PROVENDER: A Parka Worn Backwards

thefirsttinghewasawareofwashisownhandexploringthecontoursofthebonesinsidethemaninfrontofhimandallhecouldfeelwasajoythathnowhewasaliveandadesiretoknowthefaceofhisfatherbutthefacewasobscuredandhisfathercasthimawayintothedarkandemptyspaceabove

PROVENDER: From These Dreams You Don't Wake Up

Marc rolled his mousewheel and chewed through the backscroll since he last visited. It had been hell finding the page. There was a chance every time that the server had been nuked and his account with it. 

Not much discussion. The usual debate about whether it was the real thing. It was an interesting discussion but it wasn't the point. The current streak was still twelve nights in a row, but the guy had stopped posting.

Enough dicking around. Pinned messages.

He fullscreened the webm and it played automatically.

PROVENDER: False Retreat

Dune predicted that any genuine discovery of the New Age would be co opted by The Man. Psychedelic drugs, tantric sex, yoga, the human potential movement, it would all serve the interests of billion dollar corporations and government conspiracies. 

 

Today instead of maintaining adequate staffing levels, companies use "mindfulness" to fight burnout. Programmers microdose LSD to make themselves more productive. And Movement Medicine instructor Edwina "Ed" Christ holds ecstatic dance retreats to help employees of billion dollar firms open their third eye.

PROVENDER: Dharmapala

 
PhD student Lara “Lagartija” Schliemann came to Buckshaw Island with her UNLP biology class to catalog the island’s unique plants and animals. Buckshaw is sometimes called Ultima Thule for its position one island south of Thule, in the Sandwich archipelago between Argentina and Antarctica. The last update from expedition mentioned a “crashed submarine” found in a sea cave. Ominous glowing slime smeared in frozen streaks around the site prompted the professor to evacuate the cavern. He had a devil of a time stopping the rambunctious doctoral students from sneaking back to take pictures and snatch “artifacts”.

Months later, search and rescue ships found their shelters and equipment intact but abandoned. There was no sign of the researchers or the mysterious cave they found. The search was called off due to encroaching ice which would have trapped Naval Prefecture rescue team on the island. The Argentine government blamed the UK for the disappearance.

The second group to disappear was a shipload of salvagers from Ushuaia. They never told anyone where they were going, afraid someone would loot the site before them.

 

PROVENDER: Three Rites of Death

Mowry

 

After the sun fell down the view was nonexistent. Black mountains, black sky, black clouds, black stars. I was exhausted after the plane and the shuttle and the endless forest service roads giving way to private gravel driveways. All I wanted to do was sleep. But the festivities had already begun and I didn't want anyone narcing to my boss that I had skipped out on the first training. Better to merge with the crowd and slip away once I'd been counted present. 

 

The venue was a handsome alpine lodge, mutilated with modern decor that gave it the feel of a hotel conference room. The facilitators wore slippery yellow robes like raincoats. They smiled like you do when someone takes too long in front of you in line. One shoved a table and folded the area rug back in place with a foot. It had been misaligned. The other listened at the door. It was performative because we could all hear it.

 

bam bam bam bambambam bam bam bambambam bam bam

 

I couldn't tell if the heavy wooden element at chest level was a handle or a bar to hold the door shut from the outside. He pulled on it and it opened without a sound.

 

It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. Bodies packed so tight they couldn't possibly move but moving nonetheless. Thrashing and stomping. Carried forward and being carried in turn. A swirling dark pattern to fill the windowless and almost unlit space. The whirling ant mill implied an eye of the storm at the center but promised annihilation to anyone who tried to swim through the mass and reach it.

  

There was a little light from somewhere. There must have been or I couldn't see it. There was enough that I recognized someone in the crowd. I remembered her from the ride up, the only person in the van who listened attentively to the concierge's excited lecture. Something about a dolmen beneath the lodge, preserved in its original condition in a high ceilinged chamber beneath the original structure and still enclosed today a century later. She had gone up ahead of me and now she flashed before my gaze. Bruised face slick with drool, bedroom eyes half lidded. She snapped away into the human current and I was back on my uncle's farm. Watching him slam the emergency stop a moment after the farmhand disappeared beneath the grain. Like it could reverse the arc. Bear the man up out of the silo. Un-collapse his lungs.

I turned to yell at the raincoats. To do something. Pull the fire alarm. Call a time out. Like hell was I going in there.

I didn’t see who shoved me.