Halloween 2009

Yes I know. A few days late. SO? What of it?


He stood over his victim, a look of intensity on his face. In his right hand was a butcher knife, its edge gleaming with silver light, sharp as his soul was hollow.
“Don’t worry my beauty. This won’t hurt a bit. A least…not for me.”
A Widmarkian laugh came from his throat and he dragged the point of the knife slowly along the lines he had dawn earlier, not hard enough to cut, but enough so she could feel what awaited her. Then he grabbed her, holding her face steady in his left hand and brought the knife down slowly.
“First your eyes; yes, they must go first.”
The blade cut through the flesh with ease and he twisted and dug driving the edge in deep. First the right and then the left, leaving vacant staring sockets with bits of pulpy flesh hanging out.
“Oh dear, I will have to trim those up a bit later. Now your nose.”
Again the knife came down and now a vaguely triangular hole lay where a nose should be. With each cut and stab he became more excited, his actions more frenzied as if he could not contain the lust the cutting drove him to.
“And now. Your lovely mouth.”
He drove the blade in, slashing and gouging till he was satisfied with his creation. No lips to be seen, teeth shattered and jagged, a horrific mess of flayed flesh that bore no human resemblance.
“And now…you’re beautiful”
Suddenly, the door swung open. He turned and there stood…
His mother.
“DAVID PERRY! Young man, just what do you think you are doing? I have told you, you do not use my good kitchen knives to carve a pumpkin. We have a kit from Wal-Mart for that! And just look at this mess. You will clean up this kitchen and clean up this pumpkin and make it look presentable or there is no way you are going out to get candy tonight. ARE WE CLEAR?”
He hung his head in shame, the blade slipping from his hand as if it had been plunged into his own heart.
“Yes ma’am.”

Thanks to Rachel Taylor for the suggestioin of a pumpkin for a topic. And I hope you all had a Happy Halloween.

The Halloween Story

As most of you know, I write occasionally, used to a lot. But due to the trouble it can bring and generally feeling non creative, I don't as much anymmore.

However.

For the past two years I've cranked out a short, hopefully unsettling, story for Halloween. These are 2007 and 2008's. 2009 I'm still having issues with, but I'll find it. Just have to keep ripping open crypts and digging up graves.

Enjoy.

2007

And all at once, I saw it.
A form, a shape, something that was real and yet unreal, beginning to appear from the inky blackness of the woods. It grew in density and brightness till there before me stood the fully realized vision of a man at arms, a solider of the olden times. My heart quickened, my mind raced, my only purpose to communicate, to send thought across the void. My words came out in a stammer.
“Hello, can you hear me? Do you understand me?”
The form turned slowly towards me and at once I saw that this was no kind specter, but a fiend out of Hell. White flames flickered where eyes should be and from its mouth uttered a sound like the compressed cries of a thousand damned souls. I recoiled from it, trying to flee and turned to face…
Another.

2008

Connie lay on the couch watching a horror film. An American remake of a Japanese film starring the latest batch of Hollywood 20-somethings. She was half asleep, barely aware of the television flickering when a noise brought her fully awake. It was the creaking of the stairs then soft footfalls on the carpeted steps.
"Melissa?" she called out, thinking it had to be her young daughter coming down from her bedroom.
"Mommy, come here."
She sat up on the couch and turned to face the landing of the stairs. Something in Melissa's voice, flatness…something was wrong.
"Melissa, honey, what is it?"
Connie saw the little girls foot step off the last step and then her daughter was facing her, barely visible in the flickering light from the TV. Suddenly the screen brightened and she could see her daughters face, deathly white. The paleness was set off even more by the red trickle of blood from the corner of the girl's mouth. Connie started to cry out, to rush off the couch. But the sight of what could only be described as a dead hand or claw reaching out of the dark to fondly caress the child's cheek stopped her. A scream rose up from her lungs but the horror of what she saw stopped it, strangled it in her chest.

"Mommy, come here. They want to play."

2009 to follow.

Later...

Looking backwards to the future

"Long time between dreams" as the Kinkstah would say.

I haven't written a meaningful blog in around 6 months or longer. And haven't written ANYTHING besides social histories with any merit to it in a long time.

Why?

Got no real clue.

It's work to write things. It's hard work. In the past three years, including the time before the Unpleasantness, I've written close to 170 blogs consisting of rants, short stories and recipes. And then ripped them down from MySpace for varying reasons. The only ones on Facebook are a short story about my wreck (GOOD TIMES!!!) and a short rant on not judging folks. For the record I have NO blogs on Myspace at this time. Since Tom decided to destroy a friend of mine, ChickenBoy, I am off the Space as far as creative expression. If Facebook gets a good music system, MySpace is dead.

So whats the deal tonight? Why take up the keyboard and pen again?

I finished rereading a book today for about the 10th time. Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison. For those that haven't picked up the book, it has little to do with BrAngelina's movie. It's three novellas in which Harrison addresses the three great forms of conflict found in literature and life

Man vs Man, Man vs Self, and Man vs The World.

In each story, the past must be forgotten, overcome, faced and beaten and from it a new man emerges. Sometimes better for it, sometimes worse. The point is from our past we shape our future. Without what we were we cannot be what we are and what we want to be. The past molds the future.

But it doesn't control it.

The control issue I see as a problem because too many people want the past to never end. They fixate on what was and want that fixed point in time to be the standard by which all the rest of their existence is judged by. That was the high point, the rest is regret and looking back
For instance, they want the good ole days of HS to come round, to relive those magical 4 years. As I've stated before, the amount of money it would take to get me to go back and relive HS would allow me to buy Roman Abramovich's fleet and get the boats repainted maroon and white.

We must learn from the past and not let control us, not let it be the guiding factor for the future, because despite it all, you can change and make things into what you want them to be. I was talking on here earlier tonight to an old acquaintance from HS, someone I've honestly not interacted with since June of 1991. We both agreed that the early years of our lives had sucked and that only when we left and left all that behind could we become who we wanted to be. But at the same time, the tears, the scars, the bad memories of 20 years back have a value. And despite my own myopic insistance she reminded me there were some bright spots back in the day.

Added all together it makes us who we are.

But it doesn't dictate what we have to be.

Later...

Because I'm pissed off

Take this for what it is. If it bothers you, then it should.

A friend of mine is in trouble. The full reasons and range of things is truly not known to me nor to most who think they know. Such is the nature of small towns in Texas, Tazmania, and Turkistan. Everyones an expert and knows the law because they watch a lot of CSI. Thus I say ignorance is universal.

As a rule, I don't have may friends. I can't stand most folks for more than 10 minutes at a time. If you have to wonder if you're in that group, then you are. I say this because someone I consider a friend I support. So long as no harm has been done to my family, my children, my well being, I will support them in times of trouble.

Some would look down on this attitude. Some would say guilty till proven innocent then still guilty cause we think so. To you I say back off and shut up. To you I say read your Bible, the one that you break out every Easter, Mothers Day and Christmas, the one with dust on it. Read Matthew 6:14-15 (did Dan just quote Scripture?!! SIGN OF THE END A COMING!!!!) Go look back at the things you've done, the stuipidity in your life and ask yourself, would you want it all drug out for public viewing?

If backing up a friend brings judgement, brings scorn on me, then I say fine. Get in line. Theres a lot ahead of you.

Later...

It happens fast

It happens fast.
You look down at the radio, a glance at the station number. One hand on the wheel, one holding your morning Dr. Pepper. Suddenly, no warning, no sound, the car skids. The back end kicks around. All those things you learned in drivers education, in the one defensive driving course you had to take in high school, all the bullshit Hollywood movies and Discovery Channel specials on stunt driving; all that absorbed random knowledge on handling a car.
It vanishes like fall leaves whipping over the windshield at 70 mph.
The back end keeps coming around, you trying to steer out of it. Do I hit the brakes or gas? Steer in or out of the skid? What the hell? Then it's backwards, facing North when you were going South.

A thought occurs.
There should be a chip truck coming over that hill right now. Or a log truck. Something. Something should be slamming into me right now.
But it doesn't come. God and the angels that watch fools smile on you. The skid continues, the car seeming to accelerate, leaving the laws of physics in its wake. You've rotated 270 degrees from when this ride started and now the edge of the road appraoches. And the ditch. And you sail over it, feeling a strange lightness as the car leaves the ground.
Then.
The first hit. A tree, the car still in mid flight off the ground a few feet. Back corner, right side, straight into it. The sudden stop that kills those who fall from on high, a bone jarring boom that breaks the locks on your seat adjuster and sends you backwards on the rails. Then your own fall. Down into the valley of the ditch, the car ricocheting off the longleaf pine.
The second hit. The whole car settling as one in the ditch, the front end bending up, the sound of metal and fiberglass shearing and buckling. Your head lashes sideways into the door pillar. A sharp crack, not enough to knock you out, a guttural shout from you at the pain. .
You sit there for a long moment; the only sound the radio and your own breathing. You unclench a hand from the wheel and feel your head, checking for blood, bone, grey matter. Do a quick wiggle of all extremities to make sure they all function. Then you call the office, you call a friend at the police department, you call your wife.
They all come. They all ask why. They make sure you're okay, they all offer theories, they all hurl accusations. What can you say?
It happens fast.

For those who's first thought after reading this is to my welfare and health, I thank you. Yes, the story is true, happened in 2002, on my birthday.
But to my main point...how'd you like the story?

Later...