The Wal-Martian Chronicles Part II: Another Saga of Suburban Deep Space

The air in your house is not right, so you set forth on a Tuesday night journey of ennui.

The sky is clear and dark; the streetlights are further apart than you remember. Away from the main street, it feels like an abandoned colony on the moon. Whatever signs of life you see in the open air, the older lady walking to her car, the bunny rabbit running through the grass by the railroad tracks, seem out to get you. When you walk by a bright wall, you see the red and blue differentials of your shadow. If you wore 3-D glasses, you'd swear your shadow was trying to choke you.

You enter Spaceship Wal-Mart, familiar with its surroundings. In the corridor between Eat and Be Eaten, someone recognizes you. You talk for a few minutes with him, about the abhorrent state of the economy, and journalism in particular. You have to ask him his name, for you have absolutely no clue who this guy you're bumping fist to work gloved fist with is. After looking around, flipping through a couple of magazines, you leave without buying anything.

You walk through the parking lot, hurtling further and further into the void. Half the shopping center has just been built, with most of the new stores having signs that say "Available". Further down, behind the post office, you see the Golden Corral, looking virtually untouched since it opened four years ago, and since it closed last year. Those who know your appetite blame you for closing the all-you-can-eat buffet, but you never had the chance. An ominous sign tells you of an asphyxiation risk, for a carbon dioxide tank has yet to be claimed from the site.

You continue on your Space Oddity. You have a ways to go before returning home, Major Tom. Look at the stars. Look at the police lights. Look at the Fantasy Showbar, once the subject of a Supreme Court decision, now surprising you with its OPEN light on. Take your Wawa brand sunflower kernels and may God's love be with you...

Part Two of tentative's epic dream. (Part One) tentative's only creation of this was in her sleep, except past "I was". My dream didn't have an ending.

MARCH OF THE MONSTERS: THE GODDESS

And suddenly I was in a room that was as infinity large as the universe is.

I was running, the blond bitch was gone and instead it was an Asian girl, with long straight black hair. We ran, the Master and I, the Asian girl coming up behind, our heels kicking up the dust and I was leaving soggy footprints. The band around my wrist had a muted glow about it and we ran from one side of the room to the other. There was no sky, no wind or sun or clouds. Everything was the color of the floor, only the distance away determined how dark it was. And we ran.

A huge arch loomed above us. It had strange carving and the blackness behind it leading into something, perhaps another world. We came to a stop and I stood by the Master and we discussed it all in low tones. The Asian girl began looking backwards and forwards, between us and the sandy world behind us. Her white dress fluttered in the wind there was not and she lay down.

I looked at her in horror and realized everything. She was a traitor, of course she could communicate with the monster in the ground. As she lay down the sand came up around her and she dissolved into it in a pale white magic shape that shimmered on the ground like stars. As I watched the ground fell away and my dread turned into cold sweat as the sand poured down into blackness and tiles of ground disappeared. For a long time the blocks simply plummeted but then I realized they weren't all disappearing, some of them were rising and joining together and they were changing color.

The bracelet on my arm buzzed and though my Master was about to guide me I walked forward as though pulled.

For a long time I just walked, for hours, maybe days, so I could reach the end of the falling tiles. When I did I climbed up the stairs and though the traitor caused all this to happen I knew that it was okay. I stood on the platform and grasped the handles of the two long bone-saw shapes. As I did they shuddered and I stepped backwards with them still in my hands. Groaning and huge they rose and twisted into shape. Crossbows, two of them, as long as the world is wide.

I felt like a giant holding them, and as I twisted my wrists and moved the bows around I grew up and up until I am was huge as the universe itself. I laughed inside my head and looked with wonder at the crossbows. It had become red and silver and brown as it rose up out of the ground into the weapons it now formed. Axes lined it, and as the blocks moved they became more like two giant pistols that shot out axes not bullets.

I turned my goddess-head and saw the ground. I had forgotten about that which was now so far beneath me. Huge armies spanned what I could now see was a box of a room. There was no sky, no earth curving away. The flat sands turned ninety degrees to make walls a thousand feet high which then turned to make a ceiling of the same brown dusty color. I watched in bemused wonder as the armies clashed together.

I turned my crossbows towards them and fired a few times, experimentally. I didn't see anyone fall but I kept on firing. The axes curled into the clumps of man and beast as they writhed together in blood lust. I noticed motion and saw a man leap towards me. His goatee caught my eye and I knew him to be the bad guy.

Arm over arm he climbed up crossbow towards me. I didn't think to shake it so he would fall off.

I threw up my hand instead to push him away and he grabbed my wrist. A small wooden traditional crossbow in his hand, he held on with nothing and instead held firmly to the bracelet. I flicked him around several times, getting angrier as he didn't let go.

Behind him, in the middle of the huge battle ground was a towering whirlwind. It felt like it was part of me and I could control it without even noticing. The armies were fighting each other, clashing and killing because of their own little wars, but they were all united against my whirlwind of power. It was the bracelet. Without the band my master had given me this wouldn't have happened. Take the band, take the power. I wanted the power.

The armies waged war to destroy that part of me, the man tried to wrestle the bracelet off my arm. It was the Apocalypse, only in slow motion and the humans weren't winning. I was.

I fired the crossbows at the armies, axes flying off and people falling in waves. The man with the goatee suddenly dropped his crossbow into the sand so far below him and grabbed at my goddess-wrist, pulling hard at the band. He half pulled it off and I clenched my fist. Gritting my teeth in rage I grabbed him by the waist. My fingers turned to flame around him and he screamed in agony. His hands came away from my band of power to push at my fire but that only made him scream more. Red and hot fire danced beneath my skin. I tortured him for several moments longer as his blood began to boil and his screams became agonizingly loud.

Laughing a little in comfortable pleasure at my power I threw his smoldering body into the mass of armies. Still laughing, I crushed them. It was long. It was enjoyable.

I ruled for many hundreds of thousands of years after that, but all I ruled was a great empty box of sand and dead heroes.