SHEEP AND WOLVES

                                               Sheep and Woves Summary

Told in a phsycodelic style of unreality Sheep and Wolves follows an old man named Charly and the seductress named Moana who rests on his shoulder through the storm. Long without a woman Charly eagerly takes in her womanhood, breaths her hair and engages her in the self hypnotic practice she taught him. She discovers his pride and joy his Bowie knife and asks him to tell her a story about it. He recalls a tale from his childhood where he stalked and shot a deer with a bow and arrow. Watching the deer die Charly is suddenly overwhelved by guilt. Charly's father wants to teach him a lesson about being half a killer and half a dreamer and wants to make the child cut the deers neck to put it out of it's misery. But the boy offers his life for the deer, and then the deer miraculously rises to it's feet and offers it's life for the boy. Sheep and Wolves explores the idea of victims and villains. Those who seem to be helpless victims in the story all suprise Charly as fully capable actors in the arrangement. 

Sheep and Wolves

  By Alexei Melnick

Blue lightening webbed out across the sky. Huge sheets of rain were heaved off the bus's windshield as at the apex of the mountain the torso of the bus begain to bend and creek. In the moments before the crash, that might have already happened, it's not bad manners to look across the bus at the other riders and see that you too will also die but are no so extraordinarily unalive that you must hold on to that one thing you must not forget.

Phantom specter tingles as for a lost limb permeated down Charley's extremities as wondered which limb had been taken from him, or perhaps shed like a vestigeal tale, or a southerners accent. But what limb was lost?

  "Scuse me," said a middle aged woman, busty. "My man never came back from the war and your face don't look so bad to me. Do you mind if I put my head on your shoulder? I'm scared of this driver."

Suit yourself, Charly implied making room for her buttocks.

"Moana," she said. "Not Moana Lisa either."

Suit yourself, Charly implied by raising his eyebrows and nodding.

Her hair upon a lonely man's shoulder smelled saintly and like superlative cleaness, but in reality it was just the smell of a women. The fan blew streaming cool air down his shirt with the tuft of white chest hair that protruded from his collard shirt ruffling in the air.

"I do this thing to pass the time," she said. "Just when it feels like your about to pass out into sleep bite your tounge. You'll feel all the spiders of your undermind begin to crawl out."

Charly, long a loner, experimented and indeed felt spiders. Not long into breathing her breaths did he feel dizzy and like he must know what it felt like to bath naked in a lake of pure moonlight.

"Darlin," she said, grabbing the bowie knife he had holstered in his boot. "Tell me a story about this. Just think it don't say it. Not a true story. Just one that sounds like it has some kind of hunter in the mist meaning but is really just a bunch of wool."

His eyes were already closed. Little smile under his hat.

He was a boy again running threw the mountains with his bow and arrow. When he caught up the deer was lying on it's side, the arrow sticking out of his breast which heaved huge breaths.

"I'm sorry," said the boy.

It's once illusory legs twitched as it tried to stand but could not. The deers legs had gotten it away from trouble it's whole life but not now, now he was caught. The boy watched the deer begin to gradually understand it would never creep up and drink a cold lick of water from a still stream. It would never lock antlers with another male in courtship. The deer looked at him as if he was supposed to know what came next. He ran back to the cabin to get his canteen but when he returned his father stood above the dying deer smoking his pipe, whittling with the bowie knife.

"Boy I want you to kill that deer since you shot it."

The boy quickly offered his life for the deer.

"Okay, have it your way," said the father.

He put the Bowie knife under the boys chin but just as the blade begain to draw blood the deer threw up, then jumped to it's feet and offered his life for the boy.

When Charly awoke he found his blade and Moana were outside the window. There was a ribbon tied around the knife as she handed it to her man.