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== the geas== | == the geas== | ||
Johnny Merkin was asleep. A hard sleep. A hot humid night and he could not afford to run the air conditioner. So he slept with his bedroom windows up and the screens down to keep the bugs out. The sleep of the bitterly exhausted. He had been experiencing insomnia for a couple weeks now. Two or three hours of sleep for three days and then a hard crash like this one would wash over him, He normally slept 10 to 14 hours on one of these soul worn thin crashes. His trailer is | Johnny Merkin was asleep. A hard sleep. A hot humid night and he could not afford to run the air conditioner. So he slept with his bedroom windows up and the screens down to keep the bugs out. The sleep of the bitterly exhausted. He had been experiencing insomnia for a couple weeks now. Two or three hours of sleep for three days and then a hard crash like this one would wash over him, He normally slept 10 to 14 hours on one of these soul worn thin crashes. His trailer is swayed by the wind in his shamble of a home. Messy and pooped in my invading possums and raccoons at night when Johnny sleeps. Everything he owns seems to be stained and ratty. But he was only four hours into his slumber when a scratching sound from the window slowly brought him back awake with a profound feeling of regret. Of a dream paradise lost. It took serious effort to open his eyes to see what the hell that noise was. He nearly jumped out of bed when he saw a scarecrow scratching at the window with hands made out of dry straw. Ragged dirty clothes from seasons of dust and rain. Expressionless face with large blue glass beads for eyes. Johnny bolted up right with wide eyes. The scarecrow gestured for him to open the window but Mr. Merkin was suspended in a prolonged moment of shock. A raven landed on the window sill with a joint in it's mouth. It exhaled a big cloud of what smelled like quality. Johnny unlocked and slid the window open. The raven hopped forwards and stuck it's neck out. A big joint, billowing delicious smelling smoke. Johnny pulled the joint from it's beak and he took a long draw. It tasted so good and after holding the smoke in he exhaled and the taste was stronger. He could not even describe the taste, and with a flash a strong high went through him. He handed the joint back and said that he already has had enough. The raven smoked it down to nothing and between big puffs he told him what's up. "This Scarecrow is a shaman. A former human tra.0nsformed to a Scarecrow but not truly dead, for the straw chest contains his mummified heart. And with the solemn apologies the need dictates, you are being put under a geas. A magic order that you have no choice but to follow, or you will die". Merkin could not doubt this, for a talking raven and a walking and really scary Scarecrow where right here and he could feel his will being subverted. Fear and awe flowed through Johnny like electricity. | ||
"What do I have to do?". | "What do I have to do?". | ||
Johnny Merkin was asleep. A hard sleep. A hot humid night and he could not afford to run the air conditioner. So he slept with his bedroom windows up and the screens down to keep the bugs out. The sleep of the bitterly exhausted. He had been experiencing insomnia for a couple weeks now. Two or three hours of sleep for three days and then a hard crash like this one would wash over him, He normally slept 10 to 14 hours on one of these soul worn thin crashes. His trailer is swayed by the wind in his shamble of a home. Messy and pooped in my invading possums and raccoons at night when Johnny sleeps. Everything he owns seems to be stained and ratty. But he was only four hours into his slumber when a scratching sound from the window slowly brought him back awake with a profound feeling of regret. Of a dream paradise lost. It took serious effort to open his eyes to see what the hell that noise was. He nearly jumped out of bed when he saw a scarecrow scratching at the window with hands made out of dry straw. Ragged dirty clothes from seasons of dust and rain. Expressionless face with large blue glass beads for eyes. Johnny bolted up right with wide eyes. The scarecrow gestured for him to open the window but Mr. Merkin was suspended in a prolonged moment of shock. A raven landed on the window sill with a joint in it's mouth. It exhaled a big cloud of what smelled like quality. Johnny unlocked and slid the window open. The raven hopped forwards and stuck it's neck out. A big joint, billowing delicious smelling smoke. Johnny pulled the joint from it's beak and he took a long draw. It tasted so good and after holding the smoke in he exhaled and the taste was stronger. He could not even describe the taste, and with a flash a strong high went through him. He handed the joint back and said that he already has had enough. The raven smoked it down to nothing and between big puffs he told him what's up. "This Scarecrow is a shaman. A former human tra.0nsformed to a Scarecrow but not truly dead, for the straw chest contains his mummified heart. And with the solemn apologies the need dictates, you are being put under a geas. A magic order that you have no choice but to follow, or you will die". Merkin could not doubt this, for a talking raven and a walking and really scary Scarecrow where right here and he could feel his will being subverted. Fear and awe flowed through Johnny like electricity.
"What do I have to do?". "You shall go to a abandoned farmhouse in eastern Kansas where a phone awaits on the kitchen table. You will get a text on what to do next when you pick the phone up". "But where is this house?". "Go to the only bar in Ixt Kansas and tell the Man with an eye patch the raven sent you". With that the bird flew onto the Scarecrow's shoulders and the Scarecrow walked away. Johnny watched them til they disappeared in the shelter belt behind his house. He brewed up coffee and cooked some eggs, bacon and toast and ate in shocked numbness. A adventure had begun and Johnny didn't expect he would succeed. But the magic spell left him no choice. He thought about what to bring as he took a shower and dressed in one of his less worn outfits.
Johnny has packed a little gear and he's driving down lonesome country roads in Western Kansas, field and small town country. There are old abandoned farmhouses that have probably stood vacant for decades. A pleasant landscape with dust bowl era shelter belts still beside the road. He takes a few pictures with his phone. Along the way he sees a old beat up truck weaving in and out of both lanes. Johnny gears himself up to swerve and try to avoid a collision but he gives his odds at 50/50. But the truck nearly hits his car head on. He swerves hard right and the redneck swerves hard left. The truck fish tails dangerously regains control and moves on. The driver flipping him the middle finger like it was his fault. Not a good Omen for future events, Johnny thinks. His mind was muddied with paranoid thoughts about having to deal with these ultra right wing small town rednecks. Along the way, Johny sees abandoned old farm houses odd unidentifiable animals crossing the road. a buffalo's wander along the ditch with no fear as Merkin drives past. They just look at him like he is out of place out from the wrong time here. once Majestic, now ruined and abandoned farm houses, caved in trailers. A desolate field scape. A lot of consignment corn. Government pays you to grow corn and let it yellow and die . A sorta right wing wellfare for farmers rich enough to have enough acres to qualify.The land must not be too good here, the crops in general look lower level. A few cow pastures. A burnt out upside down car in the ditch that looks like it has been there for years. Strange town names appear along the road. Sixteen miles to Mojo, nine miles to Slaughter Towen. Wild turkeys crossing the road in front of Johny Merkin as he drives. He gets out once and pisses in the ditch and he happens to notice a human tooth in the grass growing beside the road. Yellowed, looking very old. A dark overcast day. for such a low traffic Road, it has a very unusually big amount of Roadkill possums raccoons skunks snakes Turtles. Johnny gets to feeling that folks around here swerve to hit animals and probably cackle for a couple minutes or so afterwards. Hell if they have a buddy on board he probably video records it with his phone.
Ixt was a sacred area lush with nourishing plants and wild game until the whites settled here, killed the local tribe and threw their trash in the ancient sacred well that nourished the land. The town is a meth hub with a few meth labs scattered among the abandoned farms and silos and storm shelters in the area. Small town of Maybe 130 people. Run down buildings that mostly look constructed in the seventies everything about this place is shabby. There is a small gas station that sells a few food products, a failing church with a tower spire that is leaning forwards slightly. And the bar named simply "Al's". Ixt was a sacred area lush with plants and wild game until the whites settled here, killed the local tribe and threw their trash in the ancient sacred well that nourished the land. The town is a meth hub with a few meth labs scattered among the abandoned farms and silos and storm shelters in the area. The bar is not hard to find, in such a small town there's no place for it to hide. A run down bar that probably saw it's glory days in the 1970s. Johnny times his arrival in the town of Ixt for the late evening early night figuring that's when the bar will be hopping. Along the way a badly Drunken driver nearly hits Johnny had on Also some strange animal round built like a rug and Wholly crosses the road in front of him this is a manooska or flat mammoth. He doesn't like the town on Ixt on first sight. Having to drive around a mostly devoured remains of a deer carcass the coyoes must of dragged onto the road don't improve his impression of the town. The bar is easy to find. Only the bar and a gas station are open on the main road. The road is named Ixt. Johny could imagine the towns folk being something like H P Lovecraft's deep ones, or some right wing extremist cult. So he pulls up to the bar and enters the run down dump. There are 19 People in here and three of them are sporting eyepatches. There is even another guy with an eyepatch but he is currently is the Men's room taking an extended shit. A fat blonde at the bar is looking at Johny with venus flytrap eyes of lust. She hits on him but he don't want her, so she waits outside the bar to ambush him with a hard kick to the crotch.
Pull over and vomit after the bar. - P1 Surely that bar serves past expiration beer they can get cheap. Johnny drank entirely too many beers whilst he was in the bar. He makes it a couple miles out of town and pulls over on the lonesome country road is lonesome country road no other vehicle headlights inside is it cool headlights inside and he pukes a lot it pukes a lot it's a miserable experience
A old building probably constructed in the 50s. Two stories. ruin of a tractor in the yard. The inside is a mess. Young people mostly teens have been partying here for decades. Used condoms gathering dust, beer bottles and cans tossed about carelessly. fast food sacks etc. The table has several empty beer cans and a mostly empty pack of Orange zig zag rolling papers young and old phone. Johnny expects the phone will be with a dead battery but it comes on when he figures out how to make it work. Upstairs there is a old feral tom cat crucified to the wall. People in this town don't like cats. Johnny had been driving since he left the bar. This abandoned farmhouse is hard to locate even with descent instructions. He had passed the weed over grown drive way that led to a grove of young trees hiding the house in the dark of night. It took a couple more slow drives past the house to find it. The yards trees looked about 7 or 8 years old, the drive way was almost erased by the weeds. This where that smart phone is supposed to be waiting for him. He parked on the other side of one of the older bigger trees that has fallen onto the driveway. Burned and twisted from a lightning strike probably a few years ago. As he walked nearer the house he heard a dog growling behind him. He turned to see a stout Doberman pincer snarling menacingly. He said "Your a nice dog", but the beast wasn't buying it. Johnny backed up slowly cooing to the snarling dog and it began to bark viciously. Johnny glanced at the house, only twenty feet to go and hopefully the door is unlocked or previously kicked in by kids. He turned and ran for the house and the dog howled and charged. He was slowed down by the ajar door being swollen and hard to open. The dog bit him in the calf and the pain was intense. He kicked the dog out of the doorway and close the door. The Doberman was snarling and barking, jumping on the door over and over again. When he was sure the dog was trapped outside he turned and looked around. The abandoned house is thrashed by parting teenagers with beer cans scattered all over. pantry's in the corner covered in cobwebs. Phone on the table as promised, an old Samsung note 2. Sure enough it still has a charge and it vibrates from an incoming text......Meanwhile the dog barks savagely outside. Johnny has had a magical spell put on him to find this abandoned farmhouse and Pick up a mobile phone that lies on it. he will get a text that tells him the next part of his mission that he has no choice to perform. when he follows the crude hand drawn map eyepatch man gave him when he finds this farmhouse and Parks and the weed overgrown driveway he gets out with a flashlight and makes his way to the house there's a Doberman Pinscher snarling at him that comes up Johnny backs towards the house the dog acts more aggressive the closer it gets to it it ends with a Mad Dash dog bites him in the leg and draws blood and Johnny enters the house and slams the door on the dog's neck wake me up let go and withdraw the dog is now waiting outside the house dog will be there for hours It leaves just before dawn. Sure enough there is a old school smart phone a samsung note 3 on the table. Merkin picks up the phone and holds the power down not excepting it to have a charge but it does, despite the table reveiling a much less dusty rectangle where the phone had been. the text instructs him on how to get to a ghost train. at and abandoned Depot in the Rolling Hills of Northwestern Kansas Goal:
Congratulations, you have made it this far. Not that you had any choice, sorry but too much is at stake to give you one. Your mission is to drive to the rolling hills of Jestin county. follow the hills alongside the river. There will be a flat space amongst the hills with an old run down depot from the 1920's. You will wait there for a ghost train. There is a ticket to get onboard on the table. Leave the car, take the train to the third depot it pulls up to. Get out there. The phone dies before the next incoming text arrives. Johnny puts the train ticket in is wallet. He has a car battery charger that fits this phone in the car. But first he must get past that vicious dog or wait for it to leave. He ends up falling asleep on the trash strewn couch after pushing the debris to the floor. He is amused to see an old condom sticking to the wall with the reservoir tip hanging down like a bowed head. When he wakes up in the morning there is no sign of the dog. He picks up some rocks that where hurled to bust windows to throw if it appears. He quickly makes his way to his car starts it up. He plugs the phone he found to the car charger and begins driving to the rolling hills after checking a Kansas map he googled up. Some of the fields he passes have become feral from neglect and they have prairie grass growing tall in them. Fields with young trees as tall as a Man.
Johny has to win a living spider eating contest in order to win the junk car the people throwing the keg party are giving away. He needs it to escape the town before the town is destroyed by a train rerailing that is holding tons of toxic waste. He got a text warning him about this upcoming event. The town is filled with pastal yellow butterflies who seem to have gathered here to mate. The locals claim they come here to mate once a year from "Other here's". Entering the town a large group of stray dogs followed him acting aggressive. Now these strays will not allow him to leave the town. On foot they will kill him the only way out is in a vehicle. The people are creepy here. They seem to all be on some drug, probably Meth. Turns out its this strange swamproot that grows in the area and people have been using it for generations. It's a crazy drunken night the living spider contest goes down. Lots of free beer that Johny don't know is mixed with that odd wet lands swamp root. the man presiding over the spider eating contest is local send me famous personality Daniel Fergis. He gets pretty deliriously high on the root beer. All kinds of spiders in jars with dipping sauces like barbeque and ranch and soy in plastic bowls to help the squirming biters go down. Johny somehow wins and eats a nightmarish amount of spiders. He vomits after winning but that is allowed. The people cheer the victorious stranger and offer him more root beer that he declines. He is so fucked up and still feeling sick but he has the car, quickly signed over and the keys. He justs needs to come down enough to drive in a straight line. So he watches the main event. The car race going circles around the town but centering on the main street. Breakneck speed. One guy gets clipped by a out of control car but he gets back up limping claiming he is Ok. One bad wreck, the driver pulled out bloody and unconsciouss. The contest ends and the driver emerges victorious, they hand him a gold coated sword and attack him. He runs and swings, injuring a couple dudes and killing one guy. It's all the losers attacking him with tire irons and fighting knives. No guns permitted for this contest. They end up ganging up on him and killing him brutally. Ok, Johny is fucked up but still ready to go. Goal: Escape the town, being as a pack of coywolves are blocking his escape on foot. He needs a vehicle make it out alive Johnny has to win a living spider eating contest in order to win the junk car the people throwing the keg party are giving away. He needs it to escape the town before the town is destroyed by a train derailing that is holding tons of toxic waste. He got a text warning him about this upcoming event. The town is filled with pastel yellow butterflies who seem to have gathered here to mate. The locals claim they come here to mate once a year from "Other here's". Entering the town a large group of stray dogs followed him acting aggressive. Now these strays will not allow him to leave the town. On foot they will kill him the only way out is in a vehicle. The people are creepy here. They seem to all be on some drug, probably Meth. Turns out its this strange swamp root that grows in the area and people have been using it for generations. It's a crazy drunken night when the living spider contest goes down. Lots of free beer that Johnny don't know is mixed with that odd wet lands swamp root. the man presiding over the spider eating contest is local send me famous personality Daniel Fergis. He gets pretty deliriously high on the root beer. All kinds of spiders in jars with dipping sauces like barbeque and ranch and soy in plastic bowls to help the squirming biters go down. Johnny somehow wins and eats a nightmarish amount of spiders. He vomits after winning but that is allowed. The people cheer the victorious stranger and offer him more root beer that he declines. He is so fucked up and still feeling sick but he has the car, quickly signed over and the keys. He just needs to come down enough to drive in a straight line. So he watches the main event. The car race going circles around the town but centering on the main street. Breakneck speed. One guy gets clipped by a out of control car but he gets back up limping claiming he is Ok. One bad wreck, the driver pulled out bloody and unconscious. The contest ends and the driver emerges victorious, they hand him a gold coated sword and attack him. He runs and swings, injuring a couple dudes and killing one guy. It's all the losers attacking him with tire irons and fighting knives. No guns permitted for this contest. They end up ganging up on him and killing him brutally. Ok, Johnny is fucked up but still ready to go. He sputters the car to life and drives out of that small town. The coywolves are still standing guard but they part when he car speeds by them. The engine ticks and the car sputters often making him pump the gas to keep it going. His only hope was to get far enough away from the animals that they are no longer a threat.
After escaping the feral dog pack in the spider eating contest town Johnny only makes it about four miles before the junk car he won sputters out and dies. He gets out and walks and a banged up truck pulls up and asks if he needs a ride. So he gets in. The driver, a red neck young Man with a shaven head says he is going to Lawrence to catch the Black Circle concert. Along the ride he gets a text from the raven warning him not to get into the truck he is riding in with the simple message its a trap. Johnny uses the opportunity he gets when the man stopped by a liquor store to get a 12 pack Whilst the guys getting the beer inside the store Johnny fleas the truck and hides in town he notices the guy is driving all over looking for him. So Johnny walks to Jestin county. An area of Kansas at the end of a beautiful expense of low rolling hills. Farming and meth are the main sources of income, with poaching and cutting down and selling other people's trees as runner ups. Bad phone reception here. It should be a tourist spot for all its gentle beauty. A 10 foot rat snake slithers across the road. lots of old sagging farm houses abandoned decades ago. there's even a sod house probably from the late 1800s still standing though mostly sunk into the Earth
Johnny drives through the beautiful rolling hills following the instruction from the text on the phone he got from the abandoned house. This landscape has an ancient energy to it. Johnny drives with the windows down taking in the fine fresh air. He has a incomplete message but it should get him to the depot, hopefully the signal is not dead there. He sees a bald eagle dramatically dive to the field below and rise again with a long green snake in it's claws.
Jestin county's a beautiful place. It looks the backdrop of a old western where cowboys and Native Americans faced off in battles. The dirt road gets fucked and more fucked up as he goes. Rattling his teeth with harsh bumps that can't be good for the car he won. Smoke curling out from underneath his hood. The heat gauge is near the burn out level. He pulls over and starts walking.
When Johnny's phone connection dies midtext he only gets that he is to go to the rolling hills and get on a ghost train. So he does, but 10 minutes into the train ride the phone that is so old it didn't save the text gets it back. Make sure not to get on the first train, because that one is the train to hell. Get on the second one. The doors won't open he can't fit through the windows. The train is full of the damned riding to hell. But they seem unaware that they are hell bound. At some point a fight breaks out between the right wingers and the antifa. A guy gets thrown into the wall of the train so hard the wall breaks and the Man's body rolls out gets caught under the wheels and is ripped apart with ghastly screams. Johnny escapes through the hole escaping serious harm by the cushion of massive jimsonweed plants. He is near a river with big gently rounded hills all around. No sign of human life, no buildings, no sound of cars or planes. To fail the Geas is to die, and Johnny is really frightened he has lost his way. Johnny is lost in a alternative reality Kansas. Goal: to escape the train before it takes him to hell.
After escaping the hell bound ghost train Johnny ends up in an alternative world Kansas when he is trying to get to Kansas proper again. Tall sandstone cliffs with massive geoglyphs of strange creatures and ceremonies, manually carved caves, sometimes high up to the cliff wall, probably there was a wooden walkway stairway system here once. once along his walk he hears an eerie flute of some unknown culture echoing through the Sandstone Cliffs. He never discovers who made the sound. he finds Flint Spearhead while walking this strange wilderness. finally in the distance he hears a sound of traffic and he walks that way to an interstate using Google Maps Define season Kansas in can figure out how to do the long walk back to the depot He texted the raven a few times so far no answer
Is thirsty and exhausted Johnny Returns to the abandoned depot after a long long walk. The Raven flies down and land flies down and lands on his shoulder saying saying you're doing OK so far but pick up the page before but pick up the pacer nothing survives nothing survives. He hands Johnny is Johnny a train ticket is a train ticket printed in parchment paper And smelling like sandal wood. An old couple are at the depot working and they have ice cold lemonade for 5 cents Johnny found a nickel whilst walking when he pays a when he pays up and gets a sweet cold is a sweet cold refreshment that rehydrates him. Johny must go back to the abandoned train depot to get on the other ghost train. He has already wasted too much precious time, a text informs him of that and he also gets an unwarranted scarecrow dick pick. The car he won in the spider eating contest keeps sputtering and dying and he finally breaks down completly a good forty eight minute walk from his goal. Drunken teenagers harass him on the way calling him a faggot acting like they are going to ram him with the car getting as close as they can at high speed. Throwing out empty glass beer bottles at him. Finally they lose control while nearly side swipping him and they fishtail and then roll. The top of the car is smashed in and they can't get out. He beg him to call for help or get them out. He pisses on the driver through his broken window and walks on with them crying and screaming at him not to be an asshole. "We were just having fun!". As he walks away the truck suddenly explodes into flames. Horrible screams He would have tried to get them out had he known but there wouldn't have been enough time anyway. while walking he needs a wondering hippie who has no name they strike up a friendship over a joint and the hippie decides to accompany him to this abandoned Depot he's told him aboutNow that Johnny is back in this Is dimension of Earth and Kansas He sets himself about the long walk back to the abandoned depot. He catches a ride But they argue about politics and the guy pulls a gun and stops the truck ordering Johnny out.
Just the difference of a few steps and suddenly Johnny can hear traffic coming from over the tall round hill in front of him. He turns around and the landscape behind him has changed. It's standard fields of produce and cows when before it was a mostly untouched landscape. He walks up the hill to see a four lane road ahead, a few cars speeding this way and that down it.