Burning the Midnight Oil

Posted on March 18, 2013 by R. Richardsson

Last night proved to be one of the longest nights I have had in long time, and not in a good way. In order for you to understand, however, let’s rewind just a little bit to yesterday afternoon.

My wife and I had just watched two episodes of ‘The Walking Dead’, on television. We are so far behind on episodes that it would literally take us a week to get caught up, and only then if we were to have the free time.

I’m a huge fan of the show. Now only does it have one of my all time favorite types of undead in it, but it is masterfully written as well! The episodes we watched were; 18 Miles Out, and Judge, Jury and Executioner. I’ll just say this, for any of you who haven’t watched the show yet (but are meaning to), or aren’t caught up; I’m glad it was Daryl.

*sniff*

Yeah, that was an emotional moment. I was angry. I was sad. I probably went through most of the twelve steps in three seconds, but it was a perfect three seconds. “Sorry, brother.” I hadn’t felt that range of emotions so quickly in a long time and it felt good! I was inspired! I wanted to write and boy did I ever…

But alas, it could not be.

My bedtime had come and gone, and if I was to have any rest before my PT job, I had to attack that pillow with the back of my head like there was no tomorrow.

I have already experimented with a story about the zombie apocalypse. I wrote a short story set during the beginning stages of it last year, so I have already got a feel for it. However, I haven’t really spent any time with my rotting little friends yet.

I can’t give away any details just yet because I plan on releasing this story in a collection after my trilogy is complete, but I will answer one question; the story doesn’t place the zombies as the focus. As a result, I have yet to get into the really nasty business.

“Have you shelved your putrid pals,” you may ask? Not at all! In fact, in my second book, I have introduced a most malodorous mischief-maker into the fray. This little nasty mcassty has something unlike any other brain muncher you have ever seen; a sentient mind! Oh yes, not only is this foul flesheater intelligent, but it has identified itself to one of the main characters as well!

Okay, before things get out of hand here.

This is a special type of undead, I realize that. It seems like I have a few unique creatures up my metaphorical sleeves and there is no short supply of them either! Let’s put them aside for now and return to where I started, shall we?

So here I am with a dilemma on my hands. I have the worst kind of writer’s block! Except, I’m not being blocked between my mind and my fingers. No, the block happens to be this annoying chunk of time I have to fill with sleep and… Ugh, just say it already; work.

It would be sixteen hours before I would be able to sit before my screen again! Seriously, what a waste of creativity! Or, was it?

When sleep finally caught up with me, I tumbled over the precipice of consciousness and into those murky depths where only the most horrific of terrors lurked. I may or may not have played catch with Frankenstein’s monster, and, I may or may not have spread some of The Blob onto a peanut butter sandwich… What I DID do was dream about those stinking piles of vacuous vultures as they chased me down a cold, dark alley.

I remember it well…

The sky was cold and grey, the wintry air unforgiving. I pulled my jacket tighter around my round frame as close to closed as I could get it, but it had been years since I had had a zipper with which to do so. The streets were empty. A transparent layer of snow-covered the ground, allowing only the barest glimpse of what was underneath and it had yet to become too treacherous to walk upon.

There was a foul stench hanging in the air. It was one that I knew I should recognize, but for some reason I could not place a name to it. Was it garbage? The cooking of some exotic food?

A low moan interrupted my reverie, floating only a decimal higher than the sound of the blustery winds around me. Now here was a sound I recognized! Somewhere across the street, in the shadows behind the vehicles, someone was hurt!

Moving as fast as I dared to across the accumulating snow, I closed the distance between me and whomever was over there.

“Hello?” I called out. “Do you need help?”

“uuhhhnnn…”

I cocked my head to the side as I listened. There was probably twenty feet between me and that poor…man? Woman? I wasn’t quite sure which one it was, which I do find a little unusual now that I about it, and had I spent more time reflecting upon it things might have gone a little differently.

The distance between us slowly continued to shorten as I approached. That unknown smell continued to waft out from between the vehicles and I felt really sorry for whomever it was. There was hint of feces in the air, a smell that I can’t say I was happy to identify, but it led me to the conclusion that the person could be elderly, or incontinent. Of course, there was that OTHER smell as well, but I was no longer worried about it. I had to help!

“uuuuuhhhhnnnnnnnn…….”

“Hang on! I’m almost there!”

What a fool I was! As I smacked my forehead with the palm of my left hand, my right reached into the pocket of my jacket and closed around my cell phone. I might be able to offer my jacket for warmth, but I didn’t know the first thing about first aid! If this person was really hurt, where the hell were my good intentions going to get them? There was less then ten feet between me and the shadows when I dialed that triad of numbers most commonly used for those in need.

“We’re sorry, the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service…”

“What the hell?” I asked.

I shook my head in frustration as I replaced my phone to my pocket. I had never had the need to use this service and the first time I need it, it’s out-of-order?!

“uuuUUUHHHNNNnnnn…..”

There was a slight scraping noise from behind the vehicles. I squinted my eyes and tried to determine what the vehicle model was, but it was just too dark. It didn’t matter, however. The person I was trying to reach had grown tired of waiting for me to get there.

From the darkness behind the car in front of me, clawing its way out of the shadows was the hand of the one I had crossed the street for. It was long and slender with a large diamond ring on the fourth finger of (her?) hand. I couldn’t be sure, the color of skin was off somehow.

“Uh, miss?”

“ggrrrhhhhhhnnnnnn….”

At that moment, all of reality came crashing down around me. She crossed the threshold of darkness and into the light with her hair hanging around her face. She could have very well been Sadako crawling from the well at that moment, come to take first my eyes and then my soul!

Her hair might have once been blond, not that it mattered. I don’t think that even if it did, she would be brushing it anytime soon! From the middle of the top of her head to somewhere around where her nose would be, her scalp had been torn from her skull. It flapped back and forth in front of her mouth as she continued to pull her decrepit body toward me.

I could only stand there in shock. It was as if my feet had suddenly sprouted roots, which had in turn busted through the asphalt beneath them and taken hold in all directions. I now knew the name for the odor which had been tickling my nose and turning my stomach. It was decay.

The crawling dead lifted her skull upward, focusing her glazed orbs upon me and I could hear the bony sound of her teeth clacking hungrily together. I was in her sights. At that moment, I had no doubts that this is what a donut must feel like when it crosses the threshold into a police station. I began to back pedal away, moving nowhere near fast enough for my sanity to bear.

I fled backwards at a crawl. My mouth hung open in a perfect “O” and I could feel my eyes bugging out of my head. Her hands worked in overtime, *clack*, *shcrrr*, *clack*, *shcrr* as they feverishly pulled her torso fully into the light. If I had had time to think about how comical it looked, I might have laughed.

“huuuuhhhnnnnn…”

This sound was different. I was looking directly at flap-face, but it had emanated from off to my right. As if I were underwater, I slowly turned my O-face to the right of my groan gal, only to see a new antagonist approaching.

He was probably around my height, let’s say six-foot for shits and giggles, and wearing a black and white pinstripe suit. Or, rather, I should say he was wearing what was left of it. The once ‘All Business’ attire was shredded and hanging from him in bloody tatters. Also hanging from him were his intestines as he dragged several feet of them toward me.

The smell of rotten flesh intensified . It was the worst thing I could ever have imagined, and you believe me when I say that I have imagined some pretty effed up stuff! My eyes began to water from the pungent assault and I finally managed to snap my mouth shut. This one stank like the interior of a slaughter-house. The scent of blood hung around him, thick and iron-y, wafting toward me with his approach.

That was the breaking point, I’d had enough of this shit. I turned and ran.

The buildings blurred past me as I left behind my loathsome lady, but her rictus grin was quickly replaced by dozens of her putrid pals. They closed in quickly. Some were crawling, others were ambling forward with their arms outstretched. I took the first right turn I came upon, dashing down an alley between two buildings.

A dead-end!

“Shi-“

“UUUUHHNNNN,” came the groan from somewhere next to me. From ground level, a hand reached out and grabbed me by the ankle, holding me tight… I was trapped!

It was at that point that my alarm called to me, screaming its message from worlds away. As always, I feel myself being pulled upward, drawn toward the sound that beckons from afar. The grip around my ankle lessens and is gone. So too, does the snow-covered streets of Dreamtown USA fade away and suddenly I am opening my eyes and looking at the clock.

*sigh* Time for me to get to work.

And so it was. I spent the next nine hours stocking the Chemicals department of my Wal-Mart, trying to hold onto that inspiration I had went to bed with earlier that day. It wasn’t easy. I won’t lie to you, I forgot most of the ideas I wanted to write down. Okay, okay, I won’t lie to you. I forgot them all.

When I got home this morning, I spent nearly two hours trying to recover that lovely bit of fiction I wanted to write about, but it wasn’t meant to be.

That’s really too bad, too, because I think you would have liked what I had to share with you! 🙂

Dreams

Posted on March 13, 2013 by R. Richardsson

I’m always amazed at some of the things that my mind produces while I’m asleep. Nothing is ever the same, well, except for that one reoccurring dream, but for the most part they are unique.

Dreams have a funny way of being influenced by your last thoughts, recent memories of something you did/watched/ate, or by the environment around you. Of course, they can also be influenced by fear, phobias, illnesses, and other negative aspects as well.

Some people claim to be able to control their dreams. Whether by meditation, diet, or some form of tether, it’s said that one can actively create and mold the world around them.

I can’t attest to this, however. My dreams are influenced by my environment, with just a smidge of fear thrown in. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that the dreams you remember the most happen before you reach deep sleep. That being said, I usually go to sleep with some light music playing in the background.

Most times I turn on the Traditional Classical or Symphony Hall channels from Sirius radio and set the sleep timer on my TV for an hour. Of course, it doesn’t always take me an hour to get to sleep, but it’s probably around there that I hit the deep end of it.

So what does that get me?

I tend to dream of my life, but with an upgrade. Sometimes I dream in alternate universes. What if I hadn’t met my wife? What if we hadn’t had kids? I enjoy the “what if” dreams because it gives me a chance to explore life outside of the confines that I currently exist in.

Other times, I dream in medieval fantasy. Magic, Knights, mythical creatures; it’s all there. These hail from my pen and paper gaming days, which I miss dearly, and I plan to write a volume of novels based around once I’m done with my current project(s).

The closest thing that I’ve had to a nightmare was after I had lost someone who was close to me. In my dreams, I was with that person when the accident occurred, but I always woke up just before…well, you know.

I’ve never really been able to control my dreams either. I think I have come close a few times, but then the dream would transition into another. Funny how that works. Just when you’re about to get what you want, whether it’s a pile of money, a new car, or that hot looking member of the opposite sex, things take a turn for the “WHY THE FUCK DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!” Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Those are the ones where you wake up and you’re still poor, your car is still a piece of crap and you’re spooning with your body pillow.

I had a lot of nightmares when I was a kid as well. I think that my home situation had something to do with it. My parents were divorced when I was young and I bounced back and forth until my bum of a father killed himself. Mom did the best she could but sometimes her fears passed down to us and we worried a little more about things than kids are supposed to at that age.

There were dreams of poverty, yes. There were also dreams in which the bad people would get into our house… Looking back, I think these dreams weren’t all that bad when I consider the ones that derived from watching Elvira’s weekly special. (Or Ray Adam’s Friday Fright Night when it was on.) While I have a special place in my heart for horror now, back then was a different story.

The first time I saw a human skull really screwed me up for several weeks. Our (my sibling’s and I’s) room was connected to my Mom’s by a short hallway, halfway down of which was a small bathroom. For many, MANY nights, an eight foot tall skull with flames in its eyes would float down the hall towards me. Its mouth would slowly open, as it drew closer, until I could finally take it no more and woke screaming.

That one was the worst.

I enjoyed my escapist dreams more. This was in a different house and time, years after my father (bum) was buried. In these dreams, I would be laying in my bed when suddenly a portal to another dimension would open in the wall next to me. I always had the option of whether I wanted to go or not. I guess you already know what I chose…

Sometimes I would travel to a mystical kingdom where I would battle unspeakable horrors in order to save the town, princess, etc. Other times I would roll into the portal and into something else, like a pit full of spikes, or a river of molten lava. I would get the Anakin treatment, but sans the cool robotic outfit and breath-y helmet. Nor where there ever any cool powers or unlimited funds with which to build a death-ray. No, I just crawled from the fiery death sauce, the flesh dripping from my bones, with my organs boiling inside of me, until I would awaken out of breath with the final image of my eyes popping stuck in my head.

Speaking of stuck in your head… You’re welcome.

It’s been a long time since I had those dreams. As I said before, most of my dreams are influenced by my environment. If there’s music playing, the mood is that of the music. If there are sounds of traffic, I dream of the city. If there is a thunderstorm outside, well, you get the point, yes?

Dreams are funny things.

I find inspiration in my dreams and I create inspiration by which to dream by.

Tell me about some of your dream experiences.

Oh the Horror!

Posted on March 9, 2013 by R. Richardsson

Shame on me. I promise you a new post and what do I give you? A shameless plug for my first book, that’s what! Ah, but it’s out of my system now, I promise. I know that YOU know about my book, I just chose to put it there for those other visitors who may not!

I was recently asked by why I have chosen horror as my main genre. There are plenty of other things I could possibly be doing with my talents, so it makes little sense that I have taken to something that only the strong can stomach.

For me, the world of horror is something that I grew up with. While I have never had the privilege to be around the fascinating world of makeup artists in this genre, and while it’s true that I have not had any filming experience, I HAVE (from an early age) read hundreds or horrific novels. I have plunged headfirst into the cinema, watching everything from B movies to the more star studded films produced by Hollywood.

I was first introduced to horror by Elvira. My first memories are of sitting in front of the television, while my bastard of a father spent his entire visitation weekends at the bar, and watching either Elvira’s presentations or Friday Fright Night.

My first movie, and I wish I could remember the name of it, was a black and white winner which had a mad scientist bringing life to a tree, via some form of transplant. I don’t remember much about it, other than the tree monster had a beating heart that glowed in its trunk and it would hide in plain sight.

Of course it did, right? lol

For several years afterwards, I couldn’t hear the rustling of leaves and not have to resist the urge to run screaming!

So… Why horror then? I’m fascinated by it. Sure, I’ve had my scares over the years. There have been the trees with beating hearts, giant floating skulls with fires burning in the eye sockets, squid-like monsters which reached up out of the water to peel the flesh from my bones… And this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. These are just a fraction of the things that have scared me over the years.

These things came to me in dreams, provoked by movies I hadn’t been ready to accept. At that time, I hadn’t known the intricacies that make up these make believe monstrosities. These creatures were put together for one purpose, to be someone else’s nightmare.

I began to hunger for the world of the paranormal. I quested for every kind of monster. It became an obsession for several years to read as many new books, watch as many new movies and read as many new magazines as I could find. By new of course, I meant new to me. But, you already got that, didn’t you?

Sure, I think of things that would give most people nightmares. I’ve dreamed of things that would put sane people into therapy for years to come!

And I’d love to share them with you.

There’s a misconception about people like me, however. Those of you who know what I’m talking about will be able to get what I’m saying here… Yes, it’s true that I find the macabre more interesting than most. Death fascinates me in its many forms. Monsters are the delight of my whimsy and the paranormal I could talk about for hours! Rivers of blood do not phase me. I can summon demons with words and thrust them deep in the heart of the city to slaughter the innocent with but the flick of one finger.

The misconception lies in that just because I fancy these things, it doesn’t mean that I have embraced the Dark Lord. Just because my work might depict violent, gruesome deaths and just because I’m not afraid to create something that others might find to be a bit too much, doesn’t make me a follower of old fire & brimstone himself!

On the contrary, I have no strong set of beliefs whatsoever. I AM a baptized Christian, yes, and my wife and I are raising our children to be Catholics, but I don’t have as strong as a conviction either way. Some part of me does, which is why I mentioned what I did just two lines up, but the majority of me chooses to accept that there are things out there which lurk behind every corner, in every shadow and beneath every bed.

There is often so much flowing through my head that I find it hard to keep track of all of my ideas. I write most of them down, I’ve used a voice recorder for others, and yet some still slip away. It’s truly a shame because 1% of the ideas that slip quietly back into the void are the really good ones. One of these days, I’ll devise a way to catch them buggers…

The truth of the matter is this; I have come to think of myself as a conduit for the things that I (and a very few others) have a real understanding of. Am I somehow glancing into alternate universes? Possibly. I could also just be that damn creative as well. That’s also a real possibility. Whatever the way that you look at it, I’d like to think that I work a lot like Stephen King does. Or, *ahem*, I work a lot like this quote of his(?) that I found online amidst a plethora of research. It goes a something like this;

“I don’t take notes; I don’t outline, I don’t do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing.” ~S.K.~

…and really, that’s all there is to it. I sit down and open my Word Screen and what comes out is some of the most effed up stuff I ever thought I’d think of. And I enjoy it twice as much the second time around!

There is only one direction I wish to travel with this and that’s all the way to the top. But don’t get me wrong here! This isn’t about some misguided notion that I should be writing according to other’s needs! I write strictly for myself. Everything that comes afterwards is for you baby, yeah!

Okay, I admit it. That last comment was less horror and more horrible. I do apologize for that. However, I hope that as you get to know me a little better, you’ll come to see the sick and twisted sense of humor that I have as well.

At least, that’s how I hope it translates! lol Or do I?

Whatever the case may be, there is plenty of time ahead of us to find out. I do so enjoy horror. I could sit down to a nice order of Hannibal, followed by The Hills Have Eyes with a smidge of The Thing (John Carpenter’s) on the side. Mmm… And for desert, I’ll have a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Toast a glass of red wine with Freddy and play a game of Pinball with the creepy old guy in Phantasm.

I hope you are the same way, and, I hope that those of you who aren’t will hang around and get to know me. I may channel a lot of dark creatures through my fingertips, but I’m really not that bad of a guy! I don’t bite…unless you ask me to. And even then, I can’t promise that it’s not infectious.