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Christopher
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Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
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Purgatorial Incarceration

0 posted 2009-01-23 08:24 PM



Clark and the Defenders
©2009 C.G. Ward



The first time Clark Monroe had the dream, he dismissed it. Even saying that much might be an overstatement, since the dream was little more than a memory on waking, and by the time he hit the showers it was long gone -- dust and a sense of amused ill-ease the only remnants.

Then it came a second time.

Now, Clark was not much of a dreamer. Oh, he’d attended those philosophy classes in college, the ones that pretended to make you look inside yourself, learn who you really were... but he’d never paid all that much attention; it was a little known -- if much guessed at -- fact that Clark’s passing grades during college were bought with the touchdown passes he threw, not the currency of his brain matter.

So when the dream came a second time, Clark ascribed it to bad pizza the night before and went on with the rest of his day. He dutifully shucked off the lingering feeling of déjà vu, hopped in his black Jeep Wrangler, drove off the campus of Texas Tech, and headed to the set where he was filming a commercial for a local hardware store.

Two weeks went by without a recurrence, and Clark let the dream disappear into that section of his brain (which was slightly larger than average) where he filed Things I Don’t Understand.

When it came a third time, Clark was able to hold on to some of it, retain the normally transitory nature of dreams. Of course, it helped that he’d already seen it three times in his sleep now.

That third time, he woke not only with the same bemused sense of ill-ease, but also with a feeling of expectation, perhaps even anticipation. Later that night, he told his girlfriend Candace -- also known as Candy -- about his dream. She had shrugged off the few tidbits he had remembered, suggesting that such silliness was not fitting for a big, brawny role model such as himself.

Clark agreed with her, but still felt uncomfortable; he recalled none of his dreams -- never had -- and having the same one repeatedly was a source of disturbing speculation.

The dream began to come with more regularity after that, often days in a row. Clark dreamed the same damned dream enough that he could have acted it out on stage without once referring to the script. He lost sleep, lost games, lost Candy, and nearly lost his mind.

Two months to the day following his first dream, they came, and suddenly Clark began to understand that his dreams weren’t just dreams.

#

Their ships covered the skies like skeet shot gone mad, dark revolving saucer-shaped craft littering the atmosphere as if pollution weren’t enough of a problem for the inhabitants of their destination.

There was panic in the streets, under the streets, in the subways, and pretty much anywhere else people could gather for a party. Presidents and dictators alike took to being buried underground, running their respective countries from the relative safety of nuke-proof bomb shelters. Commerce shut down and panicked fires ignited through half a dozen larger cities (remember where Memphis used to be? Yeah, fires, sorry folks). Oh, and the Texans fired their guns at the ships... but nobody thought much of that, as Texas is, well, Texas.

But the ships just sat there, ominous in their presence, seemingly innocuous in intent, and wholly oblivious of the scattered, panicked creatures below.

The governments of Earth sent emissaries, light shows, and candid speeches that started out welcoming, but over time devolved into threats. Still, the alien ships waited, watched, and did nothing outside of blocking the deeply depressing winter clouds (at least in North America).

Months passed by while the alien ships melted into just another part of the scenery, a mass of quasi-metal umbrellas decorating an otherwise boring sky.  Life -- as it ever does -- moved on. The peoples of Earth had their own lives to attend to, and if the aliens weren’t going to provide an interesting sidebar, then to hell with them... they could sit up there forever if they wanted.

Clark felt a bit differently about this, much to the amusement of those around him. He told and retold his dream. At first, when the aliens were a novel presence, he had a wide audience. But, as the unknown beings sitting inside the crafts above began to first do, then perfect Nothing, Clark found himself speaking to a dwindling audience; dreams, man, they’re just dreams... they’re never going to move, do anything up there, man. Go back to football and quit being such a whiner.

So Clark gathered the few Texas Tech students who would listen to him and did the only thing he could think of: he started a heavy metal band. Clark and the Defenders weren’t great at first, but with time and an inordinate amount of practice, began to be better.

Due to the taxing requirements of running a band (Clark on vocals, as surprising as that was even to him) caused Clark to make the biggest sacrifice of his life: he dropped football. Coach Leach threatened to kill him, the school threatened to expel him, and the steady supply of girls he’d enjoyed since junior high dwindled, then disappeared.

Still, he persisted, focused on developing that unique sound you can hear in many offshoots of the Defenders even to this day. Clark used his previous status as Big Man on Campus along with a touch of intimidation, and drummed up some gigs for the band. He needed exposure, and knew time was short.

The shows went well, if not as well as Clark would have preferred.

But he had his recurring dreams to thrust him on, to help him push his band mates, clinging to hope and possibility while thrashing at the strings of their guitars and plucking the bass beat from the garage-days drum sets.

The shows started growing, started showing up in stronger and stronger venues.

The world forgot the aliens in the sky, and the Defenders were signed up with Playtone, a record in the mix, and a tour scheduled. In fact, had the extraterrestrial visitors been content with their bird’s eye view of the world, the Defenders might have shot up the charts, become the Beatles of heavy metal.

But the aliens had no intention of sitting up there until time ran out into the bottom half of its celestial hourglass. No, as Clark well knew, that was not their plan at all.

#

The ships covered the Earth’s skies for more than a year, their presence a dwindled concern for all but artists and astronomers... and the latter only because they couldn’t see the stars anymore through the nearly complete shield of alien ships.

And, when that state of events changed, it changed quick!

One night in early February the ships opened. In a brilliant display of light and sound, the floating craft dropped a few million little green men (not that they were really men, but old clichés are hard to drop) to the ground, and the destruction of mankind began.

In groups of seven or nine, the puke-green, sallow-skinned aliens floated on their beetle-like cruisers across the cities and towns of Earth. Where they encountered people, the aliens let loose with explosive blue blasts from sidearms that looked just like miniature acoustical guitars. Caught in the ray, people up and disappeared. Poof, buh-bye. Nothing left, no clothes, no fillings, no cell phones... all gone in the blink of an eye.

Panic? Yeah, the panic this time made the happenings at the time of the alien’s arrival look like a sedate poetry reading at the local Barnes and Nobles. During the three days of the invasion, as many people died from accidents and carelessness as from the blue shot of now you’re gone the little green men doled out with unerring efficiency.

Oh, the governments tried to do something, but you know how well that worked out. Just look at Canada... well, what’s left of it.

Nothing seemed to stop the creatures. Across the world, they blasted mankind out of existence, even as their tough, green skin deflected everything from rocks thrown by little children to nukes launched from battleships off the coasts. Rifles, knives, sticks, croquet hammers -- all failed to affect the small creatures. The little green men seemed impervious to everything.

The world began to prepare for the end, when word began to spread of a haven in the south.

“Texas!” The word was spoken with awe and hope.

“Lubbox.” Others whispered. “They’re holding off the aliens there. They found a way to stop them!”

“Lubbox?” others would ask.

“The Red Raiders!” others would reply.

“The Defenders!” others would say.

A mass exodus began, residents running from the slow, plodding march of the aliens. Everyone was headed to that small town in Texas where they were told they could find a safe place, where the aliens were being held back.

#

To say the Jones AT&T Stadium was packed would be like saying little green men are spooky. Refugees crunched inside the stadium, people packed so closely together that breathing became a team effort, rather than an individual sport.

For six miles around huddled hundreds of thousands of people, all come to escape the deadly onslaught of the alien invaders.

And in the middle of the stadium -- right on the fifty-yard line -- stood Clark and the Defenders.

#

While the band played, Clark reflected on his dream, that recurring passenger of his sleep for over a year now. He thought about the silliness he had first ascribed to the idea of an alien invasion, even as he laughed in the face of their existence.

While he retched out his signature, scratchy bass vocals, and Alec pounded out the down beat and back again, Clark recalled shaking his head at the part where he and a group of barely-talented musicians were supposed to save the world. And while Veronica gave his throat a rest with the screeching rhythm of an extended solo, he thought of how he had once denied his destiny.

The Defenders played on though, while Clark belted out tone after tone, harmony after harmony, and the strange, lilting, almost understandable lyrics that were making the alien invaders pop like overfilled water balloons under the hot Texas sun.

For miles around -- anywhere in the radius the oversized amplifiers held sway -- the alien invaders swarmed and exploded. They came in sevens, nines, then more, whole battalions throwing themselves on the bubble of heavy metal that was the Defenders’ trademark sound.

The whole time, Clark sang the alien words with all his heart, a martyr to the music.

Veronica dropped fifteen hours into the gig, her fingers shredded and useless. Someone from the crowd immediately ran up, picked up her bloodied guitar and did a decent imitation of her rip-chord rhythms, running through the set the band had repeated six times already.

Alec fell over on the second day -- some thirty-two hours in. One minute he was right there, ripping beats on the fly, the next, he slowed down like a battery running out of juice.

The aliens, a hole created in the gap of destruction, surged then, running over thousands of people in their effort to find the source of their destruction. It almost ended there, their beetle-like cruisers topping the walls of the stadium. But someone pulled Alec off his seat, and the beat was picked up in time to squish a couple hundred aliens before they could reach the band.

For Clark Monroe, however, there was no respite.

He squealed out his vocals unendingly, voice hoarse at times, almost gone at others. He used the brief guitar and drum solos to take a few deep breaths and drink some water that the crowd supplied him.

He had watched his band members pass out with something like jealousy. His throat ached like he’d swallowed a mouthful of razor blades, and his head felt like it was about to burst open like a rotten pumpkin come ‘bout January.

He held on though, his mind wandering over life and football and the crazy dream that led him to this stadium. He ripped out the lyrics for ten hours, then fifteen. Forty-two hours came and went in an unnoticed blur of repetition. The whole time, Clark sang.

By the time dawn rolled around on the third day, Clark had been singing for fifty-six hours straight. The guitarist and drummer had changed at least four times before the tired college boy lost track.

But Clark sang on, and on and on, the alien menace crushed before the power of his song like ants under a hammer... or fruit under the tires of a semi, if you want a more apt analogy. He sang and sang, his heart beating on pure will, his eyes closed as if deep in prayer, and all but exhaustion forgotten.

At 10:39, there was a sudden flare of light on the stadium.

Clark sang on.

He didn’t hear the sound of the crowd, a susurration of surprise and joy rolling up into a crescendo of freedom.

Clark sang on.

He didn’t realize when his band mates -- whoever they were -- slowed, then stopped playing, their eyes captured by the clear blue sky overhead, devoid of the alien craft that had been a constant part of the scenery for the past year.

Then hands were shaking him, congratulatory and concerned.

Even as he continued to sing, Clark opened his eyes, a slow, painful process. He followed the pointing fingers of the crowd, his voice stumbling over the alien words, then halting when the empty sky registered.

Clark looked back down into the adoring, grateful faces of those around him. His lips curled in a half-cocked smile, his heart beat its last beat, and he collapsed.

#

Clark was buried on the fifty-yard line of the newly-renamed Clark Monroe stadium. The attendance was so high that individual homeowners were forced by the mayor to sublet rooms out to visitors.

Over the grave there is a statue of Clark and the original members of the Defenders, with a plaque on the back listing the names of those who picked up the instruments of the fallen in defense of Earth.

A larger plaque on the front lists Clark’s name in bold letters with the following written below.

Here lies the savior of the Earth. May he dream heavy metal dreamz forever!

© Copyright 2009 C.G. Ward - All Rights Reserved
SEA
Deputy Moderator 10 ToursDeputy Moderator 5 Tours
Moderator
Member Seraphic
since 2000-01-18
Posts 22676
with you
1 posted 2009-01-24 01:52 AM


You write the BEST stories!!!!

OMG this was SO good! Extremely entertaining

Good job Kissy


Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612
Hurricane Alley
2 posted 2009-01-24 11:25 AM


Excellent story!! I enjoyed it a lot but felt a bit let down....(because there wasn't more!)

Nice to see you again!

Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296
Purgatorial Incarceration
3 posted 2009-01-25 03:07 AM


Ah, Sharon, the story tells me how long it needs to be... I don't get control. Thanks as always!

Susanofer - you rock. Thanks!

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