Round Robin

Ron Koppelberger

Round Robin

Belonging to the mix of entertainment, women and cheep cologne was a satisfying wrinkle in the web of tense embryonic existence. He caused the fray, cured the commotion and assured the gaggle of drama. A sure secret, a mystery of import and tempered rumor gone round robin. In a turn to return, a will to passing whimsy, just a whisper to the giggling mistress of screams and guffaws, laughter and flittering evanescent communication; just a whisper in a room full of parishioners. He leaned toward the raven haired beauty; she smelled of lilacs and wine as her gold and diamond earrings danced in delicate circles of light, prismic and casting tiny spears of candent white light against her slender neck. Just a whisper to come along, round robin, round robin.
Her smile faded as he whispered in gentle coquette,” There’s a fire in the loft love, a fire in the loft.” He watched as she struggled to identify the whispering source of her fear. He watched as she grimaced, teeth bared in fright,
“YYYYYIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE”, she screamed through clenched teeth. “FFFiiiiiiirrrrreeeeeeeee.” her face contorted into creased lessons of fright and her expression became a contagious rhythm of flowing fear. The room shifted and the crowd churned to the front door, Screaming surges trampling, crushing in waves of patent leather and stiletto heels, in waves of bloody stomped silk, stumbling ails and tuxedo stain. They surged and pressed and the demon smiled in distracted interest as the broken bloody bodies of a dozen lay heaped near the door. “Round robin, round robin,” he hissed in sibilant appreciation.

Justified By Fire

Ron Koppelberger

Justified by Fire

The virgin leaf was unspoiled by the amber colored substance, opium in a purely secret demonstration of surety. Always there and wanting a host to the lonely deliriums of addiction, the opium was always there and willing.
Harmon Blue was bred by the passage of denial and the tiny green leafed store of opium wasn’t tempting him to dramas of confusion. Instead he found himself on the border of a giant expanse. There were Poppies as far as the eye could see. Harmon was calm as he unscrewed the cap on the ten gallon can of gasoline. As he poured the fuel on the blossoms he thought about his daughter. Twenty-one years broken, that’s how long she had lived. The gas lolled and dripped from the plants. She had, in some insane yoke of fate, become an opium addict in blooming concession to all things expressing her former life; she was encumbered by the symmetry of the substance, tortoise slow and easy in the great race.
The gasoline sloshed in moist cloying union with the deceptively hateful flowers. He knew he was justified in his remedy. They had found his daughter face down like a broken doll on her apartment floor.
The echo of the shimmering fluid as the last few drops trickled across the temptress weed was hollow and desolate. Harmon Blue set the unequaled expanse of poppies on fire. He opened up his arms and cried; the poppies burned in a glittering conflagration of beauty and utter darkness.

Summer Soul

Ron Koppelberger

Summer Soul

Bruised and defiant the why and the drama of the idea was bolstered by the summer smile of what he called delicate, beautiful and wild. Treat Roe sat on the patio rail; his misgivings and doubtful knowledge tempered by the cold taste of beer sipped from a Margarita glass.
He looked at her mascara smudged eyes and saw paradise, through half swollen black eyes and purple patches of injury. He saw and whispered his affection through cracked lips, tasting copper in small measures of beer and blood. She had equine poise shaped by the lines of a night-time allure, eyes of passion and ringlets of silken desire. He ran his thumb across the slippery edge of the glass. The daughter of dark esteem she lay her palm against his and smiled.
The fight had been furious and long. Treat had nearly gone down and for a brief instant the halo had dimmed above his loves shining countenance. Dewy Meck lay in a bleeding heap near the bougainvillea vines, unconscious and defeated.
Treat pressed his palm against his girls palm, candent in azure and scarlet they became a single beam of brilliance, rouge and blood, lipstick and torn t-shirts smeared green by the stain of grass and wont. Treat sighed summer breezes and barbecued chicken while her heart blanketed the dream that made him whole with the essence of a female betrothal. A call to the vivid twilight they moved closer together in joined conspiracies of shadow. They brought the wind to a crescendo in tall pine by ravens in flight and marriage unto the breath of an ethereal second, by backyards in caste, in eternal celebration of the twilight moment. They became a single flame fed by the velocity of a substance dreamed possible by the heavens and tears of trust.
The light on the patio hummed and melded with the currents that course through backyards and county fairs, through summer picnics and crazy screams of romance, by rare wine brilliant halos of light wrought unto the ghosts of what simple abandon, for the night and the call of the sleeping crow, holds in secret reverie. A meaning given birth by the wombs of a chosen direction. The patio, the epoch, they moved upward and into the evening sky, borne in unbridled scenes of past discovery, for the eyes of a generation in lost frays, in dark shadows shorn only by twilight visions and the fears of lovelorn battles, a trim demon in contrary coquette, they ascended away into the skies with willing mind and the desire of angels in phantasmal swirl. They moved into a clandestined existence and the conquering mind of elder possession. Chicken stained hands , sauce and beer, sweat and breath like the whisper of dandelions blooming summer souls and babies recollections of cradles in ghostly prelude unto the revelation in southern skies and seconds yearning the gateway to different worlds.
Dewy Meck lay broken as the couple moved toward heaven and the promise of a future in roses, he groaned and climbed up from the farthest depth of a black illusion. In Anger, in tides of blood and ageless sand, he gained his feet vowing the world and the realm of human existence.
He sighed and fire flew from between his bleeding lips, sparks and ash in tongues of shadow, cold fire in the aftermath of a backyard battle between the winds of fate and chicken grease, chips and human endeavors to claim an instant in heaven, Eden, Nirvana, the ranchouse with children and dirty diapers and bottles of mad dog wine; the fight for what’s bought by the angels in humble secret, in asylums unseen.
Dewy looked heavenward and vowed an oath in blood and gray eyed ice. “Till death, by the need of your breath, I’ll have the favor of tide and life, of azure skies and sunshine, of warm smokey campfires and Bad mitten games won in favor of cigarette smoke and cold beer, I’ll have and in good measure!”
Dewy climbed the patio steps and went to the barbecue built into the side rail. Lifting the lid he inhaled deeply of the wood smoke, the charcoal and crispy hotdog Oder. Reaching in Dewy grabbed a tinfoil ear of corn and a charred simmering chicken leg. Carefully Dewy whispered dark drama, the beast, the dire melancholy of a jealous cousin, a brother of what has all by exiled prisoners in chain he ate and the world revolved, sun, moon, sun, moon.
The heavens watched Dewy and earth, the here praised his silhouette, his darkness, the blood of an angry command.
Treat Roe grinned in his own world with his love, his reason for life. The halo in his midst shining light down on Dewy; Dewy stopped eating barbecued chicken for a moment, the taste of cold beer on his lips, and for just a second he knew heaven. The space of that knowledge given birth, the wont of what he thought possible for his existence, for the continuance of his particular breed. Dewy by earth and Treat by heaven, by death and life, by god and by the dark demons that want the soul of simple living, that want barbecues, carnivals in summer rust, county fairs and beer on a steamy day. By the grace of an eternal battle, gasping grasping and locked in strange union between man, woman and the beast, the possessor of dark dreams and the tempter by decree, “I’ll show them the shadows and they shall want of it, they shall fall like sparks of dimming light to the earth!” He shouted to the sky above between bites of chicken and gulps of beer.
In silent rows miles and miles away, the wheat of tomorrows promise grew as did the darkness wonting fire to consume the harvest; Treat prepared the steaks, juicy t-bones, the hamburgers as he gazed out over the garden waiting for the fight yet done.
Dewy sighed and spoke, “ I know how they are, it will be mine in the end.” they both counted the seconds in a summer of souls desire, summer souls and the wont of light and dark, they counted the seconds that formed the bond between them.

Seasons In Red Chill

Ron Koppelberger

Seasons in Red Chill

The snow was the mistress of fields in rolling cloaks of sleep. Unlucky he thought as he rooted for the secret stone. The walls of the cellar were cool, thick concrete and stone and he pressed against the coarse rock surface searching for the loose rock. The cellar was dark and quiet, heaps of snow lay against the oily surface of the small rectangular windows that sat flush with the ceiling and the surrounding walls.
Principle Fix coughed a heavy wheezy gasp as he shivered in the empty cellar. “It’s gotta be here.” he whispered in a gravely voice tinged by the bug he was suffering from. Principle coughed again and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow. With fumbling childlike hands he found the loose stone and removed it with a gentle pull. His relief was unfettered by the knowledge that he was alone, He prayed, “Let there be other survivors god.” Principle reached into the cool recess and removed the tiny plastic case.
Holding the case in his hands he remembered the sun, the blue revolutions of sky and the shimmer of endless horizons in white, it had snowed the evening before, a foot at least and the wheat fields stood empty except for the dark shoots of weed and stray wheat between the furrowed acres of land.
Hail Wister lived on the neighboring farm and construction on the old stone swimming hole behind the rows of cow stalls had ceased, it was a giant hole filled with gravel loose stone sand, dry thankless soils. Hail had predicted a great swimming hole for the grandchildren and the missus.
“It’ll be the perfect pool for all of us…….swimming and tea.” he had exclaimed. That was last summer and here it was mid winter. The pond had never materialized, construction had gone on until the hole had bubbled mud like hot molasses and smoke.
Principle looked from the kitchen window past the fence row to the great snow filled crater. Hail and his family had left suddenly one day, without notice. Hail, Alma and the two gray hounds they owned had vanished in the space of a day. The day before they left the backhoes and bulldozers had ceased to dig the swimming hole. Hails truck had stood idling in his driveway for a few moments, gray exhaust puffing out a final Farwell to the life they had known. His truck was loaded down and full of household items, the things that had gone on for years in the ancient two story farmhouse. Here today and gone tomorrow, no rhyme or reason or goodbyes to remember.
The sun had been bright and the terrain cool, frosty, sharp with the snows of a sleeping horizon. Principle remembered turning the radio on.

“It’ a great time to find the signs

In Generville. Come visit our green tree shoppers

Mall, everything for a deal, everything

For a steal.”

The commercial continued on with a disco tune from the late seventies and a screeching hoot like an owl then the news came on.

“Every hour on the hour.”

Principle turned the volume up as he turned away from the snowy vista and the red and white kitchen curtains. Gossip, laughter and then a panicked announcer…..,

“……….a giant, it tore through Peresville

Common like a bomb, it rained and the meteor belched a red colored mist,

Red rain, the entire area was deluged by

the crimson shower.

I repeat a meteor landed in Peresville Common

Today leaving no survivors. The president

Has declared a state of emergency for the area and the state.

Once again a meteor hit Peresville Common

Where it apparently rained blood……”

Principle thought about the gravel pit, the swimming hole Hail had attempted to build, obscured acquired by the land, it lay in silent reproach to the efforts of a farmer, a failed attempt at Champaign and hotdogs, river springs and the dreamy castes that filled the grand law of want and will. He had left in defeat after years in the land. The salt of the earth, Hail had left without explanation.
Principle looked back out the window it was sprinkling tiny droplets of moisture, red, thick and viscous like blood; the snow was speckled red and white with tiny depressions like teardrops. The window reflected rivulets of moisture in long streaks, slashes of crimson against the glass.
That damn hole in the ground he couldn’t get around it. Hail had fashioned the guest and here it was in a moment of silent acceptance. Give me red rain to fill the cracks and crevices, come swim in my depths, but now it was deserted except for the snows, the red rains and principle.
Principle thought about all of those things, those moments…..seconds in motion as he removed the red and blue case from the hole in the wall. It was a first aid kit he had acquired from the good-will. Inside lay two gauze and a bottle of camphor oil. Principle took the camphor and rubbed it across his brow in the shape of a cross.
“To the hole.” he coughed, it was the cold or the flu or some kind of nasty bug he wasn’t sure….he knew he was sick. The hole…..go to the hole He thought.
Principle climbed the stairs, wooden slats splintered and old, they creaked as he tested his weight. The living room stood empty at the top of the stairs, Debbie gone now and the children grown. The sky shone bright through the pinkish red sheen on the windows. The hole, go to the hole he thought again; he opened the backdoor to the frost and the blood, to aged fields of wheat in summers gone by as he made his way to the deserted hole in the ground.
His feet came away in frigid layers of frozen scarlet, puffs of loose cotton beneath. Staring ahead he looked at the depression in the ground and sighed in quiet contemplation.
Great strands of ivy covered the surface of the snow in layers across the bottom of the pit and gouts of steam wafted from the center. The truck gone now, Hail had missed it his hole was gushing hot water and steam, Roses and daisies lined the edges growing up defiantly through the snow. His hole, and hails failure, hails reason for leaving. Principle exhale and moved down the edge of the slope where he stepped into the steaming water.
It felt good and he discovered that he really didn’t care about the rain much as he submerged himself in the springs warmth and asylum.
For a moment he dreamed of pools and pearls, he owned it for that moment, forgiving the sky and the blood that poured down around the secret oasis.

Thye Veil Of Sleep

Ron Koppelberger

The Veil Of Sleep

Agile Sin slept in quiet comfort, it was a dark and lonesome sleep she was accustomed to. As the hour of eleven P.M. approached she began to dream in rapid sequences of light, fire and shades of darkness. She was a vampire to the breath that allowed her to continue living, crimson and scarlet in color, the penance of blood stole her sunshine and today left her with demons in the form of a nightmare.
She was by the edge of a great glassy pond, partially dressed and bathing her fatigued body with the fresh spring water, her reflection cried to the gods in shadow light, to be of the caste, the vampire laden unto the task of feeding, sleeping and even bathing. She sang a lullaby as she bathed, something her mortal mother had taught her,

“Clean about little one

The day will come little one

When the seams and stitch

Of a forgotten dream will

Bring you all that it seems

All in all clean.”

She was dressing in the dream when from the corner of her vision the silhouette of a creature appeared. Startled she dressed and stood away from the edge of the pond. “What is this…..?” she spoke aloud. The sky sang songs of evening tide dread in that silhouette, in that great goblin of a beast that had found her in a moment of weakness. She prepared herself for the fight that would ensue when the great beast came to her. It was fire red and smelled strongly of brimstone. It’s horns were great appendages growing from it’s forehead and it’s teeth were pointed and dripping saliva. She watched as it plodded closer to her whispering, whispering.
“Sin, I come to collect what is mine by the right of those who feed on vampire and wolf, by the right of we who have the steadfast hold on dreams and nightmares, we who hold the key to your salvation as well as your damnation. I come for you Sin, in this dream of dreams as a messenger and the spirit that will take you to the test.” he whispered with a lashing tongue and fangs that sang the song of everlasting pain.
“But you are no vampire beast and I shall not succumb to your whim or your test!” she said with a touch of rage in her voice.
“By seasons of betrothed calm and lessons of rapture you will come to me Sin, for the blood, the blood of the condemned and the taste that lies within you. By my eyes and yours!” he commanded as he moved closer to Sin. She stepped back a few paces and drew her dagger, the pass between them filled with a dank fog and sin coughed at the stench of rotting flesh.
“You are dead beast, if you are to test me then how will you do it, you’re not a living thing, how will you do it?” she yelled at the roiling mist around her. His voice echoed in the fog and smoke.
“I will test you in accord with the vampires of old, the vampires of old my dear…to the blood of a lamb and the innocence of a babe!” his voice said closer to her now. The sky filled with the light of a thousand suns in her dream and the trees looked as if they were in flames. The beast glowed a bright crimson and maroon as he loomed closer to the edge of the pond. She could hear him breathing, he was panting now and the heat he was generating filled the space between them. “You will be mine!” he spoke into her ear, “You will be mine Sin!” She drew the silver dagger she had near her hip and thrust blindly into the glowing smoke. The sun blazed and the beast screamed in mortal agony as the blade penetrated it’s flesh. Shadows and silhouettes filled the smokey flames around them and the beast fell to the ground defeated by the one action that Sin had guaranteed him. “You will die now!” Sin said in the dream as the beast faded to nothing and the night horizon returned with inky blue velvet and the twinkle of a thousand stars.
Sin fell to her knees and prayed to the elders, the vampires of her youth and in that dream of praying she found respite with the truth of who she was, what she was and where she belonged. She knew she would never be anything but a vampire, Agile Sin the wash of a thousand dreams and the wish of a lonely vampire, and she dreamed until she awoke, and when she awoke she found a few sprigs of dandelion weed clutched in her palm smelling green and new. Like the fresh cut flowers of a new day and a new beginning.
The flowers stained her fingertips and she tasted the bloom, it was in patches close to her. The stain of crimson drizzled gray and black on the grass as a remembrance of her dream, had it been real? What of the test? She tasted blood and the sensation revived her and made her ready for the evening hunt, except for dreams and nightmares she had no care in the world except to fulfill her destiny as her caste demanded.
The night sky lay like a blanket across the landscape as Sin made her way to the village common and her food, the sweet taste of warm blood would cradle her in it’s ecstasy and give her a reason to move from today into the promise of tomorrow. She sang again,

“Patient vapors hold the

Ceaseless plumage of a raven in

Designs of ancient taboo

And shadows alive unto the twilight of a new evening

Dream and the way of wandering hearts given the

Will of the night and the taste of a tear in silence and blood.”

From Ambling Broad Clouds

Ron Koppelberger

From Ambling Broad Clouds

Misty Smoke and dreams of a better tomorrow filled her mind with the promise, the promise of western futures and wild coyote jamborees. She tilted the Stetson against her sweating brow and adjusted the leather chaps that had gotten her as far as New Mexico. The horse wore old war paint and the froth that covered it’s flanks told her to slow down.
The coyotes were following Careful Spell with loyal abandon, tracing her hoof prints across the desert plains. There were hundreds of them and they were loyal only to Careful and her mystery. She lifted the kerchief she had tied across her mouth and called to them with a long lonesome whoop. “Yaaaaaiioooooowwwwww!” she called in a fervent gasp. The coyotes called back by the hundreds filling the desert air with the wild song in the shadow of a twilight moon. Careful gathered the little kindling that was available and built a camp fire for her and the old horse. The evening was fast approaching and it would be cold, they’d need the warmth of the fire. She sat next to the flame she had built and prayed to the old spirits and the silhouette of an approaching night, the coyotes howled and sang to her with fierce loyalty. She paused for a moment to remember, the wagon train, the party and the end of something important. It had been the end of the day, the end of the trail for her and thirty others. The desert had been merciless to them and they were suffering the fate of inexperienced travelers.
Pool Johns had told her that the road would be hard, he hadn’t intended it to be impossible. They were out of water and most of the horses had died leaving them with horse meat to eat and little else. When the meat ran out so did their hope and eventually they had succumbed.
Careful had awoke to the sound of coyotes howling the next morning and she had felt refreshed, rejuvenated by the sound. The old horse had appeared from the dust and she had saddled him and donned her dead husbands chaps and Stetson. She didn’t know where she was headed if she was really headed anywhere, west and the promise of a new beginning. Perhaps she had perished with the others, a ghost, maybe I’m a ghost she thought as she waved to the distant horizon and the army of coyotes. The night wore away the veil of sleep and she continued on to the next day moving closer to another town, her and the coyotes in silent command of the desert and the world perhaps, the world as it stood between the living and the dead, the old and the ancient, the world in sure whispers of life beyond life and living beyond the realm of the living. Careful prayed again as she rode high in the saddle, she prayed to the approaching destiny that would carry her across the great gulf and the wont of a breathing thing. All in all the coyotes knew their song and they knew the passions of a desert that could take and give the essence of a dream, from ambling broad clouds to the eyes of a legend.

The Efforts of The Hungry

Ron Koppelberger

The Efforts of The Hungry

Sworn by the underworld taverns and decreed by the lords of feasting prosperity, the clan wore its’ livelihood with relish abandon. “We feast upon the flesh of men and then we toast to the greater things that the gods can lend us. Great grand thirsts and desires of renewal and survival absorb us for the sake of what they call Ghoul.” the clan leader exclaimed as he chewed a piece of thigh bone thoroughly and passionately.
They lived and congregated in the deepest depths of graveyard commons, beneath the surface of the earth, hidden and unseen by the prying eyes of men. This was their haven, their respite from the deeds of men. In the past they had tried to live with men but the hunger had intruded and they had been killed whenever discovered by man. Beheadings, burning at the stake and even buried alive. The tradition stated and told the tale of the first. Buried alive, Buried alive in piles of bones and rotting flesh and the grandfather of the Ghoul had survived. He had partaken of the flesh and he had changed become something more than human, because of humans, because of their fear. He had started the congregation with rag tag remnants of humanity and the clan had flourished. There were nearly five thousand of them now and they were the masters of their domains. They moved from cemetery to cemetery as their hunger perused them, devouring the discarded the forgotten and the lost.
The head of the clan reflected on this as he sat atop a coffin behind the closed gates of an ancient mausoleum. “A drink for us all in the summer of our youth, our souls in the seat of those who perished without cause, a taste for the Ghoul and a glass of fine wine for the survivor in all of his glory.”