Two Novellas

By J.R. Torres

Two Novellas contains two wild, mind-bending stories filled with fantastic adventures. "Tales of the Wayfarer" follows the crew of a ship which does not sail the sea but rather the mind. The crew, led by their captain, a mysterious man in a brown suit, must find a source of a young man's misery before he makes an irreversible decision. 

 

"Where the Light Exists" follows Blue, a boy who thinks he is a hero as he chases the love of his life across endless perils. Along the way Blue will face dragons and mutant gangsters. But how far will he go? What will he do? What might he become? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.R. Torres
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223449256

Book preview

Chapter 1.

Behold the Wayfarer. She is a ship not of the earthly realm, but of the mind. Her form is of an old Spanish galleon, although much smaller, requiring no more than five people to propel her. By design, the Wayfarer is no slave to the four winds. No tide, nor’easter, heat, rain, cold or gust can turn the Wayfarer from her course. This is one way in which the Wayfarer differs from most ships. Another is that she does not exist. Nor does her crew. Their origin is the very place they will attempt to save. That is, they were born in the young man’s mind. This is not to say that they are, strictly speaking, works of fiction. They are as unique and as alive as any dead general or king you ever read of in a history book with a broken spine and missing pages which you were forced to treat like a priceless artifact and pretend to be interested in and then return to the book repository for another generation of young untainted minds who are asked to blindly accept that all the civilization and splendor which exists around them is the result of perpetual warfare and genocide and the broken promises of an ever changing yet eternally singular ruling elite. The crew of the Wayfarer is on a mission. Search and rescue, or so they have been told. Something unrecoverable which the crew has vowed to restore. The captain of the Wayfarer is a man in a brown suit. He knows well the demented minds of young men.

There are two writers occupying the young man’s mind, each of whom will be met at the appropriate time. The captain lights a cigarette; he strolls through the Wayfarer’s inner workings. Looking out of a porthole, the man in the brown suit observes the birth of the young man. It is his oldest memory, and it is probably a lie. The newborn child looks up at a series of hospital track lights. Later, years later, his mother will tell him how the hospital staff would not allow her to stay overnight to keep guard over her newborn child, her despair over which has never fully healed. The newborn is ill. In the memory, the young man, hours old, has some understanding of his situation. From the lens of his infirmity (or is it the hospital lights?) the world appears bathed in yellow. If he is crying, the sound was not recorded for the young man’s memory. Hands lift him and load him into a loud machine like a loaf of dough (with the yeast still alive and hungry) being loaded into an oven. He has no name,, nor a concept of a name yet. Where is the woman? The safe one? He trusts those hands above all else. When the machine around him activates, the world switches filters from yellow to purple. Morning to evening, in the blink of an eye. Later, he will learn the word ultraviolet. In the memory which may be a lie the baby is transformed. Then the memory breaks apart amid a wave of teenage love and contrived sorrow. The captain moves on.

It occurs to him that, given the nature of things, the thing he is looking for may be hidden aboard the ship. In a hallway. In plain sight. Labeled toxic, in a locked chest marked naughty-inappropriate-totally-random-but-not-my-fault-they-exist-but-none-the-less-not-okay-thoughts. Since we have approximately fifteen minutes before the wayfarer docks aboard the shores of what the famous navigator Poe called The Night’s Plutonian Shore. One of the writers, the captain is unsure which, owns a property on that shore. For the moment, we will leave the captain be, and allow him to wander peaceably through the halls of his own ship. Through another porthole we see a beautiful girl, pale skin, broad shoulders and an ear to ear grin, wearing a red prom dress.

At the stern of the ship we find its second lieutenant, a scrappy young beast of a man named Wrath. Were the object of this voyage not of dire importance, the man in the brown suit might not have asked Wrath to accompany him. This is not to say that he is antagonistic by nature. He is a soldier of fortune in the truest sense of the phrase. That is, a definition of fortune that is completely unrelated to material wealth. Wrath is more than willing to be the captain’s tough guy sidekick. In fact, he does not know how to do anything else. To Wrath’s reckoning, the young man’s troubles which have inspired this mission all stem from the fact that he is weak willed, and refuses to assert his own existence. Ahead of him on the sea of pleasant memories, two boys smoke marijuana for the first time under a bridge. Pleasant memories hold little interest for the young second lieutenant. Certain of them even cause him pain. On the subject of pain, let us take a moment to exposit the exact nature of the young man’s illness. It may be best described as ennui rapidly approaching suicidal depression. The two writers, in an effort to continue their work, have commissioned the Wayfarer and its crew to scour the depths of the young man’s conscious-subconscious.

The first writer’s house is in sight. A glittering mansion, or so it appears. In the quarters, sleeping, are two creatures. One is called the Golem. The other is called Tin. Their jobs involve feeling pain. They were made to endure. The captain lets them sleep, to escape their reality and dream of precious impossibilities. Minding the telescopic periscope at all hours of the day is a man called Actual. Bland, boring and largely unseen, this petty officer is excited whenever another ship takes the time to acknowledge him. The man in the brown suit joins Wrath at the wheel. Two men more different, nor more the same, could scarce be found.

And the scene changes.

Chapter 2.

The Wayfarer is gone, replaced by the man in the brown suit rowing a canoe up to the shores of a semi-familiar beach. Steady, the man reminds himself. Underneath him every enterprising wave wants to flip his tiny boat over; he has learned to adjust his weight with each movement so as to maintain his balance with each collision by the thinnest of margins. Steady, he says to himself. And then the canoe is behind him, idling empty at the edge of a placid sea. The man in the brown suit wonders if the beach is infinite on both sides. He decides the question is irrelevant because he would not know what the infinite would look like if he saw it. From afar the building had looked like a mansion. Up close it becomes a hotel of indefinite dimensions, like one of those beach resorts the young man reads so much about in brochures at the corner store. There is a sign:

"WELCOME TO THE NEW VISTA BEACHSIDE RESORT!

Located on the serene shores of the Sea of Pleasant Memories.

*please visit the front desk IMMEDIATELY upon arrival"

The stairs leading up to the door creak their soft, wooden sighs beneath the man’s brown boots. We are not old! the steps seem to cry out. We are only worn out. Scar tissue on top of erosion. The man in the brown suit does not hear their cries, or he pretends not to hear. It is hard to say for sure.

Did you come in on the Queen Anne? asks an old woman standing suddenly in front of him.

Wayfarer, he replies.

Oh, the old woman says, and enters the hotel.

The young man at the front desk drinks cigarettes and chews coffee.

Tickit, he says, blandly.

Oh, no. protests the man in the brown suit. Here to meet an associate.

Name?

Villanueva.

Ah, yes. He left a note for you.

The note is received over a plate of dead flowers, not potpourri, or crystals or stones or colored sand.

It reads: Gone thishing! Meet me out back! – R

Thank you, says the man in the brown suit.

Four eighteen! says the desk clerk.

Mr. Villanueva is indeed thishing when the captain catches up to him. Mibsy! I was afraid you wouldn’t come. Listen close. We don’t have much time.

What do you know about the sickness? asks the man in the brown suit.

"What sickness, friend? It’s a beautiful day! You know, Mibsy, I’m actually slightly older than my partner. I was living on this island back