A Novel Experiment

2007-12-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

Chapter the 17th

In art there is beauty, to be assured. But there is beauty in things beyond humanity's primitive senses. Man's sense of athletics is based on what, evolutionarily, they found helpful to their survival and procreation. But I have superseded such trifling concerns. Once death has been out-striped, you realize anything may be beautiful, given the right perspective. Even death itself. The macabre holds so much potential.--Caravaggio

Sheri slumped against the wall. Her hand clutched the handbag in which the gun was hidden.
"Well, now. How did it go?" said her man of mysteries. He was sitting, stripped to the waist and back to her, in front of a bust of white clay that he had been working on. As he asked the question, he didn't bother to turn around.
"It's done," replied Sheri wearily.
"Excellent." He took a wooden tool and adjusted the indentation above the eyelid of the form. "No problems, my pet?"
"He... wouldn't shut up."
"That's David for you. A consummate man of words. Beautiful words, such sorrow poetically expressed towards the end of his career. A waste in the end."
Sheri was quite for a long time. After a while, her master said, "What troubles you? If you are to cry, do draw near."
Sheri tensed, hesitated a for bit then ran to her master, who turned with a preternatural quickness and spread his arms wide so that he was ready to embrace her in a cold yet tight embrace. Sheri began to sob. Michael said nothing, but after instead quietly and slowly licked her face. First the right cheek, then, tilting her neck with a large hand, the left. It felt natural. It felt profane. "Why? Why? Why?" Sheri sobbed.
"Why what, my dear?" he replied, eyes closed as if savoring her.
"Why did you make me do that?"
"Because I can. Because what can do, what one is capable of, one must do. You did what you had to because I required it."
"This... is... so..."
Michael put a finger to her lips, quieting her. His power over her was palpable. Sheri felt her will subsiding into his. "Yes. You feel it. Forget your morals. For that matter forget what it is to be human. You are becoming something quite different. You are becoming... something beautiful. You have to trust me." His hand, still about her collar bone, tensed a little. A hand that could crush her.

New novel taste

2006-08-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not abandoning the current project; the lines for this one came to me as I tried to sleep and I decided to type them before they faded. Maybe you will see more of this story on some later date. As of now, it took a lovecraftian direction I didn't quite expect.
--
“I’m Stevie Wonder. Who the hell are you?”
These words, uttered by someone who was obviously not Stevie Wonder may be a good place to start this story. They may not. But they always struck me as indicative of the tone of the villain of this piece of fiction. The critics will probably have a field day with it. Not to mention that I shouldn’t be addressing the reader personally, as I will be playing your stereo-typical 3rd person omniscient narrator, as is so common in thriller novels these days. Hi, how are ya? But even the great Steven King broke the forth wall upon occasion. The critics didn’t like him either. But the general populace didn’t put stock in critics, and neither do I. So if I get a bad review in the New York Times, well, I’ll take it as a badge of honor. And they’ll probably quote a line from this paragraph when they do it.
But back to the line in question. Now “Stevie Wonder” became known, despite his sardonic line, as “the stranger” in Beckford Basin. I was not there at the time he uttered this smart-ass answer to the sheriff on that fateful morning. I was out at the watchtower, heroically keeping a look out for signs of forest fires. As is not unusual, there was a heavy drought going on in Montana, and a strict ban on outdoor fires was in place. From my watchtower I watched, or slept, or maybe even thought of my next best-seller, the one that would sell a million copies and make me rich. In case you haven’t noticed by evidence of the tome you now hold in your hands, I fancy myself a man of words, so being a ranger is the perfect occupation. Lots of downtime. The truth is I don’t remember what I was doing that evening. I should remember ever detail from around that time, but I don’t.
So I want to get it out first off. This is a work of fiction. Well, I’m saying that to be safe, but let me explain why. Firstly, as I just said, I don’t remember the details too well in some spots. I am in the school of philosophy that believes that reality is dictated by what we think we perceive anyway, so if I remember facts a certain way, well why not put them down in that fashion. Don’t think I’m an unreliable narrator though; I did my research, and asked my fellow survivors and what you read now is what I have been able to collect from the group. So yes, some facts are guessed at, half-remembered, and conjectured.
Second off, I think this story would have been a little… well, not boring, but difficult to plod through if not for some literary embellishments. So I paraphrased a few times, or did some creative writing in my quest to play a halfway-decent omniscient narrator. Sometimes I recreate events I was never a part of, even taking the liberty of stepping into people’s heads. Plus, I gotta stay true to my narrative roots. I am a novelist, though you may not have heard of my work. But if you’ve got a few bucks, why not pop into a hobby or used bookstore and spend them on Elrilion and the Caves of the Vanadu? It’s a good read about the adventures of a swashbuckling elf that I might as well admit was heavily based off of myself, but it never got much airplay if you know what I mean. Anyways, yes, some paraphrasing and turns of phrase to make the story sound better and satisfy my inner artist.
Finally, due to the exclusiveness of our group (the survivors), the lack of evidence, and the mysterious nature of the incident, our stories have come into question. The CDC has sequestered Beckford ever since the incident, and I and the others have been in quarantine for longer than I care to imagine. We’re out now, but still quite isolated in a way. We’ve been poked, prodded, and interrogated. I don’t know what the other’s said, but the story I gave has them convinced (at least that was the story I was told) that I was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress. In fact I write these words from a nice, quiet place they found for me. It’s along the lines of a hospital, but they won’t let the residents check out if you catch my drift.
But the public consciousness is a fickle thing. People have lost interest in what happened in Beckford. The official story is a neural pathogen that was spread like rabies. My holders have forgotten why exactly it is I am here. I think I could even get out, if I played in, gave up my story as the fiction that I am presenting it as to you, the reader. But I’ll be honest. The world is a lot safer behind these walls. The things we survived were horrible, and sometimes I wake up at night in a cold sweat and cry and moan until the sun comes up. Maybe I belong here. It’s safe, and quiet, and a man can write. Maybe a man can even publish again. I certainly hope this story doesn’t fail to reach press or fall into obscurity. Because the world needs to know the truth. About what happened in Beckford. About what is out there. And why I seek the sanctuary of my pills and starched white uniforms. Why I would rather be inside that back out there in the wilderness. This place is asylum in both senses of the word to me.
My name is Wyatt. This is the story of the survivors of Beckford Basin, and how all the residents of the town were massacred. And events got rolling the day the stranger came into town.

Chapter 16

2006-08-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Chapter the sixteenth: Forgotten friends

“Trent is a cool dude. But sometimes I worry, you know? I mean, it seems like sometimes he feels like he has to save the world. I think he got that from his mom, or maybe from his dad not being around… I don’t know, some kind of Freudian thing where he has to prove himself and take of everything-- psychology class was at eight in the morning so I didn’t really ever go. Anyways, yeah, Trent is a stand up guy, but I worry about him.”--Jared Bodaker

“I’m sorry, the crazy that came out of your mouth just then was so inane a trigger--no doubt developed somewhere along the line of man’s evolution for just this situation-- seems to have gone off in my brain, thus rendering comprehension of said crazy asunder, and I of course have to say, ‘come again?’” Jared folded his arms as he finished saying this.

“Look, all I’m sayin’ is you may have to come terms with the fact that we may have to put your friend down,” Will said in as un-aggravating a tone as he could manage. “The bloke you knew may well be long gone.”

Marcus jumped into the conversation, “I hate to be realistic, but these things are called spook hunts for a reason. I still remain unconvinced that anything supernatural has occurred to our friend, let alone the whole world.” Mark turned back around and faced out the windshield.

Will leaned forward. “This is the thing about normals that gets me--”

“Normals?” said Jared with a half grin.

“You all try so desperately to believe that the world isn’t falling to shambles around you. It is. We live in chaotic times, war-filled times, and dare I say it? Why yes Will, you do--we live in strange times. The fortune cookie has been split.” He made a breaking action.

“I totally don’t get that reference.” Mark took a sip of coffee.

“It’s a saying attributed to the Chinese. ‘May you live in… ’ Look what I’m trying to get at is we don’t know what has happened to your friend. We are vastly aware of our ignorance. But I think you should prepare for the worst, cause what little strangeness you’ve seen, you may think it’s nothing, and I can even see you two rationalizing it, but the fact is, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is a world out there, a shadow world, and it is very jealous of this world. The shadow world would love to eclipse our own. And some day, I fear it will. So… just… ya know, be prepared.”

Jared sighed. “Look, Will, we appreciate that you are… special. But maybe we shouldn’t have invited you along. If it’s so dangerous, why are you here?”

Will looked Jared squarely in the eyes. “I’m here because I’ve been given a gift. I see the shadows creeping, biding their time. I help because no one else can. When you’ve wrestled a Sumatran rat-monkey to the ground, or swapped blood with an ectoplasmic entity to seal a peace pact, or sung a baby to sleep that was never really born… well, maybe you’ll understand.”

Jared and Marcus both utter an exacerbated “Whaaaaaat?”

Before Will could elaborate further on his perspective, the passenger door opened, and Sheila plopped down on the seat. She seemed a bit out of breath as she said, “Go. Start. Now.”

Marcus started the engine. Jared leaned forward from the back seat. “What’s wrong?”

“I… it’s hard to explain…” Sheila mumbled.

“Oh, man, I sense them.” Will said, looking around excitedly. “Bloody hell, they’re close.”

Marcus pulled the car into traffic and the group was in motion.

“Right…” Jared deadpanned, “I sense that I am going to ask you for an explanation.”

“Were there suspicious people about?” Will asked Sheila.

“I don’t know. It was fine in the beginning. I got what we needed. But as I was waiting, there were… looks. I don’t know. The atmosphere of the place changed and everyone seemed… predatory. It was the same feeling from when I saw that thing at the hospital.”

“Relax,” assured Marcus. “We are far from the blood bank now. So you got the blood records? All three people?”

Sheila flipped through the manila envelopes in her hands. “Yes. I’ve got names. I guess we can try the phone book…”

“Guys,” interjected Will. “We have caught something’s attention.” In response to the other passenger’s questioning glances, he said simply, “We are being followed.”

Jared leaned forward. “Deploy the oil, Marcus.”

“What are you talking about?” Marcus scoffed.

“Oh right, we don’t have a spy car because we are not in a fictional universe, but in fact on Earth. My mistake.”

“Speak for yourself,” laughed Will. “Okay, well, I think we are being followed by the Impala two cars back. Those are low men. Mark my words, I can sense it! Now, I suggest you make like Hollywood and lose them.”

Marcus stepped up the speed. “I’d prefer to skip this part all together and get to the next scene, if it’s all the same to you! Hold on.”

Much to their chagrin, the four found that reality, as reality often does, ignored their desire for a clean transition or unseen resolution. The Impala was not easy to shake. Marcus weaved in between cars with measured abandon. Each time he cut in front of a car swiftly yet closely, Sheila sucked in a breath loudly and sibilantly.

Jared, with an uncharacteristic expression of sincerity on his face, gently put a hand on Sheila’s shoulder. “It will be alright. We can take who ever these guys are. Right, Marcus? Right Will.”

Will seemed to be chanting inaudibly. Marcus paused and curtly said, “Right.”

Shelia put her hand over Jared’s. “What have you gotten me into, you idiot,” she said with a wan smile.

“Sorry. Our friend was in trouble an--”

With a lurch they all were shoved forward. The Impala’s driver was not content to wait it seemed.

Marcus uttered a loud profanity. “They. Hit. My. CAR!” Within a short span of time, they were rammed again, from the direction of the back left tire.

Perhaps influenced by their drifting orientation, Marcus chose to turn the car abruptly into an alley. It turned out to be a bad stroke of luck, as it soon became evident that their progress was blocked by a dumpster sitting in front of a fence. Marcus stopped harshly. The wheels let out a cry.

“Maybe I can ram my way through!” Marcus propositioned.

“No,” Will responded calmly. They’ve won this round. Best now to cooperate. If we piss them off… we’ll be dead.” The others looked at Will with fear and trepidation, expectation something more of an assurance. Will, with a weary tone, said simply, “Cut the engine, Marcus. We’re not going anywhere.”

***

Low men, Will thought to himself. He had encountered the like before. The type of people the supernatural types used. The low men were flickering shadows, human offshoots of darker entities. Their very souls corrupted by service their benefactors. And the worst part was Will pitied them sometimes, they always got the raw end of the deal. Evil is not a generous master, and always eager to pull on the choke-chain. This time, the low men seemed to be a pair. One big, obviously the muscle of the two, and one smaller.

The small one, slightly emaciated with huge cheekbones, slicked back widow’s peaked hair, and sunken, sharp eyes, spoke. “What you think you know. It’s not what you know.” His thin mustache twitched under his nose in what looked like a tick. Or a rat sniffing. You’re messing with a world that you are never gonna understand. In fact, elaboration on the subject may well cause you to vacate your bowels with the force and violence of a car wreck. Right, Abe?”

The bigger one, a man that could easily double as a bouncer, yet looked to have some sharp cunning underneath his flat face, replied. “That’s right, Cain.” He eyed the group with a fierceness that necessitated they avoid his gaze. You ain’t nothing’. He is insanity. It makes my head hurt to think of him. Humans--”

“So we’ll spare you troglodytes the details.” Cain interjected. “What were you checking on?”

“What are you talking about?” Stammered Marcus.

Cain simply glanced at Abe as if to say, “Well?”

Abe took it as a cue to punch Marcus suddenly and squarely in the face. The impact was a swift and somewhat wet sounding one. With a mutter of surprise, Marcus brought his hands to his face and dropped to one knee. Blood issued at an alarming speed and alacrity from his nose soon after.

“Hey…” said Jared in astonishment. Shelia quickly glided down to check his condition. Will tightened his jaw.

Cain continued, “You see, our employer has bestowed on us, certain… endowments which facilitate and expedite our ability to not only keep tabs on when people are snooping where they shouldn’t, but also discern truth from excrement. So don’t lie to us. Now let’s see…” Cain put his hands to his temples, as if in thought. “Ah, there is information. You took information. Of course it doesn’t take a Da Vinci-sized intellect to figure out that much. But yes, I sense it. You have received information… you don’t comprehend it yet… But!” He spun towards Will. “There is something about you. The sort of smugness that can only come from knowing… That can’t be. What are you…?”

Abe stepped forward, as if incensed. Cain held him back absentmindedly. “I don’t know what you are. You don’t smell human, and yet you don’t smell dangerous either…”

“Oh, I beg to differ mate.” Will could not help himself. Some quips are just too central to one’s character to ignore.

The one called Cain arched his eyebrows for a second. He turned to the one called Abe and made a sweeping, palm up gesture as if directing a couple to their seats in a restaurant. He looks like a concierge with that hair and mustache-- Will started to think. Abe was on him, and he didn’t have the usual cool for his inner witty banner.

After a very long interval that may have in fact been relatively short, Will slumped against his aggressor; not having the strength to do much else. Cain idled up to Will, and spoke low and quietly, “You may think you know what we are. Maybe you have a glimpse. But I promise you, you have no idea what he is. Go back to you’re junior Ghostbusters’ headquarters, spooky kid. We prefer not to kill, because it makes so much hassle… but you try our patience.”

With that said, he briskly walked to the group’s car and opened the back seat. He pulled out the manila envelope and dramatically held it aloft in his left hand to show it’s importance to the members of the group that were still in shape to pay attention. “You kids are playing with fire. I bet you know what happens when you do that. Your mother’s must have told you.” Somehow, the file caught fire. Cain’s view stayed intently on the group. “Don’t let us catch you again.” He dropped the file, burned beyond all recognition, in a trashcan.

Without a word, Abe threw Will down. The throw knocked Will’s head against a brick wall behind him. He went fuzzy, barely noticing the two shadowy figures getting into the car and speeding off.

Sheila, ever the nurse, was soon applying first aid to Marcus and Will.

“All that, and we lost the file.” Said Jared in a dismayed tone.

“No, we didn’t,” said Sheila as she helped Will up. “The papers that were in that file are underneath the floor cover. I took them out and replaced them with something else. He burned the wrong thing.” She couldn’t help but smile triumphantly. Jared laughed in shock.

“Ach. Now we’re doubly dead,” Moaned Will. “They’ll probably figure it out somehow. In any case, I think we’re marked.”

“What do you mean,” asked Jared wearily.

“I mean the dark world has noticed us. We’re tainted. More tainted I should say; you lot reek of your vampy friend and me… Like big blips on their radars. Mark the words of this keen Englishman: If not those two goons, something else will come after us soon.

The change announcement

2006-04-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

Chapter 15 is updated. I'm going to change my strategy, and will no longer be posting incompleted chapters that get finished later. Instead, I will try to write a little each day, and publish each chapter as it concludes. Less updates from here, so you might want to get the RSS feed if you are one of my two readers.

Ch15 update

2006-02-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

Trent's first (concious) feeding.

2006-02-07T05:29:00.000-08:00

The adventures of David have been updated in Ch 15

Seriously, world

2006-02-06T06:07:00.000-08:00

you can't expect me to write on mondays. je suit le mort

2006-02-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

Ch 15 updated a good smidgen. I'm thinking of writing while at work, seeing as how I have free time there.
--
Ever heard of Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon? It is a an odd and hard to understand novel that is nonetheless considered among Pynchon's most accessable. Well, someone went and made an illustration inspired by every last page of the novel. Cool project. Link.

CH 15

2006-01-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Chapter the 15^th: Dangerous Liaisons

You approach perfection. I shall take you under my wing so that your beauty may be preserved forever--Carravagio

David stared at Sheri as if she were a child and he the disappointed father. “Well? Will you kill me, or are you not that far gone just yet?”

“I…” Sheri tensed, but it was so hard to pull the trigger. Just shoot him. He’s hideous. How could my Mikey ever stand someone that looked like that?

David turned his back to her and started to unload his groceries onto the table. “How did he find you? Are you a poet, like me, or perhaps an artist? Or maybe just a girl who’s face appealed to his fickle tastes this week?”

“Shut up.” She narrowed her eyes.

“It’s scary, isn’t it? To realize that you are not the first one.”

“What are you talking about?”

He cleared his throat, and slowly sat down. “My names David. What’s yours?”

“I don’t have to tell you that!”

He sighed. “I was his muse once. That’s what he told me. I thought he would show me heaven. Now I live in hell.” He rested his head on his hand. “Well, if you’re not gonna shoot me right off, maybe you’d like to hear the story. Consider it my confession. Everyone needs to give a confession before they die, right?”

“What did you do with him? Why does he want you dead?” Sheri couldn’t help her curiosity.

“I loved him. That was my first crime.”

***

“Do you come here often?” Trent winced at the cliché nature of his own line.

The girl he was talking seemed enthused regardless of this. “Here? A couple of times. The Masquerade is a cool club!” She giggled.

“Hey… would you like a drink?”

“Got one, slick.” She laughed and held up her drink to point out what he had so obviously overlooked.

“Oh, right. Um, but later…” Seduction was proving to be something that was a bit odd to Trent, who was used to casual relationships. That and the added pressure of what he was thinking of doing if he got alone with this girl… This is crazy. I shouldn’t be doing this. If I do this, there is no going back. I can’t reclaim my innocence.

“How about now we have some fun?”

“Huh?” She had startled him out of his thoughts. He didn’t realize that she was being subliminally coerced by his mere presence.

The corners of her mouth turned up as if full of private jokes. “I like you. Maybe I’m drunker than I thought, but there is something…” She slowly scanned over his body with her eyes. “….About you. I just can’t help myself.”

Trent glanced to the bar, where Belle was watching him with her ever-predatory eyes. She gave no signal that would help him. Did he want to become like her? A strange and alien thing that viewed humans as just another means to an end? If I do this… I’ll become everything I stand against…

The girl pouted her lips--oh what soft lips they must be!--and whined, “Come on. Don’t you like me?”

“You’re lovely! Um, I just don’t know if I should… uh…” Oh, how I want this. To taste what’s inside of her would be such ecstasy.

“Come on, don’t be such a good boy!” She pulled in close, gazing at him intently. “I know there is a beast inside of you. Let it out…” She drew near to his ear and whispered a request. Her breath was warm and pleasant inside his ear.

“Okay. Let’s go outside.” he said in resignation. This was inevitable. This was natural. Who wouldn’t do it?

He led her by the hand out of the club and into the very same alleyway that he had been shot in not too long ago. It seemed appropriate. This is where his horrid genesis had started; this is where he would take it to the next level.

***

“I used write poems.” Began Daniel. “I couldn’t stop. If I had a minute, I would pull out my notebook and jot down a verse or two.” He patted his shirt pocket, as if out of habit or memory, but Suzan did not perceive any notebook in that pocket now. “If I didn’t have my notebook, I would grab whatever scrap was necessary. I have many ornate boxes full of fragments of poems. Little rhymes. Iambic arrangements. Written on paper. On vellum. On grocery bags. On shop receipts. On the unused sides of valentines cards. On Japanese pulpy-paper. On one dollar bills. On 100% recycled and on expensive, watermarked paper. There was even a clothes label or two. All in a very small script.

“It was… how I breathed. How I recorded my life. How I analyzed it. Ironically, viewing life through the lens of poetry serves to distance one’s self from it. You think of things in terms of beatitudes, of metaphor, of analogy and hyperbole. You think about what it signifies, and how to beautifully express that. Towards the end of my… natural life, I was so… jilted by my own perspective. The meaning in life had been obscured by my journey to find meaning. I was so lost. That’s when my angel came.

“I was at a gallery, very exclusive. I was there because of a friend that has very good connections. I haven’t seen him nor anyone else from my old life in months. Are you going to point the gun at me the whole time?”

Sheri tensed a little. Then, without a word she slowly let it down. She realized that she really had to use the bathroom. How long had she been waiting in that closet?

David continued. “So I was at the gallery. I it was a small gathering. I remember the smell of saffron, the strange Germanic curator, and a conversation about Milton’s Paradise lost. I remember the clinical way in which I filed these bits of information in the back of my mind. I remember thinking about how I would remember it; meta-cognition, like looking down a set of infinite reflections between two mirrors. I was contemplating the secret lives that might be lived by the people that are just out of view in such a mirror setup that one might look into when he came into the room. The Artist. The whispered legend that was on everyone’s thoughts, just below the surface. When I spied him it was like--”

“All these unconscious thoughts and clues came together for you, and your realized at that moment how important he was?” Sheri saw that David was quite startled by this, her interjection into his monologue.

“Why, yes. That’s more or less my thoughts exactly. I was going to use a fancy metaphor about how it was like ice-flows coming together in some sort of odd reversal of time that was in actuality like memories you didn’t know you had solidifying and convalescing… but you put it much more succinctly. Are you a wordsmith as well?”

“I’m an artist.”

“Well, anyway. There he was. Many people use the phrase ‘larger than life’ when they have the courage to mention him within the private sanctity of their own homes. But I found then, and confirmed later, that he wasn’t larger than life; he was its antithesis. He was pure cunning, enshrouding a core of innocuous-seeming chaos. Did he give you the entropy speech. I bet he did. You would think an immortal entity such as him would get bored of telling the same stories time and again. But no. No they relish reshaping the world and history with their words. He who writes history has the true power. Why else do you think people would be so interested in disproving the holocaust or other historical atrocities? But I digress. I meant to warn whoever I was talking to--given the near eventuality that I told this story--I meant to tell from the beginning that I get off on a lot of tangents. Life is chaotic and so are my thoughts. I think that’s why Michael took such a liking to me. He recognized that I loved chaos. One of the first things he ever said to me was that he would remove my ever-present boredom.

“I mentioned my detached, albeit poetic view of the world. I believe now that I was probably depressed, and had been for a long time, but I failed to admit this to myself because it seemed such an utterly droll cliché. Don’t you think so? Well anyways, long story short, once upon a time, there was a poet, and there was a vampire. And let’s not get confused, this was not the vampire of the stories--one that fears garlic and sunlight-- but a vampire in the purest sense of the word. He feeds off people.” Sheri raised the gun again. “Easy. I may sound bitter. Well really, I am, but I still love him. You see, that is the most horrid part of what he did to me. He’s like a drug, and even now I‘d love a taste.”

For a long time he and she were silent. Finally, she lowered the gun again. “I love him more,” Sheri whispered at last.

David smiled a weak, knowing smile.

***

Trent wretched, propping himself against the grimy brick wall of the alleyway. Belle merely observed the scene with a clinical detachment. Between gasps, Trent uttered, “I couldn’t help myself.”

“She’s dying,” Belle proclaimed as simply as one could.

Trent looked up from the blood--how much had he regurgitated? Gross as it was, he felt the urge to lap up what lay before him-- in horror. “What?!”

“You got greedy, Trent. The darkness overtook you, didn’t it? Well, it happens.”

Trent staggered to his feet. I couldn’t stop! I wanted to do just a little… She was so beautiful, but not in a sexual way. I-I wanted to consume her! I--” Trent dropped to his knees to observe the woman he had seduced. She was breathing shallowly, and barely conscious. As he approached, she glanced at him with a hurt and confused expression. “I was set, I was going in. I was only going to drink a little. Then I was in Rome again, and I was bleeding a prostitute; not knowing why. But I relished in it. I relished it…” Trent broke into sobs, and blood spilled from his eyes and mouth in a spectacularly pitiful manner. He took the girl’s head in to hands, gently. “Help me! Someone! Help--” He couldn’t continue, the sobbing overtook him.

Belle folded her arms and waited.

After some time Trent’s sobbing subsided. “She’s dead. I can’t hear her heart anymore. I killed her. There is no doubt now. I am a monster.”

Belle knelt down and for the first time deigned to touch Trent, albeit lightly, on the shoulder. Trent looked up to see an expression not unlike sympathy on her face. “Yes, you killed her,” she stated. “But you’re not the only one. They killed her too. The ones that made you this way. Their evil was in you. They forced you. The hatred; the despair that you feel right now… turn it outward. Focus it on them. On bringing them down. Trent, kill the ones that did this to you; make things right. Don’t let this woman’s death have been in vain.”

Trent looked back down upon the girl. He tried to brush the blood-matted hair off her forehead. “You’re right. I have to get him. I have to get them all. It starts with the man that shot me. He’ll be the first. I will not rest until I’ve bled them all dry.”

He stood up. “You know, when I was a kid… I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman. I wanted to be one of those people I could see on tv, helping starving children in third world countries. Guess my mother rubbed off on me that way. Anyways. Well… I guess that dream is over now, huh? I mean, I wouldn’t trust me around children now, or any humans for that matter. I’m not human anymore. I’m a monster.”

“Yes,” confirmed Belle. “Exactly. Best to accept it. Embrace it. Life is anything but beautiful. I’m glad you were able to realize this at long last.”

“Well…” Trent let his senses flow out, absorbing the scene. His perceptions expanded beyond what humans could imagine. The blood. It was everywhere. Yes, he was gone; he was going to savor it. And he was going to get the man that had shot him. “Let the monsters deal with the monsters then.”

***

“So where was I in my little fairy tale? Ah yes, eternal love.” David suddenly erupted into coughing, startling Sheri. “Oh… aha… sorry. My health just isn’t what it used to be. Sometimes it itches profusely,” David pointed to the mangles part of his face. “As if it is really the human remnant of me, and I the freak, and it wants to get away from me. Well… that is what I deserve I suppose. No, to be honest it’s the least of what I deserve. Anyways, to cut the fairy tale short, I soon realized I would do anything for this… being we know as Michelangelo or Caravaggio or whatever he would like to believe he is. That anything included killing. I even hoped he would give me his dark, vampiric condition. In truth, I don’t think he ever intended to do such a thing for me, but the mere hint of a promise was enough for me. So the time came. He asked, and I did ever so willingly….”

David choked up for a good thirty seconds, covering his face with his hands. Sheri waited, her heart full of doubt. Don’t believe him. These are all lies! she tried to tell herself.

“And you know how he rewarded me?” David made a circular gesture about his face. “He gave me this… he said he wanted to sculpt my flesh… to make me into something the world had never seen before. To reward me for… for taking that model’s life. He… He took parts of me… Took them away and he put them--” At this point , Sheri startled David with a sudden scream.

“Ahh! Huge!” She yelled, pointing her gun at the floor to the right of the table.

David realized that it was a huge cockroach that was alarming her. “What? The bug?

“I hate bugs!” Sheri pulled the trigger, blasting a small hole in the floor, and missing the bug quite completely.

“Whoa!” David started to stand, his survival instinct activated. Sheri pulled another shot.

Sudden warmth made David realize that something was very wrong. But this whole situation is very wrong, isn’t it. “Sheri,” He panted, slouching back into his chair. “You have to calm down…”

“Don’t tell me--”

“Sheri, listen. I’m hurt bad. You need to call the doctor, or I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.” The wound was growing in heat. He fumbled blindly to try and stanch the flow of blood, not daring to take his eyes off Sheri. “Sheri, listen to me. I am a wretched being, I deserve to die. I’ve realized that. But you know why I haven’t taken my own life at this point? Sheri… No one is beyond redemption. We are still humans, capable of doing good in this world. We can still… You can still walk away. You don’t have to do this. No one is beyond sav--”

One more shot rang out in that vacuous and dirty apartment. David’s head slouched down, the new wound’s sanguine emission running out his forehead and over his facial deformity. The sign of his sin, baptized in his own blood.

Family guy: How's that novel coming?

2006-01-20T05:29:00.000-08:00

Chapter 14 updated for the last time. Ch 15 naturally following.
--
Couldn't help but laugh at this family guy clip; it reminds me of myself.

How to write good

2006-01-17T05:52:00.000-08:00

Ch 14 updated
--
I share with you now a small excerpt from this old national lampoon article. I highly recommend the whole thing:

How to Write Good
by Michael O'Donoghue

"If I could not earn a penny from my writing, I would earn my livelihood at something else and continue to write at night."
Irving Wallace

"Financial success is not the only reward of good writing.
It brings to the writer rich inner satisfaction as well."
Eliot Foster, Director of Admissions, Famous Writers School

Introduction
A long time ago, when I was just starting out, I had the good fortune to meet the great Willa Cather. With all the audacity of youth, I asked her what advice she would give the would-be-writer and she replied:

"My advice to the would-be-writer is that he start slowly, writing short undemanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books, crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he's ready, move up to the more challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays, pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes, broadsides, and papal bulls.
And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier than the plow-share. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I'm concerned, that gives them the edge right there."

She went on to tell me many things, both wonderful and wise, probing the secrets of her craft, showing how to weave a net of words and capture the fleeting stuff of life. Unfortunately, I've forgotten every bit of it.

I do recall, however, her answer when I asked "If you could only give me one rule to follow, what would it be?" She paused, looked down for a moment and finally said, "Never wear brown shoes with a blue suit."

There's very little I could add to that except to say "Go to it and good luck!"
Lesson 1 - The Grabber
The "grabber" is the initial sentence of a novel or short story designed to jolt the reader out of his complacency and arouse his curiosity, forcing him to press onward. For example:

"It's no good, Alex," she rejoined, "Even if I did love you, my father would never let me marry an alligator."

The reader is immediately bombarded with questions, questions such as "Why won't her father let her marry an alligator?" "How come she doesn't love him?" and "Can she learn to love him in time?" The reader's interest has been "grabbed"!

Just so there'll be no misunderstanding about grabbers, I've listed a few more below:

"I'm afraid you're too late," sneered Zoltan. "The fireplace has already flown south for the winter!"

Sylvia lay sick among the silverware...

Chinese vegetables mean more to me than you do, my dear," Charles remarked to his wife, adding injury to insult by lodging a grapefruit knife in her neck.

"I have in my hands," Professor Willobee exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning fog that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished historian bursting into my State Department office at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that Abraham Lincoln was a homo!"

These are just a handful of the possible grabbers. Needless to say, there are thousands of others, but if you fail to think of them, feel free to use any or all of these.

Chapter the fourteenth: Errant minions and minions performing errands

2006-01-02T07:16:00.001-08:00

“How would I describe him? Oh, it’s so hard… he is beauty, art, perfection, the ne plus ultra… He is light in a dark world. I would do anything for him. I would die for him… or maybe I already did? -- Sheri Derider

Sheri had lost track of time. As she modeled for Beautiful he had done incredible things with the canvas, but he did them slowly, deliberately, and with great consideration. He said that over the years his art had become increasingly slower to make, as his tastes grew more exacting. He said many things. Sheri didn’t care, as long as he kept talking with that rich voice of his; his presence was the sweetest opiate, and his hands…

Sheri coughed. It was cold in this place. She didn’t want to be here, but that is what Beautiful wanted, and if it made him happy, she was happy. She glanced at her watch, and then went back to her fantasy. Those hands. How she loved when he deigned to caress her with them, which seemed much too infrequently. She even loved when those hands were rough. When they gripped so tightly that they bruised.

She knew that she had displeased him. She knew she deserved the bruise that now adorned her shoulder. How frightened she had been as he moved faster than she could see--his chest was heaving, she had time to notice that--gripped her with one hand, and thrown her like a rag doll across the room. She had taken guilty pleasure then; he was angry with her, and she was terrified and in pain… but she had secretly enjoyed it. It was like being galvanized by lightning.

At that time, having thrown her, he was placated enough to stop. “I can’t destroy you,” he had said.

“Oh, honey…” she replied.

“I need you for my composition, after all.”

“You need me,” she said silently, with gratitude. Was there any way she could ever let her mother know about this incredible creature? Would he marry her? Could he have childr--

“Well, you’re of no use to me once the bruises show up. Whatever will I do with you until you heal?”

She stretched out seductively on the floor where she had landed. “You can do anything you want with me, beautiful.”

Beautiful looked off pensively. After some time he said, “There are some things that have been bothering me of late. Something feels… strange. I think that these little distractions are ultimately what have been holding my current project back.”

“Oh, is it my fault? “ She hesitantly got up and approached him. “I’m sorry, for anything I may have done. If my body doesn’t look good, I can lose weight or something.”

Beautiful had chuckled to himself then. “They always get this way… ah, sorry my dear. I’m talking to myself. However, there is something you can do for me. Firstly, keep eating; you’ve been so… anemic lately.

“Oh, I’m sorry! You want to feed more? Is that it? Maybe I could steal some blood from you from a hospital or something.”

Beautiful stiffened. “Could it be? Of course, that may explain some of it.”

“Honey?”

“Sheri, can you imagine the ennui that comes with the power and age accorded to a being such as I?”

“Never! It must be fantastic. You are so--”

“It is… troublesome. One feels they could go mad at times. That’s why I do my art, it keeps me sane. Rooted on the realities of this world. And my mission. Sheri, I performed an experiment not to long back. Well, several actually. I’ve always been interested in creating a proper protégé…”

“You mean like now?”

“Hmmm?”

“How you are showing me truth. Training me. Giving me power. To be like you. An angel.”

He looked at her. “Oh… yes. Of course. Like that. As long as you stay worthy of me.”

“I will do anything to stay worthy. I love yo--”

“Shh. I have a few errands for you to do then. I will be carrying out… a search of sorts, but you needed concern yourself with that. Sheri….” He took her gently, by the shoulders, and whispered, “How much do you love me?”

“I love you more than anything. You are my angel. I dreamed of you when I was a child. I would do anything for you.”

“Sheri. If you love me…”

“Yes?”

“Then I want you to prove it.”

“Anything.”

“I want you to kill someone.”

This is how Sheri found herself hiding in in the closet of one of the Born apartments, waiting for its resident to come home.

***

“You must feed,” Belle said in a casual tone that belied the seriousness of her sentence’s ramifications, as well as the loud music that was thumping about them in the club. Trent’s senses were more than enhanced enough by his vampiric condition to allow him to hear and in hearing, be somewhat saddened and disgusted for yet another time since the condition’s inception.

“No! I don’t have to!” He replied, not yet able to overcome his instinct to yell in such an environment.

Belle stirred her drink with a cocktail straw absentmindedly. “We’ve been over this before. If you don’t feed, you will only lose control all the more frequently.”

“You let me worry about that!”

“I would hate to have to put you down.”

With somber shock, his voice reached a whisper, “What are you talking about?”

She looked him in the eyes. “If you become enraged, you become a danger of supernatural proportions. What’s more, you will be mindless, liable to hurt friend and foe with equal chance. Therefore, if you lose it, I won’t take chances. I will end you.”

“What do you care anyways? Why are you even here if I‘m so dangerous?”

“Care? I care not a bit. However if you live long enough, you will understand that certain things should be seen through. There is a pattern to life. A web. We are the spiders.” Belle popped a cherry into her mouth, savored the taste. “And we must feed.”

“I refuse. No matter what you say, I won’t become--”

“You already are. But this talk bores me. Look, we came to this club for a reason.”

“It’s the place where I was shot. I want to find out why this happened to me. It starts here.”

“Indeed it does start here.” At this point a man walked towards Belle, intent in his eyes. She turned to glare at him. Trent could smell the acrid scent as the man first involuntarily urinated, then defecated. A look of cosmic horror on his face. He fell onto his butt, turned and scampered away. “You see what we can do?” Belle said matter-of-factly. “We affect them profoundly. You can get the information you need out of these people. Depending on your skills and approach, you could have a wide range of effects on them, many of which I would describe as ultra-hypnotic. But first you must feed. If you don’t, you’ll inspire nothing but fear in them. They are animals at their roots; all people are animals. They can sense if you are hungry.”

Trent shook his head. “This is madness.”

“Madness or no, you’ll never succeed if you can’t control your hunger. You don’t have to kill. Just feed.”

Trent was silent for a few minutes. Her patience wearing thin, Belle stood up to leave.

“Wait!”

“What is it?” She didn’t look back at him, but paused in mid-movement.”

“Okay. Just a little. Show me how.”

“You’re starving, aren’t you.”

“Just show me how.”

“Don’t worry. It gets much easier after the first time.

***

Sheri stiffened as the sound of footsteps came down the hall. She her hands, griped around the revolver began to shake. She took a gulp of air and tried to still them. There was a scraping of keys going into the latch, and slowly, the apartment door opened. This was it; she was going to do it. She had too. For him.

C’mon, you can do this, she thought to herself. The man she had been sent to kill, David, seemed to be taking his sweet time. It seemed ages before he finally stepped into the squalid apartment. Everything was slowed down at this point, and Sheri noticed every detail with exacting mania.

It seemed David had a limp of some sort; Sheri’s awareness of this crystallized at this point, but she realized that it had been obvious as he had walked down the hall as well. Time was doubling back on itself, folding, producing translucent layers that she could perceive at the same time. Here, now, she was waiting in a closet with the plan to kill. She was also back with beautiful, being painted by him, being observed by him, being loved by him. Yet another part of her was a little girl again, standing by her mother’s deathbed and observing the beauty of the flowers in the vase on the side table. How the sunlight had reflected of the water and the glass…

Time was still rather slow and multifaceted as she burst from the closet. She raised the gun and said simply, “Hah!” It was almost like a laugh, almost like a moan.

As this David turned towards her in bewilderment, she was surprised to see his face; the side that had been previously in view was quite regular, even classically handsome, with a strong jaw and cheekbones, and sensuous lips, but as his full face came into her view, she saw that his dextral features were marred as if they had been clay in the hands of a cruel sculptor. It looked rather painful, and it gave Sheri pause.

With an air of simple inevitability, David said, “Michael sent you to kill me, didn’t he. Well, am I your first? It gets a lot easier after the first one.”

2005-12-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

Ch 13 update. Oy, I've been disorganized of late, so writing has suffered. Know that I will be gone for the last half of this month.

2005-12-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

Yes I finally updated ch 13. Too many late nights will kill your writing career.

2005-11-25T07:54:00.000-08:00

(another Ch 13 update, as well as little corrections done for Ch 11) Well, it's National Novel Writing Month, and ironically, I've written far less this month. But no guilt; I'm enjoying myself. Happy turkey day. I have no idea who's kid that is, but I plan to fling some yams at him.

2005-11-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

(ch 13 updated) One of those characters I hadn't planned on managed to jump in.

Chapter the Thirteenth: Meetings and Theories

2005-11-13T05:09:00.000-08:00

“Who am I? What am I? These questions, ultimately, served to fuel my revenge.”--Belle Deveraux

“See, unlike you, I don’t compare myself to others.”

Marcus blinked. “What?”

Jared shrugged. “I’m just saying. You know, try not to worry about what other people think. It really impresses them.”

“Are you even listening to yourself? Do you hear the crazy coming out of your head-hole? The paradoxes alone…” Marcus shook his head with a smile.

Jared rebounded. “Okay, to put it another way… let’s see. Ah, I know! I’ll quote Alicia Silverstone quoting some actor that wasn’t Mel Gibson quoting Hamlet--”

“You’re giving me a headache.”

“Ahem. ‘To thine own self be true.’”

“Okay. Thanks for the obscure reference, and the ridiculously long set-up. But what’s this have to do with our conversation about your love-life?”

Jared held up two fingers. “Well firstly, I wanted to get off topic.”

“So done. Go on.”

“And second, I wanted to make a serious point. I really used to worry about what others thought about me. I tried to fit in. Worried that I’d never be able to find the right girl because of the way I acted, which is admittedly…”

“Nuts? Bonkers? Totally effed up?”

“I’ll go with eccentric.”

“So that’s your cover for always eating everyone’s food.”

Jared waved his hand derisively. “Shaddap. So anyways, here I was wondering if I would ever have a normal relationship, because I was always putting on an act o cover up my eccentricities. But I came to a point where I realized: I’m me. And I’m not gonna change. There is a basic element to my composition that won’t change no matter what happens to me. And I shouldn’t shun that; I needed to embrace it.” Jared paused to take in a fork-full of chocolate cake, one of his favorite items at the coffee shop. Then, between chews he said, “To thine own self be true. Think about it. It makes you truly happy. To thine own self be true.”

Marcus stared at Jared for a long time, then crossed his arms and nodded. “That is very profound.”

“Thank you.”

Marcus leaned forward. “You do realize you are eating my cake, right?”

Jared looked to the plate. “Whoops, sorry ‘bout that.”

***

Trent’s consciousness slowly drifted to reality. The walls of the Venetian dining hall slipped away like water down a drain to reveal a night sky. Trent blinked a few times, and then turned in a slow circle to survey his surroundings. He was on a rooftop. “What?” he muttered to himself.

“You’re an odd one.” A female voice, high-pitched yet husky, out of nowhere. Trent let out a surprised sound and spun to see the woman who had coolly uttered it. Impossibly standing where he had glanced just moments before.

This woman looked strange. It was a lot of little things that Trent couldn’t notice all at once, that he would notice more concretely on subsequent meetings with this woman. First there was the face, small and pale, framed with golden locks. The cherub-like beauty reminded him of a doll in the worst possible way; a strange Lolita-like visage. At the edges of her cheeks and temples, a faint (so much so that Trent wouldn’t have noticed it in the darkness of the night save for his unusually heightened senses) web of veins made a circuit, jutting towards the center of her face. It all served to put emphasis on her pale blue eyes, which stared at him, through him, and to distant worlds with purpose.

Her outfit seemed equally strange. It seemed to a peculiar collection of black leather straps, occasionally showing a glimpse of pale, sometimes scared flesh or even metal. Her only accessory was a golden locket. As she ambled with a strange and painful gate towards Trent, he felt intense panic. “Where did you come from?” he demanded.

She continued along her path, until she had walked past him. Trent followed her progress, ready to bolt, feeling like he could break a door down if he had to. This woman, whatever she was, reeked of danger. Regardless of her seemingly dangerous potential, she simply looked out into the Atlanta night. “I had intended to ask you the same question. What is your genesis, boy? Is it the same as mine?

***

Sheila sat down with little ceremony. “Okay,” she sighed, “lets get this over with; I want to get some sleep tonight.

Jared and Marcus looked at her, then each other, wondering who would begin the awkward questioning first.

“Uh…” started Jared. “You look good.” Jared winced at his own inaneness, while Marcus gave him an exasperated glare.

Marcus decided to try, “Uh, Sheila. Listen. We think something happened to Trent. Something… not normal.”

“Maybe… even… paranormal?” interjected Jared with a weak smile.

“No, it can’t be like that; it has to be something with a rational explanation,” replied Marcus.

Jared shook his hands in front of him to gesture frustration. “Okay… how do you rationally explain the gunshot wound disappearing? And the descriptions? Even Sheila didn’t describe anything that I would mark down as rational in my ledger.”

“Gun shot wound… disappearing?” questioned Sheila quietly.

“Um, yeah, that’s part of why we wanted to talk to you. Trent healed fast. I mean, faster than you should be able to, right? There isn’t even a scar now.”

Sheila shook her head. “That’s not possible. What you’re saying… if I hadn’t have sensed that thing during the attack, I don’t think I could even lend you as much credence now as I am…”

They all jumped a little when a new voice joined the conversation. “Pardon me,” came the twenty-something male voice in an English accent from the next table. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conundrum.” They looked to the next table over. There, a young man with blonde hair and a well-worn trench coat was sitting, facing them with an expectant smile. “I have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. As luck would have it, tonight I happened among your friend, and I think I may be able to lend a theory or two…”

In a tone that was cautious, Marcus spoke for the group, “I’m sorry. You are?”

“Name’s William. Will to my friends, and I have a few. I think I know what is happening to your friend. As it so happens, I was with him tonight, until the point where he… well… I’m going to go with the term disappeared for what I saw. May I join you?”

***

“What do you mean?” asked Trent.

The strange woman sat on the parapet of the building and swung legs over the side. She sighed. “Are you a monster like me?”

“Who are you?”

She glanced back at him with those pale blue eyes. “My name is Belle. Please, answer my question before I lose my patience.”

“I… don’t know what’s happening to me… What do you mean by monster?”

“I mean, do you kill? Do you drink the blood of others? Are you… insatiable at times?”

“That’s crazy. I would never--”

She cut him off, “I can smell the blood on you right now.” Trent glanced down. To his horror he saw that his t-shirt and hands were stained maroon. Blood. He realized he could smell it too. It was suddenly so overwhelming that he felt nauseous. Belle continued, “I could also smell that you are like me. You’re dead, aren’t you? One of the damned. Yes, you’re just like me.”

“What are we?” Trent whispered. “Vampires?”

“That’s a human story. We don’t fit so simply into their little stories and superstitions. But they have a few things right. We prefer the night. We are dead. And we are something to be feared, for we cannot stop ourselves. We must kill.”

“This is impossible.” Trent sank to his knees.

Belle gave a short, sardonic laugh. “Impossible? I wish. I wish I still had my humanity as much as you will. But we have to come to terms with what we are. The sooner you embrace it, find a purpose, the sooner you can gain some semblage of peace.”

“Purpose? My only purpose is to live a normal life!”

Another laugh. “Ah, the optimism of youth. You know, you’re luck someone is here to tell you what you really are. I didn’t have such a luxury. For the longest time after that bastard turned me, I didn’t know what I was. All I knew was fear and hunger.”

Belle‘s didn‘t show the slightest bit of surprise when Trent began to sob.

After about a minute, he collected himself enough to mutter, “I have a life. I can’t be like this. I have friends an… and…”

“All of that is through now. You are only a danger to mortals. I killed my first two sets of foster parents without even knowing it.” She spun back around. “Listen. I don’t like people. But you’re hardly a person now, and I find… you remind me of how I was, so very long ago. So, why don’t you let me help you? I can give you the purpose you need. I’ll help you see that you don’t have to despair. There is such power… What do you say? After all, you can’t go back to your life. Believe me, you will find only pain among mortals. It‘s only a matter of time before they realize what you truly are and try to hunt you down.”

Trent rubbed his eyes. “What kind of purpose could I possibly find now?”

Belle smiled. “Well, for one thing, you can get revenge on whoever did this to you. Lord knows that’s what has kept me going through the centuries.”

***

“Look, your friend is a spook of some sort.”

The group eyed Will incredulously. “Spook?” said Marcus.

Will leaned back a bit and stretched nonchalantly. “I believe he’s a revenant or ghoul or something. Quite possibly even… well I hate the word, it’s soooo stereotypical…”

“You think he’s a vampire,” stated Jared.

“Well, he certainly shows the signs. Not that there are too many signs for this sort of thing. In my experience, they’re all different.”

All the other present at the table gave each other the look. The look that people give each other when someone says a racial or bigoted slur in polite company. Let’s patronize this crazy person and get out of here as soon as possible. Marcus cleared his throat. “Um, look, we appreciate your theory but it’s late so maybe we should just--”

“I know what you’re doing. I’ve seen people do it a million times before. Something strange happens, and they just try to rationalize it. Or even deny it. Look, there is no scientific explanation of how your friend got shot and started walking around a few days later as if nothing happened. Unless nanobots come in pill form these days. You should know what I’m saying is more rational than anything you will come up with.” At this point the placed his hand on Sheila’s. “You felt it, didn’t you? I’m right, aren’t I? You can con a parlor-trick sorcerer. You did feel something… where? Ah, at the hospital, yes? “

Sheila slid her arm away from his hand. “Yeah,” she whispered.

“Well, there you have it.” Will leaned back again. “Look, I’m sure you guys are gonna have to warm up to the vampire theory but--”

“Shelia, there was a blood transfer, right?” Marcus suddenly interjected.

“Yes. Of course, he was in bad shape.”

“Is there a way you could find out where the blood came from? That’s what we wanted to ask you about, I guess. Any clues as to foreign elements affecting him.”

“Sharp tack, this one,” said Will. “Okay, look, I’ve got a test in history tomorrow, and it’s an essay, which is easy to bs, but be that as it may, I’d better go.” He stood up. “Let me know if you kids find anything interesting. I’ll be ready when you are.” He dug through a few pockets and pulled out a wrinkled business card. Without ceremony, he flicked it into Marcus’ pie. “Oop. Sorry, anyway, that’s my number. Give me a ring when you come around; I have a feeling it won’t be long.”

As he walked off, Jared pulled out the card. “Ha. Crazy.”

“What? Asked Sheila.

“It says ‘paranormal investigator’ under his name.”

Marc sighed. “So, anyway, about the blood…”

2005-11-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

(Ch 12 updated and finished)
Okay, my thoughts on the matter of my complicated writing: I think it's impossible to change your style. I realized that I should make a little more effort to explain certain things, however. And finally, the magic of editing will make this novel light years of better once it's all finished. It may also gain significant length. But if the gentle reader has any questions as they read any chapters, they should leave a specific-as-possible comment, which I will know of immediately due to the magic of email notification.

2005-11-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

So I got an email that said that I need to dumb down the writing to make it more accessable. Threw me for a bit of a loop, because a)I don't think of my writing as that smart, and b)I'm not sure that I could write any differently.
So what do you think? Do smart writers get read? Or am I doomed to obscurity if I continue down this literary path? Do I really write in a complicated manner? I always thought my sentences were fairly threadbare myself...

I'm so tired right now, and in the wake of this critique, I just don't have it in me to add to the novel tonight...

Eye of Argon

2005-11-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

(Ch 12 updated. Almost done?) Whenever I feel down about my writing ability, I rember that at the very least, I could always become famous for bad writing too, like the guy that wrote The Eye of Argon, purported to be the worst fantasy novel ever.
At conventions, a popular game is to try to read the novel aloud without laughing. Check out this wikiarticle on the subject, then download and read the novel if you dare.

2005-11-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

(Ch 12 update. Some orgins)
This is a facinating inerview with Neil Gaiman. It has some good thoughts on writing and creativeness.

I was chugging along writing my book. Then I got to this point in the middle where suddenly I'm looking at one character who's in a lift, and I'm thinking, "If you go up, if you keep doing what I think you're going to do, then in two pages' time, you will get killed. And I'm not sure what that does to the book that I plotted." The thing that I thought I was writing certainly didn't have a murder in the middle. I wrote the next two pages, the murder happened, and I stopped writing the book for four months. I wanted to compost it. I tried to figure out what I was doing, and eventually I decided that I could still keep it a comedy. It was sort of figuring out that weird line between horror and comedy. I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed.

--Neil

Chapter the Twelfth: Sanguine Baptism

2005-11-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

"Power slips through one's fingers like sand. Best to melt the sand, change it into glass. Sculpt it. Then you can posses and be proud of it forever."

--Augustus, in a letter to Janus

Trent/Cellini found the hand waving about in front of his face a curiosity. It was moving so slowly. As the doors in front of Augustus opened, Trent lost his thoughts to that alien boy that was paradoxically himself. He noted that no watch stood at the door that was now opening, they had moved at Augustus’ slight gesture (a small wave, almost lazily, of his right hand) none the less.

Trent felt that he should run. Run now; avoid whatever fate waited behind those doors. For he felt certain that no good would come of this. But, much as this ominous feeling gripped him, he feared even more what the mysterious man would do if he fled. Augustus was power, arrogance, and hubris incarnate; it dripped off him. It rolled of his tongue with it‘s rich vocabulary. It resided in his sadistic gaze. Distractedly, Trent realized that this was the other reason he did not flee; he was dazzled by this power just as he had been enraptured by the concepts of his mentor.

As those doors loomed open, the sound of festivities emerged from them. “Come,” Augustus said simply.

Without a word, Trent began to follow the man into the party.

***

“Are you a vampire?” Sheri could not hold in the question any longer. She looked with trepidation across the table to Michelangelo, her Mikey. He was looking out the window with a slight smile on his face. Outside the restaurant (five stars, naturally), the city lights sparkled in the night rain.

After a second, he looked up. “You’ve barely touched your stake my dear. I assure you it’s quite good. I can smell it from here.”

“Mikey…”

“You know, I wasn’t aware of the word ‘vampire’ until about oh… sometime in the 19^th century if I remember correctly. To put it succinctly, I am not the same being as the popular and sensationalized. I drink blood, yes. I love it. But…” he leaned closer, “I don’t really need it to survive. So no, not a vampire. Something so much more than a fairytale.”

“Then what are you?”

“I told you my dear, I am an angel. I have transcended humanity. I have ascended Jacob’s ladder.”

“But you drink blood.”

“Ah that. It bothers you, does it? Well, let me tell you, it’s not blood I consume.”

“It isn’t?”

His brow furled a bit. “Take a bite of the meat, before it grows any colder.”

Sheri did as ordered.

“There’s a good lass. Now then. It is not blood. It is life. And it tastes heavenly to me; naturally so. I am an angel. My function … Now this shall fascinate you --keep eating, my dear-- Did you know that I produce no waste?”

“Um.”

“I digest blood, flesh, and not occasionally fine meals, as you have seen for yourself. But there is no waste. I am above such base bodily functions.”

“Then, what happens to all that… stuff?”

“I didn’t think about it, for hundreds of years. But along with the humans around me, soon I became more cognizant of the laws of this natural universe that we live in. ‘Matter can neither be created nor destroyed!’ this was the catechism of the new science that was slowly replacing religion. And yet, there I was, doing what they said was impossible on a daily basis. Nay, beyond that, my very existence was a physical impossibility. How was it that in a universe where everything was eventually brought to its knees by age and decay, the very stuff of entropy, that I had survived so long?”

A waiter came by. Michelangelo waved him off without a word. “Um, actually, I could use some water…” said Sheri.

“He knows. Your water will be brought, I assure you. So, there I was, in quite the conundrum and confused about my very role in the grand cosmic order. Was God dead, as Nietzsche said? Was I never to know my purpose? Had my faith been in vain? Was I a mere base monster such as those that the Slavs had been ranting about since time immemorial?”

The Slavic reference was lost to her, but still she grasped his plight. “Oh, Mikey… what happened?”

“I have existed for a long time. A long, confusing time. Many things happened, and I’ve seen so much. I’ve forgotten so much. But only in supreme works of art, which became rarer by the year, did I still see the spark of the divine. I was in despair. I railed against the world that had spawned me, grasping desperately at what was still beautiful, still sacred, in this world. Then, one fateful night, which I remember very clearly, I extinguished an artist that I found insufferably horrid, a foolish Parisian. His daughter was present for the event. I felt her eye upon me as I drank the man dry. Then, I stood before her, her father’s blood dripping from my face and chest. She looked up at me--oh but she was precious with those blue eyes, ivory skin, and blonde hair -- she looked at me with those wide eyes and said, rather simply, ‘Why?’”

At this point, the waiter brought Sheri a water. Neither she nor her Mikey looked up, and they both waited silently for him to leave.

“It was then that I realized my purpose. Why I was able to live, while others died. Why I consumed, but never had to return. ‘Why, my dear?’ I replied to that little girl. “Because I am entropy. I am death. I am the all consuming. I am here to purify the world, even to the point of destroying it. I am the angel of death, and I have passed judgment here.”

For a while, silence. And then Sheri found her breath again. “Wow. So, what happened next?”

“That…” he looked back out into the city. “Is a story for another time. I will regale you with the fate of that little girl, if you are good, at some point. In any case, I hope you grasp the importance of my epiphany. It was my rebirth… my… How I came to find my purpose. Sheri?”

“Yes?”

“You have been looking for your own purpose, have you not? You have wondered, as you did your beautifully sad paintings, what it all meant. Am I wrong?”

“No… that’s exactly it.” Sheri looked down and blushed.

“Sheri?”

“Yes?”

“I will help you find that purpose. I promise you.”

Sheri’s eyes watered with a sudden feeling of contentment. She knew then that Mikey was the best thing to ever enter her life. Maybe she should feel scared too, but he was so commanding; so… powerful. This was a man not to be denied. No, not a man, something else.

“Sheri?”

“Yes?”

“Finish your steak. It’s time to resume painting.”

***

The revelers looked rich to Trent‘s naive, country-boy eyes (or rather those eyes of the body he inhabited). Beyond rich, actually. With their gold, their expensive fabrics, their servants, and their drunken rowdiness, they seemed the very picture of decadence. A woman approached Trent, her beauty underlied by a carnal confidence. “Hey, boy,” she said, “What’s your name?”

“He is not for you,” said Augustus in a tone that suggested he was all-too used to the inconvenience of waiving off amorous women. “Come Michelangelo.” Augustus drew Trent close and put a friendly arm around his slender shoulders. “I think it’s unavoidable.”

“Sir?”

“You can feel it sometimes. Our presence causes ripples in reality. Back and forth through time, the genesis is echoing.”

Trent studied the older man. “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe someday you will. We are power, such as to shake the very pillars of--”

“Augustulus!” came a boisterous man’s voice.

Trent and Augustus turned to see a large, well muscled man with long tresses and a ginger beard. He was smiling like a devil.

“I will thank you not to call me that, Oberion.” said Augustus coolly.

“Oh, but I like Augustulus; it’s always been such a cute moniker.”

“Exactly why I don’t like it. Who knows how much that suffix cost me?”

Oberion was now before them. Well, I’d say things worked out, besides we both know the real reason why you bowed out of power. Beings like us have to stay in the shadows. It’s in our nature after all.” The large man turned to face Trent now. “Is this him then? Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio, the great, if controversial, genius?”

Augustus took a seat at a chair so large it seemed more like a throne. “Indeed,” he said as he stretched out a hand absentmindedly to take the cup of wine that a servant had rushed up to offer. “The pope’s favored. Rome’s greatest painter. Oh, how the Tetragraevists will be angry.” This was a term that Trent’s dream-self did not recognize. It didn’t sound like any artistic movement his master had told him of, perhaps it was a political group, they did seem to be talking of such things after all.

Oberion snorted. “That foolish group will always be behind us. But, does the boy have any idea?”

“Ask him.” Augustus said simply.

Oberion turned his attention and smile back to Trent. “I’ve seen the Calling of Saint Mathew. It’s a brilliant work. Your chiaro--whateveryoucallit--techniqe is sublime. I didn’t think humans were capable of experiencing the world so richly. Naturally, we wonder how someone of your prodigious talent feels about joining our faction. There was a time when we blackened the landscape with our presence, but many of us are missing these days.”

Trent cleared his throat. “I’m sorry… I don’t understand…”

“Actually,” said Augustus at this point. “I don’t think the boy is cut out for the politics of the night-childer and its many intrigues.”

Oberion turned back to Augustus. He could still make a good human shield, if nothing else. There are many uses for the turned. Even a pawn may be used strategically…”

The woman that had been so eager to talk to Trent bumped into him now; he turned to see that she was aggressively embracing a new man. He turned back to the obtuse conversation and tried to ignore her embarrassing proximity.

“Oberion, I only have one real design on the boy. He is to be a slap in the face of Gioto.” Augustus focused on Trent again. “He’s been sniffing around you, hasn’t he boy? That Gioto.”

Trent though Gioto sounded familiar, perhaps even a patron of his master. “Um, well…”

“I could practically smell the stench of the Teragraevists on him. They’re going to attempt to preserve him, like they do with every great artist. Make him think their way. Cause the very stagnation that they try to prevent. All because they cling to their foolish sentimentality. What‘s the point? We‘re dead.”

“Well,” Oberion pushed a man out of his seat and took it, “If you don’t intend to have him join our faction, how are you to keep him out of theirs? Will you kill him?”

“What?” Trent said with widening eyes. He tried to back up, but the woman was now behind him, making gross sounds with her partner.

Augustus continued, unconcerned with Trent‘s fear. “No, no. Even I think it would be a shame to destroy such talent . Besides, if we are the ones to turn him… well, they’ll never get over the humiliation. That‘s the idea. To be quite frank, I don‘t have much planned beyond that.”

Oberion sighed. “This is most unlike you. Usually you have such circuitous schemes…”

“Sometimes one must bind their enemy with many silken tethers. Like a spider.” Augustus smiled. “But enough of this; I wish to leave the city before light breaks. I hate the daytime.”

“We are creatures of darkness,” Oberion said sadly. “It’s so rare to have a good battle at night though…”

Augustus stood up. “Beings like us must conquer through subtler means. That is the way of things; in this world, the monsters rule under the cover of shadows, lest the humans grow dangerous and destroy us.”

“So, how’re you going to turn this boy then?” Oberion pointed to Trent.

“Well, for one thing I intend to cloud his memory. Such coercion of the mental facilities is well within my power.” Augustus stood up. “Hear me well boy, you will not remember what transpired this night. When you wake next, you will remember but one thing: ‘I am Michelangelo Merici de Caravaggio, and I am the greatest artist the world has ever known.’” Augustus approached Trent with unnaturally illuminated eyes. Trent felt himself becoming numb. Grayness started to creep around his vision.

“Can I watch?” asked Oberion eagerly.

Trent was fading fast, as if he had drunk some potent wine. The last thing he heard was Augustus’ incredulous reply, “You’re fascination with bloodletting never ends, does it, my friend? Pity your enemies.”

2005-11-02T07:37:00.000-08:00

(chapter 11 complete). Is the joke that Marcus makes too obscure or inane?

Ergodic literature (not to be confused with erotic literature)

2005-11-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

(Ch 11 update today. Small, but there it is).
Today's writing thang:
Ergotic literature (this blog technically falls under the category of Ergotic literature, especially since your comments can have effects on the editing and plot)

Ergodic literature is literature that requires special effort to comprehend or read, perhaps due to a "non linear" structure. The term is derived from the Greek words ergon, meaning "work" and hodos, meaning "path". Ergodic literature demands an active role of the reader, such that they become "users" who may need to perform complex semiotic operations to construct the reading.

For example, ergodic literature may require following a very unconventional page layout in order to understand a novel, or in the case of ebooks, readers may need to constantly use hyperlinks to follow the narrative, or use menus to continue reading in a new location. By comparison, conventional "nonergodic" literature simply requires the reader to turn pages and follow the text in sequential order...

(continues at a wikiarticle)

This one's for the (lone) reader

2005-10-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

Did ya have to rub it in, Kit?
New chapter, starting off with a bar room conversation. I have very little experience with bars, but I'll never forget the time a drunk and a guy in a wheel chair schooled me and Vince at pool. Ah memories. Expect a lot (comparitively) to happen in this chapter as I add to it.
Also, I've decided to add quotes to each chapter, ala Frank Herbert. But I think the first quote I've chosen is illegal? I'm not sure how copywrite law applies to this. Do you?

Chapter the Eleventh: Two Investigations

2005-10-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

"I grasp at the threads of reality until I see the tapestry that has remained hidden.”

--William, to anyone that will listen.

The aged-yet-sturdy bartender eyed William with an arched eyebrow. Filling a glass of beer, he said in a gruff, friendly voice. “What’s with you, Will? Why are you nursing that beer like a schoolgirl?”

Will exhaled some smoke, smirked, and replied simply, “I’m on a case.”

“What are you talking about? This something to do with the ghost stories you’re always telling?”

A barfly looked up from his beer nuts and said, “I like the one about the dead prostitute in Amsterdam, don’t you like that one, Angus?” He pointed to the bartender with a slightly shaky hand.

Angus replied curtly, “Brother, you believe the stuff this kid says? I can refute that story on several well intuited thoughts.”

“Intui-what?”

“Ne’re you mind.” Angus sighed, handed a patron the beer, and said as an aside to Will, “He’s been drinking ever since he flunked out of the same college you go to. Now! As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the Cro-Magnon wonder…”

“The what?”

“Shut up, Harry, I’m telling you something here. Will’s fantastic tales are always complete tommyrot. The one in Amsterdam is particularly spurious because--”

“Spuri-what?”

“Harry, so help me I’m gonna beam you. Buy a dictionary before you come back here tomorrow. Reading it will give you something to do between sips of beer. Now--stop laughing Will!--now, as I was saying, Will is full of it. Right up to those brown eyes of his. Eyes are the window to the soul don’t you know. Anyways, there are several things I find to be incongruent in--” He paused, and dared Harry to interrupt him again with a fierce look “-- the young English lad’s tale. First, the very setting: Amsterdam. That right there tells me that he was stoned out of his mind the whole time, and is not to be trusted to any events he claims transpired.”

“Never touched the wicked weed,” said Will calmly. “That’s why Americans go to Amsterdam.”

Harry ignored this rebuttal. “Point two.: A whore would never come back from the dead. They’re so used to being on their backs that the grave feels like home to them.” Harry laughed and nodded. “Point three: Ghosts don’t exist anyway, anywhere. Not here, not Amsterdam. With all due respect to the lad--and we all do love ya, Will--he is as daft as a Sumerian waltzing into a non sequitur.”

“What?” said Harry. “Now you’re just making words up.”

Will erupted into uproarious laughter.

“But the most important reason why it couldn’t have happened--”

Will snapped upright in his seat. “Wait!”

“What, you don’t want to hear me talk anymore? This is your punishment for being such a lousy customer tonight.”

“I must go!”

“Why?” asked Harry.

“The supernatural calls, my friends! I swear to you, it most assuredly does exist. Got to run!”

In a flash Will was out the door.

Harry turned to the bartender. “What do you suppose that was about?”

“I don’t know, but I hope the boy will be alright.”

“Say, maybe you really do think there is something to the supernatural after all?”

“Not at all. Nevertheless, there are strange things in this world Harry; I’ve heard enough tall tales during my tenure here to believe that. And that boy, he tells the best ones. Drink up Harry. The night is young.”

***

William stood at a corner near the bar, letting the time ripen while he smoked a fag. Then he felt it again. “Ah, my spider-sense is tingling!” He joked to city. The city did not laugh, but Will was too busy looking around to lecture a city about its sense of humor. Within seconds, he spotted Trent.

Trent was walking around in a rather subdued manner, and seemed to be lilting back and fourth as a leaf on an autumn breeze as he walked along. Stealthily, Will began his pursuit.

Trent seemed rather oblivious to his surroundings, from what Will could tell. He would bump into debris every once in a while, but he seemed to manage around most of the larger obstacles in his way. As Will got closer, he could hear sibilant utterances that seemed to be coming from Trent.

He’s gone completely daft. thought Will. He took it as a sign that he could approach closer without large risk of detection from the shambling boy, who seemed to be on drugs for all anyone knew. Or perhaps even dead as Will half-believed. Much as Will put stock in the supernatural, he still found that he had the healthy skepticism of any Western European in this modern age, and he even questioned his own sanity at times. But this Trent, he was fascinating, and he might hold the proof that always eluded Will’s kind.

As he drew closer, he tried to distinguish the whispering issuing from Trent. He could make out some snippets. “Too great an honor…”, “well, I do my best with what God gave me…” and “What manner of offer are you making?” were among the things that Will imagined he could discern.

The young Englishman decided that it was okay to test the waters. “Trent,” he said quietly. There was no response from the hypnologic American. “Trent. Can you hear me?”

“Surely this is madness…” Trent whispered in a sucking gasp. His eyes, seeing some far off event, widened.

Boldly now, Will darted a hand in front of Trent’s face and waved it about. “Hello. Anyone home?” Trent merely walked and whispered on. “Where are you taking us, pray tell?”

If Trent knew the answer to that, he was in no state to tell. Blindly, he walked on. Will sighed and decided to see this journey through. Hopefully, answers were forthcoming.

***

“Okay,” Mark said. “Ask her.”

“Whoa. I don’t know if I should ask,” responded Jared.

“What do you mean you don’t know if you should ask? We come all the way to the hospital and now you don’t think you can ask?”

Jared looked down. “I should have said something earlier.”

“Well… yeah!”

Jared motioned to shush Marcus. “Sssh. She might hear you!” He whispered exasperatedly.

“Listen, you said she might be here, and she is, and you know her well, so what is the problem?”

“Maybe we should find someone else to ask…”

Marcus grabbed Jared’s arm. “What’s the problem?”

“Look we’re here. At the scene of a recent crime. And we’re going to inquire about our friend, who happens to be the ‘missing patient’ that everyone is looking for…”

Marcus stroked his goatee for a second. “So we won’t bring up our friend. It’s okay.”

“What are we going to ask then? Excuse me, but did you see anything supernatural around here lately? Do you think… --I don’t know--that there could be a logical reason why someone would heal from a gunshot without so much as a scar?”

“Relax,” said Marcus. We’ll ask her about… uh… pathogens.”

“Pathogens?”

“Um…”

Jared rolled his eyes. “You have no idea what we’re doing here, do you?”

“Well, at least I’m willing to try!”

“Ssh. Keep your voice down!”

Marcus smirked. “Hey, why are you so afraid to talk to her? She’s you’re ex girlfriend, isn’t she?”

“More or less.”

“So what’s the problem?!”

“She’s-- listen, I don’t have good luck with previous love-interests.”

Mark rolled his hand invitingly. “Pray tell.”

“Well, I have really bad luck with women…”

“Seriously? You seem to be in their company constantly.”

Jared nodded vigorously. “See, that’s part of the problem. I’ve got this… charm.”

“Charm?”

“Yeah, charm. I tend to seduce girls without realizing what I’m doing.”

Marcus rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if he was in pain.

Jared continued, “So, the thing is, when the girl snaps out of her spell, she is inevitably mad at me.”

“I’m not following the logic.”

“Girls don’t like to be tricked. They like to be in control of the relationship. They want to be the alpha-controller.”

Marcus cocked his head in confusion. “Wait, seduction is a trick?”

“Well, maybe. But like I said, I don’t mean too. It just… happens. I have some sort of preternatural charm.”

“Preternatural stupidity is more like it,” Marcus snorted. “Look, I’m sure she was a rational girl that dated you because she liked you, and I’m equally sure she doesn’t hate you.”

“Oh yes she does. I have never had a good break up. Girls get mad when the spell breaks.”

“Riiiight.”

“Jared?” Both Jared and Marcus jumped with surprise at this female voice. They turned to see that a young woman in scrubs was walking towards them. A smile beamed on her face. “Jared! What are you doing here?”

Jared smiled embarrassedly. “Hey… Sheila! Fancy meeting you here. At the hospital. Where you work.” There was an awkward beat, where Jared looked to Marcus for help. “So, how’s pre-med going for you?”

Marcus stepped forward. “I’m Marcus. Wow, Jared never told me you were so hot.”

Sheila smiled and rolled her eyes. “Really?”

“Hot?” Jared said, “Jeeze Marcus. Anyways, how are you, Sheila?”

“I’m fine, hon. But how are you? I never hear from you.”

“Sorry ‘bout that. I’m always busy. Taken care of my crazy friend’s and stuff.”

“Hey!” said Marcus. “Did you just try to make me into the Shemp of this conversation?”

Sheila blinked. “What?”

“You see what I mean?” Continued Jared, “They’re crazy.”

“Come on, you know Shemp. The fourth stooge? He knows the reference. Tell her.” Marcus pointed from Jared to Sheila.

“You see, absolutely crazy.”

Sheila laughed politely. “Right. I don’t get it. Anyways…” at this point, she switched to a more serious tone, and Marcus, upon hearing the next words she uttered, instantly wondered if this was, indeed, a woman scorned. “What are you doing here, Jared?”

“Well, I…”

“It was your friend, wasn’t it?” Both the boys let their draws drop ever so slightly in surprise. “I remember Trent. I even saw him while he was here.” She crossed her arms.

Jared laughed meekly. “Well, um, the thing is… we were wondering about him…”

“I don’t really know anything about the incident. Except what I saw and felt, which was fleeting, and dark, and terrifying.”

Marcus’s brow rose. “You saw the attack?”

“No. But I saw the thing that did it. I think I did. It went by.”

“The thing?”

“Well, I’m not especially convinced…” she looked around quickly and covertly, then leaned in. “I’m not sure it was human.”

“How would you describe it?” Jared asked.

“As a force. A primal force. Personified. Incarnate. Insane. Like if nihilism had legs.”

“You saw all that?”

“I said it was hard to describe. And I‘ve had time to think up that description. If you were there…” She shivered. “I hope it didn’t get your friend.”

“He’s okay,” Marcus said before he could stop himself.

“Marcus!” chided Jared. “You really are a Shemp sometimes.”

Sheila was confused. “What’s the problem? Is there a reason why Trent disappeared? The cops--”

“We’d rather the cops not know. Please, you can’t tell them about him, they’ve already bugged us today and we don’t really know what to tell them.”

“Why?”

Jared looked to Marcus. “We… have a theory. It’s crazy. Nothing really. But we were wondering about some things. I was hoping… you could help us?”

Sheila cocked her head in consideration. “I get off in two hours. I may be able to help you then… but, I’m not sure what I can do…”

Jared enclosed her hand between his own two palms. “We just need to talk really. How ‘bout we meet you at cold rock? The coffee shop where we used to go.”

“Fine. Right. I’ve got to get back to work.” Sheila started to walk away.

“Sheila! Please, keep this all confidential!” Jared pleaded. She simply nodded and rushed off.

“Well,” Marcus said after she was gone, “that was less painful than we thought it would be, right? For you at least. That was bloody painful for me.”

Jared sighed. “Quiet, Shemp.”

“Hey now! I take umbrage to that; I started this conversation as the lecturer, not the lecturee!” He grabbed Jared into a headlock.

“Boys!” Came the familiar voice of the angry nurse that had kicked them out of Trent’s room just days before. They both stopped in mid-motion. Filled with trepidation, they looked up. The large woman stood with her fists on her hips, glaring furiously at them.

“Uh…” squeaked Jared.

“This is a hospital, not a frat party! I suggest you go elsewhere!”

“Yes, ma’am!” The two said in unison and quickly made for the nearest exit.

As she watched them scamper off, the bitter woman thought, haven’t I seen those two before? With an angry sigh, she turned and walked off in a huff. No rest for the wicked.

2005-10-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

(chapter 10 small update) Have you guessed who Augustus might be yet (whether or not he really is, I think I will leave up to the reader)?

1/5th+ done

2005-10-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

(an update to chapter ten tonight)
Judging by the standard novel length (50,000 words) I am a little over 1/5 of the way through the novel. Actually, I think it might be a bit of a challenge to make my book that long!
Why must I have such a concise style?!
At least I'm in good company in that respect (Issac Asimov comes to mind).

another novel experimenter

2005-10-25T06:40:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, I'm still writing, just a little bit lately, so I'm saving it up before posting. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some interesting information on the original (and much more creative than I) novel experimentor, Milorad Pavić (pulled from Wikipedia):

Milorad Pavić (Милорад Павић) is a noted Serbian poet, prose writer, translator, and literary historian. His uncle, Nikola Pavić, wrote in the kajkavian dialect.

Born on October 15, 1929 in Belgrade, Pavić has written five novels that have been translated into English: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, Landscape Painted With Tea, Inner Side Of The Wind, Last Love In Constantinople and Unique Item as well as many short stories not translated to English.

Though Pavić's novels can be enjoyed by reading them cover-to-cover, among his stated goals are a desire to write novels with unusual forms, and to make the reader a more active participent than is usual. To achieve these ends, he as used a number of unconventional techniques:

* Dictionary Of The Khazars takes the form of three cross-referenced encylopaedias of the Khazar people
* Landscape Painted With Tea mixes the forms of novel and crossword puzzle
* Inner Side Of The Wind — which tells the story of Hero and Leander — can be read back to front, each section telling one character's version of the story;
* Last Love In Constantinople has chapters numbered after tarot cards; the reader is invited to use a tarot deck to determine the order the chapters are read
* Unique Item has one hundred different endings and the reader can choose one.

Last Love In Constantinople and Dictionary Of The Khazars both have male and female versions, which differ in only a few brief, critical passages.

He has also written one play. There are more than 80 translations of his writing, into many languages.

Chapter the Tenth: A visit by two men that need to talk with their inner child

2005-10-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

“Pway! Pway!” Said the little boy, his speech punctuated by youth and a lack of front teeth. In his tiny arms, he held a volleyball.

“Okay!” said Trent. “Let’s play!” He held out his arms

The little boy, with mirth on his face, suddenly threw the ball strait into Trent’s nose. Trent let out a surprised “Bawh!” and did an admirable job of keeping his smile. “Hey, what are we playing anyway?”

Instead of answering, the boy grabbed the ball ran to join the other youth which were running about the aged gym. Trent smiled to himself. Crazy or not, his recent experiences paled in comparison to what was truly important. Children, laughter, vitality, this was the real world; surely everything else was vain illusion.

Trent’s smile melted when he spotted the cops. Two mustachioed men, showing badges to Mary, the middle-aged woman that more or less ran the youth center. With a look of concern, Mary led the men to Trent. “Honey, these officers are here to talk with you.”

“Thank you,” said the taller cop in an officious, bored tone. Mary realized that the two men no longer wanted her here and so she took her exit. After she was gone, the man said, “My name’s Morose, this is Mcguilicuty. We’re from the Atlanta PD.”

“You’re Trent, right.” said Mcguilicuty in a gravely voice, to confirm the information.

“Uh, yeah, how can I help you guys?”

“You, uh, you work with the children here often?” asked Morose.

“Yeah. I do. I like kids.”

“That a fact.” McGuilicuty narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, I kinda hope to help children in the third world someday. Um, what are--”

“Have you adopted one?” McGuilicuty interjected.

“Huh?”

“You know, like on TV, adopt a child. One of those poor suckers that’s too tired to wave the damn flies out of their eyes.”

“Um, no, I‘m not sure about those programs really. Please keep the swearing to a minimum around the kids, by the way, if you could.” Trent pointed.

McGuilicuty and Morose turned to see a young girl looking up at them, eyes wide through coke-bottle lenses, mouth agape. Morose made a shooing motion, which she didn’t seem to recognize.

“Listen, Trent, we got a few questions.”

“What about?”

Morose jumped in. “We’re wondering why you disappeared from the hospital the other night. We’re wondering what you were doing when doctor Furter was attacked. We’re wondering why you left without telling anyone.”

“Uh, listen. I think you’re looking for someone else.”

“Nah, we’re looking for you. Hospital records say you came in with a nasty gunshot wound.” McGuilicuty was staring with an intensity that made Trent more annoyed than nervous.

Yet, how could he even begin to explain what had happened. “Listen, if I was shot, why am walking around right now?” challenged Trent. “More to the point, where was I shot?”

Morose flipped out a notebook and consulted it quickly. “You were shot in the right side…”

Trent flipped up his shirt. “Do you see any bullet wounds?” The little girl started to laugh shyly at the exposed flesh. “Be quiet, you!” Trent playfully chided. “Now then, if you guys have anything else?”

Morose, seemingly unphased, flipped his notebook shut. “We’ll be in touch.” He began to walk away.

McGuilicuty leaned into Trent’s space. “This aint over, smartass.” There was a gasp from the little girl. McGuilicuty looked down quickly then back up. “Pardon my French.” Keeping eye contact as long as possible, the detective slowly walked away.

“Who was that man?” asked the little girl.

“Just a crazy person.”

“He was mean.”

Trent smiled. “Yeah. Common, let’s join the others. Enjoy your youth; the real world is no fun.”

“Whatever.”

***

One moment, helping Mary close up the youth center, looking forward to the next day and putting the mess behind him, and the next… what he had though was the start of his walk to the car somehow became a walk through ancient halls. Ancient tapestries graced the masonry about him, and faint light came from torches that burned at intermittent locations. At some point so fluid that he barely noticed nor felt concern about it, he switched to his other persona; the one that inhabited his now-familiar dream body.

He was going to see what had happened to Michelangelo. This was his first time in Rome, and the city was exciting, if a bit overwhelming. The buildings were so large and elaborately decorated, inspiring within him curiosity, elation, exaltation, and no small amount of apprehension. But this was what he wanted, was it not? Sophistication, art, and the true humanity which Michelangelo claimed to have discovered, would become salient if he was just diligent.

What secrets did Rome hold in store? What secrets might be whispered to him by the angels that seemed to populate this city at a rate as if to confirm that heaven existed on earth, and transcendence was indeed possible here, if one was able to decipher the cryptographic clues found in scripture, illuminated text, or ancient stele; if one studied the work of Donatello or Bernini or the original Michelangelo (who was someone completely different yet nearly as brilliant as his own master of the same name); if one prayed ardently enough here, in the city of God, where one may find special favor with deity.

“Good evening to you.” Trent jumped at this sudden greeting from the darkness. He strained his eyes to see where it came from.

“Who would be there?” Trent asked in a voice full of as much bravado as he could muster while still sounding polite.

A figure emerged from the shadows, seemingly melting into existence. Trent passed this off as a trick of the smoke from a torch, or tiredness. In any case, being in Rome was so overwhelming that he was starting to feel a distinct sense of unreality. This is a dream, right? Trent thought, his real world personality asserting itself upon the illusion for just an instant. Then he flowed back into his dream consciousness seamlessly, as one tends to do under the spell of somnolence.

The figure was a man, eloquently dressed in the garbs of an affluent noble or cleric (Trent was too ignorant at this point to really know the difference, but he suspected that this was a layperson). A genuine and warm smile graced his features. “Forgive the intrusion. I am Augustus. I’ve been hoping to meet you.”

“Me?” Trent asked incredulously. How could this rich man know of him, let alone want anything to do with him. Perhaps it was due to his being part of Michelangelo’s entourage. Michelangelo was a thing of curiosity in the city; the artist petitioning the pope to be pardoned for murder.

“Of course. I recognized you instantly from the painting; they tell me it’s a self-portrait. My, what a fascinating work it is! No wonder Peter and his cohorts desire to assimilate you. Your talent is truly worth saving.”

Trent felt he should try to correct the strange man’s mistake, but this Augustus’ words were so oddly compelling, that just hearing them what practically believing them. “My talent?”

“Oh yes, this technique of yours, the heavy contrast of light and dark, it’s simply brilliant. It is enlightened, scientific, and yet deeply humanistic at the same time. You’re obviously of superior stock.”

“Well, I am training my mind and brush to exceed normal limits.” This much was quite true.

Augustus smiled warmly. “Ah, I do love a youth with ambition. Come, let us go to a small party I am holding at a local place. I want to show you such wonders… but first libations and revelry. This city is far too boring since the old empire declined, and I should know; I founded this gaudy city. Well, shall we go?”

“Um…” Trent hesitated, would Michelangelo be cross with him for going off with this stranger? There seemed to be something dangerous, powerful and all together otherworldly about this man. But as much as this caused apprehension, it also sparked intrigue within his heart. This Augustus was just so… interesting for reasons he didn’t understand.

“Come come, I have found that over the years my patience, rather than growing, instead turns out to have actually shortened. Are you with me? I offer you more than you yet glimpse.”

“Will we be gone long?”

“Worry not; I’m inviting you to a party, nothing more. You’ll be back in your own bed by dawn.”

“Very well, let’s go.”

“Excellent!” Augustus turned on his heal with preternatural speed. “Let us be off! The celebrations have already begun; I stepped out just to invite you. Some things are so important that one has to do them in person.”

2005-10-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Indents added to the paragraphs. HTML still sucks.
Chapter 9 has been started and updated a little. I forgot a point I wanted Mikey to make, so this chapter's current progress will be edited when the produndity returns to me.

But until it does>>

Chapter the Ninth: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair

2005-10-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo seemed to float with ethereal grace from painting to painting in the mausoleum-like structure that was known as Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist was a very exclusive gallery run by what Sheri considered to be the most banal Germans she had ever met. Zeitgeist was so exclusive, Sheri didn’t know anyone who had ever made it in, yet the receptionist, as soon as she had seen Michelangelo, had fawned and greeted him with overtures that were almost enough to make Sheri laugh. But if anyone deserved such respect, her Mikey did.

As expected, the Germans had treated Sheri with much less respect, as if she were a kid tagging along with daddy. The receptionist, followed by a little woman with mod glasses marched up to a spot near Sheri. Severely, the receptionist uttered, “Will there be anything to drink?”

“No thanks.”

“I was inquiring about him.” The receptionist’s finger shot out to indicate Michelangelo.

“I will take some wine, the usual year.” Michelangelo muttered distractedly. “Did the ‘Refuge of the Ramses II’ find a buyer yet?”

“No, sir.” The receptionist cast her eyes down.

“That is troubling. Sheri, you must see this.”

The Germans scampered off and Sheri ran to her Mikey’s side. “What is it?”

“This is one of my works. I tried to capture the grandeur and oppressive solitude of these cyclopean environs for a soul who--are you familiar with Ozymandias?”

Sheri strained to think what that many syllabled word meant. “Um…”

Switching to a velvety, oratory tone, Michelangelo intoned, “‘I met a traveler from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well whose passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.’” To finish, Michelangelo stated, “This painting is tangentially related to Ozymandias’ plight. Of course, historians got his name wrong, which adds to the irony deliciously.”

“That was beautiful,” said Sheri in all sincerity. “I know that from somewhere.”

“A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I’m rather fond of that one. It helps to remind me of the ephemeral nature of human creations, concepts, and, of course, the mortal coil itself. ”

“But if art is a human construct…” Sheri’s brow furled.

“Ah, yes, do go on.”

“Isn’t it somewhat pointless to produce it?

“Ah, like a star in the heavens is your brightness. I am ever so pleased with myself for choosing you. Yes, this is the central dilemma of being an artist. What’s the point, when your point is rendered pointless by the passage of time? But you must keep in mind certain things. Firstly, if you do certain things, do them well, and on a grand scale, the world cannot help but be affected by them for ages. Many people have forgotten the true name of that long-lost pharaoh, but still his influence is seen, in that very poem if nowhere else. Even idiots have heard the poem’s most famous line. So do something big, make a splash, and you may be able to change the world. But nothing lasts forever.”

“But you had another point to make?”

“Indeed my dear. There is a significant way to change humanity that few conceive. There are some images, sensations, and intonations that are so invasive that they can change humanity in a way similar to genetics. I call this the art of the divine. Art that can be so sublime as to transfigure its viewer. A holy experience. As one would expect, it can take millennia to find such a concept and render it in the proper media effectively. But if anyone has that long, it’s me.”

“What are you saying?”

“Come, my dear, did you doubt me when I said I was an angel?”

“Oh, I… I’m sorry it’s just,” Sheri cast her eyes downward. What was Mikey? An angel… it was to fabulous a concept; yet did not the very air seem transmogrified by his otherworldly aura?

“Quite alright, my dear. Even Thomas doubted. Ah! I remember rendering that scene, oh it was ages ago…” he starred off with a soft smile, and then suddenly his eyes became sharp again “Oh my, what have we here? An arachnid?”

Sheri looked to the paining, where a black spider was slowly winding its way down a new spinneret of webbing. “Oh, yuck! I hate bugs!” She glommed onto Michelangelo.

“Have heart, my dear; after all, spiders do have intriguing proportions if nothing else.” At that point, the little woman returned, sans receptionist, with a bottle of whine. “Ah, thank you Frau Blucher, but we shant need the wine after all.”

The little woman raised her eyebrows. “Sir?”

Conspiratorially, Michelangelo turned to Sheri and whispered. “Now you shall see my wings.”

“Oh dear,” said the little woman in a heavy accent born of a disdain for learning English. “Here ve go again. Alida, please see that we are not disturbed, he is in one of those moods. Be gentle, sir.”

Michelangelo laughed. “Your gallery has such a reputation for being cold. But I find you all here at Zeitgeist to be delightfully vital where it matters most.”

With that said, he cast aside his roquelair and got down to business. And Sheri did indeed see his wings.

“They’re beautiful.” She whispered to herself. “Beautiful and awful at the same time.”

Will to the rescue

2005-10-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

actually humor in general to the rescue. Humor is one of my strong suits, and a tongue in cheek approach is what made depicting Sheri interesting. I have to keep that in mind in the future, and when I edit previous chapters. (chapter 8 completed)

2005-10-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

(chapter 8 updated a little)

2005-10-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

(little update for chapter 8)

I've been reading a lot of good stuff lately, including Clark Ashton Smith. I highly recommend this story; it's one of my favorites of all time.

Below is the text (shamelessly ripped) from a review I randomly stumbled accross on this site. The text below is by John D. Rateliff. I post it here because it's a good article about what good writing should be.

"In sheer daemonic strangeness
and fertility of conception,
Mr. Smith is perhaps unexcelled
by any other writer, dead or living.".

-- H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

L. Sprague de Camp called the three leading writers to emerge from what is now called the "Weird Tales" school of pulp fiction "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales": H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Of the three, both Lovecraft and Howard were popular in their own time within their own limited circles[1] and have retained devoted cult followings to this day. Specialty presses (Arkham House, Gnome Press) have been founded with the express purpose of rescuing their work from the crumbling pages of out-of-print magazines and preserving it in book form for a wider, more permanent audience.[2] A number of their works have been filmed, usually with no particular concern for fidelity[3], and both men -- noted misfits even by the generous standards of pulp-writers -- have been the subject of much biographical speculation. In all the excitement, somehow the third and most talented of the three, Smith, has been overlooked.

This is hardly surprising -- Smith has always been the least popular of the three, and his work is an acquired taste prized by those who appreciate his elegant, morbid, sensuous touch -- but it is unfortunate all the same. For if it's fair to say that Lovecraft and Howard are more important historically, through their influence on other, better writers, than in their own right -- i.e., that HPL's creation of the Cthulhu Mythos and REH's giving definitive form to the barbarian adventurer motif are events whose importance far exceeds the literary value of their actual stories -- then the exact opposite is true of Smith. Smith's work creates no new paradigm, blazed no new subgenre of comparable popularity to Lovecraft's or Howard's. This is not to say, of course, that Smith's influence has not been important. It's hard to imagine Jack Vance's The Dying Earth series or John Brunner's The Traveller in Black ever having been written without Smith's example before them. But the tradition of writers influenced by Smith has been a substrata of fantasy/horror, not a main thread. His importance rests essentially upon the sheer excellence of his work: the man who wrote Lovecraftian stories better than Lovecraft himself, the most literate of all pulp writers, who showed what an extensive and erudite vocabulary can do in the hands of a Master. Clark Ashton Smith just might be the means by which pulp fantasy and horror transcended their roots and ascended into Literature.

"[Smith's] stories more than any others . . .
had everything to do with my decision . . .
to become a writer . . .
[I]n the short story form
CAS stood alone on my horizon . . .
[his] influence was . . .complete
and . . . compelling."

-- Ray Bradbury, introduction to A Rendezvous in Averoigne

Literariness

Smith's stories have a "literariness" that eluded his fellow pulp writers, due no doubt to the unusual route by which he came to pulp fiction. A child prodigy, he had already written a full-length novel by age 14[4] and published four short stories in mainstream fiction magazines (The Overland Monthly, Black Cat) between the ages of 17 and 19. By the time he abandoned fiction and shifted his attention to poetry as a teen, he had already achieved the competency in prose many of his pulp peers (e.g., Frank Belknap Long or E. Hoffman Price) never surpassed in their long careers. His poetry also won early acceptance: Hailed as a prodigy, an up-and-coming young poet, he was embraced by the literary mainstream, publishing his first book of poems before he was twenty (1912) and having his poems appear in such journals as The Yale Review, The London Mercury, and H. L. Mencken's Smart Set.

Unluckily for Smith, however, just as he became identified with the San Francisco literary establishment (which had dominated the West Coast since the days of Bret Hart and Mark Twain half a century before), that literary world began to self-destruct; its remaining literary lights vanishing at an alarming rate -- Ambrose Bierce (disappeared 1913), Jack London (committed suicide 1916), and Smith's own mentor, the now-forgotten George Sterling (suicide 1926). Furthermore, the literary style Smith embraced and embodied in his poetry, melodious and formal and melancholy, descending from Poe and Baudelaire (whose Fleurs du Mal Smith translated), was kicked into the dustbin of history, displaced by the Modernism championed by Ezra Pound (who urged his contemporaries to stop imitating the poets of seventy years before and try writing something new for a change). It was Smith's tragedy, perhaps, that he by age twenty achieved the goals Lovecraft and Howard strived for in vain all their lives, only to have it all slip away before he was thirty.[5] Reduced to writing a Biercian column for the local newspaper, his eventual return to fiction a decade later was due largely to the urging of H. P. Lovecraft, whom he quickly surpassed in his own field.

[Smith's tales] are, above all, sensually compelling.
. . . [A] fiction writer must . . . enclos[e] his characters,
and therefore his readers, in a scene, an atmosphere . . .
Once you have trapped your readers in sights, sounds,
smells, and textures . . . [they] will be unable to resist
. . . Take one step across the threshold of [CAS's] stories,
and you plunge into color, sound, taste, smell,
and texture -- into language."

-- Ray Bradbury

Word Music: from Prose Poem to Weird Tale

The secret to Smith's stylistic breakthrough, the element that so strongly differentiates his work from that of his contemporaries, seems to come from his mastery of the prose poem, a form he had begun experimenting with in his early twenties; his third book, Ebony and Crystal (1922), included as its final section a score of prose poems which are far more effective than the finely crafted but utterly static traditional poems in verse that precede them.[6] When, desperate in the early days of the Depression to find a regular source of income to help support himself and his two elderly and ailing parents, Smith returned to authorship in 1929, he created his own distinctive new style of fiction by essentially expanding prose-poems out into full-length stories by the addition of characters, dialogue, and plot. The result is a heady mixture of what looks to the careless eye like language run riot but reveals itself, on closer scrutiny, to be entirely under control:

Beginning with late spring, the Cistercian monks
were compelled to take cognizance of sundry odd phenomena . . .
They . . . beheld flaring lights, where lights should not have been:
flames of uncanny blue and crimson that shuddered
behind the broken, weed-grown embrasures
or rose starward above the jagged crenellations . . .
Hideous noises . . . issued from the ruin by night . . . and the monks
. . .heard a clangor as of hellish anvils and hammers . . . and
. . . deemed that Ylourgne was become a mustering-ground of devils.
Mephitic odors as of brimstone and burning flesh . . .
floated across the valley; and even by day . . .
a thin haze of hell-blue vapor hung upon the battlements.

. . . Observing these signs of the Archfoe's activity
in their neighborhood, they crossed themselves
with new fervor and frequency, and said their
Paters and Aves more interminably than before.
Their toils and austerities, also, they redoubled.

--"The Colossus of Ylourgne" (1934)

Sights, smells, sounds: Smith appeals directly to the senses in passages like these that pile on the carefully chosen adjectives, in rhythmic prose that incorporates many techniques normally associated with poetry (alliteration and cesura in particular). Smith may prefer a polysyllabic colorful word to a simple short one, but the word he chooses, however unusual, will always be precisely correct. Just as Hemingway deliberately chose a plainstyle vocabulary and short, simple sentences to emphasis the ordinariness of his characters and encourage reader identification with his protagonists, his contemporary Smith takes the opposite approach that is just as viable, deliberately stressing the artificiality of the tale through a style that pulls out all the stops and makes use of the entire available vocabulary English has to offer -- a feat few authors before or since have dared to attempt. It's the difference between (say) a recorder flute or acoustic guitar on the one hand and a church cathedral's pipe organ on the other.

"As to my employment of an ornate style,
using many words of classic origin and exotic colour,
I can only say that it is designed to produce effects
of language and rhythm which could not
possibly be achieved by a vocabulary
restricted to what is known as 'basic English'."

-- Clark Ashton Smith, letter to S. J. Sackett (1950)

Naturally, advocates of one style tend to denigrate the other, and Smith is often derided for actually knowing words the critic doesn't, and daring to use them. His deliberate choice to follow Poe's example and create "word-music," where sight and sound of the words are an essential element of what's being said, rather than journalistic prose that stresses message over medium, meant that to a degree he was willing to accept a limited audience, one not put off by the demands his vocabulary puts on the reader , or at least willing to put in the effort to follow where he led (the same could be said of two more of his contemporaries, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound). His disciple Jack Vance has largely avoided similar criticism by incorporating a strong element of humor in his baroque prose, especially the dialogue, making clear that his style is at least partially a joke he's sharing with his readers. Smith also has a strong and largely unrecognized streak of humor that lightens his work, and on occasion deliberately piles on the polysyllabics for comic effects:

What unimaginable horror of protoplastic life,
what loathly spawn of the primordial slime had come forth to confront us,
we did not pause to consider or conjecture . . . [I]ts intentions were
too plainly hostile, and it gave evidence of anthropophagic inclinations,
for it slithered toward us with an unbelievable speed and
celerity of motion, opening as it came a toothless mouth
of amazing capacity. . . . We saw that our departure from
the fane of Tsathoggua had become most imperative . . .

-- Master-thief Satampra Zeiros encounters fiction's first Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (1931)

In short, Smith could simply have said "it rushed toward us with its mouth open to try to eat us, so we decided to run away"; the humor comes from the hapless thief's saying it in a slow and stately overly elaborate way. Again like Poe, roughly a third of whose tales were comic pieces, albeit with grim overtones (e.g., "Some Words with a Mummy", "Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral", "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", "How to Write a Blackwood Article", and so on), Smith can include a touch of humor in his tales without negating their essential horror; this is a difficult balancing act that few horror writers achieve.

"Cast a Cold Eye/
on Life, on Death"

Smith's most typical tone, however, is one that can be described only as cold-blooded. Whereas in Lovecraft's stories there comes a point where the author will stop and coyly remark that what follows is "too terrible to describe" (typically followed by the narrator fainting like a maiden aunt of Victorian days), by contrast Smith at such points quietly proceeds with the description, which often turns out to be horrific indeed (see, for example, the narrator's gruesome death at the end of "The Seed from the Sepulcher", or those caused by the brain-devouring creature in "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis"). Small wonder that several of his stories were censored by Weird Tales, which demanded he excise certain gruesome or salacious details before publishing them.[7] Nor are his characters given to fainting away; some of them calmly accept death, not so much out of suicidal impulses as a deadly mix of fatalism and ennui, while others fight bravely to the last and occasionally even triumph, though in Smith's cosmos all such victories are qualified. Even those who defeat their foes and win love are wise not to examine their happiness too closely: the beloved may prove to be a monster herself (e.g., the lamia of "The End of the Story" or the title character of "The Enchantress of Sylaire") or, perhaps worse still, merely an ordinary woman ("Morthylla"). On the whole, Smith (inspired no doubt by the French Decadents and fin-de-siecle) prefers to avoid being overly judgmental -- the villain of one story is sometimes the hero of the next (cf. "The Maze of Maab Dweb" and its sequel "The Flower-Women", or the Averoigne tale "The Holiness of Azedarac" and its projected but unwritten follow-up "The Doom of Azedarac").

His ability to adopt unconventional points of view -- Smith opens one tale with an account of a character's escape from the Inquisition, and within two pages makes the reader regret that he got away ("The Colossus of Ylourgne") -- shows up best in his treatment of the dead (and undead). It's hard to imagine another writer who could title a play The Dead Will Cuckold You and end up presenting the main female character's seduction by a zombie, when it comes, as a tender, touching moment rather than a vile act of necrophilia. Nor, in the hands of most Cthulhu Mythos writers, would a corpse-devouring Great Old One served by a ghoul priesthood turn out to be relatively benign ("The Charnel God"), concerned only with the dead and indifferent to the living. There's a reason Smith's work has inspired any number of game writers dealing with necromancers (see below). It's not just his utter lack of squeamishness but his ability to adopt, and persuasively convey to the reader, what death is like from the dead's point of view ("Necromancy in Naat"). In "The Empire of the Necromancers", one of the Zothique stories, he even in an amazing tour-de-force switches the point of view mid-way through the story from the necromancers to the animated subjects they have raised from the dead; the undead mount a successful revolt against their living masters for the sole purpose of once again returning to the untroubled calm of death.

After his death, he forgot that he had died;
forgot the immediate past
with all its happenings and circumstances . . .
[H]e began to play with the thought of some presence
-- immortal, lovely, and evil -- that . . . would respond
to the evocation of one who . . . had longed vainly
for visions from beyond mortality.
Through headstone aisles of moon-touched solitude,
he came to a lofty mausoleum . . . Beneath it,
he had been told, were extensive vaults . . .
To his startlement a woman, or what
appeared to be such, was sitting
on a fallen shaft beside the mausoleum.
He could not see her distinctly . . .
"Who are you?" he asked . . .
"I am the lamia Morthylla," she replied.

-- "Morthylla" (1953)

The Dead Will Cuckold You

Oddly enough, despite his preoccupations, Smith's work is not repulsive or grotesque but weirdly beautiful. One of the reasons is that he admits into his fictional worlds not just horror but also love -- ennui but also passion. It's significant that Smith's works are filled with well-drawn female characters. In this he stands alone among his Weird Tales peers -- compare the enchantress Moriamis ("The Holiness of Azedarac"), the sorceress Sephora ("The Enchantress of Sylaire"), or even Sabine, the late wife of Gilles Grenier, who avenges herself upon her husband even after he kills her ("The Mandrakes") with Howard's personality-lite trophy-maidens in the Conan stories. Smith's work would be seriously diminished without the femme fatales his protagonists encounter, who are usually smarter, more powerful, and more effective than their male counterparts; in contrast , Lovecraft's only fully realized female character turns out to be a man magically possessing a woman's body(Aseneth Waite Derby from "The Thing on the Doorstep"). Lovecraft considered sex a rather tacky distraction from the intellectual game of horror and avoided it as much as possible; Howard treated it as a rote off-screen reward for his heroes; Smith simply assumes it's an essential, and delightful, part of life that, for better or worse, continues even beyond the grave.

He had killed her one even in autumn,
during a dispute of unbearable acrimony,
slitting her soft, pale throat in self-defense
with a knife which he had wrested
from her fingers when she lifted it against him.
Afterwards he had buried her
by the late rays of a gibbous moon
beneath the mandrakes in the meadow-bottom,
replacing the leafy sods with much care,
so that there was no evidence
of their having been disturbed . . .

-- Gilles Grenier kills his wife Sabine, who later returns the favor "The Mandrakes" (1933)

All of these qualities help define Smith: A vivid imagination with a morbid twist; a poet's command of language, a prose-poem writer's ear for word-music, and perhaps the largest vocabulary of any horror writer in English; a fatalist's acceptance of death coupled with a decadent's appreciation of sensuality; a noted lover of women (Smith was notorious for his many affairs) who created strong female characters, and a pessimist not afraid of killing off his heroes if it gave a story a necessary ironic, bitter note; a writer whose devotion to his craft paved the way for Bradbury, and Zelazny, and Ligotti, who pushed pulp fiction as far as it could go before ascending into literature; a member of the Lovecraft circle who could write "Lovecraftian" stories better than HPL himself, whose contributions to the "Cthulhu Mythos" (Tsathoggua, The Book of Eibon) were enthusiastically taken up by Lovecraft and made canonical; a pulp writer who churned out roughly a story a month for three years (the vast bulk of Smith's stories were written between 1929 and 1932, when writer's block began to overtake him, who wrote bejeweled prose that has far outlived the ephemeralness of his medium. (He finished only a handful of tales between 1937 and his death twenty-five years later.) Clark Ashton Smith was a man of many talents and the finest writer of weird tales of his day. [8]

"I, Satampra Zeiros . . . ,
shall write with my left hand,
since I have no longer any other,
the tale of everything that befell
[my companion] and myself
in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua
. . . as a warning to all good thieves and adventurers
who may hear some lying legend of the lost treasures
. . . and be tempted thereby.

-- "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (1931)

Averoigne and Your Game

A writer like Smith, who could throw off ideas like a flaming pinwheel, has proved a godsend to DMs and RPG designers over the years: his works were full of monsters, characters, ideas, and motifs that could be sprung on unsuspecting players who had never read the original tales, as relatively few have. The first RPG product based on his work, Tom Moldvay's excellent Chateau d'Ambreville (a.k.a. X2. Castle Amber, 1981) was not only an exceptional D&D adventure in itself that enabled PCs to play through the four major Averoigne stories ("The Colossus of Ylourgne", "The Enchantress of Sylaire", "The Beast of Averoigne", "The Holiness of Azedarac"), it also provided the template for one of the most famous of all AD&D modules, I6. Ravenloft, and the Ravenloft campaign setting that followed. The original stand-alone module was further developed by products like Gaz 3. The Principalities of Glantri (1987), eventually becoming a major part of the D&D "Known World"/ AD&D Mystara setting -- cf. the Glantri boxed set by Monte Cook and the audio-CD adventure Mark of Amber (both 1995).

In addition, Smith's work has not only inspired a number of D&D monsters but also has set the tone and thus had a major impact on the treatment of necromancy as it has appeared in roleplaying games, in such products as The Complete Book of Necromancers (1995), the Al-Qadim setting's Cities of Bone (1994), Return to the Tomb of Horrors (1998), and Secret College of Necromancers (2002). Surprisingly enough, his stories have had little impact on the Lovecraftian Call of Cthulhu game, being represented only by a very few scenarios -- e.g., a single encounter in Trail of Tsathoggua (Chaosium, 1984), a markedly un-Smithian use of the sorcerer Eibon in Spawn of Azathoth (Chaosium, 1986), the Great Old One Mordiggian hovering ineffectually in the background of The Realm of Shadows (1997, probably Pagan Publishing's weakest CoC release), and the like. Gamers who are admirers of Smith's work are better off creating their own scenarios around his ideas. Zothique, his end-of-time setting for some of his best stories, is probably too bleak for an ongoing campaign, though very effective for self-contained scenarios inserted into a pre-existing game (e.g., in Pelgrane Press's The Dying Earth RPG). But Averoigne is perfect for fans of both D&D and Call of Cthulhu: It combines the medieval sensibilities and possibilities for heroic adventures of the one with the eerie horror, lurking menace, and overwhelming terror of the other. (I am myself currently running a d20 Call of Cthulhu campaign set in Smith's Averoigne and can testify to its effectiveness as a setting.) Considering its historical links with the development of the whole "Land of Mist" concept underlying Ravenloft, the domain of Averoigne can easily be into a Ravenloft campaign; Averoigne is also an apt setting for a Vampire: the Dark Ages scenario (it even already has its resident vampires, "A Rendezvous in Averoigne"'s Sieur Huge du Malinbois and his wife Agathe).

"Old age, like a moth in some fading arras,
will gnaw my memories oversoon, as it
gnaws the memories of all men.
Therefore I write this record of the true origin
and slaying of that creature known as
the Beast of Averoigne. And when I have ended the writing,
the record shall be sealed in a brazen box,
and that box be set in a secret chamber of my house
at Ximes, so that no man shall learn the dreadful verity
and that box be set in a secret chamber of my house
of this matter till many years and decades have gone by."

-- Luc le Chaudronnier, "The Beast of Averoigne" (1932)

Bibliographic Note

Unlike the Zothique and Hyperborea story cycles (cf. Necronomicon Press's Tales of Zothique [1995] and The Book of Hyperborea [1996]), Smith's Averoigne stories have never been pulled together into a single volume but remain scattered over various books. All eleven completed tales were published by Arkham House in their six collections of Smith's work between 1942 and 1970 (Out of Time and Space [1942], Lost Worlds [1944], Genius Loci and Other Tales [1948], The Abominations of Yondo [1960], Tales of Science and Sorcery [1964], and Other Dimensions [1970]) -- these are now all quite expensive collector's items, but paperback reprints of them issued in England in the 1970s by Panther Books can be found somewhat more easily. The so-called "best of" collection, A Rendezvous in Averoigne (1988, re-released in 2003), reprints four of the Averoigne stories (including two of the best ones). In addition, various plot outlines and notes for several additional unfinished tales are included in The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Arkham House, 1979) and Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith (Greenwood, 1989).

A second attempt to publish the complete Smith -- and the first to bring his work to the attention of a mass-market paperback audience -- was made by Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series in 1970-1973, but ironically their "Averoigne" volume was to be the fifth in a series that was cut short when the publisher was bought out and the line terminated after volume four. Pocket Books released three CAS collections in their "Timescape" line in 1981-1983, but these, while fine selections, deliberately emphasized the variety of Smith's work and so only included five Averoigne tales -- though to their credit Timescape did include all four of the best in the series. Finally, The Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, the recent Fantasy Masterworks trade paperback (2002) that runs a massive 580-pages, includes three Averoigne tales (though only one of the best four). Of all these, only the Arkham House A Rendezvous in Averoigne and the Fantasy Masterwork omnibus are currently in print; neither is likely to be in your average bookstore, but they can be ordered online either directly from Arkham House www.arkhamhouse.com or www.amazon.co.uk, respectively.

A note of warning: Readers tempted by Chaosium's The Book of Eibon (2002) in the hopes that it presents a definitive collection of Smith's Mythos writings, a la their excellent Robert Bloch (Mysteries of the Worm), Henry Kuttner (The Book of Iod), and Robert E. Howard (Nameless Cults) collections, should be warned that unlike these The Book of Eibon contains only two genuine Smith stories, the rest of the book being hackwork pastiche by Lin Carter and others (some of it falsely labelled as "collaborations" between Smith and Carter, much as Derleth used to forge Lovecraft's names on stories of his own creation).

Finally, Smith is fortunate in having an exceptional website devoted to his work, which makes available on-line all of his currently out-of-print writings as well as biographical information, pictures of some of his artwork, and much, much more: see www.eldritchdark.com.

The Averoigne series has unfortunately never been collected into a single volume. Arranged by internal chronology, the eleven completed stories and four story-fragments are as follows: *"The Oracle of Sadoqua [e.g., Tsathoqqua]" (set in Roman times), "The Maker of Gargoyles" (November 1138), "The Holiness of Azedarac" (a time-travel story starting in 1175, going back to 475 A.D., then flashing ahead to 1230), *"The Doom of Azedarac" (c.1198), "The Colossus of Ylourgne" (late spring 1281), "The Beast of Averoigne" (summer 1369), "The Enchantress of Sylaire" (n.d.), *"The Werewolf of Averoigne" (n.d.), "The Mandrakes" (? c.1400), *"Queen of the Sabbat" (n.d.), "The Disinterment of Venus" (April 1550), "The Mother of Toads" (n.d.), "A Rendezvous in Averoigne" (? c.1550), "The Satyr" (? c.1575), and "The End of the Story" (November 1789).

An asterisk (*) indicates an unwritten story that survives only as a plot outline, ranging from a single paragraph to several hundred words.

I am endebted to Steve Behrends' Starmont Reader's Guide on Clark Ashton Smith (Starmont House, 1990) -- the single best book on Smith's work -- for help in establishing this sequence; the conjectural dates in the preceding listing are Behrends'.

Notes

The cover shot of A Rendezvous in Averoigne used in this column is from the Arkham House printing.

[1] Lovecraft was the second most popular Weird Tales writer among the magazine's readers, behind only Seabury Quinn, author of a long string of execrable supernaturally-themed Hercule Poirot pastiches (the "Jules de Grandin" series). Howard's popularity near the end of his career was such that Weird Tales published the Conan tales pretty much as fast as he could write them; between December 1932 and September 1936 there was only once a gap of longer than two months between issues carrying Conan stories, and often they appeared sequentially month after month.

[2] Arkham House, while founded to publish Lovecraft, also extended its mission to the "Lovecraft tradition" as represented by his fellow Weird Tales writers. Smith's high standing among his fellow "Cthulhu Mythos" writers (as opposed to his limited acceptance by the reading public) is indicated by the fact that his Out of Space and Time (1942) was the third book published by Arkham House, preceded only by Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others (1939) and Derleth's self-published Someone in the Dark (1941). By contrast, Donald Wandrei, the imprint's co-founder with Derleth, had to wait until their fifth release in 1944 for his first Arkham House book (following close on the heels of their second Lovecraft book in 1943). Other members of the Lovecraft Circle did not join the queue until after Smith's second book, Lost Worlds (1944): Bloch's The Opener of the Way (1945), Frank Belknap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos (1946), Howard's Skull-Face and Others (1946; Arkham House's nineteenth book), Leiber's Night's Black Agents (1947), et al.

[3] See, for example, The Haunted Palace (1963), an inept adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward starring Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr; The Dunwich Horror (1970), which devotes most of its attention to an interpolated love-interest; the Jeffrey Comb Herbert West, Re-animator (1985), a most un-Lovecraftian medley of gallows-humor, sex, and gore; et al. Most of these take only the names of (some) characters and a few motifs from Lovecraft and make no attempt to reproduce the plots of his stories. In recent years, however, a thriving amateur film scene has grown up around independently produced Lovecraftian short films such as "Cool Air" and "Return to Dunwich" (both 1999); these short films make serious attempts (some more successfully than others) to remain faithful to their originals.

As for Howard, see Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Barbarian (1981), which significantly did not take its plot from any of Howard's own stories, or even from the pastiches by de Camp and Lin Carter, but owes more to the Marvel comic books based on the thriving Conan-pastiche market that grew up in de Camp & Carter's wake. Howard himself has been the subject of a film, The Whole Wide World (1996), starring Renee Zellwedger, based on the memoirs of REH's one-time girlfriend, Novalyne Price. Rather surprisingly, given his eccentric personality, no film has yet been made of Lovecraft's life.

The only Smith video adaptation of note is a minor episode of Rod Sterling's Night Gallery (1972) based on the (equally minor) Necronomicon story "The Return of the Sorcerer" (1931), starring Vincent Price and Bill Bixby.

[4] The Black Diamonds, an Arabian Nights tale not published until 2002 (Hippocampus Press). At 90,000 words, it is nearly double the length of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Lovecraft's longest fiction, and twenty percent longer than Howard's sole novel, The Hour of the Dragon (a.k.a. Conan the Conqueror). While it lacks the elegance and word-music of his later fiction, it is quite readable blend of ideas and adventures and amply demonstrates that he had already reached at a precociously early age the competency most pulp writers settle on for their entire careers (e.g., Frank Belknap Long or E. Hoffman Price), only to surpass them when he returned to fiction in 1929.

[5] Lovecraft's dream was to see his work appear in book form; for his long and futile pursuit of this goal, see S. T. Joshi's H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996). Howard's was to graduate from the pulp magazines -- the lowest rung of the fiction world -- into the pages of the slightly more upscale Argosy and other "slick" magazines; see de Camp's Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Arkham House, 1976) and also his Howard biography, Dark Valley Destiny (by de Camp, de Camp, & Griffin, 1983).

[6] For a complete collection of Smith's superb prose-poems, a form he seems to have adopted from Poe (cf. EAP's "Silence" and "Shadow"), see Nostalgia of the Unknown: The Complete Prose Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith (Necronomicon Press, 1988).

[7] For the most part, these have since been published in "The Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith" series, released as individual pamphlets by Necronomicon Press (1987-1988); the Averoigne story "The Mother of Toads" was among them. Other stories that Smith was forced to re-write include the Averoigne tales "The Satyr" (to eliminate the scene in which the cuckolded husband ruthlessly murders his wife and her lover, impaling them with his sword while they are making love) and "The Beast of Averoigne" (whose original version took the form of documents left behind by multiple narrators, a format apparently considered too difficult for Weird Tales' audience). The modern-day story "The Return of the Sorcerer" also had its original conclusion -- wherein a murderer is killed by his dismembered rotting limbs of his victim (shades of Jeffrey Comb's Herbert West, Re-animator) -- toned down a good deal for publication.

[8] While any list of the best of Smith's tales will perforce be subjective, nevertheless any "best of" collection deserving the name would have to include "The Empire of the Necromancers", "Morthylla", and "Necromancy in Naat", all three set in his end-of-time era Zothique (as is his marvelously creepy play, The Dead Will Cuckold You); "The Enchantress of Sylaire", "The Holiness of Azedarac", "The Beast of Averoigne", and "The Colossus of Ylourgne" (the four best Averoigne stories, with "The Mandrakes" not far behind); "The Last Incantation", "The Death of Malygris", and "The Double Shadow" (all three set in Poseidonis, his version of Atlantis); "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (set in Hyperborea, comparable to Howard's Hyborian age but written with much more wit); "The Vault of Yoh-Vombis" (truly horrific science fiction set on Mars); and "Genius Loci" and "Nemesis of the Unfinished" (two modern-day stories, the latter an effective fictionalization of the crippling writer's block that brought Smith's own career to a premature end a quarter-century before his death).

2005-10-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

I've had too many excuses not to write lately. Tonight, I bow out because my arms are sore from Karate. The old Japanese guy beat the crap out of me, for which I am exceedingly grateful. Tuesdays may just be a miss for me on a regular basis; Saturdays look equally bad these days. Too many excuses. Okay, I'm in pain so, stopping now.

Sequel to "en passant"

2005-10-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

You may remember En Passant. This is a sequel to that story. It is currently unedited, so I refine it later, but I thought I'd post it since I feel bad for not upating the novel for a few days.
Probable Crime

As I moved my rook into position, I couldn’t help but gloat a little, “You see that, old metal-mind? You only have three moves allowed you before checkmate. And I can already see all of them.”
I deserved to gloat, I felt. Just months before, I had been introduced to this game, which hailed from the ancient Earth empire that had preceded the rein of the great and terrible Tsan-Chan, who was, as far as the fog as history tells us, one of the last great rulers of Terra before Earth became unfavorable to humanity and fell under the dominion of the Coleopteron race (colloquially known by many humans as smart stink-bugs, or simply stinks). Nowadays, humanity is of course spread throughout the milky-way, and almost completely under the dominion of the House Roy ale, which is under dominion under the ones-who-are-not-to-be-named, who are, rumour has it, under the dominion of the ineffable great Great Ones—much speculated about entities that run the pan-galactic empire I and my partner serve in a law-enforcement capacity, albeit at the lowly level of “humanoids, unasended.” In other words, everybody is a slave to somebody, or something, but the lines get a bit fuzzy. Most people say it’s always been this way. Smith, being the dangerous—yet ingenious and therefore tolerated—radical that he is, disagrees with this. I envy his optimism on one hand, but in my darker moments I can’t help but wonder if these are the delusions of his largely-artificial, old, and no-doubt malfunctioning brain.
But enough history lessons, I’m digressing…
While I found chess exceedingly boring at first, I soon got better at it, in no small part due to the cerebral-restructuring constantly catalyzed by the probation-implant in my brain, but also because said implant and detective Smith both insist on it so damn much. Of coarse I can successfully tell Smith to leave me alone, but the implant is much more insistent, and it controls my flow of endorphins, so naturally I tend to follow whatever suggestions it slips into my mind. I had a come to a point where I understood a great deal of the higher-theory behind the game, and was naturally proud of my accomplishments. I had even started to find my games with Smith interesting.
Smith, in his natural and infuriating way, simply looked off into space. “Yes, I see, there are only so many choices, and they are all pre-determined…”
At that point, general Servius, all flustered tentacles and teeth, barged into our suite. “What are you proto-forms doing?” He said in a tone that I interpreted to be outraged. “Smith, you and your associate are detectives are you not? Have your feeble-minds failed to grasp the importance of this case? A relation of the queen’s consort is dead!”
Smith smirked and rolled his eyes; an expression I think he knew he knew could afford to do because the enraged Forbian before us could never interpret what it was supposed to mean. Then Smith raised his right arm at a 45 degree angle, palm outward, and extended a pinky beyond what would have been possible had he not a cybernetic limb, we had been well-advised by a learning module that this was the proper gesture to calm a member of general Servius’s temperamental species. It interpreted as something akin to “please be not alarmed, I have taken no food from your fermentation pit, and I feel kinship with you.”
Servius seemed to flail a little-less.
“You see, your eminence, I and my partner here were engaging in a metaphorical mental puzzle-solving activity, not unlike the Fenyman diagrams that led to the Carson diagrams that allowed humans to first solve the formulas that helped our humble race to envision space-time flight.
Servious’ tentacles and spines moved in a way that the implant gave me an impression was meant to be interpreted “I see that you have an egg-sac for me. Let me drop my genetic material into that.” The general then said, “Humans, I find it hard to contemplate how your infuriatingly simple minds work. If it were not for your special status, I would eat any zygotes you harbored at this very instant.” I never found out what a zygote was, and the implant never bothered to tell me.
Our “special-status” was somewhat due to not too long ago proving something that everyone already knew but few dared to test—and incidentally, what we found when we defied the empire and bagged a criminal that time should not have let us was still a classified, if well-known event—, that paradox was not a threatening force. That being said, Halatia IV was currently under quarantine and observation, while detective Smith and myself where regarded with curiosity by the higher species (especially the scientists) of the higher species of the Malfactean kingdom in which we resided. So uniquely were we regarded, that we had been invited to a special gathering by the aforementioned relation to the Malfactean queen’s consort, one Shaddam Sics, who had boldly announced a new type of computer that could tell the future.
Smith and I had originally been invited due to our tangential relationship to the paradox case, in addition to our status as servants of the local monarchy and the Empire as a whole. Shaddam, using the vast resources available to him as person of his world-crushing status—and if you think that is impressive, you may do well to study the quarter-galaxy-wide influence of the queen sometime—was on the verge of completing his giant-computer located on a planetoid orbiting Sirius. As our ship had fallen out of space-time and descended to the planet below, Smith, well-traveled though he was, and I both let out gasps at the size of the computer. It was well visible as taking up the majority of the space of the subcontinent on which it resided, and as we explored its environs, little canine creatures ran all about seeing to the maintenence of the thing. Of course, most of the size was simply for show. In an era where things as small as the implant in my head contained worlds-spanning encyclopedic knowledge, a computer this large was so huge as to be almost laughable. But as a learning module on our ship had explained, the computer was also meant to be a grand monument to the queen’s splendor. In addition, the hyper colliders that helped the computer make it’s incredible calculations where encompassed in the very rings that orbited the planet, and many of the spires of the city-computer of “Nuelo-Novack” that we now wandered through were designed to help receive transmissions from those rings.
But two things had prevented the throngs of important people that arrived to witness this event from seeing the computer in action. For one, Shaddam had merely predicted the completion of his computer, which was still at an indefinite state; and two: Shaddam had been murdered shortly after the welcome reception held for the illustrious event, eaten by a hoard of nanobots slipped to him via an anonymous present. Naturally, Smith and myself had been derilicted with the duties of detecting the perpetrator of this dastardly deed, as we were at close and available law-enforcement officers of a special status (though I must admit I don’t think anyone ever knew what to make of us two humans and we got stuck with the case because the more important life forms present where too busy squabbling with one another). And so it was that general Servius, the same loathsome entity that had commanded us to solve the murder, was now standing before us expecting a solution. I almost giggled at how silly it was that a couple of humans, that very same detested and ill-considered race, were now charged with fixing everything. I almost laughed, but I thought the implant seemed to be rather testy under the circumstances, and I didn’t want to endanger my fix. Later I would realize that Smith and I were being expertly put into the positions of expendable scapegoats to take the fall if the investigation proved unfruitful.
But for now I was filled with importance and braggadocio mirth. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I and Smith have a reputation of inter-planetary detectives extraordinaire for a reason. After this brief respite to gather our mental facilities, I was planning to shake-down the crowd.”
“What does this mean?” asked the general.
“What it means,” Smith hastily and politely replied, “is that my partner plans to use his telepathic talents to aid him in determining guilt. I myself need to talk to Shaddam’s lead technician. Can this be permitted?”
Servious seemed to consider this, then said, “Very well, but remember your places.” With that said he emitted a sudden squeal that made us jump and left the room.
“Be careful, partner.” said Smith quietly. “We are dealing with intrigue on a pan-planetary scale. One false move and these, venerable nobles will have us drawn and quartered, or worse. Never underestimate their abilities to think up tortures over the slightest perceived insult. Don’t let yourself get caught scanning anyone’s mind.”
“No worries partner,” I said, still dangerously bold. “I learned a thing or two working a crowd during my previous occupation.”
“Oh lord.” muttered Smith. “I’m just glad the implant prevents you from petty-thievery and griffs these days.”
“That hurts,” I said with a smile. It was time to get to work, so I made my way into the crowd. I interviewed those nobles that I could get to cooperate with me. I interviewed the strange dog-men that slaved about, and interviewed the brain of Ferix Mu. The general sense that I got from dialogue and what little I could glean from their minds was that one Ergot Rux, another lesser relation of the royal lineage most the most likely to have committed the crime. After a while, I made my way to Ergot himself.
Ergot was of the same stock of horrors that populated the royal line; in other words, hard to describe in human terms. They had things that appeared to be humanoid organs, and they had other things that were mysteries. In addition, due to their unique physiology, Ergot’s species seemed to absorb a lot of the light in their immediate area. I talked to the maw that I guessed was the auditory communication organ.
“What do you want, human?!” Came the bass voice.
“I hope that you could expedite my investigation,” I stated as calmly as I could.
“I haven’t the patience for this. My beloved cousin has died!” Ergot had been Shaddam’s cousin indeed. The rumor I had gleaned was that he had cuckolded Shaddam with Shaddam’s third wife, and Shaddam had most likely found out. Ergot stood to benefit greatly in the event of Shaddam’s death, and he was already starting to order some of Shaddam’s servants around. “Where is the lead technician? We must see the work of my illustrious cousin completed!”
“Sir, I am a detective under her majesty’s conscription, and I really must have my questions answered if justice is to be ser—“I didn’t get to complete my sentence, due to a tendril of Ergot constricting me with sudden force.
“I am Ergot, scion of the many-faced mother! You dare to accuse me?! Such insolence cannot be! I will now summarily execute you for your impetuance, human!”
At that moment I expected to die, and even my implant said many expletives in my head at once, but suddenly came the shout: “Let that mortal go!”
Everyone’s head (or other major sensory organ collections) snapped to see that it was the lead technician who had uttered these words. He was standing next to Smith, and extending a green, mucus-covered hand.
“You dare to order me?!” said Ergot incredulously. “Know you not that with the death of my beloved cousin, you and this entire planet are now under my dominion?”
“Let him be,” said general Servious, much to everyone’s surprise. “Smith and grand technician Po, what have you found. Release the human, Ergot!” Reluctantly, Ergot put me down.
“Let me explain,” said Smith. “I have found without a doubt that someone at this distinguished assembly is the murderer!”
A shocked murmuring ran through the crowd.
“I’ll spread your constituent elements from here to Corpus Infinitum!” Howled Ergot, as if he alone had been implicated.
“A grave charge,” said the general. “What evidence have you to support the claim?”
“I think,” said Smith, “that the grand technician Po can explain better than I.” Smith motioned for the bulbous-headed scientist to start speaking.
Po began an explanation, “Despite the setback of our lord’s death, we have completed the work of the future-prediction computer. Now, it so happens that this computer works on the principal of temporal self-consistency. The computer predicts the future by determining the probability of events exactly. If an event would disrupt the space-time flow, its probability is effectively zero, and therefore it will not happen. To put it in layman’s terms, it only tells us exactly what will happen, and nothing else. Unfortunately, the data outputted by the computer can only be expressed as a “yes” or “no,” but the computer can never be wrong.”
Ergot growled, and then said, “So what? How could a computer that can only tell us the future. Help us solve this crime? You are wasting our time with this silly talk.”
“I disagree with all respect. For you see, detective Smith will now make a statement concerning the guilt of the murder…”
Po motioned, and Smith said flatly, “The murderer is Ergot.”
Ergot seemed enraged from what I could tell by his howls, growls, and soggy-yet-angry sounds, but the general motioned for him to stay calm. “Explain at once Po,” said Servius, “for these are serious charges to come from such a lower life form!”
Po continued calmly, “The computer will now make a simple prediction, as it’s first ever function. The question I will pose to it is rather simple: ‘Will detective Smith be proven wrong?’”
Without warning, the computer-structure around us hummed to vibrant life. Strange aura-borealis like illuminations jutted down from the rings of the planet, which were faint blue against the ruby skies. It was all rather breathtaking, and many of the dog-things that populated the planet looked to the sky and howled, only to be beaten sternly by their taskmasters. After a few minutes, the spectacular phantasmagoria about us died down to a dull roar, and I heard a small sound, like a bell, emit from the main console that Po and Smith stood before. A strip of paper was ejected by some strange organ on the computer, and Po read pensively.
“Well, what does it say?” asked the general.
“In relation to the question of whether or not Smith will be discredited, the computer says ‘No.’”
“This is an outrage!” Cried Ergot. “It is I should be in control of this sector, not my simpleton cousin! Surely you all agree with that! Yes, I killed the whelp, but he was weak, he did not deserve what he had! Do you know that I cuckolded his mate? For three hundred years, right under his pseudo pods!”
Servius had had enough, and he ordered the guards in his entourage to detain Ergot. Luckily, I had managed to sneak away by this point and was well out of range when Ergot went into a berserker fury. Thankfully, only three guards died that day before he was subdued.
***
Once back in the cabin, I could see that Smith was acting rather self-confident. “You think you’re so smart,” I said in a jesting manner. “But I know when you figured out the case.”
“Oh, pray tell,” said Smith.
“I know for a fact that you researched the workings of the future predictor in depth before coming here.”
“Quite true.”
“But it seems to me that you didn’t realize how it could be applied until our game. Just like our last case, the simple game provided you with a metaphor for the solution. You weren’t exaggerating to general Servius when you described it with similar terms. Once you saw that your moves were predetermined in the game, you realized that such causality spreads to real life as well. That we all have a path determined by the rules as well as where pieces fall.”
“You’re doing excellent,” he said with a smile.
“You also realized that if the machine could be completed, all you would have to do would be to make a simple prediction. Naturally, you chose the most obvious suspect, one oozing with guilt, but having the resources to avoid detection through evidence. You’re gambit paid off.”
“Very apt.”
“However, there is one thing I must take derision to.” I stated.
“Oh?”
“There is no way that you’ll be able to continue using this simple game to determine your actions in these cases.”
“Indeed. That’s why I was considering taking up another ancient Earth game. Go, perhaps… Well, shall we finish our game?”
“But we both know that you’ll only lose.”
“There are some things, my young partner, which one is destined to do.”

2005-10-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

It just ain't my week. I deleted what I wrote today, because it didn't feel compeling. Hopefully, I'll have something legible added tomorrow. But I'll be gone for a few days after that.

2005-10-04T04:40:00.000-07:00

I'm sick, also busy. Haven't gotten much writing done, but Chapter 8 has begun.

Chapter the Eighth: Nagging Doubts

2005-10-04T04:39:00.000-07:00

Jared chewed some Peanut butter Crunch slowly. Marcus, domestic as ever, was cooking eggs and sausages. They both glanced occasionally to where Trent lay. Finally, Marcus broke the silence. “Well, what do you think it is?”

“What?”

“What’s happening. Isn’t this too crazy?”

“I don’t really want to think about it. Or what happened at the hospital.”

Marcus slid two eggs (sunny side up) onto his plate and sat down opposite Jared. He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then said, “I’ve been thinking about the guy that shot Trent.”

“What do you mean?” said Jared through a full mouth.

“I mean, what you said about everyone’s morals breaking down at some point. It got me thinking about the nature of evil… who is innocent and who is evil and all that.”

“Okay.” Jared made an inviting gesture. “What do you think evil is?”

“Well, I think it may be that evil is just a form of insanity.”

“I’ve kind of wondered about that too. I mean, from a cultural-anthropology standpoint, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to be evil. It’s just bad business for the species.”

Mark thought a second, and then responded, “But it would be good for competition sake.”

Jared nodded. “Point. If you were truly underhanded, you could fight your way to the top.”

“Okay, but back to the question at hand. What is evil?”

“Well, it’s doing something bad to someone else.”

“But what if you are insane?” asked Marcus.

“Uh, isn’t evil still evil even if you are crazy?”

“I don’t think so. Take for instance a serial killer. A hypothetical serial killer may kill because the voices tell him to, but ultimately, he often just a pitiable creature that has lost all sense of reality.”

Jared responded, “Okay. So what’s the difference between evilness and insanity?”

“Perhaps… it has to do with the ability to recognize what you are doing.”

Jared brightened. “Oh! Oh! I got it! If you cannot recognize someone else’s humanity, you must be insane, because a human that has no empathy must be a crazy; he might as well just be doing anything, as far as his brain is concerned, but in reality he is doing things that happen to be horrible.”

“Okay, so if a crazy person doesn’t recognize the humanity of others, then a sane, evil person would…?”

Jared drank the milk remaining in the bowl, and then put it down. “A sane, evil person would logically hurt people while being fully aware of the pain he was causing. That is what evil is, recognizing someone else’s humanity and hurting that person regardless.” Jared folded his arms and smiled at this epiphany.

“Or,” continued Marcus, “The evil person in question could choose to disregard the humanity of those he hurts. Pretend it does not exist. That way he doesn’t have to deal with the guilt of doing a bad thing. Look at what Hitler did. He and his followers didn’t think the Jews were human, and that’s how they justified their actions, by disregarding others’ humanity.”

“The ironic thing about it all is that if you consider others to be inhuman, you become inhuman yourself, through your actions. You become a monster.”

Marcus put down his fork. “No. That flies in the face of what the point I just made. We have to accept that everyone is human. Always. No deeds or actions make you lose your humanity. Otherwise, we are just rationalizing any bad actions we perform concerning those we judge to be ‘bad’.”

Jared‘s brow furled with anger. “But aren’t there monsters out there? Wasn’t the guy that attacked Trent a monster!?”

“But Jared, what about what you said the other day, at the hospital. Everyone’s morals break down at some point, right? This guy, much as I hate to say it, isn’t a monster. He’s just some poor guy that got so desperate he temporarily forgot the humanity of--”

“He’s a monster.” Neither Jared nor Marcus uttered this phrase; they turned around to see that Trent was sitting up from where he had lain. “He’s a monster. Scum. A social disease. The earth would be well rid of him.” Marcus and Jared stared silently, and then jumped a little when Trent shouted with sudden fury, “He tried to kill me!”

Trent stood up. “I can’t ever forget that. I can’t ever forgive it. And if I ever find him…” Trent didn’t continue the unspoken implications, but instead walked into the bathroom and slammed the door. After a minute, Jared and Marcus heard the shower start.

***

This is not happening. A sane, reassuring thought. Trent was sure that if he just tried to go about normal life in his usual way, things had to fall into order. You gotta hold it together. But how can one hold it together; how can one live normal when nothing is normal?

Look at them. Trent surveyed the mass of humanity that shared the lecture hall with him. Professor, Utegu, an immigrant from Kenya, was lecturing on the subject. They can’t imagine what’s happened to me. What’s still happen--stop it! There is nothing happening to you.

A girl glanced quickly in Trent’s direction, and then looked away. Trent could feel her curiosity, as if it were a tangible thing. With a little concentration, he realized he could feel it from every direction. People were curious about him. They were wondering why he was here. And why not in a hospital bed. They have good reason. People don’t just get shot and walk around a few days later.

Trent realized he could feel other things as well. He could smell the scents of the people around him, as if they were right under his nose. The after-shave of the guy two seats back. The soft scent of the girl to his right. The bad breath of the guy to his front. It was almost overwhelming. Just breathe. Ignore the smell and breath. You have to keep breathing. It’s what humans do.

“Some believe that the diseases are nature’s way of fighting back against the incursions of man.” Said the professor in a thick accent. Much as he loved the concepts behind the professor’s class, Trent was usually lulled to sleep by the professor’s nigh--impenetrable and monotone accent. Today was, of coarse, different. “It may be silly to think of nature as a maleficent force, but ecologists are foreseeing more along these lines if the population of Brazil keeps increasing along these lines. What is to become of the humans who cannot find work in the cities?”

The old African continued on, but Trent’s focus was on the sensations that were slowly and oppressively overwhelming him. Now he was sure that he was hearing things he shouldn’t be able to. The hiss of the speakers between the words of the professor. The slow and steady breathing of the girl that had looked at him a minute ago. Remember to breath! And the heart beat of the portly man to his left. Oh that was transfixing. Why? Why do I hear this? Why do I enjoy hearing this? Trent sensed the girl glance at him again. Heard her heartbeat increase when he looked at her with a hungry expression. You better be scared. You better be meek and scared and avert your eyes, because I’m something you cannot fathom. I am--”

“Mr. Roswell, what do you think?” Heads darted in Trent’s direction. Trent, in his hyper-sensory state, had missed the subject now under discussion.

“Uh…” Trent cleared his throat. “Sorry? Could you repeat that?” Does everyone have to gawk like that?

“We were discussing the situation in Brazil. What do you think can be done about the overpopulation and environmental impact of--”

“Overpopulation? Well, it seems to me that the tree-sap collecting people, or whoever they are, living in the forested areas need to wage a campaign against the interlopers?”

Utegu’s jaw dropped. “Are you suggesting warfare as the solution to their problems?”

“Oh, nothing so overt. Industrial sabotage should do the job. But if worse comes to worse, yes, I think warfare should be considered. Could be a definite solution to the overpopulation problem.” Almost the entire class was starting intently at Trent. Oddly enough, though Trent had said these words in a fit of pique and uncharacteristic disregard for the people he was considering, yet some in the class seemed to be nodding in agreement. The girl that had previously been glancing at him seemed enraptured. With sudden force, Trent yelled out, ‘What’s the matter? Have you never seen someone that got shot before?”

Stunned silence. After a few seconds, Trent exhaled deeply and began to gather his things. The professor was still trying to muster a response as the door closed behind Trent’s back. Trent was long gone.

***

The day was what passed for a winter one in Atlanta, with a melancholy, muted tone to everything, colored by the overcast sky. Storms were coming. Trent halted in his progress on the well-walked path, and without turning, said, “Why are you following me?”

Unabashed, Will, the very same puckish exchange student from the night before, stated simply, “Just a little curious about you.”

Trent now turned, an enraged expression on his face. “Are you stalking me? How did you find me, anyhow?”

“Wasn’t hard. You’re not the only unique entity in the world, believe it or not. I have a bit of a knack for tracking your lot; though I must admit that I am perplexed by one thing. I still don’t know what you are.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Trent turned back and started to briskly walk away.

Undaunted, Will simply fell into line besides Trent. “Listen, mate, I’m grave serious about something here. Whatever kind of revenant you’ve become, your troubles have just begun.”

“What are you talking about?” said Trent incredulously. “Nothing’s changing. I just have to live my life like anyone else and avoid weirdoes like you.”

“Now that wounds me to the quick!”

“Besides,” Trent added grimly, “What do I have to worry about? Not even a bullet can stop me apparently.”

“This is actually a problem, my spooky friend you see--”

“Who’s spooky?!”

“Ahem. You see… well, how can I put it best?” Will lit a fag, heedless of Trent‘s glare, which was something Will was used to from these politically-correct American types. Ah, I got it! You know the American comic Spiderman?”

“Of course.”

“Well, if the creator of Spider-man, one Stan Lee, left a single important message to the world via that vehicle, it was this, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

Trent stopped. “Let me get this straight. I’m going through the most terrifyingly confusing period of change in my life short of a puberty undergone while under the parentage of a single-hippy mother, and you’re quoting a comic book to me to help me realize the gravity of the situation?”

Quietly, Will responded. “Well, it’s a really good line.”

Trent rolled his eyes and started again. “I can’t stand the smell of those things. Especially recently. Why don’t mind your own business, William?”

“Will put his hands into the pockets of his trench coat and swung it back and forth casually. “You use a little levity, and what happens?” As Trent walked off, Will shouted, “Hoy! How’s the blinking? How about your pulse?”

The single-fingered gesture that Trent gave in response let Will know that they were most likely doing as he had suspected.

2005-09-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

Did a little updating to chapters 2,3, and 4.

2005-09-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

(another update to chapter 7, which I think is finished) Now to touch up some past chapters; I think I need to take out a certain blood-drinking scene... or maybe not... I'm not sure if it gave away too much too soon or what, because I want people to drop their pre-concieved ideas about this "vampire," as he is hardly one in the traditional sense.
Oh and I think I've come up with a good title for the novel, finally.
Also, I wanto to get the sequel to "En Passant" out of my head and onto paper before I forget it. I think Steven King said if you forget an idea it probably wasn't that great in the first place; Steven King, however, doesn't know me or how --what's that word again, ah yes*-- absentminded I am.

On writing**, From the "Oh, I wanna be that guy" deptarment:

Thomas Pynchon is a reclusive American novelist possessed by a certain eclectic genius, an architect of literary structures that range from immense tesseracts to tiny, perfect gems. Charting a dizzying course through the worlds hidden in the curve between the blue depths of Absolute Zero and the ineffable awareness of the Universe Entire, his works explore the vast space between Burroughs’ shlupp! and Joyce’s yes. Author of only a quintet of novels and a few short stories, his creations have been hailed as some of the most original works to have been transmuted from the decay of the twentieth century.
Pynchon’s style of writing is unique, electrifying, and complex. A potential map to self-awareness as well as an intricate puzzle-box, this postmodern Deadalus has paradoxically constructed his verbal mazes not to confound, but to reveal. Simply put, his iconoclastic prose is both gnostic in intention and delightful in execution. Like the labyrinthine chains of DNA coiled in the nucleus of life, it is often dense and convoluted in structure, but the encoded message is shimmering, elusive, and profound. And, like life itself, it presents equal measures of beauty and obscenity, awareness and obfuscation, comedy and tragedy.

*: I wish I could say that was a joke but I really did forget the term absent-minded for about a minute :(
**:No, not another Steven King reference (if you get this you get this).

2005-09-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

(Chapter 7 updated; and Sheri is demanding to be more than another annonymous victim, so I'll have to go back and write a few more things in her introduction). Basically, I will have a lot of editing to do, as that is the true glut of writing. There are also reader comments to address, but... wow, I have a sleeping pill kicking in right now. You'll just have to read ch 7 and wonder...

2005-09-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7 started, and far from done. I'm trying to figure out a way to change < p > tags with CSS to make the problems of html displaying indented text wrongly go away, but so far I am largely ignorant of how to do this. If anyone has ideas... Anyways, in the words of Neil Gaiman: "Shower. Sleep. Yes."

Chapter the seventh: On the Nature of Evil, or Lack Thereof

2005-09-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

Trent was his strange dream incarnation again, and this time it felt more natural. He felt less panicked, and fought his own actions less. This time, the tavern had given way to a country road of dirt. He was treading alongside the man that could be his brother, or father, or doppelganger. The artist.

“If I may know,” said Trent, “What is your name exactly?”

The artist staggered, partially due to being drunk, and partially due to being surprised. “You don’t know yet? Strange what parts of the rumors make their way to people‘s ears.”

“My friend had scarcely told me of your presence before I came over.”

“Very well, my young protégé. But you must deny it strictly if someone asks you…”

“Of course.”

The artist wrapped his arm around Trent’s neck, leaned in, and whispered his name. “But... you may call me by my first name. No one can seem to remember that one. So please, call me Michelangelo.”

“Very well,” replied Trent. “That shall be my name from now on as well.”

“You’re a laugh… pardon me lad, my rental of that cheap wine is up…”

Trent stood politely to the side and averted his eyes as the artist did what all humans do against the wall. “Will you teach me your trade?” Trent asked.

Michelangelo did not reply for a while. A taxi drove past, and suddenly Trent was disconcerted with the anachronism; this place was simply too old, isolated, and or primitive for such a thing. He had almost forgotten this was a dream.

Michelangelo was tightening up his belt. “Do you have talent?”

“Uh, I don’t honestly know…”

“Perhaps it’s best you be merely a model then. You need talent to be an artist.”

“I could learn!” Trent turned to face the older man.

“Hmmm… to learn to paint like me… would take two, maybe three lifetimes. But you are free to try, as long as you make your own supplies. I won’t teach you though. You’ll have to learn by observation. Imitation. That’s appropriate, eh? You are my double after all.”

Michelangelo turned and started walking again. “Where are we going?” asked Trent.

“I’ve secured a place at the edge of the villa. It will suffice for my needs for now. But I don’t intend to stay here! As soon as I get a pardon from the pope, I will wipe the dust of this place from my feet. We’re better than them, you know.”

“Who?”

“Artists are better than the banal masses that infest the world. We are the real humans. We know what life is truly about. Stick with me boy, and I will teach how to be a true human. Take that man for instance. Pathetic.” Michelangelo pointed to a passed-out vagrant in an alley they were passing.

Trent forced his dream self to stop as Michelangelo walked and ranted on heedless of his young acolytes pause. That bum, Trent thought, something not right about him… Slowly Trent realized that this bum was an anachronism just as the taxi had been. The clothes were modern, and something about the guy’s face seemed familiar. It was obstructed by wild hair and at an angle that made it hard to see clearly…

Suddenly Trent’s dream self took control again, and he was forced to catch up with Michelangelo, who was rambling on about being an angel on earth.

***

Sheri blinked her way to consciousness, which took surprising effort. Rarely had she felt so tired after sleeping. She realized she was in someone else’s bed. Of coarse, you dolt, she thought to herself. After all, she had gone back to Tall dark and handsome’s house. She sat up and looked about herself. It was a four post bed, with flowing sheets like out of a fairytale. Bright light beamed through a latticed window and gave everything a celestial illumination. Definitely like a fairytale… but where were her clothes? Did she sleep with tall dark and handsome? She didn’t have any recollection of something like that, but, come to think of it, she couldn’t remember anything beyond the point when, shortly after they’d agreed to her modeling, he had embraced her. Kissed her. Work his way down her neck… After that, just… darkness. All consuming. All encompassing. And oddly enough, very addictive.

But where was her Romeo? “Michelangelo?” She called out. The door to the room was open, but she heard no reply. After some time, you got up and found a very fancy set of dresses in the room’s armoire. She slipped one on and prayed that she would not encounter any hard breezes today, or at least would have an opportunity to find her underwear somewhere.

Afterwards, Sheri ventured out into the spacious foyer. In the workspace, now well lit by daylight, she found Michelangelo standing in front of the painting from last night, a pensive look on his face. It appeared he had changed clothes, and he now sported a dark suit and a long roquelair. “Oh, there you are!”

“Mmm.”

“Um, my clothes…”

He looked up from the composition. “I had them incinerated. I’d prefer you only wear what I give you from this point forward.” This said, he turned his attention back to the painting.

“I… what designer is this? Is this who I think it is?”

“Of course. Only the best for you, my dear.”

“Okay, but… no underwear--”

“No need for them.”

“That’s crazy. You can’t just--”

“Tell me something.” He turned towards her, gazed into her fiercely, making her lap up those piercing eyes. “You are an artist are you not?”

“Uh, yeah, did I tell you about that? I don’t recall saying--”

“I felt in your soul when I drank you essence last night.” Heedless of her confusion at this statement he continued. “I could help you. Let you exceed yourself as well as your craft. What I’m offering you is the possibility to become more than human. I‘ve been contemplating taking another protégé on for some time now. One with talent. I have seen your works, Sheri Rehnquist, and I am impressed. This is rare. Combined with you looks, it makes you one in a billion. So, what would you say to becoming one in seven billion?”

Sheri cocked her head to the side. “You’re odd. No… that’s not it…” she considered, one finger to her chin, and then her face brightened. “You’re eccentric. You’re some kind of genius, aren’t you?”

“I am more than a mere genius. As the days go by, you may be able to glimpse what I am. What I am… becoming.” He extended a hand. “Do not be afraid. Let me enlighten you.”

Sheri felt her eyes directed by some unknown force to the canvass. It had changed since she had seen it last. “Is… that me?”

“Yes. I could not resist. You were so radiant last night.”

“I look beautiful.”

“Join me, my dear. I will make you beautiful forever.”

He extended his hand. With an impulsiveness that would madden her if she thought too much about it later (and so she would not), she took his hand. “Very well, Michelangelo, take me. Mold me as you see fit.”

“Excellent. Let us hope you last longer than the last girl.” Before she could inquire about this “last girl,” he started to pull her towards the lift. “There are some things I am curious about, and business I have to attend to. Let us go at once. Many would think someone in my position has all the time in the world. But that is not true. Often I have learned to regret not acting when it was fortuitous. Let that be lesson one. Everything changes, and you have to adapt or risk becoming a garish anachronism.”

The lift arrived, and they entered. Then he said, “Well, not everything changes. People for instance, always the same. Governments, religions, philosophies come and go, but humans remain as stupid as ever. As I stated, I will help you to overcome that.”

Shari could not contain the next question to escape her lips, weird as it seemed to ask, “What are you, Michelangelo?”

He smiled that seductive smile of his and leaned close. “Don’t you know?” She slowly shook her head, never breaking contact with his entrancing eyes. Then he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I am an angel.”

As they walked out of the down-stairs gallery and onto the street, Sheri reflected that she had met her fair share of handsome men that turned out to be crazy in the past. Many were the numbers of men that seemed normal at the onset of a relationship who somehow hid their severe neuroses for weeks or months. This statement of divinity had come before she had known the guy even twenty-four hours. This statement was also the single-most crazy thing she had ever heard. And yet, how could she deny it? Was he not the most intriguing man she had ever met in her life? Was he not immaculate to behold? Was he not perfect?

“I find,” remarked Michelangelo, “that there are two kinds of people in the world. Those that are able to grasp what I tell them; that open their hearts to me and would give anything for me. Then there are those that disappoint me with their logic, and selfishness. Which kind are you?”

“I would die for you.” She said without hesitation.

“Good. I can see that this will be an amicable relationship.” He paused then, and stopped moving. His gaze was fixed upon something in the alley to their right.

“What is it?” Sheri looked in the alley. There, she noticed a bum, curled up and sleeping. “Darling? What troubles you?”

For a long time he did not move. Then at last he spoke, “I’m sorry, my dear. Oddly, I feel like I have seen that vagrant before. But then, I’ve seen a lot of people, too many to remember.” He started to walk again. “It’s a marvelous day, is it not? See, men like that one cannot fully grasp beauty. Men living as mere humans do. Stay with me my dear, and I shall show you such wonders. My, but I’m getting the oddest sensations of déjà vu lately…

2005-09-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

(Chapter 6 added and one line that was giving away too much in Chapter 1 was changed)

Grady Hospital is a location suggested by Kit. It works for me.

Chapter the sixth: Grasping Frantically at Normality

2005-09-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

Jared and Marcus wore looks of dumb shock. Jared’s cards fluttered out of his now limp grip. Absentmindedly and almost conversationally, Marcus looked over and muttered, “Trent’s back. Oh, wow, you had a full house?”

Jared jumped up. “What are you doing here? You shouldn‘t be here.”

“I… don’t know what’s going on,” said Trent quietly. He looked about the apartment that he and the other two boys shared due to its relative cheapness and closeness to campus. All the usual accoutrements were there, computers, futons, the bunk that Jared and Marcus shared, the bookracks filled with various tomes that reflected the residents’ interests--Asimov, Plato, Gaiman, Keating, and others shared space-- and posters that did the same. Tori Amos, Seal, VNV nation represented some of their musical interests, and Evil Dead, The City of Lost Children, and Ghost in the Shell made appearances for their cinematic inclinations; various pieces of art made by them all also occupied the wall. Trent took it all in, breathed the familiar smell of Marcus’s candles and incense, and noted Jared’s eclectic sense of music currently manifested from a computer via “Moon Dance” by Van Morrison. This was no illusion. He was home in every sense of the word.

Maybe it was all a bad dream. But wait, hadn’t that strange young man at the pub mentioned the shooting? “Jared, was I shot?!”

Jared looked at Marcus briefly, concerned, and then turned back to Trent. “Of course. You were shot when we went clubbin’ at the masquerade last Saturday.” He paused, then said, “You do remember, don’t you?”

Trent pulled out one of the chairs from the small table the others had been playing poker on. He sat down with the abruptness of one who is exhausted. “Yes. I remember but… I’m not hurt anymore…”

“Maybe you’re not well.” Marcus said softly.

Jared took him by the shoulders. “Trent. What are you doing here?”

Trent looked up, a bloodless pallor on his face and tears dancing in his eyes. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. I woke up and…I--this.” He pulled up his shirt to show the lack of a wound.

Marcus got up and came to examine the spot. “That’s not right. I found you; I saw the blood coming out and I held the wound while Jared called the police…” He lifted the other side of Trent’s shirt, as if he expected the wound had migrated somehow. Convinced that somehow the wound had disappeared, Marcus wandered over to the TV and switched on the evening news. “That’s not right,” he said again to himself.

Jared sat on the floor at Trent’s feet. Thoroughly dumbfounded, he finally said after a great pause, “Is this some kind of miracle?”

“I… don’t know. It doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels… really scary, yet empowering. I mean, if I came back from this.”

Jared noted that Trent was breathing deeply. “Are you okay? Do you need some water? You look like you’re having a panic attack.”

Trent smiled briefly, Jared of all people, was someone in a position to recognize panic attacks, being a very high-strung person. “No, it’s not like that… I just keep getting this fear that if I forget to stop breathing, I won’t. It’s silly, but someone pointed out earlier that I wasn’t--”

“Look at this!” Marcus shouted without warning, making them both jump. Marc was pointing at the screen.

Trent and Jared jumped up to see what was meriting such a reaction at a time like this. “What is that?” asked Trent.

Jared replied with surprise, “Don’t you know? That’s the hospital you were at. That’s Grady hospital.”

Trent didn’t recognize the place very well, having never noticed it from the outside. In a female voice, he caught the following, “Police are concerned this evening after a man was attacked in his sleep by an unknown assailant that was using some kind of sharp instrument, rumored to be a scalpel, thought the hospital is saying the possibility of such a thing coming into the attacker’s possession are slim.

“Also, we have some eye witness-reports of an attacker that moved too fast to identify. Moreover, our most recent information tells us that one of the patients has gone inexplicably missing. One Trent Philip, who was in the news eerily--uh earlier, rather-- this week for being the victim of a shooting. He is reportedly in intensive condition and in need of serious medical treatment. Anyone with information…”

“What’s going on?” asked Trent to no one in particular. “Everything is crazy.”

The broadcaster continued. We are now going to go live to “Trishia Yamashita at the hospital. Trisha, what’s it like down there?”

The camera panned back a bit to show a young woman in a business suit. “Thanks, Diane. Residents are almost inexplicably frenzied following tonight’s events, though few could see what happened, everyone is in a panic. The agitation is palpable. I’ve never seen people like this during three years of reporting in the field.” The camera moved over to show a bewildered looking man in hospital pajamas.

“With me now is a witness of the events. Sir, you saw the attack first hand?”

“Yes, we all felt it coming.”

“Sir?”

“We knew something was going to happen. It was like hearing thunder far off and getting all the hairs on your neck standing up cause you’re creeped out.”

Trisha showed confusion at this strange description. “Sir, can you tell us what it looked like?”

“I saw a guy I think. He moved so fast. He was huge, I think. It was hard to tell; the lights started going crazy, and this baby was screaming. And it howled! I swear it did, but it was like more than one voice; a cacophony of howls. The thing… the guy was hunched over the doctor, had him in a fierce grip.”

“That’s--”

“And I swear, when I looked up, it had this feral look like… you don’t want to mess with me. I fell down. Then it moved real fast again. He was gone. He moved so fast, and the whole time the lights were flickering and paper was blowing everywhere.”

“A harrowing tale,” said Trisha patronizingly. “Did you see a weapon? Did you see any scalpels or other tools the assailant could have grabbed?”

“That thing didn’t need a weapon.”

At that point, Trent practically leapt to the TV, hitting it and turning it off. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t watch any more… this is all too… too much. I can’t handle any more tonight.

Marcus bent down and placed a friendly hand on Trent’s arm. It’s okay. We don’t know what’s going on… but…”

“Maybe we need some sleep before our heads pop from collective aneurisms,” Said Jared. “Times like these I wish I drank.”

Marcus got up. “Luckily, I have no such problems. You want some Irish Cream, Trent?”

“No,” said Trent as he walked over to the futon and plopped down. “I’m not thirsty.”

It was the first of many long nights for Trent.

2005-09-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

(5th chapter updated, seriously pondering my next move)

Have you seen Mary Sue?

2005-09-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Right. Sorry for not updating the novel; I'm still thinking about my next plot movement. Story dump forthcoming. Wait, none of that sounded right. Also, I have a bitterly sardonic cold. Didn't know viruses had personalities.
--
I found this article about the phenomenon in fiction of the Mary Sue archetype. I promise, that neither of the two main characters in this novel are based on me. When it comes to injecting my personality into stories, it usually happens with secondary, unimportant characters, or maybe a phrase I would use will find its way into someone's mouth. Nothing major. I'd much rather meet new people than myself. I already like myself far more than is healthy; but you already know that if you read my other blog.

2005-09-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

(Chapter 5 added; due for a treatment tomorrow to add some details)
I'm conflicted over adding the word Smeging to William's vocabulary. But I figure, he's a red dwarf fan, among other things, so why not? What thinks the reader? Too obscure/silly a reference? Does it ruin the suspension of disbelief?
--
I like Will; he deserves his own book.

Chapter the fifth: Disconcerting Occurrences

2005-09-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

“Oy, mate, you look like Hell.”
Trent snapped to consciousness, the memories of his dream still fresh. He was surprised and more than a little disconcerted to find himself not in the hospital. Instead, he realized he was a in a pub, sitting in a corner whilst a few people loudly caroused around him. He looked down to find that he was wearing one of his usual outfits: A pair of black Chuck Taylors, denim jeans, a blue sweater, and a faux-leather jacket.
“Are you quite well?” asked the guy who had woken him, a young man that seemed to be British by the sound of his accent. This guy, maybe in his early twenties, looked rather friendly. He sported a would Trent would later characterize as a British music-star hairstyle that would fit in well with the sex pistols or the like. This guy was wearing a small amount of eyeliner, a sweater, and fade jeans. To his side lay a weathered trench coat.
“Uh… where am I?” Trent asked in a confused tone.
Instead of answering right away, the young man lit a cigarette, inhaled, and exhaled thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “You’re not another sodding ghost, are you?”
“What?”
“I’ve seen a few in my time. Honest. Think what you will, but when I see a guy do what you did I gotta wonder. Names William by the way. Just plain old Will works too, ‘f ya prefere.”
“I… what did I do?”
“Well, you just appeared out of nowhere like. Smeging incredible, really. Kind of like you flowed into your seat from a blur of nothingness, like a film going from fast to slow motion, with a touch of reverse. Phantasmagoric, I must say in all honesty.”
“I shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean?” Wills eyes narrowed, and Trent could tell he was still nursing his theory that Trent was, in fact among the walking dead.
“I mean, I was in a hospital.”
“Mmm. Are you sure you’re not a ghost? A revenant? A zombie or corporeal undead of some sort? Besides your sudden appearance and crazy story, you are registering high on my spook’dar.” Will said this all with a half grin, as if he was either jesting or bemused by it all.
“What are talking about?” Trent didn’t like this. He wanted to get out. Anywhere but with this crazy foreigner.
“I got the gift, mate,” continued Will heedless of Trent’s discomfort. “Was born with a caul on my head, so I was. But I’m not complaining. My life’s been all the richer since I accepted the strange parts of the world. Anyways, I see things ‘man was not meant to see’, d’ya kennit.” As he said this last line, William took a waviery/horrific tone that was no doubt intended to invoke humorous associations with old horror b-movies.
Will took a drag, released it. Then his eyes widened with recognition.“Hoy, I recognize you; you’re the boy what got shot the other day! Talk of you was all over campus. I go to Oglethorpe, just like you. What do you study? Me, I’m trying myself in a self designed major, kinda a combination of paranormal psychology and law enforcement. A regular ghost buster, d’ya kennit.” Will winked.
“Uh, I’m in international studies…”
“Ah, wanna save the world or just see it? I’d bet you’re a little from the ol’ A and B, am I right? Stay away from the Balkans; bad spooks out there, trust you me. Oy, it musta hurt bein’ shot an’ all. Where’d you get shot?”
“I…” Trent touched his side, was surprised to feel nothing unusual, and lifted his shirt. Much to his shock, there was bare, unmarked flesh underneath.
Helpfully, and in a much gentler tone than previously used in this conversation, Will said, “I think you’re confused mate, yeah? Maybe the gunwound is on your other side?”
“I… I’m sure I was shot. I’m not still dreaming, am I?”
“Ah, now that’s a question for the philosophers. I met a mad man in Sumatra that tried to convince me he dreamed the world and he couldn’t wake up. Course, I think he came up with the theory to justify the fact he had killed three prostitutes. People justify their evil to ignore the fact that they’re monsters. All the worst monsters I saw were really just people that forgot how to be people.” Seeing that Trent wasn’t engaged in the conversation, Will tried another quick change of subject. “Now Sumatra, there’s a fairly nice country. If you do the habitat for humanity or Peace Corps thing after you graduate, I recommend Su--”
“I gotta go,” said Trent, abruptly standing up.
“Oy, one thing before you go!”
Trent reluctantly turned to face this puckish rouge that would most likely be a laugh under different circumstances.
With a painful flair for the dramatic, Will took a final puff of his fag and rubbed it in the ashtray. “Mate, I just can’t help but wonder… when’s the last time you blinked?”
“What?”
“Because you certainly haven’t blinked the whole time I was chattering on. Oh well, off with you now. We’ll meet again, no doubt.”
Trent did his best to not break into an all-out run upon his terrified exit.
After Trent had left, Will muttered to himself grimly, “Well, if he is dead, won’t be long before things get interesting.” Then loudly, “Hoy, barkeep! What does a bloke ‘ave to do to get a refresher over here?”

2005-09-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

(Chapter four seems to be complete. Also, I changed it's title)

2005-09-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

(chapter 4 expanded; there may be more for this chapter. I must consider the outline...)
The artist mentioned in Chapter 4 is real, and he really did make a sculpture out of his own blood. Under mysterious circumstances, it (may?) have melted.
You can read about the "accident" here. I must admit I share Tall dark and handsome's dislike for Marc Quinn's art. The art community, naturally, thinks he is a genius. To each their own.
You know that paragraph of legalese that appears in movie credits and copywrite pages that goes something like, "all the people in this work are entirely fictitious and references to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental"? Yeah, that's always bull.

2005-09-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

(4th chapter started) I know it's time to quit when I happen to be so tired, I have a second train of thought that starts to impede with what I'm writing, sprinkling random words and phrases into my text like a literary bandid. The enemy muse within.

Chapter the Fourth: Parallel Corruption

2005-09-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Tall dark and handsome had led Sheri away from a lovely party at a gallery opening. But he was, all things considered, far from tall, and more beautiful than handsome, like a cherubim. The guy had charm though; she could give him that much credit and more. Somehow, he came off as larger than life, especially with that long, flowing coat that seemed to conceal some giant force as paradoxically as a tesseract. It was a bit odd that he hadn’t taken it off for the party, but Sheri was starting to suspect he was a bit eccentric. It certainly intrigued her; she wasn’t even tipsy and she had accepted his invitation to come to his building (he owned a whole building!) and “take a look at some of his humble works.”

Of course, Sheri was also interested in what he could do for her. Word around town was that he owned a very exclusive gallery. When she struck up a conversation, he had come back with a familiarity and warmth that was at first off-putting, but ultimately charming. She had barely had time to learn his name before he suggested the trip to his place.

“Uh, did you enjoy the party?” She asked as they rode his elevator up.

“Mm. To be perfectly honest, I was disappointed. The artist-- what was her name?”

“Uh, Sandy Bowman.”

“Ah, yes, thank you, my dear. Sandy Bowman seems to lack conviction. One cannot simply slap some paint on a canvass and call it beautiful. One has to have narrative, cause, and innovation in mind.”

“Wow, that’s really deep.”

The elevator stopped, and they got off. Tall dark and handsome had a nice place, in Sheri’s opinion. In fact, nice was an understatement. Spacious, ridiculously pricey furniture (even the lamps seemed to be expensive to her keen eyes), art everywhere, and a sense of opulence complete with gold-leafed columns.

“So Mr. artist, you talk pretty passionately. What kind of narratives, causes, and innovations have you come up with?”

“Chiaroscuro, for one,” Tall dark and handsome muttered.

“Chiaroscuro? You’re too funny!” Sheri laughed a little longer than was appropriate, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to impress this guy so bad. Hell, she wanted his babies, and she didn’t even like kids. A small part of her self became concerned about this, but the majority of her was so deliriously happy, she couldn’t care less. “You know that’s impossible. Unless you where alive during the Baroque period, and despite your fabulous digs reminiscent of that time in history, I think that would make you really old.”

“You couldn’t be more right.” Tall dark and handsome sighed and got a far off look in his eyes.

***

Trent was mildly confused. This had to be a dream of some sort that he seemed to be experiencing. Everything was out of focus and, in a lesser sense somewhat nonexistent, if he did not pay specific attention to it. Moreover, it was hard to focus on what he wanted to. In addition, he was viewing himself from outside himself, and he looked nothing like himself. He was a young, good-looking man with intense features.

He was in a bar. No, that wasn’t the right word. Dirt floors, stonewalls, the smell of waste was omnipresent (had he ever used his sense of smell in a dream before?). This was more like a tavern. In Latin America perhaps, for everyone seemed to be speaking in something that sounded like one of the romantic languages. In addition, everyone was tan, many of them with rich, curly hair like his dream own incarnation.

Trent was listening to conversation, and somehow aware of the meaning of the words, despite the language involved. “Hoy, Cellini,” someone said, and Trent knew that a friend was calling to him.

Legs that were someone else’s and yet his own moved him to his friend, a slightly inebriated, merry fellow. “What is it, Lorenzo, he heard himself say in the foreign tongue.” These were Italian names, right?

Lorenzo grabbed him familiarly, like drunken people tend to do. “Don’t you think that man looks like he could be your father or older brother?” Lorenzo pointed to a man across the room.

Trent’s dream self smiled. “You are right Lorenzo. Who is that man?”

“Eh, I don’t know his name. I hear he is a famous artist. Exiled for killing someone. You should go entice him with your beautiful and familiar face.”

“Don’t be silly, Lorenzo.” But Trent’s dream body was already floating across the room so he could introduce himself.

***

“Hello?” Sheri said with a bit of panicked voice. Tall dark and handsome had been Tall dark and catatonic for about 30 seconds now. He had simply been staring off into space. He did even seem to be breathing or blinking.

Slowly, Tall dark and handsome’s eyes lost their cloudiness, and their intensity came back. At long last, he said, “Sorry, my dear… I seem to have been reminiscing… what an odd episode. I was remembering my-- well, it’s not really important.”

“Thank goodness,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her head into his trapezius, as if it was the natural thing to do. “You had me scared to death.”

“He chuckled charmingly and rubbed her shoulder thoughtfully. The night is still young. Anyways, would you like to see what I’ve been working on?”

“I would be overjoyed!”

“Excellent. Come this way.” He led her around a column to an easel that stood above a drop cloth blotched with mainly scarlet and umber hues. The painting that lay on the easel seemed to likewise have this color theme. The picture Sheri saw was, to her eyes, immaculate. A study of a reclining female nude. However, from the looks of things, the painting was still in progress.

“Incredible,” she said, leaning closer. “You really do like baroque art, don’t you? And this scarlet color; such a strange quality to it. This is oil?”

“In part. I use a lot of blood as well.”

For a beat she was disconcerted. “Blood… really?”

“Yes, it’s an old technique. Blood has a quality to it… indescribable.”

“Ah, yes! I know what you mean. Have you heard about Marc Quinn? He’s a British artist that used nine pints of his own blood to create a sculpture of his head--”

“Marc Quinn is a charlatan. He and his body of work disgusts me. Blood is not a gimmick to be used in such a trite fashion. Oh his idea was intriguing at first; I’ll give him that, but his execution… and his other sculptures! Post modern--” at this point Tall dark and handsome seemed to use several non-English curses with much vehemence. Sheri swooned a little at his passion on the subject.

After his outburst, Tall dark and handsome composed himself abruptly. “I am sorry, my dear. That was most unbecoming of me.” Then, almost as an aside, he said quietly, “Perhaps I could have Mr. Quinn over for a discussion of his work some time.”

“No, that’s alright. I like a man with strong opinions.” So, what do you call this work?”

“Ah, the painting you have been viewing is called ‘death of Electra. It of course is unfinished. I’m afraid my last model didn’t last.”

“Oh, what a shame!”

“I must admit my motives for bringing you here involve more than simply showing you my art.”

“Oh?” Sheri’s heart started to pound.

“You’re beauty. Your proportions, your… everything are perfect.”

“Oh, thank you!” She gushed.

“So, I was thinking…”

“Yes? Yes!”

“…that you will be my next model.”

Sheri paused in mid breath, blinked. “Oh? Oh… um ah, yes!”

“Excellent. Let’s get started right away.”

2005-09-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of writing (and because I remembered its existence the other day), I'm posting a freshly-edited copy of an old short story (I fixed what lingering typos remained and hopefully it's correct now). Please, enjoy. Maybe I'll submit this one to a magazine someday soon. I have sequels in this setting in mind too.

And/or you can read the new section added to the end of chapter 1.
--
En Passant
here is a rough draft of a sci-fi/hard-boiled detective/chess story I wrote a small while ago. Feel free to critique if you're into that sort of thing... and keep an eye out for the cthulhu mythos reference (very subtle).
Remember, ©: Claytonian

En Passant

The streets of Kritos IV were dank that night, accompanied by a darkness that clung to everything like a Camidian brain slug, the corruption of its tendrils infecting whatever they could dig into. Throughout the city, one could smell the fetid stench of where there was no power for the microbots to clean up rotting garbage. Detective Smith had us positioned around the corner from the entrance of a supposedly abandoned bio-structure. The old building showed obvious signs of disease; every once in a while it would belch out methane gas.
“This building has riggers,” said Smith quietly as we stood waiting with our hands on our weapons. “The whole place could explode if there was an open flame. Demolition’s due tomorrow. He’ll be packing his bags soon.”
I knew he was right. Riggers was a disease that made bio-structures dangerous. Even in an ignored ghetto-planet like this, full of Hatlian immigrants and their unsavory culinary practices involving other humanoids whenever they could get hands on them, a building with riggers could only stay up so long before public services tore it down to grow a new one. Unfortunately, when we got this information from the intergalactic police force we also received some more disturbing news. Word on the street was that our target was going to make a jump to the planet of Alhared on a flight leaving exactly two hours from the moment we were standing there. Already, the camera-sentry bots on that far-off planet were searching for a genetic match for our quarry.
Of course, even a child still in their growth pod knows that once a person has made a jump, they travel so fast that they arrive before they left, and simple quantum mechanics dictate that catching them in the past is moot and dangerous. The department cannot warrant the costs and risks associated with trying to apprehend a person that obviously will make their flight in the future. This policy was put into affect three years before the first hyper-jump was even completed; the intergalactic police can be highly efficient when it comes to matters of saving money. Well that, and there is the rumor that one could cause a paradox.
Detective Smith is cold and logical, all servo-heads are of coarse, but he is also surprisingly tenacious. I could sense in him the desire to make this arrest, even if we did get word on our bell-communicators from headquarters that our villain had been spotted on Alhared. I had a feeling that it would be up to me to talk Smith out of his plans, but part of me didn’t want to.
I had recently given up stim bugs. Not because I wanted to–don’t get me wrong, I’m utterly addicted to the endorphin rush that comes from letting those parasites crawl under my skin–but because my supply had been cut off by headquarters for the time being. Headquarters likes to keep pre-cogs like me as fresh as possible, and stim bugs lose their primary function of enhancing one’s abilities as their chemicals become too common to the body. In short, I was going through withdrawal, and becoming suicidal even to the point where part of me wanted to take the scumbag down and risk a paradox-implosion that may be localized to a block or as big as a solar system.
A voice in my head said, “Remember your duties, Mcguilicuty. I see your nihilism levels rising.” That was my implant, a rusty old model that was supposed to keep rehabilitated individuals like me playing nicely. My work for headquarters one part of my sentence for past crimes deemed mild enough that I could be put to use as a servant for the public good. “Take a criminal, make them into a cop”, that was the logic of the empire, especially if you had a useful talent like precognition. The implant gave me endorphins when I was good, and seizures when I was really bad. Just one more reason to let Smith make the capture even if our Bell-communicators started to ring in our heads, letting us know the bust was off.
I gritted my teeth and tried to clear my head despite the unpleasant tingling now flowing through my body. I thought back to the conversation me and Smith had over a game of chess earlier that night. We had been on a space barge, passing away the time until our jump through the light-years was complete.
***
“Relax,” Smith had said. It’s only an hour’s journey these days. So fast in fact, that there is a you are still sitting at the terminal in the past, waiting for his flight. I can remember back to the time when flights spanning this distance would take weeks. There were still some temporal ramifications, but not like now. Now you could call yourself from the future and say hello, if the government would allow it.” I knew he was right. With a bell-communicator, (devices named after Bell’s theorem), one could communicate instantly with any point in the universe, provided there was a central receiving station on the planet tuned to the quantum-stuff held in your communicator. All this is detailed ad nauseam in the lessons that the implant programs into my dreams each night.
“Well, your brain is bionic,” I grumbled. “Who knows how long you’ve been alive? I bet even you’ve forgotten.” And it’s true. Smith has so many synthetic parts he has more in common with an android than a human. I pushed a pawn two spaces forward. “Your move.”
“Well, I’ve been alive long enough to contemplate many things,” he said. “Tell me, are you familiar with the history of chess?”
“No. I wasn’t even aware of what chess was until I was ‘rehabilitated.’ This implant has changed me in many ways. Mental games are just one thing that it forces me to... enjoy.” The implant gave me a shock then, just to remind me that I was nearing a boundary.
“Well, I don’t pity you for having to pay off your debt to society in such a way, but you should be glad that the tyranny of eugenics are finally ended. But that’s comparatively recent history and I‘m digressing; I was alluding to ancient history: the 14th century.”
“Are you gonna move?” I asked impatiently.
“Getting to it. Back in the 14th century, the move you just made–jumping the pawn forward two spaces for its initial move–was introduced as a new optional move in the official version of the game. The move was deemed to be quite powerful, however, and someone conservatively suggested a counter move to limit the advantage of the pawn’s new ability.”
“And that was?”
“Let me demonstrate”, he said, moving a pawn adjacent to my own into the square mine had skipped over. My piece blinked out of the holo-display.
“You can’t do that!” I protested. “Did you hack this thing?”
“Not at all. You’ll find that move was well within the rules. It is called en-passant, the counter to allowing pawns to move two spaces at once. You capture the pawn as if it was still on that square. It seems to travel right past that point, but a ghost, if you will, of the pawn remains. Capture the ghost, capture the pawn.”
***
My thoughts of the past were interrupted by a pre-cognizant flash back in the present. “He’s coming!” I mechano-pathically shouted to Smith. “He’ll be here within the–” I was interrupted by the familiar tone of our Bell communicators giving us information that was traveling instantly from over thirty eight light years way. The binary code processed quickly into a message I was already expecting. Our perp had been identified on Alhared just as we had feared. Headquarters was ordering us to back off immediately.
“No,” whispered Smith with determination. I realized by the way his head was cocked that he had jumped his programming.
“What do you mean?” I said incredulously. At the same moment, our target burst through the door with his entourage of goons. “Smith!” I desperately pathed, “don’t do it!”
But Smith had other plans. He yelled an obligatory “Freeze!” which was of course met with some obligatory shots from the thugs before they fled into the curtains of the night. As we chased them down the alley, I felt a part of myself observing all this with a detached curiosity. What would happen now? Would it be like some people theorized, where fate and chance would conspire against us in such a way as to allow our antagonist to make the jump? Does time cover its tracks unlike so many criminals fail to? Or does time trip up in a spectacular event that ends everything and everyone instantly? The superstitiously dreaded event we know as paradox. Part of me wanted to see Smith succeed. Part of me just had to find out for myself. Maybe the implant disapproved of these thoughts of mine as I dodged and shot my way down the alleyways, but it was designed to shut down during moments when I was in danger. The last thing you need in a firefight is a distraction.
Ironically, I took a slug in the shoulder as I had that last thought. It was a retro-weapon bullet, designed to vibrate the body until your brain ruptured and dripped out your nose. If I wasn’t a rehab case with a head full of electronics, and if I had not been merely grazed, I may not have lived. As it was, I passed out after a moment of excruciating pain.
When I came to, Smith was calling in the ambulance. “Did we get him?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” said Smith. “He’s Gorgon food. Literally. They swooped in as soon as I made the kill, and I’ve been batting them off you.”
I looked around to see that the little snake-like creatures that this planet was known to have in an abundance --like unto the rats and Roach-men that took over old Earth-- were indeed waiting to get a piece of me like the carrion they are. “One thing bugs me,” I said. “We’ve been partners for some three years. You’ve never pulled a stunt like challenging the edicts of headquarters on this scale before. What’s gotten into your head, metalmind?”
I heard servos whir in his dilating silicon pupils as he reminisced. “It came to me during the chess game on the flight over.” As he said this, the sound of sirens started to become over-bearing.
“What does chess have to do with anything?” I asked through gritted teeth. My arm felt like jelly. I would discover later that this wasn’t far off; it would take me three days in a regen tank to grow it back.
“En passant, my friend,” said Smith as he lit up a cigarette with a flame from his artificial finger‘s laser. “We just played chess against father time himself and won.”
I found out later that our perp was attacked on Alhared by an “invisible beast that ripped him apart and ate him alive; at least, that’s what the superstitious Alhared natives said when interviewed. I resolved then to play chess more and think less in a firefight.

Show, don't tell

2005-09-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

So I must admit I am partially crippled right now. I've constantly heard the admonition, "Show, don't tell." But I'm not sure when to break the rule. For instance, I've avoided giving physical descriptions of the characters thus far unless a character from the story noticed them for some reason. But is that taking the rule too far? I'm starting to wonder.
When is it alright to just tell? Why is it considered bad to tell anyways? Who made the rules?
Anyhoo, because I was feeling crippled, I think I left out a scene I shouldn't have. I'll be adding to chapter 1 shortly.

Where do all the stories go that never lived?

2005-09-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

(Chapter 3 updated)
So way back in high school, I wrote a first-person pov story about a crazy neo-nazi who had come into possesion of a briefcase with a nuclear detonator. The story detailed the tragedy of his first love (and how events led him to become a frothing racist), which was mirrored by him finding a new love. The new girl discovers he's a nazi and leaves him. In anger, he detonates the bomb.
I was very proud of this story; it was the most engrossing one I'd written to date. I was even prouder when I was asked to read it in front of the rest of my English class. I went through my narrative and finished with a satisfied grin. Then the kid two seats back says, "Hey Clay. Were you on crack when you wrote this?"
Anyway, that didn't dampen my pride in the story. But I'm wondering what happened to it. Where did all my childhood stories go? I've been writing since I was a kid.
The fourty page Road Dahl-esque fantastic adventures of the kids that discovered their next door neighbor was a brilliant scientist who had left his 101 potions to them when he died? Gone.
The pulp-fiction style sci-fi stories? Gone.
My first novel? Lost to the sands of time.
Each one a seed of brilliance. Each one a watershed in my creative growth.
I mourn the lost fiction.

Who ya gonna call?

2005-09-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

I started chapter 3 tonight, but I'm pretty tired, so it's probably rife with typos, and far from done.
The computer claims that, in a world with perfect grammar, on cannot pivot on just one heal. What do you think?
--
As you may know, the novel is set in Atlanta. I've enlisted Kit to scout some real life locations for events in the book to take place. He's supplied me with some good information thus far, and relayed to me the phenominon in Atlanta graffiti of Mr. Fangs. Here's some pics:

See more at the Ghost Hunting Around Atlanta on Flickr.
--
In other news, I hope this is a joke. But it's the way the world is going after all...

Chapter the Third: A place of life and death

2005-09-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

“I was really shot, wasn’t I?” Trent asked the nurse who, just a minute before, had barged into the room demanding that Marcus and Jared leave immediately. Jared and Marcus had been reluctant to go, but a stern look from this well practiced tank of a woman had made them lose all resolve, and so now it was just Trent and the nurse and the beeping of the machine that watched his pulse.

“Yes.” The curt answer of a woman who is running on three hours of sleep and ten cups of coffee; a woman that had gone through this conversation a thousand times before. The person in the bed’s name and features may change, but ultimately, it was the same person in that bed every time. And almost always, they said the same thing.

“It’s so strange. I mean, I barely feel any different. There’s not any pain…”

“Mmhm.” The kid didn’t think there was pain now, but when some of the drugs wore off, he would start complaining just like all the rest of them.

Trent was curiously padding his fingers around his side, where the bullet wound was covered with gauze. “Don’t really feel anything painful at all…”

“Don’t do that.” She said. I’m going to bring in some food. A doctor will be here shortly.” She started for the door.

“Oh, I’m not hungry.”

The nurse pivoted on one of her heals. “You will eat.” The tone of someone that spoke edicts not to be questioned.

“Yes’m.” came the speedy and meek reply. Trent waited for the nurse to go. Instead her brow only furled. “Uh… something wrong?” Trent was actually afraid she was going to yell at him.

“Your pulse… are you dead or somethin’?” she said in a flat dudgeon.

Trent realized that the heart-beat monitor was no longer beeping. It was simply ejaculating a flat line sound. “Whoa. Do corpses talk often?” Trent chuckled light-heartedly.

“Stupid thing is busted.” The nurse hit the EKG with a hard chop. After a second, the beeping started normally again. “There.”

The nurse started for the door again, and then looked back, briefly, at the boy in the bed. For a second there her heart had actually leapt with excitement like in the old days, but it was no use. Nothing special here.

The names and faces may change, but ultimately, the patient in the bed is always the same. Just another person like all the rest. She shrugged off the feeling and went back to her duties. No rest for the wicked after all…

***

Trent was not left to marvel over his experience for long before a doctor rushed in, accompanied by a much younger, less swarthy-looking nurse. “What? Are you alive?”

“Why does everyone ask me that?” asked Trent with a smirk.

The doctor explained being called down about the EKG flat lining. As soon as he had ascertained the mundaneness of the situation, much like Trent’s nurse, the doctor was all business, waiving away the young nurse, and barely pausing to note Trent’s remarkable recovery. He did some standard tests. Doctor stuff that all doctors do, then he gently prodded Trent’s side wound. Trent wondered what the nurse would think of that.

“Painful?”

“Not really.”

“You sure?”

“Yup.”

“That’s odd. You’ve made one of the speediest comebacks I’ve yet seen.” The doctor paused to write something on Trent’s clipboard.

“Uh hey, doc…”

“Mmm?”

“I was wondering... did I go into surgery?”

“Of course. You were in the ER for a while. Collapsed lung, internal bleeding. You were even clinically dead for about twenty seconds. Real mess. Luckily we had your blood type on hand.”

“My blood type?”

“Yeah, rare…ish. AB. Hard to find sometimes in this day and age when people don’t really donate out of… I don’t know-- selfish cowardice is the only way I would describe someone not willing to give blood-- anyways, we had a few pints on hand, luckily.”

“Hey doc…”

“Mmm?”

“Uh, nothing. I just… uh, I promise to donate when I get better. I’m gonna live my life different.”

“You know a sad fact? I’ve seen drunk drivers, prostitutes, gang-bangers, and chain smokers all look death in the eyes and say that. All of them repent on their near-death bed. But you know what?”

“Uh, no…”

“I could equate the number of them that actually change their lives for the better with another blood type.”

“I really don’t follow you…”

“Sorry. Erudite doctor joke. The blood type is O. As in zero people really change. They all live their lives like they always did. A week after being discharged, the heart attack victim will be eating bratwurst and drinking beer. The crazy motorcyclist goes back to doing stupid stunts on his hog. Everyone has the same story. That’s the sad fact. No one ever really changes.” The doctor looked wistfully out the window. Then he remembered his duties and started to make a quick exit.

“I hope, Mr. Reeves, that you do make a change for the better. But--and no offense intend ended here-- I doubt you will. I have yet to see anyone transcend themselves in my tenure here. Adieu.” In a flash the doctor was gone.

Trent thought about the jaded man’s words for a while, and then he went back to reliving his experience for what would be just one more of countless times.

Chapter the Second: Art is Dead

2005-09-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

“What do you find beautiful?” the creep asked in a hypnotic yet unnerving voice. Sven thought that voice sounded way too patronizing and coercive. Like the voice of a child molester stalking his pray. Can you meet me at the mall? Oh and wear your school uniform, okay? Plus, there was a strange quality to it brought by an accent that Sven couldn’t quite place.

But a patron was a patron, and from what Sven could tell, this guy was loaded. He inferred this from the Armani suits, the immaculately manicured nails, and of coarse, the private gallery which Sven was now auditioning to be featured in. Initialy, Sven had met this patron (soon to be known as “the creep” when Sven thought of him) at a party among the social elite. The who’s-who of the local art scene. Everyone seemed familiar with the creep. Whether it was his wealth or his intense, youthful looks that drew people to the creep Sven wasn’t sure. One thing was for sure, this guy was like a primal, preternatural force, and it unnerved Sven so bad he almost hadn’t bothered to show up for this interview, which had been arranged by the creep out of the blue after just a few minutes of cocktail-party conversation. Sven was gonna milk the creep for all he was worth and maybe put the weirdo in his place while he was at it. “Beauty? Beauty is irrelevant. I have transcended such base concepts. I make art.”

“Oh? Beauty is irrelevant?“ The creep’s thick eyebrows arched in mock surprise. He sighed. “Well… you might as well show me your work.”

“Okay.” Sven flicked on the projector. Somehow, the lights dimmed on their own. Sven figured that the creep probably had someone working in another room, looking through the security cameras and waiting for cues. This guy was definitely loaded.

“I’m waiting,” said the creep in a sickly-sweet tone.

“Ahem. Right.” Sven clicked in the first slide. This is untitled number 25. It’s a piece about the banality of--”

“Stop.” The creep had switched to a very severe tone. “Are you telling me the title is ‘untitled’?”

“Um, yeah. Untitled number 25.”

“You know, I have seen a lot of art over the years. More than you can imagine. I can’t recall exactly who started this trend of calling works of art ‘untitled’ or ‘untitled in blue’ or --saints preserve us-- ‘untitled number 25,’ but it has never sat well with me on many levels. What does it say about your faith in a work to not give it the dignity of a title?”

“Uh, well, the post-modernists--”

“And isn’t it ultimately a contradiction in terms? ‘Untitled is still a title, is it not?” The creep jumped up from his chair and was in front of the screen with an alacrity that confused Sven. The creep continued, “Perhaps it is supposed to be clever? And speaking of the pretentious, let’s talk about what I see on the screen here.”

Sven had had enough of this prick. This commission obviously wasn’t going to happen, so he decided to at least give a good insult while he had a chance. “Hey fu--” But his mouth was stilled by an unknown force. The creep now had his back to Sven and was a dark form studying the picture, which showed an instillation mainly consisting of black and red paint, with doll-parts liberally sprinkled in for good measure.

“You will not be speaking anymore,” said the now cool voice in response to Sven’s unvoiced question. All the seductiveness was gone. The creep was no longer that sleazy-type of guy that unnerved with his otherworldly qualities and familiar tones, he was just plain scary now. “I didn’t invite you to my gallery to show me your work anyways. I have only cursory interest in it. I could tell, from the way that you walked and talked the night I met you, that you were a poseur.

“It makes me feel better though, to confirm that stopping you from producing further art will not be any great loss. Look at this composition. Why, it is not a composition at all! Black and red? Tell me, did you wet the bed until you were twelve? I don’t doubt that you did. How droll. And the doll parts? It’s been done so many times I can hardly count. In fact, there is not one original aspect to your work at all. More to the point, there is no beauty.”

The creep turned around, his, pale skin flush with rage. And those eyes of his, once a beautiful and alluring almond brown, now yellow, and seeming to glowing with an inner fire. Combined with his curly auburn hair and the halo of light churned forth from the projector, the creep’s features made him resemble at this moment an angel of death out of a William Blake print. Sven wanted to go ape and scamper out of here if he had to knock over his own grandma to do it. But he could not move. Sweat started to trickle into his eyes. He couldn’t even blink. Could not rip his pupils from this horrific figure.

“All humans are the same. You do what has been done before. You put a urinal on a pedestal, sign it, and call it art. It’s sickening. Each human thinks he is better than the last, smarter, more clever. They are not. Each human thinks that the totality of events in history has been leading to his birth; that they are the most important person to come along; that humans are the apex of evolution. Each person thinks he is the best; that he is a god among men. Well you are not. You are not what art has been leading to. You are not the first one to think of your clever little ideas. You have not made any new discoveries. You are not at the top of the food chain.”

The creep had moved faster than Sven could track again. Now the creep--what was his real name? Sven couldn’t even remember that now. --was behind him, leaning unnervingly close to Sven’s ear. When the creep spoke again, his seductive tone had returned, and he spoke in a quiet voice.

“Look at the state of you. Overcome by my simplest cantrip. Sven outdone by Svengali. You are not special. I haven’t seen a real artist in a generation. No. You are not unique. You are like all the rest of them. Cattle. Nay, less than that. Ants. I will show you beauty still exists, that you may begin to fathom your folly. Pay attention, you are to be a participant in an impromptu piece of performance art. I call it, ‘a study in sanguine humor.’ The reference will probably be lost on you, but I digress. Shall we begin?”

That said, the creep bit into Sven’s neck. All Sven could manage was a squeak. The creep lifted his now-bloodied face for a moment. “Pay attention to this moment. Listen to the song of your little heart beating frantically. Feel the sensation of your life leaving you. That is art.” Thus said, the monster went back to tearing at Sven’s neck with preternaturally sharp canines.

About the experiment

2005-09-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

This is a novel, written a little bit at a time. The idea is that if a few pages or paragraphs are written each day, then I can concentrate my creative energy into making immaculate passages. I got idea the long ago when I read that the woman who wrote The God of Small Things wrote that book at a rate of approximately one or two well-planned sentences a day. I won't be that slow and exacting. I already have the outline completed, but writing sometimes throws the author suprises, so not even I am sure how the plot will turn out.
Also, since this novel will be online for the time being, I'm letting my collective audience of the blogosphere give imput, critiques, and error corrections (believe me, there will be a lot of errors in spelling, vocabulary, and a plethora of lacunae).
So in short, the "experiment" is to write a novel as perfectly as I can with community interaction and observation. We live in exciting times, where even something as simple as writing can be viewed from a new perspective.
You will no doubt notice that any chapter I'm currently working on (and sometimes old chapters too) will change. This is because I constantly spot things I want to change, correct, or clairify (or the readers will no doubt request such changes and I may oblige). The novel experiment is alive. Alive! Ha ha ha! [/mad scientist laughter].

Whilst writing chapters, I plan to make blog entries here as well about the writing process (both on this novel and in general), and things I've noticed in my research for the novel.

Chapter the First: Ignoble endings; Horrific beginnings

2005-09-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

The first thought that calmly floated through Trent's mind at that moment was, So, this is what being shot feels like. The pain was like some far off sensation. In the initial moment following the gun blast, everything was muted, slow moving... almost... serene. Ever so slowly, he floated down, transfixed by the surrealness of the moment. The world tilted as his body was thrown out of balance.
Droplets of blood floated at swift yet somnolent trajectories from his side. Everything was gray except the blood. The blood stood out with radiant importance. That wasn’t blood there. That was life.
As he hit the concrete like a sack of disjoined bones, all slow motion and muffled sounds, Trent couldn’t help but feel a little academic curiosity at his own lack of anxiety about the situation. You just got shot. Shouldn't you be screaming or something? Not a panicked or scolding mental monologue, but one of idle interest. But he realized that someone was indeed screaming, he was just having trouble hearing with his ears ringing like this. His hearing, was filled with one far off eeeeeeeeeeeeeee. To his surprise, he realized that the bellow of terror he could hear ever so slightly was coming from himself.
Realization came at the slow/fast speed of this unique moment that he was terrified after all. His Zen-like instant was an encapsulated bubble of eternity, paradoxically coming to a swift end. His last rational thought of the forever/temporary moment was, I wonder if I am going to die.
As he lay on the street amidst rubbish, urine, discarded porno mags, and his own slowly yet inevitably pooling blood, as he lay dying, painfully and ingloriously outside the club he had exited not thirty seconds before with a promise to his friends to be right back, as he lay thinking panicked thoughts and gurgling his own fluids, his assailant riffled quickly and clumsily through his pockets. And found his wallet. Almost as an afterthought, as he was running away, the mugger mumbled under his breath. “Sorry.” Trent, naturally, never heard him.
Thus began Trent's long trek down a path to the the darkness that underlies reality. A path he never imagined himself taking.

***

"There comes a point in everyone’s life where their morals break down." This voice, familiar. Like the voice of a father. Or God. And it seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere, just like the voice of God should. Trent was confused, not fully self-aware just yet. He perceived swirling forms, like storm clouds, dark with import all about him. His awareness was floating in a void, unfixed and undefined.
The voice, definitely a male voice--and isn't that what you would expect from God too?-- continued, "For me, my morals break down at food. When it comes to food, I just kind of lose my inhibitions."
Another voice, also familiar, also masculine but more baritone, "Really? But you're so skinny."
"I'm slim. Anyways, that's how you tell, us thin guys are ravenous. We eat everything in site--"
"That's true enough. I've seen you do it at parties. At my parties."
"Well, --sorry ‘bout that-- see, that's what I mean. I spot food and I take it. I don't even consider the moral ramifications until later, if at all. I will eat people out of house and home if I get a chance. A lot of times, I will reach into people's chip bags--even as they are holding them--without thinking about it at all. As if it was already mine. I forget myself until I get incredulous looks."
The singsong reply: "Gluttony will kill ya."
"Maybe. I don't know. I'm not a Catholic, so I'm not sure about the seven deadly sins thing or whatever. Sins! That's what I was driving at! My point was, everyone--and I don't care who you are-- everyone's morals break down at some point. That's how it is. With me it's stealing food. I rarely feel guilt. Maybe cause it satisfies a primal need. Maybe cause my body doesn't want to be this skinn--this thin. But everyone is like that about something. Their morals just... break down."
The other voice again, "Why?"
"I don't know. Probably has something to do with the whole primal needs thing, like I just said. Some things must appeal to a person so much that they don't care anymore. They just take, or do, or whatever, heedless of consequence. Sometimes, they feel bad about it later. Sometimes not. I think there is a sliding scale of humanity involved."
"So, if you still feel guilty, you're still human."
"I was thinking about why Trent was shot. I mean, how desperate do you gotta be before you shoot someone? Before you don't care about ending another human life?"
The other voice was indignant, if doubtful. I don't have any moral breaking points."
The first voice now became incredulous. "Don't you?"
It was at this point that Trent came back to frightful awareness and sat up screaming.

***

The screams quickly subsided, they were more out of reflex than anything else, besides, they exacerbated the huge headache that Trent suddenly realized he had, and Trent immediately felt regret about yelling out. He rubbed his eyes as he felt concerned hands gently push him back into the bed. When he truly started to look around, Trent slowly started to make simple inferences. Tacky prints on the wall, windows looking out onto the Atlanta streets bright with light, bouquets of flowers everywhere, the smell of antiseptic and cleaners, and the beeps and scurrying of people, and finally two concerned friends. He was in a hospital. But that made sense, he had been shot hadn’t he? He remembered the strange Zen-moment of his shooting as if it happened to someone else, yet every detail still made crystal clear. An indelible mark on his psyche.
The owner of the first voice, the taller of the two men standing to the sides of his bed, said simply, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“Wow,” said the second voice. “We were worried. Jared and I were just watching over you a little. But--”
Jared interrupted the second friend. “This is crazy, you aren’t supposed to be awake this soon! Heck, you weren’t expected to wake up at all.”
“It is a miracle,” stated the second friend matter-of-factly. All things considered. You should be dead.”
Trent rubbed his temples weakly. Finally, he said, “Marcus, I assure you I wish I was dead right now.” That got weak chuckles out of the friends.

***

After a long pause, Jared broke the silence. “Uh, we haven’t contacted your mom yet.”
“No one has?”
“We didn’t really have a clue how. She’s always on the road and all…”
“Well… maybe it’s not so important that she knows right now. It might break her little hippy heart, even though I’m okay.” Trent imagined that his mother was out being happy somewhere at this very moment, and his inner eye saw her perfectly: her slim body, long white hair done back in a ponytail, and a smile on her barely-wrinkled face. No doubt she was camping somewhere in the Midwest, gazing at tonight’s stars, and quite oblivious of her son’s plight. He did not grudge her for it; her free-spirited nature had always been an inspiration to him.
It was because of her that he had gained a love of humanity. Whenever he paused to reflect on it, he could see how his life seemed greatly influenced her kind demeanor in so many ways, even unto his choice of a future career. There would be a time to tell his mother what happened, even a bad mother would deserve that much, and she was far from bad. However, no need to worry her just now.
“I’ll take care of it,” Trent said as he combed some of his long, dark hair out of his eyes with his hand. Then his eyes widened with surprise, followed by quick squinting from the strain of expression. This was worse than a hangover or migraine.
“What is it?” asked Markus.
“School,” Trent groaned.
“Don’t stress it, we’ve taken care of notifying your professors. All your fellow international studies majors send their condolences.”
“And a few flowers,” chimed in Jared.
“I live a charmed life.” groaned Trent as he rubbed his temples. This time, his friends laughed a little stronger, if for no other reason than to relieve stress.