Doors to Dreams, Dreams to Nightmares

For some weird reason I am drawn to doors.

Especially old doors.

It started, I suppose, when I started a story cycle I haven’t shared a whole lot and which I am in the middle of writing. The stories deal with keys which people find that open certain doors. The doorways lead to different places, some places of dream, some of nightmare, always of danger. It’s one of those things where an idea struck me, an image of a warped, old door, and of a mysterious key. The conceit is far from unique, but my hope is that my approch is interesting adn fresh. Being that I am stuck on doors of late, I am drawn to strange, old, or interesting looking doors. Lucky for me, I live in a funky old building in downtown Flint that has had a LOT of strange and old doors in it. Alas, the doors are being thrown away now that the building is being cleaned out and cleaned up BUT I have been able to take a lot of fun pics. Here, dear friend, is the latest of the doors to be thrown away. Who knows who used, and where it once lived but, for me, it offered a mystery that needed only a key.

Or a camera.

…c…

As the dusky leaves do fall…

PS – I have no idea what the hell dusky leaves are but, dammit, it sounds all, you know, writerly.

Like it seems to make sense.

Sorta.

PPS – You shouldn’t begin the post with the end, but, you know, I just saved you from sitting through the credits. So, yeah, you’re welcome.

It has always been hard for me to put into words, writer though I am, the feeling I get when Halloween is approaching. It’s as if I am transported to childhood again and that giddiness is there all over again. The vague fear of darkness and the things that lurk beneath October leaves. I think that is a holiday that still refuses to be completely tamed. Sure, we have reigned it in, churches have tried to take the paganism out of it to make it a ‘harvest festival’ and we have done all we can to safe-guard the children but there is still a danger to the night. It is a holiday about death, about monsters, and about portraying someone (or thing) other than yourself. This is a holiday that is as much for adults as it is for kids and one that can be as tame as a painted face and a smiling pumpkin or as scar as a masked killer and a boobey-trapped room. The holiday is ready to be made and remade and daring you to do your best…or worst.

I remember walking the night with friends, the night full of laughter, of the heavy smell of burning leaves, and of the shadow of danger that always lurks that night. A hundred myths, a thousand memories. a million dares are all born this night where we taunt and conquer death and evil.

And yes, there IS death and there IS evil but they are there for us to master and overcome. Any night, any holiday can be used as a tool for vile deeds but this is a night that is there to own, there to take, and there to make of it what you will.

I remember that whatever the costume, as soon as I was out with friends, the weight of the candy I was toting the most real thing in the world, it was a sort of happiness that we rarely find in life. It was freedom that kids rarely feel. Close your eyes and you can feel the cool wind. Breathe deeply and you can smell the burning leaves. Listen and you can hear the cries of trick or treat.

Sure, I love a lot of holidays, oddball that I am, but Halloween is the one that is my true, first love. It speaks to me and says a lot about the person I am – a little dark on the outside, but chewy and gooey in the center.

Happy Haunting.

c

After Dusk Falls – story

After Dusk Falls

In the distance the trees looked like fading matches, their colors almost glowing in the dying light, and watching it, from a hundred doorways, were five hundred eyes. The children danced from foot to foot, anxiously awaiting the word from their parents that it was time for the night to begin and every minute they waited felt like a week. Wait the children did though as the adults held them back, their eyes on the horizon as the sun slipped away for another day. As soon as the sun was gone the adults looked to a small woman sitting in a wicker chair and with a nod to herself she lit the Jack-o-Lantern and the children were released into the street with a cheer.

As soon as the children were freed they pulled their masks down, grabbed their candy bags, and sought out their friends so they could start out for the houses. With the children gone most parents went about the work of gathering goodies warm and cold, some even finding costumes of their own to put on. There were some adults though who had other responsibilities on this night, and these people moved away in the darkness, their forms twisted in the dim light from the lit pumpkins, and went to the  watch towers to keep an eye on things outside. Inside though, inside it was Halloween, the first Halloween in fact since the world had changed, and that was all that mattered to the children, and that made the adults smile.

A nervous mother with ragged nails approached the woman in the wicker chair and spoke -
“Is this right? Should we do this?”

The woman, whose name no one had ever asked so they all just called her Missus, smiled and patted the mother on the hand.

“Yes, it is right. It has been a long time since these children have known any joy, and even longer since any of us have. We are safe here. When my husband, god rest him, and me found this place and started broadcasting it was a dream, a blind hope that people would find us but you did, you all did. We found each other. Now, this place, this life, this is not forever, this is only until we are ready to return to the world again but for now this is what we have, and it is time we learned how to live again. I know I won’t live long enough to see the world like it used to be but those children may and we gotta teach them about what was and not just about what is. Ya understand?”

The woman looked off into the darkness, to the sound of distant laughter that echoed off the cinder block walls of the former prison compound and forced a smile. The older woman nodded, patted her hand again, and then shooed her away, knowing she was anxious to see how her boy was. With the mother gone Missus looked off into the dark and saw shapes moving quickly from shack to shack, home to home, bodies twisted in the light of the Jack-o-Lanterns. They would be at it an hour, maybe a little more, gathering together as she and her friends had to discuss the night’s haul and how things had gone. Some may tell of seeing things hiding in the shadows while one or two may tell of a trick they played. Eventually they would all make their way to the mess hall where it was warm and cocoa was waiting for them. And each child would be counted and re-counted as the parents made sure everyone was accounted for and everyone was safe. It was small, but it was a start, and bit by bit they would start taking the old world back, at least that which was worth reclaiming. Her stomach soured at the thought of the war that had preceded the fall but she pushed the thought away and smiled as she heard “Trick or Treat!” in the distance. Tonight was the beginning, and then came November and Thanksgiving, and beyond that was a hope chest that was full to the brim. Out in the night though, further off than the cries of children, was another sound, and this sound chilled her and moved her from her warm thoughts and out of her chair. In the distance came the sound of a rifle firing.

Miller was frozen in place as heat rose in waves from the barrel of his rifle. Younce, a corporate head in another life, came up to his watch mate and clapped him on the back. ””’

“Nice shot. Took her right down. Christ that was close. I dunno who the hell left the back gate open but I am gonna radio it in and someone’s ass is toast. Right? Shit.”

Miller didn’t answer his companion, standing completely still as more of the dead made their way slowly towards the gate. The back gate was the weak link in the defense of the prison compound that had become a new home for so many families in this new world and while it was only one gate of several something would  have to get past, it was a mistake like this – someone leaving a gate open after coming back from a reconnaissance mission – that could get them all killed. Younce clapped Miller on the back again before walking over to secure the gate and its latch for a second time, correcting a mistake that he had made that afternoon when he’d snuck outside the compound to check on the marijuana he had growing nearby. This was close, too close, but pot was a valuable commodity since the war and the rise of the living dead and a man had to make a living. When he turned back around Miller was already heading back to town, their shift over and the people in the towers back on guard. Younce called to him but Miller heard nothing, only the echo of the report from the rifle and the dull sound that  had come from the girl’s head as it had split her face into two. It was the face though, the face of that poor, dead girl, that would haunt him until his own death.

Her name had been Angela and in the old world she had been a Kindergarten teacher; since the change though she had been a sort of one person welcome wagon to the compound. Miller and his wife were newlyweds when they had come here and Angela had been the first to know when he and his wife caught pregnant. If there was one person he came to love in that place that would never be home beside Missus it was Angela. She had disappeared one night after supper, heading off into the mountains with a man she had fallen in love with, the two of them anxious to be out on their own. Miller had seen her off and had locked the gate after they had left, cutting into the darkness and around the dead as they gathered outside. That was a month ago. And now he knew what had become of her.
Now he knew.

Halloween was winding down in town as the werewolves, vampires, fairies and spacemen made their ways slowly to the harvest party and expectant parents. Another night safe, another night where everyone was safe. He frowned then, as he caught sight of his wife, their daughter held close in her arms, a frown he had to quickly erase as he drew near. No, not all of them were safe that night, but no one need know that.
No one ever needed to know.
…c…

pictures of the memory of you

Having fun with a frame I found at work. The days are turning cold, and so are the thoughts. Can you smell the burning leaves too?

Little Mean Things – a Halloween story

Little Mean Things

It was a mistake. A monster. A thing that was not one of nature’s special creatures. It had no right to exist in a world of warm sunshine and cold science, of technology and dead gods but which existed despite all of that. In spite of it. It existed.

And it was theirs.

As the three boys stood over their prey the woods moaned, wood grinding on wood, branches joining hands, leaves whispering as a slight breeze stirred from the east. The three didn’t even notice, their quarry run down and bleeding before them, it’s arms reaching out towards the woods, towards its home, trying to crawl towards the safe darkness but one of the boys standing on it’s tail so it cannot move forward. It’s caught. The three boys, smiling silently now, the fat one out of breath, spread slowly out and surrounded the thing that lay on the grass before them and now there would be no escape. The short one, overweight and still breathing heavy, Karl, let out a loud guffawing laugh and approached the thing and kicked a leg out and caught it in its side. It let out a pitiful moan and pulled away, its arms pulling clumps of grass and dirt up as it moved but another kick halted its progress and it lay motionless as Karl moved back into place, still wheezing. The wind again, stronger this time. The thing lifted its head to feel it upon its face, its eyes, all five, closing as the cool spring wind runs across its flesh. Its mouths look as if they are smiling but then Victor, the oldest and tallest of the three moves forward and strikes it with a rusty golf club.

Something in the woods shrieked and Karl laughed again, this time not as loudly, but the smile still on his face.

A sneer on his face, Victor raises the club again and again, dropping it harder and harder onto the thing as the noises get quieter and quieter, the orange fluid coming from a gash in its head getting deeper and deeper. Victor stopped finally, chest heaving and breath coming in short bursts, reaching into his pocket for his inhaler as the monster let out a long, low sigh and brought all four arms around its thin pink frame to cover itself. All four arms, all three thin and wiry and covered in black veins, interwove themselves together so that when it was finished the thing was in a ball, more or less, its two stubby legs the only things that were still outside of the shell, but they were covered in thick scales that would be difficult to pierce without something very sharp. It was safe.

The first two boys looked to the darkness of the woods and from their shadows stepped the last of the three and youngest, Daryl, a blank look on his face as he moved out of the darker shadows, the scar that ran between his lip and nose almost glowing. A light rain began to fall and the wind picked up, howling through the thick trees and pushing Daryl’s long, stringy hair away from his face. It was hard to read his eyes and the other two boys stepped away from him, and the thing, as he approached it. As he was within feet of it his left hand slid out of his pocket and he knelt beside the thing. It was still now but if you listened closely you could hear it making a low mewling sound. Daryl reached his hand out and gently touched the sticky pink skin of the thing’s arm and left it there a moment before starting to slowly stroke it. As soon as he touched it the mewling stopped and the wind picked up slightly and the thing’s body tensed up for another attack but none came. Daryl changed nothing and kept stroking the thing’s skin with his left hand, the other still in his coat pocket. The rain began to fall harder on the four of them and on the woods.

They had found it here, in the O’Leary woods outside of town, just as they knew they would. It was always out here late at night, feeding in a small river that lay about a half mile into the woods and in an area where the boys had never known there even was a river. It would slip out of the darkness of the trees and splash around in the water until it caught something that to the boys looked like a spider, only one that lived underwater, and then it would place the meal into the middle of the three mouths and would climb quickly back into the trees again to be lost in the darkness. Victor’s brother had first seen it here just before winter, when he and their dad had been in the woods hunting. They had shot a doe and were tracking its blood trail but just when they thought they had finally tracked her down the blood disappeared into thin air. They spun around, searching every direction for a clue but found none. It had vanished. Then above them they heard the snap of a branch and looked up in time to see a small pink thing with many arms and short, powerful legs climbing high into the tree they stood beneath, the doe held tightly by its throat in one of its hands. A few drops of blood fell onto the two men’s up-turned faces but in another moment both were lost in the tree. Neither had spoken of what they had seen as they made their way back to the truck and neither had said another word of it to anyone until Victor’s brother had come home drunk not a month ago and had told Victor all about what he and his father had seen and how he still saw the thing whenever he went to sleep. Slightly more than curious, Victor and his friends had then begun staking out the woods where they approximated Victor’s brother and dad had been and within a week they had seen it, fishing alone late at night. They had no idea what it was and not once did they set to words any theories. All they knew was that it shouldn’t be there. It had no right to exist. And they were going to kill it. God only knew what something like that thing could do to a man, or worse, a child, if it turned its mind to such a thing. So they waited and waited and waited this night, all three of them standing silently in the spreading darkness for three hours before it showed itself and then waiting another hour before they began to close in on it. And now…

Daryl stroked the thing’s skin and slowly, so so slowly, the thing’s arms loosened inch by inch, and still the boy stroked its skin. As it loosened its arms Victor and Karl moved closer, slowly, moving as slowly and quietly as they could so as not to disturb what Daryl was doing. And after ten minutes, the thing’s arms pulled away and folded back to its sides and Daryl rolled the thing over so it faced him, doing this one-handed and very gently. It was a hideous thing. Its face all eyes and mouths, five of the former and three of the latter, and all of them open wide. Daryl smiled then down at the thing and brought his hand up to its face and at first it flinched but then as he stroked its sticky skin its eyes closed to slits and its one of its own arms raised to touch Daryl. Just as its hand was about to make contact with Daryl’s skin though Daryl pulled his right hand free and in it was a dull butter knife which he brought down and buried in one of the thing’s eyes. It let out a shriek that pierced the ears of the boys but it didn’t halt Daryl, who pulled the knife out and plunged it again and again into the thing’s face, even as it flailed against him weakly with its arms. Two of the arms shot up and wrapped around Daryl’s throat and his eyes bugged out as the breath was strangled from his body and the world began to go black. Victor and Karl ran forward and kicked the thing, now blind and bleeding profusely, in its head and when it released Daryl they stood on its arms and kept it pinned as Daryl went back to his work, forcing the knife deeply into the creature’s body then tearing it out, its cries getting quieter and quieter with each successive blow until finally it was silent and the only sound was that of Daryl’s grunting and the steadily increasing wind. And finally it was done.

It was done.

Daryl looked down at the pitiful beast, its body shredded, nothing more than pulp now, and then he stood up, dropping the knife as he did. Victor smiled broadly and punched Daryl in the arm but the smile died on Victor’s lips as he saw the other boy’s face and its grim demeanor. Daryl turned then and began the long walk back to their homes, knowing that they’d all be in trouble when their folks found out they had been out this late on a school night. In a moment Daryl was lost in the darkness. Karl and Victor looked at each other and then into the darkness of the woods and as something moved behind the veil of trees they turned and ran as fast as they could to catch up with Daryl and to get away from this place. The wind became a gale and the rain pounded the earth, soaking it and washing the creature’s blood back into the earth. Something dark reached its long black arms out from the gloom of the woods and took hold of the thing and pulled it back into the embrace of the trees and suddenly the wind died and the rain ended and it was over.

But up in the darkest places of the trees something awoke and moved towards the world of Man.

…c…

The world through a prism

These are just some random photos I have taken recently. Not great, high art, but fun stuff that I edited down to focus on the images. I am still learning, with each photo I take, but the stories are there, waiting to be captured. I just have to learn to capture them in the best ways I am able.