F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Fear

And Now…I Will Leave You….

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I Will Leave You To The Dark…. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)
I Will Leave You To The Dark…. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)

Black Friday—how apropos in terms of title!

I had not planned on publishing this here. The origin of this piece is kinda funny: it had started as a blog comment on my friend, Susie Lindau’s, fun Hallowe’en blog post, “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash“! Susie is a trip, and she comes up with really cool ideas for posts, like this one, in which she’d said: “Drop a link to your blog in the comments and leave an enticing hook that penetrates the victim’s soul, if they have one.” In her post she also had a cool graphic with the words: “Join me in a blog party that will leave you breathless.”

Well…I had to try to come up with something. This was way too cool of an opportunity to pass up—and on Hallowe’en, my most favorite holiday (and yes, it really should be a holiday where you actually get the day off)!

Anywho, while in the middle of doing half a dozen other things for which I took the day off, I sat down and belted this thing out. Posted it. It literally got me chuckling like an evil little clown doll!

What I had tried to do was write up something creepy that involved imagery from as much of my writing as possible, without going too overboard. To lend an horrific flavor to my overall short story effort. It was so funny and creepy I thought, you know, I should post this on Facebook (and here). So I did. It would be my little “Hallowe’en decoration,” though I’d also posted a Hallowe’en short story, called “The Hallowe’en Tree.” It was fun, that’s all it was, and it was fitting! And with one modification, the rest is as I’d written it that day. Thanks, Susie, for the cool inspiration! The title and subject matter are also “wildly” appropriate, here, becaaause…

This concludes my free short story releases!

It’s been exactly a year of releases! I’ve released 55 short stories/poems and one essay. And I know, not all of them were, well—good—but I sincerely thank all of you who read and commented and followed my work! I had wanted to post the best of my work over the years, in as close to their original form as possible, on this site. To have a “paper trial,” if you will. Then I would heavily edit as much as possible the better of these, and put them in my first and only short story collection, which is due out next year (2017). I will also include any new stories I might come up with prior to its publication (I’m currently working on a new one). The collection is tentatively titled, Do The Dead Dream? It will be released in both e- and print book formats. I’m really excited about finally getting these out there! This has been such a labor of love and quite the trip down memory lane!

I thank Mandy Pratt for her editorial, copyediting, and proofreading assistance! Her efforts will be seen in the final versions in the 2017 collection. She has largely been in the background of these posts, but a couple of times I did employ her for a post or two that really needed an extra eye up front. “The Wreck” was one of them, as well as “Rewrite,” which was a brand new story I’d written this year.

Once again, thank you all for your support and kind words! It’s been a crazy, sometimes eye-opening journey reliving my younger-self’s mindsets and creativity, and I hope I’ve managed to both entertain and enlighten! It is truly with a measure of wistful nostalgia that I finally move on from these works into whatever future belongs to my new efforts….

This post had originally been published October 31, 2016, on Susie Lindau’s “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash.” And so…

 

I will leave you breathless

I will leave you headless

I will leave you lifeless

I will leave you soulless

 

I will leave you inside-out

I will leave you ripped about

I will leave you full of knives

I will leave you praying for doubt

 

I will leave you to the dark

I will leave you largely in parts

I will leave you worse than I came

I will leave you to my arts

 

I will leave you on the floor

I will leave you on the wall

I will leave you on the ceiling

I will leave you cloaked in pall

 

I will bruise your mind

I will rend your spirit

I will make you mine

I will have you…upon which to dine

 

I

Will never leave you.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Fear

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Never Look Behind You!
Never Look Behind You! (Image by “COS 09,” Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COS_09.JPG#/media/File:COS_09.JPG)

From whence comes fear?

Darkness?

Evil?

Ourselves?

I suppose there must be all sorts of “papers” written about the subject, but this image came to me one fine day, years and years ago, so I wrote it up.

This is my second publicly published work of fiction. It was published in Tyro #16, on January 6, 1989.

 

Fear

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

 

It was the Devil’s own pitch

A darkness utterly corrupt and vile.

 

I couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t hear a thing

The silence absolute—except of that internal ringing sound.

 

I turned, slowly.

The only way I could know this

Was by the steps my feet made over each other.

 

That’s when I came face to face with it—

Teeth ripping my face apart.

 

Related Posts

 

If Today Was Your Last Day

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What would you do if today was your last day?

Would you do anything differently?

Would you live every moment as if it was your last?

The sentiment of this question and questions like this are meant to get our collective asses in gear and re-evaluate and reboot our lives. To shed the unimportant.

Be kinder.

More understanding.

More loving.

More helpful.

Reconnect with what’s important to each of us.

Concerns like this usually hit people at funerals, job changes, divorces, and other major life changes. We reflect. Go internal. Wonder what has become of our lives…our passions…our goals.

Us.

We all get caught up in the minutiae of having to eat, sleep, and clothe ourselves…most of us feeling with have to “settle” for rungs of the ladder that fall far short of our lofty goals…then we fall into depressions…cultivate shitty attitudes…and grow into miserable old men and women nobody wants to be around….

But does it have to be that way? Is there a better way?

If today was your last day on earth, what would you do differently—and why aren’t you doing it now?

While each of us are still alive, we can always change our lives. It’s never too late. But (I maintain) it all starts with our attitudes. I’ve said this before, but everything exterior begins with our interior. We don’t just blindly take action to anything without first having an internal consideration: thoughts. So, to change our exterior, with need to change how we think. Our attitudes.

If we want a better life for ourselves, it starts with thinking differently about ourselves.

Sure, we’ve made decisions throughout our lives that have taken us to “this” point in our lives…but it’s never too late to change. To say “no” or “yes” and make a life (it doesn’t have to be “major”) change. We all have to do something while we’re walking or crawling this oxygenated rock orbiting an average yellow star…but, in the interim, we can effect changes to our lives by taking the first step inside ourselves. Changing our point of view about ourselves…changing the way we think about our lives, while looking for new avenues to explore. Being open to new opportunities that “suddenly and miraculously” present themselves, once we’ve changed our attitudes.

Life…if nothing else…is about change. So, why not have that change work for us?

But don’t look to others for those answers…for the answers to changing your own life…only you can do that. Each of us are the only ones who can change our own lives…and having more money or children or shiny new anythings won’t change any of that.

Giving things away isn’t the answer. Sending philosophical confetti upon the masses won’t do that—though makes for great music videos.

Understanding who you are…taking a concerted stock in your own life…

Feeling loved.

Loving others.

If today was you last day?

Make it the beginning of an entirely new life.

Fear

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You're Mine.... (@Doug88888)
You’re Mine…. (@Doug88888)

Since this is October, and I really love Hallowe’en, I’m going to try to get more into the, um, spirit of things more this year. For the rest of the month, I’m going to make a better attempt at posting all-things Hallowe’en and spooky. I love spooky. Not gory and graphic (though excuse my prose poem, below…), but “old-school spooky.” Atmospheric. If I get my way, I’ll post some cool cemetery shots I’ve taken (if I can get them scanned; see, I think I have some great shots from Alexandria, VA area, but they were before the advent of the digital camera….), some favorite spooky movies, reads, monsters. So, we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, here’s a prose poem I penned years ago, and which had been published only once, in a now-defunct Canadian magazine, called Tyro. I changed one word in posting it this time: “of” to “for,” in the second line, second stanza.

Fear

It was the Devil’s own pitch,

a darkness utterly corrupt and vile.

 

I couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t hear a thing,

The silence absolute—except for that internal ringing sound.

 

I turned, slowly.

The only way I could know this,

was by the steps my feet made over each other.

 

That’s when I came face to face with it,

teeth ripping my face apart…

© 1989, Originally appeared in Tyro, issue #19.