STRANGE SIGHTS

Certain things are just true. They are not open to discussion. Mathematics just makes them so. One of them is the inter-relatedness of humanity. Everyone alive today is descended from one person who lived fourthousand years ago. So, Abraham the Patriarch...he your pop-pop. Cheops who built the Great Pyramid..he your pop-pop too. And that warrior queen from up in Albion (Britian) who commisioned a little chapel known as Stonehenge..she your mom-mom. This does not mean that we are all exactly the same. Ethnic differences still exist. God knows, I was not even that much like my brother. If he was in fact my full brother. How can I tell? Untill the great scientist, Maury Povich, invented the paternity test, those things were better left unsaid. But Papa is over twenty eight thousand years old. Did he have mortal children before he passed over? Yes, he did. And for that reason he cares greatly about the future of his children, when he is in his right mind. Who would have thought one skinny, 'six' year old vampire brat would be the one to cure him. Oh, but Annie was hard to take. She'd mess with the mummies too much. Those 'familiars' on the night crew went crazy getting everything back the right way before opening time. Quenn Hep-Hep posed as if she was locked in carnal union with General Tothrama (whom she hated in real life). The royal toddlers of Princess Ka-Ka smoking cigaretttes and reading 'busom' magazines. While Ka-Ka's mother was posed laying on a sofa in the mid-century furniture exhibit, eatin' piles of Twinkies from the snack shop. May the wrath of Horus fall upon her. Oh, but that Zebulon was a pagan and able to throw such curses. Papa took to leaving the tiny wretch alone for longer and longer periods of time. The familiars hated that. But what could they do? Oh, he made it up to them. Everybody got baubles from jewelry shops in the diamond district. If you come to town, don't miss it, branching off from Eighth and Sansom Streets. But Zebulon sometimes wanders.....Papa floated around the perimeters of the buildings in the old navy yard district.. He'd sublimate into the air and become more or less invisible. Then he'd listen to what went on inside. He knew about Jonathon and how he played cowboys and bath-house whores with the young doctorix. It made him smile. He knew about Sarah and the little 'elves and cherubs.' And he felt sorry for them. But he was just coming 'round to his sanity and could not yet remember how to bring them back. Let Franklin do it. Let him use that Great Armonica of his. Papa was curious about that. He had not seen anything like it since the court of Radimar the Magnificent, Warlord of Old Delmun. That one had his toys. But drunken revels were the norm back then and all the toys got broken. And when the necromancers couldn't build them back up fast enough, they got broken too. Anybody care for a wizard's leg?? Ha ha ha, it was actually funny. But I guess you had to be there. ......Now, where was I? Oh yes, Papa's wanerings. He knew what Sarah saw, for he could see it too. She walked across an infinite plain made of thick glass. The sky above was featureless and gray. The air, misty and cool. Below the glass stretched a vast lake of fire. And every once in an eternity a stringy demon would manage to pop through the surface, only to be roughly yanked back by his angry brethren. For who was he to deserve such blessings? The glass plain was warm and sometimes Sarah would lie down on it. She could see the demons on the other side rapping on the glass and making faces at her. But little of the sound came through. And she had no way of knowing how long this numbing torment would go on........or what the elves and cherubs saw through their eyes........