Short Fiction (4/100): Dark

It's dark here. It's warm. It's safe. I know all this because I can sense it, as much as you can sense anything. Everything in you shouting the truth of this. It's dark. It's warm. It's safe. And though there's nobody in here with me i know i am not alone. I know this like I know anything. It's so evident that it would be insane to question it. And though some of you find the dark frightening, I understand, but I can't see why. There's nothing frightening in here beyond the fact we can't know every little detail about it. And that's okay. There's no monsters in here with me. I know that I'm safe from anything like that, as long as I'm here, in the darkness, in the warm.
At least, that's how things have been, but today has been... strange. Earlier today, something broke beneath me and things flowed past me, and the world around me began to move. The movements come quicker and quicker now, and what was once a perfect, dark, safe place to... something stranger. I don't like the change. Change has never been needed before. It was perfection. So, why am I being forced out? Why am I moving towards the exit that appeared, the way out i never wanted...
Hours, it took, agonizing hours as the walls forced me out and crushed against my sides and screams, familiar screams filled my ears... and suddenly, there was light, and a man in white took me into his arms. I was cold, and wet, and confused, and I knew I wasn't safe anymore. And I was certainly right about that, because he struck me. And as that first bit of pain coursed through me, the light blinding my eyes... that's where everything went downhill.

Short Fiction (3/100): Love

I learned a few things growing up, about love.

Love is conditional. Love is unreliable. Love is something that was supposed to mean everything, but so often meant nothing. This is what I learned as a child, in a house where I was told I was loved and knew every day it was a lie. That's where I learned what love felt like. I can't say I cared for it, at the time.

I grew up, and though my heart ached for it, I'd sort of given up on finding that love I kept hearing about in stories. This unconditional, perfect, meaningful love that was trumpeted in song and story. It seemed like a myth, a bigfoot in a blurry photograph, a trashcan lid flying saucer. So I told myself I didn't need it. I built a world in my head where I was going to be alone. Forever. And I was fine with that, in that world. I told myself that every night. Because I was too broken to ever think someone would give a damn.

It's amazing how the things you never expect to happen can happen all at once. All I know is that maybe I was wrong. Maybe it can mean something after all. Maybe that love, the one I read in book after book, saw in film after film, maybe it was real. And I guess, well, I gotta say... it was worth the wait...

Short Fiction (2/100): Light

You always hear about people seeing them, y'know, lights in the sky. Aliens. UFOs, the old Unidentified Flying Objects as the military calls them, though after a lot of careful research, I've most got them identified. It's just like identifying a car model, really. Noticing how the body is shaped, the placement of the lights, the colors used, all that. It took a lot of work, of course. Lotta long hours staring at blurry photographs that stupid people think just look like thrown dishes or trashcan lids. We'd be so lucky, were that the case. Anything intelligent that could fit in a trashcan lid would be incapable of developing a weapon with a destructive range sufficient to cover earth. And that's what most of 'em are here to do, I'm guessing. Destroy us or enslave us.
But why, you're asking, if they're doing that, what's taking them so long? If they're just doing those, why haven't they done it yet? and that's simple. Time lapse between the two fleets. They send the scouts in for fiftyish of our years, their time may be experienced differently so perhaps even longer, those scouts tell them everything they know... and everything we know... and they make their decisions... are they going to kill us or enslave us? Who are they selling us to, if they're enslaving us? What will we end up doing for the rest of our lives, in their alien clutches? I don't know these answers. I wish I did. It would make it easier, watching the lights.The problem is, they're clever. And they don't have to be too clever. They pinpoint the crazy, the drunk, those distant from normal society, and take them and test them until they break. Nobody ever believes them. Nobody ever believes US. We're lunatics because that's easier to accept than the fact that any minute that fleet could dock in orbit and burst our planet like an interstellar zit.
As for their ships, well, who says that we can photograph them properly? They just look like trashcan lids on our stupid little obsolete cameras because they want us all to look crazy. those of us in the know. And that's why I'm afraid of those lights. I know a little too much for my own good. I know one day, as i walk back from the all-night taco joint down the street, with my food in a little white paper bag stained red with leaking salsa... and I'll see one of those lights again... and it'll get closer... too close.... and then... it'll open up above me and that light from above will open up... and in a moment I'll be gone. Forever. Lost in that light that nobody will believe is there.

Short Fiction (1/100): Introduction

I guess the best way to explain what's been going on is to start at the beginning. First of all, who I am. My name is Bill, and I'm the one who brought the nightmares here. I didn't mean to, but I don't think that matters at this point. You see, I'm a writer, and well, we think weird, some of us at least. At right angles to other people, sometimes. It's helpful sometimes and hurtful sometimes. I never mean any harm, but sometimes things go… badly. This time, well… I'm never going to be sure if they came to me on their own or if I made them in my head, either wouldn't surprise me. But every day, as I slept, and as I wrote, there were more and more of them, there, inside my head. Screaming to get out, to be free from the confines of my head. I simply assumed that meant they needed to be written down. So I wrote them down, my dark menagerie, thinking that would satisfy their need. How silly of me.

They became real, crawling out of my head by inches, starting as dreams…. And later, hallucinations, half seen in the dark… then, after weeks of slowly building as I stopped sleeping and eating, they were real… flesh and blood real. Teeth and bone real. Right here, right now real. They prowled around me at first but… one day, they fled out the doors, those nightmare beasts that I still thought were just hallucinations. They ran out into the other apartments, out onto the streets. Everyone could see them. And they leaped at people, and ate them alive. I heard the screams echoing up from below. And though you tried to fight them, nothing seems to hurt them. Nobody's quite sure what to do. But you all know that. That's why you're here. And I know what you've come here to do, I see those looks on your faces. I see the weapons in your bags or behind your backs. I just want you to know the one thing I know, the only thing I can tell you. Killing me won't make the nightmares go away. But I suppose you're going to try that anyway. Make it quick.

Lyrics: Sleepless Nights

Verse 1

So late at night, so dark as I am staring at the ceiling
The clock's red glow just let me know it's One AM, and I'm awake
So long I wait so wide awake despite how tired I'm feeling
I close my eyes, silently sigh and ask what does it take?

Pre-Chorus 1

Watch the clock with bleary eyes,
Trying to shut off my mind
Watching time go ticking by
On another sleepless night

Chorus

I lay down my head
Close my bloodshot eyes
As I lay in bed
On a sleepless night

Verse 2

It’s two-o’clock the numbers mock me glowing as I lay there
Their crimson light it seems so bright within the darkness of my room
I try to sleep, I’m counting sheep but I am getting nowhere
My rest denied, I look outside and curse the slowly setting moon

Pre-Chorus 2

Watch the clock with bleary eyes,
Trying to shut off my mind
It seems peace is hard to find
On another sleepless night

Chorus

I lay down my head
Close my bloodshot eyes
As I lay in bed
On a sleepless night

Verse 3

The clock strikes three my mind runs free as I take leave of my sense
Try to repress my restlessness throughout the night so long and dull
The house’s creak, the faucet’s leak seem so loud in the silence
And every sound just seems to pound within the confines of my skull!

Bridge

Why can’t I sleep?
Why can’t I sleep?
Why can’t I sleep?
Why can’t I sleep?

Pre-Chorus 3

Watch the clock with bleary eyes,
Trying to shut off my mind
Feel my sanity unwind
On another sleepless night

Chorus

I lay down my head
Close my bloodshot eyes
As I lay in bed
On a sleepless night

Fiction: Here By Your Side, It's Heaven

Poets throughout the ages have written wonderfully about the beauty of nature, and their love for the all-mother that she is and the beauty of her works. Others turn their eyes to the sea, seeing within her the mystery and beauty that they long for, writing odes to her beauty and fickle nature… So, I ask you, is it so strange that I have fallen in love with her, with Death herself?

It began the day my mother died, when father lost control one evening as he beat her senseless. As her spirit soared free, I saw her come down gently to my mother, and take her by the hand. She was wonderful... Her long black hair, her pale skin, her dress shining like obsidian... I loved her, even then. She carried my mother away, took away her pain. Mother turned to me, and I saw a sad smile cross her eyes as what had once been her earthly shell cooled slowly beneath her. I knew my mother was dead, but somehow, it didn’t seem sad. Wherever she was going, it couldn’t be worse than here, with Father, the drunk, and now killer. He shook her, and panic filled his eyes.

Mother had told me something, once. About what to do if Father lost his mind. She showed me a cabinet. She showed me a box. She showed me a gun. I ran. I opened the cabinet as Father screamed in the background to get back here. I took out the pistol as he turned the corner. I loaded the magazine as he ran towards me, screaming. I fired as he reached for me. He fell down, and Death walked into the room. She smiled at me, and blew me a kiss. She reached down, and wrenched Father away from the cooling mass of meat bleeding gently on the floor. And with him in tow, him in all his horrible splendor, she sank into the ground. There was a faint sound in the background, and she was gone. I was acquitted for his death, on self-defense. Just another poor kid, just another bad family gone to pieces over domestic violence. But I didn’t care. Mother was gone to some place nicer. Father couldn’t hurt anybody ever again. And I was in love.

The therapists they took me to were worried about me, how well adjusted and normal I seemed. I didn’t even seem to care, and so they kept me in therapy for years, and they were frustrated, thinking I’d merely lodged the reality away or lost my mind when I had to kill my father. But I wasn’t crazy. And so I grew up, and became a soldier. They gave me a gun, and they taught me how to fight, how to kill. And I saw her, sometimes. When a man I knew, a man I fought beside fell, or one of my shots landed, and a man who was bent on killing me and my compatriots for his country fell and left behind another cooling bag of meat, bone and skin. She took them, and she carried them softly away. And though she never seemed to notice me there, I watched her, and smiled. I would keep fighting, and I would kill to see her again. So, I wasn’t sure what to do, when the psychologists had me discharge from the military, when they hypnotized me and found out about her. I was given a pension, and with my wages, I was able to get a good apartment. But… I had to see her again. I still had the gun...

The first one was a drifter. The bullet went into his temple, and I threw his body in the river. There was no satisfaction in the kill, never any satisfaction there. Just another death, just another stopping heart, just another cooling corpse on the ground, nothing more and nothing less. But to see her again, that was joy itself. I waved to her, and she turned to me. Her eyes were so sad. She looked away, and took the drifter away with her. It had been easy, so easy. I had to do it again. I had to kill another man, I had to see her, I couldn’t live without seeing her...

The body was never found. He was an old man who lived alone in his house, nobody ever saw him, and nobody would know he was dead for weeks. I snapped his neck in my gloved hands and watched as the beautiful vision of Death came to claim him. I reached out to her, and she twisted out of my reach... She spurned me, but she would be mine. I would have her. The next was a girl from a street corner. She got in my car, and I stabbed her to death in my apartment. And As death came for her, I watched her, and her eyes met mine, her sad, beautiful, eyes, eyes deep and dark as the universe. And then she left. I nearly wept; she’d seen me again...

And then the police came in the door. They’d been following me, apparently. They’d found the body of the old man, they’d heard about me from the military psychologists. The man in the apartment below had heard her screams. The trial was quick; I didn’t really have a leg to stand on, as they’d seen me holding the mass of flesh that had been the hooker from the corner, seen the knife in my hand. They sentenced me to death. I sat in the condemned cell, but I was damned if I was going to wait. I tied a few knots in a sheet, and jumped from the bed, with all but the briefest of snaps. My feet danced a victory jig on the air as she came down for me. I looked up into her sad, beautiful eyes, and as my body cooled below, she embraced me, and I said... "I love you..."

Theories on Insanity

Some people start by introducing themselves. I consider this a waste of time. You will catch on quickly enough.

People are always wondering what is precisely wrong with me. I could go on for hours on the subject, but what it inevitably comes down to is the fact that everyone has something mindlessly, pointlessly wrong with them. We are all utterly, pointlessly, incredibly fucked up. Your brain is full of bad wiring and rusty connections and so much horrible stuff that it would scare the hell out of you to know the whole of it. I know this because I know a fair bit about people.

I know that normal people are a myth. Normal people with 50's style lives, happy relationships, both parents and normal childhoods, who have no strange beliefs or weird wiring in their heads or the kind of kinks you wish were contained within the depths of 4chan but know are everywhere. Sit in traffic, and I'll guarantee if you look around you there are people around that would believe you to be absolutely insane if they knew anything about you. And there is someone around you about whom you would feel precisely the same way.

There is a reason politics and religion and all that are not merely measured on a scale of intelligence. I have known many bright and retarded people on both sides of the political spectrum. There are brilliant and moronic atheists and religious people. I am not particularly religious myself, being a disciple of Eris and thus considering my religion a sort of hobby rather than a large part of my psychological background. I do not consider religion anything other than an excellent way to argue out the afternoon (which admittedly, I do love doing. I promise you I will do my best to be intelligent, which is more of a guarantee than you can get out of most people. I am for the most parts just fascinated with different points of view.). Your opinions, your life, your politics, your views on religion and whatever the hell else are a sum of all your messed-up experiences on this shit-hole planet that we call Earth, which we are bound and determined to kill before it kills us. I wish for an afterlife if only so that I may see how it ends.

The point is that we are all a bit fucked up. For starters, human brains are made by unskilled workers in potentially volatile and imperfect environments, potentially while exposed to toxic materials, using insufficient or improper building materials, or using improper blueprints because the people responsible for the construction of this new brain are screwed up themselves. It is really not hard to come out of the womb with a brain-related issue. Even assuming you make it out of that unscathed, you have to remember that the rest of you are built on how others deal with you. So, unless everyone else deals with you kindly and you live in a Norman Rockwell painting, you are going to end up messed up sooner or later. Not to mention that if you are not screwed up in the right ways chances are your parents are going to pour a few prescriptions down your throat to fix it. But that is a rant for another time.

The point is every last one of us humans is damaged goods. Broken. In small ways or in big ways. In the end, the only important thing is that you remember this and deal with your world, and the people around you, accordingly. And that is where I start this today.