Doose the Ghost

This is the next chapter in my unfolding epic, The ShambElla Saga:

The previous chapter:

***** * *****

-A Short Digression from The Narrator-

Inept?! This coming from a guy who's nothing more than a psychic sock puppet for a lab monkey!

Putting aside the supposed author's unwanted—and unwarranted!—opinion…

I said I’d stay behind the fourth wall from here on out, but I keep finding that in telling your stories, unexpected events and characters turn up! This particular fellow, Doose, appeared much as he describes himself in his first-person vignette below. How he ultimately figures into The ShambElla Saga I cannot say, but I can assure you that he does, or else I wouldn’t include him!

We’ll get back to Sam and Ella on their way to Highway 65 in the next chapter, but as you might already have guessed from meeting the goons, and Ella’s strange nightmares about the Beast, the post-apocalyptic landscape is full of surprises, and somewhere among them, lurking in the shadows, is Doose the Ghost.

Doose the Ghost

I attended many open mic nights over the years. I haunt them like a trick of the light flits in and out of the shadows. They call me Doose the Ghost. I show up unannounced, sing some sad songs, and leave without ceremony, but I have many fascinating conversations with other artists in my wandering, in between performances, discussing their work or mine.

One fella performed a rich backlog of comedy songs he wrote over many years. Each song was a story with a twist, a punchline that hit gold with the audience every time. At the end of his set, he played a sad song.

“This last one isn’t comedy,” he said, “but it’s also an original.”

The sad song was beautiful. It touched me to the core.

I asked the guy after he was done why he didn’t do more like that.

“For me,” he said, “the comedy stuff stops being funny right away. I’m always the first person to hear the joke, and the first person to stop laughing. It’s for the audience. I don’t mind playing it, but it does nothing for me. The sad stuff makes me feel the same as the moment I wrote it. It’s bittersweet, but it makes me happy to recall that I feel, that I care on such a deep level, even though I was only able to learn that I care through… well, through hurting. Isn’t that funny? That the funny stuff should make me sad, and the sad stuff make me happy?”

I told him I perfectly well understood. I don’t write a lot of comedy, but when I do, it wears on me quick, but my sad songs are, perhaps on account of their sadness, endless givers.

We express truth in both our comedy and our tragedy, but in our comedy we seek to look away, to literally laugh it off, whereas in our tragedy we probe deeper, and, if we are of strong stock, we penetrate all the way to the core and discover treasures.

Some of those treasures are scolding hot, some blistering cold. Those of us who temper ourselves to endure the depths of the abyss must veil our treasures in allegory and sometimes sweeten them going down—with a jest, a spoonful of sugar to hide the bitterness of the real stuff, the medicine that works, that changes not only ourselves, but the world.

What the hell does a vagabond, an aimless drifter, a mindless, pleasure-seeking, treasure-hunting scoundrel like me know about changing the world?

That’s a story for another time…

***** * *****

The Next Chapter: