F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

Philosophical

“Broken Windows”

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"Broken Windows" (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2016)
“Broken Windows” (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2016)

“Broken Windows” is out as an e-short story!

Here’s the link!

I can’t believe I’d originally started this story twenty years ago, in 1997. I’d only written four double-spaced pages. I rediscovered it last year (2016) when I was revisiting all my short stories for my blog. As I read those four pages I was overtaken with emotion—in just in those four pages! That Saturday I’d written the rest of the 22 (I’d actually written 24, but edited it down) double-spaced pages (5,000 words). While I had been working on it…revising it…revising it…I kept getting emotional each time I’d finish reading the story.

Last year I submitted “Broken Windows” to the Longmont Public Library’s anthology, and it was accepted. I decided to not post it for free on my blog like I’d done for a host of my other stories, but to instead publish it as its own KDP Select ebook-only format (like “Clowns“). I went back over it this last year as I got things together…and again…it brought me to tears.

So fine…it’s going to be one of those stories.

Once again, I had Lon Kirschner do my cover. And, once again, he did an incredible job! After working on the story, I felt like it had great potential as a “single” short story. I also had a particular vision for its cover (nothing specific, just some loose ideas)—but I couldn’t even do a cover if it wasn’t its own product! That also led to my decision to release it as a single. But once Lon got hold of the project, he again knocked the cover out of the park!

I love this cover!

Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more about how short stories are making a come back. I’d even read a handful of some really good anthologies last year. Of my own work, I thought “Clowns” was a really fun story, thought it would take off in some fashion…but it hasn’t (yet—I still have hopes for it!). I characterize it as “a fun little scare for the whole family!” Really, you oughta read it! So, now I’m releasing this one, which has more emotional appeal versus horror. Fractured families….ghosts…redemption. And it’s very Twilight Zone. Extremely so. The only “horror” is the emotional horror that some families go through in stories like this—which to some are not stories…but the actual lives they endure. And it’s brutal. Horrendous. Usually there’s little recourse for families that go through problems like this…but in my story I create a different outcome for all involved.

I really love this story…it’s moving, emotional, redemptive.

Powerful.

And it’s got aircraft. Which I love.

But damn it, it brings me to tears every fricking time I read it! So, I hope it will also be one of “those stories” for you! I reread the story for this release and have finally been able to not shed a tear reading it…though I did still well up inside.

Finally, I thought, I could get through it without tearing up!

I’ve also included “Broken Windows” into my 2017 short story collection, Do The Dead Dream? Of the entire collection, this one story has perhaps been poured over more than any other, so, geez, there better not be any errors (thanks, Joyce)!

If you do like “Broken Windows,” and you can swing it, I ask that you also consider purchasing the Longmont anthology, of which “Broken Windows” is also a part, to help support the Longmont Library. This anthology, titled You Belong 2016, Words and Images from Longmont Area Residents, is not available online, but at this time you may contact the Longmont Public Library:

Steve Kenworthy
Head of Technical Services/Systems Administrator
Longmont Public Library
409 4th Street
Longmont, CO 80501
303-651-8614
steve.kenworthy@longmontcolorado.gov

But this version and the one going into my collection are different than the one in the Longmont anthology. It has been heavily reworked and changed in areas…better fleshed out…so if you get both, you won’t be reading exactly the same story! But I hope you enjoy both versions!

Steve Kenworthy  and the rest of the Longmont library staff are great people and they’ve been gracious in allowing us writers to have nonexclusive contracts with our stories to publish elsewhere! Thanks, again, Steve!

Please be on the lookout for my first-ever short story collection, Do The Dead Dream? I am now looking to release it in early October.

And damn it, I hope someone else out there besides me sheds a tear!

A major heartfelt THANK YOU to Jimmie Butler and Joyce Combs! Jimmie pointed out a major “flaw” that was “obvious” to me, but not to readers, and that helped better flesh out the story. Joyce…Joyce has been my indefatigable cheerleader for all of my stories, but she and I have gone over this story more than we can ever count! Thank you both for your indispensable support and critique!

 

Float Number 8

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)

Today, Saturday, July 15, I did my eighth float. It has been seven months since I’d last done a float. Let’s just say life got in the way. And since then Morgan and Ana-Alycia have hired an employee! Welcome Stacy to the Luna Float Spa team! Morgan, Stacy, and I had a great conversation today, after my float. Stacy has also had brushes with the paranormal, so it continues to show what I mean by saying ALL of us have instances of paranormal activity in our lives!

Like my past couple of floats, this float was also a subtle one…almost non-existent, actually. I had no real intense “visits,” where I “go somewhere” and pop back, or do a rapid-fire succession of multiple such visits. I mean, I might have had one, which I’ll mention below, but it happened so danged fast that it was like all I got was the end of it, returning to the tank. Maybe.

The Robochair

I had used the “Robochair,” as I call it, which is a Dreamweave massage chair, for 30 minutes before floating. I have done this twice, and I think I’m not going to do that anymore…before a float. I think it interferes with my floats for some reason…too much “stimulation,” so to speak. Or “working over” of the body when you’re trying not to even consider a body during a float (after all, these are sensory deprivation tanks!). In fact, just at the end of using this thing, I almost had an episode much like my floating experiences, where I “go someplace.” But the chair stopped and I was pulled out of whatever almost happened.

Yeah, it’s that good!

Okay, so I moved on to my float.

The Float

As I got into the pod, I felt that “internal movement” I sometimes feel, where the insides of me move around, but the physical me—the “outside me”—does not. I initially thought, this would be a great float…but I soon discovered that it was not quite to be. I again had stabilization issues, where I couldn’t keep from (lightly, albeit) knocking around the insides of the pod. In a good float I can quickly stabilize and not “roam” all over the place. That was my first clue.

Throughout the float I had images of people, places, and things, most of which I have since forgotten. But I did manage to remember a few and have written them down, two of them really cool images, but I now only seem to recall one of them, dang it! I also didn’t have the really cool colors I usually get, only getting a “spray” of light red/pink that materialized once toward the end.

Here is what I remember:

  • I saw a small light bulb, maybe a little over an inch in length, and it glowed a neat orange.
  • I saw a floating laptop! A bell had also materialized in front of it and floated with it. The bell was like the Liberty Bell, but a smaller version that fit with the laptop. They were both on a flat flotation device. In a pool? This was the one really neat experience I had that I could remember.
  • Saw several people. Some had spoken, but I’ve lost the words. One had said: “Oh, shiiit…,” followed by some other words I’ve since lost. It was a subtle utterance, not harried or under duress.
  • Saw a young girl in a long white-and-red stripped shirt. To be honest, she looked like one of my nieces! It was her profile I had seen.
  • I kinda had an experience where it seemed like I was “going somewhere,” but it got truncated and all I’d seen was this door closing, and that was that. Odd.
  • Eyes. I seem to see a lot of eyes, in some manner or the other. I didn’t see many, I think maybe two or three.
  • I jerked quite strongly four times. One of those times, my head jerked up, out of the water. The other times were more side-to-side kinda things. My hands also jerked a little.
  • Behind my eyes I saw a brief “spray” of red…but it changed into more of a pink, from its spraying effect.

So, there it is! Not like my first three floats, but it doesn’t have to be. I think that I might be feeling a bit “pulled in different directions,” and my energy wasn’t quite as focused as it should have been. Throw in the Robochair, and I think I just wasn’t as ready for the float as I thought I was. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a great session in and of itself! It’s so danged relaxing! But I’m trying to get my short story collection out there and other things are just on my mind, and I think I just wasn’t as focused as I should have been. But…I got a free float with this one, so I have that to look forward to!

Not every float is going to be a home run…you just have to take them as they come…but enjoy them and be open to what can happen in them!

 

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Float Number 7

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, December 09, 2016)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, December 09, 2016)

This past Friday, December 9, 2016, I did my seventh float (for an hour; 90 minutes is a bit long for me, I find). As was the case with my previous float, it, too, was a subtle one. Before I’d arrived I’d been feeling lots of [what I call] “internal movement.” Where I actually do feel a sense of “movement” inside me. It’s not vertigo or anything like that, but a psychic, metaphysical movement. Perhaps it’s a bit hard to describe, but that’s what it feels like: movement inside my body. Like parts of my insides are shifting around….

In contrast to the above, once inside the pod, I immediately felt “centered”…in the water, I mean. As opposed to the last float where I had difficulty centering in the water and kept floating around and bumping into the interior pod walls. I felt immediately centered—“solid as a rock” in terms of stability and not bouncing off the pod walls (my mind keeps going to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s: “Open the podbay doors, please, HAL”…).

Here’s what I experienced this time around:

  • This was interesting: a “friend” had stopped by to say “Hello” and left…out a “door” off to my right. I couldn’t see who this “friend” was, but I saw her (I seem to have a lot of female energy in my life!) leave through an actual door off to my right. She was literally out the door, when I realized what had just happened. I saw a “body” leave, but didn’t see anything about that body—clothes or the identity of the person leaving. But I had the feeling of a female energy. Thanks for stopping by, whoever you were!
  • I saw someone talking to another and there was something about a calendar or schedule. This and several other scenes I have since forgotten, but they’d felt so real—like I was really there—I was actually surprised when I “returned” to the pod!
  • As I’ve previously mentioned, I sometimes have experiences where I’m really “there” (wherever “there” is)…it’s quite real and stark at the time…but when I return I lose it…forget it. Or by the end of the float I just can’t remember it. There’s just too much going on for me to remember every little event that I become a part of…that if I try too hard to remember everything that happens, I’ll miss out on other experiences as they try to unfold, but I’m too focused on what I’d just left….

This was a very subtle float. Again, it wasn’t as intense as most of the other ones I’ve had…but the couple above experiences were pretty intense. As I’ve previously mentioned, I seem to slam-bam! between multiple experiences…but this one was not so. They were “soft,” even gradual at times. “Subtle” keeps popping up.

My wife and I were talking about all my floating the other day, and she was wondering why I did it. Was it in search for a sense of peacefulness or “calm” in my life? No…I don’t do it for that…though I do love the pure meditative benefits. I do it to better help in consciously manipulating and reaching my inner self (consciousness)…for (as I call it) “bringing the inside, outside” in a more direct manner. Now, that is already done every moment on an organic level, but I’m just trying to better manually reach my inner consciousness….to manually manipulate my consciousness and consciously control where I go and what I do and experience. So far I just seem to go where my inner self takes me with no [apparent] control. But it’s exciting and fascinating. Or maybe there is a “method to the madness” of what happens to me—and I’m sure there is—but I’m just not getting it…and that’s okay. I love the floating experiences…love what happens “in there”…and all the little “weirdnesses” that happen. It give me food for thought! Expands my consciousness in ways I only seem to get from floating (short of dreaming). In fact, it’s very much like dreaming, though in dreams I have been able to consciously change and manipulate dream experiences!

So, until next time…try to bring the inside outside into your lives!

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Float Number 6

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, November 12, 2016)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, November 12, 2016)

Yesterday (Saturday, November 12, 2016), I did my sixth float. This was a more subtle float. And by “subtle,” I mean it wasn’t like most of my floats where I’m flying back and forth between all kinds of “vignettes” and such (brief out-of-body experiences?), but that yes, I had many of my normal experiences, but they were not jarring and as intense. It does seem that every float can be different, just like mediation, working out, whatever. We don’t know all that is going on inside us, and even when we do think we have a good handle on things, we never really know just what is actually going on inside us metaphysically. I was ready and excited to do this float, like I usually am, but the whiz-bang internal fireworks I normally experience just weren’t there…but it was still a great float!

Just…subtle….

One of the things I’d experienced in my last float was a feeling of a cool breeze of air that had shot across my face, so this time in I looked for that. Nothing. There really is no “cool breeze” that blows across you, so that was an interesting experience last time.

Prior to this session, I’d also gotten a free shiatsu Inada Dreamwave massage chair session. The last time I’d used this chair was after my very first float, in February of this year (2016).

The Living, Breathing Inada Dreamwave Massage Chair! (Image by Luna Float Spa)
The Living, Breathing Inada Dreamwave Massage Chair! (Image by Luna Float Spa)

From that first float post, the Dreamwave chair:

“I used the shiatsu massage Inada Dreamwave chair after the pod experience, but I’d recommend using it prior to it. This chair...it has 100 air cells, while your typical, commercially available chairs have 30 – 40 cells, Ana-Alycia tells me. And it has 106 body types programmed into it. Anyway, it’s simply amazing. It’s like six different people working on you at once. And I kid about the “life of its own” part, but as it works away on you, you can hear the air cells sighing upon exhaling (inflating and deflating—see, I still refer to it as if it is ALIVE…) and the material creaking and scrunching all around you as it works you.

“Yeah, it’s alive.”

As I said, this time I used it before the float. I don’t know if that made any difference for me in this float. But it’s freakin fun!

Here is what I experienced during yesterday’s float:

  • A person—I think a lady?—walking a German Shepard. S/he pet the left-side of the snout of the dog with the first two fingers of his/her hand. I saw from a distance of perhaps 10 feet.
  • I saw a somewhat abstract image of a horse face full-on that came right up to my face. At this point I think the abstract image turned into a “real” horse face. You’d think I’d know one way or the other if the face went “real” versus abstract. You’d think….
  • From a slightly elevated perspective (i.e., hovering), and from many yards away, I observed Naval officers in their “whites” in formation atop a ship’s deck, with another officer in charge of them, walking back and forth and addressing them, doing his thing. Behind them all were naval guns. The officer-in-charge walked back and forth once or twice. Interestingly, as I observed (and this went on for several moments), I was hit with the feeling of so much “white and gold.” “White” would be their dress uniforms, and “gold” all their insignia and emblems on their sleeves and caps.
  • Felt there was a lot of things going on in the background. Sometimes literally, like behind and around me as I went on my subtle journeys in this session, but also in the grand scheme of things.
  • I did seem to flit in and out of ” a couple of conversations,” as I usually do, but these were so subtle, I didn’t always realize I’d just been in one until after I left it. And I would instantly not remember it (now, those last three words are important: I was going to write “forget it,” but that didn’t feel right; the more correct term is not that I “forgot” them…but that I “did not remember” them…).
  • From a bit (pardon the pun) of a distance, I saw a horse running on a track.
  • I saw abstract eyes. These I saw with my eyes closed and opened. See my last float for an explanation.
  • Toward the end of my float, I very briefly saw, “in the upper left quadrant” of my field of view, a ribbon of red. Like that Christmas ribbon candy, but it was red only.
  • Interestingly, I had a hard time keeping stable in this session! I kept pinging off the walls! Now, not a forceful “bump,” but I kept drifting into the sides of the pod. I don’t usually have difficulty maintaining center stability in there, but this time I did.

After the float I entered the common area, where Morgan (one of the owners) and a young woman were talking about the woman’s experience, and sat quietly half-listening to their discussion, while recounting my own to write them down for this post. At one point Morgan brought me into the conversation. Later in the conversation, the woman asked me what I think all these images and “vignettes” were and if they were important. I told her I feel everything is important…we may not understand why or where all these experiences come from, but I don’t consider any of them dismissively coincidental or unimportant. I feel these images and events and experiences come from multiple sources. I think they could be peeking in on alternate/probably existences…lives. Could be events that are somehow tied to whatever energy we’re involved in at the moment. Could be other people’s stepping in on us. Could be those on “the other side” saying “Hi” or just making themselves known. The woman also asked if I ever enter a float with intent, and I told her, yes, I have—in fact I did so with this session, but it didn’t exactly pan out as expected, to which Morgan chuckled a good one (as I did)! Things don’t always go as planned, for me, I told her. That I’m not one of those who consciously works out answers in dreams…now, I do believe problems do work themselves out in dreams, among other “venues,” let’s just say, but consciously, I’d only had that happen once in my life…and today was no different in my float session. But…the over-arcing goal is always to just allow myself to experience whatever it is my Self wants to show me.

Afterward I noted the animal imagery interesting. I mentally noted that a friend of mine had just purchased a new horse. Also after the session, someone I was talking to mentioned something about race horses. So that thread is curious. I’m not a “horse person,” but have nothing against them; I love all animals—I am “an animal person”!—but the horse thread is interesting!  And a friend of mine is currently performing some in-depth military history research, so this was also quite curious! Maybe what I witnessed were some of those who were a part of the historical events my friend is researching? I’m not clear on the period of these officers. It makes no sense to me otherwise—I’m not Navy (though my dad is, but he was a submariner, not a “skimmer,” and this definitely seemed like the deck of a surface ship).

Also, Morgan had mention that he was going to do some increased promotion and asked if he could use my blogs in their promotion! I thought, dang, that is so cool! I gave him my permission to do so. Thanks, Morgan and Ana-Alycia, for thinking of my work! I hope I can help give others a better understanding of what they can expect and it helps grow your business! It’s such a cool, bettering-of-life business, and even if others don’t get nearly what some of us get out it, it’s the intent that matters! The intent of trying to make one’s life better, which expands outward into life in general. When we better our own lives, we better life in general. And even you only get an incredible physical relaxation out of it, that’s fine, too! It all helps. If you’d like to get more metaphysical experiences, then begin by meditating at home. I’ve been doing so since I was a kid…admittedly, I don’t do it as much or as frequently as I used to, but that is where to start if you want to gain similar metaphysical experiences with the added isolation of the physical environment. And also have the intent that that is what you’d like to do!

But, everyone is different. I’m not some yogi, not a guru. Don’t want to be. I’m sure many have more intense, sustained out-of-body experiences than me, but that’s not the point: the point is that we all intend to better understand ourselves in the ways that our selves will do so. There’s no “race,” here (again, the horse imagery!). Enjoy the journey and better discover who you are!

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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