howyoutalktostrangers

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

The first baby's head was breaching.

The raft bucked in the current like an ornery horse, and Shuswap Joe grunted with effort as they slalomed through the crashing waves. The cold water dribbled down Celista's forehead and collected in her eyelashes, blinding her.

Later she would struggle to remember these moments, the way her body convulsed and shook there on the raft. The one emotion she could recollect was the feeling of inevitability, the feeling that she didn't have any choice but to be giving birth amidst the purple flaming chaos. And though there were three other people in their flotilla, she was going through this experience completely alone.

Her most persistent companion through it all, yawning evil in the darkness, was Nanor. He watched her like a hungry goblin, his claw-like fingers intertwined in anticipation.

The first baby finally slid out of her with the violent crash of a wave, and for a moment she thought he would slide away into the current. She grabbed ahold of the umbilical and wrenched him back, squalling, holding a perfectly formed baby boy with an instantly working set of lungs.

She felt a wash of relief, hearing his voice added to the soundscape of the night, but only had a few seconds before the next baby appeared in a spray of blood.

Blinking away the river water, Celista's gaze fell on the horrified looks of the priest and nuns, trailing six feet behind them in the current.

"I need to baptize them!" she yelled, though he voice was lost in the night wind. "Please, father. You must!"

They had hit a calm stretch of water, and Shuswap Joe swooped down to see what he had missed. One boy was kicking angrily, while the other nuzzled against her breast trembling and silent.

"You did it," he said. "They're here."

Afterwards she would wonder how long she really got with her husband, rapt with wonder at their twin sons. Was it minutes? Hours? They were able to find a quiet beach to stop momentarily, and the priest quickly dabbed the boys' foreheads and murmured his prayers.

The first baby flailed and vocalized while the other slumbered.

However long it was, her reverie was cut painfully short by Nanor's reappearance. He loomed over them both in a flowing black cloak, cackling with anticipation.

"Don't worry," he told her. "Joe will never remember the second child. It's only you that will have to live with the choice."

"And what happens if I refuse to choose?"

He took a step closer, floating slightly above the sand. "Many people have tried to outsmart me. You won't be the first one to fail."

"You can't force me to give up a son."

"If you don't make a choice, I'll simply drown them both. That's your third option."

Celista looked down at her two boys. They both already looked like Joe. She couldn't believe they'd come from her body, these miracles, and tears welled in her eyes as she imagined them grown. One of them would be strapping and free like his father while the other would become a demon's acolyte.

Nanor approached her from behind, his breath freezing against her cheek as his arms encircled her.

"So, my dear?" he asked. "Which one will it be?"

She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and pointed.

"That one."

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

My wife went viral for singing Leonard Cohen during the pandemic.

In those early weeks, when everything was getting locked down, she watched with fervent interest as videos from all over the world showed people creating beautiful music from their captivity. She watched the same ones over and over, clutching her laptop close to her face. I couldn’t get her interested in the real world, even to take a walk around our block — which was pretty quickly amassing a haphazard tent village that crowded on to all the lawns and green spaces.

“You put somebody in a cage, and they’re going to sing. It’s that simple,” she said, her face flush with inspiration. She’d lost her tutoring job only a week earlier, and already her idle mind was spinning off in all directions. 

“This is only a cage if you choose to perceive it that way. This is just temporary,” I told her.

“Oh yeah? How temporary?”

“Things are going to go back to normal. You have to believe that.”

“Oh yeah? Says who? Who are these authority figures who get to dictate how we live?”

“They’re trying to keep us safe.”

She ripped up the sleeve of her shirt to show a string of angry red burns from her lighter. “This doesn’t feel safe to me. Does this look safe to you?”

I made a deal with her that I’d film her balcony concert if she stopped hurting herself. Every evening at 7 p.m. all of Whistler Village would erupt into a cacophony, banging pots and ululating into microphones, to thank the health care workers. My wife waited until they quieted down one night to set up her karaoke machine and deliver a heart-wrenching rendition of “Hallelujah”. 

She’s talented, my wife, with a haunting voice that makes me think of Adele. I had my iPhone on a tripod, positioned horizontally to optimize the video’s orientation on social media. She only did one take.

“You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya,” she sang. 

“She tied you to a kitchen chair. She broke your throne and cut your hair, and from your lips she drew a Hallelujah.”

“That was beautiful, baby,” I said, hugging her afterwards. She was crying.

“I didn’t do that for you. I did that for me.”

Over the next few days we watched the view count ascend at a dizzying pace. First it hit 10,000 views and then shortly later a million. A few different news outlets tried to contact her, but she wouldn’t give an interview. I started to wonder if there was a way to monetize this thing, but she wasn’t interested in talk like that. She carried herself like she was on a holy mission, and began yammering to herself when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

It felt like I was losing her to something I didn’t understand, like she was falling in love with the audience inside her skull.

“Are you hearing voices in your head?” the masked mental health worker asked a week later, standing over her while she slouched betrayed on the couch. Her belongings were strewn across the floor like it was the bottom of a hamster cage.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

My wife doesn’t have any clothes on.

I wake up in the middle of the night, interrupting a wicked nightmare in which I was trapped in a snowdrift, and find her wrapped in a blanket on the balcony smoking pot from our little dragon pipe. Our apartment isn’t very big, but it’s wide open to Whistler Mountain and all the glistening glaciers that seem to disappear into the night sky. 

She doesn’t know I’m watching her black-haired silhouette from the living room, wondering in my bare feet if I’ll ever be able to reach her again.

There’s different types of language, different ways to show someone what they mean to you. We’re five years deep into our marriage and I still routinely feel like she’s a stranger in my bed, like she’s holding all her cards to her chest. Even when we have sex, it’s like she’s only giving me a small part of herself. Afterwards she always rolls over with practical efficiency, reaching for the pipe while the pulse in my neck continues to throb at a frenetic pace. 

We’ve been talking about children but at the same time I don’t trust her not to hold them at arm’s length too. Will she show them love, or will she hoard her affection like a riddling bridge troll?

“Why are you up, babe?” I ask, slipping through the sliding glass door. “Don’t you have to work in the morning?”

At first she doesn’t answer, just pulls her blanket tighter.

“Should I be worried?”

Last week my wife got out of the psych ward following a month-long stay. They say she’s manic bipolar with psychotic delusions, which means she believes in things that aren’t real. It scares me more than I can admit to anyone, and now that she’s jettisoned her family it’s only me here clutching the kite strings.

“Do you know why they named this place Whistler?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.

“I dunno, after some guy?”

“Some guy like who?”

“An explorer, maybe? Some sort of mountaineer?”

She nods to herself, her eyes in shadow, then raised the pipe to her lips for another toke. We have both been pot smokers for years and I can’t bring myself to question her consumption. It would make me feel like a hypocrite.

“Do you hear that?” she asks. “That keening on the wind?”

I turn myself to the immense blackness and closed my eyes for a moment, until I can hear a faint cry. It's a shrill cry, like a loon maybe, and it’s echoing down the slopes to us like a message from beyond. I settle into my chair and prop my slippers on the railing. Our balcony is hardly big enough for two people.

“I hear it, babe.”

“You hear it, the whistling?”

“Yeah. Sounds like some animal is screaming.”

She snickers. “It’s a marmot, and it’s probably horny.”

“Horny?”

“I think it’s their mating call. It’s looking for its little marmot spouse.”

I’ve never seen a marmot, but I know it’s a cat-sized rodent. Like a mole or something like that. I try to imagine its subterranean lair, kilometres away.

“That’s what they named Whistler after,” she says. “Not many people know that. The mountain was originally called London, but the trappers renamed it after the marmot’s whistling.”

“No shit.”

“I looked it up.”

She’s brilliant, my wife. One of those tortured artists who is never satisfied with the work she’s producing. I’ve read her short stories and her poems and her journalism, and it’s the closest I ever feel to touching her intellect. It’s like she’s creating literary mazes for me to slog through, in search of the minotaur. 

I have no idea what I’ll do if I find it.

“Do you want some of this?” she asks, holding out the pipe. “It’s not cashed yet.”

I take the pipe and work the choke, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs. The truth is I smoke to feel close to her, not because I actually care about being high. I don’t think it does the same thing for me as it does for her, but I like having a shared ritual. The smoke curls white from my lips, getting in my eyes.

Suddenly I’m elsewhere in my mind, knee-deep in snow, following a long line of men lumbering in the bright afternoon white. Some of them have sashes of dangling animals, little masses of unidentifiable fur. The cold feels like it’s crawling up my nostrils, and my eyeballs feel too naked for this environment.

“I don’t think you really love me,” my wife says, with a deep sigh. “I don’t see why you would.”

I stiffen in my seat. “Why would you say that?”

Then she stands up, her blanket flared out around her like the unfurled wings of a great bird. The light from our window gives her face a faint glow.

“I think I want a divorce.”

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Things are drawing to a close.

I wrote the first chapter of The Long, Lonely Flight of Lady Celista in early 2020, and now I'm constructing its conclusion five years later. She's come a long way.

Back then Celista was a headstrong British teenager in the 1930s, traversing the Atlantic Ocean solo in her aeroplane, and now she's preparing to give birth in the middle of a wildfire, while floating down the Adams River on a raft.

Lady Celista was always modelled after my wife Kristina, and she's helped shape the narrative in a bunch of ways — including encouraging me not to give the story a happy ending, because "this is a sad story, but a beautiful one too."

I've always envisioned this book as the second in a trilogy, and now it looks like the third instalment will be about the twin sons of her and Shuswap Joe.

I've commissioned Jade Edgar to design a cover image, and I'm thinking about using the painting below either as a back-cover or interior illustration.

Watch out for the final excerpt, coming out any day now. It's about fear management, and facing the inevitable — which is what Lady Celista is doing as she labours away on that raft.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

This was a fun story to write.

To mark Whistler's 50th anniversary as a resort municipality, I interviewed three local businesses about their history — with one pizzeria sharing a fun story about a ghost I named "the lonely lumberjack".

I got a particular kick out of interviewing Joey Gibbons, whose father was responsible for constructing the first building in Whistler Village. And the Keg had a fun story about how its original building was moved down the Sea to Sky Highway to become a government building, resulting in them widening the road.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Celista struggled to sit upright.

The contractions were getting closer together now, so she hadn’t been able to walk down to the river from their mangled carriage. Shuswap Joe carried her in his arms, along with two sturdy sheets of wood that he’d salvaged from the carriage and strapped to his back. Behind them came the priest and his two nuns, all of them beginning to choke and hack on the smoke that filled the air. 

Was this what brimstone might smell like?

From where Celista was sitting, she had a sweeping view of the raging forest fire. It was gnawing hungrily through the landscape like a hungry dragon, and it was coming right towards them. They had no choice but to take the rafts. She was scared to put herself at the mercy of the river, thinking of the time she’d nearly succumbed to its embrace. 

She still felt Nanor’s cold breath on her neck.

“Okay, so I will be piloting from the first raft,” Joe explained, standing waist-deep in the current. “Lady Celista will be with me.”

He then held up the six feet of rope that connected the two rafts.

“The waters are in a fine mood, so as long as we’re careful we should be able to float together right back to Scotch Creek in a few hours.”

A contraction hit that sent Celista’s mind reeling. Suddenly her consciousness was a pinprick of light amidst the blinding pain. She moaned involuntarily, rocking on to her hands and knees. She was still murmuring “Mary” under her breath in an attempt to soothe herself. She clutched the cross at her breast and let out a feral scream. 

There was cherry-coloured blood running down her legs now.

“They’re coming, Joe,” she said. “Joe, the twins are coming.”

“Right now?” he asked, splashing to shore.

“Right now.”

“I guess the babies are on their own schedule,” he said.

“Seems like they’re in a hurry, Joe. Like they’re racing to see who can come out first.”

Far above their heads there was a mighty crack, and a ten-foot limb wreathed in flames came tumbling down towards them. The priest tackled the two nuns out of the way at the last second, and Joe launched Celista down the beach and on to the raft. She rolled into the fetal position, cradling her protruding stomach. All around them the air was red.

That’s when Nanor appeared, not even bothering to hide anymore. He was dressed in an elegant black suit with a top hat, and had covered as much of his translucent skin as possible with scarves and gloves. She could still see the dead-looking flesh of his face, and how it was corrupted with something black and foul that seeped through his pores. 

“You tried to kill me,” she said. “That day on the cliff.”

“I prefer to call it a sacrifice. And if it makes you feel any better, it was terribly hard for me to do. But my faith was being tested.”

“What do you have faith in?”

He laughed. “Oh, the river. Only the river.”

Celista could see that her companions were frozen on the beach. Shuswap Joe was still waist-deep in the water. Time was doing something loopy, but at least the flames had come to a complete stop. Her mind careened around her like she was drunk.

“I’m afraid I’m here to offer you an impossible choice,” Nanor said. “I apologize in advance.”

“What choice?”

“Well, your husband was saved from this river four decades ago. A fisherman gave his life to bring him to safety, just a mewling little boy in a basket,” he said.

“The math has been off ever since. It tipped the scales somehow. The river got cheated out of a life, and ever since it’s been looking for someone to take his place.”

“What do you mean, take his place? Where?”

Nanor shook his head solemnly. “I am in need of an acolyte. I’m looking for a child of my own. I would let you choose which child would come with me, of course.”

Celista spat angrily. “You stay away from me, you spider-freak.”

“One child would grow up with you, in civilization, while the other will grow up with me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Nanor crouched down so that he could look her full in the face. His smile was enigmatic and forced. Behind him everything began to hum and crackle back to life. The nuns clambered aboard the second raft, and then they helped the priest up. Joe took his place at the front, wielding a giant branch that he could use to push off the bottom and navigate around water features. 

Everybody else would just need to hold on.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

There’s this Japanese movie — I’ve never seen it, don’t know what it’s called, but I think about its premise at least once a week.

Basically all these people are in this waiting room and one by one they’re called into a doctor's-like office where they’re asked how they’d like to spend eternity. Each one of them gets the choice to live inside one memory, one experience from their lives. Maybe they want to be a breastfeeding child, or maybe they want to live inside a great theatre performance they gave in high school. Ever since I learned about this movie I’ve lived with this omnipresent feeling of is this it? Is this my heaven? 

A few years ago I moved to a small town called Duncan, right after I started having kids, and right in the centre of town there’s a recreation centre with a wave pool, a lazy river and eight lanes of lap swimming. This is where I taught my kids to swim, sometimes once or twice a week, and this is where I found myself saying this is it. My heaven could be belly-flopping on a pool noodle and following my kids as they test-drive their goggles for the first time.

I could do this in perpetuity, wallowing like a hippo from the hot tub to the diving board and back to the rhythmic crash of the waves. It’s not that I’m happiest there — when I first arrived in town I was grappling with suicidal depression in the midst of the pandemic — but it’s certainly where I feel most safe. The familiar young lifeguards look over us, everything is predictable, and the faux trees and 50-foot windows make you feel like you’re lost in nature, like this is some forest oasis where tired warriors come to bathe, healing their wounds in the soothing current.

These are the moments I can live inside forever.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Celista was existing in two realities at once.

Behind her fluttering eyelids she was high amidst the groaning green trees, singing her birthsong while a gentle breeze tickled her bare flesh. But in reality she was flanked by praying nuns on a rickety horse-drawn carriage, banging down a forest path while the world filled with smoke.

Her pregnancy had drawn her to both heaven and hell simultaneously, and she balanced fearfully on the precipice between them in her mind.

When she opened her eyes, everything was a fiery orange.

The priest had started out the trip at the reins, but it was Shuswap Joe who was navigating them now. He shouted commands at the horses, panic in his voice, as they rattled and shuddered along. Celista watched his back bounce as they hit roots and unseeable grooves in the dark mud under their wheels.

She propped herself on her elbows, a move with triggered the nuns to return chattering to her side. She looked into their eyes, wishing that they spoke her language.

Then she realized what they were saying: the Hail Mary. It wasn’t the words she recognized, but the cadence of their voices, as they fingered their rosaries.

“You’re calling for the holy mother?” she asked one of them.

The nun answered by pointing to the sky.

It had been decades since Celista had learned about Mary in the British churches of her father, and years at least since she’d said the holy words addressed to Jesus’ mother. When she arrived in Canada she hadn’t found an opportunity to engage in religion, but suddenly it felt terribly appropriate to pray — who else could she turn to?

“Here, here,” the other nun said, pushing a rosary into her hands. “Mary. Mary!”

Suddenly there was a lurch, and a mighty crack, and Celista felt the carriage beneath her tremble like a wounded animal. The priest came crawling past her, his robes flying around him, his face an angry crimson.

She could see that he too was praying through terrified tears, and that something was seriously wrong.

“What happened? What happened?” she asked, as everyone began to disembark.

That’s when a new face appeared in the smoke, one she recognized from her trip through the Adams River tunnels. It was Ellis Sweetwater, the skinny derelict who had secretly been the evil Nanor all along. For months now she had convinced that he’d just been a strange apparition of her mind, but here he was in the flesh and blood again.

She jolted in his direction, pointing.

“Nanor!” she cried. “Nanor is here!”

Shuswap Joe swept down from the orange sky, and cupped her face in his hands. His cheeks were smeared with soot, and he was bleeding from a significant slice over his right eye. He swiped at it with the back of his hand, spreading the blood like a paint brush.

“This carriage isn’t going to make it any further, my love. We can’t bring these supplies. We have to go,” Joe said. “Do you hear me?”

“I saw Nanor,” she said.

“Where?”

“In the smoke! He’s following us.”

If anyone was going to take a Nanor sighting seriously, it was Joe — he’d met the river wraith as a child, and had tangled with him multiple times since. The look on his face was one of frustrated inevitability, a realization dawning on him that he couldn’t escape their nemesis.

But now of all days? Why would he show up now?

“Listen to me. You have to forget about him. We have to get out of here, do you understand? If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to die. All of us.”

“What are we going to do?” Celista cried in desperation. “Where can we go?”

Joe took a deep breath, then slicked back his hair. He looked like a man about to face the gallows. He reached down and touched her stomach, feeling the burbling twins beneath his fingers, and a single tear slid down his cheek.

“We don’t have any choice,” he said. “We’re going to have to take the river.”

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Arbutus trees always looked to him like naked women.

Contorted into sexual poses as they sensuously peeled their skin. They were the arboreal version of strippers, whorish and proud in their constant state of undress, their taut limbs tangled in their flaking bark. And in the unnatural glow of circling police lights they looked mysterious and secretive, like they were nervously backing into the black shadows.

A half-dressed posse, eyes wide open.

Deacon lit his third joint of the evening, letting the swirling tendrils of smoke ascend into the sky, while pondering the cluster of Arbutus trees that lined the swooping driveway down to the dead guy’s mansion. It was like having a herd of paparazzi right there on the slope leading to the front door, whispering to each other as the police officers marched back and forth from their squad cars.

The coroner was here too, and Deacon had watched the orderlies wheel the gurney in, but they hadn’t reappeared yet. That would be his first look at the victim, if in fact he was a victim. There was a good chance this dude was responsible for the angry scorch marks coming from the third-storey window, if not the gunshot wound that had brought his manic episode to a screaming halt.

Only the trees knew the truth.

This was all a part of Deacon’s standard crime scene evaluation — he liked to walk the surrounding grounds, puffing on a joint, while allowing the energy of the place to wash over him like the tide. He could tell when an environment was toxic, when the air itself smelled of jealousy or fear. The cops were hostile and uncooperative, sometimes blocking him from completing his work. They had no time for spirits or energies or whatever he was looking for, and weren’t interested in having some stoner computer expert bigfooting their investigation.

The Maple Bay Police Department was particularly problematic, because there were only three officers on their payroll, and all of them had encountered Deacon at least once. The fact that he’d solved a murder that had confounded them a year before, earning himself a reluctant spot on the front page of the Cowichan Valley Citizen, only made their animosity stronger. They could have tolerated an incompetent private eye, but a successful one was too much for them to take.

“I thought I smelled something,” said a voice from the dark.

“Ghost Train Haze, full-gram sativa pre-roll. They had a special,” Deacon replied, without bothering to turn.

“Always so creative with their names.”

“Giving something a name is a creative act, no matter what you call it. You could call it dog shit, if you wanted to. Equally creative.”

“I knew you’d say something like that.”

The face that emerged from the shadows was wreathed in hoodie, pulled low over a lush set of fake eyelashes. Steph was in her early forties, with two teenage daughters from two different dudes, and had spent the better part of last year being Deacon’s side-chick.

She was his most reliable source for information about the seedier side of things in the Cowichan Valley, always keeping track of who was ripping off who, who was selling dangerous shit, and who was about to go berserk — lately these recurring mental health crises were dominating the Maple Bay Police Department schedule, keeping the officers haggard and buried with paperwork, unable to engage with anything else.

That’s where Deacon factored in.

“What’s the first read here?”

Steph pulled back her hood and took a spot beside him at the side of the driveway. She was tiny, with golden filipino skin and a body sculpted by CrossFit and veganism. She was a pot-smoking, work-from-home life coach with a healthy client list, so there was no financial reason for her to dabble in the nether world.

No, her role in the criminal ecosystem was completely voyeuristic, like she got a jolt from the True Crime sexiness of it all.

Somehow, though, he sensed that Steph had her own particular brand of justice in mind too. What was Steph seeking, when she called him? He didn’t know the answer.

“Dude’s name?”

She sighed heavily. “Brandon Taylor Wilding.”

“You know this guy?”

“My second baby daddy, this is his cousin. They weren’t close.”

“You met him?”

“Maybe at a family barbecue, something like that. I don’t remember.”

“So who lives here, then?”

“Both his parents, plus his younger sister.”

“Your aunt and uncle, then?”

“Dean and Debra, and Dayna’s their kid. She’s maybe 20.”

“How old was Brandon?”

She frowned for a moment, gazing down at the house. The spinning police lights illuminated her face and then plunged it back into darkness, rhythmically. If he had a camera, Deacon could’ve caught the emotional torment on her face.

“He was 40,” she said, finally. “Just turned.”

“And what aren’t you telling me?”

“Telling you?”

“You barely know this cousin, yet you’re here within an hour or two of his death. You tell me they mean nothing to you but you’re staring down at that house like you’re enraptured by it, like it’s calling out to you. There’s something going on here that you’re skipping.”

She laughed to herself. “Why even bother involving you if I can’t tell you the truth?”

“You said it.”

Deacon hadn’t set out to become a private investigator. He’d started his career as a journalist, working for a handful of newspapers throughout B.C., after finishing a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and failing to write the Next Great Canadian Novel. He was bearded, curly-haired and endlessly curious, making a name for himself as a political iconoclast with a dopey energy.

His career had taken a violent left turn after an editorial he wrote that was deemed politically problematic, something about the education system, and he was fired in the ensuing backlash and ultimately black-listed in the industry. Since crash-landing in Maple Bay eight years ago, he found that people kept approaching him to solve their problems. Sometimes it was as simple as tracking someone down, other times people actually wanted him to solve crimes that were being ignored by the authorities.

The case that had put Deacon in the national headlines centred around a five-year-old boy named Arthur Amuru who was kidnapped from a playground just a few streets away from his house — that made it personal.

Through his back-channels Deacon had been able to identify a suspect, information he handed over to the authorities. When they searched this suspect’s lodgings on Salt Spring Island they found a hastily dug grave with Arthur’s bones inside. It was the sort of victory that leaves you hollow, to have to watch the perpetrator receive life while the victim receives nothing but death.

It was during this investigation that Deacon experienced his first homicidal urges, where he felt like he was truly capable of taking someone else’s life. He fantasized about it sometimes, even now that the murderer was safely locked away.

“Do you want a hit?” he asked, holding out the pre-roll. “I’m good on this.”

“No, thanks.”

He took one more toke, then dropped the roach. From where they were standing, the briny seabreeze off the Strait of Georgia was nearly overwhelming. The property was near the end of a weaving coastal road that ended with the raw wilderness and immensity of Maple Mountain. It would be hard for a non-local to find, this place, and harder to park — the street was barely wide enough for one car, and there were no shoulders anywhere. Deacon could see Steph’s Jeep parked through the woods, a hundred metres or two from the entrance to this place.

“So what’s the deal with you and Brandon?” he asked.

“I can’t really get into it without describing the family dynamics. It’s a whole thing.”

“There’s no Coles Notes version?”

“The Coles Notes version is his sister died, his other sister. This was five years ago. And ever since then, he’s been a bit volatile. But I didn’t think he was insane. Like I didn’t think this would happen.”

“How did the other sister die?”

“Her name was Deanna. She was an alcoholic.”

“And the backstory there?”

“Brandon thinks she was sexually abused, when she was younger.”

“How much younger?”

“Like underage younger.”

Deacon took a moment with that. There was a certain amount of righteous fury that was beneficial, necessary even, in situations like these but there had to be a face to it. If you were enraged by the simple thought of a crime, say a girl being interfered with, then it has more to do with you showing off your morality than actually helping someone.

"Yeah," Deacon said. "That'll be the foundation of all this. We're going to have to start there."

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Sgt. Lise Vineyard pushed open the interview room door with her hip, giving her entrance a resounding bang as her sidearm connected with the cold steel.

In each hand she had fistfuls of food — saltines, cheese sandwiches, some yogurts and a Coke, and before sitting down she unceremoniously dumped it all in front of her subject.

“They told me you were food-motivated. Brought you what I could,” she said. “Those cheese sandwiches are a bit old, but they should still be good.”

Bill Arsenault didn’t hesitate, tearing into a sandwich like they’d been starving him these past few hours. He had soft brown hair that had been slicked back at one point, but now floated around his face like giant feathers.

“Thank you,” he said, munching away desperately. “Those other officers didn’t bring me shit.”

There was something soft to him — she didn’t want to use the word innocent — and watching him eat made her feel like she was looking at a much younger boy.

“I’m Sgt. Vineyard,” she said, pulling out a metal chair with a squeal. “And I’m here to talk to you about something very specific, okay? I’m here to talk to you about your social media.”

He snorted. “My social media? Why?”

She leaned forward. “Because we think it’s interesting, and we think there’s more going on here than people understand. A code language, maybe.”

“You’re saying I speak in code?”

“Do you think you speak in code?”

“Technically I’m not speaking at all. Just typing. That’s why it’s bullshit, bringing me in for ‘uttering’ threats. I didn’t utter shit.”

Vineyard pulled out a small manila folder, and began taking out print-outs. They were from Instagram and TikTok and X, but mostly they were from Facebook. Most featured recognizable memes of some sort, paired with a custom caption.

She was looking at faces of gangsters, bright illustrations from children’s cartoons, and a cluster of underwater images of octopuses. She arranged them in an array in front of Bill, so he had a horseshoe of his work staring back at him.

“I have a feeling you’re wasting your time,” he said. “I hate to do that to you.”

“You can let me be the judge of that. I get paid either way. I just want you to help me understand all this.”

“Understand what?”

She held up one particular image. It showed Tony Soprano in a robe, holding up a carton of orange juice. She happened to be familiar with this scene from the show, when the mafioso berates his wife for buying the kind “with pulp” instead of “with some pulp”. In the picture he was pointing angrily at the carton, his lips curled up mid-speech.

“I’m going to read you the caption, okay?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“You posted this picture one week ago. You wrote ‘orange juice is my new addiction’ and then ‘flame thrower time, Mikey.’ What can you tell me about that?”

He shrugged. “I like orange juice.”

“But is it your addiction? That’s the part I don’t understand. Are you speaking in code here, Bill? What does orange juice represent for you?”

He was on his second cheese sandwich by this point, and Vineyard saw him consider his next move. Did he want to indulge this line of questioning?

There was a half-smile on his face, like some part of him wanted to let her in.

“You’ve seen The Godfather?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Okay, well when Vito Corleone gets whacked there’s oranges rolling in the street. It was the beginning of this whole trope, where there’s oranges there any time somebody gets hit. At the end of the first season of The Sopranos he’s holding orange juice during a hit, and the bottle even takes a bullet in slow-motion. And they keep coming back to it, establishing that when Tony drinks orange juice it's foreshadowing that he’s gonna get killed,” he said.

“So does this mean you’re addicted to killing people?”

He laughed. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“How?”

Again, he hesitated, and again he decided to take it further. “It’s a colour thing, all of this. It’s not just about the fruit. It’s about the colour.”

“Orange?”

He leaned forward excitedly, like he was letting her in on a huge secret. “Orange is the colour of safety, right? Pylons and safety vests, whole construction sites, it’s just a sea of orange. So you can run to orange for safety, or you can run away from it because it signals danger,” he said.

“Prison uniforms are orange, and orange is the new black. That’s the saying. Which means orange can represent mourning, and evil. There’s cheese, and orange crush, and the orange wave of the NDP party. Then there’s Michelangelo the ninja turtle, he’s the orange one — and he’s the last turtle standing, so they call him The Last Ronin.”

“And is that Mikey? The Mikey from your caption?”

He took a deep breath, and took some time to chew.

“There’s Mikes everywhere. You got the fixer from Breaking Bad, Mike Ehrmantraut, that bald bad-ass. Mike is the name of The Mayor of Kingstown too. Then there’s James Gandolfini, his kid is named Michael, plus of course the guy who played Christopher was Michael Imperioli,” he said.

“Obviously everyone knows Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson, and they might be tempted to think they’re the real Mike. Or maybe they’re thinking of the archangel. But to me the real Mike is Michael Ingham, the Bishop of New Westminster — this was the guy overseeing the child abuse scandal in the Anglican Church. This dude confirmed me when I was fifteen years old.”

“Confirmed you?”

“It’s like baptism, but you get a say in what’s happening. I was baptized as a baby. Were you baptized?”

“I can’t say I was.”

“It’s some real gangster shit. Getting people indoctrinated before they have the capacity to say no.”

Vineyard considered this.

“So you say ‘orange juice is my addiction’ and then ‘flame thrower time, Mikey.’ Are you saying that you’re addressing Michael Ingham?”

He grimaced. “Maybe. I wrote that when I was manic. Everything has like five different meanings.”

“Like the flame thrower?”

He laughed. “That’s from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Brad and Leo massacre those Manson fucks and save Sharon Tate’s life. But the thing is a prop from a movie, from when he was burning up Nazis. It’s pretty meta shit.”

“And do you like meta shit?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Like the fact you’re eating cheese right now, just when we’re talking about orange.”

“Sure.”

“I happen to know that one of your favourite show is The Wire. More than half of these memes reference it somehow, and in that show there’s even a character named Cheese. A character who is responsible for the death of one of the most prominent criminals in the entire saga, his uncle Prop Joe,” Vineyard said, trying to remember all the details from the briefing room.

“Is that who you think you are. Are you Cheese?”

He smiled, realizing that she was beginning to speak his language. “The cheese stands alone.”

“What’s that from?”

“Omar whistles that when he’s coming after you. The Farmer in the Dell.”

She nodded. “See, now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Where do you think we’re getting?”

“Well it sounds to me like Mikey isn’t a ninja turtle, or a mobster, or anything else. He’s a gay street ripper with a facial scar.”

Bill couldn’t help himself. “Omar’s coming.”

Vineyard stood up and walked across the room. She was getting further than her colleagues and needed a way to keep this rapport going. She tucked her blond hair behind her ear and took a few careful steps before proceeding.

“If I remember correctly, Tony Soprano offers one of his victims a soda before shooting him. Is that right?”

“A Fanta.”

“Ding ding! Another orange drink.”

“That’s what I told you. It’s the colour you have to pay attention to.”

“Orange means safety, but orange also means death. Am I getting that right?”

“He was tricking the dude into feeling safe before unloading in his chest. The dude tried to kill Christopher.”

“Michael Imperioli. Mikey.”

“Right.”

“So did he try to kill Christopher, or did he try to kill Michael? One of them is fiction, the other is an actor. But they have the same face.”

Bill had an expression on his face now like he’d found his kindred spirit. He gaped, blinking in delight and surprise, then let his mouth close again.

Vineyard allowed herself a moment of victory before she spoke again. Now it was time to overturn the tables in the temple. She needed this guy to get religion.

“These last few hours you’ve been sitting here, you’re probably wondering what we’ve got on you. Why are we wasting time playing TV trivia with you? You’ve seen enough cop procedurals to know we can’t hold you long, and we can’t hold you unless we have something important. So you must be wondering: what is it?”

She sat back down. “So I’ll show you the respect of just spitting it out. We have two bodies, Bill. Both of them in New Westminster. Now our intel shows that you haven’t left Vancouver Island in months, but there was enough going on with these social media posts that we think you know more than we do,” she said.

“We’re not asking you to incriminate yourself. Really, we want you to help us.”

“Help you?”

She pointed at the cheese. “Does that represent safety? Or death? Can I call you Mr. Cheese, like some sort of Batman villain?”

“You could call me Billie Jean.”

“And I’m not your lover?”

“Something like that.”

Vineyard reached into a new folder and took out a new stack of pictures, this one from a crime scene. She noted as she laid them out how all of them prominently featured orange traffic pylons, blocking off the blood on the concrete. Two bodies dominated the compositions, both of them clad in orange T-shirts that read Every Child Matters. They had been bludgeoned, so their faces were distorted and crumpled in on themselves.

“Is that orange enough for you?” Vineyard asked, leaning in to get his raw response.

Bill seemed confused. “Who are these people?”

“Killed night before last. Going to a youth rally where Michael Ingham was speaking. And look at what somebody left at the scene,” she said, pointing at the final photo. It was a carton of orange juice, the exact one from the Tony Soprano meme.

“What do you have to say now?” she asked.

He blinked for a moment, then regained his composure. “It looks like they chose some pulp."

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Ancient Egypt comes to the Gem!

This summer Anthony and Cleopatra will be performed by the Shawnigan Players as part of the annual Shakespeare Festival. With Jai Mills playing the titular Roman emperor and Mary Gallagher playing one of the most famous female political leaders of all time, it promises to be riveting theatre.

Directed by Aaron Montan, this tragic epic will depict the blood feud between the protagonists and Octavian, a leader so intent on domination that he uses his own sister as a political tool. The Bard's depiction of Cleopatra has been praised as one of his most complex and fully developed female roles.

You thought you knew the story, but do you really?

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

Dreamers & Schemers is coming this July!

Love this photo shoot we did with stage manager Megan Bourns. There's no shortage of over-sized props and giant vaudevillian personalities in this show.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

What’s the difference between a dream, a wish, and a reverie?

This is the question driving Dreamers & Schemers, an exploration of Vancouver Island’s history from the Seeds and Salt Theatre Company that will introduce audiences to three iconic figures: Major MacFarlane, Minnie Paterson and Painless Parker.

“Though many of these characters lived more than 100 years ago, their stories reverberate to the present day. Each of them embody the frontier spirit in different ways, whether they were paving the way for the Malahat Highway, saving countless lives during a shipwreck or becoming internationally famous as a circus dentist,” said Maureen Alexander of the Mill Bay Malahat Historical Society.

Alexander prepared the script with local thespian Will Johnson, who is also starring in and directing the show. The remainder of the cast is filled out by Chadd Cawson, Jade Edgar and Svea Young, all of whom bring a vaudevillian flair to the production.

The stories follow the belligerent visionary behind the construction of the Malahat Highway, Major MacFarlane, as well as a lighthouse keeper named Minnie Paterson and dentist who was deemed a “menace to his profession” named Painless Parker. Each of them start with a dream, and proceed to inspiring heights.

“After our successful production of Messages in the Dust last year, I was thrilled to be invited back to showcase these three stories. Entertaining, sometimes ridiculous and absolutely inspiring, these characters will invite you to rethink Vancouver Island history and the amazing people who came before us,” said Johnson.

“Our goal is to make you laugh, make you cry, but most importantly, to make you think.”

With a hand-painted set, over-the-top props and musical interludes, Dreamers & Schemers is a one-hour show that is perfect for families. Starting at the Mill Bay Community League Hall on July 5, it will travel all over the Cowichan Valley for 10 performances before concluding at St. John’s Church on July 27.

Tickets will be $15 for students and seniors, and $18 for adults. For more information and to obtain tickets, email dalealexander2@gmail.com.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

By the time Shuswap Joe reached the bridge crossing the base of Adams Lake, flames were dancing atop the trees on all sides.

He had carried Lady Celista two hours through the underbrush as she screamed and writhed in his arms — several times he thought the babies would emerge before he reached the church, plopping down to the forest floor. For the first time in years he found himself compelled to pray, though he wasn’t sure what deity would respond to his call.

He ignored the exhausted trembling of his legs as he pounded across the planks, passing over the rushing river current beneath his boots.

“We have to be married,” Celista whispered, delirious. “Before the babies come.”

“I’m going to get you there. Don’t worry.”

“Are we close?”

“I can see the steeple, just ahead of us.”

“Good, good.”

When they reached the clearing in front of the church, a black-clad priest was cinching down a wagon-load of holy items. There were golden chalices and ornate candlesticks, mounds of emerald green linens, and a haphazard pile of Bibles and other holy books. He stood atop the whole mess, wiping his brow with panic and stealing glances at the advancing forest fire.

Sitting on the end were two very nervous-looking nuns, their eyes closed as they thumbed through their rosaries.

“Father,” Joe said, laying Celista down in a patch of grass. “Father, we need you.”

“Need me? For what?”

“My woman, Father. She’s about to give birth.”

An insane glint came into the priest’s eyes, full of fear, and he let the ropes in his hands go slack. “Are you mad?”

“She wants to get married before the baby comes. Babies, I mean. She told me to find a priest.”

He laughed. “Well, you’ve found a priest. But if we dawdle much longer here, I’m afraid you’ll have nothing but a charred corpse. We need to escape. You’re welcome to escape with us, but this is hardly an appropriate situation for a wedding.”

“We don’t need a big ceremony. We just need you to say the words.”

“The words?”

“Whatever words. A blessing. Whatever you can offer.”

The priest finished tying up the ropes, then wiped his hands on his black robes. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face smeared with soot.

“Where are you going?” Joe asked.

“We’ll take the road to Scotch Creek,” he replied, jumping down to face him. The pair of horses strapped to the wagon were beginning to kick and neigh nervously. “Across the bridge there.”

“You’ll never make it with all this cargo.”

“It sounds like you lack faith. My God will see us clear.”

“Please, sir. It will only take a few moments. Look at her.”

The priest looked towards Celista, noticing her for the first time. She was laying on her back, puffing her cheeks and breathing rhythmically.

“The Lord’s timing never fails to amaze me,” the priest said.

“So you’ll marry us?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “How can I deny you? Load her in the back of the wagon. The nuns will see to her needs, and you’ll help me navigate.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank the God who created all of this. I’m nothing but a servant.”

Shuswap Joe ran back to Celista and scooped her into his arms. He brought her to the wagon and placed her between the nuns, who were chattering in a language he didn’t understand. They wrapped her in a thick blanket and motioned for Joe to take his place up with the horses. He laid his hand gently on her forehead and gave her one last reassuring glance.

Embers floated lazily between them, glowing.

“He’s going to marry us, beauty. You only have to hold on a little longer.”

Celista’s eyelids were beginning to droop, and her head lolled backwards. Joe clenched a fistful of her black hair in his palm. He had never loved anyone like this before, had never had something so precious to lose. Was there some sort of design to this series of events? Some reason they were being tested like this? All he knew was that he was eager to say the words “I do”, no matter what the circumstance.

“Don’t sleep too long,” he said. “You’re going to miss our wedding day.”

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

How cool is this?

For a few years now I've been working on my sequel to The Ballad of Shuswap Joe, which is about his love interest Lady Celista Spencer.

Now that it's nearing completion, I've teamed up with illustrator Jade Edgar to create a cover. Physically this character is based on my wife Kristina — particularly her hair — and I wanted to make sure it had an aviation theme, because the opening scene involves her flying an aeroplane across the Atlantic in the 1930s.

This book will be called The Long, Lonely Flight of Lady Celista.

This week Jade shared some of her initial sketches, and I couldn't be happier with how things are coming along.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

This is my Braveheart moment.

For the next instalment of the Mill Bay - Malahat Historical Society's series of traveling shows about Vancouver Island's past, I'm pulling a Mel Gibson — writing, directing and starring in the show.

I'm really proud of the script I wrote alongside Maureen Alexander, who did all the initial research into our trio of colourful characters. Rehearsals are in full swing and it's been a pleasure to collaborate with three outrageously talented local actors: Chadd Cawson, Jade Edgar and Svea Young.

I'll be playing nearly a dozen different characters across three stories, but my current favourite is Frank Verdier, an axe-wielding lumber baron who owned most of the Saanich Peninsula a hundred years ago.

It's going to be epic! And I don't even need to wear a kilt.

See you in July. 

[howyoutalktostrangers]

Blood in the Sky

Lady Celista burst naked through the undulating surface of the Adams River, gasping and pregnant, just as the horizon began to glow crimson through the mountaintop trees.

It was just after dinner time in late March and she’d come down to find the river eels in the shade of a twisted, ancient tree on the verge of death. Its branches drooped down around her like sun-bleached bones and disappeared beneath the surface, creating a twisted grey canopy. Its roots slithered in and out of the water like the serpentine creatures that encircled her, lifting their heads to offer their electric song to the sky. 

Bracing herself against the lazy current, Celista’s chest constricted with dread. She was due any day now, and she was fairly certain that she was carrying more than one life — a suspicion she hadn’t yet shared with Shuswap Joe. In the river eel pool she stroked her tummy in soothing circles, singing songs from her childhood low under her breath, feeling the hum vibrate through her body. Her children leaped and jolted inside her with recognition, dancing in the womb. And all the while the eels swooped around her, filling the roiling water with magic energy.

“I thought I would find you here,” said Joe, appearing from the forest. He was already pulling his threadbare flannel over his head.

“The eels are busy today.”

He smirked, wading in. “Aren’t they busy most days?”

“It’s like they know the baby’s coming.”

Shuswap Joe swept through the water and embraced her from behind, cupping her navel in his palms. Ever since her belly began to round he had treated her with subservient wonder. The cold current swept around their hips as they closed their eyes, imagining the life that was coming. 

She had spent so many years running from her family, now she would have one of her own. 

“Do you see that glow?” she asked, after a long moment of burbling silence.

“What glow?”

“Up there, on the ridge. It looks like fire.”

Joe turned his head to follow where she was pointing. “Fire? No, that’s just the sunset.”

“Isn’t it early for the sunset?”

His hands went slack then dropped away from her belly, and he took a few steps away to get a better look. Together they stared at the throbbing strip of colour, which was beginning to cast shimmering oranges and yellows into the clouds. 

“I don’t see any smoke,” Joe said, his voice cracking with concern. “Do you see smoke?”

It was right then that Celista’s first labour contraction hit, making her stagger and nearly fall into the water. She gave out a high-pitched yelp of pain as she struggled to regain her balance, the slimy river rocks shifting under her feet, while all around her the eels began to leap majestically into the air. Joe smacked one out of midair as he rushed to her side, taking hold of her elbow.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “My love?”

“I think it’s happening, Joe.”

He blinked with surprise and fear. “The baby? The baby’s here?”

She winced in pain. “Babies, plural.”

“Plural?”

“We’re having two babies. And we’re having them today.”

Joe gazed at her slack-jawed, processing this new information. He grabbed her by the shoulders and searched her expression for meaning. Then he slumped backwards with a giddy grin, shaking his head. Celista knew that he was terrified of being a parent, mostly because he’d never had any, and that this would be a lot for him to process.

For a moment it seemed like he might turn and sprint out of her life forever, leaving her to deliver the pair on the shores of the Adams, but instead he gave out an insane yammering howl of delight, clawing at his chest and splashing manic through the shallows. He was like a shaman doing a rain dance, but instead he was conjuring new souls.

“You’re sure?” he asked, finally. “That it’s two?”

“It’s two.”

“How long have you known?”

“They’ve been making their presence known for months, but I couldn’t be sure until a few weeks ago. It’s like they’re wrestling each other in there.”

Tears streamed down Joe’s face. “I love you, Celista.”

They kissed. “I love you too, mountain man.”

“So what do we do next?”

“Well,” she said. “Do you know any priests?”