bio

John Carnahan is a rich, handsome bachelor. He has no resumé and is easily tricked or lured. A plank spread with cheese, wine and sativa under a hanging sandweight may catch this gentle, elusive legend of the swamp. He is likely to complain. He teaches film and English at California State University, Hayward and has freelanced for Chaosium, Fantagraphics and Quick Trading.

What are Invisible Weapons?

Alicia's Irish Setter, Biscuit -- Bisky -- is nearly as old as Alicia herself. He has always been running beside her in the weeds, his copper color against her denims. When the veterinarian injects him with barbiturates he looks betrayed, then his eyes slide shut and his body deflates. The tragedy gives some kind of mandate to Melissa, Alicia's mom, who says that this was the last lesson Bisky had to teach them as if the sick dog gave a diploma. And so on: Melissa sees hard life lessons everywhere. You try to comfort me, Alicia tells her, By saying how strong you are, over and over. Alicia goes into the living room and watches The Life of a Star, on public television, which shows how a star gets red and then collapses, pulling the near planets into it and leaving the outer ones dark. Flashes of Biscuit's lips draped like a shroud over his teeth are exorcised by tinted footage of bright coronas, curving through blackness dripping flames as big as continents. Alicia hardly notices her mother's presence until a station break congratulates them for watching public television together. Melissa says, Don't you want the Honda for your Japan game tonight? Fuck it, Alicia says. Please go, Melissa says.

Two months ago Alicia's gaming group stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons and started playing Chanbara, a fantasy set in feudal Japan. Alicia's character is Yomihana, a nun who became a dark side Tantric warrior after she was raped by 100 grooms. Alicia uses her mom's book on World Religions to play Yomihana since a role-playing game is infinite and any book can be part of its method. In Japan there are 10,000 times 10,000 gods, called kami, haunting the roads and anything you see beside the roads. Yomihana has become adept at getting answers from the kami based on Melissa's book. If Yomihana were inside Alicia's body right now via timewarp she would be learning to smoke and drive; she would be pointing her Marlboro 100 straight out the window of the Honda and coasting down the off-ramp into nothingness. Passing the used car lot Yomihana would hear the car kami screaming Take this price sticker off my windshield! I'm blind! A divorced woman kami who blew out her brains behind the wheel of the same car whispers Don't buy this car. I'm sitting here. Don't make me move. Alicia enjoys carrying World Religions, two game manuals and a mandala coloring book into a closed storefront in the Sun Value Plaza every Friday night at 7:00. The gaming group meets in a stockroom behind Wonder Comics & Cards where the pulp and cardboard dust makes Alicia sneeze. Fred Nagato, the gamemaster, has been here getting ready since the store was open. He is laying chalkboards on a conference table and checking his notes. Alicia glances at him over her book. Usually Fred doesn't erase the chalkboards, just draws paths, walls, trees, and caves down the length of the table until the story is finished. But when he hears more players enter through the front door he erases two of the boards with a swipe of his scabby hands. Richard enters -- tall and quiet, dropping the back door key into his breast pocket -- followed by Barry and Gilberto. Are you okay? Richard asks Alicia. I'm only going to talk in character tonight, she says.

Tonight the kami tell Yomihana that the pass ahead of them is guarded by a witch who forges invisible swords. The witch's four sons will ambush the heroes at dinner with invisible swords and then torture them in an effort to awaken a demon. So when the players enter the witch's house and notice a sword rack that seems empty, they gather up the invisible swords and use them to defeat the witch and her sons, who die from a few blows. Barry points to the map where the miniatures are tipped over. Is that it? It's only like nine o'clock. Barry is thin and translucent like an earthworm, and Gil is a boulder of fat. They always sit together. Gil says Huh good thing Yomi was here. His voice is flat and drowsy. Richard shrugs and cleans his large Elton John glasses. Barry says I stick my invisible sword up the short one's butthole. Richard stops cleaning his glasses and asks, Are you doing that for real? Yes, might as well. I put a spiritual wall around these two maniacs, Alicia says. She is thinking Please dudes, just play. Fred writes notes behind his screen, then says The blood all over the floor runs into one pool and a hand made of scabs grows out of it. Torture has awakened the Blood Oni after all. How ironic. Barry says We attack. Like a hen Barry picks one candy-red dodecahedral die from a spill of dice in the center of the table. Everyone watches the dice totals with lips parted. Fuck, a one, I'm a dead man. Rolled a nineteen, inspect it if you please. Seven, dismembering side cut. Twelve, I evade. Two, disaster on a bloody slippery surface. Yomihana chants and swings an invisible sword in each hand to help tear up the body of the demon's total.

Alicia is driving Fred Nagato home. He's sixteen but has no permit or car yet. High school teachers like Alicia's mother call him abused, abusive, problem, challenge, poor, retarded, minority, mental -- teachers teach the kids to hate Fred and blame him when a knife is stolen or a fire is started. But Alicia knows the person beside her is starved for kindness because when she tells him tonight's game was tight, she sees him smile in the box of windshield and shadows in the passenger seat.

The stoplights at Mountain and Camino Verde are anchored on either side by gas stations whose fluorescent whites are the only color besides the amber lane dividers. Out the driver's-side window Alicia sees a short frizzy-haired girl in denims run from the Shell station's whiteness onto the shadowy easement, waving both arms. That's Stacy Braggat, Alicia tells Fred, I have to stop. Alicia rolls down her window. Jesus Christ help, Stacy says. Stacy quit Kit Carson High last year to take her GED and study Police Science at a junior college near Sacramento. She has hitchhiked here with her boyfriend Mac, who was driving her home from Sacramento when they ran out of gas ten miles west. Mac has been staying out of view while Stacy flags down a driver. He steps out from the bushes carrying a jerry can -- he's a big man with clothes and hair like Stacy's but his curls are receding and his jeans and jacket look too small.

Mac and Fred sit in the backseat. In the front seat Stacy consoles Alicia about her dog. I sure thank you guys, Mac says after about a mile. What's your name, dude?

Fred.

Fred? Mac asks, incredulous to meet an Asian Fred.

Mac's van is parked on a dry flood-plain well behind the shrubs and washrooms of a vacant rest stop. Mac and Stacy enter the van whispering, then return to invite Alicia and Fred to camp the night with them rather than going back to Redville. Alicia nods yes and then regrets it. Is there a phone I can call my mom here? she asks. No phone. Fred is nodding yes we'll stay. Stacy and Alicia drag a cooler out of the van and project a light on ham, onion rolls, frozen yogurt, and Coronas. Mac already has a beer. He points the bottle's mouth where he wants Fred to lay the firewood. Fred with his shifting armful of sticks and cardboard resembles a poor feudal woodcutter in Chanbara. Stacy shows Alicia her bags of bud and coke but Alicia is watching Fred. She worries that he'll act small and resentful. But no, because Fred and Mac have conspired to wet the campfire with gasoline and make a trail away from it they can light like a fuse, so Alicia takes a mental note on Fred's weirdness, how come he doesn't always use it. Mac is a computer genius, Stacy says, An über-hacker. Hey Fleetwood Mac, let me light it! Stacy runs forward with a long red butane lighter but Fred dodges around her like a crow and lights it. A cathedral of fire shoots up from the sand. That's fucked up, you shoulda let her, Mac says. Fred waves his hands conjure-like over the fire.

Stacy calls Mac and Alicia aside to finish a roach. Thank you thank you, Alicia says, This day has been like a month long. Stacy asks Does Fred get high? Alicia says Not much, it makes him hyper. Stacy says He's weird.

Watch me kill him with an invisible sword, Alicia says. She raises an invisible Japanese sword above her head and runs crouching at Fred who rises to meet her with an invisible sword and chases her around the fire and over the trail of flames that he made with Mac. Mac and Stacy karate kick each other's thighs with loud thuds. Beers in hand, Fred and Alicia explain that role-playing games are like this but elaborated by dice and rules and when Mac looks skeptical, Fred asks whether it is any dumber than football. No, Mac admits at length, But it might be dumb for a person to do what a computer can do easier. And some people play those games as a substitute for reality. Mac shakes his curls and looks in his lap. He says But what is reality? How do we know anything is really real? Everyone nods. It's easy to see how their bodies, the rocks or the van might be like the night air -- colorless, empty, unreal.

Alicia and Fred make beds in Melissa's four-door Honda. Fred has acquiesced to getting high and now wants to stay up getting higher. Fred fucks Alicia in the car but Alicia is distracted picturing Stacy and Mac fucking in their van -- Mac moving Stacy around his body like a terrycloth towel sometimes saying Score in his deep voice. Whereas Alicia waits for Fred to clamp on her mosquito-like and finish without even grunting, because she tests herself with pain thresholds like the burn and drip from cocaine, because Fred is the biggest pariah. Afterwards, Fred and Alicia work on the problems of relating Chanbara to the real world. They consider the white trash, city council dullards, and suburb-building parvenus of their hometown -- do these people have a Wisdom score? Honor points? Alignment to Order or Chaos? Can they be guided by Ancestors? With words and numbers Fred and Alicia erect a blueprint city in the dark, Fred slowing and loving his words like the Asian DJ on the jazz station from Sacramento. Are there kami in Redville? Fred asks Alicia if Yomihana can feel the kami here in Redville. I can feel Bisky's spirit behind the campfire, for real, Alicia whispers. They listen to trucks cross the horizon on the distant freeway. In a dream, Fred saw Yomihana or at least a woman in a black cowl drifting through the ValleyLife Mall. Alicia too has dreamed about that mall and so have Deirdre, Zack, and their neighbor. Fred and Alicia think maybe ValleyLife is haunted at night by dreaming consumers. They agree to meet there tonight in their dream kami selves. We can take anything we want from the dream store, Fred says, Do anything we want, whatever to whoever.

Pre-dawn Fred and Alicia are awakened by the noises from Mac's van, which bounces on its springs as ragged growls fly out. Alicia searches for words in the long eruption of noise that Fred identifies as upholstery being ripped. Is Stacy okay? Alicia asks. I'm not going out there, Fred says. There is a loud thump followed by silence. Alicia falls asleep picturing what might be happening to Stacy, unable to raise her own aching shoulders from the backseat.

Alicia staggers out of the Honda into a bright sky. She looks at the line of walnut trees on the horizon and thinks Sorry about the car, mom. Fred is poking around the debris left by the van, which is gone. He shows Alicia a pile of foam rubber chunks, some partly burned into caramel but mostly ordinary. I saw you in a crowd in the mall in a dream, Fred tells her, That's all I remember. I saw you too, Alicia says -- but she's thinking No I didn't, sorry. I don't know what I saw. The chemical toilet at the rest stop has no roof, just a blue rectangle over Alicia's head. On the way back to the car Alicia is stunned recalling images from her dream as if they poured back through that rectangle of sky. She saw Biscuit in the ValleyLife Mall. She followed him down an escalator with a guard yelling at her, into a department store, through clothes racks that Biscuit could crawl under. She lost him near an employees-only door so she entered it, climbing empty flights of stairs into what she calls the control room. Here there were banks of television monitors staffed by men and mostly women in their thirties who looked like art teachers with their longish hair, colorful scarves, suede boots resting on their desks, their swivel chairs tilted back. She asked if they were the military, or NASA, or what, and the woman who answered removed her feet from the desk and grew serious.

Alicia shades her eyes and looks directly at Fred. This woman said there's a plague, Fred, she said evacuate. Don't waste a minute. Get in your car and just drive. Fred smiles. He and Alicia draw their invisible swords and get in the car.