I left a witch in a cave. I left her in a highly compromised position in a moment of darkness severe. I left in that cave a monster and more, but what I found in that cave has become one of the primary threads that flow through these stories, all the way back to the beginning, or at least near enough so. I say this because I have a story now, written July 4 2019 that confirms this. Oh yes, I do! By near enough, a delicious hint that has since rattled around in my mind will appear August 1st, 2018... and yes, this is as near linear as my thinking gets here. It's all focused on that cave though, at least the discovery I made there, and its first appearance was shit... literally. Trust me on this.
Also, this isn't about that. I mean, what is important here isn't just shit, but something ever so much more that when that witch took to the safety of that cave, I had no idea what would await her nor the ramifications that would mean insofar as the world I had to explore. When I speak of these Tales of the Bajazid as a history, that is exactly what it is. It is the history of this valley from its first taste of Man to now. As with a span so grand, a stage with so many sets, there are histories within histories waiting to be discovered. I know hints and hints only of this history beyond the earliest of these Tales yet to appear, and when I wrote about that witch, I knew nothing at all.
In late May and Early June of 2017, I was on fire. I had just finished five Tales and was on track for my goal. As well, I could feel the changes appearing in my work, in my thinking. It is true... the more you do something, more confident you get. With this pace increasing and seeing my stories now stacked proudly before me, 11 clasp-lock clear-front black document holders with something real culled from the abyss of my captured moments. My determination to continue was not wholly a willful consideration. At this point, a momentum had begun to develop and all who knew me wondered.
Seriously... I still hold that job I got the day I started my 3rd tale but I work distant from everyone else. I have learned that those within the business proper hold me in different considerations. One of those few within who I do speak with... and this is not for any distance but physical myself... one who gives me breaks often, has said I am considered "eccentric", which is nice. When I work the early, early mornings and the world is dark about upon arrival, some of the women I work with usually wait until a male employee shows up for safety in the darkened parking lot. I've heard it described to me that one woman always waits for the "crazy fuel guy" to show up before she feels safe. Hey, that's kinda a compliment...
I don't mind this. It's been this way my whole life. I get excited about that which excites me... the true definition of a Geek. What excites me are the dead people that populate my conversations every day... but that I did not talk about at first. It wasn't until the next January that the store as a whole knew there was something happening out in that little box outside. Before that, only those two I daily worked with and one young lady, an avid reader who has become my primary emotive content Reader. Her reactions the mornings after she's read my roughs gives me a good focus on what is working. As for the rest of the store, I was just the weird guy from fuel who used the same words as everyone else, but not always in the same order and whose perspective always seemed kitty-corner from right angles to what they saw. I'm used to it.
Oh, the reason why the store learned of what I was doing was because of what I finished that June. While that revelation was over half a year away, when it arrived, there was no disguising from my physical appearance that something significant had happened in my life. I was at work when the email came and, well, some of my customers were concerned at first for I was ever so pale, ever so flush at the same moment and yes, there is, I'm sure, surveillance video of me dancing a maddened jig. It could not be helped and any who have had this singular moment, their first acceptance and to a paying market, you will understand.
Everything became real the moment Weirdbook published "Kachina" in their issue #38. I was now a writer, an author. I had tasted something, a success personal and an acknowledgement of existence beyond all I'd known. Yes, it was that transformative to receive that first notification... and to think it was all because of what I found in that cave.
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