The little girls fingers twine and untwine.
The photographer moves things on the surface of the camera and smiles instructions at her.
She always does what grown-ups tell her to do.
But today she’ll be extra good, because it’s her birthday photograph.
She wants only for father and mother to tell her how pretty she looks.
Amelia King will soon be six years old. It is 1933, or maybe ’34, but she can’t remember.

Mr. Arlo fondles his camera, getting her to smile more.
In just a moment he will take her photograph.
But her dolly has begun to whisper again.
Amelias’ eyes slide towards the plastic infant.
Mr. Arlo clucks softly and she is facing him again, with a big bright smile and her chin held high.
Twine and untwine.
The doll is speaking with more urgency, even though it’s against the rules.
One of it’s eyelids is frozen half open, in a conspiratorial expression.
Twine, pinch and untwine.

Mr. Arlos’ long fingers freeze in place over knobs and buttons.

The doll is speaking louder now.
Why doesn’t Mr. Arlo hear her and tell her to stop?
Amelia is afraid that the doll will move.
The doll knows more about Amelias’ father and his factory than she does. It knows what a factory is and what high, grey walls, which block the sun out, look like.
Amelia has never seen a smokestack, a transmission gear or a boiler.
She doesn’t understand what a catwalk is, or anything else her dolly says for the remaining unbearable seconds.

Snick, pop, flash, crackle and the blackened bulb cools.

“Mr. Arlo, what does mangled mean?”
His smile slips, hung on a hook and waiting.
“And what’s an incinerator?”

Pressed low and modern between an endless sky and high desert emptiness, are the Ramada “Twin” Inns.

Five miles to the west, El Paso Texas shimmers across the hard-pack of west Texas and thirsts for the well watered patrons of the inns.

Arleen Daley is about to take a dip, but a man with a camera has called her beautiful and asked her to wave.

 Strong sunlight freezes the motion onto film.

One hour later, the photographer will head west on highway 62, the last image of Mrs. Daley waiting within his Kodak.

Arleen will drive east onto highway 180, a Styrofoam cup of Sanka, from the Inns 24 hour coffee shop, as her final companion.

A year down the road, in 1972, Arleens’ husband will enter the Ramadas’ new gift shop and see his missing wife.

The photographer had worked for Ramada.

Arleens’ image waves to passers by from the postcard rack, beside desert sunsets, above aerial shots of El Paso and from beside close-ups of Texas wildlife.

Robert Daley will buy the postcard and drift to the pool.

He will sit in the chair where a year before the “person of interest” had sat reading Life magazine.

He’ll look to where his wife had stood, waving goodbye, and will wait till the shadows match the photo.

When the scene is set and everything is the same, her absence will invert itself within him and he’ll feel, for a moment, like she’s right over there.

It was during his weekly Thursday luncheon, with Doctors H. and J., when Sir Edmund Suffer suddenly realized his mounting distaste for the company of other humans.
“ Phaw”, he blurted, through a mouthful of garlic potatoes.
The good doctors lowered their daily newspapers simultaneously.
Dr. H. raised his right eyebrow slightly.
Dr. J. raised his left.
Sir Edmund responded to the eyebrows with a forkful of Beef Wellington each.
“I say…”, exclaimed Dr. H.
“Really old man”, spluttered Dr. J.
“Pppphhhlllbbtt”, Sir Edmund spat, delivering his most fervent raspberry to date.
Sir Edmunds exit was abrupt.
The doctors were more than a little flustered.
Dr. H. retrieved his monocle from a bowl of lobster bisque and issued a loud “harrumph”.
Dr. J. declared the entire event indecent and publicly distasteful.

The following Thursday came and went, as did the next and the one after that as well, with nary a sign of Sir Edmund Suffer. Inquires were discreetly made, by acquaintances at the club, with no results.
Still more discreet, were efforts to contact Mrs. Suffer, regarding her husbands behavior.
The good doctors raised all four eyebrows in unison upon receiving a telegram, some weeks later.
“Mrs. Suffer no longer in residence 112 Bow truckle Lane stop Last seen fleeing premises in dressing gown and with a modicum of luggage stop Sir Edmund witnessed on front stoop hurling liquor bottles and live chickens stop Fear the worst stop”

Yet another Thursday came and went with no signs of Sir Edmund. He did not return to the prestigious Shropshire Men’s Club, nor to any of his other usual haunts.
His absence was noted at the Foundation for Block and Tackle Research, at the Friends of Asians Association meetings and the Metropolitan Museum of Unusual Haberdashery, as well.
It became the consensus that Sir Edmund Suffer was wandering the Americas dressed in women’s clothing.
The truth of Sir Edmund was somewhat less scandalous, yet more… irrational. Having shunned the company of humans entirely, he had spent the recent weeks drinking cherry beneath his billiard table and plotting.
Whether it was from the cherry, or the sub-billiard and cramped confines, or Sir Edmunds refusal to eat anything other than blood pudding, he passed into unconsciousness on a Friday morning.
While in this state, he had a vision in which he cavorted across a shallow pool, hand in hand, with and ambulatory pickle.
A sentient vegetable graced with a singular and disarming disposition.
Monday morning arrived and brought with it several local barristers, with concerns about Sir Edmunds considerable holdings.
They found his home deserted.
The only evidence they found of the man himself was a brief list, written in his own hand, on the floor of the upstairs lavatory.
It read: “No.1 – Liquidate all holdings. No.2- Locate scientist with flexible moral fiber and love of drink. No. 3- Purchase farm land.”

One likes to think, whatever his actual plans and their outcome, that Sir Edmund Suffer found happiness, with a pickle of some sort.

For the third time, in two long years, a road ravaged Ford Rambler wagon grinds it’s way along highway 89, outside Prescott Arizona. It will turn right, off the highway, onto an unmarked track, before reaching the branch to Oak Creek Canyon.
Just after sunset the Ford rolls to a halt.
A lanky shadow-figure removes its’ straw hat and separates itself from the car.
Save for the hunched, blasted shed, built by the shadows own two hands, near a large boulder, there is nothing but sand, stone and tortured scrub for five miles in every direction.
Still… Abram Barlow will wait until the deep night to move the device.
It is May 8th, 1967 and in the morning Abram will vanish again beneath the smooth surface of polite society and the anonymity of the masses.
But for the moment he is unique.
He is redeemed.
He is turning his back on wealth, on fame and on bookish immortality.
He is placing a heavy metal crate in a shallow grave.
He caresses a valve, on the side of the dark rectangle, and there’s the sound of air, like a tired sigh.
From deep within the box comes a muffled click and the desert silence resettles its’ head beneath its’ black wing.
Enshrouded and buried, the box will sleep.
Abram places a carefully rusted padlock on the door.
He cleans black-rimmed glasses on a crisp, white shirt; knocks sand from the tops of black leather shoes.
The first rumor of daylight appears above the bluffs.
Abram replaces the straw cowboy hat over his close-cropped hair.
He steps into the Rambler and into null history.

Each year, late in the fall, lake Michigan turns it’s gunmetal face towards Milwaukee and attempts to kill the city.

The year is 1963 and a shapeless, dreamless man takes refuge in the orange warmth of the new Schiltz Guest Hall.

He works for Pabst.

His life revolves around a certain lever, on a certain machine, beneath an endlessly turning flywheel.

As the wind outside hisses threats and throws ice, the man is thinking that this year the lake will succeed.

He drinks from the new brown bottle.

Winter thunder falls from somewhere above the 9th ward.

The trophy hunter chandeliers dim, flicker and then flare.

Antler shadows darken the hall and every face but his turns to the windows as the wind screams them loose.

The man is watching the dark cage of shadows and instead sees levers all around him.

It is 11am and he is late for work.

He drinks again and sweats.

Remodeling in progress

After much nothing and and more than a little shrugging, I believe I finally know what to do with venue. New content is on the way.