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ISSUE 106 | OCTOBER 2022 MONSTER ZERO: JONNY DESTEFANO LAURIE STRODE: KRYSTI JOMÉI FANG: JULIANNA BECKERT THE DESCENT: KAYVAN S. T. KHALATBARI KILLING MOON: CRISTIN COLVIN ISLAND OF LOST SOULS : MARK MOTHERSBAUGH WEDNESDAY: MEGAN ARENSON RINGU: DYLAN FOWLER FRONT COVER: PETER KORNOWSKI, THE CREATURE BY THE RIVER — @PETEKORNOWSKI BACK COVER: CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN, BIGFOOT HITCHHIKER — @CULT.CLASS NONLINEAR SOUNDS: PETER KORNOWSKI, CHRIS AUSTIN, NOAH VAN SCIVER, MOLLY WIRTZ, BRIAN POLK, MOON_PATROL, JOEL TAGERT, ERIC JOYNER, NATE BALDING, HANA ZITTEL, MAGGIE D. FEDOROV, GRAY WINSLER, JASON WHITE, ROSS HARRIS, GREGG DEAL, BRIAN SERWAY, TOM MURPHY, WARREN HAMMOND, JOSHUA VIOLA, AARON LOVETT, DAVE DANZARA, CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN IRREGULAR MOVEMENT: PEDRO LASTRA, SKYLER SAWYER, WES MAGYAR, BILLIAM RODGERS, AUBREY SCHWARTZ, GABRIELLA LEGERLOVATO, JEROME MORRISON, KAREN LEMBKE, MAX NEUTRA, OLIVIA BROWN, CAITY KENNEDY, CHAZ JOHN, HERSCHO DUDS SILHOUETTES: MARIANO OREAMUNO, HANA ZITTEL, DS THORNBURG, PHIL GARZA, TEDDY OGBORN, MAGGIE D. FEDOROV, ZAC DUNN SUPPORT OUR FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS: TERRAPIN CARE STATION, MEOW WOLF, DENVER ART MUSEUM, MUTINY INFORMATION CAFE, MONKEY BARREL, ROOTS RX, BENNY BLANCO'S, DENVER FILM, HEX PUBLISHERS, OFF THE BOTTLE REFILL SHOP, MCA DENVER, SEXY PIZZA BE IN BIRDY – ART + WORDS + ET CETERA: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SUBMISSIONS MONTHLY MAILED SUBSCRIPTIONS + SINGLE ISSUES + MERCH: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SHOP ADVERTISE IN BIRDY + SUPPORT US: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/CONTACT-US BIRDY IS RELENTLESS, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MONTHLY ©2022 BIRDY MAGAZINE, CRASH LANDING ON A SHAPE-SHIFTING WORLD CHRIS AUSTIN, KING STREET PASS

No. 106

IGNITE. COLLABORATE. CONNECT. Join us for an evening full of performances, artmaking, and one-of-a-kind experiences in collaboration with local artists and creatives. FRIDAY OCTOBER 28 6—10 PM FEATURING CAL DURAN MULTIMEDIA ARTIST SARAH FUKAMI PRINTMAKER & MULTIMEDIA ARTIST DENVERARTMUSEUM.ORG/UNTITLED

LIFE JUST KEEPS ON GOING, DOESN'T IT? (OBSERVATIONS, MISHAPS AND YOU-KNOWS) BY BRIAN POLK THE FIRST COUPLE OF TIMES I SAW QUIET QUITTING," I THOUGHT IT WAS QUIET QUILTING" And I concluded it was a nice little trend. What could be more quaint than a bunch of people either getting together or sitting alone and quilting quietly? But the more time went on, the more controversial it began to seem. Then I saw friends whose opinion I really respect vehemently speaking out against the concept. That’s when I realized something must be amiss. After looking into it more closely, I realized the word was “quitting,” and that’s when I joined the outrage. (Now that I know what it is, I too consider myself to be a quiet quitter, and I No. 106 don’t see anything wrong with that.) Also, when I retire, I think I might look into becoming a quiet quilter, since it seems like it’d be quite relaxing. TURNS OUT MY FRIEND GOT IN SHAPE BECAUSE HE WAS PLANNING ON LEAVING HIS GIRLFRIEND At first, I figured my friend Hank started working out at the gym because he was concerned about his health and wanted to not get winded walking up a flight of stairs. But as soon as he began dropping the pounds, he moved out of his girlfriend’s apartment after living there MOLLY WIRTZ, PNADA3 - @WLFFBBY

eight years. At that point, I realized his bid to get in shape was so he could present his best self to all the other single people he would soon be dating. It’s definitely a move I’ve made in the past (which is why it was so easy for me to recognize), and one that I’ve seen countless other people make. That’s why if your long-term romantic partner randomly decides to take up running, you should probably do the same, since you’re both likely to be single here pretty soon. I WALK REALLY FAST SO PEOPLE THINK I'M IMPORTANT Once I realized that walking fast imbues a sense of purpose, I’ve come to realize a determined gait can convince my coworkers and supervisors that I have shit to do. Little do they know that I’m walking from the bathroom to the break room and back again. They just see me coming and say, “Excuse me,” and then let me pass without further comment. Or sometimes I will be doing nothing in front of a computer besides checking various websites that have little to do with work when I hear someone approaching. It is then that I minimize my windows, say, “Got it!” and resume my fast walking. But if you do try this, just make sure you have a destination in mind, because if you start walking fast and someone follows you, you can’t just stop and admit that you actually have nowhere to be. (If they catch you doing this, the jig is surely up. And you simply don’t want to ruin a good jig.) REMEMBER HOW EVERYONE MADE ASHTRAYS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POTTERY CLASS? If you don’t then you’re definitely under 40. But if you do remember this, then that was weird, right? I was at my parent’s house and they saved a bunch of craft crap I made when I was a kid and sure enough there were a couple of ashtrays mixed in. That means that all throughout the ‘80s, no one thought, You know, maybe we shouldn’t be teaching kids how to make ash receptacles for their parents so they can smoke tobacco products in front of them. Different priorities, I guess. So if you’re a youngster and you hear us old folks talk about how dissimilar things were back then, just know we speak the truth. Then you can roll your eyes at us and say, “Whatever Xer.” I THINK ONCE THERE'S CRAP IN YOUR PANTS, THE PARTY'S OVER Call me old-fashioned, but I think once excrement of any kind makes an appearance in your trousers, the party should really end and you should go home posthaste. And this isn’t just for toddlers and old people — though it absolutely applies to them as well. But if you’re a regular adult and you have a bottle of wine with dinner and maybe seven or eight martinis at the bar afterwards, and all of a sudden you begin to sense danger down there, then it really is time to make an excuse to get the hell out of wherever you are. Now some people might say once you go home, hose yourself off, and get yourself into a new, non-pooped pair of pants, you can rejoin the party — and I do get what they’re saying. The problem with that is, you run the risk of crapping again. And if you shit yourself twice, your self-esteem may never rebound and you will turn into an agoraphobe because you now possess the knowledge that you can poop your britches twice in one night. (It’s a huge gamble is what I’m saying.) So yes, better just stick to the rule of thumb and heed my grandpappy’s advice: “If the skidders start a-slidin’ toward yer socks, best hightail it straight home, boy.” He was a wise man.

MOON_PATROL, X-RAY COW

BY JOEL TAGERT The steer had been flayed and dissected, its skin, organs and bones arranged upon the shrubland in a meticulous mandala with the animal’s heart at its center, a cloud of black flies fighting the Wyoming wind to claim their share of the bounty. Dick Gerlits stalked slowly around the circle — fifty feet from edge to edge — a scowl steadily cutting deeper into his leathered features. “What do you think, boss?” asked Hector. Gerlits took his time answering. “I think I’m gonna find the son of a bitch that did this and nail his fucking hide to my wall. If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I’m gonna find him.” “Well, watch out if you do,” said JJ. “Cause this son of a bitch has got a sharp knife.” “That supposed to be a joke?” “I ain’t laughing. But look at it. He knew what he was doing.” Gerlits nodded, eyes tracing the calligraphic loops of intestines, the runic ribs. “No blood.” “Huh. Must have drained it first. Then what, they take it with ’em? Do a little prom scene with it later?” This was his animal. Done on his land. “I’ll ask when I find him.” “But who?” said Hector, baffled. ∆ That was the million-dollar question. The sheriff’s office didn’t have shit to say about it, no surprise with that twit Dollard at the reins. Everybody had a theory, but none of them made much sense. JJ was convinced it was some druggies, out of their heads on meth. Hector told credulous stories of chupacabra. Dick’s wife, June, said it was Satanists up from Denver: she’d seen one the night before at the Flying J, a goat’s head tattooed on his neck, if you could believe it. Gerlits brooded on past wrongs and old enemies. But there were no leads, nothing concrete. Not even any tracks close to the scene. Half the people in town thought it was someone at the ranch, a notion Gerlits had entertained himself before finally crossing each of his half-dozen employees off the list. At week’s end he went online and spent three grand on eight networkconnected trail cameras. Recognizing that this wouldn’t be enough to capture even a small fraction of the twelve-hundred acre ranch, he placed four on fenceposts near the hill where they’d found the steer. The rest he situated at road entrances and turnoffs, reasoning that missing tire tracks aside, the bastards hadn’t walked out there. It was October before it happened again. ∆ Gerlits found the cow himself this time, half a mile west of where they’d discovered the dismantled steer, in the meadow just shy of where the cottonwoods rose near the Platte. Even before that grisly find he’d often driven around the ranch, keeping a watch on things, but since then he’d made a point of circling the roads morning and evening. So he found it with the rising sun still low, the air crisp but the wind faint, what June would call a blessing of a day. This time the perpetrator had set the bones in an equilateral triangle pointing directly north, the intestines winding in a filigree around the edges, the organs arrayed by shade — dark to light — in the interior, with the cow’s skull at the apex, the eyes, tongue and ears set in perfect symmetry on either side of the still-intact spinal cord, leading up to the brain in the opened bone casing. The fatty folds glistened in the golden dawn light. “Show-off,” Gerlits muttered. ∆ The time stamp on the video read 3:56 a.m. That alone was surprising; he’d assumed it would take all night to undertake such complex work. The cow ambled into frame, reading pretty small; the camera had a lot of pixels, but the animal was still too distant for good detail. Suddenly a cone of light flashed on: flashed on from above, like a streetlight, its source out of frame. The image flared as the camera tried to adjust, with only partial success. It would stay washed-out no matter how he played with it. Then the cow rose into the air: or at least, that was how it looked on his screen. It was kicking and bucking, clearly panicked, but it bucked in place, as though on a hoist (and maybe it was on a hoist). Its black shadow began to grow tangled and unreasonable, warping and stretching. Lines and shapes erupted from it, twisting and curving until they drifted to the wheatgrass below. Steadily the bulk of the cow diminished until there was nothing left. The light snapped off, and with the motion stilled, the camera shut off too. For hours Gerlits played and replayed the video, zooming in and out, altering filters and settings. When all that proved to offer few insights, he stared off at the shelves of his study, where he’d set some of the 9

smaller animals he’d caught and stuffed over the years: rattlesnake, barn owl, fox. Their frozen visages returned his gaze with hatred and fear, silently hissing, hooting and snarling. ∆ “I’m starting to think you got some sweetheart in town.” “Don’t say that. You know where I am.” “You get up in the middle of the night and disappear. You don’t come back until dawn and then sleep half the day. You’ve never been like this.” “You saw the video. You saw what they did to our cows.” Since the recording Gerlits had built a hunter’s blind, camouflaged as completely as he could manage. For weeks he had spent most of his nights hidden there, waiting with a pair of night-vision binoculars and a Browning long-range rifle. “Maybe it’s …” June trailed off. “I just want to know where you are.” “I’m out at the blind. That’s all.” “In the cold?” “Yes, in the cold.” “Well, just make sure you keep your clothes on,” she said. Gerlits pushed back his chair and stood up from the table. “Where you going?” his wife said. “Out to the shed.” “You haven’t even finished your steak.” “Lost my appetite.” ∆ Weeks in the grass-topped shelter, half-huddled in a sleeping bag, listening to the wind whistle and howl, waiting for a light from the sky. June might be able to ignore it, tell herself it was God or Satan, but he couldn’t. Something was out here, on his land. It was his. ∆ He was half-dozing when a light flashed in his eyes. His first thought: Someone driving on the highway. Then he woke up fully, adrenaline surging. There wasn’t a road in that direction. He snatched up the binoculars. A cow was lowing loudly, beneath its cries a powerful throbbing hum. Where the camera had failed, the binoculars rendered everything in exquisite detail. The cow was lifted right into the open air and peeled apart like an orange. It was still hard to see what was doing it, but it was dark and round, floating absolutely steady in the air above the scrubland. Maybe as wide as a house trailer was long. It seemed to be etched all over its surface, like a cuneiform tablet, and it had an opening or hole on its underside from which the light shone. Not a drop of blood reached the ground. Instead the fluid floated in the air, forming a red cloud, until the cow’s disintegrating body was suspended inside a crimson snowglobe. When the final gobbets of flesh drifted down to the earth, still the blood hung there. Something descended from the vessel. It was humanoid, but long-limbed, big-headed. It was facing away from him. It levitated downward, into the red mist. The globule shrunk inward. It flowed into the creature’s skin until all that remained was a crimson silhouette with long-fingered arms extended at its sides, like a withered child dipped in red paint. The rifle, you idiot! He set down the binoculars and scrabbled for the gun, but by the time he brought up the sight it was too late. The ship, and its owner, were gone. Maybe it was for the best. It had visited three times. It must like this No. 106 hunting ground, this canvas. He thought there was a good chance it would come back. The remains were hexiform, three crossed lines of skin cut like tank tracks, with the ribs stuck vertically in the earth around them. It was like a shrine. He felt he was on hallowed ground. ∆ It took so long for the visitor to return that Gerlits was afraid he’d missed his chance. All through the brutal Wyoming winter he shivered in his blind. June thought he’d gone crazy; she went to stay with her sister in Sheridan. He gave Hector authority over the ranch’s dayto-day operations, which pleased Hector but made JJ quit in a pique. Gerlits could give a shit. He was on the hunt. He drank black coffee and hot soup from two thermoses, bought boxes of chemical heat packs. He performed his other preparations in the padlocked steel shed down the road from the house, where he kept works in progress, along with his experiments, taxidermies he wouldn’t want seen, and videos of how he’d made them. He thought of burning the lot sometimes, but the locks were sturdy and he couldn’t part with them. Along with his knives and needles, he had a reasonable supply of veterinary supplies, including a dart gun and some ketamine. These he moved to the hunting blind early on. He kept most of the cattle in the lot at night, but he would let a few out strategically, tracking their progress. One glorious, freezing March night, with the snow drifting against the breaks, it paid off. He heard the humming first, the sound he’d been waiting for. He raised the dart gun to his shoulder. He’d already been following the cow’s progress across the fields; the animal was no doubt desperate to huddle into the herd. He didn’t wait for further activity, but fired, loaded again, fired, loaded, fired. The dissection was beautiful. Gerlits was like a spectator in an operating theater, a baseball fan at the game, a season ticket holder at the opera. When the show concluded, he held his breath as the master descended from his perch to drink a cup of wine. The alien hung there, red and glistening. Ecstatic. Then it shuddered. It fell. The light from the ship flicked off. Gerlits turned the gun and scope to the side, stared into the darkness with his unaided eyes. Then he clicked on his head lamp and scuttled out of the blind to run into the biting cold. The remnants of the carcass were arranged in stippled piles, at least a hundred of them, a delicate sunflower pattern dabbed in muscle and bone. The creature that had made them lay upon his work barely moving. It had long, thin limbs, a huge triangular head, no mouth, a slitted nose, mantis eyes. While a second before its whole body had been crimson with stolen blood, now its wrinkled, mottled skin was rapidly darkening to near-black. No smooth-skinned babe this: it looked ancient as a mummy. He had worried there might be more of them in the ship, but inwardly he was convinced the thing was alone, and as he crouched between the cow’s remains, that conviction seemed to be borne out. He looked around the circle once more, with admiration, then returned his attention to the alien. “You extract the blood because you need it,” he said. “Or maybe just cause you like it. But you make the design just for fun, don’t you? A work of art.” Carefully he unsheathed the skinning knife at his hip, turning the curved steel talon to catch the beam from his head light, snowflakes whirling. “I’m a bit of an artist myself.”

ERIC JOYNER, WOLFMAN - ERICJOYNER.COM

BY NATE BALDING Break out the fun size Snickers and a ball of cotton webbing you’ll be finding pieces of next June, because through the trick and/or treat of temporal experience the world has once again reached Checkpoint: Spooky. Even now the walls between realities wear thin. Howling across the moors is pitched a little brighter; spiders creepy-crawl with a little extra verve; dye jobs result in a sheen at once considered both classic and modern-chic. Return on spellcasting has inflated from threefold to fourfold for a brisk couple of weeks, and keen ears might register the warbling chorus of spirit children singing that classic hymn, “Tell Me About Your Pumpkin God” from their many shallow graves. Yes, Hallowe’en has arrived stringing along its pals All Saints’ and Samhain and they brought a keg. Filled with beer? Nein, filled with blood! "Party like a ‘pire" as our hemophagic friends are fond of saying before they exsanguinate a tournament of virgins (yes, this is the correct terminology for a collection of persons unfamiliar to carnal purpose, originally referring to a specific Magic: The Gathering game held in August of 1994 — a period of time younger readers may not recall as predating the social acceptability of “nerd shit,” alternatively known as the Age of Mega Wedgies). While no Halloween is complete without the ritual disfigurement of a porch-gourd, few can recount the legend presaging this most hallowed of ween-tivities. Like much of the lore surrounding this final threshold, before winter slips its fingers around the chilled bones of the Northern Hemisphere, it starts in a small Irish village and involves a drunkard. Feel free to insert your own joke here but be aware that it does make you at least a little bit racist. Stingy Jack, so-named due to his parents’ intense distaste for their child, was well-known in his village for his frugality in all affairs, save those of the spiritual (read: Boozing). His public image was further besmirched by his insistence on carrying a sod-encrusted turnip for nibblin’ when the woozy waltz took him down the long road to forgetting to have enough cash for a better meal. Not to taste-shame a man for reflecting on his joie de goûter and finding there’s a simple, plentiful and, above all other things, inexpensive snack that travels well, but it’s kind of a hat on a hat, isn’t it? As happens in somewhere between 100 percent and also 100 percent of Irish anecdotes from the oral tradition, Stingy Jack stumbles into fate’s boxing ring and waiting for the bell in the opposite corner stands the Lightbringer himself, weighing in at however much the collective misdeeds of humanity clock in at. Jack’s reputation was known to the devil who’d decided Jack ought to be relieved of his immortal soul posthaste. Remembering his first name was Stingy, Jack opposed any line of action depriving him of his property and formulated a plan. It was almost as good a plan as borrowing a piece of gum to cover your breath on the 2 a.m. trip to Taco Bell because it’s your car and besides you’d only had, what, seven beers? Eight? Nine? Whatever. But a plan nonetheless. Stingy Jack pleads with the Lord of Lies and they come to an understanding. Jack would provide one (1) battered human soul and Old Scratch would let him have one last glug of his favorite ale. Thus acquiesced they travel to an inn where Jack gets his pint, the devil gets his soul and the barkeep doesn’t get anything because Jack doesn’t have any money. Apparently the two things Satan can’t beat are God and capitalism, because he’s on the hook for a tuppence and isn’t leaving until the bartender gets paid. For the second time in his life Jack bottles some lightning and ear-drops a win-win proposal. “‘Ow a-bout this,” he explains to the source of all evil on the material plane. “You turn yuhself inna a coin an’ pay wif it. Then— ” here he leans in to whisper, but accidentally loudly declares “— then you turn on back plain as morning sunshine, eh?” Good idea, thinks the once right hand of the Lord imbued with the powers of an omniscient deity. This all makes perfect sense. So the stupid devil (an appellation given by historian Wirt Sikes in his classic, British Goblins, due to the amount of times in Welsh storytelling he’s easily thwarted by mischievous pedants — sometimes the real bits do the funny work) does the stupid thing and transforms into a stupid coin that Stingy Jack quickly pockets next to a crucifix, preventing the former leader of an undying army of angels charged with spreading love across a multiverse from being able to revert shape. Tables turned, the ruler of a realm of torture beyond comprehension blubbers at Jack begging for release. On condition of retaining his soul for 10 more years, Jack does just that. One decade to the minute later: Jack is face-to-face with his old drinking buddy who — for reasons that actually unmake the concept of sense — agrees to allow Jack to climb an apple tree to get a bite for the trip to hell. Satan climbs up after him, that ragged, turnip-hardened soul nearly in his grasp. Jack leaps from the tree, carves a cross into the trunk and the stupid devil has once more entered the chat. The Lord of Darkness remains trapped in the branches until he agrees to never steal Jack’s soul. Years later Stingy Jack rides the elevator to the afterlife but, due to his many dalliances with the wages of sin, doesn’t make it past the velvet ropes. He tries the back stairwell to the underworld but the devil remains true to his word and also refuses. Jack becomes a castaway stranded on earth but unable to partake of it, forever trudging along carrying nothing but his woe and his Wilson-esque companion: A turnip carved with a face, illuminated from within by the fires of hell. And that, friends in crow places, is the definitely true story of Jack of the Lanterns. HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PARANORMAL? SEND THEM TO: WEREWOLFRADARPOD@GMAIL.COM OR TWITTER: @WEREWOLFRADAR. IT’S A BIG, WEIRD WORLD. DON’T BE SCARED. BE PREPARED. 13 SKYLER SAWYER

UNMASK ALICE: LSD, SATANIC PANIC, AND THE IMPOSTER BEHIND THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS DIARIES BY RICK EMERSON (2022) Marked with the iconic, half-shaded face on the cover and the selling a chance to enter a BY HANA ZITTEL drug-filled underworld of the late ‘60s, 1971’s Go Ask Alice has managed to maintain a hold on generations of readers purporting to be the real diary of an anonymous teenager. After unknowingly taking LSD once during a party, the diarist, “Alice” (though unnamed throughout), sinks further and further into a debaucherous life of sex and drugs to horrifying consequences. When I read Go Ask Alice, at a likely far too young age, I fell right into the clever and manipulative hands of its creator and marketers wondering, Is this really what drugs can do? In Unmask Alice, Rick Emerson seeks to find the truth about this notorious and extremely well sold tale by looking deeper into the “editor” of this diary, Beatrice Sparks. An unsuccessful writer in various formats, Sparks had, for a time, written content for Art Linkletter, the radio personality responsible for People Are Funny and producer of Kids Say the Darndest Things. When Linkletter’s 20-year-old daughter commits suicide, the family attributes her death to a LSD flashback. Linkletter began speaking out against drug use and meets with Richard Nixon to push his agenda. Nixon’s War on Drugs and the beginning of the Charles Manson trial left Sparks with the perfect amalgam of events to pitch her newest idea to Linkletter: the publication of a diary she was supposedly left by a sweet, all-American teenage girl sucked into the world of drug addiction, leading to her horrifying death. The catch, for Sparks, was that publishers pushed for her name to be removed altogether from Go Ask Alice, not even as an editor on first editions, believing that the name of an adult would repel young readers. The soaring success of the book was almost immediate with the perfect storm of excellent reviews and attempted book bannings, driving curiosity, but few were asking necessary questions around the origins of this material. How had Sparks acquired it? Where did Sparks come from and what gave her authority on this topic? Despite her roaring financial success from Go Ask Alice, Sparks still did not have what she wanted: the life of a successful author. This all changed when she happened to acquire yet another diary, one that attempts to expose the hold of satanic practices on teenagers. Dubbed Jay’s Journal, Sparks’ manipulated release contributes to and exacerbates the Satanic Panic in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Emerson’s investigation sleuths out the web of lies created by Sparks to gain notoriety. Everything from fabricated academic and professional degrees to these found dairies, Sparks was so seduced by the idea of fame she did not hesitate to harm anyone who got in her way, and those around her became so wrapped up by money and moral panic to take a second look. Unmask Alice unravels the implications of Go Ask Alice and Beatrice Sparks by providing fascinating macro and micro views of her impact on our cultural trajectory, weaving her publishing history into vital moments in the War on Drugs and the moral panics that followed its publication. Emerson’s investigation has also been highlighted on the podcast You’re Wrong About on an episode featuring an interview with Emerson from host Sarah Marshall and author Carmen Maria Machado. HELL PHONE, BOOK ONE BY BENJI NATE (2022) Sissy finds a discarded flip-phone in the bushes outside her house, catapulting her into a spiraling mystery to find the owner along with her best friend, Lola. In this classic feeling teen horror investigation, the phone’s ominous caller only gives brief instructions leading them to an eerie house and a gory body. After quickly calling the police, the cops arrive to find no sign of a body or anything amiss. Even after attempts to discard the phone, it keeps coming back and continues to ring, leading them right back to the house with the body. When they begin to chase down the origins of this ghost body, the girls are led to clues pointing to a long-standing cult in their small town. Though the story is simple, the artwork and character development in Hell Phone make it a pleasure to read. Drawn with bright, pop art manga style panels, Benji Nate has created a fun and light twist on the classic horror genre. Hell Phone leaves readers with a stark cliffhanger waiting for the friends to dive back into the mystery. Nate’s characteristically cute and surreal artwork can be found in their other graphic novels released by Silver Sprocket Press including Catboy, Lorna, and Girl Juice. No. 106

NIGHTTIME HUNGERS BY MAGGIE D. FEDOROV I began dreaming of the hole when I was 4-and-a-half. It was the first year my parents took me to visit Nina’s tiny grave in the family cemetery on the far edge of the sprawling acreage of my childhood home that I could actually understand who and what we were there for. We went on October 24th, the anniversary of my twin sister’s death; and I dreamt of the hole that ate her once a week or more for the next eight years. At the time I don’t think I even noticed I had stopped having those dreams; life simply went on, as it is apt to do. The return of the nightmare, however, left a lasting impression in stark contrast to its fading away. In a vast darkness, the hole suddenly WAS. It lay in the dirt and pulsed as if it had a heartbeat, leaving hallucinatory tracers. Rocks jutting from the edges of that godforsaken pit could easily have been mistaken for teeth, and as I leaned over the edge to catch a glimpse of my sister resting in it, the hole gave one final, ferocious pulse. Off balance, I fell and it ate me too. But this time instead of landing hard in the gullet of the beast, a ringing roused me from my nightmare and I found myself standing in the dark kitchen of my studio apartment already clutching the phone. “Mom?” She let out a gentle, tired sob and I knew even before she said the words. My heart sank directly to my feet; my body and the floor met each other there in a cold embrace. Thirteen hours later, I step onto the tarmac at Spokane International Airport clutching a lukewarm coffee and my carry-on. Exhausted and blind to the people and things around me, I navigate from memory to the parking lot and don’t have to try hard to find her. My mother’s sideways smile and red 4-Series stick out like a sore thumb here more than most places. She holds me long and tight, leaving a slowly expanding wet spot on the sleeve of my blouse as it soaks up her liquid grief. “You and me against the world now, Petra.” She steps back, wipes tears from her face, looks deep into my soul, and smiles. “You and me against the world,” I echo back at her, fighting the burning tears welling in my own eyes. She takes my bag and places it gingerly in the back seat; an unspoken invitation to move past the words neither of us are ready to hear spoken aloud just yet. We’ll save our sorrows for the graveside, as we always have. I-90 East towards Coeur d’Alene is eerily quiet for midafternoon on a Friday; but, then again, nothing about this day has yet to turn out “normal,” so why should the traffic be any different? “How long will you stay?” she asks. “At least through Wednesday.” My temple pressed to the cool glass of the passenger window, I pick at my fingernail polish and mark the passage of landmarks that signal the approach of home: passing through the North Pole (“Always listen for reindeer, even in July.”), the Westmond Cemetery (“The funeral industry is a scam, Petra. People have cared for their own dead as far back as the beginning of us all. Cemeteries are a colonizer’s innovation No. 106 to drain the wallets of people who don’t know better. But we know better, don’t we, Noodle?”), and finally, the road signs that loudly proclaim: “LAKE PEND OREILLE - IDAHO’S LARGEST LAKE.” Daddy is – was – proudly one-eighth Kalispel, and loved to speak at great length about how thoroughly this inspired his work to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. His music told the stories of the lake’s earliest inhabitants: Wren, Coyote, Fox, and other characters that were the epicenter of the tales told to him by his grandfather when he was a boy. I was never fortunate enough to hear the folktales, but when Daddy was composing he’d often sit me down and ask me to tell him what I thought the story said through the music. “You have a stronger music noodle than your mother,” he’d whisper with a wink, just before he started to play. The stories were in our blood, he often told me. That’s why I had the noodle, and Mom didn’t. The memory stings my eyes and I press harder against the glass to bring myself back to the here and now. Being home was never so hard as this. Every place, every object, every familiar face; they all have a story that ties him to them. Everything here is a reminder of my grief, as if his death had ripped the heart right out of my chest and left a gaping hole for my very life to pour out of, hot and sticky. In Seattle I could bury it; pretend it wasn’t real. Here it is inescapable. The ascent up the halfmile gravel drive to the house triggers a quickening of my pulse that throbs in the space between my skull and the passenger window. There is a fear behind the anticipation, though I can’t place what for. I have seen death before; smelled its putrescence. The fact that I can’t pinpoint where this dread takes root in me only amplifies it. I peel my head from the glass, but the pulsing does not cease. Instead, it beats on in my chest, a steadily thumping cadence to which the next several days will become attuned. That much I already know to be true. I feel it in my bones like the chill of winter. The key turns in the door, and as it opens the air that pours out through the crack makes my hair stand on end. It’s electric with the same inescapable dread that first found me at the far end of the laneway. Mom looks over her shoulder at me and flashes a toothy grin reminiscent of a greeting you might get from a gorilla; friendly, yet frightening. She leads me through the entryway into the Great Room where, in the middle sits his hospice bed, and atop the blankets lay my father. “JESUS, Mom– ” I drop my bag, kneel next to him on the floor and take his hand in mine, “– when did he get so … small?” To be continued. PEDRO LASTRA

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH, CYCLO-AUGEN PET (2004)

JONNY DESTEFANO, AUTUMN STROLL

BY GRAY WINSLER Charlie walked along the shore, cold waves lapping at his feet. His little legs wobbled over uneven stones, water breathing in and out of every crevice. The tears on his cheeks had dried, now washed away by the salty mists. He raised his hand, touching the tender edges of his eye, skin bruised with purples and grays. The sun was starting to set, sky awash in harsh violet hues. He knew he should be heading home, but all he wanted was to be alone. Wind, bitter and cold, cut across the sea. He wrapped his arms around himself as he shivered. Then, along the shore, he spotted the abysmal mouth of a cave. He hobbled toward it, hopeful for any respite from the wind. His eyes adjusted to the dim light as he clambered over boulders, deeper inside, and found a spot to sit. The air was still around him, but the stone was ice on his skin. He curled up into himself, teeth chattering, cold from the inside out. The only heat he felt was the welling of more tears. But Charlie soon found his gaze drawn toward the cave’s mouth. A shadow flickered upon its edge. Squinting, he blinked away his tears. Standing against an amethyst sky a slender creature made itself seen. Charlie’s eyes widened at the thing. Its form seemed vacant, like a drawing yet to be filled. Except for its eyes, which stared back like lunar saucers hovering in a night sky. “Who are you?” Charlie called, tremor in his voice. The creature said nothing. It stepped its long, thin leg into the cave. “Is this … your home?” The creature blinked. “I — I didn’t mean to …” Charlie trailed off, watching as the its head tilted to the side. It seemed curious of him. Its movements reminded him of a stray cat he’d found a few weeks back — hesitant but intrigued; wishing, perhaps, for affection. It blinked at him again, and Charlie felt the tension in his body ease. The creature seemed to carry the same loneliness he felt. “You have a … nice home,” Charlie ventured. “Home,” it repeated, the word a gentle whisper, more felt than heard. It stepped closer, each foot seeming to disappear into the long shadows that stretched across the cavern. No. 106 Charlie kept still, even as it began to reach out its lean arm toward him. He felt his skin begin to tingle as its fingers grazed over his cheek. He giggled at the sensation, but the creature seemed startled by the noise, pulling away. Charlie watched as its glowing eyes were drawn to its own hand then. Its fingers began to take on a more pallid color, as if impersonating skin. “What are you?” Charlie asked, amused. “You,” it whispered. *** Charlie returned to that cave every day after school. It was all he could think about. It was the one thing in the world that was fully his own, that no one else could take from him. “I’m Charlie, by the way.” “Charlie,” it whispered. “Do you have any other friends? I have a few. They’re pretty cool. One of them has a Switch. Do you know what that is? You can play games on it. Like Mario. I like Mario Kart, but I’m not very good.” The creature blinked. Charlie laughed. “You’re weird. But that’s okay. My mom says I’m weird too.” Each day Charlie came, he noticed the creature seemed more human — like the empty sketch he’d seen before was starting to fill in. It even seemed to shrink down to Charlie’s own height. “Do you have a name?” Charlie asked. It shook its head. “Hmm, well we need to give you a name. Everyone needs a name. And a good one, not like Charlie. Something unique. Something strong. Like … Thor!” The creature blinked. “Nah, you’re right. Too popular. Maybe, um, Wrex? Or Shadow? Oh oh oh, no wait, I’ve got it — what about Stone?” The creature seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. “Stone it is,” Charlie smiled. Charlie kept visiting Stone every day, and every day Stone seemed to come more alive. A nose began to protrude from its face, curly brown locks from its head, even a belly button sunk into its abdomen. Charlie was fascinated,

ART BY JASON WHITE

endlessly curious to see how Stone would look today. “I like you. You have … good vibes.” Charlie was trying out this new word, vibes. He felt he’d nailed it. “Do you have ‘good vibes'?” Stone asked. “Me? Hmm. I don’t know.” “I think you have good vibes.” Charlie laughed. “So why do you live here anyway?” “It’s my home.” “Yeah, but like, are you dead? Are you like one of those ghosts that wanders the shores? One of my friends told me about those. There was this one guy, Bill, whose wife died, and he was so sad that he swam out into the sea and drowned himself. Now they say his ghost walks these shores at night. Is that you? Are you Bill?” “No, I’m alive.” “Well, that’s good. I don’t think anyone would believe me if I said I was friends with a ghost.” “Your eye. What happened?” “Oh, just these kids at school. They’re assholes.” “Ass-holes?” “Shh, don’t tell anyone I told you that, okay? Stone nodded. “Look, just forget about it. I don’t want to talk about them.” “Okay.” By the second week, the creature appeared identical to Charlie. It’d even started to take on some of his mannerisms — the sniffle of his nose in the cold, the squint of his eyes when he was thinking, the way he scratched at his cuticles when he was nervous. Charlie was flattered. He’d never seen himself as someone worth imitating. “Can I see your home?” Stone asked. “My home? Oh, you don’t want to see my home. It’s boring compared to your home here on the beach.” “But at your home we can play Switch, right?” “Ha, I wish. My parents won’t buy me a Switch. They say it kills brain cells.” “But … you’ve got to see my home.” Stone said. Charlie found this compelling. “Let me think about it, okay? My parents … I don’t know if they’d like you.” The next day, Charlie decided he’d take Stone home with him. But as he was biking out from the schoolyard, he spotted Kevin in the distance with his gaggle of acne-riddled goons. Charlie squeezed his breaks and made a hard right, hoping they didn’t see him. But he heard Kevin’s scratchy voice shout after him. He pedaled faster, but it wasn’t long before the flock of bikes appeared over his shoulder in the distance. He pressed his tiny feet harder, pedaling madly even as his bike was rocked by the uneven ground that led up to the rocky shore. “Where ya goin’ you little shit?“ Kevin shouted after him. The bike’s chassis shook violently over the stones, forcing Charlie to toss it aside and take off on foot. He sprinted down the shore toward Stone’s cave, winter wind stinging his lungs. Water splashed beneath him as he dashed over the rocks, forcing himself not to look back. He burst into the cavern and screamed, “Stone! Hide!” But Stone didn’t move. Charlie pulled at its arm, begging it to duck behind the rocks together. But Stone merely shook its head. “Stone, please, those kids— ” Charlie broke off as Kevin appeared at the mouth of the cave, Max and Fin following close behind. No. 106 “Well, well, well. You didn’t tell me you had a twin, Charlie. Now why would you go hiding a secret like that?” Charlie shook his head, staggered back. “I don’t …” “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Kevin jumped further into the cave. “His name’s Stone,” Charlie said under his breath. “Stone? Ha! What, was he named after a dog or something?” Kevin stalked up to Stone, the two of them standing eye to eye. “What are you looking at, huh?” The cave was still for a moment, air stinging with tension. Charlie’s hands were shaking as he watched the two of them. Stone’s head tilted to the side, studying Kevin. Charlie noticed Stone wasn’t afraid at all. It seemed just as curious as it was the day they’d met. “You think you’re tough or something?” Kevin jeered. Stone’s hand lurched out and took Kevin by the throat, lifting him off the cave floor. Charlie gasped, stumbled backward. Max and Fin looked nervously at each other as Kevin choked, “Cut it out man!” “Asshole,” Stone said, lifting Kevin higher in the air. “Stone! Stop it!” Charlie screamed. Kevin scratched at Stone’s hands, but flesh peeled off to the empty shadow beneath that wrapped around his neck. Charlie watched, horrified, as Kevin’s eyes flared with fear, the veins bulging from his face. Max and Fin turned and ran. Charlie rushed up to Stone, yanked at the arm that held Kevin up. “Put him down!” He screamed. Stone looked to Charlie as Kevin writhed in its grip. “Why?” “Because … because we don’t kill people!” “Hmm.” Stone said. “Okay.” He let go, Kevin crashing against the rocks. The cavern was filled with the echoes of his gasping breath as he crawled toward the cave’s entrance. They both watched as he scrambled to his feet and took off down the shore, not looking back. “Asshole,” Stone repeated, smiling to itself. Charlie looked to Stone, and as his breath began to ease, he started to laugh: a carnal release of tension accrued over years of torment. And as silence returned to the cave with only the gentle lapping of waves upon the rocks, Charlie realized that for the first time in his childhood, he finally had someone who was looking out for him.

AN EVENING WITH MARK MOTHERSBAUGH Denver Film Fest 2022 presents an Evening with Mark Mothersbaugh, featuring clips from five decades of work in music and film — from his earliest days as songwriter and frontman of the band DEVO to his scoring with such illustrious filmmakers as Taika Waititi, Wes Anderson, and Philip Lord and Christopher Miller. Branching further into the realms of music video, TV and gaming, Mothersbaugh has collaborated with Neil Young, Brian Eno, Matt Groening, Paul Reubens, Tony Hawk and many more. In true renaissance fashion he has also created a large body of mixed-media art that was presented in his retrospective MYOPIA at MCA Denver in 2014-2015. Onstage for this one-on-one interview with Jonathan Palmer of BMG Creative Synch, the talk will be complemented by clips and snippets from Mothersbaugh’s past portfolios as well as a sneak peek of upcoming work.” FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11 AT 7 P.M. FREYER-NEWMAN CENTER DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS | 1085 YORK STREET TICKETS AVAILABLE STARTING FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 MORE INFO & TICKETS: DENVERFILM.ORG Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and self-described “disruptor” who lives and works in southern Colorado. A major solo exhibition at the Ent Center for the Art’s Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery site in Colorado Springs will feature new works in multiple series addressing Native identity and critiquing American society, politics, popular culture and history. Deal’s art practice incorporates lifelong interests in punk music, street art and graphic styles, comic books and speculative superhero fiction. Deal presents a new paradigm that places the perception, narratives and voices of Indigenous people at the center of modern and historic storytelling, with romantic and damaging stereotypes of culture placed upon them upended and rejected by all. In Esoo Tubewade Nummetu (This Land Is Ours), Deal asserts that Native peoples and their cultures are still here and that we are all standing on the homelands of past and future Indigenous generations. “In 2018 a man asked me, ‘What is the most important thing to Indigenous people? The land? Protecting traditions? Your language? Or your people?’ I told him, ‘Those are all the same things.’ So much of the Western understanding of Indigenous people on the North American continent is predicated by the perception of existence and not the reality of existence. Whether the mystical Indian, the vanishing race, or the antagonist to Western progression, these ascribed identities situate Indigenous people as perpetual relics, rarely given quarter in the present, and certainly not in the future. Our likeness, personality and even culture has been created, romanticized and reproduced through film, photography, literature, consumables and visual art. The premise of one artwork in the exhibition titled, White People Shouldn’t Paint Indians, is based upon the idea that our own identity has been informed by this Western gaze, and the marginalized nature of Indigenous people has prevented us from telling our own stories. Our image, wrested from our control and wielded on our behalf, has ensured that our image and our identity are manufactured in a way that negates truth and distorts truthful understandings of who we are as both historical and modern peoples. Contemporary art is one sure way to challenge these ideas, even reusing the damaging images to reimagine, challenge and reflect on hundreds of years of misinformation and misappropriation. In a new paradigm, we must assert our identity in the face of settler colonialism and generations of romantic nationalism. As we do so, new narratives manifest themselves, challenging established spaces and hegemonies that have traditionally suppressed voices of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. Such an undertaking demands that we reimagine the sound of authentic Indigenous voices, uproot the romantic notions of history, and boldly state that we are not only here, but that you are on the homelands of our people and the generations of Indigenous people in the future.” ESOO TUBEWADE NUMMETU (THIS LAND IS OURS) ON VIEW THROUGH DECEMBER 11, 2022 MARIE WALSH SHARPE GALLERY, ENT CENTER FOR THE ARTS | COLORADO SPRINGS LEARN MORE: GOCADIGITAL.ORG/EXHIBITIONS/GREGG-DEAL SPECIAL EVENT: VISITING ARTISTS & CRITICS TALK WITH GREGG DEAL TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11 AT 6 P.M. | CHAPMAN RECITAL HALL, ENT CENTER FOR THE ARTS FREE TO THE PUBLIC | LEARN MORE INSTAGRAM: @GOCACOLOSPGS SEE MORE OF DEAL’S WORK, CURRENT EXHIBITS & UPCOMING EVENTS: GREGGDEAL.COM | INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: @GREGGDEAL 25 WES MAGYAR PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST PHOTO BY ROSS HARRIS

MORE ARTISTS & CREATORS WHO INSPIRE MEOW WOLF DISCOVER THE CREATIVES WHO MADE OUR CREATORS WANT TO CREATE! – BY BILLIAM RODGERS Shortly after we opened House of Eternal Return, we asked Meow Wolfers around our then-tiny production studio about who inspires them in their work. We collected six inspirational artists and talked about how they shaped our creative lives. Give it a read: meowwolf.com/articles/artists-creators-infl uenced-meow-wolf It’s a fun snapshot of where we were as a studio half a decade ago. Two major exhibitions and a half-dozen new departments later, we wanted to revisit the topic and ask Meow Wolf artists who inspire them today. Here are More Artists Who Inspire Meow Wolf: AUBREY SCHWARTZ Meow Wolf artist and props production manager Aubrey Schwartz is a multipath talent around Meow Wolf Studios. She’s worked on everything from installation art to fi lm production, costume design and puppeteering. Two artists who inspire her are fi lmmaker Julie Taymor and Muppets creator Jim Henson. In particular, Aubrey admires their talents mism and worldbuilding. She had s to say about them: “In general, I am a big fan of practical effects and the whimsy and magick they evoke when done right. I love masks, puppets, creatures and objects made animate. As a child I was absolutely obsessed with thing by Jim Henson, especially the otherworldly creatures of The Dark Crystal, The Labyrinth and Fraggle Rock. They created whole worlds, where everything was alive and animate. As an artist I am very interested in animism and the fae. “Julie Taymor's costume, mask and puppet designs transform the human form in ways that dissolve it and create something otherworldly. I like that they are often large, exaggerated gestures that feel dreamy and surreal. “Both artists are full-on in their world building in a way that transports you from this ordinary mundane world to a fully-imagined reality.” GABRIELLA LEGER-LOVATO Gabriella Leger-Lovato is a lead concept artist at Meow Wolf. They are an illust and 3D modeler, and you m recognize their illustrations from Convergence Station’s “Book of Whales” and Omega Mart’s “Burial Chamber” texts. The artist who inspires them is Jamie Hewlett, who is behind the Tan Girl comics and co-creator of t virtual band Gorillaz. “(Hewlett) is the reason I started to pursue art as a career. I think it’s because his work is unique and gritty. All his characters are unapologetically themselves and don’t resemble a lot of mainstream styles that are plastic, overlyrefi ned and easily digestible. His work is always just hella weird.” No. 106 JEROME MORRISON Jerome Morrison is a desig technologist who makes the interactive elements of works like “The Navigators” in Convergence Station and the “Omega Access Experience” in Omega Mart. His work adopts new technology an trends and applies them t immersive experiences. Creative works that brought his passion for interactive puzzle and experience-making into focus are the Assassin’s Creed series of video games, particularly the puzzles that break up the cloak-n-dagger action of the main game and give players an eerie view of the history-spanning conspiracy at the heart of the story. He had this to say: “I like the slow drip of content as a reward for solving these increasingly diffi cult logic puzzles. (The game also includes) these additional ciphers that you don’t need to solve for 100 percent completion, but tell so much more about historic events like the CIA takeover of Latin America, atrocities like the Banana Massacre, and conspiracy theories like Hitler’s body double (this didn’t fool the assassins, they got him anyway).” KAREN LEMBKE Karen Lembke is a fabric and sewing artist whose work appears in Omega Mart projects such as e Camping Portal” and “Deli ats.” Her fabric work appears throughout Convergence Station in projects such as the Bearret creature in “Swamp,” the puppet for the Convergence Station Newsstand, a C Street irus and alien meat vendor arts. Karen’s creative inspiration is none other than Nature themselves. “With fabric as my primary medium, I love to look at textures and patterns in nature for inspiration. I see off -the-bolt material as a jumping-off point for how to manipulate it into something more interesting. Various strains of mold, sea slugs, garden snails, insect wings, seashells and more can be mimicked with diff erent types of fabrics through painting, pleating, shearing, smocking and so on.” MAX NEUTRA Max Neutra is an experienced designer at Meow Wolf Studios. You’ve seen his work with projects like the “Osmositron” in Omega Mart and the Q-Pass experience in Convergence Station. Chances are you’ve experienced one of his many projects, scripts or voice acting appearances throughout both Denver and Vegas, or you’ve encountered his voice-activated kaleidoscope in House of Eternal Return. Max is inspired by the works of Gonzo illustrator Ralph

Steadman and Moon Trax artist Tiger Tateishi. He focuses on th incongruent feelings of beauty and chaos that are present in eac artists’ work. “(Tateishi) makes these paintings that are laid out like a page of a comic. A sequence unfolds in panels arranged on the page (or canvas) and it feels like a story is being told, or science is being explained, but at the same time the imagery is so weird that it is too alien to fully understand. It gives the same feeling that I get whe looking through Codex Seraphinianus. It’s almost a sickening feeling Like seasickness. Like my feet are on the ground of a real place, but can't quite get my bearings. TBH I can onl in small doses. But I marvel at it. I vel at how it works. How eff ective it is. I marvel at how something can be both beautiful and unnerving at the same time. “An early infl uence of mine is Ralph Steadman. He has a book called America that I saw when I was a id. I loved the energy and freedom d emotion depicted in his splashy scratchy technique; grotesque and fun. But specifi cally there were some drawings in that book depicting Disneyland that changed me. Having grown up in LA, I had gone to Disneyland several times and in my young mind it was indisputably the best place in the world. Then I saw his images of Mickey and friends as looming monsters, and kids and parents looking dirty and ugly and miserable, and it felt like he pulled back the veil. He showed me that the way Disney presents itself is not necessarily the reality of the situation. If Disneyland is not, in fact, the happiest place on earth, what other truths are out there waiting to be uncovered?” OLIVIA BROWN Olivia Brown is a senior artist at Meow Wolf. She is an art director and fabricator for massive projects in Convergence Station, including the Transit Station and Numina. She is the lead artist on several projects within Omega Mart and one of the designers of the Charter Offi ce experience in House of Eternal Return. She is inspired by artists who use sensation, movement and tension to take viewers out of the material world. “I look to Yoko Ono. Her Fluxus works helped develop the idea of sensation as art and to de-emphasize the material. She’s very experimental and isn’t afraid to depict her discomfort. “I’m also drawn to Terence Nance. Nance makes fi lm that feels both fractured and whole. He uses surrealism to identify and free tension. That’s something I’m attracted to and strive for. “Finally, musicians Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s most recent album Topical Dancer is fun and challenging in the best ways possible. I love how they use humor and a really honed craft to move bodies and pivot minds in the right directions.” CAITY KENNEDY Meow Wolf co-founder and senior creative director Caity Kennedy hardly needs an introduction. Her keystone projects include the Forest in House of Eternal Return and the wondrous, sylvan Numina anchor space in Convergence Station. One of Caity’s major inspirations is the unparalleled Mattress Factory museum in Pittsburgh. d Mattress Factory a number of times a kid, even a small kid, and was always ery excited to go back. Whether the work in a room is gorgeous, aweinspiring, confusing, intellectually challenging, physically challenging or simply surprising, it enveloped you in itself, in those qualities, in a way that made it impossible to look y, impossible to dismiss and move Dreamlike in that way; inescapable unfamiliarity. And out front, the outdoor pieces that were dug down into the ground were so captivatingly mysterious! That is immersion, but it is especially powerful when all that immersive work is all collected together. The building becomes legendary, the boundaries become questionable. Is the elevator an installation? Oh there is another building around the corner that used to be a house? Is there art along the way? It's so easy to get lost. “The nearby house has student and emerging artists work. I went back on my way home after college and saw the nearby house full of installations for the fi rst time. It wasn't just a house with art in it — the house was transformed. It was the medium to react to and with. I was already an installation artist and an immersive muralist, loving most to completely cover the interior of a room in murals, creating an illusory secondary space over the architectural details of the fi rst. So this playful, but often also high concept art house was right up my alley. I was charmed and inspired and hungry for more!” CHAZ JOHN Last but not least, Chaz John is an artist and fabricator who led the factory mural project in Omega Mart and applies his considerable talents to projects like OM’s whale hearts and the vacuformed trash bags and tra sculptures in Convergence Station. “I like things that spark joy, you know? Like Ozzy Osbourne, Professor Honeydew (from the Muppets) and miniature trains.” MW: Honeydew is an interesting choice for joy because he discovers something fantastic, which immediately causes a horrible disaster for Beaker. “Yeah, that’s life, dude. The dan wheel of chance, as they say.” Thanks to all Meow Wolf artists who shared their time for this piece about the grand (and strange) things that inspire us. We collected far more leads than we can use in this single article so stay tuned for an update with even more Meow Wolfers sharing the people, places and things that drive them as creatives. BILLIAM IS A NARRATIVE LEAD AT MEOW WOLF. HE’S INSPIRED BY TECHNO, THE WORKING CLASS AND PITTSBURGH REGIONALISMS LIKE “YINZ” AND “N’AT.” GET TICKETS TO MEOW WOLF’S HOUSE OF ETERNAL RETURN IN SANTA FE, NM, CONVERGENCE STATION IN DENVER, CO AND OMEGA MART IN LAS VEGAS, NV: MEOWWOLF.COM/VISIT 27

BRIAN SERWAY, WOLF

BY TOM MURPHY CHURCH FIRE – PUPPY GOD Nearly four years since the release of the basically prophetic summer camp doom diary, Church Fire's new album out now on Witch Cat Records is somehow noisier, more confrontational and more both fraught with and purging of the trauma of facing the escalating threat of authoritarian conservative culture. The band — now a trio with the addition of Kate Warner formerly of Mirror Fears and David Samuelson moving to drums, with Shannon Webber still in the role of musical catharsis shaman on vocals — takes aim at that ambient, corrosive darkness with a playful and spirited critique set to paradoxically strident and fluid beats. Not every song is a thorny rebuke. In “almost over” and “painless” there is a meditation on vulnerability and an expression of tender feelings that give the scorching histrionics and pointed critique of other tracks a context, and the overall arc of music a depth, that is rarely found on albums that are as gloriously poetic and enthralling in their invective. DREADNOUGHT – THE ENDLESS On this fifth album, orchestral doom quartet Dreadnought more fully realizes its songwriting range in bridging the styles of feral doom, art rock and experimental pop. The elemental, distorted, unhinged vocals are still well in place to bring that unearthly energy that is the hallmark of when Dreadnought forgoes conventional song structure for entire passages of song, and leans into the primal instinct of where the music should go. But one hears in the synth arrangements and the layering of interweaving structures a touch of where the best of those melodic death metal bands from Gothenburg take the music into an emotional realm beyond limitations of genre. Especially in the outro to “Midnight Moon” and on into the album's title track where we hear something more akin to the conceptual sounds Tori Amos has been exploring in her more recent albums. Dreadnought never fit neatly into a single heavy music genre and this record proves the group has creatively reached deep and well beyond where one might have predicted. SHADOWS TRANQUIL – DOWNWARD FLOWERS This sophomore offering from Shadows Tranquil is the musical equivalent of seeing a high definition photo of a breathtaking event and being somehow both overwhelmed with melancholic feelings and a sense of awe at the details that hit you at once, as they emerge from your memory when you think back on the songs long after they're done. Motes of tone trail off the major melodies, textural flecks flow forth in the wake of the percussion and the swell of feeling in the vocals burn bright and linger. It is an album of reflective moods and of memories that leave a mark on your psyche for a lifetime, that you may spend years contemplating and reinterpreting to glean deeper meanings and themes in attempt to discern the patterns of your life. Sure, this is post-punk and shoegaze, but in there is also an ear for progressive rock and the artistic ambition of early post-rock so that you can get lost in the music's dusky layers and buoyed up by its undercurrents of triumphant energy. SORROWS – SELF-TITLED Glynnis Braan sounds rattled and mournful amid the loping, skulking synth strands of “Alive.” Like a creepy and menacing version of a Mezzanine period Massive Attack song. The vocals feel very up close and intimate and yet mixed perfectly in the spaciousness of the music. In moments this album answers the question of what a Skinny Puppy record might sound like if they worked with Edward Ka-Spel, not on a new set of Tear Garden songs, but on a trip hop record that has the melancholic weight of a long lost Nico album. But it wasn't cEvin Key who worked with Braan, it was Lawrence Snell, the drummer of experimental rock band Meet the Giant. Together for this project’s debut, the two musicians seem to have found a way to give beautifully unsettling voice to dark and painful places in the heart like Diamanda Galás collaborating with Curve. FOR MORE, VISIT QUEENCITYSOUNDSANDART.WORDPRESS.COM 29

DENVER MOON: THE THIRTEEN OF MARS BY WARREN HAMMOND AND JOSHUA VIOLA Book No. 3 in the Denver Moon series: It's been more than two years since Denver Moon discovered that alien shapeshifters infiltrated Mars Colony. Their attempts at human mind-control have failed, but when Denver opens a vault beneath a terraforming facility, she discovers what they really want: to exterminate all inhabitants of the Red Planet. Tatsuo Moon — Denver’s grandfather and the co-founder of Mars City — has been gravely injured. To save him, Denver will need the help not only of her friends, Smith, Nigel and Navya, but also of humanity’s archenemy, Doctor Werner. To save Mars, she'll need a miracle. [ Excerpt ] I pushed the heavy metal door open, wincing at the squeak of its hinges. We didn’t want to be heard. Not yet. Not until I had Smith’s muzzle placed against the doctor’s temple. Then I’d have plenty to say. Holding Smith out front, I stepped through. Navya and Nigel fanned out beside me. Before us was a room the size of a warehouse or a shipyard hangar. The door behind us slammed shut, and the locking mechanism clanged into place. Another half dozen doors all around us did the same. In the center of the room was a glassed-in facility that was so brightly lit, it stung my eyes. A voice came from a speaker up high on the wall. “Denver,” said the unmistakable voice of Doctor Werner. “Finally, I have you where I want you.” <Shit,> Smith said. <Glad you’re still paying attention,> I subvocalized. “What just happened?” asked Navya. “We’re locked in,” said Nigel. “Welcome,” said the doctor through the speaker. “I’ve never known Denver to take no for an answer, so I figured you’d be breaking in at some point. Kudos to you taking the stealthy underwater route. I thought shooting your way through the security forces guarding one of the access tunnels would be more your style.” I smelled something burning. The odor was unpleasant but somehow familiar. “What is that smell?” I asked. Nigel, Navya and I approached the glassed-in structure at the center of the room. Its walls stood twelve feet high but it had no ceiling. Instead, it was topped by an intricate latticework of tracks and rails busy with dozens of long-armed robotic machines zipping from position to position. Standing just outside the glass, we could see gurneys inside, dozens of them lined up in neat rows. On each gurney was a person covered by a white sheet pulled up to bared shoulders. The robots moved from person to person, red lasers drilling into their heads. “My god,” said Navya. “Hair,” I said. That was the smell. Burning hair. I turned away, rage welling inside. Next to me was a bin filled with clothes and other personal effects. Near the top was a purple plastic bracelet. “The refugees,” I said. “This is what happens to them.” “No wonder they have so many security guards around,” said Nigel. I thought of the mayor shaming me over Mars not embracing more refugees like her people did here, and I found my fingers squeezing Smith’s handle so tight my hand hurt. I hadn’t felt such a sting of betrayal since I learned of my grandfather’s traitorous deal with the same son-of-a-bitch doctor over twenty years ago. But I’d learned from that experience that my purest rage must always be directed at the doctor. Towing the moral line was never easy for those in desperate circumstances, and it was the doctor who so expertly victimized them. As on Mars, he’d only been here for a few months before he’d already perverted this rare oasis into something disgusting and self-serving. “What are you doing to them?” I asked. When there was no response, I tried asking again, this time louder so the audio system could pick me up. “I’m just about done perfecting them,” he said. “This is why I was sent to this system decades ago. To take control of the human mind. Although most of my kind has given up, I’ve made great strides since I severed ties with them and came here to Earth.” “You’ve gone rogue?” “As you already know from the first wave of attacks on Mars City, the Alvearu have decided on a policy of extermination, but when I prove human mind control is indeed possible, they’ll change their position. You should be thanking me, Denver. I’m saving your pathetic kind from extinction.” “Who is this Alvearu?” asked Nigel. “We need to talk to them. We need to negotiate.” “For such an intelligent machine, you stun me by how little you seem to understand your situation. First, as I’ve told you before, the Alvearu do not negotiate. Second, when this conversation is over, I’m going to ask you to remove your chip, which I will then destroy before dumping the pulverized remains into the ocean. The rest of you will share the same fate as the refugees. Your minds are mine.” I waved Smith for the camera. “We’re still armed, asshole. Good luck coming in here and taking my gun.” He let out one of his beetle-like snickers. “That’s not going to be enough, I can assure you of that.” I pressed my back against the glass and inched to the right to be in position to see most of this space’s entry points. “Nigel, cover the entrance to our rear.” Navya said, “Denver?” “Stay close to me,” I told her. “Smith has a full charge. When Werner sends in those kids playing security guard, they’ll be in for a rude awakening.” She tugged on my sleeve. “Denver?” I looked at my friend. Her face was a pale mask. “Look.” I turned around to look through the glass. The refugees had sat up, their eyes blank, their mouths hanging open like I’d only seen on the dead. Their skulls had been drilled through in several places, the wounds weeping with dark, thick fluid. Probes had been inserted and riveted in place. In unison, they stood like a well-disciplined army platoon. I saw the girl from the cafeteria. She’d looked beaten and defeated then, but every little bit of humanity was now stripped completely out. 31

Navya, we obliterated one entire creature, but it was becoming obvious we only had the firepower to take out a small fraction of what we faced. Navya was knocked to the ground, her weapon skidding across the blood-slicked floor. One of the people-bug’s legs lifted to stomp her into a paste but a diving Nigel managed to knock her out of the way and the leg slammed the decking with a sickening wet slap of pulped bodies. Another people-bug pounded its way toward Nigel and Navya. I held up my hands in surrender. “You win! I give up.” I shouted at one of the cameras mounted on the wall. The bug stopped with one leg hovering over my friends. “Put the weapons down,” said the doctor over the intercom, “and get back upstairs and lie down on one of the gurneys. The botsie too.” <Smith, what should we do?> <I don’t know, Denver. None of my simulations are showing a way out that doesn’t end with all of you in body bags. I suggest cooperating.> I dropped Smith to the floor. “I promise I’ll make it quick,” said the doctor. “After I drill the first hole into your skulls, you won’t feel much at all.” We headed for the stairs. One of the people-bugs blocked the Now she was a robot. A zombified corpse of living flesh. With a startling clank, the glass walls separating us from them lifted. Navya, Nigel and I backed up. I didn’t want to shoot any of them. They were all so, so young, but I’d do what I had to do to protect myself and my friends. They gathered into groups, their overall number seemingly doubling, then tripling before I noticed many more were feeding up a staircase near the back of the formerly glassed-in area. “What are they doing?” asked Navya, her voice registering yet another new level of shock as some of the refugees laid down or sat and interlocked arms and legs. Muscles flexed and squeezed, and I swear I heard bones snap as they hugged themselves into a tightly packed column. Speedily, they piled themselves into several more stacks, and then these stacks bent as if jointed, and they merged with others. More refugees climbed up, using their fellow victims as ladder rungs and formed a segmented body atop its legs. Frozen in shock, we stared at a six-legged bug-like creature made of an unthinkable tangle of dozens of living human bodies. It moved, legs tensing like a spring, and it leapt in our direction. We ran, and though we had nowhere to go, we sped away from the monster. The creature turned. The people forming its feet were already crushed and bloody, yet they still clamped on tight. I fired. The pulse blasted one of the legs apart, but the other five legs were pumping in our direction. Navya fired, too, but already the bodies that were detached by my blast were regenerating. Gods, more people-bugs were forming. At least a half dozen of them. “The staircase!” I shouted. We sprinted through gurneys, dodging low-hanging equipment, and hustled down the stairs into another vast space where another half-dozen giant people-bugs awaited. Behind, the upstairs people-bugs disassembled to come down the stairs and snappily reassembled. I took more shots as I ran, none of them hitting their mark. Smith lobbed a few more to make up for my misses. Combined with Nigel and No. 106 staircase, and we had to pick our way between its legs. I saw the people close up, their faces wrenched in agony. Squeezed so tight together they struggled for air, their skin discolored with oxygen deprivation. Many, it was obvious, had died. Their bones broken, their lungs and hearts pressed to death, yet their limbs and muscles were still controlled by the probes inserted in their heads. Held together by fingers dug deep like meat hooks into twitching flesh, the people-bug moved in coordinated fashion to unblock the staircase. The doctor was deluding himself if he thought he’d successfully cracked the human mind. This was body control. Not mind control. Whatever he was doing to their brains was destroying everything these people were. They were empty. The doctor might’ve finally beaten me, but I took heart in the fact that once again, the doctor was a failure. His kind could kill every last one of us, but they’d never own us. Never. We marched up the stairs and we each chose a gurney. “Hand straps,” said the doctor, who stepped out of the shadows cast by the bug-people. “Denver, I want you to secure everybody’s hands.” He was this close, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. His mind-slave goons were all around him, ready to strike at any moment. I went to Navya. “I don’t want to die,” she said, her eyes pooling with tears. I clutched at my own heart which was strangled with guilt as deep and dark as the ocean bottom. I pressed my forehead against hers. Tears streaming down my cheeks. “I know. You’ve been such a good friend. I’m so sorry I brought you here.” “I knew what I was getting into,” she said. She tried to smile but the grin was instantly swallowed up by fear. Nigel was next. I strapped in one wrist then the next. “I didn’t think it would end like this,” I said. “Others live on,” he said. “It may only be a flicker, but hope survives.” “This is all my fault for bringing you here.” “Don’t worry yourself with that, love. We’re all mates and this is what mates do for each other.” “Thank you,” I told him. I bit my lip and took a deep breath before subvocalizing to Smith. <Smith, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m so sorry. I failed.> He didn’t respond. Too far out of range, probably. I sure hoped that AARON LOVETT

was why. Maybe he’d pick up an echo of my transmission later, when he was closer to my body. I just didn’t want him to go on assuming he wasn’t on my mind before the doctor turned it to sludge. I laid down and used my right hand to strap in the left. The refugees, many battered and bloodied, were all around me now. They secured my other hand as well as my ankles and placed a brace over my forehead, tightening the cinch until my head was totally immobilized. A crisp sheet was flung over me. The machines above us started to move. Long laser-tipped arms stretched and contracted, taunting us with their deadly power. My right hand was tugged on. I turned my head as far as it would go. One of the refugees was fumbling with the binding around my wrist. I felt something inserted into my hand and immediately recognized what it was. <Smith?> <Yes, it’s me.> I clutched him tight and moved my arm an inch or two under the sheet to find that my right hand was no longer secured. Hope surged from deep inside and every last nerve began to tingle. I looked at the young girl who had removed the restraint. She appeared to be just as blank-stared as the rest of them. The probes protruding from under her hair blinked green, but she must’ve still been in some control of herself. I tried to make eye contact though I could barely move my head. She turned away and one of the machines centered itself over my forehead. My eyes darted in every direction in an effort to locate the doctor. I needed him to come close. Simultaneously, ten separate arms on the machine overhead reached for my skull. Lasers engaged, and I smelled the burn of my own flesh and hair. My skull began to vibrate as the lasers dug into bone. Unable to move my head, I searched for the doctor, startled when he showed up right next to me. “It will all be over soon, my little puppet.” I lifted Smith, and the sheet fell from my wrist. Whipping the barrel in his direction, I squeezed the trigger as far as it would go. DENVER MOON BOOK III: THE THIRTEEN OF MARS IS AVAILABLE OCTOBER 11. MORE INFO: DENVERMOON.NET WARREN HAMMOND IS KNOWN FOR HIS GRITTY, FUTURISTIC KOP SERIES. BY TAKING THE BEST OF CLASSIC DETECTIVE NOIR, AND REINVENTING IT ON A DESTITUTE COLONY WORLD, HAMMOND HAS CREATED THESE UNIQUELY DARK TALES OF MURDER, CORRUPTION AND REDEMPTION. KOP KILLER WON THE 2012 COLORADO BOOK AWARD FOR BEST MYSTERY. HIS LAST NOVEL, TIDES OF MARITINIA, WAS RELEASED IN DECEMBER OF 2014. HIS FIRST BOOK INDEPENDENT OF THE KOP SERIES, TIDES IS A SPY NOVEL SET IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL WORLD. JOSHUA VIOLA IS A 2021 SPLATTERPUNK AWARD NOMINEE, COLORADO BOOK AWARD WINNER, AND EDITOR OF THE STOKERCON™ 2021 SOUVENIR ANTHOLOGY. HE IS THE CO-AUTHOR OF THE DENVER MOON SERIES WITH WARREN HAMMOND. THEIR GRAPHIC NOVEL, DENVER MOON: METAMORPHOSIS, WAS INCLUDED ON THE 2018 BRAM STOKER AWARD™ PRELIMINARY BALLOT. VIOLA EDITED THE DENVER POST #1 BESTSELLING HORROR ANTHOLOGY NIGHTMARES UNHINGED, AND CO-EDITED CYBER WORLD — NAMED ONE OF THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGIES OF 2016 BY BARNES & NOBLE. HIS FIRST NOVEL, THE BANE OF YOTO, WON THE USA BEST BOOK AWARDS, NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS, INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS, AND INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS BOOK AWARDS. HIS SHORT FICTION HAS APPEARED IN NUMEROUS ANTHOLOGIES, INCLUDING DOA III: EXTREME HORROR ANTHOLOGY, DOORBELLS AT DUSK AND CLASSIC MONSTERS UNLEASHED. IN 2022, HE BECAME THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF COMICS AND NOVELIZATIONS FOR RANDOM GAMES’ VIDEOGAME FRANCHISE, UNIOVERSE, A NEW SERIES FROM THE CREATORS OF GRAND THEFT AUTO AND DONKEY KONG COUNTRY, AND THE WRITERS OF STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS AND HALO 4. WHEN HE ISN’T WRITING AND EDITING, VIOLA DABBLES IN ART. IN 2020, HE COLLABORATED WITH HIS HUSBAND, AARON LOVETT, ON AFTERSHOCK COMICS’ MISKATONIC #1 COVER ALPHA COMICS VARIANT. AS A VIDEO GAME ARTIST, HE WORKED ON PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CALL OF THE KRAKEN, SMURFS’ GRABBER AND TARGET: TERROR. VIOLA IS THE OWNER AND CHIEF EDITOR OF HEX PUBLISHERS IN DENVER, COLORADO. 33

THE BALANCE OF NATURE BY HERSCHO DUDS Throughout my career as an evolutionary biologist, as of late in Berkeley, I have been part of numerous research projects in remote areas around the world. On this dreary Halloween Eve, as I am sitting down to begin writing my memoirs, one of the bug-costumed kids who came to our door made me commiserate about a particular eerie study early in my life. This event shaped my academic career, but is now making a career of haunting me. After completing my Ph.D. at Harvard, a distinguished Stanford professor hired me as a so-called postdoc. As part of my position, I worked for a few months in the eastern region of Gabon near the Oua River on a research project involving a type of jungle army ant. This particularly rare species beautifully illustrates the power in numbers. For instance, in a matter of hours the minuscule ants can devour a whole wounded-immobilized or dead aardvark: flesh, cartilage, bones, teeth, hairs and whatever else. Their social structure is complex, not only having the normal division of labor, but three specialized soldier/forager classes co-exist. One has unusually large and strong pinchers, another has the ability to excrete a horrendously potent formic acid-based concoction, and the third has massive legs for the ability to carry about forty times its own weight (twice as what is normally seen) for considerable distances. The precise coordination by these troops results in the rapid chemically-accelerated disintegration of the victim into tiny chunks that are quickly carried off to their nearby underground nest. In the end, truly nothing remains at the site of the micro-dissection. While witnessing these bacchanals, I started focusing on activities that occurred upon completion of their meal when the ants left behind a wiping pattern in the dust or undergrowth where the dead(ed) victim had lain. Along with the quickly dissipating volatile formic acid mix that leaves no lingering vinegary smell, I deducted that these represented attempts at unmarking or camouflaging the site to prevent possible tracking by predators like anteaters to the location of the colony’s residence. Yet, most remarkable was the intricate mystical and alienlooking webbed design on the surface of the area, that despite being undecipherable, appeared so natural that it would not be noticed by a non-expert. In fact, I had literally stumbled on my first one when tripping over a trunk and falling into it headfirst. The resulting close-up view revealed the ant’s handy artwork. In scientific lingo, such an accidental finding is called “serendipity” to elevate its credibility. Having acquired all these interesting facts and ideas in a couple of months, I was quite pleased and set out for my journey back home. At the end of my first day traveling by foot I arrived at a hospitable village. A big celebration was taking place as one of the women had hunted down and slain a super venomous, black mamba-like snake that had killed a number of townspeople over the past several months. The woman had slaughtered the monster by cleanly chopping off its head with a machete and the trophy was displayed on a large banana leaf near the outskirts of town. Its body was arranged distinctly separated from the head as evidence and an ominous sign at the entrance of the settlement in order to convey the message: “fear these powerful villagers.” Meanwhile the whole town had gathered at its central square on this momentous occasion for an extensive celebration with drink, food and dance. Gone unwitnessed, the body of said snake on the banana leaf was now covered by a plethora of ants of the type that — if I had been there instead of drinking palm wine at the party — would have been so familiar to me. I would have also known the ants would not eat the snake, as that must have been a bad past experience. In that moment a boy walked away from the crowd in search of his mother’s hunting trove. Locating the treasure, he saw the ant-covered snake body, but oddly the adjacent head was untouched. He gripped the snakehead with the intent to pierce it onto a stick and then parade among the festival crowd to honor his brave mother. Equipped with primitive-autonomous neural and muscle controls, the head of the snake struck with its remaining intrinsic truculence and emptied the poison from its jaw-sacks into the boy’s abductor pollicis between the index finger and thumb of his right hand. He was instantly overpowered by an unimaginable fear and before being able to recover from that initial shock, he fainted. Upon waking ten minutes later the neurotoxin had taken control and he noticed his complete paralysis. He instinctively opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. The ants that were still agonizing over the snake’s body noticed the nearby commotion and expanded their foraging territory to the subsequent newly identified, and possibly consumable, target. With full mental clarity the paralyzed boy saw the vast number of ferocious ants approaching, accompanied by the stench of the noxious ant acid. Once more massive fear gripped him by the throat and in utter terror he scanned for any sign of his elsewhere dancing mother. Hot tears burst from his eyes when he was overcome by the excruciating pain inflicted simultaneously by thousands of nasty pinchers. Omitting sickening details, the boy died a most tormenting, prolonged death and was disassembled bit-by-tiny-bit, including shorts, shirt, and all, while the village continued its celebratory activities. The next morning there was a terrible commotion in the community. The parents of the boy were wailing that they could not find their son anywhere. An extensive search was conducted but to no avail, there was no trace of him to be found. Hereupon the citizenry proclaimed that the boy must have been kidnapped by their rival tribe. Great anger erupted. Amongst the increasing calls for revenge, I decided it best to walk away from the village and grabbed my belongings to make my way out. While scurrying out of town I noticed the banana leaf on the side of the road with the beheaded snake body on top. Closer inspection revealed that the snake’s head was located near a pointy stick in an adjacent spot surrounded by almost invisible webbings that my trained eyes immediately recognized as my earlier discovered camouflage motif. It was instantly obvious to me as to what had transpired. Therefore, I stood there somewhat indecisive, but in the end did not turn around, and as such gave life back to the boy, allowing the notion of his kidnapping the prior night to endure. Upon my return home I quickly wrote up my findings on the mystical colony-programmed-camouflage (formiflage) and my manuscript was rapidly accepted and published by the prestigious journal Nature, followed by awards and prizes. But now, at my advanced age, I regret to also note something I have neglected to mention over all those years. While I was basking in glory, far away a deadly fierce tribal war was raging. 35

DAVE DANZARA - @LOSTINTIMEDESIGNS

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