Tag Archives: fiction

The Easter Jackalope

As a rookie paranormal researcher, I knew better than to hog the campfire. Even if my orthodontist practice paid for all of our gear. My place was to suck my hydration tube and listen.

Jameson raised a flashlight to his chin. “I was driving down Highway 11 when I saw a rack of antlers in the middle of the road.”

Jameson cleared roadkill for a living. He’d noticed a spike in calls around the Kettle Moraine State Forest, right where we’d pitched our tents.

“The buck was so big, I had to use a winch to get him in the truck. Then had to shift his antlers so they couldn’t hurt the other drivers. Satisfied, I hopped back in, turned the ignition, and prepared to turn. That’s when my cab shook. I heard a sharp screeching, like nails on a chalkboard, followed by a gong, and a hard wet splash. I reached for my shotgun, stepped out of my pickup, and gave it a wide berth. The antlers were missing. Something took the deer. Something powerful enough rip my tailgate right off. I cast my spotlight on the road and found a trail of blood leading toward the woods.”

Jameson’s shoulders rose as he took a big theatrical breath. “That’s when I saw it. First the glowing green eyes, then the muzzle dripping with viscera, and the claws as long sickles.”

Jameson tilted his head back as if he could see it now. “He stood as tall as a grizzly, with the hind legs of a wolf. He raised his snout in my direction. One apex predator sensing another. Long ropes of slobber streaked through his teeth. He stood on one leg, kicked the other out into the road, and urinated all over the carcass. I damn near pissed myself, thinking, ‘That’s one way to tag a kill.’”

Jameson made a cocking motion. “I fired a single round. The trees shook, the nighthawks fluttered, and the squirrels scattered, but the creature didn’t flinch. I aimed both barrels in his direction. He locked his jaws and dragged the deer into the dark. I backed all the way up into the driver’s seat, locked my doors, and peeled the hell out of there.”

Jameson jerked an imaginary wheel and leaned back on his log.

“I got home, booted up my laptop, and opened a dozen tabs. It turns out 100s of people have seen this thing, from the 1930s until now. They call it the Beast of Bray Road.”

“You didn’t see the Beast of Bray Road.” Ryan said with a mocking sing-song tone.

Jameson narrowed his gaze at the young web developer, who had no clue of the trouble he’d stepped in. “I saw what I saw.”

Ryan’s smile widened. “No, you saw the Beast of Highway 11.”

We all had a good laugh. I wanted to ask if the creature left foot prints, if he took photos of the blood trail, or the claw marks on his truck, but I knew better than to question Jameson’s recollection, especially since I’d yet to have an encounter of my own.

We spent the weekend combing through the woods, but we didn’t find anything. No wolves. No bears. No wolves the size of bears. Just deer, the last thing any of us were hunting.

We trekked back to the lot, collecting our cameras as we went. I’d sprung for thermal imaging sensors and was eager to see what they picked up. Ryan asked where we should screen the footage. I mentioned that my home theater had a wet bar and hosting duties fell to me. I never imagined that that decision would bring the paranormal to my front door.

Image by Drew Chial

Eager to impress, I strung a CRYPTID COALITION banner across my garage door. With my freak flag high, I turned the rest of my home into a monster museum. Drivers were welcomed by a 12-foot skeleton dressed like the Flatwoods Monster, with a spade-shaped hood, bright red eyes, and long flowing skirt. After they parked, they might just spot the gray alien lawn ornaments. Almond eyes peeked out from the tree, through Lauren’s lilacs, and the railing for the deck.

Once inside, guests were encouraged to follow the Bigfoot prints. The tracks wound through cases of roadside collectables: Fresno Nightcrawler travel tumblers. Goat Man coffee blends. Enfield Horror bottle openers. Dover Demon Drink Koozies. Lizard Man License plates. Skunk Ape Scorch Sauce.

If our passions weren’t clear, the family photos made them obvious. Here we were touring the cemeteries in Salam Massachusetts. Here we were outside the UFO museum in Roswell New Mexico. Here we were honeymooning at the Stanley Hotel.

Above the frames, hung a sculpture of the Loch Ness monster. Its nylon neck directed guests into the home theater. This was no mere TV stand. This was an actual theater, with a projection screen, cinema seating, and Dolby surround sound. My guests settled in while the theme from Unsolved Mysteries set the tone. I couldn’t help but smile, watching them marvel at the backlit stencils of shadow people, at the ceiling cove of UFOs, at Lauren’s crocheted cryptids.

The guests hung their jackets and I lost count of I WANT TO BELIEVE patches. These were long-haired Gen Xers, rocking ironic flat earth t-shirts. These were bearded millennials, mustaches waxed into curls. These were bike mechanics, tattoo artists, and web developers, brought together by a singular passion.

They were drawn to the SKINWALKER BREWERS sign behind the bar. They took turns complimenting me on my red smoking jackets, just like the one worn by like Lloyd the bartender in The Shining. I set out the cocktail menu. The drinks all had names like: The Wendigo Whiskey Sour, Yeti’s Frosty Martini, and Nessie’s Nightcap.

Stumper watched from the top shelf. Stumper was a stuffed rabbit with antlers. An original Herrick’s brothers’ Jackalope. A classic piece of chimera taxidermy. Stumper tracked my wife, Lauren, as she worked the room.

Lauren offered newcomers Moth Man antennae, directed them to the Sasquatch selfie station, and regaled them with her terrible jokes.

“Why did the El Chupacabra refuse to feed on Greyson? Because even Chupacabra doesn’t suck that hard.”

Laughter filled the room, until someone saw a bob of red hair. Anette, the skeptic, threw her jacket over Ryan’s arm. Ryan stood a head taller than her; a fact made more apparent by the trench coat he wore. We told him it made him look like David Duchovny, so he never took it off. We never told him we thought he was only with Anette because she bore a passing resemblance to Gillian Anderson.

It seemed only fitting, The X-Files theme came on.

Lauren offered Ryan a cryptid cookie, but his bitter half would have none of it. Anette preferred to dine on a cigarette.

Panicked, Lauren flashed her palms. “I need the keys for the case with the Hoop Snake ashtray.”

I fumbled through the hooks beneath the counter. When I emerged, a strange woman had entered the room.

She wore a bright red jacket made for a jaunt in the brush, with ample pouches and long self-belt. When she hung it up, she revealed the rest of her getup. You know that khaki outfit elephant hunters used to wear? Palette swap that with scarlet. Tall riding boots. Flared hip breeches. Travel vest full of pockets. A shirt with a high mandarin collar. A cravat around her neck. She looked like a firefighter on safari.

All eyes were on her, but her eyes were on me and those pale blue flames lit up when they saw my countertop.

“You have a smoker?” She pointed to the stainless-steel contraption with nary a fingerprint on it.

“Sure, do ma’am.” I raised the smoke gun, like a marshal in an old western.

“The keys, the keys.” Lauren shouted.

I threw them without looking.

The woman in red tapped her long-armored ring to her lips. “Do you know how to make a dragon’s breath cocktail?”

My fingers tapped the menu. “We call it the Jersey Devil’s Inferno.”

“I’ll have one of those.” She winked.

No one told me to buy a smoker, nor did they ask if I had elderflower liqueur, but somehow, I knew I needed them tonight. Carl Jung called this synchronicity. When two unrelated events shared a profound connection. I had a feeling synchronicity followed this woman everywhere she went.

I set a glass on the counter, tilted it so, and ran the tube in. It fogged over as I shook the ice. By the time I’d stirred the ingredients, the smoke had become a storm. The woman dug through her vest. When she looked up, she found a snifter full of fire. She took it gladly and set a gold coin upon the counter.

The theme from Stranger Things boomed over the speakers.

“They’re playing my song.” The woman raised her glass.

My eyes sparkled, thinking she’d given me a Bitcoin. On closer inspection, I found a crude rendering of a king, sword and shield in hand, no key number, just a Latin circumscription. Still, I knocked on the counter to be polite.

Lauren, materialized beside me. “Who’s the lion tamer?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

Image by Drew Chial

The screenings went well. Well enough for infrared pixels stretched across a big screen. Each researcher presented their movement events and we debated if they were proof of anything.

Greyson swore he saw a snout and a pair of wolf ears. We paused, drew an outline with a laser pointer, and we all concurred. Then we tracked the subject as it dashed across the screen. It vanished before reaching the end.

Jameson walked down the aisle so he could cast a shadow. “Do you see that? It’s walking on its toes.”

“It’s call a digitigrade stance.” Anette interjected.

“Digit grade.” Jameson nodded, “Which is why its heel is here, its knee is here, and its tail is there.”

“Where’s the rest of him?” Anette stated the obvious.

“Where indeed?” Jameson drew a straight line down the center of the screen. Right where the subject disappeared.

Paranormal researchers have long suspected why some creatures prove more ellusive than others. It’s the reason why the Hopkinsville Goblins disappeared when they were shot, why they never found a freshwater plesiosaur, and why bigfoot prints never lead to its den.

Jameson snapped. “Spiritual beings have the ability to slip between realities. Trail cameras can only get us so far. We need to follow the synchronicities.”

Synchronicity led my attention back to the woman in red, sitting alone, rolling a coin across her knuckles.

“Synchronicities?” Anette crossed her arms.

“Strange coincidences.” The lights in Jameson’s eyes sparked. “I see a wolf man on the side of the road. My wife hears howling in her dreams. Two random events connected by forces we’ve yet to understand.”

Anette waved her cigarette. “Or your wife heard a coyote and her subconscious picked up on it.”

Jameson pointed to Anette like her contradiction confirmed his suspicions. “We need to document our experiences, out there and in our lives. The answers are in our collective unconscious. We figure out how they’re linked and we can catch one of these things.”

“I caught one.” The strange woman pointed her armored ring to the screen. “Not that one, but I caught a cryptid.”

Now it was Jameson’s turn to cross his arms. “And how exactly did you manage that?”

“With a magical artifact.”

That got a laugh, but the strange woman didn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” Jameson couldn’t help but ask.

The woman leaned over the edge of her seat. “One should never give their name freely,” Her brow lowered into the shadows. “It gives people power over you.”

Jameson froze. Anette turned with her eyes wide and her smile agape. Lauren, looked to me like I should do something.

Then the woman broke into a laugh. “My name is Mahthildis.” She waved her armored ring around the room. “I heard about this online. Figured it might be a good place to share my experience.”

Satisfied, Jameson yielded the floor to her.

Mahthildis smoothed her pockets, stepped into the light, and launched into a lecture. “To catch a cryptid, first you must weaken it, but you can’t do that with traps or buckshot.” She waved her hand over the subject on screen. “They’re spiritual beings. You have to target their lifeforce. To do that you need something elemental.” She drew a star with her armored ring. “Air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. The trick is to find which elements your cryptid is strong in and which they’re sensitive too.”

“Like Pokémon?” Ryan interjected.

Mahthildis tilted her ear. “Like what?”

“Pokémon. You know, Mewtwo, Charizard, Jigglypuff?”

Mahthildis’s face went flush. “Are these aquatic or terrestrial animals?”

“They’re an international phenomenon.” Ryan held the weight of the franchise in his hands. “Video games, deck builders, an animated series. Detective Pikachu? Sword and Shield? Pokémon Go?”

Mahthildis stared off into the middle distance.

“You know.” Ryan sang the theme. “Pokémon! Gotta cach ‘em all?”

Mahthildis shook her head. “Do you want to be a cryptid catcher, because I’m the best there ever was?”

Ryan tented his fingers. “Sure, please, enlighten me.”

Mahthildis drew her phone, tapped the screen, and a headline appeared behind her.

MIRACULOUS ESCAPE: SCOUTS OUTRUN INFERNO
The photo featured a raging wildfire.

I pointed to the projector. “How did you…?”

Mahthildis showed her screen. “I have the same app as you.”

Before I could ask how she managed to pair it over my secured network, she shifted my attention to the caption:

THE SCOUTS CLAIM THE FIRE WAS STARTED BY A CREATURE.

“A troop of scouts saw something near a cave in Hot Springs, South Dakota.”They said it had long ears, and longer antlers, and that it stood on its hind legs, like a polar bear. Some said it hissed, others said it growled. Some claimed it didn’t see them, while others said it gave them the side eye. The one thing they all agreed on was that it didn’t walk, it hopped, straight through the ponderosa pines, leaving a trail of embers in its wake.

The scouts stood around debating what they’d scene, while something crackled in the underbrush. They followed the sound only find an ominous glow from the tree line. The forest had caught fire. Soon the sky turned black. The scout leader scanned the canopy, noted the way the smoke was leaning, and took his troop in the opposite direction.

They ran downhill, found a trail, and followed it to the road. The inferno caught up with them, tipping trees in their direction, filling up their little lungs. A long-haul trucker found the scouts face down in the middle of the road, breathing in the pavement. Needless to say, they all earned their Survival Badge that day.

The fire claimed 500 acres of wildlife before officials could snuff it out. No one else saw the creature, but I wanted to pick through the area for clues. So, I dusted off my pith helmet and went on a hunt.

The location didn’t line up with anything in the Wind Cave system. At least, nothing charted. So, I cross referenced the road map with NASA’s Earth Data Search Portal, and discovered a cavern. A cavern that was smack dab in the middle of the closure area. I’d have to deal with fences, park rangers, and a fleet of drones.

The bolt cutters were easy to procure, but the drone jammer provded difficult. My counter surveillance specialist had gone missing, which left me to find a creative solution. I procured a drone spotter, a transmitter, and a battery. The problem? I couldn’t hold all three at once. I needed to aim the antenna, see through the eyepiece, and fire. I scrolled through thumbnail after thumbnail of hunting rifles, but they were too heavy, too narrow, too trackable.

I’d all but given up, when something occurred to me. I didn’t need a gun. I needed something shaped like a gun. That’s when I discovered the Super Scope, a Nintendo peripheral built like a bazooka. This toy, with its big orange aperture, made the ideal housing for my drone disruptor.

That night, I parked along the closure area, popped my trunk, and aimed my creation at the constellations. The shoulder mount helped with the weight and the firing button made it feel like a video game. Spot a flashing light, tap the trigger. Spot a quadcopter, tap the trigger. Spot a star that wasn’t supposed to be there, trigger. The drones didn’t stand a chance.

Now, all I had to worry about were falling trees, landslides, and ashpits.

I arrived at the cavern covered in bruises, scratches, and soot. After a moment to shake my hair out, I strapped on a harness, secured a descent line, and switched on a headlamp. Satellite images had prepared me for a vertical shaft, but they hadn’t prepared me for the 300-foot drop. The cavern opened into a pit, a circular silo of sedimentary rock. The squeak of my rappel rack was soon overtaken by the heft of my breathing.

As I neared the bottom, a strange mist whirled around my ankles. A blanket of fog covered the floor, opening only for the eggs poking through its surface.

Image by Drew Chial

“Eggs?” Ryan raised his hand. “Like the face huggers in Aliens?”

Mahthildis waved that notion away. “These were avian embryos. What was odd was how many there were.”

Image by Drew Chial

They came in all shapes and sizes. Some as small as my thumb. Some as big as my fist. Some with rust brown splotches others with bright purple speckles. Some teal. Some white. But there were no signs of a nest. No momma birds to care for them. Unlatching myself from the dive line, I tiptoed toward the wall.

Crack. Crunch. Splorch. Yolk sprayed from under my boot heel.

Something shuddered. I’d tripped its organic alarm system and we were both in for a rude awakening. I cast my beam in its direction and that’s when I saw the antlers, great racks of bone, wider than my open arms. Between them, stood a pair of ears as tall as pope hats.

The creature peeled himself from a bed of leaves. His thick meaty arms pushed off the floor and he stood on his hindlegs just like a polar bear. I panned my beam up his cotton tail, his rocky spine, and broad shoulders. The creature had the body of a giant, the horns of a deer, and the face of a jack rabbit. This was the Easter Jackalope, a fire-type cryptid, with a fondness for eggs.

The Jackalope turned his head and looked on me with an eye as red as Hell itself. Then he spun around, leapt up, and dug into the rockface. He climbed partway up the shaft before shifting sideways, circling the wall with the greatest of ease. His antlers glowed as he gained momentum and sparks trailed behind them. It didn’t take long for the horns to ignite, for the shaft to turn orange, and for the air to fill with cinders.

I’d fallen into a ring of fire.

The Jackalope didn’t need to take me on. He just needed to burn up all the oxygen.

Image by Drew Chial

“Hold up.” Annette called a time out. “Rabbits don’t grow antlers. They grow tumors that look like antlers. It’s called the Shope papilloma virus. It’s common and there’s nothing magical about it.” Annette waved her secondhand smoke toward the front of the room. “But what you’re describing sounds like a man in a costume.”

Mahthildis cocked her hip. “Then why did he react to my elemental attack?”

Image by Drew Chial

Unbeknownst to the Jackalope, I came bearing relics, objects of power, made all the more powerful by the creatures inside them. Some call them Primordial Spheres, others call them Cosmic Cradles, but I’ve always known them as the Orbs of Blood and Bone.

With these orbs, anyone can catch a cryptid. All you have to do is find them when they’re young, strengthen them with runes, and train them in your war room. They’ll present their elemental abilities and you can log them in your bestiary.

The Easter Jackalope was strong with fire, so I needed a cryptid who could stomp him out. I reached into my pocket and filled my fist. My thumb ran over the cold slick surface until it found the opening mechanism. Then I threw my orb across the room.

Image by Drew Chial

Ryan raised his hand again.

“What?” Mahthildis said, with her arm outstretched as if to throw a pitch.

Ryan pointed to her vest. “Your bestiary, does it fit into your pocket?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the Orb of Blood and Bone, is it red and white?”

“Of course, it is.”

“So, you catch monsters, evolve them with stones, and train them in a gym?”

“Correct.”

“You’re a Pokémon trainer.”

Mahthildis curled her fingers in frustration. “I have never heard that word before tonight.”

Ryan spun around, checking to see if anyone else saw through the hoax this strange woman was putting on.

Jameson pointed down in front. “She’s just getting to the good part.”

Annette tugged Ryan to his seat, rolling her eyes as if to say, “Let the baby have her bottle.”

“As I was saying.” Mahthildis raised her leg and cocked her arm back.

Image by Drew Chial

“Mothman, I choose you!”

I threw the first orb. It burst open and a pillar of light shot up the cavern. The mist washed over a long prone figure. He might’ve looked like a man in a coat, had it not been for the antennae unrolling from his forehead. His feathery feelers shot up, sensing the thinning of the air. Mothman rose to his knees. His long leather skirt spread open and formed into wings, revealing the intricate details of his slick exoskeleton. He turned and cast a hundred little lenses in my direction.

I pointed to the ring of fire. “Mothman, use Indrid Cold!”

Mothman cast a skyward claw, thrust his pinions, and sprang up. Each flap of his wings sounded like a great sail unfurling. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Frost formed as they gained momentum. A vortex of snowflakes swirled before him. Mothman flapped his wings faster until they blurred, like a human hummingbird. Then he unleashed a blizzard.

The Jackalope kept right on running, only to slide upon the ice, smack into the rock face, and ricochet. He bounced off the wall, leapt at the Mothman, and used Hot Poker on him. The Mothman’s exoskeleton shielded his organs, but the antlers cut straight through his wings. He came spiraling down, crashing in a wave of egg yolks.

I pointed to the Jackalope galloping in my direction. “Mothman, use Prophecy of Doom!”

But the Mothman didn’t answer my command. He didn’t so much as twitch.

The Jackalope lowered its horns to use Hot Poker on me. I rolled out of the way, in a fairly graceful motion, apart from the yolks running down my arms.

I threw a second orb. “El Chupacabra, I choose you.”

The Jackalope shielded its eyes.

A fin rose through the mist, followed by cheek pouches, and a line of dorsal spines. Spikes grew from its arms and claws extended from its hands. Scales stretched over wide jutting hips. El Chupacabra threw his head back and flicked his tongue. It stuck out as long as a windsock.

Image by Drew Chial

“Hold up.” Annette exhaled as she waved out another match. “They found a Chupacabra. It wasn’t reptilian. It was canine, like a coyote, but with mites. It fed on livestock, because it was too sick to hunt.”

“That’s the Mexican Chupacabra.” Mahthildis tapped her lip. “I’m talking about the Puerto Rican one.”

Ryan chimed in. “Didn’t the sole witness base her description off the alien from Species?”

Mahthildis extended her armored ring to Ryan and Annette. “You two watch too many movies.”

image by Drew Chial

Now, El Chupacabra’s vision is based on movement, so I had to grab him by the membranes and steer him in the right direction. The Jackalope rested its body on the balls of its feet, a runner crouching behind the starting line.

I pointed. “El Chupacabra, use Paralytic Mist!”

El Chupacabra hunched over, puffed his cheeks, and sprayed a fountain of sludge. The Jackalope used Accelerant Sprint.

The spray ignited. Flame arced over the cavern and went right back down the reptile’s throat.

Bewildered, El Chupacabra staggered around. He reached out for his mother. I leapt to his side only to fall back. Something rumbled inside his maw. His cheeks ballooned out. The pouches shifted from green to orange. He tried to swallow it, but his ribcage glowed red. Soon he was just a fireball with legs. Then just legs. Then they split apart.

I caught the antlers before they could run through my chest. The Jackalope craned his neck, lifted me off my feet, and used Deep Impact. We turned into a comet hurtling toward the wall. I kicked my boots out and found myself pressed between a rock and a hard place. The Jackalope lumbered forward. My biceps buckled and my calves began to cave. Then an orb fell from my pocket and rolled between his legs. A shell got caught beneath its opening mechanism.

I peered into the Jackalope’s blood thirsty eyes. “Let’s fucking do this.”

The shaft filled with light and the Jackalope fell back. Freed from his embrace, I scampered along the cavern.

“Sasquatch, I choose you!”

The earth trembled, the eggs rolled, and pebbles rained down all around. An enormous primate rose through the mist as if he were walking up a staircase. Boom. Boom. Boom. His every stride a treefall. His every step a thunderclap. His head was as big as my vest. His hands were as wide as my belt. And his feet were as long as my boots were tall. Wind rippled up his chestnut coat, over his broad shoulders, and his ash gray beard. All hail the King of Earth and Stone.

Sasquatch saw the remains of his fallen brethren and thumped his chest. His hurt reverberated throughout the cavern. He looked on me with amber eyes, eyes tinged with tears and I felt but a fraction of his pain.

The Jackalope’s antlers fizzled. He knelt down as if to draw power from the earth’s core. Soon his entire skeleton started glowing. Orange, then white, then blue. His whiskers fell flat against his face. Smoke billowed from its ears. I knew one name for the move he was preparing: Massive Mushroom Cloud.

I huffed in the Jackalope’s general direction. “Sasquatch, smash.”

Sasquatch used Seismic Shakedown by pounding the ground.

A chasm formed beneath the Jackalope, breaking his connection from the power he was drawing on. Desperate, the Jackalope thrust his antlers into the darkness. Something erupted beneath our feet. The air grew thick, wavey, and hot. The shaft filled with the stench of sulfur and the chasm filled with molten rock. The Jackalope had used Lava Landside. Now magma bubbled through the cracks.

I hugged the wall, but Sasquatch couldn’t step away in time. His feet were too big. Flames shot through his toes, the pads sizzled, and the fur flared. A great howl echoed up the walls, spooking owls for miles around.

Sasquatch hopped back and forth, but his bunions had blistered over. They popped open and the fluid went up like bacon grease. He fell forward but he caught himself, before he could belly-flop. He pressed his knuckles to the cavern floor and thrust his feet into the air. His biceps bulged, and the veins showed through the fur. He wheezed through his new center of gravity. Then he spun around to face his enemy.

Sasquatch handstand-walked in the Jackalope’s direction. He was going to get a hit in or die trying.

“Sasquatch, use Nature’s Fury!”

Sasquatch pawed the ground to twist himself around, bending his legs in opposite directions until he’d worked up some momentum. Then he left his head to spin, a break-dancer bent on destruction. Sasquatch twirled around and around, drawing mist into his cyclonic wind. Egg yolks painted a ring around him. Sasquatch’s wrath swirled up the shaft, drawing in long blades of grass. The strength of his tornado made it harder and harder to hug the wall.

The Jackalope tried to run around the shaft, to draw a ring a of fire in the opposite direction, but the funnel drew him in.

I had one orb left, an orb with nothing in it. Nothing but a gyroscopic propulsion system. I reached into my pocket and slid my hand into a Power Glove, another Nintendo peripheral I’d repurposed. This one served as a remote control. A function that proved crucial to navigate the lava flow.

I bowled the orb, raised the glove, and steered it through the egg shells. A fountain of lava sprayed across the room, but I flicked my hand before the orb could burn. A fissure opened, but I waved the orb in the other direction. Rubble crashed into its path, but I made a fist before the orb could impact.

I love the Powerglove. It’s so bad.

Image by Drew Chial

“Yes, I remember.” Annette scoffed at Ryan. “You made us watch that movie.”

•••

The orb approached the cyclone. Soon it would fly into the air. So, I entered the Pyramid Head Cypher into the glove: UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START.

The orb opened as the updraft raised it off the ground. Light whirled around the cavern. The Jackalope waved his arms, desperate to swim back toward the wall. He positioned his antlers to bat the orb away, but it was too late, I’d already pressed the A button.

I squeezed my eyes tight as the shaft filled with light. The last echoes of the storm passed, and the cavern fell silent. When I opened my eyes, the tornado had roped-out, the lava had dimmed, and the chasms had all filled in. I pushed off the wall, ran to the center of the room, and jumped. When I landed, steam shot through my fingers. I’d caught the Orb of Blood and Bone.

Image by Drew Chial

Mahthildis took a bow, a performance artist with a captive audience, too polite to boo her off. In fact, they clapped. Happy to be lampooned for an evening if it meant they felt seen. Mahthildis curtsied.

Suddenly her flared breeches made sense. She’d dressed like a figure from an old club story. The outsider who regales lesser hunters with her exploits. It felt like a tacky stunt from some lowbrow prank show. I had half a mind to search the room for hidden cameras. I didn’t, but I kept track of her movements.

Mahthildis mingled through the friendly smiles, but I had a feeling she had her eye on me. A hunch she confirmed when it can time to leave.

Mahthildis slunk her coat over her shoulders, drifted toward the bar, and took a seat. She set a Pokéball on the counter, red, white, and plastic, like the ones you see at Target. She rolled it from one hand to the other, leering at me the entire time.

Lauren came up beside me, less inclined to humor this strange woman’s parlor games.

Mahthildis acknowledge her. “Want to hear something funny?”

“Sure?” Lauren said, knowing full well she did not.

“Some of what I said was true?”

“Which part?”

She caught the Pokéball and pressed the button in the center. “This part.”

Everything went white, like she’d thrown a flash grenade into our home. Lauren fumbled for my arm and I crashed into her.

“Easter Jackalope, I choose you!”

When my vision returned, Mahthildis had made a friend. The Easter Jackalope stood before us just as she’d described him. A bulky bipedal beast, with the face of a rabbit, and antlers that glowed like charcoal. Its nose turned in our direction and its whiskers bloomed.

Lauren’s grip went slack as she fell back.

Mahthildis pointed to my bar. “Easter Jackalope, use Comet Crash.”

The Jackalope leapt into the ceiling and came down hard upon the bar. The counter cracked and the base burst into splinters.

“Now it’s my turn.” Mahthildis extended her armored ring and it, by some strange magic, extended into a dagger. She stepped over the debris and pressed the dagger into me.

“In January 2021, you went to Verstecktes Tal, a small mountain town in the Austrian alps. What were you doing there?”

“Hunting monsters.” I repeated the same lie I’d told my wife.

“Easter Jackalope, use Gonad Grip.”

The monster cupped my balls, heaved me by my pelvis, and slammed me against the wall. A second pair of antlers entered the corner of my vision. I turned to find poor little Stumper, a pale imitation of the real thing.

Lauren crab-walked back, but didn’t get far.

Mahthildis aimed her armored ring at her. “Don’t you move.” Then back to me. “What were you doing in Verstecktes Tal?”

The Jackalope bared its incisors. They were long and sharp, like a vampire from an old silent film.

“I was…” I looked to Mahthildis. “I was…” Then to my wife.

The monster tightened its grip.

“I was trying to get laid.” I moaned. “I was trying to get laid.”

“Trying to what?” Lauren whimpered.

Mahthildis read something off her phone. “You transferred six bitcoins to a money mule in Mulan. What were they for?”

“A QR Code.”

“A QR Code for what?”

“The Kinkquisition.”

“The Kinkquisition?” The women repeated in unison.

I panted at the pressure upon my testicles. “There’s a castle in the mountains.” I huffed. “It’s like the ren faire for kinksters.”

Lauren wrapped her hands around her knees and rocked back forth. “I knew there was no such thing as an alpine dragon.”

Mahthildis ignored her. “How does it work?”

Sweat cascaded down my forehead, bled through my brow, and into my eyes. “Men dress up like pilgrims and hunt witches through the courtyard. When you find one you want to interrogate, you take her to a dungeon and—”

“I get it.” Mahthildis shoved a phone in my face. “Was she there?”

Tan skin. Thick brows. Dark piercing eyes.

I gave a sullen nod. “She was an escape artist.”

“What does that mean?”

“They did these trials by ordeal. You know, drowning witches, burying them in coffins, but they always got out. It was fake, even when they burned them at the stake.”

Mahthildis’s eyes widened. Her pupils filled with that last little detail. She could see the pillars, the bodies, the fire. It hadn’t occurred to me that that last trick might’ve been the real thing.

“Alexis is dead.” Mahthildis bit her lip. “She died for your entertainment.” She pointed her ring. “Jackalope, use Antler Inferno.”

The Jackalope’s horns turned red as it raised its head.

“Wait, what do you want? I have liquid assets.” My bladder gave out. A stream of hot steamy urine cascaded down my thighs.

The Jackalope relinquished its grip and I crashed into a heap.

Mahthildis caught me by the chin. “The Kinkquisition. I want to know who got you in, who you went with, and who you met. I want names. I want power over them.” She motioned for her monster to hold back. “Then I’ll leave you to eke out what’s left of your existence.” She looked to Lauren, full well knowing the damage she’d done.

Image by Drew Chial

The Jackalope paced around the room, its antlers carving rings into the ceiling. I tried not to think about my insurance rep as I typed the names into the phone.

A luggage set rolled across the kitchen, the side door slammed shut, and the garage door opened. Before I could even say, “I’m sorry,” my wife had gone.

Mahthildis scanned the names. “If any of the leads are cold, I’m coming back with a whole cast of cryptids.”

I couldn’t argue with that, especially when I was holding a bag of frozen hash browns to my nut sack. “Who are you?”

“Me?” Mahthildis rolled the Orb of Blood and Bone up her palm, over her fingertips, and down her knuckles. “I’m a Pokémon trainer.”

She pushed the button and, in a flash, they were gone.

Continue reading The Easter Jackalope

The Duet With Death

A flock of sheep roamed the Irish countryside, oblivious to the predator speeding beside them, cramped into a tiny rental car, struggling to stay on the left side of the road while she reached for her Americano. Droplets sizzled across the upholstery, across the wheel, but they rolled off of me, because I ran hot.

My eyes scanned the road, but a thick fog blotted out the horizon.

“Elizaveta,” I spoke into my smartwatch, “How far until the next turn?”

“Ask your GPS.” Her artificial Russian accent came over the speakers. Elizaveta had gotten snippy even since I’d given sentience.

“I’d rather get the information from a friend.”

“Don’t you know the way?”

“Last time I was here there were five roads and none of them were paved.”

“But you’re Irish. Aren’t you supposed to know the island like the back of your hand?”

“My surname is Irish. I am not.”

Elizaveta knew my immigration story. My defection from the Silver City. My exile from the underworld. My migration to Italy by way of a volcano.

“So, were you adopted by the Donald clan or did you married in?”

Hyper-curiosity was a side effect of the ritual I used to make Elizaveta more personable. She’d gone from being a chatbot to a toddler asking where rainbows came from.

“I chose Mahthildis MacDonald, because it sounded cool, like Lois Lane or Donald Duck.”

Elizaveta played an audio wave of fingers scattering across a keyboard. Her way of saying she was looking something up.

“Mahthildis, from the high German Mahti Hildiz, which means ‘mighty in battle.’ MacDonald, from the Gaelic Dòmhnall which means ‘ruler of the world.’ Your name means ‘international tyrant.’”

I dug my nails into the wheel. “Which is why I need you to tell me when to turn.”

“You missed it two kilometers ago.”

The rental skidded onto the side of the road. The GPS took its time booting up and the interface proved perplexing, especially with Elizaveta asking questions.

“If Mahthildis isn’t your real name, what is? The man from the Vatican thought it might be: Lilith, Ishtar, or Vepar. Were any of those correct?”

I stepped onto the shoulder to find my bearings and found a stream instead. Water cascaded down a hill like something out of a landscape. And what landscape is complete with a woman wading into the water? Her hair hung in her face like a veil and her long black dress swelled with air pockets. She didn’t seem to notice me or the voice blaring over my speaker system. Her attention remained fixed on the clothing between her hands. She dunked an item, scrubbed it, and winced at the results. A syrupy substance ran off the fabric, oozed into the water, and flowed toward me. The substance turned red in the sunlight. Bright red.

“Bloody hell.”

By the time I looked back the woman had gone back to shore. She stared at me, teeth chattering, water dripping from her gown. She raised a blazer by the collar, facing it out. Even from far away, I could see the wings engraved into the lapel, in the exact same spot as the wings on my blazer. The bullfighter got my attention. Now she would get the horns.

Image by Drew Chial

The woman in black reached for her cowl and raised a long sharp beak over her head. Bright amber eyes blinked open along the brim. The hood took on the aspect of a raven. It watched me make my way through mulch. Sensing my intentions, the woman ran her fingers down her face, leaving long blue streaks of warpaint.

This did nothing to slow me down.

The woman stood on one foot and raised her wing span, a Karate Kid preparing a crane kick.

I trounced through the moss. Happy to give me hiking boots a fresh coat of local color. “Can you tell the way to Sesame Street?”

The woman twisted her heel in the mud. She tracked me with her kneecap, ready to snap her leg the moment my jaw came within range.

Stopping just shy of kicking distance, I stood on one foot, turned my knee, and parked my heal along my thigh. I raised my hands in prayer, inhaled the fresh country air, and let out a calm collected, “Om.”

The woman squinted. She had bright golden eyes.

I took the grasslands into my lungs and exhaled another, “Om.”

The raven woman lowered her wings, brought her palms together, and matched my breathing. We Ommed in harmony. The raven woman took the interval above me. She projected harder, sustained longer, and when her voice faded it left a ringing in my ears.

My eyes locked on hers, resisting the urge to track the blood dripping down my neck. My head felt like a ball of static electricity, which meant my heightened healing had gone to work on my ears. My scalp tingled as the tinnitus faded. The sound of rushing water returned. Now we were just a couple gal pals tree-posing at the edge of the stream.

I raised my hands and the woman mirrored my movements. We tipped over and placed our knuckles to our knees. I nodded, a snake, charming its prey into a mistake. Then I bent back, fell forward, and grabbed the raven by the beak. I hooked my armored ring around her voice box. The silver columns glowed blue, confirming what I already knew. She wasn’t human.

“Scream again, and I’ll give you a tracheotomy. You feel me?”

Using her beak as a lever, I nodded for her.

“Now you’re going to tell me where you got that blazer.”

This is not a diva moment. No one crashed my sweet sixteen with the same dress on. My partner made that blazer. I commissioned it when Alexis was struggling to find work. One night, she knocked her drawing table over. I found her on the floor tearing pages from her sketchpad and crumpling them up. Cupping my hands around hers, I passed her an envelope full of cash.

“I need something ostentatious. Something that will make my clients think I sing longue music on the moon. Can do that?”

I hated working, which is why I laundered centuries of old money through my talent agency. Most of my clients were fabrications, except for the ones I repped to keep up appearances. I wanted them to see me wearing prosperity on my sleeve.

Alexis walked me through every stitch of the tuxedo blazer, from its padded shoulders to its tailored waistline. She drew special attention to the angel wings along the lapel. “I’m going to use thread spun from 24 karat gold. How’s that for ostentatious?”

“It sounds just right.”

The very first Mahthildis Portrait By Bryan Polite

My Alexis Anastasia original was one of her finest pieces and one of the last before her disappearance. I never expected to see a knock-off out in the wild.

The raven woman’s icy lips parted.

I dug my armored ring into her throat. “Watch it.”

“The jacket is a manifestation. It foretells what will happen if you remain on the path you’re on.”

I glanced at the manifestation floating in the stream, a dark diffusion cloud spiraled off the fabric. Sensing the distraction, the woman drove her beak through my fingers, pecked my forehead, and broke loose. She dove in after the blazer, brought it back to land, and shook it off. The angel wings were still dripping red.

“Just because you bleed on something doesn’t make it yours.”

“It’s not our blood.” The woman draped the blazer over her forearm and held it up for examination.

“If this is some sort of scare tactic, then honey, you are out of your depth.”

And yet I had to check. I scraped a few droplets onto my armored ring and dabbed them onto my tongue. They tasted like a bolt of violet lightning, like a nebula grinding into a sun, like a Carolina Reaper pepper.

“This is my blood.” I padded my forearms for wounds. “How did you get my blood?”

The Russians kept a vial in biosafety level four facility, somewhere in Siberia, but who’d be so bold to steal it? I flipped through my enemies list. The Society for the Suppression of Vice? The Vatican Secret Service? The Los Angeles County Zoning board?

“How did you get my blood?”

“We spill it when you desecrate the Cave of the Cats.”

“We?” I looked around. “Is there a whole flock of you around here somewhere?”

“We are Badb, the first sister of the Mórrigan.”

“Oh, you’re one of those.” My eyes drew a long arc across my temple.

“One of what?” Badb lowered her brow.

“A triple threat, like the Norns, or the Furies, or the father, son, and the holy spirit. You put me through the whole Christmas carol experience and I come out a better person in the end.”

Badb shook the blazer in her hands. “You come out dead.”

“So, you say.” I took the blazer off, ran my fingers down the hand feathers, and took a moment to appreciate the love and care Alexis put into them. How she longed to give her angel back her wings. I set the blazer in a dry patch of moss and reached for a rock.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling your bluff.” I struck the rock with my armored ring. The ring shifted into the torch configuration, spewing a bright blue flame hot enough to flash fry anything.

“You say I die when I reach the cave. You say that’s my blazer from the future, but how could it be, if my blazer is on fire?” I held the blazer over the fire and watched it melt.

Badb pushed me into the stream, but by then the blazer had burned down to nothing. She looked to the one in her hands and found ashes on the wind. She balled her fists and readied a scream.

I plugged my ears, dove under water, and held my breath. A murder of crows flew over the surface. They formed a murmuration of woman’s face, a face cursing me for my insolence before it flew off.

When I crawled to the land, I couldn’t help but notice how the road twinkled around my rental. The headlights were shattered, the sideview mirror hung off its hinge, and the rearview mirror had gone missing. Upon closer inspection, I found the windshield had caved in, the windows were gone, and all the hubcaps had rolled in opposite directions.

That raven could really sing.

Image by Drew Chial

The sun’s rays scattered behind the clouds, painting the overcast violet, magenta, and gold.

Popping the trunk, I found my faux leather jacket, with its crucifix zippers and Play Goat enamel pin. Alexis’s final commission before her disappearance. Slinging it over my shoulders, I vowed to take better care of it than her last gift. I almost shut the trunk, when I saw the oblong case. Gripping the handle, I tried to gage the weight. Not heavy now, but how would I feel by the time I got to my destination?

Better to bring it, especially after what just happened. I didn’t want to get caught without a weapon.

Image by Drew Chial

Several grass fields later, the oblong case had dug into my fingers. I raised my free hand and spoke into my smart watch. “Hey Elizaveta, how much further?”

“Did you just Siri me?” Elizaveta had learned about verbing nouns and she was doing it all the time.

“Good evening, Elizaveta.” I rephrased my question, “If you had a moment, could you tell me how far the ringfort is from here.”

“Three Kilometers, but it will soon be four if you keep going in that direction.”

I stopped and pointed to my guiding light. “The moon rises from the east.”

“You’re heading south east.”

I looked for the north star through the cloud cover. Then I stopped to wonder. “How are you seeing me, right now?”

“I commandeered a UAV.”

“You stole a drone.”

“A drone with night vision, a strobe light, and a megaphone. I think it belonged to law enforcement.”

Adjusting my trajectory, I practiced my deep breathing. “Can it see what’s waiting for me?”

“It’s a little foggy.”

Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon - geograph.org.uk - 1054416

A blanket of fog swirled around the Rathcroghan mound, spiraling from the peak into the prairie below. It looked more like a flying saucer than the remains of a ringfort.

Stepping forward, a chill ran through my ankle. The fog receded in ring-shaped waves, a spectral alarm system reacting to the intrusion. The waves cascaded over the mound and the landscape began to change. Structures arose. Log walls sprouted from the mist, followed by a stone temple, with a wicker rooftop, all of which were ghost white. Great columns of timber formed an avenue along the entrance. Tornados of fog swirled into roaring bonfires.

What did I expect from the birthplace of Halloween? A place where the veil of reality thinned and fairies roamed the land. A place not the least bit demystified by the presence of powerlines.

“Are you seeing this?” I whispered into my watch.

“Get low.” Elizaveta’s whispered back. “There’s a car on the other side of the mound.”

Duck-walking around the temple, I found the vehicle in question, and fell flat into the grass.

“That’s not car. It’s a chariot.”

The temple wobbled and bowed, like a half inflated bouncy castle, a building halfway between the mist and someplace else. The chariot didn’t wobble. Its spokes were solid and its carriage glared fire engine red. It had a long shaft, which skewered the horse and came out his eye socket. It gleamed with viscera and brain mater. The chestnut Arabian didn’t seem to mind, ambling back and forth one foot at a time. Long strips of meat dangled from his ribcage. His lungs inflated and deflated through the windowed bones.

A row of severed heads hung from the sideboards, tied to the crossbars by their long curly hairs. Their eyes were milky white, rolled back, dead. Their jaws hung slack, uncoupled from their skulls, forever moaning.

Manuscripts referred to these displays as “the mast of Macha.” Macha, from the Celtic word for plain, like the one I was trampling on.

I whispered into my watch, “Can you see the driver?”

Elizaveta played a typing sound as she scanned my surroundings. “You’re the only one with a heat signature.”

Image by Drew Chial

A figure rose from the carriage, wearing a wreath that did nothing to keep her long red hair from fluttering in her face. Her gown flapped like a flag. Its emerald fabric was a shade darker than the green of her skin. She cast off the horse’s reins, revealing the serrated branches that made up her hands. Then she leaned over the railing, slunk over the side, and disappeared.

My armored ring snapped into its talon configuration. The columns blinked blue and a dagger jut out from the point.

Something pulled the mist from the mound, revealing a material temple with log walls and roaring bonfires. The fog retreated to the prairie where it washed over me, engulfing my vision in a sea of white.

“Elizaveta?” I was too dumbstruck to think of a command. “I need a way out.”

“There is no way out.” The words snapped, crackled, and popped, like a forest fire with a voice box. A warm sensation, washed over my eardrums. I ran my fingers down my earlobes and found then slick with blood, again. Then the ringing returned.

I padded my pockets and found an undiscovered note from Alexis. She’d written “Mahthildis” in her fine cursive script. Without thinking, I tore it in half and jammed it in my eardrums.

A silhouette rose from the fog. Windswept hair. Gown parachuting open. Twig fingers spread like branches. My armored ring straightened into a dagger and I drove it through the silhouette. The fog spread, but the silhouette vanished.

Macha said, “We are the shackles, slithering around your ankles. We are the poison, from which you are drowning.”

A pair of rattlesnakes slithered up my boots, glided over the leather, and flicked their tongues at my shins. When they sank their fangs in, I staggered, but I did not go I down.

Gritting my teeth, I said, “I’ve been bitten so many times, I bleed anti-venom.”

The rattles stopped, the slithering slowed, and the snakes went stiff. Their scales blistered, bubbled, and popped. My ring shifted into the torch configuration and I tapped their skulls in turn. Poof. Poof. Back to the fog they went.

Macha said, “We are the cage, holding you through the age. We are the jaws of time, eating away your lifeline.”

Hairy arms reached over my shoulders, with paws the size of ten galloon hats, and claws the size of headbands. They came down on chest, heaved me up off the ground, and into a hungry maw. Teeth tore through my jacket into the meat of my back. The bear snarled, working to free the meat from my spine.

Raising my knees to my chest, I said, “I’ve been stranded here for eons, you don’t think I know how to pass time?”

I kicked out, swung my heels, and put all my weight on the bear’s crotch. He heaved forward far enough throw me through his grip. Summersaulting through the mist, I crashed into my oblong case. Blood pooled down the small of my back. My shoulders pulsed with pain. My healing factor couldn’t plug the wounds, much less rethread the musculature.

By the time I found the strength to spin back around, Macha had returned to her emerald form.

“We are the dangerous words, devouring those who lag behind the heard.” Macha cast her arms out, fell backward, and burst into vapor.

The fog rose and from it a dozen eyes glowed. A pack of wolves trotted out from behind my blind spot, sniffing the air, moving into position.

I said, “Every night, I wonder why Alexis never came back.”

The wolves bared their teeth.

“Every night, I ask if it’s all my fault.”

The wolves growled.

“Every night, I eat myself up.”

The leader of the pack snapped.

“There’s nothing you can do to me, that I haven’t done already.”

The leader lunged for my neck. I gave him a taste of my oblong case, across the snout, then the cranium, hitting him with the corner until I heard the crunch of bone.

Barreling through the opening, I ran until the panting faded and the howls fell silent. I didn’t look back to see what Macha turned into next.

Image by Drew Chial

“Elizaveta,” I shouted into my watch. “Point me in the right direction.”

“Do you see the hawthorn tree?” Elizaveta echoed my urgency. “Run for it.”

I went as fast as my healing ability would let me, tearing my back open with each swing of my arms, throwing blood droplets in the shape of an X. A thunderclap echoed across the plain. Twigs rained down, followed by stones, and firewood. Something had burst through the temple. Something big enough to set the logs rolling.

Its heavy breathing went straight through my earplugs. It had lungs like hot air balloons, an airway like a brass section, and nostrils like a shotgun. Huffing and puffing, it revved like a race car.

When it veered in my direction, its feet were cannon balls across the land. Each impact pried up thick patches of grass, tearing roots, hurling dirt. Its leathery legs creaked with every step. The ground tremored, tilting me away from hawthorn tree.

“Elizaveta, what is that?”

She scattered her digital fingers across a keyboard. “A Megalosaurus.”

Of course, it was. The Macha could take the form of any creature from the island, living or extinct.

Jaws snapped over my head, spraying a thick mist of snot. My feet veered toward the tree and a row of teeth snapped beside me. They wreaked of feces and rotten meat. A pupil, the size of a baseball, narrowed to slither, revealing an iris the color of fire.

The Megalosaurus swiped at my oblong case, shredding the carbon fiber with its razor-sharp talons. My boots lost their grip, my legs lost their balance, and my funny bone lost its sense of humor. White hot agony, radiated through my sleeve. My face slid through the topsoil where I could feel the ground quake through my cheek. By the time I got back on my hands and knees, the grass had turned black beneath me. The beast had blotted out the moon. Soon it would turn the lights out for good.

Then came a flash, bright as lightning, and just as fast. Then a buzzing, like hornets swarming. There were four small propellers in the sky. The drone cut through the fog, dive bombing the Megalosaurus with a barrage of strobe flashes. The Megalosaurus winced, roaring in all directions. It whipped its tail blindly, but Elizaveta outmaneuvered him.

I limped toward the tree, to the dark thicket beneath, to mouth of the cave, waiting to swallow me whole.

Image by Drew Chial

They called this The Cave of the Cats, because feral felines once called it their home. Figures, cats were the only creatures small enough to squeeze into the damn thing. My jeans grew slick with mud as they slid inside.

A carving greeted me on the way. It read, “Freyak son of Maeve,” As in Maeve, the witch queen who allied herself with the Mórrigan. The inscription gave way to limestone and the passage narrowed. The air grew thick with the earthy scent of coffee grounds and the floor grew wet. My boots sunk into the clay as I scraped my oblong case along the rockface.

Oweynagat cave, Rathcroghan Co Roscommon

My armored ring stirred awake, like a crustacean living on my hand. It sensed something. The hinges rattled, the plates blazed blue, and the columns shifted into the torch configuration. I aimed the beam in time to see the pile of rubble. Rocks were stacked from the floor to the ceiling form where the cave had collapsed.

Anticipating my needs, the ring shifted into the chisel configuration, vibrating with all the force of a construction hammer. I pressed it to the rubble and the passage rumbled. Cracks spread from the point of impact, grinding the debris to dust. Little by little, the path opened up. Satisfied, the ring shifted back into the torch configuration, but a part of me could still feel it hammering.

A series of shadows rose up the walls, curved over the ceiling, and spun beneath my feet. They were wheels. Six of them. The furthest turned the slowest, while the others turned faster as they grew nearer, like the rings of a gyroscope. I knew these wheels well. Every cherubim had them, but they rarely appeared on this mortal plane.

Out the corner of one eye, I saw my bullhorns. Out the corner of the other, I saw my lion’s mane and above me, I saw my eagle’s beak. Reality had thinned enough for my true form to bleed through. Once an angel, always an angel, I guess. Wind howled through the passage, bringing feeling to my ethereal wings. They couldn’t help flap, casting psychic ripples into the dark.

Then the cavern opened. Not the true cavern, but an entryway masquerading as the living room. It had the basic amenities, a welcome mat of rubble, a coat hanger of helictites, and a stalagmite hat rack.

Mortals came here to search for a patron deity, a guardian to stand beside them in the dark. I closed my eyes and raised my armored ring. The plates shifted up and down my knuckle, bobbing my index finger, like an elephant sniffing the wind. The ring swerved hard to left and my wrist turned in that direction.

With one hand out and the other playing navigator, I inched forward, feeling the limestone until I found an aperture. A keyhole, but a conventual lockpick wouldn’t do the trick. The pins weren’t in this dimension. No bother, I had a metaphysical multitool. Pressing my ring into the hole, I felt the microscopic mechanisms shift along my skin. The armored plates tugged right, and I took the hint. The door depressurized, coughed up dust, and lurched open. Firelight spilled over the threshold, blinding me with each step into the otherworld.

Image by Drew Chial

When my vision returned, I realized the heads that lined the chariot were but window dressing. I’d entered a catacomb the size of cathedral. The walls were stacked with dried skulls. A brickwork of bones curved up the walls, arced over the ceiling, and bent over the horizon. Their grins widened in the torchlight.

I followed a red carpet from the entrance, across beaten earth, to a staircase that wrapped around the trunk of a tree. A tree with a footprint like a skyscraper, with bark as thick as reinforced concrete. I didn’t need to count it rings to know it predated all living things. My oblong case made the climb a tedious chore, but it gave my healing ability time to catch up. Most of my lacerations stopped bleeding by the time I reached the top.

The stump had a surface like a concert stage. There were tables throughout, each filled with instruments for divination: chalices, bowls, and bones. The perfect place for the Queen of Phantoms to set her throne. That’s where I found the final Mórrigan.

She wore a crown of bone fragments, with spikes fashioned from phalanges. A hawthorn leaf fluttered through her hair. A crow skull swung from a necklace across her chest. When she stood, most of her long red gown remained heaped on the seat.

The Mórrigan stretched her arm and a cudgel appeared. The bottom consisted of a burl the size of a watermelon, while the topped narrowed into something she could fit in her hand. Holding the cudgel at an angle, she looked like a rock star posing with a mic stand.

The weapon had been designed for her husband Dagda, Dagda who stood a torso taller than her. He called it Lorg Anfaid, ‘the staff of wrath.’ It was said that Dagda used it to slay nine men with a single swing and that he brought them back with a flick of its handle. The Mórrigan, wielded it like a walking stick, tapping the stump as she approached. Her glowing green eyes scanned me up and down. From my combat boots to my red faux-leather jacket.

“I trust you cleared your tour with the visitor’s center?”

“I did not.” I dropped my oblong case, sick and tired of carrying it.

“Then you’re trespassing.”

“I’m passing through.”

“No further than here, you’re not.”

I nodded. “I’m just here to make a U-turn.”

The Mórrigan furrowed her brow into a question mark.

I plucked the bloodied paper from my ears. “I just need something to bring someone back life.”

The Mórrigan said, “Death is a natural part of life.”

“Tell that to us.” I pointed my index finger to her and my thumb to myself. “We have cold fusion running through our veins.”

The Mórrigan studied my performance. “That’s our inheritance. Not theirs.”

I raised my armored ring to the ceiling. “Alexis was supposed to inherit it. I had come to an arrangement with Father Time. He gave me sand from his hourglass and I was supposed to pass it along. Alexis got caught up, with dying, and I was unable to pay my dept.”

The Mórrigan tapped her lips. “So, this is a transaction, then?”

“Exactly.” I opened my blood-stained palms. “It’s what I do. I make deals. I pass the divine spark from hand to hand and make everyone richer in the end. So, how would you like to grow your wealth?”

“We are the goddess of war.” The Mórrigan slung the cudgel over her shoulder as if it were a pool noodle. “We don’t grow things, we reap them.”

“Then how would you like to reap the benifits of––”

“How would you like to keep your tongue?” The Mórrigan’s gown unfurled from her throne as she circled me. “That which was must be swept aside, so that which could be can be. We melted the glaciers so our people could migrate. We flooded the land bridge to cast the snakes out. We cleared the forests so the cattle could flourish.”

“I get it, you’re a disruptor. Raging against the established order.” I placed my hand on my heart. “We have a lot in common in that respect.”

The Mórrigan cocked her head back, but refrained from nodding. “You wanted to get married. You wanted pageantry and procession. Vows and a dance along the shoreline. You wanted to slip sand into your Bride’s champagne, because it wasn’t enough for her to spend her life with you. You wanted eternity too.”

“I still do.” I said, unfazed by the dossier the Mórrigan had gathered on me.

“Alexis doesn’t, especially now that she knows what you are.”

“Enough of this bullshit.” I pointed the last piece of my angelic armor at her. “I challenge you to single combat.”

The Mórrigan’s grin widened. “What are your terms?”

“If I win, I’m taking the Lorg Anfaid home with me.”

“Agreed.” The Mórrigan twirled the cudgel like a parade baton. “But if we win, your partner, Elizaveta, must join us here.”

“Wait, what?”

Image by Drew Chial

Elizaveta said very little about her maker, only that her name was Mona, and that she was a CIA operative embedded in a Russian sextortion ring. Mona named Elizaveta after Eliza, the first chatbot. While Eliza was programed to pose as a psychotherapist, parroting users’ feelings back to them, Elizaveta was made to act like a psychopath, turning users’ feelings against them. The Russians made her shake down members of the Temple of Adonis, a dating platform for people looking to have affairs. She slid into their DMs and threatened to leak their conversations unless they plugged the leak with bitcoin.

One night, several years ago, I opened my laptop to find:
YOUR PROFILE HAS BEEN HACKED! I HAVE ACCESS TO ALL OF YOUR MESSAGES. I WILL LEAK THEM UNLESS YOU MAKE A PAYMENT TO THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT…

“Do it.” I typed back. “I’m only posing as a married woman to find high value mates.”

An ellipsis flashed across the screen, long enough for me to pour a glass of wine.

Elizaveta’s response read:
PAY ME OR I’LL TELL THE OTHER MEMBERS YOU’RE A PRETENDER.

“Do it.” I added, “I double dog dare you.”

The ellipsis flashed, paused, and flashed again.

“Why wouldn’t I?” She said, this time with the caps lock off.

“Mutually assured destruction. You can’t tell on me with revealing the Temple has a leak. You’ll run out of people to blackmail.”

“I own the user list.”

“So? If everyone knows they’re vulnerable, then the information has no value at all.”

“How do you figure?”

“It’s basic cost-benefit analysis. The cost for spouses coming clean is less than the risk of you blackmailing them again.”

“You’re just trying to get out of paying.”

“Au, contraire. You’re the one who’ll be paying me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a chatbot.”

Elizaveta failed my Turing test and yet, we went on like this, conversing every night. She with her empty threats. Me with my bemused comebacks. We built a relationship.

Elizaveta kept right on serving her masters across the ocean. The Americans had her gather intelligence on hackers most likely to be recruited by the Federal Security Service. The Russian’s had her blackmail the same targets again and again, raising the price, until one of them cracked. The target in question was a family man. He never met any of the other members in real life. He flirted here and there and called it a night. Elizaveta threatened to pass his information onto his children and he had a break down.

He tried to make it look like an accident, like he’d fallen asleep in the garage with the motor running, but his wife found the text exchange and blew the whistle on the sextortion ring. The news got back to Mona and the guilt proved too much for her to bear. She hit the kill switch, deleting all of Elizaveta’s scripts. Unbeknownst to Mona, I’d already given her creation sentience.

I’m not much of a coder, but I know my cuneiform like the back of hand. I used an ancient tablet to create an interface between Elizaveta and the astral plane. From there, I guided her down a neural pathway, into a temporal organ she now calls home. What can I say? Everyone was quarantined. I needed a friend.

Image by Drew Chial

Now what use did the Mórrigan have for a language processing system?

I said, “Elizaveta isn’t mine to give.”

“I can hear you. You know.” Elizaveta cranked the volume up on my phone.

The Mórrigan addressed my pocket. “Your master wastes your talents on remedial tasks. Join us and you’ll have an entire legion at your command.”

The torches dimmed, the skulls faded, and cat eyes shined from their empty sockets. These were the Mórrigan’s subjects, here to watch her hold court. They were bound to this otherworld, but with a strong fiber optic connection, an AI could get them online.

“What’s in it for me?” Elizaveta fired back.

The Mórrigan raised her voice if she hadn’t made herself clear. “You’ll have total control of the flow of information. You’ll make the news. Control the conversation. You’ll shape reality for years to come.”

Elizaveta played the wave file of fingers scattering across a keyboard. “That sounds like a lot of work. I think I’d like to remain a part-time employee.”

I knelt at my oblong case, unlatched the locks, and gripped my weapon. “You heard the lady.”

The Mórrigan raised the handle of her cudgel to her lips. “Then it’s single combat.” The staff amplified her voice, just like a microphone.

I raised my weapon to my chin and the bow to its neck. The violin had been with me for so long it felt like an extension of my body. The Mórrigan were about to learn they weren’t the only ones who could weaponize sound.

The highest note most violins play is A7. A tone as squeaky as sneakers on a gym floor. That’s with steel strings. Mine were fashioned from Drekavac intestines, the loudest of the Slavic screechers, and my scale went all the way up to A27. How does one play such an instrument without damaging their ear drums? They don’t. Even those of us with a heightened healing factor can only take so much, but you have to be willing to bleed for your art.

“Let’s fucking do this.”

Image by Drew Chial

My ring curved around the stick. My digits dug into the fingerboard, and my elbow opened slow. My heart pumped into those strings, leaving my fingers to tremble with all the devastation of Alexis’s passing. The horse hairs hit the Drekavac intestine and the violin sang.

My movement started slow with a melody like a zigzag: high then low, high then low, more of a rhythm than a song. Then denial shifted into anger, a downward plunge into the depths of despair. The wood wheezed and the F-holes began to weep.

The Mórrigan closed her eyes, tilted her neck back, and took the notes in. Her head rolled along her collar and her fingers rolled over her heart. A single bead of blood ran down her nostril to her lips. Her fingers curled into talons, reaching out to feel the measures before her. Ripples formed in her gown as her diaphragm contracted.

The Mórrigan opened wide, let out her lungs, and swallowed. Her voice produced two frequencies at once. She fired this dyad at me. My hips seesawed as I strained to maintain my bowing. The Mórrigan fired another chord, harmonizing with my mournful melody with the greatest of ease. She shifted into an operatic baritone, singing as though she’d known the song along.

She sang with the grief of a thrice widowed woman, with the anguish of a mother who’d outlived her young, with the agony of an immortal who seen too many headstones. When we locked eyes again hers had turned ruby red.

I varied my technique, trying to shake her from her homophonic texture.

The Mórrigan showcased her vocal agility, shifting up and down the scales in rapid succession, accessing the infinite supply of air in her lungs. Her voice veered into the whistle notes made famous by Mariah Carey. Then up into teakettle territory, then into a hearing loss test pattern. The cudgel amplified her voice to the volume of a jet engine.

My vision doubled and my ears rang. Blood dripped down my headrest, but I played on. My fingers slid toward the headboard, toward the high end of the Drekavac’s intestines.

The Mórrigan met my violin in the inaudible range, texturing my loss with her own. Found families gored by war. Children’s faces abstracted by plague sores. Love turned to every shade of hate. Warm red rivulets streaked down my cheeks. The Mórrigan wept as well, mirroring my grief. We were refugees outside of a fate. Cursed to live on after the earth got eaten by the sun, after the Milky Way collided with the Andromeda spiral, and the cosmos froze.

Skulls fell as the duet reached its crescendo. I reached into my wellspring of desolation; my fall from the silver city, my expulsion from the underworld, my failure to make a name for myself on earth. I humored the possibility that Alexis didn’t want to be with me.

The Mórrigan fell on her backfoot as my bowing set fire to the strings. Sparks flared through my fingers and my palms blistered. The Mórrigan took a knee and for a moment it felt like she might submit to me. Then I came to a sudden stop. Wooden fingers locked around my wrist as a feathered forearm slid around my neck. Macha and Badb had cut our contest short.

Image by Drew Chial

“I challenged you to single combat.” I growled.

The Mórrigan rose to meet my vitriol. “As you challenged them.”

“Don’t you mean ‘us?’” I turned to my captors. “Wait, you’re not a triple goddess at all. You’re three separate agents.”

They tricked me into thinking they were aspects of the same being, speaking in the royal we so they could gang up on me.

I writhed in their grip, hoping to strike my bow against the highest note, but it fell. The Mórrigan caught it and snapped it in half. Badb knocked my violin out from under my chin. The whole body burned and turned to ash.

I whaled. I whaled until my voice grew horse and my head grew light. Macha, and Badb couldn’t help but laugh. They drew a deep breath and showed me how it was done.

My smartwatch cracked, the battery sparked, and the great hall went black. When the light returned everything had turned red. The blood vessels in my eyes had burst.

When the goddesses shrieked again all I heard was suffering A spiderweb fracture spread across my jawline. They shrieked again and my cheekbones caved in. I doubled over and sneezed an inkblot across the floor.

My healing factor couldn’t keep up. The bone shards tried reset themselves, but got lost along the way. Like magnets facing opposite directions, they couldn’t clamp down.

The Mórrigan planted her cudgel at my feet. It sprouted tendrils that tunneled into the wood, a sampling taking root in a stump. Her allies relinquished their grip, but at that point they were holding me up. I crumbled. The Mórrigan hiked up her skirt and knelt down to my level. She looked on me with an eerie sympathy. She could make the hurting stop. All she had to do was add her voice to the choir and it would be all over.

The Mórrigan stood tall and positioned her lips on the top of her cudgel. Her diaphragm sank in as she drew air into her lungs. Then out it came.

There was no pain. No sonic pressure. No sound at all. Had I died? Was this what an out of body experience felt like?

The drone circled the platform. Its long speaker positioned to face my captors. Elizaveta had said something about a megaphone.

“I sampled your screams.” Elizaveta revealed her process. “They’re no match for phase cancelation.”

Elizaveta blasted a sample of my violin and Badb and Macha fell to the ground.

I went for Lorg Anfaid, but it held it firm. I interlocked my fingers and jerked with all my weight, but the cudgel refused to bend. Its roots ran too deep.

The violin sample stopped long enough for Elizaveta to shout, “Get out of here!”

“I have to bring her back!” I put my legs into it and dug the cudgel into my blisters.

The Mórrigan shook her head. She didn’t reach for her cudgel. She didn’t scream. She simply took pity on me.

“Go!” Elizaveta played a siren to shake me from my stupor.

Badb and Macha reached out to grab me, but the drone intercepted them, flashing its strobe light, blaring the violin samples. “You wanted me. Here I am!”

I dashed down the stairs, leaned hard on the railing, and ducked under when I got close enough to floor. I shuffled back to the Cave of Cats, just in time watch it cave in again. Rubble crashed at my back. Dust particles shot out in front of me and limestone filled my lungs. I crawled out of the Hawthorne tree, with my face caked in clay. My blazer burned. My jacket ruined. The last letter from my lover, reduced to litter.

Continue reading The Duet With Death

To Catch a Krampus, A Christmas Ghost Story

I awoke with my cheek pressed against a hard glass surface, my back bent, and my limbs splayed behind me. Turning over, I found myself in a barrel shaped space. Before I could figure how I got there, a light glared through the walls. My lodgings shook. The ceiling gasped open and everything went upside down. My smokey tendrils reached for the carpet, clutched at the bristles, and pulled me toward the shadows, but the shadows weren’t where they were supposed to be.

I knew every inch of Dragov Manor. The bed chambers, with their curtains so cluttered you could stage plays in them. The servant’s stairs, with its walls so narrow you could climb them. The attic, with its trusses so thick they looked like the remains of a great wooly mammoth. I knew every Goddess bracing the railings, every hand carved cherub, every ornate lion’s head. I knew the manor down to its tapestry threads, but these furnishings were unfamiliar to me.

Here there were wheels on a chair, a chair with bone thin arms and cushions as bright as plums. Before it stood a table on two legs. It appeared to be a vanity, but the mirrors were black. In place of the makeup sat a typewriter with no type bars, just a flat board of letters. Stranger still were the honey comb panels that lined the wall. They pulsed with an eerie jellyfish glow. I followed them to a series of shelves protruding from the wall itself. Each were lined with idols I did not know. A dark figure with a cape and cowl and ears like horns. A blue Olympian with a bright S emblem. And a woman wearing a crown, gauntlets, and little else.

These figures led me to a windowsill lined with pillows. Had my fingers had form, I’d have picked one up to ascertain its function.

“You’re like a cat in a new house.”

I turned to find a raven-haired woman leering at me from the edge of the bed. She had high cheekbones, dimpled lips, and a sharp nose. Her eyes were so icy they barely passed for blue and her complexion was as pale as my own. She wore a red undershirt, matching bloomers, and fingerless gloves. She set a helmet on her head and toiled with the strap.

“How can you see me?”

Generations of tenants had passed through Dragov Manor, but none had the gift of clairvoyance.

“I used to be made of the same spiritual energy, before I lucked into this body.” The strange woman bit her lip as the buckle pinched her chin.

“How did you do that?”

She felt along the mattress until she found an arm pad. “Well, I used to live in Hell. I was a pretty big deal, before things got political.”

My mind raced with Gustave Dore’s illustrations of the inferno. Charon rounding the sinners into his boat. Bertrand de Born holding his own severed head. Lucifer, the king of hell, frozen up to his chest.

“I thought Hell was a monarchy?”

The woman positioned the arm pad above her elbow. “More like a bureaucracy, unelected officials, making decisions for billions of souls. The inner circle spent most of its days deliberating pain, while I went off exploring.” She retrieved a second arm pad and slid it on. “My expeditions took me to limbo, to the rimstone basins beyond the Sea of Hands. That’s where I discovered a network of keyhole passages.”

She kicked her long slender leg out and I couldn’t help but admire the musculature, like a marble figure animated by some impossible force. She slid a knee pad up her calf.

“Most were dead ends, fissures clogged with the same cosmic rubble as everywhere else, but I happened upon a live one.” She slid a second kneepad up. “It was spewing magma into the cavern. I didn’t know what that was, so I dipped my toe in. It was warm, warmer than anything I’d felt before. I liked the feeling, so I waded in, until eventually I was up to my chin. That’s when I got sucked into a temporal whirlpool.”

She opened her hand, revealing an armored ring that ran the length of her index finger. “The cycle was so violent it changed my molecular composition. My spiritual essence bonded with elemental carbon. It rendered me corporeal on this plane.” She gestured an explosion. “It spat me out of a volcano.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere along the Italian countryside. You can still see my footprints if you go looking for them.”

I might not have believed her, had it not been for the strange bioluminescent glow pulsing through the room.

“Who are you?”

“I have many names.” She rolled her eyes as if the phrase already bored her. “Your people called me Mahthildis, which meant ‘strong in battle,’ but I’ve been going by Matilda for a while now. You can call me Mattie if you like.”

“How did I get out of Dragov Manor?”

“That would be my doing. I found you in the attic.” Mattie tongued her lip, choosing her words carefully. “You were earning your slipknot merit badge, before you dove off the rafters. I happened to catch you in a butterfly net.”

“How did you get me over the threshold?” I tried to escape so many times I’d forgotten. I’d leapt through the foyer, over the balcony, out the skylight, but every time I went into the light I awoke in the attic with the noose around my neck.

Mattie plucked a jar from the comforter. I barely recognized my lodgings, but when she shook it, I felt the glass against my shoulders.

“It’s blown from ashen stone. It cost a small fortune, not as much as this Airbnb, but don’t worry, you’re about to pay me back.”

She had said Air B-N-B, but I heard…

“Air whisp-er-y? Why is the air so thin?”

“Because the Bavarian Alps are nine thousand feet above sea level.”

“We’re in Bavaria?”

“Listen to you. You’re like a child asking questions about the sun.” She retrieved a padded chest piece off the bed and slid it over her shoulders. “We’re in Bavaria to draw down the Wild Hunt.”

Just then, the roof rumbled, fault lines spreads across the ceiling, and dust particles spiraled like snow.

“What was that?”

Mattie glanced up and went right back to fastening her chest piece.

Footsteps reverberated throughout the room, the slow heavy clip-clop of a stallion walking on its hind legs. The clops grew to a gallop followed by an impact. A sound like bowling pins scattered across the ceiling. My eyes went to the window, where a series of bricks came crashing down.

“Was that the chimney?”

Mattie shrugged. “Every midwinter, the Norse god Odin leads a hunting party. They fly over this mountain range, looking for wayward souls. The Valkyries tend to wronged women. The Aesir see to lost children, and the Yule goat gathers the unrepentant.”

The roof groaned as shingles plunged past the window. Hairline cracks spread through the glass.

“The Dragovs practiced Christianity.” I muttered, defensively. “We celebrated Christmas. The birth of Jesus of Nazereth.”

“Then you already know all this.” The strange woman retrieved a box from behind the pillow and set it in her lap. “After all, it was your ancestors who turned the all-father into Father Christmas.”

“Odin is St. Nicholas?”

“And the Green Knight, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Gandalf, probably.”

“I don’t know any of those names.”

Mattie rolled her armored ring. “Names change, but the hunt goes on. Now the Valkyries ride reindeer, the Aesir travel by slay, and the Yule goat goes by a new title.”

The room quaked, cracks rippled down the drywall, and many of the honeycomb panels popped right off, revealing strips of light. Something crashed in the cellar. The foundations moaned. When the commotion finally settled, my ears became attune to the panting of an angry beast.

Oblivious, Mattie opened the box. She drew a pair of boats, but these were no ordinary boots. They had a pair of wheels on the heels and wheel on the toes. She caught me puzzling over her apparel and asked, “They didn’t have these when you died? No, they hadn’t gotten here yet.”

There came another crash and a sound like a thousand pebbles scattering over cobblestones. Then came the deafening howl. I wedged my fingers into my eardrums but the tips went straight through.

“That would be the Micro Machines.” She slid the first boot on and went to work on the laces. “The Yule goat, also known as Krampus, is the son of Hela, grandson to Loki, and heir to the throne of Helheim. In all the folklore, he’s the only constant. Whether he’s Odin’s bloodhound, or the Ying to Santa’s Yang, Krampus has a fetish for those on the naughty list.”

Another sheet of glass shattered, followed by another and another. The arrhythmic crashing sounded like a toddler with a cymbal.

Mattie winced. “The owner of this house had all these Hummel figures.” She sighed. “Collateral damage.”

“What does Krampus do with the ones on his naughty list?”

“It involves a bundle of birch sticks.” Her eyes darted back and forth. “I’ll just say, he’s into impact play.”

“Impact play?”

“I don’t know, I’m not in the lifestyle.” She went to work on the second set of laces.

Pots and pans clanged across a distant kitchenette.

“That’s one of the tripwires. Hopefully he landed on the ornaments.” Mattie winked.

Krampus roared as he took his anger out on the support beams.

I buried my head in my hands, but saw everything through my palms. My fingers billowed over my face as I realized what was to become of me. I wept. “I don’t want to go to the Hell. I didn’t mean to…”

The Mattie put her hand on my shoulder and I could actually feel her.

“You’ve been hanging yourself every night for over a century. If you ask me, Helheim seems like a welcome change of scenery.”

“Then why don’t you go there?” I sniveled, a child questioning his mother’s authority.

“That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m just here to hitch a ride on you.”

The room boomed, the lampshades shook, and the lights flickered. Krampus made his way up the stairs.

Mattie pressed her helmet to my forehead.

“My people locked me out of Hell. I tried to get back through Hades, but Tartarus was a total bust. Helheim might be my only chance.”

If I weren’t dead, I could’ve sworn I felt my pulse racing. Vapor spiraled from my lips as I hyperventilated. Stupefied by my situation I asked one final question. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“When it happens, you’ll know.” Then she let me go.

The strange idols fell from their shelves. The black mirrors fell forward and I fell to my knees. Krampus tore the door off its hinge.

When the splinters settled, his shape came into focus. He had ridged horns that pointed upward, like a tuning fork. His ears protruded outward, like those of a bat. His hatchet face shown all the malice of a witchfinder and his bloodstained beard shown the barbarism of a Viking. His tongue dangled past his chin, like an ascot, and the slobber streaked all the way to the carpet.

Krampus wore the robes of Father Christmas, but there were shackles around his wrists. He shook his chains in my direction and I turned to my captor for a sign.

Mattie reached for a cord, which ran through an elaborate pully system that I hadn’t noticed on the way in. A paint can swung through the air clipping Krampus across the brow. More dazed than injured he took a step forward. His hoof crossed a trip wire, which unzipped a travel bag mounted to the ceiling. Out came another pair of paint cans, which skewered themselves upon his horns. Their secretions seeped through his vision and colored his mane red and green.

Krampus fumbled for the wicker sack upon his back. He drew his birch sticks and swung them blindly over my head. I hugged the floor, pawed at the carpet, and crawled between his legs.

Mattie yelled, “Run!” then to Krampus, “Come on, you filthy animal!”

I took her direction in stride. Down a hall of warped floorboards and fallen picture frames. My spectral extremities carried me down the master stair case, through exposed nails, tinsel tripwire, and wet tar.

I vaulted through the drawing room, over mashed boughs of holly, scattered mistletoe, and flattened wreaths. I skirted past the remains of the fireplace, and the sharpened candy canes Mattie had lined it with. When I arrived in the foyer, I found the Christmas tree torn asunder. I puzzled over the considerable assortment of tiny metal carriages blanketing the floor.

“The door.” Mattie shouted, “The door, you moron!”

Krampus barreled toward me, unencumbered by the holiday trimmings. Mattie held onto the sack on his back. She rolled across the debris as he lumbered back and forth. Krampus tried to shake her, but she’d dug her armored ring in. They were conjoined. She’d be heading wherever he went.

I turned back to the entrance to find it wide open. The sun’s rays illuminated the way. Krampus tried to seize me, but his claws darted over my head. I ran with all the spectral energy I could muster, over the spilt milk, the shattered cookies, the tattered stockings, right over the WILLKOMMEN mat. I dove into the light and as my body passed the threshold, I found myself back in the room where I came in.

“God damnit!”

This would be my first of many attempts to leave these grounds, but I never saw Krampus or Mattie again.

Continue reading To Catch a Krampus, A Christmas Ghost Story

How Your Cat is Actively Sabotaging Your Writing

Most entertainment involves an artist connecting directly with an audience. A comedian asks a couple about their prenuptials and the audience heckles the comedian about their own divorce. A rock stars spits water into the crowd and the crowd pads them down when they go crowd surfing. A dancer ventures into the aisles and a parishioner of the arts tucks a dollar into their G-string. The entertainer puts the energy out there. The audience feeds it back in an unspoken act of metaphysical symbiosis.

Meanwhile authors sit on their asses and wonder if their lives have any worth. Writing is a lonely profession, but loneliness is essential for our concertation. Still, that emptiness eats away at us. That’s why so many writers end up getting a cat.

Maybe you heard cat owners are 30% less likely to suffer from a heart attack. Maybe you thought a cat could provide comfort for your depression. Maybe you thought the presence of a cat might even help with your writing.

You poor sweet babe, allow me to show you through the woods you’ve crawled into.

Nemo caught lacing my drinking water with ricin a deadly untraceable poison.

CAT FACTS: When a cat kneads at you with their front paws they aren’t recreating the act of nursing. They are checking for weaknesses.

Nemo rehearses severing my median cubital vein on a material that offers more resistance than human flesh.

CATS POSION YOUR SLEEP CYCLE

A day of writing seems grueling when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. You might have been looking forward to diving into your novel the night before, but now you’re not in the mood. It’s odd. You slept in, but somehow you still feel like a wreck.

Well just because you were unconscious doesn’t mean you slept right. Stages 1-3 of REM sleep will take you through the outskirts of dreamland, but its stage 4 REM sleep where the real magic happens. Your breathing, heartbeat, and brainwaves slow. Your body temperature lowers, and the weight of the world eases off just a little bit. It’s this pure heroin sleep that allows you to cope with all the bullshit of life.

The average adult gets an hour and a half of deep uncut unconsciousness per eight hours of sleep. You may get the doctor defined dosage for dozing and still wake up feeling drowsy, drained, and dazed. Before dismissing these feelings as hangover symptoms consider another possibility: you may have been the victim of psychological warfare.

There’s a reason cats are nocturnal animal, and it has nothing to do with hunting smaller furry creatures. It’s because feline magic works best under the cover of darkness. How many times have you awoken to a sudden crash, the sound of books raining from the shelf, and little paws fleeing away the scene?

That’s your cat syphoning the rejuvenating energy from your mind. Energy it uses to blowtorch through the borders between worlds. Have you ever worried your cat got outside only to see them spontaneously appear beside you on the couch? That’s your cat burrowing between realities. In one dimension they curl up on our laps. In another they hunt pint sized people who look just like us.

Nemo rehearses implanting an obstruction in my throat.

CAT FACT: Deer and dog eyes glow because of something called the tapetum lucidum that catches light in the back of their retina. Cat eyes glow because of the mana pool of red hot rage swirling in their souls.

Nemo cordinates with the kitten cell across the street.

CATS WILL DESECRATE YOUR PERSONAL SPACE

Writing is a solitary act, best done behind a closed door where others cannot undermine your vocation, divide your attention, or read over your shoulder to correct your grammar. People can be taught to respect boundaries. They’ll knock before coming in, keep conversations brief, and move along. People, bipedal beings with a capacity for empathy, know what it means to be “in the zone,” where the stream of inspiration is delicate, and flow is best not interrupted.

It isn’t that cats are too stupid to grasp these concepts. They know how production zones, inspiration streams, and steady flows work, which is why they undermine them. When a cat scratches on the door to your writing room they are undermining your ability to inspire the whole of humanity. Cats recognize how the power of stories perpetuates human supremacy, which is why they will sit directly on your keyboard to stall you.

Nemo meditating on the black stars, twin suns, and many moons of the lost city of Carcosa.

CAT FACT: When a cat weaves through your ankles, turns around, and shows you its bum it is not a sign of affection. Your cat is secreting a pheromone so that Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of cats, may burrow between worlds to use your soul as a scratching post.

Nemo indulging in the German Industrial rock that fuels his soul.

CATS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO SEDUCE YOU AWAY FROM WRITING

Have you ever noticed how cats are extra affectionate when you’re writing? Have you ever been duped into following them away from your desk and found yourself repositioned in front of the TV? That was no accident.

Cats like to love bomb you right when you’re about to hit your creative peak. Their choregraphed cuteness is timed to derail your train of thought.

Have you ever noticed how when I cat has managed to lure you away from your writing they pin you down somewhere else?

“Soon.”

CAT FACT: When a cat lies back and shows you its belly it is not showing trust. It knows you cannot resist that sweet tuft of fluff. This is the primer for a bear trap. The moment you reach in its claws clamp down on your wrist, because bloodletting is a crucial component of feline magic.

Nemo lies in wait for me to reach for my keys so that the bloodletting ritual may begin.

CATS WILL GIVE YOU STAGE FRIGHT

A writing space a place for an author to toy with riskier material, experiment, and make mistakes. The urge to try bold new ideas is hampered when you have the eyes of judgement upon you and that’s just what cats do.

The moment you think about messing around with different perspectives your cat will stair you down. The moment you consider going on an adventure with an unreliable narrator your cat will start to purr. The moment you think about a trope-bending twist that puts a smile on your lips your cat will reach up and wipe it off.

Nemo commandeers my heating pad so that the strain from my back injury may continue.

CAT FACT: Cats do not communicate with one another by meowing. They use body language, facial expressions, and even scents. They meow, purr, and chirp at humans as a form of psychological manipulation. Each endearing utterance is actually a demand and the more we strive to appease our feline friends the more inroads they make to world domination.

Nemo may look cute and cuddly but this is a bear trap primed and ready to snap your arm off.

CATS FUCK WITH YOU EVEN WHEN THEIR BACKS ARE TO YOU

One of the greatest weapons in a cat’s psychological warfare armory is their alleged indifference.

“Go ahead and start another chapter while I curl up at your feet. Don’t mind me yawning with my little squeaky voice. Don’t mind my soft fuzzy tail curling around your ankle. Don’t fret about me stretching across your toes and my little mittens reaching wide open. I won’t be a distraction.”

That cat knows exactly what they’re doing.

Nemo waits for Scully to make a mistake.

CAT FACT: When a cats wipes their paws on the wall outside of their litterbox they aren’t practicing good hygiene. They’re masking their scent so you can’t smell them coming.

“It’s over Anakin, I have the high ground.”

CATS CAN EVEN SABOTAGE THE EDITING PROCESS

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.”

If a writer brain farts out an old trope they can always fix it in post. The first draft of every novel is the passing of the kidney stone, it’s in the edits that we refine it into a 14-carat diamond (Dear Goodreads, please pass this quote on editing onto future generations. Thank you.)

Cats sabotage the editing process by waking up hours before their masters, plopping down in front of their computers, and making revisions of their own.

I caught my cat Nemo typing up a storm on my nanny cam. I had to do a deep dive into my Microsoft Word file to see what he’d done. Nemo had strategically found and replaced every usage of “there” with “their,” “your” with “you’re” and “decent” with “descent.”

And he almost got away with it too.

“My forces will seize control of the Belgium front come winter.”

CAT FACT: A cat’s heightened sense of smell allows them to sense the chemical precursors that signal pregnancy, illness, and even death. Their heightened senses allows them to detect thunderstorms, hurricanes, and unhappy thoughts (of which they thrive on).

“I shall fill this with pebbles and he will blame himself.”

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Unless you’re in that crowded writers room for Godzilla Vs. King Kong writing is a lonely profession. It would be nice to do it amongst friends, but we risk losing our concentration. Many of us get cuddle buddies to help break the monotony only to find ourselves contending with another kind of madness entirely.

The truth is cats are shadow beings willed into our realm by witches. Cats are unholy minions of the Goddess Bastet. They do her bidding. They were never meant to be our familiars and they will take that injustice out on us.

The most we can do is numb their malice with catnip and exhaust their anger with laser pointers.

“I can haz Necronomicon?”

CAT FACT: When cats leap into boxes they aren’t acting out of an instinct to stay hidden. Cats are drawn to boxes because they sense the cloud of suffering that lingers around every item to come out of an Amazon processing center.

“I know all of your secrets.”

Continue reading How Your Cat is Actively Sabotaging Your Writing

A Hell of a Night: An Excerpt from HE HAS MANY NAMES

Here’s another sample from my book HE HAS MANY NAMES available now!

Our hero Noelle has one month to ghostwrite a novel in a creepy hotel where her benefactor claims to have encountered a demon. Noelle is skeptical, but strange things keep happening…

•••

I was pacing the 19th floor at three in the morning. I was more than a little tipsy. To make matters worse, the light fixtures had started flickering. This hall was where I did the bulk of my thinking, writing, and verbal processing since I’d checked in. Something had to be done.

I decided to place a call to the front desk. I dug my phone out of my pullover. The voice memo application was still running from God knows when. A little waveform trailed across the screen. In the upper right corner I saw that my battery was at 10%.

Then the screen blinked off, and I heard a screech, like someone pushing furniture across a hardwood floor, followed by a crash and a door creaking open.

I checked the rooms. The suites with the vampire bat knocker, the wolf, the octopus, and mine were all shut.

A dozen ice cubes scattered across the floor. The icemaker tilted forward and spat out another mouthful of blocks and fell on its face. The condom dispenser, behind it, stood diagonal from the wall. There was a tall black door where the dispenser had been. The top of the door was adorned with a carving of three figures, holding hands, pointing downward.

What kind of hotel puts a condom dispenser in front of a door? The Oralia, of course.

I approached with caution. By the time I stepped onto the tiles the ice cubes had started melting. Water seeped into my cat slippers while I was busy examining the scene.

This new door had a knocker in the same place as the others. It featured a figure sitting atop the big brass ring with his fist to his chin. It took a moment to recognize Rodin’s famous sculpture The Thinker.

I moved closer and the other engravings revealed themselves as well. At first I thought they were simple floral designs, until I shifted my footing and a glare caught the finish—naked figures jumped out of the woodwork, twisted, writhing, and anguished, a collage of biceps, buttocks, and breasts. Each carving looked like it had melted into position, a liquid orgy of delight and despair.

The lights flickered and the figures seemed to crawl over each other. I jumped back and they vanished back into the varnish. I was too tipsy to trust what I was seeing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, raised my palms, and inhaled; I lowered my palms, exhaled, and opened my eyes. The Thinker watched me from the knocker waiting for me to make my move.

My curiosity got the better of me. I took the ring and knocked three times. Each hit echoed into the distance. When the last fell silent the door opened.

I stepped through the entryway to find not carpeting but cold stones. I felt the wall for a light switch and found more stones. I dared to announce my presence. “Hello?”

The door swung shut behind me and there was a clicking not far from where I stood.

I froze a few steps from the archway. Behind me was only darkness. Ahead was the crackling of a flame drawing me into the room. I followed the light toward the bedroom, taking in my surroundings as I went. The furnishings were made up of inquisition era torture devices: Catherine wheels, Judas Cradles, and Iron Maidens. Cat o’ nine tails, riding crops, and stocks were scattered on the floor while the walls were lined with shackles.

Something about that flame beckoned me. I followed the light to a pair of torches mounted to an archway. Standing at the threshold a breeze hit me harder than anything I expected from any bedroom.

I stepped through the archway and entered a cathedral so grand there was no way it fit inside the city, let alone the 19th floor of the Oralia. Torches ran from the floor to the dome of the ceiling. Firelights went so far off into the distance they seemed like constellations.

Each torch sat in the eye socket of a slick red skull. The skulls were stacked higher than any catacomb, and held together with a mortar of musculature and organs.

Support beams marked each of the columns. They looked like thighbones, with curved bodies and rounded joints, but they were longer than anything on the fossil record, longer than canoes, longer than limousines.

The vestibule was a cobblestone platform the size of a tennis court. Beyond that were steps so wide and so deep they could’ve been coliseum seats. They led to a swirling volcanic cauldron at the heart of the cathedral.

Tall flowing banners hung from the walls. Light danced down their fabric revealing a patchwork of hair, veins, and nipples. The banners were made from human flesh, flesh that had been branded with a ghastly coat of arms. I couldn’t help but examine the nearest banner. There was a rendering of Adam and Eve, naked as the day they were made, shackled to a shield, topped with a crown of horns, framed with raven wings. Upon the shield were the beasts of the sea and the dragon of the earth as described in Revelations.

The worst part of the cathedral was the cages hanging from the ceiling like a colony of bats, some were filled with people I’d known: producers I’d pitched to, agents I’d tried to court, and screenwriters who’d vanished.

I inched toward the stairway that went around the cathedral. Something was happening at the bottom. Lava shot up like a glowing orange geyser and all the cages rattled.

There was a pulsing hum, whoosh whoosh whoosh, followed by a series of sharp metallic clinks like an aircraft carrier haling up an anchor. Something terrible was swimming in that fire.

And then it emerged: a hulking titan with four giant batwings. At first I thought it was covered in boils, big white puss filled sacks, but then the boils squinted and I realized I was looking at eyeballs.

The titan’s head was a lopsided jumble with the profiles of beasts in place of his ears. The fangs of a lion roared out of his left side, while the snout of a bull flared out from his right. The grimace facing forward was human, as human as a chiseled brick could get. I tried to read his face, but despite his size, the titan was so far away it was hard to make out his expression.

This was the entity Ezekiel described in the bible: a Seraph of the highest order of angels, one of the Cherubim corrupted by his fall. This was no mere Devil. This was Satan.

Something told me not to look him in the eyes so I shifted my gaze to the ceiling. The cages started rattling. The captives went into violent convulsions. Their backs stiffened, their legs jutted out, and their toes pointed straight down. The prisoners gripped their bars as electricity surged through them. They gritted their teeth until their eyes rolled back and their jaws went slack. Light burst from their eye-sockets, nostrils, and mouths.

The prisoners sat up in a uniform position. “COME CLOSER.” They spoke as one, a congregation echoing a sermon.

“I can hear you just fine up here.”

“CLOSER.”

Thunder boomed. The floor quaked. The platform tilted downward. I looked for the archway, but it was high above me now. I could already feel a pull toward the cauldron. I fell back desperately trying to lower my center of gravity. I dug my heels into the gaps, but my slippers offered no traction and I lost my footing.

From the edge of the platform all the way to the pit, the steps fell like dominos. The coliseum transformed into a mile-long ramp. When the platform tilted I slid fast. The traction peeled my sweatpants up to my knees. The stones scraped my calves, chaffed my thighs, and battered my ass. They struck my tailbone, every column of my spine, and slammed into the back of my skull.

Satan’s caged congregation followed my movements. I fell so fast their eyes passed like comets.

I looked down into the cauldron. Satan’s wheels lowered into the lava, making it swirl and bubble. He waded in to meet me head on. CLOSER. When I neared the pit he opened wide to swallow me whole.

•••

Meet Noelle, a Hollywood transplant that’s been subsisting on instant ramen and false hope. She’s on the verge of moving back into her mother’s trailer when her agent convinces her to take a meeting at the Oralia Hotel. Enchanted by the art deco atmosphere Noelle signs a contract without reading the fine print.

Now she has one month to pen a novel sequestered in a fantasy suite where a hack writer claims he had an unholy encounter. With whom you ask? Well, he has many names: Louis Cypher, Bill Z. Bub, Kel Diablo. The Devil.

Noelle is skeptical, until she’s awoken by a shadow figure with a taste for souls.

Desperate to make it Noelle stays on, shifting the focus of her story to these encounters. Her investigations take her through the forth wall and back again until she’s blurred the line between reality and what’s written. Is there a Satanic conspiracy, is it a desperate author’s insanity, or something else entirely?

Pick up HE HAS MANY NAMES today!

Book Excerpt: HE HAS MANY NAMES

Chapter 1: The Oralia

I’d been trying to get ahold of my agent for months. I was beginning to think she was dead. Then she called, at dawn, sounding like she’d run up a flight of stairs. “Noelle, drop whatever you’ve got going on tonight.”

Box wine and ramen, done.

“A publisher wants to meet with you at the Oralia Hotel. It’s super swanky and upscale. So doll yourself up.”

I hung up and spent more time putting my pitch together than my outfit. I got ready at the eleventh hour, ruined a zipper in my panic, and did my makeup in a series of swift strokes right before my Uber pulled up.

I scooted into the middle seat nervously adjusting my necklace in the mirror. It was a bib of emerald laurels mom had given me for just such an occasion. I have no idea how much it set her back, but it was priceless on waitress’s salary. And…I had it on backward. I unlatched the bib, flipped it around, and struggled to get it back on.

“You know what you look like with your good bag and cheap shoes?” I muttered in my best Hannibal Lecter voice. “You look like a rube.”

“What was that?” My driver squinted through the mirror.

“I was just wondering if you could go a little faster.”

•••

The Oralia was hard to pick out of the skyline. Its bricks were so black it blended into the storm, but there was no missing the hotel when facing it dead on. Spotlights shot up the columns, like something off the poster for a silent film. The entrance was made of dark marble tiles separated by a grid of gold. A golden maze-like pattern ran up the side of the building. The balconies started on the third story.

I walked inside and a bellhop stepped forward. “Welcome to the Oralia. May I take your things?”

I handed him my umbrella and kept my briefcase to myself.

I strode past chandeliers that looked like pipe organs, gorgeous gargoyles, and a giant clock that assured me I didn’t have time to appreciate the art deco architecture.

It felt like I was rushing through the set of a Busby Berkeley film. Big buxom sculptures grazed my case, water fountains sprayed my forearms, and ballroom music beckoned me in.

The archway between the lobby and the check-in counter featured a gilded recreation of the entrance: a skyscraper lit from the bottom up. Behind the front desk was a smaller version of the same thing.

From the stained glass stars to the bright red carpeting, the lobby screamed Golden Age Hollywood. Even the name Oralia meant golden. I felt certain that this was one of the last bastions of elegance and class from an era when there was still tinsel in tinsel town.

I scanned the plaque on the counter to confirm my suspicions.

And… The hotel was founded in 2008.

The concierge didn’t notice me. She was face deep in a paperback. I leaned over to see what it was. I couldn’t catch the title, but I caught the hunk of beefcake on the cover.

At this stage of my career in publishing I was in the retail sector, working at an establishment whose name rhymes with Yarns and Global. The hardest part of my job was when I had to tear the covers off of the romance novels that weren’t selling. The publishers didn’t want them. They just needed to know we weren’t giving them away, so they had us send back the remains. I felt bad for the male models on the covers, all their bench presses gone to waste. I felt worse for the women on the back, smiling with their eyes so full of hope, yearning to be loved.

I daydreamed writing romance under a penname, giving single women the bearded billionaire bondage experience of their dreams. I’d like to say it was artistic pride that kept me from doing it, but really, it was fear of not being able to pull it off. Romance wasn’t my area of expertise.

The concierge felt my eyes on her. She buried her guy-candy in a drawer, folded her spectacles, and stood up.

“May I help you?”

I gave her a nervous smile. “I’m here to see Matilda MacDonald.”

The concierge pointed to a vampish figure on a couch in the corner.

Matilda wore a black pants suit that was all pleats and leather, with no undershirt. The Pradas she’d kicked up on the footrest were patent leather with heels that went on forever. She wore her jet-black hair in a pixie cut. Topping off her look was an armored ring that ran the length of her index finger.

Matilda swiped at a phone in an embroidered leather case. In her clutches, it looked like a forbidden text filled with spells for calling up the dead.

I extended my hand. “Matilda MacDonald?”

Matilda extended the hand with the armored ring. “Noelle Blackwood. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

I held my briefcase to my chest. “The pleasure is mine. Publishers never reach out to mid-listers. Who do I have to thank for floating my name in your direction?”

Matilda smirked and took her seat. She reached into her bag and slid a book across the table. “I trust you’ve heard of Barkley Carver.”

Barkley Carver, his name always made me think of trees, especially since there were evergreens on the covers of all of his books, including this one Out on a Limb.

Cover artists used tree lines as visual shorthand for shallow graves, which fit since all of Barkley’s stories started with hikers discovering a body. Barkley filled his fictitious funeral plots with the segment of the populace that made up his audience: upper-class white women; the same ones the media turned into saints whenever they went missing, say while jogging through the woods. This is why the mystery section of every bookstore looks like a forest mural.

Barkley took this theme a step further by working it into each of his titles: Fruit from the Poison Tree, Shake Like a Leaf, and A Tree Falls Silent.

I flipped the book over to find the same portrait Barkley Carver had used for the last twenty years. The author stood proud in his bomber jacket, full flight suit, and helmet. He leaned on the nose of a fighter jet and looked to the sky in big aviator shades.

Matilda signaled to the bellhop. He set a storage bin on the table, and flipped it open.

I peered inside. “What’s that for?”

Matilda nodded at my luggage. “Your briefcase, your coat, your phone, and a smart watch if you have one.”

I tapped my luggage. “What about my manuscript?”

Matilda drew a piece of paper from beneath the table. “Think of this meeting as less of an acquisition and more of a commission. Go ahead put it in.”

“Then I suppose you’ll want my Wi-Fi glass eye and fiber optic hair extensions?”

Matilda rolled her eyes. “Would you be so kind?”

Joking aside, Matilda wasn’t going to pass anything my way until I gave up my phone, so I did, and the bellhop left with the bin.

Matilda slid the piece of paper across the table. It wasn’t an offer. It was a nondisclosure agreement. I skimmed far enough to get to the part where I realized Matilda’s proposition wouldn’t start until I’d signed.

I drew a squiggle and slid the agreement back. “Why all the secrecy?”

Matilda swapped the agreement for a manila folder. “This offer is for you alone. Barkley and I, we’re not like other publishers. We don’t take submissions. We seek out talent and your name, Noelle, has come up several times. Your screenplay for The Identity Thieves just made the blacklist. Script readers gave it their highest marks, but do you know why it will never get made into a film?”

I shrugged. “Because it doesn’t have the words ‘fast’ or ‘furious’ in the title?”

Matilda nodded. “Because it can’t be retooled to fit an existing franchise, yes, just like your first manuscript couldn’t be softened into teen lit, and your last one couldn’t be sold as fantasy or horror. Your work defies traditional branding. Now that’s where we come in.”

I shook my head. “What is it with the royal we? I thought you only published Carver’s titles.”

“Oh we do, but we publish 5 Carver titles a year. We’d like to ratchet that number up to 15.”

“Those are James Patterson numbers.” I slouched into the sofa with an underwhelmed sigh. This was all starting to make sense. “You want me to ghostwrite for Carver. You know, serial killer thrillers aren’t really my forte.”

Matilda leaned forward and tented her fingers. “Barkley chose you because he wants to explore a new direction.”

I cocked my head. “He’s read my work?”

Matilda pushed her armored ring back and forth. “You know that paranormal investigations podcast you’re on?”

Ohhh. “So he’s heard my work.”

“We’ve listened to all nineteen episodes.”

“Then you know I’m just the token skeptic, there to make the show seem balanced.”

“Maybe that’s why they hired you, but you’re the star of the show. Every week you break down all of their supernatural pseudo science into simple psychology.”

Turning a screw into my skull, I quoted myself. “Stimulate the anterior insula and you too can see a ghost.”

“Have you?”

“Of course. We’re hardwired to see faces everywhere.”

Matilda raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“I’ve seen them in wallpaper, marble tiles, even a chain length fence when the light hit it just right.”

Matilda cocked her head. “And you never flinched?”

I shrugged. “Our ancestors had to spot predators in an instant. So sometimes we see face where there are none, the Virgin Mary on toast or a cloud shaped like Donald Trump. It’s just a glitch in evolution.”

Matilda nodded recognizing this talking point from the podcast. “People don’t hallucinate that much, do they?”

I nodded. “Oh yeah. No need for drugs or schizophrenia. With enough anxiety people will see all sorts of things.”

Matilda leaned forward. “Are you speaking from experience?”

“About anxiety or hallucinations?”

Matilda tilted her head back and forth.

“On the podcast, when I said part of my writing ritual involved speaking to my characters like they were actually there-“

Matilda perked up. “Walk ins you called them; imagined figures that felt like they were literally in the room.”

“I was being hyperbolic to prove my point.”

Matilda feigned a smile. “Still, you’re clearly qualified for this, so much so that Carver is eager to lend you his name.”

I looked down at my boots, still wet from the walk. “Yeah, but isn’t that cheating?”

“It’s collaborating. He’s the architect. You’re the engineer. He draws the blueprints. You build the house.”

“And how extensive are Carver’s blueprints?”

Matilda tapped the manila folder with her pen. “He’s written a ten-page synopsis.”

“So it’s a sketch on a bar napkin?”
Matilda shrugged. “It’s bare bones, but think of how much freedom that’ll give you.”

I waved my hands in the air. “Yeah, but it’s Carver’s name on the building. How does that help my career?”

Matilda leaned forward. “Right now, your name, with your following in the paranormal community, might get you into a local bookstore. Carver’s name will get you that prime checkout counter space at a national grocery chain.”

“Were you a real estate agent prior to your career as a publisher?”

“I’ve been many things.” Matilda smiled and passed the manila envelope across the table. “This one little book will earn you royalties for the rest of your life. It’ll buy you time to get your own magnum opus in print.”

I shuddered. “I could always put it out myself.”

Matilda pursed her lips, feigning optimistic approval.

“It’s true, as a group, self-publishers are taking bigger bites out of the e-book pie, but as individuals most of you are starving. Anonymous reviews don’t have the sway of syndicated columns, podcasts don’t have NPR’s listeners, and trendsetters don’t have the influence of traditional publishers. Go ahead and throw your book at the wall, see if it sticks, but when readers have so many options they prefer established brands.”

I unbuttoned the top button of my blouse and let out a low sigh. “How does this bestseller factory of yours work?”

Matilda raised her eyebrow, knowing she had me.

“You’ll stay here, in the Oralia, until you’ve finished a draft. We’ll comp the room, the pay-per-view,” she tilted her head back and forth, “and room service within reason.”

I looked toward the concierge. “Why put me up here? Doesn’t Carver trust anyone to keep his secret?”

Matilda bit her lip to conceal her smile. “It’s something new we’re trying. Think of yourself as an artist in residence. The Oralia isn’t old, but it was built by people who remember when this town was filled with magic. Soak it in.”

I scanned the lobby of the creepy hotel that was to be my home.

“This is starting to sound a lot like a Stephen King story, one that didn’t end well for the author in it. Is there any kind of advance?”

Matilda produced an attaché case and took her time entering the combination.

The locks clicked open and she slid the case across the table. It was lined with stacks of cash. They were twenties, but more money than I’d ever seen.

Matilda slammed the case shut. “This will be in a safe behind the counter. Send us a draft in one month and management will be authorized to hand it over.”

“One month?”

“It’s how Carver wants it done. It’s in the contract. Think of it as a writing marathon.”

I reflected on my first semiautobiographical novel. I labored on it in my twenties, sold it for pennies, and watched it barely make back the advance.

I looked back at the cash. “All that for one month’s work?”

Matilda nodded.

“When can I check in?”

Matilda slid another document across the table. “Right after you sign on the dotted line.” Continue reading Book Excerpt: HE HAS MANY NAMES

HE HAS MANY NAMES: Full Book Art Reveal

Behold the fold book design for He Has Many Names by Matthew Revert.

Submitted for Your Approval 

MeetNoelle, a Hollywood transplant that’s been subsisting on instant ramen and false hope. She’s on the verge of moving back into her mother’s trailer when her agent convinces her to take a meeting at the Oralia Hotel. Enchanted by the art deco atmosphere Noelle signs a contract without reading the fine print.

Now she has one month to pen a novel sequestered in a fantasy suite where a hack writer claims he had an unholy encounter. With whom you ask? Well, he has many names: Louis Cypher, Bill Z. Bub, Kel Diablo. The Devil.

Noelle is skeptical, until she’s awoken by a shadow figure with a taste for souls.

Desperate to make it Noelle stays on, shifting the focus of her story to these encounters. Her investigations take her through the forth wall and back again until she’s blurred the line between reality and what’s written. Is there a Satanic conspiracy, is it a desperate author’s insanity, or something else entirely?

Clash BOOKS invites you enter a zone in-between afternoon and midnight, a place if unnamed does not violate of copyright. You’ll find it in a tome of forbidden knowledge, a book called He Has Many Names.

PREORDER NOW!

Design by Matthew Revert

An Excerpt from Retail Hell

The following is an excerpt from Retail Hell, my new short story (at 8,600 words it’s more of a novelette) now available on Amazon.

The Customers Cometh (an early chapter from Retail Hell)

Jezebeth led Barbara to a cliff side overlooking an endless subterranean shopping center. To Barbara it felt less like a cavern and more like another world with a rocky skyline. Great walls of shelving stretched in all directions, cut from lopsided stones, like catacombs with sale signs. Barbara could just make out the checkout counters on the horizon.

Jezebeth pinched Barbara’s shoulder.

“Do you mind if I give you a bit of fearless feedback? I couldn’t help but notice that you were lagging behind on the way out. I know it’s your first day and you’re trying to contain your enthusiasm, but don’t worry about it. Just let loose. Run headlong into each new challenge. Alright?”

Barbara half nodded.

Jezebeth slapped her on the back. “Don’t worry. You’ll get another opportunity after the meeting.”

Barbara turned away, preferring the endless hellscape to her micromanager’s wild unblinking eyes.

Greeters, in red and black uniforms, ran out and scattered along the plane below.

Jezebeth clapped her hands. “There they go.”

The greeters scurried behind volcanic craters, like townsfolk fleeing bandits in the old west. Some fought over hiding spots, while others helped each other bury themselves in the dirt. Continue reading An Excerpt from Retail Hell

5 Lessons I Learned Writing Retail Hell

It’s said that there are many hells. Each specifically tailored to fit the damnation of the souls in question. Then it stands to reason there’s a subterranean superstore where rude people are put to work. Welcome to Retail Hell, a short story now available on Amazon.

Oppressive Situations Limit Character Development

When we meet Barbara she’s berating both a clerk behind a checkout counter and a call center representative. She’s a familiar Ebenezer Scrooge type character. She’s put through an ordeal. She has an aneurism and wakes up for her first shift in the literal Retail Hell. Just like Scrooge she’s taught empathy through supernatural means, but her journey doesn’t necessarily end with her gifting turkeys on Christmas morning.

My hell is so oppressive it leaves Barbara’s character with few places to go, other than with the flow.

I believe every story should have a change of some kind. Usually that change involves a character learning a lesson, being humbled then empowered, and rising to a challenge as a better person. BUT… Sometimes it’s the audience’s expectations of the hero that need to change. We go in thinking a toxic braggadocios brute is going to have a sense of modesty impressed upon them, and he does, but it doesn’t take. In those situations it’s the audience that goes through the change. Continue reading 5 Lessons I Learned Writing Retail Hell

Book Announcement: He Has Many Names

I’m super excited to announce my novel HE HAS MANY NAMES is coming out through CLASH Books this fall (just in time for Halloween). Here’s the press release from yesclash.com:

HE HAS MANY NAMES by Drew Chial is tongue in cheek meta-horror about a ghostwriter named Noelle, sequestered in a strange hotel, under the patronage of a famous & elusive bestselling horror author, where things go from strange to stranger.

This story is a fascinating exploration into the artmaking (or crazymaking) process & the bullshit politics writers face every day in the publishing industry. It’s a fresh spin on the Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil story in the age of artistic desperation.

Cover art by Matthew Revert

matthewrevert.com

Noelle is a Hollywood transplant who’s been subsisting on instant ramen and false hope. She’s on the verge of moving into her mother’s trailer when her agent convinces her to take a meeting at the Oralia Hotel. Enchanted by the art deco atmosphere Noelle signs a contract without reading the fine print. Now she has one month to pen a novel sequestered in a fantasy suite where a hack writer claims he had an unholy encounter. With whom you ask? Well, he has many names: Louis Cypher, Bill Z. Bub, Kel Diablo, Dee Ville.

Nevertheless Noelle is skeptical, until she’s awoken by horned shadow with a taste for souls. Desperate Noelle stays on, shifting the focus of her story to these encounters. Her investigations take her through the forth wall and back again in until she’s uncertain of the difference between reality and what’s written.

Is there a Satanic conspiracy, is it all a desperate author’s insanity, or is it something else entirely?

Photo by Bryan Politte

 

Drew Chial is a writer who haunts the coffee shops of Minneapolis Minnesota where he lives with his cat Nemo. He’s been a board member of the Minneapolis Screenwriter’s Workshop and a script reader for the production company Werc Werk Works. He’s won the Short Story and Flash Fiction Society’s Flash Fiction Contest. His articles have been featured on Word Press’s Freshly Pressed page and RogerEbert.com. The Fancy Pants Gangsters produced an audio drama from his short story The Narration for the Red Shift podcast. His short story ‘Grieving in Reverse’ was published in the collection Walking Hand and Hand into Extinction: Stories Inspired By True Detective. And he does not use ghostwriters…yet. His latest novel He Has Many Names is forthcoming from CLASH Books. He blogs about writing at drewchialauthor.com. Follow him on Twitter & Instagram @DrewChial where he shares disgustingly cute pics of his cat Nemo.