“…and on the left is Berg Eltz,” the guide delivers the canned script from rote. His German-accented English spills from the tour bus speakers as he navigates the narrow Elzbach River valley road. “The castle has been owned by the same family for over eight hundred yea…”
Elise’s mind wanders until the even temperament of his voice only fills the background spaces in her head.
Why did she want to see castles, Prince Charming was never coming. Hell at this point the evil Prince would do. She imagined being locked in the highest turret. A plaything to be ravished beneath the full moon, her hungry bones left to wait for the next time. Her mother insisted girls like them were destined for more mundane fates with men who were far less interesting. Men like her Dad who worked his fingers to the bone, sweating blood and tears just to survive.
Unknown
The bus stopped at the end of the long stone walkway leading to the entrance of Eltz. For the next two hours, the historic castle would be her playground. Her travel companions opted for the guided tour while Elise chose to walk the halls and grounds alone. ‘Bleiben Sie hinter der Linie’, ignoring the signs she sat on the edge of the Prince’s bed. A moment later she swung her feet up and lay back. The room was much smaller than she expected but it didn’t matter. She watched the door, expecting him to walk through at any moment, no one came.
As the stopover came to an end she thought of her own smaller castle back in Omaha. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. The thought of removing her glass slippers felt liberating. Pulling them from her feet she set them on the stone wall and walked barefoot onto the bus.
At the next stop Elise sat for a moment, not sure if this was scheduled or if the bus had broken down. As she looked out over the scenic countryside, she caught movement in her periphery. Turning her head and setting her eyes on a tall, dark and extremely handsome man. He was heading right toward her while he motioned with his hands.
Unknown
“Excuse me, excuse me… I think you left these at Berg Eltz.”
She nodded.
“I need to be certain,” he said as he dropped to one knee.
She raised her leg to meet his hand and he slid the slipper onto her foot…
Spring, summer, winter, fall, rainy or dry, the seasons are born of a celestial love story.
Theia, travelling cold and alone through Sol’s domain. Oblivious to a fate inexorably tied to the maiden planet set within its path. Drawn towards the fiery sphere’s beauty, racing towards the edge of her influence not realizing he had moved beyond the point of no return. Her gravity pulling him deeper into her well, towards a climax that will devour him and knock her off kilter.
The impact tilted her axis and gave rise to Earth’s seasons. The debris from their joining spilled into the night sky. The seeds of a new life filled the space around her. Coalescing over millennia to birth a child from nothing more than a chance meeting. Their child, forever in lockstep with its mother, gentling shaping and reshaping her shorelines as it circles her.
Theia may no longer roam through Sol’s domain but his legacy lives on in the night sky. Its DNA is embedded in the Earth and the Moon, marking the months as Earth continues her journey around the Sun.
It had been a long night. The club manager demanded she stay, a plaything for some VIP clients who were looking for more than drinks and dances. Saying “No” was never an option, at least she’d earn some extra cash but it meant her boy would be alone. The sitter couldn’t stay any later, she had to get to her own job in the morning. Hopefully, he’d sleep in and not notice she was missing.
Tired, sore and feeling dirty and used she pushed on the small door that swung inwards revealing the tenement flat she called home. Exhausted, she stepped inside and as she approached him, fear flashed in his eyes. He dropped the gun on the sofa and told her he didn’t do it.
Strewn across the milk crate coffee table and old worn couch she’d salvaged from the dumpster out back lay her old photo albums. The pages were torn and set adrift in a sea of unwashed dishes, an overflowing ashtray, and other shit. Every picture had been removed and hot-glued to the furniture and walls of their one-room prison. Surreal, the scene played like a 3D movie around her. Their tiny life illuminated in the orange and yellow glow of sunrise streaming in bands through the bars of the apartments only window.
“I know,” she said. How could she be angry with him, it wasn’t his fault. Her knees buckled as a wave of guilt and shame crashed into her, taking her breath and making it difficult to draw another. She wrapped her arms around her seven-year-old miracle and began to sob.
He squeezed back and said, “It’s going to be okay Mommy. Please don’t cry.”
“Turn off the transporter beam Umek, and put this thing in cloak mode,” Temu said while shielding its six eyes and looking away from the lonely soul standing on the side of an old Earth road.
“What don’t you think he can see you?” Umek shot back, “You are a humongous moron.”
“Whatever, just get us the hell out of here!”
“Awwww, come on, he looks like he needs a lift and we could use some company. Besides, if he turns out to be a dick we can just drop him off at the next galaxy.”
“Are you nuts, we ain’t no bleepin’ Galactic Uber service. Did you not read the sign we passed about a parsec back?”
“What are the chances…”
“…that he’s a bloody axe murderer! I’d rather not find out.” Temu interrupted.
After a brief pause, Umek continued, “…where is your sense of adventure, aren’t you getting sick of being trapped in this tin can with me yet?”
I have spent a lot of time in the United States from the mid-aughts through the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency. With my children playing rep sports it seems every weekend was spent in some apple pie town for ball tournaments or some other sports-related function. I have met some great people and made lifelong friends but it is safe to say that the nation to the south of my home has always been different. A singular obsession with guns, violence, race and money is woven far more deeply into the fabric of American society than it is north of the 49th parallel.
The infiltration of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its companion illness COVID-19 brought both our great countries and in fact the entire global community to a standstill. The onset of the “China Flu” halted our frequent forays across the longest unprotected border in the world. While the majority of us adhered to mandatory quarantine and masking mandates public sentiment was turning. It has become clear that in my absence something was shifting in the machinations of Canada’s southern neighbour. The division of the Trump Administration policies continues to poison America, seeping into its very fabric.
Fast forward to 2023, with the world once again open for business. Most everyone has returned to an altered yet familiar normalcy of pre-pandemic times and our weekend jaunts to a very different America have once again resumed. My son now a young man has graduated from youth to beer league sports. Travel for him has ended, however, his sister has taken up the mantle, playing fastpitch with all the aspirations and promises of her youthful exuberance. One eye fixed on a future that could open doorways to grants and scholarships for both academic and athletic performance.
Who knows, maybe someday she will play in the Women’s College World Series, something that she and her teammates have followed closely during this trip. Gathering together in the hotel between their own games to watch women role models, not much older than they themselves playing their butts off for personal pride and the glory of their school.
My return to America was much different than my previous visits. On the surface everything seemed familiar, however, this time there was a tension I don’t recall being there before. This rendition of America is suspicious and deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white (and red and yellow and brown), donkeys and elephants, scientific discovery and fairy tales, Venus and Mars (and everything that falls on the spectrum in between).
I felt this tension in everything I observed and everyone I interacted with. The African American clerk at the Dick’s Sporting Goods store, tentative as I approached the counter until the tension was broken with friendly banter. The Latin American waitress at the restaurant seemed so timid serving tables of white customers, barely able to make eye contact with me or those at other tables, but had no problem interacting freely with people identifying from minority backgrounds. The gay Latin barkeep who wouldn’t dare talk back to an obnoxious white customer, waiting to unleash loud, harsh words about them the moment they walked out the door. At the same time starting arguments with Black customers he felt had “disrespected” him. These interactions drive home the hierarchical nature of race in American society.
Then there was the retail experience. A highlight for most Canadians heading to the States however I found it very different – almost every major outlet and even smaller stores had uniformed Security Guards at the doors. Some places, like Walmart forgo private security in favour of paid-duty police officers armed to the teeth. In small ways, it felt more like a police state than a constitutional republic ingrained with the ideals of democracy and freedom. I was flabbergasted to find that the prices which used to be so much cheaper were no longer a bargain. Most items after factoring in exchange rates were comparable to prices back home and in many cases more expensive. Many items are priced the same in USD as they would be in CAD. For a Canadian, that means incurring additional costs of about 25% to purchase the same products in the States as at home.
The only exception is gas, which by comparison is still cheap as f@ck, especially in Ohio. That is probably why the cars seemed bigger than ever. Navigators, Suburbans, Expeditions, Silverados and F-150’s everywhere. The only electric-powered vehicles I saw the entire trip were the ones with Canadian licence plates on them. Apparently, global warming isn’t a thing anymore.
I know America is the land of gun worship. Constitution, militia, amendment, yada, yada, yada, but this is the first trip where it seemed real. From the McDonalds somewhere between Detroit and Columbus where a teammate’s family stopped for lunch. Multiple TV menu boards were black and riddled with bullet holes that had rendered them lifeless. Another example was the car in the hotel parking lot, damaged and dented along the entire passenger side, The lines from scraped paint and dented metal lead the eye to a void where the rear bumper, ripped clean off the car, would normally be. From the front view, it sported bullet holes through the hood that were now operating as additional air vents for the engine block inside. The owner spent most of his time hotboxed in the back seat before returning to the hotel room and leaving the entire building stinking like skunk.
It takes time for government policies to work their way through the system and down to the grassroots levels. It seems to me the divisive nature of the Trump Republican years continues to bear pest-infested rotten fruit while the oblivious Democrat left concerns itself with social engineering pet projects. All the while, Nero fiddles away as the real fires rage on.
My observations point to an Empire at a crossroads, an aging Superpower quickly fading beyond the Western horizon while the morning Sun rises in the Far East. A politically savvy China tightly controls its media and manipulates the narrative to build goodwill and paint itself as a positive and cooperative international partner. It is an image that does not jive with the brutal nature of China’s totalitarian regime but Trump himself proved that if you keep telling the same lies over and over the truth becomes irrelevant. The pro-Beijing rhetoric has become a seemingly better option for our youth when juxtaposed against the outward dysfunction of a divided America. A disillusioned generation of Americans, of Westerners, willing to forgo freedom in favour of the red mirage. Not even a slim chance that they know they are being duped by a wolf in sheep’s clothes.
Without some sort of monumental upheaval that allows America’s factions to reconcile, find common ground and work towards a common vision all China and its allies need do is waits like vultures for The Divided States of America to destroy itself from the inside before swooping in to pick whatever scraps remain on the carcass.
Thomas sat at the table with his head in his hands, years of hard work and dedication hung in the balance.
He was still the highest-grossing salesperson in the organization, his stature legendary after 35 years of service.
They called him Easter Sunday because no one could resurrect a lost deal like he could, bringing opportunity back from the dead as if it were Jesus on the third day.
Sure, he’d been handsomely compensated for his efforts, but he’d made more money for this Corporation than anyone could count; single-handedly lifting it from its Mom and Pop beginnings to a giant of the industry.
Defunct of any reason the Director of Human Resources stared at him with shame and disgust, they no longer saw him as a giant but an out-of-touch dinosaur.
He tried to explain that it was a simple misunderstanding, the word gay had once meant happy, but it was too late, the damage was done; guilty in the court of public opinion he watched as his life swirled about the room before being flushed down the elevator and out the back door – left holding nothing but a single box of his belonging.
Mary Two Rivers stood quietly in the place along the edge of the reservation she’d come to so often, the band Chief agreeing to one last visit even as the heavy machinery roared around her.
The pain had not softened in the years since her Emily, the dark-haired girl with a spirit set alight by a spark from the Creator’s fire, had been taken.
The worn and weathered doll she’d been gifted by the widow from the secondhand shop in town, herself long since dead, marked the last known location of the girl who’d vanished some 21 years earlier.
In a few short hours, the landmarks that provided Mary with the last links to her baby’s existence would be erased in the name of progress; another girl added to the list of the forgotten.
There is an epidemic across North America that has seen tens of thousands of Aboriginal women and girls murdered or go missing. In Canada that number is about 1200 since 1980 however it is believed to be much higher as many cases are never reported or reported incorrectly. Information on Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls can be found at MMIWG.
Edelman lay on the beach basking in the glow of the midday sun. I watched the suntan oil sizzling on his skin as he explained that skin cancer was a fallacy spread by big pharma and the government. Although unclear on the motive he insisted it was connected to vitamin D production and much more sinister than profits and corporate greed.
The conversation slowly turned from conspiracy to a sales pitch. I’m not certain what he was trying to sell but he insisted that he took care of himself and explained that his vitamin D was silky smooth and creamy like milk.
“Would you like a…”
I was certain he was going to say ‘taste’ but just as the words should have been escaping his lips a couple of spry young punks kicked up sand into his face as they ran past. I wasn’t spared as the spray shot across my mid-rift and into my bikini. As I moved I could feel the grit chaff against the tits.
Edelman was spitting sand (and venom) as he jumped up and took pursuit. He was a hulking man with muscles popping out everywhere and washboard abs that would make Dwayne Johnson swoon. What a marvellous specimen I thought as I stood up. I tugged at the bottom of my bikini top while bouncing up and down. Hundreds of lucky white granules fell to the ground as the related ruckus erupted just up the beach. Those poor lads weren’t going to know what had hit them.
I picked up my towel and headed in the other direction. Sure he may have been a smoke show but thank God I wouldn’t have to hear about vitamin D any longer.
“A disguise?” Paisley queried. “You planning another job? Not this train, I hope.”
“Relax, nothing worth taking on this one,” Cassidy said as he turned to his sidekick and gestured for them to leave.
The Sundance Kid stood up, “Come on Etta, let’s get a drink while the boss talks.”
Butch and Paisley watched as Longabaugh and Place passed a drunk entering from the next car. He stumbled down the aisle, a flask of whiskey in hand. As the man got closer Paisley recognized him. Arlo Arbuckle, an old magician who’d been on the circuit for years before Paisley had arrived in the new world. Rumour had it he was once a highly regarded wizard.
Arbuckle raised his flask when he recognized Paisley. Jamison nodded back.
“He with you?” Butch asked as he watched the man drop into a seat three rows away.
“Coincidence, just an old wizard I know. He’s more about the drink than magic these days.”
Butch turned back to Paisley, “You know, I’ve done some things but I’m not getting any younger. Harry and I are looking to head south, like South America south. maybe Argentina or somewhere no one will find us. Etta’s getting tired of the fugitive life and Harry promised to settle down, maybe do some ranching.”
“So why the disguise?”
“You know, Harry will be fine but out there but the Pinkerton Detective Agency won’t let me rest.”
“So you want a new identity? Leave Robert Parker behind in America?”
“Something like that but I need to be dead or they will keep hunting. Even now they are getting ready to meet us when we disembark in New York.”
“I’m sure I can conjure up something crude to get you through the crowd undetected. Once we are somewhere I can work we can do something a little more permanent. You’ll be a new man by the time you board passage to Buenos Aries.”
“No Jamison, I need something permanent. America needs to believe that Butch Cassidy of the notorious Wild Bunch is dead or in prison. I want my end posted on the front page of every ink-stained rag in the Union.
“What did you have in mind, Butch?”
“I want you to conjure up a perfect copy of me, identical in every way. The slightest irregularity will sow a seed of doubt. When I, well my doppelganger, gets off this train the Pinkertons need to believe it’s me and the minute that unsuspecting sod flinches… well you can figure the rest out for yourself.”
“You are asking me to sacrifice another passenger? I’ve done some messed up shit Butch but even if it were possible, which it is not, I’d be sentencing someone to death out on that platform.”
“…and I’d slip out the back a changed man, free, never to rob another train or take another life again.” He placed a satchel full of enough money to take me back to Europe, or across the world to Australia on the seat across from him. I’d be able to escape the restrictive laws America places on witches and warlocks. Go somewhere I could use all of my talents. I’d be free.
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