F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

fpdorchak

Rewrite

by

Profound Love. Profound Angst. (Image by Leonid Pasternak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Profound Love. Profound Angst. (Image by Leonid Pasternak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
This is my newest effort! A brand new short story I was inspired to write April 8th, and wrote April 9th. I’ve since been polishing it (including having Mandy Pratt, my tireless, proofreader/editor, go over it). It’s a dark, troubling tale about what not to do in a relationship.

I was mentally pummeled with the idea while working out at the gym that previous Friday afternoon. This is perhaps the worst time (in my mind) to get inspired to write anything, because, well, I’m working out. I don’t have time to just stop what I’m doing and start scribbling notes for 10 or 15 minutes. It screws up the workout’s momentum, kills the cardio, and puts me in a different frame of mind (I’m in AGF mode at the gym, not Writer Guy mode). But, in this case, I was done with the iron and transitioning into cardio, so I grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled the steady stream of ideas as I used the Elliptical trainer….

This is a story of questionable redemption. This is…#WeirdFiction.

Thanks also go out to Marc Schuster for some literary fiction “technical support,” and to Karen Lin for some “grammatical consultation” on a particularly vexing phrase that I ended up using.

I feel I must also mention Stephen King’s short story “Nona.” This story used to be one of my favorite King short stories. I was not thinking of it when I wrote “Rewrite,” but afterwards the tone of “Rewrite” certainly reminded me of

Do you love?

“Nona.” I have not read “Nona” in something like 15 or 20 years.

So, this is “Rewrite’s” debut! My newest effort! It will be in my short story collection I am planning for release by early 2017.

 

Rewrite

© F. P. Dorchak, 2016

 

Do you love me?

Yes, there were the affairs.

Do you?

The shame.

I can’t live without you.

The disintegration.

How could something that had been so right…so beautiful…turn so hideous, so…obscene?

Whose fault was it?

Does it matter?

 

I was a writer. A literary author, if you must know the truth. Authors are published. Writers aren’t necessarily. I wrote and got paid for it. Rather well, for one in my capacity. But I didn’t want to be like most of my peers, writing about affairs and incest and abuses of substances or the body. I wanted to write about the metaphysics of life. Its philosophy. Things Humanity overwhelmingly thirsted for. Things we could get some use out of…provide application to our daily lives to make them better on a far more expansive scale, thereby improving Humanity’s Collective. Writing about one’s body ink (“tattoo” was far too vulgar a term for my employment) or the evil that men and woman do does not advance the race one bit. Sure, it might be cathartic to the author, stir emotions in the reader, and make both rail against the injustices in the world…but how did it fix anything?

Yes. I wanted to fix Humanity.

So I wrote about hard questions and troubled people. Those looking for something more. Asking and finding answers greater than themselves that transcended societal constraints. Wrote of examinations of the soul and how we can all apply our newfound epiphanies. As a public figure I also attended conferences, spoke at luncheons and banquets. University graduations. Received thunderous applause. Bookers, Faulkners, a Pulitzer. That kind of thing. I say this with no measure of pride. It just was. It was my life.

I’d grown up in a well-to-do family, both parents well-regarded Princeton professors. I attended Princeton and did not disappoint. It seemed writing was what I was born to do. I was born to arrange words and profoundly manipulate their order…able to peer into the hearts and souls of Humanity. Mainly, it seems, those of the long locks and graceful curves (and I did have quite the thing for the ladies)…men, it appeared, were not interested in my words. At least, not straight men. And those were the ones who most sorely needed my words.

I received my doctorate in English, Literary Theory. Conducted writing retreats that quickly became boring. Won many awards that really meant nothing, when you got right down to the writing. The writing stands on its own. It must. To write with honors in mind is to wax mendacious. I cared not for awards. I cared for words. I cared for people.

Like most of the women I met, I met my wife, Emelia, at a literary conference. She was of the aforementioned long locks and graceful curves. Long, dark hair and eyes…eyes that questioned God. She, I’d noticed, had always hung back from the crowds that had gathered around me asking about my sources of inspiration…my deepest, darkest secrets…and whether or not what I’d written had actually happened to me. Many would reach out and touch me, “casually” brush past, while making intended contact. I’m sure they also tried to inhale my scent. But she…this Emelia…would always hang back behind the others who kept trying to get closer and closer…she…kept her distance.

Observed.

I should have paid this greater regard.

We finally met at the conference’s banquet, and my “thing” for other women evaporated. She’d lingered around the table where I sat, one with my name embarrassingly emblazoned upon a tall placard. I invited her to sit in a chair I had secretly “saved” just for her—tipping the chair forward into the table—hoping to again see her. I was incredibly taken by her. Mysteriously so. With some hesitation, she took my offer. We were in bed that night.

We

Do you love me?

married a year later.

I loved her…loved her pain. She was a struggling artist who worked at an art gallery and had read all my work. My work was similar to what she was trying to do with her oils and acrylics. She had a sullen, brooding way about her that belied her desired optimism in Humanity.

Desired.

I deeply loved her.

As our lives progressed, I got more successful, while her artwork languished. But she was good at managing other people’s work…running an art gallery…and perhaps out of some measure of self-pity took the promotions until she was running the gallery when the owner unexpectedly passed.

We talked about it…how it would affect her work…but she’d already taken it. The position. She wanted more and was tired of being left behind. Tired of being…

In my shadow.

Her new position had taken up more and more of her time to the point where she no longer painted. This seemed a more distressing time for me than her. She seemed to fill her days with meetings and luncheons and showings. She’d finally “made it.” On her own.

I couldn’t tell if she was happy…or just occupied.

My schedule grew even busier, and I traveled even more. More speaking engagements, more book tours, and now, film deals—which I fought, though my agent said it was just another way to get my words out there. She said couples go to these films. Couples. That means guys. Straight guys…those who would otherwise never have been exposed to my work. Here was a way to get my message out to an entirely unexplored audience, whether or not they mentally rolled their eyes…consciously or subconsciously they would be receiving my profoundly manipulated words.

So I did them. The film deals.

As I grew busier, my wife also grew busier…and that’s when we began to

Do you love me?

grow apart. Even when we were together, we weren’t…she on her tablet or cell and I on mine. We were both providing our attention to others, not to those with whom we were with. The irony of it all was that we’d both given into these contraptions to get us out from behind our respective businesses

Do you…

to spend more time with each other. I remember one day in particular. I was in contact with my agent, awaiting a response to my next book deal. It was to be my most principal arrangement to date…Emelia and I were sitting in the living room…a fire burning softly…the lights low. She was uncharacteristically not on her tablet. Just staring into the fire, arms comfortably crossed. Quiet. As I attended to another, I heard

“Do you love me?”

I chuckled. “Of course I do!” I said, looking up and casting her an immense, tender smile.

I returned to my agent.

“You’re not growing bored with us? Me?”

I again chuckled as my tablet dinged with the e-mail I had been waiting for and the request for yet more attention.

“Of course not!” I said, amused, as I got to my feet. “I have to take this!” I said to my wife, as I left her sitting alone in our low-lit living room…a romantic fire crackling and sending my shadow across her seated form….

From that point on we rarely seemed to see each other. We’d become more like roommates. We were polite enough, superficially cheerful, even. But, one or the other of us would be too tired for intimacy…or the other had something more pressing to do that would inexplicably materialize and need to be done just then. Someone else needed something. There was always…something…else….

Like energy attracts like energy.

I had my ever-growing conference circuit to attend to. Banquets and book tours. Speaking engagements. Emelia had her gallery showings, her wining and dining of artists and “their people.”

Then, one day, while at another writers conference, I’d received an e-mail from an unknown admirer to my business number. Attached were photos of my wife. Her mouth and hands attached to another.

I excused myself from my table and went outside.

Somehow…somehow…

Do you love me?

Are you bored with me?

…I found myself in my hotel room’s shower with a statuesque woman whose name was “Juliette” or something similarly tragic.

There are no coincidences.

I allowed Juliette her exit…and spent the entirety of the evening sobbing.

I spiraled down from there. Sometimes it’s so much easier to take the wrong path. To feel sorry for oneself. I’d become everything I’d loathed in others…in other’s books. I’d become that novel’s story that everyone loved to read. Loved to hate. That story that fixed nothing.

And I couldn’t stop myself.

I found there were no shortage of women who wanted to “listen”…to…“ease my pain.”

How could I fix Humanity…if I couldn’t fix myself?

And my wife said nothing. Became more withdrawn. We rarely spoke. Our lives had become clinical. Separate. There were times I’d be awoken in the middle of the night by moaning…groaning…in one of our bathrooms…followed by sobbing. And it was during one of those nights that I’d had enough. I had decided to change the course of my story-that-fixed-nothing…to change the course of our lives.

I went to my wife. Found her upon the floor, cradling the toilet and puking up her soul. It seems she was more expressive of her love for me in private.

I begged forgiveness.

Begged to confess all of my sins…to come clean—but she would have nothing of it. She, in turn, begged for mine…just wanted us to start over. To be like we were. How things had been. When we’d been in love.

Once.

Could we—

Do you…

love each other again?

I told her I’d never stopped loving her. I had just become…absent.

We both had.

We spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms.

 

Not long afterward, I was at another engagement, the Keynote Speaker, in fact, when I got the call.

I had just begun my address when I’d suddenly clenched up inside…all my words had seized in my throat, as if a part of my soul had been ripped away.

I couldn’t breathe.

Holding a hand up before myself and my audience, I uncomfortably laughed it off…paused…took a sip of water…found a way to

Do you love me?

continue.

There’s been an accident

Do you…

the voice had said. I collapsed.

It seems my wife…the woman I loved…the love of my life with whom I’d reconnected…had been at a restaurant. They’d all been outside. A car had veered out of the way to avoid hitting another that had run a red light…and

The rest was lost on me.

 

Emelia had come to me that first night.

She’d stood before my bed. Looked at me. Just stared at me as she always did. I looked back to her. I cried. Reached out.

I love you, but the dead can’t return, she said.

I miss you! I cried. I can’t live without you!

I love you, but the dead can’t return, she again said. We can dream…but we cannot return….

And she was gone.

I’d cut off all contact with everyone—my agent, publisher. Family and friends. Women called…came to my door…to comfort me. I sent them all away.

I’d once written a story about a woman who’d died in a car crash. The crash was from a car that had veered out of the way from another…and struck this woman, this fictional character I had created.

For inspiration I’d written it from the point of view as if I’d lost my love. I’d poured all that I thought (at the time) was my heart and soul into what it would have been like….

I…knew…nothing.

I reread it. Cried. Reread it again. I went to my living-room fireplace and started a fire.

Stared into the fire.

Had I killed her?

Had my words? My metaphysics? Had they wielded that much power?

It was but one short story of many.

Coincidence.

But my entire life’s work was about the lack of coincidence in life. How all of life had meaning. Nothing was to be so inconsequentially branded and dismissed as “mere coincidence.” I’d written about lives like these. How my characters had gone on to recreate new lives in the various faces-of-loss….

But my wife was gone.

Forever.

The love of my life.

The woman with whom I’d sinned against…but who had taken me back.

The only hand I’d forever hoped to hold as we grew old together.

She was not some fictional character in a novel.

 

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do!”

“You’re not growing bored with us? Me?”

“Of course not!”

 

My books…my words…meant nothing.

Only Emelia had meant anything. Everything.

And she was gone.

I brought out the story.

Crumpled it.

Uncrumpled it.

Began to tear it into pieces…when I stopped.

No. There are no coincidences.

I believe this.

 

I rewrote the story.

I rewrote our lives.

Top to bottom. Beginning to end. With what I now know. I slept and relived all that our lives had been…and what it’d meant to me.

Was supposed to have meant to us.

I created a new beginning. A new end. A chance to start over.

As I slept, I again dreamt of Emelia. Of those pictures sent to me of her and that man. Only in the dream, the pictures had come to life. Emelia and the man were sitting there…in the restaurant. Casual. Peers in the art community having a few drinks. A few laughs. Joking around with others in their party. Until they kissed. Long. Lingering. Hands everywhere. The rest of their coalition departed.

When they were done, she’d come to her feet and the man left. Simply left.

She turned to me.

But…I brought us back together. Why are you showing me this? I asked.

I’m not showing you anything. This is what you imagined. It’d never happened that way, but it’s what you imagined had.

I love you. I need us to be together again!

We cannot.

Come back to me!

I love you…but the dead cannot return.

 

I awoke and went back to my story. I rewrote it again over the course of several days. Willed it into existence. When I slept…I dreamt about it. About her. She always appeared.

You know what she said.

 

So I rewrote it one more time…then ventured out into the world I had forsaken. I would make my story work. I would compel it into existence. Live my own words and their new, most profound order. I obtained what I needed. I needed something that left no room for error. Something that would perform even if I couldn’t. Wasn’t totally up to the task. On the mark.

I wanted results.

 

I lay in our bed, in the dark. Crying. I’d lost her. Forever. Lost myself. There was nothing left. Nothing more to do. I couldn’t live without her. I grasped the weapon…regripping it several times as if I knew what I was doing…and brought it out from under the blankets and comforter.

Comforter.

I smoothed out the bedding with my hands…remembering all the warmth and comfort it had afforded us over our brief history together. I looked over to her side of the bed and remembered the feel of her nakedness beneath the bedding as she’d snuggled up beside me. How we’d held each other.

Once.

How she used to be there.

Choking sobs erupted from me! Uncontrollable torrents of rain and pain!

Oh, how I heaved!

I wiped away the tears with the back of the hand holding the .45. I closed my eyes and rammed the muzzle firmly up and under my chin, ever-so-slightly angled. The metal felt wrong, but in its wrongness felt…

Acceptable.

I undid the safety. Cocked the hammer.

Could I really do this? What would it feel like to instantly conclude a life? Would there be pain—or would it happen so fast as to feel like falling off to sleep? What was the other side really like? Was my life’s work on the mark…or was I to be damned like all the traditionalists ranted?

I would soon know.

I placed my index finger around the trigger…when I heard…

In the hallway.

Someone was out there.

I opened my eyes.

Footsteps.

I heard them. Soft. Considerate. Mindful.

Hers.

In those slipper-socks she always wore.

Is that something I would really hear?

Do you love me?

I love you…but the dead cannot return.

She came closer. Entered the room. I could feel her…feel her presence!

Her!

She got into bed with me…the bedding lifted, the bed shifted…her body slipped in beneath the sheets. Snuggled up against me.

I was again moved to tears! I couldn’t stop crying! I wailed!

Then her hand…oh, dear God, her soft, warm

(it was not warm)

loving hand touched mine! Wrapped itself around mine…

And together we pulled the trigger.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Walkers

by

Keep Moving, People. (Image by By Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu: Jean Jaurès, sous la direction de derivative work: YSpirine [Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Keep Moving, People. (Image by By Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu: Jean Jaurès, sous la direction de derivative work: YSpirine [Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
I remember writing this short story quite well!

What I remember (I checked my writing records) most was that it was accepted for publication in a letter to me, March 13, 1992 (Friday the 13th), by Thin Ice…but Thin Ice went under before it could be published! I was even told that it would be the lead story in that issue of the magazine…but it wouldn’t be published until Summer 1994 (two years later!). But then it was delayed yet another year.  Yeah—so, I waited three years for publication, only to have the rug pulled out from under me in 1995. The editor (whose name I realized I’ve since forgotten—I’d remembered her name for years and years…) even said I could submit elsewhere if I wanted to have it published earlier….

So, now…24 years later…I am finally giving it that life!

I am and have always been fascinated by walking…that by walking you can literally get anywhere on this planet. Okay, you might have to take a plane or a ship or two, but still…it’s by walking that would get you there to take that plane or ship. Or that swim. And I love walking…the physical (and metaphysical) locomotion through time and space. Yes, you probably never gave the “time and space” part much though, did you? One is moving through both TIME and SPACE when one locomotes. And if you let your mind wander…run free…you’re also wandering the universe when you walk. So, there’s really a whole lot more going on when you take those physical steps than perhaps is initially imagined….

And what if there existed a race that that did everything while in constant motion?

That was my inspiration all those years ago, and I just love this story! It has intrigue and sex (well, okay, an “honorable mention,” since sex is mentioned…) and mystery! Horror! Metaphysics! It’s a quest—and so much more I can’t get into without giving away the twists and turns that this 6,000-word story takes! It’s one of my favorites. I wasn’t sure if I would post it here, because of its length…I think it might be the longest on this blog. I have a couple longer short stories I’ve been holding off posting because of their length…but decided to go with “Walkers.” I might include one or two of the others, as well, later….

So, yes, “Walkers” is also unpublished…returned to me by Thin Ice, on May 11, 1995 (delayed a year from its original publication), because the magazine had gone under, but it was intended for publication (as the lead story!) in that Summer 1994 (1995) issue….

 

Walkers

© F. P. Dorchak, 1992

 

Severen’s feet mindlessly shuffled on with bland reiteration, as he opened sandied eyes. The sky was clear and there was a chill in the air, as early morning reds and oranges splashed across the horizon. The terrain was dusty and desolate.

Severen lifted his head and stretched.

He’d dreamed of being confined to something called a “chair”…with wheels on it…unable to use his legs. He remembered it’d been a good dream.

“Another day,” he said, and rubbed his eyes, cracking open his mouth into a wide, morning yawn. Severen look around and saw Techen, immediately to his left, who also began to stir.

“Mor-ning, Tech,” Severen greeted, mouth full of sand. He spit out the silicate granules.

“Yeah, right.”

Severen smiled back and shook dust from his hair, then looked around to the faces immediately behind him, several rows back. Most were still asleep. Then there were the faces behind those, and still more behind those…the unfathomable mass of Walkers that filled in all the way to the rear horizon. And all of them walked…all of them trudged aimlessly across desiccated terrain. They were a people of many ages and varieties, and the sound of their incessant plodding unmercifully assaulted Severen’s morning grogginess, bringing him back to a reality he’d much rather preferred to have escaped. It was an ancient march. A tiresome one. At its best, it was

 

“…time to send one of us to investigate. Agreed?” It was Strutter, an Old Walker, who had finally came out and said it. “With that having been said, we must send one of us.” His voice was weary with age, but he was the wisest of the Walkers. All of the Council nodded, including Severen.

“We’re sorry to drop this upon you, Severen, my friend, but it is the will of the Council that you should go. You are the healthiest of us to withstand the rigors of the journey.”

Severen flinched, but remained strong—Council-bound—and accepting of the challenge. Somehow, he had come to expect this, despite the fact that he knew of two others who were supposedly younger than him. Smoothing out his Council uniform, he straightened up and addressed Strutter.

“I agree and accept.”

“Good. We wish you our best.”

There was something about Strutter’s look that sent a chill through Severen.

Those not of the Council, but closest to them, turned to each other and began to spread the word, and with a bow of his head, and eyes closed, Severen immediately slowed his pace and began the rearward journey. He shifted his shoulders and twisted his body, as he allowed the peopled interior to swallow him up. It seemed

 

Colder back here. Emotionally colder.

He had never been back more than a half-a-generation or so before, and had labored long and hard to get to his present position on the Forward Council. People in the interior were less friendly, less open (how well he remembered that), and now he had to go back in—deeper—to investigate rumored trouble at the rear.

The Rear.

He’d heard of only one other walker who’d gone as far back as one generation, and now he was to go all the way back.

To the end.

As far as he could physically reach—and to make matters worse, he was to come all the way back.

If possible.

It was a quest that bred mixed feelings among the Council, a quest that Severen felt severely hindered by, for further progression on his part, at least for the time of the journey, anyway, but he was duty-bound and the rumors had to be laid to rest. The killings (if there truly were any killings) had to be investigated…stopped.

Feet on autopilot and still facing to the front of the March, Severen retreated deeper into the interior. Uncountable bodies, both familiar and unfamiliar, brushed and flowed past.

If there really were any killings going on, it would probably do the horde well, he thought. Everyone knew there were far too many Walkers, and that, no matter how heretical the thought, they really could stand to use a thinning.

Facts were facts.

As Severen continued backward, he noticed something no one had ever mentioned. This feeling of going backward was almost an erotic, stimulating affair…and he wondered why it was so outlawed to the common masses. He noticed that going back just two or three rows had no real effect, but once you got the momentum going and traveled through at least a quarter of a generation, the sensation suddenly overcame you. It was a heady, whole-body phenomenon that was very much like sex. Everybody, except the aging and dying, went forward, and he had not known anyone who had gone this far rearward before—except in childhood tales, of course.

(forward)

But it was a good feeling.

Severen also noticed how some began to regard him with suspicion. Or fear. Many turned to those beside them and whispered, all the while keeping a watchful eye upon him. He couldn’t hear them all, but occasionally did catch something like: It is not often one from the Council travels rearward. They must surely imagine something dire. Or: What becomes us that one of them dares invade our privacy? But, overall, Severen found the people most accommodating, actually somewhat more talkative than he’d expected. He would have quite an enlightening report to pass on—if he ever made it back—or passed it on to a Communicator.

 

Although he had probably been doing it for the past few rows, Severen became aware that he was slowing down. He had come across a tightly knit group at one point and found that he was growing increasingly bogged down. Twisting about, Severen glanced behind. He saw that the jam-up seemed to go on for quite some distance. He faced forward. Just enjoy the ride, Sevvy, he told himself. He looked around to the people beside him and attempted conversation, but as usual, only ended up in passing people by. Until he spotted a particularly quiet and hulking figure of curious intensity, off to his left. Temporarily delaying his rearward passage, Severen redirected himself laterally toward the man. People moved, respectfully, out of his way.

“Good day, citizen!” Severen hailed, “perhaps you can assist me? My name is Severen, of the Forward Council.”

The man wheezed once, then gave him a quick, non-interested glance. “Yeah, so?”

“I’ve been sent by the Council to investigate goings-on at the rear. There have been recent rumors surfacing—”

“Surfacing? Where’ve you been, mate? Them’s rumors been around fer generations.”

“Excuse me?”

“I means, yer frigging behind the times, mate—an why would the Council send back one-ah its own? Why not someone more expendable?”

Severen bit his tongue. He needed to regain control of this conversation.

“Okay, so we’re a bit behind the times, can you assist me or not?”

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

“What’s in it fer me?”

“A better position in the March—”

“Oh, sure, an where would that get someone like me? It’s not like we’re getting anywhere with all this drudgery.”

“I can see about making you a Communicator.”

“Oh, a Communicator, huh?”

“Yes. It’d be low level to start, but it’d be a beginning.”

“Well, I can’t tell you much, y’see, I’ze only heard the rumors, like you, but there’s somethin nasty going on back there. I only heard a one guy who made it back, and he went mad. Was sent back to the rear. You ain’t gonna like what you find—if it don’t find you first.”

“Please, elucidate.”

The man looked back disapprovingly at the Councilman’s choice of words.

“It’s dark back there, people…disappear…an…an there’s somethin else.”

“What else?”

“Don’t know. The man went n got all unscrewed before he could tell—but he was about to say somethin, I could see it in his eyes. It was like he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.”

“That’s all you got?”

“Told you it weren’t much.”

“What was his name, this fellow?”

“Chim, or Jorg—no, Chjort, that was it. Chjort.”

“Thank you. Want the position?”

“Whatever.”

Severen allowed the crowd to advance past, as he continued rearward.

“Sev’ren!” the man yelled back.

“What?”

“Take it easy, mate. It turned Chjort nutty. Killed the others.”

Killed others?

(expendable?)

“Thank

 

You never really knew just how large the whole damn thing was from the front. Never really knew until you got inside it. All you saw were rows upon rows of bodies, and bodies going back as far as the eye could see. Way back. But as Severen ventured in, he got a true feeling for just how large this exodus was, more so than any of the Communicators (those who ran messages within assigned districts and kept the masses informed), the Forward Council, or any other mythical hero he’d ever heard about. Communicators came close to getting a truer feel for the size of the March, but they never ventured beyond their own boundaries. Each generation had several districts, but the number depended on how large a generation was. Lately, generations had been growing.

Council members…they really knew nothing.

Anybody could be a Council member, though there had to be a proving to see whether that person was truly worthy of the position. Everyone wanted to be up front, to make laws and institute changes, but not many were willing to work for it. To pay the price. To see something other than the backs of their contemporaries. That was what had initially driven Severen. That, and the love of a woman, or, more to the point, the scorn of one.

Severen had fallen in love with a woman named Thea. She had been strong, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He’d first seen her when she was only two hops over from him, magically having appeared out of nowhere. They’d flirted, and when Severen finally made his move, he found her more than interested. They were soon marching side by side. Copulating. Inseparable. Then he began to tell her of his ambition, that he wanted to start a family of his own and become one of the Forward Council. That was where things began to deteriorate. It seemed she had no ambition to go to the front, a place where you couldn’t hide.

Hide.

She had something to hide. She didn’t like being put up for display. She liked where she was, free to drift about…to see others. And Thea had no intention of starting a family. She liked being able to see whom she wanted, and do what she willed. Severen had been nothing more than a passing encounter for her. Sure, she liked him…even the sex and good times they’d had together…but that was all. Severen had awoken one morning to find her gone. Just as he’d found her…he’d lost her.

He never did find out what it was she had to hide, but figured she was probably trafficking in the powerful sleep drug, Utopa, the most common offense in the March. The drug gave the power to dream while awake, for as long as three days, after which subjects usually became hooked and zombie-like. Some, those of stronger constitution, lasted longer and became junkies, but most withered away and died. Either way, all were eventually sent back to the rear. In the end, Severen’s break with Thea had been for the better. Associating with pushers wasn’t conducive to a Council position.

Severen found himself again eavesdropping.

“…Celila and Trax were doing pretty good until Celila’s Communicatorship,” a pair of Walkers discussed.

“Took her away, didn’t they.”

“Yep—but they’re still seeing each other, wouldn’t’cha know it. It’s been a hard road since she’s the youngest Communicator and gets all the rotten routes—she’s gone nearly all the time.”

The other gave a knowing nod and wrinkled his face disapprovingly. Severen remembered that name. Celila. She was new. Swift. She was also a good Mediator for the Council, which wasn’t good for her man, since she’d most probably get promoted and see even less of him. It wouldn’t be until her next promotion, a supervisory position, that she’d have any time for a relationship—and who’d want to wait that long?

Severen angled off into a different direction, and looked up to the sky. It had darkened noticeably since he’d last checked. He realized he was now into the very heart of the March, sand almost completely obscuring the sky. And don’t even talk about the noise. It was also decidedly colder…not just emotionally, but physically…and he didn’t like that. It should have gotten warmer, from all that body heat. But it

 

Wasn’t life a bitch? It seemed that all one had to look forward to was to live long enough to get to the front lines. Then what? Severen had gotten there, and where had it gotten him? He was back where he’d started—hell, he was further back than where he’d started. He’d actually regressed….

And he had just blindly accepted this task. How easy it had been to plod along aimlessly in life and be the yes-man.

(easy)

This whole thing was entirely overrated. What was he supposed to do once he found what he was looking for? The gruff-one had mentioned that others had been killed.

What others, and why; what had killed whom?

Severen had no knowledge of anyone else being sent that far back, let alone being killed off.

But what if others had been sent back?

Was there something the Forward Council wasn’t telling him? What was that look in Strutter’s face all about?

Was he even supposed to make it back?

That last thought rocked him like an earthquake.

Maybe he was an offering. An offering.

“No, no—that can’t be. The Council isn’t like that. They’re Law-givers. Elders.”

So why choose him? The only ones on the Council who had any real power were the old ones. The ones who’d been around a while. So where did that leave the younger members? If the elders didn’t die, then the younger went nowhere.

(except on journeys like this)

But he knew of no one—

Then it hit him.

There was something about a journey!

He remembered…as a child…that his parents had told him about a Council member they’d met who’d gone back on a similar trek. Severen didn’t remember the purpose of the trek, but did remember the look on his parents’ faces when they talked about it. They were scared.

Why?

Because little Sevvy had already made up his mind that he was going to join the Council when he grew up.

Millions of tiny switches clicked on and off inside his head.

Spark.

And there were always bogeyman stories from childhood about what went on back there…way back there. Stories of the dead coming to life and ripping the aged from their generations, never to be seen again. Of screams and howls in the dead of night. Maybe there were more to the legends and myths than people cared to believe.

Spark.

Spark.

Or tell.

Contact.

A conspiracy within the Council!

Severen was suddenly slammed into.

It wasn’t the normal hiking-through-the-lands-trip-and-tap—no, this was a full-on grind that lifted him up off one foot and had him tottering for a moment as he skipped across the terrain, trying to regain his balance. When he did regain his footing, he whipped around hard to see the face in the crowd that must have started the upset. It was a face that sent a chill up his spine. It was an evil, twisted face that didn’t look real…but continued to hold his gaze.

Severen maneuvered out of the face’s path to see if it would follow.

It did.

No sooner had he repositioned himself, then the face again followed him…but had also gained in row. Severen looked around. Found that the generation of people around him suddenly seemed to have aged a great deal. Many were white-haired and bent over…more shuffle than walk to their strides. Many had only half-opened eyes, or failing eyesight.

This meant the dead were even closer than he’d imagined. Maybe a lot closer.

Severen maneuvered toward a stout individual and there held his position. The old man looked to him.

Why do you come to me? his gaze begged, I am old and not long for the March. Go away.

I am sorry, old man, but I have no choice, Severen’s eyes replied, I am on a mission. From the Forward Council.

So you would have me killed for the Council?

Before Severen could make his reply, the stalking face was upon the old man. Severen had been so hypnotized by the ancient one’s gaze that he’d forgotten to keep track of his pursuer. He looked on in horror as he saw its face—and what was left of its body. It was dead and stank of carrion. Powerful, clawed arms raked out from underneath powerful, shredded shoulders…arms that hopped and grappled from shoulder to shoulder and supported a smoldering torso. It tore asunder those it touched. It was a torso that supported a head and shoulders—and nothing more. There was nothing below its gaping and dangling chest cavity.

Severen watched as the old man was torn apart by the corpse; he backed away with weak, flaccid knees…and noticed that those alongside the old man had also moved away…silently and without question.

As if this was accepted routine.

“No!” Severen shouted.

But still his feet took him away.

“No!” he shouted, but still his gaze was upon the old man.

“No!” he shouted, but still the corpse crawled and rended. Rended the ancient one to pieces….

“NO!”

Severen watched as the old man’s eyes were separated from their sockets….

His words had no effect on the killing. No effect on the dismemberment that went on (as he watched). Words that could not stop the direction his feet were taking him. Away. Severen saw the old man crumple soundlessly, wordlessly, to the ground.

Accepting.

Why do you come to me, the ancient man had pleaded.

Because I am on a mission, he had replied.

A mission.

He was on a mission to find out what was going on at the rear. Well, he’d just found out—and now he was running away.

This is the real reason I was sent back. I’m no investigator—I’m a sacrifice.

Looking to a cripple beside him, Severen saw the walking stick he possessed and grabbed it without thinking. The cripple looked to him and smiled, then allowed himself to fall to the ground, quickly trodden asunder by those that flowed over from behind. Severen was shocked to discover he felt no emotion one way or the other. Turning, he looked back for the clawed corpse and hefted his newly acquired weapon. He was lucky, the wood felt solid and sturdy. It was dense and would wield well.

Severen backed up and readied the staff; glanced behind himself several times, but still could not see his attacker. It was getting darker. Colder. Out of the corner of his eyes he thought he saw something, and turned slowly, not sure there was really anything there. Yes, three positions over…a face glared back at him with a mouth full of teeth and decayed flesh.

Grinned hideously.

Severen followed that smile down to its neck, then down to its chest.

Down to its waist.

There was now more body to this corpse than when Severen had first encountered it!

Severen looked to the newly acquired legs…legs that had not originally belonged to that creature. Legs, he recognized, that had belonged to the ancient man

(why do you come to me?)

with the penetrating gaze.

The creature had stolen the ancient one’s body.

The very thought made Severen’s stomach heave, and, indeed, he nearly did. He tried not to imagine the horrors the ancient man had been put through to give up those legs.

The monster approached, and the crowd widened.

Good, Severen thought, more room to swing this thing.

“Come on!”

The corpse lunged awkwardly, but Severen managed to hold his ground as he lifted the staff in a backward arc and quickly snapped it forward. It connected, and the corpse took the full force of it in its waist, easily splitting in two. The top half flew forward and the bottom half crumpled to the dirt. Severen then watched as the creature latched onto another walker. Not allowing it time to gain another claw hold, Severen again rushed it. He rose his weapon high over his head and brought it crashing down onto the center of the corpse’s cranium, splitting it open. It emitted a rancor that made Severn gag. The thing writhed in pain, but uttered no sound, and the walker it was attached to hardly seemed cognizant of the attack. Severen finished off the creature by hammering it free with the staff, and it went tumbling bulkily to the ground—and to the rear of the March.

Great, that’s the last place I wanted this thing to go, he thought.

The March then folded back in around Severen as if nothing had happened, and as he wiped the sweat and fear from his brow, one of the walkers adjacent to him turned and smiled. Severen regarded him blankly.

Then vomited.

 

What was going on back here?

Severen no longer knew just how far back he was, and it didn’t really matter, he guessed, because things weren’t right. He could no longer see the sky, and it was almost always dark, now. And there were times he had actually thought he’d heard screams—and laughter, hideous, hideous, laughter—from the rear. Every time he would look back, fear would grip him and give him a good throttling. He didn’t want to go back there. It was a No Man’s Land. A festering graveyard. Nothing good was back there….

He had given up on the quest long ago—blew it all off. His sojourn had now become more of a matter of principle. Of what was right. He recalled how it had bothered him to accept the quest…at why he should have been chosen…but found he didn’t feel this way about this new revelation. Some things just felt right, even if they were wrong….

But who would know of his intent?

There were no longer any Communicators this far from the Council, so information of his whereabouts wouldn’t exactly be known, and to the masses he would just be remembered as the “one from the Front” performing his duty in the defense of his people. He would fade away into the annals of history as just another soul lost to the rear.

Or sacrificed.

His blood boiled.

He had his pride and no one was going to sacrifice him.

As unfortunate as his present situation was, he had to make the best of it. He was too far back to just turn around (so to speak) and return home. If not for the Council, then he had to do this for the others. His fellow walkers.

But, by the gods, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense! Send the young! The virile! Those who could better challenge the Old Ones. Send them to the rear to appease whatever was there—just keep it from coming forward. Keep it away from the front…from the Forward Council.

Severen looked to the staff. To those around him. If they weren’t dead, they were very near. Their shuffling was pained and slow, their bodies decayed. It wouldn’t be long now.

He was scared as hell.

 

Severen’s pace had slowed quite a bit, either from fear or uncertainty, but slowed down it had.

The air now had a distinctly different feel to it, and it stunk. Rotted flesh. Nervously he glanced behind himself (as he tore off a piece of fabric from his uniform and tied it around his mouth and nose), but could no longer see beyond two or three rows. It was as dark as night and there was a thick haze, one that he’d walked right into.

Like he had any choice.

Rotted, moldy flesh, he thought, so much particulates in the air.

His mind began to drift back to the conspiracy. As right as he knew he was, he tried to coax some sense out of the activities that had led him to his present situation. Of course the Elders wouldn’t have taken this journey themselves, they probably wouldn’t have survived it, and sure he wasn’t the youngest—not by far—so why was he picked above all others?

Maybe because you’d risen from within the March, Sevvy, old boy.

Of course.

He hadn’t been born into the Forward Council, like the others. Strutter had always been there, had been there even before his parents had grown, and Techen—Techen was born into it, he knew that. But what about Quix? Se-Er? Yes, they, too, all claimed birthright. In fact, Severen now saw, he couldn’t think of one of the Forward Council who wasn’t of direct bloodline (except Strutter, but he was the Elder, the Rule-Maker), so why would the two younger members be any different?

They wouldn’t be—unless another insider was being cultivated as he had been….

This wasn’t exactly the feeling he needed just now.

An unexpected rocking from the row directly behind him caught him off-guard and sent him into an adjacent walker as he tripped across a particularly deep rut. The man he hit crumpled to the dirt and had, in fact, actually disintegrated.

“Oh, no—no…I can’t be there yet!”

Another walker near to him opened a hardened, white eye and winked weakly.

“Y-yer not…there yet….” he said.

But you’ll wish ya were.

The words put Severen temporarily at ease. If one was dead, then others were sure to follow, and soon. The graveyard

(answers)

was not far away.

Destiny.

Ah, the hell with it.

Spinning around on his heels and actually facing toward the rear, Severen hefted his staff before him and marched forward.

Into the pitch blackness of the unknown.

 

It wasn’t long before he found that all those surrounding him were, indeed, dead.

None moved out of his path as he approached, so he came to wielding his staff and smashing them out of his way. Their bodies crumbled into dust as did the first. Or as near as he could tell, in this darkness, to which his eyes had grown exceedingly well accustomed. He also saw that the ranks had thinned out considerably, and this bothered him.

What was beyond? Was there a beyond?

Would he fall off some edge that rolled up after the March’s passage?

Old wives tales told to disobedient children.

Yet tales that still scratched at his troubled, adult psyche.

Movement. There was movement ahead.

Severen felt the fear again seize him, but fought it off and cocked his head. There was a figure that ran behind the few bodies that still shuffled past. He squinted, but the figure had darted back into the darkness. It was an upright figure, to be sure, like him—but quick. All this time, he thought he was alone. The fear returned.

There’s nothing good back here.

He tightened his grip on the staff.

What had he gotten himself into?

He continued forward and heard noise…this time behind him.

Then the noise moved somewhere to his left.

Then back again, behind him.

Spinning around, Severen brought up the staff just in time to deflect the brunt of an attack. A dark figure had bounced off him and run back into the dark, but not before leaving tears in his clothes and stinging gouges in his flesh. Severen thought of the similarities between this attack and the earlier one—but that this one had legs.

Severen spun around several more times, making sure that the thing was gone. At least temporarily. His temples throbbed with his quickened pulse, and his chest heaved with shortened breaths. Adrenaline surged throughout his body. There was more movement…more of them.

Terrific.

“Who’s there! By the power of the Forw—”

A black thing lunged, and this time Severen wasn’t as lucky, his staff slammed up hard into his forehead. Warmth spread down and over his eyes. At the same time, something ripped deeply into his right arm and there was another liberating splash of warmth upon his face. Blinding pain quickly followed…then the thing was off him.

By the time Severen managed to reopen his eyes, another was upon him.

Pain or no pain he cocked back the staff, and, twisting around with it, slammed it hard into what he surmised was the torso of the creature. It took all the spring out of the thing’s attack and Severen watched it crumple into a heap. Quickly recovering, Severen barely had time to react to another one, so he ducked…only netting a gash to his forehead…and followed the shape around. He brought his weapon down square on the thing’s back and there was a more-than-satisfying crunch. The thing didn’t get back up. Severen backed away, whirled his stick about him, and peered into the darkness for more.

But none came.

 

The ache of his body grew more painful as the shock wore off, and his gait turned into more of a labored shuffle. He’d managed to stem the flow of blood from his wounds, but the pain that racked his body had to be more than just from cuts and bruises.

Infection.

Infection that spread rapidly. If Severen didn’t miss his guess, he probably wouldn’t make it til sunrise, if there was a sunrise anymore….

 

Severen dreamed as he dozed. Dreamed of a dark and thick blackness…a blackness from which nothing returned. He saw eyes…two large…all-seeing orbs that emerged from the darkness, only to return back to it. And he saw claws…lots and lots of claws…that all tore and ripped into him. Ripped him into big, chunky pieces—

He awoke with a start. Couldn’t believe he had

(been allowed to survive)

dozed. He was alone. Except for the occasioned walking dead he passed. He no longer swung at them.

Severen had never really given much thought to what was actually at the rear, the ultimate rear. To what it might actually look like. He just wished he wasn’t there, now. On the surface, he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care to know, but deep down he did feel a sense of duty. A yearning for more.

Must know.

Must.

Bring back information…crush the conspiracy….

Back—back to whom?

The people.

The Council could no longer be trusted. They were all suspect. All in on it. Had been since the dawn of eternity. All those sent back in the legends and myths had been sent back as fodder for some evil god. Sent to keep whatever was there from coming forward and destroying the rest of the March.

Was sure of it.

Dead sure.

Never had there been any mention of the dead coming back to life from the graveyard. Never. Had always been left as a black void of nothingness. A place not spoken of during the light of day, barely even whispered of during nightfall.

It was a lair.

But a lair to what?

What evil force made its home there, and to where did its power extend?

Severen checked his arm’s dressing. It was a mass of dried blood and torn material…and there was a gangrenous pus that festered around the wound. Severen touched it with the end of his staff and it burst, splattering onto his face a smelly spore-like substance that got inside his mouth. He didn’t bother to check his other wounds. He felt the infection as it ate away at him. He didn’t need any further confirmation.

Heavily, Severen lifted his throbbing head.

“What…are you?” he coughed into the darkness.

Two blazing red eyes opened their lids from the darkness before him.

“What do you want from me. From us?”

The eyes floated. He was sure they were amused with him.

Gathering all his effort, Severen hefted his staff and swung it out before him. The eyes remained untouched…were now filled with a mass of scrolling stars.

Not much further to go. Care. No longer cared. Never make it back….

Eyes.

Disappeared.

Severen plodded forward, used his staff as a crutch. Lost all feeling in his left side. Numb on his right. Vision grew cloudy….

DO. YOU. KNOW. WHO. I. AM?

Came the voice.

DO. YOU. KNOW. WHO. I…AM?

It was a voice. Inside his head. This was it. Had finally gone delirious. Alone; seeing ghosts. Hearing voices. What difference did it make if he answered? Was dying anyway….

No, I do not know…who you are…but I’m sure this…poison…has invented something good…for me.

I AM…THE…UNNAMED.

Severen looked into the blackness and laughed.

Well, aren’t you a grand delusion!

I…AM…ALL.

Pleeeased to meet you….

Silence.

Severen felt the uneasiness that accompanied that silence. Felt, for the first time since his last attack, that maybe, maybe he wasn’t all that alone…maybe it wasn’t delirium he was talking to….

YOU HAVE COME…FOR ME…YOU ARE TO BE MY…COMMUNION.

PREPARE YOURSELF.

“Who are you?”

I AM ALL.

“…said that, but…what are you?”

No immediate response.

I AM…THAT WHICH KEEPS THE MARCH…FORWARD.

That which keeps the March forward. Severen shook his head. “Don’t…understand.”

IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE…TO UNDERSTAND.

PREPARE YOURSELF.

That which keeps the March forward. Could it be possible that the March was evoked by this thing? Controlled by it? That the March was nothing without it? But the March had been going on since time immemorial….

Forever.

I AM BEYOND THAT.

Eternal.

Severen’s head hurt. He stumbled. I’m going to die, I’m really going to die….

Severen placed the staff out before him for support, bore the majority of his weight on it…but only managed to continue forward in short…shuffling…movements. Movements that brought immense pain. Severen jerked; felt something burrow into his brain.

ENOUGH…TIME.

A gigantic claw shot out from the darkness, and with it, a deafening clap of thunder. It smashed through Severen’s stick and grasped him mid-body, lifting Severen up off the ground. Severen went limp and expelled a loud huh! as his staff clattered in pieces about him. He had a sudden flashback of helplessness as a child…the time he was caught first-time masturbating…and felt like that child again. But there was also an unexpected ease with who he was…what he had become.

He felt small and puny…yet complete. He retreated inward.

There was warmth there.

 

The two large, red eyes again formed in the darkness before him and Severen was pulled in. Severen looked directly into the eyes and spoke:

Go on…I’m prepared….

 

Severen floated. Drifted within nothingness. There he found the thing he had come for. The quest. The reason. It was fear, plain and simple. Fear from the Walkers as they had built it up over their generations; over eons.

FEAR.

From turning back. Fear…from looking behind—and forward. Fear that they were being followed…devoured from that which was behind them. Darkness. And it had caught them. Exacted its toll. Its price for existence.

PAY HOMAGE TO THAT WHICH CONTROLS THEE….

 

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Night Drive

by

Drive Toward Your Dreams. (Image by By Wayne Wilkinson, Lost Highway 52 Uploaded by AlbertHerring [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Drive Toward Your Dreams. (Image by By Wayne Wilkinson, Lost Highway 52 Uploaded by AlbertHerring [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)
This is an essay. A perhaps slightly Emersonesque meditation on the metaphysics of the nocturnal road trip I’d written in 1988, at the age of 27.

It details my philosophical musings as I took one of my quasi-frequent nocturnal road trips back in my twenties. I used to drive alone at night cross country, in my un-air-conditioned 1987-or-so Toyota truck. I loved (and still do) driving at night. As you can well see, I found (and still do find) a mystical experience there. I made my last such solo night drive from Wyoming to Colorado in November of 2015.

There is just something about the very air that changes at night.

The road.

Those you meet and pass…the distant lights of human dwellings….

One’s imagination runs wild…perhaps because there’s not much to physically look at, so our musings turn inward. However, in my case, my musings are frequently turned inward, I don’t need a lack of light to do that. But at night…it is something that takes on a whole new world…”gravitas” is the current term-in-vogue.

The essay, written in January of 1988, months after one such August’s night drive,  details the entirety of that trip on the dark roads of the West. It is a trip I still think about, perhaps my most fun—certainly most mystical—road trip ever.  I had driven from Colorado to Nevada to California. Stayed with family in Las Vegas (I’m not from there, but some family members lived and still live in the area), then continued on. Everything in here is as it happened…the musings of a frustrated 27-year-old wanting to reinvent his life.

I love this piece. Remember this drive. It was, indeed, a magical summer’s drive for me…one which I hope to always keep in my memory as Time continues its counterfeit, inexorable march ever forward. So far, I have.

I hope each of you has a similar Night Drive in your life…and if not, I urge you to do at least one! There simply is no other experience like it!

This essay has never seen the light of day. Please…keep it that way…and read it at night….

Night Drive

© F. P. Dorchak, 1988

I was engulfed by darkness.

A few minutes earlier, I had been sheathed by the warm familiar surrounds of city lights and sounds. Now, I had left them all, sneaking away into the dark like someone trying to leave a past behind. I was trying desperately to hide under the warm and comforting blankets of the dark. As my headlights raced ahead of me, I felt like—like a knife…slicing a path. A path toward a dream. A dream away from my work, a work I had come to hate, to abhor. Something that no longer suited me, that I no longer wanted to be a part of. I wanted out…to become a part of my new dream. I was in love with a dream…and on this August night, I was on my way to find it….

Maybe that was it, maybe I was trying to leave something behind, at least for the moment anyway. I had to get out and as far away as possible. I headed for the west coast.

It drizzled a little. It was a good thing that I had decided to bring a tarp to cover my belongings in the bed of my truck. The rain danced alive and taunting on my windshield, casting an eeriness I reveled in as the distances between me and the city increased. I felt a Beckoning….

The interior of the cab was dully illuminated by the console’s mild incandescence. The steady womp, womp of my wiper blades were hypnotic…comforting. I was propelled into a trance, a dream world of my own making…one I never wanted to leave and would many times since then, try to recapture….

My headlights cut a swath into the darkness, splitting apart the waves of black so I could find my way. A new way.

I just couldn’t get out of this state fast enough.

I dreamed about nothing other than how far I had left to go…but in a longingly way—anticipating. I was looking forward to the drive…of being out on the road while most were sleeping safely in their beds. I looked forward to driving through treacherous mountain passes at three in the morning…the eerie ivory glow of the moon bathing everything in its radiance. Few people ever really experience this mystical quality. And I don’t mean just a midnight’s drive through the city—though it too has its own mystique—no I mean driving on top of the world, totally and utterly alone…cliffs to both sides, hair-pin turns, fog, and the ever-present possibility of making a false move, sending you over the side, into the unknown depths of the deep….

It was something spiritual, though I have no ordinary religious beliefs. Something stirred deep within my psyche, releasing such a flood of emotion and feeling that are even now difficult to put down. As I passed through the somnolent towns on my quest Westward…the mercury vapor lamps breathing their own life into the night…I felt myself no longer separate from the night—I was part of the rhythm. I had become one with the darkness and their night songs.

I felt the orgasmic thrill as I rushed head-on into my journey!

All the times I had felt alone or lonely faded away as I drank in my by-my-selfness. I wanted to be alone. I looked about my cab…to my cooler filled with juices and sandwiches…and enjoyed being alone. Just me and my truck and the dark. There was no one else on the road.

So I hit Monarch pass.

I was so close to the heavens, but would later find out hours into the future, that I would get even closer. The clouds whisked above me…seemingly mere feet above my head. The moon was the eerie atmosphere I thought ahead to in my earlier hours. I wanted to stop, but felt that that might ruin part of the atmosphere…that I was to continue driving…that it was part of the whole process. Moving. I was moved by the dark argent of the night. How can this be explained? It can’t, it can only be experienced.

I spiraled up and up, trying to reach the moon. Wisps of clouds flew past my truck, wetting the outside. My travel seemed to not be of this world…but a travel into other dimensions….

At one point I had driven around and across Blue Mesa Lake. It, too, was ghostly…the moon glinting off the waters understood how I felt. Understood me and my intentions. I looked into the water trying to figure out what it must be down there now…in the darkness…and if there was any life form within those dark waters….

What it would be like if I were on that lake right now…alone…in a small rowing boat? Sitting out somewhere in the middle of Blue Mesa Reservoir just letting the current take me where it will?

I saw one or two campfires off among the hills…and at once tried to place myself there…to mentally see who and what was going on…and, at the same time, to not even be bothered. To let those people feel the same freeness and openness I now felt…without any intrusion whatsoever…mental or physical. I was, for perhaps the first time, truly in love with life and me.

Who I was.

Had been and wanted to return to being.

I continued onward through and past towns called Montrose, Ouray, and Silverton.

It was at these places that I became a ghost…a nonperson flying past in the dark.

I stopped at several 7-11s, both for gas and food. Teenagers were huddling about in their groups and cars, hardly taking a notice of me. And I thought back to the times I had made my way to such places at night for mundane reasons. I might hardly have taken notice of similar passers-by…not stopping to realize how much a part of life they were. That they have names too…loves…hates…bills and desires. And how they too might be thinking the very same thoughts I am now thinking….

It’s like you have invaded a protected reserve of some sort…being allowed to experience for a very short period of time…a slice of life elsewhere. These 7-11s have the same ice machine that “my” 7-11 has…the same blue-and-white metallic AT&T phone booths with the perforated phone on the side, placed neck high. The same Coke machines…the same No Parking fire lane out front, and the same red tape markers lining the entrance/exit glass doors to judge the height of criminals by. It was all the same…except for the location.

Even the empty refuse blowing around the stores’ grounds was alike.

But as I paid for my goods and pulled out, leaving the lights and life behind, I couldn’t help but think that it was all an elaborate, mystical setup…just for me!…and that as soon as I left it all, it would all shut down…close down…people stopped moving and the lights would go out…die….

That all that was just there for effect only.

Only there for me as I stopped and continued on in my night drive…my solo (but not lonely!) sojourn.

Then I passed the town of Telluride below me, heading up a steep mountain pass. This pass was to be higher than Monarch had been, I was to find out. And even more of a mystery. It was here that I got my inspiration of all this as my “religious experience.”

It was the windiest road I had ever driven, and I threw my consciousness into the future, imagining what the drive would be like in the winter…people attempting the drive to hit Durango…or Telluride for skiing. It would be impossible with snow, would it not? As I passed certain points on my excursion upward, I noticed things like gates across the roads. There was one just as I hit the base of this road heading up. These were the same I had seen from my previous ‘home.’ They were gates to close off the road, conditions life-threatening.

Up ahead, I saw a flashing yellow light. Every time I took a turn, the light ended up on a different side of my travel, my perspective to it constantly changing. I began to give up trying to figure out where the light was in relation to me.

Just before the light, I passed a vehicle alongside the road, uninhabited. I thought how lonely it looked, like a dog without its master. It looked so lost, its personality lying latent until the turn of a key. It sat off the road on a cleared shoulder which looped off the road.

I found the light, flashing at the mouth of a short tunnel, maybe 75 feet in length. As I approached it, I suddenly realized what it really was—not a tunnel at all, but a snow shelter. The yellow light was harsh and abrupt as it spilled all over the concrete and mountain, but at the same time warm and friendly. It was something active in the midst of inactivity…in the middle of darkness…and I seemed to strike up a brief but deep friendship with it as I passed it…similar to how one might feel were they the last person on earth and spied…met…another human…but could not stop….

I speculated how that it would still be flashing long after I left…unlike the microcosm at the 7-11s. This inanimate object was real…and everything else wasn’t. I felt lonely for it. Thinking how it must look in the midst of a snowstorm…covered and iced…the light forcing its way through the buildup of snow upon it….

My turns became yet tighter…more brutal…the moon grinning to itself, seeing if I was worthy of my quest. I grinned back defiantly—besting it! There were a few close ones, especially with the fog, but I proved myself equal to the challenge. The moon welcomed me at the top.

And here, it seemed like I had truly touched the sky!

It was a rush being so high, on tiny winding roads, in the early deadness of the morning hours, moonlight bathing the scenery before me. Looking out and across the chasms and gullies, I was hit with the ‘religiousness’ of it all. I am not religious, but my beliefs were at that point substantiated. Everything is connected, and it all does make sense if you just open your mind.

I…was a spirit soaring through the night….

I was feeling a sadness descend upon me as I began to leave the peaks, spiraling downward, now. I saw some headlights up away from me, and wondered if the driver or drivers within had experienced the same-or-similar adventure as I had.

I approached the Four Corners and Arizona, the mountains quickly faded behind me. The sky was slowly cracking with light in the east. Four Corners and I were shortly to meet.

The sky had brightened only slightly so, initial streaks of red and blue and yellow staining the air to my rear. I turned onto the Four Corners road, traveling down it about a quarter mile to where I saw the sign. It was a dark, heavy wood engraved with the words ‘Welcome to Four Corners‘ carved into it. Alone…the only one there…I stopped, got out and took a picture of the sign with my headlights aimed on it….

 

Morning now having a firm hold over the sky, I saw flashing headlights miles ahead of me. The Arizona desert had barely been up, few cars out on the road. There were many lights, it seemed, the brilliant lights of red and blue startling the empty, early morning.

Finally getting there, I saw that there were several state patrol cars and an ambulance parked to the side of my road…a desolate road out in the middle of nowhere…

A body lay on the ground…covered in a white blanket.

I looked as I slowly drove by…the indifferent looking patrolman waving my through. It was my view of an actual dead human being, though I couldn’t actually see him or her. It was just the body. In spite of the official cars around it, it looked so brutally and eternally lonely. How long had s/he (I got the feeling it was a ‘he’) had lain there? What happened to him-or-her? Who had found him-or-her? It seemed that even though there was an actual body there…that something tremendously large was missing. That there was a huge emptiness engulfing the area. The emptiness of the body’s person….

 

Leaving Las Vegas behind, I made my way north.

It was a paradise of the dark.

When you drive the desert, everything seems so much closer to you, especially at night. The light of your headlights seems to pull the landscape up and into you as you drive by. Literally bringing everything closer…it’s an amazing, metaphysical quality. You seem to see things clearer—the tiny cacti…the shrubs…any little creatures that might scurry across your path. The light that is shed is different from ordinary light—different from any other light. It is like there is no other land—nothing—beyond the borders of your illumination. All the terrain available is only what is lighted.

Then you come upon other drivers…and you feel that unspoken pride among you, as you realize that you are witnessing a part of life others are not or will never experience. It is a common experience shared.

I passed a group of motorcyclists, wondering how great it must feel to be even more exposed to the night and its elements. I almost didn’t even want to pass them, but finally decided upon it.

Ah the night!

It was truly a flat world we lived in!

As I drove I almost became convinced of it…that there was no curve to the landscape, just the flat terrain between the borders of my headlights. I passed several little towns and way-stations, totally mystified by the ghostly draping of light around their buildings. I passed one building where a door was open, interior light spilling out into the dark. There was a man standing around there, smoking or something, I surmised. I tried once more to project my mind there. It was sacred….

Moving, moving, always moving….

I needed gas, and stopped at a station up ahead in some hamlet of a town. Again, there’s something about the way light falls about a gas station and its islands at night, especially at stations in areas unfamiliar to the observer. As I stopped to fill up, the motorcyclists I passed earlier came to light at the same station, hair and beards windblown. I envied them and shared the pride and freedom they exuded from the ride. Whether that was all they did or it was just a summer jaunt, that was all they were doing then…and that was all I was doing then. We—the bikers and I—didn’t hold jobs…didn’t pay bills…had no responsibilities that outweighed our lives. No, we were road tripping into a glorious summer night…hours of late night and early morning.

I looked over at them, smiling, and said ‘hi’. They were a friendly lot, enjoying life. It was an exciting brotherhood I was feeling just then, in spite of how I normally feel about brotherhoods.

I never wanted this to end!

And for that summer, it didn’t.

I got back on the road, leaving them forever behind. California was still hours into my future and I was alive with ecstatic excitement! So, north I continued, landscape speeding by.

I let my mind run at breakneck speeds into imagination. I could do nothing but think about how magical my summer was…my best summer since childhood. The mystical quality was something I didn’t want to explain for fear of losing it, which I knew would never happen.

The road winded, threading its way up and down, through passes and around lakes, bits of habitation and life scattered here and there, but only us night drivers were the conscious ones….

 

Hours later I found myself needing another fill up, taking it at a major turn in direction for me. Now I would be heading directly at my dream, my goal. West. The lights at the station took on a new meaning for me, because my direction was now more direct. All I had to do was basically, drive ‘straight.’ Again I let myself get lost in the eerie aura of the station’s lights—an oasis in the middle of the dark night. I often wondered about the type of people who man these places in the wee hours. Do they feel the same way about the night…the darkness? Is that why they work those hours?

It was as if there was no reality outside of the illuminated confines. No other people. It all seemed to be a rather existentialist drama. Two people acting out some tiny performance for whatever god’s amusement…after which (since we really don’t exist) we simple go back into the ether of the universe. Patiently waiting-in-unconsciousness until called again to re-enact the same performance of events for yet another passing spirit in the dark….

I would have gladly given up my life to just that then! I would willingly live these same moments over and over again for Time Immemorial! This is what, I find, I live for—what my whole of existence was meant for. My Fate. And I welcomed it enthusiastically.

My God, how I didn’t want it to end! Ever!

I felt such emotion well up within me—even now, as I write this a couple months later. This is what I want my death to be! When my time is up in this form, I want to wander the night, doing what I was doing now. To become one with the night. There is only one Heaven in existence, and I was in it now….

I left the station, full of powerful emotion and sadness, knowing that this will indeed end…for with the coming of fall, there is the end of summer. Oh, God, why couldn’t I bring myself to die now! So This would always remain as it is now?

Oh, if only I could….

 

I drove onward through the mountains, through the likes of towns with the names of Yerington, Wellington, Markleeville, and Sonora. It was a hypnotic movement, going beyond the actual physical accomplishment of guiding a truck along a road. It was an opiating ballet of trance-like qualities. Yes. There was no vehicle, no road, no individual, no route. There was only but a collectiveness. A collectiveness of consciousness. There were no separatenesses—everything was intricately interconnected…becoming one intense moment…one united fluidity….

It was at that point that you knew…beyond all doubt…what your position in life was…and it wasn’t something you could adequately explain nor want to explain. It was something brutally personal…something you wanted no one else to know about you…yet something you wanted every ‘individual’ to experience for themselves. Maybe it was something that could most adequately be explained as a ‘tone of feeling.’ Something that defied ordinary explanation…ordinary words. It transcended them…using the realm of mind….mind tones….

As I weaved in and out of the passes…the approaching lights of the towns floated by…looking like space ships or space cities. The clusterings of lights hanging in the night air… seemingly suspended in the air by the dark….

Again, I thought of the type of people who must live among the mountains. So high up, and yes—even to some extent—isolated. Are they as me? Or are they as gods? I knew it was a silly thought, but as anyone knew who did much driving, things are not the same at night. Things change…the very air changes…people’s perceptions change. And it was this change that I was experiencing…thrilling in….

A few times along the route, I stopped, mainly to get my direction positive, as there were no light posts to light the turns that I needed to take. Few signs. It was like nothing else mattered. You would inhale the very night around you…it travelling down your throat into your lungs…the capillaries grabbing for it. It then shot out to every minute section of your being, revitalizing every facet of body and mind—

Everything made sense.

Wars, love, greed, rape…it all made sense…coming into a shocking clarity.

So onward I went again. I was no longer tired—I couldn’t be!—every fiber of my existence was on fire with this new knowledge and anticipation and excitement!

I was getting closer to my dream.

The night began to lighten as I approached Sonora Pass. I was becoming somewhat dismayed at the thought of leaving the nightness behind…but it was dispelled by the fact that this location on the earth was almost like a temple. The morning light scratching across the sky’s border lent its own mystical qualities to the land. The view of the surrounding area was breathtakingly gorgeous.

I wound my way up the steep mountain pass, the second highest mountain pass in the Sierra Nevadas, my mouth agape at the beauty. I had driven this route several years ago, and it was more beautiful then it was then. There was a light fog lighting around the spruce and lower-lying brush. Gray smoke weaved the air, coming from fireplaces. No doubt many were still asleep, but some were assuredly getting up, as this was a camping and hunting area.

My journey continued to take me to what seemed like a plot of microcosms…little dioramas of land…each one cute in its surroundings. The road would merge through these dioramas, only to disappear on the other end of it…yet continue with another one as the previous dioramas closed up with your passing….

Everything was so lush and intense! Like each diorama exploited life to its fullest in each of its microcosms! That that’s why they were set up like this. To spread it all out all over would detract from what this particular beauty was. It was only meant to be experienced in intense handfuls…and at night…by passing ghosts….

The feeling as I drove through it all was that of driving my vehicle over catwalks. I remembered how I felt back in college, when I worked in a campus auditorium and discovered the catwalk above everybody in the theatre. It was sandwiched between what was left of the auditorium’s ceiling and the building’s roof, a condensed space with precarious-looking hanging catwalk suspended by thin wires. Air conditions, heaters and lighting units filled this dark space, and there was a musty smell that I immediately felt comfortable with….

As I walked through wobbling catwalks, I constantly reminded myself to watch my step, or I’d fall through the ceiling…then another seventy feet or so onto the chairs below. But it was that feeling of walking (flying?) over everything, everyone below! Of being suspended over the world with its own little diorama around me as I explored….

And that was how I felt now…only that I was driving my truck…suspended over the world…and that if I deviated from the diorama, I’d go crashing down thousands upon thousands of feet. My trip was only a few hours longer now, as my destination within California closed in.

And I wondered if the things I had experienced during my night drive were still all there…behind me…when I answered my own question.

Of course they weren’t.

They had disappeared with the night’s release…but would most assuredly return when the days last rays again retreated….

As I drove on, a smile on my face and dreams in my eyes, I realized that life is great (as a friend once told me). I had a warm feeling inside me. But beyond that I knew that life is also as we create it. At that point in time, my reality exceeded my dreams. And what do you do when you reach that point in your life?

You continue dreaming.

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A Tribute To Mac

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As I’m going back over all my old short stories, I found this little tribute I’d written back in 2000. It is about an incident that happened to me while I’d been a boy in the 70s. It was about one of the family dogs we’d lost. I’d been there when it was killed. I’m glad I’d written it up when I did, because I’d apparently already begun to forget some of the details I’d written up. Well, we are talking some 40 years, here! I even had to ask my dad about one set of details as I’d written this up a couple weeks ago.

I’ve delayed posting because I’ve been looking for a picture of Mac…but I just can’t find one! Which is weird, cause I’d seen pictures of him—and his grave—in my possession. I must have lost them over the years, or someone else has them. In any event, if I do find one, I’ll add it into this post after the fact.

As with most of what I write, it doesn’t quite end as you might expect it to end…and which is why I’ve posted it to this site rather than my other one. I like that about my work. I like that about the weird things that happen to me in my life.

Embrace the weird.

 

A Tribute to Mac

© F. P. Dorchak, Sept 17, 2000

I remember Mac like it was yesterday. Mac was the best pal any kid could ask for. He never asked for much: food, shelter, and friendship. Okay, and a constant supply of attention. You see, Mac was a black Labrador Retriever, one of our family’s pets back in the 70s. I loved him so much that as an adult I’d also named the Black Lab we’d had “Mac” (his official name for those AKC papers was “Lord MacTavish du Lac”), as well.

My dad says we got Mac from one of his dad’s bosses who lived “out west.” My grandfather used to chauffeur for the president of the board of Phelps Dodge Wire and Cable. All I do know was that for a kid just barely a teenager, the dog was big! Paws as huge as your own feet!

Mac took a while getting used to coming to us when we called him, but I guess that was to be expected. We lived in The North Country, as it was called by those who live there (upstate NY, the extreme northern end of New York State; we lived in the Adirondack Mountains) and what with all that open space…well, it took a while. But Mac was fun-loving, as all labs are! I remember…

He had this one big tree branch that was actually longer than himself, and he always used to play with it and drag it around with him all over the place. There wasn’t a day you wouldn’t look out and see him dragging it somewhere, playfully growling and head shaking back in forth in the excited frenzy of play. Or find him under the shade of some tree on a lazy summer day, patiently (surgically!) chewing and whittling away at the limb with his teeth. He loved that danged stick. He must’ve actually bitten off several inches of it, because I swear, after a while, it looked shorter….

And Mac was always there for us kids. In fact it wasn’t all that unlikely to see one of us kids sleeping on Mac’s side as he slept. We called him our “Portable Pillow.”

But…the inevitable happened one day.

 

I was going to take a bike ride a couple miles down the road to check on the mail at the Post Office, when Mac came running up to me from somewhere wanting to come along (we didn’t always keep him leashed, which wasn’t a great thing, I know, but it’s how many operated up in The North Country). Well, by this time Mac was pretty regular about coming when called, so I decided, why not? Off we went.

Mac stayed by my side as I rode one of my brothers’ bikes (his had a basket, mine didn’t, and I needed that for any mail I might collect; it was a red “banana” bike;  mine was purple) down the road. I was pretty impressed to say the least, though I was also wary about the traffic, of which there wasn’t much to begin with. If I called him, he came. I was feeling pretty good about my buddy, Mac.

We made it to the Post Office and Mac came inside with me, all happy and excited. I can still remember that day, some 40 years later. Everyone knew everyone in this hamlet of Lake Clear, including one’s pets, so we all said “Hi.” Then, much like that Miss Almira Gulch, from The Wizard of Oz, there was this one old lady in there collecting her mail. She was one of those ladies who made an issue out of everything: “Oh there ought to be a law about this” or “Oh there ought to be a law about that.” Wrinkly and bitchy (sorry, this was how I’d described her when I’d written this in 2000, so I’ve kept it as-is). The type that also revels in scolding kids for anything and everything. Miss Almira Gulch.

Well, as Mac roamed the floor as I collected my mail, the lady turned to me after seeing my dog, and told me that someday my dog would get hit by a car, the way it was running loose. “There ought to be a law…” I just knew she must have been thinking then. I said, naw, he comes when he’s called real good and we don’t let him out loose that much (really, I said that? Again, this was what I’d written in 2000, so…). Besides, Mac was a careful dog, I said. The lady left, and Mac and I said our goodbyes to Post Office personnel. We were back on the road, mail in basket, Mac at heels.

We were almost home, at that big downward-S-curving bend, maybe less than a quarter mile from home? Mac was trotting contently on the other side of the road, staying off the pavement. He had just crossed over there…when he’d decided to come back over to my side.

I swear til this day, that what I saw him do, he did. I actually saw him do this: as Mac went to cross the road, he looked first one way…then the other…then made his way across.

Now, whether or not he was actually looking for cars is arguable…but that was what he’d done.

It was at this time that a little compact sports car (I think it might have been an MG Midget, but something like it, top down, as I recall) came screaming out from around that bend towards us. Mac never saw it coming. His head was turned in the opposite direction—it happened immediately after he’d just looked down the way of the approaching bullet.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I seemed to have blocked out the thump that must have occurred, the screaming of brakes, and the skidding of car. I dropped my bike where I was and ran into the center of the road. The road here was banked at a good angle to meet the S-curved bend…and it was where Mac now lay…my Little Buddy was now a black mass around which red was actively leaking out and pooling. His mouth…his mouth was open at a sick angle…his tongue hanging out at an even sicker, unnatural angle. I remember seeing him still looking like he was breathing for a little while…roughly so. It looked utterly grotesque…hideous…and I didn’t know what to do.

I felt entirely helpless.

I’d shot my hands into the air several times in futility and disbelief…my eyes searching for somebody, anybody…anybody who knew what to do…to tell me that what I was witnessing was not reality…not what I was really seeing. That it was actually another dog lying there in a pool of its own blood in the middle of warm asphalt….

Nothing came out of my mouth.

I ran to the edge of the road…then back to Mac…then repeated my steps. Other cars began to stop.

I then ran to the door of a well-kept gray house that was right there. I rapped on the door and someone answered. I remembered trying to keep my cool…keep calm and not cry…as I blurted out what’d happened. I asked to use the phone. I called my dad. He answered. In the same calm but wavering voice, I told my father what had happened. He rhetorically asked me if this was a joke. That’s what people do in times like this. It’s the same question everyone asks while they try to forestall the inevitable realization. I think it was then that I started to cry.

I ran back out as my dad was on his way to…us. I went back to my Mac’s side. He was still bleeding…the blood still making its way down the road’s canted angle. I looked at his black body, disgustingly twisted…his mouth and tongue still that sickeningly hideous way they were when I left. I thought back to when Mac had looked both ways before crossing the road. Of what that old lady (I’d used a different term in the first draft of this…) had scolded me about Mac back in the Post Office.

And I thought of that damned little sports car…barreling around that corner like it was a Grand Prix racer.

I looked for it. There were people talking to the driver and its passenger. A guy and a girl. To this day I can still see them all standing “over there” in a group, in my mind’s eye.

I reached out and touched Mac…he was still warm. Warm but unmoving. I bent over and cradled him…praying he wasn’t hurt too badly…was not dead…hoping beyond hope he was fixable—

Was this a joke?

It wasn’t…and Mac would no longer be our Portable Pillow. No longer be whittling away at his huge stick in the shade of some tree. My dad had arrived, looking all official in his NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Ranger uniform. His Everything-Will-Be-All-Right manner. He was used to scenes like this, I’m sure. Pulled dead bodies off of mountain tops and all. Now we were pulling our dead dog off the road.

We took Mac home in the back of my dad’s red ranger truck. The killers had apologized most remorsefully, saying they hadn’t seen our dog. Of course not. Most people don’t intentionally try to kill dogs while out for a drive during a beautiful, sunny day. They gave my dad all the money they had on them: about ten bucks, I seem to think it was.

We buried Mac up behind our house, before one of three gardens we had. I made a small wooden cross and carved Mac’s name into it with my pocket knife. I found Mac’s tree branch and brought it to the grave. I made two upright supports for it and suspended the stick across and over the grave. It stayed that way for most of my remaining years at home.

I don’t know how much longer after all this it was…days, months, a year?…but one day I’d seen Mac again. I’d been at the top of the long staircase of our 1800s house…I’d turned around to face the stairs while on the top landing…when I’d seen his happy black tail and butt. The tail was straight up into the air—and it and the butt were quickly heading down the stairs!

I was stunned. That was Mac! We hadn’t a black dog, in fact I’m not sure if we even had a replacement dog at this point, but it definitely was not a black dog.

As an adult I don’t hold any anger or animosity toward that “Miss Almira Gulch” or the couple that had hit Mac. Things happen. We all have to die sometime of something, I always say, and I believe there is more on The Other Side. As I also remember it, my dad told me that the couple was pretty shaken up from the accident. But, to this day, I still think about that scene. Of that couple…and how that accident might have affected them. Of Mac lying in the middle of that road. Of Mac looking both ways before crossing. Of that old lady’s ominous warning. I loved that dog. I’ll always miss Mac. He was more than just a Portable Pillow to all of us.

 

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This Happens Sometimes

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It's OK. No It's Not. Yes, It Is. No. It's Not. (Image by By Tanya Little Flickr: 9 of 365 ~ Frustration [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia
It’s OK. No It’s Not. Yes, It Is. No. It’s Not. (Image by By Tanya Little Flickr: 9 of 365 ~ Frustration [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
As I’ve been [re]working on my short stories the past year, there was one I was really trying hard to make workable. Publishable. But…in the end…I just couldn’t make work. It was titled “A Taste of Eden,” and it was kinda nasty. In a part or two, actually, downright disgusting. But the rest of the somewhat disjointed story was kinda cool—had some time-shifting Titanic imagery in there…scary, horror scenes inside an abandoned building during a gnarly thunderstorm…self-mutilation…and a perverted bovine-headed-and-hoofed demon—I really wanted it to work…but…I just couldn’t. And I really didn’t like the “perverted” part. Seriously—I’d written that? Grossed me out. Ick.

(…daisies and kitties…daisies and kitties….)

Maybe in another 20 years.

So I sent it to the Not Used Folder.

I never totally trash/delete anything…no matter how bad.

Then there was another story—a partial of maybe 1,000 words—that I’d expanded into 5,000 words. But can’t publish it because of certain reasons…and having a lawyer review it…well, it’s not worth the cost…but beyond that, I have to be considerate for the people “involved.” You see, I’d written about events from real life…changed them up a little…but they would still be obvious to those these events had happened to.  And they might not take too kindly to me writing about them.

So, into the Not Used Folder that went. Hopefully, after we’re all dead, someone will find it and publish it. It’s a really powerful story. It keeps bringing me to tears every time I read the damned thing.

Wasted time. One could say I’ve wasted time on these efforts…but one could also say, no time and effort is ever, really wasted. It all counts toward growth…improved writing. And I believe this. I’ve written 10 100K novel manuscripts…each has taken 2-3 years of my life. Some longer. I’ve only published half of them. As to short stories, I still haven’t counted them all up, but I’m coming up on about 52 published ones, if I make it through to November 27th, when I published my first on this blog, “Tail Gunner.” Right now I have stories scheduled for release through October 28th. And I still have a couple left.

And then there was my little misfire yesterday.

Oh, for cryin’ out loud.

I’d been so damned careful for weeks on where I was placing that cursor of mine…then—after updating a bunch of my short story blog posts with the cleaner hyperlink to my Short Stories page—it happened: “premature publishing.”

I spazzed out and mistakenly hit Publish instead of Save Draft. Classic rookie mistake.

(Yeah, there’s a double entendre in all this. And, by the way, I’m not writing this post in response to yesterday’s mishap—I’d actually started writing it two days ago.)

So, I sent out another “post” announcing my error, then promptly went looking for all copies on social media and deleting them (though the e-mailed versions still exist…). I think I was successful. But, yeah, it took some of the wind out of my sails, dammit….

I’ve had all this “weird energy” lately…different issues I’m not going to get into…but a “minor maelstrom of transitional energy,” I’m calling it. Aggravating old injuries, new issues kicking my ass, “interpersonal issues,” tons of work on short stories not going anywhere. We all go through these periods of time. And then there’s the weather…still acting like it’s winter in May. This is Colorado, not….

But you know…it’s all okay…it is.

This happens sometimes.

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Links to all my posted short stories are here.

A Conversation With Hell

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Don't Answer It. (Image by Holger.Ellgaard [CC BY-SA 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0], via Wikimedia Commons).
Don’t Answer It. (Image by Holger.Ellgaard [CC BY-SA 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0%5D, via Wikimedia Commons).
This story appears to be the first (or among the first) story I’d written as an adult and began recording, as I got full time into writing as a business. As an ongoing intent. From my earliest records, it appears I’d written this in May or June of 1987. I was 26 years old. It is my first writing entry into my writing log, which I’ve kept ever since. On May 6, 1987, I sent a letter to the Library of Congress for copyright forms. On June 1, 1987, I’d sent this story out to Writer’s Gazette, TheMind’s Eye, 2AM Magazine, Pleiades Magazine, and SCIFANT (I don’t know if this is the “SCIFANT” from all those years ago, but there’s the link).

My very first entry into my writing log, however, is the following:

Contacted Dr. Clifford Bennett about publishing “Hope,” “Conversation,” “Love”. He died May 4, 1987 (82 years old).

You can see there were other stories I was working on.

Dr. Bennett was in the publishing/writing world, and I no longer remember how I discovered him (maybe it was a referral from some critique group I was in at the time). For some reason, I also remember Dr. Bennett performing hypnosis, and we’d worked a couple times with some hypnosis sessions. Anyway, I’d met with him a couple times, then I remember he was “hard to get hold of,” and soon afterward I’d learned that he’d died. His obituary is posted after this story. Dr. Bennett was my first contact with “the publishing industry” and the first “professional” to help me with my writing. I wish I remembered more about him.

Anyway, this story harkens back to my straight horror writing days. It’s not one of my best, but it’s short and sweet. It needed some clean-up.

Inspiration? Aside from today’s telemarketers, we’ve all gotten wrong numbers. In today’s world there’s the “butt dialing” phenomenon. But back when I wrote this, in 1987, we just had plain old wrong numbers.

This story had been published in SCIFANT #8, May 5, 1988.

 

A Conversation With Hell

© F. P. Dorchak, 1987

Ring!

Ring!

“Hello? Hello!”

It was the same thing. The same thing for the past month. Will Garret had made a brief jaunt back to his house to pick up some papers he had forgotten. No sooner had he stepped into the hallway, when the phone rang.

A crackling sound over the phone with no answer.

Who was it? Was there a problem with the phone?

He’d already had it checked.

A bad line?

Nope, had that checked too.

A prankster?

Definite possibility.

Whatever it was, it had gotten annoying a long time ago. These calls came at all hours of the day, none of them consistent in time. Some would come at two in the afternoon, while others would come at three in the morning.

He hung up; no use prolonging the agony.

Will stepped back from the phone and watched it. Then to his surprise (and then again, maybe not), it rang again. He let it ring a few more times, he couldn’t not answer it.

He just had to know who wa—

“Hello?”

“Hello,” came the smooth as silk reply. It was a masculine voice.

“Who is this?” Will asked, more than a little irritated.

“Uh…Fred Tarpenton…of Tarpenton Buick,” came the reply.

“Oh—I’m sorry. I’m a little on edge…I’ve been getting these crank calls, and—”

“Not to worry, apology accepted.”

A promotional call from a car dealer. Not interested, but figured he might as well listen for a while, considering the way he’d answered the phone.

After hanging up the phone, he went back to work. A corporate executive is a busy guy.

At his office, Will slaved over extensive paperwork on the merging of a new client. His huge oak desk was filled with reams of paper, a coffee cup was buried underneath the piles, somewhere. His phone rang and he absentmindedly fumbled for it.

“Yes,” he said, his reply neutral, distracted.

Over the receiver came that familiar crackling sound.

He shot up from his desk, hurtling the phone across his office. He moved behind his chair and gripped it in tightly.

It had been bad enough that he had been getting these calls for the past three and a half weeks…but they’d been confined to his home. This is the first time he had ever gotten one at work.

“Miriam!”

He was already on his way into reception, where his administrator worked. “Miriam, did you just forward me a call?”

“No, Mr. Garret, why?”

Will forced himself to calm down, no use letting his charges think he’s losing his grip on reality.

“Oh, nothing…nothing.” He turned and returned to his office. He told Miriam to hold all calls.

Back in his office he sat back down. This was getting out of hand. He looked to the mess over by the wall. Guess hadn’t really needed to have Miriam hold his calls. Have to get a new phone now.

It was nearing nine o’clock as he entered his driveway. It had been a tough but profitable day. He exited his car and entered the house. He’d just opened the front door, when the phone rang. Will slowly closed the door behind him and cautiously approached the ringing instrument.

It continued to ring as he put his briefcase down. Reached for the receiver.

“Hello?”

Crackle.

“Who is this?”

Crackle.

“What do you want from me? Money? I’ll give you anything you want, just—”

Crackle.

Crackle.

“Fuck.” Will slammed the receiver down and reached for the wall jack, unplugged the phone and the other two he owned. If nothing else, he was determined to get some sleep tonight.

The next day was bright and sunny and Garret awoke in an excellent mood. There had been no phone calls to wake him. He ate a well prepared breakfast, read the paper and began to leave for work.

He felt as though he could take on the world!

Standing in the doorway, he thought it better to reconnect at least one phone, and backtracked in, reconnecting the living room extension. As soon as the contacts connected, the instrument rang.

“Answer this, buddy!” he said, and flipped off the phone.

The phone continued ringing.

It was a busy day, as usual. Business calls, meetings, paperwork and more paperwork. It was 4:05 p.m. and he thought it best to leave a little early today. He began clearing off his desk—

Ring!

Ring! Ring!

“Oh come on, Miriam, where the hell are you?”

After several rings, he grabbed the phone.

“Yes?”

Crackle.

FOOOOOOOSH!

A bright yellow-orange bolt of flame shot out of the receiver, searing straight through Garret’s skull. Not stopping there the flame wrapped itself several times around his head, burning flesh dripping like wax from his charring skull.

Will did get a chance to utter a shriek, but that was about all.

He dropped the receiver as he tried to stand up, his hands going up to his incinerated head. Tiny flames sputtered around what had been his nose and left ear.

Miriam burst in just in time to see him sink back down into the plush executive’s chair. The dying flames and smoke continued to issue from the blackened remains of what had been his head. The carnage was total.

Miriam stood, frozen, at the entrance unable to move.

Garret’s body from the neck down was untouched. It twitched a few times then lay still, arms hanging to their sides, his head cocked to one side and smoldering. A few feet from Will’s body on the floor lay the still flaming receiver. Several defiant flames still licked at the handset. Had Miriam her sanity, she would have heard the faint echoes of a demonic chuckle.

Out in reception, a phone rang….

 

Dr. Clifford Bennett Obituary, 1987
Dr. Clifford Bennett Obituary, 1987

 

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