Sun Silly

Sun Silly

by

Jerry Laub

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2020 by Ace Abright

All rights reserved.

A financial gift from the sale of each copy of Sun Silly will be made to these charities – Victims Center (United Way) and Together We Rise (a college fund for foster teens). In my heart, I know this is where the greatest joy from writing Sun Silly will come.

Love Life & Laugh,

Jerry

About the book

Sun Silly, is an inspirational story about Veelee VonVogue, who has found the kind side of foster care and a somewhat normal life. Lara London, a Deep State facilitator has plucked Veelee from the ghetto and his mom, Jillie Jo; she placed the teen in foster care with Mike and Melissa Matches – who also have Deep State ties. Veelee immediately encounters High School (teenage) drama in Queenfield, the hometown of the antagonist, Anglaia, whose mother is best friends with Melissa Matches (Veelee’s now foster mom) the parents friendship continually puts the two teens together, which summons the devil in Anglaia’s personality. All the while, Veelee is being recruited by our Deep State shadow government, THE secret society – Luminaries. Lara London the attractive local Librarian who had found the beautiful mind of Veelee early on, mentors and guides him with books and her own genius. Behind the scenes, Lara is also his very active guardian. Lara’s main motivation is a higher post for herself within the Deep State and purposely hopes to use Veelee to dismantle the 5G program and the powerful signals emitted from towers and satellites that could kill a billion people around the world if not stopped. The third braid that wraps the rope together is the Jackkson family and their secret blood line with Anglaia, Veelee and the Deep State. Veelee is sweet on the beautiful Librarian, Lara London, but not the nudge into politics – he wants to be a scientist and create a Silly pill derived from the Sun that will cure every disease.

Cast of Core Characters

Veelee VonVogue:

Anglaia Clinton:

Lara London:

Adamina-Rose Clintin:

Aarontino Jackkson:

Chapter 1

Veelee sipping on sunshine

THE ALARMS IN MY HEAD BONE STABBED AT my ears, pinching off the hint of a dream? My eyes danced for a time beneath the calm darkness of my eyelids then sprung open to the pain of the stinging night air. I coiled into a sitting position and wiped at the fog of wet breath on the glass until I could see through the smudge of the car door window. It was a drunken man shushing the bottle he had inadvertently kicked. He was pushing down the noise with both hands as if asking for mercy, his eyes bulging from his face like a stepped-on goldfish. That is when our eyes connected in a dance of the damned, and my heart stumbled to a stop. With a groan similar to that of an engine straining on a weak battery, my heart wrenched tight then jolted into a rapid crescendo of African drums thumping wildly in my chest. The man staggered like a zombie in my direction.

I knew the door was locked but checked it anyway, just in case. He tapped on the window with his unkempt corkscrew of a fingernail and said, Hey! There was no other option but to be terrified.

Go Away! I silently screamed to myself.

I was required to answer to adults, even ones dumbed by liquid drugs. We had known every other drunk in the K-sea area, my mom was a stripper and part-time waitress—a magnet for guys like this one. Just as I was about to wake her from her passed out crouch in the back seat, a horn honked. The man gawked over his shoulder to see the taxi, spewed some cuss words in my direction he thought my look deserved and surfed away on a clumsy wave—leaving a line of barf behind on the pavement as he went.

I was accustomed to nights like these. Mom had us living this way since dad committed suicide. Some nights she would leave the club with a man, and I would be left to fend for myself. The sound of silence would always be my preference, my friend. Being alone was not the end of the world, yet despair would manage its way into my thoughts in the form of a random pity-party but knew I couldn’t take too seriously. Remember Veelee, feelings are visitors, it’s better not to marry any of them. Tough times make tough people. Lara’s voice echoed through the jelly of my brain. Followed by the subconscious voice of Christopher who constantly reminded me that we shared an organ, a heart. He liked to make me feel it, sometimes the heartbeat would take off like a racecar for no reason or seemed to move around in my chest like a baby in the womb.

Silence was my magic pill, it proceeded me in my daily walk and forged a strength strong as steel, my personal reality, my personality. A molded expression of resoluteness ran the smile off my face most days, vowing not to look into any mirror directly as it would give my ego energy to complain. My adopted facial expression was much easier to use than telling people to leave me alone, although there were weak moments where my words could not shape mean, tough thoughts correctly, and this face of mine betrayed me as a kind soul.

Mom would not replace the alternator, and we had to push-start the car all the time. The trunk of the car usually had a plastic-wrapped case of bottled water and some assorted canned goods like beef stew and mom’s favorite, cheese curls—the messiest snack ever invented, along with a mound of trash bags filled with our crap. There were pillows and blankets we used when it was cold or cracked the windows in the summertime where I wished on every star in our galaxy for a breeze—when the car battery was completely dead, I knew fate would have me playing patty-cake with the hot hands of the devil. There were a few times where the windows were down, and I didn’t have the keys or battery juice to roll them up, a perfect scenario for a thunderstorm to jump out of the sky without notice. Not only was the witchy wind, licks of lightning, and explosions of thunder scary, but as everything inside the car got soaking wet, it made me feel like worthless scum.

Who could ask for more? Right! My attendance at school was horrific, too. I missed first block regularly. If mom had a bad hangover, she’d say, Screw it! Read your books, baby boy. Momma’s sick today, and pass back out.

Weekends and summer break were the hardest to deal with when we were homeless—I was always amazed by the number of gawkers that passed by the car and conceitedly pretended to push the clouds higher into the atmosphere with their eyes, not wanting to look or see something glaringly wrong in the world. Becoming part of a time-consuming or financial solution would be too much to ask—most smudged looks I received were repetitive and easily dismissed.

It was a guessing game when or if mom would return to me when the club closed. Most often, I’d have to wait until she sobered up at some Joe’s house and was able to come back to get me and the car. Most often we were at the mercy of some horny drunken man she most likely had met for the first time. It was completely random—nine or noon? I never knew. I would end up pacing around the parking lot in between the books Lara from the Trueman Library had recommended. Books that graced my life with alternatives, but not quite a safe refuge, as the weight of them in my backpack slowed me down when I needed to move fast.

I learned early on how to make myself invisible and avoid drawing attention, especially when police officers patrolled the area. If they found me, mom and I would go through tons of drama at the police station, where we could be kept for hours before released. Mom hated social workers and law enforcement passionately—she was always in trouble for something. As long as I had batteries for my flashlight, I was somewhat content. I could hide beneath the blankets and read, entertained and educated by the wily minds and wonderful worlds shared by amazing authors.

When mom didn’t get dragged off by some man’s billfold or muscles like tonight, she would be passed out in the back seat of the car. I learned to use the seasons to my advantage over the years, a morning ritual of rolling the windows up in the summer and down in the winter, so she would get up sooner and get us to a shower and food.

There had been a drought of new dancers at the club lately… mom preyed on them, especially the young and naïve. On a good day, it took about ten minutes for mom to convince the tenderfoot that life had managed to keep them apart all their lives, that they somehow had beat the odds and were now besties—mom would then invade the new girl’s life and home with her poor me song and dance, clinging on to the residence for as long as possible… eventually they all found instant peace the day they kicked us out.

The drunken stranger who had kicked the bottle earlier had me wide awake now, and I could do nothing else but mull over my thoughts. Maybe prepare a speech I’d someday present to a gathering of curious souls.

Maybe I’d say something like, "There are but words presented in the English language to derive my understanding and the basic meaning of all things. Spelling out our spells in a line of words that generically substitutes for life’s explanation, to include creating every problem we want to have. Everything is only words. To be clear, there are other languages and symbols one might wiggle their way forward in various ways to forge Aristotle’s golden mean. That glorious alchemy of virtuous meaning. Where all noble truths merged into the happiness of our next breath, constantly kissing the darkness of death. One colossal consciousness of ultimate virtuous knowing...

And yes, virtue is simple. It’s the strength or essence of a thing. In a paraphrastic way, the highest virtue is not conscious of itself. It is every known thing’s magic. When you breathe, you do not praise yourself for being virtuous in breathing and giving yourself life. If you have beautiful green eyes, you do not praise yourself for growing the most bravura jewels on earth that entertain colors and forms. You may say they’re just pretty eyes but seeing is the true miracle of eyeballs— it’s like the healing medicine of a plant, its strength, its virtue. Numbers too clearly scream truths. Screams magic. The past and future are simply thought streams of illusion. Dreams lurking for an emotion to gallop upon, hormones that give life to feelings—

Maybe someone would like a speech like this one day? Dunno, but I will always be grateful for the friendship and tutelage of Lara London. She seems set on making me a learned man in the future. My brain has hoarded the collected thoughts of many great minds, which I now gallantly use to explore my greatest fascination of all: the sun.

My beloved sun is very hot, reaching temperatures of fifteen million degrees Celsius. The sun is so large that one million planet earths could fit inside it. And it continues to get hotter the longer it burns. And yes, in a billion years, the earth will become a blackened chunk of floating space charcoal. Human life will one day end on this planet. Until then, we human beings will be required to hunt energy on a daily basis.

For the past three years, I have absorbed as much of the men I admire as possible: Isaac Newton’s calculus, Hipparchus of Nicaea’s trigonometry, Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi’s algebra, Euclid of Alexandria’s geometry, Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking’s astronomy, theoretical and modern physics. Orders of operations and formulas were exciting to watch until they became rudimentary or otherwise boring.

To me, mathematics became similar to looking at a color spectrum. Once you know blue is blue, it’s not very impressive to tout blue all day long. I wanted to find answers to my questions and solve some mysteries of my own. Not come up with the known answer to someone else’s numbers and riddles. Fun for a while and impressed my schoolteachers, but I lost interest in testing. The best math one can learn is the answer to the future cost of choices made at any random moment. A daily calculation tilted to the good is exactly the correct method to avoid life’s infinity of random problems.

Mom snorted as she jostled around in the back seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. Her breath and uncommonly foul-smelling feet were making me nauseous as usual. When we lived in the car, my bedroom was in the passenger front seat. When I reclined the seat back to sleep, mom’s butt was a foot away and pointed directly at my head, when she farted, the fragrance of inner dead was not worth the act of breathing. It was like inhaling a sickening contagion meant to kill me.

Tonight was one of those stinky nights. I rolled the windows down and got out of the car so that the night air might suck the majority of the stench from the inside of our makeshift motel on wheels. At school, I, too, had a reputation for smelling funky when we lived countless days in the car. I could actually become repulsed by the smell of myself too, and knew it was an issue. My schoolmates enjoyed being as rude to me as possible concerning my hygiene or stale clothes.

Mom could not legally drive us places after work anymore. She had too many drinking and driving offenses. The last offense was a bit outlandish as we were sleeping in the car and a female police officer mom had insulted the week before nailed her for a DUI, mom was completely wasted and had access to the car keys. The charges stuck in court. One more time and she would be jailed for at least a year, or most likely for as long as the law allowed—the Judges in K-sea did not like her. She had met them all at one time or another.

Unavoidably, I became a risk-taker like my mom by driving the car to a safe spot close to school without a driver’s license. When possible, I would try to get to school an hour early and follow Mr. Watts, the janitor inside after he unlocked the back door. For some reason, I felt like I needed to sneak on the tips of my shoes down the school hallways to the gym for a quick shower. Don’t really know why. It may have been due to the embarrassment of my explanation to school authorities should I be nabbed for loitering. I think Mr. Watts knew what I was doing, and I was grateful he never caused me any trouble.

I pushed on the car door until the dome light went out and eased myself onto the hood of the car, placed my hands behind my head, and relaxed against the windshield. I laid there spread-eagle and watched the stars winking. It made me smile as my vision collected the vast space between the things in space. The soul of K-sea had settled down to a soft eerie quiet, rendering a few faint wayward sounds in the distance. The traffic had hushed, and the city was at rest—boring or not, I began to think of more numbers. Couldn’t help it. It was a habit.

Nikola Tesla’s discoveries and his hint to the numbers three, six, and nine were captivating. But for me, I realized that true magic exists in the numbers thirty-seven and sixty-four, especially when used in scientific equations. Tesla’s universal understanding of energy is so mind-boggling that if I could spend one day with anyone who ever lived, it would be him. He fathered alternating current and truly wanted to gift the world with his Wardenclyffe Tower—a power station that would have created a free wireless power delivery system for all… incredible thinking that came from a man almost a hundred years ago, ideas that will most likely be suppressed forever due to worldly money matters. A most audacious gesture, nonetheless. Fortunately, a great deal of the wireless principles has been adopted in the communication arena as Wi-Fi, cellphones, and computers.

With similar concepts, I intend to capture the sun. I just need to learn how best to package and market the most potent energy source in our universe—food. Those awesome little chunks of sun we toss in our mouth and eat. I will most likely challenge grocery stores and put a great deal of the medical and pharmaceutical industries out of business, giving spinach, seaweed farmers, and beekeepers a huge raise.

Is a job or a day’s pay worth a day of life? Should I run and hide from the preeminent fight of pill-pushing doctors and powerful folks of fake food factories. How much would a billionaire pay for a day of life? I ask myself.

My approach will be much different than Tesla’s. I will overwhelm the nation and world before the wealthy can react and steal my ideas. Only the powerful can fight the powerful, long gone are the days where the power of people was a realistic campaign. Tesla’s work and futuristic thinking continually blows my mind… he adamantinely believed that it would one day be possible to photograph thoughts, making our minds a picture book we could hold in our hands and head. Sometimes I’m grateful he didn’t figure that one out. Yet thoughts are little energy fields, things that have a life of their own and kill the majority of the human species in one way or another. Negative thoughts are ornery critters that will tuck themselves into an organ or meridian system and create one of twenty-five thousand diseases the medical field hopes to profit from.

These thoughts at two o’clock in the morning were becoming heavy as they jump atop my eyelashes, making it hard to keep them open. It’s time to get off this car hood and get some rest.

I curled up into a fetal position in the car seat and skimmed a few more thoughts, without a doubt knowing this sort of life disgusted me and motivated me to engage in solving complex matters. I would someday create an extraordinary life. Thoughts of my future made my mind explode and pause in noble silence at the same time. So far, I have two very good scientific formulas to test in a scientific laboratory. I have committed them to memory so that they will never be left or lost in a trash bag somewhere.

My mentor, Lara London, feels I would do well to consider politics. She has gone over many of the great and not-so-great leaders of the past, and whole-heartedly believes there is no

greater power on earth, yet I enjoy learning scientific models much more.

In studying physiology—how the human body functions—I have noted that the entire liver replaces itself every ninety days, and a cup of lemon juice can aid in its detoxification, giving the organ a helping hand to perform over three hundred functions, making the entire human body healthier. Yes, lemons. It fascinated me to learn that the vast majority of negative thoughts like to hang out in the liver as well, which the key fix there is forgiveness and a few secrets I’m learning about the sun.

Lara also thinks that a good magnet rubbed across the skin, love shared from a happy heart, fifteen rigorous sweat-producing minutes of exercise, and of course, a daily cup of fresh lemon juice in the morning is the most potent magical medicine prescription on earth. I agree with her and would only add my future Sun Silly pill.

Mom roused awake to the sound of the closing car door and mumbled, Go to sleep baby boy – make sure the car doors are locked. She quickly passed back out after another round of tumbling about. The rotten air was gone now, and I might, in fact, be able to go to sleep.

Chapter 2

The dance of Anglaia

MAYBE IT WAS THE DREAMS? SHE WAS driven to shape me into her snooty little identity—a daughter that most resembled her. She was Mother Earth in her own mind and obviously created me by her damned self—a modern-day immaculate conception had somehow reoccurred, and she was the only one who knew about it. Thankfully, I was born a girl, or she may have named me Jesus, Jr—a name she called me most days, anyway.

She wanted a prissy little prom queen—which I could totally pull off—but that’s beside the point. She needed to be known as the mother who raised the greatest child on the planet. Sarah’s child! Constantly pushing me into a place I didn’t fit—similar to giving a cat a bath in a hot cup of coffee. Try if you dare, Mother. Like a lioness, I purred at the thought of a good catfight. Sometimes—most of the time—my mother, Sarah, needed and would be reminded of this simple fact. Repeatedly. I had a way of wrapping words in my attitude and unleashing them like a great, angry hurricane goddess. My storms could be quite volatile and did create a bad day for anyone who pissed me off.

My name Anglaia, which most people jacked up. It is pronounced on-glay-ah. The name is from one of the three graces, daughters of the Greek god, Zeus. My grandfather, Jacob Clintin, had a statue of the naked ladies on display in his home. The girls had cute bodies, but I found them awkward to look at when I was a young girl. Stories of Sisyphus and the farmer’s almanac were grandfather’s general mix of conversation, which had me leaning more on my father, Bruce, and his hippy, laid-back approach of how to live my life.

We were the Clintin family, and yes, there was no end to the puns, jokes, and BS that came with such a last name. Should the two families be put in the same room together, it would be agreed—no relation! Healaray was a badass, accomplished political woman, and I knew I got some residuals out of the name deal, especially with adults who simply heard my last name. I knew most of them were doing abridged geography and genealogy in the back of their heads, trying to rationalize a family possibility. It was fun to let a stranger’s mind wonder. If I was asked, are you related, I would shrug my shoulders, leaving them to answer their own question...

It was getting late, and I was beyond tired. The fresh smell of clean sheets made me smile as I lay thinking of what tomorrow might bring. Then scream one echoed down the hallway, stealing my thoughts. "There her ass goes again," I said to myself, shaking my head side to side, wallowing a crater in my pillow. It was like listening to the same song or watching the same movie over and over again, year after year. Scream, wait nine seconds, scream two. Then a wave of light would pour into my room through the cracks around my door.

My father, Bruce, would now be gently speaking to her and holding her close. Father never lost his temper when it came to my mother’s dreams. But I thought it was complete and utter nonsense. The main nightmare lasted for two minutes and two seconds, the most frequent dream she had. Some sucked more than others and played on longer if Father was sound asleep. The dreams entailed on and off spurts of heavy breathing, moans, and jibber-jabber. Her body would contort and twitch like my dogs did when they slept. These nightmares were no longer her own—we all suffered her hillbilly childhood.

Our family doctors had determined the catalyst to these dreams and other fits of insanity were the combination of her sleeping pills and red wine, which did not mix well. I took it upon myself to be as helpful as I could by pouring out every single bottle of red wine I found. Sometimes I couldn’t get the cork out, so I’d toss the whole bottle away.

We would war over wine bottles and sleep. When I found her fishing out the bottles from the trash, I knew I had to change my strategy and took the bottles out to the back yard and smashed them on a huge landscaping rock I had named Mr. Rocky Wino. I couldn’t help the rock was a damn drunk. It had to have wine, Mother, I’d mock. Needless to say, she didn’t purr about my purrfect solution.

I would never claim to be related to those idiots in her dreams, ever. It was about the only thing we could wholeheartedly agree on. My mom’s side of the family was basically off-limits. When the subject came up, I’d sincerely tell everyone who asked about her family that she was given up for adoption at birth—end of story. Her nightmare usually involved her running and trying to get away from something. Shadows that came alive in the dark. From the blackness, a cold torment danced in her mind when she let down her guard. Drifting off to sleep was not a simple involuntary act. It required medication. Mother has yet to tell me what happened. All I know is that when morning came, a plume of red blood spiderwebs crowded into her swollen eyes and made my head hurt to look into them.

I really try to be an interesting girl, participating in all the interesting activities where I could be noticed, like cheerleading. Truth was, turning sixteen was all that was on my mind these days. Everything else about life really sucked—especially my mother’s rules. Today was a typical routine day. Father dropped me off at the mailbox and drove the Hummer around our home to park it in the garage. I entered the front door, slinging the mail in the general direction of the coffee table. Anglaia, you could stop and say hello to Mrs. Matches. We were just talking about how well you’re doing in high school, Mother said, cooing like she had her vibrator set on pulsate.

I might if you will stop wearing those open-toe stiletto shoes. Your toes look like gnarly mutated tree frogs sucking for air—those are some fat, disgusting toes, Mother.

Thanks for punching my brain Mother! So glad I got grandmother’s cute hands and feet.

Not good! Not good at all… Hi, Melissa, I said rolling my eyes like loose marbles in a shoebox.

Father snorted in the kitchen as I joined him. I think my new retort tickled him as his keys rattled across the countertop. He had many to choose from over the years.

We had just gotten home. Cheer practice went long, and I was cranky, tired, and hungry. I pushed the one-minute quick-set button on the microwave, traversed back into the front room, and snatched their bottle of Moscato wine and dashed out to give Mr. Rocky Wino a drink.

Melissa gasped and then blurted out, What the… as I left. I didn’t see a sleeping bag and knew she wouldn’t be losing sleep from the aftermath she was helping to create. I paid for that, you little— Then her lips tightened and cinched closed.

Bite me! I said.

Anglaia, mind your manners, young lady. Bruce! Mother said sharply.

Father gave me the look. Anglaia… do not do that again, he grumbled, and we kind of smiled at each other.

Okay father… Sorry! I said loud enough for the whiners in the sitting room to hear.

I know if anyone has my back, it’s my amazing father!

Melissa, I have more wine if we need it. That child of mine… Geez, Mother said.

Melissa Matches was here for old people talk. She had been my mother’s best friend for as long as I could remember. They usually didn’t talk—they gossiped. Probably more than my girls and me. I know one thing for sure—my friends would never sniff each other’s armpits when a new deodorant came out as they did. The Matches always seemed to be around. They even came on one of our family vacations, and we sat together in church—which drove my father and me nuts.

It seemed we could not get away from them no matter our tactics—which involved shenanigans from time to time. Melissa’s husband, Mike, was a northern motormouth with a Northeastern Basston accent. He never shut up and absolutely knew everything, just ask his wife who thought she had lassoed Albert Einstein! It looked like the conversation I cheerfully interrupted was most likely more serious than I could have known. Being tipsy this early in the day wasn’t going to make matters any better, though. I did know that.

Enjoy your evening ladies.

Why are adults so annoying?

I did allow them to keep their half-full wine glasses, and yes, I expected a thank-you for saving the day, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Father aimed his voice toward the sitting room, while glancing at me, Sarah, did you say Melissa was here? We smiled at each other again, and that was the last I heard as I pulled my soggy burrito from the microwave, grabbed some chips and salsa, and went to my bedroom, slamming the door.

I flopped on my bed, turned on some music, and eyeballed the picture of my awesome grandparents. Grandfather’s home was situated conveniently on Table Lock Lake in Bronson. A tourist destination in the Midwest in the state of Mizzeree. He was the moneyman, the green-stream, or lifeline that anchored and shaped the family’s attitude and personality—just kidding. Truth be told, Grandmother was the breadwinner by far and away, but Grandfather was in charge. Sort of. He was the man, anyway.

Grandfather, Jacob Clintin, came from a line of dairy farmers. A three-hundred-acre farm passed down the line for a hundred years. Grandfather absolutely hated it. He would tell me stories of going to school smelling like cow piss, and that in the winter it would snow so deep he and his brother had to walk on top of fence posts barefooted for six miles to get to school. The farm was located between the towns of Sycamore and Rogersbill, fifteen miles south of Queenfield, Mizzeree, where we lived.

Speckled across the farmland were many Amish families as well, who intended to squeeze the land for the best living they could manage without modern convenience. The women wore long dresses of one color, and the men wore white button-up shirts, black pants held up by thick leather belts, and black suspenders—most of them wore black hats and had bushy sideburns. Me and the body hair of men simply did not get along—it creeped me out. And yes, my church is usually praying for a plethora of my sinful vocalizations already. Amen. People judge me—, I judge people. Fair is fair! Really don’t care.

My grandfather had mixed emotions and many stories about the Amish way of life too. Especially the Hossfly family that owned the farm adjoining his childhood home. If we could only pick our neighbors, he’d say. Which included the Nitzenslobbers who currently lived next door.

The thing he said he hated most about dairy farming was the never-being-done part of seven-day workweeks. Working life began from the time you could lift a bucket of feed. It was a lifestyle where you were always ten things behind—something always needed to be done or fixed. You were never done or off for the weekend, that was silly talk, he’d say.

Grandfather Jacob was also a Mother Nature guru—through and through. He always had a nutshell prospective dancing around in my ears. Many years of knowledge crammed into my brain in a matter of minutes, especially when it came to his opinion of my teenage attitude. Not a church girl, Grandfather, I’d tell myself, even though we went a couple of times a month. I did learn to roll up my tongue and comments when he was around. Grandfather Jacob had no problem spanking my ass if he deemed it necessary. My personality had been adjusted about ten times so far.

It was hard for me to believe Grandfather didn’t share my father’s sense of humor when it came to