jack_babalon | Re: emerge

Fireflies on a cool September night, a migration of lime stars drifting over an otherwise empty road. Fingers sticky with dry chocolate ice cream and vaseline poke through a cast iron manhole cover. Eight stubby pink worms wiggle for air before curling into hooks and lock themselves into a grip. The manhole cover lifts an inch, pauses and slides to the right with an excruciating metallic scrape. Luminiscent mist of white ghost light billows out of the sudden aperture to spill across the pavement. A top hat wearing silhouette rises through the manhole opening, effortlessly lifted from below by an invisible elevator platform and emerges with a confident step through the wisping mist.

The man (yes, we can tell that much from here) stops. Reaches into a crumbled tuxedo jacket and produces a cigarette. Placing it in his mouth, one of the fireflies lands on the tip and immediately ignites into a verdant flame. Brief illumination of the hidden face beneath the shadow veil of the hat's brim. Familiar bug goggles, mirrored with a fracture lens over the right eye, stare back at you. Unshaven cheeks bulge into a smile of cracked lips and blows out a solid stream of gray smoke. The nicotine cloud hovers there, crackles with green lightning and floats up to graze over the sleeping street.

The man doffs his hat, pressing it to his chest and gives a flourished bow -

Forgive my recent absence, everyone.

It's been five days since my last post - five days, a couple dozen miles and several hundred gallons of rain water to be exact. The Internet has been down here in Exile since my return from Arcadia on Wednesday and has only recently been restored as of this evening. I could go into the details about the last 96 hours but I know time is short and the hour late.

Instead, for your perusal, a few postcards from my recent adventures off the grid: