Future Secured by Gar's Head: The Lord's Wizard

Storm clouds moving in, eight tornadoes in the general area over the last three weeks; trying to camp out is a total pain during tornado season. Max Rennegy, lead singer of The Wounded Souls - one of the most popular new bands to emerge from the Oklahoma rock scene in years, with a successful album currently headed up the charts - was trying to get away and relax with his family during a summer camping trip. He was fishing down on a secluded river bank near their camp site. Jawunda, the lead guitarist for The Wounded Souls, was there with him. They were sitting on the bank, the lines of their poles in the water, sitting back in their new Bud Light camping chairs with their sunglasses on, a cold drink beside them.

"There he is again," Max yelled, leaning up to grab his pole. "That stinking gar keeps stealing my bait." He took the pole and gave it a powerful jerk, but missed the gar.

"He sure is a sneaky little sucker," Jawunda said, grinning before taking a sip of his drink.

Every time Max would bait his hook with a small perch, he would cast it out and after only a couple of seconds his line would sag - the gar taking the bait and running with it - then Max would give it a tug and reel it in and the little perch would be gone from his hook.

"The storm is getting closer," Jawunda said, looking up into the dark swirling clouds above.

Max looked up too. Fast-moving swishes of fingerlike clouds were circling together, not moving in one direction, but pulling and joining into a quick-swirling cyclone of doom a few miles above the river, which seemed as if it could drop down a ferocious tornado tail in a millisecond that would carry off the lead singer and lead guitarist for The Wounded Souls, depositing them in another state before ripping them to pieces.

Max rebaited his hook and cast it out again. "I gotta get this damn gar before the storm hits," he said, watching the line sag again and leaning forward, ready to yank on the pole, "C'mon, c'mon little sucker," Max whispered, preparing to give a powerful tug. He suddenly grabbed the pole and stood up, pulling as hard as he could. His sunglasses fell off and the pole bent in half. "I've got him! I finally got that darn gar!"

The gar whipped and jumped at the end of line and Max strained with all his strength. He struggled and his Bud Light chair turned over but he got the gar reeled in. It lay there on the bank, over two feet in length, it opened its mouth and snapped its long pointed snout with hundreds of needlelike teeth running up and down, its skin thick and rough like an alligator's, with two fully formed front feet with claws, yet fishlike fins over the rest of its body - most of it looked like a prehistoric dinosaur from the Jurassic period. Jawunda and Max watched the gar flop on the river bank, their mouths open in shock since it was obviously a "throwback" gar rarely seen in Oklahoma. Max stepped down hard on the gar's neck to hold it in place.

"What the heck is that thing?" Jawunda said.

"It's a gar," said Max.

"Never seen a gar that looked like that before."

"Tell me about it. It's a total freak of nature."

Max reached down to the top of his boot and pulled out a 10 1/2 inch homemade bowie knife made out of a triple-tempered steel file.

"What are you taking your knife out for?" Jawunda said.

"You'll see," said Max, gritting his teeth and sliding the blade across the gar's neck. Blood shot out in a torrent. "I've got to get its head off." He gripped the head and tugged until it popped off, the primitive spine giving a sickening crackling sound.

Jawunda stepped back and shook his head at all the blood. Max let the gar's body drop to the sand and it flopped for awhile, then went limp.

"Why did you cut its head off?" Jawunda said.

"Haven't you ever heard of ichthyomancy, Jawunda?" said Max.

Jawunda wrinkled his nose and stared off into the creek for a few seconds. "No, I don't believe I have. What is it?"

"It's when you use the heads of fish to predict the future."

"That's nuts."

"No it's not," said Max, brushing sand off the gar's head.

"But that isn't even a fish you've got there, Max. It's a freakin' gar's head. That wouldn't be ichthyomancy, it would be garomancy."

"Whatever. You just watch, Jawunda, I'm going to use this gar's head to predict a lot of stuff about our future; and especially the future of our band, The Wounded Souls."

Max held the large bloody gar's head in his hand. Then he bent forward and brought it up close to his face and looked deep into its red bloodshot serpentine eyes. He turned it over and examined the silvery scales on the back of its neck, then brought it closer, up to his nose, and took a big whiff. "Bitter ancient pond scum," he said. "We'll be able to see a lot in this gar's head. Highly valuable information."

"Yeah right," said Jawunda.

Lightning crackled above them, thunder boomed and roared, the wind was whipping through the brittle tree branches violently, the storm was getting closer.

Jawunda stepped backward and took a sip of his drink. He raised his sunglasses to the top of his forehead and examined the gar's prehistoric face in total disbelief. "No way can you predict the future from that, Max."

"Oh yes I can."

"Tell me what you see then."

"See the deep lines around the gar's nose holes? Notice the way they are tilted and flaired?"

"Yeah."

"Oh man... No... Not that..." Max saw something horrible in the gar's face. He stared down at the sand, shaking his head with his eyes closed.

"What is it? What did you see, Max?"

Max slid his knife back in his boot while still cradling the gar's head in his palm.

"The Lord has a Wizard," said Max.

"What?" Jawunda squinted and raised one hand awkwardly.

"The Lord above has a Wizard that is controlling him. And the Wizard is evil. But the Lord is filled with supreme goodness, and he's in conflict with the Wizard. But the Lord's directives will surely change now since the spirit of the Wizard is installed in his brain fighting for supremacy."

"What in the hell are you babbling on about?" Jawunda said.

"Brain... brain..." Max pondered the word as he stared up at the swirling black clouds gathering above him. He brought the gar's head up close to his mouth, then suddenly bit into its forehead. He slowly sucked out the gray brain matter. Jawunda squinted and almost gagged watching him. Max rolled the gray tissue around in his mouth for awhile.

"Yep," said Max, holding some of the gar's brain on the tip of his tongue. "The world is going to change soon, and it's all because of the Lord's Wizard. He has a pesky wizard inside him now and there's nothing anybody can do about it. The Lord cannot handle the Wizard. He's messing up his life. And the universe is going to split and cleave and stifle the algorithm at the center that runs everything - all matter and energy and mysticism will soon be lost. Remember what Willard Van Ormond Quine said: 'Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.'"

Jawunda shook his head and frowned. "Man, you're really out there, Max. Is that really what you're seeing in that gar's head?"

"Yeah."

"What can we do then? What can we do about the Lord having a Wizard?"

"Nothing... Wait a second, I know. We can write a song about it. We can give the message to the world about the Lord's Wizard through the power of our music."

Max squeezed the gar head trying to smash it. He had seen enough. Then he leaned back and threw it into the river as far as possible and it landed with a small splash.

"That's a good idea," said Jawunda. "We need to write a few more songs for our next album anyway. Maybe we could make it a concept album. We'll make it about The Lord's Wizard. That could be the main theme and the title."

"Right on," said Max. "Let's get started."

Max and Jawunda slowly walked up the steep river bank, their shoes slipping a little in the cool mud. They went into their tents for paper, pen, and acoustic guitars. As soon as they were inside their respective tents, a small tornado dropped from the sky above the river and destroyed the gar's head and body and all the fish and crawdads in the water. But Max and Jawunda didn't even notice, they were too busy writing their new album about The Lord's Wizard. Things in the universe would be totally different from now on, they were positive about it, and they had to get the word out ASAP. Maybe this new concept album about The Lord's Wizard would zoom up the charts just as their current album was doing. Maybe they would soon be ultra-rich and ultra-famous and The Wounded Souls would be able to play at the half-time show during the next Superbowl. They sure hoped so.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books Red Zen, Heartless B*stard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Cocoon of Terror, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover's books, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG's Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Swallow's Tail, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.