Eva and I, or, The Wages of Love

Edit: Proofread, bits expanded upon, and things explained better.

We met a few years ago at school. It was the same story as you might hear from anyone else: A friend of mine had a class with her, she started hanging out with my

"in-group," and over some time, she was just as much a part of my normal day as the five-dollar lunch in the basement cafeteria. She was smart, she could talk the talk

my group talked, and we accepted her seamlessly.

Of course, as Nature's badly-written Science Fiction script is wont to have us portray, people fall in love. It wasn't exactly the way I'd have preferred it, though,

but then, love is never exactly the most accommodating of circumstance-makers, often only coming when it is wryly inconvenient or downright dishonourable.

Dishonourable, as this instance most definitely was, for, you see, one of my group had just started his own relationship with her.

He was the good-natured type, a solid friend to have when you wanted to have a friend. He wasn't the kind to try to get anything out of having people close to him; he

had friends because they were awesome to have. I wish there were more people in the world that shared his sentiments for this, but that's getting off-topic here. He

was one of my own, my people, and if I didn't support him in the most difficult of manly endeavours, what kind of friend, what kind of tribesman was I? The men in my

tribe took care of each other, and this was to be no exception.

Thus it was that my group of previously-four-and-now-five started a strange set of connections within itself.

Adam and I were really the ones who made it happen to begin with. Tex mentioned that he sort of liked her, and so Adam and I set it up and pushed it into place,

letting the pieces fall like tetris blocks, giving them a nudge or a turn here and there so they would fit. It was my own action that signed my hands away, which still

makes me laugh even now. Tex and Eva got along rather well, in fact, after the initial kick-start. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of that possible link

between myself and her.

There was romance, there was cutesy crap, and everything that would normally show up in a penny dreadful wasn't lacking here. Adam and I cheered Tex on from the boy's

side, while Alice played the role of support for Eva. Things were going extremely smoothly, so we should have known that something would have gone wrong sooner or

later. Still, with nothing of the kind of notion that the audience of any stupid romance movie unconditionally bring with them, there was no reason to exercise any

damage prevention measures. That would have been presumptuous, and what would have been termed by the more common of our age group as "a dick move."

Now, I'm no party-goer, and I'm even less of a Disney fan, so when it was posited that the group went to that accursed park, I made the decision to skip out on it.

After all, park tickets were more expensive than any right-minded college student would be comfortable paying, and I'd been to the original version of the place more

times than I'd like to recount. It was, of course, during this particular trip that the last straws were piled on, and the camel called bullshit on the metaphor about

a single straw's difference in weights being enough to break his own back. This straw? It was more like a large concrete waterway pipe. All at once, with only hints of

its existence beforehand to prepare for its incoming.

Tension, stress, and worry are things Eva doesn't exactly take well, and when the initial blow hit, it cracked the glass holding back the entire aquarium of mental

overload. Slowly, but very, very surely, that crack spread. You can try to fix that kind of damage, you know. Tape over the cracks, glue in the little valleys, but it

only holds for so long.

I finally knew it when Alice and I were sitting, waiting for class to start, and Eva arrived later than usual, crying.

"I'll take notes for us," I whispered to Alice. She knew exactly what I meant, and the two of them disappeared, leaving me trying half-heartedly to follow the lecture

for the rest of that seemingly-extra-long class. When it was out, I immediately began searching for anyone who could tell me what happened. I sent messages to Alice,

Tex, and Adam, but only Adam got back to me immediately. We met in the cafeteria.

Adam told me that Tex and Eva had been having some trouble. It was true, I had been privy to a bit of that knowledge, but I assumed it was the sort of small,

inconsequential issues that always cropped up now and again. I was wrong. I asked the nature of the trouble they were having, and he told me that Tex had gone back on

a promise that he had made, a sort of deal-breaker on both ides of the equation. It was a big deal, or, at least, only a big deal when presented with the reality of

itself to Tex.

Tex's main difference between himself and the rest of the group was that he was religious, where the rest of us were patently not. That he followed the teachings of a

religion did not factor into our harmony, really-- I mean, honestly, he didn't try to indoctrinate us, and we didn't try to rationalise him. It was a complete non-

issue, so much so that I wondered if he was only religious when his parents were around. Apparently, though, he became religious when faced with the prospect of a

long-term relationship with someone who opposed the idea of being held to any set pattern of beliefs because someone said so. Suddenly, kissing was a no-no, physical

intimacy got cut back to nearly-nothing, and talk of that dreaded word so many people hear too often from people in white collars knocking at their doors at

disgustingly early hours. He'd taken back his oath that the religious difference would not matter. Suddenly, and very strongly, it did.

Of course, I had the "Bro Code" on one hand, and my undeveloped feelings for this girl on the other. What's a guy like me to do? I invoked the only thing I knew to

invoke in situations like these: The Neutrality badge. I would listen to what happened from both sides, without bias from either, and throw my tracks neither north nor

south.

What actually transpired is a story I don't know if I have the right to tell, but the differences between an independent, nonreligious girl and a spiritually middle-

class boy were enough to drive them apart and break the bonds Adam, Alice, and I had tried to tie in the first place. I felt like the idiot on display for forcing it

to happen in the first place. If I hadn't initially paired them together like some terrible one-true-pairing fan-boy, nobody would be having the intensely bad day they

were having now. Now, obviously, any onlooker would tell me it was not my fault, but I have a habit of assuming responsibility for my friends' unhappiness. This time

it actually was something I had done, and it was something stupid. Add to this that I wanted nothing more than to be responsible for this girl's happiness, and it

becomes painfully clear that I had little choice but to do something to alleviate one side or the other

What used to be a nice circle, with all points connected to all other points, suddenly had a glaring disconnect right through the middle. We were all still friends

with Tex, and we were all still friends with Eva, but Eva and Tex were no longer friends. What can you do to fix it? She wasn't religious, and he wouldn't have her if

she wasn't religious. The only direct paths were to change the mind of one of the parties, and that was as likely as convincing a butterfly that life was better

without wings.

The group eventually amassed enough platelets to scab the wound and prevent any more blood loss, but as most wounds are wont to do, a scar was left there. A scar

that is hard to hide, one that will not be obscured by make-up. It still flares red now and again, especially when subjected to similar conditions to the ones it

experienced when the scar was made. We try not to let those happen very often at all.

But then, where was I, in this whole thing? Was not I also in love? Was not I also pining for the heart of pure, fair Eva? Has the author forgotten about the romantic?

Do they not share the same heart and head?

No, he has not forgotten. But the romantic, the romantic wishes he had been forgotten. Too much is at stake for the romantic to be involved, and he knows it.

The group was scattered to the winds at the end of that fateful year, to return to the places from whence they had come. We still kept as together as five points on a

map could be, but then, thrown as far apart as we were, what else could be done? We drifted apart much in the same way that leaves drift in a pond's clear, still

water. Slowly. Up until this point, I had kept silent about my own interest in the companionship of such a girl as Eva. What good could have come from it? During the

occupation of her heart-land by Tex, I would have been an unwanted guest at best, a threatening challenger at worst. During the rebuilding effort after the war, I

would have been no more than the philanthropist that donates money in hopes of being recognised with one of those gaudy bronze plaques that they tack to the last

remaining bits of the capitol building, a constant reminder of what destroyed it in the first place. Any time after that, and I would look like that guy who looks for

old people to rob because they are easy targets. I intended to be none of those things, and would not have afflicted that kind of status effect on any allied player.

My self-respect coupled with my fear of rejection made be believe that if I said anything at all, I would look like I was trying to capitalise on her losses and slip

in like some sleaze-bag. No, I wanted nothing to do with that image.

Flash forward three years. We've all finished school, and when I moved back to my hometown, I found she was only a hundred miles away.

Only.

Too far for me, who had no resources. Alas! That hundred miles was the longest hundred miles I'd ever not-experienced.

There was a play, called "The Casket Comedy," wherein one of the main characters laments his inability to meet his loved one for an entire six days, and he makes it

sound like the world is coming apart at the seams with his oratory. When I had not seen hair nor hide, heard word nor breath of my love for two years, what kept me

going? What kept me thinking that I had some shred of chance, some glimmer of that gold in the mines that produced primarily dirt and coal?

Really? It was the romantic in me. It was the thought that if I hoped hard enough, if I pined enough, if I stared at the moon long enough, maybe the stars would align

to produce just the right polar magnetism to pull the two of us together, and we'd live in that land of unending silent gazing into each other's eyes and wistfully

sighing, holding hands in some small cafe somewhere.

Of course, there's nothing realistic in that, but as I have determined through many a philosophical conversation with many friends, I've never been a realist.

I moved into her town, into a house less than two miles from hers. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish, but I moved into a house where I inhabited a single

room of it so that I could be closer to her. I didn't have a stable job, I didn't have any actual resources any more than I had before, but I knew I just had to be

near to her.

It certainly made it easier to see her. I saw her in the first two months nearly ten times more than I had seen her in the two years previous. I was jobless,

relatively poor, and living in the same house as a self-proclaimed Crip gang member, but I was happy. Due to my lack of money and the rent of my single room being

higher than I could provide regularly, the endeavour was destined to be short-lived, but I could mark no better time spent in that year than the ill-planned jaunt into

being closer to her.

It's amazing, how being in the same vicinity as someone else has the power to override so many of the issues that the rest of reality imposes on one.

Alice and I never drifted as far apart as the others did. Even now, I appreciate this with a greatness to it that I wonder if she understands. When I was feeling

particularly self-loathy and melancholic, I would talk to her about what I wanted to say but could not bring myself to. She knew just how much I was in love with Eva,

perhaps more than I knew even myself. She's a keen girl, one who asks questions that only have answers when she asks them. In another life, she might have been my

level-headed sister, but in this one, I think she's more valuable than that-- she's one of the most unique girls I know, and that makes asking her for advice the most

productive out of all my other acquaintances. She told me that there wasn't time to wait-- what if she found someone else? What if she had to make due with a lesser

specimen because I didn't offer myself? What if you DIED and never told her? Don't wait on it.

I didn't actually intend to tell her how fond I was of her that night. It just sort of... spilled out, like when a jar is too full of honey and it sloughs down the

side, leaving sticky sugary trails behind. The Buddha once said something to the effect of there being no guarantee of happiness as a direct result of action, but that

there being zero chance thereof if you remain inactive. That Alice had been pushing the importance of this confession? declaration? on me for some time probably had

some influence on it. She had, in fact, even helped me write the mental script I had totally planned to use but ended up stumbling through and missing most of. I

should thank her again for that sometime.

We'd gone to have tea with some friends, and she'd given me a lift (seeing as I was lacking in both navigational skills in my new town and also gasoline). We ended up

talking for way too long, about way too much for that time of night, a night I knew wasn't the right night for it. We both cried. I told her about everything I'd

thought about her, for as long as I had, and she told me that maybe, just maybe, she felt something kindred to it. We both admitted we were scared.

As is often the case with many real-life stories that are too boring to be made into Hollywood blockbusters, she had the presence of mind to know that she wasn't ready

for a relationship of any kind, and I had the willingness to acquiesce to her request. We left it on the table and covered it up with one of those Indian throws that

are so useful for covering up junk you don't want guests to see when they come unannounced and you have no time to clean up. The rules were pretty easy, really.

Don't talk about it to anyone who was directly related, so that nothing dramatic happened. Don't talk about it to her, so she could have uninterrupted time to sort out

what she wanted and when.

I often wonder what it must be like to be in cryostasis. How aware is your brain while it's frozen? How much do you remember during your frozen stay? While nothing

about you changes, do you still have the ability to store data? Or is the whole thing literally imperceivable except from an outside standpoint, one that is not your

own?

Enough time has passed since that fateful night that I wonder if she's forgotten about it. I have not. I think about her often, really. Quite often. Often enough that

I had to write this story to get it off my mind. Now that I am once again far away, we do not speak often, and this concerns me. I will lay awake in the middle of the

night, after waking from some dream, and sigh quietly.

What rightly should I do? I can only wait, as she asked. That's fine, though. I have waited four years already. I am patient. I can wait longer.

Hooks

Story 3 of 100, same meme as Needles and Knives.

Down by the docks, there are these warehouses. You know the kind, the kind drug dealers use to peddle their shit, the kind that cops stake out for catching drug dealers. Well, there's one of them down there that nobody even wants to go to any more. Pretty much everyone says it's haunted or something. I wonder if they are right.

This one, this one warehouse way by the east dock 3 used to be like a meat house. It has all the metal doors and shit, the roll-up kind that trucks back up to, you know the ones. Then inside there are like a bunch of big rooms with those conveyor-hook systems that they'd hang up the big carcasses on and like it would go into the refrigeration rooms or out into the loading docks or whatever, right? Well, one time we had a rave we wanted to do, and the way I saw it, where better to have a rave than a fucking haunted warehouse, right?

So we brought in my brother's sound equipment, and set the place up one day. Speakers, lights, the works. We could seriously blast some fucking waves with the shit my brother had, right? But like, the best party about the place was that the acoustics were fucking wicked. The reverb was delicious, man. You could FEEL the music everywhere in that place. Well, everywhere except that one room.

The conveyor rotation shit worked in every room except the one in the back. That door was stuck or some shit, and the little hole in the wall thing where the conveyor goes through had been boarded up. We didn't know why, but it was far enough back that we didn't care. We wired up all the other rooms with speakers and shit, and at like ten or so people started showing up. We'd charge like five bucks a pop for each person, and the place was big enough that we definitely made back the money we spent in like two hours and a fuckton more after that.

At around 2, though, that's when the music shorted out. I went back to look what happened-- someone probably kicked a cable out or some shit, right? But that's definitely not the case-- the room next to that one boarded-up room was just trashed. The speakers were kicked in, and like seven or eight people were lying face-down like they'd OD'd on something or whatever. It only hit me like a few seconds afterward that the door to that room had been opened outward, like toward you when you're looking at it.

I only looked inside for just a second before I had to start running. Like you know when you notice something and it processes in your head before you understand it, and your body starts to react before your cognitive system tells you what it's reacting to? It was kind of like that. I was like halfway out of the warehouse before I finally knew that I was being chased. This guy, he was like all covered in shredded up clothes, right? All bloodied up and had like two fucking huge meat hooks, one in each hand.

The police said they found me in a little rowboat in the middle of the bay, but I don't really remember anything past the hook-guy turning and catching one of the girls in the eye socket with his fucking hook. They said I was like mumbling and rocking back and forth. I don't even know.

The news still says the guy's running loose in the city, and his hit number is up to 63 right now. That's a lot of corpses, man. I wonder if he takes them back to that warehouse, hangs them up on the fucking hooks there?

Needles

Number 2 of 100 from the same meme that Knives is from. Warning! This has some language in it that might not be suitable for young kids.

I have a bad habit. It's particularly bad in this day and age, when the tools are easy to get and the stuff itself is on every corner. I've been in and out of jail for my bad habit, in and out of the hospital for my bad habit, and in and out of sanity for my bad habit. I'd love to stop, really. I would.

But some habits are just hard to break.

There's a vein that runs along the inside crook of your elbow, called the median cubital vein. It's pretty big, pretty easy to spot. You get to it best when you have your elbow bent. This vein goes straight back to the heart, a clear shot to that big wiggling muscle inside your ribcage that makes you tick. That's where the game starts.

One tiny little pinprick, and then you've got a full-access doorway to that marvellous crimson stream people so often waste. Into that doorway, you know, I'm quite fond of introducing various things. I'd done the usual rounds of drugs-- ketamine, opioids, depressants, you know the lineup. Nothing really did me the good song, though, like Red Sunrise. I don't remember who it was that showed me the first time, because I was probably high off my bucket, but after that, man... After that, Red Sunrise was my new god.

In its base form, my dealer said, it's a strong hallucinogen used for ages by old monks and priests to “contact God.” Well, I knew that whatever it was that caused the geezers in monasteries to write the crazy shit they did was going to be good enough for me to get a ticket on the electric flapjack, and I dropped a wad of bills on this shit every time I saw the guy. It came in little bottles, almost like test tubes, with rubber corks jammed into the top. The stuff itself was a dark green, almost black until you held it up to a bright light. Reminded me of when you put a shit-ton of Kool-Aid into a tiny bit of water.

And it hits you like a brick to the temple, man. You go out for hours of real time but it feels like years of your life go by in these fucking sick trips. It turns your arm green for a while, but that's a small price to pay for what you see in these walks, man. With me, I'm always walking through this field of flowers, but the flowers are thousands of tiny human faces, and they are all screaming and biting their tongues off but I can't hear them because I'm not listening, and the ground is made of bone dust and the air is heavy with a sickly-sweet smoke. And man, every time, I always meet this dude with four eyes, two on top of each other on both sides of his face, and he's got these teeth, man. Fucking wicked teeth.

And he tells me secrets. He tells me where to find more Red Sunrise, always the same guy selling it. He tells me who people are and what they do. He's like a fucking voyeur's dream. He tells me where to go and where to look to see the hottest shit go down, he tells me which girls are hot to do what I like. He makes me promise to him, every time, though, that for every secret he tells me I have to give him a pint of blood.

A body only has like 5 or 6 liters of blood at one time, so that's only like 34 secrets for a liter. And a liter is a lot of blood, you know? A lot to drop all at one time.

So I got wise on this, yeah? I started stocking up.

...what, you think I'd use my own blood? Fuck that shit. Better yours than mine, fucker.

Knives

Part of a 100-stories meme for /x/. June 2010

The game was an easy one-- you had to find something with which to protect yourself, and then still be alive when time ran out. Well, easy in explanation, sure. But when I was there, boy, wasn't nothing easy about it. Lots of people got killed in there, and nobody was the wiser. Hell, I even had to cut some men up myself, back then. Hell of a good deal of "therapy" that was.

You'd wake up in a haze, likely from the heavy dose of whatever they pumped into your veins, in one of the rooms with the door locked. I never woke up in the same one twice, but it was always a room in east block 3 that I'd get. Some people would say they got the same room once or twice, but I never did. The room you got probably still had the results of the last therapy session that happened in it laying about, so you had to hope you didn't step in it or anything. You just waited for the door to open, the intercom to announce the time limit.

I hid a lot, ran away a lot, but you can't run forever from the things they would send after you. I got to know east block 3 pretty well, though, so I could usually get to the kitchen area, pick up one of the big knives that were hanging on the magnet bar over the stove. I tried a broken broom handle once, but you don't have a chance unless you can draw blood. These things were really unstable in the head, you know? Some people said they were ghouls come back from the dead by way of some science-magic marriage, others said they weren't ever human to begin with. All I knew was that sometimes I recognized them, the leathery faces drawn tightly back into a permanent toothy grin and the eyes wild and bloodshot.

They moved pretty fast a lot of the time, and they'd spot you from down a hallway or wherever, and just like that they'd be all over you, biting and tearing and scratching and kicking. Doc once said that they represented the bad parts of the human mind, and that by killing them you're symbolically killing those parts and making yourself better, but that was a load of shit. I'd seen movies before I got "admitted," I connected two and two to figure out just what was up with these previous patients. That's what they were, you know, patients that disappeared for some reason or another some three weeks before. You could tell which ones had been worked on the longest; they were the ones with the brittlest skin, the least blood in them. Their eyes were shriveled up, but somehow they still saw. And when they saw, boy did they see.

I don't know how long I was in that place, but we never found a way out. Honestly I'm surprised there even was a way out at all, let alone a way in. When the SWAT team or whatever finally burst in, though, I thought, "Hot damn, finally a way out of this hell-hole." But then, of course, having seen and done what we'd all seen and done, we obviously could not be let back out into the real world, now could we, doc?

Small Brown Dog

Another three-word-game story for /x/. April 2010

This is something a friend told me a while back. He lived in Los Angeles at the time this happened to him, but he says that it could happen to anyone, anywhere, if they are not careful.

One day he and some friends of his were at his place drinking and smoking, like typical college students do. One of them thought it would be a good idea to do some graffiti on the administration building's steps, and of course everyone else agreed, because nobody disagrees when they are high and drunk, I guess. Anyway, so they got a bunch of spraypaint and hopped into my friend's car.

The campus was only like five minutes away, but they took the back way around so they would not get caught by the campus police. Here's where it gets weird.

On the backroad, they were driving along, when suddenly the truck lurched like it had run over something. He slammed on the brakes, and got out to see what he had hit. It felt too big to be a squirrel, but that was pretty much everything that was out there at that time of night, right? Well, it turns out he ran over this little brown dog, splattered it all over the street. I'm talking, guts and blood and everything, man. It was probably hella gross.

So my friend starts freaking out, and he gets back in the truck, starts it up, and starts going again. The other guys are like "What did we hit?" and he just says they hit a squirrel, a big one.

Sure enough, though, like two minutes down the road the truck jumps again, like they hit something else. Again, he hits the brakes, but this time he just leans out the window and looks back.

It looks like the same fucking dog they just hit like half a mile back, but it's different this time. Bigger, somehow? Or like, maybe it's closer or something. He said he couldn't really tell, because he was drunk, but it was DEFINITELY the same dog. He's like "Fuck this," and floors it, pulls a U-turn and rockets back toward his place. He won't say anything to the other guys except that he thinks it's not a good idea to be driving while he's as drunk as he is.

When they pass the spot that they hit the dog the first time, though, there's just a big wet spot on the street. No dog, no nothing. But then he looks back up at the road in front of him just in time to see a huge brown dog on his hood, staring at him for a second. He veered off the road and rolled his truck twice, broke his collarbone and messed up some of the other guys in the car too.

He told the police what happened, but they went to look for the dog that he hit, and all they found was a big wet spot, the same way as before. On the way back to the crash site, though, one of the police cars spun off to the side of the road too, and the radio crackled when that officer radio'ed in that he had hit a dog or something.

That was plenty enough to scare my friend sober, and he could not get to the police station fast enough, DUI and all. He transferred colleges up to Washington as soon as he could, and never drove that back road again. He says sometimes, though, he can still see some little brown dog in his mirrors when he's driving, or sees a big wet splatter on the road.

Now, I'd have called bullshit on this story until the other day when we were heading to the liquor store and he hit something in the road. Sure as god-damn, it was a little brown dog. Think this fucking thing is following him? I don't even know what to make of it, but now I'm starting to see it here and there too, all splattered all over the floor in the chemistry building at night or whatever. This place is fucked up, man. That dog followed him.

Woman With Red Eyes

April 2010. Written as part of the "Three Word Game" I made up for /x/.

Everyone had heard the rumours about her, those tantalising tales that told of how you could ask her any question, and she'd tell you the answer... for a price. Sure, same old stuff everyone's heard a hundred times, right? Well, Gabriella Wallace certainly fit the profile:

Long, scraggly grey hair that went down to her hips; fingers like bones, the skin just hanging off of them like a deflated balloon; broken, crooked teeth. She even lived in that house in the woods, from which everyone swore issued faint cries at night. What intrigued me most about her, however, was that she never went outside without her hood drawn up over her head, shielding her eyes from being seen. Summer nights that sweltered with humidity, late Autumn evenings rife with lightning bugs, no matter the day-- she'd never go outside without her hood.

Curiosity got the best of me one day, you know. It always does. I got off of work, and on the way home I passed the road that led into the woods, through those somehow-terrifying trees that grew just on the city line.

Of course, it was natural. I had to go back and take the road through the woods. Just to look. Not to stop.

So I drove through those trees, you know the kind. The kind that make you slow down, make your eyes dart back and forth to catch every movement in them, make your blood pressure rise for no reason. Then, just like that, I was driving past the footpath that led up to the old house. I was just going to take a look. I wasn't going to get close, I wasn't going to knock or anything, Just look.

I locked my car, stuck my keys into my pocket. Only a quick look, I told myself, only to see the place. When my knuckles hit the door, though, I was already in too deep. The wooden door was cracked, warped, rotting, but it swung open slightly when I tapped on it, just like in all the movies.

I was only going to take a look inside, and if there was anything there I was going to book it back to my car, hit the gas, and get out of there. Nothing more. But then, how many promises to myself had I broken already? Just how daring did I think I was?

hrough one of the old, crumbling door frames, I could see flickering light, like that given off by a candelabra. No, don't go that way, of course that's the wring way to go, I told myself, but there is no impetus like a man's morbid curiosity to push him from behind into the room. In the room, dimly lit by the flickering light of five candles on a wooden table, sat that old crone Wallace, in a rocking chair by an empty, cold hearth. I stumbled a bit, startled, and started to try to find words of excuse, something to forgive myself for intruding, and then run like hell, but before I even had a chance, the hooded lady motioned to the table, to a chair which sat where no chair was just seconds ago.

I should have known better, in hindsight, but then, of course hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn't it? I barely even hesitated! I just waltzed over to the table and sat down.

You're not too uncomfortable, are you? Good. I think it's difficult to listen to stories when one is uncomfortable. Let's continue.

She was on the other side of the table, where she was not, just a second ago. I could only see her mouth, twisted and wrinkled, under her hood, but it was definitely just like I had heard-- cracked, dry, old. A crooked tooth poked out from one side. All I could do is stare. Don't you think that's impolite?

"Ask," she said, her voice reminding me of fingernails on old paper. But ask what? I hadn't actually expected anything like this! I didn't think beforehand of what I would ask if she WERE there, if she were even real. My throat was really, really dry. You know how it gets, when you are about to talk, and suddenly you choke?

I thought about it for a second, and the first question that popped into my head was "What are you?" Foolish, I know. Such questions should be left for AFTER she grants you the magic wish or hands you the pot of gold or whatever, but I wasn't really thinking too far ahead. She smiled, her rows of crooked, broken teeth like a razor-wire fence behind her grey lips.

"A collector," she replied, and she leaned up just enough for me to see her eyes. Her eyes! God, I'd never seen something like them before. They were red, black, decaying! Like some sort of pus-spewing corpuscle whose very existence was a sin!

"And just now, child, I'm in need of new ones," she said. But! She didn't take mine, no. As you can see, I still have both of my eyes, clear and healthy. No, that's the rub: she's got herself a helper, now. And let's be honest-- you don't really need your eyes, do you? Honestly?

You're not too uncomfortable, right? The straps are not too tight? Good, good. Let's begin the extraction. This might hurt.

Antebellum

July 2009

Yeah, go ahead and laugh, fuckers. Once they find where you've put me, there will be some shit to wade through before you see the light of day again.

You want information? Sure, I'll give you all you want. It's not like it will help anyway. I come from an organization that has no official name, the organization that you guys seem to want to find so bad. What were you calling them again? Right, “Antebellum.” Something like irony might be the right term for that. We're the ones that you keep getting reports of missing persons about. We're the ones you hear stories about, we're the ones that distribute the unmarked video tapes you keep finding.

Yes, those are real videos. We don't use any special effects or whatever. We set up a camera, film the acolytes doing their thing, and then cut that straight to tape. Don't worry, you'll never see anyone you know on those tapes; we do a really good job of picking up people who won't be missed. It's the people who watch those videos that you'd likely have seen before.

Pretty much every sad soul that comes looking has watched one of those videos, wants in on the activities. They want in for the rush, the fetish feed, the feeling of power. Whatever their reason is, it's pretty sad that they think they can just waltz right in uninitiated and just scuffle about with someone's organs on their head. You know how long it takes before you can even watch someone's sacrifice? Six years. Before that time, you're just a shadow, an uninitiated shadow. You do what the acolytes say, you don't question it. You question it, and people start to forget about you.

You ever heard of the collective unconscious? Yeah, that's a load of shit, but I'll tell you what is real. The Flow. We call it something else, but it's easier to explain to people like you if we just say the Flow. It's the reservoir of memories from which the human mind draws its experiences. Something happens to you, your head makes note of it and then stores that memory in the Flow. Sometimes it reaches for a memory, and it grabs something else instead-- that's what you call deja vu or hallucinations or visions or whatever.

Well, we know how to get into the Flow and mess with the memories that are floating around there. When someone dies, their memories just get set off to float around wherever. The way we do it, we can sometimes catch those dead memories and tie them to the memories of the living, causing what we call Backfeed. You tie even one dead memory to the Flow, and people start forgetting stuff about that person. You tie all of them to it, and it's like that person never existed at all.

No, it isn't “mind control,” you stupid fucks. This is a lot deeper than any hypnosis or whatever. Why the fuck do you think nobody can remember who it is on those videos? Kind of a pity that you're still standing still, though. It'd be a lot smarter to have moved me somewhere else a while back. You call us “Antebellum?” I guess for you, the fight hasn't started yet. There's four of you, and hundreds of us. It's cute that you think you stand some chance. Oh, kill me, is that the plan?

God, you people are dumb. It does not matter if you kill me, we're still going to erase all four of you from existence. No, it is not a pleasant experience. Fine, fine, don't believe me. It'll make it all the more entertaining when you're the one on the table, the knives and saws just begging to be whetted on your skin. Yeah, I've done two or three of them. One of them, a woman about twenty two or so, stayed conscious for far too long for her own good. Made it terribly difficult to grab her memories, you know? I bet you do.

She was a stunning girl, kept yelling that her brother was a detective, that they'd find us, that we'd all be killed for the things we do. We actually missed one of her memories, sadly. You might have a faint recollection of having a sister if you try to remember hard enough. No matter how hard you try, though, you won't remember anything else--

That was unwise, detective. How do you expect me to give you information if you break my jaw? As if it mattered anyway. You're still not believing me on that, huh? You think you're just going to walk into the subway tunnels after you toss me into a prison cell, find us all huddled around a Crowley book, and arrest us all? How cute.

I'll make sure you stay awake the longest, detective.

XXV

March 2009

I have been asked to tell my story to those of you who will listen, and it looks to me that several of you will. Regardless, whether you do or not, you're all damned to hell anyway. If you'd do me the credit of removing these straps, it would perhaps make the story more interesting; I can hardly tell an engaging story while restrained like this.

Some ten years ago, I was a simple graduate student, majoring in philosophy with a specialty in religious thought. I'd read everything, from Plato to Socrates, from the Pope to Manson, and I thought I had a strong grasp on the human psyche in terms of beliefs on the afterlife. It was common to find me asleep in the lower levels of the library, on top of some dusty tomes of classical thought or the like. I began to write my dissertation paper, specifically on the belief in “Extra-Planar Beings.”

In this paper I sought to make plain that the belief in such beings has been around since the beginning of time in most accounts, and strangely similar in their structures. Many cultures believe in a sort of being called “demon,” or “dæmon,” or the like, and most all of them believed this sort of being to be not only evil and likely connected with the darker side of deism, but also controllable if one has a strong will and the right tools. The Lesser Key of Solomon actually has a long portion describing the sigils of each of a number of demons, their names, and how one might go about exploiting their abilities when they have been bound.

I sought to prove, however, that even though the belief in such beings has remained burned in the human psyche for aeons, the belief held no real backing in reality. Religious fanatics like the Pope were the only reason such beliefs still even existed and were not erased long ago, and these procedures to summon and bind demons were completely without base. This is what I thought.

To further prove this sort of creature a farce, I endeavoured to summon one myself, on video tape, to be used as evidence against their existence. I set up the binding circle with the chalk and the runes, just as my material described. I took all the “magickal” precautions that the books advised. I even prepared an offering to this demon, should he actually appear and I find myself wrong. I chose the demon labeled XXV, whose name I dare not utter here.

At the first light of the full moon, then, I began this ceremony. The chants, the incense, the silver symbols and everything else that was required. I was fully convinced that there would be no explosions of sulfuric stench, no flashes of light, no demons whatsoever, and was just about to give up, clean up, and stop the tape, when something actually stirred in the center of the circle, and then there was a sudden shock-wave feeling that threw me off my feet. Of course, I should have known better.

There was nothing in the circle, though there was that scent so aptly described as rotten eggs that lingered in the air. I had no explanation as to the event until some time afterwards, when I cal;med down enough to watch the tape. Just as described in the Lesser Key, for a split-second in the center of the circle I could see what appeared to be a great fanged canine, some seven feet tall at the shoulder, with great feathered wings sprouted from its back that extended to a wide wingspan that by rights could stretch from this side of the room to the other.

The mouth of this dog was opened wide, and was flecked with pieces of flesh that dripped with blood. Its eyes were like lanterns burning with copper dust in them, and its body rippled with powerful muscles that looked to be able to rend steel in two. It was only on the video for a single frame, and after that the colours on the film were distorted and washed-out. As one might expect, I was physically shaken by this occurrence, and wondered if all this time I had been wrong.

It only truly hit me later, when I went to wash my face. As I looked up into the mirror, the steam rising up around me, I saw not only my own reflection, but that of the dog-beast that I had seen on the film. It looked just like I had seen it on the screen, but to see it with my own eyes was perhaps too much for my constitution, and I fainted and hit my head on my sink.

I awoke some hours later, with a throbbing headache and my eyes seeming to deceive me. My bathroom walls were covered in sticky red, and on the mirror was scrawled, “قتلتهم كلّ .” Arabic, which, roughly translated, read “Kill them all.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I had taken up a kitchen knife and cut open my pet cat, and splayed her innards across my floor. My hands shook, my sight was tinted red, and I wanted more, I wanted to end more lives. Somehow I pulled myself back together, though, and terrified, I curled up in the corner until sleep overtook me.

The next morning I endeavoured to clean up my studio, which by that time was covered in half-dried blood and pieces of cat body. I did not know what I had done, what I had mistook, but what I did know what that I had indeed found that there was something to the belief behind these demon figures. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw this beast behind me, and every time I saw this beast I was overcome with that same rage that filled my body the first time I saw him. Those fangs, those eyes, they haunted me wherever I went. A cursory glance at a storefront's glass display, and he would be there, and someone would die, and I would flee, my hands dripping with blood.

By my hands, nearly seventy people have died on the streets of Rome. I've spoken with priests, with cardinals, with ministers, and they could do me no good. Even the Catholic Church's exorcists could not draw from me the fire that burned in my chest when I saw this beast. Finally, to make it stop, I decided that I would have to stop seeing at all, and using a screwdriver, I put out my eyes, so that I would never see his reflection again.

It's a pity that he's all I can see now, in my head, in the darkness. Thank you, by the way, for listening. I'm sure I'll make a textbook example of the “deranged serial killer.” You're only too kind to have regarded my story. Also thank you for releasing these straps; it will make my job much easier on the person I catch first.

The Typewriter

February 2009

It is nice of you to think of my health, friend. God knows I have been writing for far too long. Perhaps I will be afforded some rest for a moment, and I will explain to you my trouble. I shall start from the beginning, so that you may understand everything as fully as possible, and so that I may not seem mad myself.

My parents had divorced when I was four or five, over my father's having caught mother in a tryst with another man, and I lived with my father for a while. I think he went a little bit mad after the divorce, though, because he'd shut himself up in his office and just write letters all day, tapping on his typewriter until the bell sounded, pushing it back over, and tapping again. He'd only ever come out for food and trips to the bathroom. He had everything delivered by post: the milk, the bread, the meats and cheeses... He'd make breakfast, eat it up quickly, and then run back to his room and write more. He must have written thousands of pages of letters, stuffing them into envelopes and jamming their bulk into the post box every day, mumbling to himself.

I never found out to whom he was writing until a decade after he died, and the owners of the house he used to occupy contacted me about the enormous stack of mail that had come in for my father. He had written all of those letters to a single place, every single one of them addressed to P____ avenue, number 447, to one mister Graves. All of the letters were marked “return to sender,” and had never been opened, though the postmarks were from some eleven, twelve years ago. The family wrote in their letter to me that the postmaster had pulled up, unloaded some ten boxes of old letters at their door, and then promptly left to go to the next house on the route, as though there were nothing unusual about such a volume of letters being delivered all at once.

What I have neglected to tell you, dear friend, is that while I lived with my father, I saw a great many things I could only explain as fancy, as my mother had often conditioned me to think. Attached to every letter he wrote I saw what I can describe only as an amorphous shadow, a mist or smoke that surrounded the envelope and flowed as though somehow, even being mist, it had some semblance of life in its form. The more he wrote, the darker they became, and the more I questioned my own eyes as I saw him drag that spectral fog to the door and push it into the post box.

His health, too, diminished as the shadows grew darker, until one morning I awoke to find him laying over his typewriter, his face drawn back and pale, and his eyes turned a milky grey colour, as though he had poured ink into them. The moment I saw this disfigured farce of my father, I was immediately struck with a fever, and had to be taken to a hospital. The whole while that I was in the doctors' care, I could see a dark, shimmering figure that reminded me vaguely of that terrifying visage my father wore on his dying breath.

Sometimes it would whisper in my ear, such terrible but yet unintelligible words as to make me shudder for minutes at a time. Sometimes it would touch my head, and I would be wracked with ache until the morning. This apparition was malevolent, cruel, and unrelenting, even until the end of my stay at the hospital.

I lived with my mother after this, until I was able enough to work, and afford a place of my own. Still, no matter where I went, I could not escape the figure that followed me. My work was disturbed from time to time, but I told the manager that it was anemia, and that I would be fine given a few moments. It was in this state of ill-being that I continued for some years before I was made aware of the letters returning to the tenants of my father's old house.

With reluctance, I went to the house and took the boxes from them. As I did so, I could not help but notice the two children of the house, twins with blonde curls reaching their shoulders and nary more than four or five years old, staring intently at the boxes as I took them away, almost with a look of fear. I brought the letters back to my own house, and stowed them in my basement for lack of something better to do with them. I would attend to them later, but for then, I had not the time to meddle in my father's old letters.

Less than a week after I retrieved the boxes I received a message from the coroner's office, saying that my mother had passed away. Now both of my parents had died, and so it was my own burden to deal with the family matters such as my mother's burial. At the funeral, the figure that followed me everywhere even was silent and stood still at the side of the hole wherein the coffin was lowered, and then covered up. As the last shovel of dirt was replaced on the top, however, I swear I detected a hint of a sinister smile on the barely-distinguishable face of the spectre.

A month passed before I was finished with the familial duties. I had sold my mother's house to some new tenants, I had seen to her proper burial, I had made sure that her will was carried out as she wished. Only then was I granted some time to deal with those curious boxes of letters in my basement.

The first letter I opened was the earliest one, perhaps his first letter written in his madness. Both sides of the paper were covered from edge to edge with the same words, those of my mother's name. Seven pages of the same behaviour accompanied the first. The second letter was exactly the same as the first one, and the third, and the fourth. Gradually as the letters progressed, however, there were mistakes in the lettering, the spacing, smearing of text, and a general disorderly feeling about them, until I reached nearly the last letter.

As I opened it, the spirit behind me gave a loud screeching sound, so loud and shrill that I was forced to cover my ears with my hands to preserve my hearing. My first thought was, “The neighbors will hear! Surely this will amount to trouble,” but a minute later the spectre stopped its wail, and traversed to the typewriter I had inherited.

The letter I held said only two words: “Kill her.”

My eyes swam for a moment. To what manner of madness had my father been subject? Why had he written these hundreds of letters? What did he wish to accomplish? To whom did he try to send them?

The last letter lay unopened on the table. My father was mad from the moment he and mother separated, I had no doubt. With a trembling hand, I picked up the last letter, broke the seal, and opened it. This was written by hand, in the looping script I was certain was my father's, but also in those lines was betrayed tension, fear, anger, and remorse. It said:

“You may take my son as payment.”

I was mortified, sickened at this letter's content. Immediately I resolved to ascertain to whom these letters had been sent. This mister Graves would meet with the authorities, I would make certain. I traveled to the place the address indicated, my revolver in my pocket and my cane in my hand. When my carriage pulled up to the place, however, I lost all resolve to descend from it, and instead beckoned my driver to return home.

The address indicated was that of an old, burned-out and abandoned building that once housed the Graves and Fate Typewriter company. It had burned down nearly three decades ago, according to the newspapers. Some of the less respectable sources say that the company was a ruse and that the building was actually a mob front business, and that everyone who was in the building when it caught fire mysteriously disappeared.

So I have been at this for nearly three weeks now. Since I opened that letter I can barely stop typing on this infernal machine without the spectre wailing again. Tap tap tap tap ding, tap tap tap tap ding. The very machine upon which my father died is drawing the life from me with each keystroke. I know not what has happened to me, but only that I, too, will perish on this machine, thanks to my father's insane desire for revenge. Every day I type page upon page, slip them into envelopes, and put them in the post box. The address remains the same, P____ avenue number 477, to one Mr. Graves. I cannot bring myself to leave this room, to stop my typing, to dash this vile contraption to pieces for the wailing. I only know that the typewriter is their tool, and that when they are finished with me I should join my father. Over and over again I type my name on the pages, over and over again. When I finally am told to type those two words, friend, you'll see no more of me.

Soul Bottles

February 2009

It is with great lament that I must relate my tale to you, for once you have heard it, you too shall be set upon by this shadow, this shade that wracks my dreams and haunts my waking hours. May God have mercy on your soul, poor traveler. Yet I must tell you this story, so listen well.

In London, in an age past, there was a man of noble blood, whose family was ghastly rich, and whose decadence knew no bounds. What this man pleased, so he received, through whatever means found necessary to acquiesce to his commands. Should he have desired the neighbor's daughter, he would have her, or her house would burn to ashes; should he covet a visitor's watch, the visitor would often not return to his home that night or ever. So great was his greed in life that he aspired to begin collecting things he could not buy with money, things no other man could possess but himself.

Thus it was that he began his studies in the black arts. He took holiday in the Orient, and while he was away, he learned the magicks and sciences of the Eastern magicians, for his reputation had not spread so far as to be found known in China. His family tended to his businesses until his return a decade later. His studies in the Orient had imparted upon him all manner of mesmerisms that he could employ to befog the minds of whomever he pleased, but this was not enough for him; while he could break the minds of his victims, ultimately he did not receive anything from the endeavour.

So it was, then, when he acquired his dread tome from a collector's cache, that he delighted in the finding of the ritual by which the very spirit of the victim be decanted into a glass bottle and sealed up, leaving the victim naught but a shell, akin to what the Voo-Doo cults call a “zombi.” In this manner was the man truly satisfied, for now he could truly collect that which no other man could possess. At once he began his study of this abhorrent ritual, and not long after, this man began his collection of spirits and gathering of soulless puppet-servants.

In his parlour he has some hundreds of these spirits all bottled-up and displayed majestically for the ignorant visitor to gaze upon and at which to wonder. It is by this magick that his obsession is bounded, for now he hungers for nothing but these pretty bottles, more and more of them for his collection ever-growing. He was known for his extravagant parties, where after all was said and done one guest was never accounted for, and one more bottle would appear on his shelf. The guest would then appear as he was before, but with a hollowed demeanor and a glaze on his eyes. He speaks only of morbid tales of the man from ages past who collects the spirits of poor victims, and of the nightmares that wrack his wits to their ends. It is not surprising, either, to find them dried up and dead no longer than a fortnight after, looking as though they had been dead for years.

Alas, it is with such dread and remorse that I must reveal this to you, poor traveler, because tonight you are his chosen guest. God save your soul, for he will have your spirit in a bottle by night's end.

Sanctuary

This one could have been better, but it was at least semi-well-received on /x/. December 2008.

May 14 1873
The new patient seems to be taking well to her surroundings. She still bites at the leather hand-cuffs and wails about her lost cat, but often new patients will bemoan the loss of something familiar for a period upon entering this prison. As for myself, I have finally repaired my violin, the only material possession they allowed me upon admittance. I have not played in years, and my fingers are stiff, but I shall make an effort to play again. Whether it is to soothe myself or the other patients is something even I do not know.

May 17 1873
Her name is Claire, the new one. I spoke to her through the window in my door to-day. She said she comes from Louisiana, and that she had run all the way to Delaware to try and escape what she called “the edges.” I do not know what “the edges” are, as the poor girl became so distraught at the mention of them that she did not continue with her story, but began weeping and whispering to herself. I could not hear what she was saying.

May 24 1873
She says she sees them now, here and there, when she is being led about by the nurses. Her case is a fascinating one, indeed. When she is not sobbing quietly to herself (for she has quit her habit of loudly mourning her apparently lost cat), she combs her long, silky brown hair. Would that I had hair like hers; it has been months since I tore my own out. My violin is not in tune, and alas! they will not grant me a tuning-fork, so I must make do with what my ears can tell me.

May 25 1873
Whispers among the nurses seem to tell of one of the orderlies disappearing for hours, only to reappear with his body wrought with wounds that did not cease their bleeding. Claire insists that “the edges” have begun claiming victims, and begs profusely to be put somewhere safe, where they cannot get to her. The nurses refuse her requests, of course. The nurses all but ignore us, such a shame. I asked to be spared some milk to-day, as I thought it necessary to my recovery from such a state as this one, but I was denied.

May 28 1873
Claire awoke with bruises and cuts covering her pale frame this morning, though I witnessed not a single person enter her chamber the night before. Peculiar as it sounds, the nurses believe that she had done it to herself, and though I cannot push my own mind to believe that poor Claire would do such a thing, it seems the only recourse to assume she somehow escaped her hand-cuffs and injured herself. Poor girl. My fingers are becoming less and less stiff.

June 3 1873
I have not seen a nurse in two days. Claire and I both are beginning to feel the effects of hunger and thirst set in. I have saved some bread from time to time, but I cannot get it to Claire's chamber. We are too far apart, and all I can do is play my strings to try to keep her calm. I am hungry.

June 4 1873
In the night I swear I heard something walking in the hall outside my chamber, but it was too dark to see anything. Claire must have heard it too, for she began screaming and kicking, reciting pieces from the Testament in a frenzied voice, and crying. Perhaps whoever it was had looked in on her, because this morning she would not speak, save for those familiar words of hers, “the edges...” I played for her until my fingers hurt.

Since I wrote my entry in the morning, much has come to pass. I spied a man in a Victorian-style cape glide past the window in my door only an hour or so ago. I did not see his face, but his shoulders were broad, and so I think he was a man. He made no sound as he moved, save for the same foot-step sound I heard last night. Claire whimpered and cried to herself, but tried to keep quiet, I presume. I am hungry; I have had nothing to eat in three days, and at times I feel light-headed and lose consciousness for minutes at a time. It is disconcerting. I wonder if Claire and I will be all right.

June 5 1873
This morning my chamber door was open. I had neither seen nor heard a thing in my restless, thirsty sleep last night, but somehow it was open before me. I was weak from hunger and thirst, but managed to open Claire's door as well, and we made for the kitchen. I had seen it once, while I was being led through the halls to what the nurses so generously termed “treatment,” but what I will not recount here, as it still disturbs me. When we arrived, we hadn't seen a soul, and there was not a one in the kitchen, either. Most of the fresh food was spoiled, but there were preserved foods in jars, upon which we fed ourselves. Claire's eyes were wide, and bloodshot, as if she had not slept for fear of something the whole night. Now we two sit together in the pantry, with the door pulled tightly shut, because just minutes ago Claire grabbed my arm and dragged me here to hide from the edges. I asked her if that man I had seen with the cloak was one of them, and she replied, with trembling and terror-stricken eyes, “yes.”

June 6 1873
While we slept, one of them took Claire. I awoke to find the door open and Claire missing. Perhaps it was not them, and perhaps she wandered off by herself. I played for some time, hoping she would return, but I neither heard nor saw anything. I am becoming lonely. I played some more, for myself this time.

June 9 1873
The doors to the outside are locked, and the windows seem to have been boarded up cleanly. I have walked the halls numerous times in the last days, and nary had I thought I heard something, when turned the corner to be faced with an empty hallway again. There is plenty of preserved food, and water, but I wonder about the nurses, and about the other patients, and about Claire, and about myself. I worry at times that perhaps this is a dream, that I am indeed as infirm as the doctors had declared. My fingers are cut from the strings, and my poor violin is smeared with blood. I had ought to clean it off.

June 20 1873
At least I believe it is the 20th. I cannot tell any more. I awoke with a start last night to see Claire rushing down a hallway and around a corner, but upon pursuit I found I could not discover her again. I had hoped vainly that she was indeed returned, but alas. I am beginning to run out of places to look, and the halls are becoming stale and brown. I have not hungered in a day, either. I dare not look into the glass, for my form was pale and gaunt the last time I did so. I do not wish to see myself as such. I will continue to play, in hopes that Claire or someone will hear, even though my fingers bleed when I touch the strings.

June 30 1873
Though I have plenty of food, I do not eat. Plenty of water, and I do not drink. I am without the urge to do so any more, it seems, since it finally happened. I say “finally,” though I do not know who was waiting for it. It just came about that I no longer felt pain, no longer felt cold, nor hunger, nor thirst. All I feel is loneliness. Will someone come and free me from here?

September 13 1873
I do not remember much of what has passed since my ink ran dry some months ago. It was only recently that I found another inkwell in a reception desk I had not thoroughly searched before. Yet still this misery of solitude drags onward. I have not seen a soul in so long.


Newspaper article from June 10 1873

Reports of foul play have surfaced concerning Portsmouth Asylum's baffling case of what was originally called mass murder. It seems that all the victims, both asylum workers and patients, were killed using a knife-like implement, though no weapon was found, nor were there any suspects in this rampage murder-spree. Of note were two patients who, having somehow escaped the killer in the first onslaught, perished some days later completely drained of blood. One was found in the pantry clutching a violin, and one in the basement treatment area. What puzzles detective so much was that the whole asylum was locked from the inside, and not a single route of escape was found. Rumours have begun to circulate about ghosts, but investigators are still pressing for some sort of logical conclusion.
That in mind, some investigators claim to have heard sobbing coming from the basement, and violin music from the pantry, long after all the bodies had been cleared away, and no logical source of the sound can be explained.

Click

Written in February 2008. Somehow I really like this story. It might not be the best thing I have ever written, but I like it. It was originally significantly longer, and described Baylis' traipsing around Los Angeles all day beforehand, but it ended up being too long for the assignment and I had to cut it.


Click. Katie Baylis' camera snapped, and she had captured the image of a woman in the courtyard of a church, sweeping the walkway with an old straw broom and humming what had to be an old hymn.
The woman looked up from her sweeping. She was pretty; she had a very dark black skin tone, and she looked to be around her 30s or so. She smiled a warm, wide grin that almost invited Katie to come in the gates and pray. Or something.
“You're so pretty...” said Katie, and she stepped a little closer, but then she looked at the gate. There was a heavy chain and padlock holding the gate shut, looking very unwelcoming to prospective worshipers. The woman looked back down and continued sweeping.
“Can't have you comin' in here and foulin' things up, now can we, white?” she said with a heavy swing to her voice. “All you folk ever do is mess things up. I know,” she said. She looked back up at Katie, and then walked into the church doors.
Katie stared for a second. What just happened? She was not entirely sure until she heard the bell at the top of the church ring, and saw the woman from a second ago up next to the bell. She waited for the bell to quiet, and then began to yell from the top of the belfry.
“Y'all have been treatin' me like dirt for too long!” she began. Some passers by stopped and looked up at her, talking behind their hands and pointing. “Y'all treat me different because of who I am! I ain't gonna take no more of this!”
Katie suddenly realized it-- This woman must be trying to kill herself! Was she going to jump from there? So high up, she'd definitely be killed if she jumped. She cupped her hands around her mouth.
“Hey, get down from there, you'll fall!” she yelled up. The woman laughed.
“That's just what I'm gonna do, white! Just you watch, I'll get down all right.”
“Look, I don't know what's wrong right now, but if you come down here we can talk about it.”
“What, and have you ridicule me for being black some more, white? You just keep your mouth shut and watch!” said the woman, and laughed again.
“You're a Catholic, aren't you? If you kill yourself, you'll go to hell, won't you?” yelled Katie. By this time a crowd had begun to gather around the church and her, and a good deal of people looked genuinely worried. “Isn't that what you believe?”
As she shouted up to the woman, three words kept flashing through her head. Take a picture. Take a picture. She still held her camera in her left hand, it would be easy, and it would be a beautiful picture, to be sure. A woman in black and white standing on top of a church in the noontime sun. The clouds in the sky seemed to beckon her on. Take a picture.
She shook her head, as the woman spoke again. “If I'm going to hell, I'll see all of you whites there, lady!”
Katie raised the camera up to her eyes. As she looked through the viewfinder, she saw the woman staring back at her, saw her step off the roof, saw her begin to fall.
She fell for what seemed like hours, the crowd gasping and crying out in alarm. The woman's face was bright and clear, not at all the face of a mad woman. She fell from the top of the belfry to the concrete she had been sweeping earlier, a sickening crack echoing through Katie's mind as the woman's head smashed against the ground. She lay still for a moment, and then a dark red pool began to form around her. Police were called, people started running away, screams filled the air.
Click.

Written December of 2007. This piece is really bad, honestly. I should probably not have allowed this one to make the cut and posted it here, but somehow I feel like I should put it here anyway. Loosely based on the Visual Novel "Hourglass of Summer."
...man this is a piece of crap.


It was the beginning of winter vacation. As the sun was setting, I was on my way home from school. I had stayed to watch Koboshi-chan's archery club activity, and then went to the library for a talk with my history professor, Miss Sendou, to make sure I had everything for the vacation, which I planned to spend studying.
The sun had just dipped down below the mountains to the west, so everything suddenly had an eerie darkness to it. I didn't really notice. I took the same route home that I always did, walking at the same pace, seeing the same sights, and thinking the same thoughts. Things were boring.
I had friends, to be certain, but they were all staying in Tokyo over the break too, so there was really nowhere to go. I sighed a little as I kicked an empty can someone has left on the curb a few times. This year's vacation was turning out to be the same as all the other ones.
When I arrived home, I was greeted by a busy “Welcome home!” from my mother, who was in the kitchen merrily throwing things together for dinner. I had invited Koboshi-chan over as well, as a sort of “Hooray, it's vacation” dinner, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Koboshi-chan's family had an appointment today, Hiroto, so she could not come, you see. It'll just be us, if that's all right,” called my mother's voice. She was always so bright and cheery, regardless of the situation. I had hoped to eat with Koboshi-chan, because it was fun to be with her, but so things go. I shrugged in return.
The dinner we had was a normal dinner. Fish, soup, some vegetable dish, and rice. I left the table early and slumped my way to my room. The clock on my bedstand read 10:47 PM, December 21st. A fine vacation start this was. As I laid back on my bed, I pulled the pillow over my eyes.
Once, just once, I wished that something interesting would happen to me. Something that has never happened to anyone else before. Something, anything. With those thoughts in my head, I drifted off to sleep.

I was suddenly awoken by my mother, who was shaking me back and forth. “Come on, Hiroto! You'll be late for school if you don't put yourself in gear! Get up, your breakfast is cold!” said she, as she finally let my shoulders go.
I squinted against the sunlight streaming in through my open curtains. “Mom, it's vacation. Let me sleep,” I muttered as I glanced at my clock. 6:34 AM, January 6. “It's still really early...” Suddenly my eyes shot open and I stared at my clock again. The date was wrong. “Is this some practical joke or something, mom?” I asked, reaching over to change the date back to the proper date.
“What are you talking about, Hiroto? Vacation ended yesterday. Don't tell me you still have vacation fever. Hurry up, you'll be late!” she said, and turned to leave. “I pressed your uniform for you, so hurry up and get dressed.”
I was confused. Vacation had just started yesterday, and I had only been sleeping for a few hours. What in the world was happening? In a sort of daze, I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on my uniform. The stairs were cold and steep as I went down to the kitchen to get breakfast. My plate was on the table already, covered by a sheet of plastic wrap to keep it clean. As I removed the plastic and picked my chopsticks out of the cup that held them, I looked back at my mother, who was washing dishes in the sink.
“You sure you're not joking with me?” I asked.
“I am doing no such thing,” she replied. “You're late, though. You'd better hurry. I know it's still hard, but you've got to go. There's an assembly today, remember?” she replied. I hurried as best I could to eat and brush my teeth, and then I was on my bicycle, on my way to school with not a little doubt in my head.
On the way, however, I saw the elementary schoolers that always walked in huge clumps walking along the usual school route too. Didn't they also have vacation? Maybe theirs started later. Maybe there was some surprise party today at school that I was not supposed to know about or something. Maybe I actually slept through the two-week long vacation. Maybe my teachers will give me all A's this semester too. Heh.

I arrived at school, and it was bustling with the usual amount of students that were hurrying to get to class at the beginning of the school day. I locked my bike into the rack and started for the assembly building (mother had mentioned something about it), hoping there would be an explanation as to why I was so rudely interrupted in my vacation. On the way there, Koboshi-chan met me.
“...hey...” she said, her voice quavering a little. “You... doing all right...?” She put her arm around my own as she walked next to me.
“...what?” I said.
“You shouldn't pretend it didn't happen, you know. It creates suppressed memories, which will turn into post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards... Just don't get sick or anything, all right? You've been through enough these past couple of days...” she said. She squeezed my arm a little as she spoke. “I'll be here with you from now on, okay?”
It was queer, the way she was acting. Koboshi-chan was always a really energetic, bouncy girl, always smiling, always ready to play and have fun. This Koboshi-chan, though... she was sad, and the air around her wasn't its normal warm, glowy self. Something was going on.
The assembly hall was quiet, for having nearly three thousand students in it. Miss Sendou sat at the front, in all sorts of bandages. Her arm was in a sling, and she had part of her head wrapped up in gauze, as though she had been in an accident of some sort. I stared for a moment.
“What's up with Rika?” I asked. We all called her Rika, even though she got mad at us for using her given name. Koboshi-chan did not respond. The principal got up on the stage, and straightened his tie.
“It is a terrible thing, to begin back to class with such an accident. Today will be a day of observance, for the late Masumura Erika.” He spoke slowly, as was normal, but this time his voice held a sort of quaver that betrayed he was on the verge of tears. I watched as several students looked pityingly back at me.
One of them patted me on the shoulder. “Sorry about your girlfriend, man... never would have thought this would happen...” he said, his eyes full of pity and sadness.
Wait. Masumura Erika, the hottest girl in school, is dead? And what is this about me having a girlfriend?Who is it? my thoughts raced. Koboshi-chan sobbed. I looked down at her small face, and that expression which was normally bright and sunny was a maelstrom of tears and smeared makeup.
The assembly continued as Rika took the stage with the help of some crutches. She adjusted the microphone to the correct height, and then began to speak. “I... was in the car that struck Erika yesterday. The car I was riding was struck from behind by a truck, and spun into the intersection we were waiting at. Erika was, at that time, waiting for the light to turn so that she could cross. My car pinned her to the lightpost, and killed her instantly. You cannot imagine the guilt I feel. Erika had only just started to find friends, and had just found a boyfriend, and it is my fault that she is no longer living. I must apologize. Tatsumiya Hiroto, I am sorry that your girlfriend was passed away, by fault of my own.”
Those words echoed in my head. What is going on here? What is she taking about? I barely knew Erika, and that was only because I had watched her practice swimming once or twice on days when there was no archery club meeting. How could she have been my girlfriend? How could she have, having become my girlfriend, died? I did not understand anything. It was as though my mind had completely forgotten the two weeks that had passed between my yesterday and my today. I stood up, holding my head between my hands, and fled the assembly hall.
I ran to the clubhouse, and yanked open the door. There had to be a place where I could sit and collect my thoughts, where I could rationalize what was going on. I heard footsteps behind me, and as I turned, I saw a heavily-breathing Koboshi-chan leaning on the door.
“Is this... interesting... enough...?” she said between her tired breaths.

Suddenly I was back in my room, lying on my bed. My cellular phone was ringing, but I did not pick it up. Instead I just stared at the ceiling.
Was all of that real? Was it a dream? Was I crazy? Did I hallucinate that whole situation?
I picked up my cellular phone and flipped it open. “Hello?” I said hesitantly.
Koboshi-chan's voice came from the other side. “Hey Hiroto! Wanna go see a movie today?”
“...what... day is it today?”
“It's Saturday, you bird-brain! The first real day of vacation! Let's rock up Shinjuku or somewhere!” she said, and a giggle followed.
I looked at my clock, a headache definitely forming in my forehead.
11:26 AM December 22nd.
I was back in my normal time. It was the correct day. I still did not have a girlfriend. Everything seemed to be normal again, as far as I could tell. And I was content with that. None of my friends were dead.
For a second I was silent, but then I took a deep breath. “Yeah, sure. I could go for a movie,” I said. “As long as there's no car accidents in it.” Perhaps the life I was living was interesting enough for me, without any interference from wishes.
I resigned myself to two things. The first was to not make idle wishes again. The second was to meet Koboshi-chan outside and take my bike to the theatre.

Walking at Night, Alone 2

Written in October of 2007 as a POV-shift version of the previous story Walking at Night, Alone. For the same class. Technically it's a different story, but I don't know which side of it I like better. You decide.

Often she could be seen walking alone, down the sidewalk of the street that passes the east dormitories to a place next to the bridge which crosses the small stream. She can be observed to stop there, sometimes for a minute and sometimes for longer, staring at the ground and shivering. Sometimes she would sit down and talk to nobody, as though she believed there to be someone listening. Then, just like before, she'd get up, dust herself off, and start walking back the way she came.
She lived in the east dormitories, on the far side of the college. She was a normal, average girl, if a little quiet. She went to all her classes, got acceptable grades, and had a few friends she would spend time with. She was part of the basketball club, though she was not very good at it. She would never really say much, though. People would say it was because of the crash.
It had happened only two months before, on a Saturday evening. Her boyfriend, or so everyone thought of him, had been walking to her dormitory just after dark. Greek Row, the fraternity house street, had been blazing with parties and drinking, so much that if one were to light a match, the whole street would probably go up from the vapors alone. Someone had got into their car and turned the key, and it went downhill from there.
He was struck by the car and pinned to a street lamp, where his body was nearly torn in half. He died instantly, only a few moments from her room. She, having heard the crash, came down from her room to see what had happened, and saw him where he had perished so close to her. She began to run towards him, but then the gasoline tank caught fire and the car exploded, incinerating most of what was left of the poor boy. The driver, needless to say, was also killed, but he didn't matter to her. She had fallen to her knees and stared for what had seemed like days until the police and fire departments came and ushered her away.
Today was just like any other day. After her classes had ended, she had gone back to her dormitory. She started reading her class' textbook, something about physics, until the sun began to set. Like clockwork, she shut her book, set it on the desk, and picked up her jacket. Making sure that she had her key, she stepped outside and locked the door.
A few minutes later, the headlights of a passing car washed over her frame as she walked slowly toward the crash site. It had been a few days since she had come to visit the place where her boyfriend had been killed, so the little wooden cross had fallen over and was covered with leaves. She crouched down and stood it up, dusting the dirt off of it. Stepping back, she breathed deeply, and then sighed.
She began to talk. She talked about what had happened in the past few days, how her and his friends were doing, the new movie that had come out... It was as though she was speaking with a real person, but the conversation was one-sided and sad-sounding. “I wish you were here to do this with me,” she often said while she spoke. Then she'd look up, as if expecting to see him standing there, smiling. Sometimes, sometimes, she could swear that she caught a glimpse of him, just on the edge of her peripheral vision, but when she'd turn, there would be nobody there.
Just like it had started, she dusted herself off, and with a nod and a wipe of her eyes, she'd start back toward her dormitory. The little cross would shake a little in the breeze, but she'd never look back while she was returning. She never saw the shadow, the translucent form that stood next to her every time she came to talk. She never felt the soft caress of the figure's hand on her head, as if to say, “Don't worry.” She probably never would.
But he was there to listen.

On second thought, I think I like this viewpoint better. -ED

The Way

Written in May of 2007. I'm skipping posting a lot of the REALLY BADLY WRITTEN stuff I have from back then, and only posting the "ehh, this might be worth reading to someone" pieces.

Every direction looked the same. White to the left, white to the right, white before and behind. He cast no shadow, he left no footprints, he made no sound. With every step he took, he was painfully aware of the fact that he was alive. He only knew because he could still feel wracking pain coursing through his body.

Life is suffering.

He knew that there had to be something he could do to make it stop, something that made it hurt that he could get rid of. Try as he may, however, he could think of nothing that would cease the pain. All he could think about was what he was missing right now. He should be at the party, lounging in a luxurious hot tub with other rich kids, talking about the money that they all had.

The origin of suffering is attachment.

He stumbled; over what, he did not know, because there was nothing to stumble over. His knees hit the hard ground, and he put his hands down in front of them. The ground was hard and cold, smooth like marble, and very, very real. His breathing became more and more labored as the pain shot through his legs, up toward his chest, and then out to his fingertips, finishing at the crown of his head. He shook himself. Stop it. STOP IT. Stop hurting. His head screamed, but his voice seemed to disappear into the endless expanse of white. Everything was so bright. So white.

The cessation of suffering is attainable.

He slumped back onto his calves, and looked upwards. It was punishment. That was it. It must be punishment for something he did, something he was supposed to have done. Something. There was no other explanation. He felt like a child being scolded by his mother. Without knowing it, tears began to well up in his eyes. As they ran down his cheeks, they burned his face. He brought his hands up and covered his eyes with them. Everything was so bright. It was then that he heard a voice. The first thing he had heard in this place. He looked up, and in the distance, he saw the silhouette of a man. He was built lightly, not underweight, but not normal. The voice continued to call out. It was calling his name out. He reached forward, his arm shaking, and shut his eyes. Save me.

The way to the cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path.

When he opened his eyes, the silhouette had taken form, and was holding his hand. Awaken. Cease your attachments. Live free of life. As these words echoed through the white void, the familiar yet distant man smiled, and began to fade away. Everything began to get darker. He felt a jolt through his chest, and then another.

Suddenly he opened his eyes. He was in the back of an ambulance, his coat thrown somewhere, and his shirt pulled back to expose his chest. The EMT held two paddles in his hands. "Clear," he said, and one last jolt brought him back to reality.

Was he really that miserable? He lived alone, with nothing to comfort him but his money. Maybe, just maybe, that silhouette was on to something.

The Endless Wait

Written in October of 2006. MAN I AM OLD. Also haha oh wow how emo was I when I wrote this thing.


The thunder rolled in the distance as the sky darkened with rain. Slowly, droplets began to fall from the sky, dampening the ground and making the grass glimmer with what little sunlight could be seen through the clouds. The wind brought a bitter chill in with it, and the streetlights began to flicker on one-by-one.

An old swingset in a park creaked noisily as the chains moved back and forth, back and forth. The boy sitting on the swing clutched a crumpled piece of paper to his chest and looked up at the grey sky.

"Rain. Figures," he said bitterly, and tucked the paper into his jacket before sliding off the swing and walking away slowly, the rain permeating his shoes and soaking his feet.

He arrived at an old, run-down, abandoned house and opened the door. As he stepped inside, he shook off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door. He took off his shoes and overturned them, allowing them to drain and dry out. Sighing deeply, a moth-eaten couch welcomed him. He sat down and shut his eyes.

"He returned to the lonely place he called home," said the boy under his breath. "Now, where's my cat..." he mumbled, glancing over his shoulder and around the room. No cat. He sighed again and leaned back, the cold fingers of sleep trying to steal away his consciousness. His stomach gurgled, but he allowed himself to fall into a deep, dreamless, and troubled sleep. This time.

When he awoke, the rain was still pounding on the glass windows.

"Damn," he cursed under his breath. "Still raining. When's it gonna stop!" he cried, clenching his fist. He rose quickly from the couch and entered the musty kitchen. There was no food, but there were still old knives there. He seized a small sharp blade and trudged back to the couch. He was resolved this time. No one would stop him. He pressed the blade to the underside of his wrist and clenched his teeth.

No, you mustn't do that. I would be very disappointed if you did, a voice softly called.

"Shut up! You're not real!" the boy screamed. He pushed harder on the blade. "So much for promises!"

But I would be sad if you were to do something like that, the voice retorted.

"Dammit! Get out of my head, you hear?

Do not do this. I would be sad.

The boy's hands trembled, and the blade clattered to the floor. He held his head in his hands. "But why not? Why not? Tell me why I shouldn't just spill all of it? WHY!?" he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. But no one was kind enough to answer him. He was alone again. Just like always. Bitterly alone.

There was a soft mew, and then a cat climbed up on the couch. The feline rubbed the boy's hand with its head and purred.

"Oh... hey, Lonesome. Where've you been off to?" the boy asked. "..silly me. You can't talk. I wish... you could talk..."

The next morning brought a rainless sunrise, the grass glittering in the morning rays. The boy's eyes opened, and he sat up, stretching. "What a night... what a night..." he mumbled. He looked down by his feet to make sure his cat was there, and quietly got up.

The blade still lay on the floor. He slowly picked it up and took it back to the kitchen. As it slid back into the block, he sighed.

"Why do I always stop? Why can't I ever just do it? Why? Dammit!" he yelled. He pounded his fist into the counter. "I can't wait any longer!"

Later, the boy could be found on the same swing in the same park. Clutching the same piece of paper to his chest. It was this way day in, day out. Some people wondered if he was real. Gossip told of how crazy he was. People talked behind their hands about how he was always on that swing every day, for the last four years. But he was there. Always there. No one knew why.

Some days later, a girl about his age arrived in the city. She spent days asking around about a boy, about nineteen years of age, brown hair... Finally someone recognized his description and pointed the girl in the direction of the old beat-up house.

When she arrived, she opened the door and stepped inside, ushered in by silence. As she scanned the room with her eyes, her heart raced as she saw the couch. She looked closer, and she saw the boy curled up into a ball with the cat sleeping next to him. She smiled and shook the boy's shoulders, but he didn't wake up. The cat yawned, opened its eyes, and when it saw the girl, darted off the couch, dislodging a sheet of paper from the boy's hand. It had spots of red ink on it. The girl apprehensively (and by now very afraid) turned the boy over.

He was drowning in a sea of crimson. His hands, face, and shirt were covered in partially dried blood. And a knife was in right hand. The cut was long on his left wrist.

She stumbled back, the room spinning, and tried not to vomit. She finally gathered the courage to look again. This time, however, the paper caught her eyes. She slowly picked it up. As she read it, she felt her throat tightening up. Hot, stinging tears poured from her eyes.

The paper read:
"Dear Darling:
I have to go away for a time, but I promise you, as sure as the sun will rise, I will return for you. Wait for me.
Love, May"

And as her eyes rose from the paper, she saw the writing in his own blood on the wall:

the sun stopped rising today