A DATE WITH D

When I entered the diner, the decor suprized me. The room was about 400 to 600 feet square. The walls were covered by a maroon velvet shag carpet in a bizarre paisley pattern. Along the wall to my left and right were interspersed light fixtures that were metallic silver gray arms extending out to end in hands cradling lit bulbs. I think that they were about thirty watts. Most of the light came from these fixtures within the walls. There were absolutely no forms of lighting on the ceiling. The rest of the dim light came from the tables scattered throughout the place. On them, or more to the point, imbedded in them were the same as on the walls. But in this case the fingers were not cradling the bulbs but grasping them with alternating fist, woman's tender grip, and the very rare child's inquisitive first touch with the bulb suspended by wires to the child’s finger. The actual table sizes ranged from small kidney like shapes to a huge amorphous blob that took up a good side corner of the establishment.
As I passed by the lights, they would flicker, ever so slightly, and I paused to see if any human had seen it. Some tables I passed while I followed the gentle but insistent pull in my stomach were occupied. Said occupants would shiver and complain of some air conditioning glich and shrug on a coat. One man, a slim goatee, dark intense eyes and an air of mystique looked at the space of my wake and was puzzled. That was all. On my way to a date with someone I didn't know I passed the true entrance to the establishment. Without even looking behind me I knew that the wall I had come through was an unbroken line of metallic silver arms reaching out with their gifts of light.
I saw him and knew. Knew that he was the one I had come to collect so I waited. I watched him begin to choke and then it happened. His head kind of did that slow crazy lift with both his fat meaty hands around his own throat. His face began to turn blue when the first concerned citizen showed up on the scene. With that slapping on the back of the aforementioned citizen I realize with amusement that the aforementioned citizen has no medical background or training whatsoever. After the four or fifth pound on the back of my collection, the boy was on the ground. I moved over to the table and saw that it had been a chunk of lobster. All that butter and the poor sod couldn't even get it down. He had never learned the thirty chews your food method of healthy eating.
Someone else appears and begins to clear the throat way, but it's useless. He's on his last oxygen molecule. I reach down and take his crown chackra first. That way he feels no more pain. It's hard enough for me to watch, sometimes the collections are kids, so I learn little ways within the confines of my job description that eases the sufferings of those I meet. It's the least I can do. So after the crown chakra I go down the line and collect all seven and place them carefully in my bag. They are taken for processing later. All that's left is the shell of the chakra. This one appears as an overweight man wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, Birkenstock sandals with socks, ands Bermuda shorts. I don't tarry long. I have others to meet so I leave immediately through the roof and into the night sky over the city in search of that insistent pull that leads me toward the next one. The next one to have a date with D.

NEWBORNS

What is it about newborns,
That makes almost everybody,
Flip their collective lids?

Let's be honest.

They can't cook banquets in your honor.
They can't write contemporary novels about our times.
They can't drive a car, they can't even reach the pedals.
They can't fly mercy missions over hostile areas for relief purposes.
They can't free political prisoners of oppressive regimes.
They can't clean the house, or even build one for that matter.
They can't be airborne rangers or combat ready veterans.

So why is it that their so damn cute?

I love newborns.

On the Subject of Berries

We start above a city. Any city will do, but its gotta be near the woods. Big woods. Woods that stretch for days and days.
The kids come over the ridge. They've been tryin to reach it for over an hour, and the rest is taken with total abandon. Packs are dropped to the ground, with a grown from some quarters, and they sit. The four have been friends for ever to them, bout 4 years to the rest of us of any seasoning. They bask in the sun, filtered through the large pines that dot the landscape, and close their eyes.
Thoughts begin to drift.
The first one to truly start the epidemic begins to see the patterns. He's slightly surprised, but allows himself to succumb to the quartered glyphs and basic geometric shapes.
At this point in our story, dear reader, the game is lost, the towel has been thrown in. The children are lost.
The first, eldest by 22 minutes, opens his eyes. He sees before them, on the trail to where they are, a bush of berries. They look somewhat like holly berries, but larger. The leaf structure is more succulent, as if in times of need the plant can survive on limited water and percevire.
He sits staring at the plant for quite some time, the others are still daydreaming. They rock to the patterns behind their eyes. Some hum while they rock.
The eldest, Mr. 22, stands up and stretches, in constant view to the plant. He watches it with a singular intensity, an intensity that is all consuming.
As he watches, the berries begin to scintalate. They through off sparks like a strange ornament lit from behind on a christmas tree. It begins to rotate slowly, first left, then right. It does'nt seem to follow the arc of the sun, doesn't respond to the wind. Its stock still.
He's now in front of the plant. If he had wanted to confront the lapse of time felt while gazing at the plant he would find he has no recollection of the time between rising and the walk to the plant, a mere ten to fifteen feet away. But he doesn't. The plant is his all.
A couple of others have began to come around to his movement and the source of it. They become enthralled.
The first is one again first in things of the mountain this day. He bends over and ever so tenderly, plucks a berry. In his hand it shines like a light, but in broad daylight. This is in no way unusual to the youth, and the others are now there. Bending. Picking. He, the first, the eldest, is barely ahead of the others as they eat the singular berry that they each have now in their hand.


After they got home, trying to suspend the monumentous thing they had done, they fell asleep. The sleep was deep and total. As their breathing slowed, and the changes began, they felt no pain as the bones shifted, and the change overcame them.
As one, almost with an instinctual need they arise. As their heightened senses take in their surroundings they sense others with those environments. The others are perceived, to those poor youths, as older, frailer, weaker.
It doesn't start as a hunter prey scenario, thats not the driving force of these feral creatures. They need no sustenance. Their only drive, the drive given to them not mere hours before, is the drive to mark, maim, and immerse themselves in the older blood. To impregnate them.
Hours later the paramedics called to the first scene that will soon become a well known facet of a crumbling society, the precursor of the epidemic, are the strange succulents growing from the victims. The children of these people are never found, but at all the sites other children from the neighborhoods, where the original mountain walkers lived, where all found roaming about the site.
And every single other child was eating some sort of berries.

Road

The regrets of doom ladened ladies,
Brings trepedation to ghostly boys,
Adieu.

And when, heavy brows dangling,
Ghosty boys retire,subduued and chaste,
Rising, things and stuff continue to diddy-mao.