Labels Aren't Just Used For Nutrition!

I have a Zen Calendar on my office desk that I bought at 5 and Below on a whim.  Zen is pretty cool, although much of it is a little too mystical for my liking.  This calendar occasionally has some Taoist words of wisdom as well though, so that makes up for it I guess.

Today’s wisdom was great: 

I love this.  And here’s why.  The world is an awfully complicated place, and yet we are constantly oversimplifying in just about everything we do.  It more commonly happens within our relationships with people, but let me step back and explain this from a very basic standpoint first.  You have a pen on your desk.  Anyone who is reading this is now visualizing a pen.  Does your pen have black or blue or red ink?  Is it a ballpoint pen or a gel pen or something else?  Does it have a rubber grip, or is it a cheap piece of plastic?  There are quite literally thousands of different styles for pens.  Yet they all are explained away with one word?

Now let’s think about people.  Let’s lump all the fat people together, and I can do this because I’m fat. =P  Now let’s use some logic (flawed logic, but logic nonetheless) and say that all fat people are lazy.  Well, we could be correct with this statement, but that's rather unlikely.  I’m probably the last person you could ever call lazy.  I jog two miles a day four times a week.  I try to write 5000 words a day.  I work from 8:30 to 5, which routinely involves solving technical puzzles and riddles that would boggle most people’s minds.  In the evenings I entertain a three-year old.  I may be lazy in journaling what I eat and following dietary guidelines, but does that make me lazy as a person?  And what exactly qualifies a person as being fat, anyway?  I most certainly am fat, obese by doctor’s standards, so I’m not counting myself in this.  But if someone is, say, six feet one inch tall and a hundred and ninety pounds—right on the border of being overweight according to a standard BMI chart, is he/she fat?  I could point you to thousands of athletes who are six foot one inch tall, weigh well over two-hundred pounds, and would never be considered fat.  Fatness, to me, is in the eye of the beholder.  It’s a label.  And it’s not a very nice one.

I’m not going to go on and on about how people bully others with labels here—I’ll save that for another time—but you get the picture.  Labels are so misleading.  Except maybe when it comes to relationships—if a person says he/she doesn’t want to label a relationship with terms like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” or whatever, chances are that person is looking to dump you as soon as someone with nicer, ahem, labels comes along.  Labels mean EVERYTHING in relationships.  Am I right?

But labels are pervasive in our world.  Try reading a technical journal some time, especially one relating to a Microsoft product.  You’ll read about things such as Active Directory, Hyper-V, group policies, DNS, NAT, blah blah blah.  I’m really quite shocked to see immigrants who learn English as a second language (ESL) then jump into the IT field and become successful.  As if English isn’t hard enough to learn alone, they then have to master technical jargon.  Add in a programming language, which can be just as mystifying, and it’s just all that more impressive.  No wonder so many people complain about immigrants taking all of our jobs.  Far too many of us have too much difficulty mastering English alone, and we were even born here!

Of course, we live in a now, now, now and a me, me, me society, where most people want things done yesterday and often only worry about their own concerns.  When speaking to people like this, you can’t exactly use a hundred different words to describe something simple like a pen.  But you can think with an OPEN MIND.  When the reverse happens—when they talk to you about a pen, or a fat and lazy person—you can understand that their labels are simply that.  Labels.  Utterly inefficient words used to describe something that is clearly a thousand-fold more complex.

Scary Inspiration

As any good artist will tell you, inspiration is the key to creating something from nothing.  As a novelist, I typically will take a story or interesting or scary time of my life and mold and shape it into a compelling piece of writing.  In my new novel, Terminal Restraint, I’ve done that with a tale told to me by a friend a while back.

I recall I was in my early twenties, and we were sitting in another friend’s living room, and this was the first time I had met this guy, Dave.  He had a bald head and goatee (kinda like me), was tall and athletic (kinda like me), and he appeared to be on speed or some other energy-boosting drug (not like me).  In his hand he held a bottle of Mountain Dew, and he swore up and down that’s all he had consumed that night.  Shortly after getting to know him, I knew he was telling the truth, as I’d never seen the guy take any drugs, not even smoke any cigarettes.  I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him drink.  But anyway on this particular night in his agitated and jumpy manner, he told us a story that I’ll never forget.

He and a couple other guys were driving up State Route 36 from Altoona to Ashville, Pennsylvania.  The road runs through a rather remote area, and the sun had set hours before.  At one point, the driver turned to them and asked if they wanted to see a Satanic church.  Uh, what?  The passengers all laughed, but a mile or so up the road, the driver turned into what appeared to be an old abandoned dirt road.  He drove on through dense forest in the dark of night, their car jostling them as they drove over deep potholes, until they reached a clearing.  And there, before them, was an old structure, a church, with red lights glowing in the windows.

As they slowed to a crawl and the driver turned out the lights, they began to hear screams coming from the church.  They listened for a few minutes, but then suddenly dogs began barking—not from one distinct spot up ahead but from all around them.  Several of the passengers reported seeing animal eyes looking at them from the darkness, and they immediately turned around and fled, going at a much quicker pace down the dirt road than that at which they had travelled up.  A third of the way down, a set of headlights appeared behind them, and they could tell that their pursuer was coming up on them fast.  They finally exited the dirt road and took off back up Route 36, and behind them they saw the car pull out into the road, stop, then drive back up.  And apparently their driver had predicted the dogs barking and the pursuing car, as he’d done this twice before and witnessed the exact same events.

Dave’s little story was scary, but of course he had doubters.  One person commented that they were probably just trespassing and being pursued by the property owners.  Another asked if it was just Christmas or Halloween and if the lights were just decorations.  Dave swore up and down that none of that was the case, and I can honestly say that for years I’ve wondered about this mysterious Satanic church.  And the few times I’ve travelled that road, I’ve looked for this mystery driveway, but alas I’ve never found it.  Then again, it’s not marked, so why would I?

I’ve always had a fascination with the dark/odd/quirky/taboo.  I think a lot of people do, but they are just afraid to admit it—at least publically.  I was always one to listen to controversial music: AC/DC, Motley Crue, KMFDM, Marilyn Manson.  It was never in an attempt to rebel or just be different, rather it was me trying to understand what all the fuss was about.  And of course I’m partial to rock and industrial.

About ten years ago, a friend of mine said that I resembled Anton LaVey, the man behind the Church of Satan.  At the time I had only an inkling of who Anton LaVey was, but after looking him up, I was dumbfounded.

Me circa 2002.  Creepy, right?  I didn't even know!  Of course, I read all about him and his beliefs.  While I don't personally agree with them, they are very interesting, to say the least!

When I began writing Terminal Restraint, I had this idea in my head of killing off my main character.  But I needed some way to bring him back, or at least make him “not dead.”  I’d already done the technology thing in my first two novels, so I figured I’d delve into the paranormal with this one.  And what better way to do it than to use the idea of black magic?

So I began perusing the web and researching a little more in depth, and the more I read about black magic and, in particular, LaVeyan Satanism, the more I realized how it’s not really at all like how I had imagined it to be.  I mean, I knew who Anton LaVey was and that he had his Church of Satan, and I knew they didn't actually have human sacrifices, but there's a lot to them that I had merely glanced over a decade ago.  LaVeyan Satanists, for starters, do not believe in Satan.  They are atheists.  And the black magic they do isn’t really what you think.

But by this time I had already had half of my novel written, and even though theistic Satanists are quite different, I wanted to stick with the Church of Satan theme.  So I had to change some things up, and of course I still wanted to get all of my hidden messages through to my readers.  But I still managed to pull a bit of Dave’s story into my work, and sure enough LaVeyan Satanism plays a big part.  After all, I was his spitting image!

Below is the first chapter of Terminal Restraint.  If you like it, check it out on Smashwords or feel free to hit me up for a coupon for a discount.

Chapter 1

Autumn, 1974

The hunter green Jeep Cherokee slowly pulled up the long and winding driveway, its tires crunching over the cracked slate and loose shale.  The old man glanced down at his map again for reassurance, steering clumsily and trying to confirm whether this was the correct driveway.  The dirt road had not been maintained well, and numerous thickets and briar trees scratched and clawed at his vehicle like children drawing their nails down an elementary school chalkboard.

The house, as described to him by the panicked young man, was up a long and twisty driveway off of Route 36 between the small city of Altoona and the tiny town of Ashville in central Pennsylvania.  The private road was barely noticeable, and he almost missed it even in the bright sunlight of the afternoon.  Even the rusting mailbox to the side of the driveway had been obscured by a fallen tree branch, and he was lucky to have spotted it with his poor vision.

The beleaguered caller had asked him to come during the evening, but he had refused, and he was thankful for his decision as he surely would have had more trouble finding it in the darkness.  In fact, he might not have even come at all had the young man not sounded so urgent in his request.  He had instantly wanted to know more about what exactly he was dealing with, but given their nature, he felt it best to arrive and then be filled in on the specifics of the problem.

As the Jeep rounded a corner, the small white house appeared off to his right.  The sun-soaked and faded siding and absence of several shutters made the dwelling fit well with the rest of the surroundings.  The grass was knee high, and several dilapidated cars of varying ages sat around the property.  Either the owners were not wealthy, or they just did not care much about appearances, but that was not for him to judge.  These people lived their lives as they did, and that was their business.

He pulled to a stop and slowly and methodically exited the Jeep.  A dog barked somewhere nearby, startling him with a low-guttural tone that made him think the beast was of a large and mean breed, which only served to increase his reservations.  He hoped the animal was on a leash or tied up, as he was far too feeble to fight it off.

Reaching into the passenger seat, he grasped for his ornate wooden cane.   It took several attempts to retrieve it, but once he had the handle in his grip and the end firmly planted on the ground, he felt a little more at ease.  He could walk without it if necessary, but he preferred the comfort of having something to lean on when he grew tired, as he did so often as of late.

“Hello, Mr. Barakat!”

The paunchy old man turned to the voice and squinted as an icy cool wind struck his face and stung his eyes.  It took him several moments before he spotted the much younger man descending a small set of steps from the dilapidated porch off to the side of the house.  As the young man approached, he could see that he was barely older than a child, only in his early twenties, and he wore a black smock and black casual dress pants with cuffs around the ankles.  His brown hair was neatly combed to the side, and he had on thick glasses with large black frames.

“Do you need any assistance with anything in your vehicle, Mr. Barakat?”  He approached quickly and shook the old man’s hand.  His manner was respectful yet urgent.

“No, no, I’m fine.  I’ll send someone out for it if it is needed.”

Taking the elderly man gently by the elbow, he replied, “Very well, then.  I’m Wilson Potter, and this is my home.  Welcome, and thank you so much for coming.  You can’t imagine how relieved we are to see you.”

Mr. Barakat nodded and, feeling a little less wary, allowed the young man to lead him up the stairs and onto the porch.  He took each step one at a time and was nearly out of breath by the time he reached the top.  Leaning heavily on his cane, he rested for several seconds, peering out at the thick forest surrounding the home.

Wilson waited patiently for him to catch his breath, and when the old man appeared ready, he led Mr. Barakat into the house and into a small dining room.  He pulled out a heavy oak chair for his guest, and the older man slowly lowered himself into it and rested with a heavy sigh.

As the Mr. Barakat glanced around briefly, he noticed that the house was sparsely furnished and rustic, just as the outside had appeared.  The home, both outside and in, did little to shed light on why Wilson Potter had summoned him.

“Mr. Barakat, can I get you something to drink?  Water, or tea or coffee, perhaps?”

Mr. Barakat cleared his throat to speak, coughed twice loudly and violently, and then gruffly said, “Tea or coffee would be fine.  Whatever you have.”

A thin pale woman appeared from a small room off to the side of the dining room, and she introduced herself as Helen.  He shook her hand politely, and she excused herself, turned, and hurried off down the hall.  He then waited patiently for Wilson to bring him his beverage.

A few minutes passed until the young man brought in a steaming hot cup and sat it down on a saucer in front of him.  “Tea,” he said.  “Do you need milk, or honey and sugar or anything like that?”

Mr. Barakat smiled and replied, “Oh, some honey and sugar would be delightful.  Thank you.”

Wilson scampered back out of the room again, and Mr. Barakat couldn’t help but notice the chips and cracks in the saucer and cup.  As he had deduced earlier, these people were either poor or just did not believe in material possessions.  Either way, Mr. Barakat would thank them and treat them kindly.  They needed his help, and that’s what he was here to provide.  These were his type of people as well, especially if they did have money but chose not to spend it on lavish items.  Simple and modest.

The young man returned a few moments later with a small glass jar of honey and several sugar packets.  He sat them on the table near the old man’s mug and then pulled out a chair adjacent to him.

“You had no trouble finding the place?”

Mr. Barakat smiled thinly, but he responded, “A little.  I won’t lie; it wasn’t the easiest driveway to find.  Miles and miles of woodland and then a barely visible dirt road?  I’m not sure I would have been able to find it in the dark.”

Wilson frowned and nodded.  “Yes, I apologize for asking you to do that at first, Mr. Barakat.  We just don’t like our neighbors knowing too much about us.”

Mr. Barakat nodded.  “Yes, I understand.  It’s fine.”

He slowly and methodically added a dollop of honey and two packets of sugar to his tea.  “I can’t recall if I’ve ever been to these parts.  If I have, it hasn’t been for many, many years.  When I was a lad a bit younger than you, I think my father may have brought me through here, although I can’t say for certain.”

Wilson seemed to perk up a little at this revelation.  “You were visiting someone?  You knew people from around here?”

Mr. Barakat began to laugh softly but then broke out into a coughing fit that rattled his entire body.  He reached for his cup of tea, but seeing that it was still too hot, withdrew his free hand as he coughed into the other.  Wilson jumped up and returned with a glass of water, and Mr. Barakat took it and quickly drank down half.  He continued to cough for several more minutes before the fit finally subsided.

Observing him with concern, Wilson uttered, “I’m sorry to drag you out here, Mr. Barakat.”

“Oh well, it’s not too much of a problem—at least yet, anyway.  But as I was about to say, I grew up in Salamanca, New York, and we would travel down this way from time to time to trade with the Amish and Mennonite people that lived in these parts.”

Wilson frowned, but then he quickly nodded and looked away.  Mr. Barakat keenly noticed his expressions and grinned.

“Not the type of people you would expect me to be associated with, I take it?”

“Oh, no, Sir.  I mean, no, I didn’t imply that.  I mean, well, yes, I suppose it seems a little odd.”

Mr. Barakat continued to smile.  He was thoroughly enjoying the young man’s perplexed state.

Helen came into the room suddenly and sat down at the table.  She had applied a minimal amount of makeup and had changed into a conservative blouse and black dress.  Her long, black, curly hair hung down neatly, and she appeared intent and ready to join in on their conversation.

“Mr. and Mrs. Potter, you will come to a point in time in your lives when you realize that nothing alarms you.  Nothing can shake your convictions.  You’ve pretty much seen and done it all, and if you haven’t, it probably wasn’t worth seeing or doing.  But before you get that far, you must realize that when something odd or different or alarming comes along, you must never ostracize it.  Rather, you must learn from it, embrace it, and use it to your advantage.”

They looked at the old man, slightly puzzled, and nodded pleasantly.  He could sense that neither of them seemed to fully comprehend the meaning of his words.

“What I’m trying to explain to you is that you, being of devout faith to our following and ideals, will recognize that all the world is filled with people, and even though we teach our kind to mind ourselves and live free, we must recognize that others do still exist, and that they may serve a purpose for us, even if their ideals are quite the opposite of what we believe.  We shouldn’t turn our backs on others—we should use them to acquire those things that we desire.  That is our way.”

Mr. Barakat eyed each of them as they both smiled and nodded again.  They seemed to understand this statement a little better than the first.  This was a test, whether they knew it or not, and so far they were passing—but just barely.

“So, on to the matter at hand.  I understand, from your message, that you are the leader of the Grotto of this area.”

Wilson nodded slowly.  “Well, yes, Sir.  I guess I’ve been unofficially leading a group of nine of us for the past few months.

Mr. Barakat took a small sip of tea and stared at Wilson, silently commanding him to continue.

“Oh…umm…yes, we’ve been meeting several times a month for the past three or four years.  We were formerly led by Reverend Silvio Palomino, but he passed away just recently.”

“Oh, Silvio?  From Philadelphia?  I did not know he had relocated to this area.  He’s dead?”

“You knew him?”

“Yes, although I hadn’t spoken with him in many years.  Probably a decade, now that I think about it.  We worked together back in San Francisco prior to meeting Anton.”

Wilson and Helen glanced at each other and smiled, briefly.  Mr. Barakat was bemused by their reaction.  They apparently had had doubts that he was the real deal.

Casting his eyes down toward his lap, Wilson softly explained, “Yes, we all loved Silvio very much.  He was a father to all of us.”

 “I hadn’t known that Silvio passed.  He was fifteen or twenty years younger than me, though.  In his late fifties?  Was he ill?”

“He was killed in a car accident, Mr. Barakat.  A drunk driver.”

The old man frowned.  “That’s a shame.  He was a decent man.  I offer my sympathies, and I’ll have to stop by his grave before I depart.  Now then, what is the reason for my being here?”

Wilson glanced at Helen again, and he bit his lip as if chewing on it would help him find the words he struggled to say.

 “Mr. Barakat,” replied Helen, apparently taking over in light of her husband’s inability to voice their concerns.

“Yes, young lady.  What is it?”

“Well,” she said, “we are questioning our allegiance to the Church.”

The elderly man elicited a slightly comical frown.  This was not what he had expected.

“I’m sorry?  You mean to say you are starting to question our tenets?”

The two glanced at each other again, and Wilson replied, “Sir, there is something you need to see.”

Mr. Barakat was growing impatient, but he complied.  They all stood up, and he followed Wilson out a rear door and into the unkempt back yard.  The sun was beginning its descent from the sky, and Mr. Barakat noted the time on his watch.  He had expected this to only take a fraction of an hour, and he was hoping to be long gone from this area by sunset.

As they walked slowly down a barely recognizable path through the back yard, Mr. Barakat saw that they were approaching a small woodshed.  A battered red and silver wood axe leaned against the side of the shed, and a heavy silver chain held the door shut.  The windows had all been boarded over as well, and Mr. Barakat could easily see that the chain and boards were newer additions to the older structure.  They quite obviously did not want anyone seeing or gaining access to what they had inside.

“I am not here to play games, children.  I’ve driven a long way.  What in the world could be in this structure that would have anything to do with me?”

Wilson turned and looked at Mr. Barakat, and the fear in his eyes, clearly evident, indicated that they obviously had stumbled upon something that rattled their beliefs.

“Before I open this, Sir, I just want you to know that what is in here seems to go against everything we’ve believed and have been taught and instructed.  We have been devout followers of the Church of Satan.  We are true atheists and have never believed in a higher power.  We know that the only God is ourselves, and we have never questioned those ideas.  There is no afterlife.  There is no God.  There are no such things as angels or ghosts or devils.”

“Yes, yes.  That’s all very good, Mr. Potter.  So what, you are going to show me proof that the Church’s teachings are false?  You are going to show me a miracle or something of the sort?  Son, Christianity has been doing that since its inception—long before the Satanic Church came to be.”

His tone was becoming very sarcastic and disrespectful, but he had already made up his mind that whatever these two had to show him was a waste of his time.  He did not come here to be mocked.  He was a fourth degree Magus.  He had worked directly under the Order of the Trapezoid since its beginnings in San Francisco a few years prior.  He was now the highest ranking member of the Church of Satan this side of the Mississippi.

“Sir, please just look.  If you can tell us what this is, then we will be most relieved.  But we have no explanation, and, quite frankly, it scares us.  No, it terrifies us.”

The old man leaned heavily upon his cane, but he motioned for them to open the doors to the woodshed.  He wanted to get this over with so that he could get back and contact High Priest LaVey to have these idiots removed as active members.

Wilson pulled out a large key and inserted it into the lock that secured the two end links.  He undid the heavy metal chain slowly and then tossed it to the ground.

As he began to pull open the door, Wilson explained, “We found it—sleeping, we think—in the woods.  We chained it up and locked it in here.  It hasn’t been fed since…well…since we put it in here two weeks ago.”

Mr. Barakat scoffed.  “So it’s dead of starvation, then.  Is that what you’re telling me?  What is ‘it’, exactly?”

As Wilson pulled open the rickety door slowly, deliberately, the sunlight shone brightly into the shed.  Mr. Barakat peered in, looking from left to right before seeing the pale figure huddled in the corner facing away from them, only his naked and bony back visible in the light, the skin hanging on his body like melted wax.  His pants were ragged and torn, and his bare feet were caked with mud.  A brownish substance seemed to cover parts of his torso, although it was difficult to see what it could be.

Without a doubt, though, it was a man.  A human being.

As Mr. Barakat turned in anger toward the couple, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the man moved, scurrying away from the light.  Not only was he not dead, but he seemed to move with the fluidity of a teenager or young child despite his appearance.

“You have a…a person in there?”  His eyes searched Wilson’s face for an answer, and he instantly became wary as he began questioning their motives.  Where these people murderers?  Had they invited him here to chain him up as well?  Torture him?  Were they Christian zealots disguising themselves as Satanists with grandiose intentions of kidnapping him in the name of their God?

Mr. Barakat glanced over toward Helen, afraid that she would be holding the axe or a gun and motioning him into the shed.  Instead, though, she held nothing, just staring at the filthy and grotesque man inside.  Wilson had even taken a few steps back and still seemed frightened—even more so now than he had before.  Whatever was going on here, they were absolutely terrified of the individual they had locked up in this shed.

Pointing to the pale man huddled in the corner, Wilson urgently stated, “Sir, that’s not a man.”

Mr. Barakat shifted his poor eyes back to more closely examine the individual.  The emaciated man was certainly aware that they were there watching him, and he seemed frightened as well.  He shivered several times violently, and Mr. Barakat realized that he had no other clothing or covering to protect him from the chill.  How in the world had he survived two weeks with no warmth or food?  What was wrong with these people?

“Sir, are you OK?  What is your name?”

Mr. Barakat took a few tentative steps closer when the man turned abruptly and made a savage guttural noise at him.  His face—its face—was twisted into a horribly disfigured and grotesque mask.  The eyes, black as coal, stared back, large unnatural shadows hanging under them.  The skin, not just pale but a faint bluish tint, seemed to be hanging off of its bony face.  It looked like a man, or what would have once been a man, after he had been dead and buried for several weeks.  In other words, it resembled a corpse.

Suddenly its long and wiry arms reached out and clawed at the old man, and as he back-pedaled, his legs gave out and he toppled backwards onto the ground, crying out as pain overcame him from nearly all over his eighty-year-old body.  The creature was chained to the back wall of the shed, and Mr. Barakat was just safely out of its reach, but it tried over and over to grab ahold of him, clawing and scratching at the dirt, hissing incomprehensible threats.

“What in the hell is that thing?” screamed the old man as he recoiled in horror and pain.

Wilson ran up to help Mr. Barakat, but as he hooked his hands under the old man’s armpits and began pulling him backwards, the monster pulled hard at his bindings and began bending the links in the chains.  It was furiously strong, and it stretched the chains just enough to reach its slender, bony hand out and grab the old man by the ankle.

Wilson pulled hard, but to his surprise and dismay, he saw Mr. Barakat’s expression change.  At first he thought the elderly man was just shocked or frightened by the ghoul’s grasp, but then he realized that his guest was in severe, unequivocable agony.  He seemed to be having a heart attack as his face had turned pale white and his entire body became limp.

“Helen!” cried Wilson.  “Help!  Help, dammit!”

She had grabbed the axe from outside and ran up to swing at the creature’s arm, but it turned its dark, soulless eyes on her and screeched.  Hearing the horrible sound it made, she stopped, frozen in fear, and could only stare as the horrific scene unfolded before her.

Suddenly Mr. Barakat reached up and grabbed Wilson loosely by the hair.  He had turned ghostly pale, his strength nearing depletion.  Looking up into the young man’s eyes and with his last dying breath he whispered, “Burn us.  Burn us both.”

Wilson scrambled backward out the door and watched in horror as the creature pulled Mr. Barakat into the corner.  Wilson had been staring at the now lifeless body of the old man, and he waited fearfully for the creature to rip into the man’s flesh.  When the creature didn’t though, and he looked closer, he saw that the monster was instead staring back at him, almost as if it knew him or recognized him.  Its eyes were black and cold like icy death, but there was a familiarity to them that was inexplicable and terrifying.

It hissed something at him.  A word.  Was it?  No.  It couldn’t have been…

His name?

Wilson grabbed the heavy shed door, and as he swung it closed, he heard the creature hiss his name again.

“Willlssssson.”

Slamming the door shut, he turned to look for his wife and was shocked to find that she had already grabbed a can of gasoline and begun dousing the shed.

“Helen, wait!  We don’t know what that thing is!  We can’t just kill it!”

Turning to look at her husband, trembling with fright, she replied, “Yes, we have to!  Mr. Barakat said we have to!  It’s a demon, Wilson!  It’s the living back from the dead!”

Before he could say another word, she lit a match and tossed it onto the shed, watching the flames shoot up the side like little wicked tongues, determined to erase the monstrosity and dead old man inside from existence.

“Helen, you don’t understand!  I think that was him!”

She stood back, watching the fire engulf the small structure, and turned to face her husband again.  “Who?” she asked, as she folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself for comfort but finding none.

“I think that thing was Reverend Silvio!”

She shivered, either from the chill of the afternoon or the horror they’d just witnessed, and ran to her husband’s arms.  They both stood together, crying and watching the structure burn.  The paint on the walls blistered and the shingles on the roof began to fall inward as the blaze grew.

Less than a half an hour passed before the small shed had burned to the ground, leaving nothing left but ashes and the everlasting memories of the horror they’d just witnessed.

I Really REALLY Look Like an Idiot!

I love being shown the follies of my ways.  It’s like looking into a mirror and realizing that shave and trim I just applied to my facial hair, that Fu Manchu or goatee or whatever, just looks absolutely ridiculous.  Or when I’m shopping for new sneakers, and I go and pick out a pair that I like, show them to my wife, and she tells me they are “old people, orthopedic shoes.”  Or when I go outside to look at the blue moon because, after all, my wife said we had to go see it, then I come inside and say, "It's not really blue," at which point my wife makes fun of me for even checking the color of it in the first place.  I told her I thought it was a "bleu moon", because after all, the moon is made of bleu cheese.  Right?  And for the record, I knew a blue moon wasn't actually blue--until my wife had me questioning myself.

But in regards to being shown how foolish I am, I absolutely love it.  Seriously.  I mean, how else would I become better at life if I wasn’t shown my mistakes?  How could I ever improve myself if I just went along doing things without ever knowing how much of an idiot I am.  How could I keep myself from looking like an 80s cover band member living in a retirement home?

Yesterday my son and I were at the supermarket, and as I was filling up my truck with all of our bags of groceries, I heard this boom boom boom come storming in behind us.  I looked up, and the first thing I noticed was that the vehicle was the exact same make and model of my truck—only blue instead of silver.  Then I realized that the noise was actually a song off of a new album I just purchased that I absolutely love.  The band, In This Moment, is lesser known and of the metal/hard rock/industrial genre, and the song itself is one of the best on the album.  However, it’s not exactly appropriate for general listening audiences: lots of explicit words and stuff, if you get what I’m saying.

Now I don’t go driving around blasting my music with my windows down, driving in front of a grocery store where everyone walks and would be involuntarily subjected to hear this obnoxious and publically inappropriate music.  I had a friend once that did that constantly.  He’d roll his windows down and blast his music as soon as we pulled into the parking lot of the mall.  I was always so embarrassed to ride with him.  And I asked him why he did it, and his answer was something to the effect of “getting chicks to notice us.”  The problem is, he got married shortly thereafter, yet he continued to do it up until I last saw him driving around—with his two kids in the car.  And now he's not married.  Sad, really.

But I thought this guy in my truck yesterday had to be a young driver--like in his teens.  I mean, what adult does that, aside from my friend?  I like to listen to my music at a higher volume, but I certainly don’t drive with the windows down.  Maybe just a crack if it’s hot and the AC hasn't cooled the interior down enough yet, but never with all four windows all the way down.  Never with the intention of drawing attention to myself.  What an idiot...

The guy drove over to the gas pumps, and it would have been much faster and shorter for him to approach from a different direction, but apparently he NEEDED to let all of the supermarket clientele and staff know that he REALLY liked this song.  As I drove out, I looked at the guy and had to do a double-take.  It was like I was looking in a mirror.  Big guy, shaved head, beard, sunglasses, t-shirt, plaid shorts, sneakers.  Very VERY scary.  Not the guy himself, or ME (although sometimes I wonder if I'm perceived as "scary" with the way people act around me, but that’s a story for another post).  This was scary in that there I was, pumping gas, listening to loud and obnoxious music, making a nuisance out of myself.  It was like me if I didn’t have any common sense, I guess.  THAT'S scary.

There’s a guy I know—not really friends but we know each other well enough—and I’m always telling my wife how I’d love to be like him, but I have the sense not to be.  Tattoos all over, piercings, listens and plays loud rock music, has a fascination with monsters and scary things.  In looking at him, you’d know he was into that stuff immediately.  In looking at me, you wouldn’t.  He’s the me without the smarts to not do those things.   It’s a running joke my wife and I share, because every so often there’s something new and idiotic or dangerous that he finds himself involved with that’s ironically something I’ve mentioned “doing in another life.”  You know, a life where I have no family to support and bones that break and all that stuff that keeps me from doing those types of things?

But back to the guy in the truck yesterday.  I don’t know what his deal was.  Maybe he was insecure about something, so much so that he had to “get chicks to notice” him.  Because all the chicks I know LOVE a guy with a big truck and a big sound system.  That has to be on the list right above abundant amounts of chest hair and neck hair.  Am I right, ladies?  Anyway, this guy yesterday must have had some mental/psychological issue or another.  The song itself makes a blatant reference to a specific type of woman, and so perhaps he had an issue in his love life or with women in general and was trying to send a message.  Maybe he was actually trying to get chicks AWAY from him.  If that's the case, good job, buddy.  But I’ll never know.

I will know one thing though.  I’m so happy I saw that dude yesterday.  It made me realize how closely I've come to crossing the line of minding your own business and enjoying yourself to being a disruptive and obnoxious jerk.  The next time I’m driving by myself, I don’t think I’ll roll down the windows at all.  And I certainly won’t listen to my music at an inappropriate and deafening level.  Of course, if anyone ever sees me doing that, I guess I could always blame it on that guy.  But nah, I think I’ll just keep my entertainment to myself.

Blind to the Ways of the World

I’m amazed at how content some people are with ignorance.  They live day to day without reading newspapers, watching news, surfing the web.  And I’m finding more and more of these people each and every day.  People that choose not to encumber themselves with technological tools such as smart phones and Facebook accounts.  People that don’t have cable or satellite subscriptions or even a television to watch them on.  What gives?

My wife’s aunt  is in her late thirties or early forties and can’t read.  Not English.  Not Vietnamese, which is her native country.  I just can’t imagine stumbling through life and seeing WORDS everywhere and not knowing what they say.  I mean, how could anyone go through life without having any inkling of what is going on around them? 

On the flip side, I see people that seem to LIVE on social networking sites.  I've even had some recent Facebook "friends" that have lost all social etiquette.  It seems some people, rather than choosing to give updates on their daily happenings or posting pictures of things they find interesting or exciting, have decided that Facebook is a prime market for proselytizing their political agendas.  It’s not like he or she would go around telling people in public that Romney is an idiot or Obama is inept.  Doing so would probably, at the very least, get a few choice vulgar words or middle fingers tossed at them.  Yet on Facebook they have no problem posting graphs and phrases outlining the fallacies of our president and/or his competitor.  Or worse yet, a few of my Facebook “friends” have posted glaringly inappropriate content.  Nobody wants to know that you think that lady’s butt looks nice, even though you used some outrageously vulgar language to express your sentiments.  Nobody cares that you think certain people have lied to you for years, and that they can all reside in a fiery biblical residence for their rest of eternity.  Nobody cares about your religion or your politics or anything else you post in an attempt to make people see your point of view.  Because either people will agree with you, or they won’t, and the ones that won’t will just think you are nuts and defriend/block/ignore you.

I’m not sure which is better, being completely naïve to the ways of the world or knowing entirely too much, especially with regards to close friends and members of your own family.

When I turned eighteen, I got a tattoo on my leg of the Chinese symbol for the word slave.  I had it lasered off in my late twenties because, well, it was the Chinese symbol for the word slave!   And really, I think it might have actually meant “female slave”—I know, how awful is that!—and I felt extremely embarrassed about it when I frequented Chinese eateries.  But the reason I got the tattoo in the first place was purely philosophical.  It was to always remind me that I am a slave to my desires.  In other words, I live in a capitalist, keeping-up-with-the-Jones’s society where everyone is judgmental of everyone else, money equals power, and we are raised from a young age to place value in material possessions.  I will always want things.  And each and every time I see something I want, that something begins to own me.  I’ve lost control.  I’ve become nothing more than a child lusting over a piece of candy.

For a while I actually dreamed of moving to China and joining a monastery.  I wanted to train my body and my mind to think without influence, to exist without needs, to accept all and judge nothing.  Of course, being a white American kid, I realized those were merely pipe dreams.  Sure I studied martial arts and read hundreds of books on eastern philosophies, but I had to be realistic.  And now that I’m a father and a husband, I wouldn’t trade my family for the world.  But I still envy those monks, knowing that they know nothing and yet everything at the same time.

Our minds, as babies, have not yet developed enough to understand the world in which we live.  And as we grow, we learn to love, hate, value, judge, believe.  We learn what is right and what is wrong, what makes us happy and what makes us sad.  But unfortunately all of that is relative.  What I judge to be good, like maybe voting for Obama for president, someone else may judge to be bad.  I value my Dodge Ram pickup truck, and yet I know a few people who detest the make and model and even hate the people who drive them, as I learned one day when a friend not-so-eloquently put his foot in his mouth by bashing people who drove them, not knowing that I had just purchased one a few weeks prior.  Oops!

So really, all of these things that we’ve learned since the time we were born really seem quite trivial and meaningless, don’t they?  Even down to the mere words we use to describe things.  Is it a spoon?  A utensil?  A lifter?  A ladle?  A spatula?  Did you walk here?  Or stroll?  Trot?  Bounce?  Saunter?  Oolala!  We use labels to define things, and yet those words do no justice for what I’m describing.  Each of you reading this is  picturing a different type of spoon—plastic, ornate, wooden, soup, large, small.  Does it matter?  All this knowledge in our heads is pointless.  Rather we should be focusing on the tangible and intangible.  Focus on what we observe.  Pass no judgment.  Do not label it.  Observe it, understand it, and then move on.

Having an empty, clear mind is a wondrous thing.  Because without that, we are all mindless slaves.  I’m a slave to my desires, and so are you.  I can’t just give up social media.  I mean, I can, but how else would I let all of my followers know I have this wonderful blog?  I can’t quit my job, because then I couldn’t put food on the table for my family.  I can’t give up drinking Red Bull.  Ok, maybe I can, but why should I?  We are born to be consumers.  We are born to grow up, go to school, get a job, have a family if we choose, grow old, and die…and buy buy buy all the way through.

Sad, really.  Life for those monks seems so much simpler.  And easy.  And peaceful.  They know a spoon is for eating rice, and that’s that.  They don’t get to hear daily about gas prices going up, injustices toward others, etc. etc.  It's no wonder they are some of the greatest thinkers mankind has to offer.

Maybe my friends and family who live life outside of the proverbial “Know” are onto something.  And maybe I shouldn’t have had that tattoo removed.

My Short Story Tribute to Ray Bradbury and Other Inspiring Authors

I love great short stories.  They are quick, stimulating, and they always leave you wanting more—as long as they are written well.  I participate in a lot of flash fiction contests, which are challenges designed at creating meaningful fiction tales within only a hundred or two hundred words.  Definitely not easy, yet it’s great fun to challenge myself as a writer in that way.

One of my favorite authors, Jeffery Deaver, released a few compilations of short stories: Twisted and More Twisted, and I have to say they were two of my favorite books.  I’d just pick one up, read a short story or two, and walk away instantly satisfied.  And just as the names suggest, Deaver loves to turn the tables on his readers by including crazy and unforeseen twists, and he does not disappoint in either of these collections.

And likewise as I’d mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man is a collection of his short stories.  Bradbury’s stories were written for Sci-Fi enthusiasts, and while he still had some shocking twists to his tales, the more notable aspect of his writing is how he details futuristic and often dystopian worlds with chillingly realistic details.

In tribute to these two great authors, I’ve released one of my own short stories, “Class One Act.”  I’ll probably have a few more in the near future.  If you are reading this and you’d like to check it out FOR FREE (rather than paying for a copy on Smashwords.com), let me know and I’ll send you a coupon.

And don’t hesitate to let me know if you think it stinks!  Because really, I can only get better when I know where and how I’ve erred!

Click here to check out "Class One Act!"

Life Imitating Art

Several news stories popped up over the past couple of days that seemed eerily similar to some TV shows and movies I’ve recently watched.  Sure, all art comes from inspirations we find in our everyday lives, but I find it extremely fascinating when the reverse happens.  It’s like a paradox of sorts—and if you like paradoxes and shameless plugs, check out my book Paradox, available through the links on the header above.

ANYWAY, take for example this story of a boy who wandered out of the woods and into Berlin last year.

He claimed he lived in the forest with his father for years, but when his father died, he buried him and walked five days north to Berlin.  He then quickly adapted to technology and city life after being assigned a legal guardian and cared for by youth services.

Now doesn’t this remind you of the movie Hannah, where the girl is a trained assassin who lives in a forest in Germany with her father?  I mean, there are striking similarities there.  Could he be a real-life Hannah, trained by his rogue assassin father to kill ruthlessly?  Perhaps.  I think more will come from this story as the months progress.

Next we have this story, about a pair of human lungs apparently found on a sidewalk in Los Angeles.

This brought to mind a recent House episode I watched, where House has a pair of lungs and must find out what is medically wrong with them prior to transplanting them into a patient.  The episode was a memorable one because it transitioned House from prison back to the hospital this last season, although the lungs themselves really didn’t play much of a part in the story.  Still, it was shocking to see a pair of lungs removed from a body, and it must have been very frightening to just find them lounging around on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, soaking up the sun’s rays as they sipped at a Pina Colada (that’s my own generalized visualization of what every Californian does each day).  I mean, I know experts say coughing up a lung is not possible, but could they be mistaken?  Were these organs intended for a transplant as the ones in House, but somehow they got lost?  “Hey Joe, did you grab me a cheeseburger?”  “Yeah.”  “And the lungs?  Did you bring them?”  “Oh…uh…”  You know, people find body parts all the time, mostly due to nefarious actions of serial killers and whatnot, but lungs?  Lungs?!?

And finally we have this story out of Middleborough, Massachusetts, where the residents of the town voted to fine people $20 for swearing in public.

They say the law was enacted to prevent teens from swearing in the downtown area and public parks, but when I read this I had to think of the scenes in Demolition Man where Sylvester Stallone’s character is repeatedly fined for swearing by the little machines strategically placed everywhere he goes.  Funny in a movie, but not so much in real life.  Luckily the ACLU is jumping all over this and hopefully putting an end to it.

I don’t mean to begin proselytizing here, but there’s a valid reason why the First Amendment exists and is the first of many amendments to our Constitution.  If you don’t understand why, I suggest you read Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four.  I really hate swearing in public as much as the next guy, and I cringe when someone says something vulgar within earshot of my three-year-old.  And I agree that people should be held accountable for it.  That’s what public nuisance and disturbing the peace laws are for.  Our nation’s laws should not be altered to limit what people have the right to SAY, and as soon as we start changing them to enforce that sort of thing, we begin treading down a treacherous path of sacrificing liberties that our nation was founded upon.

And really, consider the people you know who do swear in public.  I can think of maybe ten to fifteen people that do, and when I consider their lives, i.e. their financial situations and marital statuses and whatnot, I realize that those people are already being punished for their actions.  Sure, swearing in public is just one tiny little nuisance in the grand scheme of things, but those people who do utter expletives around others tend to be the dregs of our society.  Seriously, nobody is going to think of them as a professional, unless of course they are a rock star or have some other talent that trumps their foul-mouthed bad behavior.  Honestly though, do you know anyone in a prestigious position that walks through the grocery store saying “F#%” and “S@#^”?  No, I didn’t think so.

These types of news stories always catch my eye, as some of my stories and novels have had eerie similarities to real life events.  Take for example the mental hospital in my book, Project Utopia, which is based on the mental facility in Pittsburgh on the Pitt campus that was shot up by an assailant in March of this year.  And of course, anyone with ties to the University Pittsburgh knows about the string of bomb threats, some of which targeted the Cathedral of Learning, which also is a setting in that same book.  In April of this year, a shooting on the Oikos University campus in Oakland, California left seven dead, eerily similar to an aspect of my novel, Paradox.  Then a few weeks later, my wife told me a sad story of a young man in Philadelphia who had passed away, and his first initial and last name were an exact match to a character in one of my yet-to-be-published novels.

As a writer, these types of coincidences will tend to rattle you.  I know it’s pure happenstance that some of these events and settings are similar to my novels, and I’m sure many other writers have the same things happen to them.  Still, just a little part of my creative imagination has to wonder if the things I write manifest themselves into reality.  Perhaps I should start writing about an IT worker in his mid-thirties living in Pennsylvania who wins a billion dollars and signs a huge book deal.  Wouldn’t that be something?

We've Lost One of Our Own - Ray Bradbury RIP

As an author, I’d be remiss to not mention and honor the passing of one of my biggest influences, Ray Bradbury.  I can say without a doubt that his works were some of the most inspiring for me as a creative thinker and writer.  Everyone knows Fahrenheit 451, and if you haven’t read it, what’s wrong with you?  Seriously, though, the man contributed so much to the world of literature, and I’ll bet there will be a rush to buy many of his works.

I think my favorite story of his had to be “The Veldt.”  It’s so undeniably creepy that it will make anyone shiver.  The story was published in “The Saturday Evening Post” back in 1950, yeah 1950, and it just amazes me that someone could write a story like that—about virtual reality, nonetheless—so long ago.  I mean, I can’t even imagine what technology might exist fifty years from now, and yet Ray Bradbury conjured up a tale about a VR nursery and the pitfalls of such high-tech devices left in the hands of young minds.  I know I’ve thought about that story more than once watching my 3-year-old son navigate around the screens of phones and tablets and the Internet better than most adults.  It won’t be long until he comes close to surpassing me, and considering that technology is my forte, that’s quite a feat.  Still, hopefully I stay on his good side so that I do not face the dilemma and misfortune of the parents in Bradbury’s incredible short story.

If you would like to read “The Veldt” or any other of his fabulously deviant tales, pick up a copy of The Illustrated Man, which is a collection of his short stories.  While you are at it, get one for me, because I seem to have lost mine!  Grumble grumble!

There have been other great authors pass recently, including Maurice Sendak earlier this year, J. D. Salinger in 2010, and two of my favorites: Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton in 2008.  But out of all of them, I’d have to say that Ray Bradbury was the best, and he will be sorely missed.  Nobody will ever replace him, but as long as I continue to fancy writing and putting the crazy thoughts in my head on paper, I’ll certainly do my best to mimic the style of such a brilliant man.  Sure, I’ll probably pale in comparison, but I’ve always tried to do as he did, write at least 1000 words a day, and live by his profound advice:

"Just write every day of your life.  Read intensely.  Then see what happens.  Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers."  -Ray Bradbury

And finally, of all the quotes and stories Ray Bradbury ever gifted to us, this one has always been my favorite.  I think you'll understand why:

"I don't believe in being serious about anything.  I think life is too serious to be taken seriously." - Ray Bradbury