Dandy Darkly

Soul Food

Welcome back to Dandy Darkly's Memoir Macabre! When last we left off, our conflicted protagonist prepared to combat the horrors of the dreaded Soul Eater...

Dandy Darkly returned that Sunday night to retrieve the essence of the young man who'd been discovered decomposing in McCarren Pool's utility shed. He stood before the massive carapace of the rotting building. Powerful emotions: hate, anger and even more hate poured from behind the cracked windows. Dozens of horrid faces floated in the darkness. They smacked their lips in hungry anticipation of the Dandy's grand entrance.

He sashayed toward the door - not quite runway but very, very close - and with a forgotten word from a forgotten time, blew the chained doors off its hinges.

He stepped into the darkness, "I'm here for the boy."

Lord, aren't I always? Hey everyone! It's me in the first person. I'm trying something new tonight because my witch doctor (of course I have a witch doctor) is treating a recent scrape I had with some pretty rockin' painkillers! Wooooooo! I know that speaking of one's self in the third person is a little un-hip right now. Thank you, Suede. But I'm tossing caution to the wind in favor of dramatic license. Enjoy!

Leering faces surged forward from within a wall of inky darkness. A sea of cruel mouths with jagged teeth swarmed towards Darkly. They snapped at him from every direction.

"Phyrex."

An opalescent bubble encapsulated the exorcist. The fearful faces of the Soul Eater reeled from the light, some screaming with seared lips and blistered noses. Others recoiled as though they hit a wall, now missing entire rows of teeth. Their drops of black blood turned to smoke.

Dandy Darkly stood with his eyes closed and quietly chanted to himself.

The white light became a faint yellow glow. The inky wall of hissing faces floated just beyond the amber aura. Judging by the the Soul Eater's size, it'd been eating Williamsburg's bleakest for decades. The many faces pushed forward to attack, to beg for release, to weep, to feed, to share their personal horror stories.

A gaunt woman's grim face appeared from the darkness. It strained as though escaping from tar. She had pretty, deep set eyes. A heroin addict. Her daughter died in childbirth. Some dude took her here on their second date. A homeless man was squatting here. A fight. She awoke hungry for souls.

A tiny ball of the yellow light pulled away from Dandy Darkly's protective circle. It pressed into the black. Darkly shuddered. The madness and misery of the entity was intoxicating, like pressing a golden fork into a slice of decadent chocolate cake.

Another face pushed from the black. An elderly man. Liver spots on his bald head. A World War Two veteran. Boom! His neighborhood became a ghetto. Boom! He cried every night in his pillow. Boom! The damn rap music. Non-stop. Non-stop! Boom! He found the pistol in the laundry. He walked to the pool which Margaret loved. Boom! He awoke hungry for souls.

Dandy Darkly's breathing quickened. A look of pain crossed his expression. A corrupted soul managed to press through the light. It bit Darkly on the hand. The golden ball darted through the blackness nonetheless.

Another snarling face. A cab driver. He sat his entire life in traffic. Streets full of cars. Tonight is the night I get held up. I know it. A car swerved into his lane. He awoke hungry for souls.

Dandy Darkly's hand bled freely. His blood dripped to the floor. Still the golden glow searched.

A murder. A young couple awoke hungry for souls. She was the head cheerleader and he was the high school quarterback who took the team to state. He called her disgusting names and demanded she perform degrading sex acts. Death cured her eating disorder as she frantically gnashed her teeth in Dandy Darkly's direction.

He continued to chant with his eyes closed. Another mouth snagged his pants leg. The tiny golden ball flickered from deep within the murky darkness, but didn't go out.

More pitiful images sought an audience. A suicidal beat cop. Two sisters so horribly burned from an apartment fire that their faces seemed to melt into one greasy wedge, like a floppy slice of pizza. A young man who'd stumbled into a shed looking for a blowjob. HIM!

"Phyrex Mundi!"

The tiny yellow flicker exploded into a brilliant burst of blinding white light. The silver image of a young hipster was sent hurling from the side of the terrible essence. The faces howled as one and turned in ravenous pursuit of the released soul.

"I OFFER AN EXCHANGE." The exorcist held a toothless skull before the black cloud which immediately halted its pursuit, but still hung near the silver form - like an ominous thunder cloud above a shimmering horizon.

What had so caught the attention of the Soul Eater? In the physical world the skull had belonged to a confessed murderer, but in the spirit world it chained a malevolent soul. The hulking figure still kicked and jerked just like it had in that Texas electric chair.

The petty soul of the mugging victim was a morsel compared to the hateful, murderous, sumptuously evil buffet which Dandy Darkly daintily dangled as barter.

"This one for him!" Forked tongues licked cracked lips. Pupils dilated as they examined the offer. The heads nodded as one. Darkly casually tossed the skull into the far corner of the room.

The Soul Eater lunged for its dinner.

The murderer's soul howled in pain as countless vicious mouths gnawed into him. Dandy Darkly briskly walked to the liberated soul. He swiped a small ring through the shimmering image. The young man's form vanished. Outside the building, the little Ghost Girl pointed and giggled as though to tattle on Darkly. He merely rolled his eyes and walked away.

The howls of the murderer echoed across McCarren Pool, but eventually became one with the satisfied burps of the engorged Soul Eater.

***

The next weekend I personally delivered the ring (his high school class ring - gag!) to the client who'd contacted me. She was a close acquaintance of the deceased. The soul wasn't exactly happy, but "he" was now able to receive a proper goodbye and ended up in a better place. The family too. And I got a nice wad of cash as payment. Oh, and my costly materials are included in the final bill.

Executed murderer skulls with soul attached are neither cheap nor easy to come by, ok?

Night Swimming

The Little Ghost Girl ran around the perimeter of McCarren Pool screaming for help.

"Help! Help! ... Help!" Her pale arms waved in the July night.

"HELP!"

I was in the center of the drained expanse, sitting in lotus with my eyes closed. A tiny white candle flickered - sending wobbly shadows across the empty pool's walls.

"HELP! ... HELP!!!"

"SHUT UUUUUUPPPP! No one cares! I'm not here for you, anyways."

The ghost retaliated and showed me her death mask. Suddenly I was underwater. The little girl hung limply above me. A bubble escaped from her lips. Her eyes matched the color of the water, and her blond curls were a halo framing a peaceful, angelic face. Two more small bubbles. A lifeguard launched himself from his observation chair, and a blond mother in a corset style swimsuit shrieked.

"Help! HELP!"

...and I was back sitting crosslegged in the empty pool. The Little Ghost Girl of McCarren Pool dashed in the opposite direction around the massive (originally built to hold close to seven thousand swimmers) concrete bed. Her cries for help eventually faded away.

But she's not the only ghost that haunts McCarren Pool - just the most famous. Behind the rotting walls angry anonymous eyes glared from broken windows. In some places the grafitti moved - slinking together to form vaguely humans yet vaguely feral faces. The Greenpoint music venue simmers with indifference on weekends as area Hipsters cram skinny jean leg to skinny jean leg - and it absolutely burns with malevolence once the sun sets.

Ghosts HATE Hipsters.

Tonight (especially) the haunts were in a ruckus due to the morning discovery of a badly decomposed body in a nearby shed. With local imaginations dreaming up all sorts of spooky shit, The Void was sucking up the fear. And all the OD'd junkies, murdered vagrants and one little drowned girl were out in full force as a result.

I was there to reach through all the uproar and track down the soul of the dead male discovered in that shed. Unfortunately - I'm pretty sure any trace of the poor guy's soul was dragged into the abandoned building hiding what now felt like a particularly nasty spectre we call a Soul Eater.

Soul Eaters are when two or three particularly corrupt souls perish (usually via a death pact) and merge into one and then have to eat souls to maintain and grow. The more souls gobbled up means the bigger it gets. NOT a pretty sight after a few decades. The more I thought on it, the more certain I was that the many spirits I had originally felt were actually just One. Big. Pissed-off. Soul Eater.

And the soul I was searching for was in there too... poor thing.

I'd need to come back with some firepower. Good timing too, the NYPD showed up. I blew out my candle and discreetly left. Apparently, someone heard a little girl screaming for help.

So I'm heading back to McCarren Pool this weekend... Fun. 

Alligator Tears

The bent form feebly leaned against the stained wall, totally ignored by the morning commuters. But I noticed him, of course.

Love handles (the result of a good life) and in his late fifties, he wore polished alligator skin shoes. Like some lost used car salesman who accidentally wandered off his Texas lot and into Gotham's labrynth, he also sported blue polyester slacks and loud tie. But curiously, "he" wasn't really there-- not in the same way that a departed soul manifests in a fixed spot. But wow - whatever he was, he was really bright.

Bright is a term we purveyors of the paranormal use to describe a spectral manifestation's visual accuity. Imagine an image ranging anywhere from a grainy, black and white screen to a high definition color monitor. (Some MIT parapsychology professor created a scientific scale and mathematical formula for defining brightness, but I leave the numbers to the amateurs who host those retarded ghost chaser shows on America's suckling teet, the television.)

Back to bright. Like I said - whatever he was, every detail was availabe, from a tiny teardrop rolling from under his giant reading glasses to a pale band around his ring finger where a wedding ring had recently been removed. Such vivid encounters are a rare treat.

It was 2001 - almost a year after 9/11 and I'd only been in New York for a month. I was considering  wandering further northeast to explore Boston, but this very encounter convinced me to stay in Manhattan.

I continued to examine the crying man, his face now cherry red and his back leg shaking violently. He cradled his limp left arm like a delicate new born. And then I felt it.

I felt a soul - but not his soul.

This soul belonged to a young man with wavy hair and kind eyes - but desperately not wishing to be seen, He had obfuscated himself quite admirably. But now he stood watching the collapsing man - a figment of his own manifestation.

He looked at the space around him. More people's images, but less detailed, appeared either brushing past the young man or standing with newspapers open but their eyes keenly focused upon the ailing gentleman in those slick alligator skin shoes.

But no one did anything to help.

Panic and anger flushed hot and salty around the young man's blurred form. He stormed down the subway platform. I chased after him, bumping through a crowd of Asian tourists as they disembarked a train in the real world and real time.

The young man's ghost stretched his neck peering over a mass of forms who materialized to block his view. He pushed through them and darted down the subway platform. I followed. His aura spoke of helplessness, but paired with an overwhelming anger toward the authority he was so desperate to find yet so desperate to avoid. The fabulous combination made me dizzy.

His frustration battled a desire for a typical nonchalance that was suddenly rebuked by the unexpected (and pathetic) sight of a total stranger in dire need of help. But no help was available.

The fluffy haired ghost blew back past me towards the brick wall. More figures, the young man's memories of that moment materialized - his memory of the many commuters who stood by and said nothing and did even less to help the dying man.

And yet, the young man, so desperate to remain an anonymous face in the crowd also said not a single word nor offered a hand as the dying man continued to sink towards the sticky floor of that subway platform.

Suddenly a rush of adrenaline flooded my senses. My own pulse quickened as he ran towards the stairs leading up to the ticket booth. Finally the apparition spoke, "Get help! There's a man--", but an approaching train drowned out his plea.

And another wave of blurred forms pushed him down the stairs as more commuters hurried to catch the express train which had just arrived. I caught my breath.

It was the young man's train too.

Indecision now - a huge inhale of it, that pivotal left or right, yes or no, Marvel or DC decision. That moment when we ask ourselves to step up and make the hard - before I could finish savoring the conflict, the young man's ghost made up his mind and stepped onto the train.

I suddenly saw the scene from his eyes. The doors slid shut and the train slowly began to move. The brick wall approached - and there he was in those alligator shoes. The man kneeled slumped against the wall and didn't move. He looked dead.

I thought the young man's thoughts, "Look at those shoes - he deserved it. Fuckin rich prick." And the young man's anger at the man's wealth and his anger at the absent police swallowed his guilt for not doing more.

"I said excuse me, please!"

I startled from my trance. I was standing on the platform where I had originally seen the older man slumped against the wall. His form was gone. The young man's specter/aura had vanished as well. His soul faded back into the crowd as it so desired. Had I even moved at all? Trippy. And that's when I decided to stay in New York.

***

And speaking of New York... the prolific posting prior to my auspicious absence was quite exhilarating. I admit that I hadn't realized the potential for education that this electronic journal represents.

And call me paranoid, but I've no doubt The Void did indeed work its influence to regain the dis-harmony it so prefers. A little blabber mouthing about ghosts and The Void freaks my shit out because of it. Luckily The Void doesn't hold grudges. It blusters, but I can tell it's curiosity is piqued as well.

The Void is weird.

So following my (fated it turns out - more later) encounter with the Pope's modern day witch hunting squad, I spent some time away. I'm pleased to acknowledge that all the portents originally malevolent have returned to a lovely shade of pale lavender, a most calm and spooky color. I use the word acknowledge because I've learned that to acknowledge something brings it into being. Thus it's true. Yay. I love the internet.

So - I'm back.

Also pleased to report that I pretty much quit my temp job - and as Libra's balance would have it, I floated peacefully into a dream job at (set your phasers on nerd) a gaming company.

I am single again, but such is for the best right now. That's just fewer movie dates to cancel at the last minute.

In closing--

There's a calmness that some of the more talkative ghosts refer to before they met their first death. Its like the world simply slows down and the soul which is about to leave that mortal shell can finally take the time to appreciate those last few seconds as it passes into a different reality.

For once in a long time, I feel a smiliar focus and clarity and calmness - and potential. Maybe it's wearing shorts and flip-flops to a job I love, perhaps it was my two months of meditation - I hope it's not that gross out blood baptism courtesy of the Catholic Church, but whatever the reason - things are good now.

Well Wishes

So... I've felt rather burdened by the bloody Baptism received by the "hand" of The Purification. Today's beautifully rejuvenating respite served as ample reminder that even among the most frightening and challenging aspects of my unique existence there always exists the sunshine to offset the darkness... Its too easy for me to become enraptured of the quiet death of Autumn. Sometimes it takes a breathtaking Spring day to really flush my cheeks. I considered meeting my boyfriend and some of his friends out for a drink, but eh... I've cleaned my bedroom, put my trinkets away. I think a night alone is best. Interactions are difficult for me. Social interactions that is. Maybe its due to the solitude I experienced in my formative years.

For me early life was one sequestered, but not skulking about in mausoleums and graveyards as you might expect, such gloomy pursuits were spent much later in life. Quite the opposite - I came into my current self immersed in splendid nature, And I'm talking natural nature, too - not the urban green spaces city-folk flock too before 9 a.m. so they may unleash their bandana'd, canine companions - bourgeois satisfaction plastered across chemically whitened smiles as though they're one with nature and one with humanity. Such hipster sentiment is bullshit.

I do envy them - even if it's ignorance I'm jealous of.

I truly grew up in the wild, lost among the ancient trees of the Appalachian foothills. The earliest spirits who spoke to me were ones of Gaea, the Earth Mother; creaking trees that if you listened close enough seemed to whisper as the wind rustled their lush, green leaves. They were playful and innocent - full of imagination, not tainted with the burdened perceptions of Mankind. My bare feet found first root in unsoiled soil; Earth not trodden with Man's heavy heels and heavier hearts. My first glimpses into a world apart from yours was framed by the gentile exploration of a wild child. The voices whistling among the song birds and splashing in the rivers of my native Georgia weren't something to be feared, but rather understood.

And there I romped and roamed and discovered a mysterious old farm site which I've simply named The Well.

The Well was a flattened patch hidden among natural coverage about two hours (on kid's legs) northeast of my family's land. A rotting oak which hid a family of bats, a fallen tree across a shallow gully upon which I dared to challenge my balance, a rocky outcrop covered with blue moss, which time and time again I pretended were the sapphires of an ancient dragon's treasure hoard - all map markers in a child's mind, who as an adult finds today's blaring horns and red/green/yellow lights more confusing and frightening - but still I'm there to face those things which everyone else would find much more horrific by comparison...

Not that I mind.

So following my trail, one would come across a most modest of areas - in the Winter rather nondescript save for a section of mossy logs laying across a gaping well.

But come springtime in the South - when Mama Nature is all gussied up in her fanciest emerald gown and colored jewels spill forth from her ample cleavage, and her perfume sends mortal men swooning and poets reaching for their quills (and pens) - you truly realize how the forest becomes a mystical place, a place where the mundane and mystical mingle.

And so I found The Well on one of my many stomps through the acres. My ever faithful companion, Possum, by my side. Oh, Possum. What a good dog. Golden mutt - one of my earliest memories is my dad asking what I wanted to name the dog that just showed up (as dogs do in the country) and I said Possum. They also simply disappear in the country, as Possum did. He was a good dog.

Did he lead me to The Well? Maybe... I still see him in my dreams from time to time. The golden guardian who perhaps knew more about my Fate than any dog should have - not even Lassie! But this boy never fell down The Well.

I simply sat beside it, in the glory of flowers which weren't wild - tulips, daisies, morning glories and daffodils. They were a colorful audience who eavesdropped on my discussions with (very likely) my first spiritual communication - the old lady, long dead, at the bottom of her well.

I never got her name. There are a few different rumors regarding who she was. Depending on when you wish to place the classic Southern misogyny and racism, she was either a kind, old medicine woman who was raped, beaten and tossed into the well by filthy heathen Cherokee Indians or a kind, old medicine woman who was raped, beaten and tossed into the well by filthy runaway slaves.

Go figure.

I never had the opportunity to ask her which miscreant minority it was who raped, beat and tossed her into her well. Quite the contary, we spoke of gentler things. Bear in mind that I spoke to her a decade before I ever heard such colorful rumors. It wasn't until I was at the University of Georgia, that I realized the fabled old medicine woman was very likely the same old lady I'd been discoursing with for so many Springs as a curious young'un.

Talking to her felt so serene, so free of the anger and the fear that pours off the living. Her tinny little voice echoing from deep below. I remember practically whispering back, for fear of someone (my nosy little brother especially) hearing and ruining my secret talks. Those breezy Spring days, when I'd pack a pimento cheese sandwich and inform my mother that I was off to stomp around the woods, hatchet in hand - they remain some of the fondest memories from a childhood often plagued by a variety of worrisome topics.

But Mankind doesn't slow down for childhood memories and secret spaces. About twelve years ago most the land north of my family's property was purchased by a pulp wood company. They unceremoniously shaved the entire area, replanted saplings and moved on. Nothing familiar remained,

I've tried to retrace the path. When home (rarely) for holidays, I've called out into the wild for the old woman's answer... nothing. Part of me wonders if the darker deeds I've witnessed (and pursued) have pushed my kind, childhood friend away. Or maybe she, like some spirits, exist in a particular space and time. Or maybe she just needed an innocent child's ear. And luckily enough a child was there to listen; someone like that ghostly old lady - part of his world, but part of the darkness too.

Pope on a Rope

Much has happened in the past two days. Let's see if I can compose myself enough to relate what's going on. I don't exaggerate when I tell you that I feel lucky to be alive.

My tale begins Thursday night at 3:00 am. Well,
Wednesday if you take into account the visions, but anyways...

I was lurking behind Saint Brigid's Church at Tompkins Square Park. Hidden among a few tiny tombstones and graffiti painted dumpsters, I arranged six red candles in the form of a hexagon - about a foot in diameter. In the center, I placed a single white candle. After lighting the red ones (clockwise), I took from my pocket the 12th card of the Tarot, The Hanged Man. I put flame to the white candle and held the card above the fire. The Tarot card began to burn. The sound of a mob, first a faint whisper which grew into a roar sounded the phrase "let him swing!" over and over. I held the burning Hanged Man above my head and whispered, "let him swing." I heard the click of a gallows. The anger of the necktie party became celebration.

And then silence. From the clouds the silhouette of a man's body tumbled limply like a rag doll. He wore black robes and around his neck sat a noose, the end of which reached beyond vision. His arms were bound behind him. His fair Irish features marked with an emotionless expression. He slowly fell another forty or thirty feet until snapping tight just a few inches above the white candle. His body jerked and his legs kicked wildly. The pale ivory skin of his neck turned the shade of eggplant and burst blood vessels filled his blue eyes with crimson explosions. His swollen tongue jutted from his mouth, forcing out an unholy homily of inhuman grunts and choking noises.

After swinging for nearly a minute, he finally came to rest, the tips of his toes touching the flame of the white candle. They ignited and began to burn like kindling. I asked, "Father O'Riley, what can you tell me about the Pope's visit this weekend."

The spirit regarded me with utmost contempt, "I don't respond to that title anymore."

The fire had reached the wretched thing's knees, "Glenn O'Riley... what can you tell me about the Pope's--"

The ghost leered through the smoke of it's burning form, "You carry the same stain as my boys. That mark of love, that sacred blessing--"

The fire had reached his upper thighs, "Glenn O'Riley! I command you to speak!"

I turned the burning card so that it burned faster. The inferno consuming O'Riley's ghost seemed to match the card's intensity. The fire climbed as far as his midsection. The rope binding his wrists had burned away. He swung his arms wildly. They resembled slender matchsticks.

"Tell me about The Purification!"

The dead preacher howled his sermon, "The Holy Father brings with him a fire to cleanse the wickedness of this cruel city. Minions of The Void shall be purified. Sorcerers, seers and speakers of the dead will burn before His greatness! The Purification is here, my child."

He held his burning hand outstretched as though to grasp the card. The arm was a nothing more than a skeletal cinder, but the fleshy parts of his palm and fingers remained. They bled profusely as though slashed with a razor blade.

The card burned completely and with it O'Riley. His ashes dropped to the ground among discarded needles. The flame raced up the spectral rope. The screeching soul reminded me of a bottle rocket. I dropped the scorched Tarot card on the priest's grave. Pederast was chiseled across his headstone.

"Fuck you, weirdo."

***

The majority of my thoughts on Friday were primarily consumed with what the former priest had warned me. The Purification is coming. Here's the deal about ghosts and their portents. Ghosts are kind of like gossip tabloids. The bigger the rumor means the more readership and more money. But with The Void its all about dreadful omens and fear mongering, kind of like the Republican party - but not as ancient. But something about O'Riley's warning (and his bloody hand) sent a genuine shudder through me. And I do not shudder easy.

That night I was supposed to meet a friend out in the East Village for dinner. But an uneasy sensation paired with my off and on agoraphobia moved me to cancel. I stayed in Friday night with the curtains drawn and my lights off. It was 10:30 pm. I sat in the dark Indian style, exploring my tense feelings - when my doorbell rang. I froze. The doorbell rang again. On my knees, I peered down from my second floor window. A black sedan sat idling in front of my apartment. It's headlights were on. The doorbell rang again. A group of teenagers, maybe seven young men, strolled up the sidewalk talking. Two men in black robes briskly walked away from my apartment. They were carrying briefcases. After they got into the ominous vehicle, it quietly rolled out of view.

I laid awake in bed the entire night with a chair under my front door knob and a small hand gun beneath my pillow. I fled immediately for Larchmont the next morning to stay with Ms. Margerie. She told me I was being ridiculous and worrying about nothing. I returned this morning. She was wrong.

My door was unlocked. Had I left it unlocked in my hurry to leave? Had someone broken in? Was someone here? I tried sneaking, but my creaky floor ratted me out. I'm an exorcist, not a ninja. Luckily, no one was there. Even better, nothing seemed missing. Most of my magical, material mojo is stored in rental spaces around Manhattan. My disorganized closets could have been ransacked, but then again -- I'm a mess when it comes to laundry. No one had been in my apartment. I guess I had left the door unlocked. 

I called Ms. Margerie to tell her that my paranoia had indeed gotten the best of me. I laughed, "I totally expected His Holiness hiding inside with a Howitzer--"

And then I went dead silent. Margerie asked, "Are you there? Heeelloooooo? Ground control to Dandy Darkly..."

I stared above my bed at the single bloody hand print dominating my white wall. The ghost of Father Quinn had been right. The Purification was here.

A Bitter Rat Trap

Twenty feet above me, the ceaseless traffic of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway thundered in the night - drowning out my commands of departure. I stood my ground on cracked pavement, littered with broken glass bottles and the discarded rubber from a blown tire. Also, three dozen black rats circled my feet - clawing my boots and seriously ruining my favorite pair of corduroys. A few of the more motivated pests managed to claw as far up as my belt. Two of them had gotten as far as my jacket sleeves,

I clutched the offenders in either hand. The beasts writhed and squealed and bit at my gloves, but they were the least of my worries.

A gargantuan rodent, nearly eight feet tall and almost as wide, pressed itself against a highway support pillar. While I commanded it to depart, the grotesquery responded by vomiting forth more and more writhing, goo-soaked vermin. 

"In the name of Apollo! In the name of Hippocrates! I command you to depart!"

The rats in my hands vaporized - leaving me soaked in foul smelling ectoplasm. Another rat climbed my shirt, snapping at my chin with yellow, jagged teeth. Unbalanced, I waded through the twisting mass of rats beneath my feet.

"Ganga, river mother, cleanse this pestilence from whence it came!"

The sky cracked open and a sudden torrent of rain fell across the highway. The rush of water flooded the ground around me. The rats began to squeal. The water stripped their bones bare as though acid had been poured across them.

The fat-rat climbed above the flash flood and let forth a noxious exhale of carrion-foul breath. I wretched a projectile of my own - a lovely shrimp risotto enjoyed earlier at a neighborhood Italian eatery, but continued to maintain focus on the abomination. It was almost done.

I removed my glove, pulled from my jacket a common household rat trap, positioned the holding bar beneath the hammer and triggered the device, letting it snap down onto my dainty fingers.

The pain triggered a sharp yelp from me and a sharper yelp from the grotesquery as it collapsed from it's perch beneath the highway. It remained there for nearly a minute... utterly still... except something was... still moving... I saw a faint ripple beneath the creature's fur... and then

...

It's stomach tore apart as a clot of shrieking, gore-crusted rats chewed through skin and matted hair. The smell was nauseating - puss and blood. Some of the rats ran for darkness, most launched into one another, biting with a frenzy unseen in nature.

My left hand ached and bled where the rat trap had snapped across three of my fingers. I think my nose was bleeding as well. Violent sobbing echoed from behind me - a powerfully sad sound. A man in his fifties cradled himself in a fetal position. He wore a dark suit covered in stinking grime. A bullet wound to his forehead told his final tale.

Now a slave to The Void's manipulation - the giant rat a physical manifestation of either his filth in life or maybe a mockery of his execution as a rat.

The Void is not without a sense of humor.

I placed the rat trap in his hand and it clattered to the pavement - the ghost and foul rat carcass now nothing more than early morning fog drifting in from the East River.

Spring Cleaning

With my new desk job around the corner, and only a few days of sloth remaining, I decided it was high time to peel my ass off the sofa and start cleaning out my closets. Ugh. How I hate cleaning...

My apartment isn't disgusting by any stretch of the imagination. I once drove to investigate a Missouri trailer park where other-worldly howls were heard nightly from an abandoned lot. The owner had died nearly a year earlier -- a total white trash fatty who lived in garbage and whose skin had grafted to his sofa bed. Hah!

I do try to have sympathy, but come on... when you're so fat that your body grows into your sofa - an eternity of misery is likely to follow. Yet another reason to use those gym memberships you're paying for, fat America.

A young woman in stirrup pants and an ill-fitting blouse identified  herself as the surviving daughter-in-law. She showed me to the lot in question, and I began feeling out who (or what) was causing the disturbance. Eventually, I felt several sets of emerald eyes peering out at me from deep within a patch of bamboo grass adjacent to the property. My watchers were predatory, hungry and feral. They were ghost cats.

I absolutely despise dealings with ghost animals.

I asked the daughter-in-law if there had been cats. She was wow'd - like being amazed by a nickname from beyond the grave during a séance, "The spirit says he misses you... Princess." Only failing to realize she's wearing a gold necklace that reads "Princess". That's a classic trick fakers use to reel them in.

In the heaviest Southern drawl possible the daughter-in-law oh-sooo-slowly related the story of PawPaw's love for cats and how he took in twenty of the parasites to keep him company while he merged with his cushions, smelling of cat shit and human feces, littered with pizza boxes, fast food wrappers and roaches. Every single inch of the trailer had been covered in filth. In light of such a mess, my single bag of laundry is almost an accomplishment, something to be celebrated - not carried off to the wash.

Being a Southern boy I respectfully (as much as possible) listened to the yarn - she cried three times about how she tried to bring him McDonald's Premium Choice Salads, but PawPaw would throw a hissy fit on his sofa, kickin his little fat legs if there were no fries. I had to bite my lip. Eventually PawPaw suffocated from his own massive weight. The wall of the mobile home was dismantled to pull his bloated corpse and sofa out. The twenty feral cats were killed right there by animal control.

PawPaw's slovenly existence wasn't one of anger. With the exception of the lettuce, I got the sense he quite enjoyed being catered to by his ignorant daughter-in-law. It was those fucking ghost cats lurking in the bamboo patch that were causing the ruckus.

The dead cats were now gremlins - hardly a threat, more of a nuisance to the living. Luckily I had experience dealing with such pests before. I took from my satchel a small animal skull. Squirrel, I think. I held it in my open palm and walked the perimeter of the empty lot, keeping eye contact with the bamboo patch. I saw visions of the cats ravenously eating the corpse's fingers and face.

A quiet chorus of cat screams trickled forward in response to my probing. The daughter-in-law sucked Yoo-Hoo through a straw with wide eyes. I lit a red candle and drizzled the hot wax onto the skull. Some of wax scalded my hand, and the cats howled as though they'd been burned.

I stood before the towering bamboo. Tiny pinpoints of green light surged forward. They floated in pairs. The hissing and howling was now so loud that neighbors turned on their lights and peeked out from windows. I placed the tiny skull on the ground and smashed it with the heel of my boot. Instantly the noise ceased and the miniscule, green orbs floated upwards like fireflys before fading away.

The daughter-in-law was a sickly shade of cement - no longer wow'd. Her vibe was totally 'please go the fuck away', which is the typical response after someone witnesses a cleansing. I buried the skull fragments and dripped a little more wax onto the soil as a consecration.

Sometimes cleaning the spirit world is easier than a one bedroom apartment. Back to my sofa. Now if only someone in stirrup pants would feed me McDonald's. 

Shells

When I first die - which may not be the end but possibly a new beginning - I hope it is a quick death. Such lamentable tales of destruction I've heard. Woeful spirits who believed a suicide would be an escape from the pain - only to discover there exists a world of torment worse than the crippling arthritis, a scorned heart, the emotional pain of our seemingly broken shells.

I remember happier moments in my earlier life. Not to imply I'm old, when one is faced with the potential of immortality, age becomes a non-issue, but those sunny mental snapshots - often spent at the beach - nevertheless had a shadow cast across them. However nothing like the darkness I face on a day-to-day basis. The spooks and chills of my youth were quaint by comparison.

I was obsessed with shells - worn down by the ceaseless waves - of our world but strangely alien. I would throw the unbroken ones back into the water hoping (with the optimism of a chubby thirteen year old) that a cartoon critter would find a home, maybe even sing a song in celebration. But once a shell is empty (our shells included) it's simply fuel for cars - dinosaur bones and diamonds - dog shit on the sidewalk - discarded bubble gum that will outlast humanity's presumptive notions that we're the beginning, the middle and the end. There's much more than you'd guess hiding in the shadow's of our Starbucks and Wal-Marts.

I learned to accept the shadows cast across my childhood. Even when I figured out that no one else could perceive the things I could see, still I carried on - and tried to be like everyone else. I knew the naked man standing waste deep in the waves wasn't supposed to be there. White and pale, so thin, covered in seaweed and jagged bite marks. The phantom tried to speak to me, desperate to find his shell. Poor thing.

To be utterly cliche: I see dead people.

That was my first encounter with a fully realized spirit manifestation. First time I'd seen a naked man too. (I wasn't particularly put off by either.) I write these words from a place of shameful, exhilarating narcissism, but also I've been searching for some means of solace for these sad souls who speak to me. Because when we voluntarily separate from our shells, all we have to greet us is The Void.

The Void is better defined by what it is not. The Void is not Hell. The Void is not the Devil. It happily accepts such labels, because Man's perceptions of wicked things only make it stronger. The Void is not Evil, but angry souls are courted by it. The Void is a middle ground between the physical and spirit worlds, but it's not Limbo either. It's not a place. It's not a person. But as humans we feel the need to personify everything we can't explain. So The Void becomes a person by way of our own narcissism. As tales of horror were spoken, The Void made them real. Now The Void writes it's own stories. The Void is the darkest dreams of a collective humanity, brought to life by us. We control The Void as much as it controls us - and most importantly our deceased souls.

Some souls aren't strong enough to manifest themselves. The Void's hold is too powerful. There are time honored means in which to coax them out. Such ritual I’m happy to share because The Void is knocking at my door. The only option I have is to educate while I’m able. I don’t know. Can The Void affect its grasp upon the Internet? An entity similar to The Void in that it is a created space of thoughts, feelings and fears. I’m conflicted in using such a relatively young (by comparison to The Void which grew from the shadows of Mankind's first cave fire) tool to share these secrets.

The Void abhors progress. If there’s one constant regarding my enemy and friend is that simple fact. Purveyors of the art can get very stuck on tradition, it is the not-so-subtle influence of The Void that limits us to tossing bones or holding hands during a séance when more sophisticated means are begging to be discovered. I digress, however.

Suffice to say, the closer The Void stalks, the more at peace I am with my fate. For the first time in a long while, I am content in this aching, farting cage of tendon and bone, and though my shell be well worn, still I wear it well.