The False Treasure Chest

The False Treasure Chest

Reckless Rambles

By: Chase L. Currie

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

So, my dear friend, there is no way for me not to write to you on this matter and keep my faith at the door. Although, if I’m telling you the truth, my faith, the belief in the Lord, and His Word is never left at the door. All my arguments and ideas are rooted in my faith, I simply leave it up to you to name them in that meaner, but they all wrapped up in my faith as a Christian. I hope you will not bear me any ill will. I pray you read my words to the end, and rather you agree with my faith or not, you can still pull some advice from my words.

                I fear I might even say wisdom. I do not sit well with the word ‘wisdom’ coming from my lips or the idea of me showing you any kind of wisdom. I am not your teacher, I am your friend, and we are merely having an in-depth conversation.

                At this moment, as I write to you, there is an un-open bottle of sweet wine in my kitchen. It was a gift given to me on my birthday. I do not feel as it is the right thing to open it when there is no one to share it with over dinner. I want to drink it, you see. I would love to find out if the wine is as sweet as I hope it is, but I have to keep the longing to taste it at bay.

                Every time I walk into my kitchen, I look at the bottle. It is an amazingly crafted bottle with a picture of mundane life on it, and the bottle itself looks as if to be made from stone, but it is not. It is from the Middle East, where I am not sure. I could go find out, but I fear, I would not finish this and end up drinking it if I left my desk.

                But when I stand in my kitchen, I wondered what it would taste like? There is a fight within me not to open it and drink just a cup.

                The fight is not a great one; in fact, it is a dull one to tell you the truth. All I do is look at the bottle, wonder, shrug, and go back to my books. I know, however, there is a dragon that loves alcohol swimming in my blood. This dragon green with envy at all the drunks wishing to be with them, and he is very tiny in my heart. He covenants the love of the drink like all dragons worship the brightness of gold. He wants it. He almost needs it.

                I haven’t slain this dragon; there is no need to bring the sword to bear on its neck. It is not big enough to be deadly to me, but what this little green devil does is remind me daily not to feed it. I do not wish to battle this dragon in my life. I have so many others to circle in combat within my heart.

                This little green guy had me thinking the other day as I stared at the bottle of wine. In the old stories, the hero goes off to slay the dragon. It is a good story and one we should teach, but why does the hero do this? Is it because a dragon must be slain? Is it the nature of the hero?

                I guess, yes to both of those questions.

                The hero kills the dragon and gains the treasure; then he goes back home. A poor fairy tale would leave you there, but in truth, the treasure is almost, if not more so, as deadly as the fire breathing dragon. Beowulf becomes King after killing the monster and his mother, only to do the same thing the monster did in the end, covenanted his power. Lancelot rushes off to find the Holy Grail but betrays Arthur by loving Guinevere, which we should have known after all Lancelot is the first person to utter her name. Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit kills the dragon but loses his mind to dragon sickness, the love of gold.

                Those true legends or myths teach us a lesson we tend to leave at the entrance of the cave. We may have killed one dragon, but we have given birth to another one. The monster of a false treasure chest is far deadlier than the monster with claws and fire.

                Or, as I was sitting there thinking about the matter, we overcome one sin only to find another one. I sighed deeply when this idea came over me. I was almost saddened to the point of pouring me a cup of wine to drown it. I have been wrestling with some of my dragons as of late, never seeing able to slay them. Sins I wish no longer to feed, but for my failures, I keep giving in to them far more than I would like.

                I keep praying to slay the dragon, to stop these sins, but in truth, it is a weak pray. The devil, you know, kind of pray. I want to stop it, true, but I know when I do, the monster behind it might be worse. So, it is better to have this dragon than another one. At least, I know how to wrestle this sin.

                Too bad I’m not like Jacob …

Or maybe I am. I know this sin is wrong, and yet, I am still giving into it. The Lord calls us to stop sinning and turn to Him. Now, God knows we are foul people who will find a way to sin anyway, and we will sin every day of our lives. It is our nature to do so, but we should turn to Him when we do sin. To ask Him forgiveness, along with asking Him to help overcome this sin.

                Here I am wrestling with the Lord on the matter of my sin. He has told me what to do, and I, the childish man I am, am not happy with it.

Ah, I scream out at Him; it is a small sin; it is only hurting me and no one else. It makes me happy on those low days, and I have been having quite a few of those as of late. It feels good, and the world, everyone around me tells me it is not wrong. After all, this sin is a part of our nature. Why give it up for something worse?

I can almost see Him standing in the cave dress in all the glory of His armor, shaking His head at me. He is watching me battle this dragon waiting for me to turn to Him. But fear of the unknown has poisoned me, and I see foolishness in letting go of the sin I know for the one I do not know.

“The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth (145:18),” so says the poet of Psalms. I had almost missed the point as I reached by the bottle of wine. I was about to feed my little green dragon, but I stopped himself looking back at the Lord. He smiled at me, waiting for me to see the point.

Here it is my friend; it is not about defeating the dragon or stopping the sin. Yes, you should try to do those things. It is essential to remove unhealthy subjects out of your life, friends, lovers, and sins. Not for your happiness but for your health, and not for health but your relationship with the Lord. We should try not to feed our dragons, allowing them to grow until we have to slay them, or they swallow us whole. 

But the point is to turn to the Lord and ask Him for help. You must ask Him to help you in this battle with the dragon, no matter if you fail or not because the greatest failure is thinking you can do it alone. He will come to us every single time we ask, and He will wait for you at the door. He has already said so in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

I may slay the dragon I am facing now. I may not, I’m not sure, but what I do know is no matter how many times I fail, the Lord will help me back to my feet. He will be with me along the wicked path of life, trying to pull me ever closer to Him. He will be my sword and my shield if I allow Him to do so.

It is I who have to follow close to Him. It is I who have to stay on the right path, but far too often out of my childish ways, I wandered into the dark to fight dragons because I want to be the hero. (I will write another letter to you about what I mean on the matter of wanting to be the hero, but if I do so now, then we will be there all day.) Only to be wounded and broken, calling for the Lord to rescue me. He will not fail to do so every time I cry for Him. He will always come running, but I have to call for Him.

How unfair, I can hear you saying. If the Lord knows I need help, then why not – what? Force the help onto me? Have you ever tried to help someone who does not want it? I have, and it ended very badly. The same can be said to the Lord. He could make me right, whole, and force me to love Him and stay on the right path, but that would take away so much of my love for Him. I would no longer be able to come to Him out of love freely.

You could put a gun to my head and force me to write this letter to you, but we both know this letter would be weak, dull, and at worse, pointless if you used the gun. By allowing me to sit down with my pen to write to you with passion, I hope my words dip with love.

Someone could force someone else to love them, but we would call that wrong and rightfully so. Love by its nature must be freely given. The Lord is merely waiting for us to call upon Him. He is already at the door, we just have to open it, and we have to keep it open for Him. Love might have been freely given, but it also means you have to work at it, like any relationship. 

The dragons are going to come. They might even be more enraged when they see you or I are with the Lord. I genuinely do believe sin becomes harder to avoid the more you become closer to the Lord. For many reasons, I would say, but the few I can put forth here will be the fact our nature as sinners do not go away, we still want to sin. I sat want the drink even though I know it is wrong of me to do so. I can now see the wrongness of actions clearly, but that does not take away the fact I want to do them. My mother may say I can only have one cookie, but the dragon in me longs for more and giving into the dragon, as I’m sure you know, is quite fun. It is why we hold people of faith to such a high bar of morality, but it doesn’t make it any easier to reach the bar.

Because we are foul creatures, we will fail in trying to be perfectly good. Or we will fail in trying to slay the dragon alone. We need help. We need more than ourselves to be able to defeat the dragon. And maybe, we don’t defeat those dragons. Perhaps, we become wounded fighting them; either way, the Lord will come to help us.

I’m sure you might ask yourself how does someone like me, who doesn’t believe in God, take anything from all my words on the Lord. Well, first, I hope you do find the Lord one day, and then my words will carry with them even more weight. But if that day never comes, then I hope you see that whatever dragons you are facing, you can’t do so alone. I hope and pray you reach out to someone to help you in those battles. Most of all, I hope you do not keep feeding those dragons, and if you do, if you fail somedays to stop them, forgiveness is still there for you.

With a tip of the hat,

Chase

    

P.S. After re-reading and editing this letter, I have noticed something else. The treasure is a blessing given to us by the Lord, but that blessing has pulled the heroes from Him. God, I believe, will never allow you to keep any blessing He gives you if it pulls you from Him. I do wish to elaborate more on this topic, but that will be a future letter down the road.

The Burden of Purpose

The Burden of Purpose_04_05_20

Careless Thoughts

A Bad Memoir of Little Memories

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

I have found a secret to life …

                And it is there are two places which are the best to speak to someone about hard subjects. The first, the one in which I have used quite a bit in my life, is the car. When you are in the car with someone that is the best time to bring up something which might be difficult to speak about, they can’t run away, and you have to face them head-on. The two of you confined to the world in the car. No one else is real. No one else matters and there is just you and the other person.

                I’ve had many heated debates in my car over the years.

                Equally, the amount of tears have been spilled in there too.

                The second place, which I’m sure we all know, is the dinner table or over some kind of food. I have plenty of heated debates at the dinner table. I even had more lovely talks while sharing a pizza or dinner with someone. A cup of wine, a good meal, with a lovely person, those are the secrets to a good life.

                I found myself one day having lunch with my cousin after church. We went to this little pizza place here in the city I’m living in and talked about life, dreams, and God. It was one of those lunches which seem to stick out in my mind. The topic was near and dear to my heart.

                “I wish I knew my purpose like you do,” he said to me.

                I smirked, knowing almost everyone in my family has seen me as a person who always knew what they wanted in life. It is true. I know what I want, better yet, I know what I was put here for in my life. One might say I know my Purpose. “You don’t truly know what you are asking for,” I said to him.

                I think he was expecting me to tell him how to find a purpose in life, and I wish I could tell him, but I don’t know. As I said, I am someone who has felt a Calling on my life for a long time now. It is something I can remember from my youth. The Calling has always been there.

                (If you are looking for how to find your purpose, sadly, I’m not sure what to tell you. I would say try many things to see what sticks. I would say you are never too old to start looking, but I guess my greatest advice would be to pray and do it a lot. I might write something on the subject later.)

                I guess it would be unfair of me not to tell you the Calling, yes?

                I have always wanted to be an artist. There were three things I wanted to be when I a child, be a sniper, firefighter, and artist. The former two fell away quickly when I saw the power of art in my second-grade class. I couldn’t read or write, but I could draw, and drawing became my everything.

                Even now, I still wish to be an artist. I mean, I am an artist. All the artwork on my walls is made by me, but my creative loves have changed to writing. I long to make a living with writing because it is a Calling placed on me. I can use my story as a writer and a believer to help others.

                It is my purpose in life.

                “What do you mean?” He asked.

                It was something I had been thinking about a lot lately. What does it mean to have a purpose in life?

                It means, as Bukowski said, “If you are going to try, Go all the way.” Bukowski worked in the post office for most of his life before he became a poet. Three to four times a week, he would take the phone off the hook, unplugged the TV, and open the beer bottle getting down to the toil of the pen. He would smoke his mind away while pouring out his soul. He went all the way. He never stopped writing even when life seems like another dull day.

                Then one day, he quit working at the post office and became a poet.

                It is a lovely romance story for an artist, yes? But I don’t believe we all can do it. I’m sure we all can’t live the way Bukowski did or any of those other artists we romanticize in the history books.

                So, what do I mean, and why did I bring up Bukowski? You might already see the hints of what about to say in the story I told you.

                To have a purpose in your life means everything else must fall away. The Burden of Purpose is to wake up every day; knowing everything you do today must be in line with that purpose. The lousy job you have which only paid the bills and the rent means you can eat when you get home. A dead artist, a dead person, has no purpose in life.

                The job can and does allow you to live while you try to figure out a way to fill your purpose. Hell, maybe the situation is your purpose. I would think someone who is a cop or EMT felt they were being Called to help people. I hope so, anyways. I hope they were not merely in it for the money.

(Money, by the way, is not a purpose in life. It is a tool and a tool you must be careful with because it is far too easy to fall in love with it. The money will never give you a purpose for life, unless you are a dragon, of course.)

                Then there the fact you will sacrifice time and money to always move forward in your purpose. If something is keeping you from taking the next step, a job, a lover, a friend, then you should remove it from your life.

                “You want a purpose,” I told him,” but what you do understand is every day you wake up, you are fighting for it. Nothing else matters.”

                I am not saying the family is not a purpose; it is.

                I am no saying being love is not a grand old purpose; it might be one to the greatest purpose in life.

                What I am saying is, are you sure you want to take on the Burden of a Purpose in your life?

                I write between a thousand to four-thousand words a day, except for Sundays, I take it off, which can be a lot of work. I come home after a long day at my warehouse job, sit down at my desk, and started truly working. Now and then, I open Facebook or some other site that will rot my brain out one day and see all you folks off having fun.

                I close the sites, get up, and head for the door. Normally, I only make it to my bedroom door, but sometimes I get to my car. I stop, I don’t go out because I have work to do. I go back up the stairs, unhappy, and get back to writing.

                I say no to friends.

                I don’t pick up phone calls.

                I sleep less because I have to keep writing. I move toward the purpose of my life; every day, every step is heading toward that Calling.

                The Despair of my Burden is the fact I have not reached a point in my life where I am sharing my stories with the world. I share them with a few friends here and there. Sometimes, people online read them, but not to the point where I’m paying my bills with my Calling. (And I may never get there, but I’ll keep trying.)

                Some nights, I laid in the dark, staring at the ceiling in an empty bed. I didn’t find a lover because I didn’t go out to the bars or the parties. The Night is the only thing holding me, and my head is filled with people who are not real, and I wondered if I want to keep carrying this Burden until the grave.

                I look back over my life, wondering if it was all a waste.

                I could have gone to college for a real job. I could have gone into the workforce, making some good money. I could have got a wife, had some children, buy a house in the neighborhood, and get a pool. I would write here and there until I lost the drive for it as my kids got older, making me give up on things for a bit. I would tell myself every day and night when the kids are gone, and I’m retired, then I’ll pick up my writing again.

                I’ll be an artist once more.

                It wouldn’t all be bad. I would smile every day as I kissed my lovely wife. When we go to church as a family, it would be perfect. My kids would ask me to read to them at night; I would, then I would watch them sleep. My purpose might have changed; it might have become them.

                I roll over in my bed on those nights with tearing in my heart. Not because being an ordinary guy with a typical family is the pits of Hell. God, no, I don’t think that at all. The tearing comes because those things above about the American Dream sounds lovely to me. I see it all the time what joys my mom and dad have because they have a family. I wouldn’t mind sharing in those joys.

                The tearing in my heart comes from the fact; I want it all.

                Most of the time, I wake up to the sun rapping on my window, smiling at me. It asks me to come out and play for a bit, but I can’t, I have work to do. So, I sit back down at the desk to write some more.

                The Burden of Purpose is a simple one; are you willing to give up everything for it? Whatever that purpose may be, and if you believe for a second, you can’t give up what is Called for the Purpose, then I wouldn’t ask for it.

                 The Despair of Purpose is a horrible one; you have a purpose, but you don’t follow it, and you fear you will die, never carrying it out. You would fail in your purpose in life. You keep trying no matter what because it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. And yet, the fear is still there, I know, I have felt for a long time.

If you are not willing to face these hardships when asking for a Purpose, then my advice to you is don’t ask. Life would be better without it; trust me.

With the tip of the hat,

Chase

P.S. I do believe God has made us all for purpose. The baseline purpose we are Called to do is believe in God, follow His Word, and Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. What I’m talking about is asking for something else to do in this life. To ask the Lord for a Grand Purpose or in truth, asking for more toil in this life. 

A Letter On Kindness

"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can see."
― Mark Twain

Today has been long for me. I did a lot of running around to make sure everything was in order for the lockdown, and somehow along the way, I got weary of the duty. My job has been shut off to me as of yesterday, and the stress is building. I have plans to work around it. I have ways of still bring in money, but in truth, I think I need to breathe. I'm fighting not to let the despair bring my walls crumbling down because there is nothing, I can do to change the events outside my window.

                In these great times of uncertainty, there is only one thing we can do, and that is to make ourselves better than we were yesterday. You can't lay in bed all morning, wishing things were this way or that way because the pillows are for dreaming, dreams change nothing. But you have to get up, go for a walk, write the sorrow away, and, most of all, move. If you can't walk, then read, for isn't a book the greatest portal to somewhere else? I think it is for us all.

                I sat in bed this morning listening to jazz before the sun rose and smiled at the first rays of light breaking into my window. They were a welcome intruder begging me to get up, get to work being a person. I couldn't turn them down.

                I started to move.

                The song playing on this morning was 'It's Been A Long, Long Time' by Harry James and Helen Forrest. How could you not smile at the song? It is one of my favorite songs of all time, warm and safe. The tune is full of love, making me long for someone who isn't real yet.

I wrote a poem about it a while ago.

Note Three

Kiss me once –

And ask,

"Are we going to make,

It to the stars?"

Kiss me twice –

To rinse

                The Blues

                From my bones

As I hold the dream of

                You,

In the smoky Club,

With hints of smooth love.

Kiss me once again –

"To the stars?"

Ah, sorry my dear,

                To the grave.

               

                The poem is about to publish this month, I believe. I will let you know more when I learn more or when it is out. The funny thing about the poem is I didn't mean to get published. I wrote it for fun and sent off thinking nothing would come from it, but here we are with someone liking it. I don't know if I would call myself a poet, but if I did, it would be for my mother. She has always been a true poet at heart, more than I am. Maybe, one day I'll write a story about her.

                Speaking of stories, I should be working on my novels, but again, I need a break. I need to breathe. Tomorrow I have plans for a walk in the park with a friend and a day of writing. I think it will be a perfect day. I am already looking forward to it.

                I have to keep moving, making myself better.

                One of the ways I think we can all make ourselves better is to be kinder. Something you have pointed out to me in your last letter. People need to be kinder, and the odd thing about my faith is it teaches that only believers should be kinder to others. As a man of faith, I know it is our nature as people to be mean, ugly and horrible to each other. Doing wrong is far easier than doing the right thing. It is a truism of life and my faith teaches me I should do the harder thing. I should, as Frost said to take," the one less traveled by," and be all the better for it.

                But I haven't found a way to make people kinder, only myself. The sad truth of life is that it might not matter to anyone. All we have to do is look at the world, shutter at the fact, evil seems to be winning more often than good is triumphs in the battle. Another thing my faith teaches me about the human soul.

The world is a fallen place. There is nothing I can do to change it. It is doom like the flower in the summer wind waiting for winter to pluck it. There is nothing I can do to stop the chill of Jack Frost.

                I can, however, change the inner world of myself. I sat here and look all the evil of this place and say, "I will not add to it." Well, I will not mean to add to it. I'm sure I have done evil in my life, but that is a question I dare not ask others to elaborate on for my sake.

I can only be kinder to others. I can only do good within my world and hope it adds bit more goodness the battle. Even if I'm defeat by wicked actions, I can stand in front of the Lord and say," I did my best. I did what You asked of me."

                Now, I know you are not a believer in my faith, but I think you can see what I'm getting out here. I know the darkness of the world is hard to bear, rather if the evil is small or grand, but all you can do is be kinder. It may not change anyone's heart or do anything to make the day brighter, but you have known you did good.

                I have been thinking a lot about how selfish people are these days. Yes, I know people have always been this way, but I have not always been alive to see it. I watch people think only of themselves and not stopping to thinking about anyone else. They do not love your neighbor as yourself; they simply love themselves.

                Of course, most people would tell you the reason they are acting this way is because they have a family. They have to think of them first. They have to do for them over all else.

                Odd, huh? It says neighbor, not your brother, father or mother, even your children, but the person in the other house. I'm not saying die for the person. I mean, if you are dead, then you can't be kind at all expect to the worms. I'm merely saying think of them before you think of yourself. Be a little kinder but being kinder is the path less taken. We few get to walk it alone most of the time.

                Then again, I also see how people who believe they are kind would pull someone else world down to bring wealth and joy to others. A blind rage of kindness to show the world they are good ones. They get to stand on the bones of their enemy and say," See, I destroy them for you, oh low ones."

                Blinded by their needs to be the good one, they do not see the greater harm they've caused. I am saving your baby while killing an elderly person who does not share. Of course, if they asked the older person, they might have given their life for the baby, but we don't get to know. All we get to see is evil cloak goodness, and that is the greatest sin of all.

                You might be thinking I'm saying not to be kind. Not at all, I'm merely saying be cautious of the virtue you are using as a weapon in the battle of good and evil. I'm also saying you should not use a moral code base on yourself to bring changes to the world. After all, if we're in a fallen world and doing evil is far easier for us to carry out then good is, then we must be vigilant about our deeds, even if they are in the name of good.

                Ah, hell, I got a little preachy there, and I didn't mean too. You know all of this and we both agree we should be kinder. I'm sure the why or how doesn’t matters as long as we do it. I simply let myself ramble before I stopped the pen. I'm sorry for sounding like I was preaching to you. I didn't mean to come off that way.

                Outside of this philosophical quagmire about people, I have been thinking a lot about Robert Johnson, a blues player who sold his soul to the devil. There is a lot of reference to hoodoo (Voodoo) icons in his songs, making people believe he practice the arts. I'm not sure he did. I think he simply knew people of the time would get the reference in the song seeing the deeper meaning in them. Kind of like what Poe did in the Raven. In Irish mythology, Ravens are the harbingers of death, which more people back then knew then today. It is one of the reasons Van Gogh put Ravens in his paintings, Wheatfield with Crows. A lot of people think he was working on that painting when he shot himself, but he was not working on it. He was working on another picture.

                I started to wonder what icons we have in our zeitgeist today, but my mind wandered back to my pet crow at my old job. I missed the little guy. I named Frank Hopper, the 4^th, and I hope he is going well in all this madness.

                I need to go to bed before this gets any weirder.

With a tip of the hat,

Chase

The Introduction that will never happen

An Uncomfortable finding of themes in ‘The Wolves of Charlotte’

Draft 2

By: Chase L. Currie

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

It has taken me some time to understand the why for this story, and normally, I wouldn’t have gone looking for it. In truth, I didn’t too much go looking for the why in any of my stories. I believe there are many whys for every story, and stories can be about more than one thing or theme. You can have a story about love and still have death in the background as a theme. Or a story about death and have the joy of life as a theme under the main thought of the story. I believe this to be the case because life is much like this. When I have lost friends and family members, my days have been painted in gloomy emotions, but love, joy, and many other subjects were still found in those days. Those days were not the sole domain on one topic of my life.

                I believe this should be the case for your writing as well.

                I have read that Stephen King doesn’t look for a theme of his story until he goes back to edit it. The first draft and rightful so is simply him telling himself the story. This is true for all writers. Once the first draft is done, then you can go back to find the themes within the story.

                I have done the same, it has taken me some time to find the theme, but it is there. I found it on a walk the other day.

                The Wolves of Charlotte at first glanced is a story about a middle-aged man named George August, going back to his hometown to say goodbye to a childhood friend. The friend Jordan Rouge had killed himself. While at the funeral of his friend, he runs into the love of his youth, Maddie Thann, who simply ran away one day with her brother Grayson. George had never stopped loving Maddie but knew he would never see her again.

                He let her go all those years ago. He moved on and moved out of the city. He went to the other side of the United States, try to make it as an artist, failed, and works as a store manager now. The only good thing about his life is his girlfriend Lauren Michelle, who he plans on marrying soon.

                Until the phone call about Jordan comes ringing.

                Then he finds Maddie had come back for him. She still loves him. He still loves her. They fool around thinking it would be a fling and nothing more, but soon Maddie’s life catches up to them. Maddie and Grayson, unknown to George at the beginning of the story, are werewolves running away from their Alpha, Trent Salem, and his Pack, and a werewolf hunter is chasing them all.

                George is tossed into the middle of this world he never knew was real; he believes it was only in books and movies, but like all myths or fairy tales, there is some truth in them. It just happened to be a truth George wasn’t ready for in his life.

                No one is ready to know the monster under their bed is real; no one but the monster.

                As I was writing this story, I had no real idea what the theme was going to be outside the fact, werewolves, like animals, simply acted on their nature. It is much harder for a werewolf to control their urges for an act. If they want to hunt, then they do so. If they want to make love, then they do so, no matter who the person is, they simply want and act.

                Along the way, in this story, I started to notice I wrote a Bonnie and Clyde tale with werewolves in it. I was satisfied with the story being a retelling of the most fabulous outlaw couple in history. The twentieth century’s Romeo and Juliet myth we have all come to love. Like all good Shakespeare tragedies, it ends in death, and I was sure my story was going to be along the same lines.

                I didn’t think I needed to dig any deeper into the themes or meaning of the story. It was done. I was done thinking about and wanted to move onto my next work.

                But like I said before, on a walk, my mind started to question the whys of The Wolves of Charlotte.

I told my dad I was writing a story about werewolves. I explained to him the Hunter in the story, Moses Tozier (yes, the last name is from a King novel) was a part of this group called the Twelve. The Twelve are believed to be descendants of Nephilim who survived the Deluge. They carry with them halos, which allows them to fight against evil by blessing whatever object they are holding. If Moses is carrying a shotgun, then it is a sanctified shotgun. If he holds a knife is burning with righteous powers. Why does this matter? Well, the only way to kill a werewolf is with blessed silver. The standard sliver will not kill a wolf, might hurt them, but then again, getting shot or stab would hurt anyone.

                I got this idea from an old rule in D&D about how to kill a werewolf, blessed silver being the only thing to kill it, and felt it was a great rule to bring into my world. I set rules for all my stories of how the monster’s powers will work. It keeps them within a box and the power not too grand, allowing ordinary people a way to fight back.

                My dad said to me after I told him all this, “I hope you don’t make the werewolves the good guys.”

                “I won’t,” I told him, and I didn’t. And yet, the main characters, the ones we followed most in the story, are the werewolves. None of the wolves in the story are good people. Maddie selfishly wants George in her life because she knows “that death is the wages of sin,” as Bonnie Parker puts it. Maddie knows the long run will only end in one way, death for them all, but she can’t let go of George. Grayson, he doesn’t care about George, but the old friend allows him to start his Pack, something he wants to do. Trent and the old Pack want revenge at any cost, which is mostly their lives.

                They are not good people because they are not people. They have killed and tortured across the world, not caring one second about anyone else other than their kin.

                Then what about George? He is an average person running along with wolves, is he a monster? He did cheat on his girlfriend, someone he planned on marrying, but he also believed the one would never come back. You know, that one who got away? What would you do if they came back? It was Maddie for him, she was the one. She did come back just with blood dripping from her hands. He still goes with her after finding out the truth.

                Does that make him a bad man?

                Maybe, I’m not sure. It does make him unlikeable, but evil like the others? I don’t know.

                But I know what I did with, George. I see why he is there. Not merely to have someone new to the world for the reader to go along with, but to show the reader it is easier to fall for evil than to do the right thing. Doing good is hard; doing evil rather in the form of sin or evil actions is far easier to do because it is in our nature to do such things. We have to fight to be good.

                George fails.

                He couldn’t overcome his nature at all.

                The only good person in the whole book is Moses, and to everyone else, he is the monster. He is the evil hunting them. I mean, he is trying to kill them. It is his duty to do so. I like Moses a lot, but I also based him off my brother-in-law so that I might be a bit bias on the matter.

But he is essential to the story because as much evil that is in the world, there is also good there too. As Gandalf said to Fodor, “There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.” Moses is the other force at work. As much as evil is always one step ahead of Moses or seem to be able to run wild in the world, he is trying with all his power to stop it. He chases the monsters under your bed as much as the monsters chase you.

                He even remarked to himself how much they are alike. Where the werewolves must hunt because it is a part of them, Moses being one of the Twelve, must hunt them because it is a part of him. What he is trying to say there is when good, men or angels or God, sees the will of evil acting then it much do something to act against it. Evil is always on the move to kill and destroy, but so is good on the move to stop it.

                At least, I hope it is in this world and not just in the world I have written in these pages.

                I do hesitate to tell you the themes I have found in my story. I don’t want to paint your reading of it in the same light as I see it. I want you to find your meaning in my story, but this is what I have found in the story. I did not set out to write a story about the condition of human nature; I simply wanted to write a retelling of Bonnie and Clyde as werewolves. A road trip story with a lot of blood and horror along the way. I want to have fun with writing a story, but it changed into something more.

                Even if you don’t find anything more profound in the story then a silly tale of werewolves, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you fall in love with some of the characters and can’t wait to see what happens to them. Some of them will make it to the end, others will not be so lucky, but you will have to read to find out what happened to them, my dear reader.

“You've read the story of Jesse James

of how he lived and died.

If you're still in need;

of something to read,

here's the story of …”

-          Bonnie Parker ‘The Trail’s End’

A Letter on Anxiety

Dear Mr. Doubt,

“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

-          Matthew 6:34 (NKJ)

There is oddness about today, my friend, as I write you this letter, one in which I cannot put my finger on but lingers over me like a spider web on a full moon. I can see the shimmer of the web. I’m not sure if this odd feeling has any great degree on my state of mind, but it is there.

                My mind or the quality of my thoughts this last week has been up and down due to the lack of sleep and me starting a new job. The pay is better, and I’m slowly starting to rise from my poor lot in life. It is a physical job, a lot of mindless lifting heavy things in the back of a warehouse, but it is a good job.

                I have always said in my letters to you that I believe every thinking man should work with their hands. There is a blessing in the tore of the day. A need in the work of life that is good for the soul. I often dream about being a teacher, writing for a living, and having a small farm to take care of at the same time. I do not want to lose the physical side of work. It is needed for all people, and it is good for the mind. A healthy body is a healthy mind, after all.

                I thankful for the job, for it is where the Lord wishes me to be. I grateful for the work, for it will force me to take better care of myself.

                And yet, there is a soreness I must overcome from this new job. One I haven’t had in a while, but my body soon will be okay with the activities of work.

                I must share some good news while I’m writing to you. I am heading back to school in the Fall or, at the least, in the winter. Which then, I plan on looking into a school where I could get my master to allow me to teach.

                Sometimes, I’m unsure if the Lord has called me to be a teacher, and then He places me somewhere in my day where I can teach someone something new. The other day I showed a friend some drawing techniques. I walked away with great joy in my heart.

                At church, I was speaking to some people on the subject in which I have been reading about, how hope is built on faith, and the way they were listening to me, put more joy in my heart. I couldn’t tell you if I was right on the idea we were speaking about, but in truth, that doesn’t matter to me, all that matter is people were thinking as they walked away from me. I do not mind being wrong. I hope I am; then I have something to learn.

                Great things are building in my day, but as I laid down in bed during this week, the anxiety of tomorrow plunged me into a pit close to despair. I couldn’t sleep close to the edge of this pit and would wake with my days painted in the gloom. I tried my best to mask the dullness of emotional night by not paying attention to the anxiety.

                It failed.

                The beast, which is my anxiety, only grew with every passing day. I couldn’t escape, and the only remedy I could find was to do as Poe did in the Raven, read.

                Here I am with all these blessings falling into my lap, and my days are seen as bad to me. The work is good, honesty, rightful, but it is not where I want to be. I keep seeing myself wasting my days in this lot in life when the Lord has given me gifts. It is a sin not to use the gifts the Lord has given you. I wondered if not the greatest sin of them all. It weighs on me that I am failing the Lord. Everyone else been damned, I do not care what others think of my failures, because I do not have to answer to them, but the Lord –

                Ah, I only hope I can say I did my best.

                On the way home the other night, the terror of tomorrow had me thinking about how to handle this anxiety. I recall one time when I was meeting a friend for lunch. I step out of the car with a smile on my face, and he asked me how I was doing?

                Bad, I said. I’m having an awful day.

                Then why are you smiling?

                Because I have something to overcome now.

                It is the only way I know how to handle bad days.

                But I can’t overcome my bad days alone, and let me explain because I hope this helps you with your anxiety. We have spoken on the matter here and there in our letters. I know it plagues you deeply to the point of almost making you not get out of bed in the morning. I have been thinking about a way to help you overcome this hardship. In since you are a believer, a person of faith, then I will speak to on those terms, something we both share.

                A hard day or a mere lousy day gives you something to stand up against, I have learned. It allows me to grow in my faith because on those hard days; I can turn to the Lord to help me get through them.  I put my trust in the Lord. Not to make the day better but to let me know I am not alone in the struggle of it. That the Lord is there with me to help me carry my cross when I need it, not to carry it for me.

                We too often want the Lord to use His great power for our will and wishes, and not to trust in Him that He has the best in mind for us. That sometimes, the ‘no’ or the agony is better for us because we have to grow closer to Him. The mere bad day gives me the chance to say, “Lord, I know You are with me, and with You, all can be done. Even overcoming a bad day.”

                That is the blessing of an ordinary bad day.

                Then what about the horrific anxiety of the future and all the terror it being with it?

                I believe – and I have given this some thought as of late – there are two ways to look at this quagmire. I hope this helps you, for they have helped me.

                The first is to see the anxiety as a good thing because it means you have a goal in which you are reaching for in the future. You still have dreams and passions for your life, and the fear of failing in those dreams is what is causing the anxiety, but you have them, and you are making moves to carry them out. Yes, you made failed; that is a possibility in life, but not trying to is worse than any failure.

                Having the anxiety is far better than seeing tomorrow or the next ten years as just another day or another year. A shrug about it all and nothing more: you have given up, no point in trying because you have already failed, but the anxiety, hopefully, we will keep you moving.

                Yes, the terrors of tomorrow can be real. Indeed, the anxiety is genuinely a foe within your soul, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t battle it. It is an emotion, and all emotions must be felt to be overcome. But it is an emotion which you can use to feed you, or you drown in the despiser with it.

                Anxiety means you are alive, and you have goals, something we must see it as. A bad day is a blessing just as much as the good days.

                The second way I’ve found to handle a bad day is to remember the Lord is with you, as it says Zephaniah 3:17 NIV;

“The LORD your GOD is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love, He will no longer rebuke you but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Or –

                As a friend once said to me,” God suffers with you.” This has to be true, for do you not feel agony when you see a loved one in pain? Do you not weep with the heartbreak of those who you love? If God – and He is - our Father and loves us as His children, then does He not weep at our foolish suffering? But He is with us in our hard days – in the dark of our minds. He is there.

                So, what does this mean for a bad day or the great monster of the future?

                It means you are not alone in it. For what truly is a bad day in your life but a storm within your mind? The monster we so fear about things yet to come is nothing more than the Shadows of our minds toying with us. Is this normal, mere, suffering of our lives not afflicted on to ourselves by ourselves?

                Yes, I would agree, there are days worse than others where you can’t control the outside events. A car wreck is out of your hands. A girlfriend breaks up is not in your will. The death of a loved one is a roll of fate. But those days, we know we must turn to God for help. We turn to Him in those worse days all the time, but why don’t we do so in our mere bad days?

                Are they too small for Him?

                Are those mundane bad days our punishment we cast on ourselves for some greater sin? Or – are they simply meant because everyone has bad days. It is a part of life after all, right?

                But God calls us to gather Joy from Him. He is our Joy, expect, what? On a mere lousy day? Where our minds are our greatest foe? On those days, we don’t call to the Lord, but why?

                It on those days that we should call to Him. The mere bad days, rather a fact of life or making of our own, it is the place we should turn to the Lord. Not to make the day better but to be there with us, which He has said, “The LORD your GOD is with you.”

God is with you, my dear friend. He is there in your suffering; do not turn your back on Him. For He is the harbor in the storm, the flower on the grave, the Joy after the hellish night of being in the fray with the devils. He is there with you.

A bad day is a great day to turn to the Lord.

I hope this helps, my friend.

With a handshake,

Chase

Note Fifteen

Draft 2

By: Chase L. Currie

I met Him

                On the pier,

                With a pair of,

                Holes in my,

                Heart.

I put my feet

                In the Summer water,

                Of a childhood fancy,

                Where I can,

                Only find smiles,

                Filled with Joy.

He gave me a

                Fishing pole,

                Under his yellow,

                Straw hat,

                We sat for,

                A while in,

                A quiet wind.

I met Him

                In a gallery,

                Of lost souls,

                Those who turned,

                Their backs,

                On His love,

                He did not weep,

                In front of me,

                But He did weep for them.

I met Him at a

                Coffee shop, alone and lost,

                After hours of pushing

                Thorns into my bones,

                I weep in front of Him,

                The hurt won,

                The tears real,

                I cried to Him.

And He reached out,

                Taking my hand,

                Asking me to tell Him,

                A tale,

I met Him -

A Slice of the Fable

01 09 20

Reckless Rambles

Draft 1

By: Chase L. Currie

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

I have a fatal flaw, I trust people, and I desperately want to know their stories.

I’m not sure where this desire to learn someone’s story came from in me. I don’t think there is one key place in my history that I can pinpoint for it to come around. Maybe, it is a core fact of all storytellers to want to hear more tales. Every writer wants to tell someone’s stories but to do so, we must first know them.

                But this longing came to me the other day as I was sitting in the coffee shop. The lady behind the counter, who knows my name, but I have no idea what her name is, was talking to me about art. She is going to school for art history, so we chat about paintings we like and don’t like all the time. We always come to each with new things to tell. (This week I’m thinking about bringing up Edie Sedgwick and how as of late, I can’t stop watching her interviews.)

                It is a fun little game we have, but I was reading there one day, glancing over at her. Well, not at her for the most part, but past her and out the window. She happens to be in the way, and when I back to work in my journal a bit …

                I started to write questions I wanted to know about her.

                Why art history?

                Where do you come from?

                Is this place home?

                Cake or pie?

                I almost needed to know these things about her. Then I sat back, thinking to myself about how I had always been this way. I have this thing about myself … I like to be an outsider. I’m sure this came from me always hanging out with the odd kids in school. Or the fact, I always felt like an outsider among most people.

                Even today, I feel on the other side of most things looking in on it. At church, I watch people trying to see what reason brought them to this building on a Sunday morning. I said something to the people around me seeing the hush look they give me because I do not do a great job at watching my language there.

                Not anymore.

                Shit, fuck, and damnit, flow easily from my lips these days.

                When I see these stares, I want to know why they are so disheartened at my words. Who told you I can say those things in this building? Why are you taking them the wrong way? Tell me about your father and how it felt moving from place to place all your childhood?

                I want to know people on a deep level. I don’t too much enjoy small talk, but then again maybe small talk is simply the foreplay to the bigger things. Like my friend at the coffee shop, I love talking to her about art, but there is so much more to learn. I want to dig into those darker places in her heart to see what story I could find there.

                You could lie to me about the stories, I wouldn’t mind.

                You could tell me the truth about them, I wouldn’t mind that either.

                I simply want to know is all …

                Like I said, this may have come from the fact I have always seen myself as an outsider looking in. But this has also led me not to understand why the outsiders of the world suddenly want to be on the inside. I can easily recall when the Alphabet People were fighting for equal sight under the law, which I agreed with, but then they turn to this idea to … well, you have to accept me too.

Uh, whoa, sir or madam, me disagreeing with you is me seeing as a human. I disagree with my family and friends all the time. If I wasn’t willing to sit down at the table and talk to you, then that means you mean nothing to me. I do not have to accept anything about you and nor are you going to make me.

                But, also, why on God’s green earth do you want to be on the inside? Can’t you see what that means? It means people like me who hate the idea of being on the inside see you like something we cannot become. Being the outsider allows you to see so much more than being trap in the norm, but I do understand the reason for wanting to be in the norm.

                I get it.

                I see it, and it is so much safer in there.

                Lame, but safe.

                This could also come from the fact my mom and dad were odd people in the world. My dad was a Christen biker, who played D&D most nights while riding with the Hell Angels. My mother was a poet and who was a hangover of a flower child, never wanting to be like everyone else. Both of them tried to do it the world’s way, the normal way in life, and it always fell apart for them. Neither one of them were normal, but they didn’t act like they weren’t anything but themselves.

                School might have a lot to do with my feeling of being on the outside as well. I couldn’t read in school, kids made fun of me for it … and being fat … so it was best to be on the outside. And yet, soon, all those kids who were picking on me saw that I was happy being myself. I didn’t care what they thought or said or saw. I was me, and it was all I needed.

                I made some great friends afterward.

                And then I went to a school with more odd people, more outsiders, but even there I felt out of the camp. The only way I knew how to be around people was to listen to their stories. I wanted to hear them, see them smile, watch me cry, and wondered why they were this way.

                My dad is drunk, she said on the bus ride home. I hate it.

                How bad is it? I asked.

                Bad.

                But how bad?

                She told me about having to get in the morning to get ready for school and making sure she didn’t step on the broken beer bottles. They were all over the floor, and sometimes, her dad would be asleep on the couch, vomit all over him. She would help him up, clean him off, and get him to bed.

                I guess that is why I let the boys – use me. At least, then I mean something to someone.

                Oh, love … oh, love.

                The stories weren’t always rainbows and flowers, most of them were heartbreaking, and some of them were downright soul-crushing, but all of them needed to be heard. Most people – okay, all of us, don’t get to share our stories with people. We are not sitting on the mountain tops of life screaming into the world, listen to me! Hear me! What most of us get to do is sit across from someone with a cup of coffee, in a low voice, and said …”Here is my story. It’s not a lot. It’s not great, but it is all I have.”

                Well, friend, it’s all I want to hear.