I have completely freaked my shit out.

[digitaldiscipline]

Had, for me, an unusual occurrence last night.


2:45, woke up from a particularly vivid text nightmare (while having the nightmare, i was also reading it as if in a book - a sure sign that my writing muscles are getting in shape). mulled it over for a while, went to jot down an outline so i could recount it.

that done, i repaired back to bed, but the brain kept worrying over the denouement, which kept freaking me out (goosebumps, chills, hearing noises, the whole nine yards), so i trundled back downstairs (now 3:15) and proceeded to try and type it out quietly. i was more successful at the typing it out than the typing quietly (ooops, sorry, K *smacks forehead*), and an hour and a half and 1500 words later, i've got an IT-like freaky little short story on my hands.

and reading the end of it -still- creeps my shit out.

Comments

[sabinenotagoth.livejournal.com]

let's see let's see let's see

i sometimes have nightmares in narrative/book form also. i rather like that, even if the dreams themselves are...unsettling.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

[because it's too long for one post, it's gonna be 2 parts]

CALLING BACK CREEK

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[because it's too long for one post, it's gonna be 2 parts]

<center>CALLING BACK CREEK</center>

<align=right>
Nov 4, 2001

Richard “Ralphie” BuBois
47 Sedgemill Terrace
Atlanta, GA 30411
Class of ‘82
<align=justified>
Michael Halliburton
56 Hedgeford Lane
Haven, ME 07315

Dear Mike:

Bet you never thought you’d be getting a letter from me of all people. Frankly, it feels a little strange writing it. The whole idea of written correspondence seems a little quaint and archaic these days. But some things are better (or best) done by hand – not because they’re personal (which this certainly is), but because some machines can’t be trusted.

You know what I’m talking about.

I have in front of me an envelope with Dolly Grainger’s return address, and I suspect you’ve got one tucked away with this month’s credit card bills, utility statements, and the rest of the accounts due.

I can’t decline to attend any more than you can, I’m afraid. Oh, I don’t want to, because I haven’t kept social ties with anyone from there except Agnes Wheeler (who is now my wife). You probably don’t remember her from back then – Coke-bottle glasses, braces, thin as a rail, dressed like a bag lady, might have weighed 75 pounds soaking wet.

“Soaking wet,” how’s that for a nasty surprise, huh?

So, I’m married. Put my time in at Stanford and picked up with a couple of hot-shit internet outfits, three of which you’ve probably heard of (and two more your stockbroker he wishes he’d gotten in on early). Very much “local boy makes good” stuff, if the Courier had ever wanted to run a story. No kids, thank God.

Aggie’s a knockout now. Tinted contacts, killer smile, and great fucking tits. How’s that for a healthy, All-American, macho turn of phrase. Great fucking tits. Bet you never expected those words from me, the one everybody thought was a queerboy. But they are – big, firm, and buoyant.

Buoyant, indeed. Another reminder, isn’t that nice?

Which brings us back to Dolly’s little invitations. Hard to believe our twentieth class reunion is next June, but I find it very easy to believe that the reunion is scheduled for the night of the 15th, and that it’s supposed to run until after midnight. I don’t think we have any choice about being in town in the dark hours of the 16th. On the road. On that road.

Speaking for myself, I don’t remember too much about what happened in 1971. When you’re eight, life is always happening in the present; “moment, moment, moment, next!” I remember horsing around (or being shoved around, actually – you and Henry Bollinger were a heck of a lot bigger than me) and tumbling down the bank.

Remember how high the river was that spring? We’d had all that snow late, and it was such a cold spring that it took forever for a good melt, and then it kept raining. But it was sunny the last day of school, wasn’t it? Knock-your-eyes-out sunny, and warm. But it hadn’t been warm much, and definitely not enough to pull a nasty chill out of the water.

Maybe it was different for you, but I remember the water feeling hot and greasy, like spit when you have to puke.

I managed to whack my head pretty good on a rock (that lump lasted through the Fourth of July), so I don’t know how I missed it. My folks told me I got pulled out almost a mile downstream, clammy from shock. You were always bigger and stronger; did you scramble back to shore before you went around the bend? I suppose it doesn’t matter.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

[part 2]

But I do remember graduation day, and so do you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have that tumbler of Jack Daniels by your right hand. That’s okay, there’s a slowly-disappearing fifth of Grey Goose on my desk as I write this. And I bet the bar will do a brisk business at the reunion, and it won’t just be us. Nobody will know why they’re hitting the sauce quite that hard, and there’ll probably be some arguments (my money’s on Penelope Johanssen and Meredith Bax, with the undercard of Curt Bowley and Jimmy LaPerrier).

Besides, drunks aren’t very good swimmers, and are ever so much more apt to drive off a twisting road, especially at night.

But that afternoon in 1982 is why I’m writing you, bottle close at hand. Another knockout day, remember? Warm, windy, and the last day of our High School lives. Funny how many of us rode our bikes that day, isn’t it? And me, the flamboyant dipshit, with those chopper handlebars and that mop of curls, weaving in and out of everybody like I was begging for an ass-kicking.

What did I care? I’d never have to see you assholes again, other than for two hours Saturday afternoon. I was so happy just to be free that I didn’t care what anyone saw or thought (except Agnes, of course, but she had 9th period free and always left early).

I don’t know if I flipped you guys the bird, or said something, or what. Whatever it was, I had to pedal for my goddamn life when you lit after me. At this point, I’m almost inclined to believe that nothing set it off. Well, nothing tangible, anyways.

And nothing wrapped the shoulder strap of my orange nylon backpack through the spokes of my back wheel and around the chain as I hit Venkman’s Curve, either. You don’t believe that either, huh?

But there I was, the bike snapping over and sliding before it went down on the hardpan, and me, flying like a fashion-impaired scarecrow clear over the embankment and into the water. You must have tried to stop and crashed into my bike, because I saw you go in nearly head first. I remember thinking you’d break your neck because the water was so low (and I’m sorry I wished you had at that moment, but eighteen and outcast is a pitiless way to be).

Yeah, the water was low. Too low, which is why we’re both here to get Dolly’s invitations. But still fast and strong enough to dump me ass over teakettle with the current. I got one look at you, standing up and leaning backwards into the flow, watching me. You were soaked, but your hair was standing up, and the sun hit it just right, so you looked like you had a halo with horns. It was your expression, though – there was some shock and surprise, and a fair bit of pissed off, but you looked scared shitless, too and I thought I saw you say, “Thank God, not me.”

But by then, I was going around the bend. You remember how it opened out into that pool where all the summer people thought the fishing would be good on the far bank, across from the municipal intake? I don’t remember fishing there, or seeing anyone from town bother (except Scooter Malley, but as the man said, there’s a fine line between fishing and sitting around, drinking beer, and looking like an idiot holding a stick).

After that one little girl had been pulled into the intake in, what, ’63, the town put a grate across it, which was just smart – you can’t go around having a five-foot pipe with nothing to keep people out. I can’t imagine being the guy who had to put that sucker in. You couldn’t pay me enough.

There was still that one strong current, though, and it hooked towards the municipal intake. I was caught hard in that, and between panic and being scrawny, I was along for the ride, even with the water as low as it was. I’d managed to keep my head up, pretty much until then, but got sucked almost all the way under, and that’s when I heard it.

The water talks there. It’s not the polite chuckle of a backyard stream or the insensate roar of Niagara Falls, this was words and sentience and malice. My ears were in the water and my face was in the air, and the water talked to me.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

[part 3]

Maybe you heard it before, and maybe you hear it now. Might be that there’s a whisper of it when you refill your glass, or a word or two below the mechanical hum and flutter of the dishwasher.

But it’s calling us back. A space of ten years the first time, twenty years now. I don’t think we’ll both be around in thirty more, do you? That’s why, come hell or high water (or, perhaps for us, they’re one and the same), we’re going to be there whether we want to or not.

“. . . comes to us yes comes to us yes feeds the wall feeds the hole yes comes yes comes yes feeds the wall yes you comes you ours yes ours feeds feeds gobbles eats you up yes comes and eats feeds haves gobbles comes yes. . . “

It was mad, gibbering, endless. It was the voice of those creatures Lovecraft tucked away in some remnant of bad geometry, the endless litany of a sucking maw, and it was hungry. It’s the voice of the river, and it’s still flowing.

[sabinenotagoth.livejournal.com]

add to this. publish this. it's that good.

...

[etcet.livejournal.com]

i've submitted it already (though the .doc version has some italics, which helps a smidge). *s*

[sabinenotagoth.livejournal.com]

*yay*

i still want more though! the story reads as finished, but i want to know more! :)

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

good stuff. Want more.

I have to say, I can definitely feel the King influence. Considering how long he's been doing this, and how much he makes doing it, I don't think that's anything close to a negative.

good show, man.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

nothing i've read of king, with the possible exception of some passages in IT and Cujo, freaked me out in the slightest. perhaps it was the intensity of the sensation in the dream, hearing the water gurgle and talk like that for myself that did it.

i could probably flesh out the descriptions and settings, and maybe do some dialogue here, but it's pretty much done as-is.

now that my writing muscles are getting back into shape, though, this may become more frequent. i just don't have longer works in me, typically (4500 words is the longest thing, other than my abuse of audi, that i've written in quite a while. if anyone wants that, i can email it in .doc format)