Earlier this month, I related to you all my descent into the very heart of darkness and despair as my girlfriend and I defied all common sense and journied to Jo-Ann Fabrics in order to acquire various materials for our assorted projects. As anyone who has read the aforementioned article, has been to Jo-Ann, or has read the not so subtext of this introduction can attest; this was an enormous mistake. This, however, is not about why I awake screaming every night. No, this is about our trip to Micheal's.
You see, a couple of weeks ago, we decided to give Jo-Ann's main competition a chance and the nearest location that hadn't been converted to a meth lab was in Buford. We piled into our car and traveled south along 85, Googling the directions to the store and putting them into my GPS because my phone is crappy I refuse to enable location services. We arrived at Exit 4 and, as anyone who knows the area can confirm, we knew our search had begun in earnest since everything worthwhile in Buford is just off the exit. It was only once we got closer to the end of the GPS's trail that we realized that something was terribly wrong.
It turns out that Micheal's, according to my GPS unit, was in the middle of the Mall of Georgia's parking lot. This is not only a terrible place to try to sell anything but suspect oranges and counterfeit consumer goods, but it's also precisely where Micheal's wasn't. Upon confirming that we had, in fact, gotten the address correct and retrying it in the GPS, we decided to simply burn a few hours in the mall because our time is quite abundant.
It was as we were leaving that we saw it, directly across from our favorite exit to the mall. In giant letters on an obnoxiously plain sign, the plainly written word Micheal's. Rolling our eyes (in perfect unison, as is our custom) we drove into the parking lot and entered.
Now, let me tell you that Micheal's is a completely different world from Jo-Ann's. Literally the only thing they didn't have was fabric. Jo-Ann's Fabrics understandably has an advantage there, but we still refuse to ever visit again. Instead, we got X-acto knives, a model AH-64 Apache, a few art pencils and a few other supplies. We were, overall, quite pleased. The only oddity in this store was that for some reason an eighth of the women there were pregnant. So, really, we knew that we'd found our store because at least the patrons of Micheal's can get laid.
Submitted for your approval.
25 February, 2013
24 February, 2013
Musings: Space
This will prove inordinately difficult to believe, but I like to consider myself an optimist - at least when it comes to certain things. One of those things being humanity's needs and eventual prospects in space. Ultimately, I believe that we'll end up assuming a more settled place in the cosmos; spreading our seedy tendrils from rock to rock and star to star. If we don't annihilate ourselves or exhaust our planet before our technology reaches a suitable point and we aren't too shortsighted to see the need for it, it is utterly inevitable.
However, something that people don't consider is how completely terrifying space actually is. I mean, it can't be just me who thinks this, right? Consider: known space is nearly completely and totally empty. The distance between Earth (or, more precisely, the outermost edge of Earth's space junk debris cloud) and our sole moon - infinitesimal in astronomic terms - is so devoid of matter and content that it completely surpasses any void you have probably ever encountered in your life in terms of its utter desolation. That's just a cosmic stones throw. Consider the distance, now, from us to our nearest star: a distance greater than the sum of all distance ever traveled in human history. The distance from our galaxy to Andromeda, the distance to the next galactic cluster, and so forth are all exponentially more vast. It's all so empty.
Now consider what dwells in the other percent of a percent of a percent of space. The rocks. Most of those are, as well, desolate and devoid of life. Many of those aren't just desolate, but they are in fact hostile to life as we know it. They're bathed in radiation and clouded in toxins. It's just a completely and utterly awful place for us as a species.
At last, consider what *isn't* empty or deserted or desolate. Consider the rocks that have life. Consider the one-in-a-septrillion rock that has thinking, breathing life upon it. Life that can form and exist in ways that we can hardly conceive of with our brains that have spent billions of years condensing out of Sol's stardust. Think of how we treat each other and think of what these strange and inconceivable creatures might do when faced with this.
Just my two cents.
08 February, 2013
We
Well, first some news. Red States is on hold for the foreseeable future. It is very much a collaborative work and collaboration is the sort of thing I prefer to do in person whenever possible. As my co-author has moved to California, I doubt this will be possible for quite some time. However, it would be unwise to assume that my muse has left me. Indeed, I have begun a new project called We. It's an interconnected series of short stories taking me back to my most beloved of genres: horror. It's the tale of a small town in the Southeast as it grapples with visitors from beyond the stars who harbor a horrifying secret that will challenge everything they know about the world and themselves.
I actually based this on some day dreams I had as a child. You see, I've always been fascinated by aliens and UFO sightings, and despite my skepticism and rational beliefs, I truly do want to believe in them. While I harbor an extremely idealistic hope for whatever aliens might be out there, anyone who tells you they have no *fear* of what might lie beyond our world is either a liar or else they aren't quite cognizant of the implications of what they're pondering.
Anyway, as a child I was in the third row seat of my dad's Plymouth minivan as we returned home from the local Winn-Dixie. As an adult looking back on the event, I'm sure what I saw was the bright lights that the grocery store used to illuminate the store-front parking lot reflecting against the tinting of the window next to me. However, at that young age I truly did believe it to be an alien craft. How could I not? After all, my good friend Levi, with whom I am still in contact, and I frequently discussed aliens and UFOs. It was a subject that was frequently on my mind in those dreamy, youthful days. Unhindered by my cynical adult skepticism, my subconscious was free to spin many a dream and nightmare about what those lights might portend.
Though it's no longer a cornerstone of my life and fascinations, I still hold a deep interest in aliens. It's always been something that I've wondered about and wanted to write about, but until recently I just didn't know how to approach it. I hope you're all please with the direction in which I'm taking this story, as it's long been a dream of mine to write some truly great alien abduction horror.
I invite you, now, to read the first part of this new horror opus: Mike's Story.
I'm awake now. I am terrified and I am awake and I am far more terribly and horrifyingly sane and lucid than I have ever been at any moment in my life. I know so much now. I know so much more than I ever wanted to know about our place in the universe. I mean all of us. You and me.
I used to sit awake at night and dream of all the things that might be out there. I used to wonder all about the stars and the many rocks spinning around them and all the stories that might at that very moment in time be unfolding on all those tiny little spinning specks of dust around all those twinkling dots of light in that great light speckled above.
And then I met Carol.
She was a woman of reason and grace. She set my dreaming ways aside and showed me a world of the rational and the real. She was a doctor and a skeptic. She used to sit with me and watch the TV and we'd laugh at all of the phony psychics and the televangelist scam artists. We'd poke fun at the Bigfoot "researchers" and the die-hard ghost documentary crowd. We just found it all so tremendously funny; these feeble minded hicks who were taken in by the unknown and spinning it all into delusional fantasies. I guess we had a pretty twisted sense of humor.
Oh, and her dogs. She loved her dogs. She had two of them. Two of the sweetest labs you'd ever seen. There was Gemma and Hadrian. They loved to run and jump and fetch and play and if you rubbed Hadrian's belly just right, he'd keep twitching his leg for an hour.
But, I digress. When the local rednecks began talking about lights in the sky, we... Well, we approached it with our usual humor. We scoffed at the yokels, amusing ourselves with the notion that they might not actually even know what an airplane was. We kept laughing even after the first night.
Even at the time, something didn't feel right about those lights we saw when we spent the evening hours together on our dock. They didn't seem to sit right in the sky. Something about the way they moved and the way they *didn't* move was not too distant from the spots you get when you stare at a halogen bulb for too long. I fancied that it was a trick of the eyes. Perhaps from some unexplained prominence of the moon's light... But it was cloudy. It was cloudy and Carol... She said she saw it too. We gathered Gemma and Hadrian, our ever present companions, and went back to our home.
The next morning, the dogs were nowhere to be found. We looked and looked all over our property, but we couldn't find the slightest sign of them. Well, nothing of them physically. We found their collars down by the creek bed which fed the pond. They looked... singed. I hadn't seen the likes of those burns in my life, though. There was a strange quality about them. The collars were polyester. The fibers should have melted and globbed, but they seemed frayed. It was as if they'd burned from the inside out, it seemed. But that couldn't have been possible. I pocketed the collars and spent the better part of the rest of the day looking for Gemma and Hadrian, to no avail.
Taking the collars back to the house, I studied them in greater detail. My efforts to determine what had happened to the dogs that would leave the collars like this were fruitless. It was Carol who nervously suggested that some of the local hicks might have shot the poor things. I called Sheriff Woods down in town to let him know to look for them. I guess that's what we came out to the sticks for, anyway. You know, the sense of community. A place where the cops will care about your dogs and stuff. With nothing further to do and a long day of prowling the woods for our wayward dogs behind us, Carol and I returned to bed.
I awoke with a start. The house was bathed in a radiant white light. Next to me, the bed was empty. I shouted for my girlfriend but was answered only with silence. God, that light. It was blinding. I normally hate guns, but in my fear, I kept a level head and went to the closet across the room to retrieve Carol's grandfather's old service pistol from World War II. I'd seen her shoot the old .45 a number of times and she'd even managed to rope me into it once or twice. I checked the clip and the holes in the side indicated that all seven rounds were in place. Racking the slide as I'd seen my girlfriend do so many times, I left our room.
Despite being windowless, the hallway from our room to the staircase was bathed in the same blinding light as our bedroom. I raised my right hand to my eyes, parting the fingers so as to shield myself from most of the light, tightly clenching the aged gun in my off hand. It was so quiet. It was so damnably quiet. As I turned to mount the staircase, I saw them in the hallway, heading to the door.
There was Carol. She was just... She was following them. I... They looked like people but their proportions were all wrong. They were so tall, but they were impossibly thin. I don't even know how they held themselves up or supported their large, bulbous heads. And she was... She was going with them. And I don't know how they heard me. I don't know why. I just know that Carol turned. She turned right at me and looked up and smiled. "Come with us." She said. She smiled and beckoned me to come with them.
Then, her horrible minders turned to me and stared to me with black, dead eyes. My god, their eyes! They were so big and they were so unblinking and they were so cold! They looked at me! I don't know how I know what they were looking at but I know it was *me!*
I squeezed the trigger of Carol's grandfather's gun and I closed my fingers over my eyes and I screamed I screamed and shot again I fell in the corner and cried as I heard the most horrible of sounds. I can't even describe them! My God in heaven, those sounds!
I awoke hours later, crumpled under a table at the top of the stairs. The front door was off of its hinges and nowhere in sight. I looked all around the house for Carol but she's not here. I looked all around the woods, despite my knowing that she wouldn't be there. I tried to call the Sheriff but my cell phone won't get signal and the landline is dead. Town's too far to walk, my car won't start, and I have the most horrible suspicion that I wouldn't make it anyway. When I came back in, the entryway to my house reeked of gunpowder and another, more subtle burning smell. I returned to the table where I passed out and saw the gun I had used last night at the top of the stairs. I checked the clip and saw five rounds within. I know they're coming back. I know what I have to do. I just hope I have the courage.
I don't want to be here when they come back for me.
Anyway, there it is. I hope you all enjoy it, and I encourage you all to let me know what you think. Honest critique is appreciated, as usual. This is only a draft, mind you, and a rather rough one at that.
I actually based this on some day dreams I had as a child. You see, I've always been fascinated by aliens and UFO sightings, and despite my skepticism and rational beliefs, I truly do want to believe in them. While I harbor an extremely idealistic hope for whatever aliens might be out there, anyone who tells you they have no *fear* of what might lie beyond our world is either a liar or else they aren't quite cognizant of the implications of what they're pondering.
Anyway, as a child I was in the third row seat of my dad's Plymouth minivan as we returned home from the local Winn-Dixie. As an adult looking back on the event, I'm sure what I saw was the bright lights that the grocery store used to illuminate the store-front parking lot reflecting against the tinting of the window next to me. However, at that young age I truly did believe it to be an alien craft. How could I not? After all, my good friend Levi, with whom I am still in contact, and I frequently discussed aliens and UFOs. It was a subject that was frequently on my mind in those dreamy, youthful days. Unhindered by my cynical adult skepticism, my subconscious was free to spin many a dream and nightmare about what those lights might portend.
Though it's no longer a cornerstone of my life and fascinations, I still hold a deep interest in aliens. It's always been something that I've wondered about and wanted to write about, but until recently I just didn't know how to approach it. I hope you're all please with the direction in which I'm taking this story, as it's long been a dream of mine to write some truly great alien abduction horror.
I invite you, now, to read the first part of this new horror opus: Mike's Story.
I'm awake now. I am terrified and I am awake and I am far more terribly and horrifyingly sane and lucid than I have ever been at any moment in my life. I know so much now. I know so much more than I ever wanted to know about our place in the universe. I mean all of us. You and me.
I used to sit awake at night and dream of all the things that might be out there. I used to wonder all about the stars and the many rocks spinning around them and all the stories that might at that very moment in time be unfolding on all those tiny little spinning specks of dust around all those twinkling dots of light in that great light speckled above.
And then I met Carol.
She was a woman of reason and grace. She set my dreaming ways aside and showed me a world of the rational and the real. She was a doctor and a skeptic. She used to sit with me and watch the TV and we'd laugh at all of the phony psychics and the televangelist scam artists. We'd poke fun at the Bigfoot "researchers" and the die-hard ghost documentary crowd. We just found it all so tremendously funny; these feeble minded hicks who were taken in by the unknown and spinning it all into delusional fantasies. I guess we had a pretty twisted sense of humor.
Oh, and her dogs. She loved her dogs. She had two of them. Two of the sweetest labs you'd ever seen. There was Gemma and Hadrian. They loved to run and jump and fetch and play and if you rubbed Hadrian's belly just right, he'd keep twitching his leg for an hour.
But, I digress. When the local rednecks began talking about lights in the sky, we... Well, we approached it with our usual humor. We scoffed at the yokels, amusing ourselves with the notion that they might not actually even know what an airplane was. We kept laughing even after the first night.
Even at the time, something didn't feel right about those lights we saw when we spent the evening hours together on our dock. They didn't seem to sit right in the sky. Something about the way they moved and the way they *didn't* move was not too distant from the spots you get when you stare at a halogen bulb for too long. I fancied that it was a trick of the eyes. Perhaps from some unexplained prominence of the moon's light... But it was cloudy. It was cloudy and Carol... She said she saw it too. We gathered Gemma and Hadrian, our ever present companions, and went back to our home.
The next morning, the dogs were nowhere to be found. We looked and looked all over our property, but we couldn't find the slightest sign of them. Well, nothing of them physically. We found their collars down by the creek bed which fed the pond. They looked... singed. I hadn't seen the likes of those burns in my life, though. There was a strange quality about them. The collars were polyester. The fibers should have melted and globbed, but they seemed frayed. It was as if they'd burned from the inside out, it seemed. But that couldn't have been possible. I pocketed the collars and spent the better part of the rest of the day looking for Gemma and Hadrian, to no avail.
Taking the collars back to the house, I studied them in greater detail. My efforts to determine what had happened to the dogs that would leave the collars like this were fruitless. It was Carol who nervously suggested that some of the local hicks might have shot the poor things. I called Sheriff Woods down in town to let him know to look for them. I guess that's what we came out to the sticks for, anyway. You know, the sense of community. A place where the cops will care about your dogs and stuff. With nothing further to do and a long day of prowling the woods for our wayward dogs behind us, Carol and I returned to bed.
I awoke with a start. The house was bathed in a radiant white light. Next to me, the bed was empty. I shouted for my girlfriend but was answered only with silence. God, that light. It was blinding. I normally hate guns, but in my fear, I kept a level head and went to the closet across the room to retrieve Carol's grandfather's old service pistol from World War II. I'd seen her shoot the old .45 a number of times and she'd even managed to rope me into it once or twice. I checked the clip and the holes in the side indicated that all seven rounds were in place. Racking the slide as I'd seen my girlfriend do so many times, I left our room.
Despite being windowless, the hallway from our room to the staircase was bathed in the same blinding light as our bedroom. I raised my right hand to my eyes, parting the fingers so as to shield myself from most of the light, tightly clenching the aged gun in my off hand. It was so quiet. It was so damnably quiet. As I turned to mount the staircase, I saw them in the hallway, heading to the door.
There was Carol. She was just... She was following them. I... They looked like people but their proportions were all wrong. They were so tall, but they were impossibly thin. I don't even know how they held themselves up or supported their large, bulbous heads. And she was... She was going with them. And I don't know how they heard me. I don't know why. I just know that Carol turned. She turned right at me and looked up and smiled. "Come with us." She said. She smiled and beckoned me to come with them.
Then, her horrible minders turned to me and stared to me with black, dead eyes. My god, their eyes! They were so big and they were so unblinking and they were so cold! They looked at me! I don't know how I know what they were looking at but I know it was *me!*
I squeezed the trigger of Carol's grandfather's gun and I closed my fingers over my eyes and I screamed I screamed and shot again I fell in the corner and cried as I heard the most horrible of sounds. I can't even describe them! My God in heaven, those sounds!
I awoke hours later, crumpled under a table at the top of the stairs. The front door was off of its hinges and nowhere in sight. I looked all around the house for Carol but she's not here. I looked all around the woods, despite my knowing that she wouldn't be there. I tried to call the Sheriff but my cell phone won't get signal and the landline is dead. Town's too far to walk, my car won't start, and I have the most horrible suspicion that I wouldn't make it anyway. When I came back in, the entryway to my house reeked of gunpowder and another, more subtle burning smell. I returned to the table where I passed out and saw the gun I had used last night at the top of the stairs. I checked the clip and saw five rounds within. I know they're coming back. I know what I have to do. I just hope I have the courage.
Anyway, there it is. I hope you all enjoy it, and I encourage you all to let me know what you think. Honest critique is appreciated, as usual. This is only a draft, mind you, and a rather rough one at that.
04 February, 2013
A Trip to the Fabric Store
Despite being a literary cliche, it was indeed a cold and stormy night when my girlfriend and I found ourselves at Jo-Ann fabrics in Gainesville. We had come to avail ourselves of their wares for our various projects: the construction of Mandalorian armor, the manufacture of pouches for my wheelchair, and so forth. We thought nothing of the terrifying weather around us, only paying the requisite attention one need pay when a risk of sleet and ice is present.
We wrapped ourselves in our coats and crossed the parking lot with all due haste, not caring to linger in the downpour around us. Upon entering the store, we were bathed in the customary fluorescent light characteristic of low-end, big box retail establishments. Knowing what we wanted, we set to work, not yet entirely aware of the dour mood that pervaded the store.
Our first hint of the misery within came when I observed the pained expression common to the customers of the store. It spoke to me at length of great longing and sadness, of tragic and wasted lives spent amongst half formed constructs of felt and cheap yarn; where budget priced white box wine pushed regret down - temporarily - into a nice, forgettable corner of the subconscious. The expression did not seem entirely unusual to me, as this is the sort of person one tends to find out and about at the hour we had made our expedition, and so we paid these tortured souls no heed.
We pressed on amidst these shambling husks of people into the aisle which contained the raw materials we needed for one of our projects. Turning to grab what I required, I spotted an employee whose back seemed to be hunched by the weight of all the world's sorrows. Our eyes locked and I knew then what it was to glimpse into the very heart of misery. I turned away with haste to gaze once more upon my lover's warm continence, lest this wretched creature claim my very soul. I heard, or at least I believe that I heard, the pitiful being amble towards a customer in the next aisle where a muttered conversation was only half audibly perceived by me.
At length, the employee issued forth an anguished cry. "What do you wanna go to Micheal's for?" she asked in a nasally, high pitched drawl. She was answered only by the back of the customer, who I saw exit the aisle and leave the store, a cashier reaching longingly for her as if to pull her back down into the pit of depression in which this store resided. I knew that we were no longer safe here. If we did not make good on a hasty retreat, I feared for our ability to ever feel joy again for the rest of our natural lives.
We gathered our goods and made a diligent path towards the sole cashier on duty that dreary night as the previously encountered employee's cries issued forth from a back room to which she had presumably retreated. Before we even reached the counter, the cashier shrieked at us an offer to join their value club - ensuring that they would forever have us in their sullen grasp. My girlfriend, wise beyond her years, immediately replied as she laid our purchases upon the counter. "I'm sorry sir" she said, presenting a far braver facade than I believe I had at the time "but we're moving." The cashier was unfazed. "Well when are ya movin'?" he replied. "If it's not too soon..." Here he was cut off by my beloved as she pushed her debit card forward to buy her items. We paid with no further conversation and made good on our exit.
Arriving home, we slowly absorbed the pain and desperation of the atmosphere we had narrowly escaped. As a final insult, it seemed they had overcharged us on a sheet of foam presentation board, which would have been far cheaper than what we believed it had originally been anyway had we gone anywhere else. We had been cheated, in the end. We had been cheated by that damnable pit of sorrow and misery. And darkness and decay and Jo-Ann's Fabrics held illimitable dominion over all.
UPDATE: My good friend Elisabeth tells me that this is not at all unusual for fabric stores, so just fuck the whole damned enterprise.
We wrapped ourselves in our coats and crossed the parking lot with all due haste, not caring to linger in the downpour around us. Upon entering the store, we were bathed in the customary fluorescent light characteristic of low-end, big box retail establishments. Knowing what we wanted, we set to work, not yet entirely aware of the dour mood that pervaded the store.
Our first hint of the misery within came when I observed the pained expression common to the customers of the store. It spoke to me at length of great longing and sadness, of tragic and wasted lives spent amongst half formed constructs of felt and cheap yarn; where budget priced white box wine pushed regret down - temporarily - into a nice, forgettable corner of the subconscious. The expression did not seem entirely unusual to me, as this is the sort of person one tends to find out and about at the hour we had made our expedition, and so we paid these tortured souls no heed.
We pressed on amidst these shambling husks of people into the aisle which contained the raw materials we needed for one of our projects. Turning to grab what I required, I spotted an employee whose back seemed to be hunched by the weight of all the world's sorrows. Our eyes locked and I knew then what it was to glimpse into the very heart of misery. I turned away with haste to gaze once more upon my lover's warm continence, lest this wretched creature claim my very soul. I heard, or at least I believe that I heard, the pitiful being amble towards a customer in the next aisle where a muttered conversation was only half audibly perceived by me.
At length, the employee issued forth an anguished cry. "What do you wanna go to Micheal's for?" she asked in a nasally, high pitched drawl. She was answered only by the back of the customer, who I saw exit the aisle and leave the store, a cashier reaching longingly for her as if to pull her back down into the pit of depression in which this store resided. I knew that we were no longer safe here. If we did not make good on a hasty retreat, I feared for our ability to ever feel joy again for the rest of our natural lives.
We gathered our goods and made a diligent path towards the sole cashier on duty that dreary night as the previously encountered employee's cries issued forth from a back room to which she had presumably retreated. Before we even reached the counter, the cashier shrieked at us an offer to join their value club - ensuring that they would forever have us in their sullen grasp. My girlfriend, wise beyond her years, immediately replied as she laid our purchases upon the counter. "I'm sorry sir" she said, presenting a far braver facade than I believe I had at the time "but we're moving." The cashier was unfazed. "Well when are ya movin'?" he replied. "If it's not too soon..." Here he was cut off by my beloved as she pushed her debit card forward to buy her items. We paid with no further conversation and made good on our exit.
Arriving home, we slowly absorbed the pain and desperation of the atmosphere we had narrowly escaped. As a final insult, it seemed they had overcharged us on a sheet of foam presentation board, which would have been far cheaper than what we believed it had originally been anyway had we gone anywhere else. We had been cheated, in the end. We had been cheated by that damnable pit of sorrow and misery. And darkness and decay and Jo-Ann's Fabrics held illimitable dominion over all.
UPDATE: My good friend Elisabeth tells me that this is not at all unusual for fabric stores, so just fuck the whole damned enterprise.
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