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Tuesday, January 20, 2004
This week we're experimenting with Round Robin Social Storytelling through e-mail instead of through live chat. The idea is that authors have more time and less restrictions on length. We may end up with some longer stories than usual. There have been a few glitches so far (and we only started yesterday, good heavens) with two of our members dropping out, a new one coming in and another one's e-mail suddenly refusing to accept new messages, but I am confident that we'll come up with some sort of end product. In the meantime I am working on a short story that I started in a speedwrite last week. When it is finished I may post it here or not. We'll just have to see.
Monday, January 05, 2004
When Daniel was finally certain that the minister had left, he opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. Though it took him a minute for his eyes to adjust to that brand of darkness peculiar to crypts, catacombs, and choir-robe closets, soon he was able to discern shapes and forms in the haze surrounding him. "Jules?" he called in a hoarse whisper, but there was no response.
Daniel sat up, his eyes slowly focusing on the fluted columns of the Windsor family mausoleum. Jules should be here by now, of that he was certain. But if Jules was not here, well, Daniel would take advantage of his absence to explore a little. He carefully climbed off the top ledge where he had stashed himself on hearing the funerary party. The Windsors certainly kept their crypt clean, he thought, as he examined his dust-free hands at the bottom.
Indeed, the whole place seemed just a little too clean. There were none of the dust and cobwebs he would have expected, and the firelight glinted a little too clearly off the polished wood and silver of the coffins around him. Wait... the firelight? Why did he see such a thing here at all, here where he thought he was all alone? He froze, looking down in terror at the room below him.
"Jules?" he whispered again, his mouth dry. The moment the name had escaped his lips, he regretted speaking. He knew, in the pit of his stomach, that Jules had not been the one to light the fire, and he was not at all sure that he wanted to meet the person that had. In response to his call, a scuffling began in a dark corner of the crypt, and it seemed to be moving toward him. Daniel swallowed hard. Why had he agreed to this? It had seemed a fine idea as he and Jules sat in the warm comfort of the pub. But now... now there was no comforting, well-worn mahogany bar before him, no half-drunk pint resting in his hand. There was only the darkness, and worse, the firelight. No sign of Jules. Daniel inhaled sharply as the shambling footsteps grew closer.
Daniel wanted to turn and run, but he knew that doing so would only lead him into a wall. He'd managed to get himself in a corner. Great. The only thing to do was stand there and wait and try to play it out. Maybe Jules was having a bit of fun. The seconds crept by as the figure moved closer and Daniel's heart thudded in his chest. Don't panic, he told himself. He wanted to be able to laugh at the whole Douglas Adams thing, but his throat was too tight and dry. Maybe he'd laugh later, if he got out of here alive. He could see the robes now, and a pale foot shuffling into view. It was bare and callused and covered in sores. They looked like they should have been red, but instead were a washed out purple color that put him in mind of the time he'd spilled Merlot on his sheets and tried to wash it out. Except the sores were much nastier than the sheets had been. They looked like they were oozing. Daniel could see both feet now and he was horrified, He wondered if he ought to look up but every impulse in his body begged him not to. You do NOT want to see the face of this thing, Daniel. Every cell seemed to be screaming that.
He slowly raised his eyes from the figure’s feet. The bubbling skin of the feet led to swollen, distended ankles. What terrified him most, however, was what encircled the creature’s ankle. There, against it’s mottled skin, lay a trinket Daniel had not seen for nearly a decade. The anklet, finely crafted platinum-chain with charms in the shape of ravens, was one Daniel had bought long ago. His fiancee had never able to wear rings; she would take them off to wash her hands, then forget them. When he proposed, Daniel had given her an anklet instead. He remembered the day as clearly as though it were yesterday, bending down on one knee before Raven on the mansion’s expansive lawn. She had thought the nod to her unusual name to be touching, an example of his devotion, and joyously accepted his proposal. Far too trusting, it never occurred to her that Daniel picked the design because he had no idea what else she might like. Nor did it occur to Raven that Daniel was marrying her for her money, that he loved her estates and riches far more than he could ever love any woman. There in the crypt, however, it seemed karma had finally caught up with him. Daniel trembled violently; he had no idea how Raven had risen from the dead, but he knew in his heart that she was going to avenge her murder. By carefully suffocating his young bride, Daniel had avoided leaving any evidence for the police. Up till that moment, he had thought it the perfect crime. But there, alone in the silent crypt, Daniel Livingston knew that he had made a grievous mistake, one that would lead to his demise. Somehow Raven had been resurrected, and no amount of money could save Daniel from his fate.
Fish was not happy, not happy at all.
He liked to think that his anger wasn't just based on
Samuelson's success, but even if it was, well, didn't
he have a right? Hadn't he worked just as hard?
And hadn't that bastard stolen his prize right out from under him?
He sat and fumed as he thought about what he'd say the
next time they met.
As he seethed, he wondered if
perhaps his favorite friend couldn't express his
feelings better. He fondled his knife, running his
hand over the well-polished handle. He had gotten it
for his birthday ten years ago, and it had never left
his side since. Friends came and went, often turning
into mortal enemies first, but his knife had never
deserted him so. Fish drew it from its sheath and
watched the light glint and flash, playing on the
well-honed blade. Yes, he thought to himself,
Samuelson would get his. And it would be richly
deserved.
The knife was made of genuine Damascan Steel
Replicant. Fish had saved all of his money from the
first two years in her Majesty's service to afford it.
He'd had it custom built and engraved with a message
he felt would always mean something to him: True Love
Above All. The blade had a name, too. He felt
something more than pride for her. He felt love, and
so he named her accordingly. Amora. Amora was always
there for him. She was always by his side and in his
heart. She helped him with his work, and spent leisure
time with him too. And now she would help him cut his
ties to Samuelson. One way or another he was going to
be the lead Major. Amora knew that. Amora told him
everything would be all right.
For the moment, however, all Fish could do was wait.
His division was still eight hours away from the
capital, even at the ship's fastest speed. He exhaled
heavily and leaned back against the curved metal wall.
The knife in his hands was heavy, but the weight of
the blade was comfortingly familiar. He spun it
between his hands without looking down. He had
twirled the knife between his fingers so many times on
his long voyages, that the movements had become nearly
automatic. Aside from the blade, Fish carried few
possessions with him. When he had newly joined the
Service, his commanding officer had said that in the
distance possessions were anchors that tied you down.
A younger, more materialistic Fish had doubted the
man, but he had since come to recognize the veracity
of the statement. Money meant virtually nothing to
Fish. What he wanted; what he lived for and, if
necessary, would die for was power
Whistling between his teeth, he dropped the blade back
into the sheath, and that was satisfying too, feeling
it shoot into place like a bolt on a door. He dropped
his reverie with the knife, and sprang for the ladder
like a man with purpose. It was, however, nearly half
a minute later that the screams and commotion began on
deck, the call sounded for all hands, and a report
sounded.
The mutiny was short and swift, and before twenty
minutes had past, Fish controlled the ship. The
bodies of the former captain and first mate, plus the
communication second who was too slow for his taste
had been removed to the morgue, and Fish was sitting
comfortably in the captain’s chair. He looked at the
assembled crew, his crew, and smiled slowly. “Ladies
and gentlemen” he began “we have a slight change of
plans. We will continue to the capital along our
present course. I wish to be informed immediately if
we catch sight of the Dreadnought or the Incandescent.
Other than that, you should continue as you were.
Any questions?” There were mute shakes of the heads,
and his crew turned back to their work. Fish had a
ship now, and Samualson would be getting his. Oh,
how’d be getting his.
Fish was happy, very happy indeed.
"You kids never even try to understand these things," he said bitterly. He shook his head, half in anger, half in sadness, and threw the copy of the Advanced Trigonometric Astro-Telemetry manual across the room. It crashed into the wall and fell, landing in a heap, like a bird that had broken its neck. "I've tried being strict. I've tried being fair. I've always tried to understand, but what do you do? Ignore me. I think I've earned your respect. Haven't I? What else do you want me to do? The fate of the planet hangs in the balance, and all you ever want to do is stay out late, hopping freight trains and tripping on cough syrup, or whatever it is you kids call it these days. Haven't I always been there for you, given everything you needed? Food, shelter, love? I even bought you the Lambourghini steamroller you begged and begged me to get you for Christmas, Alec. And this is how you repay me? For all these years?" He fought back tears as he spoke, his hands trembling. He clutched at the mantlepiece to steady them, and fell silent.
Alec sighed and put a hand on his father's shoulder. "Look, Dad," he said, "It isn't that we don't appreciate everything you do for us. Really." He stopped for a moment when he saw the vein throbbing in his father's forehead. The appearance of the vein was never a good sign. He hesitated to go on, lest it make his father worse, but then went on in a rush. "Please don't get overwrought," he said. All of the children knew this word, overwrought. They had grown up hearing it nearly every day. Their mother was always afraid that one or all of them might become overwrought and turn out like their father. "All this talk of the world hanging in the balance is not healthy." Alec put his arm around his father's shoulders and walked him to a chair. "Please sit down and try to be reasonable. Jenna didn't mean to upset you. She just wants to go to the prom like everyone else at her school."
Of all his siblings, his eldest sister was by far the most trying. While the Guinness children were all brilliant, even by their father's standards, only Alec seemed remotely interested in applying his intelligence to any sort of scholastic pursuit. The other children, even fourteen-year-old Josh, cared only for self-indulgence. The Guinness' ample wealth had enabled the children to live lavishly, spending exorbitant sums of money on the kind of whimsical excesses that their peers could scarcely dream of. Despite attempting to placate his father, Alec knew full-well that Jenna's behavior was certainly not normal.
Going to the prom might be a normal desire, but taking the Concorde overseas and hiding out in London was not how most children dealt with disappointment. Nor, Alec grimly reflected, would most children then email their father, claiming to be traveling with a pack of teenage drifters and hopping train cars for transportation. His mother's fears had been more than realized.
"When I was your age," growled his father, although by this point he was past addressing anyone in particular, so the age in question remained nebulous, "When I was your age, we listened to our parents! Respect! Respect is dead nowadays. When my father said to me, "Now, son, you can't go out tonight, you have to stay home and help me devise a source of high-powered coherent radiation, did I decide to go joyriding around Europe with a bunch of druggie hippie hobos?" At this point his wife came padding into the room, a pained expression on her face. It had been there ever since Alec could remember, and the passage of time had only intensified the effect.
While his mother comforted his father, Alec went to retrieve the stricken book. Lifting it carefully, he smoothed the pages, and carefully closed the cover. It was not badly hurt, and would survive virtually unscathed, although he knew that in some years, it would be that much more worn, and the cover would slowly come loose from its bindings quicker than it might have otherwise. He turned his attention back to his parents, huddled closely together, in whispered conversation. So many conversations between his parents were seen, but not heard, that most of the children had learned lip reading in order to eavesdrop. It was, Alec considered, like any other war. The enemy would create encryptions, and you would seek to break them. He frowned, momentarily nonplussed, but then realized the militant description was appropriate in many ways.
Not for the first time, he cursed his family's wealth. He knew that it was essential, that there was no other way they could have a chance of completing the Mission, but sometimes he was afraid it was more of a distraction than a help. It was a heavy burden his family bore, knowing that they would be the only ones with the skills and the technology to face the invasion. With so much money at their disposal, it was easy to try to run off and hide. But there was not much time left. His grandchildren would be only a little older than he was now when the first ships arrived. He and Jenna might well live to see that time, and he didn't know whether to be excited or terrified. He sighed heavily; there was nothing else to be done. His parents' marriage might be falling apart before his eyes, his sister might be trying her best to die at thirty from an overdose of paint fumes, but he was goddamned well going to finish his equations. Now, if he could just find a way to reconcile the phases of the warp material and the third level disruptor beam. Alec knew it would be another long night.
"God bugger it!" I exclaimed. I swung my leg around;
there was a disconcerting clicking noise. I let out a
small scream as I toppled to the floor, and lay there
moaning for a bit. Then, I slowly stretched my leg
out, getting about an inch before the pain returned.
Cursing silently to myself, I rolled onto the stomach,
and stared at the wall ahead of me. This was not the
time to have a sprained ankle
The water was boiling on the stove, Harris (the dog)
was whimpering to be let out of the closet, and the
Jenkinsons were due to arrive in less than ten
minutes. Cursing the slippery tile of the floor, I
pulled myself towards the counters at the other end of
the room, where I hoped I could climb into some
semblance of a standing position. I was going to have
to work and think quickly.
Latching onto the handles of the cabinets, I clawed
my way to my feet. Pain shot up my leg, and I caught
my breath. I could stand, though. Barely. Could I
walk? Gingerly, I took an experimental step. I gritted
my teeth and inched my way to the closet, where Harris
was howling. Hobbling as fast as I could manage, I
prised open the door. The wolfhound, now freed, showed
his gratitude by leaping upon his hindlegs and
thrusting his paws onto my chest. Unbalanced by his
weight, I crashed to the floor, shrieking in pain.
That was where Mrs. Jenkinson found me. Harris had
knocked my glasses off and I could only make out a
blur of Mauve above me, but the voice was
unmistakable. "Prudence, dear, are you all right?" she
crooned. "We came a few minutes early and I just let
myself in, because I know you never mind about that,
and then imagine my alarm when I heard you shrieking
in here! Well I never did think you should have such a
large dog in the first place." She shook her head,
something I could tell because the mauve blob was
moving and making me seasick. I still had a dog on my
chest -a 150 pound dog, mind you- and the pain in my
ankle was making me nauseous already. This threatened
to put me over the edge. I closed my eyes and willed
myself not to vomit.
As my last surviving relatives, the Jenkinsons had legal
power of attorney over me. I never did think they
should have the right to decide what I could and
couldn't do, but the state of Nevada disagreed.
After Harold passed on and I took a fall one morning
getting the newspaper, some busybody neighbour
suggested that maybe I was too old to be
living by myself. Just thinking about it made my
blood boil. I've done alright for the past 112 years,
and I have no intention of quitting this joint anytime
soon. If I let on to how badly I was injured, though,
I knew the Jenkinsons would move to have me placed in
a nursing home. With that thought, I steeled my
resolve and stood up quickly. The pain was blinding.
It would've felled any young person (the younger
generation have no pain threshold whatsoever) but, for
a woman who bore 11 children at home, the pain was
quite manageable.
"It's quite all right," said I, in the general
direction I had last seen the Jenkinson female (for
nothing but stars, spots, and wheeling pain-colored
sunbursts were presenting themselves to my vision at
the moment) "I was shrieking in delight over some
news I recieved from a very old friend - Orlando Bloom
signed her forehead at an unexpected appearance in her
hometown." I grinned sickeningly at her (not
difficult in my condition) and batted my eyelashes. I
knew she had a teenage daughter, and so would
recognize my reference well enough to be traumatized
by it. It had the desired effect; she started
muttering excuses and heading for the door. "Pass me
the telephone, will you Maude? There's a dear. I've
got to phone my bridge club and pass around the happy
news. Squee," I added. She handed me the phone and
scuttled out, and I, with a sigh as much of relief as
blinding agony, sat down to dial my osteopath.
We sat on the steps of the library at four a.m. talking in the dark. We'd gotten off from work at the factory a half hour earlier, but we both needed wind down time before we went home to sleep. I lived with my mother and my little sister, so I couldn't make noise when I came in, and Jerry was married and had three kids. We'd started taking walks together after work six months ago. Jerry said it helped clear his head from all the paint fumes. Normally we just talked about whatever. Shootin' the shit, Jerry would say, but I could tell that this night was different.
Everything about his demeanor was altered. Normally, Jerry seemed to walk aimlessly, his steps slow as though he had no reason to hurry. He probably didn't, really. From what I had gathered from our late-night conversations, Jerry wasn't a man with a lot to live for. The night I met him, he said off-hand that his father and his grandfather and every ancestor before them had been born and buried in Tullahoma. With three kids and a nowhere job, Jerry was headed for the same destiny. I'd met men like him before. To people who didn't know me, I suppose I seemed bound for a similar fate.
Tonight Jerry was animated, filled with energy almost to the point of mania. He cracked a grin at every small sound, at the wind around the rooftops, at the cats in the alleys as if they were communicating some fabulous secret. Whoooosh. You have been selected. Yowwwwrrr. You may already be a winner. "T's up?" I asked eventually. "Nothing," he answered promptly, vigorously, and automatically. Then "Mike, I've got something to tell you."
It shouldn't have surprised me, in retrospect, that I - we - had come to a certain closeness. Was I his confessor? No, but it was inching that way, and maybe today, here, before a temple of knowledge we would take a great step forward. And maybe we would arrive safely, or maybe we would discover that we had been standing on the edge of an abyss, and we would not land at all. My mind stretched that second out, an eternity of hyper awareness, and then "Yeah, Jerry?"
"I'm leaving, Mike" came the reply "I'm going. There's a train out of here in two hours, and I'm gonna be on it. I'd like you to be with me"
I didn't know what to think. Jerry was my best friend, and he meant a lot to me, but could I really abandon all I'd been working towards for these eight years? Would I really abandon my masterwork for him? I was all so uncertain. I wished I knew more--where he was going, what he was planning. I could feel the fear coming over me. The night seemed to eat into my bones. But I knew what I had to do."I'd like to, Jerry," I said, heavily.
Jerry smiled. "It'll be great, man. No more factory. We'll head out for the coast. Nothing but easy living from now on. Sun and ocean breezes, and no more damn paint fumes. Think I'll open up a little shop, sell fishing tackle, bait. I got a little money saved up, but I'm not takin' anything else with me. Starting over. I might even change my name. A new life, you know?" I wrung my hands nervously. Could I abandon the experiments? I was close, so close. A few more months, and I knew I'd have my functional prototype. But was it all a pointless quest? Hadn't I just been using my work as an excuse to keep going, something to cling to? Some reason to justify to myself my prolonged existence in this nowhere town?
I opened my mouth to speak, unsure what I'd say. Probably something along the lines of "Sure, Jerry. It'll be great." But just as I began to form the words, an animal cry rent the night. Seconds later, great gouts of flames licked up from a house four blocks away, and without even looking, I knew. It was my house. The prototype had gotten loose. Dread clenched my stomach in knots. I'd taken every precaution. This couldn't be. This meant... I didn't want to think about what it meant, but in my heart I knew. I had only time enough to shout "Take cover!" and to push Jerry to the ground as the shockwave hit. It was all over, I knew. I felt the heat of the flames on my face, felt the flesh of my face char and slough away in great strips. All over. The brick facade of the library crumbled down on us, and then everything was black.
Her purse was full of butterflies. As a little girl, Theodora had spent long afternoons in the fields near her grandmother's house trying to catch the delicate insects. Beautiful though they were, the butterflies never lived long in captivity. Once snared and placed in jars, they quickly sickened and died. Those days had been all but forgotten, however, after Theodora grew up, for in the city she never saw butterflies. In her dream, though, the butterflies strong enough to withstand being confined and they glistened like dragonflies.
Some one of her co-workers, back in the days when she had still carried guest checks in her apron pocket, and had laughed with the other servers passing in and out of the kitchen, had taught her a few origami shapes - crane, fish, frog, butterfly. The last was the only one she remembered now, and if there was ever a small scrap of paper to hand, she would often find herself a few minutes later slipping a miniature folded butterfly into her purse. She never noticed when she was actually folding it, and there was always a moment of pleased surprised when she found one in her hand.
A fleeting moment, but a moment none-the-less, and then into the purse it would go, among its many brethren. She occasionally would go through the handbag, sorting out the butterflies, remembering, when she could, where the paper came from. Receipts were quite popular, although generally a uniform color, white, with purple-black ink embossed on them. An embarrassingly colorful run, left over from an abortive interview where her hands had occupied themselves for an hour using the potential employer's multi-hued post-it notes. She hadn't gotten the job, of course, but she had the butterflies to remind her.
She thought back to that day, to sleeping on the subway as she rode home from her interview. She'd told herself she never really wanted the job in the first place--that she was only interviewing there to get some practice--but she knew she would have taken it if she could have. The stress of working at the plant was getting to be too much for her. No time to make butterflies there. All she could hope for was to dream of them for a few minutes during her commute. How suddenly it had all changed!
It had all changed, of course, that day she'd been riding on the bus, going nowhere in particular. She'd been so tired, yet at the same time restless. She hadn't anywhere to go, and nothing to do, and it was her day off. She had tried, fitfully, to nap, and when that failed she'd watched television for awhile. It was no use. She craved movement. She needed something to catch her attention. So it was she found herself at the bus stop, having walked thirty blocks, thinking of nothing in particular. Her feet aching, and the sky threatening rain, she had paused at the nearest bus stop and boarded the first bus to come by, not even bothering to check where it was headed. She would ride it to the end of its route, she thought, and back again, and she would watch the tall grey city through the windows. Her hands fidgeted in her lap, and she cast about for some small scrap of paper to occupy her in her restlessness. By chance, she picked up a discarded slip lying at her feet. It was a lottery ticket.
She'd barely looked at it at first, her fingers ready to fold it into butterfly shape as she was so accustomed to doing with every other scrap she found, but then a voice in her head said, "Look! Theodora Rose Palmer, look!" She heard the voice clear as day, and she could have sworn it sounded like her grandmother, who had died when she was fourteen, but of course that was impossible. Still, she listened to the voice, and she looked at the paper and saw what it was and she decided then and there to get off at the next likely place and find a newspaper. The ticket was a day old, so the numbers had already been announced. Since someone had thrown it away, it obviously wasn't a winner, but Theodora thought it would be fun to make a game of it anyway. Of course she'd been shocked when it was a winner, and not just any winner, the winner. She scarcely knew what to do with 67 million dollars (and that was after taxes), but she wouldn't ever return to the plant, that was for sure. She thought she'd share her house with butterflies. Have a butterfly garden all her own, and all the scraps of paper in all the prettiest colors she'd ever wanted. And so she did just that. And if her friends, or the people at the shops thought she was crazy when they caught a glimpse of all the blue and the yellow and silver and crimson every time she opened her purse, well they didn't say a thing about it now. Millionaires were allowed to be eccentric.
Friday, January 02, 2004
I remember when I preferred books to movies. I was an unstoppable reader from the moment I learned till some time in my early twenties, often finishing three or four books a day. But somehow the combination of college and work left me too fatigued to keep it up. These days, I like nothing better than to lie back on the couch with some popcorn and spend an evening watching videos.
I buy videos, too - that's another thing that's changed. I read far too many books to keep pace with my spending money, and so I kept the libraries both of my friends and my city my constant creditors. Movies, on the other hand, you have to own. Well, at least I have to. Nowadays.
I think I might still read if they made more Choose your Own Adventure books. For adults, though, not kids. I used to love them. I have often thought about this since my college days, but it wasn't until last month when I was watching 28 Days Later with Hal that I had the big one, the mother lode idea. Instead of dvds with alternate endings, why not make choose your own adventure ones? Think of the possibilities! In the mood for a comedy? Rather see it end tragically? If you think he should have kissed her skip to chapter 24 if you think he should have slipped on a banana peel, go to chapter 8.
It was a brilliant idea, and it had the potential to transform movies forever! It would change the dynamic of storytelling, make it better. Plus, it would appeal to the ever growing "do it yourself" sense that more and more people exhibited these days. I immediately bought a digital video camera, and together with a few friends set out to create a prototype. All I needed to do was capture the essence of the idea on some sort of film, and Hollywood would be falling all over itself to throw money my way.
God I was a genius! I began, perhaps simply, vaguely, with too many ideas to put any to good use. Before a month was out I'd filmed three weddings (between four characters), two bedroom scenes (they weren't willing to experiment all that much), sixteen arguments, a dozen or so heart to hearts, and perhaps half a dozen tragic demises. I needed some sort of story to put things in order.
I needed a story with truly universal overtones, a story that would speak to the heart of every viewer. I needed an epic. I needed, at least, an excuse to use both of the bedroom scenes. After many drafts, many late nights spent staring into the soulless blank eyes of Microsoft Word, inspiration struck at last. I fired out an initial treatment, working and reworking it, honing it til it was perfect. Only then, as I gazed with pride over my Meisterwork, did I realise that I had neglected to film the pastry-chef's-convention-attacked-by-giant-helium-breathing-squid-demons scene that would prove the emotional lynchpin of the film.
My mother's kitchen was the scene of the key plot twist. My younger brother wore a white apron and a tall chef's hat. Also, a mustache and sunglasses. When these last two costume choices were questioned, my brother calmly answered, "I'm also a spy in this scene. All chefs are spies." Several of his friends were game for playing the giant squid and I made them all stand on stools, after taking off their shoes so as not to scuff Mom's newly-sewn seat cushions. Their costumes consisted of several cans of silly string and each was equipped with some frozen octopi that was tied on top of their head with ribbon found in my mother's sewing basket. The whole thing looked, well...amateur, frankly. I mean, it was a valiant effort but in the end, it turns out that movies weren't meant to be chosen. They're formed and provided for our amusement and should be viewed in the order given to us. I apologize to my friends from the sex scenes who thought they were going to be onto the big screen. And even bigger apologies to the sexy folks who didn't realize they might have ended up on the big screen.
"I said give me your wallet, motherfucker!" and he hit me a second time. I felt something liquid and warm oozing from between my split lips, and I knew I was bleeding. I could taste it now. He landed a third punch squarely in my stomach and I fell, half-unconscious, slumping against a stack of flattened cardboard boxes. He loomed over me, and i could see my blood on his knuckles. 'The wallet,' he said, kicking me in the ribs.
"I don't have a wallet. I have nothing," I moaned, flat on my stomach against the boxes. I could hear him standing over me, breathing heavily.
"Nothing? A rich-lookin' guy like you? I don't believe you," he yelled, angrily, inches away from my face.
"Nothing, I swear! I left my wallet and keys in the office this evening. I didn't even have money for the bus--I've been walking since 39th Street. Please, you've got to believe me!"The hoodlum blinked once or twice. I could see doubt in his face. I only hoped it was enough. It was a dangerous game I was playing, but I was desperate. He couldn't be allowed to find what I was carrying. If it got into the wrong hands... I shuddered to even think of what might happen.
"Your jacket," he said, and from the satisfaction in his voice I could tell he though himself very clever. "Hurry!" I struggled to disentangle myself from its sleeves, shaking as much with relief as with fear, and as much with cold as both. I handed the jacket over, and he snatched it, feeling for the pockets through the fabric. "And - uh - your watch!" This I removed without even thinking about it - it had been stopped for three days anyway. Don't let him remember my pants pockets, I silently pleaded. Or my shoes. Those would be just as bad, and maybe even worse.
I was only three blocks away from the drop off point. Losing the stuff now would be horrible. I didn't want to have to face old Lou empty-handed. He wouldn't give a shit that I was bleeding and bruised. He was very business-minded and didn't much care about operative well fare o long as the transports went smoothly. I handed my watch over to the kid and started forward. "Not so fast," he said, blocking me with an arm. "Can't have you going off and getting the coppers out on me the second I turn my head."
"I won't, I swear it," I said. My voice was trembling.
"I'd love to take your word for it," the kid said, "But I'd love kicking you in the face, more." The last thing I saw before I blacked out was his leer and the steel toed Doc Marten.
It was dark when I regained conciousness, which meant I had probably missed the appointed time, but with luck I would still get there before Lou left. I picked myself up, and tried to clean the dried blood off my face as best I could. Then I staggered out of the alley, and toward the drop off point. It would not be good for my credibility to show up late, but it was better late than never.
I could only wish that they had picked someone more suited to the job, but I'd been doing this for years and I'd never run into trouble before. It was not by accident I left my wallet in the office: if I were to be found I would at least want them to have to work to know who I was. Certianly Lou appreciated precautions like that, though if it were to fail... I shuddered, from the cold, from the pain in my leg, from the thoughts in my head, and I found myself already leaning against the right door, and knocked. The door opened smoothly, I nearly fell inside.
"You're late," Lou said.
I mumbled something. I took the notebook from my pocket.
"What did you say?"
"I said I've got it, Lou. Passwords, backdoors, whatever you need. I got mugged, but I didn't let the stupid shit take it." I normally watched my language around the likes of Lou. It was a small thing to make me feel superior. But tonight I was showing just what a tough guy I could be.
Robert was a thin, fierce man, but he feared that this job with the refrigerator would tame him. It was a squat, chunky, General Electric affair, and it sat there at the bottom of the stairs, seeming to mock him in its mute white obtuseness. There was something rather perverse about a refrigerator unplugged, he thought vaguely, as he moved into position. As if it were no different from any other container.
As he approached he notice that its door was slightly open, and the black fluid that had begun to form inside it the week before was trickling onto the parquet floor. Lydia would have his hide if he didn't get that cleaned up before she got back from the grocery store. He didn't want to clean it up. He didn't like the thought of getting a hand too near the stuff, even with a greasy rag and rubber glove for protection. Maybe he'd watched The Amityville Horror one too many times as a teenager, but he couldn't help feeling the stuff would try to devour him. He stood on the landing for a minute scowling at it before picking up his resolve and moving in for the attack.
Halfway down the stairs, he thought better of it and went immediately back up to the garage, where he kept his things. After several minutes of shifting through the accumulated detritus, he found what he sought: it was an old-fashioned blow torch, and the propane tank was nearly full. Thus fortified, he returned to the basement steps. Even armed with fire Robert still hesitated before descending once more to face his enemy.
Also armed with a good putty knife, he was ready to work on the floor. Just as he thought, the black goo would budge only a little with his scraping efforts. Two minutes into the job, he lit his blowtorch. At first he tried simply heating up the knife, to see if it would do a better job scraping, but that didn't seem to make any difference. If he didn't know better, he'd say the goo was already burning a hole into the floor, and he didn't know how much more damage he could really cause than that sullen refrigerator. He turned his torch on the floor itself.
The torch sprang to life with a satisfying pop, and the bright blue flame licked and hissed eagerly, anticipating the taste of flammable material. Bending low to the floor, Robert ran the torch's flame over the black river of ooze that disfigured the floor. His plan was to heat the goo back into a tractable state, and then to scrape away the softened black mess away with the putty knife, hopefully without destroying the floor in the process. He was mildly surprised to discover that the flame's heat had no effect whatsoever. If anything, the torching had tempered the unknown ichor of the refrigerator, forging it into a seam of pure black basalt. Cursing under his breath, he faced the inevitable -- yet he could not deny taking a grim sort of pleasure in the contemplation of his task. He would have to just hack the stuff out, floorboards and all.
Heading back from the tool shed, Robert had a sudden thought: maybe the saw and the hatchet weren't both needed. But that was quickly quelled by the heft and feel of walking through his house with a huge, sharp thing in each hand. It made him feel manly, alive and ready to kill anything that got in his way. That included little black stains that seeped out of the refrigerator and sought to make his life a living hell and ruin his marriage. No stain was going to get away with such a thing, not if Robert had anything to say about it. The first cut into the floor was a bit rough, it's hard to start a nice hatchet throw without something towards which to aim. But a thick black marker provided the much-needed black X and everything went smoothly for a few minutes. That is, until Robert discovered the first rule of sharp things -- they have no discerning power. They cut through wood and electrical wires with the same ease. Also, water pipes.
By the time he got down to the basement to turn everything off, the kitchen was under four feet of water, and filled with an eerie blue smoke. The old refrigerator was bobbing up and down, floating slowly but inexorably towards the cascade of water running down the front steps. Something in Robert's face changed. He had the smile of a man no longer completely in control of himself. He flung himself at the refrigerator and pushed it further down its path. He crashed through the door with it just in time to see Lydia walking up the driveway with two bags of groceries in her arms. As he came to a rest at the bottom of the steps, the refrigerator in front of him, torrents of water around him, he grinned sheepishly up at his wife. "Sorry hon, there weren't nothin' else to do. My pappy always said there's only one way to deal with a problem 'fridge--you gots to float the damned thing out!"
There were fourteen of them in the box, as far as he could tell without lifting the paper off. He glanced nervously toward the chimney, and reached for the red book. "In nominos detritus parkas dominos quantum," he intoned as he lifted the heavy volume from the table. He always thought that saying a string of impressive Latin sounding words helped satisfy the customers.
Mrs. Greeley leaned forward in her armchair and scrunched up her grey face in awed concentration."What does it mean?" she asked, her voice a trembling whisper.
"A good luck charm I learned from a Swami in The Hague," he answered. "Now then, let's begin, shall we?"
Opening his book, Mr Leviticus Hutch, Necromancer, Physician, and Ice Cream Manufacturer stared at the pages for a moment. He glanced again at Mrs Greeley, and then quickly back at his tome. After a few more moments, he set the book down, and riffled through his pockets, until he found his wand. He flourished it, to a rather satisfying gasp from Mrs Greeley, and tapped in on the box sitting in the middle of the table. "Spirits of air and darkness" he breathed "I command and abjure you to appear!" The lights in the room dimmed, and his client huddled a little. Then, from the box, a thin swirl of smoke appeared.
"Lev!" Mrs. Greeley gasped. He did not even register noticing her. The smoke twirled towards Mr. Hutch like a showman's moustache, slowly entering his body with every passing breath. And with each breath, his eyes turned a lighter and lighter shade of blue. Outside, in the front room, children came and went, happily licking cones of Levi's Famous Peppermint Stick Ice Cream. Every now and then one small child would catch a glimpse into the back room, and his ice cream would melt, unnoticed, as he wandered the streets outside.
With almost imperceptable slowness, the body of Levicticus Hutch faded and paled, his colour and substance ebbing away to an etherial clearness. His very flesh was subsumed by the smoke, and took on its milky translucency. Mrs Greeley beheld his transubstantiation with increacing alarm, as Mr Hutch was rapidly losing his form altogether. His features streamed and blurred into one another, stirred and shifted at whim by chance air currents wafting through the room. Before she could even think to speak, an arc of blinding green light shot from the box, cleaving the intertwined wisps of smoke and Hutch in twain. With a motion not unlike a cyclone, the two clouds spun into eachother and swept with the speed of a squall back into the box. The lid slammed shut, and Mrs Greeley was left quite alone and quite baffled in the ill-lit backroom of the store.
Mrs. Greeley chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, deep in thought in the middle of the storeroom. She scratched the back of her left leg with her right foot as she pondered. Suddenly, she exploded with words. "Did he say something about The Hague? I think that's the Polish restaurant a few towns over! Why, he must have tricked me into looking away with those fancy wind and smoke machines and snuck out! Hmph. He thinks he can pull one over on Lynn DeWalt Slarmer Greeley, does he? I'll see about that." And with that, she strode from the back into the ice cream shop, shuffling several of the smaller customers to the side with her bustling skirts. The door slammed behind her and all that could be heard were the continuing murmurs of satisfied sugar fiends.
Hutch, meanwhile, found himself in a state of increasing confusion, his now unmatter'd spirit fluttering left and right in its new enclosure. His transformation--from a quiet midwestern fraud magician, table rapper and ice cream man to a disembodied consciousness trapped in a wooden box--had been unsettlingly quick, and he was unsure of how best to embrace his new place in the world. Indeed, he was starting to fear that he could be trapped forever. Such was often the fate of those who crossed the ancient and mysterious Power that watched over the Greeleys.
"Such was certainly my fate, at least," croaked a dismal voice in what would have been his ear if he still had a body. This aforementioned lack also impeded his ability to jump with surprise, but a startled quiver shook his formless frame.
"Who are you?" demanded Mr. Hutch, with all the bluster he could manage under the circumstances. "And what are you doing in my box? There's nothing in here but my dry ice cartridges. And me, I suppose," he added.
Spectral laughter resounded all around him. "Oh, far from it, Mr. Hutch, far from it," sighed a new voice on his right. "You're going to have a great deal of company."
"And not much to do."
"But there's plenty of ice cream."
"Ice cream?"
"Yes, ice cream- the one substance which transcends all spiritual planes. I can only hope your successor is as talented as you, Mr. Hutch, for you make as fine a butter pecan as I have tasted these five aeons."
Thursday, January 01, 2004
He watched the smoke slowly unfurl from the tip of his cigarette and up, languidly, into the rainy sky. It had been raining all night long and it showed no signs of stopping, let alone slowing. Smoking in the rain gave him some sense of empowerment in a world gone insane. Or so he told himself on the nights when things were going badly. In reality, he had no choice. It wasn't an addiction so much as a compulsion, always having a cigarette nearby. It was something to touch, something warm to hold when no one was around to spare him the loneliness that his position warranted.
He felt the slow, heavy drops falling from the sky, running down his face, soaking his tattered grey sweater. It was funny, he thought, how the only way he could ever get out and enjoy the night air was to inhale smoke into his lungs. He wouldn't stop, though: he enjoyed the paradox of it. Even more, he enjoyed doing something he didn't have to think about. As he stood there, leaning against the cool brick wall of his house, he heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. An animal of some sort darted out and across his lawn, and then, out of the bushes, the figure of a girl came into view.
It didn't occur to him to be puzzled, it didn't occur to him to be apprehensive. Nothing in particular crossed his mind, indeed, for he relaxed with the same fervor and dedication a man in his midlife crisis shows for his jogging or his bicycling.
"You got a light?" inquired the girl, who had by this point approached him. Wordlessly he held out one of his stock.
"I don't smoke," said the girl. "Disgusting habit."
"You don't smoke? But you wanted a light," he said. The words came out in a huskier tone than he might have employed other times. The combination of the smoke in his throat and the surprise of having to speak after so many hours of silence left his vocal chords rusty. The girl sized him up and looked behind her before she spoke. He could see in her eyes that she was going to bolt in a second if he didn't stop her. He didn't particularly know why he should want to stop her, come to that, but before he'd processed the thought, his hand was on her shoulder.
"Don't touch me," the girl said. Her shirt was soaked through completely and she held her shoulder rigid.
He eased the hand away and flicked the cigarette onto the concrete patio. "Come inside," He said. "I've only got kitchen matches."
He led her through the dank concrete corridor that served as a foyer, into his kitchen. It was little more than a box built of cinderblocks and cement, an ancient sink, and a rusting stove. A bare and flickering bulb hung from a sting in the middle of the room. He found the match box, and offered it to the girl, who hovered in the doorway. She ignored the matches, and continued to stare around the room.
"You live here" she finally asked, in a quiet voice.
"Yeah," he rasped, and tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice "Have for a couple of years." He proffered the matches again, which she gingerly accepted.
"Thanks" she turned, and hesitated, then "I'm Talia"
"Allen" he replied.
She had an image of a man in hermitage; a poet gone lost and gone mad, hidden from a world in which he might once have run wild.
"What do you do?" She asked.
"Librarian," Allen said. "I work the stacks at..."
She had stopped listening. She knew the place. The gothic tower which was possibly the oldest building in town, full of enough books to keep an army of worms busy for a century. This man certianly could have been lost there for twenty years without anyone knowing the difference.
"Why do you ask?" He finally said, and she tuned in.
The answer floated to her mind. "You don't have a television. Everyone has a television." Allen could see she was feeling uncomfortable again. He wondered if she would burn the place down. She seemed the sort.
She turned the matches over in her hands, thoughtfully, and something in her manner made him want to snatch the matchbook back, but he checked himself. She was only a girl, after all, and she'd made no threats. Still, he found himself at a loss for answers, and he had to ask. 'What do you want with the matches?'
She flashed him a look of pity, and shrugged her thin shoulders. Rainwater dripped down her face, and her hair hung in lank, wet strings. Brushing her bangs back away from her face, she slipped out a match and struck it against the matchbook with natural, practised grace. She held the burning match out to Allen, her eyes fixed on its small but sturdy flame. Turning from the burning match, she studied him intensely. Inwardly he floundered, having no idea what was expected of him in such a situation.
Neither of them moved until the match had burnt itself down to Talia's exposed fingers. The flame had singed her skin, but she had not cried out, nor had she flinched. Having reached her damp fingertips, where beads of rainwater had pooled, the flame snuffed itself out.
She remained where she was for a moment, watching him wordlessly. Then she handed Allen back his book of matches, opened his door, and disappeared back into the dark and the rain.
It was something to chew on, thought Brianne as she surveyed the scene. Certainly it wasn't the case last time she had been here. Alysin was completely new to the scene, at least since last October, and she seemed the most put out about the regulations. Just what would it would mean for the rest of her old friends, she would have to find out.
She decided to call Olivia and ask her opinion. The phone rang and rang, but no one ever picked up. She shrugged to herself and left a message. A day or so later, she tried again, to no avail. The day after that, she was shocked to see a grainy black-and-white image of Olivia's face in the newspaper. Scanning the accompanying headline, she read that Olivia was dead.
Names and faces flew through Brianne's brain as she tried to absorb the news. None of the "usual" suspects were applicable here. Olivia wasn't someone who made enemies. She kept her nose clean and stayed out of trouble. This was the primary reason why she had been the first call that Brianne had thought to make upon learning of Alysin's suspicious behavior. Something would have to be done.
Unable to think everything out for herself, she tried to get in touch with the rest of her old crew to see if anyone knew more than she did. She called Andrea's house, but got no answer. Jack's answering machine picked up after a few rings, and she hung up without leaving a message. And so she went, making her way down the list, working herself up into a panic as none of her friends seemed to be home. It was nothing, she told herself. On a warm friday evening like this, surely she couldn't be surprised to find nobody at home. But still she couldn't help worrying. She felt sick to her stomach. Grabbing her coat, even though she didn't really need it, Brianne headed out into the night to look for any hint as to what was going on.
She would check the old place first, she told herself. It was the logical choice. Still, it was where she has last seen Alysin before the disaster, and she had been avoiding it instinctively ever since that day. She reined in her reluctance and set her steps firmly toward the old place, and was disturbed to find how short the way still was from her house to her destination. When she pulled open the door, she saw the usual chaos and pandemonium, but something was different this time.
Children were playing with dolls in the front hall. That was normal enough. The clinic area was always busy between five thirty and eight. All the parents with days jobs ended up coming in then. They'd supplied the office with several toy bins just for that reason. But there hadn't ever been any blood on the toys before. She didn't want to look closer. She wanted to turn right around and get out of town, but she had to get to the bottom of things. She resolved to walk calmly past the children without alarming them and then go into the reception area and ask for Alysin. She lifted her chin and started to pick her way through the play-group. She'd gotten halfway to the reception room door when she noticed the real horror.
Someone, or something, had been through the entire office, meticulously stabbing people in the chest. There was Courtney, slumped over the copy machine, and Todd, sprawled in the hallway. Brianne raced through the halls, the cubicles, the break room. Everywhere, dead people and puddles of blood. She resisted, oh how she resisted screaming, but after the fifth body, her stomach rebelled and she vomited all over the carpet, spasming, gasping for breath and falling to her knees. The police found her there hours later, curled into a ball.
Brianne was never the same again.
I needed to cut my toenails again. Unlike Rosencrantz's they did not get cut in my sleep. This was possibly because I didn't sleep. I mused about the basic unfairness of life. Or death. Here I was, dead for nearly one hundred hears, and my damn toenails kept growing. And I couldn't sleep, because what is the point of being the 'restless dead' if you can just nip off for a nap? None whatsoever the powers-that-be had decided, and so I was stuck with long toenails.
At least, by the end of my life in 1915, I was fully versed in the art of cutting my toenails. Just imagine if I'd died a child. No. I'm quite glad that I did not. I can assure you, however, that bleeding slowly to death from a nearly infinite number of shrapnel wounds acquired in the bottom of a trench somewhere in France is not a good way to die. Once I tried to swim across the ocean, but I was beset by sharks almost immediately. It was a few months before I'd regenerated back from a scrap or two that must have washed onto the beach. Almost as painful as death itself that. Terrifically unfair.
Not, of course, as unfair as my toenail situation. I don't have bad-looking toenails, as far as toenails go, if I may say so myself. They are pearlescent, shapely nails, strong and even, with no unsightly yellowing or thickening. I once met a fellow with a chronic toenail fungus that had followed him even into death. Persistent malady, is a toenail fungus. Not even beheading by guillotine could shake it. Not, of course, that one should expect removal of the head to result in easement of toe disorders. Completely different ends of the body involved.
Why should such lovely nails that happen to have ended up on my feet, instead of the classically-chosen hand position, have to suffer so? I ask myself this every single day of the eternity that is my lifespan. I mean, deathspan. Yes, deathspan, if I may be allowed to create new words to fit my own interests. I think that I may. Now, back to the toenails, already in progress.
As I sat on my coffin, snipping off my scarily long nails one by one, I briefly thought about painting them, too. Something festive, a nice bright red, maybe--a little something to add a bit of color to the old corpse. It's a dreary life (or a dreary death, I suppose I should say), dragging your chains 'round the market square at half past three each night, always frightening a few drunks, then dragging yourself back to the hills by dawn to catch whatever animals you can find in the old woods. Never any change. Almost makes a chap want to take some sort of Extreme Measures.
I know some folks that take positively neurotic care with the removable bits of their body - I mean, removable in the ordinary, animated course of things, hair and so on - on account of the nasty things that are said to happen if the wrong sort of people get hold of bits of you. Still, I can't say I've ever worried much about that. Just let the scraps fall where they will, I say, and the grass around the grave can be the richer for a few shard of toenail. It's rather nice to think about at least one part of me pushing up the daisies as it ought. Reassuring, you know. Great Cycle of Life and all that.
Now my old friend Tom did get into a spot of trouble with a voodoo queen once, but that was entirely his fault. I warned him not to keep harassing her during her paid seance sessions, but he didn't listen. "Oh come on now, Hibbs," he said. "It's just bit of sport. Who could mind a bit of sport?" Well he changed his tune after the green fuzz started spreading over his flesh. It smelled awful, I can tell you that, but he said the worst bit was that it made his body ooze trails of slimy bile and itch like ten devils all at once. Now I know a decomposing body isn't necessarily the world's sexiest thing in the first place, but let me tell you, not even the other dead lads wanted to be anywhere near old Tom in that state. Who knew if it might be contagious? He had to plead with the queen for weeks before she took pity on him. Now they have a deal worked out where he actually helps her with seances instead of causing a ruckus. She says if he even thinks of bailing out, it's back to stinky ooze for him. She's got a chicken's foot with his name on it all ready to use at the drop of a hat.
I've had nearly a century to practice the toenail cutting on the coffin thing, and I can do it in less that 45 seconds if pressed for time, but you and I both know I've got all the time in the wold, so I usually let it drag on for a while. I consider it my weekly reflection period. This is the first time I have written about it, though. I know it's a bit of a strange topic, but when Fred gave me this Leather bound blank book for Christmas, I knew I had to fill it with something. I think if it really takes off, I may send it off to some publishing houses. Manheim has a great grandson in Moore and Glossop, so maybe if I can get in good with him he'll put a kind word out for me. As it is for now, I must put aside my noble writing so that I can attend the annual Beheaded Barons' Ball held by Messrs. Gloust, Mercer and Wainwright. None of them are headless or of noble lineage, as it turns out. They just thought nming the ball that way would draw more dead debutantes, because really, who doesn't want to deflower a virgin, even after she's past her living prime? I'll let you know know if I have any luck after next week's toenail reflection period. Adieu, fair readers. Papa's got a ball to attend, because indeed, dead can dance!
