Street

Hah. Maybe I’m not out yet. Worth it to see the look on Smokey Shul’s face when Barley and Tuck went a running through the god-damned Melancholy Trees. Hells but that was a move worth the folds.

Now they’ve gone and rolled out of direct view. No different I suppose, it was always high mag from the roving but just seemed somehow closer when we could lay back in the loungers, take a sip of our personal poisons and see the righteous spot on the old ball where the two of them sat looking right back up at us. Least, that’s the way I saw it with each toast I gave the damned sons of aunti-jis. Or daughter and son, I suppose.

This is Ontaria Chang Speaking from the High Noon. Place is filling up. Vultures sensing the end. But friendly enough vultures and hell, I’m making money any way you look at it. Come on around for a drink if you think you can make it in time.

State Street. Once upon campus hangout, after hours bars, and tourist trap.
Now there’s a thought, ain’t it. Tourist trap. Let that one percolate in the back of my mind for a bit.
They’ll be here soon enough. The trip through the trees threw them.

Scared.

Of everything.

That’s what they are.
They’ll still come. Won’t stop them, but gave us some time. Didn’t expect them to come so quick and I kind of wanted to have our discussion, the one where I convince them why me and the Tuckster need to stay, down here on State Street.
Or better, at the Terrace. Now there’s a memory. Sitting in the iconic UW chairs out on the terrace, with a pull of good beer and maybe a brat loaded with onions and sauerkraut overlooking Lake Mendota and looking over all of those lovely young things in their short shorts and tight shirts.
Somehow it’s all better in memory. And more joyful when we weren’t all young and fit. Young looking at least. Nothing to be done about the age hidden in the wearing mind.
Tuck calls me a lecherous old man. But hell, looking’s free and memory’s freer.
I better stop there.
Hoped a few more places along the street had survived, but things were pretty bad.
Myle’s. Gone.
Michelangelo’s. Gone.
Capital. Gone. (Not the center of government, the brew pub. Though that capitol is mostly gone too.)
Ian’s. Gone.

Nothing I didn’t know. No reason to go leaky about it. A lost child could do a surprising amount of damage in those last days. Toss in a cricket or two and you get State Street Mark 2.0. Rubble and ruin.

Further along though, Bop was in good enough and Fair Trade looking almost untouched, enough that I could Mandi a couple hot cups of. Best find though, Mediterranean Cafe. A Mostly Sealed. Even managed to prepare a nice meal while we waited and I prepped what I was going to say to The Tourists when they walked through the door. No way they won’t listen to me. I know all of their buttons.

We left The Malt House at a dead run.
I’m not really sure why. Barlenon’s idea. Says when they come, we have to be on some old street that mattered in the Once Upon.
Personally, I was quite happy sitting there on that patio with all that good liquor just through a door.
And I can also tell you that if I’d known what it meant to run through that forest, I damn well would have stayed.

Do you know about the Mournful Trees? Not nearly so many movies about them and they’re never in the pretty-prettys. Maybe you remember them, if you’re one of the LongTimers and were in the right place. Or wrong.

More likely wrong.

Thing is, the Mournful Trees . . . you may have heard the theories about the Affecteds. One claim is that they were all people once upon. Listen to Smoky. Says that The Tourists nano tech, same crawl as rewrote most people out of existence and same crawl as made it so I can get up and walk around in the six-times of earth, that tech also wrote the monsters of the end times. I don’t know as that’s true or not. I can say the Glints, up close like this, in the light just right seem more like people than not. People tied to sunlight and shadow.

And the trees. The trees.

When we saw them outside the bar, they didn’t seem so bad and who am I to say if their moan was despair or just a way they talk. But running through them? Right. That set things off. They wanted us then. They reached. They turned. They grabbed. They tried to follow.
You want horror? Listen to the sound of the mournful trees turning, trying to reach and grab and follow. That’s not wood cracking as it bends out of shape. That’s not just soil squelching as they uproot and step after us. That’s bone. And that’s something I don’t want to think about. Too much for you? Hell try being in that forest with all of them turning and reaching and stepping after you.
Slow though. And we were out easily enough with only the glints shadowing us and The Tourists backing away. And the drifting sounds of despair.
And then, soon enough, the street. State Street. Got some clean clothes at a little shop. Bop it was called. Definitely needed some clean clothes. Coffee. Settled into some actual good eats and waited. Barley rehearsing his plan. Me? Just shaking off the ugly of it all. And trying not to hear that long, low moan settling in my mind.

From here, you can go on to the next, or right on back to look at all Barley’s pretty pictures in the grid.