The Grotto

Chapter 2

"Damn this dog! Damn it all to hell!". A shotguns spewer of bullets was heard in the lumberyard and with it, the barking stopped. Mr. Rylands feet hurried across the sunny gravel and into his office, slamming the door behind him in an attempt to undo that authority if his.

The radio playing the Beatles "Blackbird" stuttered with the slamming of the door. The radios stations around here keep playing the same songs over and over again. Give us something with a tune to it, and we will grind it into your skull until your ears bleed eighths.

Fine. Ok. Well then.

With the barrel sprayed bullets still warm from the impact, Mr. Ryland moved with weighted down feet, like two mounds of sand that took two to lift and quite hardly at that. Slumbering in his recent burst of brutality, the marching blood in his veins contracted at the leisure. His blue tattoos seemed saddened as his skin became the object of frailty, breathing, quite hardly aswell.

The body of the beaten down dog lay way washed and singularly beaten. It must've been of about middle age. Mr. Ryland would not have won if not for the pointed barrel. A dog of its size would've easily ripped him open and bathed, lavishly yet courteously within his master's blood. Him, no longer a pawn but a ruler in his own right. Now limp, no longer limping.

The house he lived in was located almost adjacent to a lavish forest. With one side of the houses windows opening towards a wall of brown and green, while the other was exposed to any light shown to it. Once being a hidden hideaway, closely guarded secrets were shared in the quiet woods that used to surround the old house. But now, with the big yellow removers, tentacled industries driven by a foul goal beckoned the noise to join them. So the house stood encompassed and split. Half in woods, the other to an infant desert.

You have to understand that Mr. Ryland is not like us, accustomed to complexity. This is someone who is easily bewildered and violently forgotten. The kind who barely leaves a mark on our collective conscience. When the noise started to change his land, he to became sullen and baren. Like a wolf whose inability to birth stems from the lack of a womb. It sterilized him. Just as slowly, the casting shadow of the window panes moved and evaporated itself by touch. No edges to this light. Sepia shaded by the curtains, the room was full of comforted dust, the kind that has been cleaned away and now became a hallmark in recognition.

Through the small separations in the wood beams that held the folding house together, workers turned off machines and sipped the burning hot, break coffee, and lit small pocket pipes. Some of them just like Mr. Ryland who, accidently fell on the other side of the blissful silence.

The thing was, we all felt the accident. The wrong that came from the right. And with it, an innate urge to pick up and flee the segregated hallways and closed elevators. He was just a pawn, no exemption to a game, a box in a company. His own company with a sole worker keeping the levers working and the joints oiled. Packing the bullet and pushing it forward. If he wants to run, let him!

In an inconspicuous holding shed, where the storage of 'things' took place, long ago a biker came and stayed the night... his teeth like soot and the wrinkles of his face originating from the bones of his skull. Within the rotting teeth, small shining pieces of silver looked at you, like a boy looking at girls through a fallen knot of wood in a fence. There, and just when the girls turn their heads, he disappears and hides. You look at it, it looks at you, and you see nothing. Ghostly, but actually there.

The biker named Rigis Archwich arrived and landed just as the sunset lost its flare in the sky. Ready to move, ready let the boys jump the fence. This was twenty three years ago to date, those who took part in it, recalled it as "The Night Of The Green Flash."

So began the story concerning Rigis Archwich and his sleep, but we will save that for a different day from The Grotto.