Fogbound

For Inktober, Friday, October 30, 2020. Prompt word: "ominous." Tuckerization: Gregory Salter

A reminder that volunteering for tuckerization only means a character in the story shares the participant's name. Other than that, no similar characteristics are implied. 

This story is a continuation of the city stories that began with Sarkomand in Some Would Call it Worthless and continued in The Library.

Fogbound

by Alan Loewen

Gregory Salter continued his trek toward the west, following the road until the city-sized library was merely a speck in the distance. Having escaped the ennui of Sarkomand, he left the Library behind to see what might lay ahead of him.

The plethora of books he read was fascinating, and he was enchanted with the hundreds of lives he had lived, but after a while, he noticed, to his growing horror, that his real life began to disappear in countless incarnations. When Gregory discovered the basement filled with living skeletons, impulsively grabbing and reading one book after another, he filled an improvised backpack with food and water and fled.

With the weather warm and comfortable, Gregory passed the next two nights comfortably on the eastbound road, using only the canopy of trees as his only shelter.

It disturbed him that he had met no other people on the road, and the woods bordering it were eerily silent, devoid of the usual sounds of animals and birds. However, he continued his journey, and on the third day, he found himself walking into a mist that soon turned into a thick fog. Still able to see the road under his feet, he wondered if he should turn back but decided to soldier on. To bolster his courage, he found a thick branch in the woods that doubled as a walking stick and an improvised cudgel.

To his relief, he came to a set of city gates set in a stone wall. The fog was so thick that it was impossible to guess their height. Cautiously, he stepped past the entrance, surprised to see no people on the cobblestone street before him.

It was only until he walked a reasonable distance that he saw people furtively moving through the mist. They occasionally glanced at him but continued on whatever personal missions they had. None of them seemed willing to stop and talk to him, even though he tried to stop a few to ask questions.

He decided to avoid the dark stores with large empty windows, and though he was tempted to knock on the doors of the brownstone houses, he continued his trek through the fog.

A sign above a door gave him hope of finding answers to this weird city that had entered. The Cobblestone Pub beckoned him, and when he walked through the door, the patrons, sitting at the scattered round, wooden tables or leaning against the bar, turned as one to stare at him. Within seconds, they lost interest in him and either returned to their whispered conversations or turned to stare sullenly into their mugs.

Wishing to stay invisible, Gregory made his way to the bar. He beckoned to the barkeep, who came and silently stood before him with raised eyebrows.

“Excuse me, sir, but …” Gregory began, but the man interrupted him.

“You came from the Library,” the barkeep whispered. “You should have stayed there or returned to Sarkomand.” Stunned into silence, Gregory stood there as the barkeep turned and filled a mug with a dark liquid.

“On the house,” the barkeep said. “You’ll have to find a job to pay for your livelihood. There’s a guesthouse just down the street. They’ll take you in until you settle. Just don’t be out in the fog when night truly comes.”

“But,” Gregory stuttered. “I’m just moving on.”

A grim smile came to barkeep’s face. “Bad news, newcomer. Those who enter this city can never leave. Surely, they told you at the Library that no one ever returns from following the eastern road.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Gregory snarled. “The gate I entered is just down the street from where I entered. I can leave anytime I want.”

The barkeep shook his head slowly. “When you walked through the gate, it changed into a solid, unclimbable wall. It was the same for all of us. There is no escape. Now, drink your beer and get to the guesthouse. We’re an hour away from nightfall. I have no rooms to let, and I don’t want you sleeping on a table.”

“What …” Gregory said. “What happens at night?”

The barkeep shrugged. “People just disappear. Sometimes, we hear screams when some idiot loses track of time and doesn’t find shelter. Now, let me be. I have work to do.”

The barkeeper turned away to check on other patrons, leaving Gregory staring at his own beer mug. Tentatively, he took a sip, and hunger and thirst made him drain the mug dry.

Uncomfortable with the silence, Gregory shouldered his knapsack and made his way to the guesthouse.

True to the barkeep's word, he was taken in and given a week to find a job and a place to live.

Also, the barkeep spoke truth about the gate. Gregory never found the entrance where he had entered or any way to leave. The stone walls surrounding the city were smooth as glass, and when he tried to talk to people about building a ladder to find the top of the fog-shrouded walls, they stared at him and passed on.

He found work with a mushroom farmer, as the various types of fungus were the only edibles that would grow in a city perpetually covered in fog. A two-room flat became his new home, and he quickly learned to avoid being out at night in the ominous fog. Occasionally, Gregory would be awakened by a distant scream of some victim of the night, and he would tremble in his bed until the morning, unable to return to sleep.

Countless years later, Gregory shuffled his way through the streets like the other citizens of the city. He never learned the name of the fogbound city. It was a mystery, a town without a name.

One evening, Gregory sat at his small dinner table and quietly spooned tasteless soup into his mouth. He blinked his eyes and shook his head. A sudden realization came to him. He hated this city more than anything. He hated his life, day by day, digging mushrooms out of offal and trudging home before the dreaded night claimed him.

He quietly put his spoon down and shuddered. Better an end to this nameless purgatory than another day of soul-crushing ennui.

Gregory got up, tucked his chair into its place by the table, and walked outside into the fog.

As night quickly descended. Gregory swallowed his terror and waited quietly.

He gritted his teeth until he feared they would crack under the pressure of his jaws, but he clenched his fists and refused to move, ignoring the other people fleeing to shelter.

Complete darkness crept upon him, and Gregory felt a cosmic cold envelope his body. He could not help it when a nameless dread made him turn toward his door for shelter, but it was too late.

He felt gravity reverse, and Gregory fell into the sky with a shriek.

He plunged heavenward, tumbling through the fog until he was above the clouds in a maddening fall upwards. He suddenly saw the stars. As he was swallowed up in their glory, Gregory, in his terror, abruptly realized he had discovered a way to leave the city after all.

The House: An Excerpt

As I have written before, dreams turned into literary works are usually the most boring pieces of fiction a person can read. Therefore, I use my nightly wanderings to inspire my writing, not dictate it. The subjective archetypes and symbols of a private dream world must be made universal to be understood. 

So here's a little something for your amusement, an adaption of a dream escapade I had that may turn into something bigger. Maybe.

The House

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

"This house ain't haunted," the woman said. "It's possessed!"

She stood on the front porch of my new home, and I had no idea what to say. I knew two days after I moved in that the house had something wrong with it, but I had no desire to talk to a stranger about it — especially one wearing a housecoat and smelling of age and old cigarettes.

"Uh," I managed to say. "Okay. Thanks."

She looked at me as if I had just told her the Easter Bunny wasn't real and with an incredulous shake of her head she turned and walked down my front steps. I watched her cross the road and disappear into the dilapidated house standing there. 

It took the lady five days after moving into my new home for her to introduce herself and that to give me some ominous Grade-B movie warning. It only confirmed that as an introvert, my reaching out to anybody in the neighborhood served as a good idea.

I shut the door and walked into the living room, sat back down on the couch and turned the volume back up on the television. 

I heard the footsteps start on the stairs again. They always began on the ground floor and went up to the second. After the first two days of moving in, I learned to ignore them. The stairs would be empty as they always were and I had no idea on how to make it stop. I had stood on the stairs for hours on the second day, but my invisible guest never made an appearance. I could only hear the footsteps when I occupied another room.

I also got used to waking up with every door of the house wide open as well as the muffled sounds of yelling from the basement. And no way was I going down there. I've seen too many movies. Anyway, other than the tour the real estate agent gave me, I've never been to the basement again, and since I own very little, there's nothing I need to store down there.

You have no idea of the hatred I have for basements.

You have no idea of the hatred I have for basements.

So, here I sit, shy, depressed, and wealthy enough from my online business I can even eat fast food twice a week as long as I have a coupon and can stick to the dollar menu.

I look at it this way. It leaves me alone, and I leave it alone. We can haunt the house together as far as I care.

What Started It All

My love for the macabre and the numinous was inspired by a number of books, movies, and television shows from my youth. Seeing Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), my first film in a movie theater, when I was six years old and watching the famous Jonny Quest TV series when I was nine had a significant impact on my life and inspired my obsession with genre art. Yet, the greatest impact came when I was fourteen years old when I discovered an anthology in my junior high school library.

Great Tales Of Terror and the Supernatural was an anthology of 52 classic tales of horror and dark fantasy edited by Herbert Alvin Wise (1863-1961): a Wall Street broker and patron of the arts, and Phyllis Cerf Wagner (1916-2006): a writer, actress, and socialite. 

First published in 1944, when I signed the anthology out of the library in 1969, I had little knowledge of the impact the collection would have on my life, especially the two tales that came at the end of the book.

Out of all the classics available to my fingertips, The Rats in the Walls and The Dunwich Horror, by H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) were the ones that set my imagination on fire. In fact, of all the stories in the book, it was the latter that truly frightened me as I read of Dr. Henry Armitage desperately trying to stop a colossal, invisible monstrosity as it ravaged the backwoods of Massachusetts. I actually had nightmares.

Since then I have read everything the Old Gentleman From Providence has written as well as made two pilgrimages to his grave at Swan Point Cemetery. Since then I have crafted my own tales of terror, but none have ever come to the quality and impact of Lovecraft’s imagination. Nonetheless, if I ever become famous for my writings, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants who have come before me.

Here is a list of the 52 stories present in the collection. The entire book is a free and legal download available at this link.

1. La Grande Bretêche, by Honoré de Balzac (trans. of La Grande Bretèche 1832)
2. The Black Cat (1843), by Edgar Allan Poe
3. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845), by Edgar Allan Poe
4. A Terribly Strange Bed (1852), by Wilkie Collins
5. The Boarded Window (1889), by Ambrose Bierce
6. The Three Strangers (1883), by Thomas Hardy
7. The Interruption (1925), by W. W. Jacobs
8. Pollock and the Porroh Man (1895), by H. G. Wells
9. The Sea Raiders (1896), by H. G. Wells 
10. Sredni Vashtar (1910), by Saki
11. Moonlight Sonata (1931), by Alexander Woollcott
12. Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1932), by Conrad Aiken
13. Suspicion (1933), by Dorothy L. Sayers
14. The Most Dangerous Game (1924), by Richard Edward Connell [as by Richard Connell]
15. Leiningen Versus the Ants (1938), by Carl Stephenson (trans. of Leiningens Kampf mit den Ameisen 1937)
16. The Gentleman from America (1924), by Michael Arlen
17. A Rose for Emily (1930), by William Faulkner
18. The Killers (1927), by Ernest Hemingway
19. Back for Christmas (1939), by John Collier
20. Taboo (1939), by Geoffrey Household
21. The Haunters and the Haunted: or, The House and the Brain (1859), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton 
22. Rappaccini's Daughter (1844), by Nathaniel Hawthorne
23. The Trial for Murder (1865), by Charles Dickens (a variant of To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt)
24. Green Tea (1869), by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
25. What Was It? (1859), by Fitz-James O'Brien
26. Sir Edmund Orme (1891), by Henry James
27. The Horla, or Modern Ghosts (1910), by Guy de Maupassant (trans. of Le Horla 1887)
28. Was It a Dream? (1903), by Guy de Maupassant (trans. of La Morte 1887)
29. The Screaming Skull (1908), by F. Marion Crawford
30. The Furnished Room (1904), by O. Henry
31. Casting the Runes (1911), by M. R. James
32. Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad (1904), by M. R. James
33. Afterward (1910), by Edith Wharton
34. The Monkey's Paw (1902), by W. W. Jacobs
35. The Great God Pan (1894), by Arthur Machen
36. How Love Came to Professor Guildea (1897), by Robert Hichens
37. The Return of Imray (1891), by Rudyard Kipling (variant of The Recrudescence of Imray)
38. "They" (1904), by Rudyard Kipling
39. Lukundoo (1907), by Edward Lucas White
40. Caterpillars (1912), by E. F. Benson
41. Mrs. Amworth (1922), by E. F. Benson
42. Ancient Sorceries (1908), by Algernon Blackwood
43. Confession (1921), by Algernon Blackwood and Wilfred Wilson
44. The Open Window (1911), by Saki
45. The Beckoning Fair One (1911), by Oliver Onions
46. Out of the Deep (1923), by Walter de la Mare
47. Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921), by A. E. Coppard
48. The Celestial Omnibus (1908), by E. M. Forster
49. The Ghost Ship (1912), by Richard Middleton 
50. The Sailor-Boy's Tale (1942), by Karen Blixen aka Isak Dinesen
51. The Rats in the Walls (1924), by H. P. Lovecraft
52. The Dunwich Horror (1929), by H. P. Lovecraft

Doll Wars: The Prologue

Some years ago I began my most ambitious work, a braided novel that told a story of an ancient blood line that could bring life to golems. Instead of crude wooden puppets, the most recent generation was able to bring ball-jointed dolls to life, but conflict split the group into two factions and their dolls and their masters now battle unseen across our world.

The first part, In the Father's Image, first appeared in a special issue of Ethereal Tales magazine in 2014 and appears in my collection, Come Into My Cellar, Darker Tales From A Cerebral Vaunt. 

The second chapter, Rowan Dreaming, has never been published anywhere except in my collection bearing the same name.

The fourth and final segment, Dollmaker, was first published in the March 2009 issue of Aiofe's Kiss and has never appeared anywhere else.

What follows is the prologue to Doll Wars, the third and largest segment of the work where the characters in the first two stories all come together to learn about their strange power to bring life to inanimate dolls and find themselves embroiled against their will in a conflict that is centuries old.

Doll Wars

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Prologue

Florence, Italy 1833

“Ci sentiamo, Carlo!”

“Ciao!” Carlo called as his friend ran off. Carlo turned to run back down the street toward his home. With the setting sun at his back, Carlo laughed with delight as he raced his lengthening shadow on the cobblestones. He deftly avoided the lamplighters as they began their evening duties and dodged the horse-drawn carts and carriages that clattered through the streets.

Leaping onto the porch at his house, he opened the front door and paused to catch his breath. “Mama! Papa! I’m home!”

Only the echo of an empty house greeted him. “Mama? Papa?” Carlo closed the door behind him.

A sudden loud noise from the basement made him jump.

His father, Domenico Lorenzini, had forbidden his family to ever enter the basement and dutifully, Carlo and his mother acceded to his wishes.

Once a week, Aldo De Luca, his father’s cousin, would pay the family a visit and after tousling Carlo’s hair, would join Domenico in the basement and stay until well after Carlo’s bedtime. Carlo thought the world of Aldo De Luca and called him Zio Aldo, Uncle Aldo.

But now, Carlo paused in front of the basement door listening to the sounds of scuffling and cursing, muffled by distance.

“Aldo!” he heard his father shout. “It’s heading toward you! No! No! The stairs! The stairs!”

Frozen in surprise, Carlo heard feet ascend the stairs behind the door. The doorknob rattled, turned, and the door flung open.

Carlo could only stare at what stood before him. A tiny figure, no taller than his waist stood framed in the doorway, the garish light of a lamp below making the creature stand out in silhouette.

It bore the shape of a human, a clumsy caricature of a small boy but one made out of wood, a crude face chiseled onto a rough, splintered ball of pine with stiff limbs ending in mismatched digits. Behind it, Carlo’s father and Aldo De Luca raced up the stairs in hot pursuit.

Carlo screamed.

With a hiss, the creature lunged at Carlo, knocking him onto his back. Splintery fingers clawed at his chest and face.

“Carlo!” he heard his father cry, “My son!” Carlo’s father tripped over the top step and went sprawling, hands reaching for his only child.

But it was Zio Aldo who reached Carlo first. Grabbing the misshapen creature by the back of its neck, he pulled the hissing thing off of the screaming child and hurled it back down the basement stairs followed by the sound of something shattering. 

Aldo then scooped Carlo up in his arms, hugging him to his chest. “What have we done?” Aldo groaned in his ear. Aldo suddenly spun about and put Carlo into the outstretched arms of his father. “Carlo! Stay with your Papa! Take him, Domenico. Let me deal with what we have done.”

Carlo clung to his father. Together they watched Aldo shut the basement door behind him and heard his footsteps descend the stairs.

“Papa?” Carlo said through his tears. “What was that?”

“Silence, my son,” his father said. “Let me see if you are injured.”

His father’s inspection of the small scratches on Carlo’s face was interrupted by a short squeal from downstairs making them both jump. Minutes later, the tread of heavy footsteps slowly came up the stairs. Uncle Aldo opened the basement door, his face pale.

“I threw it into the fireplace,” Aldo said. He ran his fingers through his curly, black hair. “I threw it into the fireplace and held it there with a poker until it stopped struggling.” He fell back against the wall as if all his strength had left him. “Wine. I need wine.” He stumbled off toward the pantry.

“Papa?” Carlo said as he continued to shake from the encounter. “Papa, what was that?”

Domenico smoothed his son’s hair. “Son, listen to me,” he said quietly. “You must not tell anyone what you saw tonight. We could get into trouble, very serious trouble. You must forget what you saw and you must never tell a soul.”

Later that evening, Carlo crept from his bedroom to the top of the second-story stairs to listen to his father and Uncle Aldo as they talked in the kitchen below. His mother, his father had told him, had been gone all day tending to an ill friend.

“Surely you are going to give up this madness, Domenico,” Carlo heard Aldo say.

A pause followed. “No,” Carlo’s father said. “I got the procedure wrong. Rabbi Loew had it perfected. If he did it, then we can do it as well. The next one …”

“That thing could have killed your son! Your only son! ” Aldo hissed. “We’re fortunate that he only had scratches. And what if that thing had escaped into the streets?”

Another pause. “Aldo,” Domenico said, “I cannot give up now. You and I are blood descendants of the great rabbi of Prague and we have inherited this power as a gift. It’s in our blood. I cannot stop my research. I will continue. I just failed in the process. A flaw. I confess I don’t understand the ancient Hebrew. The manuscript is in such poor condition! I will be more careful next time. The next golem will be ...”

“Domenico,” Aldo interrupted. “We and our forebears have followed Mother Church for the last six generations. What we are doing is wrong. It is black magic.”

“And, Aldo,” Domenico continued, ignoring the interruption, “I need your help. And I know you. You are just as curious as I.”

“We are doing the Devil’s work,” Aldo muttered.

“Was the Golem of Prague the Devil’s work?” Domenico asked. “You know the legend. It protected God’s People.”

There was a longer pause. Uncle Aldo finally spoke, his voice so low, Carlo could barely hear him. “How do we make sure that we do not create something we cannot control? What if we cannot fully discover the secret?”

“We will try until we succeed.” Carlo heard the finality in his father’s voice. His father had a stubborn will. “I will make the name Lorenzini famous.” A pause. “And the name De Luca as well.”

With a shudder, Carlo crept back to his bed as the voices of his father and Uncle Aldo droned on into the night.

Child of My Desire Published In Morpheus Tales #31

I'm delighted to announce that my flash fiction piece, Child of My Desire, has just been released in the magazine, Morpheus Tales #31.

A preview of the magazine is available here and it can be downloaded in various formats here. Also, printed copies are available here and here. Below are the opening paragraphs of the story:

Dr. Abraham Winslow stopped outside the closed door to the hospital conference room and watched the man within through the small window. Joel Dekker sat at the table staring at his hands, not looking much like a best-selling author. His doughy face, heavily lidded eyes, and fat quivering lips spoke more of a man who could barely remember his alphabet. Scarlet scratches, only a few days fresh, marred his face.

Winslow rapped on the door and opened it. Dekker looked up but did not stand.

“Mr. Dekker,” the doctor said, “thank you for meeting with me.”

A flash of pain went across Dekker's face. “My daughter, is she okay?”

“There has been no change in her condition but, Mr. Dekker… a few questions have come up about Deirdre.” The doctor sat down at the table across from Dekker and opened a large file.”When your daughter did not respond to traditional medications, we did a full medical scan on her. The results are… puzzling.”

The Apple Lady: A Poem

One of my first poems. Based on a true incident.

All except the last stanza. At least, that is what I would like you to believe.

The Apple Lady

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The night echoed a choir of crickets
Accented by an aroma of earth.
The moon washed the old orchard clean of color.

He ignored my protests against the chill,
The night, this vigil among the trees.
"Do you believe in wonder?" he asked.

My lie came easily.
"I lack imagination."

"In my twelfth year, " he said,
"I saw her among the trees
Clothed in autumn leaves
Hair red as autumn apples;
Her eyes like autumn frost."

I shook with more than cold.
"We should be home
With beer and friends,
Forget childhood dreams
And childhood lovers."

I left him standing
In moonlight and leaves.

With the rising sun
We found him fused
Into the bark of an old apple tree,
Taken in a wooden embrace,
A gentle smile on his lips.

Fifteen Super Short Stories

Many years ago when Livejournal was the Facebook of the day, a meme made the rounds of people asking others to recall when they first met. Well, let's just say I have a wild imagination. Enjoy.

+*+*+

In late October, 1918, shot down just five miles behind the German lines, DeBray and I hid in the burned out remains of an old manor outside the deserted village of Château de Chambord. Our self-imposed imprisonment was relieved by a well-stocked wine cellar and a deck of cards with the 8 of Hearts missing.

For weeks we regaled ourselves with tales over bottles of Bordeaux from such vintages as Lafite Rothschild, La Conseillante and Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. Playing poker, DeBray ended up owning all of France.

Weeks later, desperate to rejoin our unit, we drank the last, cast fate to the wind, and ran into the night in a mad attempt to breach the lines from behind.

The next morning we found ourselves near frozen in a potato field, our heads pounding.

A farmer told us the war had been over for weeks.

+*+*+

"Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’" Stoker waved his hands like an orchestra conductor and created a herd of snow-white unicorns out of whole cloth. "Let’s applaud cerebral implants."

Another wave and gryphons joined the dance.

"I just can’t seem to be able to do that," I complained. I waved my hand and a dyspeptic unicorn smelling of old fish appeared and promptly melted into a greasy puddle. "What am I doing wrong?"

Stoker snapped his fingers and the puddle congealed into a pretty fairy who soared away on streaming wings trailing ginger and violet. "How are you building them?" he asked.

"Just like you. One molecule at a time."

"Ah!" he said with a nod. "There’s your problem. Your building blocks are too large. Start with smaller particles."

"Particles?" I asked. "What particles?"

"Elementary, my dear Loewen. Elementary."

+*+*+

I journeyed to Saint Kitts hoping the Caribbean sun would burn away my ennui. My paints had dried in my mind; my soul remained a blank canvas.

I heard her where she sang to herself in the front door of a little beach shanty. “My name is Tracy.”

She showed me mysteries in the tide pools and the sea caves. We explored the vendor stalls and I bought her a straw hat. We fed the pigeons in front of Saint Martin’s. She taught me how to drink Margaritas and how to laugh once again.

That night on my easel, I painted wild arabesques of color, pirouettes of pastels. Inspired fantasies flowed in watercolor.

The next morning, the beach stood empty, no trace of the shanty or its muse.

My watercolors are now famous, my best capturing her features with brightly-colored pigments mixed with my tears.

+*+*+

He sat in my counseling chair like it was a throne. “Humanity has grown weak,” he said grimly. “We gave them their chance, but they squandered their stewardship for bread and circuses. Now it is time for our return until humanity learns its responsibilities anew.”

I nodded and wrote “Delusional” on my notepad.

He stood and I cried out in surprise and awe as his eyes changed from human to the large orange slitted orbs of a tiger.

The receptionist burst into the room. “Dr. Loewen!” she asked, “What happened?”

I sat staring at an empty chair. “The old gods have awakened,” I whispered.

+*+*+

“My problem,” Razz said, reaching for her sketch pad and pencil, “is that I have too powerful an imagination.”

To demonstrate, she drew a butterfly that suddenly shimmered and flew off the page. I watched it flutter about my counseling office.

Razz shook her head in despair. “My apartment is filled with bats, unicorns, fairies, cartoon characters; all of them about the size of an eight by eleven inch sheet of paper.”

I meditated for a moment and then wrote out my prescription. Razz read it and smiled.

The next day, she returned grinning. “I never thought of drawing Aladdin’s lamp,“ she said. “I used my last two wishes to solve my problem.”

I twitched my nose. “Let me guess. Because you doubted his powers, you wasted your first wish on turning me into a giant green rabbit?”

“Bingo!” she said.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was tea time in Bejing and we had sat down for a quiet time of refreshment at Madame Chin's when the Tongs attacked.

I never knew you were so adept at self-defense with nothing but a pair of chopsticks.

Five minutes later, you rejoined me at our table, flicked somebody's spleen off the tablecloth and resumed your tea as if nothing had ever happened.

"Where ..." I gasped, "Where did you learn such martial arts?!?!"

You simply smiled at me over your cup of steaming Jasmine tea. "I see you never ate lunch at the Fullerton College cafeteria."

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

When the Amazon Women from Mars invaded, Earth was thrown into total turmoil.

Fleeing the rubble of what was left of San Francisco, I found you walking among the wreckage.

"Those alien women are coming!" I cried. "We need to hide!"

You just smiled as you pulled out your ray gun. "Sorry, old chap, but I was one of the advance spies. Mars needs men."

Mars has such a pretty pink sky.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

There she stood on the balcony overlooking the lawn and you pushed me out into the moonlight where she could see me.

"Call her name," you said.

"E-e-e-s-Esmerelda!" I called, my voice shaking.

In the shadows you told me the words of love to woo her and I followed your advice and then and there she pled me her vows of true love.

"I'll be right down!" she cried gaily. I almost wept for joy.

She ran out into the dewy lawn and the moonlight and I reached out to hold her in my arms. Suddenly she saw me and with a cry of despair, she stopped and suddenly began to weep. "I thought you were Alexander!" she wailed.

I was the best man at your wedding.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

"Stay behind me," you yelled as we stormed the beach.

Bullets knit a tattoo of death around us, and though other men's lives were forfeit that bloody day, we made it to the first line of dunes.

"There's a pillbox just over this hill," you said. "Wait here until you hear the grenade go off," You grinned at me like it was a picnic outing.

Far over head, ack ack guns burst in colors of black and gray as Allied bombers flew deeper into enemy territory to deliver the death they carried in their wombs.

You rolled over the dune and I heard an explosion, but little did I know it wasn't the grenade you had yet to throw.

With a war cry, I stood to run over the dune and took a round in the gut.

When I came too, you were standing over me putting away the suture kit back into the med bag. "I had to jury rig you back together, but you'll be okay."

To this day, I still taste steel canteen when I belch, but you saved my life. I don't think I've ever thanked you.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The undead had holed us up in an old Domino's Pizzeria. I and the three others were a screaming, lunatic mess, but you kept the rest of the survivors calm by finding what was left of the store's supplies and jury rigging some pepperoni pizza for morale as well as strength.

It was that evening when Dave carelessly showed himself in front of the big glass window.

Next thing we know, ravenous zombies had broken through and it was every man for himself. You stood on the counter and dealt final death to the undead with the biggest pizza cutter I had ever seen.

You got away. The rest of us didn't and I hope you still have the pizza cutter 'cause I'm coming for you and I'm getting really tired of eating nothing but brains and watching pieces of me slowly fall off.

+*+*+

You were cool, calm, and collected in your three piece silk suit. I sweated and twitched and looked like I had crawled out of a Salvation Army bin.

You were an old hand at the spy business. This was first outing.

She was slim and blonde and her legs went all the way to the ground and she wore a red dress that fit like it was her skin.

You swept her off her feet. I sweated and twitched and hiccuped.

When she betrayed us later than night, you smooth talked your way into having her release you from your bonds. She cried and kissed you, provided the keys and you swept her away to Istanbul where she now works as your new sidekick.

It seems you forgot your old sidekick. The bomb went off and now half my body is now metal and plastic.

I'm now the new Mr. Big and the world's #1 Bad Guy and when you and your new partner come to take me out, you'll find that all my sidekicks are ugly old men you won't be able to sweep off their feet.

I would write more, but it's 10 o'clock and I have to go oil myself.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The clues given to us by that dying Mountain Shuar Indian had led us to the greatest treasure trove of all. The hidden gold of the Incan leader, Rhumunauhui.

We stood inside the ancient Incan temple and, because of my ignorance, I needed you to read the ancient pictographs on the wall.

"Yes," you said. "The treasure is behind this door. You open it and I'll nip outside to fetch more flashlight batteries.

The treasure was there just as you read, but you got the gold and I got the curse.

You now live in regal splendor, but I'm just a pile of amorphous slime and if it takes me all night, I'm going to ooze through that front door keyhole.

I'll see you in the morning.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I had watched you walk past my place of business for weeks and one day I had to test my fortune.

You came strolling up the sidewalk and I knelt in front of you holding out a bouquet of true black roses and a box of bon bons made by Belgium chocolatiers from rich cream from virgin cows as I professed my undying devotion.

You looked at me with a withering glance bordering on pity. "You, sir, are beneath my station."

Today I drown my sorrows in absinthe, but I bear with pride the marks your stiletto heels made when you walked over me

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The Tyson Mansion was the Mount Everest of haunted houses and nobody had ever explored its arcane mysteries without going completely mad or failing to survive the night's adventures.

At two in the morning the apparition appeared, a grisly horror from a madman's worst nightmare.

In my panic, I dumped my attache case and threw everything I had at it: holy water, onions, crucifixes, sacred symbols, wolfsbane ...

Unaffected, it glared at me with malevolent evil.

You casually walked up to the monstrosity, looked it straight in the eye, and said, "I don't believe in you."

It vanished in a puff of skepticism.

+*+*+

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Of all the coffeehouses in all the forgotten corners of the world, you had to walk into mine.

Carlton at the piano played The Lady of Shallott in E minor. You stood elegant in a little off-the-shoulders number wearing a perfume that blended the best of jasmine and cinnamon and cardamon.

I treated you to a Coffee Cream Chantilly, my house specialty and we spent the night sampling arcane coffees from across the world.

In the morning, you excused yourself to powder your nose and when a half hour returned I realized you weren't coming back, especially when I noticed that you had so entranced me you had taken my wallet, my watch, my rings, my Saint Brendan medal, and my truss. You were good!

Keep it all. It's a small price to pay for the pleasure of your company, but please return my heart.

I Blame Lewis Carroll

Nightmare fuel for young Victorians

It cannot be denied that my love for the weird and the numinous permeates all my work and recently I have been pondering the trigger that started it all. Admittedly, my personality leans strongly in that direction, but as I reviewed my childhood, one memory that stands out is one day finding in the library a book of nonsense poems. Most of them made little sense and had very little impact until I came across Lewis Carrolls' The Hunting of the Snark. I suspect I could not have been older than 10 years at the time.

I had been familiar with Carroll because I have always adored his Alice stories having read them multiple times as a child and even today in adulthood. Though I found the 1951 Disney movie to be charming in its own right, I always found it disappointing as it never captured the sheer magic of Carroll's actual work. So when I discovered The Hunting of the Snark written by one of my favorite authors, I dove in with great joy and a lot of eager expectation.

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,

   As he landed his crew with care;

Supporting each man on the top of the tide

   By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

   That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

   What I tell you three times is true."

In the tale, I found wonder, humor, magic, but unlike the Alice stories, my childish mind also found sheer terror, especially when my imagination was fired by the famous illustrations by Henry Holiday.

The opening of this nonsense poem introduces us to a crew of ten members (whose names all start with the letter 'B'): a Bellman, a "Boots", a Bonnetmaker, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiard-marker, a Banker, a Butcher, a Beaver, and a Baker. In their quest , the crew lands on an uncharted island to hunt for the Snark in a manner most unique:

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

   They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway-share;

   They charmed it with smiles and soap.

However, there is one small complication. The Baker reveals that he received a prophecy before the trip that if he encounters the Snark, but discovers it is actually a different creature called a Boojum, his fate will be terrifying.

"'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,

   If your Snark be a Boojum! For then

You will softly and suddenly vanish away,

   And never be met with again!'

This illustration still freaks me out.

I'll leave you with three guesses as to how the poem ends.

The result to my young mind was to create a world where the laws of logic don't work or else work in a manner of ironic absolutes. Nightmare fuel to say the least, and the poem created in me a fascination for the mystifying and the sheer wonder of what some philosophers call the mysterium tremendum. It is, thanks to Lewis Carroll, that I am best known for the quote, "The world is not safe, nor is it necessarily sane."

But the valley grew narrow and narrower still,

   And the evening got darker and colder,

Till (merely from nervousness, not from good will)

   They marched along shoulder to shoulder.

Then a scream, shrill and high, rent the shuddering sky,

   And they knew that some danger was near:

The Beaver turned pale to the tip of its tail,

   And even the Butcher felt queer.

Yet even then, like Carroll's intriguing worlds of nonsense and fantasy, I cannot deny that life contains a sense of beauty and the shadow of something greater than our existence. Nonsense it may appear to be, but not nihilistic. 

You can read Carroll's entire poem here, but to read it with its original illustrations, I would encourage you to read the entire work here.

The Inugami: The Opening Scene

Events in The Inugami run concurrently with the events in The Shrine War. In The Inugami, American Kelly Robbins moves to Tokyo for language studies at the University. Renting an apartment in the Motoyawata neighborhood, she discovers the crawlspace is inhabited by an unfriendly Inugami, a yokai in the form of an anthropomorphic dog left behind by a previous resident, an evil Taoist sorcerer.

What follows is a very rough draft and may be radically different from the finished story.

The Inugami

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Kelly nodded at the real estate agent who held the front door open for her. Carefully removing her shoes as was the Japanese custom, she wrinkled her nose at the the smell of an old house unused. Underneath the aroma of mold, came the smell of something else, like a faulty sewer line.

The Japanese real estate agent was a bubbly personality and immediately launched into her spiel. “The house has been on the market for some time,” she said, “but I think it would be perfect for you.”

Suddenly, as if on cue, the house vibrated with the roar overhead of a jet engine as it came in low over the roof. The agent smiled nervously. “It is located closely to the Narita International Airport so you won’t have to travel far when you revisit the United States, yes?”

Kelly smiled back. “I lived under the flight path of the Charlotteville-Albermarle Airport,” she said calmly. “It will be just like home.” Kelly kept her face expressionless, wanting to laugh at the sudden look of relief on the agent’s face. “And the Metro?”

Once again, the agent slipped into her programmed sales pitch. “Just eight minutes away with a brisk walk,” she said. “The Tozai line will connect you to the Chiyoda line and you can walk to the University from either the Nezu or Yoshima stations.”

The agent gracefully slid open a door to show a large, furnished living room. “There is also an eat-in kitchen, a combination bedroom and study and the bathroom has a shower.” She wrinkled her nose. “With a little airing out it will be perfect for you and at 70,000 yen a month, it’s very affordable.”

Kelly looked around the spacious room. It was not that she was going to be spending a lot of her time here. Her responsibilities at the University as well as her studies basically meant she just needed a place to sleep and eat breakfast and dinner. “Is the upstairs apartment rented? Are there neighbors?”

“No, the upstairs needs to be refurbished, but the workmen only come during the day when you will most likely be at school.” The smile never left the agent’s face. “Motoyawata is a quiet neighborhood.”

Again, the house shook as a jet soared overhead.

Patterns: The Opening Paragraphs

Patterns is my new work in progress, a tale about Ryan Williams who wins what he thinks is a Go board at a prize drawing, but it turns out to be something far more insidious and as he uncovers its secrets, it begins to change him. Here are the opening paragraphs (still to be considered a rough draft)



“Our next drawing is for a traditional Go board.”

The crowd went silent waiting as the owner of Walt’s Cards and Games rummaged through the bowl that held slips with names of those who came to celebrate the store’s tenth anniversary. He plucked out a yellow piece of paper and Walt squinted as he made out the spidery handwriting. “Ryan Williams!”

There was sporadic applause as Ryan raised his hand. “Here!”

Walt held up his hands for silence. “I want to thank all of you for coming and celebrating our anniversary. I want to congratulate the ten people who won our drawing and when you come up to claim your prize, please bring some picture ID.”

Ryan made his way through the crowd that now focused on the table offering free snacks and treats Walt had made available for the celebration. Waiting patiently in line, he tried to suppress his jealousy as winners before him walked away with rare and expensive board games. A young kid walked by holding a copy of The Campaign For North Africa and Ryan doubted the boy actually had the ability to even understand the most basic rules. Maybe he’ll trade with me.

When he got to the front, Walt waved his ID away. “Know you well enough, Ryan. Enjoy.” With that, he handed a large, plain cardboard box to Ryan who whistled at the feel of weight and substance.

“Looks like I’m going to be learning something new,” Ryan said.

Walt smiled. “They’ve been playing Go for almost six millennia and I think I’ve had this game for that long. Never could find anybody interested in it, but if you can get some enjoyment out of it, I’m just glad to let it go.”

Ryan smiled. “So what you’re saying is that I’m getting your unsold junk?”

Walt pointed his finger at Ryan’s face in mock anger. “Walt’s Cards and Games never sells junk. But I’m willing to let you trade this for a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.”

Ryan laughed at the offer. “No thanks. I like myself. I’ll learn to play Go.”

Sheila: A Morality Tale

 I share this tale with some trepidation as it was originally intended for a very small group of people who would understand the milieu of the tale. Allow me to elucidate.

Written many years ago, Sheila: A Morality Tale takes place in a parallel universe where sentience developed among humans and various species of animals. Much like Zootopia they live together basically in harmony and all the tales I wrote about this universe center around a watering hole called The Unicorn & Gryphon Pub, probably the only bar in the world that sports busts of St. Francis and St. Patrick above the door.

So if you can handle Sheila being an anthropomorphic goat, please enjoy this little tale of hamfisted morality that is quite suitable for this Halloween season.

Sheila: A Morality Tale

A Tale From The Universe The Next Door Over

by Alan Loewen
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sheila hit the play button on the CD and smiled as the guitars ground out the familiar intro. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, humming along with the ZZ Top tune that she adopted as her personal theme song.

Her hands smoothed her black, velvet dress along her perfect hourglass figure, the high hem showing legs that would have made Venus kill.

She's got legs, she knows how to use them. She never begs, she knows how to choose them.

A caprine face looked back at her from the mirror framed by a long, lush mane of glistening brown hair. Her archetype and face corresponded with a Toggenburg goat, but her figure would be recognized in any dimension as female. And as far as Sheila was concerned, her figure was prime regardless of her original derivation.

She's my baby, she's my baby, yeah, it's alright. She's got hair down to her fanny.

The phone rang and she let it go unanswered as she continued to primp in the mirror.

She's got a dime all of the time, stays out at night movin' through time.

On the fourth ring, her answering machine picked up. “Sheila? It’s Jackson. Why don’t you return my calls? Can we talk?”

Sheila smirked and let the poor slob talk himself out. Jackson had proposed two nights ago and that always signaled the end of the game and time to move on to another playing field. She paused before the mirror in thought. She had never tried dating a canine before. Maybe she could hang another different type of heart from her hemline.

She checked herself out in the mirror one more time and smiled at perfection.

Oh, I want her, said, I got to have her, the girl is alright, she's alright.

Her archetype may have been that of a vegetarian, but all her victims knew Sheila as something else. Sheila was a real man killer.

***

The Unicorn and Gryphon Pub sat on a lonely street and Sheila had hunted there before. She didn’t like to go to places where she might bump into old boyfriends with a grudge, but it had been over a year since she had hung out at the U&G. Surely, old boyfriends had moved on by now.

She walked into the brightly lit establishment secretly pleased by all the heads that turned and looked at her. Take a good look, boys, she thought to herself. It don’t come cheap.

Sheila mentally took note of the male population. Yes, this would be a good hunting ground.

She walked over to the bar and got her first disappointment of the evening. Sheila had forgot about the bartender and evidently he hadn’t forgotten about her.

His archetype was human; not that common, but not that rare. He walked over to her while she took a seat at the bar.

“Hey, Sheila,” he said as he set up a glass. “It’s been awhile. Brandy Alexander, right?”

“You’ve got a good memory ...” she paused forgetting the name.

“Friends call me the Horse. Inside joke.”

“Well, barkeep, you’ve got a good memory.”

The bartender smiled at the obvious affront. “Yes, I do. I also remember you dated Franklin for awhile.”

Sheila paused in an exaggerated pose of thought. “Franklin? Franklin? I don't seem to remember him. There are just so many men.”

Heavy poured brandy and coffee liqueur into a shaker followed by two scoops of rich vanilla ice cream. “He probably doesn’t remember you either. We hosted his wedding reception just two weeks ago. He married a beautiful girl.”

“That’s nice,” Sheila said absently, “but all the men here aren’t married.”

Heavy shook the tumbler, gave it an artistic twirl in the air and with a deft move, unscrewed the lid and poured the creamy contents into her glass.

“One Brandy Alexander, ma’am.”

Sheila sipped the concoction with a smile. “I will say this, barkeep. Nobody in town makes a better Brandy Alexander.” She looked up at him, a warm smile on her face. “Why don’t I just come over to your place tonight and you can teach me how to make these?”

The barkeep smiled in return. “I don't think my wife and three kids would appreciate that.”

“Well, you could come over ..”

The bartender stopped her with a wave of his hand. “I’m happily married. End of story.”

“That‘s not true for every married man.”

The barkeep chewed his lower lip in frustration. “You know, a bartender today is the same as a professional counselor. Let me give you some free advice.” He ignored Sheila’s exaggerated sigh of boredom. “You see that bust over the door? That’s Saint Francis of Assisi. Know anything about him?”

Sheila looked up at the marble bust above the door. Next to it sat a similar bust of Saint Patrick. “Do you take up an offering with the sermon?” she asked.

“Sheila, all I’m saying is that you can’t be a happy person and you ought to ask yourself what those men had that made them happy in their circumstances. There are men and women here of all different species that would like to be your friend. Just a friend.”

Sheila laughed in contempt. “I don’t want friends. I don’t need friends. Every female here is only competition. Every male here is simply prey.”

The Horse’s response was interrupted by a tiger dressed as a chauffeur. “Forgive me, madam,” he said to Sheila with a small bow. “My employer wishes to speak with you.” He handed her a note written on cream-colored bond.

Sheila opened the note and read the elegant script. A smile came to her face.

She turned to the tiger. “Please tell your employer that I will be delighted to make his acquaintance.” The tiger nodded mechanically and walked away toward the front door of the pub.

“It seems,” she told the bartender, “that a wealthy man is waiting for me outside in his limo wanting to meet me.”

The barkeep looked worried. “Sheila, maybe ...”

Sheila put up her hand. “I’ve already listened to your sermon and I don‘t need another. Anyway, I know what you’re going to say about danger and that I‘m a defenseless little girl.” She threw a bill on the bar to pay for the drink. “Anyway, do you really think a serial killer is going to ride around town in a limousine and have his chauffeur deliver his love letters?” She smiled at the bartender’s increasing frown. “It’s show time,” she said.

Sheila put her hair in place with a toss and walked toward the front door. Old men in limos meant old money and Sheila liked money. She especially liked old males with old money because old males normally didn’t live long.

Sheila caught her reflection in the glass of the front door as she opened it. Her caprine face looked back at her, perfect in balance and beauty. Oh, Sheila, she thought. You’ve entered the big time and tonight you’ll collect a heart that will top all your other trophies.

The white stretch limo sat alongside the far curb. The tiger stood beside the back door, holding it for her.

Though dark inside the vehicle, Sheila could dimly see two extended leather seats facing each other.

“Welcome, my dear,” said a rich, cultured voice near the front of the limo. “I’m honored you would meet with so old a man. Please join me.”

Sheila saw only a dim silhouette, but the cultured voice and the atmosphere of money put all fears to rest.

Gracefully, she entered the car and sat facing the figure. The tiger gently shut the door with a faint click. “I’m glad to meet a man of such obvious taste and culture,” she said. “Could we have a little light so we can see each other better?”

“Of course. Forgive me,” the figure responded. “Men of my status have an inadvertent tendency to be rude sometimes.”

Sheila heard the car’s engine turn over and felt it begin to pull away from the curb.

In front of her the silhouette leaned over and flicked a switch and a dim white light illuminated the car’s interior.

Sheila screamed once and dove for the door, but there were no interior handles.

“Yes, I can imagine it’s a shock to see me,” the cultured voice said. “We chupacabras are so rare that very few people even remember us. I‘m even honored that you recognize what I am.”

Crying in terror, Sheila backed away from the reptilian figure, its eyes reflecting back the dim light like green fire.

“I even wonder,” it continued, “if I may actually be the only chupacabra left, but it’s okay. There are so many goats...so many pretty, little goats to keep me occupied.”

Sheila spun around in her seat, screaming. Panicked, she ineffectively beat at the rear window.

“I don't think we need the interior light anymore, do you?” the cultured voice asked. With a click, the interior of the vehicle’s cabin was plunged into darkness.

Wailing, Sheila watched the lights of the Unicorn and Gryphon Pub recede into the night.

“So pretty,” the voice said behind her. Strong, taloned claws wrapped themselves around her slender waist and inexorably pulled her back.

“So pretty,” the voice whispered in her ear as Sheila struggled helplessly. Another clawed paw wrapped itself around her neck while another gripped a thigh.

“So pretty,” it repeated as four muscular arms held her in a powerful embrace.

“I could just eat you up.”

Kill Your Darlings (A Short Story)

Sitting in the window of my favorite coffee shop, I watched Reggie coax his battered Dodge Van into a parking slot. I glanced at my watch and knew something was wrong. Not only was my eccentric friend on time, he was actually a few minutes early. When he eased his bulk out of the van and started looking about, I assumed he forgot that I told him I would meet him inside the cafe.

He finally saw me waving through the window, and he waved back, yet as he walked to the entrance, he still looked about with a look that bordered on fear.

Inside, he shed his coat, and squeezed himself into the seat across from me.

“Skittish, aren’t you?” I asked as he motioned for the waitress.

“Fred, you are not going to believe what I think is happening to me. It’s … it’s incredible and I want you to tell me I’m just losing my mind.”

“Okay. You’re just losing your mind.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” he said, anger flashing in his eyes.“I think I’m in some serious kim chi.”

“Okay,” I said. “Spill.”

“First let me order something. I’m starved.”

He called the waitress over and ordered breakfast suitable for three men.

“Eating light today,” I said.

“Stress puts me off my feed,” he replied. “This has me all worked up.”

I boded my time as the waitress put a little coffee in Reggie’s cup of milk and sugar and wandered away. After taking a large gulp and a good amount of it joining the other stains on his shirt, he wiped his chin on the back of his hand and sighed. “Well, Fred,” he said, “remember that pile of stories I wrote for my humor anthology?”

I nodded.

“Did you read the one I wrote about the three girls attaining magical powers?”

I rolled my eyes. “Unfortunately. That was—how can I put this kindly?—sophomoric.”

“Well. Here’s the killer. Do you remember the last line of the story?”

I shook my head in the negative.

“Well, I do. I got the blasted thing memorized. I quote: ‘And when I get my hands on the clown who plotted this,’ Priscilla said through clenched teeth, ‘he'll wish he had never been born.’”

“Oh, yeah. I remember something like that.”

Reggie looked around nervously. “Fred, I didn’t write that. The last line I wrote was one of the girls making a crack about their new cheerleading routine.”

“Well … maybe you don’t remember writing that last line or maybe the editor thought she could improve on the story. I don’t know.”

Reggie shook his head. “Neither of them are true. And last night, I got an e-mail.” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was a computer printout and other than the typical header which said it was from a Priscilla Waverley, the message itself contained only on line. ‘A good writer kills his darlings. Maybe it’s time for the tables to be turned.’

“It’s a tasteless practical joke,” I said.

Reggie laughed, a high pitched nervous cackle. “Oh, but you see, I’m not a noob when it comes to computers. I know how to find the source of an email from its header.” He blinked at me owlishly through his thick glasses. “Fred, it comes from no known domain.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Reggie, Reggie, Reggie, do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you are saying? You’re trying to get me to believe this e-mail came from a character in one of those silly stories you wrote!”

Reggie leaned in closer. “Fred, you gotta listen to me. Do you remember the super power I gave Priscilla Waverly in the story? I gave her the power to manipulate earth. Now you can ask my wife, but last night Emilia and I woke up to what felt like an earthquake.”

“It was an overloaded eighteen-wheeler driving by your house,” I said in growing impatience.

Then the waitress brought Reggie’s breakfast and our conversation was interrupted by my friend’s frontal assault on three Breakfast Specials. I nursed my coffee and kept silent while he ate. I learned early that getting Reggie to eat and talk at the same time was a guaranteed path to post-traumatic stress disorder.

In ten minutes he shoved his plates aside and hugged his refilled coffee cup like a beloved pet.

“So,” I asked, “what do you want me to do.”

Reggie shook his head. “I think I’m going to need some real help. If I find more evidence like this, you’ll help me right?”

I nodded. “Of course, but I’m telling you that you’re letting your imagination run away with you.. You need to relax. Go write a romance or something.” Reggie sneered and left. Three minutes later I realized he had stiffed me with the bill and the tip.

The next day was Sunday and that afternoon, I had just sat down to watch the latest Dr. Who bootlegs when the phone rang.

“I don’t know who this is and I’m not happy,” I said into the mouthpiece, when I was interrupted by Reggie’s high-pitched wheedle.

“Fred! Fred!” came the tinny voice over the phone, “You gotta help me! Please! Turn on the TV. Go to Channel 8!”

“Hold on,” I said. I found the remote I was sitting on and flipped the channels. A smartly dressed woman stood informing the viewers an unexpected earthquake measuring three on the Richter scale had struck south-central with its epicenter just two miles south of Dillsburg.

Where my friend lived.

“Fred, please. You gotta come. I don’t know what to do.”

“Reggie,” I said into the phone. “You have got to calm down. Literary characters do not come to life. It doesn’t happen.”

I heard my friend sob on the far side of the phone. “Fred. I’m calling from inside my writer’s shed. Priscilla Waverley is standing on top of the hill right across the road. Please come and get me out of here. I don’t think she’ll kill me if there are witnesses.”

Suddenly, I heard my friend shriek and his scream was drowned out by a low growl as if some gigantic beast had reared its head. The line went dead.

In two minutes I was in my car heading to my friend’s home.

My worry increased when the traffic report on the radio told drivers to steer away from the area that contained Reggie’s address.

Twenty minutes later, after lying through my teeth to get through the roadblocks, I came around the corner and brought my car to a halt alongside the road. My jaw hung open in shock.

Reggie’s home still stood intact, but a short distance away in an old field gone to weeds and shrub, an old shack served as his writing office. Or, better to say, had served.

Surrounded by rescue vehicles with their blinking lights, the place where Reggie’s shed should have been was nothing more than a huge gaping sink hole.

I put on the four ways and stepped out of my car. It didn't take any imagination to know my friend could not have survived the earth giving way under his very feet.

Slowly, I turned around to look at the grassy hill my friend had mentioned, the one that would have been clearly visible outside of his office window.

And there she was.

After gingerly climbing over a barbed wire fence, I slowly made my way up the hill to her, carefully picking my way around the occasional cow patty.

She didn’t run. She just stared at the destruction below with a sickly grin on her face.

“Priscilla Waverley?” I asked when I got close.

She turned and looked at me in alarm. “You know me? How do you know me?”

“Reggie told me that you were threatening him.”

She laughed. A little teenage girl giggle. “I think I did more than threaten.”

“No doubt,” I said. “Mind if I ask you a question? I really have to know.”

She shrugged. “Ask away. If I don’t like the question, I’ll just have the earth open up and swallow you. Nobody’ll ever know.”

“Do you have any memories of your life say, about a year or so ago?”

She snorted in contempt. “That’s stupid, of course I …” Suddenly she paused. Her brow furrowed in intense thought and a look of worry came to her face.

“In fact,” I asked, “other than the events in the story Reggie wrote and what you’ve done to scare him, do you have any memories of any life at all?”

She looked at me then. Scared. “I know if I think hard enough …”

“You know,” I interrupted, “I find it ironic that Reggie and his wife always wanted a child and in a unique sense of the word, he actually was your father.”

“Go … go away.”

“You’re guilty of patricide. And because of a perceived slight to your pride, you killed the man that brought you into existence.”

I had her full attention now.

“Now that Reggie’s dead,” I asked, “what’ll happen to you?”

She looked back down the hill at the ruin she caused. “I don’t know. I’ll get by.”

“No,” I said. "Not so. The man who brought you to life and could have sustained you is now dead.”

She looked at me, genuine panic in her face. “But you’re talking to me! You see me!”

I smiled at her. “Who, me? I don’t believe in you.” I turned on my heel and walked back down the hill.

When I got to my car, a policeman stopped me. “Excuse me, sir. But I have to find witnesses. Did you see what happened?”

“No,” I said. “It was well over and done when I arrived.”

“Didn’t I see you up that hill there talking to somebody? Could they have been a witness?”

I looked up at the empty hillside.“My apologies, officer, but you must be mistaken. I haven’t spoken to a living soul since I got here."

(Title graphic is labeled for noncommercial use with modification. Original artwork can be found here.) 

Halloween Gift #1 - Timely Revenge

Security Interview Transcript
Date: Monday, August 12, 2019
Time: 14:25
Subject: Dean Tevis, Engineer

"You say I killed Drew Carlson and my wife, Lisette, but I'd like to see you prove it. As far as we both know, they probably died peacefully in their sleep ... together. Exactly the way they wanted it.

"And what is Zeus Corporation going to do about it? There can't be a public trial, you know. The miniverse is a military secret, all hush-hush. Can't let that get out now can we with all our government contracts and everything, right?

"So, since none of us can get about our real work until you have the story, here it is.

"Can I have a cigarette? Thanks.

"You fellows brought me into the Genesis Project two years ago. By that time, you already had created a miniverse in that magnetic jar. Man, I wish I had been part of that. To rip a tear in our space/time continuum and create a tiny universe of our very own and all of it contained in a space that to our perspective is the size of a pea. Quantum physics rocks, doesn’t it? And then not only to have power over it all, but create a portal where we can go anywhere you want inside a universe of your own creation? To control its time flow and make it zip ahead twenty thousand years in less than a millisecond.

"I love how it makes me feel like God.

"By the way, how many universes has the Corporation created and destroyed before this one? I can see you either don't know or you can't tell me. No sweat, but I’d love to know. Does it ever make you wonder if our own universe is somebody's experiment? Gives me the willies to think about it, but let's not go there.

"Anyway, I came into the project with my wife, Lisette. I can't believe that I spent all that cash helping her get a doctorate in exobiology and here you guys actually gave her an opportunity to use that worthless degree. Knowing Lisette, I thought the money would have been better spent on basket weaving classes.

"But, Lisette and me? We were happy, emphasis of course on the past tense. I helped control your private little cosmos and she got to go inside and study all those weird little aliens you all evolved in there.

"But I couldn't go in with her. I had to stay out here with the engineering staff and help baby-sit an entire universe while she's in there looking at who-knows-what.

"And she's in there with Drew Carlson. Mister I-Got-Muscles-Instead-Of-Brains and he's in there with my wife and I find out he's doing a lot more than just studying your pets. He's in there making moves on my wife and they think I'm stupid and don't know.

"For pity's sake, man, I'm a freaking engineer! I hack computers in my sleep. Did she really think I wouldn't see the e-mails they were sending each other on their office computers?

"So they want to be together? No sweat. I waited two months until it was just them and them alone on an exploration trip. They go through the Portal to some backwater planet you guys had already seeded with Earth life and when nobody was looking, I aged the entire miniverse ninety thousand years in just a few seconds.

"With Drew and Lisette trapped inside it.

"I already heard the Corporation found the planet filled with little furry imbeciles with hints of Drew's  and Lisette's DNA. I guess inbreeding does do in the old sentience genes eventually, but hey, Warren and my wife got to be together, right? They even got the opportunity to raise a little family.

"Anyway, look at the bright side. If I hadn't showed you Security guys a dangerous loophole in the system, you wouldn't have those new safeguards in place. You should thank me.

"Anyway, a planet full of furry little freaks is pretty evident to me that Drew and Lisette lived a long time, so technically, I didn't kill 'em and you can't put me on trial and I'm too valuable for the project, so I'll just head back to work, okay?"

Concluding Report:

The Zeus Corporation has judged Engineer Dean Tevis unfit for further employment. He has been summarily fired and exiled alone to Earth VII, Shallivarden System in the Cathuria Sector and the entire miniverse time flow accelerated by two hundred years.

This case is considered closed.

(Title graphic is in the public domain and is labeled for noncommercial use with modification)