On the eve of a chilly May, Adam and Mary were to have an intimate garden wedding at Savannah Park where they first met. Only family and dear friends were invited, it was a small, private affair. Marry was clad in a simple, white, lace dress. Like any girl, Mary was eager to marry the love of her life, Andrew. Meanwhile, the clock went past six, an hour late into the event, and Andrew failed to show up. No on at the wedding had any idea where Andrew was. Mary wept in shame and swore to never see Andrew again.

For some time, she never saw or heard from Andrew since that fateful day. Neither has she heard any news from Andrew’s relatives or family.

One Sunday afternoon, Mary’s phone rang she, got an unexpected call from her ex-fiancé, Adam asking her to meet him at the park where they first met. He told her that there was something he wanted to tell her and that he was deeply sorry for hurting her. He briefly explained that he just wanted a chance to be forgiven and that she was the first love of his life and that he never meant to leave her standing at the altar. After a month of not speaking to him, Mary wondered of Adam’s sudden urge to meet her. She was speechless at first but there was a mystery-like feeling that she wanted to see him again, so Mary agreed to meet him at Savannah Park.

Andrew was there. His face showed sadness as he was dressed in a white button down shirt and white slacks. Mary felt a certain kind of emptiness as they met. They sat in a bench across the fountain, the street lights were dim and it was a bit dark. The park was now empty. 

Andrew held Mary’s hand, he was cold and shaky. Mary wept silently. There were no words but only a feeling of sadness and an unexplainable feeling of doubt and concern. Andrew had nothing to say to her except be with her as she let out all the hurt in tears of shame, sadness and sorrow.

Mary finally asked, “Why didn’t you show up? Do you know how that felt leaving me alone at our wedding and never again showing up? I thought you loved me? How could you embarrass me like that?” and she felt anger and resentment again, she felt her cheeks red and Andrew just looked with eyes that were cold and empty. “Well, I don’t think you can explain. I hope you’re happy and I have made a decision to move on with my life. Good bye, Andrew. “ Mary stood up, bid her last words and walked rapidly away from Andrew and went home.

After several days, she got another phone call… This time it wasn’t Andrew, it was Andrew’s Mom, Mrs. Dowell. “Mrs. Dowell but what’s wrong?,” Mary asked.  Mrs. Dowell’s voice was hoarse and brittle, like she had cried for hours and finally she said, “Mary, I have some terrible news for you. Andrew… He… He never meant to hurt you, dear… He… He passed away… He was murdered the night before you were to marry.”

Mary was stunned, could not believe what Mrs. Dowell had just told her. Mary, shaking with tears streaming down her face, told Mrs. Dowell that a few days ago, Andrew and she just met in the park and that he asked for a chance to be forgiven…  “How could he have called to meet me if he passed away the night before our wedding?”…Then, Mary felt a sudden, tingly, chilly feeling ripple through her body as she recalled Andrew’s odd behaviour that night at the park. “He was definitely there but he was cold and empty”, she explained.

Knowing what had happened and why Andrew came to see Mary, Mary lit candles and prayed for Andrew’s soul. She had forgiven him in her heart and also prayed for Andrew’s forgiveness in return as she had not understood what had happened when she met Andrew at the park that night.

Mary now knew that Andrew was stuck between the world of the living and the dead, and that her forgiveness would lead him to the light that he was so desperate to see and transition to the peaceful world where he now belonged.

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I knew a man, a dead man who was nameless, and a spectre that every sane man forgot. He told me his story in my nightmares and my dreams and he’ll repeat it to me every goddamn day.

The days long ago were harsh and black; every man’s life was more a dead living then living until death. In this time, there was a young man, a defiant man with eyes of the bluest, deadest ice.

No one knew his name, no one could care, and life was too much of a struggle to be involved. This young man was taken away as prisoner for a crime to his dying day would say he did not commit. He was a lonely man by any means, a quieter man you’ve never met yet a friendlier one you’ve never seen, but there was a scent of madness on this man. It was in his skin, his breath, his essence, it was the scent of a dead man walking and he knew it but he’d fight it to the end.

They took him in cuffs to his court room drama, and he fought it all the way. The guards, they tore at him and ripped his clothing to shreds. With both hands tied, he broke their skulls with his head alone but for every man he broke in survival, he lost every chance, every possibility of walking free.

Fate pulls at the heartstrings in all of us, but it seems only the worst of luck would place a laughing judge behind the desk in front. A Judge, a Jury and a Warden, and whose corruption was at peace with the time of the world, when money and numbers meant everything and names and lives meant nothing. The prisoner fought telling the court he was innocent, innocent.
“I’m Innocent!” He cried.

It was all in vain. The jury just laughed with jeering cries, calling for a harsher punishment, calling for death and execution. All the while the judge just sat behind a quiet smirk, for of course he knew he was getting his money and his time was not wasted.

The guards eventually subdued the young mad man, and when they had him on all fours, they didn’t waste a second on him, for he was scum in their eyes. They beat him to an inch of his life, let the blood pool in his kidneys and his lungs, pummelling against flesh and bone, for they enjoyed it all. They enjoyed beating the animal senseless.

To them, he was filth, just another criminal, another piece of trash on the street, garbage as if the world wasn’t full of it and each and every one piece protesting their innocence. They cried and sobbed, still yelling their innocence until their throats was raw. He was no different.

Blindfolded, his pride destroyed; they stripped him down and dragged him to his cell. The guards opened the door, threw him in wrapped only in a small loincloth made of rags. The cell was cold and damp, a reminder this wasn’t just a prison but a camp.

Slowly the man was broken down. For that first day his screaming would not stop, instead it would turn to sobbing or hysteria and who could blame the prisoner? Stripped of everything and left in the cold to die like an animal, would you not cry your sanity away as well?

Two years passed and the prisoner had lost his words. He could think, he could hear, see and smell. He could touch and feel and he knew where he was, but he would not talk. After that first day in his cell, no man ever heard him utter another word. Instead he remained in a near catatonic state, always on the very edge of sanity. Until one day in his second year of imprisonment his world changed.

The guards were always cruel and for their own messed up reasons, he was their special prey. They always made sure to include him in their sadistic games. One special occasion, a guard had a twisted game for his meat. Armoured and tall the guard strode in; rifle under one arm and a red fountain pen in the other. The pen was small, thin and sharp but solid and strong.

The guard told the prisoner to make it easier on himself, that he would exit the cell and give the prisoner enough privacy to kill himself quietly, provided he wouldn’t make too much of a mess and for  the first time in his life, the prisoner had an option could think about even if it was only briefly.

Slowly the prisoner nodded his head to the guard, indicating he wanted to go through with it. Laughing savagely the guard wandered off, leaving the man with a choice.

The prisoner sat quietly on the cell floor, both hands wrapped around this pen full of bloody ink. He thought about everything his life had once been, about everything that had been taken away from him.

Half an hour later the guard came back and found the prisoner asleep. He looked through the bars in the door at the prone figure, swore quietly to himself about people being weak and stalked off.

The prisoner lay sleeping and for the first time in a long time he found himself dreaming, not just sleeping but actually dreaming pictures and words. He found himself dreaming for one thing: freedom.

The next morning the prisoner awoke his new weapon in hand. From morning to night, night to morning he tapped the butt of that god forsaken pen against every inch of wall in his cell, always listening closely for any hollow noises, anything to indicate a weakness in the walls. The endless TAP, TAP… every few seconds was enough to drive those still sane mad.

For ten years the prisoner tapped every morning and every night. For those ten years his other prison-mates complained. One night in his tenth year, the prisoner heard a hollow noise from his tapping; weakness in the wall just above his bed frame, maybe from water damage or heating. He tapped as a mad man, the echoing thuds loud enough for everyone to hear. This prisoner had the scent of hope, and hope is something no prisoner should hold, at least not in the eyes of their keepers.

His keepers, his guards dragged him from his cell in the eye of the morning to a room in the back, a place away from passing patrols and surveillance cameras. They beat him, they beat him so hard. They pummelled him with batons and broke his ribs with their fists and boots. The morning air was filled with the sound of bruised flesh and breaking bones. He had been close to death many times before but not as close as this. They flayed his flesh with whips and stabbed him in every area not vital with glass and nails, anything they could use to take away his hope.

Torn asunder in mind and body, they left him there to die, and die he did until a petite figured nurse with blonde and black hair found him. She was beautiful and rare, something the prisoner could barely see through eyes so swollen. She spoke about everything and anything while she worked and he loved every moment of her company, but the hours passed too quickly and his keepers came to claim him to his cell.

Days went by and she was all the prisoner could think about. He wanted to escape, to take her away from this devils paradise. The more he thought about her, the quieter he became, a fact his guards hated. He would give them no response; no gasp of pain even a goddamn glance. They laughed at him, jeered at him because they knew he could never speak a word.

Night by night they beat him and they laughed and every night he woke to the voice of the petite blond and black haired nurse. She spoke words he could not comprehend, but only hear in blurs and muffles in his broken head and deafened ears. Through blood-cracked lips… he smiled.

The guards were ruthless in their taunting, in their effort to break him. They would point and laugh at him, knowing he had no words to come back with; until one day... he snapped. A man already broken can snap, and when he does death is always waiting close by for him and those around him. He walks beside them all but when a broken man cracks, death breaks into a run and the scent of agony fills his senses with ecstasy.

The prisoner pointed at all of them with fingers snapped in all directions and he laughed. He laughed beyond everything and all he was for a moment was hysterical, hurting laughter. It was as if every beating, every hurt his heart had felt was coming back up in his bray, like he was telling the world and the guards to get lost, to go screw themselves and lose themselves in their pathetic lives.
He could not talk, but he could think and this laughter was the closest thing to true defiance he had ever had before.

This scared the guardsmen, it scared them in a way they had never known. The beatings came faster and harder every hour and every day, and every day he’d wake and laugh. He’d laugh so hard and so hysterically through bloodied lips and cracked ribs. Blood would pool on the ground from teeth that had been knocked out, from cuts and scrapes and skin in strips, but still he would laugh. He knew what he was doing in his own mind. Because every time he’d laugh, they would beat him and he would wake up in the arms of his lovely nurse. The pain was worth it, the beatings were worth it just to wake up in the arms of company.

Her small expressions of kindness were enough to get him through his days, to help him weather the pain of his own life. He thought that if he could do this long enough, maybe he could grow stronger and accept that he was a prisoner, he would never truly leave his cell behind.

But the keepers were not stupid. They caught on to his fondness for the nurse, the game he played. For a time they stopped their beatings. They never came to take him away to the back room, away from the world. Even when he laughed and pointed at them, they walked away.

He never could understand why until it was far too late and this time, they would not hold back. There was no back room this time; there was no hiding from other patrols or the surveillance.

This time it was pure, raw hatred for a man who they saw had wronged them, had used them. In front of the crowd of in-mates they beat him worse than they had ever. They broke both his legs and shattered his kneecaps to being useless. They broke every bone in his body and saved the spine to last, just to watch him squeal and scream and he held on. He held on with every part of his soul, all because of his nurse.

Little did he know of the news they held back. They waited for the right time to tell him. They waited three weeks til he woke from his battle coma. They smiled at him and waited eagerly for his reaction as one of the smaller ones piped up.

His nurse was gone, they sacked her for stealing. She lost her job, her references and any hope of survival. They made sure she’d never work again. They’d beaten her and raped her, scarred her face with their sharpened knives meant for unruly prisoners. They’d made sure she would never earn a dollar on the streets even, for no man would take a night out with a hooker with a carved mask for a face.

To their delight, their hard work paid off, for at the start of their shift that day, they found her body in the street; malnourished and frozen, she lay on the staircase to their entrance her fist frozen to the door, her pleading to be let in still caught on her still-beautiful face.

The looks on their faces that day when they shared their news with the prisoner, they giggled and laughed and made every crass joke under the sun. They watched him cry and plead, something he had not done for a long time.

With broken legs they dragged him one last time to his cell. With broken legs he dragged himself through the cell door, his legs like splintered ivy, bones shooting off in all directions.

For three days he lay there on the floor, on his stomach. For three days he cried.

On the third night, a small fountain pen with red ink rolled out from under his bed towards him. He wondered how, for there was no one in his cell. Without light he could tell there was no one beside him.

The guards that morning heard his tapping, the endless procession of eerie, tiny taps and then the loud thudding began. Hope in his heart, he had found the weakened wall again, but he wanted them to know. He wanted to see their eyes when they knew he had discovered his hope again. He wanted them to be scared, to be terrified of a man who had lost all and only recovered the maddening of a slim hope and so he pounded that pen against the wall, against the weakened mortar.

They rushed to him and he waited. He waited for their yells, their curses. He waited until they had just pried his cell door open. He waited until they bent close to him, and tried to grab his arms.

To this day, be it my dreams or my nightmares, the strength behind a desperate act still scares me, as did the look in this man’s eyes. He has left his soul behind and now only clings to his flesh.

As the guards bent down, his will returned. With broken arms and fingers splayed in all directions, he fought them off. The sheer power in those broken hands was enough to snap his captor’s wrists as he pried them off. Slowly he stood on broken legs with agony passing through every vein. The guards… they cried out for help, any one to stop this mad man, but on that day time came to a slow. The first step he took, he nearly fell, but he regained his balance quickly as the second step came down faster, and in a heartbeat later he was close to running.

His keepers stood in silent fear, in a world of awe as he charged full speed at that weakened wall. A man’s cell is his prison, as is his heart; but that day the prisoner was free from his jail. Six inches of mortar and brick become dust as the prisoner hit. A demolition crew couldn’t break that wall like the prisoner did that day.

He was free...

But freedom comes with a price, and this is something we all know. For some of us the price is too high and we choose keep being prisoners from our own fear. For others, the price is just right and they pay it willingly.

For ten years the prisoner had never known the layout of his jail, for ten years he had never known how high or low he was off the ground, and that there was his mistake. A mistake he would pay for with his life and this he knew at the very end.

As he fell through the wall, his momentum carried him on and before he fell, he turned himself over to look at his captors once more. He looked into their eyes one last time and kept their glance, laughing all the way down. With tears in his eyes, his thoughts were chaos, all but two.

His last thoughts were two things a second before he hit –
His blonde and black haired nurse, whose beauty he would never forget, but name he had never known.
His very last was – “I’m finally free...”

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Suicide is not the way folks, it's never the way to go. Please think of those who you would leave behind and instead talk. Talk to someone.

No Suicide is Selfish

Maybe now I’m so close to that endless madness I’m starting to realise something - something damn important. After losing my wife Emily, I realise now that no suicide is truly selfish. I get it now. I see her, I see her in my dreams every goddamn fucking night.

Cause she’s not dead, at least not completely. Every night I feel her hands caressing my face, slowly walking them down my naked chest and down my body. I feel the sensual feel of her touch, those fingers so warm and alive, yet I know she is both so dead and gone. It doesn’t matter, because I know she’s here, she’s not gone yet. I realise she was simply looking for something that wasn’t in this world. I get it, truly I do.  She will always appear but I know she’s still with me regardless.

I think about it now, I think about those eyes of my wife, my beautiful wife Emily. Looking at those beautiful eyes, all the while I trace her naked body with eyes and hands, cupping everything from her breasts to her thighs. If this is death, then it is no different from life. How can she be gone? How can she be if I can feel her warmth, if I can feel the firmness of that skin, that scent of both life and death?

Suicide is not an easy thing, it must be so goddamn hard to make that decision.

No suicide is easy,

I tell myself that every day, even in the agony of the morning when I wake up to find it was a dream but then again was it? I wake to find myself holding nothing but sand in my hands, having realised I watched her become dust and dirt before I wake. Is this madness? Is this real? Am I alive or dead or even goddamn awake? Is it suicide or is it murder? Tying her up, letting her bleed. Did I want that or did she?

Christ I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I Don’t KNOW.

I tell myself her suicide wasn’t selfish, I drum it into my brain and skull, drill with anything sharp nearby because I need to, I need to believe what the hell happened and it happened for a fucking good reason because I’m going crazy thinking, I’m’ going crazy letting all these thoughts just multiply in my mind over and over and over again.

I love her, I loved her, and I love her. I hold her, I kiss her and watch as her face becomes no more than sand, dirt and dust and blows away in the morning breeze. The agony of the loneliness cripples me, brings me to my knees and I realise I’m still here, I’m still fucking here. I miss her so much.

But I can’t stop myself from feeling those hands, those arms around me, every fucking night. Those fingers dancing downstairs, playing and teasing me like a passion play. That ecstasy, that rapture of that body dancing and grind in front of me, begging me to take her again and again and again. But she’s dead I cry to myself, she’s dead and she ain’t coming back. I remember blood, I remember nothing but blood. I remember maybe a body, a shape, a shine or a silhouette maybe even a goddamn shadow. I don’t know, I just don’t fucking know.

Suicide, death, the taking of your own life, even the wanting of death to come; is it not the same? Is it truly not the same?

Emily was my all. Emily was my life and she made her wrists weep. She let them cry all away, all her life in the tub; those stupid bath (as if that’s the cause of my entire problem).  As if I can blame a bath tub for my pain. As if I can blame my own wife for her pain, and I guess it was pain I created.

I won’t lie to myself, I won’t lie to you, whoever the hell you are and however the hell you’re reading these thoughts, (be it paper or digital). My marriage was a mess, a complete and utter fucking mess. That’s the truth.

I cheated on Emily, I did, I did. I remember it; I remember it so goddamn well. I hate myself for it, I hated her for it. I hated her for not understanding why WHY I did it, WHY I Did what I did. Emily didn’t get it, didn’t get my loneliness. No one fucking understood my pain.

I don’t remember her name, or her looks. Just that she killed the pain, if just for the while. Maybe that’s one more reason Emily hated me, one more reason Emily loved me.

Emily’s a ghost now, don’t you get that? Yet he’s still here. Breasts and legs and body and figure, she’s still here. She taunts me every night, teases me every night and kills my heart with dust and sand every damn morning. My guilt spreads and blooms like a flower in my fragmented mind.

Her suicide, her death; I get it, I GET IT. I understand she did it not for her own self but there was nothing left in this world for her, except one thing.

Revenge; that’s all it is. How cold, how sweet, how addictive knowing she’ll take my soul in the heat of the sex and the love. If I hold her she’ll disappear yet if I love her she’ll take me away, she’ll kill me there and then.

Ha-ha, I’m screwing a ghost. I’m making love to a dead woman; a woman that’s nothing but ashes in an urn on my fireplace. Yet she’s real, oh Christ she’s so real. Her suicide wasn’t selfish, at least not purely. She died for me, so she could take me away from a life and a marriage I hated.

That’s what love really is. I’ll sit here writing my thoughts and let my mind wander. I’ll drink myself to stupor and play roulette on every round. I can’t remember if I loaded the gun, but I’ll know in six rounds or less. That’s the beauty of it all, that glorious feeling of saying goodbye.

I realise now, no suicide is selfish.

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Digga was a lonely man needs love and sometimes one to pity

Digga was crazy as a fool. I was just a kid when I first met him. Just a scrawny kid back home in my hometown of Gulthinwin, WA, and no you won't find that town on the map. A lot of reasons why, Digga's just one of em.

Tall and lanky, but strong as a willow tree, that old boy was a rarity. Those blue eyes that saw straight through you.

You see folks, Digga was an war vet but what war no one ever knew. His face scarred and torn, a body full of bullets.

We called him Digga for a number of reasons, but there's one reason that I'll leave you to learn in a moment. You see this old fool was always with a shovel in his hand and some folks used to say he slept with it. No one ever figured why.

He'd dig like crazy, dig a hundred holes in a single day like he was always looking for something. You'd be in the street walking past, holding momma's hand like a good little kid and there he'd be, scarred face looking at you like "hey little man, how you doing?"

Oh by all means Digga wasn't no pedophile, I won't even insult the guy by suggesting such a thing. Nope, but the folks didn't like him all the same. There was something not right with him, be it the blank stare or the blank smile without warmth behind the face.

He was always digging, and for a while there in his old age he'd be running a small, treasure hunting kinda business. You'd ask him to find it and hey presto, he'd dig a whole and there it was. It was almost like a person buried it 6ft under the ground on purpose, just to see him dig and just to laugh at him while continued to look like a fool while he waved his shovel about. Poor guy had no co-ordination.  He'd get back at them though, those people would wake in the morning and a shallow grave dug in their garden beds. He'd laugh and holla while they yelled and screamed. It was just a game for the old boy.

But thing started getting serious in the local graveyard, because the locals kept finding holes and graves dug up. Who else to blame but the local nutter?

Was they right to blame old Digga? Maybe in a way.

I was six years old walking and playing in that cemetery with a kid friend of mine. I still remember seeing old Digga, face all sweaty and that damn shovel in his hand like it god damn glued to it.

He looked at me, those blue eyes in every direction, one up towards the sky looking for god's answer and one looking down, just waiting to see if the devil saw him.

He said to me "Don't look at me like Joey. You just a kid, you don't get it. The ladies alive, they aint want me, ain't like me. I all torn up, scarred and worn. Who in they right might would? You don't get the lonely like me. Can't blame a man for wanting to end that lonely can ye?"

Being just a kid, I didn't know what he meant. Didn't care, I just knew that I was scared. Maybe that showed because his eyes looked sad too.

"Just go home Joey. Won't tell your parents you was playing here. Know that they ain't like it when you do." He was right too, my parents would have killed me should they have known. Cemetery is no place for a kid to play.

As I grew up, a lot of rumors started about the old fools. A lot of people saying he was a necrophiliac. A man who's loneliness causes him to love the dead. Maybe he was, some part of me knew and just didn't care. I felt sorry for the old fool.

Somehow the grapevine swallowed some news that it had to share, and it had to share it with every other person in the town. I guess it explained in a way why Digga was who he was. A  farmer who knew the fellow from his earlier life told us the news.

You see, Digga was born John Hollands II. He served in a foreign war as a trench digger, before coming home to have a family and work a farm. Far away from the bloodshed and the dead, to live in the peace around him. His world fell apart on Oct 23rd, 1972.

His youngest born son was three years old when he fell into a hole dug for irrigation. He was missing for two days before his father found him. The young boy had been covered by the rain and the mud. Digga spent three days digging the child out while it kept on raining, kept on pouring. The child did not survive.

John Hollands II never recovered and his mind snapped.  A widow with no living children, he lost his way. From that day on he never stopped digging, as if he trying to find his boy. Some days he was fine, a normal person in a normal world, some days he was barely lucid.

Digga never stopped being his name sake. He dug trenches in the war, dug for his livelihood and his farm. He dug a grave that ended his child's life, and he dug a grave for his child in death. He never stopped having a shovel in his hand.

Its been twenty two years since I went back home, and just recently I took the plunge and traveled. The people haven't changed, they're all just small minded an without pity. Old Digga passed away about two year ago. In the end he lost his sight, lost his speech and after two strokes finally let go of the world. They buried him with a shovel in his hand and not out of respect either, purely because they couldn't get it out of his dead hands.

Thing is, the cemetery is still full of graves dug up. There is still holes in the lawns of those he played pranks on. The bully who picked on the old boy the best, well he got his own. He fell into a shallow grave someone had dug and broke his neck. Exact same spot and exact same style that Digga always dug.

Strange he's not here no more to blame?

The people get on with their lives, blaming the children for playing pranks, for digging holes in the neighbors yard.  They keep yelling at them even when they shake their heads and they cry.

"It wasn't us mom. Wasn't us. Digga did it."

See?

Digga did it.

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Just one of the many sites for a crossroads demon

There be a crossroads demon here in our town; a lonely one, a saddened one but all the same a demon. Demons don’t like normal folk, they be jealous. They be jealous of what we are, and something they will never be. I’ve seen enough folk come and go throughout this town to know the difference between a hoax and a real life experience. The crossroads demon, well he looks pretty normal. He looks just like you or me, heck he could even pass as human right? Oh but kiddo, that’s where you’re wrong.

Normal humans like you or me kiddo, we got shadows. This fella don’t.

A crossroads demon doesn't care who you are.

You drive down to the roads, just where the train track and the actual road meets and boy oh boy, you’ll see him, plain as day. He’ll be standing there, a smile on his face but his eyes aren’t blue or brown or green, they have the colour of scarlet. That bloody damn colour. He’ll smile at you and wave you closer and you’d think he’d be like any other teenage kid.

You see, if you got no shadow then you can’t pass anywhere in the world. A shadow is what ties you to this earth, it’s what ties you to the lie and the dark and every other section of the natural way of the planet. It’s also your life. You think for a moment, if your shadow is a life signature what happens when its gone? Well that’s Easy. You be dead but you just don’t know it. You’ll watch the world fade away and wonder why everyone’s forgotten you and why everyone seems to grow old and die so goddamn fast.

They can’t see you no more. Only a demon got that power to stay in the world of the living and actually be seen by the living.  There ain’t no hell and there certainly ain’t no heaven if you got no shadow boy. That crossroads demon, he’ll walk right up to you, talk to you and stare. He’ll bend down like he’s dropped a quarter and pick up your shadow. Then he’ll run to the other side of the tracks and that’ll be the end of it. You’ve just lost your life, just as easy and as quick as that and even with a smile served.

The crossroads demon ain’t got a name, but every person that crosses those tracks just disappears. Again purely cause we can’t see the dead. The shadow ain’t just your soul, it’s a combination of your soul and your flesh, hence why we never see no bodies.

Ain’t no blood or gore, just poof you’re gone.

A crossroads demon cant be reasoned with.

One thing I am noticing though, a lot of people are disappearing lately; every one of em at crossroads, regardless of trains. Even just you’re normal intersections and crossroads.

I drove into town the other day, drove right past a woman and a little girl walking to the other side; A guy without a shadow walking right up to em. He smiled and waved and did this thing, bending down to pick up a quarter. He snatched those shadows right up and ran, and I mean ran. Faster than a human can.

That’s what they are kiddo. They be a crossroads demon. So quick, painless and so final. Ain’t no one ever wanna end their life so quick like that.
These days I don’t walk across those pedestrian crossings because you can’t see a crossroads demon until it’s too goddamn late. I’ll drive across but I’m always quick about it. I see too many people just die and disappear like they were never there.

A crossroads demon don’t care about your family, or your working life. They ain’t care you got a mortgage to pay or a thousand goddamn bills. They see right into your soul and they know exactly what burdens you got hanging right over your head but again they don’t care.
I keep thinking if I find the crossroads demon that took away my wife maybe I’ll have some closure but every time I get close enough to the bastard its that smile. It just paralyses you. How many time now have I come so close to that death?

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ve shot him. I’ve pumped shotgun shells into him; I’ve nailed him with .45 Handgun rounds. I’ve done everything I can to him, but nothing ever works. He simply heals up quick as a flash and stands there smiling like the world’s on fire but he’s too happy to care.
Your only option is to high tail it outta there and past those crossroads because a crossroads demon can’t pass the barrier that makes the road a crossroad. They can’t pass those barriers because that’s where the living is the strongest.

Let me ask you this, what’s stronger? A circle or a cross? If you said a circle, you’d be damn right. The world of the living might as well be exactly that, a circle. Inside that circle at different points there are these crosses. Ideally that’s where our roads are, and it’s here with the constant coming and going that our barriers are weakest. That’s exactly where these bastards wait and they can wait an eternity.

A crossroads demon doesn't care how long it has to wait.

Their world is boring to em, too much power, too much corruption not enough humor or the beauty of the random event. Every time now that I drive by an intersection, even out here in the country, I see em. I see those people just standing at the lights and the crossing and sometimes, just sometimes I see someone without a shadow. Right there, that’s enough for me and most of the time I feel like high tailing it home, but there’s no point in doing that right there because a crossroads demon can smell the fear and if you ain’t careful, he’ll take your shadow alongside the cars shadow. The bigger something is, the bigger the shadow it casts in the light. You see my point?

A crossroads demon ain’t one to be messed around with because if you do, there won’t be a body to bury. It’ll be like you never even existed at all. Maybe pay attention the next time you cross a pedestrian crossing. Look around for the person without a shadow and if you see em, step off the crossing onto the road. If a car hits you, at least you know you’re hurting enough to know you’re alive.

You see anyone picking up a coin you’ve dropped, get the hell outta there!

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Don't turn on the lights

Scream for me; scream for me all night and day lover,  that girl screaming the world away. You always do. Every night that’s the message in the back of my head and it’s there every goddamn night. That piecing scream like a human’s being murdered, that echoing in your eardrums that seems to block out all thought. Every night that sounds starts and its killing me all the more. It’s a girl screaming, I know it is.

That girl screaming!

Maybe it’s from my heart, maybe it’s just from my head but that girl screaming always seems to play on my mind. It’s so hard to describe just how terrible it is.

I just keep telling myself scream for me baby, scream.  Like that’s gonna fix the problem.

The old folks always say this place is haunted, like that actually means a thing in this old place. St Markous Hospital, Connecticut.

You see a long time ago I was a med student here, and as a med student you see enough death to last you a life time. You get used to hearing that last rattling breath as the remaining air in patient’s lungs finally escapes, seeming to vibrate every rib and bone in their body. It’s a process; it’s nothing to be afraid of.

But that’s where you’re wrong, because it’s not the death that scares you. It’s what’s after the death. I remember turning on the light in the office and hearing the girl screaming, every day, every time from then on I heard her, that endless screaming, just blood curdling, so high your brain felt like it’s on fire.

Every time it was dark she was there, every light switch I hit she was there, and every time her screaming started.  She was unfailing, it happened every time.  Every light switch, every room is haunted here in this hotspot by her, because she is where I am, she is my past and she will in inevitably be my future as well. The girl screaming follows me endlessly where ever I go.

Maybe it’s just the one patient who’s still lingering here, maybe not. If so, I know who the girl screaming is. I know exactly who the girl screaming is. My final test as a med student was so close to failing that it really wasn’t even worth passing me. You see as the last thing to prove my skill as a surgeon; I had to diagnose, operate and save a young girl. Biggest problem was this child had a massive problem with any sort of anesthetic at all. Her body would reject it and her nerve endings would feel again, as if the drug was never there. Oh this child was a rarity and what a challenge for someone trying to prove their worth for the very last time. But every doctor and surgeon on earth knows what a human scream truly sounds like, and this was indeed my chance to listen to this girl screaming, for her to be human too.

I’ll never forget the look of anger on her face, that girl screaming so intensely as the scalpel cuts into her body. It’s the most detesting thing on earth knowing you’re cutting into someone to save their life, yet they can feel every par t of it from beginning to end. The kid’s left kidney had to be removed and transplanted with a new one.  Just what the hell do you do? What do you to end that girl screaming, screaming for so long?

I realize that now she’s started to follow me home now, it’s not just every light switch at the hospital. Now every room, every light switch has a ghost just waiting to scream for me behind that electrical node.  Hiding, counting every second until I hit that plastic lamp and bang, there a she is. That yelling, so loud that it paralyses you and it just doesn’t stop, oh Crist it just doesn’t stop. So inhuman, yet so human all the same, exactly the same as it was on the operating table.

Always that girl screaming, always in my head.

The operation didn’t succeed at all, and I know it was due to my human error. To be completely honest, there were no other factors involved except for immunity to anesthetic. It was just a routine kidney transplant, something I completely botched.

Why? Well how can any man concentrate when there’s a girl screaming continuously, that same high pitched noise and it won’t stop and you can’t cut right. You can’t block a damn thing and the blood is running endlessly, it’s everywhere and she just won’t stop screaming, over and over again that one frigging note. You try so gosh darn hard but she won’t stop screaming and there’s another couple hours on the clock yet for this operation to go smoothly but you’re learning and you know you’re killing her, you just know it but what do you do and everyone’s watching but not one will help and you try and stop the blood but it won’t stop, what do you do, WHAT DO YOU DO?

Even when she was in the last stage of death, just as her world went black and her eyes couldn’t see anymore from the blood loss, she was still screaming. The child was endless, that girl screaming even until the last point. There was no rattling breath in her chest, no, it was the anger and the rage and the pain and the wail of a person done wrong on every level of trust.

I quit medicine soon after that. That was enough to shake my foundations. For a while there maybe she thought that was punishment enough but I guess that’s not the case anymore. She blames me; she’ll always blame me because I should have saved her. I should of I know, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t… doesn’t she understand that?

But now none of it matters because I know she’ll stalk me, and when I’m dead and gone she’ll go back to the hospital, maybe contend with every person who ever reads this last memory. She blames me and everything and everyone I’m connected to in any shape or form. She’s dead and she knows but she won’t forget. That girl screaming won’t forget and she won’t forgive, she’ll continue to get back at me and everything tied to me.

I’ve tried so hard to sleep but I can’t. I know in the darkness and the absence of the light she’ll be there in a hospital gown, soaked to a tee with blood and dead eyes just waiting for me. When I turn on the light to chase her away she’ll leave but she’ll scream until I turn it off again. She’ll be there again in that dirty frigging gown, black blood all down her back.

she doesn’t care who she kills, who she torments. She’s in pain, the agony of blade through flesh and broken trust of those who promised to take care of you, of those who promised to take all this pain away.

That girl screaming will not leave me, she won’t leave you either once you’ve read this. I’m writing this because I need people to understand that I’m sorry for what I did to that child. I will always be sorry and I will always pay that price. As a surgeon, your goal is always the safety and life of your patient, your goal is to always strive to make sure that trust is never broken.

Regardless I’ll leave this note here so the world can read it long after I’ve gone away. Maybe then everyone else she torments can understand just how terrifying it is to turn on the light to chase away the darkness, only to realize the light can’t chase away the pain. That girl screaming will be behind every lamp and light.

Don’t ever turn on that lights, please… please don’t ever turn it on again.

Don’t be scared of the dark, don't let her start.

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Pearl Diving Suit O-85

He’s Alive – Pearl Diving Suit O-85

I’ve been diving, along long time. These days it’s the only place I get away from it all, the world, the pain, all of it. I need that freedom, that freaky, eerie feeling like I don’t know If I’m gonna surface. That’s what keeps me under all the more.

You see, what makes my spot so damn fine, it’s the spooks, the apparitions. They’re everywhere underneath that surface, all of em. They do the same thing over and over, like memories. I personally believe that them there, they’re residual hauntings. I see so many of them underneath that water, and they all play like a recording, all silver and transparent.

The underwater cave is a place I named myself – Blackened Water 205; named after a world war two submarine that was sunk right near the cave entrance.

In this hell hole, there is so many beautiful entities and I watch em for what seems like forever. Down there, time slows, it barely moves and inch. I’ve been down there for a full hour and only had my oxygen tank decrease by less than a minute of oxygen left.

It’s so goddamn beautiful...

Blackened Water 205 was a world war two submarine, she run across an underwater mine and that was the end of her. All sixty people aboard drowned a slow, horrible death. Some days I go down there and I can see her, in all her beautiful steel hulled glory. The sailors man the port holes and look out at the world around them like they’re not dead at all. The best part isn’t the submarine, no way.

Down here there’s an antique diving suit, must be from the early part of the war. It’s rusted and scratched and torn. He’s alive down here, pearl diving suit O-85. Some days he gets up and walks around, no misty transparent form in this one, oh no. This suit, this here suit doesn’t hold the spirit of a dead sailor, or the spirit of a diver.

Pearl Diving Suit O-85 is the spirit of excessive use, the constant numb process of a repeated action. He’s alive diving suit O-85. You can see he has memories, constant memories, the constant memory of the method of pearl diving, of falling to this deep height with nothing but a tiny tin oyster hammer. This here tin hammer wacks away at oyster rocks so far down, of collecting those gently falling open oysters with a rubber soled, gloved hand, examining the open object with a curious interest, waving the creature around in the water and trying to pan away any dirt and grime, seeing inside for the treasure or a white oyster or even if he’s lucky and unlucky a black pearl.

No man inside that, no man inside any of the antique diving suits anymore. I love seeing the beautiful bronze bubble helmet, with small port holes on both sides of the head, the air hose that still seems in mint condition that trails up to about ten feet above the suits head. The air hose still jumps and pulls like someone up above is sending the diver messages. Don’t forget the deafening roar of his voice box that doesn’t exist like a drowning man trying to speak.

In his scratched gloved hands holding the remnants of an oyster, as the suit continues its exploits pearl diving. He’s alive diving suit O-85, even to this day that suit continues to do its pearl diving. As nothing but a physical body, it has no need of air, no need of fear of decompression or the bends. It has no flesh or lungs, no brain nor heart or emotion. Pearl diving is what he used to do until he passed away; the bends was what got him.

Diving suit O-85 has no name, no diver in the pressure suit. He’s the continuation of a method, a pattern of life, the previous life he had.

I know not to watch him for too long or I’ll be caught down here without air, the beauty of diving suit O-85 can leave you breathless, for it’s a sad thing to see nothing but a decomposing memory. Maybe the suit remembers his previous life, maybe he remembers the countless divers who wore him, then again, maybe not, who actually knows?

Pearl Diving Suit

Pearl diving suit O-85 remembers pearl diving, that’s all he was built for and for the rest of this eternity that’s all he’ll ever do. I’m sure after he’s collected enough pearls for his target limit, he’ll walk to his designated pick up point and release the air inside; maybe even drop his lead weights. They’ll pull him up to the surface and disappear and it will be like he never existed.

I’ll come here tomorrow and watch him pearl diving again, the never ending cycle of a process completed, remembered but without limit, without stop.

Everyone else forgets just who these people were, the dead sailors, the Blackened Water 205. They all forget about every other dead sailor, dead pilot and man who perished in this cold, dark water. They all ended up in Davy Jones’ locker, every one of them. But I remember them; I’ll remember them for the rest of my life. Every day I dive under this ocean is another day I may not surface, for remembering takes my energy away and I’m too busy being caught up in the beauty.

The pearl divers, he’s the only one of the pearl divers I see down here, there’s no room for any more pearl divers down here.

He’s alive, he’s alive down here.

Oh Christ, he’s alive pearl diving suit O-85. Pearl Diving Suit O-85 is right here, next to me, tin hammer in hand and I'm the oyster in question.

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