Hiraeth Excerpt (Interlude: Love and Other Failures)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Interlude: Love and Other Failures

Though Heather was his first love, she was not his last. Over the years, he fell in love repeatedly, eager to feel the same connection with another person as he had felt that summer back in 1988. He didn’t start dating until High School, but even then, it was more miss than hit, and even when he could get someone to go out with him, it was usually over within a month, having come to an unsatisfactory conclusion. He began keeping track of the girls he had asked out, noting how infrequently any of them had said yes. At first it wasn’t too bad, as he had other things to worry about, but soon his friends also began dating, and it became apparent that he would be the only one among them to die virginally alone.

Of course, that all changed in the summer of ’97, but that’s a story for a little later on. Suffice it to say that, though it lasted nearly four years, it fit into the same pattern which had characterized all of his relationships before, at least upon its conclusion. He kept putting himself out there, only to be torn down time and time again. And while a smarter man might have learned a modicum of caution over the intervening years, Tex was not that man. Each time he wore his heart upon his sleeve, only to dry his eyes upon it just a short while later.

As the years passed, and the number of his ex-girlfriends slowly grew, he began to see pattern coming into focus. It seemed that he found himself falling for women who were the absolute worst for him, while steadfastly discarding anyone who genuinely seemed to give a damn about him. Worse, this made sense to him, as it seemed in line with everything else in his life at the time. He found himself drawn to self-destruction, and it only made sense that he would recruit someone into his life to help him achieve his goals.

In the spring of 2006, he finally decided to do something about it. The decision was made easier by its binary nature. A coworker had informed him that two women seemed to be interested in him. The first was a sexy and sensuous woman who had easily caught the eye of everyone she worked with (not unlike his last long-term girlfriend), while the other was rather plain, but, he was told, was head-over-heels in love with him. If you have been paying attention, then it should be obvious who he chose. That he chose the irrepressible flirt is, then, no terrible surprise. But, as had happened so many times before, that relationship went precisely nowhere, and he was left alone once more.

He might have given it no thought, but then he bumped into the other woman at his friend’s wedding reception, and an idea came into his head. A few months later, he asked out for dinner at a local restaurant, and laid himself bare before her. He had decided on his strategy the week beforehand, and had come to the realization that, if he was to outwit his own instinct for self-harm, he would have to be completely honest with this woman. He told her everything that was wrong with him, from the mental illness to the idiosyncrasies of his apathetic nature. Part of his reasoning was a measure of full disclosure, so that she couldn’t accuse him later of having deceived her, but his other motivation was the small hope that she would become frightened and run away, leaving him to lavish attention upon people who only sought to do him harm.

Within thirteen months they had a son, and within three years they were married. It was everything he’d told himself he’d wanted, and yet he found that it was not. He still fell in love, though he knew he oughtn’t, and found that he was trapped within a prison of his own illusions. As he came to think upon it, he realized that perhaps it was not his gut which was outsmarted on that evening in April, 2006, and that the cruelest form of self-harm he could manage would be to allow himself to have everything he’d told himself he wanted, only to watch it fade and crumble as he realized that it must have been somebody else’s dream.

All he knew was that he wanted to be in love, to feel that excitement and anticipation of seeing someone again. He wanted someone to think that he was handsome, and charming, and something other than a complete and utter failure, which, up ‘til that point in his life, he’d been. What he craved was someone who would believe in him, and hold him so that he could feel vulnerable once more. What he desired, more than anything, was to have that summer back again, so he could tell that girl who kissed him that he loved her.

Hiraeth Excerpt (Chapter Seven: On Love and Kisses)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Chapter Seven: On Love and Kisses

He was eight years old when he first kissed a girl. It was perhaps the single most wonderful moment of his entire life, and no matter what came after, and no matter how hard his inner demons tried, that memory remained true and pure throughout his life. If his grandparents were the basis for what he felt constituted the perfect marriage, then what he had with Heather Hopkins was what he based his expectations of true love upon. That their love lasted mere months never bothered him, aside from the feeling that his chance at lasting happiness had been taken from him. Years later, after he had been through hell and back, he found out that Heather had carried a torch for him until adulthood. He knew that there was no way that he could have made it out to see her before her love for him had finally faded, but he felt that perhaps if he had tried, he might have staved off all of the pain which he borne over those past several years. It was the one event in his life he might have been tempted to go back in time to fix, were he given the opportunity.

Her family had moved into the house at the top of the hill that summer before the start of school. Tex was just about to enter into the second grade, and was pleased to discover someone with whim to spend the wait for the morning bus aside from the weird girl in the mobile home across from the bus stop and the bully who lived just down the road from her. School that year was nowhere near as engaging as had been the year before, and soon Tex found that the best part of his day was the time when he was walking up the hill and past Heather’s house on his way to the giant stump at the corner of Manitou Beach Drive and Mountain View Road. His weekends were dedicated to Arthur, as they’d been going to different elementary schools since the end of Kindergarten, and his weekday afternoons were still spent at the daycare he had been attending, but every morning was set aside for Heather Hopkins.

After having assembled his backpack, and dodged the affection of his mother, he ran out the front door and up the hill. Well, more specifically, he ran out the door and ran up half the hill, while walking quickly up the rest because the hill was quite steep, and he usually ran out of breath before he could reach the top. He would then pause once he had reached the summit, and compose himself before casually striding up to wait in front of Heather’s house. At that point, her brother would, more often than not, burst out of his front door and past young Batmart, squealing, “Race you!” as he bolted toward the bus stop. At first, Tex had run after him immediately, unsure if he could beat him, but as the months passed, he’d learned that he could take the other boy, and began giving him a healthy head start. He usually had enough time to wave to Heather as she stepped outside before he had to take off after John in order to beat him across the finish line.

Then, victory his, he would jog back to meet Heather, who was waiting for him just outside her house, and the pair would walk calmly to the giant stump and talk about whatever elementary school couples talk about. In all honesty, Tex had no idea what was going on, as girls were, in his experience, just strange creatures who seemed incapable of grasping the simple nuances of the latest action figures. And aside from his friendship with her, he had never really spent all that much time in the company of the fairer sex. They were most likely to be found in packs, and, having recently discovered his introverted nature, Tex tended to avoid such groups. He had no training in psychology, and not a clue what was meant by the term “mob mentality”, but he’d found that things usually went better for him in significantly smaller groups. If you were to have asked him that year if he had fallen in love with her, he would have made a face and blurted out some sort of denial, as she was a girl, and the only people that he loved were his family and his friend. But if you had asked him that same question at the end of summer vacation, in the days before he was to enter the third grade, he would have had a different answer entirely.

That school year passed slowly for him, and when it had finally run its course, he breathed a sigh of relief to be free of it. The first few weeks of his vacation were dedicated to winding down, and washing the stink of education from him, but in the first part of July, he made a truly startling discovery. It all began one Saturday, when Arthur had made other plans, and he suddenly had nothing to do that day. He sat sullenly in front of the television and watched the lineup of cartoons, fuming that he wasn’t going to have any fun at all. And then the weird girl from the mobile home just across from the big stump came down and knocked upon his door. She had cotton balls in her ears, and spoke entirely too quickly. Tex soon discovered that she was asking if he’d like to come and play. He was about to gently refuse her offer, as one can never be too careful with little girls wearing cotton balls in their ears, when he saw John and Heather walking up behind her.

His mother gave the go-ahead, and Tex raced outside to join the other children. His mother’s rules had been fairly clear. They could play in the yard, or in the woods behind the house, and if they were going to walk down to the beach, they had to be extremely careful about traffic. Also, they weren’t to go in the water. Other than that, the four children were left to their own devices. Had his mother any clue about what was to transpire that afternoon, perhaps she might have reconsidered granting her permission, but in her mind, there was no way to foresee what would come to pass, for her son was only eight years old, and it was far too early to have worry about that sort of thing. Mostly, her fears involved a car driving down to the beach too quickly and clipping him as he made his way out of the woods. But she also knew that there was safety in numbers, and that her son, for whatever faults he may have possessed, was also actually quite cautious where his physical well-being was concerned. As she watched them run off into that warm and inviting summer mid-morning, she allowed a smile to cross her face, pleased that her son had managed to make at least one other friend.

The children sprinted into the woods. There were overgrown trails and an old building which had burned to the ground around the turn of the century. It was the perfect place for make-believe. There were dragons flying overhead, and Stormtroopers chasing them. They were explorers discovering lost civilizations. They followed the trail down through the woods, and exited onto the road leading down to the beach, but instead of continuing on to frolic on those rocky shores, they crossed the road and worked their way through the vegetation on the other side which concealed yet another overgrown ruin. Just yards away from the road, yet in a place almost entirely untouched by the daylight all around, there was a staircase which must have, one day, led up to another long-forgotten building. This forested area was entirely different than the woods which they had just left behind: dark and closed in, more tangled underbrush than trees.

They might have tarried longer, but John began to grow afraid, and they made their way back out and up through the other woods once more. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but Tex had not been at all afraid upon that staircase. Normally he would have been almost paralyzed at the claustrophobic closeness of the vegetation, and the lack of light, but he had felt only a grand sense of adventure, and a small pang of disappointment when he’d had to leave that place. Justine and John had raced ahead, eager to get back to the safety of the lawn in front of Tex’s house, while Heather and young Batmart strolled along in pleasant silence, taking in the beauty of the forest, and breathing in the richness of the saltwater air mingled with the scent of pines. As they exited the forest, and the sun spilled down upon them, they were both filled with a happiness and exultation which neither of them could have explained.

The four of them played Freeze tag on the lawn until they could run no more, and then collapsed down beside one another, lost somewhere in the giggles. It had been a perfect afternoon. And then Justine sat up and threw a glance toward Heather (which Tex neither noticed nor which he could have understood), and asked if anyone wanted to play spin the bottle. Our hero had only heard of that game in passing, but was entirely unfamiliar with the rules, and John, it appeared, did not possess even Tex’s limited knowledge on that subject, but Heather was quick to respond with her assent, and Tex jumped in right after, not wanting to be left out. At that point, all eyes fell upon the younger boy, who knew that even if he were to dissent, would still be overruled by the majority. With the small sound of someone who has no clue what is going on and isn’t sure how he feels about it, John said, “Okay.”

 They sat cross-legged in a circle and Justine placed an empty can of Shasta Lemon-Lime in the very center, before laying down the rules. They would take turns spinning the can, and whoever the open side was pointing at when it ceased its spin would be kissed by the person who had done the spinning. It seemed fairly straightforward, and Tex felt certain that he wouldn’t mess it up. Justine spun first, and the can came to rest pointing at Heather, who sat beside her. “Re-spin” she said, to which we all agreed, because neither of the girls seemed to want to kiss the other. In later years, Tex wondered what would have happened if the can had come to point at him, for, in truth, he didn’t really want to get all that close to Justine. As fate would have it, the can stopped in front of John, and the two of them locked lips like one might do with a distant relative. In retrospect, Tex realized that this game must have been played for he and Heather’s benefit, as neither Justine nor John seemed terribly thrilled about playing. “Your turn!” Justine said, as she sat back down again.

Tex had never kissed a girl before, at least never in this context. He felt strange as he placed his hand upon the can and gave it a spin. It was like the sensation which he felt on Christmas morning as soon as he woke up. The can stopped halfway between Heather and Justine. “Spin again,” the girl with cotton in her ears implored him. He took hold and gave it another spin, only to see it stop this time on the boy who sat behind him. Frustration was setting in, and he heard a sigh from across the circle. He grabbed the can again, and spun it as hard as he could muster, only to have it pointing back at him. Justine then reached into the circle and rotated it until it was facing Heather. No one pointed out the obvious violation of the rules, as all four children were just happy that Tex wouldn’t have to spin again. Tex nervously rose to his knees as Heather did the same, and they waddled toward one another until they met up in the center of the circle.

                “Hey,” said Tex, unsure of what to do, for, as was mentioned earlier, he had never actually kissed a girl before. Heather then leaned in and kissed him.

As their lips met, he felt the very center of his being explode in white hot channels of electricity. If he had known that kissing was as cool as this, he might have done it sooner. So entranced with this new sensation was he, that he almost didn’t notice when Heather’s tongue somehow found its way into his mouth. In all reality, it wasn’t the most romantic kiss, for neither of them truly knew what they were doing, and instead of the sensual caress which has come to have been known as a French Kiss, it was more a matter of stabbing tongues at one another. When they finally fell away from one another, young Batmart was in a state of shock. He looked again at Heather Hopkins, and thought, for the first time in his life, that he wished to know what love was, and wouldn’t be opposed to the notion that she showed him. He was also surprised to discover that her mouth tasted quite similar to how her house smelled.

Over the course of the summer, the four children got together several more times, though no more games of Spin The Bottle were ever played. And, after a while, it would just be Heather who would walk down the hill to visit Tex. The two would go on walks through the woods and down into their secret hiding spot upon the staircase hidden beneath brambles, where they would embrace one another, and teach each other how to kiss.

It was the single happiest time in Tex Batmart’s life, and when that summer came to a close, he knew that he had fallen helplessly in love. He began to envision a life for he and his bride-to-be, as they would walk arm-in-arm to the bus stop in the mornings after he had raced his brother-in-law and then come back to her. He knew that he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and watch cartoons as if every morning were a Saturday. There was nothing which could have stopped him at that point, which is why, it seems, that the universe was forced to intervene.

In the week before he was to enter the third grade, Heather came to say goodbye to him. He thought it strange, at first, for it was only a week until school was set to start again, but then she broke the news to him. Her father had just gotten a new job, and the family would be moving to Moses Lake, which was somewhere in Eastern Washington (though, for all his ability to travel, it might as well have been New York). They made plans to stay in touch, neither of them realizing that it never works out that way. For an afternoon, they sat together, holding hands, and trying to reassure each other that this wasn’t going to be forever, that they would see each other again someday. And he walked her up the hill and to her front door, giving her a hug before she went inside, he felt an emptiness begin to grow inside of him. By the time he had walked ten feet, tears had begun to stream silently down his cheeks.

He didn’t know it at the time (although, perhaps he did), but that was to be the last time in which he would ever lay eyes upon her. His mother wasn’t sure what was going on, and when he explained the facts to her (for he knew that she would never understand a concept as vibrant and confusing as True Love), she thought that he was just sad to lose a friend. The reality, though, was that his heart was breaking, and had no idea what he was going to do.

Hiraeth Excerpt (Interlude: The Great Purge of 2000)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Interlude: The Great Purge of 2000

The year 2000 was not an especially great year in the life of Mr. Batmart. Despite all of the dire warnings regarding the Apocalypse (which would be brought about by the ubiquity of poorly-coded software which would be unable to understand that December 31st, 1999 was not immediately followed by January 1st, 1900), the new year came as easily as all which had come before, and rather than a sense of wonder at a brave new world, Tex was left with the sinking suspicion that things would be a repetition of everything that had come before. He was especially disappointed when the power remained on at the stroke of midnight, having harbored a secret hope that someone working at the power plant might have had a sense of humor. Instead, he was left to mingle with drug addicts and wonder if there was any way that his year could get any worse.

Apparently, he had not learned that lesson from his two decades of life, and in the wishing, most likely sealed his fate for what was to come. That year would see his relationship split violently apart at the fraying seams which had held it together in something resembling that which might have otherwise one day worked. It would also bear witness to his first (and second) bouts of homelessness. He met someone that year who had been in love with him, someone who he allowed to be his girlfriend because he was simply too numb to care. That year also brought about a criminal record, and his first experience (as an adult) of working for the man. But it wasn’t until the very end of it, in the first half of December, when his life began to fully fall apart.

His ex-girlfriend was driving him out to the County Seat so that he could visit Her in jail. Of the lot of them that had been arrested, only She had managed to stay locked up. He knew it was her charming personality and respect for authority which had done her in, but went to see her anyway. He didn’t know that She hadn’t put him on her list of visitors, nor that he wouldn’t have been able to see her that day even if She had. The plan was to take his three crates of writing, two-thirds of his life’s work, somewhere for safe keeping after going to visit Her in jail.

These were the days before smart phones and GPS, when the internet still took effort, and was often more trouble than it was worth, and before long, he and Amy had gotten completely lost on the winding back roads of Port Orchard, Washington. It had begun to rain, but neither of them really noticed, as rain in December was nothing knew, and they were otherwise preoccupied and lost within their own thoughts. He thought of how nice it would be to see his love again, and she thought that she wasn’t sure if she could stand to be around him. She didn’t know why she still loved him, when he had never looked at her that way, despite the fact that they had dated all that summer, when She was off trying to figure things out.

As they began down a hill, Amy tapped lightly on the brakes, having noticed a pickup truck at the bottom of the hill, waiting (for literally no one) to turn left. It took Tex just a moment longer than it took Amy to realize that the car wasn’t going to stop. As they continued down the hill, gaining momentum as the tires refused to grip the pavement, and hurtled forward and down along the tug of gravity, they both knew how it would end. Amy tried honking her horn, but the driver of the pickup truck gave no indication that he heard it. Seconds later, Amy’s car came to an abrupt halt as it collided with the pickup truck at thirty-five miles per hour. Neither Amy nor Mr. Batmart were injured in the crash, nor was the driver of the pickup truck.

The two occupants of the now-totaled car stood on the shoulder in the pouring rain and waited for the tow truck to arrive. Tex had grabbed what he could carry, and Amy told him that they would go back the next week to recover all of the rest. Their friend, a fellow dealer in the circle in which they had been running, arrived just before the tow truck was to depart. Batmart gave a glance at the trunk of his ex-girlfriend’s car, and shook away a growing feeling of loss.

The following March, when Tex had finally saved up enough money to pay off the debt his ex-girlfriend owed the wrecking yard (and managed to get Amy to give him the ticket for her car so he could present it to them), he and his girlfriend drove back out to the County Seat to rescue his life’s work. They arrived about two o’clock in the afternoon, and Tex walked up to the man who looked like he must be in charge and asked to have his stuff back.

                “Yeah,” said the man with a tone of indifference, “We don’t have that car anymore.”

                “What do you mean?” Tex asked nervously, his grasp on reality beginning to waver.

                “Yeah, we only wait a couple of weeks, and then we junk it.”

                “Okay, but there was stuff in the trunk. My stuff. I’ve been trying to get out here this whole time but the car’s owner couldn’t find this!” Tex began to waive the ticket in the air between them.

                “I get that,” the man in overalls said, this time a little more gently, “but if it was in the car, then it’s been gone for months.” He must have seen something break within Mr. Batmart at that moment, for Tex could feel himself shattering into countless pieces. “Sorry, kid.”

Tex walked back to Her car, and slowly, numbly, got inside. She knew what had happened by just one glance at his face. They drove back home in silence, stopping only to spend the money which had been set aside for salvage on a quantity of drugs which Tex neither needed nor desired, yet consumed anyway, hoping that maybe if he did enough, it might slow the rending, searing pain within his breast. Three days later, after being roused by Her from his hibernation, he finally let go of all the pain, all of the overwhelming melancholy which had defined him, and felt the final strands of sanity slip through his rope-burned fingers.

That day, months prior, he had lost, save for a handful of poems and short stories, two-thirds of his entire life. Boxes of poetry, of stories in various stages of completion, all of his Black and White negatives. On March 21st, at 11:23 a.m., the weight of loss and failure nearly crushing him, Tex Batmart took the only option left to him, and went truly and properly insane.

Hiraeth Excerpt (Chapter Six: MIND MAN)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Chapter Six: MIND MAN

It should not have been such a fundamental revelation for the boy, but it was, all the same. In fact, it should have painfully obvious as soon as he began to write his letters, and learn how to spell some words, but it took until that day, that fateful assignment in the First Grade, for him to understand why he had been put on the earth, and build a fire within himself which would keep him going for the many long and dark years which lay ahead. He had no idea, of course, just what a twisted, winding road this path he’d chosen would put him on, just the confidence in knowledge of what he felt that he was supposed to do. Later, many decades after, he would wonder if it might not have been worth the uncertainty which all of his friends came to experience, just so that his path might not have hurt so much. And then he would chuckle, realizing that it made no difference, for the path he chose was as much a part of him as any other, and that he could no more have forsworn his destiny than he could have willing parted with a limb. Wishful thinking, he decided, was for people who had nothing left to accomplish, and were just waiting for the end to come. He had been awaiting that final day as well, but as far as he could tell, he’d have no such luck until he was able to fulfill the promises he’d made when he was only seven years old.

As far as life-changing moments go, it was fairly innocuous: his teacher passed out a single mimeographed page instructing her students to imagine that they were a Superhero, and describe what their superpowers would be. The boy had written other things, of course, so this wasn’t the first time that he had been faced with the task of writing creatively. But somehow, for some reason, the idea began to burn somewhere within his brain that revolutionized his way of thinking, and indeed, his very way of taking in the world around him, and it all came down to a single thought: You mean I don’t have to wait for someone else to write a story? I can come up with them on my very own?

He was nearly floored by the simplicity of the notion which was rapidly expanding within him. Doors of possibility began throwing themselves open, and offering him up glimpses of the futures which lay within. He could write the stories that he wanted to read. He could channel his creativity into something that could outlast him (though he didn’t fully understand what that meant, at the time). This was his chance, he suddenly understood, to know what it meant to be fully alive.

Perhaps his thoughts were not quite as precise and orderly as I have laid down, but the realms of endless opportunities had begun to show themselves to him. He might have lost himself in revelry, had his teacher not walked past and reminded everyone that they had half an hour to complete the page. Refocused on the task at hand, young Tex took up his pencil and took the first steps of what would be a lifelong journey into words. What kind of Superhero would I be? he thought furiously to himself.

He considered the strength of Superman, and the ability to fly, but then remembered that he was afraid of heights, and shook the thought away. Maybe I could be like Batman? He asked then, of himself. But the Caped Crusader was very strong, and had lots of cool inventions, and was allowed to stay up at night, and the boy knew that they shared none of those traits in common. He didn’t understand why he was having such a hard time picturing himself as a Superhero, aside from the knowledge that he wasn’t too terribly heroic. But he knew that he was smart, as all the grownups he knew kept reminding him (though usually when he’d done something spectacularly foolish), and if he was so smart, why was he having such a problem imagining a superpower for his alter ego?

And then it came to him, in rather the same fashion as it would throughout the remainder of his years, a sharp rap upon his brow delivered by the fickle mistress, Inspiration. Write what you know. He’d heard the words before, but they’d never really meant anything to him until that very moment.

At the top of the page, next to the drawing of the Generic Superhero, he wrote two words: MIND MAN. And with those eight letters, he released the stopper which had been holding back the stories in his head, and the words began to flow out of him, almost faster than he could make himself aware of them. As his abilities increased over the years, he came to refer to this state as “Getting Lost Within The Flow”, as he came to learn that he would find better results if he set his conscious mind just a little to the side, and let the words spring from him like bursts of electricity through muscle memory.

It was the closest he ever came in his adult life to believing in a god; those moments when his fingers danced across the keyboard and drew the story out from somewhere deep inside of him slightly faster than the voice which narrated in his head. When he was writing at his very best, he was in fact just reading along as the words appeared upon the screen, simultaneously his, and yet fresh and new before his eyes.

Mind Man had no Super Strength, nor any extraordinary physical endowment. From the outside, one would have no clue what manner of man he would be facing. Perhaps the cape which Mind Man wore could be considered telling to the criminal element, but it was a conceit of a seven-year-old mind that all the coolest people in the world wore capes, and so, such a fashion choice would be no more unusual than a baseball cap worn to a ball game. This hero used his mental magnificence and sheer force of will to subdue the evil all around him, transformed the encroaching darkness of ignorance into the argent brilliance of illumination. In short, he won because he was able to outthink his opponent.

And though the story, along with countless others, was lost in the Great Purge of 2000, it remained the foundation upon which Mr. Batmart laid his legacy. Obviously, if a copy were to exist, the words themselves might not impart the sweeping themes which have been described here, but if one were to look past the linguistic limitations of a boy who had just turned seven, it would be plain to see where he was going. In the interest of honesty, he may have also been influenced by A Wrinkle In Time, which he had just finished reading, most especially the climax, wherein a force of Ultimate Intelligence was defeated by the Power of Love, which, even at that age, Tex Batmart felt was a little too… simplistic a plot device. So he turned the climax on its head, and created an anti-hero, or, at the very least, launched an unimpeachable defense of villainy.

At the end of his half-hour, he looked upon that single sheet of paper, and read it to himself, amazed that he had created something of its kind. It sat before him like the promise of contentment, which at his age, was as close to happiness as he could truly understand. He had written all those words, snatched ideas and sentences out of the ether and forged them by his will. At that moment, he knew that he could do anything and everything, and was determined that he would.

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Interlude: Friendship)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Interlude: Friendship

Over the course of his life, there are only four people upon whom Mr. Batmart has ever bestowed the title of “Best Friend.” The earliest recipient was Ty Howell, both Tex’s first friend, and a comrade through the trying times of daycare. His reign came to an end however, in the summer of 1986, when his chose to launch an unsanctioned attack upon the genital region of a boy named Arthur Grant.

It was, in fact, that incident which made the transfer of title all but guaranteed, having created a bond between the two boys not involved in carrying out that terrible attack. And so, from that summer, until one almost ten years later, Tex considered Arthur to be his new best friend. In fact, considering the tenure of their friendship, and the subsequent absence of Ty, in later years, Tex rarely, if ever, mentioned the first boy who had been the best of friends, merely telling new acquaintances (should the topic arise in casual conversation) that Arthur had been his best friend since Kindergarten. And, considering how close the boys became, both only children who came to be like brothers, two families brought together for the celebrations and consolations, it is no wonder that the generally more insignificant friendship of Tex and Ty wasn’t hardly mentioned (or remembered).

The other two people to have held the title (and who continue to do so to this very day) are both named Dave, grew up with one another, and had their own friendship before Mr. Batmart gained the hat trick. When they came to spend time with one another, there was still kicking involved, but usually directed primarily toward the shins.

The first Dave was befriended when the boys were just eight years of age. They had met in class, and hadn’t really thought that much of one another, but over the years, their participation in Cub Scouts brought them together, allowing them to bond over such harrowing incidents as having Dave’s mother as the Den Mother for their troop.

They circled one another in the coming years, frequently sharing classes. They drifted apart a bit in middle school (which is when the two Daves met and befriended one another in band class, while Tex preferred the decidedly less musical route of art, home economics, and a brief tour of duty in seventh grade shop class), but by their second year of high school, they were better friends than ever, having found a common enemy in the public school structure, as well as their inabilities to constructively interact with members of the opposite sex, though this would prove to be less of a problem at first for Dave B.

There wasn’t really any specific moment when Tex knew that Dave was one of his best friends, rather, it was a gradual realization that they’d spent such a large part of their lives together, and had shared so many moments of a common history, that they were bound to one another, for better or for worse, but in a significantly non-romantic context.

Dave F, on the other hand, was almost a sort of happy accident. He and Tex had most likely been introduced several times throughout the years, as they shared many friends in common, but it wasn’t really until the winter of their Junior year in high school that they truly became friends.

It was a dark time in our hero’s life, owing to his growing apathy and run-ins with the law, and when he found a kindred spirit in Dave F, with whom he could discuss grand plans to improve the world or discuss such major issues as death metal or fringe theatre. He’d found someone who would take him on adventures, and help to relieve the boredom of what life had become. They shared poetry with one another, and hung out in graveyards to get drunk.

When Tex moved in with The Woman at the end of his formal education in the public system, Dave F was there to keep him grounded in reality. They made music together, and played Super Nintendo until the break of dawn. And even when the dark days came, and it seemed as though their friendship could not withstand the internal politics of the drug-addled circle to which they both belonged, it somehow endured. And when Dave F called, and asked Tex to move to California, the move was made without a second thought.

Though he was an only child, Tex Batmart found that he had two brothers, with all the benefits and detriments which siblings have been known to offer. In his darkest moments, he felt the pull of friendship, and yet chose to cling to it, as he let everything else fall away. Arthur was a brother, and because of him, Tex always knew that he had another set of parents, for all intents and purposes. Out of all of the boys which he had called “Best Friend”, the only one to slip away was the first to have claimed the title. So it is with recognition of all which he had set in motion with just one rage-filled kick of his small leg, that this author chooses to thank that old acquaintance, and hopes that he is doing well, wherever he may be.

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Chapter Five: Kindergarten, and Other Injustices)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Chapter Five: Kindergarten, and Other Injustices

Two little old men, sitting on a log. That is how his Kindergarten teacher described Tex Batmart’s friendship with Arthur Grant. It was a friendship which would supplant the one which he had cultivated with Ty, and which would provide him with emotional and moral support until adulthood. It wasn’t until Mr. Batmart moved away to Seattle proper that he fell out of contact with his friend, and even then, he still managed to make occasional contact with either Arthur or his parents, from time to time. But it all began back in the fading days of summer in 1985.

Both children had been placed into the afternoon Kindergarten class, which Tex would later attribute as the cause for his aversion to rising early. For Tex, it wasn’t really all that terribly much different from what he was used to in daycare, aside from the giant yellow bus he got to ride to get to and from the school. They still played with toys and munched on snacks, but there were also lots more books, and even a computer. His teacher had been surprised to find that he could read even before his first day in her class, and began the tradition which would haunt him until his first report card of high school, stating that he was a pleasure to have in class.

Through the years, the boy discovered that, as he struggled to find a way to completely disappear from notice, for he didn’t much care for all of the attention that came from being put on the spot, that unless he had failed spectacularly at something within a week or two of the end of the trimester, the most that his teachers could ever really say of him was that he was a pleasure to have in class, or that, ironically, he worked well with others. Of course, there aren’t all that many grades in Kindergarten, and usually the only way that someone might fail is if they couldn’t keep their paste addiction under strict control.

Of that year, the most that Mr. Batmart could truly recollect was time spent playing some sort of educational spelling adventure on the computer, and playing with toys at recess. And it was there, upon the playground of that elementary school, that he first got to know the boy who he would come to call his friend, though, considering their first encounter, it’s almost a wonder that there was any kind of friendship at all.

It wasn’t that our hero was unable to make friends, for he had shown himself to be at least marginally proficient at mimicking normal social etiquette, but that, in some ways, he exemplified the natural state of being of a native northwesterner: to outsiders, often considered chilly or aloof, but once comfortable with the people in his surroundings, warm and easygoing, sometimes to a fault. No, the friendship nearly didn’t happen due to a heated political debate.

                “GoBots are stupid!” one of the squealing children yelled.

                “Transformers are stupid!” another countered immediately.

A group had gathered near the monkey bars as the children (mostly male, as the girls had better things to do than defend the honor of their chosen brand of cartoon-advertised toys and action figures) began a spirited discussion of the relative merits of the two major toy lines of vehicles which were secretly artificially intelligent robotic lifeforms currently deep undercover.

Perhaps it was the quality of the Transformers toys, or then again, perhaps it was a preference for the cartoon, but the proponents of an Optimus Prime-led hegemony outnumbered the GoBots supporters by at least two or three to one. Tex had rarely been in the majority, and actually, had never truly had the opportunity to participate in an activity that was so polarizingly decisive, but he himself was a strong believer in the supremacy of the Transformers, and had quickly and easily mastered the transformation sound effect.

He knew of the GoBots, and to be fair, had nothing against the competing program. Cartoons were cartoons, after all, and to him, it was a moot point in any case, as everyone in possession of the slightest amount of sophistication knew that Thundercats was the finest program to debut in the Year of our Lord, 1985.

But when push came to shove, as was likely to happen quite soon if the recess lady didn’t come over in time, he would have said that he was a Transformers man. Of the group facing the moral judgement of superior numbers, Arthur seemed the least fazed about the prospect of conflict. He stood his ground and just reiterated that he thought GoBots were cool.

The crowd was beginning to whip itself into a frenzy, when the recess lady descended upon them and broke up the mob before things could truly get out of hand. As everyone began to shuffle back in the direction of the classroom, Tex walked up to Arthur and helped him gather up the fallen toys. “GoBots are all right, I guess,” he told the other little boy.

               “Okay,” was the only reply he got.

As far as friendships which would one day change the course of human history go, it wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings. But that simple act of kindness matched against an unflappable sense of calm drew the two together, and soon they began to seek one another out at recess to talk about the things which only five-year-old boys can talk about. Upon examination, they rather resembled the stand-up comics of the 1990’s, in that most of their conversations about things revolved around talking about things from their childhoods which they thought were cool, and asking one another if they’d seen this program or heard about the latest toy that would be coming out.

Soon, they were comparing He-Man action figures and asking one another over for the weekend. This was more of a problem for Tex, as he was still maintaining a friendship with Ty, who was in the morning Kindergarten class. They had seen less of one another since the end of summer, as Ty would leave daycare early in the morning, and be arriving back shortly after Tex had gone to school. The weekends had been their time to compare notes and wash away the stresses which only organized education can bestow. By the time that 1986 had come, they were lucky to see one another every other weekend, but it all came to a head shortly after Kindergarten graduation.

Having been friends for as long as either of them could reliably remember, the boys had a little ceremony at Ty’s house to commemorate their successful completion of their first year of school. Their parents had planned a little party, and there were diplomas, cake, and silly looking headgear. Neither of the boys had truly felt all that much different, as by June, they had both grown accustomed to their new routines.

It was more of a shock to them on the first day of their very first summer vacation when they felt the first stirrings of restlessness which untried sloth can bring. It was kind of like a weekend which never ended, although there was still daycare all throughout the week. By that time, Tex had grown tired of being forced to live two separate lives, and had decided that both Ty and Arthur should finally meet each other. It made sense to him, for he was good friends with them both, so it stood to reason that the both of them should enjoy the others’ company as well.

Sadly, this blind spot in human nature never fully disappeared from Mr. Batmart, despite decades of actually knowing better. Had he been paying more attention to what happened on his lawn in mid-July of 1986, he might have fared better fourteen years later, in similar circumstances.

That day began well, as he jumped out of bed, voice already set to “outside,” and immediately set about peppering his mother with queries as to the time, what the time of arrival of his friends was estimated to be, what the differences in those times amounted to, and finally, what time was it? Just as his mother felt that she might actually have a nervous breakdown if her son was not miraculously struck dumb within the quarter-hour, the first of his guests arrived. Ty came in, and the boys started playing, their voices no less piercing that Tex’s alone had been, but at least directed at one another with no expectation of participation by his mother. Ty’s father gave Mrs. Batmart a nod of consolation, exited through the front door, and quickly drove off before something could occur which might necessitate the cancellation of his so-infrequent-as-to-be-nearly-mythical Saturday plans for peace and quiet.

The boys were so consumed with what they were doing that neither of them noticed when Arthur finally arrived. One minute they were reenacting a crucial scene from that week’s Voltron, and the next, Arthur was standing just behind them, waiting to be introduced. It is perhaps necessary, at this juncture, to bring up the fact that most social situations outside of a binary combination tended to make Tex fairly uncomfortable, and even such a simple task of making the introductions between his two best friends was beyond his grasp. And so, much in the same fashion as he would for the rest of his life, Tex Batmart, given the choice of performing a straightforward social nicety or ignoring his obligations, took the one which allowed him the opportunity to pretend that nothing was happening, in the hopes that the situation would resolve itself, or that everyone might just go away.

His mother noticed his reticence, and stepped in quickly, so as to keep Arthur from feeling alienated. “Ty,” she said, “This is Arthur. He’s a friend of Tex’s from Kindergarten. Arthur, this is Ty. Tex and Ty have been friends since they both started at daycare.” All three children had stopped what they were doing just so that they might give the ranking adult in the room their full attention so that she would see the exact moment when they all dismissed her. “Hi,” the two boys said to one another. Eager to get back to what they had been doing, Tex quickly brought Arthur up to speed, explaining that, though the episode which they were replaying was from the second season, and therefore the use of the vehicle-based Voltron toys was technically correct, both Ty and young Master Batmart had agreed to use the characters and mannerisms of the (far superior) first season, which had featured a lion-based Voltron.

Soon they switched over to playing He-Man, though that came to a screeching halt, as they could not decide to got to play with He-Man and who had to play as Skeletor. They all agreed, however, that no one wanted Man-At-Arms. It was about an hour into their playtime, when Tex’s mother suggested, a little more firmly than any of the boys felt was strictly necessary, that perhaps they might have a bit more fun if they transplanted their adventures to the front lawn. In age before the ubiquity of personal electronics, where video games where still played in arcades, and television channels were changed by an act of manual labor, such a banishment was hardly seen as such. There was no Wi-Fi signal to worry about, and the toys which they were happy to play with indoors were just as fine (as no more likely to be irrevocably damaged) outdoors. Each boy grabbed an armful of action figures, and they trotted out the back door in single file.

What transpired next, or rather, the moments immediately preceding it have been lost to the mists of failing memory and time, but the outcome of what was shortly to occur set down the paths which at least two of the boys in that childhood triumvirate would travel. As they played outside, there was some sort of disagreement, as is not entirely uncommon among small children, or even males of any age, and, in a moment of inspiration, one of them decided that the best way to settle their differences was with a quick kick to the groin. Loathe to keep you in suspense, this author wishes to reassure you that Mr. Batmart’s testicles and remaining genitalia remained untouched by violence on that solemn day, but that one of his friendships would be irrevocably damaged, while the other would be immeasurably strengthened.

Were our hero a callow sort of man, perhaps he might have sided with the victor in that particular confrontation, but even at six years of age, he knew that a swift kick to the gonads was unsportsmanlike, and sided with the victim. And so it came to pass that Ty, who had most likely sought to drive away the boy which he had perceived as a clear and present danger to his friendship with Tex Batmart, instead brought about the very thing he’d been desperately trying to avert. As his sneaker-laded foot impacted upon the genital region of Arthur, he lost his status as best friend, and by never forgiving Tex for having a friend other than himself, Ty eventually lost his status even as a friend.

This drifting apart took time, of course, but by the time that Tex went to visit Ty out at his new house in Bothell, theirs was a friendship in name only. That weekend only came to pass as a sort of nostalgia brought about by the rapid decline of childhood. When they parted ways that time, each promising to stay in touch with the other, neither of them really felt inclined to try.

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Interlude: Road Trips with the Grandparents, Part One)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Interlude: Road Trips with the Grandparents, Part One

In the summer of 1984, his grandparents, perhaps sensing that his mother could benefit from some time apart from her precious son, took the boy on a road trip to California. When he was told of the impending vacationary travels, he insisted that they take his grandfather’s truck down on the trip. When his grandfather asked him where his grandmother was to sit, he helpfully suggested that there was room in the cargo bed. Sadly, at least to him, he was overruled.

He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t interested, and in fact, the only reason that he hadn’t offered to ride in back himself, was that his grandfather seemed wholly obsessed with the notion of seatbelts where it came to his diminutive passenger. For the entire run-up to the day of their departure, the child could feel his excitement grow, filling him to nearly bursting with a smug sense of glee and four-year-old entitlement.

But on the day of his departure, he briefly lifted up his mask of self-importance, and asked his mother if she was sure that she would be all right without him. He couldn’t say exactly why he came to feel the way he did, but the look upon his mother’s face as he was being bundled into the car seemed wholly inappropriate considering that he was going to be going away.

He felt that she should be wracked with apprehension, tear-stained eyes betraying the sense of loss she felt, seeing her son, her only son!, being taken from her. Instead, he caught only a barest hint of a smile which was quickly hidden behind her “serious face”, and then the door was closed, and the journey begun.

It would be his first trip to Disneyland, as well as his first extended period of time away from his mother. It was also, according to reliable sources, a time when he subsisted almost entirely upon air and various bites of food from off his grandmother’s plates, much to her growing fear and consternation.

As the miles rolled by, and the boy became an official Interstate traveler, he found himself caught between the realization that he would soon be arriving at the “Happiest Place On Earth” and the worry that his mother would be cast adrift without him. Every other night, as he and his grandparents settled into their motel, he would call his mother and ask her if she was all right.

Far be it from a simple narrator to interject his personal opinion, but it is entirely plausible that he was using these conversations not to reassure his mother, but rather, to reassure himself. It was, after all, his first time so far away from her, and though he dearly loved his grandparents, he was also ill-equipped to deal with change.

Of course, once he made it to the Magic Kingdom, the majority of his worry began to melt away, and his conversations with his mother, while still framed in the pretense of concern, were now more about assuaging his growing sense of guilt at having an amazing time and leaving her at home in utter boredom.

As for his grandparents, he didn’t give a second thought to whether they might be bored, as he could not conceive of how someone might remain untouched by the sheer splendor of it all. In later years, the only thing which he was able to recall was a brief moment of stark naked panic at the sensation of flight above a miniaturized London as he and his grandparents glided along upon the Peter Pan ride. And though he never truly got over his fear of heights (either real or of a forced perspective), it made him feel immeasurably better to discover that his grandfather had also reacted similarly.

His grandmother, on the other hand, had thought that they were both acting just a bit ridiculously. But at the time, Tex was rather shaken by it, and demanded almost immediately upon exiting the ride that they make their way back to the Small World ride again.

According to his grandparents, if there is a hell, then it is going on a trip to Disneyland with a four-year-old child. And, if one has truly lived a vile and horrid life, littered with depravity and sin, then the special place reserved for him is the Small World ride. For a child, its repetition and simplicity were the pinnacle of innovation; for the adult accompanying him each and every consecutive visit, mind-numbing would have been more preferable than any term which I may try to insert here.

Throughout their visit, they managed to take a ride on the Peter Pan exhibit, the Pirates of the Caribbean (decades before anyone considered turning it into a film franchise), and very nearly managed to get on the Teacup ride. In contrast, they were forced to queue up and suffer through (at minimum) forty-eight trips through the smallest world of all: their rapidly shrinking sanity. Suffice it to say, that when the vacation was drawing down, their joy at never having to take that ride again was the direct inverse of the child’s despondency, but at that point, they may have even been willing to pay another visit to the Tiki House.

By the time that they had finally gotten home, each of the weary travelers was anxious to go spend some time apart from one another. The boy’s anxiety had gotten the better of him, and once all of the fun had been extracted from his visit to the Golden State, he began to feel a keen and biting sense of urgency to return home. As there was no constant barrage of diversion to keep him occupied, his mind returned to the plight of his mother, and how terribly lonely she must have been.

His grandparents managed to keep it together just long enough to drop him off at home, and only then by retreating into their inner sanctums and imagining a world where tiny people did not feel the urge to speak from the moment when they woke (entirely too early to be wholesome), until the moment when they finally passed out, mid-sentence.

The car pulled into the spot in front of our hero’s home, and as soon as he was unbuckled and set loose, racing toward his mother, a tangible weight lifted from each and every one of the three vacationers. No sooner was the boy’s luggage extracted from the trunk and set briskly upon the porch, did his grandparents get back in the car and drive back to their home.

It might have seemed a bit bizarre, if the boy had noticed it, for normally his mother and his grandparents lingered interminably before departure. He, however, was awash in the comfort of returning home, having nobly cut his adventure short so that he might rescue his mother from her doldrums.

“I’m home!” the boy said with genuine enthusiasm. “Did you miss me?”

His mother only stared at the falling dust which her parents’ car had left behind as they’d driven away. The smile upon her face turned down ever so slightly, and then she snatched up the boy in great big hug, and said into his ear, “Of course, honey.”

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Chapter Four Continued…)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Chapter Four: Continued…

But, aside from the dog which always seemed to hinder our hero’s entrance to his friend’s abode, everything else about his visits there fell in line exactly with what he had imagined. There were new toys with which to play, and he was allowed his minor bouts of despotism under the graces of hospitality. Of course, it was also during these visits that he began to get some sense of class distinction.

Though he had never before considered his economic situation (and it would be years before he truly started pondering in earnest), he was taken aback by the casual wealth in which his friend seemed to have been born. He still did not consider himself poor, as he had toys, and watched a significant amount of television (though far less than he might otherwise have preferred), but he could not help but notice that his friend seemed to have so many more channels on his television, not to mention that his friend actually had his own television.

Had he not still been at an age where he expected everything he saw to somehow become his, he might have handled his time over there with a fair amount more grace. All was not lost to him, however. The boys seemed to be allowed a far more liberal style of self-management, and henceforth frequently found new and exciting ways of getting into trouble, not that the threat of punishment was much of a deterrent, at least not somewhere our hero was altogether unlikely to be held accountable. And after some time, he was forced to admit to himself a begrudging respect for his new best friend (though, as Ty was his only friend outside of daycare, it was a “best” friendship by default). As much as he would have loved to rule in an approximation of a petty dictatorship, he found that being first among equals was nearly as good.

This friendship would continue on for another couple of years, interrupted by the start of school, and then Ty’s move away to somewhere known as Bothell. By then, of course, Tex would have made another friend, and this one would remain his best friend until they both reached high school (or, more accurately, two-thirds of the way through middle school). But for this brief time in his life, Tex enjoyed his friendship, and when it finally came to an end, as the majority of friendships eventually must, it was with a heavy heart and steely resolution that he finally said goodbye, though it had helped that his sleepover in Bothell had been an unmitigated disaster, which had left both friends eager for its conclusion.

 

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…

While weekdays were spent at daycare, and weekends divvied up between his place and his friend’s, Fridays were reserved for something special. These were the days which he spent with his grandfather. They would get together and go off on adventures, sometimes to the hardware store, and sometimes to the Jiffy Mart. But no matter where they went, it was always the high point of the young boy’s week.

Never having known his father, Tex latched on to the time he spent with his mother’s dad, and relished in the opportunity to explain (at some great length) about everything which had been going on that week. His grandfather would listen patiently, never interrupting (though this author is certain that there must have been times when the old man would have preferred to chew off his own leg than hear another story about Masters of the Universe). Not surprisingly, then (considering how Mr. Batmart came to understand the nature of reality: that the universe seemed only to exist in order for someone or something to be able to thwart him), it wasn’t long until his grandfather’s good nature paid dividends.

They were on a mission to pick up something from the local hardware store, and the boy had been going on for quite some time about the exploits of Prince Adam (who, he was forced to repeatedly explain with growing exasperation was actually He-Man. He had given up entirely on the possibility of conveying to the old man what, exactly, a Battle Cat was), and the general state of affairs in Eternia, when, in the middle of the aisle, he raised up his hands (and, yes, his voice), and proclaimed to the entire crowd of customers in the establishment that, by the power of Greyskull, he had the power.

It was a bit anticlimactic when no one seemed to recognize what he was going on about, and he could not, for the life of him, understand why his grandfather could not seem to keep from laughing. There was nothing amusing about it, at least, not that he could see.

And on yet another occasion, riding back with his grandfather in his pickup truck, New York Seltzer in one hand and pack of bubble gum in the other, he very nearly caused a head-on collision with a tree. They were on their way back to his grandparents’ house from a quick run up to the Jiffy Mart (the finest chain of convenience stores in all of Bainbridge Island), and in the midst of an ongoing oratory regarding the pros and cons of his ownership of the entire collection of He-Man action figures, vehicles, and playsets, he paused to thank his grandfather for having purchased him the gum.

His grandfather had been ready to respond in genuine appreciation for the young boy’s manners when Tex, in a nod to his complete and utter lack of decorum and impeccable comic timing, continued:

                “Yeah,” he said, in a now-conspiratorial tone, “Mom won’t let me have the damn stuff.”

His grandfather’s head snapped to face the boy, and for a moment, his hands followed as well, aiming the truck inadvertently from its course along the road to a row of trees which ran alongside of it. He snapped out of it in time, and managed to shake it off, correct his course, and avoid certain collision, but he was still dumbfounded by the way in which his grandson had so casually (and with contextual accuracy), begun to swear.

It wasn’t, he noted, said for shock value, or to test the limits of parental regulation, but rather used as anyone much older might have used it. He thought back to when he and his wife had taken the boy out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, and his grandson had explained (in that clear and piercing, matter of fact tone which only the truly young and innocent possess) that his mother didn’t want him to use the “F-word”, except, of course, he failed to see the need to substitute a euphemism.

His wife was quicker to respond that time, owing, perhaps, to the fact that she hadn’t accidentally aspirated a large sip of cabernet sauvignon, and told the boy that since his mother didn’t want him to use that word, perhaps he shouldn’t use it.

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Interlude: Animals And Other Pets)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Interlude: Animals And Other Pets

The young boy had grown up without a pet of any sort. His mother was deathly allergic to felines (the inspiration for his purchase of a cat when he moved out at seventeen), and had stated repeatedly that it would be unfair to own a dog, since neither he nor his mother were home enough to spend the time with it which it would almost certainly require. Having never had much experience with animals, therefore (outside of the usual baby and toddler toys which made noises at the slightest swing of a door, turn of a dial, or press of a button), it came as no surprise that he always viewed animals with healthy level of mistrust. A dozen or so years later, he mused if perhaps animals reacted to him based upon his own deeply-seated prejudices. Either way, the reality of the situation was that he never truly felt comfortable around them.

When he was seven or eight (or maybe it was nine or ten), his mother took pity on him and his desire toward pet ownership, and purchased him an aquarium, and allowed him to pick out a fish. The only thing which he would be able to recall regarding any of this was that the fish was black, and quite possibly demented. It would swim up to the waterline to snap its jaws at bubbles, and then shoot downward to gather up and shoot out pebbles. Never the one to pass up an opportunity to categorize something, the young man (who would, one day, grow into legend) christened his pet fish, Poppinsink. It wasn’t really much of a name, but, to be fair, neither was it much of a fish.

When it was discovered floating upon its back, Tex petitioned of his mother that he be allowed to conduct an autopsy (for he was of an age when he was interested in how things work), only to be denied. Thwarted, he set about planning an elaborate funeral for his pet, all the while intending to exhume it just a day or two later, or when his mother had forgotten. Unfortunately, he wound up sidelined by distraction, and kept indoors by heavy rain, and by the time he had remembered, the little marker under which he’d buried his first pet had washed away.

It wouldn’t be until he was a man that Tex Batmart would have the opportunity to try his hand again at caring for an animal. As was mentioned earlier, when he had left home in his late teens, one of the first acts to which he committed himself was the ownership of a cat. Initially, its name was to be Karma, but then he remembered a show from his childhood which he had adored, and named the cat instead, Snowmeow. Eventually, he combined both names (though the wee beast would respond to neither), to the effect of something vaguely Irish sounding.

Spurred on my his successful care of another creature, and that his girlfriend had too many, he soon became the owner of his very own dog, of the Bouvier des Flandres breed, by the name of Wizard. He bonded with his dog, seeing something of the attraction which led man to domesticate said beasts, and was therefore completely blindsided when Wizard wound up killing Snowmeow. In the end, he lost Wizard, as he had nowhere to keep him once he moved out on his own, and when he heard sometime later that his dog had died as well, he could not help but believe that perhaps it might have been better for him to have stopped with Poppinsink.

To read the next installment, click here

Hiraeth Excerpt (Chapter Four)

The following is an excerpt of:

Hiraeth: 

The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became

By Tex Batmart

If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here

Chapter Four

It has been noted that, having grown up an only child, Mr. Batmart never truly had the opportunity to learn a great many fundamental social skills. It is not this author’s place to disagree with the aforementioned sentiment, but one does feel obligated to qualify said statement.

While he was, indeed, the sole child residing with his mother, he had been forced to socialize with all manner of tiny people since being interned in daycare. For those younger than himself, he had always felt great affection, and tried to help them where he could, while his relationships with the older kids were always slightly more problematic. On more than one occasion, he has admitted that he viewed those bigger boys and girls as nothing more than case studies, sneaking glimpses of techniques and mannerisms which were still unknown to him. This often came across as hero worship, though he would be quick to remind you that nothing was further from the truth: he merely stayed close to them so that he might better understand the situations which one day he might face.

As for his interactions with adults, he was well ahead of the social curve, aside from when his passions got the better of him, and let slip the hidden nature of his machinations. Perhaps it was that he had no one his own age with whom to interact once he had returned home, as his mother had no other children, his aunt had none at all, and his uncle’s two boys lived several states away. That left him to learn how to navigate the swirling inconsistencies of interpersonal relations in the master class at which the average adult might operate.

Soon, he began to feel more comfortable around them as well, having also determined through careful observation, that children were generally inconsistent, and while a grownup might not act in such a manner as to capitulate to one’s every whim, they could, at the very least, be counted upon to act rationally, at least within the guidelines of their own personal worldviews. It is no surprise, then, that it wasn’t until he had gained four years of age that he was able to formulate a friendship with someone his own age.

The new daycare to which he had been shipped was, at least from our young protagonist’s viewpoint, a step in the right direction. The woman who considered herself in charge of all the children was generally kind, though possessed the type of face which had caused him some measure of discomfort upon their initial introduction. And while he wasn’t thrilled about having to learn an entirely new set of rules, he found the open space outdoors and adjacent wilderness of twisting paths which cut through forests of Scotch Broom like mazes more than made up for it.

In the beginning he wasn’t allowed unfettered access to the great outdoors, but once he’d been there awhile, and had befriended a school aged boy named Mark, he was granted conditional visitation into the wild. Most days, though, at least during the summer months, when the temperatures rose up to a sweltering seventy degrees, he was content to run back and forth through the sprinkler which his captor had been kind enough to set up on the lawn.

It was the year before he would begin attending elementary school when he had the opportunity to make himself a new friend. Mark was now gone for most of the day, and during the late morning and early afternoon, young Tex had begun to feel his absence. Sure, there were toys, and stories (some of which he had recently begun to read all on his own), but there were times when, after school had started for the day, that he was all alone. That is, until one day in late autumn, another little boy began arriving at his daycare.

This new kid was the same age, and always brought some neat toys, though Tex viewed him with a small measure of suspicion as he knew absolutely nothing about baseball cards. Still, after a week or two, once the wary circling had faded into just a hollow gesture, the two boys began to play in earnest, and little Batmart was thrilled that, from his position of seniority, he was able to teach this new kid something or two about the conditions of their captivity.

When they played outdoors, they were to remain in the front lawn; the Scotch Broom and back lawn were strictly off-limits. No yelling, hitting, or (and this one, personally, felt like an attack upon our hero) biting. Any toys brought from home must be shared, or they would be confiscated. Snacks must be eaten at the kitchen table, and completely finished before one was excused and allowed to return to play. Naptime was non-negotiable: if a child wasn’t tired, he could just lay there silently until time had expired, but was not able to play with toys, or even bring a book along to stave off the inevitable boredom which would follow. As he ran through these many regulations, clarifying any vague points and making sure to spell out the consequences for non-compliance, Tex came to realize that perhaps the only thing which had kept him outmaneuvered at every turn since his arrival had been the simple lack of an accomplice.

It took longer than he might otherwise have preferred to bring the new boy up to speed, and somewhere along the way, he was forced to adopt a façade of respectful deference, as Ty seemed to believe that simply because one is more naturally extroverted, he should be the one to call all of the shots. At first, young Tex was taken quite aback, for if there was anything which he disliked almost as much as bathtime, it was someone of obviously subordinate capacity who quite clearly believed that he was somehow the brains of each and every operation. Soon, however, it was made clear to our pre-Kinder hero that there were definite benefits to remaining in the shadows, most notably in the areas of discipline and watchfulness.

While Ty delighted in the limelight (and remained perplexed as to why it was only ever he which seemed to be placed upon Time Out), Tex began mastering the arts of subliminal messaging, and reverse psychology. And while he remained unable to directly withstand an interrogation, he found that if he had merely nudged Ty early enough in roughly the right direction, he could answer honestly that it hadn’t been his idea. Was he uncomfortable about selling his friend down the river when the heat was on? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is more likely that he simply felt that if one didn’t wish to wind up facing punishment, one best not be caught.

Another benefit to this comradeship-in-arms was that it opened up the possibility of there being something to do upon the weekends. While he would have never openly admitted it, Tex had grown accustomed to being around other people under four feet tall, and every weekend, he would be deprived of them. Sure, there were cartoons on Saturday morning, and his growing LEGO collection provided hours of entertainment. But there were certain things that simply could not be done alone, as well as the fact that if anything conceivably “irregular” occurred, he was the prime (and only) suspect. Soon after befriending Ty, he was made aware of another option: going to his friend’s house to play (or, failing that, inviting his friend to come and play with him).

At first either option suited him just fine, but it rapidly dawned on him that he rather liked the way that his things were set up, and rules by which he made believe, and that his friend, useful as he might have been, just didn’t seem to understand this very well, which especially irritated him when his mother made him aware of the social traditions involved in the host-guest relationship. That in mind, he made a concerted effort to permanently relocate their play dates to the home of his best friend.

But, as it should be obvious to anyone who has been with us since this tale began, this new plan did not come without its costs: Ty was in possession of a dog. Not some cute canine like was often featured on television, but a massive, drooling beast which made a point of always barking and running full speed at visitors of shorter stature.

I suppose that I should take the time here for a brief interlude to explain our hero’s feelings towards animals.

To read the next installment, click here

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