Serial Experiment Part 5

Experiment Part 4

"FUCK YOU!" he screamed at the light, the poetry, the hope, the mercy. She came to him lucky, about to rest, white haired, bloody angel. She came to him close to the quiet that was the best that men could hope for and he awakened her into the world of screaming and sorrow. He did not apologize for the things he did to people, no matter how loathsome and yet an "I'm sorry" almost crept past the wall of nihilism he had erected to keep out these and similar sentiments.

"Thank you," she said.

A lecture. A dismissive sneer. A derisive laugh. All possibilities. All in character. If there weren't a kind of blank canine sincerity in her brown eyes he would have thought that she was trying to mock him.

"You're welcome," he said. He meant it.

"I believe my name is Elsie," she said. She was proud. It meant something to be her, even if she could not tell what it was. He thought of the first time he called himself Robby Graves, screamed it into the microphone. Abrakadabra. Something else. An explosion of possibility. Not so much that she thought her name was Elsie, but that she knew this one fact and it deeply effected her beliefs. He trembled a little at the static charge of her assertion.

"It's nice to meet you, Elsie." It was nice to meet her. It was scary to meet her. He shouldn't have met her. She was dead. It was still nice to meet her.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. He was hesitant to give it. He did not know which one to give or if either of them was right to describe what he was becoming.

"Is it a secret?" It was not sarcasm. It was perfectly legitimate question. If he were at the top of his smarmy, pseudospiritual depression junkie form, he would have said, "yes, but I'll tell it to you anyway."

"Robby. Robby Graves." She laughed at the pun. When she was done laughing at the pun, she laughed at another joke, one she kept private. It was cutting, truthful and funnier than the pun. He had an inkling what it was, but he would not have laughed at it. He did not ask what was so funny. She felt selfconscious about that.

"Is that your real name?" she asked.

"Sure, I guess."

She fell to the floor weeping and shaking as if kicked down by an invisible ogre. She folded her arms against her chest. He backed off, afraid to touch her, to do something about whatever celestial ailment left her in this position. He waited, knowing that it would pass, but that whatever had brought it on would linger.

She stood up straight, hugged him.

"We have to get out of here. Someone bad is coming."

Serial Experiment Part 3

This is section 3 of the Serial Experiment I've been doing with Ash Lomen. For info on the experiment and the first two sections, click the links below:

Serial Experiment Part 1

Factory Boys Serial Experiment Part 2

Part 3

Beloved Elsie, child of moonglow
Softer than fresh snow
If only you could know
The warmth that you've brought

Beloved Elsie, fire of destiny
Right hand of insanity
If only you could know the
Disaster you have wrought

Earthlight was singing. Name almost familiar. The voice was Summer rain. Not too heavy to make trouble. No hurry to get home. She would not catch cold. Second verse hurt, but it was strangely nonjudgmental. Simply what she was, whatever that was. She remembered a crowd gathered to watch a frightful looking man, a giant with a heavily scarred face. He was at a podium speaking. Looked scary, but nobody was afraid. In fact, they felt good being near him. They loved him. Without question, without hesitation, with the purest of intentions, they loved him. She felt like crying at the thought that somebody so frightful was so loved. She wondered if anyone had loved her so much as this man who loved and was loved as the Earthlight loved.

Beloved Elsie, brought forth in starshine
You'll understand in time
All of the things that you forget
You could live without regret...

The man who loved and was loved so much shakes, twists, contorts in pain. She hurts too, looking at it. The crowd hurts. Please, he is big, he is old, he is powerful, he will live...someone would have to listen to that prayer, someone would have to know how much everybody needs this man to survive. He gives one last pained look, asking why and knowing that the only one who could answer it would never tell him. Somewhere among the crowd, a bad man smiles. He must have been a part of it. It looks like he really wanted it. Somebody do something. Somebody save him, somebody do something about that man! Either man. The man everyone loves dies and the man who had to be the only one who did not love him flees the scene.

If this mistake has to be made
If this justice is delayed
Open your eyes, don't be afraid...

She opens her eyes. The face she sees is full of fear, full of misery, afraid of the dark, afraid of the light.

"I'm sorry," he says, not knowing what he has to apologize about.

Serial Experiment Part 1

So, I've been a bit on edge lately. I'm always a bit on edge. But, I've been waiting on edits and responses to a few queries and getting back to writing short fiction and thus my creativity and writing have been erratic. So I decided to take some initiative and jumpstart my brain again. Horror artist and Bizarro and horror author Alan Clark has a great book of fiction out called Boneyard Babies, made up mostly of collaborative efforts. Fantastic, experimental stuff. I will be reviewing it more thoroughly in the first issue of Nuckelavee. He describes a great writing game called Bone Grubber's Gamble. I decided to try it, so I got in touch with horror/Bizarro poet and author Ash Lomen and we tried it. Twice. Both times the stuff was good. So I decided to try another game. One more indepth with more longterm results. Each of us makes up a character. Sends details on the character to the other one. This is the first viewpoint character. The second one, we make up for ourselves. So, the story will be told from four perspectives two made up by Ash, two made up by me. When all four viewpoint characters have been introduced, we can use any perspective we like. If you want to follow this serial, you will need to follow both blogs, where we'll be taking turns posting sections of the story. I'm getting things started with the character Ash created for me. Lights go up on Gothrocker Robby Graves.

“I am the insurrection and the blight,
There’s a reason that I just go out at night
And all the little girls they spread legs wide
Because I take pride
At bein’ more dead than alive inside
And I will treat you like a slut
I will make you cut and cut
Cause we are only human when we bleed
And I’m becomin’ somethin’ worse
I’m becomin’ somethin’ worse than me…”

Robby Graves was more a consumptive than a rockstar, not singing, but spitting lifeforce that he couldn’t spare whenever he stepped up to the mike. A bleeder, a junkie, a proud lost cause that made stray martyrs long to strap dynamite to their chest. Girls caked in thick white makeup held up scarred wrists to reveal deep devotion cuts, tore off their tops and waved pierced, sliced and cigarette burned breasts that could be his if he offered only so much as his attention. They loved him for his long blonde hair, his bare chest and his message of existential surrender. He could never love any of them.

“Least favored son of Morningstar
I slash my wrists with my guitar
And I’m becomin’ somethin’ worse than me…”

A smiling Japanese schoolgirl in the front row stuck a sharp tanto into her belly. Twisted it. The smile never left her as she bled out everything inside. He stopped singing, absorbed in the spectacle. He was not surprised, he was not impressed, he was envious. He wished he could give something like that. Perfect display of Zen nihilism. Mastery of elegant empty. He walked out, went to his van. He needed a hit.

Cried, but didn’t shoot up. The drugs didn’t work anymore.The cuts went away. When he used his groupies, they developed an eerie sense of contentment and well being, the cuts on their wrists vanished as his had and their eyes opened to life, while his desire was always to lead them to the clemency of death. He didn’t like this. The drugs didn’t work anymore. The cuts went away. He had been dreaming of angels with the heads of white rabbits.

He took a handful of pills, begged his body to surrender, didn’t want to die necessarily, not for good, just to be away from the things that were him. What he’d always wanted. He was, in a way, getting it. He closed his eyes, concentrated. Meditated on disappearing. Black. Blank. Enveloped. Empty. Hollow.

Thud.

Something banged against the van. He opened the door, stepped out to find a dead girl on the ground face down. In spite of her white hair, she looked like she was barely out of high school, perhaps even young enough to be a junior or senior. He rolled her over, hoping to get a good look at her face. He regretted that. The spark he tried so desperately to suppress filled him, felt tiny traces of life left in her, sought to fill her too. He begged it not to, but it wouldn’t listen.

End of section 1.

Keep your eyes on Ash Lomen's blog for section 2.

Will Work for Brains

Looking round, one can't deny
That brains are in quite short supply
First portioned unevenly
Then rotted out by MTV
And we shattered several tiny minds
When we left every child behind.

Where does that leave the living dead
When they seek out their daily bread?
The werewolf gives a mighty howl
Which could endear him to Simon Cowell
And vampires now pose no threat
But get the teenage girls all wet
But zombies have no way with words
Because they all lack vocal chords
And it's hard to look sexy and sulky and wan
When your face is mostly gone.

Back in the days of antiquity,
There was no threat of zombie ubiquity
And zombies needn't ever compete
Over whose head they would get to eat.
The shamblers now hit record highs
And whenever anybody dies
They join the ravening unemployed ranks
Chewing on heads that just shoot blanks.

Now what remains of these remains
Hold up their signs "Will Work for Brains"
With zombies in Jane Austen now
Zombie pigs and goats and cows
And thus zombie originality
Gets oft eclipsed by banality.

With hordes of hordes of things around
We keep our gazes to the ground
And we gotta let the genre rot
When zombie Austen's the best it's got
But remember back when zombie fun
Was an illicit thrill second to none?

Want healthy zombie's? Here's a tip
Feed the genre, help John Skipp!


Rose, the zombie puppet musical has 21 days left on Kickstarter! Feed the zombies!

Rose on Kickstarter