Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 43

Baked Scribe Flashback : Ad Spaced

“Look, I misread your ad all right? Can we just stop dwelling on it?” Angel’s patience was officially spent.“It was in the singles section! How could you have misread it?”

“You had so many God dammed abbreviations in there, I couldn’t—”

“Do you have any idea how expensive those ads are?”

“No.”

“Well they’re expensive. I had to use all those abbreviations, because otherwise I couldn’t have afforded it. Besides, there’s a guide at the bottom of the page explaining them all.”

“Well I didn’t see that either.”

“You don’t see much do you?”

“I can see enough to see that you need to bite my—”

“Look, as charming as I’m sure the end of that sentence was going to be, how about we just call the whole thing off? Cut our losses. Sound good?”

“Fine. Bye.”

Angel watched her storm off across the parking lot. He had used this tactic of “misreading” personal ads, pretending to set up a date in order to fish for new victims for over a year now. Normally at this point, he would feel the tiniest twinge of guilt, but now he felt proud to have lifted her wallet. She hadn’t felt a thing and he deserved the cash for his time and for putting up with her attitude. He was at the Grand Canyon after all. At least he could get a souvenir and maybe a sandwich out of the deal, on her dime.

He stopped, mid-thought and mid-stride, as two things happened in rapid succession. The first was when he opened her wallet and found it to be empty, save for the fake paper credit cards that sometimes came with new wallets.

The second was when he looked to check the time and discovered that she had stolen his watch.

Baked Scribe Special Announcement

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have read my work and enjoyed it. Today is a very special day for me, although as I am writing this ahead of time I suppose this is me, speaking to you from the past. At some point today, my second son, Elliot David Clark will be entering the world. We are eager for his arrival and to meet him for the first time. If he is anything like his older brother, Harry, we will be in for a treat in our house in the years to come.

Any of you who have kids know the extreme affect a baby has on the day to day routines. Your life becomes a sort of haze, a blanket of exhaustion and disorientation, and it becomes difficult to make time for even basic “luxuries”, like taking a shower or brushing your teeth. As you can imagine, writing is going to be put on the way back burner for me as I take this time to devote as much as I can to my family.

Fear not, however. The blog will continue to run ahead at full speed. I have reached out into the community of fellow word-sters, and quite a few have graciously agreed to donate their work to the blog while I am taking care of the important things in my life. Some of it is previously published work, some have provided excerpts from upcoming releases and many have written original stories, specifically for the blog. And if you find yourself thirsting for my words, Flashback Saturdays will still be happening during my absence, and I have already uploaded all of those entries to post as well.

This is the schedule for the guest scribes, and I hope that you will take the time to read their stories and also to check out their various websites and Amazon pages, because they are some talented folk!

April 8 : Dino Parenti

April 15 : Blaze McRob

April 22 : Joseph Rubas

April 29 : Samantha Bryant

May 6 : AM Yates

May 13 : Rebecca White

May 20 : Feind Gottes

May 27 : Robert Allen Brewster

June 3 : Rob Dufalo

June 10 : Carly Compass

June 17 : Dawn R. Taylor

June 24 : DS George-Jones

July 1 : Jessica McHugh

July 8 : Rich Hawkins

July 15: Elizabeth Carroll

Again, I hope you enjoy all of this great work. I was very excited and humbled that they were all willing to have their words hosted on my blog. For now, I will have to sign off, with my compliments, and I will see you all in July!

Chad A. Clark

Issue #110

Mario braced himself against the seat in front of him as the bus hit another crater-sized hole in the road. Half of the other kids on the bus screamed and hollered, the trip somehow becoming both the entertaining and terrifying. Coach stood up, trying to pretend that he wasn’t bothered by the abrupt motions of the bus. After a few moments, he broke down and reached up to take hold of one of the side rails.

“Look you guys, I don’t think this should be this big of a deal,” he said as he barely kept himself from toppling over backwards. “You all just need to shut up during the diving portion of the meet. All your noise is distracting him, and it makes us all look bad.”

There was snickering all over the bus as Mark, the diver, sat with his back turned, sullenly, to all of them. Mario thought the whole thing was being blown out of proportion. If the guy couldn’t perform because of a little distraction, maybe he shouldn’t be doing it. They weren’t serving tea and biscuits here.

“Did you see that creeper guy in the stands?” Brody asked, as the bus jumped and they bumped into each other again.

“What guy?”

“Up in the top row, behind their team. I’m pretty sure he was there alone. I couldn’t see his face with that hood pulled up over his head, but who just sits there alone, watching a swim meet?”

“A parent?”

“If someone here was his kid, you’d never guess he gave a shit about any of them.”

The bus drove out onto Mason’s Bridge. Mario glanced out of the window, and down at the river at the bottom of the deep valley below. It was at least a hundred feet, and the bridge anymore looked like a stiff breeze might take it apart.

“I mean, who does that?” Brody was still going on about the guy in the stands. How was Mario supposed to know. Maybe the guy’s kid just sucked.

The bus dipped and rocked to the side. Mario placed a hand against the window to brace himself, and it took a few moments for him to realize that he had been holding his breath, clenching his body as he had been bracing for some catastrophic impact.

“Jesus, you are such a baby!” Brody sneered at him. “Would you try and relax?”

The wind picked up as he said this, and hit the bus so hard that it felt like something had actually landed on the roof. They swerved to the left, and for an elongated moment, Mario feared that they were about to start fishtailing. Then, the bus seemed to lift up slightly, and the vibrations from the tires abruptly ceased. He felt a sudden sickness in his stomach at the familiar sensation.

It was what it felt like when an airplane took off.

He looked out the window again, in time to see the ground now dropping away from them, before vanishing into the dark. The driver was screaming, and everyone seemed overly slow to figure out what had just happened, until the bus was savagely jerked and turned until it was completely upright.

Mario fell back against his seat, rolled up and over it and down to the next one behind him. He flipped over, and looked over the back of the seat, at the rear emergency exit that was now directly below him. Before he could get a better grip on the vinyl cover, the bus jerked again, and he slid off, drifting across the aisle to bounce off the next row of seats, dropping down and tumbling over, before he crashed onto the rear door. He kept enough of his senses to roll out of the way and behind the rear bench, knowing that other kids must be falling towards him as well.

From the outside, he heard the sound of a shriek, loud and animal-like, and only barely drowning out the cries from the inside of the bus. He heard a scream of tearing metal, and looked up to see giant, elongated talons now penetrating through the roof and squeezing, pulling more of the bus apart as it shook them mercilessly.

“Do you hear that?” Brody asked. Mario thought the question idiotic as firs,t but then he thought he might have understood what Brody was referring to. It seemed like a second cry, another creature like this one. The bus was shaken even harder than before, lifted up briefly before dropping back down, hitting the ground with a deafening crash and skidding to a halt.

After what felt like an hour, Mario pushed himself up into a crouched position. He reached out to push the emergency exit open and, one by one, they staggered out. He felt pain shoot up his leg and blood dripping down his neck as the others joined him, all staring up into the sky.

The thing that had attacked them looked like some kind of reptile, or bird of prey, big enough that it might have been able to pick up an entire house, let alone the bus. Mario blinked at the sight of the thing, wondering why it had let them go when he spotted the second one, nearly identical to the first, swooping down from the darkness above, teeth and claws bared in full attack mode. The two things collided, and the force of their bodies impacting caused him to stagger back, even from such a great distance. They grappled with each other and swiped out with their claws as their wings beat the air, keeping them aloft, high above them.

The second one continued circling around its opponent, darting in for quick attacks, and Mario could hear the frustration in the cries from the first. They all stood there, in awe of the battle unfolding above.

It ended so quickly, he almost didn’t have time to register it. The second beast, who he had somehow already dubbed as their protector, flew in to take hold of the other thing’s throat, ripping and pulling flesh and bone with it. The thing didn’t even cry out as it fell, plummeting down somewhere, off in the woods.

Mario watched as the giant bird took several lazy orbits before starting to descend. He wondered vaguely if they were going to be attacked again but in a swirling mass of shadows and light, the thing shrunk, like a retreating shadow collapsing in on itself and, as it touched down on hard pavement, he found himself looking at nothing but the figure of a man, standing alone in the middle of the road.

He heard Brody take in a sharp breath behind him as he started jabbing Mario in the back.

“That’s him!” he hissed. “The guy at the meet, that’s the guy!”

Mario gazed at the man, mouth slackening open at the thought of what he had just transformed from. From the distance of his vantage point, the man seemed to smirk, maybe waving at them as he pulled his overcoat more tightly around himself He turned to leave, retreating away on foot, until he was lost within the dense cover of night.

Baked Scribe Flashback : Walking In Memory

The plane set down in New Orleans in a pouring rain. He stepped out of the terminal, his bright red alligator boots crunching down on broken glass. He raised up a hand, clutching a pack of cigarettes, as he waved for the next cab.He walked down Bourbon Street, glancing up at the balconies, and remembering how her hair had flowed in the breeze as they pelted the Mardi Gras crowds with peanuts. He took long drags from the cigarette, the smoke rising up to mingle with the banners and elaborate flower arrangements that lined the street.

The coffee shop where he had met her was still there, now sandwiched between trendy chain restaurants. The ragged poster of Louis Armstrong still stood guard over the patrons, partaking in burnt espresso and stale sandwiches. He had never cared for the place, but the essence of her still lingered there and who was he to fight the pull of tradition?

On the next corner, as he tried to fight the taste of caffeinated memories, the smell of catfish frying wafted down from the balcony above, and he could make out the sound of someone inside, banging on an old piano. It was the same corner he had walked past with her, the preacher standing on his apple crate, reaching out to the crowd, reaching out for him.

She had always loved the city, the people and the music, the food and festivals. Loved the smell of spice in the air, and nights spent trudging through the worst parts of town to find restaurants hidden behind heavy metal doors. He was often surprised that they hadn’t needed a password, just to get in.

She had always been there next to him on these trips, here in the city and beyond. She was supposed to stay there, always at his side. Now the only presence he felt around him was the weight of absence.

So, hours after his informal walking tour, he blinked and found himself on the bed of a hotel room. He reached across to return the now empty bottle of gin next to the empty bottle of scotch. Satisfied that he had finished both, he reached to the table on the other side of the bed, took hold of the tiny prescription bottle and laid back, steeling himself against the imminent comfort of the outstretched shades of eternity.

Issue #109

“Come on, stop feeding me this bullshit,” Dominic said.

“No bullshit, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Darius responded.

“Come on.”

“What?”

“How long have we been working together?”

“Going on ten years now.”

“And how long have we been meeting for drinks like this?”

Darius frowned and looked down at his hands, trying to remember. “At least five years. Pizza and beer, every Wednesday.”

“And after all of that, you still can’t bring yourself to trust me? Is that really what you’re saying?”

“It’s got nothing to do with trust, I don’t know—”

“Darius.”

“Seriously, I don’t know—”

“Darius!”

They had reached the point where each was starting to realize that the argument was actually more serious than it had seemed at first. Dominic has started it almost as a joke, but Darius’ reaction was clearly making him upset.

“Okay,” Darius said as he placed the pint glass down on the table. “Just explain what’s bothering you.”

“I know something isn’t right with you. I’ve seen all of the signs, everything you think no one is noticing because no one is watching.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Dominic rolled his eyes and looked away for a moment. “Don’t make me say it, all right? It makes me sound like a loony. I need to hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

“Darius, for fuck’s sake.”

“I really don’t—”

“All right, I’ll tell you what I’ve been seeing, and you can try to explain it. Last week, I saw you trip and spill an entire pot of hot coffee, all over your arm.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and’? I would have screamed my damn head off. You didn’t even make a sound. I thought maybe you just have a high pain tolerance, but your skin didn’t even look burned.”

“Wait, I remember that now, the water wasn’t even—”

“Don’t insult me. I watched you take it off of the burner, right after the brew cycle ended. I could see the steam coming off of it.”

“Okay, I think you’re a little off in your recollection, but okay. What else?”

“Just last week. I saw that forklift—”

“Now hold on.”

“No. I know what you told everyone, that you had gotten out of the way, just in time, but I saw the thing back up over your foot. I watched your foot vanish underneath the wheel, and you acted like you didn’t even notice it.”

Darius was already shaking his head. “You’re imagining things. There’s no way I could have—”

“I know there’s no way you could have done that. That’s kind of my point, though. Where are you from, Darius?”

“What? You know that I’m from Baltimore.”

Dominic shook his head. “Nope. I checked you out”

“You checked me out? What kind of a friend does something like that?”

“I don’t know. What kind of a friend keeps something like this to himself? I did a couple of those Internet background searches. No record of anyone with your name in the greater Baltimore area. No one in Maryland, no one in Vermont. Pretty much the entire east coast. Nothing.”

“And why would you trust the Internet?”

“That’s your defense?”

“I don’t need to defend myself, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Where do you really come from, Darius?”

The two men stared at each other, not conceding an inch in either direction. Darius tugged at his ear with an irritated air about him, as if he was trying to figure out the fastest way out of this argument.

“What do you expect me to say?” he finally asked.

“The truth would be refreshing.”

“Is that what you really want?”

“Yes!”

“Because I think you just want me to tell you whatever you want to hear and wrap it up in a bow, as if it was the truth.”

“I can’t do anything about that,” Dominic said.

“So what is it that you intend to do?” Darius asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m assuming that this confrontation is some kind of preamble to a threat, or demand of some kind. Can we just skip ahead to that part?”

“I just want you to look me in the eyes and tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Dominic slammed his glass down on the table and slid his untouched food to the side so that he could lean in closer to speak, hissing the response at Darius. “I don’t think you’re human.”

The proclamation stopped the conversation cold. Darius stared, as his mouth slowly dropped open, so taken aback that even he didn’t know how to respond.

“You…do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t make it not true.”

“Well, actually it—”

“I actually know for a fact that you aren’t human. In fact, it was the reason why I was sent here.”

Darius frowned, clearly not getting it.

“I’ll give you credit, you’ve stuck to your cover story, but that doesn’t change the gross errors you’ve been making as of late.”

“What the hell are you—”

“Darius, Sector Command received reports that you were being sloppy, putting yourself into a position to be discovered. Naturally, we couldn’t have that so they sent me, and instructed me to use this body, in order to evaluate your performance here.”

Darius’ eyes went so wide at the shock of the revelation that he didn’t even see Dominic lean forward and bring the blade around, into the base of his neck. He stiffened in his seat and after several convulsions, collapsed to the side onto the seat of their booth.

Dominic stood up and bent down to retrieve the knife. He wiped the blade clean with his handkerchief as he looked down at the body.

“They sent me to clean up your mess.”

Baked Scribe Flashback: First Meetings

Before the crew had even finished the landing sequence, the delegation of Khaln’aari had emerged from the forest to greet them. Captain Altranor led them down the ramp to meet the party with the crew already in full dress uniform. Theirs was one of the first crews to come to the planet, and it lifted their spirits to find such a warm reception.The digital network that was streamed through their comm badges was able, albeit slowly, to translate what the Khaln’aari were saying. Before long, the formalities of the reception had lessened somewhat to a more comfortable familiarity. They exchanged gifts, the Captain giving the Khaln’aari a glass figurine of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom. The Khaln’aari had given each of the crew necklaces of tiny, but intricately sculpted pieces of brawn’dak stone.

The two groups entertained each other at the reception site with traditional myths native to each others’ cultures. They traded the stories, back and forth, until the sun was starting to set beyond the southern horizon.

The food was by far, the highlight of the evening.

Being nighttime hunters, the Khaln’aari allowed several members of the crew, including the Captain to join them on that evening’s excursion. The crew had been able to achieve several kills, even though all they saw of the animals were dark shapes running through the trees. The Khaln’aari had several dozen kills, and they sent the younger hunters of the tribe to collect the bodies and clean them for the feast.

Hours later at dinner, the servers brought out pots, steaming from within. The stews, all different, were served to everyone, dark and rich, with the most moist, and flavorful meat any of them had ever eaten. The over-sized glasses of blood-red wine went straight through them, and soon, most were seeing the table through an unsteady haze of pre-intoxication.

The Captain stood to toast the hospitality of their hosts and to thank the Khaln’aari for the feast.

There was a tittering of laughter in response to the toast and for the first time, the Captain looked uncertain. The leader of the Khaln’aari rose and spoke loudly for quite some time, the rest of his delegation chuckling as he went on. It took a minute before the neural network was able to fully translate what was being said, and another minute before the implication of his statement set in.

“That is precisely what the last group of humans who visited here said. I know that you believe you were the first to set foot here, as did they. You were incorrect in that assumption, as were they. They enjoyed their meals as well, that is, before they knew what they were eating, or rather, who they were eating. As great as their anger was at being tricked into hunting their own kind, the humans who had visited here before them, it paled in comparison to the revelation that it was those fellow travelers who they had been dining on.”

The crew all pushed back from the table, meaning to stand, reaching for weapons that the Captain had not let them bring for fear of offending the Khaln’aari. Before they could even rise to their feet, guards stepped forward out of the shadows and held them down in their chairs. The Captain stood frozen in place, unable to move or react. The leader spoke one last time, “I wonder,” he said as he lifted a glass, “how the next crew will feel about hunting you. Do you think they will enjoy the food?”

Issue #108

 

The rain was heavy that night, coming down in sheets across the empty street around him. Bryce was out of gas and of course, in one of the worst, most isolated areas, just south of the city. All the buildings he could see were dark, save for one.

It was set back from the road, at least several hundred yards. Despite the parking lot being empty, he could see lights on in several of the windows as well as distorted movement through the frosted glass. They would have a phone he could call for a tow.

He was drenched, even through his clothes, by the time he reached the building. Even over the noise of the storm, he could hear the sounds of heavy equipment coming from inside, but he had to take several laps around the building before he found a door. It was locked, of course, being so late, but as hard as he banged on it, no one came to answer. Either they couldn’t hear him, or just didn’t care

The noise from the equipment seemed louder to his right, and when he walked over to investigate, he discovered that a window was cracked open. It looked like an employee locker room, and seemed empty. He spotted a phone across from him on the wall and begin trying to worm his way through.

He eased himself down onto a couch, and stepped down, beginning to move towards the phone that he now spotted on the far wall. It was just out of his reach and as he inched closer, his breath caught in his throat and he froze as he caught sight, in his periphery of someone, sitting alone at a small table.

Bryce jumped back, too surprised to even yell, and managed to kick a book that had been dropped on the floor, which slid across and clattered against the legs to the table. The man didn’t seem even aware of his presence however, and just sat there, staring blankly into space in front of them. A thin line of drool formed at the corner of his mouth, and was drooping nearly all the way to the table.

As Bryce slowly regained his control. He saw for the first time the unfocused look on the man’s eyes, darting from side to side as if on a timer. After several elongated moments of this, he started to rock forward and back in the chair, moaning slightly as he did so.

Bryce walked past him, to the window that looked out over the factory floor. He cracked open the blinds, peeked through the gap and for the second time felt his chest seizing up, unable to catch his breath.

There were people emerging from the machine, rumbling out on a long conveyor belt.

They all looked like the man who was sitting behind him. It was like watching a string of duplicate copies, everything the same, down to the glazed look on their faces. After a few minutes, a buzzer could be heard and now, a female version began to come out of the machine, again all completely identical.

Whatever was going on in here, he needed to get away. Somebody had to be told about this place. He had no idea how he would convince the police to come down, but he had to try. He railed against himself internally, as the drive to do all these things simply wasn’t powerful enough to overwhelm the disgust and awe at what was happening in front of him.

As he pressed closer to the glass, he saw another group of the things climbing one by one, into what looked like large barbers chairs. Equipment lowered down and began working them over, adjusting their appearances. Hair color was changed, glasses were added, the bone structure under the cheeks was actually adjusted like clay, until each thing started looking like a different person. Arms dropped down from the ceiling, attaching different items of clothing, like some kind of life-size doll.

Bryce jumped at the soft moan from behind him. He swiveled his head around to look at the man seated at table, but he still gave no indication of moving. Bryce began to make his way back to the window, where he had crawled in from.

He stepped up onto the couch, and had started to pull himself through, when he heard the door banging open behind him. Someone yelled out, and he heard someone running across the room. He tried to pull harder, but a pair of pants took hold of his legs and pulled him back through. The side of his head knocked against the window frame and he saw darkness.

When Bryce woke up, he thought he had gone blind. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them to make sure that his eyelids hadn’t just been dried shot. All he saw around him was darkness. The sound of his breathing echoed off what he assumed were the walls around him.

His hands had been tied behind him, to the chair in which he was seated. He pulled on them and twisted his hands, but to no avail.

“Hello?” he called out. What had he stumbled into? He was still trying to even reconcile what he had just seen with what he had always thought was even possible. People, being churned out of an assembly line like canned food?

He started to hear sound coming from the darkness around him. He couldn’t identify it at first, but slowly he began to recognize the sound of shuffling footsteps. Bryce strained forward against his restraints but could could not make any headway. Whatever knots were holding him down were not relenting.

He was about to scream out, when bright lights exploded around him and he had just enough time to take in what was going on in the room around him.

All he could see was a small mob of the faceless figures he had seen on the factory floor, still awaiting their final mold. The skin was stretched, grotesquely thin over them as they stumbled towards him. Their moans, which he could now just barely hear, was soon drowned out by his own screams.

All around him, the light retreated to darkness, rendering him once again blind. His shouts became high-pitched shrieks, and the last thing he felt was what seemed like hundreds of different hands grabbing him, and beginning to tear.

Issue #107

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That paper shredder is winking at me again. It’s as if it knows that a good meal is about to be served. You left me here on purpose, didn’t you? Front row seats to the carnage of paper, that you seem to have no qualms against feeding into that thing’s gullet. Seriously, does it ever get full? Or is it always just hungry for someone else?

It’s not my fault.

All I wanted was to grow up into a strong, beautiful tree. Or, failing that, live out my life as a part of someone’s poster, or an important clause of a groundbreaking law or one of the pages of a great book. It isn’t my fault I ended up having a collection letter printed on my skin. It’s not my fault that your personal information is printed on here. I don’t think I deserve to be shredded just for that.

Why can’t you just tuck me away somewhere? Maybe put me in the bottom of a tub of clothes that you think you’re going to magically fit into someday. We’d never see each other again, and I’d never be able to help someone get a credit card in your name. I wouldn’t cause any problems.

I don’t want to go through that thing. Who knows what really happens after? Where will I end up? Why can’t you just

No.

No, no, no, no just leave me the hell alone, put me down. Oh please God, don’t put me through the…

Oh, I’m sorry, was that a paper cut you just got there? No more than you deserved. Serves you right. Go upstairs to get a bandage to put on that. At least I didn’t end up as one of those. I’m betting that when you get back down here, you’ll never be able to figure out that I wafted through the air and right into the air return duct when you dropped me.

Now this is the life.

Special Edition

[image error]Normally, this is my time of the week to post my usual indulgence in the dark side of fictional prose, be it horror or science fiction or otherwise. You don’t really know me as an “essayist” but if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a week off, and share some of my thoughts with you.

This past Friday saw the passing of Leonard Nimoy. For anyone who knows me, it should come as no surprise that I have always been a pretty big Trek fan. I have never been deep enough into the franchise to consider myself a Trekkie or a Trekker, although I was in deep enough to know that there is a difference between the two. I’m much too young to have experienced the show as it aired, but the films with the original cast were a huge part of my childhood, maybe even more so than the original Star Wars trilogy. To this day, I can still watch Star Trek two through four and enjoy them. I still remember in 1987, scoffing at the notion that this group of upstart actors was going to carry on the Star Trek name with a new, spinoff show. The spinoff was clearly destined for just as much greatness, however, as it would lead to three more shows and four movies of their own. I hung with the franchise, waning somewhat over time, but for the most part holding true to my love for Trek.

But in my heart, I will always be devoted to the original cast, the one that started the whole thing, and not just the rest of the Star Trek universe. Star Wars nerds probably aren’t going to like seeing me say this, but you could make the argument that Star Trek planted some of the seeds for that other franchise that began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

A great deal has already been said about the ground breaking nature of the show; of the fact that at the height of the cold war, the war in Vietnam and the civil rights struggle, one show presented a vision of the future that included a Russian, an Asian and a black woman, all as members of the same crew. For me, personally, there was something else, in addition to all of this that spoke to me.

It was cool to be smart.

Everyone had their favorites and reasons for liking one more than the other, but my favorite part of the show has always [image error]been the chemistry between Nimoy and DeForest Kelly, the polar opposites of the passionate Doctor and the coolly logical Vulcan. Of the “big three”, I always felt that the two of them had a stronger connection and bond than either had with Shatner, who seemed like the closest of the group to the generic “movie star” personality. What I saw onscreen was obviously the pleasure of two characters engaging in constant debate, who clearly respect and care for each other despite the overt hostility and disagreement. Beyond that, however, was the feeling that you were seeing two actors who genuinely celebrated in each others abilities and performance. I’m not going to say that Star Trek would not have succeeded without the two of them, but it would have been a much different show.

It’s difficult to see the people who you looked up to as children start to pass away. Besides the obvious mark of our own mortality, it’s difficult to weigh the permanence of these characters in your mind versus the fact that they are no longer with us. It becomes difficult to see them as people, and not simply the characters who we have grown to love. At some point, they become larger than life, so it seems like the worst kind of offense that they can somehow be subject to the end of life, just like the rest of us. We still have all the memories, the lifetime of work, the movies and shows and as much as we still enjoy them, there’s now just a hint of sadness when we see them, a touchstone of what was lost.

I would be lying if I said that I was conversant in all of Leonard Nimoy’s work. I don’t think I saw him in a single role other than on Star Trek. I’ve only seen one of the movies that he directed, other than his work on Star Trek. It’s an immediate association with that character that I know Nimoy rejected for some part of his life before coming to terms with it, and embracing the huge population of Star Trek fans who had nothing but love and appreciation for him. I was, and still am a huge Trek fan and Leonard Nimoy was a major contributor towards the creation and quality of that show. His work and dedication to the character helped make Star Trek what it was and I always appreciated the fact that, as the years passed and Shatner has become sort of a caricature of himself, Nimoy seemed to gain more notoriety and distinction.

Of that first group, he was one who participated the most in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While several of his other castmates had brief, cameo appearances throughout the show’s seven year run, Nimoy was the only one who had major screen time in multiple episodes. He contributed to the narrative of the show, instead of being there to provoke the viewer to point and say, “Hey, look who it is.”  I was extremely happy in 2009 to see that, when JJ Abrams took the mantle of Star Trek and the franchise was handed over to a new generation of fans, it was Leonard Nimoy who represented the original cast and, in a way, passed along his blessing and approval of the effort. It seemed appropriate that, as the entire Star Trek continuity was destroyed by that one movie, the one surviving element was, of course, Spock.

Mr. Nimoy, you will be missed a great deal. You were a bright star in the landscape of American culture and entertainment, not just for me but for endless other kids of my generation. For everything you did and represented, thank you, and God speed.

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Issue #106

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Tap, tap, tapping at my door, or whatever the line was, I think I understand it a little better now. I guess the narrator was going a little bit nuts-o, one little tap at a time. Never really made sense to me, after all it’s just a poem.But now I’m sitting here in my living room, and the knocking has been going on for over an hour. Constant, heavy blows, as if he’s using his own head as a knocker.

I owed my roommate a bunch of money. I mean, a ton of money. Money that I had stolen from him. I don’t know if that detail matters or not, but there it is. He had figured out what I was up to, and he was going to rat me out to the fucking dorm director. Maybe even the cops.

Well, the last thing I need is some meathead former jock coming down here and pretending like he’s got some authority because the university gave him some crap meaningless position. I don’t need cops coming in here and dragging me out of the building. I couldn’t let him tell. I couldn’t let him put me into that kind of position, what was I supposed to do? What would you do? I dealt with him the best way I could figure out.

I killed him.

I killed him, and now I’m pretty sure he’s standing out there, on the other side of the door, rapping on it with his forehead, because apparently his keys didn’t follow him into the afterlife. Or, maybe he just doesn’t know how to use them anymore.

The whole door is starting to shake in the frame now. What the hell am I supposed to do? The undead didn’t exactly factor into my thinking process here. It’s not like I can kill him again. Not like I can outrun him, and even if I could, so what? Eventually I’m going to get tired and he never will.

The wood is starting to break and splinter now. Not much time left I guess. I can see one of his crazy eyes through the hole in the door now. Not much time left.

I guess I’ve got one thing going for me. At least now, I know for sure what happens on the other side. And you can bet good money that when I come back, first thing, I’m going to be coming for this asshole.