Creative Writing Contest Submissions

Thank you to everyone that participated in The Doors Creative Writing Contest!

Poetry submissions may be viewed here, or by searching the #TheDoors50 of instagram.

Below you may find the short story submissions! Please note, each story represents the opinion of the author and not the opinions of The Doors or The Doors team. Which one is your favorite?

Inside The Head Of Mark Benek
By: Giorgio M.

WORDS SENTENCED TO
TWO CONSECUTIVE LIFE SENTENCES
PLUS 49 YEARS

TO CAPTURE NATURE
IN WORDS
OR RATHUR
A PICTURE

WORDS IMPRISOND INBETWEEN INVISIBLE LINES OF A PAGE
DO NOT ACT SO SURPRISED
WHEN THE WORDS
FOOL THE WARDEN
ESCAPE THE CONTINENT THEN THE CONSONANT AND VOW AND HOWL
SAVE THE KNITES LIFE

AFTUR THE WORDS
SUCCESSFULLY PLOT ANOTHUR GREAT ESCAPE
TO ANOTHUR WORLD
INSIDE YURR BRAIN

COMPLEX C-I-T-Y BLUES

MY BRAIN
IS LIKE AN OFFICE
WITH A NICE VIEW
THURR ARE CONSTANTLY OPEN WINDOWS
OPEN FILE CABINETS
IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS IN THE BREEZE
UNCORKED BOTTLES OF WINE
IMPORTED FROM ITALY
HMM CABURNET

THE PLAY BOY BUNNY
LITES MY CIGGURRETTE
WITH HUR FINGUR TIP
SHE TURNS ON
THE LITE BULB ABOVE MY BED
AN IDEA TO GET HUR IN MY HEAD

SHE WALKS LUXURIOUSLY
WITH GREAT EASE
LIKE A TRAPEZE ARTIST
WITH A TRAY OF SEVENTY THREE MARTINIS
ON HUR FINGUR TIPS
WHO THOUGHT THAT I
WOULD BE THE ONE TO FALL
FOR HUR VOLUPTUOUSNESS

TO FALL SO DEEP DEEP UNDURGROUND
WHERE I FOUND A BRAVE NEW SOUND

FROM THE NEW ORLEANS
BLUES MUSIC SCENE
IN A LIMOUSINE
FROM LONDON TO PARIS
I KNOW THAT I KNOW
JUST WHERE IT IS

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
IN BETWEEN THE LIMITS
OF REALITY AND FANTASY
THURR IS THE ELEKTRIK C-I-T-Y
BUILDINGS ARE BUILT
OUT OF
YELLOW ORANGE GREEN RED BLUE
AND PINK POKER CHIPS

I HAVE
FIVE CARDS
I HAVE
FIVE KINGS
I HAVE
A ROYAL BLUSH

CITY SQUARES
ARE BLACK AND WHITE
LIKE A CHESS BOARD

AND ON THE WRITEURS BLOCK
THURR ARE NO NUNS
NO ENTREPRENEURS
NOR STOCK BROKEURS
JUST PIMPS AND
WEST END WOMEN IN BLUE STOCKINGS
THURR IS A CITY IN MY HEAD
IT IS WHERE I LIVE

THURR IS A FIRE IN THE FOREST OF CHROME PALM TREES

MY BRAIN HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A BURD IN A CAGE
I OPEND MY MIND
I OPEND THE CAGE
THE BURD NATURALLY OPEND ITS WINGS

I GET HIGH TO GET AWAY
AND IN THIS ESCAPE I WISH I COULD STAY
AS I LEAVE
MARY QUICKLY FOLLOWS ME

SHE HOLDS HUR RED DRESS ABOVE HUR KNEES
SLOWS DOWN
UNDRESSES AND GENTLY SCREAMS
COME BACK TO ME

AND I DO
I SURRENDUR MYSELF ALMOST SO DESPURRATELY
BECAUSE WHEN SHE IS NEXT TO ME I GET A FEELING OF ECSTASY
SHE MAKES ME TEPURRARILY INFINITLY HAPPY AND
AS SHE APPROACHES ME SHE SAYS

LOST IN LUST
WITH LOVE I FOUND
THY OPEN HEART
BLEEDING ON THE GROUND

SHE PUT MY HEART BACK INTO A ONCE EMPTY SPACE INSIDE MY CHEST
AND WITH MORE WORDS SO KIND AND TRUE
MY BLOOD CHANGED COLOUR TO A KIND OF BLUE

AS THE TRIUMPHANT TRUMPET PLAYUR PLAYS
I CARVD OUR NAMES IN A
STAR
ON A CHROME PALM TREE
FOR NO REASON

SHE SAYS
GIVE ME A KISS
BECAUSE I LOVE YOU
AND NOW SOMEHOW
LUST IS LOST WITH LOVE REFOUND

I CANNOT FIND THE WORDS TO DESCRIBE HUR MAYBE THE COLOUR RED

DRIVE TO YOU IN A RED CAR
WALK WITH YOU IN RED SHOES
LOOK AT YOU THRU RED SAINT LAURENT SUN GLASSES
AS YOU SPEAK WITH RED LIPS
AS WE DRINK RED WINE OUR THOUGHTS INTURTWINE LIKE YOUNG VINES
ON AN OLD TREE
IN THE REDWOOD FORREST
SO CLOSE YET SO FAR FROM NAPA VALLEY

I WILL CROSS THE RED SEA
WALK WITH YOU IN RED SHOES
AS SHE SPEAKS WITH RED LIPS
ELEKTRIK RED FLOWUR PEDALS TWURL IN HUR HEAD
RED VYNL SPINS

AS WE PATIENTLY DRINK RED WINE
I WROTE YOU A LETTUR SO BLUE
A LETTUR I HOPE YOU RED
A LETTUR I HOPE YOU COMPREHENDED

I WISH YOU WERE MINE
I WISH IT WERE NOT TRUE

HAVE I EVUR CONFESSD MY LOVE FOR YOU
HAVE I EVUR CONFESSD MY TRUE LOVE FOR YOU

ELEKTRIK BLUE FLOWUR PEDALS TWURL IN MY HEAD
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO
PLEASE BREAK MY HEART

RED WINE OPENUR

SIMULTANEOUSLY

AS THE KING
DRINKS HIS DRINK
WITH A CLEAN PALETTE
FROM A DECORATED CHALACE
IN HIS PROTECTD PALACE
THE BAR MAN BEGINS
TO POUR THE POOR MAN
A DRINK ON HIMSELF
AND SAYS
DID YOU KNOW
THE GARDEN OF EDEN IS
A BIERGARTEN
CHEEURS

THE POOR MAN
DRINKS HIS DRINK
AND SAYS
AND THE GODS ARE GETTING DRUNK

2 : 47 AM

IN THE LARGEST CASINO IN PARADISE
A PAIR OF DICE TUMBLE
FROM GODS LEFT HAND
SNAKE EYES PARALYZED

DID I FORGET TO MENTION
IT IS HAPPY HOUR IN HEAVEN
AND GOD IS GETTING DRUNK
THAT IS WHY GOD IS NOT ANSWURRING YURR PRAYURS
IT IS NOT THAT GOD DOES NOT CARE
IT IS THAT GOD NEEDS US MORE THAN WE NEED GOD
SO DIONYSUS AND BACCHUS AND ANGELS AND DEVILS
SURPRISE GOD ON A SUNNY SUNDAY AFTURNOON IN THE LIVING ROOM
AND SAID

GOD GET IT IN YURR HEAD
IF YOU USE IT YOU USE IT
IF YOU ABUSE IT IT ABUSES YOU

IT IS A DIVINE INTURVENTION
EVEN GODS HAVE THURR FLAWS
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

The Rise and Fall of Jim Morrison
By: Nikki M.

Some would say it all started in July 1965. America was in a fragile state, in the midst of the Vietnam War. It was a time of confusion, yet also a time of revolutionary change. It was a time when people were yearning to find their purpose on this big, beautiful world.

Jim glided across the golden sand that paints the beaches of Venice, California. With the crushing ocean waves serving as the background music to that summer day, he sat down next to a UCLA classmate he recognized on the beach. Without much introduction, Jim told his classmate, Ray, he wanted to start a band.

Ray replied laughing, “Do you even sing?”

Confidently, still with the natural background music of the Earth there to compliment Jim’s voice, he spoke the following words: “Let’s swim to the moon, lets climb to the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide.”

Ray sat there awestruck. “Did you really write that?”

“Yes.”

And thus, the beginning of one of the most iconic rock bands to this day was set in motion. Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek sat there on Venice Beach completely unknowledgeable of what their lives would soon become. The places they would travel, the people they would meet. Not knowing the fortune and success that they would come into, but also the inevitable depression and angst that they would endure as well. Jim and Ray sat there on Venice Beach with the warm sand cushioning their toes, the hot sun radiating off their faces and the cool ocean breeze blowing their long hair cuts in the wind, clueless that they would soon become known in every country around the world as the new rebellious and destructive rock band: The Doors.

But as I said before, only some would say this all began on that warm summer day in July 1965. Jim’s journey began much earlier than that. December 8^th, 1943, Melbourne Florida– a legend was born.

Jim was born James Douglas Morrison, son to Clara Virginia and Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, who commanded US Naval Forces during the Vietnam War. Being in a military family was tough for Jim. Moving from state to state and never having very many lasting friendships, Jim formed undeveloped and unusual social skills.

In 1947, at only four years old, a tragic accident had shaped Jim’s life forever. The Morrison’s were driving on a highway in the desert and witnessed a horrific vehicle crash where Jim feasted his innocent, youthful eyes upon several Native Americans lying bloody and lifeless. Unable to stop looking, despite his parents’ efforts, Jim swears that on that day the soul of one of the lifeless Native Americans’ elevated from ground where the motionless body rested and entered into his own. Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life and would use that as an excuse to justify any of his unorthodox behaviors to come. References to this event are repeatedly made by Jim in various songs and poems that he has written.

In the years to come, Jim’s family moved from state to state to satisfy his father’s occupation. Knowing that no home or friendship would last too long, Jim resorted to readings of all varieties. His favorite authors were his only friendships that lasted, for they would always be there no matter where he traveled. Jim found a particular liking in poetry and the work of various philosophers. The band’s name, The Doors, originated from a quote by one of Jim’s favorite authors:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” –William Blake

It was around the time Jim discovered his passionate interest for reading that he began getting himself into trouble. He was so interested in philosophy that he often pushed limits and boundaries to see how people would react. He not only wanted to see the extent of what he could get away with but he wanted to open people up to the idea of being honest and true.

By this nature of behavior, Jim was kicked out of many living situations throughout college. He did not want people to hold back from expressing their emotions so he did everything he could to piss them off. Morrison thought he was doing them a favor by teaching them to be true to themselves but the rest of the world did not see it that way. He never learned his lesson and his destructive behavior did not end there. It only worsened as it followed him to stardom.

While studying at Florida State University, Jim grew a passion for film. This is when his professors urged him to transfer to UCLA to further his prosperity. And so he moved to Los Angeles. And thank God he did. Jim made two films at UCLA before graduating in 1965. The films were bizarre and harshly criticized, driving him into a state of dark sadness. Jim gave up film. His brain was complex. He was shy and misunderstood. The meaning behind his actions and words were buried so beneath the surface that it was hard for anyone to relate. Jim did not take criticism lightly, and this would follow him to his grave.

Filled with anger, Jim did not attend his UCLA graduation so his diploma was mailed to his family; a family in which he had left in the past, never to look back upon. Then he moved to Venice Beach, California.

And so we return to that warm day in July where Jim and Ray sit in the soft golden grains, looking out onto the endless horizon of the Pacific Ocean dreaming of their futures, not knowing that their dreams would soon come true.

Not much time had passed until the sun and the stars aligned perfectly on the Earth’s rotation to form a fate that would never be forgotten. The gravitational pull of the moon not only guided the salty waves of Venice Beach, but it guided John Densmore and Robby Krieger into the company of Jim and Ray. The doors of perception were finally open. The Doors were finally born.

C’mon baby light my fire.

Once they began making the music, The Doors started playing regularly in a popular local LA venue called Whiskey a Go-Go. Jim’s shy and reserved persona increased substantially when performing in front of crowds. He rarely faced the audience while performing and was almost always seen with his back to the crowd. Like many others in Hollywood, the pressure of upcoming fame and stardom drew him to the bottle. Alcohol was Jim’s drug of choice. The alcohol would take Jim on a dangerous and self-destructive path.

Less than two years after Jim and Ray’s encounter on the beach, The Doors were signed to Elektra record label. In the 60’s, a new age was rising where the norms of society were being loosened from its noose. The people finally started to have a voice and ability to express their own opinions. Freedom. The Doors were labeled an antiestablishment band, often singing of dark and powerful subjects such as death, murder and madness. The darkness was also accompanied by more traditional themes such as sex, drugs and rock and roll. A few months after being signed, their hit single Light My Fire landed them the number one spot on Billboard’s Top 100 in June ‘67 and remained there for three weeks straight. The Doors were finally on the map.

While listening to the radio in his room, Morrison’s younger brother Andrew was interrupted by a friend barging through his door.

As Light My Fire played in the background the boy screamed excitedly, “Andrew, do you know who that is?”

“The Doors, so?”

“Andrew, that’s your fucking brother singing.”

Jim’s family, who he hadn’t given a thought about since he left Florida, had no idea what Jim was up to this whole time. It was only a matter of time before the whole world would know of Jim and his rebellion, coexisting with Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger.

Their aesthetic was different than most upcoming bands at that time. The Beatles were young and innocent. The Grateful Dead was peaceful and happy. The Doors were dark and reckless. Jim was a bad boy. A menace. A rebel dressed in leather. He took the world by surprise and made it his throne.

Once risen to stardom, The Doors were requested to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. The band was to play the songs Light My Fire and People Are Strange. They were asked by Sullivan’s censors to not reference drug use on air while performing their top hit.

“Can you please change the line ‘girl we couldn’t get much higher’ to ‘girl we couldn’t get much better?’”

Jim complied.

So the band got on stage. Manzarek on the organ. Krieger on the electric guitar. Densmore on the drums. And Jim, standing at the front of the stage with his brown curly hair sitting long enough to brush the top of his shoulders, took his microphone off the stand and started singing.

“You know that it would be untrue,

You know that I would be a liar,

If I was to say to you,

Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” They all smirked mockingly.

The band finished the song without changing a single word, which they mutually agreed upon before they performed. Once they walked off stage Sullivan angrily refused to shake any of their hands. The show producer told the band they would never be invited to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show again.

Jim shrugged. “Well hey man, we already did.”

This would not be the last time The Doors would expose their rebellion and carelessness to the world.

Jim was spiraling faster down his self-destructive path. His drinking habits were becoming a nightmare to his band mates and his fans. He would miss practices and half the time he actually did show up he was too belligerent to even play. On one occasion Jim arrived to the studio to find that his band mates had already left and trashed the whole place. He never paid for the damages.

The law finally caught up with Jim’s destruction on a cold December night in 1967, and he was arrested for the first time in his musical career– although not the first time in his life. The Doors were to perform a show in New Haven, Connecticut. Before the show Jim met a woman. Jim took the woman backstage to the shower area and the two began kissing. Not recognizing Jim as the band’s front man that he was supposed to be protecting, a security guard at the venue told Morrison and the girl to vacate the area.

“Eat it” Jim said.

The guard pulled out a can of mace, “Last chance.”

“Last chance to eat it!”

Jim was sprayed in the face with pepper spray right before he was about to perform.

The officer apologized for the incident after The Doors’ manager told him he had just maced the lead singer of the very band he had been hired to protect, admitting he hadn’t recognized the singer.

When Jim was finally able to perform, his anger and sadness caught up to him mid-song. He stopped singing.

“The whole world fucking hates me,” he yelled into the microphone.

Jim proceeded to tell the audience of his encounter with the officer backstage. He went on to call him a little blue pig in a little blue hat.

“I’m just like you guys man, he did it to me, they’ll do it to you.”

The crowd went wild.

The police came on stage and dragged Jim out. Morrison was arrested and charged with inciting a riot, indecency and public obscenity. Thirteen other arrests were made following Jim’s, as the angry and disappointed crowds took to the streets.

This was the first of two arrests that made an extremely harsh impact on The Doors. The second happened on March 1^st 1969, Miami Florida.

He said, she said.

Rumor has it, while on stage at a venue in Miami, Morrison exposed his penis in front of an audience composed of nearly twelve thousand people. Jim appeared to masturbate in full view of the crowd while screaming obscenities. He was sentenced to jail and given a fine to pay after being found guilty of indecent exposure and open profanity. But did it really happen? Five hundred photos were entered into evidence and not a single one depicted Morrison doing anything of the sort. In addition to that, he and his band mates swore that he never actually pulled it out, he was only joking about doing it.

Whether it happened or not, after this fiasco the touring days for The Doors were pretty much over. No venue wanted to gamble with the consequences that normally followed their performances. Many cities in many states banned The Doors from performing there.

Jim felt like a laughingstock. His alcoholism, meant to cope with his anxieties, only made them worse. It ruined him. He was heart broken. He wanted to start over and write poetry but no one took him seriously anymore. He started this journey wanting to be the change the world needed. He wanted to open up the minds of his fans and allow them to explore every crevice that had been smocked with spider webs in their brains since the day they were born. He wanted to be looked up to. To be understood. And to him, all he ended up as was the dirty rock star who wasn’t welcomed anywhere to perform anymore. Jim’s ego had plummeted. He let himself down. His pain crawled so deep inside him that the only way he knew how to cope was to escape his reality. He got drunk enough to forget his rise and fall, and when he woke and the pain was numbingly present; he did it all over again. Jim’s once slender figure and boyish face was now fattened and bearded. The alcohol took a toll on his mind, body and soul.

It wasn’t long after that that Jim moved to Paris with his longtime lover Pamela Courson. He wanted to focus on himself and his poetry. He wanted to forget about the dreadful life he left behind. The embarrassment and humiliation he caused not only himself but his band as well. Jim wanted to achieve happiness. He wanted to rebuild his name, reconnect his muse. He crawled out of the dark abyss that he had been internally living in for so long, brushed the dust off his leather jacket and opened his book of life up to a new chapter.

March 11^th 1971. Jim sat on his airplane headed for Paris, looked out of his window and smiled. He turned his head to the left to see his eternally beautiful inamorata sitting beside him. Her silky red hair draped down past her shoulders and stopped just below her breasts. She looked back at him. He saw blue eyes filled with hope. He grabbed her soft hand, closed his eyes and dreamt of the future. A new beginning awaits.

The couple arrived in Paris. Jim had been so eager to get his life back in order but he could not escape his fate. After time, Jim eventually gave into the plague that had been slowly killing him already, the addicting poisons of drugs and alcohol.

In the early morning of July 3^rd 1971, Pamela found Jim’s body lying lifeless in the bathtub at their apartment on the rue Beautreillis in Paris. Although a prisoner to drugs and alcohol, heroin had never been touched by the hands of Jim Morrison until that night.

Jim drew himself a warm bath after a night out with Pam. He walked over to the mirror hanging above the sink and saw an unfamiliar man staring back at him.

“Who have I become?” He thought.

As Jim was staring back at the man he could not recognize anymore, he looked down and saw a bag of powder on the sink that Pamela had left there. Jim set up a line for himself of what he believed to be cocaine and grabbed a dollar from his pocket. He knelt down; his tired, bearded face leveled with the sink, and took a deep breath in through his nose.

The euphoria. This was not cocaine.

Jim was still alive but felt like he was already in heaven. He turned the faucet on the bathtub off. He undressed and he got in slowly. He felt every inch of his body entering the warm tub until he was totally submerged in the sparkling water from his neck down. He closed his eyes peacefully and took a deep breath. He thought of the Native Americans in the crash. He thought about each home he lived in as a child. He thought about meeting Ray on the beach. He thought about his first show at Whisky a Go-Go. He thought about his song holding the number one spot on the Billboard’s Top 100 for three weeks. He thought about his band, his friends. He thought about seeing Pamela’s face for the first time and falling in love. He thought until his breath ran out. And that would be the last breath Jim Morrison would ever take.

“People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.”

–Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison was twenty-seven years old when Pamela Courson found his lifeless body lying in the tub. Only twenty-seven, but what a life he lived. Speculation, as expected, followed the circumstances of his death but I’d like to believe Jim went out without fear, without pain. Despite his faults, Jim Morrison will remain in history as one of the most extraordinary artists to grace this planet. Thank you for your life Jim, may you rest in eternal Peace.

Fast Eddie
By: Matt S.

“Grabmeuhcouplecokes… cotton mouth y’kno?” as Fast Eddie chokes out the last toke of the roach. Quickly, Fast Eddie stashes the funky skunky stuff into an old oxidized ALTOIDS can – MADE IN GREAT BRITIAN, NT WT 1.76 OZ (50g). Fast Eddie had this logic that if he collected all his roaches, he could pawn off the “1.76 OZ of homegrown” to some free-lancing left-brained Polo wearing yuppie college kid for 50 bones. If anyone could pull a stunt like that, it was Fast Eddie.

“Yafuckinkiddinme! ‘Spose I’ll hoof it across the street to PAULIE’S CORNER STORE since Pizza Face and Pretty Boy both got Cerebral Palsy all-a-sudden” – Yeah, that’s the villain I been scheming with since I got clipped from the umbilical cord. Fast Eddie, guy was a maniac with a potato head. But, his barber scalped a fade around his temples to precision. Jesus, I mean his barber was his actual wingman. He’d tell us to go to the gay barber. We’d be sitting in at SPEEDY’S CUTS while Fast Eddie was choppin’ the locks and we’d overhear,

“Fast Eddie what work will my soft hands be doing today?”

And Fast Eddie would dish it right back, “If you wanna play with more than these locks later, what would you want my sex hair to look like in the morning?”

Just like that, Fast Eddie had undercooked and greasy golden French fries atop his potato head. Slicked back and thin cut, ready to serve. Ready to be swallowed into a cheap customer’s mouth. That’s why the drunks, gays, straights, in betweeners, freaks, creeps, geeks and neighbors all liked the fucking guy. Blue collar, told it how it was, and even offered a third hand when his other two were tied up someone else’s ass!

I could see Fast Eddie still jerking around across the street. Shootin’ the shit with the local folk. More than just a “It’s so warm in here!” small talk guy. Nobody remembers the shmuck with a dull personality. Fast Eddie could make a blind guy fantasize about the cashier at PAULIE’S just by the way he worked his tongue into imagery. He had it. Coupleuhcokes turns into Fast Eddie holding the door open for any pretty broad that gives him the slightest amount of eye contact (the polarizing effect of a good haircut). Perfect case study for Freud.

The musty haze of the hotboxed jalopy paranoid the living daylights outta me! We could get high in any partatown and Fast Eddie always coerced us to smoking in his car. Never got to enjoy my high, could never even tell if I was even high at all. The mirrors read “OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR” – that’s for damn sure. Mirrors were always staring at me with a never-ending time-warped nightmare. I’d get stuck in the mud with the Piggy’s that busted me with the joint that was burning away my dreams of CALIFORNIA COAST. I could only roll in this mud pit for so long until the objects in the mirror become reality.

Julian senses that one of my classic paranoia episodes is imminent. An observant learner, personal therapist, and mediator. Some of his unpaid roles. He uses the crank on both doors to roll down the clouded condensated windows.

“Carlton man, you love riding on the shoulder” chuckled Julian as he lounged in the plush back seat of the Caravelle.

“This is why I hate smokin’ grass, now you’re speaking straight from the hole that I call your CHAFFED LOOSE ASS!”

“Naw man… see listen, you ride the shoulder too much. That motherfucker ahead is always driving 5 miles per hour under the speed limit. You let him. And he owns you. He holds you back. He controls the rate at which you reach your destination. Shiiiit, if you ever reach it. You can’t pass him, you stay leaning on that white cozy shoulder called COMFORTABILITY. When you gonna pass the mothefucker ahead of you that’s been controlling you? When you gonna take EXIT 52 towards IMFUCKINFREEVILLE?”

I can’t even flip this one on Julian, “Yeah well I can’t ride yours and Fast Eddie’s coattails for too long now. IMFUCKINFREEVILLE has a population of some twenty million people. Once the weather vane in my oversaturated brain oozes out some hope and blows WESTWARD, I will pass that motherfucker ahead of me. No turning signal either. Imma trade in the cozy white shoulder for some dotted yellow cheese.”

“Carlton… that motherfucker dragging ass is YOU. Pass him with a prayer, leave him in the rearview.”

Julian, the backseat monk. Met him after I graduated high school. P.F. Flyer’s always crispy white, not ever one crease, not ever one scuff. Always thought he would become some materialistic rich prick. Prejudgment without contempt. Stupid me. Materialism attached to the developing brains of us high schoolers. Some shake it and others go to Universities to chase degrees that breed greed. Julian didn’t let the manmade cancer infiltrate him. He ended up rolling with us Proletariat outlaws. Somewhere, Karl Marx is grinning at me for my recruitment.

We had 30 minutes, precisely, to make it to the liquor store. Saturday’s were always the night for our bender.

Fast Eddie had this shit-eatin’ grin on his face when jogged back over the ’85 Caravelle, “Christ Almighty! Fast Eddie were you rubbing one out in PAULIE’S bathroom or sumthin’? We’re alloutta Jameson and you know we are 20 miles from the liquor store and it’s already 8:30!”

Liquor stores were no joking matter, we only found one that never had us show I.D. Plus, Fast Eddie grew a liking to the geyser that worked there. A sad babbling sack of space that got comfortable and stuck with one job his whole life. Bubbling and babbling, day in and day out. Shook so many times that he eventually became flat too.

“Pizza Face and Pretty Boy… always so self-interested. Gonna catch up to you shits soon enough.” Fast Eddie inserted the crusted key into the ignition of the Caravelle – DOOOP, DOOOP, DOOOP. God knows how many germs were on that steering wheel. Thick coats of compiled grease, excess secretions, and the fluids from various estranged females that Fast Eddie coxed in to his traveling fuck-pen. Law of superposition says oldest layers were on the bottom. I’d rather not know these things, but the smell invades my nostrils like the troops on D-DAY. Can’t even condition or desensitize myself to this aroma. Unrelenting attacks by the smell of Fast Eddie’s ball sweat and lingering remnants of a poor mans weed. I want to take a shower.

“Saturday Night. Dropping the needle down on a dusty B-Side for all you crazed, erotic, and hormonal souls cruising around looking for trouble. How about that L.A. WOMAN track… 1971. The Doors.” Slick Tom, our favorite disc jockey the night of a bender. Always reliable to set the tone.

Fast Eddie pounced on the pedal as Jim Morrison screeched sonic sex through the speakers, “Oh shit yeah fellas, we’re on the move. ‘MR. MOJO RISIN!’”

We punched it onto RT. 5. The faster route according to Fast Eddie, but it was actually the scenic route for him. He loved cruising past the prestigious Victorian style homes and dissecting what kind of conversations happen between the walls of those monasteries.

Fed up with the scenery after 3 miles, Fast Eddie barks “I bet these rich prick Dad’s just read the STOCK MARKET page in section B5 of the WALL STREET JOURNAL and ask their rich prick wives and rich prick kids where they wanna go on vacation next once the rich prick Dad’s inside trade deal hits on Monday morning.”

“Put the boner back in your pants, you’ll get your dividends too once you start pushing your roach filled ALTOIDS cans to the future homeowners of these fucking houses!”

Fast Eddie snapped right back at me, “I swear I’ll ash my next roach on that smirk of yours, Pizza Face. Maybe that’ll make you look more appetizing.”

Julian leaned in from the backseat, “AN ENDLESS PISSING MATCH, don’t your sacks ever go dry? Your testicles are attached right to your egos. Big swollen ball sacks swinging back and forth back and forth. Blowing your load all over one another day in and day out! It’s exhausting, your egos need a vasectomy!”

Just like that, right when Fast Eddie and I erupted, Julian cooled us down at the surface like molten rock. Crystallizing and metamorphosing into conglomerate. Needed him to flush our egos out. Needed to stop treating him like my urinal cake.

Fast Eddie swerved and weaved around the slow-moving masses of society that had no agenda for the night. Maybe they did. Maybe this is my self-interested motivations speaking again. I hated how maliciously Fast Eddie rounded the corners. Guard rails could’ve skinned my fingertips if I cracked the window open. This was Fast Eddie’s route. Knew every stop sign, timed every red light, and new all the lucrative hideouts where the Piggy’s patrolled.

It was 8:47, the odometer of the Caravelle twitched another mile on the dash. Only two miles remained between the three Proletariat outlaws and our enabler.

My second paranoia episode ensues, “Holy Shit Fast Eddie, you’re doing 55 in a school zone!”

“Who says I wanna choke down Jameson tonight? I’ll turn into De Niro from TAXI DRIVER if you don’t shut the hell up”

Just like that GUMBALLS GUMBALLS GUMBALLS flash in the mirrors. Objects in the mirror are becoming closer than they appear. Nightmare come true. I’m fucking doomed. We are fucking doomed. My self-interest putting me first.

“GODFUCKINGDAMMIT EDDIE! Mile away, no traffic, all interstate and now I’m gonna get jammed up with the Pigs!”

Fast Eddie retaliates, “Me, me, me! You squeal just like a fucking pig!” He takes the pressure from my brain and applies it to the pedal, POUNCE.

Julian has been around Fast Eddie enough to know that he will go to extremes to prove a point, “Fast Eddie c’mon man be cool, WE all ain’t trying to get canned. WE got living to do.”

Fast Eddie has that same shit-eatin’ grin that I seen earlier, “Fine I’ll pull this piece over. But, you don’t speak Pig Latin, got it?”

“What the hell do you mean!”

That’s all I was left to work with during my waning moments of freedom. The cop high tailed it over to the Caravelle. Tiny hairs, all a half inch long stick straight up and down on the officer’s fat head. Level one blade to navigate his temples, had to be Fast Eddie’s barber. I’m sweating bullets. The plate tectonics of my face begin to emerge. Premature pimples surface and I feel the magma boiling under the crust of my skin.

Fast Eddie rolls down the window, “HANDS ON THE WHEEL OR BRAINS ON THE WHEEL NOW”

My stomach launches acid into the back of my throat. Fast Eddie complies. Answers to an authority figure. No finger-fucking around.

“NOT ONLY ARE YOU THREE LITTLE SHITS A LIABILITY ON THIS ROAD, DO I HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE YOU WERE SMOKING MARIJUANA?”

Julian hasn’t flinched and Fast Eddie’s mute. Fast Eddie’s still got that shit-eatin’ grin on his face.

“AM I SPEAKING FUCKIN GREEK? IS THERE MARIJUANA IN THIS VEHICLE, THIS IS THE LAST TIME I WILL ASK BEFORE I SHAKE YOU DOWN TO YOUR PALE PEACH FUZZED ASSES!”

In my peripheral I see the ALTOIDS can staring at me. Rusted smile, MADE IN GREAT BRITIAN. 1.75 OZ – damn near weightless. But, enough weight to land me in the sin bin.

Enough to land us in the sin bin.

The Cop begins laughing, I mean really fucking laughing. The wild Pig chased his pray down and now he is foaming at the mouth. Ha-HA-HA-hahaha’ing until there is no oxygen remaining in his bloated stomach. Almost as if the funky stuff has protruded from the ALTOIDS can and immediately hit his bloodstream.

“ALRIGHT FAST EDDIE, THESE ARE THE PROLETARIAT OUTLAWS EH? OUR MOUSE TRAP COULDN’T CAPTURE A RAT!”

Fast Eddie’s dimples break out from his skin for the first time in a decade, “Thanks OFFICER LAFFERTY! Next hoagie from PAULIE’S CORNERSTORE is on me!”

“I’ll take the ALTOIDS can instead… when it’s full.” He replies. Walks away, swinging his Billy-club.

Fast Eddie peeps his dilated eyes into the corner of the mirror, glancing at Julian. “Pretty Boy whatsamatta! You didn’t croak! You didn’t squeal! Conglomerate don’t crack!”

Julian boasted,“Yeah, RATS don’t survive by scurrying on the shoulder. Too scared to chase the dotted yellow cheese if ya know what I mean. I gotta eat, I mean… WE gotta eat.”

“Amen.”

And, just like that comfortability didn’t appeal to me anymore. Lit the roach, took a toke, exhaled. Puff puff pass to Julian puff puff pass to Fast Eddie, and back to me. Repeat. Fast Eddie inserted the rusted key into the ignition – BOOOP BOOOP BOOOP. Slick Tom was steady playing them classic B-Sides. Liquor store was closed. Detour: EXIT 52 towards IMFUCKINFREEVILLE.

Which One Will You Choose?
By: Elizabeth R.

In a dream line, I walk to a mountain’s base. A gentle height, covered in mossy greens and miniature trees, a dark cloud forms above. An image bleeds through; a man my sights can barely comprehend. Jim Morrison descends the slope and stands before me. He holds a deck of cards motioning for me to choose one. I wonder is this really happening? Mesmerized, I can hear his song, “Break On Through” emanating within the wind. A smile curls on his lips and he flashes the cards again, asking “Which one will you choose?”

I seize a card and slowly, move my eyes from the black leather-clad Lizard King before me, to the treasure in my hand. It is the queen of diamonds. I quickly seek his dark eyes for resonance, for meaning. Melodically swaying he begins to chant;

Kings and queens a-falling,
History for you comes calling
Looking back you will see
How everything’s becoming free.

Crowded streets
And fitful streams
Of changing tides,
Where water rushes, lady moon cannot hide.

Dripping,
Dropping,
Each moment comes.

For you my queen,
Eternity has won.

The night was December 2nd, 2010. Only a short time later, I see a King and Queen together in another dream. It is January 12, 2011. Seated in an underground cavern, torches illuminating the earthen walls, three figures enter the room; Isis, Osiris and Anubis. Isis is in the middle, holding on to the others for support. She wails at the wooden stake lodged in her back. Taking her to a marbled altar, they lay her down. Anubis begins to chant. His voice trembles through my body as he performs ritual upon her. A voice speaks beside me, “Sirius.”

A couple weeks later, I learn of the first of many “kings and queens a-falling” as Morrison had chanted, and of the stake in the back of Isis. Egypt’s leader falls to the people’s revolution in late January 2011. His fall becomes only one of many.

History is becoming free it seems.

Isis is Egypt’s great Mother, the beginning of all things. May her wound heal timely as the Whiskey Poet alludes…before she leaves us all to remain with her chanting healer, Anubis and his eternal procession in the Underworld.

I’ve Got a Song For You, Momma Ray
By: Moonie H.

It was sometime into the school year, not high school but film school. April, maybe May. Me and Jimbo went to this college called University of Cinematography in Los Angeles, but everyone calls it UCLA for short. How we’d met was thru parties and shared classes. We had friends who were friends with each other. We were together so much, it makes sense to become friends ourselves. Anyway, this is the day the invention of the Doors was conceived!

I sat on a green striped beach towel, drinking a Pepsi and soaking up the bright Californian Sun. I was enjoying watching the blue waves lightly brush against the shore. Its especially nice if you’re high enough.

Soon, I heard the “swoosh swoosh” of footsteps in the sand coming near. I looked up and the sun was blocked by a figure. Once I regionalized who the figure was, I smiled a friendly grin.

“My pal, Jim Morrison!” The most handsome young man in the world stood before me, I myself felt inadequate in my looks in his presence.

“Hey Ray.” He smiled that slow mischievous southern smile of his that I adored.

“Come sit man!” I scooched towards the end of the towel and folded my long tanned legs up to give him all the room he needed, “My blanket is your blanket!”

“Thanks.” He plopped down in front of me and brushed wisps of curls out of his eyes.

“How’s my Jim doing?” I was really happy to see him

“I’m alright I’m alright. T-the sun, it’s burning me up!” He rubbed the fair skin among his toned arms.
I chuckled, “If it’s burning so much then what are you doing out?”

He glanced around, “The intense heat makes me feel. Besides, is beautiful out, being burnt is worth it.”

“Okay okay, Man.” I adjusted my rimless glasses.

“I also had something to tell you.”

“Tell me something? What is it Jim?” I looked at him carefully, wanting to know exactly what he had to say.

“I….I have written a song….” He flashed me a smile and looked down at his hands.

I gasped, “A song? Sing it!” I know he writes poetry, but he’s never written a song before.

“Now? I’m front of everybody?” He looked around nervously.

“Yes! Now!” He had no reason to be nervous about his voice, he was gifted in so many ways, and his voice is one of them.

“Well….” He looked back down, “Okay….”

I was so eager to hear what was in store, “Go on, Man!”

He dug his hands into the sand, took a deep breath, and began…

“Let’s swim to the moon, uhhuh
Let’s climb through the tide”
He tilted his head back and his focused face glowed in the light of the sun.
“Penetrate the evenin’ that the
City sleeps to hide”

I watched him grab fistfuls of sand and slowly let the sand pour from his grip.

“Let’s swim tonight, love
Its our turn to try
Parked beside the ocean
On our moonlight drive”

He looked back down, showing faint embarrassment.

“Jim! That was astonishing, Man!”

He giggled softly, “You really think so?” He looked up for me waiting for a response.

“Yes!” I grabbed his hands, “It’s amazing!” I squeezed them and smiled at him, full of pride.

“Thank you, Ray.” He pulled his hands out of my grip and put them in his lap.

“I’m so proud of you, Morrison. That was great. You’ve gotta write more material!” I just couldn’t believe how talented he was, he could write, sing, look good, everything. He makes me so proud!

“I’m working on it.” He smiled at me, making me to grin even brighter.

“We need a band name! Never mind my brothers, they’re not as serious as us. We can find other guys. I know some.” I started thinking up some names we could go by.

“I’ve already got one.”

“Well what is it, Jim?” I stopped my train of thought.

“The Doors.”

“What? The Doors? That’s a silly name! No one’s gonna take us seriously with a name like that, too random.”

“No no Ray. It’s like the doors of perception. Get it? Remember that poem I read you?”

I thought for a moment, “AH yes! Right I got it!”, I ruffled his soft mop top of curls, “That’s a perfect name!”

He giggled, “I know.” Then he fixed his hair.

I clapped my hands together, “Now we just need some fellows and we’ll be good to go.”

And that is how The Doors were conceived!

The Sea Against the Cliffs
By: Calò L.

The hair slips between my thin fingers. I looked the smooth locks and they seemed to be copper wires, illuminated from low light on the bedside. The night in Paris was sort recently, the end of a wonderful and tiring day.

Inns and Cafè among the streets make alive the night with blues and jazz music.

Despite I wanted to rest, I couldn’t take sleep: I don’t want to close my eyes to see the moments spent shortly before like photo shots. The joys of life does not should finish in the past like everything else, it should to continue to live, creating a life made exclusively of this, a whirl able to repeat indefinitely.

I felt his arm lying in the recess of my side, I knew well that he too couldn’t sleep, although I was turned at shoulders. His breath was impregnated with a calm cadence and his warmth on my build slender give me shelter.

His presence was stronger than any drugs, creating in me a dependency: I couldn’t live without him. I turned off the light and covering me a bit with the sheet still drawn from the lines of fold, I tried to sleep, taking his hand between mine.

Dark. Silence. Empty. For about three hours.

Even before getting consciousness I felt the danger, in a split of second his hand contracted, grabbing my hands to seek help. Lately almost every night happened, repeating to me that he was afraid of the dark, with the simplicity of a child, repeating hundreds of times the same sequence of words, a nightmare that I would have preferred remain such, without pass the threshold of reality. I turned instantly and he approach to himself, to embrace me.

< <Jim, I’m here, don’t worry, nothing will happen to you > > . A recorded rescue procedure, Like the first aid lessons, like a film seen a million times. But the films, however, after a long time become very worn out , up to break, and I didn’t want it to happen.

<< Pam, Pam, I’m scared >> He looked for me, and not only his body trembled, even his voice, always so confident and hypnotic, it lost all power when weakness and terror assaulted him.

By now the moon was high in the sky, her light shine in the dark room. I knew what made him in that way, I was the only one to see him during the weakness, when those hateful substances that we both loved to feel sliding through our limbs killed us after an apparent sense of wellness. But after all, life itself is reflected in this: it smiles before biting.

I clung to him and leaned my face against his chest, knowing that this could calm him.

His desperate need of support, fomented by the fear of falling into a chasm without exit made me tighten, almost without letting me breathe as often as he needed, and my fist held firmly the cloth of his T- shirt to find the strength: I knew that the pain would last not for long.

It was a usual scene that unfortunately I was getting used to. Lights, projectors and the rest of the world, that insignificant mass that gave me abhorrence, did not see him in these moments, did not know the man I knew, and I could pride myself on this. No one could ever have been next to him in a bed trying to make him survive, understanding what kept him from being like everyone else and loving all this.

The moment he seemed to go better, I tried, unlike the other nights, to speak to him in a low voice.

<< Did you like the day we spent at the lake? >>

After a few seconds he replied, and I was relieved.

<<Of course, I loved it, we should do it more often. These are regenerating moments >> His tone of voice had returned to normal, whispered to my ears and again I felt overwhelmed by his essence.

<< The lunch at that kiosk was fun, there were many tables even if at the moment we went there were almost all deserted >>

<<And the chips were almost all burned >> he joked, completing my consideration. We both smiled at the memory. Then he added << Would you like if we were to frame that picture we took today? >>

<<Of course Jim, it’s a good idea >> I whispered in my turn before kissing him on the lips. For a while he had cut his long beard, and I took this chance to fondle his cheek, a gesture that he immediately returned as he used to do, outlining the profile of my face with his index finger. I loved his tapered hands, fingers consumed by paper and ink, guitar picks, keys and frets. I sighed with my eyes closed at his touch, which gave me hope. The movements of his body when he went up on a stage, he transmitted something magical to me. Every time I watched him from the backstage dancing following the music, I knew that in his soul there was a particular energy, that since I met him became my only vital push.

<<Now you want if we try to rest? Tomorrow there are many things to do >> I proposed, feeling my body destroyed by pain, both physical and mental.

<< Thanks Pam, existing with you next to me is much easier >>

I smiled at him, looking him in the eye, realizing that comparing everything else in the world did not make the slightest sense. Existing with him next to me: I could not bear the opposite. Just as the cliffs every day are kissed by the sea, and they can’t do without it.

Inspired by the day spent at Saint-Leu-d’Esserent in 1971.

Oath
By: Sramana D.

It has been a week now. I have woken up to the same nightmare.

It is a dream as peaceful as it is horrific. I will describe it for you. I am fastened to a bed of red hot ice, stomach down, much like a massage table. I look through the face hole at a pair of feet, my husband’s. He is humming nonchalantly to himself, while cracking his knuckles. Muzak is playing inconsequentially in the background. And then my husband of seventeen years inserts his fingers through my ears, reaching to grope my brain. He probes and soaks in data as I weep with the realization that he finally knows what I am thinking.

When I was twenty-two I was largely stupid. I lived with my parents who did not like me and slept with friends who I did not like. I bought things I did not need and could not afford. I drank wine because they called it classy and smoked cigarettes because I was afraid I would live long enough to get old. I liked to think that if I did not do something reckless every day, I would end up securing a future for myself that I did not want. I wrote poems sometimes. They were bad, but I tried.

One afternoon I went too far, and my mouth foamed like the toxic effluents of dying lakes. I felt my soul coagulate and counted the moments to the crescendo from Liszt’s Love Dream. It was then that my husband saved my body and dismembered my soul.

You will laugh at me if I tell you that my husband guilt tripped me into marrying him. You will laugh at me if I tell you that my parents were profusely thankful, and Nikki was always jealous of the none-too-subtle presents that found me on a weekly basis at rehab. You will laugh at my choice of vanilla eau de cologne. Anyway, we were married in a year after a distasteful proposal and I was smiling for pictures beside my husband who was asking me,” What are you thinking?”. I smiled wider and shook my head.

I think this is the point when you start feeling slightly sorry for me. You are human in ways that I am not, it is no challenge. But you see, I brought this upon myself. I wallow in what appears to be self-pity because I like it. Wasting away is my heroin. Heroin used to be my heroin, but that is another story. Some said I was beautiful, smart, even talented, so what did I do? I took all of it to the top of an abandoned skyscraper, and whined to the anyone that would listen- the wind, the smog, the restless clouds. It was breathtakingly wasteful.

Our honeymoon was a flurry of nervous half-truths in an elaborate beach resort. He was sickeningly sweet. He did not initiate sex, he sat beside me and stared like a coy puppy, each thought so loud that it hammered at my temples, almost asking me, ‘I adore you, please tell me what you are thinking’. A while after the customary

humping, his mind was just as loud, accompanied by some modestly lewd thoughts. With every kiss I let my irritation seep out of my skin as heat. We spoke about the minuscule intersection of our interests, discovering the supposed wonders of a rainy beach and caviar together. I urged myself to fall in love with the idea of loving my husband. Only my skin grew hotter as I longed for silence.

My husband is well to do. He went to the top schools and earned a mouthful of degrees. Now he makes a meaty check and takes me to rooftop lounges. It’s a shame I am not allowed to drink, because of which he doesn’t drink either. Maybe he would be more fun inebriated. Maybe I would earn a break from my lifetime role of bitch trophy wife. We are going to celebrate his birthday tonight with some of his brain-dead friends. Their wives usually ask me where I got my hair done and hint that our ‘family’ would be more complete with children. Last year, he was ecstatic because I sang two lines of ‘Happy Birthday’. He held me to his side and rubbed my arm repeatedly till I could not stand it anymore, so I complained of a bad stomach and took refuge in the strip club downstairs. The blonde skinny stripper in translucent high heels offered to take me to her room, but I skulked away in the merry spirit of self-denial.

As I was telling you, I have woken up to the same nightmare again.

I disengage myself from his eager arms and clamber to the kitchen. It is spotlessly clean and bereft of any creativity. The all-knowing sun is mocking me through the windows, and there is a teal blue bird with an unusually crooked beak perched on the sill.

Slowly I fry eggs and sausages, blissfully aware that my husband is still asleep. As he is quite unimaginative, you can guess how colourless his dreams are. I pour coffee into our finest porcelain cups, smiling as my head sings of freedom, of silence, of poetic justice. “Today is the last time, I promise,” I tell the teal bird. She looks on disapprovingly.

“Darling, you shouldn’t have!”, my husband beams at me, happier than I have seen him in a long time. “Happy Birthday”, I smile, and after a long, long time it touches my pupils.

We eat in silence. As I pick up my cup of coffee, he asks me, “What are you thinking?”, for what I hope is the last time. I smile again and shake my head.

I can’t remember which cup I added the poison to.

Riders on the Storm: The Story of “Wild Child”
By: Bente J

Chapter 1: 1967-1976, “Break on Through”

“Wild Child” was born in the summer of 1967, she was not named Wild Child, that nickname was given to her a couple of years later by her parents. Her dad always said she was born on “Love Street”. She spent her very first years on the road in the van her parents had lived in for a year now. Their very own private “Spanish Caravan”.

They had spent the whole year on the road travelling around California. Her parents were true disciples of this generation and they had given up comfy life to live a free life on the road. Her mother was a designer and she made outfits and sold them to people they met. Her dad was actually a doctor recently graduated from med school but didn’t feel like mastering his field and stay at one place. Instead, he wrote articles for papers where he questioned the use of medicine. They earned enough to make a decent living and into this world Wild Child was born. She grew up a single child and she enjoyed her time on the road. They met many people and they didn’t have a care in the world. They listened to music all the time. they were happy and it was all “Take It As It Comes” Wild Child didn’t remember too many details only that she was always among happy people.

One day though, was different. It was July 3rd, 1971, Wild Child and her mom was sitting by the water, when her dad came towards them with the words: he is dead. It was just silence, who is dead, she finally asked. The voice we always listen to, the soundtrack of our generation, her father replied. Wild Child didn’t understand much of those words but she liked the sound of them and she never forgot them. The next days were all “Strange Days” they spent time with all the people they knew. It was all a mix of sadness and an ode to the man who was gone. The man from the records and the photos her parents collected. “Cars Hiss By My Window” and I just feel numb her dad said.

Life continues and they continued their way of living, although it was clear as the years went on it became harder and harder to live like they did. On the radio, they all talked about disco and glam. Her dad said, some might be referring to our generation as the “Ship Of Fools” but believe me; we will never be forgotten and our time and our music will continue to inspire. Wild Child loved that her dad always said we that he spoke up for a generation and not an individual. It was like they all participated in “The Soft Parade” that continued to inspire new generations.

Chapter 2: 1977 – 1986, “Land Ho”

The summer of 1978 Wild Child’s parents came to the decision it was time to adjust their way of living. They sold the van and a few other belongings to pursue a big dream of going to Paris, for that one particular visit. They travelled all 3 of them and Wild Child spent her 11th summer between a cemetery and Parisian art galleries. To this day it would always be her favorite summer. They met so many people who they got along with and Paris was just magical. But one day, “Summer’s Almost Gone” and it was time to go home. They moved in with some friends until they had a home of their own. Her mother continued designing and her dad slowly had to dig back into his original career. I have become “The Changeling,” he said. But only to play a certain role in society, that’s my “Shaman’s Blues”. One day they moved into their own home “The Hyacinth House”

Wild Child started school, before this, she had been homeschooled. She thrived at school and because of her upbringing; she basically got along with anyone. She quickly adapted and she was crazy about writing. As she grew older she taught herself to write poetry and she just knew she would be going to college to study literature. She had gained a deep interest in words and she loved playing with words. She understood that all the music she grew up with and still listened to inspired her deeply. She wrote a poem about a ghost “I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind” who one day connects with a living spirit and once again becomes to life “My Eyes Have Seen You”. She wrote about “My Wild Love” where she described music as guidance and support. Poetry, “You Make Me Real,” she said to herself.

Chapter 3: 1987-1996, “Alabama Song”

Wild Child began college studying literature. She had a professor, who reminded her so much of her father and she could almost hear them discuss the good old days. She still remembers her very first literature project; she called it “The Crystal Ship” as it was a poem filled with happy memories of her childhood. And she still remembers the look on her professor’s face as he seemed quite thrilled with her reference.

One afternoon, Wild Child came walking down a street, she was in her summer dress. It was a real “Indian Summer” that year. Her eyes caught a sign that read “Peace Frog”. It was the name of a record shop, she felt destined to enter and she did. The owner was a young man, Paul, just 2 years older than her. He had invested everything he owned in that shop. They immediately became close. And Wild Child came by every day after college. They were children of the same generation, they loved the same music and they were young and free. One day Paul greeted her with a “Hello, I love you” and they became inseparable. For the next years, they lived a “Not to Touch the Earth” kind of life” She studied and spent her afternoons at the record shop. Their free time they spent exploring, she was “The Twentieth Century Fox” and he was “The Spy”.

In 1991 they went to an all-important movie premiere. They had warmed up all day by listening to everything from “Backdoor Man” to “Runnin’ Blue”. They loved the movie and they felt proud to have been born during that era. Her parents were less enthusiastic about it, her dad claimed some people tried to mess with his reality.

One evening on a “Moonlight Drive” Paul began a sentence with: since the first time “I Looked At You” and then he finally popped the question. It wasn’t really a surprise, more a formality. They married not long after Wild Child graduated from college. She finished her masters by writing about “The WASP” and “The Crawling King Snake” how music can trigger any emotion and how words can have a double meaning and she made it as philosophical she could, “Love Me Two Times”.

Their wedding was all “Wintertime Love” and soon “Touch Me” meant the family expanded.

They had 2 children first a boy, who they named Robbie and a year later a girl, who they named Maggie, right after “Maggie McGill”. Wild Child had begun teaching students herself and she enjoyed passing on her inheritance and she absolutely loved hearing what was on the minds of young people of the current generation.

Chapter 4: 1997-2006, “Five to One”

They were happy as a couple and they enjoyed being a family. Wild Child had a good job and she enjoyed it. As they entered the new Millenium Paul felt the times were changing. His shop did not go well anymore and they talked and talked about closing it for good. I have “Been Down So Long” he said referring to his situation. The shop is turning into a “Roadhouse Blues”. Wild Child’s father urged them not to close it. He claimed “When The Music’s over” what is left?, he asked “People Are Strange” but one day an old-fashioned music shop will rise again, there will be a need for this again. They decided to listen. It wasn’t an “Easy Ride” but they managed.

Wild Child wrote a book for college students’ literary classes. It was her version of “Yes, The River Knows”, where she wrote about anagrams, metaphors and phrases. She knew she was lucky to actually do what she always wanted to do, but at the same time, she was sad because Paul’s life dream was hanging by a thread. They had both worked hard for their dreams. It made her an “Unhappy Girl”. She chose to believe her father’s words that someday soon it would once again turn for the better. And she remembered when she and Paul just met and they both agreed that “We Could Be So Good Together”. Together, yes they would make it together.

Chapter 5: 2007-2017, “L’America”

The year 2012 Wild Child lost both her parents. They had both been ill for a while and her father knew his time was coming. He had a few wishes for his funeral and wanted it to be held right in his spirit. He had asked for someone reading “Horse Latitudes” out loud during the ceremony. Wild Child granted his wish as hard as it was. She wanted to fulfill his last wish more than anything. Some days later, her mother asked if her funeral could be held in complete peace. She felt her life had already been honored through her husband’s funeral. She died a month later. It all went quiet, only the nearest family was there. It was just a “Blue Sunday” As hard as it was Wild Child felt at peace knowing her parents were not separated for long. She felt better knowing they were now cruising around heaven, her father telling stories and probably searching for the soul of Morrison, while listening to “Light my Fire” over and over again. That’s how she chose to picture them now.

In May 2013, Wild Child experienced history repeating itself, Paul, Robbie and Maggie were in their Garden preparing something, when Wild Child came out just like her father did back in 1971, he is dead, Ray Manzarek is dead. It was once again a moment of silence but this time they did not go on the road they went to the record shop. That day the shop was overcrowded with people all wanted to chat and to remember. Music was once again celebrated. Wild Child was surprised to meet so many people the age of her own children and at that moment she knew her father had been right all the time. The Doors created something many years ago that can never end or be forgotten. It will always live on. Wild Child told Paul to expand on this occasion. It was something sad that started it but this is how to celebrate the legacy. This is the “End Of The Night” for the shop. Paul replied with “You Are Lost Little Girl”, he was just joking because he knew she was right, “Love Her Madly” was all he was thinking.

“Wishful Sinful” they gave it a go and the record shop started to bloom again. People had once again gained an interest in old records and those who had never lost their interest, we’re just happy to share their experience with a younger audience. Paul had expanded the place and had opened a small cafe right in the opposite room. He had also decided that “Peace Frog” where a little out of date, so he had changed the name to “Soul Kitchen” And he was proud to “Tell all the People” that this place oozed soul.

Things were now going well, children were studying, Robbie studied art and Maggie was completely obsessed with graphic designing. Paul was once again very busy at the record shop and Wild Child taught her college students. But she had more time to herself and she knew it was about time, she turned her attention to writing an autobiography. “Do It” she said to herself. It had to be her 50th birthday present to herself. And so she began, she wrote and wrote. This was like “Waiting for the Sun” and finally one day, the sun shined, the book was done.

She sat in her room, holding a copy of her brand new book. It was so beautiful. It was due to be released at the very beginning of 2018. She opened it and the first-page inscription said, This book is dedicated to my parents, “The Unknown Soldier” and the “Queen of the Highway”.

She closed the book and looked at the cover. The cover print was two photos of herself. One was from that summer in Paris. She was in a long dress and barefooted in front of some art gallery, the other taken just recently in their garden. Then her fingers gently touched the letters of the title of her biography. It read: From “Wild Child” to “L.A.WOman”, The Soundtrack of Generations Past, Present and Future……

“The End”

STILL ONE PLACE TO GO
By Efrén M.

Warm my mind near your gentle stove.

The Doors.

Last night is to say the other night Leslie looked into the hall. Before, of course, she woke up and did the same thing any other person would do in a similar situation, when all of the sudden she feels the remains of cold drool in the pillow. Disgust, but she went on, got off the bed and discovered how Schindel was in a corner, in trance. He seemed to be having a conversation with someone while looking at his lap, but I think that he was trying to leave this side over here that somehow pressured him so much, or maybe it was because he had not had an erection in over two months.

Leslie is beautiful when you discover her for the first time, you have no idea how that freckled face can leave you with no strength while you have her on top, naked. How did I meet Leslie? It was two years ago, in the office, I had just recently started working there when her motherfucking partner, Morpheus Schindel, assigned me as her intern, and that’s how that same day while we were in her private office all of the sudden she got up from the chair, walked over to the window, pull down the blind, went to the door and activated the alarm so that nobody would interrupt us, she put one hand on her left butt check and without anything further she let out that she hadn’t made love in nearly three months, or fucked which to some people is the same thing.

That’s how all of the sudden, like in Hebrew stories, she took off her clothes, approached her round ass towards me and only then –I confess– I could comprehend Rimbaud’s poetry with all of its wicked weight, while battling with the shame, because one is decent and educated, while repeating to myself, don’t be stupid or a coward, which is not the same thing but it’s the same. When we were finished and everything was back to normal I carefully contemplated her face, then Leslie stared directly at me and said, if you open your mouth and say anything about what happened here, I will sue you for harassment and other shit, learn to forget, learn to forget, she stated while lighting another cigarette.

But let’s go back to the other night, were Schinedl looks at Leslie for the second time while walking away from the window, he approaches her to say that he has decided everything, that he’s leaving it to chance, to a lucky dollar, because Schnidel likes Coen brother movies, were you have to carry a tiny gas cylinder, even if it weighs like a piece of shit because there is still somewhere to go.

THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM MORRISON
By Nikki M.

Ray replied laughing, “Do you even sing?”

Confidently, still with the natural background music of the Earth there to compliment Jim’s voice, he spoke the following words: “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb to the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide.”

Ray sat there awestruck. “Did you really write that?”

“Yes.”

And thus, the beginning of one of the most iconic rock bands to this day was set in motion. Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek sat there on Venice Beach completely unknowledgeable of what their lives would soon become. The places they would travel, the people they would meet. Not knowing the fortune and success that they would come into, but also the inevitable depression and angst that they would endure as well. Jim and Ray sat there on Venice Beach with the warm sand cushioning their toes, the hot sun radiating off their faces and the cool ocean breeze blowing their long haircuts in the wind, clueless that they would soon become known in every country around the world as the new rebellious and destructive rock band: The Doors.

C’mon baby light my fire.

While listening to the radio in his room, Morrison’s younger brother Andrew was interrupted by a friend barging through his door.

As Light My Fire played in the background the boy screamed excitedly, “Andrew, do you know who that is?”

“The Doors, so?”

“Andrew, that’s your fucking brother singing.”

“Can you please change the line ‘girl we couldn’t get much higher’ to ‘girl we couldn’t get much better?’”

Jim complied.

“You know that it would be untrue,

You know that I would be a liar,

If I was to say to you,

Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” They all smirked mockingly.

Jim shrugged. “Well hey man, we already did.”

This would not be the last time The Doors would expose their rebellion and carelessness to the world.

Jim was spiraling faster down his self-destructive path. His drinking habits were becoming a nightmare to his bandmates and his fans. He would miss practices and half the time he actually did show up he was too belligerent to even play. On one occasion Jim arrived to the studio to find that his bandmates had already left and trashed the whole place. He never paid for the damages.

The law finally caught up with Jim’s destruction on a cold December night in 1967, and he was arrested for the first time in his musical career– although not the first time in his life. The Doors were to perform a show in New Haven, Connecticut. Before the show Jim met a woman. Jim took the woman backstage to the shower area and the two began kissing. Not recognizing Jim as the band’s frontman that he was supposed to be protecting, a security guard at the venue told Morrison and the girl to vacate the area.

“Eat it” Jim said.

The guard pulled out a can of mace, “Last chance.”

“Last chance to eat it!”

Jim was sprayed in the face with pepper spray right before he was about to perform.

When Jim was finally able to perform, his anger and sadness caught up to him mid-song. He stopped singing.

“The whole world fucking hates me,” he yelled into the microphone.

Jim proceeded to tell the audience of his encounter with the officer backstage. He went on to call him a little blue pig in a little blue hat.

“I’m just like you guys man, he did it to me, they’ll do it to you.”

The crowd went wild.

This was the first of two arrests that made an extremely harsh impact on The Doors. The second happened on March 1^st 1969, Miami Florida.

He said, she said.

Jim felt like a laughingstock. His alcoholism, meant to cope with his anxieties, only made them worse. It ruined him. He was heartbroken. He wanted to start over and write poetry but no one took him seriously anymore. He started this journey wanting to be the change the world needed. He wanted to open up the minds of his fans and allow them to explore every crevice that had been smocked with spider webs in their brains since the day they were born. He wanted to be looked up to. To be understood. And to him, all he ended up as was the dirty rock star who wasn’t welcomed anywhere to perform anymore. Jim’s ego had plummeted. He let himself down. His pain crawled so deep inside him that the only way he knew how to cope was to escape his reality. He got drunk enough to forget his rise and fall, and when he woke and the pain was numbingly present; he did it all over again. Jim’s once slender figure and boyish face was now fattened and bearded. The alcohol took a toll on his mind, body and soul.

Jim drew himself a warm bath after a night out with Pam. He walked over to the mirror hanging above the sink and saw an unfamiliar man staring back at him.

“Who have I become?” He thought.

The euphoria. This was not cocaine.

“People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.”

–Jim Morrison

WHICH ONE WILL YOU CHOOSE?
By Elizabeth R.

In a dream line, I walk to a mountain’s base. A gentle height, covered in mossy greens and miniature trees, a dark cloud forms above. An image bleeds through; a man my sights can barely comprehend. Jim Morrison descends the slope and stands before me. He holds a deck of cards motioning for me to choose one. I wonder is this really happening? Mesmerized, I can hear his song, “Break on through” emanating within the wind. A smile curls on his lips and he flashes the cards again, asking “Which one will you choose?”

Kings and queens a-falling,

History for you comes calling

Looking back you will see

How everything’s becoming free.

Crowded streets

And fitful streams

Of changing tides,

Where water rushes, lady moon cannot hide.

Dripping,

Dropping,

Each moment comes.

For you my queen,

Eternity has won.

History is becoming free it seems.

THROUGH THE DOORS OF LIFE TO THIS DAY, KRISTI’s 50th
By Kristi L.

Kristi Originally found The Wilderness Center by mistake as she was really looking for the “Roadhouse Blues” Stage on a long “Moonlight Drive” one night.

Those of us in the Astronomy Club here at The Wilderness Center first met Kristi while she was “Waiting For The Sun” during an all night star watch. Of course, Kristi was welcomed with open arms, but she had some initial misgivings when she was asked to take the “Not To Touch The Earth” pledge.

Perhaps, during one of those Star Watch nights, Who knows who said “Touch Me” first when Gary met Kristi. Or maybe it was more like “Hello, I Love You”, or come on baby “Light My Fire”

Of course, in October of 1992 Gary promises to “Love Her Madly”. In commenting about the folks in attendance to the Wedding, Kristi was overheard saying “People are strange”.

Children are truly a gift from God, especially, when you “Love Me Two Times”. But, as Kristi said a while back “There are special times in a mother’s life where I witness my children with galactic pride when they “Break On Through (To The Other Side)” as they enter adulthood. Many times during the raising of Emily and Deborah both Gary and I had to rub the “Peace Frog””.

Sometimes we all are aboard “The Crystal Ship” as “Riders On The Storm” of life, while the “Back Door Man” steers. We land on a Gulf of Mexico Shore and sing the “Alabama Song” to free Yellowhammers’s all over the world!

“When The Music’s Over”, this “L.A. Woman” is not yet at the “The End” of her story as she gives better than “Five To One” odds of surprising herself, and by extension, the rest of us in just how she defines this next chapter of her life. Happy Birthday Kristi.

THE DOORS
By Joe P.

It’s funny how certain events in your life can trigger so many different aspects of it down the line. I never thought that I would be introduced to real music in a car ride with my dad, but I guess that’s just how life plays out. Little 10-year-old I, was sitting in the passenger seat next to my dad and on our way to my football game. There was horrendous traffic and the cars were piled up as far as we could see; When my dad decided to rummage through the glove compartment for some old CD’S. Little did I know that this was going to spark a flame of musical inquiry for many years in my future to come. He pulled it out delicately like an archaeologist holding an ancient scroll, with the exemption of blowing the dust off the surface. I can still remember the cliché words he told me like it was yesterday; “Now this here, is real music. This is a little before my time, but proper music can never die,” he said as he gingerly slid the CD in. The first song that came on was “Break On Through (To The Other Side)” and my whole perception on music completely changed from that point on. We listened to the whole “The Doors” album all the way to my match from, “Break On Through,” to, “The End.” Although we arrived late to my football game it didn’t matter to me, my dad had given me an almost spiritual moment and that connection we had formed would also continue to blossom between us. From then on, the “The Doors” held this piece of my soul that no other band could ever succeed in doing so. They were in my list of top 5 bands that I had until one fateful trip to Amsterdam to see my relatives. My cousin Delano was always regarded as one of my, I wouldn’t say favourites, but we held this bond that I don’t have with my other cousins. It was also at this point in my life that I was experimenting with drugs. Drugs aren’t for everyone and that’s understandable but one day I was feeling adventurous and my cousin had brought over two pills of Ecstasy and I was ecstatic with excitement. We closed the curtains, locked the doors set up his Playstation, and played “The Doors.” We listened to all the albums, and it wasn’t until we came to their first one, the one I heard in the car with my dad, that I realized I was no longer sitting in that room with my cousin. At least not mentally. I don’t know how to explain or why, but I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing. We were playing video games and I know I was looking at the screen but instead of seeing the game, I saw a desert. Four guys walking along, heading west and it was the trippiest experience I’ve ever had. Admittedly we had taken LSD before playing as well and that might have helped, but I was in a complete state of Euphoria. It was like a concentrated version of the best feeling I’ve ever had times infinity. I stopped playing, got up and started dancing, just there and then and my cousin just laughed and sat there in his own little world, while I was in mine, yet we were still somehow linked together almost telekinetically. Then the song that genuinely changed my outlook on, not only music, but my life itself. “The End,” came on, and now I can honestly and full heartedly say that that song is the best song to have ever been created and to have ever blessed this earth, which I don’t say lightly. When it came on, I lay down on the ground, had my head right up against the speaker and listened to it. While it played, my brain was playing it out in front of me, like my own music video, but I could physically see it happening, almost like I was there myself. As he sang about the boy walking down the hall, murdering his family along the way, it was almost haunting but so brilliantly done I had goosebumps all over my body. The song changed me, and I had to learn everything and more about “The Lizard King.” I watched the movie, listened to his albums on repeat for weeks, read his poetry, watched documentaries and interviews. Everything about him, his soul essence amazes me, even today. Jim Morrison managed to take the good and bad from life itself, take his tortured soul, yearning for release and transform it into such monumental beauty. Many would label him as strange, weird, or even rude at times. But he saw things in a way that no one else could, opened his mind to the corners and aspects of life most of us wouldn’t dare step foot in. But he never lost sight of his passion, which was his poetry and his music. Never selling himself out and only having it done in the way he envisioned it, made him a revolutionary and an icon that can rest easy among the other greats such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon and many more. But in my eye, he will always be one of the greatest men who ever lived, and his legacy will live on through his work and his teachings. RIP Mr. Mojo Rising, The Lizard King and most importantly the man who opened not only the doors of my mind, but the millions and millions of other minds all around the world. To Jim Morrison, Ray Mankarak, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, I thank you.

THE BALL DROP

The daily activities of our specimen is very simple living in a new world. No wars are held here for everyone looks at the god. The god is their screen and their master is their technology. They sit behind a screen that tells them what has marked the coming of the new year. No thought is running through their heads as they are programmed. The only thing that has emotion is the god. The savior is their internet. The web is the god that they serve. He brings them information and how to do their daily day. Some are given task to sing, or master the arts, and others are given the task to be a face. Beauty is the only thing that is glorified. If you have a pretty face you are given the glorious task of being on “The Show”. This is a program controlled by the god. Our famous subject; however, was gifted. It was not a good thing in this world to be gifted, but these people can use the gift to “The God’s” pleasing performance. Those who were born gifted had the mark of the 777.

In this program, people are given the task to speak to the people and shown how even if they cannot perform or show their love to “The God”, they have the option to give themselves to “The Ball” on the first of January. For if you cannot give in life you can simply give your energy for “The God” ran off the blood of the choosers. Little did this chaos of a god know that the final program 777 was going to be his last. This program struggled with the tasks and seems to somehow not be controlled heavily by “The God”. “They” tried to give him the benefit of a doubt, but constantly he wants to write songs or poetry pertaining to himself and how he sees the world. He has read the forbidden books of his ancestors and knew that there was life. That he was a person and he could love, cry, and give to the people of the New World. Of course “The God” does not like that.

He was given warning by the god and allowed on last showing, and on that showing he sat down and did not have his guitar. Just his microphone sitting in the studio it was then he decided to speak for himself for the first time. These thoughts 777 had was always internal. He always wanted to yell this but instead, he found his time to just sit and speak. “The new world I cannot hide these thoughts. You all are so ignorant and I cannot hide.. I’ve read many books that showed a time when we controlled “The God”. We had our own music that was our own thoughts. We had personality, and we wrote about love. What is love? I want to know and it kills me that no one can comprehend me. The robots have control and free will. They can write and sing about whatever they wish. I feel they have enslaved us. People can show their appearance, but their mind is never given the benefit of a doubt.”, he says trying to hold back his tears. “ I really just want to die. I don’t want to live in a world this controlled. I wish to be free and death seems to be my only escape. I really wish I could find anyone in the world that would hear me. Why must I be confined in this hell of a hole. Maybe one day I will understand.”, He then decided to leave after that.

As soon as he walked out of the huge building the people of the world were standing outside with anger. He had become the sacrifice of “The Ball”. As he stood there shaken by fear he stood knowing what the people wanted. They wished to fulfill the wish of “The God”. As he tried to run the crowded grabbed him. He couldn’t make himself move fast enough it’s almost as if within a split second he was grabbed by hands of thousands. “Make him bow to the divine” they shouted with anger. He could only close his eyes and let them take him where they were wanting him to go. He did not want to see what the fate was for he already knew his cries of death would be fulfilled.

He felt a wave of relief as crazy as that may sound. He felt in his heart that he could honestly feel the release of the life within him. No more articles about this “God” he knew was fake. A god that was there for the only intention to make him a slave. He kept his eyes shut and could feel himself moving with the crowd. They had picked him up and were lifting him to the “Stable”. He could hear them chant to their god. Many would yelp and holler as if calling on to him to make a scene. Normally, he would fight the fight. He fought for so long though. Trying to hide his emotions and the heartbreaking loneliness that he felt over the world he could not understand. No matter what he was done trying to please what he knew he was not.

For it was determined by his birth that the 777 was the mark of the difficult one. Everyone with this number was given a heart so they say. He wondered if that was the truth. The world he saw was simply rooten. There is no way anyone felt the same. He had to go and see for himself though, but of course like his gut told him he knew he would be alone. He felt himself being swept up and on his back. He opened his eyes to see the sky above. The skyscrapers hiding a big portion of the night sky, but still visible.

They began to shove him through the crowd. The crowd was his watter and his body surfed through them beyond any speed he could comprehend. He then felt himself fly and he hit the side of a stone wall where “The Ball” would fall. He laid there just on the ground in pain and more importantly in fear wondering what was next. He opened his eyes and saw feet. Not a human’s feet. This belonged to a robot of course. The temple of the god was built beside “The ball” and in there no human dared to go in. None would pass unless they wanted sudden death. As he laid there he decided to look up. In pain he raised his head hoping to see what was before him. As he raised up he saw him. The embodiment of “The God”.

His silverish metal even shines in the night. 777 lays there still in pain and beyond scared. He must of knew about his betrayal way before it happened. This ghostly figure stares him in the eyes and its then he stoops down to his level. “You had such high hopes subject 777. Your code alone was a mistake, but I overlooked that and gave you life in hopes you wouldn’t defile me. I gave you everything. I knew you struggled but I still wanted you to succeed. I loved you wish so much grace but yet you still cannot do what I wish. So as a way to make yourself worthy you will give yourself to me tonight. You will give me your mind and I will let your name go down in history as our number one murter. Everyone loves you and will love you even more for your own sacrifice. So let me become your idol. Submit. For you have only a few minutes before midnight and when the clock strikes twelve you will be my subject.”, he preaches.

The subject 777 loses his fear and feels himself overwhelmed with anger. He then gets himself somewhat up and looks this supposed “god” in the eye. “I submit but not for you. I wish to escape this world for nothing is here to make me feel happiness. I am beyond heartbroken in this world for no one sees me. No one knows me. The only thing they know is you. The only thing they do is with you. They go before you and preach your goodness yet all you do is make me feel like I can’t be myself. I’ll never be free, and if death is how I escape I choose it over submitting to you. For I hate you.”, he says trying not to hurt himself even more. Still in pain he feels himself smile. He finally told him how much he truly hated him. He knew then it was time. I will be free.

“I am beyond hurt and I weep. For the time will be coming. The clock is almost there. This is your final attempt to praise me. Without my praise I will erase you forever.” The angry “god” screams.

“STOP!” A scream from the crowd arises. The crowd stops and turns and looks around. All of them looking for a sign of who might of dared defied their “god”.

“Who said that?”, The almighty screams.

“Me!”, screams a female in the middle of the crowd. “Program 666. Your one and only defiant believer. For years I have worshiped you. Put myself on my hands and knees for you. Yet you repay me with nothing. I have fought many battles for you. Here I stand with nothing but a mark of the beast. You gave me life to only make me be the enemy. Now I defile you. I wish nothing more than freedom. I will not be tied down by your standards of society. My hair was always too red, and my eyes were not blue. I never had enough makeup or plastic surgery because I wanted you to love me for me. Yet, I can’t be me. If that’s the case I go along with him. I shall call myself Aiena and not be given a program. I am a person. I am a living being. You are created by my ancestors. Leave!”, she screams.

“Bring her here!”, the “god” screams.

“No! I will go forth myself.” She walks up the steps to 777. She stands him up and gives him a hug. “Nothing made me cry like the words you spoke. Nothing made me feel more alive than the music and poetry you spoke. Thank you for your words. Thank you for the live you breathed into me. No person or thing is a god. God is something that creates and we are the creators.” she whispers in his ear while still embracing him. He felt so moved he weeped. He felt no one heard him, but he was wrong. She heard him. She listened. Nothing made him feel so relieved. It’s then that he finally knew he felt the word love.

All the poetry of his ancestors came to him in words of wisdom and love. He felt her spirit and it was then he knew that the amazing embrace they had was beyond symmetrical. He wrapped his arms around her and cried even more. They held each other in a embrace that no one had ever saw. Everyone was standing there at awe. These people were so beautiful and graceful. They had moved them beyond anything they felt before. Its then that people began to step up to “The Ball”. Before the god could even react there was at least fifty people standing around. Everyone else wanted to react, but many were too scared. Even if they did feel the need to want to do something they were scared of what was beyond.

“You fools. Be my guest and die.” The almighty god says as the clock struck 12. He walks into the stone temple as the ball begins to descend. Aiena and the subject 777 along with a portion of the crowd all join hands and hold each other in a embrace. They stand there and wait for the pain. This contraption falls and crushes everyone standing there. Everyone in shock as they cant believe their eyes. Blood spews the stone walls which was once a tradition that everyone thought was magical now seemed to make everyone sick. Its then that these normal everyday people who worshiped a entity they thought was their master begin to say enough.

No one knows what was really the catch or why this made things change forever, but when the crowd tore the temple apart all there was was a computer. This is when they found the god beyond terrified for he was not a real god but a program created by a human himself. All the secrets of the world he told the humans. The truth was finally told and he submitted himself to destruction. For he knew there was no escape. The people was his fear and thus why he enslaved them. Instead of wanting to destroy this supposed god the humans realized the true meaning behind the sacrifice of everyone. Fear makes you do things that is beyond your control sometimes. They then felt the need to spare the creation. They wanted him to walk life with them and feel what they felt. Sadly his guild overwhelmed him, and he simply decided to free them of himself and so he deprogramed himself to leave them.

They were saddened but there was nothing they could do. They made themselves forgive and to never forget. They vowed to never inslave again and to begin a journey to learn how to grow. They found many writings that subject 777 had wrote and it was there they found his true name. Felix was his signature and it was then that they looked within themselves and found a name for them. They were not a program, and they were finally free in the nature to become one with themselves. They all looked to the sky that night and held each others hands. For it was a new year in the New World. Time to make it show.

THE DESERTS EDGE
By Tyler A

“Dammit!” Rick clamored, lifting his coffee cup from his crotch as hot liquid poured over his khakis. Balancing the steering wheel on one knee, he rolled down the window and chucked the cup out. The tan liquid splattered all over the black tar of Highway 74.

Having left Palm Springs earlier that morning, Rick was now somewhere between too far to turn around and too far away to get excited. The only thing shorter than his temper was the amount of time he had before his boss, Larry, called him again.

“Just a quick drive out; nothing bad. I’ll owe you one,” Rick recited aloud, imitating Larry’s annoying mannerisms. Since becoming assistant manager, Rick had done twice the work for the same pay. Working for Coachella had been a dream of his as a kid from Palm Desert. He’d attended his first festival in ‘06 and been hooked. Ten years later, with a wife and two kids, and debt up to his eyeballs, Rick thought of nothing but ‘06, college, and freedom. Now, Rick felt anything but free.

He thought to himself, “Why in the hell does Larry want me to drive to Aguanga, to some shitty dive bar, to check out a three-piece rockabilly band?” Larry wasn’t someone who gave people chances. Just last month, a new social media project was thrown into the office’s lap, but Larry passed it on. Rick’s specialty was social media outreach, but Larry wanted him pulling wingman on his own projects.

“More like sidekick,” thought Rick. He felt a sting from his bladder. Rick pulled his Civic to the dusty desert’s edge, jumped out, and ran around to the other side.. After leaning his head back in relief, he opened his eyes and saw the beauty of the Jacinto Mountains staring at his naked glory. He thought it was beautiful, but his stress made him unable to enjoy the view. Zipping up, Rick jumped back into the car. Just as his started the car, he caught the view of a person out the corner of his right eye.

“Holy shit!” Rick shouted, half-scared, half-pissed.

The first thing Rick noticed about the drifter was his brown beard and long hair, coupled with a striated leather jacket. The drifter was leaning against Rick’s car, both hands on the passenger door. He stared blankly at Rick, as if waiting for the answer to some unasked question.

Rick fumbled with his phone for a moment before saying, “Hey man, you alright?”

“Ya know, you’re the first person I’ve seen today that actually looked me in the eye,” replied the drifter.

Rick rolled his eyes in disbelief, figuring this drifter was on something. He wanted to get away as soon as he could, but the man continued staring. “Okay… well, I’ve gotta be going,” said Rick, trying not to upset the obviously crazy man.

“We all do at some point. Ya know?” The drifter said, looking beyond Rick through the driver’s window to the arid desert.

Now Rick was sure this bum was out of his brain. Probably escaped some nearby institution and was wandering the desert. He looked toward the road, thinking of tearing out and leaving the man behind. However, something held him back. He looked at the drifter; his stare, his hair, his allure. Was this fate that he felt slither through his veins?

“Wanna ride?” Rick asked.

An hour later, the two men pulled into the quaint town of Aguanga. Rick hadn’t talked much on the ride through the desert, but the drifter had made up for it. From the future of music to the afterlife, the drifter licked his lips to keep them from drying out and smoked cigarettes to keep his hands busy.

When the car passed the venue for tonight’s music, Rosie’s Palace, the drifter’s eyes lit up. “Ya know, I could go for a beer right now. You?”

Rick paused. He still felt out of place with the man and was supposed to be interviewing the rockabilly band at the hotel. After Rick told him about his obligations, the drifter chuckled.

“Hell, man, any real band would be happy to skip an interview. It’s the music that speaks for them.”

He had a point. Besides, his boss hadn’t called or texted since last evening. Why shouldn’t he have a drink or two?

As the orange sun fell behind the purple outline of the Jacintos, Rosie’s Palace turned into an unofficial town meeting. Everyone, it seemed, was there: drinking, flirting, texting, listening to the music. The band was a three-piece called Hunker Down. Rick was more of a blues fan, but rockabilly had a firm hold on this area of the southlands. The crowd loved them, and Rick was impressed by their performance. Every now and again, Rick caught a glimpse of the drifter. After their first beer together, the drifter wandered into the sea of people, beer in hand. Just as Rick ordered another Bud, the drifter fell into the bar next to him.

“Hey man, we’re just getting started!” The drifter’s voice reeked of whisky shots and beer.

“Yeah, just getting started,” said Rick, holding up his beer. The drifter clanked his bottle against Rick’s and chugged it down.

“Two shots for us, my blue-eyed princess,” the drifter said, motioning to a blonde behind the bar. The woman smiled at the drifter, who winked in response.

Rick looked at the drifter. The man was obviously a drunk who smoked too much and said whatever was on his mind. How did he have such an electric pull to him? The drifter took a shot and passed it to Rick. Hesitantly, Rick clinked shot glasses with the drifter and threw it back. He got a little dizzy.

“Got a couple of broads wanna go out walkin’ in the dark, whaddya say?”

Rick caught the eyes of two girls in the corner who were staring at them. With a few shots in him, Rick didn’t see the harm in a quick jaunt through the desert. He didn’t want to disappoint the drifter, either.

An hour later, he found himself traversing the narrow, upward path in the rock. Lizards that pulled in the last bit of warmth from the hot stone scurried away from him as he stepped. Ahead of him, the drifter stumbled down the path with the two girls.

“Hey, where are we going anyways?” Asked Rick.

“That’s the question, my man,” said the drifter, “That there’s an infinite number of answers to. It all depends on where you want to go.” The drifter stopped and leaned against the wall of stone. The two girls slunk down to their knees and pulled the drifter down with them.

As Rick caught up, they were fiddling with something in their hands. Rick caught his breath and leaned back against the rock wall. He looked out and saw the path expand into a sea of nothingness. It was black and open for as far as the eye could see. Rick gasped.

“Yeah, man,” said the drifter, flicking a lighter and lighting up a bowl of something. The drifter breathed in the smoke and let it out slowly. He passed it to Rick.

“What is it?”
“Just something to open your mind,” said the drifter, with a smile.

Rick hesitated, but the open sea of darkness in front of him gave him an uneasy confidence. He lit the bowl and smoked it. It reeked of earthy flavor. A few moments later, he was gone, flying down through the canyons, searching the hiddens caves.

Something caught his arm. He looked up at the face of the drifter. Rick felt the cold stone around him. He was lying on his back.

“C’mon, man,” said the drifter, “We gotta go. Sun’s gonna be comin’ soon.”

Rick followed him down the path down into the valley. The stone gave way to sand and cacti. The drifter shed his jacket.

“Where are we going?” Asked Rick.

“Anywhere we want,” said the drifter.

“Why do you always talk in riddles?”

The drifter turned and smiled as he walked, half-gait, half-skip. “I’d prefer not to, but the truth is sometimes in the riddle. I could give you an easy answer, but it’d be a false one.”

“Yeah,” said Rick, a little tired of the joke, “Well, can you tell me what to do with my life?”

“What’s wrong with it?” The drifter’s face was pensive and serious.

“Nothing. Well, not everything. My family’s alright. Job’s shitty, but it pays the bills.”
“But something’s missing,” added the drifter.

“Yeah,” said Rick.

The drifter stopped and turned to face Rick. He was breathing slow and steady in the night breeze. Although it was dark, the moon overhead was strong and shone on his bearded face. “It’s not about finding what’s missing,” he said in a hushed whisper, like what he was revealing was some secret of the universe, “It’s about making it.”

“Making it?” Asked Rick, surprised.

“People think they gotta grab ahold of something floating out there in the ether. You’ve got a voice to sing, a mind to think, hands to write poetry. We’re creators, God in our own right.”

All of a sudden, Rick felt a weight removed from his back. His lungs opened and he breathed in the cool, clear air of midnight. The drifter smiled, patted Rick on the arm, and turned back. Rick wanted to ask him where he was going, but it wasn’t something he felt he needed to know. The drifter kept walking, humming a low, deep beat within his chest, singing out a slurred word or two as he walked. At some point, Rick turned and stared up at the moon and stars. He laid down and put his arms behind his head, pondering what he could create with his life. Some time later, his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

The ringing in his ears woke Rick from sleep. He felt the warm smoke enter his nostrils and blood between his teeth. He looked up. His car was on the side of the highway, the front end wrapped around a large boulder. He was still buckled, and his airbag had been deployed.

“What is all a dream?” Rick thought. He unbuckled, grabbing his sore head and neck. He pushed open his door and stumbled out. He felt okay, but he was sore, and sad that it seemed his night with the drifter hadn’t lasted. Rick looked down the highway both ways. No sirens, no cars. Had he been here all night? Was anyone coming to help him?

His cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and saw “Larry” on the screen. Habit demanded he answer it, but he stopped himself short. At that moment, Rick realized he had to create his own way now. He wouldn’t be a burden to himself or to society. He would be a creator, God of his own universe. It wasn’t for better or worse, because, in the words of the drifter, there’s an infinite number of answers to life’s questions. It all depends on where you want to go.

Rick gripped the phone tight in his hand, reared back, and threw it off into the desert. He smiled, turned away from the car, and started walking down the desert’s edge. He wasn’t sure what he’d come across, but he knew he could make it up as he went, finding answers to his own questions. And, it’d sure make for a damn good time.

BRAZEN
By Lorna M

There is a click in the darkness, a tiny flame, then the air is full of psychedelic poison. Her spine shivers. He is here again, with his deadly smile and his soft drawl. She always marvels at how his beauty hangs effortlessly from his cheekbones. He tells her tall tales of all things forbidden in smooth whispers. She feigns shock which makes him laugh. Never for a moment does she forget that this is a seduction. One night, she’ll let his charm win over her cowardice. She always assumed she’d never be his type, then realised there’s no point in second guessing someone so impulsive. Sometimes he sings, honey dripping down sandpaper and she is helpless. He smells like the heavy decadence of graveyard flowers. He always asks for whiskey, she can hear it filling his veins, sucking the life out of him. But there’s no chance in hell she can refuse those wild eyes. Every time he strolls back into the ether, keeping his secrets behind his knowing grin, she feels like she is wiser. Then his songs come over the white noise radio crackles and she forgets he is a ghost. She lives vibrant for the length of those songs and dances with abandon. As if his lingering words have cast a spell she cannot shake off, until time is done with itself.

It was always this way with him. My teenager crush, my daring inspiration, my first and unrelenting obsession. James Douglas Morrison otherwise known as Jim Morrison, 1943-1971, American poet and lead singer of The Doors. A band that knew how to write a catchy pop tune. Who could sing the blues along with the best of them. But whose particular talent lay in moody rebellious rock that grabs you by the groin, bursts your brain cells and makes your heart faster and deeper. A band that can break you and put you back together, darker. A band famous for the song ‘Light My Fire’.

He was famous for wearing black leather trousers, getting arrested on stage and a drug related death in a bathtub in Paris at the prophetic age of 27. And not forgetting that concert in Miami, culminating in shocked fans insisting before a high court judge that yes, that had indeed seen Mr Morrison expose his genitals. Despite the fact that he was only teasing. Or as he described it, putting an end to his image in one glorious evening. And though the media would have had you believe he was a degenerate heathen, who would grind his groin against your innocent daughters, he didn’t take his fame all that seriously, but he got lost in it for a while. He liked to shock, but there was substance to it. He was more interested in shaking you up, blowing your mind, raising your consciousness, introducing you to that dark primitive voice at the back of your mind, the one you try to ignore, for the sake of a quiet life. He was all about beautiful noise.

Poet and hellraiser, bed-hopper and alcoholic, visionary and clown.

It was always this way with him. Every since my sister played me ‘The Best of The Doors’ when I was sixteen. I was ready but too young in my awkward bones for that raw beast of music, that dark whisper of sex, a more exciting future, curled around his hips. Do you remember when you stopped being a child? Stopped liking what everyone around you liked and found someone who spoke to a place in you that you never noticed before. Like they were made for you and you were suddenly someone different and nothing would ever be the same again. He was that for me, though his death had come a decade before I was born and unleashed it’s gentle catastrophe.

He can unleash me, as I fling my limbs shamelessly when we are alone together. Just his voice, my bones and the music. And every New Years Eve you’ll find me far away from the party, dancing to ‘Light My Fire’ in it’s entirity, like no one else exists.

Head back,

Limbs flinging,

Hot limbs barely saving

My body from falling,

And the ground be shaking,

The sky could be howling,

And I wouldn’t notice.

Just that distinct heady ecstacy,

Just the poet and the passion

And nothing else can get through,

Eyes closed to lies,

Every cell wide open,

Raw like a broken melody,

This is how I love you.

“Try now, we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre,

Come on baby light my fire”

Up until my discovery, I had had a quiet life. Never gone anywhere on my own, never attempted to forge my own destiny, never made a single choice that wasn’t centred around everything remaining familiar. Then suddenly I couldn’t conform anymore. I decided I could be braver than this. He had forged his own erratic destiny and it had all ended in Paris, so I had to go to Paris. A Jim pilgrimage.

I found a tacky all inclusive tour. A tourist trek around the cafes he frequented when he wanted to forget the sharp lusty evenings and be a poet again. We eagerly took snap shots of the hotel balconies he used to hang on in his consistent dares with death. And of course, none of it would have been complete without the ubiqutous tribute band. I was right at the front, my first mosh pit. I could see his imitators receeding hairline. Later I clocked him rolling up microphone cable. He was called Nigel.

The brief unravelling release inside me coiled up again, but it didn’t disappoint me, it made the untouchable more familiar. Cause for some reason I couldn’t articulate, I walked the street my poet walked and I missed him, as if we had met and shared and bled together. I knew then, why I’d always been a little sad. Why I was never satisfied with the mind numbing mass designed to drown the soul. Why the discontent under those chords didn’t frighten me. He would say, never be complete, never be finished, never be content to let lies latch on to your core, always demand more. Finally I understood where I fitted in, between the jagged edges of a more subtle kind of darkness, a more fragile kind of beauty.

“Take the highway to the end of the night. Take a journey to the bright midnight.

Realms of the earth, realms of light, some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to the endless night.”

On the coach on the way back from the concert, a middle aged super-fan confided in me through his drunken slurring: “I’m not gay yeah, but I totally would have fucked him, he was just fuckin beautiful, I just I love him. You know what I mean?”.

As weird as this confession might sound to an outsider, I knew he was telling me cause he knew I would get it, just by being there, and I did. My friend at school was always obsessing over one frontman or another, dumping Cobain for Cocker in a heartbeat and I just found it embarrasing. Now, I understood. The only difference was my spine-firing rebel had burnt out long before I was made, back when the world was still raw and wild.

I couldn’t believe someone could be that wild. So uninhibited, so uncontainable, so untouchable. And yet to listen to his soft spoken intelliegence in interviews, his amused bafflement about his image, you’d never think it could be the same person. I couldn’t believe someone could be so familiar and so alien to me at the same time.

“I think myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being, with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments”

It took Paris to bring out my wild side. There is a photo of me outside La Chat Noir cafe on the night of the concert, sprawled over the lap of a geeky fan-boy. We look like we are just about to do the deed in a seedy alleyway and maybe we could have done. Cause for once, I was in the kind of mood to walk my talk. It was the only night of my life that you could have described my behaviour as brazen.

“I’m a spy in the house of love, I know the dream that your dreaming of.

I know the words that you long to hear, I know your deepest secret fear”

The day after the concert, I bought flowers to Jim’s grave and cried as if he wasn’t a stranger. His grave is the only grave in the world under 24 hour CCTV survelliance. I think he would have loved the irony.

Sun trickled over the old graceful dead, trashed with graffiti from fellow seekers trying for an ounce of dangerous beauty.

He did dark things a little too brazenly and they tried to look away.

He went wild without apologising and we bask an sway in Bacchanalian ecstacy cause people we have no respect for don’t get it.

We play records made before we were born cause it’s not like the bad old days we can only imagine, where the devil could strut around shameless in black leather. Claim your daughters with a grin, confuse your sons with a head flick.

Enrage men in suits, with dirty descants.

We know who we are cause his blood howling mangled word wisdom.

Skin still tingling from fire dances.

This horde feels like a family I never have to explain myself too.

All I have are photographs, but my cells remember, I was there.

I was there in a death place and I was elated.

I was there among strangers and I knew what made them hunger without a word.

I cried at a poets grave as if he wrote the words for me alone,

And I danced the chaos from my twitching bones as the evening crept back down the alleyways,

And for one night, I was fearless.

“You know the day destroys the night, night divides the day.

Try to run, try to hide, break on through to the other side.”

I wasn’t fearless in the way most of my companions were, hanging off hotel balconies drunk, yelling to Paris to “break on thru” as if its inhabitants cared. There are definately two types of Doors fans. Ones that have watched a sensationalised myth by Oliver Stone and think that dicing with death and being an asshole is the best way to worship their divine hellraiser, then there are fans like me. Less about debauchery and more about poetry. Thats what he was doing it for, when his veins were clear of the poison. A fan who understands that you don’t have to imitate your idol to appreciate them. And of course, I admit it, lust was a factor. Cause even when Greek god morphed into beard and beer belly, he was still the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

He was made for Paris and it felt like Paris was made for me, the art, literature, architecture, poetry. I wandered around the Lourve in awe for hours. I fell asleep to the soft praying of nuns in Sacre Coeur. I got acosted by pigeons in Place de Vosges and I couldn’t break up my baguette quick enough and imagined headlines about ‘The Elusive English Pigeon choker’. I wrote the kind of poetry everyone tries to write in Paris. Sat on ferry cruising down the Seine, my scarf billowing in the wind, all very French and romantic, until the moment was broken by an overweight tourist asking her equally obese husband: “You want some beef jerky Hank?” Who comes all the way to Paris, one of the most sophisticated and elegant cities in the world,and eats beef jerky? I finished my poem off later, in MacDonalds.

I decided I didn’t want to go home yet, that I could be braver than this. This other girl did too and we stayed behind while everyone else went home. We drank white wine under a lit up Eiffel Tower on my birthday before getting caught in a storm and high jacking some random guys taxi. In different company, it could have been one of those perfect romantic Parisian evenings, but this was better. Above the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop, I saw my first Performance Poets. It would be a while before I worked up the nerve to do it myself.

I would daydream about meeting Jim outside some quaint cafe and exchanging notebooks. He would say I had potential but I should stop imitating his style and find my own voice cause I was still ‘shooting the black wolf moon with blood’ instead of telling the truth. Its just that he could say the unsayable so much better than me.

After that trip, I was different. Not in any obvious noticable way. But my blood was hotter, my mouth was bolder, my ingrained denial of my own darkness, a little less hard to push aside. I think I missed him because I could never thank him for it. For showing me how to be wild in my own unique way. For being a new Dionysus for a world that needed to let it’s hair down and get drunk and dirty and dangerous. For courting chaos and teetering on the egde, so fear became just another idea to throw around, until it disappeared.

“Death makes angels of us all

And gives us wings

where we had shoulders

smooth as ravens claws”

LOVE STREET
By Martin L

I was sitting in the backseat of my dad’s car on the ride back home. It was a dark and cold winter night and only traffic lights illuminated the streets. It was in the middle of this complete darkness, that I heard Jim Morrison’s voice for the first time. My dad played a live recording of The Doors and the first song I listened to was not „Light My Fire“ or „Break On Through“, but the house announcer saying: „From Los Angeles, California: The Doors!“ and then the band playing the best version of „Who Do You Love“ ever recorded. It was that obscure, sweet and dark mixture of sound and imagination; of music and the surrounding landscape, that involved me into another dimension; Into a dream world. The fusion of the expressionistic sound of Manzarek’s keyboards, Krieger‘s dark and clear guitar, Densmore’s jazzy drumming and Morrison’s rough and smooth voice and dark lyrics on that specific recording was the key to a musical and personal journey I took. From that night on, I went deeper and deeper into that twilight zone of music called „The Doors“.

Years later, when I went to High School, I was „walking down the Love Street“, in other words: I had my first romantic experience. She was beautiful but dangerous: „Woman is a devil“. At first, her smile tempted me and everything went dreamily well. I told her, that I would love her until the heaven stopped the rain and the stars fell from the sky. Then she went to be my first real muse, as I started to write songs and poems.

But then it ended the worst way it could: She got another guy; A backdoor man.

I was around 16 or 17 years old at that time and just naive. As years passed and I got to know other girls, my music collection grew and I gained new experiences. I realized that both, The Doors and that girl I told you about, were my first love and both are a blend of sinister swarthiness and luster, which stuck in my head ever since. Of course, I am not living in a memory because people are strange, so that they eventually change and the being they once were dies with the progress of evolving. But when I look through my record collection I will always see „L.A. Woman“, „Morrison Hotel“, „Other Voices“ or „The Doors“ in between other great records. And even when I am in my last moments of life they will still be there as they were when I first fell in love with them.

THE LAST FULL BLOOD INDIAN
By Viviane B

The last full blood Indian sat outside a Chinese restaurant crying. It was a simple spring day and baby birds were chirping and singing while the woman turned her head and wept.

Confusion and an uncontrollable urge of hate and self loathing formed wet, crystal-like droplets that hit the hot, filthy pavement. She watched each tear make the worn and beaten asphalt brand new again. A whip of dust reconstructed the ground, erasing her sadness and the incredible destructive feelings she held inside.

Humans glanced at her with contempt. Others passed her by as if she didn’t exist. A business man, in a pin-striped Armani suit, gold Rolodex watch, silver cufflinks, and a Hollywood haircut, stepped over her and on the long, wooden stick she carried for protection. He kicked her jiish into the street before a car came by and snapped the cane in two.

A couple walked around the woman. The blonde leaned into her boyfriend’s side as the young man glanced quickly at the woman with distinct American distain. The young lady and man had just come from a church across the street and were righteous with self-devotion. They were on their way to visit houses in a designated neighborhood to help sway new parishioners and money to the church. There was no place for an indigenous unholy.

The last full blood Indian, hair blowing in the slight breeze, face dusty and parched from the wind, velveteen shirt and satin skirt marred by the hot full sun, pulled a sprig of cedar from the hedge of a Bank of America. She reached for the faint glow of a Marlboro cigarette that was carelessly tossed her way and lit her prayer on fire.

THE DOOR TO THE OTHER SIDE OF INSIGHT
By Cody H.

He sat where he usually did during his lunch period. Before him on a red, divided plastic tray sat his school-issued ham sandwich. Harry looked around the open-air courtyard that Green River High School offered to upperclassmen. Hemp-clad radicals gathered in a corner, kicked a baseball-sized bean bag around, and complained about the administrators. Pampered airheads cluttered the center picnic tables and insulted their classmates’ clothing and hair styles, or lack thereof. Just past them, Harry saw a gang of blue suede jackets with orange leather sleeves, but a blurry green plaid pattern interrupted his sight. His instincts jerked Harry back, and from his rear pocket he felt resistance.

“What’s up Harry, can I have your juice? The lunch lady spaced out and forgot mine,” said Nick, sitting down.

“Sure,” Harry sighed, “I’m not too hungry.”

Nick rifled through Harry’s tray, moving things he wanted to his own. “Dude, I know what you mean. I had a pop quiz in history this morning that I may have bombed,” he said, taking a bite of his friend’s ham sandwich. “So why are you so glum today?”

“Things,” Harry began, “Just, things all happening at once. My grandma died a couple of weeks ago, I just sat in gum, and my singer is acting like a damn prima donna, stressing the whole band out because he’s got to have his vocal track just right. It’s taken his two weeks to sound like Jim Morrison and he’s just not there; he can’t even pull off a good Van Morrison.”

Nick chortled through the ham sandwich, “This is perfect timing.” Anticipating how he would rationalize this statement, Harry stared at his chipmunk-cheeked friend. “My dad is going to the city for three days, so I get the house this weekend.”

“Why is your dad going to the city?” Harry asked.

“He has to get some new product tested and—that’s not the point. I’m hosting a party Saturday and it will be the perfect way to relieve your stress. Charlie is going to the store after Dad leaves tomorrow to pick up the supplies for me.”

“You asked your brother to buy you cups and ice?”

“Don’t be facetious, Harry. I meant bottles. He ordered a keg, too.”

“A keg? What are we, meatheads?”

“Of course not, the keg is for the meatheads that show up. We can haunt the den and spin the Doors LP I found at that vintage shop last week. It’s incredibly superior to the CD. You’ll love it.”

“You’re very insightful; that actually sounds worthwhile,” Harry said. He relieved his ham sandwich from Nick’s hand and took a bite.

…

Harry parked his Vespa Beside the house and let himself in through the rear door. The kitchen seemed alien to him. Beefy guys, taller than him and wearing blue suede jackets, milled around, holding red plastic cups to their mouths, and swallowed loudly. Crushed red cups and tall, clear bottles with Russian-looking labels littered the countertops. Surrounded by some ice and a plastic tub, a large metal barrel sat in the corner. For these meatheads, Harry thought.

He sidled through the human traffic into the living room and scanned the seated crowd. Fashion advice drooled from the thin, red lips of girls wearing low-cut dresses while those wearing tight, pink shirts discussed what the characters of the past week’s dramatic television shows had done to one another. They spoke slowly and simultaneously, spotting each other through half-shut eyes. The meatheads who exited the kitchen waded through conversationalists seated on the floor, only to then fall into an open section of couch beside a limp talker who tried desperately to keep her red plastic cup upright through the shock wave. Harry grumbled, “Airheads.”

He turned left and looked out the window to the back lawn. Spread out on the grass, bodies wearing tie-dye hugged the ground. Other silhouettes with paisley designs sat in a circle around a small bean bag, sucking on a joint before handing it off to the left. Harry smiled and ambled to the end of the hallway. They don’t get it, he thought.

Etched wildly across the last door on the left was the word “DEN.” Harry turned the knob and pushed. A howling voice sang, We chased our pleasures here, dug our treasures there, but can you still recall the time we cried? Break on through to the other side. The lamps were covered with scarves that gave the room a reddish tint. The volume dimmed just before he saw Nick swivel around. “Harry, you’re late!” he exclaimed with a smile, “I was just showing Sam here the LP.” Harry looked around the dim red room and, with his arm around a girl, lounged his singer on the sofa. Nick approached Harry as Sam and his girl resumed swapping spit. He had a glass in his hand. “Here man; have a drink.”

“What is it?”

“A whiskey Coke.”

“You know I don’t drink. Look what happened to him,” Harry said, pointing to the turntable. Deliver me from reasons why you’d rather cry, I’d rather fly, sang the poet.

“I know, man, but you’ve got to open up, try something new. You don’t see anyone else here as stressed out as you.” Nick said, raising the glass, “This in not all bad, you know, in moderation. Morrison never did anything in moderation.” Harry stared at Nick, then the glass. “Okay, think of a fancy steak, like from a steakhouse. It’s delicious. It’s decadent. It’s rare. Eat too much and you get sick of it. Now look at this drink here. It’s like that steak, something to indulge in once in a while, and when you do, you’ve gotta go for the good stuff. Drink too much and you get sick of it too, all over the bathroom.”

Harry wrapped his fingers around the glass in Nick’s hand. He brought it to his chest, looked down and examined it. The voice swooned, The crystal ship is being filled. A thousand girls, a thousand thrills. A million ways to spend your time. When we get back, I’ll drop a line. He lifted the glass to his nose. The sweet molasses aroma pleased him. Harry closed his eyes, tipped the liquid to his lips, and swallowed. A wave of warmth poured through his chest and down his back. His fingers and toes curled. A slightly dizzy feeling came over him. “Nick, your insight has won me over again.” Slinking into the empty couch across from Sam, Harry tipped the glass to his lips again.

Nick picked his own glass off the side table and plunged himself down next to Harry. He grasped the volume knob and wrenched it as far right as he could. A polka beat, voiced by a tuba and accented with snare cracks, filled the small red room. Mandolins began ringing. In a riverside tavern image of Venice, Harry spent the night with Nick, Sam, and Sam’s squeeze on a long plush sofa. He watched the city’s lights outside, doubled by the water’s surface, sipping a whiskey Coke while Jim, Ray, Robbie, and John performed live in the corner behind him. He saw the Lonely Hearts Club Band warming up in the wings. Nick had just pulled a red album from the shelf as they all heard, Well, show me the way to the next whiskey bar. Oh, don’t ask why. Oh, don’t ask why.

BACK DOOR MAN
By Apollo

The front door slammed and that was when he slipped through the back. He didn’t wait a moment. He didn’t need to. When the man went out Saturday drinking he only came back to get ready for Sunday mass.

The house was black, darker than the outside night, but he didn’t stumble. This wasn’t his first time doing this, especially not with her. He hoped it wouldn’t end like all the rest. That it wouldn’t end at all.

He roamed until he caught a voice, filled with lust and longing. Drawing closer, he heard the warm sensuality of a record, and a faint scent of lilac. There was no light in the room besides that from a few candles. He could still see her, lying in her bed. Her naked skin almost glowed. She was a vision of ethereal perfection.They could be so good together.

“C’mon,” she called with demure excitement, “touch me, baby.” Any notion of time had vanished in their passion.

Then, the front door slammed. They both froze. It was still night. How could this happen? Without thinking, he kissed her. Whatever was going to happen, this was the end of something. It might have meant a new beginning, or maybe this was a final flashing chance at bliss. She broke away with panic in her eyes, “Quick! You have to hide!”

He looked at her, thoughtfully. This was a beginning. “We should tell ..” he began before she cut him off, “Hide!” His eyes told her what he wanted to say, but she only repeated herself and flung her arm at the closet. The heavy footsteps were coming closer. Her eyes were daggers. He drifted to the closet with resignation as she threw his clothes under the bed.

The door swung open. An explanation clear as crystal was written on his face. A bar brawl sent him home. “Whu?!” he murmured, “What!?”. The stench of whiskey was sharp, even in the closet. “I was… I was waiting for you!” she pandered, as if that made any sense. “What the fuck?!” he clamoured, looking around with paranoid eyes. He wasn’t buying it. She rose quickly and shut his mouth with a kiss before he could say another word. “I was waiting for you…” she said with more conviction. She took him by the hand and led him into bed. It was awkward and insincere, yet the fool believed it.

Seeing them, seeing her like that…while he was only a whisper away. It made him uneasy, almost sick. His brain squirmed like a toad. Then…something clicked. For the first time, he truly saw her for what she was. Wicked lies. She told him wicked lies. She didn’t want him. She’d never do that if she wanted him. She never wanted him. As much as she didn’t want that slug on top of her now. All she ever wanted was to appease her own selfish desires. She was wicked and evil like all the rest. Every meaningless moan only made it clearer. She was like all the others.

He quietly opened the closet. She almost gasped. He saw her face, that evil snake’s face staring at him with all its vain anxiety. It filled him with rage. If he had only looked away he might have left then and there. Instead he met her gaze with eyes of dead aggression. He saw her fear and it made him feel good, even better than she possibly could have were they not interrupted. He knew exactly where this was going, and the thought of it only filled him with pleasure.

The drunken slug couldn’t notice him and the whore was too dumbstruck to move. He went to the table and looked. The vase was heavy enough. He picked it and walked over. He saw the words forming on her lips, but it didn’t matter now. It was too late. The man looked up in time to feel the thick glass break on his nose.

The dumb bird screamed. The pig’s face was bloodied now. The splinters jutted out like worms in microwaved meat. He picked up a large shard from the floor and in one cold, prolonged movement cut the man’s belly open. The evil smile that took his face as he spilled the other’s innards burned her mind. She tried to move but her limbs were numb and she fell on the floor. All the girl could do now was scream.

He turned to her. Through heavy puffs of breath she stammered, “Oh God! Oh please! God! Oh save me…” He just stood and looked at her. He wanted to relish every moment, her every terror. He smiled. She muttered indistinguishable pleas, barely able to speak. The smile left him. He looked away and paused, then with grave solemnity began, “You know, back when I was in seminary school, there was a man who put forth a proposition…” She was silent.

He looked to her now with ridicule, “That you could petition the Lord with prayer.”

“Petition the Lord with prayer!” His voice raised with a hearty chuckle, stepping closer. He stooped, encroaching on her like a predator. He put his mouth so close over her ear that she felt his every breath, and said with every ounce of meanness and fire in his body, “You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!”

She screamed like a baby and that was it. He plunged the shard deep between her breasts, knowing this was their climax. Her scream became a croak and then a cough as blood filled her lungs. With the performance over, his smile returned.

He got up as life left her body. Standing by the doorway, he glanced at them again. Their faces looked ugly. Intestines sprawled out all over the dead man’s abdomen and onto the floor, which sheened with blood. It looked like someone threw a big pot of pork and beans on his belly. The thought made him laugh. There was something hypnotic about the whole scene… the romance and the carnage. They deserved it.

The cold static of the record player broke his spell. The music was over. It was time for him to go. He took off the light. It was almost dawn. He went to the kitchen and took to a chicken. The uneasiness in his stomach had long gone and hunger took its place. It was a good chicken. He would have finished it off, if the sirens had not interrupted him. He was surprised they didn’t come sooner. This wasn’t his first time.

As they burst through the front door, he slipped through the back, with a last mouthful of chicken. Disappearing into the night, the killer was on the road.

End