Stalking Used To Be Difficult

Frank missed the good old days when stalking was difficult. It used to be that you would have to put in real legwork to track your quarry. He remembered the thrill of walking through dark neighborhoods, lurking in bushes, and stealing mail from actual mailboxes. Back before cell phones, when everyone had a land line and there was no caller ID, and he could call in the middle of the night and listen to the groggy, panicked "Hello?!" And then stay silent until they hung up in confusion and fear. 

The old cars, you could turn off all of the lights and creep along the asphalt in near total darkness. Then pull the emergency brake to slow down, so not even your brake lights would glow red and give you away. 

Now all these new cars have automatic "running lights" that never turn off. 

Not that there was much legwork to do anymore. People now just give all their information away. A few social media sites, and maybe a subscription to one of those professional networking sites, and you could learn almost everything about a person. 

Through the pictures they posted, he knew where they liked to eat, what their families like, where they shopped and went out for fun, and even who had guns and who didn't.

Frank supposed that there might be some gun owners who didn't broadcast their ownership online, but if so he never encountered them. If he ever wasn't sure, a little comment on their posts (from a fake profile of course) asking them to sign an online petition to ban "assault rifles" (they really hated that term) would pretty quickly suss out where stood. 

He didn't care about guns himself; he liked a challenge. He was a little surprised at first, because back in the good old days everyone was against any registration of their weapons and now here they were advertising it to the world. There was a message board for stalkers, Frank knew, but he wasn't stupid enough to ever go on there. As if the government wasn't already monitoring it. 

The youth of today, really, they weren't paranoid enough. 

Frank was excited tonight. He had been following this lovely blonde for a while. She was about his age, and smart. She didn't post anything online. She probably had a government job; those federal types were usually more careful about that. She lived in a gated community, but not a real one with actual security, just that kind that had a little metal box that you punched in a code, usually # and then whatever year it was 30 years ago. Everyone just used their birth year for those things and you could get it in a few guesses. 

It did make it harder for him to find out which house was hers, since it was much more conspicuous when someone was following you. And everyone had garages here, so even though he knew what her car looked like, she doubted she parked on the street. 

She mostly had no online presence, but what she did have was a wishlist on an online shopping site. Once Frank had found that, the rest was easy. He ordered a few things from her list that seemed romantic; some scented candles, lingerie, and hand cream. He wasn't quite at the total to qualify for the free same-day shipping, so he put a bag of quicklime into the virtual cart. It didn't seem to fit with all the other girly stuff in her list; maybe she was a gardener. That would be good too, because the bigger the box, the easier it would be to see what house it was delivered to. 

And that's how he found out exactly where she lived. 

Frank waited until midnight, then he made his move. Her house had a basement window that faced away from the street. He had found the original layout from the online real estate listings site. He could tell from the pictures that she still had the original windows, which had were set in wooden tracks, and this type of window had a hook-and-eye latch that would easily come loose with a side-to-side wiggle of the window sash. 

He slowly slid the window up, and slipped backwards through the opening, on his stomach, to land on the floor below. 

Except there wasn't a floor below the window. 

The basement flooring had been removed, and there was a gaping, earthen pit. Sharpened pieces of rebar lined the bottom, and they broke his fall by piercing his arms, legs, and back. 

He gasped and flailed weakly, but he was helpless, like an insect pinned to a specimen board. 

He was facing upwards, and he saw the face of the pretty blonde looking down at him. 

"Hi Frank!" She said brightly. "I'll be with you in a moment." She lowered a ladder into the pit and climbed down carefully. Frank was having trouble breathing. She turned to him, and he saw she had a large kitchen knife.

"Thanks for the quicklime," she continued. "It really helps with the cleanup." Frank stared at the gleaming knife, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. "Oh this?" She brandished the knife like an olympic fencer. "I guess it isn't necessary, since you'll be dead in a few minutes anyway. I guess I just miss the good old days, you know?" She bent over and looked directly into his eyes. "Yeah, you know."

After Frank was finally dead, she kept stabbing, for the practice. 

THE END

Author's Note: We here at the blog do not condone the cool crime of digging a spiked murder pit in your basement to deal with home intruders. This story is dedicated to my friend Kristen who I had a crush on freshman year of high school and I offered to walk her home once because I read some old book probably and thought that was a nice thing to do to show you liked someone but in practice it turns out it's kinda creepy. So again, I am sorry about that. Again, we became regular friends afterwards and shoot has it really been 25 years? Time flies when you're having fun, I guess. Speaking of which, it's midnight on a Friday night so I best get these old bones to bed. I've got a big day tomorrow of driving my nephews to and from work, and...writing I guess? Not a novel... But something. Goodnight, and I love you all. 

The Song Of The Ice

In a town in central Alaska, a little girl sits on the bank of a frozen lake. The moon is bright enough tonight that she didn't need her oil lantern to find her way, and it sits in the snow beside her, unlit, next to her mother's ulu knife.  She hugs her oversized parka around her, and she listens carefully to the song of the ice.

The ice will tell you everything, once you learn how to listen. 

Water is in all living things. It is in our breath, in our tears, in our blood. And it is the same water, cycling through the soil and the sky, through our bodies, over and over again. 

And the water remembers. The ghostly creaking, cracking, humming, noises coming from the lake are those memories persisting.The little girl had learned from her mother that the magical sounds were caused by the temperature changes; that the surface of the lake was like the skin of a giant drum. Deep in the ice of the frozen lake, its insides were rubbing against itself, and the shore. The moans and groans and whines and wails were vibrations, amplified. "That is what the sounds are," her mother had told her. "But that doesn't mean that's all they are." 

Her mother was gone now. Missing, they said. 

Missing, since last night. 

Missing in an Alaskan winter meant death, usually. The little girl had waited all day while the adults made half-hearted attempts to look for her mother, just like they always did whenever a native woman went missing. When night fell, that little girl had slipped away. She doubts they would look very hard for her either, if they even notice. And now, she listens, patiently, to the song of the ice. The water remembers everything. It would remember her mother, and lead her to her. 

The song of the ice tells her everything. 

The little girl stands up, her face set. She picks up the ulu knife. The thin, crescent-shaped blade gleams in the moonlight. She walks back to town, leaving behind the oil lantern, unlit, in the snow. 

The ice sings on. 

THE END

November Mourns

November always felt different to Donal, and not just because all the monsters had gone back underneath the earth. The short October days were filled with preparation; the fortification of defenses, the sharpening of blades, the chirurgeons setting bones and stitching up wounds, and the burying of the dead.  

In October, the village felt alive. After Samhain, the final night of October and they had survived the largest, final assault, a torpor fell upon the people like a blanket of snow. True, they were exhausted from the month of nightly attacks, and eager to return to the dull routine of early-to-rise, early-to-bed. Soon enough the camaraderie of standing shoulder-to-shoulder would wear off, and they would be back to bickering with each other, as ancient slights were recalled. 

They were a warrior people now, although not exactly by choice, for when they had first settled here long ago, it was to fish and farm and hunt. They did it well, and they had done it peacefully for decades before the monsters came. The elders said the monsters had come because the village grew too large and attracted their attention. Donal didn't know if it was true, but when he went out with the hunting parties, sometimes they would find the remains of other villages. If his people hadn't been the first to settle the valley, they were certainly the ones left now. 

Donal walked to the blacksmith, the bellows finally cold after a month of repairing weapons and armor. He put his sword with the others. Nobody had their own sword here. All the weapons were made equally well, as there was always a chance the original wielder would not see the morning.

Last night, he had tripped over the body of a slain wulver, a creature with the body of a man by the head of a wolf. 

A nuckelavee, a grotesque half-horse, half-demon saw him go down and charged him. Eilidh, a fair-haired girl, had leaped directly into its path and drove her lance into its frothing maw. 

Over the monster's gurgling shrieks, he had shouted a confession of love and admiration, and she had returned it. Then they were back to the battle and had spoken no more of it. 

Why then, he wondered, do we only speak our hearts in the face of death? Do we fear revealing ourselves so much? Can we only be true for s single night at a time?

Donal resolved to go to Eilidh and repeat what he had told her when she had saved his life. If it was true in war, it would be true in peace. 

Perhaps this November would be exciting after all. 

The Second Promise

On the last night of October, there was no moon. The wind blew wet, cold, and briny, from over the the ocean and swirled around the small graveyard atop the hill, covering the green grass with grey, hoary frost. Its chill could not penetrate the earth; underneath, the soil remained warm and rich and alive. 

Crooked, rough-hewn headstones curved along the hill in grinning rows. Inscribed on the ivory slate was not a name and year. Instead, there was the first line, and the last line. This was not a graveyard for people. It was a graveyard for stories. 

Hamish Eshad had come to look for his.

His luxurious wool long coat flapped in the icy breeze as he walked slowly, holding up a storm lantern to each inscription. Though the hill was not large, and no stories repeated, Hamish searched for hours. Many of the stories began in almost identical ways, some even exactly so: someone is born, someone is lost, someone leaves home for the first time, a boy meets a girl. The endings, however, were always unique. 

Just before dawn, he found his. He had been concerned, as the night began to fall away, because he was not supposed to be here. When he found it, he almost wept with relief. 

This headstone had only the first line: "All endings are foretold by their beginnings; when Hamish Eshad met Killoran Rivers chose to meet once more, as if for the very first time, this was an act of defiance."

He sank to his knees and began to dig with his hands. The earth moved away easily, invitingly, and soon there was a hollow large enough to hold him. He sank down into the warmth and began to scoop the dirt over himself like a child at the beach. Hamish took one last breath, and with a final armful he was completely interred. After a few minutes, everything stopped, and the  graveyard was still. 

Then came the sharp staccato sound of chipping slate, and the headstone had its final line. The bitter wind blew the dust from the final inscription, and all was still once again. The last line now read: "Their last promise to each other was that whatever else happened, they would write their ending together."

 

THE END

But it was not the end. 

Hamish erupted from the ground with shower of dirt and a great rattling gasp. He coughed violently as the icy air entered his lungs again, and spat out the bits of loam and silt that had filled his mouth. He scrabbled upwards, out of his ephemeral burrow, and threw himself against the headstone to read the new inscription. He read them and laughed, a little hysterically, but mostly joyfully. 

By all accounts, this should not have worked.

Hamish didn't bother to brush himself off. He ran out of the graveyard, down the hill, and into the direction of the rising sun. He didn't want to keep Killoran waiting. He smiled as he ran. She had a bit of a temper, that one. 

THE END

Author's Note: I threw on Viking Wolf on Netflix because it's Norwegian and so I could have something on while I write, but because I don't speak Norwegian maybe it would work out better than that time I tried to watch Hellboy and write. I like listening to people talk, but if I understand the language it really interferes with my imner monologue. As I finished this story, the end credits came on and the song that plays over them is midnight love by girl in red and it almost broke me. It's a beautiful song and I was not expecting it. It's like these stories; so many of them have just gone wherever they want to go.

And I do kind of apologize for the false ending. 

But not really. I didn't know what was going to happen either and you know how hard it is to write a fake ending in writing when people can just skip further down the page? I don't know if it's ever been done unless you count "It was all a dream" but I would never do that to you, Dear Reader. Goodnight, thank you for being there for me (if you're not sure if I mean you, don't be silly, of course I mean you) and I love you all. 

The Hunter's Moon

The night before Halloween is always the most dangerous. All year, the undergods watch the evils done by humankind and harvest the miasma of suffering and despair left in their wake. The thaumaturgic substance was distilled, refined, and infused into effluvia rhamnusia, or ichor of nemesis, as the alchemists call it. I use the old name for it: soul phlogiston. It doesn't really matter what it's called. The most important thing to understand is that the worse we are, the worse it is.

As the sun sets on the 30th of October, ghostly tendrils, like stray threads of fog, are sent up from the depths of the earth, turning the land it touches into a corrupting morass. When the wisps of the noxious mist touch a living creature, flesh intumesces, bones elongate and warp, teeth and claws enlarge, erupt red and wet through the gums and and skin, gleaming like porcelain razors. Those innocent creatures, once corrupted, became an amalgam of nightmare and beast. Then they would turn to the city. 

Humans were not immune, although it was rare to find an innocent human in this city.

The city had grown too prosperous too quickly, and the vast structures had arisen in a frenzy of activity in only the past decade. Towering structures with flying buttresses, adorned with elaborate carvings. Pointed arches stabbed at the skyline, making the city look like the lower jaw of a slavering beast. Every prominent building had massive, stained-glassed windows, and the sunset trickling through them turned the streets the color of blood.

The narrow, twisting streets were cobblestone and brick, filled with blind turns, sudden inclines, and dead ends.

The moon rose in the sky, and night was here.

Every town has at least one hunter, and a city this size would need dozens. Tonight, in this city, I was the only one left. 

I did not wear armor. There was no point. A light, loose-fitting long coat over a coat, trousers, and vest to protect from the night's chill, sturdy boots, and a tricorn hat worn low to shield my eyes from the spatter of blood.  

We had firearms, but they were ineffective from any safe distance. You could only hurt them if they could hurt you. Those were the rules. 

My preferred weapon was a heavy, saw-toothed cleaver. The creatures that were coming to prowl the city for victims were not easily crushed, or shot, or stabbed. They had to bleed, or they would not die. Until enough of the nemesis salts were drained, they would fight on, slavering, enraged, howling, until they cut us all down. The cleaver's teeth were crude, jagged, and could tear through hide, bone, and entrails.

I shouldered my weapon and walked out from my workshop into the city, my footsteps heavy on the cobblestone, echoing down the empty streets. Everyone knew to stay inside tonight. The creatures would usually leave by dawn, and they would not come back the next night. Halloween would be safe, one way or the other. 

The wind shifted, and I smelled something sweet and metallic; the coppery smell of blood. I sighed, and my breath clouded around me. I heard the clicking of claws on stone, and glowing yellow eyes peered at me from the shadows, flickering in the light of the gas lamps.

I drew back my cleaver. "Stay calm," I thought. "Just think of it as nothing more than a bad dream."

More eyes appeared, and then the beasts were upon me.

THE END

Author's Note: Happy Halloween! Thank you for doing this with me. It's been...illuminating. And fun, and painful, and scary, and frustrating, and joyous. I don't know exactly how many stories I've written, but I know it's not 31 so maybe a few more will trickle out over the next week or so.

And yes, this is Bloodborne fan fiction, but I will not apologize. I love that game. And I changed it a little; there are undergods, not elder gods. Take that, copyright lawyers!

I am weary. And it's Halloween, so go face your fears and give out lots of that most delicious of candy: human kindness. Goodnight, and I love you all.

She Didn't Dance

She didn't dance, and it was an endless source of arguments. He would argue that it was good to lose control and let yourself go. She said that it might be good for him, but if she did that it might not be good for everyone else. He said that she was being her own worst critic and she couldn't possibly be as bad as she was making herself sound. Besides, what if they got married? She'd have to dance them! She raised an eyebrow at this implication. He raised his eyebrow back, and then thrust out his left arm, put his right arm around the waist of an imaginary partner, and waltzed off while pretending to weep. She laughed and returned to her painting. 

She never discouraged him from dancing, or refused to attend an event that involved dancing. She'd go with him to the night clubs and find a luxurious alcove, usually in the VIP section, and sip a bellini, a cosmopolitan, or a margarita. She enjoyed the music, and some of the places they went did put considerable thought and effort into the colors, and lighting. 

They had attended a wedding of one of his friends, and she had overheard a girl he was dancing with talking about her. The girl was drunk, and had said "Why is your girlfriend just sitting there? Is she mad at you or just being a bitch?"

He had laughed, "No, she's not mad at me at the moment. But keep it down or she'll hear you."

"So what if she does? Are you afraid you're going to have to stand up for her?"

"Oh I would love to, but she doesn't need me to stand up for her. You don't want her to hear you say that because she considers it a compliment, and I honestly don't think you're tough enough to be her friend. I'm looking out for you, really!" 

At the table, she had sipped her margarita to hide her smile. 

One night, they were walking home very late from a club. He was a little too drunk to walk straight and kept stumbling. They were still pretty far from home when she noticed they were being followed by two men. She giggled. The living blades at her waist, and strapped to her chest, arms, and legs, were very hungry, and the exercise would help her fall asleep. 

She turned into a dark alley. The men followed. Halfway down the alley, another man appeared at the opposite end, cutting off their exit. He stumbled against her again, and she used her hip to flip him over and toss him into the dumpster next to them. She didn't want him getting hurt.

At the burst of movement, the men rushed in from both sides. She chose the katana this time. Her form-fitting purple gown did not seem to have anywhere to hide an entire sword, and this caught the men off guard. As the first pair reached her, one grabbed at her arm to pull the katana away and the other circled to get behind her. 

She did a perfect pirouette and cleanly sliced off the arm of the man reaching for her sword. Then she did a pique turn and buried the blade in the second man's chest all the way up to the tsuba. The blade drank deeply.

She performed a fouette, a powerfu turn that pulled the blade free and whipped it towards the neck of the one-armed man, severing it completely. With a petite jete', she plunged the katana vertically down the neck. The blade drank deeply. 

The third man at the end of the alley realized he had no chance and turned to flee. She did a tour de reins, a spinning jump, contracting her back muscles and leaning toward the center of her spin at a sharp angle. All the momentum was channeled into the katana, launching it from her hand like a javelin. The sword flew straight into the fleeing man's back. He crumpled face-first into some garbage, and was still. The blade drank deeply, and was finally full. 

Her boyfriend was peeking his head out of the dumpster, his eyes wide. She smiled, and did a little arabesque over to retrieve the katana, still sticking up out of the last man's back. 

There was a blur, and the katana was gone, and all he saw was his girlfriend in her elegant purple gown, looking just slightly out of breath. She walked towards him. 

"Ready to go home?" She held out her hand to help him out of the dumpster. 

"Yes. Yes I am."

They exited the alley. He looked back at the headless man. "My love?"

"Yes?"

"It's okay if you don't want to dance at our wedding."

She smiled. "How very gracious of you. I'll try to keep that in mind."

THE END. 

Author's Note: I sincerely apologize to actual ballet dancers. I'm sure there are moves that are far more lethal than the ones I try to describe here, but please consider that I don't really know what I'm doing and technically it was the katana that was doing the killing. Which I had to add, again, because I don't know how a ballerina assassin would actually go about killing someone, I'm only certain that they COULD kill someone.

Seriously have you ever seen a ballerina's feet?! It's like they lift weights with those things. They look like they could kill you with just their pinky toe. 

Goodnight, and I love you all. If I'm found tomorrow plie'd to death, just leave it alone. It's just better for everyone not to anger Big Ballet. 

Actual Journal from October 29th

This is not fiction. This is me writing aimlessly. For fun! Reflecting on the the writing I've been doing since the 7th of October. My technical ability has severely diminished, and I wasn't that good at it in the first place. I keep having to look up how to format dialogue. Ah well, I never claimed to be a professional. Plus editing is a separate process and I can come back and polish it later. Maybe. 

Currently, I'm doing laundry. I only do two loads: one of my workout clothes, and then the rest of my clothes. Every weekend I do this. 

In a couple hours, I will take my nephew to work. It's 20-minute drive to Laveen. Lots of interesting houses. Some lovely ranch-style mansions, then a field of cotton, a citrus grove, then moderate houses, then mansions again. An irrigation canal runs all along the side of the street. 

I've hung my clothes up to dry. It's fall here, so the clothes will take longer to dry; probably an hour instead of the usual twenty minutes. I'll scrape off the layer of dust. Should be fine.