In 98 Words
Current mood: happy
Category: Writing and Poetry

Several months ago, I entered a 98-word short story contest sponsored by the Fine Arts Center in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The rules were simple. The story must be 98 words long, contain a character who has a conflict and overcomes the conflict.  Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Well it wasn’t.  98 words! That wasn’t a lot of canvas to paint my words upon.  Most of my first drafts were close to two-hundred words and felt incomplete. 

I won a 60 word contest several months ago, so I muddled on, determined to capture my stories in less words than I usually use to greet someone (I’m considered somewhat of a talker).

After some experimentation, I decided to test myself a little and entered three stories: one dark, one humorous and one serious.

Although I primarily write dark fiction, humor sneaks into my writings all too often.

Okay, so what’s the point of this dribble?

I was just informed that two of my three entries have been chosen to be in a souvenir booklet entitled The Short List that will be released in June of this year.

The dark story didn’t make it. Perhaps I’ll post it here in a few days.

Thanks for reading!

Damien

11:12 AM - 5 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

One Foggy Christmas Eve
Category: Writing and Poetry

One Foggy Christmas Eve

By Damien Navillus

"Are we gonna get to Grandma's soon?" Jimmy asked from the backseat.

"Please sit back and be quiet honey," Helen Brody told him. "It's really foggy and your Daddy has to concentrate on the road."

"I just don't want Santa to get there and not see me. He might take my presents to our house and then I won't get them until we get home next week."

"We wrote Santa that letter last month. Remember? He'll leave your presents at Grandma's house, even if you're not there when he comes. You know you're probably at the top of his 'Nice' list. I'll bet you're one of the top ten six-year-olds on the list this year," Helen told her young son.

"I hope Grandma leaves the cookies he likes."

"Don't worry, Jimmy. Your grandmother's been leaving cookies for Santa since I was a little boy," Dan reassured him.

"Oh, yea," Jimmy said as he started to squirm around in the backseat.

"Jimmy, please stop kicking the back of my seat," Helen said.

"Sorry, Mommy, but I gotta pee."

"We'll be there soon, honey. Can you hold it for a while longer?"

"Yea, I just –"

Jimmy stopped talking in mid sentence as he was thrown forward when Dan Brody hit the brakes a little too hard.

"Hold on everybody. Traffic is stopping," Dan told his wife and son as he eased on the brakes a little gentler this time.

"Is it the fog?" Helen asked him.

"I don't think so. It's actually starting to dissipate a little. I can see about ten car lengths ahead now. There's probably an accident up ahead."

Dan reached under the center of the dashboard and switched on the CB radio. Helen smiled to herself. Ten years of driving a big rig dictated that Dan have a CB radio in every vehicle even though he rarely used one of them outside of his truck. The radio came alive with a jumble of voices.

"- hit the top of a rig hauling furniture from Raleigh. It was moving so fast it almost went clean through. There's blood everywhere," a man's voice broke the silence.

"- called animal control. The fog's slowing 'em down. I guess. If -," another voice interrupted.

"- worst thing I've ever seen," a third voice cut in.

Dan knew he wouldn't get any intelligible information, because there were too many people talking at once so he tuned it to the emergency channel.

"He doesn't appear hurt, but the deer is dead," a male voice came through the radio.

"Animal control is on the way. Traffic's at a stand still for almost twelve miles in both directions," another voice answered. "There's no place to detour on this part of the highway. We've got to start letting them through."

"Sounds like someone hit a deer," Dan said to no one in particular as he turned down the volume of the CB. "They should have traffic moving pretty quickly."

Within ten minutes, the cars ahead of them started to slowly move forward. They played stop-and-go for the next thirty minutes before the blue lights of the emergency vehicles became visible as they rounded a curb. It took another thirty minutes before their car was almost in line with the accident. Emergency vehicles were on both sides of the road.

"Looks like a lot of commotion for one deer," Helen said.

A uniformed police officer was directing traffic through the accident scene. Everyone looked at the accident as they slowly drove through.

The top of the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler was smashed in. The dented area was covered in blood. Blood ran down the side and dripped across the mural of the white sofa and armchair painted on the side of the truck. Next to the truck, a green plastic tarp covered the body of what appeared to be a very large animal.

"How did that deer dent that trailer way up there?" Helen asked. "Can they jump that high?"

"No. They can jump pretty high, but that's just not possible," Dan answered as he stared at the wrecked trailer.

A gust of wind blew the edge of the tarp away from the dead deer.

"It's Rudolph. He's dead. Oh God, Rudolph!" Jimmy was crying and gasping for breath. He turned his head away from the dead reindeer with the red nose and looked out of the window on the other side of the car. From there, he saw Santa Claus, fully dressed in his traditional red and white outfit, sitting in the back of an ambulance holding an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Much of the white fur that adorned the sleeves of his jacket was covered in dried blood. A mangled sleigh lay on its side behind the ambulance. Several large bags of presents wrapped in brightly colored paper were pinned under the sleigh. There were a few of the gift wrapped boxes scattered on the ground. Jimmy could see several large reindeer walking around in the empty field in the background.

Santa Claus looked up and saw Jimmy crying. Lowering the oxygen mask, he raised his hand and waved slowly. His once white gloves were covered in blood and dirt. Jimmy raised his hand to wave back when one of the other reindeer darted in front of a car that had sped up as they exited the accident scene.

Jimmy screamed and pissed his pants at the same instance that Prancer flew over the hood of the car.

THE END

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7:43 PM - 20 Comments - 33 Kudos - Add Comment

Scare Me Contest
Category: Writing and Poetry

Last month, James Goodman, the author of The Dance - (Respendence Publishing) and Writing on the Wall - (Wild Child Publishing),  had a "Scare Me" contest on MYSPACE. The rules were simple - or so it seemed.  Write something bone chilling enough to scare the judge (Mr. Goodman, himself) but there was a twist.  You had to do it in sixty words or less.  Sounds easy? Try it, It's not!

After whittling away at my adverbs and adjectives for a hour or so, I was finally able to get my thoughts into a paragraph containing sixty words.

So what's the point of this story?

I won! Me! I did it!

You can see my winning entry on Mr. Goodman's MYSPACE blog or on his webpage at http://goodysworld.blogspot.com/

As always, thanks for reading my thoughts.

Damien Navillus

Dark Fiction Writer

1:25 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

New Short Story
Category: Writing and Poetry

STORY REMOVED

6:05 PM - 8 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

The Grass Isn’t Always Greener
Category: Writing and Poetry

I was going through some folders of my writings and stumbled on a poem I wrote in March of 1978. I was thirteen at the time, so please don't laugh at this too hard. This was written before most of my writings took on a slightly darker tone.

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

When I was a lad of three of four

I crossed the street alone.

I walked around the block in awe

Then made my way back home.

What mother had said the day before

Now truly made no sense.

The grass wasn't always greener

On the other side of the fence.

It came in different shades of green

And several different tones.

But our lush lawn was certainly

In par with Mr. Jones.

But now that I am older

I know what mother meant.

So I replaced my once lush lawn

With slabs of green cement.

THE END

I guess even at thirteen I was somewhat of a cynic.

As always, I welcome your comments and critisisms.

4:19 PM - 11 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

Damn, I Hate Stephen King (Based on a True Story)
Category: Writing and Poetry

Damn, I Hate Stephen King

By

Damien Navillus

My wife Sarah was channel surfing the other night while I was draped over my laptop working on another yet short story about something scary … or hairy … or both. She stopped when she came to The Shining on AMC – the original one with crazy looking Jack Nicholson in dire need of a haircut. I looked up at the exact instant that the little kid starting chanting "REDRUM, REDRUM" through his nose. A series of loud thumps directly above us made us both jump at the same time. It sounded like something was walking around on the second or third floor.

     "Go up there and see what it is," my wife whispered.

     "Yea, right. I'll get right on that," I answered, as I started typing again.

     "Chicken."

    "Bawk, Bawk," I answered, trying hard not to let a comment like that get to me enough to make me go upstairs after dark. Our house is spooky enough in the daytime. It even looks ominous from the road as it has a very strange layout. The East Wing has three floors, the main part is a single story and the West Wing has two floors. There are twenty-three rooms in it and it is haunted. I know I kind of blurted that out matter-of-factly, but it's true. My wife and I are both big horror fanatics so we jumped at the chance to buy a house with a history of being haunted, but after living in it for the past four years, all of the novelty has worn off.

     "We can go together," she said. "Unless you're too scared, then I'll just go myself."

     Two shots to the male ego was obviously my limit that night. I may have been low on self-esteem or high on testosterone, I don't know, but we ended up going up to the second floor together; if you can call her almost climbing onto my back and pushing me along, together.

     The music that was coming from the TV was pretty creepy, but I tried to ignore it as we ascended the stairs. There was a loud bang or thump or scream or something in the movie at the exact instant that I grabbed the door handle. I screamed – a manly scream if I'm remembering it correctly – and jumped backwards almost knocking her down the steps.

     "Damn, I hate Stephen King!" I said.

     "Yea, right. Does that mean we can throw out the fifty-some-odd books of his you have in the library?"

     "No, I need those for research." I opened the door, switched on the light and slowly – ever so slowly – entered the large room that made up most of the second floor.

     "I thought you just said that you hated him."

     "Maybe hate is too strong of a word," I offered.

     "Aww. Are you scared because of the Shining?" she teased.

     "No. I'm not scared of anything."

     "Ok, big guy. I hear what you're saying, but it's kinda hard to swallow."

     "Name one thing that I'm scared of."

     "Well, after you read The Stand, you were scared to death of germs, and Lord help us if anyone sneezed around you. You were scared of the super flu. That went on for a couple of months."

     "That's not being scared, just cautious. I didn't want to get sick," I offered in my defense.

     "What about St. Bernards? When we went puppy shopping, you vetoed the St. Bernards, and we ended up with a Chihuahua instead."

     "Well yea. Look at what happened with Cujo."

     "Gotcha!" she cried.

     "Ok. One point for you, but dogs that big can really get mean and then where would we be?"

     "Watch out," she shouted. "A spider."

     "Where?" I screeched as I danced backwards toward the door.

     "My bad. It was just a dust bunny. Don't worry, I don't think spiders really turn into clowns with fangs."

     "Very funny. You're just full of yourself tonight. I'm not afraid of spiders because of that book. They're just really creepy and they bite. I'm not going to count that as a point for you. Lots of people are scared of spiders."

     "Well what about the time you read Pet Semetary and then wouldn't bury the cat in the back field when it got ran over by that truck? You just kept saying that there might be an ancient Indian burial ground back there or something."

     "I'm just trying to respect the burial rights of all Native Americans. It had nothing to do with being afraid because of a book."

     "Ok. Sorry," she said sarcastically, as we looked around for whatever had made the thumping noises. "How about going to the beach this weekend?"

     "Like I'm ever going swimming in the ocean again. Sharks! Duh!! And that's not because of anything Stephen King wrote, either."

     "Well, you never said you were too fond of Peter Benchley, either."

     "Ha, ha, ha."

     "I got one. You almost stopped talking on your cell phone completely last year after reading the Cell."

     "No. That was because I was trying to keep our minutes down to a minimum. You're trying to make something out of nothing. Stephen King's books do not frighten me. I just love to read them."

     "You told me that you had nightmares about the vampires kid floating outside of your window after you read Salem's Lot."

     "Oh come on. I was thirteen or fourteen when I read that, and it was the movie I dreamed about. I was fine when I read the book," I said as I turned to face her. "Kids that age-"

     Her open mouth was full of long white fangs, and it looked like blood was dripping off from them. I screamed – a manly scream if I'm remembering it correctly – and ran all the way down the stairs without looking back. The sounds of her laughter made me realize she was wearing that pair of vampire fangs she bought from the Halloween costume section of Wal-Mart a few days ago.

     "Damn, I hate Stephen King", I yelled up to her.

     "You know you love him," she yelled back between fits of hysterical laughter.

     "Yes. Yes I do. Maybe his next book will be about where to bury wives that give their husbands nervous breakdowns."

     I could still hear her laughing up there for several more minutes. I eventually turned up the volume on the TV to drown her out.

     We never did find out what made the thumping sound that night.

THE END (OR IS IT?)

Please leave me a comment.

Good or bad,

I really want to hear from you!

2:25 PM - 28 Comments - 52 Kudos - Add Comment

Short Story - The Cleansing
Category: Writing and Poetry

The Cleansing

by

Damien Navillus

Last week, I was only half watching the eleven o'clock news on channel seven when a story came on that demanded one hundred percent of my attention. Everything else that I was half thinking or quarter thinking about was temporarily put on hold. I even got up and walked across the room to turn the volume up, a task that I had rarely performed in the six months or so since the remote control went missing. The news story was about a ten-old boy named Daniel Hutton. He had been murdered in the alleyway between Murray's Drugstore and the Like New Again Auto Parts Store on the south end of Main Street. He had been strangled on his way to school. The Trinity Police Department was asking for anyone with any information, any information at all, to contact them. A $10,000 reward was being offered to anyone with information that would lead to an arrest and conviction of the guilty party or parties. The case was being labeled as one of the Branding Murders because the boy, like the seventy-four other unsolved murders with similar MO's spanning nearly thirty years, had been branded on his chest, just over his heart. The news did not say what the brand was, but I knew. It was a cross - a very old, ornate cross. This news story disturbed me greatly. Not because of the ghastly circumstance behind the murder, or the pain the child must have endured, but simply because I had not done it.

It made me wonder if any of the others were back in town. We are supposed to stick to our assigned territories, but sometimes I would hear of someone who had strayed away from the teachings and started Cleansing a place that was already spoken for. This was against the rules and someone would have to be punished.

I read a newspaper article a few years back that said a team of over a hundred FBI agents were investigating these killings that were occurring all over the country. The article called them "Branding Murders" and the name just seemed to stick. At the time the article was written there had been over three thousand of these murders committed in thirty-six states. They were thought to be occult sacrifices of sorts, but none of the murderers had even been caught to verify this theory. The cops in New York City thought they hit pay dirt in the late seventies when they stumbled on a serial killer who said he took his orders from a neighborhood dog named Sam. He didn't know anything about the crosses though and was quickly ruled out as a suspect in the forty-one open "Branding Murders" in that city.

I quickly put these thoughts out of my head when she came out of her apartment building. I had been sitting in my car for the past two hours waiting for her to leave. She was on foot again, so I got out, fed the parking meter with enough change to be safe for about three hours or so, and then started to follow her. She walked slowly, taking in the cool, crisp air, and basking in the moonlight. She walked as if she didn't have a care in the world. She walked like I wasn't just thirty yards behind her.

I followed her at that distance until she hit Second Avenue. The lights were bright enough that I could fall back a little more so that I didn't raise any suspicions, but still keep an eye on her. She stopped several times to look into the windows of several of the shops along the street. We were in the antique district and the items from the past seemed to fascinate her. She spent several minutes looking at an old statue of a gargoyle in one of the windows. Its red glowing eyes caught my attention for a few seconds, too.

She quickened her pace a little when she turned onto Riverside Street. There were less streetlights and the whole area seemed a little spooky, even though the light of the full moon kept it from being very dark. A casual observer would have mistaken her quickened stride as that of a woman who was afraid of being mugged or worse.

She was good. Oh, she was damned good.

She walked for just less than a block before turning into the restaurant. I walked in about five minutes later. The Fisherman's Net was her regular Thursday night eating establishment. I had been following her for just over six weeks and she hadn't missed a Thursday night yet. At least I was able to get a decent bite to eat. If this was Saturday, I would be eating stale popcorn and drinking watered down Coke in the back row of some awful chick flick while she and her friends sat in the third row and cried while eating nine-dollar boxes of JuJu Beans and Good-N-Plenties. Following the directions of the PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign, I found a small table on the opposite side of the room from where she was seated. It was important that no one would be able to tie us together.

As usual, she was sitting with three other women. They all looked to be about the same age, late sixties to early seventies. None of them were wearing wedding rings and I'm fairly certain the stocky woman with the oversized pearl necklace and the slender woman in the too tight black dress hadn't looked at a man in twenty years or so. They weren't obvious about it, but I have been taught to be observant.  

They would spend the next hour and a half or so eating crab leg, drinking cheap wine, and gossiping about whoever and whatever. I had to sit at the table right next to them four weeks ago when the restaurant was nearly full and I got more than enough gossip to last me a month of Sundays. I don't think it's appropriate for me to know that Sally Jennings is cheating on her husband with the seventeen year old kid who works at the car wash, or that Diane Kerrington had another black eye from walking into a door that looked remarkably like her drunk husband, or any of the dozen or so other things I learned about the dozen or so other women who were unfortunate enough to know these four busybodies. 

 Living alone for as long as I have, I've learned to eat pretty quickly, sometimes right out of the can hunched over the sink. Pathetic, I know, but I live a pretty busy life and not everyone can afford to eat out every night. Tonight, I had to pace myself, because my own meal of salad, steamed vegetables and ice water would last for less than twenty minutes if I wasn't careful. People remembered someone who just sat at a table in a crowded restaurant for an hour after all of the dirty dishes had been cleared away. 

I was able to make my meal last close to an hour without looking suspicious. The piece of apple pie for dessert helped a little. I left the young waitress a twenty percent tip before leaving. Too big of a tip was as easily remembered as too little. At least tonight I was walking so I could skip the treadmill without feeling too guilty. I made a quick trip to the restroom and just sat on the toilet for about ten minutes without even pulling my pants down. I would have stayed a little longer, but the guy in the stall next to me must have been allergic to seafood or something. I got out of there pretty quickly. I hated the possible exposure that waiting outside could bring, so I usually wasted as much time inside as I could.

I only had to wait outside for about ten minutes this time. They came out the front door and said their cordial 'till next week's' and 'call me's' before they parted. I hid in the shadows of the butcher shop across the street. I never butchered any of the ones that I Cleansed, but I didn't miss the irony in it.

I waited impatiently for a couple of minutes before I dared follow her again. I had a feeling that tonight I was going to get the information I had been looking for, so I was anxious to get moving.

She made it almost home when the light from the full moon gave her away. She turned just slightly and I saw it in her face. The voice was right. She wasn't human.

I took her just before she got to her stoop. I grabbed her around the neck and dragged her to the side of the concrete stairway. She tried to fight me, but she had lived as an old woman for too long. In this body, she was weak and frail. Experience had taught me that as long as I kept them out of the light of the full moon, they wouldn't be able to fully change.

I kept squeezing, as she turned blue and her eyes started to bulge. Suddenly, her eyes focused on me and they turned dark red. She opened her mouth wider than her human mouth should have allowed and exposed a mass of yellowish fangs. Her neck began to swell and pulsate under my hands. I was so scared that I almost lost my grip for a second, but I managed to keep to the script. It didn't seem to matter how many of them I Cleansed, they still scared the hell out of me when they tried to change.

She died without making a sound. I am thankful for that because their screams sometimes haunt me for weeks afterwards.

I pulled the cross out of my pocket and touched it to her left breast. It sizzled for a second and I had to turn my head to avoid vomiting. I hated the smell of their burning flesh, couldn't eat meat for the past thirty years because of that smell.

I left her right where she died, hidden from the powerful light of the full moon. I went back to my car feeling confident that I had done what needed doing. I had Cleansed her. Her eyes and fangs had proven that the voice in my head hadn't been wrong. I hated it when the voice was wrong, like it had been when it told me to Cleanse my own daughter almost thirty years ago. She had only been two years old when the voice started whispering to me late at night. It kept telling me that she was one of the shape shifters. I fought it at first, but it was persistent and it was a voice I had grown up trusting. It was the voice of Father Murphy. The voice reminded me that her mother, my late wife, had been a shape shifter and now my daughter was one too. I still had the three long scars across my ribcage that my wife had given me the first time I saw her change. I would certainly have been killed if she hadn't tripped over one of the lamps she knocked off the dresser. Once she was down, I jumped on her back and strangled her to death with the lamp's power cord. I stumbled to the dresser to get the cross, but I passed out from all of the blood that I lost. When I woke up in the hospital the police were calling it a 'home invasion' with one fatality. I didn't have the chance to touch her with the cross, so her death was never classified as one of the 'Branding Murders'. They never arrested anyone and as far as I know my wife's murder is still an open case file. My daughter had half of my genes and blood in her so I thought she would be safe, but the half-breed part didn't matter to the voice. Half of a shape shifter was just as evil and just as dangerous, I was told.

I killed her without looking for any of the signs. She was my fifth Cleansing and the voice had been right about the first four. She never turned and the cross didn't burn her skin. She is buried along the wood line in the back of my house. I used to plant flowers back there, but that is when I wasn't so busy with the Cleansings. Now the ground is covered in weeds and thorn bushes. I'll make it a point to clear it out this fall. Maybe I'll plant tulips this time. Tulips had been her mother's favorite flower.

Father Murphy died almost thirty-five years ago, but his voice is still as loud and clear in my head as it was when he was teaching us about the devil's shape shifters and the things that must be done. I trust Father Murphy, or the voice of Father Murphy, more than anyone I have ever met, but now I am a little more careful. I look for the signs myself. Even the voice of Father Murphy can be wrong from time to time.

I need to get home and get some sleep before the voice starts speaking to me about the next Cleansing. It hasn't given me more than two or three days peace in over thirty years. Tomorrow is Saturday and I haven't even started my sermon for my Sunday Service. I will have to pay special attention to the congregation on Sunday. Whoever Cleansed that boy last week will come looking for me soon. After all, it's just bad manners not to visit your kin when you're in town. I hope I will recognize him. I haven't seen many of them since we were kids in Father Murphy's Home For Wayward Boys.

THE END (OR IS IT?)

Please leave me a comment.

Good or bad,

I really want to hear from you.

2:22 AM - 32 Comments - 54 Kudos - Add Comment

2:27 a.m. - a Novel
Category: Writing and Poetry

2:27 a.m.

Michael Saunders haunting started almost three years ago. It didn't take the form of a ghost or a demon - but of time. Not of all time, but of one very scary moment in time – 2:27 a.m. It had been quiet – in an uneasy sleep, for the last eight months, but now it is back.

2:27 a.m. is the exact time of his gut-fires – stomach aches so intense he feels like he is dying. It is also the exact "time of death" of his beloved wife Maggie, a natural born witch with a penchant for the dark side.

During their vacation to the Crescent Hotel, the most haunted hotel in North America, Michael and Maggie stumbled upon a curse. The curse was from the time of Dr. Norman Baker, the evil Doctor who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people while he ran the hotel as a cancer hospital in the 1930's. The curse would eventually kill Maggie, like it had killed hundreds of others.

Now, three years later, Michael discovers that Maggie's soul is in jeopardy and it was up to him to save it.

Currently reading : Last Seen Leaving By Kelly Braffet Release date: 02 November, 2006

3:08 PM - 6 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment