The Green Moon

Copyright © 2025 by D. White.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 01/21/2025

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CONTENTS

THE GREEN MOON

THE ECHO GARDEN

INVISIBLE ROSES

TUBA CITY

IS DADDY COMING HOME?

CAT BOXING

THE BUTTERFLY HOTEL

MICHELLE’S EGG SHELL

NEAR THE WEST BRIDGE

RUTABAGA PIE

APPROXIMATELY RON

PURPLE NO-SLIP DECK SHOES

BETTY. WHERE ARE YOU?

ROCKET GIRL, I LOVE YOU

MISS USHER. BRING THE BIRDS OF JOY.

THE OLD GIRL ON TUTT STREET

THE BODY IN THE POOL

WHITE TREES

THE PILLOW CASE

I WANT TO GO TO OREGON

STAIRCASE TO POVERTY

I SAW MY DOCTOR

THE SNAKE HEAD

BABY IN THE WALL

ROOM EIGHT

IN A 1928 ROADSTER

SILLIN’S BIRTHDAY

A GREAT WAR

ON THE DECK OF THE ECHO SHIP

APARTMENT ELEVEN

MEGAN AND DARIUS

THAT WAS WHEN I LIVED IN EAST LATVIA

MR. WOOD

THE TWO LOGS

THE ANTI-DROWNING LEAGUE

DRINK DARK THE WINE, POLICEMAN

THE DISAPPEARED

A SHORT TRIP TO DEVONTON

NEXT DAY WE HAD A PICNIC

THE ART OF LIVING

MR. REPRESSO & TINKERBELLE

THE MAGICIAN

LET’S PROBE JOHNNY’S MEMORY

HE HAD A SMALL RUBBERY ARM

IT WAS GETTING LATE

A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

MR. FLY-BY-GHOST

AUTOMATIC

THE VACUUM

NOW THE REST OF US CAN BREATHE EASY

A PLAN FOR REDUCING EVIL IN THE WORLD

COME TO DINNER!

THE MATINEE IDOL

THE INDIAN HEAD

THE CAKE & CANDY TABLE IN HEAVEN

FORTY-FIVE DAUGHTERS

NIGHT BIRDS

THE TITANIC

THE GLASS HOUSE

THE TSUNAMI

THE LONELY TRAINS OF OCTOBER

THE GREEN MOON

Irma and Dex went boating.

This was in our early days, our clear days of youth. We used to go boating… in boats with mirrors. It was the spring or early summer (I don’t think the fad lasted more than a season) in 1890… Mirrors.

All kinds… thick framed mirrors from that era later called the Victorian Era, thickly framed mirrors that weren’t stationary… that you could tilt on an axis. The frame remained stationary but the mirror could be released by a catch and tilted horizontally. You could lean over the mirror and see your head flying in the sky.

For some reason, Uncle Oscar was dead (on a particular Sunday afternoon I recall). He wanted to go along. "Can dead people really appreciate an outing like this? CAN they in fact enjoy our excursion?" No one answered. Oscar was firm in his resolve so we packed his coffin into the back of the carriage, the coffin with the little window in it and we went along to the canals where boats were waiting to take us out onto the water… to view the sun and the foliage and the birds, and other boaters in our ideal group…

Oscar? Oscar? Are you comfortable?

He won’t answer.

I know. I was just being polite. We were polite in those days… before all the changes started to occur.

Oscar seems to be enjoying himself… We left it at that… the four of us… Dexter, Irma, Randolph and Sinfonia and of course Uncle Oscar… Five of us… (Does one count the dead? One should. They are all around us).

The ‘fad’ (we only called it that later)… The fad or ‘lark’ or ‘convention’ or ‘pleasure’ only lasted a season. By the time of August, I think it became too hot to load those heavy mirrors into the boats… and once one group stopped, the others considered stopping as well - then did. Soon the lake and the canals had only boats without mirrors, only boys and girls and of course their chaperones…

It was the very next season it happened. The Millers were the first out on the lake with their mirror (an over-sized mirror too)… We laughed at them. They had embarrassed themselves and felt shamed. It was several years before they were included in social gatherings again. Young Lucia Miller probably suffered most. She married poorly (she married a store clerk with over-sized ears). Her sixteenth birthday coming out party was poorly attended. She had to settle for a store clerk that in addition to his large ears, had a pronounced limp. A crate of nails had fallen on his right hip. He also talked with a lisp. Otherwise he was tall, his features were (other than the ears as mentioned) moderately pleasing. Given proper clothing and setting and provided he didn’t open his mouth to speak, he could have passed for one of the civilized gentry. He at least could have looked the part… (but clearly over the years Lucia became unhappy with him, even though he had nothing to do with the fiasco of the mirror on the lake and in March too!… before good weather… as if eager to impress which clearly revealed low breeding). Up until then, the Millers had been doing fine on their journey of entering society. The false note marked them as not being a part of the whole. It ear-marked them for exclusion.

Sometimes society can be cruel… but it has so many benefits as well.

Surely… for us but not for the Millers.

"Don’t even mention the name. I still can’t forgive them. We could have had another season, maybe two but not after… I enjoyed it but with their crass move, we had no choice but to reject it… These sort of things need to happen together. For one to stand out… and like that… It’s a clear provocation. They HAD to be dealt with severely."

Yes… I suppose… It was a shame however…

It was later Sinfonia started lying about the snails… I think too the year of the mirrors was the same year of the green moon. The copper smelting plant (miles away) was spewing green smoke into the open air that year… and when the moon came up… It was often green!

THE ECHO GARDEN

Arenas for sound… to reflect and amplify… Each audience member had an ear horn which they could pivot to aim at a bird, a distant animal, people talking or to hear wind in the trees…

I didn’t care for the Blue Note…

Yes… Kinda run down. It was the first one I think but they didn’t keep it up.

I liked the Sound Garden.

You mean the ‘Echo’ Garden?

Yes! The ‘Echo’ Graden!

Too much concrete I thought… But the sound WAS pretty good… It was my second favorite.

Which was your favorite?

The ‘Old Wooden Castle’…

Well. That had the best resonance but… too close to the mill.

That’s why it was only open Sundays… so you could hear the birds, people taking walks, holding hands, whispering, making promises…

Wilson was always out with his horseless carriage though…

Yes. A damned nuisance! That’s why the swivel horns were so good, so specific to where you point them! If the carriage comes around, you aim the horn somewhere else.

I know. But it was so loud, you couldn’t help but hear it anyway.

True enough…

They’re all gone now…

A passing fad…

No. I think the new century just got too loud. Construction everywhere… like the big Court House in town to contain the centuries’ new crimes. It was the beginning of BIG crime…

They had to keep moving further out of town too… TOO far for most people.

Remember? We went there on our first anniversary.

The Old Wooden Castle?

No, Honey. The Sound Garden… I mean the Echo Garden.

That was our first anniversary?

In ’01.

Oh sure. I remember. (He didn’t) It was a quiet peaceful afternoon… listening to sounds of the earth.

And we held hands the whole time.

Yes. We did…

INVISIBLE ROSES

We could go somewhere.

With what money? It takes money to start up and I don’t want to start up again.

Not with me?

I’m done. I was born here… If I can’t make it here, I’m done.

You’re thirty-five. You’re not done!

The mine is closed… I’m out of work.

The mine isn’t closed…

It is to me. A machine’s got my job. Half the men can do twice the work… Three…

The Union…

Look what they did to the union. They shot all those people, even pregnant ladies.

They wouldn’t now. That was 1914.

They’d do it. Besides. Some still have jobs… You can’t get everyone mad. I’m getting my father’s gun… When he couldn’t work, he did the manly thing…

I sold your father’s gun… all the guns.

What? Without asking me? Those were MY guns!

OUR guns. We needed food didn’t we? Who paid rent on the trailer space?

I got another method. I can still go up to Cedar Ridge… where he… I got this bottle here. That’ll do the trick. Pretty soon I won’t remember my name… It won’t matter. Nothing will.

Me? What about me?

I’m… depleted, outmoded. You’re a woman. You can get a job… anywhere, waitress at a café, dancer at a strip club…

My dancing days are over…

Aw. You got it honey. You can live. You got guts. You’ll change, adapt. You’ll make it… You’re better off without me. Even if you have to leave this godforsaken nowhere place.

I thought this was SOMEplace… I thought you said you’d make it here or nowhere.

Now it IS nowhere. It’s killing me. Don’t quibble, Honey. You know what I mean. It IS nowhere and I want to stay here because if I leave, it’s nowhere out there too only more so. It’s almost fall… It’s pretty up there… in the hills, evening winds in gold and yellow leaves… same time of year as the old man… His arthritis was starting to get him those cold nights.

How old was he?

I don’t know… fifty-nine, same age as Richard Burton. He was a coal miner.

No he wasn’t. He was an actor.

I KNOW he was an actor! I meant he would’ve been a coal miner if he stayed but he left…

Then leave too.

I ain’t leaving. Bury me here. I don’t want to be go away…

Go bury yourself! I’m not going to sit here and watch you…

Okay, Hunny-bunny. I’ll bury myself… But before you go… le’ me toast ya…

You’re drunk!

Not enough! Not YET! Now isn’t that preposterous… I drunk? Of course I am… and if I don’t choke on my own vomit, I’ll crawl up to Cedar Ridge like in the movie… I’ll be drunk blind in the cedars… like in that movie.

What movie?

I don’ recall.

I can’t stan’ seeing the one I love doing this to himself. I’ve been packed for a week.

Well leave then. Who’s askin’ ya ta stay… Before you go I got a story to tell you. It’s ‘bout my mother. She used to go to the rose bushes in the yard. It was winter and they was no roses but she smelled them anyway…

–

I asked her… What’re you smellin’ them for mother? There ain’t no roses. What’re you smellin’ them for? And you know what she said?

No.

They’re there. You jus’ cain’t see ‘em…

(The CIA Inspector General’s Special Review: Counterterrorism, Detention and Interrogation Activities (2003-7123-IG), declassified in August 2009, details the authorized standard and enhanced measures for interrogation.

To quote:

"Standard Measures (i.e., without physical or substantial psychological pressure)

Shaving

Stripping

Diapering (generally for periods not greater than 72 hours)

Hooding

Isolation

White noise or loud music (at a decibel level that will not damage hearing)

Continuous light or darkness

Uncomfortably cool environment

Restricted diet, including reduced caloric intake (sufficient to maintain general health)

Shackling in upright, sitting, or horizontal position

Water dousing

Sleep deprivation (up to 72 hours)

"Enhanced measures (with physical or psychological pressure beyond the above)

Attention grasp

Facial hold

Insult (facial slap)

Abdominal slap

Prolonged diapering

Sleep deprivation (over 72 hours)

Stress positions

-on knees, body slanted forward or backward

-leaning with forehead on wall

Walling

Cramped confinement (confinement boxes)

Waterboard

In all instances the general goal of these techniques is a psychological impact, and not some physical effect, with a specific goal of dislocating his expectations regarding the treatment he believes he will receive.

(Page 219-220. THE INTERROGATOR, An Education by Glenn L. Carle, published in 2011 by Nation Books, 116 East 16th Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York, 10003, ISBN 978-1-56858-673-1)

TUBA CITY

I’m going to move to Tuba City… I think.

Why? It’d drive me crazy… tubas playing all day, all night.

Very little crime there!

Who’d want to steal a tuba… or tubas?

I like tuba music.

You’d get tired after awhile. You buy a house there… you’re stuck.

But, houses there are CHEAP!

"THAT’s because no one wants to LIVE there. How’re you going to sell it if you want to move? And what about work? Buying and selling tubas? Repairing them? Making them at the tuba factory?… There IS a tuba factory there… isn’t there?"

I don’t know… sounds okay to me!

And did you know… Tuba City police will fine you if you DON’T PLAY the tuba! (At least one hour a day!).

That’s not so bad.

You don’t even know HOW to play the TUBA!

I’ll learn. There’re only three valves to push down. How hard can it be?

That’s seven combinations though!

SEVEN?

One valve by itself, the second one by itself, and third one by itself or all three at once or one and two and two and three…

That’s only six!

You didn’t let me finish! The seventh position is all three open… none of them pushed down.

Seven… That’s not so bad.

You’ll go deaf in the lower ranges!

(Jim and Dave took a trip north to Tuba City to check it out. After getting a late start because of arguing, they had a flat. By the time they arrived in Tuba City it was after dark. They cruised the streets to see what they could see and listened to the tuba players wandering around the town. Jim was disgusted by all the oompa oompas

(David, fascinated by strangeness and absurdity (and also by the dedication the players had listened intently, windows open, sometimes with two or three people sitting on a park bench playing… The police cruised the streets timing the players (the police weren’t allowed to play tubas while on duty. Off duty only… and they still had to put in an hour a day… to abide by the same rules as everybody else…)

Jim: Let me outta here…

Dave: Okay… I think it’s swell here. On the way out of town at a checkpoint, they are asked to show their practice card (stamped daily by the police).

Dave: We don’t have one.

Official: Are you a citizen?

Jim: Oh god no!

Official: Let me see your passports.

(They showed them)

Official: Have a nice ‘Tuba’ day, he said then… Consider moving here. We can always use more Tuba players! then he tipped his hat.

Jim: Yuck! Gun it! Let’s get out of here before they kidnap us and make us play the tuba.

Dave: Okay! Okay!

IS DADDY COMING HOME?

Honey. Don’t swim out too far… just as far as that dead body out there.

Mommy? What’s he doing?

Holding his breath.

Dead people hold their breaths?

Sometimes.

Is it performance art?

Yes.

Mommy? What’s a ’morgue’?

So many questions! Go out and swim! We have to go soon…

Why?

We have to make dinner. Daddy’ll be home soon.

Isn’t that daddy out there… floating face down in the surf?

It might be. He’s wearing your father’s shirt… or one like it… with MEL on the pocket and a big bowling pin on the back that’s falling over because a bowling ball just hit it.

What’s a boiling pin?

That’s ‘bowling’ pin, Honey. Not ‘boiling’… Now go out and see if it’s daddy…

If it is will he be eating dinner with us?

No… Why ask?

I can have his hamburger!

We’re not having hamburgers tonight. Now do as your mother tells you… Go swim out and see if it’s daddy.

"But I CAN’T swim!"

Oh, that’s right. Daddy was going to teach you but he can’t swim either. Well. Wade out then… far as you can. Get a stick or something. Here. Use this! Mom takes clothing line out of her over-sized purse. It has a hook on one end. She continued…

Pretend we’re fishing and daddy is a big fish. Go and hook him and reel him in.

What’s ‘reel’?

(Impatient)

Quit asking questions. Go. Do it!

Okay…

The kid hung one end of the rope over his right shoulder and walked from the sand into the water then dragged the corpse out.

Is it daddy? mommy asks, trying to sound cheerful…

Yeah! I think so. I’m afraid.

Why?

I don’t want to look in his face.

But it’s just daddy…

I don’t want to see. He has crabs and snails on his face.

On his face?

His eyes.

There aren’t any such things as snails in the sea… as sea snails.

He’s ‘icky’… slimy from, you know, from the water…

Did you touch him? Use this rag and clean your hands… When we get to the filling station, we’ll scrub your hands real good… with soap and hot water.

CAT BOXING

Late at night, people stood in front… maybe just two or three but sometimes ten or twelve…

They would huddle near the front window hoping to be there when it slid open and a scene of cat boxing could be seen. The front glass was somewhat covered in decals, advertising products that in many cases had long disappeared from the marketplace.

They might have been sold at the location some years ago but not now.

You had to be ready. The show would only last about sixty seconds… The front window was only about twelve inches square. It would without ceremony slide open and those lucky enough to be there could cram their heads close enough to see the flickering movie images inside the building on a screen… 16 mm (and becoming increasingly scratched by multiple screenings some viewers claimed).

There was no sound, just the sound of a rattling film projector. The operator of the projector was hidden on the other side of the screen. Attempts to open the back door to get inside the small concrete block building were futile. Crow bars had been used on the metal door to no effect. It was heavily bolted and barred from the inside.

A show might occur at any time of the day… early in the morning or maybe late at night.

Those that kept track of the schedule could find no pattern. The schedule was random. Usually (though not always) there was at least one show every twenty-four hours. One time it was repeated just five minute later (time enough to rewind the reel?) so fans took to hanging around after a show ‘just in case’…

Because the window was so small, only a few, maybe three at most could get a really good view of the show (people pushed each other aside to get close) so it was a good idea to hang around for the possibility of a second show…

This was a good idea if there were a lot of people.

After nine months, people were coming from all over the world to see… from Paris (in France, not from Paris, Texas though people from Paris, Texas came also). A website was created and a site on Facebook… Some accounts were strictly factual (so therefore rather dull) but other accounts were wildly exaggerated (therefore more interesting but less reliable), most accounts being a combination of the two. For example, one writer claimed he heard noises from inside the small building… moans and occasional shouts of enthusiasm or perhaps from fear… all emanating from the projectionist supposedly. Others claimed the only sound heard from this silent film was from the noisy projector itself…

Some claimed they’d SEEN the ‘projectionist’ (as he/she came to be called). Others swore on the projectionist’s anonymity and/or invisibility. How then did he/she come and go? Speculation was he/she lived in the building and never ventured out (but what about food and water?). Others claimed to know there was a secret tunnel under the building that could be entered from a nearby embankment (forty feet away) to a freeway onramp (highway 113).

When asked where the opening was, they did not know or could not find it.

Assuming it had been looked for, the opening if it was there must have been very cleverly hidden…

He/she could certainly have lived in the small twelve by twenty foot rectangular cinder-block building. Electricity could have been run into the building under the ground. Water and sewage too. A bed, a shower, a toilet, a stove could certainly have been placed inside… Why not? Maybe the ‘Projectionist’ did live there. Leaving by the backdoor would have been risky business, especially after the cat boxing film had become so popular but it was possible. Fans claimed there was ALWAYS someone there but how could that be true? The projectionist for example could have come out and mingled with the crowd, pretending to be one of them!

Strings or hairs placed across the back door where it might have been opened seemed never to have been disturbed.

Notices placed on the building by the Fire Department had been ignored (why not e-mail notices to the building owner? Maybe the owner had no e-mail service. The owner must have been unknown or they would have been contacted directly). Notices by the tax assessor and the I. R. S. had also been posted and ignored.

Eventually the building was seized through legal efforts on behalf of ‘the people’ and the building was entered by the police. No one was found on the premises. A few fans who happened to be there at the time posted on line what they ‘claimed’ they saw in brief glimpses of the inside. The police quickly stopped any souvenir hunting or cam-cord filming though at first people were allowed in and walked around freely… There were a lot of empty fast-food containers on the floor. Some claimed to have seen movie posters (but another claimed there was nothing at all on the walls except for a few stains, one stain in the shape of Florida one observer claimed)…

One claimant said there was a poster for Pinocchio, another for Alice in Wonderland (the Johnny Depp version) and another for The Matrix.

There was no projector but the screen was hauntingly there. It was soon taken apart by souvenir hunters who broke into the building after it had been sealed by the police. These fragments were offered on e-bay. One fan speculated that if all the fragments were put together, the original screen must have been the size of a football field…!

The site was sold at a county auction. The feds, the state revenue board, the police and the fire department were all duly compensated. The property was once again sold (there was no record of a previous owner but that did not deter public servants from selling it anyway). A developer built apartment buildings on the land.

After some protest by the Save the Kittens Group, a plaque finally, years later was placed at the appropriate spot. People came from around the world to view it (and to of course steal it). After many attempts to replace the plaque, money ran out and the Save the Kittens" group stopped replacing the plaque.

Some claimed the meaning of the two kittens boxing was metaphor for ‘Good vs. Evil’, one kitten being white (for goodness) and the other dark (for evil). Those that disagreed stated the kittens were not dark and light. They were shadows and so colors could be assigned to either kitten. This went against the idea that it was about good and evil (or that it had been a racist statement). Some claimed it was a tragic tale about the loss of innocence, two kittens having to fight for survival (pitted one against the other by cynical forces of the world market-place).

Some suggested there had been more than one film of cats (kittens) boxing… Could this be true? It was possible different films were used. As a clue (though not a very dependable one) there were differing claims as to the coloration of the kittens. Why couldn’t viewers agree? Perhaps not ALL who had claimed to have viewed the film actually HAD! No one had thought to actually film a copy of the film (as seen through the small window)… using a cell phones or a small digital camera…

Goths and Punkers had claimed the kittens had been filmed just before being drowned or set on fire with kerosene, thereby preserving their kitten-hood for all time… making them immortal. If drowned they would be stuffed by a taxidermist and placed on a special shelf at the Projectionist’s home. On e-bay several ‘authentic’ stuffed kittens appeared for sale at ridiculous prices… the highest price being having the biggest claim on authenticity!

This meant many kittens had died to make people money…

Others wrote the Projectionist’s Bio as having been a sad old man who’d made a film of kittens he’d known and loved who had grown up and died. The film had been his tribute to them and the love he’d felt for them. Perhaps the other set of hands holding up the pugilist kittens had been his wife’s hands, hands that were now deceased along with the kittens (two sets of hands had manipulated the cats’ cute little paws… had the hands belonged to husband and wife?)

Perhaps the whole endeavor was a very private man’s attempt to share his feelings with others. Perhaps his disappearance meant he too had passed on… and was now with his wife (and kittens)… In the afterlife they could whenever they wanted to, re-enact ‘cat boxing’.

THE BUTTERFLY HOTEL

I think it was Louella who first noticed it. She was sitting in the lobby and noticed a board with hooks on it that held hotel keys… The keys looked like butterflies.

A room key was connected to the room number by a steel ring. Together they looked like two wings of a butterfly. The name of the hotel (Butterfly) might have helped along Louella’s imagination.

I think it was two days later when Louella came into the lobby and commented all over again (having forgotten she’d already said it) that the keys on the key board looked like butterflies (one or both time she may have been intoxicated as she often was). It was just about then when the keys turned into butterflies and started to fly off in random directions all over the lobby.

Later in the day, more toward evening, the doctor who had been sitting in the lobby announced that he thought not all of the keys had changed into butterflies. He thought perhaps only three or four had changed (of fourteen keys on the key board).

After that people started coming from miles around to sit in the lobby and see if the keys were going to change into butterflies once again. I myself had found keys on the lobby floor or outside on the porch. They must have flapped their wings until they became absolutely exhausted and then fell to the floor to return to the lower energy state known as being a hotel key).

You’d think business would pick up after such an event but it turned out people (being the practical beings that they are) did not like to check into a hotel where their room keys might be changing into butterflies. That might create all sorts of logistic problems and the faint of heart might suffer health consequences if their key were to fly out of their hands after turning into butterflies.

A Mr. Wilson one evening got all the way to his room (number fourteen) before it happened. He had set the key down on the dresser only to have it change into a butterfly. It was two days later before the key was found… across Front Street just next to one of the three gas pumps there. It had gone quite a distance before ‘dying’ (as Louella like to call it), returning to the state of being a solid brass room key…

I was the owner and general manager and I felt because of the problems the butterfly room keys were causing I should close it down.

It was almost two years before I opened it again. I thought by then people would have forgotten about it.

The Federal Government was going to seize it for back taxes anyway so I decided to at least TRY and make some money to pay the back taxes… Maybe the keys would behave themselves this time and I could get some business done. If I could show I was at least bringing in some income from the hotel, the Federal Government would allow me to stay open and make them payments. (It wanted money, not an old run-down hotel that had been built sometime in the 1890’s that it knew would not sell for much).

There were quite a few sights in the area that tourists used to visit and they still did.

There was Rainbow Falls, the highest waterfall in the three counties area (and it had been featured in a silent film staring Francis X. Bushman in 1918).

There was the Blue Bear caves and there was Piano Butte. It was a long hike up the side of the butte on a dusty trail climbing back and forth but the eight hour trek was worth it. No one knew for sure how the piano got up there. Some say a distraught piano player who had been rejected in love carried it up there then had jumped off, leaving the piano. Others suggested it had fallen from an airplane or an aerocopter. Red Rock was only twenty miles away and they had rock concerts up there. A strap holding the piano could have come loose and the piano fallen to half bury itself in the sand and dust.

At any rate it was a sight to behold… and eerie, especially about sunset (hikers were brought down by aerocopter so they didn’t have to walk all the way down in the dark).

I trained myself not to think of the key board as containing keys that could become butterflies. It seemed to work at first. A lot of people in the town had forgotten the ‘butterfly incident’ as it used to be called. Most didn’t believe it had ever happened in the first place and anyway… Louella wasn’t around anymore. Even if she had been there hanging around the lobby, people knew she was not the most reliable and credible of persons. She’d gone to the big city convinced she had magic or at least psychic powers and was never heard from again.

I had renamed the place the Elkhorn Hotel which was about as far away from the concept of butterflies as I could imagine. I lined the lobby walls high up with stuffed elk and deer heads. Their eerie horn shadows eked up the wall giving the place a serious air, not a frivolous one that might be given over to hotel keys turning into butterflies…

But it was not to be. After two days it started happening again… first one (I think it was the key to room twelve) and then two more began their jaunt around the lobby.

Fortunately, I was the only one around at the time and I was able to grab two of them and prevent a third key (third butterfly I mean) from getting out through the screen door.

Word got out though and the sheriff presented me with a warrant explaining I was required (for reasons of ‘public safety’) to report to a psychologist in Capitol city early the following Monday morning. I hadn’t told anyone! How had the sheriff found out? It was doc who turned me in. Come to think of it he was sitting at the next table at the Tip-Top café when I was relating what had happened to my best friend and confidant, that rascal! He had seen it happen himself two years before! I guessed ratting on me was his way of dealing with what he had seen two years ago, something he had not wanted to see and have to deal with, seeing as how he was determined to be a rational man…

I closed the hotel never to open it again.

As for the Elkhorn Hotel, I lost it to the government in an auction. I kept the keys though… and on the same board too (small nails stuck out of it for hanging key rings on).

From time to time (who knew according to what logic or schedule) they would one at a time or in number go flying about my room… (They especially seemed to like taking a rest on my newspaper as I read it in the evenings).

What were they looking for? Was it merely exercise? Was it for the excitement? (It must have been boring being a hotel key). Was it for escape for a little while (but they soon tired it seemed and WANTED to return to the lower energy level of being hotel keys)?

I never did find out…

MICHELLE’S EGG SHELL

She was as dead as Oxylotyl perfume. She floated on musty clouds, hovering with her angel’s wings… popping pills… (Xanax, Zoloft, Prozac).

A long tube stuck out her belly, funneling her soul spurt by spurt onto an egg on earth.

Mother bird squawked loudly nearby to protect. Fear made her crazy in her nest, built hastily on top the roof of a bank next to a busy intersection of streets…

Screeching wildly, she warned attackers away, shouted against vulture hawks trying to swoop down and peck egg shells so they could eat the goo inside that was trying to become Michelle…

WILL her soul make it down to earth again? Or will she be eaten? If so, her soul will find another way… another invisible train for her to take her soul to earth…

Life pushed… Heat compelled… Appetite & emotion ran supreme through the universe.

She decided she’d rather stay on cool pleasant clouds… but she must go down (into the silver glowing pain of suffering).

She had to go.

She had to go down anyway… for it was fever that made the world!

NEAR THE WEST BRIDGE

Near the bridge over the Mongol River, I could hear in cool summer evenings the metal of the bridge groaning, squeaking, cracking, leaking… I’d hear the beams, grommets. The trestles cooling, making noise as they condensed.

Ellen? Are you there? She left for six months then came back… drunk, no longer lithe and happy, lanky and rosy cheeked. When she came back she was stretched, flaccid, thin and weak, her face swollen. I love you, she said but I was a place to stay she wanted. She’d been kicked out and was pregnant (probably and not by me). Who was he? She just buried her face in pillows. Oh Ellen. I didn’t believe it... the I love you part. She wouldn’t look at me when she said it… There was no use talking about some man who wore an eye-patch.

After she died, ghosts started to appear… my parents as well as Ellen as if she had somehow summoned them from the beyond. I could even smell my father’s pipe or so I thought.

I lost the place… Café 66 in Waynesville, a town named after a general that went mad (was he part of the Civil war? the Revolutionary War?). I shouldn’t have taken a loan on the place to build those six bungalows out back... nothing but trouble what with teenage boys and their cars. At least two girls got pregnant back there… So said popular gossip.

Townspeople spoke of the place as the ‘den of iniquity’.

I was mostly under the needle now. It was the late nineteen sixties and I’d sit and count the blades of grass in the giant lawn until I’d fall asleep in the middle of afternoons. I’d wake with drool on my shirt. It was a sun-drenched lawn and beautiful beyond belief. I’d walk the grounds, avoiding television news, violence in the streets.

Not here where I was though… in North Waynesville. One day I just kept walking… back to where I grew up. I crossed the metal