The Spaces in Between Read online

  Acknowledgements

  It had always been my intentions to dedicate my first book to everyone who thought I would never do it, but you know what? Fuck those guys.

  If you are holding this book then I want to thank you. Without you none of this would have ever been possible. I would just be dictating to the wall.

  And of course, to my wife, who still hasn’t left me.

  Foreword

  I don’t know how you got a copy of this book.

  Maybe you found this volume mixed in with other used books in the stacks of the Goblin Market. Its cracked leather cover spoke to you with promises of secrets better left untold. The purveyor’s one glass eye darted away in deference when you picked it up.

  Or perhaps a shrouded figure shoved this tome into your hands. “Keep it secret. Keep it safe,” he said. Any of his features draw a blank in your mind. You check your watch and realize that you’ve lost time.

  Or maybe against all odds you downloaded this from my site.

  In any case, however, if this is an e-book or .PDF file and you paid for it, you need to cut a bitch. I am offering the e-book version and audio podcast of this book free of charge. Any other copies are sold wherever books are sold. Seriously, could you help me out here? I don’t know where these things are sold.

  Now The Spaces In Between is Copyright 2010 by Chase Henderson under Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, and Share Alike. So yeah, if you want to pass this around to your pals go for it, just remember you didn’t write this. And if for some reason the mood takes you, yeah, fanfiction is approved, but for God’s sake don’t make money from it.

  At least not before I do…

  Now on to this unsavory topic. If you like this book then please pass it on to a friend. If you really like this book then why not consider heading over to http://thehometowntourist.com to purchase merchandise, books, or to just donate. I might just make another one then.

  Also another thing you could do for me. Should you spot any spelling or grammatical errors in this work, Instead of putting on your grammar SS hat and marching through town square, just drop me a line: typo (at) thehometowntourist (dot) com. Leave as many details for the correction as possible and hopefully they will be implemented in future editions.

  And of course: These characters and events are fictional and any resemblance to persons living, dead, or fictional or situations past, present, or fictional is purely and completely coincidental.

  If you actually got this far through a foreword, you have my thanks and respect.

  Chase Henderson,

  May 02, 2010

  Buried in an Obese Coffin

  “So much of what we call reality actually happens in the spaces between this life and the next.”

  - Cameron Styles, Pirate King

  The Spaces in Between

  Chase Henderson

  WARNING

  SUBJECT: Attn to all of Creation

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: all

  CC: Everyone and Everything

  All things big and small from all walks of life are to be on high alert. Chokmah awareness if you still have the intergalactic security chart. The recent exploits of the Dread Pirate Cameron have come to our attention. We ask that the following precautions are taken while we apprehend this villain.

  Do not speak the name of the Dread Pirate Cameron. He is able to hear his name spoken from any distance. From this moment forth he will be referred to as the Pirate King. The Pirate King can lie in any and all ways. In thought, appearance, etc.

  The Pirate King can steal anything. After the theft of an entire Andromedan star system he is not to be underestimated. No eye color, artifact, planet, soul, free will, idea, dream, etc. is safe from the Pirate King.

  If you have any suspicions that the Pirate King is in your solar system do not approach, glance at, or talk to the Pirate King. Most likely if you suspect nothing then he’s already there. Please report anything suspicious and unsuspicious to your star system’s Ashtar representative.

  The contents of this message are highly confidential and shall only be stored deep within the collective subconscious.

  From the desk of

  Lord Sananda, Head of the Ashtar Command

  “The butterfly effect, please, if a mouse farts on the Astral it could set things in motion to destroy several realities. That’s probably true, too.”

  - Cameron Styles, Pirate King

  Prologue

  In which a chance meeting during a coma sets it all in motion…

  Warren Elliot stirred from his two-day coma.

  He clenched his eyes as he ran over the events in his cloudy mind. This was the delicate time while waking up where one tries to shuffle their thoughts into the categories memories or dreams. A time where one could actually believe that he had woken up as an insect before they remember who they truly are. Occasionally, dreams slip through this filter and Hollywood religions are born.

  The eye boogers cracked as Warren opened his eyes. The room was such a sterile-looking off white that when the light reflected off it his atrophied eyes could barely make out his surroundings. Warren flinched and looked away. For a moment he slipped back into his dreams, this was nowhere near as bright as the white he had seen. In his dreams Warren Elliot had seen black and white in their purest forms – light and nothing.

  He took a deep breath and squinted into the brightness. The dark shapes of the life support machines leaned against the walls. Their beeping finally registered in his mind as he realized he’d been hearing them all through his dreaming. He jumped when he spotted the dark shape heaving at the end of his bed.

  Warren regretted catching the shape’s attention. He feared that the shape was one of those dark amalgamations that haunted HP Lovecraft’s dreams. After significant squinting the amalgamation revealed herself to be the ordinary beauty of Janet Rockbell. His fiancé’s face was striped with black streams of mascara. She was still beautiful - the fact that she would even stay with Warren made her more beautiful to him.

  He was in no way a looker. His body was in the final stages of “Programmer’s Ass” an ailment common amongst computer programmers who are rarely able to leave their computer. Those afflicted with this ailment suffer from an ass at least forty pounds overweight. Like most programmers he had grown a beard in a vain attempt to establish a chin line. Only to result in the further stigma of neck beard.

  “What…what happened?” He knew damn well what happened.

  “When we were on the phone…” Janet said, “You were t-boned by a Hummer.” Liar. You mean while we were arguing on the phone I stopped in the middle of the freeway.

  He could clearly see what happened playing in the small theater of his mind. They were arguing about finances. He could make steadier money working at Best Buy, but he was a programmer, godammit. At one time he forged the dot COM boom with millions of strings of code. Then the bubble popped. No one wanted a programmer without a degree, which is just a nice way of saying “We don’t want anyone associated with the dot COM crash.”

  Hateful words were exchanged. Like “mother-fucker” and “cunt”. Both were classics in destroying any kind of relationship. Janet hung up on him, wishing she had an older phone so she could have slammed it back on the cradle. Warren scrambled to call her back.

  He screamed her name into the Bluetooth headset. His cell phone seated next to him reported in the voice of a monotone, robotic female that it was dialing one of his clients. Ok, his only client. The owner of an Australian website which provided 24-hour streaming “Ostrich Shows” to subscribers.

  Warren glanced away for a moment to hit the cancel button on his phone before the Birdman’s phone rang. But what happen
ed next was very unclear, and it was fading fast.

  Warren spotted his handheld tape recorder sticking out of Janet’s purse. He intended to grab it, but nothing worked. He used it to record any important thoughts so uses were few and far between. He was worse off when he lost the damn thing, which was more often than not. He was amazed to see that it was intact, but surmised that he probably left it at the apartment.

  “Janet, I need you to get out my tape recorder. I need you to turn it on.” She looked at the tape recorder in her purse. It had been her only source of his voice for nearly forty-eight hours. “Please! Quickly! This…this is the dream I had…while I was out.”

  2

  I don’t remember much about when the Hummer hit me so I was probably out immediately. I do remember seeing the doctors working on me. I was floating above them…no, no, don’t give me that look. It was a dream, of course. You know it’s incredibly common that when someone visualizes himself or herself it’s from above.

  Anyway, I felt almost a tugging at me. I followed it far away. I soon realized that I was no longer even on Earth anymore. It wasn’t heaven or hell. I wasn’t anywhere. I was surrounded by nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  It was the purest black I had ever seen.

  There was nothing, but I don’t think you’re getting how black it was. I don’t think I have the words to ever get you to understand it. This is what H.P. Lovecraft was trying to say when something was indescribable. He was talking about his dreams, you know.

  I was seeing what Joss Whedon called the Black. It’s terrifying. Nothing that stretches to infinity. I continued forward, because I was drawn. I wandered through this void for what felt like days, but of course it was really only minutes.

  Then something broke the monotony. A bright light. It was the purest light; greater than anything my imagination could have ever mustered. I was convinced that this is the only thing that could have ever really pierced the oblivion. This is where I was drawn, but this wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel complex. I wasn’t in a container. It was infinite like space.

  In the light I finally realized that I was not alone. I was surrounded by strange objects and symbols. Words and letters of almost a million different languages swam around me. One string of Engrish, ‘This guy are sick.’ bounced off my chest. The letters were flung everywhere. I even considered eating one.

  While I was distracted the light had grown. Something was headed towards me. It was the strangest thing – a ship, but it wasn’t a spaceship per se. It was no space ship like I’ve ever seen in Star Trek or Battlestar Galatica.

  And goodness knows that I’ve watched a ton of those. It looked just like an old sailboat. The only thing remotely space age about was the pulsating pyramid where the topsails would be and the matching pyramid on the bottom. The damn thing was even flying the Jolly Roger.

  I was suddenly hit with a feeling of dread. I didn’t want that ship catching up with me. I turned heel and bolted back the way I came. Just like a dream, I was stuck in place, but when I looked down there was a chain right through my stomach. I was pulled back towards the ship with one big tug and unceremoniously hit the deck.

  “Welcome aboard the Soulforge!” A grinning Rastafarian greeted me. The most striking feature was his red dreadlocks. Not red like a redhead, but pure red hair. From head to toe he was covered in full pirate regalia. His one eye was focused purely on me. He twirled the other end of my chain in his hand. “I’m Captain Cameron. But you may call me the Dread Pirate or the Pirate King, wakari?”

  Cameron turned sharply and walked down the deck. “I’d follow me. Beats being dragged.” I complied since the chain through my stomach was uncomfortable, but it didn’t hurt, mind you. He basically dragged me along the deck behind him like a dog.

  The deck looked like what you’d expect on a pirate ship, but the whole thing was surrounded by a glass bubble. I assumed this is how the Captain survived standing on the deck. We stopped in the middle of the deck, and Cameron made a grand gesture. I was surprised to see that neither of his hands were hooks. The floor split and what I could guess is an elevator rose out of the opening.

  Cameron pulled me along into the elevator. As soon as the doors closed behind us the elevator slid down the shaft. The insides of elevator were a sterile white with absolutely no buttons or counters. The doors slid open once the elevator hit the bottom floor.

  Under the deck the ship looked an awful like the inside of the whale in Pinocchio. It just lacked any water what so ever. I expected the ground under me to be squishy, but I had just realized I couldn’t even feel the floor.

  “Mr. Elliot,” Captain Cameron said, “I’ve shanghaied you today for your technical expertise. There is something I want you’re help stealing, and I will not return you until I have it.”

  “This…this is a dream, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Sorta, actually you are in a coma. Dancing between the border of life and death, if you will. In a nutshell reality is made up of many layers like an onion. Now reality as you used to know it is at the core. Where you are now is in between the physical and the afterlife - what I like to call the Astral.

  The Astral is where we go to dream. So I can understand the confusion. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m rambling.”

  “If this isn’t a dream then why do you speak English, spaceman?”

  “Oh, well, you see all inspiration originates in the Astral until it trickles down to be interpreted by those in the Physical. So many languages end up repeating with only subtle changes. Wakarimashita?” That last bit I thought meant, “understood?”

  I was now very bored of this dream and tried to shift it towards something more exciting like sharing a hot tub with Starbuck…I mean you dear. Unfortunately, this was in no way a lucid dream.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Cameron said, “As long as I will this chain to exist, you won’t be going anywhere.”

  “Alright, I guess I’ll play along then,” I said, “What are we stealing?”

  “Oh, that? It’s called the Mehmet Talisman. An ancient artifact rumored to have to the power to make spirits solid. Right now it’s on display in the space museum Asterix.”

  “So what you want me to stay on permanently?”

  “No, it’s for me.” A samurai walked through the squishy wall beside me. First a pirate now a samurai, I knew now that this could only be a dream. The samurai was dressed in later samurai gear, you know, when they were wearing pants that looked like skirts as opposed to dresses. His raven hair was in a topknot, and he wore an expression like he was glaring into the sun.

  “And you are?”

  “Sakamoto Ryoma deshita.”

  “He’s Ryoma Sakamoto,” Cameron translated, “He’s the revolutionary father of modern Japan. Lead the riots that disposed the shogun. It’s amazing what one Samurai can accomplish when he’s packing a six-shooter. Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Why would I make something like that up? Did I fall asleep watching the Last Samurai?” I said.

  “That crazed Gaijin the last samurai?” Ryoma bitched in a thick George Takaiesque accent and then spat ectoplasm. Ryoma seemed to be the most real thing I saw in my dreams. Seemed the most solid.

  Cameron raised his palm and gestured at the wall with a ‘Live Long and Prosper’. Boils formed on the wall and the membranes split with a sickening slurp. A computer monitor emerged from the wound.

  “So what happens if I throw up the devil horns?”

  “A phone rings in Hell.” Cameron clicked through the computer interface on the screen that looked suspiciously like Macintosh with his fingers. A map of space came up on the screen. Planets and stars were grayed out, but colorful symbols were splotched all over the universe. Using his finger as a stylus, he drew a path connecting the esoteric sigils.

  “That Sci-Fi crap you watch dubs the Astral as Hyperspace. A Hyperspace Drive does travel by the Astral passing through connected thoughts and ideas. I do it all manually, and it’s far more efficient if you kn
ow what you are doing.”

  The monitor displayed an unusual starship orbiting a puke green planet. The ship was surprisingly yonic in shape. Yonic? That’s the polar opposite of phallic. I don’t want to go into how, but you could guess how the ships docked.

  This was our destination: the museum starship Asterix.

  3

  “I feel like Hunter S. Thompson,” I said while looking at the fat green creatures covered in boils and ties mingling around the bar. “Though these lizards are pretty calm after getting their booze.”

  “The Draco,” Cameron corrected. “They are the bureaucrats of the stars, and the administrators of this museum. The starship is orbiting their home world Baa for repairs and to change shifts for the next year.”

  “Don’t you think you might be a tad bit conspicuous being the notorious Pirate King and all while the museum is closed?”

  “The Draco are far more anal than even you, and would never, ever close the museum short of an emergency. It passes through war zones on a regular basis all the while charging full admission. Their spiritual aptitude is worse off than most Earthlings; I’ve made it so they’d never notice me as anything unusual. Or you at all.”

  Cameron took a sip of his deep space equivalent of rum and coke.

  “So what exactly do you need me for again?”

  “Well most people that end up here on the Astral are mathematicians, scientists, and all purpose dorks,” Cameron said, “I’m the exception. I’m not technically inclined at all. What you were supposed to do was figure out one of the tour computers for me. Now we have to find one of these guys that can speak something like English.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do about the computers being down?”

  “Well, you fix it, computer guy.”