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| The flashlight was starting to dim. I felt the same way. I watched it fade, saw the beam begin to narrow. I had nothing else to do but watch the stones be swallowed again by the darkness. I thought that he should feel something, rage, or at least fear, but after two days, there was nothing left. I had run out of food and water long ago, and soon he would be without light. I would be alone here in this tomb. It was mine. As the light faded, I was taken by the darkness, and it held me, like a mother holds her son. The air was still, and heavy. I probably didn't have much oxygen left. I contemplated trying to stand again, to shout or search the walls, but I knew I didn't have the energy anymore. I had spent two days hoping, waiting, rationalizing. Now I was empty, as empty as the hole I had discovered. I looked up and tried to see where the cave walls curved into a ceiling. I couldn't see them anymore. I was alone with the darkness.
I remembered a story I had read as a child. A magician was lost in a ruined temple, and the only person who knew he was there was a priestess. He was her enemy, but when she had his life in her hands, she led him out and they left that place together. No one was going to come for me, though. I was going to die.
Either because from the sensory deprivation, or the lack of oxygen, the visions came, one by one. First came George, and he laughed at me. He was in that stupid smoking jacket he always wore, and one of those pretentious pith helmets.
"So, you lost again, eh? Well, don't worry, I'll take great care of Liza now that you're gone. He laughed that grating laugh of his, and exited. Liza followed, veiled and weeping. She couldn't say a word to me. She just turned and looked me in the eyes, red behind black curtains. I cried out to her, but she burst into fresh tears, and kept walking. What had I abandoned her to? Others came, the real and the unreal. The living and the dead. They each looked at me, said their peace, or said nothing, good or ill. I saw the line of exes, and wondered when, or if they would have my funeral when I didn't return triumphant to Buffalo next week. Would they send a search party? I had been so stupid to take that bet. George was right to laugh at me. Suddenly, I saw I was outside of myself, but I wasn't in the empty tomb, well, empty save for what was quickly becoming MY corpse, anyway, but that bar on Chippewa. Liza, George and I were sitting in the corner booth, the usual table, and I pretended not to notice the way he was looking at my fiancée.
"Oh, a true explorer can do it in the old style." I heard myself slur drunkenly. I hadn't noticed at the time how much more sober he was than I. That was when I realized that the whole thing had been a trap, and George let me walk right into it. The rage returned, but I couldn't do anything. I died, with Liza's name on my lips.
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| Today is the first day of Nanowrimo!
For those of you not familiar, it is an online challenge every November to write a 50k word novel over the course of the month. Last year, Nano was a HUGE bung puller for my writing. Doing nano was the expirience that changed me from a person with a good idea that wanted to write to an actual writer. If I hadn't joined nano and met all the cool people at the Buffalo Writers Group, I could never have grown into a writer, and thanks to them and to my online writing friends, I have been able to learn so much and to try things that would have been impossible for me thirteen months ago.
I just want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has supported me.
--Hugh
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| Here's a halloween apropriate story that I wrote several months ago.
I woke up tonight in a bad way. The dreams have been getting bad lately. I went into the bathroom and started the shower. As was my ritual, I looked into the mirror, but of course nothing was there. I only keep the stupid thing for other, I tell myself. It's for the occasional transient guest. These nights company is infrequent. I live alone.
When Rachel left, she broke every mirror in the house. She called them foolish, called me weak and childish. She was the child. We argued, as I followed her path of destruction from room to room. Sometimes I wander around the building, retracing our last, angry dance, and I wonder how she's doing, how all of my lost children and lovers are faring in the dark world. I last saw her in 2001. It was three months before the towers fell.
I remember waking up that night, watching the destruction play over and over on the news. I wondered what it meant, and I knew that there were secret casualties that September morning. There were deaths that would never be recorded, because the victims were already dead to the world. I saw the telltale signs in the way the smoke shifted and the dust blossomed. It was photographic evidence.
I remember buying my first camera. I was living in France at the time, and daguerreotype was the closest thing to magic I had seen in a very long time. Everyone was excited, so we procured one. We turned the lamps up so much that I feared we would burn, as though it were oak and cold iron on the skin. Still, every one of us sat there through the torturous hours, holding out hope. When there was nothing there, I was so disappointed I slept for a year.
Standing under cold water, I can't shake the sleep from my soul. I had a dream, still half remembered, about one of the children, but I could no longer remember which one. It had been so clear in the dream, but the face slipped away from memory, like blood through cobblestones.
I remembered London, in the first year. It was all so easy then, on the blood-ridden cobblestone streets. I felt more alive than living, then. So much time has past, though. I have learned in my time that it isn't the years that get to you, like everyone thinks, but the lives. It is the faces that fall through your fingers like grains of sand, that wash away like foam on the sea.
It was washing my hair, seeing the foam fall to the drain that I fully remembered the dream. I had dreamt of Anton, the barber. Than, in retrospect, had been a very bad idea. I had thought him necessary, but we had been vain then. I dreamt he was chasing me, holding his long straight razor. It wasn't like that night when war was declared, and he was full of rage and fear. In the dream, Anton was calm, slow yet fast enough in the way of nightmares. I knew that he had come to kill me, in the dream. He had come from Hell to take me back where I belonged. I fled in terror, through an endless maze, and in all my forms, slipping through grates and out high windows, but there was no escape from the maze, or from his endless, measured footsteps behind me. They were counting down my doom. Then, suddenly he had caught me, and was delivering the stroke which would cut my neck. However, the stroke never came, could not cut me. I awoke with tears in my eyes.
There were tears in her eyes when I caught her, on the streets of London, the one who got away. I had taken more pathetic ones than her, and my heart had never broken. But standing over her, sharp of claw and fang, the mask of the predator broke, and I found myself lacking. To this day, I cannot say why her, but that was my last night in London. There were men with stakes there, after that.
I turn off the water and dry myself off. There is no reflection for me to shave to, of course. That was what Anton had been for, all those lives ago. Then, ours was a large family. We had thought ourselves to be aristocrats of the darkness, taking what we wanted from mortality and feeling none of it. Those were hedonistic nights, of revels and song... and blood, of course. Always of blood.
A tendancy of modern horror writers which bothers me is the tendancy to have vampire characters that either don't have the traditional vulnerabilities, or overcome them through "being really powerful," as in the Anne Rice book in which Lestat flies into the daylight, but survives. If anything, I would think that as their "dark" powers become stronger, so would their vulnerabilites. Down the line, I would like to write a longer vampire-related work, but at this point, there's too much other work in the queue.
Nano is just two days away! I'm mostly ready, but this year I'd like to have a map of where the action takes place and where the characters come from. Like last year, I'm writing high fantasy. Last year's nano took place in a city over the course of one day, so I was able to get by only worldbuilding as needed, but this years is a more traditional quest-style story, so I have to do more background work for it
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| I leave for Osaka in just over five weeks. It would be a lie at this point to say that there wasn't an icy ball of stark terror forming slowly in my gut, but overall I am excited but more than a little sad at the prospect. To leave everything and *nearly* everyone I know and care about, particularly Jer behind, is a frieghtening prospect. There is still so much that I have to do and want to do, but I'm doing my best to fill the days between now and November.
This week was Writer's Group on Monday, in which I wrote some backstory for this years nano. It was nice to actually write the characters that are slowly filling in the blank spaces within themselves and my notebook. It is, possibly, my favorite part of writing. When I make notes, it's like a pencil sketch. A form, a name, a few details, and then I have to write them, and suddenly, it's like I'm approaching them at great speed, the distance between the idea and the pen shrinks to nothing, and suddenly they are living people, filled with breath and color and movement nad life. Making ART doesn't feel any better than that.
On Tuesday, I met Jer, Mike and Liz for dinner at the Five Star China Buffet, which is, strangely, next door to the unafilliated Five Star Northern Bank. After the meal, we headed to UB and sat in on Anime Club's showing of "Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door." It is an excellent film, one which I had seen before, but always watch when I come across it. The only thing that irked me was that they stopped the movie during the credits. There is a clever, and in my opinion, important bit after them, so I was a little angry, but no matter.
On Wednesday, I again met my friends and others, and we participated in a small tournament of the game "Settlers of Catan" at a local games store. It was a nice atmosphere, and I haven't been to a real local games store in a while. I was pretty disapointed when Syracuse's "Altered States" changed their name and closed the doors of their main branch. I have yet to bother to visit their newer, more family oriented location, but I have no desire to. I actually managed to place second, behind a two person tie for first place! I won a five dollars to spend in the store, and purchased the Cheapass Game, "Give Me The Brain," which I have yet to play.
Last Night was quiet, a few other friends came over to the house, two of whom I had not seen in some time, and we played more games and generally shot the breeze. A few more tenuous plans were made for an upcoming Halloween party, but that's about it.
Tonight, despite that I have to work during most of it, I will be attending the very end of a benefit for my friend Dave, who has had a series of health problems, but hopefully these for the most part behind him.
This weekend will be the last that Darien Lake, the local theme park, will be open for the year, and if the weather holds, and possibly if it doesn't, I will go on the coasters a few more times before it's too late. The rumor is that Six Flags is trying to sell the place off, so I am worried about whether it will still be there when I return. That place is very important to me, so I'm a little nervous.
Here's a flash fiction piece to end with, which also includes broad strokes of characters in my nano, who have different names, as well as other slight tweaks. The goal was to write a story in which a character leaves chaos in their wake.
I looked across the table at her. She was, as usual, sharpening things. She had picked up the nickname amongst the group of "Pincushion Girl." Not to her face, of course. As if she knew what I was thinking, she flexed her wrist, idly. A two inch iron spike fired from the shoulder of her armor. It hit the wall with a splintering crunch, and she got up to retrieve it.
"Ha!" She called from across the room She ran over and showed me the needle. A roach was swerved neatly on the tip. I blinked, snapped my fingers, and the bug was on fire. A bit of indiscrete warning that I was unimpressed. She dropped the spike and crushed the fiery insect under her foot. She shot me a withering glare, and I smiled back before tuning back to my book. I heard her leave the room, but I didn't look up as she slammed the door.
I did look up as I heard the crashes along the wall. The slamming of the door had knocked something loose on the shelves above, and it was raining pottery. Diving aside, I avoided a fatal collision with a ceramic water jug.
When it was safe, I followed her out the door. If she was going to throw a tantrum, I should apologize before she hurt somebody. Last time she was in this sort of mood, she destroyed more than pottery.
I went through the lounge and out into the courtyard. There was a trail of broken flagstones leading to the training grounds. I had a trail to follow. The training grounds were one of the largest areas of the building, practice took up more space than anything else, as we gained more and more members. Tara was working doing weight training, or at least she had been. The bar had snapped in half. Tara herself was sitting on the bench in a dazed expression.
"Angela passed by this way." It wasn't a question. She nodded, not saying anything. "which way did she pass?" She pointed left, toward the library. I nodded, and kept going. This was getting out of hand.
I found her sulking in the library, a trail of spineless covers led up to the space where she was sitting, staring up at the ceiling.
"Angela?" I called softly from behind her. She turned around, and her eyes went wide.
"What happened?" She asked.
"What do you mean, what happened? I've been following your trail of destruction."
"Trail of... What? I just walked over here and sat down. What happened to those books?"
"You didn't..." I paused. "Didn't you hear that racket behind you?" She shook her head. "The pottery? The flagstones? The weights?"
"I was reloading the shoulder mounted x-bow. it makes a terrible racket."
"Fuck." I sighed. "Go find Laurel. We have an intruder."
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| The goal of this week's exercize is to perform a litterary sleight of hand, a distraction from annother action. This is what I came up with.
It appeared in with a roar in the morning sky, a death bringing comet of bright steel and vengeful fire. It plummeted, dispelling the light spring clouds, and made brutal contact with the earth at the reservoir pond in Founders Gate Park. The water boiled and a cloud of steam cloaked the fallen angel as it lay in momentary aquatic repose. After a few moments, the monstrous shook off its burning cloak, and rose from the steaming bath. The giant stood up fully, with a noise of motors and metal scraping metal. It was seventy feet tall, and the balefires of hell itself burned green in its eyes. It walked, slowly, taking its time, out of the pond, through the square, and into the city, an armored figure, in scale with the buildings, armored in black. It seemed to take no heed of where it walked, toppling lower buildings, crushing cars, falling through raised highways not able to support it. It also took no notice of the luckless crowds of people that surrounded it, crushing each other in a vain attempt to escape the blind soles of massive steel feet. The army did what it could, creating a fortified line of tanks and armored cars in a ring around the believed destination. The capital building would hold, the generals said. A wall of fire would protect them from the Black Angel. The government secure, the people were abandoned. The machine reached the Capital Mall and, spotting the tanks, stopped. There was no attempt at communication. Nothing more was to be said.
The minutes passed in a tense stand off. Neither the defenders nor the monster making a move. Neither entering the zone of the other. They were separated as by a sheet of glass. It was not remembered which of the tanks fired first, which fear crazed young gunner pulled the trigger without orders, but once it was cast, his neighbors followed suit, and the air support followed. Payloads rained upon the metallic demon that had come upon them that day, obscuring it in a cloud of debris. A profound silence followed.
On the other side of the defense line, the Ministers were already dead.
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