F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Metaphysical

Blondie's

by

Road To Nowhere. (Image by Kate Jewell [CC BY-SA 2.0 {http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0}], via Wikimedia Commons)
Road To Nowhere. (Image by Kate Jewell [CC BY-SA 2.0 {http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0}], via Wikimedia Commons)
This story originated from a situation when my then-girlfriend and I had to take shelter from a heinous and torrential downpour back in the summer of 1984.

Brenda and I had been driving back in separate cars to North Dakota in the middle of the night after having visited her parents in Iowa. It was probably the worst rain storm I had ever been in, and we simply could not see the road. She was ahead of me and had pulled off on some back road. We found shelter at a really cool deserted gas station with a covering and waited out the storm.

And there was this old-time black-and-white photo I remembered looking at long after all this…and in it was a woman looking to the photographer. Her look…her emotional intensity…was startling…riveting…fascinated me.

From out of these two experiences came this story.

This story was originally published in Black Sheep #40, the February-March 2002 issue.

 

Blondie’s

© F. P. Dorchak, 1995

 

Rain crashed down in severe, impenetrable sheets as if the anger of the gods were being visited upon me. It was deafening, thunderous. I punched through it, tears blinding me. A midsummer night’s dream, I mused. Some dream, indeed. It’d been some time since I’d last been through Iowa, a lifetime ago, for all practical purposes, but all I know is that whatever I did, whomever I was with, it all paled in comparison to her. I’ve never met anyone like her—before or since—and though we barely talked, had never really even held each other, I never stopped thinking about her.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with my girlfriend at the time, but, as I said, that was a long time ago….

Maybe the gods aren’t angry…just sad. Like me.

I remember that midsummer’s trip as if it were yesterday. I was with Grace. We’d been making a marathon drive back from her parents’ home and it had been raining hard then, too. We’d taken two cars, because I’d met her directly from a business trip and we were driving back to North Dakota. It was somewhere between midnight and three in the morning when the rain slammed down so hard we could barely see, and since Grace was in the lead I followed her as she pulled off onto some obscure back road that wasn’t on any map. We pulled off and found shelter beneath an overhang to an ancient gas station. We sat there for some time—I had gotten out of my car and gone to hers. It could have been a beautiful setting…could have been quite romantic…if it hadn’t been for our fight just before leaving her folks. We’d been dating for about two years then and Grace had brought up the idea of marriage, but not just marriage—marriage and children.

Why do people always feel the need to bring more souls into the world?

I may be a bit unconventional—or unreasonable—but I feel that there are quite enough bodies already populating the planet, thank you. Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I loved her…then. I wasn’t so averse to taking her as my wife as I was against having kids. I was young, still a bit wild, and had no intention of being tied down to a family let alone children. Anyway, we’d left her folks under somewhat strained circumstances. She’d even snapped at me that maybe it was a sign we drove in separate vehicles. Things weren’t going well and let’s just say they didn’t get any better.

So, I’m in her car, the downpour still mercilessly pounding the countryside, and we just sat there. The sound of the rain was curiously soothing for all its furor, even hypnotic. The night hung thickly over us like a heavy blanket—and the fact that it was three in the morning was even better. Have you ever been awake at that hour? I mean, really awake and experienced the fact that others—most really—were still tucked away snugly in their beds, dreaming? It’s quite cozy, like living film noir. At any rate, Grace broke the silence first. She wanted to know what I wanted out of life. I told her I didn’t know that I was just busy living it. Well, didn’t I want to live it with someone? Of course I did, I told her, it’s much more fulfilling and enjoyable when you can share things with one you love. Don’t you love me? she asked, of course I do, then why won’t you marry me—it’s not about marrying you, Grace, it’s about the kids part, the kids’ part? what does that have to do with anything—everything, dammit, I can’t explain it, but it’s scary and there’s too many people in the world and why are you trying to pressure me I thought we’d been through all this already….

It wasn’t long after that that Grace burst out of the car and into the downpour. I went after her, of course, to find her standing and sobbing out in the middle of the muddy road we’d just come on down. I tried to hold her, but she wouldn’t have it. I felt my life ripped apart—after all, I loved her—I didn’t want her to go, but something wasn’t allowing me to accept her proposal. Then I looked to her and saw she was staring at the building we’d parked alongside. It was kind of funny, because I, too, got caught up in whatever was going on at that moment. We were parked between some of those old-time gas pumps and the building. Slowly, Grace began to walk away from me. Again I followed. Totally ignoring our vehicles we went to the building. Above the awning, or roof, we’d parked under, was a sign we could barely make out through the downpour: “Blondie’s” it said. Instantly intrigued, we forgot about our problems. Grace got to the door first. She reached out for the screen-door handle and pulled, then worked the inner doorknob, which opened into a darkened interior. A dry, darkened interior. We both just walked on in….

 

It was the strangest experience I’ve ever had. There was an immediate calmness that befell us—and a deep, emotionally powerful…something. I don’t know what it was, I just know that I immediately felt like crying. I looked to Grace, but she was already looking at me. I couldn’t tell if those were tears in her eyes or remnants of the storm.

We just stood there, looking at each other.

This time it was my turn to make the first move. I flipped on a light switch. Partial lights flickered on. I broke away from Grace and began to take in the place. It was an old-time gas station-restaurant, like in those old forties movies I love so much. Even had that musty, nostalgic, smell and creaking floorboards. I immediately fell in love with the place. But where was everyone? Sleeping? Then why was the door left unlocked? I mean, back-country Iowa or not, most businesses I knew didn’t leave doors unlocked overnight.

“I’m gonna look for a bathroom,” Grace mumbled and went off in search of one.

I walked about the room, listening to the rain not only pounding the building, but my soul…and found myself falling deeper and unaccountably deeper in love with the place. It really was quite quaint and I immediately wished we’d found this under different circumstances. Grace was in the rest room for some time, so I sat down at a table in one corner of the room where I felt particularly drawn to. There were old, polished-but-quite-worn-out wooden tables, two of them…a Wurlitzer…display cabinets that were now empty, but could have at one time or another been home to candy, pies—whatever—but, what really piqued my interest was an old calendar tacked up on the adjacent wall. It was dated 1944—I remember that—and there was this picture of a woman on it, but over her picture was tacked an old black-and-white photograph. “Vargas Girl” had been scratched out beneath the calendar’s picture, and beneath that was scrawled “Blondie.” I smiled. Someone else was in love…at one point, anyway. Someone had stood where I now sat and had put up their wife’s or girlfriend’s picture over this Vargas Girl. I reached up and removed the black and white and looked at it. Though a bit faded, I was instantly shocked by the emotional intensity of this woman. She was quite attractive, and was staring out across the boundaries of time…at me…pleading. She wanted something, but what? The longer I stared, the more I wanted to kiss her, to hold her. She seemed lonely…desperate. I placed the photograph on the table before me and folded my hands beneath my chin. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her and just…stared. Into her eyes. Large and dark. I wanted to feel what she was feeling at the time of this picture, feel her thoughts, her lips, her—

“What are you looking at?”

Grace had returned and to my utter amazement I had all but forgotten about her. Embarrassed, I pushed away the picture.

“Who’s this?” Grace asked, picking it up. “She’s pretty.” She put the photograph back on the table. “Did you find anyone?”

“No. It seems a bit weird, but I think whoever owns this joint forgot to lock up. Lucky us.”

“Yeah,” was all she said, turning away.

Grace walked off toward the checkout counter, but I remained seated. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the beautiful face in this picture.

What had this woman’s life turned out like?

Had she fought with her boyfriend? Her husband? Have children? I was caressing the edges of the picture when Grace called out to me.

“Nolan, could you come over here, please?”

Reluctantly, I got up and did as requested. “What?”

“What should we do? It’s still pouring outside, I’m cold, I’m hungry. No one’s around—”

“—well, that’s not exactly so,” came a voice from behind us. Both of us turned to find a woman standing in a bathrobe, arms crossed, at the entrance Grace had used for the rest room. “You’re welcome to wait out the storm, here, if you’d like.”

Grace and I looked to each other for a long moment. “Y-your door was open, and—” I began, when the woman again interrupted.

“Some of us tend to get complacent out here, especially us few remaining optimists. The offer still stands. I’ve got coffee brewing in the back.”

Just then we smelled the rich, elevating aroma.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” Grace added.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t your fault. I haven’t slept…well …in a long time…and when you used the bathroom the pipes…they have a life of their own, if you know what I mean. Why don’t you both have a seat—or stand, as you prefer, I know you’ve probably been on the road all night.”

The woman disappeared into the rear.

“Guess she lives here,” I said, as I directed Grace back to the table.

“There’s something weird about her,” Grace said, sitting.

“I know, I felt it, too.” Once again I reached for the photograph.

“She’s very pretty, isn’t she, the woman in the picture?”

Startled, I hesitated in my answer. I felt embarrassed, like I’d been caught in an affair. “Y-yes, she is. I keep wondering what her life must have been like—”

“Hard.”

Two cups of coffee were place before us.

“She was my grandmother,” our mysterious woman said, continuing, “She and her husband started this place.”

“Is that who tacked this up there?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking to the calendar, “it’s remained up there all these years—until you took it down.”

“Oh—I’m-I’m so sorry—” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said, smiling warmly, which actually kind of unnerved me, “you didn’t know. Sometimes change is good, you know? Do you mind if I sit with you?”

“No, go right ahead, I mean, we barged in on you,” Grace said.

I looked to our coffee and found they each already contained the cream and sugar we both took in them.

“Thank you for the coffee,” I said.

The woman smiled.

 

It almost seemed like another me, then. Another life. As I now try to navigate through this downpour I recalled all the other times I’d been through here between Cedar Rapids and Grand Forks. I’ve been through countless rain storms, always searching for that one, unmapped road, and never have I found it. But I feel closer each time I come out in search of it…feel irresistibly drawn to it, like metal to a magnet. I’ve tried to explain this feeling over the years, but eventually just gave up. I tried to explain all my failed relationships and lonely nights…my failed employments…but in the end gave up, merely trying to cope. A pipe dream. That’s all it was. A futile attempt to keep my life going in spite of all the failures I’d created: never staying at one job long enough to get on a first name basis; never staying in relationships long enough to consider marriage—and always wondering how Grace’s life turned out. Always wondering if maybe, maybe I should have taken her offer….

 

But that magical night remained with me forever.

As that woman sat at the table with us, I felt something about her reach out to me—like her grandmother’s photograph. Once or twice under the table, I felt her leg brush against mine. I said nothing, thinking it just one of those unseen beneath-the-table moments, but I felt her touch on several occasions, and soon became extremely uncomfortable—not because of the contact, but because I wanted the contact—and found myself irresistibly attracted to her. This went beyond any purely physical attraction, because—and don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful—but it went deeper. Like we knew each other on some level I couldn’t explain—and didn’t necessarily want to. I was enjoying this mysterious bond, but was also hoping Grace wasn’t picking up on it. But within a short while, I found myself doing the unconscionable: I found myself trying to touch this woman as I sat before my girlfriend. I’d place a foot just so, a leg or hand in a certain position.

I couldn’t believe what I was doing!

And all along this woman showed no hint of our hidden interplay, carrying on a perfectly normal conversation with my girlfriend and me. Then it happened. After all the coffee this woman had been serving us, Grace got up to again use the rest room. As soon as Grace had disappeared into the dark, the woman turned to me. She never said a word, but my excitement grew. I shook with anticipation…and, yes, embarrassment.

She smiled. Gently took my hand.

Oh, her warm, soft skin…the feeling as we finally held hands out in the open was indescribable!

Gently and lovingly, she caressed my skin. I felt as if I’d known her forever. I pictured us making love—not a mere fling, but feral, passionate love.

I took in everything about her…her expressive yet not overly full lips…the wisps of loose hair about her quietly beautiful face…the depth and loving of her intense scrutiny. The softness of her touch…and of how profoundly her touch moved me.

I don’t know how long we carried on like this, but gradually my uncomfortableness gave way to pure, uninhibited adoration. She lifted my hand to her beautiful lips and kissed and nipped at my fingertips; turned my hand over and kissed my wrist.

I nearly died!

I squeezed her hand…took it within both of mine and kissed hers…realizing that at any moment Grace would return. I tingled with bizarre excitement and reached for her face—what was I doing? We came in closer. I could feel her warm, moist breath upon my skin. She parted her lips to meet mine…her eyes hypnotic and yearning. I closed my eyes…

And our lips touched.

It was electric, like a spiritually arching jolt. We both locked in this unbelievably metaphysical kiss that lasted an eternity—when she broke away. I heard Grace’s approach and hurriedly wiped my mouth, but the woman didn’t. Again, she smiled.

“Miss—oh, I guess we never got your name—the light burned out in the bathroom—”

“I’m sorry—I’ll fix it immediately—”

“Oh, don’t bother now, it’s no big deal, it was only the dark, you know. I don’t think I’ll have to use it again, anyway. We should probably get going,” Grace said, as she turned to look out the windows.

I suddenly realized that the rain had let up enough that it no longer battered the building like boulders. I looked to the woman beside me, who was already looking at me with searching, painful eyes…eyes that literally scared me, because I felt I’d seen them before. Her face had somehow changed as well…into a deeply terrifying way I couldn’t explain. It was like she was beginning to emaciate…but it was an emaciation I found I was very much attracted to—

“Nolan—what are you doing?” came Grace’s sudden, fierce outcry.

Immediately terrified, I looked to her.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

To my utter astonishment, I looked to the tabletop—and found myself clutching this mysterious woman’s hands.

My blood chilled and I shot to my feet, quickly yanking back my hands.

Grace stared at the both of us. She said not one word, but inside I knew every thought that raced through her mind: is this what he’d been doing while I was away—how could this be?, we’d never even met her before…maybe marriage wasn’t such a good idea….

Still without a word, Grace turned. The look of hurt that had been on her face tore my soul from my breast. As I reached out for her, Grace never turned around, but thrust an upraised hand before me like a pissed-off traffic cop. I was stopped by the force of her silent command and stared back. Grace quietly opened the door and went out into the night. I again made a move toward her when the woman grabbed me.

“Please…,” she begged.

Images flew through my mind…us living happily together…us again making love—but they were more than mere images…they were as if I had actually lived them for one long, luxurious, moment.

I took the woman’s hand into my own and gave her my own pleading look. I didn’t want to leave her and I couldn’t explain it.

What the hell was going on here? How could I do such a thing in front of my girlfriend—a woman I could have married? How could I feel such emotion for a woman I’d never before met?

Grace started her car. Gunned the engine.

“I…have to go—I don’t know you. Don’t you see? I don’t know you, yet want to stay with you. Can you understand me? I can’t. I have to go…with her.”

I broke free, and rushed from the building, out into the storm.

Once outside, Grace had already left…her taillights disappearing into the darkness and rain. Quickly, I got into my car, brought it to life, and left the pumps. As I spun out into the rain and mud, I looked into my rearview and froze. The building that we had taken refuge in had melted from sight. I’m not saying that the rain had again become so thick that only yards from it it had been made to appear that way—no, what I’m saying is that as I looked into my rearview I actually saw it melt into nothingness as the rain pelted it.

Good bye.

 

And so I’ve thought about it all these years and still come up with the same questions. Had she been a ghost? Had it all been a hallucination? Had we ever met before?

No, I’d never seen that woman before in all of my life.

Every map, every person I’d ever talked to had no recollection of that road, or building. Of that woman. No folklore, no legends, no nothing.

So what’d happened?

Something had to have occurred, because Grace had seen her, too, had seen us holding hands, for chrissakes. Grace’d never stopped after she’d gotten into the car that night, except for gas, and when she had, I stopped, but she turned and gave me that same murderous glare and silent command. It was over. I didn’t even try. We both knew this was the end. No longer had it been about kids, if it ever really had been. I let her go and watched as her taillights again left me for the darkness.

Forever.

Ever since I’ve failed at everything. I got fired from every job, never had second dates, and after a while, not even firsts. Got evicted from apartments—lost my mortgage—you name it. I finally admitted to myself what I needed to do. I had nothing holding me back anymore, so where was the harm? I’d gotten into my car, filled it up, and headed into rainy oblivion.

And here I am.

I’ve gotten pretty good, over the years, of driving in the nearly undriveable. Learned the Iowa back roads pretty well. But I’m tired. I need to find what was, all those years ago. If I can’t, well, I don’t know what I’ll do.

So the rain pounds down upon my windshield, cursing me for all I’ve done, and not done. Bursts of thunder and lightning jar my senses. I take one more turn up ahead, and slide down a small hill into a dip. The rain seems angrier here, and I have to slow down still more. I look to the speedometer and see that my speed barely registers.

Why am I even driving?

Because I need her.

I’m exhausted. I peer ahead, looking for a place to pull over and uncover the sleeping pills…so many, many, of them…beneath my crumpled jacket on the front seat. I briefly look at them.

Enough of everything….

When I spot something up ahead.

I get closer and try to make it out—and what do I see?

An ancient gas station.

A roof covering gas pumps.

I break, and my car slides into a muddy and crooked stop before the pumps. I get out, deafened by the roar of the rain, wincing from the force of the storm, and stand there…looking to the building.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing!

And there’s a light on.

Legs weak and shaky I approach the screen door. It’s solid, all right. Grasping the doorknob, I open it. I enter the room and see a shadowy figure slumped over at one of the tables in that far corner. Her head hangs low.

I am without words as I approach, for I know it’s her.

Sure, I’ve aged some, as I know she has, but what’s right is right. I get to the table and see an old black-and-white photograph still lying on the table where I’d last left it. I look to the woman who still sat in the same chair I’d left her in. I place a hand to her shoulder—cold at first—but soon feel warmth. She lifts her head…and I come around and sit beside her.

“I’ve waited for you for so long,” she whispers, in a wavering, tortured voice. Tears drain down her cheeks.

Heart in my throat, I look into her eyes and see the same woman I’d seen all those years ago. Exactly the same. I’m not sure how I know this, or how much I believe it, but it makes sense. She isn’t a ghost, at least not in the conventional sense—no…she’s a wish….

“I’m Blondie,” she whispers, “I’m the woman—”

“I know. The photograph.”

She smiled.

“It’s hard to explain,” she says, “but I’ve always loved you…just as you’ve always loved me. We’re two people of the same hunger. Both of us wanted something neither had, but reached across time to find. There are other…lives…we all live, some in dreams, some not. When you looked into that photograph, you created all of this—”

“But how could I? We got here before I found the picture—”

“Desire has a way of warping time. I can’t explain it myself, only know my want…as do you. However it happened we know the reality of the outcome. Can we live in more than one reality? I don’t know. I only know that I didn’t want to live in the one I had been in up until that picture. I had to leave. The moment you read my need…desired me…you took me out of that life and brought me into this one. That’s all I know, all I care about. I’m no longer where I was.”

“And me?”

Again, that warm smile.

“Your choice. You still have that choice—”

“No…I don’t. There is no choice—can’t you see? I’ve always been with you since that moment—everything else I’ve ever done, or tried to do, has left me; never had I anything since I left you.”

She smiled and we both knew.

Why try to know and explain everything? Why not just live in the moment and leave the explanations to Who or Whatever runs this crazy ride.

I reached out to Blondie and took her hand and immediately felt a lifetime younger—older?—who cared. We were together and I would never, ever again abandon her. We had both found what we so desperately sought—and it was just that—we both needed to need it…desperately.

 

The rain continued to pound, relentlessly, but it wasn’t angry, not in the least. And as our building and pumps melted away…as did my car and the remains of my previous life…I realized that there had never been any anger in the rain—only tears of joy.

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

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.

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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Contamination

by

I will corrupt all that is light. (Image by Louis Le Breton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
I will corrupt all that is light. (Image by Louis Le Breton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
This vile little ditty originally appeared in Aberations #11 (yes, that’s how it was spelled), but I never received payment…or a copy, though I’d repeatedly contacted the original owner and publisher…who had long-ago sold the business.

This story is the only other vampyre  story I’d written (as far as I’ve found to date)…and it is nasty. I’d come quite a long way from my original and tame 1978 vampyre story. This one is a mash-up of the metaphysical (“The only limits are those we choose to accept!“), horror (appropriate vampyre violence), sex (yup), and religion (pretty much bet it’s not what you’re expecting). But it was the metaphysical considerations (“The only limits are those we choose to accept“) I applied to the horror genre that are typically only applied to pleasant, everyday life. Safe, pleasant everyday life. So, I applied the consideration to two standard horror and religious tropes. I’m sure it will upset a certain few. That’s the way it goes…can’t please everybody. At the time…the story begged to be written. So, I wrote it.

The crucifix written about in this story is based on one our family owned when I was a kid (not I’m not sure where it is now)—it was an absolutely beautiful piece of art, just as described, with the black-topped glass vial secreted away in the back inside it. With the sturdy thin metal Jesus on the front. Had a beautiful heft to it. I’ve never seen another cross like this…but, you know, I’m not a religious guy. And as nonreligious as I was even as a kid, I loved to hold it and look at it…purely for its aesthetics. It was cool looking!

This story is not.

This story was published February 8, 1993.

 

Contamination

© F. P. Dorchak, 1992

 

Rosary dangling about her neck, Sister Mary Solicity eased the boy’s legs under the blankets.

“Thank you, Sister,” the youngster said.

The Sister smiled back. “You’re quite welcome, young Benjamin. Now close your eyes and get some sleep. You did good today.”

The child’s eyes lit up. “I did?”

“Yes, you certainly did. Now good night, and the Lord be with you.”

“Good night, Sister Mary. Good night!”

Sister Mary Solicity withdrew from the boy’s bed and turned off the light, but ensured that his nightlight remained on. Benjamin closed his eyes and dreamed about the parents who would one day be his. Parents who would love him this time, never abandon him.

Sister Solicity closed the door and continued on down the hall, checking the other rooms.

 

The night blazed past cold and alert eyes. The darkness was alive and intoxicating, but new blood was needed. New blood, but not just any new blood. This one required more, required a challenge. This one wanted to rock reality and send the world into a new form of corruption and defilement, one that had never been known before. The old ways, the old rules—they were outdated and stifling. This one knew they could be broken; knew they could be changed. Rules were meant to be destroyed and he would be their destroyer.

And he hated.

As unfeeling as his race was deemed to be that was one thing that was incorrect—they did possess hatred. They hated all that was opposite to them…they hated with such intensity that all of life had shunned their very existence…banishing them into an eternal darkness and damnation that came to consume their blackened souls.

They were condemned to die—yet not even death would embrace them.

Instead they instigated a profound mockery, which polluted all that was called good. All that was called life. It was a discovery that was to keep the race alive…a discovery so vindictive that a new race was forced into existence. The undead. Nosferatu. Their names were many, but they all meant the same thing.

Vampyre.

The creature blazed on through the darkness, his consciousness alive and vibrant. He would bring his race into the new order. Take them out from under the ragged legends that had kept them at bay all these centuries—and a lot would have to be atoned for that lost time.

And he would lead them out.

He would inject new venom into the terror that was theirs…and tonight it would begin.

He grew weary of those of his kind that were merely content to live the legends. New legends were needed. New myths.

And this was the night.

 

Sister Mary Solicity closed the last door behind her and held her rosary out before her, loosely but reverently. She felt so much pain for the children, yet so much love. They were the lost sheep in need of a shepherd, and she was relieved that she had been chosen as their guide.

She knew of a Shepherd. The Shepherd.

Sister Mary Solicity could only vaguely understand what brought parents to abandon or abuse children—their children. She tried not to dwell on the subject, for when she did she found a rage build within that tore her apart.

Unchristian thoughts.

Thoughts that assailed her and sent her to the confessionals.

Thoughts that would cause her to accept penance—a penance upon which she would then add her own.

Always, it was the same cycle.

Sister Solicity entered her darkened chamber and immediately went to the pulpit, which squatted beneath a softly illuminated cross.

But, there was something else…something she didn’t want to admit that also ate away at her.

Her dreams.

Dreams that had always been peaceful and soothing had turned hideous and disturbing. She found herself constantly battling impure thoughts that grew there…in the darkness of her mind…and, again, found herself doing more penance. It was taking its toll.

Solicity stepped to the pulpit, kneeled, bowed her head, and began to pray. She prayed with the fervid intensity of a martyr, and it brought perspiration to her skin. She’d never before been forced to pray so hard—and it startled her—but the more she toiled, the more engulfed she became.

Evil sought her…evil thoughts ate away at her soul…threatening to crush her very existence, if not, her faith….

Please, Lord, save me! I’m scared. Something is happening and I don’t know what to do. I feel it so very near tonight!

 

There was no longer any need for stealth. The vampyre wanted the world to know of its impending demise…wanted to taunt…to watch the world squirm—to know just who it was that was bringing about The Reformation of Ways.

It leaned against a building and waited. Someone approached, several someones, and he sensed the anger they wore. Their fear. This promised to be an exquisite feeding, and it would be a good way to begin the New World Order.

 

The group of six noisily rounded the corner, laughter and curses filling the air like crackling fire. The streets were as deserted as they were dull, and the boys craved action.

“Man, what a fuckin morgue! I think we’re doin too good a job, Ice Man, nobody’s comin out!”

“No problem, Ace, my man—we’ll just go in after em, know what I mean?” The entire gang erupted into more laughter.

“Hey, Ice, look over there, man. See him?”

Ice Man turned.

“Sure do. Maybe this night ain’t a total bust—come on!”

The rest of the gang fell into the shadows and spread out, but Ice Man strode confidently out into the street, fishing through his pockets for a cigarette. He approached the shadow.

“Hey, man, got a light?”

The stranger’s face remained cloaked in darkness. Without a word, a tiny flame sprang to life.

“Thanks man. Hey, you know it’s not too cool bein out here by yourself. You could get mugged or sumthin.”

The stranger remained silent.

“Hey’d’you hear me, man? Said it—”

“What would you like me to say?” the figure asked. It was a voice that unnerved Ice Man, who found himself unexpectedly fumbling with his cigarette. It wasn’t the confidence in the voice that scared him, he’d dealt with confidence before…it was the edge. There was an edge to this man’s words that he’d never before experienced.

Ice Man’s confidence quickly eroded and he suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake. He wondered if he had been deserted by his gang.

Nervously, his eyes shot back and forth, looking for his crew. His tongue darted between parched lips.

It was so dark…

“Nothin, man, nothin—just give me your fuckin wallet—now!”

Ice Man couldn’t believe he’d blurted it out. Just like that. Like a wet-behind-the-ears amateur. But he had. He wasn’t ready, and he wasn’t even sure his crew was set up, but the words had just come tumbling out like someone else was inside him, forcing his hand.

Intentions known, there was nothing left to do but go with it—and out from the shadows came the others and Ice Man felt, once again, in control.

“Bout time, man, I was wonderin where you all been.” Ice Man shifted nervously on his feet.

“We was waitin on your signal, is all,” another said.

The stranger remained quiet.

“Come on, man, your wallet. Now!” Ice commanded.

Quiet, subtle laughter came from the dark corner.

“Come and get it, you little bastards.”

 

Sister Mary Solicity pulled the blankets up over her. She didn’t like how her praying session had gone. No sooner had she begun her intense concentration when she’d exploded up and away from her pew, her mind reeling as if punched by a room-sized fist. There was something very evil out there and it was coming for her. She was sure of it. Seeking her.

Her specifically.

Buried beneath her blankets, Sister Mary Solicity again held up her rosary and nervously began to run the beads. But as she traveled down them, the beads fell from her hands. Uttering a mild curse, she began a Hail Mary and chaotically grasped for them beneath the blankets. Her hands found her legs instead. Nestled naively between them lay her rosary.

She closed her eyes…reached for the beads…but found flesh instead.

No—

(unclean)

But couldn’t resist…

(unclean)

…felt exhilarated…

(un–)

She dropped a hand to a leg and followed the soft flesh upward.

So supple.

Struggling against the urge, Solicity bit her lips every inch of the way.

Felt muscle. Pelvis.

(so firm)

(so warm)

Then all went limp as her caresses grew stronger, more meaningful…

(unclean!)

Hail Mary, full of grace…

 

The vampyre released the boy and allowed him to drop. His face had been rubbed down to bone, just for the pure enjoyment of it, and the brick wall behind them streaked with his remains. Except for one boy, no one was left standing. One young, eyes-frozen-wide child. The vampyre went directly to him, callously kicking his way through the body parts that littered the space between them.

This is going to be better than the rest; this one is utterly saturated with fear.

The boy had been spared to watch, held there under the monster’s control to experience new, heightened levels of fear as few mortals ever had.

Taking the boy gently into his grasp, the vampyre inhaled the scent of his fear like a fine bouquet. Then he gently brushed his nose alongside a small strip of the boy’s neck—

And lowered his reddened fangs.

 

Sister Mary Solicity leaped up from her bed and into the washroom, collapsing to the floor by her tub. Sobbing, she turned on the water and waited for it to reach a scalding temperature. She removed her hands from the folds of her gown and thrust them underneath the faucet, muffling her screams. Tears poured down her cheeks. She used soap under the burning water to speed the burnishing, then removed her clothing and entered the water. She kept the pain to herself as she ran the bar of soap between her soiled

(unclean!)

(vile!)

legs.

Wash the sins.

 

The boy collapsed in the vampyre’s hands, as the vampyre ripped his fangs away from the neck. The creature inspected the wound, and satisfied cast aside the body. It had been an exemplary feeding…almost too good…and he felt that he could have easily returned to his brood with what he had gotten from tonight’s kill—but that would be too easy.

He was determined to meet destiny.

To topple the pillars of the past. He was going to do it—had to—but had fed too much. The hunger for the kill was quickly diminishing and this he would not allow. He needed to hunger.

I will have my destiny. I will lead us forward.

Extending an arm, and baring a portion of it, he ripped a gash across the length of his forearm. He watched as the boy’s blood flowed out from his artery and onto the ground. He felt the bloating of his body give way and drain. There was an inner longing, an inner fear that balked and revolted at this act…but the creature remained firm and whipped the arm around him until he began to feel faint, weakened.

Yes….

 

Sister Mary Solicity went back to bed, cowered painfully as her seared skin scraped the underside of the blankets. Her rosary lay on the bedside table and she looked to it, daring not to touch it. Sister Mary Solicity gritted her teeth. Her body burned in places she dared not think about. She had hoped shock would set in and deliver her from her misery, but that would have been too easy.

Too easy, indeed.

(penance for my sins)

(penance)

The past few months had been increasingly difficult for Sister Mary as the unclean, unchristian thoughts assailed her. She was as lost as a stray lamb. Already she had sought the advice and counsel of her Lord, Mary, and all their counterparts, but no one seemed able to stem the rising tide. She was being tested, that much was for certain, and she was determined not to fail—this she must have told herself a hundred or more times—and she’d be damned if she couldn’t prove herself worthy of her Namesake, or her Lord. The other Sisters had warned her about this in the convent, but they had said it could be overcome if only one was pure enough of thought and deed—but had it been this tough for the others? Surely if they could weather such a storm, then she, too, could weather it as well. She was sure of it….

Sister Solicity fell into troubled sleep.

 

The vampyre arrived at his destination.

He felt her there…felt her delicious torment…her fear….

He rubbed his self-inflicted wound and recalled her discovery. Months ago he had found her…and bit by bit had begun planting his seeds of corruption. She had sown them well…and now it was time for the harvest—but vampyres were repugnant of religion and all that was Holy.

Or so he had been told.

Yet…what if religion wasn’t as powerful as it was made out to be?

What if it had all been a mental thing—a lie, an artificial barrier cleverly erected by humankind to trick the darker forces from their true heritage? And what if…in this supposed New Age of thought…this barrier could be removed and destroyed—proving to all that nothing was impossible and that a New Age was indeed dawning…but for the darker forces as well?

Then there would truly be no escape for man…and the boundaries of fear would be forever and unimaginably open and unfettered. The repercussions, infinite!

The creature stood before Sister Mary Solicity’s balcony casement. He no longer needed her admittance for entry. Never had. All he had need of was her fear…and the new blood she would supply him.

Summoning his power, he confidently glided through the windows and lighted down upon Sister Solicity’s wooden floor.

He was in!

Had not required anyone else’s permission save his own!

Excitement flooded his every sense as he realized that he had already broken one of the most cardinal of all tenets.

Here was one suspicion proved false—how many others were equally false?

The vampyre approached Sister Solicity’s bed, but found himself restrained by an unexpected barrier. Quickly he searched the room. Looking above the nun’s bed, he found the source of the obstacle.

A crucifix.

Nonsense! I will not limit himself! I must transcend the legends and myths of old…must create a New Order. I must.

Retreating a step, the vampyre closed his eyes.

Lies.

Lies, all lies!

Lies to be overcome! To be pushed aside!

Untruths, falsehoods….

The vampyre opened his eyes and continued forward…but still there was the opposition. Angrily he again closed his eyes and concentrated harder.

The only limits are those we choose to accept!

Astonishingly swift the vampyre bolted forward and yanked the crucifix from the wall, his fist bashing a hole through the wall as he took it. He cocked an arm back to throw the crucifix…when he hesitated.

The cross did not burn.

It did not sear.

It was just as lifeless and dense as anything else in the material world and caused no harm.

He brought in the cross closer and sneered at its deep mahogany finish. The metallic image of Jesus on the front. In its grooved backing was a small vial of water with a black cap. Holy water.

Chuckling, he opened his hand and allowed the crucifix to drop to his feet.

Come to me, my children.

I will corrupt all that is light.

All that is right.

You are mine.

Passing a hand over Sister Mary Solicity, her blankets rolled back.

There was one sure way to violate all that was pure and righteous. One sure way, which was feared by all who wore the Cloth. His grin exposed his teeth.

Come to me, Sister….

 

Solicity floated through her dream world awaiting her lover.

Their wedding had been a most blissful affair…and tonight was the consummation. They had both only barely been able to contain themselves…but that would be necessary no longer.

Solicity wore a sheer nightgown that barely covered her secrets, secrets no man had yet known—but something wasn’t right. There was something niggling at the back of her mind—

Her husband appeared.

He wore a black robe. His face was strangely obscured, but that was okay. Dropping the robe he slid in beside her, and Solicity’s excitement grew, especially as caresses were showered upon her…touching every part of her flesh…every part of her soul…

Solicity spread apart her legs to allow her husband’s entry and her mind wheeled with a dizzied passion!

It was unsettling…she couldn’t think straight…couldn’t retain her mental balance. All she knew was that her body was screaming to her of passions undreamed of and they were feelings with which she had nothing to compare to (continuing to deny her secret masturbations…). They rivaled the grace of her faith…and still…still there was this nagging voice inside her, growing louder, louder with each moment….

 

Unclean.

 

The vampyre spread apart Sister Mary Solicity’s lily-white legs and inhaled her scent. He longed for the kill…but had labored long and hard for the harvest. He was not about to waste the moment by taking huge gulps when controlled, delicate sips would suffice.

Welcome to the New Order, Sister Mary Solicity. You should be so honored to become the Mother of the Newly Damned. The Anti-Mary.

Laughing, he shed his clothes, entered the air above her…and entered her with demonic precision…

The more blood the better…and none of it would be wasted….

 

Solicity felt the hunger of her husband’s powerful intercourse…felt the exalted stimulation of all her senses into one oblivious experience. Felt the itchiness that accompanied the organ’s internal abrading—

Pain? Was it supposed to be painful—

The nagging, unquantifiable specter was no longer at the back of her mind. The knowing had finally made its way through to the surface.

Solicity, you’re a nun. A Sister of Mary, Bride of Christ—what are you doing?

Sister Mary Solicity tried to throw off the body atop her, yet the man gleefully continued his violation. Sister Mary Solicity sucked in air as the man lifted his head—revealed his face.

Hello, Sister Solicity. Are you enjoying our consummation?

She saw a face pallid and evil…eyes red and blazing without pupils.

Teeth…elongated and razored.

Breath that came from the grave.

I’m so glad we could finally meet, Sister, I’ve been so looking forward to our rendezvous.

Sister Mary Solicity tried to fight, but was pinned. There was more to the attack then the body above. There was the body within.

Sister Mary Solicity screamed.

 

She had hoped that the nightmare would be over upon awakening, but this, again, would have been much too easy.

She awoke groggily to his continued defilement and disjointedly looked about herself. The pain was unimaginable…blood everywhere…her gown was torn and the scent of their sex permeated everything like an unholy death-stink.

She screamed uncontrollably, but nothing seemed to come out of her mouth. But as she continued to look about the familiar aspects of her life, she was struck by…by the pleasure her rape now seemed to afford her…of the fullness and erotica that split her open to the meat of her soul. Arms outstretched above her, she brought them down to her face.

There was blood there, too.

More around her neck.

This feels good, she realized…real good.

Continuing down with her arms, Solicity wrapped them around the body atop her.

I want more. Give me more. Give it to me!

Solicity wrapped her legs around the vampyre and pulled him in deeper.

It’s not so bad, is it Sister? There’s so much more to life—more to death—then either of us ever realized, isn’t there? Whoever thought the Anti-Christ would be a nun!

Sister Mary Solicity heard nothing of his words, her senses immersed in the mounting explosion within, and her screams were no longer of pain, but of passion.

She clawed the vampyre in her orgasmic rage.

Consider our new relationship consummated, Sister.

The vampyre rose from her and allowed Solicity’s legs to collapse wide.

Ah, how I love that smell, Sister. You are now mine and our New Age has dawned! There are no limitations, as I suspected!

Ecstatic, the vampyre rose to his full height, hovering in the air above the defiled nun.

But something unexpectedly hit him.

Hammered him.

Hammered him hard and without mercy…continued to grow…

Yes, something else dawned.

The sun.

The monster whipped around and looked out the casement windows, and what he saw was the topmost edge of a golden disk.

His eyes bulged.

But there are no limitations—I have proven it! I have proven it!

The vampyre watched as the sun grew in size…watched as the rays painted the landscape in hellish shades of reds and oranges.

Sister Mary Solicity lay in bed and brought her hands down to her thighs. Looked over to the vampyre, who, naked, stood transfixed before the opened window. She watched…quietly moaning to herself…watched as the sun’s morning rays broke above the windowsill and traveled up the length of the vampyre’s dark body…puffs of smoke spontaneously rising from him.

This is my New Age! Mine! There are no limitations, only legends—legends and chains!

Solicity watched as the vampyre turned to her…watched as the sun now hit him full on.

I am the Lord of—

And watched as he blew up in an explosion of graveyard rot. Clumps of his corpse splattered the walls, the ceiling, and her face—

Sister Mary Solicity masturbated.

 

The Sister readjusted her habit.

She grimaced at the memories she relived, at the inquisition she had been made to endure. She had been heavily counseled and later deemed fit to resume her duties. The rape had been a test of her will by the Lord (she had been told) and she had handled it with all the strength and grace worthy of any in the Sisterhood. In fact, her status among the others had actually been elevated. She was proud to have been allowed to stay on and that she was much the better for her experiences.

She was told.

The incident had changed her for the better in ways unimaginable…everyone could see. And no longer had she any problems with

(unclean)

unchristian thoughts.

She was finally able to sleep. Her performance was better…better that anybody else’s. She possessed incredible, renewed energy.

She grinned.

Her entire body bucked. Her arms supported her at the attic windowsill. Enough was enough.

“Okay, that will be all. You may go, now,” she said flatly, and righted herself, smoothing her habit back down over her hips and legs.

The groundskeeper reeled back, exhausted, and wiped away his excess as he pulled up his pants.

“I don’t know how—”

“Silence! I bid you no conversation—you know the rules. Begone!”

The groundskeeper cinched his belt and a lustful grin formed on his face. Nodding, he picked up his tools and left. Adjusted his pants.

Sister Mary Solicity listened to his clumsy descent down the stairs and watched as he exited the building. He looked back once, over his shoulder. She’d have to punish him for that. She came closer to the window and readjusted her attire. It kept sliding off and was growing more annoying with each day. Reaching to the habit’s guimpe, she ripped it off, revealing the two small, healing puncture wounds on her neck.

Yes, there would be a New Order all right—but first, first there were going to be some changes around here…some new legends born….

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

The Chain Letter

by

Pass it Foreword! It Work! (Image by F. P. Dorchak, © 2015)
Pass it Foreword! It Work! (Image by F. P. Dorchak, © 2015)

Back before e-mail and the Internet, there were these things called “chain letters.” Actual letters that randomly circulated to the “unlucky” for immediate global dissemination and unheralded good luck upon the recipient. I received the exact chain letter in this story, and—except for the rest of this story—did exactly what Tyler Stevens did in the beginning of the story: dissected it for shits-and-grins. I had time on my hands back then.

Had these things started out as gags or bullying tactics?

Who knows.

I don’t believe in them. Chucked it or shredded it all those many years ago.

But then again…I am still waiting for my publishing career to take off….

I’m also changing up my short story links to my Short Story page. It’s much easier to manage all the links than putting them all down at the bottom of each post, which I have to constantly update and approve—individually—each time I post a story.

This story has never been published. Or copied. Or propagated. Or….

 

The Chain Letter

© F. P. Dorchak, 1994

 

“This paper has been sent to you for good luck. The original copy is in New England: It has been around the world nine times. The luck has now been sent to you, providing you act on it. You will receive good luck within four days of recieving this letter provided you sent it back out. THIS IS NO JOKE. You will receive it in the mail.

“Send copies to people you know. Don’t send money, as Fatehas no price. Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours. An R.A.F. officer received $70,000.00. Jim Teller recieved $40,000.00 and lost it because he broke the chain. While in the Phillipines, George Weh lost his wife six days after recieving the letter. He failed to circulate the letter, however, before her death she won $50,000.00 in a lottery. The money was transferred to him four days after he decided to mail out this letter.

“Send 20 copies of htis letter and see what happens in four days. The chain comes from Venezuela and was written by Samir de Tressoint, a missionary from South America. Since the copy must have a tour of hte world, you must maske 20 copies and send them out or suffer possibly dire consequences. This is true, even if you are not superstitious.

“Beware: Cervantes Diego received the chain in 1943. He asked his secretary to make 20 copies and send them out. A few days later he won a lottery of two million dollars. Arian Dardamaix, an office employee, received the letter and forgot it had to leave his hands within 96 hours. He lost his job. Later, after finding the letter again, he mailed out 20 copies. A few days later he got a better job. Darian Fairfax received the letter and not believing threw it away. Nine days later he died. Be fair warned!

“Don’t ignore this!

“IT WORK!”

 

“What the hell is this?” Tyler Stevens asked himself, turning over the letter. The quality of the lettering was poor, no doubt because of repeated copying, and there were stains on its tri-folded and crinkled paper.

“Shit, this guy can’t even spell ‘receive.’ And what’s with this have-good-luck-or-die business?”

Tyler had just returned home from a game of tennis with his girlfriend, Dyanne Foster, and he was tired, sweaty, and hungry. He was in no mood for stupid human tricks. On his way to the hot, comforting, spray of a shower, he cast aside the letter.

The chain letter quietly smoldered under the table.

 

Tyler sat in front of his television, spaced out to some documentary that droned on about middle America and the construction industry. Getting up, he went over to where he last remembered tossing the letter, found it, and picked it up. It seemed somewhat more wrinkled than he recalled.

Fucking chain letters.

He wondered how much time he had before death or dismemberment.

Four days. 96 hours.

He took the letter back with him to the couch and Reread it. Several things immediately stood out.

First, beyond the obvious imperfections in English and punctuation (and he was no expert), why would somebody who claimed to be a missionary send out a threatening letter? Good luck!—but disregard this and you die! Just what kind of missionary would this person be? And wouldn’t de Tressoint himself (or whoever possessed the original letter) himself die? The letter did say not to retain it, so who could be in possession of an original?

And next, how does this person know that the letter made one let alone nine trips around the world? If its sole purpose was to make that trip—which it had apparently already had—then why was it necessary to continue?

And just what did the original look like? Assuming that the letter actually brought about money and employment, it had to exist prior to the deeds themselves. So, this being the case, the incidents cited had to be added after the fact—which meant that the letter had to have been tampered with.

Provided, of course, all of this was for real. Which it wasn’t.

So who did the tampering?

And who the hell were Jim Elliot, George Weh, Arian Dardamaix, and Darren Fairfax, anyway? Made-up names, no doubt. And how do we know that their specific “luck” was directly attributable to this particular piece of paper and not something else? How do we also know that some prim and proper English Royal Air Force Officer would even remotely admit to such a humiliating act as this? Officers, let alone British officers were bastions of strength and logic—not prone to silly superstitions and patronizing threats.

Tyler set the letter aside and went into the kitchen. He grabbed a wine cooler from the refrigerator, returned to the couch, and continued to pick apart the letter.

It was really no big deal that a husband inherited money from a deceased wife. Sure, it was a bummer his wife kicked after winning all that money, but wasn’t something like that a legal given? And how do we know that the woman who kicked wasn’t already well on her way to begin with?

Same with the others who’d died.

And the man who asked his secretary to make copies for him—how many businessmen (like those British officers) do you know who’d admit to being superstitious even if they were? Citing names didn’t lend any more credibility to a piece of fraud then the paper it was written on.

But back to the “original.”

What might it look like?

Tyler fumbled through a coffee-table drawer and came up with a number-three pencil. He hated being threatened, which was exactly what this letter was doing. He began lining out everything that couldn’t possibly have been in an original, and corrected any misspellings. The end result turned out something like this:

 

“This paper has been sent to you for good luck! The original copy is in New England. The luck has now been sent to you, providing you act on it. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter provided you send it back out. THIS IS NO JOKE. You will receive it in the mail.

“Send copies to people you know. Don’t send money, as Fate has no price. Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours.

“Send out 20 copies of this letter and see what happens in four days. The chain comes from Venezuela. Since the copy must have a tour of the world, you must make 20 copies and send them out. This is true, even if you are not superstitious. Be fair warned!

“Don’t ignore this!

“IT WORKS!“

 

Aside from the suffering “…possibly dire consequences,” and “Be fair warned,” which didn’t fit the overall tone of the letter, there was no mention of death or destruction—just that it had to leave the hands of the recipient and make a tour of the world if good luck was to be had.

Now that sounded more like something a missionary might send.

Next question: who would add to the letter (okay, so this one wasn’t all that difficult—any Tom, Dick, or Harriet who felt so inclined over the years)? But who could possibly even know what had happened to these people, and (more importantly) what had happened as a direct result of this letter?

Not possible. It was all fiction.

Tyler looked for the envelope, a torn and crumpled ball in the brown Albertson’s shopping bag he used as a trash receptacle. Who would have sent this to him? Of course there was no return address…and his address (which was a qualified correct with its missing apartment number and typoed street address) wasn’t even centered on the envelope. Instead, it sat skewed high and to the envelope’s left of center. His last name was typed first. The zip code was correct only after a wrong digit had been over-typed. This couldn’t have been anyone who knew him. On a hunch he went to the phone book. Sure enough, the address used was the one listed in the white pages, which had no mention of his apartment number, or zip code.

Clearly a class act.

There was just no way that certain things could possibly have been known in this letter. It was either that the letter—the original—was real and subsequently altered, thereby making the one he had no longer valid, or that it was written up as-is and sent out—definitely a hoax. Or—

There were other means involved.

Supernatural means.

“Bullshit.”

Tyler again trashed it.

 

The remainder of the week continued uneventfully and Tyler all but forgot about his chain letter—except for the rare moment or two when he found himself inexplicably making twenty copies of a magazine article…or the phone bill. Or buying that box of Mead 100 (twenty-times-five), white, 4 1/8 by 9 1/2-inch envelopes.

After finishing a later than usual work-out session at the gym, Tyler came home and showered. Afterward he soon fell into a deep sleep and slept soundly until three in the morning, when an uneasiness invaded his dreams. It was as if he dreamed of nothing but blackness…a deep, evil blackness that never ended. He tossed about in bed, unable to awaken…unable to break the dream’s hold.

The dream-darkness expanded within him like icicles of terror were actually invading his body. He dreamed of a beautiful woman who came to him from afar…a woman who seductively pressed herself against him…taunted and seduced him. They entwined…consummated. The scent of their lovemaking cloying, rich. The woman lay beside him, face down. He couldn’t look to her without becoming again instantly, painfully aroused. Slowly, he reached out to her. She rolled over to his touch…

“Come fuck me again,” she hissed.

The woman’s once-beautiful face was now misshapen and hideous. Punctuated with open sores and something running just beneath the surface of her odious, discolored skin. Her eyes were black and pupil-less and ran freely with a discolored puss. She cackled at Tyler, and he vomited. A wicked tongue shot out of the hag’s black, distorted mouth-that-looked-more-like-a-gash and licked up the vomit. Tyler tried to run…to break the hag’s dominance, but the hag’s tongue split apart and wrapped around his face, his torso, and down around his

 

Tyler shot up in bed and screamed, frantically running his hands all over his body.

A river of sweat ran off him.

He fell over in bed—then uttered another shriek as he fell onto the side of the bed where the hag was and whipped his body over to the other side of the bed.

His screams slowly died in his throat as he buried his face into the bedsheets and clawed them from their tucks and folds….

Opening his eyes he stared into the red glow of his alarm clock.

Three-ten, no, -eleven.

Stop. Regroup.

Closed his eyes, still clawing at the bedsheets

The room smelled differently….

A nightmare.

Sweating, he slowed his breathing to a more normal rate and rolled back over. Cast a quick look to where the hag had ben—in his dream.

Empty. That side of the bed was empty…no vomit, no pus, no….

He reached down to himself. He uttered a sound of disgust. Wet dream, alright.

His stomach revolted.

He rolled over onto his side…and came face to face with the puss-leaking, diseased face from his nightmare. She lay in bed beside him, tongue flicking in and out of her knotted gash-of-a-mouth.

“Come fuck with me,” she croaked.

Her noxious and grating words blasted through Tyler like a pair of cranked, thousand-watt speakers.

Tyler squealed like a stuck pig and exploded out of bed, blankets and sheets still wrapped around him. He tripped over himself and the attached sheets and smashed over one of his dressers’ lamps as he vacated the room in one gigantic bound. In the darkness he ran into a wall and

come fuck with me I love a good fuck

laid himself out—

come fuck with me I love a good fuck

—but just as he was blacking out, Tyler saw the hag descend upon and straddle his….

come fuck with me I love a good fuck….

 

Tyler awoke groggily and leaned up against the bedroom doorjamb. Felt the painful bump and dried blood on his forehead. The bathroom lights were still on, but were now paled against the early morning sunlight. His mouth felt like an empty tree trunk with moss growing inside it and his neck was as stiff as a two-by-four. He slowly picked himself up and twisted the kinks out of his body. Looked to the blankets tangled in his legs.

How had he gotten here?

Tyler looked back to his bedroom. One of his lamps missing.

He shuffled out from the tangled sheets and returned to the bedroom. Found the lamp scattered about the carpet like a murder victim, its bulb smashed and lampshade torn.

His bed was deserted.

All his sheets were in a pile that lead into the hallway, where he had awoken. He threw himself down on the bed.

What the hell’d happened?

Clammy and shaking, Tyler didn’t feel at all well. Pushing himself up off the bed, his hand narrowly missed a dried, discolored stain on the sheets.

And there was just a hint of pungency to the air….

Nothing a good shower couldn’t fix.

 

After buying new, 60-watt light bulbs and a lampshade, Tyler hurriedly rushed home to clean up and meet Dyanne for their one p.m. tennis date. Showers were great, but when the hot water ran out it was time to get moving. It wasn’t that Tyler had a shower fetish, but there did seem to be nothing a warm shower couldn’t remedy and that’s what he loved about them.

Changing quickly, he made it out to the courts. Dyanne stood by the fence, waiting impatiently.

“What took you so long?” she asked, her words laced more than a little with annoyed attitude. Her racket swung casually from her two-fingered, I’m-not-at-all-happy-with-you-right-now grip. “These courts are severely booked—”

“I’m sorry, honey, but I had a rough night—”

“Oh?” she said, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Oh, that accusatory eyebrow.

“No-no-no, that’s not what I meant—I mean, I did have a rough night—but not from—look, I had a nightmare and ended up sleeping on the hallway floor, okay? Had to replace a broken lamp.”

Dyanne’s I’m-pissed look took on a softer look. “Excuse me?”

“The funny thing is, I can’t remember a damned thing about it, just that it scared the crap out of me.”

Embarrassed, Dyanne lowered her voice and uncrossed her arms.

“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I just had to pick up some new light bulbs and a new shade. I broke a lamp.”

“God, what happened? Can’t you remember any of it?” She moved in closer, brushing away some of Tyler’s bangs.

“Nope. Just that something literally scared the piss out of me. But, it was just a dream—now, let’s play some tennis!”

 

Dyanne and Tyler were deep into their second match, the score 30-40. Dyanne served the ball. Fault. Her next serve made it, but drew Tyler to the far end of the court. He barely snagged the shot before his own return forced Dyanne up to the net. Her return forced Tyler back to the rear and caused him to miss. Deuce.

Dyanne retrieved the ball and again served, spiking this one just inside the white rectangle. It whizzed past Tyler, who missed the most perfect serve he’d ever see.

“Ha, lover, my game! Oww….”

Dyanne was so cute in her pink shorts as she pirouetted about the court.

“Nother game, hon-ey?”

“Sure, but this time I win!”

Tyler set up and served. Dyanne picked it up easily enough and her return sent Tyler scurrying back across court. She was giving him a good workout, but his quick backhand sliced it to a sharp left. Dyanne rushed to meet it…and missed it by a hair.

The next scene suddenly slowed down.

Like a person unsure of what it was he was witnessing, Tyler watched as Dyanne performed a neatly executed forward spin from the momentum of her missed swing…her racket slowing left her hands and flew into the chain-link fence. She spun around for a second turn, moving backwards and towards the chain-link fence that enclosed the courts…her hands going up before her face.

She smiled just as she clenched the galvanized, crisscrossed wires of the fence.

Something’s wrong here, Tyler sensed, terrible wrong….

He couldn’t have known that a section of the fence’s wire had raised itself into tiny little barbs just where Dyanne’s hands were now planting themselves…but that’s exactly what happened.

As Dyanne made contact, she screamed…

And life returned to normal play.

Tyler sprinted across the court to Dyanne, who was now cupping her hands into her chest. Tyler leapt over the net and quickly came to her, her a tight grimace of pain.

“What’s the matter—what’s the matter—are you all right? Dyanne?”

Tyler crouched down on the court. She was in a heap, leaning back against the fence. “Dyanne—let me see!”

Tyler pulled her hands away from her chest and saw the blood that remained on her shirt and exposed skin of her upper chest. Lots of it.

Taking her bloody hand into his, Tyler felt his stomach

(come fuck with me I love a good fuck)

knot.

Her hand was torn to pieces.

Most of the flesh on the underside of her palm and fingers had been brutally torn away.

“Oh my…God. We’ve got to get you to a doctor!”

The other players on the court had now all stopped their games and looked on. Some turned away in disgust.

“Someone, please,” Tyler pleaded, “call an ambulance—please!” One man broke free from his daze and ran off in search of the payphone.

Tyler looked up to the fence where Dyanne’s hand had landed only seconds before and found it stood as nonchalant as ever—and there were indeed raised barbs on it. There were also droplets of blood…and what looked exactly like bits of Dyanne’s skin clinging to those barbs.

Come fuck with me—I love a good fuck….

 

Tyler took Dyanne home to her apartment and stayed with her. She looked so vulnerable…so helpless…and reminded him of a puppy, named Sheena, he’d once had as a kid. Sheena had been running loose one day, as did most dogs out in the country, when she finally met the front-end bumper of a ’67 Ford truck. She’d managed to limp off to the roadside, but could go no further and collapsed in the tall grasses, her left rear leg broken. The driver, a farmer from down the road, felt terrible and took her to the local vet, footing her bill. Sheena was back on her feet in no time, her rear leg bandaged in white and her tail wagging, but whenever it rained the family had to wrap her leg in plastic bags until she healed. Needless to say, she never ran free again.

So there rested Dyanne, her right hand bandaged white and lying on her chest, which rose and fell to her (finally) relaxed breathing. They had watched television all night and it was quite clear that Dyanne had plans that evening that totally involved a quiet night’s rest. As she fell asleep on her couch, Tyler picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. He gently lay her down in bed, took off her bathrobe, and eased her beneath the crisp bedsheets. Once she was properly situated, Tyler also disrobed and slid in beside her. He loved the feel of her warm skin against his and wrapped his arms around her. He fell asleep thinking about how much he loved her and hoped she’d be okay.

 

The alarm clock had gone off several minutes before either had noticed it, but Dyanne was the first to stir. She slammed it off with her bandaged hand and winced from the impact. She turned to Tyler, who still lay with his arms around her. Very mindful of her injury, Dyanne repositioned herself and kissed Tyler on the forehead.

“Time to get up, sleepyhead.”

Tyler stirred, eyes still closed. Dyanne gave him another kiss, then nudged him slightly.

“C’mon, honey, time to get up. I’ve got to get to work.”

This time Tyler responded with a soft smile.

“Hi.”

“Hello, morning breath.” She smiled back. “What do you want to eat?”

Tyler said nothing, but instead rolled in closer to her.

“Fine, be that way, I’m taking a shower.”

Dyanne climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom, starting the shower.

“Don’t let that bandage get wet,” Tyler shouted from the other room. “Wrap it in a

(Sheena)

bag or something—”

“Don’t worry, I heard the doctor too!” Dyanne said. Poking her head back into the bedroom, she added, “But thanks for caring.”

“Any…time.”

Dyanne felt silly doing it, but she got out a used Oroweat bread bag from the kitchen and wrapped it around her bandage. Using a large rubber band saved from many paper deliveries she secured it and returned to the shower. She tested the water before entering by inserting her good hand. By this time Tyler was ready for movement and slowly crawled out of bed. He took in the sounds of running water and Dyanne’s periodic splashing sounds from the shower.

Smiled. Got out of bed.

“May I join you?” Tyler asked, entering the shower stall.

“Anytime, stranger.”

“May I soap that gorgeous body of yours?”

“It depends on what else you have in mind.”

“Watch the hand—”

“Riiight,” she said, and came in closer.

 

Come fuck with me, I love a good fuck.

 

As the next few days progressed, Tyler found himself accumulating scars and bruises of all kinds…just little ones here and there, and in themselves they wouldn’t have been any big deal—except that Tyler collected them for no apparent reason. He’d wake up with a new one (or two) each morning. Dyanne, of course, also detected them and Tyler explained them away as one of those periods in life when you seemed to be the world’s klutziest person and there was nothing you could do about it.

But everywhere he turned things went wrong.

Checks bounced…a twenty-hour bug found a home…and yesterday he scraped the side of a car as he parallel parked—and he prided himself on how good a parallel-parker he was.

Tyler and Dyanne went for a walk after a late lunch at la Petite Conchon. Early evening rapidly approached and traffic was a bit on the heavy side as people headed home for an early weekend.

“Thanks for lunch, hon,” Tyler said.

“It was the least I could do after all you seemed to be going through this week. I wanted to do something special. Maybe it’ll break the

(twenty copies)

(raised barbs)

“spell, or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Let’s cross here,” Tyler said, checking traffic. “I’ve got to get going. There’s something I need to do.”

“Okay,” Dyanne said, smiling, “but first, this—” She pulled Tyler into her arms and planted him with a deep, lengthy kiss. “I love you!”

Tyler held her with a penetrating look.

“And I love you—more than anything else in the world—now, come on!”

Grabbing her good hand, Tyler led her out into the street, a section of the traffic now clear, but as Dyanne followed, her pocketbook bumped against her side and out fell her checkbook. Halfway across the road.

“Wait!”

“Wait what? We’re in the middle of traffic!” Tyler came to a halt three-quarters of the way across the street.

“I dropped something!” Dyanne broke his grip and went back for her checkbook.

Tyler searched the road for what Dyanne had dropped.

Everything slowed down….and came the whispers…

…come fuck with me, I love a good fuck…

…come fuck with me, I love a good fuck…

…comefuckwithmeIloveagoodfuckcomefuckwithmecomefuck—

Tyler turned to see a large, black car moving towards them. He opened his mouth to scream—but nothing came out.

Dyanne bent down to pick up the book

(come fuck with me I love a good fuck)

and looked up to him, a smile across her face as she triumphantly waved the errant checkbook at him.

Come fuck with me I love a good fuck!

He saw her look around for traffic.

comefuckwithmeagoodfuckIlove

Saw her spot the car.

a good fuck a really good fuck

Saw her arms go up.

I love it I love it

Her hips connected first.

The sound of her bones breaking against the metal reverberated hollowly in a universe gone lag.

A good fuck I love

Tyler saw her head and face unite with the windshield in a spurt of gore and glass…her teeth and gums gnashed horribly together.

One of Dyanne’s hands flopped off to one side of the car as she molded to the hood.

And that was not all Tyler had seen.

He saw the face of the driver…the face of the hag from his nightmare.

The lightbulb.

The stained bedsheets.

The nightmare.

Dyanne’s body rolled off the vehicle and landed with a thump. Bumped about once or twice more before coming to a rest.

For what seemed an eternity, her head lolled limply from side to side.

The car continued on in its course.

Tyler was unable to move. Forced to watch. He realized what kind of car had hit her.

A hearse.

 

Tyler was still shaking when he got home. He’d spent the rest of the day and half the night at the police station and related matters and could barely hold himself up. He was sick to his stomach.

But he had found the paper.

Did what had to be done.

Was spent…had no more will. Collapsed to the living-room floor, tears streaking his face. He lay still. Thought about George Weh’s wife and Darian Fairfax. About twenty-times-five and four-and-one-eighth-by-nine-and-one-half-inch envelopes.

Felt an unexpected urge for a shower.

(wash the sins)

Needed to.

Sobbing, he looked to the bathroom.

The light was on.

He didn’t remember turning it on…but that didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered. He’d lost Dyanne. Lost everything.

He dragged himself to his feet and made his way to the bathroom. Kicked off his shoes and removed his clothes.

Found the shower running.

Nice and

(it didn’t matter)

hot.

Steam filled the bathroom.

It just didn’t

(nothing did)

matter.

Naked and trembling, Tyler stepped into the shower and felt the warmth penetrate his skin. He collapsed into the bottom of the tub.

Whispers came from the spray.

(nothing mattered)

Did you have a good fuck?

“Fuck you!” Tyler yelled.

Did you have a good fuck? I did.

“Fuck you,” he sobbed and closed his eyes. The whispers chuckled.

The hag’s face formed in the mist above.

I had a great fuck, Tyler, now it’s your turn.

On ran the whispers. The face disappeared.

Tyler lay in the bottom of the tub, adrift in his misery. He ignored the fact that the shower had grown hotter (it didn’t matter); spikier (nothing mattered)….

It just didn’t matter one goddamned bit.

Tyler tried to right himself when he noticed that the water had become downright painful. Not hot painful, but spiked painful. He looked down to his body and saw the red.

Was it something in the water?

Felt disjointed. Resigned. He collapsed back inside the tub and let the warmth flow over him.

Through him.

Around him.

His last thoughts were of Dyanne.

Tiny daggers…no larger than short pins…screamed down from the thundering shower head and tore and ripped and penetrated into his body.

Ripped through his nerves and burst open his organs.

Razored blades that clattered down along the plastic surface towards the drain like iron filings to a magnet.

It wasn’t long before his heart had ruptured into an explosion of red that filled the tub and spattered the walls.

Tyler floated….

The water rained down upon him…washing away the filth….

The sins.

Tyler’s body lay empty.

It just didn’t matter anymore.

It never did.

 

At a rickety and battered table sat an ancient, diseased woman. Her hair was greasy and gray and her veins filled with bile and hate. Her life reeked of a different kind of cancer not of cigarettes or cells.

But she liked writing letters. Got real good at it, in fact.

Having no friends, she wrote them to no one in particular. She just wrote—not that many would willingly read what it was she had to say. She didn’t much like people, and that was okay, because people, it turned out, didn’t much care for her. She didn’t have a name, didn’t need one. People used names for identity. To be proud. She had no need of either.

She just wrote.

But this time she received a letter.

One that found its way to her doorstep.

She had no mailbox.

She found the letter while on the way to the woods with an eviscerated cat. She liked gutting cats, they were fun. Dogs were too big. She liked cats.

Collecting the letter in her rickety hands, which had no return address, she sat down at her table and inspected it.

Who would write her?

How did it get here? No matter, maybe she could return the favor.

She opened the splotched and unevenly sealed envelope and removed the contents. Unfolded the paper. She read the few, hastily scrawled words beneath the poorly typewritten paragraphs first. It was then that her yellowed orbs screamed wide. She heaved the letter away, which smoldered and disintegrated before it hit the floor.

Tried to outdistance what was to come.

The old lady tumbled furniture as she fled.

Heard noises in pursuit.

Ran into the living room. A wide, spacious living room. She used to be rich once. Had a big house.

The whispers grew, filled the building.

Words that became audible and loud.

You know what they whispered.

 

Pass it on. IT WORKS!

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.