fantasy

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (V.) “Hazel ’n Jade / Paisley with Age”

A series of poems + prose conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

“Bank balance, balance beam, beam double-you,” reverberated off the hollowed-out hospital walls, set forth from the squeaky larynx of the Underaged Alchemist. “This cannot possibly be the ‘easier path’ that ass-backward weirdo loitering in that strange alley spoke of,” he said to no one but himself as he explored every corner, swept every surface of the burnt-out building with a flashlight he had been using steadily for some hours now.

Double-YOU, eh? Hmm… where the hell are Hazel ’n Jade when you need ’em? He did not have the thought as much as the thought had him. It pierced him with its poignancy—this told him he was on the right track: a click of the mind, a hand in a glove, a key in a lock. Those two would make some sense of this, surely.

…and don’t call me Shirley! moaned either into or out of the back-left (forthright?) untouched underside of his brain, generations of hidden knowledge gleaming off its spongy surface in the flittering shadow dance of the ever-circling, horizon-riding, sweltering belt buckle of a sun. If only any of that light reached outside his skull. Gray matter, matter-of-fact, fact or fiction? He had no clue.

They’d at least have a joke to tell, even if it was only conceived to conceal the other’s pain, the roots of the Teenage Sorcerer’s mind sprouted out into branches, back to Jade ’n Hazel, Some levity at sea level to lift falling stone for but a moment while we somersault to safety off the smooth edge of a jagged cliff, it conjured blooming buds and allowed them to blossom whilst simultaneously withering into ash, An argument betwixt themselves over the origin of hair-dye, every woman who lost her life for it, and why that was somehow still important—no, more important—when they could change their entire aura at the snap of their thin, flinty fingers.

…yet, from time-to-time—one! Jade, and, one! Hazel—stepping out from the privacy of which performing such spells requires, finds her counterpart sporting a style and look identical to herself… Oh!—how embarrassing! The inescapable tragedies of being born incantationally well-endowed fraternal female twins!

This was one of those times, and as they materialized at opposite ends of the ophthalmology wing in the Murmuring Infirmary where the Young Apothecary strode, Hazel’s contagious smile dropped to a scowl, Jade’s face held its typical inscrutable beauty, and they both vanished before the enthusiastic lad even had a chance to check his eyes.

Jade was already putzing around her skyrise cottage. Hazel, safely lost within her favorite forest where all the best berries reside. They might as well have been light-years away as far as hearing the Youthful Mystic’s pleas was concerned. He may as well have been a scrapped idea of a vacated childhood dream—the untethered atmospheric space junk of a failed technocratic regime, hurtling through the ice-cold cosmos in the vast, pitch-black, unending darkness.

There was no way he could tackle these puzzles without the help of the Promiscuous Prodigy. If only he could recall that then.

His flashlight went out. He prodded on blindly, unable to check the maps drawn on his wrists he had already forgotten were there.

Multiple griping utterances came and went every which way—in, out, through, and around his head—like a chorus of aging cacti caught in Scarlet’s Ebb, but the one that lingered longest croaked, You should have seen it when we were kids—boy! oh, boy! lemme tell ya… and on and on and on as he scrambled to find a way out.

(Back to Pt IV.)

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (IV.) “The Contrarian” or “The Waiting Lie”

A series of poems + prose conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

The Contrarian did not appear—he was discovered, as one discovers a flaw in reasoning only after depending on it.

He stood where the Alley of Sincerity narrowed into something less like a path and more like a decision already made.

“You’ve come far enough,” he diagnosed.

The Vermilion Kittens circled him without reverence. One hissed. One slept. One dissolved halfway through a blink and returned differently colored.

“They are not guides,” he motioned to the walls, nudging a Kitten aside with a shoe that made no sound. “They are rehearsals.”

The Alley stretched, or pretended to. Its walls—if they were walls—leaned inward as though listening.
“Sincerity is only convincing when observed,” he said. “Tell me, who is watching you be sincere?”
There was no answer, which pleased him. 

“And the Wall of Reason,” he said, almost kindly, “is a marvelous invention. Nothing passes through it—not even error. Especially not error. It keeps you very safe inside what you already believe.”

At this, the Alley bent. Not visibly, but undeniably. A step forward resembled a step already taken.
One of the Vermilion Kittens led onward. Another led back. A third insisted there had never been a direction at all.

The Contrarian sighed deep and hot, not with frustration, but with recognition.

“You were told to proceed,” he said. “But not what proceeds you.”

He gestured, and for a moment, the Wall of Reason could be seen—not ahead, but everywhere at once, thin as smoke and thick as doctrine.

Something struck it—from which side was unclear—and the sound was identical to agreement.

“Listen carefully,” he said, lowering his voice as if approaching honesty. “If the Pendulum of Morality truly swung side-to-side, you would never mistake motion for progress. But it does not.”

As if summoned by contradiction, the Pendulum revealed itself—distant, immense, and wrong. It lurched forward, then back, then forward again, like something reconsidering its own premise.

“You were warned about deviation,” he said. “You were not warned about design.”

The Alley narrowed further. Or perhaps it focused.
“There is a simpler path,” he said at last. “Not easier—simpler. Fewer symbols. Fewer intermediaries. No performances for unseen audiences.”

A pause, precise and deliberate.

“You may continue,” he allowed, gesturing toward the multiplying kittens and the receding Wall. “Many do. It is a very convincing system.”

Then, almost as an afterthought:
“Or you may refuse to arrive where you were told you are going.”

The Vermilion Kittens stopped moving.
Not in unison—never in unison—but in suspicion.
The Alley did not change.
Which was, for the first time, noticeable.

And somewhere—whether ahead, behind, or within—the Pendulum failed to decide, and called that balance.

(Forth to Pt V.)

(Back to Pt III.)

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (III.)

A series of poems + prose conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

To seek Truth—if She still breathes—follow
the Vermilion Kittens, their eyes aflame
with candor, through Sincerity Alley
to the Wall that Reasons Back—lest the Pendulum
of Morality defers to its own direction: back-to-
forth rather than side-to-side.

The Contrarian arrives barefoot, aghast
with vagrancy, pockets full of static, claiming
resurrection by tessellation, offering a celadon serum
that hums like a neon Eucharist, insisting it will
transmute your spiritual dampening
into an onslaught of joy.

The Forgettable Saint has warned against
this for centuries, wounded with immortality—
unheard beneath the Symphony of Creation,
unnoticed amidst the Divine Cosmic Waltz.

Emerging from the Oracle’s Closet, the Underaged Alchemist
promises the Promiscuous Prodigy—with maps drawn
on their wrists—that to reach the Dungeons of Abundance,
one must resist the gleam of the Gold-Plated Gallows,
decipher the Infirmary of Mysteries, and avoid at all costs
the Parlor of Perpetual First Impressions—unless one wishes to
unknowingly begin again back at the beginning,
never to speak to Him, trailed for all eternity by
the infinite ellipsis in an everlasting glow of gloom.

Enough with riddle and scripture—the illusion and reality of it all.

Step through.

It’s time to experience the Netherrealm from the inside out.

(Forth to Pt IV.)

(Back to Pt II.)

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (II.)

A series of poems + prose conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

Further in, a flicker stirs
like an inverted firework—
not of Hope, but Remembrance—
a brittle pulse in the Belly of Dusk
where remorse coils like smoke in lungs.

The Whistling Spectacle frolics
hand-in-hand with the Anticlimactic Angel—
on the tip of thought atop the Tower of Certainty—
mocking Time and Truth with their
slow, decaying tongues.

A ceaseless fever dream, the so-swollen
crimson soil weeps with every footfall, soaking-in
silhouettes of the Parade of Regret, as if
Penance was a place, not a plea.

Still, the Tease awaits—languid, laughing;
seething, searching—beneath the haunted
hush of what was heretofore.

The darkest part is a fact of art:
the Heart of the Artifact is hard to find.

(Forth to Pt III.)

(Back to Pt I.)

“God’s Got Nothin on Gasman”

            An effluvium of tortoise-tone smoke rose all around him. He stood in the dustydark boarded-up building with no regrets.

            The space was abandoned, but far from empty. It held: a dilapidated counter as the only level ’n elevated surface that once served as a service desk now used for a multitude of other erroneous inactivities; pallets jutting out at all angles, left stacked or standing every which way like a failed attempt at a giant game of Jenga, rusted antique automobile ’n oil signs barely clinging to the walls like lizards ’n silverfish or something else unidentified ’n strange that slipped its cocoon and flung itself free into the frenzy… among other things.
            Think of something, Dear Reader. The rundown gas station he stood in held everything except that thing you just thought of. (Now what are the odds of that?)

            His mind was made mostly of kerosene—and he was still for the moment, smoking slow and convincingly, while the noxious wave patterns leveled out in his skull.

           It’s not hard to pump gas, he thought, you just always have to be sure to get your fill.
           That, and: God’s got nothin on Gasman.

            [*cutscene omitted*]

           His thoughts didn’t come out as clean as they once did. Still, they were invaluable when translated (which, as of yet, there was not a single known translator of such “language” on this planet, or any other). And, now, they emanated audibly.
           Glibglibglibbbb, came one. Urshaurshaaa, went another. And so on and so forth. Et cetera, et cetera.

           The world zoomed on outside the decaying walls. Time ticked endlessly toward nowhere in particular. He was an anachronistic artifact, a sullied statue in his greasy jumpsuit and beat-up boots.
           It mattered not how dark it got, how cold or bleak. He remained, mostly unmoving, in a tuckered-out tomb of concrete blocks and ethanol.

           He heard there were places where gas stations still exploded. The knowledge of these kinds of occurrences was useless to him—it simply did not compute. A moth faltered in its flight, swirled and twirled, crashing down belly-up under the faint glow of a pulsating “EXIT” sign.

           There was only one rule in the rundown abandoned gas station: No Smoking.

           He lit another smoke in his mind, which gurgled graciously for the chance to do so. It was a volatile yet conscious decision. Although the one rule did not specify, he knew why it existed, and although extrapolating with assumptions in gray areas and murky waters was one of his pet peeves (in the top ten on his list of lifelong no-nos, in fact), he felt it more than fair to take those two words literally, not figuratively. If we were to take every rule to pertain to the imagination as well, he thought (which came out flifffliffflifffliffffff), we’re in deeper shit than I imagined. (Shunnashunnnnshun)
            Plus, the therapeutic encapsulation a mental tobacco toke granted him was one of the main exercises keeping him alive.