“Is it on?” Darkness was all he saw, silence was all he heard. “Is it on?” he asked again. A small particle of light could be seen in the distance, there was a “bzzrp” electrical sound. Suddenly light and color filled the air a second before an immersion of sound. “It works! It works!” he shouted excitedly as he looked around at his new surroundings. Huntington Park was alive with life. Birds sang in trees, people walked past him. Food vendors called out looking for hungry patrons. He rushed to the hot dog vendor and ordered a hot dog with everything on it. When the food was handed to him he took a big bite expecting to taste the sweetness of ketchup, tart of mustard, and savory of a roasted weenie. Daniel’s delight faded as he tasted nothing in his mouth. He tossed the meal into a nearby garbage can. He set his mind on the path that winded through the park. A sign in front of him seemed to glow instantly. He walked toward it and read the writing, “Park Trail 6”. Glancing to his right he saw the path he was looking for. His joy returned to him as he started jogging down the path. Roller skaters whizzed past him, people on bicycles rode past. Some waved, others were more interested in where they were going than who was on the path. Soon he reached the sprawling lake that was at the center of Huntington Park. There was a rental booth, decked out in yellow aluminum siding. You could rent paddle boats, fishing equipment, and storage lockers, among other things. He watched a man teaching a boy how to fish at the bank of the water. Far in the distance he could see a young couple in a paddle boat doing circles as fast as they could. Probably trying to create a current, or waves, or some other nonsense. “It’s nice isn’t it?” a voice next to him asked. Daniel was quite shaken by the experience as he looked over to see who had snuck up unexpectedly. It was a teenage male, dressed in a logo t-shirt and jeans. He smiled at Daniel causing his monolid eyes make creases in his bronze skin. “It really is the Utopia they market it to be.” he waved his bronze hand around. Daniel said nothing and glanced again at the man teaching the boy to fish. “Well if you get bored in here, my name is Austin Greeves.” the teenager offered out his hand. “You can find me any time.” “Don’t you sleep?” Austin laughed and then walked away. He tossed his skateboard to the ground and skated off in the opposite direction. Daniel hadn’t notice the skateboard earlier. Maybe he just wasn’t paying attention.
Category Archives: Stories
Pathway to Destiny
The crowd screamed and pushed against the line of soldiers with glazed over eyes. The soldiers were keeping a small semi circle of dirt clear in front of a platform that stood about four feet from the ground. On the platform three people surrounded by soldiers sat in chairs. Mark sat in a chair in front, Casandra and Dybin sat in chairs behind and to either side of his. Mark Chasarue sat disinterested watching the spectacle.
A man with black matted hair was brought out in metal chains. He was dirty and malnourished from being in the prison cell for a month. The robe he was wearing was white when he first arrived in his cell but now was a reddish brown.
Larso Denkan looked into the cold gray eyes of the blonde man on the platform. He knew he would find no mercy in them, they were as cold as the steel they resembled. His recent decisions began to flash into his mind, the reason he was here. The chain of events that had led to this.
Things had been bad in Toolay for a long time. There was no work, there was no law, there was no help of any kind. Rumors were spreading of this new world, a land of plenty. People there had lots of space to move freely about, there was plenty of food to eat, and soldiers to protect them from those who mean harm. It was a dream come true to Larso who had to fight for everything his whole life. So he rushed to the most beautiful woman in the village, Mara, whom he had loved since he first met. He asked her to join him in the new world, he promised her she would never have to struggle again. They married quickly and fled together in a boat and arrived with thousands of others to this new promise land.
When they arrived it was not as he had hoped. Too many other migrants had arrived with his same dream, and with them bandits and outlaws looking to fleece the new world. They had no place to live, and no work to go to. Mara became bitter and resentful towards him, at least back in Toolay she had land to farm for food. She was with child when they arrived in the new land, and had given birth to a beautiful baby girl. A baby girl who cried day and night, and would not be comforted. A baby that cried like all the babies cried in the migrant encampment. It cried because it lacked safety and security, warmth and food. The baby never stopped crying.
Larso couldn’t take it anymore. Everyday he went with a hundred others to the square and looked for work, but there was never any. He begged alongside the widowed and orphaned for money or scraps of food. Mara, who was once the most beautiful woman in the village was starting to look more like an old shrew. His heart broke, his spirit broke. He saw the sellers in the square, the baker, butcher, fish merchant, all of them doing well while he starved and lost everything. The resentment and jealousy began to stir deep within him til he decided to strike out.
He took a loaf from the baker, but the baker came after him with a knife. Larso wrestled the knife away and stabbed the baker, killing him. Then he took what money the baker had on him, and the bread he stole, and ran back to Mara. Mara screamed when she saw the blood, he was a monster to her. She fled with the child into the migrant encampment, he never saw her again. Two days later the soldiers arrested him. All he could think of was Mara’s beautiful face, twisted in a scream of horror as she clutched their child close her. He missed them so badly every part of him was filled with sorrow, at least they were not here now to witness this.
The Game
It was dark, in the immediate distance. A bright white light illuminated overhead, I could feel it’s heat like a naked bulb. In front of me was a small round card table, the top covered in green felt, the stem made of polished dark cherry wood.
I reached out and glanced at my hand. Perfectly oval, bright red nails extended from long, slender fingers. Fingers that reached out like spider legs from a open ended, ruffled trimmed fingerless glove. The glove itself was some sort of dark grey denim, with a machine sewn seam perfectly centered on the back of my hand. A white ruffled eyelet lace protruded from the top, and the wrist. I turned my hand over to glance at the palm. The ruffled lace was machine sewn into a white cotton liner on either end. The grey denim had dark grommets, with a black satin ribbon crisscrossing over the liner. It was tied in a neat bow near my heart line.
My black hair fell to the side of my face into my peripheral vision, it was cut short just below the ears. The hair fell straight yet looked like humidity had caused minor frizz.
I glanced down at the corseted top I wore. It matched my gloves with the exception of the midriff part made of black leather. The dark gray denim fit tight and kept my posture straight and perfect. I could feel the bottom of it near the sacral chakra and the top just above the heart chakra. The white shirt came up over my cleavage and covered it, white ruffled eyelet lace trimmed it almost like a ViVi collar. The sleeves ran down my arm and reached just to the inside of the gloves, but they were cuffed with a single white plastic button.
Then a light came on across the room and to the left. There sat a man behind a table identical to mine. He had a thin oval face, his cheeks slightly sunk in giving him a ghoulish, ghastly aura. Smooth, thin white hair fell limp and lifeless under a black top hat sporting a light grey band. A thin long scarlet feather behind a single normal sized playing card, you could only see the blue designed back of, were tucked into the band on the left side.
He wore what looked like a black formal dinner jacket, over a light gray vest with black buttons. His white undershirt bore the same eyelet lace as mine, only his sat high upon his neck. I tried to see his eyes, but they were shadowed by the brim of his hat. He wore black leather gloves, though they only extended past his long bony knuckles so only a third of his fingers actually showed.
There was no background, there was no floor or ceiling. There was nothing but darkness, and the two of us.
Original X-roads-2003
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I Understand
The headache began from the frontal lobe, somewhere near the anterior premotor cortex. It was a constant pain that came from nowhere. Slowly easing itself in til it had reached the volume of pain it wanted, then resided at that point unmoved. The continual pain if left unchecked would lead to other symptoms. Agitation would increase like lightening on the nervous system. There would be a definite loss of the ability to concentrate, it would soon become impossible to keep focus for long periods of time. These two symptoms would lead to new side effect, restlessness. Restlessness would lead to a myriad of psychological and mental impediments. Sound thinking and reasoning would fall slightly off kilter. After time a feeling of desperation begins to creep in.
Knowing the physiology would not stop the onslaught, not even taking an asprin would stave it off. The cure lies somewhere else. The only cure was to stop completely the compulsive obsessive disorder that had taken over. Like a demon, the illness snuck in without warning and possessed you. Controlling your thoughts and actions, manipulating your emotions and needs.
It was an addictive itch, that fueled a burning inner desire when you scratched it. It felt good. The burning desire within you, the hunger and wanting. It felt good to nurture it. A slightly erotic and evil invocation, that feeling you get when it feels good to be bad.
It started like most things, it was all done in passing. A small curiosity, a passing interest. Then it was almost a morbid fascination, like driving slowly past a car wreck. You had to look, what harm could one small peek do?
But that small glimpse did something you did not expect. It awoke your mind to strange thoughts you had not experienced before. It opened doors to wild fantasies you never dared dream before. It took you to a place you had never known of, a land so strange and foreign you wanted to know every nook and cranny of it. Everything was new. Whatever you expected when you came here, you left with the first free taste of a very addictive drug.
This was no ordinary drug, it was not one to dull the sense and ease the mind. It offers no escape, only bondage.
Kate
The cursor blinked on the command line. It waited for its command. It did not judge if you did right or wrong, it only obeyed. It did not question. It did not feel. It did not willingly tell your secrets. It only did what you told it to do, nothing more nothing less.
The letters were quickly typed on the screen.
The only the sound in the room was of the clicking keys.
rpm -i peek_a_boo.bld0024.i8.rpm
The screen flooded with words and numbers as the program installed on the machine.
After a few minutes the whirlwind of letter of and numbers stopped and the command waited again.
The cursor blinked.
cd PaB
./peek
The computer screen flashed to life. A large dark screen came up with a single box. A series of asterisks appeared as the password was typed in.
The program opened up. The mouse moved quickly over the toolbar and a box popped up mid screen. An ip address was typed in.
The entire contents of the hard drive were opened in a file explorer interface. The /pics/ directory was clicked on.
The command line stood ready, the cursor blinked awaiting orders. rpm -e PaB The screen spring to life on command, it whirred with letters and numbers. Then stillness, the cursor blinked.
Pictures of cats, kittens, a few dogs were intermingled with selfies. Nothing sexy. A few selfies were copied to a directory.
All the files were looked over on the hard drive. Movies, music, emails that had been saved to the hard drive. Everything there was to know about her was here. Where she lived, who she was. It held all her secrets. A few mp3s were copied. The program disengaged from the ip address. A phone number was entered into the box. The contents of the phone were laid out in the same manner as the computer. The pictures of the same female with her friends, at her work. All her destinations, all her check ins. All the information off the phone was transferred to separate directory named Kate. The mouse hovered over the X and the programs warm glow ceased.The command line stood ready, the cursor blinked awaiting orders. rpm -e PaB The screen spring to life on command, it whirred with letters and numbers. Then stillness, the cursor blinked.
Hal
Addie opened her eyes. Her body was stiff, and her skin felt the cold surrounding her like an enemy. The cotton sheets seemed cold, despite the down comforter on top. Her bedroom was lit only by the moon shining in from the single window to her right. Unmoving shadows embraced every corner and curve of the fixtures and furniture. There was no sound at all. She laid there in the stillness and glanced around her room.
Nothing out of place, everything is as it should be.
Her muscles began to relax as she recognized she was safe. The sheets began to feel warm and comforting luring her back to sleep. She started to close her eyes just as the clouds began to move over the moon.
The room began to grow dark as her eyes closed. Then just as they were almost shut and everything was blurry. There was movement to the left of the bed near the wall.
Addie couldn’t tell what it was, how big it had been, or even how fast it had been moving. For the first second she wasn’t sure she saw anything at all. She was almost dreaming, it might not be anything real. The moon was blotted out by a passing cloud, perhaps it was a trick of the eye just as it was closing.
Then she heard the noise. She knew right away what the noise was, or more precisely where it was. Something on her dresser had moved, but it was just one thing. As if someone pushed it an inch in any direction.
Addie’s eyes were now wide open.
It was as if she still had them closed. She could not see anything at all. Her heart began to beat so hard she shook from the force of it. Her lamp was on the night stand to her right. All she had to do was reach out her arm and turn on the light.
Her body laid there frozen in fear.
What if it whatever it was ripped off her arm as she was reaching? What if it didn’t know she was awake and it would leave if it thought she was sleeping? What if the cloud moves and moon comes back out?
As if on her command the clouds moved on and the moonlight began to pour back into the room.
Addie’s heart began to pound with less force as she noticed the shadows all in their places. Nothing was out of place, that she could see. The dresser was washed in shadows and it was impossible to tell if anything had moved.
There was nothing else.
Addie took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She started to clear her mind of the nonsense she almost given in to. Her heart began to beat at a normal pace. Addie breathed slow.
She began to force her eyes to close. Just as her lids were closing there was bright blur at the foot of the bed.
It lunged at her.
She opened her eyes wide quickly, but all she ever saw was a white blur lunging at her like a wild hungry dog. The only sound she heard was it landing on all fours on the bed, and her final scream for help into the night.
Serial Killer
The blood was starting to clot and fall in globs to the floor. He continued to cut away the flesh from the bone in silence. He tossed the meat aside in large plastic storage tub.
It was not the thin cheap plastic storage tubs you would buy at the local mega-mart, they were the thick sturdy kind that were hard to find. All storage tubs used to be this thick, when he bought them in bulk in nineteen eighty four.
He wasn’t a hoarder. He just liked to plan ahead.
He planned so well ahead it was eerily like ESP. Which he did have in some small sense. He had enough to know he would need those containers when he saw them.
He didn’t know the economy was going to tank, leaving millions out of work. He had no foresight that the country was going to be so far in debt it could not get out, ever. He knew none of these things were going to happen.
He did know Katherine, with a “K”, was going to want to go home with him last night. He knew she would drink one more cherry martini once he got her there. He knew how the whole night would go. Not so much because of ESP, though he was sure it held a part.
It was due to his meticulous planning, and the fact the he knew Katherine was spelt with a K two weeks before their chance meeting at the bar.
He knew more than how to spell her name.
He knew where she worked, where she played, who she worked and played with. He would have made a great private detective. He knew her favorite color, her favorite drink, and (thanks to an online dating profile) what her perfect man would be like.
For three hours he was that man. A night of role playing. A smile, a laugh, and unlimited charm. Then he brought her home and mixed her a drink.
She wanted more, so much more. She’d found her perfect man, she wanted her happily ever after to start here and now. She was so desperate, so very desperate. She would have done anything he asked, anything.
That was all he needed.
Then as she neared the end of her drink, her flirting became slurred. Her movements became clumsy. She went to the restroom to urinate, and expired on the toilet.
It was a stroke of luck he hadn’t counted on.
He removed the wig of short dark hair, and took out the light brown contacts. He had both in every color. He enjoyed dressing up and playing the part.
It added to the adrenaline rush.
He could have been an actor.
He pulled the last piece of meat off the bone and tossed it in the plastic container.
He set the bones in a huge cauldron over the walk in gas fireplace in the front room. He left them to boil as he carried out the tub of meat to the woods.
He walked for a few hours, and set the tub down uncovered. He said nothing and enjoyed the sounds of the surrounding woods. There was no one around here for miles and miles.
After the bones were cleaned, he laid them out to dry on a large metal dehydrator he had built. Then he took the dry bones to a large industrial trash compactor located in the shed. Within minutes of the large machine’s whirring and cranking, it was over.
He took the bone fragments and dust, added them to some bonemeal mulch he’d bought a few weeks before for the garden.
He went down to the basement and cleaned the cold metal steel floor and the autopsy table.
He had the house built at his own expense. Room by room, each by different construction crews. No one knew the floor plans but him, everything was built without question, to his specification.
H.H. Holmes would have been proud.
It Could Happen…
P.P.R.
In 1984 in the state of Tennessee, the country’s first privatized jail was born. Since its induction many have asked “Was it worth it?” When the economy began to tank, states turned to privatize jails for their overflow.
“Human rights groups were constantly up in arms over the treatment of the prisoners.”, said Officer Deardly. “Prison costs were beginning to skyrocket, and the state funds were dwindling. Privatized jails were a perfect solution.”
Rioting has become a thing of the past. These new privatize jails are equipped with state of the art surveillance and restraint technologies. Pipes equipped to seep nontoxic sleeping gas run throughout the main hallways. The Gas System is installed in all major rooms in the prison.
When a riot is being detected by the surveillance cameras, disabling nerve gas is pumped through the pipes into the room disabling all prisoners. The system is mostly automated, however guards still monitor the cameras.
Many human rights activists have petitioned for the closure of many of the country’s privatized jails. Many of the claims lodged in the past have been dismissed. Courts generally rule in favor of the privatized jails, citing laws that protect private companies. However, most of the complaints being lodged now are accusing the privatize jails of becoming forced labor camps.
At Browning jail, in Texas, prisoners work as farm and ranch hands. The general population in Browning jail seem to be well adjusted. They eat three healthy meals a day, that they had a hand in personally growing. Browning jail started off with one small carrot patch and a couple of sheep. They now plant and harvest enough food to sustain the entire prison from both the ranch and farm.
While at Browning we met inmate #963056, he was transferred here on a life sentence the day the doors opened at Browning. He knows all the history of this prison and all the ins and outs of daily life on the inside. After his shift at the slaughterhouse we got a chance to speak to him.
“I’m in for life.” Gregory Sazo Inmate #963056 stated with a smile on his face. “I tell you when they introduced the fact that we could have bacon for breakfast in the mornings. This place lit up! I mean you had inmates whoopin and a’hollerin. Spirits was real high. Then they found out that someone has to slaughter them hogs, and they wasn’t so happy. So many of us seen so much killin’ already, and to know… To know that hog had to die so you could eat some bacon. Well that really brought it home for some of the boys here. Yeah but, not me. And not some of the country folk. It was brought up to the warden, to stop the slaughter of innocence. In the end we ended up killing a lot less hogs, simply because the other inmates wont eat it. They like that with the cows too, and the sheep. So they started shearing the sheep and selling them off for profit.”
While many privatized jails are touting success stories like Browning, the less talked about prisons are the ones housing the criminally insane. These privatized jail systems treat their inmates like science experiments.
After trial, psychopaths are loaded up and put in a one room cell, with cameras watching their every move. There are multiple microphones as well, to capture every sound they make. Every angle of the room is covered. They lose their right to any kind of privacy when they committed heinous murder.
They are given no human contact, meals come in mechanical dumbwaiters to their cell. When the criminal messes up the food mechanism, the room is flooded with sleeping gas so a crew can come in. The criminal will be sedated a second time after they are secured in a straightjacket. Then the inmate is moved to a second room and left there while repairs are being done. The criminals will often awaken during this process, while in the new room. Alone and in a straight jacket, strapped to a gurney. The inmate will be gassed a second time and moved backed into the original cell after the work is completed.
On occasion a repair will take several days, in which the criminal is normally gassed unconscious and hooked up to an iv and urinary catheter. Every once in a while they will get a criminal who continually destroys the food dispenser and is allowed to starve to death.
They are studied like rats in a cage, twenty four hours a day everyday. Their every word read, their every drawing psychologically evaluated. They are sometimes rewarded for compliance and good behavior. Sometimes one will be given a room with a window that overlooks a grassy endless field. Another will get a television to control and watch. These too are just so they can be studied in a more relaxed environment. They want to know what makes these monsters to society tick.
Indigo
Indigo Shyloh had been an ugly duckling all her life. In elementary school she was picked on because she had a big nose and ears. When she got to middle school she not only had a big nose, and big ears, she was also taller than everyone else. She turned to her studies and turned her back on a society that did not accept her.
She always made the best grades, no student could match her on any level. She refused to compete in academic competitions, because of her looks. Winners always appear with their picture in the paper, for all the world to see. She always shied from the camera when someone was taking pictures in the room. The family photo album generally had her peeking out from behind an elbow or obscured in the back behind everyone else. She always did her best to hide or blend in, she never wanted to be noticed.
When Indigo entered high school her heart fell to an all time low. She watched the pretty girls, with the beautiful faces, all get date after date. They always had their choice of the boys of the school. The boys flocked to these girls, as if they had some sort of invisible power over them. It hurt her to watch, she cried herself to sleep at night. Why couldn’t it be her?
She began to notice the shapes of the girls faces and taking notes to herself of what she would have changed, if she could. By her junior year she had a plan in her head of what she was going to do with her life.
She would work really hard and save all her money, then research plastic surgeons. She would make herself look like one of them.
The years passed, Indigo finished college and a job in a corporate office. Day in and day out she did her job efficiently and without problem. She never complained to anyone, and she never asked for anyone’s help. In her spare time she researched doctors, and she saved every extra penny she made.
Finally she had the money she needed to get everything done. She’d made sure she’d saved enough for the two years it would take of recuperation down time, when she would be unable to work between procedures. She quit her job, there was no farewell cake or party for her. Indigo had no friends.
Four years later Indigo Shyloh was a completely different person.