Confessions with Dr. Reed Robaire

Part III of IV in a series of "interviews" with characters from my upcoming novel, Ghosty: An Inappropriate Tale for Young Girls.

Today's interview is with Dr. Reed Robaire, dashing man of SCIENCE!


Your main fault: Remembering that most people are not as brilliant as I am. They can't understand the SCIENCE!

Your idea of misery: Teaching high school SCIENCE!

If not yourself, who would you be? I see myself as Captain Nemo, anti-hero of SCIENCE!

Confessions with Rot Thammavongsa

Part II of IV in a series of "interviews" with characters from my upcoming novel, Ghosty: An Inappropriate Tale for Young Girls. (BTW I could use some major help with the title.) Also check out the interview with the novel's protagonist, Bingo Elkins.

Today's interview is with Rot "Rose" Thammavongsa, Bingo Elkins' personal assistant/bodyguard/assassin.

Your idea of happiness: Serving my employer. What else? I dare not speak it.

For what fault do you have most toleration? There's an old Thai proverb, Nam-dtann-glad-mod...krai-ja-ohd-dai. ("Sugar near ants...who can restrain themselves?")

Your favorite heroine in fiction: Moll Flanders.

Confessions With Bingo Elkins

I'm impatient for NaNoWriMo to start, so I've included a preview of some of the characters who will be featured in the novel I'll be writing next month: Ghosty: An Inappropriate Tale for Young Girls. (I may tinker with the title.)

The questions are taken from an English-language confession album which was later answered and made famous by French author Marcel Proust. Vanity Fair adopted and adapted the "Proust Questionnaire."

The first interview is with the novel's protagonist.


What you appreciate the most in your friends: Loyalty, old egg! It's a rummy shame when a chum lets you down, what?

How you wish to die: As I've been toddling along in the afterlife for nearly eighty years now, this question gives me the pip somewhat.

Your favorite occupation: Well, I can tell you it's not running my corporation and what not! I have coves that can do that for me. If I had my rathers, I'd be biffing the old tennis ball or having a round of golf. Alas, noncorporeal hands make that dashed difficult, so I have to seek other adventures.

NaNoWriMo in 11 Days!

Only 11 days until NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! If you don't already know, it's a month-long writing contest to produce a 50,000-word novel...in a month. The prize?

Having written a novel.

I'm extremely excited about getting started. I've written a novel before, but it took me 6 months to write it, and a dozen failed attempts before that. As a writer, I tend to worry too much about things being perfect (why else would it take me a month to write a simple short story?) so I'm going to take Stephen J. Cannell's advice and throw that albatross out. Knowing that what I produce on such short turnaround will largely be crap seems decadently delicious to me for some reason. I'm ready for rock'em-sock'em, freewheeling fun!

My buddy is a 3-time winner as well, so I have to admit...the competitive juices are flowing, too. Unfortunately, he's not entering this year. Too bad! That would have been cool. However, my lovely girlfriend is also an entrant, as well as my little girl (in the Young Writers Program--she's 7).

More to follow.

The Outsider Appendix (Part IV)

This is a continuation. To start at the beginning of the appendix, click here.
To read the original poem, click here here.

V. DUSTY DEATH

Part V recalls the three recurring ages of Roman antiquity: the long-past Golden Age, the Silver Age in which we now live (see Professor Gainsworth’s books), and the coming descent into the soulless Iron Age.

318-320. Cf. Psalms 77:16-18.

325. Cf. “Song of Myself,” Whitman.

327. The mind, too, is like dead ashes. I heard that somewhere.

335. Hilary’s conquest of Mt. Everest. See line 357. After he and Norgay took pictures of themselves at the summit, the Kiwi unzipped and drained his lizard on the rooftop of the world.

339. From the Dhammapada.

360. Cf. “Self-Pity,” D.H. Lawrence.

389. Christ’s betrayal by Judas.

400. ‘al-Haqq, al-Hail, al-Hubb’ (Truth, Strength, Love). According to Earth, Wind and Fire, all these are written in the Stone. See also 410-415.

403. The spirit gives life, but the letter kills. St. Paul, perhaps, or some such fellow.

410-414. The Eightfold Path of Buddha’s dharma.

417. More about the uncountable Purusha can be found in the Purusha Suktam. Verses 13-14 are especially significant:
From his mouth came forth
The men of learning
And of his arms
Were warriors made
From his thighs came
The trading people
And his feet gave
Birth to servants.
Of his mind, the moon is born
Of his gaze, the shining sun
From his mouth, Thunder and Fire
And of his life’s breath,
The whistling wind
Space unfolds
From his navel
The sky well formed
From his head
His feet, the earth
His ears the Quarters
Thus they thought up
All the worlds

425. I do not know the pen behind this charming little tune. I first heard it from Ryan Charter upon his kindergarten graduation.

426. Cf. Verlaine, Sagesse, Bk. 3, vi.

432. The net of jewels, in which every jewel contains the reflection of all the others. Representative of the ten thousand things.


Whew! That's it! Come back tomorrow for more!

The Outsider Appendix (Part III)

This is a continuation. To start at the beginning of the appendix, click here.
To read the original poem, click here here.

III. THE STARS WOULD BE SHINING

174-176. Cf. Puccini, Tosca:
E lucevan le stelle,
e olezzava la terra,
stridea l’uscio dell’orto
e un passo sfiorava la rena…

191. Cf. “Dragula,” Rob Zombie.

193. Cf. “Ozymandias of Egypt,” Shelley.

195. A unification of “18 Wheels on a Big Rig” by Stuart Mitchell and a website of no small notoriety.

199. Cf. “The Blind,” Baudelaire, 92.

216. Virgil, here neither the poet of the Aeneid or Dante’s hell/purgatory tour guide, is actually the primary character in the poem, central to its meaning. His self-immolation, pitiable and inevitable, will take on a heroic aspect, especially if one considers it in the context of a Ragnorak-like uprising, and with the inexplicable and cruel death of his amour, it is a startling indictment of the ‘divine.’

223. While the thematic repetition was not intentioned, it is interesting to compare imagery here with that of the snowy mansion in Part V, if one is so inclined.

250. Compare to Calpurnia in Julius Caesar.

262-272. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi, Orpheus.

273. Cf. Puccini, Tosca, II.

282. Most flowers have a representative meaning, as this one does.

IV. INNOCENCE IS DROWNED

312. The definitive account of Stone Creek’s debt to this semi-mythical muse (who had a flair for Faustian bargains) can be found in Bear Lester’s Essays from Stone Creek (Hardcore Utilitarian Press). Mr. Lester knows more about Classical Greek than I do about Modern English.

316. Cf. Psalms 46:9. The inclusion of so many biblical and Eastern religious passages in this text may puzzle those who know me, but then again God is not without a sense of humor.

For the last installment (honestly!) click here.

The Outsider Appendix (Part II)

This is a continuation. To start at the beginning of the appendix, click here.
To read the original poem, click here here.

II. BRING THE PAIN

75. This happens more than I thought.

91. Cf. The Mabignogion, Owein.

96. Cf. The Iliad, VIII.

101. Cf. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller.

105. Cf. “New York Minute,” Don Henley.

124. From one of Aesop’s lesser-known fables. One’s bag of faults in front is typically smaller than that one carries in back.

133. Admiral Yamamoto after losing nearly all his carriers at Midway.

139. Cf. “In Flanders Field,” John McCrae.

161. The tenth avatar of Vishnu, who at the end of the Kaliyuga, will appear in person on a white horse named Kalki.

170. Cf. Richard III.

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider Appendix (Part I)

This is an appendix to "The Outsider." It, too, is "written" by Tedmund Arlen Shinarook.

To read the original poem, click here here.

NOTES

Much of the prophecy, as well as some anecdotes and personal remembrances in the poem were adapted from Professor Charles P. Gainsworth III’s book on Stone Creek municipal history: Stone Creek: Present Iniquity and Future Doom. Incidentally, while I do not recommend trying to read it in one sitting, Professor Gainsworth’s work illuminates brilliantly many of my themes; and his volumes resonate (in the tradition of Gibbons and Trevelyan) with the peculiar energy that makes the citizenry of Stone Creek do as they do. There is another book that has had a profound influence on my outlook, as this poem clearly reveals; On the Heights of Despair; I drew particular inspiration from the essays On Death, On Sadness, and Capitulation. No one familiar with Cioran’s oeuvre will misapprehend my choices regarding references or anything else.

I. QUADRIVIUM

Line 5 Cf. “September,” Earth, Wind and Fire.

20. Cf. Matthew 11:28.

31. Cf. The Consul, II. i.

40. Id. II. i.

41. I of course am referring here to the seven liberal arts of the medieval Western university, whose manifestations have been adopted for my own purposes. Music, strangely one of the sciences back then, would have been characterized in the following fashion: a woman in a robe with twinkling discs at the head of music-makers, a procession of poets, musicians, goddesses, and the daughters of Zeus, the three Graces Aglaia (brilliance), Euphrosyne (Joy) and Thalia (Bloom). Geometry and Rhetoric were accompanied by Pythagoras and Cicero respectively; Arithmetic is portrayed traditionally, but Grammar and Dialectic had many more accessories than were mentioned here. Astronomy of the golden wings (who has much in common with Urania in Part IV) is crucial, Mistress Thomas insists, to any understanding of the future.

58. Verlaine, Mon Rêve Familier, Poèmes Saturniens, VI.
Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D’une femme inconnue, et que j’aime, et qui m’aime
Et qui n’est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même
Ni tout à fait une autre, et m’aime et me comprend.

72. Ionesco, Rhinoceros, III, Dudard.

74. Verlaine, Sagesse, Livre I, vii.

This is a continuation. For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part IX)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

The girl of auburn locks looks to the night
And whispers in e minor to the moon
And looks for wild geese already flown away
Breathes, and purses her lips
And walks tetchily homeward down a matted trail
And into a field freshly snowed
Meets a blue heron, who stands solid
And motionless recalling map pins and tiny flags.

On this snowy plain near the mansion
In this inverted season, the ice is melting
As stolid glaciers melt, below the surface
There exists a secret fault, the final answer within.
Winter goes, and spring comes,
The dead lie dreaming ever near.
We dip our hands in the same dish
Did not see that one coming
Goog goog goog
Into the lake of fire. And the band
Threw down their instruments

Between the Nahrain the nightmare rouses itself,
Born of the boots, raised by the saw
Nursed by the pear in that banal museum.
The guests loiter, eyeing the prepared table.
She wipes the dry death from the setting
A H
al-Haqq: where are we going?
Citizens, a white cloud falling over my eyes
The killing letters of a fire-breathing text
Proffered to a numbed generation of sleepers
While elders, who go before, paint themselves sages
Needing no mirror to see their own eyes
And dictating spirit terms with their absolving pen
And contemning their heirs with puffy abuse
As their fire flickers and dies
A H
al-Hail: I have seen the stone
Traced the stone with my finger and known
I spoke of the stone, always in my mind
Acting on the stone, the calling in my mind
Purpose I find, aevanescent recollection
Attention means attention
A H
al-Hubb: From his gaze the shining sun
Was formed, his mouth breathed thunder and fire
Even as we breathe, from his navel all space
Was formed, one blood, uncountable heads and eyes
Beyond grasping hands

I sat in the nothingness
Thinking, before the all was
Thus I thought up all the world

He screams and he cusses and wrecks all the busses

Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse
Ô toi que voilà pleurant sans cesse―lat be lat be
Dis-moi, qu’as-tu fait?
These eyes have seen across ages
Through every man’s sight. Purusha seith this.
Al-Haqq. Al-Hail. Al-Hubb.

Ji ji mu ge


Not the end!!! Come back tomorrow for the appendix, in true Eliot-style...

The Outsider (Part VIII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

V. DUSTY DEATH

Within the trembling deep of the great waters
Within the pregnant expanse of the clouds
Within the shaking of scorched earth
The prisoners and the pilgrims
Torches and staves and labyrinths
Of rocks of summer crowning random ridges
I who destroy am about to die
We who about to die walk to our own funerals
We are little men

Only ashes nothing else up here
Dead ashes and nothing and the tall grass
The grasses dying in among the rocks
Stretching along the mountain’s endless broken back
In the end this ash we did banish
Lying in the tall grass he did not vanish
Face in the sky and hands in the shadows
In the bitter end lying in the grass
The ridge ahead not slowly rising sharply falling
Only here you see the vanishing and kneeling and crawling
When you give up victory you can sleep
Fearless dreams under a million stars
When you give up defeat you can sleep
Except for the shrieking hoarse voices night and day
Everyone leave the room except for you
In the end

And there is nothing
Lots of nothing
But dead ashes
Only ashes
The dust
The cinders in your lungs
The end brushes the ash from his face
Their noontime explosion
Nobody in nobody out
But nothing is like the dead ashes
After the sun is put out between wet fingers
Whup whup whup whup whup whup whup
And yet there are no ashes

What is the first thing you will do in Olympus?
When I go, I am going to piss on it
Those longbeards in their white togas
They say three out of every four men are gods
Walking right by the dead birds in the snow, spiteful
I do not know what is earth and what is heaven
—But when I get there I will piss on it.

What noises up here make one forget
Buzz of stony silence
When is that darkness monster coming back
When is he coming, caked with sulphur
Shining like sleek oily metal
In the hay where lovers tossed
Hot wax and riding crops and ribbons of choking silk
Surprise visit
Medina Masif Jibal
Glockington Stone Creek
Strange

For the last installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part VII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

The cardinal wails
Trees lose leaves
The swollen rivers
With stones they cry
They ask
Why
Heavenward, her dying on the breeze.
Body at rest
Piercing shade
Near Methymna shores
On her way to Hades
Muori dannato
Muori muori muori

Arl and Lizzie
Slender candles
Gentle masque of twilight
An emerald earring
Green and silver
The garden shrine
Sitting and watching
Cyclamen breeze
Stirring the branches
The voice of resignation
Dove and crow
Muori dannato
Muori muori muori

‘Karts and pin oaks.
Eliot sired me. Mara and Soma
Betrayed me. By Mara I was found
Sitting cross-legged under the hickory tree.
‘One leg is in Hell, and the other
Remains here. Through the years
You slept. You thought yourself a bien-pensant.
Maybe she never knew. Why do you ask?’
‘Over in Glockington.
I learned to suppress
Pain and Fear.
The subjugation of pleasant things.
Our neighbors just neighbors who knew
The middle ground.’
muori

To Stone Creek then she came

Digging digging digging digging
O Unjust Father I defy you
O Unjust Father I defy

digging

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part VI)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

In the gathering dark, after the fire
And before the Chicken Kiev, when the hands of the clock
Mark the minutes of this walking death,
I Virgil, guide, living blind on the margins,
All used up now by life, by Him forsaken
In the gathering dark, by His Olympian indifference
Laid low, computer solitaire consoling the hours,
The author encased by drywall, stares in the mirror, shaves
His face, and roots for dinner among the cans.
In a closet tenderly packed
The sudden detritus of her life forever frozen,
In cardboard boxes are stored (in sealed plastic bags)
Clothing, photographs, jewelry, and letters.
I Virgil, all used up now by this soupy world
Tired of waiting, and got on my way—
I would go out to meet him.
My friend, ironic and detached, waves,
No sin-eater he, not greeting but beckoning,
One who compels obedience
In his death black suit and blood red tie.
The sun has moved on, as it always does,
He puts down his fork, it was bland and tasteless,
There is but one souvenir
Left to be put away, sweet relic.
Numb and dispassionate, he wrings it free;
A band of gold overcoming the unwilling knuckle;
On his finger now a sunken white band,
The empty gully his new companion.
(And I Virgil drenched in flame
Defied the so-called Master Architect;
Where I sat by the gentle Tecumseh weeping
And began my despairing death.)
Bathes himself in somber fuel,
And strikes the match, dispelling the dark . . .

She wilted and put a hand to her mouth
Disbelief flooding her face as he left;
Unable to stop the cruel looping mantra in her brain:
‘Do not go. I have had strange dreams.’
Grinds her temple with her fingers,
‘Not to me, O Lord, not to me’ it was said
In the misty rain of Lu Mountain, in the River Che.
(Curses the gathering darkness before her eyes.)
O Death death, I see nothing special
Within these four walls on West Pierce Street,
The emptiness of an open fist
And a table cloth and a bowl shattering on the floor
Hot sticky soup everywhere: where haughty Death
Insists to take with his bony touch
The life I have never loved so much.

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part V)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

III. THE STARS WOULD BE SHINING

The burnt sand is crushed: the brittle hood of brush
Pestled and ground into the watery silt. The earth
Surrenders to the foot, splashing. Come, sweet Thalia.
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly, until at last I return.
The starlight here is far too brazen, not so the flowers,
The carpet of grass, the modest vesper, your graceful step
Into the veiled hush of our twilight. Come, sweet Thalia.
I overlook the city, the sac à fiens of liberation;
On this foul box I offer to take nothing…
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly til I get back,
Gentle Tecumseh, wait quietly til I put down my pack.
Free from the twitching pincers of the beast
I murder conviction, and shield my eyes from the East.

The bus rolled slowly through our town
Trawling for trollops with benjamins for bait
Only to disappear through the hedge of mist
Before the black sunshine corrupted the pewter sky
Ransoming our bones now twice sold
And settling all old business in the Forum of the Doomed.
The perished ones made animate they march again
On the grass where blood was never spill’d but flood’d,
On the scaffold held court the Dead One, exterminating son.
How could I look on his works and not fear
The mantle of the avenging wraith he assumed, yet I only
See the depraved, exulted pimp of the Sex Trolley.
O (prime numbers) there’s one two three five seven
Eleven thirteen seventeen
Whores on the yellow bus
Èprise du plaisir jusqu’à l’atrocité.

Harder harder harder
Click click click click click click
Who is that?
Oh snap

Wayfarin Rats
Under the scorched earth of spinning ghosts
Mr. Principal, the old gas ball
Aflame, a seven-page letter in his pocket
Cf. ass-clown: briefcase in hand,
He gave me stereo instructions for the soul,
I got him in at the Head Cracker Café.
I am the drum that brings bad spirits.

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part IV)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

‘What is that bell?’
It ought to be for you.
‘Why do they keep ringing it? When will they stop?’
Like you care.
‘I’ve
‘Heard it before. I should have gone with them. I was
‘The only one left.’
Your tongue
Is lethal but your sword is quiet.
‘The bag in front of you is as big as the one behind me. But I won’t give in.’
Break
One-one do you copy four-two-four-zero-zero—
Your hometown
It’s not like this
‘What do you want from me? What do you want?
‘I never claimed Spinoza’s Stone, I always did
‘What I was told, always. Is this not the case?
‘Can you disagree with me?’
Sasha sugi, he says.
Your path is set, I see you shall not waver.
But be warned I shall bring the pain
Should you posture and tarnish your shield further.

When Hagar’s husband got snuffed, I thought—
I’m not making this up, seriously I thought this,
WE ARE THE DEAD
We’re hiding under the porch, shh baby don’t look don’t look.
Now you won’t have to worry if he’ll find out
About you and me. His Havanas, I gave them to Bobby.
T had me in his den, Hagar, and he bragged about them,
He said, you know, they’re finer than she is.
And sweeter-tasting, he said, so I hid them in my jacket.
I kept them for five months, but I don’t smoke, see.
We’re going to die, she said. Looks like it, I said.
Then get on top of me, she said, and let’s get to it.
WE ARE THE DEAD
You don’t get to choose, just grab one.
Take your receipt and step out of the way.
And if you run out, you have only yourself to blame.
You’ve had time to prepare, I said, you knew this was coming.
(For fifteen years no less.)
I see him, she said, turning the spotlight,
He’s got something in his hand, like he’s on fire, she said,
(He keeps getting hit, but he doesn’t go down.)
The lawyer didn’t want me out here, but I’d never seen a NBK.
You’re a terrifying metsunge, I thought.
My, if I met your efficient cause, I’d just die, I thought,
Where your red kalki at Superbeast?
WE ARE THE DEAD
Dang, the rain that’s coming down, he never saw the like,
As he put the cross on his head, not the crown that others—
WE ARE THE DEAD
WE ARE THE DEAD
Dive false tongue. Dive wasp. Dive candle-waster. Dive.
I’ll be waiting. Dive. Dive.
Dive down, men, dive down, ladies, dive down, dive down.

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part III)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

II. BRING THE PAIN

The wagon they rode in, these indifferent children of the earth,
Made rough love to the road, whereas its crew,
Bound to each other with unabdicated ecstasies and unconsidered dreams
Behind which a golden veau slouches in their six
(If you don’t have a shield, you better ax somebody!)
Their Night impaled by oncoming halogen eyes
Freely flashing the teeming masses’ yearnings as
Instamatic enlightenment scorched from within,
Their silken dalliance undone from their suitcases;
Thoughts of hops and stolen pickaxes
Undaunted, laughing in the face of their strange nameless tagalongs, summoning
Commodus, Didius Julianus, and Elagabalus—cheating, dumb-lucky
And perverse in aspect; vitriol riding the waves
Across the deading border, they gathered
To witness a Very Special Episode,
Hailstones breaking the surface of the fountain’s waters
Pitting the sides of the silver bowl.
A squamous vest variegated with threads
Brilliant green and purple, gilded buttons to hold the man,
This eidolon of Hermes in reverse.
Above the question mark of his existence one found
The beam of Father’s scales still teetering
But destined to come down on his side as surely
As they did for Homer’s Patty; within this dark wood
Lay that which should not be roused
From slumbering tomb, while all he really sought
Was his ultimate Broadway.
Sapphic boredom met the bloody slaughterbench
Of Cambodian history; lecherous Chircharogne
Swallowing fire, wailing, argumentum ad misericordiam.
The wolf is at the door.
Going to emergency, going to jail, cry out
For the approaching sirens
Passing you by, making you die.

‘You’ve been spared a second time. Yes, spared. Wear the mask.
‘Go along. Was it really so bad? Be honest.
‘Are you afraid to look? To compare? Yes?
‘I think you’re just fine. Liar.’

The dusty earth shall run with blood
Long after we come over them with our will.

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part II)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

Witchy Thomas, Cassandra of renown,
Tried to warn them, but
She never revealed her Arts and Sciences,
Or her seven sisters. Look, she mumbled,
Here one comes, my starry-robed sister with the globe and compasses,
(Who is that strange whitebeard at her side? Goo!)
Here is Mathilda, long-fingered and wise,
A multiplying ray bursting from her forehead.
Here is the girl with the crown of stars, the girl with the scalpel and pens,
And here is the gal with the cloak and shield, and this one,
Her hair in elaborate rolls, holds a serpent and carries a wax tablet,
And secrets a fishhook. I do not see
My sister Harmonia. Innocence is drowned.
No one can close this door, nor darken this shining path.
There you have it. She met Grahame too late,
Else things may have turned out differently:
So can say history’s fortunate few.

Strange and piercing dream,
Through the time that passes his life,
Sinners in the hands of an angry musician, he said,
He will make wide slaughter in this land.
Still, we reasoned, one is not more than one,
And so ignored this soggy lobby greeter.
Carried our hero on our shoulders around the gazebo,
Where the Ragbags exchanged their vows,
With joy-soaked oblivion of the approaching storm.
I bumped into an old friend, shook him and yelled ‘Boonie!
‘Remember me from Al-Rabiah?
‘That guy we knew who put out his eyes with the golden broach,
‘Did you keep in touch with him? How’s his family?
‘Too bad he missed this spectacle!
‘His anarchic principles, which I found most illogical,
‘Would have been no match for our community spirit!
‘Damn skippy! va prier contre l’orage,–va prier!’

For the next installment, click here.

The Outsider (Part I)

The following is a lengthy poem I had originally planned to include in the sequel to Maniac Tuba. It was "written" by a character named Tedmund Arlen Shinarook, a despondent, alienated widower. I based it on the more esoteric poetry of T.S. Eliot, and there are many references to events in Maniac Tuba, as well as ones from the (unwritten) sequel, Stone Creek Nights. Still, I think it can be somewhat enjoyed on a visceral level, as well.

1Tedmond Arlen Shinarook (1965- ). The Outsider. 199-.

The Outsider

Et male consultis pretium est: prudentia fallax,
nec fortuna probat causas sequiturque merentes;
sed vaga per cunctos nullo discrimine fertur;
scilicet est aliud quod nos cogatque regatque
maius, et in proprias ducat mortalia leges.

I. QUADRIVIUM

Oh March, failed Venus, impudent Venus,
Your shadow falling across this cactus land, no longer
Suffering the peaceless people, chasing away
The poppy orb of a nuclear furnace setting in the sky.
April changed the minds of pretenders, smelling
Like burnt Naugahyde victory, shaking off
The burden of its penitence.
May was a kick in the meatbucket, stumbling over the Sinjar
Under cloudless skies; we were gone only for a day,
But the memory remained, back to the truck,
Cursing the bodiless voices, sliding into the warmth of her sucking mouth.
Ma kathaba an fa’ala, aktahalat ‘ainah bi-jamaliha.
And back in the day, staying at the Canterbury,
Awkward stirrings, the office held a b-ball pool,
And I won forty-five dollars. I said, Sandra,
Sandra, you’ll have to wait. Right left, get on up.
You are such a bazoo, that is what you are.
What that is, I don’t know, only that you are one of them.

How many pennies would cover, would coat
This ill-famed town? Lay down your burden,
And listen, and do not flip me the bird, or some other
Indexical sign, as the parade passes,
As the scientists try to correct common sense, those modern shamans,
And seek from us a Diomedan swap. This game
Isn’t all kung fu and supermodels,
(‘Noble’ fool, your vintage is failing),
And there’s a trenchcoat at the door hammering away
Possessed by spirits of the abyss crying your spoil and ruin
And he doesn’t care he’s at the wrong door;
This isn’t a lyceum, it’s a gulag.
May I come in?
Shall we pretend we could keep you out?
‘You asked me if I was holding the fort down;
I want to burn the fort down.’
–Yet you will see, soon enough, how strong our army is,
In your red velvet pants, holding your blow torch, you cannot
Escape, ruff tuff creampuff, the Father of Knowledge
Will come as he left, in blood and fury,
Shattering this Beaufort zero, and make you tremble.
Bright was the moon and far was my home.

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part X)

This is a continuation. To start at the beginning, click here.

Aftermath

from the Omaha World-Herald

TWO SLAIN, ONE MISSING IN “ANIMAL ATTACK”

WESTBROOK—Investigators from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday said that the deaths of two women found brutally slain at the Saleen Regency Hotel now appear to be the result of an animal attack, and not a human attack as first believed. According to Deputy Chief Victoria Flint, preliminary reports indicate that injuries sustained by Margaret Murphy, 24, and her sister Amanda Murphy, 20, are consistent with that of a large animal, although the Coroners Office has not completed the final autopsy report.

“We don’t know what [type of animal] could have done this, and to that end we are enlisting help from the University of Nebraska Medical Center,” Flint said.

The two sisters were found about 10 a.m. last Tuesday in their hotel room by cleaning personnel. A third sister, Tess Murphy, 17, was confirmed to have checked into the room, but her whereabouts remain unknown.

“We haven’t received any tips,” Flint said. “We are doing canvasses of the area, talking to witnesses, and hoping for the best. That’s all we can do at this point.”

Asked about the lack of forced entry, Flint admitted that it was “bizarre,” but declined to speculate on possible scenarios.

Community reaction has been vengeful.

“They need to find this animal and kill it,” said Josh Bucket, an area businessman. “Anything that can tear up two young women like that and drag off a third shouldn’t be allowed to live.”


Okey-doke! That's it for this one...I liked doing the research for this. The form of epilepsy, although never connected with lycanthropy, is real. My next story will involve...well, you'll see. It's going to be written in the style of P.G. Wodehouse.

Seizure (Part IX)

This post is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

Tess stared at her father, completely thunderstruck by this tale, and, despite herself, deeply resentful of her father, who would, even in a made-up story, choose her mother’s life over her own and relate this fact to her.

“I do not find this remotely funny and all the thought you’ve obviously put into this joke I consider borderline psychopathic,” she told her father, who seemed unprepared for the bitter restraint of her response.

“I wish what I was telling you was only a joke. And I’m afraid that I have not yet relayed the worst of it, as far as it pertains to your role in the story.”

“Well, I was wondering exactly how this all would play out. Is Kastorsis handsome? Or at least wealthy? This may yet work out.”

“Like I said, you will start to notice some changes—they may seem very minor at first,” David said. “Maggie tells me you have a hard time waking up nowadays. Yesterday, at the homecoming party, you tore into the Mongolian beef, but you’re supposed to be a vegetarian. And your arm hair is a lot darker than it used to be. Of course, these are only things I picked up because I knew to look for them and I am sure there are things that are happening that you wouldn’t be telling me about.”

“I got my first period when I was twelve, Dad.”

“Trying to shock me won’t change anything. I said that you might be experiencing some weird things right now, but am I right?”

“There’s always weird things going on with me, but you’ve always warned me about Occam’s razor,” she said admonishingly. “Maybe you can tell me why I keep getting these hangnails. I clip and clip and they always come back. Must mean I’m a werewolf.” She giggled.

“I can offer you proof of a sort. But of course, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this because I don’t think you’ll like the form it will take. You may be angry with me for a while.”

“I may be angry with you? What makes you think I’m not angry with you now?”

David stood up with a tired sigh. Indifferent to her daughter’s look of apprehension, he circled behind her and reached into his jacket. Abruptly, he grabbed her wrist, pinned it to the table. Ruthlessly, he slid the sharpened edge of the letter-opener across the back of her splayed hand. It must be said that he took exceeding care to slice shallowly. Still, the assault had taken her completely by surprise and she began to shriek even before she realized how painful it was. It was more excruciating than any sensation she had ever known: she looked down, expecting to see carnage, but through the mists of agony was dumbfounded to see a modest two-inch scratch the width of a line of ink.

“This is no doubt the worst pain you’ve ever felt,” David whispered over his daughter’s shoulder, who was now clutching her hand to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Look at it. Use your Reason. A cut so minor shouldn’t possibly hurt this much, should it?”

“What did you do to me? Poison?” Tess cried.

“This letter-opener is 95 percent sterling silver. And surely you’ve heard what they say about werewolves and silver weapons,” David said, wiping the tool clean with a small cloth and putting both back in his jacket.

“I’m not a werewolf. There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

“Sure. There’s no such thing as werewolves. But what are you?”

***

After racking her ankle on the coffee table, Amanda turned on the light and jumped back in surprise. Tess had been sitting in the dark, her eyes narrowed into somber, soulless, predatory slits. Her nostrils flared.

For the last installment, click here.

Seizure (Part VIII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

He frowned.

“Well, I’ve already told you what kind of story to expect. You are frequently going to want to react adversely to what I’m telling you, but I would ask that you bottle it up until I’m all finished. I’ve been to a lot of places since your mother died—the deserts of Australia, dozens of islands in Indonesia, and up and down the Malay Peninsula. I’ve seen some strange things. Because I had to find, God help me, the sorcerer who extended your mother’s life and try to undo our deal. And on your face is exactly the expression I expected to see at this moment. I, too, scoffed at his claims and discounted them as the ravings of a lunatic and in doing so, maintained my faith in the rational and empirical. I assure you, Tess, were I not so harrowed at the thought of losing her, or if medical science could have saved her, I never would have went down such a crazy, dark road. The truth is that I didn’t think I had anything to lose, and I wasn’t ready to let your mom go. It all started in the Kerguelen Archipelago in the south Indian Ocean: this is where I met Kastorsis the Wicked. I’m there looking for a very special fungus, a smut that I projected had the power to repair spinal cord damage and reverse the necrosis that was killing Theresa. Now this place basically is a rock pile out in the middle of the ocean, understand, and there is nothing tremendously green about it. Aside from me and my men, there are about a hundred French seismologists, geologists, rocket scientists, and some poor government schmucks who must have pissed someone off really bad to get exiled to this slag heap. So you can understand the shock I experienced when I stumble across a half-acre on that barren island that was completely lush, Tess, like a doggone botanical garden! This is about two clicks away from a glacier with penguins on it. That ecosystem hadn’t been able to support flora like that for about 50 million years and it should have been the subject of intensive scientific study. In this transplanted tropical paradise, an old man hobbles out to meet us and he’s the kind of graybeard who seems to clutch at your thoughts as you’re thinking them. So, was I surprised when he refused to speak to anyone but me? Not at all, strange to say. The rest of my team leaves, without saying a word, as if it’s a logical necessity. Bear with me—this is the part of the story that gets really weird. After everyone leaves, I follow this man to his hut and I go inside; this man’s hut is smallish on the outside, but on the inside it’s like a colonial manse. I tried to harness my tongue and jaw to speak, but I found those parts of me paralyzed, and besides, despite the fact that we had not spoken a word aloud, we were communicating like it was the Algonquin Round Table. Kastorsis made an offer to me. He pulled what I most desired right out of my brain. The deal was, he granted Theresa seven years of perfect health—she would die immediately thereafter. Kastorsis kept his part of the deal: miraculously your mom got better, and was in perfect health for exactly seven years. And then she died on her next heartbeat. The price I paid for extra time with my wife was you. I granted him license to transform you and to take possession. In fact, you may already be experiencing the change. He said it would begin on your seventeenth birthday. I understand this makes me a monster. I was so besotted by grief at the time, I would have promised anything and sacrificed anyone to keep my wife alive. After your mother died, I returned to Kerguelen to try to get out of the pact, but it was as if he had never been there. I have spent the last six months trying to find Kastorsis, or some shaman or wizard who can save you, but I am ashamed to say I have uncovered nothing.”

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part VII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

Her father sat in silence not only because he was marshalling the courage to speak—itself a phenomenon incongruous with his personality—but also because, to both his regret and pride, he had discovered Tess to be utterly unafraid of long silences, a streak of cruelty he himself had often employed in his dealings with troublesome rivals and subordinates. Suddenly, her father straightened himself as if he were going to break the news of someone’s termination. Tess tensed perceptibly. Her father took another draught of his brandy and, placing it on the table (the clink of glass on glass), began:

“For some time I’ve been rehearsing what I was going to say to you now—ever since your mother died, in fact…I thought, hmm—I really have no idea how you’re going to react to any of this—I believe that you deserve the truth, regardless of the improbability or impossibility of it. Hmm. Of course, you’re going to think the old man has lost his mind. I’ve gone all Heart of Darkness on you. On the other hand, it is my duty to tell you, there are things in this world that defy explanation, and disbelief in them does not make them any less true. And I have sat you down to tell you some things that defy explanation but are nonetheless true. Now, it looks like you are thinking exactly the things at this point that I would have thought you would be thinking, because your face is abjectly incapable of disguising your thoughts. Hmm…that’s exactly the expression your mother had on her face when she and I began this very same conversation. Have I told you lately how much you remind me of your mother?”

Here her father paused as though seriously awaiting an answer. Tess detested rhetorical questions masked in serious inquiry.

“Never heard that one before!” Tess said quickly and somewhat sneeringly, irritated by the idea that her time, evidently unlike that of anyone who spoke with her, was a consumable scarcely worth considering. “Did you have something momentous to tell me, or are you having second thoughts now? You would like to postpone this until you got your courage up or your thoughts together, perhaps?”

These were confrontational words reminding her father that the direct and simple were far superior to the circumspect and convoluted, words that hit home with a man of action! All the fumbling and dithering began to disperse, and a mindful confidence took its place. A new aspect emerged—the face of the merciless, ruthless businessman, one whose streak of cruelty often served his ends. Taking such barbs from others, namely, Tess’s older sisters, he considered intolerable because they were invariably executed in passionate fits or without weighed premeditation. Amanda in particular had always found her father’s indulgence toward Tess’s comments shocking and unfair, but what she neglected to bear in mind was that her father placed a high premium on effective verbal jousting, a skill for which Amanda’s poor brain would never be wired.

“Well played, and now we’ll get on to the bad news.”

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part VI)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

The Delta of Confidences

Amanda got back to the hotel room around three a.m. and she had the exaggerated, giggling stealth of the intoxicated that created more noise than it prevented. Both Maggie and Tess had known that Amanda’s promises to stay dry during this trip were worthless. The main reason behind her father allowing her to go on the trip was largely the confluence of three factors: Maggie’s promise to keep her dry, which was farcical; the attractive idea, proposed by a neighbor, that the three sisters would “bond,” helping to ease the pain of their mother’s death, six months past but still an open sore; and simple distraction, fallout from a confession to Tess after his return from Malaysia, a conversation that revealed either pronounced schizophrenia on his part, or dark portends indeed for his daughter.

A few days after his return from the mountains and jungles of Southeast Asia, David M. Murphy took his daughter Tess aside for a serious talk on the veranda on the secluded south side of their mansion. The purpose of his trip, as everyone had been led to believe, had not been pharmaceutical research, the foundation on which his company and the house they lived in had been built, at least, he clarified, in the strict terms of his shareholders. Because similar jaunts in the past had met with wild success, there was no reason for anyone to doubt him. In response to a rather impertinently unfunny quip from Amanda (about the quality of “weed” he had brought back), David boasted to the homecoming reception that their stock was getting ready to “crap diamonds.” But, even then, Tess could tell that this swagger was false. Her sisters insisted that Dad had found the magical plants as he had done so many times before, that he had once again gone out into the savage places and seized its mysteries, and in doing so, as was their habit, they were confident that their lifestyles were about to soar upward once again. Sensing when her father was lying, or even simply concealing something, had always been a singular skill of Tess’s and one that assured that she would be the delta toward which all confidences flow. Now, as he poured himself a snifter of brandy, Tess noticed with foreboding that her father only looked at her indirectly and fleetingly.

Such shiftiness in expression always appeared foreign to David Murphy’s face. Like Maggie and Amanda, David was tall and prepossessing, and, like Maggie and Amanda, his eyes were the color of Arctic seas. His skin was weather-beaten and coarse, reminding one of a leather basketball left out in the yard all winter. Except for the uncanny similarity of their facial shape, there was little to link Tess to her father or sisters physically (making her, it seemed, an orphan of sorts when her mother died). Perhaps these dissimilarities, because of the distancing that always seemed to occur when they were brought up, were the basis on which Tess’s amazing insights were built. Moreover, her similarity to her mother prompted David to treat her with an almost doting sentiment, a tendency, ever more pronounced since her mother’s death, that hardly escaped her sisters’ notice.

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part V)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

A painting hung on the wall above the couch. It was Thomas Kinkade’s Cobblestone Bridge. As a rule, Tess had always found motel and bank art contemptible—it was the maudlin nadir of contemporary vulgar kitsch. She could not look away. It appeared as if the elements of the painting were moving and that, in addition to the swaths of pigment burning afterimages onto her retinas, so it seemed, the glow from the house in the painting was escaping from off the canvas into the room, cascading onto and pooling around Amanda in an effervescent pool of light, and immolating her senses and stymieing her every impulse to move. What sublime beauty she now beheld! Before long she felt tears running down her cheeks, began to shake, and started gasping for air as if she were drowning.

“I don’t think she’s staring at it because she likes it. I think she’s having some sort of attack, like she said,” Maggie seemed to say, from somewhere distant, as if she were shouting from the bottom of a very deep pit.

“I think we should slap her.”

“You’re not touching her.”

“What should we do then?”

“I think we better just wait.”

“‘We better just wait?’”

“I think it’s like sleepwalking. I think I heard somewhere that you don’t want to try to wake them up. It looks like she’s starting to come out of it.”

“And you said you were fine with her driving,” Amanda scoffed.

“If I had known this might happen, don’t you think I would said differently?”

“If this had happened when she was driving, we’d all be dead right now.”

“You’re being overdramatic. Look, she’s coming around.”

Tess waved off Maggie’s helping hands, wiped her brow clear of sweat, and sat down in the chair Maggie had vacated. The world was coming back into focus, muted and duller to the power of ten and worse off for it. What once had been a pyrogenic shearing of the color spectrum was now a cloying, saccharine, ordinary painting. Amanda, whom Tess had always held up as a standard of beauty, who moments before bathed in the nimbus of an archangel, now seemed plain, even ugly.

“We lost you for a few minutes,” Maggie said with a mixture of concern and relief.

Tess forced a smile.

“I guess I won’t be driving anymore.”

“No. You won’t.” Maggie’s lustrous chestnut hair, her best feature, fell against Tess as she tended to her. Now it felt like coarse dry straw.

“So everything’s good here?” Amanda said, unzipping her suitcase.

“The pool is open until eleven.” Maggie did not have to look to know that Amanda was getting out her precious white bikini. “Not rushing off to slut it up with strange boys doesn’t make you uncool; staying here with Tess would make you a good sister. Then again, you shouldn’t let your sister’s medical condition get in the way of your social life.”

“I know I’m not as perfect as you are, but bitch, don’t tell me I’m not a good sister—”

“Go ahead and go. Don’t pretend like you’re not going to. Tess and I will stay here and play gin.”

Amanda went into the bathroom to change.

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part IV)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

Omaha

Tess drove until they reached Omaha just after twilight, adamant in her refusal to cede the wheel to Maggie. She wanted to prove to herself that her episodes were unobtrusive and controllable by the exercise of her will. Midway through the afternoon, at a rest stop near the Illinois-Iowa border, Tess had a bizarre exchange with a five year-old boy while Maggie and Amanda were in line for the restroom. Tess had left the car to stretch her legs, and then, as she smiled at the towheaded lad making a starfighter fly up and down the sidewalk, witnessing his consciousness completely subsumed in an epic intergalactic struggle, she was taken aback when he suddenly pulled up as if slapped and stared at her. A young child has never stared as intently at a television screen as this little boy stared at her, and it required his parents physically moving him and driving away for the link to be severed.

“Was he staring at your unibrow?” Amanda remarked impudently as they carried their bags to their hotel room.

“Why do I even open my mouth?” Tess said, pushing past her and entering the room.

“You can bite my head off if you want, but you have to admit that that was really weird,” Amanda said, delighted with her bon mot.

“It is weird,” Maggie said resolutely. “This kid, he sounds like something out of The Children of the Corn.”

It was a flawed analogy and Tess knew it. The child was normal and, had she never appeared at the rest stop, he would have continued to be normal.

Amanda stretched out on the sofa. She had dropped a lot of weight over the summer. Maggie sat down at the desk next to her, casually flipping through the hotel guide and making notes on the complimentary notepad. Tess walked by both of them and claimed the bed by the window. This declaration was too much of an insult for Amanda to bear.

“I’m sleeping by the window, Tess.”

“The hell you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You think you’re the big sister now?”

“Only if you’re talking about maturity.”

“Let her have the bed,” Maggie said, irritated. “Why shouldn’t she get the bed she wants since she’s been driving the whole way? Why should you care who sleeps where since you’re probably going to be out half the night with whatever boys you can find around here?”

“That’s not what I was going to do.”

“Isn’t it?”

For a moment Amanda was silent. Tess watched from the doorway.

“Maybe.”

“So you’ll take the couch then?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You want to sleep in my bed?”

“No.”

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part III)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

“I don’t see,” Amanda said, “how Dad could let you go on this trip when you have epilepsy. Let alone drive—”

“You didn’t hear a single word I said!” Tess cried, losing patience. “These are not convulsing seizures and they are not loss of consciousness seizures. Sometimes I don’t know why I even open my mouth around you.”

“If the doctor says you’re okay to drive, I’m fine with it,” Maggie told Tess.

“Assume crash positions, everyone!” Amanda remarked.

They got on the interstate and after some awkward silence passed, Maggie asked Tess to explain her condition again and Tess explained it as simply and completely as she could. In truth, had her sisters ever paid as much attention to her as they did to themselves, they should have been able to tell that even now she was keeping something colossally worse from them. She didn’t tell them about the heightened senses or the hallucinations just as she and her Dad had withheld these things from the doctor, choosing instead to roam at length on how optimistic she was about the medicine she had been prescribed. And, indeed, Maggie seemed comforted by this tale, although no amount of verbal petting was going to penetrate the rind around Amanda’s cerebral cortex.

“Tess!” Amanda waved her hand. “This is my car! I may not be allowed to drive it right now, but I still have a say in who does! I don’t think it’s safe to have an epileptic driving the car!”

“Amanda, shut your stupid mouth!” Maggie said decisively.

Amanda said nothing. They settled into their respective places in the car. After a while Tess asked Maggie a series of questions about the cooking school in Vegas and pointedly ignored her sulking sister in the backseat. Meanwhile, her hands began itching so much that she was afraid that her sisters would notice her discomfort. Fortunately, however, Maggie heedlessly walked into the jaws of her trap, extemporizing at great length about the many things she had to look forward to.

“Wait! You changed the subject!” Maggie shouted. “Tess! You sneaky minx, you!”

Maggie smiled and this time an air of amity finally seemed to be taking hold. The feeling turned out to be infectious: Amanda had already become bored with her sullen gloom—another few minutes and she would be texting her girlfriends. Maggie started fishing around in her purse for her MP3 player.

“You know, she still hasn’t explained why Dad and her were going at it today,” Amanda said, in a tone of weary acceptance. Tess, distracted by the pins and needles boring their way into her hands, couldn’t keep her thoughts straight long enough to formulate a response. Tess swallowed, looked at Maggie, and, very quickly, with the deliberateness of someone drunk trying to feign sobriety, turned her head and covered a manufactured yawn.
The stinging subsided. Tess drove on utterly taxed and struggling not to pant. They took I-65 up to “da Region” and hopped onto I-80, which would take them all the way to Las Vegas. Stopping at Arby’s for lunch, Tess skipped the salad and pressed her sisters to get her a large roast beef as she darted for the restroom. But she didn’t need to go: when she closed the stall door behind her, it was as if she had happened upon van Gogh’s toilet, and the brilliant flood of vivid colors that had been surging about her finally triumphed, she fell against the wall and wordlessly slid to the floor. Clarity overwhelmed her and seconds seemed to stretch out into hours, days, aeons. These things passed. She left the restroom and rejoined her sisters.

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part II)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

As she trailed off, she sniffed an opportunity to pass Garrett. Maggie straightened and didn’t quite seem to know where to put her hands. For a moment Tess hesitated, then, sensing the window closing, gunned the Jetta and committed herself. Amanda gripped the front seats and braced for an impact. However, Tess drove it onto the gravel shoulder and maneuvered the car around the steadily leftward-drifting Garrett Simpkins. The clamor of the gravel distracted them from the fact that they had not actually crashed: Tess unleashed a finger on Garrett, nearly hitting Maggie in the face when she reached back. Amanda immediately warned Tess that if she was going to drive like a maniac, then Maggie would have to drive herself to Vegas.

“Jesus,” Maggie said, addressing no one in particular, “I want to get there alive.” She then spoke to Amanda over her shoulder. “She is not the only one who needs to calm down. We’re not ten minutes from our house and we’re already bickering.”

“I will calm down when Unibrow Kyle Busch here stops trying to kill us,” Amanda said pungently.

“Bitch! Shut up! I do not have a unibrow!” Tess shouted.

“I’m only saying what everyone can already see,” Amanda declared.

“What is it with you two? I want a peaceful trip! A relaxing trip! I—”

“I swear I had meant to be on my best behavior on this trip,” Tess sighed. “I was apprehensive about this trip because I know whenever we’re together it gets hairy—and I know I just said hairy, Amanda, so you can stop snickering. At least I have tits. But you’re right, though, that there is something going on between me and Dad and I’m really sorry that it’s upsetting you guys. However, there is no way I’m going to talk about it with you.”

“Well, if it’s not betraying some big secret, maybe you could inform us as to why he had to take you to the doctor?” Amanda replied tartly, this time saying it as much to Maggie as to Tess.
“Why’s it important for us to know?” Maggie offered. “If she doesn’t want to tell us, she shouldn’t have to if she doesn’t want to.”

Tess, who a week ago had had her conception of what constituted a necessary secret violently obliterated, calmly said:

“Dad took me to the hospital because I had been having seizures,” Tess said quickly, in a neutral tone. “It’s nothing, okay?” she added, sensing concern. “It’s not like I get the shakes or black out. So relax. They call it catamenial epilepsy, on account of it’s women who get it and it tends to get worse during a woman’s period. It’s not full-blown epilepsy. The doctor spent a lot of time explaining that to me and Dad. And it’s okay for me to be driving a car. Hearing about all this, of course, it explained some symptoms I’d been having—obviously I’ve been really distracted and anxious lately, and not for all the usual teenage drama reasons. But the main reason I asked him to take me was because I was wetting the bed. I would appreciate it very much if you didn’t make fun of me for this—you both have plenty of things I can make fun of and, I swear to God if you start in on me about it, I will drive this car into oncoming traffic. I admit I was planning on keeping it from you two, but I guess I should have told you, now that I look at it, especially with things as they are, because we’re sisters. There you go, that’s my…big secret.”

For the next installment, click here.

Seizure (Part I)

I'm happy to unveil a short story I wrote this summer. While I was looking over a number of my stories, I noticed that I have a preference for writing zombie stories. I thought to myself, "Why not try a different genre?" And so this is my poke at the werewolf story. It's written in the style of Dostoevsky.

Hope you like it.

“Seizure”

Road Trip

Tess drove with sweating rage even in the rural town she lived in, and getting stuck behind Garrett Simpkins on 116, when his cell phone was cemented to his face, she pounded the steering wheel with her fist.

Soon, sensing malignant intent in Garrett, an unaccountable fury crowded her thoughts. She was convinced that, to prevent her from passing him, he was drifting over; positioning oneself so on this country road effectively transformed it into a one-lane. She turned her head in horror when, instead of joining her in her complaint, Maggie told her to calm down. But she tried to do it in a nice way, as related here:

“I mean this in a nice way—calm down. Now that everything is set up and my stuff is waiting for me and we’re on the road, we can relax and enjoy the trip—we’ve got all week to get out there. There’s no reason to freak out five minutes from home.”

Amanda, who was sitting in the backseat despite the fact it was her car, because had had her license suspended for too many speeding tickets, suddenly and peppily stuck her head into the front seat.

“I gotta side with Mags. If you keep this up, you’re going to have an aneurysm before we get out of the state. You’ve been acting like a lunatic all week. I mean, what is your deal? You were really bitchy with Dad when we left.”

She blew her bangs out of her face with a mighty puff, for she had little room to move her arms because of all the bags and suitcases pinning her in.

“Like I said before, that is a situation that has nothing to do with you two,” Tess said with what she hoped was inarguable finality.

“Nothing to do with us!” Amanda said incredulously, tapping Maggie on the shoulder and thumbing in Tess’s direction. “If this situation has nothing to do with us, Tess, then maybe you can explain to us”—she presented her palms—“why you’ve been glaring at Dad all week like he stole something from you. He can’t say anything without you barking at him! We couldn’t even have breakfast together this morning because you stormed out! What would it have cost, I ask you—to put all your issues aside for one morning? Someday you’ll learn that being on the rag doesn’t mean you get to act like a three year-old!” she mused, leaning her head back and rolling her eyes.
“On the rag, right,” Tess growled. “Every time I do something you don’t like, it must be Tess’s time of the month…”

For the next installment, click here.

I, Racki (Part XVIII)

This is a continuation. To start from the beginning, click here.

Then I took another look and realized everything was just fine. It was in the weary way Hannibal looked at me and in the nervous way Petra hugged herself. Hannibal and I have a bond that’s like we were in a war together, and to look at Petra is to look at a roadmap of all the flatbacking she’s done in her life and the way she looked at me right then was the same way she looked when she found out somebody had peed on the cake at her sixth birthday party… disgusted. But between me and Hannibal there’s an unspoken link, the kind of manly understanding that some skank could never disrupt. The kind of understanding that comes from winning together and losing together and being down.

Now to someone not paying close attention, none of these things would have been apparent in any way. I gave Petra a hardy hello, acted like it was perfectly natural for her to be over, even though we both knew better, and when I thumped fists with Hannibal, I couldn’t help but to think he was relieved. It may have sounded like a typical whassup grunt from Hannibal, but years of down-for-whatever friendship can convey a whole encyclopedia in a moment. Petra was red in the face, but I played it cool, acting like I didn’t even notice what she was scheming to do.

If Petra Plascak wanted to bring down God’s own thunder on herself by trying to steal Mayor Bruce “Lead Pipe” Wilson’s only daughter’s Prom date, then in my book she should go nuts. But leave my boy out of it. Then you bring down my thunder. Very solemnly, while I pointed a finger directly at Hannibal, I said, “You’re my boy, Hannibal.”

And right back at me he said, “You’re my boy, Racki.”

I nodded. Petra waited. At last she said, “Um, okay. Racki, pick me up at six-thirty, will you? I gotta go get ready.” Then I nodded again, watched her leave and said, “Yeah, I thought so.”

fin

This was the end (my only friend, the end), and I hope you enjoyed the story. Stone Creek is a disturbing, yet highly literate town, and I hope someday to return there for more stories. Come back to DWCC soon; I've have something new up, for sure.

I, Racki (Part XVII)

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The day had been a complete and total success as far as I was concerned and had carried me to every corner of Stone Creek and beyond to do what I could do for my best friend Hannibal and the Wilson family. I needed to tell Salome that she had nothing to worry about when it came to this evening, so I grabbed a cell phone off the first kid I saw back at the Fish Fry. There weren’t going to be any screw-ups. It was a simple, easy plan with an objective so manifestly doable that it was all I could do to not pat myself on the back. Details had been changed, things Salome didn’t need to know about, but the day Racki Turkz doesn’t go the extra mile for his homies will be the day they put this young buck in the ground. Inexorable forces of fortune gathered and after a few rings I heard a voice and that voice was the crisp alto of Stone Creek’s favorite daughter Salome Wilson.

She got right to it. “Pay them?”

“Yep,” I told her.

“Not all of it, I hope.”

“Twenty percent.”

“They know their assignments?”

“To the letter,” I said.

“Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“So you say.” I could hear the second thoughts circling in her voice.

“I got it all under control,” I said.

My kind words gave her pause. “Hmm,” she said, “that makes me feel better.” I could tell that she had gotten tired of this conversation when she said, “I’m done with you, Racki.”

After that I said good-bye and hung up, tossing the cell phone into the nearest trashcan I could find. I said, “That’ll be the day.”

Lena Binks announced the winner of the Stone Creek Go-Kart Grand Prix. It was Bal Thackeray in a stunning upset.

It was that time of day when a lot of the townies went back to their houses to eat so there weren’t as many people for me to shove out of the way. I went to push my beret back off my forehead and remembered I had given it up, like an amputee who still thinks he can feel his foot. My feet were on autopilot walking down the sidewalk and since I really didn’t have a whole lot to do before the Prom shortly thereafter I was cutting across a yard on Woolsey Street and going around the back of that familiar ranch house to see Petra Plascak and Hannibal looking back at me, her with that stupid blameless look she always wore, him washing his car shirtless, the two of them talking blandly, the ultra-cool bored talk, when you don’t dare say what you really want.

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I, Racki (Part XVI)

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I rang the doorbell. I was giving Jailey thirty seconds to answer it. When she came to the door she had a towel wrapped around her head, a sweatshirt that said “Scuba Divers Do It Deeper” and no makeup.

She opened the door and in about as surprised a voice as I’ve ever heard, exclaimed, “Racki!”

When I saw how much she was smiling I thought maybe she had had herself a stroke. I said, “Hey, Jailey, get fired much?”

Sunlight was beginning to fill up the sitting room from the west, and she took off her towel and bobbed her head to and fro, teasing and pulling at her long black hair.

She looked at me for a second, scrunched up her face at me, then said coyly, “Did you come over here to fool around for a little bit, Racki?”

“Been there, done that, honey. Plans have changed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Me going with someone else tonight instead of you.”

“Is this a joke?”

“I don’t joke,” I told her.

“I quit my job, I bought a dress.”

“Those were two among the other mistakes you made,” I said.

She was shivering with teary, hot rage. “On the day of the Prom, Racki. Who is it?”

I had a sit on one of their comfortable leather chairs. “I’m taking Petra Plascak.”

Stunned, she breathed, “No.”

Jailey could tell I meant business and so she didn’t jump into a bunch of cheap hysterics. Mr. Sius, the chemistry teacher, had hooked me up with Jailey as a lab partner last semester and before long I was banging her. You could say she was a Goth chick, the way she dressed. I just thought it would be nice to have a girlfriend for a while and under all that makeup Jailey looked alright. Mr. Sius got drunk a lot, and one night he fell down a well. That was it for him. But Jailey to me became one of those girls that you really don’t take so much to the hot parties and school functions that are the parade ground of teenagers in lust, as much as one of those break-the-glass girls you see when you need something done to you in the utility closet during fifth period and other than that not getting into your way a whole lot because you have important things you’ve got to do.

“Can I ask a favor, Jailey?”

“You want me to give back the boutonniere you bought me so you can give it to Petra.”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m psychic. I’ll be a laughingstock thanks to you.”

“Like you weren’t before?”

“Right. You can have the boutonniere. Petra Plascak.”

I waited for her to go get it. “Anything else?” she spat.

“Yeah. Can you still do my book report? I need it Monday and I didn’t read the book.”

“I’ll do it.” Sniffling she said, “Tell Petra I said ‘Hi.’”

“Well, I doubt I’ll do that.”

I could tell she was still ready to pop a rivet. But I know defeat when I see it. “That’s it then,” she told me. “I’ll see you around.”

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I, Racki (Part XV)

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These Killianfield rocket scientists were giving me a dumb, waiting look. “Look… one thing matters here.”

“What?”

“Petra Plascak doesn’t make it off the boat.” My six year-old nephew picked up things quicker than this. “Alive,” I added.

“How’s that?”

“How’s you not playing stupid with me? I realize that you guys are from Killianfield and so that makes you very stupid people, but you’re getting $10,000 and a free pass out of town.”

These guys made my head hurt. Especially the short one. “Didn’t you say we were kidnapping this girl?”

“Stevie, let’s just say she got an upgrade.”

Stevie was wetting himself, but Kynedyr and Harold were handling it a lot better.

“Can we see that photo again?” Harold asked.

“No. I’ve shown it to you a million times already, so get it straight in your head, and stop bugging me about stupid crap. She’ll be easy to recognize because she’ll be the one wearing the expensive silver necklace after the king and queen are announced and if you have any other questions kindly shove them up your butt.”

Stevie said, “Kynedyr, this is murder we’re talking about!”

“Look, man,” I told him bluntly, “do you really think if you don’t follow through on this things are going to be one bit easier? Seriously, your life won’t be worth whatever the currency is in the third world country you’ll be hiding in. Trust me, the Wilsons don’t like a quitter. So just focus on all the things you can buy with the money you’re going to make. Video games, I suppose, and looks like maybe some acne cream.”

“Last time you said, ‘Kidnap her.’”

“He’ll be fine,” Harold told me.

Stevie just sat there with his head in his hands. I clapped him hard on the shoulder when I got up to leave and said, “Kiddo, you’re just a dream come true.”

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I, Racki (Part XIV)

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The rest of the afternoon I spent nailing down details for that evening. Knowing only the vague outline of Salome’s plan wasn’t something I was terrifically thrilled about, and despite the fact that I was going along with it, it bugged me a little bit, tainting my enthusiasm about doing Hannibal this big favor.

The isolated fragments I had almost made sense… one guy was going to go down to the boiler room and plant a bomb. The other two, also from Killianfield, had fairly simple jobs. Anybody with half a brain could tell this wasn’t going to be a simple prank. Things like that happen in Stone Creek from time to time, but who cares? Once you cross the Mayor or his family you’re finished in this town. A line in the sand you definitely don’t want to cross.

I met my team inside the Tripoli Pizza Monarch, where the heavy smell of cheap sausage and tomato sauce covers you like a blanket, and they were already mowing a large pie down. This wasn’t a group of National Merit scholars here. These guys were chumps but they were leadable and they were unknowns. There was a waitress who saw me join them and she might have bothered us if I hadn’t told her I’d beat her with a pepper grinder if she came by again.

Kynedyr Woods savaged his mouth with a napkin and then crumpled it into a ball. “You want some pizza?”

“I don’t see any ham on it. Forget it.”

“Ham’s a breakfast food.”

“My fists are an all-you-can-eat buffet,” I told him.

Harold Banamun yawned and leaned back as if he were going to take a nap, all sleepy and doe-eyed. Turns out he always looked like that. “You have our money?” I just looked at him. “I hope you have our twenty percent.”

“Are you going to deliver?”

“Bite me. You got it?”

“Here.”

A wad of bills in a manila envelope may have been more dramatic, but a money order is what they got. It was the lavender paper of the Community Bank of Stone Creek and the three of them stared at it like it was Monopoly money, but after a few seconds Tidy Boy and Sleepy Boy seemed to figure it out so I gave a long hard stare at Stevie DeVries.

“It’s money,” I said. “Your gal pals can explain it to you. Don’t blow a fuse trying to think it out all by yourself. Are we done?”

“Not quite. The busboy outfit I got doesn’t fit me.”

“Look at my face and you tell me if you think I care.”

“How are we going to get off the boat?” Kynedyr asked me.

Harold roused himself somewhat out of his little siesta he was taking and said, “You have to address this. I don’t want to be there when the boiler blows.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way off,” I said.

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I, Racki (Part XIII)

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Jim disappeared inside.

She snapped her pert little chin to the left, and her auburn hair bobbed onto and off her face. “You listen carefully to every word I’m about to say to you. The plan we discussed is still on. The silver necklace will be the key like I said. Make sure your guys know. If you or your playmates deviate from the plan one iota, it will fail. You know who my father is, so trifle with me at your own peril. I want this. Get it done.”

“Your odds at Miss Congeniality are looking pretty slim. You are one terrifying little bitch.”

“You need to watch your mouth,” she replied with no anger at all in her voice. “Your chief worry tonight is being a good Prom date for Petra, Racki. Fooling her isn’t going to be easy for you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I thought you were gay.”

“What?”

She reached into her purse and pulled out her compact, her lips puckered for inspection. “You need a sense of humor. Your good friend and my Prom date, Hannibal J. Baptist, can’t know anything about the plan. Everything will go a lot smoother with him in the dark.”

“Probably it would help if I knew more myself,” I said. “My understanding of the whole thing is pretty cloudy.”

“Racki, this plan…”

“Yes?”

“Right. You said you would trust me on this.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You know what’s going on.”

Then, out of nowhere, Jim Riley had returned. He had a fuzzy, confused look and was holding the teddy bear I brought. I felt a new wave of hostility wash over me and I wanted to punch him, right in the goatee, and I guess Salome sensed it, because she said something about how the teddy bear didn’t go in the refrigerator and sent Jim back in the house.

I shook my head and Salome went on talking. “Look at me, Racki. Ignorance is the best policy for what’s going to go down tonight.”

I nodded my head and I stood there, wondering why my mouth had started to water.

I wanted a pork fritter.

Cardinals and crows chirped in the trees all around us and bore witness to the plot we were hatching, and as they were shouting their approval at us Salome asked, “You still with me?”

Game on. Absolutely. Saving my friend from Petra Plascak’s hooks was worth any trouble.

A question that had been bugging me for some time bubbled up to the surface and I was going to ask whether it ticked her off or not. “What’s in it for you, Salome?”

“There is something, but don’t worry about it. Can you do that?”

“Like a champ,” I told her.

“Excellent.”

I cracked my knuckles as Jim Riley came out the door a second time. It was a busy day, and I still had a buttload left to do. “Salome, I think you and I are a lot alike.”

“And that’s your fantastic conclusion?”

“Yep.”

“Nothing about the moral ramifications of what we’re about to do?”

“Huh?”

“Facilis descensus Averno, Racki. See you tonight.”

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I, Racki (Part XII)

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“Am I testing you, Racki? I will admit, it would be nice if someone were to attack the convoy and I were given the chance to annihilate them. However, that was not my intention, no. The Age of Danger has passed this town by and all threats have long ago been neutralized. I spoke loosely just now and revealed these things to you because I have no fear of the enemy and I invite them to essay my martial valor, challenge them to check my undelaying advance and by so doing display my unquestioned reverence for our Mayor. I once took down a bandit who thought he’d jump the fence and steal pears from His Honor’s private orchard, but that’s all my service has required so far.”

Distantly, Jim Riley scratched his chin and looked like he was thinking something really deep. “I had a nightmare last night,” he said.

“A nightmare.”

“There was a big battle. Everybody was dying. A battle right here in Stone Creek.”

“So what was the nightmare, Jim?”

“I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to protect the Mayor and he died.”

“That’s some dream.”

“And our waking world is not at all unlike it. Why are you here instead of Mr. Baptist?”

“I was wondering when you were going to get around to asking me that. You see, I’m doing him a favor.” I saw a look of escalating concern ratcheting up on him. “No way should Hannibal have to bring a stuffed bear over here. Hannibal doesn’t even know I’m over here helping him score points with Salome with this stuffed bear.”

“You’re mistaken, Racki,” he said. “Stuffed bears have no effect on that frosty lass.”

I shrugged my shoulders noncommittally. “Think she’ll like this boutonniere? The flowers the homo put in look pretty girly. Girls dig the stuff that homos do.”

“The cyclamen represents resignation and loss, Racki.”

“I see,” I muttered. “I wasn’t really paying attention when the shop fairy was putting it together and this is what happens. I plan on paying that clever man a second visit, but flower meanings probably aren’t Hannibal’s strong suit so maybe not today. But definitely tomorrow. That’s what you get when you mess with the Player Slayer.”

“It’s quite obvious you’re sweet on Hannibal,” he stated.

“That was a mistake.” My voice was iron. It was a nice day, and now I was feeling fighty. “Things were going so well here. What I’m saying, is say good-bye to your teeth.”

That old sweet rush I get in my belly before the swinging starts showed up. “Careful,” he said.

“Five minutes from now you might have to start drinking all your meals through a straw.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

That was Salome, wearing an olive sundress and thumbing the shoulder strap of her purse. My fists were clenched and my rage-coil was ready to spring, but I don’t settle accounts while I’m doing people favors. Salome took the bag, looked inside, and handed it off to Jim Riley. “Go ahead and put the flower in the refrigerator, Jim.”

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I, Racki (Part XI)

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“My boss is a great man. He paid the costs and told me that if I came back alive that I’d always have a job in Stone Creek. A man like that is a man to whom you can give over right and wrong and makes it easy for you to achieve the reputation of a faithful retainer.”

“Are we talking about the same Mayor Bruce Wilson?”

“You are a careless and insincere boy, but I refuse to allow you to miss this opportunity because of your youthful insolence. I too at your age was full of undisciplined vigor and casual resolution. That shallow arrogance of yours may serve you well at your present station, but I remind you that there is life beyond high school. The time is coming and coming fast when sides must be taken.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Listen to me. Your life is slipping away. Your old ways must be banished into the dark corners of the earth and you must begin to see the world with eight eyes. As I look at you I see the recklessness of my own youth and even now I sense the desperation and insanity that is the mark of a great servant. But you are rude. So rude. Almost intolerably rude.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” I deadpanned. “I think you’re supposed to go inside and tell Salome I’m here.”

“Salome will come down when she wants to. She will be leaving shortly with young Petra Plascak to go pick up her dress at the alterations shop and perhaps pick up some jewelry. Likely you have no more than ten minutes to converse with her before we set out.”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Security, don’t you think you shouldn’t be telling me all that?”

Riley wet his finger and touched his earlobe. “Twenty minutes on 16 going into Jonestown will be when we are most vulnerable. The Mayor has chosen me to head the security detail for both the dress trip and the Prom tonight because I take to an enemy on the battlefield as a hawk takes to a bird.”

“Is there… a reason you’re saying all this to me?”

“I get out of the car first, then the girls, and they go into the dress shop that’s been cleared out ahead of time. The other two cars block off traffic on Van Jones Street and detour any pedestrians that try to use the sidewalk. And if you’re wondering, we are authorized to use deadly force.”

Riley mumbled into his lapel once more and glanced down the driveway. For a moment I thought I saw Salome through the foyer window, but I couldn’t be sure. “Are you testing me… trying to see if I’ll leak this info?”

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I, Racki (Part X)

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The paper bag I was carrying was dumped out by the agent at the door and I watched as he violently shook and then tossed aside each article when he was satisfied it was harmless. The agent’s name was Jim Riley and I tried to figure out how I knew that until I remembered that he went to school with my older brother and after that had kind of dropped off the face of the earth.

Now he was mumbling something into his collar. He was beefier than I remembered him, the look of a stone cold killer. He straightened his tie and crossed his hands in front of him while never taking his eyes off me as I put everything back into the bag. “How have you been, Racki?”

“Shot a four-over this morning.”

“That’s nice. How many putts?”

“Do you really care?”

“No.”

“Nineteen then,” I said.

“I guess that’s okay.”

“I guess you want to know why I’m here.”

“I already know.”

“A delivery.”

“Right.”

“Jim,” I said, “I’m totally surprised, seeing you here. I just assumed you were dead all this time.”

“Really?”

“What happened to you after you graduated?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he told me.

“I’m from Stone Creek, Jim.”

“You’re from Stone Creek, pal, and I am, too. I just barely graduated from high school. I was totally clueless on what to do next. I’m not college material, I don’t want to be college material, and just the thought of being around college material makes me very hostile in my brain. I may not know the difference between Rimsky-Korsakov and Kolmogorov-Smirnov, but I just put a new racing suspension on my Mitsubishi and I have an all-access pass to the Champagne Room at the Red Windmill.”

“Damn, how do I get in on this action?”

“Get the Mayor to hook you up.”

“Is there a lot you have to do, to get this job?”

“Lots. I went through six years of hell. The easy part was five years in the French Foreign Legion marching all over Central Africa after which I returned to go to a special school no one knows about in the mountains of Virginia. That was the hard part. Not everybody survives the course, if you know what I mean, and the people who live through it get hired by important people who need nasty things done quietly like the government and big business, or people with lots of enemies, and the money to make them go away.”

“What, Jim? Say that again. I wasn’t listening.”

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