Lookingglass Hell

Alone you’ll be free. But you can’t be alone.  

All one you'll be free but you can’t be all one. 

You can’t.

Because.

People are watching so you can’t say what. You’re thinking. Want to say can’t say can’t. Think. People have 

Eyes.

Like mirrors see you suck your soul out.

Glass eyes.

That’s what you see.

If you look behind everybody’s nobody’s eye. Behind the glass.

There’s a hole. A perfect sphere of blackness. Black hole sun, like that idiot pop song the idiot neighbor insists on playing so loudly. Yes, I might open my chained door a crack, and politely raise my voice. “Please turn it down.” I try to say it nicely. But my neighbor’s shouted reply is invariably, “Fuck you.” After which he turns up the volume to even greater decibel levels. Because I’m helpless. The neighbor knows I never come out. What I really should say …

In sheer defiance, I shout out the appropriate, impolite response in my fortress of solitude.

“Fuck you.”

Tourettes! It’s a breath mint! It’s a candy.

Silence! No more interruptions.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I refer you to Exhibit A, a painting by René Magritte. “The False Mirror,” en francais, “Le faux miroir.” If you examine this painting very closely, you can clearly see that the eye in the sky is clearly open, clearly proving that everyone’s eye in the whole world is open, and there’s a black hole inside/behind the I, and we’re all being sucked to our deaths into this cosmic vacuum cleaner. Everybody.

Except me.

Because I’m the Man Who Wasn't There.

(Shhh. That’s the secret!)

But it’s true.

I’m invisible.

You won’t see me. I won’t let you see me.

Because.

I have formed (ha!) a force field that protects. A barrier that.

Preserves me. Except there’s no you I me it. I’m not really talking to you (me) this is all done with mirrors! 

Based on this ineluctable logic, I decided in the year 25 AD of the Julienne Fries calendar to disappear from the world of people. Quit my job. Pounded boss’ desk with weak white fists. Fuck you you. RESIGNED like “The Prisoner.” XXXXX. 

Thanks to dear dead rich daddy I could do that.

Daddy died thanks daddy.

And left (me) enough money to live alone.

Thus, I became my own world. 

Home alone, home all one.

The will was read, the corpse was in the ground, the house was mine. I did what anyone would do in my situation.

Shut the doors, tinfoiled the windows, nailed up hurricane shutters, sealed out the mindstorm. Paid for decades of lawncare in advance. Phone, yes. TV, no. Food deliveries only, paid all my bills on time. Nobody bothered me. My brilliant plan worked.

Yay.

Ladies and gentlemen, sluts and thugs, I am now in the sixteenth hour of the thirteenth year of my great isolation, my grand experiment, my grande mal. To John Donne I say, Fuck you, sir. I am an island!

Like the astronuts before me, I have gone where no man has gone before. My trek stabs ever onward in this apparently stationary house, this Eden, this space capsule. To speak plainly, I’ve remained completely alone in my house since 1979! 

All doors, shut, windows closed.  

No contact with the Naked Apes at all.

Then.

In the Year of the Comet, disaster.

The old-school family grocery store down the street [insert name here] folded. The old man who ran it croaked and died. Thus, no more deliveries. Chains (you have nothing to lose but) don’t deliver. You go to them, they don’t go to you. That’s the way it works. It’s the law. (Exceptions for nuts, but that means getting on the nut list.)

After starving for days, I’m forced to go out for groceries. Before leaving, I grab a pair of mirrorshades, to reflect any harmful rays. Ray Bans, of course. Vintage. Put them on. The logo sparks a word association.  A painful childhood memory. The Miami Seaquarium. Waterworld life behind thick green glass. 

If you look inside the manta ray, gaping maw, inside, it’s hollow, look in you can see the rib cage!

Dad’s future widow squeezed my hand.

Look honey, look.

I squint my eyes.

No!

But the harassment continued. I finally looked.

And saw into the nothing. The hollowness. The implication was clear, and I was a clever little boy. The manta ray? It’s a tube with fins swimming around. I’m just a tube with legs. The direct cognition of emptiness, as the Buddhists say.

What’s wrong, honey?

Nothing.

I walk into the nothing now. A new kind of nothing.

How has the world changed during my self-imposed exile? What horrors await? The nightmares of Harlan Ellison? Or Philip K. Dick? Or.

Outside, sun stabs. No evil robots.

I walk like a robot to the shopping center on the corner. It’s now become the Sunrise Mall. Completely changed. No more fins on the Publix marquee. O brave new world.

Store. Door. Aisles. Cart. 

Aisles, aisles, aisles.

Colors, boxes, colors. All screaming for my attention.

Look at me, look at me, look at me.

Checkout line. I fish out a fistful of cash.

“Does money still work?”

Horrified look. But the clerk nods. Yes. It does! 

Callou, callay! O frabjous day!

The pimpled clerk starts swiping my purchases over an eye in the conveyor belt. Math seems to be a lost art in 1994. A world designed for morons. Kornbluth, it seems, got it right.

Scan, beep. Scan, beep.

I want to go home. 

Mister? Hey! Child’s voice, ignore it. Mister! Don’t engage. Scan, beep! An eternity later, I buy the needful groceries, try to walk out. But the child keeps calling out to me. Hey, mister! You. I didn’t die, but I’ve clearly violated some future protocol. Mister! I ignore her, keep walking. Redfaced manager appears. Are you all right, sir? I shake my head, no, walk past him. Then the child runs up, but Mother swoops down to save her. Don’t talk to him, honey. I walk past them both and out the sliding glass doors.

Sun now lower in the sky. But the light still hurts. Even through the Ray Bans. But let’s emphasize the positive.

My mission was a success. I’m still invisible.! 

I keep telling myself that. Keep walking.

Nobody saw. Ha-ha!

Sweating like a pig, I make my way back home. And then I’m inside. I made it!

My trek goes on, Masala. It goes on.

Plop the sack of groceries on the table. 

Ringing phone. 

Longstory short, I will still live alone, they won’t stop me. The question of groceries will not defeat me.

Ringing.

Switching metaphors, this is the story of my life. Or play. Performed inside this lonely stage. A tale told by an idiot. Performed by an idiot. For an idiot audience. Me. (applause) My Shakespeherian assault on that global village idiot theater of the collective unconscious is a hit with.

Ringing.

Ignore it. Pay attention to me! 

I wrote a song:

 Alone you’ll be free but you can’t be alone

The trees are watching, watching with glee

The trees are watching you now as they shellter

A coven of witches who live by the sea    

What did you think? I think.

Ringing.

The strident phone keeps doing that. I won’t need groceries for awhile, so I don’t pick it up. I go to bed.

Ringing, ringing, ringing.

No. Shut up.

I’m going to sleep.

Danger, Will Robinson. They saw you! They’re going.

Sleep. Safe and restful.

Sleep, sleep, sleep.

ZZZZ.

Bad dreams, not safe and restful.
First, an endless line of Men White Coats. Holding nets and marching in tune to an idiot novelty song from 1966.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha, ho-ho.

His brain agan, always worried about its own survival. They're coming to take you away. Not a joke. At a deep survival level, the organic computer inside his skull knows it's true. But he doesn't take the hint. He's afraid, but not enough.
So the nightmare gets worse. His brain stops dancing around. Makes the warning explicit. Spells it out.

You looked weird. You smelled bad. Somebody complained. Tomorrow, they’ll call and call again. You won’t answer. So they’ll come. Policeman, social services. The Man. The Man will pound on the door. Sir? You need to open up, sir. You’ll either open up or they’ll break the door down. And then they’ll take you away.

You wake. Which is to say, I do. Then reach for the big box of pills that daddy (thanks) stashed under the bed. Take one. Sleep again.

Now, safe and restful.

Lost in Technicolor dreams pretty about Alice and that pretty world of talking chesspieces and dragonflies and the White Knight and the Red Queen and the pretty things they said. The secrets they. 

Alice got through the glass.

Awake. Pop out of bed like a Jack in the Box.

Trying to remember. The secret the?

Alice = all ice = all I.

Alice got through the glass.

Escape is possible! Yes!

I go to the bathroom and try. For the thousandthousandthousandth time. But I can’t get in. No. Because myself is in the way, as always. That idiot on the other side of the mirror! No use pounding it bloody. I’ve learned my lesson.

But the dream revealed.

A secret. It’s in the book!

“Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”

What did she find? That’s not the point! 

Alice got through. 

The book tells you how.

The book is magick! There are spells within!

(I read that in another book.)

I try to find Dodgson’s novel in my mouldering ziggurat of books, but can’t. But I’ve read it. And what I need is in my head.

So, back to bed. I pop another pill, illegal this time. (Daddy sold them. That’s where the money came from. Don’t tell.)

Sleep, more dreams. But they’re not dreams.

Much bigger than that.

Hallucination, vision, spell. No.

Those are just words. They don’t describe.

The place where the terror comes from. The holy terror.

And he was in that place.

The realm of. 

Words? You’re going to name it?

As I was saying.

Here. This place. Is.

Magick. A crossroads. A decision. Bloody signature on paper. Sign here, sir. And here.

Quit stalling!

You’ve been here before.

You know what to do!

Drown the dormouse in the tea.

You’re the dormouse, you’ve always known that.

Doormouse = dormant.

The self/not-self you think you are, aren’t.

Kill yourself. 

You don’t exist. What have you got to lose?

“He” made the choice, the only choice. (“He,” “it,” “I,” whatever.) He killed himself. Drowned the dormouse kicking screaming burbling in a pot of tea.

And then woke up for the final time.

Happy for the first time in years.

Laughed and laughed.

It worked!

Now he was really alone.

Because there wasn’t any me any more.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you might expect, it went to that bathroom and walked up to the mirror. This time, ah, there was only empty glass. Skinny, out of shape, it huffed and puffed and hoisted itself up on the sagging mildew stinking sink cabinet below the mirror. Hunkered down, no hurry, studied it. There was nobody on the other side. His "I" did not deceive him. But be sure. Test. Experiment.

It did exactly that.

Put its hand through the glass. Right hand.

Its right hand went through. 

Hypothesis confirmed!

Pulled hand back. Shouted.

“Sic semper tyrannis!”

Now?

Only one thing left to do.

Go all the way through into the mirror world.

It pushes, struggles, pants.

The mirror yields melts like water.

And then it’s all the way there.

On the other side.

Here.

Where everything is different.

The chorus of voices. Stops. Finally.

Nothing but stuff here. Nothing but objects.

And it is an object.

It can finally touch things! 

Walls, glass, medicine cabinet.

It runs its hands over this and that. But what if?

Looked back at the mirror. Like Lot’s wife. 

Curiosity killed the.

But it doesn’t turn to dust.

Doesn’t fade away to ashes.

Because there’s nobody on the other side of the mirror. Still empty there, too! Which meant.

It can go back and forth. From one world to the next!

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Opens medicine cabinet, another empty mirror. Pill bottles.

DNIRDEZNEB. MUILAV.

Reaches out. Then its brain flashes out a warning.

Danger, Will Robinson.

Survival at stake. Take no pills. Why? Scientific American, July 1971. Parity and Looking Glass Enzymes. Complex technical article, organic chemistry, but the takeaway is clear. Take no pills, eat no food in Mirror World. You’ll die.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t want to die.

But it still feels curiouser and curiouser.

So it walks outside its Mirror House into the Mirror World.

Sun, not so different here. Knives of light. Can’t see. Then it can.

Visible signs of neglect on all sides. Weeds, grass, waisthigh on the lawn. (Lawn service took the monthly check, did no work. How was it supposed to know?) Childhood bicycle turned to rust, lying in the tangled green. Stained hurricane shutters. The whole house sagging. CODE VIOLATION notice on the door. Prime downtown property! A teardown! This neglect is just asking for trouble. The Man would surely come.

But nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. They’re coming to take you away. Not anymore. 

It smiles up at the stabbing sun. 

Then walks up to the cracked sidewalk. Kept walking. Looking.

 Everything is backwards. (In terms of parity, not time. It refers you to Scientific American.) Lookingglass world. Left is right, right left. Bus passes on the street, stops. Noise, stink, fumes, ad on the side.

SEIFSITAS MELAS.  

Sidewalk, people walking. Can’t see it, hurt it. (Body brain it formerly know as “I.”) A vacuum can’t destroy a vacuum! Nothing can hurt the Man Who Isn’t There! No one can see you!

Really?

Stand still on sidewalk. Experiment.

Flashes genital region.

No reaction.

Crowd keeps walking, walking, walking. 

Brain thinks: of course...

Hypothesis confirmed! Yes! It is invisible!

Logical. Obvious. Mirror World is imitation only. Just a copy of the Real World. These aren’t real people. No mind, no thought, no self. Ghosts. Empty images, the walking dead. They’re all its. Just like it! (But they don’t know it.) The fun part is.

They can’t see it because they aren’t there. Can they hear it?

It shouts.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you."

Nothing.

So happy, so happy.

It had lied to itself before, it knows that now. Pretended it was invisible. It really wasn't. But now the lie is true! Here, now, it truly is invisible. And …

Invisible means invincible!

Old woman drags squeaky wheel cart full of old woman stuff past the bus stop. Bus hisses, starts to go. As an experiment, it pushes her under the bus. The wheels of the bus go round and round, crush her, crunch her. She screams, thrashes around like a wind-up doll, spewing red fluid on the asphalt.

Then everything stops.

And the universe goes backwards, rewinds, repairs, goes forward again. The old woman is good as new.

Repeated experimental trials achieve the same result.

It realizes the first law of Mirror World.

Anything it does here is temporary. You can’t permanently change Mirror World because Mirror World only imitates Real World. It’s only a copy. Any change corrects itself.

It runs back home, grabs some needful stuff, then heads out again.

Then wanders the Earth like Mephistopheles. Walking up and down. Searching, studying. Killing Mirror People. At least temporarily.

It keeps this up for days, popping pills (amphetamines, symmetrical molecules), not sleeping, not eating, finally starving. It wanders far, far from home. Then.

Panic reaction. 

Because its brain is flashing out another warning. A very obvious fact it stupidly forgot.

It will die here. No food to eat.

Fear of death. But more.

Guilt feelings. 

It stops in front of a sidewalk cafe and screams.

“I’m sorry I killed myself! I'm sorry!”

Nobody reacts.

It runs. Panting. Head full of thoughts.

I have to get back, go home, push through the glass, get back to the other side. The Real World. Where people have eyes and they can really see you. I was wrong, I was wrong. Being seen isn’t the worst thing. I hate being invisible. I really really hate it!

It knows this is a lie. “I” have to do this, “I have to do that.” Who is it kidding?

But it runs anyway, and finally gets back home.

It fumbles with the key, opens the rain-soaked, mildewed door, goes in. Runs through the ruined kitchen, runs back to the bathroom, crying and crying, then it pulls itself up on the sink counter again. It's going to push through. It's going to go back. This time, it’s going to stay. 

But it can’t get through.

Because.

Because there’s some idiot on the other side! Eyes wide open, pounding bloody fists on the mirrorglass. Screaming and screaming. It’s seen this idiot before, it knows, can’t quite place it, but that’s not important now. The idiot screams at him. “Get out of the way, you idiot! Get out of the way!” It screams the same thing back, but it's useless.

No matter how much it screams, the idiot won't get out of the way.

— Marty Fugate, (c) 1994

All rights reserved.

Finnegan ... Go Back to Sleep

A long, long time ago, I had the wacky idea of turning James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake into a SF novel. The premise: His big bad book isn't a metaphor—it’s literally true. The human race really is a collective mind in a deep slumber. Like the sleeping Red King in “Through the Looking Glass,” our Big Self slumbers—and dreams it’s all our Little Selves. The literal notion: the maddening complexity of early cities overloaded, crashed and fractured the collective mind. But, thanks to the Internet and other emerging technologies, Finnegan’s starting to wake up again. (I had a great opening scene: All the nuts in Central Park pushing shopping carts and muttering to themselves start hearing the SAME VOICE—and begin dancing around in coordinated movement worthy of Busby Berkeley.) 

Cute idea, no story. So I shelved it. But hell. On second thought, maybe it’s not fiction after all …

I reached this conclusion after watching live feed of the Kavanaugh hearings the other day. Being lazy, I randomly clicked on the first vid that popped up. The vulpine FOX news is what I get. Dr. Ford is giving her testimony. Live. Below it, users are making comments. Live.

These flashed by at tachistoscope speed. I get a vague impression of hatefulness, but it’s too fast to read. So I did a control-a, control-c, and copy and paste a massive chunk. 

And it reads like this …

​she is a polished liar, she got grinded on as a teen, by a teen. welcome to the real world. Real victims laugh at this amount of abuse.

why is she reporting this now 30 years later

By telling lies she got everything to gain but nothing to loose.

​He sexually assaulted her and she said hi!?

​Jesus, please bring truth and expose every lie.

So are we ready to believe Ellison's girlfriend

AND I NEVER CALLED THE POLICE!

​[[ (( FAKE NEWS ]] ))

​liar liar pants on fire

​she's a nutcase

​YES: I WILL CONTINUE TO LIE!

why would you say hello?

did the rumors start before safeway?

​coffee! where is my coffee

Wait wait.....I'm just seeing this. Republican's can't speak but Democrats can grand stand? How is that fair and equal?

She thinks this is funny AF

LEFTIST TALKING POINTS WHILE A GOOD MAN IS BEING SLANDERED TO KEEP HIM FROM RESTORING THE REPUBLIC

OH YEAH RIGHT HE JUST HAPPEN TO BE THERE LOL

Sandoval​yep she was paid off but her lying sin will find her out, you can't hide from God.

And on and on it goes. Just like that.

It’s like reading the stream-of-consciousness of a hateful Molly Bloom. They aren’t watching the testimony and forming conclusions. Their conclusions are fixed, and it’s the iron grid that frames their experience.

These viewers are of one mind. It’s a group mind, a mob-mind, a hive-mind. And that collective mind is clearly insane.

Now, the villagers have thronged the public square. They're carrying pitchforks and torches, and they're pissed. Dreamtime is over. It's time to do some damage.

Because Finnegan is waking. The giant is blinking his eyes, stirring in his coffin, and ready to leap up and start stomping. 

I'm starting to think this Internet thing is not such a hot idea.

Pissed-off Yorkshire Actors Shutter Play They Haven't Read

When The Show Is Oh No No-Go: Pissed-Off Yorkshire Artists Skip Audition and Shut Play Down Before Reading Script.

On Wednesday, September 19, several Yorkshire artists received an invitation to audition for a play called “Ye Adventures of Robin Hood” by playwright Roger Screwe. The play is the second production in a series of Screwe's historic plays called “Tales of Merrie England.” The ugly truth is “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is inspired by the fraudulent 19th century British writers who distorted an ancient legend to make Robin Hood a self-exiled Saxon noble fighting Norman lords. Both the original legend and the subsequent Victorian distortion have no basis in fact! According to Wikipedia and most historians, “Robin Hood” never existed at all.

The production, which was slated for a December 2018-February 2019 run at Dolamite Theatre in Danby Wiske, was not only written by the Irish playwright Roger Screwe, but was programmed to be directed by the Liverpudlian director Jennifer Lastnamehere. Over the course of the past few days, actors in the Saxon and Norman communities in Yorkshire have called for the show to be withdrawn from Dolamite’s upcoming season. Load of Bollocks asked some of the artists who were invited to audition for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” to comment on why they are speaking out against this production:

According to Saxon actor Kenneth Rawhead, “Who’d’ve thought in 2018 we’d be back to Robin fannying about in Sherwood Forrest, eh? It’s one stereotype after another, and no lie. The Saxons live in forests and shoot arrows. The Normans are fat, speak bad French, eat quail and the like. Wot a load o’ rubbish, that! It’s simplistic, in’t it? That there programming stirs up like Saxonphobia and Normanphobia and I dunno all wot else as I ain’t read the sodding play. Have a real Yorkshireman and/or Yorkshirewoman put pen to paper or finger to keyboard or what have you, or don’t write the play at all!”

Welsh actor Ian Fluellen noted, “That scouse bitch asked me to audition—I spit in her face, I did! ‘I’m Welsh, you bint, are you blind?’ That’s wot I said, I did. It’s wrong on every level, this. You got Saxons playing Normans and Normans playing Saxons, and wot’s with the sodding pantomime horse, eh? Real horse or no horse, I say! Bloody abomination, that. Kiss my leek!”

Cornwall-based artist and activist Ella Leek quickly added that, “As an artist and an activist, I am outraged at the disruption Brexit is causing in the—oh, this isn’t about Brexit? Sorry. I’ve done five interviews this week and I just naturally assumed … sorry.” 

After three days of back and forth between artists in Yorkshire and administrators at Dolamite, the play is now being pulled, to be replaced by a different, and entirely uncontroversial, script as yet to be announced or, for that matter, written.

Jack, the Giant-killer

"There's no such thing as magic."

     Jack’s Mother always said that. It was her answer to everything. The reason you couldn’t trust people to help you; why you always had to be careful about what you say; why the good guys don’t always win; why you have to give yourself an escape route, hide a reserve fund, and not count on your next meal; why you should never assume today’s friends will be your friends tomorrow, that people keep their promises, or that every story had a happy ending, even yours. She had drilled all this into Jack’s head ever since his Father died. Since the giant had killed him. 

Life had turned out to be as bad as she had predicted. For Jack, there had been no good luck, no mercy, no magic. Everything had failed. Now, the crops were dying. They were starving and they had to sell the cow.

Jack had named her “Mrs. Cow.” Mother had always told him not to give the cow a name because one day they might have to sell her. He’d named her anyway. Now they had to sell her. Mother didn’t say “I told you so,” didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

But she made Jack take the cow to market, a long walk down a dusty, lonely road.

“Don’t talk to strangers,” she told him. “Don’t talk to anyone. Just take the cow to market.”
So Jack did exactly what she said.
At least he tried to.

“Nice cow,” the Stranger said, a starved but nimble fellow with pale blue skin appearing instantly out of nowhere at the crossroads. But Jack wasn’t afraid. 

He just ignored him and kept walking.

“Right,” the man said. “’Don’t talk to strangers.’ Right. Good advice, that. But everyone’s a stranger at the market, aren’t they?”

“How do you know I’m going to market?”

“Well, it’s either that or you’re out walking the cow.”

Jack’s lips curled into a smile in spite of himself. He stopped and looked at the Stranger.

“What do you want?”

“I want to save you a long walk and buy your cow right now.”

Jack thought about it. 
“Why not?" he said.

“Deal,” said the Stranger.

“Not yet,” said Jack. “What’ll you give me for it?”

The man held up a sack.

“This,” he said.

“What’s ‘this’…?” 

“Magic beans,” said the Stranger.

Jack laughed and spat on the ground. He turned his back on the man and continued walking to market.

“Don’t you believe in magic?” the man shouted after him.

“No.”

“No?”

“No!”

“Look me in the eyes and say that.”

Jack turned, walked back, and looked the Stranger in the eyes. Then he spat out the words like broken teeth:

“I. Don’t. Believe. In. Magic. Satisfied?”

“Your Mother should be satisfied.”

“You shut up about my Mother! You don’t know my Mother!”

“Well, that’s your Mother talking, isn’t it?” said the Stranger. ‘There’s no such thing as magic.’ It’s what she always says, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“I see it in your eyes.”

“Yeah? What else do you see?”

The Stranger looked into his eyes.

Jack glared back with hate. He kept looking at the Stranger, looking him straight in the eyes, and he held his gaze for a very long time. The Stranger was taller, but Jack wasn’t afraid. He had his knife. The Stranger didn't seem to care. The staring contest went on for a lifetime. Until the Stranger looked finally away. 

“Just as I suspected.”

“What? What'd you suspect?"

“I can see that you’re lying.”

“About what?”

“Magic. You do believe in magic, Jack. That’s the truth.”

“I don’t believe in you, mate.”

“Don’t you, Jack?”

“How do you know my name’s Jack?”

“What else could it be?”

Jack turned his back and walked away again. 

“It’s a trick,” he said. “Some sort of trick. I’m not falling for it.”

The Stranger didn’t follow but shouted after him.

“These beans are powerful magic, Jack. Very powerful.”

Jack kept walking.

“Don’t you want to know what they can do?”

Jack kept walking. The Stranger shouted again.

“Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?”

He kept walking until he was over the next hill and couldn’t hear the Stranger anymore.

Bastard.

Poor, thin Mrs. Cow looked up at him and “Moo?”

“Shut up, you,” said Jack.

He kept walking, tears leaking out of his eyes.

Twenty minutes later, Jack turned around and ran back, dragging Mrs. Cow behind him down the road. The Stranger was still there. Just standing there. Smiling.

Bastard.

“All right … what?”

“What do you mean what?”

The Stranger’s smile grew impossibly wide.

“You know what!” Jack exploded. “What sort of magic? These beans of yours, what do they do?”

“Oh that…”

“Yes. That.”

Right bastard.

The Stranger leaned down and whispered to him.

“It’s like this, Jack. If you plant these beans by moonlight, they’ll grow up into a magic beanstalk.”

“A magic beanstalk? Really?”

“Overnight.”

“So what? What good’s a magic beanstalk? You can’t eat it. You can’t build a house out of it.”

“You can climb it.”

“And?”

“You can go places.”

“What, above the clouds?”

Jack was not so stupid as to think there was a kingdom floating above the clouds.

“No, Jack, not above the clouds. Not here, not there, not up, not down. Not on this earth. Other places. Other realms.”

“Fine. Let's say you're not lying. Your beanstalk grows. I climb it. I reach your sodding "realms." Then what?”

“Then you take back what’s yours.”

Jack knew instantly what the Stranger meant. The Giant. His father. The harp. Jack’s eyes watered up and he fought the waters down. Bastard. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mate”

“Yes, you do. You think this is your life – this filth, these rags? No. The Giant stole your life.”

“There’s no such thing as giants.”

“Right. And I suppose that ring of standing stones just danced into that field all by themselves, hmm? Don’t play stupid, Jack. Of course there are giants—any educated person knows that. One of them worked for your Father, you see. Sadly,  he didn’t want to work for your Father.”

“My Father…?”

“You’ve heard the stories, of course. What the people say.”

“What do they say?”

“Well … your Father was a thief, a pagan, punished by heaven, so on and so forth.”

“Yeah. That’s what they say, all right. I’ve heard it my whole life.”

 “Ah, but the people only say what the Giant tells them. He whispers in their dreams, Jack, and they believe him because they're weak and stupid. But I knew your Father and he was no thief. Know this: The Giant was the thief! The Giant killed your Father and stole his harp. The harp is yours by bloodright, Jack. Yours. Take it, Jack. Go up there and take it.”

“He’s a fucking giant,” said Jack.

“And you’re a giant killer. Here.”

The Stranger threw the sack of beans at his feet.

“Fight and live or despair and die. It’s up to you, Jack. And you can keep the goddamn cow.” 

Of course what the Stranger actually said was closer to, “An yae ge’a nu gekeapaen youren kine an’t hast g’habeen g’damnyed t’ye.”

But you get the idea.

The Stranger turned his back and walked away. Jack picked up the sack of beans and continued towards market with Mrs. Cow, then thought better of it, and turned around. He expected to catch up with the odd, blue-skinned Stranger on the way, and finally did.

“Here,” he said. “Take the cow. It’s only fair.”

The Stranger smiled and did just that.

Mother was furious, of course.
She knew instantly before he'd said a word. 

Where's the money, Jack? Where's ... You don't have it do you? God I knew you'd do this! I knew it! You’re just like your Father. You stupid little ...
Mother screamed and screamed. Jack stood there in the doorway looking stupid and holding the sack of stupid beans. He tried to explain. Mother snatched the sack out of his hands and threw it out the open window behind her. Then she slapped Jack across the face and sent him to bed. Jack thanked Lord Jesu that she hadn't used the cudgel. And he huddled in his bed for hours. He could hear Mother in her own bed, bitterly weeping. Jack knew she would kill him if he went outside and tried to pick up the sack of beans , so he didn’t. He just tried to go to sleep.

But the moon wouldn’t let him.

The moon was in his eyes all night, a bright, full moon. Jack had horrible dreams. Not proper nightmares. The horrors of half sleep, which are much, much worse. Then the moonlight stopped stabbing him.

He woke and saw something in front of the moon. Something big. 

A giant fucking beanstalk.

I’m mad, Jack thought, utterly mad. Some of that bad rye bread, perhaps.

Best to make the most of it, then.

Jack ran outside, kept running until he reached the beanstalk, grabbed hold, then started climbing. He kept climbing.

Until he reached the top.

Whiteness.

Fog, or something like fog.

Jack was in a different place.

Not above the clouds. He knew he wasn’t walking on clouds.

Just a different place.

It was like the land between dreams and waking, the land you went to when your mind woke up but your body stayed frozen, when your eyelids were closed but you could still see through them, when the familiar room surrounding you was the same and yet not the same, and strange floating diamonds seemed to hang in the air.

A very dreamy place, this. But Jack knew he wasn’t dreaming. This place was real. If he forgot that fact, he would die. Jack knew this, although didn’t know why he knew it. He kept reminding himself of this very important fact.

I have been here before in dreams.

I am not dreaming now. This is different.

It is possible to die here now.

When you’re here in this place in a body it’s possible to die here.

Jack kept repeating it

But he still walked through it all. 

It was a beautiful place. It was a dead, lifeless place. As if all the pretty things in all the beautiful, happy stories of childhood had died and rotted here. 

First the stepping stones of elf bones.

Then a crucified unicorn.
Then ...

You get the idea.

The horrors came in many forms. Their message never changed.

There is no such thing as magic.

But Jack kept walking.

At the end of his march, Jack followed the long, shattered spine of some dead beast that turned out to be a dragon, a strong, wise dragon that had been hacked apart and died horribly. Though Jack could see it fought like hell.

The stepping stones of its long, broken spine finally led him to the Giant’s castle. Nothing moved there. Jack studied it, then crawled under the massive door.

Jack emerged in a broken maze of translucent crystal, shining walls snaking in and out of each other, walls kicked open in places by a Giant too impatient to read the sacred pattern. Jack knew instantly that this wasn’t a castle but a temple, some sort of holy place. Or it had been a holy place once upon a time, but had been defiled long ago by the Giant and was now filled with skulls and bones and bits of dead things.

A saintly man would think of God, why is there so much evil in the world, and so forth. Jack merely wanted to vomit.

So much holiness still lingered in this place. Jack closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. Eyes shut, he saw a Being of light. The Giant cut its throat. The Being bled light and bled out until it died. The light stained the walls, stained everything. Jack could see the stains. Even when he opened his eyes, he could still see them. This place filled him with terror.

But that was a bad way to put it.

This place wasn’t terrifying. This place was terror itself. Pure terror – which was just another word for pure knowledge. Knowledge crystallized. Knowledge like a crystal knife in Jack’s heart. Knowledge about everything, including himself.

And Jack knew far too much.

Jack read the pattern in the shining walls and what he read there was himself.

And he hated what he read.

Jack was not strong. He was not courageous.

He was a boy, a little boy.

He was selfish and bad and hiding his fear.
Run! Run and hide!

But he couldn’t hide now.

Now, Jack was shaking like a chattering skeleton.
I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

That's all he ever thought about. It's the reason he did everything he did. Fear.
I don't want to die.
God, how selfish. Why shouldn't I die?
What terrified him was his rotten self.

You’re a selfish, selfish boy.

Mother was right this time. Jack clearly knew that all he’d ever thought about was himself. And yet he’d never faced ...

Jack suddenly realized that Mother had been hurt, that her spirit had been broken, but all he could ever think about was how mean she was, how she always said no. He knew that he'd added to her pain, that he was a total bloody bastard, that nothing he did was noble or pure, that he had no right to go on living. But he also knew an easy fix for that.
Jack picked up his knife and held it over his heart, quite ready to plunge it in.

It was very possible to die here.

But he didn’t plunge the knife in, after all. Jack came to the surprising conclusion that he was already dead—at least from the perspective of the children who would hear his story. Once he knew that, the shaking stopped, and that was that.

Jack really didn’t care any more.

And just when he was feeling much, much better, the Giant returned.

Roaring. Stomping. Screaming.

Holding something beautiful and struggling in its big, thick fist.

The first thought in Jack’s head?
This Giant really isn’t that big – maybe 30 feet tall or so, but not big like a mountain. 

Jack’s second realization was that the Giant was holding a delicate, fairy princess with butterfly wings. How pretty she was! Unfortunately the Giant popped the Fairy into its mouth, still screaming, and crunched down on her with loud, crackling satisfaction until the screaming stopped.

The Giant spat the bloody bones on the wall. Then it sniffed the air.

“Fe-fi-fo-fum,” it shouted.

Old Druid words.

Jack had heard them before. Quoted badly. Mangled.

“Fe-fi-fo-fum.”

But here was the source. The undistorted words of despair in the Giant’s own bloody tongue.

The Giant started chanting – a ritual curse involving grinding Jack’s bones and making bread with them. But its anger soon grew beyond words. All it could do was howl and scream and thrash about the ruined temple, mindlessly breaking things, increasing the ruin. Jack took the opportunity to crawl under a shining slab, squeezing in between all the tightly packed stinking skulls that had rolled beneath it over the years, hoping the stink would cover his own scent. Jack stayed there for hours while the Giant roared and roared and then eventually got drunk, grew tired, and fell asleep.

It snored. For a long time.

And then Jack came out.

He found the harp immediately on pure instinct.

Held it in his hands.

Gold. Who cares? 
The songs are what matters.
Singing harp they called it.

Not that it sang on its own.

Stupid peasants believe that.

But Father had told him the truth.

It lets you sing, Jack. Pure poets’ songs of light with no place for darkness to hide. The answer to every riddle. The clean bone of truth. Your truth. Everybody’s truth. Just hold it and sing. That's all you have to do.

Just hold it and sing. 

That’s all he had to do.

Jack held the harp and looked at the big, sleeping thug beast of a thing that had killed his Father. It's mouth was open. Rows of yellow teeth as big as millstones, meat and marrow stuck between them. Singing seemed like a very bad idea at the moment. But ...
Jack knew he could easily cut the Giant's throat while it slept. But holding the harp, Jack decided against it, because that would be cowardly, and nothing he’d ever want to sing about.

Instead, Jack walked to the door. Holding the harp, with all of its words and songs. But not singing. No. Not now.
Almost out ... almost.

I got away with it! Just sneak out of here like a quiet rat and its yours forever, Jack.

Jack walked closer to the massive door. Saw the gap beneath it. Just a few feet away ...

With the harp in his hand. With the pure words singing in his mind. A song. That had nothing to do with sneaking. 

And whether he wanted to or not.

Jack reached the door, and turned around.

And shouted:

“HARP FOR HARP AND SONG FOR SONG, WORD FOR WORD AND AN I FOR AN I. MY NAME IS JACK, YOU BLOODY GREAT FUCKING BASTARD, AND I’VE TAKEN WHAT IS MINE. WINE FOR BLOOD AND BONE FOR BREAD. THE SON RETURNS TO SEE YOU DEAD.”

Not particularly poetic, he thought.

But it got the point across.

The Giant roared and staggered after him. Jack ran.

He passed the Dragon’s bones and told his Father goodbye. Kept running until he came to the beanstalk.

The Giant followed, a slow, clumsy, cursing thing. Jack was quicker and cleverer. Reaching the beanstalk, Jack grabbed, let himself fall, then grabbed again. Not so hard! Mad idea, but it worked, so Jack kept it up, while the Giant roared above him. Jack would slide down, then reach out his hand to clutch a vine and break his fall at the last possible instant. Slide-clutch, slide-clutch. Continuing in this fashion, Jack reached the ground in no time. His hands were bloody, but he was down. The stupid bloody Giant wasn’t even close.

Curious, bleary-eyed villagers walked up to him. Perhaps even more stupid than the Giant.
"What's all the ruckus about, young fella?"

Jack pointed to the beanstalk.

“Cut it down, you idiots,” he started hollering. “The Giant’s coming! Can’t you hear the Giant? Cut it down!”

The villagers surrounded him, looking slightly less idiotic now, as if waking from a dream. The Giant was roaring over their heads now, but the villagers were taking their time, not wanting to do anything rash and impulsive, you know. Despite their caution, a new idea was slowly forming in their dull heads at exactly the same time. What’s making that noise? A Giant, maybe? You think that’s what the kid’s talking about? As the Giant got louder and louder and closer and closer, it became harder and harder for the villagers to deny that Jack here just might have a point.

“The fucking Giant’s going to kill us,” Jack screamed. “Cut the fucking thing down!”
The villagers barely started moving. Then stopped for some reason. Jack turned to see what they were looking at.
And saw his Mother standing there.

“There’s no such thing as giants,” she said.

“And I suppose there’s no such thing as giant beanstalks?” 
She laughed. Jack didn't hate her in that second.

He’d made her laugh. That made everybody laugh.

Her laughter broke the spell of helplessness.

Mother ran back to the old tree stump and grabbed an axe. The other villagers looted the barn for axes, blades, knives, and anything that could chop, cut and hack.

They all tromped back to the beanstalk and hacked away.

The Giant was closer. But not close enough.

The beanstalk cracked like a lightning bolt.

Beanstalk and Giant fell. It hit the ground but didn’t die right away. The Giant was a tough sort of giant after all, but it was still bloody and broken for all that. The villagers approached what was left of it with their knives, and axes and, before you knew it, cut the Giant to pieces, until he was very nearly dead, thank you very much. They gave Jack the honor of giving the deathblow, but he knew it wouldn't feel like an honor. He'd just be putting the damn thing out of its misery.

The bloody thing looked up at him.

“Jack … your Father ...”

“Fuck you,” said Jack.

Then split the Giant's skull open.

And, before you knew it, things returned to normal.

Like his Father before him, Jack returned with his harp to the circle of standing stones at the full and dark of the moon each month. He played the harp and the sacred words flowed out of him whether he liked it or not. The villagers drank his words like water and grew quiet and wise and strong and not at all stupid as they’d been before. Although there was no way to stop the children from telling stories, the now-wise adults all agreed to hide these stories from outsiders. They’d keep the true tale to themselves and tell only lies. The rest of the world didn’t believe in magic and it was best to leave it that way.

What was left of the Giant and the beanstalk soon rotted into the ground.

The stories went on.