An Introduction to Other Worlds—Part 1

So I’ve been giving y’all an exploration of the Living City of Azza-Jono. Now let’s have a look at some of my other worldsets.

The first two are connected, though I haven’t really stated how yet—and we’ll leave it that way for awhile longer.

Gaucho

An amnesiac and a talking cat search for what’s happened to lost memories.

I wake up.

My eyelids are heavy. Where am I? What’s that against my arm? So soft …

“Oh, hey, kitty …”

“Kitty? I’m Pem.”

Did that cat just talk to me?

“Excuse me?” I clear my throat and say it again. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t recognize me, William?”

“Holy cow, you did just talk to me.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Um, no. No, I don’t think so.” My head hurts but not like I’ve been drinking. It’s an unfamiliar pain. “Um, where are we, Pem?”

“We’re at the Station. Where else?”

Pem paws at her face in small circles that are getting larger with each swipe.

“What’s the Station, Pem?”

Pem stops wiping. Stares at me with wide, unblinking eyes. Then pulls back and lets go with a giant lick down the side that lifts the foot up. Does that about twelve times, then licks chops.

“Pem?”

“Huh? The Station. You know. Our house …”

I don’t recognize this place. It certainly doesn’t feel like home. My finger hurts. There’s a callus here. Looks like a ring.

“Did I lose my ring?”

“I dunno. Did you? I don’t have any use for rings.”

“Oh. Of course not. Well if you see it around, tell me, okay?”

“You bet. Hey, I’m hungry. How about you open a can of food for me, huh?”

“All right. Where is it?”

“Over here.” Pem trots in dainty little steps over to a stack of canned food.

I read it out loud: “Grool’s Gruel.” There’s a black, wispy tentacle dripping some slime. “You eat this stuff, Pem?”

“Hey. Momma’s hungry, okay? Give it.”

“All right, all right.”

I crack the can, but now I need a fork and plate. I look around in the cabinets for dishes. There aren’t many, but I do find a stack of saucers. Drawer has some silver in it. I fork out the food and put it down. I stroke her back, like a reflex.

“Thanks, pal.”

“Sure.”

What’s out the window there, over the sink. Let me take a look …

“Holy cow! How high up are we, Pem?”

Pem eats.

“Is that a mattress down there? At the base of a tree? We live in a tree?”

“Nom nom nom …”

Not getting anything from her while she’s eating. Go take a look out the front door.

“Wow, that’s a long way down. Are those steps or a ladder? I guess it’s kind of the same ….”

I feel a pull, like a magnet in my chest near my heart. She’s out there somewhere. I know she is. I feel my finger again, and it points.

“Um, what’s with this, Pem?”

She’s licking her face but is done eating. “You’re pointing again. You do that sometimes.”

“Right, but what does it mean?”

“I dunno. It’s how we know where to go.”

“Where to go where?”

“You know. Where we go. We do stuff every day, then come back here and sleep. And more importantly, eat.”

“Huh.” I take a step outside. Feels new.

Hogwash!

a mysterious man in black wanders across the land, killing everyone in sight.

one

From the transom west comes the Hoawoshwogg, clad in black with dandy scarves and rivers of electric lead ready to make folks dead, heavy shooters long in the tooth and neck, etched with the lost words of makers dead from an ice age long gone, songs of independence, killing with a thought, given to the credence of this man's hands, bare beneath trim cuffs and intricate links. Each step shakes a tailfeather, a jingle-jangle of inevitability jutting out from rich snakeskin beneath fine wool. He breathes only in time with his steps, heart beating the drum of doom. Waxed moustache sculpted on a stiff lip, mouth pulled taut for years to make wrinkles there and down, like a permanent pucker. Each step is a funeral procession, every thought a dirge. And when the urge comes, the Hoawoshwogg arrives.

The town is Pearl. The year is 17 of Our Lord the Lady. The day is Friday. The place, a saloon at the end of the thoroughfare. The man, a man of the cloth and star, though such things were not often met in Pearl. This gave Henry Mancus significant clout, an acumen which was understood through proclamations, each one a sermon because of the collar, every one a law due to the badge. The mantle of authority was not challenged by the expected. Those rough riders and rounders hung their hats when the Reverend came around. When he spoke of Jesus' blessings, they listened. Who knew what they believed, but it was they, the supposed outlaws and free men who held his rule in place, while the abolitionists and congregants, half of them, rallied for his removal from one office or the other.

The matter of the collar, the presbytery found, was ordained by God and could not be divested without just and righteous cause.

And so they went to the judge.

The judge ruled that there was no law or statute prohibiting a man of the cloth from holding public office.

Henry Mancus smiled, looking out at the horizon, seeing God's Will coming, drenching his eyes in black blood under the earth, liquid gold, and the steerage of cows atop it all, and the fields of cotton and the owned men picking it. He smiled on his fortune and found it good.

So good, he found it, that he decided he would feast, and one of the cotton women would pleasure him. He would drink the wine of the communion and continue his ascent to heaven, one groan, one sip at a time.

Each thought, a pass over the land, a breath through the nose, the sound of spurs jingle-jangling.

Henry turned to look at the handsome man next to him. A rugged sort, maybe nearing his own age, but clean, almost immaculate in neatness having walked up, seemingly, from the desert.

The pastor sherriff said, "Good day, friend. Are you new to Pearl?"

The Hoawoshwogg shot him in the head.

Henry's surprise and questions never really formed a coherent whole before the hole in his forehead gave piloted a bullet through his brains, exploding out the back of the skull. His eyes were still filled with visions of a ripe land and genuine admiration for this man, who had taken his life.

The rough riders and rounders with their pluming moustaches had plenty to say but little to do. The Hoawoshwogg let them run their mouths, then shot them, too.

He went in the saloon of Pearl, shot everyone inside there, then went back to the street, shot everyone he could see with lightning precision and breakneck speed. It wasn't so much that he moved quickly as he fired rapidly, and he saw their death before it happened, which gave haste to that eventuality.

He went in the bathhouse, killed everyone.

Went to the brothel, killed everyone.

Down the bend to the river, where prospectors panned. All gunned down by the Hoawoshwogg.

His feet carried him upriver, away from Pearl, toward Bethlehem.

Three more next issue. Sound off in the comments!

Xoxo,

T

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