Cancel Toby Chalmers!: Chapter 6
Well, since my novelette Cancel Toby Chalmers! (copyright me, now) has been sitting around, completed, for nearly 16 months, I’ve decided to share it for free, until it’s later released as part of a Toby Chalmers collection.
Here are Chapters 1-3: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here are Chapters 4 and 5: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here’s Chapter 6.
Chapter 6
Awakening in his bed, fully dressed, yet again, Toby Chalmers groaned and vowed to cut down on his drinking. He made that vow often in the a.m., though it always evaporated hours later. Days encompassed too many hours. The tedium of modern existence demanded a tonic to fuzz his thoughts and make him grin.
His kidneys ached most mightily. He was lying on his cellphone, he realized. Retrieving it, he discovered that its battery had died. I must’ve started an ASMR playlist and passed out while watching it, he thought.
After plugging the phone into its charger, he set off for his bathroom, for the usual morning routine.
* * *
Damn, that hits the spot, Toby thought to himself, polishing off the last of his breakfast burrito—leftover steak sliced into morsels, plus eggs and mozzarella cheese, enwrapped in a flour tortilla. He’d been making himself breakfast burritos nearly every day lately. Beef, chicken, bacon, potatoes, bell peppers—their contents might’ve varied, but the satisfaction they provided remained constant. He liked to wash them down with the same customized beverage: half chocolate oat milk, half organic cow milk, stirred until perfectly blended.
He'd worked out already. Time to brush his teeth. Then, to keep himself occupied for a while, he’d return to the story he was writing.
Why bother? he wondered. After all, he hardly needed the scant income that his efforts earned him. With Toby’s austere lifestyle, the trust fund he’d drained years prior would last him until death. Moreover, the days where he’d felt a pressing need to contribute to the artform he so cherished were long gone. He didn’t even write horror anymore, just puerile, perverted bizarro fiction that he could barely stand to put his name to. That was the only writing he could sell.
Well, at least I have fans, he’d told himself until recently. Eventually, my horror stuff’ll catch on and I can craft stories that I’m proud of again. But was that even the case? In his early days as an aspiring horror author, when it seemed as if he’d jump out of his own flesh if he didn’t churn out prose and sleep came irregularly and far too meagerly, he’d been inundated with ideas—morning, noon and night. He’d jotted notes down onto every paper scrap available or texted them to himself when out on the town. He’d felt as if he was but a channel for greatness to flow through, as if he’d embraced a higher calling and would soon be banging celebrities. He'd worked on four separate narratives daily, shifting perspectives with ease, researching on the fly. Now, he could hardly stand to craft a single novella, only wrote because he couldn’t think of anything better to do.
Truthfully, he didn’t even like the scant fans that he did have. Most were middle-aged Caucasian men who seemed far too interested in fucking him. They sent him flirty direct messages, even after he assured them that he’s straight. A few had even sent cock photos and ended up being blocked. One proposed marriage. Another rolled a paperback copy of The Indelible Adventures of Sergeant Thundershorts into a tube and deepthroated it. Toby had met plenty of cool homosexuals back when he’d had more of a social life, who’d sold him great MDMA, respected his sexual boundaries, and even introduced him to pretty women, but a significant percentage of his readers now seemed quite rape-hungry.
Oh well, better get to work, he thought.
* * *
Later, resting his hands, Toby read back what he’d written: “‘Keep perfectly still,’ the man said to his wife, as he stuffed her vagina with grass ’til it overflowed. ‘Once our sexy little sheep slut is eating you out with much gusto, I’ll take her from behind, rough and fast. It’ll be our first threesome. You’ll love it, I say. No, don’t look at me like that. This is all for you, baby.’”
I can’t finish writing this, can I? Toby thought. I always assured myself that I’d never write about bestiality, yet I’m just a page or two away from doing just that. That was the line I’d never cross, I’d assumed. What’s the fuck’s wrong with me?
I’m going crazy in here, cooped up all by myself. What if writing about sheep sex turns me on? I should go out to dinner somewhere, maybe flirt with a waitress. I’ll write my phone number on the check and tip exorbitantly…see if I hear back from her. Oh, that reminds me, I left my phone charging.
Retrieving his now fully-charged celly from his bedroom, he thought, Wow, I haven’t gone on social media once today. That’s gotta be some kind of record for me.
And of course, having mentally invoked social media’s specter, Toby found himself with no choice but to activate an app. Whoa, what the hell? he thought, inundated by notifications. 2,842 replies. 584 quote reposts. Most of the time, I’m lucky to have a few notifications. What did I post again, anyway?
IPA fog had swallowed all recollection of the previous night’s writing. Vaguely, he recalled the disgust he’d felt upon seeing black-on-black police brutality on TV, and how he’d decided to address it. I must’ve achieved some real drunken eloquence, he thought, just like Ernest Hemingway. Good for me.
Then he started reading the replies.
“Kill yourself, you racist pig fucker!” wrote 2Woke2Die.
“Whitey gon’ white,” wrote YUGumpin.
“Get right with Jesus!” wrote getrightwithJESUS.
PatriotiCali wrote, “Finally, somebody understands that niggers should only be allowed out at night. You’re my hero, Toby Chalmers!”
Oh my fuckin’ God, thought Toby. No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Did I accidentally write something racist? Please tell me I didn’t.
His dinner plans now forgotten, he checked out a few quote reposts.
“Look at this bitch ass Toby Chalmers, outin’ himself as a racist,” wrote SWOLLHYPHY.
“Cancel and cancel again for good measure!” wrote QuitStaringAtMyTits.
“More trash writing from a trash writer,” wrote 66picklesandchange.
Toby could put it off no longer. Guess I’d better bite the bullet, he thought. I’ll see what’s gotten everyone so worked up and attempt to explain myself. I didn’t go full edgelord last night, did I? He found his post and thought, Holy shit, it’s a long one. With an extended sigh, he began reading:
Race memory has long ascribed a stigma to darkness. Indeed, from the dawn of humanity, nighttime has provided predators with cover to skulk, stalk, and assault, then disappear back into gloom. Hazards unknown in the day manifest to purloin, rape, and murder. Sometimes those hazards arise in one’s own psyche.
By and large, as a species, we prefer to see our surroundings, to read faces and postures to discern dark intentions. We prefer the warmth of the sun to the moon’s cold indifference. Candles, lightbulbs, flashlights, phones, computers, and TV screens keep darkness at bay. When in total tenebrosity, we strive to sleep, to regain vibrancy in our dreams.
Our distaste for the darkness has even shaped our language. White magic will heal you. Black magic will hurt. A white knight will help you. A black knight will harm. Blackouts hide drunken misdeeds from your memory. You blacklist, blackball, and blackguard those you want excluded, and blackmail those whose money you covet. If you’re believed to be truly evil, some will label you a blackheart. But what of those individuals of African descent known as blacks?
Is it so much of a stretch to assume that humanity’s collective unconscious, which has long associated blackness with wrongdoing, has prejudiced each and every human, blacks included, against people of African descent? Look at the arrest statistics. Look at the black-on-black violence statistics. Look at the slave trade that shaped the United States as we know it: Africans selling other Africans to Caucasians, to treat as beasts of burden. The reasonably intelligent transcend their innate bigotry and give blacks a chance to prove themselves great, but many people are dumber than shit.
Spade, darky, spook, shadow skin, and tar baby—just a handful of the racial epithets crafted to call attention to their skin coloring. Stereotypes about blacks abound even now, perpetrated by the media and black celebrities all too happy to portray themselves as drug dealing criminals for paychecks. Do those rappers and actors feel ashamed, knowing that their actions continue to negatively shape society’s assumptions, leading to more violence and deaths? Or are they blinded by millions of dollar signs?
It's time for humanity to finally embrace the darkness, to cherish the shadows with just as much gusto as we cherish the light. It’s time to stop focusing on black crime and see their race as it truly is, multifaceted and fascinating, just like all of the others are. I don’t want to see another black man begging policemen for mercy as they stomp the life out of him.
Limit horror to horror fiction, now and always.
Toby closed his eyes for a second, as if that could erase his past actions. What the fuck was I thinking? he thought. Suggesting that even blacks are secretly prejudiced against blacks…I mean, Drunk Me could be right, but holy fuck.
He checked on his follower count. Just under 10,000 the last time that he’d looked, it was now less than half that, and still plummeting. He was following less people now, too, indicating that hundreds of those unfollowers had blocked him for good measure.
He had gained a few dozen new followers, though, most of whom used Donald Trump as their avatars. Caucasian incels, the lot of ’em, Toby assumed, shaking his head. Should I block them or ignore them? Are they gonna purchase my books or attempt to recruit me for the Ku Klux Klan?
He checked a few more of his replies. “By ignoring the plight of the trans community, this post is advocating for violence against it,” wrote GenderOmega.
“Cisgender, straight, white men aren’t allowed to talk about race. We must take notes and nod when others tell us what to think, for the good of humanity,” wrote TheTrillestYT.
“Non-Caucasians can’t be racist. Racism belongs only to the devil race, our oppressors,” wrote HorrorHunkSteve.
Should I post a phony apology, see if that appeases these assholes? Toby wondered. Can I blame it all on the beer, maybe donate to a black charity, and be forgiven? Oh, what am I thinking? Most of these morbidly obese shut-ins have never sipped alcohol in their lives. They’re still cuddling up to their mothers, attempting to suck milk from their withered tits. If I so much as imply contrition, they’ll attack me all the harder.
Toby had seen it happen before. Two months prior, horror hack Oswald Mortenson had joked that a world without straight, cisgender, white, male authors was worse than a world without books and begged for forgiveness when the vox populi turned against him. He’d never been heard from again. Even his children disappeared from social media. Then, when Beauregard Liddell, owner of Burning Ladle Books, posted, “I’m sorry, but whites are the best horror writers,” then attempted to pass it off as a week-early April Fools’ Day prank, the publisher’s every author demanded that he cancel their contracts, and he’d retired in shame.
Damn, Toby thought, these whinging crybabies are probably leaving my books phony reviews now, to drive down their average Amazon and Goodreads ratings. He visited his Amazon Author Page and his mouth fell open in shock. There was only one title left: his self-published short fiction collection, Mementoes of Madness.
Fleshless Fingers, his every bizarro title, and every magazine issue and anthology that he’d contributed fiction to were gone. Revisiting social media, he found that all of their publishers had blocked him. Logging out of his account, so as to view theirs, he found that each had posted a press release decrying Toby’s racism, and vowing that he’d never work in the small press scene again. Those posts had gotten more likes and reposts than all of those publishers’ previous posts added together had.
On Goodreads, he found all of his best reviews and ratings absent, and his friends and followers lists drastically depleted. Is this how it all ends? he wondered. All these years of polishing my prose and working to gain a fanbase erased because I posted a single controversial theory? That doesn’t seem fair in the slightest.
He thought about it for a while. While his initial instinct was to crawl into a bottle of hard liquor, then score maximal quantities of whatever hard drugs he could get his hands on, that was quickly eclipsed by a blazing, crimson rage. No fuckin’ way, he thought. These weeping vaginas aren’t gonna make me a junkie. They’re not erasing my prose as if it never existed. I’ll self-publish all of my out-of-print stuff, then start writing horror again. I’ll search out freethinking readers and be more popular than ever.
If only it were that easy.
Here are Chapters 1-3: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here are Chapters 4 and 5: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here’s Chapter 6.
Chapter 6
Awakening in his bed, fully dressed, yet again, Toby Chalmers groaned and vowed to cut down on his drinking. He made that vow often in the a.m., though it always evaporated hours later. Days encompassed too many hours. The tedium of modern existence demanded a tonic to fuzz his thoughts and make him grin.
His kidneys ached most mightily. He was lying on his cellphone, he realized. Retrieving it, he discovered that its battery had died. I must’ve started an ASMR playlist and passed out while watching it, he thought.
After plugging the phone into its charger, he set off for his bathroom, for the usual morning routine.
* * *
Damn, that hits the spot, Toby thought to himself, polishing off the last of his breakfast burrito—leftover steak sliced into morsels, plus eggs and mozzarella cheese, enwrapped in a flour tortilla. He’d been making himself breakfast burritos nearly every day lately. Beef, chicken, bacon, potatoes, bell peppers—their contents might’ve varied, but the satisfaction they provided remained constant. He liked to wash them down with the same customized beverage: half chocolate oat milk, half organic cow milk, stirred until perfectly blended.
He'd worked out already. Time to brush his teeth. Then, to keep himself occupied for a while, he’d return to the story he was writing.
Why bother? he wondered. After all, he hardly needed the scant income that his efforts earned him. With Toby’s austere lifestyle, the trust fund he’d drained years prior would last him until death. Moreover, the days where he’d felt a pressing need to contribute to the artform he so cherished were long gone. He didn’t even write horror anymore, just puerile, perverted bizarro fiction that he could barely stand to put his name to. That was the only writing he could sell.
Well, at least I have fans, he’d told himself until recently. Eventually, my horror stuff’ll catch on and I can craft stories that I’m proud of again. But was that even the case? In his early days as an aspiring horror author, when it seemed as if he’d jump out of his own flesh if he didn’t churn out prose and sleep came irregularly and far too meagerly, he’d been inundated with ideas—morning, noon and night. He’d jotted notes down onto every paper scrap available or texted them to himself when out on the town. He’d felt as if he was but a channel for greatness to flow through, as if he’d embraced a higher calling and would soon be banging celebrities. He'd worked on four separate narratives daily, shifting perspectives with ease, researching on the fly. Now, he could hardly stand to craft a single novella, only wrote because he couldn’t think of anything better to do.
Truthfully, he didn’t even like the scant fans that he did have. Most were middle-aged Caucasian men who seemed far too interested in fucking him. They sent him flirty direct messages, even after he assured them that he’s straight. A few had even sent cock photos and ended up being blocked. One proposed marriage. Another rolled a paperback copy of The Indelible Adventures of Sergeant Thundershorts into a tube and deepthroated it. Toby had met plenty of cool homosexuals back when he’d had more of a social life, who’d sold him great MDMA, respected his sexual boundaries, and even introduced him to pretty women, but a significant percentage of his readers now seemed quite rape-hungry.
Oh well, better get to work, he thought.
* * *
Later, resting his hands, Toby read back what he’d written: “‘Keep perfectly still,’ the man said to his wife, as he stuffed her vagina with grass ’til it overflowed. ‘Once our sexy little sheep slut is eating you out with much gusto, I’ll take her from behind, rough and fast. It’ll be our first threesome. You’ll love it, I say. No, don’t look at me like that. This is all for you, baby.’”
I can’t finish writing this, can I? Toby thought. I always assured myself that I’d never write about bestiality, yet I’m just a page or two away from doing just that. That was the line I’d never cross, I’d assumed. What’s the fuck’s wrong with me?
I’m going crazy in here, cooped up all by myself. What if writing about sheep sex turns me on? I should go out to dinner somewhere, maybe flirt with a waitress. I’ll write my phone number on the check and tip exorbitantly…see if I hear back from her. Oh, that reminds me, I left my phone charging.
Retrieving his now fully-charged celly from his bedroom, he thought, Wow, I haven’t gone on social media once today. That’s gotta be some kind of record for me.
And of course, having mentally invoked social media’s specter, Toby found himself with no choice but to activate an app. Whoa, what the hell? he thought, inundated by notifications. 2,842 replies. 584 quote reposts. Most of the time, I’m lucky to have a few notifications. What did I post again, anyway?
IPA fog had swallowed all recollection of the previous night’s writing. Vaguely, he recalled the disgust he’d felt upon seeing black-on-black police brutality on TV, and how he’d decided to address it. I must’ve achieved some real drunken eloquence, he thought, just like Ernest Hemingway. Good for me.
Then he started reading the replies.
“Kill yourself, you racist pig fucker!” wrote 2Woke2Die.
“Whitey gon’ white,” wrote YUGumpin.
“Get right with Jesus!” wrote getrightwithJESUS.
PatriotiCali wrote, “Finally, somebody understands that niggers should only be allowed out at night. You’re my hero, Toby Chalmers!”
Oh my fuckin’ God, thought Toby. No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Did I accidentally write something racist? Please tell me I didn’t.
His dinner plans now forgotten, he checked out a few quote reposts.
“Look at this bitch ass Toby Chalmers, outin’ himself as a racist,” wrote SWOLLHYPHY.
“Cancel and cancel again for good measure!” wrote QuitStaringAtMyTits.
“More trash writing from a trash writer,” wrote 66picklesandchange.
Toby could put it off no longer. Guess I’d better bite the bullet, he thought. I’ll see what’s gotten everyone so worked up and attempt to explain myself. I didn’t go full edgelord last night, did I? He found his post and thought, Holy shit, it’s a long one. With an extended sigh, he began reading:
Race memory has long ascribed a stigma to darkness. Indeed, from the dawn of humanity, nighttime has provided predators with cover to skulk, stalk, and assault, then disappear back into gloom. Hazards unknown in the day manifest to purloin, rape, and murder. Sometimes those hazards arise in one’s own psyche.
By and large, as a species, we prefer to see our surroundings, to read faces and postures to discern dark intentions. We prefer the warmth of the sun to the moon’s cold indifference. Candles, lightbulbs, flashlights, phones, computers, and TV screens keep darkness at bay. When in total tenebrosity, we strive to sleep, to regain vibrancy in our dreams.
Our distaste for the darkness has even shaped our language. White magic will heal you. Black magic will hurt. A white knight will help you. A black knight will harm. Blackouts hide drunken misdeeds from your memory. You blacklist, blackball, and blackguard those you want excluded, and blackmail those whose money you covet. If you’re believed to be truly evil, some will label you a blackheart. But what of those individuals of African descent known as blacks?
Is it so much of a stretch to assume that humanity’s collective unconscious, which has long associated blackness with wrongdoing, has prejudiced each and every human, blacks included, against people of African descent? Look at the arrest statistics. Look at the black-on-black violence statistics. Look at the slave trade that shaped the United States as we know it: Africans selling other Africans to Caucasians, to treat as beasts of burden. The reasonably intelligent transcend their innate bigotry and give blacks a chance to prove themselves great, but many people are dumber than shit.
Spade, darky, spook, shadow skin, and tar baby—just a handful of the racial epithets crafted to call attention to their skin coloring. Stereotypes about blacks abound even now, perpetrated by the media and black celebrities all too happy to portray themselves as drug dealing criminals for paychecks. Do those rappers and actors feel ashamed, knowing that their actions continue to negatively shape society’s assumptions, leading to more violence and deaths? Or are they blinded by millions of dollar signs?
It's time for humanity to finally embrace the darkness, to cherish the shadows with just as much gusto as we cherish the light. It’s time to stop focusing on black crime and see their race as it truly is, multifaceted and fascinating, just like all of the others are. I don’t want to see another black man begging policemen for mercy as they stomp the life out of him.
Limit horror to horror fiction, now and always.
Toby closed his eyes for a second, as if that could erase his past actions. What the fuck was I thinking? he thought. Suggesting that even blacks are secretly prejudiced against blacks…I mean, Drunk Me could be right, but holy fuck.
He checked on his follower count. Just under 10,000 the last time that he’d looked, it was now less than half that, and still plummeting. He was following less people now, too, indicating that hundreds of those unfollowers had blocked him for good measure.
He had gained a few dozen new followers, though, most of whom used Donald Trump as their avatars. Caucasian incels, the lot of ’em, Toby assumed, shaking his head. Should I block them or ignore them? Are they gonna purchase my books or attempt to recruit me for the Ku Klux Klan?
He checked a few more of his replies. “By ignoring the plight of the trans community, this post is advocating for violence against it,” wrote GenderOmega.
“Cisgender, straight, white men aren’t allowed to talk about race. We must take notes and nod when others tell us what to think, for the good of humanity,” wrote TheTrillestYT.
“Non-Caucasians can’t be racist. Racism belongs only to the devil race, our oppressors,” wrote HorrorHunkSteve.
Should I post a phony apology, see if that appeases these assholes? Toby wondered. Can I blame it all on the beer, maybe donate to a black charity, and be forgiven? Oh, what am I thinking? Most of these morbidly obese shut-ins have never sipped alcohol in their lives. They’re still cuddling up to their mothers, attempting to suck milk from their withered tits. If I so much as imply contrition, they’ll attack me all the harder.
Toby had seen it happen before. Two months prior, horror hack Oswald Mortenson had joked that a world without straight, cisgender, white, male authors was worse than a world without books and begged for forgiveness when the vox populi turned against him. He’d never been heard from again. Even his children disappeared from social media. Then, when Beauregard Liddell, owner of Burning Ladle Books, posted, “I’m sorry, but whites are the best horror writers,” then attempted to pass it off as a week-early April Fools’ Day prank, the publisher’s every author demanded that he cancel their contracts, and he’d retired in shame.
Damn, Toby thought, these whinging crybabies are probably leaving my books phony reviews now, to drive down their average Amazon and Goodreads ratings. He visited his Amazon Author Page and his mouth fell open in shock. There was only one title left: his self-published short fiction collection, Mementoes of Madness.
Fleshless Fingers, his every bizarro title, and every magazine issue and anthology that he’d contributed fiction to were gone. Revisiting social media, he found that all of their publishers had blocked him. Logging out of his account, so as to view theirs, he found that each had posted a press release decrying Toby’s racism, and vowing that he’d never work in the small press scene again. Those posts had gotten more likes and reposts than all of those publishers’ previous posts added together had.
On Goodreads, he found all of his best reviews and ratings absent, and his friends and followers lists drastically depleted. Is this how it all ends? he wondered. All these years of polishing my prose and working to gain a fanbase erased because I posted a single controversial theory? That doesn’t seem fair in the slightest.
He thought about it for a while. While his initial instinct was to crawl into a bottle of hard liquor, then score maximal quantities of whatever hard drugs he could get his hands on, that was quickly eclipsed by a blazing, crimson rage. No fuckin’ way, he thought. These weeping vaginas aren’t gonna make me a junkie. They’re not erasing my prose as if it never existed. I’ll self-publish all of my out-of-print stuff, then start writing horror again. I’ll search out freethinking readers and be more popular than ever.
If only it were that easy.
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