Wild Man: The Burnem story: The Chronicles of Monkeytown, #2

By M.R Maze

The Burnems undergo great strife as a mysterious illness takes hold of the mother. Strange events ensue that test the determination and willpower of the small family. As they battle darkness manifested, despair becomes their reality and neither the father or son feel they will survive this outbreak.
A battle between dimensions and aid from ancient beings, outer worldly encounters makes for another day in the city of Moncton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.R Maze
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386036531

Book preview

‘The Path that reveals’

Seven stories, that’s how far I fell. Am falling.

Something tells me there’s more to it all, once I hit the ground.

Still... A piece of me knows I will just be red paint in a moment.

... A long moment.

It drags on, and on. When? When will it happen? I try to regain focus for a moment, like I have time to reflect on my life. I only have time to think these pointless thoughts as I brush past the custodians cleaning the building, working the graveyard shift. Maybe they noticed the flash of human waste that shot across the window. Maybe they just didn’t care.

Still falling... Has time slowed? Or am I this impatient to meet the ground... I need to know if it was all for nothing. It must be for nothing, none of this can matter or else I’m carrying a burden into the afterlife, and that is how a ghost is made.

Ghost... Who would I haunt?

...

I am ready for the light.

...

Where is the light!?

...

Wait! I see it! Oh, praise Jesus god damn Nazareth and savior, there is a heaven! It’s so bright, I’m certain a crowd of angels await my arrival!

Elaine...

Elaine must be there, she was the purest person I knew! She was the most beautiful human, inside and out. Oh, God she must be there or else I don’t want in! Spare me the monstrosity of living another moment without my Elaine!

It’s your fault... You took her from me and now you’re taking me, you son of a bitch! Leave me, leave me alone you can’t have me, I won’t give you the satisfaction!

-Release me!

Duke roars at the heavens with the last raspy ring in his throat, dehydrated from his body being in chaos mode for hours. The last breath in his lungs cursed the gods of modern religions. He hated Gods, he hated angels, he hated demons and most of all he hated humans. Duke cried as his last thoughts of his wife brings him to the worst moment of his life.

Time stops. Duke is transported from that place in our minds, the place that controls how we perceive reality. His reflections lead him at his wife’s side, even if only in memory.

He’s holding her hand, and although she makes the motions’ he feels no strength in her grip. She is awake, but she’s asleep as well... It’s the medicine they gave her. He gave her. Her body was failing, and Hippocrates oath meant nothing when that Doctor stole her mind. And for what? Money? Research? Science? What good is anything, what good is anyone if she’s still dying!

-Duke...

Adrenaline surges, his heart skips a beat as his lover speaks her final words, the first words she had spoken in three days.

-Duke?

-Yes, my love?

-Duke are you there? Can you hear me? I can’t see you darling, where are you?

-Elaine, baby, I’m right here! Follow my voice, feel my touch. I’m here, and I love you.

-Duke, oh Duke I can hear you. I feel your hands can you hear me?

-Yes darling, please tell me how I can make you more comfortable. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?

-Duke... There’s something inside me.

-I know honey, we’ll figure this out. There’s still time you just need to hold on.

-It’s not that... I can feel that and it’s horrible, it feels like the world, no the universe itself and ended right inside of me.

Duke cries. He was already holding on by a thread and with her pain became a whole in the dam that held back an ocean.

-It’s not that Duke, it’s something else. It might even be hope I... I just don’t know... Elaine coughs, blood splattering across the white sheets.

Duke sees blood on his sleeve and composes himself, remembering he must be strong for his wife. -Tell me Elaine, tell me what my dearest...

-Something speaks through me... Something, or someone. Oh Duke, is it God? Please let this be something divine, and not my mind collapsing around the final bend... The lights flicker as she speaks these last words, Duke gets a migraine as his wife seemed to magically gain her strength just long enough to deliver her final words;

-Duke!

-Elaine?

-... Go back to work!

Outside of the room, a young boy, nearly a man in mind listened attentively as his mother spoke her last words to his father. He wasn’t his real father, his mother was raped and because of her beliefs, he was born. And now she is dead. Such is life, so he thought.

Things weren’t always so doom and gloom, Ewan thought to himself. When he was born the whole world seemed innocent enough. His father and mother loved him so, and he was a happy baby. Even further on things were relatively tame. He wasn’t beaten, he wasn’t abused in any shape or form. He simply received experiences differently. His perspective was a funnel and life itself was being poured into it... But something else was as well.

After Ewan was born, although his life was fine, he resented everything in it. And yet, time kept moving forward and nothing would become of his buried opinions. He loved his father, he loved his mother. But now she was dead, and so was his world.

Ewan Burnem, son of Duke and Elaine Burnem was born in Bathurst, New-Brunswick where his father was from. Elaine was from Ontario but spent her formative years in the opposite coast of Vancouver islands. The year was 1991 and it was a vicious winter. The two lovers met while Duke was attending the regions film school. She was a barista at the local Amsterdam Café.

However, there was a significant moment, a terrible but significant moment that occurred while Duke was away for work. They had been living in a small city called Moncton. What Moncton lacked in numbers it made up for in creative population. But creativity doesn’t come without malice, and during their stay there while attending a rock show in the downtown region Elaine was assaulted and raped. This malice held in the savage creatures known as men would destroy a part of Elaine forever. Such destruction was compensated with a faith in a higher power, a power that must correct such atrocities when their time comes.

Elaine recovered, but alongside her psychological turmoil a seed of hope was born, a seed that could only ever been cared for and loved with the inclination there was more to life than pain. There must be more to life than pain.

Elaine kept her baby. A mysterious box of DNA, combined with a house of love, adoration and experiences derived from the controlled environments provided by his parents. No way was true malice going to find a home in this boy, no way will it make its way past the ancient but impassable wall that is a mothers’ love. Not her boy!

Perhaps it was because the Burnem’s moved so often that time seemed to move faster than normal, whatever that may be. Before they could even grow accustomed to calling themselves parents their boy was starting school. 

Before they could finish reflecting on their days at school, they were watching their sons first football game. His first day at high-school, his first heart break... Everything seemed normal. He was a normal boy, and a good boy. A good boy who lost his mother and with that his whole world came apart.

Worse than Ewan’s moral compass was Elaine’s deathbed. A makeshift hospital rendering in the living room of a basement apartment in the not so nice end of Moncton. Elaine was a strange woman who took her convictions beyond serious. She would create illogical reasoning behind her choices, as if to justify if it again wasn’t for the lack of logic. Like smoking twice as much when your throat was sore, as if to show your throat who’s boss. Or like living in the city you were raped as if facing evil head on made it any less so.

It was a normal day, just like any other. Ewan was at school, Duke was at work at the nearby grocery store, sometimes a cashier, sometimes pushing carts. On the occasion the deli would ask for his help, and so began the era of Duke’s sandwiches that only his family would enjoy. It may as well have been the whole world.

Elaine was a poet, the kind that never published her work. She showed no one, not even Duke, not even Ewan. She read them to Ewan when he was born when Duke was still working and travelling as a filmmaker.

It was on this normal day in 2012 that Elaine suddenly fell to the floor. She was asleep to all that would see her at that moment, but inside she was running for her life.

This was her first hallucination. A dream so real a persons’ heart could stop, or their brain turned a vegetable. 

-I believe you have a