Tree Sap of Ledgend

PREFACE: So this is a spiritual sequel to this story http://vklaus.soup.io/post/8692541/In-The-Garden-Of-Eden-or-How . This time the prompt was to write a story about "Tree sap of Legend" And much like the garden of eden story, I did.

The story of Mitchell Right started in 1984 when the band The Waffle Iron Gang was first formed, but the legend behind his success goes much further back. The Bible tells us of The Tree of Knowledge. The Christian teachings say it was the source of sin and vice, but any musician worth his salt knows the truth. It was the source of what we know today as Rock and Roll.

From the time Adam hewed the first acoustic guitar from one of its branches to serenade eve, to stories of nymphs, elves, and satyrs, the tree has been sought by many musicians whether they knew it or not.

Some start their journey looking for something else entirely, Mitchell Right, for example, was searching for the rainbow colored toad he saw after dropping the pre-show acid. Sadly, as the buzz was starting to fade and he became less and less convinced such a creature existed. Not only that, he started to think he completely and utterly lost.

Had Mitchell realized he had only been wandering in the forest for about 20 minutes instead of the 3 month’s his chemically enhanced brain lead him to believe, perhaps he would of just turned around walked back the way he came, played at the club, and simply went home. Instead a Rock and Roll God was born.

Panicked, confused, and still more than a little stoned, Mitchell fell back on what he had learned while smoking weed and watching hours and hours of wild life survival shows on cable. He grabbed a fist full of spotted moss shoved it in his mouth, sat under the tree, started sobbing while rocking back and forth, clutching his guitar.

Now, The Tree has a capricious nature. It seems to appear at random all over the globe. That night it appeared next to Mitchell Right about a half a mile from the club, The Cloacal Egress in Muscoda, Canada.

Nobody knows for certain if it was the combination of the, most likely poisonous, moss mixing with the residual acid lingering in his veins that made him think the sap oozing from The Tree beside him looked an awful lot like unrefined heroin, but as Mitchell sat terrified and looking for a way to calm down, he went for it. Filled his trusty syringe full of the sap from The Tree and injected it into his arm.

While the sap is not nearly as potent as the fruit from the tree, the difference was made up by it being injected right into the blood stream. Mitchell felt its power wash over him immediately. Suddenly the world popped into vibrant color and as if in a haze he gripped his guitar by the neck and walked out of the forest and played one of the best shows of his life.

The next morning he woke up in a hotel bed next to with two naked women and one male transvestite, named Cherrywillow, who, Mitchell thought, desperately needed to touch up his make up.

As Mitchell reflected upon that idea the world around him got a lot darker and a lot colder. Mitchell thought he was passing back out but then he noticed Cherrywillow open his eyes and saw they were bright red and glowing.
Cherrywillow sat up and spoke with a strange cadence that was both quite musical and entirely dark at the same time.

“That was quite the show last night, sweet stuff. I was impressed, and I’ve seen some crazy bullshit in my time.”

It didn’t take much time for Mitchell to realize what had happened.

“Shit.” he said, “I OD’d didn’t I? I OD’d and now the devil is here to take me to hell and… and… and all that… Stuff! Right?”

It probably wasn’t the most eloquent thing he had ever said, but Mitchell Right didn’t get paid to “talk good“.

Cherrywillow let out a gleeful laugh, and stood up after gathering up the blankets and draping it over himself like it was a dress and walked over to the hotel mirror. (If that seems strange to you, Its probably worth noting that the devil will be the first to tell you, that while he may be THE DEVIL, the unholy blight of all that is good and right, he isn’t with out his sense of dignity.)

“No,” said Cherrywillow, “You didn’t OD. This body I’m wearing now, did, but not you. You still have a long way to go, yet.”

“Then maybe Im still just tripping from whatever that shit was last night.”, Mitchell said as he rubbed his temples.

“I suppose that could be. In a sense at least. That ‘shit’ was sap from The Tree of Life. The wellspring of rock and roll. Gods own guilty pleasure. I‘m here to offer you more.”
“Seriously?” Mitchell said, suddenly interested, “The stuff was pretty damn good. How much more. I mean, I kicked ass last night but my boys could barely keep up.”
“I’m afraid I cant give you any for your band mates. Sadly, they went the same way as Ol’ Cherrywillow, here,” Cherrywillow paused for a moment and frowned at his reflection, then sighed, “Red lipstick really doesn’t suit him does it?”

“Not really.” Mitchell responded absent mindedly. He was trying to wrap his head around the news that his whole band had died over the course of the night. He had known all of them since they were kids.

“I wonder if these girls have a better color” Cherrywillow mumbled as he began to rifle through the still passed out girls belongings.

‘All of them. Dead.’ Mitchell thought. ‘I will never see Gutter, Snake, Bits, or Chauncey again.’ As Mitchell was about to start to cry, Cherrywillow shouted “Eureka! Emerald Green!” It startled Mitchell enough to pull him out before he descended completely into sadness.

“Devil, what in the fuck’re you doing?”

Cherrywillow, admiring the color of the new lipstick, was making kissy faces at his reflection. He paused mid kiss and his glowing red eyes blinked at Mitchell in the refection of the mirror, “Oh! That’s right we were making a deal, sorry, I get distracted by cosmetics easily. Anyway, so the sap, I can give all you can stand and all I need for you to do is promise me your soul after this is all over”

“But my band members…”

“Don’t worry about them, I’ll make sure they are taken care of, I’ll send up some replacements after I get back.”

“… Just my soul, huh?”

“That’s all.”

“Will I be tortured when I die.”

Cherrywillow, shrugged.

“I dunno. Punishment is kinda random. Keeps the relative moralists from bitching.”

Mitchell thought for a while. He always wanted to be a rock star. To be remembered forever and to go out with a bang. His friends were dead, and that was sad. But what a better way to remember them than to rock out harder than any had if ages. Hell probably wasn’t that bad of a place anyway.

“Ok.” Mitchell said, “I’ll do it. You just keep me knee deep in the sap, ok?”

“Sure thing! That syringe will never be empty. As soon as you inject it will be full again. Contracts on the dresser.” Cherrywillow said he turned his attention back to the mirror and started applying some foundation.

Mitchell walked over to the dresser and took a deep breath as he stared down at the dotted line.

“Um… I don’t have a pen.”

Cherrywillow tossed Mitchell the tube of red lipstick Cherrywillow had used the night before, and Mitchell Right signed his name and sealed his fate.

For the next five years the world experienced a musical renaissance as Mitchell Right and his bad of Rock & Roll demons from hell went, from town to town, blowing doors down, with the power of their music fueled by tree sap from the Tree of Knowledge.

Word of his mind bending music and his insane rock and roll lifestyle reached from the most populated metropolis of America, to the most remote locations in coldest Siberia. Mitchell Right and The Waffle Iron Gang became more than super stars. They were bigger than the Beatles, wilder than Hendrix, and longer lasting than Mick Jagger. But that which is gold can not stay and, one day, Mitchell Right had to pay the piper.

It was the eve of his first performance on his 29th tour of Japan. That night the show was going to be broadcast all across the globe. It was the biggest audience ever recorded in human history. An huge open air event with the silhouette of Mount Fuji looming in the background.

As he was sitting off stage in his dressing room, he stared solemnly at the syringe full of sap. He closed his eyes listening to the crowd humming outside, waiting for him. But then from the darkness he heard a familiar voice and one he had been waiting for a while now.

“Good evening sweet stuff.”

As Mitchell opened his eyes he saw a young Japanese man who was wearing a costume of the ancient samurai, standing in his doorway. It took a second for Mitchell to recognize him, but there was no mistaking the glowing red eyes.

“I assume you are here to collect on our deal.”

“You’d assume correctly, Mitchell-chan.”, The Samurai said cheerfully.

Mitchell clutched the still full syringe in his hand. The devil had held up his end of the bargain and now it was time to hold up his. Mitchell knew this day would come but he didn’t want to accept it. Mitchell had lived a good life, but he didn’t want to stop living it. It was too soon. He wasn’t ready yet.

“No.” Mitchell said.

“No?”

“No! You heard me! Im not going yet. Im not done yet!”

The Samurai’s eyes glowed brighter and the voice grew darker than it had before.
“You would defy me, after all I’ve given you?”

“Given me what?! This drug?! I don’t need it! And… And you can shove it and your stupid deal up your own stupid ass!”

Mitchell threw the syringe at the samurai, grabbed his guitar, pushed past The Samurai, and ran onto the stage for what would be the single greatest musical event in ever seen by mankind.

As he walked on to the stage, Mitchell noticed his band members were gone. The stage was dark save for a single spotlight tracking him and another on the opposite side where he saw Japanese Samurai. His face was now covered with a iron demon mask but his eyes still glowed deep red.

They stood apart, a guitar in each of their hands. Mitchell’s freshly painted white and the samurais jet black with rusted strings. Mitchell knew what was about to happen. It was a story almost as old as the story of The Tree. Only this time, he wouldn’t win a fiddle made of gold, he would win his soul.

The Samurai Devil was the first to start. The ground beneath their feet shivered and arcs of electricity trailed off each plucked rusted string, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Some described the sound as half a pound of meth with a ounce of cocaine as a chaser. The sheer power of it sent a shockwave of sonic energy that still echos in the loins of those who were in the audience as far as 30 years after the show had ended.

After hearing that Mitchell Right was beginning to shake. His nerve was wavering. He felt so small in the face of The Devils rock prowess. The stage suddenly felt to big. He could feel the eyes of the audience waiting to see what he would do to counter.

He shut his eyes a dug deep. He would not loose his soul to the devil. He would not let the devil beat him. He would give the world something to remember. He would do something that would make his old friends who died so long ago something to cheer about in hell.

So he dug deep. Deeper than he thought he could. Gathered all his experiences, his passion for music, his desire for success, all the power the tree sap had lent him in the past, and pulled it all together. He grabbed his pick, looked into the spot light, then across at his devil samurai counter part, and played his guitar.

The ground did more than shiver. It began to shake and shake violently. Stage lights began to fall from the metal scaffolding as Mitchell began his rebuke. Every cord plucked was like a wash of warm energy as it poured through the audience and into every living room showing through the TV or radio.

As the song continued it got more and more powerful. A strange light began to swirl around Mitchell. A strong wind began blow as clouds gathered above and a violent thunder storm suddenly broke loose over the audience. The sound of the thunder and the hard patter of the rain and hail provided the best bass and drum line respectively; the whirl and whistle of the wind the perfect vocalist.
Mitchell went out with a bang as he finally reached the crescendo of his song as Mt. Fuji erupted. Flame and lava rocketed into the storm clouds above and black obsidian began to rain down onto the stage. Some people screamed and some people cried, but most cheered.

When the rain stopped enough for people to see the stage clearly again, they audience could see that Mitchell laying dead on the stage floor. The coroners would eventually determine the cause of death was that of every great rocker in history, an over dose.

The Samurai Devil, however, was no where to be seen. He sulked away back to hell, rather salty he didn’t get what was rightfully his. Mitchell had put his entire soul into that song and let it loose. His soul did not belong to the devil any more, it belonged to the entire world. It belonged to history. Existing forever in the hearts and souls that final performance had touched.

That is the story of Mitchell Right.

The Gears Never Rust

The Gears Never Rust

Glenn Uncertain had done many great things in his life as an adventuring archeologist. He braved The Tombs of Technokahmen. Faced down an army of tanks made from ancient American Indian bones that fired their malevolent spirits from the tank‘s turret. He even read the illustrated edition of the book written by Grand Visor of Horrible Deaths. None of that phased him. However, there was only one thing in the world that terrified him: The Cog Sphere.

Resting at the top of a tower of brass steam pipes and valves The Cog Sphere’s clockwork gears turned endlessly for an unknown and meaningless purpose in the center of Sprocketburg.

Glenn Uncertain was the man who first discovered it hidden deep beneath the earth. Glenn described it, soon after it’s unearthing, to his dear friend Alexander Uncertain¹
in a letter as, “A birds nest of polished metal that ticked, tocked, writhed, and twisted itself in the dirt with a terrifying vivacity. It’s shape an incomprehensible form that is beyond the conception of the minds of men”.
The Cog Sphere quickly developed a unique fascination by most of those who laid eyes on it and quickly became the jewel of the city. The people decided that it was rare discovery that needed to be displayed proudly. But Glenn soon realized that those who looked upon it’s hypnotic motion for too long soon started to get strange new ideas.

It’s dark influence began to spread throughout the city and “The Madness” set upon the town and things began to change. The most drastic change being that before The Sphere’s arrival the town used to be called Edistown in celebration the man who invented electricity, but after it arrived the people changed Edistown to Sprocketburg. A name that celebrate the old ways of steam and oversized bolts.

Glenn himself was only able to protect himself from The Cog Sphere’s influence by observing the device through a pair of his multicolored science goggles. A pair, as he explained to Alexander, of being “Ingeniously infused with a little magic to reshape the world into something much more logical and less silly ridiculousness. If you were to observe, say, a Zeppelin² (or any other such inflatable dirigible), you would see in it’s place, an Areoplane of a very sensible design.”
When Alexander asked what Glenn saw when observing The Sphere he responded with “It appears as nothing. A black void of empty space. Existing only to take up space in an already crowded world.”

The people of Sprocketburg did not share Glenn’s fear and in fact chastised him for defaming the glorious technological revolution at hand. He had to stop working as an archeologist and was not allowed to leave the city.

During his imprisonment Glenn Uncertain began to document the changes in the people day by day³. On January 23 He describes the strange ornamentation that began to appear on the few priests that remained in town.

They had adorned queer additions of copper and brass gears attached to their newly adopted top hats. The gem encrusted cogs spinning pointlessly and fueled by small and unnaturally efficient steam engines they now all carried on their backs.

When Glenn asked about them he writes the priests responded thusly, “The Sphere gave us inspiration. Showed us how to tap into the diving power that can only be accessed by slightly tarnished tappets and screws.”

Over the next few days he saw more people were joining the priests in their new practice. Soon nearly every man, woman, and child had the mark of the Sphere’s influence. With in three months of the discovery of The Sphere, everyone began wearing jewelers glasses and extraneous vests, scarves, puffy shirts, and brass pocket watch chains. Each person trying desperately to out due the other in order to show their devotion to The Sphere.

Glenn writes solemnly in his journal. “The streets are empty again today. I look out my window and see no one. But I know that in each house there is a family hunched over a workbench desperately trying to find a new way to incorporate a cathode ray tube into their lapels. I fear that if I were able to see past the grease smeared lenses of their goggles I would see the hallow emptiness one would find in the glassy eyes of a clockwork toy.”

Glenn was not wrong. The townsfolk’s need to out done one another grew geometrically and architecturally⁴ over the course of five months. It was then the houses began to undergo their metamorphose. They became inexplicable messes of pipes, gears, and pneumatic tubes. Literally indiscernible from one another. Glenn described them as “The tendrils of The Sphere wrapping around the city, choking the last bit of life an culture out of its dying body”.

Glenn lamented that nobody in the city went on adventures any more. There was no more digging, no more romance, no more great battles of good and evil. There was only the Cog Sphere. It became life and life became purposeless. The human body became merely a means to decorate itself in the pointless machinery of The Sphere, which only served to decorate the human body, which was only a means to decorate itself in the pointless machinery of The Sphere, and so on. In under a year the town of Sprocketburg had become city wide embodiment of The Sphere.

One day Glenn put on his goggles all he saw around him was blackness. A void of usefulness and logic. Glenn described it was like closing your eyes and imagining the dumbest thing you possibly could. We think that it was this that finally drove him insane.

The last journal entry we have from him is as follows: “I can no longer abide by this. These people were once my friends but they aren’t anymore. They are gilded shades of their former selves and tonight I will free them. Perhaps in death they will find freedom from The Sphere⁵."

We know little about what happened next. We do know he left a trail of bodies behind him as he marched towards the tower of The Sphere. We do know that they found his body tattered and scared with severe burns from an explosion. We also know that the Sphere was no where to be found nor was any shrapnel that would have been produced by any explosion. All we have is a slightly singed note in Glenn Uncertain’s handwriting saying:

“--- long now. The burns will kill me soon. Have to tell. It opened for me. Showed me its core. Showed me the complex infrastructure of levers and chain belts that exist between. The terrifying complexity of the clockwork creatures probing the fabric of reality slowly trying to get through. Can‘t stop them. For them, there is no time.
The gears never rust.”

---------------------------------------------------
1. The two weren’t exactly related. At the time immaculate conceptions ran at about the same rate as the spread as agnosticism thus leading to a rather large family of fatherless children from a diety that may or may not exist.
2. A sort of mobile couch used by the fatuous and wealthy to observe, from above, sporting events.
3. See illustration.
4. The previous architecture was one of minimalism with a touch of arcadian-non-linear-refomism.
5. The original documents are a little difficult to read sometimes but most scholars believe that at the end of this foreboding sentence Glenn Uncertain had drawn a cartoon frowny face.

My Academic Career

My day, the short version:

The very long version: (Note: I was going to draw pictures to seperate paragraphs but I am to tired so I'm going to use random pictures I found on the internet today)

I’ve never had a normal semester where everything goes exactly as it should. I don’t believe that actually happens. However it seems that recently I accidentally opened the setting on the universe and switched the difficulty level to extreme and can’t find it again to turn it back down.

Around a year and a half ago, during the summer I was staying at my parents for the summer as I started moving out of the dorms and into my apartment. During this time I began to have a series of panic attacks that only ever hit right before I would go to bed. This became a problem. So I went to the doctor and he put me on some daily anti-depressants. Soon the attacks went away and all was well. Till I moved into my apartment and started school again.



Now I once this happened unbeknownst to me I stopped having panic attacks and my brain chemistry returned to normal. HOWEVER if that happens and you are no longer suffering from anxiety and depression but you keep taking the medication like you are told to, it causes PROBLEMS. Brain refused to think properly, weeks of extended lethargy, and profound lack of focus of any kind. Made doing homework and going to class ummm… difficult. Especially as I had just moved a mile and a half away from campus with out a car.



On top of that it took nearly half the semester for my financial aid to finally go through and for half the semester I wasn’t even certain I would last till the end of the semester. A little after midterm I realized what was happening and I stopped taking the medication and tried to fix as much as I could but it was already too late and the damage was already done.



So I did BAD that semester. Like, REALLY REALLY, bad. Like, 0.00 gpa, bad. Not my proudest moment. Kinda kicks my pride in its massive nuts to even admit to the badness and stupidity on my part. But there it is.



So after that semester I got put on financial probation, basically the withhold the money the state is giving to you. Be that grants and scholarships or straight up loans from a bank.



That semester I did what I could and tried to pull my life back up out of the shit I found it in once I got of the meds. I did pretty well, but not necessarily stellar. I got all 15 hours I attempted and considering 1 of the classes was a 700 level class generally given to grad students I was feeling pretty alright.



After about a month of looking for summer work and stuff my parents got a letter informing them that I was academically dismissed from my school. WATTA TWIST! AMIRITE?



Apparently I had not done good enough and that I had to take a semester off and apply for reinstatement in the spring.



They also heavily suggested I apply to the local community college for a semester. So I did that. Which worked out ok, got a lot of general education requirements out of the way for pretty cheap. Allowed me to take some loan money and do some travlin to hang out with some(an) awesome people. Since all that shit was hella easy I did GREAT. Still not deans list, but still pretty great.



So I started on the arduous task of getting reinstated.



In order to do this, you need to fill out and petition of reinstatement. Which requires you to write what the deal is, why you want to come back, and your grades from schools you’ve attended since AND have your old university advisor to write a letter saying whether or not they thought you should be allowed back in or not. So I had to wait till after my grades were posted (after winter break started). And even though I turned my half in on the 3rd of the new year, literally the first day the offices opened, and event though I gave my adviser her half of the application before the winter break, I was just reinstated YESTERDAY.



GUESS WHAT! YESTERDAY WAS THE DAY TUITION WAS DUE! YAAAAAAY!
Now guess who found out today?



Yeeeeaaah. After I ran around all day today getting signatures from every professor I taking this semester, and getting enrolled and stuff getting taken care of I found out that if I didn’t get nearly $700 by today or $725 by next Wednesday and then $600 by friday I would be dropped and all this would have been for naught.



So off I skipped to the happiest place on earth, known as the financial aid department!



Turns out I’m still on financial aid suspension! And the committee that reviews the application for repealing that wont meet again till may 5th! Sooooooooooooooooo………. Yeeeeaaaaah…. I basically have to find someway to come up with $725 by next Wednesday and $1500 more in installments starting next Friday or get a non-student loan and hope they approve my appeals application so I can pay the loan off in May. So that’s where I’m at the moment. But that being said I am being optimistic.



Best case I get the non-student loan and get it paid off immediately and improve my credit score like a boss and kick ass this semester. Worse case scenario I take a semester off and get a real person job till I can get back in the Fall. Which isn’t the end of the world and would probably let me do even more travel and buy more art supplies.



But that’s the deal. I’ve got at least 4 more years of this bullshit. T___T

Weekend At The Movies

I am so tired.

Commissions Part 2

“Be afraid. Be TOO afraid”

The last of my commissions have been at last sent out which means I’m back and ready for more.

How this works:

You donate using the buttons listed below the deal you want then email me at poorklaus@gmail.com and tell me what you want me to be in your painting. I will then work feverously for days on end till my soul ascends to the seventh layer of the holy nega realm and you painting is completed.

So here’s the menu and as usual shipping and handling is included in the listed price unless you live out side the US in which case there is $5 extra shipping charge.

11X14 Paintings For $25

International

11X7 Paintings for $15

International

Postcard Size Paintings for $5

International

Any Sized Digital Paintings/Drawings for $5

Also for sale are

Vibrancy for $25

National

International

The Creative Process for $20

International

If you don’t see exactly what you want here email me at poorklaus@gmail.com and we can see if we can work something out!

LURVE,
Klaus.

A Summer of MS PAINT

Its very boring at my parents house. Most of my time is spent blankly staring at my computer screen while listing to podcasts with people far more interesting than me. One day however to maintain my sanity and to keep from making dolls in the shape of my favorite podcasters I decided to start doodling in Paint. The following is the terrifying results of a summer of idleness and frustration.