A Strange Predicament

    Jeremiah watched the torch light flicker in the next chamber and wondered how long it would take Radcliffe to complete the next part of the puzzle. There was little to look at in his current chamber. Debris from what looked like many old camp fires and broken pottery shards cluttered the corners of the room leaving the central part of the chamber free from refuse.
    Jeremiah’s thoughts once more turned to his father. He had never really known the man, just stories that Radcliffe had told him. There was no clear picture of the man in his head, just a vague father shape that had once been part of his life as long as his memory could reach back, then nothing.
    The light from the next room was wavering back and forth wildly. While Jeremiah could hear noise that sounded like Radcliffe’s booming tones, he could not make out what he was saying, specifically.  Suddenly, a commotion came from the other chamber. Someone cried out briefly and then nothing for a long while. Soon the torch light no longer flickered from that direction. Jeremiah chewed his lip fretfully. Surely, this was not an impossible situation that he had found himself in.
    Jeremiah made a start toward the inner room, but as soon as he stepped off  the pedestal the doors started closing. He stepped back onto the plinth. This was going to take some careful figuring. How was he to go see if Radcliffe needed help and then put thought into action if the very act of moving made action impossible?
    “Drat! There’s no way to get off of here without closing the doors. Well, I might as well try to see if I can figure this out.”
     He stepped off of the pedestal and the doors came down.
    “Okay. That’s going to be troublesome. Maybe I can gauge how much weight actually needs to be on the trigger. Then I can put some of this rubbish on there and decide my next move.”
    Jeremiah knew that  Radcliffe had always felt a little strange about Jeremiah talking to himself, but it helped to sound out his ideas before putting them into action. He examined the switch. There was nothing to use to access the button that he could see.
    He put his entire weight on the pedestal and then took one of his feet off still keeping most of his weight on the switch. Slowly, he set the foot down beyond the boundaries of the pedestals and slowly shifted his weight to his other foot. As he got about half of it over there he heard the gears grinding again.
    “Ah, So we didn’t need my full weight at all!”
    Jeremiah almost jumped for joy then, but then remembered himself and his situation and decided on a smaller personal celebration. With this much of the plan satisfied, he started looking through eyes that felt considerably better about the situation.
    “All it takes sometimes is a little calm and a little thought.”
    He shifted his weight back off of the pedestal and gripped his torch. The garbage in the corner did not look as useful as he might have suspected at first. It was mostly pottery shards and ashes from old fires. This next part might not be as easy as he thought.
    He sifted through one of the corners and made a neat pile of the larger shards to the side. Before very long there was a stack of sorted shards next to him. His hands were now coated in soot. He took his collection to the pedestal and laid it there. The doors came up a quarter of the way and Jeremiah allowed himself to feel hopeful, but didn’t feel the need to stop just yet. That fraction would allow himself to pass quite easily, but Radcliffe was a tower of a man with a barrel chest and that would never grant him access to freedom. He looked around for another likely corner to work with and noticed that the other three corners seemed to hold the smallest pieces. Still he steeled himself and started to work on one.
    No luck greeted him with the first one. The shards may as well have been grains of sand for how useful they would be to him. The second corner proved just as futile. Hope started to drain from him quickly.  Jeremiah whistled against the dark and noticed something glinting in the farthest corner. Trying not to get his hopes back just to dash them again on the rocks of failure, he walked over to the last corner. Buried in the debris and soot was an anvil shaped pot covered in brass. Immediately he set his torch in a recess in the wall and started to work freeing the pot from the surrounding garbage.
    With barely believing eyes Jeremiah thanked the gods for his luck. He picked up the pot and put it on the pedestal. The doors barely moved. Something was missing. Jeremiah picked up his torch and began searching the walls and corners again for any sign that there was something that would help him. There were air vents that led into the chamber, but they were far too high to reach on his own. The carvings on the walls were only decoration and not very good at that. This left him with the seemingly useless anvil. What could he do with it that he had not thought of yet?
    He thought that maybe if he had a great quantity of water or sand to work with, this might be easier. But all Jeremiah had was trash and the burnt remains of trash.
    “Put the trash in the pot, that’s it!”
    Jeremiah reexamined the pot and saw that it was mostly empty. He took it to what he now thought of as one of the useless corners. Slowly, he began sifting through the garbage with his hands. Only keeping the shards of pottery that were fairly heavy. When he got a good handful he would put it in the pot and go back to work.
    Within a few minutes he had a fairly heavy pot, almost too heavy for him to lift by himself. He dragged the pot over to the switch and grunted it up into place. With some satisfaction, he listened to the gears grind once more and watched as the doors opened to a little more than three quarters open. That would have to do. Working quickly he placed the larger shards on top of the anvil pot and dusted off his hands. Then he picked up his torch and set off into the next chamber hoping that he wasn’t too late to help Radcliffe out of whatever mischief that he had gotten himself into. He quickened his pace a little and stepped forward into the unknown.


    When Jeremiah reached the next chamber, he saw to what purpose that Radcliffe had used the large urn. There was a similar switch in this room that seemed to control the door to a further inner chamber. The switch seemed part of a larger more elaborate system than the one that had taken up the last few minutes of his life. There were ornate brass decorations on a large stone and  crystal gods carved into the altar. Jeremiah recognized Zeus mostly because of the beard, but the lightning he was carrying made identification simpler. The other gods were not so iconic to him so he largely ignored them. He left his torch in one of the recesses he found and looked toward the further inner chamber.
    Jeremiah crept toward the door and tried to hear what was going on, but only heard muffled voices there. Then he decided that there was nothing for it but to try to creep in there and get the lay of the land. He knelt down and started to crawl into the door.
    As soon as he had most of his body in the chamber, he noticed that the room was a larger version of the chamber just outside. The statues of the gods much larger and much more ornate and detailed. They seemed to be looking down at him balefully with those eyes made of quartz.  Jeremiah shimmied between what looked like a granite pew and a work bench. On the work bench there were assorted vials and test tubes dusty with neglect and disuse.
    He listened again and discovered that he could make out Radcliffe’s voice quite clearly now. He seemed to be thinking out loud to himself. A habit that he had tried to break Jeremiah of on several occasions, but still could not help but doing himself. Jeremiah tried to get a little closer to the source of the sound and carefully slinked around the pew until he could get a good view of the action in the chamber.
    Radcliffe was alone in front of the shrine, apparently looking for some sort of switch or release. Jeremiah thought of approaching Radcliffe, but something held him there. Perhaps it was shame of seeing the older man in a private moment. Maybe he wanted to know what was so important that they had risked both their hides to obtain it. Jeremiah was loath to put a name to it, but there he was watching Radcliffe try to decipher the Greek writing on the floor.
    Radcliffe seemed to have a eureka moment. Jeremiah couldn’t see exactly what he had done, but one of the goddess statues opened to reveal a small alcove that she had been concealing all this time. Radcliffe was bouncing with excitement, behavior that Jeremiah never would have attributed to him, but there he was giddy as a schoolboy.
    Just as Radcliffe was beginning to regain his composure and walk to attain his new prize, Jeremiah heard footsteps behind him. Cornelius Ayres walked in.
“Radcliffe! I see that you have made it easier for me to attain my prize. Stop right there, if you please.”
     The gun Ayres held rang out a punctuation that stopped Radcliffe in his tracks and Jeremiah slunk down further into his hiding place.

A Puzzling Door

    In the mountains east of the town of Goodrich, there are said to be treasures untold waiting for the man brave or foolish enough to go out and get them. Out there the wind blows right through you and when it blows through you out here you might hear a whisper that speaks to the very heart of you. It tells you something in the ancient language of evolution that urges us all on to adapt or die.
    The voice in Jeremiah Rickets’ heart was telling him that a dead man’s treasure was not worth freezing’ to death no matter how much gold there was. That maybe slipping off back to town while Reginald Radcliffe, (of the New Hampshire Radcliffes, if you please), was consulting the map he had that old prospector draw for him. A nice hot mug of something pleasing was just about to cause him to slink back to the tree line when Radcliffe whirled around on the spot and looked at him.
Radcliffe cut a dashing figure against the snow and wind. He was born of American Aristocracy, and he never let that detract from his friendship with his young companion, Jeremiah. Radcliffe never feigned interest, it was always genuine.
    “Jeremiah, don’t lose heart! We are well within forty paces of our goal.”
    “Mister Radcliffe it does not make sense. Why are we out this far in the middle of winter? Gold doesn’t spend if you die getting to it.”
    “Because, Jeremiah, if we get to it before that confounded bounder Cornelius Ayres we win the prize.”
    “And what prize might that be sir? If you’ll remember I was confined to the servants’ quarters on account of my stock ‘not being noble enough’. I come from a fine family, sir. Just because they didn’t come over on the Mayflower doesn’t mean we are trash.”
    “The prize, young Jeremiah, is none other than the hand of my dear Elizabeth. Commodore Fontescue has given me his word that we are to be married on my successful return.”
    “Is this to be a dual marriage then? We share a bride? I don’t see how that’s an incentive for me, honestly.”
    Jeremiah started to turn to go. This was quite enough, thank you very much. He could see freezing his hindquarters right off for the right reason, but he would be damned for a fool if he would stand for this, and double damned if the reason for it was just to make sure Radcliffe married well.
    Radcliffe eyed Jeremiah for a split second and then decided that it was time to reveal the real incentive.
    “Your father is alive.”
    Jeremiah halted mid-turn.
    “You’re lying. My father died ten years ago during the battle of Hawthorne Creek. I have his watch. His commander said he died saving the lives of the rest of his company.”
     “While it may be true that your father was severely wounded during that battle, and he saved the lives of many men that day, he did not die. I know where he is. I can take you to him, but I’m asking you to trust me. Can you do that for me? Show a little trust that I know what I’m doing? I’ve not steered you wrong, yet. So it’s a little cold? The human body is made for adaptation. The Esqimaux are certainly proof of that.”
    Jeremiah considered this and reasserted his parka against himself.
    “Fine. We will finish this and you will take me to my father.”
    “Wonderful, my boy. Now, take notice. We are less than forty paces as I indicated before. That tree that looks like an old woman pointing is our next marker. That leads to Marcurio’s cave. We’ll at least be out of this blasted wind before it starts to really get to us. Aha, the cave! Let’s get into the lee of it and light a couple of torches.”
    The pair rushed toward the cave and Jeremiah spent some moments preparing his torch, making sure it was wrapped well, and that the pitch had not rubbed off too badly. All seemed in good repair as Jeremiah pulled his tinder box from his pack and struck it to ignite his torch. Once the business end of his torch was ready, he lit Radcliffe’s from his own and handed it to him.
    “Mister Radcliffe, what if there are bears in there?”
    “Never fear, Jeremiah, we have something interesting up our sleeves.”
    But this just made Jeremiah fretful. When Radcliffe said he had something interesting up his sleeves he usually meant that he had visited that quack scientist friend of his. The one in Monmouth that always made Jeremiah feel as if he were doing mental jumping jacks. His devices were too complex to always work properly, but Radcliffe put his trust in them and, somehow, every time he did he was rewarded with excellent results.
    He also had so many questions. Mostly about his father. What had caused him to run away? How had he survived?  Why hadn’t he come back to him, but entrusted his oldest and oddest friend with his raising?
    Jeremiah pushed these thoughts away for the moment and followed Radcliffe into the cave. He was starting to feel better out of the biting wind when Radcliffe stopped short.
    “Looks like we’ve hit our first obstacle, boy. This seems to be a riddle of devious devisings.”
    Jeremiah tried to not let out a sigh, but found his curiosity had gotten the better of his wisdom and looked at the device that had so excited his mentor.
    It appeared to be a great stone tablet with nine smaller stone tablet buttons along the face of it. Each of the buttons seemed to have a depiction of a Greek letter upon the face of it. Jeremiah looked at it briefly and turned to look at Radcliffe.
    “What is it?”
    “That, my boy, is something we must overcome. Luckily, we have some inside information about our subject. Firstly, we know that this was Marcurio’s cave. We also know that he had an obsession with the classical world. Most notably, the Greek civilization. That makes sense, because without Greece there is no classical world at all. We also know that his wife’s name was Margaret. Now let me consult this array of buttons and see if the letters are there for Margaret. Okay, Mu is there, Alpha, Gamma, Alpha again, Rho again, Epsilon, Tau. Pi and Omega seem to be red herrings. Okay, stand back, Jeremiah. I don’t want you getting hurt if I get this wrong. ”
    Jeremiah backed up a step and immediately started wondering what would happen if Radcliffe did get it wrong. Who would take him in then? Would he ever find his father without Radcliffe? Such were the thoughts swimming in his mind when Radcliffe started pushing the stone buttons into the face of the tablet.
    Gears turned behind the stony edifice as Radcliffe finished inputting the code. Within a few minutes a large stone rolled away leading to a passage. As the dust from the rolling boulder settled Radcliffe beamed at Jeremiah and shouted for joy.
    “Onward to treasure, young master Rickets.”
    Radcliffe pushed forward through the passage, but Jeremiah hesitated for a moment. His feet seemed stuck to the floor. Whatever was in that chamber, someone went to a lot of trouble trying to protect it. Certainly there would be more traps or puzzles ahead to keep it safe.
    His moment of doubt over, Jeremiah stepped over through the passage. When he reached the other side he saw Radcliffe looking at a large urn in the center of the room. On the other side of the room was another door, but the gloom beyond prevented Jeremiah from seeing further. The urn was decorated in the greek style with images of daily life drawn on the sides, but in this case the daily life seemed a lot more modern that the urns Jeremiah had seen in museums.
    “What about this one? Surely this is not the treasure you’ve been talking about ever since Portsmouth?”
    “There is only one way to find out. I’m going to lift the urn from the pedestal. I will do it on a three count. I want you close. If need be I want you to stand on the pedestal.”
    “Why do I have to stand on the pedestal? It’s not going anywhere. Besides, if that’s the treasure, we’re done. Let’s go get some hot beverage and let me warm my bones by the fire.”
    “I need you to stand on it because it seems to be a weight sensitive switch, and you seem about the same weight as our beautiful friend the urn here.”
    “Then why do we need the urn at all? The door on the far side is open. It seems rather counterproductive.”
    “It’s because I think this has further use in the next room. Now please get ready to stand on the platform. I’m about to move the urn.”
    Jeremiah looked at Radcliffe with some measure of bewilderment, but did not back away from the platform. As soon as Radcliffe started to move the urn, both doors began to close. Radcliffe made hurrying noises as he lifted the urn finally away and Jeremiah stepped on the platform. Just as quickly as the doors had started to slide closed, they rolled open again.
Radcliffe started toward the other door. Jeremiah cleared his throat and the other man turned around to look at him.
    “So, I’ll just stay here then?”
    “Cheer up, Jeremiah. The last part should be the easiest of all if the last two puzzles were any indication.”
    Radcliffe walked forward through the next passage and Jeremiah hoped that he was right, but could not help but notice that if anything did happen to the older man Jeremiah would certainly be stuck forever in a god forsaken hole in a mountain that no one ever visited.  The thought made him shudder against the wind that was no longer there as his torch guttered and spat as if in response to his uneasiness.

Steve Rogers' American Captain

http://americancaptaincomic.tumblr.com/
For those of you who are fans of Marvel, this comic is a breath of fresh air, letting you see Steve Rogers as a humble guy who has normal nothing days like everyone else. To those of you only know him from The Avengers movie, there's lots of good stuff here for you, too.

Sometimes I have to wonder about myself. I have no choice.

Yesterday, my brother Aaron, (a sage and honorable man), told me that I should not worry about things over which I have no control. That is much easier said than done. My whole life is a long dark teatime of the soul.
I work third shift and, while I do try to keep my mind on the task at hand, my mind tends to wander.
Most of the time I think about things I want to write or finding that special someone I can spend the rest of my life laughing through to the end, but sometimes I rehash old conversations, specifically conversations with my last girlfriend, M. (No names. If you know me, you know who I mean. If not, I prefer to leave it at this. Honestly, this is not about calling anyone out or making people choose sides. I already decided against doing that on Facebook. I would just like to talk about this.)
Side notes aside, as it were, she broke off our relationship almost two years ago. I'll be working and something will remind me of a turn of phrase she used once. The next thing I know, I'll be having a full blown conversation with the ghost of her memory.
As you can imagine, this is problematic. On one hand, I want to be healed of this ache and loneliness. On the other, I just want her back.
The following is something I posted on Facebook after one of my fugues.

I admit there's still a part of me that would take her back, no questions asked, but every day that shrinks a little giving way to the part that remembers how I helped her through some of the toughest parts of her life. How I stayed and talked when others would have run. I let her in. Truthfully, one of the hardest things for me and I did it because I wanted us to work. I truly loved and valued her, but she dropped me at a very low point and I was surprised that didn't kill me stone dead, but I got through it with the help of some very special people, and I met some of the best dudes ever who I am proud to call my friends. I will come out of the other side of this, changed and stronger. I am a phoenix.

Sometimes those words seem braver than I feel. Okay, most times they do.  I want to be the guy who wrote that. More than ever, I am, but every day has been a struggle.
At least I no longer cry when I hear music.