5am see's me driving along the highway into a majestic sunrise, blazing australian red and scarlet slashes across the huge sky, there's nothing quite like it, a powerful ancient landscape meets the glory of dawn. i'm contemplating my new life as some sort of team co ordinator type, responsibility pours into me like a self important beurocrat from a dostoyevsky novel. 
im split into various parts, my many selves operating a juggling routine. one fights a war far away. he's battle worn now, waiting for the results, he's cynical and jaded, ready to die. 
as i turn of the highway a spectacular rainbow shoots up into the stratosphere. it's biblical in it's architecture, gods promise...

the next morning the threat of storm havoc is in the atmosphere, as i drive towards terrible beach at 6am. i scan the waters, messy choppy surf, strange clouds forming, anarchic patterns herald chaos. i take a chance before deluge. i swim out in the ice water, it's shark country. the conditions perfect for attack but i figure i'm okay out here, i'd be so numb from cold i wouldn't feel anything anyway.

no waves this morning, it's far to random but i swim around and get wet, a few casual dog walkers and joggers look out at me a lone figure in the icy chill of the tasman sea. later i'm drinking a coffee dripping wet, being warmed by a friendly waitress from spain and the aspect of me that is presented is a ghost like phantom. i try to bring myself back together but i need time and some closure on a few fronts, soon i tell myself, soon.  

i wanted to write about the tv show i watch for a long time, i watch it on blu ray as i bingo watch the whole season without adverts and having to wait for another episode and believe me the tension and drama is so acute a week is just to far away.
i like a lot of series at the moment, orange s the new black, true detective, game of thrones, black sails but there is one show i should hate by all accounts, a tv series on pitch i would really avoid yet it has come to be one of the best shows i have ever seen and it's called, the walking dead.
i will not spoil it for you but it's not what you think it will be. philosophically it's the opposite of star trek, a show about hope. it's about no hope, it's about hell upon earth, it's horror and it's an utterly devastating experience to put yourself through. yet for some strange reason it is my fave show, possibly  because it's confronting. each series and there have been six now, becomes more and more captivating and it took me the two series before i really became hooked upon it's greatness. you as a viewer are made demands upon, you have to follow uncomfortable narratives, you have to be prepared to invest in characters you love whom come to do disgusting things you hate, you have to understand the unimaginable circumstances they are in, you have to cling to them and learn to let them go. this is a tv show they got right, it's a rare thing where horror works. the zombie apocalypse has always been a story that opens a pseudo political window into culture. the dawn of the dead was a brilliant film about consumerism, but here the zombies are nowhere near the threat as the survivors are. the zombies don't have to survive, they are free from all emotional suffering, pain and seem to just be functioning on auto pilot while the survivors are forced into transformation by such extremes. they loose their humanity and the walking dead are the living. 
there's enough humour to just keep you going but it's rare. there's enough beauty to fix you to what's important and the narrative is unpredictable and yet elusive. all we know is no matter what these characters go through it goes from worse to worse. 
i just finished watching the harrowing conclusion to series six, man it was sobering. it was indeed horrific and awful and made me feel sickened but i love some of those characters enough to keep watching. i've never seen a show that throws up so much philosophical stuff in your face, keeps you petrified and wanting more. the walking dead.

the wind picks up, shoots through mission control blowing up some paperworks and suddenly my lounge is filled with giant confetti. i scamper around picking them up, it's the old novel i was working on, now all out of sequence, probably a lot better. i should finish that one. 
i sip my coffee and stand looking upon the garden, filled with parrots, kookaburras and wrens. not a fucking bush turkey in sight thankfully. i rather be a bird man than a turkey right?
i feel close to packing in my job, i can feel the anger and frustration simmering away deep down inside my guts. i feel the absolute futility of it. i notified a corruption. now the person is attacking me and setting me up. i warned them this would happen i asked for protection and what i got was a circus. 
i could jump ship easy, there are people calling me but it does go against all principle. 
i'll fight this battle. i'll take my nemesis down, he's a weak petty dumb drone of a man, a bully and a thug. i have the support of the team but not the management absurdly. the management are a ridiculous group of paper pushers, it does make me laugh at their attempts to manage with blue sky thinking bullshit. hey australia it didn't work for tony fucking blair how do you think it's going to work for you. this type of work requires acute skills not dreamy ambience. ah well the pistols are drawn, i am in the sights of a psychopath  but he fires blanks whereas i have a nuke in waiting.

how i fucked fate and ate my own karma
by
captain mission

winter 2017 found me holed up in the temple of anissa, screaming snow had sealed me from any chance of leaving until the season changed and spring began melting the ice.
the snow was fierce, i hated it. blizzard whiteout, that snow blindness was eating up hope. the fucking irony was i only turned up for an overnight stay, just to grab some artefact for the bastards at the black museum. 
the pilot said, 'sure mission, we will be in and out, those monks hate visitors.'
even then 1000ft above the mountains in unimaginable turbulence i knew we were never quite going to make it. this was a one way trip. i wished the pilot would shut the fuck up and focus on the big black cloud looming over us, but instead he just chatted away gibbering about some girl he had fucked in chicago. 
i was clutching the chute and trying not to throw up when the storm swallowed us up.
i don't know what happened to the pilot, no doubt he faced death blabbering about his one night stand. me i clutched what i thought was the chute and fell out from the hatch at the mercy of the renegade winds. only the chute was an inflatable raft. somehow as i was tossed around i pulled a cord and it inflated, so consequently when i hit the snow at the side of the mountain i not only had a soft landing i had a sledge that carried me down until i sailed over an edge, once again glided through hard falling whiteout and landed in the grounds of the forbidden temple. the raft stopped at the feet of the holy one. i know this now because he told me, but at the time i couldn't see anything except whiteness. no doubt the raft had saved my life. i was laying flat upon my back and oriented myself so i was on all fours crawling on solid ground until one of my hands felt what appeared to be a foot. 
the holy one grabbed my arm and led me inside.
they fed me hot teas and herbs, gave me some strange paste to eat. they bathed me and took care of the cuts and abrasions. i think i must have broken a rib as my chest hurt with every breath, so i lay down and slept for a thousand years.
later i found out i was in anissa, at least the pilot had got me here i thought wondering what had become of him. last time i saw him he was falling out the front of the aircraft sucked up into the storm.
i asked the monk who was sitting near me. he said in broken english, 'no one else here. only you.'
the holy one made certain i was healed, sure i could have used some painkillers but they did a good job with their plants brews and tibetan bowl sound baths. i could feel the vibrations in my broken rib, my organs, and blood vessels.
no-one knew the age of the holy one, he only made an appearance once a day, he would drink tea and talk to some people then he would retreat to his rooms. from the monks i came to understand he was ancient, a man who had transcended space and time, his name was lam they told me, but additional information was not forthcoming.
gradually as my vision was restored i caught glimpses of lam, he was a child, dressed in robes. it was hard to make out details on his face but his eyes were bright and far to big.
my restoration was due to one monk who went by the name of iggy pop. i don't quite know how he adopted iggy's name but it was quite amusing. he would often hum iggy pop tunes to me under his breath and as my strength returned i would join him and sing the words. our fave was 'neighbourhood threat' but we did good harmonies on 'turn blue.'
iggy or monk pop as i liked to call him poured me a tea, and i asked him about the holy one, dali lam.
'what's that cat's story man. he's tiny, a dwarf or something?'
'not dwarf,' monk pop shook his head, 'he is the holy one.'
although i attempted to get more information about dali lam monk pop kept suspiciously quiet.
later i asked monk pop about the artefact and pulled out the papers from my jacket pocket. 
monk pop looked at me seriously, 'you know what this is?' he asked all seriously.
'fuck, it's just a piece of paper man, it don't mean nothing. just burn it for all i care.'
he looked at me curiously.
'i don't care. the black museum can go fuck themselves. cutthroats and gangsters anyway, i hear they are into some weird voodoo and black magick shit. sending me out here in the middle of nowhere. fuck them all.'
the winter was severe. it froze everything except my blood. my blood seemed to burn with an intensity i had never felt. i don't know if it was the high altitude or the tea but i felt good, warm with an inner glow and alert. monk pop gave me some lessons on meditation and i took to it well. he gave me mantras and chants that i practiced and found offered me insights into not just my own thought processes but some of these sounds had an effect upon my exterior world. once i found myself in a deep chant, a vibration so powerful when i opened my eyes and found i was sitting cross legged about an inch from the floor.
another meditation took me back through time and i saw myself being born. only i was not just watching myself, i was experiencing the whole process. the journey out from my mothers womb. i saw past lives, rebirths and deaths, all played out like an immersive film, but as real as it gets.
monk pop was surprised at how quickly i was learning all these techniques, he was also encouraging, he took me down to the library and showed me a collection of hand written parchments. some were ancient, most were even older.
unfortunately i could not read or understand the language, sanskrit, but other parchments were covered in drawings and symbols i took to be astrological. one used the motif of dragons and i was particularly drawn to a picture that looked a lot like the earth from space surrounded by a black dragon. not only was it beautiful and intricate but it seemed powerful and significant.
monk pop said it was magick and symbolised when and how magic came to earth.
eons ago earth was a beautiful paradise, an eden of lush life forms, rich and diverse. all at peace, everything in harmony. but then the red dragon came to earth from space. it made fire and burnt all things of beauty causing chaos and fear. then as the scorched earth clung to life the white dragon came and ate the red dragon and life once more bloomed in harmony. but eons later the last dragon, the black dragon came. but it was so black no one could see it, only feel it. the great beast wrapped itself inside the earth and slept, but it's power radiated out and gave the earth its magick.'
impressive story, groovy pictures. i dug these lord of the tibetan ring tales. 
we ascended the spiral stairs and left the dragon charts alone. we sung 'china girl' as we climbed, not the bowie version.
gradually my anger at being stranded and abandoned, thanks black museum, abated i began to feel something else, a kind of stillness, a peace. in fact the bare stones and the snow and ice reduced everything down to basic fundamentals. sometimes when i ventured above ground i would gaze out at the mountains and their peaks, i would soak in the strange wilderness and let it overwhelm me, these places were said to have demons and i could see why, they were awe inspiring and powerful. nature at it's extreme untouched pristine and raw had a certain majesty. it was also dangerous and unpredictable and sometimes t's slow moving geology would move fast and swallow you up.
every afternoon i would catch glimpses of the holy one. he was so small, i couldn't quite get my head around it so one day i asked if i could meet him. 
monk pop smiled, his eyes alight, 'it is forbidden.'
what could i do, my hosts had saved my life, i could only respect their wishes.
monk pop had been in the temple since birth, he said the female monks live amongst them as equals but are often indistinguishable from the males, he pointed at two robed monks walking out of a doorway, 'see those are two females.'


routines became rituals, the day was spent in deep meditation and contemplation. but for me i seemed to be drawn down towards the library and the ancient dragons. i spent many nights down there in the candle lit chamber gazing through the many books, images and symbolic charts. despite my lack of language skills and any real idea on linguistics i did discover some patterns and similarities which i cross referenced with monk pop. 
he smiled, 'beyond my pay grade,' he whispered.
the dragons were representations of energies, forces that had come to earth or perhaps manifested upon earth to the decedents of these monks. the dragons were sexual in nature, it represented sexual energy or some form of powerful spiritual energy, it was complex and difficult to distinguish between the two but my intuition was focused and acute with ambiguity as all magick tends to be. the red being primordial in nature, one could call that raw sexual energy, wild and unbounded, the white being a more conscious controlled power perhaps love but the black dragon, the magical one was difficult to decipher in terms of magick.

under the forbidden temple was a vast network of catacombs, they sprawled out into the mountains and reached in all directions. monk pop had informed me most of the tunnels had been unexplored for generations and only dali lam really knew the complete network. he spoke of monks who had gone missing down there and never returned. 
sometimes i took myself along a corridor with a few candles and some string to guide me back but i never got very far, the candles burnt out, the string ran out or i just got spooked.

four months into the white out i was down in the library reading what may be an astrological or alchemical formula, but the chances are it could have been a recipe for cheesecake for all i really knew. however there were certain fascinating aspects to the diagram.
'it's certainly not a recipe for cheesecake captain mission.'
i turned around to see dali lam standing there alone. his face was concealed under a large hood but his eyes were clear and they were not quite human although somewhat asian in appearance they were elongated and blacker than anything i had ever seen. dali lam was an alien. a grey i guess if we must think in terms of classifications but whatever termanology alien was most accurate. his massive forehead now revealed as he pulled down the hood.
'yes, yes, i am not from here mission, please get over the shock and lets discuss philosophical matters.'
'i'm sorry, it is a slight shock. it's just i never once suspected you would be...er not from here.'
'not human, you mean.'
'yes, not human.'
he smiled, 'we are all made from stars.'
i nodded, at least that was fundamentally true. something we had in common. he moved towards me, and looked at the table where all the charts were laid out sprawled across the stone surface. his long fingers moved them around and into some sort of oblique cohesion. again he spoke without speaking, some sort of telepathic projection.
'you are curious and have decoded much of the meaning in these charts with intuition but the real clue was not the representation of the dragon but the one of...'
...'the earth.' i finished for him.
'yes, these charts are eons old, way before mankind had any knowledge of the curvature of the earth. you were focused on the mythical but the clue lay in the science. these maps are indeed seeped in mystery, they were drawn by myself when i came here but they are in my own symbolic terminology, from my world. the dragons represent an aeon and you are correct to identify this with energy. some cultures see them as consciousness but you saw a sexual force. where i come from we see everything in sexual energy, all life is sexual in nature and it is the primal force that drives all living things. the red dragon symbolises this indeed but you ascribe love to the white dragon, whereas for us it is control. love under will. love although is indeed a by- product for us it is a dimension we cannot comprehend in the way you humans do. for humans it is ever present and real. my race don't have anything quite like it but we wanted it, so we came here and attempted to understand it. we do understand it but it is not possible for us to feel it. our needs are different, you have love we have control over our sexual natures. my race left me here after i made contact with a human you may have heard of, his name is mr. crowley.'
'alister crowley. yes i know of him, i have read much of his works.' suddenly it dawned upon me, crowley had completed a ritual where he had made contact with an alien intelligence, lam. he had even drawn pictures of him and it was apparently the first ever drawing of a grey alien in western societies although anthropologists and archeologists had also found cultures that had cave representations of lam.
'how old are you?'
'in your time i am thousands and thousands of years old, in my time i am just old. i have seen much of your planet and it interests me, which is why i chose to stay. occasionally i made contact with individuals and groups, some human brains are able to comprehend me without to much trauma so i need to be somewhat selective when i are contact. i came at period i call a nexus event, the shift from one aeon into another. the man, crowley was a herald however he misunderstood much of my intentions and communications. 
'it was probably the smack.'
'no it was his ego, thus i relocated to a society with out the same ego issues.'
'anissa, the forbidden temple.'
'it's only forbidden due to its topography, but the monks are very well practiced in a certain form of vajrayana we call kalachakra.' 
he reached out with his long spindly fingers and spread a sheet of parchment over the dragons. slowly unfurling it for me.
'all the monks here are buddhas, they have attained enlightenment, escaped suffering and their rebirth into this particular life was chosen specifically for you captain mission.'
i laughed.
then i saw lam was serious. so i stopped and tried to look serious.
'lam, you better explain what you mean.'
he pointed to the image, it was wheel like, psychedelia  wheels within wheels beautiful colours, purples, deep crimsons and rich blue tones, bright vibrant reds, a psychedelic kaleidoscope and as i looked i saw two forms within the art, two beings joined as one. this was not obvious, it took a while to make out and sometimes my concentration lost focus but my meditation practice was helpful in connecting to the images.
another chart showed what was an intricate mandala, and as i gazed into the mandala it immediatly absorbed me completely, i was sucked into it. 
i could feel my brain changing, certain neural nets creating faster than my thoughts could travel and new pathways expanding into unknown areas. i saw time streams and an explosion of memory in reverse.  partly patterned on my meditations but mostly new flashes of insight and understanding. as i stood there i heard chanting, the monks had entered and had begun some sort of ritual. lam hovered before me, a faint glow around him. the cycles of time were split into two  spinning wheels, two godlike beings, the wheel of external time, the internal one and then through the mandala the extraordinary unknown one. forbidden to mortals this last cycle, it was the karmic 'mechanism' of rebirth. the monks were practicing a tantra called anuttarayoga tantra which were graded practices through levels of unknowable time cycles, potentiality. they had escaped time itself, they could reincarnate anywhere, in any point along a time continuum. lam had taught them how to travel through space and time, escape even death and rebirth. it was incredible, my head began to feel lighter and i noticed my body glowing. the mandela was a star i gravitated towards, all dimensions shifted away and although i could hear the chanting monks, i could not see anything but the shining path towards the huge mandala and the strange entities that they were made from. i opened my arms embracing death, life and the doorway between, my head flung back chest out as i passed through into the iris between worlds. 

you can never escape time only its limits, the confusion it brings, the instinctive attachment we develop to it that give birth to karma, that renders us at times mercy, also known as fate. as i passed through the kalacharkra lams voice whispered inside my own expanded mind, 'liberation is our only mission captain mission.'
i thought i heard monk pop singing 'here come's success' in the distance echoing in snow capped mountains... 
...born into snow blindness i felt the strange soft ice around me, the whiteout of a savage elemental force ripping into my skin and burning my cheeks. spots of red drips ran down my face, splattered onto the snow in immaculate explosions, a trail of debris behind me i laughed and howled and maybe i danced, for i remembered death is nothing but forgetting. 

in the strange frozen landscape i looked beyond the falling blizzard and up towards the forbidden temple of anissia.

later i woke up in the military hospital in the autonomous region, someone had hooked me up to a drip and as i sat up on the uncomfortable bed asking the nurse if she had heard of the forbidden temple. she insisted i was found in the wreckage of a light aircraft wandering around snow-blind and with a broken rib and a few cuts and bruises. she said there was no temple there and no one knew of anything like anissa. 
the black museum didn't take long to track me down, their men in black paid me a visit at the hostel i was staying at two weeks after the hospital had discharged me. we ordered drinks at a coffee shop yaks milk and freshly ground coffee, the men wore their back suits and trench coats. hid behind their wrap around ray bans as i explained i had not been able to locate anissa or the artefact. they looked at me and laughed, 'you're a fool mission, you are the artefact.'

we were strangers when we met, tangents crossing paths, we were travellers aligned, just for a short time, a moment within a moment. 
all those people we pass, the ones with the smiles and that look, deep in their eyes, all those people don't know what they know.
and now the sun rises quickly over a dead world
yes the light travels faster at the end game.
we eat the half dead fish from a dwindling ocean, our memories betray us. our thoughts no longer flow like gliders in clear air, but they manifest a friction. something abrasive in devolutionary processes of recall, memory becomes a voice external, a radio tuned into a ghostlike frequency. i know food, shelter and the strong impulses and urges towards sex and violence flood my frontal cortex, the reptile in me awakened. i am suspicious of these ghost thoughts, they have invaded my mind with their strange voices and images. 
i see the previous times where civilisation flourished and we built incredible structures and mastered the realms. i see how we left this land, like birds and then beyond. we reached the stars. i see the telecommunications, the way knowledge was available and instantaneous. long ago i saw how the species conquered it's domain. and now, we walk through that rotting history, derelict and almost a landscape unknown, it no longer seems important against the brute will of survival.
once there were crowds and hordes but now there are just dwindling numbers of us, a few tribes perhaps. my mate holds out her hand, she offers me some bird meat. her eyes look at mine and i look away as my mind floods with emotions i cannot understand. 
she turns away, i make a noise, it booms out, a cry or howl at the situation, limited in my understanding, i know nothing about language but in that sound is the pain and frustration of my species. it's lonely and sad and begging for forgiveness.
the female looks at me in sympathy but i only feel disgust. 

memory of a free festival - bowie

the deep fix meet in the city for springtime gathering, a brainstorm of ideas, some fall to the wind others scattered with the stars. old  mission flirts with a peroxide blonde in a skirt and red shoes, i'm feeling spring in my bones, and smile like the sun machine is coming down and we are going to have a party.
somehow we find ourselves in the park at the back of kings street, near the old trees and church. solar powered people recharge their cells, it's slightly surreal as we sit on a bench and enjoy the bliss.

the last few weeks i have been reading a new author i discovered called laird barron whom although had been writing for ages had only just fallen under my radar. it's not often i find someone who's work i devour and whom i respect completely as a talent that would influence me so greatly but i'm in awe of his work. from the short stories which are gripping and unpredictable to his novels, 'x's for eyes' and 'the croning.' such incredible storytelling i wrote the previous one in his honour. 
laird writes horror fiction but it's so much more than what horror conjours up in our minds, his stories are literate and intelligent while also being imaginative. his dialogue is witty and precise, while his characters are rich fascinating men, part hemmingway part detective noirish and hugely flawed. i really loved 'x's for eyes' and wished it would just go on for much longer but the collection of short stories i read 'the imago sequence' was fantastic as well. there's a complexity to his stories that keep you focused and a threat you never really see coming and when it does it stays with you for days. 
i still have a few books to read of his but it's so exciting to discover a writer i like that i feel the inclination to devour all his work. i love that feeling. and i love the way laird has changed my approach to writing as well.
that's a cool thing, when you feel a connection and it's not something that just imitates but it influences. 
'the croning' is a good starting point, a short novel but it will keep you awake at night and wow, is it good. i am not a lover of horror, william burroughs was horrific enough but i do like good writing and some horror is better than others. for example i liked william peter blatty's exorcist books, they were very clever and very well written. i loved thomas liggotti and dan simons whose book 'song of kali' reminded me a little of 'the croning' although i should add not in story or style but in the way it made me feel.
if i had to describe his work in a few lines i'd say it's about the idea that once you experience something other and by that i mean something completely illogical and irrational beyond normal reality, you can never un-know it.
anyway the story i wrote about hopti is a kinda a quick idea in homage to liard and a thank you for inspiring me.

hopti was an islander although he never said what island and i never asked. huge guy built like a fortress, always smiling and walked with a waddle like one of those toys that never falls over. i liked his gentle giant quality and his simple take on life. he never said anything complicated so conversation was reasonably undemanding, he would always talk about food and his family. somewhere in the background lurked a big happy family and i guess when you have that you have everything. 
i was single, had lived alone for so long now whenever i heard the sound of my own voice i was surprised, so it was good to have a swimming buddy to talk with even though we never talked about anything much at all. 
hopi swam each morning out to the buoy so i'd see him down the beach while i surfed with my fin. hopi was partly seal or whale, he could swim in any condition and swim fast, he was faster in water than on land. he could hold his breath for an unreasonably long time and sometimes cause me concern. 
it wasn't a particularly good day, no real clouds but no real sun. maybe the conditions read storm in 24 hours, i couldn't read them exactly as well as other surfers but it felt like a looming change in the air. at least the water was tepid. hopti surfaced next to me, i was hovering mind slightly empty waiting for the next wave.
'big feast tonight mission,' he waved his paw at me,'you come?'
'ah that's very kind hop but i don't really eat after dark.'
'come, we bake, cook beasts, bbq sauce, hot potato, you come, meet family.'
jesus i felt kinda trapped in the surf with the giant. i hate bbq's and the idea of meeting a happy family didn't fill me with enthusiasm but my options were limited out there alone with him. i couldn't refuse, it may offend his cultural disposition, not that i was into cultural relativity but hop seemed like a good person to have as an ally.
i walked up the beach to the surf club for a shower, hopi waddled beside me giving me semi-coherent directions to his place. he shook my hand and smiled, big white teeth and bright red gums. hopi never showered after a surf but he washed his feet and clambered into a big beaten up old truck filled with bits of metal, rope and tools and i watched his face in the side mirror as he left me outside the club.
i turned and looked at the footprints we had left in our trail, hopti's big prints and my light ones didn't make sense, it was odd and left me feeling strange, unsettled.
i couldn't shake that feeling all afternoon. i was committed to about three hours work on the computer but i just couldn't focus. some sort of anxiety had taken hold and it was creeping up my spine like a fast moving strangler vine in the jungle. those prints were just wrong, something about them just didn't make sense and it was nagging away in my head and aching at my gut. 
now who can say how accurate memory is, even hours after an event details alter and although i could not be sure the more i thought about those footprints the more i began to see the discrepancy was hopti's prints were nowhere near as deep as mine, which would go against physics itself as he was about three times my size and i am built big.
i paced around mystified and smoked half a joint to numb my thinking. in an hour or so i would have to leave and socialise, so i showered and got ready while my brain came up with hundreds of excuses not to go, none suitable to use. 
on the way over i stopped at the bottle shop to buy some beer. i figured i should take something and was certain beer not wine would be the best contribution to the dinner but as it happened i bought a bottle of red as well. i didn't know if hop drunk, he never mentioned it but i figured beer goes with bbq's and the wine would be a back up just in case it was a slightly more sophisticated event than i imagined.
the drive was short, he lived about 30k's away, and in the oncoming dusk i drove along the beach road up to the highlands into the bush. down below i could see the moon rising over the horizon, dark clouds brewing and moving fast in my direction.
it turned out the house was more of a ranch, it was way off the main roadway and down a dirt track. my xv winding along nicely, i switched the lights on and followed the drive into a tunnel of light. the track became narrower, dense high growth bush on either side seemed to form a tunnel and as i glimpsed up i noticed the stars were blocked out with dense branches and leaves. i slowed down and drove carefully, the last thing i wanted was to kill some endangered nocturnal marsupial.
suddenly the ranch presented itself, federation in design but rustic looking, well worn in and slightly neglected. i could hear the sound of music and see fairy lights wrapped around the balcony, a few cars parked randomly out the front and hop's truck sitting there looking like something from a rejected mad max film. i parked between two big utes. 
i grabbed my bag and wandered up to the front door. i was surprised to see the door covered in graffiti and some strange red and black markings on the floor. they looked like glyphs but were intricate and floral, almost fractal.
i pushed the door open and peered into a large empty interior. noises floated in from the back and i yelled out, 'hop, hop, it's me. mission.' 
i followed the sounds through the lounge, through the kitchen where two women were taking something out from the fridge. they were older ladies, maybe grandmothers, they seemed to stink of cheap perfume and as they acknowledged me with their smiles i saw the rotting teeth of old hags and puffed up skin that had travelled well passed its use by date. they hovered around me, took my bag and as i repeated, 'i'm a friend of hop's,' they nodded and stretched their mouths wider than i thought possible, in grins that seemed exaggerated and slightly surreal. i tried not to appear confronted by their strange distorted faces but was having a hard time already. my body was speaking to me in a loud voice, 'something as not quite right, leave now.'  
'outside, outside.' one of the women pointed to the back door. i smiled and walked out leaving them behind me.

hop stood above the big fire pit, his massive frame was governing a small crowd of people, and he was chanting in some strange language i assumed was native to him. it sounded like an angry hymn as he spat out the words and occasionally the small crowd would add something, like an affirmation. this went on for an uncomfortable length of time and i stood awkwardly hoping eventually hop would acknowledge my arrival. but he didn't seem to even notice my presence and continued leading this weird ceremony. i watched quietly wondering if i should just sneak away and go home. 
from the pit burning embers rose up in spirals and thermal currents, and through the red spots i could see the trees in the back of the garden and make out the shapes hanging from them. i took a gasp and stepped back, surely i must be imagining this, human bodies hanging in the trees. maybe the smoke was distorting my vision, i strained to look. my eye mechanics under pressure seemed to water up, i rubbed at them but that only seemed to make them worse, my vision blurred and i turned my face away from the macabre vista.
the chanting suddenly stopped and the crowd all moved forwards towards the burning pit. i stayed put, my legs had frozen, heart beating loudly, letting my eyes adjust and trying not to irritate them with the impulse to rub them. 
although i did not wish to see any of the detail my face couldn't help but look upon the scene. it was a car crash i was driving passed. i knew i shouldn't, knew i would regret it but the deep compulsion to observe and experience knowledge, understanding and apply some order of logic to it was stronger. i looked.
what i saw was unfathomable in terms of logic, reason and experience. these concepts suddenly became useless as i saw hop and a few individuals leaning into the pit and pull out what appeared to me a human arm. it was blackened and bent at an incoherent angle. hop passed it to one of the guests and the man, he was a tall figure, lanky and lean put the severed limb to his mouth and took a bite, he chewed and swallowed. he nodded and gave an approval and hop then leaned into the pit and began distributing the cooked body parts to his guests. 
i was in the throws of some sort of feedback loop, disgust crossed with nausea as i tried to throw up but could only splutter choking sounds. 
suddenly the door behind me swung open and the women marched out caring trays of food. they walked past me, like tropical servants or geisha girls at a tea ceremony, dressed in colourful sarongs and sandals. they delivered the food to the guests who by now were all devouring parts of bodies like they were ravenous. some knelt down to eat, some sat cross-legged, others stood. hop and a friend seemed to be pulling one of the bodies hanging from the trees down. when i saw the body twitch it registered that it was still alive. it wriggled but perhaps its hands were tied behind its back, and it shook and shuddered like it was in spasm. 
my eyes began to burn. i shifted my position towards the side. now i had clear access to the scene. there must have been about four bodies hanging by their feet upside down, hands bound, mouth gagged and bodies naked and bloodied. some of them had slices of skin removed, some had emblems cut into their backs and chests, some had industrial looking spikes embedded in them at random points. whatever it was these people had been tortured severely but they were all alive. 
hop suddenly produced a long blade, a sword. he held it to the neck of the kneeling prisoner and keeping that stupid smile swung it with his mighty big fist and the head just fell as gravity took hold, it fell straight into the pit. blood poured down and spurted up, not just a little trickle a waterfall, right into the fire as hot steam rose. the stink was putrid. it was vile. i almost passed out, i could feel the nausea in my body, my knees about to give way as i sunk down. 
i was on my knees, my hands were searching my pockets for the car keys. i would make a run for it. as i stood up, my nerves rattled and my movements awkward i turned to face the house i was met by the women. those faces leered into mine, warped features of ancient hags, dripping with madness as they grinned at me and held their serving tray's out to me. they were filled with blackened ears surrounding what looked like a beetroot dip. and around the ears, a ring of fingers. 
the women stood in front of me offering me their wares as though we were at the sunday markets. i shook my head, hand searching deep in my pockets i found the car keys and managed to compose myself. 
'captain mission brother, i glad you made it to the feast.' the mouth said, big meaty face blacked even further out by night and soot, flickering flames illuminating his massive hulk body those eyes soft and gentle but face glistening with blood. not his.
'hop, i am leaving. this is not my thing man.'
hop smiled again and his big head nodded up and down, his fat lips parted and a huge tongue popped out. he put his paw on my shoulder and pushed me towards the pit. 'eat something. drink with us. you our guest.'
'hop, i'm leaving okay, i don't eat meat and i don't feel comfortable here.'
'ah mission, you special guest, my family meet you. here. here my aunties.' he pointed to the two old ladies with the hors d'oeuvres.
i nodded a hello and gritted my teeth, who knew what these women would do. i could tell now they were quite mad, their eyes sparkled with that intense break from reason, the point where responsibility exits the mind and is replaced by the will of exploitation without fear of consequence. we stood there awkwardly, defeat flooded my synaptic pathways and then i was pushed again towards the pit. the stink of burnt flesh hung heavy around the garden. and i could see the body of one of the hanged people bleeding out by the neck. i wanted to throw up, my guts heaving.
in the red coal were a few burnt body parts, i saw three decapitated heads, burnt to a crisp. they lowered the headless body onto the heat and hop plucked out one of the blackened crisp heads. he used a big stick and held it up to my face. the features were unrecognisable, a twisted melted mass of distorted flesh and crisp blood, some muscle around the cheeks and black dead eyes. the mouth was fused as lips melted together and the teeth had fallen out. hopi inspected the head, he took a knife and popped it into the eye socket levering out the eyeball and with some impressive sickly skill he pierced his knife into the ball and held it out to me.
'eat. you guest. you eat.'
there was no way i could eat that burnt offering and i wondered what choice i would be given in this charade. i kicked myself for not understanding hop's culture, where was he from, what are the customs of his peoples. why had he befriended me. why did i assume because he was gentle, always smiling and being friendly he would be sane. this whole family were nuts, but they were also imminently dangerous. and then i came to the terrible conclusion, the inevitable thought. would they even let me leave tonight. how could they.   
i'd been through sticky situations before, i'd confronted death many times and escaped its clutches, i knew death, i accepted it and when it came i would embrace it correctly but this was not my death. i would not die here, now. i knew this, and it gave me a glimmer of hope, but i would have to get away somehow. preferably without eating a dead mans fried eyeball.
the fire was warming my skin, it was a cold night and the clouds were looming above big dark ones contrasting hues as the moonlight cast it's light down through their mass.
i felt a lonely drop upon my face. the beginnings.
hopti's people surrounded me, they all started whispering in their language, and hop stood there with the eye thrust at my face waiting for me to take it. 
i yelled out to them all and commanded their attention, 'silence!'
it was immediately granted, and i think they were taken by surprise. i lowered my voice and directed myself at my friend the cannibal. 
'hopti, i see your gods. they are powerful and very strong. they love you. i know them. but they are only small gods.'
his face seems to change, as he absorbs my words into whatever comprehension he can. his mouth gives it away, a slight twitch. 
'small gods?'
i am uncertain if he is asking a question if it is rhetorical or is it simply a new idea to him. his face shows no sign of anger just puzzlement.
'hopti, your gods have sent me here to show you a truth they conceal from you. that they are not all powerful or mighty and there are other gods that can extinguish them.'
'are you a god?'
it's the most stupid thing he's ever said to me, yet the most complex and intelligent. 
'no, i am no god but i command powerful gods.'
there is murmurs from the small audience.
i look up at the skies, cosmic time laughs but subjective time is ticking. 
'there is a god you may know, he wields a mighty hammer, he is scandinavian, a norse god. he commands thunder and lightening. he is the son of a very powerful god called odin. i have called him to stop your party. to stop you.
the lightening comes right upon cue, it cracks open the darkness, and in that moment do i see the faces of hopi's people loose their confidence? maybe. 
'the barbecue is ended hopi. you must let me leave now.'
the rain falls, it's a deluge that will not let up until dawn at least. i push hop's sword and the eye at it's end away from my face and walk out. no one follows me. 
i start my xv and drive down the dirt track, one eye on what's in front of me, the other on the mirror. i breathe deeply, focus my attention. calm my nerves.
the wipers are working overtime. i hope the track isn't one that flash floods although the xv is capable it would be challenged by a strong current. fear travels down my body and exits my foot which involuntarily applies pressure upon the accelerator and i hear the roar of the overdrive trying to kick in, but something's wrong, i can feel it as my eyes scan the dashboard. as if mocking me the red light flashes on and i realise that hopti's people have covered my escape. they have drained my car of petrol, and as it shudders and stalls i know i have about 5 minites head start, which leaves me no time. 
i open up the glove box, pull out a joint i keep for emergencies and push the cigarette lighter in. a mobile phone would have been more practical but i suck the weed down and put on some music. richard ashcroft's voice echoes out into bushland and the rain falls like e deluge. the headlights illuminate the wilderness and i kill them because i don't really want to see what's coming. 
thunder mocks me in the distance as thor runs away.