I’ll be posting a new Python project of mine in January, along with some updates on my writing and maybe an excerpt or two as well.

Hopefully, next month/year will be a little more relaxed and give me time to get back to regular blogging.

Merry Christmas/Hanukah/Yule/Festivus/etc.

After a two-month hiatus, the Query Shark has returned with several new entries.  For those that don’t know, you can submit your query letters to the Shark and they may, or may not, be critiqued on the blog.

Ballantine editor Mark Tavani shares his thoughts on the state book publishing industry.

Yes, that big success can happen — it’s out there — but it’s like the lottery or one of those lucky few that got in on a good stock’s IPO. Don’t bank your future on it, don’t write a book geared towards the market if you don’t “feel” it (readers can tell when you’re writing outside your comfort zone), and definitely don’t go on and on about how crappy you’re doing in this economy. At least, don’t do it to potential business associates such as an agent of publisher.

In the anti-words of Nike — Just Don’t Do It.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it … in fact, I’m positive that I won’t. I’ll get close, which will be a victory to be, if only a moral one. The novel will be finished in the first month of December, which to me is a good enough position to be in. I’ll know that I would have finished on time had I not run into some real-life issues that prevented me from having the time to write on a few days.

Oh, well, there’s always next year to prove that I can, in fact, write a novel in 30 calendar days. To me, right now, it’s important enough that I can write a novel within 30 days of actually writing.

I was at about 10k words when I decided that I didn’t like the story idea I was working on.  After a short break to figure out a new concept, I started again but now I have to play catchup.  So instead of the usual 1,667 words a day to reach the required 50k words, I need to write about 3,000 words; not just to meet the daily quota but also to be able to catch up to where I should be.

Luckily, I like this idea enough — actually, I love the idea — that meeting that word quota’s not proving hard at all.  In fact, there’s been at least two days where I exceeded that quota.  It may not look it from the stats,  but part of that is because I wasn’t faithfully updating the word counter until I had exceeded the original amount I had written.  Not that I really was updating the counter with the first idea either

Mark straightened himself, looking at the blank masonry wall. He was standing in a building sub-entrance, where garbage cans were stored to his right. Brow furrowed, he tried to figure out what was going on.

He double checked his bag. Everything was in there as it should be–one book, one cord, a package of chalk, and two amethyst crystals. He could tell by the weight of the garment bag slung over his shoulder that it had something inside. He was somewhat relieved that there was physical evidence to prove that his whole shopping excursion wasn’t a figment or hallucination. Of course, it didn’t rule out that what was happening now was, in fact, real. After placing his bag back on the ground, he stepped closer to the whole and ran his left hand over the brick surface.

It certainly felt real. Tapping gently against the bricks felt real and actually caused his knuckles some pain. It was impossible for this sequence of events to have happened, and yet at the same time there was no way that it all could possibly add up in a logical, reasonable way.

After all, he was inside a non-existent store for what only felt like an hour and a half at most, but by his watch he had been in there for almost five hours. It was, though, the same watch that was malfunctioning, its hands spinning wildly out of control, when he was in store. There was also the fact that he had two bags, one regular bag containing a book and other items and a garment bag. If the store didn’t exist, then how could he possibly have gotten these bags?

He pushed against the bricks again, and was not surprised when they didn’t move in any discernible fashion. He also was not shocked in any way when he walked up the stairs and saw that there was not any sign indicating the presence of a store named Eternium. Maybe all of today had been a figment? He decided to head back to Wyck Ways, just to confirm it’s existence and, at the risk of being viewed as a oddball, even ask the clerk there if he had actually been in the store at any time during the day.

He walked downtown, his head hung low as he mulled over today’s events, and barely noticed when a woman, talking loudly on her cell phone, brushed into him. She excused herself mid-sentence and without looking up, Mark obliged her with a half-hearted, ″No problem.″

He continued walking downtown, towards Wyck Ways, when the woman said, ″Mark? What are you doing down here in the Village?”

He looked up, and saw that it was Lucia from work that had bumped into him. He was taken aback by the fact that he hadn’t recognized her at first, but wasn’t too surprised since he hadn’t really been watching where he was walking. she also wasn’t at all dressed like she would be at work.

He assumed she was dressed for a night out, since she was wearing a short, black skirt and a tight, low-cut grayish top. She didn’t have her glasses on either; she once had told him she only needed them when reading or working on the computer. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her face, and she had a choker on her neck, from which dangled a diamond.

Mark now decided to reassess his impression of her and really began to dislike his personal rule about not getting involved with coworkers. He was beginning to think that her straight-laced, conservative attire at work was all just a ruse, so that people wouldn’t realize how pretty she really was.

“I was just doing a little shopping,” Mark said, holding one of his bags up as if it was a trophy.

“Isn’t this a little far from your neighborhood? What sort of stuff were you getting?” she asked.

“Just a book and some other stuff,” he said. “I’m heading back to Houston Street, where are you going?”

“I’ll walk with you,” she said. “I’m going down to Mulberry.”

They walked together for a few blocks, making idle conversation along the way. Mark did his best to make sure that the path they took would have them go past Wyck Ways; and when they did, he was relieved to see that at least that store was there.

Noticing that he was looking into the storefront as they passed it, Lucia asked, “Are you into that occult stuff?”

“I’ve been reading up on it lately,” he answered, again holding up his bag. “I picked up a book earlier, actually.”

“Interesting,” she said. “I never would’ve pegged you as being into that mystical or spiritual stuff.”

“Yeah, well, if recent events are any guide, things and people are never as simple as they seem on first glance.”

Lucia looked at him, one eyebrow arched. She said nothing though, as they walked to the subway. When they got to the subway entrance, Mark said, “Here’s my stop. I guess I’ll see you Monday at work.”

Before he could turn and start heading down the stairs, Lucia asked, “You want to go get dinner? I’m on my way to a nice place in Little Italy. You’re more than welcome to come, too.”

“Are you meeting someone there? I mean, you’re all dressed up.”

She laughed, “Only because I work there. It’s my family’s restaurant and I help them out as the hostess on weekends.”

“Oh, I see,” Mark said. “In that case, I’d love to go get dinner.”

They walked for a bit before he said, “I don’t think I’m dressed right to go to a nice restaurant.”

“It’s not that fancy,” she said. “Anyways, we’ll be sitting in a corner. I still have to work, even if I have a guest with me.”

It took a little under thirty minutes for them to walk to the restaurant, a small unassuming place named Chianti. When they went inside, he was introduced to her brother, Enzo, who was the bartender and her younger sister, Giovanna, who was working as a waitress tonight. Lucia checked his garment bag into the coat room and smiled as she said, ″No menus, Mark. I know what’s good here.″

They sat down at a small, two-person table in the corner by the front door of the restaurant. Giovanna didn’t come over to take their order instead she just brought plates of food to the table. Lucia would tell Mark what each dish was, explaining what it was made of if necessary.

Whenever a new dinner party came in, Lucia would have to get up and seat them at their table, and give them their menus. It made for an awkward conversation between Mark and Lucia, with a lot of repeating what they were talking about before she had to get up and a healthy dose of being interrupted mid-sentence because new customers came in. At one point, Enzo came over with some wine for them and talked for a few minutes with his sister.

It was a little annoying to Mark, since they were speaking in Italian; he was also pretty sure they were talking about him. And he became positive of it, when Giovanna came over and sat down to talk; the two sisters kept talking to each other, with occasional gestures in Mark’s direction.

Giovanna stood up to leave the table. Lucia said, ″Sorry that my family is so rude.″ Pausing to look at her sister, she added, ″Only wanting to talk in Italian.″

Giovanna stuck her tongue out at her sister, turned and walked away. Mark said, ″Don’t worry about it. I run into that problem more than you’d think. And not just Italian.″

His cell phone started to ring. Mark looked at it and saw that it was Tommy calling. ″I have to take this,″ he said, getting up from the table.

He walked outside and answered the phone. ″Hey Tommy.″

″Ok, I got your wood dice. You home? I’ll stop by with them.″

″No, I’m not home.″

″Really? Is Mark out in public on a Saturday night without his best buds by his side?″

″Tommy, this is not a 1950’s radio serial, so stop with using that voice.″

It sounded like Tommy was chewing on his cigar. ″Killjoy.″

″Are you drinking?″

″Yeah. How could you tell?″

″Cigar.″

″Am I that predictable?″

″Yes,″ Mark said. ″And while I love this little comedy routine we’re doing, I have to get back to my table. I’m not finished with dinner yet.″
″Where’re you at? I’ll meet up with you and give you your giant wooden dice,″ Tommy said, over emphasizing the last words.

″I’m in Little Italy, at Chianti’s.″

″Good place. By yourself? Solo dining? I need to get over there, stat.″

″No, not solo. I’m having dinner with Lucia.″

″Lucia? The hottie from your office?″

Mark said, ″Yes, her.″

″Ok, I’m gonna let you go then. You have more important things to do than talk to me. I’ll drop the giant wooden dice off at Peter’s,″ Tommy said, again overemphasizing the phrase ″giant wooden dice″. He continued, ″I’d let myself into your apartment, but I don’t want interrupt my man and his coworker’s ‘business meeting’.″

″Thank you, Tommy. I’ll talk to you later.″

″Sure thing. Pete and I will be waiting for the details, of course.″

″Of course.″

Mark hung the phone up and went back inside the restaurant. Giovanna was back at the table talking to Lucia, but stood back up when he got to the table. He sat back down, saying, ″Sorry, that was Tommy. He was running an errand for me.″

″Tommy’s the annoying one, right?″ Lucia asked.

He smiled. ″Yes, you could call him that.″

Taking a sip of his wine, he said, ″Usually women like his charm.″

″Eh, he’s a little too much. I like the quieter types,″ she said.

Giovanna came back to the table, bringing over two pieces of tiramisu and two cups of coffee. As she picked up her fork, Lucia said, ″So, tell me about that book you bought. What’s it about?″

Still putting cream in his coffee, Mark said, ″Honestly, I have no idea what it’s about.″

″What’s the title?″

He reached for his bag and pulled the book out. ″De Muto Corporem Mentemque,″ he said. ″And I don’t read Latin, so I have no idea what that means. Some parts of it are in Greek. Others are in Hebrew.″

He flipped through the book, showing her the Greek and Hebrew sections. She looked at him with a raised eyebrow and asked, ″So why did you buy the book? By the way, I think the title is something like ‘About Changing the Body and Mind’. I don’t speak Latin either, but Italian does have similar words. You know, being one of those linguistic descendants and all.″

″I actually got the book for free,″ he said. With a smile, he added, ″Had a coupon. Anyway, I decided to get it because of this.″

He opened the book to the final section, which contained the silvered ink and its fascinating optical illusion. He moved the book around a bit, so Lucia could see how the lettering appeared to pop off the page and float in the air. ″Oh, that’s so cool,″ she said. ″I wonder how they do that.″

″See, it’s a very nifty conversation piece, if nothing else.″

″Do you plan on getting it translated, or trying to learn enough of the languages to try and do it yourself?″

″Eventually, I suppose, yes,″ he said.

By now, they were finished with their deserts. Mark was pleased that once the dinner crowd thinned out, he and Lucia were able to have an uninterrupted conversation. Or, at least, one only interrupted by members of her family coming over to the table and chatting.

″How much do I owe for dinner?″ he asked, putting the book back into the bag.

″Don’t worry about it, it’s on me,″ she answered.

″I can’t let you do that. We drank a bunch of wine and ate all that great food.″

″No, I insist. It was better than sitting at the bar talking to Enzo all night, anyways.″

″You sure? I mean, we always split the bill …″

Lucia interrupted him, saying, ″No, your money’s no good here.″

″Thanks for inviting me here, everything was great.″

″Lunch is on you on Monday,″ she said. ″We have to start closing up soon. You can stay if you’d like, but it’ll be boring.″

″I actually have to meet up with Tommy. He picked some stuff up for me. I need to go and get it from him.″

″Ok, then, good night Mark. I really enjoyed having dinner with you,″ she said. She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, saying, ″See you on Monday.″

He briefly thought that he should embrace her, and give her a real, honest-to-God kiss. He decided against that, though, considering that her whole family was here and some of them–at least Enzo and Giovanna–were watching them intently and he also wasn’t sure if this was just a friend’s dinner or an impromptu date. He instead gave her a friendly hug, and gathered his belongings. ″I had a good time too. Again, thanks for inviting me.″

She gave him his garment bag from the coat closet. On his way out, he said goodbye to her siblings. Once outside, he figured he should get a taxi back to his apartment; Tommy was probably still at Peter’s and he wanted to make sure that he got those wood carvings tonight.

*

He got back to his apartment building by 11:30. He grabbed his mail, walked over to the elevator and hit the button for the tenth floor. He went into his apartment. He put both of his bags on the couch. His tossed his mail onto the table by his phone, glancing at the answering machine as he did so. He was not surprised to see that he had no messages.

He left his apartment, and quickly ran down the stairs to the ninth floor, which was the floor that Peter’s apartment was. He knocked on the door.

Peter answered the door, slightly swaying as he did so. ″Well, hello Marky.″

″Heya Pete,″ Mark said.

He was already walking in, when Peter said, ″Come on in. We’re just starting to watch the ‘Seven Samurai’.″

″Like I have 3 hours I can spare.″

″It’s a classic, Mark,″ Peter said, his speech somewhat slurred.

″Yes, yes, I know. I’m just here for the giant wooden dice.″

Mark overemphasized the words yet again, and silently cursed Tommy for getting that stuck in his head.

Tommy walked over to them, clenching an unlit cigar in his teeth. ″So, how’d it go with office hottie?″

″We just had dinner,″ Mark said.

″Your loss then,″ Tommy said. ″I got a bunch of these things for you.″

″What do I owe you?″

″Don’t worry about it,″ Tommy said. ″Actually, I’m making out on the deal. The guy’s making me a custom humidor in trade for a box of cohibas.″

″I thought you hated the cigars,″ Mark said, ″and that you only smoke them when you drink.″

″But I do so love to drink,″ Tommy said. He made a grandiose waving of his arms while saying, ″And nothing, my good man, nothing beats a good scotch and cigar.″

Tommy handed him a box, it was fairly heavy and upon looking inside, Mark could see that they were indeed giant wooden dice. ″Thanks for getting these for me,″ Mark said.

Mark opted to take the elevator, since the box was unwieldy and awkward. The wooden objects shifted with each step, their weight constantly bounced against his stomach as he walked to the elevator lobby.

Once he got back to his apartment, he put the box on the floor by his couch. He decided that it was too late to start mucking about with drawing pentagrams on the floor; he was just going to go to sleep instead.

He quickly fell asleep; for the first time in a while, he had a very happy outlook and felt pleased at how his day went.

]]> http://www.stevecoursen.com/2008/11/chapter-4-the-path-into-darkness.html/ I really haven’t spent much time looking around at Python blogs/pages/etc lately.  But, since I’m procrastinating from the whole NaNoWriMo thing, I spent time today doing that.

• Easy Python decorators –some examples of creating Python function decorators using the decorator module.
• Python 3 Patterns and Idioms –early development of an open source book to discuss patterns and idioms to use in Python 3.
• Guido Answers the Top 20 Questions –Python’s creator answers the Top 20 questions in his section of “Ask a Google Engineer”.
• Python Frameworks –the good and the bad of 3 Web development frameworks for Pytyhon.

The interior of the store was cluttered with rows of shelving, containing books, curios, and wood carvings. Past these were a handful of bins, with bolts of cloth; the colors of which varied from deep purples to slightly off-white. Like the previous store, this one was also empty of customers; probably due to their obfuscated entrance, he figured.

He also didn’t see any employees or clerks, although he saw that the cash register was on a display case along the right wall. He started to look around the store, casually looking at the books. He wished that he had the time to read more of these books, but if he wanted to find all his supplies and reenact whatever it had been in his dreams, he couldn’t waste any time browsing through the store.

Normally, he would have dismissed all this occult and mystical paraphernalia has hokum and a sham out to convince the easily duped that they could perform magic. But a feeling deep in his gut told him that these books were the real deal, and not just the works of charlatans or the imaginative.

He picked one up and skimmed through it. Interspersed with flowery prose about the Earth Mother, there were detailed instructions and descriptions of rituals and incantations. One such example caught his eye–it was called the Rite of the Watchful Eye.

Some of the ritual described in the book seemed similar to what he had seen in his dream, but in this passage the writer seemed very concerned with making sure anyone reading it would not think anything involved was evil or malicious. It seemed unnecessary and distracting. Mark quickly thumbed through the pages to see if this was a recurring thing in this book, and indeed it was. Every time a rite or invocation involved a pentagram, the writer exhorted the reader to understand that it was not evil to perform the ritual.

Mark wrote it off as the book’s author coming from an upbringing that preached that magic and the occult was wrong, something that almost inevitably would be used for evil. Everyone has issues, he thought.

He returned to reading the Rite of the Watchful Eye and while there were similarities, these were only superficial for there were also some major differences. For one, this ritual involved its performer–the book called them witches–using some of their bodily secretions, either sweat, saliva, or something along those lines. The Monk’s ritual didn’t involve any of that, and from what Mark could tell he didn’t seem to be the type that would be collecting his own spit and sweat.

He turned around in the aisle between two of the bookcases and looked over the other shelf’s offerings. One title immediately jumped out to him, mostly due to its title being written in the sort of illuminated font that medieval monks used. He pulled it from the shelf, and mouthed the title silently, “De Muto Corporem Mentemque“. He opened the book and scanned through the pages. They were all in a different language, and from the look of it actually, it was more than one language. One appeared to be Latin, another looked to be Hebrew, and finally there was some Greek lettering.

Towards the end of the book, there was another script being used. Mark couldn’t place at all. It even used a different ink; the whole last section of the book was printed with a silvery ink that at times was difficult for Mark to discern clearly. As he looked at those pages, he could feel his head starting to ache and a sharp pain was forming in his eyes.

He went to put the book back on the shelf, but noticed that as he moved it to different angles the silvered text seemed to hover off the page as if it was one of those three-dimensional holograms that children love to look at. How odd, he thought. Closing the book, he looked for a price on it. Not finding one, he decided that if it wasn’t too expensive he’d buy it just for the novelty of that last section.

He opted to stop looking through the books and focus now on searching for the items he was looking for. He rummaged through the bolts of cloth trying to see if any of them matched the blue that he had seen in his dream. After going through the first bin, he moved onto the second one. Near the bottom, he found a bolt that was a match for the color.

On a series of shelves behind the bins, were packages of chalk, vials of ink, and quills. Another shelf had pieces of parchment, small notebooks, and hard-covered journals. Mark picked one of the chalk packages that contained the red and white colors he needed. He looked around the shop again, looking for the shop-owner or an employee. Still, he was the only person in the shop. He walked over to the left wall, which had a collection of belts, rope, string, and cords hanging from hooks. It didn’t take as long as the bins before Mark found the red-colored cord that appeared to be the right length and had similar tassels

As he walked over to the display case and register on the other side of the shop, he thumbed absentmindedly through the book. None of it made any sense to him, and he still doubted that he should purchase it. It would probably be expensive, due to, what he assumed to be, the expensive ink and printing process used in the last section.

“Found what you were looking for?”

Mark returned from his thoughts. An older-looking man, with gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard stood behind the display case. He had a British accent and sounded very proper in the way he spoke. Mark didn’t notice him before, but figured that the man must have walked over to that area when Mark had finished with his shopping.

“Not everything,” Mark answered.

The man was ringing up the purchases, and asked, “What else do you need?”

“Two pieces of amethyst,” Mark said. “And don’t ring the book up if it’s going to cost a lot.”

The man walked away from the register, and over to a section of the display case. “Amethyst, hmm,” he said, more to himself than to Mark.

He was quiet for a few moments, before saying, “I have some over here. Any particular size or shape you need?″

″They should be rods, to go at the ends of this piece of cord,″ Mark said, picking up the section of red cord.

Opening the display case, the man said, ″I have some like that. Here these should do.″

Mark looked over the pieces of amethyst and they seemed to match what he had seen in his dream. ″I would’ve like to have a robe made with that blue cloth,″ Mark said, motioning to the bolt of cloth resting next to the cash register. ″But you don’t appear to sell clothing. I suppose I’ll need to find a tailor to make it for me.″

The old man slightly smiled and said, ″We can make that here. Since everyone always wants different styles and cuts, we don’t sell any tailored clothing.″

″Really? That would be great. I just need a simple robe, more like an overcoat,″ Mark said. After thinking about how it looked in his dream, he added, ″It should clasp on the side, if possible.″

″Sounds easy enough. It shouldn’t take too long and you can browse some more if you want to wait.″

The man resumed ringing up Mark’s purchases. ″That’ll be two hundred fifty dollars, including fifty for the tailoring and tax.″

″Oh, I forgot about this,″ Mark said, handing the man the coupon he had gotten from the clerk at Wyck Ways.

After looking it over, the man said, ″Dierdre really gave this to you? Doesn’t seem like her. Humph.″

He hit a few buttons on the register, and said, ″One hundred dollars, including tax and tailoring.″

″Wow,″ Mark said, getting out his wallet. ″I didn’t realize that the coupon was for such a large amount.″

″It’s a coupon for a free book,″ the man said. ″And you happened to pick a very expensive book.″

After putting the money in the till, he added, ″I really need to rethink that policy.″

″I’ll be back with the robe in a few minutes, you can wait here if you’d like,″ the man said as he took the bolt of cloth and walked away.

Mark pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and flipped it open. He was annoyed when he looked at it, as he didn’t get any signal inside the store. Checking in on Tommy would have to wait, so he decided to loiter around the bookshelves some more and see if there was anything else interesting.

After what seemed like almost an hour of waiting, Mark checked his watch. It was only 3 PM, and considering he came into the store a little bit after 2:30 and had looked over all the books and most of the other shelves, he came to the realization that he was bored in this store.

″Here you go, my boy.″

Mark turned and saw the old man walking over towards him smiling and carrying a garment bag. ″That wasn’t too long, now was it?″

Taking the garment bag, Mark followed the man over to the display case, where his other bag was. He glanced at his watch as he gathered up his items. The hands of the watch were spinning wildly. They would do several revolutions counter-clockwise and then suddenly begin moving clockwise. This repeated a few times, before Mark muttered, ″Must be broken.″

″What’s that you said?″ the man asked.

″My watch,″ Mark said, showing it to the man. ″It must be broken. The hands are spinning all over the place.″

Raising an eyebrow, the man said, ″It does appear that way.″ With a smile, he said, ″We don’t fix watches here.″

″Thanks for your help,″ Mark said and walked towards the shop’s door.

″No problem, my boy. Good day,″ he heard the man say as he emerged from the store.

Once outside, he was surprised by the darkness of the night sky. Looking around, it seemed to be early evening, perhaps a little after dusk. He looked at his watch again, and this time the hands were not spinning wildly. Putting it against his ear, he could hear the ticking of the gears. He looked at the watch once more. It read 6:45.

He placed his bag on the ground and got out his cell phone. It read the same time. There was no way possible that it took him 4 hours to walk across the store, pick up his bag, and exit. At least out here, he had a decently strong signal, so he dialed Tommy’s number.

The phone rang twice before Tommy answered. ″Speak to me.″

″Tommy, it’s Mark.″

″Still looking for the dice, my man. I think I found someone who knows a guy who makes weird wood sculptures like that.″

″Really? That’s someone’s hobby?″ Mark found that he was never surprised at the things people do with their spare time.

″I’m heading there now,″ Tommy said. ″I’ll call you back in a bit after I check it out.″

″Thanks. Talk to you later.″

Mark closed his cell phone and put it into his back pocket. As he picked his bag back up, he glanced at the Eternium’s store front. Or, at least, he would have been looking at it, had it been there.

]]> http://www.stevecoursen.com/2008/11/chapter-3-the-path-into-darkness.html/

The dreams had come back every night for the last week, leaving Mark harried and tired from the lack of sleep. The man spoke every time, repeating the same words; although it seemed as if the man was growing impatient and frustrated at Mark’s continued inability to understand him. There was a scowl on the man’s face now, which replaced his previous slightly jovial expression.

Mark had noted all of this in his dream journal, as well as recording the daytime vision he had had on Monday. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened again and he had managed to have a regular, if not busy, work week.

Now it was Friday, and Mark had turned down offers of going to a bar or two with Tommy and Peter. He just wanted to relax and, hopefully, get a peaceful night’s sleep. He hadn’t had the energy or desire to try to unravel the meaning of his dreams and vision, or even to try to translate what the man had been attempting to tell him. He chuckled to himself, still partially convinced that the words were just nonsensical gibberish that just sounded as if they were a real language.

He sat on his couch, reclining lazily while watching a documentary on the history of the Knights Templar. The show didn’t capture his attention though, and he drifted slowly off to sleep.

*

He was in a dimly lit room, lit by torches resting in sconces that lined the brick masonry of the walls. The floor consisted of one large piece of stonework, in the center of the room, which had been worked into an octagonal shape. Radiating from that were marble tiles of an almost blood red color, as if to be rays of light emanating from the edges of the octagon. Alternating with these radiant tiles, were tiles of an uncolored marble. The whole effect resembled a shining, red star.

Inscribed in the center of the octagonal stone was a pentagram, partially enclosed in a circle — the bottom two points didn’t have a connecting arc. Near each point of the pentagram was a piece of carved wood; clockwise around the circle these shapes were a cube, a dodecahedron, an icosahedron, another dodecahedron, and finally another cube. The symmetry of the design was not lost on Mark.

An eye was drawn in white at the top point of the pentagram. Red, symmetrical flames were wreathing the eye, culminating in a flaming tongue-like shape. A stark, white pillow was placed inside the pentagram, so that a reclining person’s head would be immediately under the flaming tongue.

Standing by the top point of the pentagram was the man — Mark had decided that he looked like a medieval monk, so had taken to referring to him as Monk in his journal. He was wearing a blue robe with a red, tasseled cord draped over his shoulders. The ends of the cord each had a piece of amethyst, shaped into a star.

Rather than speak, Monk pantomimed drawing the pentagram and draping the cord over his shoulders. He walked clockwise around the circle, placing the wood shapes at the points of the pentagram. He then pointed to the pillow, closed his eyes, and said, “Lingua perficio narro.”

*

Mark woke up, white noise flooding his hearing. Still groggy from his sleep, he noted that it was sometime around 3 AM; his vision was blurry, and he shuffled off to his bedroom to write this latest dream down in his journal. It was evident that Monk wanted him to draw the elaborate pentagram design and then lay down inside of it, reciting that phrase.

To what effect, though, Mark wasn’t sure. He was in no shape to contemplate it now, his mental faculties were still fuzzy with sleep and his whole body felt heavy.

At least, there weren’t any spiders in this dream. In fact, it had been a pleasant dream compared to his others of late, and Mark hoped that he would feel energized and recharged in the morning. There even was a sense of familiarity to the whole drawing and inscription of the eye and flaming tongue. He wasn’t quite sure where, but it felt like he had seen it before. Maybe just in a book, he thought.

He was able to quickly fall back to sleep, and remained so throughout the night. No odd dreams came to him–no spiders, no robed men trying to talk to him.

In the morning, he awoke and for the first time in a week felt refreshed as he went about his morning rituals of showering, coffee, and medications. It was Saturday now, so there was no need for him to head off to work so instead he was able to take time to make himself some breakfast. It was nothing fancy, just some scrambled eggs and toast, but it was more than he was able to enjoy on a workday. On those days, he usually had a bagel or a buttered roll.

As he ate, he looked over his dream journal and reread last night’s entry. He grabbed a pen and some paper, and set about sketching the encircled pentagram and octagonal stonework as best he could. He was not a talented artist by any means, but the shapes involved, with the exception of the flaming tongue, were simple geometrical ones.

When he was finished, that feeling of having seen it before returned. This time, however, he was certain that he had seen such an inscribed circle first-hand and not in a book or movie. He was at a loss as to when or where, but he was hopeful that that memory would come back to him soon. He sat for a few minutes, looking over his crude sketch, searching in the corners of his memory in vain trying to recall exactly where he had seen the design before. He wasn’t sure as to why, but he had a strong feeling that he should make make the design … inscribe it on one of the floors of his apartment and act out the ritual that had played out in his dream.

He felt silly that he was even contemplating such a thing; it was only a dream, after all. For a brief moment, he though that maybe he should mention this to either Tommy or Peter. He decided, though, that to do so would only raise another uncomfortable conversation about why Mark should be seeking out therapy and not–most definitely not–be acting out rituals from his odd dreams.

He finished his cup of coffee. Putting the cup down on the table, Mark nodded his head, affirming to himself his decision to create the pentagram and perform the ritual. He felt that he needed to do this, to show to himself that his dreams were just harmless figments.

He calculated the dimensions of the pentagram and its enclosing circle. He was unsure if he needed to have the octagonal stone and the surrounding radiant sun mosaic to do what the Monk had shown him. After a few sips of coffee and some deliberation on the matter, Mark decided that he wouldn’t make the mosaic for the first run.

If Monk was still frustrated and impatient after he made the pentagram and did the little ritual, he would look into getting the mosaic. He was pretty certain, though, that building a marble mosaic in his apartment would violate his lease at best, and cause the floor to collapse under the weight at the worst. Short of finding a basement or a warehouse of some sort that he could temporarily rent, he wasn’t sure where he could get such a heavy load of marble delivered and assembled without causing structural damage to the building.

He made a checklist of things needed for the Monk’s ritual: a blue robe, a red cord, two rod-shaped pieces of quartz, and the five wooden objects. Since he lived in New York City, he was confident that some store, somewhere in the city would have all these items. He decided that one of the occult bookshops down in Greenwich Village would have, or at least know where he could get the robe, the cord and amethyst.

Since the wooden objects were the same shape as the sort of dice used in role-playing games, he was also certain that someone would have large wooden versions of them for sale. Almost everything has a collector nowadays, even those things that are of questionable value or use such as large, unwieldy wood dice.

Tommy occasionally played such games, so Mark opted to try and get him to find the objects. He only played those games when he was drunk and bored, but he did know where gaming stores were at least. When he was sober, he enjoyed mocking them–such were the many contradictions of Tommy McNally–which would give him an incentive to accept Mark’s request.

Mark dialed Tommy’s cell phone. On the third ring, Tommy answered by grunting into the phone.

“Tommy, it’s Mark.”

There was another grunt, followed by Tommy loudly clearing his throat, before he said, “Do you have any idea of how hung-over I am? Pete and I ended up at the Wolfram.”

“Ouch. Did you stop at every bar along the way?”

“But of course,” Tommy said. “I wouldn’t have done it any other way.”

“Good thing I didn’t go then,” Mark said. “I have a bunch of stuff I need to do today. It can wait until you get functional, but can you do me a favor today?”

“Ja,” Tommy said. There was the sound of Tommy lighting a cigar, followed by a round of coughing. “Good God, man. Why do I smoke these things when I drink?”

“I need you to get me some decent-sized wood dice. They don’t need to really be dice, but just in their shape. I don’t know which kind is which, so just get me two of each.”

“Dice, huh?” Tommy said, before coughing again. “What are going to do with them? Are you redecorating your place in some sort of retro-geek style?”

“No,” Mark said, with some slight laughter.

“It don’t matter none. I’ll find what I can. Do they have to be wood, or can they be plastic?”

Mark thought for a second. He decided that since he was skipping the marble mosaic, he should stick to the objects being made of wood. “No, they have to be wood. And they shouldn’t be painted, or anything like that. Blanks will do just fine.”

“Ok, boss,” Tommy said. “I’ll give you a call later when I find them.”

“You sure you can do that?”

“My good man, have I ever let you down?”

“Yes,” Mark said. “Yes, you have.”

“Bollocks. I’ll talk to you later. I’m going to have a bowl full of aspirin now.”

“Later,” Mark said, laughing as he hung up the phone.

He scrounged around for his subway map and looked over which subway lines he’d have to take to get down to the Village. He didn’t go there very often, and when he did it was usually late at night, full of booze, and with at least one distractingly loud friend.

After mapping out his route, he got dressed. It was an early spring day; Mark walked by the open window in his kitchen and noticed that it was already pretty warm. He put on a black shirt, his pair of boots, and put on a baseball cap.

He stuffed his checklist into his back pocket, while he finished his cup of coffee. He then headed out of his building and down to the subway stop a block away. His plan was to ride the subway to Penn Station, switch lines to head down to Houston Street, and then walk uptown from there allowing him to pass most of the occult shops in the Greenwich Village area. Before going down the stairs to wait for his subway, he stopped at a street vendor and got himself a small cup of coffee–cream, no sugar, as the sugar makes him jumpy and he was already beginning to feel anxious.

Subways always made Mark feel uneasy; he didn’t like the darkness, the feeling of being almost entombed underneath the city. To keep his mind off of the crushing weight above him, he took measured, regular sips from his cup of coffee. He was doing his best to keep his breathing controlled and was doing very well at it. Even though he dreaded talking to strangers, he always enjoyed people watching, and there were several people in the subway car with him.

He was busy imagining what their homes were like and what they did for a living, and other such things, when the train came to a rumbling stop. The lights flickered and dimmed, then turned off. He took another sip of his coffee, but he could already feel his breath quickening and becoming shallow.

Someone in the car opened their cell phone, allowing the soft light of its display screen to create some illumination in the darkness. It wasn’t enough, though, to ease Mark’s mind. He breathing increasing in rapidity and he began to feel a sharp pain in his chest. He became even more panicked when he thought that maybe the anxiety medication wasn’t helping at all.

The limited light from the cell phone’s display didn’t reach where Mark was seated. He heard a clicking sound behind him and the shuffle of someone’s footsteps. He turned to look, but in the darkness, couldn’t discern anyone or anything. He felt a pinching sensation on his head, as if some of his hair was being pulled out.

He could feel beads of sweat forming on his brow just before the train thankfully roared back to life and the lights came back on, although dim at first. Breathing a sigh of life, Mark wiped the sweat from his forehead and took several deep breaths to get his breathing under control again. He surveyed the other passengers, to see if they, unlike him, had kept their cool. He was relieved to see that a few of them seemed rattled by the brief shutdown of the train. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the passengers leaving the car; he quickly took stock of the others and they were all in the same seats they had been in before the train stopped.

That was odd, he thought. The others are all accounted for, but someone left the car. Unsure if it was a figment of his own creation, he decided to follow the person. He briefly lost his footing as the train went over some warped rails but he still got to the vestibule door quickly. As he entered the next car, he could see the person he was following ahead of him by the door to the next forward car.

He quickened his pace, so as to not risk losing site of the person, but still trying to maintain a look of casualness. After all, he wasn’t sure the person was real and, if they were, hadn’t determined what, if any, nefarious thing they were up to.

The subway train began to slow down, and the crackling, tinny voice of the conductor came over the intercom announcing that they had arrived at the 49th Street stop. Mark stepped into the vestibule between cars as the notification bell chimed and the side doors opened. The person Mark was following turned to look at him, made a complex hand gesture with his left hand, and smiled wryly. Mark tried to open the car door, but found that, try as hard as he could, he couldn’t make the door latch move. He watched, unable to pursue, as the man exited the train.

The side doors closed and the subway train pulled away from the station platform. Once the train was underway, the latch released and Mark burst forth into the empty car. He looked around to see if there was anything worth notice. Seeing that there wasn’t, he sighed heavily and collapsed onto the bench seat. He scowled, mulling over the event. Was what just happened real? Did that man somehow prevent the door from opening? If so, how? All he did was wave his hand around, how could that possibly cause the door latch to become temporarily inoperative?

It was a riddle, to be sure, and Mark disliked riddles. Why was everything a riddle these days? Simple answers would be nice. That’s what he longed for–nice, simple answers to nice, simple questions. He ran his fingers through his hair, and was silently pleased to find that he couldn’t feel any missing hairs; so if any were pulled out of his head, it wasn’t a significant quantity of them.

This was definitely going into his journal. He closed his eyes, and tried to visualize the man he had followed; it was imperative, he felt, that he be able to describe the man properly so that he could figure out what was going on. Of course, it would have helped greatly if Mark had been able to get a good look at him, as it was he was only able to tell that the man had been of average height and build, wearing a long jacket–possibly a trench-coat or a duster–and a fedora. Now that he thought about it, it seemed very cliché to have a run-in with such in a figure. He was still going to note it in his journal, but he was becoming more confident that it was just a figment.

It was only a few stops before he arrived at the Houston Street station, and he got off the subway. He walked up the stairs and out on the city streets. To be honest, he was a bit on edge now, despite convincing himself that the whole event on the subway was yet another hallucination. As he oriented himself to figure out which way was uptown, he had that uneasy feeling that he was being watched; however, since he was now standing on the sidewalk in one of the busiest cities in the world, he wrote it off as nothing to be concerned with. Given Manhattan’s population, there could have been a hundred people watching him right now, all for various and sundry reasons. If he started to worry about such things, he would end up as a semi-functional paranoid like Peter.

He shook the feeling off and started heading uptown to the first store on his list. Two blocks later he arrived in front of ″The Wyck Ways″, a store that according to his research specialized in candles used in new age rituals. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he’d be able to find here but decided it couldn’t hurt, especially if he was able to find some incense sticks that had a soothing smell to them. If he wasn’t going to be able to consistently get good rest and be harried with daydreams, he could really use something that would help ease his mood.

He entered the store, which was empty except for a clerk standing by the register. It was cramped with shelves lined with colored and scented candles of all shapes and sizes. There were elaborate candelabras along the far wall, with candle snuffers and lighting wands hanging beneath them on hooks. There were two bookcases along the right wall, with a scant selection of books.

Mark quickly ascertained that he wasn’t going to find anything he needed in this store. As he approached the counter that the clerk was leaning on, Mark was startled by the rapid movement of a cat. He hadn’t seen it upon his first look around the shop and, frankly, it surprised him to no end. Once on the floor, the cat looked up at him; arching its back as it moved into a defensive posture, it bared it’s teeth and hissed loudly at Mark.

All Mark could do was look quizzically at the cat, unsure as to its reaction. He didn’t like cats, and that usually resulted in them finding any excuse to rub against his legs and constantly be under foot. He never had a reaction like this from one before.

The clerk, who was disinterestedly reading a magazine, made a sucking sound with his teeth towards the cat. Upon hearing it the cat darted quickly towards one of the bookcases and smoothly jumped up the shelves, coming to a rest atop of it.

He felt self-conscious as he said, “Excuse me. I’m looking for some colored chalks and some crystals. You don’t sell that sort of thing here; do you know where I can find that?”

″Eternium, up two blocks and over one,” she said, not looking up. She handed him a small piece of paper, “Here, take this coupon. We own that store too.″

Turning to leave the shop, Mark said, “Okay, thanks.”

Outside the store, he headed towards Eternium, which wasn’t on the list of stores that he planned on looking at. Maybe it was a new store, and wasn’t listed in the phone book he had looked at; he shrugged to himself, and tried to enjoy the pleasant weather on a fine spring day.

He walked past a pub that he had gone to a few times with Tommy and Peter; if he remembered correctly, one of Tommy’s exes waitressed there, or at least she used to. It also sprung to his mind that at least one of his coworkers lived in this neighborhood; he recalled attending a social dinner party in a walk-up apartment building. He wasn’t sure which one though; he didn’t socialize with them much aside from work and lunches. The closest he had to a social friend from work was Lucia, but that was more of a regular lunch association. Now that he thought about it, the dinner party had been at Lucia’s, right before their department got reduced to just the two of them.

He almost missed the entrance to Eternium, as he was absentmindedly walking down 4th Street. It was a basement level entrance, with only a small sign to mark the stairs. In addition to the store’s name, there was a pair of symbols on the top corners of the sign: an eye inside of a translucent pyramid on the left side and the crescent moon on the right side.

Sure, I wrote a bit as well — under the suggested daily word count, but it’s better than nothing.  The start of a writing project is always the hardest for me.  I don’t really kick into gear until after about 30 pages.  Until then, it’s a dreadful sensation to sit down and write.

It’s not that I have writer’s block or anything like that.  It’s just that I’m ultimately lazy.  It’s one of those characteristics that work well for computer programmers.  It’s just a horrible one for writers, since I’m the only one that can put my words onto the page.  I can’t write a program that will do it for me.

But somewhere after the first few chapters, the characters and story come alive in my head and I find myself daydreaming about them or, even worse, getting some sort of idea to use in my sleep.  Only once the story is finished does my imagination return to normal and let me get back to just being a lazy programmer.

So, until that grand part of the story “kicks in”, I’m going to procrastinate and keep doing things like making Squidoo lenses.