F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Alternate Realities

Pink Gloves

by

Red. Black. Pink. (Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Red. Black. Pink. (Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
“She turns.

Murder screams through her head.

It’s not her angst-ridden, desperate face that JFK and the public sees, but the calm, placid face of Jackie Kennedy.

Pleasantly smiling face.

Calmly twisting wave of a white-gloved hand. Hair…hat?

Pink.

Pink, pink, pink…outfit?

A kind of “coatdress”—pink…pink hat.

Red roses.

Red.

Pretty, red, thorny.

Pink.

She can still feel it, the threat—it wasn’t supposed to be this way—but it’s still there—she can feel it like an oncoming

(Blaaack…black, black….)

shockwave that has already happened.

Unstoppable.

Pink, red, thorny, black.

Please, Mister President, you have to get down!

Too late, it’s too late. Hot

(red)

splatters her pink face, pink body, pink life…not once, but twice…

Pink, pink, pink…

…husband bowls over…collapses into her…before a black

(black black black…)

terror drowns out her soul—”

—Psychic, Wailing Loon, 2014

The above comes from my newest novel, Psychic, about a hotline psychic who becomes embroiled in a government conspiracy that doesn’t involve JFK as you might think it would.

But, an interesting thing happened on the way to releasing this book.

I’d researched and researched my scenes, including this one. I knew that Jackie wore a pink coatdress and white gloves. Knew it. Yet, when I had my proofreader, Mandy, give me her notes, she’d pointed out that I’d written pink gloves.

Pink gloves?!

No way!

PINK?!

Very embarrassing.

But I went back in there, and sure enough, I’d written “pink…pink gloves.”

I don’t remember ever writing that, yet there it was. Anyone who knows anything about that day knows Jackie wore a pink dress with white gloves.

Writing mechanics and proofreading aside…this highlights something this novel trucks heavily in: alternate realities. It appears a very real alternate reality had (once again) made its way into my reality. Some alternate “Frank” (or, perhaps, Victor Black?) had weaseled into my world and changed that word to “pink.” I had no memory of that—at all—and it actually gave me cause for pause. That particular error just really made me think, gee, where the hell had that come from!

So, perhaps along the lines of my ring and grape episodes, this little morsel had seemingly come out of nowhere. Why? Of all the comments Mandy had given me, this one item really threw me for a loop….

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Had I really made that error?

Had there really been one shot or two?

Guess we’ll never really know.

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Ghost of Me

by

One of the weirdest things to happen to me occurred on September 20, 2010, at around 4 in the afternoon.

Actual names have been removed for privacy.

Two relatives were at our home with my wife, while I was at work. One relative was in the kitchen with my wife, the other outside. My wife and the first relative were making dinner. At about this time, both my wife and this person both heard the downstairs door to our living room open then close, and me shouting out (as I always do) “Hellooo!”  They both looked to each other and commented that I was home. The other relative then came inside, and my wife told this person I was home.  But after a few moments they wondered where I was, because I hadn’t yet shown my face. When one of them went to check on me, they only found one car in the garage–I had not yet returned home!

My wife looked to the one who’d been in the kitchen with her and asked, “Well, you heard it right?” to which the person replied, “Yeah, I heard it.”

But I was at the gym!

<cue Twilight Zone music….>

Okay, that’s a first–I’m a ghost while I’m still living!

After hearing this, I’d talked to all parties, and they all confirmed the above events. Every detail. To make it even more interesting, when I really did return home that night, my wife had me go to where she’d been standing and showed me exactly how it all went down by her going to the same door…opening then closing it. I then came down to her after she’d closed the door and shouted out my normal “Hellooo!” I asked her, “It sounded just like that?” She said yup.  She added that I even had that playful lilt to it I always do when I shout it out upon getting home.

Later, as I got ready for bed the next night, I think it was, it dawned on me that when I was running errands after work on the above day (the 20th), I was fully intending to head home to check on some flight reservations I’d made at work for a business trip. When I went to check on these reservations after having made them, our Internet and e-mail went down, and I really wanted these reservations, because I was flying home in the middle of a four-week biz trip. And up until the very last minute, I’d thoroughly intended on actually coming home, checking on them (or making them if they hadn’t gone through at work with our Interent down) then head to the gym–but changed my mind on the drive home and ended up going directly to the gym. So this all happened exactly when I would have gotten home if I hadn’t changed my mind and instead headed to the gym.

What do I think this was?  Well, it could be considered “suggestion,” some kind of telepathic link…or perhaps it was an alternate reality. I like to think of it as…a ghost of me!