Gingerbread
October is now essentially over. As such, I’ll be temporarily retiring the Halloween related horror-story gimmick. No more horror stories after this, until the next one I conjure up. This particular story, though there are a number of different themes, deals largely with nightmares. A few of my own childhood nightmares have been woven in. Nightmares are experiences of fears both real and fantastical; fears that our conscious self can’t put into words, that might seem ludicrous to outside observers. In a certain sense, they’re really the origin of the horror genre. They provide a bizarre sort of catharsis, after the fact, after the escape. They’re terrifying, and the really bad ones will linger for days, weeks, or for the rest of your life, but in the end we all wake up. Most of us at least. There are times when I feel a little guilty for what I put…
Fear the Dead
Losing someone you care about is never an easy thing. People try to take the edge off the loss by remembering the different stages of grief, by making familiar statements such as “they live on in you” or “they’re never really gone so long as we remember them,” or any variation thereof. We who are religious look forward to a future reunification. All these considerations and statements can be comforting, and there is nothing wrong with any one of them, but in the end they are just admonitions and ratiocination, both of which can have a tendency to skip off the surface of emotion, like a pebble over water, leaving the underlying feeling untouched. People react in many ways to their loss: Denial, Anger, and so on. Still others can be jealous of the dead. They might not want to share the sense of loss with others. They might come…
Long Walk Alone
Alcohol is a many-faceted substance, most often referred to by it’s various nicknames: social lubricant, truth serum, liquid courage, and so on. It serves many different purposes for many different people. For some people it’s simply a way to relax after a long day, a quiet little escape, harmless. Some people just drink at parties for fun. Others drink because reality is a harsh mistress, and somewhere along the way they lost the ability to cope. Others are just addicts, trapped in a need, one they don’t always want to be free from. Drink is a Trojan horse. The immediate result is freedom, or escape. When the desired effect fades away we find the poison that the drink smuggled in. We become paranoid about things we said and did when we were not entirely ourselves. Poison lingers long after the escape has vanished. Within the drunken consciousness there is often…
The Door in the Ceiling
Parties are strange things. Clubs are even stranger. It defies logic to really think that a group of strangers can have a genuinely good time together. It is possible of course. However, we must acknowledge a certain social awkwardness inherent in the premise. Which is why the lifeblood of clubs and parties tends to be drugs and alcohol. It’s difficult to interact with people drunk, let alone sober. I say all this as an introvert, of course. If there’s one thing introverts like to talk about it’s about being an introvert. We’re very fond of reminding people about this particular aspect of our respective characters. A party is a frightening prospect, particularly without a little help from a strong drink, both as a prop and more importantly, as an anti-anxiety agent. There’s a reason it’s called liquid courage. The problem with parties is that there are people there. People are…
A Difficult Man
Everyone has had to deal with difficult people. As I am writing this there are apparently 7.7 billion people in the world, which means there are 7.7 billion unique personalities, each with their own ideas, experiences, beliefs, and prejudices. For most people, what is any belief, political, religious, or otherwise, but a disguised prejudice. At any rate, with 7.7 billion personalities, disagreement is inevitable, and we are bound to encounter someone we find distasteful, to put it mildly. Conversely, each one of us will be a difficult person to someone else. I have encountered people in my life who seemed to be so devoid of any redeemable qualities, who had negative characteristics to such a degree that I found it hard to believe that they brought value to anyone else’s life. I couldn’t help but assume that they were as unloved as they were unloving. Which is tragic in many…
Lech
Every introduction to this story that I’ve thought of thus far has been horribly cliche. Nonetheless, I need to dress up this intro somehow, at least enough to pique your interest so that maybe you’ll take the time to click the link, download, and then read the story. I have been told by one of my proof-readers, who has been gracious enough to read my work, long before it was remotely suitable for public consumption, that this is her favorite thing I’ve yet written. Given the fact that we frequently trust the praise of strangers, called critics, I hope you will give this one a read.
The Inheritance
There are still a few people in the world who it is socially acceptable to openly hate, or at least to dislike. Trust fund kids are among them. On the surface it seems reasonable to be upset that someone would be the beneficiary of unearned riches. On the other hand, what business is it of mine, or yours? It isn’t only money, belongings, capital, or useless knick-knacks that we inherit from our progenitors. There are genetic blessings, and curses, as well. Beauty, a tendency to alcoholism, a tendency to athleticism, allergies, good or bad vision, a multitude of strengths and weakness passed down through generations. Beyond the material and the physical we also receive a psychological inheritance, which of course overlaps with the physical inheritance already referred to. For better or for worse we hold certain personality traits in common with our parents. In the instance where one parent is…
Complaint
Customer service, in any capacity, has always been difficult for me. If it were possible I’d prefer not to interact with customers at all, and that is rarely possible. Obviously, patrons are an important part of any business transaction. Without anyone to buy stuff there would be no one to sell a product or a service to, and therefore no way to fund my continued existence. I have no skills that would sustain me outside of a market economy. In order to survive we must all serve in some capacity. We must be useful in some way, and then get paid for it. Nonetheless, it’s easy to resent the customer for requiring our services; it’s as easy as resenting bad customer service. Despite my distaste for working directly with customers, I’ve had few bad experiences serving in that capacity. That is not to say that I have not had any.…