Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 16

Tracing The Trails Of Richard Bachman : Rage

I don’t care who you are.

I don’t care how successful you are or how famous or how much love and adoration you have received. Anyone who engages in artistic endeavors on a regular basis faces a daily siege on all fronts against the bulwark of their self-esteem and self-confidence. Putting yourself out there in the world, so exposed and vulnerable leaves you open to any number of attacks from those who might cruise past your work. All you can do is hold it up there and hope people like it for what it is.

Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that if a person manages to achieve a certain level of fame, it could lead to a fair amount of self-doubt. If your talents started to slip or if you started rushing things or going about the wrong approach to a project, who would be there to tell you that your work isn’t up to standards? So often, when writers start to hear people tell them things like, “I love what you do” or “You have such a fresh voice”, you run the risk of starting to obsess over what it is they find so great. If you worry too much about reverse-engineering your own process you can end up breaking it.

To take that one step further, I can also see that if a writer were to achieve a level of mega-success, you could start having difficulty trusting that people are buying the books for the right reasons. Is it because they like the books? Are the stories really that good? Or is it because they saw the name of someone famous on the dust jacket so they bought the book because it must be good.

Personal note to universe? I would like to sign up for havig this problem. Thanks.

The point of this rambling introduction is that I can understand (in theory) what might have driven Stephen King to start publishing books under the name Richard Bachman. You want to believe that people come to your work out of love for the words, as opposed to love of your celebrity. After all, this would be a large reason why King’s oldest son would choose to publish under the name Joe Hill. So essentially, King began using the name because he wanted to see if he could still make it happen, using an unknown name with little or no effort to publicize it. In King’s own words from his introduction to The Bachman Books, “I think I did it to turn the heat down a little bit; to do something other than Stephen King”.

King had these books piled up, some of his earlier efforts, essentially burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to publish them. The concern from his publisher was that the market would get over-saturated if the reading public were to see more than one Stephen King book in a year. This seems more far-fetched looking back now, especially considering the mid to late eighties when it wasn’t uncommon for King to publish two or three books in a year.

Things came to a head for Richard Bachman in 1985. According to King, he was receiving letters from day one asking him if he was Bachman. Still, it was in 1985 when the official outing took place, caused by several key clues. First was the fact that all of Bachman’s books were dedicated to people who also had connections with Stephen King. This was significant enough but the deal was sealed by a book clerk from Washington DC, Steve Brown. Brown had harbored suspicions about Bachman’s writing style for some time and finally took the time to go to the Library of Congress to look up the publisher’s information on the books. It was there that he discovered King listed as the author on record. When Brown contacted King’s representatives with this information, he was contacted directly by King who gave him his blessing to write an article and agreed to sit for an interview.

Thinner would be the last book published by Bachman before the unveiling although, interestingly enough, King had apparently intended for Misery to be a Bachman book. Once he was outed, these plans changed. There would be a few more Bachman books to come but for the time being, King actually announced to the public the news of Richard Bachman’s death.  

Those who have read his book, The Dark Half will likely find the story of his unmasking familiar as it would become the inspiration for Thad Beaumont and George Stark. After King went public, the four books published under Bachman’s name previous to Thinner were bound into a single edition and published as The Bachman Books.

As my reviews of King’s books have now reached the point where this collection was originally released, I thought it would be a good time to step aside for a moment and review each of Bachman’s books as they were published.

Rage was Richard Bachman’s first book, published in 1977. The story is of a disgruntled teenager who brings a gun to school and murders one of his teachers. Following the killing, he proceeds to hold his fellow classmates hostage while he toys with school and police authorities. He confronts his classmates, spurring and exploiting the conflicts between them as the social dynamics of the high school get mixed up in a sort of metaphorical crucible.

Rage bears a certain distinction from the other books of King’s catalog. While he is no stranger to the experience of libraries banning his books, Rage was the one title that he, himself chose to take out of circulation. In the nineties, there were a series of actual events involving school shootings and I have no doubt that at some point, King had to start to feel uncomfortable with the implications of life too closely imitating art. In one instance, a copy of The Bachman Books was actually found in the locker of a student responsible for killing a number of his classmates and King made the decision to pull the book. Rage was kept on the market for some time after as a part of The Bachman Books, but not as an individual title. To date, in the US, The Bachman Books collection has also been allowed to go out of print and is only available through third-party sellers. In 2007, King would release the final Richard Bachman book, Blaze, and in the preface said, regarding Rage, that it was “now out of print, and a good thing.”

I’m not really one to put much stock in the notion of popular art directly causing real life violence. One look on a global scale will show that in countries across the world, people are reading the same books, watching the same movies, listening to the same music and playing the same video games with barely a fraction of the rate of violent crime. Still, I can’t say that I hold it against King for feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the book being on the market in light of the events in the world at the time. To be sure, looking around in this country as it stands, nearly twenty years later, the book has actually become more culturally difficult to bear.

As for the story itself, I have to admit that I wasn’t as taken with Rage as some others have been. Part of me suspects that this book probably gains a special level of notoriety among King fans specifically because of the controversy around it as opposed to the merits of the book itself. Rage was one of King’s earlier efforts at novels and to be completely honest, I think his inexperience shows a little. The book isn’t bad. There are some powerful moments to be sure but as a whole, I kind of feel like the story tries too hard to be a sort of social exploration. Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the story was like some kind of bizarro version of The Breakfast Club, but where the principal was replaced by a combination of Holden Caufield and Travis Bickle. It was like King was making such a concerted effort to be earnest with the message of the story that I often had the feeling like I was reading a script for a student theater production or a one-act play.

It doesn’t help that for the most part, I found the protagonist of the story, Charlie Decker to be kind of an entitled shit. His backstory is given out in bits and pieces, but it is all from Charlie’s perspective so who knows how seriously we can take it. If the stories told are true, his father is clearly pretty unsuited as a parent but Charlie himself also behaves badly in many of these flashbacks as well.

The reactions of the other students in the story seemed a little far-fetched to me as well. They just seem to be a little too casual and comfortable in the way they react to a classmate barging into class and shooting their teacher, right in front of them. I know that the initial killing was important in order to create that moment of shock for the reader, but I actually think the story would have worked better if it had just been Charlie taking his class hostage, without the murder at the start.

In sum, not the greatest book I’ve read, but far from the worst. I obviously can’t say how I would have reacted to the book, not knowing who the author was. Since I was only nine when he was revealed, I have pretty much always been aware of the fact that Richard Bachman was Stephen King. I will be interested in seeing how the other books shake out from here.

I suppose the one piece of evidence that can be taken into consideration when summing up Richard Bachman’s legacy is this: in 1984, Thinner had sold around 28,000 copies after its initial publication. Upon discovery of the fact that it was actually a Stephen King book, sales went up to nearly 300,000 copies. Take that for what it’s worth, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the King name was the right way to go.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

Baked Scribe Flashback : A Shade For Every Season

 

The end had begun with the fight. She had screamed at him so loudly that he had actually thought one of her pupils were going to pop. The vase she had been so happy to buy, now became the missile hurled at him to shatter against the china cabinet. He had left the house wondering if he even truly wanted to come back.

The fight consumed every thought as he sat behind the wheel, driving but not really seeing. He looked down at the passenger seat for a moment when the sound of brakes and horns snapped him back to attention, and as he jerked the wheel, his fleeting thoughts were of how the median looked. It stretched away from him as if being pulled by a rubber band and the world around him slowed to a near-halt. He looked around, wondering if the car was spinning or if it was just him. His stomach felt like it was turning upside down as he felt a dull impact to the back of his head and the world blinked away.

He looked around and instead of the car, found himself suspended amidst a swirling mass of gray clouds. They roiled around in all directions, occasional flashes of light so brilliant as to leave harsh after images in his eyes. He felt the tremor of a massive explosion and pulled away instinctively.

In the blink of an eye he was standing in a long hallway. There was a dull illumination about everything, everywhere he looked but he could not detect any actual source of the light. The hallway seemed to stretch out away from him into infinity, with occasional doors marking either side.

He was still taking in the surroundings, trying to understand how he had come to this place when he noticed the child standing next to him. The face looked so familiar as he looked down at it. As he scrambled for a mental foothold, the child gazed up at him as if waiting for the answer to an unspoken question. He couldn’t understand why he felt so familiar until the realization flooded in.

The child was him.

The child-version of himself reached up and held out his hand, waiting patiently. It was impossible to accept what he was looking at but there were so many pictures lying around their parents’ house, it would be hard not to recognize his own face, even at such a young age. It was him in every way, greeting himself as a seven year old guide waiting to take him…where exactly? Jacob reached out and took the tiny hand in his and together, the two began walking down the hall. To their left and right, the doorways began to open and his child companion stopped at each, clearly expecting him to look within.

In one room, he saw himself as a teenager, hunting for the first time with his uncle. He was reaching down to lift a baby rabbit up out of a nest, looking around to see if anyone was watching before taking hold and twisting the head until the neck broke. The next room contained the college version of himself, in bed with the waitress from the restaurant he had met during his part time job. She sat atop him, already taking him into her as she was removing her bra, moving onto him as she took his hands to place them onto her breasts. In another room he saw himself at the age of ten, at his grandfather’s funeral. The scenes jumped back and forth, displaying moments that he remembered vividly and yet had given almost no thought to since.

The tiny hand that was once his own gripped him suddenly and he saw that they had reached the end of the hallway. Jacob looked down into his own face and watched as the child that once was him slowly began to dissipate, vanish away from reality. He looked up, now standing at the base of a staircase leading into darkness. The world felt like it was wobbling around him as he took one unsteady step forward. The stairs were solid underneath him so he followed that first step by a second, and then a third.

The room he stepped up into was an empty hospital room. There were no windows or doors, just equipment unused inside a sterile operating theater. He turned to look over his shoulder and saw that the stairs were now gone. When he turned back he saw that a patient was now strapped down to the exam table, which was tilted up to an almost entirely upright position. Even with all of the blood and damage to the patient’s face, he could still recognize what he was looking at.

The patient on the bed was him, like looking into a distorted reflection. This version of himself on the bed looked like he had been badly beaten, with bruises, cuts and lacerations all over his body. Immediately, his body began to sear with pain and the details of the car accident began to come back to him. Fresh wounds appeared on the injured version of himself, cuts opened up on the arms and face, causing blood to start flowing freely. He remembered the shattering glass, the sensation of being thrown forward. This was what he must look like, a three dimensional mirror on the table. As he stepped forward for a closer look, his mangled self opened his eyes and spoke to him softly.

“What you were is gone forever. What you will be is never known and what you are is not long for this world.”

Jacob shook his head, “I don’t understand what you mean.” He tried to ask for more but the injured version of himself had already drifted into a state of unawareness, looking blankly off into the open space of the room. A repetitive beeping had started to fill his head, starting slowly and now reaching a manically frantic pace. He felt sweat beading up on his forehead and looked around the room, not understanding where he was or what was happening. If these shades of himself were supposed to be functioning as guides of a sort, they had yet to explain to him what he was doing in this place or where they were taking him.

There was a deep vibration that he felt, not from the walls or the floor, but from within himself. He looked up and saw that the hospital bed was now gone, replaced by a simple wooden ladder, going up towards a ceiling that had now become, impossibly, hundreds of yards away. He took hold of the rungs and began to climb, white knuckling as he was buffeted by increasingly powerful blasts of hot wind. The ladder swayed from side to side, and the muscles in his legs were twitching, either from fear or fatigue.

The ground below him had long since vanished into a swirl of dense fog when his head ran up against something solid. He looked up but found that he was still staring up into open space with no sign of whatever barrier he had just encountered. His hand shook badly as he reached out and could definitely feel the solid surface. It gave slightly as he applied pressure, making him think about trap doors leading up into attics and crawl spaces. He pushed upwards and first heard a skree that could have been the sound of rusty hinges followed by the heavy sound of a door falling open. Where blue sky had once been above him, there was now a portal leading into darkness amongst the clouds. Jacob climbed up and pulled himself through.

The ladder dissolved from under his grip and out of instinct, he grabbed futilely at thin air and screamed even after his brain had registered that he was standing on solid ground. He was on the roof of a building of skyscraper height, looking out into gray horizons. An old man stood by the ledge, gesturing for him to come over. Jacob couldn’t help but scrutinize him as he approached. Could this also be him? A version of himself that was yet to come?

The man gestured towards a coin operated set of binoculars mounted into the stone ledge and handed Jacob a brilliantly gilded golden token. Jacob inserted the coin and peered through the eye holes.

The world was engulfed in flames.

Everywhere he looked, all there was to see were towering plumes of smoke and flame, waves of heat he could feel even from such a great distance. He pulled back and looked at the geriatric reflection of himself but the only response he got was a shrug and a turn of the head, to gaze off into the horizon.

“I don’t understand!” Jacob yelled again. His older self pointed at the binoculars and handed him another coin. He looked again but this time saw an expanse of the most beautiful valley he had ever laid eyes on, grass so green and waters so blue that it almost hurt to look upon them. He could see fish in the lake, birds in the trees, deer in the field.

Then, like a photo negative exposed to heat, the image in front of him started to curl in from the edges, blistered and begin to burn until again he was looking out upon a maelstrom of fire.

Three versions of himself he had seen. His past, his present and this. “Is that supposed to be my future?” Jacob asked, “Is that what you’ve been showing me? Some kind of a warning?”

He looked up, and now saw all three versions of himself staring back; the child, the accident victim and the senior citizen. As they stared him down, their hands came up slowly to take hold of each other and in one last flash of blinding light he was suddenly looking at a perfect mirror image of himself.

Again, the sound of hospital monitors filled his head. He could also hear the sound of distant chatter, like doctors and nurses in an operating room. In that moment, the only thing he cared about was getting back into the life he did not realize until now, how much he wanted. He could never return to the past, his expectations of what his life should have been and his fears of what was yet to come. He needed to leave it all behind so that he could truly live his life within each moment.

He looked down from the rooftop, thinking idly that it sometimes took rising up above things to be able to look down and take perspective.

He stepped up onto the ledge in a sudden moment of inspiration and looked down into the billowing storm clouds below. Jacob stepped off the edge.

Hot screaming air rushed past him as he fell, headfirst into a swirling mass where no light entered. Then, after an eternity of a moment he found himself rushing down into a luminescent ocean of stars and light that grew only brighter.

His eyes snapped open in time for him to jerk the steering wheel and apply the brakes. He pulled to the left and was able to get the car stopped as the truck barreled past him, nearly clipping him in the process. A few more seconds and he would have planted the front end of his car into that median.

Jacob shook his head and looked into the rear view mirror, scanning traffic for an opening and smiling ever so slightly, either from the elation of still being alive or from the ever elusive understanding of what really was important to him in the one life he had been lucky enough to be blessed with. He resumed his path, spirit renewed in the foundry of second chances.

 

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : Saving Strangers

 

At some point, you had to ask how much more you needed to do in order to help a person out of their troubles. Ronnie had been out walking the street since early afternoon. Crayson was supposed to have been home by now, but so far, nothing, and no answer on his cell phone either.

So, to hell with him. He could walk from here to the end of the Earth, if that’s what it took to amuse himself. He didn’t care. This would be fine for him. Nothing like a day-long walk through the cold and snow and mud and slush.

Then he had seen the guy lying on the bus stop bench.

The clothes hung off of him in the barest threads. He wore a jacket, but it looked like the kind you’d wear to the park in early autumn, not the dead of winter. His beard had grown to nearly unmanageable length, almost completely obscuring his face in a mass of scruffy fuzz. And the smell. Ronnie placed a hand over his mouth and nose to try to shut it out, but the assault of the odors of urine and feces was hard to ignore. When he looked at the guy’s pants he saw what looked like bloodstains.

Ronnie wasn’t even sure if the guy was breathing. He didn’t want to touch him, but it seemed vulgar to prod him with his foot. So, he knelt down into a crouch and placed a hand on the guy’s shoulder, shaking him slightly.

It took a while, but eventually the eyes slid open and focused in on him. Ronnie put on a smile and tried to look like this happened to him all the time.

“Hey buddy, what gives?”

The guy looked at their surroundings as if he was seeing for the first time. He didn’t seem sure how he had gotten here in the first place and Ronnie wondered how much he could’ve possibly drunk that day.

“I lost my ride.”

“Missed your ride, huh?” Ronnie nodded, looking around the park, “Yeah, that’s a drag. Anything I can do to help?”

“Missed my ride,” the guy said again, this time with a little bit more force behind his voice, “Think you can help me find a new one?”

“Well, guess that depends on where you’re going,” Ronnie responded. Deep down in places he didn’t like to let other people see, he was a little ashamed for wishing that he had never started this conversation.

“Got to get home,” the man said as he struggled to sit up. Ronnie helped him up into a sitting position and brushed off his coat as best he could. “Think you can help set me back on the right path?” he asked.

Ronnie sighed and looked around the park, wishing there was a cop or someone nearby he could ask for help. But since it appeared that he was on his own, and there was nothing else to do tonight, he might as well help the guy out. “Well wherever you’re going, you can’t show up looking like this,” he said. “Maybe we should get you somewhere where you can get a shower and shave.”

So they ended up at the YMCA, and while the guy took a shower, Ronnie walked across the street to the second hand store and bought him some clothes and a proper coat. The clothes would probably be too big, but at least he would be warmer.

When the guy walked out of the locker room, he looked like a completely different person. The beard wasn’t gone but it had been neatly trimmed. He was also wearing a pair of thin, wire rimmed glasses and the clothes that Ronnie had bought ended up fitting as if they had always been his.

“Can’t thank you enough for these,” he said as he walked up to him. “You’ll have to give me your address so I can reimburse you.”

Ronnie waved him off. “No problem. Not even worth the stamp.”

The guy nodded. “Well regardless, I’m in your debt.” He paused, looking down at the ground and Ronnie braced himself for the next request. “I hate to impose, but do you think I could trouble you for one last favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Well, my ride is likely going to be waiting for me a little ways outside of town. It would be a big help if you could drive me there.”

So they ended up in his car, driving north out of town. Was there a limit on the amount of favors that you could do for somebody? How much was enough?

“Here we go,” the man said. Ronnie looked up and glanced to the left where he was pointing.

“There’s nothing there, that’s just the forest.”

“I know it sounds a little crazy, but that’s where I need to go.”

Ronnie looked at him, over at the trees then back at him. “I can’t drive in there, I’d have to leave you off right here.”

The man smiled at the suggestion, “I know. You’ve done enough young man, I really do appreciate it.” Ronnie watched him open the door and step out onto the road. As he walked across and towards the woods, he turned back one more time to speak. “Just so you know, there is no limit to the extent of human kindness, so long as we let it take us where it leads. Thanks again, Ronnie.”

He sat back, speechless. Why would the guy say that unless he was reading his mind or something? Did he ever tell him his name? And what was he going to do out there, in the middle of the woods like that?

He was in a mental fog all the way back to his house. When he got there, and the car coughed to a halt, he looked up at the brand new Mustang that now sat in front of the house. It occurred to him that it was the exact same car that he had made a model of when he was younger. He shrugged it off and walked inside.

There was a set of keys on the table and he picked them up, staring at the Mustang logo on the key-chain, mouth hanging open. He saw a note on the table as well. It had been folded neatly in half and all he found on the inside was a little, hand-drawn smiley face with one word scrawled in a tight, neat hand.

Thanks.

He ran out front and looked at the car, apparently left behind for him by a person, or persons unknown. The events of the day ran through his head and as he looked up into the sky through the freshly falling snow, for the briefest second he could just make out the deepest, happiest laughter he had ever heard.

And the sound of sleigh bells.

 

Issue #160 : Sacrifice

 

The sun crested the hills below, the pink of dawn spreading itself out into the midnight blues of night. Jesse looked up into the receding darkness and felt the boat shifting underneath him on the water. It was the day he had been anticipating for a year, the day he would truly and completely become.

Who would bear witness to his passing?

The souls who had been born and lost, before and after him all converged, rising up from the water in memories of salt and foam. He rowed against the currents of memory and illusion, the only path to the light taking him through necessary darkness.

Birds began to swarm overhead but he ignored their cries. Worthless creatures. He would never pay heed to those who thrived off of the leavings of Death. They were here at his pleasure, just another piece of the landscape over which he would declare his inevitable victory.

He felt the coldness of the water, even through the bottom of the boat. His arms strained at the continual pulling of the oars towards his projected goal, to his final resting place.

His mind felt at ease, one with his purpose and intent. He would see through to the end of this day as he would see to his own end as well. That the moment drew so close thrilled and terrified him. Not from any unwillingness, but his uncertainty at how sure his strength would be when he found himself at the tip of that blade, held within his own grip. Would he have the power to be the one to drive it home and open the paths before him to his own victorious glory?

Every year, at the harvest of the newly born, the elders delivered the same cautionary reminder, the story of the one who denied his responsibility and chose the path of weakness. The one who was chosen to sacrifice himself so that the rest of the tribe would be allowed to flourish. He refused and selfishly clung to his own life as if it was a thing which he owned.

And it was the multitude that paid his price.

For three seasons, there was not a single live birth. The thread that connected the past to the future had been crimped. And only one thing would fix it. Only one death taken at his own hands would save the tribe.

He refused to see this, refused to accept or believe the necessity of his own sacrifice, even as the tree of his people withered around him. In the end, it was the sight of his life-mate, taking her own life before his very eyes that convinced him of what he needed to do.

As he finally performed the act and offered himself up to the tribe, life once again began to flourish. The thread was restored and births once again were allowed to take place. And every year henceforth, a member was chosen on his seventeenth name day to sacrifice himself for the better, long-lasting good of his people.

Today was Jesse’s turn to step into the light and prove the strength of his people as it was channeled through him. He would not be the reason for life to fail. His tribe would thrive on the ashes of the memories of him.

Upon completion of his passing, the elders would collect his remains and burn them. The blade would be melted down and reformed, including a handful of his ashes. He would remain an essential part of this ceremony until the end of time.

He looked over the piece of bark on which he had etched the name of the hero to be sent on his way next year. The elders would collect this as well. All part of the essential cycle, demanded by everything that the gods knew better than they.

Jesse looked up at the ridge high above the lake and finally saw them. The spectral forms of all those who went before him, hands linked as they watched silently, showing him their respect and appreciation.

Taking hold of the handle, Jessie turned the blade inward. The cuts were quick and practiced and the fluid heat he felt rush out over his hands was the last proof he would ever need of his own essential goodness.

 

Top Picks : Kids, by Paul Feeney

There are a number of different ways horror genre can be accomplished, styles and formats and delivery mechanisms. Supernatural or non-supernatural, it comes in all shapes and sizes.

For me though, regardless of how the horror is packaged, there is one aspect that, while it is not required, can often steer a story towards success and away from failure. Namely, it is the ability to take a situation and circumstances that are entirely benign and make them terrifying.

With his newest release, Kids, Paul M. Feeney accomplishes this with a level of craft that is superb to behold. Who would ever suspect or feel the imminence of danger, spending time with friends while the kids play upstairs?

Feeney wastes no time making that danger real and frightening as hell. The adults in this story find themselves suddenly under siege from an enemy that they can barely conceptualize or understand.

Right away, the pacing of the book is incredibly well done. After a quick peek at what is to come with a prologue of sorts, he takes a small amount of text to introduce the players of the story. Before you have time to blink, the heart of the real action is underway. Once I reached that point, there wasn’t really a moment where I felt okay with putting the book down. It’s very difficult to put the reader inside the intensity and fear of a moment but Feeney manages to do exactly that.

I think that one common pitfall which inexperienced writers can fall into is the inability to resist the urge to explain everything in the story. I think that sometimes we want so much for the readers to know what we were going for that we go over the top in terms of putting way too much exposition into the story. Instead of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow, we end up creating a brightly lit landing strip on an aircraft carrier in the middle of a blackened ocean that you can see for miles away.

The point is that I think we rob a lot of pleasure from the reader by not letting them take part of the narrative journey on their own. I have already made this point numerous times in previous essays but I am a firm believer in the notion that a story begins in the mind of the writer and ends in the mind of the reader. If too much of the story is laid out in clear detail, it can leave the reader with little left to do on their own. What’s the fun in that?

How is all that relevant to this book specifically? I think that it could possibly be easier to write a scene, intricately detailing what is happening to the characters and why, but I also think it would be less scary. It’s more frightening to see something happening that you don’t understand and can’t provide an easy explanation. And that is what I think the real strength of this book is, its ability to put you into that situation that is so unthinkable and also with no clear idea or reason what might’ve caused it. It creates the notion that literally anything could happen to any of us at any point of our lives. At any time, something that we consider to be safe and comfortable could quickly become a threat and a danger. Personally I find that notion pretty terrifying.

One aspect of this book I particularly connected with came out of my own experiences as a parent, a roller coaster of conflicting emotions that I thought Feeney captured amazingly well. On one hand, you have the intense feelings of love and loyalty for your own children. It may seem absurd to contemplate, but I can imagine how you would still feel that connection, even in the face of whatever horrible acts those kids might be performing. No matter what, those are your children, the ones you brought into the world and who looked up at you with adoration and affection. It was moving to see these characters having to balance that emotion and understanding against the realization of those same kids as somehow being a threat. I also loved the interaction and conflict that develops between the parents themselves. One thing that can develop between sets of parents is a certain amount of unspoken resentment for what they perceive as the other’s shortcomings. A situation as stressful and dire as the one in this book is bound to bring all of those tensions to the forefront so I found that to be a great creative decision on Feeney’s part as well.

I have had the pleasure of reading several works by Feeney and I have always found that he has an outstanding sense for story and for character. In the contemporary landscape of writers who more people should be aware of, he is one of the names at the top of my list. Do yourself a favor, check out this as well as other works by a great artist.

As an afternote, this book is a part of an ongoing series of novellas, published by Dark Minds Press. Keep an eye out on the blog in the next month or so because this essay will not be the last I have to say about this series.

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Click here for your copy of Kids
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Baked Scribe Flashback : Holiday Spirit

 

It was possible that the boozy Christmas Eve dinner he had just put back was causing this, but at that moment, “the ghost” was the best he could come up with to describe the apparition that now stood in front of him. It was a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, wearing a white dress. The fabric looked old, worn and frayed in several places as it fluttered in the cold night breeze. Her skin was the palest he had ever seen, verging on a translucence that was frightening and yet somehow, intriguing.

Crayson stepped forward and put a hand out, for what exactly? Not a handshake to be sure, those hands didn’t even look solid. It wasn’t like the girl had something to give him. He lowered the hand back to his side, raised it again after it occurred to him that he was being rude, and then dropped it, again, because he couldn’t ignore the chills that were gripping him by the spine.

The long walk home from his parents’ house had led him past this alley at just the right time to find this woman, as if she had been waiting for him. He looked at the dark curls of her hair with the red ribbons and in a flash of memory, he knew where he had seen her. The near car accident from a week ago. The taxi swerving recklessly into the opposing lane and this woman had been driving the other car, the one who had almost been hit. Everything had seemed fine but not long after, he had spotted an ambulance tearing off in the same direction she had been driving, so maybe something had happened.

Why was she staring at him like that? What did she want? How was he supposed to help, because after all, he felt confident that help was what she desperately hoped for.

He put his hand out again, still unsure what he was offering, but this time, she moved closer to him. She didn’t walk up to him, but rather, seemed to slide forward on the back of a breeze. He felt a coolness creeping into him as she drew close and lifted up a hand of her own to caress his. This was going in a direction that he had not expected, but he still felt completely safe with her, not mistrusting her intentions at all.

Her hand came up to stroke the back of his neck, and with the slightest force applied, drew his face down to hers for a kiss. The feel of her lips was of cool, moist skin, there one moment, gone the next and immediately there again. Her breath was like wafts of air from a freezer as she let it out into his mouth and, as the kiss grew deeper and her tongue slid ever so slightly against his, he felt a shudder and warmth that started in his groin and radiated outward to the end of each fingertip and toe.

The kiss finally broke, and he looked down at her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but he didn’t think they were brought on by sadness. He placed his hands on the cool elusiveness of her exposed arms and pulled her up against him.

The clatter of a garbage can lid drew his attention from her as the sound of laughter scoured away the moment they had just shared. Three kids, teenagers at most, were making their way down the alley towards them, pointing, with cackling laughter that made him grit his teeth in anger.

“Look at this.” The one who seemed to be the leader was wearing a brown bombardier’s jacket, several sizes too large for him. The other two were wearing faded jean jackets and had a look about them that suggested that there were very few things that they ever did without a “by-your-leave” from their fearless leader. As such, they both laughed a little louder than necessary.

“Look at this,” he repeated himself. “Where the fuck did you wander in from? Didn’t care for the opera me good sirs?” The last sentence was delivered in a stereotypical British accent that made them seem somehow more menacing. “I think you should be givings us your money. Alls of it if you please.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell them to wait, that he would get his wallet out and give them whatever they wanted. The tip of his tongue was as far as that sentiment advanced before chaos exploded and suddenly, he could barely track anything that was happening.

The alley was filled with the echoes of a shrieking cry that brought to his mind’s eye the wraiths of Tolkien, cutting through his train of thought like a blade. He knelt down and clutched at the sides of his head, trying to blot out the sound. The first of the three kids, jean jacket number one probably got off the easiest. In one moment, his head was ripped straight off and hurled out into the street. The body continued walking away for several steps before collapsing. Jean jacket number two started to run and was lifted up off his feet. Crayson winced at the sounds of his screams as he was beat against the buildings, swung violently from side to side until there was little left to drop into a bloody heap on the ground.

The leader, Mr. Bombardier himself, screeched like a child half his age, and collapsed, as close to the fetal position as someone of his size could manage. He swung through the air around him with one clenched fist but, all it served to do was provide a target, as the arm was quickly severed at the elbow. He screamed, and continued waving the arm around, now spraying blood all around him. The invisible force lifted him up to his feet and one by one, his limbs were plucked off, like the wing off a chicken.

Crayson felt an icy breeze from behind him and turned to look again into the woman’s revitalized eyes that blazed with new life, new warmth. He took her into his arms and resisted the urge to turn his head to look over the grisly carnage left behind by his guardian, his love. He held her close, and felt her arms sliding around to his back, caressing him with cold hands that he couldn’t help but think would be the hands that would eventually pull him down into the deep abyss of infinity that he would share with her forever.

 

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : A Gift In The End

 

Sondra pulled through the intersection and glanced to her left at the man on the corner, taking money from the woman in the white Lexus. He looked homeless, but she could have sworn she had seen him just last week at Cooper’s, ordering a fifty five dollar steak dinner. No difference. Most of these guys were con artists anyway, and they all came crawling out of the woodwork for Christmas. Nothing better than taking advantage of as many people as possible during the holiday season.

She couldn’t say for sure how long it had been since cynicism and spite had jumped on board, but the two of them had long since committed an emotional mutiny and were now steering the ship. Every night she went to bed, wincing at the taste of her own discontent, which continued to fester and poison her soul.

Snow was starting to fall gently, and it was one of the rare moments that she actually enjoyed taking in what was happening around her. The sight of snow falling, and crisp afternoon air always made her nostalgic. She opened her window and let the cold air flow in and over her, perking her up to an extent that no coffee or drug ever could.

Her mind drifted back to so many winters ago. Running up the slopes with Tobias, Red Runner sled clutched in her left hand. She remembered school nights, staring out into the blizzard, checking by the illumination of the street light to see if it was still snowing, wondering if it would be enough for them to cancel school the next day.

The squealing sound of her radio in this memory had suddenly begun to sound like locking brakes. Her eyes snapped open as she looked up into the flashing headlights of the car ahead of her, and realized and that she was in the wrong lane. She pumped the brakes and turned the wheel, causing the car to rotate before spinning back on course and drifting back to the correct side of the road.

It was just by luck that a cop hadn’t been there to see her stunt driving. She turned right, off of the street and into the small parking lot in front of the communications studies building. The package didn’t look like it had been damaged but there was no way to know that for sure. Of course she would hear about it if, at the hospital, they opened the box and found anything wrong. She would hear the wails of the patient, likely in pre-op, waiting for the delivery of the liver that they needed so badly, and after taking so long to find a compatible donor. All she could do was get it to the hospital, and pray that nothing had happened to it from being tossed around in her car.

She had no way of knowing who the liver was for. All she knew was that it was going to end up going to someone else, while her father just sat at home and waited to die. Regardless, it had to get to the hospital within the next few hours or the organ would be useless to anyone. It did feel nice to be able to make these dreams come true, but at the same time, it would be nice to get something for herself as well. Didn’t she deserve anything? It was Christmas after all.

Was she being greedy? Missing the point of the season, unreasonable to want things for herself? She pondered all of this as she turned into the hospital lot. As she walked into the lobby, it occurred to her that the Styrofoam container that she was transporting this organ in looked like the exact same cooler that they used for bait when they were kids.

The bitch at reception directed her upstairs as if she didn’t know where to go already. She walked up to the elevator, rode to the seventh floor and exited, walking past all the idiotic posters with the fake families gushing about how amazing the hospital was, as if people were really coming here because they were tired of summering in the Hamptons.

She walked past the pre-op area so quickly that she almost didn’t recognize her father sitting in the room, looking with the wide eyes of expectation. Their gazes met as she passed and a moment later, she registered who she had just seen. She stopped and walked back to the doorway, letting her mind go quiet as the string of revelations began hitting her.

Pre-op meant that he was here waiting for surgery. Waiting for transplant surgery. He had been waiting for months for the liver that would allow him to survive, and stay a part of her life, at least a little longer. How many nights had she fallen asleep, crying at the thought of losing him? All he needed was the liver that seemingly was never going to come.

The liver that she was holding right now under her arm like a piece of firewood. She lifted it up, now seeing it as the valuable relic it was, and looked back up at her father. He saw the understanding in her eyes and nodded, lips turning up at the corners, into a smile.

 

Behind Our Walls : Deleted Scenes

 

Holly looked up from the beginners origami project that she was butchering as Fiona walked into the apartment. She frowned and picked up her phone to glance at the time.

“What are you doing here? You aren’t off for another six hours.”

“Yeah. Things change.”

Fiona picked up the remote and switched over to CNN. The talking heads were still theorizing and speculating, but it was still the same hot air that she had heard back at the diner. No one knew what was going on, they just were able to be more eloquent about it than the morons at the shitty food suppository had been.

Holly dropped her book on the floor, clutching the abstract looking paper stork in her other hand as she stared at the television, reading the headlines crawling across the bottom of the screen. She opened her mouth to speak, but after a moment, closed it and shook her head, opening and closing it several more times before finally finding voice. “I can’t believe this, how did I miss that this was going on?”

“Helps if you watch something other than the cooking channel and cartoons.”

“Shut up.” She was barely paying attention, now fully engrossed in the coverage. Fiona rolled her eyes and let her head fall back against the cushions.

“They don’t know anything,” she said as she stared up at the ceiling, wishing she hadn’t even said anything. “I was just checking in case something else happened. Don’t give yourself a hernia trying to dissect every word coming out of that thing.”

“How can you not be upset by this? This is a huge deal.”

“Yeah, huge. I get it.”

“Don’t be such a bitch. Look, I know I don’t watch the news but even I get how serious this is.”

“Well good on you.” Fiona was staring at a magazine but felt Holly’s gaze burning in to her. She let the silence hang in the air for several more moments before slamming it back down on the table and looking up. “I get how big of a deal this is, there just isn’t anything new being reported. I don’t see the point in attaching yourself to the tube and hanging on every word that’s just going to be recycled and repeated for the next eight hours.”

Holly shook her head and smirked a little. “And what if they never start telling us anything?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Why did you get off work so early?”

Fiona blinked and paused. Holly was a pro at changing the subject so quicky it nearly made you forget what you were talking about in the first place. 

“What?”

“Why did you get off work so early?”

“Why…what…why does that make any—”

“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer? Why did you—”

“Oh, Jesus wept, I was fired, all right? Is that what you wanted to hear?” She ducked as Holly picked the book up off the floor and fired it like a missile at her head. It arced across the room and collided with a lamp, knocking it off the table to shatter on the floor. Fiona leapt from the chair and stumbled over her own feet as she staggered away from the sudden assault.

“You were fired. Fired!” Now Holly was standing and advancing on her. “Can you explain to me why you are incapable of holding down a job for more than five minutes? Is it really that hard to just not get fired?”

“Hold on, this was not my fault, I told you about the sleeze-ball of a son the owner has working for him, I swear that douche—”

“I. Don’t. Care! I don’t care if you had to stand at that grill with some guys hands permanently stuck to your ass! I have been supporting you for months now. You moved in here with this sweet song and dance about how you would get a job and start contributing. So far all I’ve seen is that I now have a thirty year old daughter that I have to feed and pay for. You can’t even manage to bring food home for us and you work at a God dammed restaurant!”

“I told you, the boss wouldn’t let us—”

“Yeah, you told me. You have an excuse for every damned thing don’t you? Nothing is ever your fault, is it?”

“Would you at least let me finish a sentence?”

“Well, you just finished that one. Feel better yet? Because this is obviously all about you. I’m just the fucking cash machine, hit withdrawal whenever the fuck you need anything. Just call Holly to save me.”

As she finished, a loud banging came from the apartment upstairs, followed by a muffled cry to keep the noise down. Holly marched to the corner, picked up a broom and began smacking it against the ceiling.

“Why don’t you mind your own business and I’ll try and ignore it when you take five hundred trips to the bathroom every night, you fuckers!” She threw the broom back towards the corner, where it clattered against the wall and bounced halfway back to where they were standing. Fiona put her hands up and began backing away. She had seen Holly angry plenty of times before. Their relationship had seen more than its fair share of volatility and hostility, but she had never seen anything like this. Holly took a step forward and Fiona took another one back.

“Do you realize that I actually have two jobs so that we can keep things afloat around here?” Holly was still moving forward and Fiona was starting to worry what was going to happen when she didn’t have any more room to back away. “I sell plasma so that we can have a little extra cash on hand. We barely have enough money to get by, but for some reason, you always seem to keep yourself good in cigarettes and booze.”

“Hey, you asked me to move in with you, it isn’t like I suggested this arrangement.”

“Oh, so its my fault, right? My fault that you’re a fucking deadbeat who can’t lift a finger to try and help with the bills around here. Easer to just lie around the apartment and collect all the free food I give you.”

Fiona was starting to desperately hope that this was all part of some elaborate foreplay. “Okay,” she said, “Just tell me what I need to do to make this right. Do I need to beg for my job back? Because at this point, I’d think he would be more likely to call the cops on me than—”

The scream of rage made Fiona jump back as Holly lunged forward to grab at her neck. Fiona was just able to duck out of the way and scrambled back towards the center of the room. Holly spun around and began to approach again, the rage blazing from her eyes as she also started to cry. Fiona actually took a step forward before she realized what she was doing, not sure if physical contact would make any difference. Holly shoved her back, and began pacing, grabbing fistfuls of her hair as she started to talk to herself.

“She doesn’t give a shit about what I do around here, noooo. Just take, take, take and then take some more.”

Fiona put her arms out to try and at least stop the manic pacing but Holly just elbowed past her.

“Maybe I’ll have a job, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll have money to help you out, but probably you should plan on not. What’s this? Oh, this is the new vintage jacket I just bought with the hundreds of fucking dollars that I don’t fucking have. You don’t mind eating Ramen for another month, do you?”

“Holly, please. You have to calm down, you’re going to give yourself an aneurysm or something. Please, just sit down and take a breath.”

The blow came so fast that Fiona didn’t even see it coming, a closed fist to the side of her face. She crumpled to the floor and in an instant, Holly was on top of her. Fiona felt fingers take a firm grip on her hair and slam her head back against the floor. Light exploded in front of her and her hearing went muffled. Holly marched off into the kitchen, screaming incoherently. Fiona felt drunk as she stood up, weaving from side to side as she put out a hand to try and steady herself.

“Holly, please don’t—”

The scream snapped her back to her senses as Holly charged into the room, this time waving Fiona’s chef knife around in the air. “Get out! I don’t want you around here anymore, sucking up everything you touch, just get out!” The distance between them closed in a heartbeat and Fiona was pushed up against the wall trying to avoid the slashing thrusts of the blade. As Holly swung and missed, her momentum carried her into Fiona and the two of them fell to the floor.

Fiona wasn’t even sure how it happened. She had grabbed hold of Holly’s wrist to try and control the knife and was turning away to try and use her body weight to get the weapon loose. Just as she was about to pull away, Holly lunged forward to grab for it. The knife slipped out of her grasp and fell between them as they collided. They fell and hit the floor, rolling away from each other and when Fiona jumped to her feet she immediately saw the pool of blood soaking into Holly’s shirt, the knife still protruding from her chest.

Holly looked down at the knife as she tried to stand up but her arms failed and went out from underneath her. She coughed and a fine spray of blood emitted from her mouth. Fiona heard one agonized sob as she fell onto her back and after two shallow breaths, Holly was staring blankly up at the ceiling.

It felt like hours that Fiona lay there, staring at Holly’s body on the floor, even though she knew from the clock that it had barely been a few minutes. No one would believe how this had happened, not with the commotion the neighbors all around them had been hearing. She needed to get out of here now, while she had the chance. She took hold of Holly under her arms, aware that she was now crying and pulled her into the closet. How could things have come to this so quickly? She looked so pathetic there, curled up on the floor with the laundry and hangers. Fiona reached up and pulled more clothes down, letting them drop on top of Holly’s body and grabbed several blankets to add to the pile.

“I’m sorry,” she said, barely understandable to herself through the sobbing. She didn’t know what else to say. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair to either of them.

Still, it was time to clear out. She tossed what she thought she would need into her backpack, grabbed the keys and ran out the door, taking care to lock it behind her. Down at street level, she made an effort to slow down to a more leisurely pace, not wanting to attract attention. 

She turned down Wilson and began making her way towards the bus station.

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Purchase Behind Our Walls today in paperback or for the Kindle.
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Tracing The Trails Of The King : Skeleton Crew

I have discussed in previous essays about how I have been a late comer to the short stories of Stephen King. I have loved his novels from day one but had a harder time getting excited about the shorter works. I realize I’m repeating myself somewhat from my review of Night Shift but a big part of this is the fact that he is such an effective writer that even his twenty page stories manage a similar emotional weight to the thousand page novels. So to go through that cycle over a dozen times in the span of an entire book can be exhausting. It can be a stretch sometimes to experience the ending of a story and then turn the page to start over right away, from scratch.

Skeleton Crew is the one collection I actually owned growing up. Part of me thinks that I was drawn to this book more than others, largely due to the cover. The picture of the children’s toy, the monkey banging its symbols together, set against a solid black background was so evocative and creepy, I loved it.

Reading this now in its entirety, I think this is an incredibly well constructed and crafted anthology of King’s work. I liked that, although the narratives of the stories stand on their own, there is more of a feeling of connectivity then there was in Night Shift. The phrase “do you love” makes its way into any number of stories throughout the book. As a result, thanks to that simple touchstone, you often have a feeling of returning to center, even though the particular story you are reading might have nothing directly to do with the rest. 

I had a hard time as a pre-teen, working up the motivation to read the entire book but even in Junior High, there were several stories that stood that I would come back to constantly. More specifically, The Mist and The Raft were two that I couldn’t get enough of, both in the premise and the execution.

I don’t have enough time to really treat all of the stories in this book so I will point out a few exceptional examples that I particularly loved.

But first, there is one story that I was a little disappointed by, ironic as it inspired the cover art that I love so much. “The Monkey” is a story that, by all rights should be right in my wheel-house. I love dark supernatural and stories about cursed or possessed objects that reach out into the real world to cause mayhem and destruction. I love the idea of a toy possibly being inhabited by some kind of evil entity that, after terrorizing a child, manages to come back much later to do the same to his children. It’s a great idea and if you were to just describe the concept to me, I’d be on board in a heartbeat.

The problem for me I think is just in the execution. I think that King might have been better off making this one a novel or, even more of a novella. I think that there is too much going on and there are too many characters for as short as the story is. Also, the story takes place during two different time periods so there is some jumping back and forth from the past to the present, also hard to pull off if there isn’t more narrative space to make the transitions smoother. As it is, I had a bit of a hard time separating out what was happening to the father in the past and what was happening to his son in the present. I think the story would have come out stronger if it had been a touch longer and if there had been fewer jumps. Maybe start in the present, when the son finds the monkey and then jump back to tell the entire back-story all at once before coming back to finish everything out.

In the end, I don’t hate the story and it does have a phenomenal ending, leaving things somewhat open ending and ominous. I just think it could have been much better.

So with that, let’s move on with a few standouts from the book that I really enjoyed.

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The Mist

Such a well conceived and crafted story. I think that the greatest horror happens when it originates from something that, by all practical considerations, should be completely harmless. The image of fog is certainly evocative enough but to think that there actually could be something out there in the mist, waiting to pounce down on you is great. The way he builds the story is brilliant in this isolated community. He hints that something may or may not have gone wrong at a nearby military research facility. I love the story on two levels, first for how the supernatural aspects of it unfold but also how the story works as sort of a social crucible. You get to see all walks of life trapped together inside the confines of this small grocery story and witness how they immediately start to break down into differing factions. The story also stands as a great exploration of religious fanaticism and how that can go awry as well.

I wanted to discuss two specific issues surrounding this book. And this is just my take here, so please feel free to disagree. First, despite its frequent acceptance as such, I don’t see this as a Dark Tower story. I realize that there are certain elements which, when viewed in a certain light can seem like the Dark Tower mythos, but to my knowledge, King has never acknowledged the connection. I think that there are two categories when it comes to King’s books. There are the ones that make blatant Dark Tower references and the others which can be manipulated somewhat to fit into the Dark Tower universe. I see The Mist as being one of the second type. And as I have said before, people are free to interpret the story however they want, it has just never been that way for me.

The second issue is regarding the film adaptation. I have never understood why there is such a hostile reaction to this from King fans. Is the ending to the film quite a bit different than the book? Yes. But let’s be honest here. The ending to the book was good, but it was also vague and open-ended. There is no way that ending would have been accepted by a general film audience. When you look at it in isolation, the movie’s ending is brilliant.  It’s powerful, it’s bleak, it’s poignant. And I have to think that if this had just been an original screenplay, not linked with a Stephen King book that the ending would have been universally accepted as such.

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The Raft

Another great, efficient story. And again, it starts out with such a light hearted opening, it’s hard to imagine the horrific turn that the story quickly takes. I love the isolation of the story, how you can put someone just a few hundred feet away from complete safety and yet make that distance completely impossible to traverse. I read this in Junior High, after Spielberg had already started souring me on the notion of swimming anywhere other than a swimming pool, courtesy of the Jaws franchise. This was another addition to that mentality that I did not need, but I also love how the right story at the right time has the ability to have that kind of an impact on you. I love the imagination that the creature in this story sprang out of, in the same way I do with The Mist. It isn’t easy to take something that essentially looks like a film of oil-slick on the surface of a pond and make it so terrifying. The ending to this story is also awesome, another dose of bleak hopelessness, courtesy of the King.

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Nona

The thing I love about this story is that it is another literary example of how you can never be sure how much you can trust the narrator. Seeing him tell this story about being taken in by this beautiful woman and how he is driven to various acts of violence is chilling to read. Was Nona real or just a figment of this guy’s imagination? Was she something he invented after the fact to try and soften the impact of what he had done? I can’t say and to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to know. I kind of like how it’s left ambiguous. Too many people fall into the trap of thinking that everything has to be laid out and clearly explained for the reader. I appreciate it sometimes when I am given the chance to think things through and decide for myself.

I also love how the story becomes a part of the Castle Rock mythology, with a little reference to one of my favorite adolescent bad boys, Ace Merrill.

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Survivor Type

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this story took my off my feet. It was not even remotely what I was expecting and it has become one of the greatest short stories I have ever read, hands down. I’m serious, if this story had been surrounded by four hundred pages of complete shit, I still would have been happy paying the cover price, just so that I could get my hands on this story. I’m not going to spoil anything because a big part of the impact is in the slow realization of what this character is doing to stay alive, stranded alone on an island. It is nothing that I think anyone would conceive of, let alone have the courage to go through with. Trust me when I say this. If you are sitting on the fence about this book as a whole, this story alone makes it worth it. It’s not for the squeamish, that’s for sure, but an amazing and hard hitting story.

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Skeleton Crew is a great book. There is a nice variety of stories but with somewhat of an emotional connection between them. For all of his accolades, King is a master when it comes to the short stories. Night Shift was an amazing collection and I would place this one right up there with it. For as extensively intricate as many of his novels are, he has the ability to quickly duck in through your defenses and deliver that knockout punch, leaving you on your back like Glass Joe within ten seconds.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Guilting The Masses

 

Katie turned the car onto the main drag, cursing again as the wheels slipped on the ice. Why the city couldn’t get the roads cleared faster than this was a mystery to her. What the hell were her taxes paying for anyway? And of course the asshole behind her in the puke-green Honda wouldn’t give her any room, tailgating so close, she could read the digits on the fuzzy dice hanging from the guy’s mirror.

Her paycheck was too small again. How was she supposed to keep her head above water with these shitty wages? It was the holidays, things were supposed to be easier. All she felt was more annoyed at what she saw as cheer and joy on display from people who were as fake as her knock-off handbag.

The brakes skidded as she slammed on the pedal for the fourth straight red light. Apparently the city couldn’t time the stop lights worth a damn either. Moments like this made her think more seriously about taking the bus, but why suffer the indignity?

At the fifth straight barely-missed green light, she stopped and the sight of the man on the corner halted her, mid-thought.

He stood there in a threadbare dinner jacket that looked like it had been out of style for about 20 years. His pants were torn in several places and the snow looked like it had completely saturated his thin Converse sneakers.

Well, she wasn’t standing out there, at least. She was in a warm car, coming from a warm house going to a job that at least paid her a little. It was Christmas. She rolled the window down and handed over a twenty, just before the light turned green and she drove on with her life, the frustrations at least temporarily quieted by her freshly bolstered self-worth.

* * *

Randall watched the lady’s car pull away and he stuck the twenty into his pocket. That brought his total for the day to just over five hundred dollars, which would be more than enough for a hotel room and a massage. Maybe even a nice steak dinner too.

He made more money scamming these suckers than he ever had at his job. And he didn’t have to pay taxes. He loved the holidays.

Seven more days until Christmas. He might even bring in a couple more grand before St. Nick came down on his sleigh. He looked up in time to see the crowd of carolers crowded in front of the drugstore. No way he wanted to get too close to that group so he quickly turned down the alley.

He was lost inside of his own cleverness, so far gone, that it was too late when he heard the crunch of snow under someone’s feet. Before he could even step out of the way, the box cutter was pressed to his throat and the gnarled, tobacco stained fingers shook excitedly as they dipped in for his wallet.