Truth in ruins, p.1
Truth in Ruins, page 1
Truth in Ruins
John Edward
LAWSON
“The Non-Duality of Elanoir” first published in Death to the Brothers Grimm
“When the Darkness Bleeds” first published at The Dodsley Pages
“Kübler-Ross’ Ladder” first published in WTF?!
“A Face is Man’s Best Friend” first published in Just Kill Me Already
“Tyranny of the Beat” first published in The Sound of Horror
“Truth in Ruins” first published in The BIzarro Starter Kit (Orange)
Truth in Ruins © 2013
by John Edward Lawson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator.” This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press
Bowie, MD
Cover illustration: Grandeduc and Dreamstime.com
Cover design: M. Garrow Bourke
Book design: M. Garrow Bourke
Printed in the United States of America
Rawdogscreaming.com
Did you know you can read these books on all your devices and computers with the downloadable Kindle Reader App?
Also by John Edward Lawson
Novels
New Mosque City
Last Burn in Hell: Director’s Cut
Collections
Paramourn: Unfortunate Romances
Devil Entendre
Lawson vs. LaValley (with Dustin LaValley)
Discouraging at Best
Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades
Poetry
Wholesome Terror: Lawfully Combative Verse
SuiPsalms
The Troublesome Amputee
The Plague Factory
The Horrible
The Scars Are Complimentary
Illustrated Books
A Child’s Guide to Death
(with LaValley, Malfi, and Sullivan)
As Editor
Tempting Disaster
Sick
Of Flesh and Hunger
Table of Contents
Truth in Ruins
The Non-Duality of Elanoir
When the Darkness Bleeds
A Serpent's Crushing Weight
Belly of the City
Kübler-Ross' Ladder
A Face is Man's Best Friend
Tyranny of the Beat
Truth in Ruins
About the Author
Reading & Resource Guide
The Non-Duality of Elanoir
Edem scans the wasteland through the scope of his sniper rifle. He is currently located in a sniper roost on Chicago’s north side. The smooth length of his glass rifle remains steady in his tentacle’s grasp. He watches, waits…there are no new peanut plants in his sector. The long hours he endures on watch are not necessarily lonely, as he is accompanied by other soldiers, but often he is required to spend days and nights away from his family.
Inside Chicago people mill about in a state of ignorance. They swig sweet piss or ale, eating cedar chips or trans fat, engaging in games of chance or games of skill or simply observing such games, inured to the semitransparent nature of every wall. The dark forms shifting just beyond the half foot of glass no longer intimidate or stimulate, not in the bedroom much less in the mundane goings on of pub life. The populace of Chicago lives in a haze, going through the expected motions for no other reason than to go through them.
A synthesized voice blurts from the public address system: “Today’s threat level is LC. Today’s threat level is Least Concerned. Please return to your regularly scheduled activities.” The final syllables echo out across the vast expanse that used to be the Earth.
Edem grits his teeth and blocks from his consciousness memories the sickly flora and fauna of his early childhood, or his imprisonment within the jellysuit at age eight. Instead he concentrates on thoughts of his wife Aifong, the one focal point of beauty in his life. Certainly no beauty waits to confront him within the rifle scope.
As the wasteland gathers strength and ponderous dunes surmount blasted mounds bearded with decaying yellow stubble there is no verdant push-back, no fertile fist launched at Armageddon’s girth, for life no longer germinates in the soil, no longer roosts in trees, nor scavenges among the ruins. Vast molds and fungi are rumored to dominate the wasteland’s depths, such as no human eye has gazed upon nor could survive viewing. Humanity—such as it is—holds up in its last bastion, the ultimate public house and fortification known as Chicago. This spiny outgrowth is barely discernible amidst the barren landscape when seen from afar, but as one draws ever nearer the structure’s the abnormal magnitude becomes clear. Despite being miles wide and four hundred floors in height, more construction is planned to accommodate repopulation efforts.
Such expansion is in the future tense because materiel are currently being diverted to the war effort. As resources go, the most precious—water—is provided by the subterranean River Wesser, also known as Chicago’s “Blue Gold.” In consideration of humanity’s other assets, the Earth’s desertification has considerably limited the selection of building materials. The cork tree, despite all expectation, has emerged as the singular tree adaptable to current ambient conditions and resistant to forest-ravaging blight. While furniture and pipes can be derived from cork, walls and floors and weapons are made from what is now the most abundant substance on Earth: sand. The glass made these days is the space-age variety, however, and is deceptively strong.
The populace are no mere humans; the denizens of Chicago are examples of transhumanism executed with greater skill than the pioneers of genetic engineering ever dared dream possible. Their grossly distorted forms take up far more space than a proper human body should, what with their quivering, gelatinous bulk lumbering from side to side and their tentacles whipping and curling in all directions. Beneath the murky green or brown or blue surfaces conventional Homo sapiens are visible, gleefully going about prosaic daily life in jellysuits.
After many failed experiments the generation before Edem realized protection from environmental toxins would not come from the blending of man and tiger, bear, or any such other mammal, nor from avian creatures. Responsibility for ensuring man’s survival rested on the jellyfish. Jellysuits are filled with liquid, and while the jellysuits is by nature clear the features of its wearer tend to be somewhat obscured by an assortment of coloration provided by designer symbiotic bacteria.
Soldiers like Edem in their entrenchments and sniper roosts are altogether different; their jellysuits are derived from the Pacific box jellyfish, which is a large, brown, crudely square-shaped predator with lightning speed and hundreds of thousands of poisonous cnindocytes along its tentacles. The sting of those specialized cells is capable of causing heart failure in a matter of minutes. Although humanity’s primary enemy—the peanut plant—does not have a heart, the box jellysuit is nasty enough to give the peanuts pause regardless.
Manning Chicago’s lone complaint counter Aifong has no time for meditations on her husband in his sniper roost, nor for humanity’s plight. In addition the pacifying the relentless stream of complainers she also works at filling out an application. The paperwork belongs to a life coach named Elanoir, and it seems endless. Aifong studies the forms, and next to race circles undercooked instead of well done. For gender she marks pimp as opposed to sleazak; this is for her son, not her daughter after all.
Hollers of encouragement and derision emanate from a nearby pocket of the pub, wherein a game of the new yet popular boomerang darts is under way. One of the contestants unleashes his boomerang dart with a mighty bellow, only moments later to cry, “Oh God!” before howling in pain. This sports fad alone is responsible for more complaints than every other game combined.
“Are you even looking at these?” Customer Number 586,204 jostles the plate of cedar chips he previously slammed down on the counter. “Do they seem cooked to you?”
“Sir, you could always try the trans fat.”
“I eat trans fat tomorrow! My flabbicus says I’ll max out on my calories otherwise,” the customer states, pointing at a calorie counter made of colored beads. “What kind of pub is this, anyhow?”
“The only one. Next!” She hands number 586,204 a voucher worth ten guilders while beckoning to number 586,205.
“Yeah,” says Number 586,205, writhing with discomfort within her jellysuit. “My acariasis and pediculosis medications aren’t working!” A cursory look beyond her neon green jelly skin reveals a plethora of sores and lesions.
“If you don’t want mites and parasites don’t get mouse holes installed.” Aifong gestures to the mouse hole in the woman’s left ribcage. “I know it’s trendy, but give me a break already.
“Well, how else is the food supposed to get in my stomach?!”
“You have a blowhole, right?”
The woman tosses her flabbicus at Aifong; it bounces off her jellysuit without causing her to experience any physical sensation, yet her ire is roused nonetheless.
“Next!”
“I’ve been waiting in line six hours!”
“Then don’t throw stuff at me next time. Now serving number 586,206!”
As for the reason to consult with a life coach Aifong does not circle career change, life goals, physical and mental well being, or spiritual health. Instead she circles love life for her son.
Elsewhere, the son of Edem and Aifong—a teenager named Ansa—attends mandatory pub activity training. Whilst students migrate from sports betting to billiards he keeps to himself, hoping to avoid drawing the attention of a schoolmate, Calabar.
In forcing your perception through the purple tinting of his jellysuit exterior one discovers Ansa is of relatively small stature for a boy his age, and although lean he is muscular. His calves are sharp, his back and abdomen well defined, his thighs and buttocks and chest full of curves. His mother’s eyes peer out from his sockets, her anxiousness replaced by resignation, his thick lashes accentuating the sense of gloom. He remains unaware it is his lips which have brought disaster upon him, for it is those full DSLs the sleazaks of his class covet for themselves, yet cannot attain—DSL meaning Dick Sucking Lips, not that anyone perpetrates that act any longer, nor do the younger generations even fully grasp what the phrase means.
That Ansa is the subject of all sleazak stares and gossip has driven Calabar mad with a different variety of envy. He himself is unavoidably, inescapably large, yet for some reason the attention of his birth cohort’s female population evades him. He is manly in every customary sense: thick, meaty, with large arms and broad bones, his body hair advanced several degrees beyond that of even his instructors. His chunky wrists make Ansa’s sleazaky in comparison, and his fingers are equal in width to any two of the smaller boy’s combined. His tint is blue, not purple, signifying gender strength as opposed to gender weakness.
As the jellysuits of the students propel them along through the dim, translucent halls Calabar cannot help but turn his attention to the object of beauty upon which his every aspiration roosts: Avicenna. She is derived from a lineage to be respected and feared in equal measure, of a physical measuring disproportionate to her peers, with a jellysuit that is the envy of everyone they know. Not content with the miracles of transhumanism, not impressed and financially restrained by the burden of paying for a fashionable tint, her parents opted for all manner of extra, specialized tentacles and a multitude of tints starting with red at her head and working down through pink, purple, blue, then white giving the impression she walks in a fog bank.
It is those extra tentacles—or, more precisely, how they quiver ever nearer to Ansa’s tentacles—that push Calabar beyond the edge of reason.
The synthetic voice in the speaker system comes alive. “It is time for your morning dose of acariasis medication. It is time for your morning dose of—”
Calabar blocks Ansa’s path as the students begin to rummage through their backpacks for medicine to stave off ectoparasites transmitted by all the vermin they are in contact with. He goes head-to-head with his rival, leaning forward to butt blobs with him. “Hey you mother-fisting little mammy-jammer! Tryin’ ta go?!”
Ansa allows his backpack to slide from his grasp, and slowly—ever so slowly—raises his glare to confront the anger in Calabar’s eyes. “What’d you say about my mammy?”
“You’re a mammy-jammer! And a mother-fister! Bet she even keeps a mouse hole in her left boob so you can still breast-feed! Bet—”
Ansa’s left tentacle strikes a solid blow across the gelatinous dome covering Calabar’s head. “Oooooooh,” the other students yell, “douched to his dome, yo!”
As combatants cannot feel the actual blows landing in the midst of fisticuffs—or, more properly, tentaclicuffs—it has become customary to shout douche with each hit to let the opponent know they have taken “damage.” To keep the contestants honest bystanders shout along, and the faint of heart know to stay away from halls from which a chorus of “Douche! Douche! Douche!” emits, although the crafty and inveterate gambler remains on the prowl for spontaneous douching.
This is how the brawl begins. Calabar and Ansa spend the better part of an hour jiggling each other with blow after blow, grappling each other into walls and tables and games, spilling ales and trays of trans fat or cedar chips. The problem arises from the boys’ refusal to honor the douching covenant: after a certain amount of “damage” is reached one must lay unmoving on the floor for ten minutes in observance of being “knocked out.” Today, however, the rules have been flaunted, cast aside in pursuit of unreasoning hatred, and in doing so the boys have inadvertently sundered Chicago’s social fabric.
Elanoir sits with her legs crossed and arms folded, and the extensions of her limbs limply draped down to the floor. She nods and mm-hmms at the appropriate moments. As is typical in such cases the parents have much to say, whilst the child remains silent unless prodded. Elanoir’s jellysuit is multicolored, alive with ever-shifting shades and patterns, much to the consternation of those she comes in contact with. This family is no different, and if not speaking Aifong and Edem preoccupy themselves with peering queerly at her.
Edem clears his throat. “So. We done told you about our boy. Now how do you plan to teach him about, I guess, life…I mean, that’s what life coaches do, right?”
In return Elanoir asks, “Would you prefer a mentor—one who teaches by example? Maybe a trainer, who gives instruction regarding previously unknown skills? Or a life coach, one who targets talents within the individual and how to best employ said talents?”
“We’ve tried mentor programs,” Aifong offers. “Seminars, courses, hypnosis. You name it. Just do whatever it is you do. Our neighbors said you did a great job with their son.”
“Would that be…” Elanoir refers to her notes. “Erfurt?”
“Yes,” Aifong says.
“So, I take it the transformation Erfurt experienced is a good model for what you desire to see in your own child?”
Aifong looks to her husband before responding. “Yes.”
“And how do you feel about that, Ansa?”
Ansa looks to his father, then to his mother situated on the other side of his father. His eyes move to Elanoir’s for the first time. “Erfurt’s cool. Seems to be keeping it real. If I could be steady like that I’d be happy, sure.”
Elanoir nods, taking notes. She goes on to explain life coaches use inquiry, reflection, requests, and discussion to guide clients toward achieving goals. Whether the family selects her or not she desires they understand the life coach they do hire should never do more than the client, or lead, or—worse still—set their own goals for the client. “As for my particular brand of coaching, you are aware it encompasses congruent/confident communication, interpersonal skills, flirting, fashion, recreational activities, humor, and street smarts regarding meeting and attracting more compatible long-term partners?”
“Wait a minute.” Edem turns to his wife. “A thousand guilders for dating advice? The boy’s in high school! A guy that age don’t need advice, he needs to get laid!”
