M Drive - The Sludge, Part II

Continued from Part I, here.

The entity blinked, and nearly went insane.

For a moment, the universe, all of that lovely sensory input, simply vanished.  The entity was cut off, back in its prison outside of reality!  It had been thrown back out, rejected, trapped once again in its indeterminate and everlasting hell!

When the entity opened its eyes again, it was screaming.

Adventures in Home Brewing, Part II of II

Continued from here.

"Yeah, you sound sober!" I pointed out.  "Weren't you drunk just a moment ago?"

Dan looked back at us, blinking a couple of times.  "I am!" he insisted.  But then, a moment later, he shook his head in wonderment.  "I mean, I was..."

For a moment, we just all looked at each other.  Ari, perhaps because he'd been sober from the beginning, was a little quicker on the uptake.  "No way," he said, and he grabbed his own cup of coffee.

Dan and I both watched as he lowered the cup from his lips - and screamed.

The scream went on for quite a while, until Dan slapped a hand over his mouth.  "He's gone too far the other way!" he cried out at me, as Ari battered at the bigger man with flailing arms.

I stared back, wide-eyed.  "What do I do?"

"I dunno, find something with alcohol!"

I spun around, staring at my kitchen.  We had (well, Dan had) finished off most of my beers.  In desperation, I grabbed the jar of vanilla - distilled in alcohol.

We shoved the bottle into Ari's mouth and forced a couple gulps down his throat.  As we watched, holding our breaths, the man finally calmed down a bit.  "Holy crap," he gasped, staring at us.  "That stuff is strong!"

"What happened to you?" I had to ask.

Ari shook his head back and forth, searching for words.  "Okay, you know when you take a shot on an empty stomach, and you just feel the world lurch as the alcohol hits you?" he finally stammered out after a minute.

We both nodded.

"Well," the man concluded, "it was just like that, but the opposite.  And way worse."

After that ordeal, we all needed a drink.  And not of my brewed coffee concoction.  Dan scrounged up some more beers, and we sat around, staring at the still mostly full jug of black liquid.

"Could make a fortune outside bars at last call," Ari finally offered.  "Sobers people up with a sip, that stuff does."

"Yeah, but one wrong sale and you've got somebody screaming," I retorted.

After a minute, Dan just shook his head.  "Damn, man," he finally said.  "You definitely brewed something, that's for sure..."

Adventures in Home Brewing, Part I of II

Dan and Ari were both watching as I revealed the bottle from the refrigerator, struggling a little with its weight.  The three-gallon jug was nearly full of dark brown liquid, sloshing back and forth with a bit of foam cresting the tops of those waves.  The liquid inside was dark, murky, the brown of bloodsoaked mud.

It didn't look especially appetizing, I had to admit...

M Drive - The Sludge, Part I

Formless wasn't quite the right word to describe it.

The entity had shape, of a sort.  If shape was the right word to describe a writhing, roiling mass that seemed to defy any attempt to corral it into a set form.  It spasmed and twisted, trying to seek out some sort of definition for itself.

Blind, sightless, tasteless, earless.  The entity was trapped in a hell of sensory deprivation.  Every second was a million years of confinement, of lack of any awareness except for itself.  It threw out filaments, twisting tentacles of blackness, but it encountered nothing that brought it relief.

That was almost the end.  Perhaps, in another story, the entity would have simply gone completely past the realm of madness and into the peaceful valley of catatonic slumber.  In many stories, that did happen, and nothing was left behind except for a small puddle of ever-shrinking sludge, just one more meaningless deposit in the middle of nowhere.

But that didn't happen...

Lucifer's Gift, Part III

This story begins here.  The last entry was here.

...and bumped against one of the fallen cherubs, who was now sitting on the floor.

With his fat, baby-like fingers, the reached out for the apple sitting in front of him.  The apple was gleaming, shining, looking perfect.  It definitely did not belong in the grasp of this chubby little imp!

Lucifer's Gift, Part II

Continued from Part I, found here.

Like I said, I knew that this was a dream.  And as I looked around, even if I hadn't thought so before, it was now abundantly obvious.

I appeared to be standing in a diner, looking like it was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.  That is, except for the cherubs.  And the devil.  And as the waitress sauntered over to me, I noticed that she was dressed in ripped tights, a strapped-up leather bustier that looked to be covered in nasty symbols, and sprouting a pair of batlike wings hanging off of her back.  As my eyes fell on her, she licked her lips at me with a curiously long tongue, in a manner that can't possibly be considered anywhere below PG-13...

Lucifer's Gift, Part I

As the little cherubs flapped around my head, making rather annoying bleating noises, I stared back at the man in front of me and became absolutely, completely certain of two things:

First, this was definitely a dream.

And second, this man in front of me was the Devil.

Let's Take A Walk

"So listen, I've been thinking, and I think I know what we need."

"What, like a new coffee table?  Mine has a lot of stains, since you keep on forgetting to put down a coaster."

"Nah, dude, not like that.  I mean what we need as a race!  As part of humanity!"

"Ugh, one of these again..."

"I promise that it's really good."

"...fine.  Okay, tell me.  What do we, as members of the human race, need?"

"We need something to tell us when we're almost there!"

"...what.  You mean like GPS?"

"No!  Well, kind of.  But for tasks!  Goals!  Achievements in our lives!"

"I'm really feeling lost here."

"Okay, well, think about this.  Haven't you ever wanted to become a best-selling author?  Or a famous actor?  You know, some big dream like that?"

"Of course I have!  Everyone has."

"Well, so why'd you give it up?"

"I mean, I dunno.  It's tough, isn't it?  You try and you try, and you don't seem to be getting anywhere.  Eventually, you just stop."

"Yeah, exactly!  But don't you wonder sometimes?  What if you were almost there?"

"You mean like I was about to make the big time?"

"Yeah, exactly!  And maybe you were just one book, one gig away!  But you don't know, because you quit before covering that last little step."

"Ah, I see.  But if there had been a voice to tell me that I was almost there-"

"Then you would have pushed through, and you might be famous by now!  Or rich!  Or successful in life!"

"Hey!  I think I'm doing okay in life!"

"Oh, okay, sure, but not amazing, right?  Because we give up too fast!  So we need someone to tell us that we're almost there!"

"Or even better, a progress bar."

"No, not a progress - actually, wait, hold on.  That does work better."

"So it's agreed.  We need a progress bar for all of our goals in life.  I'll draw up the paperwork so that we can submit it to God for his signature."

"Come on, dude, you don't have to be sarcastic about it."

"I'm just saying - it's a cool thought, but it's not just magically gonna happen."

"Whatever.  I thought it was creative.  Anyway, it's getting chilly out.  We should probably turn around."

"But what if we're almost there??"

"Almost where?"

"I dunno.  Whatever our walk goal is."

"Just for that, I'm not gonna use a coaster on your coffee table tonight."

The Best & Worst Days of My Life, Part II

The doctors told us that the chance of it happening was low.  Exceedingly low.  She's a very rare type, they'd tell us.  The organ in question is very sensitive, easily damaged, and doesn't last long after death.  These organs, of this type, almost never came on the market.  Sarah was at a high spot on the list, but the list meant almost nothing.  Most people left it through death, not through a happy ending.

And then the call came...

The Best and Worst Days of My Life, Part I

I stared down at the piece of paper in my hands, sitting on the edge of the bed.  I could feel my suit wrinkling, crease lines forming in the fabric, but I didn't care about it.

It didn't matter.  Nothing else mattered.  Just the words on that sheet of paper.

I reached up and rubbed one hand across my face, hoping that somehow, when I reopened my eyes, things would have gone back to the way that they were.  That she'd be back...

The Three Wishes, Part II

This is a continuation. Part I is here.

This question, so innocuous, definitely produced a response from the genie ahead of me.  He stopped dead, spinning around to glare at me.  His eyes were wide, and his look was so intense that I took a half-step back before I caught myself.

"Want to be set free??" he repeated, nearly screaming.  "Are you freakin' mad, man?"

Faced with this onslaught, I cowered back.  "I saw it in a movie!" I stammered, too terrified to say anything but the truth.

For a moment later, the man glared daggers at me.  Then, he took a deep breath, clearly attempting to calm himself.  "Ahhhh," he sighed as he let out the breath slowly.  "No, please, please, for the love of God, do not set me free!  And don't even joke about that!"

I was confused.  "Wait, you don't want to be set free?  Why not?  Isn't this a burden on you?"

The genie opened his mouth to reply, but then paused, wagging a finger at me.  "I'll tell you after you make a wish," he replied.

Right.  A wish.  I had three, right, so it was okay if this one wasn't perfect?  I racked my brain.  But something made me pause.  "What about phrasing?" I asked.  "Are you going to always grant it in some twisted way?"

The genie threw up his hands.  "No!" he all but shouted.  "Just wish!  I just want them over and done with - I'm not going to waste time screwing them up for you!"

I didn't know if I could trust the man, but what other option did I have.  "Okay," I began.  "I'd like to never have to worry about money again.  Just have, like, a trillion dollars someplace.  No one knows, but I can just pay for whatever I need without ever thinking about it."

"Oh, you humans," the genie chortled, more to himself than to me.  "Always thinking about money."  He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.  "Granted."  And a moment later, he handed me a black credit card.

"Okay," I said, after tucking the card away carefully.  "Now, why don't you want to be free?"

We had come to a bus stop, and the genie took a seat on the empty bench.  He looked up at me for a second, waiting until I sat down next to him.  "Look, this isn't my world," he said.  "And I don't even know all the details of this whole ordeal.  Our universe is entangled with yours, or something like that, so occasionally we get yanked over from ours to yours.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but yours sucks."

I wasn't sure if I should be offended at this slight to our universe.  I mean, it wasn't terrible!  But the genie was still talking.

"And anyway, when we come over, we've got a bunch of energy buildup, that we figured out we can discharge through wishes," he continued.  "So that's where the wishes come from."

"But you don't want to be free because..."

"...because if you wish that, it discharges all the energy - but uses it to bind us to this universe!" the genie finished my sentence, a little heat in his words.  "And really, all I want to do is get home."

I nodded.  I could understand that.  I felt as though I'd been trying to get home for far too long.

After a long minute of silence, the genie clapped his hands down on his knees.  "Anyway," he said, finally breaking the quiet.

"Second wish?"

The Three Wishes, Part I

The genie wasn't how I had always envisioned them in my head.

For one thing, he wasn't big and blue, with bulging muscles and those metal bands around his fat wrists.  Instead, he was wearing a tee shirt, the logo faded to obscurity amid what had to be years of occasional stains, and a pair of faded and scuffed jeans.  He looked more like a surfer than a magical being.

If he hadn't appeared with a clap of thunder in the middle of the antique shop, out of thin air, I would have never pegged him as unusual at all...

Have you heard? I wrote a book!

I wrote a book!  A novel, actually!

Check it out here:

The Less Than Perfect Wedding

This little project started 9 months ago, when I participated in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.  However, just because this story was written, that didn't mean that it was ready to be shared.  Not yet.

But now, after nine months of tweaking and editing, I feel ready for it to be published.  Fly, little novel!  Go out into this big, scary world, and make a few people chuckle!

For anyone who wants to read what this book is about, just continue.  Trust me, it's funny.

”All I wanted was the perfect wedding. No bitter mother, no pothead father, no crazy sister or lecherous brother-in-law. No surprises. Nothing going wrong. Not happening.”

Danielle Jansen, newly engaged bride-to-be, knows that there are signs suggesting that her wedding won’t turn out perfect. 

One such sign? As soon as she’s engaged, her parents can talk about nothing but divorce. Next, Danielle finds that her bitter mother has hired a wedding planner without her knowledge - and the theme appears to be Damnation & Hellfire. And just to put the cherry on top, her insane sister shows up to her bachelorette party stumbling drunk - and claims that she just seduced Danielle’s husband-to-be. 

When Danielle’s boyfriend proposed, she warned him about the chaos that would shortly follow. He didn’t listen, but she did warn him. Because the old saying really is true: you don’t just marry your partner - you’re stuck with their entire family...

If the link above, doesn't work, you can get to it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N552OEM

Tell your friends!  Tell your family!  Tell your enemies, if you think they'll buy a copy out of spite!  No Kindle?  You can read this book in your browser!  But please, help me continue to provide a brief moment's entertainment by supporting me in this purchase!