Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 102

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome Review of TGT

Another from Ursula Raphael (she did one of the Amazon reviews):

One of the reasons I began writing book reviews is that I often found the jacket descriptions vague or completely off-the-mark. I would read some of the blurbs singing a book's praises, and wonder if the person quoted actually took the time to read the book in its entirety. Such was the case with The Ghost Toucher by Gerald Rice. The description on the back cover didn't do this novel justice…I thought it was going to be a boring ghost story, but decided to read it since I have a high opinion of the publisher, Severed Press.

The story takes place in our world, after ghosts become such a common occurrence that the psychic business goes down the toilet. Anyone can communicate with the dead, so The Network devises a new reality show where host Stout Roost seeks out spirits in places such as haunted houses, and he antagonizes them while catching their reactions on film. After filming his last show, Roost disappears and leaves only the taped episode behind. The Network assigns the task of finding their missing host to a customer service rep, Kelly Greene, and a detective known simply as Israel who specializes in supernatural cases. Sounds like a lame mystery novel with ghosts thrown in, but it turned out to be a complicated paranormal thriller.

I say complicated because there are a lot of characters to keep track of, frequent POV changes – not just from one chapter to the next, but sometimes the POV would change several times in the span of a just a few pages. At one point, I thought some of the characters were multiple personalities of the same person. It wasn't bad editing, but rather multiple storylines criss-crossing at random moments, until they finally converged at the end, only to be continued in an upcoming sequel. In addition to Rice's writing style, the details of the alternate reality he has created are overwhelming.

Kelly Greene, I suspect, feels much the same way. He's just a regular guy struggling to keep on going after losing his wife and kids in a horrific accident. He doesn't even watch The Ghost Toucher. His life changes drastically after receiving his new assignment, and being partnered with the mysterious Israel. Israel tries to prepare Greene for what lies ahead of them, but Greene refuses to accept what he experiences as he finds himself in the middle of a war between gods and their "tools" – the assortment of non-humans used to manipulate mankind.

I was surprised at the amount of gore in this story: possessed people dissolving others by vomiting acid (think Aliens' acid), creatures that imitate humans by devouring significant body parts, and demonic columns built with moving limbs, just to name a fraction of the bizarre creations spilling forth from the mind of Gerald Rice. To top it all off, the setting is the Detroit side of Michigan. Thank God, I live on the other side of the state because the descriptions were just too realistic for me to stomach.

What really pulled all the strangeness together were the little mundane scenes that Rice slipped into the story, here and there. For instance, one of Greene's companions gets left behind in a McDonald's parking lot, after he went to get some coffee for everyone. After everything the group had just been through, I found getting ditched with a tray full of coffee to be quite hilarious…but you'll have to read the whole thing to fully appreciate the tone.

The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt V

Ed seemed to flounder a moment, considering. "I-I don't know," he stammered, "how 'bout we vote on it? That's fair." He turned to Howie and me. "Right fellas, that'd be fair, wouldn't it?"

We nodded and agreed, not really understanding what he was suggesting, but trying to keep Jack's mind off pummeling one of us.

"Tommy, I'm goin' out to see Rae soon!" I heard Net call out. Rae Parks was ill and lived on the other side of the farm and Nettle would cut through to go see about her.

Nettle's voice brought Jack back to himself and his angry expression melded with confusion. "That's a dear sweet woman you got, Tom," he blurted. "What do you mean, vote?"

"On whatever we do about Bob, we vote," Ed said.

Glenn shakily got to his feet, huffing like he was out of breath and he nodded too. "I don't wanna kill him, though," he said. "Just rough him up a little, break a leg, maybe. Scare some sense into him." Apparently, Jack's fist had knocked all the fire right out of him.

Jack put up his hand. "I vote we kill 'im. Who else?" Howie looked around at us and slowly put his hand up.

"These things only get worse," he said, apologetically. "I got my reasons too."

"Well I vote we don't," Ed said, raising his hand. "Somethin' evil may a' gotten into that boy, but it ain't his fault. It's that house, if it's anything." Glenn raised his hand and I thought of Nettle standing in the doorway, even though she'd already left, watching the five of us standing out in her lawn, four of us raising our hands for no good reason.

"Well ain't you gon' vote, Tom?" Glenn said, a trickle of blood coming down from his eyebrow. I hadn't seen Jack hit him there. Jack, Ed and Howie looked to me as if to say, 'well?' and I thought about it for a moment.

"Put your fool hands down before Nettle sees us," I said, pulling their arms down and heading back to the porch.

They all followed me and sat down on the porch as I went in and got a couple cases of beer. When I came out they had already been carrying on the conversation in whispers. I jumped in and said, "I agree with Howie it's probably just gonna get worse, but what can I say? In the war all I was was a hatchet job. I never killed nobody. I just can't commit to it, but I don't think it's gonna go away on its own."

"That'd be what we call a stalemate," Ed chimed happily, grabbing a bottle with his good arm. The case went around as we all sat in silence. Everyone was at least on their second before anyone spoke again.

"I have an idea, then," Howie said, his speech already grown slow and thick. "What would make you think we don't have a choice?" he asked, turning to Ed. We pretty much never asked Glenn his own opinion because he never had one until Ed did.

Ed considered a moment, his tongue playing over his lips as he did. "If he killed somebody. Or was about to, I s'pose. But why not just call the sheriff?"

"Oh, puh-lease," Jack hissed in disgust. "He's a retard- what's the law gonna do? They'll just put him in one of those nut houses for a few years and let him go. Besides, who's got proof of anything? Y'all know he's dangerous. This whole town does, but nobody wants to do nothin'. Everyone just turns the other cheek.

"I'll tell you what we should do," he continued, leaning forward in his chair. "If we're not killin' him, fine. But Ed, you said it yourself that house is evil and the least we can do is finish it off. I say we grab a couple cans of kerosene and do what should've been done a long time ago."

My Response to NAPW

Dear XXXX,

Thank you for taking the time to contact me through my website. I appreciate the hit . I also appreciate the apology for the mistaken email from NAPW. Your organizations email was absolutely taken as a humorous mistake as you can tell from what I posted. While fans of Repairman Jack may be great in number, we can hardly count ourselves in the billions. The site really only has a few dozen regular posters (I'm guessing) and just about all of them know me well enough to consider me an easy-going, jovial fellow.

However, I can't help what other people may think of a company that randomly selects people and sends unsolicited emails to them (how did you get my email by the way?), requesting membership, money or whatever else may be the life's blood of your organization. I'd never heard of you, and thus, had 0 opinion of you or whatever it is you do. Quite frankly, I still don't have one. So far as I'm concerned we can have a mutual parting of ways and be none the poorer for it. But I can't really ask someone to change a negative post about a person or organization to which I don't have a negative or positive opinion. I honestly don't know that you aren't a clandestine organization intent on scouring the electronic halls of the internet, ferreting out the weak to cull their information for your own secret, nefarious purposes. Gee, I really hope that isn't so. But I would hope that anyone who found my post in a search would take the extra step to be detail-oriented enough to read through all posts in the thread to discern for themselves that none of us knew anything about NAPW except that I'd gotten an email in error and that a small group of us were distantly entertained by it. What I have done was post your message to me in the thread so that you may defend yourself, but you can definitely feel free to expound your position by joining and explaining exactly what NAPW does and reach out to our female contingency. We have at least 3 women.

Sincerely,

Gerald Rice

PS- If it is still your intention to have the post removed, I would suggest contacting the originator of the post. I have no ability to delete someone else's and your appeal would be better suited with him.

The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt IV

"Somethin's gotta be done about that boy, Tom," he said. "I don't know about a killin', but somethin's gotta be done."

Just then, we saw a figure on a bicycle in the distance. Bob stopped at the corner, planted a foot and looked over at us. Bob was too big for the rusted out child's bicycle. He stood a good six-foot seven at least and had to be a upwards of two fifty.

"Speak of the devil," Glenn whispered. Rising, there was tension threading out of him and through Howie and Ed like they were tied together and would be dragged along if he'd moved. But there was something more in the tension of how he stood. Fear.

"Hi, Bob!" Bob shouted, waving slow at us like he was washing a window. He had that same shit-eating grin on his face as always, but the three of them staring at him with so much animosity made Bob look different to me somehow. When no one waved or said anything back, Bob put his arm down and rode off, a frown draped over his face, but then it melted back into that monotonous frozen half-smile. They watched him go in silence and I stepped out on the porch behind them.

"So what's it all about, fellas?" I asked.

Ed and Howie turned to me, a thousand words in their wide eyes, but remained silent. Glenn looked away from the corner and tears hung under his eyes like over ripe fruit.

"The high-yella SOB butchered m'dog," he said, choked around a voice full of hurt.

I looked over and saw Jack coming down the road from the opposite direction. I didn't want to be callous about it, but it seemed an awful lot of hate to be feeling over a dog.

"What do you mean, butchered?" I asked.

"Chopped up like he was steak meat," Howie cut in for Glenn. "His guts was scooped out and stomped on. You could see the boot prints in 'em."

Shocked, I took a seat and pulled in closer to them. "How you know it was Bob?" I whispered.

Ed spoke this time. "'Cause Bob's wearin' his doggie collar."

I had no idea of how much Jack had heard until he spoke. "So what do you think now? Should we still just pray over it and hope it goes away?"

Glenn's back was to me, but I saw his ears turn red. Unexpectedly, he leapt off the steps and rushed Jack, knocking him off his feet and tackling him to the ground. I heard the wind sail out of his lungs and as Glenn reached back to hit him Jack's fist glanced across Glenn's chin almost too fast to see. Jack was older than Glenn by a good ten years, but he was still wiry and strong as an ox.

Glenn was still over him, but he slumped like the only thing holding him up was Jack's hands around his throat. Jack wrenched him to the side by the collar and by the time we made it over to the two of them, Jack had already gotten to his feet and kicked Glenn in the ribs twice.

"Jack!" Ed called. "Jack, this ain't how to settle this! Bob is the one we're boilin' over, not each other."

I saw Jack's eyes study Glenn on the ground, huddled around his middle. He looked up at Ed like he was next. Ed took a reflexive step back.

"What do you think now? Hm?" Jack said, taking a step toward us.

NAPW Strikes Back!

A couple months ago I got an on-line invitation to join the NAPW. I don't remember the initials but it's a professional women's organization. I just got a message from their general counsel on my website asking me to take my post down. Read for yourself:

Hi Mr. Rice. I am the General Counsel of NAPW. I read your post on the repairmanjack forum about how our company mistakenly sent you a letter inviting you to join our organization. I apologize for that. In another time, something like that was just a humorous mistake. Today, it is an opportunity for people to write about it to the world. While that is absolutely acceptable, people have responded to your posting and called NAPW an "online scam."

This is absolutely untrue. We are the nation's strongest, fastest growing networking organization dedicated to professional women. We work incredibly hard to provide more and more opportunities for our members, but much of our hard work is undone when someone uses the term "scam" to describe our company. Most companies face issues like this today. We do our best to monitor this sort of thing and to get out in front of it. So I am writing to ask if you would please consider removing your post, or at least deleting the comment which calls us an "online scam." The problem today, as you probably know, is with managing a company's reputation as reflected through Google search results. Your posting is a top-50 result for NAPW and the use of the word scam in that post really hurts us.

I thank you in advance for your time and consideration, and ask that you please contact me to discuss this.

I don't really care either way, but I don't have the ability to delete a thread, only to edit my own comments. But how cool is that that my post is a top 50 result, eh?

The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt III

"'The hell!' I yell at him. I start after him, but before I can get off the porch steps I hear my Jenny scream somethin' awful. I put my chair through the window and as soon as I'm inside, I freeze, thinkin' there's somebody else in this house. It feels like there's a buncha somebody elses in the house and then I hear her tryin' to cry out to me. I grab my bat and kick in her door and see him hunched over her bed, half holdin' her up with one arm and his fingers clamped down over her throat. He looks up and sees me and drops her back down in the bed. Then he backs away and does the damndest thing! He runs into the closet and shuts the door.

"I run over thinkin' he might try knockin' me down to get past so I call Jenny over to yank the door open. I had the bat in both hands like I was tuggin' a rope so I could jut it into his chest like if he sprung out at me? She pulls it open and I charge in bashin' everything in her closet and I put a hole in a wall before I realize he isn't even there."

There were many things I could have described Jack Hendauer as, but a liar wasn't one of them. I struggled with believing him and rationalized it as Bob had attacked his girl, but it couldn't have happened the way he said it had.

Jack's dry hand locked around my wrist and he leaned in, searching my eyes.

"It's the truth," he said. "I swear every word."

"I know, Jack," I said, tucking away my doubts. "But I think I'm drunk."

He jerked his hand away like a lick of electricity had pricked it and all that seriousness seemed to drain right out of him. He looked tired and old, like he hadn't slept since that night last week.

"I best get goin'," he said, rising unsteadily. A giggle slipped past his lips before he cut it off. "I think I'm drunk too, but I know that'll be one dead retard if'n he comes near my little girl again."

I watched him stagger towards the road, weaving between the gravel and the grass slowly zigzagging over the horizon. The full moon was low in the sky like he could've stumbled into it any moment before he fell out of sight.

I tried rising from my own chair and collapsed back into it. Prohibition was just too recent for us and a few beers were still enough to put us under. Nettle let me sleep it off outside. Served me right.

Sometime in the night I must have crawled myself into the house and passed out right by the bedroom door. Fuzzy voices in the distance woke me up and I had to try three times before I was able to crawl to the washroom. My full bladder was a raging flare and I couldn't have made it to the outhouse in time.

Some of the fog had started to lift by the time I came out. I tiptoed downstairs and eased behind a cup of coffee Nettle had waiting for me.

"Who was at the door, Net?" I carefully asked around my thick tongue.

"One a' those friends a' yourn," she said, wiping the counter, absent-mindedly.

For some reason I jumped out of my chair, a little too quick, intending to run to the door. The room turned upside down and everything tinged a deep crimson while my head rampaged like it was fixing to split. I stood still until it cleared, then crept to the door to see Ed, Howie and Glenn on my front steps.

"How's by you, boys?" I asked behind the screen door.

Ed turned to me, a look in his eyes I'd never seen before.

The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt II

Glenn seemed satisfied with himself and leaned back in his chair. We sat in silence for the next half-hour or so until the sun made its bed, then one by one, everyone drifted off in their separate directions. Jack was the last to go, still holding on to his last bottle of beer, empty now, his eyes turned to the red horizon.

"So what's it all about, Jack?" I asked after a minute or two.

His gaze slowly migrated to where I sat. I could tell something was bothering him, but Jack would say he didn't believe in a man having feelings. Maybe that was his price of survival from the war, maybe they had all been burned out of him after his wife died, maybe it was a combination of both, but I couldn't have said. I didn't know him back then. The way he drooped in his chair I could hardly see his face. The moon set at his back and I saw his broad shoulders rise and fall with a deep sigh.

"My little girl's pregnant," he said suddenly, turning his profile to me.

My mouth hung open in surprise. Jack was so strict in her raising, I couldn't imagine where or how or --

"Some boy from up in New York," he answered without my asking. Jack was the oldest of the five of us, but he looked the youngest. Tonight he looked all of his forty-two years. He paused a moment before continuing. "She told me just last week, tears in her eyes just as big as the day Cad passed. I was all set to throw her out when I saw those tears and I thought to myself 'This is my baby'. I held her in my arms the same minute she was born. Been raisin' her by m'self over ten years- how could I think such a thing?'

"I sat down and talked with her and you know what? The girl's off and gotten a life without me. She said that boy is gonna do right by her, gonna take her right up to New York City with him."

We sat in silence another moment.

"And I want her to go with him. I want her to go and never look back."

"Why, Jack?"

"That boy," he said and stopped, turning towards me and exhaling sharply through his nose. I knew he wasn't talking about the one from New York City, his finger stuck out as if Bob were standing a few yards away from the porch and he was pointing him out. "That boy," he began more carefully, "was in my house night before last. He was standing over my Jenny while she was sleepin', just… lookin' at her, his eyes all thirsty-lookin'."

"How'd he get in?" I said, distracted by even more stunning news and betraying more excitement than I intended. Jack didn't take notice, but plowed through his tale.

"Don't know. My door stays locked nowadays like everyone else's. I just about killed him throwin' him out. If Jenny hadn't been there…"

"Tell the truth, I don't know if I couldda been a better man, myself," I said. A couple more beers were stirring around in the bucket and I fished one out. "Whatchoo do after that?"

"That's the thing. No sooner was I throwin' him offa my porch, than the door slams in my face when I turn to go back in. And I swear I saw that boy's face in the doorway the instant before it shut."

"Say what?"

"Yeah," Jack said, nodding. "I was shocked as all get-out, m'self. I did a double take and there he was still, picking hisself off m'lawn.

The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt I

Everything went together real sudden-like. The five of us were sitting on the porch and drinking like we had started doing every Friday night, not talking, just watching the sunset and being alone with our own thoughts. It was good company to have even though we were to ourselves and every now and then one of us would blurt out some half thought out, unfinished sentence.

The clouds were slow and thick, moisture clung to us like a heavy rain would start any moment. I think we all felt that energy galvanizing the same as we felt something building up inside of us. Jack said it first, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees, his beer bottle swirling loosely between his fingers. "Somethin' evil is in that boy," he said and leaned back, looking back up into the sky like he'd just been to Confession.

No one said anything for a while after that; it wasn't necessary to ask whom he was talking about. Bob was different, there wasn't any denying it. Before, he'd been the most guileless, harmless boy in town. Sure he stole, but he never would learn any better. Besides, his momma always settled up with whomever he took from.

He was a man-sized child. Barely in his teens, he'd been nose to nose with me almost four years ago, but he towered over me by that summer. Those in the know said Bob was the product of Ms. Kelly taking up with a colored but the story eventually devolved into her being savaged by a group of them. Her father had put her up in that house shortly before he died and she'd been renting out rooms ever since.

We actually didn't know what Bob's real name was. Only reason we called him Bob was because no matter who he met, he always called them Bob. I was Bob, Jack was Bob, my wife was Mrs. Bob; everyone was Bob.

Howie wrinkled up his brow, making the deep pink of the top of his bald head look like even tighter. He took another swig of beer. "What are you proposing we do about it, Henny?" he said, his posture a twin of Jack's. Howie and Ed called Jack Henny from their days together in The Great War.

Howie had only known Jack a year or two longer than me, he'd come back to Georgia with Jack instead of going back to his family in Mississippi. He was a Jew, but Jack had vouched for him so he was okay by us.

"Don't rightly know. Can't rightly say," Jack said, staring off in the distance.

"Yeah, you do," Ed chimed in, a smile playing across his face. "Get it out your mind."

I think I understood the way Jack thought well enough, but I just kept silent.

"What?" Glenn asked, completely lost. "What are we talkin' about?"

"Jack here is about to suggest we get on ol' Bobby," Ed said, sitting back. Jack just sat there, swishing a swallow of beer around in his mouth, not looking at anything, but still seeing something we hadn't yet.

"What do you wanna do, rough him up?" Ed seemed to consider a moment. "Nah, you wanna kill 'im, don't you? What he done to you so bad?"

"Jack, you foolin', ain't you?" Glenn said. "Bob ain't done nothin' to nobody, 'sides, killin's 'gainst God's law."

"Mm," Jack said.

Oh Dear

It appears I've run all out of stories.

Not quite.

For your reading pleasure I present, The Five Thousand Fingers of Bob...

And BAM! Just Like That

I don't know why it didn't hit me before.  But it makes perfect sense now.  I even know exactly how to write it (just have to plot first).  Friend will be a novel/novella.  I hesitated to write it beyond its incarnation on MicroHorror (there's roughly ten or so pages of a screenplay) but I wasn't sure where I was headed with it.  It's supposed to be dark comedy, why not go over the top with it?

More info soon...