Human Touch (Cover Reveal)

A couple years ago I was in a rut with writing. A couple? Seriously, A.J.? It’s been five years. Back in 2019, I was in a rut with writing. My editor, Larissa Bennett, challenged me, literally, to write a story I didn’t want to write. I told her about an idea I had but was hesitant to write because it was a ~GASP~ love story. 

“You should write it,” she said. 

I said, “I don’t want to,” like a petulant child about to pitch a fit.

After a bit of back and forth, I finally said, “Okay,” but it was more like one of those moments where your parents told you to apologize for saying something rude to your sibling. You apologize begrudgingly but really don’t mean it.

At some point I sat down and wrote the first couple lines to the story: 

The coffee shop was quiet. The few people talking did so in whispers as if they were in a library and the librarian was an ancient old biddy with blue hair, triangle lensed glasses and a mallet behind her back. Talk too loudly and get a smack to the head you might not wake up from. Charlie liked it that way. 

It wasn’t like the Starbucks a few blocks over that garnered most of the public who were willing to spend their money on their favorite caffeinated drinks. There weren’t a bunch of college students with their laptops and schoolbooks, and there were no groups of more than four people who liked to talk and laugh loud enough to disturb those reading books (or possibly doing schoolwork on one of those laptops). No, this was a little mom and pop place not owned by a mom or a pop, but a woman in her mid-thirties who married, divorced, and had no children that he was aware of. She spent her mornings and most afternoons behind the counter of the Coffee Dee-Light serving the regulars, like Charlie, with a smile and a bottom-line price that should have competed with Starbucks, but somehow didn’t. 

I liked the first few paragraphs and decided to write more. Though I would walk away from the story and come back to it later, the story of Charlie Massingale and Dani Overton never left my mind. I finished the story close to the end of 2020 after a few starts and stops. 

I had no intentions of releasing this book. It was going to be my dirty little secret. I, author of dark, emotional stories, wrote a love story. No, no one could find out about this. But I really like the characters, even Dee, who owns the little coffee shop they meet in.

So, here we are, you and I and this book, this story, Human Touch. It’s a love story. It’s Clean Romance. It’s completely different from anything I’ve written, simply because I intended for the two main characters to fall in love. 

Why post about this now? Well, because I’m releasing it soon and I need to talk about it. I want you to read it. If you don’t know about it, well, you can’t read it.

With that said, below are both the cover, which has a Take On Me by A-Ha vibe and the synopsis.

Charlie Massingale has mastered the art of fading into the background. Haunted by the tragic loss of his wife, he seeks solace in a quiet South Carolina town, hoping to escape his past and bury his pain. For years, he succeeds in his quest for anonymity.

Everything changes when a young woman recognizes him at a coffee shop and strikes up a conversation. Plagued by his own guilt and desires to stay missing from the world he once thrived in, he denies their connection, leaving Dani yearning for more.

Determined to unravel the enigma that is Charlie Massingale, Dani reaches out to her beloved author, hoping to connect with a man no one has heard from in nine years. To her surprise, Charlie responds, sparking a fragile bond that neither can ignore. As their correspondence deepens, Charlie finds himself captivated by Dani, awakening emotions long dormant within him.

Caught between the past and the present, Charlie faces a crossroads. Will he allow himself to embrace the possibility of love once again? Can he overcome the weight of his past and accept the warmth of the Human Touch? With their lives intertwined, Charlie and Dani must navigate the complexities of age, and the lingering shadows of the past that threaten to tear them apart.

So, what do you think? Interested? Let me know in the comments below.

Until we meet again, be kind to one another.

A.J.

The Concepts: Chuckie

On June 29, 1993, I wrote my first short story. If you were a member of my Patreon page, One Step Forward, then you know that story is called, Chuckie, and was based on a nightmare I had multiple times. You also know how the story came about. But here, at Type AJ Negative and this thing I call The Concepts, you probably don’t know anything about that. Today, I give you the story—the full story that has never appeared anywhere outside of Patreon.

I was twenty-two in June of 1993. On the day—early morning, really—I wrote Chuckie, it was eight days from my birthday. Before I get into that particular day (which is really short, to be honest), I want to tell you about what led to it.

A few weeks earlier, maybe longer, I can’t really remember, I began having nightmares. Time has a way of running together. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years … decades … they all run together at some point. Things you remember completely when they first happened become dull around the edges over time. Details get lost or exaggerated upon, and as a writer, my job is to exaggerate the truths while telling all sorts of lies. But those nightmares. I remember them quite well.

I was in a house, but I wasn’t me. I was a kid named Chuckie Benson. He had blond hair and blue eyes and was bigger than my lanky 150 pounds at the time—oh and I had dark black hair. These days, it’s more on the gray side than black. The doorbell rings, which was definitely not a reality in the house I grew up in. No, there was no doorbell, only knuckles on wood. In the dream Chuckie—me—opens the door and there stands Alex, who looked like a burned up weenie with a sinister grin that was mostly teeth, and well, not really a grin. Alex didn’t have a last name in the dream or even in the original version of the story I wrote. When I rewrote the story, I gave him the last name of Morrison, since I was a Doors fan. 

I always ran through the house trying to get away from Alex only to run back into him. He would grab me by the throat in his still smoldering hands and choke me. At that point, I woke, not screaming or shooting up in my bed the way you see in movies. My eyes just snapped open, and I was awake, my heart crashing hard in my chest and staring at the darkness of my room. 

I had this dream quite a few times, almost nightly for a while there. This was bad for a couple of reasons, the biggest of these being sleep. I already struggle with sleep—had since I was about fourteen—and with this recurring nightmare, sleep became nonexistent. 

Then one day someone asked me, “Hey, are you okay? You look tired?”

“I haven’t been sleeping,” was my answer.

From there a conversation was had based on my lack of sleep. I mentioned the nightmares and how terrifying they were for me.

“Why don’t you write your nightmare down the next time you have it?”

“Why?”

“That might make it go away.”

That’s hoodoo magic nonsense I believed. I think the individual who told me that caught my thoughts on my face before I could even say anything.

For the next few paragraphs, I will relay to you what was relayed to me, in as much detail as I can remember. These are the words I was told:

There was once a writer—a very good writer—who suffered from having nightmares, specifically, one nightmare over and over and over. He got to where he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function, and couldn’t write. He went to his doctor and told him what was going on.

The doctor said, “The next time you have the dream, get up and write it down. Writing it down will make the nightmare go away.

The writer, desperate for some relief and sleep thought it couldn’t hurt.

That night he had the nightmare. When he woke, he got up and spent the next three hours writing the nightmare down. When he went back to bed, he didn’t have the nightmare, but the next night, lo and behold, the nightmare was back.

The writer went back to his doctor and took what he wrote with him. He explained to the doctor that he had done what he was told to do.

“Let me see what you wrote,” the doctor said.

The author handed him the papers. The doctor spent the next little while reading it, then shook his head. “I see what the problem is,” he said.

“What?” the writer asked.

“What you wrote is the nightmare.”

“That’s what you said to write.”

“Yes, but you’re a writer. All you did was write the basic details of the nightmare. You didn’t write the story the nightmare is trying to tell you. Next time you have the nightmare, write the story it is telling you.”

A couple nights later, he had the nightmare again. He got out of bed and spent the next three days writing the story of the nightmare. He never had the nightmare again.

That was the story told to me. Of course, with a story like that, I, like anyone who heard it would do, asked, “Who was the writer?”

“Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“Really?”

“And the story was The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Now, as with any story told like this, I was skeptical. Still, I was desperate for sleep. The next time I had the nightmare, which was the very next night, I got out of bed, pulled out a note pad—what people refer to as scratch pads now—and a pen. I spent the next couple of hours writing the bare bones story of Chuckie Benson and Alex Morrison. 

After I was done, I laid back down. I didn’t fall back asleep that night. However, I never had the nightmare again.

Here’s my caveat for this Concept: I’ve never been able to substantiate the story told to me about the writer or the story. I mean, the story does exist, and the author was a real person. But I’ve found no record or truth of how the story came to be. It very well may be true. Or it very well may be something made up in the mind of someone playing shrink and offering a solution. 

Either way, it did work for me, and that’s what matters here. Oh, and the fact that writing that story springboarded me into writing, something I loathed up until then. Other than jokes and parody songs, I hated the very idea of constructing a story. In school, I did the bare minimum to get by with a D-. 

The story—true or false as it may be—of the supposed nightmare Robert Louis Stevenson had that led to The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, remedied my own nightmares and spurred a love for writing that has never passed, and here it is three decades later.

Until we meet again, my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J.

Just What’s Going On Here? 1/03/2023

One thing I want to do this year is promote my work more. I’ve done a poor job of it over the last few years. Sure, I post stories here, and occasionally, I post information about a book but those have been sporadic at best. That means information about new books, old books, reviews and goings on. That also means more posts, some of them that will simply read like this one with a title similar to this one. 

With that said, here is the first installment of Just What’s Going On Here.

1/03/2024-1: There are books coming. They are, in no particular order, 22, Human Touch, Unbroken Crayons, Motivational Sh*t You Didn’t Ask For, Her Cure, The One Left Behind, Susie Bantum’s Death and Simply Put. There’s also the 10th anniversary release of Cory’s Way. 

1/03/2024-2: I recently had a discussion with Lisa Vasquez about doing a collaboration similar to the one I did with another writer, M.F. Wahl, a few years ago, titled All We See is the End. You can find that little book here:

Lisa came up with a really cool storyline and I am currently researching for it. I’m excited. You should be, too. It’s going to be killer.

1/03/2024-3: I received a new review for The Forgetful Man’s Disease today. It’s pretty cool and I am proud of it. Here is the review:

This story is about an old man named Homer Grigsby who suffers from dementia and has flashbacks of his son’s death. He also sees ghosts of his old friends and refuses to leave his home in the Mill. The writing was exquisite, seamlessly weaving nostalgia, sadness, and a touch of horror. Homer Grigsby felt incredibly real, and portrayal of his struggles with dementia was both moving and authentic.

Wonderful Story!!

This was a real pick me up and will be appearing on the site with the other reviews. Also, if you want to pick up a copy of The Forgetful Man’s Disease, you can get the digital version here: 

If you would like a print copy, drop me a line at ajbrownstoryteller@gmail.com

1/03/2023-4: I finished my first story of 2024, a five thousand word piece called No Sin Goes Unpunished. The devil does his deed without making a deal with someone for their soul. It was a fun write.

Thanks for stopping by. That’s all for now. Feel free to drop me a comment below or reach out to me at the email above. I’d like to hear from y’all. 

Until we meet again my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J.

Why Believe?

For the last month or so I have been posting one word on social media almost every day, mostly in the mornings. That word? Believe. 

Why believe?

Before I answer that, let me give you some context. Three years ago my wife joined a fitness group. This group consisted of a few women around the world, but mostly in America. At one point, I think around December of the first year my wife was part of this group, they started talking about their word of the year, the word they would live by during the following 365 days. My wife’s word was Consistency. That’s a magnificent word. 

I decided to do the same thing. Like my wife, I went with the word Consistency. But it wasn’t my word. It was hers. Last year I chose Unstoppable. It felt like a good word, and it was inspired by the song of the same name by Sia. Great lyrics that should be exceptionally inspiring. But I think that was a cop out word. Sure, I used it at certain points through the year, but it wasn’t even remotely … consistent. 

Fast forward to around the middle of July. I didn’t know it at the time, but I began experiencing what I fully believe was depression. Having never dealt with that in my life, I didn’t recognize it. Sure, I know people who have depression and some of it is crippling. But I—me, personally—have never experienced the feeling. 

Not knowing what it was, but knowing I was in some weird funky mood, I said nothing to anyone about it. ‘It will pass’ is what I told myself. Well, it didn’t, at least not right away. It lingered until mid to late-September … and I didn’t say anything about it. This caused some issues. I was easily angered. For the first time in my life, I felt real jealousy, and that being toward the person I love the most. At points, I withdrew from people—I wanted to be alone all the time. I already don’t sleep well, but during that time, I slept even less, which led to exhaustion and more crankiness. I would go out to the studio and hit the punching bag without gloves on—I split or bruised my knuckles a few times during this process.

At separate points, I was approached by two people, one young man, and one woman. They both asked the same question: ‘Are you okay?’ To the young man, I tried to play it off as just going through some stuff. ‘You want to talk about it?’ he asked. ‘Not really. I’ll be okay.’ To the woman, one who knows me so well because she is pretty much the female version of me, I said, ‘I don’t know.’ We were in New York at the time and she said, ‘Let’s go to the store.’ 

It was a brief trip there and back. During that twenty minutes or so, I finally said, ‘I think I’m depressed.’ It’s the only thing that makes sense. 

Saying that out loud gave me a starting point. It gave me something to think about, to act on. It gave me a way to move forward. Outside of that brief conversation, I texted with another friend about it. I didn’t talk to anyone else about it until one day after Thanksgiving when my daughter and I were sitting at the kitchen table discussing her and her boyfriend’s plans for the future. I brought it up because I feel like she was one of the ones I took it out on. That conversation helped me understand I had lost something during the entire process. 

I still don’t know what caused it, but I think it had been coming for a LONG time. What I do know, is at some point at the beginning of it, I stopped believing in myself. I’ve always been one to say, ‘I don’t need you to believe in me, because I believe in me.’ But at some point, I lost that. I had to find that. I had to get that back.

I started saying the word Believe to myself. That was it. No other words. No Believe in yourself, man. Believe in your abilities. Nothing like that. Just BELIEVE. BELIEVE. BELIEVE. 

BELIEVE.

That word means different things to different people. It might mean believe in God. It might mean believe that something will work out. It might mean believe that what happens is meant to happen. It might mean that you believe in someone else. It might mean you believe in yourself. 

The definition of believe is simple in this context: to have faith. And Faith in this context is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Believing in yourself or having faith in yourself means you have complete trust or confidence in you and your abilities. That’s a powerful mindset. 

Two things before I go.

First, Believe. 

It’s my word going into 2024. I think it has been my word my entire life. When nobody else believed in me, I always did. Every morning now, even the bad ones, I say to myself, Believe. I leave it at that, and I take on the day. Some days are good. Some, not so good. But Believe. It’s what I have always told myself and something I am trying really hard to regain.

Second, depression doesn’t always appear as a frown or slouched shoulders or sadness. It’s often a smile, a joke, a positive appearance around people. It’s not always outwardly visible, but I can promise you it is always inwardly gray and cloudy. It’s a muddled mass of tar-like quicksand and you’re always sinking … and sometimes, you don’t realize it. 

If you need a word to live by, you don’t have to wait for a new year, choose Believe. Believe in yourself. Believe in what you bring to the table. Believe in your abilities. Just … Believe.

Until we meet again my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J.

Little Witch–Halloween 2023

Little Witch

There’s a witch at my door and she won’t go away. I saw her as I drove up the street, coming home from work. She wore a black dress, black cape and black pointy hat. She was short and slightly hunched over as if time had beaten her down. She turned her green face toward me. A wart sat on the tip of her long nose. She carried a white bag with a crudely drawn pumpkin face on it. The bag didn’t look full, but there was something in it. She looked up at me as I passed. Her eyes were dark and the smile that crossed her lips was crooked and terrifying. 

A chill ran up my spine and I thought a cat may have walked across a grave I have yet to be buried in. In my hurry to get home, I knocked over the mailbox and parked, half on the concrete driveway, half in the grass. 

Once out the car, I glanced down the street. She walked toward me, bag in hand, crooked smile on her face and those dark, evil eyes on me. 

I didn’t wait for her to reach my house and cast a spell on me. I ran inside and closed the door. I turned the lights off, both inside and out. I called for my wife. She didn’t respond. I started to look for her, but barely made it to the hallway before the knock came, three sharp raps that echoed in my brain. 

She’s here, I thought and turned toward the door. My legs were like jelly and my stomach flipped and flopped as if full of a thousand tiny fish. If I don’t answer the door, she’ll go away. 

I eased into the hallway and planted my back against the wall. It was cool through my shirt but it did little to help ease the tension in my shoulders. Still, my brain hoped the witch would leave and I would be okay.

The knock came a second time, three sharp raps louder than before. My breath caught in my throat. 

“Go away,” I whispered then cringed at the sound of my voice. Was it too loud? Did she hear me? She’s a witch. She had powers. Of course, she heard me.

“Mr. Brown?” came the voice from the other side of the door. 

Yes, she heard me.

My hands went to my mouth, clamping it shut. With my heart in my throat, I squeezed my body to the wall as tight as I could, hoping she couldn’t see me beyond the door. My brain said witches have a third eye and, oh yes, she could see me. 

But she can’t come in, right? She can’t open the door. She had to be invited in, right? No. That was all wrong. That’s vampires, not witches. What’s the rule for witches? My brain spun and my thoughts were a jumbled mess. I didn’t know the answer.

Then a very clear thought tip toed across my mind. Did I lock the door? It was a question very much like was the coffee pot turned off before going on a trip. You never can remember, but you hope it was. Right then, I couldn’t remember locking the door. All she had to do was turn the knob and enter the house and then what? She’d have me right where she wanted me.

Go check, I thought.

Are you crazy? I replied.

There’s a witch at your door. What do you think?

I eased off the wall and poked my head into the doorway. I couldn’t tell if the door was locked or not? I took a deep breath, certain I would die before the night’s out. As quietly as I could, I eased into the living room and walked slowly to the door, hoping the floor wouldn’t creak or I wouldn’t stumble or bump into anything. Any noise would surely land me in a cauldron over an open fire. The thought made my bladder heavy.

When I reached the door, I looked out the peep hole. I saw her in the odd globe-like view these little one-way windows create. My bladder grew heavier. The witch was not alone. Next to her stood a vampire dressed in a fine white button-down shirt, powder white face, pointy ears and, long, sharp fangs. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, but I heard my name and the words, ‘he’s home.’

They knew I was there. I wanted to call for my wife again, but they would hear me and not leave. At least not until the vampire had drained the blood from my body and the witch had gathered my remains and stuffed me into her cauldron. I would be the Brown Brew and she would feed me to her witchy sisters.

I hope I taste good, I thought, then shook my head. No, no, no. She’s not going to eat me.

Of course not. She’s going to turn me into a toad and keep me as a pet. She’s going to feed me flies and … 

“Stop it,” I said aloud then slapped my hands back over my mouth.

The two outside became quiet. I looked through the peep hole. They had been joined by a ghost that looked like a soft-edged triangle, and a princess in a blue dress with blonde hair and a wand in one hand. She had to be an evil princess, maybe even a witch. Maybe a house needed to be dropped on her, on all of them.

The next knock on the door came but it wasn’t three sharp raps by one hand. It was several heavy thumps by multiple hands. They were growing restless and angry. It was only a matter of time before one of them busted out a window or magically unlocked the door. Then it would be all over but the stewing and brewing. 

My breaths came in quick gasps, and my heart was beating in my temples. 

I have to get out of here. 

I turned to run, then screamed like a two-year-old child. A shadowy figure stood in the doorway. It wasn’t short like the ones at the door. In its hands was a bowl. It was there to chop me up and give me to the monsters outside.

“Jeff, what are you doing?” she asked.

The light came on. Cate stood in the hallway, an orange bowl in one hand. 

She repeated her question, “What are you doing?”

“Ummm …” I pointed to the front door. “There’s monsters outside. They’re going to eat us.”

Cate rolled her eyes and brushed by me. She flipped on the porch light and unlocked the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s Halloween,” she said and opened the door. A well-timed chorus of Trick or treat came from the monsters outside. 

I looked over Cate’s shoulder as she talked to the children dressed as a witch, vampire, princess and ghost. I felt silly. I felt dumb. It was Halloween. It’s my favorite day of the year. How could I forget?

“Put an extra piece of candy in the ghost’s bag,” I said.

“Why?” Cate asked.

“He’s probably only been given rocks tonight.”

She rolled her eyes again then dropped an extra piece of candy in his bag.

I stood in the doorway and watched them walk down the drive and onto the sidewalk. The witch looked at me. She smiled her crooked smile, shook her head and cackled.

AJB

In the Beginning There Was a Nightmare

On June 29, 1993, I wrote my first short story. If you were  a member of my Patreon page, One Step Forward, then you know that story is called, Chuckie and was based on a nightmare I had multiple times. You also know how the story came about. But here, at Type AJ Negative and this thing I call The Concepts, you probably don’t know anything about that.  Today, I give you the story—the full story that has never appeared anywhere outside of Patreon.

I was twenty-two in June of 1993. On the day—early morning, really—I wrote Chuckie, it was eight days from my birthday. Before I get into that particular day (which is really short, to be honest), I want to tell you about what led to it.

A few weeks earlier, maybe longer, I can’t really remember, I began having nightmares. Time has a way of running together. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years … decades … they all run together at some point. Things you remember completely when they first happened become dull around the edges over time. Details get lost or exaggerated upon, and as a writer, my job is to exaggerate the truths while telling all sorts of lies. But those nightmares. I remember them quite well.

I was in a house, but I wasn’t me. I was a kid named Chuckie Benson. He had blond hair and blue eyes and was bigger than my lanky 150 pounds—oh and I had dark black hair. These days, it’s more on the gray side than black. The doorbell rang, which was definitely not a reality in the house I grew up in. No, there was no doorbell, only knuckles on wood. In the dream Chuckie—me—opened the door and there stood Alex, who looked like a burned up weenie with a sinister grin that was mostly teeth, and well, not really a grin. Alex didn’t have a last name in the dream or even in the original version of the story I wrote. When I rewrote the story, I gave him the last name of Morrison, since I was a Doors fan. 

I always ran  through the house trying to get away from Alex only to run into him somewhere else in the house over and over again. He would grab me by the throat in his still smoldering hands and choke me. At that point, I woke, not screaming or shooting up in my bed the way you see in movies. My eyes just snapped open and I was awake, my heart crashing hard in my chest and staring at the darkness of my room. 

I had this dream quite a few times, almost nightly for a while. This was bad for a couple of reasons, the biggest of these being sleep. I already struggled with sleep—had since I was about fourteen—and with this recurring nightmare, sleep became nonexistent. 

Then one day someone asked me, “Hey, are you okay? You look tired?”

“I haven’t been sleeping,” was my answer.

From there a conversation was had based on my lack of sleep. I mentioned the nightmares and how terrifying they were for me.

“Why don’t you write your nightmare down the next time you have it?”

“Why?”

“That might make it go away.”

That’s hoodoo magic nonsense I believed. I think the individual who told me that caught my thoughts on my face before I could even say anything.

For the next few paragraphs I will relay to you what was relayed to me, in as much detail as I can remember. These are the words I was told:

There was once a writer—a very good writer—who suffered from nightmares, specifically, one nightmare over and over and over. He got to where he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function and couldn’t write. He went to his doctor and told him what was going on.

The doctor said, “The next time you have the dream, get up and write it down. Writing it down will make the nightmare go away.”

The writer, desperate for some relief and sleep thought it couldn’t hurt.

That night he had the nightmare. When he woke, he got up and spent the next three hours writing the nightmare down. When he went back to bed, he didn’t have the nightmare, but the next night, lo and behold, the nightmare was back.

The writer went back to his doctor and took what he wrote with him. He explained to the doctor he had done what he was told to do.

“Let me see what you wrote,” the doctor said.

The author handed him the papers. The doctor spent the next little while reading it, then shook his head. “I see what the problem is,” he said.

“What?” the writer asked.

“What you wrote is the nightmare.”

“That’s what you said to write.”

“Yes, but you’re a writer. All you did was write the basic details of the nightmare. You didn’t write the story the nightmare is telling you. Next time you have the nightmare, write the story it is telling you.”

A couple nights later, he had the nightmare again. He got out of bed and spent the next three days writing the story of the nightmare. He never had the nightmare again.

That was the story told to me. Of course, with a story like that, I did, like anyone who heard it I think would do, asked, “Who was the writer?”

“Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“Really?” In actuality, I was thinking all sorts of B.S. had been told to me.

“And the story was The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Now, as with any story told like this, I was skeptical. Still, I was desperate for sleep. The next time I had the nightmare, which was the very next night, I got out of bed, pulled out a note pad—what people refer to as scratch pads now—and a pen. I spent the next couple of hours writing the bare bones story of Chuckie Benson and Alex Morrison. 

After I was done, I laid back down. I didn’t fall back asleep that night. However, I never had the nightmare again.

Here’s my caveat for this Concept: I’ve never been able to substantiate the story told to me about the writer or the story. I mean, the story does exist and the author was a real person. But I’ve found no record or truth of how the story came to be. It very well may be true. Or it very well may be something made up in the mind of someone playing shrink and offering a solution. 

Either way, it did work for me, and that’s what matters here. That  story springboarded me into writing hundreds more, something I loathed up until then. Other than jokes and parody songs, I hated the very idea of constructing a story. In school, I did the bare minimum to get by with a D-. 

The story—true or false as it may be—of the supposed nightmare Robert Louis Stevenson had that led to The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, remedied my own nightmares and spurred a love for writing that has never passed, and here it is thirty-one years later.

Ally’s Story

Ally sat on the floor in the bathroom between the bathtub and the toilet. She had moved the trash can before sitting down, knocking it over in her hurry. Tissues lay scattered on the floor around it, along with a used tube of toothpaste and a couple of toilet paper rolls. Her mascara made black streaks down her cheeks from the tears that fell from her eyes. Her knees were pulled to her chest. She gripped the gun her father gave her before he died in both hands. It was heavy in her tired hands. 

If she would have stayed calm when Barry showed up, she would have grabbed her cell phone. She didn’t and it sat on the kitchen table where she had been sitting when the first knock came. The knock didn’t scare her, even though it was heavy handed and sounded like thunder. It was the voice that came with it, the voice that told her Barry was there and things were about to get ugly fast. 

“Open up, Ally,” he said. Though he tried to sound cordial, maybe even nice, she knew better. “We need to talk about this.”

The second mistake she made was not grabbing her phone. In hindsight, it was probably her first mistake. She could have—should have—called the police as soon as he showed up. Instead, she stood from where she sat at her kitchen table and went into the living room. She didn’t quite get to the couch, which was new, as was the television and the nice chair that sat a few feet from the couch. A coffee table sat between the couch and the television (with a fashion magazine and local music paper sitting on it along with a blue and white coaster that stated the name of a local band one of her friends were in, Government Poptarts). The light in the living room was off, but a lamp that sat on a small end table near the door was on and lit up the front door and the window beside it well enough she could see Barry’s shadow beyond the curtain.

Her real mistake—first, second or third didn’t matter—was replying to Barry’s “Open up, Ally. We need to talk about this,” comment.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Barry. Go away.” She tried to sound tough, but deep down inside she was scared. In truth, she was terrified of him and had a hard time thinking right then. It’s not that Barry had been a bad husband—until a year ago they were great together, spent two years dating, nine years married and had a little girl, Amber. 

That was then.

So much can change in a year, and everything had, starting with Amber’s death and the initial legal issues Barry faced because of it. If he had just held her hand when crossing the street instead of texting a friend of his, then Amber wouldn’t have run out into the road and been hit by a car. At first it was a tragedy, one Barry argued was the driver’s fault. He even told Ally that. 

“The man was speeding, Amber,” he said from his side of the plexiglass booth, a blue phone receiver to his ear. And she believed him. Why wouldn’t she? “I barely kept from getting hit. I tried to grab Amber, but …”

Ally shook her head as she stared at the door. She had opened her mouth. She had spoken to him and now he knew she was home. At some point, she crossed the room and now only stood ten or so feet from the door.

“Ally, open the door.”

“No. Go away or I’ll call the police.” Her heart beat hard and her mouth felt dry. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His tone changed. The cordial sound was gone. His voice was no longer begging, but calm and angry at the same time.

“Barry, please leave.”

“I’m not leaving until we talk.”

She yelled next. “We’re done, Barry. Go away. I’m calling the cops.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll go away.”

She thought it was over. She thought he would leave. She waited a minute, then another. When there were no more knocks on the door, no more Barry talking on the other side, she went to the window, moved the curtain just enough to see if he were gone. 

A rock struck the window. It, along with broken glass, struck her in the face. She stumbled backward, fell over the armrest of the couch, and landed between it and the coffee table. The pain above her right eye was sudden and intense and accompanied by blood spilling from several spots on her face. 

“Open the door, Ally,” Barry yelled, this time it wasn’t muffled through the door. It was clear and through the broken window.

Ally got to her knees and looked back. Barry had an arm in the window and was trying to unlock the deadbolt, something she had a friend install when she filed for divorce and a restraining order. His hand found it but couldn’t quite unlock it.

Get up! her mind screamed. She stood. Her world spun for several seconds before she staggered away from the door, the couch and the chair. She didn’t think about her phone on the kitchen table or calling the police. All she thought about was running and hiding.

By the time she reached the hall, she heard the door open. She was almost to the bedroom when Barry kicked the door in and the chain at the top snapped. The door slammed against the wall and Barry yelled her name. She looked back in time to see him enter the house. 

Though her world spun, and she bumped into the wall, she managed to get the bedroom door closed and locked. 

That’s not going to hold, she thought. Then, her brain thought of her father, of the gun he gave her, and the fact she had put it in the dresser on the other side of the bed shortly after Barry was escorted out of the house by the police after refusing to leave. 

She rounded the bed and opened the drawer. By the time she had the gun in hand, Barry was at the bedroom door. He didn’t knock gently, but pounded on the door, demanding she open up and “talk about this like grown adults.” 

Ally didn’t respond. Instead, she ran to the bathroom, thinking she could crawl through the window. She slammed the door shut and locked it. Her stomach sank right along with her hopes—the window was above the toilet and entirely too small for someone other than a little child to fit through. She thought of Amber—she could have fit through it if needed. She had only been five at the time of her death and Barry’s negligence and …

Amber’s death was the beginning of the end, but wasn’t the sole reason for Ally filing for divorce. The police told a different story than Barry did, but that could have been his word versus the driver of the vehicle. The three witnesses who vouched for the driver didn’t help his cause, but even then, they were married, and Amber’s death was an accident, and she was going to stand by her man like a loyal wife and …

It was the text that ended their marriage. Barry wasn’t arrested right away. That happened the day after Amber’s death. Neither of them thought to get his phone from off the bedside table. The driver and the three witnesses told the truth, but there was so much more to it than just a friend texting a friend. It wasn’t until she checked his phone a few days after the accident—just a day after her daughter was buried—that she found out who the friend was. 

It was four in the morning when his text notification went off. Ally was tired but sleep was the furthest thing from happening. She picked up his phone, typed in his password and checked the message. Ally didn’t know who Kristin was, but a scroll through the text messages told her Barry had been talking with her for a while and having an affair for almost as long. The text with this Kristin the day before wasn’t just a distraction that led to his daughter’s death, but was him setting up their next hook up.    

Everything’s a lie, she thought.

Ally sat on the floor in the bathroom, the bathtub to her right, the toilet to her left. He could smell the soap she had used to take a shower not two hours earlier. She could smell the Clorox cleaner that hung on the inside lip of the toilet. She could smell sweat on her body. They were all scents that didn’t seem to go together. 

Her heart crashed hard in her chest; tears fell from her eyes, smearing mascara. Her stomach was in knots and her arms and hands shook. She didn’t think too much about what led to her current situation, to Barry’s breaking into the house they once shared during happier times, at least for her. All she thought about was Barry being outside the bathroom door, beating on it with his fist, yelling at her to come out as if he were the big bad wolf about to blow down her house of straw. And when he did, she had no doubts he would hurt her or worse. Though he never had before, Barry had become increasingly aggressive and angry and had left a message once on her cell stating, “if I can’t have you, no one can.” Until then, she never thought him capable of hurting her. Then again, she never thought he would have an affair either and he had. If she had to bet money on it, she thought he might have had more than one, that this Kristin chick was just his latest fling. The message led to the restraining order, one that didn’t seem to matter to him.

“Ally, I’m only going to ask you one more time to open the door.”

She swallowed hard. Her hands were sweaty. Her elbows were on her knees and her arms extended toward the door. She tried to keep her hands from shaking, but they still did. Her right pointer finger was on the trigger and the safety was off. She didn’t have to check to know it was loaded—she made sure of that right after the threatening message. 

“Please, go away,” she said, her voice shaky. 

“Not until we talk this over.”

She shook her head. There was nothing to talk about. She thought about her phone, how she should have grabbed it when he knocked on the door. She thought about her opening her big mouth and telling him to go home, there was nothing to talk about. She should have just called the police the moment he called out to her. There was a restraining order for crying out loud. She thought about the message he left her, how menacing and threatening it sounded.

“Please …” 

Barry hit the door hard. It shook in its frame. She thought he kicked it.

“Open the door!”

She didn’t get a chance to respond. He kicked the door again. She screamed. A third kick and the door jamb started to give way. On the fourth kick, the door slammed open and struck the wall by the sink. She barely saw the redness of his face, the anger in his eyes, the scowl on his face. 

Ally pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun going off was deafening in the small bathroom. She pulled it again and again and again until there were no more bullets and the gun only clicked when she squeezed the trigger. 

It was over in less than three seconds.

Barry didn’t fall forward into the bathroom. He fell backward. At that moment, her brain didn’t register the blood that soaked the front of his shirt before he hit the floor or the fact that three bullets struck him in the chest, one in the arm and one in the hip. The other one hit the wall to his left. 

Ally sat there between the bathtub and the toilet, her elbows on her knees, arms extended, the gun in both hands. She stared at Barry’s body, not really seeing it, her mind in a thick fog that prevented her from thinking. Eventually, she would have to stand and leave the bathroom. She would have to step over his body and try not to step in his blood. She would have to call the police if someone else hadn’t by the time she mustered the strength to move. She didn’t do any of those things right then. Instead, she dropped the gun on the floor between her legs and put her face in her hands.

AJB

Hold Me At the End of the World

The weather lady said to stay indoors. She added find a safe place away from windows and for all that is good and holy, do not stay in mobile homes. Those were certainly going to be carried off in the wind when the storms hit, and they were going to hit. A radar map appeared on the television. It was a future look, some four or so hours from then. The entire state was covered in green, the color for rain. There were orange patches here and there that indicated minor storms. It’s the red expanse off to the left of the state that held the weather lady’s attention. 

The map remained in the background, but the weather lady—Sandra Trapp—appeared on the screen wearing a blue dress and what looked like a white pearl necklace. Though she appeared put together, there was a quiver in her voice, one that said she was scared of what was coming and you should be, too. It was definitely a way to get across the gravity of the situation, if it was indeed grave. Or maybe it was just an act, a way to boost the ratings which, as far as anyone knew, could have been sagging because another local weather woman might be prettier or sexier or wear more revealing clothes. Or maybe she was just better at her job.

Art doubted any of those things were true, but who was he to say? 

“This storm is massive,” Trapp said. In her hand was the clicker she used to change the image on the green screen behind her. Her thumb pressed a button and the red blob on the left side of the map—the western portion of the state—began to move. It crossed into South Carolina, not as one storm, but a series of them, all with tiny hooks here and there, indicating possible tornado activity. “The entire state is under an emergency order to stay inside …”

Art clicked the off button on the remote. He had seen plenty over the last few days—enough to worry him, but not to the point of anxiety. No, anxiety was Lacey’s thing and she had managed to work herself into a tizzy the last couple of days. She even went to her brother—the pothead in her family, the one always shunned because of it—and asked for a couple of joints to calm her nerves. Isaac was willing enough to give them to her, and seemingly without judgment. She had already smoked half of one and seemed calmer on the outside. Art had no clue what was going on inside her head, so the effects of the joint looked to be doing what she intended. She offered him a puff. He declined. He knew of her anxiety and how it could sometimes make her completely irrational, so even if he didn’t approve of her use of marijuana, he said nothing. Still, he thought she knew how he felt about it.

The joint wasn’t the real problem, he thought. They had grown distant over the last few months, neither of them really talking about their days, their wants or anything really. They had slipped into a pattern of get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Occasionally, there was sex, but nothing like before where they both got into it, where they both wanted it. He fully believed those days were over. The weekends weren’t much better. One of them was usually gone during the days and on the occasions they went somewhere together, there was little real conversation, nothing with substance.

There had been arguments—far more than before—mostly over silly stuff like putting the toilet paper on the wrong way, or not washing dishes when they were done eating or him snoring too loudly. Yeah, that one was a real kicker. She snored, too, believe it or not.

No, it wasn’t the joint that was the problem. It was them—him and her, though he felt like it was all him.

Now, as the storm loomed just hours away, a touch of fear gripped his chest. 

We’re prepared, he thought. All the windows are boarded up. Sandbags are in front of both doorways, inside and out. They had food, thanks to Lacey’s anxiety. She went to the store and dealt with the crazies, and even had been one herself. She gathered the toilet paper and milk and jugs of water and Art didn’t know how many canned and boxed goods. They were set on those things. She bought extra batteries for flashlights, and, yes, she bought extra flashlights. Those flashlights were in every room, new batteries in each one, and all of them tested to Lacey’s satisfaction.

Art went to the window and opened the curtain to see if the clouds were gray, only to see a piece of plywood beyond the glass. He took a deep breath, went through the house and to the back door. It only took him a minute to remove the six heavy bags—at least thirty pounds apiece—and set them aside. He opened the door, stepped over the bags on the other side of the threshold and onto the porch. 

Dirty gray clouds moved fast across the sky. Those didn’t bring rain, but the wind, which had been a breeze of five or six miles per hour that morning, was now gusting around twenty or so. It was enough to make leaves rustle and fall from limbs and his hair whip around his face. His shirt ruffled and his skin grew cold. By evening, those same winds were supposed to be between sixty and ninety miles per hour. Mobile homes didn’t stand a chance against that. Many cars probably wouldn’t either. He wondered how many trees would uproot in the middle of the night. If those winds reached a hundred or higher, he feared for houses like his. Though seemingly solid and sturdy, who knew what winds like that would do to it?

“Art, what are you doing outside?” Lacey asked. She sounded irritated. 

“I just wanted to see what it’s like out here, you know, before the storms arrive.”

Lacey let out a deep sigh and shook her head. Her blue eyes were clear of any anxiousness, as was her face, which under normal circumstances would have a pinched worry on it. Her hands didn’t shake and she didn’t twist her fingers together like she often did when she was nervous. She left the door and walked away instead of fussing for him to come inside. 

Art’s shoulders slumped and he went back inside but didn’t put the sandbags back in place. He would do that later, before the storm got too bad. For now, he wanted to be able to peek out occasionally, even if just for fascination’s sake. 

Fascination was exactly what it was. He was like a young boy seeing the neighbor girl in a bikini for the first time. Though he knew what a girl was, seeing one so … so … almost naked was exhilarating and kept drawing him back to view some more. Though the impending storms weren’t pretty in the least, they held the same intrigue for him. 

When the winds picked up, he looked out the door. The clouds had gone from gray to black with a slight green tint to them. When the rain began, he peeked out the door again. It wasn’t quite going sideways but he thought it might soon enough. The wind had picked up considerably by then and tree limbs had already begun to snap and litter the back lawn. The last time he poked his head out the door was when the sound of something heavier than rain began tapping on the roof. Hail the size of dimes were mixed in with the rain. When he closed the backdoor that time, he locked it and put the sandbags back in place. 

Art took a breath. It seemed to shake his chest just like his hands did right then.

The lights flickered a few times and half an hour after the hail began to rain down, they went out altogether. Art had been sitting at the kitchen table, his phone in front of him, the weather app up. The storms had crossed into the state two hours earlier and were now knocking on the door of their small town, a town full of mobile homes and smaller houses, a town with mostly hard working people living there and very few well to do families. 

“Art?” Lacey called. Her voice shook. He frowned, not because it was her and they were on shaky ground at best, but because if her voice held that quiver, even after smoking half a joint, she was more than scared. She was terrified.

“In the kitchen,” he said. 

Before she entered the room, a beam of light appeared from the hallway. It was followed by Lacey. She wore shorts and a T-shirt, her normal sleep attire, though it was only a little after eight.

“The storm’s almost here,” she said. Her voice was calm now. Maybe the quiver had been in his head.  Her eyes were clear, where normally there might be tears in them.

“I don’t think it’s almost here. I think it’s already here. Or, at least, the beginnings of it, anyway.”

She nodded. It was the first time she showed any real signs of worry since the last time she took a hit off one of Isaac’s joints. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She frowned. This told him all he needed to know. Marijuana or no marijuana, Lacey was scared. It may help keep her calm, but it didn’t alleviate the fear she felt. “This storm is supposed to be one of the worst ones in the history of South Carolina. It’s already caused a lot of damage in other states—did you see what it did in Alabama?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Alabama. Any other time, he would have thought, it’s just Alabama. They were known for getting some bad tornadoes. They might even be used to the weather, he thought. But the storms that ripped through the state left hundreds dead, thousands homeless and entire towns flattened as if stepped on by a giant foot. If the tornadoes weren’t bad enough, the flash floods that came with it created raging rivers out of neighborhoods. 

“Georgia isn’t fairing much better.”

“I know, Babe.” When was the last time he called her Babe? He couldn’t tell you if he were pressed to. 

“Do you think we’re going to be okay?” Now there was real concern in her voice.

Art stood. He was tired and wired at the same time. He wanted to sleep but thought that would never happen, not with the possibilities the storms could bring. He put his arms around Lacey; she did the same with him and placed her head on his chest. It felt good. It felt natural. It felt … honest. Art said the only thing he knew to say: the truth. “I don’t know, Lacey. I hope we’ll be okay, but … I honestly don’t know. We’ve done everything we could to prepare but … I just don’t know.”

“That’s not very comforting.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to ride it out in here?”

If he were completely honest, he would have told her that was the plan, especially with the way things had been between them lately. He didn’t say that. “I don’t know. I might go into the living room for a while and hope the signal on my phone doesn’t go out.”

“Or you could come to bed with me and hold me as the world ends.”

This caught his attention. She wanted him around, maybe even needed him around. Maybe their marriage wasn’t as bad as he thought it had become. As the world ends? She fully believes this is it. She’s a lot more scared than I thought.

“I can come to bed, but I don’t think I’m going to sleep much.”

She pulled away from him. Even in the darkness of the room with her flashlight pointing down at her feet, he could see calmness on her face, in her eyes, even as her words told a different story. “I have something that could help with that.”

Any other time, Art would think she meant sex, but this time … this time she meant one of her brother’s joints. 

“I’ve never smoked one of those things.”

“It’s okay. I’ll help you through it.”

He considered it. He hated the idea of smoking anything—his dad died from lung cancer, and he had seen far too many movies where pot heads had fried brains. It’s not something he found appealing. Still, the very real prospect they could die tonight lingered and if Lacey’s cool demeanor was a result of a couple of puffs on a joint, then what did he really have to lose? On top of that, she wanted him with her … as the world ends. He would be her comfort. In return, she would be his. 

Art nodded. After years of not giving into peer pressure, beginning in high school, to drink or smoke weed or pop pills or anything of the sort, he said yes to the one person that mattered most to him. Like Isaac, Lacey didn’t appear to judge him. She smiled, squeezed him tight one more time, then took his hand. 

Lacey led him down the hall holding his hand, the flashlight in her other hand cutting a swath in the eerily dark house. His flashlight went on and centered on her back. Normally, he loved the way she looked in those shorts, and even more so when she walked in front of him. A smile always creased his face and his eyes always seemed to focus on the going away portion of her backside. He believed he wasn’t the only one who admired it. This time, he didn’t look down at her bottom. He focused on her blonde hair, the ponytail she kept it in, as it swung from side to side. 

They entered the room that was both storage and office. Their lights showed the desk opposite the door, the chair tucked beneath it. Light reflected back to him from the computer monitor sitting atop the desk. There was a couch to the left. He didn’t need light to know it was dark green and had a small blanket hanging over the back. There were two beige filing cabinets near the desk, both bought at a yard sale for twenty bucks apiece. A throw rug covered the floor in front of the couch, an old coffee table on top of it. An ashtray sat near the center of it, one half smoked blunt perched on its lip, the other one—nonsmoked—beside it. A lighter sat beside the ashtray. It was nothing more than a yellow Bic Lacey bought while she was at the store with all the other crazies. 

They went to the couch. Lacey sat first, then motioned for Art to do the same thing. “Sit down. It’s a lot more relaxing that way.”

Art sat. Between them was about three feet of space. Lacey didn’t pick up the partially smoked blunt. She picked up the other one. She put it to her lips, picked up the lighter and flicked the wheel a couple of times until a flame—a much larger one than Art expected—fired up. She put the flame to the tip of the blunt. As smoke began to rise off of it, she inhaled. A light red cherry appeared at the tip. Lacey tipped her head back, her breath clearly being held. After maybe ten seconds, she released the smoke into the air in one long, billowing stream. She inhaled, then exhaled several times. 

“Okay, Art. Your turn.”

She held the joint out to him. He looked at it for several seconds as if it were something dangerous, deadly even. He supposed in some cases, marijuana could be dangerous if someone spiked it with fentanyl or some other drug. But Lacey didn’t keel over dead or even act as if something were wrong. He took the joint and looked at it. A light tendril of smoke rose in the air from its tip.

“Put it to your lips, kind of purse them together, then inhale.”

“How long do I inhale?”

Lacey shrugged. “Since you’ve never done this, maybe three seconds? Then hold the smoke in your chest. Count to ten and release it.”

“Ten?”

Outside, a gust of wind slammed into the house. They both looked at the ceiling. Thunder, which had been nonexistent for the most part, began to boom around them. He imagined streaks of white or yellow lightning zig zagging to the ground just before the thunder rumbled. Art’s heart picked up, his stomach knotted. Nerves were beginning to settle in as the storm grew worse. 

Lacey held the joint out to him. Though it was lit, very little smoke plumed from the tip. Art took it. It felt a little rougher than a cigarette, another thing he had never smoked before, but had held plenty of times at parties or for his mother when she needed an extra hand and didn’t want one hanging from her lips. There had even been a few occasions where someone from the church came by the house when she was smoking. Instead of putting it out, she gave it to Art and told him, “Don’t you take one puff of this.” Then she would go to the door, talk to whoever was there, then return to a cigarette that had burned down a little since she handed it to him.

“You didn’t smoke any of this, did you?” she always asked, her eyes squinted in as much of a question as what she spoke. 

“No, Momma,” was always his answer and it was always the truth.

Right then, he held the joint with two fingers and a thumb as if it were a delicate flower and squeezing it would ruin it.

“Put it to your lips.”

Art did as she said, letting the joint touch his lips, but not actually putting his lips around it. 

“A little further, Art.”

Now his lips wrapped around it. Before she could say inhale, he took a drag—one far too long for someone who had never smoked anything before. The smoke filled his chest, burning it and his throat. He didn’t have a chance to hold it in. He began to cough. Smoke blew from his mouth and nose. He grabbed a bottle of water from the coffee table and took a few swallows. He coughed again. Some water sprayed from his mouth. Lacey stood and patted him on the back. When he stopped coughing, her hand still rubbed his back. 

Tears were in his eyes when he looked up at her. “How does anyone smoke? That was horrible.”

“You get used to it. Eventually, that … that initial shock to the system goes away.”

Though that told him more about how many times she had smoked, he said nothing about it, instead, asking something else. “Do I need to take another drag?”

“Probably—you coughed all that one out.”

Art took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t know, Lacey. That was pretty horrible.”

“Just take a smaller puff—two seconds, tops.”

“It tasted like butt.”

“You know what butt tastes like?”

“No. It tasted how I think butt would taste like.”

Outside the wind slapped against the side of the house. Rain beat down on the roof. It sounded like gunfire. Though the lone window in the room was boarded up, lightning had to be lighting up the sky—thunder boomed every few seconds now.

They exchanged looks. He didn’t know how his eyes looked, but he could see real fear in hers. Yeah, she could probably see the same in his. 

At least I’m not the only one scared.

Art put the joint to his lips, inhaled, counting, one, two, then pulled it away. Though his chest and throat still burned, he didn’t have that sudden, almost violent, urge to cough. He released the smoke, then coughed again.

“Now what?”

“We go to bed.”

“But I don’t feel anything, well other than the burning in my throat and chest.” He rubbed his chest with one hand for emphasis. 

“Getting high is not like in the movies, Art. You don’t take one puff and you’re suddenly high and happy and saying, ‘whoa, dude.’ It’s like anything else. It has to get into your bloodstream. Give it a few minutes. By then, we’ll be in bed.”

Lacey took the joint, put it to her lips and took a long drag. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back and held the smoke for nearly ten seconds before releasing it into the air. She took a deep breath and held the joint out to Art. “Take one more.”

Art didn’t argue. What’s it going to matter if they died tonight? Any long term effects he thought he could have would never happen. 

But what if we survive?

The mental version of him shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands in an oh well gesture. 

Art took the joint, put it to his lips and slowly inhaled for longer than two seconds. His chest burned again, and a harsh tickle formed in his throat. He put one hand to his mouth, trying to clamp it shut and keep from coughing. It didn’t work. Though he didn’t hack up a lung this time, he still coughed, his cheeks puffing out and a small amount of smoke wafted from his nose. He held the rest in as long as he could, only releasing it after more than ten seconds when his head started feeling light. 

Lacey’s hand went on one of his arms. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, placed a hand on his chest and licked his lips. “Yeah.” It came out breathy and rough. 

He didn’t know how long they sat there, husband and wife, lovers, each one in their own heads, each one needing the other to get through the night, if there was any getting through it. She had asked him to hold her as the world ends. Now, he wanted nothing more than to do that. At least, there would be no more growing apart, no more senseless arguments, no more feeling everything wrong in their marriage was his fault.

“Let’s go to bed,” she said.

“Okay.”

They stood, both of them rounding the coffee table on opposite sides. They left the room, her in front, him behind. Down the hall to the bedroom they went. It was slow going, as if the room wasn’t less than twenty feet away, but more like a mile or two. Eventually, they reached the door and went inside. Art closed it behind him.

Their bedroom was typical, he thought. A queen sized bed near the center of the wall opposite the door. Small end tables sat on either side of the bed with lamps on each one. A clock was on the one near Lacey’s side of the bed. It read four minutes after ten. Art had a moment to wonder how it got so late. A dresser sat to the left of the door, a television sitting atop it. There was another door that led to a half bath, which was referred to Lacey’s Lady’s Room. It held all of her makeup, a mirror, a toilet she only used and a few other odds and ends she put in there. The closet was just beyond the dresser. The room wasn’t entirely neat with some clothes on the floor and a small trashcan beneath the end table on his side overflowing with mostly tissues and candy wrappers. There was no carpet, just the original hardwoods, scuffed over time by shoes and the moving of furniture. The only thing different this time was a light sitting on the dresser that looked like an oil lamp. Art had seen it before. It was nothing more than a battery powered flashlight. Instead of a button to push to turn it on, there was a knob (much like an oil lamp) you turned to brighten or dim the light. He thought that was a nice touch by Lacey. 

He didn’t bother changing out of his jeans and shirt. He kicked his shoes off, pulled his socks off and went to turn off the light.

“Leave the light on, Art,” she said. He did so without question, even though they both liked pitch-black darkness when it came time to sleep. 

Outside, the storm grew worse. The house shook with each clap of thunder. The rain sounded like a train going over the roof. Though the windows were boarded up, a sliver of light from lightning showed through the crack on the edge of one. He thought he heard hail striking the house. 

Lacey crawled into bed and pulled the sheets up on her side. Art followed, sliding in beside her. For the first time in a while, Lacey scooted over to his side of the bed and laid her head on his chest. One arm went around his waist. Art slid his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tight. He let his fingers tickle her shoulder the way he did when they first got together.

“I love you,” Lacey said.

“I love you, too, Babe.”

They turned and kissed. It was long and raw and in other times may have led to something other than sleep. Then they settled into the bed, her head on his chest, his arm around her shoulder.

Art stared at the ceiling for what felt like much longer than the two minutes it actually was. Lacey’s breathing slowed and he knew she was asleep. He didn’t know if they would wake up in the morning, or even if there would be a morning for the rest of the world. At that moment, he didn’t care. He closed his eyes as the storm grew more intense. At some point, he heard nothing more and began to drift away with the comfort of Lacey in his arms. His last thought before giving in completely to sleep was I’ll hold you as the world ends.

Sleep claimed him and the storm was no more.

Concepts

With every book I’ve put out, I have always added notes at the back of the book or at the end of each story. I’ve always loved when authors do this, but so few do. To me, this is like getting an inside look at the process of coming up with a story. It’s a sneak peek into the mind of the author. 

Sometimes there’s not much to the process at all. It can be as simple as overhearing something someone said (as is the case for Digger’s Lament, written in 1999). Or it can be as complicated as seeing something, not knowing exactly what your mind is thinking, but absolutely knowing there is a story there (as is the case for a picture of a woman playing the piano near a railroad track as it appeared on the front page of the New York Times one day in the summer of 2023 which led to the story, Face the Music). Sometimes the idea can come from a picture a child drew (as is the case for On the Rails, based on a picture of a colorful train my daughter drew with people beneath it). It could be something disturbing or funny or maybe even worrisome that you witnessed (as is the case with Cassidy and Owen’s Cemetery For Almost Dead Things). The inspiration could have come from a song (which are the many cases for most of the stories I wrote in and around 2007). The inspiration could come from a real life tragedy (as every story I have written on September 11^th has been since that day in 2001).

Amy Winehouse once said in an interview these words: “Music is the only thing that will give and give and give and not take.”

That’s powerful. I agree with her that music gives and gives and gives and never takes. I don’t agree it is the only thing that does that. I believe stories give and give and give and don’t take. Both of them are art. Both of them are created from nothing and become something. Both of them involve words and if a story is done right, it is like a song without music. Every song is rooted in something the creator saw or felt or heard or something that touched him or her. It’s personal. Every story is exactly the same. The creator saw or heard or felt something that moved him or her to create a fictional world from it. It’s a beautiful thing.

When I read about where a story comes from it’s as if the author is telling me these things—me, not you or anyone else. Me. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Hey, buddy, let me tell you how this story came to be.’ I get excited. No one else may care about this thing. But I do. 

Every story, no matter how short or how long, has a background, it has roots in something. It has its own life. And I like to share that life with you.

So, here we are, on this website, me getting personal with you about how my stories come to be. I hope you’ll stick around. I hope you’ll read these pieces. I hope you will comment and have a discussion with me about them. I hope I don’t bore you with them. That would be tragic. 

Thank you.

A.J. 

Don’t Snoop

The following is a memory that was triggered when I made a sandwich to take to work with me. 

*

“Don’t snoop,” Grandmomma always said when I was being nosey or poking around in places I had no business poking around in. “Don’t snoop.”

My grandparents lived in an old two-story house in what some call the mill hill and others call the mill village. I called it home. I spent a large chunk of my childhood there, running the streets with my brother, for the most part. Occasionally, other kids would show up, them, like us, visiting their grandparents for the weekend or the summer or Christmas or Easter break or whenever Mom and Dad needed a break. There were only a handful. Tony. Wayne. David. Bryce. David B. Bryce was the only mainstay for a while, his family living in the corner house of the same street my grandparents lived on. He moved away when I was nine or ten. I can’t remember. David B. was the next to leave, though not by his own will. Getting hit by a car and dragged a short distance before getting untangled beneath it isn’t exactly your own will. Wayne and David—it seemed I knew three sets of brothers with that combo of names—showed up the least of the bunch. Then their grandparents moved away and so did they. Leaving Tony, myself and my brother … and the Barnett brothers, but we steered clear of them and when we saw them coming, we all ran the other way. 

I spent a lot of time with my granddad, playing marbles, watching the Braves on television, walking down to the McDonald’s from time to time for an egg mcmuffin, or heading to Brown’s Grocery for whatever he needed and the occasional bag of candy and coke in a small glass bottle. Those same bottles we collected and took back to Brown’s for money. I cut the grass and cleaned the yard from time to time, all things outside. 

When it came to the inside, that was all Grandmomma, and even trying to help clean from time to time was considered snooping. 

Still, we snooped when we could. I don’t know why, but I think it is something all children do, and many adults as well. We’re curious, people are. We go to a house we’ve never been to and suddenly have to use the bathroom, which may be true. A lot of people peek into the medicine cabinet just to see what’s there. It’s a medicine cabinet, what do we think we will find besides, I don’t know, medicine?

Grandmomma’s house was laid out fairly simple. A living room when you walked in the front door, a bedroom directly off to the left, the door always closed. There wasn’t really a hallway, but small area directly beyond the living room that opened into what could be considered a large dining room. To the right of the dining room was a walk-in closet or a pantry. To the left was a small kitchen with a stove and sink to the right, a table and chairs to the left, and like every other kitchen in America, cabinets for plates, bowls, glasses, canned goods, perishables and whatever else went in kitchens. A small black and white television sat on the counter. Off the dining room was another door. When you opened it, the door to the left was the bathroom. Stairs led up to the second floor where two large bedrooms sat, separated by a small walkthrough closet. There were lots of places to snoop. There was also the back porch with Granddaddy’s various tools and what nots and the metal shed that I thought had been built rusty but somehow remained upright. 

Snooping at Grandmomma’s house wasn’t easy. You had to be almost ninja-like. Well, not really, but we were kids and kids aren’t exactly known for their stealth. Grandmomma had to either be outside, in the bathroom or asleep for us to snoop successfully. Even then we had to be quick. 

There was a piece of furniture in the living room that had a drawer in it and two doors at the bottom. I only ever opened those doors once—there were only boring things like books and papers down there. The drawer was wide and long but not very deep. Still, it held things like jewelry and coins and other trinkets little boys wouldn’t be interested in. The only time I ever stole money from my grandparents came from that drawer. Two case quarters, as Granddaddy would put it. They never said they knew I stole the quarters, but I think they did. I mean, I explained it away when I came back from Brown’s with a little more than what a quarter would buy back then by saying I returned a couple of bottles. Still, I think they knew otherwise. I never looked in that drawer again while they were both alive. It was only after they had passed, when we were cleaning out their house, that I looked in the drawer and recalled stealing two case quarters. 

The bedroom off the living room was rarely a good idea. Though there was a bed and dresser and two small end tables in the very small room, it was mostly used for storage. Getting in and out of there quietly and quickly was next to impossible. Snooping in the pantry was easy. That was the one place Grandmomma or Granddaddy would send us to get some canned or boxed good. The only thing remotely tempting was the rack of clothes to the right of the door when you walked in. There were always boxes hidden by the clothes. Still, if they didn’t send us in there, we had best not be in there. And they always knew we had snooped. I didn’t understand how they knew, but over time it dawned on me. There was a pull string for the light. We would pull it when we entered the pantry, but not always when we left. If that light was on, we gave ourselves away. 

The bathroom was a bathroom, and yes, the medicine cabinet contained various medicines, none of which interested me, though I can’t say the same about my uncle, but that’s a different story. 

The upstairs was tricky. Several things had to happen for us to snoop up there. First, my uncle had to be away. That was his domain and if he caught us up there, he was a bear—a mean one. Second, both grandparents had to be outside. Then we had to pretend we were going to the bathroom, quickly bound up the steps (which made so much noise it made bulls in China closets look quiet). I always preferred the room on the right—my uncle didn’t sleep in that one. There always seemed to be something neat in there, from his guitars to his girly magazines. He also hid his drugs in various places in both rooms and the small walkthrough closet that never seemed to have a light that worked. I didn’t like the walkthrough closet and I spent as little time in the upstairs as possible, always afraid our uncle would come home and be a mean bear. Whenever we got caught up there by Grandmomma we told her we were just going up the steps so we could slide down on our bottoms. It was a good lie. It really was. Not that it worked, but it was the one we used the most.

That brings me to the kitchen drawer—yes a specific one. It was to the left when you walked into the kitchen and the last one along that counter. In it were various things a little boy could find interesting. Red and green rubber bands that kept the newspapers rolled up when the paper man came by and tossed them out his window and into the yard; many colorful twist ties that held bread wrappers shut. Yellow and green seemed to be the color that was most popular, with an occasional red, white, or black thrown in there. Bobby pins that were used to hold Grandmomma’s hair back. They were also useful for putting on the front part of a paper airplane to give it weight and steady the plane so it would fly longer and farther. There were measuring cups I never saw Grandmomma use. There were pennies and bottle caps and glasses so old the lenses were tinted brown. Sewing thread, needles I poked myself with more than a handful of times, and wooden pencils sharpened with a knife, not a wall or electric sharpener. Grease pencils with a piece of thread near the tip you pulled so the paper would peel, and the tip of the pencil would get bigger. I loved those grease pencils. 

The drawer was a wonderland of junk that always fascinated me. It’s also the drawer that was never off limits. It wasn’t snooping if I went in that drawer to get a rubber band or a bobby pin for an airplane. It was a safe drawer. And it was the one I loved the most. 

Like everything in life, good and bad things alike, everything comes to an end.

After both my grandparents passed away, I went “home” for the last time and helped clean some of the house out. I went back to that drawer and opened it with the reverent awe of a six-year-old. As I looked in the drawer, tears filled my eyes. It had already been emptied. I looked at the bare drawer and recalled the rubber bands and twist ties and bobby pins and thread and needles … and grease pencils. My heart cried. I did, too.

I took a deep breath, wiped my eyes, and composed myself. My brother and I made our way up the stairs for the last time. He pointed out and even showed my mom where her brother—our uncle—hid his drugs in places in the wall, by the heater, in the crawl space in the ceiling of the walkthrough closet. At the top of the steps, I sat down. I thought bout sliding down those steps on my bottom. I didn’t. 

The other day I was making a sandwich to take to work with me. I pulled the yellow twist tie from the almost empty package of bread and set it on the table. I always give the dogs the last three pieces of bread, the two end pieces and one other piece (three dogs, three pieces of bread). We call it bread butt day for the dogs. They love bread butt day. 

I tossed the empty package in the trash and picked up the twist tie. It was mangled, as twist ties tend to become once they are used. I looked at it and thought about the drawer in my grandparents’ kitchen for the first time since the last time I saw it empty. I walked over to the drawer next to the sink, opened it and dropped the twist tie in there. I smiled, heard my grandmomma whisper, “Don’t snoop,” in my mind’s ear and closed the drawer.

5/19/2023

AJB