Indian Summer Halloween (cont.)
3. Jack

Hayden had been sitting in front of Julian's computer for at least an hour, aimlessly surfing the Internet for more information on Halloween and for reports of similar incidents, but he kept coming up empty. It seemed every page he wanted to look at had been taken down or was otherwise unavailable. The sites he did find were mostly online costume shops or instructions on carving pumpkins. He wondered if he was having no luck on purpose, if maybe whatever was causing the decorations to come alive was playing some massive trick on him. He wished Julian hadn't gone out of town to visit her grandparents. She was better at surfing than he was, and if she couldn't find it on the Internet, it wasn't there to be found. He wished he could ask Sky because Sky would almost certainly be able to rattle off some obscure tale he had found in some book no one had ever heard of. Hayden tried to make himself stop thinking things like that, but he couldn't help it. It was going to take him a long time to forget the way it felt to have Sky die in his arms.

The front door opened and closed. Hayden looked up from the screen. The boy who stood in the doorway looking lost and timid couldn't have been more than sixteen, but Hayden got the feeling that the boy wasn't quite ... a boy. There were several things that were abnormal about the kid, and the first of these that Hayden noticed was the distinct smell of cucumbers that wafted off him. The second was that the boy's skin was a pale, pearlescent green. Of course, the color of his skin could have been a very good make-up job, and cucumber, for some reason, seemed to be a very popular scent at those places with all the lotions and bubble baths. But the color was too natural, and those bubble baths didn't smell quite that ... well, fresh.

"Can I help you?" Hayden asked.

The kid turned towards Hayden. His eyes flashed blue. Hayden felt little knots bunch up in his stomach. "I can't find my sister," the kid said.

Hayden studied the boy's eyes. The blue flash had settled into green then shifted through red, orange and yellow before washing out to a dead white. Hayden could read nothing in those eyes. "Have you checked the mall?" he asked.

"I ... um ... no. She's not ... she doesn't go to malls. She's ... um ... different?"

The kid should have been sweating bullets. He was nervous as hell, and he was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket that it was way too warm for. But his green skin was dry. The more Hayden looked at the boy, the more he was convinced that the green was natural. It was too consistent, even under his fingernails and on the inner rims of his weird chameleon eyes. Hayden wondered if the kid and his missing sister had anything to do with the night of the living decorations, as Conrad had called it.

"All right," Hayden said. "Let's see if we can work this out." He pulled a yellow legal pad from the desk drawer and plucked a pencil from the cup next to the monitor. He wrote the date on top of the page. "What's your name?"

"Jack O ... Lan ... tern ... " the kid said. He had started out easily enough but trailed off when he realized that what he said sounded ridiculous. He looked at Hayden, his eyes quivering through muted autumn colors.

"Excuse me?"

"Jack ... Orlando?"

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"No, Mr. Detective, it's not a joke. My sister's been missing for a ... for a long time, and if I don't find her tonight, I might not ever find her."

"Look, I'm sorry, but I - "

"Please, Mr. Detective. You're the only one who can help me. This is the only night of the year that either of us is tangible, and even then, no one really sees us. But you can see us."

"Tangible?"

"We're spirits. My sister is the spirit of Halloween. Well, she's not really my sister. She kinda adopted me after I tricked my dad into getting into the cucumber. My mother didn't want anything to do with me. She's a banshee."

The story was at once believable and utterly inconceivable. Jack was nervous and upset and seemed sincere, but Hayden knew better than to trust what he saw on the surface, especially from a green-skinned spirit who smelled like a fresh salad. There were a lot of questions Hayden wanted to ask Jack, but he could tell by the set of the boy's mouth that he would get lies and half-truths. "What's your sister's name?" he asked.

"Carlin," Jack said.

"What does she look like?"

Jack hesitated. "I don't ... know? I haven't seen her in a hundred years. She could've changed."

"What did she look like last time you saw her?"

"A little girl with long blonde hair."

"Any distinctive features?"

"She's a spirit. You'll know her if you see her."

"Okay, look. I've got some other things I need to deal with first. I don't know if you've noticed, but things are getting a little weird around here. I need to figure out what's going on and stop it before I waste time looking for missing spirits. But I'll keep my eyes open."

"But, Mr. Detective - "

"Sorry, Jack. I don't do missing spirits."

Jack frowned. His eyes went from violet to deep grey to black, and then the black bled into the whites like a broken egg yolk. "If I don't find her, the weird things might not be the end of it," he said. He turned around and stalked out the door.

Hayden leaned back in the chair and chewed on the pencil. His cell phone rang. That time, he remembered which button to press. "Yeah," he said.

"I made it out of my office," Conrad said. Hayden could hear Crash and Hurricane barking in the background.

"Good. What did you do?"

"I burned it. It just turned to ashes. And guess what? Not bones. Just paper ashes."

"You're at home now?"

"Yeah. My dumb ass dogs have a pumpkin cornered in the kitchen. A guy down the street got wrapped up in the fake spider web he put on his front porch. I've seen ghosts in the windows next door. This is just not good. And I can't find anything."

"Me either. What about your psychic?"

"Does the name Jack mean anything to you?"

"It might."

"How 'bout the missing spirit of Halloween named Carlin?"

"So the kid wasn't bullshitting me."

"No."

"Shit."

"You thought it was a joke, didn't you? You told him to go away."

"Like I'm supposed to know anything about the spirit of Halloween."

"Where is he now?"

"I don't know. He can't be too hard to find."

"She said something about cucumbers, too, but I ... "

"Please don't finish that thought."

"You got it."

"The kid smelled like cucumbers. He said something about tricking his father into getting inside a cucumber."

"Well, I think we gotta be damage control right now. This'll probably go away in the morning."

"I agree, but we should look for the kid, too. I have a bad feeling about this."

"I don't like it when you get bad feelings." In the background, there was a sound like several balloons popping at once. The dogs barked louder. "Shit, now they're just making a mess. I gotta go."

4. More Tricks

As night settled over San Desperado, the tricks began to take on a far more sinister bent. While the decorations hadn't outright killed anyone, hospital emergency rooms and urgent care clinics were glutted with patients suffering from panic induced asthma attacks, broken bones, serious lacerations and even a few heart attacks. At least one of the heart attack victims died, and Hayden was sure that wouldn't be the only one unless he was able to do something. The cops had their hands full, and he tried to help them. They didn't believe him when he told them about how the decorations were coming to life. They all seemed to believe that someone was playing a horrible prank. More than one of the officers looked at him with a mix of pity and fear. Another, whom he had known for several years, said bluntly, "I heard you'd been a little loony since Squire died, but you didn't have to take the whole city with you."

Armed with a Louisville Slugger borrowed from a sporting goods store that had been overrun by several black cats and ghosts, Hayden roamed the city looking for Jack. Conrad, Crash and Hurricane did the same. The last time Hayden had talked to Conrad, the dogs had gotten away from him, chasing after a black cat. Conrad had stopped into a drug store to get bandages for the deep scrapes in his chin and the cuts in his wrists from the leashes. He and the pharmacist had fought off a cardboard Frankenstein's monster with water guns. Armed with a Super Soaker that had two tanks worn on the back, Conrad had gone looking for his dogs.

The subdivision of Arbor Mills was relatively quiet. Most of the decorations seemed to be heading somewhere, but Hayden was too concerned with helping the residents along the way to follow them. A whole family, including the dog, had been wrapped up in the fake spider web they had placed in the trees in their front yard. After beating off the giant rubber spider that came with the web, Hayden cut the family out of the web. In another front yard, a Styrofoam headstone marked a real grave up from which a zombie was clambering, and as Hayden beat it back, he thought about the cemetery. From what Jack had said, he gathered that Halloween was a night when the veil between the world of flesh and the world of spirit was thin.

With the zombie down, Hayden ran towards the cemetery. He was only vaguely aware of the sound of a motorcycle behind him, but when the bike sped past him and he smelled cucumbers, he stopped and shouted, "Jack!"

The bike, a sleek black and silver Honda CBR600, skidded to a halt, and Jack shut off the engine. He got off the bike and took a few steps towards Hayden before he stopped. He took the helmet off and tossed it high into the air, catching it deftly on the tips of his fingers as he bent over to straighten the tongue of one of his boots. In his mouth was some kind of noisemaker, and Hayden realized that the sound he had heard was not the sound of the motorcycle. Jack tucked the noisemaker into his back pocket and grinned. It wasn't an unpleasant expression, but it made Hayden think of green living things buried deep in black, loamy soil.

"Happy Halloween, Mr. Detective," Jack said.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say," Hayden said.

"I still can't find Carlin."

"I'm a little bit more worried about other things right now."

A flock of witches turned a corner at top speed and flew straight at them, cackling. Hayden barely had time to duck as they buzzed by. Then they turned and faced Jack, hovering in the air. Jack's eyes were rainbows.

"Get 'im, girls," the witch at the head of the formation said.

They hunched over their brooms and aimed down at Jack.

"Bring it on, ladies!" Jack said.

As the witches bore down on him, Jack wound up with his helmet like it was a bowling ball. When they were close enough, he flung the helmet at them. He hit the leader square on her crooked nose, and she was hurtled back into the rest of the formation, scattering it like bowling pins. Cardboard witches floated to the street. The helmet struck the pavement several yards behind Hayden and rolled.

"Strike!" Jack said. He pulled a glove off his hand with his teeth and marked down his score in the air. The scorecard, full of perfect frames, shimmered in the air for a second as Jack admired his score. "Damn, I'm good," he said. He tugged at the corner of the card, and it vanished.

Hayden got to his feet. "Are you responsible for this?" he asked.

Jack shook his head. "I'm trying to stop it," he said. "I've been trying to stop it for a hundred years. Carlin's doing it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. She ran away. She didn't say goodbye. She didn't tell me why. And the crones told me I had to find her or ... or they'd make me flesh and blood so I have to get old and die, and then the same thing that happened to my dad will happen to me."

"Okay. So what happened to your dad?"

"He tricked the devil so when he died, he couldn't go to hell or heaven. I tricked my dad, so there's no way I can get out of having to wander around with my soul in a turnip. Or a cucumber."

"But you're a spirit. Aren't you outside that loop?"

"You'd think. But they bound me to it. And they keep tabs on me with this." He pulled off his other glove and shot Hayden the bird.

Hayden just stared at Jack.

"This!" Jack pointed at the shimmering ring around his middle finger. As Hayden watched, a face formed in the ring.

"Find her!" the face said.

"Fuck you," Jack said, shoving the glove back on his hand. "I hate that little bastard."

"I guess you can't take it off," Hayden said.

"No."

"Okay. All right." Hayden ran his hand over his face. "Now what am I supposed to do?"

Jack shrugged. "I got 'til midnight."

"What about the graveyard?"

"Wouldn't go there if I was you. But I'm not."

"What's going on there?"

"Well, the dead ... the dead can walk tonight. And you got ... just don't go there, Mr. Detective."

"Are the decorations going anywhere in particular?"

"Yeah, after me."

Hayden heard dogs barking behind him and the click of their claws on the asphalt. "Incoming!" Conrad shouted as he chased after Crash and Hurricane who were bounding after a black cat.

The cat dart past Hayden and ran up the sleeve of Jack's jacket, squirming up his arm and down into the body of the jacket. It struggled for a while, and then Jack pulled the zipper down. The cat popped its head out and blinked at the dogs with eyes like candlelight behind a glass of red wine.

"Look out for the - " Hayden started to say, and Conrad tripped over Jack's helmet. "Helmet."

Conrad picked himself up and rubbed fresh blood from a scrape on his cheek. There was gauze taped around both his wrists and across his chin. "This is not a good night," he said.

"You all right?" Hayden asked.

"Yeah, fine."

Crash and Hurricane stood in front of Jack, growling at him and the cat. Jack hugged himself and the cat and backed away in slow, uncertain steps. The cat hissed. "Shut up, Bacchus," Jack said. "They're not normal dogs. They might hurt us."

"Get over here, you assholes," Conrad said.

Crash and Hurricane stopped growling and padded over to Conrad.

"They won't hurt you unless I tell them to," Conrad said. "And I'm really thinking I wanna tell them to."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Journalist. I'm trying to stop this. I really am. I gotta find Carlin before midnight or the crones'll turn me into a real boy."

Conrad looked at Hayden. "What is this, Pinocchio?" he asked.

"It sounds a little more like a punishment than a reward," Hayden said. "If he doesn't find Carlin by midnight, these crones will turn him into a human so he has to get old and die and then become a wandering spirit."

"Isn't he already a wandering spirit?"

Hayden shrugged.

"Whatever."

"Have you noticed the decorations heading in any particular direction?"

"Yeah. They all seem to be headed to the ... oh fuck."

"Graveyard?"

Conrad nodded.

Crash and Hurricane took off running towards the graveyard with Conrad and Hayden close behind. Jack walked down the street and picked up his helmet. He got on the bike. "Come on, Bacchus. We gotta help 'em," he said. He put the noisemaker in his mouth then put the helmet on. Bacchus nodded and put his own helmet on.

Indian Summer Halloween
1. Trick

?Trick or treat!? a little girl?s voice said.

In his dream, Hayden Knight turned around and looked down at his daughter. Meghann grinned up at him from behind a sparkling rainbow colored mask shaped like a butterfly. She wore a bright blue leotard with matching tights. She held out a pink plastic pumpkin with round black eyes and a dog toothed grin.

?Trick or treat!? she said again.

Hayden put his hands in his pockets. He pulled a handful of bullets from the left and nothing from the right. He dropped the bullets into the pumpkin.

?Thank you!? Meghann said.

She skipped a few steps away and held the pumpkin out to Taren Chase who was dressed as the Punisher. Several bandoliers full of bullets and grenades crisscrossed his chest, obscuring the big skull on his shirt. He had even tried to grow a little stubble on his cheeks to complete the tough, ragged look, but it wasn?t quite right. He had a Dixie cup in one hand, and he dumped its contents into the pink pumpkin. It was blood with fragments of bone in it.

?Thank you!? Meghann said.

?You?re welcome, butterfly,? Taren said.

Meghann skipped a few more steps and stopped in front of Skylar Dvorak. She thrust the pink pumpkin towards him. The bullets rolled around, making a sticky clunking sound. ?Trick or treat!? she said.

Sky was in his usual loose white pants and tunic, but he was wearing Meghann?s little silver wings and her flimsy rhinestone tiara. ?Trick!? he said. He snatched the pumpkin from her hands, and she chased him around in circles, giggling.

Hayden felt something brush by on his left side. He sighed. ?Why does he do this to me?? he asked.

Taren laughed.

?Give it back, you meanie!? Meghann said, jumping up at the pumpkin that Sky was holding up out of her reach.

?Okay, here. Treat,? Sky said. He dropped Hayden?s watch into the pumpkin and handed it to her.

?Thank you!? she said when the pumpkin was back in her hands. She skipped over to the sand box and sat down to admire her treats.

?I just gave my daughter bullets for Halloween,? Hayden said.

?You?re dreaming,? Taren said. ?Don?t worry about it.?

?I know I?m dreaming, but I still gave her bullets.?

?I think it?s appropriate,? Sky said. ?You know she?d be just like you if she?d grown up.?

?If I let her.?

?She?d be just like you. You couldn?t stop her.?

?That doesn?t mean I?d like it. Ever. She?s my little girl. I never got to take her trick or treating.?

?Hayden, we?re all dead. Why are you here?? Taren asked.

Hayden didn?t answer. Meghann plucked a bullet from the pink pumpkin and tried to unwrap it like a piece of candy.

?You keep coming back to this place. It?s not that you?re not letting us go. This is where we?re supposed to be. That?s not the problem. You?re looking for something from us that isn?t here.?

?The dead are all I have,? Hayden said.

?Bullshit.?

?I can?t have the living ones because they?ll end up here. I can?t love them because their lives are too precious to be wasted that way. As soon as I try, I?ll lose them.?

?It?s too late,? Sky said. ?You love them. They love you. You can?t keep hiding behind that fear thing you do. It?s lame.?

?I?m dead inside. I?m dead inside, and I gave my daughter bullets for Halloween.?

2. A Little Off

Hayden felt off kilter all morning, and he couldn?t quite figure out what was throwing him off. Maybe it was the dream, but whatever it was, three cups of coffee hadn?t been able to fix it. Nor had taking a good long sniff of the bourbon he still couldn?t make himself get rid of.

Maybe it was the weather. By noon, it was almost eighty degrees. That might not have seemed so unusual except for the fact that it was October 31st. The meteorologists on the television liked to call it an Indian summer, but Hayden had seen plenty of those. This was something else.

Having nothing better to do, Hayden decided to take a walk. Everywhere he looked, he saw signs of Halloween. Black cats with their backs arched impossibly high; witches with warty green noses; pumpkins with all kinds of faces carved into their hollowed out orange heads. Store windows and houses were decorated with skeletons, bats, spiders and ghosts. Bags of candy sold like milk, bread and bottled water during a bad storm. Children and adults raced around in silly and scary costumes, and there were posters everywhere announcing parties of every sort in every imaginable venue. But it all felt wrong.

Hayden stopped by the coffee shop again. The manager was standing outside, desperately trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. She looked far too pale to have just experienced some harmless Halloween trick. Hayden lit the cigarette for her. ?Are you okay, Jennifer?? he asked.

Jennifer somehow managed to get the cigarette to her mouth and take a drag, but she still shook like it was ten degrees below zero. ?Thanks for the light,? she said. ?No, I?m not okay.?

?What happened??

?Spiders.?

?Spiders??

?Yeah, the ? we had ? okay, you?ll think I?m smoking something other than tobacco.?

?Acid isn?t smoked.?

?All right, smart ass.? She grinned, and some of the color came back to her face. She took a deep breath. ?We had spider decorations in the window. The ones you saw this morning??

?Yeah. They were pretty creepy. Did they turn into real spiders or something??

?Yeah.?

?Um ?? But somehow, Hayden wasn?t surprised. His stomach started to twist itself into several hard knots.

?I?m serious! We had to beat them to death with brooms. I already don?t like spiders. Now I fucking hate them. The corpses are still on the floor if you wanna take a look at the murder scene.?

?I think I will.?

?So you believe me??

?I?ve known you for a while now, Jen. You wouldn?t make that kind of shit up. And I?ve lived in this city long enough, too.?

?So, what, you think San Desperado?s a hell mouth or something??

He knew that was supposed to be a reference to something hip, but he didn?t quite get it. ?Or something,? he said. He went inside.

Chad had jumped up on the bar and was clutching the spray nozzle from the sink like a gun. ?Get the fuck away from me, you fucking cat!? he screeched. He squeezed the trigger. A cat yowled then ran for the back door, pausing briefly to look over its shoulder at Hayden. A knot in the pit of Hayden?s stomach wrenched a little tighter. The cat winked at him and was gone.

?You can get down now, Chad,? Hayden said.

Instead, Chad turned around, his reflexes still taut with fear, and he squeezed the trigger of the spray nozzle. Hayden was out of range and only got a light mist from the spray. ?Oh shit,? Chad said. He looked as if he wanted to let go of the nozzle, but he didn?t move.

Hayden stepped around the puddle on the floor and gently pulled the nozzle from Chad?s hands. ?The cat?s gone. You can get down,? he said.

Shaking, Chad accepted Hayden?s help and climbed down off the bar. He sat on a stool, slumped forward like he wanted to cry. He looked up at Hayden. ?What the fuck is going on?? he asked.

?I?m not sure yet,? Hayden said. He was sure that something was going on and that it wasn?t good. He knew that if he took the time to ask the right questions in the right places, there would be more incidents of Halloween decorations coming to life. He worried about what would happen once it got dark.

Jennifer came back inside. Her face had gone pale again. ?Okay, that?s it. I?m closing this place, and I?m going the fuck home. I?m locking all the doors and windows, and I am not coming out until Saturday morning,? she said.

?What happened?? Hayden asked.

?That gadget place across the street ? they put little rubber bats in their window display. The bats just turned real. I swear to God, they did.?

Hayden glanced over her shoulder at the gadget shop. It was quiet, but he saw a black cat scoot out the front door. He couldn?t be sure it was the same cat that had been inside the coffee shop, but the twisting knots in his stomach told him it was.

?Where are the spiders?? he asked.

Jennifer pointed to a corner. She sat down on the stool next to Chad and lit a cigarette.

?Gimme one of those,? Chad said.

?You don?t smoke,? she said.

?I do now.?

Hayden walked over to the corner Jennifer had pointed to. He expected to see greenish yellow spider guts and deflated black bodies. Instead, he saw bits of black plastic, orange and black felt and the wires that had been the legs of the fake spiders. He poked the debris with his toe. It shifted, but there was nothing sticky or visceral about the parts he was looking at. He bent down and picked up a busted torso. Nothing but plastic and cloth. He looked at the broom that had been used to smash the spiders. There were bits and pieces of the plastic and the cloth among the straws of the broom but no evidence that the broom had been used to kill a living thing. He stood up and went back to the bar. Chad and Jennifer both looked at him, pleading with him to tell them something that made sense.

?Go home,? Hayden said. ?Stay inside. If you?ve got any kind of Halloween decorations up, take them down and throw them out.?

?Even my pumpkin?? Chad asked.

?Even that.?

?What the fuck is going on?? Jennifer asked. ?Are people gonna start turning into their costumes??

That was another reference that was too hip for Hayden to get, but it didn?t seem like too far-fetched an idea. God, I hope not, he thought. ?I don?t know,? he said. ?But this is gonna get worse before it gets better. It?s not even dark yet.?

?I don?t think I wanna be in my apartment alone,? Chad said.

Hayden wandered around the city after that, looking for more incidents of decorations coming alive. At the library, a cardboard witch taped to a window had peeled herself down and zoomed though the library on her broom, cackling and turning books into frogs. Pumpkins had spontaneously exploded or laughed and floated away. But it wasn?t everywhere. It seemed to be spreading out slowly from the center of town, but Hayden found nothing there.

His cell phone rang as he was heading back to his office. He only stared at it for a second, trying to remember how to answer the damn thing. He recognized the number on the caller i.d. display as Conrad Satan?s cell phone. He hit a button that he hoped was the right one. ?Hey,? he said.

?Hey. Are you having as much fun as I am?? Conrad asked.

?That depends on your definition of fun, and I?m not so sure we define fun the same way.?

?It?s the night of the living decorations.?

?Something just isn?t right about this.?

?I?ll say.?

?Any ideas??

?No. It?s just random strangeness right now. Every newspaper and TV reporter in the city is trying to figure this shit out, and there?s just nothing.?

?Is this happening anywhere else??

?Just here. I?ve got some other ? sources I wanna check with.?

?You mean psychics.?

?It?s worth a shot. Nothing else is working.?

?What do we know about Halloween??

?It?s a good old fashioned pagan holiday that the Church couldn?t get rid of.?

?That?s not helpful.?

?Sorry. That?s not my area. But I?ll look into it.?

?Don?t go to the library.?

?Okay.? Conrad paused, and when Hayden didn?t explain, he said, ?Why not??

?All the books were turned into frogs.?

Conrad said nothing.

?Are you at home or at your office?? Hayden asked.

?I?m at my office, amazingly enough. I?m not sure I?ll be able to leave my office.?

?Why??

?There was a skeleton taped to my door.?

?Just be careful. I don?t know if these things are hurting people or not.?

?I don?t think they are, but I sure as hell don?t like the way that thing is staring at me.?

?Call me back when you get something.?

?Right.?

Hayden pressed a button, again hoping it was the right one. He still wasn?t quite used to the phone, despite the hour Julian had spent trying to teach him how to use it. He shoved it into his pocket and walked quickly back to his office.

updates!
just kidding.

"i have a dream ...
... that one day my four small children will be judged not for the color of their skin but by the content of their character." mlk jr.
i had no intentions of posting anything regarding the supposed holiday that today is, but i was hearing snippets of the speech all morning. that line in particular caught my interest. i apologize if i've misquoted. i'm doing this from a memory which is not functioning with the proper caffeine levels.
anyway. what got me about this is how far society has come in terms of this and how far away we are from the heart of those words. we are much slower to judge by skin color these days, although it does still happen and seems to be connected also with attitude and style of dress. it's unreliable. to look at me, you'd think i'm just a regular white girl. well, not really. i'm not all white, thank you, so don't lump me into that group. of course, when i say that i am filipino, that gets me a whole different reaction. none of this causes me much trouble. it's not worth it to me to deal with people who want to judge others in this manner. but the truth is, appearence is all we have to go by. not a soul wears the content of his character on his breast or pinned to the lapel of his suit or hanging like a diamond encrusted dollar sign around his neck. it takes time to learn the content of one's character, thus you can't make the kind of quick judgements we're prone to making. we are a society of "five minutes." we want it all faster and better. we don't have time to get to know people in order to be fair about what kind of person they are. we don't make the time. we don't want to. if it can't be done in a short amount of time, we move on.
i'm going to tattoo the content of my character across my forehead. "poor impulse control."
(some of you get that. if you don't, you need to read neal stephenson's "snow crash." don't argue with me. read it now. or my poor impulse control might do something you'll regret ... )

Cucumber

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who tricked the devil into climbing a tree. When Jack carved a cross into the trunk of the tree, the devil could not get down. So Jack made a deal. He would let the devil down if the devil promised not to let Jack into hell when he died.

So Jack continued to live his life as he always had, and as all things do, Jack died. He had not been a good man, not even remotely, so his soul went straight down to hell. The devil kept his end of the deal and would not let Jack in. The gates of heaven did not open for him either, so Jack was doomed to wander the earth carrying his soul in a hollowed out turnip.

His soul inside the turnip made a nice light by which to travel his dark path, and soon he noticed that many people used turnips as lanterns and that they carved strange and scary faces upon the turnips at a certain time of the year. He learned also that he had been seen wandering in the dark nights and was called Jack O?Lantern. On the night when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest, the people imitated Jack?s turnip lantern, hoping that it would keep other spirits at bay.

On one of those nights, as the people reveled, Jack was confronted by a screaming banshee. She was very upset with him, and she tried to take the turnip from him.

?Pray tell me what the matter is, sweet banshee,? Jack said to her as he looked for some place to hide. ?Do I not deserve to know why you wish to steal my very soul??

The pale banshee considered this a moment. ?Nay, Jack O?Lantern. Ye need know nothing. Ye knew nothing before,? she said.

?I have wandered many years now. Knowing is not something a wandering spirit needs to do.?

The banshee hissed at him and resumed trying to snatch the turnip from his hands.

?Tell me your name at least, or I shall have to call you nothing but screaming bitch.?

?My name is Blinne, and if ye dare to call me anything at all, I?ll suck the eyes right out o? yer head.?

Jack spotted a well up on the crest of a hill and trotted to it with Blinne close at his heels, still snatching at the turnip. He leaped over the well. Blinne stopped and blinked at him. He held the turnip out over the mouth of the well. ?Now Blinne, kindly tell why you want this or I?ll drop it down this well so that neither of us will have it,? he said.

The banshee wailed. Jack couldn?t help but cringe. Over her shoulder, he could see the lights from the windows and the shadowed faces of the wary villagers.

?Come now, sweet banshee Blinne,? Jack said. He tossed the turnip into the air and caught it at the very last moment before it plunged into the unreachable darkness below. ?Whoa, there. That was close.?

?The last of yer descendants has passed, Jack O?Lantern,? Blinne said. Her desperation was clear in her voice as it verged on its warbling death cry. ?I called for her, and when she came to me, she asked me to bring her the soul of the rotten bastard who cursed her family.?

?Curse?? This genuinely perplexed Jack. He had heard of no such curse upon those who bore his name, and yet it seemed just that such a curse should be placed upon them.

?Yes, curse. Each of them has suffered the same fate ye brought upon yerself no matter how good or how bad they may?ve been in life. They wander not so aimlessly but searching for the bringer of the curse so that they might break it and go to whichever of heaven or hell has been set for them.?

Jack contemplated this for a very long time, and after a few seconds, he said, ?If you will do one thing for me, I will give you the turnip,? he said. He had no intention of giving up the turnip, but if he could trick the devil, he could trick a banshee.

Blinne cocked one eyebrow. She didn?t believe that he felt any sympathy at all for his descendants. She would have expected him to mock them for not being clever enough to get out of the curse. ?What is it ye want, Jack O?Lantern?? she asked.

?You must agree first.?

?I?ll agree to nothing until ye tell me what it is.?

?I would hate to tell you and then have you not agree to my terms. It is a simple thing. I promise you it will not hurt a bit. You want the turnip, do you not??

?Aye.?

?Then you must agree.?

?Aye, I must.?

?So you agree??

Blinne sighed. ?Aye.?

Jack smiled. He walked around the side of the well to Blinne and took her pale, slender hand in his. ?It has been a long time since I?ve known a woman,? he said. His voice was as sweet as honey and as soft as rose petals. ?And you are very beautiful. We did not come to meet this way for no reason.?

?Bastard.?

He laughed and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. She opened her mouth to wail, and he kissed her. He took her down to the ground and removed her dress. He kissed her breasts and ran his fingers through the soft curly hairs between her legs. Soon his kisses and caresses had her panting for more, but he stopped. Dawn was drawing near. ?Meet me back here at dark, and I will have you,? he whispered.

Seduced by his charm and his touch, Blinne agreed and spent the daylight hours aching to be with Jack.

The next night, there was more of the same. He kissed her and stroked her until she trembled with pleasure, and as the sky began to grow light, he promised he would have her the next night. For seven nights, he pleasured her, always promising he would have her the next night and always leaving her at sunrise, wanting him so badly that she could only lay in that spot and pleasure herself until he came to her.

On that seventh night, Jack went to the well and found Blinne lying on the ground naked, writhing under her own touch, and he was only too happy to watch for a while. When she saw him watching, she said, ?Now, Jack. Take me now. I?ll not wait another night for it.?

And so Jack lay with the banshee Blinne, knowing that she had completely forgotten his promise to give her the turnip if she slept him with. He left her there by the well and continued his wandering.

~

Summer came in a flash of color and a rush of heat that Jack had not seen in many years, and he spent his evenings lounging in the cool gardens brought to life by the skilled hands of villagers and the kindness of the weather that year. Then one night in the month of July as he was lolling about in a patch of fresh cucumbers that were just ready to be picked, he heard the shrill voice of a banshee calling out his name. He recognized Blinne?s cry right away and looked for a place to hide. None was to be found and he was soon face to face with an oddly distended Blinne. He looked at her swollen belly with wonder. ?Dearest, you?ve ? grown a tad,? he said lightly.

?This foul thing in my belly is yer spawn, worthless trickster, and it?s to be born tonight,? Blinne said. The spite in her tone was unmistakable. ?I shall expel it into yer hands and be done with both ye and it.?

?But I ? I ? ?

Blinne howled in pain as the child within her let it be known that he was ready to come into the world. She clutched Jack?s shirt in her fists. ?I pray it?s a mite smarter than its sire, that I do,? she snarled. ?Else I might slit its throat even on the cord.?

?You?ll do no such thing, you spiteful whore!? Jack cried. He was surprised to hear his own concern. He may not have been a good father to the children his wife bore him in his life, but he had loved them.

?Then take yer bastard from me and never cross my path again!?

Blinne lay down on the ground, lifting her dress up over her stomach. She spread her legs open and began to push. Jack knelt between her legs and took off his shirt so that he might catch his babe with it when Blinne?s pushing and grunting yielded a new life. The hours wore on until the sun was just beginning to touch the horizon, and finally, a tiny being jumped feet first from Blinne?s womb. It landed squarely in Jack?s arms, urinated all over him and began to wail. Blinne pushed herself up on her elbows to look at the child, and for just a moment, she felt a touch of motherly love for the howling thing in Jack?s arms. But then she recalled how Jack had tricked her. She drew a knife, cut the umbilical cord and got to her feet.

?A pox on both ye rotten bastards!? she spat, and then she was gone.

Jack looked down at the child he held. It was a boy, and his skin was a pale pearlescent green. His eyes, when he finally stopped crying and opened them, shifted through colors so quickly that Jack couldn?t tell which they started on and which they stopped on. He had a patch of thick black hair upon his head and was as lovely a newborn as Jack had ever seen. The baby smiled up at his father, reached his arms up and cried, ?Papa!?

Jack laughed, delighted. ?That screaming bitch doesn?t know what she?s missing,? he said to his new son. ?I shall name you after me, then. Jack. Come, little Jack. The sun is almost up.?

Big Jack and little Jack slept away the day hidden in the garden, and when big Jack awoke, he had an idea. Little Jack was already crawling his way around the garden, playing with the bugs and the worms and gnawing on the leaves to see what they were.

?Jack, come to your papa,? big Jack said. ?There?s something I need you to do for me.?

?But Papa, the worms want to play,? little Jack said.

?The worms will wait. Come here, son.?

But little Jack could tell that his father?s intentions were not quite good, and he crawled into the cucumber patch. ?Play hide and seek with me, Papa!? he called out.

?Oh, all right.? Big Jack wandered the garden, searching for his son. He was becoming terribly frustrated at not being able to find the boy when he entered the cucumber patch and saw little Jack sitting in the middle of the path with a cucumber in his left hand and a big grin on his face. ?Jack, you naughty boy. You had me worried there for a second.?

?Trick!? little Jack said, laughing.

?Yes, indeed, a trick. Now, your game is done. Come.?

Little Jack crawled over to his father who bent down beside him and showed him the hollowed out turnip he carried.

?Do you see this, son?? Jack asked.

The boy nodded, his eyes shifting from white to green to blue and back to white. His father?s tone was very serious. The turnip was terribly important, and little Jack listened closely.

?When I was a boy, not as young as you, I tricked the devil and got myself banned from hell and heaven so that when my time had passed, I was doomed to wander this land carrying my soul in this turnip.?

?It?s awfully small for a soul.?

?Yes. It?s cramped and damned uncomfortable. I would love to be able to take my soul out of this turnip and stretch it. If you could take my place in the turnip just for a little while, I could do that. Come on, son, into the turnip with you.?

?No. I don?t think so.?

?What??

?It looks dark and scary inside the turnip.?

?It isn?t, I promise. Do as Papa says.?

?But I?m afraid, Papa.?

?Now, Jack. It?s not so bad. Be a brave little man.?

?I?d feel better if you got into this cucumber and made a light for me to have with me so I could see where I was. Just in case it is dark and scary.? Little Jack held up the cucumber he had in his hand. ?See, I carved it out and made a hole so the light will shine through and show me where I am.?

Touched by his son?s ingenuity and not wanting the boy to be afraid, Jack agreed, but no sooner had he gone inside the cucumber light than he realized he had been tricked by his own child. Holding his hand over the hole in the end of the cucumber, little Jack ran down to the nearest cemetery and buried the cucumber deep in the earth, trapping his father inside the vegetable in the hallowed ground.

Little Jack ran back to the garden and grabbed the turnip, which still held his father?s soul. He cut open the turnip and watched the soul dash to the cemetery where it tried to dig up the cucumber. To this day, a small light can be seen on some nights in that graveyard, hovering above a certain spot on the ground. Later that evening, little Jack had a turnip stew for supper.

let me get back to you on that ....
i am tired.
my back is spasming.
i have a gazillion loads of laundry to do.
it's fucking cold.
i just downloaded yahoo IM, but i have no friends. so i will probably go uninstall it soon. i do strange things when i am bored.
i was going to post some fiction i've been working on. something new i started today that has nothing to do with any of the things i said i was going to work on. but it's kinda creepy and i think i wanna finish it before i go sharing it. but finishing it requires getting off the damn internet.
overloaded, creatively.
desperately in need of a change in pace.
three day weekend!!!!
mood: psychotic knife weilding homicidal maniac. ^_^

um, oops....
okay, so more oops than i thought. i hit enter instead of tab and so posted only the title. OOPS.
the green bay philly game started at 4:30 or something like that so i missed all but the fourth quarter before i realized my error. OOPS.
as for the game itself, favre and sherman are going OOPS. lot of stupid calls in that one. how the fuck do you let a team covert 4TH AND 26!!!!!????????!!!!!! i mean come on, boys, play some damn defense. 4th AND 26! that means they've got 26 yards to go and if they don't get it, you get the ball! you see that little orange plastic thing over there? DON'T LET HIM GET TO IT!!!! i don't think i've ever seen that long of a fourth down converted. and that pass ... brett, what were you thinking? were you thinking? i really wanted to see favre win a superbowl this year. i've always thought he was a bit of a jerk, but i love to watch him play. guess that wasn't meant to be. but now he can grieve for the loss of his dad and start over next year with that behind him. it would have been harder the longer he put off dealing with it anyway.
and the evil empire has fallen! the st. louis rams lost to the carolina panthers in a game i thought was gonna suck. i couldn't stop watching it once i sat down and got into it. it was nice to see jason seahorn miss that tackle that allowed the game winning touchdown in double overtime. seahorn = OVERRATED! he might be cute and all that ... well, not really. cut, but not cute. sorry, angie. (cute football players are hard to find. {donald driver} that's why i like hockey better! okay, no, i just like the high speed hits and the fights. cute players are a bonus. who am i? what am i doing?)
superbowl match up = philly and new england. winner, new england. they got it together. consistant on both sides of the ball. not spectacular, but hard working, mindful and they are a TEAM.
hockey news! brian boucher, goaltender for the phoenix coyotes hold the record for consecutive shut out minutes -- 332 and one second. that's five games and six minutes or so. wow. and he's the backup!
oh, and did i do any writing yesterday when i sat down to do it? no. i made a map of texas. hey, it was important to know where they would be doing and all that stuff! it's because my muse hates me, i swear. i've been listening to johnny cash's last cd, "american iv: when the man comes around." great cd all the way through. "when the man comes around" was the song that kicked started the idea for the raven and the apocolypse story. but there's another song on there, "give my love to rose," that's begging for a story. basically, the singer comes across a man who just got out of prison and is now trying to get home to see his wife, rose, and their son. the dying man tells the singer, "give my love to rose, please won't you mister, take her all my money, tell her buy some pretty clothes" and so on. don't know how much money, don't know what the singer does after the man dies. could be he's telling this to rose already, but even so, there's a bunch of things that could happen. and of course, my mind goes for the more twisted story line.
if you want to know what my muse looks like, go to the mega toyko website. there's a cool pic of the two main characters above the artist's rant today, apparently a new tshirt design. my muse is the one on the right with the spikey red hair. he would be a redhead, wouldn't he? although my muse is not named largo. my muse insists he doesn't have a name, which is fine, because i tend to call him all sorts of deraggatory terms when i'm mad at him, which is pretty much always.

amuse the muse
well, i've successfully avoid my muse up until today. i spent friday night with a bottle of wine and the last four episodes of the second season of 24, which isn't nearly as good as the first season but still has its moments. it doesn't matter really. it's all about keifer sutherland. i don't usually go for blondes, but he's just too cool. i'm curious to see what they've done this season, which i've heard mostly sucks, but the guy that played the pretty principal on buffy the vampire slayer is in it as the president's brother. *wipes drool away* sorry about that. anyway, one glass of wine for each hour, fours hours, and then i was asleep. muse, i mock you! ha ha! yesterday, we spent money on things to try to get our apartment organized and cleaned up to make it easier to move into a real house. and then i spent most of the day roaming the internet and writing scenes in my head. but not on paper, damn it! no, i refused to give in! then we installed the CD burner i bought and watched hockey and football all night. muse is mocked again, mwaha!
today, i cleaned out the office closet. that was scary. i'd forgotten about some of the notebooks i'd kept. the very first journal i ever kept, circa fall of 1988! i was too frightened to read them. trust me, it would be terrifying. these are not typical teenage girl journals, no "i love so and so" or "so and so has a crush on me! he's so cute!" oh no, none of that. this is scary girl in the corner wearing black with a razor blade a match book and scribbling in a notebook ... in blood. this is "heathers" worthy shit. really, really scary. and one day when i'm dead and gone, someone will find these and read them and wonder why i was never locked up in the state mental prison.
anyway. muse has calmed down and agreed to stop pestering me. so i've been able to narrow my work load to three. "the church," "texas," and the raven thing that doesn't have a title yet.
after researching hypnosis and posting a question on the nanowrimo forums, i've decided that i need to redo that whole scene so that either hayden realizes while it's going on that the priest is trying to hypnotize him but isn't successful OR hayden realizes this but is for some reason convinced there's a hypnotic suggestion planted deep in his head, which leads to him hesitating, conrad doing stupid stuff and the conversation that hayden has with taren about getting rid on the suggestion, except that taren is talking about the bottle of bourbon in hayden's desk drawer while hayden is talking about the hypnotic suggestion. it's an amusing scene and i hate to cut it or change it, but we'll have to see what happens after the rewrite of the hypnotizing scene.
duncan and jake just refuse to stop, so "texas" gets to stay on. of course, it needs a better title than that i think. or not. i kinda like that. it works for them. until i come up with something better.
the last needs a title as well. i was thinking for some reason "raven and the red dawn," but that sounds like ... i don't know. something it isn't. "raven's dream" is probably what i'll end up using, since i've decided that's the basic premise. raven has a dream of the apocalypse, tells everyone about it because he believes it's an important dream, but no one believes the dream has any merit; they all think it's some kind of elaborate trick. but it's not, and so raven sets out to prove to them that he's not trying to trick them and maybe find a way to stop the world from dying. i still need to reread the book of revelations and skim through some more of my research stuff, so this one will stay on simmer rather than full boil.
hopefully this will get me through march or so without any hitches. and then i can worry about the rest of the detective stories and all the other bits and pieces of things i've got floating around. but i'm still left with a problem. where do i start? better think of something because the football game starts at eight or something like that. and this is a game i don't wanna miss!

snow sucks
and that's all i have to say about that!
in other news, if it were any other day but friday, i'd be whackin' people right about now. the moron contingent has been strong, and though i've fought gallantly and held them at bay all week, i'm losing strength and am badly wounded by their sheer moron-ness. please send reinforcements. or several bottles of wine.

a ha! i did it!
they said i couldn't change the color of the links. bullshit! all i had to do was scroll through the code in the style, figure out which line it was and what color i wanted it to be, and tada! black instead of that eye aching red. if i really wanted to, i could probably make more changes in the code to suit me rather than dealing with their stupid templates. bastards.
anyway, work sucks. it's supposed to snow. and i'm making something interesting. no writing, oddly enough. or not. this seems to be the way my brain has been going. i spent last night gathering more raven information. i specified a little more what i was looking for and still got over 12,000 hits, several of which were useful, but still a majority were crap. i figured i'd be reading through that stuff and maybe starting to write. but no. i got to thinking about the icky things in mike's fridge and the comment i made about cthulu like things oozing out of tuperware. so i'm making CTHULUWARE!!! there will be pictures when my creature is complete.
and the hurricanes just scored a beautiful goal to tie up the rangers. thanks to jessie boulerice and chris simon trying to beat the shit out of each other. i think jessie won. i love hockey.