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Roy heard a howl followed by a cackle off in the distance from where he entered the village—whether it was man or beast, he wasn’t sure.  He froze and held his breath momentarily to listen.  After a few seconds of silence, his ears detected the sound of snapping wood.  Connecting the origins of the noises, he could tell that whatever was out there had followed him to the village, but had strayed from his path soon after.  Roy gave whatever it was the benefit of the doubt, drawing the conclusion that the first noise was intentional and the second noise was made by mistake.  He knew it wouldn’t be long before the noise-makers made their move.

 

The night following the execution at the village crossroads, while the rest of the village was sound asleep, two unexpected visitors arrived at the door of Hadley’s cabin. 

The rumble of the knocking sent a tremor through the walls invading Roy’s receding consciousness.   As the front door opened, the exchange of air pressure jarred Roy’s bedroom door open a sliver, and a beam of candle glow shot through the moonlit blue of his room and into his eyes—this was a beckoning he couldn’t refuse—he crept towards his bedroom door and stood silently.

            From the darkness, Roy watched as his father greeted Councilman Rojj Bannajan and Cleric Harold Westerend with cold discontent.  Their company didn’t last long, and whatever was discussed was done so with low voices and discretion, with the odd exception of the cleric blessing the walls of the cabin and Bannajan checking the windows every few minutes.  As the two men set back out into the night, Hadley locked the door and glanced to his son’s bedroom with what Roy felt was direct and knowing eye-contact.  As his father snuffed out the lights, Roy slipped back into bed.

            Roy was awakened the next morning by his father calling to him from the sitting quarters.  The sky outside was as still and dark as it was when Roy fell asleep the night before.  This was an unusual break from Roy’s typical morning routine, and he knew right then that it had something to do with the company from the night before. 

            Roy ate breakfast as he watched his father clean a pair of long rifles along with his hunting pistol, which until then, still harbored a few dried drops of Clifford Farelhorn’s blood.  To Roy, it looked as if his father had finally decided to bring Roy along on his daily hunt—that was until the old man placed a small security trunk in front of Roy’s plate, opened the lid, and revealed a rolled sash of leather that Roy recognized with a dumbfounded expression on his face.  It was because of this heavy roll of leather that Roy’s father hunted alone, Roy thought.  It was because of the row of blackened hunting daggers slotted in their individual sheaths, rolled in the confines of this leather sash, that Roy had lost his hunting privileges.

            A few years earlier, around the time of that year’s first snow, while hunting with his father Roy exhibited his knife throwing technique, a skill that he had secretly developed using the sash of throwing knives, in hopes of awing his otherwise unimpressed father.  Roy seized the opportunity to draw a knife from his coat when he noticed a lone stag aloof and grazing on whatever it could find on a patch of low tree branches.  If he couldn’t blame the throw on the cold, he would’ve blamed it on his father’s presence—Roy’s throw was off even before his release, catching the target in its left hoof and not between its left eye and left ear, as intended.  The look on his old man’s face was one that Roy would never want to relive.  To Roy’s surprise, but not so much to his father’s, the stag fell to the ground head first, as if the knife had found its intended target.  Immediately upon hitting the ground, the animal’s body bubbled, bloated, and hardened into a gray cocoon before chunks of the dead animal cracked, crumbled, and trickled away into the wind.

            “We’re not hunting today, are we, father?” Roy asked before taking the last bite of his breakfast.

            “No, son,” The old giant replied.

            “Is this anything to do with Bannajan and Cleric Westerend coming over last night?” Roy continued to probe for answers.

            “So, you were awake.” Roy’s father said as he fixed the tie on his supply bag, “What did you hear?”

            “Nothing,” Roy replied, “I didn’t hear much.  Was it about yesterday?”

            “Yes, it was.” His father answered.

            Suddenly it all became clear to Roy; the execution, last night’s visit, the guns, the knives—no doubt, the knives.  They were going hunting, in fact, just not in the traditional sense that a man hunts for food.  There were more of them out there like Clifford Farelhorn—more empty, soulless ghouls.

            “Why did they ask you to do this?”  Roy stiffened in his chair.

            “Did you hear us, or not?” The old man chuckled to himself, knowing that his son was not a fool. “In times like these, we do what we’re told, ‘less you want to keep looking on for another welcoming place to live.”

            Roy’s father finished securing the last of his equipment and turned to his son, who was still sitting at the table in his pajamas.

“Consider today a history lesson.”  The old giant said with an unusually hollow tone, “Now, get ready.  I’ll be waiting outside, getting the motor ready.”

           

 

The chemical fire lit the irritated pink in Roy’s eyes to a dull orange.  There wasn’t much damage as far as he could see—a few red lumps of veins here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary.  He tucked the broken piece of glass under his arm, and scooped a handful of coarse dirt up from the ground with his good hand.  He then began to grind the dried blood from his face with the rocky earth.  It was better this way than with your clothing, his father once told him, let the soil mask the scent of your wounds.  And even though the red mess had already embedded itself into most of the fabric on his body, blood is blood, and to a hungry beast, blood is smell.  He recited the words of his father with his mouth closed.

 

            The butcher handed Rojj Bannajan the meat cleaver.  As Bannajan lifted the cleaver over his head, the ghoulish mutant broke into hysteric convulsions; howling, jerking his head back and forth, slapping his ears onto his shoulders, grinding and punching his fists into the ground with arrhythmic percussion.  Councilman Bannajan barked a slurred order through his iron mask and motioned for the butcher to secure Farelhorn’s head.  The butcher refused with an awkward grimace, and turned his chin away and downwards into his chest.  Bannajan then looked to the blacksmith’s apprentice, but the man was one step ahead of the butcher and had already exited the area.  Abandoned by his cohorts, Bannajan hung his head and moved into position, avoiding eye contact with Farelhorn.  The wild emotion that Bannajan had lost out on from breaking vision with Farelhorn was replaced with the sobbing and contorted red faces of the children in the front row.  A blunt snap was heard with one of Farelhorn’s punches to the ground, and with the very next blow from the same hand, his forearm twisted, bent, and folded underneath the elbow.  What would’ve depleted the spirit of any decent man, neglected to even scratch the surface of Clifford’s threshold for pain, and with the following punch, bone ripped through the skin of his forearm, leaving the appendage in a mangled ‘T’ shape. 

            The shouts and cries turned to cautious whispering as many of the people from the front row, including the children, made their way far from the crossroads, leaving the sordid chorus of Clifford Farelhorn’s retching and pounding to replace the vacated ambiance.  Councilman Bannajan stood with false composure, and that was all that he could manage.  Roy heard a feint blubbering echo from underneath the man’s iron mask, and knew very well that Bannajan’s will was at its last drop. 

            After standing quiet for a moment, finally an idea; Bannajan glanced across the top of the crowd until his eyes found what they were looking for, and with that, Roy’s attention was directed to his father who was standing near the back of the crowd, and barely noticeable in the corner of his left eye.  The old giant shot his son a stone glare, and with a slight shift of his neck and eyes, urged his son to leave.  Roy returned the stone glare, and didn’t move a muscle.

            By now, the remaining eyes in the crowd followed Bannajan’s attention, and, for the very first time, the villagers failed not to notice Hadley, they didn’t pretend to forget who he was.  The invisible elephant in the crowd was now very evident, and now very much needed to carry through with what he was widely known for.

            The out-of-character and disobedient behavior of his son, followed by the unwanted requisition from the crowd and village councilman to carry out a public execution, set Hadley’s blood to fire.  His eyes popped, his jowls pulled back, and he felt a sharp crack in his grinding teeth.  His true face was revealed, and everyone was to blame.  Hadley looked the crowd over with a blazing hatred, suggesting that after Clifford Farelhorn’s execution, each and every one of the villagers in the crowd would be next.  He shoved those to the ground who failed to remove themselves from his path as he made his way to the front row of the crowd, but before entering center stage, he stopped.  Standing side by side with Roy, Hadley gave his son one last silent warning.

            “I’m not leaving,” Roy said.  “I’m not going home.”

            Words were not in reach for the man whose rage could burn holes in steel.  The thought of lunging at his son and beating him senseless immediately crossed Hadley’s mind, but his anger towards the crowd remained stronger and secure at the forefront of his mind, and perhaps this defiant milestone in Roy’s life called for him to witness this execution as a sort of passage further into manhood.  Hadley continued onward until his feet reached Clifford Farelhorn’s knees.

             Hadley looked down past his chest and stomach, and onto the ghoul that had once been the man Clifford Farelhorn.  The demon jerked its head upward, and pulled his body to a crippled stance.  Upon meeting Hadley’s face, Clifford inhaled, and from the depths of his soul, screamed with a terrified pitch that crackled and multiplied itself several times over in the eardrums of every warm blooded body at the crossroads.  Without hesitation, Hadley pulled out a thick-barreled hunting pistol from underneath his jacket, buried the muzzle into the ghoul’s forehead, and pulled the trigger, detonating a missile of fire and smoke out through the back of Clifford’s bald head.  Farelhorn’s lifeless body fell, landing hard on its knees.  Before the body was able to fall flat onto the ground, Hadley gripped the crown of Farelhorn’s empty skull with his free hand, dropped his hunting pistol, and pulled out yet a second weapon—a stout blade with the thick weight of a meat cleaver, and the elegant curvature of a hay-sickle.  Raising Farelhorn’s body up with one hand, Hadley made a clean slice a few inches underneath the chin.  The body then fell to the ground for the very last time, and the head remained in the old giant’s hand.

            Hadley lumbered past Bannajan.  He didn’t make eye-contact, he didn’t say a word.  He dropped Clifford Farelhorn’s empy skull at the councilman’s feet without breaking stride.  Before exiting the crowd he turned to Roy, and with a calming temper, he lobbed his blade into the ground in front of his son. 

            Roy spent the rest of the day with Sophia Rose, on a hilltop—away from view of the village—examining his father’s blade.

 

 

 

A short while into his walk through the tunnel of ash, he came upon a small fire that smelled of sulfur and burning hair.  The wet stain on the ground beneath the fire suggested alchemy, the cause was most likely human, and after serious thought Roy felt comforted by this assumption.  For the first time since the previous night he could see the red on his clothing.  Beneath the soaked cloth on what he once considered to be his strong arm, he thought of the dangling sinews and crushed bone that made up the length between his wrist and his elbow.  By looking at the bandage alone, it was apparent that his forearm had lost over half of its mass.  He lifted a piece of glass up from the ground and polished away as much char as he needed to examine his face.  He peered down through the bottom opening of his scarf which sat low on his forehead protecting his eyes from the polluted air.  His mouth, chin, and nose were messy with crusted red.  He widened his lips and grinded his teeth.  The inside of his mouth was dark and raw.  His gums were torn in abnormal places.  White chunks of flesh were still wedged in his teeth.  This place was once the village crossroads.

 

Roy woke up to the sound of blunt iron on wood—the front door.

“Roy Hadley!  Up!  C’mon, quick!”  A girl’s excited shout was muffled by the timber walls of the cabin but still comprehensible, let alone the person behind the voice was motivation enough for Roy to respond promptly.

            “Comin’!”  

He wasn’t exactly disorientated from his sleep but still came up short for better words.  The butterflies in his stomach were flushed from his lungs as he scrambled to find the right kind of clothing, and vaulted out the front door.  Immediately upon exiting his home wild arms lunged at him from the corner of his eyes, rocking his balance, the smell of lilac and the softness of lips pressed against his face.  This was more than Roy had expected.  Although not as outwardly intimate as Roy had truly wanted, it was flirtation in progress and he felt certain exclusivity from the kiss.  

“Did I scare you?”  She asked.

“Umm...  No, I had it coming,” Roy said with more confidence than he felt he should have.

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and once again, Roy felt the underlying awkwardness that he had always felt when around the girl.  This was an exclusivity he unwillingly reserved only for her, for Sophia Rose.  

Her arms slid down from around his shoulders and one of her hands caught one of his.  She began running, and with that, they were off towards the village crossroads.

Anchored in the center of the village, the location served as idyllic real estate for the daily market.  The concept of holding a market at the intersection of two major highways was based on the idea that it would bring in outside money from the pockets of desperate travelers and road merchants.  The chance of this outside money reaching the village died the very same way many travelers had died in highway robberies and wolf attacks several miles outside of the village, other travelers knew to stay away from these parts if it meant setting up camp for a night.  All the same, the crossroads was located in a place of convenience for most villagers.  Those on the outskirts had to travel a mile at the most, and most traveled by mount or small motor.  That morning, Roy and Sophia Rose traveled the distance by foot.  

As was the case with every morning, most of the villagers were gathered at the crossroads in the midst of their daily routines, or so it appeared in the forefront.  Off in the distance, there was a crowd of no particular distinction that seemed to be growing with each person passing by.

“Over there,” Sophia Rose said without breaking stride. “I think they’re gonna kill ‘em.”

“Who?” Roy demanded.  Thoughts of a bounty-hungry mob, and his father awaiting judgment crossed Roy’s mind until he spotted the old giant entering the market grounds from the hills, returning from his daily hunt.  Roy’s next thought was to let go of Sophia Rose’s hand, but she didn’t let go of his.

“Jodiya’s father,” Sophia Rose let on. “He’s rabid, and bloody.  They think he killed somebody.”

The audience was growing by the second, people were squished together back to gut, but somehow for Sophia Rose’s small body, trudging a pathway to the main attraction was an effortless task.  Sure enough, it was Jodiya’s father, Clifford Farelhorn, the village accountant, married, and father of three.  For Roy, the absence of Clifford’s children and a wife screaming for his release was a fair explanation for the accountant’s given situation.  

Clifford Farelhorn’s head was buried between his knees, and his body was shaking with sickness.  His trembling wrists were braced in iron shackles from which extended a rotten length of rope tied to a hitching post.  The color of the man’s skin, which was olive-tan only weeks ago, was now drained of its saturation and thickness, and now littered with massive boils and purple veins.  Roy couldn’t help noticing the amount of hair Clifford had lost since he had last seen the man, and with that, the accountant continued slapping and raking his scalp, pulling at what little he had left.  To Roy, it didn’t look like Farelhorn at all, but as if some patchy-headed mutant had stolen Farelhorn’s trademark rich man’s clothing, and had taken it upon himself to pull his misshapen head clean off in front of an eager crowd.

The crowed parted across from Roy and Sophia Rose. The blacksmith’s apprentice and the butcher, both men of enormous stature, made their way through the crowd, and all eyes were immediately upon them.  The blacksmith’s apprentice carried with him a spool of heavy iron chains, and with the butcher, the man’s heaviest meat cleaver.  A third wide-framed man arrived soon after; to conceal his identity he wore a rusted metal facemask and a leather apron stained with grease and blood.  It was evident to most villagers, including Roy, by the third man’s distinct pear shape and the dark skin exposed by rolled-up sleeves, that it was none other than Rojj Bannajan, second village councilman to the elder.  With him, Councilman Bannajan carried an ominous chopping log.  It now seemed clear and simple that the place where people tied their mounts and livestock to wait, eat, and shit would be the last place on earth that Clifford Farelhorn’s living flesh would ever touch.  

            As soon as Farelhorn's hands and waist were secured with the iron chains, Bannajan moved in with his chopping log, courtiously positioned himself at Farelhorn’s side, dropped the log at Farelhorn’s knees, and lifted the guilty man’s head up for the crowd’s final testimony.  

Cheers and heckles revolted into panic and disgust.  Many of the people at the front of the commotion turned their heads and blasted their nausea onto the feet of those immediately behind them, those who didn’t lose it were fortunate enough to swallow it back down, Roy was the unyielding exception.  Sophia Rose immediately pulled Roy’s arm to leave, but Roy didn’t give, he stood as stone, and so Sophia Rose let go of Roy’s hand and locked her eyes dead down at her soiled shoes.  Roy couldn’t help but to stay, something inside of him felt a certain warmth and clarity.  In what others in the crowd saw as the carnage of Farelhorn’s torn and ruptured eye sockets, Roy felt a burst of adrenaline.  In the black iron horns bleeding from Farelhorn’s face and forehead, Roy felt in control.  In the crusted blood on Farelhorn’s mouth, chin, and nose, Roy felt an eerie familiarity.

 

The ashes from the fires, carried skyward by the wind, have turned to snow as ash tends to do.  Boards, beams, shingles, and furniture lay a blanket of white and gray in the places where they once resided.  With every five paces twenty feet of vision is lost, and with every twenty feet awaits the same fate for the footprints left behind.  And now only one set of footprints exists here in the corridor of gray that was once the farming village of…  What does it matter?  The town that once was, will never return.  The current population: zero.  The chance somebody will hear of its whereabouts and dream of rebuilding here: zero.  The later was the very reason why Hadley and his son decided to stay for a year plus two months in the first place, and let me assure you there are none others like the two.  Their past in itself is yet another tale of ashes and depleted populations.  Where once the farming village existed now serves as a horrific memory for the one man passing through.

 

Some of the villagers called him Roy, and for some others, Hadley’s son.  They called Hadley by his last name because they didn’t know his first.  He never said it out loud, nor did his son.  By asking Hadley his first name one would require to look Hadley dead in his eyes.  To look Hadley in the eyes meant to recognize who Hadley was, and nobody in their right mind wanted the burden that followed.  Roy Hadley was a less abrasive version of his old man but not by far off.  By looking at photographs of Roy and his father side-by-side one could easily lead to the assumption that the two were different versions of the same man separated by some forty years of age. 

 

It was Roy’s father who decided to restart their lives in this village.  The village didn’t exist on most maps of the region where it was located, and for a good reason.  Stories about the demonic Oaurin tribes terrorized the surrounding lands for nearly a thousand years.  Stories of kidnappings, ritualistic killings, and the consumption of human flesh were rampant and seemed to only increase in numbers as the years went by, and no matter where the stories ended they always began in this uncharted farming village.  Yet these tales never discouraged the ignorant or those with distaste for religion and lore from finding refuge here, neither of said traits could be attached to Hadley and his son.

 

It was only a year into their stay when Roy and his father were cornered into living key roles in the most notorious Oaurin legend to date. 

(end of part one)

 

They weren’t letting up no matter how much I told them to stop.   Their persistence combined with the tightness in my lungs triggered something inevitable. 

 

I took the smaller guy by the front of his neck and pushed him backwards.  He tripped on his own feet with a playful in-character rhythm.  I started hammering my fists down on the second one’s face and shoulders until he lost balance, and that’s when I noticed the guy that I hit with my car moving towards me while using my car to keep his bearing.  He looked pretty rough.  The kind of rough that suggested he shouldn’t be standing let alone moving at the pace he was.  I reached my hand out to him and in return he smacked me on the side of my face as he threw himself at me.  He wasn’t as aggressive as his two friends, who were then regrouping to their feet, so I directed his staggered momentum towards his friends while giving him a solid shove, with my foot, to his lower back.  His neck snapped back from the shove, the back of his head slapped between his shoulder blades.  Killing a person with a car is one thing, accidentally, but in a fight during a fucked-up prank where my life wasn’t in immediate danger… 

 

Belly down, in a tangled mass, dead, and more ghoul than what I first gave him credit for, his head cocked back like a ready PEZ dispenser, a chiropractor’s worst nightmare, a circus contortionist’s wet dream.  He glared at me with wild eyes, his nose crinkled and his mouth snarled as if to carry into a violent sneeze.  The sound of his exhale sent a spike into my chest and knees.  What I heard was from somewhere beyond our world and beyond any reasonable understanding.  Deep down I knew what I heard was a rally cry for the dead to awaken.

 

His friends looked up at me with the same hopelessness that their dead-twice-over friend did before my car slammed into him.  At this time my two attackers were revealed more clearly to me by peripheral glow of my car’s headlights.  Attacker number one, if I could put them in order, had blood painted over one eye and a wet rip leading from that same eye and up his forehead.  Attacker number two was yet another tribute to anatomical oddities.  I felt my calves pinch and coil and that organ-puking urge came over me once again.  This wasn’t special effects.  In the place where his chin and bottom lower teeth should’ve been his tongue squirmed and curled like an earthworm on a hook, and below his jaw protruded bleeding tubes of what looked like uncut calamari.  During the first assault I wasn’t entirely certain but it was now clear that from the base of his neck I heard him breathing.  The two shuffled towards me, over their somewhat headless friend, not minding his well-being, and all the while thirsting to make me suffer dearly for what I had done.  Fight stepped aside for flight, and I scrambled to my car without hesitation.

 

As I jumped into the driver’s seat I swear I saw a three or four more coming down the hill on the passenger side.  I took the drive home with the same kind of caution as driving through low or no visibility conditions.  I saw a few homes on fire, cars whizzed at me and around me.  I heard the occasional crash and violent popping noises, but nothing in terms of emergency sirens.  By the time I pulled into my driveway the tornado sirens began to wail.  They’ve been sounding ever since, although now occasionally crackling and almost always full of static.  I’m not entirely sure, it may be that my ears are coming to their end.

 

I’m now sitting in my bathroom, the only room away from any windows, the only room with a trail of extension chords leading to it.  I didn’t have the time or resources to board my house up.  I’ve been checking the news sites every 30 minutes.  There hasn’t been anything for six hours now.  I found a few internet forums that have been keeping up to date by the minute.  One of the forums has a few local survivors that are planning on making a run for it to northern Wisconsin; somebody on there has a relative that just finished a medieval style castle up north. 

 

My power has been going off and on, and my phone line was dead for a few hours one day.  I doubt it was fixed by the phone company.  Everybody I know is dead.  It’s just me and my cat.  Is there anybody out there?

END

****And that was my first zombie journal entry.  I plan on writing a few more in the next few weeks involving different perspecitves and encourage others to write about their own "experiences".*****

 

 

Strange thing the other night… I hit somebody with my car.  I swear I did…

 

As some of you may know, my car is shit...  The battery acts up, and my headlights are often too dim to see shit.  When my car ran into the guy, my lights were bright enough that I saw his eyes.  I wasn’t going that fast.  I was in a 35 MPH zone, and I know I wasn’t speeding, I just don’t believe in the benefits of going fast.  He didn’t make eye contact with me but there’s no doubt in my mind he saw my car.  I’m guessing he was drunk or stoned, maybe even suicidal.  I only saw his face for a second, but his eyes were what I remembered the most.  He didn’t look like he was there in the moment, definitely not aware.

 

Anyways, he was hit pretty hard, and the hood of my car has a huge crater dent in it, not to mention the blood crusted on my license plate. 
 

When I was getting out of my car, just as I brought my head up, two other guys jumped at me out of nowhere.  I felt my insides wanting to jump up though my throat.  My mind was already racing from hitting somebody.  I seriously wanted to vomit my insides from the added panic.  I always thought I would shine in a moment like this and seriously throw down, but all I managed to do was flail and swat at them as I screamed and cried.  I really thought I was going to die.  I thought the guy I hit was some fuck-stain trying to get me to stop my car so his thug asshole friends could rob and probably murder me. 

 

When I collected myself between blows I came to realize that they weren’t hitting me much at all, more like the same slaps I was giving them and the occasional tug and push to keep me against the car.  It’s like they were mocking my reaction.  I felt a slick wetness on my fingers and I’ve never been able to smell blood that far away from my nose before, but that’s what it was.  The blood combined with the fact that this attack was starting to seem a bit on the playful side made me feel like I was being fucked around with –A really shitty and dangerous Halloween prank.

 

(END OF PART ONE)

So I just finished my fifth game board RPG map this year, my third map painted and constructed from scratch.  I'm not sure if I'm able to give any information about the name of the game, but if it's like any other game that I've done it should be on store shelves in about four to six months.  Now why do I care to write about this?  I mean, it's not a plug of any sorts.  You can't plug something if you're sworn to keep quiet about it.  And painting this map is not a milestone in my career, it was a small 300 dollar project that I put 800 dollars worth of patience and skill into, and I'm proud of the outcome.  

What I want to single out with this journal entry is what it means to finish a project, be it one part in a series such as this map or something final, pen up and book closed.  And I'm talking finished as in, I just did.  I finished this map and without getting out of my seat I started writing, and between this paragraph and the last, I sent an email to the Art Director at FFG that it's good to go on my end.  The file is loaded and ready for review.

Recently, the thought of finishing a project or illustration has carried some weight with it.  Now that it’s finished, do I like it?  Will it meet standards?  It's not as great as my greatest, but where do I rate it?  Usually when I finish an illustration, I wait on it over night.  I sleep on it, letting my mind clear.  That way, the next morning I can wake up and either puke in horror of my mistakes (usually caused by an error of judgment due to overworking myself) or give the final product a reassured smile before sending it off to the client.

When the client receives the illustration it goes on from there one of two ways; it gets the nod and I never touch the work again or, back to the digital canvas for touchups, additions, subtractions, whatever.  Sometimes requested touchups are completely unnecessary, or will worsen the artwork on occasion (it's easy to tell this before hand), and other times they're a life saver, making you grateful that there's another set of eyes to watch your back. 

And so I wait...

I suppose I should get right to it and write a marathon for my first entry, but if I set the bar too high, chances are I'll fall below my own expectations.  So I'll start this one off with these two sentences and pray to my own free will that I' do more next entry.