Week 4 - The Family Portrait

The Family Portrait

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“Lou’s” was a dive bar and the man behind the counter’s actual name was indeed Lou. Calling it a dive bar was being nice. It was old and run-down. There were chips in the paint and broken lamp shades and water stains on the ceiling.  Signs had faded paint. The carpet had stains. The television was an antique that barely worked. It had all the worst options for amenities – an expensive jukebox with seemingly random choices of music, a coin operated pool table that was uneven and came with warped pool cues and an electronic dart board that didn’t keep score half the time.

It was as if everything there was designed to keep customers away.

The clientele that “Lou’s” did have didn’t seem to mind their surroundings. They weren’t there because things looked pretty. They went to “Lou’s” because they were going to drink like they meant it.

Art sat at the bar, three beers into his afternoon. There were two other people in the room – Lou and another lone customer sitting at a table in the back corner.

Lou was a good guy. He had been friends with Art for a long time, even though they were over twenty years apart in age. Lou looked back and forth several times between the two men before finally approaching Art. Art noticed Lou’s approach and the cautious way he carried himself.

“You’re making me nervous, Lou. You gonna talk to me? Then talk.”

“You looking to freelance?” Lou whispered.

“I was trying to drink this beer.”

Lou scoffed. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. And I really meant what I meant. I’m going to have this beer and then another and maybe another.”

“You know it sucks to see you like this.”

“Merry Christmas. Happy I could help.”

“Don’t get like that with me. I’m the one helping you. I’m the one sticking by you. A freelance job might be just the thing you need. Get your mind off your troubles. Get your mind off of Amy--”

“She’s coming back!”

“No, she’s not. And even if she does come back, she’s not going to want to see you like this. Not like this.”

“You don’t know what she wants.”

“Apparently neither do you.”

That hurt. Art paused and felt that moment of pain. That was a low blow, even if it was the truth. He almost struck Lou, but instead said something that would hurt even worse.

“You’re not my family. You’re certainly not my father. I don’t even know if you’re my friend.”

Lou had known Art when he was a teenager and full of real venom. There wasn’t going to be much unkindness that could come out of Art’s mouth as an adult that would match that. Besides, he could tell Art wasn’t really trying. It was a sad desperate insult, an insult based in self-loathing. Lou knew too much about just how lonely and abandoned Art was feeling right now and how much that just seemed in step with all of the pain Art felt when he was younger. Lou could handle a few sour grapes now and again. He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over Art’s bad moods.

“You want to burn bridges? That’s fine. Burn all you want. But you aren’t going to burn this bridge, our bridge. I’m the one that’s here. I’m the one friend you got.”

“God dammit, Lou…” Art was silent for a moment, and then he took a deep breath and sighed a sigh of friendlier relief. “Sometimes you’re the worst.”

Lou smiled in return. “Yeah I know.”

“What about the guy in the back corner?”

“Somebody. Somebody with an interest in keeping this place safe. He’s not going to care what we talk about. So talk to me.”

“Okay. Pour me another and tell me about it.”

Lou told him about the job. And even though it was an unsanctioned, nonunion job, Art decided he could use the money.

Art was short for Artemis. It was his code name amongst criminals. It was his code name amongst co-workers. What none of them knew was that Artemis was also his real name. He had been named after the Greek Goddess Artemis. Apparently his father wasn’t concerned with naming his son after a woman. Perhaps it was a joke. Or perhaps his father didn’t actually know who or what Artemis was. Maybe he just liked the way it sounded. Artemis couldn’t ask the man himself, the man himself hadn’t been around for years. And so the torturous teasing he incurred as a child was a final parting gift from his negligent father, a man that couldn’t be bothered to be around enough to properly raise his son. Back when his father had been bouncing in and out of prisons, his friend Lou had stepped in and tried to lend a helping hand in raising young Artemis. Art never forgot everything that Lou had sacrificed to help him. It was one reason Art didn’t mind taking on a lot of odd jobs so that Lou could get a cut of the proceeds. Despite every bitterness that he felt towards the man, Art had basically followed in his father’s footsteps into a life of petty crime. Funny how things worked out like that.

Lou had warned him that there was a girl involved. Art wasn’t sure just what he was being warned against. Lou had a distrust of women. He didn’t like the way they screwed with his mind while working a job. But maybe this time Lou was afraid of something else. Maybe he was worried that seeing another woman so soon after Amy had left him would set Art off into a spiral of despair. Or maybe he was warning Art because Art had a dangerous taste in women.

The next day when Art met with her, he understood Lou’s concerns had been ‘all of the above’.

She lived in the private community of Mt. Olympus, a development high above Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills. It was a place of palaces and wealth and excess. The rich drank and looked down at the lights as the normal people scurried about. Art hated Mt. Olympus. It was sealed off and insulated. Bad things happened when people got too insulated from one another. Bad things had happened on Mt. Olympus. He knew a thing or two and had heard a few rumors about some of the people that lived up here. There were some dark and twisted types. Art didn’t have to come here often and he didn’t stay long when he did. He was especially thankful that there wasn’t an ‘Artemis Dr.’ in the neighborhood. That would have been too much for him to take.

Priscilla Thorne was in her late forties. She was tall and confident. She spoke directly and didn’t mince words. She was clearly very intelligent. She acted prim and proper, but it seemed as if that might have been an act. She was wealthy, old wealth, spoiled wealth, long-held wealth, but Art wasn’t able to ascertain where it came from exactly. He was a little hungover and the meeting was a little too early and he wasn’t able to complete as much of a background check as he would have liked. He did know that Ms. Thorne was formerly Mrs. Maxwell, but Mr. Maxwell was no longer breathing. Mr. Maxwell had made money working for a movie studio, but it wasn’t clear which, if any, movies he had ever helped develop or produce. He seemed like the sort that was somehow skilled or lucky enough to hang around money and by being in its close proximity, some of it somehow fell to him. It was a good skill to have in L.A. Art wished he had some of that skill himself. If Mr. Maxwell hadn’t had his heart attack a few years earlier, Art would have had several questions on the subject. Unfortunately Ms. Thorne didn’t seem to care to talk about that subject or about the glitter of Hollywood.

What Ms. Thorne wanted to talk about was art.

“What is it you want me to steal?”

“I never mentioned anything about stealing. You’re not here to steal anything. Is that what you thought this was?”

Art couldn’t tell if she was suddenly nervous about hiring a criminal or if she was suddenly playing coy and wanting him to spell out the facts of the crime, just in case he was setting her up to be arrested. Art had dealt with people like this before. They were paranoid, never knew whom to trust. Probably not a bad idea when they were paying someone to break the law. Art didn’t mind taking the lead and walking them through things. It was his job after all and he did enjoy doing it.

“No offense, lady, but it was my understanding you wanted to hire a thief. I just assumed you understood what it is that I do.”

“I know who you are. I know your reputation. I’m hiring you because I want to make a point. I want them to know I hired a thief. I want them to know that if I wanted the painting I could have it back at any time. I hired you because they’ll know who you are and what it is you do.”

“Okay. I can talk tough. I can make a show if it, if that’s what you want. I can tell you right now though, not a lot of people are scared off by that.”

“That’s okay. I have complete faith in your skills. You make the point. Let them weigh their options.”

“Fine by me. It’s your dime after all.”’

“Yes, it is.”

“But once that’s done, you’re going to have to weigh your own options and figure just what exactly it is you really want me to do for you when they reject the offer.”

“You let me worry about that.”

To be continued...

Week 3 - Many Memories

Many Memories

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“Do I know you?” Jacob finally asked, once he was sure that he had exhausted all other reasonable delay tactics. She didn’t react at first and for a brief second he wondered if he had spoken out loud or not. “I don’t know you, do I?” he continued. “You look familiar to me.”

He had been staring at her for far too long. Jacob knew she knew. He had caught her glancing over at him out of the corner of her eye as he had been glancing over out of the corner of his. She knew he was there and she knew he was speaking to her in particular. It was awkward and bad and he had looked over one too many times, until he was well past the point of return. He stopped trying to hide it and began looking at her outright. Then it turned into staring. And if he stared any longer without saying anything, he was afraid she could get worried that he was a total creep or madman and then there was no telling what might occur. So he had to speak. And it had gone about as well as he had expected it to.

“I don’t think so,” she replied, barely giving him a second glance. Apparently he was not her type and she wasn’t going to be bothered wasting precious time with anything less.

That didn’t bother Jacob. A lot of people didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at a lot of them either. He usually couldn’t take it. He hated that awkward eye contact game where both people try to decide if they really want to acknowledge the other person or not. It was so much easier for him when they obliged him by not paying any attention without the pretense of being polite. No, he didn’t mind at all. It made his day-to-day life so much easier.

Jacob had been sitting at the bar nursing his gin and tonic, dulling his senses to the world around him, and trying to mind his own business. This was common practice. The world was too full of stimuli and Jacob needed to divorce himself from it as often as possible. Not everything, but far too many things, overwhelmed him – sights, sounds, locations, and people. People were the worst. They made him nervous. They created anxiety. All he wanted was a little peace and quiet, but unfortunately most of the time, the world had other plans.

Jacob had never been in this bar before. It was on the far side of town, away from where he lived and worked. It made things easier. It was new, which presented a certain type of anxiety of its own, but at least the people were strangers. He usually didn’t read too much into people he didn’t know. Sometimes, but not often. Or at least less than with people he saw often enough. A stranger could sometimes just be a stranger and stay that way. There were always plenty of possibilities, but at least with a stranger he had a chance that he had never interacted with them before. The odds were usually in his favor, which would allow him to drink his drink in peace and forget all about the possibilities of the world and of his past failures and possible futures.

But then she walked in. He didn’t notice her right off, but he could tell something was wrong. He always got a sensation, like a blur or double vision. Things got mixed up and muddy and he could see two or three possibilities at once. The drink helped with that. If he had had enough to drink, then the whole thing could end up the hallucinations of intoxication, or if he was lucky he might blackout and not remember anything at all. That would have been nice. He could have just let the whole night slip away into nothingness and none of it would matter.

Sadly though, he hadn’t been drinking long enough. And then there was the fact that she decided to sit down right next to him. That was bad news for them both. Sometimes they knew too much too. Or sometimes they just knew there was something special about him and felt the connection of a kindred spirit. But usually they had no idea they were a trigger and that the universe was throwing them together. Jacob always wondered if that was fate or divine intervention, or if it was all just random chance.

He almost didn’t look over. After he did, he really wished he hadn’t. He saw her face and could see that she had one of those faces, and after that, it was all over.

Jacob knew he knew her, even if she didn’t know him. He knew he knew her, even though he knew he couldn’t tell her that. He knew he knew her even if he didn’t really know her. He was well aware that no matter what he said at this point, she would never understand what he was talking about. He had learned that after too many failures to explain or be understood. Back when he used to try and talk about it, those people always thought he was just trying to be funny.

“And you’re sure we don’t know each other?” Jacob asked again, this time a little more anxious.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,” she said without thinking about it, and then she went back to her drink.

Jacob had looked her right in the eyes when he asked her that time. He knew the things he knew and what he was sure of, and this was one of the ones he was sure of.

He recognized the face. It was an instant reaction. It was that type of face – a face with a past and too many futures. He could look at her and imagine all the things she was and could have been. He could guess her dreams, her ambitions and her failures. He had seen so many faces like this in his time – too many. When he was young, it was a fun game. Guessing. Pretending he was intuitive or that there was some sort of confidence game that he was running. He had always been confident. Confident, but not arrogant or aggressive. He had always had an eye for detail and an awareness about him. He always seemed to know things. Things he shouldn’t have known. It was a fun party trick. It was disarming. It could be flirtatious. It could also be annoying as hell. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop it. He had no control over it. He would look and it would just happen – he could see a world of possible outcomes.

As he got older, the fun ended and it became a nightmare. His mind couldn’t sort things fast enough, or make sense of it all. It was overwhelming and paralyzing. Sometimes he saw nightmares or loss or even death. The best times were when he saw positive futures for his friends and co-workers. Those were the best times. Even if they didn’t always come true. Sometimes the dream seemed more real than reality.

Jacob looked at her fingers. He could see the ring that wasn’t there. He looked at her lips. He could see the cigarette that had been there so many times before. He looked at her hair. It was a light brown and was cut short and wild. He could see it had been many different colors and many different styles. How could he tell her any of that without sounding mad.

Her flesh looked so soft and tender. He looked at her neck and thought about kissing it. He thought about running his tongue up and down her body. He was sure he had done that before. Somewhere. Sometime. He thought about reaching out and wrapping his hands around her.

He could kiss her face. She had the sort of face he could kiss. It would have been nice, but he knew it didn’t work that way. She had no idea who he was. To kiss her now would just be insane and to her it might even seem criminal.

“Okay, sorry to bother you. Thanks.”

Jacob got up to leave.

“That’s it? That’s your pickup line? Ask me if we know each other?”

“I wasn’t hitting on you.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

Jacob didn’t know what to tell her and was sure she wouldn’t believe the truth, so he walked away.

Later, she walked away from the bar and turned down a residential avenue, when a voice came from behind.

“Hey…”

She turned to see Jacob. He had waited for her to leave. She wasn’t surprised at all.

“I knew it.”

“What?”

“Hitting on me before. You were trying to pick me up.”

“I promise you I wasn’t.”

Jacob approached her. He was sure of himself. Every step he took displayed that. She noticed and for a moment sort of liked it. Maybe she had misjudged him after all. Then he got nervous. Really nervous.

“I was just trying to make sure…” His voices trailed off. He looked confused for a moment, then a little bit afraid. This made her scared and she took a step back.

“Are you okay?” She didn’t really care, but it seemed more polite that screaming for help. He hadn’t really done anything to warrant that reaction, and yet that was her first instinct.

He looked at her eyes. He knew eyes. It was too bad – they were really pretty eyes. He wished he didn’t know them. He wished she had just been a stranger. He could have walked away if she had just been a stranger.

“I had to know. I had to make sure. Before I…” He took another step towards her, and not in a friendly way.

“Before?” she started to ask, but then he lunged at her. “Wait! Stop--!”

He wrapped his hands around her neck and began to choke her. She fought as best she could, but he was stronger. He yelled at her, tears starting to form in both their eyes. It was a moment of symmetry and he knew this was the only way to make the visions stop.

“There are too many. Do you get it? Do you understand? Too many images. Too many memories. I know you. I’ve seen you. I know all about you. But it’s not you. It’s you, but not you. It’s the other you. All the others. I need to make it stop. The futures… the past… Everything you could have been. It’s too much for me to see it all. I need to make it stop. I need to make it go away. You’re not real. You’re fake. I can’t take it. I can’t tell what’s real. There are too many. I can’t see them all. I have to make them stop. I don’t know what’s real. I’m sorry, but I have to stop them.”

She didn’t understand any of what he was trying to say. She heard very little of it, as she was suffocating and starting to pass out.

Week 2 - Iberia Must be Destroyed

Iberia Must be Destroyed

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Much can be made of any one particular moment in the annals of history. That is, as long as someone is so inclined to look at it with enough time and scrutiny. Any moment can be made out to be the moment with enough effort. The historian can play out a million different scenarios as to how each moment affects every other moment and how changing one can change them all. The pendulum swings this way or that, and an entirely different world is born. It is easy to look at one battle, one leader, or one specific instance and try to ascribe to them more importance than they are truly worth. There, of course, must always be room for a dramatic flair when examining history and it is perfectly natural for there to be an appeal to romanticism which follows perfectly from this style of thinking.

History is not at all like this, and yet, history is precisely this.

There is no telling just how everything impacts everything else and just what the one key element of utmost importance is. It is quite possible that history behaves exactly like we would want it to and that fate and chance and opportunity have conspired to make the exact right outcome occur. It is also possible that luck and accident and inopportune indecision control more than we’ll ever know.

Some enjoy playing the game of “what if?” and wondering what could have happened if not for this or that or “for want of a nail.” Perhaps it is comfort they seek, comfort from a world they hardly understand or perhaps fear. Perhaps it is simple wish fulfillment – the desire to see underdogs win, to see a brighter outcome occur. Or perhaps they are simply wishing that the world had more order, that accidents, epidemics and ignorance didn’t have just as much of an impact as reason, right and might.

Or maybe they themselves understand something more about history and life in general. They see the tides of time and the ebb and flow of chance. Perhaps they see the warnings for the future and the lessons of the past, even if their method is through the imagined and the impossible.

Theirs is the quest for that which is fair. Theirs is the quest for that which is better.

 “Delenda est Iberia!” “Iberia must be destroyed!” That was the battle cry Cato proclaimed during all the speeches he gave to the Roman Senate, but no one ever took his call to arms too seriously. It wasn’t because they didn’t see the threat that he saw. Indeed, Iberia was a problem, a potentially significant problem. But no one else was as reckless as Cato was; no one was willing to endorse a course of action with so much potential for disaster. They saw the problem, they all saw the problem; they were just wise enough to also see there was no immediate fix and a rushed military campaign would prove to be folly.

No one, not the Legionnaires, not the Phalanx, nor the Marauders, the Immortals or Hannibal’s elephants, were going to march into Iberia and make them burn. They had all tried. They had all failed. The Iberians had been under siege for as long as there was recorded history. They knew a thing or two about defending themselves. No one and nothing was going to have an easy go at Iberia. Cato knew that too, but he had his own political agendas to promote and it made for a good speech. So no one took him seriously, perhaps not even Cato himself.

As the stories went, there had been battles for thousands of years with the Iberians. Every culture, every empire, everyone in the known world had come across these men, and they had all failed to push them from Europa. Roma was simply the latest in a long line of empires to fail.

An Iberian wasn’t just a perfect soldier, he was a perfect warrior. It was as though Iberians had been born and bred for this one purpose. But even that didn’t do them justice. The Spartans had been born and bred to become warriors. But they still had to become a warrior. An Iberian simply was. From birth or before, they simply were what they were.

The Iberians were beasts – monstrous amalgamations, half-man, half something entirely different. They were enormous, tall and strong, at least a foot taller than any Roman. Their faces rigid and their features bloated and overgrown. They looked like a nightmare. Their muscles were twice that of a normal man. They were covered in dark, thick hair. They ran faster, moved quicker, and struck harder. They were hardly men at all. They were masterful creatures.

The stories and legends spread across the Empire and were blown to mythical proportions. The people were afraid. The Legions were afraid. The leaders were afraid. Who knew what was true? It could have been legends or stories of the gods – invented myth, made to frighten an enemy before the battle was even waged. How many wars had Iberia won simply by not having to fight them?

Roma didn’t have men to waste trying to find out. Roma had plenty of real and present problems all around them. There were the Northern Berserkers. There were Carthaginians who threatened them at sea. And there were the rumored Seres off somewhere in the Far East. It was said they were as brutish and robust as any Iberian. Roma didn’t have time to fight one war or worry about one enemy; Roma had a world to contend with and was surrounded by constant threat.

After years of struggle and sacrifice, a balance had arisen between Roma and her many enemies. Carthago had been quelled. Persia was at peace. For the moment, the Goth were at bay. There was no reason to start another war.

But that didn’t stop some from trying.

Gaius would later become one of the most prominent leaders in all history, but even he failed to make any inroads into the Iberian Peninsula. Gaius had to settle upon an uneasy balance of power and turned his attentions to the East. Just as the legend Iberia grew, so too did the stories about Scythae and the Seres warriors from the East. It seemed as if Roma would soon enough be surrounded and time was better spent preparing for truces and a strongly defended Limes Arabicus, as opposed to throwing away countless lives on a war that no one could win.

What no Roman at the time realized was what a missed opportunity it really was. Yes, the Iberians were taller and stronger and daunting warriors on the field of individual battle. One-on-one, an Iberian could break a Roman. But what no one knew was just how thin their numbers had really become. Roma had twice the population and was perhaps closer to three times in size in reality. Roma had training, education and military strategy. All they were lacking was the information and the will for prolonged battle.

They gave the Iberians the worst thing possible – time.

The Pyrenees Mountains had made an excellent defense against their eastern aggressors for centuries, perhaps for millennia. Now the Iberians had time to improve that defense and even take things one step further. They launched one of the greatest feats in ancient civic engineering and set out to build a defensive wall that ran along the length of the Pyrenees.

There were rumors of a similar wall on the other side of the world, but at the time Iberia was increasingly isolated and it is unlikely that they would have heard of such a building project. More likely, they were simply wise enough and talented enough builders to appreciate the benefits of a proper defense.

What Roma thought they needed was a way to contain each threat. So while the Romans prepared for a battle that might not come, the Iberians were afforded the time to ensure that if and when they turned their attentions again to the west, that they would indeed be ready to defend their homeland.

Roma, for their part, took an extremely passive approach to counteracting their Iberian dilemma. Their solution consisted of sending the northern barbarians towards the west, and promising them any of the lands in Iberia they could take, if only they agreed to leave Roma alone. It was a poor trick, but it worked at first, using the barbarians to try and force them into fighting Roma’s war for them.

In that way it did take care of two potential enemies, and kept them both busy and weak. But at the same time it make the Iberians constantly aware of the threats from the east and the fact that Roma was their enemy. The Iberians were in a constant state of military awareness. Becoming more aware of their nation’s weaknesses, and watching the growing strength of their enemies, the Iberians realized they must pursue several new tactics.  They needed new and powerful solutions to counteract the growth of power from central Roma.

They were able to strengthen their defenses, and to prepare themselves against a state of constant threat. They realized their population was still relatively small and they would always be in danger of being run off the continent and pushed into the ocean. So they began an aggressive plan and decided to spread – North to Britannia, South to North Africa, and East into Gaul in order to make their own buffer states between them and Roma.

They waged war with the Carthaginians and Numidians. They waged war with the Goth and the Gauls. They waged war with the Celts and conquered Britannia. When they learned of islands and great lands to the north and far northwest they headed there as well. They created colonies. They made an empire. They ensured that they couldn’t be eradicated simply by defeating them in one place and one place only.

For thousands of years they had fought in Europa and had been pushed back, further back, by the constant tide of multiplying aggressors. Their numbers diminished and they were forced towards their own ocean border. For another thousand years they held off the empires to their east. Then, they had finally had enough of simply defending themselves. Iberia had survived and now it was fighting back and growing for the first time in ages.

There were stories about the far west, across the great sea, past the Pillars of Atlas and beyond. There were legendary foreign lands and lost civilizations. Iberia decided they would find out if that was true, and they headed west. They would get there first, and it would be theirs, all theirs. Roma might try to follow, but it would be difficult. Iberia controlled the outlets to the oceans. They controlled Gibraltar and Tingis and the Mons Calpe and the ability to close off the mouth of the Mediterranean from the great Sea of Atlas.

When the Iberians were done with their conquests, they grew bored and decided to return to the lands that had once tried to eradicate them. They were coming back, this time in full force. They had had enough of the new world. They wanted their ancestral homes again. They had scores to settle.

Perhaps Cato had simply been using a rhetorical device in his speeches, or perhaps Cato knew more than even Cato knew that he knew. The world had been warned. “Iberia must be destroyed!” The world had not listened. The world had no idea just how right Cato had been. The world was going to find out.