Nightmare Fuel, Day 13. This is a Silent Protest

One more horrible thing! Now a day short of a full fortnight.

I noticed that I've been a bit dialog-heavy on some of these, so decided to go without dialog on this one. Other experiments include the present tense and... well, read on. Is there something about the protagonist I've not told you? How does making the assumption one way or the other change how you see the story? 

Thanks as always go to Andrea Trask for the prompt, and the rest of the Nightmare Fuel community for playing along.

More AV soon, I promise. For the nonce, read on.

This is a Silent Protest

by L Czhorat Suskin

If High School were a place for the dead, Danny is right at home. He is dressed as a ghost.

Not a damned soul with jangling chains still bearing the scars of his death. Not a prophetic ghost, eyes wide with hidden knowledge from beyond the veil. No, Danny is a cheap Halloween ghost, in the kind of costume you'd always seen in cartoons and comic books but which nobody has ever worn: a plain white sheet tossed over his head with two holes cut out for eyes. They're cut into quite neat circles, but the effect is still as laughable and slapdash as you'd imagine.

It isn't even Halloween.

Danny gets on the bus, ignores the questioning calls, the mocking reminders that the date is wrong. To a locker, stows things and unstows things. Questions of why and how come and what the fuck bounce off the sheet like water from the proverbial duck's back.

Kids are watching now, a bit curious. Nobody's ever paid Danny much attention, but this is weird - even for a weird bookish kid. If kid is even the right word for these young men and women straggling across the bridge to adulthood. No matter. By now everyone's realized two things:

Danny is dressed as a ghost.
Danny isn't speaking. At all.

And now it's time for homeroom. The role is  called. Eyes slowly turn to Danny as the call and response goes on, they slowly realize that the game will soon be over. Danny's name will be called, Danny will mutter "here" or "present". Except, of course, Danny does no such thing. The name is called,  a crisp white index card is revealed from beneath the sheet with a clumsy flourish, like that of a magician just learning the trade. The card does not say "here" or "present" but, in plain block letters, "THIS  IS A SILENT PROTEST".

Confusion and annoyance bubble through the room. Silent protest about what? Why? What does one person's silence for a day (will it only be for a day) say about anything? These questions and more are asked, but the only answer is a flourish of that same index card. Danny won't accept a pen, won't write out what the protest is about. That lone index card seems to be the sole concession to the world.

The day goes on. Kids make a game of trying to get Danny to talk with an engineered collision in the hallway, a called out name, a sudden noise. Danny remains the perfect ghost, silent. Teachers just ignore the ghost and get on with the lesson. Tests are coming (tests are always coming) and there's no time to waste trying to ferret out what this silent protest might be. The index card develops a pronounced curvature from all the flamboyant flourishes with which it is displayed (and it is numerous times). The midday meal is lifted, one bite at a time, under the sheet, from whence it vanishes into the ghost's inner mouth.

Late  in the day someone tries to snatch the sheet, to unmask the ghost and bring Danny back. Of course they do. This is high school and these are not yet adults. So, the sheet is snatched, the index card is snatched,  but not grabbed back and fought for as imagined. Danny stands in the hall, face shockingly naked, eyes wide. Blinks, reaches into a backpack (and who wears a backpack in school? Our silent protester, that's who), pulls out another sheet and another index card.

Just like that, Danny is gone and the ghost is back. The crowd deflates with muttered "whatevers". It wasn't as much fun as they'd expected.

What happened next? That will tell you what kind of story this is.

Is it a fable, with a clear moral? Does Danny come back the next day, sheet absent and voice present, to explain the lesson of the silent protest?

Is it a modern ambiguous fable, with a heavy-handed message? Does the silent protest drag on, day by day, until it becomes expected that Danny will never speak again, and a play-ghost becomes, for all practical purposes, a real one?

OR are we looking to shock the reader into greater compassion? Is Danny's body found the next day, red stains already drying on the once-white sheet, beside a tattered index card reading "THIS IS A SILENT PROTEST".

Does it matter? 

Is this a silent protest?

Nightmare Fuel Day 12 - At the Wall

This is one that I might revisit; after the story I'll say a bit more.

At the Wall

by L Czhorat Suskin

The cottage at the wall was a quaint one, all gingerbread and colorful trim gently muted by years of sunlight. The caretaker was just as quaint, his grey beard as neat-trimmed as the hedgerows, his briar pipe as anachronistically charming as the old stone well out back. We found it a particularly delightful place to room and board ourselves; a romantic getaway in the shadow of the wall.

KHoffmanDC on Flickr
 http://www.flickr.com/people/24248942@N04 by way of the Wikimedia Commons
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creepy_Old_Face_-_Flickr_-_KHoffmanDC.jpg
shared under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

We'd caught glimpses of the wall between trees on our way along the hard-packed gravel road. It looked like nothing more than the kind of stone wall you find in old farming communities.They say that those walls aren't walls at all, but just a convenient way to stack stones out of the way when clearing them from your field. 

The Wall, of course, is different. We all know why; we know in our legends, our fairy-tales, the stories we grew up with. We know it in our very bones.

So, we end up there, in the cottage on the wall. Together, with the caretaker. We all know what's there and, aside from the joy of our company, why we're there. We don't know the details, the best places to go, the best way to see those who live beyond the wall. For that, we asked the Caretaker. 

From an antique slant-top desk he drew forth a battered leatherbound notebook, overstuffed with stapled handbills and pamphlets, scraps of paper, phone numbers. He settled on a page. "MacPheagles. They'll give you a tour of fae country, and a real fae would lead it. Some of the other wall tours are run by people from this side of the wall.. these are real fae."

My bride looked at him, "they're real? That's better?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "You can see how they really live. It's different than us. Their clothes haven't changed much over the centuries, nor their customs. One of the first things I saw here that blew my mind was a real fae family, with kids and everything. 

"You can see their kids too?"

"Not only that, everything. Their bakers use some kinda fae magic to make those little cakes. I don't have to warn you about eating them! And if you go off the main roads a bit, you'll even see their prisoners, turned to stone and frozen into the wall. And their women have this delicate beauty. Should I arrange it for you? Something you'll never see otherwise?"

She nodded, and I nodded, and we left the caretaker to make arrangements for us to get a tour from a genuine fae, to see the strange ways of the people living beyond the wall. 

---------------------------------------------

Still here? Of course you are. The inspiration, aside from the image, was a real conversation I had with the owner of a B&B in Lancaster, PA. Amish country. He spoke of a buggy tour run by "a real Amish person" and kept harping on the genuineness of the experience. It felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if the Amish were zoo exhibits. I left wondering what other groups we'd do this with; about how strange it would be to be offered a tour of Williamsburg, for example, by a "genuine Jew". Why does the former seem charming, but the latter offensive on its face?

This is a setting and idea I'll likely revisit after Nightmare Fuel season ends. Perhaps you'll all see the end result later.

Nightmare fuel, Day 11: a Week of Death

This is another one little scrap of dark whimsy. It's fun to set up patterns, but only if you find a way to break them later. The breaking of the pattern, in addition to what is implied in that empty space, often gives power to part of a story or film. 

One example from a different medium, is the moment late in Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ comics when  Cain is about to kill his brother Abel for about the millionth time, but has his hand stayed for the only time we've seen or ever will see. It adds gravity to what was already a heavy, emotionally dense part of the book. 

This is nothing as deep as that; as I said, dark whimsy, but fun in a way. The image prompt comes from the one and only Andrea Trask herself
, hostess for the Nightmare Fuel project.


A Week of Death

Dinner time. Monday evening.

"How was your day?"

"I saw dead worms today."

"In school? Are you learning about animals?"

"No, daddy. On my way there. Mommy said it rained last night, and the worms drown. It's so sad."

"They're just worms. Who cares about them? What happened in school?"

"Math, spelling, gym."

--
Dinner time. Tuesday evening.

"How was your day today?"

"I saw a dead bird.on the sidewalk."

"You know what I mean. Your day at school."

"It was all twisted like a broken doll. There were flies all over it."

"What.happened.at.school?"

"We had reading and art."

--

Dinnertime, Wednesday evening.

"How was your day?"

"I saw a dead dog. In the sump near the park."

"You shouldn't go there. And you know what I meant. What happened at school?"

"Math and writing."
--
Dinner Time, Thursday evening.

"How was your day?"

"We saw a dead deer."

"You know what I meant. What did you do in school?"

"We had a field trip. I saw it from the buss window. It looked sad and broken."

--
Friday evening.

"How was your day?"

"Fine. We had music and art."

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 10th. An Experiment

I'm continuing to play with form. Today's prompt was pretty straightforward, which is the hardest thing for me to deal with.

I initially thought of something with the conflict between nature and civilization, and with the potential for the latter to strike back at the former. Or how living so far from nature stresses us. Neither of those ideas felt compelling, so I started from there and drifted to a little scrap of whimsy which unspooled over my twitter feed through the course of the day.

I might at some point revisit this form of storytelling. I don't know if I'll make a new Twitter account for it or have it drift in and out of this one. The latter seems, at least, more interesting.

From uvw916a on Flickr from http://www.flickr.com/photos/25023895@N02/
via a Creative Commons Attribution license

From LeonardCSuskin on twitter.

Did anyone else see the sheep in Central Park's Sheep Meadow? Sheep eyes are creepy.
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

The sheep meadow sheep seems happy, watching the tourists through creepy sheep eyes. Does it even know that it's in the city?
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

The sheep meadow sheep seems happy, watching the tourists through creepy sheep eyes. Does it even know that it's in the city?
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

Is the Sheep Meadow sheep still there? Did it leave the park and wander the city streets, brushing shoulders with carriage horses?
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

The sheep meadow sheep ducked into an office building at lunch time, while the workers wandered out through the park.
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

There was never a #sheep in the sheep meadow. #NothingIsReal
— Leonard C Suskin (@LeonardCSuskin) October 11, 2013

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Ninth. The Examined Life

This one is a bit of a throwaway; an all-dialog experiment in the spirit of some of Terry Bisson's work.

The image is a very evocative one, and part of me feels bad about not doing more with it. I'm also trying to make these pieces different from eachtoher, at least on some level.

"Another tax bill came, sweety."

"Shit. How much is it?"

"Too much. Too much by a lot."

"shit."

"I think I'll have to sell another memory."

"Oh honey. Not again."

"There's no other choice. And it won't be that bad. We can write it all down first. Like we did the last time."

"It won't be the same. You've told me that."

Ronald Van Hoist on Flickr
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/halfhide/
Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial license

"Maybe. It's still something. And.. this is hard to explain, but even if I don't remember after they take them out, I remember remembering them. There's kind of a shadow or something left. It's OK. Really."

"This sucks."

"It'll be OK."

"Promise me you'll buy them back if we can make enough money before they're sold? Promise me?"

"Sure. I promise. 

It's OK. Really"

"Don't you worry about this? Doesn't it matter to you?"

"There's no choice. Now get a pen and paper so we can write it down. They said they'll pay extra for romantic memories."

"Fine."

"It's OK."

Nightmare Fuel Day the Eight - The Year of Average Living

Another Day, another prompt!

This is another one I didn't take literally. The image is quite evocative, but it's hard to make it into something _not_ literal, and my initial ideas seemed hampered by the expectations. The author shrinking to a tiny clone of everyone else, Gregor Samsa-style? The existence ot tiny beings who secretly control or make the world? A hidden world beneath ours? They see too.. expected. 

I toyed with the idea of technology creating a sameness within us (one which I touched on in previous posts here), but those, too, felt literal and didactic. So I took a slightly different route and a different form. Look at the image, see what I found, and - if the spirit moves you -  ponder what you'd do with this image.

From José Manuel Ríos Valiente on Flickr,
shared under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives license.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/josemanuelerre/5385576298/

Dear Editor:

When we learn to let go of our ego, we may truly find ourselves. Each day we are beset by suggestions, hints, and recommendations by sources ranging from search engines to booksellers to streaming video services. What would happen were we to accept all of them? Can this be the gateway to the age-old dream of freedom from the shackles of desire? The Year of Average Living explores these questions, summarizing and expanding on the journey begun within the pages of my blog of the same name.

For one year I chose the first restaurant selection from online review sites, the first "you may like..." suggestions from Netflix Hulu, the first suggestions from Amazon. In the spirit of successful and provocative experiments such as No Impact Man, The Year of Living Biblically, and 365 Days,524 Recipes. Like the very best of the genre, The Year of Average Living transports us beyond the initial premise to teach us lessons about ourselves and the world around us. Do these suggestions and recommendations represent liberation from ego, or another form of corporate slavery? What can one accomplish when freed from the shackles of the thousand tiny, inconsequential decisions one must make? Learn all this and more.

My work as a freelance writer and web-developer with specializations in new media marketing and search engining optimization gives me great understanding of the subject matter and a strong platform for this book. I live in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York  with two cats.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours,

Jacob Weill.

Nightmare Fuel, Days 4 and 5

A pair of short pieces from over the weekend. With this we're all caught up!

Seven pieces in seven days.


First one is a little mini-experiment. I love non-traditional forms: in this case, exploring an idea through a FAQ. It removes context and character, leaving one with just a concept.

FAQ for The Treatment

Source Unknown

Q: What is The Treatment?
A: It is a simple set of neurohypnoticbioadjustments to alter your subjective reactions to better match cultural norms.

Q: Is this brainwashing? 
A: Not at all! We accept corrective lenses, hearing aids, laser surgery, and cochlear implants to adjust objective reactions to stimuli. Think of The Treatment the same way; it adjusts subjective perceptions the way that glasses adjust objective perception. 

Q: Why should I accept The Treatment? What good will it do me?
A: The single most important difference between happy and unhappy people is that happy people fit in. Seeing things the way other people do will help you to become more connected by shared enjoyment of our common culture. This is literally the best thing you can do for yourself if you want a better life.

Q: Won't this change my personality? Make me a different person?
A: Of course not.  It's simply changing your perceptions, the way you see something as beautiful or ugly, entertaining or banal. Is your favorite musician or TV show part of how you define yourself as a person?

Q: Won't this make culture boring, as everything becomes the same?
A: Not at all. In fact, people completing The Treatment express great creativity within the accepted bands of taste. This creates more culture which is acceptable ad lovable to more people.

Q: You suggest The Treatment for children as young as six. Is it fair to decide for them?
A: Is it fair not to? To sentence them to live as outsiders? To not give them the gift of common experience with their peers as they grow? This is the time to do something for them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next one I took a different tack; this is a non-literal reading in which the image doesn't quite appear in the final piece. I rather enjoyed this one. It's meant to be read with the first and second NMF submissions for this year, but thematically more than literally.

Intermission

by L Czhorat Suskin

Dying wasn't so bad. Light, only light. Like in the stories, but before her. The light was behind, and she felt herself drifting away from it.

from Fat_tony http://www.flickr.com/photos/fat_tony/
Attribution Sharealike Creative Commons License

Not knowing what happens next out in the world bothered Sandra more than she'd think, but truth be told she'd never expected to be able to wonder anything afterwards. She kinda just expected to be ... gone. 

The feel of her body lingered for some moments, like an all-over ghost pain from the amputation of every limb, the removal of every organ. 

Then things started vanishing. The memory of the first time she played the violin or drove a car or had sex flicked across whatever was her memory, and then slipped away. Sandra couldn't remember the feel of running or eating or being touched .. even by him.

She didn't remember what happened next, couldn't remember before the light. 

She forgot remembering, what she was trying to remember. 

Didn't remember what remembering was. Just was. 

What was left of the dead person's soul felt a trickle of unease, but it didn't know why. A sensation of bright light, a place that looked a bit like a cage and a bit like a store. 

The passage of time.

Others came, stripped like it was. It could sense in them cracks, imperfections. A ghost-memory of dolls discarded for creepy eyes, missing hair, cracked faces. They were like that. It wanted to fix them. It wanted to fix everything.

Everything could be so beautiful.

Another drew near or was thrust near or placed near. Familiarity and  a wash of revulsion, what would be a turn in a stomach if it had a stomach. 

And another, broken differently. 

And a light filled the room.The light was one of them, bright burn of a bare bulb, harsh glare on all the chipped and broken edges.

Time

passed



Something new. A voice. Not unkind.

"You made a bit of a mess of that last time around, but I think you're ready to try again. When you have those moments you feel deja-vu, the fluttering in your stomach, love-at-first-site, inexplicable fear and loathing... Pay attention. That's your memory of the last time around. Or the time before that.

Of course, you'll not remember my telling you this. Good luck."

He slowly felt the sensation of sensation. Was he put back together? Grown anew? Were some parts the discarded scraps of the others? 

 limbs and lungs, hair and heart, ears and eyes. 
Soon light, only light,

he pushed towards it.