My Work
Here is some of my writing for you to check out!
01
Joe Waits for Tuesday
At the center of the village, on the second floor of an inconspicuous wooden building, Joe’s memories slither within the basin of a granite tub.
As for Joe, his carcass spends its days trudging between the water trough in the village square and the old well, dug about half a mile in the surrounding forest. In his hand, he carries a bucket, and had his memories not been removed from his skull, he would proudly say, “For as long as I can remember, I ain’t ever let a single drop fall from this bucket.”
Joe completes this task because the village needs water—just as it needs bread, roads, and cabins. Like in other communities, these jobs have been delegated to bodies capable of carrying out such tasks. The citizens spend their days upholding their duty without protest, but unlike the villages beyond the forest, there is no chatter filling these muddy streets.
No conversation.
No banter.
Only droves of silent carcasses, passing one another.
“Tuesday…”
The word trickles from Joe’s lips at certain times throughout his journey to-and-from the well. It’s an involuntary habit, caused by an instinct hidden in the deepest cavern of his brain. A habit that rests alongside the unconscious urge to breathe air into his lungs, pump blood through his heart, and digest his day’s grub: all mechanics of perpetuating life. And where there is life, there is the resilient desire for freedom.
“Thursday,” mutters the roofer.
“Saturday,” whispers the road layer.
“Monday,” coughs the baker.
… And then their tasks resume.
“Joe, come with me,” the monotone voice of a hooded figure fell over Joe’s catatonic mind. He placed his bucket down and followed the figure through the village, where he neither gave nor received a wave from any of his neighbors conducting their responsibilities. The unconscious part of Joe understood that he was deviating from his ordinary path. His soul sent a slight wave of electricity into the muscles in his legs, resembling the first notions of excitement. Only once did the figure turn back to Joe, and that was to wipe the bit of drool leaking from the corner of his lips.
The figure walked into the wooden building and up a staircase, unlocking the bolts of a large steel door on the second floor. The rusty hinges creaked, revealing the empty room that contained nothing but the granite tub full of memories. At the side of the tub, the figure bent Joe to his knees and held his face over the pool. The memories, perpetually circling the tub’s inside curves, twisted and curled at the sight of Joe’s face; for a lucky one of them was to be free.
The hooded figure reached into the viscous fluid and took a tight hold of one of the slimy creatures. The memory curled its tendrils in and around the figure’s palm, wrapping around the fingers and forearm like a snake coiling around a far bigger animal. The hooded figure placed the creature onto Joe’s face, and its body wriggled in and out of his nostrils, ears, and mouth. There was a scent hidden inside Joe’s skull that it desperately yearned for: the scent of home.
On that particular Tuesday, the creature chose Joe’s left nostril as its entry point. The memory weaved its slimy body into its familiar caves, and the years of Joe’s life began to flow through his brain like a flood. His mother, whom he cared so much for. His father, who taught him how to fish. His brothers and sisters, each wise and patient. He backed away from the tub, away from the grasp of the hooded figure, and sat on the floor for hours as his history returned to him one month at a time. The memory slithered over more ground within Joe’s head, giddy and energetic. Soon, Joe began to remember not just the people he once knew, but also the places he had been. The adventures. The stories. The happiness. The…… The decisions……… The regret.
Joe sat up from the wooden floor, his smile evaporating as the creature slithered deeper through his brain. He was no longer just viewing the beginning of the memories, but also their end.
There was an illness that took away the man that taught him how to fish, and there were many fights with his siblings during the grief.
There were years that passed without dialing a brother or sister’s phone, and there was a time when he eventually forgot the sounds of their voices.
The memory of a love skated across his frontal lobe before she ventured off in the middle of the night. There were quite a few loves that escaped Joe in the same manner. “Escaped?” Joe muttered, ashamed as he spoke the word. But it was the correct word; for he left them no room to exit his life peacefully.
There were thoughts of changing that were silenced with a multitude of vices. There were too many mistakes made again and again. There were three children, all his. One taken too soon, another abandoned, and the last one wise enough to stay away. There were choices—his choices—that sickened him, and there was a day when his mother refused to call him her son any longer. And after that, there was no one.
Joe looked up at the hooded figure. That Tuesday, the person inside the cloak was a young woman. He thought back to all the different faces he had seen beneath the hood over the years and remembered the day, long ago, that he made the cold and lonely walk to the village. Just as he did on that day, he wished to no longer remember the freedom that he squandered so masterfully.
He reached his fingers into his mouth, latching onto the tendril of his memory hanging in the back of his throat. Little by little, coughing and teary-eyed, he pulled the creature from its home. The memories began to fade as his mind was hollowed once more, and he held the squirming creature tightly in his palm.
“Don’t come back here, Joe,” he told himself, hoping his final words would remain somewhere in the emptiness of his psyche. As usual though, as his memories fell wreathing and convulsing onto the floor, any recollection of the event was gone. The hooded figure scooped up the creature and placed it back into the tub, where it continued its laps around the granite alongside the memories of the village’s other residents. She stood Joe’s cadaver to its feet and guided it out of the building. Joe picked up the water bucket and resumed his task, as if that afternoon had never occurred. The next Tuesday, Joe was brought back up to the tub and, yet again, he pulled his memories from his skull with disgust. The following Tuesday bore the same result, and so did the one after that.
Months went by, and the villagers conducted their tasks in silence. One Thursday, the roofer exited the inconspicuous wooden building without the hooded figure, his memories still in his head. For whatever reason, he did not choose to remove them. On his way home, he passed Joe in the forest and gave the man who had been supplying their community with water a wave goodbye. Joe said nothing, and continued on with his duty. A few Saturdays later, the road layer patted Joe on the shoulder before disappearing through the trees with his own memories. Once again, Joe said nothing and focused on keeping all of the water droplets from spilling over his bucket.
That following year, on some ordinary Monday, the baker, who had lived in the village for nearly twice as long as Joe, walked out of the wooden building with a cane and set off to face whatever disaster he had long ago left in the outside world. Joe trudged through the snow, trying to make it to the trough in the village center before the water froze in his bucket. The baker stopped Joe and wished him the best, saying he hoped that Joe would soon find the strength to leave his memories where they belong.
Joe stood there in the snow, silently, as the baker talked. Had Joe been the man from his past, there was no telling what he might have said or done in response to the kind wishes. Fortunately, he did not have to make any decisions about how to react. He did not have to worry about regretting his words or actions. All Joe worried about was the water in the bucket. He offered a blank gaze in response to the baker and continued his trudge back towards the village. On his walk, the resilient desire within his soul, the one that stays good and far from the brain and its faults, let out one more word. A deafening cry for freedom that softly slipped from Joe’s mouth in the shape of “Tuesday.”
02
Nudie
Miriam Grayson-Garland stole my heart and a nudie mag on the same afternoon.
It was just after school on one of those humid, late-August days, where the freedom of summer still hung in the air alongside the sound of cicadas. Our bus dropped us off four streets from my house and five from hers, and while most parents today would never let their seven-year-old children walk home with only the good-will-of-man to watch over them, Miriam and I grew up in a humble collection of houses and shops that generations of folk singers liked referring to as “a little slice of heaven”; the type of hometown far, far, far away from any of that “no-good” and those “no-good-doers” our moms and dads used to shake their heads at while watching the evening news. A place where the good-will-of-man could be found in abundance.
On that sweaty afternoon, however, Miriam and I skipped right past our homes and walked to McGillis’ Corner Store on the other side of town. I still have no idea why we did such a thing, but I followed her without hesitation. Miriam managed to make it past the vigilant guard of Grandma McGillis, creep to the forgotten aisles of the store (where it was rumored that Grandpa McGillis stocked a small collection of smut), and sneak a bronze and busty topless covergirl into her backpack. She wedged the magazine between times-table worksheets and a coloring booklet and, before Grandma McGillis knew we had ever entered her shop, we were gone.
In the bushes behind the town library, while Miriam and I were flipping and giggling through the dirty pages together, I looked at her and realized that we’d be seven for the rest of our lives.
I stole our first kiss and our neighbor’s 1977 Pontiac Firebird six years later. It was eight o’clock at night, and we were sitting in the car’s backseats about three miles outside of town. Headlights dashed. Our nerves kept us chatting for a bit, but we both knew that it was only a matter of time before the conversation slowed to a halt and the silence would prompt one of us to lean in towards the other with puckered lips. The silence inevitably came, I leaned in with my eyes closed, and our smooch lasted for three whole seconds. If you were to ask me now though, I’d say that it felt as if our lips were held together for at least an hour.
I had thought that by thirteen-years-old I wouldn’t have been scared to open my mouth and risk the possibility of knocking my teeth against hers, but I was terrified to do such a thing. We didn’t even try to snatch the other’s tongue with our own, as such an intimate action seemed more fitting for fifteen or sixteen-year-olds. But, even if our first kiss was just a brief peck, we liked doing it so much that we scooted nearer to each other across the leather seats and repeated the action over and over until we lost count of the smooches. After I put the car in drive and sped back towards home to make our nine-thirty curfews, she held my hand and asked if I still had that dirty magazine. I smiled, leaned over the cupholders, kissed her again, and said that I had it in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.
Every Sunday for the next three years, Arthur Windrow (a good friend of our parents, proprietor of the furniture store on the far side of town, and former owner of a 1977 Pontiac Firebird) made an announcement at church requesting that his neighbors keep their eyes open for who might have stolen his missing car. Of course, everyone in town agreed to be on the lookout, and the populace of our “little slice of heaven” remained optimistic that whoever took the car would return it to Mr. Windrow’s driveway with a full tank of gas once their conscience got the better of them.
During one particular Sunday, however, Mr. Windrow’s announcements ceased and the buzz around Lilly-Smith’s Coffee shop was that the townsfolk (and Mr. Windrow himself) had all concluded that a no-gooder from the big city or some trouble-stirring-passer-throughs must have been the ones to make off with the vehicle. This hypothesis would, more often than not, be brought up by either Miriam’s parents or my parents during the ten-minute, summertime car rides we used to make to Eubank Lake, as frowning upon and shaking their heads at the faulty consciences of outsiders had become one of their favorite hobbies with age. Miriam and I would nod along with our parents, but when we arrived to the lake, she and I would swim away from all the kids playing Marco Polo and play a game in which we would see who could dive deeper into the water and be the first to touch the Firebird’s hood.
Throughout high school, Miriam and I remained hopeful that there would come a week where we would finally be invited to one of those Friday night parties you see all the time in the movies. Unfortunately, no invites were ever sent our way, and Henry’s Diner became the usual Friday night spot for us and our small collection of friends who had also been waiting patiently for the day they could crack open their inaugural beer alongside the students that were always picked first for a team in gym class.
Sitting there at the diner, sipping on coffee while all pretending it didn’t taste like mud, we’d ask our friends what their theories were on the missing Firebird, as there were many theories that began to circulate amongst the town’s youth as to who really stole Mr. Windrow’s car. We also loved to ask our friends’ opinions on what they thought became of the sailboat oil painting that used to hang in the public library and the twenty pounds of grade-A tenderloin that vanished from Mr. Pobcomb’s cattle ranch; just two examples of some far less gossip-worthy thefts that had occurred over the past few years.
They’d say about the firebird: “Well I think, personally, that if somebody was to make it over Mr. Windrow’s barbed wire fence and past his two Rottweilers, they would’a had to be ex-special forces.”
And about the sailboat: “My mama told me that painting was secretly worth somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand bucks. Only a real genius art thief would’a known that.”
And in regards to the tenderloin: “Mountain Lions. They come down from the hills when it gets hot, and my uncle said he saw one the size of a horse roamin’ around the Pobcomb property the day the meat was stolen.”
Miriam and I would sit and listen to their theories, our fingers skipping in each other’s palms as the tales became more vibrant and colorful with each Friday at the diner. I may have barely been five-foot-five with some early signs of balding, and she may have been flat-chested with bucked-teeth, but gosh-darn-it, hearing each other referred to as special-forcing, art-thieving, wild animals always made us feel like two up-and-coming stars that all the talent agencies were fighting to represent. We’d forget all about the parties going on across town, as all that mattered were the bolts of promiscuous intention we were shooting through our fingers and into the bones of the other’s hand; a sensation that got stronger and stronger with each Friday that came and went.
Our first time was after school in a field of freshly greened grass a week and a half before prom (the night all those quarterbacks and cheerleaders with the songs written about them were waiting for to lose their virginities). We, on the other hand, didn’t have the discipline to put “the deed” off any longer. I think we both went into the grass assuming there would have been more nerves when undressing in front of each other, but it was easy to take our clothes off, as if we had been looking at each other’s naked bodies for years. While slow dancing at prom later that week, she whispered in my ear and said that if there was ever a nudie mag with just me on each page, then she’d stuff every copy that she could get her hands on into her backpack. My response was “I Love You” and she whispered it back to me without hesitation. For whatever reason, it seemed fitting for both of us to say those three words at a volume that only her and I could hear.
Despite protest from her parents, Miriam went to college one state over to follow her dreams and I stayed in town to help my dad with his roofing business. The Grayson-Garland mother and father waved to me every time they would drive by and see my bright red arms hammering shingles into some family’s little abode. Miriam visited less and less as her exams got harder and harder. I missed her calls most days. Her parents, having most certainly bore witness to heartbreak’s depressing foreplay before, stopped their friendly waving at me. It was the type of decrepit feeling that sunburnt blues artists liked writing about. I wasn’t measuring life in chunks of years at that point anymore, but by each second that I wasn’t with her.
And at the age of eighteen years, three months, six days, two minutes, and ten seconds, Miriam called me crying. She stumbled through some generic breakup dialogue she might have stolen from a network TV show and said “I Love You” one last time before hanging up.
Winter arrived, roofing slowed, and my pale skin was saved from becoming a permanent shade of Honeycrisp apple for a few months time. However, I had plenty of free hours to spend by the telephone, and entire days passed with my eyes glued to the landline in hopes that Miriam would call. To try and cheer myself up, I went on two dates with the Drummond girl down the street, but after I stole her a bouquet of roses I received a stern reprimanding on my lack of morals and ethics. She shook her head at me in a manner that would have made my parents proud, but said that she was willing to give me another chance if I promised to change my ways. I told her I’d think about it at home.
I never made it back to my house that night though. Instead, I drove straight out of town in my junker and sped across state lines as if I was still behind the wheel of that Firebird.
At a rest stop eighty miles away from the college, my heart nearly froze when I saw Miriam stepping off of a greyhound bus. In her hands, she held a oneway ticket back home. I was crying again, and so was she. I hugged her and asked what had made her change her mind. She said that she was set to go out with a classmate, but cancelled the date when she saw him waiting in a line comprised of suitable, young bachelors that stretched out the door of the campus’ flower shop. She told me that he was holding a bouquet of the most beautiful roses she had even seen in his arms, but something didn’t quite sit right in her chest about joining the ranks of women who would have been receiving a bouquet of legally purchased roses that evening.
The day before our wedding, we stole the biggest batch of flowers we could, and even stole the cake as well.
We moved into a little house in our hometown, I kept balding, and Miriam’s teeth kept bucking. So, you wouldn’t have believed our surprise when our son and daughter grew into pre-teens resembling the leads in some film adaptation of a best-selling young-adult novel. We were lucky though because they were truly two well-behaved kids; far too busy with sports practices, studying, and carrying on the town’s tradition of upholding the good-will-of-man to create any secret lives that would have had me or their mother worried. Miriam and I would often laugh, wondering if they had given us the wrong babies at the hospital.
Life carried on and we kept the flame alive by sneaking what we could out of grocery stores and pharmacies. Now and again we’d steal a nudie mag and leave it on the other’s pillow for a good laugh that would, more often than not, be the prelude to some fearless, open-mouthed kissing. A week prior to our son’s middle school graduation he walked into our home and two six-packs of beer spilled from his backpack. He nervously inspected the zipper, finding that the flimsy device couldn’t bear the weight of the metal tins that he hurriedly stuffed inside the bag back at the shop that took the place of McGillis’ Corner Store. His eyes rose in defeat to meet the consequences that Miriam and I were obligated, as parents, to serve him. She yelled, I yelled, and our son ran off to his room leaving the beer cans at our feet. When the door shut, we looked at one another and shook our heads just like our parents used to when we were little.
After cracking open a couple of the beers, I grabbed Miriam in my arms, pecked her lips like back in the Firebird, and said in a volume that only her and I could hear, “The boy doesn’t take after me and his mama, that’s for god damn sure.”
03
An Act of Blood and Vengeance – Chapter 1
DAY 1
On his way to enact bloody vengeance, Tulg spends — what his best guess is — one hour crying in the bathroom of a rest stop somewhere in western Pennsylvania. At the end of his hour, he summons the courage to wipe the tears from his eyes, put on his oversized cataract glasses, and leave the stall… Seven of our days have passed.
He wraps two wool scarves around his mouth, hiding his fangs, and walks out of the bathroom. Night — safe, familiar night — shrouds the world beyond the bus stop windows (thank you sky spirits). The vampire zips his red ski jacket to the base of his neck and crosses the lobby to a ticket clerk who reeks of excess deodorant. “When is the next bus leaving for New Jersey?” he asks.
“North or South Jersey?” mumbles the clerk, never looking up from his magazine. It’s a miracle Tulg can read his lips through the unkempt beard.
“Um… are there any going to the middle of the state?”
The clerk takes his first sip of steaming, midnight coffee, and answers with the rim of the cup blocking his mouth. “Fo-zzzz-ant-zzz-orth-zzz-ion-zzz-er.”
The mortal words slam into Tulg’s eardrums —
Jumbling
Skipping
Buzzing —
As if the universe itself is turned to fast-forward. Out of all the side-effects of immortality, time dilation has become his most detested… And it’s only getting worse.
(come on focus on his lips)
Shamefully, the vampire asks, “Could you repeat that, please?”
The clerk puts down the coffee and raises his head. He stares at Tulg, looking him up and down, then stares at him some more. It’s a familiar look, one that should be easier to endure after seven thousand years.
As if talking to an imbecile, the clerk annunciates:
“For Cen-tral Jer-sey sta-tions…
“… take the North Jer-sey line to New-ark.
“Then, trans-fer.”
Tulg nods, more appreciative than insulted. “And when’s that bus coming?”
“Should zzzz-ere in te-zzzz-n zzz-inutes.”
(did he say ten minutes) Tulg’s embarrassment keeps him from asking. For no more than what he assumes is six seconds, he tries deciphering the words within his own head. His concentration drifts away from the clerk: the only mortal grounding him — barely — in his long-lost human perceptions…
“Hey, you al-zzzz-right, bucko?”
The vampire refocuses. The clerk’s face has completely changed expressions — like he’s just watched Tulg wake from rigor mortis. “You kinda zoned out-zzzz-for like… five minutes.”
“I did?” Tulg stammers.
The clerk takes a sip of lukewarm coffee and nods. “Never-zzz-met a narcoleptic before.”
“You still haven’t.” (narcolepsy thats a new one)
The clerk drinks the last of his cold coffee and quickly urges: “zzz-is-zzz-ving.”
“What?” Our hero stares at the clerk’s mouth. He focuses on how the air springs from his tongue, filters through his teeth, and shapes itself on his lips:
“THE. BUS. IS. FUCKING. LEAVING. BUCKO.”
Tulg spins around, spotting a bus on the other side of the rest stop’s windows. The last of the passengers walk up the steps, and the driver shuts the doors behind them.
“Thank you!” Tulg blurts to the clerk. He sprints across the rest stop, his work boots clomping along the tile floor, then asphalt. By some miracle of the sky spirits, he reaches the bus before it leaves the parking lot and pounds his fist against the silver greyhound logo.
The driver slams on the brakes — the oversized vehicle jolts and screeches to a halt. The slumbering silhouettes snap upright behind its windows, mumbling a batch of swear words.
Clump! The double-doors open, and Tulg apologizes to the elderly driver as he climbs the steps with his bus pass in hand. The frail little man grins — one of the kindest smiles Tulg has seen in all his years — and barely glimpses the pass.
“Almost left ya behind, son.”
The words drool from his mouth, and our hero understands every syllable. If only other humans spoke at such a meandering pace, then perhaps Tulg would have become one of those suave, seductive vampires like Bela Lugosi or Robert Pattinson — not this bumbling dolt.
“Sorry, sir,” he apologizes. “It’s been a very long day.”
The old man pulls the doors closed. Another Clump. “Well, you’ve got six hours to rest yer bones. Go ahead and get comfortable, son.”
Tulg shuffles his way towards the back of the bus, leaving a timid “Sorry” with each passenger who gives him a Spanish-Inquisition-style glance. Their exhaustion eclipses their irritation (if only the inquisitors prioritized sleep all those years ago) and most are snoring by the time Tulg finds an open seat.
“Six of their hours,” mutters the vampire as he leans his head against the cold plexiglass window. “That must be… maybe… twenty-five-ish minutes for me?” The bus gets moving again, and he closes his eyes. Tight. Before the outside world makes him vomit.
But as Tulg sits there in his personal darkness, swaying with the motion of the bus, he realizes his math is off (twenty five minutes doesnt make any sense, try and remember how Bruna did the math, think idiot).
Two and a quarter minutes. That’s the correct answer — the answer he isn’t wise enough to find on his own. Bruna was the smart one… the one who found ways to make sense of this Curse’s symptoms. A vampire who skated over time with the elegance of a figure skater, and a person who was kind enough to make Tulg her partner. But now, Bruna lies beneath the soil of Kurbis, Missouri, a wooden stake driven through her heart, and Tulg’s existence has once again become a lonesome cascade down the slopes of humanity’s frenetic world (don’t cry youre a goddamn vampire tulg, just keep your eyes shut). He’s read enough books, watched enough films, and seen enough history to know that killing the man responsible for his wife’s death won’t bring her back, but it may — if he’s lucky — make the rest of eternity more bearable.
Two and a quarter minutes pass; the bus jolts to a halt and the hydraulics ease. Tulg opens his eyelids and looks out the window at cracked asphalt and factories.
(newark)
It’s still night, but our hero watches the sky morph from pitch-black to dark blue — a constant flow, like a river current. Sunrise is only a few of his seconds away. He quickly straightens his cataract glasses, zips his jacket up to his jawline, fastens his winter gloves, re-ties the scarves, and pulls his trapper hat over his head.
He walks to the front of the bus as dawn seeps through the plexiglass. Descending the staircase into the humid air, someone calls to him from behind.
“If-zzz-snow-zzz-fella!”
The words zip through his eardrum like a drunken gnat. He turns, halfway down the vehicle’s steps, and sees the elderly bus driver staring at him with a hint of concern.
“Come again?” Tulg says through the scarves. “I need to read your lips.”
“If yer looking for snow,” repeats the ancient bus driver, “you came-zzzz-here at the wrong time’a year, fella. Should’a-zzzz-proably told ya that back in Pennsylvania.”
Tulg straightens his posture, thinks back to the day he watched his wife die, and declares: “I’m not here for snow. I’m here to enact bloody vengeance.”
His voice distorts through the scarves. By the time the phrase limps over the bus driver’s failing eardrums, there’s no telling what the senior citizen hears.
“Oh, well… Best’a luck to ya! We got lots’a that here in Jersey anyway.”
The old man gives Tulg a boney thumbs up, and the two share a nod. The vampire steps into the warm daylight and watches the bus disappear down the cracked asphalt. Before entering the station, Tulg wonders what the driver thought he said (hes gonna go and tell all his friends about the idiot he met today i’m sure).
He loosens the scarves around his mouth, and hopes that will allow him to speak more clearly throughout the remainder of his journey.