Magen Cubed's Blog, page 41

New trailer for Flesh Trap

Courtesy of my in-house A/V guy the Reverend Civilian, who is also scoring the project soundtrack. Which will be up for download in the new few months, because he's a maniac who doesn't sleep.

Flesh Trap goes live Saturday, October 1st, then resumes a Tuesday/Thursday publishing schedule. Set your watches, children.

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Ain't No Grave comic

Ain't No Grave, page one by John David Brown

Ladies, ladies, ladies (and gentleman, whom I see in the corner looking bored), it is with great pleasure that I announce that The Fiction Circus has been so kind as to publish my comic, Ain't No Grave. First published in short story form by Post Mortem Press and illustrated by Austin-based comix artist John David Brown, it's the story of death, betrayal, forgiveness — oh, and zombies. It's heartfelt and poignant, but also full of dead stuff.

I first became acquainted with John when he did the illustration to another Fiction Circus publication of mine, and he said he wanted to do a comic based on one of my stories. After a few months of hemming and hawing over what to send him, I typed up this story and sent it his way. This is the outcome, and I'm really proud of it. Ain't No Grave is one of my favorite stories to have worked on, and John's art is stellar. It's just the right mix of grim and surreal, and I couldn't think of a better fit for this project.

So give the comic a read. (It has pictures and zombies and stuff, so don't whine that reading makes you sleepy.) I hope you love it as much as I do.

Flesh Trap: Coming soon to a computer screen near you

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At Jay's Diner Casey drank coffee and wrote in his journal. Harold sat in the booth across from him, long and skinny with his mess of greased hair and lip-ring. His skin stuck to the leather seat where his colorful t-shirt and cargo shorts showed, making a squeaking sound whenever he covered his mouth to a cough. Up close he had a white stud in his nose and gold irises, details Casey had taken for granted under the dingy light of the Grab-N-Go. There was a neat square carved into his chest, heart thumping wildly between his splintered ribs, peeled open like knotted fingers. The blood trickling from the corner of Harold's eyes made Casey lean away as it began to pool on the scratched tabletop. Harold licked his dry lips.

"Hey," Harold said wetly, mouth beginning to fill with blood. It oozed down his chin to collect with all the rest, running off the table and onto the floor. "I think you left something at the store, man."

Flesh Trap is almost here. After nearly two years of work, thirty-seven draft revisions, editing, reviewing, staying up late, getting up early, doodling, scribbling, several pots of coffee and generally a lot of banging my head on the desk, we're less than a month out from the release of the first chapter. Trailers are being fine-tuned. Illustrations are being inked. Soundtracks are being scored.Chairmen (and women!) are being selected for key positions in the Casey Way Fan Club.

Oh, and I made the website.

Check out the art. Look into the characters. Read the prologue chapter, The Girl on Mooreland Street, first published in M is for Monster last Halloween. The site is a little naked at the moment, but there's much more to come as the release date approaches on October 1st. Flesh Trap is on its way, coming soon to a computer screen near you.

On the topic of bandwagons and why one shouldn't jump on them

In the last year, I've had the unique experience of being both a feminist — striving for female equality and the advancement of women's issues with my writing — and a knuckle-dragging, cliche-spewing torchbearer for Cracker Von Patriarch, working to undermine decades of cultural evolution. It's been interesting, to say the least. And here's the reason why.

Women like my writing. By and large, most of the people that I encounter (especially online) who follow my work are women. I, for one, think that's great. In fact, it's the best ever. In my genres and media formats of choice, women tend to get left behind, written off as the occasional exception to the rule that Girls Don't Like Horror. And Girls Don't Like Comic Books. And basically that Girls Don't Like Fun Stuff. So when I get an email or a comment from some college educated young woman in Illinois, or a funny and well-read girl in Oregon, or just a charming lady in England, all telling me that my stories are scary and haunting and stick with them long after they've put down the book or shut off the laptop, I'm thrilled. It makes me want to work that much harder to get stuff in print and book stores, to get it into the hands of people that like to read the stuff that I want to see in the world.

People started throwing around the words "feminist writer," and after a while I thought, "Oh, okay. I guess that makes me a feminist writer now." I also heard "gay writer" a lot, in different connotations and for different reasons, but that's another matter entirely. I wasn't sure if the label fit, but I nodded and smiled politely anyway.

Somewhere along the way, a peculiar thing happened. I started getting these emails and comments from men too, of all ages and walks of life, all of whom began to shake me by the shoulders and say to others, "Oh, she's a feminist. She's writing horror for women." (In defense of some of these guys, a lot of the comments were made in the spirit of "Yay, horror that women can enjoy!" or "Yay, fair and balanced portrayals of women!"  Others were basically "Yeah, she's a feminist, but we can forgive her for it." There's a huge difference between the two, obviously.) Although I appreciated the sentiment, I found it confusing. All of a sudden I felt like I was suddenly let into the member's only clubhouse under false pretenses. I wasn't writing horror for anyone in particular, certainly not women or gay people specifically (although I enjoy their readership, don't get me wrong). I have always written stories for The Void as I tend to call it, that lack of content I see in the world. It's all that stuff I want to enjoy for myself, and so I make it instead. If that means I see a lack of strong female characters, or gay characters, or characters who fall in love with octopuses or have black holes in their chests, then I'm going to write about them. Because, well, that's the kind of stuff I want to see out there in the world.

I didn't want people to read me because I had a label, or to write me off for the same reasons. Was I writing in some kind of secret language only known to a select few? Were my stories so niche that only a small readership could enjoy them? Did some people really look at my writing and say "Wow, yeah, this is totally written for women"? I didn't know. The whole thing was just confounding to me.

Fast-forward to a few months later, as I'm making my way through some of the feminist news sites and personal blogs that I follow, run by women that I tend to think of as level-headed pundits for internet feminism. Only then did I realize, while reading scathing opinion pieces and reviews of horror films, comic books, and other forms of Boy's Only entertainment, how much these groups demonized the very stuff I was writing. All horror is misogynist and trite, bent on showing the sexual objectification and victimization of women. And, okay, yes, that does happen a lot in horror. All media has problematic content, and those run predominately by men tend to be skewed when it comes to depictions of female characters. (This is very true of American horror film tradition, but less so of European films. As an aside, The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror is an interesting read on this topic.)

I accept that. Yeah, I love my slasher movies and exploitation films as much as the next guy, but I know that the old cliches of scantily-clad women running from masked killers and sexually subservient victims need to go. I'm not thrilled to see the same old crap be recycled by writers and filmmakers, making women out to be weak victims or — shock and awe! — sexually aggressive murderers who use their bodies to lure men to their deaths. So I try to generate my own content to combat that. That's what writers are supposed to do, I think: Create for the void, and do it in such a way that doesn't suck. (Because faux-feminist horror films really kind of suck.) The problem was, most of these bloggers or columnists that I encountered weren't talking about generating content, or trying to provide solutions for these issues. They just slapped a fat X across everything that they deemed as broken without trying to fix it. Because, if you wrote horror, or enjoyed horror, or had anything to do with horror, you were part of the problem. And it really rubbed me the wrong way.

It was then, after taking a step back (and a deep breath or two), that I realized what it was that I was trying to say. In my writing, I'm interested in character dynamics. I'm interested in quiet stories about the real, the unreal, and everything else that hides in between. I want my characters to stand on their own merits, male and female, and not to fall into the pit of boring and offensive stereotypes. I want to write good stories, not after-school specials or opinion pieces, and get the readers to suspend disbelief for just a few minutes in their day. Because, above all else, the most problematic content in any medium is the poorly written variety. The stuff that's full of cliches and bad ideas, pumped out by lazy writers who want to make a buck off the tried-and-true formulas of by-gone days. And the best way to combat that, I think, is to get up and make something good for yourself.

So maybe that makes me a feminist writer, or a gay writer. I think it just makes me a writer. Take that however you like it.

Wait for summertime

I woke up in June this year waiting for Florida and rain and time with my girlfriend, eager for long days and cicada-song. Before I knew it Florida came and went, leaving me dazed and confused in a July that never ended, dragging on and on in tedium and family drama. Then August disappeared in a flash and I woke up in September, wondering just what happened to Summer 2011. I like summer and look forward to it every year. The smells of grass and hot asphalt under my feet, the sounds of insects like rattlesnakes in the trees. It always excites me in some primal, child-like way, because summer means freedom from the school I no longer go to, the books I no longer drag around in backpacks. It's like another state of mind, with trips and hot nights and porch swings, another place in time.

This year, my summer was both eventful and slow, positive and disappointing. Good and very, very bad. I traveled a bit, went to a party or two, got caught in a lot of thunderstorms. I started a new job, one that I enjoy (which is a strange but welcomed change of pace) and affords me the chance to get my head above financial water and still have time to write. I started exercising more, eating better, trying to clean up my diet before my intestinal track crawled out and choked me to death. I lost more weight than I have in years, buying smaller and smaller clothes to fit this new and unfamiliar body of mine. I finished one book (thirty-seven drafts later) and started work on another, filling up notebooks with outlines and plot-points, character studies and doodles. I got some new stuff published. I messed up my ankle. I messed up my shoulder. I was in a lot of pain. I didn't get to move to Austin. I didn't get a lot of things I wanted, and had to make a lot of sacrifices to keep the things I did have. I lost a lot of those things anyway. I had a lot of panic attacks.

I mean, a lot of panic attacks.

I'm not sure what all happened, looking back at it now, sitting on the floor in front of my laptop as the sun starts to settle just a little earlier tonight. Now I just find myself waiting for the weather to change, for the skies to darken and the leaves to turn. I'm looking forward to my anniversary with my girlfriend. I'm looking forward to Halloween. I'm looking forward to releasing Flesh Trap, and working on its sequel. I'll miss the cicadas, but I think I'll make it for another year.

The New Flesh rides again

Greetings and salutations, my fellow weirdos and miscreants. It pleases me to announce that The New Flesh has released their second annual anthology, Long Live the New Flesh: YEAR TWO, showcasing their top favorite weird stories. As last year, I was fortunate enough to be included on this list of uniquely strange fiction. It features flash fiction from well known authors and new-comers of the bizarro genre alike, as well as my story The Ocean Machine, about a burlesque dancer who's in love with her pet octopus. Sound good? I thought so.

You can get your copy of the free ebook here. Believe me, it's worth the load-time.

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A Day in the Life of Casey Way

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CASEY WAY

-Size 9 Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars (three years old, scuffed soles, initials on the bottoms, red just as God intended): $46.00

-American Eagle low-rise boot-cut jeans (medium indigo wash, holes in the back right pocket): $29.99

-Fossil Paulson Execufold wallet (black): $25.00

-Contents: None of your business

-Mossimo tee (black, cigarette burns in the collar): $7.99

-American Eagle full-zip hoodie (black, holes in the sleeves): $44.50

-Cell phone (silver, Samsung something-or-another, 2004 model, not a single fucking app for that): No new messages

-Relic Surplus laptop messenger bag (frayed strap, ink stains on the flap) : $68.00

-Apple iPod classic 160GB mp3 player (white): $186.00

-The entire Bjork digital catalog: Downloaded on iTunes

-Nightmares: Blood pooling on white tile, backward-falling snow, meat dripping from his dead father's face

-Coffee (full pot, black like tar): Required

-Mead wireless composition notebooks (known as "survival notebooks"): Purchased in bulk. Also required

-Halcion (insomnia), Asendin (depression), Zaroxlyn (blood pressure): $40 co-pay at CVS

-Marlboro Reds (one pack a day): $5.83

-Work: Boring

-Sleep: None

-Nightmares: Always

-New messages: None

-Bus-fare: $6 round-trip

-Handful of pills (shaking from the coffee): Before breakfast, during lunch, after dinner

-Box-cutter (orange cover, black edges, found in the bottom of the dresser): Sweaty

-Gasoline can ($24 to fill up): Heavy

-Matches: Ready

-New messages: Three

"Where are you?"

"Don't do this."

"Come home."

Big-top malfeasance

So, I want to write a story about an American politician.

Envision an average, middle-aged, white Christian male from the Bible Belt or the Heartland or the Mid-West. Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter all that much which. You just need to know that he's better than you. He has good kids and a good wife and a good record and a good degree under his belt from a good school. He probably did a tour in the Reserves, you know, just to be a sport. Everybody loves him, no matter what stupid propaganda falls out of his face on primetime TV and during stump speeches, because he's just so darn likeable. He's so clean-cut and squeaky-clean it's disgusting, and he votes with his Bible as well as his gut, and he's running for governor and he's eager for your vote. He'll grease your palms and kiss all your babies just to get you to like him. Because you'll like him. You have to.

Everybody does in the end. That's the whole point.

Except that it hasn't been his Bible that he's been voting with these last two terms as the Distinguished Gentleman From. It's actually been a Magic Eight-Ball he's been keeping in his closet for the last four years. If you ask him about it, he'll joke with you about that trusty old Eight-Ball, how it got him through a few tough campaigns when his knees were sore from praying and he was in his eleventh hour. Except the eight-ball isn't so much of a ball as it is a woman he keeps bound and gagged in his office closet, who can see into the future with the empty sockets where her eyes used to be. The seer is the only person who knows his secrets, and how he once strangled a girl in college and likes to take hunting trips alone to shoot deer and sleep in their hollowed-out carcasses. It's the only way he can feel "normal" under his bleach-white smile and noose of an Oxford tie, when all the lies are closing in with every town-hall meeting and CNN interview. It's the only thing that keeps his perfectly neat and tidy family safe from the machete he keeps in his work shed with the heavy padlocks, filled with illegal torture porn and weapons. It's the only thing that keeps the politician's world in order.

The seer knows all this. She's been keeping his secrets and steering him in the right direction for two elections, since he found her in a steam-trunk he bought in Thailand and put her to work to sweat the future out of her pores. Just until the night before the big election, when he starts to see things that aren't there, bleeding from the walls of his office, limping down the hallway where his staffers are rushing around in preparation for his victory. And the woman in the steam-trunk just keeps laughing through her ball-gag.

I wonder what the exit-polls will look like when he's carving his interns' faces with his machete and rubbing their blood in his hair. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The further adventures of Harold from Flesh Trap

Because Harold is my favorite character from Flesh Trap. So sue me.

Harold Tan loved girls. He loved the girls with drooping eyelids and dirty knees, carpet-burned on their elbows and knuckles. He loved them with bruised lips and black eyes, amputated arms and legs fitted snugly into cuffed pegs with matching collars. Girls looked best spread open, stuffed full of medical utensils as big as fists, laughing and smiling and asking for more.  Harold loved that the most. The girls were poster-sized and pinned to the walls above his bed, dresser and laundry hamper, full-color foldouts with breasts bound in electrical tape and bandages tied over bruised sockets. They were better than the real thing, girls that talked too much and wanted his money and time. These girls never said no, fitting easily under the counter at the Grab-N-Go where Harold hid them, tucked away behind the cash register to keep him company.

He spent most days at the store, manning the counter on swing-shifts. Hair gelled in place, tonguing at the stud in his lip, Harold thumbed through porno mags to pass the time. At night he closed up shop, counted the drawer, caught the last bus to his friend Tony's to drink beer and play X-Box.  Tony was a skater-punk with all manners of holes punched into his face and caps to cover up his tri-colored hair. Sometimes they went out to the dub-step clubs across town when Harold had some extra money. Tony liked to pick up girls with stringy dyed hair and candy-colored outfits. Sometimes the girls even went for it, laughing into their beers and letting Tony fondle them in the bathroom or in the parking lot after last call.

Harold didn't care. He drank his beers, maybe danced. Maybe he watched Tony screw a girl in the men's room with his stupid gap-toothed smile. Maybe the girl asked Harold to join in, once or twice. Harold didn't like these girls with their nose rings, hair dyed pink or turquoise, tasting like cigarettes and beer. He had his girls at home, all to himself, so he just watched and thought about leg braces and leather collars instead.

Coming soon to a computer screen near you.

Ten reasons why you should read Flesh Trap

Image by Dan O'Connell

There are many reasons you should Flesh Trap. Some of them are legitimate, some of them are completely baseless lies. Only I know the difference. These are ten such reasons.

Ten. This is a psychological horror story.

The lockbox sat on the kitchen table. Casey paced around the room from counter to counter, studying the box from a safe distance. He had locked the doors and shut the curtains, closing himself in with it as he moved around the box, inspecting every dent, every nick or scratch. Worked through possibilities, the how's and why's behind it. No one had known he was going to the house but Joel and Mariska, neither of whom had anything to accomplish from placing the box there. It wasn't Paul trying to confuse him, even if he was likely psychotic underneath that tightly buttoned sweater, and he knew it wasn't his father. David Way was dead, no matter how easily he crept into Casey's bed or into the corner of the living room, flattened between the bookshelf and the corner table when Casey wasn't paying attention.

"Alright, you little bitch," Casey said, if only to hear himself say it. "What's inside you?"

Retrieving a butter-knife from the silverware drawer, he pried at the lock, twisted the blade in the shoddy catch to lever it open. The lock gave out in a jerk and scrape, and holding a breath he pulled back the lid. The smell of rotting meat struck Casey first, like the stink of an animal carcass left in the sun. Inside the metal box was a lining of sweating flesh, thin and heavily veined by blue arteries. Fingernails and tiny canines like a baby's milk-teeth flanked all sides of the box in staggered rows, circling the throat at its center. A wide gullet of corded musculature, flapping open and shut in a wet slap of flesh and smelling like dead animal and intestinal juices. Slap, gurgle, sigh.

Gagging, Casey slammed the box shut and scrambled back across the kitchen, tripping, falling. The room lurched and narrowed his field of vision into a motion-sick tunnel. His pulse beat against in his temple until his sight cleared, grabbing the edge of the counter to drag himself upright. He disregarded the decorative pot of spatulas and spoons that he had sent across the floor, grabbing instead for a kitchen knife from Joel's cutlery set and brandishing it at the box. The box didn't move. The sounds of its digesting gullet thinned into a tight sucking noise. Another sigh and the box sounded pleased with itself.

It's weird, it's scary, and it doesn't play around. Flesh Trap follows Casey Way's hallucinatory ride through his broken memories and brutal visions, haunted by the all-encompassing shadow of the pedophile father whose murder left him with a hole he can't fill. Something is waiting for Casey at his childhood home, the site of his father's death, and it follows him out again into the world. It might be his father; it might be something else entirely, taking the faces of those closest to him and hiding in plain sight in boxes made of skin and teeth.

All Casey knows is that it's coming for him, one night at a time.

Nine. This is a mystery story.

The dust hadn't yet settled in her boot prints, kicked up and fresh as Mariska made her way through the kitchen, living room and down the hallway to the bedrooms. Specks of it shimmered in the beam of her flashlight, held close to her face with one hand, the other fisted around the crowbar at her thigh. Flight-or-flight made her strong, ready, tight like tension wire and prepared. Heavy boot prints raced circles around the kitchen island counter, Casey's size nine Converse shuffling to the living room, disappearing in the carpet. She hadn't expected to find new footprints, but it would have made the looking easier. The trash in the living room parted like a sea to the empty fireplace, new beer cans with old gas cans and nothing seemed all that different.

A monster had been living there, if Casey was right. It hid in boxes made of their childhood, wearing other people's faces. Only Casey saw these things but she believed him, wanted to prove him right. There was no trace of it now. No claw marks on the doors or teeth left behind in the dust; no sheets of torn skin or shed hair marking its territory. She half-expected to find David Way's skeleton in the corner, creeping out from the shadows to choke her. It would have given her proof, something more to cling to than the box of flesh Casey had been carrying. It would have been more to hide from, more to hate than just David's face in old photographs. She was done hating people. David was dead. He just needed to stay dead. It was easier that way.

Mariska stopped in the hallway. She counted the steps that stretched from door to door. Ten to their parents' bedroom, five from Casey's to hers. The bedrooms were scars in the home, ugly things scored into the walls from the nights Casey hadn't slept. His eyes had burned holes into them, whispers from the cracks beneath her bedroom door etching words into the plaster and under the paper, to the studs where the nails remembered. She didn't see them now, but she remembered. The same way she didn't see the devils that had rested there once before, lying in the trash and the dirt where the box had sat in the fireplace and held court over its possessions. She didn't see the evidence of their chains in the dust, the trails where they had dragged themselves across the carpet from one room to the next. Instead she sighed and walked away.

It's about a man finding himself at the center of a series of deaths and disappearances, and being forced to confront long-forgotten childhood memories to find the cause. Casey just has half the story about his father's death, only part of the puzzle. The memories of the event are locked inside his head, slowly tumbling out of him through dreams and hypnosis, pieces of time. Journal entries, missing persons fliers, lockboxes, Polaroid pictures, 911 tapes – every little detail brings Casey closer to the night his father died.

Casey is a detective of his own emotional damage, and everybody close to him is working the case, his step-sister Mariska and his boyfriend Joel. Either they find the answers, or more people die. It's only a matter of time.

Eight. This is a story about family.

"You know what happened that night? After I left? I was going to go to some older kid's party with my friend Stevie. I told Mom I was going to the movies, 'cause it was a school night, you know? You wanted to come but I called you a dork and made you stay home." She shrugged, looked down at the dirt ground into the carpet. "I should've let you come. I shouldn't have left you there. I was so stupid."

Casey dropped his head back with a sigh, connected the stains on the ceiling in an invisible line. "You can't blame yourself."

"What do you remember?" Mariska sounded more hesitant than she meant to.

"I don't remember much. I was watching TV when Dad got home from work. He and Alyona were yelling in the kitchen. I thought it was another argument, but then she was just screaming, over and over. Then my Dad started screaming, and there was this loud, wet sound."

"Aunt Cheryl said that when the police came you were in the kitchen with your dad, just sitting in the blood. She always said that they told her Mom was there with you, just screaming."

He shook his head. "I don't remember."

"I should've never left you there with those fuckers." She dragged a knuckle across her eyes, digging the tears out before they had a chance to fall. "I'm so sorry."

"Hey. Mar, hey." Casey leaned in, nudged her knee with his foot. "Don't. I'm not sorry."

"I know I shouldn't have taken off all the time. I just hated him, you know? I hated him so much; I couldn't stand to be there when he was home. The way he looked at me, the way he touched me, always telling me how beautiful I was. He said he loved me even more than Mom, because she didn't take care of him the way he needed. She didn't make him feel good. Can you believe that shit? My real dad ditched us before I turned two so I didn't remember him, but I just knew that's not the way a father touched his daughter, you know?"

Casey felt five-years-old again, padding down the hallway in green dinosaur pajamas in the middle of the night. Mariska's door was always closed. In the morning there were bruises on her thighs whenever her nightgown pulled up, thick like his father's fingers. He brought his knees up to his chin, hugged them to himself.

"I could've said something," he said to the ceiling and the constellation of tobacco and smoke stains. "I was down the hall for eight years."

"Who would've listened to you? Mom?" She scoffed into her beer. "She was married to him, slept down the same hall, too. She was too busy being June Cleaver to see anything. We didn't really have anything before my mom met your dad. He could do whatever he wanted to me as long as we all played happy fucking family at the church picnic and PTA meetings."

"You know what the worst part of it is?" Casey asked. Mariska shook her head. "I loved my Dad so much. He was Father of the Year since day one. Baseball games, Disney World, fishing trips." He shrugged. "He never hurt me, he barely even yelled at me. Now I can't help but think he was just buying me off so I wouldn't tell anyone. All along I knew, though. It should've been me instead."

"No, Casey. Don't say that. You didn't deserve it."

"It should've been me, Mar. I'm his son. If somebody was supposed to take the brunt of it, it should've been me." Casey hadn't felt his arms shake until his fingers dug into his shins, leaving bruises that he would find in the shower later. "I could've taken it."

"Casey, don't."

"He ruined your life."

"Yeah." She sniffled, smiled. "And my mom ruined yours. I think we're even."

The laugh that rattled out of his chest was cold and ugly.

"Happy anniversary, Little Brother."

"Happy anniversary, Sis," Casey answered when he finally stopped shaking.

Family can bind and maim. It can hold you down just as easily as it can prop you up; tear you apart just as soon as shape you into a better person. Casey and Mariska are the products of their parents, veterans in the silent war made of their childhoods, bearing scars of shame and abuse that run deep to this day. Now the step-siblings keep each other's heads on straight, keep each other above water. Sometimes this closeness blinds them to the harm they can do, so co-dependent that their shared baggage can drag them down. Even for it, this is a story about family. Living with family and forgiving family, knowing when to fight and when to walk away.

Just as much as their family has torn them down, they have each other because of it. At the end of the day, that's all that matters.

Seven. This is a love story.

It was dark outside by the time Casey heard the door open and Joel slip out, making his way across the patio on bare feet to wrap his arms around Casey's neck. He closed his eyes to the brush of Joel's lips against his ear, held a breath.

"You still mad?" Casey asked.

"No, I'm not mad." Joel sighed, slid his arms down to Casey's waist. "Hey."

"Hey, what?"

"Just come to bed. Okay?"

Abandoning the shears on the planter stand, Casey did what he was told. Followed as Joel retreated to the bedroom, locked the patio door behind them before he did so. Turned off the light, looked at his mother's picture, and looked away. Down the hallway to the threshold of their room Joel was already undressing himself, opening his vest and button-up. Casey stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the nightstand and slipped out of his t-shirt, tossed it at the corner hamper. He reached for Joel at the foot of the bed, taking him by the chin to kiss him, first softly then firm. It was easier than saying sorry or trying to explain. He didn't want to talk about anything at all.

"I didn't mean to be snotty to your sister," Joel said sincerely.

"I think she's used to it at this point."

"Rude." Joel punched Casey's shoulder lightly. Casey smirked. "I mean it."

"I know." Casey cupped Joel's face and kissed him until he was quiet. "I really don't want to talk about that right now, okay?"

"Casey."

"Hey." Caught Joel's bottom lip between his teeth, held him by the base of his throat with fond fingers. "Don't be sorry. Not right now."

This is a kissing book; I'm going to be very upfront about that. This is not a public service announcement or an after-school special. This is not a romance novel. This is a story about two people trying to save themselves and each other from circumstances spinning violently out of control. Their relationship is the backbone of the story, the details and history of which are woven into the events of the plot. At the end of the day, Joel is what keeps Casey together, keeps him sane, and keeps him from coming apart in the face of what's bearing down on all of them. They just happen to both be male.

If that bothers you, the door is to your left. Thank you for your time.

Six. These are normal people.

"Hey," Mariska called out, voice rougher than usual from coffee and cigarettes. "I was about to call a doctor. I didn't know if you were going to come around."

"How long was I out?"

Through the doorway to the kitchen, the box still sat on the table with the blade. Blood had dried on the table-top in a black puddle. Casey swallowed.

"About a day now. You, uh, blacked out yesterday morning. I cleaned you up and moved you to the bed." On the couch Mariska snuffled and scratched her nose. "I left the box there. Didn't know what to do with it."

Casey nodded. "Thanks. And for the clothes, too."

Moved to the couch and he dropped onto it with a sigh. He found himself staring at the morning news through the haze of smoke from Mariska's cigarette. An anchor with a blue tie and a gap in his front teeth made mention of the strange attack at Jay's Diner, flashing a picture of Sherrie and a thirty-second clip of a taped interview with an officer on scene. Standing outside the diner beside a squad car, she made passive assurances that the police department was taking the report seriously. Restaurant workers in the area need not be alarmed. It appeared to be an isolated personal incident. Casey learned forward and shook his head.

"Jesus."

"Is that your friend?" Mariska asked carefully. "The waitress?"

"Yeah."

She nodded. "You need a ride to the hospital?"

"Probably. I should go see her, make sure she's okay."

"Is that the game plan? Go talk to her and see what she knows?"

Casey shrugged. "I don't really have a game plan at the moment."

"Well, look, you think this thing hurt your friend, right? If it did, you need to find out what it did to her and what she saw. Maybe she can help you out."

His eyebrow bounced. "You know you're really taking this well, all things considered."

Mariska stubbed her cigarette out in the neighboring coffee table ash tray with a cough. "Yeah, well. Look at our family, Case. Crazy shit kind of just follows us around."

"So you believe me?"

"I don't know what I believe. But after yesterday, what can I even say, man?" Her eyes jumped to the kitchen to watch the box carefully. "What are we going to do with it, anyway?"

He didn't say anything. She took a deep breath.

"So you need a ride or not?"

This is not a story about FBI agents or hard-boiled detectives or well-trained professionals with guns and nice six-packs. This is a story about a guy who works in the library. His boyfriend is a therapist. His step-sister is a late-night radio DJ. These are normal people, who have problems and pay taxes and usually go to bed at a reasonable hour. They have relationship troubles and bleed easily. There are no heroes or villains or damsels in distress.

As an aside, Casey is not cool. Mariska, however, is way cooler than he is. That's just the way it has to be.

Five. Casey's therapist is probably a vampire. And he's probably trying to kill him. And that was really fun to write about.

Casey borrowed the space at the end of Paul Orman's black sofa. His dark jeans and t-shirt helped him fade into the upholstery, cross-legged, shrinking away between the cushions he slouched against. Paul's office was a cave carved out of cinderblocks and mahogany on the eighth floor of a high-rise building, black leather and wood stain stretching from wall to wall. In the center of the room was a high-backed leather armchair with heavy pleats and ornate brass decorations, an end table, and the sofa.

"What would you like to talk about today, Casey?"

Between the tall arms of his chair, Paul was sallow with thinning gray hair and dark eyes. The bony peaks of his skull recalled Max Schreck, Count Orlock, Nosferatu, stalking dark corridors and staircases. The notion that Paul Orman had ever instructed a classroom of future therapists made Casey uneasy. That Paul held a fond place in Joel's heart as his thesis advisor ultimately left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I don't know." He said nothing about vampires. "What should we talk about?"

Casey saw Paul on Tuesday mornings with black coffee still fresh in his mind. Joel made terrible coffee, half-caff piss-water, not at all like the black tar Casey needed in his veins every day. Joel made up for it on most mornings, when squeezing Casey's small bicep Joel kissed him goodbye at the door and warned him to play nice. For the first three sessions Casey agreed. This morning Casey had promised nothing.

"You know it's up to you, Casey." Paul smiled vacantly. "You can talk about whatever you like here. It's a safe space."

Casey shrugged. "There's not a lot to talk about. I told you that last week." And the week before that.

"Humor me, Casey."

"I'm pretty sure Joel already told you everything you needed to know. I mean, you're on his Christmas card list, right?"

"Joel only came to me and asked me to review your case. That was all."

"Then you already know I'm just here so Joel will feel better, right?" The thought of Joel sitting bright-eyed and gullible in the front row of Paul's yawning classroom, some cathedral-auditorium, all dark glossy wood fixtures and overcompensation, made Casey uncomfortable in a way he couldn't fully articulate. "And you get paid either way, so I think it's a win-win no matter what happens."

Four. Medical bondage porn and amputee fetishism.

The girl on the closed circuit television was there, a stripe of shadow against a gray burst of streetlight. She was skinny in the hips like a boy, one of his porno models in a cheap white party dress and plunging neckline. Strips of gauze and electric tape crisscrossed to cover bruises on her arms and thighs, pressing her breasts together under her blouse. Beneath the elbow her arms were amputated and healed in thick scars and a wrapping of hospital bandages crowned her head. It obscured one eye and part of her nose in blood-and-dirt smeared bindings, the other eye blackened with bruises.

She opened her mouth and let out a sound like television static and Harold took a step backward. Dropped the bags and his feet skittered across the greasy concrete, unsure of his footing when she took a step toward him, bare foot and silent. Hot panic worked through Harold's stomach to his groin. She came to him, dress transparent around her hips and breasts as to outline the pink of her nipples and slit between her thighs. It made Harold's heart thump as the girl got down to her knees, mouth open and damp like her good eye when she blinked in a lazy flutter of lashes. Harold reached down cautiously, combed through the hair sticking from her crown of bandages. She leaned into the touch like a cat and he stroked her for it, enjoying the way she rubbed her stubby elbows against the front of his pants.

"Did somebody leave you like this?" he rasped. He slipped his fingers through her sweaty hair, between the bandages to rub into her scalp. Spit ran from her mouth in a thick string as she drooled against his pant leg, eager like a dog. For it Harold sucked a breath between his teeth, hardening against his fly. "Okay. Okay, I'll give you what you want, Baby, no problem."

I regret nothing.

Three. Psychedelic head-trips.

"Slow your breathing, Casey," Paul said soothingly. "Allow every muscle to relax, from your head to your feet. Feel your eyes and your face relax, your neck and your shoulders. Can you feel it? I'm going to count back from ten to one, Casey. With each number you will become more and more relaxed. Slower and slower, deeper and deeper, until you're completely relaxed. Is that okay, Casey?"

Casey took a deep breath. "Fine."

"Good."

Paul's smile was audible. Casey exhaled. He felt himself begin to slip, loose inside his clothes and from the couch. The watery unbalance of his equilibrium told Casey that he was falling, sliding in liquid descent between the cushions and the upholstery of the sofa.

"Ten, nine, eight. Slower and slower…"

Casey felt limp like a ragdoll and falling through the floor. Through the cracks of the floorboards and the spaces between levels, all concrete and pink cotton candy insulation. His eyelids twitched. He took another breath.

"Seven, six, five. Deeper and deeper…"

He dropped freely through the floors of Paul's high-rise office, through the steel and wood. Gravity pressed down onto Casey's chest and caught in his clothes and hair, fluttering at his back. He fell through plaster and carpet, light fixtures and glass, through to the ground floor and everything underneath it.

"Four, three, two, one…"

Casey gasped and felt his back strike solid ground.

"When you open your eyes, you'll be home. It's the house where you grew up, Casey. Can you see it?"

Casey opened his eyes and saw the sky above him. It was a faded blue sheet pinned in place by the tops of skinny green trees, surrounded in bushels of needles that gleamed like bone-flint in Casey's mind. He blinked twice in the light of a bulbous yellow sun and felt sore all over.

"Yeah, I can."

Casey pushed himself upright, sitting in the green stretch of lawn and amid the snapping mouths of his mother's flytraps. They knotted around him in thick clusters of toothy smiles, catching in his sleeves and pants as Casey stood. Across the yard he saw himself as a child. Three-years-old, he was chubby in the face under shaggy hair and freckles, tugging at his mother's skirt as she tended to her garden of mouths. They grinned cartoonishly for their breakfast, and perhaps for her as well, long and beautiful in her white sundress and sandals. Her hair dark like Casey's and tumbling past her shoulders, her eyes bluer and brighter.

In the distance their home was white and fat with heavy shutters protecting curtained windows, enclosed by dense brush and tall trees. Casey watched his mother carry him across the patio, short fat fingers catching in her blouse and hair. She smiled with her whole face, from her eyelids to her chin. She looked happy.

"Where are you, Casey?" Paul asked from somewhere far away.

"I'm in my backyard." Beneath him his mother's traps snapped at him, hissing in his wake as he cautiously crossed the yard. "My mom's here with me."

"Your stepmother?"

"No, my real mom."

"What do you see, Casey?"

"I can see my house."

"Can you see the backdoor?"

Up the patio and over the steps, Casey stopped in front of the door. It was taller than he was by three heads and white like the rest of the house. "Yes."

"Walk through the backdoor, Casey."

Swallowing, Casey grabbed the knob, turned and pushed. Inside there was only a hallway, long and white, sterile like a hospital room. The cold air blew stale against Casey's cheek and smelled like chemicals, making him acutely aware of the hairs at the back of his neck. Logic told him he was on Paul's sofa, but at the end of the hallway there was a black metal door, crisscrossed in an intricate mesh of chains and padlocks. The locked door was broader and taller than a man and emitting static from behind it, the snow between television stations or between Casey's toes when he dreamt of his father.

"What do you see, Casey?"

"A locked door."

"Walk through it."

"I can't. I can't get in, there's too many locks."

"Walk through it, Casey."

From the other side of the door there was a moan, a clanging and mechanical sound like pornography on bad speakers. Casey shook his head and against his better judgment walked forward. Moans moved down the passage like a degenerating signal, voices faded between stations to pull Casey closer. A splash and feeling of wetness drew his attention to his feet. Water closed over his ankles, thick and syrupy, black on first glance then red. The moans spiked into a scream and Casey realized it was blood.

"Oh god." It filled the hall in a swamp that sloshed against the walls, quickly climbing Casey's legs to his knees to choke his movements. "There's nothing but blood here."

"You have to keep walking, Casey," Paul insisted coldly from the space behind Casey's head. "You have to get to the door."

Thud.

Casey looked up, jumped at the sound of steel and flesh. From behind the door something beat against it. The frantic animal sounds of fists and shoulders, bone and skin, pounding through the shackles to reach Casey. His heart thumped as he moved through blood, hands out to clutch uselessly at the chains. He screamed and tasted iron, shaking at the padlocks, scratching and tearing and

"One, two, three, four, five—"

biting and ripping and bleeding from his nails where they chipped away and

"Six, seven, eight, nine, ten."

 Two. Faceless children.

From the floor the box opened in a creak of hinges and metal parts. Casey heard it but didn't have to, already aware of the lid moving, opening to its throat. Out of the throat crawled five fingers, one arm and then another, two hands reaching out for leverage. A boy with no face lifted himself from the box's guts, lean under his clothes and his mop of dark hair. There was a hole where his face should have been, an empty space that made a void of his skull that the light coming from the bedside lamp couldn't reach. Casey knew this before he saw it, the boy dragging himself to his feet in a pop-snap-pop of ligaments and bones, unfolding himself into flesh. Bare toes wriggling, solid weight on the floor, breathing like Casey breathed, shallow like a rabbit.

The boy picked up the box, closed the lid and held it, skinny fingers tap-tap-tapping behind Casey's eyes.

 One. Did I mention vampire therapists, medical fetishism and faceless children?

Oh, I did. Well, that about wraps it up then. The serial is coming Fall 2011.