Snakes and Ladders

by Bailey Summers

(This is a story written to and about a good friend Wren Phoenix, both written and posted with her permission.)

Have you ever had one of those shitty fucking days. Yeah you’re right, I guess we’ve all had them. But It seem I’ve had 52 years worth. They say that you can never find true happiness unless you’re true to yourself.

You know there’s a part of it that really wants to believe that. But it’s harder than hell…yeah, harder than hell because there were times I’d have cut a deal to fix myself.

I know everything I’ve said’s confusing isn’t it. Try living it. Try living through being this big, tough, burly guy. A guy who’s kicked more than his share of ass and done some things that were…well those are other stories. Bouncer, Trucker six three and currently about 360lbs I was a lot heavier, I even have lost a foot…no, it was diabetic related even though I have problems with that too. No I lost the foot while trucking. I got stuck on an icy patch of road one winter and had gotten out to check if I could get the rig out and I slipped and fell on black ice. I was knocked out for a few minutes because the next thing I knew I was screaming as the truck’s weight had loosened it. It started to roll back a bit and that leg was being crushed by the weight of the truck.

I screamed so loud and for so long that the snowplow guy actually heard me. Now I’ve got a prosthetic one. It matches my fake life. See, I just knew, knew that deep deep down in my soul I wasn’t myself, I wasn’t the big burly rough guy called Bear by too many for too long. I know it was meant well but it just re-enforced to me what I wasn’t and could never be…The girl I was in my soul.

I had taken it as long as I could before coming out to my family. My mom had passed so I’d never get her acceptance, or support. My Dad just looked at me when I told him. He sighed like I hurt him and he left. The look on his face was that of…Typical, this is your excuse for being a failure this time. My siblings laughed at first thinking I was joking and when they finally clued in that I wasn’t.

There was just one fight, one huge dose of how much of a fuck up I was and the lovely way they took the opportunity to throw everything I ever did wrong in my face. Some of the worst bits were when they said I was lying and just finding a new excuse for everything. And when I really cried and bared my soul, I got contempt like I wasn’t good enough and cruel laughter.

It was the last time I’ve heard from them. They’ve changed phone numbers and e-mails and one had sent their kids to a therapist to see if I ever touched them! Dad moved in with them and sold the house I had grown up in.

Then there was my wife, Yeah a really great girl too. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get why I felt like this and she needed constant reassurance. I’ll say this, she did love me. I loved her but this nearly wrecked us. She died a week after x-mas from a brain aneurism…She was in the kitchen cooking and I was doing laundry when she collapsed. I ran to her and she wasn’t moving but doing a fast dog like pant. She was crying with tears streaming down her face. I looked at her and her eyes went wide when she seen me…A smile, a big smile…Then she said her lasts words to me. “Oh, Wren!” then she was gone.

That’s when I took the sleeping pills. I nearly overdosed, I wanted to overdose and my family had me locked away to save me from myself...and them. It took six months before the shrink let me go. I convinced him that it was the grief and not the depression. My home, my wife’s home as meager as we had it was sold to pay for my clinical stay.

I started trucking again. I needed the money. I was still thinking about killing myself oh about every second day.

I took jobs and routes I never normally would. Like tonight I’m driving through this really bad storm in Alberta heading to a drop near Calgary. The clouds are so low I felt like I could almost touch them. Dark, dark clouds that weren’t the right color. You know when a tornado builds and you’re too close and the air gets this olive oil tint to it? This was like sepia tinted…Then my truck started dying on me…like the electrical was giving out? But it’d flare back on, then dim. I pass a sign saying Brooks It’s a town but I didn’t read the miles oh sorry kilometers to it. It’s getting worse and I pull off the road into a side road. I’m looking for a place that might shelter my rig. I’m getting the feeling of tornado, I’ve been through tornado country a few times back home. I’ve seen a few. I’ve been in one. It picked up my rig and me in it coming out of the blue and me and my truck flew sideways 400+ feet off the road and into a corn field. I still had my wife then so I had something to live for.

Today…I don’t know why, but I don’t want to die today.

I’m lost in thought when I run out of road and it gets rocky and bumpy. I’m cussing and turning the truck around when the power in the rig flickers again and I heard the weirdest damned sounds coming out of the CB. It doesn’t sound human. Then some does but it’s no language I’ve ever heard. The signal must be going screwy from the storm…It starts raining hard and then it changes over to snow…that’s not snow…I roll down my window a little and sand starts to drift in? The closest desert like thing is the Alberta badlands but this couldn’t come from there…I thought it was snow but it’s really a kind of a blue grey.

Oh…wow…

The sky got darker and I swear it’s like being underwater but in the clouds I’m seeing ball lightning like constellations and each ball up there seems to have this aura around it like it own personal northern lights. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I reach for my camera and both my gps thing and CB blow shorting out and there’s that not human sound again only louder. Right on top of me…

There’s a lightning flash and I see a sign saying Gordon Freeman mound site? Then it get’s smashed off it’s posts by this lizard? A lizard the size of my rig if not bigger!

It hits me side long? And there’s a rider in a saddle on it’s back and she gets slammed into my windshield. I know it’s a she because of the cry her voice made when they impacted. Us all go rolling side over side three times before stopping and somehow I landed back on my wheels. I see white as a bolt of lightning flashes out from the mouth of the dragon.

Yuh…I said dragon, with a dragon rider…in fantasy armor that clings to her like a second skin. No…not like the really stupid stuff you see where the girl would get gutted because it’s just metal lingerie. No think skin tight, silvery blue metal with something flexible underneath but total coverage, think medieval Iron Man…woman.

The bolt of lightning from the dragon hits another one…Huge, black, with three heads and red glowing eyes. It oozes smoke and I can feel the evil coming from it and it’s rider.

I mean, I’ve felt stuff in my life and seen and been through some evil things our at least what I thought was evil. The wave of this I felt sent my evolution screaming backwards and like a chimp or a monkey or even caveman there was this part of me that wanted to shriek and run up a tree and howl at the thing while throwing excrement and rotting fruit.

The lightning bolt gets intercepted by a disc of darkness. The dark dragon fire back three time with thick red swirling bolts of napalm like missiles and the dragon and rider dodge and bounce around. I’m freaking out, but so much I can just watch…They circle each other and my truck twice. The woman’s yelling something ate me…okay…that’s the funny talk from the CB. The dark dragon, one of it’s heads lowers down and it stares at me. It sees through me…sees the real me…like Sauron’s fucking eye from LOTR and it makes this sound…

The other dragon the silvery one takes the opportunity to jump the evil one and for a second There’s just the snarls, huge Jurassic park huge beastly sounds. Then they grapple rolling and trying to kill each other. And My truck is in the middle of it all.

The clouds are all around us now, like they descended and the ball lightning touching each of these network of stones? Then there’s this flare as the explode? Or rather become, became lines of blue light. Then there was this huge thunderclap and the clouds broke. Like when a tornado breaks up sometimes all dark one minute and blue sky the next.

Only I’m in blue sky country if it suddenly became the Sahara. If the Sahara was the same color as the snowing sands. There’s a brief respite of a few seconds before they’re at it again. And them and me go tumbling down a dune a couple of hundred feet down. I’m hurt by the time we stop. I broke my arm, my false leg came off and there’s a ringing in my ears that won’t go away…The truck’s on it’s side but it’s pinning the girl and the dark dragon has the other one pinned. One of the heads leans over the woman and smiles, baring it’s teeth. Red drool drips onto her burning her armor like acid. It makes that sound again…the one it made when it looked into me…It’s…laughing.

Something snapped and as much as I’m Wren, Bear’s there too I wear him or that part of me like armor. This thing looked at me and saw my inner soul and it laughed at me. I might not have had it in me to lash out at my family or anything like that but this…Bear had a target. I know, me human, crazy as it was, batshit crazy as it was I reached into my sleeper and pulled my shotgun out a double barreled 12 gauge. I was crazy pissed and somehow I got my fake leg back on and climbed out of my truck door and stood on it.

The thing was just about to rear down and eat the girl. I screamed. “Hey! Motherfucker!”

It stopped and one of the eyes on that head turned and looked at me. It sneered. I saw the shadow of one of the other heads coming down over me. I turned at it and fired both barrels into the eye of the head that was going to chomp me. “Eat that asshole.” The eye exploded and I was covered in gore…it burned me like the saliva did her armor.

Only the blood was way more concentrated, and a lot more of it, and I wasn’t wearing armor.

I threw my hands up only to see them burn like I swam in a vat of acid. Then the burning started…I think I screamed. Oh hell I know I screamed…and screamed…and screamed…I saw my body ignite. Too much body fat…it was like someone lit a torch. I should have went unconscious fast but I didn’t…it lasted minutes but it felt like forever. Then finally darkness.

***

~Are you sure you are ready for this Shaya?~

“Yes Bhlaze, this person saved us both.”

~Yes, person but what is it?~

“I’m not sure but they saved us and that’s a debt I’m going to repay.”

~But to bond yourself to it, it’s dangerous Shaya.~

“I have to, He’ll not survive otherwise. I’ll get us to the holy lands to the tree.”

~They might not take him, we do not know what he is.~

“Home then, If I’m bonded to him then mother will have to heal him to save me too.”

~You tempt fate, she will not be pleased with you being so foolhardy, nor your father.~

“Too bad, what do they say? It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask permission?”

~Aye, and you’re taking us where angels fear to tread.~

***

There’s a burning on my chest, right over my heart. I feel it through the darkness of passing out because in burns too cool, it burns silver.

***

“Can you heal him.”

“You’re sickening Shaya, you shouldn’t have done this.”

“He’s dying mother, he saved our lives and scarred Shai-tan. He’s a hero.”

“He’s not one of us, look at him. He’s not of our people.”

“Both of you just stop, he saved our daughter Aeselanni, he badly hurt a mortal foe of our people…He…No she needs our help.”

“Father?”

“She?”

“Look deeper, look at her spiritual form. She…”

“Ah, I see…I’ve never seen this before Dorian?”

“You wouldn’t I believe this is the first human you’ve ever seen.”

“Human!, Father stop shaking the branches humans are just wondertales to amuse the children and the fae.”

“She’s human, I have see sketches…My great, great, great grand father fought on Tir Tangyrre and Tir Na Nogg against the enemy. They where cave dwelling tribesmen for the most part, They live on Ea as we once did.”

“Mother can you heal her.”

“I have too do I not, if not her death may take you with her.”

“Yes, but even so Shaya her life will drain on yours.”

“Father I know but I have to do this. I feel the good in her.”

“Well Aeselanni? Can you heal her.”

“If my majiks will work on humans yes. The great healing I’ll need to do will make her whole as it begins the healing from the soul outwards. I’ll be worthless for a month afterwards but I’ll try.’

***

My darkness slowly becomes light and I’m in a bed, silken sheets. I smell perfume…I open an eye and yawn and stretch. I become instantly aware. Heavy hair, my D cup chest, two fully healed legs, long, and smooth and I touch in a mad hurry squeezing a boob with the movement. It’s gone. The damned thing is gone and my proper equipment is there…I start crying and I’m getting freaky and hysterical. I died?, I died! And I’m in heaven. Only heave could be like this with me being me! The bedroom too is beautiful beyond words like is Rodin and Michelangelo did wood working. Even my voice is different…a soft contralto…I’m crying and standing in the mirror naked and freaking out. The only part of Bear that’s left is my hair and eye color and my height. I’m still 6ft 3inches but lean, maybe 150lbs, a size 4?…! God my legs have never been so long…my waist is tiny…I’ve got the hint of ab’s.

Several people come in with push tray carts and stuff. They’re all women and I would’ve been jealous of them, all over five and a half feet tall, all under a size3 in dresses. Elegant dresses just spaghetti strapped silk with this low bodice. I don’t…

….They’re speaking the language of the woman, the dragon rider…There’s another voice and they leave bowing to this six foot tall woman in a cotton? Slip and under things standing in an adjoining door way. Lean like them in that too beautiful super model look but if this super model looked feverish, tired with dark circles under her eyes that look reddened by crying. Her hair has waves and body to it and is long and raven black even shiny like that too, and her eyes are huge, and navy? Blue…? I see it as she slowly moves into the room. She’s hurt and weak…She neatly fall into the chair by my bed…her ears…they’re pointed…She’s got her eyes close shut and her head back. “You must be cold Wren…There should be a robe behind the change screen.” I go and find it silk, real silk too. Then I realized she called me Wren…I walk out quickly and catch myself in the mirror. Yes, I’m me, the very real me that’s always been in my head. I turn to her to see her smiling but then her eyes roll backwards in her head… “Wren…?…Help…” she pitches forwards out of the chair into a heap on the floor.

************************************************************************

End of chapter 1