Jonas David's Blog, page 13

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Can a book be a work of art? The answer is yes, and I’ve read it.

The only way to read this novel is to do so the same way you might look at a painting.

A painting captures a moment, a feeling, a tone, it brings thoughts to your mind and makes you wonder and stare and imagine. If there are figures in the painting, you don’t expect know who is going where and doing what, what will happen next and so on. Maybe you look at the figures’ faces and postures and try to decipher their emotions and thoughts, and make up your own story about what is happening. Maybe it’s different every time you look. But you don’t look at a painting to be told a story. You look at it because it’s beautiful.

And this book is amazingly beautiful, and vivid, and evocative, and painful and sweet and alive. It is a stunning capture of a few moments in time. I hope you take a look, and enjoy it as much as I did.

Attrition: a collection of short stories

I have finally finished putting together this collection, and it is now available on Smashwords!

As I was compiling what I feel are my best stories from the past few years, I noticed a lot of them had a similar theme of loss and grief, so that made tying them all together in a collection much easier. I pared down the choices, and these 11 stories are what I came up with.

It’s free to download, so I hope you take a look, enjoy, and share

Hill House vs Hill House

The 1959 Shirley Jackson Gothic horror novel, The Haunting of Hill House, has spawned two  Hollywood movies, a radio adaption, numerous parodies and copycats, and has influenced novelists and film writers for decades. Most recently, it’s been made into a TV series by Netflix which, after I heard from so many people how great it was, I decided to watch.

I was so impressed with what I saw that I read the book, too, and was surprised to find how completely different it was on almost every level.

I’ll attempt here to compare the positives and negatives of both the Netflix series and the Shirley Jackson novel.

The Netflix show



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This Netflix original, loosely inspired by the Shirley Jackson novel, tells the story of one family’s experiences in Hill House. The Crain family have purchased and moved into Hill House in order to renovate and resell it. During their time there, they experience a cornucopia of strange and terrifying events. The TV show tells two parallel stories: one details the characters’ childhood experiences in the house, and another tells of the characters’ recurring experiences 30 years later.

I loved this show for a lot of little reasons, and disliked it for a couple big ones. Let’s start with the positives.

The use of silence, subtlety and anticipation

Modern Hollywood ‘horror’ movies, even the supposedly psychologically unsettling ones, all seem to focus on loud noises and gross/upsetting imagery. What I loved the most about this show was its comparative restraint. The most scary parts of the show for me were the parts that showed nothing, or where you saw something but couldn’t be sure what.

The first episode sets the precedent, letting you know that there are creepy things going on, and that they could happen most anywhere, and at any time. And once I started watching out for creepy things, I couldn’t stop. The show regularly uses wide shots of entire rooms, giving the viewer a clear sight of every part of the room around, and behind the characters. Paradoxically, this clear view of everything makes the characters seem in constant danger. The viewer can see anything that might appear in the background behind the characters, and even though in the majority of these scenes nothing does appear, you are constantly waiting for it to. Your eyes vigilantly scan every open space with anxiety that something unspeakable may fade into view…

This kind of anticipation kept my jaw perpetually clenched, and my eyes glued wide open. The buildup to each scare was agonizing, and the almost cathartic relief of finally seeing the horrible thing added to its intensity. Yes, the show does give in to the jump-scare that is so prevalent, but it is used expertly. Rather than blasting you in the face like clockwork, the jump-scares are spread out, and some of them at truly unexpected times, during intense, emotional moments.

The terror of the unknown, and of one’s own mind

The most effective monsters are the ones that aren’t shown, but are only implied or hinted at. When you catch only a tiny glimpse of something, your mind can go off the rails filling in the blanks with horrible details. Another thing I loved about Hill House was the great job at hiding the monster. There are so many shadowy figures in the background or slight movements out of the corner of the eye, that you find yourself grinding your teeth and holding your breath in terror at what it might be, more than what it is.

In a world filled with gore-fest knock you over the head with a bloody stump ‘horror’, I found this kind of restraint impressive. The creators of this show actually seem to understand how fear works. We humans fear what we can’t comprehend and can’t control, what we can’t see, what we can’t escape. Once something is explained, named, and a face put to it, a reason put behind it, it loses all power over us and is in our control. And thus, hardly scary.

The few times that Hill House showed and / or explained a ghost were moments of respite for me. I could relax and unclench my jaw because the ghost lost all its power once it was defined and shown.

Episode 4 contained the most palpable instance of this for me. Something is knocking one by one on the doors in Hill House, getting closer and closer to young Luke’s room. The way the scene is filmed is incredibly tense, and I was leaning forward, a hand over my mouth, not wanting to see what it was out in the hall, but unable to look away. But then Luke gets up, creeps to the bedroom door, and opens it carefully. He peers out into the hall and sees–a tall floating man with a cane. I let out a breath, and leaned back in relief, all the tension leaving my body. Okay, I thought, I can understand what I’m looking at, I can process it, I know what it is, it’s no longer scary.

If Luke had instead seen a fleeting shadow, a moving shape, a hint of something that suggested a person or figure tapping on the doors, perhaps I would have held onto my fear as my imagination came up with a flurry of possible horrors. But the instant I saw clearly what it was, I felt relief. It’s been so long since I’ve been scared or creeped out by anything on TV, that I can’t think of another time I’ve experienced this drastic, vivid relief at seeing a monster.

Of course, Hollywood has to ride a careful line between this effect, and the need to actually show things for people to talk about and post screenshots of on social media. The creators of Hill House understood this, and avoided showing things for as much of the show as they could, with amazing effect. I doubt they could have avoided showing all the ghosts, even if they wanted to. But they could have avoided…

The ridiculous end

I loved the ambiance and the tone of the show. The characters were amazingly developed and acted, the scenery was well crafted and expertly shot, and the cold, anxious fear and heightened emotion were constant and palpable. But in the last couple episodes, the show fell into the trap that so many popular shows and books get sucked into: the desperate need to explain everything.  

At the climax of the show, the characters all become trapped in the ‘red room’, and are one by one rescued from terrible visions by the ghost of their recently dead sister, Nell. Nell then deliberately and specifically explains to the characters everything that’s been going on, and how the house works. I’m sort of used to this from TV and movies by now, and grudgingly accept its necessity. While the tedious explaining was annoying, I could have overlooked it. What I could not overlook was the discordantly confusing tone-shift that had me woling (saying ‘what’ out loud) for the last minutes of the final episode.

For the previous ten hours we’ve been shown in progressively more and more terrifying ways, just how disturbing Hill House is. We are also given some pretty upsetting hints at what the afterlife might be like for people who have died there, specifically Nell. Theo’s description of the darkness, of the cold emptiness and eternal loneliness she felt when touching Nells body was one of the most disturbing moments of the show for me. Yet in the final minutes of the final episode, the ambiance and tone of unsettling terror that has been so expertly crafted is all thrown out right out the window, and this song starts playing.

While this soft, nostalgic tune plays, we are treated to views of the characters getting their lives together in heartwarming ways. This is odd enough, but then we see the older versions of the Dudleys rushing into Hill House, so that they can die in there, and live on as ghosts with their daughter. It seems now we’re supposed to believe that anyone who dies there lives on forever happily in Hill House.

In the final shot, we zoom out of the dark, twisted looking house (while the sappy song continues playing) and see from the outside that the house is lit with warm, welcoming yellow light in the windows. The final voice over, in senseless twist on the original words at the start of the show and novel, says: ‘whatever walked there, walked together.’

What?

This completely undercuts Hugh’s sacrifice. When he killed himself so Olivia would let the kids leave the house alive, it was terrible to think of him trapped in that house eternally. And that terribleness made it powerful that he’d do such a thing to save his kids after being estranged for so long. But after this ending, we’re left with the discordant impression that the house is a nice place that stores memories for us to look back on at our own convenience. Is Hugh relaxing there with all the other ghosts waiting for people to visit? Are all the ghosts we saw throughout the episodes simply misunderstood nice folks? This puts a very strange twist on the previous nine and a half episodes.

I suspect that this ending was a hamfisted attempt to have closure while at the same time not allowing the characters to burn the damn house to the ground, as any sane person would do. My interpretation of the ghosts had been that they were twisted, horrible versions of the memories of those who’d died in Hill House. The ghosts certainly seemed horrible. But in the last minutes of the show they are shifted over to warm memories of those we’ve lost, stored safely inside the house like a worn and heavy photo album. Of course, if the characters had just burned the cursed house to rubble we couldn’t have a season two…

Although I was completely confused and annoyed by the end, I loved the show as a whole. I enjoyed nearly every moment watching it. For reasons that I’ll explain later, I’m very glad I watched this show before reading the novel.

The Shirley Jackson novel



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In this Gothic horror novel (which involves terror more than horror) a paranormal investigator and three strangers with past paranormal experiences spend several nights in the supposedly haunted Hill House to document their experiences. The story follows a single POV, that of Eleanor Vance, a young woman who experienced a possible poltergeist as a child.

As you can see from that description, the TV show took nothing much from the book besides the house and the names of the characters (the other two guests are named Luke and Theodora.) This book is its own thing, and it is a thing that I very much loved. Here’s why:

The use of subtlety and implications

I may have described the TV show as subtle, but that is only by Hollywood standards. The novel is a master of implications and uncertainty. While you are shown very clearly in the first minutes of the TV show that ghosts are real and are haunting this family, in the book it’s not so clear what is real and what is in the characters’ minds, specifically Eleanor’s mind.

Eleanor, or Nell, is described as having experienced a poltergeist in her youth that rained rocks down on her house multiple times. This detail is used by the show as an experience of Olivia Crane in her childhood. (This same detail is also used by Stephen King in Carrie, clearly influenced by Jackson.) Some interpretations of the book claim this raining of rocks, and all the experiences in Hill House are due not to hauntings, but Nell’s own telekinetic abilities. In one very tense scene, the characters huddle in a room together, overwhelmed and terrified by a persistent pounding all through the house. Later in the story, Eleanor runs up and down the halls in a panicked, delusional state of mind, pounding on all the doors. This is taken by some as an implication that the previous pounding was caused by her as well.

The stability of Eleanor’s mind is called into question in subtle ways early in the novel. When asked about her life outside Hill House, Eleanor makes up details based on things she observed on her drive to Hill House. A child in a cafe whining for her ‘cup of stars’ turns into Eleanor herself having a cup of stars (this cup is another detail used in a different way in the show), a cottage house with lion statues and an imagined white cat become details of Eleanor’s own supposed apartment, which she describes to Theodora in an attempt to impress her. Eleanor does seem to have some kind of attraction to Theodora, and it’s possible that the blood on Theodora’s clothes (which all the characters witnessed and is later found to be inexplicably gone) was engineered again by Eleanor’s own supernatural powers, perhaps subconsciously, as a way to get Theodora into her own room.

The above theories are ideas of mine and others, and are never stated outright in the book. Unlike a TV show, where the public demands that everything must be explained in detail, in the book things are left up to interpretation–which makes them much more interesting to talk about. Was it Eleanor who was haunted, rather than the house? Or did the house possess Eleanor and feed on her because she was the most susceptible to psychic phenomenon? That we can even have this kind of discussion is a major plus in the book’s favor.

A simple story

While the characters are complex, the story is straightforward. There are no plot twists or secrets revealed, other than about the characters’ internal workings. What objectively happens in the story can be summed up in a few sentences. In the end, a shocking event happens, but it fits entirely within the characters, and can be predicted fairly early on.

Maybe a better way to describe the story is focused. The story knows what it’s about, and doesn’t wander off into unimportant areas. The story is about Eleanor, so we learn about Eleanor. We don’t get distracted by long, detailed histories of the other characters, or of the house and the people who died there, how they died, and so on. Mrs. Dudley, for example, is an enigmatic character that adds a layer of unease to the novel, but the story is not about her, so we aren’t burdened with chapter upon chapter detailing her origins, her family, her reasons for taking care of the house, etc.

Instead we have a direct, clear focus on Eleanor, her thoughts and feelings, and her reactions to the characters around her. The reader’s feelings are not spread out over several characters, but are all focused in one spot. Some people may be disappointed in the lack of details and history, but I find that this focus heightens the impact of events in the story.

A straightforward, fitting end

Through the course of the novel we learn a lot about Eleanor Vance. She is uncertain of who she is in the world, but wants to find out. She wants to belong somewhere, but feels tied to her past with her sick mother. She wants to be liked and to fit in so much that she makes up things about herself that she thinks others will approve of. She wants so badly to get away from her home life and on to something new, that at the start of the book she steals her sister’s car when she won’t loan it to her.

By the end of the story, Eleanor has tied her personality and self so thoroughly to Hill House (be it because of her own mental instability, the house’s paranormal aspects, or some combination of those) that it is impossible for her to separate herself from it. The other characters become so worried for her mind that they send her away, in effect, excommunicating her from her new home. When she is faced with the unavoidable prospect of leaving Hill house to go back to her despised home-life, she does the predictable.

There are no screaming ghosts or evil demons whispering in her ear, there are no hallucinatory tricks played on her. She simply decides not to leave, and happily crashes her car full speed into a tree. The novel ends the same as it began: with Hill House, cold, foreboding, and empty–other than whatever unknown thing may walk within.

Retrospective



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At the time of writing this it’s been a few months since I read the novel, and even longer since I watched the show. My opinion has changed on both of them over that time. I find I like and appreciate the book more as time has gone on, and only see more and more problems with the show as I spend time thinking about it.

I’m glad I watched the show first

I have to reiterate that I massively enjoyed the show, especially the first 5 or 6 episodes. And I’m really glad to have had that experience without any preconceived notions of what the show should be. Had I read the book first, I’m certain I would have been quite annoyed by many choices the show made.

It’s not that I expect everything to be the same, or even similar to the book. The entire story could be (and was) different, but the key point, or spirit of the book must be there, or else why call it by the same name? This is what would have annoyed me had I read Hill House first, and what has annoyed me about so many remakes, reboots and sequels: everything that I loved about the original was completely absent in the new version. There were many things that I loved in the Netflix show, but they aren’t what I would have expected from a show supposedly based off, or inspired by, the novel I read.

It is an almost guaranteed result whenever something is remade, it seems, that the creators of the new version will completely miss, or ignore, the point of the original.

Hollywood overdoes everything/misses the point

In the end, Netflix’s Hill House was its own story, and only very loosely inspired by the Shirley Jackson novel. Being inspired by something is perfectly fine–we can’t help but be inspired by many things every day. However, there seems to be an epidemic of remakes and reboots that are void of anything relating to the title they hide behind. It’s gotten so bad that few people I know are excited to see a new movie with a title they recognize. Instead, most groan at what they take for granted will be another ruined favorite.

This plague could be caused by laziness (damn the quality, people will watch it because they’ve heard of it!), an effort at mass appeal (hmm, if we just change everything about this, a lot more people will watch it!), an attempt to magnify some popular aspect of the original (people really liked the alien in this movie, so lets put 100 aliens in the sequel!), or the creators just completely missing the point.

For Hill House, I think it was some combination of the above. The writers seemed to have an appreciation of the original, based on details such as the cup of stars, the rocks raining on the childhood house, the names of the characters, the red room. These details were used in completely different ways in the show, but they directly relate to the book, and they were not necessary other than the creators wanting to use them.

But the creators also wanted to make a horror story about ghosts, and in the money-driven Hollywood world, there is no way they could have just created their own ghost story with a title and characters that no one had heard of. So they took a title that was well known to be about a haunted house, and jammed that house full of ghosts, even though in the original novel it’s debatable whether the house contained any ghosts at all.

The result is that fans of horror will watch the show, and would have watched regardless of the title. People on the fence about watching might recognize the name and decide to turn it on. And fans of the book (who might not even be horror fans) will watch because they enjoyed the original. Only one of these groups has a big chance of being disappointed. It’s beneficial to Hollywood to pull these kinds of tricks to get a bigger audience, and the only people who lose out are the biggest fans of the original material.

This leaves us with a paradox where the bigger a fan you are of something, the more upset you’ll be to see it made, or remade, by Hollywood.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s all entertainment and all we can do is enjoy what we enjoy. But be aware that in today’s world, titles are more often a form of marketing than anything actually reflecting the content.

I hope you check out both the Shirley Jackson novel and the TV show, but I highly recommend watching the show first, as I did!

Is Sci-fi missing something?

A friend linked me this article about the squeamish hesitance of writers to call their books sci-fi, and the reputation sci-fi has for being cheap or base entertainment.

Some of this rings true for me, too, even as a (ex?) sci-fi fan and writer myself. Their example of Faber is accurate. I remember when I first read Faber’s books being blown away by how real and vivid the characters seemed, because I was so used to most sci-fi where the characters are just incidental and the focus is all on the idea, the world, the science, the action, the alien, etc.

Faber was, I think, the gateway for me into the literary world because after reading his books I found all the sci fi books I read afterward to be lacking something. I still enjoy some sci-fi, like the ‘Three Body Problem’ series by Cixin Liu, which just so overwhelm you with a constant barrage of mind-blowing ideas that you don’t have time to notice there isn’t really much to the characters, and I suppose that’s the final goal of a lot of sci-fi, to wow you with ideas and concepts. But I think for me, sci-fi in general is just not interesting enough anymore.

It’s possible I’m just interested in different things now. Most of the ‘new’ ideas aren’t new to me anymore, so if those ideas are all a story has going for it, it’s gunna be a bore to me.

I’m not sure what that mystical ‘it’ is that’s missing from sci fi for me, but it’s something that most sci-fi books don’t have, and Faber’s books do have. Octavia Butler is another  who uses her ideas to ask human questions, but having read a LOT of sci-fi, it seems pretty accurate to call her and Faber exceptions (Stanislaw Lem also, though I’ve only read Solaris). In my experience, in most sci-fi stories the human questions or human interactions are something that happens on the side, momentarily, before the characters rush off to discover and/or destroy whatever is next.

The idea that so called Real Literature is about more than people running around shooting each other (or flying around punching each other, or zooming around lasering each other…etc) is maybe an unstated one, but an ingrained one. Real Literature, we think, is about the internal, not the external. And sci-fi, almost by definition, is about the external. It’s about the science, the technology, the undiscovered–these are all physical things external to us.

There also seems to be some expectation of Sci-Fi to be big. It has to be huge, sweeping, galaxy-wide, epic, of universal proportions–which leaves little room for us to know about or care about a single individual’s internal workings.

But can these things be combined? The big external and the personal internal? It seems so. Faber has done it, but the majority don’t do it. It’s no surprise to me that some authors don’t want to be associated with all the negative aspects of the sci-fi genre just because their characters happen to be in the future, or on another planet.

So all the above is to say I completely understand the hesitation in being labeled sci-fi. If an author has written a book that really focuses on characters, and that book just happens to be on an alien world, they don’t want people to see ‘sci-fi’ and immediately think the book is about the alien world. But is it true that sci-fi is still never about the characters? or do I need to read more, newer, sci-fi? Are there other examples like Faber or Butler out there that I haven’t heard of? Do I need to scour the reviews of sci-fi novels and look for those with a bunch of one-star ratings that say ‘boring, nothing happened,’ like I do to pick my literary reads? 

Maybe so. I’d appreciate any suggestions of sci-fi that you think deserves to be called Real Literature.

Back from the doldrums

Hello world! I’ve been having a hard time writing lately, but I’m happy to say my funk is over, and I’m producing fictional words again! I’ve gone back to a project I was working on last year, and I’ve rediscovered the thread, which is not something I’m usually able to do when I’m away from a project for a long time. Yay new skills!

So what happened? How did I get my mojo back? I don’t really know for sure, but something shifted in me and I have motivation again. It happened while I was thinking about the future, and how life ends quicker than you think. I wan’t to leave some mark on the world, and if I don’t do it through writing, I don’t know how else I can. Even if I end up like an ancient person painting a cave wall, with my work unseen until long after I’m dead… well, at least I will have left something behind!

With that in mind I’m planning to release a collection of short stories this year. There are ten to fifteen stories I’ve written over the past few years that I feel are good enough to be read, so you’ll get to read them! I think putting them out as a collection makes more sense than one by one as blog posts, which I started doing. I’ll just put them on Smashwords, then start on writing more!

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. Feels good to be writing again.

Episode 3 with surprise guest!

The third episode of the Lucent Dreaming podcast Somniloquy is now available for your listening pleasure

Click, listen, enjoy

Yes, I’m still reading, just slowly

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Here are the books I’ve read so far this year and my thoughts! I am way behind schedule!

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Amazing! I have a much longer post about the book versus the show coming up, so I’m not going to post much here besides ‘I loved it!’

Sapiens: a Brief History of Human Kind by Yuval Harari: Incredible, mind opening, engaging and humorous and supremely informative! There are so many things I took away from this book that it’s hard to name one, but I think the realization that there were many human species existing on earth at once in the past is a stunner to think about. Can you imagine how things would be different if one or more of them had survived to build their own societies alongside us?

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: Boy do I love her writing style. Subtle, understated, and some just really weird stuff that fans of modern, severed-limb style ‘horror’ will probably be bored by. The title story has had such an influence on the world of fiction that it will probably be predictable to most and not very shocking or impressive, but it’s still a great read and there are a lot of gems in here!

The Passion According to G.H by Clarice Lispector: Wow. This one is really hard to describe because almost nothing happens in the book outside of thoughts and feelings. This is definitely not for everyone. Probably not for most. But the language is beautiful and if you love getting into weird head-spaces, this one will really take you for a ride. The final 15% or so my face got sore from being in the D: position for too long. The book as a whole reminded me of a few very intense panic attacks I’ve had, which I called ‘horror attacks’ (though terror is probably a more accurate word) that really changed the way I thought about life.

I love how you get sucked into the bizarre mind-state of GH, but when you pull yourself back and think of the objective reality of what actually happened in the book, it’s actually kind of hilarious.

A strange experience. I’ll have to read it again at some point, I feel I probably missed a lot in the middle.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess: It’s a book, okay! It’s going on the list! I need the numbers! This was actually great for me, a relative beginner at chess, and I bet it would be useful as a refresher to someone more experienced, too. Unlike a lot of chess books, it gets laser focused on one topic: back-rank checkmates. It goes through every conceivable variation of every pattern, and by the end of it you’ll be recognizing those patterns in your games and saying ‘oh yeah, that’s where I force the king into the corner like this’ and so on. Very helpful!

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee: Short and potent. Beautiful prose. A sordid story of our past that is still a sad reflection of our present. Life goes on, and seems completely out of our hands, but even so we must try to do what’s right, even in the face of impotence. Powerful and memorable.

LD issue #4 and Somniloquy!

Issue four is out! AND we are accepting submissions for issue five, which is our flash fiction issue!

Also, our podcast Somniloquy has a new episode coming out this week, and you can currently listen to episodes one and two here!

I hope to be posting some more writing of my own soon here as well. Stay tuned!

A thriller novel in 1600 words

Here is a novel I wrote in 1600 words. It’s a ‘page turner’!

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Prologue

In a dark warehouse a Helpless Woman limps away from a shadowy figure.

“Help! Help!” she cries, but no one is there to help her.

The figure holds a gleaming blade in a red-gloved hand.

“No!” cries the woman.

Blood splashes on the ground.

CH1

Detective Jack Richmond wakes to a phone call. He blearily grabs the receiver and knocks an empty whisky bottle to the floor.

“Hello?”

It’s his partner, Karen Jillian. “There’s been a murder, Jack, get here, NOW.”

CH2

Jack slams the brakes on his blue 2018 Mustang and screeches into the parking lot. He gets out and straightens his duster. “Where’s the murder?”

Karen points at the warehouse. She’s wearing a short skirt that shows her sexy legs.

CH3

Inside the warehouse Jack kneels and touches the ground and rubs red liquid between his fingers. “Blood. There’s been a murder here.”

“Yes, but where’s the body?”

A red drop lands on Karen’s cleavage and she looks up. A mutilated body is hanging from chains.

Karen screams.

CH4

In the cold, dark morgue Jack examines the body. “These wounds came from a knife, look, see how the skin is cut.”

Karen bends to look, and her blond hair falls against Jack’s hand. He twirls a lock in his fingers.

“Jack, don’t.” She pushes his hand away. “I’m still grieving the death of my blind, war-hero father.”

CH6

Karen sits sexily on Jack’s desk and holds out a plastic evidence bag full of ashes. “We found something in the ashes when we cremated the body.”

She pulls a metal square from the ash. There’s writing etched into it.

“Hieroglyphs,” says Jack, “A code.”

“Jack,” Karen says, and touches his shoulder. “I feel some connection to this woman. We have to solve this case!”

CH7

Jack and Karen sit in a dark library and flip through the yellowed pages of an ancient book. They wear glasses and cardigans.

“Look, this symbol,” Jack points, “It means… death.”

“And this one,” says Karen. Her hand grazes Jack’s. “It means… love…”

There’s a thump in the dark and they both leap to their feet. “Who’s there?”

CH8

An old man steps out of the shadows. His eyes are white orbs and he carries a cane. “The killer is not who you think,” he says.

Jack grabs him by the collar. “Who are you!?”

The old man wheezes laughter. “You know nothing, Jack! Find the red glove!”

“Jack!” Karen grabs his muscular bicep. “We have to go!” They rush out the door and the old man cackles in the shadows behind them.

CH9

They speed away in Jack’s Mustang. “What is it Karen? Why did we rush out of there?”

“Because.” Karen holds up the metal square. “I translated the message.”

CH10

Jack and Karen sit on a bed in a dim hotel room. Jack’s tie is loosened. Karen’s blouse is untucked. Karen lays some papers on the blankets.

“See? The hieroglyphs mean: love and death walk hand in hand, never trust a blind old man.”

Jack nods. “You translated that just in time. But what did he mean by ‘find the red glove?’”

Karen grabs Jack’s hand, her cheeks are flushed. “Oh Jack, let’s forget about that old man. Hold me.” She kisses him, and they fall across the papers.

CH11

Jack wakes screaming from a dream of being chained and bleeding. He reaches for his whisky, but only finds an empty pillow. Karen is gone.

CH12

In the morning they drive Jack’s Mustang through pouring rain. “Where were you last night?” he asks as he shifts gears.

“Bad dreams,” she says, “I had to go for a walk.”

A call comes in on the radio: “We’ve had another murder, get here quick!”

The two share a glance, and Jack steps on the gas.

CH13

They screech into another warehouse. A young officer approaches. “The victim’s in there. She’s chained up just like last time!”

Inside, a bloody corpse hangs from chains in the dark.

Karen screams.

“We found a knife.” The officer holds up a gleaming blade in a plastic evidence bag.

“Are there any prints?” asks Jack.

“No, the killer must have worn a glove.”

“Could it have been… a red glove?”

“Yes, that’s definitely possible. And one more thing, Jack,” says the officer. “DNA tells us the victims were sisters.”

CH14

“We’ve got to find that old man,” says Jack.

He starts the engine and Karen puts a hand on his. “I don’t think we should trust just any old man, Jack.”

“But the glove! He knew about the glove!”

CH15

They return to the library and Jack searches up and down the dark aisles. Karen follows him.

“Jack, wait!”

But Jack doesn’t wait. “Where are you, old man!”

A wheezing sound comes from the shadows.

CH16

The old man steps into the light and points his cane at Jack. “You read my glyphs, didn’t you?”

Jack gasps. “You wrote the message?”

The old man nods. “Did you find the red glove, Jack?”

“But your message said nothing about a glove.”

Karen steps between them. “Don’t listen to him, Jack! Let’s just go!”

“Go? Like last time?” snaps Jack, angrily. “Something is fishy here. No blind man would write a message that said ‘don’t trust a blind man.’ What does the message really say?”  

CH17

“It says,” wheezes the old man, “love and death go hand in hand, find her glove and foil her plan!”

Jack gasps. “Her?” He snatches Karen’s purse and dumps it to the floor. A red glove falls out.

“Jack, no, it’s a lie!”

Jack picks up the glove. “Evidence doesn’t lie.”

“Arrest her!” says the old man. “She killed her sisters out of jealousy!”

CH18

“Sisters?” Jack gasps.

“It’s true, the victims were my sisters,” says Karen, “but I didn’t kill them!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack demands.

“I didn’t want to get taken off the case! It’s important to me to catch the killer, who I know now is this old man!”

“You did kill them,” says the old man. “You killed them to get my inheritance for yourself!”

CH19

Jack gasps. “Inheritance? Then you… you must be Karen’s blind war-hero father?”

“Oh Jack!” Karen grabs Jack’s hand and kisses it. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t! Don’t you… love me?”

“Love and death go hand in hand,” says Jack. He pushes her away and pulls his gun. “Karen Jillian, you’re under arrest!”

“Yes!” says the old man. “Point your gun at her! She deserves it!”

Jack narrows his eyes. “How can you see what I’m doing?”

CH20

Jack spins around and throws the red glove at the old man, and he knocks it aside with his cane.

“You can see!” says Jack. “You could see this whole time!”

“Damn you!” The old man drops his cane and stands up straight. “It’s true, I can see! I can see just fine and that’s how I killed my daughter!”

“But, but why?” cries Karen.

CH21

“Because you never visit me! You left me to rot in that retirement home, and you actually thought I was already dead!” The old man shakes his fist. “You, Karen, were the worst! The only one of my daughters to join the service, and you were the least understanding! That’s why I chose to frame you for your sister’s death!”  

Jack points his gun at the old man. “Old man, you’re under arrest!”

CH22

The old man cackles. “You’ll never put me in a cell! I’ll spend the rest of my life tormenting you, Karen!” He turns and sprints into the dark.

Before Jack can chase after him, two shots are fired and the old man collapses in the aisle.

CH23

Karen holds a smoking gun, and tears run down her cheeks. “He was my father, but I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”

Jack puts his arm around her. “It’s over now, Karen. It’s over.” They embrace and kiss.

“I just have one question,” says Jack, as they gaze at each other. “Why did he say he killed his ‘daughter,’ when there were two murders?”

CH24

Karen caresses Jack’s cheek and kisses him. “He misspoke is all, he was a very old man, and crazy too.”

“He was crazy…” says Jack. Karen is very soft in his arms.

Karen kisses him. “Oh Jack, I’m so glad it’s over! And with my inheritance, I can make everything right for those who were hurt.”

Jack’s eyes widen. “You really do have an inheritance?”

CH25

“Yes,” says Karen, looking down. “That much was true. It’s a lot of money, and… Jack?”

“What is it Karen?”

Karen kneels in front of Jack and takes something from the pile that was dumped out of her purse. She holds up a silver ring. “I want to share it all with you, Jack. Will you marry me?”

CH26

Jack and Karen run out of the church as onlookers throw rice and flowers. They get into Jack’s Mustang and drive away as the crowd of smiling people chase after. The car’s back window is painted with ‘just married,’ and strings of cans clatter behind, tied to the bumper.

In the car, the couple hold hands over the gear shifter. Their rings glint in the sunlight.

The radio hisses. “Jack, are you there? There’s been a murder!”

Jack and Karen share a glance, and Jack steps on the gas. “On our way!”

Epilogue:

The old man sits up in the dark, empty library, and tears off his bulletproof vest. “I’ll get you Karen, I’ll get you one day!”

Ghostin’ myself

I’ve been away for a while, not writing. Not writing sucks! I somehow lost the motivation. I say somehow, but I know how.

I started to feel that it was pointless to write when nothing will ever come of it. I still sort of feel that way. It’s not that I doubt that I’m good enough (though sometimes I do doubt that) it’s more that I doubt people want to read what I want to write.

So much of what is popular is not interesting to me, to write or read. So what is the point of writing what I want to read, if no one else wants to read it? The more I hear people talk about what they like to read or watch, the more I feel like what I want to create won’t interest very many people.

I think, though, that I probably assume too much. That is a problem I often have. What I should do is keep putting things out there, and only give up when I’ve proven myself right. But it’s easier said than done.

Motivation is a pain in the ass.

Anyway, time to start producing words of some kind again. I have a feeling they might be satirical when I do…