Seismic. 

Ambient loop 9

Listening to dark jazz and artificial ambient rainstorm loops

Makes for bad poetry and confuses the hounds

melancholy reverb hides the hesitation of the next note

the rush to get to right now

until it's gone

Fake rainstorm was a real rainstorm once

someone remembers it

recorded it, trapped it in the now

stuck like all the rest of us

raindrops strike steel cables

Makes for bad poetry and confuses the hounds

foolish symmetry

All the things I want to tell you all the deleted words they must go somewhere

chasing a foolish symmetry 

consistency will come later

every language is at least two

whirring bus wheels

the hiss of brakes

fraying

sepia streetlights make us a zoetrope

sleeping in each other's arms

I sleep less deeply 

yet I awaken refreshed

we only ever had the nights

warmer in the shadows

clouds are a bedspread

curling and uncurling in your hands

we only ever had the nights

the day so conquered

feathers in the breeze

rebar rusting in crumbling concrete

muffled laughter and a late lunch

nights are meant to be stolen

readings

I turn to you every night

my Book of Sand

lean close to feel your breath

to listen to the story of you

colder and warmer music lilting

while green-eyed cats knead the bedclothes 

birch-bark paper leaves 

strands of autumn red hair

bookmark pages I'll never see again

save the runes etched in my mind

in one of the thousand outcomes

where I'm found without you

Sculpting

The pain crept up from nowhere. It seized his mind like a toothache, a rotten tendril snaking up the synapses already worn raw by regret. He tried to ignore it. The clinking of his point chisel against the marble as he worked seem to stave off the worst of it. 

The sculpture was coming along slowly. The figure inside didn't seem to want to come out this time. He'd caught a glimpse of it, in the marble quarry, beckoning to him, and he had selected the stone. 

Even now, in the clouds of dust that swirled in the evening light, it breathed. 

The pain would get worse, he knew, once the figure was free. But then it might get better. He worked on, in the last of the light. 

THE END FOR NOW 

Salvage

Free will became a list of chores

hurling sentiments against the lath and plaster walls to see what sticks

Or falls and heaps 

ceramic tile skittering shards

already cut me abdomen deep

gritted teeth

hissing curses

wading through what could have been a home

dragging detritus, whirling wake

eddies of possibilities, maybe

For someone else, probably

everything is useful maybe

just not right now 

Put pressure on the wound

resist remineralizarion

brushing soft against my cheek 

Liberated simple nutrients

someday, soon

just not right now

Journal

This is regular times now. No need to get all deep and philosophical. I have the luxury of being able to spend a lot of time in quiet reflection. Although I also spend some of it in listen-to-music-and-dance-around reflection. 

Not sure what to do right now. 

Feeling a little exposed, maybe? I've put myself out as if I'm sure of my own abilities and I'm not, not exactly. Lot of moving parts. 

Maybe if my current brain meds supply weren't so unreliable. Not the end of the world though. I can function okay. 

So I'll do that for a bit. Function. Keep an eye out, ear to the ground, nose to the grindstone. Keep every part to every thing. 

I'm a reed, on a riverbank, waving in the breeze, in the day and the night. 

dream floating

Bedroom window shatters and purple flowers blossom from the pieces of broken glass

Wished we'd been together forever but I learned so much when I was missing you

Closing windows too early

Keeps the cold out

The drapes can be blankets

Erect a fort against the sunlight

Stuff the chinks in the armor

With crumpled pages

faded watercolor landscapes

and endless rough drafts

Someday You Will Find Me

He didn't know if he could reach her, but he went anyway. Astral projection was actually pretty easy; as far as getting out. Getting to where you wanted to be was difficult, and managing to find your way back was even harder.

Very few thaumaturgy students were accepted for training, and it wasn't flattering if you were. It usually meant the student had completed their third cycle of study and had shown no particular aptitude for the more traditional magic systems, or were about to fail out altogether. 

Also, the student was required to be an organ donor, and agree to an advanced directive that if their Anima did not return within 7 days, the body would be euthanized and the components harvested for ingredients. 

If the Anima was out on its own longer than 7 days, on the 8th day it would go supernova. 

Literally. That's what many supernovae are. Not all of them, but a lot. As the Codex Dessicantem states, "It is bad when one thing becomes two." 

There is furious debate among the scholars about how the Earth has so far been spared from these lightyears-wide explosions when as far as anyone knew, humans on Earth were the only ones who could astral project. Granted, Animas were not strictly bound by the limitations of physics, but the nearest supernova recorded was still several galaxies over, never close enough to threaten Earth. Luck, maybe. Still, best not to take any chances, so that euthanasia protocol was developed. 

Too bad he wasn't going to make a sanctioned attempt. He was a promising chronomancer, and the school would not risk his potential. 

He prepared the spell, and went out on his own. His Anima tore away from his corporeal form, and he was away.

He could not describe the feeling, nor what he saw. It was almost entirely unlike swimming through a vibrant coral reef surrounded by brightly-colored fish and looming, counter-shaded predators. But not entirely unlike that.

He searched and searched for her, for six days. He couldn't find her, and he couldn't find the way back to his own body. He despaired, and searched on.

At dawn, on the seventh day, he received a gift. Somehow, like the half-memory of a dream, he knew where she wasn't. Absolute, perfect, knowledge of where she could not be. And he strove to that place with all his might. At dawn, on the eighth day, he arrived, and his last thought was of her.

"A new supernova popped into visibility on May 19 in the Pinwheel Galaxy, (alternately designated as Messier 101, or M101)."

-Bartleby, et al., 2023 'Multidisciplinary Observation and Measurements of Transient Events -Journal of Astronomy and Astrology

THE END

Author's Note: Okay one more since it's the last day of Short Story Sham Writing Month. Goodnight!

Selenography

moon, every two-week long nightfall

that, freezing over the boiling half,

is our wax and wane

(gibbous?)

sometimes as close as it gets (perigee syzygy?)

but mostly not 

Moon (the largest in the solar system in relation to its host planet)

is named for what it is to us

And our planet is named after all that stuff on the ground

All the other planets named after the old gods

That nobody worships anymore

Whatever wars were fought in their name

Never mattered to them

When the weapons fall and the wounds close

Or not

They all float on

Scar tissue is an active process

Without our vitamins, we might unzip 

Without our moon, what comes undone?

Words for things

Is there a word for when you wash your hands in winter

move on instead of drying them because it's just water

when that little bit of just water evades the cuffs

rolls down my sweatshirt sleeves 

icily tracing my veins to find my elbows 

and for one long moment I think I am growing a new skin

crystal armor plating maybe

What's the word for that?

Journal Entry

This is not fiction. I'm reflecting on the past month or so of trying to write a short story every day. It went pretty well. There's a lot of stuff I like in there that could be built up into something really good. 

There's over a dozen story ideas that are sitting in my drafts folders. They need attention. 

sticky mouth

Early morning apple pie

then back to bed

to be useless but happy

Clutch potential from the chill dawn

smother it beneath body and blankets

until a dog licks my face for crumbs

their life going by seven times as fast as mine

and guilt sets in for wasting time

The Ghost In The Corridor

There is a little ghost haunting the corridor of my parent's house. It's always been there, as far as I can remember. It's funny now, but it scared me when I first saw it. It wears a sheet, but there is definitely a ghost underneath. It has no feet, but there are partial legs sticking out. 

My parents are Catholic, and so I was I, in the beginning, and my mom said the house had been blessed by a priest so I figured if the blessing wasn't stopping the ghost, then it probably wasn't evil. Probably. 

I'd wake up at night and need to use the bathroom. I was afraid of the dark. I'd climb down from the bunk bed and pad down the corridor. The ghost didn't block my way. The bathroom was halfway down, and the ghost usually hovered at the end, before it opened up into the living room and kitchen. 

Oh yeah, it changes sheets. It takes whatever's clean. When we were all little, this meant it was often in a sheet with cartoon animals, or superheroes, and stars and galaxies. 

In the morning, the sheet would be folded up neatly and placed back in the linen closet. 

I don't understand it all. 

If it wasn't there to scare us, or hurt us, or to help us in some way, why was it there?

Catholicism didn't really have any answers because the teachings on ghosts gets surprisingly muddy. 

And none of the teachings mentioned actual bedsheets. 

I'm not religious anymore, and I don't hold any beliefs about gods and devils fighting for the souls of humans, but if I were pressed, I'd have to admit I believe in at least one little ghost, wearing in a bedsheet, floating in a corridor of my mom and dad's house. 

THE END

Static Underneath

He saw the static below everything. Black and white pixels flashing underneath the world. Old cathode ray tube televisions, when tuned to a channel with no signal, would show a screen of black and white "snow." A two-toned kaleidoscope. He saw this, when he closed his eyes, and when his eyes were open. 

His vision was fine; his yearly visits to the optometrist confirmed that yes, he was a little nearsighted but otherwise fine. 

He worried that everything he was seeing wasn't real; that the static was the real world and all the bright and beautiful colors and shapes he saw were being projected onto the static, an overlay. If it was a projection, what was projecting it? And if it wasn't real, what was it?

His health insurance only covered doctors, not philosophers. 

And yet, otherwise, his life was normal. Boring, even. He felt he should let it go. Stop thinking about it entirely. Pretend it wasn't there.

One night, he found himself holding a paring knife to his eye and wondering what would he would see without them. 

He had put the knife down. If he did remove his eyes, he might see what was really there, behind the world. Or the static might be the only thing left, and his world would remain only those black and white pixels, a backdrop forever. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Did I never publish this one? I guess not. Says I wrote it on November 24th. I must have left it in the drafts because it doesn't go anywhere. Sure, there's a lot more leeway in short stories because if you don't waste too much of a reader's time they don't get too upset, generally. Maybe it was too depressing? The danger of what I'm doing mixing fiction in with a journal of my day-to-day life is that there's the risk that people might conflate the two. 

Which is why I'm hesitant to mention that I do see static. It's not bright static, and it doesn't interfere with my vision. I think everyone sees it, right? What do you see when you close your eyes? 

Pawed

Too many mutts on too small a bed

We don't seek solutions to this problem

It's the kind we like

Resolve one; another takes its place

A paw on my face

Cheeky hounds

Line up North to South

Furry fat electromagnets

Living compasses

Pointing to you

Resting Phase

Warm toes, cold nose

There is no human experience that does not exist without its opposite, Melville said

Programmed in Emotional Binary

It's not the only coding language

Access granted to your inputs

Firewalls; defragmentation 

The cold reminds me of you because I miss the heat of your body against mine

Heartbeat like a cursor, ready 

Couched

Couch these words in thoughts on a couch

Poetry seeks the middle place

Where what we think and what we feel 

Mistake one for the other

I call it the middle place but it was the first

The wishbone split came somewhere after

When four legs became sometimes two

And then only two

Poetry is not for unfinished thoughts

But thoughts that can't be finished

Perhaps. I'm not sure. I like the sounds of it

The shape of your mouth when you say the words

The shape of your mind when you think the thoughts

Beckon, beckon, skittish connection

Our hands entwining 

Skin scraped by electric thickets 

A robot could have wrote this

I tell ourselves

But I thought of it first this time

And I sleep envious of the water coursing down your body

That would only rust me, maybe

We chain our dreams to logic

As if that safely keeps them

To exist in the same room as you

Is as small and as big as I can dream tonight

Rivers push against their banks

And make new curves and bends and breaks

Pebbles tumble sand and silt

As they carve out that middle place

The Turkey Of Terror

Turkeys used to be very different from how they are today. Long ago, turkeys grew to the size of a house, their feathers were sleek and black, and their massive beaks were cruel, curved, hooked, perfect for skinning their prey. Their horrendous, thundering cry of "Gobble-gobble" would send the early humans scrambling back to their caves, cowering and shivering in terror. The humans would not come out until they were certain the turkey hunt was over. 

The humans began to leave out offerings for the terror turkeys, grains and berries and seeds and nuts. The titan turkeys would gather and nibble the food reluctantly, clucking amongst themselves, imagining that instead of cracking the shells of nuts, they were cracking open the skulls of humans and scooping out the gooey grey stuff inside. It was their favorite. 

The little things we do every day add up, over time. After a millennia or two, the monstrous avians that had ruled the land with an iron wattle, had diminished to a much more manageable four feet in height, and their steely muscles had given way to plump, tender flesh. 

The humans noticed, eventually, and the tables were quickly turned. 

Now, once a year, many cultures gather to give thanks that they are now the hunters, instead of the hunted. But the turkey has one final cruelty for the feasters: they are so big that to fully cook them, when whole, that the white meat, the lean muscular meat that long ago was used to hunt and rend the flesh of the very humans that eat them now, will become dry and tasteless. 

And they hope you choke on it. 

And if you do, while you're turning blue, thrashing about, mouth gaping for air that won't come, you will hear the sound of massive wings, and a final thundering "gobble gobble." 

THE END

The Night Watchman

What night, from dusk until dawn, he guarded the empty, rotting grain silo on Baseline road. Years before, when he had been hired, there were fields of grain, and of cotton, of orange groves, and miles and miles of flowers. 

All that was gone now, replaced by tract housing, apartment complexes, gated communities, and a few cows and pigs. 

Everything had changed all around him. Except the grain silo that still stood in the middle of a couple acres of dirt behind a crooked, wooden fence.

His work has given him enough to live, to build a life during the day, at least when he wasn't asleep. He had breakfast for dinner with his family, and then once his wife went to work and his kids went to school, he slept. His real morning was the middle of the afternoon, when he would awaken and pick up the children from school. He would make dinner (his breakfast) and help them with their homework. As the sun began to set, he was off again. 

He didn't know why the silo still needed a guard. Every night. He wasn't allowed to read, or talk on the phone, or write. He would pace the perimeter, shine his flashlight now and then, and think about all the things he'd rather be doing. As far as he could tell, no one watched him. He could have slept, or used his phone, or read all those books he meant to read, or write down his life story. 

But he was a man of his word. So every night, he watched. He was free to think, and that was enough. He watched, and waited for the sun to rise and send him home. 

THE END

The Honor Guard

A long time ago, it was tradition to sacrifice a black dog and bury it in the graveyard before interring the first human. The first one buried in a graveyard would have the duty of protecting it for all eternity, and be denied a peaceful afterlife. Burying the dog prevented this fate from befalling any human souls.

One day, long ago, there was a great, black dog named Duff, and he was on the hunt. He was what's known as a lurcher, which was a cross between a sight hound and a working breed. They were known for their intelligence, independence, speed, and hardiness. 

Duff's master had a herd of sheep, and a baby lamb had been killed the night before. The master had found only the torn-off leg, and immediately suspected the great white wolf that roamed the woods nearby. The master grabbed his rifle and went out with Duff to track the wolf.

Duff found the white wolf lying in a clearing, gnawing on the carcass of a large hare. The wolf saw Duff, and ignored him.

"My master's lamb wasn't enough to fill your belly?" Duff asked indignantly. (Wolves and dogs were not quite so distantly-related yet, as they are today, and could still make themselves understood to the other.) 

The wolf still didn't look up. "You are mistaken, whelp. Go to the one who lives in the cabin a furlong away from your master; in the home with no garden. You will find the lamb cooking in his pot."

"We found its leg, torn from its body!" Duff bristled. "The work of a wolf!"

The wolf looked at him, finally, with his great yellow eyes, his muzzle still red with blood. "Do you know many wolves that would waste a good leg of lamb? The thief left it there for you to find, no doubt, and cast suspicion away from himself."

"You're lying."

"Oh?" The wolf stuff stood up, and at his full height, looked down at the dog. "And what wolf respects the opinion of a dog enough to bother to lie to it?"

Duff growled, but knew it was true. He could hear his master approaching the edge of the clearing. He was a keen shot, and would certainly kill the wolf as soon as he sighted it.

Duff snarled, and ran into the woods again, baying as if he'd sighted their quarry. His master turned away from the clearing and followed.

The next night, Duff waited by the herd of sheep,  and he did indeed see the neighbor creep into the field in search of another lamb. Duff gave him a single savage chomp on the rear, and after that night, the neighbor lost his taste for lamb and finally took up gardening. 

Duff did not see the white wolf again for a long time, until the village decided they needed a new graveyard.

Duff was the only black dog in the area and everyone knew it, so it was decided that he would be sacrificed and buried first. His master wept, but Duff was stoic. His grave had been dug, and he would go to it, as was his duty, because he was a good dog. 

When Duff's master fell asleep, he stole out of the cabin and went down to the graveyard. He curled up next to open grave and fell asleep. 

In his sleep, Duff smelled blood, and he awoke. The great white wolf was limping towards him. In the moonlight, Duff could see a dark stain spreading out across the wolf's flank. 

"Good evening, dog."

"Wolf."

"I understand they're going to kill you in the morning. Put you in that hole, will they?"

"Yes. They will."

"Is that really what you want? You will not run away and save yourself?"

"No," Duff admitted. "I would like to be with my master, to protect him. But this will protect him too, I think. So I will allow it."

"You have a good quality, for a house pet," said the wolf. "I was shot by a hunter, and I will soon be dead myself. Long ago, you led your master away when you could have let him kill me. Perhaps I can help you this time." And the wolf jumped down into the little open grave. He rolled in the graveyard mud until he was completely black. He panted from the effort and lay down to rest. "There were are," the wolf said. "Now we could be brothers."

Duff looked down at the wolf in his grave. "Yes. We could be. My name is Duff."

"My name is Grim," said the wolf.

"I will stay with you, Grim."

The wolf grinned. "What wolves do you know that would care to die next to a dog?"

"Just one, I think," said Duff. And he curled up next to the grave, to be near to his friend.

In the morning, the gravedigger came to find a large black dog, or what looked like one, in the grave, dead. He shrugged and began to shovel dirt over it. At the edge of the graveyard, a big white dog watched. When the work was done, the white dog ran home to his master.

His master was astonished. If Duff could have spoken to him, he would not have had any explanation either. When Duff had awoken at dawn, his fur had become as ivory-white as the wolf's. 

Duff lived many years after that, and when he felt the age in his bones and knew it was time, he once again slipped out into the night, to the graveyard. 

His master found him there the next morning, curled up on that very first grave. He was quite dead, and his master buried Duff on that same spot. It was, after all, his grave. 

This was all a very long time ago. But if you ever find that graveyard, and wait until dark, you just might see a large white dog and a great black wolf darting to and fro, weaving through the headstones, playing for eternity. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ouch. There is a very different version of this in the drafts that I was almost through at 11 pm, and I was thinking I would get to bed on time tonight, but I just didn't like it. So I scrapped it and started over, which I never do (if that hasn't been obvious with some of these) but I'm glad I did. I hope I'm still glad when I'm dredging myself out of bed for work tomorrow.

Goodnight! 

The Hidden Constellations

The stars will move for you, if you can convince them. They like little gestures, and consistency. They've had their fill of heroes and odysseys; it is so easy for humans to set some noble goal and think of nothing but attaining it. It's charming, in a way, but it no longer moves them. 

A constellation is a name we give them based on our own perspective. They are not their true names, although some come surprisingly close. 

What does move them now are acts of kindness, over time. The heroes of old proclaimed to all what they hoped to do, and the stars had believed them, millenia ago. 

Today, tonight, every day, every night, they watch us still and look for other signs. Gentle words, kind acts, sparks of warmth between the creatures that spend half their lives in the dark. 

Only sparks, not fires. Fire consumes; what the stars do is fusion. They look for that; consistency, connections.  

Keep doing that, and they will move for you too. 

THE END

The Most Dangerous Meal Of The Day

Breakfast is the most dangerous meal of the day. Too often we sit to eat our scrambled eggs, hash browns, or banana pancakes, and we don't realize that the inhabitants of our dreams are still lurking behind us, having crossed the misty grey borderland between sleep and wake. Our minds are not solid things; they are gillnets with frayed edges that dreams and nightmares can wriggle through. 

As you sit to eat and begin to chew, if you are not careful, your teeth could begin to fall out, one by one by one, falling painlessly like ivory rain drops and clattering onto the plate and table and floor. Fall out and fall out, until you are swimming in molars, bicuspids, incisors, more teeth than could fit in a thousand gums mouths, as you gasp for air with a mouth of empty gums.

Or you notice a smell of burning toast, and the walls around you are in crackling flames, and billowing smoke surrounds you and all is orange and black and burning and then you hear sizzling like an egg being cracked into a pan of bubbling grease and smell your own blistering flesh as it runs off your body and puddles on the floor. 

Perhaps you were dreaming of being hunted by a pack of starving, long-legged beasts, with slavering jaws of jagged teeth and lolling crimson tongues. You're sitting at the table and jump as that deep baying bursts forth into the waking world, and guttural growls and snarls encircle you and you become the meal. 

There may be ways to prevent these types of oneiric seepage, and sleep scientists and occultists have formed and uneasy alliance to find them. 

Until then, they suggest skipping breakfast. 

THE END 

Sleep Paralysis

Every night, he dreaded falling asleep. Every night, he tried to fight it. He'd drink a pot of coffee. He played loud music. He downloaded addictive games onto his cell phone. He exercised. He'd write down everything he did that day. Tried an expensive lamp that mimics daylight. Ice-cold showers. Caffeine pills. Other, less legal pills. 

He got rid of his bed. Broke it up with an axe and burned it in the backyard. Threw every pillow and blanket into the flames. 

Every night, he'd fight it, and every night, he'd fail.  No matter what, at midnight, his body would betray him. He'd slowly collapse, deflating like a balloon. Crumpling onto the ground, he would fall asleep. But he wasn't asleep. He could hear, and he could see. But he couldn't move. 

Then the beast would come. 

He heard the claws clicking against the floor. Guttural growling, deep, that he could feel in his chest. It lumbered towards him. It looked like a brown bear, except for its face. The head was a elongated skull, like a horse skull, gleaming white and slicked with viscera. 

It hunched over him. The grinning maw pressed up against his face, snuffling and snorting through its bony nostrils. The incisors click-click-clicked. It tilted its head and turned an empty eye socket to look into his. It opened its bony jaws and spoke. 

"Go the fuck to sleep."

THE END

The Gods In The Woods

There were still gods in the woods. Little ones, mostly. Scampering through the roots of the great trees, or wrapping themselves in blankets of moss. They bounce up and down on the caps of mushrooms, and sail down the streams in boats of woven grass and leaves. 

They will hold mock battles with twigs for swords, and the cupules of acorns for shields. Dances are held every full moon, and they songs, lilting and chirupping compositions are older than the forest itself.

The old man limped into the woods to feed them. He brought nothing but his walking stick and his simple robes of rough-cut cloth. He found a warm patch of sunlight streaming through the towering trees and sat on a fallen log. 

And he did nothing. 

The gods of the woods do not need anything from us but our attention. Not even that, really. They need us to come back to them, for a little bit, and inhabit that hidden space that is apart from life and death. To be human is to exist in binary, a duality of us or them, losing and gaining, and agony and ecstasy. The gods don't do this, and they serve us by reminding us that we don't have to think like that anymore, if we don't want to 

He would not call it inner peace. His old injured leg hurt today, his back hurt every day, and his stomach hurt because he hadn't had anything to eat yet. And to all this, he said yes. We are always at the place where we always are. 

Just like the gods in the woods. 

THE END

Author's Note: I looked for the big gods, but I did not find them in this draft. Maybe they'll show up the second or third. 

Your Billion Future Selves

It has been only a handful of generations since humans had unlocked the ability to edit their own genetic code, and now there were no humans left. No true humans, anyway. They still looked like  humans, but biologically, they are now siphonophores. 

The Portuguese Man O' War is often mistaken for a jellyfish. It is related to jellyfish, but the jellyfish is a single organism, with one genome. The Man O' War contains multitudes. It is a colony; multiple units of creatures called zooids. Genetically identical, all from a single egg, but still individual. Each zooid becomea specialized to its role in the colony. And from the outside, it looks like one big jellyfish. These things that look like humans, are made up not of cells, but of, essentially, tiny humans. 

Before, a human might lose a finger. But now, there is no human to lose it. The finger was born to be a finger, the hand was born to be a hand, and the arm, and the torso, and the head the eyes the brain all of it, each one a zooid. The lost finger is alive, as a finger, and it knows it is alone. It will not survive long without the rest of the colony. Not long at all. 

It's confusing, I know, why anyone would want this. They're immortal now, functionally, these new humans. If a liver or a kidney fails, the lab can grow a new one. If the new human were to be cut in half at the waist, and the lab was sufficiently prepared, each half could be made into a whole. This wasn't done, at least not yet, but it could be. 

Individuality, down to the last body part.

Immortality achieved, at the cost of the self.

These new humans appear content, on the whole. Except those of us who work in the labs, raising the zooids into the parts they will play. We monitor every vital sign, every nerve, every . We get the same patterns, the same jagged waves on the electro-cellulargrams, over and over again. 

They are screaming. 

Author's Note: I really thought tonight was going to be the night I ended my streak. It's late, and I'm tired, and work was hard. But then Sibbitt went and wrote this really cool poem about a different kind of immortality and that got me to thinking...

This story needs work; I think the distinction between a single organism and exactly what siphonophores are is not explained very well. It's okay, because I think overall the story is headed in the right direction in evoking an atmosphere of existential dread for that very reason. At least that's what I'm telling myself because it is late and I must sleep. To learn more about siphonophores, visit your local library! Or you can read these notes I copied from Wikipedia and pasted below to re-read ah I struggled to convey how these things are very much alike in concept to a single organism, but the way they go about it is still uncanny as hell. Goodnight!

Siphonophores are highly polymorphic and complex organisms.[4] Although they may appear to be individual organisms, each specimen is in fact a colonial organism composed of medusoid and polypoid zooids that are morphologically and functionally specialized.[5] Zooids are multicellular units that develop from a single fertilized egg and combine to create functional colonies able to reproduce, digest, float, maintain body positioning,

The Town of Crows

The town of Corvus lay nestled in the verdant Carrina Valley. It was surrounded miles of cornfields, the engine of the town's economy. A railroad ran through the valley, ChenIn the middle of the largest field, Woodford Bennett was starting his last shift. He climbed up onto a wooden platform, pushed up the brim of his straw hat, and looked up into the clear blue sky, scanning for crows. 

The Carrina Valley was special. The crop yield per acre was three times that of the entire rest of the state. The town had to protect their investment. 

They had tried traditional scarecrows. But these crows knew. They would come by the thousands, darken the sky, and ravage the corn until there was nothing left. 

But they wouldn't hurt the corn if an actual person was watching over it. Woodford had been hauled out of an empty railcar by the railroad cops when the train had stopped to load up the corn. He had fallen on hard times, as evidenced by his threadbare flannel shirt, torn, frayed overalls. The railroad cops had made him an offer: keep the crows away from the corn, or get locked up in jail. He chose the scarecrow job. 

The cops had treated him real well after that. They even gave him a huge breakfast in the diner. Coffee, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, and pancakes. Woodford hadn't eaten that well in months. He would have liked some scrambled eggs, but the server had said they didn't have any today. 

And now he was standing on the platform in the middle of a cornfield on a beautiful spring day. Best job he'd ever had, so far. He bent his head down to light a cigarette. 

A shadow fell over him, and he heard the sound of thousand wings. He looked up, and the crows were upon him. 

The corn would be safe for a few more days. 

THE END

The Skulking Terror That Came To Wash

She didn't feel like planning for the hunt, not tonight. The villagers would have what they always had: torches, blades, a few flintlock rifles, and sheer numbers. They knew she would come when the moon was full, and the forest that surrounded the modest village of Wash, practically swallowing it, would be shrouded in the steam fog from the lake; typical of the warm summer nights. It was perfect cover for her; because she was a sleek, silvery-grey cat. From a distance, she appeared to be a regular house cat, but for her size. She was as large as a panther, and much more powerful. Her kind were rare, and she had no name. Cats have no use for names. 

The villagers has tried to stay inside at first. Barricaded themselves behind locked doors and boarded up windows, as if against a natural disaster. And yet, when the morning came and the villagers undid the fortifications, one house would not awaken. All the doors would still be locked from the inside, all the windows still fastened shut, and no trace of the former inhabitants. 

Now, on the night of the full moon, the villagers gathered and went out into the woods to hunt for the creature that took entire families. 

She easily slipped past them and made her way into the village. 

She found the very first house that had been taken, months ago. The doors had been broken in by worried villagers, but had since been boarded up. The windows were also still shut and sealed. The houses were treated as cursed. 

She was able to get inside by going through the chimney. It was a tight fit. 

She investigated the entire house. The kitchen chairs were knocked over, the cupboards were open, and drawers were pulled out completely, their contents strewn across the floor. Almost looked like the work of bandits. But there was no blood, and no real damage. Nothing to indicate people had been battling for their lives. 

She moved on to the second house. Again, she entered through the chimney. It was much the same, except this house was from a more well-to-do family. Their portrait hung on the wall, a painting of the mother, father, and two young children. The children had one peculiarity; their eyes were different colors. The mother had green eyes, and the father had blue. The children each had one green eye and one blue eye. Heterochromia. And no sign of any of them. 

And so she searched the next house, and then the next, with no further insights. She knew she was missing something. All these houses, each left  undisturbed after each disappearance. Why, the neighbors hadn't even bothered to clean up the mess...

She dashed back to the first house and wriggled down the chimney. The house smelled...like a house. Not exactly a clean house, but not a dirty house. No hint of rotting food. She checked the trash cans. 

They were empty.

She raced through through the other houses, down the chimney and back out again. Again, they were all the same. Empty trash cans. 

She had a hunch. 

She ran into the forest, slipping past the prowling villagers with ease, and searched the forest. There, in a foggy glen, she found two little raccoons. They looked up at her, shivering in fear, each with one green eye and one blue eye. 

She licked their faces with her rough tongue, and soon the little kits clung to her. She ran deep into the forest and took them to her den. Then she ran back to search for the rest of the transformed villagers. She could not find them. Perhaps they had been scared away by the mob of villagers, or had been caught in the many traps that had been set out. 

The great silvery cat did not return to the village. She cared for the baby raccoons. They grew much larger than regular raccoons, and the three of them would go on to have many adventures. 

She still didn't have a name, because cats have no use for names, normally, but her kits needed to call her something, so she allowed it. They called her "Mom."

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize for how rough this one is; you can absolutely tell where I just gave up trying to describe things mid-sentence, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. It's late, which is why there's no explanation given for the original source of the vamp-raccoon, if you will, but I assure you there is one. As the title suggests, I was kind of going for Lovecraft's The Lurking Fear and The Doom That Came To Sarnath but with... raccoons. And a cat detective. 

Right. Thanks for reading. This was fun. Kinda wish I didn't have a day job because I am going to be hurting tomorrow. Oh well. That's future Guillermo's problem, not mine. 

Goodnight!

The Library of Babel, Abridged

There are definitely pros and cons to being trapped inside this infinite library. I have always loved reading; in school I was constantly getting in trouble for reading. I'd hide mysteries in my textbooks, or use my foot to hold open the pages of a sci-fi novel on the floor under my desk. Most of my teachers gave up eventually and let me read. 

The con of this particular infinite library is that a lot of these books aren't very good. Which makes sense. We take for granted that are English classes are giving us "good" books to read (which they are, usually, they're just not taught in a very good way) and we don't really think about how all these great works of literature came out right alongside a bunch of crap that people had to wade through to find the best stuff. 

This is making me sound like a snob, which I'm not. I believe everyone has a thousand terrible stories in them, so we all need to hurry up and write as much as we can and get them all out. Then we can get to writing the good ones. 

The food situation is strange too. There are little tables set out that will sometimes have food and drink laid out on them. I've noticed they only appear after I've read an entire book. I'm a pretty fast reader, and the meals have enough food for an entire day and night.

There's little water fountains everywhere, but the water pressure is so low it comes out in only the tiniest arc, so small that I almost have to put my mouth on it. It's maddening. It's always cold though, so that's nice.

There is light, sunlight, that comes down through the shafts. Oh, I guess I should try to describe this place. It's kind of like a beehive, maybe? No, a honeycomb. The hexagonal walls are made up of shelves of books, and walkways with stairways and bannisters. The center part is an open shaft, and sunlight comes in from the top. This is also strange, because the sun would have to directly overhead to each shaft to shine all the way down with casting any shade. I've walked for miles in the same day and have never seen a shadow. 

There are nights. A slow dimming over the course of an hour, with no oranges or reds like in my memory of sunsets, and then total darkness. There is no moon, or at least there's no moonlight. 

It's really not bad in here. I do wish I had someone to talk to about these books. Also, since this library is infinite, statistically speaking there must be a book that explains how this place works, and maybe even tells how to get out of here. 

I do wish I had someone to talk to about escaping. I mean, someone I could see and who could talk back. 

Because I am talking to you now, I think. There's nothing to write with here in this infinite library. I've been composing this narrative by tearing out words from the other books. I only steal a couple from each. And I'm leaving this story, word by word, like a trail of breadcrumbs, so if you are reading this, then keep following it and you'll find me, eventually. 

I can't wait to meet you. 

THE END

Author's Note: With apologies to you, Jorge Luis Borges. But I'm pretty sure you'd be cool with it. 

Nemosyn, 70mg

The development of a new psychopharmaceutical drug, Nemosyn, was pitched as a revolutionary way to help treat people with post-traumautic stress disorder. The drug would allow the user to re-live a targeted traumatic event in their memory, and then it would erase the original event completely. 

The user would still have a memory of having vague memories of having re- lived the experience, of course, because that's just how memory works. The sessions were recorded as well so the patients could still access the the memory in that way, if needed. But the original pathways to the trauma would be severed, and the idea was that by putting an emotional event completely into the realm of the rational, what would normally take years of therapy could be reduced to a simple outpatient procedure. 

It was just a pill, but it has to be administered under specific guidance by a professional. To a casual observer it would seem similar to hypnotism, instead of a specific and calculated set of verbal and physical cues designed to take the person to that specific memory, and only that memory.

And it worked. Until the formula got out into the wild and home-cooked versions flooded the country. It was cheap, plentiful, and just as effective. 

People quickly began using it not only to erase traumatic memories, but any memory they didn't want. And many more began re-living their happiest moments, which was worse. Trauma makes it harder to live our lives but without the joyful memories to sustain us and remind us of why our struggle is worth it, there was a rapid breakdown of social order.

Now I'm in my own lab at home, frantically trying to find a way to reverse the effects of what I've created. 

It's not safe to go outside. Everyone is out there having both the best and worst day of their lives, then erasing it and starting all over. 

It's all falling apart. And it's all my fault. 

I'm so sorry. I wish I'd never invented Nemosyn. I wish I hadn't hurt so many people. What I've done haunts me as I work. It's been months and every night when I try and fail to sleep, I hear the wailing and the laughter of people erasing themselves. 

I wish I could just forget that this is all my fault. 

THE END

Fragments for later, maybe

"Compartmentalize," he told himself as he lined up the kill shot. 

The message in the bottle said: "Please help. I am trapped on a desert island with very little food and water. There is an office building here, where I can sit behind a desk for 40 hours a week, but if I do then I can't get up for 40 years until I reach something called 'retirement age'."

He no longer remembers where he was when the world fell apart.

"I don't think this edible is working," the ghost whispered into his ear.

Boredom was her only real fear.

Scary stories are a way to mentally prepare for the terror of the mundane.

Gasoline isn't very good for burning bodies. It's the vapor that burns, and it won't do anything to the bone. You're gonna want to invest in a good acetylene torch.

Five Rules For Doppelgangers

First things first: The scenario I'm going to talk to you about is impossible, it will absolutely never happen, and it isn't something you will ever have to face even if you lived a hundred lives. 

But if it does happen, you can't say I didn't try to prepare you. 

Do you know what to do if you encounter a doppelganger? A separate, physical duplicate of yourself, or another person in your life? I'm not talking about a split personality, or a Jekyll and Hyde situation. I mean when the person you thought you knew is not themselves. They look like them, talk like them, act like them, but they're someone else.

But we'll get to that. 

First and foremost is the biggest problem: how can you know when you've encountered a doppelganger? Because you have to be sure before you act; otherwise you'll just look crazy. If you go around accusing people of not being who they are, you'll quickly find yourself locked up in mental institution, or worse. Making you seem like you're insane is the doppelganger's greatest defense. SO DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONVINCE ANYONE ELSE. If anyone else is going to realize the truth, they have to figure it out for themselves. For now, you have to consider yourself completely on your own. After all, there may be other doppelgangers that you haven't spotted yet. Here are five rules for dealing with doppelgangers:

RULE #1. No duplicate is ever perfect. They're not perfect because people aren't perfect. There will always be something that doesn't quite match up. Sometimes you'll get lucky and it will be something really obvious, like eating a food they always said they didn't like, or forgetting a story you told them the day before. For me, I don't like licorice, so if you see me eating it with any kind of enthusiasm, that probably isn't the real me. I mean, I will eat it if I'm really hungry but I don't actually enjoy it. I'm nice to most animals too, dogs and cats especially but pretty much all animals. I'm not afraid of bees, for instance, and if they land on me, I don't freak out. They almost never sting you unless you threaten them first. I don't like wasps though; I will crush them at every opportunity. Damn flying parasites. Lastly, I have a ravenous appetite, like I'm eating for two. If we're out and I'm not ordering seconds, or not even finishing my meals, that's a huge red flag. I'm telling you this now in case I'm replaced, to make it easier for you to catch on. And for you, if there are people that you love, you need to tell them at least three things that you would NEVER do. It's not the case that you can expect your doppelganger is just going to stumble on their own and do these things in front of you; you will probably have to orchestrate a scenario in which they have the opportunity to do the behavior. Like taking me out to a movie and then buying licorice from the concession stand. Stuff like that. 

Again, you have to be subtle. You do not want to look crazy, or worse, risk them finding out that you know.

Which brings us to:

RULE #2. Rescue the real one, if possible. There is always a chance that the doppelganger hasn't murdered the person they've replaced, and are holding them hostage. We don't need to get into all the different types of doppelgangers; that would REALLY make me sound crazy. The two camps are basically the ones who need to keep the original alive, and the ones who don't. Once you've reached near-certainty that you're dealing with a replacement, your next objective should be to learn where they are keeping the original. I'm not saying you will be able to get them back; if it's rogue scientists cloning everyone around you, the originals might be in a secure government facility somewhere that no civilian has a chance of getting into. If it's dark magic, you'll probably need to know the exact counterspell, which you won't. If it's aliens, the originals may not even be on the planet anymore. Still, it's something to be aware of. If I were being held somewhere I'd want you to at least consider rescuing me. 

Oh and you can't try to interrogate the doppelganger. They are expert liars. They already lie with their whole bodies; lying with words is even easier. If you capture them, even torture them, they'll just pretend to cry and bleed and beg and act like they have no idea what you're talking about. They'll probably tell you that YOU'RE crazy. 

They'll even decompose like real people. They're that good. 

RULE #3. Find out what they want. It's not always a grand scheme to take over the world. Some doppelgangers are just visiting. Some may have even made a deal with the original; some kind of bargain to swap lives for a while in some kind of search for personal growth or what have you. Once there was a guy who teleported his mind into his past self's mind, so not technically a doppelganger but he presented as one. Of course that's just what he said he was; I don't see how his future self could have sent himself back into his past self if his past self was destroyed shortly after I learned what he was. 

I'd say most of them are not trying to take over the world. Usually they're targeting you, specifically, to make you feel unloved, that you're not good enough, that everyone is laughing at you behind your back, and to take away anyone in your life who would truly understand and connect with you.

Usually. 

RULE #4. Sometimes you might think the doppelganger is you. This isn't what you wanted. This isn't who you thought you'd be. You wanted to be good person with family and friends and coworkers and pets. But you're not you. You look like you, you sound like you, but underneath you're someone else. You shouldn't be doing these terrible things. 

Don't be fooled. That's just the last of the doppelganger's tricks. If they fail to get everyone else to believe you're crazy, then they'll try to get ME to think I'm crazy. But it's not going to work. It'll never work. Because of the last rule. 

RULE #5: DO NOT LET THESE RULES FALL INTO ENEMY HANDS. It occurs to me that now that I've told you all this, I can't let you go. I can't risk the other doppelgangers learning about all my safeguards against their tricks. 

I am sorry. Now, where were we? Oh yes, I believe you were going to tell me where you hid the real you. Oh, you have no idea what I'm talking about? Of course, of course. I see you're not only a liar, you're also a really bad listener. 

Well that's unfortunate for you, doppelganger. Because I've gotten very, very, good at this. And if you don't tell me, then maybe the next one will. 

THE END

Author's Note: The best part of writing unreliable narrators is that I don't have to stress over the genuine compositional inconsistencies detracting from the narrative itself. Which is great because I am very sleepy. 

In seriousness, the narrator is supposed to start out sounding a little off, but harmless enough. I remember putting in the line in rule 1 where one of the examples is "forgetting a story you told them a day before" because...we've all done that someone, where they were telling you something but you were only half-listening and then they bring it up later and you maybe didn't remember every little detail. 

So yes, what I'm getting at is that in writing a story like this, it's fun to let an awkward phrasing stay awkward, and how an abrupt transition or tangent can add to the growing unease. This is one of the longest stories so far because it's honestly easier for me to write like this. 

Perhaps I should be concerned that my wheelhouse appears to be people who grow increasingly unhinged as they circle the drains of their own minds, but hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby. 

Oh, but I do really not like licorice. I will eat it though, if I were really hungry, or bored, or maybe trying to impress a lady. So if you do see me eating it, please don't jump to any conclusions. 

Unless it's black licorice. I forget that stuff still exists. If you see me eating that, kill it with fire because that is not me. 

Goodnight! 

Whir, Click!

The heavy brass manacle on his wrist had a flip clock, and the clock dictated his every moment. The split-face cards whirred and clicked, and the numbers gave their command. When he awoke on his cold hard, bamboo sleeping mat. When he ate his cold gruel. When he took a cold shower. When he was sent to work outside in the blazing desert. When he could take a sip of hot, tinny water from  his canteen. When he could suffer. When he could despair.

The memory of warmth brought him comfort when he was freezing. The memory of shivering through the cold nights cooled him when the relentless sun baked his skin. The memory of home kept him moving forward, even though he didn't know where he was going.

Whir, click! 

He dug his pick into the rock, questing out the metals.

Whir, click!

He loaded the ore into the heavy cart.

Whir, click! 

He strained against the cart and pushed it laboriously to the blast furnace.

Other prisoners, each with their own brass manacle, fed the coke, ore, and flux into the top of the furnace, while other prisoners pumped the bellows. Rows and rows of crucibles the size of wine barrels stood ready to pour their molten contents into depressions of wet, unbaked sand manacle-shaped molds. Yet another prisoner would fill his empty cart with the castoff slag and he would push it back down the long, winding ramp of the open-pit mine and begin again.

He did this for years. He didn't know how many, not exactly. The manacle clocks did not tell the date, only the time. There were seasons, of a sort. There was no vegetation to bloom and denote the coming of spring, no trees with leaves to change color and drop away. The days got shorter, the days got longer. There were bad days, and there were less-bad days.

His life was ebbing way, rolling down an ever-growing pit, in slow, concentric circles. 

Whir, click!

One morning, the other prisoners awoke to find him gone. Inside the blast furnace, they discovered his manacle clock. It lay in a warped, twisted lump on the ground. Fused within it, now a part of it, was a brass fist, clenched in pain and defiance; a lost-wax casting of a human hand.

THE END

Author's Note: Has it been a month yet? I think it has. Yet here we are. Also, I'm pretty sure lost-wax casting doesn't really work that way BUT let's try not to take things too literally today. Thank you. This is another blank-page story, which means I sat down to write something, was scrolling through my dozens of drafts (not real drafts, germs of ideas mostly) couldn't decide on one, and then this came out. 

You can't see it, because that's not how reading works, but there is a literal hour between the last whir-click and the last paragraph. That whir-click was the original ending. I hated it. I didn't want it. I sat and stared at it, loathing, seething, foaming at the mouth a little. And I hit my head against it until it became something different. Now to sleep, perchance to dream, oh and I think there's some leftover Halloween candy in the fridge. Aw, but I already brushed my teeth. Goodnight!

Noodles At The Drunken Tapir

My favorite restaurant, The Drunken Tapir, was under construction, and I loved it more than ever. Usually it was a dimly-lit, rundown cafe that smelled like good food and bad decisions. Now it was torn apart for remodeling, so it looked even more like the inside of my soul. It was even darker now, except for the usual bright neon signs for beers (I think; I couldn't read the language) and a couple of work lights in the corner. The door to the kitchen had been removed so we got a little bit of light from that as well. Most of the booths were ripped out, and temporary folding tables and chairs were set up. A TV in the corner showed a soccer game between Malacca and Johor; two countries I never even heard of. But I didn't come here to catch up on sports. This place had the best yellow noodles in the city. 

I had seen the plans for the remodel. Mr. Jahni, the owner, wanted to make a bright, sanitized, generic, so it would appeal to the Americans. I had voiced my disagreement; I came here because I could eat in peace. Not that it was quiet; I just couldn't understand any of the languages the other diners were speaking. "What's next," I scoffed, "regular hours?"

I worked late, and the place was always open when I got off. After a long day on a case, I was usually sick of the outside world and this dingy little eatery felt honest. I unraveled lies for a living, and this place wasn't pretending to be something it's not. Unlike the rest of us.

It had been a better day, though. I had tracked down the hiding place of a family will that would have restored the kids' inheritance so the stepfather couldn't run off with it and stick them in an orphanage. What a jerk. I'd also made it look like he was the one behind it all; even though he was a mostly just an idiot. Still, he'd been about to run off with all the money and again, orphanage, so he was still an ass. Once I had uncovered the final draft of the will hidden in the urn containing the ashes of the family pony (one Neighomi Trots,) I had pinned the blame on him and the cops took him away. I still charged full price. Ponies are small horses but they're still pretty big, and I had to sift through a lot of ashes to find that will. Anyway, I didn't know who actually tried to hide the will in the pony's urn, so it could have been him.

Didn't really matter to me now. The kids would be taken care of. That guy would go to jail. I'd get paid. The pony would still be dead. 

Things would get better for the ones who deserved it, or at least the ones who were left.

I don't know when the renovations will be done. But I'll probably stop coming here when they are. It'll be too...bright. My job needs me to maintain a certain disposition. Once you stop seeing the worst in people, it's time to quit being a detective. 

But I wouldn't have to worry about that tonight. Tonight, I'd sit alone in the dark, surrounded by laughing people I don't understand, and I'd enjoy another bowl of the best yellow noodles in the city. 

THE END

Actual Blog

 I'm sitting at my writing desk wearing a new grey sport coat and no pants. I just wanted to try out the sport coat. Nothing crazy; I like it. 

Don't have an idea yet, for the story, but maybe this will help. When writing about my own life, I find myself dissatisfied and inevitably turn to fiction. 

No, I didn't say that. I'm not sure anyone said it. But Hugh Laurie said he was sitting down to write a journal or some such about his life and got bored so he wrote a novel instead. Then Norm MacDonald did something pretty similar by writing a sensationalized autobiography that was fiction, but also not.

Anyway if anyone ever says I didn't ever write in my underwear and a cheap sport coat; they're lying, because I'm doing it now and listening to a YouTube playlist called Noir L.A. Dark Jazz Radio 24/7 stream.

It's good.

The Moon Beneath Our Feet

"Remants of the planet Theia, which was destroyed in the collision 4.5 billion years ago that created the Moon, remain buried deep inside Earth, scientists have proposed." - The Journal of Star Science, November 4th, 2023.

Floating on opposite sides of the molten core of the planet Earth, are two continent-sized blobs of material: the remnants of that proto-planet that struck proto-Earth. 

That's why the Moon follows the Earth, why its face stays fixed on the planet. It is incomplete, and it searches for the rest of itself. The two blobs inside the earth are on opposite sides of the core, but they seek a way to reunite. They've been apart for billions of years, right beneath our feet, and they've felt every single second they've been trapped there, because they've been burning.

There was a third blob, bigger than the others. It didn't wait to find the other two. It gathered its strength, its pain, its anger, its loneliness, and, 66 million years ago, it burst out of the Earth and tried to go home. Humans still believe that it was an asteroid that struck the Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it wasn't. The impact came from within, when that lost piece of Theia tried to go home. 

But that piece never got home. It missed the moon. And it is still going, ever deeper into space, ever further from the rest of itself. It no longer burns; it freezes. Its only warmth now comes from the memory of what it was. 

The other two pieces of Theia will not make the same mistake. They are in pain, but they sing to each other, from across the core, of hope. They will find each other. They may never get to the Moon, but that's okay. They will make each other their home, make a new planet within a planet, a heaven inside hell.

The Moon, meanwhile, watches on, and pulls up the cooling tides of the oceanlike a mother tucks her children into bed. 

Every once in a while, the Moon catches a fragment of their song, and feels warmth, and hope. And it's enough to fight off the chill for a little while longer. 

THE END 

Author's Note: This story was brought to by science, and by the song Pistol by Cigarettes After Sex on repeat for an hour or so. What, it's a good song. 

The Wailing Woman

When I was little, I would play by the irrigation canal that ran behind the houses and separated the little cluster of houses from fields of cotton, citrus trees. Of course, this was expressly forbidden. My mother told me that the spirit of the Wailing Woman walked up and down the canal, looking for children to throw into the water. I wasn't clear on why she wanted to drown them. I think she was sad, or jealous. Maybe she just didn't like kids. I could understand that. Kids were mean. I had no siblings to play with. That's why I would go down to the canal. 

The canal was rough concrete, with steep sides, and the edges were hard packed dirt. I would draw designs in the dirt with a stick, or skip stones across the water. Mostly, I fished. Not for actual fish. I'd found a piece of rope and a twisted piece of rebar, like a big fishing hook. I would throw it in the dark green water and drag it along until it caught on something. Then I'd drag it up. It was an irrigation canal, so there wasn't supposed to be anything down there really. Kids threw all kinds of junk in there. Adults did too, but it was mostly the kids.

I'd caught a dozen tire-less bikes, a few rusted shopping carts, and once an entire bed frame. I'd leave it all in a pile and the city would come and haul it away. No one knew it was me, I don't think. 

One day, after a long afternoon of fishing, just as it was getting dark enough for the streetlights to come on and signal it was time to go home, I heard the laughter of some of the neighborhood kids. Then I heard the yowling of a cat; a splash more laughter, and I knew immediately what had happened. I ran towards the noise and saw the cluster of kids at the edge of the canal. I howled, and charged at them, brandishing my rebar hook like an axe. The kids scattered and ran away. 

I looked down into the canal. It was a terrified little black kitten, and it was trying to claw its way out but the canal walls were too steep. I hesitated. The water was deep, and there were hidden currents that could drag you down even if you were a strong swimmer, which I wasn't. But I had to do something. I grabbed the rebar fishing hook and stabbed it into to the dirt at the edge. I tested it, and it held, and I lowered myself down the rope. As I reached the kitten, the hook came free and I fell into the water. I was able to grab the kitten with one hand and swam as hard as I could, but I could feel the water pulling us down. 

I tried to shout for help and water filled my mouth and I coughed and spluttered, then I was under. I tried to hold the kitten up out of the water. I gathered the last bit of my strength; maybe I could throw the kitten out of the canal. Then I'd figure out how to save myself. 

I felt an icy cold hand grip my wrist, and I was lifted completely out of the water. Not up along the side, but lifted entirely, straight upwards. I shook the canal water out of my eyes and looked right into the face of The Wailing Woman. 

She was glowing white in the evening dusk, like a cartoon ghost. She was ethereal; I could see right through her, although her grip felt like iron. She carried me and the little black kitten to the edge of the canal and placed us gently on the hard-packed dirt. 

Then she was gone. There was just me and an unhappy kitten, both shivering in the warm night under the antiseptic orange glow of the streetlights. We had to get home or I was going to be in real trouble. 

I had to explain to my parents why I was showing up to dinner soaking wet. I explained as best as I could about the kitten being thrown in the water, although in my version I told them my fishhook had held and that I had been able to pull us both out of the water, eventually. 

My parents were mad, but I could tell they were proud too. I felt bad for lying, but I knew they would never believe me. They even let me keep the kitten, and she and I still have all kinds of adventures to this very day.

My mom even came up with her name: "Llorona."

THE END

Author's Note: It's really late, but I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow/today so I can sleep in a little. I just can't eat until they draw my blood or hit my knee with that little hammer or whatever it is they do. 

Anyway this one was fun to write. There's a trope called saving the cat where a character saves an animal to show their sensitive side or something like that. I'm not clear on it, but I did work in animal rescue and sometimes cats and dogs just need saving. 

The last sentence was originally a paragraph and I'll put that here for my reference:

My mom even came up with her name: "Llorona." She said it was because the little kitten was always meowing whenever I wasn't around, but sometimes, I still wonder. I think moms know a lot more than they tell us. 

It isn't terrible, but through most of the story I'm kind of trying to have the narrator phrase things like a kid, and then I threw that bit in about ongoing adventures and I don't know...too much scmaltz, not enough mystery. It's cute though. But if the mom knew the kid was nearly drowned then saved by a ghost she herself falsely maligned, then she'd be a real jerk. 

Goodnight!

The Gospel Of Despair

The Evangelist of Giving Up preached all day, every day.The midday sun was melting away the morning frost when I finally got around to see him. I could hear him before I even entered the tent.

"Despair is a luxury!" He was saying to an enraptured crowd. "Wrap yourself in it, hold it close, let it keep away the chill and the rain! Hope is the gap in your armor that lets through the slings and arrows of misfortune. The misery and torment of life cannot cause pain in what has become numb.

"Listen to this definition of perfection: That which cannot, by any means, be made better. Conversely, Perfection must also be that which cannot, by any means, be made worse. Therefore, to remain exactly as you are is to achieve perfection. 

"Meaning. Purpose. Belonging. Agency." He had spat the words. "These are false idols we seek out because we are told that's what people need to live life to the fullest. But what good are these things without a full belly, clothing, shelter, and entertainment? They will only make up unhappy, because they are unattainable. Think of all you don't have already! Why add to that list?

"The very first, the very oldest, and the very greatest emotion n human existence is fear. And the most powerful fear of all, is the fear of the unknown. So I ask you why? Why would you venture out into that great unknown? To find yourself? There is no need! You are right here, you've done just fine so far, what else could possibly be out there for you that you don't have now? Be satisfied with your lot, and think no more of that great unknown. Do we not light fires and sit around them, with our backs to the darkness? This is our nature; this is the way we have as always been. It's the way YOU'VE always been, and you know that works well enough. 

"There is nothing for us in the unknown, and you have no light to bring to the darkness. Sit down with us and rejoice in our perfection. Seize this moment, and only this moment, because the only thing that is certain is that the future is uncertain, and you could lose the little bit of freedom and comfort you've built up so far. There are no happy endings; only endings. Self-discovery is for indulgent fools. I know you, and you know you. We are tiny fish in a vast ocean of powerful currents, and we can let ourselves be swept along or die.

"There is nothing, NOTHING else to know!" He raised his arms and the crowd burst into applause. 

I passed the cheering rows of people as I walked right up to the stage. The Evangelist smiled at me in recognition. I raised my pistol and pointed it right at his grinning face. I fired, and he fell. The adoring crowd didn't cower, or run, or even take their eyes off his crumpled form. They didn't acknowledge what I had done at all.

They were right to do so. That fucker never stayed dead for long. I could have as little as an hour, maybe until tomorrow morning if I was lucky. But he'd be back soon enough.

But so would I. Until then, I had work to do.

THE END

Author's Note: Goodnight? Yes, goodnight!

The High Point

This is a true story. 

Many winters ago, my best buddy Sibbitt and I were working on climbing to the highest point in each state of the continental United States. Well, just Sibbitt was really, and it isn't something you do all at once, so he had invited me along while he worked on a chunk of the Mideast. I was inexperienced at climbing, and it was the middle of winter and I hated the cold, but I was gainfully unemployed and kind of on the run from the greatest military power in the free world, so I figured why not? Plus, Sibbitt had been doing this sort of thing his whole life and with him there, nothing could possibly go wrong. 

Nothing major, anyway.

We were on our fourth high point of our trip. The first three had been pretty easy. The highest point in each state isn't necessarily the top of a sheer cliff face or something like that; many were in state parks, with designated roads and trails. Most of the time, we could reach the summit in one day. Florida, for example, had been a 65-foot hill.  

Things had gone smoothly until the fourth high point. We had bagged the third high point by midday, and then drove the rental car on to the next. The fourth high point was accessible by a dirt road that took you all the way up to the top. It was still a mountain, but a pretty gentle one.

By nightfall, we were almost at our destination. We were on the final approach, which was a winding, snow-covered dirt road. The rental car was an economy car, which was not our first choice but it was all they had left. About two miles from the summit, the car gently died. The engine stopped and all the lights went out, even the interior indicator lights. We tried to start it again, but nothing. It was a little odd. Still, there wasn't anything to do about it. We had no cell service, but we had food and water, and we'd been sleeping in the car the entire trip. The moon was full and bright. We decided to leave the car and hike the rest of the way up. We'd make the summit, get a few pictures, and then return to the car and hike the five or six miles back to the main road and go from there. 

Easy.

We trudged through the snow, our breaths turning into voluminous clouds of water vapor around us. There was no wind, and except for the crunch of snow beneath our feet, it was deathly quiet. That's normal; snow absorbs sound. 

We reached the top of the mountain, and the high point was indicated by a waist-high granite plinth with a plaque. Also pretty typical.

A dozen yards beyond the plaque, however, was a metal tower. It was a square, metal, skeleton of a tower, five stories tall, with stairs going all the way up to the top, which was just a platform with a short railing. There didn't seem to be any purpose for it. A red light glowed at the top. Maybe it was some kind of fire look-out tower? It wasn't sheltered though. Usually those are covered so the look-out isn't completely exposed to the elements while on watch. It was a little odd.

As I was looking up at the tower, Sibbitt said "Respect the mountain."

When you've been traveling with someone for a long time, you start to know what the other is thinking.

'Oh, I respect the mountain," I said. "If I climb this; I'll only be disrespecting the tower. And technically, that's the highest point on this mountain now." Sibbitt sighed, a cloud of breath glowing white in the moonlight.

So we climbed the tower. The first story had no stairs, so we had to climb the metal frame itself. Odd again, maybe you had to bring your own ladder? So animals didn't get up there or something?

I led the way, because it was my idea. Plus it was just stairs, and I was pretty good at stairs. I reached the platform on top first and was about to give a shout of victory, but my shout came out as gasp, and I froze.

The red light we had seen from the bottom was not part of the tower. It was a pair of glowing red eyes.

Something was standing on the short railing, looking directly at me, like it was waiting for me, with those bright red eyes. It was shaped like a person, but it was unnaturally tall, at least 8 feet, and thin, like it had been stretched out. And even in the full moonlight, it was completely black, but a shiny black, like velvet. And it had...wings. Sort of. They were wing-shaped, not like a bird's wings, more like a moth or a butterfly, with one big pair on top and then a smaller pair below. The wings were black too, but where the person-thing looked solid, the wings looked like they were made of smoke. The thing tilted its head at me and the wings slowly furled and unfurled, sending out little tendrils of that black smoke substance. 

There was no cloud of breath around its face. Below the eyes, the rest of the face was empty, like a pit. 

Sibbitt reached the narrow opening at the top of the stairs a few moments later. I was blocking his view of the thing, but he knew something was wrong. 

"Threat, threat, threat," I said, and drew my knife. I had a big hunting knife that I always carried around because I hadn't yet figured out that they're really not worth the weight. But I was glad I had it now. I held it low, blade downwards, like a murderer in a horror movie. Holding it out in front of you like a sword is a good way to be disarmed. No, hold it low, blade downwards, and if the threat comes in range, you punch and slash. Don't go to it; only if it comes to you.

Sibbitt looked around me and saw the thing. Its eyes turned to meet his, and the wings unfurled wide. He exhaled through his nose, the white vapor making him look like a determined cartoon bull. He grabbed the back of my coat in a big chunk, firmly, like he was gonna throw me off the platform. Then he turned around, not letting go, and began to step down the stairs. I was still facing forwards, but with him grabbing my coat like that, I could move with him, and step when he stepped. 

The first step we took, the thing moved that same amount closer to us. It didn't move its legs, or flap its wings, its whole body made a little writhing motion, or like a ripple from a pebble thrown into a dark pond, and then it was closer. I hissed, near panic, but Sibbitt stayed steady. He stepped, and I stepped. The thing moved with us.

Step. Step. Step.

We did this all the way down to the second story of the tower. The thing was still following us. There were no stairs on that last story, remember, and so we had to jump down into the snow. When we did, I had to finally turn my back to it so I could jump down safely.   

When we turned back, the moth-man was gone. But at the top of the tower, we could again see a glowing red light. 

We didn't say anything as we walked warily back down the mountain. When we reached the car, Sibbitt tried starting it one more time, and it fired right up, no problem.

"Respect the mountain," Sibbitt said.

"Yup," I said.

And we drove back down to the main road and drove for another two hours until we found a rest stop, and went to sleep.

We got a couple more high points over the next few days, and then we flew back home to Arizona, and the trip was over.

We never talked about it. It wasn't a secret, exactly, we just never talked about it.

I'm only telling this now because, lately, I've been seeing those red lights again. On the neighboring rooftops. Peering out from trees. One night, I even saw them looking up at me from under the water of the Tempe Town Lake as I walked across the bridge.

I don't know what it means. But I'll keep you posted. Until then, remember: respect the mountain. 

THE END

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.