Backstage left was a place where light didn’t get an invitation, didn’t have a ticket to go. Dave and Elizabeth fumbled through that darkness, stepping slowly, hands against the black brick wall. He knew what he was looking for, and she just had to trust him. Sometimes, that’s all another person needs: someone to sift through the darkness with them.

They came to a door light had stuck its foot in, sun beams gleaming on the hard floor through a crack between a black push bar door and the frame. A red sign glowed over it, and sunlight peaked around it through the crack left between it and the frame. Dave pushed it open and stepped outside.

The wind swept his hair across his face as he stepped out onto a grassy landing. The great glory of earth reached out before him. A blue sky beset with a white golden sun rested over blue steel mountains dusted with heaven’s frozen tears. Dave looked upon the green and blue wetland before him that the cold mountains hugged warmly like an old friend. This looks like someone dropped the Alps in the everglades, he thought.

In the midst of all the glory of the landscape sat one mountain close to Dave. He noticed a trail leading to its foot and up its side. I’m going to hike that trail. I’m going to climb that mountain. I don’t know what waits at the top, but I can’t wait to see. I’m finally excited about something. The search has meaning again.

“I have to go up that mountain,” Dave said. “And I don’t think you can come.”

“No. We all have our own mountains to climb. You can tell me about it when you come back. We’ll talk over supper.”

“Yeah. Let’s get pizza.”

“Let’s get pizza,” she said smiling at his face.

Dave put one foot in front of the other with his hands in his pockets. His feet led him to the forest at the mountain’s foot. Cicada’s roared from the verdant walls around him as he hiked onward and upward. Didn’t Lola say something about climbing a mountain?

As Dave climbed farther, a fog rolled in around him like smoke from a campfire. The mountain seemed to become a different place from the one he had seen earlier. He looked back through the greenery and into the red sky as the jewel beset upon it crept behind the mountains that held the welkin world on high. Dave breathed in the beauty, then turned to continue his trek upon the mountainside. Is this still the way up?

The smell of ashwood burning invited Dave onward. He stepped out of the mountain grove with a long tangled beard and hair in want of a cut. He took his pack off as he approached the bright little fire pit. He looked up at the cloak of night; never had he seen the stars in all their magnificence, and now they looked down upon him, great giants dusted upon a beautifully and brightly glittering expanse of darkness.

A man sat in a producer’s camping chair tending the fire.

“Hello Dave!” said the man. Dave looked into bright and warm eyes disciplined with the coldness of man who has spent many days fighting to hit deadlines. Dark but peppered hair lay gently combed but firmly styled atop a handsome head with a healthy face, full of life and dignity. A mustached trimmed tight over its lip accented the piece that held the face together; a compassionate smile seemed to say everything anyone would ever want to hear.

“Uh, hello sir,” said Dave.

“Well, why don’t you come have a seat; there’s a chair here waiting for you.”

“I’d love to.”

Dave couldn’t pass up a nice fire with good company. His toes were clammy in his shoes, and his fingers were chilled by the mountain air. But all at once, everything grew calm and still and comfortable. He sat down in the nice camping chair with the same look of thought on his face that he always wore. Few moments passed as the fire crackled its melody on the quiet mountain.

“You look a little confused, son,” said the man, tapping his fingers and raising an eyebrow.

“Well, you’ve caught me off guard I guess,” said Dave. “You aren’t who I thought I’d find up here.”

“I see. Who were you expecting then?”

“Eugene O’Neill.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Someone gave me a description, and his face kind of fit the bill.”

“I don’t look that much like a skeleton, do I? Who told you about me up here, anyway? I bet it was Lola. She never listens. Doesn’t hear a word I say.”

“Yeah, I figure she’d recognize Walt Disney.”

“Well, you take what you can get. Now onto business; I have something very important to ask you, son.”

“What’s that?” asked Dave. He was perplexed; he thought he was the one with all the questions. Why am I so surprised about another surprise? You’d think I’d learn by now.

“Did you enjoy the ride?”

“Huh? Uh, well… is it over?” asked Dave, running his fingers through his nasty and tangled beard. “I mean, I’d like to say yes. When you look at a painting that moves you, you want to be able to tell the artist about the effect it had on you, but I don’t think I’ve seen the whole painting yet.”

“Then I take it you did get something out of it.”

“Did?”

The man pulled out a white, unfiltered cigarette and an expensive lighter with mouse ears engraved on it. Smoke rolled up around his face. Dave watched the pale smoke mingle over head with the black smoke from the fire. The stars were obscured, but not entirely blotted out.

“Did. Will. Would should could. That’s all relative. Anyway, what isn’t relative is that there’s no sense in creating if nobody gets anything out of it. So, I want to know what you got out of it.”

“Well…” said Dave. “I didn’t find any answers, if that’s what you mean.”

“Answers?” said Walt with a chuckle. “No, I think those are rather boring and overrated. They’re kind of like life’s macguffin. That’s the way Hitch usually puts it.”

“Is that why most answers only create more questions?”

“Yeah, I think that’s why it’s designed that way.”

“Everything is always in motion, moving toward the final act.”

“If you say so.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“We try to hold on to those sunsets and intimate nights, but we don’t have hands to grab with.”

“Are you looking to hold onto the moment, or the joy that it brings. You can remember joy; you’ve got hands to hold that.”

Dave rolled the thought around in his head.

“Everytime I think I know something,” said Dave, “I find out I don’t know anything at all.”

“Oh, come on now; you have to give yourself more credit than that, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a spinning teacup. It’s best to have some friends and family in there with you.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s easier said than done though.”

“What isn’t? That’s the excuse of lazy, invalid, pessimists. Is life something you live, or is it something you talk about?”

“A little bit of both, I guess,” said Dave, feeling clever.

“Sure, but don’t spend too much time running your mouth or you’ll forget why your mouth learned to walk in the first place.”

“I guess you learned to speak with your cartoons.”

“I learned to speak in a lot of ways, but yes, cartoons were one of them. What about you? I hear you write a little poetry here and there.”

“I try. It is what it is, but I like to think I’m working on my own ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ It’s only half the length though and a tenth as deep.”

“How many other people do you know who have walked that far or dived that deep creating something?”

“None, I guess.”

“You sure? Have you ever bothered to ask?”

“No. No I haven’t, but I figure they would have said something if they’d created something worth sharing.”

“Did you ever say anything?”

Again, Dave thought he would be the one with all the questions.

“Never mind that though. Just keep it in the back of your head if you want. My real point was for you to just keep walking. Just keep diving—”

“Just keep going.”

“That’s right. You’re working. You’re working hard, and there’s virtue in that. Work harder if you want, but remember why you do what you do.”

“Because I’m in love. I’m in love with my wife. I’m in love with the beauty of Earth. I’m in love with creating. I’m in love with my coworkers, no matter how much they frustrate me at times.”

“That’s right. Fall in love. Fall desperately and madly in love, and then look up and realize what you’ve got in your hands: a responsibility to the thing you cherish. Give it a shot. See what happens.”

“Is that an answer?”

“Only in so much as it will will lead you to more questions.”

“That’s not really a bad thing.”

“No, I don’t think it is either. Any chance you could let me see those poems you’ve been working on?”

“Well, they’re all on my computer, and I’m afraid I didn’t bring that with me.”

“You sure about that? What’s in your pack?”

“Is that how this works?” asked Dave, unamused.

“Magic works in a lot of ways,” said Walt with a wry smile. “Do you really need to ask?”

Dave pulled out his laptop, pulled up his old poems, and passed the computer to Walt.

THE KILLER OR THE WOLF

It’s morning again in the City.

There was always one star

the whole town could see.

The Killer met the Wolf in street.

The whole world spun beneath their feet.

It’s always like that, always spinning.

“I’ll go for the throat,” he thought.

“But, then I would be

just the same;

a taste of blood’s a taste of death.”

The Shaman has his own ways,

and he wields them with the Sun.

He is the Wolf Shaman,

wild and uncommon.

The Killer,

he lifted his bat over his shoulder.

“I’m the man who killed the horse.

I am God and I am Satan.

I am born from your remorse

and sorrow

seeping into bones

because there’s no tomorrow.

I have lived in

every dawn and twilight,

a herald of hubris,

fault, and plight.

I am ruthless.

I am night.”

Dawn rose

above the City

gilding stone with

mighty sun beams. This

was her message to the

Shaman:

“What happens if the moon

screams?

Do you listen? Do you

paint its pale glow on your heart?

When the rain is gentle,

do you lament?

Were you born to die, or

do you die because you were born,

Wolf Shaman?

What happens

if you live between that time,

riding across the smoke in the night sky?

Will you find the glitter of stars;

will they reflect off your eye

as you smell the moon and

lift your sacred cry to heaven?

Pray, Wolf. Pray to the power

that is and will be. Let not

Death’s Dogma the

Killer’s Kind

bury you beneath

the might of their kind.

One day we all meet the killer;

it is our curse and

our desert, yet

the angels sing your name;

it is not Nihil, for

you are not of that tribe.

You are no

slave in the Nile. Some

rivers run north, remember.

Chains can be forged;

chains can be broken: by truths.

You are a being, not a was or a will be.

Now, take it in your hands

and understand,

‘What happens when we chance to love?”