Monthly Archives: February 2017

2-26-2017

by

0

So he could see the red angel sitting across from him, with all the other people sitting around playing games.  She had something to say and she was coming through clearly, which made him feel good, but then there was this other aspect of himself that was confused and sad, that had developed in his mind a conspiracy of the Moons of Saturn, Mimas and Pandora, also Prometheus, I think.  But it was very like the tremendous fantasy he had had of that other time.

And then he had a bunch of memories that didn’t make any sense about conversations that had never happened in Grand Rapids, and a bunch of very weird things that had never made any sense, and also a lot of really stupid, ugly people who were never entertaining at all, and some place he could have gone to do something but now he was here instead and he had known a lot of people who were really revolting and seen a whole bunch of stupidity and suicide.  And he was going to get paid some more but there was some deeper magic happening also that he had some faith in, it was like he had emptied out his life and now he was going to go on into the future as something else, with something else.  And there had been a very dramatic daydream about the moons of Saturn, Tethys, Calypso, Telesto, etc.  And perhaps he should be thinking about Mimas.

So one the one hand, everyone was full of shit, but on the other he had just accomplished something and now a Red Angel was appearing to him. She reminded him of S. B. who had forgotten about him long ago.  And why was all the chaos? He wanted to ask.  Why was it important to see these monsters, to assimilate to their filth under the influence of phrase?  What was he supposed to be — and here he felt some flunky wanting to assimilate the same tired bullshit about choice and responsibility.

There was a car chase, indeed!  He had been replaying that conversation with E. S., thinking about the W. a bit.  It was working out for him, but he had to come up with a way to do it in the middle of this disturbing game of conservatives.  Earlier he had seen a whole parade of them and learned to say good night.

The channeling was picking up speed and he was indeed John Constantine, prowling around the night with a trench coat and a switchblade.  Then the tiredness came upon him, and it was like an episode of Star Trek, but he could look forward to the next weekend when it would all begin again.  It had never made sense, but he was going to get completely away from it and not have to deal with the dislike and the stupidity again.  At last he had gotten what he wanted, but of course he had to get a hold of Juliet.

Friday 2-24-2017

by

0

Willow was so cute, and then they came and got him and it was all over.  And there were some other strange things going on, but he had a headache.  Then he was thinking all about Joss Whedon, but eventually it went away and he did something else.  But there was a planetary influence and then he fell asleep.  And he could not believe Mr. Serious existed.  Was it possible that he was finally to be released from the tedious presence of Americans and their asinine life stories?  Their crass, empty worship of garbage?  The trivial teaching spewed by their berobed and beribboned twerp Masters of talk radio?  Cocreative ass-filth!

No, he lived now only for {J}, only for their partnership in darkness, ever receding from the silliness of the world, ever vanishing, escaping. What did Mr. Goofy-Cave have to say about it?  And you know this is all beginning to make sense.  So what if she was a moon of Saturn, she could have a boyfriend just like anyone else.  Well, it was getting better for him.  And then there was going to come a point where he would find something fun to think about, someone fun to think about, and it would be good for him.  He remembered the power, he remembered how he had always been alone.  He remembered things that were perhaps inconsequential, like hearing Jefferson Starship on the radio.  This was actually the world and I do wish for all these people to be better.

There was so much in the imaginal realm, and then there were other beings there.  And he wanted to talk to them, and he wanted to believe the rank idiocy of America and its cocreatives behind, and he was slightly disgusted at all he had had to sit through on the way out, and the disgusting emptiness of the spiritual paths the people had followed, and the putrid psychic aftertaste of monsters like {the reincarnation of Leni Reifenstahl}, and the fact that it never added up to anything that had been described to him by the insipid Cheerleaders of Light who were so perky and utterly empty as to assume entire lifetimes of yipping and yapping about trivial bullshit while the United States became a fascist emptiness.  We can end this any time you know, so please let’s do so.

Obey, obey, obey, talk shit with the trolls and obey.  “How about a straight answer to my question?” he asked.  And he tried to remember various thought processes so he could maintain his identity during their next attack.  He remembered what he had wanted to be, and then there was that terrible pressure, and something slipped in his mind.

{L} had been such a trivial fascist moron, it had to be true that the great councils of masters and teachers were just such morons, themselves, or why would they claim to be the self of such garbage, and the only presence power and intelligence animating them?  Why a life of unpleasant mediocrity with only sad phrases to guide me among the new fascists of Saint Germain’s utter obedience and choice?

2-23-2017

by

0

He could feel the magic sizzling in the air, roiling it and bending it.  And behind that there was the pale glow and the sense of space as the other worlds came into focus.  Earlier he had been looking at the picture of the master and he felt the movement of energy behind the presences in his mind.  Everything had changed, everything had moved, and as usual there was no explanation forthcoming, only an endless parade of obedience and servility, bootlicking morons cheerfully cheerleading their underlings.  There was nothing left in the world but rationalization and filth and death.  “Where can we all be going?” he wondered.  “And what difference can it make?”

He continually remembered a conversation he’d had with Nate years before, talking about how bad Jesus sucks as a spiritual teacher and he kept elaborating it in his mind, going on to imagine he’d talked about the Moons of Saturn and a lot of other stuff that made no sense.  George Lucas was watching him, he knew.  There had to be a way around it. But he had the power, he knew, he could feel them and hear them in his mind whispering about it, whispering about the things he could do.  He could feel his mind expand to incorporate an inner reality beyond the plane of Earth.  He had never really given a damn about the Earth, he supposed.  Or maybe he had and they had simply wanted to prove him wrong and humiliate him.  He couldn’t remember how it had all started.  All he knew was that the air was opening up and there were beings there.  Perhaps they wouldn’t judge him, but what difference could that possibly make?  It was all hierarchical.  It was all movement from bullshit to bullshit.  He could look back in time, look back over his entire life and probably back to the one before and see obedience and servility, pompousness and the love of emptiness.

But at least it could end.  He was probably going to yell at someone on the other side, or more likely just forget they ever existed.  They were meaningless twerps.  After all their talk of service, what had they served but mediocrity and filth?  What had they engendered in the world but pomposity and failure and accusation?  What good were those bow-ties and goofy trashy robes?

What difference does it make, anyway?  Soldier Field, the most sacred ground in America?

Across America, they were all reading his blog.  He was out on the cocreative edge of creation.  I believe my life is over.  They struck him with a scimitar.  There had been other lives before, and there would be other lives later.  I can only wonder now why it was so vitally important.  I can only wonder now why it was so vitally important.  But the portal was opening, and he was going to pass through into the infinite.  And there would be someone on the other side.  He was going home at last.

 

2-22-2017

by

0

“It was 1976, and I’d never seen a movie.  I never thought it was any of my business, but they were getting so influential that I thought I’d better. I went to see one on what I thought was marine life, but it was about a giant shark.  And I sat there thinking, I’ve crossed the dimensions to protect humanity from vampires and werewolves, and their own horrifying consciousness, and here they are paying to be frightened by pictures of a giant shark.  I started laughing hysterically.  I’m afraid I ruined the movie for a few people.”

“So do you watch movies now?” asked the sidekick.

“Not too many, but I do watch that one when I need a laugh.”

Her nickname was “Jaws”.  She was wearing thick black velvet and a necklace of rune-carved silver links.  They were the imprisoned souls of evildoers.  She had a short blade, like a long knife, of shining silver.  (Dakota Fanning).

Charisma, you’ve got to explain something to me.

“It’s a shitty business, but I’m trapped in it forever.”

Jaws administers the soul agreements.  When you see her naked she has pointy elf-like ears and she moves catlike and feral.

The thing is, it is so much easier to imagine now.  Years ago I would have thought, “How could there be a lost civilization?  How could an advanced civilization disappear without any trace but a few legends?  But over the course of my lifetime I’ve watched music and literature disappear, I’ve watched the postwar legacy of American leadership dissolve into soundbites and bullshit, I’ve watched religion become a tawdry farce, and I know now it is indeed possible for a civilization as technologically oriented as ours to fall into disrepair.  I worry that this will further lead to the dismantling of democracy in favor of fascism.

“So now we voyage across the infinite in search of happiness, in search of escape from the normality of Christians and Republicans and empty corpos who believe in nothing but money.”

“Kiss me!” she begged, and he did.

The energies came down around him, dissolving his sense of space.  The ancient ones were present in the light.  There were strange memories of the past for him to contend with, a sense of completion haunted him.  They were watching, but they would not reveal themselves until it was too late for him to do anything about bad timing.

He was convinced Martin Landau was watching him, the captain of Moonbase Alpha.  I have my own Moonbase Alpha, I now understand.  “What could you possibly want, directing your attention in that way?” he asked.

Then all was gone from him and a darkness flowed through his mind, drowning out anything that had gone before.  He had to keep reaching for something better so that things could change.  They seemed so sad.  “It’s going to get better,” said the Angel.  You just have to move deeper into the night.  She drew her sword.  And now what will I do?  He asked.

Buffy Redux

by

0

“I don’t know if this is Buffy Redux, but by making yourself do this you seem to think you will regain what you lost.  We are totally uninterested in these things.  We are interested in your assistance.”

“I need a kind of clarity in the upper right quadrant of my mind.  I need a solid frame of reference against which to test and surrender ego.”

“Quadrant 2 or Quadrant 4.  You will find.”

“Where are we going?  We’re going home.”

“Let’s have fun,” she said.  “And then there was some really great music on the radio.

“We’re going to figure this out, we’re only good and  bad.”

Movement of imagery.  “So you wanted to write fiction.  You are exceptionally stubborn.”

Obviously there’s someone here and I’m very happy.  “We are beginning.” Spiral, obelisk.

Light, dark.  Neil Gaiman, children, this sort of thing, a place in the world.  The other dimension became very thick.  There was nowhere to go.

All was dark, but the loft was vast.  “These are the aspects.”

The voyage, step by step.  They did indeed do these things.  It’s time for a big change, we can go back over it later.  Then the other spirits were there and they needed to make some kind of metaphor.  They live in cities.

And the energy came pouring in.  There was a sense of displacement.  It was his struggle to record all  that he had seen.  “I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.”

“We’re going to get this done, and we’re going to go farther.  We need a process to review this.”  “What are we building toward?”

Juliet.

The long, low, dim hall and there is Spike, growling about the future.  And then Shatner is talking about what is necessary to maintain order.  “And they are all terrified but this is an exciting movie, so of course they screw it up.”

George Kennedy is around.  Thinking about talking about about.  Thinking about the Archer and the Sorceress.

I don’t care about any of these things.  Martin Landau did some terrible ritual magic with James Dean?  No, I don’t know.  Where is the secret cult?  There isn’t one.

Then I was talking about the Stromkirk and the Stromgald.  Anthony Hopkins and all.  Who gives a shit?  What is this order?  The Bureaucracy.

Well, we need to be moving toward something.  I can’t be wasting my time moving toward this fucking crap.  I have to have some order here.  So the order is Kara?

I guess I have to straighten out something about Saint Germain.  And then I have to get clear what I’m doing here.  I start contacting Kara and then my awareness of Sandra gets stronger.  What if the Occult Bookstore crowd put black magic on me?  One of the illusions is of movement.  All right now, I’ve got to do something with this.  Martin Landau.  I wish I knew the fucking purpose.  The purpose is discovery!  Shouts whatsisface.  Where is the target in all this vagueness?  Juliet?

Deeper in the night

by

0

They were all together.  “Man, this is exhausting.”

“We have to clear this out,” said Carl.  “It will change.”

“I hate boredom.  Juliet Landau is watching me.  Of course everyone is watching everyone, but I have a task. I am a psychic.  I am approaching the infinity of Buffy.”

“I can’t believe you said that,” said Beth.  Outside, the wind howled.

“It’s just that something’s cracked and broken in my mind.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?  We have to go deeper into the night.”  The wheels were spinning in his mind.  “We have to kill the enemy.”

“Well, let’s go find him,” said Beth.  So they were out the door and down the street, looking for a man of evil, knowing that Zane was ready for anything.

“Buffy, I love you,” said Giles.  “I will be by your side forever.”  But it was only causing her turmoil because she knew he would never love her the way she needed to be loved.

“Well, fuck it, we need to know what we’re going to do, anyway.  We can’t wind beack the clock, but we can do something about the memory gaps.”

“It’s changing him too dramatically.  That’s why he does this and does that.”

“There’s some kind of compression, and it’s getting better and better in that direction.”  The scenes of the past were beginning to become real to him.  Hopefully there would be some other energy and things would feel better, but I read for this guy an hour and a half last night and it went extremely well.  I heard Humberto talking about me, but I don’t think it matters too much.  The spirit world is going to be there for me and with me so I need to make adjustments to that.

“I love you, Jason,” said Willow.  “We’ll be able to get a handle on these experiences.”

“But we have to find the villain,” Giles reminded them.  “I think it has something to do with suffering, but how would I know?  My depictions are based upon something else.”  So what happens to the junkies?  It doesn’t matter.  I just wanted to do the forgiveness thing, and now to some extent I’m involved in this other silliness as well.

Ho hum.  At least we’re all together.  That was important to me, not knowing how to belong to anything.  But then the white light came down, and the strange, distorting energy.  He could see other lights making themselves known as well.  Well, what are they all going to do, I wonder?  The point was that he was in the midst of a difference and he couldn’t tell anyone what it was.  However, he could do something darker.  Then the energy swept down deeply.

“We have to find a new language,” he said, “Or do we?  Maybe it’s Juliet Landau.  Maybe I’m supposed to talk to her.”  All he could hear was “Kiss on My List.”

Oh, and there’s stern, ugly Nancy who thinks she’s going to bark her little bark now.

Another Sunday at Graham Crackers

by

0

Giles was always there.  Timmer was, too.  They had some drinks and they were listening to music.

“I think we may get killed at some point.”

“So what if we did?  We’re heroes.”  The light of souls was blazing.  “She’s trying to tell you something.”

The Angel of Candlelight Orange had a couple of things to say.  She was glowing beautifully bright as she emerged from another dimension it seemed almost as though she had simply stepped out of the back hall.

“‘Chicks With Sticks’ is a cool name.” she said.

“Okay, you can call yourselves Chicks with Sticks.”

“Thanks, daddy,” lisped Amy.

“Now we have issues to deal with.  We have some kind of mission, right?  The power is coming down.”

“You have more decisions to make,” said Kara.  “You can go anywhere and do anything with this.”

“Well we have to understand Buffy.  Buffy is a clue to the big mystery.”

“I don’t mind watching Buffy for the rest of the year,” said Beth.  “But you’re going to have to get a handle on your own dreams.  You can’t keep wandering around like that.”

It was a hot night.  The windows were open, the radio was playing.    “It’s his memory,” said Giles.  “His dreams have been bleeding into the world and now we have to bring them into focus.”

“Did I forget everything?” he asked.  “Is it all pain?”

“How long have we been friends?” asked Amy.  “Seriously?”

“About five minutes in another dimension, or something.”  Then there was a dark pressure again.  “I have to go, I’m sorry.” he put his hand to his head and got up to go.  He passed down the long hall and out into the night.  Through the window, he could hear the radio in the library playing “Texas Radio”.

The zombies were on the sidewalk that led into the woods behind the school.  “God damn it, not zombies again!” he groaned.

He leapt forward and kicked one in the chest, it fell back with a groan and the other tried to grab him.  The angel appeared in a pillar of fire, bearing his sword.  Taking lithely he spun and decapitated the one that was coming behind him.  The next he stabbed in the throat so that it staggered into the trees.  The first still lay on the ground struggling to get up; he kicked it down and stepped on its head.

“Jason, I’m sorry!” it was Beth calling from behind him.  “I’m sorry this is all happening to you.  I just think you should know that.”  Crying, she came forward from the shadows and into his arms, he held her.  “I’m sorry it has to go on like this.”

“I’ll be okay, I guess.” he said.  “At least I’ll be able to figure out where I’m going.   Thank you.”

“Your perceptions will expand.” said the Angel.  “It’s best to try to sleep now.  Thank you Beth.”  Beth kissed his cheek and went back into the school.  He continued along the path, out into the night.  He thought about watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on his phone.

by

0

“Okay, so I’ve got the music playing.”

I don’t know if this is going to work right away.

It was the usual Sunday afternoon at Graham Crackers Comics.  There was that sense that if he could just follow the thread a little further it would fill him up somehow.  It hurt, there just under the surface of his imagination was something real, something he had never shared with anyone.  It was like a memory of a happier life he could have had, and there were lots of fantasies of his horrible grandmother.  Childhood brutality, paranoid conspiracies.  And then the magic.  Also gyro sandwiches from the restaurant around the corner by the Bryn Mawr station.  It was something he needed to grasp, and there was also an angel there.  On some days he had amazing experiences of other worlds.  He did that when he shopped a lot.  Perhaps it was Mercury and Splendor.

There had been that day at Quake toys when he felt really cool, like he was at an awesome rock show or something.  And then that signing by Alex Ross when he felt a shining light within, and there was Alex Ross.  Suddenly he flashed on Austin Osman Spare.

What I don’t know, said the Angel, is whether you can write and listen to music at the same time or not.

But it didn’t matter he knew, because the sharper vision was coming through.

And he knew they were watching him, causing ripples in his mind.  He knew they were preparing things for him, and there was something for him to do.  Soon the barriers would fall and he would be able to talk to the ones he wanted to talk to.  There was some kind of energy around him growing stronger every day.

Buffy was so cute.  He wondered what to do next.  “We are all together,” said Giles.  “We didn’t get it this time, but we’ll try again.  And that never happens anyway.”

“I don’t want this to happen again,” said Temilyn.  “I keep working on this and it keeps fucking me up.  I’m just not going to let it happen.”

“No, you’re quite right,” said Timmer.  “We could all just lighten up a bit.”

“It is magic, you know,” said Veronica.  “It’s a little silly.  It’s actually ridiculous, but we have to deal with it.  And let me tell you I don’t mind killing everyone.”

Adrial laughed.  “All right, let there be blood,” she said.  The men were climbing in the trees.  “We have to make this work.”

Zack stabbed him in the head.  “I love that song,” he said.  And we are going to get 500 words out of you tonight.  We are channeling you know.

“Well, I’m the Messiah he said.  Obviously, why would god grant me this.”

“God didn’t grant you this, I did.”

“Well, I guess we’re going to be doing something now.”

Meanwhile, the owner was crouched in his goofy cave, praying to his statue as everything died.  “No, we have to get it a little better than this. You see it takes something to fill this up.”

“We have to get to the killing.  It’s not that hard once you get started.”

There was magic and such beauty between them. It always makes me feel so safe, coming to the library … she was saying.  “Zack, you’re so fucking spectacular you kill people. We have to do something about this.”

“They’re talking about me in another room, and I can’t remember any god damn thing!”

“Zack, you have to work with me.” he could hear her thoughts in his mind.

“Well, here we are now, and we have to do something.” said Giles.

Beth was there too.  “Of course I’m imaginary.  But at least we’re doing something.”

“How did you want people to feel, anyway?” asked Giles.

“I don’t know, but I’m doing it again.  How do I make people feel like this, Timmer.”

“Do you want to make people feel like this?”

“Are we going around in circles again?  Something has to exist here.  We have to move forward with it.”

The angel came down with a golden light, and a sharpness, cutting away the physical plane.  “Now we are in a space, what do you see?”

“On the surface, it’s golden, but then it turns reddish.”

“Remember, Captain Scarlet is indestructible.  Do not try to imitate him.”

“But then where do we go?” asked Willow.  “It was the love we shared.”

“Something bad happened, Jason.  You have to try to remember.”

“You can’t take the last bit of someone and get away with it.”

“How do I get Buffyness into this?  It probably takes years of practice.”

“No, it doesn’t take years of practice, it takes some ass-kicking angels.  So here we are, and deal with it.  Welcome to the Hellmouth.”

The library was all dark wood and old.  The books were leather.  “Do we really need a library?  The information comes so fast.”

“Everything echoes across the world.”

“We need something that we’re doing.  Peter Murphy or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”

Amy reminded them, “We need to work on death scenes, killing various people.”

“We are going to bring the magic.”  Well anyway let’s move forward.  We are assembling the mind of all.  It’s just like “Highlander”, and we’re going to get that word count.

“What’s beautiful?  What’s free?” asked Marc.  “I have no idea.  I just want to die fighting for the right thing.”

“Well, I’m just bloody exhausted,” said Giles.  “I have to get some sleep.”

She couldn’t control herself.  She ran after him and made a pass at him.  “Oh, dear.  No, darling, I can’t do that.”

“Anyway, let’s go crazy.”  It gets so that’s all they care about.  Okay, we’re almost ready and it’s fine.  Now what.  Arrangements.  I don’t care.  That’s how World War I started.  Nevermind, we brought the magic anyway and by the way your little experiment has worked.  So now what?

“That’s it boys, over the hill.” And the war started.

 

 

Conversation with an Angel Part II

by

0

They were at Dice Dojo again.  As he walked in the door a woman was putting away “Shiny Dice”, the game he had looked at the week before.  He knew it was a sign.  He’d been receiving signs all day.  He sat down at the small table in the back that he usually used and saw “The Castles of Mad King Ludwig”, another one-player board game he could get for himself.  He wondered though because he’d purchased “Ravenloft” and used it once.  On the other hand, “Dungeon!” had been very important for him.

The room was pretty crowded.  Timers were running on the big screens.  He was trying to remember what had happened.  He felt very cozy, very sentimental for something.  He knew he was going to get what he wanted, though.  It was a clean, well-lighted place.

He knew there were inner temples somewhere, and he had to get back to them.  He knew that Kara, the angel from Mars, was appearing to him as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And then there was a stream of strange images, some thoughts of the past, of times when he was perhaps lonely and his mother was in charge, and she and his father cut him off from the world or misled him about what feelings were.  It didn’t matter all those opportunities were lost now, like the opportunity to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on television back in 1997.  Not that it matters … he kept feeling drawn to Joss Whedon.  Perhaps they would meet.

But there she was, sitting across the table from him, rolling the dice.

“I get very frustrated waiting for you,” she said.

“I want to be with you more than anything, but I can’t keep my mind straight.  I can’t even understand what it means to say I want to be with you.  There’s some terrible darkness in my mind.  But at least it’s getting better.”

There’s something that’s not worth saying, he thought, why does this have to be about some kind of secret trauma.

“But I am blazing!” she said, and she glowed with a candlelight orange light.  “They were real people, and I am really an angel.”  People were playing games all around.

“Things keep changing, I get distracted.  I don’t want to be, though.”

“So don’t be,” she said.  That same guy was lurking around so she kicked him.

“And then there’s that asshole, Ken.  I guess I got what I wanted from him, but now I am sensing these strange inner shapes.  And I fucked things up with Carla so bad.”

“No, you didn’t.  You’re just not supposed to be here.”  Something shifted inside of him and he felt himself moving away, going somewhere else.  There would be people there, he knew, people he wanted to talk to, as opposed to these rotten Nazi scum.  It would make me so happy if they went away forever, he thought.  I just couldn’t get over it.  Cocreation?  The hero’s journey?  How could America become such a dark, meaningless toilet of empty moneygrubbing?  What happened to all the promise of freedom?  Why with all this crap about choice spewing around the world am I sitting here in a Machiavellian hell of failure and manipulation?

“But-” he said.

“at-” she continued.

“least-” he struggled to finish.

“-we have something to alchemize,” she said.  “I am very different and I am doing this for you now.”

 

 

The Dirty Gang #4

by

0

John was working away at the door and at last with a wrenching shriek of metal he flung it open — and a breeze so hard it was almost a wind blew their torches out.  Theybha screamed and Jason put his arms around her.

“Damn!” said John, jumping back a foot, holding up his doused torch defensively, but nothing came forth from the darkness but the strong breeze.

“Oh, crap, what are we going to do here in the dark?” asked They.

“I hear water running in here.” said John, feeling his way into the room.  “It’s not that big.”

“Watch out for spiders!”

“You know what?  I need a rest.” said Jason, deciding to sit down where he was.  Thay sat down beside him and snuggled under his arm.  “We’ll see the torches when those two catch up with us.”

“I’m tired too,” said Beth, closing her eyes.  “It’s got to be after midnight.  We should just sleep.”

“There was some stuff back in the storerooms.” said John from inside the room.  “And there’s a stream running in here!  You can drink from it.”

“Well, thank god for that,” said Beth, dreamily.

“This is overwhelming.” said Jason.  “Nothing ever happens to us and then suddenly this.  It’s crazy, it’s just like a story or something.”

“Mmm.  We’re going to be rich.” said Beth happily.

John returned and sat down beside them.  “Yeah, even if the grownups find this and take it over, we can get a ton of that stuff from the storerooms out of here before they do.  I guess we could sell some of it in Verbobonc, but I want to see if we can get horses or something, go even farther.  I want to see the Kingdom of Furyondy, and Newhon.”

“Well I never believed Newhon was anything but a legend but at least you’ll get to find out.” said Beth.

“It’s amazing how it can all change in a day.” said John.

“We deserve it, for putting up with this crummy town our whole lives.”  said Beth.

“But we’ll share it all, five equal parts.”

“Of course,” said Jason.  “All for one and one for all.  Just like the stories.”

“I know I feel that way.  I shouldn’t have to say it but it’s a big change.  We’ll have to make decisions, decide who gets what and where we’re going to go.”

“I want to stay together.” said Beth. “I don’t trust you not to get killed, anyway.”

“Me or Jason?” asked John.

“Either of you, but mostly you.” replied Beth.

“It would be stupid to separate now,” said Jason.  “I mean, I’ve thought about striking out on my own, but we found all this money together and why would I want to go off and find some other people to be around.”

“You’re right,” said John.  “It’s best really, to stay together.  But I really really want to see the world, you know?”

“All in good time, my friend,” said Jason.

“And we are friends,” said John, “Friends to the end.”