HellgateTides

demon

2011-06-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

he was living-dead,

2011-06-09T16:16:00.001-07:00

Well…

It wasn’t surprising, really. Nothing living could have endured what he had. So…he was living-dead, then. There were worse things to be. At least he was animate and mobile. At least he had a chance for vengeance.

Best to get the lay of the land. He returned his attentions to the world around him. The sky was blood red, and there seemed to be no sun. Rather, the whole thing glowed in the deepest crimson. Interesting.

Now, the field of the dead . . . he gazed out over it. At first it seemed infinite. A single vast wasteland of arms, legs, shattered bodies, bits of flesh rotting as watched.

But, then, gradually, he realized there was a limit to it. Far, far away, almost beyond the range of his vision, there seemed to be a wall of some sort, rising and containing the spillage of cadavers. Ah.

Just then, some instinct warned him. Without thinking he threw himself to one side.

There was an enormous crash of metal. He whirled about to see a huge metal scoop or claw, like the open mouth of a steam shovel, crashing into the mound of bodies. He watched as it closed around a great mouthful of the dead, and then rose into the air, spilling bits of flesh as it did.

Shai’ol

2011-06-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Lester stood, unthinking, gasping in the air…

He could breathe! He could breathe!

He did not wonder how it was that he’d been able to survive under a mountain of rotting bodies. He did not wonder how long he had been there. He did not wonder what malevolent force had cast him into this hell.

He simply stood and let the air fill his lungs. To breathe!

Gradually, he began to become aware of his surroundings. He stood, he discovered, in a middle of a vast field of the dead. Bodies stretched off in all directions as far as he could see.

Bodies . . . twisted, mutilated, some partly burned. Here was an eyeless head, the scalp half removed so the skull gleamed in the red light. There was a torso, legless, armless, its genitalia ripped away by some savage force.

They were nude. None seemed to have clothing.

Which reminded him. He glanced down at himself. Oh, fucking hell. He was nude as well, but the problem was his body itself. A vast, gapping, hideous wound stretched from his throat to his groin. Heart, lungs, guts. . . all were on display.

He did not bleed. The wound was dry. No blood flowed. He checked his pulse.

There wasn’t any.

Dr. DEM Is Amazed At His Own Powers of True Scholarship

2011-05-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Things Worse Than Anguish

2011-05-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Really angry now, Morris snapped. “I’m not, and it wouldn’t be any business if . . . “

“Take, for example, that book you’re writing,” Lester plowed ahead, as if Morris had said nothing. He tapped a finger on the papers he’d brought, the automatic writing. “You’ll never finish it.”

“I…what?”

“Two reasons for that. First, because you’ve basically realized that you have no talent for that sort of thing. I mean, your first book was all right, but that was really your doctoral dissertation, and you had your major professor to edit it line by line, page by page, until it made sense. Your second book, well, that was a mess. I’ve tried to read it. Sentences go whirling into infinity. Logical connections get tossed out the window.”

Morris felt the fury take him. He meant to say something cutting . . . to yell …even to stand and threaten physical violence.

But he couldn’t move!

Lester continued without seeming to notice his paralysis. “Second, because you don’t give a damn any more. Years ago, you woke up and realized you were just going through the motions. Everyday, every passing day, it’s a gets a little more tedious for you. The papers sent off to ‘Prestigious Journals.’ The snide comments you put on student’s work. The office politics. The way you sit on grant committees and deny funding to all and sundry . . . regardless of the value of the projects . . . simply because you can. And because that’s the way it’s done.”

Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he speak? He tried to move his arms, his head, his body . . . he couldn’t. He felt as though were buried in something. A hot, viscous liquid … like molten glass.

Lester spoke on. He tilted his head, like a dog. “And you’ve begun to hate it all. You hate it the way a man on death row starts to hate the walls of his cell, the calendar, the other prisoners, his guards. Begins to hate even his own lawyers, and the endless appeals that keep him alive. He begins to long for the chair, the chamber, the lethal injection that drips cold death into your veins. It would be a relief.”

He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t cry out. He felt he was strangling. He had a visions of human bodies piled in great heaps…

“I think it is all rather horrible really. I mean, your life.” Lester spoke from some distant place. “Day in and day out. Sort of Sartre, don’t you think. But I can help you. I’m your gateway, you see. I’m the door out.”

He could move again! He gasped and choked. Dear God. What had happened to him? Dear Christ. He glanced up, found Lester’s red and yellow eyes looking down at him.

He found the breath to curse him. “Why didn’t you help me, damn you?”

“Because you didn’t ask.” The eyes continued their pitiless regard of him. “But, I repeat my offer. If you ever do want to escape . . really escape . . . just call. I’ll do what I can.”

“Go to hell.”

The man in dark leather smiled again. “Now there’s an interesting concept. All that nonsense about eternal suffering. As if.” He laughed. “As if there aren't things much, much worse than mere anguish."

Then, with a last “good night,” he turned on his heel and was gone.

The Professor Again

2011-05-09T18:43:00.001-07:00

The last few shreds of poor little Lester

2011-05-09T18:42:00.001-07:00

At that moment, some part of Morris softened. He looked at the man before him and felt real pity. Here was an individual who had aspired to some kind of accomplishment, only to discover that it was as beyond his reach as the stars themselves. “Are you really leaving the program?”

He got a laugh by way of reply, and then, “Have a choice? After the performance I gave today?”

Morris tried to save him. “I could intervene. If you apologized to them, maybe I could talk to Professor Putridrine and …”

Lester raised his hands, revealing more gristly fake stitches at the wrists. “Please don’t bother. I’m leaving.”

“I’m …” Morris considered his words, then plunged ahead. “I’m very sorry.”

“Yes,” for once Lester wasn’t smiling. “Yes, I believe you really are. Unfortunate, really. There is a part of you that is, I think, genuinely decent. Problematic for me. It would make my life so much easier if you were rotten to the core.”

Morris said nothing that. He wasn’t sure what he could have said.

So, Lester continued. “You all are, actually. You, the others. A touch of humanity in all of you. You are complex creatures, you know.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“I wish you were more like me. I’m pretty much the same right through. Cut me open and you’d find I was sort of like a plant. A pine. All the same right through, except for a few tree rings.” Another laugh. “And, of course, the rind. That’s different, too. The last few shreds of poor little Lester.”

Morris regarded him warily from behind his mustache. This was the talk of madness. Lester was clearly disturbed. Was he also dangerous?

“Don’t worry,” Lester gave his former professor a grin. “I speak … metaphorically. If it makes you more comfortable, pretend I said ‘the former Lester,’ or the ‘previous me.’ It isn’t true, but it makes conversation easier.”

In spite or because of Lester’s assurances, Morris found himself becoming tense. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but . . .”

“But you think I ought to be getting along, yes.” Lester seemed almost tender. “But, before I go, I do want to repeat my offer of help.” He stood.

Irritated, Morris “I don’t need your aid.”

“Ah, but you do. You see, you are desperately unhappy.”

The Professor Regards The World

2011-04-28T18:07:00.001-07:00

So Much Promise...

2011-04-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

“I thought I’d find you here.”

He jumped, then, embarrassed, turned to find Lester standing beside him. The fool was still dressed in his Halloween get up. All black leather and queer eyes.

Why hadn’t he noticed him come in? Ah well, didn’t matter. “Good evening,” he said icily, watching the little idiot standing beside him, a cheery smile on his stupid face.

“Yes, lovely evening.” And, without for an invitation, he slid into the seat opposite Morris. “Enjoying the show?” He waved airily at the street beyond the plate glass window.

“I would hardly refer to this as a show,” Morris said, though that’s exactly what he’d been thinking. “This a tragic event. A human being has lost his …or her . . . life out there.”

“Well, that’s way it looks.” Lester seemed unfazed by the rebuke. He gazed dreamily out the window. “But, I’d bet you a donut that they’ll discover the murder took place somewhere else. Then the body was dropped here. For some reason.”

Morris felt a little chill.

Lester seemed to remember where he was. “Anyway, I wanted to track you down before I left the campus. I have something for you.”

“What . . . do you have?”

“This.” He produced a bundle of papers. “This is the material you were paying me to collect from the archive. I thought I’d pass it on.”

Morris took the documents gingerly. “What are they?”

“Copies of originals and my transcriptions.”

“Original what?” Morris was feeling more than little mystified.

“Decuir . . . your mass murderer, remember him? . . . well, it turns out he did automatic writing. Ever hear of automatic writing?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Decuir turned out scads of it. He’s got pages and pages of the stuff in his files. I copied a bunch and, well, sort of translated it for you. The originals aren’t easy to read.”

Morris put the papers down on the table in front of him and started to read. “What is all this?”

“Mostly quotes from famous literary works. It seems your good Doctor Decuir had a taste for the gothic. There’s stuff from Marlow’s Faustus, Poe stories, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner . . . you know, the part where the dead sailors get up and walk.

Morris made some vague disgusted sound and put the papers aside. “Anything else? I mean, of genuine value?”

“Nope. Not a bit. Your Decuir was one boring boy, I’m afraid to say. Not a single blood stained scalpel or pickled eyeball to be found in any of the boxes. Sad, really.”

“Sad?”

“Tragic. So much promise. So few slaughtered.”

The Professor Feasts

2011-04-14T18:43:00.002-07:00

At the Greek's

2011-04-14T18:43:00.001-07:00

He glanced up and down the street. To the right, cars stretched off as far as he could see. To the left . . . police vehicles! Cop cars with the lights flashing, an ambulance, rescue vans, even a fire engine.

Hell! The traffic blocked the entrance to the parking lot. No one would be able to get out for hours. Hell. Hell. Hell.

Still, it could be worse. If he had to be late, tonight wasn’t a bad time for it. His wife would be teaching her six-to-ten class at State. His son, well, his son would be doing whatever it was his son did these days. His daughter . . . he knew what she was doing. He just preferred not to think about it. So long as she didn’t get pregnant.

He might as well grab supper. There was a sub shop down the way. He frequently went there for lunch. Why not dinner as well?

Feeling almost jaunty, he headed down the street. The sub shop was actually in the direction of the emergency vehicles, so he soon found himself approaching the scence of whatever it was that had happened. There were police everywhere. Their attentions seemed to be focused on an aged hatchback parked across the street. Yellow tape sealed off the area, and, strangely, the EMTs had draped a tarp over the parked car.

He came to his sub shop and entered. It was empty of customers, which was a good thing. He hated to eat where his students might see him. Not befitting the dignity of the office, and all that.

The Greek behind the counter took his order for a meatball sub without comment. Morris realized the man was staring over his shoulder and out the front windows of the shop. He turned. The ambulance had driven up beside the parked car. Police were removing something from the car, wrapped in some kind of bag. They put it on a wheeled stretcher. The loaded it on the ambulance, which, in turn, drove away in a fury of red lights.

“Say,” he asked the man behind the counter. “What happened out there?”

The Greek shrugged uneasily. “Donno. They found a body.”

“A body?”

“Dead man, yeah. They found him. Kid tried to steal the car and he found the body.”

Morris couldn’t help smiling. It was terrible, of course, but there was something funny about it. The thief making a clean getaway, only to find something rotting in the back. “Did they say what the body . . um . . died of?”

Again the man shrugged. “No one told me. Here’s your sandwich.”

He took it and a can of soda to a window table. Not bad, he thought, watching the police and crime scene investigators do their thing outside. Not bad at all. A good sandwich, and a free floor show. What more could you ask?

The sandwich went down easily. Then, he sipped his soda while he watched men in uniform removing things in transparent bags from the parked car. All very interesting.

“I thought I’d find you here.”
d

Professor Morris Within

2011-04-02T14:39:00.001-07:00

Professor Morris

2011-04-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Professor Morris exited the Hall and made his way down the stairs. It wasn’t easy for him. He had been overweight since childhood, and, despite the best efforts of nutritionists, a private trainer, his wife, and, even, now and then, himself . . . he remained heavy.

But he wasn’t morbidly obese. He needed to lose a lot of weight, yes, but he wasn’t any 500-pound side show attraction either. He was only, well, sixty or seventy pounds over the limit.

The strange thing was that women didn’t find him unattractive. He had never quite figured that out. It seemed perfectly logical that they should avoid him. Yet, for reasons that he didn’t pretend to understand, many women seemed to find him “cute.” He had rather frequently found himself in the arms of willowy blondes—other professors, a neighbor, graduate students.

Not his own graduate students, of course. He was no cliché. And, besides, in this day and age of sexual harassment suits, it wasn’t safe. But, other people’s graduate students, well, they were another matter entirely. He preferred sociologists.

But, truth be told, it wasn’t exactly sex he was after these days. In fact, he was reasonably faithful to his wife. No. What he wanted most from them was support. Young women, graduate students, these could be molded, positioned, trained. He could coach them ahead of conferences and then point them at his rivals, and say, “kill.” They’d do the work for him.

In fact, he had two such women prepared for today—Rosellen, who was leaving next year for study in Ireland, and Paula, the girl from the Gold Coast of Connecticut. He had primed them to attack Lester Smith Graham. Not that Lester was a particularly important target. On some level he was indifferent to the little man’s failure. But, it was always good to practice.

Which was why he was a little disappointed that Lester had behaved so strangely. Walking out like that . . .? Well, it made no sense at all, and besides, it spoiled the little drama he’d been planning. Rosellen coming in from the left flank, Ivy closing for the kill from behind.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk. He was certain that his girls would have a crack at someone else in the near future.

He came to the doors and eased out into the dying light. And so to home . . .

That was when he saw the traffic. Out in front of the Hall, on the main street that bordered the campus and the faculty-staff parking lot, was a long, slowly, crawling mass of cars . . . bumper to bumper.

What the hell?

her hunger

2011-03-26T12:42:00.001-07:00

to Feed

2011-03-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Then, she was walking again. She had no idea what her direction was. She had no goal. She had no memory of her return.

But, just as twilight merged into night . . . she was back at the campus. She found herself in her car in the parking lot down the hill from the library.

She discovered that she was sitting at wheel, motionless, staring though the windshield into the dark of the lot, and trembling . . . shaking uncontrollable . . . unable to move.

It was not fear that made her tremble. Not terror. Not weakness. Not horror at having seen the dead man.

It was desire. An intense, fierce, utterly insatiable, desire. A desire that beyond the merely sexual, beyond the longing for family and success, even beyond her furious need for the approval of her mother and her professors.

Desire.

The desire to be at the gray car of the crime scene, to walk past the cop who had tried to stop her, to lift the tarp, to open the passenger side door, to reveal the gristly corpse, to open her mouth…

And feed.

The Professor's Soul In Flight

2011-03-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

...like gaping wounds in their brick skins.

2011-03-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Somehow she found herself walking away from the campus. The street grew increasingly tough. Where before there had been some shops and open stores, now it was all empty buildings, broken glass, and boarded up windows. Small groups of dangerous-looking men lounged at corners and along curbs.

Once, two thuggish teenagers detached themselves from such a group and followed. They called out after her. She continued walking without hearing them. They rushed after her and one reached out to catch her shoulder. “I’m talking to you, bitch…” But, then, at the sight of her face, her blank expression and great staring eyes, they fell back, fearing her for reasons they could not explain.

She went on her way.

The streets more empty still. Finally, even the loungers, the thugs, and the street people mumbling to themselves were gone. She was now among the abandoned mills and shuttered factories down by the river. Around her, they loomed empty and terrible, with black windows and vanished door like gaping wounds in their brick skins.

She could hear the water of the river. The river itself had been long ago covered over. It flowed now through a tunnel under the city, only emerging polluted and lifeless a dozen miles to the east. She could feel it! Cold, wet, black . . . dead. Under the streets. Under her feet. At the roots of the factories that had, long ago, channeled its energies into wheels and rotors, turning machines that produced rifles and pounded the skins of slaughtered pigs into shoes.

I’m home. The words came to her. I’m home.

hanging

2011-03-17T13:34:00.001-07:00

Butchered Meat

2011-03-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

She started. “What?”

“There’s been an . . . an accident.”

She glanced at the street behind him. There was a parked car. Police were swarming over it. Paramedics had draped it with a white tarpaulin as if they were trying to shield the street from whatever was inside it.

For a moment she bristled. How dare they try to prevent her from …

There was a gust of wind from behind her. It was hot, and odd, and unexpected. The tarp on the car fluttered, then fell.

And she saw.

The rear passenger’s side was open. On the seat inside was . . . blood, and a body. A body so mutilated that at first she thought it was butchered meat. Then, she realized that that was a leg, that was a torso, that was a human head, skinned like an animal brought to slaughter.

“Oh, Christ!” the cop said, and hurried away to help wrestle the tarp back into place.

For a moment, she stood where she was. Then she turned and walked away . . . hurriedly . . .unthinkingly. She had no idea where she was going.

Hellflight

2011-03-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Standards Of Genuine Scholarship

2011-03-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, time to go. She collected her possessions, locked the door of her office, and headed down the stairs. She continued her meditations as she walked. Yes, it was best that Lester left. Indeed, she had wondered if he ever was going to get the message that he wasn’t wanted. She had sent his dissertation back a dozen times, now. And he still kept turning in re-writes. Was he really so dense as to not get the message? At least, not until now?

Apparently. He was a dim sort of a man, it seemed. She made the inevitable Women’s Studies joke about all men being dim. But, then, there was still something . . . troubling … about the whole affair.

She felt no guilt about her role in the business. If anything, she was proud. It was the distasteful but necessary duty of a genuine scholar to Maintain The Standards Of Genuine Scholarship.

But, still, she felt a little bewildered by Lester’s failure to submit to her directives, and to understand her . . . well . . . her intellectual dominance. She had explained to him, again and again, that his work wasn’t good. That he did things wrong. That “We Don’t Do Things That Way In the Academy.”

It never occurred that her that what she actually meant was We didn’t do things that way at my college back in New York. It never occurred to her that anyone existed outside the tiny circle around Spitter-Cane, a few of her colleagues, and the group of privileged graduate students who fought (ruthlessly) for her attention. It was a war that Putridrine had, herself, consistently won. No one was more grimly determined, more energetic, more willing to use any means to gain her professor’s approval. Even if, as it frequently did, it meant sabotaging the efforts . . . destroying the careers! . . . of others.

But . . . Lester . . .

She walked along the sidewalk to where she’d parked her car. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the police cars and the ambulance until she was almost on them. Then, abruptly, she was facing the yellow tape and the brown uniforms of the police. What the hell?

A policeman was standing in front of her. “Please, ma’am, go back around the other way.”

Her Secret Self

2011-03-08T18:09:00.001-08:00

her intellectual superiority

2011-03-08T15:26:00.000-08:00

Linda Putridrine, Ph.D., associate professor (tenure track), winner of the Dickens-Luz Prize for Advanced Scholarship, and The Darling of the Department, was in the women’s toilet on the third floor. The Faculty Only one. That locked. So students wouldn’t go in.

She finished, listening to the rush of urine into the bowl. For some reason, that sound had always pleased her. It made her feel she had Done Something. If she had thought about it—which she hadn’t—she might have wondered at the satisfaction she felt at such moments. She might have realized that her pleasure came from the days of her extreme youth, from when her mother would glow with pride and sing her praises for having tinkled in the little pot rather than in her pants.

She finished and cleaned herself, using the last of the paper to do so. It never occurred to her to replace the roll with a fresh one from the cabinet under the sink. Such things were for lesser people. When she left, too, she declined to wash her hands. If her son had done the same, she would have punished him without mercy. But, her own flesh . . . that was inevitably pure.

Returning to her office, she sat behind her desk and wondered. What a bizarre day! With Lester Graham, she meant. That weird, weird confrontation at the defense . . . the way he’d walked out like that . . . the bizarre offer of “help.”

On some level, if course, it was a good thing. She had long ago decided that he was not intelligent enough to be a real academic. He didn’t deserve a Ph.D. He didn’t have the driving, burning, critical intelligence necessary to be a rigorous scholar. Not like herself, for instance. Why, during her own stint at graduate school, her major professor . . . Dr. Grace Sptter-Cane … had said, “You know, you are the sharpest graduate student I’ve ever had.” She felt warm and pleased at the memory. Dear, dear professor Spitter-Cane.

She gathered up books and papers, her laptop, and prepared to leave. Yet, if it was best that Lester had elected to leave the program, what a strange way to do it. That costume! Those contact lenses! The seeming indifference to his committee’s intellectual superiority. Well, to her intellectual superiority.

That was the important part.

The professor's secret soul...

2011-03-05T13:28:00.001-08:00

A Blood Red Sky

2011-03-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

There was another quake. The infinite weight that crushed him into the mass was . . . less! He could squirm about! He could use one hand to free the other!

And . . . there! He heard something! A deep rumbling . . . a cranking sound. A machine?

Another quake . . . and light!

There was a crack in the mass of corpses above him, and a tiny, glorious spark of red light.

He threw himself into action. He clawed at the bodies around him. He felt their blood streaming beneath his nails.

And . . . then . . .

He burst to the surface!

He forced himself out of the blackness, out from the blood and bodies, between the skulls and the rotting flesh.

He stood on a mountain of the dead.

But he didn’t look at them. He only stared upward, into a blood red sky, and felt the icy air fill his desperately working lungs…

He was free.

hate...

2011-02-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

He found new strength in hate

2011-02-28T17:15:00.001-08:00

He found new strength in hate.

He’d born to absent parents who’d been too busy with the careers to give a shit about him. He’d grown up bullied and beaten on playgrounds and in classrooms. And then, as an adult, he’d gone from the failure to failure. He’d had no friends, no family . . . known no gentle touch. And then . . . the dissertation committee.

Bastards! Stinking pompous bastards.

And finally . . . finally . . . he was Here.

That’s quite enough, thank you very much.

The hate grew in him. The hate saved him. It filled him. It gave him new energy.

He would be avenged. He would find out who put him here. He would track them down and destroy them.

Hellgate

2011-02-27T18:54:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there were corpse-quakes

2011-02-27T18:52:00.001-08:00

Sometimes there were earthquakes. Or were they corpse-quakes?

Whatever . . . suddenly, the pile of death would move, quiver. Sometimes, heartbreakingly, the space he had been so carefully digging with his fingernails would fill again after such a quake.

But, he found it was easier to claw the space out again. And each time there was a quake, the weight on his chest was a little less. He redoubled his efforts.

Why was he here?

Was he in hell?

What had he done to deserve this?

Nothing. Somehow he knew. He was guilty of nothing. At least nothing so hideous as to be consigned here. No. He was simply in the hands of something with a capacity for infinite sadism.

Just then the mountain of the dead around him trembled again. For a moment, it seemed that the space he’d been so carefully constructing would collapse once again. But, then it held.

Another quake shook the mass. He worked harder.

Then . . . slowly . . . the hatred came to him.

Hellgate will return!

2011-02-25T06:38:00.001-08:00

Hello, Everyone,

Sorry for the long, long, LONG delay...(three years? Oy!)

But, look for future additions real soon. Hellgate will return.

2009-01-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

God had no intention of helping him

2009-01-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

For a time, the panic returned. Oh God Oh God Oh God…

But it seemed that God had no intention of helping him. He could go nowhere. Gradually he calmed. He pushed has hand forward into a skull before him. He felt it shatter. Yes! It gave him a little more space in which to move.

Days passed. He worked without rest, scraping away at the bodies and rotting flesh, compressing it into the walls of the space around his hand. Slowly, the hole grew.

Then, after a year …

He could move his arm!

Shai'ol

2009-01-04T09:54:00.001-08:00

He was, he realized, encased in dead bodies

2009-01-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

He could not breathe!

For a long time Lester was unable to move. He could not see. He could not hear. He could not breathe. His lungs shrieked for air, but there was none. He was buried in something. Something hot. And heavy. And sometimes it moved about him.

He could not see. He could not hear. His only sense was touch, and all he could feel was the crushing weight of whatever it was that kept him trapped.

He tried to scream. But his lungs were sealed.

Oh, God! Oh God!

What had happened to him? Where was he? He remembered being in the apartment. He remembered that he’d been translating a document. Automatic writing! That was it. And a quote from Faustus. And waking up. And then taking a shower.

Then . . . he was here.

Sometimes he prayed. Let me die. But he didn’t. It just went on and on.

Finally, the horror gave way to … not exactly indifference, but a kind of numbness. There is only so much pain the body can endure before it becomes merely background noise. The most horrific nightmare becomes a bore. So it was that after the first few months he found himself testing the limits of his helplessness. What could he move? What could he feel?

He discovered that by dint of enormous effort he could begin to move the muscles of his arms. Once the mass around him quivered . . . an earthquake? . . . and a space formed around the fingers of one hand. He pressed his advantage, pressing back whatever it was that buried him. He could move his fingers! Yes. He stretched them . . . there! What was it he felt?

A skull. Tissue.

He was, he realized, encased in dead bodies.

2008-12-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

2008-12-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

Then he began to scream

2008-12-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Forrester risked another glance at Putridrine and Morris. He was staring at Lester, his lips tight below his mustache. Putridrine had remembered to close her mouth, but she, too, stared.

“I wish to give you an offer of aid,” Lester continued. “Each of you . . . one and all . . . needs me so very much. I would like to help you.”

Again, no one had the slightest idea what to say. But, finally, Professor Putridrine managed to speak. “What could you possibly . . . offer us?”

He favored them with another musical laugh. “Much, so very much. All of you have needs and desires, appetites unsatisfied...” He turned to face Morris. “Monographs unwritten.” Then to Putridrine. “Enemies to be confronted.” Then to her, “Fidelities to be maintained.” Then, seemingly, to everyone in the room. “So many things.”

He smiled again. “Well, I’ll be off. If you need me, just ask, and I’ll do whatever I can. Happy Halloween, everyone.”

And then, he was out the door, and gone.

For a long, strained moment, no one said a word. Then, everyone spoke at once, and wondered what the hell . . . what the bleeding, sulfuric hell . . . had happened.

*

It was a question that would occur, as well, to a young car thief a short time later.

Actually, he was a would-be thief. He’d never stolen a car before. In fact, he was only sixteen. He was one of the numberless young men and women who were, in theory, attending high schools in the grim little post-industrial city where the University remained as a relic from another, richer age when the mills still churned out shoes and optical instruments, rather than rotting empty on backstreets.

The boy saw the old car, beat up and ill maintained, on the road leading up to the University. It says much about him, and how green he was, that he paid any attention at all to it. A more experienced thief would have eyed the Morris’ little BMW, or Putridrine’s Audi, where they sat unattended in the lot known informally as Pedantic Place.

He crept up beside the driver’s side door. He tried the handle. It was unlocked! He looked through the window. The key was in the ignition! This was too good to be true. This was like someone was forcing the car on him.

He glanced up and down the street. No cops in sight. Now, he thought, for a little quick action. The guys would never believe it.

He opened the door and slid behind the wheel. Fantastic.

He realized the seat was wet. He put his hand on it. It came up red and dripping. What? He looked at the floor, in the passenger’s seat, in the back.

Then he began to scream.

Someone heard him and called the police. They arrived a little later. They saw the hysterical boy weeping in the street next to a parked car. Indifferently, they assumed he was on drugs. Indifferently, too, they shot him with a stun-gun and took him away in cuffs.

Only then did one of them look in the back of the car.

2008-12-26T16:09:00.000-08:00

The Best of Friends

2008-12-26T15:49:00.001-08:00

You could hear the gasps around the table. Someone whispered, “whoa.”

Morris sputtered for a moment, then spoke, “Mr. Graham, that is hardly the language appropriate for this situation.”

“Really? Oh. Sorry. It’s bloody dripping excrement, then. Doesn’t that sound better? I think so. But, whatever you call it, it’s still shit. Probably the worst that’s ever crossed your desks.”

The shocked silence deepened. Finally, Forrester found herself saying something, if only because no one else would. “I wouldn’t say … that.”

“No”—he laughed again, a warm, hearty sound—“but only because you’re much too nice. You would prefer the term . . . what was it? . . . Oh. Yes . . . Not Up To The Standards We Hold Dear.”

She felt as if some one had slapped her in the face. How had he known what she… ?

But by then he was speaking to the table. “Yes, shit. Of course, it didn’t have to be that. I mean, I’ve read his… my original. Naturally. And, frankly it wasn’t that bad, when it started out. What was it? Two years ago now? Or about that.”

He scanned the table with those fake red and yellow eyes. “It wasn’t a bad proposal, as proposals go. Not great.” The eyes focused on Putridrine, then moved on to Morris, rested at some spot between them. “But, then, you played games with it. Rewrite and revise. Obstruct and condescend. Patronize and pulverize. For no reason whatsoever, other than that you could get away with it.”

Aghast, Forrester glanced at her colleagues. Oh, shit. This would ruin her in the department! Morris was white with fury. Putridrine’s mouth had dropped open with disbelief. Oh, shit, shit, shit!

But Lester didn’t even pause to take a breath. “And, now,” he laughed again, “we have the fruits of your efforts. Trash. A piece of trash that shall be swept away with the other rubbish of the department. Marvelous.”

Morris rumbled into action. “How…how dare you.”

Another of the bright smiles went his way. “Yes, it is always difficult to dare speak the truth. But, it doesn’t matter. I’m leaving the program today.”

“You most certainly will,” Morris said, his voice thick with fury. His fists were clinched on the table before him.

“However,” Lester continued. “Let me make it certain that I hold you in the . . . deepest . . . affection. And respect. Yes, I respect you. Even admire you. In fact,” again the eyes swept over the committee, “I want to part friends. The best of friends.”

2008-12-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

A Dapper Demon

A total, fucking, bloody, dripping, waste

2008-12-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

“Anyway,” he continued, “the long and short of it is that I’ll be invited to rewrite one more time. Or, to put it another way, you’ll hint yet again that it’s time for me to consider a nice job in … oh…shoe repair or something. Only, this time, I’ve finally gotten the message.”

His red and yellow eyes shifted to some point behind her. “Ah,” he said, “here comes the rest of the party. Let’s join them, shall we?”

Lester took her arm and she was too startled to resist. He turned her easily and she found that coming up the stairs behind her were, indeed, the rest of the dissertation committee…Morris in all his obesity, Putridrine with her disconcertingly elfin features, following them six or seven graduate students.

They reached the landing and, at the sight of him, the professors stopped in shock. The graduate students, their way blocked, bunched up in a confused little knot. One girl, who’d been looking over shoulder while she spoke to her friend behind her, bounced off Morris’ copious posterior and nearly fell. With a squeak, she teetered backwards, but then one of the other young women steadied her.

Lester seemed wholly unaware of, or unconcerned with, his effect. Instead, he greeted them jovially. “Hello, hello! Everyone’s here. Superb!” He gestured at the door of the conference room. “Let’s begin, shall we? I’m eager to chat with you all.”

He held the door open and the small group filed in past him, each nervously glancing at his bizarre features and dress. Or else, they stared stiffly ahead, pretending nothing was different.

Forrester was the last to go in. She passed him with something a little like a shudder, then found a seat for herself around the table.

Dear Lord! He was mad. That had to be it. Or on drugs. Or something. There was no other explanation.

She knew she had to take charge somehow. “Well, uh,” she said, “I guess we should get started.”

“Absolutely,” Lester chirped from where he sat on the other side of the table. “Let’s do begin. Who wants to be first?”

She glanced at the other members of the committee. They were still staring at him, blankly.

“Come, come,” he urged them. “Speak up. I know you’re out there. I hear you breathing.” He laughed at his own joke.

Morris cleared his throat. Someone’s chair squeaked.

“Please,” he said, smiling. “One of you must have some nasty thing to share. Maybe you, Professor Putridrine?”

She looked at him. “I, that is, ah . . .”

“Let me see if I can help.” He gave them all another of his newly dazzling smiles, all pearly teeth. “I’m sure that you’ve read the manuscript and concluded that it is based on a severely out of date interpretative apparatus in that it fails to employ the criteria of Race, Class, and Gender within a postmodern context.”

Her eyes bulged. She glanced down at her notes, then at him again. “How did you know what I…”

“Just a guess. Anyway, my response to your critique is that, by Golly, you’re absolutely right.”

“I…I am?

“Yep. No use of Race, Class, Gender, or Postmodernism. In fact, that’s just the tip of ye ole iceberg. The whole dissertation is a total waste. A total, fucking, bloody, dripping, waste.”

2008-12-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

Like an S&M wet dream?” he said, again cheerfully.

2008-12-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

It was he. He turned and greeted her with a dazzling smile. “Hello, Professor, lovely day for a lynch mob, don’t you think?”

She was stunned. What on earth had happened to him? Where before he’d seemed gray and shallow, and a little hunched in on himself, now he radiated confidence. He was rosy, in fact. A bit reddish, even. As though new blood coursed in his veins.

“Uh…” she collected herself. “Yes, Lester, ah, pleasant day.”

Then she realized what he was wearing. It was time for another shock. What she’d taken to be a black sports coat was, in fact, a hard black leather jacket. He wore as well shiny black leather chaps and what seemed to be shirt of black cotton. She realized what it was.

“A Halloween costume?” she asked, aghast.

“Well, it is the right date,” he said cheerfully. “Do you like it?” He displayed the backs of his hands to her. Running from the wrists to the top of the index finger knuckle were rows of heavy brown stitches, as though they’d been cut open and then roughly sutured shut again.

“You look like . . .” she sputtered.

“Like an S&M wet dream?” he said, again cheerfully. “Yes, I think so.”

Then she saw his eyes. Where before he had dim little eyes of dishwater blue, now they were yellow and red, with cat’s eyes slits rather than human pupils.

“Your eyes!”

“Contact lenses,” he explained. “Novelty ones.” He put a hand up to his right eye, covered it for a moment, and then there was a faint but strangely sickening sucking sound. He dropped his hand and then his right eye was its familiar dim blue. “You used to be able to get them at just about any toy store, but then they realized they were a health hazard. Now you have to order them special.”

She looked way from him, compulsively. Somehow the red eye on the left and blue on the right was more distressing then when both the contacts were in place. “Take it out, take it out…” She directed him, meaning for him to remove the other lens.

“As you wish,” The hand went back to his face. But, it went to the right eye. Again there was the horrible little sound of something wet. Then, both his eyes were red again.

She glared at him. “You come . . . like this . . . to your proposal defense?”

“Well, yes. I’m going to a Halloween party just after I leave here, so I thought I would just save some time—”

She interrupted him. “But…but…this is your defense!”

“Yes.” He gave her another dazzling smile. “And we already know what will happen, don’t we?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ...”

He continued cheerfully. “What will happen is that dear Professor Morris . . . Uncle Morrie, I call him . . . will harrumph once or twice, quiver his mustache, and conclude that I haven’t gotten nearly enough evidence. And then Professor Putridrine . . . bless her heart . . . will announce that I’m under-theorized.” He winked at her. “Lovely word, that. ‘Under-theorized.’ I’m not sure what it means, but it sounds grand. Almost like you’re really saying something. I must remember to use it in a sentence someday.”

She gaped. What had happened to him?

2008-12-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

Something had died in the walls, and it was rotting

2008-12-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

Lester Graham was possibly the third worst graduate student she’d ever had, Susan Forrester, Ph.D., thought gloomily as she walked to Dunpher Hall.

The second worst was Phoebe McGrieve, a middle-aged housewife who’d come into the program under the auspices of that great fat idiot, Morris. McGrieve had some faint idea about wanting to get a Ph.D. Only she’d been, basically, dead from the neck up. She couldn’t decide on a dissertation topic, and finally Morris had given her one. He’d discovered some obscure local politician who’d gone to jail for some half-witted bit of underdone graft in the nineteenth century and he’d told her to go research the man. That was three years ago. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, she was still researching.

The very first worst had been Martin Jackson Taylor, who’d been a complete pain to everyone. Oh, he was bright enough, but he’d been older—he’d been fifty. He’d been a journalist or something, and had written a book or two, and so he thought he knew everything all ready. Or, worse, that he knew enough to be treated with something like respect. Which, naturally, isn’t how the game is played at all. Not with graduate students. So, he had to be slapped around a little, in a supportive and mentoring sort of way, of course. Alas, the treatment had been ineffective, and the man had left the program with a curse.

But Lester . . .

Lester was simply dim. There was no way around it. He just wasn’t mentally up to the challenge of graduate studies. “He cannot uphold the standards which we hold dear,” was the way that Linda had put it. She liked that phrase. The Standards We Hold Dear. She rolled it silently off her tongue. How profound it sounded.

Truth to be told, she was both a little intimidated and a little in awe of Linda Putridrine, even though Putridrine was technically her subordinate, as well as nearly thirty years younger than herself. The fact of the matter, though, was that the younger woman had graduated from an extraordinarily influential program in New York, where-as she had only graduated from a state school. It had been a good state school, but it was . . . well, second tier. Not to be compared with Putridrine’s Manhattan credentials.

So it was that she had let Linda more and more set the tone for the department. When, as second reader on Lester’s proposal, she had announced that it wasn’t even mediocre, Forrester quickly agreed. Yes, she had passed his work before, but if Linda Putridrine said it was bad, well, clearly, there was something wrong.

Besides, to be honest, there was another issue.

Forrester had recently remarried. After many long, uncomfortable years alone as a single mother with two children, and an ex-husband who combined total irresponsibility with a certain touch of mental illness, she had found herself unexpectedly in love with a lawyer from out of state. They’d married over the summer, and, frankly, he was a lot more interesting than the University.

She was on track for retirement, and easing out of the situation before hand seemed a perfectly good plan. If Linda wanted to run things, well, great. Let her.

She came to the doors of the Hall and trotted up the main stairs. This wasn’t going to be fun, she knew. But, best to get it out of the way.

She waved at the department secretary through the glass door on Floor Two and continued up the stairs to the conference room on Floor Three. Odd. There was some sort of smell in the place. It was like . . . like . . . well, like something rotting. Or, like fetid water.

Where is it coming from? She glanced around. The walls? Yes, that was it. Probably something in the walls. A rat or something had died in there and it was rotting.

Right. She turned her thoughts back to Lester. What would he do when they made him rewrite the proposal again? Get violent? Kill himself? It had happened before . . . though, he didn’t seem to be the type for the former, and she doubted he had the courage for the latter.

She came to the landing of Floor Three and glanced around. No sign of Lester. There was only a tallish, thin, rather handsome young man leaning against the far wall. She hadn’t seen him before. She wondered who it was.

Then she looked again.

Lester?

2008-12-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

The blade touched his beating heart

2008-12-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

That was it! It was from the Marlowe play, Doctor Faustus.

He hurried to his bookshelf and threw books aside. He found his copy of the collected plays of Marlowe and went thumbing through it desperately. There! Act Five. Right at the end. As Faustus is about to go to hell. It came when the Bad Angel is tormenting him.

Wow. Decuir … or at least Decuir’s Id . . . had read Faustus.

He carefully put his notes in a folder. This, he knew, might well be the answer to all his prayers. He could go to Morris and say, here, look, I’ve found something important. For that, they might even let him stay in the program.

Delighted, he poured himself a half-inch of wine in a juice glass and toasted the long dead Decuir. Murderer and a bastard you may have been, but you may have saved my bacon.

He went to bed and, for the first time in months, went to sleep easily.

Until…

Three a.m. He woke with a start. He’d had some kind of horrible dream. He couldn’t remember the details. It was something about being torn to pieces. And his whole committee had been there—Forrester, Morris, Putridrine, all transformed and somehow horrible.

He switched on the light beside his bed. He knew what the dream meant. It didn’t matter what he gave them. They wouldn’t let him stay in the program no matter what he did. He was doomed.

Well…

He got up, put on his robe, and went into the front room. Maybe he’d make warm milk. It might help him sleep. He put some in a cup, heated it in the microwave, then sipped it meditatively.

Well, best face facts. They were going to kick him out of the program…or at least make him rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite until he left in frustration. Okay. Fine. He’d get a job somewhere. Maybe he’d teach at a private school. He’d save money and then, in a couple of years, he’d try again at another university. This time, he’d be careful about who he’d have on his committee.

The milk was good, but didn’t seem to make him any sleepier. He put the empty mug in the sink. It was good, he decided, to have a plan. At last he was facing reality and ready to move forward. And further …

…what was in the pocket of his robe? He put his hand in and…ouch! … something bit him. What the fuck? It was the paring knife! How on earth had that gotten in there?

He decided it must have somehow fallen in when he had put away his cup. He put the knife back on the counter and held paper towel to his finger until the bleeding stopped.

He still wasn’t sleepy. A shower, he decided, might help. He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower in the tub. He let the water run while it heated up. He loved the peaceful sound it made.

Yes, it was good to have a plan. He didn’t feel great, but at least he knew what he had to do. He had to take charge. He needed to move forward.

He took off his robe and hung it on the hook on the inside of the door. Something went “clunk.” What? More cautious than he had been before, he checked the pocket. Damn! It was the knife again.

He must—he thought—have caught it with the sleeve of his robe when he put the mug away. It must have fallen back into the pocket. Weird. Oh, well, he decided, he’d just put it back when he came out of the shower. He left it on the back of the toilet tank so he wouldn’t forget it.

Nude, he stepped into the water. Yesss. That was the ticket. The hot water caressed his neck and his back.

Everything would be all right, he decided. It wouldn’t be great. It wouldn’t be easy. But, he would get things done. In the end, it would all work out. Just a matter of time.

And thinking thus, he reached out from behind the shower curtain, took the knife from where it rested on the back of the toilet, stabbed himself in the stomach just above the groin, and then in a single ruthless motion, slit himself open from gut to lung. The blade touched his beating heart.

Yes, he thought, as he collapsed into the tub, everything will be just fine.

2008-12-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be

2008-12-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

An accident, surely. Surely, they had just picked the first available Friday for his proposal defense. It just happened to be Halloween.

Still…

He went down the walk to his apartment. So they were going to let him defend at last.

He unlocked the door and let himself in. It was dark inside. He switched on the overhead but it was hardly brighter. For some reason, the owners had painted the place a deep hunter green, so the walls seemed to suck light right out the place. You could probably, he thought, launch flares in here and it would be dark as a graveyard at midnight.

He put the bills in one place and his books in another. What was he going to do about dinner? Well, he’d left a little steak to thaw out on the counter of his tiny kitchen. But, somehow, he didn’t feel like eating beef right now. Eggs? A salad? He remembered then there was left-over pizza from the other night. He ate that standing over the sink. Then, he thought about having some vegetables. He had a couple of carrots in the ‘fridge. He got out a paring knife and thought about peeling them, but then he changed his mind. Not worth the effort. Instead, he held the knife in his hand for a moment, considered it, and finally touched the blade with the index finger of his right hand. He was startled with a drop of blood appeared.

Damn. It was sharper than he thought. He washed his hands and then rinsed the knife. He left it in the drainer to dry.

Now what? He realized he was bone tired. He fell into the chair in front of the TV and switched it on. Maybe there was something on about the shooting in the building. But, there wasn’t. Just the usual collection of sitcoms, soap operas, and reality TV shows. One was a game show where contestants confronted their fears. He watched uneasily as a woman with a phobia about worms was slowly submerged in a vat of them. Only her eyes, wide with terror, projected above their slimy mass.

Shit!

He switched it off. What now? Read? Go out? He had few friends (none, really) so going out with “the guys” wasn’t an option. Maybe then take a walk? No, that wasn’t an option either. The neighborhood was safe enough in the day, but, well, at night . . . no. There’d been muggings lately. The whole area was going downhill.

He found himself thinking of the automatic writing.

Maybe . . . he stood and got his book back. The copies of the Decuir’s pages were there in a folder. He sat back down and regarded them. They were weird and flowing, somehow graceful. Yet, it was chilling to think he was looking at communications from the mind of a killer and madman. From, in fact, his subconscious! His . . . what was the term? His Id.

He tried to read them. Could that be a letter? Was that a word? He stared at them, daring them to make some kind of sense. But nothing came. They lines squirmed in front of him.

Hell.

And then . . . there! That was an “S” . . . and that was a “…an.” The lines seemed to unlock before his eyes. That was a “t.” And a whole word! That was “bodies.”

Fantastic! He wondered why he hadn’t been able to see it before. It was so clear now. “…bodies boil in lead.” “…ne’re can die” “more horrid be...”

He dashed for paper and pen and then began to work feverishly at his kitchen table. Yes! He could translate it!

…into that vast perpetual torture-house.
There are furies, tossing damned souls
On burning forks. Their bodies boil in lead.
There are live quarters broiling on the coals,
That ne’er can die; this ever-burning chair
Is for o’er-tortured souls to rest them in.
These that are fed with sops and flaming fire
Were gluttons and loved only delicates
And laughed to see the poor starve at their gates,
But yet all these are nothing. Thou shalt see
Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be.

Dear heaven! What on earth was it?

He stared at his translation. Horrible, yet . . . yet . . . it was familiar. He had seen it before. Where . . .

Doctor Faustus!

2008-12-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Halloween?

2008-12-09T08:06:00.000-08:00

He parked on the street and walked the distance to his building. The gray-faced landlady of uncertain age was standing out front smoking a cigarette and periodically hacking her lungs out.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Shooting.” She said it as though it were the most common thing in the world.

“Who got shot?”

“B4.” Meaning the tenant in that apartment. And she started hacking again.

He watched while an ambulance arrived. EMTs appeared and wheeled a man’s body on a stretcher out of the building. The man’s face was veiled with an oxygen mask, but the men moved with the indolence of those who know their job has ended before it had a chance to begin. The man was surely dead or nearly so.

They loaded the body in the ambulance and took off. The fire engine and the police cars went their way. The landlady went back into her apartment. He heard her television switch on. A televangelist exhorted his flock to send money.

Lester remained where he was.

Who was B4? He tried to remember but nothing much came. A dark haired man, taller than he, and very slim. He always seemed a little . . . well, out of it. He suspected B4 of doing drugs, and very likely dealing them as well. That was probably how he got shot.

So …

Creepy, though. His own apartment was A4, just below the murdered man’s. Oh! That was a scary thought.

He went to the bank of mailboxes at the end of the wall and opened his own. A number of envelops fell out. He glanced at them hurriedly. Bills. An advertisement or two. And…his heart stopped...a note from the University.

He opened it trembling. It was brief and unsigned. It said simply that he was to defend his proposal (again) two weeks from “the above date.” He calculated. That would be . . .October 31.

Halloween?

2008-12-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

They'd have his head on a platter.

2008-12-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

One of the archivists interrupted his thoughts. “It’s four forty-five, everyone,” the man announced to the room. “Everyone wrap up, please. We’ll be closing at five.”

Around him the other researchers put away their notes and books. Lester returned his box to the desk and then prepared to leave.

He was proud of his little discovery of the automatic writing. He wondered if Morris would pleased.

Probably not.

The mild sense of satisfaction he’d gotten from his work evaporated. No, Morris wouldn’t care in the least. Worse, Morris and the rest of his dissertation committee … Linda Putridrine, Susan Forrester…would soon have his head on a platter. They’d cut it off and leave it bleeding.

His hopes for a degree were as dead as, well, as any of Decuir’s unfortunate friends and family. It was only a matter of time.

He made his way to the parking lot and his car. The engine turned over with the choking death rattle of an ill-maintained and elderly vehicle. Yes, they’d have his head. Sliced off and spilling gray matter on the street.

He wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. For the first two years of his time at the University, he had been quite happy. The professors had seemed to like him. His grades had been fine. Oh, there had been problems now and then. There was the time he’d lost his temper during a visit by a semi-important scholar. But, he apologized to her and everyone else a dozen times. There were papers that hadn’t been particularly well liked, but that’s the norm. So, on average, everything had been more or less fine.

Then, a year and a half ago, he had written a proposal for his dissertation. Everyone seemed pleased with it. He had shown it to the members of his committee—his major professor, Forester, plus Linda Putridrine and Morris. No one had objected. Everyone had an opportunity to criticize the piece if they’d wanted. But, he’d heard nothing.

So, came the day when he was supposed to present and defend it. To his horror, and in front of all the other graduate students, they’d ripped him to shreds. Forester had sat, expressionless, silent, watching him perish. Avuncular Morris had announced behind his blubber and his mustache that, alas, there was no dissertation here. Putridrine was worse of all. She was all but frothing at the mouth. How dare he assume that … didn’t he know that . . . how could he begin to believe that . . . was he really so fantastically stupid?

He left the room in shock. Behind him he’d heard the twitters of one or two of the other graduate students—the young, pretty women that Morris seemed to always have around him, in spite or because of his girth. On the days that followed, he asked around . . . discretely . . . and, yes, it soon became apparently that those other students had known what was coming already. They’d been told what to expect.

He, alone, was to be surprised that day. He had been set up to take a fall. For a time, he’d considered leaving the program. But, no. He was strong (he said). That was the kind of thing you had to expect in the academy. From women, particularly. They were busy showing that they were every bit as tough as men. Tougher!

But, then . . .

There had followed a year of rewrites, and more rewrites—not of the dissertation, just of the proposal. Each time he’d turn in one version, they’d demand yet another. He had done it now, he thought, just about eight times.

Slowly, even he was beginning to get the message.

He turned a corner and came to his apartment building. It was a little sixteen-plex in the student ghetto. He was startled to realize that there was a fire engine and police cars out in front, their red, flashing lights illuminating the late afternoon twilight.

What in the world?

there are furies

2008-12-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

sketches of dead bodies, clinical and precise, organs exposed to the air.

2008-12-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

Shit! He thought. The sketch was horrific. He glanced through the book. There were others, equally graphic, scattered all through it. Around them were line after line of some, strange looping script.

He looked at the writing. What? There were no words that he could recognize. It didn’t seem to be English.

He glanced at the cover in hopes of finding some note or identifying label, but, no, there was nothing but more of the strange tangled script. After a moment, he carried the notebook up to the desk where one of the archivists regarded him suspiciously.

“Any idea what this is?” he asked her. She looked at it. Then she put on a pair of reading glasses and looked at it again.

“No…” she said, hesitantly. “You’re working with the Decuir material, aren’t you?”

He admitted that he was.

“Does it say anything in the finding aid?”

He checked. All it said was “personal notebook.”

“Hmm.” She nodded. “Do you suppose there’s anything in the next box?”

“That would be 176. Can I see it?”

“Are you finished with 175?”

“Just let me copy these pages and you can have it back.”

“Fine,” she agreed. “By the time you’re done, I’ll be back with your box.”

He took the notebook to the copy machine and scanned a few pages. Then, the archivist returned. He put the notebook back and took the new box back to his desk.

He could find no other notes like those he’d found, but he did find a folder full of letters. One of these to Decuir from something called, “The Psychic Research Fellowship of New York.” It was unsigned and simply said that Dr. Decuir was now a full member in good standing.

Below that was a second letter, this one a carbon copy of an original, and dated 1934, which Decuir had apparently sent to the Fellowship early that year. It read in part, “…obviously, I must insist on the greatest discretion. If it ‘came out’ that I was conducting these researches, it would have a most distressing effect on my relationship with my patients.”

Attached to the letter with a rusting staple was a receipt, $1.50 for one copy of the “Psychic Research Pamphlet, Automatic Writing: Your Gateway To The Other World.”

Whoa!

He looked at his copies of papers from the notebook. Automatic writing, that’s what it was.

It just so happened that he knew something about it. He’d even tried it a couple of times. The idea was that you got in contact with your unconscious mind by simply putting a pen in your hand and holding it over paper. You’d try to relax and, if you were lucky, your hand would start writing all by itself. It was sort of like doing a Ouija board, except you didn’t have two other people helping you. Supposedly, your Id or subconscious or whatever could send you messages that way.

He’d even tried it a couple of times, back in the days when he’d been in middle school and he’d been looking for something, anything, to give him some sort of control over his situation. He had also given self-hypnosis a try, and karate, and meditation. None of it had worked, of course. No matter how hypnotized he was, his parents were still a pair of acerbic and cruelly witty alcoholics, mutually abusive, and hating him with a deep sense of personal martyrdom. “We stay together,” they told their therapists, “for the sake of the kid.”

Oh, hell.

But, anyway . . . so Decuir was into automatic writing? Wasn’t that interesting, he thought.. Wonder what part of his unconscious mind he’d discovered that way.

He looked again at the sketches of dead bodies, clinical and precise, organs exposed to the air.

Ugh.

Best not to know what Dr. Decuir had discovered . . . when his hand began to move, all by itself.

2008-12-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

the personal notes of a serial killer

2008-12-04T05:22:00.000-08:00

And now he, Lester, was deep in Dr. Decuir’s papers—the personal notes of a serial killer. For the princely sum of three dollars an hour on top of his regular TAship, he was employed by Professor Q. Madison Morris, Ph.D. to go through them page by page, in search of anything interesting that might make it into the Professor’s upcoming book, Race, Class, Gender, and the Political Economy of Murder in a Nineteenth Century City.

Dear God, he thought . . . as he turned another page. Three dollars an hour wasn’t near enough. Not for this.

For a murderer, Decuir was a dreadfully boring man. His papers consisted mostly of notes, letters, business records, and a set of diaries, all of them uniquely tedious (“had toasted cheese for lunch. Tea was cold”).

He turned another page. Not that it mattered, he supposed. Morris would write whatever he damn well pleased. Whatever Decuir was or wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter to the good Professor. He’d find some way or another to wedge the throat-slicing doctor into the book. Assuming he ever got around to writing it, that is. Morris had received tenure after his second book—a magnificently researched monograph on a series of deaths in a small Colorado town shortly after World War I. It had been long believed that the many dead had been the result Spanish Influenza. Morris, however, argued a serial poisoner had been at work. Someone—and he suspected the local postmistress—had been spreading death, a little at a time, and for no other reason than it gave her pleasure.

Morris had finished that book 20 years before. He said he was now working on this new one, the one that Lester was supposed to be researching. But, so far, not a page of it had seen light. And, since he had tenure, what did Morris care?

Lester put aside the notebook he’d been reading (prescriptions written between April and June, 1920) and picked up another. It was a dusty, hardback thing, and when he opened it bits of browning paper fell to the table. There was a curious smell to it. Like earth. For some reason he found himself thinking of decay. He opened the book…

Oh!

There, on the crumbling paper, were sketches of a human body, sliced open from throat to groin.

2008-12-03T05:27:00.000-08:00

The Archive

2008-12-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

The Archive was scary.

It was like a bunker. They had it under the university library. It was where all the files and collectables were. People died and donated their papers here. Scholars . . . like him . . . then came down here to find out what dead people had said and written.

It was, he thought, sort of like robbing a grave. Except instead of dealing with rotting flesh, you dug through rotting ideas.

The graduate student—his name was Lester—shrugged. Well, maybe he was just being a little bitter. Not that he didn’t have a lot to be bitter about.

He sat at one of the tables with its little light. Around him, other researchers were working on their projects. All of them were under the inquiring eyes of the archivists who sat behind the desk at the front of the room. He glanced at the wall above their heads. A grim, yellowish painting of a scowling man glowered down at him. It was, he knew, one of the founders of the University. The man looked a little fish-like around the edges.

Well… he said again, best to get busy.

On the table in front of him was a document box, specifically Box Number 175 (*Section b) of the collected papers of Dr. Samuel Westticon Decuir (1879-1935), an obscure but apparently influential citizen of the little city of Crayhaven. He’d been, it seemed, a physician, a friend of the mayor, a supporter of the governor, a pillar of the Crayhaven Reformed Church, and, as a sort of hobby, a murderer. According to newspaper accounts at the time, he’d slaughtered his wife, a subsequent mistress, a neighbor, and an unknown number of vagrants whom he lured into his office with a promise of food.

He was never caught. Rather, he slit his own throat with a scalpel. A nurse found him, and a note confessing to his crimes, in the leather chair behind his (blood soaked) desk. There was also a will, leaving his money to the church, and his papers to the university.

The police found three more bodies, never identified but expertly dissected, decaying in the basement.