Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 30

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Some of my favorite books I have had the pleasure of reading over the past year. Check these out, they’re all winners.

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Coming soon! Check out the blog next week for the first installment of this series!

Issue #140 : Adrift

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I’m dying.

Alone.

In the dark.

That’s what it feels like, and I suppose it’s pretty much what’s happening to me. It’s been thirty days since the incident, and the only way I know that, is because I know that the engine recycles once a day. I’ve heard it reset thirty times.

I don’t know what caused the collision, or even what the ship collided with. Whatever it was, or whatever caused it, there was a near total power failure shortly following the collision. I still had partial control, and was able to at least pilot the ship, when the computer screwed everything up. I can only assume that the logic circuits were convinced that the ship was crashing, and did what was needed to prepare for that, namely, activating the safety function for the command center, automated restraints that hold you in place against your seat, to help prevent whiplash type damage during a crash. The point is that whatever caused the total power failure might have been something that I could have stopped, had I not been trapped in that God dammed chair. At least when the power went out, the mechanisms holding me down gave out, and I was able to get free, otherwise I would have likely ended up starving to death.

Because it’s so much better to be where I am now.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know how far outside of the normal patrol routes I am, or if it’s even possible that anyone will be able to find me. I don’t even know if I’ve been reported as missing.

Sometimes, I think I hear voices, but the darkness is so complete that a lot of the time I’m not really sure if I’m asleep, or if I’m just hallucinating. I suppose that when you get down to it, there doesn’t seem to be that big of a difference between the two.

I wish I could figure out what to do. The ship is getting some kind of power because I’m still breathing and I can hear the engine. From up here though, the ship is just a dark, cold tomb. And I’ve run out of ideas as to what I can do from in here. I don’t even think I could open the outer hatch, and go around on the outside of the ship to try and fix whatever went wrong.

The other day I couldn’t figure out what sound I was hearing, or where it was coming from. It was bone-chilling to listen to, so much fear and despair in there. It just kept going and going until my throat started to hurt for some reason, and I finally figured out what it was.

It was the sound of my own screaming.

I go from terrified, to depressed, to angry and then despondent. Sometimes, I think I’m feeling some kind of crazy hybrid of all of them at the same time. I get so tired from all of it, and you’d think that I’d be better off sleeping. For sure, I’d use up fewer resources that way, but sleeping is worse. When I sleep, I get to go away from this place but every time, I have to wake up here, again. I have the same few seconds of confusion, before the misery rushes back in, and I realize how fucked I actually am.

Why did I volunteer for this trip? There were any number of people who could have done it instead of me. The section commander even told me that I had hit my quota for the month, so I could sit this one out. Nope, I had to be the big fucking hero, sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else.

I guess I ended up doing exactly that, after all.

And here I am, talking to the dark. I like to pretend that there’s someone in here with me, and we’ve just been floating around, managing to keep from bumping into each other. I talk out loud to try and keep the crazy out from my—

Something just tapped on the…

Something just tapped on the outside of the ship!

I’m going to the port side to look out the window, and I can see the ship up there, maneuvering in to dock with me. I don’t know how they did it but somehow they found me, they tracked me down and now I get to go home. I can finally get out of this death—

Why are my eyes opening? They weren’t closed. 

I was just over there by the port side, why am I back to floating around in the center of the cabin? Why were my eyes…

Sleeping.

This is what my life is now.

I wish I could end this.

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Ramblings On The Craft : Write What You Know?

DISCLAIMER : I consider myself to be a life-long writer but I am still an aspiring author. What’s the difference? Essentially, to me anyway, it means that while I have devoted a great deal of time to my words and my art, the amount of money I have made as a professional writer to date could maybe be used to purchase a nice steak dinner for two. So while I have a deep and devoted passion for writing, I do not claim in any way to be an expert or authority figure. What you will find in these essays represent my personal thoughts and feelings about various issues related to writing. I think that in any endeavor, it is essential to have the mindset that there is always something to learn, something you don’t know. As soon as you start to think that you are an authority on anything (besides how to eat a hot dog or perhaps, spelling your name) there might be a problem. With that in mind, I am fully cognizant and comfortable with the fact that on any and all of these issues, I could be completely wrong.

Put another way, I recognize and admit that I could be full of shit.

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In the grand pantheon of generic advice given to writers, both from those who know what they are talking about, and those who don’t, this is one that we hear a lot. Likely, we have heard from a very early age, whether it be in writers workshops or in school classrooms. I can vividly remember hearing it from various grade school teachers, whenever we would get to a unit on creative writing. Write what you know, they said. Write what you know because you will be able to present something that is believable and authentic. You will be able to write something that is correct, because you clearly will know what you are talking about.

And I can’t say that I completely fault anyone for taking this approach, or in seeing the wisdom in advising other writers to do the same. On the surface, this seems very intuitive. If you try and write about something that you have no personal knowledge or experience with, then how can you possibly write something that is going to be legitimately accepted by your readers?

Here’s where I have problems with the advice and, ultimately why I don’t pay much attention to it. Telling someone to write what they know if fine, if you happen to be writing literary fiction. It’s easy to say, “write what you know”, because chances are, your life experiences are easier to translate into whatever it is you happen to be writing. If you are writing about someone who grows up with abuse in their childhood, or someone who is dealing with the ravages of drug addictions, or is a victim of domestic abuse, or overcomes a learning disability to get accepted into Harvard, those stories are definitely going to be enhanced if the author themselves has had personal experience, and are bringing that to the table.

But even in those circumstances, I would never tell someone that they weren’t allowed to write about spousal abuse or alcohol addiction, if they have never experienced it themselves. If those subjects are something that you are passionate about, there are certainly avenues for you to learn more about it, even if you haven’t lived it. Besides the obvious resource of libraries and biographies, there are bound to be plenty of websites and blogs from victims, who are more than willing to share their personal experiences. These are all things that you can use to lend an authentic voice to your writing.

The problem becomes confounded even , when we consider anyone who might have an interest in writing about the fantastical, about the magic and spectacle they see, only in their imaginations. It’s not like you could ever have real experience with traveling to alien worlds. You’re never going to know if there actually is an afterlife or what that might me like. Ultimately, there are just some aspects of fiction and some stories that are always going to be speculative and to suggest that not having personal knowledge of something should prohibit you from writing about it would eliminate a great deal of amazing books and stories. Where would Dune fall into the realm of, “write what you know”? Or 2001? Or Dune? I, Robot? The Lord Of The Rings? The War Of The Worlds?

The list would go on forever, and I think our literary landscape would be quite a bit more dull, if that rule were to actually reign supreme over the land. For me, as a horror writer, that rule would pretty much take everything off the table for me. Even as a kid in grade school, I always wanted to ask the teachers, aren’t writers supposed to exercise their imaginations? Isn’t the heart of any fictional writing at least somewhat based in fantasy?

And that isn’t to say that as a writer you shouldn’t make every effort to educate yourself about whatever random subject or piece of information comes your way. Just keep in mind that you could end up with some bizarre Google search histories if you aren’t paying attention. I don’t want it to sound like I think that because we are writing in the realm of make-believe, that the author is relieved of any obligation to make the effort on the research side of things. The Internet has made a writer’s life quite a bit easier anymore. Do you want to write a story set in Cairo? You can actually use Google Maps to go there, or at least enough to lend some extra credibility to your story. Want to write a story with a main character who is a surgeon? Look up information on surgical procedures, to give you a small arsenal of jargon and knowledge that make your character seem credible. Your readers aren’t going to expect you to get it perfectly right. Ask a nurse someday about how many times on ER, one of the “doctors” was shown using a piece of equipment in a way that wasn’t even close to being right. As long as the story is good, and you make a reasonable effort, it will work. We still have to do our due diligence as writers, but the point is that we don’t have to exclude anything just because we don’t have experience with it ourselves.

In my mind, I see the solution to this issue as a hybrid, a landing zone somewhere in between the two extremes. You shouldn’t be so limiting in what you are choosing to write about, but you should also want your books to be accurate and real. For me, when I say, write what you know, what that means is to take your own background, and skill sets, and make them a part of your story somehow. We all have various subjects that we are experts on. Let that be a touchstone for your story. Use your own perspective to give your characters a unique voice in some areas, in a way that only you could have created. Just as an example to demonstrate this, I suspect that it is no coincidence that so many of Stephen King’s characters happen to be writers.

So I guess I would suggest a revision to the rule, an addendum to the original version. Write what you know, but don’t shy away from writing about things that you don’t know. In fact, writing about things you don’t know is where the fun really happens, and it can only help you, and force you to stretch those creative muscles. Being a writer is about traveling outside of yourself and exploring the unforeseen, the unfamiliar. Use your experiences and knowledge to color your perceptions of those imaginings, but don’t limit yourself.

Weren’t your dreams a big part of wanting to be a writer in the first place?

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Baked Scribe Flashback: Confinement

Jackson leaned against the bulkhead, and pressed his ear to the cool metal, listening to the wind howling outside in what had previously been his place of employment, now merely a graveyard.

They had just started receiving reports of the solar storms, massive blackouts, ships falling from the sky. There were urgent reports of splinter groups rising up, arming themselves and engaging with central forces. Fighting had sprouted up all over the country, and was raging all night. Outposts failed to report in, and dropped off the grid entirely.

Early that next morning, there had been an earthquake. Or at least that was what it had felt like to Jackson, even though there hadn’t been any registered tectonic events in several generations. The whole room spun violently to the left, throwing people off their feet and tossing furniture around as if it were nothing.

It was as if the ground itself was opening up to swallow anything within reach.

Jackson had been frozen, indecisive and David had been the one, in the end, who had saved him. Jackson wasn’t sure why he had done it but, as the tremors were becoming so violent that the building itself was starting to come apart, David shoved Jackson through one of the bulkhead doors and slammed it shut behind him. It was one of the silos used, previously, for launching inter-planetary probes. Now it was used for storage, with a few workstations and archived material as well. The reinforced walls made him safer than he had been out there, but even sealed inside, he could hear the sound of screaming. There was a moment when he thought he had heard gunfire.

Now he was alone.

He tried calling out with the digital receiver, to any stations that could have responded, but no one answered. Not just the static from a bad connection, it was as if the network itself no longer existed. He tried banging signals against the wall, but there was no response, the only sound being that of rain and wind, howling through a vast open space. He was afraid to open the hatch, afraid to expose himself to whatever it was that had happened out there. Every few hours, the walls around him would shake violently, either from residual explosions or from tectonic shift. The computer monitor only worked sporadically, but he had seen distress signals coming in from all over the world. From the corner of his eye, he saw the computer flick on and turned to look at the readout.

That was when the power failed.

Time slipped away from him at that moment. He had experienced the dark before, but this was different, so smothering that it immediately made him doubt that light had ever existed in the first place. The dark was so complete, that he couldn’t help but worry that he had simply gone blind. Either way, it didn’t make any difference. He couldn’t see.

At first, he focused on fumbling around in the dark, searching with his hands and finding equipment and storage boxes. He tried to sleep, knowing that his body would use up fewer resources that way. Also, there might be less need for mental distractions if he spent more time roaming the pastures of his own dreams. Time ceased to exist. He sat there in the dark, hearing noises, talking to the noises, to the voices speaking to him from his own head.

Someone would have to come eventually, free him from this prison, this sarcophagus, the metal barriers keeping him from the light. His rations were only going to last for so long. Once he was out of water and food, the choices would become simple. Either open the hatch and expose himself, or stay, and guess how long it would take for his air to dwindle into nothing.

Jackson stood up, flexing his arms, and began to walk around the room, holding a hand to the wall to keep from losing his balance. It would be a bitter irony to trip over something in the dark and break a leg or worse. He took a moment to curse himself for not familiarizing himself well enough with the room. He heard a tiny voice in the back of his head, mocking him for his denial of the inevitability of his fate, and reminding him how easy it would be to finish it all. All he could do was pace, hands pressed to his forehead, to try and smother his self-sacrificing thoughts in the blanket of darkness that surrounded him.

From somewhere high above, Jackson heard the sound of shrieking metal. It could have been something out there trying to force its way in. It could have been aftershocks from the earthquake, trying to pull the structure to pieces. No way to know from in here. The sound of the metal under stress cut out and was replaced by a moist sound of something sliding, slithering through a tight space. Was it wriggling through a hole in the roof? Something burrowing up from the ground below him? Or was it nothing at all, save for his own imagination, turned loose on his conscious fears?

He stopped walking, the effect of his now frantic pacing only serving to further draw out the mania. There was no sound, save for the swollen buzz of complete silence. His breathing began to fill his head and he slapped himself, the pain and ringing in his ears slightly overtaking the pitched volume of his own solitude.

At some point he fell asleep, or he lost the ability to think within the darkness. Was he even alive? Is this what the after consisted of? Endless disembodied awareness, with no one else there with you, a perpetual night of solitude? He called out into the silence, for anyone to open the door to this tomb, but no one answered. The sound of his own voice was becoming alien even to himself.

What was crawling out from under his fingernails? He could feel the slimy trail of them, as they wriggled free from the nail and began inching their way up his arm. They were coming for his eyes, where they would pry their way through the lids and burrow their way inward for the prize they sought. He tried to sit up, and only ended up falling to his knees, crying out for relief, flinging his arms around in an attempt to dislodge the worms that were already attaching themselves to his upper back and neck, working their way up.

Whatever the presence that was in here, it was the key to everything. It was the reason why no one out there knew he was in here. It was the evolutionary spark that was birthing this new creation, bursting forth from within him. It was the thing that he needed to eradicate.

He remembered seeing the tool box before the lights had gone out. It was on the shelf under the computer panel. He opened it and felt around until he found something that would work. The elongated screwdriver was still there, so he grabbed it along with a rubber mallet. His hands were actually shaking, anticipating the sweetness of relief. He placed the screwdriver with the tip against his forehead, to the left of his eye, and just above the bridge of his nose. He lifted the mallet and drew back.

One strike would be enough.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Mind Of It’s Own

“We will open fire.” The voice was authoritative and threatening as it blasted through the megaphone. Jenson waved the sword around in wild circles, trying to get it to release from his hand. He stopped when it occurred to him that the action could be misinterpreted.

“You don’t understand. I can’t drop it!”

“Yes you can, son, just let go.”

“For the hundredth time, it physically won’t leave my hand. Look!” He unwrapped all of his fingers to show that he wasn’t even trying to hold on to the hilt. Jenson had to again resist the urge to start shaking his arm back and forth, as if some kind of sticky substance was clinging to his hand, instead of an ancient samurai weapon.

“Just tell us what you want. Let us try and help you.”

“I bought the stupid thing at a yard sale. When I drew it out of the sheath, it just went haywire and I couldn’t control it.”

“Son, that’s just—”

“I know how it sounds. But I didn’t kill all those people. The sword killed them. What reason would I have to—“

This time he was interrupted, as the sword pulled straight up into the air, as if issuing a challenge to the crowd. The blade dropped down, and stabbed through the air repeatedly, jabbing in the direction of the police line. Jenson was dragged forward, stumbling to keep from falling, as the sword whipped from side to side.

“This is your last warning.”

Jenson was jerked back and forth as the sword started swinging around in even crazier arcs and thrusts. He screamed at them to help him, to make them understand that this all had a perfectly logical explanation. They needed to understand that he was innocent. They needed to rescue him from this thing.

The last thing he heard after the hail of gunfire took him off his feet was the metallic clank of the sword hitting the ground after falling from his now limp hand.

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Tracing The Trails Of The King : Cujo

FAIR WARNING – if you have not read this book, there will likely be spoilers contained within this piece. This is the eighth essay in my ongoing series on Stephen King, and is intended to be a free discussion of the book. I cannot be held responsible if I inadvertently ruin the ending for you, so if you think this might apply to you, I would encourage you to turn back now.

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There was water in the marsh and he was horribly thirsty, but the actual sight of the water had driven him into a frenzy both times. He wanted to drink the water, kill the water;bathe in the water; piss and shit in the water; cover it over with dirt, savage it; make it bleed

-Stephen King, Cujo

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So it’s bound to happen, pretty much inevitable. You don’t write seventy some books and expect every single one of them to be out-of-the-park grand slams. Everyone is going to be slightly different in their preferences, in terms of what books they love and which ones just don’t work for them.

Cujo is one that I would have to categorize as a miss, or rather, I think that it could have been so much better than it ended up being.

Throughout his career, King has certainly been open and honest about the role of addiction in his life, and with his problems with substance abuse. And as we start to get into the mid-eighties, his habits were starting to edge towards the worst point in his life so, with that in mind, it is kind of appropriate that he chose to write a story about a monster that can’t be reasoned with, and destroys everything it touches in a mad, blind rage.

I have read that King has no memory of writing this book. He was so over the edge, from the booze and the drugs that he literally lost almost all sense of the book, of any word he wrote, or scene he constructed. And what I’m about to say is going to sound harsh and maybe unsympathetic, but when I read this book, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine that. And please don’t take this as anything more than my honest feelings about this specific book because, while I know that I am probably in a minority on this one, and that this is one of his more popular titles, to me it reads like the author just wasn’t paying that much attention to the craft of the story, or to the narrative.

And to be completely clear, I think that there is an amazing, brilliant story in there. The core of the book, once you get there, is inspired and amazing. The problem is the sheer amount of husk of the narrative that has to be stripped away, before you get down to the essential qualities of it. The book is a very slow starter, although I did appreciate the early references to The Dead Zone. It is slow to start and he seems to devote a great deal of time creating narrative arcs for characters who, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really matter that much to the story as a whole.

Some of that time spent does serve somewhat of a purpose. For example, after our heroes finally find themselves trapped in their car outside the home of their mechanic, we know from what has been happening in his story that while they are hoping to be rescued, no one will likely be showing up any time soon. We have that information which they are lacking so, that does sets up a certain amount of dramatic irony but even that isn’t really necessary, in my opinion. I actually think that the story would be stronger if we spent the entire time with them in the car, wondering if and when anyone will ever show up.

Ultimately, I think that this story would have worked much better as a novella. If I were to do an edit on this story, I would probably strip away most of the story that isn’t directly related to the mother, trying to protect her son from the roving beast outside of their car. If this was shorter, more efficient and focused, I think it would be one of the greatest books in his catalog. Instead, what we are left with is a book that, while I didn’t hate it, certainly is not as good as other offerings from this time period.

There are several aspects to this story that I think redeem this story to some extent, and make up at least somewhat for it’s shortcomings. First, he puts the reader into the mind of the dog, and tells some of the story from his perspective. This itself is no easy task to accomplish, as the challenge becomes how to portray the simplistic imaginings of the animal, but still in a way of moving the narrative forward. His additional challenge here, is that we are dealing with a mind that is largely deteriorating from the effects of rabies. Seeing the fraying of this dog’s sanity is chilling and tragic to behold.

Also relating to the dog, I love how he has managed to create a monster that is somehow terrifying and awful and yet, at the same time, completely sympathetic. It isn’t Cujo’s fault that he happened to chase a rabbit into the opening of a cave and gets stuck. It isn’t his fault that he manages to get bitten by an infected bat and it certainly isn’t his fault that he wasn’t properly vaccinated against such a deadly disease. Rabies robs him of any sense and reason so, you have on one hand a monster that you can’t help but feel sorry for. But at the same time, he is a monster that can’t be talked down or won over. He only does one thing now. He kills and does so without forethought, or caring of the consequences. He just kills.

I also loved the ending of the book. I won’t go into too many details, other than to say that the tragedy of it was about as shocking as I have gotten from a book and I really appreciated that King resisted the urge to go for the stereotypical Hollywood style ending. The ending he wrote took a lot of guts and confidence in what he was doing, and I have nothing but respect for him doing it the way he did.

So if I were to grade this book, I would probably give it a solid C+. Probably a three star rating. I enjoyed it, and once I got to the real meat of the book, I couldn’t put it down. I just think it needed to be much shorter, and maybe included as one of his collections of longer short stories, the likes of Different Seasons or Four Past Midnight. I’m sure that there will be many who disagree with me, although part of me wonders if those who are rabid (forgive the pun) fans of this book are more fans because of the movie, than anything else. Regardless, everyone is entitled to their own lists of titles that they love and those they don’t care for as much. For me, this one didn’t work as well but, as I said at the start, you don’t write as many books as he has without having a few that disappoint more than others. There were more than a few amazing books that came before this and even more that were yet to come.

I think that this book represents somewhat of a transitional period for King. Starting with Carrie and moving up through Firestarter, there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on characters possessing some kind of psycho-kinetic or supernatural abilities, whether it be to start fires or to physically move objects or see the future. I see Cujo as the first step into the next phase, if you will. It seems that many of the books that follow this focus on a character on a quest. Whether it be a boy trying to save his mother’s life, in The Talisman, or that of a Gunslinger, following the Man In Black across the desert. You can see a quest of sorts in the journey of a recovering alcoholic poet, who ends up being the last man standing in the midst of an alien invasion or the loser’s club, trying to stave off the ultimate evil. There are also books of great dark, supernatural content such as Pet Sematary or Christine.

My point is that as this door closes, it opens to so many more books, classics of modern literature, that we have been fortunate to have been gifted with. I will see the rest of you along the way, as we visit each one of them.

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

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Blogging From A To Z

After taking last year off, I will be again taking part in the April Blogging From A To Z challenge.

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I will be writing about some of my favorite Stephen King characters, starting at the letter A and ending at Z. The posts will appear alongside the regular stories in the normal feed, but I have also created a dedicated page for the April entries. So if you want to get caught up, or just drop in from time to time, you can read them there as well.

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I am very excited to be participating again this year, and I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for the support!

Issue #139 : To Reveal In Others

Aaron turned up the water pressure, and swiveled back to continue spraying the side of the house. The stains would have to come out eventually. Something would have to do the trick. For once he was grateful for the heavy foliage around this side of the house, so that the neighbors couldn’t see what had happened here.

The walls were stained heaviest in three separate areas, with some kind of congealed matter still clinging to the surface. He detected an odor of rot in the air, and wondered how long it was going to be before more of these squads were sent out for him. He had been lucky enough to corner both of the things out here, behind the garage, but that probably wasn’t happening again.

This house was no good for him anymore. They wouldn’t stop coming after him, and next time they would likely send eight, instead of two. Better to just start fresh somewhere else. He would get this mess cleaned up, grab his bag and hit the road.

He turned the intensity of the hose up to the highest setting. It could have been his imagination, but it seemed like the matter was starting to break apart, and reveal the surface underneath. He picked up the brush and began scraping the rest off.

“Hey there!”

Aaron’s head snapped up at the sound of the man’s voice, now leaning against the gate and grinning down at him. Aaron squinted into the sun, and tried to get a better look at him. It wasn’t a neighbor, and he wasn’t wearing a uniform. No clipboard or promotional material, no bag of cleaning products that he wanted to demo. The guy reeked of bullshit.

The man started to step closer. Aaron stood up and waved to greet him. “Hey.”

“Sorry to intrude, I thought I would introduce myself. We just moved in up the street.”

Sure they did. In the entire time he had been renting this house, Aaron hadn’t seen a single For Sale sign, anywhere in the neighborhood.

“Yeah, so we missed you a few times and I saw you out here so I thought I’d come by and say hi.”

“Okay.” Aaron stared at the guy, waiting for him to wander off in the wake of his awkward greeting, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going anywhere. Red flag number one, those things hunting for him might look completely human, but they almost never picked up on the most obvious non-verbal messages.

“Do you want a beer?” he finally asked, feeling around his back for the revolver, pulling his shirt up and out so that the bulge would be less noticeable.

“Sure you bet,” the guy said it without pausing, as if it had been one long word. Red flag number two, unusual speech patterns. Aaron held out a hand.

“I’m Aaron, by the way,” he said

“Oh, geez Molly, I’m sorry. My name’s Rudy.” The two men took each others hands and Rudy pumped it up and down vigorously.

Red flag number three. The things had a hell of a time figuring out how to curse properly.

He nodded and gestured towards the lawn chair to take a seat. The skin on Rudy’s hand had felt cool, clammy to the touch. There could be nothing wrong there, or it could be because Rudy’s body was dead, with one of those monsters, burrowed into his brain and controlling the body like a scooter.

Aaron opened the back door to the garage, reached into the old Filco and took out two beers. He twisted both caps off as he walked back over to the chairs. Rudy’s eyes followed his every move, like he was being examined.

“Here you go.” Rudy took it and drink deeply. Aaron watched the man drink, trying to detect if it looked natural or contrived. He couldn’t tell for sure, one way or the other. All he could sense for sure, was the sense of mockery behind the man’s eyes, as if he was biding his time for something.

 The problem was that there was very little that could be done at this point to try and weed the little fuckers out. There was always the risk that you could mis-read the red flags, and end up tapping some poor bastard who was just lacking in the social graces. You just had to wait them out and hope that at some point, they made a mistake. If you were lucky, that happened before you ended up dead. This thing could have taken over this poor bastard’s body and was just riding it, causing enough of a delay to allow the rest of them to show up and overwhelm Aaron with superior numbers.

The two men locked eyes over the beer. Rudy grinned as the frothy contents spilled from the lip of the bottle and dripped down his chin. It was like a bad joke that you knew was about to happen, but couldn’t do anything to stop. It was a scene from a bad movie, played out again and again. He was the sucker in one of the most pathetic, paper-thin cons ever invented. These things thought they could just take over the planet, push humans out of the way, and take everything for themselves.

Aaron was one of the few who recognized this, and was willing to do what was needed to stop it.

“Hey, do you want to see something?” he said. Rudy looked curious. “I’ve got a pretty interesting, vintage model train setup going on down in the basement. Want to check it out?”

“Sure, Molly’d like that!” he answered, further entrenching Aaron in his decision. It was like Rudy had all the words, but couldn’t figure out how to put them in the correct order, or how to use some of them. He nodded, and led him to the front door, and down the stairs. He stepped out of the way and let Rudy walk in first, waiting for him to stroll around to the center of the room before stepping in behind.

“You gonna turn on the lights?” Rudy asked. He was looking around, squinting into the darkness, so much that he didn’t see the barrel of the gun as it flashed up. Aaron fired once, behind the ear and Rudy collapsed to the floor, never making a sound or moving to defend himself. Keeping the gun trained on him, Aaron reached over and hit the switch, revealing the body, face first on the floor. The blood that trickled out of him looked like it was tainted, taking on an almost crimson purple color but again, it was hard to tell for sure.

No matter, he’d dispose of this one, the same he had done with the rest, and then he could see about making his way out of town. These were the sacrifices he had to make, in order to continue living this life. Every once in a while, he might end up killing an innocent by mistake, but weighed against the sheer magnitude of what a world would look like with those things taking over, he was willing to do what it took.

This was his job.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Go

“You son of a bitching bastard, can’t you roll the dice normally? Just one time, for fuck’s sake?”

Edmund ignored the question as he moved the die-cast steamer over the Short Line, past the dreaded luxury tax and Broadway, around the corner and into the promised land. “I’ll roll them whichever way you want, pally,” he said. “It still comes out in the end with you sucking it.”

The right cross came over the board so quickly, he didn’t even have time to consider ducking. Tiny pinpoints of light danced around him as he toppled over backwards. He waved his arms around to try and regain his balance, and ended up spraining his wrist on the floor for all his troubles.

Before he could try to stand, Sachs was on top of him, the mask of humanity melted away in a fire of rage. Blows rained down from above and Edmund tried to roll away, but couldn’t. He did the best he could, curling up into the fetal position and tried to protect the more sensitive parts of his body.

“You own every God damned hotel and every thing always has to roll for you, you son of a God…” Just when Edmund thought he was tiring out, the intensity actually went up a notch. He thought he should probably fight back, but the situation was so absurd. Besides, as hard as Sachs was trying to hit him, it really wasn’t hurting him that much. Better to just let him wear himself down.

Edmund looked to the right at the sound of a surprised inhalation of air. Doris stood in the doorway, her mouth hanging open at the sight of her husband on the floor being beaten by their next door neighbor. He could see her trying to make the connection between a kids’ game and the brawl that was happening on her parlor floor. Edmund was so focused on her that he only barely registered the sudden reflection of light off of the metal, now in Sach’s hand.

So it was, that he had just enough time to consider the decisions and events that had led him to this, the result of a few lucky tosses of the dice and one off-hand comment. How many things could have been done differently that would have put him onto a different path? One that didn’t end with a steak knife, buried in his chest, protruding from the center of a growing stain of red on his shirt.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Easy Street Next

He dug down, deep into his pocket for the slip of cardboard that was going to bring him the three hundred and fifty million dollars. He had driven straight through the night in order to get to the state lottery office but, he still wasn’t tired. His life, or the life he should have had, was about to begin.

“Sir, there are other people waiting in line behind—”

“I know, I know, just wait a minute. It’s here, I just need—”

“Sir, if you would please just step out of line and let—”

“Oh fine, for fuck’s sake.” Carson walked over to the kiosk overloaded with fliers on state programs, gambling addiction, and credit card applications. He wasn’t going to read any of them but at least here he could take his time to fish the ticket out of his—

The ticket was gone.

It wasn’t possible. He had just touched it before he came in, pinched it and lifted it up in his pocket to feel the weight of it.

The door.

He looked out and saw the teenager gaping down at the ground. Following the kid’s gaze to the sidewalk he quickly spotted the bright multicolored rectangle that was supposed to be his ticket to a better life. And of course that pre-pubescent shit stain was reaching right for it.

Carson howled in rage at the injustice and sprinted to the door screaming. “No, you fuck, don’t even think about it, fuck-hole, stop, stop!” He sped up his speech as if trying to find some talismanic combination of the words. He hit the door full force, pushing it outward, almost into the kid who was now halfway down to the ground.

Junior looked up at the commotion and Carson hit him at full speed. There was a heavy, moist exhalation of air as Junior stumbled back, tripped over a parking pylon and sprawled across the hood of a hatchback.

Carson grabbed the flimsy ticket that was going to put him onto the road to salvation, and marched back into the office. Time to put that stuck-up bitch in her place. “One side!” he bellowed, even though everyone was already cringing away from him. “Don’t worry, I’ll buy all of you cars,” he said, starting to giggle as he slapped the ticket down with an open palm.

His new best friend behind the counter looked at him, shook her head and looked down. She looked at him again, and then back at the ticket. Her puzzlement and confusion was sprinkled with a healthy dose of satisfied mirth when she looked up at him for one final time.

“You do know that all of the numbers have to match, right?”

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