Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 45

Baked Scribe Flashback!

On Saturdays, I offer up a previous issue of the Baked Scribe that is no longer active on the site. If you missed it or if this seems familiar, I hope you enjoy this look back. The car was parked along the side of the highway. Jess leaned forward to try and get a closer look through the windshield and unconsciously eased off of the gas pedal. Even by the light of the moon, he could see that the windows were so fogged up with condensation that it was impossible to see inside. But how could there really be anyone in there? It was 2:30 in the morning and if someone was just hanging out in that car, chances were good that whatever was going on in there, he probably didn’t want to walk in on it. As he passed, he caught a flash from the corner of his eye as the dome light inside the car came on. he craned his neck around to see, sure that he must have just caught a reflection off the moon. his second look verified what he had seen though, as the light was indeed on.

It wasn’t important. Just a car, nothing that he hadn’t seen before. Still, something tugged at the back of his mind, a need to make sure the person back there didn’t need help. How would he feel if the next day he turned on the news to find out that some guy had died from a heart attack there on the side of the road, watching cars pass him by until it was too late?

Jess took the next exit and turned onto the surface road which ran adjacent to the freeway. he drove to the next on ramp and re-entered the highway, driving slower as he watched the shoulder for the car. he saw it up ahead just before the bend and pulled up behind it. Somehow, in the openness of the area around his there still seemed to be an echo from the door chime of his car as he opened the door, the crunch of the gravel under his feet as he stepped out.

The car was some kind of generic sedan, reminding his of the cars his grandparents would drive them around in as children. The motor wasn’t running and there was no indication of movement inside. Save for the fogged windows, he saw no sign of life inside.

“Hello?” his call was quickly absorbed into the increasingly brittle wind and he received no answer. he stepped closer to the car, moving carefully towards the drivers door. It was as if invisible fingers were reaching out from the darkness and brushing against his neck. his skin felt electric, as if his hands and feet were falling asleep.

“Hello?” he called out again, leaning in closer to the window and with one hand reaching out to rap a knuckle on the glass. It hovered there without actually carrying through with the intended action while still no response was received from within.

Jess reached out and placed a hand onto the door handle, fingers trembling against the cool, moist surface. his breath was starting to come in ragged hitches, fully expecting something to jump out at his, to burn his hand for the offense of intruding where he shouldn’t have been.

he yanked his hand free at the sound of an air horn blasting behind his. A semi blew past his with a rush of air and sound that pushed his up against the car. he turned to glare, long enough to catch a glimpse in the darkness of a giant yellow smiley face on the backside of the rig. In the wake of the truck’s passing and in the newly found silence, he thought for a moment that he had heard someone moving around inside, an exhalation of breath followed by the car shifting slightly.

“Is anyone in there?”

Another sound, again almost too quick to hear but even in that split second he had an image of them as children at a slumber party, shushing each other before the parents came in to shut down the fun.

Don’t open the door!

The voice was his own, spoken from the deepest bridge where the unconscious crossed over into conscious thought. he wanted to listen, to take heed, but it was the other part of his brain, the one that reminded his that it was more important to put others before yourself, that voice was the one that ultimately won out and made it impossible to move away from the car.

Don’t open the door!

his hand made its way back down to the handle, was sliding on the moisture as it pulled up, hesitating at the resistance from the bolt inside the door, the scintilla of added applied force that would be needed to open the door.

Don’t…

The voice was pleading now, but also sounding resigned to whatever path he was determined to set herself onto. Another voice of responsibility was lecturing his now, on the importance of people’s privacy. You couldn’t just go around, letting yourself into whatever car you felt like.

he had to do this.

What if he was the one trapped inside the car, slowly bleeding to death, or worse? Maybe a broken leg, or having just had a stroke, the door just out of reach and unable to respond to the other person’s calls. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t he be mentally admonishing the person for taking so long to just open the damned door?

This was stupid. Why did he pull over in the first place if it wasn’t to try and help this person? If he happened to interrupt some random person in the middle of sticking it to the nanny he would just have to live with that embarrassment. he had a momentary flash of possibility as it occurred to his to simply call the police and report it. But what would they say, really? What would happen if he filed a report on what ended up being a parked car?

Don’t open the door.

he grabbed the handle and lifted, pulling the door open and peeking inside. The door made a wet, popping sound, as if it had been stuck. From the inside, the car began to chime softly, indicating that the keys were still in the ignition. No one was sitting in either one of the front two seats. When he looked at the passenger seat, however, he could see the moisture left behind on the leather. It was like someone had been sitting there for a long time and had just stood up.

“Hello?” he called out again but nobody answered. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. he also heard breathing, labored as if whoever it was back there was in a great deal of pain. Jess kept his hands braced against the roof of the car, ready to shove off and start sprinting towards his car if he had to, and stuck his head through the door. The backseat was also empty. he felt like smacking herself on the head for his idiocy. he didn’t understand why he allowed herself to get so worked up. Somebody had car trouble and had gone off for help, or had called a cab. Harmless. They must have just left the dome-light on by--

Something brushed past his from behind.

Jess screamed so loudly that he actually startled herself. There was no one there but he felt the distinct sensation of bodies brushing past his. he had heard footsteps. his panic spiked and in that moment, of needing to act, to be anywhere but here, he sat down in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, and slammed the door behind his.

The inside of the car wasn’t merely quiet. What he felt was the complete absence of sound, a vacuum in which even his breathing was amplified several times louder than it should have been. It was a cold feeling that he associated with funeral homes, places where you caught glimpses into things that you weren’t supposed to see in this life.

This was like being in the presence of death.

Still, footsteps sounded outside, circling the car at a slow, shambling pace, the car occasionally shifting as if someone was bumping into it as they passed. he had to repress the urge to slap his hand against the door lock, knowing somehow that it would do no good.

his breathing was starting to echo in his head until he began to realize that it wasn’t just his own breaths that he was hearing. They could be heard beside his and from behind. he could feel the sobbing already catching in his throat, crying out at herself for not choosing to simply drive on, screaming at his to reach for the door release, to try and escape even though it was likely too late. he heard what sounded like metal scraping across a sharp edge.

Outside, a dark colored bird fluttered down out of the night sky and alighted on the roof of the parked car. It stood there for a moment, preening in the moonlight until a shrieking cry ripped out from the inside, startling it back into flight.

Inside the car, the dome light flipped off into darkness.




Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.
©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Issue #99

“Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t burn the place down.” Brianna was practically frothing at the mouth as she pointed at the newly painted window of the store.

The sheriff took a step forward and put a hand out to stop her advance. “Folks, you’ve got to get a grip here. Listen to yourselves for—“

“I don’t care how it sounds. In the past month there have been seven fires. The mayor and his family are missing and twenty seven people have died. All since these fruit loops opened this here gallery.”

“Brianna, what you’re suggesting. It sounds—”

“Sounds what? Sounds completely logical? What else would you call it?”

“What else then? How could the owners here be responsible for all of it?”

“That’s your problem to work out Walter. You’re the sheriff after all.”

“Sheriff or no, it ain’t my responsibility to chase down every crazy notion that you might have coming down the pipes of that nut cracked skull of yours.”

“It ain’t crazy sheriff. It ain’t crazy when we’ve had more deaths in a month than the last three years! I don’t know how they’re doing it but I’m tired of watching you sit around on your fat ass watching the crows fly by. We’re going to do something about it.”

She walked forward, jabbing towards the store with the can of gasoline and with the other, flipped open the metal Zippo. Walter dropped his hand down to the revolver and the crowd paused.

“Folks, I don’t want to take you all in but I will. Every last one of you. We’ll get a city bus down here to haul all of your asses down to the jail. Now get on out of here before this escalates beyond our control here.”

They all grumbled, looked like they wanted to challenge him but in the end, they all turned away and dispersed, like a puddle of water slowly oozing off into various ditches and drains.

Inside, Damion was peeking out from behind the closed shutters of the display window and let out a sigh of contentment as he flipped on the lamp, pausing to run his finger along the shade that had once belonged to the late mayor.

There was a sign over the stairs stating “private” that he walked underneath to go down to the workshop. He stepped over a pool of blood and several stray body parts, into the main room where Gloria was sewing something together at one of the stainless steel tables. Damion walked up to her and placed an arm on her shoulder.

“They’re leaving for now, I think we’ll be—”

He looked up at the sound of footfalls on the stairs. The sheriff had apparently walked in unannounced and had followed him downstairs. Damion watched as the man looked around at the carnage on the floor and walls, looked at what was left of several of the citizens of the town and looked up at them, ice in his eyes.

“I told you idiots that you needed to take things slower. Now look what you’ve gone and done.”




Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.
©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Issue #98

Louis dropped another log on to the fire and looked out over the raging surf of the ocean, for the return of the ship that thus far had only returned to him in his dreams. There was no reason for him to believe that if it would come, that he would see it but staying here and getting nothing was still preferable to leaving and wondering what could have happened.

She had been gone for two years now. Two years on this night, the accident had happened. He had been left behind to face the unspoken accusation in the eyes of her friends that he had been drinking. The reality was that she was the one who is drunk, otherwise she would've been driving.

Was he alive because she had been drunk? It made no difference now.

You need to move on, let go of her. It had been the advice everyone had given last year, when he came out to this place, to watch out past Nelson's point to see if he could catch sight of the ship.
*   *   *
“Slow down!”

He could barely understand what she was saying beyond hysterical giggling and shrieking. She wasn't even looking at the road to know how fast they were driving. In fact, her eyes weren't open at all.

Louis looked over at her as she swayed from side to side in her seat, her hand reaching down to fumble with the belt.

“Wait!” He said, reaching for her hand.

He trailed off at what he saw out on the water, rounding the corner from the adjacent bay and turning towards him.

It was a ship.

Sitting tall in the water, the vessel was making its way towards land. The color all around it saturated as if in a black-and-white photograph set into motion. It looked like one of the massive sailing vessels from ages long since extinct. There were no lights or people visible on the deck but it plowed through the waves as if controlled by some unseen force.

His moment of confusion was shattered by the air-horn of the truck. The last thing he saw was the headlights before the shattering of glass and then darkness.

As soon as he had woken in the hospital, he had known that she was dead. He had felt his newborn isolation in the world. She was gone and he had been left behind with no longer any idea what to do with himself.

But he did remember the ship. He remembered the sight of it as it's massive girth gliding across the water, as if part of a dream. In the weeks following the accident, he tried talking to people about it but got pretty much the same response. He could see the disbelief in their eyes and realize down deep that he was only further contributing to the conclusion that he had been drinking.

He resigned himself to silent torture as the memory punished him more than any of them ever could have. He kept the secret to himself and told no one else about the ship. There would be an answer out there and he would find it, but in the meantime it was important to put on a front of composed sorrow and regret. The spiteful anger that drove him onward was what he kept to himself.

On the first anniversary, he sat there, up on the cliff, looking out over the water, half drunk and more than half contemplating jumping to a painless death blow. The ship never showed itself and he woke up in the morning with nothing but a sore back along with what was left of his resolve. He was still alone.

It was the absence of her that he felt more keenly than anything else. The feeling was like what he imagined it would be to wake up missing a limb. Like in Kafka, experiencing a moment of such sudden, trans-formative change that nothing would ever feel the same again.

He didn't know if his problem could ever be fixed but, like someone who had been wronged, he sought recourse as the only salve left available to him. The ship was the key to everything, the core of all that had caused the bottom to drop out of his life.

The local history books at the library offered no clues or explanation of what the ship could be. He thought about questioning some of the locals or the fisherman, but he was already getting a reputation of being a bit of a nut.

All he could do was wait.

He had no reason to think that the ship would ever appear again or that it only showed itself on that date, but something told him that it made sense. A tiny voice in the back of his head seemed to both encourage him while at the same time warning him off.

Month ago, he had been let go from his job. The manager had given him as many chances as he could to fix the problem, but in the end he was just too preoccupied to focus on his day-to-day responsibilities. He even caught himself handing in paperwork with little sketches of ships in the margins.

The second anniversary came along like Christmas morning. He set up his shrine at the cliff-top, eagerly waiting the possibilities of what could be. His night had started with such hope and optimism and now at this late hour, it seemed on the brink of bitter disappointment.

As his head began to dip and drift off toward sleep, he began to hear the vague sound of bells. His head snapped up now, fully awake.

The ship was gliding in from the distant horizon.

Even with two years between, he still recognized it as if he had been carrying a photograph with him. It cut through the water with the sails dancing crazily about, even though there was little wind that night. All the detail seemed exactly the same. All save for one.

There was now a lone figure standing atop the deck.

He was too far away to make out many details, but it was clearly a woman, the simple white dress fluttering all around her. He can also tell that she was barefoot, his eyes tracing back up over the somehow familiar body, to the shoulder length hair.

It was her.

He couldn't explain how he knew that, but it was the undeniable truth whispered to him in his head with the voice he heard for the first time in two years. She had been waiting.

A sudden pain intruded into his head and he had just a moment to reach up for his forehead. Everything went dark and he felt himself lolling forward, weightlessness overcoming him as the sea grew louder. The last thing he saw before darkness was rocks and water rushing up at him.

He was standing on the deck of the ship. She no longer stood there but he still sensed her presence as the boat drifted through darkness. All he could see on all sides was water, roiling away into every horizon, and from all around, he could hear the murmurs of the dead.

Louis turned his back on the world, pulled his coat tighter around himself and headed below deck to join the rest of the crew. Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.
©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Baked Scribe Flashback!

On Saturdays, I offer up a previous issue of the Baked Scribe that is no longer active on the site. If you missed it or if this seems familiar, I hope you enjoy this look back. She looked up into the sky and saw her dreams highlighted in starlight. On one hand she liked to imagine that she was looking at a rich black canvas be-speckled in bright white colors, but it also could have been an infinite expanse of white light, slowly blinking away to black. The vastness of it all was enough to take her breath away. The thought that she wasn’t even seeing the tiniest sliver on the smallest blade of grass in the most insignificant of all the galaxies. How do you really conceptualize the idea of a space that has no finite space? She tried to picture the the ocean of stars and planets and black holes and quasars and watched as they tumbled away into infinity, limitless as the confines of her imagination.

Off in the distance, right at the edge of the skyline, she could see mountains, the tops of which reached up so high, they were almost kissing the bottom of the star-field. As she looked up, she just caught the tail end of a shooting star as it passed out beyond her sight.

A cool breeze made its way along the hilltop, ruffling the tall grass as it rushed up at her, pin-pricking her arms from the cold. The wind picked up and began waging an auditory battle against the sing-song of the crickets and cicadas. She had the vague thought that next time she should add a thunderstorm into the mix.

The images around her rippled slightly and the exceedingly polite voice chimed in that her time was about to expire, would she care to purchase more? She let the timer run down and watched the hillside and the stars blink out of existence as the holo-projector shut off, returning her to the stark interior of the pod. She stepped out and resumed her daily walk to the Tran platform, looking up at the metal enclosures of her underground city and daydreamed of an infinite sea of stars which she would never actually see.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.

©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Issue #97

Joseph entered the navigational data into the computer and sat back, bracing himself for the cautionary alert.

“Captain,” the voice chimed in, on cue. “The system you have selected has been flagged as unsafe for outside traffic.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”

“The astrological constants of the Dooridium system differs in one respect to—”

“Stop.” He kept having to remind himself that the computer always did what was asked of it. There was no room for nuance. “Just execute the course.”

He settled back in his chair as he felt the thrum of the engines engaging, keying in the panel next to him for a cup of tea. The star-field swirled around him on the view screen and he closed his eyes.

The scream of the others at the substation was still the sound he heard whenever he closed his eyes. The entire planet had been reduced to rubble, his escape to the ship being the only successful attempt off planet. No one left but him. He had piloted the ship away from the system, desperate to report the incident to the nearest station, to get his report onto the network.

As of yet he had found no other signs of life. Nothing.

The ships digital charts showed all of the outposts along with their neighboring planets and systems. All he had found was death, as if a malevolent force had made its way from planet to planet, consuming all life. Joseph never saw the entity, whatever it was but rather always seemed to appear, right in its wake.

“Captain, our present course will take us within unsafe proximity to a Celestial—”

“Change to correct.” Joseph snapped. The computer still insisted on calling him Captain, despite knowing full well his actual status. He was nothing more than a part time technician. Maybe it was just programming to call person controlling the ship, "captain."

Every day left him feeling like he was wasting his time. At first he had been relieved that the level of automation on the ship had given him the ability to get away alone, now the only thing he wanted was company, another voice other than this damn little dry personality that the computer had been programmed with.

It didn't make any sense that every planet in every system could have been struck. There was no way that some kind of simultaneous ecological event could've stricken all these worlds and there was no militaristic force capable of leveling such an attack. There was not even sign of other alien civilizations. It was as if the experiment of life itself had been abruptly stopped across the board.

He had come across another ship the week before, drifting through space. It didn't respond to any hails, and despite his reluctance, he took the shuttle over to investigate. The ship was dead. There was no sign of violence or disturbance inside but there was no crew to be found. He found no evidence of the ship being evacuated. He found trays of food, half eaten and books sitting out on desks, computers running programs and requesting input. It was as if every living being on the ship had just vanished at the same time.

The computer had offered no hypothesis, any idea of anything that could've caused this. And to contemplate the amount of power needed and on such a scale to accomplish something like this terrified him.

He wondered how long before this wandering swath of destruction would find him. Was this no different than a rat running endlessly around in the treadmill, to the amusement and enlightenment of beings unseen and unknown?

The clock on the adjacent chimed, indicating that he needed to take his scheduled time to sleep. As hard as it was, he had to force himself to take that step towards relaxation. At least the ships had been designed with the notion of the Captain being readily available, as a lavish office off the bridge contained a cot which pulled out from the wall.

Time was hard to track in this place, as he passed through systems on different temoporal alignments, he could only hold to the arbitrary schedule on the ship. The concept of night and day had long since fallen to the wayside, and he now had to force himself to simply live by the clock.

A shadow seemed to have fallen across his world as the time allowed for all species had come, and that this mysterious force was simply the harbinger of this doom, bringing death and destruction in its wake.

Joseph pulled up the star charts on one of the computers, taking note of all the blackened out sectors he had indicated as being lifeless, vacant cavities of ghosts and silence.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the planet killer came upon him as well, absurd to think that he was somehow special or that he would continue to go unnoticed. He would meet his demise as had so many others before him.

He didn't want to accept the idea that there was no one left. Still, he found himself preparing on the inside. He winced at the thought of that transitional moment when he knew that his this breath would likely be the last. The ship would only last so long and even though he knew that he could settle down on a planet somewhere, recently vacated, he knew where he would end up. He could only go so long, treading over the remains of the dead, alone until insanity would settle in. Better to let nature take it's course.

Joseph settled back and prepared to carry on with this hopeless search. He would continue to try and find life, knowing in his heart that by his own hand or otherwise, this was all simply a direct path to the inevitability of his own death.

_ Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.

©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Darla Decker Takes The Cake, by Jessica McHugh

Every now and then you get the chance to connect with a book, to find a story and a group of characters that tickle all the happy, nostalgic parts of your brain and takes you back to places you thought were gone forever.

Regardless of genre, regardless of what age group the book is targeted at, I think that it is always a pleasure to be able to read something where the writer's obvious love for their words just drip off the page. When you get a book from that writer that speaks to your own experiences and memories of childhoods long since passed, it's even more of a rare pleasure to come across.

I have written this before, actually I believe it was in my review of Darla Decker Hates To Wait but I think one of the hardest things for a writer to do well is to write believable characters who are children. I know this seems like it should be easy and straight forward but when you read someone who really knows what they are doing, the difference is night and day.

As adults, we lose a lot of what makes us who we are as children. Where once, our lives could change dramatically from year to year, as adults we pretty much settle down into a regular routine that can go on for years without any major changes. We stop living in the moment and instead start obsessing over what might happen tomorrow. The point is that our priorities and our outlook change and it's hard to get back into that mentality of being a child. As a result, many writers create children who are basically just miniature adults. They have incredibly insightful views on the world and are so sharp and witty, you'd think that they had an entire team of professional writers providing their lines.

McHugh creates children that are three dimensional. They are flawed and make mistakes, they are victims and heroes and the whole way through, you find yourself rooting for them. You see everything through their eyes and you believe that you are seeing the world through the eyes of a child, not an adult trying to imagine what childhood used to be like. You stop seeing the book as McHugh's words and instead see the world as Darla sees it, as well as all of her challenges growing up in a world that she is trying to understand.

I only went to camp for one year as a child but I always regretted not getting to do it more often. The experiences in the book really hit home for me and my memories of camp. First, it was the fear and dread at the notion of sleeping in a strange place with a bunch of kids I didn't know. Then, somehow, I ended up making great friends that, with the exception of one person, I would never see again. And even that one person who would end up in the same Junior High school as me, I didn't get along with as well as we did at camp. It was like the camp was this microcosm within my life and the people and experiences would always and only ever exist there. Even though my experiences at camp were limited to one year, the story McHugh tells speaks strongly to those memories and in a way, it was like my own chance to go back to summer camp.

McHugh's strength is in her characters and this book is no exception. I found myself relating to Darla despite the many years that separate me from the generation which she would be a part of. I had a lot of fun reading the first book in this series, an experience that was repeated with this book and I look forward to the next. I find that writers often have difficulty in just being a reader. Often we find ourselves dissecting books and seeing the narrative flaws, sometimes without even meaning to. So to be able to find a book in which we can forget that, sit back and remember why we fell in love with reading in the first place is an experience to be savored.

As a reviewer, I don't like to put a lot of description of the story into my review. I know that as a reader, I want to be able to experience all of those things for myself. So if you are reading this, trying to decide if this book is for you, I say go for it. If you haven't read the first book in the series, you should do that as well. Words are the tonic that can make everything feel just a little bit better. Words crafted by a master of the art form are something you should seek out and make a part of your life.

Trust me.
DARLA DECKER HATES TO WAIT
      DARLA DECKER TAKES THE CAKE

Baked Scribe Flashback!

On Saturdays, I offer up a previous issue of the Baked Scribe that is no longer active on the site. If you missed it or if this seems familiar, I hope you enjoy this look back.
Jordan stepped up onto the ledge and looked out into the golden expanse of the glittering morning sunlight. The birds were now fully awake, filling the air with their song as the cool breeze made his skin stand up on edge. He held his arms straight out to each side, balancing as he teetered along the edge, glancing down at the miniaturized cars driving past on the street below.

From the edge of the roof, he heard a beeping as the intercom squawked with an indistinct voice, probably the front desk calling up because one of the occupants from the offices across the way had called out of concern. New tenants more than likely. The ones who had been there longer were used to seeing Jordan out here for his morning excursions.

He was so occupied with searching the windows across the way for someone staring out at him, possibly waving their arms crazily and screaming at him to get down, that he almost didn’t notice the loose piece of gravel that had somehow ended up there on the ledge. The rocks scraped loudly across the concrete as he swept them off the roof with one smooth motion of his foot.

As he turned around the corner of the rooftop and out beyond the protection of the building, the wind howled as it blew in off the lake, buffeting him and knocking him back on his heels as he walked. As he felt his equilibrium shift, he lifted one foot and extended it out into open space, leaning back against the gravity that fought to pull him down to a crushing death on the street below.

The sounds of brakes grabbing tires and of rubber being left behind wafted up to him, shattering the serenity of the morning. He rolled his eyes in annoyance at the intrusion as he now started to hear the muffled cries of his latest guest who was still securely restrained inside his utility shed. The wind continued to howl as he hopped down off the ledge and strolled over to his workbench. He looked down over the tools laid out in front of him and chose carefully, selecting a brass pair of needle-nose pliers as well as one of the new scalpels he had just purchased.

Time to get back to work.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.
©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Issue #96

He walked around the bar, eyes dancing around the room and the people but never settling down on one thing. The gun wasn’t pointed at anyone specifically but he waved it back and forth in front of them, jabbing it through the air at him as if he needed to make his point again.

“Someone in here is not who they say they are,” he said, stabbing the gun in the direction of each person he passed. One woman shrieked as he did so and jerked her hands up into the air, knocking over the drink on her table, scattering liquor and ice cubes all over the floor.

The man carried on, oblivious. “One of you doesn’t belong here and I am going to find you. I don’t care what your fucking leaders claim you’re doing on our planet. I don’t care what the President says, you aren’t welcome here.

“Sir, please. You have to calm down.” The bartender stood there with both hands out, trying to soothe the man, to talk some sense into him. The gun swung around, seeking the source of the noise and the bartender flinched against the shelves behind him, knocking several bottles off in the process.

“Shut the hell up!” the man screamed. His finger tightened on the trigger and anyone who was near the bartender leaned away, afraid to be caught in the path of a bullet, meant for someone else.

“Please stop!” This voice chimed in from the back of the bar and the gun was already arcing around to find the source.

“Who said that?” His voice was shrill, cracking from the effort. “Who the fuck said that?”

No one volunteered. He took one step forward, took aim at the back of the room and fired once. The sound of the shot echoed off the concrete walls and amplified so much that it sounded like a bomb. The people who had crowded around the back screamed in unison and fled in several different directions, save for one man. He fell to his knees, clutching at the wound in his neck that the and trying to stop the blood, to find breath that he would never taste again. No one came to his aid as he slumped against the pool table, knowing that there was nothing to be done and not wanting to create a new target.

Already, the lunatic was resuming his orbit around the bar, prodding at people with the gun as he did so, muttering under his breath. Whenever anyone might shy away from him, he would give them a sharp blow from the gun, or perhaps a vicious kick to the midsection.

In the time it would have taken to smoke a cigarette, this had turned from a normal afternoon into some sort of collective worst nightmare for everyone. The plates of half eaten food on the tables were still warm, abandoned as the patrons had clamored for safety that the sparse, tiny little dive bar could not come close to providing.

A sudden moment of realization seemed to alight on the man’s face and he marched towards the bathrooms. The door had barely swung shut when they all heard a piercing shriek, followed closely by a gunshot.

“To hell with this.” A man in a suit stood and ran for the door. His hand was on the handle and pushing down when the bathroom door opened again and they heard the gun discharge. The man took a shot to the head before he could push the door open and he toppled against the wall, taking out a small table in the process.

“There’s one of you in here!” He would not let it go, determined to find his answer, even if it meant killing every last person to find the one who wasn’t. He sounded like he was about to start crying, fostering the hope in many that he would simply turn the gun on himself.

In the end, it was a pool of spilled beer that saved everyone. He took an exaggerated step towards the crowd, only to have the foot slide out and away from him. His arm with the gun swung up towards the ceiling, out of his control and before he could bring it around to bear, three people jumped on him. They jerked the fun out of his grip and tossed it away, towards the counter.

The bartender came around to the other side, approaching the man and peering down at him as if he was some kind of a bug. The contempt in his voice was obvious and as the man on the floor began looking around the room, he noticed for the first time that everyone’s eyes were now glowing. Not one person in the bar. All of them. Every last one in here was one of them.

He looked up into the glaring search lights coming from the bartender’s eyes as the thing looked down at him and spoke again.

“You came into the wrong bar, friend.”

Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.

©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved  

Issue #95

In all fairness, Rodrigo couldn’t say that this was the worst job possible but it was pretty close to the top of the list. And to top it off, because he lived in one of the cheapest counties anywhere, he wasn’t even provided with a proper vehicle. All he rated was an ambulance, long since taken out of commission. He heaved the remaining portion of the carcass into the back and and half turned, wiping his gloves off on his plastic overalls as he surveyed the scene. There were still some little bits lying around on the road, but other animals would take care of those by morning.

As he went to slam the door, he heard a sound from the pile. He couldn’t place it at first, but it sounded wet, like something being pushed against the floor of the van. It had to be something shifting around. It wasn’t like there was anything holding all that stuff together. The smell that wafted over him was enough of a reminder why he had no interest in investigating any further. After all, what else could have caused it?

He got behind the wheel and slammed the door hard, wishing half-heartedly that the engine wouldn’t turn over or that maybe the door would break somehow, making the vehicle unusable. Of course the old warhorse stood strong as much as the stench as he pulled out onto the highway. Traffic at this time of night was sparse, just the occasional semi amidst the leavings of the previous day’s destruction.

This stretch of road was one of the worst in the state. The speed limit was way too high, but no lawmaker would ever have the balls to change that. There wasn’t a stretch of straight anywhere and it was a road heavily used by commuters, so people were usually in a rush. He was left to clean up the remains of these animals whose only crime was to go out for a walk.

He heard the noise again.

This wasn’t the sound of bodies jostling together and sliding off each other as a result of the van’s movement. He was used to that sound and heard it all the time. This sounded like something trying to crawl out. He could hear something scratching at the metal flooring, as if trying to find enough purchase below to stand up and out of the pile.

He was letting the work get to him. It was probably inevitable, in all likelihood not the first time someone in this job experienced this. Just a little slip from reality, thanks to a lack of sleep and the normal apprehensions surrounding a pretty shitty occupation.

Something was breathing behind him.

He jerked his head around at the pile of decimated corpses. The head laying on top was wobbling, like a drink on a tray until it rolled to the side and dropped to the floor. It continued rolling until it hit the sidewall with a hallow sound and came to a stop. He turned back to the road to see that he had drifted halfway off onto the shoulder. He corrected the van’s trajectory and pulled back onto the road.

Something was crawling out of the pile.

Somehow, some rodent must have sneaked into the back end and was now making its way out to freedom. Had to be that.Still, it sounded larger, so much so that it was getting nearly impossibly to explain it away or ignore it.

He saw the shape in the mirror, rising up out of the carnage, nearly to the roof. He swerved off the road and turned back to look. The thing was somehow made from the organic material in the pile it had just risen out of. It was as if someone had put all of those remains into a giant meat grinder and used the by-product to mold this thing, as if out of clay. It spread out its arms, clearing the debris out of its way and began making its way towards the front of the van.

Rodrigo yanked the wheel to the right and stopped on the shoulder. He could hear himself screaming but from another universe as he jumped out of the van and began running away from the highway. There was a screech of strained metal behind him and he looked over his shoulder to see the thing tearing through the side of the vehicle as if it were paper. It squeezed through, leaving animal matter behind, smeared on the side of the van as it stepped out.

As it began to take stride after him, Rodrigo turned and ran. A deep, rumbling howl emitted from behind him and the force of the sound wave knocked him forward and to the side where he knocked his head against a tree. He felt dizzy as he forced himself to his feet and continued running, feeling himself vomiting down the front of himself but not taking the time to care, let alone wipe himself off. He felt his heard pounding, the hitch in his breathing as he labored to stay ahead of this congealed body of dead flesh as it bounded through the woods after him. Its stride seemed to lengthen and grow faster somehow. He refused to turn and look, the smell floating past him as he tried to keep up his pace.

The ground began to tremble. He felt like he was running on a treadmill, while the thing behind him only grew closer. His lungs felt like they were about to shut down and deep down he knew that this race was soon going to be over.

He didn’t see the tree root that tangled him up but he suddenly found himself face down in the mud. He had a few moments to savor this before the full weight of the thing crashed down on his back and he felt the pain of any number of different animals’ teeth rip into his flesh, pulling and tearing. The world went dark around him, chased by the smell of rotting meat.

The next night, the Saturday driver pulled off onto the shoulder to clean up the pile of remains he had spotted. He paused for a moment, not even sure what kind of a body he was looking at, laughing at how much it looked like human remains. Whatever it had been, the other animals around had clearly been having their way with it.

He shrugged, scooped up what he could and tossed it into the back of the van, along with the rest.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.

©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved   

Issue #94

“I don’t understand what you’re so worked up about.” Dean snatched the paper away from Hilton and looked over the article again. “She was killed by a mugger, what’s the big deal?”

Hilton took hold of Dean’s wrist and turned it down so that the paper was lying flat between them, and pointed at the picture of the victim.

“She sits across from me on the bus every night.”

“You mean she sat across from you on the bus every night.”

“No.”

“She used to sit across from—”

“Look at the date. This happened over a week ago.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I just saw her last night.”

Dean stared at him for several moments that drew out like hours before shaking his head and turning back towards the kitchen.

“That’s it?” Hilton asked. “You’ve got nothing to say so that’s it? You’re just going to walk away?”

Dean turned back to face him. “All right, I think you’re a fucking loon, is that what you wanted to hear me say?”

“If that’s what you honestly think than yes, I want—”

“You come up to me talking about dead people riding on the bus with you, what were you expecting me to say?

“I’m not crazy.”

“Well, I’m sure most other crazy people have thought that at one time or another.”

He would just have to prove it to him, beyond any possibility of debate or denial. So the next night, even though he knew full well that this was a mistake, he ended up on the number sixty five bus, tapping his knee with his phone, ready to get photographic proof of how sane he actually was.

Two hours, every night he rode the bus, occupying the same seat, paying each time the bus restarted it’s route so that the drivers wouldn’t give him a hard time. This went on for a week to no avail. He was getting ready to give up on the whole venture, to concede his grip on reality, that he had simply seen another woman who looked eerily similar. That explanation should fly. He was ready to give up the search as soon as he got to his stop when he saw the woman again.

He had just gotten off the bus. No one boarded as he stepped off and the bus had been nearly empty. Still, as he glanced back over his shoulder to watch it pulling away from the curb he saw her, sitting right across from where he had just been. He tried chasing it down, screaming and waving his arms but the driver either didn’t see him or didn’t care.

The next night, he spent four hours on the sixty five. He was starting to fall asleep in his seat, almost out of loose change when he saw her. It was out of the corner of his eye and was as if she had just appeared out of nowhere and he turned back to face her, turning slowly so as to not alarm her. She remained facing forward, not acknowledging his existence or presence.

The woman was wearing a simple, flimsy looking dress of faded green. It was definitely the woman from the newspaper article, he was sure of that much. After all this time spent, he had finally found her and now that he was here, in the moment, he found himself floundering to decide what to do. He felt drawn to her for reasons he couldn’t explain, even to himself. The urge to reach across the aisle and caress the exposed skin of her arm, the base of her neck, he actually had to sit on his hands to keep them from roving.

The bus jostled as it hit a bump in the road, tossing him against the side wall. He glanced out the window for a moment and saw her out there, now walking down a darkened alley. It couldn’t have been her though, the bus hadn’t stopped. He could still see her in the reflection in the window, sitting there in her seat. It occurred to him suddenly that she was actually looking at him

Staring at him, eyes black as the night sky outside.

Hilton jumped in his seat and turned back. She was gone, the seat now occupied by a nurse on her way to or from work. He shook his head and yanked on the pull-chain, requesting the next stop. The bus had barely slowed before he shouldered his way through the back doors and stepped out onto the street.

The alley was just a few blocks back. He ignored the glances and comments from people he passed, even though he recognized his rudeness as he jostled through the crowd.

“Why are you so obsessed with this?” the voice inside his head was his own, admonishing him in a tone that suggested that he should know better to leave well enough alone. Still, his feet carried him on.

A cold breeze flowed over him as he stuck his head around the corner, peering down the alley. He could see no one, even though there was almost nowhere in the alley to hide. A construction site on the next block over had sealed off the other end, making it a dead end. There were no doors into the surrounding buildings, only ladders to fire escapes, too high to be used from the street level. There wasn’t even a dumpster to hide behind.

Still, there was no sign of her. He supposed it had to make sense, if what he was thinking was true, if the implications of what he had seen was correct, wouldn’t she have the ability to appear and disappear at will? Would she truly be tethered to the laws of this universe? Or would she be somehow above what dictated reality to all of them?

Hilton began turning around in circles, looking through the shadows cast by the streetlights to try and see her. He couldn’t even hear the traffic from the street anymore, just his own sharp intakes of breath as he searched for her, needed her. The walls around him began to blur, spin on their own accord until he realized that he had stopped moving altogether.

She stood before him, eyes fixed on his for the first time. He looked into her eyes in the flash of that moment, felt every ounce of her pain and rage, amplified a hundred fold. He clapped his hands to his ears, which were already starting to ooze what he had to assume was blood.

She stepped forward, as if for an embrace, opened her mouth and screamed.

Hilton staggered back as if he had been struck. His arms were pulled back and he vaguely felt the bones snapping. He felt pressure like two invisible thumbs on his eyes, pushing further in until he felt the cornea flex and start to break. He saw streaky light and darkness before falling to his knees, now realizing that her screams were now inter-mingling with his own. The world went dark and muffled, as if a sack had been pulled over his head.

He looked down, realizing that he was watching his own feet as they were walking down the center of the number sixty five bus. The other passengers seemed oblivious to his presence as he passed. The world outside the bus seemed to no longer exist, an impenetrable fog bank. All there was for him now was this bus.

He also had the alley, and any others that he could manage to draw there.

He took a seat across from a young attractive passenger. In time, he would figure out how to reveal himself to them.

These passengers could all be his.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog, I hope you enjoyed the story! If you did, I hope you'll consider sharing this story via your social media of choice below, or even leave me a comment!. You can also subscribe above to receive email notifications of new content when it is available.
All text content is the exclusive property of the author, Chad A. Clark and is intended solely for the purposes of viewing online. Any copying, downloading or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.
©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved