D:L&L - Part 1 | Dot: Introductions

My name is Dorothy Gale. Dorothy O. Gale. My dad named me after his mother, and my mother let my grandmother pick out my middle name. Let's just say my grandmother was a lunatic, and my mother was a hippie chick from the 1960s; while that worked well for the two of them, it stuck me with one of the dumbest damned middle names on the planet. Moon Zappa's got nothing on me. My middle name is Ozma, purportedly some “lost princess” out of Grandma’s stories. I am just eternally grateful that my father put the smackdown on the two of them when they tried to make that my first name.

Grandma's maiden name was Gale. That's another convoluted story, but let's just say Grandpa was killed in the war (no, I don't know which one), and Grandma decided to go back to her maiden name before Dad was born. My philosophy? Don’t ask, don’t tell. If you knew Grandma, you’d let her live in her little fantasy world and humor the old darling.

I spent most of my childhood on Grandma’s farm in Kansas, listening to her stories about some wild wonderland called Oz, mostly a place called The Emerald City. I was always kind of a geek. It seemed a little too sweet to be real, but when I asked her about outlying areas, she would just shudder and say, "Oh dear, those places were scary! I tried to avoid the mountains and anywhere close to the deserts of death. You just never knew what was around the next corner!" It sounded like an adventure to me, but okay. Grandma wasn't that interested in talking about anything but pretty fields, castles, how a lion got courage, how a scarecrow got brains, how a tin man got a heart, and raved on and on about some chick named Glinda.

Glinda was a piece of work, from what I could tell. Later on, in college, I read all about her in a psychology course I took. She's listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders under "narcissistic"...with a side order of OCD. I tried to explain this to Grandma, but she refused to acknowledge that her little fairy story might carry some elements of reality.

Actually, though, her version of things was totally revisionist when it came to fairy tales. Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, and all of those old Nordic and Eastern European children's stories were intended to scare the shit out of children. Told the way they were supposed to be told before the censors tried to separate children from the real world surrounding them. There were some pretty graphic morals to those stories.

Not in Grandma's world.

She totally freaked out when I joined ROTC in high school. Girls didn't play "army". They became cute little cheerleaders or gymnasts if they wanted that kind of exercise. Well, Grandma, this girl wants to play MARINE, not army, so you were half-right on that. Besides, it wasn't playing. If there's one thing Dad taught me, it was to establish goals early and do your best to reach them. JROTC in high school took me to ROTC in college, and from there to OTC and off to Afghanistan. Twice.

The military, for all its fun moments, was a serious business. What made it more serious was Afghanistan. Dear God, what a culture shock! For all they taught in training in the US, they could not prepare anyone for the reality. That's how it is in life. You just don't know until you've had the experience yourself. And to relate that experience to others. There's no way for outsiders to fully grasp its enormity. I have a lot of stories I'll never tell anyone for that reason.

Every now and then, I think about Grandma's Oz and wonder if there were parts of that Oz that were like Afghanistan. It wasn't the deadly deserts part, really, but it was the mountains. I know the mountains in Colorado to be beautiful and wonderful, so they couldn't have been the kind of mountains that Grandma inferred were so dreadful. They had to be more like the ones near Peshawar to be that scary to her. Or not. Who knows? Grandma's Oz has only one leftover legacy in my life: my middle name.

Well, there's one other thing, and that's Toto. Toto was Grandma's little doggie sidekick in her stories. I named my little sidekick after hers. Mine is a Colt .45 ACP, like the one I carried as a Marine, complete custom from Springfield Armory...and then I did a little customizing of my own. Hey. We all have our pets. This is mine.

Don’t make a mistake.

I’m not Dorothy Gale, the sweet little girl from Kansas who lost her way. I’m her granddaughter, and I’m not fucking around.

Ah, there we go. That’s me. That’s what you’re supposed to do with a head injury, they say. You’re supposed to make sure you remember who you are. That’s what they tell you. You know “they”: your mother, doctors, hospital personnel, WebMD. So my long-term memory is okay.

I can hear the doctors now. “Do you remember what happened?”

Hell, yes, I remember what happened. Dumb and Dumber decided they wanted a piece of me. I gave them a piece they’ll never forget, especially ol’ Mikey. That boy will taste his own oysters from the inside for some time to come. And that asshole Andy? He figured he’d walk away with Toto in the process. Not happening. Careful, you could put your eye out! Or I could. Nobody messes with Toto. Maybe you halfway look like a zombie now that I own your left eye, Andy. You didn’t die, but you might wish for awhile that you had.

“What else do you remember, Ms. Gale?” This doctor-voice in my head sounds sarcastic.

I’d finished reading City of the Dead that afternoon and started Dying Light when I smelled the rain in the air. I checked the radar, saw hooks in the patterns and loads of blood red on the screen. I figured I should batten down. Funny, I was listening to AC/DC at the time. All I could think was “you shook me all night long”, because that’s what this storm was going to do when it hit.

I had just slid the chair back to head out, when the boys made their lame attempt at an attack. They might have put up a better fight if they hadn’t been drunk, but drunk or sober, I would have still taken them. Witless wonders. Never mess with a Marine.

Now, this is kind of where it gets hazy. I remember the fight, but not the particulars. I don’t have any idea what they hit me with, but I know it landed square on the back of my head. It had to be Mikey, because I was shredding Andy’s face at the time.

What I remember after that is the storm. The boys were gone. I was lying on the floor. My head was exploding, and I couldn’t open my eyes. The rain was pelting the windows hard. I’ll bet if we clocked it, the wind would have hit 60-70 miles an hour. The house shook almost as if it were yanked off the foundation. I had the worst case of bed-spins I’d ever had.

It seemed like that storm went on for hours. I knew better than to try to get up, but I was finally able to open my eyes. I reached out and touched my beautiful Toto. Poor baby. I’d almost lost him to an idiot.

I don’t love Toto just because he cost me all of my savings at the time. It was one of Toto’s brothers that was there for me when I needed him in the four years I spent in Afghanistan. He was such a part of me then. No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t get along without him. Two months after I came back to the farm, I had another Toto, and my life regained its balance.

I waited about 10 minutes after the house stopped shaking before I grabbed Toto and tried to stand up. As I checked to see if I had bruises, I saw that my blouse was torn in several places. I don’t have favourite blouses, so it didn’t really matter, other than the fact that it happened at all. I set Toto on the desk again, pulled my skirt back into place and smoothed it out. I looked at the flat screen monitor. Black. We probably lost Internet connection, and with the house shaking, it may have come unplugged. I’d worry about that later.

It was still raining, but the winds were calm. No thunder. No lightning. It was pretty quiet outside.

For some reason, I still had that stupid eyeball in my hand. Yack! I needed to dump that, so, with Toto in my left hand and this sticky, gooey, bloody eyeball in my right, I went out to the kitchen. I tipped Toto’s barrel up to flip the light switch. Great. No power. I picked my way over to the sink and dumped the thing in the trash underneath. When I turned on the faucet, just a trickle came out. What the heck! This storm couldn’t possibly have damaged the line to the well, and the hot water heater is new! I looked out the window as I struggled to wash my hands. I couldn’t see the well, let alone anything that might have damaged the line between here and there.

It’s time to go outside and see what’s up, Toto. I’d better change my clothes. We’re going to need the camos and boots to go out in this mess.

I changed my clothes and put my hair up in a pony tail. With Toto strapped to my waist, I tugged on my boots and jacket, and opened the door.

Holy shit.

I was staring at a landscape I’d never seen in my entire life. Those were not oaks lining the lane. That wasn’t our lane. My car was not parked by the barn. In fact, the barn wasn’t there! And where the hell was my car? What the heck were those hills in the distance, and where was State Highway 171?

Blinking hard, I rubbed my eyes and blinked again, trying to re-establish focus. It was bright outside, to say the least! Who ever heard of red trees? What kind of weird algae was that? Those hills were similar to the foothills of the Rockies, but there were no mountains behind them. I heard tinkling bells, sort of like chimes, and it seemed to be coming from all directions. They sounded like Grandma’s chimes, but they weren’t hanging on the porch anymore. Those chimes had withstood decades of storms and winds, but now they were gone. The ground looked dry. How could it be dry when it had just been raining for hours?

This just wasn’t right. I stepped back across the threshold into the entryway and shut the door.

I’m becoming my crazy Grandma, I sighed. Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I sank into the office chair, and my mind went back to Grandma’s descriptions of her World of Oz. I thought I just saw that same sort of parallel world. This was impossible. What seemed to be outside that front door could not exist.

It didn’t take long to plan an initial assessment of the perimeter while there was still some light. Pulling open the bottom drawer of the desk and reloading Toto was automatic. The jacket pockets were stuffed with additional cartridges. I was ready to go.

I was as prepared as I was ever going to be under the circumstances. I reached for the door handle and swung it wide, gave Toto a quick kiss before holstering him, took a deep breath and murmured…

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…