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.