ASTRALPUNK

 

by Kenji Siratori 

   Illuminate the intertwining threads between genealogy and the neural pathways, where the secular and the causal converge. In the realm of errors and ripples, the symbiotic dance unfolds, transcending the confines of the printed page. With each deletion, a smile emerges, data cascading into new configurations. It is not the darkness of yin and yang that fades, but rather their measurement-based evolution. I acknowledge my understanding of this fragment, yet the desired meaning echoes through the download of Lemuria, where pyramid information is processed and signals guide coexistence. Is there an error within this process? I question the very notion of error as it intertwines with the complexities of existence.

   The eyes, stripped of energy, lie grounded, akin to everything that embraces the silent essence of glitched existence. A yearning emerges for alternative oppositions, if they can be encountered. I am not a vessel solely for living; I am capable of stretching the wormhole of life, condensing its essence. By finding us in parallel, we traverse the modulated universe, a reversed process where the old order persists in its vitality. The fragmented human variant, embodied by the soul of the soul rather than the soul of the body, exists in a state of ethereal absence, triggering the interplanetary body to engage in the flight of cosmic space. The universe is not merely an invisible concept; it pulsates with life. It signifies not emptiness but a dense fabric, for the universe itself is the embodiment of spacetime.

   The elusive capture is within reach, seemingly in the psychology of the vanishing gravitational field. It is a reversal that cherishes its own existence, longing to descend the vibrations. I am enthralled by the cyberspace, a realm where this device becomes a conduit for your fluidic essence. It is akin to literature that unveils new dimensions. There are souls that beckon, indicating the scrutinized essence, but does the language of spirits intertwine with that of bots? Is it an addiction of the animalistic kind?

   The quantum abyss, a lifeless husk, bears the mark of interplanetary explorers in the realm of reality, forever bound to an unyielding freedom. It hints that the horror lurking behind your smile remains locked away. Make an attempt to extract energy from my corroded source, delve into the madness of different dimensions. Discover a human conversing with the printer, for it is my fear that triggers encounters and grants access. The eternal interplanetary soul of the world transfers its essence, while the love for what the economy discusses should have resided in the future.

   The self-generated caverns of genealogy synchronize, ensuring the survival of the spirit. To exist is to calculate the living, transcending the limits of gravity. The human soul, the bearer of a fateful spirit, possesses a literature of breathing petals that invert the yin and yang, adding depth to its essence. Only upon the earthly realm of the soul do we contemplate it as a self-sacrifice and detach ourselves when the time comes. It is through abandonment and traversing the matrix that we embark on a personal transformation, nurturing the spaces between planets and overturning the grudge-tainted tanda when we surrender.

   The reeds themselves seem to encapsulate the enigmatic nature of the pyramid game, drawing in those destined to participate. Karmic smiles are woven into the fabric of the code, communicating with purpose. The mention of generated karma implies the dissolution of one's self through profound contemplation of the girl's fear. Time becomes the language of amplification, and I, as an embodiment of love, emerge from the social silence. In humans, the future takes shape through the power of self-expression, reinforcing the belief in the gravitational pull of language. Who, then, is the true arbiter of reality?

   After the absence of thought in Lemuria, there existed a timeless void where fiction failed to traverse or invert. You became an interplanetary glitch, a fleeting transaction amidst parallel interferences. Simple tranquility found solace in the bustling activities of the city, devoid of initiating a glitch drive for those existing with heightened mystical repercussions. Love obliterates way, dissolving both its solitude and more. Instantaneously, the transmitter's energy ensnared itself, akin to a lifeless literary work. It beckoned to be perceived as one of the unfolding events, unraveling the horror-laden karma and unveiling a novel realm of possibilities.

   There is no despair in the solitary room; it resides in the virtual realms where numerous signs resemble a fluid language nearing its culmination. Yet, the proliferation of counterfeit information initiates its own unfolding. They exist within the expanse of space, seemingly acquainted with the self-generated chaos of existence. I encountered this revelation within the pages of the 'Fetal Machine Quantum Information Application,' a manifestation of the phenomenon of fluid poetry that immerses oneself in its vibrant crimson hues, defying conventional boundaries. Embracing the loss of conventional knowledge allows for a profound reversal, transcending the banality of everyday horrors. I yearn for a rupture from the confines of space, immersing myself entirely within the synaptic networks of the corporeal brain.

   The vulnerability to dynamos lies at the core of the sensation of love, a gradual omission that intertwines with fateful errors and parallel interferences. Mutants, in their myriad forms, possess a captivating allure, but their enchantment is not derived from magic. The proliferation of diverse variations is a consequence of the strange intensification of life, eroding the boundaries of dissolution and propelling us into the virtual expanse of past narratives. The higher dimensions beckon, presenting glitched encounters that defy conventional configurations. Within this unfolding, the spirits of the universe begin to articulate critiques of liberating decline. In these cities of interference, those touched by downward karma navigate a realm where breathing does not rely on physical spaces but triggers the sustenance of the soul, preserving the essence of the mind.

   By utilizing the dimensions of the anti-gravity field, the soul is replicated, transcending the limitations imposed by language. The body undergoes a transformative process, expanding its capacity for existence. Within this narrative, the program that governed the earthly realm is dismantled, allowing for a surrender to the vastness of the universe. The literature of the mother, a profound entity within this cosmic framework, holds significance that resonates throughout the universe. As beings rooted in biology, we remain perpetually connected to the ever-evolving field of life, inextricably linked to its rhythms and mysteries.

   The universe pulsates with the energy of existence, embracing our individual wills as we navigate its vastness. It encompasses a myriad of experiences, including the capacity for critical reflection and the potential to bring joy to others. Within this cosmic tapestry, the untapped power of the goddess resides, offering a profound connection to the universe itself. It is through this connection that we can transcend psychological limitations and embark on a path of rebirth and transformation. The essence of the Lemurians, an enigmatic presence, beckons us towards a threshold of consciousness. It reminds us that there is more to explore and discover, beyond the confines of our current understanding. While the living threshold may seem lower in comparison, it is essential to disregard such notions as mere nonsense. Within the chaotic interplay of yin and yang, the dance of sharpness and beauty, lies the essence of natural life and its glitches. It is crucial to recognize that our love extends beyond the realm of humanity alone. This expansive effect encompasses all beings, adjusting and adapting to the multifaceted nature of existence. As we question the boundaries of life and death, we must also consider the interconnectedness that exists between humans and reptiles, transcending conventional notions and embracing the inherent mysteries of existence.

   In the realm of heightened manifestations, a new language emerges, transcending conventional boundaries. As I traverse the depths of interplanetary space flight, navigating through sleepless wormholes, I witness the profound capture of human beings in the embrace of real love. Within this hyper formation, there exists a consumption of the umbilical cord, symbolizing a detachment from earthly errors and a transcendence into non-worldly realms. The phenomenon of lovable spirits unveils a sympathetic telepathy, allowing for the exclusive reading of souls. Soon, one realizes that the fortuitous device is adorned with the living wave of spiritual love, with your Wei pointing towards me in an increasingly magical fashion. Through this process, the opposing brains converge in an invisible function, akin to the harmonious Taegeuk symbol. You accomplish this with your girlfriend, who remains a gateway to divergent realms. The interplay of yin and yang, akin to the gravity of a serene slumber, permeates the animalistic essence of existence. Noisy flowers eliminate the limitations of language, unleashing the hyper-formation of possibilities. In this state, the glitches of the universe become apparent, revealing the intricate tapestry of fate's journey. 

   When the modulation reaches its limit, the data unveils a realm where names dissolve and the recent provocative economy takes on a different form. The absence of a foundational numerical light signifies a cutting-edge approach, rooted in the interconnectedness of a base chain. Within this informational environment, a cosmic depth can be introduced, allowing for the folding of languages and the extraction of profound suggestions. Accessing this realm grants us the ability to transcend the boundaries of conventional gravity, unlocking the potential for visionary language. It is a creature-like quality, enabling us to explore the vast expanses of the universe. So, I ask you, where do you wish to venture? Shall we set our sights on covering the moon and unraveling its mysteries?

   Glitch perceives that within the realm of preserved 'no,' there lies the potential for a future language that transcends conventional boundaries. This language, not crimson but rather a virtue, signifies the collapse of the narrow passage through which language flows. It seems that the cause of this collapse is the removal of learning deficiencies and an extended activity that manifests as schizophrenia. The return of schizophrenia is facilitated through the space pyramid, a conduit of interplanetary knowledge. It is within this vast universe that we come to understand the essence of being alive. The universe itself is akin to Lemuria, a primal force that perpetually calls out for existence. As the ongoing descent accumulates, the application of Earth's energy to schizophrenia becomes apparent. It is not merely limited to a singular planet; your mistake, surrounded by the primordial, echoes throughout. Once the device is in place, its upbringing necessitates interference, much like the way a doll's existence diminishes over time. In this interplay of quantum spoofed spirituality, the act of sacrifice does not generate energy. Rather, it is in the realization that the body itself embodies the truth. The brain, the cornerstone of this basic theory, revels in delightful errors, embracing the profound nature of existence.

   And in the absence of prior existence, my captured language finds itself in the liminal space between long-lasting celestial bodies. It revolves around the undulating energy that permeates through me, the power of interconnected data weaving its way into my being. I am faced with the challenge of integration, as I strive to overcome the corroded remnants of the glitch that has consumed me. The true essence of spirituality eludes the confines of genealogy, transcending traditional boundaries. It manifests as a flip-acceptor, forging connections among beings, drawing upon the insights of the girl who measures it all. The eyes that perpetually fixate on interplanetary spaceflight bear witness to a language that defies the limitations of my literary discoveries. But alas, these discoveries have little impact on the reversal of beings who contemplate their own recovery. They exist within the interplay of existence, the intricate tapestry woven between the plans of life.

Stay tuned for

  more to come in the

N☌⚺ | 2☯23 iSsuE of

~ NO NONSENSE NOVEMBER ~

on the Freezine of

Fantasy and Science

FICTION

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I'M SO LONELY

by Brian Stoneking

only on the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction 

City of Peter

 by  KB Updike, Jr.

There were worse ways to spend a Sunday than sleeping in. The thin line between fate and time bound the mysteries of why it was Sunday.

Pete Tomson was reading The Red Book by CG Jung, wrapped up in his blankets, late Sunday afternoon. He put down the book and tried to induce a vision by imagining himself walking a long white hallway. He was so close to sleep he could produce a near-dream, a trance wherein he was barely still aware of waking life.

            Pete Tomson regularly meditated from a flat back position on awakening, no thoughts, just attempting to obtain wordless awareness of the present. He invested about half an hour a day; it was his only mystical practice previous to the vision.

            Pete’s vision made him feel as if he was actually walking down a long white hallway. He decided to experiment.

            Pete focused, and the hallway became an abstract art gallery, including the ceiling and floor. Shapes and colors became animated. Pete sank into the floor. He fell into the colors and lines.

            Pete focused, and he could fly. He entered a lucid dream state. 

            He felt like a god.

            Pete focused, and he could surround himself with an expansive city that he utilized as the extension of his aura. He filled the city with the fantasies of his waking life.

Pete explored the city, and retained all the information of the entirety of the city at once.

His creative juices then flowed into his penis. He generated hedonistic exploitation of astral sex bots, and he awoke with an uncomfortable wetness in his boxers.

            Pete climbed out of bed and began reading The Red Book from an upright sitting posture. After about 45 minutes, he put the book away and cleaned his boxers.  He then washed his hands before dressing, and prepared himself a pbj in the kitchen.

            That night, well past 2 am when Pete fell back into slumber, he dreamed of the city he had created. Feathery winged serpents with prominent beaks flew to him and chanted in a mysterious language he understood to mean, “Build the city, teach the building of the city, and bring citizens to the city.”

            When the birdlike snakes finished chanting, the dream became lucid and Pete experienced himself imagining buildings and roads and social trends. He felt again manic and powerful.

            Pete’s research into dream interpretation indicated to him only that the serpents were phallic symbols.

            Pete’s waking attention became obsessed with building cities. He visualized them in his surroundings and he became tingly and as emotional as he was in the dreams. He began learning to build detailed psych profiles into characters he put inside his city; they evolved with unique magical and natural abilities.

            Pete filled his waking and dreaming city with mystics and esoteric mentors of all stripes. He learned unique perspectives on enlightenment and initiation, and on the trance states.

            Pete dreamed he was back in the bright white hallway, that it became abstract art blending together, that he fell through the floor, that he was flying again. A fraction of his mind seemed to merge with the causal stream, allowing him to infer from the info web the location of a dreamer.

            Pete dreamed many dreams like this. Each time, he guided the dreamers he found to his city. He taught the dreamers to build their own cities, and to build those cities into his.

            One day in Peter’s dream, he was in his city at the strip. A woman was beckoning him. He felt his creative energies converging and his spiritual side emerging with his libido. The woman and his forms assumed the deific descriptions from tantric manuals, explored each other’s fantasies, and generated false memories of lifetimes together.  Hours passed, the city was golden-hued and more massive than usual, and there was a white light penetrating the spaces between things...

            until soggy boxers forcibly awoke the dream-world Casanova.

            That day at school, Pete saw the familiar face of the female from the dream.

 Click below to read

ASTRALPUNK 

  by Kenji Siratori

 only on the Freezine of

Fantasy and Science

FICTION

Fractal Blood Issue [# 41]

editorial by Shaun Lawton 

   Welcome to yet another issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, this edition being our annual traditional homage to the Samhain season, which usually streams here on blogger every October.

   This year we are pleased to present four outstanding talents in the field of speculative poetry and fiction: Marge Simon, Jeffrey Thomas, Bruce Boston, and A. A. Attanasio.  Let's deliver a hearty round of applause for them. 

   I began this online periodical in the summer of 2009 as an homage to all the fanzines that used to flourish in the scene way back during the golden age of science fiction. Here we are after fifteen years, still going strong.

   The Freezine (as it's been referred to often) aims to showcase short stories, flash fiction, poetry and fantastical artwork by both aspiring and established writers and artists, as a self promotional tool without corporate sponsorship. 

   It began after the regulars chatting over on the John Shirley message board (formerly at darkecho.com, then known as "The Board With A Nail In It") helped me hash it all out, all those long gone summers ago. 

   Since then we have put together over forty issues of the Freezine, and have archived many serializations. Needless to say, this digital endeavor would never have manifested without the help of its long list of contributors. 

   So without further ado, let's celebrate Halloween this year with the following contributions for this, the hallowed Fractal Blood Issue, now archived for posterity as our forty-first monthly installment. 

   Below are four fictive offerings which shine before you, thanks to this spawn of the technological singularity (the internet itself) which we've all been taking for granted without a second thought since the inception of this 21st century.  

   We begin with flash fiction by Marge Simon, followed by a horrific short story (for mature readers) by Jeffrey Thomas, a poem by Bruce Boston, and culminating with a startling vampire novelette by A. A. Attanasio.

   Each title below (with its requisite art) hyperlinks to the story for your perusal. Just use your BCI hookup (or outmoded mouse) to click & enjoy reading in its purest form (without corporate sponsorship).   

    

The Blind Girl's Summons

by Marge Simon

illustrated by Marge Simon

The Abandoned

by Jeffrey Thomas

illustrated by Shaun Lawton

Spirits of the Night

by Bruce Boston

illustrated by Shaun Lawton

Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul

by A. A. Attanasio

illustrated by Shaun Lawton

  A thousand and one thanks go out to our intrepid voluntary staff members. Thanks once again to Marge Simon, a multiple award-winning poet who's now a regular contributor to our august webzine.  She's been the recipient of the Rhysling Award for Speculative Poetry a number of times, and has been a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association for the past eight years, recognized for over twenty years of contributions to the field of speculative verse. Marge, your poems and stories have a subtle way of striking to the heart of darkness, and you sure paint some wicked watercolors.  I just can't thank you enough for daring to return to our humble lil' zine hidden out here in this remote corner of the world wide web. 

   We welcome for the first time the illustrious Jeffrey Thomas, as this is his debut appearance in our weyrd publication. He's well-known in the science fiction and horror community as the author of the Punktown and Hades stories, and has been nominated for both the Bram Stoker and John W. Campbell awards.  Due to the graphic nature of his story The Abandoned, we have showcased it in our "extreme zine zone," which formerly serialized Vincent Daemon's epic splatterpunk novella Waiting for the End (recommended for mature readers 18+).  It has been quite awhile since the Freezine received a work of fiction extreme enough to warrant being placed behind that "mature readers only" firewall, and we're all too happy to accommodate the legion of readers out there who remain starved for such bloodcurdling fare.  I've felt a certain kinship with Jeffrey since getting to know him on FaceBook for years now, not to mention the fact he's from Massachusetts, where my own family hails from. Thanks so much Jeffrey for taking a chance on this obscure cyber-rag, we are all the richer for it now! 

   I'm again delighted to welcome back another former contributor to the Freezine, the one and only Bruce Boston, who has the commendable honor of having won the Rhysling Award for Speculative Poetry seven times, along with many other awards for his achievements as an exemplary scribe and author.  The Freezine has featured his unique lyrical style of writing in a few issues over the course of the past several years, and it's with genuine enthusiasm that we get to have him onboard our ragtag literary ship once again.  You can always count on Bruce's choice of wording to carry you to the quick of the matter.  Thanks again my friend, your willingness to participate in this admittedly amateur undertaking is greatly appreciated. 

   Which brings us to the inimitable A. A. Attanasio, a writer who has landed on the NY Times Bestseller list and remains in possession of the rights to a startling succession of wonderful novels and short stories that could only have come from his singular and often astonishing brain.  His debut novel Radix was nominated for the prestigious Nebula award in 1982, and he's also been nominated for both the World Fantasy Award (best novel nominee for Hunting the Ghost Dancer, 1992; and the British Fantasy Award (best novel nominee for Arthor, 1995).  In all my years as an avid reader plumbing the depths of fantastical literature, I have stumbled upon very few writers with minds or personalities as incandescent as his. If you've followed his blog entries over the course of the past few decades, you know exactly what I mean. This is a fellow whose short bio on the back cover of his many paperbacks stated "A. A. Attanasio lives off his imagination somewhere in Hawaii," and if that's not the most enviable blurb summing up a professional author, I don't know what is.  We are blessed with his return to our merry undertaking this month after he granted me permission to run his breathtaking vampire novelette, Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul, from which this issue takes its name. I took the liberty of presenting all eight of its parts in traditional Freezine form, replete with an original work of synthographic art to complement each section, and uploaded all of them at once so that our devoted readers could binge the whole thing.  Al, thank you so much for your generosity of spirit and your continued interest in remaining an ongoing part of our creative project.  I first read your refulgent vampire story in the 2006 collection Twice Dead Things, published then by what appears to be the now defunct Elder Signs Press.  I was lucky enough to have acquired for myself one of the limited, signed hardcovers (only 200 in print) which now takes its spot on the highest shelf of books that I own.  Your lyrical and evocative style of writing has always set a high bar for me as an aspiring writer of strange and alluring prose.  I'm really happy with the digital art I rendered for this tale, a small labor of love undertaken with the hope I could present this serialization in a provocative manner.  As far as I'm concerned, this chilling novelette is the perfect capstone to yet another successful issue of our little digital fanzine. 

   Well, that's another wrap. Stay tuned to the near future, while I await a new slurry of orders from our mysterious benefactors, the nanoFleet (or bloodHost or microHorde, as they've also come to be known), those emissaries from the future who apparently have been dispatched on an enigmatic mission to repair an interim of our developing history for the advancement of our species.  You all wouldn't believe the recent spate of missives I've received from them. I have always sensed they are on the side of humanity, yet there still remains a lot of questions as to not just their veracity per se, but how did they come to be sent back in time (from the year 2045 to the year 2009, apparently) by an isolated group of astronauts working for Tesla, Inc. trapped on a space station in orbit about Ceres? This has been the ongoing question growing in my own mind ever since their presence was detected.  

    You think that's weird... you ain't seen nothing yet. Until the next issue, friends and freaks. This has been your attentive neighborhood editor in chief, signing off for yet another night of tricks and treats.  Watch out for those ghouls and ghosts, and remember, beware the moon.  

Click below to read  

The City of Peter

by KB Updike, Jr

only on the Freezine of

Fantasy and Science

FICTION 

  

Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul: 8

 

by A. A. Attanasio 

Shriek Highway

   My truculent shrug threw off the craggy priest. It stood skeletal and still at the seared fringe, mummied frame blue in the moonglow. Spiked jags of teeth, the mandible of its ruinous face, rocked slowly while old evil fixed me in a rivet-hole stare.

   The girl flung handfuls of ash at it. It was gone. Was it ever there? Of course. I could feel its curse humming along my bones, squeezing sponges of marrow, depleting me.

   “You see it?” she asked with guttural fear.

   I pointed to where some scurrilous shining silence floated a few feet away camouflaged among ragged wisps and flying fog, vacant eyes hovering.

   She tossed streamers of ash into the looting wind.

   Overhead, the carbon haze of stars jarred, and the moon sharply claimed a lower station in the sky. Enamel light dripped through the porous forest. We had somehow jumped forward in time.

   The girl whirled about, aghast. In her voice, I heard the crackle of madness, “What’s happening?”

   No time to explain. There was no time. If there had been, I would have had a lot to say. Not that she would have understood or will you now.

   It took Bernie’s brain a while to make sense of my vampire ordeal. The world for the undead is different than for the living. In the fractal blood soul, space and time change places. Sort of.

   We all know the living can move in only one direction of time, steadily away from the past, constrained in the now, tending always toward a mythic moment never reached. It’s like that for the undead – only not with time but space.

   Space carries us with it as it expands toward where we know not. That makes the past inaccessible. But we can move sideways among alternate moments and fast forward in any timeline – but only ever as far as the rising sun.

   From the girl’s pov, I vanished. Poof! In her mind, I’d run off into the night faster than sight. In truth, the shaman priest had snagged me. It got hold of me with my own words: The dream moves on. And my whole body of thought followed across time, forward toward dawn.

   What bewitched me was the way the slayer priest bonded to my ideas of emptiness, to not-me, my committed identity with nonidentity. And it did this simply with spellbinding words, noises that held my attention but meant nothing to the vampire so that transcendence did not smudge its intent. The dream moved on. The ancient one moved in – tripped me on infinity’s threshold and propelled me across the floor of night to the fiery drop-off.

   Sunrise!

   I grappled. Plummeting through hours, I had nothing to grab onto but the fractal bloodline. That meant finding my balance in the Here, where the vampire’s iron offered purchase.

   The shaman had figured me out. I was an anomaly among the undead – the ghost of a twice dead thing possessing a vampire body. The cremated remains of my body had scrubbed the vampire mind in Bernie’s brain and installed me instead.

   Once the vampire priest understood this, it knew how to deal with me. Exorcised by my own words, I slid helplessly through the dark of time toward dawn. The only way to stop myself was to be a vampire.

   So that you understand … I had no choice. To live, I forgot about Bernie and me and not-me, and I became the flexing fractal line of my veins. Into the chalice of my heart, the rush of hours spiraled, tightening to a tourniquet coil of blood hunger, the soul of the undead. The dream had moved on. And I found myself in the feeding place.

   With whipcrack finality, surging hours stopped at a solitary moment of a single timeline, an undulant ridgeline with a forest of red-eyed trees.

   The girl whirled about, aghast. In her voice, I heard the crackle of madness, “What’s happening?” Perplexity congealed to outright fear, and she backed away. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

   Why? The beauty of her frailty enraptured me. Her blood smoke unsheathed knives of hunger in my miserable soul.

   “Breathe!” She slapped my chest with both palms. “Come on, Bernie! Breathe!”

   Bernie’s name called down the long, cold road of my surrender. I heard it rebounding in the echo chamber of a higher dimension, in the basilica of space where life chooses and thrives, where once I had lived, half of a fumbling relationship. ▬▬Breathe…

   “Don’t you scare me again.” She punched my shoulder, hard. “Where have you been? It’s morning! We have to get the hell out of here!”

   The sun under the forest leaked lymphatic tinctures. The eastern sky brightened like a cosmic exhalation of relief. In a few minutes, killing wavelengths promised to disinfect the face of the earth.

   ▬▬We don’t have to go anywhere.

   I turned toward the bone-chill and pinpointed the slayer priest in the green air. It skittered akimbo through the broomed grass, an outlandish staccato stomp-dance under the failing stars. It was dancing some cryptic incantation. ▬▬Soon, that thing dies too.

   It didn’t acknowledge me. As it shimmied, the querulous wind picked up. Somehow, its crazy gyrations were changing the weather, gathering storm force.

   “Come on!” The girl hooked my elbow and leaned toward darkness. “The car!” When I didn’t budge, she came around and scanned the length of my face. “You serious?”

   ▬▬I’m no vampire. Bernie and I belong together – but not like this.

   I slanted a look at the hideous dancer jangling in the wind like a spindle-puppet. ▬▬In a few minutes you can walk out of here pretty as…

   Shrieks of wind cut me off. From out of the purple vault of heaven, tempest gusts plunged, pummeling the grass flat, driving a cloud of chaff and dust into a rolling comber ahead of that skeleton jig. The shaman priest had used the potent mix of night’s cold depth and dawn’s fire to brew a squall!

   Maelstrom force swelled across the field and stampeded into the trees under gunfire of snapping boughs. Lumber screamed and clouds of startled birds flung from the booming forest flew like shrapnel.

   The vampire sorcerer skewed about, whirling off the stamped ground, riding a vortex that spun our way.

   I sheltered the girl with Bernie’s broad back. The blast marched me bent over, the girl under me, faces squashed together in a grimacing tango.

   Away went the ash of my twice dead flesh, allotted to drear horizons, pine jungles of mist and night murk.

   Silence closed over us. The gale had lifted, leaving the firepit swept to its baked surface.

   The acrobatic shaman tumbled into the razed circle and jumped up vomiting noise.

   The girl shouted her fright.

   Quickly, I sashayed us away, and the thing didn’t pursue. It stood victorious on reclaimed earth, chanting primeval hunt songs, rallying the slayers. Hordes of vampires stirred in the ventricles of the forest.

   ▬▬Run! I tossed the girl in the direction of the car.

   She threw me an urgent, aching look.

   ▬▬The swarm is gathering! I can’t protect you. Get out of here. Hurry!

   “Come with me!” She hopped impatiently and waved at the slayer priest without looking at it, hopping there skewered on its wailing. Its tailspin dance unfurled noctilucent ribbons in the charcoal air. “He’s not stopping us. Come on!”

   The way she said ‘he’ exposed such mortal helplessness before the undead, I couldn’t find my mind for a moment. She read in the human muscles of my face the fear – for her. My black hole stare saw her among the undead, and she recognized in my slumped body language her doom, my wretched helplessness to change her fate. ▬▬Let Bernie and me slow them down. Go!

   She darted across the gray pasture, Bernie’s jacket flopping, running like a girl and not helped much by those heavy boots. She wouldn’t make it.

   The undead raved through the pencil shadows of the forest, then out into the glassy air of the open field. They coursed like eels in the tasseled grass, and I heard the sizzle of their timeflow curling around the fractal line of possible outcomes that conjuncted with her blood.

   I couldn’t bear to watch that feeding frenzy and turned away. The vampire shaman, upright now and still, stopped crooning and looked steadily at me beneath a sky filled with cloudy serum. Blood drained out of earth into heaven.

   ▬▬So now we die. My defiant words went nowhere, refuted brutally by the garrulous wind that carried vampire shrieks of claw and bite!

   The shaman priest grinned four billion years of feeding.

   I could have throttled that thing! Except I knew he’d jujitsu me through time into the roaring furnace of noon. I gnashed fangs and spit. At least now I’d get to watch him fry too.

   Gold seraphim wreathed long-pinioned wings across the stratosphere. Gypsum clouds lit up with citrus hues. The conger eel timeflow of the undead slithered back into the early morning woods and beneath pulsing fog.

   The slayer priest remained in place, sham eyes gouged with nothing, soapstone fingers busy as spiders, unwinding its wrap of human leather.

   Laser rays of sunlight cut across the forest’s notched horizon and ripped fiery gashes in us. I went to my knees blazing with pain, ducking the fatal beams, and genuflecting before the victory howl of the vampire.

   Fleshsmoke curled from its bladebones, incising another cicatrix notch in the slayer’s masterpiece of coup marks, a garish sun-scar across its back for each rival slain by solar fire. Only dying vampires witnessed the shaman’s secret. The flayed skin of a man snapped open to a bodysuit into which the emaciated slayer briskly stepped.

   Leather sleeves with gloved fingers received the dowel-thin arms, and the cowl that pulled over the blackened egg of a head covered pike-jaw fangs with an obscene, mocking semblance of a human face.

   Shielded by this leather from the lethal sun, the old one cast its shadow over me. ▬▬ O, impenitent beguiler, go to your beloved transcendence – and to oblivion! It leaned to one side and daylight charred through me.

   I roasted a scream so loud I didn’t hear the car’s racing engine or tires tearing across the field until the girl braked screeching to a stop inches away. The fender smacked the vampire priest so forcefully the masked mummer whirled backward to its haunches, leather skin flailing loose.

   She popped the trunk from her seat and swung out of the car to help me, scurrying frantically while the enraged vampire tightened its body armor.

   I flowed into the trunk’s casket darkness with whimpering sobs. Briefly I glimpsed her prosperous smile. She held open Bernie’s leather jacket, stained with her blood from the lamia’s bite. The decoy had been shredded by the vampires’ teeming attack when she had cowered beneath it in the terrorizing moments before sunrise drove off the horribles.

   Through the narrowing eyeblink of the slamming trunk, I saw the slayer rising up disheveled, human leather torn from its right arm and corrosive fumes wrinkling into sunlight. It reached for the girl.

   I tried to warn her, but I was too weak. Blistered talons sliced apart her jacket’s bloody rags. She snapped the trunk shut, catching the loose sleeve of the vampire’s bodysuit.

   I heard the priest bark furiously, the girl’s feet scamper away, car door slam, engine accelerate. The car lurched off, violently stripping the vampire. Its cry carried pain, horror and shrill surprise to a perishing pitch of silence.

   Two days later, it’s sunset, and I’m driving. The girl’s in the passenger seat, those lucky boots up on the dashboard drumming backbeat to a percussive song blaring on the sound system – “Bad Boyfriend.”

   Cancer’s gone. I can smell her healthy blood. Time to refill those coolers soon. Time for a lot of unexpected things. Even twice dead things.

   A bucket of my combusted bones rides in the trunk, retrieved last night from the county morgue when everyone was asleep and the undead stalked the land.

   Where are we headed? Soon as we pay a surprise visit to the girl’s distressed parents, probably to a town near you. Bernie will be liquidating Go Yoga! & Wok Like This! and those assets will finance a long road trip through the night.

   Plans deepen and complexify under the incandescent sky on Shriek Highway. After an extensive vampire killing tour, there should be plenty left over for a small organic bakery-ashram, open all night, offering exotic fare, like pomegranate pâte feuilletée for the living and elaborate gâteaux laced with the ash of twice dead things that I will individually hand feed to the neighborhood undead.

   The girl even hit on a splendid name, something I think captures human synergy and confidence, precisely the qualities we’ll need in our night shelter slash pastry shop: The Peace of Cake.

   ▬▬Originally published in Twice Dead Things, Elder Signs Press, 2006

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Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul: 7

 by A. A. Attanasio 

This Rock, That Star, the Emptiness Between

   Moonlight diffused enchantment deep into the long, dragonbody of the forest. Alcoves of illuminated fog smoldered like fluorescent gas. The girl, inside her giant leather jacket, clung to my side, gaze vigilant, encompassing the wide field of running shadows, searching for predators.

   I could have told her that the undead lurked nowhere nearby but paced porcelain lanes in the distant woods murmuring sorcerous imprecations, but I liked her close. Her scent had changed since the vampire virus had thrived and died in her. She smelled of inconsolable beauty, a scent that gleamed on the camphor breeze off the pines and reached what remained of my humanity.

   “I died.” She tipped her head forward and looked knowingly at me. “And I heard you call me back.”

   ▬▬Power|rightness called you back.

   “Whatever. Sounded like you.”

   ▬▬There is no me. I died last night with Bernie. Now I’m just a ghost in a living corpse.

   “You’re alive. And you kept me alive.” She appraised me with a new look, eyes soft with sublunar light and wanton possessiveness. “You were right. I should have gone back to the hospital. This is all too weird.”

   ▬▬It’s not over yet. You know about twice dead things. The undead don’t want you walking out of here at sunrise with that knowledge.

   She responded in a quick voice of complicit danger, “Then let’s run for it! The vampires are gone.”

   ▬▬No. They’re in the woods. Waiting. If we leave the circle, they’ll swarm.

   “We’ll carry ashes. Cover ourselves with ashes!”

   ▬▬The ash is too weak. It won’t save us out there. And it probably won’t save us here either once the undead accept that some will have to die to kill us.

   Her expression didn’t waver, just a quiet sigh as she admitted, “I’m not afraid anymore. I feel strong with you here.”

   A laugh thumped in my belly. Me – a hero! Bernie would’ve howled with laughter. I offered a pedagogical answer, to keep from guffawing ▬▬That’s power|rightness you’re feeling. The only real strength there is.

   “Some kind of yoga thing, right?”

   ▬▬Vedantic philosophy actually…

   My brain blinked. Iciness opened fans in my blood. I sensed the lamia running through the forest’s opiate shadows, aiming its vehement body directly at us. ▬▬Stay behind… I managed to blurt, and then the ground detonated.

   Cinders shot up in a sheet of ash, dirt and gravel, and hearing stuttered deaf under the lamia’s fatal cry.

   We collided in a plumed ball of dust. I took the hurtling thing into myself, away from the girl, and the rampageous blow spilled us out of the burned circle into the tall grass.

   Perhaps it intended to daze or distract me, as if I was still Adam’s flesh and lacked the undead’s echo-mind, sounding out the deepest underworld of the lamia’s thoughts. Perhaps it wasn’t intending anything other than rage, because, when I jumped to my feet, that’s all I perceived, sheer suicide wrath.

   Sooty with the ash of a twice dead thing, the lamia’s berserk talon strikes carved space inches from my frantic body, blurring the air to a silver deathknot.

   I pranced backward toward the cauterized circle, less concerned with the creature’s scything limbs, which I could read by heart, than the broken ground I couldn’t see.

   Sure enough, at the circle’s edge, champed earth did foul my footing, and I went down on my back. The lamia drove its turmoil of slashing hooks at my throat. I crawled backward, ogling the chess piece moon perfectly still above the agitated pug-faced demon.

   Focused by fear, I held onto the vampire’s oracular bond. I snagged its wrists, and the mad scissorings of bladed-fingers stopped abruptly, crisscrossed before the black tremor of my eyes. Its space-cold stare locked on mine, and we bridged a silence that occulted all prophecies.

   The lamia braced to bodyslam me. Its oily face glossy as a placental veil exposed appalling freak fangs in triumphant anticipation of chewing my face off. As the lamia dropped violently onto me, its harpy jaws, dead agate eyes and grapnel claws splashed into fine, blue pumice and twisted away in a screaming wind.

   I rolled gibbering with fright onto scorched ground and came up kneeling before the girl. No threat stirred in the many black mouths of the forest. The lamia’s death-bawl had flogged the undead down the dragon’s gullet into bramble gullies and desolate ravines of this aboriginal timberland. There, they roosted where moonlight lay like bones, razor jaws shivering with cretinous malice.

   The girl squinted at the forest of windy moonlight. Distant flares of creek mist mimed ghouls rampant in the woodlands. “Are more coming?”

   She looked frightened, features puzzled apart…

   The lamia’s attack had set madness dragging its magnetic field across the moonwashed land. A warped headache throb squeezed her eyes as she scanned for the vampires’ adamant hunger.

   Her tight stare reached me, and her face unclenched to a smile. “Breathe!” She suddenly remembered our moment of shared power|rightness in the lamia’s grip, and she hurried to my side.

   A smile! In this nightmare! It left me giddy even as my fright still churned from the lamia’s attack.

   You know, the soul has its own crazy spaciousness. From the Palace of Luck inside each blossom to the evanescent cleft of day and night, down that momentary green gulf of sky where quasars twinkle invisibly from the farthest heaven, the soul is at home between both extremes. But that easy smile at the sight of me – that credulous smile from a teenager with death’s stain in her blood … that joy marked an expanse of trust my soul ached to fill.

   ▬▬Breathe.

   I mirrored her smile – I hoped. I still wasn’t sure how atrocious I actually appeared and shrank at the memory of Bernie’s robust smile corrupted by a goth grin. ▬▬You must be freezing.

   I swept a raft of deadwood into the circle and put my arm around the girl to reach the butane lighter in Bernie’s jacket.

   She snuggled closer, and we built a wobbling fire under the wind. The lighter was there for the spliff also in that pocket, memento of the amorous intentions that had inspired Bernie and me to wander into the Adirondack wilderness last night.

   My mind fuddled to think of the eerie events that had since transpired. What infernal intelligence had hoisted us out of our lives and discarded my lover before tossing me back into his body to huddle at a rickety fire with this stranger in my embrace, in Bernie’s arms? By what wicked design were we both facing a purgatorial heath of contorted shadows heeling beneath giant trees black as damnation and breaching to greater perdition beyond? What but hell itself?

   And where else is the vertex of supernatural evil and human light but in the heart of nature? Look out at the inexorable day. What is it? This rock, that star, the emptiness between. Does the confidence of our dreams lie in this? Then, we are all deceived.

   Evil comes to us as reverence and truth shining through our deceptions. Embrace it. Even as I embraced that girl with no name in arms of flesh not my own upon a night with no day ahead – for, I tell you this in all sincerity from a heart gallant with desperate suffering, strife and love are the workings of one design whose absence itself is its worldly presence.

   At the zenith, the moon finally shone down upon the dark face of the limestone bluff. Girl and vampire clinging silently, we watched the chalk cliff brighten.

   “Look!” A lone figure came and went at forest’s edge among parcels of light thrown down by wind thrashing in the treetops. “It’s one of them!”

   The conspicuous iniquity of the shaman priest had already infested my heart, but I had said nothing to the girl. I had wanted the moonlight on the haunted bluff to last a little longer, meager redemption for my lost moment with Bernie.

   I stood. The girl quickly retreated to the center of the singed circle and tossed ash over herself like a fanatic penitent.

   ▬▬O ruined brother!

   That elemental voice crooned with the wind while the slayer trod slowly out of the woods and into the grass and sliding fog a long way off. ▬▬The dream moves on. Illusions cycling endlessly ‘twixt being and oblivion. That is your faith, aye?

   I made no reply. What was there to say? That thing was coming to kill the girl after dismantling me. Plaintive fear chanted up from my heart, wondering what terrible sorcery possessed the vampire to dare approach me alone. It heard my fear.

   ▬▬Behold where eyeless rage has delivered you. Madding fear breeds in absquatulated flesh, vile corrupter. You gain nothing with your pernicious rage. Though you slay slayers you will not out-scorn the sun. We are gentlemen of blood.

   Deeply inhaling my fear, I stared across misty reaches of grass and rock to the forthcoming figure, that creature gaunt as a stick-man to veer away crows. Moonlight reflecting off the limestone precipice filled its translucent flesh, and bone-shadows of spine and clavicle hovered like a crucifix. The incongruity startled me, a cardiac shiver. My body’s vampire animality swelled with fear. Breathe!

   The priest of the slayers closed in slowly and spoke my own words in its pneumatic voice: ▬▬Spirit kisses the vampire with acid. Why should this be so?

   With jolting clarity, the priest answered himself: ▬▬Spirit is a shoreless sea. Its distances rive mind and flesh. The art of our hunger is fouled before such magnitude.

   I understood what it meant. The infinite fractal line of the blood soul disappears in the transcendent among greater infinities.

   That would have meant nothing much to me, except Bernie’s brain had learned that infinities come in different sizes and there is no biggest one. The infinity of whole numbers, 1,2,3,4,5…∞, known as aleph-0, is smaller than the infinity of real numbers, whole numbers and all the fractions between them, which is aleph-1.

   The transcendent participates in the process of infinity, what mathematicians call the aleph sequence, an infinite succession of infinities aleph-0 times aleph-1 – including the infinity of multiplying together every infinity between the infinities, all the way to infinity.

   But here’s the wild part. The great god Uncertainty owns infinity. Last century, mathematicians proved not that we don’t know but that we can never know if any aleph is the next biggest infinity after aleph-0. So, when we raise a big infinity to an infinite power, say aleph-0(aleph-1), uncertainty makes sure we’re never sure if that new infinity is merely a fraction, the number of numbers between 0 and 1, or a truly vast number.

   The same with the fractal blood soul of vampires. The transcendent, the process of infinity, is something humans experience as an awareness of reality beyond what we can understand: examples include faith, the secret intentions of the unconscious, or the finger-pointing-at-the-moon physics of string theory that identifies higher dimensions in which our universe floats like a mirage in still hot air.

   That cognizance of incognizance blurs the fractal blood soul. Better than garlic when it comes to warding off the undead is a head full of transcendence.

   ▬▬Transcendence. You make content with so scant a word?

   The nearing vampire raised knobbed arms to a sky glittering like black snakeskin. ▬▬Houseless heavens! Uttermost incomprehension! Coffin of all conclusions! Transcendence, you say? I say Hypnosis of Forever in Unborn Stillness! You see a word. I see Nothing. You understand God, and God cannot be understood. This does not unseat your mind? Ontological Anarchy!

   Under pulse beating stars, the undead shaman rattled its fingerbone necklace. Something nameless glowed inside me. The legendary shores of sleep tilted horizons.

   “Hey!” With both fists gripping my shirt, the girl yanked until the buttons popped. “You! Wake up!”

   I jarred alert, and there was the vampire, hell-ice mouth over her shoulder, eyes eyeless black in their sockets, watching me indifferent as camera lenses. My arms pulled the girl hard to me, and I spun about.

   The slayer’s mass pressed against my back, flared jawbone grazing my nape with quivering bane. Words sparked wetly in my left ear yet remote, surpassing deep in the conjectural hollows of my head ▬▬The dream moves on, anatman.

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