She’d always fancied herself a chess player, more than a poker progeny. Still she was a quick study. As she watched from above she studied the strategies below, around the table. She always made sure to think less of herself than more of herself. As a rule in life, she chose humility over humiliation. This played in her favor when attempts at wrangling her into playing games were made. She didn’t like games so much, not the grown up kind of games at least, those games disguising mass global manipulation. She especially didn’t like the divisive ways of poker. It bothered her that the poker players figured her an easy target. It bothered her that they considered her so pliable, operating without doubt of her subservience to them. They presumed a win once luring her into the game. She had watched them from above the table, instead of engaging around the table. She played chess from above as they played poker. She was a natural at chess. Still if she weren’t such a quick card study of the poker game below, she would be dead.

Her observatory ways led her to effectively recognize predators in her periphery. She kept a list. It wasn’t a long list, just specific. Her list had grown over the years, yet precisely in her effective balance of vengeance. It began before she was birthed, therefore was quite refined from the time she could understand its context. Everyone has a list, but hers was connected to past, present, and future times specific to her life. Her list was specific, as was she as she studied them from her vantage point above the table. They unknowingly helped her refine her list, with each card played. Their eyes and asses shifted in their chairs. They gave away their hands well before played. From above, their moves became sequentially more predictable. She was curious if they would realize she knew each move before they did, as they played a planned their towering game of poker. Her advantage was their arrogance. Her interest, was their ignorance. She was patient.

The sky above was dark, where she chose to reside. Above the table, the spooky sky was so dark she had to carry a flashlight at all times lighting her way, lighting two steps at a time. The darkness made her feel safe. In the darkness, she could hide at whim and with will, turning her light on and off as she pleased. Lights off she could follow predators unnoticed. She learned early on, this was the magic of being the prey. The prey has a soul, lifting high to her aerial view with not any effort really. The artificial predator has no soul. His machinery in position upon crouching low, this predator exists with his tendon completely exposed. This over exuberant confidence of this predator is also its Achilles heel. Cord behind the ankle tightly in tact is so easily accessed as the anxious hunter tilts its body forward. The stance of the prey is different from this predator though. It’s intelligent; its fluid perspective capable of multiple views simultaneously. It stands vertically, a poise facilitating three hundred and sixty degree views. Its sensibility of situationism crosses boundaries, sensing invisible peripheries, at all times. In the darkness the sophisticated prey can flux between gaze and lure. Its instincts evolved, it shifts to becoming a natural hunter, as its predator become prey. One simple chess move of the enlightened prey, in dark or light sky, makes her a hunter. The spooky sky just makes this dance of prey, even easier.

‘A’ Ten Train… One flash light splits in two as it shines on the hunter in the darkness. A flash light is best turned off, until the moment the hunter is discovered. Otherwise the light of the enlightened prey amplifies, marking a permanent spot, undermining its ability to shift without being seen. With flash light turned off, the prey can navigate unnoticed. Soul elevating, declining, lingering anywhere has to be black as night to blend unseen to those hunting. So it survives, mimicking the predator stalking with heel chord exposed. Then in a flash, the prey cuts the chord of hunter as its light flash splices across the predator turned prey’s body. Roles reverse, in the spooky sky. The enlightened prey lands behind the hunter, strikes the predator’s chord, turning hunter into the hunted. In a flash, the heel of Achilles could be made two from one, when dancing with the enlightened prey. The prey’s light becomes two as the inverse becomes true. The tease of the prey is key. The hunter becomes over excited you see. In its enthusiasm, it exposes itself. In a flash of light, roles reverse only because of the insatiable character of the unconscious hunter, in the casting of predator and prey.

She went north. Cast as prey in the city, she was tired of having to feather float high above just to survive. She wanted to touch the ground, dance in the dirt without having to be a predator too. So she boarded the soul train to find some peace in sublime nature. Predators in nature were safe, unlike the artificial predators in the city. She understood them. She didn’t fear the ways of even the most carnivorous in the wild. She perceived them as protectors, something she didn’t have in the city. So she rode the train listening to her music while witnessing nature’s scenery through her staccato window in train car five.

There were eight cars composing the train. As it vibrated across the tracks, passengers slipped slowly into time travel. Each train car carried a cast of characters. As each cast of characters traveled, the linear train reshuffled into a non-linear narrative. As it came to a halt on the bridge, iron arches lifted it high above the river. The passengers grounded as stillness elevated across the tracks. Souls moved out of embodiment, as the vibration stopped and meditative vibe within the passengers’ bodies came to a halt too. Train cars and bodies no longer vibrating, became contained. Still on the brick, the cast had no where to go, linearly aligned high above the river. Souls not quite ready to stay still as were trains cars, they started stitching an interactive narrative through the vestibules. She watched without time, as her soul choice was to sustain an aerial view lingering above in witness.

Her focus was on train car seven, counting from back caboose to front. In car seven, the religious leaders were playing high stakes poker. As they laid each card down on the table the diplomats peaked over their shoulder padded shoulders to see what the leaders were laughing about. The priest laid the queen face down as he spilled a glass of red wine atop her. The rabbi laughed, ‘That’ll teach her’. They continued drinking from goblets, around the square table. The evangelical preacher threw down his hand yelling ’Fuck destiny!’. He’d had a bit too much to drink and was pissed at the rabbi. The imam getting cozy with the rabbi, sat kitty corner to him, sharing winks across the orthogonal corner of the table. The priest noticed them card counting, obsessing over numbers, as he slopped up the red wine with dollar bills. They were writing the numbers in a book, counting verses of supposed destiny. They had split the deck in two at the beginning. Bumping the stacks with elbows, cards fell to the ground one by one. They were cards which would be used later, to build one tower of poker cards. They had already started to plan the poker tower, well before the deck was split. The rabbi condemned the imam, making the falling cards look unplanned and seemingly unknown by him. ‘Who cut the deck in the first place?’ he would coyly question as the one tower grew tall on the middle of the house of cards kingdom, as the players picked up cards from the ground. The tower grew tall, after the two decks fell. The priest chimed in again, ‘We’ll poke her all right’. They all began to pass cards under the table, as laughing amplified with drink. The girl watched from her aerial view above. She played chess, as they played poker.

Train still on the bridge, car seven was even louder than number three filled with a boisterous boy’s school field trip. The gamers stared at the diplomats, staring at the religious pomp. They photographed the political figures from behind, focusing especially on the princess. It was she who would eventually tilt the scale, in opposite direction than the diplomats intended. The gamers were obsessed with photo imprints, image making presumed truth in each eye. The gamers didn’t know the difference between truth and fiction staring through camera holes at dignitaries with more affection than at loved ones. They didn’t care to recognize truth from fiction, in photographing diplomacy. They recorded the poker match, sent the digits to satellites to be datafied into binary bites the web of random algorithms. They photographed to get clicks. The destiny of the digits were square bites, pixilated orthodox bits of images reconfigurable in any way, conveying false narratives with unreal imaginary video. The narratives were presented as truth, linear narrative seeming unquestionable. But the true narrative was actually a series of perfect fourth movements between the train cars shifting in time. The true narrative wasn’t anything like the linear one at all.

The gamers took seductive photos to be used to tell customized stories to each electrical address, attached to each personal device around the world. Contrived moving images composed with infinite fraud, would convey a different story to each person, luring them into the reflecting web. The princess made for a good digital impression, seductive beauty enticing viewers into screened worlds, around the world. She was gracious. She sat on a cushion next to the others, projecting a perception of diplomatic innocence, on their behalf. The other diplomats studied the poker game, counting currency as the tower grew tall. They counted currency, as the religious leaders counted numbers of false destiny. Each time the diplomats noticed the gamers focusing cameras, they stopped to pose with white teeth smiles. It was all a game to them. Then the gamers shifted focus to the real poker game at the table. In the corner, the two stacks of cards continued to fall as one towering house of cards grew in the center. Each hand was played precisely.

The diplomats felt empowered by their position, between the gamers and religious leaders. They were a liaisons, the transcribers of information. The control as the tweeners amplified their diplomatic posturing, white teeth showing bright. Although they kept one eye on the poker game at all times, always looking for opportunities to get in on the game, they still smiled for the cameras. They hedged bets, competing over photos ops. The king watched a card laid with his face upon it. The gamers snapped a shot of him looking down at a picture of himself, laid flat on the game table. The queen wedged her way between the king and cameras, jealousy ensuing as the gamers directed lenses upon him only. Then she heard the priest slap down another card, ‘I keep getting my hands dirty with the queen’. She looked down at the table and saw her face on the card. The gamers snapped a shot perfectly timed, as her mouth opened in awe in real time. Then the rabbi elbowed a whole half deck of cards to the floor, as he threw down the joker of clubs yelling, ‘Trump!’. The imam was pissed. He was set up for the fall of the deck, so the rabbi could build his tower. ‘Whatever fuckers just keep playing poker,’ he mumbled under his breath as the game came began to come to a close. Then all around began to engage in fabricating the full house of the kingdom from the fallen cards, with the poker tower towering high on center.

She played chess in real time, while they played poker in the virtual. The religious leaders, gamers, and diplomats now all in elbowed each other as excitement amped. They wanted to catch glimpses of their faces in the cards, as they were stacked in the tall tower. The princess, on the other hand, had no card by her name. This gave her special purpose. Her purpose was to perform a balancing act. She was to sustain the royal image in real time, while seemingly staying out of the game. She was to protect the kingdom made of cards balanced edge to edge, by conveying the perception of perfect purity. That’s why she sat on the cushion in stillness, upon the throne. Although, she was indeed disappointed as the vibrating stopped upon the bridge, as she sat on the cushion. Still, she smiled for the cameras. And as she diverted attention, the house of cards turned into an entire world kingdom with the tower towering tall in the middle. They built the tower one card at a time. Each single one, inspected carefully prior to placement told a story, they thought was only known to them. The entire kingdom of cards grew slowly, but surely in their eyes. After all, they were royalty… they figured. The religious leaders, diplomats, and gamers all stacked their cards then balanced them upon each razor edge to build the kingdom. All the while they were careful not to exhale too much hot air, as they would blow everything.

As they stacked, the cards began to take on a life of their own. They kept having to shush the joker. Being the trump card, it thought it could say whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted to. Those aiding and abetting him enforced his delusions of grandeur. The sucker, the gamer in charge of the placing the faces on the cards, told the joker he had gathered all the data in the world necessary to build the kingdom. He worked closely with the other gamers. He was tight with the miller, he’d suck him from time to time. The sucker had played his own imaginary game, with square cards, through the pixelated pictures of screen capturing bites and bits in the name of pseudo socialist order. The joker fell for it, while the sucker made fun of him behind his back. The diplomats didn’t give a shit, as they figured they ran the game. After all, the photos on the cards were imprints of their faces alone. The imaginary kingdom of all the world grew, as the dilution of the players did too. The lines all blurred between the poker players and players within the royal kingdom of cards, in train car number seven.

The girl watched from her view up above, soul working hard to levitate in the midst of the global deception taking place below. She could see the linear narrative they drafted whilst they played their hands. She could also recognize the real narrative, versus the false linear one being constructed vertically in the tower. The tower was the center piece, vertical stacking stories in a tall straight line into the spooky sky. It would be bright and shiny, representing an untrue honest anew. It would represent oneness from two. It would enforce a convincing linear narrative upon the subjects of the kingdom, reduce questions asked and target focus on hope… at least that was the intent.

The cast of characters around the poker table was well rounded. The miller, formed and molded the plan. The sucker… well you know what he did. There was the sergeant. His handed out cookies. He thought he was king of all things. There’s always one of those know-it-alls. There was the cushion on the throne, upon which the princess sat. His role was to ease any potential slip and fall of the tongue of the joker. The joker standing in the middle was always nodding yes to their suggestions. There were many characters in the periphery excited about the new kingdom and tall standing tower on center. They turned a willingly blind eye to any collateral damage of the poker game being played. They chose to be blind of those who would suffer in the process. Perhaps this was the reason they would eventually be blindsided.

Then there were characters she once adored as friends, whom she knew personally. They had pretended to care for her too. She could count on them to forward her stories across the airwaves, to the cast list. Although they thought they did this in their best interest, when it was really in hers. Sometimes the opposite was true. Either way the truth is easily revealed when the artificial predator is overexcited in his stance. They thought they were the predators. They thought she was the prey, when in fact the opposite would soon be true.

The miller had formed the coup, plans dating as far back as his college days. He was one of those guys bitter from a prom date gone bad so many years before. It’s fascinating how one event during a person’s young age can lead them to alter the course of global events later in life. He thought he was cool, until word got out that he had a pinky penis on prom night. As she uttered this linguistic mnemonic ‘pretty pinky penis prom’ she was talking about its size, but he thought otherwise. She was kind of teasing him, whilst also preparing herself for a pretty unpromising compromising presentation inside her pussy. But he took it the wrong way. The ‘p’ sound kept replaying in his head all night, as he tried and failed to get it up. The promise of prom was literally and figuratively unfulfilled, as the phrase ‘pinky penis’ echoed privately inside his personal unspoken paradigm. Unfortunately, all he could do was picture his soft pink penis. It wouldn’t turn any shade darker, not even purple with a crown. From that day forward, he harbored unyielding jealousy of any peni of the dark shaded variety. Such penis envy then transposed into an all-inclusive hatred toward any other with a dark skinned non-pink man member. His head spun with hatred of dark skin. So the little miller all grow’d up… become a skinhead.

He milled and milled. He milled some more. He dug his pinky hands into the webbed world in the sky. He met with the sergeant at coffee shops to align strategies. The milling of data bites and binary code within the ether, helped form and mold the strategic poles. And this strategy dated back to that moment he was destined forever, to live with his pinky penis. He wanted his day in the sun. He wanted to prove to the world that he, in fact, was a man of biblical proportions. Yet secretly he’d decided that his penis could only stoically shine, if the heartier ones of his imaginary browner skinned brethren shone less. So as he milled his plan to expose his pinky prowess, making plans to eliminate the competition. He wanted to impress the royal crown, send business their way. The miller ran his ideas through the ban saws of his friends’ network strategies, careful not to cut of his little pinky fingers. He ran his lies all the way into the pockets of the friends of friends who threw all the money into the poke her pot, sending it straight to the crowns.

The sucker, sergeant, joker, the cush and princess all played their games. They wanted to be royalty, you see. So they thought if they staged a war and parlayed money to the crown, they would be. They procured secret information through the winter. He had deep dark insight into anyone contrary to the mission. In the winter, people’s accounts were hacked, information processed, and sent to investment hubs in the original kingdom. He was an opportunistic fuck; short, entitled, and ugly as hell. He was friends with the cush. He hung with him and the princess on the island. They exchanged notes, strategized pole positions. The princess adored the winter. She even named her dog after him. Together, they were responsible for damage control, in the kingdom of cards. It was for their people, the tower was built in the first place.

They milled an entry on the ground floor of the tower, an actual entry to the tower was the visual entry to the land of wanna be milk and honey. They were gonna make money, to send to the land of milk and honey. The more money there, the more metal they could buy from the royal crown. They filled it with false gold plated boldness, seducing the warlocks, enticing membership into the seal beating club of dubious affairs. They rolled the cards into poles, as the milling of the tower of cards amplified. The joker was excited to build a tower for his granddaughter, ‘Look at the poker tower!’. Anytime someone challenged his rank, he threatened to start a war. He figured the crowns would love him for that. They had bought up twelve lands in the mountains. There was water up in them there mountains, fresh water. They were going to invite friends only, those who had helped build the one tower in the middle of the kingdom. They all made money from the wars waged, but disguised it well. The religious leaders, diplomats, and gamers all helped them.

As the girl watched from above, she gazed in panorama at the long train below, one to eight cars in a row. Then back again, eight to one, she shuffled the linear narrative as they shuffled the remaining cards below. The poker tower grew tall. The father of the cush had facilitated its construction for the silver man. But then he went to jail. The cush never forgot this. Although the jail time was a mere diversion from bigger truth of the tower, the cush held a grudge against the joker. Cush’s father and the joker were in the same business, the business of building artificial things. This specialty of theirs translated to artificial stories told, too. They were experts at lying. Nonetheless, the cush’s father did jail time so the truth about the towering poker tower would be even more diluted with stories of lies. He was dethroned, yet the cush was determined to get the throne back, as being just the cushion upon the throne wasn’t enough. The princess went along with it, because she wanted so much to be royalty… sitting on the face of the cushion wishing the train was still vibrating. So the cush married the joker’s daughter, eventually planning to set him up, take him down, and take back his throne. He didn’t realize that a son really does pay for the sins of his father. He and all those connected to his diseased greed would pay too.

She resided within the airstream often, radiating peace. Her airstream was at times, contrary to her. It thought that when she went down, it would go higher. The airstream figured during high humidity, when it swooped low through the sky, she would elevate. Her spooky sky made the airstream act spooky too. The airstream believed it was her spooky quantum counterpart, in the universe. When the it rained, the airstream figured she would be happy. When she cried, it awaited the coming of the sun. The darker the spooky sky became at night, the airstream presumed she would shine bright like a star. She loved her airstream for trying to make rhyme and reason out of the way they danced. She also realized it was just slightly confused about the dynamic nature with which they interconnected. For only a while, would she allow this to last… let him believe he was knowing. But there were many verses, not just one, to the dance in the place between them. Eventually she would have explain to him, that neither were spooky to the other.

The airstream in the sky was home to the invisible. Artificial life in the air waves was presumed, but few realized the invisible life within the streams was of natural origin. She understood this though, as she lived within this realm in the sky now and again. And sooner than later, life living within the airstream would reveal itself. One day, life in the airstream would manifest itself in many ways within earth. Eventually the sky would become so dark that her brightness would shed light the truth of the airstream. The ghosts of the river, that lived within it, would come down to earth to restore balance. They would return to the land through which the river flowed, calibrating the earth to align with nature’s ways.

The airstream in the sky was home to the invisible. Artificial life in the air waves was presumed, but few realized the invisible life within the streams was of natural origin. She understood this though, as she lived within this realm in the sky now and again. And sooner than later, life living within the airstream would reveal itself. One day, life in the airstream would manifest itself in many ways within earth. Eventually the sky would become so dark that her brightness would shed light the truth of the airstream. The ghosts of the river, that lived within it, would come down to earth to restore balance. They would return to the land through which the river flowed, calibrating the earth to align with nature’s ways.

As she declined back into the train, fluxing between train cars one through eight in non sequential order, she studied the activities taking place inside each one. In the fourth car the husband and wife were still arguing about the future of the children. The third train car was noisy as ever, as the teacher reprimanded the boys school for taking their field trip for granted. The children in car number two were sleeping on and off, as the vocals in car three kept them from dreaming in a happy alpha wave state. The empty silence in the first car caboose ground the train on the bridge, as it stood still with no vibration or habitants. She returned to the fifth car where she had once resided with her headphones, alone only to hear the sounds she selected from her personal radio. She wished she had stayed there in a way, as the things she could see and hear from above the train, elevating high above in the natural airstream void of any radio, were difficult to witness.

She walked through the fifth train car, only a memory of her presence before existed in an imprint within the seat and her things draped across the one adjacent to where she had sat alone before. In the sixth train car in front, the elderly couple still cradled and rocked the baby boy to compensate for the now absence of train track vibrations which had once calmed him. Upon entering train car seven, she was disappointed to learn that the gaming had amplified amongst the religious leaders, diplomats, and those in suits… now all having become poker gamers. Train car seven had turned into a full fledged casino, loud laughs and egregious game playing with the poker game still the center of attention. It was dark inside the train. She could see them, but they could not see her. She had a flash light. It blinded them to her presence, yet helped her find her way around when walking the ground floor.