Demons of Kennedy Space Center

Red Island

A tale of KSC Demons, artists and rockets

Small note: What if this is FICTION?

That acknowledgment keeps from getting in trouble with both the living and dead.

This is another tale of the Kennedy Space Center's multiverses, both in the distant past and the far future.
Follow ghosts, demons, gods, AIs, tourists, DNA experiments, vamps, and witches as they travel the multiverse only to discover their interconnections as allies and enemies across an endless history or future.

Every story is the true story.

This is a mural in the Space Systems Processing Facility

Red Island

Sufficient imagination to be madness.

Marcus reluctantly pulled out of her

The approaching daylight, the green-haired man with the whirring camera. With a final look at the unconscious woman and a bitter whine of rage and longing, Marcus fled to the safety of the tree-covered shell mound.

Ophelia opened her eyes; she lay on plastic sheeting, wet, red, warm. Red? Carmine? Her mouth hurt and tasted of saltwater and blood, but the other pain? She felt as if she had been violated. Tainted, that was the word. No, violated. Polluted?

An unseen mocking bird chirped its battle song to the approaching sunrise. The unseen surf of Playlinda Beach pounded in a rhythm that matched the pain in her head. The rum? That K2 synthetic cannabis? Where was the fishing guide?

She lay facing the east, red rose, orange pink, and carmine, the color palette of the approaching day. A look of dismay then disgust crossed her face upon seeing she was still in her evening gown, purse, and high heels missing; she lay on the sheeting she had placed around the island. I am the Artist in Residence at Canaveral National Sea Shore. Was my reputation ruined last night?

The Park Service was very unhappy with her art, her personal protest to the space program, to the Cassini spacecraft powered by 72 pounds of plutonium, and worse of all, the rocket's disruption in the heliosphere that would have unknown consequences'

A dozen spoil islands so far had been wrapped in carmine red plastic, the color representing the earth’s plight.

She lay on the red plastic, half submerged-half floating in the warm lagoon water; the launch towers of Kennedy Space Center visible across Mosquito Lagoon if she would only sit up. Her fingers wrinkled from the water that dripped across her face from wet hair plastered to her forehead.

She coughed. “Had someone tried to drown me?” she wondered.

Behind her, the moans.

Photographer Verde shot pictures like an AR-15 and groaned, “Oh Man!”

Click, click.

“You in that dress, on the sheets, that sunrise. It is pure Hitchcock!”

Click.

“I thought I saw someone on top of you; I thought you were dead or were drowning. Lay back down. Fake it! Fake it!” said Verde.

“What happened?” her mouth hurt, her tongue hurt. She had bitten her tongue again. The party at the art museum in New Smyrna? Her art exhibit and the accolades by all the papers in the northeast. Later the dance by moonlight with the fishing guide, live blues, and too much K2.

My dress. Fuck.

“You just recreated Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World; only you are looking to the space center! Andrew Wyeth Modern! Holy Shit, is this good! We are famous!” screeched Verde. “What if we do this again when an Atlas or SpaceX rocket is launching! Holy shit, a Vuclan rocket!

The orange sun peeked slowly over the eastern beach dunes that were the legal nude beach of the space center.

Did someone try to drown me?

“Oh Fuck, lay back down for that shot on the red plastic!” said Verde in near orgasmic-like grunts.

Ophelia lay back down, her face half-submerged in the lagoon water warm as a bath, everything hurt, tainted, the dress ruined. The fishing guide? The Florida sun did not burn away the feeling of pollution that was almost self-hate and passion? Tainted passion. Vague memories of last night? Embarrassed by her behavior, a trick of that synthetic drug, but not the first time, she woke ashamed, and that was just what she could recall. Nowhere to hide from the shame of one’s own behavior.

Click, click, click.

A tear rolled down her cheek, adding salt to the lagoon water and the floating carmine plastic.

Click, click, click.

The photographer, his green hair jutting straight up, stopped suddenly to pull out an e-cigarette loaded with mind-altering synthetic cannabis and puffed vigorously, watching the reflected sun on the drunk woman, visualizing her in the same location with no clothes on. The gods had been good to her in appearance, if not a little stingy, by doling out the static-electricity-zapped circuitry in her head and her predilection to seizures

Some of his most popular work had been when the so-called artist-protester dropped to the ground with her eyes rolled up. The close-ups were stunning, and the shots placed online received accolades and praise from across the planet.

His digital camera counter showed nine-twenty-seven photographs taken this morning. “Risk prevention in a digital age,” he whispered to the sunrise and the wet woman. “Plenty of storage.”

Verde chuckled, “Better than Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World,” and the photographs of the water closing around Ophelia’s face were priceless; after this trip, he could retire and take bird pictures. “Not,” he chuckled again.

Click.

Marcus fled into the shelter of the trees, assailed by rage, anger, longing, even guilt, but more rage than he could recall in years

For weeks he had watched the man and woman who had invaded his island. Marcus did not say a word when they wrapped the shoreline of his island in carmine plastic sheeting

At night, Marcus, curious, stood for hours in the darkness watching the two drink; The woman’s soft voice had a surreal fashion as if he had met her another time. But then her internal conflicts manifested by the yelling, the smoke, and whiskey shots. They would smoke and drink; wild laughter would echo across his island, then the two would argue late into the night, yelling about their documentary, their disagreement in art, environmental terrorism, the space program, or anything about the outside world

Or later, when alone in the heart-breaking night, the woman would weep until the dawn, madness by her side, her tears a drawing out of Marcus feelings of connections, inseparable connections, that he had long ago set aside deeply hidden.

It was not wholly unknown that demons and humans could fall in love-it just never worked out very well for fragile humans.

Marcus wanted to hug the strange woman, Ophelia was her name, yet she was rarely alone.

The man with green hair, she called him Verde, was always taking photos of the woman with red hair when she was unaware, even asleep. Several times unexpected rocket launches would light up the sky over the space center and lagoon islands, exposing Marcus and the green-haired man watching the sleeping woman. Only the fact that she woke open-mouthed, gaping south towards KSC, marveling at the technology to lift satellites into orbit, saved the two watchers from being observed. Both fled in sudden panic.

One night Marcus watched the bioluminescence of the lagoon while reflecting upon his chosen life of isolation and the recent dreams that were his but not his, not disturbing dreams, just odd.

He could hear the sound of a motor boat cutting across the moonlit lagoon, even recognizing the purr of the motor, one of the professional fishing guides who brought visitors to fish the shoals around the now red-edged island.

The shallow water flatsboat slowed, and in the moonlight, the fishing guide lifted the motor and used a long pole to push the boat over the red plastic that encircled Marcus’s island.

A spell of drunken laughter came from the ghostly white boat; the artist Ophelia wasted again. The captain jumped over the side and lowered Ophelia to the plastic.

“Ooh, so strong,” cooed Ophelia. “So tan.”

The two kissed, tentative at first, then with more passion. Ophelia dropped her evening gown hem she had been holding out the lagoon water. The guide jumped back into the boat, and soft music wafted across the island; the two began a long, tortuously slow dance in the shallows, standing on carmine-colored plastic.

Click.

The whirring of a camera came from the shadows. Along with the click-click of pictures, Marcus heard a soft sobbing leaking from the photographer.

At length, the fishing guide stepped back, “I have an early client tomorrow, up too late as it is. See you again? Sure we have not met before?”

“Oh, I would remember meeting you,” said Ophelia.

They came together again for sloppy kisses, and the guide pushed the shallow watercraft into deeper water. The motor fired up and sped away

There was more sobbing in the bushes behind Marcos. Verde was enraged; he wanted to hit something. The woman was destined for him. Had they not met in a vision when he smoked the new K2 variant? Now, her betrayal with a common fisherman was heart-wrenching and maddening.

Ophelia began weeping while standing on the red plastic sheets; she was torn, was her art really art? Was the cause worthy of moving to this remote area of east Florida? There were times when she doubted her sanity and feared losing control of her addictions. Was that why the fishing guide did not stay the night with her? Had the guide seen the scars of her cuts?

Marcus standing in the deeper shadows was intrigued; both the artist and the photographer were sobbing like scorned lovers. Suddenly the woman in the wet evening dress fell over, dropping like a felled tree as if some had just struck her.

Verde stepped from his hiding place, wanting to kick Ophelia for her betrayal. Marcus followed, sticking to the shadows to watch the interplay of the weeping man and overdressed woman laying the plastic.

However, the photographer began to take pictures, gasping for breath as if he had just completed a race.

Marcus crept up behind the two to see that in the approaching dawn, Ophelia was having a seizure, lying rigid on the sheeting with her eyes rolled up in her head.

Click, click.

Verde was taking pictures while Ophelia, with her weight on the plastic, slowly sank; the back of her head to her ears was already underwater. Enraged and fascinated, breathing heavy, the photographer watched the rising water.

Click, click. Verde snapped a burst of photographs as the water approached Ophelia’s mouth and nose. Click, click, click, click.

“I’m an artist, not a lifeguard,” said Verde with a revengeful chuckle.

Marcus kept waiting for the green-haired man to pull the woman out of the lagoon but finally realized Verde had no intention of saving her.

“No, not again,” said Marcus, always the reluctant demon; when he realized he would have to take possession of Ophelia or she would drown. Soon.

Verde looked around, only shadows. Had the insects sounded like something?

Click, click.

Dejected with no other choice, Marcus pushed psychic tentacles into the rigid woman before it was too late. He only needed her to raise her on her elbows. That was all.

A lightning bolt struck his tentative touch. Never in the long history of humankind and demons had there ever been a reason to possess someone whose brain was paralyzed under the effects of a grand mal seizure. Why would such a task ever be required or even contemplated?

Verde moaned in ecstasy as the water closed over Ophelia’s mouth and nose.

Click, click, click

“Not a lifeguard,” he puffed out again.

The woman did not flinch when her face was fully submerged.

“Why do I feel the need to rescue this human?” hissed Marcus, assailed by guilt. Guilt! Guilt? The shame of un-demon-like thoughts flailed him. He was weak! Love?

Rage inflamed him, and he considered tearing the head off of the green-haired man.

Marcus pushed hard against the grand mal storms of stinging electron lightning that held the woman rigid, her jaws locked together.

“I will possess you,” snarled the demon.

Click

Verde peered around the dark island again. Bull alligator or frog croak? Only the grunt had been angry.

Marcus unleashed the power he was reluctant to use; there were always side effects to power use, hunger and need. Raging, he swatted aside the thousand stingray barbs of electron stabs, the thousand jelly-fish stings of her last human defiance.

In a dream, in a blizzard of shocks, he follows the woman’s life force across a planet of lightning, to step out of the electron storm into a fantastical tavern where a biker with a long blond ponytail glared at him. The sign above the biker read, “No demons served.”

Inhale the aroma of whiskey, hemp, fresh bread, and seasoned oak burning in a cast-iron stove.

Carmine-red vampire-like lips, her curved smile when Marcus walked to her table, and when at last she spoke, tentative navigation, “Fred and I are stuck in here while it storms outside,” said Ophelia

Her subtle fragrance of cinnamon pheromones the sanguine invitation to dance by moonlight, to harvest.

Marcus, the minor demon, possessor of Ophelia, studied the biker with renewed interest; there was the aura of the dead about the biker, an aura he was familiar with, his neighbor? The skin of the biker suddenly peeled off to show a tattooed native American. The Barghest of the mound where Marcus had slept for a thousand years. Barghest, or Barrow-Ghost, the shaman Puma had prepared for the afterlife. The Ghost had chosen not to speak to Marcus-his loss.

“What are you doing in here ghost?” snapped Marcus in silent demon-speak.

The response was a venomous rasp, “Same as you demon-spawn. Feeding. She leaks life force. If she is giving it away, I will feed,” said Puma, in a voice of a talking cotton-mouth snake.

“These electron storms are not uncommon, sit stranger, we have plenty of time,” purred Ophelia. Barbaric embroidery, her red hair half-covering her face, unbound and disordered, heart-breaking

Somewhere back on the lagoon island, the water had covered her face. Marcus tried to breathe, to inhale air, a reminder of time.

“We are leaving,” said Marcus and clamped an iron hand around the woman’s wrist and pulled her into the electron storm.

Marcus fought the storm for control, the human was still in the thralls of a seizure, but he had taken the jerky crude motor control.

Verde stepped back as Ophelia began to thrash back and forth; click, he could swear the woman lifted, levitated from the water! Click, click, click, click.

Ophelia’s head came out of the water with a massive gasping intake of air and dropped back onto the carmine plastic sheeting.

Then it was Marcus’s turn to be assailed by the addiction of the world, scents of myrtle, odors of old shellfish and bird droppings, ivy and berries, the sight and pull of the old moon and twinkling stars of distant worlds, the blue-green bioluminescence flashing in the lagoon.

The sense of art and poetry, the only power that weak humans possessed and demons lacked leaked into him. But even more disturbing, this woman in the throws of her seizure, he shared countless stories with her, shared across eons of time and other, other, the other

Love.

In his rapture of eons of love and hate, impossible non-demon tears, Marcus observed the stars; at first, scintillating in the night sky, they were now dim and draped in a veil of ghost mist. The colors to the east, he was watching the dawn, the molten colors that are the dawn and death for minor demons like himself.

The longing and pain. “This is why I do not take possessions!” and with a terrible wrench, pulled out of Ophelia and fled the approaching sun

Click, click, click, Verde snapped pictures of odd shadows that flew faster than a swallow or bat but outlined against the dawn

“Such good drugs,” moaned Verde.

Marcus retreated into the burial mound, past lifeless bones. yet others, some skeletons still retained a spark of life, an echo; a rum-runner spoke at him in Cuban-Spanish. “Who am I?” Another, a French soldier who had escaped the massacre at Matanzas inlet, spoke a dialect of French, “Who am I?

The Timucua shaman named Puma, who had prepared for the afterlife, felt Marcus brush past and could only hiss, “Ware demon-spawn.”

Marcus wormed below the mound to the old lake bed, to the water cemetery where the skeletons still had their brains intact because of the lack of oxygen in the tannic muck. Their memories sealed inside the brains replaying thoughts and actions through a lens of tannic-brown. No memory of the sun, but tales of the glaciers melting and sea levels rising, recalling the grasp of spear or play of children. They did not ask, “Who am I?”

Yet it was Marcus, the lesser demon, confused, who asked, “Who am I,” after his possession of the woman and the forced sharing of the visions of other lives with the red-headed Ophelia and others

Marcus waited out the day in contemplation and rage. He had been a fool hiding from the world. “Loud and fervent cries of war and undoubtedly a welter of other fun things I have missed,” moaned Marcus.

The contact with the woman and sharing of memories, bleeding of memories from other? Through her, he had sampled the lights of New Tokyo and New Salt Lake City, given the taste of love and murder, of blood-drinkers, new drugs, cannibalism; he was a demon after all. Through the woman he saw a Hawk-headed god and a computer turned-god-at war, followed by talking rats? A spear and a cross that cast centuries-old shadows? The memories had contained countless nuclear explosions, whose radioactive infernos had created new demons, immature, unskilled demons who wandered the time-lines sputtering “Who am I?” simpletons that even Marcus the lesser demon could slay with impunity. No greater fun in existence could be had, than hunting dumb demons.

With full night, Marcus nearly leaped from his tomb.

A camp fire, three humans, sharing grog or mead, smoking K2 in a pipe passed around the fire.

The fishing guide sat close to the red-headed Ophelia. The green-haired photographer smiled and joked, hiding his jealousy, his eyes bitter.

Green-hair held the smoke inside his lungs as long as he could, then barked a laugh as the K2 smoke exploded from his lungs in a bluish cloud. He handed the pipe to the fishing guide. She accepted the pipe, clandestinely wiping the spittle from the pipe stem before taking her own deep intake of smoke.

The fishing guide, the blond Eileen, passed the pipe to Ophelia, their shoulders rubbing together, politely resisting outward affection while the hungry-eyed photographer sat across the fire.

Without permission, Marcus lightly touched Ophelia with a psychic tentacle, a simple invisible caress. The woman leaked memories and visions while under the influence of the K2.

The vision of a hunt that had not happened yet or had happened ages in the past? Or? Ophelia stood in the shadows of the Launch Control columns, the darkness hiding her except for the faintest outline as if she single-handedly held up the Grecian column. We stared until I asked, “Boar hunting?”

I tasted the opulence of colors of her blush as she emerged from the darkness with a bright smile and sharp spear.

“Yes,” she said eagerly, “I thought you would never ask again.”

Later, above the night chorus calls of space center frogs and alligators, the roar of tusked boar, hideous screams of pain, of writhing struggling bodies, that was the joy and pleasure of the hunt.

Marcus, his recollections blurred, other hunts, past and present blending together, was awed by the sight of her glittering spear flashing downward, Ophelia, her cheeks, two roses in their fresh bloom, decorated with splattered hog blood, carmine in the bright moon.

Her cinnamon hair was plastered to her forehead from exertion, triumphant wild and sublime magnificence, palm trees and hemp plants swayed to the hot Florida night wind; he might have been in love

And yet.

Sitting around the fire, Ophelia laughed at something the fishing guide said.

“You are so funny,” said Ophelia and gently caressed Eileen’s shoulder, her voice a rich and suggestive melody known planet-wide as ovulation

Both Marcus and the photographer flinched, bereft of her attention.

“Pathetic and beautiful,” said the diaphanous ghost sitting on a roll of carmine-colored plastic the artists had pulled from around the island.

“Why the biker persona last night?” asked Marcus. The ghost had returned to his normal look, an echo of past living-time, feathers and shells dangled in strands of grey hair, and dried turkey feet jutted from his earlobes.

The Indian thought before answering, “The image of the blond man came from your memory,” said Puma.

The demon had to laugh.

“No, I remember all the ugly faces of humans I have had the displeasure to interact with, including ghosts.”

Puma shrugged his shoulders; the stars could be seen through him.

“Yet it was memory pulled from the fear-zone of a Marcus somewhere, from somewhere, somewhere other,” said Puma. “A prison cell roommate so terrifying that even Fred picked up on it?”

“And Fred is what?” demanded Marcus.

The Indian only shrugged, shimming in the night air like a will-o’-the wisp. “I was going to ask you the same demon-spawn. What is an AI?”

Around the campfire, with a heady buzz, Eileen scrolled through her phone.

“I have to check on new customers,” she explained. “You do what you have to do to pay the bills.”

However, she was actually searching for the creepy photographer sitting across the fire, smoking, coughing, and bragging about another exploit. However, the green-creep, his eyes screamed another story: Fury. A jaded Lover?

“Eeeeew,” she almost said aloud, considering Verde and Ophelia might have had a temporary island fling

“Gag me now,” she hissed under her breath.

She found his web page: HPV: Horticulturist and Photography by Verde. Photo Gallery, Documentation and exquisite Gardening.

A smiling picture of the same creep sitting across the fire appeared on the screen. Verde L’écume Virdian Malachite, Owner

Under the photo, the caption, “I can make your secret garden flower.”

Eileen gagged out a cough, causing Ophelia and Verde to laugh.

“Told you it was some good shit,” said Verde smiling, with daggers in his eyes.

“Sorry,” said Eileen, who returned to the webpage. She reviewed his social media activity, nine-hundred thousand and twenty-six likes?

She opened his online gallery to see hundreds of pictures of Ophelia in various throws of epileptic seizures. Even selfies while holding Ophelia by her crimson hair, Verde smiling, the hunter.

Then the other pictures, Ophelia laying on that red plastic sheeting and the lagoon water slowly covering her face, and then close-ups of Ophelia under the water, drowning, her red hair spread out like a medusa or mer-witch.

“I have to pee,” said Eileen, getting stiffly to her feet and walking into the shadows near her boat.

She returned with a taser and shocked Verde on the back of the neck, holding the stunner longer than she actually needed for immobilization.

Ophelia jumped up, “What the hell?”

“Look at the screenshot I saved, some of Verde-green man’s work,” said Eileen.

“That came off of his laptop,” she lied.

Verde moaned, Ophelia gasped, Marcus emitted a moan of demon-pleasure, enjoying the spectacle, and Eileen shocked the photographer again. Once again, applying the shock button longer than needed.

“I do like these two ladies,” said Marcus.

Ophelia was enraged, wanting only revenge, and she kicked the photographer until her foot hurt, a full two kicks.

“Wait, hun, we have to do him justice,” said Eileen.

They rolled Verde in the Carmine plastic sheeting tighter and tighter.

Verde became aware, aware of only red and confinement. He had been wrapped like a mummy in red—suffocation by carmine.

“Noooooo.”

He had hated small spaces his entire life and began screaming, which only used up more of the limited air until gasping into red blackness.

The two women sat on the rolled-up Verde, kissing until the lump under them stopped moving.

To the south, an Atlas rocket lifted from the launch pad, lighting up the night and causing mullet and manatees to panic across the vast lagoon.

“Loud and fervent cries of war and undoubtedly a welter of other fun things I have missed,” moaned Marcus, thrilled to his demon bones.

The two ladies pulled the rolled-up plastic to the burial mound and proceeded to dig a grave. Never noticing the bones of the Cuban rum runner they exposed, the bones speaking faintly, “Who am I?”

The two ladies dropped the roll of plastic with its trash inside and tossed in the offending laptop and camera. They kissed from exertion, Ophelia’s hair plastered to her forehead and Eileen shaking her blonde ponytail in the night air

After filling in the grave, the motor boat roared to life, and the ladies departed Red Island forever.

Ever so slowly, Verde’s wisp forms in between Marcus the demon and Puma the Barghest. The photographer confused, smiled at the two strangers who are obviously stalking the two bitches.

“I’m Verde. Mind if I take your pictures?” My online followers will be ecstatic looking at these two nutcases-an old Indian witch doctor and whatever the hell the tall man is.

“Shoot,” said the demon, who watched with demon-like-curiosity as the Barghest Puma sniffed and slipped then into a Delphi-like vent, aperture, fissure, crack, passageway to the multiverse.

“Eh Fred?” said Puma, his distant fading words, and was gone.

Marcus placed one scaly demon hand into to gap; he could sense the tear in the heliosphere the rocket had caused. He could taste the cinnamon, a palpable sense of other, of other worldliness. The infinity of the timelines opened as a great muddy river that hinted at floods, and whirlpools like the carvings at Newgrange and branches upstream or down, even dead-end sloughs, or clear water side channels like veins and arteries, like the flowing pulsating veins of God

The other.

The aperture was shrinking as the heliosphere attempted to correct the wound in normal-space time, and Marcus the demon wiggled through to….

“The welter of fun things I have missed,” said Marcus.

The demon’s deep laughter echoed from the other as the fissure closed.

The new ghost, Verde, stood on the shore of the island. His island? The lights of Kennedy Space Center to the south and silent stars overhead.

“Is there anyone here? Anyone!” Verde was becoming desperate. Am I alone?

Faintly, in the burial mound, a French soldier who had escaped the Spanish massacre at Matanzas Inlet only to be tortured by a shaman called Puma whispered, “Who am I?”

To all who could hear, a ghost screamed silently into the starry starry night.

Other tails of the Space Center:

Vampires of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy

Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center

Dreams of Kennedy Space Center

Aliens of Kennedy Space Center

Director of Kennedy Space Center

Hitchhikers of Kennedy Space Center

Witches of Kennedy Space Center

Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center

Chimeras of Kennedy Space Center

Gods of Kennedy Space Center and the Nile

Dinosaurs of Kennedy Space Center

Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center

Remembering Kennedy Space Center

Shadows of Kennedy Space Center

Virus of Kennedy Space Center

Starman of Kennedy Space Center

Gate Jumpers of Kennedy Space Center

Allies of Kennedy Space Center (Pt 2 of Gate Jumpers)

Savants of Kennedy Space Center

Gene Splicers of Kennedy Space Center

State Security of Kennedy Space Center

Rescuers of Kennedy Space Center

Ferals of Kennedy Space Center

Return HOME from Demons of Kennedy Space Center page

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