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…
Easy Way Out
It’s October! Which means that it’s getting cooler; everywhere except the south that is. I spent the early afternoon sweating profusely at my favorite local brewery. October also means that Halloween is fast approaching. Halloween means candy, costumes, and for my wife and I, a lot of horror movies. So with the general subject of the horror genre in mind, I’ll be posting a horror short story every weekend in October. Or at least that’s the plan… I do still work full time. The intro to my latest short story “Easy Way Out” is below. Enjoy! Nature is good, but in small doses. The impulse to “go back to nature” in any capacity is a strange one. If you think evolution is correct, you’re wanting to return to something that mankind spent millions of years evolving to escape. Evolution is an escape from the horror of nature. It’s an escape…
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…