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by Rev. Joe Kelly
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part seven.

By the time they reached the courtyard they had to crane their heads to look up at the top of the gigantic edifice. It rose close to a hundred feet in the air, and it was crowned with a strange frieze of men locked in combat with monstrous warriors with bestial faces, who sprouted many arms and clawed hands, who bore the legs and trunks of lions and bulls. Demons, probably; spirits of the outer dark, or their hideous bastard offspring with mortal men and women. Luo squinted suspiciously at the frieze; if he didn’t know better, he would have thought the demons were the heroes of the frieze, for they seemed to be triumphing over the men… strange.

Together, he and Alruf entered the huge portal with swords drawn. It did not take long for their eyes to adjust: the vast dome-roofed chamber they found themselves in was well-lit by broad windows in the upper galleries that ringed the room. This was the main sanctuary, the place of worship and public ceremonies.

And Luo knew, as soon as he could see, that he had not been wrong about the frieze.

He and Alruf scowled at the gigantic thing that sat on the vast pedestal. It was a huge statue of black basalt, contrasting sharply with the sandy stone of the temple. Whereas the temple’s design was stately, the thing that squatted on the central pedestal was grotesque, worked by hands inspired equally by awe and hatred. Its grossly obese body was distinctly toadlike, its long, spindly hands resting smugly on its bulging belly. Its hideous face, a swirling mishmash of features canid, batlike and simian, was split with a leer that bared pointed teeth, and its beady eyes were squinted in cruel mirth.

Luo shook his head. “Devils’ blood… these people worshiped a thing like that?”

After a moment, Alruf shook his head. “I’m not so sure they did–not willingly, anyway.” He waved at the pedestal. “Something’s been cut off there, and that thing put in its place. Probably the former god of this city.”

“Ah… a forced conversion.”

Alruf nodded. “I can see it now. A power-mad priesthood who abandoned their good God for the gifts of this demon. And thus they brought about the downfall of their own city.”

“Or they were desperate, and sought to prevent it.”

Alruf scoffed at the beast on the pedestal. “The ambitions of fools… no man can escape his destiny.”

Luo shot Alruf a look out of the corner of his eye. More of his half-baked philosophy. Where did this barbarian ever get it into his head that he was an intellectual?

Well, never mind. They split up to search the side rooms.

And several hours later, they had come up with nothing but dust. Even the furniture had long since rotted away, leaving only empty, darkened rooms with piles of mute debris here and there, shards of shattered stone, bits of verdigris-green bronze and lead fittings.

They met on an upper level, eyeing each other with disappointment. Alruf shook his head. “This is a waste of time.”

Luo growled to himself. “This place must have been picked clean long ago…” His eyes wandered over the back side of the giant edifice… and halted.

There was a broad portal tunneled into the rock, angled sharply down, carved wide so that the sun would shine through it at any time of year. He looked across the sanctuary: it had a mate, behind and above the hideous idol.

Luo grinned. “There’s still a chance.”

Alruf chuckled. “If you’re afraid to fight me, just say so.”

Luo shook his head, and pointed out the hole. “That shaft is meant to shine on something at a certain time of afternoon. Something we haven’t found yet.”

Alruf glanced at the hole disdainfully. “Surely we aren’t the first to see it.” Luo was already hurrying back around the gallery. “In a place this isolated? There’s a chance! Come on, barbarian–I’m not leaving this place empty-handed!” He cackled as he heard Alruf swear and hurry to catch up.

on to part eight.

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part six.

“How’s the leg?”

Luo glanced up from the glow of the campfire to glare at Alruf. “Still numb.”

“Of course it’s still numb. I mean, is the numbness going away at all?”

Luo massaged the stretched out leg, worked at the tender, swollen flesh. “Seems like the feeling is coming back a little.”

Alruf nodded. “Good.” He took a big bite of cured goat and spoke as he chewed: “You should be able to use it just fine by tomorrow morning. Then we finish it.”

Luo watched the Wose curiously. A small smile crept over his lips. “You’re really dead set on throwing your life away over some girl, aren’t you?”

Alruf brooded for a moment, his face growing dark. “A boy like you wouldn’t understand.”

“Eh? Try me. I think I understand perfectly.” Luo leaned over a little. “I’ve been jealous myself.”

His snicker drew a glare from Alruf. The Wose spat, “I told you, you wouldn’t understand. I’m not killing you for the girl’s sake.”

“Then why?”

Alruf leaned closer and snarled, “I’m going to kill you because I don’t like you. Because you’re a loudmouthed, braggart son of a bitch, and the world will be better off when you’re gone.”

Luo stared at him a moment, dumbfounded. He barked a laugh. “And what the hell are you, but a greedy, jealous bastard who can’t let go of a woman? She came to me because you bored her, and you can’t stand that fact.”

“I told you, it’s not about the woman.”

“Oh, sure.” Luo leaned back and chuckled. “It’s a matter of pride and honor. Sure. Keep telling yourself that.”

Alruf sat back as well. “You’re a fool, boy. And you’re not going to live long enough to learn why.”

Luo grinned back at him, and chuckled.

After a moment, Alruf grew a nasty smirk. “Yes… you’re a fool, all right. All blunder and bluster. No substance.” He lay back on his blanket with a sigh. “The dreams of fools… castles in the sky. And then a strong breeze passes by and blows their dreams and their empires into oblivion.” He poked his head up. “That’s all you are, boy. An emperor of clouds.” He lay his head back, and chuckled. “And that’s all you’ll ever live to be.”

Luo had stopped smiling. He peered through the darkness, examined the cliff face. With the glare of the fire in his eyes the temple facade was completely invisible, yet he could still picture it clearly. It had made quite an impression on him.

He muttered to Alruf, “Barbarian…”

Alruf muttered back, in a sleepy voice, “Who the hell are you calling barbarian, barbarian?”

Luo ignored his clumsy goad. “A thought occurs to me. You must have seen that big temple when you climbed over the walls, yes?”

“What of it?”

“Well, before you showed up, I had been thinking, idly, of seeing what might be found there.” Luo shrugged. “Chances are, it’s nothing, completely empty. But who knows? This place is long forgotten. Something valuable might have been left behind. And, I was thinking… two men would stand a better chance of gaining a difficult treasure than one.”

Alruf glanced up at him and grinned. “Trying to weasel your way out of the fight?”

Luo scoffed. “Hardly. We’d fight after we explored the temple, and the man who lived might walk away a very wealthy man.”

Alruf considered this a moment, then nodded as he lay his head down. “Yeah… I suppose that sounds like a plan. A little adventure, a duel in the courtyard… just know, barbarian, I’ll be watching you the whole time.”

Luo shrugged. “And I, you. But we’re honorable enough men, eh?”

Alruf chuckled quietly. “One of us is, anyway.” His voice grew heavy and indistinct as he drifted off. “You know, it’s funny… as soon as I saw the temple… I could picture us fighting to the death there. I had a feeling I’d meet you there… funny.”

Luo frowned to himself as the Wose fell silent. His shamanic training had told him there were no such things as coincidences. When one man was fixated on a thing, it was obsession. Two or more, warned of mesmerism, deviltry.

He peered through the dark, focused on the spot where he knew the temple facade to be. Nothing. There was no power there to stir his blood. Of course, they were far away, and he was not as well trained in the mystic arts of the Kan clan as he was the martial. But for a spell to be entrapping them, at such a distance, he was sure he would have felt some stirring of his blood.

He shrugged, and lay down to sleep.

And as he slept, he had strange dreams. Glorious visions, but all muddled, confused. Fleeting glimpses of castles in the sky. Of pleasure houses and courtesans.

He saw her face, as well. The girl he had shared a forbidden love with, the girl who the shamans had burned alive on the sacrificial pyre after they found them together. She was alive, and smiling. And she seemed to beckon him towards something…

But whatever it was, he had forgotten by the time he awoke. Alruf was already up as he stretched his leg. The Wose tossed him his sword. “I’ve been waiting for you near an hour now. Lazy bastard. Let’s get that leg of yours stretched out.” He grinned savagely. “You’ll need it when we’re done with the temple.”

On to part seven

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part five.

Alruf was at last figuring out something was amiss. He stopped, his eyes growing curious, but before he could ask a question he froze with terror.

From the hole there emerged the most dreaded predator of the Ogdru, what might have been the most awful creature to ever crawl upon the earth: an Ogdru death worm.

Its body, as thick as a man’s torso, was soft and velvety red, with tiny, dotlike eyes that seemed all the more evil for their dull inscrutability. It glided in a horrid undulating motion on huge, spindly legs like those of a centipede. Its formerly lackadaisical antennae now waved about furiously. From a puckered, anus-like mouth huge pincer mandibles emerged and retracted. But its venom was not in the mandibles: it was in those whiplike antennae that lashed with a frightening speed. To face a death worm, on foot, was a death sentence.

Luo was backing up quickly, though it did little good: the worm moved with a hideous speed, closing rapidly, and it was not even in a hurry. It could easily outrun a man at a full sprint. His mare, at least, had a chance, and she took it: she bolted off into the ruins without so much as a whinny.

Luo shook his head as Alruf backed up with him. “You dumb son of a bitch,” he snarled to the Wose, “you’ve killed us both.”

They stumbled backwards, up the pile of stones, both men helpless before the worm’s advance.

Luo repeated, “You’ve killed us both!”

Suddenly, Alruf looked down, all around at them. “The hell I have!” He threw his sword aside, grabbed a rock, and with all his might hurled it at the worm.

The worm dodged the rock as it bounced off the ground, its powerful body carrying it easily out of the path of the missile. But Alruf was already grabbing another. “Come on, you lazy bastard–I can’t kill this thing alone!”

Luo threw his saber away, grabbed a rock and hurled it.

Rocks landed all about the worm in a regular pelting rain. Its progress was slowed to a crawl as it was forced to dodge rock after rock. But onward it crawled all the same, dogged, still determined to kill the thing that had annoyed it.

Luo chose a smaller stone now; the bigger ones were too damn slow. This one, he held with both hands, aimed carefully, and threw with all his might. The worm dodged, but not in time–the rock smashed several of its front legs. The worm writhed in pain a moment, then stretched its head out slowly–too slowly.

With a shout of triumph, Alruf hurled a big stone and nailed the worm square in the middle of its head. The head burst open with a splattering of hideous yellow bile. The rest of the body thrashed about, pinned beneath the rock and glued to the ground by its own internal juices.

Luo howled wildly. He grabbed his saber and, whirling it in the air, he charged the worm, intending to cut it to pieces. Alruf muttered something behind him, but he ignored the Wose. If he didn’t want to join in the glory of victory, his loss.

He ran up to the worm, sword raised–and then he realized, too late, what Alruf must have muttered. One of the antennae, still thrashing about spasmodically with the remains of life, slashed across his leg.

Luo’s howl turned to one of agony and rage. He leaped back, too late. He had not got a full dose of the venom, but it set his whole leg afire all the same. Backing up from the dying worm, he heard the Wose laughing heartily at him. He cursed himself. His leg was crippled, so weak with pain and venom that within moments he was unable to put weight on it. Alruf could kill him at his pleasure.

Alruf grinned down at him. He hurled his last rock at the worm, and, not bothering to see if he had scored a hit, he grabbed his backsword and trod with light feet down the pile of stones towards Luo. Luo held his saber out as he glowered through the pain at Alruf. The tip shook badly.

Alruf shook his head disapprovingly. “I told you not to go near it.” He glanced at Luo’s leg. “Well… I’ve got some poultice in my bag. I’ll get some of the worm’s venom and make you up a paste for those bites.”

“Fuck you!”

Alruf halted in mid-turn. “What’s that?”

“Fuck you, I say! You think I’d take any of your medicine?! Why in hell should I trust you?!”

Alruf threw his head back and laughed. “Boy, if I wanted to poison you, all I’d have to do is just lie back and wait. I’m giving you a cure because I want you good and healthy for when I kill you–no man will accuse me of killing you outside of a fair fight.”

Luo considered his words, but he did not lower the sword just yet.

Alruf shrugged. “You can take the paste, or you can let the venom do its work. But that leg will turn rotten in a day or two without help.” He turned and walked off, adding as he left, “I’m going to make it up while you decide.” Luo snarled at the Wose’s back, and the point of his sword dropped in defeat.

on to part six.

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part four.

Luo scrabbled to the top of a small ridge that must have once been city walls, and looked out over the vast pile of tumbled and weathered sand-colored stones.

Once, it must have been a city. Men had lived here, aeons ago, the forgotten crowds scurrying about like ants. Soldiers had patrolled the streets in ordered phalanxes, their proud panoplies of armor flashing dazzlingly in the sun. From his vantage point, Luo could see a plaza abutting a small butte that overlooked the former city. Into the living rock of the butte there was hewn a magnificent edifice, a facade for a temple. He could all but see the exotic and grand ceremonies that must have been held there: great gatherings of men in shining silk robes and pompous hats, heavy with glinting jewelry, lifting eyes and hands to the sky as sacrifices bled and burned to gods whose names were long forgotten.

Only the edifice remained now, somber and sullen in its forgotten grandeur. The rest of the city had long since lost all glory and glamour. Not a single roof remained intact; here and there, some of the grander walls still stood as empty, stunted shells, but no frieze, no other carving, had survived the wear of the centuries. All else lay in scattered piles of mute and crumbling stone.

There was something about that edifice that drew Luo to it. Perhaps it was the fact that it had remained where the rest of the city had crumbled. Something about it almost seemed to stir his Kan blood, as though mystic power lay buried beneath the rock.

Well, if there remained anything left to plunder, it could wait until tomorrow. Luo climbed down the remains of the walls, leading his Kan mare behind him, and shuffled jelly-limbed and half-blinded by exhaustion through the ruins.

All about was silence and desiccated death, a place so long devoid of life that even the bones of the men who had died there had turned to dust. Not even an insect or a lizard stirred in the heat of the desert afternoon, so that the whole place was as silent and still as a vast tomb. Luo’s only thought was to find a shaded spot to rest in until the night came. He thought he could see one, close by, and he wandered idly towards it, feeling like a dead man himself.

Something in it moved.

Instantly Luo’s hand was at the hilt of his saber. His weary body was tensed with its last reserves of energy; his normally rock-steady hand shuddered with his roused blood.

After a moment, he blinked. Had he imagined it? He was more exhausted than he had thought possible. He might be seeing things…

No. There it was again. A furtive flickering in the shadows.

His skin crawled, his hair stood on end, as he realized what it was.

From a pitch-black hole at the back of a shallow cave amidst the ruins, there emerged what looked like two huge red whips. They waved about with the lazy motions of a half-interested cat’s tail, probing the air outside with a sleepy curiosity. The body that the whips were attached to did not emerge from the cool of its burrow; the thing was drowsy, and not eager to wander through the heat of the day.

Luo stood as still as he could, holding his breath.

After a short time the whips withdrew. Luo exhaled, and relaxed as he sheathed his saber. Well, he wasn’t about to sleep there tonight. He cursed his luck; the thing would be awake with the setting of the sun. He would need to be gone by then–

Someone shouted behind him, a wordless shout of bloodlust and anger. He spun about, his sword already drawn, legs tensed once again, and he swore to himself.

There, at the top of a ruined stone wall, his face covered in dried blood, was Alruf. The Wose snarled as he bellowed at him, “You should’ve made sure I was dead, you son of a bitch!”

Luo glanced fearfully back at the burrow. He put his sword to his lips and hissed at the Wose to keep him quiet.

Alruf just stared uncomprehending at him, his expression consumed by rage. As he clambered swiftly down the shattered blocks, he continued to shout: “You can be certain I’ll make sure you’re dead–for what you did to my men, for stealing my woman, and for hitting me over the head with a Gods damned rock!”

Luo hissed, “Shut up, you fool!”

This only goaded Alruf’s rage. “Shut up? Oh, you lost your chance to shut me up! Here!” He grabbed a hefty rock. “I’ll shut YOU up!”

And he hurled it at Luo’s head.

Luo ducked, and turned in horror to watch the rock. It bounced off the ground, once, twice, and sailed neatly down the hole. Luo groaned. “Oh, you dumb shit.”

on to part five.

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part three.

Alruf whirled about and charged up the wash, dodging bouncing boulders as the cries of terror turned to bloodcurdling screams. The boulders crushed the soldiers with sickening, fleshy smacks. A rock glanced off the top of Alruf’s head and knocked his helmet off. Reeling from the blow, he charged heedless and half-stunned through the avalanche.

At the top of the wash he halted to catch his breath and steady his spinning head. He looked up, panting–just in time to see the whirl of a jet-black scalp lock and the bronzed, massively muscled flesh that rose before him.

Alruf dragged his backsword out just in time to stop the giant barbarian’s long, thin saber from cleaving his skull open. Too late, though, to brace himself–the blow smashed the back of his own blade into his head. Alruf gave a strangled cry as his legs gave out from under him, and he tumbled back into the rocks below. His body rolled limply back down the wash, came to a halt with a dull thud amidst the last of the tumbling boulders and the ruined and bloody bodies of his men with their faces and limbs grossly distorted and smashed into unnatural angles.

Alruf lay there, very still.

Kan Luodal considered the Wose for a moment. He should have climbed down and made sure Alruf was finished off. But he was tired, exhausted unto collapsing with the strain of the sleepless three-day chase. His mind was fogged, his limbs heavy and uncertain. Even his legendary Kan stamina had been taxed beyond its limits; there was a very real danger, he considered, that he would lose his footing among the rocks and meet his end, with his head smashed open, lying by the very man he had just triumphed over.

Besides, the bastard was dead. Blood covered his limp, expressionless face. If the swordblow hadn’t killed him, the fall surely had.

Insomnia-drunken, Luo turned, shuffled and staggered back across the plateau, considering as he did the sprawling ruins that lay there. If nothing else, they would be a good place to rest.

Vultures and flies began to gather. They circled hungrily over the dead bodies in the silent wash. After some time, one of the bodies stirred. With a pained groan, Alruf sat up, and thanked Zubal-Thurdos that the northerner had been foolish enough to take him for dead. He rose, wearily, achingly, to his feet, and started the long trek back up the wash to retrieve his backsword.

On to part four.

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part two.

The captain was a large man, almost heroic in size and stature, but he had a gloomy and dour aspect about him that no hero should have. It was this, and the fact that he was an outsider, a mahogany-skinned Wose of the far western isles, that set him apart from the men.

Nidru sighed as he left the troop and approached the captain. Once again, he would have to play ambassador between the men and their leader, for the sergeant could tell even those loyal soldiers were close to mutiny. And no wonder: they had been dragged far beyond their duties, into a dangerous land… all because of a woman.

Nidru muttered a curse and halted a few steps from the captain. He knew the Wose was aware of him, though he gave no sign of it.

“Captain…”

He got not so much as a grumble from him.

Nidru tried a different tactic: “Alruf.”

The captain grunted, “What?”

“How far do you have to take this?”

“To take what? My duty to the Shah-ru?”

“Midrada doesn’t want you risking a full troop of his city guard in the pursuit of one thief. You know he would never order such a thing.”

Alruf shook his head ever so slightly, his attention still on the wash around them. “My duty is to break up the brotherhood of thieves that plagues Amul. We pursue one of the worst and most murderous of their number.”

“But he’s come all this way–surely he doesn’t intend on returning to Amul! You’ve chased him out of the city. Midrada is rid of him. What need, then, is there to run him down?”

Alruf did not reply.

Nidru swallowed hard. “This is not about your duty to the Shah-ru. This is a personal vendetta. You and I both know it. The men know it.”

Alruf’s shoulders tensed a little, but he said nothing.

Nidru ventured a little further: “No woman–”

Alruf whirled on him, and Nidru found himself halted before his baleful glare. Through Alruf’s tangled black hair there blazed his bright blue eyes. They gleamed ferociously from his face, like Angra Mainyu’s lightless fires dancing madly in the Outer Dark. So uncanny was his aspect, that the men liked to joke with the other troops that their Captain was a djinni. But Alruf’s demoniac temper was no joke, and even his own men quailed a little when those eyes burned fiercely upon them.

Nidru found his voice again. “No woman is worth the lives of the men of your troop. Hell, no woman is worth your life alone!”

Alruf glared at him still, but the burning fury faded; and he hesitated before he shook his head. He muttered, “This isn’t about her.”

“Then it’s about your pride! Your barbarian’s honor! For that, will you get us all killed?”

Alruf considered Nidru’s words a moment. At last he turned back to the head of the wash. “He’s near.”

“He’s miles away!”

Alruf shook his head. “He’s waiting for us. He wants to be done with this thing.”

“How could one thief possibly face two score of men?”

Alruf turned back and smiled sardonically. “He’s a match for any ten of the men. Maybe more.”

“One thief–and a boy, at that?” Nidru scoffed. “You mean to tell me a boy of barely twenty would be a match for even one of the Shah-ru’s hand-picked guards? He’s a big son of a bitch, I’ll grant you that, but he’s no soldier, and by Marodak, he’s certainly no mighty warrior.”

“You haven’t seen him in action. He moves like lightning. And word has it he’s one of the Kans.”

Nidru gave Alruf a canny smirk. “I don’t believe for a second a Chazgar renegade, no matter how impressive his feats, is one of the Kan clan. None of those arrogant bastards would stoop so low as to become a thieving rogue.”

Alruf turned back to the top of the wash, where it opened up to the low plateau. “Like I said, you haven’t seen him in action. I wouldn’t have believed it myself otherwise.”

“You’re just sore that he fucked your woman.”

Alruf’s eyes blazed once more. His jaw tensed with the pain of wounded pride.

Nidru’s smirk faded. “She’s not worth it, Alruf. No woman is–and certainly not her.” He stopped short of calling her what she was: a harlot. That might be enough to set Alruf off.

They held a staring contest for a moment before Alruf turned to the head of the wash once more. Nidru sighed, and turned to walk back to the men. “I’m going to have the men pitch camp at the base of the wash.”

“Belay that,” Alruf barked without turning. “We’ll camp up on–”

Something snapped beneath Nidru’s heel.

Both men whirled to face each other. Tensely they watched the edges of the wash. The troop was staring about in furtive fear. Their hands hefted spears and shields.

There was a slight sigh, a hissing, as of sliding cords–and the sides of the wash exploded to thundering life.

All around, rocks and boulders the size of men’s heads and torsos burst out from the sides and tumbled down in a crashing avalanche. The wash funneled them inward, directly towards the men. The soldiers, the best and bravest of the Shah-ru’s army, screamed, threw their arms aside, and fled like desert hares, stripping off their armor in their panic.

Nidru chased them down without thinking and hollered, “Turn back! Idiots! You’re running into the path of the rocks!” Thinking only of his men, he was heedless that he had made the same mistake. Alruf shouted after him: “NIDRU!” Too late: a boulder smashed into his back and sent his crumpled and bloody body flying limp through the air.

on to part three.

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part one.

The troop halted near the top of the rocky wash, panting, sweating. Their hands worked anxiously about the hafts of their winged spears as their eyes flickered nervously about, scanning the desert, the horizon, as they had incessantly since leaving Amul. The nomads, those human wolves of the Ogdru desert, rarely ventured this far north, into the ancient hills south of the Ogdarus Sea; but rarely was a far cry from never, and the tales of their brutish savagery, which the men had passed around for gruesome thrills while relaxing in the taverns and the courtyards of the city, now set their nerves on edge.

The captain crept a little further up the wash, and halted again to peer about carefully. There was a trap here. He could smell it, like a wolf smelling carrion a mile off.

on to part two.

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Or: the geographical volume of covid’s human toll

by Jimmy Sprinkles

It’s the middle of January, 2022. Nearly two years have elapsed since the virus colloquially known as Covid hit US shores. In that time we have experienced a series of tumultuous events that feel like a work of dystopian fiction. I keep wondering who went back in time to shoot a dinosaur but wound up stomping on a historically critical butterfly. 

We’re bombarded by statistics, colored-coded maps and graphs on an hourly basis by our media outlets. These figures might seem abstract and impersonal to many, while many others have become completely desensitized. It’s hard to understand the scale of this disaster when we’re confronted with death toll figures so high they could be mistaken for a fortune 500 CEO’s salary compared to percentages of the human population so miniscule that said CEO would be dismissed by the board if they appeared on a quarterly report.

With this bewildering data in mind I set out one evening to make sense of it all. There’s a line in Grosse Point Blank where Mini Driver orders John Cusac to, “tell me about the dead people”. I decided to embark on a little thought experiment to do exactly that. 

What follows is my attempt to visualize geographically the cost of America’s muddled response to covid. For this experiment I decided to focus only on America’s death toll. I have checked and rechecked my figures and the results should be sobering to anyone without an antisocial personality disorder.

The first thing to do is arrive at a number of covid deaths that can be, if not accepted, then at least agreed upon by people with differing opinions on the accuracy of case and mortality reporting. We’re going to have to make some concessions here for the sake of argument. It also will make our lives easier to be working from a round, tidy figure. As of writing the official statistic is in excess of 860,000 adult covid related deaths in the United States. 

Let’s agree to focus solely on adult mortality.  Because, well, it’s hard to get a number on covid related deaths of minors. I can come up with a rate via google but that percentage requires additional data and calculation to turn into a number. The death juvenile rate is pretty low. 

To be generous to those who feel the official death toll is grossly overreported, let’s  put some give in that number to appease the skeptic in everyone’s family.

Why don’t we round that 860k+ figure to 800k even. We’ve now taken the minors out of the equation and taken a bite out of this possibly inflated head count. In order to make my point I’m willing to make further concessions. I’ve had people claim to me that the number has been inflated by anywhere between 10 and 50%. I would disagree. My personal opinion is that deaths are underreported, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that there’s quite a bit to certain people’s doubts and say that on average mortality has been 25% overreported due to loose standards of what constitutes a covid related death in some states. Well this is easy arithmetic! With a generous 25% rate of overreported fatalities we have arrived at 600,000 deaths in the USA since the start of the pandemic. That’s the skeptic-friendly number we’re going to base all of our calculations on… 

How do we visualize that number of people? Certainly you don’t know 600,000 other humans. Well that’s why we’re going to lay them out and estimate some acreage. Hopefully in the process the death toll will cease to be a percentage or a hypothetical number for us all. Are you ready? Let’s do this.

What if we lay these unalive individuals end to end, side to side? Let’s make this easy and say we’re going 300k up and 300k across. But how much square footage does a human take up? This is where we’re going to need to consult the CDC. I can hear some of you groaning already. Could we all agree that the US government can at the very least average out all those heights on state driver’s licenses with a tolerable degree of accuracy; and that they’ve done reasonably plausible work averaging chest, hip and shoe size measurements? Well, if not, stop reading.

Still here? Good. Since you were willing to concede the point (or never disputed it in the first place) you should know that according to the CDC the average adult male is 5’9” tall while the average height of an adult female is 5’4”. Thanks to the joys of the imperial system, averaging those 2 measurements comes up with a fractional number of inches that will needlessly complicate this process. I propose we go with 5’3” for the height of an average lady. Throughout this entire process we will estimate low and round down even if rounding up would be more appropriate. Great, now we have an average adult height in the USA: 5 feet and 6 inches. An imperial foot is 12 inches, so moving forward 5.5 will be the figure representing the height of each of the dearly departed.

In general the widest point on the adult male body should be the shoulders while an adult female is typically widest at the hips. Average shoulder width for a man is usually reported at 16.1” or 1’4.1”, and the average woman measures 13.622” or 1’1.622” hip to hip. When we average those numbers we arrive at 14.861”. I think we can safely round down to a single foot. The removal of almost 3” of space will make our calculations easier and hopefully appease anyone who felt that our 25% rate of over reporting was too low. 

Now it’s time to calculate the total width and depth in feet so we can arrive at an acreage. For height we have 300,000 humans who are on average 5.5’ tall, so the height of our rectilinear space will be 1,650,000’. This rectangle is again 300,000 persons long and we’ve conservatively specified 1’ of space for each at their widest point. Now we can easily multiply them the way we were taught in elementary school to arrive at a square footage of 495 billion square feet. That’s 495 followed by 9 zeroes, roughly half a trillion square feet. Mrs. Boyce from my 4th grade math class would be so proud of me right now, but I digress.

Google can easily tell you that an acre is 43,560 square feet. Now that Imperial measurement sounds so particularly arbitrary, but that’s how we play in the USA. So to arrive at acreage we would divide our 495 billion by 43,560. Double check my figures yourself,  you can google an imperial system acreage calculator and plug in 1,650,000 for length and 300,000 for width. You could also double check my division this way if you were so inclined. Working from the imperial system the answer using a calculator is of course annoyingly fractional but for our purposes 600,000 human bodies laid out in the specified arrangement will occupy 11,363,636 acres of land.

Approximately 11.3 million acres of land is a lot of space. It’s not easier to picture than 600,000 people. Why don’t we identify a space we can all understand to compare that number to. Given the federal government’s patchy response to this public health crisis I propose we use the capital, Washington DC. What’s great here apart from the aforementioned stab at irony is that unlike other American cities the borders of DC are fixed, so no matter when you’ve been there, it’s still the same size as what’s stated by Wikipedia and Britannica; 43,766 acres.

Obviously we can’t fit all those covid victims in the district in one layer. It’s time to do a little more division to figure out how high we would have to stack them in order to keep these poor folk from spilling into Maryland and Virginia. That gets us a long fraction but in the spirit of rounding down why don’t we call it 259 discrete layers of victims. This is more of a generalization; DC isn’t square, I used to live there, however I think we can go with this figure just to continue the visualization.

At this point I’m going to have to stretch your credulity a bit further and propose that we imagine removing all the structures in the district (yes, imagine, I said IMAGINE; don’t try to level the capitol) apart from the Washington Monument which will become our yardstick of loss. It’s hard to get a figure for how deep a layer of former covid patients would be because humans vary a lot in that department, and we’re pretty lumpy all over, and some sections of our body have a tendency to compress. Based on measuring my own chest and shoulders, I’m posting a figure of 6 inches for our depth. It’s pretty conservative, but again the goal is to keep rounding down here.

With our figure of 6 inches in hand why don’t we resume working in feet? To estimate a depth of our morbid rectangular cuboid we can just divide 259 in half and since it’s not an even number why don’t we drop the decimal? This gives us 129 feet. Our yardstick, big GW’s quasi-phallic monument? It’s 555 feet and 5 and 1/8ths inches (gotta love non-metric measurements). We’re covering over a quarter of the damned obelisk! Don’t bother trying to climb the steps for an aerial view, because the entrance is no longer going to be accessible, even if you could get into this town full of dead people.

Let me reiterate that this is a thought experiment tinged with more sadness than irony. I just want you to be able to picture the scale of loss in your mind. I am not advocating we bury our lawmakers in corpses to express our disapproval. I’m not advocating we actually level the capital. I’m just asking you to forget the sub-1% death rate that’s often touted and imagine people stacked a quarter of the way up the monument in even rows and columns keeping in mind that each one of them was (hopefully) loved by at least one other person. Imagine all the lives touched by the loss of these people. How much space would their mourners occupy?

Winter Publication Schedule
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Lord have mercy, what a contest!

Some of our finest flash fictionateering, ever,
ending in a three way tie for both prizes,
decided by the Fan Vote.

Not one to Waste Time, the Winners are:

the grand prize
“Casket Suite” by James Dorr

and runner-up
“Storm Surge” by Laurinda Lind

Yes indeed, a three way tie for both prizes.
The top contenders by judge votes were
“Clouds” by Ilhamul Azam, along with “Casket Suite” and “Storm Surge”.
As you may recall, a draw is decided by the Fan Vote:

“The Toll” by Stephen Page
won the Fan Favorite vote with over 30% of the 228 votes,
followed by
“Casket Suite” by James Dorr
with over 15%.

Of the top contenders, “Casket Suite had the most votes,
followed by “Storm Surge” by Laurinda Lind with almost 14%.

Thus, our winners.
View how the judges voted.

! It’s the 10th Anniversary of Defenestrationism !

We’re celebrating with an absurd amount of publishing–
so be sure to keep surfing through the rest of these cold winter months,
as Defenestrationism.net proudly presents

“Blood Run, a script “
by Chantelle Tibbs
(daily, January 18th through the 21st)

“Dude, Where’s the Washington Monument? The Real-Life Volume of Covid-Deaths”
by Jimmy Sprinkles
(January 23rd)

“The Seven Jewels”
by Rev. Joe Kelly
(thrice weekly, January 26th through February 23rd)

“Cornelius X’s Book of Bad  Dreams”
by Tom Ball
(thrice-weekly, February 25th through March 27th)

read the suites
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With 185 votes cast,
one of our finalists has a commanding
— yet not nearly insurmountable–
lead for Fan Favorite, while
the following two are only six votes apart.

The fourth, fifth and sixth contenders
are all within ten votes of each other,
and far from out of the Fan Favorite picture.

Vote early, vote often.
For time to ensure your favorites become winers
is running out.

Voting ends the stroke before midnight, Eastern, on the 15th.
!That’s this Saturday night!

Vote Now
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