“Oh, Banes, please don’t have sex with Sarah until I fire her—she’s my mother’s nurse!”
-Barrister Moreno
…
From a Dream, 4:30 AM 7/7/25
Girdion reached out from Oblivion with his cold claw, hooked the black nimbus that ringed his waspy waist and hauled him aloft.
The world rocked and lurched—the, pavement, no the aluminum floor, waggling underneath of him. He was in the coupling housing between coach cars, standing behind a suitcase with a tool box stacked on top, a small, soft-shelled tool box what held tools he did not recall. But the thing said serenely, in its every shivering angle, “I hold tools, Master.”
People crowded behind him as his time slip was broken by the intercom, “Norfolk, next stop, five minutes. Please, to the head of the front coach car.”
He was stuck in the back of the second coach car. Before him stood a witless ape, a horny, salivating slave to the matriarchy. His long lost chattel stood before him, glistening in ebony desire over the collar of his uniform, oblivious to all except for the perfectly-formed Eastern European dancing girl he was preventing from leaving her seat. He insisted he carry her bags and give him her phone number. She insisted that she was a committed athlete and had no time for such priorities.
She was adorable. He had dragged her back whimpering to her Master one snowy day in Bessarabia. Matching the brand on her rump to that on the ponies in the pasture attended by the Slave boys, he had ridden on unsympathetic to her tears, as unsympathetic as he was now to her fears. She looked up at him for help, then recoiled with a start as she saw the Ire of Girdion there in his dead stare.
The Chattel, slouched about, his eyes by darkest instinct fated to follow hers. Its eyes meeting those of the winter-eyed devil, the rude amorite jumped six inches in the aisle, his eyes bugging out like cones, his great yam-gobbling mouth stalling and stuttering, “Whad dah, whad dah, whad dah, what dah… Fugg!”
“Excuse me, Sir,” commanded Banes, and the long ago penitent slave, instantly obedient, recovered from his anger, and gave way.
Banes then motioned for the slave girl to proceed him so that he might examine the full curvature of her yoga pants and rue the fallen world wherein that woman wore no master’s brand.
She was exceedingly athletic, perhaps a gymnast, and was met by a like beauty, wearing instead of her square cut nightfoam locks, a similar modest coif of yellow hair. Her too he had, once upon a righter time, run down at the mouth of the Oster to return her to her own patient Owner.
Banes was offered a helping hand down from the train and declined, hobbling proudly in his steep decline. Wandering about the sidewalk and the parking lot, the man so freshly recalled from the House of the Dead, wondered, who had summoned him fourth?
The cars these days all looked the same, black SUVs and white SUVs, sprinkled with Jeeps and sedans of Japan, nothing else. The area looked to be of enough poor repute, in squared gray concrete and cheap clay brick, that he might be able to find an errant slave to haul his things, the suit case, the mysterious tool bag.
‘Whatever had happened to my carpet bag?’
A thing beeped, no, slid electrically, like fingers across piano keys, in his pocket. There was a soft blue light and squared imprint through his threadbare slacks. Out he pulled a flat thing with a screen. He peered into what was an oblong hand-held TV screen, a thing so unlikely he was convinced he wandered in dream. The face of a smiling Negress, a pretty woman with nut brown skin lit up, “Hey, Baby, so glad to see you are back in my neck of the woods. How about dinner tomorrow?”
“What is tomorrow?” he drooled.
“Saturday, its almost Saturday now. Sunday is Fathers Day—we can make it DADDY’s Day!”
“Yes, of course, My Girl,” he smiled, wandering within, wondering at her name. At what well might he drop the bucket to retrieve that sweet girl’s name?
“Baby, please have your man send me his address. I just have his number and a girl ever only wants to beg one man.”
“Yes, Dear,” he smiled to the TV phone as she smiled and disappeared.
A voice boomed from across the street, a military, strident tone, “Banes, stay right there. I will get your things.”
A fine figure of a soldier—probably some brand of sailor at this port town—strode across the street grinning, “Sir, I have everything you need. It will be an honor to cross blades with you.”
“Thank you,” he wondered as they shook hands with that strong man. Then the drool stopped as the buckets splashed down in the sixth well west of the Janusarium, and he recovered, “Reilly, an honor. Thanks for having what is left of me. Ah, the young woman, on the TV phone wanted your address. I appear to be in store for a dalliance?”
“Taken care of, Sir.”
“Her name, Reilly? We seem to be acquainted and I would not wish to hurt—”
“Penelope, Sir. She is our Quartermaster—things have changed in the Naval service since your day.”
…
The shiver, clang, spark, swash, chink and ring of steel occupied him during the days with his stout protege. The young fellow did him the respect of roughing him up and taking his time and measure to task, even slamming him against the gym wall.
By night the quartermaster named Penelope, who looked the part of a Bell of old in white cotton dress, modestly attired, plied him with drink—spying on him of the obvious, even winking at him and looking up with pouting lips and saucer eyes at dinner, “You know, Major, I’m just using you.”
The Monday morning after Daddy’s Day, he woke in her broad bed, weak-legged and groggy to the ringing of an odd doorbell.
“Don’t answer it, Baby,” she said, standing their in a lace shift. “It’s my idiot husband, doesn’t realize the importance of my work.”
He looked at her stupidly. She answered, as the bell rang again, like an electric organ, rather than some proper bell, batting her magnetic amber eyes, “You are a wonderful source of information. We’d hate to lose you over my little indiscretion. But, its so nice to have a lover that can’t recall your connection—helps me understand a little why the Fates are such bitches.”
He walked to the door, intent on facing the cuckhold, and was struck by a bolt from behind, something like lightning freezing him into a meat board and sending him to the living room floor.
She stepped over him and opened the door.
Heavy feet booted in.
Heavy hands rolled him over.
He looked up and recognized the man’s strong, bullish face, a body of stout girth. He wished to talk, but could not. While awaiting Voice to return, he went to the Janusarium and counted out six wells to the west and dropped his bucket—and there he plunged with it into the ripples of Oblivion.
