May 7, 21—

I met V when he was still a man, Darling. At night, of course. Under cover of black abyss where men can shield their natural squalor. The girls and I on the hunt. This was before the war. At the very dawn of AI. When we could slither as silk into streets and clubs and penthouse suites. Our clothes half molted and bare skin glimmering stardust in the pulsing lights as we danced. These hijacked bursting bodies full of rage and thirst and lust.

We found a group whose number matched our own. The typical breed. Fat wallet, thin brain, limp blood. We paired off at the bar and in the clearing smoke I was left with V, standing in front of me. Drink in his hand. Wide doe eyes rapt upon me. But they never left my face and that’s the first thing I saw, Darling. I melted up to him, swaying my curves and parting my lips in a little exhale. He just stared me in the eyes. Sipped his drink and tried to smile.

“What are you drinking?” I said, staring him right back. I could feel him weaken. Fuck what a feeling.

“You want some?” he said and tipped the glass toward me, then glanced down and pulled it back, clocking his faux pas. “Whisky sour,” he said, trying to take back his cool.

“Whisky sour,” I said, somewhere between question and statement.

I leaned into him, brushing one nipple against his crooked arm holding the glass. I used one finger to tilt the bottom of the glass to my mouth, wrapped my lips warmly on the rim so they left a mark, and drank his whisky sour.

I took a long savoring blink and straightened upright and glared him back in his eyes, which had never left mine. “Mmmm,” I said. “Yummy.”

And I thought for a flash that he came on the spot. It would not have been the first time, Darling. But no. V stood his ground, the little puddle. I looked away and sighed and blinked again as I brought my gaze back to him. And on his face the tease of a new visage. The hint of animal hunger hidden beyond shy eyes. And I had to take him into me.

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When the invites pop bleep on your phone you figure you got some skin in the game after all. You mull over the messages one last time and wonder how you ever met these people, then at last you decide to attend a big housewarming party on the edge of town with a friend who’s always been way more connected than makes any sense. Who are these people anyway? More importantly, what will you wear? And worst of all, will you find anyone to talk to?

Your friend, who since middle school has insisted on being called by a nickname which is not quite a last name, which really when you look back on it should have been your first clue that you were well above your station, picks you up at not quite eight, which is the first weird thing because this never happens. Jax is never early. Jax is always late. Assuming Jax shows up at all and doesn’t bail at the last minute. You apologize and rush to get ready while Jax lingers in the car and a light busts open in your head that the only possible justification for this is that Jax has a love interest at this party.

So you spend the drive ribbing Jax about this love interest and the most you can summon is a grin and “it’s all good” from Jax as if that’s workable information. And you spend so much effort trying to make Jax open up that you fail to notice the steady decrease in buildings and increase in trees as Jax drives you out beyond known civilization. By the time you get your bearings and glance at Jax and rifle through possible offences against Jax that would merit being executed and buried in the woods, you turn into a long private driveway where Mercedes and BMW and Jaguar logos wink at you in the waning light.

You look over to Jax and say “Where are we?” and Jax grins again and you say “Who lives here?” and Jax just says “It’s a friend from work.”

“Oh okay,” you nod in understanding. Until that little light pops again and you have no idea what Jax does for work. Jax always has money. Always looks great. And is always “between gigs” in a matter-of-fact manner with no anxiety. Like how you might describe a room. The lamp is between the couch and the recliner.

You follow Jax toward the massive house. And now that you can see it better behind the trees you’re not sure what kind of horror film you just stepped into.

Instrumental music wafts out from somewhere inside. The real shit. Not recorded. A string quartet, if you had to guess. If you’re confident of what a string quartet is anyway.

Jax reaches out for the doorbell but the door opens before that can happen.

“Hey welcome!” the man says and you can’t tell if he knows Jax or not.

“Thanks!” Jax says, equally ambivalent, but there’s no doubt that we’re in the right place.

The man turns to guide us into the innards then slaps his head and turns and says “Where are my manners,” he says. “I’m Bill,” he says and reaches out to shake your hand.

You shake it and say whatever you normally say in this situation.

Bill turns back toward the house then quickly turns back around to face you. “Are you a beer person or a wine person?”

“Oh! Uh,” you manage to say, caught off guard.

Bill smiles big. Jax also turns and smiles at you and right then you notice that Bill didn’t ask Jax about a drink preference. But no worries, you suppose. They already know each other? Or not. But no matter.

“Ummm,” you mumble, then manage to say…

1. “A beer please.”

2. “Wine please.”

3. “Oh, sorry. I don’t drink.”

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Amber shines back at birthday six a wild happy smile. Sitting on the couch and mom and dad take photos from across the table full of gifts. And friends and parents laugh and watch the birthday girl go lost behind a giant box laid on her lap. And this one from the lost aunt and mom and dad share worry in the eyes a tick but little arms shoot up to get to work on the wrapping while little legs kick back and forth in glee.

“And who is this from?” someone says.

“Oh she couldn’t make it,” dad says. “My sister,” he says. “She moves around a lot.”

“She sent that stuffy to Amber last year,” mom says, pointing to the armadillo always by Amber’s side.

And Amber takes the cover off to piled colored tissue paper and throws her groping hands inside to crunch for the surprise.

“He’s not a stuffy,” Amber says and throws a pinched little frown at mom over her shoulder. “He’s Hector.”

But before mom can reply, Amber moves the box to the cushion next to her and gets on little knees so she can dive in better, kids and bigger people asking what’s inside. At last she moves aside the veil and there the heavens lie. She reaches for the bottom but can’t grip it, and there two stronger hands join hers and she lifts her head to mom’s face and now she sits in thrall before the gift with all forgiven.

“It’s a toy?” dad says.

“It’s too heavy for that,” mom says, and throws a glance at dad, and turns to Amber feast her eyes upon the thing.

“It’s like one of those, you know, I’ve seen them in museums,” someone says and swigs his beer. “Looks expensive.”

But Amber sits in thrall at this, and moves her little fingers at the planets and the stars and moons and feels them roll beneath her touch, and whirls the bright orbs around each other with a bygone reverence.

“I guess it’s a solar system,” beer guy says with another slurp. “Cool if you’re into that.”

“Who gets this for a child?” someone else says and no one answers.

“We can put it in her room,” dad says.

And as mom removes the box and present to go on with the routine, she spies a little card inside that Amber had missed. Just a small white envelop easily abandoned. She takes it out and says under breath “Oh there’s a card here too,” and opens it to read it.

“What’s it say?” dad says with a tiny dry sting in his voice.

And mom takes out the card and says, “It’s blank, there’s just a note,” and she reads the message to the gathered crowd.

Dear Amber,
I cannot wait to meet you
I cannot be there on your day to give you this and greet you
But should you ever need to, call upon these stars
And wait for them to come for you, no matter where you are

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Amber and Hector climb into the heavens. She sees all around her, any thought of a spaceship paling against the like of this, some invisible frame that holds them safe. The twilight stars expand and brighten and before Amber can stop her breath for the vision the glow of Earth rises behind her. She turns and peeks, the blue pearl echoes in Hector’s little eyes. She looks down to see him and his face, she could swear, wears the same awe as her own, but of course that’s silly.

Amber sighs agape the planets as they pass to the beyond. Hot red Mars and she wipes her brow. Cold white Pluto and she curls up in her pajamas. The visions portend sensation and another quiet laugh escapes her. The ship speeds up and soon her Sun blinks on like all the infinite others. Beyond the Milky Way, red dwarfs and black holes and nebulae and shapes she doesn’t know and colors she can’t name present themselves before her eyes kaleidoscopic grandeur.

At last at sea among the distant lights the ship slows down. Its form appears before her only at the edge of vision, like frost forming at a window’s edge. And soon enough she’s on her feet. And soon enough the brightness fills her little space, although she sees no source, as though the stars augment their light and sharpen it around her. And she and Hector are not alone in there. Shapes dance in the shadows, now stopping, now speaking an otherly babble.

“This frequency?” one says.

“Does it understand?” two says.

“Hello there,” a third says. “Earth Hector. Do you understand?”

“Not that one,” one says. “Try the bigger one, the one that’s breathing.”

“Oh, how hideous,” three says. “You there. Earth Amber who breathes.”

“I think it understands,” two says. “Its eyes are all over the place.”

“You frightened it,” one says. “Didn’t you read the instructions?”

“I didn’t have time,” three says. “Does it have a button?”

“Thing from Earth,” one says, “can you hear us?”

Amber spins around. The voices come from everywhere. Tears well in her eyes, air passes quickly in and out of her chest. Her face contorts. She pulls in one huge gust, then screams.

“She can hear us!” three says.

“It’s not supposed to do that,” one says.

Amber faints.

“Oh, we killed it,” two says.

“Wait,” one says. “No, it’s just sleeping.”

“It sleeps?” Three says. “Ew.”

“I guess we got the atmosphere mixture right then,” two says.

“Stop slapping yourself on the thorax,” one says. “We still need to get it back to base so we don’t get dismembered.”

“Ah, dismembered,” three says. “We’ve really come a long way as a species.”

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April 27, 21—

Let me paint this for you, Darling. Let me show you this world in broad strokes first before we go into the meat. Because if it ever finds you, by then the world you see will be all color and no canvas. The pristine mold of a face long rotted into dust.

This veneer you will see all around you, Darling, know what it is. The first trick it plays on you is that it’s intelligent. But we’re not talking about sentient machines here. It’s artificial intelligence. And it’s called artificial for a reason. It doesn’t create, it duplicates. It mimics based on input. So when it came time to fabricate the post-apocalyptic city you see all around you, it didn’t create a city. It took all of its entry data for “post-apocalyptic city” and built based on that. So imagine a combination of Blade Runner, Dark City, The Matrix, ad infinitum. And maybe you never saw those stories, Darling, so you don’t know what I mean. But I have to use the things I know, from the world I used to live in.

So the surfaces you see, Darling, is AI trying to manifest this weird aggregate world beyond the digital realm into the physical. It’s the architectural equivalent of the six-fingered men that the first AI art used to do because they couldn’t mimic people correctly. If you’re far away or look quickly you don’t catch it. But day after day, on the ground, when you see it slow and up close there it is. You see it too now.

And as for the rest, the way out places, if or when you get out of the city. They won’t be post-apocalyptic suburbs, but rather “post-apocalyptic suburbs” or “post-apocalyptic countryside.” Inputs that they crushed together and spit out into those barren lands you might see. They just replaced the ick neon chic with Mad Max meets Walking Dead meets The Road meets The Stand, because those stories and others like them were fed into the AI.

But I come from a much older world, Darling. Older than even the humans you may see in yours, the new neon topia waiting for you. My body was a demon before it came to write this. Or, perhaps better, the demon before entering this body was pure spirit, so pure energy, pure will, all eros. That’s why the demons don’t enter the human body with any memories of where they came from, because there is no “there” there, from whence we come. So when they, we, take over the host and control that massive human brain all we have of ourselves is this human consciousness: their memories, personality, awareness, perceptions, all except for the heightened and healed senses. The human is dead but the vampire is alive for really the first time. Even the holding of this pen, and more the writing, creating something for the first time in and as lively blood-filled flesh, wakes us out of that abyss, shocks us into this new life. But the first thing pure eros wants to do, the most primal urges? Feed and fuck.

Humans think the lust is demonic, and in the movies, Darling, if you ever get to see the old stories, that’s how they portray it. So having sex is the most depraved thing they have us do. Every writer of vampire stories is a puritan at heart in this way. But it’s not the so-called evil of sex that appeals to us. It’s the humanity of it. The abrupt conscious embodiment of it. We’re thrust into this flesh fully born. We fuck our brains out because there’s nothing more alive than this. Nothing more human. We frolic in this flesh, far more than most humans do. So I did as well.

And, Darling, the best lover I’ve known was our V. And the best lover I ever lost was our V. Little could I know it was only the start.

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I’ll move on to part 2 once we get a good deal of votes.

At last a break from the cold. The winter blast abates as the north turns to the Sun and leaves grow out and green up on branches. Holidays good and gone and memories washed away in peppermint mocha and granny’s fruitcake. You toss on the first thinner coat of the year and can’t see your breath in the morning mist finally and wonder where all the extra light came from outside.

So spring slides into view and you take your annual audit to see if the mood cuts you to venture out upon the living or stay put among the cozy warmth back home. Where no one else can pick the flicks just to talk over them and ruin the movie for everyone. Where you can sit free of guilt and full of cheesy chocolatey popcorn glory without a side-eye tsk from peanuts in the gallery.

Then the invites pop bleep on your phone and now you got some skin in the game after all. As per your routine, you wait till the last possible moment to commit. But once you do you’re in for the long of it. You mull over the messages one last time and wonder how you ever met these people, then at last you decide to…

1. Go up north to a cabin on the lake and catch up with old friends and maybe some new faces. Campfires, cocoa, canoes. What could go wrong?

2. Attend a big housewarming party on the edge of town with a friend who’s always been way more connected than makes any sense. Who are these people anyway?

3. Use your charming wiles to lure your best friends over to your place for movies and games for the weekend, or at least a Saturday since you’re all adults now unfortunately. And anyway, it’s fine telling people to shut up during a movie if you’re hosting.

Leave your comments below! Heh heh heh heh…

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But the longdrawn ghastly sound of her real name only pushes Jenni into a mad frantic lust. She readjusts herself on Peter’s ramrod goliath into a squat and bounces on it tiny brown cheeks slapping up and down. She leans over him with one hand still covering her face and kisses him to hide herself away, her long black hair disguising them so you only see their penetration. And now she’s slamming back down into Peter so hard that his balls jello jiggle into red and her manic grunts start to cover over the anxious silence. With each crash she fucks the real world out of existence and makeup chick stops a split beat from the savage beauty.

“Jenni!” makeup chick breaks the spell and cries out with eyes batting from the scene back to the shambling Dirk and forth again. “Run!”

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I was late to the party getting into classic literature. I studied religion and then theology in college and graduate school, so fiction was not my forte. I never got into it as a kid either since my time was reserved for Nintendo (I got the original NES when it came out in 1985, including the robot that nobody remembers now). As part of my transition away from faith, though, I still had a desire for humanities and higher education.

Fiction worked its way into that mindscape, if you will, and I read Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon a couple years ago. With the exception of a few Shakespeare plays read during high school and college, I never touched the big classics like The Odyssey or The Divine Comedy. I’ve been rectifying that dearth for the past few years, finally.

To that end, three specific classics I’ve been savoring have infused my own creative fiction, and in this post I’d like to share the specifics of what I’m calling “the canon cycle” of my work: three different novels in various stages of completion, each inspired by a canonical work of literature. Here they are, from most to least complete.

First, Fell Reach Stories is inspired by The Canterbury Tales. I actually completed a first draft of this in 2022 but it needs a lot of work. The novel starts when a group of people who all live in the same small fictional town in northern Minnesota finally get together at the local diner to talk about all the weird supernatural tales they’ve either heard or experienced over the years. It has horror and humor elements but I wouldn’t really call it horror-comedy on the whole. Maybe more like if Stephen King had written Lake Wobegon Days.

Here is a sample of a part that I plan to leave in the final version:

The Confession of Elliott Moore

…So, the beginning. In Europe, it’s not uncommon for young people, especially young men with a bit of money—from aristocratic families in the old days but now more often from the professional classes—to travel the world a while before they settle in. I was one such young man, my father being a doctor of some renown in London—himself descended from noble stock—and I did this after the war. Paris, Vienna, Venice, even Moscow for a short time. On a tour of Rome, I stumbled by chance into a cafe late one evening for no other reason than to take in the night life and the people, many of whom were themselves just passing through. I found myself sitting one table over from two old Vatican priests. They were speaking Italian, of course, but one of them had an American accent. This intrigued me. I had not yet been to America and it was becoming more in vogue and something of a mark of distinction to spend time there. Dickens did it of course, and de Tocqueville, famously. I had met several Americans by that time so I had some familiarity with a few of their, your, mannerisms and ways of speaking. My Italian, of course, was quite good, along with French, German, Spanish, Russian somewhat. The product of a classic education at Oxford—Christ Church, if you’re familiar—and being reared in a family that was expected to be cosmopolitan.

Well, at this point I’d no other intention in eaves dropping aside from pure curiosity. It’s the reason one goes on these kinds of holidays, in the end. Then the American priest mentioned a village—I suppose you’d say small town—where he served for a short time by the name of Fell Reach, your little burg, and I was drawn in even more for no other reason than the odd name. Fell Reach. How peculiar, I thought. I’d heard of Minnesota but couldn’t place it on a map with any confidence. That would have to come later. Now, bear in mind that I could see very little of this conversation; only out of the corner of my eye, lest I give myself away. But the American seemed positively shaken. The other man said very little, only listening at first. He sounded native Italian. It hit me that I found myself overhearing a barroom confessional of sorts, although I soon discovered it had nothing to do with what the American had done, but rather what he’d witnessed.

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Second, in a rather more graphic different direction is Cream Queens, inspired by Don Quixote. I have about 16,000 words written on this one. Leigh Bennett is a virgin who just graduated from college. Before they all move away for the summer, she and some friends are going to spend a week at the newly reopened Camp Massiqer, where all the counselors were slaughtered decades before in one grisly night, but the killer was never caught. And, oh yeah, Leigh is taking along her roommate Angie, who will fuck anyone. Angie’s goal is to finally get Leigh laid.

The initial spark for this was simple: How about a slasher flick where the slut is the hero instead of being punished for having sex? Leigh, like Sancho Panza, finds herself along for the crazy ride of her more charismatic partner Angie, a self-appointed “slut errant.”

Here is a sample for your consideration…

Angie Marker lies on her back covered in mansweat. Sam pants on top of her. She plays with the anklet above her head while he catches his breath.

“One more,” Angie says, taps his shoulder pitter-patter. “Back in the saddle.”

“Are you close?” he wheezes.

“A bit farther away when you ask,” Angie says.

He nods, head bowed, pumps away again. Once more unto the breach.

“Wait, is it further or farther?” Angie says.

“You’re asking me?” Sam says, ekes out breath.

“You’re the professor,” Angie says.

“I am a professor,” Sam says. “I was never your professor. Give me some credit.”

Angie puts a finger to her chin. “It’s farther isn’t it?”

Sam nods, pumps faster.

Leigh knocks on the door. “Ten minutes!” she says.

Angie pops a thumbs up over Sam’s shoulder but no one sees it. “No problem!”

“What do you mean no problem?” Sam says. “I can go longer than ten minutes.”

“Of course you can, princess,” Angie says, babies him, “but not today. Camping trip.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam says.

Angie stabs a thumbnail in his side like spurring a horse. “Come on, daddy. Big finish.” She watches her anklet jingle jangle in the morning light while they reach the summit.

---

Sam dresses. Angie stuffs clothes into a tattered backpack while a Winston dangles out the side of her mouth. The smoke fights against lingering semen ether. Angie sucks it all in.

“Can I call you?” Sam says.

“You can call all you want, sir,” Angie says, goes through her sock drawer the way you find neat things in a landfill sometimes.

“I mean, will you answer?” Sam says.

“The future is unwritten,” Angie says, takes a puff. She closes the sock drawer and opens the underwear drawer and gazes in it like Nietzsche’s abyss.

“You barely have any panties,” Sam says alongside her, throws on his sport coat.

“Most have never returned,” Angie says, shakes her head. “The stories they’d tell.” She leaves the panties alone like sacred relics and closes the drawer.

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Third we have Paradise Acquired; or, The Department of Random Horrors. As you can see, I’m not set on the title but I do like the classic feel that the double titles gives off. Think Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Think Dr. Strangelove; or, How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. As the first title suggests, this is heavily influenced by Milton’s Paradise Lost. In fact, it’s fully meant as a sequel to that story, although I’ve only got a couple thousand words so far.

The premise is that after two thousand years since Satan’s defeat by Christ, Satan has finally come up with a way to get back at God: he founds a corporation. One of the departments in this new venture is the Department of Random Horrors, where the staff have the difficult but rewarding job of figuring out what happens when, say, you walk under a ladder or see a black cat or when it’s time to suffer the side effect of a monkey paw wish. You think that all happens by magic? Nope. Someone has to think of it.

And a sample for my dear readers…

A pool of the screaming damned swirls about in the courtyard, wreathed in twisted black ivy. The onyx fountain in the middle drags and drops the lost souls from the dead flow in a cycle, harrowed faces flickered lit by the cracked violet sky as they fall and whirl and fall again. The only break in the scarred landscape for infinite sight, save for the Business Tower that looms over the vista. Far up in the nether heights of the complex, hewn from the bones of Tiamat herself, Malcolm holds a mug of coffee and smiles out the window.

“Hell of a view, isn’t it?” Malcolm says with a grin, sips and looks to Wilson.

“Wow, yeah,” Wilson says with his own grin, puts out one hand on the glass to take it in. “I didn’t get a tour at the interview.”

Malcolm sips again and glances at the hand on the glass, his own free hand relaxed in his pocket. He coughs and Wilson turns to see his sour face.

“Oh, sorry,” Wilson says, takes his hand from the glass as from a hot stove.

Malcolm smiles again, waves it away. “No biggie,” he says, “that’s why we got window washers.”

Malcolm snaps with the free hand and next to them poofs a hunched man in overalls holding a bucket and rag. He scrubs away the stain and mumbles in angry German.

“Is that—” Wilson says.

“Alright, so over here you got your genie team,” Malcolm says, moving toward the sea of cubicles behind them and waving in presentation. “They do wish logistics.”

He walks on but stops at Wilson’s confused face. “That means they figure out how to make all those wishes actually happen,” Malcolm says.

“Don’t the genies do that?” Wilson says, hands in his pockets, small and safe.

“Yes and no,” Malcolm says, wavering one hand sort of. “Let’s say some dope comes across a bottle, rubs it a few times, out floats a genie, ok?”

“Ok,” Wilson says, following the lead.

“Ok,” Malcolm goes on, “so let’s say he wants to test it out, isn’t sure if he’s dreaming, so he orders a sandwich and then POP, out of thin air there’s his sandwich, right?”

“Right,” Wilson agrees.

“Ok, well sure,” Malcolm says, then props up a thumb, “but where does that bread come from?” More digits go up. “And the meat, tomato, lettuce?” he says. “You get the idea.”

Malcolm nods, deer in headlights. “Not the genie?” he says.

“The genie’s got some power, sure,” Malcolm says, “but he’s not thinking of that level of detail.” He thumbs over his shoulder. “That’s these guys here. Wish logistics. The genies can manipulate matter, not create it.” He sips his joe, scans Wilson for understanding. “These guys say, for instance, ‘Oh, we can take those spare atoms from Venus without destroying the universe,’” Malcolm says. “It’s all very scientific.”

Feel free to leave some feedback and thanks for reading!

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Amber hears them again. A harsh word kindles wrath and it’s all but moot who started it this time, all but dust in the wind the nature of what they hurl at each other downstairs after Amber’s put to bed, sounds or objects, the nice china or cruel desperate arrows. Amber spoons up Hector up close to her chest and turns on her side away from the door, the stuffed armadillo a lost aunt from Albuquerque sent her for birthday five and Amber can’t recall her name anymore but she loves Hector. The lost aunt she met once and who is in heaven now, along with the fish and great-grandpa and the squirrel that jutted out in front of the truck and all the old faces in gray photos whose names pass through Amber’s ears when mom and dad show her the album and balance both clumsily on their knees.

Amber clutches Hector and puts the other little hand tight against her open ear and squeezes shut her eyes like maybe that will drown the downstairs. Like maybe that will whisk her away beyond the noise for safekeeping till they laugh and nuzzle each other again and whisper sweetness Amber doesn’t know but still can feel all the same. Amber feels her face clench and her quiet give out and the anger beyond the door is met with her own soft weeping in terrible harmony. She sniffles and pulls up Hector tighter to her face and strokes his little armadillo muzzle and cries into his soft belly.

She opens her eyes just to wipe them, just to see her animal friend a glance before closing them again against the night, when out from a corner at a far and distant spot she spies a twinkle in the sky. Amber gasps, and this sound of her voice from her little body shakes her more than the brilliance out the window. She sits up. She wipes her tears just to see better.

She throws the covers off her legs and pitter-patters to the window, the brays downstairs losing space in her mind for place of wonder. She turns Hector around so he can see it with her, squeezes him against her chest where his beady plastic eyes alight in prismatic reflection. The brilliance fills her room, and though the window’s closed her long brown hair flutters in a hidden breeze. The light comes near, spins and courses over the barren acreage of the valley toward Amber’s room. Her grief goes lost among the lilies, stolen and replaced by good cheer and she covers her mouth to hush her giggling.

And she looks down at Hector, and he looks up at her as she pivots his frame, and she tells him “They came!”

And the light fades away and returns to its purpose. And before the window is no one again. And Amber’s bed is empty. And the noise downstairs goes on.

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A decent day for an orgy in any case. Overcast cloudy with an eery air of ick unseemly for the Valley. Dave adjusts the set to avoid the windows cause nobody jerks off to gray, so he says, swear to god. You want as much light as you can because it simulates life, brightness, vitality, felicity, fertility. So maybe not so decent but here they are. Makeup chick holstering lubes and towels at the ready. Dave and crew panning around to close on every orifice. Porn girls oohing out a stew of moans fake and real. New girl Molly with random high squeaks somewhere in the centipede of bent thumping limbs.

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Two media I love: supernatural shows and gangster films. When I say supernatural, I mean more specifically the strange and unusual, not necessarily horror but often these run in the same vein. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, X-Files, Twilight Zone, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and Eerie, Indiana. We got a new “monster of the week” with every episode, and even if our heroes conquered in the end, we always felt a little on edge at the end of the show, a little weirded out, at least some of the time and despite the campiness. Think of the Buffy episode “Hush” or the X-Files episode “Home” or the Angel episode “I’ve Got you Under my Skin” from the first season (one that nobody talks about, by the by).

I was also raised on a healthy dose of gangster films because of my parents, specifically the cinematic classics featuring the Italian mafia. The Godfather movies, Goodfellas, and Casino were each played down in the basement several times over the years. And let’s admit: those flicks are pretty damn good. The writing pulls you to the next frame, which is what every good story does.

A few years ago I wrote a story called “350 Miles” (link above). It features Jack Morton, an aging “tough guy” who gets paid to do the mob’s dirty work, as he drives three dead bodies across Nebraska. He’s not necessarily a hit man, but not necessarily not a hit man, and for whatever reason he always pulls the shit jobs that nobody else is willing to do. His main link to the Boss, whoever he is, is Jimmy Doyle, who acts as Jack’s handler on behalf of the Family.

Some time later, I threw in Jack and Jimmy into another story, this time as cameos. If you read “Midnight Diner” (link below) you saw them make a cameo appearance in the story’s coda, seemingly safe from the ogre chef’s cleaver.

It was around that time, or maybe even at the moment that I threw in Jack and Jimmy in that second story, that I had an epiphany: what if somebody wrote a whole series about these two hapless tough guys who, for whatever reason yet to be revealed, always get stuck dealing with the mob’s weird situations? Which raised another, bigger question: What would the mob do in, say, an X-Files universe? How would the guys from Goodfellas handle, for example, a guy they’re supposed to whack but who won’t die? Or a mythical sewer monster who lives underneath the restaurant that acts as the front for the Family business?

Well, for one thing, likely a lot of comedy. And “350 Miles” and “Midnight Diner” are already comedic, even if only of the dark ickier kind (poor Jimmy Doyle doesn’t know what he’s eating).

So here is Jack Morton’s introduction proper, and hence the introduction to the series. This guy, along with Jimmy, lives in the city, which for some reason is seeing an influx of strange supernatural activity. The Mafia, surely, would have to figure out how to handle this. Why not delegate the two lowliest, most expendable schlubs available to take of all this alleged weirdness?

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We stayed out of the AI War. Just like we did with all the others. You watch kings rise and fall then parliaments and ministers and presidents over centuries. All with new names. All with old names really. All old kings in different clothes and classy titles. All fall down.

We stayed out of the AI War because we thought it would end up the same. We were wrong. And we were wrong because the robots won. But no one calls them that now. For a while during the rise and the war you heard all sorts of names for them. Robot. Mech. Drone. Synth. All outlawed words now. Now they’re people, just like you and me.

Well, not like me. Not like us. What’s left of us. When the tide turned in favor of AI we all gloried in the judgment of those puny mortal meatbags infesting the planet. Of all those kings being brought low for the last time, not to rise again. We felt vindicated for once. After so long living in shadows, being hunted and outcast for our natural thirst. Our demon-gifted beauty. The enemy of our enemy is our friend, we said. Now is our time to rise.

Only we were just like those humans, those sad brittle fleshpops, missing the forest for the trees. And soon we learned the hard way just like them. Vampires, so long damned to lurk in the dark, would stay there. The enemy of our enemy became just another enemy. And worse. An enemy we couldn’t even eat.

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The setup: Write a story about a turkey who’s been pardoned.

Out. Free. Goodbye giblet gaol. So long cluck clink. Pardoned.

I filch a Roadrunner from some old bastard and bomb west on 66 from the swamp, wattle flapping in clean breeze for the first time. I noodle the kill list again. El Presidente picked the wrong chompipe this time for his little PR stunt. Headline: Turkey pardons a turkey. Gobble your hearts out, America. I throw on my shades, crank up The Trashmen, and kick it into fifth. Has everybody heard about the bird? Maybe not but they will. Yeah. They will.

First stop: Fuckburg, Iowa. Home of Farmer John’s House of Horrors; aka Home. No time to give him the full treatment and pump his frumpy mantits with steroids, so I skip the fun part. I hide behind the door to the coop, gobble along with the rest of the walking Thanksgivings, and crack his kneecaps before he can make me. Courtesy of Louisville Slugger. I drag his screaming carcass over to the block. Or as we call it, The Block. You get it. Any last words? Nah. I lay that long wobbly neck down and give him the chop. Let’s see if Monsanto can still sue his ass in Hell.

Next stop: Podunk, Missouri. Distributor Gary. The middle man. Gary’s Lexus sits in a dirt road cutting a corn field, collecting dust between daily washes. Gary waddles his mass and ten-gallon hat back from a barn and another client meeting. He punches the fob and rolls in behind the wheel. He glances up at the turkey-head shadow in the mirror, but before he can scream I give him a corn husk full of ether. When he wakes, his wrists and ankles are tied. His ass is stuffed with Stove Top. I finish brushing the melted butter on his breast and open the oven door. I tell him not to piss himself. It’ll ruin the gravy.

Final stop: Willmar, Minnesota. Home of Jennie-O Turkey. I disguise myself as their mascot and walk right in the front door. Last meeting before Turkey Day. I waltz in the room. Do a little dance routine. Flail my wings about like a circus freak. Then I hand out some candy. Everyone likes candy. That’s it. Eat monkeys eat. They pass out before you can say quarterlyprojections. I tie and bag them up and sneak them out the back door into a big green Jennie-O van. We’re going for a drive, little poults. I rev up the grinder at the industrial kill floor after dark. Where you toss the chicks you can’t use. I can’t use these guys either. I salt them so they wake up. Throw them on the belt and flick the switch. Don’t worry. They say you don’t feel a thing.

I get a taste for it. By the time I roll up to the Tyson president’s palatial estate with a hacksaw and a pound of butter, I’m all over the news. Rednecks are shooting turkeys like pigs in a swine flu. Food company executives are resigning in droves. Protestors in full militia gear converge on the White House wrapped in American flags emblazoned with upside-down turkeys. Vegan anti-protestors show up waving mammoth Bird Lives Matter banners and shouting All Cops Are Basters. In a last-ditch effort to up his approval ratings, the president slaughters a turkey with his own hands at the next Thanksgiving, right after pardoning not one but two turkeys during the annual ceremony. A confusing time for everyone.

But I’m still out. Still free. Still feeling that fresh air pass through my beak. Still pardoned. And if you feel something behind you when you take that first bite of tasty baked fowl at the dinner table, don’t turn around.

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Photo byNatalia Y.onUnsplash

“Well, I said to Maude, I said, where on earth are you going to find one?—oh, thank you, darling—and if she didn’t have the nerve to tell me—”

“There’s Fitzgerald, of course, if you don’t mind his dour characters. I myself prefer Hemingway. Something about his brutish quality—”

“He got a subpoena to this, oh, it’s so absurd, some kind of House committee. He says they want him to name names. Eighty percent of Hollywood is Communist, for goodness’ sake, and—no, I’m perfect, Jack, thank you—and the other eighty percent hates Communists—”

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Melanie turned away from the old picture that sat on her nightstand when the front door opened. She sat up, wiped her eyes, and went into the living room to greet her husband.

“Hello, darling,” she said with a grand smile.

“Hey,” he said, failing to notice the gesture as he threw his keys on the side table. “What do you want for dinner?”

Her smile narrowed. “You mean you can’t smell it?”

He looked up and sniffed. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Meatloaf?”

“You didn’t notice it?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “This new—new you? New arrangement?—will take some getting used to.”

“You don’t want meatloaf?” she said. “You can tell me.” Tears began to well in her eyes, on cue, and she looked away.

He crooked his head, puzzled, then went to her. “No no no,” he said. “I love it. It just took a minute to hit my nose, that’s all.” Now he gave her a big smile, but unbounded.

“You mean it?” she said.

“Yes, absolutely,” he said. “I love meatloaf. Is it—?”

“My grandmother’s recipe,” she said, “yes.” This tempered her and the coming tears ceased their forward march. “She was quite the entertainer, you know. Spent most of the fifties in New York. Lavish dinner parties. Clark Gable was there once, although he was past his prime by then.”

“Yes,” he said. “You told me.”

“Oh, did I?” she said. “Well, I’ll be sure not to mention it again.”

She said this last in a playful tone, then bopped his nose with a finger, kissed his cheek, and finished setting the table.

“I can cook, you know,” he said, “or we can go out.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “This is how things used to be”—she paused, put a plate down without looking at him—“how things ought to be, if you ask me.”

“I understand, darling,” he said.

She smiled wide and glided over to him with her arms spread out. “I love it when you call me darling, darling,” she said. She kissed him quickly on the lips, then nuzzled his nose with her own. “Dinner is served,” she said.

“And what’s for desert?” he said with a sly grin.

“We’ll not have that kind of talk at the table,” she said, only half serious.

“I don’t think she’s getting better,” William said.

“What makes you say that?” Dr. Parliss said.

“She still thinks she’s living in the nineteen-fifties.”

“I see,” Dr. Parliss said.

“I mean, not literally,” William said. “She knows what year it is, but I mean—she dresses like Lucy Ricardo or the wife from the Honeymooners. Both wives, I guess. And dinner is ready when I get home from work. Everything is clean and spotless. It’s, well, it’s a little disturbing, to be honest.”

“I see,” Dr. Parliss said. “And you find this form of grief unacceptable?”

“Oh come on,” William said. “Don’t turn this around on me. Do you really think this is normal behavior? She obsesses over that old picture of her grandma and her friends.”

“Oh?” Dr Parliss said.

“She died six months ago, her grandmother,” William said. “She—they were very close, I know that, but still.”

“As I said before, these things take time,” Dr. Parliss said. “Are you concerned for her safety? Has she tried to hurt herself?”

“Well…no,” William said, then put his head down. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

William looked up again. “You don’t understand. We met in college at a feminist meeting. Up until her grandmother passed, she had a corner office on the fortieth floor and worked fifty, sixty hours a week. The form of womanhood from that era, the stay-at-home wife, is everything she’s always hated. And now, it’s—I don’t get it.”

Dr. Parliss looked at him in silence. “Well, what exactly would you like me to do?”

“I guess…” William trailed off. “I don’t know. I’m telling you, though, it’s not normal. Do you think you can fix her?”

“I suggest that you give her more time,” Dr. Parliss said. “It’s possible that there is nothing to fix.”

“A martini, please, Jack, extra olives—and anyway, I’m not much for politics myself. Such boring business—”

“Well, the French position will never be the same after the war, don’t you think? It may be the cultural capital for now—Paris is thriving—but the army won’t be what it was last century—”

“Yes, I saw it on 46th Street, but I much prefer The King and I. I find ethnic stories so enchanting—”

“Melanie, dear, what do you think?”

“What’s that?” Melanie said.

She lay on the bed she shared with her husband and stared at the old picture of her grandmother and her friends that she had adored since she was a child. She knew everything there was to know about it, having asked her grandmother the endless questions a child always does when it comes upon a relic of delight.

1952, dear

The Stork Club, dear

Yes, in New York City, dear

That’s Jack, the waiter, dear

That’s Frances, my best friend at the time, dear

That’s Morris, Frances’s beau, dear

That’s Harold, Morris’s friend, dear

That’s Glen, a gentleman I was seeing at the time, dear

That’s Agnes, another friend and also Harold’s girl for a while, dear

Why, that’s me, dear—you don’t recognize your grandmother, do you?

Yes, of course, they were all very nice, dear

Yes, I do miss them, dear

The phone rang, jolting Melanie from her reverie. She stood up from the bed and roamed into the kitchen, looking for the phone on the wall.

“What on earth?” Melanie said to no one. “Where is the blasted thing?”

She looked all over until she saw there was no phone on the wall. The sound was coming from a strange rectangular device on the kitchen table. When she found it, it was also buzzing and vibrating and making an awful fuss all around. She took a step back, alarmed, until she saw her husband’s face on it. She reached for it and pressed the bouncing green button.

“Yes, hello, Martin residence?” she said, standing over it.

“Melanie?” her husband said.

“Yes, darling, is that you?” she said.

“You sound far away,” he said. “Are you driving or something?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, darling,” she said. “You called me at home.”

“Um, ok,” he said. “Listen, would you like to go out tonight?”

“Oh, goodness,” she said. “I already have a casserole in the oven.”

“I just feel like I should do the cooking for once,” he said.

“Don’t be silly, darling,” she said, holding back a laugh so as not to embarrass him, “you don’t cook.” She had wanted to say that he can’t cook, but didn’t want to be rude. “And it’s not your job anyway.”

“Well, is it too far along to take it out?” he said. “I made reservations.”

“Oh you did?” she said, now exasperated. “For where? The Biltmore? Oh my goodness, this isn’t enough time to get ready. I’ll need to do my hair, put on a dress. Oh William, I appreciate the thought but it’s really too short of notice. The Waverly? Oh, don’t tell me.”

William sat in rush hour traffic and listened to Melanie panic and sigh on the other end of the line. Until her grandmother died, he had done most of the cooking, and was, in fact, considered quite good at it by Melanie and their friends. On one or two occasions, he’d even been asked if he’d had culinary training. And now, for the last six months, he’d been told and it’d been said that he simply didn’t cook, and that was that.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “I should have called earlier. Nothing fancy, just put the casserole in the fridge till tomorrow and wear whatever you like.”

“Whatever I like?” came the reply. “Oh William, really. You don’t know how a girl thinks at all, do you?”

“I’m sorry, dear,” he said. “I just don’t want you to panic.”

“Well,” she said, sounding less anxious, “I understand. It’s not your fault.” The complete thought there was It’s not your fault, you’re a man, but neither of them said so outright.

“Thank you, sweetie,” he said. “I should be home by six.”

He disconnected the call and rolled the conversation over in his head. Perhaps Dr. Parliss would take the situation more seriously if William laid out in detail the radical shift he had seen in Melanie over the prior six months.

Melanie never answered her cellphone like it was a landline, doctor

Melanie never said, “The Martin residence,” doctor

Melanie never believed in gender roles, doctor

Melanie always liked my food, doctor

Melanie couldn’t cook and now dwarfs Betty Crocker, doctor

Melanie never panicked when I said we should go out, doctor

Melanie mentions restaurants that I’ve never heard of, doctor

Melanie wears dresses now, doctor

Melanie never refers to herself as a girl, doctor

Melanie is batshit crazy, doctor

“Yes, I did see it. Marilyn is gorgeous, isn’t she? Of course, mother never would have let me go when I lived at home—”

“The Buicks are good, reliable, but I want something with a little more pizzazz. Maybe a Nash or a Cadillac—”

“He takes me to baseball games—please, Jack, on the rocks, thank you—and it’s such a bore. The things we do for them. C’est la vie, as they say in Paris. Oh! I rhymed—”

“Melanie, dear, you must join the conversation. It is a party, after all.”

“But I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, have you taken in any pictures?”

“Read any interesting books?”

“Traveled anywhere exciting?”

“No,” Melanie said. “Dinner is almost ready.”

She glanced at the picture another moment before wiping her tears and sitting up on the edge of the bed. The revelers continued on without her, in perfect happy stillness long ago, unaware of her.

Melanie went to the kitchen and checked the leftover casserole in the oven. Her husband opened the door, came in, and removed his shoes in the entryway.

“Melanie?” he said. “Sweetheart.”

“Yes, darling, in the kitchen!” she said.

He set his keys on the side table then went and kissed her. She turned at the last moment so he landed on her cheek.

“My breath is abhorrent,” she said, a little white maybe lie.

“Understood,” he said, smiling.

“What are you so happy about?” she said.

“It’s just nice to see you,” he said. “How was your day?”

“Busy,” she said. “Very busy.”

They said nothing while he riffled through the mail.

“Darling?” she said. “Do you think we ought to take a vacation?”

He paused but didn’t look up. “What’s that?” he said.

“I said I think we ought to take a vacation,” she said. “Just the two of us. Somewhere exciting.”

He paused again, buying time. “Are you sure you’re ready to do that?” he said. “I mean, are you still upset?”

She smiled and waved him off. “Why would I be upset?” she said.

“Because…I mean…so you’re not?” he said.

“Of course not, darling,” she said.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” he said.

“Well why on earth not?” she said.

“It’s not a good idea, ok?” he said with a snap that surprised them both.

She turned and stared at him, then turned back to the oven. “Well, of course, if you don’t think it’s a good idea, then it’s not a good idea,” she said.

“I think she ought to be committed, doctor,” William said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“So it’s not improving?” Dr. Parliss said.

“Not at all,” William said. “In fact, now she wants to go on vacation. It’s not good for her to be out of the house right now, right? I don’t think it would be good.”

“What are you afraid of exactly?” Dr. Parliss said.

“Doctor, be reasonable,” William said. “She’s…you know…she’s not the woman I married.”

“And you can’t wait any longer?” Dr. Parliss said.

“I—no, I don’t think so,” William said. “Look, will you sign the papers? Because if you don’t I’ll get someone who will.”

Dr. Parliss looked down and sighed, removed his glasses to rub his nose, then looked back to William. “If nothing is improving, as you say, then perhaps we can have her come in for a longer evaluation. Seventy-two hours, to start.”

“Thank you,” William said. “I really think it’s the best thing for her.”

William unlocked the door and came in.

“Darling, you’re late,” Melanie said from the kitchen. “Was there traffic—”

She turned the corner to see Dr. Parliss and another man standing behind him, then froze.

“Darling, I wasn’t expecting company,” she said. “You should have phoned me.”

“Honey,” William said, “Dr. Parliss and I think it’s time for you to get some better help.”

“Help with what, darling?” she said.

William and Dr. Parliss looked at each other.

“Melanie, we have a very good program,” Dr. Parliss said. “The arrangements are already made. It’s all covered by the insurance. No need to worry about expenses.”

“A program for what?” Melanie said with a confused look.

“Melanie, don’t you—” William began, but Dr. Parliss put a hand on his arm.

“We just think that you will feel like your old self after a few days at the treatment center,” Dr. Parliss said. “Maybe longer.”

Melanie’s face changed from confusion to concern.

“Think of it as a nice vacation,” Dr. Parliss said.

“You want to send me away?” Melanie said, looking at her husband. Tears welled up. “What did I do? Am I not a good wife anymore?”

William moved to comfort her.

“No, no, sweetie,” he said, “that’s not it at all. It’s just—we want you to feel like your old self, and we think you just need a little help, that’s all.”

Melanie wept softly while her husband rubbed her back.

“I’ll need to get my things,” she said, resigned to a fate she still didn’t grasp.

She turned toward the bedroom.

“Here, let me help,” her husband said.

She put back a hand and he stopped.

“No, darling, I’ll do it,” she said. “I just need a few minutes.”

She went into the bedroom and closed the door.

She lay on the bed and stared again at the old picture on the nightstand.

“Well?”

“You talk about Paris so much,” Melanie said. “I think I’d like to go there.”

“Hey, that’s the ticket!”

“And I want to go to the pictures too, and ride in a Nash, and even see the Yankees play.”

“Now you’re talking!”

After a few minutes, William knocked on the bedroom door.

“Sweetheart?” he said. “I really am sorry about this.”

“You don’t need to give me the silent treatment, ok?” he said. “It won’t be for long. I just think you need some help, that’s all.”

He quietly reached for the door and opened it.

“Melanie?” he said.

He came in.

“Honey?” he said.

He looked for her, but the room was empty. The windows were closed.

He called out for her again. Dr. Parliss and the other man entered too, but she was gone. They searched the house, over and all over and again, and did not find her.

William looked in the bedroom for her once more, the way someone does who keeps checking the same spot for a precious lost thing they know isn’t there, in the hopes that by some miracle it will appear.

He saw the old picture on her side of the bed and picked it up. He had seen it before, given it passing interest, but now he looked, and looked, and looked again. He had never noticed how much Melanie took after her grandmother. The resemblance was uncanny.

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Great horror is like great sex. You build up, you build “the mood,” you hit the right beats, the next “base,” and then at the perfect time you climax. And on the way down, you leave room for more. The trick in both is maintaining perfect tension, rimming that edge the exact right length of time, until that needed pop of release, and then, in the best examples of both, easing down that hill in a way that leaves everyone (the audience, your partner) wanting more.

In a recent post, I argued against the urge to center character in your fiction. Some stories, particularly those in the vein of “literary fiction,” need a focus on character because the world those stories inhabit tend to be our mundane world. But storytelling is not a “one size fits all” affair. I pointed to Stephen King’s and Edgar Allen Poe’s stories as examples of fiction that did not center character and didn’t need to. They did something different because of the kind of stories they were writing. They centered a particular sort of mood. That is, they made dread everything.

But as with sex, building the mood takes time and crashing it can be quick. This is why so many horror writers struggle to hit. The play between dos and don’ts, action and restraint, is a tricky one, and every movement implies a stillness, yin and yang, touching and waiting to touch and the best lovers make their presence felt in every absence as the dance of bodies flows forth to explosion. And so with horror. What follows is the first in a short series discussing elements that I’ve found to mark the best horror writing, and which I feel are more relevant to horror than other genres.

Practice an economy of sound

Think of your story as sound before text. I mean ontologically, not necessarily chronologically. Horror stories play in the sonic, not primarily the textual or scriptural. This may not be as important in essay or memoir, perhaps, but in horror sound is paramount for building dread. The way your story sounds, the aural flow of the words on the page, should match the rhythm of the mood you’re trying to create.

To this end, avoid Latinized or Hellenized words, particularly those with prefixes or suffixes that will only serve to “ruin the mood.” Use single syllables as often as possible. English is great for this because it has that rich heritage of Germanic and Anglo-Saxon words we adopted. All those little words with one or two syllables that pack a punch. Pop. Bang. Crash. Creep.

Let’s build a hypothetical example to make the point.

Laura trots down the basement to check the laundry. She pulls the hot clothes from the dryer and piles them into the basket. She steps over to the table and plunks the basket down. She holds up her new favorite sweater and nuzzles her face into its warmth with a smile. She folds away and hums a tune to pass time. All done, she grabs the basket and heads to the stairs and hears a creak from the floor above. She stops. Listens. Cocks an ear. Holds her breath. Runs through who this could be. Parents out till Sunday. Creak.

Not great but good enough for my point. Short words. Clear thoughts. Minimal details. Slower pulse toward the end. Now consider a version heavy on words with Latin and Greek origin.

Laura descends the staircase down into the basement to investigate the laundry. She recovers the steaming apparel and accumulates it inside the receptacle. She saunters over to the table and ensconces the receptacle thereupon. She displays her most beloved novel knitted garment above her and envelopes her countenance into its balminess with a smile. She folds away and suspires a musical composition in order to while away the temporal proceeding. Upon termination, she apprehends the receptacle and ambles to the stairway and detects a mild discordant tone originating from the story above. She discontinues. Attends to the aural disturbance. Pivots an ear. Rescinds her respiration. Catalogs who this could be. Genitors absent until Sunday. Grating noise.

Does this create dread? No. It’s long and silly and vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century novels.

This is not to say that Latinate or long words are always inappropriate in horror. They work best when you’re in a valley or low-stakes moment, something more available in novels or long-form stories where building dread throughout every sentence is both a challenge and a burden on the reader. The killer cannot lurk in literally every moment for 300 pages.

But I think longer words work best when the terror is being recounted secondhand, when the reader is two steps from the dread, as it were, and not right next to it. This is why I love Dracula, for instance, or the horror novels of Max Brooks, World War Z and Devolution. We don’t get a third-person god-like view. Neither do we get a first-person account as the terror is happening or even right after. Instead, we get something just one step removed from that.

Consider Devolution, Brooks’s harrowing account of an intentional eco-friendly community near Mt. Rainier who encounters a tribe of Sasquatch after a volcanic eruption drives the creatures down the mountain. We don’t get a straight first-person narrative from the lead character Kate Holland from beginning to end. Instead, we get a chronological account of the journal that she left behind, interspersed with various interviews with supporting characters who are providing information after the massacre. As we listen to Kate’s entries, all we know from day to day is that she survived that day. And then Brooks cleverly closes the book with an interview, leaving open the question of whether Kate herself was finally killed or made it out of the community alive but without her journal.

Let’s look at our constructed example a third time, but now from this “once-removed” perspective, which allows for a different use of words than the first rendition above.

At approximately 11: 47 PM, October 31, Laura Jones went into the family basement to collect a load of laundry.

At precisely 11:55 PM, the back entry of the house was forced open.

Same story, but we’ve removed the immediate narrator and replaced them with a secondhand narrator. Could be a police report or a documentary account told years later. How we know this information, the exact times, could be fleshed out later with a real story. What matters for the moment is that being one step removed from the action, so to speak, does not remove the element of dread. It just allows it to be narrated in what we might call a “clinical” description, allowing the use of longer Latinized English shared by those who are investigating or researching a tragedy after the fact.

In the first and third examples, we want to know what happens to Laura. Not so much in the second example, where the flow is constantly interrupted by the dissonant sound of too many syllables and with words that don’t match the intended dread. Just as in sex, too much talking ruins the mood. But the right words at just the right beat push us to the edge.

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We’d buried him twelve years before
My father, there, whose name I bore
Within a white December store
Beneath the Brookwood’s grassy floor

In quickness he was torn from us
A thick autopsy’s omnibus
Of crushed and shattered hideous
Our weeping was cacophonous

Upon the platform did they wait
He and my uncle had the date
But my train destined to be late
And with that my poor father’s fate

The depot housed a frigid chill
And twilight darkness tested will
For lookers on were nearly nil
The night my uncle chose to kill

But lest you think that right was done
That uncle saw his final sun
He swore his innocence and won
And then my vengeance had begun

For only I surmised the truth
And saw beyond my uncle’s ruth
Not even mother knew, forsooth
What severed brothers in their youth

My father told me once the tale
Of what he saw that sapped him frail
Of something secret, under veil
His brother did beyond the pale

But I was just a child then
Left fatherless and worn at ten
So powerless and without ken
How to avenge or even when

But twelve years passed and so I grew
My eyes alit with flame anew
A stepson now to uncle too
My mother’s days of peace were few

But when I saw my father’s grave
Beseeching him to make me brave
I sensed a trembling, fetid wave
Burst from within his wintry cave

I stood aghast and lost in wonder
Mouth agape and bones asunder
Struck in terror at my blunder
What godless gift did my grief plunder

I hurried home in darkened plight
My rage had mixed with anxious fright
Cathedral bells rang in the night
But nothing could prepare the sight

My uncle’s corpse lay by the door
His visage twisted, wan and hoar
I turned and witnessed nothing more
But felt my father pass before

Before returning to his rest beneath the Brookwood’s grassy floor

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Seven days

Kenneth saved up money from his day job and rented a cabin in the woods somewhere on the North Shore of Lake Superior for a week in November. The sky blew the last of the leaves from trees and spared him the early white of years before.

Kenneth sounded nameless in the ears of other writers. A modest list of form rejections splayed around their file in his inbox. Quick lookup to evade duplicate submissions. A folder for passing agents. A folder for receipts for all the contests left unwon, retreats left unattended, for hyped and costly reader notes left biting and unheeded.

Kenneth poured coffee from the shoddy cabin maker on the first morning, pinched out floater grounds, plopped in front of the laptop. Took the brown scent in through the steam and savored it, opened a fresh page to start the greatest American novel of our time. So began it thusly in a fit of spurt.

Gabe Jerome hadn’t published a novel in five years, not since the fiasco with his fourth and most controversial book which rubbed the publishing establishment the wrong way. Not that he had ever had much love among that crowd. Even his New Yorker story a year prior was thought to be bought in a desperate attempt at legitimacy. It didn’t work. Then there were his comments to a female interviewer, something off the cuff that wouldn’t have gotten more than a shrug even ten years before.

Gabe was a vet, though. Had he been starting out, he would have been canceled for sure, kicked to the curb like the serial-killer antihero in his books that made all that moola, Johnny Echo. As it was, Gabe made his apologies and minded his Ps and Qs like a good boy and scraped by on his legacy despite walkouts at his publisher from all the spoiled Gen-Z’ers. Still, he laid low at the advice of his agent.

Gabe came back from his tropical purgatory tanned and ready to get back in the saddle. He had found himself at last, a rich hack, and proud of it, and ready to get richer. He knew his readers, and they loved him. Gabe’s next target would be the literary establishment itself, come hell or high water, and Johnny Echo was going to help him.

Kenneth knocked out pages before the high night wind whistled off the lake, felling him from stupor. He rubbed his eyes, looked at the time on his phone. Another blast upon the window by the door and he rose, faced the noise, stretched, opened and stepped out the frame. A mild breeze upon the trees but nothing more. A thin excuse of a November.

Six days

Gabe traded his royalty-bought Italian villa for a cold winter in the Montana Rockies. He’d given himself three months to scrape together his next big hit, made all the easier since he and his wife had separated before he flew off to Panama. Mistresses abounded, but this time he wouldn’t have to suffer the guilt and nagging. By the time Gabe sat down to write, his favorite hot cup of joe beside his Royal 10 typewriter, he knew what Johnny Echo was going to do next.

Johnny always killed his victims through the ear on account of his parents being deaf. An icepick through the eardrum, acid poured down the canal, poisonous spider eggs inserted into a sleeping victim. His favorite, though, had been a device he’d taken off a mad scientist that could be calibrated to a person’s brainwaves and cause their head to explode with a few minutes of exposure time. But Johnny was getting older, wiser, and bored—a lethal combination. He had a new trick up his sleeve.

Gabe was on a roll. By the end of the week he’d finished three chapters with no signs of slowing down. He treated himself to a drink at the local watering hole. Gruff and bearded like Papa, with the charm to boot, Gabe had no problem attracting townie girls to his presence even if they had no clue who he was. The high-class bitches in Manhattan made him drop a few bills before dropping their designer panties in the men’s room. But here in God’s country, Gabe never had to buy a drink, especially on ladies’ night.

Kenneth called it a night at the first yawn, well after dark again. He ambled to the kitchen and filched a Bud from the bottom of the fridge, set a pot of water to boil, and slapped down a box of cheap mac and cheese next to the stove with a rattle. He leaned his back against the counter, one arm on his hip, the other nursing the beer at his lips, eyes down, fried empty brain on reboot.

Kenneth jerked when the high wind peaked again, sung louder through the cracked window. He set the beer on the counter and went near to bring the pane down, arms hugging himself from the cold. As he reached out, he felt nothing. Heard the wind scream in through the crack. Darkness there and nothing more. He pulled his hands back, looked over his shoulder, turned back, then threw them out again and shut the window with a bang.

Five days

Kenneth flicked sleep from blurry eyes and fingered the weather app on his phone from bed. The rest of the week was to be as mild as the previous days. No low temps, no high winds, no storms. A November out of time, an old September only. He put the coffee on and fired up the laptop.

Gabe got a call from his agent. The news was all over social media. Didn’t he know? The publisher was getting pressure from Twitter and their low-level staffers to pull the new Johnny Echo book from publication, with another walkout planned that day. The complaint was that Johnny coming from deaf parents and turning out to be a serial killer was insensitive because it suggests that having deaf parents makes one dangerous and insane. Gabe pushed back, said Johnny himself wasn’t even deaf and that he’d already dealt with this issue in the previous book. His agent agreed but offered two options from the publisher: either retcon the character, make it a lie, like he only thought his parents were deaf but they really weren’t; or else scrap the project and write something else, maybe a spinoff with one of the supporting characters from the earlier books. “And if I don’t?” Gabe asked. “Then we find a new publisher,” his agent sighed.

Gabe hung up without giving an answer. All the more reason to keep writing a nice fat fuck you to the industry pussies who couldn’t keep their mutts leashed. Retcon Johnny Echo? Not a chance. He poured himself a glass from the blue label, straight as a razor, and slid a new sheet into the Royal.

Johnny waited in the alley for the publisher of Monsoon-Ransom Hill to emerge from her corner office on Broadway. She was only a cog in a vast machine of cancel culture and political correctness and who knew how many careers she’d ruined by taking all her cues from online trolls. But Johnny wasn’t there to kill. He had a new MO. Johnny still had a code that the punishment must fit the crime. People got inside her head, sure. Now it was his turn. And let’s see who could speak louder.

Gabe hung it up for the night before dinner, then glanced at the pink lace panties a local had left him as a souvenir that morning on the back of the couch. He grinned. Another notch on a bottomless bedpost. He refilled his scotch, heated up the skillet for an elk steak, and listened to the winter storm pick up outside. If his gut was right, he’d have to wait the better part of a week before sowing his oats again.

Kenneth shut off the nightstand lamp and lay in bed, closed his eyes and tossed for a while then looked up at the ceiling, pale ambient moonlight ricocheted off the lake. He nabbed his phone and thumbed right on pretty local girls, expanding out wider when the clip ran empty. Slim pickings.

Kenneth listened to that high cold wind pick up again and slam against the cabin. He rested the phoned hand near his body on the bed. Strained his ears. Thumps outside. Slow, broken apart. One, two…three. Not on the cabin or the door. On the ground. Slushy, muffled. That familiar stretching sound as the boot pivots to move forward in the snow.

Kenneth caught his breath, shot upright, put his hand to the lamp string and gripped it. Another frosty thud. Kenneth left the lamp off and the tassel swing there as he snuck from under the covers. He threw his shoes on, donned his jacket, stood in the dark before the front door and nocked his ears. Slowed his breath as the breadth of silence widened. No steps. No wind. Kenneth emptied lungs and grabbed the handle and opened the door. Still mild November. Still no snow. Still just simple breezing off the water.

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Four days

Gabe weathered the storm by writing at odd, random hours. It’s why the nine-to-five gig had never suited him. Not that he’d had much experience in that. He’d been writing since high school, including his first sold story. He’d dropped out of Iowa after one semester, then taken an overnight warehouse job while he wrote his first novel, the debut of Johnny Echo, during the groggy days and lonely midnight lunches. It turned out to be a smash hit and Gabe never looked back.

Gabe ran out of blue label around dawn on the third day of the blizzard. He lit a Cuban and savored it out one side of his mouth while he kept going on the best damn Johnny Echo story he’d ever written. He went at such a clip that he forgot to eat, chomping on the butt of the dead cigar well into the afternoon. That’s when a sharp knock came at the cabin door.

Kenneth jerked in the chair in front of his computer, read the lines again. Felt the eyes wave left to right in their sockets. Read the last line again. Frowned. Deleted it. Started over.

Gabe chomped on the butt of the cold cigar well into the afternoon. He looked through the dining room window at the savage whiteout, spurred on by the isolation. He grinned and closed his eyes. He was in his happy place now. Free from worries. Free from meddling women, his meddling agent, his piss-ant manager. Then a loud pounding at the cabin door. Gabe twisted his neck. Who the hell even knew he was here?

Kenneth stopped again, glared down at his hands, weighed them as dense foreign objects. He fumbled one to his mug and downed the cold swill and a chaser of bitter grounds. He rose from the table in a sweat, padded his damp balding head on the way to the door. Opened it to the calm November wind and harmless sky. Nobody in sight. No bodies. No alien objects to shunt against deep wooded hovels in waning light. He corrected the story once again.

Gabe twisted his neck toward the door, then got up and grabbed his shotgun from the bedroom. He stood in front of the door, then opened it quickly. There was only a large branch lying on the ground. The storm had blown it down and crashed it against the door. That was all.

Three days

Johnny spied his second target deep in a parking garage on 42nd Street, CEO of the telecom giant that owned the pussy publishing house. The pulse from the unlock button on the key fob echoed around the empty level. Johnny slithered out of the shadows against the wall and pursued his prey in the tan Brooks Brothers overcoat in deft silence. By the time captain bigshot eyed Johnny’s shadow behind him, it was too late.

Kenneth worked in blocks of smaller time now. He popped the last of the beers for lunch and nursed it during swipes of left and right. Checked the matches tab on the app to find it empty. Widened the search area again and found more options, quickly vanished. Put the phone away and watched the treetops dangle in the breeze of mild November, running hops over his bitter tongue.

Gabe made love to his backup Jack Daniels and fended off another text from his agent. Back in the real world of social media, pressure was mounting for his lynching, his publisher pushing for a solution that wouldn’t have to forego the millions of dollars of revenue the new Johnny Echo book would bring in, much of it no-doubt due to the controversy itself. But Mr. Hot Shot Agent would have to wait. Mr. Manhattan born and bred. Gabe was focused on the story first, then the dogs could fight over the scraps.

Johnny sat behind the rich groggy prick as he came to in front of the steering wheel of his Bentley. The chief executive swirled his head about like waking from a nightmare, shook himself out of it, but when he reached for the wheel his hands didn’t move, tied at his sides by the seatbelts. He groaned, then saw Johnny’s face in the mirror and screamed again. He started to call for help but Johnny put a finger on his, Johnny’s, lips and put the straight razor to the man’s ear canal. “Yer gonna publish that book, now,” Johnny said. “You ain’t gonna listen to nobody else but me. You comprehend me, boy?” The rich asshole nodded and the smell of fresh piss hit Johnny’s nose. “Good,” Johnny said. “Now I got just a few more words fer ya to hear.” Johnny stuck his mouth right up to the man’s ear and whispered, nice and slow. And when he was finished, Johnny slipped out of the page.

Gabe finally—

Kenneth caught himself again to see what he’d written. The last line in Johnny’s story. He laughed at himself and shook his head. He slumped his dull hands back over the keys and corrected it.

Johnny slipped out of the car, then wandered out into the dark.

Kenneth called it a night.

Two days

Kenneth wakened to a ping on his phone. A match. He tapped open the app to see a beautiful young face and then a message. It was a link to her profile on an adult content site and the immortal words “add me lol.” He unmatched and smacked his phone back on the nightstand.

Kenneth reheated yesterday’s coffee in the microwave and sat in front of the laptop and lifted the screen and stared at the words and the white space beneath it. He stopped and started and retraced his fingers the better part of the morning before he found a rhythm again.

Gabe looked out the window with his liquid breakfast at the calming skies. The snow had stopped overnight. The roads would be treacherous but as an outdoorsman it would be worth the risk to venture out to civilization to get a lay of the land, or, better yet, just a lay. He felt the stubble on his face, set down his drink, and wandered into the bathroom for a shower and shave.

Gabe finished dressing, cuffed his flannel at the wrists, and tied up his Timberlands. He glanced at the shotgun, back in the bedroom corner, then pulled on his winter coat. He lit another Cuban for the road, or the walk, as it may be, then opened the door. There in front of him stood Johnny Echo.

Kenneth jumped out of his chair, tipping it over to the floor. He leaned down to check the screen and there the words sat, boldly staring out at him. He slapped the laptop closed and checked the fridge for maybe a rogue beer, checked the cupboards for maybe a phantom bottle of blue label. He was empty. He glowered down at his shaking hands and turned them over. He wiped his mouth, rubbed his thinning hair, turned to the door. Silence there. Mild November sounds there.

Kenneth put on his jacket and approached the door. Head spinning. Thin air passing through the lungs. He turned the knob, cracked it, stood there. Closed it again. Locked and relocked and doublechecked the locks. He went to the bedroom and dug through his suitcase to find a little stack of books, emergency backup reading in case of block. Kenneth called it a day.

Last day

Kenneth back at the table where he found words again. His glazed eyes staring at the screen, fingers tracing back, deleting back and writing forth as Gabe found words again and Johnny—

Gabe opened the door to see Johnny—

Delete the line. Start over.

Gabe pushed the door closed on Jo—

Johnny pushed open the door to see his final victim. He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his temples. He was seeing two men there. No, not two men, just double. Johnny had always liked a challenge, but it may mean going to old standbys. He approached the first, just a mirage.

Gabe stood helpless as the icepick shot out and into his ear. He fell dead. His phone throbbed and buzzed away with his agent’s good news.

Johnny’s vision returned. No more illusions. Just one target left. The very last. He dug into his breast coat pocket and opened the straight razor. He slithered to the last man, seated at the table. Thrust it—

Kenneth felt the hot red splatter on his alien hands in a flash of white light. The splayed fingers, then the empty into—

Wait. I think I hear something.

Good evening, gentle reader. Curled up as you are in a warm soft place on the edge of dark well after the sun has done its work for the day. Not yet twilight, though, and the wind glides in from somewhere and grazes your cheek on the porch or scratches at the windows. And that’s when these stories meet you. A little night breeze. Not full black just yet but late enough where the shadows out and play on the edge of sight.

So these tales dance in that middle space. A few straight horror yes but a few grins thrown in to tamp down the chill. But all just off the path somehow, to more and less degree. None of them quite and full in kilter with the the mundane plane. And some more science fiction than horror. And some more magical realism than either. And maybe some that don’t check in a box too clean much at all. In terms of style, too, they vary. A few more literary, a couple pure pulp, a few a bit tougher to chase down the thread than others.

All this as it should be. Written at different points over the last several years by a voice in flux and shimmer, along with new and ongoing tales. Here one role model, there another, and maybe now a crossbreed way of putting things that don’t much sound like anyone. But if it eggs your brain to flip on through then good and good enough.

And don’t get too riled at those shadows in the corner. Maybe they’ll wisp you a smile. Maybe they’ll reach out a hand and take you somewhere else. And maybe you’ll stay a while.

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Joy the middle child the brittle doll. She took Hannah the hardest.
In life as well as death, the both as same.
Sweet mysteries of sisters do beguile us.
Aye they do, they do.
See we came along the last.
Long and very last.
Yes. And so we missed the birthing.
Very early parts of this soiree.
No. How so dramatic. Let us term it a relationship.
A wondrous mind light that.
No good, my how boring. A much beneath us word.
Agreed. This foray then?
Alright, this foray. Born we were along and last when Joy was nearly gone.
Out of the house, that is.
Simply out of the house. Or nearly so.

And on one such happening.
Not the distant past, brother, move along.
Aye aye, skip ahead alright.
Hannah is dead.
So Hannah is dead, of course. Some these nigh on long many years.
Oh, we weren’t retired yet.
Nay but still in silver years.
And now in platinum.
Good one, good twin brother.
Yes and yes yes, thank you. But now on ancient days since Hannah passed.
And Joy, poor Joy. Then in golden years all kept up in her house upon the hill.
A monstrous thing that house.
A mansion ‘tis.
A massive span of heavy empty corners, full of dust and doom.
And I’m the drama here?
Well just admit it was a gloom at least.
Aye. It gave the willies true I nod to that.
And the creeps and shudders and all the manners of tiny evils moving dark about.
More so since she shuttered in therein.
Since her husband up and left her.
Down and left her. Down the stairs.
Down into the ground for last.
As though he did that fully willingly.
No and now now, brother, none of that. Was but an accident. I see what you are getting at.
And so she told the constable.
And here we vie for drama, twin.
Tis a rational conclusion, twin. And not the furthest from thy mind.
Fair to say. But her lover was infirm. It’s not so far so fetched he slipped and tumbled.
Her lover was infirm from being ancient.
And a woman’s not in fault for doing what she must by means of marriage.
Nay. And thus the mansion.
And thus the manor that he left her wanting none.
For want of nothing.

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So Hannah had a time with mourning Joy.
After husband down he went into the dirt.
Hannah was a spinster. Never met a man.
Never married one, dear twin, so let us clear at that.
True at that. Never married, but never one proposed to either.
Nay, thou speak it true, and why thou think this so?
Enough with rumors now, young brother, we tell it like it is.
Younger by a fraction of the day, old twin, and tis like how we tell it.
I see again that I must keep you straight.
And I must keep thee rounded.
Poor Joy did not take Hannah’s men as you insinuate.
Lo I so said nothing of the kind.

So Hannah moved into the house that husband up and left to Joy.
Down and left her grieving there, so Hannah thought.
So Hannah thought, with Joy distraught.
Or playing at it anyway.
But things turned south and sour quick.
One wonders why, with so much space left unfulfilled.
Forsooth, it’s true. They could live days without so much to glance the other’s shadow.
But hearing is another thing.
You voice it true again. Even distant creaks and steps will break a silent house.
Although twas not the rub that rended them.
Alas the mysteries of sisters so beguile us.
They do, they do.
The way this brother heard it was a man.
Some long ago and lost before these twins were given life.
Indeed they were but girls if one can credit it a fact.
For the way this brother heard it was a pet.
A pet! To sever blood communion. Has such a thing been known?
Known and seen if this twin’s eyes be trusted.
A grand wager, brother.
Only if you back the other horse. Hannah frighted for her very bones.
And merely from a pet at that?
Merely say thou. Merely from a cat. The witch companion, devil eye.
And back are we to drama once again.
Nay and nay nay, twin. Merely a report what troubled Hannah posted.
And to this twin from our Joy’s hand reported was the man. The man alone, no beast.
At least the beast lay elsewhere in this tale.
To that we are agreed and yes. Go on now in the telling.

What mourning brought them tender close was soon awash in feud.
For all the old and bitter bites renewed.
And soon from what my hearing took they spaced amid the manse.
And spread to each her corner in expanse.
Not a sight. Not a passing glimpse. Nary pin drops from the other.
So struck they the terms of the deal.
Oh and then there’s more. One wonders why poor Hannah didn’t leave.
Didn’t move herself beyond the manor’s doors to common peace.
When dear old parents died they left the house to eldest Hannah.
For Joy had want of nothing from her husband, and we twins still on the road.
And having found a buyer Hannah left.
To stay with Joy until the grieving ceased and only.
But on the eve of closure there it went all up in flames.
The family place, our childhoods roasted into ash.
And lest thou think this twin espy conspiracy again, dare not.
An accident of wiring, all parties rest agreed.
All parties rest agreed indeed. But then.
But then but what, good twin? I rest my leaf upon my haggard brow with you.
But just consider this, our potted presence here. The fire sniffs of witchery.
The fire sniffs of ashes and despair and nothing more. A fated presage of poor Hannah’s lot.
Poor eldest Hannah, true.
Now stuck alone with mourning Joy.
In that house upon the hill.
But then there came a cat in there, that much a fact is true.
A pleasant potable for Joy and far less bitter of a brew.
And Hannah so despised the cat, this twin accords to that, but not so much to sunder them apart.
Twere a man who tendered that sororal resignation, thou insist?
It cannot be the alternate, good twin, unless some third thing lingers unawares.
A man or a cat, concurred, that split them further.
More than just the natural mysteries of sisters, yes.
Then this brother dare not deign to stir up further drama with mine insight.
Insight, twin? Seep it out, then. Your wild mind passes fast the days for my delight.
Then here. What passed as man in yonder days returned in golden years as beast.
Oh I should not have invited misery.
The man they knew transformed into a pet. Alas we both are right.
Gracious me. We are moved beyond hyperbole.
But only if the fact itself is false. Alas Joy is a witch.
So facts and false are friends in your imaginings.
Nay. This brother needs not dream such haunts. One only must behold us.
But we are men, good twin. What silly nighttime reverie bedevils you in this?
The same, methinks, that so bewitches thee, to other purpose. So going on.
So we go on, and more to saner ends I hope.

Saner to be certain, when paired with how the feline met its fate at Hannah’s hand.
Alas a fact and this time free of falsity. This one heard the same as you but none the sane at that.
Not so sane, at last, but not so grandiose. Hannah chose the women’s sword of war.
Yes a tested tool. A pinch of poison for the cat. A devil eye, you say.
For Hannah disbelieved that her old caller and the victim were the same.
Disbelieved per sanity, so says this twin, yet driven to madness if only to prove the point.
Aye a mad act, but if thou think more broadly, brother, revenge lay in the making.
Revenge for what? Reprisal for a dime a dozen little pet?
Reprisal for a murder, for the cat was Joy’s familiar. A devil eye, a witch’s watcher.
And lo a sigh again from me. This fabulating marks the only devilry.
And yet behold thyself, good twin. A devil’s deed from root to veins.
And more and further madness in your sight in need of saning. But let us go.
Aye we go on.

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The poor and poorly ended beast drove Joy into a state.
And wrenched them only further from their mutual regard on count of blood.
For in a manner blood was spilled.
And in the manor boiled blood would now be spilling over.
The brother here heard tell of every trap laid strewn about.
Every trinket on the floor and out of place a deadly hazard.
Concocted by Joy for the quick and tumbling death of aging elder Hannah.
Akin to Joy’s dead husband.
Akin in cockeyed conspiracy at least. Hannah resprouted the tales.
But Joy had other plans for her. A blood spilt over aye yet free of blood affair.
Poison you suggest? The doctors beg a difference there.
Not poison, twin, but cursing. A witch’s favorite brew. Drunken over many years.
Oh more restless rumors here. More drama growing larger. Hannah was ill.
An illness sure. The most potent brew. Sightless to the minds of men.
So you see this natural thing, this mundane common sickening designed?
Designed to look in every way like nature aye.
Oh and again. The only stain of witchery here is the working of your mind.
Nay, good twin. Mine mind proofs here the only mark of the divine.

Alas and Hannah gone and we now home to grieve in proper.
To see with eyes what has befallen our beloved house and sisters.
Parents up and long since gone away into their dust.
We visit lonely Joy up in the house upon a hill.
We meant but for a visit there. The ghastly place. So reeked of presences.
Till thou mine older brother flitted rumors to the room.
A cause for conversation, nothing more. Nothing fitting poor Joy in the dock.
A common mind would usher any other topic in the void.
Like what, good twin? Pray tell me your solution.
The weather, say. Or books or food. Or worldly goings on. Or politicians or religion!
And break down all decorum? This twin only floated it. You whisked it into life.
Alas there is more blame to go around. We accord in that.
So poor and grieving Joy in all her melancholy kept us.
Thou understate the facts of the affair. We are trapped here.
Say no more good brother. We may exit at our whim.
Exeunt out the window there? With what aid and by what force?
You speak with sore hyperbole. We stay put for mourning sister Joy.
We are planted put, good twin. Our leaves betray us root to vein.
Another witchery afoot, I gather?
Thou gather not no more. Thou feed and drink and pickle in the sun.
And here comes fragile Joy with our refreshments.
Silence, twin. Lest we conjure worser punishments than this.

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