| |
––––––––
“THE LAND OF SUNSHINE”
My brother was an art and design student in college when this story was conceived. One night, while we were chatting on Skype, he mentioned that he needed a story for a Claymation project that was due in a few weeks’ time. Immediately I envisioned crooked buildings and murky nightscapes, real Tim Burton stuff, which I thought would be both fun and challenging for my brother to realize. I mentioned to him that I had the seedling of an idea about a man who must traverse a nightmarish cityscape in search of his own heart, and he was intrigued. However, as is frequently the case with me, other business got in the way, and by the time I managed to get the story written, the deadline for his project had come and gone and he had already submitted something else. Happily, he wasn’t inconvenienced, and my procrastination did not have an adverse impact on his grades. He later graduated, and this wayward story ended up finding a dark and welcoming home of its own.
“Traveler”
Is there anything more frightening than the idea of losing your identity, of feeling as if someone else has occupied and taken control of your body? Can you imagine waking up with no recollection of what you’ve done only to discover that it’s something catastrophic? Imagine having to answer for a crime you don’t remember committing. Such questions inspired this story, as well as a dash of one of my favorite plays, Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, about deceit, paranoia, and the malleability of truth under duress.
“The Mannequin Challenge”
You may remember, back in November 2016, social media timelines became host to a series of videos in which people pretended to be frozen while a camera moved around them. Kind of like adults playing Simon Says. The more popular and widespread these so-called ‘Mannequin Challenges’ got, the more elaborate and star-studded they became. Everyone wanted in on them. But while it was fun to see how clever and inventive people could get with the concept, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if someone who didn’t know what was happening, and who had never even heard of these orchestrated challenges, encountered one in media res. Add in a soupçon of bitterness and office politics and you have the genesis of this nasty little tale.
“Go Warily After Dark”
I haven’t written many war stories. In fact, I think this might be my only one to date, and it deals less with the conflict than the collateral damage on the citizens of the unnamed city. If it feels like I’m writing about the bombing of London during World War II here, that’s intentional. I was reading about life during that horrendous period and came upon a mention of the warning posters which advised the citizens to be mindful of curfew, specifically to “go warily after dark.” Those words summoned this story because as we all know, and history is quick to remind us, evil thrives in darkness, and the world is never darker than during times of war.
“Down Here with Us”
Another first. This was written for a shared-world horror/fantasy anthology, Tales of the Lost Citadel, and if I hadn’t been invited to contribute, I doubt I’d ever have written a story quite like it. And while I was a little intimidated at the idea of straying so far outside my comfort zone, I thoroughly enjoyed writing about these once-proud warriors, now little more than slaves in a rapidly disintegrating world.
“Sanctuary”
I write about kids and imagination a lot, probably because my childhood was marked as much by magic as darkness and so those themes keep coming back to me. Written for an anthology about cities, the place in which this story is set is based, not on a city at all, but a village in Ireland where I spent much of my childhood. My grandparents lived there, and I did, on occasion, have to fetch my grandfather from the pub on cold afternoons. Everything about my memories of those days and that place is benevolent and happy, however, so naturally I had to warp the hell out of them for this story. That is, after all, what I do.
“A Wicked Thirst”
One night, after drinking three days straight, I woke up face down in a puddle in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I was immediately confused, then terrified, and even though I had GPS on my phone, it never occurred to me to use it. I could have been a hundred miles from home, and it was not the first time I’d found myself in such a miserable state. Shirtless and freezing, I ran to the porch of one of the dark houses where I’d spied an Amazon box, cadged the address, and called a cab. Imagine my embarrassment when the surly driver took a right turn, then one more, and dropped me off outside my house. I’d been less than three minutes’ walk from my house, but in my confusion had staggered into the adjacent neighborhood. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then, and it led to me having a long conversation with myself about my tendency to abuse alcohol. As part of the process, I wrote this story.
“The No One: A Rhyme”
Last year, for no good reason at all, I found myself compelled to write poetry. I would be lying on the couch watching TV when a stanza of verse would pop into my head and I would have to write it down. Soon this was happening almost every night, usually late, and by the time I was done, I had half a book of poetry saved in my files. This might not be so odd but for the fact that I don’t write poetry. Oh, there’s been an occasional verse here and there, but none of it has been any good. For a time, I considered gathering up these poems, many of them written in the throes of depression, and making a book of them, but the more I read back over them, the less connected to them I felt. Thus, they remain filed away for review sometime in the future. But for this book, I chose the one I liked the best, the one that reads like it was meant to survive, one that even poetry haters could appreciate, and included it for you here.
“You Have Nothing to Fear from Me”
I don’t have a lot to say about this one that won’t be obvious from the story, or the news. I’ve known a lot of women in my life, and every single one of them had scars, mental, physical, or both, given to them by men they trusted and loved. I’ve caused some scars too. Any man who claims different is hiding the truth from himself. And whether they were intentional or not doesn’t change the fact that this has always been a tough world for women, and we have not done enough to change that.
“The Monster Under the Bed”
Sometimes, just for kicks, I write small dialogue-only stories and post them on social media. There’s not much to them. No depth, character development, or scene setting. Thus, there’s not much to say about them, here or anywhere else. But who among you doesn’t love a good comeuppance piece?
“The House on Abigail Lane”
There are over a million words of unfinished stories in my files. Over a million. Most of it will never be seen by human eyes, but every now and again I’ll go in and have a peek at what’s there. Among the corpses are a handful of aborted novels, including over fifty pages of a Kin sequel. There’s a kaiju novella, abandoned twenty pages from the end because of its similarity to a popular horror novel that was released while I was writing it, and a novel about paintings that come to life that I ditched after watching Velvet Buzzsaw. Stories can die for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes you lose steam, sometimes you get stuck, sometimes someone else gets to the idea first, and sometimes the excitement for a project wanes and you jump to a horse with sturdier legs.
During one of these expeditions into The Crypt, I chanced upon a single page of a story I’d started three or four years ago about a house in which people vanish when they go upstairs. There was enough on the page to intrigue me, and I really liked the tone of it. It had a true-crime-y feel, and when I reached the end of that page, I found myself eager to know what happened next. So, I took it out, dusted it off, rewrote that first page and the story caught fire. I hope its reanimated corpse entertained you.
We Live Inside Your Eyes (I & II)
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in my bedroom looking out the window. Eleanor, the girl in the house across the street, used to do the same, and we would signal to each other for hours. This graduated to walking to school together, and later, she was my first kiss. This story is my affectionate nod to those simple, exciting, confusing times, and an expression of my gratitude that she resisted the urge to sacrifice me to The Bone Mother.
