Sunday, May 24, 2015

GRAVEYARD RUN

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


GRAVEYARD  RUN
By R. Peterson

Pete Monroe laughed out loud when he saw the faces of Gene and Patrick as they exited the Royal Theatre on Cloverdale’s Townsend Avenue. His boys had just sat through one hour and fifteen minutes of The Hideous Sun Demon a new horror movie starring Robert Clark and Nan Peterson. Patrick’s eyes were as large as Roswell flying saucers and Gene followed so close behind his big brother they were almost wearing the same shoes. “Did you enjoy the movie?” Ellen Monroe asked her children.
“I had to shut my eyes every time Gil McKenna changed into the monster,” nine-year old Patrick moaned. “I’ve never seen such an awful face.”
“He wasn’t looking under his seat when that singer Trudy was on the screen,” his little brother laughed. “That dress she was wearing looked painted on!”
“Where did you pick up that pool-hall talk?” Ellen demanded of her seven-year old.  She wasn’t the only post World War II wife and mother who thought America’s values were crumbling.
“From Dad, when I was helping him and Uncle Bert clean the garage,” Gene blabbed. “He said he’d like to be the one to paint a dress on Dorothy Provine.”
Ellen gave her husband a look that said. Boy are you gonna pay for that remark tonight.
Pete steered his 1952 Ford nervously onto Vineyard Road and a grin suddenly crept up his chin. “Honey you missed the turn!” Ellen blurted when her husband went straight instead of turning on Canyon Road.
            “How would you boys like to earn some money?’ Pete asked his sons with an alligator smile. Both boys were now hanging over the front seat, eyes wide with excitement. Two silver dollars jingled in Mr. Monroe’s hand. That kind of money could buy a lot of sodas and candy in 1959. “All you have to do is walk or run less than a quarter mile … and I’ll pick you up.”
            “Where?’ both boys asked at the same time.
            “There,” Pete stopped the car and pointed with the hand holding the silver dollars.
An orange moon like a giant pumpkin illuminated an open gate. A heavy mist rose from the low grounds behind a rusted cast-iron fence that surrounded Black Rose Cemetery.

-------2-------

            Patrick stared out the back window of the Ford as Gene tugged on his arm begging. “Come on Pat, that’s a buck each. We can go to the show three times and still have enough left over for a Big-hunk and a Nehi grape each time.”
            Ellen Monroe looked at her son sympathetically and then glared at her husband. “You think this is funny, don’t you? Scaring your children half to death.”
            “If we forgot to gather the hens' eggs, my father used to tell me and Bert stories about the Slew-Foot Creature and then send us out to the chicken coop after supper,” Pete told his wife. “It didn’t put any hair on our chests, but it made us remember the eggs the next time.”
            “We don’t have poultry,” Ellen told her husband.
            “Still a buck will buy a lot of eggs,” Pete grinned as he flashed the coins in the moonlight.
            “With another dollar you’ll have enough to buy that submarine model you’ve been saving up for in Stephenfield’s Hardware store window,” Gene suggested.
Pete jingled the coins in his hand.
Patrick did some fast figuring. The Nataulas Nuclear Submarine model was $3.99; he already had $2.88. The dollar would put him there … almost. “Alright I’ll do it,’ he said. “But only if you’ll loan me eleven cents so I can buy it Monday after school …” Patrick looked out the window and gulped. “… if I’m still alive.”
            “Here’s the deal kids,” Pete was smiling. He drove a little way past the cemetery and turned right on a dirt maintenance road. This was going to be fun. “I’ll drive to where they dump discarded grave flowers on the North East corner and let you guys out. There is a small gate there. I’ll park back here and flash my lights. You boys will then walk the cemetery from corner to corner and I’ll pick you up.”
            “That’s too far,” Ellen shook her head, “It looks like it could rain at any time. You’re are cruel man, Peter Monroe.”
            “This is a funny story they’ll someday be able to tell their own kids,” her husband argued.
Ellen Monroe looked like she was ready to cry as they drove away leaving her children huddled together next to the small chain-link gate.

-------3-------

Pete parked his Ford so that the headlights shown across the rows of tombstones just outside the drive-through gates. With the lights on high-beam he and Ellen could just make out the tiny figures huddled together at the far corner of the nine-acre bone-yard. Pete flashed his lights off and then on again quickly. The boys hadn’t moved. “Pete, they’re terrified,” his wife wailed. “Go back and pick them up this instant.” Pete flashed the lights off again just as a meteor streaked across the sky. When he flicked the headlights on again, he could see two figures silhouetted against the stormy sky. “Look at them go,” he yelled. Pete unrolled his window to better hear his son’s panicked cries. He watched them jump several tombstones and skirt a hedge that was badly in need of a trim. Lightning arched on the horizon and a second later a low rumble shook the ground.
A black cat streaked between a clump of rose bushes and a granite-block mausoleum too old to read the name inscribed above the iron door. He lost sight of his children as they ran through a low spot in the rolling slopes that made up the oldest part of the cemetery. A large black bird soared into the air, probably a crow or a raven. Pete looked for the tell-tell splayed feathers at the end of each wing but the star-swallowing sky made it hard to determine.
Pete turned his lights off and looked at his watch it was 9:14. He laughed softly as he imagined his sons’ terror at the loss of the finding-our-way-home beacon. A white line appeared just below the moon. “Stop that!’ his wife screeched. Pete turned the lights back on and was surprised when he didn’t see his children re-appear in the car’s high beam. A ragged gulley, that traversed the graveyard at a diagonal like a scar through the mowed grass, was famous for washouts that sometimes exposed ancient bones from old west times when Cloverdale had been South Fork and men were often buried in their boots without coffins.
“That ravine is full of old exposed tree-roots,” Ellen fumed. “They could have snagged a foot and broken a leg.”
“More likely they decided to play a trick on their old man,” Pete said. “When I go over to see what’s become of them, they’ll jump out and try to scare the daylights out of me.”
“If they do, you’ll deserve it,” his wife told him. A cold wind blew from the south and parted Pete’s hair sideways as he opened the car door.

-------4-------

“That’s enough hiding,” Pete called as he walked carefully among the old monuments. He expected Patrick and Gene to jump-out at any minute and he was on edge. “Show yourselves now or one of the dollars is going back in my pocket.”
Pete was through the ravine and almost to the cast-iron fence at the far end before he turned back. His eyes were adjusting to the absence of light. If the boys were hiding, he didn’t know where. He was almost to the car when he turned and began to search again, this time in a wider area.
Ten minutes later, Ellen started up the Ford and drove slowly through the cemetery, calling out her open window. “Come back to the car boys. Your dad is sorry for trying to scare you and it won’t happen again, will it Pete?”
Her husband was beyond hearing. His casual gait had turned into a jog as he crossed the graveyard numerous times calling his son’s names.
            An hour later, a now bawling Ellen left her husband and drove the car back into Cloverdale to fetch the Sheriff.

-------5-------

            A light rain was falling. John Walker and six deputies searched the entire cemetery with high powered flashlights and three patrol cars idling with high beam headlamps sweeping above the rows of headstones. A dozen volunteer searchers covered the surrounding fields. “They’re not here.” John told his deputies. “Cover all the roads in every direction a mile out and work your way back in.”
Patrolman Rick Davis, a former boyfriend of Ellie before she became Mrs. Monroe, hugged a weeping Ellen as the county police cars sped from the crime scene. “Don’t worry, if they’re here we’ll find them,” he assured her. With her sobbing head buried in the officer’s shoulder Ellen didn’t see the scornful look Davis shot at her husband. Pete was crawling on his hands and knees about a hundred feet from where he’d left his boys, covered with mud and trying to find tracks with a borrowed Coleman lantern.
“These are Keds’ prints,” Pete told the Sheriff as John Walker tried to get him to come back to the patrol car for a cup of coffee. “That’s the shoes Patrick was wearing!” Pete raked his now bloody and swollen fingers through the wet grass looking for sign. “This smudge here might have come from Gene’s hand-me-down hiking boots. They were a little too large and always twisted a little when he ran.”
The soft rain was now falling harder. It was as if the sky had opened up and poured forth its grief. John Walker took hold of Pete Monroe and dragged him back to his Sheriff’s car just as the rain turned to a downpour. “Whatever marks they left will be gone now,” John told the struggling father. “We’ll put out an APB. If they’re still in Montana, we’ll find them.”
            “Still in Montana?” Ellen was screaming. “My boys were on foot! How far could they have gone?’
Rick Davis seemed eager to offer an explanation. “Sometimes children are abducted, by persons unknown. It’s almost dawn. Your kids could be halfway across the state by now.”
            “That’s a slim chance,” the Sheriff injected. If the look he gave the city patrolman had been a loaded gun, Corporal Rick Davis would have been dead. “They probably got lost in the dark and are holed up in a barn somewhere trying to stay dry.”
Lightning crackled three times as if laughing at his overly optimistic assumption.

-------6-------

            It was after ten AM when John Walker released Pete and Ellen from police custody. The rain had subsided and the unwelcome sun was shining brightly. Ellen Monroe had cried so many tears there was nothing left. Her eyes scanned the farm grounds in all directions as her husband once again turned onto Vineyard Road. “We promised we’d go right home and let the police do their job,” she told her husband. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Rick Davis was still following in his patrol car to see that they both got home safely.
            “I don’t care what you promised,” Pete told here. “I aim to find my children or die trying.”
            “Damn you to hell!” Ellen spat at her husband. Her rage was lost on Pete; there was nothing in the world that could make him feel any worse.
            Pete was on his knees again near the gulley when Officer Davis led Ellen back to his car. “Your husband needs to sort things out for himself,” he told her. “I’ll give you a ride home and he can come along in your car when he’s ready.”
Davis stayed with Ellen until Dr. Descombey arrived and injected her with a sedative to make her sleep. “What about her husband?” Davis asked Sheriff Walker when he returned to the police station.
            “Leave him be,” John told him. “If he doesn’t come in by the end of the day we’ll take him into protective custody for his own good. We’ve got two missing kids. What we don’t need is a dead body to go with them.”

            Pete Monroe thought he had found another smudge under about three inches of clear water in the bottom of the gulley. He couldn’t tell if it was a cat track or part of a shoe print. When he leaned forward for a closer look, his knees, weakened from an endless night of searching, slipped in the mud and he splashed head first into the muck. “Why me God?” Pete screamed at the sky. “What have I done to deserve this?”
The shadow from a large bird crossed the ground but Pete didn’t see through the swell of tears.

-------7-------

            One week later Ellen Monroe found her husband wandering through the cemetery at dawn. He’d been out all night during another rain shower and had a temperature of 104 when Dr. Descombey checked him at his clinic. Pete Monroe was admitted to Cloverdale General Hospital for pneumonia and a severe case of depression. The fluid in his lungs was gone after three weeks. The depression never left.
The All Points Bulletin issued across five states proved fruitless. The Monroe boys seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth. The official explanation that Sherriff Walker typed into his report stated abducted by person or persons unknown. As the months went by Ellen Monroe slowly began to heal with the help of Rick Davis who found an excuse to drop by almost daily. Her husband was never home. The sheriff’s department or sometimes neighbors would find him wandering Black Rose at all hours of the day or night and in all kinds of weather.
Six months after the boys’ disappearance, Judge Henry Wallace had Peter Eugene Monroe committed to State Hospital North for sanity testing and observation. Pete spent long hours staring from his upstairs cell-like room at the cemetery next door that had stolen his children and made his own life unlivable.

-------8-------

Pete Monroe plopped onto the four inch thick mattress that made a bed in his room without feeling the bounce. He didn’t feel much of anything anymore. It had been almost six weeks since Ellen’s last visit. The names and dates on each tombstone and every bent blade of grass and smudged piece of soil in the cemetery played through his brain like an endless series of flash cards. He relived every moment of the night when everything had changed. There was a clue somewhere, there had to be. Pete clung to this tiny thread of hope as his life slowly unraveled.
George Pickett, the hospital psychiatrist was the one who broke the news of Mrs. Peter Monroe’s divorce filing in late 1967. Pete took the news as just one more blow that could no longer hurt his battered mind and body. A few days later, he found a piece of stout wire unraveling under his mattress box springs. Pete considered removing it and wrapping one end around his neck with the other end jammed into the cell room’s light socket. It was an easy way out and Pete was long past the point of fearing pain. He had the mattress lifted and one end of the wire free when someone knocked on his door.
Tim Brennerman was a newly hired clinical aide   with a degree in Social Services and a passion for star gazing. “That’s the Sears/Lockwood comet,” he said crossing the room and pointing out the barred window at a white smudge on the pre-dawn sky. “It only comes round every eight years or so.” Pete sat on his mattress and stared at the floor. “I read your file,” Tim said. “It’s hard to lose one child let alone two.” Pete would not acknowledge that he was even listening. “The last time that comet was here was within a day or two of when your children went missing.” Tim looked at Pete with compassion. “Many people in this world believe that a comet is a kind of frozen chariot that sometimes whisks people away when it passes. They are doomed to ride the streak forever unless they are brought back the same instant they were taken. If a comet can disappear and be gone for so long and then return, maybe children can too. One chance, one moment in time is all anybody gets.”
Pete could recall every detail of that night. He remembered the white smudge under the moon. This new thread of hope was hopelessly insane and tiny, but it was the only thing keeping him alive.

-------9-------

Pete Monroe applied for release but Judge Wallace and the hospital psychiatrist said that although he showed improvement, his stay was extended for another six months … for his own good. Pete used the time to study comets and their orbits. Brennerman loaned him his large collection of space body texts and brought others from the library. After just six weeks Pete was an expert. The Sears/Lockwood comet appeared every eight years and ninety-two days and crossed from horizon to horizon in a matter of hours. Peter Monroe was no longer a man obsessed, he was a man on fire. The comet was due to return on May 18th. just three weeks away.
Ellen Monroe had been in to see her former husband just once since the divorce. Pete had been immersed in a book describing paranormal and occult phenomena and had hardly looked at her. This time he gazed at her with hopeful eyes. “I’ve got good news,” he told her. “The  Sears/Lockwood comet … it’ll be back in two weeks!” Ellen saw the familiar light in his eyes that was more of a mind fire than a hope. “That’s where the children are,” he said. “Riding through space in a kind of deep freeze chariot.”
Ellen looked at her former husband and shook her head. “Bad things happen in this world,” she said. “I’ve learned to move on. You need to too.” She dropped an envelope on the mattress before she left. Pete opened it with shaking hands. The former Ellen Monroe and Rick Davis were getting married on the night of May 18th.

--------10-------

Pete spent the next three weeks talking to Tim Brennerman and pouring over every occult book he could find. The clinical aide had lost a younger brother when he was twelve. “Just like he vanished off the face of the Earth,’ Tim told him. “It’s what started me looking at the world and all the weird goings on that happen every day.” He looked at Pete hopefully. “I’d give anything to bring back my brother, but it looks like you only get one chance. Comets don’t go on forever. One, two passes … and most of them burn up when they fly into the sun.”
There was a world to put right and Pete knew he had to escape State Hospital North. One morning Tim’s favorite patient was gone when Tim opened the door carrying a breakfast tray. The bars on the window had been removed with a hacksaw. Tim put the diamond edged tool he found on the floor back in his pocket. A pillow and an extra change of clothes were arranged under a blanket to look like a sleeping body. “I can give you till the end of my shift,” Tim told the empty room. “Then the next guy coming on is sure to turn the hounds loose.”

-------11-------

Ellen Monroe was in the back room of the small church putting on her wedding dress when Pete climbed silently through a window. Gloria Simpson, Ellen’s maid of honor had just slipped out to look for a string of borrowed pearls. “Pete! What are you doing here?” Pete covered her mouth with his hand before she could scream.
“You may not want me anymore Ellen, and I can’t say as how I blame you,” Pete whispered.  “But I promised that I would bring our children back, and that’s what I’m going to do … or die trying.”
“You’re crazy,” Ellen spat as Pete dragged her through the window. A minute later he was stuffing her into his waiting car. “This thing still runs?” Ellen swore as he pushed her into the passenger seat of the Bel-Air. “I thought it died the same time you did.”
“I’ve thought about that night every waking moment for the past eight years,” Pete told her. A pistol was suddenly in his hand. “I’ve got one chance to make this right. If I’m wrong, it all ends tonight … and I’ll never bother you again.”
“Why wait? Do it now!” Ellen told him. “Rick says when a person is as crazy as you they never get better.”
“Because I’ve got one chance and sometimes that’s all life gives you,” Pete told her.
It was after nine o’clock. Pete stopped at his former house and insisted that Ellen put on the green dress she was wearing the night her children disappeared. “I’ll do it,” his ex-wife told him. “Just for tonight. But then I want you out of my life forever.”
            “That’s a promise,” Pete told her solemnly.

-------12-------

An orange moon like a giant pumpkin illuminated an open gate. A heavy mist rose from the low grounds behind a rusted cast-iron fence that surrounded Black Rose Cemetery. Pete parked the Ford in what he thought was the exact spot he’d parked in eight years and ninety-two days earlier. “I hate you,” Ellen spat from the front seat. She started to open the door and Pete held her back. “You ruin the lives of our children and now you try to snuff out any kind of happiness I might have in my life.” Ellen began to cry.
A black cat scurried between the headstones and Pete looked at his watch. It was 9:12. “I’m sorry but I made a promise years ago that I’d bring back my boys. It’s just that I can’t do it alone. I need you here because everything has to be the same. Every little thing has to be just right.”
Pete saw flashing police lights in the distance. Rick Davis must have figured out where Pete would take his ex-wife.
A large black bird soared into the air, probably a raven. Pete looked for the tell-tell splayed feathers at the end of each wing and this time was sure. Three police cars turned into the graveyard.
            “You promised that when this was over you’d leave me alone forever,” Ellen reminded him.
            “I haven’t forgotten,” Pete said sadly.
A policeman’s voice over a loudspeaker told him to get out of the car with his hands raised.
A white line appeared for just an instant below the moon. Pete closed his eyes and prayed, squeezing his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood. Like Tim said: One chance, one moment in time was all anybody got. He flicked the car headlights off and then on again.
 Seconds later Pete and Ellen could both hear laughing. Patrick and Gene flung open the rear doors of the Chevy and flung themselves into the backseat. “We would have been here sooner, but I had to help Patrick clean out his shorts when that black cat ran across our path.” Gene was laughing uncontrollably.
            “You were more scared than I was,” Patrick argued. “I didn’t know chickens could run so fast.”
            “Where’s our dollars?” both boys demanded with their hands dangling over the front seat. “We made the run … now pay up!”
Pete took the silver dollars he’d kept in his pants pockets for over eight years and dropped one into each boy’s hand. “A deal is a deal,” he told his children. “No-body is ever going to say that Pete Monroe goes back on a promise.”
Both boys noticed their mother crying at the same time. She was hugging each of her sons with a grip that would take eternity to break. No one noticed as Pete opened his door and disappeared into the fog. Patrick later claimed to have heard his father’s joyful but somehow sad voice as if from a distance. “Thank you GodA deal is a deal.”
Just before the gunshot.

THE END?



Sunday, May 17, 2015

DEEP READER part 2

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



DEEP READER
Part  2
JOURNEY INTO THE MIND
By R. Peterson


Let’s get close shall we? Very close – no, even closer! Your mother told you to never talk to strangers, and she was right, but I’m harmless I swear. Well almost. I’m going to ask you to do some very simple things. When I do, they will be in bold type like this. Take a deep breath, count to three, and then exhale slowly. If you didn’t do what I just asked - do it now before you read any more.
I promise you are going to love the special place we are going. You are starting to relax and you feel not just good … but wonderful. I’m attracted to happy people, and so are you. Let’s go somewhere together just you and I. Close your eyes and lift your right hand. Can you feel that? A miniscule pulse of electrical energy just raced from the base of your spine and exited out the index finger of your right hand. It was almost orgasmic. You’re smiling slightly. You like that don’t you?
Missed it? … Or you don’t know if you really felt it? Let’s try it again. Close your eyes. Count to three and snap your fingers. Did you feel that tiny zap this time? And maybe that dull (hurts-so-good) ache in the back of your throat when someone you love makes something special for you. Good! By the time you finish reading this you will have experienced that same volcanic euphoric pleasure, but magnified a thousand times.
Let’s go searching for something of great value, a treasure if you will. I can’t go alone, because only you will recognize your deepest most hidden desires when they appear. Where is this dark and secret place? … in your mind of course.
I’m talking about magic. What? You don’t believe! You should. There is magic in everything. I’m communicating to you from the past. How much of the past depends on when you read this.
I’ve decided to drink a hot cup of cocoa on my front porch. It is 3:17 am on May eleventh two thousand and fifteen. My house is under construction. Ladders, wood-planks and saws are scattered everywhere, but there is enough room for a chair and I sit and listen to the night. The sky is overcast and dark. The pale blue moon, in its last quarter, is hiding behind storm clouds. Red lights from the top of a bank of windmills blink on and off like Christmas tree lights from the low foothills on the horizon. In the distance a dog is barking. You and I are together.
If I am in your future … then you are in my past. The universe is strange … and wonderful. I need you to trust me. The place I will take you can be scary but mostly it will be a beautiful, amazing adventure. I will bring you back feeling better than you’ve ever felt before and I promise to fill you with wonder and delight.
I wrote this contrivance some time before you are now reading it. I’m speaking to you from times gone, however long ago that may have been … days, months, years.
 Any common or garden-snake variety of writer can communicate. I want to be a kind of God and make incredible, magical things dazzle you from a distance … from the depths of space and time. When you obey my simple commands, I’m literally making things happen in the future. How cool is that? You deserve to experience the most wonderful amazing blissful things anyone on Earth has ever felt … and you will.
It’s late and a light rain is beginning to fall. You appear to me on a beam of light from the pale blue moon. The ground is warmer than the air above and a mist is rising. A light, from a door opening, appears in the vapors. My cocoa cup is empty. It’s time we were on our way - you and me. Are you ready? Close your eyes. Wiggle the toes on your right foot as you count to three.

-------2-------

We walk together into a tiny room. The boots you are wearing make a clunking sound. You realize it’s an elevator when the door closes and we begin to descend. Use your finger to lightly trace circles in the palm of your other hand. Each time you make a revolution the elevator descends farther and you feel more and more relaxed. The only sound you can hear is your own breathing as you go deeper and deeper. The lift stops with a low clunk and you want to giggle but you grin instead. The door opens. We begin to walk, but our feet do not touch the ground. Your clunky boots have fallen off. You seem to be floating an inch above the floor.

-------3-------

At the end of a long brightly lit hallway, a dark stairway descends into blackness toward what looks like a flickering orange light from a candle. You start to move down the stairs when a shadowy figure appears at the bottom. This is what holds the tiny light. You can’t tell for sure but you think this is someone from your past that you do not like or someone you are very much afraid of. You turn to go back … but I urge you forward. You feel safe with me by your side. Make your hand into a fist and squeeze tightly. Each step we take you become bolder and the shadowy figure at the bottom of the stairs gets smaller and unsure. By the time you reach the bottom, the dark figure is no bigger than an ant cowering on a polished white tile floor. The creature starts to run and you squash on it with your toe.  The tiny orange light flickers out. Moments later, the room is illuminated by sunlight coming from beautiful stained glass windows. You feel warm wonderful and safe.
Just beyond the white tile floor is a large blue velvet-walled state room covered with thick white carpet. You take off your boots and cast them away. The soft pile fibers feel wonderful on your feet. Wiggle your toes. Each time your feet move tiny pulses of pleasure run up your legs and into the base of your spine. I take you by the hand and force you to walk. You are filled with sensuality.

-------4-------

A delightful feeling begins to cover your feet. You look down and find the carpet is covered with bath-warm water. It gets deeper as you cross the room. It is almost up to your knees. Take a deep breath and splay your fingers outward. Count to three, relax your hands and exhale. You begin to sink, but it feels like climbing into a delightfully deep hot tub after being extremely cold. Soon you are covered head to toe with wonderful warmth.
Explosions of tiny bubbles racing toward the surface completely surround you and you want to laugh. Deeper and deeper you sink into euphoria. Tiny, brightly colored fishes tickle your feet as you giggle. The bubbles become larger and larger and you feel yourself floating upward. You break the surface of a forest pond inside a beautiful garden filled with mysterious flora. Many of the flowers loom as tall as a three-story building. The delightful fragrance of exotic pollen filling the air has a soothing effect almost like a hypnotic pleasure drug. Take a deep breath through you nose. Count to three and exhale.

-------5-------

Sunlight turns drops of dew, beaded on the flowers, into gorgeous rainbow prisms that crisscross the lush garden everywhere. We spot a worn trail meandering through ten-foot tall hollyhocks and start down it. A thick clump of dark blood-red roses bocks the path. You accidently brush one of the rainbow beams. An electrical shock sends pleasure pulses through your arm. You feel like you have an infinite amount of energy. Close your eyes and move your hand from side to side. You feel an electrical pulse each time one of your fingers touches a beam. You have so much energy you find yourself vibrating all over and you’re ready to burst. Two bumble bees each as large as a pony are balanced in the sand. We each grab one of the rainbows and twist it around a bee’s head. You climb on one and I do the same with the other. The stiff bristles on the bee’s backs tickle our fingers as we hold our colorful bridles. We both soar into the air higher and higher. A perfect 440Hz hum sends us buzzing through puffy clouds that press against our faces and taste like marshmallows.

-------6-------


The bees have enemies. A dozen black wasps, each larger than the bees we ride, attack from behind dark forests of fennel flowers. Their double wings make them fly faster and extended gleaming stingers look like approaching whale-boat harpoons. You can feel the terror in our trembling flying mounts. The bees have become prey, food for the predators, and so have we. Lean forward. We begin to fly faster. We zip through tight circles in the sky. It feels like we’re on a wild roller coaster ride, flashing across the blue sky in wide circles. The pursuing arthropodas are gaining. Squeeze your knees together. A white sticky substance begins to spray out the bottom of each bee in steamy clouds. Our bodies are completely covered head to toe from numerous loop-to-loops. The movement of the rushing air makes the wax harden instantly. You tumble off the back of your bee a second after I do. We are falling like statues thrown from an airplane. The loss of our extra weight allows the bees to escape, but we plunge downward.
Hitting the surface of water below is like a slap in the face but it makes you laugh. You are already bursting with happiness. The cold liquid turns the wax coating on your body brittle and it begins to crack as a wave propels us toward a sandy shore. Gently scratch your arm with your fingers. The wax coating begins to feel itchy and you find that it peels away easily in large intact sections. The skin under each layer of wax is soft and clear of all imperfections. Peeling the wax from your skin feels wonderful and makes you giggle. You feel young and vigorous. You gape at your image in a small dark pool. Your reflection in the water shows you now look the way you’ve always imagined looking. You look stunning.
We can hear music playing in the distance but it’s too far away to tell what it is. It tickles your ears and we begin to walk toward it. As we get closer the pleasure builds and we begin to run. We are both laughing out loud as the sand becomes deeper and hotter. Tap your right foot on the floor three times. The hot sand begins to cool and then starts to become cold with each running step you take. The sand has now turned into snow and a pleasant numbness caresses the soles of your feet. The musical sound is louder … it’s getting closer. Gently tug on your left ear. Magical tones ride waves through the air like orchestrated voices and tell you to hurry. The treasure we seek is very near. A cold wind, scheming to keep us away, blows into our freezing faces from the horizon as we push onward toward a large spiraling structure made of glistening blocks of blue-white ice.

-------7-------

A large castle, with nine towers and made entirely of ice, looms above blanketing snow flurries. The freezing wind, now roaring at almost gale force, stings our faces and hands and blocks-out the music. Cup your hands around your mouth and blow warm air. The wind vanishes and the blinding snow melts away. You can now hear the enchanting music again. A large door made of dark mahogany appears in the castle wall and you open a heavy cast iron latch shaped like a parrot’s beak. We are in a vast chamber with a floor like polished glass. This is the place where magic dwells.
Enormous transparent icicles hang from the ceiling like upside-down organ pipes. The wonderful music surrounds us and you begin to dance. Large drops of brilliant colored water fall from the largest icicles and solidify into a pile of sparkling frozen gemstones at the base. The jewels are every color you can imagine and more. Close your eyes and make a wish. When you open your eyes one of the colored gems seems to shine above all others. Make your selection carefully. You reach out your hand and pick it up. You realize at first touch that this is something you’ve wanted forever. Make your fingers into a fist and squeeze it tightly. This treasure belongs to you. I tug on your shoulder. I whisper “It’s very important that we leave now.” I run across the polished floor dragging you behind and through the open wooden door. You can feel the golf-ball sized stone beginning to melt and you must not lose it. Squeeze your fist tighter.
The wind is back now with a vengeance and it has traded cold for warmth. A blast of hot air scorches your face. A snapping cracking sound blocks out the sounds of the ice chamber music. Sheets of ice begin to break apart and we have to jump from one floating platform to another. The frozen tundra is turning into an ocean.  A tiny drop of water falls from your hand. Close your eyes and squeeze your fist tighter. The musical hum of the bees returns and they appear racing toward us on the horizon. There are many more than two … they are like the stars.
We are snatched into the air by the bee’s fuzzy legs. The melting sea turns to desert as we streak across the sky.
Storm clouds of black wasps appear this time and the swarms of bees are attacked and fall like rain from the sky. Our mounts are struck and paralyzed by wasp stingers. We are falling.
Close your eyes and imagine jumping on a bed as a child. We are tumbling and bouncing off the petals of the enormous flowers as we plummet toward the ground. You are laughing.

-------8-------

Two drops of water fall from your clenched fist and then a trickle runs as we land in two inches of water. Squeeze your fist tighter. We must hurry! The water gets deeper as we run. It is over our knees then up to our waist. Soon we are sinking in a mass of bubbles. You can feel the precious stone in your hand shrinking … getting smaller. The bubble feels wonderful and you giggle.
The bubbles begin to burst and we fall faster through a fizzing spray. We are now running once again through the magnificent blue velvet walled state room … splashing across white carpet covered with two inches of water. On the far wall is an open door. It is the elevator that transported us to this level. Water drips from all sides of your clenched fist. The precious stone has almost melted. It is only a tiny speck in your hand. Squeeze your fist tighter.
We both squeeze into the elevator just as the doors close and you reach for the operator buttons and they are gone. All inside walls are shiny polished chrome. Close your eyes and tap the finger not holding the melting gemstone seven times. It’s always the magic number that takes us home. After what seems like ages, the elevator shudders then slows and the door opens.

-------9-------

We are once again in the white rising mist near my porch. A pale blue moon peeks from behind dark clouds and smiles at us. Slowly open your right hand. The magnificent gemstone has melted and all that remains is a faint whisper of vapor. Magic is very powerful and even this tiny amount is enough. Blow on your open palm. A cool sensation, that reminds you of frozen castles and icy winds beyond forests of towering flowers, vanishes on the breeze.
You have journeyed into the deepest parts of your mind and retrieved a long and forgotten desire. Now that you have successfully brought your wish to the surface, it is now free to make the transition from energy into matter … and to … become real. You feel incredible euphoria.
I wave goodbye as the moonlight captures you and transports you back to your own dreams. Congratulations … you are the Deep Reader.


THE END?