S.R. Hughes's Blog: The Froth-Mouthed Ravings of a True Lunatic, page 19

The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 3

(before we continue on our trek across modern apocalyptic America, I’d like to shamelessly plug No Grave, the second part in a book series I’m writing that you can now purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, etc…)

(for those just seeing Pt. 3, now, why don’t you check out Part One and Part Two?)

 

I get off at my stop and make my way through deserted streets to my apartment.  People part their blinds to watch my progress, panicked eyes tracking me as I make my way to my front door.  Nobody steps outside.  I’ve never seen Queens so empty, not even in the pre-dawn darkness when all the bars have closed and everyone has crawled into bed.

The first thing I do is take a shower, possibly the longest one I’ve taken in my life.  It takes a while to wash off the fourteen-or-fifteen days of filth I accumulated during my blackout, and longer still to wipe clean the clinging sensation that the world is ending and the strange sense that I am, in part, responsible.  That my hands are dirty with more than just ink and mud and whatever else I’ve scraped off the world for the past two weeks.

Then I throw out my clothes (there’s no way to save them, now, no, they’ve been too long bathed in my excretions and given to the filth of the Earth) and put on something sensible but also (hopefully) attractive.  Sturdy boots, flexible jeans, and a plain gray t-shirt.  Not ideal for the baking summer sun, of course, but sturdy and reliable.

Next stop: gathering forces.  My friends have dealt with such Evils and Darknesses, before, and though I’ve usually served in the role of the scribe, accounting for events and writing them down as the bards of old might’ve done if they’d had amphetamines and whiskey and a smartphone and a handheld voice recorder, I get the sense that I’m playing much more of a leadership role in the new apocalypse.  To my great dismay.  So I pull myself up by my boot straps and start packing a man-bag.  A phial of powerful pills, a 24oz water bottle full of water, another 24oz bottle full of whiskey, a notebook, two pencils, two pens, a knife (the only actual weapon in my possession), my wallet, and a Ziploc full of multi-vitamins.  Yes, multi-vitamins.  That is not an euphemism.

I set out on foot, having, as I  mentioned, no other choice.  The atmosphere is heavy around me, yes, heavy with dread and fear.  Last week’s newspapers blow around like tumbleweeds and I catch a headline off of one: WAR IN THE MIDWEST.  For a second I don’t believe my eyes (surely they mean “the Middle East?”) but no, there it is, clear as day, in big, bold, Front Page lettering.  I pick up my pace, knowing things have just gotten much more serious.

Already I wish I had more room in my bag for additional whiskey.  Will there be liquor stores in the new apocalypse?  Will there be bars?

My first stop is to a female friend’s apartment, by name of Anna Bradbury (no relation, insofar as I know).  As I approach, I notice all her windows have been boarded shut and someone has constructed a barrier of furniture and barbed wire in front of the door.  It seems the spare key will not be terribly useful.

I buzz her apartment and wait, not sure what else I should do.  Time passes, and so I buzz, again.  More time passes, et cetera.  Eventually I find myself leaning against the buzzer, applying constant pressure.

Finally, she answers: “GET AWAY FROM THE BUZZER BEFORE I BLOW YOU TO PIECES YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

Not exactly the warm welcome I had hoped for.

“It’s me!” I yell back.

Something moves behind her door.  I hear more furniture scraping against tiled floor, the rattle of chains being undone, the clack of bolts being opened, and the tick of small locks.  The door opens and I see the top of her head over the defensive barrier, a flash of dyed silver with mouse-colored roots.  A small passage opens at the base of the barrier, just large enough to squeeze through on my belly.  “Hurry up,” she says.

So I do.  I pass my bag through, first, and slide my own way in after she’s taken it.

“What’s up with the Great Wall?” I ask.

“Get inside, quick.”

She claps the barricade entry shut  and ushers me into the apartment, closing the door behind us.  She has a shotgun and four knives.  I don’t question this fact: it seems like a good time to be armed.  I watch as she hooks chains up along the door’s width and seals it with four deadbolts.  A secondary barrier made of desks and antique chairs blocks the foyer, which requires another feat of maneuvering and agility to navigate after she’s done.

“So, uh…what’s up with the Great Wall?” I repeat, hoping she’ll chuckle at my incisive humor.

She doesn’t.  “Where have you been?”

“I dunno.”

“You asshole.”

“No, I mean it, I don’t know.  I’ve been out for two weeks, give or take, and have no memory of anything.  I like to think of it as romantic, like pulp fiction amnesia, but mostly it’s been problematic, as the Apocalypse seems to have kicked off without me.”

“It’s full-scale evil,” she replies, and when she speaks I realize we are in near-darkness, with only one pale light bulb buzzing in her whole apartment and the rest lit by candles.  “A Lovecraft-scale emergency.”

“It’s dark in here.”

“It’s dark everywhere.”

“I meant literally.”

“I had to turn off all the lights.  And my phone.”

What she tells me next harrows me: she had to turn off her cellphone and disconnect her laptop because they were coming for her.  It started a week and a half ago with full Twitter outrage, a sudden tsunami of bile-spewing tweeters (or Twitterers or whatever) flooding the internet with viscous hatred.  It only escalated from there.

They’d sent her a thousand Snapchat dick pics and then someone had dug up her private number and started texting them.  The texts became so constant she couldn’t even answer a phone call from one of her fellow Fighters of Evil, so constant she couldn’t even touch her screen without summoning a veiny, baby’s-arm-sized cock.  So she turned off her phone…and they started to come through her computer screen.  Her laptop bulged with penises and hands and dark, angry-browed faces, all of them pressed against the screen trying to birth themselves into the physical world.  They tried to crawl out and rape her and kill her in ways too vile to describe and then rape her again in the eyes afterward.  One of them got a hand through before she pulled the plug and now the severed appendage twitches and spurts blood on her floor, somehow still bleeding even as I sit there listening.

She tells me there’s a cult, worshipers of the Great Phallus M’Ra who hunt women down across the country in great, violent mobs.  By the time I showed up on her doorstep (given, that is five minutes before she tells me the tale), they’d already hit Jezebel headquarters and left a trail of butchered corpses in their neckbearded wake.

That’s why she’s carrying a shotgun and four knives.  That’s why her doors and windows are barricaded shut and all the lights are off.

“But you fought Evil, before!  I know!  I wrote about it!” I wave my hands to emphasize the point.

“This is too big for us,” she replies, shaking her head, “it’s too big for anyone.”

I stare at her, slackjawed.

How has this happened?  How has this been allowed to happen?  This isn’t the world I know, certainly not the America I know.  Certainly not.  And even Anna Bradbury, heroic Fighter of Evil and icon of many of my tales, seems disheartened?  Has she given up!?  This is the work of something vile, vile, vile–yes, this is a Lovecraft-scale emergency!  Some dark, foul thing has awoken, I’m sure of it, some abysmal creature that has spent the last two decades chewing at the broken, desiccated heart of our country, growing strong on all our despair and insecurity and secret secret hatreds…

“No, no!” I declare, grabbing up my bag, “I know just the thing!  You can’t be hopeless, not you!”

I fish out the whiskey, a strong enough magic to get the fire coursing through anyone’s veins.  “Drink this,” I prescribe, handing her the bottle, “drink this potion and we’ll have you back on your feet and doing battle in no time!”

I pray I am right, because I have already seen and heard too much to do it alone.

And, I might mention, I am something of a coward.

The post The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 3 appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

Blog Story #1, Pt. 3 (Untitled)

(before we continue on our trek across modern apocalyptic America, I’d like to shamelessly plug No Grave, the second part in a book series I’m writing that you can now purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, etc…)

(for those just seeing Pt. 3, now, why don’t you check out Part One and Part Two?)

 

I get off at my stop and make my way through deserted streets to my apartment.  People part their blinds to watch my progress, panicked eyes tracking me as I make my way to my front door.  Nobody steps outside.  I’ve never seen Queens so empty, not even in the pre-dawn darkness when all the bars have closed and everyone has crawled into bed.

The first thing I do is take a shower, possibly the longest one I’ve taken in my life.  It takes a while to wash off the fourteen-or-fifteen days of filth I accumulated during my blackout, and longer still to wipe clean the clinging sensation that the world is ending and the strange sense that I am, in part, responsible.  That my hands are dirty with more than just ink and mud and whatever else I’ve scraped off the world for the past two weeks.

Then I throw out my clothes (there’s no way to save them, now, no, they’ve been too long bathed in my excretions and given to the filth of the Earth) and put on something sensible but also (hopefully) attractive.  Sturdy boots, flexible jeans, and a plain gray t-shirt.  Not ideal for the baking summer sun, of course, but sturdy and reliable.

Next stop: gathering forces.  My friends have dealt with such Evils and Darknesses, before, and though I’ve usually served in the role of the scribe, accounting for events and writing them down as the bards of old might’ve done if they’d had amphetamines and whiskey and a smartphone and a handheld voice recorder, I get the sense that I’m playing much more of a leadership role in the new apocalypse.  To my great dismay.  So I pull myself up by my boot straps and start packing a man-bag.  A phial of powerful pills, a 24oz water bottle full of water, another 24oz bottle full of whiskey, a notebook, two pencils, two pens, a knife (the only actual weapon in my possession), my wallet, and a Ziploc full of multi-vitamins.  Yes, multi-vitamins.  That is not an euphemism.

I set out on foot, having, as I  mentioned, no other choice.  The atmosphere is heavy around me, yes, heavy with dread and fear.  Last week’s newspapers blow around like tumbleweeds and I catch a headline off of one: WAR IN THE MIDWEST.  For a second I don’t believe my eyes (surely they mean “the Middle East?”) but no, there it is, clear as day, in big, bold, Front Page lettering.  I pick up my pace, knowing things have just gotten much more serious.

Already I wish I had more room in my bag for additional whiskey.  Will there be liquor stores in the new apocalypse?  Will there be bars?

My first stop is to a female friend’s apartment, by name of Anna Bradbury (no relation, insofar as I know).  As I approach, I notice all her windows have been boarded shut and someone has constructed a barrier of furniture and barbed wire in front of the door.  It seems the spare key will not be terribly useful.

I buzz her apartment and wait, not sure what else I should do.  Time passes, and so I buzz, again.  More time passes, et cetera.  Eventually I find myself leaning against the buzzer, applying constant pressure.

Finally, she answers: “GET AWAY FROM THE BUZZER BEFORE I BLOW YOU TO PIECES YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

Not exactly the warm welcome I had hoped for.

“It’s me!” I yell back.

Something moves behind her door.  I hear more furniture scraping against tiled floor, the rattle of chains being undone, the clack of bolts being opened, and the tick of small locks.  The door opens and I see the top of her head over the defensive barrier, a flash of dyed silver with mouse-colored roots.  A small passage opens at the base of the barrier, just large enough to squeeze through on my belly.  “Hurry up,” she says.

So I do.  I pass my bag through, first, and slide my own way in after she’s taken it.

“What’s up with the Great Wall?” I ask.

“Get inside, quick.”

She claps the barricade entry shut  and ushers me into the apartment, closing the door behind us.  She has a shotgun and four knives.  I don’t question this fact: it seems like a good time to be armed.  I watch as she hooks chains up along the door’s width and seals it with four deadbolts.  A secondary barrier made of desks and antique chairs blocks the foyer, which requires another feat of maneuvering and agility to navigate after she’s done.

“So, uh…what’s up with the Great Wall?” I repeat, hoping she’ll chuckle at my incisive humor.

She doesn’t.  “Where have you been?”

“I dunno.”

“You asshole.”

“No, I mean it, I don’t know.  I’ve been out for two weeks, give or take, and have no memory of anything.  I like to think of it as romantic, like pulp fiction amnesia, but mostly it’s been problematic, as the Apocalypse seems to have kicked off without me.”

“It’s full-scale evil,” she replies, and when she speaks I realize we are in near-darkness, with only one pale light bulb buzzing in her whole apartment and the rest lit by candles.  “A Lovecraft-scale emergency.”

“It’s dark in here.”

“It’s dark everywhere.”

“I meant literally.”

“I had to turn off all the lights.  And my phone.”

What she tells me next harrows me: she had to turn off her cellphone and disconnect her laptop because they were coming for her.  It started a week and a half ago with full Twitter outrage, a sudden tsunami of bile-spewing tweeters (or Twitterers or whatever) flooding the internet with viscous hatred.  It only escalated from there.

They’d sent her a thousand Snapchat dick pics and then someone had dug up her private number and started texting them.  The texts became so constant she couldn’t even answer a phone call from one of her fellow Fighters of Evil, so constant she couldn’t even touch her screen without summoning a veiny, baby’s-arm-sized cock.  So she turned off her phone…and they started to come through her computer screen.  Her laptop bulged with penises and hands and dark, angry-browed faces, all of them pressed against the screen trying to birth themselves into the physical world.  They tried to crawl out and rape her and kill her in ways too vile to describe and then rape her again in the eyes afterward.  One of them got a hand through before she pulled the plug and now the severed appendage twitches and spurts blood on her floor, somehow still bleeding even as I sit there listening.

She tells me there’s a cult, worshipers of the Great Phallus M’Ra who hunt women down across the country in great, violent mobs.  By the time I showed up on her doorstep (given, that is five minutes before she tells me the tale), they’d already hit Jezebel headquarters and left a trail of butchered corpses in their neckbearded wake.

That’s why she’s carrying a shotgun and four knives.  That’s why her doors and windows are barricaded shut and all the lights are off.

“But you fought Evil, before!  I know!  I wrote about it!” I wave my hands to emphasize the point.

“This is too big for us,” she replies, shaking her head, “it’s too big for anyone.”

I stare at her, slackjawed.

How has this happened?  How has this been allowed to happen?  This isn’t the world I know, certainly not the America I know.  Certainly not.  And even Anna Bradbury, heroic Fighter of Evil and icon of many of my tales, seems disheartened?  Has she given up!?  This is the work of something vile, vile, vile–yes, this is a Lovecraft-scale emergency!  Some dark, foul thing has awoken, I’m sure of it, some abysmal creature that has spent the last two decades chewing at the broken, desiccated heart of our country, growing strong on all our despair and insecurity and secret secret hatreds…

“No, no!” I declare, grabbing up my bag, “I know just the thing!  You can’t be hopeless, not you!”

I fish out the whiskey, a strong enough magic to get the fire coursing through anyone’s veins.  “Drink this,” I prescribe, handing her the bottle, “drink this potion and we’ll have you back on your feet and doing battle in no time!”

I pray I am right, because I have already seen and heard too much to do it alone.

And, I might mention, I am something of a coward.

The post Blog Story #1, Pt. 3 (Untitled) appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 2

(apologies to those who will notice: my verb tense in pt. 1 was past-tense and now I’ve switched to present-tense…present-tense recounting of past events, a method of writing I’ve never employed before and so expect to screw up.  Don’t hate me too much.  Just buckle up and get ready for some flaws.)

(also, do check out The New American Apocalypse, Part One if you haven’t, already)

 

Times like these, I wish I had a car.  But I’m just a lowly starving artist, bank account limping its way month to month supported by a trickle of royalties, survival jobs, and the consideration of strangers and heavily-abused friends.  So when I see those fatcats bibbed up to eat the youth of the Lower East Side, aging suits and young professionals gathered for a feast like maggots writhing under the skin of the world, I run not to my car (the everpresent symbol of the American Dream) but to the subway, where I take filth-encrusted stairs down to a horrorshow station…

I realize I’m surrounded by zombies!  They pile through the turnstiles, shambling beyond death!

They’re not zombies in the traditional way of being zombies, with the flesh all hanging down and arms dangling by worn tendons like lepers and black plague victims, no!–they wear the same clothing they’ve always worn, t-shirts and jeans and button-ups with ties like nooses wrung around their necks.  The zombie-factor (if you’ll allow such a thing to exist) is in their mindless shuffle, their dead, hollow eyes and groaning useless tongues.  They speak to each other in something that used to be language, but now is only absurdity, only the shallowest and most meaningless gibberish:

“God, it’s hot, today…”

“Wish that fucking train would get here.”

“The MTA is useless.”

“I’m going to be late for work.”

“We’re all going to be late for work.”

“We’ve all always been late to work.”

“The MTA is late to work.”

“Did you hear about Kim Kardashian?”

“Kim Kardashian should take control of the MTA.”

“She has a baby.”

“The baby will eat the MTA.”

“…and it’s so humid, too…”

None of them seem to know that the future of our country is being cannibalized outside, or if they know, they must not care, they must have more important things to talk about (like Kim Kardashian and how good she looks even after the baby).  I pull strands of hair out of my head and grab one of the zombies by his shoulders.  I shake him.  “Haven’t you seen what’s going on out there!?  Don’t you hear the screams!?”

He looks at me with stupid corpse-eyes, confused and dumber than a brain-damaged chihuahua, “Is there a celebrity out there?”

I stamp my feet down the length of the platform looking for some sign of intelligent life, but there isn’t one.  Something has gotten its tongue into their skulls and licked out their brains, cleaned the plate, and now their minds only run on the local line.  For a second I worry that they might come for me, might use the mass of their mindless horde to seize my limbs and tear me apart and devour my soul, but luckily for me I smell like the shit that shit shat, and that seems to give me some breathing room.

It is, for the record, both hot and humid.  Gross sweat steams from my skin and hangs in the air.  I feel less confident about the breathing room as I inhale all the dead grime coming off of me.  I smell like exhumed graves.

The rails rattle with the train’s approach.  The zeds were right about that.

I hear the metal growl deep down the dark tunnel.  The train sounds like some ancient wyrm snarling out its hunger.  FEED ME.  I step into the yellow-painted caution area out of habit.  Sometimes it’s good to feel the train whip by, the air against your face, the steel body inches away — a momento mori for the underground set.  Those that can’t afford the luxury of collectible funerary garb and stolen death-shrouds and trips to museums of the exhumed dead in Italy.

The train is the color of oil stains when it rumbles in.  It howls monstrous through the tunnel and the brakes scream as it comes to a stop.  Doors roll open like heavy-lidded eyes and a polite machine-voice announces “This is a Queens bound Death Train.  The next stop is 14th Street, Union Square, with transfers to the 4, 5, 6, Q, R, and Hell trains.”  I push my way onboard into a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder sweating together on their way to whatever personal hell they’ve chosen to destroy themselves with.

In an effort to make some space around me, I decide to put on a show.  “‘scuze me, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, doing my best to fill my voice with as much phlegm and human despair as I can, “I am not homeless, but I am very, very broke.  Actually, I may be homless.  It’s hard to tell, since I remember nothing of the past two weeks.  In any case, I am taking donations!”  I maneuver my way between tight-packed shoulders and hold out my hand (dirtier than I remember it being, to be honest, with something like ink soaked in around my nails), “Alms for the poor!?  Alms for the poor!?”

People make a lot of space pretending not to see me.  They press themselves against the walls, against the screaming body of the train, and suck in their guts to avoid getting too close.  To touch me would mean filth, a kind of human dirt they’d have to bathe in alcohol to get rid of.  They stare at the floor.  They tuck their legs in under the subway benches and hug their bags to the their laps.  The bodies part like the red sea around me, all the zombies preferring the snug embrace of a stranger’s armpit to the idea of acknowledging me.  Ah, yes, and now there’s the breathing room I was looking for!

I walk up to one of them and wave my hand in his dead-eyed face.  Either he is a very good actor or he is truly, truly vacant inside, for he doesn’t even blink.  I lean in close so he can catch the stench of me breathing from the collar of my shirt.  “You with me, man?” I ask.

“You’ll just use it for drugs and alcohol!” he screams back.

“What were you going to use it for!?” I snarl indignantly.

He doesn’t respond, but he lifts his copy of The New York Post in front of his face and starts  muttering to himself in a language I don’t speak–a language I don’t think anyone speaks, except for the child-hungry old men in the park.  The newspaper headline says nothing, but the photo on the front is an infinite darkness drooling tar and I can feel something alive pulsing beneath it.  Oh, it’s the end, alright.

We stay like that until the subway bursts out of the dark underground onto the elevated track running through Queens.

The post The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 2 appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

Blog Story #1, Pt. 2 (Untitled)

(apologies to those who will notice: my verb tense in pt. 1 was past-tense and now I’ve switched to present-tense…present-tense recounting of past events, a method of writing I’ve never employed before and so expect to screw up.  Don’t hate me too much.  Just buckle up and get ready for some flaws.)

 

Times like these, I wish I had a car.  But I’m just a lowly starving artist, bank account limping its way month to month supported by a trickle of royalties, survival jobs, and the consideration of strangers and heavily-abused friends.  So when I see those fatcats bibbed up to eat the youth of the Lower East Side, aging suits and young professionals gathered for a feast like maggots writhing under the skin of the world, I run not to my car (the everpresent symbol of the American Dream) but to the subway, where I take filth-encrusted stairs down to a horrorshow station…

I realize I’m surrounded by zombies!  They pile through the turnstiles, shambling beyond death!

They’re not zombies in the traditional way of being zombies, with the flesh all hanging down and arms dangling by worn tendons like lepers and black plague victims, no!–they wear the same clothing they’ve always worn, t-shirts and jeans and button-ups with ties like nooses wrung around their necks.  The zombie-factor (if you’ll allow such a thing to exist) is in their mindless shuffle, their dead, hollow eyes and groaning useless tongues.  They speak to each other in something that used to be language, but now is only absurdity, only the shallowest and most meaningless gibberish:

“God, it’s hot, today…”

“Wish that fucking train would get here.”

“The MTA is useless.”

“I’m going to be late for work.”

“We’re all going to be late for work.”

“We’ve all always been late to work.”

“The MTA is late to work.”

“Did you hear about Kim Kardashian?”

“Kim Kardashian should take control of the MTA.”

“She has a baby.”

“The baby will eat the MTA.”

“…and it’s so humid, too…”

None of them seem to know that the future of our country is being cannibalized outside, or if they know, they must not care, they must have more important things to talk about (like Kim Kardashian and how good she looks even after the baby).  I pull strands of hair out of my head and grab one of the zombies by his shoulders.  I shake him.  “Haven’t you seen what’s going on out there!?  Don’t you hear the screams!?”

He looks at me with stupid corpse-eyes, confused and dumber than a brain-damaged chihuahua, “Is there a celebrity out there?”

I stamp my feet down the length of the platform looking for some sign of intelligent life, but there isn’t one.  Something has gotten its tongue into their skulls and licked out their brains, cleaned the plate, and now their minds only run on the local line.  For a second I worry that they might come for me, might use the mass of their mindless horde to seize my limbs and tear me apart and devour my soul, but luckily for me I smell like the shit that shit shat, and that seems to give me some breathing room.

It is, for the record, both hot and humid.  Gross sweat steams from my skin and hangs in the air.  I feel less confident about the breathing room as I inhale all the dead grime coming off of me.  I smell like exhumed graves.

The rails rattle with the train’s approach.  The zeds were right about that.

I hear the metal growl deep down the dark tunnel.  The train sounds like some ancient wyrm snarling out its hunger.  FEED ME.  I step into the yellow-painted caution area out of habit.  Sometimes it’s good to feel the train whip by, the air against your face, the steel body inches away — a momento mori for the underground set.  Those that can’t afford the luxury of collectible funerary garb and stolen death-shrouds and trips to museums of the exhumed dead in Italy.

The train is the color of oil stains when it rumbles in.  It howls monstrous through the tunnel and the brakes scream as it comes to a stop.  Doors roll open like heavy-lidded eyes and a polite machine-voice announces “This is a Queens bound Death Train.  The next stop is 14th Street, Union Square, with transfers to the 4, 5, 6, Q, R, and Hell trains.”  I push my way onboard into a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder sweating together on their way to whatever personal hell they’ve chosen to destroy themselves with.

In an effort to make some space around me, I decide to put on a show.  “‘scuze me, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, doing my best to fill my voice with as much phlegm and human despair as I can, “I am not homeless, but I am very, very broke.  Actually, I may be homless.  It’s hard to tell, since I remember nothing of the past two weeks.  In any case, I am taking donations!”  I maneuver my way between tight-packed shoulders and hold out my hand (dirtier than I remember it being, to be honest, with something like ink soaked in around my nails), “Alms for the poor!?  Alms for the poor!?”

People make a lot of space pretending not to see me.  They press themselves against the walls, against the screaming body of the train, and suck in their guts to avoid getting too close.  To touch me would mean filth, a kind of human dirt they’d have to bathe in alcohol to get rid of.  They stare at the floor.  They tuck their legs in under the subway benches and hug their bags to the their laps.  The bodies part like the red sea around me, all the zombies preferring the snug embrace of a stranger’s armpit to the idea of acknowledging me.  Ah, yes, and now there’s the breathing room I was looking for!

I walk up to one of them and wave my hand in his dead-eyed face.  Either he is a very good actor or he is truly, truly vacant inside, for he doesn’t even blink.  I lean in close so he can catch the stench of me breathing from the collar of my shirt.  “You with me, man?” I ask.

“You’ll just use it for drugs and alcohol!” he screams back.

“What were you going to use it for!?” I snarl indignantly.

He doesn’t respond, but he lifts his copy of The New York Post in front of his face and starts  muttering to himself in a language I don’t speak–a language I don’t think anyone speaks, except for the child-hungry old men in the park.  The newspaper headline says nothing, but the photo on the front is an infinite darkness drooling tar and I can feel something alive pulsing beneath it.  Oh, it’s the end, alright.

We stay like that until the subway bursts out of the dark underground onto the elevated track running through Queens.

The post Blog Story #1, Pt. 2 (Untitled) appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

Buy No Grave Today!

As some (all?) of you know, No Grave is finally available for purchase as eBook and paperback!  A very exciting time!

It’s available in paperback primarily through Amazon.com but I’m told that Barnes & Noble and other online paperback retailers should have it very very shortly.

It’s available in eBook everywhere, for those who prefer your literature be electronic (and/or you just really want it RIGHT NOW! which I understand and am deeply grateful for) — you can pickup a digital copy of the book at Smashwords, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

Check it out, today!  If you live in the Rochester or NYC areas, I’ll even sign it for you!  I promise not to write anything crude!

I’ve also started work on a blog project, which I’ve very very very loosely outlined.  You can find the first entry here.  I’m trying to release an update every week or two, to keep you all entertained while I work on the next book in The Furies series (…as well as a couple other projects I shan’t announce, yet).

Thanks for stopping in.

See you soon, readers.

See you…very soon.

The post Buy No Grave Today! appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

No Grave: Keiran’s Back

Hey, guys!  Just another friendly reminder that No Grave is coming out…wait…tomorrow?  Is it tomorrow!?

OH CRAP.

Yes, paperback and digital versions will be available in a future so near we can almost taste it.  So whatever preference you have, get ready to crack the book open and get to reading.

Before I get too carried away with writing everyone in the world telling them to check it out, let’s take another gander at an excerpt, hmmm?

Some of you might remember Keiran from his role in No Reflection — quite a villain, wasn’t he?  And you might be wondering if he’ll be making a return…well, of course he will.  At the start of No Grave, he’s been AWOL for some time, but when he reappears he wastes no time in letting Nicole and the brownstone crew know.

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Here we go:

 

Nicole’s phone began bleating, buzzing against the plastic floral tabletop.  She glanced at the caller ID, half-expecting to see Katherine’s name, again, but was instead greeted by ‘Restricted Number.’  Her brow furrowed, and she thought of her mother in the new facility, out of the psyche ward and into private care.  She held up a finger, “Hold on,” she said, hand hesitating over the screen, “it might be…my mom…”

Jimmy gave her a nod and she rose from the table.

She answered the phone halfway down the hall back to her room.  “Hello?”

“I’ve missed your voice, beautiful.”  Keiran purred.

Nicole’s blood turned to ice and shattered in her veins.  Her heart crawled its way around her lungs and slammed against her rib cage.  As soon as she heard his voice, she could feel him again.  She could see him.  His long stringy hair limp around his skeletal face.  The scars crisscrossing the right side of his face, long jagged scars leading up to a milky, cataracted eye.  She could feel his coldness, the frigid touch of his dead fingers inside her, back pressed against subway tile, his hand clamped over her mouth.

“Where did you get my number?” her voice felt tight and small, strangled in her throat.

“Why are you hiding from me?  My beautiful, mine, my pretty little thing.  Why don’t you want me to hear your voice?  Why don’t you want me to see your glowing face?”

“Where?” she repeated, steadying herself against the wall.  “Where?”

“Why do you keep fighting, my pet?  Why play so hard to get?”

The floor of her stomach kicked out into a void abyss and her innards guttered down its vortex mouth.  She forgot the kitchen, the hallway, her room, the Brownstone, everything.  She was being sucked down a dark tunnel, caught in the undertow of a black ocean.  “Where?  Where?  Where?”

“I know you,” the croaking voice purred, “inside and out.  I cherish you, I love you, isn’t that what you need?  You cruel creature, poor pet, beautiful pet.  Why won’t you come out and play with me?”

She hadn’t seen him in four months, hadn’t heard him yell for her from the street, or found a note under a rock on the stoop, hadn’t had anything.  She’d almost dared to hope he was gone, that he’d moved on, found someone else to follow, to stalk, but of course not, of course not because then she would be free, and he wouldn’t let that happen.

“Where did you get my fucking number!?” the words tore through her throat like knives.  “Where!?”

She felt Angie’s hand on her right shoulder, anchoring her.  The black tide parted around her, and she gasped for air as she broke its surface.  She wavered on the hardwood floor and felt Angie guide her back toward the kitchen.  Her muscles shivered.  Her eyes were wet.

“Hang up the phone,” Angie whispered.

“You’ll never be alone, poor pet,” Keiran continued, “isn’t that a relief?  You’ll always have me.  You’ll always have me to keep you company.  When you’re lonely, think of that.  When you’re alone, think of that.”

“Hang up,” Angie repeated.  Nicole realized she was leaning against a wall with both of Angie’s hands on her shoulders.  “Please.”

“Where?” she felt herself ask, her voice tiny again, like a child’s.

“One day you’ll learn to love me, too.  One day.  Do you miss me, beautiful?  Do you think of me often?  Do you think of me always?”

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The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 1

(The New American Apocalypse, Table of Contents:

Part One:…

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five)

 

…but you can’t kill Evil, I mean, not completely, because Evil lives inside of us just as much as it lives inside black holes and in the stomach lining of monsters and the mad minds of shapeless beings, it lives between the synapses of our brains like the gaps between stars, it swims in the chemicals stewing our brains, lives in our old, broken hearts, so, no, no matter what grandiose heroics my friends and I may or may not have ventured into in the past (not to mention, of course, the long and storied history of People Fighting Evil), we always knew we wouldn’t destroy Evil, not as an abstract concepts (see, abstract concepts can’t be destroyed, they’re immortal like that, living on some fifth or sixth dimension where they live like iconic deities) and I think that’s how I became obsessed with the Apocalypse.

Not any specific kind of Apocalypse, mind you, not any specific genre of The End.  I’m not much in the way of religion, having always considered it a kind of scam being pulled on desperate people hungry for hope, and nor have I been any kind of scientist studying the inevitable heat death of the cosmos, so I have my doubts on the whole thing insofar as THE GREAT BIG FINALE…I’ve always considered The Apocalypse™ on a much more intimate scale.  Y’know, as in “just all the humans” or “just planet Earth” or maybe “just our little corner of the cosmos sucked down the hungry maw of a black hole.”

Something like that.

Because it occurred to me one night (can never remember which, on account of the blackouts and the many various unhealthy habits I’ve grown accustomed to having) that maybe The Apocalypse™ was the only way to actually end Evil, insofar as it exists in our little section of the infinite (possibly dying) universe.

This epiphany, drawn out of a depraved mind swimming in various unnameable substances, led me to about a two-week blackout, by far the longest blackout I’ve ever had.  And, when I woke up, it seemed like The Apocalypse™ had already started up, that its grinding gears were working its treads through the Earth and burying human bones beneath them.  People were going insane.  Worse than insane.  They seemed *possessed*.

I should clarify.  After my dark midnight epiphany, the next thing I remember was waking up in a New York City street wearing the same clothes but much smellier.  After the initial shock of my own reek, the first thing I was aware of was the sound of distant screams.  A cavalcade of voices cried out through the urban architecture in several different languages and several more that weren’t languages at all, at least not on Earth, at least not the Earth I’d spent the last thirty-something years inhabiting.

I stood up and brushed dirt and dust off myself and realized I’d collapsed somewhere just outside of Tompkins Square Park.  Being of unsound mind, I decided the first thing to do was investigate the screams.  So I hoofed it toward the Park smelling like undead homeless zombies and feasted my eyes on a buffet of nightmares.

A half-dozen men in suits were cattle-prodding small children into unconsciousness.  They gibbered between them in alien languages and wore bibs over their ties (the kind you see, or used to see, at restaurants when fatcat businessmen would throw out greenbacks to stuff their face, their rolls of unsightly obesity a visible representation of their bloated bank accounts).  Three of them held carving knives and I didn’t want to look over at the picnic table by the playground, where young professional types sat with mouths haloed in what was definitely not barbecue sauce.

I did what anyone else would do, given the situation: I ran.

The post The New American Apocalypse, Pt. 1 appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

Blog Story #1, Pt. 1 (Untitled)

…but you can’t kill Evil, I mean, not completely, because Evil lives inside of us just as much as it lives inside black holes and in the stomach lining of monsters and the mad minds of shapeless beings, it lives between the synapses of our brains like the gaps between stars, it swims in the chemicals stewing our brains, lives in our old, broken hearts, so, no, no matter what grandiose heroics my friends and I may or may not have ventured into in the past (not to mention, of course, the long and storied history of People Fighting Evil), we always knew we wouldn’t destroy Evil, not as an abstract concepts (see, abstract concepts can’t be destroyed, they’re immortal like that, living on some fifth or sixth dimension where they live like iconic deities) and I think that’s how I became obsessed with the Apocalypse.

Not any specific kind of Apocalypse, mind you, not any specific genre of The End.  I’m not much in the way of religion, having always considered it a kind of scam being pulled on desperate people hungry for hope, and nor have I been any kind of scientist studying the inevitable heat death of the cosmos, so I have my doubts on the whole thing insofar as THE GREAT BIG FINALE…I’ve always considered The Apocalypse™ on a much more intimate scale.  Y’know, as in “just all the humans” or “just planet Earth” or maybe “just our little corner of the cosmos sucked down the hungry maw of a black hole.”

Something like that.

Because it occurred to me one night (can never remember which, on account of the blackouts and the many various unhealthy habits I’ve grown accustomed to having) that maybe The Apocalypse™ was the only way to actually end Evil, insofar as it exists in our little section of the infinite (possibly dying) universe.

This epiphany, drawn out of a depraved mind swimming in various unnameable substances, led me to about a two-week blackout, by far the longest blackout I’ve ever had.  And, when I woke up, it seemed like The Apocalypse™ had already started up, that its grinding gears were working its treads through the Earth and burying human bones beneath them.  People were going insane.  Worse than insane.  They seemed *possessed*.

I should clarify.  After my dark midnight epiphany, the next thing I remember was waking up in a New York City street wearing the same clothes but much smellier.  After the initial shock of my own reek, the first thing I was aware of was the sound of distant screams.  A cavalcade of voices cried out through the urban architecture in several different languages and several more that weren’t languages at all, at least not on Earth, at least not the Earth I’d spent the last thirty-something years inhabiting.

I stood up and brushed dirt and dust off myself and realized I’d collapsed somewhere just outside of Tompkins Square Park.  Being of unsound mind, I decided the first thing to do was investigate the screams.  So I hoofed it toward the Park smelling like undead homeless zombies and feasted my eyes on a buffet of nightmares.

A half-dozen men in suits were cattle-prodding small children into unconsciousness.  They gibbered between them in alien languages and wore bibs over their ties (the kind you see, or used to see, at restaurants when fatcat businessmen would throw out greenbacks to stuff their face, their rolls of unsightly obesity a visible representation of their bloated bank accounts).  Three of them held carving knives and I didn’t want to look over at the picnic table by the playground, where young professional types sat with mouths haloed in what was definitely not barbecue sauce.

I did what anyone else would do, given the situation: I ran.

The post Blog Story #1, Pt. 1 (Untitled) appeared first on Spencer Rhys Hughes.

No Grave: Monster in the Lamplight

Hey, guys!  Just another friendly reminder that No Grave is coming out…THIS WEEKEND!!

So are we ready for another sneak peek?

Today we’re going to take another look at Cyrus’ story, this time from a much later excerpt.  I don’t want to give away anything you’ll wind up reading, later, but I’ll say that things haven’t been going exceedingly well for him…

(Remember to pre-order your digital copy today!  Available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Kobo, etc…)

Here we go:

 

In the backseat of the cab, Cyrus touched the necklace Kenya had given him.  It still felt warm, the bones with that long sweeping symbol cut in them like dying coals.  He’d never felt the spell go off with such power, before.  It was amazing what someone could do with the proper tools.  He released the warm necklace and pulled his backpack off.  He unzipped it and found his laptop smashed inside.  The fight hadn’t been kind to it.

“Son of a bitch…”

The cab driver glanced at the rearview mirror.  “Something wrong?”

“No,” Cyrus answered, “just had a fall, broke my laptop.”

“Rough.  Those don’t come cheap.”

“Tell me about it,” he zipped the backpack shut and slipped it back on.  Even with Kenya footing the bill for the travel and lodging, it had been an expensive trip.  He was already down a hundred bucks cash, a cellphone, and a laptop.  His cheek throbbed and his body ached.

Stay focused, the words crossed his mind in Kenya’s voice, as if she were scolding him from hundreds of miles away.

He leaned his forehead against the cool window and watched the streets roll by.  The closer they got to ‘downtown,’ whatever that meant in Boston, the more people he saw.  It wasn’t the same volume of late-night business he got in New York on a Thursday, but it was enough of a crowd to give him comfort.

Until he saw the thing in the hoodie staring at him from under a streetlight.

It wasn’t human, though it looked like one.  It had the requisite fingers, toes, nose, eyes, mouth…but its skin was the color of old ashes, and its eyes were jaundiced and bloodshot.  Its nails were clawlike, too long and too sharp to belong on its hands.  Its horrible eyes met his, and Its head turned as the cab moved forward.

Cyrus tore his eyes away from the figure and sank down in his seat.  He needed a weapon.  The men in the bar were bad enough, mundane figures tracking him on foot or through his phone, but that thing looked like Darkplace.  That thing was a monster.  He felt himself shaking and wrapped his arms around his shoulders.  What the hell is going on?—it didn’t make any sense.  It was impossible that this many people were all hunting the same Chosen, wasn’t it?  How powerful is Gillian, anyway?

“This good?” the cabbie asked.

Cyrus shook his head, “Maybe another few blocks.”

“Sure, pal.  Sure.”

Cyrus cleared his throat.  “You know where a payphone is?”

The cabbie snorted.  “Can’t say I do.  Haven’t used in one about ten years.”

“Yeah.  Me neither.  Just lost my phone.”

“Laptop and a phone?  Kidding me?”

“Nope.  Been a really shitty week.”

“So up here, then?” the cabbie pointed to a crowded bar on the corner, a mass of smokers and cellphone talkers standing outside.  Cyrus shook his head.  I need open space.  I need to see it coming.  He knew he couldn’t hide from a Darkplace monster.  He’d been trying for almost a decade.

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Flash Fiction: Your Bathroom

It’s 4:00 AM.

You get up and go to the bathroom.

Something is waiting for you behind the shower curtain.

No, that’s impossible. Nothing is waiting for you behind the shower curtain.

Right?

But you can kind of feel it there. A presence. An energy in the room. You are not alone. There’s something in here with you. Something behind the shower curtain.

No. That sort of thing isn’t real. And that sound, that low rasp like breathing, that’s probably just wind whispering in through an opened window.

Right?

So: there’s something waiting for you behind the shower curtain.

There’s nothing waiting for you behind the shower curtain.

The bathroom light buzzes and flickers.

What do you do?

Do you leave on all the lights on your walk back to the bedroom?

Do you feel safe closing your eyes and going back to sleep?

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