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DARK WINDOWS #24 - Aug. 15, 2008 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO Our local news threw a funny new expression out there this week: Olympic Hangover. I don't know if they invented it, or if it has just bubbled to the top of the press cauldron. But it's the perfect description for people who stay up late staring at the Olympics, and then can't function at work the next day. Sleep deprivation can be seriously debilitating. I only got maybe 3 hours of sleep last night for a variety of reasons (not related to the Olympics), and it messes with my guts, my balance, and I stagger around with a crushing sort of non-headache. It's hard to explain, but I think we all know that feeling. Comically, my wife has to get up at 4am to drive someone to the airport, but we had to stay up to watch Phelps win that 8th gold medal, which wasn't on until after 10:30pm. Yeah, it has that effect on people. Another Olympic zombie created! And eBay sales have been way down. It's weird for any event to have such a global reach. Not even a hurricane headed for Florida can make a splash in the medal race. = scott ===================> POEM Splash Pollenation --- I walk through the puddle, the next slosh-steps remind, I crane back to view the footprints. Looking closely, the initial wetness, A harsh and stagnant thing, My children the same but smaller, Just as alive. I wonder which child will become the most mature, which of them the most unruly, which the playful. 12 children staggering, the broken sidewalk line, Each is a well-seeded chaos of growth, Each a small universe. I wet my feet and make a fresh batch, watch the children play. --- = 9/87, unpublished ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) The herring fishing being very backward, some of the fishermen of Buckie, on Wenesday last, dressed a cooper in a flannel shirt, with burs stuck all over it, and in this condition he was carried in procession through the town in a hand-barrow. This was done to 'bring better luck' to the fishing. It happened, too, in a village where there are no fewer than nine churches and chapels of various kinds, and thirteen schools. [1] The peasants of Western Ireland will not eat skate, however plentiful that fish may be and however famished themselves are. It has been suggested that this superstition, for such it may be deemed, arises from the resemblance which the fish, with its depending rays, bears to the human face, and possibly to mediaeval representation of the Virgin Mary. Is the repugnance to be otherwise accounted for? [2] A badger's tooth sewn within the waistcoat brings luck at cards. [3] 1. The Angler's Note-book and Naturalist's Record (Jan 1, 1880), p.9; Quoting the Banff Journal, 1855 2. same, p.9 3. same, p.10, quoting an old book of useful things, 1784 ===================> STORY The Twist (part 2 of 2) by Scott Virtes --- "Is this life?" asked the Twist, getting back to his studies without any introduction. "Ya Knockin it?" snapped someone, earning the name of Rapper as he struck a metal bar repeatedly into the palm of his hand. "Knocking? If that means studying, then yes." The men were confounded and apprehensive, their eyes unfocused, their voices garbled and rude. Hailer handed a can to the Twist, who stared at it from a variety of angles before handing it back. Hailer laughed and pulled on the can, evoking from it a sizzling sound and a smell like the cloy of overripe, rotting fruit. This he handed back to the Twist, which looked at it cautiously. "Yud think e never seen a beer before," laughed Rapper. "What is the use of sealing up bad odors in small cans?" asked the Twist, setting the can down nearby. Shouter staggered to his feet. "Yo, buddy. It's all we got. If it ain good enuf fer ya, juss hand it back. Juss don't get too big fer yer coat." "I do not understand you. I only came here to ask about life." "Yer gonna learn about death first if ya don't fuckin shape up," someone snapped back. "Shape up? I am afraid that I do not speak your language very well. What do you mean?" Shouter approached the Twist, snarling. "Listen here, dick-fer-brains ... we've taken enuffa yer shit!" And Shouter tried to grab the front ot the Twist's overcoat. His hands pressed only into air, throwing him off balance, stumbling him through the Twist and against the wall. The room fell silent. A late evening blue filtered in amongst them, saw their fear, and departed. Now there was only darkness. A light rain was now scratching feebly at the windows; a car slished past outside and below, its tiresounds fading through Doppler to a different tone, then rounding a bend into silence. Cigarette butts ashed and flaked away before the silence was broken. Shouter shuffled to his feet and retreated from the thing he had touched. Hailer sat heavily on a chair, crushing a stack of papers that occupied it. It was Shouter who spoke. "You're the Grim Reaper, aren'tcha? I could FEEL it." His voice was a scared whisper. The Twist understood this and replied, "The name sounds familiar, but I do not call it my own. I ask explanation." "You came here as a sign. One of us will die, and you will take his soul with you when you depart." Much of the colloquialism in the man's voice had melted away in the heat of his fright. Someone returned, "Come off it, man. The Reaper's a hooded thing with a sickle, NOT some hoodlum from the roaring twenties." Shouter turned upon him. "Yeah sure. I just put my hand through the fuck! Explain that!" Silence. "I am not interested in death," stated the Twist indifferently. "I only wish to hear tell of life. I want to make myself alive." "Huh. Don't know what to tell you then, buddy,: Shouter admitted without relaxing. "Life is all we got, and it sucks. Then you die. There're drugs to speed it up and drugs to slow it down, but everyone dies anyway." "What is death then?" asked the Twist, tightening the air around them all. Someone coughed. "Death is the end. Nothing. Darkness. Nobody knows, really, cuz dead people don't talk much." "I came from a place that was black and fluid, heat and colors that were thoughts or souls. Was this death? What am I?" "The Reaper," Shouter confirmed. "Who's gonna die?" "All of you, eventually, like you said. There's no sense testing me. I HAVE been listening to you." The Twist's voice was losing its power, gaining reverberance, and he could feel the Pull of Return, which told him that his visit was coming to an end. It was inescapable: he would be twisted back to that place from whence he came. "As you can hear, I am getting weak. I must depart now. Thank you for your words." The Twist turned to leave, and there was no resistance. Outside, the sidewalk was beginning to fade, but the Twist followed it anyway. It turned a corner and trailed off into a direction that no human could follow; but it was here that he met the librarian. "I think I'm having a heart attack," said the old woman, clutching her chest. She tried to get back to the library, but kept drifting further away. "Didn't you see him when you left?" asked the store girl, with slashes in her face. She spun down the walk, crying blood. "Buncha fuckin Doritos," complained Cougher, holding his throat as he fell past the Twist. "What a way to go .... it ain't FAIR ..." Of course, none of this made any sense to the Twist. Alone, it shrugged and took the last, directionless turn into oblivion. --- = Written 12/04/85, Published in NOT ONE OF US #1 (9/86). Also published in my collection "Year of the Twist" (2001), and on Alexandria Digital Literature (2/99). Note: this was my first published story! Wow, 22 years ago next month. ===================> NOW AVAILABLE: Dark Windows #1-10 PDF Edition The first 10 issues, now available in a handy PDF file with some weird illustrations. Just $3. If you're interested just email me at writer@scvs.com. ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) Stupid Jingle dreams --- While not technically a dream, I have to comment on the phenomenon of waking up with wacky, random bits of music in my head. Probably related to forgotten dream content in some way. I don't mind so much if it's a good song. I can even stomach the annoying songs, even though they can be a bear to get out of my head. But I have to wonder what kind of dream I was having where I wake up with "There may be bugs on some of you mugs, but there ain't no bugs on me." That's the theme to some flea control product -- I don't even know which one! This morning it was "Crossroads" by Eric Clapton, which was a nice change of pace. But sometimes they're downright bad, like the jingles from that FreeCreditReport ad (which isn't actually free!), or something from some girl band, or a Nirvana song where I don't know any words, only the grind of the guitar, so I walk around the house going "Rrrr rr RRRR rr, Rrrr rr RRRR rr." And you can't always banish the bad songs with good ones, either. That's how I discovered that the theme from the Simpsons and the James Bond theme are in the same key, and meld together into a sickening sort of comic excitement. I have a fair amount of success using Talking Heads songs to banish unwanted head-music, but then I have Talking Heads songs ... but heck, at least I know all the words. Same as it EVER was. (Look where my hand was.) ===================> MY NEWS: No new sales. Really an odd stretch of emptiness. Haven't been feeling well, haven't been sending out as many submissions as I should be. And by the time I get to my "writing time" (after 10pm) each night, I usually have a headache. A bit of a drag. I'm a judge for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's 2008 poetry contest: http://sfpoetry.com NO entry fee, but it's only open until Aug 31. Almost 200 submissions so far. The anthologies I'm editing are rolling along. With this issue of Dark Windows, I've just about hit the 50,000 word mark ... ===================> POEM Thunderhand --- A thunderhead the shape of a hand wandered through Iowa, it clutched the attention of the media. Stares turned hearts to ice, lightning sputtered like veins from its wrist harsh bolts scoured the land. Doomsayers grew from sensible folks the church cried for recruits the paranoid demanded the truth. The weather bureau was entertained tornado chasers moved, announcers bit their nails. The fingers were just contours of air, they said, the storm would soon fizzle out ... But the public spat at their windows, called the weathermen fools ... The fingers retracted, as predicted, the crows almost fell still, but a preacher called the new shape a fist, and blame came out again. When the storm finally passed there was a wake of ruin all caused by men -- a human storm -- which showed no signs of abating. --- = Written 9/87, unpublished ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) The noise continued, and a diamond pane of glass fell into the room. Then a long bony finger of the creature came in and turned the handle of the window, and the window opened, and the creature came in; and it came across the room, and her terror was so great that she could not scream, and it came up to the bed, and it twisted its long, bony fingers into her hair, and it dragged her head over the side of the bed, and -- it bit her violently in the throat. [1] The creature was already scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way, scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct. [2] The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the floor. One coffin alone remained intact. [3] 1,2,3. Augustus Hare, "The Vampire of Croglin Grange" (short story) ===================> POEM nighted --- Can't sleep for the burning repression so many struggle to be one no telling what sides I'm playing wasting time in this dim-lit place of the bed creak silence and water pipes sounds like rats fucking in the walls sher loves me, she loves me not. --- = Written 9/87, unpublished ===================> ABOUT THE AUTHOR Scott Virtes has had over 400 stories & poems published since 1986. Look for them in Analog, Space & Time, Ideomancer, Dreams & Nightmares, Cafe Irreal, Planet, and more ... My Home page: http://tales.scvs.com?inw=dkw Notice: Odd Clips and Story Bites all come from original sources in the public domain, or are brief clips in the spirit of fair use (a.k.a. free advertising for the source). All other sections of this newsletter are copyright (c)2008 Scott Virtes. All rights reserved. Please don't grab chunks of my work and post them all over the place. If you ask permission, you'll find that I'm pretty easygoing. ;-) ===== this issue: 2,130 words cumulative: 49,980 words |
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