Thoughts "Tales of Shadows and Light"

When I awoke that morning, the sparrows were singing outside my window, warbling happily to each other and the green world of the Spruce Tree they inhabited. Their tiny claws caught on dangling leaf branches, they bounced up and down as the crisp, January breeze coasted in and out of the web work of leaves hiding the trunk from my view.

I sat on the edge of my bed watching their play a long time. It always made me feel better about myself and the world I had to face each day when I did that. I didn't have to think about going back to that school, where the children pretended to be grownups, and acted like scoundrels and parents ran away from their parental duties to get lost in their personal problems.

Being an educator wasn't what I thought it would be. It had turned into a nightmare for me, for many of my fellow educators as well. We were policed by Federal laws, state laws, county laws, school district laws, administrator laws and by parents. Our ability to teach what we knew and do it best was hobbled by a thousand and one politically correct laws and inhibitions that had nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of what we did for a living or what the kids really needed. Our nation had become obsessed with facts and figures and self importance and forgotten the heart of learning....love of knowledge for its own sake. We had become cogs on a great wheel of indifference and corporate commerciality. A factory that grinds out future adults to fuel the money machine of America. Zombies, not thinking adults. Not individuals with a zest and love for life and all its possibilities.

At that moment I thought it was going to be a very dark day. A very dark day indeed.

But perseverance is my middle name and I get up each morning, Monday through Friday, and cast myself back into the lagoons of education like a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered again by all the restrictions and inattentions of the students and the laws.

I wondered sometimes if there was true justice in the world, that so few could make it so hard for so many, but just reading the headlines of the newspapers, or watching the national news and seeing how just a few percent of the world owned over ninety percent of it, it was no wonder that teachers were bottom-runged for extinction. As were many other professions.

Scientists were complaining about climate changes, but they had ignored one very stern, but cruel reality that life had its own way and mind about doing things. Humans could change everything but the way they looked at the world. Most people didn't change much from about two years old according to research and I believed it. 

Try teaching a thirteen year old child something new he doesn't want to learn. It's not just difficult, it's pretty much impossible. Yeah. You can get them to memorize the numbers and facts, but do they use it? Not really. It's games and fantasy they're after these days. You go through a door ahead of them and hold it for the next child to exit, and they will all come through, not one of them taking the door from you so you don't have to stand there like an  idiot.

Maybe I'm bitter, or maybe I'm wise. Point of view matters.

But that morning I was honey and light, the birdies singing sweet songs outside and making my life a better place to be for a time. Why couldn't people be more like that? Why do we have to spend so much time criticizing, complaining and trying to control each other, rather than helping, assisting, nurturing and being kind?

Thoughts were like swift arrows through my mind that morning. Thoughts about light. Thoughts about darkness.

Would I be thinking all those thoughts if I had grown up to be an astronaut? Or would I be sitting in some high tech laboratory pondering why people didn't pour more money into pure research, want to explore, want to take advantage of the knowledge exploration brings?

Probably.

Seems endemic of humans to want more than they will ever have, even if they already have more than the majority will ever have.

I'm almost eight years old now. And I suspect that soon I will get up, but not go anywhere, instead I will take one last breath, then clasp hands over my chest and sprout lilies as I expire into the Great Unknown.

I'm not afraid of dying so much, as not knowing what comes next? I suppose that's no different for anyone else either. No one really knows for sure what comes next. How could they without actually having been there and come back? And yet there were kids in India who remembered being alive before and could even point out where they died, and who their parents had been.

Do I believe that?

Just as much as I do in angels with wings. Both are possible, and both might be grasping at straws to make sense out a life much bigger than we were.

I stood up to look more out my window. Funny, but I didn't feel any wind, even though it was blowing the leaves and sparrows up and down in a shaking medley of colors and movement. I pulled my head back in and turned around, then I froze.

Laying on my bed was this strange person that looked like me. Their face was frozen in a look I couldn't explain. I was trembling at that moment. I wasn't sure what to do. How could someone have snuck into my bed without my noticing it?

I walked closer to the bed to peer at the body more intimately, but as I did so, I got this strange feeling. How come I couldn't feel my feet on the carpet?

I looked down and my feet were not touching the carpet.

That set off a chain reaction of both trembling and fear. And yet, even in the midst of the turmoil I felt at that moment, I also felt a certain kind of calm. I sat down on the edge of the bed, still not feeling anything and reached out a hand to touch the forehead of the lookalike. My hand passed through the head.

I jerked my hand back in shock. The touch of the head  had not been solid, but like pushing my hand through a dense mass of frozen air.

It was still dark in my room, even with the window open and so I noticed the bright light as soon as it appeared. 

I turned to look and the door to my bedroom was open, but instead of the usual hallway complete with small tables with stands of books upon them, and prints of famous artists hanging on velvet purple wallpapered walls, there was just this bright white light.

I stood up to examine this more closely.

Nothing changed. The light remained steady and unchanging.

For no reason I could explain I felt both fear and great peace from looking at the light. I remember reading once that when people died a tunnel of white light appeared, but this wasn't a tunnel. My preacher had said sinners go to hell, but I didn't see any flames or forks and devils.

I went closer to look. A kind of gentle warmth exuded from the light, even more so the closer I came to it. Finally I thrust my hand into it. It felt like immersing it into a warm bath water.

I stuck my head into it and ahead of me I could see a flowing path of golden light that crossed through towering columns of white light. Ahead on the path were some people I had known before. My father and mother, my old girlfriend from high school, a coach I had loved, a librarian who had instilled love for books and reading in my heart. And in their midst stood a man with radiant eyes, his face glowing with warmth, his eyes burning with a light so gentle and deep that my heart felt as if it might burst.

At that moment all thoughts of teaching escaped my mind.

I knew then that I had graduated from the school of Earth and was no longer going to be teaching. I also realized at that moment that I wasn't just teaching others, but teaching myself, that I was learning how to love even though there was none in return, that I was learning how to give, even when there was no return of such.

How did I realize that?

Let's just say that at that moment I knew why the sparrows outside my window were singing so brightly, so merrily. They knew what was most precious about life. And now I did too.

That even in the darkest of my teaching hours there had been hope and light and that no motion, or good thing I did was ever wasted. For I could also see in the path of light many of the hardest of the children I had worked with over the years, grown up now, but recognizable. I could see them smiling and waving at me. I knew then that love was never wasted and that my life had not been in vain.

I exited my room and went into the Light to join my friends there. Yes. It was going to be a great day. A very great day indeed.

Superman short animation

A Haunting We Will Go "A Second Ghost Story"

"Oh my Yudda Yudda! Where do I start?" He said to himself as he stared out of the eyes of his best friend and buddy, Jemmie Stewart.

"Start from why you're trying to possess me."

The red being, with huge saucer eyes and brown antenna and lots of pink spots and candy stripes running up and down its ghost body, twitched uneasily. "Well, it's not exactly like that."

"Then what is it exactly like?" Jemmie asked, looking at himself in the mirror image of himself on the crashed flying saucer's highly polished metal...which also happened to be stretched across about ten acres of cow pasture, with cows mooing up a storm from the sudden flaming intrusion of this bizarre space alien.

"Yudda told us. Well he told our forefathers that we would never die as long as we had a second ghost."

"I'm not a ghost."

"No, but you're making it possible for me to be one. A second one."

"I don't get it." Jemmie snapped angrily.

"You come crashing down out of the sky like you're hell-bent for leather, scare the crap out of all my cows, which will probably not give me any milk for the next year now, and almost hit me on top of it. How's that make me anything but angry as hell?"

The Second Ghost shrank back in the mirror view and actually popped out of Jemmie's body to stand on the broken turf of the meadow. It trembled uneasily. "That better?"

"Yeah...but."

"But what?"

"If you're a ghost, how are you standing on anything?"

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

"It's like this, when the Great Yudda Yudda made the universe...."

"You mean God."

"No, I mean the Great Yudda Yudda. The One who eats us all and bears us as fruit of his labors."

"Now that sounds just strange." Jemmie barked at the Second Ghost, who shrank back even further, trembling even more.

"No need to get nasty about it. We can have our own Gods. Your people have a history of having many gods, so what's one more?"

Jemmie, tired of all the wrangling with the desperate alien ghost, picked up his shotgun, and turned to go home.

"Wait." The Second Ghost hollered and shot in front of him, blocking his way.

"I need you."

"No, you don't."

"You need me."

"Like since when the beginning of the earth?"

"No, since the date you have tonight."

Jemmie froze. "How'd you know that?"

"I can read your mind."

"All of it."

"Yes. And you humans have very bizarre mating rituals, I will tell you. Now when we want to go biodualistic, we..."

"Pardon?"

"Bio...it means making babies."

"Oh. You make babies?"

"Only on two days of the year, when the Great Yudda Yudda smiles on us, then we can have babies."

"Sounds boring to me."

"Not at all, it leaves the other five hundred and fifty two days free for us to go mushy mush."

"What's mushy..." Jemmie stopped. "Don't tell me, I don't want to know. I'm going home."

He hopped into his jeep, jammed the pedal to the medal, frightening his herd even further, but hurrying to get away from that strange alien. The army, navy, air force, black ops, somebody would be out soon to check out the crash, and he wanted to be as far away as possible when that happened.

He jammed the jeep around a hard curve, then shot onto the main road that paralleled his pasture, and hurtled at top speed for about three miles. He had a lot of land. Shot down the road, his hair blowing in the crisp night air, which was close to freezing now. He didn't slow until he saw the solar lights at his drive entrance, winking blue and green.

He slowed, braked, then swung onto his small patch of road and slung the jeep into a sharp ninety degree angle, slamming to a stop in front of his three bedroom two story house, that he had built himself. He was quite skilled with his hands, his father had told him, and his mind. Because inside the house he had a computer lab setup for his telescope he kept in the attic with the night sky revolving window, so he could watch Mars and Jupiter for signs of alien aircraft. 

That's what had gotten him into the crazy mess with the Second Ghost to begin with. Imagine that, he mused, the ghost of a ghost. It was just crazy, he thought to himself, wincing at the incredible irony of it. How could a ghost have a ghost? Must be short on bodies where the thing came from.

He slung his shotgun under his right arm, hopped from his jeep, then opened his front door with his left hand without slowing. He had done this so many times, that the door was like a greased monkey, it moved so quickly and effortlessly. Course he had greased it enough for that to happen. It also had  sensor which  pulled it quickly open on his touch of the front door knob.

Yeah. He was also an inventor of sorts.

He ate a quick can of pork n beans, chugged down a half quarter of milk. Ate an apple, and a Twinkie, then shoved away from his hand made kitchen table, tossed the wrappers and can into the garbage,  put away the rest of the milk, shut the lights, kicked off his shoes by the front door for ease of getting to them on the morrow, then headed up the spiral flight of stairs he had made. He had fixed the railing so it was wide enough for him to ride it down.

Like the little kid he was in some ways, he still tried to make up for those missing years of his childhood when he had been in a coma for about three years, his parents praying for him to get better, but looking like end times coming anyway.

On the day they pulled the plug, he'd popped out of his wherever he'd been and never been the same since. It was like he had been born twice, with a genius mind, some abilities that quite frankly astounded and scared the crap out of him, and the desire to grow up as fast as possible.

So once he had shifted from middle school to high, he crammed four years into one, then got a free ride to Cal Tech, where he put in some time working on his Doctorate in Quantum Mechanics. He had even got some coaching on the internet and in person from the great Steven Hawkins. Once he graduated, he'd put all his degrees in a milk bottle, shoved it into a trunk, then used his grant money he'd been saving to put a down payment on his farm.

His parents were sad to see him go, but they were getting older, and the farm quickly became a source of income for them and him, and they didn't mind so much, especially since he had built them a home about two acres away from him with a connecting road so they could visit whenever they chose.

He slipped his clothes off, and got into his shower, complete with Jacuzzi shower head and stripped the sweat and cow smell from him, as well as the grease and smoke from the saucer. It had been quite a mess when he found it.

As he dried off, he remembered finding the dead alien. It looked like one of his cows, but with huge saucer shaped eyes and lots of yellow spots. Later, after the Second Ghost had appeared and tried to take him over, he had learned that the ghosts of those aliens were actually more intelligent than the aliens themselves.

He slipped on his jammies, then went up the spiral ladder in the hallway to his attic lab. Yeah. He sure liked those spiral stair things

He turned on all his hand-made equipment and the room came to live with buzzes, hmms, and haws, humming, zpps, and slurrs and his telescope descended from the ceiling with the Captain Kirk Command Console Chair. He strapped in and allowed the chair to orbit him below the revolving attic telescope, where he could watch the heavens.

But tonight he wasn't into Jupiter or Mars, he wanted to know if any of those crazy Men in Black were creeping around the meadow yet. He looked into the eyepiece for his telescope and the Second Ghost was in there waving at him.

He freaked.

He slammed the console to the floor and hopped off as the Second Ghost zipped out of the lens, then made itself comfortable on his Captain Kirk Command Console. The Second Ghost sprouted a Grouch Marx mustache and hairdo, then lit one of its fingers. It had twenty to each hand, and then began sucking on another finger. It blew out pink spiraling smoke and smiled.

"I think it's gonna be a cold day in hell when  you get rid of me partner!"

"Quit haunting me!"

"I'm not haunting you, partner, I'm moving in."

The Second Ghost shot towards Jemmie so fast and flew into his body so hard, that he fell back across the room onto his butt. Jemmie sat there stunned. It was gone. He looked around. He couldn't see it anywhere. He smiled. Finally, he could relax.

He went to his bedroom below and tucked himself in, then he felt an urge to go to the bathroom. He stood in front of his toilet to go, and admired his reflection for a moment. "Ain't no such things as ghosts. And definitely not Second Ghosts.  I've just been working too hard."

"Yudda Yudda." The Second Ghost said as it smiled at him from his reflection. "You just go ahead and tell yourself that!"

Jemmie screamed!

The Case of the Good Doctor and Nurse Pennymucker "A Sherlock Holmes Story"

The Doctor had just come home from a weary night at the hospital. He went to his bed and examined a small bottle with something invisible to anyone else's eyes and smiled happily, even though it was a tired smile. He stripped is clothing off to prepare for bed and in the process accidently knocked the bottle to the floor beside his bed. It rolled a tad and stopped against a foot warmer. The cap on the bottle came loose and rolled away.

Twas the night before Christmas, not even a mouse stirred, but something moved in the shadows beneath Doctor Wayne Spickermore's bed. Something dark and dreary. With an agenda that was not its own.

The good Doctor had been at work all day examining the mouths of numerous patients who complained of the local cough that had been going around London for the last several weeks. It was believed to have been imported from the India Isles, as it had all the markings of the Kali Flu that had struck the Britains this time a year ago.

He was bushed. He and Nurse Pennymucker had been working since the early hours of the morning and both hadn't slept much the night before, nor did they intend to this night either, for both their spouses were gone for the holidays, visiting relatives. She was expected to arrive any minute and he had been hoping for a relaxing bit of play before rest. 

The good Doctor was an honest man in all ways, but that of matrimony, as was Nurse Pennymucker, but they had underestimated the alertness of their mates. They had been seen sneaking into the Late Night Waldorf for a snack and a snack. Their way of saying fooling around with a good stout in one hand and something a bit more lewd in the other.

Neither the husband, or the wife had said a thing, but rather it had solidified their own plans, which all along was to end their relationships. But how could anyone have dared to assume or cognize that these two upper-middle class citizens would ever resort to violence?

"I say Holmes, this is really quite awful to look at." Watson said to Sherlock as they puzzled about the way that the good Doctor had died in his sleep. 

"Most puzzling as well, Watson, I fear." Sherlock mentioned.

Inspector Bloodstone entered abruptly, disturbing their melancholy.

"We've just finished the interviews with the husband and wife, and both have legitimate alibis."

Sherlock and Watson exchanged knowing glances. They'd seen this kind of thing before. There was always an alibi. Always!

"I'd like a go at them." Sherlock suggested. "Would you be so kind as to escort them here."

"It's rather late, don't you think?" The Inspector asked.

"Not at all. It's still Christmas and since none of us have anywhere else to go at this time, I can't think of anything better to do." Watson ventured.

Sherlock looked at Watson. He knew that Mrs. Hudson would frown at such words, but he also knew his companion was a sounding board that was a requisite in their partnership.

"I agree." Sherlock said finally.

The Inspector left and the two men searched the room, ignoring the bloated body of the good Doctor, and his eyeballs which had fallen out of their sockets and exploded.

Sherlock pulled a bible down. A Saint James version and rifled its contents, finding old portraits of the good Doctor's wife when they had first married and a picture of a tombstone with a baby's name upon it. His eyebrow rose at that, but he said nothing and put the picture back into the Bible and on the shelf he had found it.

Watson, meanwhile expanded his search into the living room area, and came across a locked desk with a secret compartment beneath it. He had found it by running his hands all over the wood. Another ploy of criminals was to hide their secrets in such ways.

"Ah-ha!" He announced to no on e in particular, and then opened the secret compartment with a surgical tool he retrieved from his black bag, where he always kept his medical supplies, and forensics tools.

"Something?" Sherlock inquired, leaning over.

"Likely." Watson replied, sliding open the secret compartment to reveal a stack of letters. The reek of sweet perfume caused him to be repelled for a moment, then he retrieved them and sat down on a two seat Edwardian Saddle Sofa. where one person faces front and one back. He began going through the letters.

"Holmes, look at this." He lifted a letter for his friend.

Sherlock took it and examined it closely a moment, then nodded.

"As I thought. The plot runs deeper than we surmised."

They continued their search.

The Inspector, meanwhile, abruptly showed up with the two suspects, who were watched over by Constable Evans, who kept a sharp eye on the nervous duo.

"Well now." The Inspector announced as he entered the living room.

Sherlock and Watson looked up from their work and nodded. 

"Just a moment more, Inspector, then we will attend to your friends."

The husband and wife glanced nervously around as if expecting some kind of monster to hurtle from the walls and snatch them into oblivion.

Through, Sherlock nodded to Watson, who went back into the bedroom, while Sherlock began pacing the living room with his hands behind his back. His cape flowed from the movement, giving him a kind of mysterious look in the semi-lit room.

"Inspector, I see no reason to keep either of these people here a moment longer."

The Inspector gave him a shocked look.

Sherlock turned around to face the couple.

"Undoubtedly you both had evil expectations of the good Doctor, and possibly for good reason, but I'm sure that your heart of darkness had nothing to do with his untimely death."

"How so, Sherlock?" The Inspector asked as the relieved couple were allowed to sit down at the French table in the center of the room where a beautiful set of Prussian Candlestick holders sat in a buffet of glass roses.

"Watson!"

Watson came back into the room and held a set of tweezers up. A roach struggled to get free from its grip.

The couple gasped.

Sherlock smiled.

"What makes this all so ironic is that the good Doctor had planned all along to dump Mrs. Pennymucker once he had secured your divorce, good lady."

The wife shriveled at that accusation. "He would never have left me."

"I agree." Sherlock said, inclining his head.

He held up a stack of letters. "But these proclaim otherwise."

He held up a pink letter. "Addressed to a Shaman in the India Isles. A very well known follower of Kali and a practitioner of the black arts, which I'm sure you'll agree Inspector are nothing to make light of."

The Inspector inclined his head.

"But how could his magic have possibly struck us from there?" The husband inquired, genuinely puzzled.

"By special delivery. Watson!"

Watson held up the roach again.

"His intention." Sherlock laid down all the letters on the table in front of the couple. "His intention all along was to have our tiny guest deliver a good-bye message to you, in hopes of not having to face the stigma of a public divorce, and a sanctioning by the Church."

The wife pale.

"Are you saying that foul insect killed my husband?"

"No. I'm saying that it was the device of his surmise." Sherlock responded pleasantly. "Watson?"

"You see, this little fellow is capable of carrying an inordinate amount of deadly poison in its front legs. It has tiny pouches on both legs, which when warmed to a certain temperature, open up and deliver their contents."

"Then it wasn't the dark arts that killed him?" The husband spoke up.

"Actually. It was. You see this tiny fellow will only wake up when it is shaken from its rest and then warmed to a certain temperature. The good Doctor knocked off the bottle that held next to a foot warmer he kept at the side of his bed."

"Yes." Sherlock said, pausing to light his famous pipe, take a few puffs, then smile at the surprised couple. "So you see the message he had intended for you dear madam, he instead inadvertently delivered to himself."

Later on Sherlock and Watson sat before their fireplace at 221B Baker Street and reminisced about the episode of the murder.

"It's funny, Holmes."

"How so?" Sherlock inquired, his long thin fingers dancing on the tip of his knees as he played them to a tune only his great mind could hear.

"In the India Isles they believe in karma. That what you put out comes back to you."

"Indeed. And it looks like this time it came back instantly, didn't it?" Sherlock replied with a wry smile. "The good Doctor's karma quite literally bit him in the..." Sherlock smiled again more broadly. "...the you know."

Both men laughed.

Outside a few late night Christmas Carolers stopped, seeing the lights on upstairs in 221B and began to sing "Silent Night."

But no one heard them above, for Sherlock and Watson had both earned a good night's rest, and were both fast asleep on their chairs.

Zombies Of The Stratosphere - Commando Cody, Chapter 10

Zombies Of The Stratosphere - Commando Cody, Chapter 9

Grab the Man with the Cape "A Cartoon Story"

I looked at her as she slept on my couch, all snuggled beneath the comforter I had given her. It was still blowing hard rain outside. I could hear it pelting the window panes and the door of my living room. Didn't seem to bother her one bit, even though it had awakened me. Something was odd about the rain. I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I sat down in my easy chair and pulled up a comic book. Yeah. That's what I do when I'm worried. I read. Comic books. So?

It was Batman, the Caped Crusader. I loved his stories. Here was a mortal man facing off adversaries that many times were larger than life, and even terribly powerful. No complains, no I'd rathers, just grab the cape and go punch someone out, or head them off with a trick or two up his sleeves.

I grinned. Amazing how many gadgets he had. Not only was he clever, but brilliant as well. In the movies they had him getting his hardware from Alfred, but in the editions I had bought, the earlier ones, he didn't rely on anyone, but his own cleverness and quick moves. 

I closed the book and laid it on my lap. The dim lamp I was reading by was killing my eyes. I was tired, so it didn't take much.

We had a terrible weekend fighting off that Zombie King at the shopping mall, and there's been hell to pay the night after, trying to explain to the police why we were killing people. The only thing that saved us from being accused of murder was they couldn't find any murder weapons and no one would testify against us, even though a reporter had caught some shots of us tearing into the zombies.

The reporter very kindly, later on, had admitted he never saw us killing a living person, which is the solid truth. Cartoon and I never kill the living, only the dead, near dead and the ghoulish, wicked and sinful demonic types. Which means everything that, basically, wasn't human and had been written about in comic books at one time or another? 

I just prayed we didn't get any of those gigantic robots, the Sentinels that the X-Men faced off against. I hadn't a clue how to defeat things like that.

Thud!

That was loud enough to not only shock me from my musings, but hurl me from my chair, reaching for the sword that had vanished when I put away my Thor comic book. I hadn't been able to get a handle on the hammer thing. Too heavy, so I had settled for a sword, which somehow I was able to manage. Maybe later a hammer or something similar. This comic book hero magic was very unpredictable, except that it usually provided me with the tools to defeat my enemies, but not always at once, and not always without a few lost ounces of blood or skin to boot.

Thud!

That did it. I ran into the kitchen and came out with my butcher knife. No hero now, just cautious. Cartoon laid there on the couch, her skin giving off a golden comic book glow, her physical form partially in her world and mostly in mine for now. Didn't stir. Now that's what I call...tired.

Nothing else happened, so I was about to put my wickedly long and deadly butcher knife down...actually it was just a butter knife...but I have a great imagination...when the front door flung open and my brother stood there, dripping wet. He flung his hair back to shake off some of the rain, and managed quite well to wet my nice rug...well, second hand...but clean.

"Brother." He greeted.

"You could have knocked." I answered.

"I did. Thud. Thud." He grinned mischievously.

"I could have stabbed you with my butcher knife." I protested, waving my butter knife at him.

He broke into laughter. "You can't even make a real peanut butter sandwich with that thing and you're worried about killing me? Get real!"

I shrugged, then remembered that Cartoon was on the other side of the couch, he was facing.

"Look, it's the middle of the night. Why are you here?"

He shut the door, then placed his umbrella against my nice new...well third hand...coat rack. He sighed. "I have a little problem."

"How little?"

He grinned. "Louisa. Spanish doll. About five five."

"And?"

"She's pregnant."

He suddenly looked dangerous and defeated at the same time. Dangerous to him and defeated because for once he had a situation he couldn't talk himself out of.

"Look, bro, I don't do marriages."

He snapped out of it and snarled at me. "I'm not asking you too. I just want some moral support is all."

"Since when?"

He took a deep breath, his temper on the edge of exploding. We were like that to each other, perfect mirrors. Me with my don't take prisoners attitude and his with take everyone prisoner.

He slumped to the rug and put his head in his hands. "I just don't know how to handle this anymore. At first..."

He began to sob.

I grew weary then. He never sobs. Suddenly, that knife felt like a weapon again.

"I was hoping you would give me a chance..."

He looked up and his eyes were blood red and horns sprouted from his forehead. "To eat you!" He screamed, then leaped from the floor, like a giant frog and grasped for my throat. 

I sidestepped him and slammed the knife into the back of his skull, butt first.

He slammed to the floor, rolled over, and sprouted ten pairs of wicked looking claws that would give a butcher a nightmare. 

"So you want to play before you die, wise guy?"

I shrugged. "Is that what they call it in hell? Play?"

He began to rise and slowly he grew taller and taller, until his head was knocking against the ceiling.

"Be careful of the paint job. I just finished it yesterday." I warned him.

He snarled angrily and rushed me. 

I backed up and my hand brushed the Batman comic book.

Suddenly I felt t his gray cape in my hand. I swung it in front of me, and sidestepped, letting him charge the cape instead. He passed through it into the kitchen, where I heard the smashing of glass.

I groaned. "I just bought those plates and glasses." I screamed.

I rushed into the kitchen and he was getting up from my fourth hand kitchen table which had been on its last legs, and now had no legs at all to stand on.

He grabbed a leg and rushed me with it.

I threw the cape at him and it wrapped around him.

He tried to unwrap it and stumbled, knocking a piece of my kitchen doorway into shatters, then went into the living room, like a dancing mannikin, blinded, but furious.

I went to the front door, opened it quickly, and then kicked him in the behind, so that he hurtled towards the balcony. As he struck it. Iron. He flamed on like one of the Fantastic Four, screamed, then tumbled from view, a holocaust of fire and smoke.

I stepped to the balcony railing and looked down. He was dissolving in the swimming pool several feet away, smoke and no flames now. The rain continued to pelt. The gray cape became a soft gray mist, and then drifted away, followed several moments later by the demon impersonating my brother. The pool had some ashes in it, but otherwise looked normal. Dirty.

I shut the front door and Cartoon sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Is it time to get up yet, Johnnie?"

I grinned at her, and then yawned. "Nah. Get some more shut eye."

I tucked her in again and she smiled up at me.

"I feel so safe with you." She said softly, her eyes growing heavy with sleep.

"Yeah. I do that to girls."

She laughed lightly, then her head rolled to the side and she began to snore lightly.

I tucked her in better, and then headed for my bedroom.

It's tough being the man with the gray cape. But its tougher still going all night without sleep. I jumped onto my bed, clothes and all, and went fast asleep.

Zombies of the Stratosphere, Chapter Nine