Dinosaur Mountain
Matt Payne
Copyright 2011 by Matt Payne
Smashwords Edition
Artwork by Melanie Daigle
Conceived in part by Jonathan and Aaron Compagnon
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter 1: Prologue
The cold wind was so loud that Maverick barely heard the detective screaming from the next ski-hill.
"Just tell us where the mobile home is, Doctor Branderdash! Just tell us where the mobile home is, and you can go free!"
Maverick grinned against the snowy glare and the blinding cold and slid his yellow-tinted goggles back over his eyes. Then he gripped hard on his ski-poles and launched himself further down the mountain. He didn't have to look back to know that the cop was already speeding down the hill after him.
The whole area was restricted because of construction, so there were no other skiers to get in his way. He sliced a long arc across a broad path, heading down towards a steep drop-off. Snow billowed out behind him, only to get caught up in the wind and scattered. Far below him Maverick saw the beautiful green and white of the vast winter-forest-valley. It was all tinted yellow from his goggles. It was a gorgeous day to run from the Law.
After a long hurtle down a steep incline, Maverick exploded around a corner stirring up snow like ocean waves. His ski poles wobbled in the air behind him like the tail of a comet. His black hair shot out from a warm brown headband, dancing around in the wind, crusted in snow and ice. His black pants complimented his red jacket and red skis. He slowed down, turned to the left and ducked into the thick trees.
The forest closed in around him and Maverick weaved between snow-covered branches that reached for him like frozen zombies. He swung his hips left and right, pushing this way and that with his ski-poles. He was full of adrenaline, and determined not to give up his freedom or the location of the mobile home. Even if he had to spend his life in hiding. He was a doctor after all, so he was smart enough to live off-the-grid. He wasn't going to jail!
Behind him, his pursuer screamed, "Dr. Branderdash! This can all be over! Just tell us where it is!"
Suddenly, Maverick burst out of the forest, and found himself skiing out onto a snow-peninsula that jutted out over a hill so steep that it was almost a cliff. It looked like the slope went down for a million feet of ice and snow and then curved around a tiny, distant hill lined with trees. There was a big sign out at the end of the peninsula. The sign said, "Dinosaur Mountain: Restricted: Super-Dangerous: Stay off!" There was a silhouette of a T-Rex against a danger-orange backdrop.
Turning back, he lifted his goggles and saw Detective Trent burst out of the tree-cover. Trent came to a hard stop, sending up a thick blast of snow. He looked across the strip of hilltop, staring at Maverick. Maverick stared back. Maverick was trapped. Trent blocked his path back to the trees. The only other option was to plunge down that nearly vertical, restricted and dangerous, "Dinosaur Mountain."
Detective Trent looked ominous in his black-everything ski-clothes suit. He yelled across the snow-blown expanse. "Where is the house? Just tell us and you'll go free!"
"It's with its rightful owners!"
"That mobile home belongs to the bank!"
Maverick screamed back, "The bank foreclosed on their mortgage in the dead of winter! I'll tell you where that home is when Hell freezes over!"
Maverick slipped his goggles down over his eyes, and shoved off past the warning sign, whichn swayed back and forth i the mighty wind.
Chapter 2: Stereo Battery Cat
The first few seconds were chaos as gravity pulled him down the ski-cliff.
His senses were a jumble, and with the blinding, freezing snow in his face Maverick didn't even know which was was up or down. He should have tumbled and fell, but as the ground levelled out he managed to steady himself with his ski-poles. He felt the hard snow beneath his skis and soon he was navigating a series of dangerously steep moguls. They ended in a big jump onto a safer expanse of snow.
Maverick landed and shifted his weight, turned to the right and sliced a clean trail across the pristine snow of a broad descent.
Now the path took him around corners and over hills. It was much less dangerous here, much less steep. He tried to keep a fast pace, yet couldn't help but take in the beauty of this gorgeous ski-hill. Even the presence of the ski-lift cable above him didn't break the spell of nature out here. The lush green trees, rolling valleys, and that fresh mountain air. Combine that with the fact that he was fleeing for his freedom, Maverick had never felt more invigorated.
But what would he do when he got to the bottom of the hill? Ditch the skis and hotwire a car? That wast probably his only desperate option.
Did he hear someone's voice? Maybe he could find a ski-doo or something.
Yup. He definitely heard someone's voice. It came from further down the hill, sounding like someone giving a lecture. It was loud but calm so it must have been amplified. Still travelling fast, Maverick listened close to try to hear what the loud voice was saying.
Now he could hear it. It was poetry or something, read by a man with a deep and mature voice.
A glistening space-bubble
Electrifies the night
I folded my mind
So it could touch itself
Maverick was confused. Wasn't this ski-hill restricted? Maybe he was getting close to the bottom. Some lame writers-group was probably doing a public reading.
The abstract poetry continued in a constant, barely comprehensible stream.
Television is code for thoughts
We transfigure reality into the patterns of our minds
Masterful tragic wizard-monsters
I would travel far into the future
When everything was dead
And feel so horribly alone
The voice was so soothing, his articulation so precise, that Maverick almost wanted to lay down and just listen to it while the cold wind blew through the evergreen trees.
He couldn't see very far down the mountain. A line of trees was in the way.
Slicing around a corner, the voice became louder than ever. Maverick saw a table sitting in the middle of the ski-hill over the next ridge. It looked like there was a stereo sitting on the table. Was that where the voice was coming from? The doctor skied towards the lone table.
In the twilight of feeling
My mind cries out for something other than itself
Only mesmerizing lies can satisfy
As it rains water in temporary drops
As history rains temporary lives down the fourth dimension
Fifth-dimensional gravity pulls our minds across time
The boombox-stereo was at least twenty years old. It had a cassette-player with the door broken off. A crooked telescopic antenna stuck out from the top. The man's voice boomed out of the two speakers, where the grids were dented and bent. The table was old, fading wood.
“This poetry is distracting,” Maverick grumbled. He fiddled with the FM-dial, searching for a music station. He found lots of static, but the surreal-poetry station was the only one available.
Then he felt someone push him from behind, and Maverick went tumbling in the snow. He lost one ski-pole, then turned onto his bacl to face his attacker. He expected to see Detective Trent standing there with handcuffs. Instead he saw a person in a tuxedo, with the head of a cat. Its fur was orange with white stripes. Maverick saw a fluffy snow-flake land on one of its whiskers.
The cat-person wore a monocle. It picked up the stereo with its paws and fumbled out the four C-cell batteries. Putting the batteries in a tuxedo pocket, the cat-person said, “Twice-born. Malt ginger is my centipede.”
Maverick frowned. “What does that mean? Who are you? What are you doing with those batteries?”
The cat-person turned on its skis. He was wearing snow-blades, short skis that don't require a pole. As he skied away he shouted, “Galaxy math!”
“What does that mean?” Maverick shouted back at the disappearing humanoid. “What's galaxy math? What's malt ginger?”
But now he looked up the hill and saw Detective Trent speeding down the mountain, tearing up cascades of snow. From this distance, he looked like an ant skiing down a mountain of salt. Maverick had to move before he got caught. He stood, retrieved his ski-pole, and headed down the trail once more.
The trail took more twists and turns with many steep drop-offs. Maverick could never see very far ahead. He dug in his ski-poles and launched himself as fast as he could away from Detective Trent.
As he hurtled down the mountain Maverick wondered why they called this Dinosaur Mountain. Dinosaurs were usually for kids and not many kids were going to take this dangerous black-diamond trail.
Chapter 3: A Smashing Friend
SMASH!
Something hit Maverick like a sack of potatoes, jolting his fast-moving body. Shock and disorientation as he flew through the air. He landed on his back and stared up at the blue sky, which looked green in his yellow goggles. Then an angry figure loomed over him. He had a gray-brown winter-coat with fur around the hood, like a caterpillar wrapped around his face. He wore the hood up, and had black goggles and a red scarf covering his face. On his jacket there was a ski-lift name-tag that said, Jenno Strunk. He said, “You stole my batteries! I saw you!”
“No! The cat-person stole your batteries! The cat-person in the tuxedo!” Maverick tried to sit up, but it was awkward with his skis on. “I'm a doctor, and the cops are after me! I need to leave now.”
Maverick stood and launched downhill again. The detective was almost upon him!
The battery-guy skied with Maverick.
“You're running from the cops? I hate authority!” The guy shouted as they went off a jump. “They always take my batteries! The cat-people are the authority-bullies here on Dinosaur Mountain, and they always push people around!”
“I can't talk!” Maverick shouted, cutting around a hill and aiming for a dangerously steep section. “I stole a mobile home back from the bank for a needy family and now the cops are after me! I have to concentrate on skiing!”
There were trees and bumps and icy patches between steep sections of downhill danger for Dr. Maverick Branderdash. He might get killed hurtling down this slope, but his freedom was worth the risk. He stayed focused, paid attention. His solid-red skis sliced between the bumps with surgical precision.
He must be close to the bottom by now. Would the cops be there waiting for him?
The radio-dude said, “Do you know how hard it is to find batteries around here? How am I supposed to listen to my radio if they keep taking my batteries?”
Maverick was getting annoyed. “Just buy more batteries and leave me alone!”
“Ha! Where am I going to buy batteries?”
“The store! Just go to the store!”
“What store? Do you see any stores around here?”
The trail started to level out again as it swerved to the left. They were always lined in by evergreen trees.
Maverick ignored him and kept skiing, but Jenno was persistent. “I said, do you see any stores around here?”
“Obviously there are no stores on a ski-hill, but you can leave the ski-hill to get more batteries, right? Next time buy extras! And leave me alone!”
Jenno Strunk stopped dead in his tracks and Maverick swept past him, churning up snow.
A minute later, Jenno caught up with him again. “Did you say I should leave the mountain to get new batteries?”
“Yes! Screw off!”
“You know that's impossible, right? You know this ski-hill goes on forever, right?”
Maverick said, “You started to annoy me five minutes ago. I don't know what your game is, but...”
The doctor came to a complete stop as he reached the edge of a drop-off. Before him and below him was a scenic vista of rolling snow-hills, evergreen trees, and dinosaurs crunching through the snow and eating people. One skiing man tried weaved between two velociraptors, only to be eaten by a gigantic, towering tyrannosaurus rex. The dinosaur chewed up the skier whole, skis and everything. The tyrannosaurus was wearing a giant red tuque.
The dinosaur-laden vista was an intersection between two ski-paths, and there were frantic pedestrians everywhere getting eaten and killed by dangerous, extinct reptiles. Some people had crossbows and they shot arrows (or bolts) at the dinosaurs.
Jenno stopped beside Maverick. “I assume you got lost while evading the cops and that's how you're on Dinosaur Mountain. Look buddy, I've been travelling down this hill for years and it just keeps going and going. If you want to get off the mountain you might want to try the next ski-lift. But it just keeps going up and up forever. It's so hard to find batteries here.”
Maverick looked at the edge of the field. Beyond that hill the horizon was vague. He saw white snow and evergreens going down seemingly forever, until the details became so small that it all just blurred into a light-green haze. This was the first time he'd seen farther than a kilometre since he turned down Dinosaur Mountain.
At the edge of the field there was a lift-station where the ski-lift carried passengers up the mountain. Maverick dug in his poles and started down the hill towards that station. Jenno was right behind him.
Fuelled by adrenaline, Maverick's healthy doctor's body sliced back and forth, weaving between a horned triceratops and an armoured stegosaurus. A velociraptor jumped at him and Maverick swerved. The dinosaur bit Jenno's head and threw him flailing on the ground, then started eating his guts while he screamed.
Rage and fear mingled with compassion, and Maverick wanted to go and help Jenno. But it was too late for his new friend. The doctor pushed on towards the ski-lift, where seats were coming down looking for passengers.
One cable-system was carrying people up from the mountain below, while a separate system was taking passengers further up the mountain. Of course, the people coming from below the mountain were getting eaten as soon as they exited the lift.
The chair-lift attendant was safely inside a glass booth, so the dinosaurs didn't bother her. But just as Maverick approached the booth, three cat-people in tuxedos burst into the door and started beating the woman with black batons. She yelled out and begged for mercy, but they were ruthless!
Now Maverick totally forgot about escape. He threw open the door to the booth and jumped inside, but he got his skis caught in the door and he fell awkwardly on the dirty tile floor beside the woman. The cat-people started beating him too, and hissing.
“Agh! Stop!” Maverick shouted. But he was glad that they were focusing their violence on him instead of the pretty lady. He hated to see something sweet get harmed.
He forced himself to his feet and grabbed a baton from one cat. They had cute cat-faces, but he used the police-stick to smash their whiskered snouts.
“The plug-planet swirls like an ice-cream fuck-dazzle!” one cat screamed as Maverick bludgeoned its eyes. “Computer!”
The cats weren't very strong, so Maverick was able to beat them all down. Then he untied their bow-ties (which were expertly tied, even though the cats had clumsy paws), and he used the bow-ties to tie all their skis together.
He laughed. “Now you're not going anywhere!”
The girl stood up with a bloody nose. Maverick wiped away her blood with his red jacket sleeve and said, “Can I use this ski-lift?”
She said, “Sure. Just step outside and sit on the next chair when it comes down. And thanks for helping me out! I didn't have enough candy to pay off the giant candy-cane, so he sent the cat-people to beat me!”
Maverick shook his head. “Whatever.”
He stepped outside and watched as the next seat came closer and closer... but then he saw that Detective Trent was right behind him! If he waited for the seat, the detective would get to him first! Maverick had no choice but to keep going down the mountain. Maybe he could get on at the next lift.
Chapter 4: Alcoholic Scarecrow Woman
The wind had calmed down, and Maverick was travelling on a path that had been well-worn by other people and their skis. He pushed and pushed with his poles, going dangerously fast. He heard the constant slice-swoosh of Trent's skis behind him, pursuing him. It sounded like a running water-tap, or static from a cruel television. Fssshhh...
Then the path split into two. The path on the left was smooth, pristine and beautiful. On the right was a drop-off and Maverick couldn't see how steep it was.
Maverick turned to the right, launching himself at the drop-off way too fast. The danger and fear made him smile.
He felt his skis fall out beneath him as he hurtled over the cliff. Looking down, he couldn't even see the ground. Now he felt himself falling, and he turned over and over. There was snow everywhere. His mind went blank and he panicked. His left hand let go of a ski-pole and then...
Poof! He landed in a snow bank. Somehow his skis hadn't fallen off.
“Thank God for these goggles,” he mumbled, wiping off the snow so he could see clearly again. He looked up and saw the black image of Trent's body flying off the cliff and tumbling through the air. The detective lost both his ski-poles and disappeared into a cluster of evergreen trees, shaking their limbs and knocking white snow from their green needles.
Now Maverick experienced a moral conundrum: should he go and see if Trent was OK? Maybe he needed medical attention. But he knew that Trent was ruthlessly dedicated to law and order, even at the expense of fairness and compassion. He would surely arrest Maverick, even if Maverick saved his life.
He looked around and noticed someone standing on the path beside the snowbank. “Hello!” he called out. “Can you help me out of the snowbank? I'm stuck!”
The figure waddled awkwardly towards Maverick and sat on the ground. “My limbs are so weak,” the figure said in a woman's voice. “If I tried to pull you up my arm would fall off!”
Now the doctor saw that she was wearing ratty old rags, and her skin seemed to be made of straw.
“Are you okay?” he asked her. “You look like a scarecrow!”
“I am a scarecrow!” she shouted indignantly. “And what's wrong with that?” She raised a bottle to her straw-lips and poured gin down her throat. “Alcohol is the only thing that keeps my old bones from freezing up! If only my daughter was here, she'd take care of me!”
“You shouldn't get too drunk out in the snow,” Maverick said. “It thins out your blood and actually makes you colder.”
“Oh, and who are you, a doctor?” the scarecrow-woman demanded, guzzling back more booze.
“As a matter of fact, I am!”
“Okay, are you a scarecrow-doctor?”
Maverick scratched his face with a gloved-hand. “Well, no.”
Then there was a rustling sound and five little dinosaurs ran out from between some trees and started biting at the scarecrow-woman's legs. She kicked at them, but one of them tore off her leg and then jumped on her chest to chew on her arm.
Maverick jumped up, grabbed his ski-poles and started swinging and stabbing at the dog-sized reptiles. They hissed and snapped, but his long poles were too much for them. They ran away into the trees and disappeared.
But it was too late for the alcoholic scarecrow-woman. She lay in tatters on a pile of her own straw. She stared up at the sky with sparkling eyes. Then she looked over to him. Maverick knelt down beside her. “Maybe I can stitch you up,” he said. But he didn't have much time, since Trent could come out of the trees at any moment.
“It's too late for me!” she wailed. “If only I could see my beloved daughter one more time!”
Maverick picked up the half-empty bottle of gin and put it up to her lips. “Here, drink this. If you're going to die anyway, you might as well feel the false warmth of gin.”
But she turned her head. “No! I want to die sober, contemplating my lonely old thoughts! Here!” She reached a dry finger into her eye socket and plucked out her left eye. “Take this to remember me by! We're neither friends nor lovers, but you're my only deathbed-companion!”
He took off his glove and she put the eye in the palm of his hand. It was heavy and hard, like glass. “Thank you,” he said, feeling slightly uncomfortable.
“Doctor! Do one favour for me?”
“Of course!” Maverick put the eye in his pocket and held her head in his hands.
“Find my daughter for me! She works at the candy store. Give her this half-empty bottle of gin. It's all that I have in this world! And now I must pass on to another!”
Then she closed her eye for the last time, and collapsed in Maverick's arms. “I've never lost a patient before,” he said. Then he closed the bottle, tucked it into his jacket and stood up to ski further down the mountain.
Chapter 5: Candystore Robbery
Soon Maverick forgot about Detective Trent and lost himself in the joy of skiing. He lifted his goggles so he could appreciate the greenness of the green trees, and the blueness of the clear sky. The exhilaration of travelling fast downhill kept his body and mind awake.
Once again the hill went up and down, left and right in such a way that the surrounding trees blocked out his view of the rest of the strange mountain.
The peaceful skiing went on for a long time, with some steep parts and some relaxed parts. Soon Maverick found his mind wandering, so he took out his mp3 player and plugged in his ear-phones. Scrolling through his music, he found nothing there that he wanted to listen to. “I've already listened to this stuff too much,” he said. “I need to get some new music.”
So he turned on the FM receiver and scrolled through the signals, looking for some talk-radio or maybe some jazz. All he got was static, except for one radio station. It was the same weird-poetry station that Jenno Strunk's radio had been blasting earlier. Maverick sighed and let it play in his ears.
I once met a man who was always about to speak
But never spoke
Because some tragedy always befell him
In a soul-muckery of dripping feelings
I drooled out some love for a gaggle of clowns
Who did impossible tricks
Changing colour and changing shape
Stretching the spectrum of emotion
With new dimensions of joy
Maverick got annoyed with the nonsensical poetical ramblings on this useless radio-station. He turned it off and enjoyed the silence for a while. But then he felt curious about how long this strange station could play this kind of stuff. He turned the station back on.
A litter of puppies
Learned how to build a spaceship
And flew into space
Two cubes are floating in space
They are always getting closer
Closer to each other
Will they bounce?
Will they form together?
Will they pass through each other?
I slowed my attention
In infinite deceleration
So that nothing could ever happen
There is a painting that talks
It is my only friend
I hope it never learns
That I am not real
Coming around a corner, Maverick saw a small blue building on the slopes. For a moment he panicked, because it looked like the building was sliding down the hill. Then he realized that the building was riding on two giant skis, and there were a bunch of people skiing around it. As he got closer he saw that the skiers were all attached to the building with ropes. They pointed their skis at angles to slow them down, and Maverick surmised that their purpose was to act like tug-boats, to slow the down and aim the building as it slid forever down Dinosaur Mountain.
“Well, that's interesting,” he said as he came closer and closer. It was a flat-topped building with a door at the rear, facing Maverick. The sign above the door read, “Candy Store!” (including the exclamation-mark.)
He grunted and pushed off with his poles until he was right behind the building, facing the door. He looked to the guy on his left. The guy wore a tuque with a fluffy bob on top. He cut back and forth constantly, skis pointed at angles to slow himself down, thus slowing the building he was attached to. A yellow ragged rope was wrapped around his waist, stretched tight to the building where it was tied to a metal hook stuck in the wooden siding.
“How do I get into the candystore?” Maverick shouted to the guy.
“Open the door and climb in!”
“But it's going so fast!” Maverick was having trouble keeping the right speed to avoid crashing into the door.
“Well be careful then!” The guy shouted back. “Can't you see I'm busy?”
Maverick slid closer and closer to the door, reaching out with one hand to the shiny brass doorknob. Then the hill got steeper and the building slid further ahead, out of his reach. He sped up a little bit and reached out again, finally catching the handle. Somehow he lost his balance, and his skis dragged and bounced awkwardly behind him. But he still held the doorknob in a desperate grip, and now he turned it and the door swung out. He hung from the open door, staring into the candystore. There were two guys talking and laughing. He tried to steady his skis, but they bounced and twisted in every direction. His poles hung by the plastic straps around his wrists.
“Help me in!” he called to the two guys inside the store.
They looked at him with big smiles. “You're doing great!” And they both laughed at him and continued their conversation.
Finally he managed to grab the edge of the doorway and pulled his torso onto the tiled floor. The bottle of gin in his jacket pressed hard against his ribs. His skis were still dragging, threatening to pull him back out onto the snow. But then he pulled himself in and clumsily got to his feet.
The walls were lined with wooden containers full of candy. There were different colors and shapes, and they all looked delicious. Maverick realized he hadn't been in a candystore since he was a kid. Actually, even as a kid he always bought candy from the cornerstore. He had only seen candystores on TV.
The two guys stopped talking and looked at Maverick with amusement. One was bald, and the other had curly hair. They both wore black skis. Their ski-poles leaned in the corner.
“I guess you want some candy!” the curly-haired guy said. “What have you got to trade?”
“I don't want candy.” He frowned. He didn't like their attitude. They could have helped him inside, but they just stood there laughing and talking.
The bald guy picked up a beer and drank from it. “Then you're in the wrong spot, buddy!”
Maverick felt like he was on the deck of a ship, with the building rocking and bouncing around. It was hard to stay standing.
“I'm looking for the scarecrow-woman's daughter. Is she here?”
The bald guy shouted, “Ha! We called her the Bitch-Crow!”
“No, we called her Scare-Bitch!” the other guy said.
“I don't care what you called her. Where is she?”
“Ah, she quit.”
The bald one wiped beer-foam from his lips. “She didn't like it when we tried to kiss her!”
The other guy shook his head. “What more could a girl want than to have two guys kiss her at the same time?”
“Where does she work now?”
“Ah, she ran off to the joggery,” said the curly-haired guy. “She doesn't know what she wants!”
“Where is the joggery?”
Before the other two could answer, Maverick heard a commotion behind him. Three cat-people leaped deftly in through the doorway in their short snow-blades. Some of them had flowery designs on them.
“I housed united,” said one of the cats, and started beating the bald guy on the head with a police-baton. The bald guy cowered in a corner, but he couldn't quite reach the corner with his skis on. The curly-guy shuffled past the cats, receiving blows to the face and head until he tumbled out the door. The cats started filling pillow-cases with candy.
“They're stealing all my candy!” the bald guy cried.
Maverick didn't care about their candy because they were heartless old bastards. “This is what you get for mistreating the scarecrow-girl!”
Another cat-person pulled a rose from its breast-pocket and gave it to Maverick. “Scene twice promiscuity.”
Maverick stuck the rose in his head-band. Then he turned to the door. He was about to jump out when he realized he couldn't quite jump while standing still and wearing skis. So he just sort of fell out onto the snow.
The curly-haired guy was already beside him on his skis. “Those awful cat-people are stealing all our candy!”
Wiping snow off his face, Maverick sat up and said, “Where is the joggery?”
But the guy ignored him. “Ours was the only candystore on the mountain! Now there's no candy anywhere!”
“Surely you can go buy some more candy! And why would they steal your candy?”
“Where would we get more candy? Do you know where to get more candy? The Giant Candy-Cane is building a Candy-Queen, so even if we got new candy it wouldn't be safe from the cat-people!”
Maverick stood up. “I don't even care about your stupid candystore! The way you talked about the scarecrow-girl, it's impossible for me to feel sympathy for you! Now, where is the joggery?”
“Aw, it's down the hill,” the guy said, crossing his arms and staring angrily down at the ground.
Maverick turned away from him and headed down the hill.
Chapter 6: Exploded Friend
Soon the path split in two directions again. Tall trees loomed up into the sky between the snowy avenues. Standing at the fork in the path was a guy wearing green skis with white floral patterns. He shuffled around, looking lost and confused. He had no ski-goggles, and Maverick could see the pain in his eyes. He had a crossbow strapped to his back.
Maverick side-slipped and slowed down to meet the stranger. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, my friend is hurt. I came to get help, but the clinic sledded past here months ago!”
“I'm a doctor. Maybe I can help.”
The stranger led Maverick to the left-slope, which was mostly flat. “Thanks. My name is Lorgan. Some friends and I got sick of always skiing downhill, so we built a little hut and bought some propane and crossbows so we could have food and stay warm. But now Eric hurt himself while trying to cook some moose. The rest of us went to get help.”
“What happened? How did he hurt himself?”
Lorgan turned towards a well-worn but small path in the trees and slid his skis that way. “He's in here! We're almost there!”
Pushing with his poles, Maverick cross-country skied through the forest. He smelled the coniferous needles. He could almost taste the sap, frozen and ready to burst just beneath the hard and ugly bark.
They came out into a clearing where a man stood in a red-and-gray snowsuit, with solid black skis. The clearing was full of scattered burning wood, still on fire. There was blood and guts all over the snow and the trees. The smell was awful.
Maverick pointed at the guy in the clearing and said, “Lorgan, is that your friend? Is that Eric?”
Lorgan said, “No that's John. Eric is the... well, he's the blood and guts splattered all over the clearing. He was cooking moose and the propane exploded. So you're a doctor, right? Can you help him?”
Maverick looked down at an eyeball sitting in the snow between his skis. “I don't think I can help him.”
Then John came over from across the clearing, sledding his skis across the blood and fire and snow. “Hi. I'm John. Did I hear you say you're a doctor? I was just out looking for help for our friend, and I met a house full of people with mental problems. Maybe you can help them?”
Maverick took off a glove and scratched his clean-shaven face. “I don't know. There's a detective chasing me, and I already wasted a lot of time at the candystore...”
“Come on, man,” John said in a guilt-trippy voice. “They need your help. They have mental problems!”
“Okay, but we have to be quick!”
Chapter 7: Electromagnetism Nightmares
Maverick followed John back through the trees and out to the slopes. They schussed straight and fast, trying to catch up to the sledding building where John had met the people with mental problems.
Out of curiosity Maverick asked, “With these buildings sledding and skiing downhill, what happens when they hit a steep part or a jump?”
John pointed ahead, “Look! There it is!” And he skied ahead, not hearing Maverick's question.
They came to a nice little house with yellow siding and a brick chimney. There was a pie cooling on a window sill. Ten people were strapped to the building to steer it and slow it down.
John was an expert skier, like everyone else on the mountain. He came up right behind the house and knocked. A fifty-something woman wearing an apron let him in. He jumped deftly into the house. Maverick thought he was a proficient winter-sportsman, but he still had to clamber awkwardly to get through the door with his skis and poles.
It was a nice little house. The dinner table was in the kitchen, with wooden chairs and grandmotherly-flowery ornaments. A door led into the living room, where there was an old tube TV, a comfy-looking couch, a rocking chair, and a clean-looking blue carpet.
Sitting at the kitchen table were a man, a woman and a young boy. The old lady who opened the door was placing a pie on the table. The man's hands were shaking as he drank a cup of coffee. They were all wearing skis even though they were inside. The old woman moved around without bumping into anything, as if she always wore them. All Maverick could smell was coffee and apple pie.
“Hello again, John!” the old woman crooned with friendly enthusiasm. “It's so good for you to stop by so soon! We all appreciate the comfort of visitors here! Why don't you introduce us to your friend?”
John said, “This is....”
Maverick took off his black gloves and shook the old lady's hand. “Maverick. Maverick Branderdash.”
“He's a doctor. He's here to help you with the nightmares!”
The old woman covered her mouth with her withered old fingers and shouted, “Oh goodness! A doctor! Our problems are solved!”
Maverick grinned. “Well let's just see what the problem is, and I'll help if I can. Who's the sick one?”
The man at the table spilled coffee with his shaking hands, then placed the cup down. There were bags under his eyes as he looked up at Maverick. “Mostly it's our son,” he said. “Nick Junior here. But we've all been having the nightmares!”
The man's wife reached out and squeezed his hand. “We can barely sleep! And our son wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming about ghosts!”
Maverick started pacing back and forth, which was difficult in his skis, and rubbing his chin. “You've all been having these nightmares?”
“Not me!” said the old lady. “And the youngest one the most!”
“Hmmm... chronic nightmares often have a psychological basis. That would be better treated by a psychologist. But let's try to rule out a physiological cause first. Do you guys take any kinds of drugs?”
The man said, “I used to smoke a lot of weed. And I did a lot of acid in elementary school. But that all changed after I met Sandra.” They looked into each others' eyes and shared a warm smile. “But now I just drink coffee to stay awake, to avoid these awful ghostly-nightmares!”
“Does the boy drink coffee?”
“No,” said Sandra. “It's not good for a growing boy!”
“What about your diet?” Maverick looked at the steaming apple pie. “Do you eat a lot of meat before bed-time? That could mess with your metabolism and cause sleeping disorders.”
The old woman shook her head. “No food before bedtime! That's my strict rule!”
“Sleep deprivation may also cause sleep disturbances, in a self-feeding cycle. If the original nightmares kept you awake and caused anxiety, then your succeeding sleeps might be disturbed, thus carrying on the cycle. Maybe if I prescribed some sleeping pills...”
The old woman grabbed his arm and looked desperately into his eyes. She whispered, “We already know what's causing the nightmares! We just need you to make them stop!”
The doctor was curious and confused. “Well, what do you think is causing the problem?”
“These are no normal nightmares!” She threw her hands up in the air and screamed, “These are electromagnetism nightmares!”
“What are electromagnetism nightmares?”
Now Nick senior pulled out a weathered tome with the title, Paranormal Facts! He flipped it open to a page, then turned and pointed at the living room. “You see that carpet? You see that damned carpet?”
Maverick looked at the clean blue carpet in the living room. “Yes. I see it.”
“Have you ever gotten static-shock from a carpet?”
“Well, yeah.”
“We don't get static-shock. We get electromagnetism nightmares!”
“So... the carpet is giving you nightmares?”
Nick senior started reading from Paranormal Facts! “It says here that when a person dies, sometimes their soul gets trapped in the carpet! Positively-charged ions in a carpet will attract negatively-charged electrons, thus causing static-shock! But if an evil person dies, the carpet may attract their negatively-charged soul-energy! If enough bad people die in a house, and their souls get trapped in the carpet, they can haunt your dreams... electromagnetism nightmares! A young person's brain-waves are more susceptible to this kind of energy! That's why it affects our son more than the rest of us!”
“Okay,” said Maverick. “I guess that's a little beyond my expertise. I guess you could move to a different house, but it doesn't take a neurosurgeon to...”
Then the door burst open and more cat-people in various tuxedos jumped in. They started talking random gibberish, and handed the man a piece of paper. He held it in his shaking hand and gasped. “An eviction-notice! From the Giant Candycane!”
Maverick turned to the cat-people. “Hey now! I've seen you cause enough trouble here! Leave these good people alone!”
One of the cats turned to the other cats and made some nonsensical gestures, saying, “Floor range cobble stop! Twisting electronic fantastic!”
Then they started beating him with night-sticks. He tried to resist, but they threw him out the door.
Wiping the snow off his face, he stood and started moving aggressively downhill towards the fast-moving house. He wasn't going to let these cruel felines win!
But then he heard a voice screaming behind him. “Branderdaaaaash!”
Turning, he saw a black-clad figure whisking down the hill. It was Detective Trent. Secretly, Maverick was glad that his persecutor had survived that tumultuous tumble into the trees. He had no desire for death and vengeance. But now he had no time to help the newest victims of the cat-people's tyranny. He had to escape from his own tormentor!
It was starting to snow as Maverick sped past the house, watching helplessly as the cats tossed the old woman and Nick junior out the door and onto the white ground.
Chapter 8: The Joggery
As fresh, fluffy snowflakes fluttered down like butterflies, Maverick's angry skis tore up the icy cold snowpack in a desperate race to evade the cold, hard Law.
He grunted and grimaced, seeing yellow through his goggles, thrusting his hips back and forth to turn and twist around bends and grooves, and traverse steep hills.
Now the snowfall was thick and it obscured his vision, but Maverick could still see the pale silhouettes of the other buildings and other skiing people with whom (and which) he shared the hill. They passed like shadow-giants, and they were eery-looking in this strange place. Like floating whales on the gas-giant Jupiter, and Maverick zipped past them like a bolt of renegade lightening. But even through the sense-numbing snow-mist, he could hear Trent's skis churning up chalky dust.
And there were weird sights, occasionally. Maverick passed a disembodied pair of legs skiing slowly down the hill. They were wearing red skis, but they had no pants so Maverick could see their male genitalia and the speckled black hair on their legs. He didn't bother to wonder how they managed to keep balanced without a torso or a brain. They turned this way and that, avoiding bumps.
Then he saw a building with a big sign that said Joggery.
Maverick remembered that the alcoholic scarecrow-woman's daughter was supposedly working at The Joggery... if he was going to give her the bottle of gin, then he had to go visit. But looking back, he could still see Trent's angry black visage through the snow. He knew that he didn't have time to stop in, because Trent would catch up with him. But how many acts of kindness must he abandon in his flight from the perpetual agitator? Of what value would his freedom be when he reached the bottom of this bottomless mountain, if all he left behind was a trail of un-helped people? Anyway, he was a healthy guy. If he had to wrestle Trent hand-to-hand and risk capture, then so be it! He turned towards the Joggery.
Like the other buildings, the Joggery maintained balance and speed with the help of a dozen skiing people who acted as tugboats. Maverick made a serious attempt to guide himself smoothly to the door and knock. The door swung open and smashed him in the face. He tumbled over, but managed to grab the doorknob before he actually fell. He had to pull himself in, but he promised himself that next time he would jump in with ease and precision.
Inside the Joggery there was a terrible clamour. There was almost no furniture or shelves. There was just a bunch of disembodied pairs of legs, wearing skis and jogging-on-the-spot. They were all naked, genitals un-covered and obvious. Half were male and half were female. The female sets were clean-shaven, tasteful and beautiful. The male sets were hairy, dangling and bouncing awkwardly as they jogged-in-skis. Maverick started laughing as he pulled his goggles up and looked around.
“I'm looking for the scarecrow-girl,” he called out. “Does she still work here?”
A skinny girl pushed her way through the sea of legs. Her skin was straw. She wore short shorts and a tight shirt that was bursting with youthful breasts. Her eyes sparkled like glass. Her hair was also straw and she wore a straw hat. Of all the odd sights in the shop, Maverick thought the straw hat was the most uncomfortable. A scarecrow wearing a straw hat seemed like a human wearing a human-skin-hat.
“Why are you looking for me?” the girl asked. She looked distracted and she had a notepad in her hand.
Maverick pulled out the half-empty bottle of gin. “Your mother is dead. She wanted me to give you this. I'm sorry.”
She dropped her notepad and bit her straw-fingers between her straw-lips. “Mommy! No!” Her sobs were drowned out by the click clank clop of all the jogging skis. She grabbed the gin and hugged it to her chest. Then she wrapped her arms around Maverick and started sobbing uncontrollably into his red jacket. Maverick hugged her back, but he didn't have time to comfort her. Trent would be here any second!
Then the door swung out and he heard the swoosh swish of blowing snow and wind. Maverick turned to see the detective reaching out for the door-jamb, but he missed and fell on the snow, disappearing as the building skied away from him.
Pushing the scarecrow-girl away he said, “I have to go! That man is trying to arrest me!”
She wiped away her tears and said, “How did she die?”
“She was torn to pieces by a pack of dinosaurs!”
She started crying again and Maverick wondered if he should have lied instead.
Then Detective Trent dragged himself in through the open door. He stood up, and Maverick looked around for another exit... there was none!
“Doctor Branderdash! Don't bother trying to escape! You can't run from the Law forever!”
“This seems to be an endless ski-hill, so apparently I can! I'm not even hungry or tired, for some reason. I'm thirsty, though.”
“I know you were just trying to help those people,” Trent said. “But we can't just steal from each other! What you did was wrong! That mobile-home belongs to the bank!”
“They paid for their home twice-over, plus interest,” Maverick said calmly. “The bank raised their interest rates so they couldn't make their payments. Would you really send them out on the streets, when both parents were working full-time and the kids were doing good at school? You're a monster, Trent! You're so obsessed with right and wrong that you can't see the people behind it!”
“There has to be order or everything falls apart!”
“Who gets to create that order? You? The bank? If we were all guided by empathy and thoughtfulness, we wouldn't need your goddamned Law!”
Trent crossed his arms. “I'm not leaving this doorway until you give yourself up.”
“Well I guess we'll just stay here forever,” Maverick said.
The scarecrow-girl took a swig from the bottle of gin and said, “I can't let you two block the doorway and take up the whole store. You'll scare away customers and the owner will fire me.”
Trent looked around at the jogging naked legs and said, “People buy these legs?”
“We don't just sell legs,” she said. “We also sell accessories. Like pants and piercings.”
“I can't leave until he leaves,” Maverick told her. “I'm not going to just give myself up.”
She looked up at him with pretty scarecrow-eyes and said, “I owe you one, buddy. Maybe we can over-power him long enough for you to escape.”
“Try it!” Trent raised his ski-poles like two swords. Maverick raised his own poles, and he and the girl walked towards the detective. Maverick swung his poles at Trent's, knocking them aside. Then the girl jumped on Trent, knocking him down. Maverick shuffled his skis to the exit and jumped out, tumbling and rolling. He gained his composure as quickly as he could and skied down past the Joggery.
Chapter 9: Mirrordrink
The lift-cables were still above him as Maverick torpedoed down the constant hill. Gondolas travelled up from below, mostly empty. If he'd passed a second lift-station, he hadn't noticed. What he had noticed was how very thirsty he'd become. Some snow would quench his thirst, but he didn't have time to stop. Trent was right behind him.
He launched off a small ledge where the hill got steeper. His skis wobbled below him. Maverick landed unsteadily, but his momentum pushed him straight.
Now there was a little hill where his momentum carried him upwards for a little while. At the top of the little hill he could see a lift-station down below! Just beyond the lift-station was a very steep drop-off.
Maverick's sharp mind instantly made a plan. I can't stop to get on the lift, because then Trent will catch me! But if I can slow down before the steep drop-off, then Trent might race past me and I can backtrack to the ski-lift! I just have to slow down where Trent can't see me... dammit my throat is parched!
Maverick sped past the lift-station without even looking. When he got close to the edge of the drop-off, he turned sharply to the right and slowed down. Then he started side-slipping down the steep, rough, icy wall. It was too steep for him to totally stop, and too rough to maintain balance. Using his poles, he shifted his weight back and forth, but then he tumbled over onto his side. Slipping and bumping, he fell and rolled down and down. He lost a pole and watched it tumble down further below him.
Off to the side, on the left of the hill it wasn't as steep. Maverick made an effort to roll over toward the tree-line. As he got closer, his tumble slowed and finally he lay on his back on the fresh snow. Looking up he saw the steep hill, and he realized how long this section was. It looked like it kept going steep for two hundred meters before levelling out. It gave him vertigo just to look at it. Maverick saw Trent hurtling down the mountain in his black snow-ensemble. Trent turned his head and yelled out, “Dammit! Branderdash!”
Maverick smiled. This part of the hill was much too steep for Trent to stop or even slow down safely. That would buy the doctor some time to shuffle back up the hill and get on the next gondola. Then he could escape this ridiculous ski-hill and focus on creating a buffer-zone between himself and the Law.
Snow still fell in chunky flakes and Maverick stuck out his dry tongue to catch some. They were so refreshing! But when he looked, he saw that there was a pop-machine just a few meters up the hill, right on the side of the path!
“Kind of a weird place to put a pop-machine,” he said to himself. He didn't usually drink pop: not just for health-reasons, but because it tasted too sweet. His cultured palette needed more from a drink than pure sugar, just like he needed more from a movie than explosions and nudity. But he would take any kind of drink right now. He shuffled awkwardly up the hill, pointing his toes out and keeping his heels closer to keep him from sliding back down.
When he reached the pop-machine, it had a blue back-drop with a picture of an orange soda-can. Above the soda-can were the words, Pineapple Soda.
Maverick was actually excited. The only time he'd ever had pineapple soda was when he visited Newfoundland for a conference. He'd also heard rumours about pineapple soda in Mexico, but he never expected to find some here on the steepest part of a bottomless ski-hill while he was running from a detective.
Looking for the coin-slot, he found that there was none! Instead there was a door-handle. So he pulled open the door to the machine and saw that it was a closet with mirror-walls. It only had one can of pop, one pineapple-soda sitting grandly upon a wooden pedestal.
He reached out to take the pop, mouth aching for a sweet drink. But the pedestal was further back than it looked. Stepping inside and reaching further, Maverick realized that the pop-closet was deeper than a regular vending-machine should go. It was as deep as a hallway.
Confused, Maverick stepped back outside to look at the machine. On the outside it was just a regular pop machine. Not as deep as a hallway.
“I shouldn't mess around with this strange drink,” he said out loud. “But it's so rare to find pineapple pop.”
So he stepped into the mirrored pop-hall again, clacking his skis on the glass floor as he walked toward the pedestal. Several feet into the tunnel, Maverick's ski-tips bumped against the glass wall, and his reaching fingers closed on thin air. What he had thought was a can of pop was just the reflection of a can of pop.
The hallway turned to the right, and Maverick saw the real can of pop sitting there, upon the real pedestal, with a faint ray of light shining on it. He turned in that direction and walked awkwardly in his skis. After a few steps Maverick was not surprised to find that this was also just another reflection of the true drink.
The real pop was off to the left, up a short ramp and around a tight corner where there was an awkwardly placed half-wall.
He'd wasted enough time in here and Maverick decided that he should leave. Even his dry, dragging, gagging thirst was not enough to compel him to search further for this futile drink. But it was pineapple soda, and while he could abandon it... he wouldn't!
So he turned to the left and tried to walk up the little ramp. But his skis just slid back down with each step. He reached out to grab the corner but the mirrored glass was so smooth that he couldn't get a grip. As he slipped and fell he could see his bumbling reflection a thousand times in all the mirrored surfaces. It made him instantly wonder, What does a mirror really look like?
He hitched the disc of his ski-pole to the corner of the half-wall and pulled himself up the little ramp. Wedging a ski in the corner, Maverick tried to step around the tight corner, but the half-wall got in the way. His legs were horribly contorted, and he used one arm to keep from falling while the other hand dragged uselessly against the smooth mirror-wall. He forced one leg over the top of the half-wall, but that moved his centre of gravity over to the other side of the little wall, and he fell over that way, even more twisted and contorted. Somehow, he ended up on his back with his legs in terrible pain, risking a sprain. He didn't dare to move because he would need his legs when Trent finally caught up with him.
Looking over his contorted body, Maverick tried to visualize how he could untwist himself without breaking bones or ruining joint-sockets. But then a dark figure loomed over him. Maverick couldn't see the face, and when he looked in the mirror-walls he could only see the reflected reflections of a shadow of a person.
“Now I've caught you, and your warm heart!” the figure laughed. Then an arm reached out from the shadow, wearing a blue sleeve and dangling a snow-white scorpion from its fingers. “This will hurt!”
The scorpion fell on Maverick's face. Before he could swat it off he felt a sharp, deep sting.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 10: Bite of the Snow-Scorpion!
At first there was no feeling and Maverick was blind. He could only think, and hear.
I wander through an endless mansion
Opening doors
Looking for a friend
Sometimes I see their reflections in mirrors
But never a true friend
My puppy could fly
And it barked and laughed
And flew through the sky
I had a kitten that could mesmerize you
With its cute kitten-eyes
And then it would eat you
“Aw that awful radio station,” Maverick mumbled. His annoyance at the distracting poetry sent blood into his brain, waking him up more. Now he had blurry vision. He noticed that his legs were tied. So were his hands.
He saw a blue shape moving around against a grey wall. Nothing was very clear.
My heart is the sugar
To make my mind eat the medicine
Of the cold universe
These translucent walls
Tease me with a world I cannot touch
Now Maverick was fully awake. He tested his bindings, and they were impenetrable. He was in a cave, illuminated by a fire and scattered candles. A man in a blue robe and a wizard's hat was walking around. Nearby on the dirt, there was another person tied up in a heap on the ground. It was Detective Trent, and he was sleeping soundly.
“Who are you?” Maverick called out.
The blue-robe man shuffled over on his red skis. His skin was absolutely horrible. It hung off his face like a mask... actually it was more like a hundred-year-old sack made of skin. There were slanted eye-slits where bright eyes shone out like happy diamonds. The mouth was sliced across the face, but turned up into a smile. “You're awake! How do you feel?”
“I feel frustrated and curious.” Maverick twisted in his ropes from discomfort. “And my belly hurts. How did you catch Trent?”
“He tried to rescue you from me!”
“Who are you?”
“I am the Wizard of the Ice Cave!”
“Ice Cave?” Maverick looked around at the rock-walls and the warm fire. “This isn't the Ice-Cave is it? Because there's no ice in here and it's pretty warm. And can you turn the radio off? I hate this station.”
The wizard frowned and walked over to a stereo. He pressed a button and the weird poetry stopped. “You had kind and friendly eyes when I caught you, but now you're grumpy.”
“Well you drugged my with a scorpion, tied me up and made me listen to that stupid radio station. That's why I'm grumpy. My belly hurts, too.”
“Your belly hurts because I fed you candy and pineapple-soda!”
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-40 show above.)