There's a dead girl in the corner, her hair is sandy blond - more sand than blond, and her face is covered with freckles. She wears an ankle-length skirt and a floral blouse, graceful and serene in her Goodwill clothing. Her glasses sit on her nose so that she has to push them up every couple of seconds.
She's got a deck of cards and when she isn't dealing out futures for other dead or lost girls, she plays solitaire because I can't always see her. Sometimes she sits alone for months at a time just laying cards down one after another. Telling herself stories of what could be, what almost was, and what won't ever happen never never NEVER.
But sure as seasons she blooms every summer, like a cancer or mold. Something beautiful but reeking of death. When the heat runs high I can hear her voice, see the anger painting her features, twisting the delicate bones into something rigid and wrathful.
Then she fades away when it cools off, as if Autumn tempers her tantrums. As if the fall allows her to lie still in her grave again, and sleep until late Spring nightmares make her restless and wake her up.
Sometimes another girl keeps her company. This one wears a horrible itchy plaid wool skirt that's too short and an overly floofy blouse with a stupid bow that ties in front. With shoes that pinch the feet and hair left hanging pale and loose so any passing hand can grab and give a hard tug.
They play skip-rope or hopscotch or jacks. They play with the dead girl's cards, examining each picture for clues and portents. Sometimes they will confide silly secrets but never serious ones. Sometimes one will sing, or the other. The dead girl only knows hymns. The other only knows country songs and some rock 'n' roll.
Everything they have they share and share alike. Food, games, nightmares. But they don't know it. They think they're keeping the deepest, darkest, most terrible secret all to themselves so as not to taint their friend with the filth of it all. They try so hard to do this they don't realize they both have the same secret.
Time passes and they fade, in and out, in and out. Sometimes one girl, sometimes two. In and out, in and out.
As years go by the girls get smaller though they stay forever the same. And sometimes other boys and girls show up. Sometimes these new friends stay for years. Sometimes they fade after mere minutes. Sometimes one little girl or another recognizes what the new friends don't know themselves and the little girls keep their secrets all the tighter. Those new friends always leave quickly.
After awhile the girl who isn't dead realizes it's only the ones who hold the deep rotten secrets that stay so long. They leave stains on everything they touch whether they want to or not. No matter how hard they scrub or how neatly they sit so still.
Sometimes one girl or the other can clean up someone else's stains some, help them leave less dirt behind. Sometimes they make it worse. Sometimes their secrets are so heavy there's no room to breathe. Sometimes their secrets are so light, they could float away if only the wind would blow hard enough, fast enough to break them free of their tethers.
But no wind is that strong.
That was kind of awesome.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2013, 09:29:24 PM
That was kind of awesome.
Thanks. There's a screaming woman and a drowning boy, too. Haven't gotten to them yet.
I was actually trying to write a rant but this came out instead so I moved it from Or Kill Me to here since I didn't know what else to do with it.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 29, 2013, 09:31:14 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2013, 09:29:24 PM
That was kind of awesome.
Thanks. There's a screaming woman and a drowning boy, too. Haven't gotten to them yet.
I was thinking that wasn't the whole thing. Normally, I'm more of a horror guy than, um, not sure what this is. But I like it.
Also, on a technical level, the writing is awesome.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2013, 09:32:49 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 29, 2013, 09:31:14 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2013, 09:29:24 PM
That was kind of awesome.
Thanks. There's a screaming woman and a drowning boy, too. Haven't gotten to them yet.
I was thinking that wasn't the whole thing. Normally, I'm more of a horror guy than, um, not sure what this is. But I like it.
Also, on a technical level, the writing is awesome.
Thank you kindly. There's horror coming, if I keep on with it. It's sort of watered down angst with a side of stale fear at the moment.
Ooooh I love this!
I love this so hard. Small typo: first paragraph "glass" instead of "glasses."
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on May 30, 2013, 01:59:09 AM
I love this so hard. Small typo: first paragraph "glass" instead of "glasses."
Thanks! It's one of those things that got tangled in edits. :P
Keep this one going, it's great. :)
The screaming woman's hands are tangled in a matted mane of hair the color of dried blood and spent soil. The more she thrashes the more entangled she becomes. Partly on purpose, to allow her greater victimhood because she can't defend herself. And that justifies her pain and her inaction. She cripples herself to validate her mental and emotional paralysis in the face of a disaster she created for herself.
She will never leave because she believes she cannot. And she hates it. So she handicaps herself to make it easier for people - for one particular person - to abuse her over and over again. Because it's what she deserves. It's all she ever deserved.
A cheap faux satin nightgown is the only thing she wears under a mud-splattered denim jumper, the skirt of which is bloodstained. She shuts her green eyes tightly and thrashes so hard that bloody clumps of hair are pulled from her scalp, though she never is freed. Her mouth is painted red and smeared, the teeth yellow and knocked out. Scars march up and down her legs, her arms are sun-browned and strong. She smells of salt water and daffodils.
And she screams and screams and screams. There's no difference in being punished and waiting for punishment, it's all the same.
No one can help her because she's where she belongs. No one can stop her screaming because she's trapped in hell. No one can tell her to shut the fuck up, just once, Jesus Christ because no one else exists in her world.
It's just screaming.
You're not right. :lulz:
Still, awesome.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:31:20 PM
You're not right. :lulz:
Still, awesome.
I get that a lot.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:32:09 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:31:20 PM
You're not right. :lulz:
Still, awesome.
I get that a lot.
So do I. I talk to people the way I talk on PD, and everyone shoves over to the other side of the bus.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:33:08 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:32:09 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:31:20 PM
You're not right. :lulz:
Still, awesome.
I get that a lot.
So do I. I talk to people the way I talk on PD, and everyone shoves over to the other side of the bus.
I don't talk a lot in public unless I have someone to keep me on track. Something reminds me of something else and the next thing I know I'm telling a story from whenever and all I can hear is people sobbing or telling me to SHUT THE FUCK UP, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:36:17 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:33:08 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:32:09 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 10:31:20 PM
You're not right. :lulz:
Still, awesome.
I get that a lot.
So do I. I talk to people the way I talk on PD, and everyone shoves over to the other side of the bus.
I don't talk a lot in public unless I have someone to keep me on track. Something reminds me of something else and the next thing I know I'm telling a story from whenever and all I can hear is people sobbing or telling me to SHUT THE FUCK UP, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
MARRY ME
It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.
HAWT, AIN'T IT?
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:44:12 PM
It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.
HAWT, AIN'T IT?
Shit yes. I've been doin' it for decades.
Good goddamn. :eek:
CPD, COME VISIT TEXAS. LET'S DO THE TOWN IN SEGUIN.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 30, 2013, 11:28:53 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 30, 2013, 10:44:12 PM
It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.
HAWT, AIN'T IT?
Shit yes. I've been doin' it for decades.
This makes me happy for some reason.
Quote from: stelz on May 31, 2013, 12:05:20 AM
CPD, COME VISIT TEXAS. LET'S DO THE TOWN IN SEGUIN.
Okay. You pick a place and I'll tell stories and once everyone is screaming and crying, we'll start picking pockets. They'll never notice.
Before the screaming woman was the screaming woman, did she drown the drowning boy? It's hard to discern the answer in his bulging, panicked eyes. There are bruises on his throat but they could have gotten there any old way.
And really, he could have drowned himself. Everyone has been warned about the sudden drop offs in the swimming hole. He just didn't listen and went where he couldn't touch bottom. Where there are things in the hole that will reach up and tug down.
That doesn't explain why his face stares up, just inches below the water, but his hands are clawing at his neck instead of reaching for open air. But kids are strange and who knows what sort of silly make-believe game he's playing.
Down there it's another world and he's forever a part of it. Something alien to us now. Things slide through the water, leaving no trace of themselves. Soon there won't be any trace of the drowning boy. Not even his bulging, panicked eyes.
All the air bubbles are gone, all the splashing is over. It's all a waiting game, now. It has been for ever.
It's odd, isn't it? How time slows down during these moments? Isn't it odd, the crystal clarity, the deafening silence? So quiet one's blood flow echoes within the cavern of the body.
These are really haunting vignettes.
These are some of the happier ones. I think the drowning boy is almost upbeat.
There are no toys where the dead girl sits. Her back is constantly to the wall and her skirt never rises above her knees. If it does the bad man will come. She has a corn cob for comfort. The husk has been stitched with floss to resemble a skirt, one piece curled in to a hat. Dead girls are bad girls and bad girls don't get toys, but a girl isn't a proper girl unless she has a doll. She must tend the doll.
Sometimes her wall is a corner. Sometimes her wall has a window in it. But she can never see out, the glass is always blurry and the window only ever opens a crack too tiny to see through. She can hear, though. The wind in the trees. Children laughing. Boys playing with a ball they kick back and forth.
She wants to go out. She wishes the other little girl would come. But the other little girl does not come for long, long periods of time. And when the other little girl arrives, it is only until the dead girl falls asleep or closes her eyes too long. The other little girl is always gone as soon as the dead girl stops thinking about her.
It takes so much to find a friend and so little to lose her.
But the bad man and the kids outside, who never answer her when she calls out, they are always there. Waiting for her to try and escape. Waiting for her to cry or scream or stomp her feet.
Then the game changes.
So sad. But so good.
The other girl hates visiting the dead girl. Everything is so sad and the air is so thick with fear. Voices raised in anger or pain are always just out of earshot where the dead girl is. The sky is always bright but it's a brightness that hurts. And when the man appears, things go from scary and sad to downright terrifying. The other girl, who has no other name, doesn't even think a name to herself because who wants to be noticed in a place like this? She thinks it's too much for one little girl to handle.
But there's no one else. In all the time trapped in this limbo there are only the angry, angry voices, the screams of pain, shadowy figures outside a window, and the man. So she visits the dead girl as often as her heart can handle and comes up with silly game after silly game to play.
Maybe if the dead girl laughs, the man won't come because he'll think it's some other girl and not the one he comes for. Maybe if the dead girl would leave that room he wouldn't be able to find her. But she won't leave.
Only the other girl ever leaves. When she isn't with the dead girl she roams through gardens and forests and splashes in a creek. She makes mud pies and climbs trees and screams until her voice goes away. She runs full-out and rolls down grassy hills. It should all be great fun but it isn't.
It's all like the house where the dead girl waits. There are things like rocks and dirt and water. There unmoving living things like plants. But living things like birds and people and deer? There are only the sounds of those.
The other girl can HEAR birds singing but can't ever see one. She can find deer tracks and hear their noises in far-off bushes but she's never seen so much as a flash of a tail as one runs away. There are no fishes in the stream. And bugs.
There are no bugs. No mosquitos. No ants. No flies. No worms in the dirt.
Once she left a bit of cake sit on the ground in the sun for a whole day. Not so much as a gnat appeared.
Her clothes never get dirty. Mud and grass don't stick. Her hands can FEEL the dirt when she digs her fingers in but the soil just sort of slides away when she pulls her hand out. She doesn't ever sweat and her hair never gets mussed. When her voice comes back it's all there, without rasping or hoarseness.
All of which makes her very afraid because this place doesn't really exist, so where is she?
Eeeek.
I was making a back-up of this thread and was surprised to find it so small. The hole it makes in my head is so much larger than is what is actually here. Kinda a weird sensation.
When she dreams, everything is peaceful. There is a forest of tall, tall trees filtering the sun into manageable streams. Taming it. A wealth of flowers, every shape and color and scent, fill the places between trees and bushes and the pathway. Birds sing and streams babble as they meander. It is beautiful and peaceful. Cleansing.
She knows she is about to wake when the path beneath her feet melts from loam, fallen leaves, and moss. It ripples and crackles. It hardens into something abrasive. It tears her feet apart.
The forest melts away with a muffled shriek.
She's back. Again. Here.
The sunlight falls full and heavy and smug. It burns and glares as it exposes every flaw, ever dark spot on her soul. It leaves no shadow or shade. It burns the forest from her heart.
Then the man comes with his belt and his shouts. His slaps and his clenched fists. Other things. The hours he is with her are long and while the pain never ceases, only increases, time itself blurs until she can't tell one slur from another. Each blow is the same, only more painful. Each insult is the same, only louder. It goes on forever.
Because she deserves it. But she knows she doesn't. No one does. Not even him. If the tables were turned . . .
Endless.
All she has are her thoughts. Those can't be taken from her. Only interrupted sometimes. And she wonders what she did. Why she is being so punished.
Then she realizes she's not. He is. This is his hell and she is not bound.
The dead girl stands, startling the man. He knocks her down but she stands again.
"It's okay," she says. "Or it would be, if you would let it." And walks through him as if he isn't there.
Leaving the wall and the window. Leaving the man.
She walks away and doesn't look back.
Oh wow... that is one hell of a twist!
Where's the line for having CPD's babies?
The other girl felt a ripple. For a second all the colors were real. Then they weren't, again. But the textures of trees and grass were wrong now. More like paper. Less like living plants. Less like something real. She turned and ran.
Smack into the house that had the room where awful things happened.
The dead girl was waiting for her, in the doorway.
"You moved," the other girl whispered.
"I did," the dead girl replied solemnly.
"I think something is happening. Nothing is as real as it was . . . before."
"Come outside with me," the dead girl said. "Please. I don't want to go alone."
The other girl took her hand and led the way.
SQUEEEEEE
The drowning boy peered through the inches of water between his up-turned face and the surface of his river. Lazy bubbles, always almost the very last of his air, slipped from between his lips and wobbled upwards. They crossed those few inches and burst free, as he never would.
His eyes and lungs burned. But they always did. His heart felt as if it were going to burst. It always did. His limbs were leaden, heavy. Weighted, as he tried to rise up and the river tried to pull him down. Stalemate. Always stalemate.
He sighed, releasing more air. Panic flooded his system, adrenaline lighting his nerves on fire. But what did it matter? He was frozen on life's cliff, dangling by a single fingertip. It would be easy to get go. It would be easy to be free. To rise up. If he could figure out how.
But the passing of the seasons, the turning of the tide. The screaming woman.
Nothing made any change to his environment. There was nothing to do but wait, struggle, and daydream.
The nightmares started early this year. Didn't even make it to April. Woo.
Spew 'em.
I usually know when I'm dreaming. I have the option of trying to change the dream or just waking myself up. Sometimes I'm either completely sucked in or I'm aware and can't change anything. Those dreams tend to suck extra hard.
Potential Trigger Warning.
.*.*.*.*.
It starts out a good dream. I'm under a tree in the rain. It's quiet and smells fresh. In my dreams I can smell things. Air and rain and trees and dirt. Good stuff. It's quite and peaceful and I think to myself I might actually sleep six or seven hours straight for a change and settle into the soft pine needles to enjoy the ambiance.
Then there's a jolt like I've been hit with a truck and a grinding thunderclap pig getting its throat slit squeal that almost wakes me up except I'm stuck. Fuck this shit already.
By the time I sort out the panic and disorientation the dream has changed and I'm eight years old wearing a white dress with a bow at the waist with white socks and shiny black girly shoes and my hair is down.
I have never dressed like this, not even when my mom used me as her own fucking dress up dolly. I was also never in this church basement as an eight year old. Fuck. My hair being down is starting to worry me, more than the clothes.
There are a bunch of other little girls dressed similarly and some boys in the equivalent. We're all on splintery wooden pews with our hands clasped and our heads bowed and we can't move. T is to my left, between me and the tiny window that I can't turn my head to see properly. D, T's slightly younger sister is on the pew behind us.
Some lady I can't look up to identify is walking back and forth across the uneven cement floor in clicky stiletto heels. The noise her shoes make echo in the room except when a heel hits one of the drains that are evenly spaced down the center of the slanted floor in a row from the front of the room to the back. Then her heels make a different noise. A dripping, slithering noise.
For a second I think we're going to get torn apart by Nessies, which would be a dramatic improvement over what normally happens in this basement.
Then the lady calls a halt to our 'precious prayers' so we can hear the sermon. We can move our heads but that's it. We all look up as the door to the room opens and our fathers walk in the room. I can hear T's breath getting faster and faster and behind me, I can hear D wetting herself. I consider doing the same.
The priest enters last, wearing his robes and a beautific smile. He closes the door and the lights go out. Someone screams and a big, sweaty hand wraps around my face, cutting off my air and smashing my nose and mouth in to my skull, squeezing so hard my jaw pops out of socket and strands of hair by my face are pulled from my scalp.
.*.*.*.*.*.
After that I don't remember anything but I woke up on the floor. So yay.
Woooooow. :eek:
Sorry.
Whoa.
Cripes!
The sun is so blinding bright it's blistering the blue, blue sky like taking a lit match to film. I'm laying on my back on a pile of dirt and rocks, staring straight up at it, watching the sky being eaten away by rage-filled fire.
Two pairs of dusty black boots appear in my peripheral vision, one on each side. "Fuck," I mutter.
Two hands reach down and grab mine, yanking me to my feet so fast I almost fall over again and the world spins. My hands are pinned and they're pulling my arms tight enough to make my shoulders scream.
"It's your fault the sky got eaten," Ex-friend #1 says. He's on the right. Taller, balder. His nose broken one more time. All the scar tissue from the shrapnel he took in the face standing out like it's outlined in neon. He's half hunched over and one shoulder is crunched up but he's still taller than me. All the damage he took over-seas is magnified and fresh.
"What the fuck did you do?" Ex-friend #2 demands. On the left, he's the shortest of us. Whip lean and almost delicate looking until he makes eye contact and all that anger and crazy spills out. His shirt is slowly turning red over the places he was shot. But there are no holes in his clothes.
"I didn't do anything but wake up here." I reply, yanking my hands free. #1 lets go, which breaks my heart even though I was pulling away anyway. #2 breaks my fingers and doesn't let go.
"That's all it takes," #1 says, glaring at me and then the sky.
Then they're both on fire. #2 screams and screams but #1 just chuckles dryly and collapses into a pile of ash.
"You ruin everything you touch," someone says, from behind me.
I start running. Everything behind me catches on fire except the voice, who repeats his message every few footfalls. I run a few miles and trip on a knobby tree root. Face-first in the dirt, I'm smashed into the earth and then my back is burning up, my flesh melting and running off my bones. I can feel my spine and ribs creak and turn black as the marrow bubbles out.
Curled up in the fetal position, one arm already broken, up to ward off blows. One wrapped around my head as I'm kicked and pummeled from all sides for what feels like forever.
I don't realize the attack is over until the concrete I'm curled up on melts into sand and the scalding particles grind into various cuts and bruises. I start screaming and flop like a fish trying to find a position that doesn't hurt. I can't open my eyes, they're crusted shut. One arm is broken and I can't feel my hand. All the fingers are crushed on the other hand and . . . there's just no good way to get upright. I flop over some more and bake in the sun.
My blood sizzles as the sun and sand soak it up. Bugs skitter over me, some getting stuck in the injuries and struggling to get free, biting or stinging me in the process.
Eventually footsteps approach and sand is kicked into my face, dislodging the crust over my eyes. Before I can open them, someone says "Get off your ass and clean up this fucking mess before I kick your god damn ass and give you something to cry about."
Then I hear the sound of leather clearing belt loops.
.....
Woke up before I could start screaming.
I sincerely hope you do something with your writing. Your visuals are uncanny.
Thanks, Hoopla.
Damn.
It's dark. The air is hot, musty, and filled with muffled thuds; explosions that are gradually getting closer. I'm pinned by what feels like a immense wooden beam, to a dirt floor. I can't feel anything between the end of my sternum and my knees.
Every so often the muffled noises aren't so muffled and there's a shifty, silty motion overhead that is followed by dust and cobwebs drifting down onto my face and arms.
A bug crawls onto my ankle and starts its way up my bare leg but once it gets past my knee I can't feel it anymore. Something creaks overhead as the ground shudders.
Flashes of light appear, in the cracks between poorly fitted board walls. The air goes from musty to acrid as whatever is burning overtakes the scent of dust.
Along with the explosions there are now screams gradually growing loud enough to make the air tremble.
The shed that I am apparently trapped in, blows away as the shockwave from a larger explosion makes the ground move like a mud puddle being bombarded by stones. The beam is not moved except that it tilts to one side, putting more pressure on the left than the right.
I try to wiggle free, to dig my way out with my heels and my right hand. It doesn't work so well. I can't breathe, every time I exhale the beam settles a little lower.
The final explosion comes in slow motion. It's as if a star is falling directly overhead. I watch it arc across the sky, streaming crimson fire that illuminates a shattered landscape, until it seems to hover just above me. A sick illusion. It is growing larger and what began as a low whistle is becoming a deafening roar.
For one split instant its added weight is an agonizing burden.
Then I wake up on the floor because I whacked my head on the bookshelf when I fell out of bed.
We're sitting down to what passed as a normal dinner during the teen years, at my house. Dad's at the head of the kitchen table. I'm at the foot. My brothers are lined up on a bench between the table and the raised TV stand. Mom is eating in the living room because Dad has made her cry with his bullshit incoherent screaming. I'm being forced to fetch and carry every time Dad decides his milk needs more horseradish sauce or he needs more Wonder Bread to scoop up his mashed potatoes and cottage cheese covered in black pepper.
The boys are talking about which girls in their classes are the biggest sluts and Dad is spraying cottage cheese-sprinkled spittle as he roars for them to shut the fuck up, he's trying to watch the fucking football game even though the game has been fucking ruined by all those god damn . . . .
Dad's a racist, enough said. I was once beaten for comparing his beard to Mr. T's.
The boys break out into a fist fight and food goes flying all over the piles of Mom's hoarded shit stacked against the walls of the room and the heaping pile of mouse-piss covered laundry in the corner behind my chair.
Everything freezes and seems to fast forward until I'm suddenly old and my brothers are all older, with beer bellies spilling out from under their stained and holey t-shirts and dried food matted in their snarled beards. Three women in Daisy Dukes and sheer halter tops have joined us around the table. There's another man who's taller and fatter than my brothers, with a nastier beard, winking at me across the table. Mom's piles of hoarded shit are now topped with new piles of shit that bear resemblance to things I own. The reek of the broken toilet and the basement flooded from our backed up septic tank and the mouse piss covering everything becomes more overwhelming until every bite of food tastes like ammonia.
I go to take a sip of my milk, noticing that everyone else is drinking beer, only to realize there's a dead mouse in my milk. I look at the table and all the food is covered with bugs. There are maggots in the cottage cheese. The mashed potatoes are smashed up with fruit flies. Pus is oozing out of the steaks.
I go to the bathroom and the floor is covered with semi-dry feces like they've been painted on the floor. The layers of mold and mildew and cobwebs on all the walls and mirrors and windows and counters have almost gained sentience. I start screaming and . . .
. . . wake up to my cat head-butting me on the chin because I'm making funny noises through clenched teeth. Everything all day long tastes like ammonia.
You have a very interesting head. I say that, being me, so you can do the comparison.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 02, 2014, 02:11:22 PM
You have a very interesting head. I say that, being me, so you can do the comparison.
How . . . flattering. :lulz: It has mellowed out considerably. My nightmares are nowhere near as frequent or as awful. Just the summertime brings them on, is all. And around Christmas.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 02, 2014, 04:18:43 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 02, 2014, 02:11:22 PM
You have a very interesting head. I say that, being me, so you can do the comparison.
How . . . flattering. :lulz: It has mellowed out considerably. My nightmares are nowhere near as frequent or as awful. Just the summertime brings them on, is all. And around Christmas.
That kind of sucks. But I am a man who treasures his screeching-falling-out-of-bed nightmares, even if it terrifies the dog.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 02, 2014, 04:39:05 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 02, 2014, 04:18:43 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 02, 2014, 02:11:22 PM
You have a very interesting head. I say that, being me, so you can do the comparison.
How . . . flattering. :lulz: It has mellowed out considerably. My nightmares are nowhere near as frequent or as awful. Just the summertime brings them on, is all. And around Christmas.
That kind of sucks. But I am a man who treasures his screeching-falling-out-of-bed nightmares, even if it terrifies the dog.
Well but on the plus side, now I just wake up on the floor or crammed in a corner beating my head off the wall. Which is preferable to waking up in the backyard or by the front door holding a bloody knife or standing in front of the open refrigerator standing in a pile of . . . stuff. So all in all, I think it's a fairly decent trade-off.
It's snowing outside and the house is filled with cigarette smoke. It smells like unwashed hicks and scorched rubber.
I slip out of the house, making sure to tuck the newspaper back into all the gaps between the broken front door and the frame. I pull a shopping sack containing two tattered sheets out from under a pile of bloody and shit-stained farm clothes on the porch. Then I break a path across the yard, made mountainous with snowdrifts up to my knees, to the tree line in the pasture.
I'm well into the trees with a good mile of snow and frosty underbrush between me and the house before I can taste fresh air in my lungs instead of the foul stuff I carried outside with me. Each clean breath drains tension from my neck and shoulders. I rinse my mouth with snow, spitting it out and scooping another mouthful until all I can taste is the snow. What I have spit out is tinged yellow and is speckled with black flecks.
The less tattered of the sheets becomes a somewhat precarious hammock strung between two obliging young maples. It's slung low so I won't be easily spotted (and I've laid my track so this spot isn't the obvious spot for my trail to lead) but it's high enough to clear the snow.
The second sheet is packed around my ears and head. I don't need to worry about frostbite even wearing thin pants and a t-shirt, not for a few hour's nap. But earaches are the devil and burrow into my brain in an eyeblink.
Settling into snooze, tucking my hands under my armpits and crossing my legs so my feet are pulled up under my legs. It looks stupid as hell but it's relatively comfortable and I won't freeze any time soon. I'll be up in a few hours when the sun comes up, anyway.
Comfortable and relaxed, I fall asleep.
And wake up to cold metal smashing my lips into my teeth. My eyes open and there's a shotgun in my face. Now I know I'm dreaming. Until this point it could have been just another normal day. But no, it's another fun trip through Cat's Brain Blender.
Someone screams some regurgitated bullshit before the shotgun goes off and my head disintegrates into meat confetti, but fuck that noise.
I woke up pissed off, with a migraine.