The Josef K. Stories

Metapost: Ultrashorts

2012-01-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

Hello, all. I'm trying to work on being more economical with my words, so I've given myself a homework assignment. I'm writing a series of ultrashorts, 140 characters or less, on Twitter, of course. They're not likely to be good, but the challenge is rewarding.

Try it with me, I'd love to see your short stories, and I'll post some here.

"When it returned the 3rd night, it no longer seemed content to shriek and stare through empty sockets. It wanted something. Something alive."

"When the sun failed to come up one autumn morning, we burned coal, wood, and our money. By winter, we were burning each other."

"When the fire died down, and the wreckage of the crash could be sifted through, nothing made sense, least of all the dozen extra skulls."

"We shared our last breath, back and forth, until it burned our lungs. The rising pressure of the black water played a steady funeral rhythm."

"She looked at me with those eyes, those bloodshot eyes, and I knew this was no longer the woman I loved. She was dead to me." - Chris Vaughn, of Terror Tortellini

"The breathing was all we heard. But when it ceased there was nothing I wanted to hear more. Until it was right behind me." - Cameron Bell, @XxCanNibalCamxX

(if you object to me posting your shorts here, drop me an email, and I'll remove them)

Work by the author is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. All other work is wholly owned by the listed creators.

East

2012-01-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

This story is a smoker's morning cough after a long night, a wet clearing of the lungs of something foul and clotted before you start to breath again. It's been sitting half done for almost a half a year (what an awful, wonderful, strange year), and it required the jabbing push of an arbitrary deadline to finish.

It's a mess, somehow too long and too short, and with flailing untied strands of theme and imagery. The prose is jagged and clunky in a way I'm not even sure how to address at this point. The essential idea is something that came to me long ago (while listening to Florence + the Machine, specifically the lyric "You can't carry it with you if you want to survive") and the essential unreality of the central idea can't easily mesh with the detailed plotting of a physical course through space I wanted to chart, naming every town and road... It's a disaster. But it simply is, by god. And it felt good to spit this up, so I can breath again, and look forward.

The next one will be cleaner, but in the meantime, happy new year, and it's good to be here. Feedback, as always, is welcome and appreciated. I probably won't do much more than clean up the egregious gramatical errors, but I'd love to be taken to task on what falls short, in order to scrape off the year's rust.

It's been a long time since I've seen the Storm.

It's always been there, behind us, whispering through the shuddering ground. A background roar behind the wind. We'd been ahead for so long, moving slightly faster than its clockwork crawl. Until the mountains. Then, as we ground ourselves upward against these slopes, we heard it rumbling closer, a rising quake in the earth. But it's been a while since I turned around and actually saw it. Sitting here on the side of the mountain, in the frigid morning, it fills my vision and stings my eyes with the monstrous unreality of it.

It rises like an unbroken wall into the sky, obscured only by the limits of my sight, fading into the clear blue, and stretching away north and south, curving away with the earth. The sunlight doesn’t seem to touch it. Nothing does. At the ground, where the churning wall of sickly blue lightning and black clouds grinds across the earth, I can see the Unmaking. The lower peaks, already shaking apart, burst and ablate away at the event horizon of the Storm. The land dips before the onslaught, as if shying away from the kiss of the boiling wall. I can feel the violence beneath my feet as millions of tons of ancient mountain falls away into its infinite maw.

It's going to be on me in a few hours. I wonder if I'll die when the peak caves away, crushed in a free-fall of slate and stone, or whether I'll be alive when the Storm touches me, shredded and atomized, erased and Unmade. I wonder, again, what it might feel like.

Metapost: Very Soon Now

2011-12-14T12:05:00.001-08:00

EDIT: Tonight, by my reckoning of time. Sometime before I sleep around 3am. I reserve the right to make small edits in the cold daylight.It's been too long. I'm going to press through the fog to finish a piece I'm not terribly fond of, but it will be posted very soon.Sorry for the long quiet, but it's been for good reasons. For me, anyway.

Metapost: Progress and Prologues

2010-10-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

The novel is progressing much quicker in my head, and much slower on the page than I had hoped. It's densely complex, frighteningly so, but I'm keeping notes. I have no shorts planned at the moment, my excitement with the world at hand is too great. Apologies for a lack of updates, but I thought I'd share this with you, the prologue, as it stands, for "This Side of the Blue".

The meteorite is the source of the light

And the meteor's just what we see

And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid

of the fire that propelled it to thee

- Joanna Newsom, Emily

The falling star carved a burning scar across the night sky. On the open plain below, a dozen eyes tracked the hot red trail from east to west, watching small flakes of fire peel away from the heart of the meteor. The glow lit their smooth faces, and as the ember at the center cooled and vanished, they turned back to the cook fire, chattering to one another in excitement. Some were old enough to remember the winter of shooting stars, when streaks of fire crossed the sky with a steady, mystic rhythm. They told stories, sung in complex harmonies, and laughed beneath the quiet sky.

A distant rumble rolled across the grassland from the west, and they craned long and elegant necks, waiting in silence for something more. But the only sound was the wind, hissing through the waving stalks of golden grass, and they soon returned to the old songs.

Part I: The Garden and the Graveyard

....

Hope the weekend finds you all well, and thanks, as always, for reading.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

The Blues

2010-09-06T02:53:00.000-07:00

The first wave hits me as I stand on the old bridge, looking down into the green and still waters. It’s like an army of fingertips, starting in my scalp and tracing down my skin and I shudder involuntarily. Familiar fog takes shape in my mind, a cotton candy spiderweb, snaring thoughts and vibrating in time with the wind through the trees. In the distance I can hear King hollering, followed by the tinkling sounds of shattered glass, and then Leif’s laughter.

I shut them out, make my world the rusting footbridge, the warm air, and the dark water below. An untouched bubble of space that I alone inhabit. On the worn concrete abutment beneath me, someone has scrawled in white paint the words LOOK UP, and I do so, without thinking, the command bypassing conscious thought. The sky is perfectly blue, cerulean above me and cornflower in the distance. I tumble the words through my hands, adding to them: azure, cobalt, bondi, indigo, ultramarine. The blues merge and swirl, dripping through my hands leaving long streaming trails of letters.

I shake my head and laugh loud, listening to the sound travel on the warm breeze. Happy. For the first time in many months, I am free, in control. My life is my own again.

“Rog! Roger!”

I try to ignore the voice, but I know Alex is already walking down the bridge toward me. The brief surge of freedom is already starting to fade. I try to hold tight to the moment, leaning out and surveying the debris choked creek beneath. What I had taken for a filthy styrofoam beer cooler catches my eye, and I look closer and see a green and mossy haunch. A rotting human thigh, the remaining skin greenish white, the rest of the body vanishing into the algae choked water.

Metapost: Continued Cool

2010-06-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Two more marvelous illustrations from "One", by Christian Frederiksen. Check out the rest of his website for some amazing work. In the past few days, I've completed the outline for the novel I'm planning on finishing this year; I'll also be completing the two short pieces I've been working on, so expect to see one within the next two weeks.

Metapost: Something Very Cool.

2010-05-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

Through a recent collaborative project, I had the fortune of meeting Christian Frederiksen, an extremely talented artist.

Christian has been working on a series of images to accompany the first half of my story, One, and I am more than thrilled with the results. Below are some low res versions of the images, which I've also threaded into the original story. You can see the higher res versions, along with many other excellent images in a wide variety of styles at his sketchblog.

What amazes me is how close these matched the images in my head when I was writing, down to a few uncanny details. I can't wait to see the images from the second half.

Shiva

2010-05-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

This is a story I've been thinking about for almost half a year, and it took that long to work it out onto the page. It's a self indulgent, sentimental conversation with myself, a story about stories, and one with very little narrative structure beyond the obvious formal shape. I'm curious to see what people think, because more than any other piece I've written, this was for me. If it's not to your liking, fear not, there are another two stories on the way, more traditional horror stories in tone, if not structure.

Less of a soundtrack, and more of a writing playlist. Music influences what I write, and this is what I was listening to at the time.

My mother is crying so loud that at first I can’t make out what she’s saying, her voice made tinny and small in the phone. Finally I pick his name from the sine wave of her wailing, and I know my brother Lev is dead. My guts constrict, wrapping into a knot, and I feel the air rush out of me, and then I am no longer quite standing. I let her go on for a while as I struggle to control my breathing, eyes tilted skyward to stem the tears, back pressed to the cool cracked plastic of the refrigerator. When she’s out of breath I hear my father, his low baritone cracked with hurt, muttering, to me or my mother or both. After a while I start to hear his words, hear ‘shiva’, and my guts twist again, counterclockwise this time. He is talking to me.

They want me to come home.

1

I land just in time for the funeral, crossing the continent in a few bleary eyed hours, and I arrive at the cemetery still wearing the sweaty reek of the plane’s cabin on my clothes. The coffin is almost into the ground before I can fully grasp what it means. That this is my brother’s body, and that he is dead, and this is forever. I’m still mulling this over, spinning it in my head like a smooth stone, when we arrive at the home we grew up in. I place my bags onto a familiar bed that looks smaller than it should, and then I return to the ground floor where I shake hands, and nod politely to a swirling fog of strange and aged faces from my childhood.

I answer the same questions over and over again, my job, my life, the past 20 years. There’s a rhythm to the answers I soon nail, and then I no longer have to think about the responses. The faces drift away with the daylight, and when the house is dark and empty, everything sharpens and solidifies. Every where I twist my eyes, something triggers a tiny explosion of images and memories. A dented baseboard. Dull silver on a salt shaker.

My mother and father sit, side by side in plastic folding chairs across from the couch, hands clasped and eyes tilted downward. For a moment I think about helping them to the couch, to some relative physical comfort. The moment passes. I sit down in my father’s overstuffed recliner, and try to keep my head above the flood of little memories.

There’s something odd about the light, I think, as the edges of my vision grow dim. I look to my mother, see the light shining painfully off the chrome trim of her glasses, see the dark hollows of her eyes go almost black. The contrast sharpens, and the uncanny change in the light becomes too painful to look at, to even think about. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. I shake my head, and look back to the flat neutral tones of the embroidered couch.

My brother is there. Dressed in funereal black, his hair long and wild. He is staring at me and beneath his uneven beard his mouth is moving, but no sound escapes, not even the sibilant pops and clicks of lips and teeth. No breath. I struggle not to pass out, hold my neck rigid, and stare.

Metapost: Idea Juggling

2010-05-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

The pair of stories I have been working on has blossomed into a trio, and my interest currently bounces between them. The first story would fit into the Zero, One, and Before storyline, the second is a ghost story (of sorts) about opposing world views, and the third is a bit of an experiment: a stab at metafiction in the style of a wiki article.

I'll have one of them ready by Sunday night, Monday at the latest, and the others should soon follow.

As always, thank you for your encouragement.

The Watcher

2010-03-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

This is as rough a draft as you'll ever see here, and currently far too long, but it's a complete first pass. Thanks to those of you that got me working again, by simply asking where the hell I was. It helped. Really. I forced myself to strip certain modern words, and it was a voyage of discovery to see how many word come from simply metallic backgrounds; wiry, vice grip, iron willed, steely, etc. Because of these peculiar obstructions, there's a feel to the narration I don't quite like yet. But there will be time to fix it later.

This is an idea I had started and abandoned a couple of time previously. It came to me, more or less in the same basic form as it is now, almost complete, including character names, upon hearing a particular piece of music.

Here's that particular album, I present it to you as a soundtrack of sorts.

Enjoy, and go easy on the grammar. It's late, and I am exhausted.

When the first sliver of the sun cracks the sky above the valley, the wet grass begins to steam. The vibrating hum of insects builds slowly as morning erodes the fore dawn silence. Birds beat at the quiet with shrill cries. Gul holds himself perfectly still, crouched behind a fallen log just inside the boundary between the forest and the valley floor. The sun does little to dissipate the bone deep chill that has soaked into him in this long stretch of stillness. His legs creak and burn as he gently shifts his weight to his left side, and then the right, counting to ten in his head to slow his movements. His eyes flicker across the grassy meadow, split down the center with the little brook, and the cluster of stout wood and earth huts, to the ringing edge of the forest, never straying for more than a few moments from the black thicket at the southern edge.

Gul can see now that the fog that rises from the dew choked grass does not seem any thicker around the places where the corpses lie. He can guess that they have been cold for several hours now. He saw them first in moonlight, pale limbs reaching with clawed fingers for the sky, spread wildly across the valley floor, the grass smeared dark with blood. The wet leaves beneath them now glint red in the sunlight, and he can guess that they they were killed sometime early in the night.

This should still his racing heart, but as his eyes return to the cold black spot in the southern woods, he finds he still struggles to keep his breath steady. The callouses on his hand rasp slightly across the haft of the spear as he curls his fingers.

Metapost: Still Here.

2010-02-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: So, it's almost midnight, and the end is in sight. Tonight, but not quite yet. 2am? 3? We shall see.

Procrastinating and dreaming, but suddenly quite motivated again.

I'll have a new first draft, "The Watcher", up by Feb 28th at midnight. I promise, Manie and Alyx.

"Shiva" turned into a little more than I could bite off for the holidays, but I'll finish it in March. From there to an unnamed weird science fiction story I've had knocking around my head for a while, but I need to confer with the braintrust when it comes to matters of biology and neurology.

Oh, and welcome, new readers and goons. I hope you find something worth returning for.

Roadwork

2009-11-29T16:38:00.001-08:00

When Conner arrived at the gas station, he exited the car with a speed that surprised even him. He took a few quick steps, almost at a run, before turning back towards the car. Under the garish sodium lights of the service station, the little blue sedan looked a sickly greenish gray. It looked squat and malign in its stillness. The little throbbing headache at the base of his skull seemed to diminish with every step and he began to catch his breath.

He took the phone from his pocket and raised it high into the night sky, waving it from side to side like a signal flag. Nothing. The signal meter defied him by remaining empty. Not even a flashing roaming message. Conner scowled at the little phone and thrust it back into his pocket.

He glanced around at the station, two solitary pumps and a closed convenience market. An isolated island of pale yellow light in the dark of the North Carolina forest, the silhouettes of the trees bit sharply into the starry night sky, surrounding him like a ring of teeth. The grating hum of electricity mingled with the crackling of insects from the woods beyond, drifting in the warm summer night air.

Jutting from the side of the shuttered market was a scraped and listing pay phone, its metal stalk visibly bent from some long ago impact. Conner approached it, digging a quarter from his pocket, and gripping the scarred plastic handset. For a moment, nothing happened, and the sense of isolation deepened, like the ground being pulled out from under him, and the panic returned. A series of quick clicks bit into his ear and the dial tone chimed. His fingers felt numb as he dialed.

Even at a few hours past midnight, Reynolds answered on the first ring.

Read more »

Metapost: Let's be honest for a moment...

2009-11-22T17:22:00.001-08:00

The mundane world intervenes, far more than we'd all like.

Work and life have been fruitful, but aggressive and needy, and I haven't been able to write lately. But, after a long, nighttime drive through a remote forest, listening to an excellent podcast (Radiolab - Afterlife), I'm brimming with the need again. When the need is great, it carves out time for itself.

The piece I've been readying, "The Watcher", is swelling to novella length, and I'm setting it aside for the moment to chase the thrill of finishing something.

I'll have a new story up by the end of next weekend, "Roadwork", a very simple little piece more like the stories I used to write on a weekly schedule. Finally, before the end of the year, I'll have a nebulous and... self indulgent meditation on death and mortality, called "Shiva".

I'm setting out this schedule not only as a promise, but as a threat to myself, a backup copy of obligations. Deadlines are the best friend art ever had.

See you soon.

Metapost: Soon... but not as soon as I'd hoped

2009-10-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

My apologies, but the chance to help design and work in a haunted house tonight was not something I could pass up.

I'll be posting at least a portion of the new story tomorrow.

Happy Halloween.

One

2009-09-07T23:53:00.000-07:00

Hello again. Here is, at last, for better or for worse, my first draft of "One", a story I've been writing intermittently for the last five months. This may be the roughest draft I've posted yet. At one time, when this story was plotted out in my head, it ended with a rather banal revenge-murder plot, involving deus ex machina villains that existed for no other reason that to be unlikeable fodder. The story surprised me by refusing this ending, instead asking for something else. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if the story is over here, but I know it won't return to the wild west pastiche I'd originally imagined. For right now, I like where it ends, and what it portends. But I may hate it tomorrow. We shall see.

"One" is a little long in the tooth, and suffers from some disconnections and irregularites that stem from its long gestation and unpredictable plotting. I tried to clean some of the internal consistincies, but if you catch a flaw in continuity, please let me know. I try not to depend on you for editing of this sort, but let's be honest; you are better at it than I am.

Although it shouldn't be necessary to understand "One", this story is preceded by "Zero" and is followed, although some decades later, by "Before". Illustrations by and property of Christian Frederikson, used with his permission.

In the night, with only dim starlight holding back the true dark, I am alone. The day’s business is done, the traps checked and reset, water collected from the evaporation pits, the perimeter alarms set. My body uncoils, the thick ropes of aching muscles unspooling, as I lay in the filthy sleeping bag. The once springy down filling is clotted with a foul smelling dampness, bunching into greasy clumps and knots. By winter I will need to strip the filling, and find something to replace it, but it will not pack down as light. By winter, I might be able to venture back into a city, and find a sporting good store. By winter, this might be all over, or I may be dead.

I drift away, the pinpricked night differing very little from the haze of sleep. When I awake and shake the gossamer film from my consciousness, I become aware of the passage of time. The spine of silken light behind the stars, the heart of the galaxy that I have become re-accustomed with in the past month, has twisted across a quarter of the sky. Small coiling tendrils of fog are coursing up the sides of the mountain, like the rising of some vaporous ocean. And behind the wet and living thrum of the brush, behind the shudder and shiver of the breeze, I hear the clank of glass and tin cans.

The alarms.

Metapost: Upon Returning

2009-08-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings, all.

My apologies for the late hour, but real life conspires against my efforts to finish a long overdue draft of "One". It is nearing its end, and hopefully before the end of the month, I will post a completed first draft.

"One" is proving troublesome, as I've been working at it on and, mostly off, for the last six months. I find the more I plan something out in advance, the easier it is to procrastinate on actually following through on it. The excitement, for me, is seeing where an idea will go once I set it free, and if I already know, well... it becomes difficult. The problem is, I know exactly where "One" goes, and although I like it, it feels stale now.

Looking forward, I've just returned from Germany, whose Gothic cathedrals, castles, and river-towns are responsible for a trio of new or reignited ideas that I'll begin as soon as this latest story is completed. One set in the present, one set during the aftermath of the second world war, and one set before recorded history. It's this last and oldest idea I am most excited about; expect to see it completed first, before September ends.

On the publishing front, I've started to receive my first rejection letters from a variety of publications. As per authorial tradition, these letters now hang on my wall, and for every one I receive, I submit two more stories. I will of course share with you if a story is accepted for publication.

Thank you for your patience, and I promise, you will not have to wait much longer.

Regret To Inform

2009-07-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

Over the past two weeks, I've gone from loving this piece to hating it and back again a number of times. It clocks in longer than the others and comes from a small idea (the coffee table scene) I had months ago but never wanted to try. It's different from my other stories in a number of ways, and I wanted to finish both as an exercise, and because I still find the core idea to be compelling. I am still foggy on my final verdict, but that likely has more to do with the time of night I find myself in. Please excuse the innumerable grammatical errors, and as always, let me know what you really think.

Enjoy.

The night before I lost her, my wife and I fought about something I cannot remember. I remember the yelling, the sweat on her brow as she spat sharp words, I remember the welling frustration inside as I tried to remain calm, until I snapped, and began to fight back, only resisting for the sake of resisting. I remember the uneasy stubborn silence as we prepared for bed, opening all the upstairs windows, pulling all but the last sheet from the bed. I remember the heat of the night, cruelly unfaltering even into the small hours. I remember wanting so badly to touch her in the dark, to begin that small reconciliation, and I remember Linda pushing me away, gently. The argument was forgotten, I have to believe, and it was only the heat that kept us apart, that pushed me away.

She was gone when I awoke, the sun already hanging, bloated in the white and opalescent sky. She had taken the car, gone to work, leaving me a small pot of oatmeal simmering on the electric stove. Next to it, on the marble countertop was a glass of orange juice and a little yellow post-it, cheery and bright, with a quick pencil sketched heart, and a single word: ‘Sorry.’ Like that, the unrest was gone, and I remembered how in love we were.

I spent the day avoiding my contracts and my studio entirely, and instead began to clean and dust the house, running a series of damp cloths over every flat surface. My allergies were already flaring as the early summer heat coaxed a thousand weeds and flowers to disgorge a miasma of pollen into the air, drifting in through every loose fitting window pane. No matter how hard the anemic air conditioner chugged, the heat never dissipated, and my sinuses flared in the thick dusty air.

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Something New... - Metapost

2009-07-07T19:26:00.001-07:00

Hello, all.

I'll be posting one of two new stories within a week, and the second shortly after. One will be the rest of the fragment I posted in March, and the other is something slightly different than usual. It all depends on what I feel like finishing first.

It's been far too long, and I hope this latest flurry of ideas and inspiration brings about a more regular schedule of updates.

I've missed you.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE 7/14: So close... I bet on the wrong horse, so my least favorite of the two will be done first. Any moment now.

Mapping the Crooked Places

2009-05-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

I wrote this in the last two days, feverishly, once the little seed of the story came to me. This is of course, unedited and rough, a first draft. But be warned, its quite long, and... odd. There is a strong influence on display, perhaps a few, and more than usual. It just happened that way, and I didn't want to hide it in this first draft. At any rate, enjoy. Feedback and criticism is always welcome and wanted.

When I was young, I drifted on the wind of my whims, allowing them to take me, rootless, like an airborne seed. I was in love, not with any of my fellow man, but with being a citizen of the places men gather. Fueled by this love, and an inexhaustible supply of money, the legacy of my parent’s deaths, I put down temporary and gossamer roots into a dozen places across the City, staying only long enough to satisfy my curious lusts before again taking to the breeze.

The City is a collection of villages, bound together like organs and cells in a body, possessed and afflicted with all the abilities and fragility of a living being. The vascular and nervous system of roads and wires brings us, each a little nerve impulse and blood cell, from organ to organ, and through the pale and textureless connective tissue between. Together the City is a whole, a single life dependent on its constituents. When I lived in the shadows of the medical college, drinking quietly and alone in bars filled with sleep deprived and wild eyed doctors-to-be, I saw the city this way, and it could have been no other.

When I set myself free from the drafty Cole Valley flat and drifted into a studio loft in the Mission, I saw that the City was a battleground: isolated camps of combatants brought together by common ideals, surrounded by the blasted, rotting demilitarized zones of cultural vacancy. Under the blazing bonfires at the heart of each district flutter the flags of identity, declaring the allegiances of its inhabitants. The enemy is raised in effigy nightly, crackling and writhing in the flames. You know who you are in those places, by your uniform and badges, by your declarations of war; and the traveller learns who he is not.

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Metapost 3: An Explanation, An Excerpt

2009-03-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

Greetings.

A few of you have inquired as to my whereabouts, and I apologize for the long silence, but I’ve been working on a pair of longer stories. One (tentatively titled... ‘One’) will be ready for you to see shortly, the other will be a long term investment. I hesitate to say ‘novel’ at this point, but it’s certainly stretching on that direction; the working title is Echoes, that’s a good enough moniker for the moment.

I’ve also spent some time editing and submitting several stories for publication in various markets, but my knowledge of the genre fiction markets is severely lacking. If any of you fine folk have any suggestions, I would be more than grateful.

Furthermore, in editing, I have found that the combined feedback from you all has been invaluable in the refining and polishing process, and for that, I am grateful beyond measure.

Thank you for reading, thank you for criticizing, and thank you for keeping me honest.

The first draft of One will be up within a few weeks, and I may share a chapter or two of Echoes as it progresses. My hope is to return to writing shorter pieces more often, but the next couple of months are proving to be complicated to say the least. But for the present, here’s a very brief segment of 'One', a little tinder to keep the fire burning.

('One' is, at the moment, an informal bridge between 'Zero' and 'Before'. I've tried not to call attention to it, but I've always believed that many of my stories have had tenuous links, or could be said to occur in the same world or worlds. There is a loose mythology to some of them, simple and nascent at the moment, but the connections have always existed in my head... I'm not sure if that brings something more to the table, or whether it's simply a lazy writing trick, so I've been hesitant to make it any more of it than necessary, preferring to let ambiguity, and not affectation, be the connecting tissue.)

One (An Excerpt)

In the night, with only dim starlight holding back the true dark, I am alone. The day’s business is done, the traps checked and reset, water collected from the evaporation pits, the perimeter alarms set. My body uncoils, the thick ropes of aching muscles unspooling as I lay in the filthy sleeping bag. The once springy down filling is clotted with a foul smelling damp, bunching into greasy clumps and knots. By next winter I will need to strip the filling, and find something to replace it, but it will not pack down as light. By next winter, I might be able to venture back into a city, and find a sporting good store. By next winter, this might be all over, or I may be dead.

I drift away, the pinpricked night differing very little from the haze of sleep. When I awake and shake the gossamer film from my consciousness, I become aware of the passage of time. The spine of silken light behind the stars, the heart of the galaxy that I have become re-accustomed with in the past month, has twisted across a quarter the sky. Small coiling tendrils of fog are coursing up the sides of the mountain, like the rising of some vaporous ocean. And behind the wet and living thrum of the brush, behind the shudder and shiver of the breeze, I hear the clank of glass and tin cans.

The alarms.

These stories are under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license

The Gift

2009-01-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

A little scrap of a first draft.
I'm focusing on a longer project at the moment, but I'll post a new short at least once a month.

Underneath the old stone bridge, in the early summer heat, I first met my friend. I’d come to this spot beneath the bridge for as long as I could remember, following the small creek in our backyard down through the farmer’s fields, and behind the roaring freeway. Beneath the bridge the dirt was still cool, even in the hottest noonday sun. I’d come to the bridge to think, to play, to cry, and to dig my pale chubby fingers into the blessed cool soil, digging deep depressions in the damp earth.

The creek trickled by, but my father had told me never to go in the water; it had a thin scum on the top that reflected the light in an odd, shimmering way, like the shell of a beetle. I’d disobeyed him once when I was younger and the rash that boiled up on my legs had scabbed and bled for a week. Now, I was content to sit among the pale and drying reeds and hold tight to that primal cold in that place where the sun couldn’t reach.

On the day he was first there, the cottonwood trees were shedding their seeds, bright white silken clouds that drifted in the air like snow that somehow defied the sun. The air was thick with heat and exhaust from the freeway, buzzing over the rise like an angry hive. He was stretched out on the other side of the creek, his body half covered by the shadow of the old stone bridge. At first, I saw only a pile of ragged clothes, capped with a wide-brimmed and frayed hat, but then I saw the long, bony fingers steepled across his chest, and his calloused and blackened feet.

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Metapost 2: A Change of Format, Ephemera and Apocrypha

2009-01-04T19:29:00.000-08:00

Greetings, everyone.

First, the news. I've decided, in the new year, to make a slight change to my writing habits. I'll be spending my writing time editing my previous shorts and beginning to plot out a few long-form tales. As such, I'll be posting a new short exercise/story just once a month, on or before the last Sunday of each month. I hope you'll all keep checking back in, and I will probably post fragments or chapters of some of the longer works without warning.

Thank you again for reading these exercises, and for passing it on to your friends (or enemies). A special thanks to those who've been commenting and giving me feedback, especially the negative feedback. You continue to keep me honest.

To keep the tap on, I'm sharing with you two oddities that I wrote before I began the weekly story project.

First, is a rewritten and rephrased version of the very first horror story I wrote, "The Hole in the Wall." While I like certain elements of it, including a just slightly tweaked climax that adds some extra menace to the proceedings, much of it, including an mid-story verb tense change, falls flat. I wrote this right after I finished "Up", very early in my evolution, and it shows. I haven't touched it since I began writing in earnest.

But, I thought it might prove of interest.

Secondly, is a mere fragment, the beginning of something longer that I may or may not revisit. It began as an idea for a screenplay that I began to write out in prose, but I've not gone back to the idea. I haven't looked at it since I wrote it around the same time as the second draft of "The Hole in the Wall", and again, I can't think of a better place to air it out.

Enjoy.

The Hole in the Wall (Revised)

It’s been 12 days since I saw the apartment last, but there are echoes of it in everywhere, here in my temporary home. Light streaming through window will remind me of the bright, spacious living room. The squeak of the floorboards recalls the creaking first step in the hallway. The smell of cracked drywall sets my teeth on edge.

I’ve severed all ties with the apartment; all my possessions are in storage or stacked in sagging boxes here in Leif’s squalid garage. I went through the vague motions of filing the police report, and leaving an explanatory message on my landlady’s machine. I’ve done all the right and proper things, so there seems little left to do but share the why, before I move out of the City, and every city, for good.

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No Man's Land

2008-12-30T16:57:00.000-08:00

Had quite a bit of trouble with this, despite a lot of extra time budgeted for writing,
Procrastinated, and couldn't seem to to get terribly excited about it.
Which is a shame, because I think that disinterest shows, even thought I like the idea.
Playlist of some period (and not so period) music.

Unteroffizier Erich Lang awakes long after the dawn to the distant sound of artillery. The gunmetal sky ripples with threatening black clouds, and the dusty smell of rain hangs in the chill air. He is slumped back against the earthen wall, his left arm crooked and folded behind him. It comes awake in a flare of pinpricks and fire, and he winces as he works it free and shakes. His slender frame is wrapped in his thick woolen coat, sodden and heavy with mud, and he feels cold water seeping in through his threadbare trousers. Besides the upturned helmet lying in the mud a few yards away, he is alone in narrow trench.

He pulls his long legs toward his body and stands, feeling the cold air glide through the shifting folds of his clothes. The coat tugs at him as he stands, weighted down with filth. There is water in his boots, running down his legs as he stands to soak through the layered socks that protected the last bit warmth and dryness. He scowls at the mud and the sky, and they are unmoved.

He winces against the sudden pain in his head and chest as he tries to sort out the jumble of memories and awakening thoughts. He wonders idly what day it is, but he cannot recall the chaplain’s last sermon, the only landmark he has to mark the progress of the days. He tries to remember the night before, or at least some small hint of how he’d ended here, soaking up rainwater in the trench. The preceding days are a monotone fog, a jumble of images and impressions of mud soaked boredom and terror.

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Metapost: Mea Culpa

2008-12-29T00:53:00.003-08:00

Update: Not yet. Sorry. Holidays and all that. Soon, I promise.

Not tonight. It's not ready yet.

Tomorrow, for certain.

In the meantime, some great art from a reader, based on Quiet.

Special

2008-12-21T20:43:00.000-08:00

Something short and different tonight.
This is what a bad idea taken to fruition looks like.
Happy Holidays.

I awake, as always, to the click and whir of a thousand hidden cameras, and the rising glow of the ambient lights. Over the next 30 minutes, the curtains on my bedroom will slowly part, gliding on mechanized tracks, and the yellow sunlight of dawn will stream into the wide circular room. Like all mornings, I entertain for the briefest moments the thought of hurling myself at the windows and plunging the half mile to the ground. I hold on to the little fantasy of wind and sky and falling for as long as it will remain, dreaming of those magnificent moments of freedom and choice.

Even if I were not a coward, there are a thousand unseen barriers and safe guards. I can not see them, but several parents are doubtlessly just outside the door, and would be between me and the window before I could leave the bed. I allow the dream of freedom to evaporate for another morning.

The woman next to me, I can not recall her name, shifts and rolls to embrace me. I wrap my arms around her and return the affection, but there is no love in it. She is young and soft, skin still stretched taut over her athletic and perfect frame. I know that in my youth I would have been buzzing with anticipation and lust simply seeing her, but now I can only take solace in the momentary ghost of affection and emotion. Her skin is warm, and her fine and downy body hair is smoother than the silk of the sheets. I draw an abstract of pleasure from this closeness, feeling something akin to happiness when our bellies synchronize in breathing, pressed close as they rise and fall in an alternating rhythm. Her breath is hot and damp on my chin and neck. It only takes me a few moments to tire of her, and I swing my legs to the edge of the bed.

The black marble of the walls and floor of my bedroom are heated to my exact preference, so I walk, naked, into the large bathroom. Like every morning, I try not to focus on the near-silent buzzing of small servos and motors as each of the cameras pivots to keep me in view at all time. They must be completely autonomous, but it amuses me to think of a thousand uniformed parents tediously tracking my every move, 16 hours a day. They would be madder than I by now.

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Sick, or The Algorithm

2008-12-15T00:45:00.000-08:00

Something a little more... slight, tonight. The holidays are beginning to eat away at writing time. I may not update as frequently for the next few weeks, or I may post more. We'll see how it goes.

Sometime during the third consecutive night spent huddled over the toilet, insides heaving and shuddering as I vomit forth seemingly everything I’d ever eaten, I realize what’s happening: He’s trying to poison me. It’s all so elegant, so perfect, and so clear, that I almost laugh, but another barrage of retching forces me into silence

The next morning I throw everything in the kitchen away, wrapping it three times in black plastic and burying it deep in the apartments communal trash cans, to prevent an unfortunate transient from crossfire of His wrath. I am out the door of the complex and halfway to the corner store when I realize: He knows, must know, where I would shop.

I pick a direction and walk, enjoying the chill winter air that soothes the ragged shreds of my inside. I turn at random intervals, following an improbable path out of my familiar neighborhood, until I find a small shop with an unfamiliar name. Once inside, I hurriedly fill a small plastic basket; brands that I never have eaten, strange tins of ethnic ingredients I can’t recognize, foods that I’d never thought of buying. Soy milk. Tofu. I can feel my stomach reborn in anticipation of an untainted meal.

I prepare the meal in a fog of nervous anticipation, trying to focus on savoring the aromas and the grease spitting sounds of the frying pan. It tastes clean, but then, so has every other meal before this. I try to tell myself that the mounting pain inside me is simple fear and anxiety, but before the stroke of midnight, I am again crouched in the dingy bathroom, surrendering the days work into the porcelain mouth of the sewer.

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Metapost

2008-12-10T11:20:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone.

Firstly, I wanted to thank you all for reading and giving feedback; this has certainly been my most fruitful writing experience, and having a small audience, I find, keeps me honest.

That said, I'm starting to go back and edit some of my previous stories, expanding them or cleaning them up, with the eventual goal of submitting them to one of the millions upon millions of increasingly lucrative short-horror-fiction markets. (Let me know if you know any...)

So, what I ask from you is this: If you've enjoyed these stories, or any one of them, please leave a comment on this post. Tell me your favorite story, or stories. Tell me which ones you think deserve to be polished and expanded upon. Tell me which ones, if any, you think are almost ready for submission, with only a scrub of grammar and spelling. Tell me which ones you hate, and why.

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Underground

2008-12-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

Need to start writing earlier. Need to sleep.
Music

Nadja doesn’t make it. I turn at the steps of the bunker and watch as the artillery shell lands on the shattered street between us. I hold our daughter and watch my wife smolder in the crater, deaf to the thudding concussions around us. Someone grabs Inna from my arms, thrusts cold gloved fingers in the neck of my jacket, and pulls me back into the black throat of the small shelter. I see my last glimpse of Leningrad’s cracked and wounded skyline, and then it goes black. The door slams shut, screeching steel and spinning locks clattering in rhythm with gun fire. I finally find the voice to scream Nadja’s name.

Inna is crying in the dark, cradled by the last of Svetlana’s daughters in the small entry way. I suddenly find I have no knees and I am on the floor with a hot choking hand around my throat. Boris and Grigory slide away from me in the darkness, I can hear them averting their gaze, necks scratching against thick coats as they twist away from me. I thrust my tears into my gullet and gag, retching and heaving up the thin watery remains of my last meal. Inna needs me, and I need strength.

The rosy cheeked boy that led our last charge, all ill fitting uniform and tilting helmet, doesn’t have the grace to leave me be, and puts one soft hand on my back. I shrug him off, and stumble to my feet. In the slowly seeping light of his oil lantern, I see his face and his fear, and I look away. He backs away from us, turning down the long dark featureless tunnel ahead. Turning back, he surveys the dozen survivors before him, shivering and broken. The short run from the grand ballroom has taken its toll on our weakened bodies. The last of the ratty birds in the hotel’s eaves had been caught a week ago; a chorus of hollow sunken eyes now stare back at the trembling child clutching a rifle.

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Dust

2008-12-01T01:27:00.000-08:00

Needs editing like I need sleep.
Playlist, for your listening pleasure.

The last storm was already on the horizon when I woke that sunday morning. It hung in the south, a solid black wall of dust, churning and seemingly motionless. I’d every intention of sleeping late into the morning, as had been my Sunday custom since Adele and the girls had left, but the distant rumbling and crackle of lightning drug me from the bed just after sunrise. I shuffled drowsily around the farm in the early morning, lashing the doors of the barn, rounding up the two stubborn hogs, and shuttering the windows; but soon I found myself rooted in place, captivated by the writhing shape in the sky. It stretched impossibly wide across the open sky, rolling across the border from Nebraska. The air had a dry, electric chill, and already the sickly yellow wheat swayed in anticipation.

I was in a trance, eyes locked on the distance when I saw a small light dust plume to the west, picked out in stark contrast with black beyond. The horse and rider at the base of the little dust devil approached the farm at a sharp trot, and my dust bleary eyes registered the silhouette. Carl Jordan had owned the farm next to mine for as along my family has been in the Dakotas, I grew up with his great booming laughter warming our home nearly every night. His usual broad, yellowing smile was absent beneath recently trimmed mustache and broad rimmed black hat; his dark suit was blotted with fine layer of grit that he brushed absently at.

“Eddie.” His voice was tired and small as he looked down at me. “No church today?”

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Zero

2008-11-23T19:12:00.000-08:00

No playlist this time, I wrote this all in one fast burst before I'd thought to put on music.
Istanbul, Turkey
August
09:12:09 AM

I am at a small outdoor cafe just a few hundred yards from the teeming throng of a morning market, just in sight of the Bosporus. I love this city, and all its thick and violent contradictions. The rising heat of the day is already causing the linen of my suit to cling to my legs.

I awoke last night with a change of heart; you are owed an explanation, and even a warning. If I do as I have planned, I and my actions will be vilified, and misunderstood. Please believe me, I am doing this for all the right reasons. You may not see it now, but in ten or twenty years, you will see a new world born. That is worth any sacrifice.

I have done my work here in Turkey, the first of many great cities to see, and I board a plane tomorrow. Don’t bother looking for me here.

Samarkand, Uzbekistan
September
05:04:20 AM

I am in one of the oldest settlements of mankind, and her majesty overwhelms me, just as her descent saddens me. Once the jewel of Alexander’s conquest, and the capital of Tamarlane’s empire, she has fallen into disrepair and goes fallow with neglect. I must confess knowing this already, but forgive my sense of romanticism; I did want to see this place, once.

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Collision

2008-11-16T20:27:00.000-08:00

My playlist while writing.

There are moments in your life, in every life, where you can look back at the small nodes of causality, those split second forks in which your course and path are fundamentally altered, sent careening in unanticipated or unforeseen directions. I prided myself, once, in being able to see these moments before they arrived, but the truth is, we hardly recognize we are at a crossroad until it has receded into the distance. You can spin the gears of your mind until they grind smooth, wondering what would happen, if only... If only you had refused the last drink, or took a cab instead... If only you had held your temper and your tongue... If only you had believed her... If only.

When I allow myself to drift down these avenues of doubt, I dream of being able to sleep through the night without waking in screams, without the sweat soaked sheets clinging to my shuddering body. I dream about looking on the deserts of my former home, and smelling the dry, warm earth without gagging and trembling like a lamb. If only.

When I arrived at my nexus, a literal crossroad on Indian Route 8064 in the high desert of Arizona, I had not an inkling that I was on the precipice. The sun was low in the horizon, fat and bloated red through the dusty air, and the heat of the day was only beginning to recede. Ahead of me was the long drive to Flagstaff through the great empty patches of the state. Long, long ago, I had taken to avoiding the highways and began taking the old roads, the crumbling delta of blacktop that go almost unused as they silently crisscross the desert. Each time, I would take a new fork, and allow the desert’s quiet purity envelop me as I traversed an unfamiliar path. It was like meditation, a way to wipe clean the slate of my worries: the rising debt, the disintegrating marriage, my mother’s rapidly metastasizing cancer. It was a place of simplicity and calm, earth and sky and quiet and emptiness. It was my paradise, the great panacea to my doubts and worries.

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Before

2008-11-11T02:22:00.000-08:00

Criminally unedited, this one is... a bit different, I think. Not sure what I think yet.
Here's my soundtrack I used while writing. May do this every week if people enjoy it.

The sun is high above me by the time I see the farm on the horizon, with its tattered yellow flag whipping in the hot breeze. The barn’s central roof beam is bowed, sagging gently in a way that feels warm and inviting, like the childhood ideal of a barn. There have been a half dozen farms along the last stretch of road, but none prominently displayed the signal flag, or showing any signs of habitation. It seems providence that I should come to this place, and I step of the highway onto a nearly overgrown gravel path.

I’ve been following Highway 37 all morning, a blacktop scar dividing the glass-still wetlands to the South and the fields and hills of wild golden grass to the North. I savor the quiet emptiness of Creation. Alone except for the elegant cranes above the water and the herds of deer grazing in the dry brush, I find long silent hours to reflect and meditate on the days passed, and the glorious days ahead. Beneath my feet the pavement is already growing warm, and the air begins to shimmer in the distance. There is a wet, earthy riot of smells, wet and earthy like fresh tilled soil and stagnant water. The whine and drone of insects is a warbling monotone symphony, unbroken save for the short cries of waterfowl.

The Vallejo Crater is far behind me now, hidden by a ridge of meek hills and the opalescent summer haze. Ahead, a little farmhouse comes into view from behind the barn, a leaning two room structure with pale yellow paint peeling in the sun. Again, I feel a comforting warmth and my grin widens at the charming innocence of the little home, and I try to imagine it without the thick wooden boards over the windows and doors.

On the porch, an elderly man in a stained white shirt stands up, slowly and stiffly as he wipes his hands on his jeans. He hoists and shoulders his rifle, bringing the sights into alignment with our eyes. I smile and wave.

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How This Ends

2008-11-08T18:34:00.001-08:00

This is not the weekly story, but instead something I wrote a year ago for a "No Longer Than 300 Words Science Fiction" competition, and it's interesting to me for several reasons. As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to use 9 words when one will do; my first draft of this piece was well over 600 words, and I spent many cycles of revisions and iterations to reduce the size so drastically. As a result, there is an economy to the language in this piece that I like very much, it's something that I have not been effectively able to repeat. Hell, look at the size of this introduction... at any rate, enjoy!

There were parties that night, but I elected to spend it alone, drinking and snorting the last of my priceless heroin on a wooded bluff overlooking the sea, capturing what quiet I could on my own terms and determined to meet the last day sober.

I woke, caked in vomit and pain as the sun arose, and trickled down to the beach, relishing the cool salt breeze on my chapped face. As I plunged my face into the water, I heard a tinny wail of joy, and turned in mute disbelief. A child raced down the beach, trailed by her mother. As public opinion had slid into open hatred of those who knowingly reproduced, births had become unheard of.

I swam in a wash of emotions: raw fury at manifest selfishness, an aching nameless joy, a thousand other twinges of head and heart. In the last decade, when it was clear that nothing could divert the comet’s path, the final gasps of propaganda’s engine had repeated this final message: Don’t Make It Worse.

I rose, fists balled, but my shout of indignant protest died on my lips. The earth trembled, a passing shock wave under foot. The impact was hours ago, in the steppes of Asia; the wall of fire and pressure had made it’s solemn journey around the world to us.

The girl was swept into her mother’s arms. They looked serenely at me, twin eyes of sea green. For a moment, I bordered epiphany. Guilt washed in behind the tide of anger. Then it was gone, and I was empty at last.

“I love you,” whispered the mother, holding the child close.

I sighed, and the air grew dim and thick with the onrush of steam. My vision clouded, and I turned to the sea, one final time.

This story is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license and was previously published in Flashes of Speculation

Thaw

2008-11-03T03:02:00.000-08:00

Whew.
I was way too tired to write this, let alone edit it, and it shows.
Oh well.

Something is wrong.

Consciousness drifts back to me lazily, like an incoming tide as my mind and body awake in stages. At first, it is dark, and I have no form, just a terrified animal spark suspended in a featureless abyss. My primal fore brain sends useless impulses to my unanswering body, demanding that I run and hide, but I am still. How long I drift here, I do not know, and the darkness devours time.

Gradually I become aware of muted sensory impressions, the faint hiss of venting gas, the dry taste of recycled air. It is utterly black however, darker than I would have believed possible, and I slowly realize that my eyelids refuse to open. I am aware of them now, thin sheets of flesh that tug across my face, but remain closed despite my efforts. Even without them, I can still sense the glass and metal frame around me.

With a dawning wave, I realize how cold I am. So cold, that for a hideous and protracted moment, I believe I may be on fire. I begin to panic, still trapped inside my nearly lifeless body, wanting to slither and crawl away from the pain. My lips part with a tear of flesh and I can feel blood trickling into my mouth, growing instantly cool as it runs between my clenched teeth. My jaw remains locked in place, the muscles straining weakly beneath my cheeks.

I want to cry, to sob like a child, bathed in quiet despair and helplessness. In my cocoon of self pity, higher functions of my mind begin to slowly emerge, grinding like rusty gears into use, and I try to calm myself.

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Quiet

2008-10-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

I never saw the ocean till I was nineteen, and if I ever see it again it will be too goddamn soon. I was a child, coming out of the train, fresh from Amarillo, into San Diego and all her glory. The sight of it, all that water and the blind crushing power of the surf, filled me with dread. I’d seen water before, lakes, plenty big, but that was nothing like this. I don’t think I can describe what it was like that first time, and further more, I’m not sure I care too.

You can imagine the state I was in when a few weeks later they gave me a rifle and put me on a boat. When I stopped vomiting up everything that I ate, I decided that I might not kill myself after all. Not being able to see the land, and that ceaseless chaotic, rocking of the waves; I remember thinking that the war had to be a step up from this. Kids can be so fucking stupid.

I had such a giddy sense of glee when I saw the island, and it’s solid banks. They transferred us to a smaller boat in the middle of the night, just our undersized company with our rucksacks and rifles and not a word. We just took a ride right into it, just because they asked us to. The lieutenants herded us into our platoons on the decks and briefed us: the island had been lost. That was exactly how he put it. Somehow in the grand plan for the Pacific, this one tiny speck of earth, only recently discovered and unmapped, had gotten lost in the shuffle; a singularly perfect clerical error was all it took. It was extremely unlikely, he stressed, that the Japanese had gotten a hold of it, being so far east and south of their current borders, but a recent fly over reported what looked like an airfield in the central plateau.

We hit the beach in the middle of the night. I’d heard talk of landings before, and I’m not ashamed to tell, I was scared shitless. I don’t know quite what I expected, but it wasn’t we got, that thick, heavy silence. Behind the lapping of the waves and the wind in the trees, there was... nothing, no birds, no insects. Just deathly stillness.

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Exit

2008-10-20T02:26:00.001-07:00

I know this road better than I know myself. I know each of Interstate 85’s 250 odd miles; I know that it takes me an average of 3 hours and 26 minutes to drive west, from Charlotte to Atlanta, and an average of 3 hours and 29 minutes to make the same trip going eastward. I know the price of gas at a dozen stands, and the closing hours of each fast food shack and greasy diner. I know the curves of each low hill and I know each stand of pine and oak trees. I know the stretching dark of the long winter nights and the wet heat of the summer breeze. I know these things well because they are the totality of my existence now.

I know the names of each exit, westward and east. Batesville, Poplar Springs, Spartanburg. They tick through my head as I pass, but the Silver Creek Road exit is never among them. In three years of this endless loop, it has never appeared again. If I ever begin to doubt that it will, then I have nothing left.

The Silver Creek Road exit doesn’t exist on any map, or at least, it no longer does. It may have once, but like the road itself, it has been razed from the earth and from all memory and record. At the beginning, I spent long anxious days poring over old surveying maps and neighborhood planning documents, searching in vain for any sign of the road, or the exit I know I had taken. When there was nothing left in the libraries and city halls to comb through, no meek county official left to interrogate, wide-eyed and frothing, then I began the drive.

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Fog

2008-10-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

First Draft - Needs massive fact checking by Navy-minded co-conspirators
Gore Warning

If you are reading this, then I am dead, and you are standing aboard a derelict Cyclone class patrol ship, the USS Mistral, with her engines dead and her electrical systems nonfunctional. I am, was, the XO of this vessel, Lieutenant Commander Ryan Simmons.

Please read this carefully. If you are an officer or enlisted man in the United States Navy, this is an order:

Scuttle this vessel, immediately. Do not finish this letter. Get off the Mistral at once, and send her down. Consider this a quarantine scenario; all hands are likely dead. God help you if they are not.

We are eight days out of Kirkwall, tracking an intermittent and scrambled distress call from what appeared to be a Icelandic fishing vessel, the Magnusdottir, deep in the no-fishing zone of the North Sea. We found the vessel, or rather, we found a mile wide streak of oil and fragments, the largest of them still burning. The night before, the enlisted man on watch had reported seeing a flash of light on the horizon.

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West

2008-10-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

September 2nd 1868

Arrived in Cheyenne in the new Wyoming Territory early this morning on the new Union Pacific line. Has been three years since I rode the locomotive. Did not realize it would remind me so strongly of Atlanta. Spent the last day of the journey with the phantom smell of blood and iron in my nostrils, and the bile rising at the back of my throat, but it is over. God willing, I will never have to ride the train again. Cheyenne is new born and mewling like a babe. Immigrants from the east and across the seas teem here, filling the streets with a babel of tongues and the raucous laughter of drunken listless youths. The hound I purchased before leaving tugs at his leash with delight at the sights and sound.

The plot of land is still two days ride across the border and to the Southwest, but true to his word, the man from the bank has hired a guide to take me there. Sent a last letter to my wife and boys with instructions to meet me here in the spring, and have purchased a wagon and the supplies for construction. The guide, a half Indian fellow, I'd wager by appearance, but civilized in tongue, has helped me hire two young men: a Irishman with a sullen chinless face, and a German, watery eyed and stinking of bourbon. Both despicable wretches, but they have agreed to work for a pittance, and both claim to have experience in homesteading.

They may intend to kill me, seeing an easy mark in a naive settler, but I do not fear these drunken children. I've seen a generation of these boys spilled open, and I know what they are made of.

September 8th 1868

Have crossed into the Free Territory of Colorado, after a day of the level prairie of warm wind of Wyoming, into the Front Range. This land is wild, in some... strange way, and like nothing I've ever seen. We are following a river through the shadow of two jagged peaks, and camp tonight just a few miles from the parcel of land. I requested remote, and by God, the bank man did not fail me. The Kraut and the Irishman grow demure and quiet without spirits, and I see no possibility of violence in them now, lest they suspect me of hoarding whisky. They will do fine quick labor, and return to Cheyenne to drink and fuck the profits.

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North

2008-10-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

First Draft
Strong Gore Warning

There was a time when I believed running might help; if I could pack up my few belongings and burn the rest under cover of darkness and flee, I could start over somewhere new. But in this bleak frostbitten place, I admit to myself, truly, that I cannot outrun him, that I can never escape him. And should I slip into the warm embrace of doubt after an unnaturally long stretch of peaceful, empty days, he will be only too happy to remind me of this.

There’s almost nothing left he can take from me. The days before him are fading like an aged photograph now, a hazy yellow dream of stability and happiness with a long future of happy possibilities stretched ahead. Today, I am huddled in the eaves of a collapsing barn in the Yukon Territory, desperately trying to start a fire with sodden and rotting hay. The more I burn now, the less I have to use as a blanket. It is a delicate balance that I have not quite mastered.

I hitchhiked across the border two months ago, and have been making my way north steadily. Going any other direction than north is no longer an option. I do not know what I will do when I reach the Artic Ocean. Perhaps continue across the sea ice, if it has not thinned to the point of breaking. What I cannot do, ever, is return to my life, to Seattle. I can never see my son again.

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Chiasma

2008-10-01T01:38:00.001-07:00

It wasn’t until I broke down in front of my sister that it occurred to me to use the word ‘haunted’. When I tried to explain what was happening to me, finally articulating the weeks of dread and utter dislocation, I found that no other word would come. Haunted. There’s still a part of me that scoffs and glowers at this, to use the language of folklore; it seems to compress what I’d experienced into a simple banality, a prisoner of language.

I paid cash upfront for the house in West Toluca Lake. Something about the 1930’s Spanish architecture tucked behind the grove of weeping willows triggered a strong association with my childhood ideal of what it meant to be famous and successful in Los Angeles. It was far more than I needed, and I struggled to fill the extra rooms with bedroom sets and elaborate smoking lounges; more out of an obligation to keep up appearances when guests were over than to satisfy myself. I was happy there, for a short while.

My friends stop visiting a few months after I moved in. Increasingly elaborate excuses were spun, and I soon stopped asking. It only occurs to me now that I was doing the same, finding every reason to stay in the house.

There was such a gentle descent into the insanity of it all, that I hardly felt it happening. The unusually stormy winter hit me hard, and long hours in front of the sun lamp seemed to do little to halt my growing feeling of melancholy and nameless unease. I started sleeping later and I abandoned even the pretense of writing, spending long hours in silence on the back porch, listening to the dry rasping of the dead leaves in the cold breeze.

It was the middle of the night when I first saw him.
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Barricade

2008-10-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

I’m about to do a very stupid thing.

I know it’s stupid. I know it. But I don’t think I have a choice anymore. And I have to do it now, while I have the nerve and the will and while my hands are still steady.

I’m sick. I’ve always been sick. Some days are better than others. When I was young my parents prayed that it might just be a precursor of the onset of epilepsy, but the seizures never came. I just… can’t trust myself.

I see things. On some days, I can hear them and smell them too. I should say that I used to see them. After being on every possible combination of pills three doctors could come up with, I thought we’d finally found the right chemical key for my misfiring brain. It’s been six years of stability and relative normalcy, trading a halfway house for a tiny studio apartment, a collection of mostly tolerable side-effects, and a steady job. I realize this probably sounds dull for most people, but I cherished every moment of that achingly simple monotony.

It went bad all at once

Friday morning. I awake from the first dream I’ve had in years, a vivid phantasmagoria of colors and sounds, and begrudgingly leave my perfect and sterilely clean apartment for the short walk to work.

I notice it as soon as the elevator opens, the unearthly stillness and silence in the heavy air. The front door of the complex is hanging open, unlocked and swinging gently, the faintest trace of smoke drifting inward in the damp breeze. Outside, the wide streets are empty and bare. My mouth is suddenly dry and I rock back on my heels, cresting a crippling wave of panic and déjà vu.

This particular hallucination, the quiet and the smoke and the emptiness, was always my most frequent; I haven’t had it in six years but the familiarity of it stings. I shut my eyes tightly, and jab my hand at the panels of chipped buttons. Moments later I am on the top floor half, and walking half blind the path to my door with practiced familiarity. Once inside I sit on my bed, gripping tight the handle of my cane, eyes closed, breathing slow and steady. Focused. Calm. Clear. I open my eyes.

I can’t be outside like this, I know this. I was hit by a car when I was homeless, wandering dazed into the street, while my fevered mind saw only emptiness. I’ll need a replacement hip before I’m forty. I can hear the slivers of bone grind a little with every labored step. I call my boss, and leave a terse message, apologizing for being too ill to work today.

I hold my breath as I open the one tiny window in my studio. It’s so close to the building next to me, I can almost touch its brick wall and I can’t see the street from this height and angle: but as I strain to lean out the window, sounds of yelling and a few whining engines drift up to me. The pall of unearthly quiet is broken, and I feel a great sense of relief, knowing that my episode is over.

I am counting the pills in orderly columns on the table, proving a fifth time to myself that I have taken my daily regimen, when I start to hear the screaming. It builds from far below; riding the struts and supports of the tower until it seems to emanate from the bones of the building.

An hour later the sounds seem like they are right outside; horrid, terrified, inchoate clumps of half formed words and pleas, punctuated by wet, ragged shrieks and heavy muffled thudding. The breathing and relaxation exercises aren’t helping, and I’m gripping the edge of my bed, soaked in sweat. The idea appears fully formed in my mind: I need to barricade the door. I struggle to suppress it. It would be like- giving up; all progress I’ve made would be for naught if I entertain the notion that the episode is real.

But the screaming… this is a new one for me.

There’s the shuffle of movement outside, and the knob of the door twists violently and shudders against the deadbolt. I try to cry out, but my throat is parched and only a dry croak comes out. The door starts flex slightly as heavy blows land on the outside, and a mad, gibbering chorus of voices spits out a strange nonsense of broken syllables.

It only takes me a moment to decide now. I burst to my feet and throw all my weight into the bookshelf, crashing into it with bright white bolt of pain. It topples slowly, leaning at first like a tree and then smashing to the ground. On top of the bookshelf goes my desk and chairs, my hip screaming with each step. I collapse again on the floor, grasping for breath, and listen to the pounding subside and the horrid voices retreat.

That was two days ago.

They come back every day and scratch at the door, whispering in that vile gibberish. Sometimes I allow myself to think I can recognize the voices. The phone is dead, and the power is out. When I lean out the window and yell for help, the only answer I get is the occasional shriek or ululating babble.

When I was younger, when I was at my worst, my episodes would last for hours, at most. I am at a loss. I have very little food left and the water pressure has already dropped.

Lying in bed in the late summer heat, in a moment of near total silence, the inevitability of it occurs to me. If I stay, I’ll starve. What happens to me on the other side of the barricade only depends on how sick I really am.

I want to believe with a sudden desire I am just ill, simply and profoundly ill. The sureness of it wells up in me, and I feel suddenly awake and lucid. I need a doctor, surely, but soon the hallucination will lift and my mind will heal. I just need to break through this.

I need to go outside.

I remove the bookshelf slowly, rotating it away from the door gently to rest with the other furniture. This is right, I assure myself. This is healthy. I turn the deadbolt, put my hand on the handle, and try to suppress the rising terror in my guts. I give it a little pressure.

Outside, I hear a dry shuffling and a low rising murmur of unfathomable voices, and my surety drains from me, leaving only cold and naked horror in its place.

My hand is on the door.

I’m about to do a very stupid thing.

This story is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license

Up

2008-10-01T01:32:00.001-07:00

Do you know what a Cordyceps is? I didn’t either until 20 minutes ago. It’s a family of thousands of different types of fungus, grows all around the word in various rainforests and jungles. The awful thing about them is they’re parasitic, they grow on other animals. An ant happens to run into some spores, and then it starts to colonize his insides, starting with his brain. At some point, the ant starts to act visibly ill; standing in place and shivering, or walking in circles. If a fellow colony member sees him in this condition, he will be dragged to the border of the colony and exiled.

Then, when it’s almost over, the ant weakly climbs as high as he can up the vines, and locks his body on tight. Finally, he dies, and the fungus emerges from the back of his head, bursting forth like a long and foul fruit. After a short time, the little stalk spews forth its own spores, leaving the mummified and broken ant clinging to the stalk, his eye cavities filled with drying fungus.

I mention this because last night, when I was up on the roof of my apartment complex, I found my brother’s body.
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The Hole in the Wall

2008-10-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

I’m hoping at least /x/ will enjoy this because it’s probably fucked me up for life. It’s seeming a lot more absurd as time passes (12 days since I moved my shit into my friends place), so I want to get this out there and have people call bullshit and pass judgement, because I think it’ll make me feel better.

I’ve moved out all my stuff, I’ve already called the cops, and informed my absentee landlord. I’ve done all the proper things, so there’s nothing left to do but share my little fucked up city living story.

About six months ago, my girlfriend and I moved into an apartment in the Benton Park neighborhood of St. Louis. About two weeks after we move in, her grandfather, who raised her, has a fucking stroke, and she ends up going home to Twin Oaks to take care of him. She was living with him full time until we can find out how to afford a nurse or hospice.

Anyway, I’d been living in our one bedroom all alone for the last half a year. It’s beautiful, newly remodeled, double paned windows, great insulation. The best a couple of hicks turned yuppies could want. It’s got a couple of weird things about it, as you’ll see. There’s only four units in the building, on the second and third floors. We’re on the top floor.

The first weird thing about the place we noticed right when we moved in.
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