Ed Messner, 'All Hail Jeff Bezos,' is the former star of an infomercial where he sold brooms. New to the writing world, Ed states his proudest moment was launching a nighttime raid to replace all inhabitants of a local church nativity scene with monkeys of various sizes procured from Amazon. Playing key roles in his reimagined view of the holiest of holy nights were Abu in swaddling clothes like a fuzzy Baby Jesus, Curious George as a banana-chomping magi, and King Kong starring as none other than the cuckolded father Joseph. Like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime, Ed walked by the church the following morning and was delighted to see dozens of protestors carrying handmade signs praising the glory of their cloud genie and condemning non-believers to eternal damnation. Of particular note was the grubby child, snot about to cross the threshold of her upper lip, with a sign in red and blue crayon that warned “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” When asked what inspired his bit of religious subversion, Ed recalled a bargain-store figurine of Baby Jesus that inhabited a manger scene his mother was especially fond of when he was a child. It terrified him. In a recent interview, Ed stated "If I was Joseph and saw that thing climb out of Mary’s womb, my next words would be 'Balthazar, bring me a hammer.'”
I'm on a 28-hour drive cross country, and I have more pieces that are more inspired by Wickedness than the one below, so I'll share more later in the week. To try to keep things tidy, I'll post them below this one.
I really enjoy writing about Liasa Leuken if you can't tell. I feel like the events surrounding the dissolution of her family are a black hole that I have the urge to fill. It may be more interesting to keep it a mystery, though, what Jane Alison calls a radial story, and instead focus on the aftermath of her actions. But hey, what do I know?
Joan Kicklighter, "Where the Past Goes to Die," is a Kingsport native, a Bram Stoker award winning author, and a self described collector of self-destructive behaviors. Her present favorite is her habit of cold calling her exes to proposition them, always half hoping for rejection. She's always afraid of who she will become if she ever gets what she really wants. Most recently, she reached out to her college flame from MMC Trinity, who will only be referred to as "L" here. L, to Joan's surprise, agreed to meet for coffee and cake at a spot near L's privately owned coastal-forest resort. L had an opera cake. Joan had blackberry. They talked about life post-transition. They talked about L's divorce, about how her husband never discovered their extramarital affair. They talked about Joan's upcoming collection, "All the Bodies I Keep Inside of Me," soon to be released by Weirdpunk Books. Joan asked about her daughter, Simone, and if she was getting along well. L didn't answer. She asked if she ever imagined a future where they never parted. L took a sip of her cappuccino, gifted her a soft smile, and said, "No. There was only ever this. Our life is a runaway domino chain, and we are only ever falling." Joan said that was a classic reflex for her, always snowing and philosophizing to keep from being honest. Both annoying and hot simultaneously. They shared their current relationship statuses – Joan, terrifyingly alone with only the stray cats in her yard to keep her company, while L had a fascinating latticework of different connections that joined together to make her present love life. L offered for her to be node in that vast web. Said she could spend time at the resort, wear red robes, and drink in the love and coastal-forest scenery. Joan thought it sounded too good to be true and asked point-blank if her resort was actually a sex cult in disguise. L laughed, "Well, I know we have a shared definition of sex based upon our past experiences, but how would you define a cult? For example, a cult like the Eleusinian Mysteries had some key distinctions from modern -" Yep, it was a cult. When asked if they performed sex magic, all she received was a shrug – practically a confession in L-speak. Damn. That was hard for Joan to say no to. Sex magic is obviously the best magic and potentially the best sex. Joan is proud that she said no, prouder than she is of her award winning debut novella "Marry Me Sappho." She thought that she could lose herself in a place like that, and the idea that her hard earned sense of individuality and identity could be erased made her want to cry. Joan stood up and said that she didn't really know anything about families but that she should take time to reach out to Michael and her daughter. L said, "You're right. You don't know anything about families." They exchanged social media handles before parting ways. You can follow Joan on damn near every platform under her handle @assKicklighter to stay up-to-date on her writing. Joan still has L's number and knows that the invitation she received doesn't have a real expiration date. She looks at it from time to time.
Morgan Dramas, “Phantom Heart Pain,” is a Walt Whitman Award winning poet, and he lives alone. He hasn’t had any family for almost a decade. He has a stag that visits his backyard. Melanistic – a 1 in 500,000 specimen. Definitely shouldn’t be found in the outskirts of Babylon, IN, where Dramas resides year-round. Its midnight black fur shines like an oil spill when it stands in his flood light. It only comes out at night, in the winter. Alone. Before Dramas installed the flood lights, it would walk up to his backdoor and fog up the glass. Mouth dripping, and antlers scrapping the sill. It would watch him walk the empty halls of his country home. Now, it just stands on the outskirts between him and the dead hay field behind his house. Steam rolling off its gleaming snout. It stares at him and hisses. Soft and dreadful, like a dying engine and a failed harvest. He set up trail cams along his property, but all they capture is static and grey stalks. Dramas wrote an award winning prose poetry collection “Cernunnos at Night,” about its seasonal visits. Naturally, his editor, Auden Lark, had to see his grim muse. They sat out on his back porch, drank black coffee – subtle notes of cocoa, blueberry cobbler, and pomegranate, imparted to it from the soil where it was born – and they waited. It never showed. So they just talked till 2 am. About their parents, about necro-waste, about how you can see the stars above Babylon so clearly. Sometimes, he’ll walk out to meet the stag. Its hissing grows quiet. A quid of crops chewed black, rotten earth, and poetry falls from its lips. He’ll drop to his hands and knees, lick it off the cold brown grass, and then go to his writing desk to work on a new best-selling collection. “We Still Breathe the Dust of ’36,” will hit shelves next December. It’s described in the American Poetry Review as a marriage between Steinbeck and Adrienne Rich. Dramas has already written his epitaph and keeps it next to his journals on the nightstand. It reads: “Extant snowprints run across the floor beneath the buck on father’s hearth.”
Resi Venturi, “Almost A Changeling,” the 2012 recipient of the Young Floridian Award, insists that nothing special or traumatic occurred to “impact” or “mar” her childhood. She remembers doing normal kid things, like finger painting, making mud pies, and singing in the woods. The idea that she is somehow damaged is one that Venturi must rebuke frequently. All anyone wants to think about is her disappearance – the striking missing person posters, with a just out-of-focus picture of her in pigtails, made a lasting impression on many. People want to talk about how she vanished from her Girl Scout troop while they were camping at Alexander Springs. “Like the Wind Carried Her,” is both the title of her collected essays released by Coffinhal Press and how her bunk mate described her vanishment. They don’t want to talk about how they found her, the exact same girl, safe and unharmed two weeks later over 300 miles away from where she was last seen. A local man in a sputtering airboat had discovered her quite by accident, standing at the top of a solitary grey tree in the middle of a vast stretch of still water. Her “rescuer” was startled to find that she was completely dry. “Stranded in Mirrored Sky,” her first non-fiction piece, which was published to very little fanfare, details her re-entry into society with a striking degree of specificity. Including how her parents tripped over themselves, running to get her, and how they ensnared her in their arms. The shiny emergency thermal blanket wrinkled against their limbs. They looked like they had just woken up from a fever dream – elated, sweating, and unable to shake the feeling that they should be afraid. Her mother asked if she was hurt while her father wanted details. Events and horrors. A culprit to crusade against. She told them that nothing had happened.
“I’m fine.”
“But you can’t be.”
“It’s fine if you’re not fine.”
“It’s abnormal to be normal.”
“I’m OK.”
– “Reunion as Dialogue,” a cinquain from Resi Venturi’s debut poetry collection, “No Stains to Clean,” which will be available digitally on the anniversary of her finding. They had her meet with a therapist, which is the correct move procedurally but completely unnecessary in Venturi’s case. They said that she had come back changed, but she felt like she was still the same Resi that was lost that April. She still painted with fingers, tasted the dirt after it rained, and still sang to the trees. They expected those parts of her to die the day she left them, but they never did. Never will. Her therapist, suspecting PTSD, attempted to treat her using hypnosis. They achieved what some may call a degree of success: murmured confessions of fear and trembling, riddles answered with riddles, and haunting drawings of a monstrous silhouette lifting her into the air. Something that had taken her under its wing and fed her like a baby bird for weeks in its nest. Her therapist came to the conclusion that the results of their therapy revealed an active imagination, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied with some counseling. Just as Venturi had said, she was fine. Just like any other kid, she painted with blood from a finger prick. She breathed in petrichor and ate earth worms. She climbed trees in her sleep and sang a song not meant for human tongues as she dug her claws into the bark. They – her parents, her therapist, everyone – always talk about who they lost. Yet Resi Venturi was never truly lost, and she’s never truly changed. If you like to talk about Resi Venturi or her work, the very least you can do is tag her, @misadventuri, on all social media platforms. Donate to her Patreon to support her creative endeavors, and you can receive a one-of-a-kind sketch made by Venturi while under hypnosis. Quality, detail, and the figures captured on the page may vary.
– I made some structural choices here that I hope don't break from the bio format TOO much, but I couldn't help myself. It was just a lot of fun to play with.
I absolutely loved that you went to dialog. That's "running with it." But I stumbled as you came out of the dialog. By going into a narrative scene (the dialog) you seize the entire Contributors narrative (a good thing) and you demonstrate how self-involved most writers are. Can you rejig this and post it in the Comments of the next ReShuffle? I'd like to find a place for it. cp
Alma Kadrey, “The Days That Bleed,” is a Gertrude Stein Prize nominated author by day and a crisis hotline counselor by night. Her writing is informed by the American mental health crisis and her experiences on its front lines. She takes calls at her kitchen island, elbows sinking into the grout of the tile countertop, and leads people through their darkest nights. Just as she outlines in her book, “Let’s Call Him Micah,” where she details her process and her decision-making by walking the reader through a fictional conversation. Most evenings, there’s a merlot sky bleeding through the lace curtains above her sink as she’s connected to a “Micah” over the phone. There’s a script she follows – a back and forth filled with static tinged voices and cold comfort words. One Micah has a partner on life support, and they don’t know how to go on without them. Another Micah is observing the anniversary of their first failed attempt at their own life. Another, still, is alone in a motel room after their partner kicked them out for breaking their sobriety. Another, and another, and another. She’s heard just about everything. “Something Real and Lasting,” her essay published in Logos Carceral Magazine, states that where some conversations end at the script, most need to go beyond procedure to make a greater impact. Alma grounds and forms empathetic bonds with her callers until she feels transported. She’s in the hospital stairwell with one Micah, back against the concrete, overwhelmed by Daphne blue smoke and pale fluorescents. Her wife, Mona Kadrey, is in the living room grading A.P. Lit papers while listening to Billy Tipton to give her some privacy. For the duration of that call, though, Alma can’t stop picturing her on a ventilator. She’s in another Micah’s bedroom, staring at a tilted ceiling fan. Lasting damage from when an adult human was hanging from its base. For another, still, she’s in a flamingo pink motel room. Everything she owns is in a suitcase lying on the stained dark teal carpet. Mona is somewhere far away, cursing her name. She embodies a stranger’s reality. She dreams of pills and wine. Feels her neck tighten. The cold iron in her hand. Alma’a autobiography, “Grounding Principles in Astral Projection,” talks about the things that keep her sane and bring her back to Earth. She’s brought back by the sound of Billy Tipton in the next room and the scratching of her wife’s pen. Alma focuses on her home; the warm honeyed wallpaper, her niece’s art framed in oak, and the opaque pendant lights just above her head. She sees the world she’s curated to shield her from the dark. This heaven is only truly loved when she sees the hell it borders. Alma may never hear from them again, once their call has ended, and all she can do is hope that it’s because they’ve found some beauty in this world to hold onto. You can contact Alma Kadrey through her website – almakadreyinlife.com – for any inquiries related to her writing. If you’re going through a crisis, she asks that you call the 988 Lifeline.
– Obviously these three stand-alones are partially inspired by Wickedness but I wanted to mention that this one in particular is inspired by the Cleo section, where the tragedy and horror is kept at a distance.
Mariana Katrina: Author of "The Storm Spotter's Guide" and volunteer storm spotter for the NOAA. Shared her experience at the Florida WritersCon during a storm on her youtube vlog. She traveled to the convention despite a tropical storm predicted to hit the area. Locals told her to park her rental in a parking garage and to stay at the event in case of flooding. The storm unexpectedly upgraded to a hurricane. The power went out in the middle of the convention and no flights are leaving the area.
Ophelia M. Stockhill MDD, CPTSD, BPD, ‘How to Be, or Not to Be,’ was found dead, except she was breathing. The tiles that made up the floor, when she came crashing down, didn’t smell as white as they looked from standing. Lightheaded and hearted, she didn’t mind. But somebody heard the noise and minded.
Her short, handwritten essay ‘The Easy Way out, The Hard Way’ has been published in her medical records binder, granting her the "Extended Stay" prize. The piece has been described by Ophelia’s inpatient social worker as ‘concerning, to say the least,’ while her poem ‘Sweet Tooth’ has gone largely unnoticed because people who frame their diplomas think it's about deserts. Her favorite food, hospital chocolate cake, is served wrapped in cellophane.
For safety reasons, her contribution was written with a ballpoint pen that had a dull tip and a soft rubber shaft, half the length of a normal pen. If she swallowed it, it would flow through her without rupturing her intestines.
Ophelia understood the no shoelaces policy, but when she asked about “why no erasers?” no one answered.
And when no one answered, Ophelia smiled with half of her mouth and asked, “Can I please have some more cake?”
In addition to her writing, Ophelia’s shocking visual/performance piece, ‘Up the River, Not Across the Bridge,’ is the first-place winner of the "Broken Character" award after one paramedic said, “holy shit, she's bleeding out, fast” out loud. Recently, she was cleared of her suspected ‘Anorexia Nervosa,’ ordering two, three, four slices of cake each meal. The diploma people chalked it up to good metabolism.
“Unwrapping that cake,” according to Ophelia,” peeling the little squares of cellophane off is the best part of the day.”
Her upcoming novella ‘Suffocation, Piece by Piece: A Quilt of Plastic’, has been described as "breathtaking" and is set to be released, posthumously, this Summer.
Was it 'Thurnley Abby'? It's got the best action sequence I've seen in a ghost story. The writer stays in scene for an impossible length of time -- and it works due to his use of On-The-Body in the POV character.
Xibalba Xocotl,’ Fun Facts About Chocolate,’ works and lives as a tour guild in San Ignacio, Belize. An amateur historian and archeologist, Xibalba’s passion for and love of his people, the Maya, makes every excursion a unique and memorable experience as he guides visitors down the roads of red dirt that his people have traveled for centuries.
Fun fact: His 2003 silver metallic Subaru, with the windshield, cracked straight through, always has a working air-conditioner. The seatbelts don’t buckle, and even though he’s missing a sideview mirror and has a flashlight taped to his hood, he only ever gets the AC fixed. Tourists love that.
If you google “Tikal,” you’ll see grand and elaborate stone pyramids. You’ll see lush rainforests full of gum trees and howler monkeys and spiders; a deadly jungle that was ruled, fun fact: by Xibalba’s ancestors fearlessly. You’ll see blonde tourists from California standing on the steps of the gods, sticky with bug spray.
Fun fact: Xibalba’s people’s kingdom was an empire built on chocolate. They discovered Cacao for the rest of the world.
If you google “The Chocolate King,” it’ll come up “Milton Hershey,” but fun fact, it wasn’t him.
In his spare time, when he’s not driving back and forth between his great ancestors’ holy sites, Xibalba Xocotl doubles as a gift shop cashier, selling keychain replicas of Maya gods and temples.
Fun fact: they look authentic, but they are all made in China and sold at a ridiculous markup. A culture reduced to souvenirs.
Smiling real big and nice for tip money, Xibalba Xocotl bows and jokes, while he hands over the last pieces of his ancient empire, which, fun fact: is actually his. Meaning it belongs to him.
Google “Yax Ehb' Xook” and you’ll find Xibalba’s distant grandfather, the first king of Tikal.
Xibalba Xocotl, the glorified taxi driver, is royalty.
He says, “Thank you so much for coming here,” groveling for tip money. Google the exchange rate of Belizian Dollars to USD to find out why.
His first book,’ Chocolate Revenge’, teaches readers the origins, evolution, and eventual bastardization of his culture’s most sacred fruit.
Fun fact: Ek Chuah, the Maya god of chocolate, is not smiling.
When wealthy tourists with giant, fat calves and pendulous abdomens drink a mug of hot chocolate, they are drinking more than the entire royal family of Xibalba’s tribe would drink in a year. To the Maya, the drink is sacred.
Fun fact: Eating Chocolate, like chewing it up, is an act of disrespect. Belize, fun fact, only started producing chocolate bars in 2007, and that’s four years newer than Xibalba’s car. It’s the last thing to go. The cities were taken, then the land and every shred of history was burned and rewritten, and now Xibalba goes by “Jose’” to tourists and has a Spanish accent. He wears a roman catholic crucifix, and fun fact, that’s called “Syncretism.”
Fun fact: It's hard to find Pepsi products in Belize because the whole country is basically owned by the Coca-Cola company. The mighty Maya, conquered again and again by weaker and weaker enemies.
But “Jose,” nodding his head as the new, more gentle conquistadors sit in his back seat, he just smiles and listens.
When they bring themselves down to his level, the level of a king, and apologize for colonization, he just smiles.
When their fat skin, tight in their clothes, sweats, and burns, he listens to them. They ask, in the very next moment, how much acres of land cost, here in this paradise. And he tells them. And he smiles.
When they pull out solid bars of the ruined pride of his people and take big, greedy bites, it’s like being humiliated again and again. And Xibalba just nods and smiles and says nice things.
And, fun fact, Xibalba’s biggest smile comes when they finish eating that chocolate bar, and he listens for the beep of the glucometer.
And a fun fact: that’s when Ek Chuah smiles, too, from his heavenly throne. Smiling broadly as the invader’s bodies break down at the feet. Their eyes go blind, and their amputation sites never heal because of the thousands of years' worth of chocolate crystalizing in their fine blood vessels. If you google diabetic neuropathy, you’ll learn who got the last laugh.
And the great King Xibalba Xocotl, from his Subaru throne, just smiles and asks if they would like another chocolate bar. They always take it. They always take everything.
Arthur Treewright, author of “Hanging Dogs,” lives in Boylan, Mississippi with his wife and three cats. His latest series is “My Memories of the Macabre.” Struggling to read my own bio, I’m reminded how as babies, the lens in our eyes are so flexible we can hold our multi-colored Mr. Puddles up to our faces and examine the contours of his nostrils from an inch away. Older, our perspective changes, the lenses are hardened, and bifocals are the order of the day. Speaking of eyes or the macabre or both, if you ever have retina surgery, or at least some kinds, the docs generally don’t knock you out. They give you happy drugs, but no general. So, after getting up at 4:30 in the morning and going through intake where you are asked questions regarding the last time you ate, you’re laying there on a gurney with an IV that hurts like a two inch splinter under a nail. You’re there with twenty other patients lined up outside the surgery rooms like planes being taxied for takeoff. Eventually you’re up and you are wheeled into the surgery room and a team surrounds you in surgery gowns. You get oxygen, you hear the ping from the heart monitor and they cover your whole body except one eye. The surgery eye. You hope that they put the arrow on your face next to the correct eyeball. In a daze, you feel pin pricks around your eye socket. You realize this is them numbing your eye. Completely numbing it. You really hope that works. Moments later you feel something entering your eye from the side - the white part. Then something else. It's a miniature propeller in your eyeball. Up close you see it, blades of steel. The propeller starts spinning. You wonder if you should be seeing this. You sort of don’t care though, because - happy drugs. Twenty minutes later they are putting a patch over your eye and wheeling you out. You get juice and a blueberry muffin. You sit there for a while. You’re picked up and you leave. They won’t let you leave if someone doesn’t get you. It’s harder to scare me nowadays.
3rd rewrite. May not make the cutoff.
Working on my 3rd revision. Good luck all!
I’m sending mine today after the past few weeks of diligent rewrites with fingers crossed.
I’m on my second rewrite. I’ll make the deadline.
Here’s a pdf of “Wickedness.” http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/ENGL/2500/Kilpatrick/wicked.pdf
Thanks Pam, you're a godsend!
appreciate you
Oh okay so I didn't need to retype the whole thing 🙃
Not going to make the Silent Nightmares deadline because I'm being pulled away by other stories but I can't wait to read!
Just tightening it up, very excited to submit
Finally....I've finally finished....my 734th draft. Halfway there!
Just submitted. I'm happy with it, and my expectations of actually getting picked are realistic. Good luck to everyone :)
Ed Messner, 'All Hail Jeff Bezos,' is the former star of an infomercial where he sold brooms. New to the writing world, Ed states his proudest moment was launching a nighttime raid to replace all inhabitants of a local church nativity scene with monkeys of various sizes procured from Amazon. Playing key roles in his reimagined view of the holiest of holy nights were Abu in swaddling clothes like a fuzzy Baby Jesus, Curious George as a banana-chomping magi, and King Kong starring as none other than the cuckolded father Joseph. Like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime, Ed walked by the church the following morning and was delighted to see dozens of protestors carrying handmade signs praising the glory of their cloud genie and condemning non-believers to eternal damnation. Of particular note was the grubby child, snot about to cross the threshold of her upper lip, with a sign in red and blue crayon that warned “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” When asked what inspired his bit of religious subversion, Ed recalled a bargain-store figurine of Baby Jesus that inhabited a manger scene his mother was especially fond of when he was a child. It terrified him. In a recent interview, Ed stated "If I was Joseph and saw that thing climb out of Mary’s womb, my next words would be 'Balthazar, bring me a hammer.'”
I'm on a 28-hour drive cross country, and I have more pieces that are more inspired by Wickedness than the one below, so I'll share more later in the week. To try to keep things tidy, I'll post them below this one.
I really enjoy writing about Liasa Leuken if you can't tell. I feel like the events surrounding the dissolution of her family are a black hole that I have the urge to fill. It may be more interesting to keep it a mystery, though, what Jane Alison calls a radial story, and instead focus on the aftermath of her actions. But hey, what do I know?
Joan Kicklighter, "Where the Past Goes to Die," is a Kingsport native, a Bram Stoker award winning author, and a self described collector of self-destructive behaviors. Her present favorite is her habit of cold calling her exes to proposition them, always half hoping for rejection. She's always afraid of who she will become if she ever gets what she really wants. Most recently, she reached out to her college flame from MMC Trinity, who will only be referred to as "L" here. L, to Joan's surprise, agreed to meet for coffee and cake at a spot near L's privately owned coastal-forest resort. L had an opera cake. Joan had blackberry. They talked about life post-transition. They talked about L's divorce, about how her husband never discovered their extramarital affair. They talked about Joan's upcoming collection, "All the Bodies I Keep Inside of Me," soon to be released by Weirdpunk Books. Joan asked about her daughter, Simone, and if she was getting along well. L didn't answer. She asked if she ever imagined a future where they never parted. L took a sip of her cappuccino, gifted her a soft smile, and said, "No. There was only ever this. Our life is a runaway domino chain, and we are only ever falling." Joan said that was a classic reflex for her, always snowing and philosophizing to keep from being honest. Both annoying and hot simultaneously. They shared their current relationship statuses – Joan, terrifyingly alone with only the stray cats in her yard to keep her company, while L had a fascinating latticework of different connections that joined together to make her present love life. L offered for her to be node in that vast web. Said she could spend time at the resort, wear red robes, and drink in the love and coastal-forest scenery. Joan thought it sounded too good to be true and asked point-blank if her resort was actually a sex cult in disguise. L laughed, "Well, I know we have a shared definition of sex based upon our past experiences, but how would you define a cult? For example, a cult like the Eleusinian Mysteries had some key distinctions from modern -" Yep, it was a cult. When asked if they performed sex magic, all she received was a shrug – practically a confession in L-speak. Damn. That was hard for Joan to say no to. Sex magic is obviously the best magic and potentially the best sex. Joan is proud that she said no, prouder than she is of her award winning debut novella "Marry Me Sappho." She thought that she could lose herself in a place like that, and the idea that her hard earned sense of individuality and identity could be erased made her want to cry. Joan stood up and said that she didn't really know anything about families but that she should take time to reach out to Michael and her daughter. L said, "You're right. You don't know anything about families." They exchanged social media handles before parting ways. You can follow Joan on damn near every platform under her handle @assKicklighter to stay up-to-date on her writing. Joan still has L's number and knows that the invitation she received doesn't have a real expiration date. She looks at it from time to time.
Very Liasa of you!
Good impulse. With the longer narrative anecdotes, it might be best if they didn't riff off our existing threads. Make them one-offs.
Good point I appreciate that! Thanks Chuck!
Thanks again for the direction! These longer one-offs were a lot of fun to write. 😊 Hope they're of some use!
Morgan Dramas, “Phantom Heart Pain,” is a Walt Whitman Award winning poet, and he lives alone. He hasn’t had any family for almost a decade. He has a stag that visits his backyard. Melanistic – a 1 in 500,000 specimen. Definitely shouldn’t be found in the outskirts of Babylon, IN, where Dramas resides year-round. Its midnight black fur shines like an oil spill when it stands in his flood light. It only comes out at night, in the winter. Alone. Before Dramas installed the flood lights, it would walk up to his backdoor and fog up the glass. Mouth dripping, and antlers scrapping the sill. It would watch him walk the empty halls of his country home. Now, it just stands on the outskirts between him and the dead hay field behind his house. Steam rolling off its gleaming snout. It stares at him and hisses. Soft and dreadful, like a dying engine and a failed harvest. He set up trail cams along his property, but all they capture is static and grey stalks. Dramas wrote an award winning prose poetry collection “Cernunnos at Night,” about its seasonal visits. Naturally, his editor, Auden Lark, had to see his grim muse. They sat out on his back porch, drank black coffee – subtle notes of cocoa, blueberry cobbler, and pomegranate, imparted to it from the soil where it was born – and they waited. It never showed. So they just talked till 2 am. About their parents, about necro-waste, about how you can see the stars above Babylon so clearly. Sometimes, he’ll walk out to meet the stag. Its hissing grows quiet. A quid of crops chewed black, rotten earth, and poetry falls from its lips. He’ll drop to his hands and knees, lick it off the cold brown grass, and then go to his writing desk to work on a new best-selling collection. “We Still Breathe the Dust of ’36,” will hit shelves next December. It’s described in the American Poetry Review as a marriage between Steinbeck and Adrienne Rich. Dramas has already written his epitaph and keeps it next to his journals on the nightstand. It reads: “Extant snowprints run across the floor beneath the buck on father’s hearth.”
Resi Venturi, “Almost A Changeling,” the 2012 recipient of the Young Floridian Award, insists that nothing special or traumatic occurred to “impact” or “mar” her childhood. She remembers doing normal kid things, like finger painting, making mud pies, and singing in the woods. The idea that she is somehow damaged is one that Venturi must rebuke frequently. All anyone wants to think about is her disappearance – the striking missing person posters, with a just out-of-focus picture of her in pigtails, made a lasting impression on many. People want to talk about how she vanished from her Girl Scout troop while they were camping at Alexander Springs. “Like the Wind Carried Her,” is both the title of her collected essays released by Coffinhal Press and how her bunk mate described her vanishment. They don’t want to talk about how they found her, the exact same girl, safe and unharmed two weeks later over 300 miles away from where she was last seen. A local man in a sputtering airboat had discovered her quite by accident, standing at the top of a solitary grey tree in the middle of a vast stretch of still water. Her “rescuer” was startled to find that she was completely dry. “Stranded in Mirrored Sky,” her first non-fiction piece, which was published to very little fanfare, details her re-entry into society with a striking degree of specificity. Including how her parents tripped over themselves, running to get her, and how they ensnared her in their arms. The shiny emergency thermal blanket wrinkled against their limbs. They looked like they had just woken up from a fever dream – elated, sweating, and unable to shake the feeling that they should be afraid. Her mother asked if she was hurt while her father wanted details. Events and horrors. A culprit to crusade against. She told them that nothing had happened.
“I’m fine.”
“But you can’t be.”
“It’s fine if you’re not fine.”
“It’s abnormal to be normal.”
“I’m OK.”
– “Reunion as Dialogue,” a cinquain from Resi Venturi’s debut poetry collection, “No Stains to Clean,” which will be available digitally on the anniversary of her finding. They had her meet with a therapist, which is the correct move procedurally but completely unnecessary in Venturi’s case. They said that she had come back changed, but she felt like she was still the same Resi that was lost that April. She still painted with fingers, tasted the dirt after it rained, and still sang to the trees. They expected those parts of her to die the day she left them, but they never did. Never will. Her therapist, suspecting PTSD, attempted to treat her using hypnosis. They achieved what some may call a degree of success: murmured confessions of fear and trembling, riddles answered with riddles, and haunting drawings of a monstrous silhouette lifting her into the air. Something that had taken her under its wing and fed her like a baby bird for weeks in its nest. Her therapist came to the conclusion that the results of their therapy revealed an active imagination, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied with some counseling. Just as Venturi had said, she was fine. Just like any other kid, she painted with blood from a finger prick. She breathed in petrichor and ate earth worms. She climbed trees in her sleep and sang a song not meant for human tongues as she dug her claws into the bark. They – her parents, her therapist, everyone – always talk about who they lost. Yet Resi Venturi was never truly lost, and she’s never truly changed. If you like to talk about Resi Venturi or her work, the very least you can do is tag her, @misadventuri, on all social media platforms. Donate to her Patreon to support her creative endeavors, and you can receive a one-of-a-kind sketch made by Venturi while under hypnosis. Quality, detail, and the figures captured on the page may vary.
– I made some structural choices here that I hope don't break from the bio format TOO much, but I couldn't help myself. It was just a lot of fun to play with.
I absolutely loved that you went to dialog. That's "running with it." But I stumbled as you came out of the dialog. By going into a narrative scene (the dialog) you seize the entire Contributors narrative (a good thing) and you demonstrate how self-involved most writers are. Can you rejig this and post it in the Comments of the next ReShuffle? I'd like to find a place for it. cp
I can absolutely make some adjustments! Definitely want to stick that landing. 😊 Thanks Chuck!
Alma Kadrey, “The Days That Bleed,” is a Gertrude Stein Prize nominated author by day and a crisis hotline counselor by night. Her writing is informed by the American mental health crisis and her experiences on its front lines. She takes calls at her kitchen island, elbows sinking into the grout of the tile countertop, and leads people through their darkest nights. Just as she outlines in her book, “Let’s Call Him Micah,” where she details her process and her decision-making by walking the reader through a fictional conversation. Most evenings, there’s a merlot sky bleeding through the lace curtains above her sink as she’s connected to a “Micah” over the phone. There’s a script she follows – a back and forth filled with static tinged voices and cold comfort words. One Micah has a partner on life support, and they don’t know how to go on without them. Another Micah is observing the anniversary of their first failed attempt at their own life. Another, still, is alone in a motel room after their partner kicked them out for breaking their sobriety. Another, and another, and another. She’s heard just about everything. “Something Real and Lasting,” her essay published in Logos Carceral Magazine, states that where some conversations end at the script, most need to go beyond procedure to make a greater impact. Alma grounds and forms empathetic bonds with her callers until she feels transported. She’s in the hospital stairwell with one Micah, back against the concrete, overwhelmed by Daphne blue smoke and pale fluorescents. Her wife, Mona Kadrey, is in the living room grading A.P. Lit papers while listening to Billy Tipton to give her some privacy. For the duration of that call, though, Alma can’t stop picturing her on a ventilator. She’s in another Micah’s bedroom, staring at a tilted ceiling fan. Lasting damage from when an adult human was hanging from its base. For another, still, she’s in a flamingo pink motel room. Everything she owns is in a suitcase lying on the stained dark teal carpet. Mona is somewhere far away, cursing her name. She embodies a stranger’s reality. She dreams of pills and wine. Feels her neck tighten. The cold iron in her hand. Alma’a autobiography, “Grounding Principles in Astral Projection,” talks about the things that keep her sane and bring her back to Earth. She’s brought back by the sound of Billy Tipton in the next room and the scratching of her wife’s pen. Alma focuses on her home; the warm honeyed wallpaper, her niece’s art framed in oak, and the opaque pendant lights just above her head. She sees the world she’s curated to shield her from the dark. This heaven is only truly loved when she sees the hell it borders. Alma may never hear from them again, once their call has ended, and all she can do is hope that it’s because they’ve found some beauty in this world to hold onto. You can contact Alma Kadrey through her website – almakadreyinlife.com – for any inquiries related to her writing. If you’re going through a crisis, she asks that you call the 988 Lifeline.
– Obviously these three stand-alones are partially inspired by Wickedness but I wanted to mention that this one in particular is inspired by the Cleo section, where the tragedy and horror is kept at a distance.
Short story that helps me appreciate a good heating system.
I was thinking the same thing. Coincidentally, my heat is out till tomorrow so, doubly so on this frigid night
Mariana Katrina: Author of "The Storm Spotter's Guide" and volunteer storm spotter for the NOAA. Shared her experience at the Florida WritersCon during a storm on her youtube vlog. She traveled to the convention despite a tropical storm predicted to hit the area. Locals told her to park her rental in a parking garage and to stay at the event in case of flooding. The storm unexpectedly upgraded to a hurricane. The power went out in the middle of the convention and no flights are leaving the area.
Elise, you can do better than that! Details. A dense little story, and this time you can go long.
Ophelia M. Stockhill MDD, CPTSD, BPD, ‘How to Be, or Not to Be,’ was found dead, except she was breathing. The tiles that made up the floor, when she came crashing down, didn’t smell as white as they looked from standing. Lightheaded and hearted, she didn’t mind. But somebody heard the noise and minded.
Her short, handwritten essay ‘The Easy Way out, The Hard Way’ has been published in her medical records binder, granting her the "Extended Stay" prize. The piece has been described by Ophelia’s inpatient social worker as ‘concerning, to say the least,’ while her poem ‘Sweet Tooth’ has gone largely unnoticed because people who frame their diplomas think it's about deserts. Her favorite food, hospital chocolate cake, is served wrapped in cellophane.
For safety reasons, her contribution was written with a ballpoint pen that had a dull tip and a soft rubber shaft, half the length of a normal pen. If she swallowed it, it would flow through her without rupturing her intestines.
Ophelia understood the no shoelaces policy, but when she asked about “why no erasers?” no one answered.
And when no one answered, Ophelia smiled with half of her mouth and asked, “Can I please have some more cake?”
In addition to her writing, Ophelia’s shocking visual/performance piece, ‘Up the River, Not Across the Bridge,’ is the first-place winner of the "Broken Character" award after one paramedic said, “holy shit, she's bleeding out, fast” out loud. Recently, she was cleared of her suspected ‘Anorexia Nervosa,’ ordering two, three, four slices of cake each meal. The diploma people chalked it up to good metabolism.
“Unwrapping that cake,” according to Ophelia,” peeling the little squares of cellophane off is the best part of the day.”
Her upcoming novella ‘Suffocation, Piece by Piece: A Quilt of Plastic’, has been described as "breathtaking" and is set to be released, posthumously, this Summer.
This one is madness. I like.
Why thank yuh. Based one a true story.
Hell, I hate the truth.
Hey Chuck, what was the name of that Victorian ghost story you insisted to Krissy and I to read?
Was it 'Thurnley Abby'? It's got the best action sequence I've seen in a ghost story. The writer stays in scene for an impossible length of time -- and it works due to his use of On-The-Body in the POV character.
It was! Sorry I didn't circle back. Oliver spotted me and sent me a link.
Xibalba Xocotl,’ Fun Facts About Chocolate,’ works and lives as a tour guild in San Ignacio, Belize. An amateur historian and archeologist, Xibalba’s passion for and love of his people, the Maya, makes every excursion a unique and memorable experience as he guides visitors down the roads of red dirt that his people have traveled for centuries.
Fun fact: His 2003 silver metallic Subaru, with the windshield, cracked straight through, always has a working air-conditioner. The seatbelts don’t buckle, and even though he’s missing a sideview mirror and has a flashlight taped to his hood, he only ever gets the AC fixed. Tourists love that.
If you google “Tikal,” you’ll see grand and elaborate stone pyramids. You’ll see lush rainforests full of gum trees and howler monkeys and spiders; a deadly jungle that was ruled, fun fact: by Xibalba’s ancestors fearlessly. You’ll see blonde tourists from California standing on the steps of the gods, sticky with bug spray.
Fun fact: Xibalba’s people’s kingdom was an empire built on chocolate. They discovered Cacao for the rest of the world.
If you google “The Chocolate King,” it’ll come up “Milton Hershey,” but fun fact, it wasn’t him.
In his spare time, when he’s not driving back and forth between his great ancestors’ holy sites, Xibalba Xocotl doubles as a gift shop cashier, selling keychain replicas of Maya gods and temples.
Fun fact: they look authentic, but they are all made in China and sold at a ridiculous markup. A culture reduced to souvenirs.
Smiling real big and nice for tip money, Xibalba Xocotl bows and jokes, while he hands over the last pieces of his ancient empire, which, fun fact: is actually his. Meaning it belongs to him.
Google “Yax Ehb' Xook” and you’ll find Xibalba’s distant grandfather, the first king of Tikal.
Xibalba Xocotl, the glorified taxi driver, is royalty.
He says, “Thank you so much for coming here,” groveling for tip money. Google the exchange rate of Belizian Dollars to USD to find out why.
His first book,’ Chocolate Revenge’, teaches readers the origins, evolution, and eventual bastardization of his culture’s most sacred fruit.
Fun fact: Ek Chuah, the Maya god of chocolate, is not smiling.
When wealthy tourists with giant, fat calves and pendulous abdomens drink a mug of hot chocolate, they are drinking more than the entire royal family of Xibalba’s tribe would drink in a year. To the Maya, the drink is sacred.
Fun fact: Eating Chocolate, like chewing it up, is an act of disrespect. Belize, fun fact, only started producing chocolate bars in 2007, and that’s four years newer than Xibalba’s car. It’s the last thing to go. The cities were taken, then the land and every shred of history was burned and rewritten, and now Xibalba goes by “Jose’” to tourists and has a Spanish accent. He wears a roman catholic crucifix, and fun fact, that’s called “Syncretism.”
Fun fact: It's hard to find Pepsi products in Belize because the whole country is basically owned by the Coca-Cola company. The mighty Maya, conquered again and again by weaker and weaker enemies.
But “Jose,” nodding his head as the new, more gentle conquistadors sit in his back seat, he just smiles and listens.
When they bring themselves down to his level, the level of a king, and apologize for colonization, he just smiles.
When their fat skin, tight in their clothes, sweats, and burns, he listens to them. They ask, in the very next moment, how much acres of land cost, here in this paradise. And he tells them. And he smiles.
When they pull out solid bars of the ruined pride of his people and take big, greedy bites, it’s like being humiliated again and again. And Xibalba just nods and smiles and says nice things.
And, fun fact, Xibalba’s biggest smile comes when they finish eating that chocolate bar, and he listens for the beep of the glucometer.
And a fun fact: that’s when Ek Chuah smiles, too, from his heavenly throne. Smiling broadly as the invader’s bodies break down at the feet. Their eyes go blind, and their amputation sites never heal because of the thousands of years' worth of chocolate crystalizing in their fine blood vessels. If you google diabetic neuropathy, you’ll learn who got the last laugh.
And the great King Xibalba Xocotl, from his Subaru throne, just smiles and asks if they would like another chocolate bar. They always take it. They always take everything.
i was was craving for a non-white non-white collar bio. this one hit the right spot.
Happy you liked it :)
What you crave you should write.
i don't have any excuses left it seems.
The anecdote, as part of a bio, can be about anything - just a separate short story in the form of an anecdote?
That was my assumption; the only connecting tether would be the bio format.
Arthur Treewright, author of “Hanging Dogs,” lives in Boylan, Mississippi with his wife and three cats. His latest series is “My Memories of the Macabre.” Struggling to read my own bio, I’m reminded how as babies, the lens in our eyes are so flexible we can hold our multi-colored Mr. Puddles up to our faces and examine the contours of his nostrils from an inch away. Older, our perspective changes, the lenses are hardened, and bifocals are the order of the day. Speaking of eyes or the macabre or both, if you ever have retina surgery, or at least some kinds, the docs generally don’t knock you out. They give you happy drugs, but no general. So, after getting up at 4:30 in the morning and going through intake where you are asked questions regarding the last time you ate, you’re laying there on a gurney with an IV that hurts like a two inch splinter under a nail. You’re there with twenty other patients lined up outside the surgery rooms like planes being taxied for takeoff. Eventually you’re up and you are wheeled into the surgery room and a team surrounds you in surgery gowns. You get oxygen, you hear the ping from the heart monitor and they cover your whole body except one eye. The surgery eye. You hope that they put the arrow on your face next to the correct eyeball. In a daze, you feel pin pricks around your eye socket. You realize this is them numbing your eye. Completely numbing it. You really hope that works. Moments later you feel something entering your eye from the side - the white part. Then something else. It's a miniature propeller in your eyeball. Up close you see it, blades of steel. The propeller starts spinning. You wonder if you should be seeing this. You sort of don’t care though, because - happy drugs. Twenty minutes later they are putting a patch over your eye and wheeling you out. You get juice and a blueberry muffin. You sit there for a while. You’re picked up and you leave. They won’t let you leave if someone doesn’t get you. It’s harder to scare me nowadays.