Part 4: Jeffrey's Reincarnation Courtesy of GCG

Back when Jeffrey Scooter had fallen on hard times—“was a junkie,” Sharla Scooter would say—he would sit at the outdoor tables at the Vermont Avenue Starbucks, smoking cigarettes and staring at the passerby. I’m smarter than all of you, he would think as he sat, running black fingernails through stringy, unwashed hair. Every ten people or so, he’d choose one to kill and envision eviscerating them with whatever was convenient: for example, he’d pick the chubby woman in those ridiculous shorts that read “Hot Mama” across her sagging ass, and mentally impale her with the nearest Starbucks umbrella.

Six months later he was scooped up by the Global Conglomerate Group, cleaned up and put to work because, in fact, he was smarter than all those imaginary victims. Jeffrey’s mother Sharla, an truculent Amazon of a woman who stood over six feet tall, liked to say that she knew Jeffrey was different from the moment he “emerged” because “he was the ugliest baby I’d ever laid eyes on”. Sharla was a bully, but Jeffrey’s baby pictures supported her observation: unusually pale with tiny, piggish eyes and a fine coat of black hair covering his body (that, to Jeffrey’s credit, fell off days after his birth), most agreed that he was, in fact, the ugliest baby they’d ever laid eyes on. Still, from the start Jeffrey was clearly a gifted boy and, at the age of ten, Sharla had his IQ tested. Finding out Jeffrey had an IQ of 145, Sharla embarked on a campaign to put Jeffrey in an advanced learning track and simultaneously make sure “that tiny head of his doesn’t get too big”. The campaign resulted in a full scholarship to MIT and an accompanying Oxycodone addiction.

Jeffrey was able to keep his problem under wraps throughout his undergraduate education, but it swallowed him whole as he attempted to get his doctorate and, two years after graduating from MIT, he was helplessly lost in the belly of his addiction. Sharla shut him out of her life immediately, quoting in a singsong-y voice the mantra she’d heard at the Al-Anon meeting, “The three Cs! Didn’t cause, can’t control, can’t cure! Look for your handouts somewhere else, junkie!”

He hitch-hiked out to Los Angeles in search of a generous uncle who lived in Malibu and got stuck in Hollywood, where he comfortably outfitted himself with a dealer and a shitty room in a cockroach-filled hotel, never making it across town. He was about to snort his last crushed-up OxyContin—how he cherished feeling the pill break beneath the drinking glass as he brought it down again and again—when Marcus and Rick kicked in his hotel door. He stared at them stupidly for a moment, and then they lifted him up by the armpits and dragged him out to the car. He struggled and screamed—they’d taken him before he’d gotten a chance to do the line.

Part 3: Testing In Bennington

December 23rd, 1949


The snow was coming down thick and wet, and Marcy could hear the windshield wipers struggling with the weight of it. She was sitting in the third row back from the front of the bus, her Christmas presents perfectly wrapped and stuffed tightly in an unromantic sack wedged between her knees. It hovered above the floor, which was slick and muddy from the wintry detritus.


Initially there were only a few other people on the bus, but by the Rutland stop there were at least a dozen. Marcy had boarded at St. Albans with a clean-shaven man in his early thirties. They had been cordial as they waited for the bus, him sucking on a cigarette and her fussing with her holiday satchel. They had been making small talk, discovering they were both headed to Bennington, when the bus pulled up and, with a curt nod, Marcy lugged herself up the steps.
She looked over at the man now. He was sleeping, his head resting against the frosted window. Bunching up her scarf, she formed a makeshift pillow and closed her eyes. She had an anxiety dream: waking in her father’s office, no idea how she had gotten there, she began walking home only to realize she was completely naked. The rest of the dream involved intricate pathways between cubicles, avoiding staff and attempting to cloak herself in items that seemed to shrink once she grabbed a hold of them.


Marcy jolted awake in time to see Bennington’s old welcome sign coming up alongside her on the left. Gathering her things as excitement began to rise in her throat, she offhandedly looked toward her St. Albans companion’s seat. The man was obscured somehow and, for a split second, she thought she saw his face before the image clouded again. Crediting the mirage with her waking state, Marcy tried rubbing the sleep from her eyes before looking again and realizing that the man was gone entirely. Perhaps he got off at an earlier stop after all that? She mused, not really caring.


Her eyes lingered over the place the man had been, noticing something off before realizing that all of his bags remained in the abandoned seat.


***


The story didn’t appear till a few days after Christmas, when the reports had been filed. The hair on Marcy’s arms raised as she stared at the paper:


BENNINGTON, VT-A gentleman living in the Soldier’s Home in Bennington disappeared on a bus traveling from St. Albans to Bennington. The fourteen other passengers all said that the man, James Tetford, was sleeping in his seat. When the bus arrived in Bennington, Tetford’s luggage and bus timetable were still on board, but Tetford was nowhere in sight. Police continue to investigate Mr. Tetford’s disappearance as a missing person’s case and anyone with knowledge of the incident or Mr. Tetford’s whereabouts should call the Bennington Police Station at…


Marcy’s hands shook as she raised her coffee cup to her mouth. She would be boarding the bus back to St. Albans this afternoon. She wasn’t afraid of the trip, per se, but instead of that last hazy glance of the man’s face before it slipped away.

Part 2: Weick Sheds Light on Why Sharon Opened the Door

" THE INCIDENT

As Maclean puts it, at its heart, the Mann Gulch disaster is a story of a race. The smokejumpers in the race (excluding foreman "Wag" Wagner Dodge and ranger Jim Harrison) were ages 17-28, unmarried, seven of them were forestry students, and 12 of them had seen military service. They were a highly select group and often described themselves as professional adventurers.

A lightning storm passed over the Mann Gulch area at 4PM on August 4, 1949 and is believed to have set a small fire in a dead tree. The next day, August 5, 1949, the temperature was 97 degrees and the fire danger rating was 74 out of a possible 100, which means "explosive potential". When the fire was spotted by a forest ranger, the smokejumpers were dispatched to fight it. Sixteen of them flew out of Missoula, Montana at 2:30PM in a C-47 transport. Wind conditions that day were turbulent, and one smokejumper got sick on the airplane, didn't jump, returned to the base with the plane, and resigned from the smokejumpers as soon as he landed ("his repressions had caught up with him,"). The smokejumpers and their cargo were dropped on the south side of Mann Gulch at 4:10PM from 2000 feet rather than the normal 1200 feet, due to the turbulence. The parachute that was connected to their radio failed to open, and the radio was pulverized when it hit the ground. The crew met ranger Jim Harrison who had been fighting the fire alone for four hours, collected their supplies, and ate supper.

About 5:10 they started to move along the south side of the gulch to surround the fire. Dodge and Harrison, however, having scouted ahead, were worried that the thick forest near which they had landed might be a "death trap". They told the second in command, William Hellman, to take the crew across to the north side of the gulch and march them toward the river along the side of the hill. While Hellman did this, Dodge and Harrison ate a quick meal. Dodge rejoined the crew at 5:40PM and took his position at the head of the line moving toward the river. He could see flames flapping back and forth on the south slope as he looked to his left. At this point the reader hits the most chilling sentence in the entire book: "Then Dodge saw it!".

What he saw was that the fire had crossed the gulch just 200 yards ahead and was moving toward them. Dodge turned the crew around and had them angle up the 76-percent hill toward the ridge at the top. They were soon moving through bunch grass that was two and a half feet tall and were quickly losing ground to the 30-foot-high flames that were soon moving toward them at 610 feet per minute. Dodge yelled at the crew to drop their tools, and then, to everyone's astonishment, he lit a fire in front of them and ordered them to lie down in the area it had burned. No one did, and they all ran for the ridge. Two people, Sallee and Rumsey, made it through a crevice in the ridge unburned, Hellman made it over the ridge burned horribly and died at noon the next day, Dodge lived by lying down in the ashes of his escape fire, and one other person, Joseph Sylvia, lived for a short while and then died. The hands on Harrison's watch melted at 5:56, which has been treated officially as the time the 13 people died.

PANIC IN MANN GULCH

With these observations as background, we can now look more closely at the process of a cosmology episode, an interlude in which the orderliness of the universe is called into question because both understanding and procedures for sensemaking collapse together. People stop thinking and panic. What is interesting about this collapse is that it was discussed by Freud (1959: 28) in the context of panic in military groups: "A panic arises if a group of that kind |military group~ becomes disintegrated. Its characteristics are that none of the orders given by superiors are any longer listened to, and that each individual is only solicitous on his own account, and without any consideration for the rest. The mutual ties have ceased to exist, and a gigantic and senseless fear is set free." Unlike earlier formulations, such as McDougall's (1920), which had argued that panic leads to group disintegration, Freud, reversing this causality, argued that group disintegration precipitates panic.

By group disintegration, Freud meant "the cessation of all the feelings of consideration which the members of the group otherwise show one another". He described the mechanism involved this way: "If an individual in panic fear begins to be solicitous only on his own account, he bears witness in so doing to the fact that the emotional ties, which have hitherto made the danger seem small to him, have ceased to exist. Now that he is by himself in facing the danger, he may surely think it greater." It is certainly true in Mann Gulch that there is a real, palpable danger that can be seen, felt, heard, and smelled by the smokejumpers. But this is not the first time they have confronted danger. It may, however, be the first time they have confronted danger as a member of a disintegrating organization.

As the crew moved toward the river and became more spread out, individuals were isolated and left without explanations or emotional support for their reactions. As the ties weakened, the sense of danger increased, and the means to cope became more primitive. The world rapidly shifted from a cosmos to chaos as it became emptied of order and rationality."

- portions of Karl E. Weick's book Making Sense of the Organization

Part 1: Goodbye Locks

Ok so I'm back on the wagon this time, I swear. I've decided the multi-entry stories are what I'm into and I love horror so we're back on that train.


***

Sharon lay awake in bed certain she heard a cockroach. The terrible creatures had been the bane of her existence since moving into this house nearly one year ago—the old Craftsman had been infested long before she lugged her boxes up the front steps. As the day of her departure approached, she’d become increasingly paranoid about the bugs, waking from arthropod-filled nightmares, choking back screams. Now, between Mark’s snores, she listened for their scurrying.


As Sharon shifted her position, Mark, half-asleep, asked, “You locked our door, right?” She had, and tension rippled through her body at the thought of going to check, and, in turn, possibly stepping on a roach. Still, something compelled her and, switching on the bedside lamp, she hopped out of bed and padded towards the front door, flipping switches and lighting her path as she went.


Even without her glasses and with the bright light in the foyer, the locks looked not-quite-right, almost translucent. They continued to fade as she approached until, as Sharon reached the front door, there were no locks at all—the chain and the bolt had disappeared completely. It looked as though someone had sanded or sliced them clean off the door.


Sharon held her breath. It was still dark and she could hear rough, bloody sounds outside but an inner voice whispered mockingly There are no locks anymore—you’re basically outside already. Open the door. She heard Mark turn over in bed, oblivious and vulnerable. Sharon was terrified. Staring at where the locks had been she yelled to Mark, “The locks are gone.”

“What?” he sounded drousy and Sharon was jealous. Maybe if she just went back to bed, she could go back to worrying about the cockroaches, falling asleep soon after, and the locks would have grown back in the passing hours? The miracle of their reappearance struck her as ridiculous despite having watched them vanish without an explanation moments before. She heard Mark get out of bed and walk towards her. Impulsively, she twisted the knob and opened the door. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t.

Maintenance

It's been nearly a week with no posts! Three job interviews and a hectic week...

Next up is another story, genre undetermined.

Crying in Public: WHY

Since my east coast visit, my blogging has been more sporadic, mostly because of my frantic job search. Employers, if you’re out there, GIVE ME A JOB. Yesterday I spent the better half of the day trying to “put a face to the resume” at one of the University job’s I applied to. It didn’t go well: without an appointment, I was treated like a security risk. Live and learn!

On vacation, I began reading Dan Ariely’s book The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. An Israeli behavioral economist and professor at Duke, much of what Ariely talks about touches on the issues I studied in organizational theory as part of my Economics major. Most importantly, both behavioral economics and organizational theory dismiss the assumption of traditional economics that all people behave rationally.

Ariely is a burn victim—as a youth, an accidental magnesium flare inflicted third degree burns on over 70 percent of his body. In one of his passages, he described an experience that bore a striking resemblance to one of my own:

“During one session at a conference in Florida, three colleagues and I were going to present our recent work on adaptation, the process through which people become accustomed to new circumstances…I had carried out some studies in this area, but instead of talking about my research findings, I planned to give a fifteen-minute talk about my personal experience in adapting to my physical injuries and present some of the lessons I had learned. I practiced this talk a few times, so I knew what I was going to say. Aside from the fact that the topic was more personal than usual in an academic presentation, I did not feel that the talk was that much different form others I have given over the years. As it turned out, the plan did not match the reality in the slightest.

I started the lecture very calmly by describing my talk’s objective, but, to my horror, the moment I started describing my experience in the hospital, I teared up. Then I found myself unable to speak. Avoiding eye contact with the audience, I tried to compose myself as I walked from one side of the room to the other for a minute or so. I tried again but I could not talk. After some more pacing and another attempt to talk, I was still unable to talk without crying.

I was clear to me that the presence of the audience had amplified my emotional memory. So I decided to switch to an impersonal discussion of my research. That approach worked fine, and I finished my presentation. But it left me with a very strong impression about my own inability to predict the effects of my own emotions, when combined with stress, on my ability to perform.”

In a freewrite piece called The Night My House Burned Down (spoiler alert: it’s a downer), I wrote about the shock of getting extremely emotional after reading a story about the house fire:

“The first time that I lost control of my emotions when talking about the fire was not until two years afterwards, when I chose to read a short story I’d written aloud in class. I had woken up early to write it, behind on my schoolwork as always, and decided to write about walking through my house after the fire. I thought I was being clever: what teacher would give anyone less than an A when they’re talking about their house burning down? One of my friends told me that for the essay section of the SAT, he’d written a [made-up] story about his mom getting cancer and credited his high score to the sympathy of the readers. This was my strategy-- manipulating my teacher into giving me a grade that I didn’t feel I deserved. I felt so confident as I began to read in class, proud of the inevitable regard my classmates would hold me in after learning I’d gone through such a poignant event. Imagine my surprise as my voice began to falter half-way through the reading and my hands shook uncontrollably as I put down the paper. Never mind the absolute stupor and embarrassment at my reaction to my professor saying tentatively, “This was obviously upsetting for you...” I began to respond, “Well, it’s obviously shocking when you see your house burning down...” and absolutely collapsed, losing control and crying hysterically, almost hyperventilating before excusing myself and weeping in the bathroom for the remainder of the class. I had accidentally gone too deep, not thinking when I sleepily wrote lines like, “some of the pictures were still on the wall, water-logged and distorted by crusading hoses, but some lay shattered on the floor, choosing to go down with the ship”. I had tapped my emotional reserves which pooled unseen and undisturbed in my subconscious.”

I chalked it up to “going too deep”, but Ariely’s passage gave me a strange comfort, normalizing the experience: the audience (my classmates) had amplified my emotional memory. At the same time, the act of talking about—announcing, even—these emotionally poignant moments is like exposing them to the air—breathing life into them and forcing us to realize just how devastating these events were.

I’ll end this post with Ariely’s thoughts on blogging and the reasons behind it. In a passage called “Blogging for Treats” he writes:

“Now think about blogging. The number of blog out there is astounding, and it seems that almost everyone has a blog or is thinking about starting one. Why are blogs so popular? Not only is it because so many people have the desire to write; after all, people wrote before blogs were invented. It is also because blog have two features that distinguish them from other forms of writing. First, they provide the hope or the illusion that someone will read one’s writing. After all, the moment a blogger presses the “publish” button, the blog can be consumed by anybody in the world, and with so many people connected, somebody, or at least a few people, should stumble upon the blog. Indeed, the “number of views” statistic is a highly motivating feature in the blogosphere because it lets the blogger known exactly how many people have at least seen the posting. Blogs also provide readers with the ability to leave their reactions and comments—gratifying for both the blogger, who now has a verifiable audience, and the reader-cum-writer (editor's note: I LOVE COMMENTS). Most blogs have very low readership—perhaps only the blogger’s mother or best friend reads them—but even writing for one person, compared to writing for nobody, seems to be enough to compel millions to blog."

Thoughts on Business...

Last summer, I met a newly graduated Celebrant. The mother of my friend B, she told me all about the Celebrant Foundation and Institute and I was struck—celebrancy seemed an ideal option for me. Celebrants are non-religious “ceremony officiants”—we study the history of rituals and their place in our lives to facilitate us in ceremony building. Doing events like weddings, funerals, divorce ceremonies, and downsizing ceremonies, the celebrant works closely with the participants in order to build a significant and personalized ceremony for the occasion.


I decided to “major” in funerals. Some might call it morbid, but I was drawn to the rituals surrounding death much more than weddings and child namings. Attending online classes from October to April, I’ve finally received my celebrant certification and am ready to start. The business sense of celebrancy is difficult—you’re essentially starting your own enterprise.


After putting a lot of thought into it, I decided to do animal funerals instead of human funerals. I came to this conclusion after realizing that I—and thus the general public—would prefer to have an older (i.e. more experienced) person officiating a loved one’s funeral, among other things. Further, I think Los Angeles is the perfect place to start a doggie funeral home.


At this point, it’s about building a website and contacting people—is it too dark to talk to doggie day care places? Dog walkers? Veterinarians? I’ll end with the poem I gave to my friend C after the death of a loved furry one—it resonates with me as a dog owner and serves to inspire my fatalistic entrepreneurial spirit.


Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Colonial Life and Bridey Murphy Reborn

Just returned from a blissful east coast vacation full of family, friends and the humidity I miss so much out here in the desert. We ended our days in Newport, RI—one of the original colonies boasting the oldest Independence Day parade. Sitting in the library now—absorbing knowledge via osmosis?—I have two sandy shells in my purse and a copy of Hypnosis Quarterly, Vol. XXII No. 4 from 1979.

A steal at $.50, the tagline of Hypnosis Quarterly reads “The Illustrated Journal of Hypnotism in All its Phases”. This issue looks at the “Bridey Murphy farce” from the fifties, specifically “dissecting [it]…employing logic and the facts of hypnosis and psychology as the instruments of dismemberment.” This is the wikied story:

“In 1952, Colorado businessman and amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein put housewife Virginia Tighe of Pueblo, Colorado in a trance that sparked off startling revelations about Tighe's alleged past life as a 19th-century Irishwoman and her rebirth in the United States 59 years later. Bernstein used a technique called hypnotic regression, during which the subject is gradually taken back to childhood. He then attempted to take Virginia one step further, before birth, and suddenly was astonished to find he was listening to Bridey Murphy.

Her tale began in 1806 when Bridey was eight years old and living in a house in Cork. She was the daughter of Duncan Murphy, a barrister, and his wife Kathleen. At the age of 17 she married lawyer Sean Brian McCarthy and moved to Belfast. Bridey told of a fall that caused her death and of watching her own funeral, describing her tombstone and the state of being in life after death. It was, she recalled, a feeling of neither pain nor happiness. Somehow, she was reborn in America, although Bridey was not clear how this event happened. Virginia Tighe herself was born in the Midwest in 1923, had never been to Ireland, and did not speak with even the slightest hint of an Irish accent.”

This case was particularly offensive to the Hypnosis Quarterly editors, who take issue with “the basic problem involved”, which they call “the desire of people to know about death”: “The tragedy of the Bridey Murphy farce is that it gives hope based on ignorance, wishful thinking and misinformation rather than knowledge and fact”.

Other articles in Hypnosis go on to list the inaccuracies of the Bridey story. Printed on the front of magazine is the dedication to “the Advancement of Ethical Hypnosis”, and the feel of the publication is very academic—these are doctors wanting to divorce hypnosis from the unprofessional associations of reincarnation and the afterlife. While I understood their motivations, as I flipped through the magazine on the rocky beaches of Rhode Island, I couldn’t help but disapprove of their desire to shut it all down.

Perhaps it was a lingering colonial spirit, but I like the idea of a remaining corner of mystery in the world, especially in these oil-seeped recession days. My romanticized (read: disease and hunger free) version of colonial life on the island, when everything was new and the universe seemed endless, is as irresistible as the urge to believe a mid-western woman spontaneously connected with the Irish ghost of her previous life.

PostScript

Now that the story has ended, I wanted to follow up with some of my thoughts on the story and “the process”. Basically, what’s up here is a first draft. There are a few kinks I want to work out namely:


• Developing Lennie’s character more


• Figuring out a more realistic way for Dexir to be distributed (for example, it would need to go through the FDA and whomever else before they would just mass distribute) and describe how that would happen. I would probably need to do a little research for this.


• Describing the nature of the beast in more detail—I wanted the “afflicted” to be indistinguishable during the day (I think this is scarier); more scenes showing how this plays out


• Clarify what exactly happened to Lennie: unbeknownst to the reader until Lennie’s demise, the “afflicted” not only seem normal during the day but retain daytime memories after nightfall. Michael had ingested some Dexir before meeting Lennie, but it hadn’t taken effect until the third day. Presumably, he went to go find something (food, supplies, etc.) and went too far, choosing somewhere else to rest for the night. Then, he reanimated but was not mindless—he remembered that Lennie was around and probably returned to the barn to kill her. Not finding her there, he went to her house.


• Give Lennie a nicer death, or at least close the story with a nice memory of hers—the one I was considering was of her riding on the Coney Island Cyclone on a teenage first date


It’s a work in progress!

The End of Lennie

Three days later, Lennie was back at her house. Her stay with Michael had been relatively uneventful. The first night, they’d slept in separate rooms with the doors locked, paying tribute to the mantra that swept through the country in its death throws: “total isolation in a secure setting”. The next night, they drank half of the Jack Daniels handle Michael had taken from McCrary’s and ended up passing out in the living room.

A good fifteen years younger, Michael was passably handsome and good company—at this point, Lennie had mused, even a Labrador retriever would have been good company—but neither of them had felt up to the task of any sort of sexual entanglement. Lennie had always found that frenzied post-apocalyptic fucking ridiculous—the Medieval orgies behind gated walls while the bubonic plague raged outside; the silver screen strangers desperately smashing their bodies together while zombies broke down the front door. For her, sex was about focus and all she saw when she closed her eyes was Milo’s missing cheek.

Even so, in one boozy moment, Lennie looked fondly at Michael and wondered if anything might happen between them. She must have fallen asleep shortly after. When she woke up the next morning, mouth dry and head throbbing, Michael was gone. She had called out for him and waited until the sun had arched more than halfway across the sky before leaving the barn and heading home. Still slightly dazed, she tried not to consider where Michael had gone—for all she knew, he was out running errands and would stumble back in moments before the sunset, with some delicacy like fresh fruit in tow. She couldn’t risk finding out if something worse had happened.

Pulling her bike up to the house, Lennie surveyed the property, which looked undisturbed. She reached the back door and found it still locked, and in one panicked moment thought she’d left the key. Fortunately, after a few moments of fishing, she found it and sunk it into the lock—the shadows were already beginning to fall. She re-boarded up the door and went up to her room, shut the door and lay down in bed.

Suddenly, she was dreaming again. She was whizzing through town on her bike, waving to people as she passed. Everything was back to normal—she saw Norm Callaway mowing his lawn and, passing the playground, all of the swings were in use. The sounds of the living! She’d forgotten the music, the lifetime of background noise she’d taken for granted.

A faint banging noise, like a nail gun, grew louder as she approached the source. She turned the corner and saw Tracy Horton, Michael’s mother, fussing over something, bringing her fist down on something again and again. She got closer and was about to call out to her before seeing that the fist was covered in blood. Tracy had someone’s head on her lap, and she was punching their face repeatedly. The limp body moved only with the force of each impact.

Lennie opened her eyes but the banging didn’t stop. She rushed to her bedroom door only to have it fly open in her face: Michael burst into the room towards her. He had something in his hand but Lennie shut her eyes before she could see what it was. She prayed it would be fast and luckily, for her, the first blow to her head knocked her unconscious, saving her from the terror that lay ahead.

Ok, ok, there will be one more after this...

Occasionally, Lennie would hear someone walking outside her house. In those moments, she would freeze completely, holding her breath and not making a sound. She tried never to draw attention to her home—she’d been living off canned goods for a while now, so there was no need for fires, and, it being September, it was still warm. Last time this year, the leaf peepers started to show up in droves, booking all the rooms at Rosy Inn Bed and Breakfast. Lennie remembered one year when she nearly hit one of them with her car: camera glued to his face, the peeper was completely unaware of his brush with death, looking up only after Lennie honked to remind him that he was standing in the middle of the street. She’d been impatient that day but, looking up at the maple hanging overhead, with leaves of crimson and pumpkin pie, she’d understood. What she would give to see that peeper now! What she would give to see a face not warped by terror or fury.


Over the past few weeks, a knot had begun twisting in Lennie’s stomach: food was running low. Her pantry shelves slowly emptied, despite her efforts to conserve every tiny pea at the bottom of the can, each tiny morsel. She would have to venture out soon, probably to McCrary’s, assuming it hadn’t been completely plundered already. If she cut through the Adams’ back yard, it was only about a mile from her house. Taking her car was out of the question—the roads were choked with abandoned cars and other apocalyptic detritus—so she would have to go on foot, or risk taking her bike on the road. She decided to take the bike: if anything happened, she’d be able to get away faster. Plus, she’d be able to bring back more food in her bike basket, as opposed to just in her backpack.


Lennie had always been a biker. A former advertising executive and native New Yorker, she’d sought out Croydon, New Hampshire for its tiny population (724) and seclusion. Roughly the same time “Meat Me” was taking place, Lennie sat in her living room with a class of champagne: she’d successfully escaped the city for one year. She’d plowed (helmet on, head down) through Manhattan streets and enjoyed the constant battle between taxis, horse-drawn carriages, and those detestable rickshaw offspring that took up the bike lane. She called them the SUVs of the bicycling community—tourist limbs spilling out from all sides, they were usually manned by cocky young men who ignored you when you rang your bell to pass.


Though she missed her two-wheeling street combat, nothing compared to the long bike rides she took in Croydon. Sometimes going 20 or 30 miles, biking on those empty, flat streets that first autumn was like a slow sip of cool water—it breathed air into Lennie, made her feel alive. She would fly past the changing trees so quickly they looked like they were burning, the colors so vibrant against the clear blue sky.


Lennie closed her eyes, inhaling her stale bedroom air. Mentally, she traced her route and made a list of the essentials. Finally, she forced herself to stand and walk downstairs. Her bike was in the foyer, with her helmet. She breathed deeply again before heading through the kitchen to the back door, where, after peeking out through the cracks to ensure no one was around, she began removing the boards. Her stomach turned as each one came down. Obviously, she would lock the door, but if anyone knew she was in there, they would come for her regardless. She also considered the fact that, if anyone chased her home, the time it took to unlock the door might cost her life.


Wearing leggings and a tight black shirt, she hopped on her bike and began to weave through the streets towards McCrary’s. She tried to keep her eyes on the road while looking for any movement. Although the symptoms only manifested during the night, her former life had collapsed and the world was in chaos—people, afflicted or not, couldn’t be counted on not to act like animals. Halfway there, Lennie had to walk her bike through the intersection of Main and North Street: there was a four-car pileup. As the fall breeze blew through a shattered windshield, a rotting arm slumped out of the front passenger seat. Lennie’s heart stopped before she realized that the puppetry of the draft was behind its animation.


Finally, McCrary’s came into view, and Lennie was almost surprised not to see little Milo, missing cheek and all. She walked her bike into the store and leaned it against the front wall. She needed to check if she was alone. The thick silence of the store should have fortified her confidence, but instead it spooked her further. The scene was too familiar to her nightmare. The McCrary’s of her dreams was much better organized, however, with way more options. Lennie smirked at her dark joke, feeling a little more comfortable. She took her backpack off and went to the canned foods aisle.


Lennie was loading the last can of ancient SPAM into her backpack when she heard someone enter the store. She froze.
“Hello?” a young man’s voice echoed through the empty store. “I know you’re here. I saw you come in.” Lennie crouched petrified. The intruder walked further into the store, and she heard his footsteps first before his face came into view, “Lennie Hammerstien!” exclaimed Michael Horton. Suddenly, he suspended his excitement and said, “You’re not one of them, are you?”
Lennie swallowed, “Are you?”
Smiling reassuringly, he said, “I’ve been hiding out across the street,” Michael continued walking closer and Lennie tensed, her fingers tightening around some canned corn. He stopped his advance, held his hands up and said, “I’ve been vegan since college.” Lennie smiled and then started to cry.


“We have to go! We have to get out of here,” she said, glancing to the sky and quietly noting the advancing dusk. She wanted to invite him over, to talk to someone, have another body in the house, but she was afraid. She remembered the locked door, the vulnerability.


“Come stay with me tonight. It’s so close—” he paused, searching for words, “and it’s safe! I promise.” Lennie grabbed her bike and they scuttled across the street, Michael’s arms full of another load of cans.


Deep down, Lennie knew it was a bad idea, but she couldn’t turn away company after so much time alone. After seeing Michael, she couldn’t bear the thought of another silent night, her terrified thoughts rousing her from sleep over and over again. He hadn’t been a friend, but, in such s small town, people just know each other. Because she was new, everyone knew Lennie. She’d known Michael’s mother, Tracy, relatively well. She didn’t dare ask about her.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Ok, so I said this would be the last one, but things are playing out a little differently than I thought they would, so there will be one more. After that, no disembodied arms, murder or meat discussion for a bit...

Third Installment of "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes": The How

As the incidents of nocturnal violence increased, so did police presence—that is, until it became clear anyone, regardless of age, race, job or sex, could be the next perpetrator. People were advised to stay indoors, but then more families ended up killing each other. The last televised warning advised, “total isolation in a secure setting” i.e. no one, not even your toddler son or ancient grandmother, was to be trusted.

The general public didn't know how the information fingering Dexir was released, but by the time it was common knowledge—roughly three months after “Meat Me”—more than three-fourths of the American population had ingested Dexir in some way: used on nearly all commercial livestock, the chemical was not only in the beef, but in the chicken, the milk, the eggs.

At first globally assumed to be a contagious pathogen afflicting Americans, the rest of the world was hesitant to step in. These fears were increased by episodes like the group of Americans visiting Paris who, in the middle of the night, brutally murdered the front desk staff at their hotel. Again, they claimed not to remember anything, but after a handful more of similar occurrences—traveling Americans committing horrific nighttime crimes—the country was put on lock down.

The real difficulty with identifying the source of the problem was that, during the day, everyone was “normal”. The symptoms only emerged while the afflicted was asleep. Sleep was recognized as the enemy fairly quickly: stores sold out of No-Doze and pharmacies were looted for amphetamines. However, the necessity of sleep was impossible to deny and the population sought other solutions. One man handcuffed himself to his bed—neighbors found him several days later, having bled out after ripping his arm out of the socket and chewing it free. That is how the final solution became “total isolation in a secure setting”: protect yourself from everyone and protect everyone from you. If afflicted, the least thing you could do was take yourself out.

Not all vegetarians were safe—if you drank milk or ate eggs, you were vulnerable—but most vegans were. And, of course, there was the small contingent that only ate organic. Still, towards the end, before American television went dark, it became clear that it was something in the animal products. This message echoed through Terrence Grummer’s penthouse, images of the carnage flickering across the television screen as he ran to his computer—the internet held out about as long as cell phones—to send an email. The windows rattled as the loud banging on his bedroom door became fiercer, more desperate. He threw himself under the bed, laptop and all, typing quickly, his mind racing, trying to simplify the science of what was happening into a format that everyone would understand. His bedroom door began to splinter as he finished the email, sending it to the news station he’d been watching. He closed his computer quietly, hearing his wife finally break through the door, covered in blood from the effort but undeterred. Terrence had just started to pray—“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”—when his wife grabbed his leg, pulling him out from under the bed. They made eye contact. She was holding a brick.

TO BE CONTINUED

note: there will probably only be one more installation

Second Installment of "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes": The Why

Painting 1946, Francis Bacon

"If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising I wasn't there instead of the animal" --Francis Bacon

“The key question we have,” projected Nancy Carolin, President of Beef Producers of America (BOPA), “is will it change the taste of the meat?” Affirming murmurs echoed through the conference center as she returned to her seat.

“It will,” answered a commanding voice from the podium. Terrence Grummer, the scientist behind the chemical in question, raised his arms to silence the outcry that erupted after his answer. “It will enhance the flavor of the meat, not detract from it.”

This conference (“Meat Me in America”) in Tulsa, OK, would permanently alter the lives of every American—and eventually every person on the planet—but very few of them knew or cared about the introduction of the new chemical, Dx32h, or “dexir”, in American meat processing. It was a miracle drug, part antibiotic, part vitamin-laced elixir, designed to improve the quality and taste of the product. As “The Food Movement” advanced, introducing newer, more palatable competition—free-range hens; organic beef; acorn-fed ham—the larger industrial counterparts were suffering. Dexir was designed to allow them to sell meats equally tasty to the organic/hand-fed/hand-massaged product for half the price.

Needless to say Dexir was a hit. All the meat served at the conference was Dexir-infused, but there were also blind tasting stations scattered throughout the room so the representatives could see for themselves the astonishing effects. Of course, there were also stations explaining, with daunting charts and thick booklets of scientific evidence, how the drug worked, but those stations went mostly unvisited in favor of the widely popular “Foie-Gras” and “Veal Cutlet” posts.

Basically, using incomprehensibly complex science, Dexir affected the neuro-receptors of both the animals it was used on and those who consumed it. It employed the brain as well as the usual suspects—the stomach, liver, intestines—in the digestive process. The difficulty in explanation was far outweighed by the extremity of its effectiveness—factory-produced, low quality pork treated with Dexir was rendered as delicious as that snobby Spanish Jamón ibérico. It was the fairy godmother of the meat processing industry and the unwitting angel of death for the rest of us.

Dexir was not extensively tested on humans. They used dogs, rats and pigs, mostly, to test the effects it had on the brain, digestive system and body as a whole. In that way, the attendees of “Meat Me in America” were the first human guinea pigs of the Dexir experiment. One of these guinea pigs was chemical engineer, John Temmor, hailing from Jupiter Island, Florida. He would go on to murder his family in his sleep ten days after the conference. Another attendee was Marianne Dupre, of Ridgewood, New Jersey who, an evening just over a week after “Meat Me”, killed 13 motel guests and herself. In fact, all of the instigators of that night-time violence were somehow connected to thefirst batch of Dexir consumers. However, by the time those dots were connected, most of America was riding the Dexir train unbeknownst: it was widely introduced into the majority of meat producing plants just three days after “Meat Me in America”.

TO BE CONTINUED

Creature Feature

In the past month, I went to see a Hitchcock film at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery; watched countless horror movies—including, but not limited to, Killer Klowns from Outerspace, Terror Train and Delicatessen—and begun devouring The Living Dead, a collection of short stories about zombies. A hallmark of this season for me are these late-night thrills, something about the balmy weather drawing me to the macabre more than any other time of year.


Today, my one and only sent me “How to Structure Your Short Story” by UK author Nick Daws. He writes:

“A short story is not just a very short novel but a distinctive literary form in its own right. To write stories that sell, you need to understand short story structure ' in other words, what makes a short story tick…. I believe that, to be successful, a short story requires four essential ingredients: characters, conflict, crisis and change.”

Employing Daws’ strategy, I wanted to pay tribute to the ghouls, mutants and undead that populate my summer nights…

"Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes"

In her dream, Lennie’s back on the old Schwinn, cutting through damp morning air as the dew flies from the tires, wetting her legs. Sometimes she’s wearing a dress—it changes—but her clothes are inconsequential compared to the miracle of being able to bike freely, without protection—an activity taken for granted before The Change. Pulling up to McCrary’s Groceries, she doesn’t even bother locking her bike—that’s how carefree she feels! Even before reality melted away—the familiar yet unrecognizable faces contorted with feral hunger, the fires, the stink of death everywhere—she never left her bike unlocked.


The bells tickle as she walks into the store, basket in hand. It’s half full—fresh peaches! Annie’s homemade ricotta! Filet mignon!—before Lennie realizes that the place is completely empty. She turns around slowly—no customers, no managers, no one at the cash register.

“Hello?” she shouts.

Something’s wrong, she thinks, shifting the basket into her left hand and raising her right to her mouth, to bite her nails. A rank smell wafts up and Lennie suddenly drops the basket. All that fresh food! It’s gone bad, covered in maggots and smelling of rot. As she stares down at her ruined goods, there’s a thud behind her, something hitting the front window of McCrary’s. Her heart in her throat, Lennie begins walking toward the sound, and this is when the dream slows down to a snail’s pace. She tries to walk faster and quieter—or turn away and run—but she can’t speed up, and instead keeps knocking cans off the shelves, drawing attention to herself. The front window is almost in view and every fiber of her being is telling her to run but some silly voice is pushing her to see what the sound is, and, besides, reminding her she forgot to lock her bike.


What feels like hours later, the front window finally comes into view and Lennie feels silly for being so scared: it’s just Milo McCrary, the McCrary’s youngest son! Six years old with a bowl cut and huge blue eyes, he’s throwing a ball against the front window. Happy to see someone else, Lennie smiles and pushes open the front door, calling to him, “Hey Milo! You scared me half to death, I thought—” Milo turns, the left side of his face isn’t right. Her vision focuses and the world stops making sense again. A chunk of his chubby cheek is missing and she can see all his teeth, those little baby teeth. He’s caked in dirt and blood and his tiny fist is gripping the ball, which he throws at her smiling—or what looks like smiling, it’s hard to tell with his face like that. She catches it but it’s too malleable, too sticky. Lennie uncurls her fingers to reveal one of Milo’s big blue eyeballs.


The dream always ends there as the day always begins with Lennie bolting up in bed, gripping the .45 she sleeps with now. Those beautiful bay windows, one of the selling points her realtor kept harping on, were boarded up now. All the windows and doors in the house were. For the first few days after The Change, she hadn’t dared leave her room, even after she’d nailed and boarded the rest of the world out. She was lucky her house hadn’t been set on fire—she’d heard her neighbors’ screams, first as they began to burn before running out into the street, and then as they were torn to pieces by the awaiting mob. Either no one had known she was in her house or the loud explosion from the gas station down the street had distracted them, but no one came for her.


The world fell to shit in days, but Lennie remembered the first report in the weeks before the chaos: “Man Who Murdered Wife and Children Claims He Was Sleepwalking”:

Jupiter Island, FLA--John Temmor claims that he woke up last Thursday morning with no recollection of the atrocities he committed the night before. Temmor, 44, called the police himself and they arrived to a scene fit for a horror film. The bodies of Virginia Temmor, 41, Mark Temmor, 13, and Lara Temmor, 10, were strewn throughout the house, not only having appeared to have been dismembered, but also cannibalized by Temmor. He is being held, without bail, by local authorities who have refused to comment. Temmor appeared distraught and shouted to reporters as he was taken away, “I didn’t do this!” Friends of his, who requested to remain anonymous, said they were shocked at the carnage and would never have though Temmor, a “soft-spoken engineer and family man”, would be capable of committing such crimes.

Temmor was the first, but soon more and more cases like his—extreme, senseless violence after sundown—began emerging: “New Jersey Woman Slaughters Motel Guests, Disembowels Herself”; “Late-Night Hollywood Club Turns Into a Blood Bath”; “Five-Year-Old Shot After Gruesome Attack”. By the time everyone figured out what was happening and why, it was too late.


TO BE CONTINUED

Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms all welcome! Back tomorrow with either a middle or an end.