Thank you to (Ai) Mr. C for voicing my attempt at a modern Traveler's Tale (the kind Chaucer wrote). The rhyme scheme is 10-syllable couplets, and the story is both timeless and strange. Audio borrowed from Josef P. The Dark Father’s Tale Our story in many ways is timeless But also out-of-time, mysterious. A quest of sorts ‘cross place & dimension Of wants (not needs) beyond comprehension. Reroutings, misdirections, lost bearings; Enemies, allies, spooks, & red herrings. A supernatural Battle of Wits: The hunt for (and choice between) coord’nates. Strange-but-true to flesh & blood, ears & eyes, Our tale resumes with a double-surprise:  Arriving in a gas-station phone booth Our hero.  Expelled from his search for truth,  Sent through the wire of a trickster’s phone. Abandoned, alone, and then, not alone. A dark son and darker father unite Under black moon, near a staircase of night. A dark reunion, this black reception Black as that child’s curséd conception. Here, outside this store of (in)convenience, A stick-up, a hold-up with no defense – The pursuer pursued; a hand and gun, A father tracked down by his misfit son. And yet, this gun-to-head’s a stroke of luck: The assailant’s dispatched, thrown in a truck. No longer alone, passenger in tow Our hero now goes where he needs to go. The night black as the pit from pitch to pitch  He parks the truck near a gravely ditch Where the father trades a riddle’s reply  For a device aimed at a target high. The son, unlike the father who lumbered,  Climbs unencumbered toward digits numbered. The dark father watched (his own fate would wait) And listened to his son investigate. On this holy hill, a new mystery: The good fortune of youth-complicity. A marriage of synchronicity Of flesh of blood of electricity – “I’m there!” said the son; coordinates matched; Then he, not father, was brightly dispatched. Trapped, zapped, snapped-up in full ocular view Before your eyes and binoculars too.  The cow jumped over the moon: Switcheroo~ Those numbers were rotten, and Richard too. “Oh,” said father, with a turn of his heel, His work not done, climbed behind the wheel. Another path ruled out, a course outrun Calmly and cold said I: “Goodbye, my son.”