Defenders of the Voiceless

By Michael Francis

Mother earth intended all of her creatures equal footing on planet, Earth. Humans, over the course of their existence, have time and again flagrantly disregarded this balance. Mother earth has given the human race one last chance to redeem themselves. Lightwalkers will try everything in their powers to change the selfish path of humanity in the hopes of suppressing mother earths desire to place our kind on the endangered species list or worse making us extinct.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504932455

Michael Francis

Michael Francis is an Australian born author who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has written two books - Positively Pazzo: Learning Italian and Travels in Italy and Yards and Stripes: A Funny Book About Work, Business and Gardening. He hopes to return to Italy several times and write a series of books.  

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© 2015 Michael Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   09/15/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3246-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3245-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913518

Print information available on the last page.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

PREFACE

Matt cringed and twisted the pillow in his sleep. The haunting dark skinned woman was floating by his body again, her scarves slid across his face and dauntingly brought his dream state to life. The last two nights of being roused ended in severe pain and terror. Matt tried to force himself awake but it was as if the incense her movements gave off kept him pinioned to the bed.

Son of a …And it was on again! All of sudden Matt was all on fours sniffing the ground, the air and the ground again. He could hear the water banking off the rocks in the distant stream and he could see his mate and her does feeding in the nearby cornfield. The colors of the leaves were dazzling but it also meant that food would be scarce and they would have to migrate further south soon. He turned and trotted toward the cornfield, but an explosion of gunfire crudely greeted him. Deer scattered everywhere. As he galloped his hooves transformed back to feet and he was moving upright and sprinted forward but his wife lay defeated bleeding in the muddy husk covered field. He screamed in rage and anguish only to meet the shell of a rifle right to the chest. Dust and tears clouded his vision as his face slammed into the soft ground. Steam rose off his body and blood flowed from his nostrils. His last image was seeing his mate and wife being gutted by men in orange vests not ten feet from his resting place.

Feathers floated all over the room and many were sticking to Matt’s sweat soaked body. It was as if a sledgehammer slammed into his sternum, he had also bit his tongue and his nose was bleeding into his open mouth. His wife sat in the chair, next to the bed, hugging her knees and rocking. She was in hysterics and in fear of her husband’s insane nightmares, which were happening every night now…

"The soul is the same in all living creatures,

although the body of each is different." -Hippocrates

CHAPTER 1

The smell of sulfur and smoke filled the air. You could compare the night climate to being trapped in a convection oven. In the water, between the rush of cars and trucks, you could hear people shouting and the screams of young children. Blackness enveloped the islands of the Florida Keys.

All of a sudden a kaleidoscope of colors exploded into the dark night sky. It was definitely a night worth remembering, the spectacular fireworks displays up and down the Keys could be seen in all directions from the water. It was customary in the Florida Keys, on July Forth, to spend the day at the beaches and islands and then everyone would pack up and head for open water to watch the fireworks from the vantage point of the dark ocean. Another Fourth of July and locals as well as tourists were enjoying the spectacular show. The local population, with the help of the firefighters, saved thousands of dollars to light up the skies every year. Those who were residents of the Keys looked forward to this day like kids on Christmas morning.

It did nothing though for the whirling mind of August Barnes. His sky blue eyes twinkled even in the dark. The warm breeze blew over their Carolina Skiff, a boat that, by the way, was perfect for the Keys. It had a flat bottom and could easily ply the shallow straits and pathways of this wonderful reef. The golden hair that wasn’t stuck with sweat to his neck and forehead flowed at length behind him. He believed the story his Uncle Mike had told him about the Rastafarians in Jamaica. They would not cut their hair because like the leaves on a tree so was the hair, nutrients and protection for the body. Despite his blond hair and pale complexion, August had sharp angular features quite similar to that of the Native Americans who once roamed freely across the Americas. He was lean and held no body fat. His build was a Cross Country Coach’s dream recruit.

Though he participated in athletics he was quite the young thinker. At the present his mind was considering why the summer nights were no longer filled with thousands of lightning bugs as they were when he was younger. He then recalled the hundreds of honeybees he saw one night at the gas station. They were not swarming or collecting pollen. The poor creatures were staggering around on the pavement as if they were drunk. They would eventually die and this disturbed him greatly. It had to be the poisons Mosquito Control was spraying into the air from their pick-up trucks. These scheduled sprayings would never stop because the residents constantly complained about the mosquito problem in the Keys. Man’s benefit to the demise of another! It infuriated August and he was constantly in discussions both verbally and via e-mails voicing his opposition to the present plight of the environment. He did not trivialize and jabber with small talk, not yet a teen, but he was much more comfortable in the company of adults and conversations that had substance and held meaning.

August spent his young life worrying his busy mind about the creatures that may become extinct in the span of his life. He also took advantage of his parent’s love for animals on the home front. They had two cats, a dog and a guinea pig. It was his gift, yet sometimes felt it a burden, to convince the masses of their selfish ways. His parents luckily supported his devotion to animals, yet lately in their bedtime chats Brian and Marcy worried that it was not the norm for a twelve-year-old boy.

Marcy was an English teacher at the high school in Marathon. She loved teaching and her students held her in the highest regard. She was losing interest in the profession because of those who ran things at the top. To them data and test scores were all that mattered. She held on to the job though because her goal was to make her children lifelong readers. She could also impassion a few kids each year to see the truth that man and animal were really meant to coexist on this earth. It was amazing that she never had to impress any of this knowledge on her son. His passion for reading was a huge relief, as would be for any parent, but his love and devotion to the protection and equality for animals was truly amazing.

In his bed at night, during his slumber, August would have, what he had penned, dream-ventures. Immediately following the dreams he would wake and often times August would already be writing. This act often caused his dog, Merle, to look with his head turned sideways. Merle was a tri-color Australian Healer and never settled down until August went to bed and then he would curl up on the end of the bed. August wrote everything down into composition notebooks. He dated them all and gave them titles. He wanted his generation to be the force that changed the way humans interpreted their role on earth. Big people, in his eyes, were too caught up in their own lives to worry about the endangered animals of the earth. Each story presented the real truth about how big people were mistreating animals and how their poor behavior could and would adversely affect our earth. It would seem his friends drove him to start with the Key Deer, an endangered species of deer only found in the Florida Keys. Many of his friends would speak harsh words about the little deer only because of what their parents shared aloud:

Oh those deer should be shot dead, all they do is eat my plants and ruin my garden.

Ugh, I hate driving twenty-five in Big Pine just because of a stupid deer.

I wish they would all die so I could finally fence in my yard and get a swimming pool.

These were the one sided arguments his friends had developed. Heck they didn’t even drive, mused August, and we were surrounded by water so why swimming pools, idiots August thought. He needed to enlighten them with the real truths about these amazing animals.

He would pen his adventures as his mind raced following his incredible dream ventures. These were vivid stories full of imagery and adventure, but often times sad without a happy ending. The truths were told to him as if his spirit were of the people of the earth. August was not your typical twelve year old to say the least. One of the dreams that August had on a regular basis and it troubled him the most was his nightmare and yet motivation. He never shared, what his pen had titled, ‘Hhnhepi waste’ with anyone. Each time his notes were exactly the same to where his pen pushed deeper into the paper and even where the pen ran out of ink writing the word survive. This phenomenon was both disturbing and yet extremely interesting. Each time his entry read:

Love has left the earth and not one creature cares much for another, especially the human race whom seems often enough to be the main target. It smelled like burning hair and charred flesh and the death toll can no longer be measured. Humans are trapped in a wasteland that can only be blamed on their own kind. As the human death toll rises the chance of survival diminishes. This dream is a glimpse into what many will blame on the end of days as the reckoning of their god and his final judgment. How blasphemous to blame god for the hell humans have made on earth. Cattle and horses stampede through the streets trampling humans, bees attack in such numbers that the victims disappear in the swarm, rats erupt from the depths below cities to finally share in the spoils of civilization. Snakes come out of the mouth of a blue corpse and one is unable to distinguish whether it is a man or a woman. Thousands of bodies are smashed flat into the ground as if the air was let out of them. The rotting, putrefied flesh is not to waste as every scavenger from the sky to the soil is doing a remarkable but ever so slow clean up of the bloody mess. Night time is no better the wild dogs, feral cats and all of their cousins begin their favorite pastime, hunting. Humans do not stand a chance and they will not be missed in the restoration of the earth and restructuring of the hierarchy of its creatures. I have never seen such organized destruction and as the humans fall so does their stone and steel relics that would eventually be covered in vegetation as if to erase any memory of the civilization that slowly destroyed the earth. Man will only sur

He had often heard his dad joking with his uncles about his dad’s adoption. They told him Brian had to be an Irishman for all the beer he could put away. Brian did enjoy his beer, but it never got in the way of his successful career. Brian had a knack for the stock market. They might have teased him about his beer drinking but his brother-in-laws always listened intently when Brian was thinking of investing his earnings in a new venture or an existing company on its way back to recovery. Brian was an investment prodigy; it was as if he saw the losses and gains before the bells sounded on Wall Street. August knew better, in his dreams he learned that Brian’s blood great-grandfather was that of the Oglala, Sioux Indians who hunted the lands of the Great Plains. They never took more than they needed and always gave back to mother earth. He often wanted to tell Brian that his ancestors were the bearers of his psychic gift.

August let many things go unsaid until he felt the time necessary. It was a lesson he acquired as if by instinct because keeping quiet and listening was quite difficult for even adults. August loved silence, but he never minded the conversations that circulated through his home. He had won the hearts of all Brian and Marcy’s friends, as he was usually never sent away to play when adults came over to visit. August would sit patiently and listen and continuously take copious mental notes of all conversations swirling around him. August was a defender of the voiceless and it is up to the readers of his stories to heed his messages and pass them on if the earth were to ever regain its original symbiotic state.

CHAPTER 2

In his sleep, the voices told August of restless spirits that resided in the Florida Keys. They were tamed only when deer from the mainland migrated to the Keys. Prior to this saving migration, the Keys were no better than an outpost reserved for bootlegging, wrecking and the violent crimes that existed around those activities. Wrecking, of course, was the profitable profession of many early Key West inhabitants which was a fiendish trick played on ships and their crews plying the Florida Keys at night. They would light torches along the coast to mimic lighthouses and as the ships came in they struck the shallow reef and their ships would be moored and often damaged beyond repair. The locals would head out and attack and loot the ships of all of their cargo. Mother earth was rendered helpless as well, and hurricanes with deadly force often struck these tiny islands at will. Man would not leave and the harder the conditions the more man resisted. They did not belong but nothing would stop people from settling there.

It wasn’t quite clear to August yet. He kept hearing about mother earth in his dreams and she often crept into his mind when he was reading a book or just simply daydreaming. He kind of figured she was charged with watching over the animals of the earth, but he wasn’t sure if this included humans and if so why were they allowed to be so harsh and cruel to other animals without consequence. He was young and often wanted all the answers now! Nevertheless he would write everything down following each dream venture.

When man decided to inhabit the Florida Keys it was a great day for the mosquito population, but they would not be the only bloodthirsty species there. This ecosystem was only meant as a resting place for migrating birds, for crabs seeking shelter on dry land and a home to a myriad of insects. Man came to the Keys and cursed them. His footfalls were too heavy, and like Grendel in Beowulf, the angry spirits were aroused from the depths of the sea where they lay forgotten for centuries. These were the angry souls of the original inhabitants, the Caribe Indians. They were ultimately wiped out by disease brought by the European explorers and pirates. Africans who died or were murdered on the slave ships were thrown overboard and they too roamed the Keys in search of vengeance as well. People in the Keys often claimed they saw the transparent images floating along the dirt roads during their drunken stupors home at night or appearing aboard their fishing boats in the early twilight. These spirits’ souls were suspended on earth like clothes on a line left to dry but forgotten in the dusty hot air for eternity. The Bahamian population who settled in the Keys seemed immune to the haunting and violence that the other settlers dealt with on a daily basis. They only laughed at the white folks’ dilemma and could often be heard saying that’s why the whiteys drank so much!

The Key Deer was no ordinary deer. The hot but humid conditions of the Keys facilitated the transformation of this species into a deer that when fully grown was no bigger than a Great Dane. What it lacked in size though the Key Deer made up for in survival instinct. The deer confided in the spirits and were able to steal the evil dwelling in the men’s souls. Its