Serializations of the Hitherby Dragons novels

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Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Gentler, “Or do you just hide, Mr. Loggins, and do your best, and give a dopey look, and hope that if you fail somebody else will come along and make it right? What do you think will happen here, Mr. Loggins, if you cannot help me? Somebody else will solve it, won’t they? The system will step in, won’t it? The Agency? It’s all right to give up on me, isn’t it, Mr. Loggins? I’m just an ex-ophidian planet-inheritor in a wicked hat. You don’t have to care. Only —”

Tom hesitates.

“— only I think that perhaps I am obliged to care about you.

. . .

Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Mr. Loggins has been reddening, his fists gone tight with anger, but Tom has stumbled onto Mr. Loggins’ counseling script and there he momentarily finds his ground.

“This isn’t about me, Tom,” he says.

But:

“Of course it’s about you,” says Tom. He is on his feet now. His face is practically glowing with the dream-wroth. “It’s always been about people like you. How could I have been so blind?

. . .

Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

“It’s never been for me,” Tom realizes. “I am just the vehicle, I am just the medium. Oh, Tom. Oh, Tom. That’s your old hubris coming back, that is. I actually thought it was for me. Haha. Ha ha!”

Mr. Loggins opens his mouth but Tom silences him with a voice like a whip of sound.

“I am given to the world, Mr. Loggins, for people like you, to save those who haven’t dared to dream, and maybe because they couldn’t.”

. . .

Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Tom steps forward. He rests his hand on Mr. Loggins’ desk. His voice is strangely pleading.

“It’s not your fault, Mr. Loggins. It’s not wrong of you to be a lump. I don’t want you to think that that’s your fault. It’s just that nobody’s ever made a hat for you. Nobody’s ever infected your DNA with parasitic serpent DNA. Nobody’s ever given you a destiny. It’s not that you’ve failed to transcend humanity. It’s just, you’ve never gotten your chance.”

“This is you projecting,” blusters Mr. Loggins, “is what it is.”

. . .

Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

“You’ve been so broken,” says Tom. “Did anybody ever even write an awful Lemurian prophecy about you? Do you even understand what it is like to make a hat? To do science? To make something amazing out of purpose and out of will? Has anyone ever even given you that much, Mr. Loggins, a chance to be amazing, a chance to be part of something, a chance to —

“It’s the best,” Tom says, interrupting himself, as if he were saying: please understand me.

. . .

Posted by on May 25, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

“Hasn’t that been stolen from you? Can you really go through your life without the fire, Mr. Loggins? Can you really live asleep?

It is too much. Mr. Loggins is on his feet. “We are off the topic, and get back from my desk, you little scat!”

Tom Friedman smiles sleepily:

“Here,” he says.

He takes the hat by the brim. He lifts it off. He casually drops it on Mr. Loggins’ head.

“Straighten up, Mr. Loggins,” he smiles. “See the one thing. Become one thing. Wake up.

. . .

Posted by on May 27, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

“I don’t,” starts Mr. Loggins.

He stops.

He tries again: “I don’t —”

There is something rising in him now. There are rivers of sensation rising from the feet of him to his crown. He takes deep breaths but he cannot control them. He is dizzy and lines of light splay themselves across his field of view, as if he were standing in a dissolving, rising world.

His eyes roll up. They flutter madly. His body twitches. It gives a jerking dance. One hand comes down hard on his desk, half-supports him, as he topples heavily to the floor.

Tom frowns.

“Mr. Loggins?”

. . .

Posted by on May 27, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Something has gone wrong with the atmospheric pressure in the room. Tom’s ears hurt. The room swims. Mr. Loggins looks up at Tom and his eyes — his eyes —

Through the pupils and the irises of them the hat has torn a jagged line of amber glow.

“Bloody hell,” whispers Mr. Loggins. “— bloody hell.”

“What did it make you, sir?” asks Tom, affecting chipperness, even though he feels as if something has gone wrong. Perhaps, he thinks, it is only that I have taken off the hat.

. . .

Posted by on May 27, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

He is dizzy. He shouldn’t be dizzy. He can understand why Mr. Loggins might be dizzy, sort of, but why —

Mr. Loggins is pulling himself upright again and there is murder in his expression.

Tom swallows.

He tries to connect with Mr. Loggins. He reaches out with his eyes, tries to forge an understanding with the man, tries to see into his heart and show something of his own, but the light form his eyes does not reflect; Tom’s smile isn’t met, but rather falls into the rage writ across Mr. Loggins and is swallowed, unechoed, drowned.

It is as if Tom has suddenly become a thing to Mr. Loggins and not a human.

People haven’t looked at him like that in a while! He’d almost forgotten what it was like.

. . .

Posted by on May 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Tom’d almost —

He is weak, suddenly. He is a child, suddenly. He is pale and shivering like a rabbit caught by a serpent’s eyes.

His inspiration abandons him.

His cockiness abandons him. His smile starts twitching at one edge.

That look devolves him; before those eyes he is just a desperate, frightened boy who hasn’t even got his hat on.

He licks his lips. “Mr. —” he starts. He swallows. He is going to say “Mr. Loggins?”

Mr. Loggins lunges.

. . .

Posted by on May 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

Mr. Loggins bowls Tom over and he falls on him. He scrambles along Tom to the neck; he beats Tom’s head backwards into the floor with an inescapable brutality; he seizes the back of Tom’s collar with his wrists crossed in front of Tom’s neck, leans in, and digs both wristbones of him directly into Tom’s throat.

Tom’s world goes red and raw and fuzzes over.

He can hear Mr. Loggins whispering something. He cannot make out the words. He can only hear the savage triumph of them, the rough righteousness in them, the something almost like exultation in them; then Tom’s sensibilities slip away into the dark.

At least, he thinks as he dies, at least I died human.

. . .

Posted by on May 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

For this he will later feel an awful, sick, and desperate shame.

. . .

Posted by on May 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

He does not know how much later it is when he wakes.

His heart is pounding. He is in a searing confusion, his thoughts in dizzy, darting desperation, like the blunt blundering flailing of his arms. Everything is strict and simple. He cannot muster complicated thoughts. His own name eludes him. There is only his need for breath and the aching of his neck and limbs.

. . .

Posted by on May 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

The world veers and skews. He finds himself, he is a person, his leg is twisted. He pulls it straight.

There is a dead man on top of him. God.

He pushes the man off. He struggles to get out from under him. The loggins of him.

. . .

Posted by on May 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 5 | 0 comments

He lies sideways and he pants.

There is a hat. It is calling to his attention. His thoughts keep flowing around it, as if it glittered. He reaches for it. He has to put it back on.

He grabs it. His hands are weirdly clumsy. His fingers are stiff. He pulls the hat on.