Been a long time.

Hello all,

Long time no see, I know. Almost six months, actually. Hard to believe I left this alone for almost half a year.

Oh well. Life gets in the way sometimes, I'm afraid.

I'd like to say that I plan on updating regularly now, but, to be honest, I don't really see that happening. I kinda doubt I have all that many people checking in here these days anyway.

I'll try to put something up here every now and then though. If for no other reason than it motivates me slightly.

Here's a bit of flash fiction I wrote a few days ago.


Hope everyone's doing well,

~Will

Seeing Life

I was walking my daily walk, past my daily stores and along my daily streets towards my daily job, when I saw life walk by.

It was bright, and beautiful, and it took the form of a young woman as it slowly paced down our daily dead sidewalks. It wore bright colors tight as the wrappings of dead pharaohs, each fold and flourish acting as clothing should. Acting in a way which made me grasp at the dank sour rags which hid my death, and fat, and sadness like a heart attack victim.

Life's hair fanned out from the cold wind like it were a summer breeze. And I watched as the other dead men and women walked by. Not noticing this brief thing which walked among us.

She walked past me, and for a moment I felt something bloom from the long winter. For a moment I remembered summer days, and flowers, and clouds which weren't black from smog, and promising snow. For a moment I remembered a time when I was alive. When I walked the streets clothed in color and friend to the wind.

But then she was gone from my vision. And the sidewalks turned again to bone. In the gutters rot again festered. And I continued my walk, slowly shuffling along with all the others.

Life was no longer meant for this place, I knew. And those who existed here no longer meant for life.

By the time I reached my destination, the pain happiness brings was gone. The numbness had again set in. And my dead life remained around me.

Unrelentingly Bleak?

This was just a short scene I had stuck in my head. I decided I should probably just type it up and post it on here. Being as if I didn't, it would both bug the hell out of me, and would probably mean that my blog would go un-updated for at least a few days more; as I am currently rather wrapped up in a story I hope to submit to a horror anthology.

When I showed it to my brother, he informed me that my work was beginning to become "unrelentingly bleak"

Perhaps so?





He scattered the crows with a wave of his hand. Sending the unlikely songbirds, those who had so quickly replaced pigeons in this new world, flapping off into an ash-grey sky.

Leaving behind their meal. His friend Charlie.

“You should have listened to Frank…” He whispered, gazing down on the colorful mess that was once a man. “He told you that alley didn’t smell right. And you saw yourself that all the crawlers’ were avoiding it.”

He thought he felt the pressure of tears build up behind his eyes, but he shook it off. He and Charlie had been close. Brothers maybe, though it was hard to tell. They had been together since before he could remember. First tagging along behind Mama Jenn, then behind Adam, her oldest boy, once one of them had gotten her during the night. When she got old. And slow.

Finally they had teamed up with Frank and his lot, once Adam had seen too much, and had to blow the thoughts out of his head.

And now Charlie was gone.

He felt the pressure again. And blinked it away. It had been two days since he’d had more than a sip of water. There was less and less these days that hadn’t been contaminated.

He couldn’t waste tears. The whispers had cost him precious minutes as it was.

He quickly stripped off what was still usable. Bullets, matches, all those knives Charlie had always been so fond of. The wooden handle of a gun was still clenched rigidly in his right hand, but the rest of the magnum was shorn straight through. Christ knows what did that.

Once all pockets were checked, all pouches emptied, he looked once more into the eyes of the one person who had always been by his side.

Then he turned away.

And in the short six steps back to what remained of his band, the man Charlie was erased forever.

October's Ending

"The wind-swept wet-leaf days of October were ending, but he was happy. He had always loved the beginning of Fall. Loved seeing the world roll itself up after another year, preparing for the blanket of snow which would soon come.

He had enjoyed his holiday. Enjoyed seeing old friends and distant family, turning old haunts back to new again, and drifting past landmarks of childhood moments. Still, no matter how wonderful the vacation, there was no place like home. And, as he tucked himself back beneath the comforting weight of his moss covered stone. He looked forward to the long sleep which awaited."

October is over. Which, for me at least, means it's time to put away ghosts and goblins. If only for a little while.


Taking it's place, however, is grave November. I believe I will also take part in "National Novel Writing Month" (NaNoWriMo) By attempting to turn what was going to be a short story(My Noir Piece, "The Black and White Life") into a longer work. Whether it becomes a novel or a novella entirely depends on how far my original idea takes me.

I still plan on posting snippets and occasional bit of flash here regularly though, so don't think I'm going to be dropping off the board.

For all those also planning on participating in NaNoWriMo, I wish you luck!

Halloween Flash Fiction.

Tis the season.


. . . . .


He had been locked in the dark for a long time.

Locked in small places that smelled of attic corners; tasting of moths, and age, and things not important enough to be remembered.

They had said it was for his own good. And he had hoped then. Hoped that they would keep him hidden from them. From the things that came from cracks and the insides of shoes; once all others had gone, and the lights had been put out.

But instead they put him here. In the dark and alone. And the things had done as they promised; they had pulled back his skin and made homes in him. He could feel them now, twitching and slithering beneath him. He could hear their whispers.

There were more of them each day, and each one carved a little deeper, burrowing in, getting comfortable. They had taken his feet, and his hands, and his torso. Hollowed them out, so now they just lay there, slowly rotting husks on a too-soft floor.

All they had left him was his head, but he knew it was not from mercy. They wanted him to see, and hear, and taste, and smell. They wanted him to feel. To know each time they took a bit away.

Soon, he knew, they would move upward. They would start with his memories, tearing away happy times and moments of peace. Leaving him only the dark.

Eventually they’d take everything. Leaving him just like the others, still in their cells. Behaved.

Soon they would be happy; the doctors, and the orderlies, and the old lonely mop-man who spoke softly to him each night.

Soon he would stop screaming.

The Black and White life: A snippet. The beginning of my attempt at Noir.

He couldn’t help but think that there was something wrong with the light as it flowed out the back of his whiskey and ice. It had slithered through a crack in his blinds, to sear through the otherwise dour grey of his apartment, yellow and hopeful; until it landed on his table, and the glass which sat upon it.

Whereupon it had turned to a diseased piss-yellow grey. Hope traded for sick contentment.

Christ. He needed to stop drinking during the day.

He wasn’t going to the office this morning. No one ever came in anyway. He was a piece of the past, regulated to old movies about stone birds. These days wearing a fedora just made him eccentric, and having a bottle of wild turkey in his desk was simply a sign of alcoholism.

He thought, as he lifted the sweating glass to his lips, that it was probably best not to argue the second charge.

They were kicking him out of his apartment, and the office would close soon after. The work just wasn’t there anymore. People went to the police now, or to large men who rested comfortably behind the reflective glass of large office complexes. No one trusted anything less than a hundred man operation, much less one located between the Easy Lotto Liquor Store and an abandoned strip club.

He tossed back the rest of his drink, just as there was a knock at his door. He let the ice rest against his lip for a moment, not in any particular hurry to get up from the torn and abused couch which had come with the one room apartment. He knew who it was. There were very few people who visited him after all, and he was supposed to have been out of here by noon, yesterday.

The knock came again, more urgent now, filled with what he supposed was justifiable impatience.

“Mr. Williams!” a muffled, heavily accented voice yelled out from behind a wall of cheap wood and smoke stained plaster. “Mr. Williams! You are not supposed to be here anymore! If you do not open this door right now, I will be calling the police! I know you are there!”

He sighed, and set his glass back on the table. It had been a bad week, in a bad month, in a bad year. And he didn’t think it was about to get any better.

The Parts you throw away: A snippet

He couldn’t sleep anymore.

The noise drilled into his brain, and set up shop behind his eyes, which always felt like they were pounding, throbbing; like too much blood was being pumped in, and they were about to blow.

Sometimes he could swear they were swelling, they felt too large for him to pull his eyelids over; but then he would always run to the bathroom, and stare into the mirror, and find that everything was normal, that his eyes were fine, if a bit bloodshot.

It didn’t matter that everything looked fine though; because it wasn’t.
He couldn’t sleep anymore, the best he could do is pass out, and only because his brain couldn’t ignore the chemicals, not yet. Enough alcohol and it would eventually stop working, at least for a little while. Allowing him to not-exist for a time. Unfortunately, passing out isn’t a good substitute for sleep, and every day he felt progressively worse. It was beginning to take more and more alcohol lately too, and that scared him. He didn’t want to imagine a time when it wouldn’t work altogether. A time when he couldn’t escape from the noise.

It had woken him again today.

No, not woken, as there was no true rest in his occasional absences from the world, perhaps roused, or some synonym of the word. That seemed more suiting.

Either way, it was the noise which greeted him to a new day of old things. The noises which pulled him from peaceful oblivion, to a world which smelled of stale vomit and spilt whiskey. It was the sound of people. It was the ring and rattle, the clink and clang, the muffled screams and shouts and just-upon-waking conversation. These were the things which drifted through the sheet-thin walls of his apartment like so much smoke, piercing his brain, and keeping him from anything resembling rest.

But he tried not to think about the noise.

He wasn’t sure when he had thrown up, but he didn’t think it had been yesterday, or the day before, or even the day before that. He remembered looking for the source of the odor once, maybe not long ago, though he couldn’t be sure; but nothing had ever been found. The smell just was. Like it had been wandering along, happened to find a home that suited it, and was now loath to leave.

The spilt whiskey he did remember, though vaguely.

He rolled out of bed easily, his feet landing just to the side of that pile of clothes he was going to take care of tomorrow, and made his way to the bathroom.

The smell was stronger there, though now mixed with something similarly unpleasant. The bathroom wasn’t in the best of condition, he knew, and he planned to take care of it soon. Probably after work today, or tomorrow at the latest.

For now he ignored the mess, instead pulling aside the curtain, and stepping into the shower. He turned the tap and then waited for a total of twelve seconds before pulling up on the little pin, and allowing the water to flow up the correct pipes and splash over him like a depressingly tiny rainstorm. He waited for twelve seconds because when he had first moved here, that was exactly how long a person must wait before the water became anything even resembling warm. It had been a few years now, and they’d done quite a bit of work on the pipes, but he still waited twelve seconds.

Lost Things: A Snippet

Ryan started awake, torn from half formed dreams, and the sandman’s shadowy respite, by the cats in the walls.

The sounds were slight, just on the edge of hearing. They lingered in the small space usually occupied by mosquito wings, obviously not loud, but at the same time, entirely impossible to ignore. Soft, mewling screams echoing from the ceiling, just six feet above his head.

Ryan’s parents had, three weeks ago, after his first complaints upon hearing the noises in the bathroom, told him that it was only the pipes settling, that odd noises were normal in old houses, that he would soon grow used to the small eccentricities of their new home.

When he complained about it later, after the sounds had tracked him through rooms with no pipes, after he began to hear the ragged sound of claws on drywall whenever he closed his eyes, they chastised him for being so childish. At eight, they said, he was expected to act more like an adult, to stop letting his imagination run wild.

The most they had been inclined to do, after Ryan showed them the small, clawed out holes which had begun to form around the electrical outlets in his room, is call the exterminator, insisting that it was simply damage caused by mice, which, they said, were yet another feature of old homes.

Ryan couldn’t remember, in all the nature documentaries he had seen on the television, ever seeing mice with claws long enough to cause the long stripes which crisscrossed the marked portion of the wall. Or any mouse which possessed the glowing green eyes which he had occasionally seen peering from the newly opened darkness, when he was brave enough to pull the covers from his head.

Tonight he did not feel brave, however. And, clenching his eyes tight, he crawled further beneath his blankets, and tried to ignore the dark whispers echoing from behind plaster and pop-corn ceiling; hoping that the morning would come soon.