moddidawdi

I decided to challenge myself a bit more on my reading goal for the year 2012. This present year it was 100 books in a year with the full knowledge that I was gonna count just about anything I could as a book. And thus I met my goal but do not feel adequately stretched. Thus I have crafted a goal that will more stretch and hopefully grow me as a reader and as a I-am-terrible-at-writing-but-do-it-anyways kinda writer. At the time this goal came to mind I was feeling again the self-enforced pressure to finally read some Hemingway and had also just picked up The Grapes of Wrath for a reread, and thus this little reading project popped into being.

It is 12 Modernist (or somehow associated with Modernist) writers in 12 months. I have to read at least one book/play/poem collection in that particular month, but will have some backups in place for reading a bit more. A few of these months will be rougher than others. A few more will be enjoyed more than others. I am sure there are plenty of surprises in store too.

This list is still subject to change and especially July, but also a few others, still need some research. Please give some recommendations if you so desire it.

I also really hope to stretch myself at reading short stories and poetry more than I normally would.

List Symbol Key:

* - required reading

• - reread

§ - especially excited about


January - Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway has been such a vacuum in my reading that I really look forward to finally get some under my belt. Would love to do all four of his most famous works. I don't necessarily expect to love him, but really want to read him.

The Sun Also Rises (1926) *

A Farewell to Arms (1929) *

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

The Old Man and the Sea (1951)


February - F. Scott Fitzgerald

After Great Gatsby, I had no idea what would be good of his to read. But I have to reread Great Gatsby if I'm doing Modernists Literature. And I've been wanting to do a reread for some time.

The Great Gatsby (1925) *•

This Side of Paradise (1920)

Short Stories


March - William Faulkner

So I read As I Lay Dying last year... and absolutely loved it. Faulkner was a huge motivation for me to do this project. So I figured this would help me celebrate my birthday month.

The Sound and the Fury (1929) *§

Absalom! Absalom! (1936) §

As I Lay Dying (1930) •§

Short Stories


April - James Joyce

I kinda dread Ulysses. Maybe unfairly but I do. Still, we're talking Modernists and I've heard it called the beginning of the movement, so... And I figure I need to read it some day.

Ulysses (1922) *

Dubliners (1914)

Finnegans Wake (1939)


May - T.S. Elliot

I am definitely not an avid reader of poetry so it'll be nice to use this project to stretch me in this area. His collected poems don't span too many pages so I would really like to get a play in as well.

Collected Poems *

Murder in the Cathedral (1935)


June - Mikhail Bulgakov

So I'd heard about this book and then saw it loosely connected with Modernists so I decided to lump this in. Hopefully I will get to a point where I actually remember Bulgakov's name so I don't refer to this month as the Russian guy.

The Master and the Margarita (1928-1967) *


July - Samuel Beckett

Seems a stretch but supposedly he's a later modernist. Though he feels more post-modern in Waiting for Godot. Oh well, I want to read more. Just don't know what yet.

Still need to research *

Waiting for Godot (1953) •


August - Virginia Woolf

Okay, so this month does not excite me, but that is more out of ignorance than substance. I should give Ms. Woolf a shot.

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) *

To the Lighthouse (1927)

Orlando (1928)


September - Robert Frost

Lots of poems. Not sure how much I'll read. Would be nice to read a play or something besides.

Collected Poems * (probably won't require the whole thing)


October - Franz Kafka

Not sure how Modernist he is but I saw him on a list so here he is. I may do more research into what people recommend.

The Trial (1925) *

The Metamorphosis (1915) •

Other Short Stories


November - Joseph Conrad

So Conrad is considered a forerunner of Modernism. Well, it gives me an excuse to read him, so I'll use it.

Lord Jim (1900) *

Heart of Darkness (1899) •§


December - John Steinbeck

And then there's this fellow. The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden are amazing works. I will love to delve into more of his stuff.

Tortilla Flat (1935) *§

Of Mice and Men (1937) *§

Cannery Row (1945) *

The Pearl (1947)

The Red Pony (1933)

The Moon is Down (1942)

If anyone is feeling the desire to join in on any of the frolicking fun, even if to a lesser extent, please let me know. It would perhaps help push me on and insulate the burnout a little. Or you can just choose to bug me and make fun of me over it. I will try and keep up a little widget up updating my status and progress. Feel free to ask me how it is going. Bring it on.

mud

I walk in fearful steps below a sky which threatens me with day. I would hurry my pace for fear of the coming light that would bring me into the world’s vision. Yet I would hurry to what? Judgement? Chains and execution? Why do I follow this path tasked to me? Why do I not run away once more? As the hare, I have flitted and flown to forget and to feast away this stain. But the wolf has discovered me in the very pit of my escape.

There in my pit I was found, sleeping under the smoke and tangles of sin. A man, a golden man in the fog of my waking, made instrument of a platter, striking it as a gong. Heads raised, heads slept, I shrunk. But it was to me he brought his proclamation. I lost many of his words to my illness, but this I took in: the King’s man awaits me at my home. He had come during the day and finding me out had sent to find me. He lays in wait for my coming. And this hunter had thus tracked me. Through the worlds of my vice he had pursued me. An untraceable trail this seeker had taken and there before me he stood. He stood amidst and yet separate from the room about him. There was a wrath I could feel under his presence, a wrath upon my scene. I did not speak and he did not ask a promise. He divulged his duty and departed, or so I assume. In my stupor he merely disappeared. I was caught yet free.

I am the hare, and the black wolf calls.

***

The sky begins to break under the strain of the coming sun. I have not seen the world under the assault of light for many months. I dare not expose my hands to the sun. I cross my arms to cover my hands, and I begin to run to the extent my troubled body lets me. Why do I run home? Am I so weary that I simply want an end? The King’s man, a judge no doubt, sits in my home. The place of my blood. The place of my guilt. I now run to the site that condemns me along with my waiting judge. I feel the fangs already in my pelt.

Before my home I find a spectacle. And fear puts it’s cold dead hand on my heart. Four royal guards await me: attentive but a sign of dismissal in their posture. They look a farce amidst the poor hovels here about. Far more ridiculous are the three apparent courtiers in heated debate before my door. Fine robes scraping the dirt, faces in a constant snarl from the disease of this land, they cast their haughtiness as a stage from which to look down on these mean dwellings. I stop and desire to flee, but I see the creeping point of the sun chasing me at my back. I must seek shelter. And so I go forward, hiding my hands and my eyes from those upon my doorstep.

Their notice brings them to silence. Without looking at them I see all their eyes, all their questions. Of what worth is this worm? They have been here all night! Of what worth am I? I cast a fearful gaze to the guard before the door; a bolt of sun hits the top of my home. I twitch in anticipation. And the guard steps out of my way, with a stern question in his glance. With shaking hands I open the door, rush in, and close it behind me; collapsing upon the door. I burn with tears.

“I greet you.”

I lose my air. I startle around. A man, a boy, a wise youth, stands before me. The judge? The prince... Upon his finger is the royal ring. I reposition my collapse into a prostrate bow.

This is not the black wolf of my dreams but a noble beast of whitened gold. Far more dreadful than my terrible nightmare is the thing in flesh; in my foolishness I had feared the judgement of a will and desire. Far great peril I find in this child’s eyes, for in them Truth I see, and with this Truth he sees me.

“Rise.”

“Master.” I remain.

“Rise.” A laugh in his voice.

“Master.” I remain.

“This is your home, here are not you master?” He waits a response but then continues. “My Father has sent me. I do His work. As I believe you see, I bear his seal.” He crouches to touch me but I shrink away. Though I am forced out of my prostrate position, I stay kneeling, but like a rabbit ever prepared to run.

“In my task I could use your talents.” He remains restfully crouched ever gazing at me.

I do not understand his words.

“My Father has tasked me with a great endeavor. The King would use you to help me. Would you assent?”

“Assent?”

“In aiding me.”

“You are my liege... Why do you ask of me? You could command.”

“Do you assent?”

“A-a-assuredly.”

“Why do you fear me?”

“Oh noble prince, you speak to the lowest of your slaves. You should not stain yourself by my presence nor my hospitality.” My eyes flash to the back room, the room it very much appears the Prince may have just come from. The room where...

“You fear my judgement. You fear my hand lifted against you. I have stayed this day in your home. I have prepared it for your return. I have cleaned it for your coming. You shall need it for what lies ahead. You fear my judgement. I have seen every corner of your dwelling. I have found all of the dust and ash that has touched this home. The man who sought you out and found you returned here first to inform me of your being discovered. He instructed me in your journey these past months. He intended to warn me. But my Father already knew and so did I. We do not turn to you in ignorance. I do not beseech you in folly. I know you. I know the story of the room behind me.” He points as I cry. “I know what your hands wrought. I know the escapes that you pursue.”

He pauses. I can no longer run. All of me is known. All of my hiding has been fruitless. All of me is known to my King, the holder of the laws. And His son stands before me, my dirt on his royalty. I see a cut, a rip, his blood exposed for his labor upon my home.

“Come.” He beckons, but I cannot move. “Come.” He approaches. With a smile, “Come.” And he lifts me to my feet. I slump but walk with him. I lose myself. I lose my knowing, my understanding, my senses. We journey and wander. I lose all time. And I sleep.

Water. I am sinking. I am drowning. No. I return to myself.

He is bathing me. He merely walked me to the basin. He is bathing me. Assured and gentle. He bathes me. My prince bathes me. He casts a cloth into the basin, soaking up water and strikes the water upon my flesh, breaking the dirt and blood of my skin. I shake in the fear of it; the awe of it. He toils and strains. It hurts me. In my nakedness, I tremble. In my shame I despair. But he does not falter. Upon the floor, I see the mud of me drifting towards a drain. I weep openly under his care. He is long about his work. Until all at once, I feel his loving scrape no more. Instead it is his hand upon my shoulder.

“Rise.”

I stand up in trembling. In cold and newness I shudder. It is my hand my eyes seek first, though with timidity. A timidity that turns into disbelief. I lift my hand above my head, looking up at it.

And in through the Western window breaks a beam of sunlight; upon my hand and against my face.

safety

Tasked with writing something purely as dialogue, I created the below texty stuff. Humorously, this story spawned while reading The Wind in the Willows. I don't think my brain functions properly. I did not spend much time on it, so please do not judge it too harshly.

"I cannot believe we made it."

"Have we? Are we really safe?"

"We are on the train. This is as safe as it gets. Look, I have us right next to the TraiSec car. This is neutral ground. They would have to be desperate and crazy to hit us here. And I can only wish we had them scared enough to be desperate. We're safer here than we'll be back home, even. Look, sorry. Just use this time to relax. We have three days of safety until our next stage. Just appreciate that our present task is just to sit tight. We've done better than anyone expected, and survived the worst of it."

"Do you think he survived?"

"I ... Listen, Betts. He made the sacrifice. He decided you were worth saving. And you are. Your safety, your life is the mission. What you know..."

"I'm a mission?"

"No, no. I'm sorry. He made his choice, made it before the opportunity even arose. I have made the same choice."

"Why are you still here then? Why is he the one we left behind?"

"..."

"I'll give you the data your boss wants! Codes, formulas, maps. Download it all straight to your hem-jack! All of it! And you and your petty power struggles can go burn yourselves to the ground!"

"To answer your question, if he is alive, he is wishing he wasn't. Pray he did not survive. It is the best case."

"And how about my second question, why are you still here, hero?"

"Because the mission isn't complete."

"Back to being a mission."

"Yep."

"I'm going back."

"What do you think he would want you to do? Make his sacrifice pointless? He is a hero. You go back, you put yourself back in their hands, and you undo everything your hero did. Call me heartless, call me dead, I don't care. We stay on this train and take it home."

"You stay on this train. I was telling you the truth, I will give you all the data your boss wants. Go home. Take your reward. You deserve it."

"No. That is not the deal."

"Isn't it? I am know you have contingency orders you are not telling me. Orders if I resist, if I am killed. My safety is not what you need. Only this here in my head. The more willingly the information is given the less corrupted. I know how this works. Your corporation is no better than the one you just rescued me from. You just hope by saving me you can get my assistance willingly. I am simply a temperamental commodity. But I will give you the data freely. Stick out your arm."

"No."

"I am going back."

"Okay."

"What?"

"I am going with you. You don't have a chance alone. Actually we don't really have a chance together. But I am going with you. I will prove you wrong. We are not the same as them. I am not the same."

havok

X-men #1: Jack Kirby(!)

"It's my job to make a film as good as possible. I need to please a cinema audience,

number one, and a comic book audience, number two. Hopefully I can do both,

but you have to make a film that works."

My blog has been severely lacking any comic book rants of late. Here's the remedy to that problem (I know my loyal reader(s) were getting restless on this front).

The above quotation is from Matthew Vaughn about his work on directing the movie X-Men: First Class. People who have heard me (somewhat jokingly) complain about the butchery being done to the X-Men mythos by this movie may be surprised to learn that I very much agree with the statement (with a disclaimer to come later).

It is common for fans of a written work to be very rabid in their desire for a movie adaptation to be faithful to the utmost degree, and comic book fans even more rabid still. However, it is when a movie is bad that the transgressions in adaptation get the full ire of the fans. When a movie is good in and of itself for some reason the errant translations become far less hazardous to the fan. I think it is common to misplace our reasons in why a movie failed into the categories of poor adaptation and we overlook the movie just being badly written. Moreso, sometimes it is the attempt to being faithful or cater to the fan that can in fact undermine the quality of the movie.

I could list the vast differences between the things they are doing with First Class and the actual comics, but truth be told they are doing exactly what comic book movies need to do, especially now as they become more and more prevalent. For too long comic book movies were predicated upon the origin stories and then hitting the most popular stories/villains of the main character. They were forced to hit all the desired plot points that comic fans want to see. However they miss out on telling their own story, crafting their own world, bleeding their own life into it. For comic books specifically a lot of that has come from not actually respecting the medium as worthwhile stories and seeing it just as a cash cow. Honestly, that is understandable. Comics are silly. But good luck telling a worthy story from something you don't respect.

Honestly, the adaptation that brings nothing new to the work is completely heartless and unnecessary to me.

Now, here's my disclaimer: Vaughn said, "I need to please ... a comic book audience, number two." My disclaimer is that this item still needs to be a priority. Good movie first, most definitely, but do not forget to respect what you are adapting. Otherwise title it something else. I am not saying Vaughn is saying anything differently. I don't believe he is at all. I just want to make sure people (all two of you that have made it this far) understand what I am saying. Although a better way to phrase it would be to respect the source material. Pleasing people can be a bad goal for art. It causes shortcuts and ... well it causes summer blockbuster movies, I suppose. Hmm, never mind. Still, I think the ideal phrasing would be respect the source material.

So what does First Class have going for it? It gets to tell a story that is basically untouched by the comics. It does not fit at all with the continuity presented in the comics, and characters are being greatly altered, etc. But they get to tell the story they want to tell. In fact, in that interview Vaughn specifically said he was allowed great freedom to make the story he wanted, which is highly unusual for these movies as every exec has an idea of how it will make them more money (understandable if you are sinking millions into it that you'd want to put at least your 2¢ into how it will make you more money).

Is a little part of me going to grumble at their choices? Yes, but I'm a curmudgeon. (I really want to bring that word back (if it was ever in fact here in order that it can come back). It's such a cool word.) Ultimately, the quality of the movie itself decides the game. Make a good movie and your twists in the adaptation get lauded. Make a bad movie, and people will blame the fact that the movie in no way represents the comic with the same name.

X-Factor #70: Mike Mignola(!)

A little game I invite you to play: Craft your ideal X-Men team. Write it in the comments section. What makes up your "ideal" is entirely up to you. For me, ideal is a team that I would like to read or write about. As for who you can draw your team from, be creative. It can be from the comics, cartoons, movies, alternate dimensions, villains, non-X-Men. Have fun with it.

mystery

When telling one's story it is common to start at the beginning, but I have not been born yet. It will be twenty years still before my father will be born to French farmers outside of Paris. Two more until my mother will be first held by her father, a German school teacher soon after enlisted and killed in the Great War. It will be thirty-nine years from today when my parents first meet in Paris and a year after that, they will be married. My parents then will spend the first few years of their marriage merely trying to survive Hitler's assault and occupation of France. Within a year of the Allies victory, my father will take up his law practice and I will be born.

What? A prophet? No. Oh, I suppose these wars are future to you. At my age my tongue begins to slip. And time has always been such a liquid thing for me. You will have to forgive me in this if you indeed want to hear my story. I am going to speak of things which for you have not yet occurred. But this is why you've come. This is why you seek my story. Perhaps I should fear giving you sight into the future. But fears are a funny thing: in youth my fears were many., and now, now I only have one fear. And telling you of events to come is not that fear.

So, yes, two wars will pass before I am yet born. Bigger by far than what you are now imagining. And to me, these wars are inescapable. I have lived forever tied to them, it seems. To me they are not two wars but both one and many.

My earliest memories were peaceful enough. My parents seemed loving and protective in everything I can remember, every one would want. They seem the perfect idea of parents in my head. Yet there was one failure of parenthood that is really my earliest clear memory. It is not the memory of an event so much as the feeling that cast its shadow over my entire childhood..

I could see things that my parents could not see. I would ask them what they were, and ask the name of these beautiful colors and auras composing these strange objects. For what is a parent's job but giving shape and name to the world of their children? But in this my parents failed me. They told me the name of these things was nothing. And there were no colors not found in the rainbow. It grew a constant war between us through out my early age. Which now I can understand their frustration in having a boy so set on stories and fantasies that he believed them to be true to their own shame. Finally a time came when I was so insistent and angered by their dismissals that I pushed my father to hit me, the only time he ever hit me. He struck me across the face. And so I never spoke of the mystery to them again.

I still did not understand that my sight was not their sight. It is actually quite amazing how hard a thing that is to grasp. I had hair on my chin before I finally believed that every man was not merely choosing to ignore the miasmas and streams all around them. But as my parents seemed resolute in ignoring this mystery, I chose to do the same, at least amidst others. When I was alone, however, I began to attempt to teach myself what this hidden world entailed.

I suppose at this point I will need to describe these things to you. I will save the technical names for later, so that you can learn them with the me in my story. For now I will grant you what my sight showed me as a small child. But I warn you, this will be like describing sight to the blind. Oh, forgive the expression. Again, my tongue is old and prone to mistakes. But the world I describe to you does not fit in our words. The objects I would see, as no one else, were like jewels or puzzles or knots or containers. No, not each object being one of those or the other. Each fit all those categories and none of them. And they were of colors you have not seen. Can you comprehend a color you have never seen? And these colors permeate the air around these mysteries in wafting clouds and light. Are they physical? No. We pass through them daily. Yet, they are not altogether untouchable. As I learned, once I gained the courage to touch one. My finger would pass through it, but where my finger passed I would notice a bend or a twist in the facet of the jewel. And so I began to experiment and play with these boxes of wonder where ever I might find them.

And so, on a day of otherwise no special importance, I opened a piece of this mystery for the first time. It was the object that floated a foot above the roots of the old ash tree in my parents yard and had been the most constant patient of my experiments. After a sequence of manipulations of my fingers I had learned over time, the thing began to grow a bit larger and then to vibrate. My breath stopped as the door to this box began to flux in great excitement and then the indescribable colors exploded and I lost consciousness.

I remember I was seven years old that day, because my seventh birthday is the last one I ever celebrated. It was also the last time I ever saw my parents.

sea

I call the sea by its name. The name it taught to me long ago. A name constructed from no words. It is the name I came to know running along its touch. A name born upon the smells and life of those distant shores. Storms its accent, sunrises its silence. I felt the name as the waves crushed down upon my back, and as the sand dissipated beneath my feet. It is the burn in my lungs, the harsh sun upon my skin. Its instant and eternal name I cry. Voiceless.

Broken and dying upon that black mountain it is the name of the sea that makes up my final thought. Not my quest, now failing alongside my dimming life. Nor she held captive in the traitor's camp below, awaiting my rescuing return. It is not of the free people I now doom to slavery. It is the sea. My mother in nurture. My father in discipline. The great and mighty sea, which in this realm seems remote and impotent.

My eyes failing, I take in the sealess waste about me, I take in my final sight. Black and barren. Muddy clouds hamper far sight from this rising peak. This is my wretched grave. My own life's blood the only water to wash this forsaken land. My eyes take their final rest. I begin to hear the waves in answer to my call. The gentle sound of a sunset's tide. In then out. And in. Then out.

branch

Tasked with writing a story about this image, here is what came to mind. It is rough and will hopefully be finished tomorrow.

It was in my twelfth day lost that I found the mound that bestowed these visions on me. I came to a place where the trees died and the green seeped away. The ground began to rise to the peaks above me. One particular foothill could be seen directly before my path, ash white and round, yet it sat below the green cliffs of the valley. The contrast was so stark, I felt drawn to search out the mystery of this decay. With my own hope long abandoned, I stepped onto the dust.

And three worlds split before me. In some indescribable way, my mind could see each of these visions independently and completely while all stood stacked upon each other. The same hill was in each of my sights; it was the same land, but in each it was wildly different.

In what I came to call the first world, it was a lush land nestled in a slender rising valley between the mountain feet. And now this land of life and joy held a village of crafted houses and a thriving people. They looked a foreign people to me, teeming with an earthy wisdom and joy beyond my ken. Children played games I had never seen, but caused a smile to swell on my face. Animals were fearless of this people and wildly abundant in my sight. I could not count the creatures I saw. This valley was life painted pristine and innocent. I wept at finding the answer to the question I had never asked.

In the second world, the same valley was a scar of fire and madness. I heard the screams of the children I saw playing in my other sight. I saw flashing swords and spears, and torches falling upon the modest houses. Painted men and women seemed to be laying waste to this pristine valley. I saw one defiant mother bring down one of the painted men. She lunged at his spear and disarmed him. I saw another painted man kick and trample an old man who was not fast enough to flee his attacker. All around me was dying, engulfed in flame and agony. I wept to find the loss of my paradise.

And the third world was the ash and decay I had stood in to begin. It was where I believed myself to be. But my visions were so pure that I questioned in which world my feet stood. Perhaps all three of them. Or perhaps I was not there at all. Perhaps in my lost wanderings I had finally reached death in all of its chaos.

With these visions overwhelming me—with a peace beyond knowing, a fear beyond terror, and a consuming silence—I could not but proceed to climb this madness. In all these worlds the hill stood white against the backdrop of the mountains. In the first it was an orderly and perfect cutoff from the white to the green life below; it was as a spherical cap to the slope. In my second vision, it was as a pale eye, looking down upon the destruction of its land and its people; sickened in the firelight, accursed. And in the third it was no longer a marked distinction from the gray stone and dust that rose up to meet this crest; it was a faded crown.

I continued to make my way up. My spirit tearing with the chaos around me. Three worlds ripping at my mind, all full and distinct. Surely, this was my death. And this was the vision of the summation of my life, fractured and retold in some indiscernible allegory.

In my climb, I came to stand before a majestic tree centered at the height of the village, thriving and royal, burning and shadow, a smoldered core. In the first image it was decorated with colors and lights. In its life it was a widespread canopy of white branches with leaves of deepest green. Many people were in the midst of recreation under its outstretched arms. Children playing games, friends resting upon mighty roots, lovers walking under the intertwining shade. This tree was the center and heart of the village. I could see signs of it being a meeting place as well as a holy place. But it was revered with a living love, rather than a solemn worship.

In my second sight, I saw a large host of the ravagers gathered before the tree already aflame at its edges. The throng stood before one man who screamed to them and gestured violently. Not understanding their language, I could still see this man at the center was the leader of this painted host. His diatribe inflamed and spurred his followers. Raised torches met his words, shouts of violence and anger concurrent with his own. And then with a motion and a loud yell, the man silenced the crowd. He turned to a young invader nearby and stretched out his hand in silence. He was granted an axe. With deft skill the man climbed the mighty trunk of the tree, axe in belt. He stepped out onto a mighty branch. A few of the host began to clamor in a rageborn joy, but the man angrily motioned for silence again. His eyes were intense with passion as he looked down upon a leg sized shoot, hands clenching the axe. There appeared a struggle in his mind. And then his blow struck. The silence held as the man battled with hewing the branch off, flames dancing on the leaves around him. The sound of his grunts of hatred echoed through his followers. Finally, the length of the branch fell to the ground, and the painted ones erupted in the midst of their passion. More began to climb the tree to ravage it in irreverence. One grabbed the fallen branch and held it aloft to strong praise. The leader admired his army for a time, and then finished breaking off an already shattered piece of branch, about an arms length long. Then he dropped to the ground, disappearing into the flowing masses below.

I pushed through the crowd, upwards, upwards, heartsick and choking. I do not know if I could physically touch these people. I suppose I would have noticed the crushing of the crowd in its rolling movement. But their irreverent and bloody manner struck me physically, regardless. If they could not hit me, they still beat me. I looked to the hill as my escape. Finally I passed to the upwards slope of the great tree's clearing, and I took a last look back at the terrible scene. The tree was beginning to fire in earnest now. Disgusting merriment lit the night along with the flames. Yet in the flowing bodies, I saw a shadow steal out and upwards as well. The shadowy figure walked with dread purpose one arm holding a rough club of near arms length.

(still to be continued)