Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 48

Issue #81

[image error] “You son of a bitching bastard, can you just roll the nice 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 ‘em 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 crazily 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 that was showing itself to the world, and not for the first time. 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 dammed 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 let him just wear himself down.

Edmund looked to the right at the sound of a surprised inhalation of air. Doris was standing 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 metal.

So it was that he had just enough time to consider the decisions and events that had led him to this; the result of one lucky toss 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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©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved

Baked Scribe Flashback! Issue #20

CHOICES
a fictional short by Chad A. Clark
This was not happening.

Martin had to get this check deposited. If that didn’t happen within the next five minutes, all sorts of insufficient funds related hell was going to rain down on top of him. The bank had made it pretty clear to him that they were no longer going to continue covering his bad checks and that further issues with over-drafting could cause his account to be closed. So when this unexpected refund check from the gas company had been waiting for him in the mailbox, he figured that his problems were solved; at least for this week. But then his car wouldn’t start and the time he spent trying to coax life into it had caused him to miss the bus. The cab company would no longer come to his house due to unpaid fares and all of the dispatchers knew his voice so he couldn’t even call them to a different location. Finally he had ran to the bank, driven by desperation. This was a huge swing of luck in his direction for once and he wasn’t going to lose all of this money to more bank fees.

Then, as if fate hadn’t already taken enough time to shit on him personally, it happened to be at that exact moment when he had turned to look out the window that he had seen it. Across the street, on the top of the ten story apartment building, he could just make out a woman. She was standing, having just made her way up onto the ledge and was now teetering in place, peering down to the street below.

Who knew how long she had been standing up there? No way to tell, no way to know if she was really going to jump or if something else was going on. He was making the wrong assumption, misreading the situation. He needed to deposit this check; the bank was closing in five minutes. Someone else would have to help the woman out there. Other people would have to see her. Unfortunately, the other customers didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything other than the person standing in front of them in line. Even the pedestrians outside walking past on the sidewalk were all of the “heads down, earphones in” variety. Even the cop in the squad car on the corner looked like he was having a mid-day nap.

It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t being frivolous, he needed this money. His welfare was hanging completely on this one deposit. What was he supposed to do, sacrifice his well being in order to stop something that he might even be misinterpreting? He opened his mouth to cry out but he was so parched and dry that no sound came out other than a chocked exhalation of air. Besides, if he had yelled something out, chances were the people would be more interested in rushing to the window to watch than to actually help. And of course, he had left the cell phone on the table at home.

“Son of a bitch.” Truer words had never been uttered.

Evidently he was the only one who could help. The bank would just have to understand; would have to make one more exception. At the very least, they should be willing to stay open for the few extra minutes it would take him to walk out and alert that cop to what was going on. Martin turned and stepped out of the line, his spot immediately absorbed into the swelling crowd. He had taken less than five steps towards the door when the man in the bulky green Army jacket shoved his way into the lobby and pulled out a pistol.

“Everyone hit the floor, this’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

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©2014 Chad A. Clark      All Rights Reserved

Issue #80

The structure of the barn loomed tall against the pitch black of the nighttime sky. Oscar looked up at what sounded like a flock of birds taking flight, darkened silhouettes passing by overhead. There was a hint of thunder and lightning was starting to kiss the furthest reaches of the southern horizon. The heat was oppressive, pressing in on them with physical force. They needed this rain.

“Sorry I had to bring you out here so late at night like this.” Daniel was the caretaker of the property, the one who the bank had arranged to show Oliver around. “Frankly, I don’t really know why you’re so interested in this place anyway. Nothing here you can’t read about in books and police reports.”

“The paper wanted me to be thorough,” Oscar explained. “It’s been ten years since Mr. Rollins’ disappearance and they want the coverage to be extensive.”

“Sure,” Daniel said as he continued fiddling with the padlock.

“I’m surprised that all of this is still here, with what the land has to be worth. What’s the point of just leaving it abandoned?”

‘Well, it isn’t like anyone would ever want to live here. The property went into some anonymous trust, and our company is being paid for the upkeep, but we have no idea what the owner or whoever has planned for this place.”

The walked into the main part of the barn. Oscar heard the fluttering of wings from somewhere up above. There was a strong smell of mildew in the air, indicating not complete neglect, but of a definite absence of attention.

“So what are you looking for anyway?” Daniel asked.

Oscar took out his notebook and flipped it open. “You’re a local, right?”

“Sure. All my life.”

“Would you mind going over with me what happened here, your memories of the events? Just so I can make sure my facts are right?”

Daniel nodded and dropped his gaze to his feet, shuffling them in the dirt as he contemplated his answer.

‘Mr. Rollins was kind of a nobody around here. Came in after the war. Never really did anything to make people take notice of him. You didn’t really like or dislike him. He kept to himself for the most part, minded his own business.”

“What did he do for a living? My understanding is that he owned the farm but didn’t actually do any farming himself.”

“Yeah, he rented out his fields to the neighboring farms. He inherited the land originally and I’m pretty sure he had no interest in working it. Times were good enough that the farmers around him could afford to expand onto his land and he made enough money renting out the property that he could get by.”

“And when did things start to go wrong for him?”

“Well I don’t know if there was ever really a time when things were going ‘right’ for him. Regardless, an older couple came into town claiming that their son and his girlfriend had been driving through here and had gone missing. Sheriff was ready to write them off until someone found the kids’ car, partially buried in the woods.”

“How was it found?”

“Well, whoever had done it had rushed the job a bit. Some of the bumper had been exposed, likely from a recent wind storm. They called in the staties and started going door to door, questioning people. They didn’t have anything else to go on.”

“Until they talked to Mr. Rollins.”

“Not even then, at first. One of the officers thought that he was acting strange and being defensive but wrote it off as Rollins just being a bit of a nut. After a few weeks of chewing it over in his head, the officer decided to report his concerns to his superiors. They were so desperate that they went and got a search warrant based off of it.”

“And that was when they found all the bodies?”

Daniel nodded. “Dozens of them, piled up all over this room here. Whatever he had been doing with them, it had been going on for a pretty long time. The bodies had been hacked up, thrown all over the place, it was a dammed mess. There was a bunch of strange equipment down below here and it looked like he had been operating, conducting tests of some kind.”

“And Mr. Rollins was not present during the search, wasn’t heard from again after this?”

“That’s correct.”

“And what about his research?”

Daniel snorted. “I guess if that’s what you’d call it. They found boxes full of Steno notebooks full of his chicken scratches. Crap about other universes, lots of mathematical equations, numbers and more formulas, dates for test subjects.”

“Do you think the people he killed were the test subjects he was referring to?”

“Who knows? Probably. Anyway, the last entry they found just had one word. Success.”

Oscar strolled around the barn’s interior. As much as the property outside had remained untouched, most of what had been in here had long since been removed. All that remained was a few stray bales of hay. The wood surfaces all around were stained, either from water damage or something else. He had reviewed black and white photographs of the original crime scene, bodies discarded and piled up against the walls. He bent down and ran his hand along the handle of a water pump that was jutting up and out of the ground.

“Who were his victims? The people he killed, was there any kind of connection established?”

“Best anyone could tell, they were all either drifters, or people out on the road for some reason or the other. He never killed anyone who lived here, guess he didn’t want the attention.”

Oscar nodded, but didn’t say anything to add to the theory.

“Your paper said that you were going to want to see the cellar, is that right?”

“Yeah, I think I need to go down there, unfortunately. Is that a problem?” Oscar found himself half hoping that it would be.

“Nope. The trap door is just over there by the back wall. It’s just that … if it’s all the same, I’d just as soon stay up here.”

Oscar shook his head. “That’s all right. Not a problem.”

Daniel seemed to relax noticeably and went to unlatching the door. He pulled it up and let it drop, the slam of the door dropping to the ground accompanied by a small cloud of dust expelled up into the air. Oscar stared down the stairs leading down into the cellar and contemplated the immensity of what had likely occurred down there.

“There’s a work light down there,” Daniel said. “About ten feet to the right from the very bottom of the stairs. Just turn as soon as you step off and go in a straight line, you’ll run into it eventually.”

Oscar nodded and began walking down the steps, wincing at the groaning from the wood, sure that he was about to end up trapped down here for seven hours while Daniel tried to get a rescue unit out here to fish him out. The stairs held out though and he soon found himself standing at the base of the stairs. There was a rectangle of light on the floor, cast from the open trapdoor above and all else was darkness.

He took several stops to the right, waving his arms around until he made contact with the light, hanging from the ceiling. As he fumbled with it, trying to find the power switch, he had a brief image of Rollins reaching out to him from across the room.

The light finally clicked on and cast illumination all around the thirty square foot room. There was an even stronger smell of damp mildew and mold down here, bugs and worms oozing out from the walls and the muddy mess that the floor had become. There was a wooden work bench set against the wall with pegs on the wall where various tools had likely once hung. The walls down here were also stained dark, making him think of blood or other bodily fluids. Oscar found himself fixating on what Rollins might have been doing to all these people, what horrific lengths he had gone in, to pursue what he evidently saw as the needs of science.

The coroner’s original report had suggested that the cuts and wounds on the bodies were consistent with that of an axe, or possibly a saw. No tool like this seemed present here in this room but standing here in this place, where so much violence and suffering had taken place, he could almost detect the metallic taste on his tongue of blood in the air.

There were spare parts strewn all over, but only one piece of actual, intact equipment, in the center of the room. It looked like it had once been the pilot’s chair of a plane, stripped out and mounted on the floor, possibly the reason why it had never been moved. A primitive control panel of sorts had been bolted onto one of the arm rests, with a number of dials and switches, marked with numbers and letters but with no indication of their actual purpose.

Oscar felt an urge to take a seat, examining the contours that looked perfectly suited for his frame. There were two pedals on the floor of the contraption and, without really thinking it through, he reached down and pressed one of them with an open palm, pushing it down until there was a clicking sound from somewhere inside the mechanism and the pedal made contact with the former floor of the aircraft.

The barn began to shake, a deep rumbling that came from somewhere deep underneath the ground itself. He looked to his right at the sound of tools clanking against the wall. Tools that weren’t even there in the first place.

“What the hell is going on down there?” He heard Daniel yelling down at him but only from across a wide gulf. The building was shaking so much that pieces of the rafter were starting to pull loose and rain down on him. The light bulb in the work light popped, fading to dark before showering glass down on him.

Oscar was kneeling down on the floor, crouched with his hands thrown up over his head. He was afraid to make his way back to the stairs in the dark, not knowing what debris had fallen that he now couldn’t see. His mind was screaming at him for not bringing the flashlight that was currently sitting in his glove-box.

The howling of the wind outside was now joined by the ringing in his ears. As he started to stand up, another sound started to creep into his awareness. It was a dragging sound, shuffling across the dirt floor.

It was the sound of footsteps.

Rollins had never been found, presumably out there somewhere, making himself scarce. Despite that, Oscar somehow knew, in that moment, whose presence he was now feeling with him in the room.

“Daniel?” He tried calling out to the caretaker but there was no answer other than the sound of wood fracturing. The room shook with the sudden noise and impact of the stairs finally collapsing under the weight of some unknown force. He heard the footsteps approaching him in the dark, and now the sound of ragged breathing. He also heard something else, dragging like the footsteps, but this had a metallic edge to it, something being dragged behind in the dirt.

The head of an axe.


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 #79

“We will open fire,” the voice was authoritative but also brimming with excitement for the possibility as it blasted through the megaphone. Jenson waved the sword around in wild circles, trying to get the thing 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 of it.”

“For the hundredth time, it physically won’t leave my hand, look!” He unwrapped all of his fingers to show that nothing was gripping the hilt. Still, it remained clinging to his palm. 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 suddenly 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 being 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.

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

The image above is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. click here for the original image.

Baked Scribe flashback! Issue #25

Already, the exact sequence of events was starting to blur in his mind. All he could really remember had been the hulking rust pile of a Chevy Nova racing up on him. The car pitched to the right and left, mere feet off his bumper as he tried to focus on the road ahead of him. This went on for several minutes before the Nova pulled sharply to the left with a scream of tires and horsepower and raced past him.

That was precisely when Cliff had decided to give the guy the finger.

It was cathartic for about a second but as he lowered his hand, he saw the Nova swerve to the left, spraying dirt and gravel before pulling back out onto the road, over-correcting and almost ending up going off on the other side as well. Through the tinted window, he could have sworn he saw the driver twist around in his seat to look back. His stomach eased somewhat as the Nova took the next off ramp and exited the freeway. As he looked though, his relief quickly diminished as he saw the Nova come to a cursory stop at the intersection before charging ahead onto the on-ramp, accelerating back towards the freeway where he would again be positioned behind Cliff.

He looked back ahead of him in time to see the bright green overhead sign for the turnoff onto the tollway and decided to hang the expense. If nothing else, there would be more troopers on this road or at least the gridlock would slow down the guy enough that maybe he would cool down and give up on whatever reprisal he was hatching for the finger incident.

Cliff had never seen the tollway this empty.

There were a handful of cars moving along around him but nothing like the usual cesspool of bumpers and car horns he usually found here. Nothing to create any kind of protective buffer between him and the psycho back there, not even cops anywhere to be seen.

A dull car horn erupted from behind him and he saw the Nova, again right off the bumper swerving from side to side in an attempt to intimidate.

It was working.

Why couldn’t there be an old fashioned speed trap when you really needed one?

Cliff was knocked back against his seat as the car rocked forward, swerving as his hands slipped off the steering wheel. The guy had actually rammed him from behind. He saw the Nova in his mirror, now several car lengths back but looking like it was readying for another charge.

“Come on!” he screamed out for the first time as the Nova sped up to run it’s shitty, rusty bumper into the back of Cliff’s import. He cursed himself for not taking the extra minute to walk back into the kitchen for the cell phone.

It was becoming clear as the Nova looked close to taking a third charge that there was no hope of outrunning the guy and there was evidently no help to be expected out here on the road. He actually began to consider just pulling over and confronting the guy but who knew what he was capable of; for all Cliff knew, he would just end up getting run down by a few tons of metal and rust.

The police siren made him jump and practically melt into his seat from relief at the audible tones of his salvation. He promptly pulled over to the shoulder and watched his pursuer do the same. All of this would end up being worth it just to see the crazy getting dragged out of the car and thrown in cuffs as he was stuffed into the back of the police cruiser.

The cop raced past them without even slowing.

Cliff watched the car door of the Nova swing open and the hulking heap of a driver step out. Before he could come any closer, Cliff jumped out, slammed his door and raced around his car to the metal barrier along the side of the road. He scrambled over it and made his way down the short embankment that leveled out into a small parking lot. The building that was looming over him looked like a low end apartment building but at this point he couldn’t really care less what it was as long as he could make some distance. As he pulled open the back door, he could hear feet slapping pavement behind him as well as the sharp, ragged breath of Mr. Friendly.

He took the steps up two at a time and had gotten halfway up the second floor before he heard the door open below and the second set of footfalls on the stairs. The only thing he had going for him at this point was that the other guy looked completely out of shape. If he ever got those meat slabs for hands around Cliff’s throat it would be all over but staying ahead of the guy seemed very possible.

There were six floors total. When he got to the fifth, he stopped long enough to kick the door open, trying to make as much noise as possible in a desperate attempt to throw the guy off. He took to the stairs again, trying to control his breathing and not make any noise as he ascended; reaching the top floor and carefully letting himself through the door and into the hallway. Apartments lined each side as he walked and even though he imagined the walls to be paper thin, he couldn’t really make out any sound as he walked. God forbid there be anyone up there that might help him.

Cliff got to the end of the hall and was looking up at the emergency exit when the door behind him was thrown open and the buffoon who had not been fooled by his idiotic ruse came stumbling into the hall. The two men stared at each other from their respective ends of the hallway and all Cliff could see was the biological picture of rage, residing in those eyes. Cliff backed into the emergency exit, pushing it open and stepping out onto the balcony. The door closed behind him as he turned to try and take advantage of the few seconds he would have to make the right decision.

The balcony stood perched alone, attached to the side of the building. There was one thin railing going all around except for the right side where Cliff guessed at one point there had been either stairs or a ladder. As of now, there was nothing connecting this balcony to the fifth floor below. Apparently if there was actually a fire, residents of the sixth floor were supposed to float away, or just not be home.

Cliff was thrown against the railing as the door pushed open, one linebacker-sized, pissed off driver coming at him from the other side. His time to contemplate was done. Cliff took two steps back, ran forward and jumped. He watched the balcony on the next floor down rush up at him as he kicked his legs through open air. Somehow, he managed to land squarely in the middle of the balcony, his momentum causing him to bounce and skid across and nearly over the edge. He was able to put a leg out just in time to brace himself against the railing and he winced at the screaming of straining metal; the image in his head of the balcony simply detaching from the building to crash to the ground below.

This did not happen, and the fifth floor balcony actually still had stairs. Cliff raced down, gripping the rail and taking the steps four or five at a time until he was at the third floor balcony, then the second and finally back down to the ground. He took a moment to look back up at the sixth floor where he had started. The guy was still standing up there, glaring down and looking like he knew the chase had been lost. Cliff gave the guy a mock salute and just for good measure, threw him the bird one last time before returning to his car.

Ten minutes later, he was racing down the tollway and back into the kind of traffic he was more accustomed to. He flicked his headlights on and off as he cruised just off the bumper of the guy in front of him who refused to drive just a little faster. Cliff swore under his breath and swerved over to pass the guy, not understanding how some idiots were given drivers licenses. Some people actually had to get to work on time. He passed the car and just as their bumpers cleared, he swerved hard, back into the original lane, causing the other driver to swerve in surprise from the near collision. Cliff smirked as he watched the car dwindle into the distance in his mirror and for a moment wondered if this had been why the guy in the Nova was so pissed off.

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 #78 : 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 start right now.

“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, 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, had just run his thumb along the edge, pinched and lifted it up in his pocket to feel the weight of it.

The door.

He looked out from the inside and saw the teenager gaping down at the ground. Following the kid’s gaze down 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 no no no! Fuck you, don’t even think about … Stop it, fuck-hole!” He sped up his speech as if trying to find some talismanic combination of the words that would fix everything. 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 sound of 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 show that stuck up bitch who was who. “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 at the ticket. 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 the numbers have to match, right?”



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

The image used for the cover above is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. This image was created by Bartosz Sendere (Bartosz Senderek / Creative Commons BY-SA-2.5 / Wikimedia Commons) Click here to see the original image.

Baked Scribe Flashback! Issue #16

The child was him.

It was the first revelation that had come to him upon waking in this place, if a place was what it could be called. The last memory he had before this was the sight of the median rushing up at him followed by the sound of glass breaking and tires squealing. Those sights and sounds had opened the door into an eternity of darkness from which he had awoken suspended amidst a mass of swirling gray clouds. They roiled around him in every direction he looked; side to side, up and even below where they obscured whatever it was that he was standing on. His stomach lurched at the sensation of walking through the middle of a cloud but he had the feeling that he had no choice but to take these steps.

Then the child had appeared.

Through the mist, he had approached and then stopped, looking up at Jacob with his hand held out patiently. Despite the gesture of invitation, he froze as he couldn’t shake the sensation of recognition, the feeling of familiarity. It had hit him all at once. There were so many pictures lying around their parents house, it would be hard not to recognize his own face even at such a young age. It was him in every way, greeting himself as a seven year old guide waiting to take him. Where exactly?

Jacob reached out and took the tiny hand in his. Instantly the clouds burst apart around him and a long hallway formed. It was like watching a film in reverse as the walls and ceiling rushed together to coalesce above, below and all around. To their left and right, doorways began to appear along the walls and his child companion stopped at each, clearly expecting him to look within.

In one room, he saw himself as a teenager, hunting for the first time with his uncle. He was reaching down to lift a bunny up out of a nest, looking around to see if anyone was watching before taking hold and twisting the head until the neck broke. The next room contained the college version of himself, in bed with the waitress from the restaurant he had met during his part time job. She sat atop him, taking him into her already even as she was removing her bra, moving onto him as she took his hands to place them onto her breasts. In another room he saw himself at ten, sitting in the funeral parlor for his grandfather’s funeral. In another he was accepting his high school diploma, watching himself and knowing that as he walked across that stage, all he was wondering was if anyone knew that he wasn’t wearing any clothes under the gown.

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

As he ascended, he pondered the commonality of all those moments he had looked back on. How at the time they had seemed like trivial moments, stepping stones on the way to what his life really would be like when he had achieved what he wanted. Only years after would he look back on those experiences with nostalgia wishing more than anything else he could return to those moments so that he could really savor the sensation and experiences now gone forever. What was there really to be said about a life perpetually spent looking over one’s shoulder?

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

The patient on the bed was him, like looking into a distorted reflection. The version of himself on the bed looked like he had been badly beaten; with bruises, cuts and lacerations all over his body. As he stepped forward for a closer look, his mangled self opened his eyes and spoke to him softly.

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

Jacob shook his head, “I don’t understand what you mean.” He tried to ask for more but the injured version of himself had already drifted into a state of unawareness, looking blankly off into the open space of the room. A repetitive beeping had started to fill his head, starting slowly and now reaching a manically frantic pace. He felt sweat beading up on his forehead and neck and started looking around the room, convinced that whatever was happening around him, he would soon be expected to have a solution.

A solution for what? Being trapped inside of his own head? Trapped with no clear purpose or indication of intent? If these shades of himself were supposed to be functioning as guides of a sort, they had yet to explain to him what he was doing in this place or where they were taking him.

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

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

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

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

The world was engulfed in flames.

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

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

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

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

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

Again, the sound of hospital monitors filled his head. He could also hear the sound of distant chatter; the operating room? He wanted out, out from these mental shackles and back into the life he did not realize until now how much he wanted. The past he could never return to, his expectations of what his life should be and his fears of what was yet to come; they all needed to be left behind so that he could truly live his life within each moment.

It takes rising up above things to be able to look down and take perspective. He stepped up onto the ledge in a sudden moment of inspiration and looked down into the billowing storm clouds below. Sometimes moving on required an active dramatic severance. Jacob stepped off the edge.

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

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

Jacob shook his head and looked into the rear view mirror, scanning traffic for an opening and smiling ever so slightly; either from the elation over still being alive or from the ever elusive understanding of what really was and was not important to him in the one life he had been lucky enough to be blessed with. He resumed his path, spirit renewed in the foundry of second chances.

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 #77 : In Deep

Tyson doused the lantern hanging over his boat and looked out over the darkness of the lake. Other than the sliver of the moon and the headlights from the occasional car passing over on the bridge, there was no unnatural light anywhere. He eased back into his seat and waved his pole from side to side, dragging the bait through the water and trying to entice a bite. He would have to remember to tear Ricky a new one the next time he saw him for recommending this new model of lure. One fish in the bucket was not his definition of success.

Still, even if he was going to be headed for home with almost no fish, it was still peaceful to be out here. It centered him, sitting out here under the nighttime illumination. The lake was like a shimmering void that he floated across, taken only where the current and the wind took him.

As his his mind was wandering, he didn’t register the sound at first but when he heard it five minutes later, it made him sit up and take notice.

Something was scratching at the bottom of the boat.

It didn’t make any sense. He was too far away from shore for there to be any undergrowth down there. He fished these waters enough to know almost down to the foot how deep the water was underneath him. Someone must have dumped something into the lake that was now floating just underneath the boat. Idiot kids pitching God knew what out of the windows of their cars as they passed over.

Whatever it was, the sound ceased as the boat passed over it. Tyson picked up another can of beer and cracked it open, savoring the popping of the air being released and the smell that wafted up over him. He let his attention drift back to his line again and tried to let go of speculating about what could have been underneath his feet.

Movement along the shoreline caught his attention and he looked to see that a small pack of wolves had come up to the water’s edge and were stalking back and forth, staring out at him with eyes that glared in the moonlight and moving with what looked like a frantic, nervous energy. In his entire life he had never seen a single wolf around here, let alone a pack like this that looked like they were itching to bolt away from some unseen threat. Even out here on the water, he could hear their ragged breathing, see the mania in their eyes and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he found himself contemplating the rifle he kept stowed underneath the bench. Before he had the chance to start reaching for it, one of the wolves yelped, as if in pain, and the pack ran off together, in unison.

Thunder crashed overhead and he flinched at the sound. He had checked the radar before coming out here and had confirmed the beautiful weather that had been predicted. Nothing but clear skies and typical summer heat for the entire night. Another peel of thunder was closely followed by a streak of lightning across the sky and then silence.

Tyson lifted the can again and took a long drink. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly and clenched his fist to keep himself from having to look at it. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to simply drop the line and make for land, to turn the light back on and call it a night. His pride was keeping him from doing any of that.

He shivered as a cold breeze came in over the boat, raising the skin on his arms. It was like a breath of air spilling over him, while something else was watching him, peering over his shoulder. The silence was broken by the sound of an animal shrieking, likely meeting its end out there somewhere. Needing a distraction, he reached down and twisted the knob on his prehistoric radio set. The tinny sound of big band jazz came filtering through the tiny little speaker. At least it gave him something to focus on, something else to think about.

Something, that was, other than the sensation that the boat was being pulled out, pushed away from the shore. It was just the natural currents, he told himself. He said this, even though he had never seen currents this strong. There was a thin line of wake left behind as the boat cut through the water and even though he wanted to tell himself that he had just caught another fish, he soon realized that the boat was being pulled in a direction opposite from where his pole was aimed.

The water around the boat began to roil and steam. The boat started to roll gently along with the newly increasing wake and before long, he was being rocked from side to side, having to brace himself against the sides of the boat to keep from falling off the bench.

The boat rolled, flipping him over with it and in a heartbeat was upside down, with him holding on to the bench, trying to keep his head up above water in the tiny pocket of air that had formed underneath. He looked down into the darkness of the water and saw them for the first time.

He saw legs.

They looked like elongated spider legs, rising up from the depth. They reached up for him and far beyond, still rising up from the murky water below, he could make out a pair of twin, glowing red eyes moving towards him. Before he could react, the legs shot up out of the water, took hold of him and pulled him down.

His lungs were already starting to burn and the water stung his eyes as he opened them, the full moon providing just enough illumination that he could make out the thing hovering in the water in front of him. It looked like it was the size of the cab of a pickup truck. The dark skin undulated in the water with the dozen or so legs protruding from the spherical body. Scaly legs gripped his head and began to force his mouth open. He resisted for as long as he could before lake water was rushing in and he felt the pain of multiple puncture wounds all up his arms and legs.

He had read about drowning feeling like falling asleep and as the thing in front of him continued to ensnare him and as he saw the widening mouth of razor sharp teeth coming at him, he welcomed the sensation of ebbing weightlessness and gave in as his eyes began to slide shut.

Waking up was not something he was prepared for.

He was lying on his back on the boat, the case of beer bottles now mostly empty and rolling around his feet. Tyson shook his head and set up, admonishing himself silently for not knowing better. Once he got started with the booze, there was no stopping and the result had been passing out with one of the worst dreams he had ever had.

The moon had long since passed the point where he would have normally started for home. He scratched at his arm as he reached back to start the motor, noticing for the first time the rash that was starting to break out on his arm. The itching was getting worse. He scratched harder, only vaguely worried about breaking through the skin in the process.

As the itching grew so intense it felt like his skin was on fire he saw that a blister was actually starting to form as well. He moved to touch it and drew back as it started to swell, as if air was being pumped into it and causing it to inflate. It had grown to he size of a golf ball before he raised a hand to slap at it.

Before he could, the skin ripped down the middle, like a shirt bursting open. Tyson yelled out as pain flared up his arm and from within the blood now gushing from his arm, a dozen tiny spider like legs burst out of the wound and was followed by a rounded dark colored body, a miniaturized version of what he had just seen in his dream. He swung a hand across and knocked the thing off his arm. It hit the bottom of the boat and slid all the way to the bow.

He began to feel the burning in his left arm and already another blister was forming. Skin along the base of his neck tore open and he felt another one of the things scampering up onto his head. He swatted at it, felt the tiny body crush, followed by the feeling of its blood trickling down his neck and back.

Tyson reached up and as he felt his cheeks start to push out on their own, as if something was shoving out from the inside. His tongue had started to swell and in an instant, he tasted a burst of blood flooding into his mouth along with the clambering of legs in his mouth, crawling out through his lips, while another set began forcing its way down his throat.

He fell back off the bench and tried to scream, but his throat had started to swell, constricting any kind of vocal cord response. Thrashing from side to side, clutching at his throat, he began to feel the insect sized legs clawing forth from his ears and his nose, clawing out from underneath his fingernails. He felt his skin tearing along his arms, legs, up his stomach and across his face. From the corner of his eye he could see that the bottom of his boat was now almost completely covered with the things.

In his dwindling moments, he saw the spider-like legs emerging from the water before dropping down onto the boat, taking up the tiny versions of itself in wide swipes, carrying its children from the boat and to their rightful home deep down, below the water’s surface.

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! Issue #23

Sealed, Delivered
a fictional short by Chad A. Clark
The only reason he had come to the house was to deliver the pizza. But from the moment he buzzed and the door opened, he knew that he was in for a lot more than that. Whatever the argument that she had just finished with the boyfriend or the husband or the girlfriend or whomever; the result was her standing here on the threshold wearing the still moist tracks of tears, and barely more than a suggestive smile.

Timmy had immediately averted his gaze, suddenly fascinated by the crown molding and the color of the drapes. She was asking him something about accepting special gratuities or something. He tried to focus on what it would feel like to have a knife driven into him at Jenna’s hands if she ever heard about this incident.

“It’s...” his voice failed into a volley of coughing and he took another run at it. “It’s $17.95 ma’am.”

“But you need my coupon,” she said, running a hand down the button down shirt, conveniently unbuttoned. She slid her hand to one side, revealing the swell of one breast. “I think I’ve got it here under my-“

“Nope, I’m good.” Timmy let out an abrupt laugh that sounded fake even to him. “I don’t need your coupon, I’ll take your word for it.”

She looked down at herself, underneath the tails of the shirt that revealed the micro-thin underwear that she was wearing. “My wallet is all the way over there on the table by the phone. Please take whatever you think is fair.”

Timmy lurched into the room and grabbed the wallet, looking through the bills when suddenly her hand snaked around him, caressing softly and moving for a vacation down south. Timmy groaned and turned, finding himself thrust into a clumsy embrace. His hands that he had raised up to push her away from him ended up cupping the least opportune place possible on her body while her lips were suddenly on his and her hands were fumbling with the elastic band of his shorts.

“What in the blue fuck is going on here?” the voice of the police officer that was evidently also the voice of her husband brought a high pitched shriek to Timmy’s voice and he pushed her away. She tumbled backwards over the coffee table and fell roughly to the ground and to his dismay, she was now screaming at her husband to help her, to save her from the predator who had just tried to take advantage of her when all she wanted was a pizza. Timmy froze over her prone body, vaguely aware that her purse was now clutched tightly in his grip. The sight of the officer reaching for his pepper spray broke him out of his stupor and he fled towards the back door.

When he hit the yard, the husband hadn’t taken pursuit yet. Before he could emerge from the house, Timmy dove into the gigantic play house that the man had probably built himself for his kids. He slammed the door shut behind him and looked around at the toy tea set that he had knocked askew.

Outside he heard the husband raging obscenities and throwing lawn ornaments. It went on for some time but eventually the sound began to fade and Timmy started to feel like maybe it was safe.

Then he heard gravel crunching followed by the sound of all things, the doorbell. Timmy’s voice went up several more octaves as the only words he could think to say spilled out.

“Not without a warrant!”

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 Special Edition

So the folks over at Dark Moon Digest have made this (unofficially) Stephen King Month and will be posting tributes to him throughout. I am not one of their writers but I felt like unofficially participating anyway as I owe so much to him and the catalog of work that we all have been so lucky to have received. I think that one of the most important qualities for any artist is to pay respect to not only those who came before them, but in particular to those who have blazed trails in their respective art forms so wide that it paves the way for generations more to follow.

When I look back on my grade school and junior high school years, I remember my emotional response to the books as much as the reading itself. This was the late eighties, getting into the nineties, and Stephen King had pretty much become a household name. You saw his books everywhere and the cover art of the various books always gave me a thrill, that these were grown up books and not something that I should have. Whenever I went to the library I constantly found my attention drawn to these books, the covers and how much I wanted to read them but was also afraid to.

I wish I could say for sure which Stephen King book was my first. Mostly, when I think back on my experiences as a child reading Stephen King, I think about other kinds of firsts. I remember how Pet Semetary was the first time I knew that a book could have the power to make you feel physically dirty and to have total fear of the unknown that lays out there around us. I remember how Skeleton Crew made me see how even something as mundane as a fog or a floating dock in a lake could become terrifying. I remember reading IT for the first time and seeing what a narrative could look like when taken to a grand and epic scale.

Mostly, I learned about how cool it must be to be a writer.

I identify the third grade as when I started my passion for creative writing, although I have since come across examples of writing I did even before that. But regardless of when it started, writing was one of my main pastimes during that period of my life. It was so amazing to me to think of how much control a writer could have and that all of the great things I saw in books and in movies were things that I could do myself, only limited by my own imagination.

I have no shame in admitting that in those early years, I wrote a lot of silly iterations of authors I was reading, including Stephen King. This was also the heyday of the slasher flick so naturally I was writing a LOT of gory horror stories. As far as I'm concerned, the best way to learn how to write is to emulate the ones you admire the most. I have read that Hunter S. Thompson transcribed entire Hemingway novels, by hand, because he wanted to know what it felt like to write something great. I never went to that extent but I think that the point is that the writers who make you passionate about literature and your own writing are there for a reason. You should do everything you can to learn from them, even if it's using them for a crutch for a while until you find your own narrative legs.

As I got older, I drifted away from Stephen King and turned to other things. There could be any number of reasons for this, it's natural for the tastes of a reader to change as they get older. I imagine, also, that as my academic career started to pick up and get more serious I may have developed somewhat of an ego and saw such fiction as beneath me. I felt like I should be reaching for literature of a "higher standard".

I think that it is no coincidence that this was about the time when I also stopped writing. I tried my hand at what I considered to be "serious fiction" and failed miserably. I loved the works of classic literature and I suppose I imposed an expectation on myself that as a "budding intellectual", I should also be capable of this type of writing. I stopped wanting to become the next Stephen King or Isaac Asimov and replaced it with a need to be the next Faulkner, the next Kafka. In the end, I lost steam for writing completely because I think that deep down, I wasn't doing what really made me happy.

Flash forward to many years after I graduated from college, and I found myself venturing into the world of books on tape. I had a long commute to work and this made for a convenient time to listen to books. Before I knew it, I was re-immersing myself into the catalog of Stephen King. I listened to books I had already read previously and I introduced myself to new ones. I picked up other authors that I had loved growing up and had long since walked away from. I remembered for the first time in a long time that reading was something that could, and more importantly, should be fun. It had been over a decade since I was that kid who would reach for a book whenever the chance allowed, not wanting to put it down until I read just one more chapter. Life is too short for pretensions, reading should be something that brings joy to your life.

It was shortly after this that I began to write again.

In similar fashion, I had to re-learn the fun of the narrative and the satisfaction that can be created in that process. Only if the writer is truly taking joy from their creations is the reader going to do the same. I truly believe this is true and I could feel it in my creative output. Before, when I would try to write, I would have an idea but after a few pages or a few chapters I would just peter out, abandoning the story forever. Now, the words were flowing and as I devoted myself more and more to my craft, that creative voice inside my head just became louder and more insistent, offering up more narrative fodder for me to play with.

When I gave myself permission to write what I was passionate about and made me happy, I truly began to experience the thrill of setting my words loose on to the page and then molding them into something that was perfect for me.  I gained the confidence I needed to put my writing in front of others because I was able to let go of the mistaken belief that the acceptance or rejection from other people was what I needed to be validated as a writer.

Stephen King wrote a book about himself and about his craft, titled, On Writing.  It's one that I come back to regularly whenever I need to refill my emotional tanks. Stephen King reminded me that I should allow my writing to be whatever it is, to not worry about what it isn't. He reminded me that there is no shame in genre fiction and that even stories about ghouls and goblins can be smart and entertaining if done well. I can't say that I wouldn't be a writer today had it not been for Stephen King's books but I do know that the path would have been a much harder one for me.

In the wake of Robin William's tragic passing, I find myself being reflective lately, looking back and reminding myself that nothing is promised to us in our lives and that the time to chase your dreams is today, not tomorrow. Some days you will take twenty steps towards it and other days you will take only one. I am constantly grateful for the books we have and I am humbled with each book that is released to see him so willing, even now, to continue sharing his gift with the world. I see Stephen King and it makes me want to work as hard as I can to be the best writer I can be and to earn this gift which has been bestowed upon me.

I wish there was something bigger I could say, other than "thank you", but in the end we have to use the words that are there. Thank you for everything you have done and for everything you do. Thank you for being a beacon of light for all of us to look up to. Thank you for being so generous with your words and with your gift. You will always have a place on my bookshelves and it is my admiration and respect for you that makes me feel honored to say that I am a writer.


Chad A. Clark
Cedar Rapids, 2014