the Writings of David J Rust

NaNoWriMo 2009 - "fen", Chapter One - Writing sprint, part one

2009-11-01T05:55:30Z

1,202 words out of 50,000.

Going to bed, now. More in a few hours.

Yours,
Sylvan (Dave)

furry

2007-11-30T00:07:39Z

Chapter One	Chapter Two
Chapter Three	Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Interlude
Chapter Six	Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight	Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten	Chapter Eleven
Interlude
Chapter Twelve	Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen	Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen

furry ... mock-up book cover

2007-11-18T18:15:58Z

Each year, for the last three, I've posted -somewhere through the creation process- a mock cover for my NaNoWriMo novel. This year is no exception!

I want to thank Aerak (mfwolf) for being my model. He's a great fursuiter and a good friend!

Here it is, folks, the cover to "furry".

Yours,
Sylvan (Dave)

The Interview

2006-12-12T12:07:15Z

This is a dream I just had. I woke up a few minutes ago with this fresh in my mind. Mr. Peller looked like Jeff Goldblum (and sounded like him). I simply had to write this down as soon as I woke up; it was amazingly cool and will -no doubt- become the kernal of a story to write! Sure, I dashed this out very quickly, but it's pretty interesting...

The Interview

by David J Rust

4:56am, Tuesday, December 12, 2006

December, cold and dry, still clung to David’s suit as he sat at Mr. Peller’s desk while the man flipped through his application and résumé. His dark eyes scanned the ivory paper intently but with a familiarity that demonstrated it was merely for show. Clearly the copy he’d sent to Arbogast Publishing two weeks before had been carefully read and digested long before he’d actually walked into the room and sat down. And, by the very nature of his being here and being offered the chance to pitch his credentials to the Director Editor himself, David felt very sure that the job would be his.

“You have a very colorful work history,” the man asked, looking over the top of the résumé. “Tell me, what brought you to our company?”

A thousand possible answers went through his head in an instant.

“Beyond seeing the ad on AIGA’s Web site,” David responded, “I think it was that Arbogast Publishing works with some of the best authors alive, today. And while I’m only applying for the job of an editor, I do have my own literary ambitions.”

“You’re looking at this as a doorway to publication?” Mr. Peller asked. His hair was as dark as his eyes, short and curly, and he looked amusedly at the man across from him over his hawk-like nose and thin lips.

“Oh, no,” David said genially, “but I figure that exposure to so many great writers would be good for me as much as my skills with the English language would be good for you.”

The answer seemed to satisfy the man who stood and walked across the large, windowed room to the only other desk in it, and handed the résumé and cover letter to a professional-looking woman sharing the office with him.

“Thank you, Tom,” she said, taking the papers and giving them a brief glance. “Mr. Jeremiah would seem to have just the right attitude for our corporate family.” She smiled at him and David saw that her title -engraved on a placard on her desk- was, similar to Mr. Peller, “Submissions Director”.

“That’s what I hope,” David said, standing as Mr. Peller nodded to him. “I look forward to showing you what I can do.”

“Well, that said, all that remains is your basic skills test and a meeting with the publisher.”

David nodded genially. He’d taken the day off from his existing job to come here in secret and apply for work that seemed, frankly, like a dream come true for him. The years of work he’d spent hammering away at computer keys -entering data, correcting financial forms, and taking abuse from irritated management- was a background he was eager to ditch. In fact, his only professional writing experiences had been a brief stint during college at the Minnesota Daily and about two years previous when he’d spent eleven months writing and editing ad copy for clients ranging from septic treatment firms to candidates for political office. It was a range he found distressingly similar.

Finally, however, he’d gotten the courage to apply at a big firm and put his skills to the test. He’d done plenty of writing over the years since college both in small volunteer publications and, most recently, in his blog. However, Arbogast Publishing didn’t seem to care about that. In fact, it was -he suspected- the writing samples he’d submitted along with his work history that had gotten him the interview.

He followed Mr. Peller out of the shared Director’s office down the hall past frosted glass doors to one with the words “HUMAN RESOURCES” on it. He handed David some papers in a manila folder he’d apparently gotten from the Submissions Director and nodded. “Just take these to Jansen Weathers and fill them out; I’m sure there will be no trouble.” David’s interviewer indicated the door and turned to go back to his office.

“When I’m done...?”

“Just come back to the office and we’ll go over the final bits of the application,” he said over his shoulder.

David nodded and looked back at the entrance to Human Resources. He took a deep breath, clutched the papers in his palm, and pushed the door open.

The air pressure differential surprised him as he walked through into what looked less like an office and more of a ground-floor lobby. He blinked at the much brighter light than was in the more subdued hallway, outside, and looked around. Confusion descended over his face.

It was an office lobby all right. Large, plate glass windows looked out onto a blustery street, small trees -still with occasional clusters of orange and yellow leaves clinging to their branches- waving in the gusts of wind. The floor was highly polished marble and the company logo, Arbogast Publishing, was detailed in gold on the floor. He looked back at the door he’d come through and saw the hallway going back to the Directors’ office.

Was this a joke? Was he being shown the door as a not-so-subtle way of being told “thank you, but no thank you”?

More than that, he’d taken the elevator up to the tenth floor of the company’s Minneapolis office and, frankly, this lobby looked nothing like that of the building he’d entered only twenty minutes before. The door shut behind him and he decided, before going back to speak with Mr. Peller, to look at the papers he’d been given. To the outside of the folder was paper-clipped a routing slip.

“TO: Jansen Weathers, Human Resources, Shaumberg, IL; November 17th, 2006.”

Not only was the city not in Minnesota but the date was nearly a month old. For a moment he oscillated between thinking this was an elaborate joke and an increasingly impolite way of giving him the bum’s rush. But this...

He looked around at the lobby in which he found himself and felt a chill run through him. Seeing was believing, he’d always said, and his surroundings -while confusing- begged further exploration. A large clock was on the wall over the door to the street and read the time as about fifteen minutes before Noon. He looked back at the routing slip on his manila folder and noted that the time stamped on it was 12:05pm. To his right, in the empty lobby, there was another door that said “HUMAN RESOURCES” tantalizingly close to the revolving doors just across from him.

Deciding he would take only a minute, he strode forward, pushed through the glass portal, and stepped out onto the street.

The wind was even stronger than it had looked and the streets were only slightly busy with people. It looked like he was in a downtown strip, a few office buildings around him as he got his bearings. The thing of it was, he’d been to Shaumberg before -only about a month before, in fact- and this did look like the place. But how he’d wound up over three hundred miles away from his interview, he didn’t know. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone.

It was chilly, but not cold, and most of the people walking on the streets only had on light windbreakers. He glanced left and right and -in the distance- saw a familiar landmark. It was The Cambridge Hotel where he’d stayed during the conference only a few weeks before. It was in the distance but unmistakable. Shaking his head in amazement, he started walking in that direction.

About two blocks down, next to a bus shelter, stood a retaining wall rising up to block his view of the hotel. A staircase was built into its side and he was able to get to the top fairly quickly. There, much closer and across the trees of a small park, he could see it more clearly. It was, indeed, the very same hotel he’d stayed in along with friends and strangers for a weekend. Several people were cutting through the park from offices along its Eastern edge, heading past him down to the bus stop.

“Uh, that’s the Cambridge, right?” he asked a woman passing him, pointing at the distant building.

“I don’t really know,” she admitted.

“It is,” a man walking nearby, said. “I used to work at the office complex just on the other side of it.”

David nodded and stood there for a moment, just staring. It was impossible. It was like something out of the science fiction he would occasionally write. Or, worse, like something out of one of the horror stories he contemplated wherein the main character would find himself in a strange, uncontrollable situation with no explanation and only a vague sense of self-preservation to rely upon to get him out of it. He turned and headed back down the stairs where the people he’d met were congregating in the shelter waiting for the next bus.

“I love coming to Shaumberg,” he said, leadingly, joining the others and starting conversation. “Every year when I drive down this way, I stop in Jaynesville for pizza Shakey’s.”

The man who’d spoken to him nodded. “I don’t think I’d live anywhere else,” he confirmed. “I’ve thought about moving the extra hour closer to downtown Chicago but, frankly, I like the traffic out this way much better.”

“And the people, too,” the woman with him said. “Do you come here on business?”

David smiled, thinly, to conceal any confusion he might be showing. “Usually pleasure, though at the moment, ‘business’.”

He nodded a curt farewell and pulled his suit coat tighter across his chest as a big gust of wind made him shiver, and started back towards Arbogast Publishing. He checked his watch. He still had five minutes. His feet were uncomfortable in the tight dress shoes he’d put on for the interview and he regretting not wearing his usual sneakers. Still, in a short time he was back at the office and passing through into the lobby from windy, autumn cold into warmth. The place hadn’t changed at all, nor had he really expected it to. Only a small part of his mind -that part which idolized Rod Serling and other storytellers who specialized in the strange and unusual- in any way expected him to find something horrible waiting. Instead, only the mystery as it had been presented to him, remained.

It was only a couple minutes to go but he decided to see it through.

Striding with confident steps he didn’t really feel, he walked up to the Human Resources door and opened it to go inside.

A man on the other side of a long desk looked up with a smile. “Ahh, good day!”

“Good day,” David said with a professional nod. “Uh, windy day outside.”

“Always seems to be this time of the year,” the man responded. “How may I help you?”

“I, uh, have these for Mr. Weathers,” he said, handing the folder over.

The man opened the folder and glanced at the papers inside, nodding. He glanced at the clock on the wall and nodded once more. Putting them down on his side of the desk, he stamped them several times and smiled. “Perfect,” he said, looking back at David. “You did splendidly. I’ll fax my response to the Director.” With that, he held out his hand, shook David’s, and indicated the door through which he’d just come.

“But what...?”

“Mr. Peller will meet you back at his office,” the man said, helpfully.

David nodded.

Still curious, but still hiding it, he left the office and walked, slowly, to the double frosted glass doors that lead back to the tenth floor hallway from which he remembered coming. The worst part of all this was its normalcy. Was he going nuts? What was happening, here?

He pulled the door open, half expecting the nasty surprise of there not being a hallway on the other side, but finding -plainly enough- the same wood-paneled walls he’d left less than a half hour before. He walked through the door and, with some hesitance in his steps, strode down the hallway to the end where the Directors’ office was.

“Ah, back so soon?” Peller said, standing up from behind his desk as David entered. “Excellent! I knew you showed promise!”

“Mr. Peller, about the Human Resources office...”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that later,” the man said as a fax started coming through on his desk. “In the meantime, I think you should meet Mr. Arbogast.” Taking the sheet of paper from the machine’s hopper, he walked over to David and patted his shoulder. “Come on...”

David nodded, following, readying questions in his mind.

“Weathers reports you did very well,” Peller said. “You showed inquisitiveness and curiosity but also caution and restraint. Quite good, indeed!”

“Yes, well, I’ve read ‘Sound of Thunder’; I was careful not to step on any butterflies.”

Peller laughed. “Excellent; excellent! Just the sort of answer I’d expect from a promising employee!”

The two rounded a corner, past the elevator bank, and continued down the hallway to a large set of stained oak doors. On the outside was affixed a bronze plaque reading “JAMES ARBOGAST - PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER”.

“You’ll make a fine Historical Editor, David; just fine...”

With that, Mike Peller opened the door for David and ushered him inside.

f i l k - A 2006 NaNoWriMo Novel by David J Rust

2006-11-26T18:06:51Z

At 11:00am CST, sitting in Urban Harvest, I wrote the last words...

83,196 / 50,000
(166.4%)

Chapter One	Chapter Ten
Chapter Two	Chapter Eleven
Chapter Three	Chapter Twelve
Chapter Four	Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Five	Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Six	Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Seven	Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eight	Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Nine	Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen

The End

Not bad, eh?

Book Two, if I continue this, will be called "Furry".

Yours,
Sylvan (Dave)

"Reality's Mirror, book one: Prophecy's Game"

2005-12-01T01:53:10Z

100,962 / 50,000
(201.9%)

Here it is, in its entirety, "Reality's Mirror: Prophecy's Game".

Cover of my book, "Reality's Mirror"

This book is dedicated to the memory
of my loving Grandmother,
Virginia Thorsen.

Prologue

Part One: Arrival
Chapter One, part one
Chapter One, part two
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six, part one
Chapter Six, part two
Chapter Seven

Interlude

Part Two: Summer
Chapter Eight, part one
Chapter Eight, part two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen

Interlude/Epilogue

Yours,
David J Rust (Sylvan SilverNight)

Book Cover

2005-11-18T22:45:13Z

Writer's Block - part 23

2005-04-07T22:27:14Z

      The darkness within him lurched and he felt an almost palpable desire to lash out at the person; to strike him from his perch and grind him into the soft earth at the boulder's base. Steven beat back the alien impulse and slowly strode forward.

      The figure turned its head and looked up at him.

      "Are you new?" he said in a quiet voice.

      Perched on the stone was a young boy, no more than ten or eleven years old. His clothing was muted, like all the colors, here, but looked to be a blue blazer over a Spider-Man t-shirt. Steven nodded in response.

      "I think I am," he said. "Where am I?"

      The boy raised an eyebrow, his hands still clutching the unseen thing in their grey fingers. "You must be new," he said. "You don't know where you are? Is this your first time?"

      Steven furrowed his brow. "You've been here before?" he asked.

      The boy nodded. "Hundreds of times; that's why it takes so long for me to finish up and leave."

      Steven looked him over and noticed a slight glow coming from the boy's hands. The luminescence of whatever it was he held, shone through between the youth's fingers, casting a slight amount of yellow warmth upon his jeans.

      "I don't think I'm supposed to be here, yet," he said, taking a guess at the nature of this place. "I was brought here against my will... What do you have there?"

      The boy grinned, slightly, and looked down at his hands. "This?" he asked, uncoiling his fingers. A bright, yellow ball glowed in the center of his palms, seemingly without any physical constraints as if light, itself, had decided to burst into being on it's own without a bulb, flame, or physical object to cast it. "It's my past; it's what I need to deal with before leaving..."

      Steven nodded. "You're dead then, right?"

      The boy looked up, his face looking concerned. "And you're not?" he asked.

      Steven nodded in response and the boy squinted, looking closer. After a moment, a look of realization came over him and he stood up, sliding off the boulder to the ground. "You ... you're not supposed to be here; not like this..." His voice sounded disturbed.

      "I can't help it," he replied. "I was brought here..."

      "You brought yourself here, you mean," the boy interrupted, backing away from Steven. "You'd better get going before they come and find you... I know what they do to trespassers who try going the other way, but what they'd do to the living..."

      He trailed off, still stepping away from Steven in the dark clearing.

      "Who? Who's going to come and find me?"

      "The Sextants," he replied, stepping so that a smaller boulder was now between him and the stranger. "And if you don't know who they are, count yourself lucky. Just get out of here; get going, and fast! You don't belong and if they find you..."

      "I already have," interrupted a cold, sonorous voice.

      Steven whirled around, his heart racing, and stared directly into a cold, set of blue, glowing eyes...

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 22

2005-04-06T13:03:46Z

Interlude
      Coarse-grained wooden crates packed so tightly that they were splintered, cracked, and warped along their edges, made up the walls to both the left and the right. Even the floor, creaking with age and smelling of rotting cedar, was uneven, and angled forward at an extreme slope into the grey and foreboding shadows, ahead.

      The hallway was lit in an archaic manner; flickering gas-lamps -their protective glass balls shattered and jagged around the open flames at their tops- lining the potentially flammable passage as walked cautiously between the narrow walls.

      Although there was no mist or fog in the air when he passed his hand in front of his eyes, looking further down the corridor, all he could see was a gradual blurring to full obscurity only twenty or thirty feet away.

      It had been that way for hours.

      The tension of not knowing where he was going, was eating at him almost as much as the fear of getting too close to the open-slatted, wooden sides of the hallway and putting himself at risk of being grabbed by one of their occupants.

      In school, Steven had read stories about the slave barges that came from Africa to the American South during the 1700s. This hallway, reeking as it did of dust and decay, reinforced the image of helpless people, crammed into small spaces, gasping for breath and grasping for the aide of anyone who would walk past.

      When the darkness had first faded, he'd been amongst those grasping hands; been touched by their cold, needy embrace. He's screamed, seeing countless sunken faces: Native Americans, dozens of anachronistically dressed caucasians, and even a few with shreds of old military uniforms were all packed into those human-sized crates, screaming for release and grabbing for his flesh as if to pull him in.

      He recognized them immediately, even if it had been an illogical leap. He was looking at the dead of Stillwater, although what this place was and why they were there was not apparent.

      Steven had run, immediately; seeking the way back to where he'd been taken but also running from the darkness that had brought him here... A darkness that he could feel within himself, as if it had taken up residence and was now rattling the cage door of his mind in the same way that the trapped souls around him were bound.

      He hadn't found any way out, but as he ran, the number of empty crates grew more numerous. A few had dried, desiccated husks of their former occupants within them ... most disturbingly still moving and occasionally grasping with weak fingers towards his passing body.

      There had been many side-corridors along the way, but they'd all been the same.

      The place was bent; an out-of-frame warehouse binding souls in crates and wooden cells awaiting...

      ...Awaiting what?

      He didn't know.

      He just kept moving as he had been for hours.

      Every now and then he would pause, listening in the dim, grey corridors, trying to get an idea of which way to go next. But every stop was the same.

      With a sharp crash, in contrast to his environment up until that point, he heard the shattering of glass.

      Startled, yet heartened by the sound, Steven rushed forward, the creaking of the wood underfoot becoming increasingly strained as the hallway began to slope downwards at a steep angle.

      Ahead and below, he began to see an opening in the blurry distance.

      Making for it, he suddenly found himself stepping out from the creaky, rotten, wood corridor and onto pungent, soft, black earth.

      All around him, tall walls rose upwards as high as he could see, swallowed not in grey, but blackness. Dozens ...hundreds... of similar corridors opened into the circular space he'd found on all levels of the complex. While he couldn't see what was ahead, it almost seemed as if the circular atrium-like opening was not complete; perhaps only a half-circle.

      He couldn't tell in the darkness.

      All around him, though, things were dead.

      Several trees were withered and empty; their roots knotted through the soil as if sewn there by an insane tailor. Dry and brittle bushes dotted the landscape between ancient brickwork and stone arches -mostly collapsed- strewn about the place as if in the middle of some Celtic ruin.

      His feet sank a small bit into the soft loam beneath him, as he cautiously left the corridor for the new landscape open before him. As he walked forward, the darkness seemed to recede that much further, revealing that, indeed, the semi-circular nature of the massive complex he'd just left was indeed not a full-circle.

      Ahead of him, his eyes began to make out a shape in the dark, grey expanse.

      Squinting, he moved closer, pausing to rest his hand on one of the broken, stone columns that were strewn about the place.

      There, on a large boulder covered in tiny, delicate designs, symbols, and runes, was a single, human shape; hunched over and facing to one side, looking into its hands as if cradling something, there.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - Week 3, parts 15-21

2005-04-05T17:33:42Z

      Kyle glanced at his friends in the back seat, the uncomfortable looks on their faces speaking volumes about how they felt at Tanya's explanation. He looked back at her, considering what to say next as they drove in silence towards the eastern edge of Minnesota.

      "Tanya," he started, trying to keep his voice neither placating nor nervous, "You're sure about this, right? I mean, you actually saw all this?"

      "As sure as I'm seeing you all, right now..."

      Kyle nodded, still trying to think of what to say. "Steven's my best friend; he helped me when I broke up with Heather three years ago and I helped him when Brian called it quits. The thing is, this is an awful lot to process."

      Tanya sighed and slumped forward. "Yeah, well, I clearly didn't think this through enough before coming to get help. I was more, 'Gotta help Steven; get friends!'"

      Oliver leaned forward in back. "And we're here to help, but..."

      "But you don't believe me..."

      "It is a bit of a ... surprise," Kyle said, trying not to sound like he was talking to a mental patient.

      Tanya turned to look at him, the suburban sprawl sliding past behind her, out the driver's side window. She looked pained, her eyes lined with worry and redness underneath. Haggard, she just shook her head and turned her attention back to the road. Kyle looked down.

      His glance caught sight of the bottom of the steering column, a tangle of wires pulled down and twisted into a rat's nest of blue, green, red, and yellow were balled up against Tanya's legs.

      "Uh, Tanya; what happened to Steven's car?" he asked, indicating the damage.

      She was silent for a few moments and then glanced over at Kyle, again. "Well, it's not as if he left his car keys behind; they got sucked to ... to wherever he went..."

      "You hot-wired Steven's Saturn?" interjected Cheryl, leaning forward to get a glimpse of the damage.

      Kyle leaned back in his seat with an exasperated breath. "God, Tanya; Steve's gonna kill you..."

      "If he's not dead already," she muttered in response.

      "How did you know how to hot-wire a car?" asked Tai, trying to change the subject.

      "The same way that I know how to fight with a knife," she responded acidly, glaring into the rearview mirror. "But you're not going to distract me; we're going to find a way to help Steven and you can talk about having me committed, later! Ok?"

      "Tanya..."

      She was getting angry again and snapped her head around to face Kyle. "WHAT?!"

      He met her gaze steadily, but stayed silent for a moment. The few farms left near the outskirts of Stillwater passed by, their windows like staring eyes at the uncomfortable quintet moving towards their uncertain destination.

      "I don't believe in ghosts, Tanya," Kyle continued, slowly. "However, something happened and I'm willing to help out. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong; I can handle that. But I'm going with you to help Steven; then, when this is over, we'll ... well, we'll face that situation when we come to it."

      He glanced at the others in the back seat, Tai nodding in assent but Cheryl still looking nervous about their destination.

      Tanya mulled over Kyle's words.

      "I can live with that," she responded as they hit the strip malls and quasi-industrial prelude to Stillwater. Traffic began to back up as rush-hour going downtown created an L.A.-like gridlock on the small highway. "But," she added, slowing the car, "When this is all over, I'm going to want an apology from you."

      Kyle couldn't help but smile.

      "I can live with that, too..."

      The temperature gradually fell; the shadows of the St. Croix river valley lengthened to engulf downtown Stillwater as the clock ticked past five. Sunset was still an hour away, but the city, nestled as it was between the bluffs cut by the ancient river, saw its streetlights coming on a bit earlier than surrounding areas. Across the open water, a few chunks of ice still bobbing near the river's shores, lights from west-facing homes in Wisconsin flickered to life despite their windows gleaming in the red and orange glow of sunset.

      Slowly, Tanya drove towards downtown, cursing the lack of a shortcut. She knew that Steven had spoken about one, but she'd never seen him take it. While speed was crucial, she also didn't want to get lost while attempting to find another way from highway 36 to Main Street.

      "Y'know," Oliver said, idly tracing a finger along the ears of the rabbit on his T-shirt, "If things weren't so ...dire... this would make a pretty good adventure."

      Tai chuckled. "You gonna write it up, Mr. DM?" he asked.

      Oliver was the Dungeon Master for their gaming group, a position he only half took seriously. Right now, if Tanya hadn't burst in -if Steven hadn't vanished- he and the rest would be finishing off Chinese take-out and delving into the depths of his latest adventure.

      "Oliver, this might not be the best time," Kyle said from the front seat, eyeing Tanya.

      "No, Kyle; it's fine. He's right... If things weren't so fucked-up this would make a pretty cool D & D module."

      Cheryl nodded, looking a bit relieved at Tanya's gradually more relaxed tone. "Gonna write this up, then, Ollie?"

      "I dunno about that," he replied. "It's a bit inappropriate, isn't it?"

      "Oh, and doing a super-hero adventure on September 11th, wasn't?" quipped Tai.

      "That was a legitimate exploration of what would happen in a supers universe, and you know it!" he responded, testily. "Besides, we each express our feelings differently..." He looked down at his feet, sighing. "I just express myself through games, is all."

      The tone of the conversation felt strained as the car finally pulled into downtown, passing the kitchen store on the left and heading down the twilight street of closing antique stores. Despite the casual nature of their exchanges, there was the uncomfortable, strained feeling of each of them avoiding the obvious topic: Tanya's sanity.

      Still, each of them thought, if she was crazy, what had actually happened to Steven? Wouldn't it be better if her story were true, rather than an alternative in which she had been responsible for something ...awful... happening to him?

      The idea that her story was a cover -intentional or not- for something she'd done was the elephant-in-the-room that none of them wanted to look at.

      "There," Tanya said, interrupting Tai just as he was talking about the food he'd left out on the floor of Oliver's apartment. "That's where we had lunch."

      The small bar, nestled in the long row of shops was well-lit from within, evening customers already packing the place with their laughter, cheer, and company. It looked deceptively normal, and Tanya felt a brief twinge of resentment at the happy people drinking and sharing jokes in the very place her friend had been taken by forces unknown.

      "Ruby Begonias, eh?" stated Kyle as Tanya pulled off to one side, idling in the parking lane. "Doesn't look like a den of evil."

      "And it doesn't feel like it, either," Tanya said. She looked at the building's second floor, lights now on in theater area that the bar used for live shows some nights. The strange, supernatural feelings that she'd seen and felt in the place, earlier, were nowhere to be found. The aching coldness, the dismal despair that the apparition had emanated, wasn't there anymore.

      "So, do we go in? What do we do, now?" Cheryl asked.

      "It's not here," Tanya said. "But we could check the construction site and the bluffs next to it."

      "Where you first saw, uh, the woman?"

      "The ghost, Tai. You can say the word 'ghost,' can't you?" Tanya snapped, back.

      A sudden, rapid rapping on Kyle's window made him jump and the others turn their attention to a disheveled teenager with a ratty, winter coat and long, brown hair.

      Kyle stared at him, as he knocked on the window, again.

      "Guys?"

      "Give him a few bucks and he'll go away," Tanya said, indicating the change tray between them. "We've got more important things to deal with."

      Rolling down the window a few inches, Kyle began fishing around in the coins for quarters. "I don't have much..." he began.

      The teen lunged forward, pressing his face up against the narrow space between the glass and the top of the car, his face twisted in red rage. "Leave the river, NOW! Run from here before your legs shatter and your bodies, burst! RUN!"

      Cheryl shrieked in surprise, and Tai, Oliver, and Kyle pulled back, sharply.

      The boy's lips were drawn back in a snarl, blackened teeth cracked and filed to points as he tried to reach through and grab Kyle with sharpened fingernails. The flesh around his eyes darkened and as Tanya shifted the car out of park and hit the gas, it seemed as if it began to rot and boil away.

      Tires squealing, the Saturn lunged out into the tightly-packed traffic, narrowly avoiding a pickup truck and cutting across a lane of traffic in an attempt to get off Main street.

      "RUN!" The teen's voice rippled across the street to them, sounding increasingly hollow and wracked with coughing pain. His face looked darker as Tanya turned and sped away, his eyes looking as if they'd sunk into his face and been devoured by darkness...

      "Run...!"

      "What the fuck was that?" Oliver gasped as Tanya squealed the car's tires around the first side-street they came to.

      Running parallel to the main road through downtown, she pulled into the parking lot of an old library and looked back over her shoulder as if to ensure the hollow-eyed man had not followed them.

      "That," she said, calmly, "Was our ghost."

      "I thought you said it was a 'she'," Tai said, looking back the way they'd come, nervously.

      "It's a ghost; male or female doesn't matter to it, anymore," Tanya said, feeling a tiny spark of vindication.

      Kyle ran his finger along the top of the window where the transient had reached through, trying to grab him. It was moist and cold with tiny brown flecks where the grasping fingers had tried to force their way in. He pulled his hand back and examined it.

      "Do ghosts bleed?"

      "Is that blood?" asked Cheryl, glancing at Kyle's fingers.

      He nodded. "Plus dried bits that flaked off his skin." He looked at Tanya, plaintively. "Tan, we have to go to the police with this. At the very least, maybe they know who..."

      "No! Kyle, do you really think they can deal with what we just saw?"

      Kyle was silent for a few moments, an annoyed expression on his face. "Yes," he said, finally. "The police can shoot something that bleeds!"

      "Yeah, but why would they?" interrupted Oliver. "I mean, we have no proof that that guy kidnapped Steven. Heck, unless they want to do a blood test, we don't even have proof that he threatened us!"

      "Besides," added Tanya, "Even if I'm wrong, even if he's not some form of apparition, arresting him isn't going to do Steven any good. If you'd just believe..."

      "Damn it, Tanya; it's not like I'm some doubting Thomas!" snapped Kyle. "I do believe in a lot of this shit, it's just that I do so with a healthy dose of skepticism." Turning to the others in the car, he continued. "Whether there are ghosts or not, do we really think that person we just saw was a ghost or some guy strung out on crack?"

      "Kyle, did you see his face?" asked Tai.

      "Yeah, and -y'know- that was weird; but for all we know he's having a bad reaction to some drug he took. Maybe he's sick; who knows? The point is, before I jump on board with the Casper argument, I'm going to need to know with more certainty."

      Tanya stopped looking behind their car and fixed her gaze ahead. The sun had nearly set and the lights were coming on in the parking lot. A few cars drove past, populated by single individuals or parents with their kids, on their way home for dinner. She felt, as she stared, her concern over whether or not the others believed her, slip away. In the background, she could hear them arguing about going to the police and, in a fashion, it calmed her.

      It was normal.

      But, clearly, in the back of her mind, she'd wondered since leaving Stillwater to find help -since staring into that evaporating black voice, swallowing up Steven's voice- that she'd imagined it. On some level, she'd felt that she'd lost her mind.

      Although it was probably unintentional, the teenage vagrant on the street had served as reinforcement of what she'd experienced. Whether or not Kyle or the rest believed her was now irrelevant; it had happened and that meant she was sane.

      "We need to go to Battle Hollow," she said, interrupting Cheryl as she was saying something about an exorcism. "I don't know who or what these things are, but it all started there."

      She glanced at Kyle and nodded. "Believe me or not, it's not going to get Steven back. I'll show you were we saw the first apparition and then we'll decide what to do."

      Kyle looked as if he was about to say something, but after seeing Tanya's resigned expression, seemed to think better of it.

      "Ok, fine," he said, glancing at the others in the car. "I'm still not convinced that ghosts bleed..."

      "He wasn't a ghost," said Tanya, simply. The others looked at her. She smirked and shook her head. "Look, if it was bleeding, it wasn't a ghost; that's logical. Maybe it was a guy possessed by a ghost. Maybe he was something else; I didn't have time to get a 'feel' for him, before I drove us away..."

      "Either way," she said, putting the car into 'drive', "the bum's in our past; we need to find Steven."

      Tanya turned around in the parking lot and drove out into the street again.

      The deepening dusk was broken with dawning pools of light as both homes and street lights came on to illuminate the way. Clouds rolled in from higher up the bluffs surrounding downtown Stillwater, their slender, finger-like cousins from earlier in the day having given way to puffed-up, ponderous giants, lumbering slowly over the river valley.

      A few snowflakes swirled in the air around the car as they drove, Tanya cutting up and down side streets, but not again descending all the way down to the base of the cliffs.

      "Where are we going?" Kyle asked, glancing at their surroundings.

      "Shortcut," Tanya replied, sparingly.

      The snow wasn't falling fast enough to accumulate; instead, it danced sparsely in the bobbing, dim headlights of Steven's Saturn while the group of friends sped along the back streets of the old town. More island-like lights came on, block-after-block and house-after-house, as if beckoning to passers-by to flee the shadows and step into the warmth of human living.

      Duplicate home after peaked-roof duplicate home passed by, Tanya's driving exceeding the speed limit by at least 10 miles per hour along the increasingly winding streets.

      "Tanya...?" Cheryl's nervous voice failed to break through the driver's concentration as she took another left and then a right, cutting close to an old, weathered mailbox, jutting out into the road.

      The houses got fewer and farther between as the car drove a bit higher into the bluffs surrounding downtown. Ahead, rising out of the deeper shadows as the road topped the highest point of the bluffs, sparsely spaced suburban homes were perched in a cul-de-sac, a pine tree line beyond them, overlooking the valley, below.

      "That's the spot," Tanya said, pulling the car off the road to park.

      They followed her pointing finger, between a pair of large, modern suburban homes, to a dark stand of scraggly pine and birch trees, beyond them. The trees, thin and barren, reached up from the dark silhouettes of homes like dry stalks of corn, waving with brittle creaks in the night wind.

      "We came up from, below," Tanya explained, "and walked around at the top of the cliff, just back there... That's where that thing attacked us."

      "The woman?" asked Oliver, dubiously.

      "The ghost," she emphasized.

      "Fine, 'the ghost.' You want us to just walk through their yards and head over to the cliff?"

      Tanya turned off the car and opened her door, stepping out. "That's good for a start."

      The moon cast it's glow down, mostly shrouded by the towering clouds, it's light caught by the sparse, swirling snowflakes.

      To the five of them, standing in the quiet, suburban neighborhood as the last of the streetlights came on, it was like looking at fireflies in winter. The tiny crystals of ice, drifting, spinning, falling, and rising between the houses caught the dimming moonlight and blew in arcs and swirls as if living things.

      A streetlight went out, nearby, briefly darkening the scene. It's dying crackle and hum made them turn and glance at it, nervously before returning their gaze to the distant trees.

      "Are you sure about this, Tanya?" Tai asked, nervously.

      Tanya looked up at her tall friend through the errant snowflakes and shrugged. "I don't think we have much of a choice."

      "You know," said Cheryl, "Right now, we could be finishing off Chinese take-out and playing through Oliver's latest adventure..."

      "Instead," interrupted Tanya, "We're having one of our own."

      Cheryl tied back her long locks into a pony tail that reached almost to her lower back, zipped up her winter coat, and tucked her hair down the back. "I'm not sure I'm cut out to be an adventurer without at least a Vorpal sword," she muttered, briskly walking to keep up with the others.

      "Let's cut through the yard, there," Kyle said, pointing between two houses. "I'm not sure what you expect to find, but as long as it's safe..."

      "We'll be safe," Tanya answered, her hand already tightly holding her pentacle. "If that thing shows up again, it'll regret it. Before I stopped in at your apartment, I visited my own."

      She pulled her other hand out of her coat pocket revealing a small, cloth pouch; a plastic sandwich bag holding a grainy mixture of crystals; and a smoked glass vial containing a viscous liquid. And old, faded label still clung to the outside of the vial, but use and time had worn it down so it's words were nearly too faint to be read. Also, whatever was held inside had apparently spilled at one point because some of the ink on the paper had run, smearing the faint text into complete obscurity.

      "What're those?" Tai asked.

      "A few things from my altar. If that apparition shows up again, I'm not just going to banish it; I'm going to give it something to really howl about..."

      Moving quickly and quietly, they made their way between the two newest homes in the cul-de-sac, their feet crunching on a few bits of snow left untouched by the dawning spring.

      "It's like being a kid again," Oliver whispered with a grin on his face. "Sneaking in to the neighbor's yard..."

      "When I was a kid," Tai responded, equally quiet, "Our neighbor was a cemetery." He looked at the nearing line of trees as they entered the backyard of the house and quickened their pace. "Not much different, I guess..."

      "Shhh!"

      There were no lights on, illuminating the back yards of the houses, and the moon finally was swallowed up behind the advancing clouds, overhead. The few snowflakes no longer held a whimsical look to them as they increased in number and became more cold, bitter, and stinging against their faces.

      "Anyone think to bring a scarf?" asked Cheryl as they reached the low, stone wall at the back of the property.

      "'Fraid not," responded Kyle. "Once we hit March, I usually put mine away..."

      "Spoken like a true Chicago-an."

      "Keep it down and follow me," Tanya said to the others, and slowly led them between the sparse, skinny pine trees towards the open, rocky field where she and Steven had been attacked. She watched her steps as carefully as she could, but with both hands occupied -neither willing to give up its grip on either spell components or religious device- she found the going slow.

      The others didn't seem to notice, taking her pace as indicating caution rather than an inability to see where she was going.

      Soon, however, the deeper darkness of the narrow stand of trees gave way and the small group stepped out onto the rock-strewn plateau that angled downwards towards the top edge of the bluffs overlooking Battle Hollow. The twenty yard strip between the trees and the edge was just as strewn with large rocks, brown brush, and a few assorted logs left over from years in the past, but in the darkness, was far more difficult to traverse.

      Sonorous and deep, a moaning wind rose from below; the silence of any workers from earlier mingled with the darkness to make the entire site seem like it was lying in state ... an open-casket funeral, waiting for them.

      "Ok, does anyone else feel like we shouldn't be here?" Oliver asked, keeping close to Tai and Cheryl.

      "Where did you see it?" asked Kyle, scanning the ground for any signs of Tanya's reported struggle. He snapped on a small light from his key ring, illuminating a foot-or-two of ground in front of him.

      She didn't respond.

      "Tanya?"

      Kyle stopped, turning to see his friend off to one side, crouched down next to one of the larger boulders, poking at something. She'd stopped holding her pentacle and was, instead, examining an object just out of his sight. Hearing him, she turned her head towards Kyle and held up a small, white object in her hand.

      "I'm not crazy," she said, simply, and walked over to the others.

      Chipped and cracked, there, in her palm, was a dull white finger bone.

      "Is that...?"

      "It's one of the bones she attacked us with, Ollie," Tanya said. "And there's more of them, over there." She indicated the rocks near the boulder where she'd stopped, and handed the chipped bone to Kyle.

      "It looks human, all-right," he said, slowly.

      Tanya ignored him and sat down on a smaller rock, closing her eyes and sighing.

      "Look, I'm a skeptic, but I'm not stupid," he continued. "Something happened, here, or else you've set up the most elaborate hoax I've ever seen..."

      "Including a freaky homeless guy," added Cheryl, huddling closer in her jacket.

      Tai walked over to where Tanya had found the bone and sifted around the ground for more. "How many fingers did this ghost have, anyway?" he quipped, raking the ground softly with his fingertips. "I count thirty or forty bones, here..."

      "Maybe she conjured them," Oliver said, walking over to join him. "Or maybe there were more ghosts than they saw..."

      Cheryl looked from Tanya, still with her eyes closed, to Kyle. Deciding not to disturb the one who had brought them there, she dropped her voice lower. "How does this help us, though?" she asked. "I mean, we found bones; where's Steven?"

      Kyle looked perturbed and walked over, closer to the top of the bluff. Careful not to get too close, he peered down to see the construction site at the bottom, awash in periodic flood lights. Cheryl followed, her hands thrust as deep into her pockets as she could fit them.

      Snow was accumulating on Kyle's dark brown hair as his eyes scanned the Hollow, below.

      "Kyle?"

      "There's no sign of him," he replied, his voice at a normal tone. "They may have been here, but I was hoping to find ... something." He turned and faced Tanya, his expression one of annoyance.

      "Ok, we found some bones; now what? Where's Steve?"

      Tanya opened her eyes and looked at Kyle from where she sat. "He's not here."

      "I can see that; where is he? Where do we go, now?"

      Tanya looked at the assorted items in her hand and thrust them back into her pocket for safe-keeping. She didn't, however, put the pentacle away. Standing, she looked at Kyle and the expanse of lights beyond him in downtown Stillwater.

      "I don't know, but the apparition isn't here, either..."

      Turning, she began walking back towards the trees.

      "Excuse me?" Kyle said, his voice getting a bit more perturbed. "I asked you a question, Tanya... Where is Steven? If not here, where? Where do we go, next? Back to the bar? To find the homeless guy? Where?!"

      Tai and Oliver stared at their friend, his angry shout echoing amongst the trees and rocks. Kyle's frustration was getting obvious, now.

      Tanya stopped and turned to face him. "Kyle, that's not helping..."

      "Oh, like a few finger bones are helpful?" he asked, annoyed.

      She fell silent and turned away from him, resuming her walk to the trees.

      Cheryl felt increasing unease as the tension built. Kyle started walking after Tanya with broad strides, the wind and flakes whipping around him like a snow globe. She stepped in front of him and gritted her teeth.

      "Look," she said, stopping him from catching up to Tanya. "She doesn't know, Ok? She's stumbling through this just like you and me... She's trying to figure this out as much as we are!"

      She turned and looked at Tanya's back, her friend just reaching the edge of the trees.

      "Tanya; stop acting all angsty! Kyle's best friend is missing and, frankly, it's a lot to digest in one sitting: ghosts, freaky bums... It's not normal and yet you seem to think he should just be accepting all this without question!"

      "I've got news for you: most people aren't witches!"

      She stopped and stood where she was. After a few moments, the others took that as a sign and slowly approached.

      "I'm not going to apologize," she said as Kyle drew close. She was speaking without turning around, but her pentacle was in her hand again. "Steve's as good as friend to me as any of you ... even you, Kyle," she quickly added.

      "So, yeah; I'm a bit stressed by all this shit. I'm dealing with it as best as I can." She turned to face them, her jaw set hard in determination. "And, yeah; Cher's right: I don't know what to do next. About the only thing I can think of is to head back to Ruby Begonia's, get a table, and check the bathroom every 10 minutes, hoping he re-appears..."

      "Tanya..." Oliver began, but a hand on his shoulder from Tai, interrupted him.

      "Tanya," Tai said, "That's fine. We're with you on this, Ok? I may not know much about magick beyond astrology -and not even much about that- but we're gonna help."

      Kyle, just shook his head and walked past Tanya into the trees. "Fine; we'll go to the bar. But, honestly; I don't know what else we can do..."

      "We'll find Steven," Cheryl said, catching up to him, and walking through the trees back towards where they parked the car. "We'll find him..."

      The group made their way through the yards and back to where Steven's car had been parked. Colder, now, the wind was blowing more fiercely as they reached the Saturn. Huddling for warmth, they waited impatiently as Tanya opened the door and unlocked the rest.

      "Geez," Tai muttered, "You'd think we'd not automatically lock car doors when we're on a rescue mission."

      "Good thing I was driving; we don't have the keys," Tanya reminded him. "And I never lock car doors in the suburbs."

      They all got in and Kyle turned the heater to its highest setting as Tanya started fiddling around with the wires under the dashboard. Snow had covered the windshield in a light layer, obscuring her efforts even more, as she tried to hot-wire the car in the dark.

      After a few minutes, and with the help of Kyle's key chain light, the engine turned over and roared to life, warm air spilling out of the vents.

      "Ok," she said, sitting back in the driver's seat, "Shall we?"

      She turned on the wiper blades to clear the snow to reveal the scowling look of a woman standing at the foot of the driveway where they'd stopped the car. She was wearing a long, thickly-lined bathrobe over pajamas and wore heavy, fur-lined slippers on her feet. The snow wasn't sticking to the ground, much, but they could see her footprints leading from the house down to the curb.

      Next to her was a huge, black trash bag, set next to an even larger plastic garbage bin. She'd apparently dragged it down to the curb for pick-up and was now glaring at the five young adults packed into the now-running car.

      "Ok," Oliver said under his breath, "That's kinda freaky..."

      The stranger, her long black hair picked up by the wind and tossed wildly, shook her head and turned her accusing eyes away from them as she apparently decided it would be better to simply go back inside. She trudged up her driveway, the snow falling around her, as the five of them watched from the safety of the warming car.

      "Freaky suburbs lady aside, can we go now?" Cheryl asked, watching as the woman entered her house via a door in the attached garage.

      "Yeah," said Kyle, impatiently. "Let's get to that bar..."

      "Guys, I think it may be weirder than we think," Tanya finally said, putting the car into drive and turning it around in the dead-end. She turned on the headlights, more winter fireflies appearing to dance in the illumination as she accelerated away from the scene.

      "What do you mean?" asked Tai. "That woman..."

      "That woman," interrupted Tanya quietly, "Was the apparition."

      As they drove away from the house, however, across the street -beneath the burned out lamp- a single figure, cloaked in black, watched them go. A lantern drifted next to it, defying gravity as if such an occurrence were ordinary and everyday. A dark iron chain was fastened to it, and hung between the lantern's handle and the open sleeve of the figure.

      Silently, without any motion from beneath it's deep, voluminous robes, the figure slowly drifted after them, street lights going out as it passed beneath.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 21

2005-04-05T17:23:06Z

      The group made their way through the yards and back to where Steven's car had been parked. Colder, now, the wind was blowing more fiercely as they reached the Saturn. Huddling for warmth, they waited impatiently as Tanya opened the door and unlocked the rest.

      "Geez," Tai muttered, "You'd think we'd not automatically lock car doors when we're on a rescue mission."

      "Good thing I was driving; we don't have the keys," Tanya reminded him. "And I never lock car doors in the suburbs."

      They all got in and Kyle turned the heater to its highest setting as Tanya started fiddling around with the wires under the dashboard. Snow had covered the windshield in a light layer, obscuring her efforts even more, as she tried to hot-wire the car in the dark.

      After a few minutes, and with the help of Kyle's key chain light, the engine turned over and roared to life, warm air spilling out of the vents.

      "Ok," she said, sitting back in the driver's seat, "Shall we?"

      She turned on the wiper blades to clear the snow to reveal the scowling look of a woman standing at the foot of the driveway where they'd stopped the car. She was wearing a long, thickly-lined bathrobe over pajamas and wore heavy, fur-lined slippers on her feet. The snow wasn't sticking to the ground, much, but they could see her footprints leading from the house down to the curb.

      Next to her was a huge, black trash bag, set next to an even larger plastic garbage bin. She'd apparently dragged it down to the curb for pick-up and was now glaring at the five young adults packed into the now-running car.

      "Ok," Oliver said under his breath, "That's kinda freaky..."

      The stranger, her long black hair picked up by the wind and tossed wildly, shook her head and turned her accusing eyes away from them as she apparently decided it would be better to simply go back inside. She trudged up her driveway, the snow falling around her, as the five of them watched from the safety of the warming car.

      "Freaky suburbs lady aside, can we go now?" Cheryl asked, watching as the woman entered her house via a door in the attached garage.

      "Yeah," said Kyle, impatiently. "Let's get to that bar..."

      "Guys, I think it may be weirder than we think," Tanya finally said, putting the car into drive and turning it around in the dead-end. She turned on the headlights, more winter fireflies appearing to dance in the illumination as she accelerated away from the scene.

      "What do you mean?" asked Tai. "That woman..."

      "That woman," interrupted Tanya quietly, "Was the apparition."

      As they drove away from the house, however, across the street -beneath the burned out lamp- a single figure, cloaked in black, watched them go. A lantern drifted next to it, defying gravity as if such an occurrence were ordinary and everyday. A dark iron chain was fastened to it, and hung between the lantern's handle and the open sleeve of the figure.

      Silently, without any motion from beneath it's deep, voluminous robes, the figure slowly drifted after them, street lights going out as it passed beneath.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 20

2005-04-05T17:22:08Z

      "Is that...?"

      "It's one of the bones she attacked us with, Ollie," Tanya said. "And there's more of them, over there." She indicated the rocks near the boulder where she'd stopped, and handed the chipped bone to Kyle.

      "It looks human, all-right," he said, slowly.

      Tanya ignored him and sat down on a smaller rock, closing her eyes and sighing.

      "Look, I'm a skeptic, but I'm not stupid," he continued. "Something happened, here, or else you've set up the most elaborate hoax I've ever seen..."

      "Including a freaky homeless guy," added Cheryl, huddling closer in her jacket.

      Tai walked over to where Tanya had found the bone and sifted around the ground for more. "How many fingers did this ghost have, anyway?" he quipped, raking the ground softly with his fingertips. "I count thirty or forty bones, here..."

      "Maybe she conjured them," Oliver said, walking over to join him. "Or maybe there were more ghosts than they saw..."

      Cheryl looked from Tanya, still with her eyes closed, to Kyle. Deciding not to disturb the one who had brought them there, she dropped her voice lower. "How does this help us, though?" she asked. "I mean, we found bones; where's Steven?"

      Kyle looked perturbed and walked over, closer to the top of the bluff. Careful not to get too close, he peered down to see the construction site at the bottom, awash in periodic flood lights. Cheryl followed, her hands thrust as deep into her pockets as she could fit them.

      Snow was accumulating on Kyle's dark brown hair as his eyes scanned the Hollow, below.

      "Kyle?"

      "There's no sign of him," he replied, his voice at a normal tone. "They may have been here, but I was hoping to find ... something." He turned and faced Tanya, his expression one of annoyance.

      "Ok, we found some bones; now what? Where's Steve?"

      Tanya opened her eyes and looked at Kyle from where she sat. "He's not here."

      "I can see that; where is he? Where do we go, now?"

      Tanya looked at the assorted items in her hand and thrust them back into her pocket for safe-keeping. She didn't, however, put the pentacle away. Standing, she looked at Kyle and the expanse of lights beyond him in downtown Stillwater.

      "I don't know, but the apparition isn't here, either..."

      Turning, she began walking back towards the trees.

      "Excuse me?" Kyle said, his voice getting a bit more perturbed. "I asked you a question, Tanya... Where is Steven? If not here, where? Where do we go, next? Back to the bar? To find the homeless guy? Where?!"

      Tai and Oliver stared at their friend, his angry shout echoing amongst the trees and rocks. Kyle's frustration was getting obvious, now.

      Tanya stopped and turned to face him. "Kyle, that's not helping..."

      "Oh, like a few finger bones are helpful?" he asked, annoyed.

      She fell silent and turned away from him, resuming her walk to the trees.

      Cheryl felt increasing unease as the tension built. Kyle started walking after Tanya with broad strides, the wind and flakes whipping around him like a snow globe. She stepped in front of him and gritted her teeth.

      "Look," she said, stopping him from catching up to Tanya. "She doesn't know, Ok? She's stumbling through this just like you and me... She's trying to figure this out as much as we are!"

      She turned and looked at Tanya's back, her friend just reaching the edge of the trees.

      "Tanya; stop acting all angsty! Kyle's best friend is missing and, frankly, it's a lot to digest in one sitting: ghosts, freaky bums... It's not normal and yet you seem to think he should just be accepting all this without question!"

      "I've got news for you: most people aren't witches!"

      She stopped and stood where she was. After a few moments, the others took that as a sign and slowly approached.

      "I'm not going to apologize," she said as Kyle drew close. She was speaking without turning around, but her pentacle was in her hand again. "Steve's as good as friend to me as any of you ... even you, Kyle," she quickly added.

      "So, yeah; I'm a bit stressed by all this shit. I'm dealing with it as best as I can." She turned to face them, her jaw set hard in determination. "And, yeah; Cher's right: I don't know what to do next. About the only thing I can think of is to head back to Ruby Begonia's, get a table, and check the bathroom every 10 minutes, hoping he re-appears..."

      "Tanya..." Oliver began, but a hand on his shoulder from Tai, interrupted him.

      "Tanya," Tai said, "That's fine. We're with you on this, Ok? I may not know much about magick beyond astrology -and not even much about that- but we're gonna help."

      Kyle, just shook his head and walked past Tanya into the trees. "Fine; we'll go to the bar. But, honestly; I don't know what else we can do..."

      "We'll find Steven," Cheryl said, catching up to him, and walking through the trees back towards where they parked the car. "We'll find him..."

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 19

2005-04-05T17:21:08Z

      "You know," said Cheryl, "Right now, we could be finishing off Chinese take-out and playing through Oliver's latest adventure..."

      "Instead," interrupted Tanya, "We're having one of our own."

      Cheryl tied back her long locks into a pony tail that reached almost to her lower back, zipped up her winter coat, and tucked her hair down the back. "I'm not sure I'm cut out to be an adventurer without at least a Vorpal sword," she muttered, briskly walking to keep up with the others.

      "Let's cut through the yard, there," Kyle said, pointing between two houses. "I'm not sure what you expect to find, but as long as it's safe..."

      "We'll be safe," Tanya answered, her hand already tightly holding her pentacle. "If that thing shows up again, it'll regret it. Before I stopped in at your apartment, I visited my own."

      She pulled her other hand out of her coat pocket revealing a small, cloth pouch; a plastic sandwich bag holding a grainy mixture of crystals; and a smoked glass vial containing a viscous liquid. And old, faded label still clung to the outside of the vial, but use and time had worn it down so it's words were nearly too faint to be read. Also, whatever was held inside had apparently spilled at one point because some of the ink on the paper had run, smearing the faint text into complete obscurity.

      "What're those?" Tai asked.

      "A few things from my altar. If that apparition shows up again, I'm not just going to banish it; I'm going to give it something to really howl about..."

      Moving quickly and quietly, they made their way between the two newest homes in the cul-de-sac, their feet crunching on a few bits of snow left untouched by the dawning spring.

      "It's like being a kid again," Oliver whispered with a grin on his face. "Sneaking in to the neighbor's yard..."

      "When I was a kid," Tai responded, equally quiet, "Our neighbor was a cemetery." He looked at the nearing line of trees as they entered the backyard of the house and quickened their pace. "Not much different, I guess..."

      "Shhh!"

      There were no lights on, illuminating the back yards of the houses, and the moon finally was swallowed up behind the advancing clouds, overhead. The few snowflakes no longer held a whimsical look to them as they increased in number and became more cold, bitter, and stinging against their faces.

      "Anyone think to bring a scarf?" asked Cheryl as they reached the low, stone wall at the back of the property.

      "'Fraid not," responded Kyle. "Once we hit March, I usually put mine away..."

      "Spoken like a true Chicago-an."

      "Keep it down and follow me," Tanya said to the others, and slowly led them between the sparse, skinny pine trees towards the open, rocky field where she and Steven had been attacked. She watched her steps as carefully as she could, but with both hands occupied -neither willing to give up its grip on either spell components or religious device- she found the going slow.

      The others didn't seem to notice, taking her pace as indicating caution rather than an inability to see where she was going.

      Soon, however, the deeper darkness of the narrow stand of trees gave way and the small group stepped out onto the rock-strewn plateau that angled downwards towards the top edge of the bluffs overlooking Battle Hollow. The twenty yard strip between the trees and the edge was just as strewn with large rocks, brown brush, and a few assorted logs left over from years in the past, but in the darkness, was far more difficult to traverse.

      Sonorous and deep, a moaning wind rose from below; the silence of any workers from earlier mingled with the darkness to make the entire site seem like it was lying in state ... an open-casket funeral, waiting for them.

      "Ok, does anyone else feel like we shouldn't be here?" Oliver asked, keeping close to Tai and Cheryl.

      "Where did you see it?" asked Kyle, scanning the ground for any signs of Tanya's reported struggle. He snapped on a small light from his key ring, illuminating a foot-or-two of ground in front of him.

      She didn't respond.

      "Tanya?"

      Kyle stopped, turning to see his friend off to one side, crouched down next to one of the larger boulders, poking at something. She'd stopped holding her pentacle and was, instead, examining an object just out of his sight. Hearing him, she turned her head towards Kyle and held up a small, white object in her hand.

      "I'm not crazy," she said, simply, and walked over to the others.

      Chipped and cracked, there, in her palm, was a dull white finger bone.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 18

2005-04-05T17:20:28Z

      Tanya turned around in the parking lot and drove out into the street again.

      The deepening dusk was broken with dawning pools of light as both homes and street lights came on to illuminate the way. Clouds rolled in from higher up the bluffs surrounding downtown Stillwater, their slender, finger-like cousins from earlier in the day having given way to puffed-up, ponderous giants, lumbering slowly over the river valley.

      A few snowflakes swirled in the air around the car as they drove, Tanya cutting up and down side streets, but not again descending all the way down to the base of the cliffs.

      "Where are we going?" Kyle asked, glancing at their surroundings.

      "Shortcut," Tanya replied, sparingly.

      The snow wasn't falling fast enough to accumulate; instead, it danced sparsely in the bobbing, dim headlights of Steven's Saturn while the group of friends sped along the back streets of the old town. More island-like lights came on, block-after-block and house-after-house, as if beckoning to passers-by to flee the shadows and step into the warmth of human living.

      Duplicate home after peaked-roof duplicate home passed by, Tanya's driving exceeding the speed limit by at least 10 miles per hour along the increasingly winding streets.

      "Tanya...?" Cheryl's nervous voice failed to break through the driver's concentration as she took another left and then a right, cutting close to an old, weathered mailbox, jutting out into the road.

      The houses got fewer and farther between as the car drove a bit higher into the bluffs surrounding downtown. Ahead, rising out of the deeper shadows as the road topped the highest point of the bluffs, sparsely spaced suburban homes were perched in a cul-de-sac, a pine tree line beyond them, overlooking the valley, below.

      "That's the spot," Tanya said, pulling the car off the road to park.

      They followed her pointing finger, between a pair of large, modern suburban homes, to a dark stand of scraggly pine and birch trees, beyond them. The trees, thin and barren, reached up from the dark silhouettes of homes like dry stalks of corn, waving with brittle creaks in the night wind.

      "We came up from, below," Tanya explained, "and walked around at the top of the cliff, just back there... That's where that thing attacked us."

      "The woman?" asked Oliver, dubiously.

      "The ghost," she emphasized.

      "Fine, 'the ghost.' You want us to just walk through their yards and head over to the cliff?"

      Tanya turned off the car and opened her door, stepping out. "That's good for a start."

      The moon cast it's glow down, mostly shrouded by the towering clouds, it's light caught by the sparse, swirling snowflakes.

      To the five of them, standing in the quiet, suburban neighborhood as the last of the streetlights came on, it was like looking at fireflies in winter. The tiny crystals of ice, drifting, spinning, falling, and rising between the houses caught the dimming moonlight and blew in arcs and swirls as if living things.

      A streetlight went out, nearby, briefly darkening the scene. It's dying crackle and hum made them turn and glance at it, nervously before returning their gaze to the distant trees.

      "Are you sure about this, Tanya?" Tai asked, nervously.

      Tanya looked up at her tall friend through the errant snowflakes and shrugged. "I don't think we have much of a choice."

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 17

2005-04-02T02:16:43Z

      "What the fuck was that?" Oliver gasped as Tanya squealed the car's tires around the first side-street they came to.

      Running parallel to the main road through downtown, she pulled into the parking lot of an old library and looked back over her shoulder as if to ensure the hollow-eyed man had not followed them.

      "That," she said, calmly, "Was our ghost."

      "I thought you said it was a 'she'," Tai said, looking back the way they'd come, nervously.

      "It's a ghost; male or female doesn't matter to it, anymore," Tanya said, feeling a tiny spark of vindication.

      Kyle ran his finger along the top of the window where the transient had reached through, trying to grab him. It was moist and cold with tiny brown flecks where the grasping fingers had tried to force their way in. He pulled his hand back and examined it.

      "Do ghosts bleed?"

      "Is that blood?" asked Cheryl, glancing at Kyle's fingers.

      He nodded. "Plus dried bits that flaked off his skin." He looked at Tanya, plaintively. "Tan, we have to go to the police with this. At the very least, maybe they know who..."

      "No! Kyle, do you really think they can deal with what we just saw?"

      Kyle was silent for a few moments, an annoyed expression on his face. "Yes," he said, finally. "The police can shoot something that bleeds!"

      "Yeah, but why would they?" interrupted Oliver. "I mean, we have no proof that that guy kidnapped Steven. Heck, unless they want to do a blood test, we don't even have proof that he threatened us!"

      "Besides," added Tanya, "Even if I'm wrong, even if he's not some form of apparition, arresting him isn't going to do Steven any good. If you'd just believe..."

      "Damn it, Tanya; it's not like I'm some doubting Thomas!" snapped Kyle. "I do believe in a lot of this shit, it's just that I do so with a healthy dose of skepticism." Turning to the others in the car, he continued. "Whether there are ghosts or not, do we really think that person we just saw was a ghost or some guy strung out on crack?"

      "Kyle, did you see his face?" asked Tai.

      "Yeah, and -y'know- that was weird; but for all we know he's having a bad reaction to some drug he took. Maybe he's sick; who knows? The point is, before I jump on board with the Casper argument, I'm going to need to know with more certainty."

      Tanya stopped looking behind their car and fixed her gaze ahead. The sun had nearly set and the lights were coming on in the parking lot. A few cars drove past, populated by single individuals or parents with their kids, on their way home for dinner. She felt, as she stared, her concern over whether or not the others believed her, slip away. In the background, she could hear them arguing about going to the police and, in a fashion, it calmed her.

      It was normal.

      But, clearly, in the back of her mind, she'd wondered since leaving Stillwater to find help -since staring into that evaporating black voice, swallowing up Steven's voice- that she'd imagined it. On some level, she'd felt that she'd lost her mind.

      Although it was probably unintentional, the teenage vagrant on the street had served as reinforcement of what she'd experienced. Whether or not Kyle or the rest believed her was now irrelevant; it had happened and that meant she was sane.

      "We need to go to Battle Hollow," she said, interrupting Cheryl as she was saying something about an exorcism. "I don't know who or what these things are, but it all started there."

      She glanced at Kyle and nodded. "Believe me or not, it's not going to get Steven back. I'll show you were we saw the first apparition and then we'll decide what to do."

      Kyle looked as if he was about to say something, but after seeing Tanya's resigned expression, seemed to think better of it.

      "Ok, fine," he said, glancing at the others in the car. "I'm still not convinced that ghosts bleed..."

      "He wasn't a ghost," said Tanya, simply. The others looked at her. She smirked and shook her head. "Look, if it was bleeding, it wasn't a ghost; that's logical. Maybe it was a guy possessed by a ghost. Maybe he was something else; I didn't have time to get a 'feel' for him, before I drove us away..."

      "Either way," she said, putting the car into 'drive', "the bum's in our past; we need to find Steven."

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 16

2005-03-31T13:27:47Z

      The temperature gradually fell; the shadows of the St. Croix river valley lengthened to engulf downtown Stillwater as the clock ticked past five. Sunset was still an hour away, but the city, nestled as it was between the bluffs cut by the ancient river, saw its streetlights coming on a bit earlier than surrounding areas. Across the open water, a few chunks of ice still bobbing near the river's shores, lights from west-facing homes in Wisconsin flickered to life despite their windows gleaming in the red and orange glow of sunset.

      Slowly, Tanya drove towards downtown, cursing the lack of a shortcut. She knew that Steven had spoken about one, but she'd never seen him take it. While speed was crucial, she also didn't want to get lost while attempting to find another way from highway 36 to Main Street.

      "Y'know," Oliver said, idly tracing a finger along the ears of the rabbit on his T-shirt, "If things weren't so ...dire... this would make a pretty good adventure."

      Tai chuckled. "You gonna write it up, Mr. DM?" he asked.

      Oliver was the Dungeon Master for their gaming group, a position he only half took seriously. Right now, if Tanya hadn't burst in -if Steven hadn't vanished- he and the rest would be finishing off Chinese take-out and delving into the depths of his latest adventure.

      "Oliver, this might not be the best time," Kyle said from the front seat, eyeing Tanya.

      "No, Kyle; it's fine. He's right... If things weren't so fucked-up this would make a pretty cool D & D module."

      Cheryl nodded, looking a bit relieved at Tanya's gradually more relaxed tone. "Gonna write this up, then, Ollie?"

      "I dunno about that," he replied. "It's a bit inappropriate, isn't it?"

      "Oh, and doing a super-hero adventure on September 11th, wasn't?" quipped Tai.

      "That was a legitimate exploration of what would happen in a supers universe, and you know it!" he responded, testily. "Besides, we each express our feelings differently..." He looked down at his feet, sighing. "I just express myself through games, is all."

      The tone of the conversation felt strained as the car finally pulled into downtown, passing the kitchen store on the left and heading down the twilight street of closing antique stores. Despite the casual nature of their exchanges, there was the uncomfortable, strained feeling of each of them avoiding the obvious topic: Tanya's sanity.

      Still, each of them thought, if she was crazy, what had actually happened to Steven? Wouldn't it be better if her story were true, rather than an alternative in which she had been responsible for something ...awful... happening to him?

      The idea that her story was a cover -intentional or not- for something she'd done was the elephant-in-the-room that none of them wanted to look at.

      "There," Tanya said, interrupting Tai just as he was talking about the food he'd left out on the floor of Oliver's apartment. "That's where we had lunch."

      The small bar, nestled in the long row of shops was well-lit from within, evening customers already packing the place with their laughter, cheer, and company. It looked deceptively normal, and Tanya felt a brief twinge of resentment at the happy people drinking and sharing jokes in the very place her friend had been taken by forces unknown.

      "Ruby Begonias, eh?" stated Kyle as Tanya pulled off to one side, idling in the parking lane. "Doesn't look like a den of evil."

      "And it doesn't feel like it, either," Tanya said. She looked at the building's second floor, lights now on in theater area that the bar used for live shows some nights. The strange, supernatural feelings that she'd seen and felt in the place, earlier, were nowhere to be found. The aching coldness, the dismal despair that the apparition had emanated, wasn't there anymore.

      "So, do we go in? What do we do, now?" Cheryl asked.

      "It's not here," Tanya said. "But we could check the construction site and the bluffs next to it."

      "Where you first saw, uh, the woman?"

      "The ghost, Tai. You can say the word 'ghost,' can't you?" Tanya snapped, back.

      A sudden, rapid rapping on Kyle's window made him jump and the others turn their attention to a disheveled teenager with a ratty, winter coat and long, brown hair.

      Kyle stared at him, as he knocked on the window, again.

      "Guys?"

      "Give him a few bucks and he'll go away," Tanya said, indicating the change tray between them. "We've got more important things to deal with."

      Rolling down the window a few inches, Kyle began fishing around in the coins for quarters. "I don't have much..." he began.

      The teen lunged forward, pressing his face up against the narrow space between the glass and the top of the car, his face twisted in red rage. "Leave the river, NOW! Run from here before your legs shatter and your bodies, burst! RUN!"

      Cheryl shrieked in surprise, and Tai, Oliver, and Kyle pulled back, sharply.

      The boy's lips were drawn back in a snarl, blackened teeth cracked and filed to points as he tried to reach through and grab Kyle with sharpened fingernails. The flesh around his eyes darkened and as Tanya shifted the car out of park and hit the gas, it seemed as if it began to rot and boil away.

      Tires squealing, the Saturn lunged out into the tightly-packed traffic, narrowly avoiding a pickup truck and cutting across a lane of traffic in an attempt to get off Main street.

      "RUN!" The teen's voice rippled across the street to them, sounding increasingly hollow and wracked with coughing pain. His face looked darker as Tanya turned and sped away, his eyes looking as if they'd sunk into his face and been devoured by darkness...

      "Run...!"

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 15

2005-03-30T14:09:49Z

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - Week 2, parts 8-14

2005-03-29T15:06:00Z

      The dark and wispy apparition's voice whispered with a shrill cacophony, sounding like muffled, ice-coated, grinding metal as a cold laugh escaped her lips. Although mist, herself, she made motions and sounds as if laboriously breathing, her dead nature and fog-composed body belying the need for breath. Trespassers ... seers ... witches ... demons-of-flesh; Your path mocks our pain; Your words are hollow in our regret. No peace; no rest until you pay...

      Lurching forward like a black snake, the apparition howled again as it attacked. Steven raised his arm to block the incoming attack, ducking as the darkness exploded towards him. Even Tanya, her hand now clutching her pentagram, firmly, flinched in the wake of the sudden eruption of geyser-like fury. Its form exploded around them in near-impenetrable darkness, the rattling of bones scattering to the sides amongst the rocks, winter brush, and old leaves. They could hear the phantom's howling all around them as heat-draining shadow, again, descended around them.

      Unlike the apparition's previous assault, however, this time the darkness was not all-consuming. Instead, rents of daylight shone through the dark clouds around them, resembling a black tornado, falling apart and re-forming as its storm clouds passed.

      The shrieking remained, however, ululating and persistent. Steven had to lean close and shout in order to be heard.

      "I'm guessing it's pissed about it's resting place being disturbed," he shouted, still holding Tanya's hand, tightly.

      "Gee, ya think?" she shouted, back.

      "You ever seen a ghost before?"

      "Felt 'em, yeah; but never seen one," she replied. "We've got to get out of here! This is about as safe as it is natural!"

      All around them, the whirlwind of darkness rose and fell, revealing patches of the outside world. The screaming cries all around them rose and fell in pitch, not quite fading enough for a non-shouted conversation, but not long enough to hint that the assault was about to break.

      "We'll never make it down the slope with this thing harassing us!"

      Tanya nodded. "Should we head for the houses?" she asked with a shout, nodding towards the distant line of suburbia, beyond the nearby trees. "What would this thing do if it met someone else?"

      Steven nodded. "Can you stun it; drive it back to it's resting place?"

      Tanya only shrugged as the bones rattling around them began to move closer. "Whether I can or not, I'd better try," she shouted in return.

      Steven closed his eyes and tried to concentrate past the howling, supernatural wind. He focussed as clearly as he could; the energy that he usually tapped for simple blessings and the calling of the elements to aide his religious observances felt thin and strained. Probably due to being surrounded like this, he thought to himself, and tried to focus.

      A glimmer of the natural world around him shone through a crack in the black tornado and he could hear Tanya's voice through the screeching of the wind. Although he couldn't make out the words, he knew their intent.

      He focussed on the energy and fought the impulse to wrap it around himself, protectively. Instead, trusting that the simple invocation Tanya had crafted, earlier, would hold, he began funneling energy to his friend, hoping her spell would give them respite.

      Peaking with a dreadful fury, the apparition wind and howling noise swallowed up most of the words. All Steven could hear were the occasional terms and phrases, invoking the elements to put the apparition to rest. He gritted his teeth as the wind pulled at his coat and made his hair whip about, wildly. He could feel the clattering bones having returned, cracking against his legs as he sent what little energy he could reach towards Tanya's effort.

      Slowly, as the minutes flowed by, gradual as floating floes in the St. Croix, the darkness began to fade. The whistling winds took on a more normal tone and the wisps of black fog seemed to pull back, sinking into the ground.

      Cold sunlight from the blue skies, above, shone down on them as Tanya -her voice still straining forcefully- continued her chant, framing her will to put the spirit back where it belonged.

      No rest; no release! Never sleep ... revenge calls our thirst! Eternal pain feeds us, rouses us, shapes us; Never ... rest ... ... ... Never ... ... ... Escape...!

      The words of the apparition faded on the wind, the dark mist dissipating entirely, leaving only a scattering of bones over and around the rocks at the top of the cliff.

      Steven looked at Tanya, her hair like a rat's nest and her clothing bunched and rumpled around her slight frame. She pursed her lips, watching as the collected bones ceased their rattle and settled into quiescence. She returned his gaze and smiled, thinly.

      "So," he said at last, "how's that for an antique?"

      "Time to go," Tanya said with a glance down the tree-covered, rocky slope. The trailing wisps of dark fog had dispersed in that direction and appeared to have gone. Her voice wavered slightly, betraying her emotions; blatant appearances by supernatural entities were the stuff of faerie tales, not day-trips to Stillwater. "Let's keep an eye out, though; if we triggered that thing by climbing over its grave, I don't want a repeat performance."

      "I think we can handle it," Steven said, his voice a bit lighter than it had been at the base of Battle Hollow. "It may have caught us off-guard at first, but -wow- we fought off a ghost! An actual, real ghost!"

      Tanya heard the tone in her friend's voice and frowned.

      Steven walked back to the edge of the cliff that looked down over the construction-filled canyon, below, but -now- ran his eyes along the steep slope they'd climbed to its north. His body was hard to read, but his jaw was set and he was glancing -almost furtively- along the route they'd taken.

      "What are you saying?' she asked, walking up to stand by his side. "We just had an encounter of the undead kind and you're saying 'we can take it'?"

      His smile answered her, his eyes alight. Even though she wasn't touching him, Tanya could tell that Steven's heart was still racing from their experience. In truth, so was hers, but in a more cautious sense of the word.

      "Look, Casper's probably never tangled with two witches, before. She never knew what hit her! If it comes again..."

      "If it comes again," Tanya interrupted, annoyed, "I'm going to run the other way! Sheesh, Steve-O, you get your jollies from picking fights with banshees?"

      "Look," he replied, turning from her and starting back along the ridge towards the top of the slope, "I'm just saying that we can handle it. We proved that..."

      "Hey! I proved that, 'Doctor Venkman'!"

      He raised an eyebrow and sighed. "That energy you felt, in the darkness? That was me."

      She paused, thinking back, and started to correct herself. "Fine, 'we.' But if you think..."

      "And," he continued, unperturbed, "We can handle it, the next time." He stopped at the edge of some birch trees, and looked at his friend. "We just fought a ghost, Tanya; a real, manifested spirit who tried to suck the life from our bones! I've never... I've never seen anything like that, before!"

      "I ... see..." she replied, slowly, considering his words.

      A few gusts of wind blew past the rocky cliff-top, filling the wordless void between the two friends with a faint breath of river air.

      Taking her few words for assent, Steven nodded, turned, and began his decent to the base of the slope. Tanya followed a few paces behind, her eyes watching the slope for any sign of their misty attacker while turning Steven's words over and over in her mind.

      The way down was uneven and the thin coating of snow and ice on every other rock, branch, and log but despite their concern about rousing the dark apparition again, their slow climb was uninterrupted. Even so, both of their hearts didn't slow down until they had reached the bottom. Once there, the two walked across the edge of the construction site parking lot, got into Steven's car, and drove back towards downtown Stillwater.

      "Tan," he said, as they passed a small coffee shop, "Do you mind if we get lunch early and look for antiques after? I really need to sit down and make some notes."

      "Nearly getting your soul sucked out of you is some sort of artistically-inspiring turn-on?"

      He snorted, dismissively, in response.

      Tanya thought it over for a moment more and nodded, pointed across the street to a parking lot sandwiched between a bookstore flying rainbow flags and a gas station. "There; park there. We can walk across to Ruby Begonia's from there."

      Steven pulled into the indicated spot. "You know, it's not really giving me any ideas for my writing, but -really- before we get too distant from what we saw, we really should write it all down."

      "Ok, I'll bite: why?"

      Steven got out of his car, locking it as Tanya emerged from the passenger side. "Well, we can't just leave it there. That ...thing... is only going to hurt someone if we don't do something about it. One way or another, this has become our problem..."

      Tanya nodded, slowly. "I suppose that makes some sense," she said. "But, first, let's get you fed and take stock."

      He shrugged, pocketing his car keys, and started across the street towards the bar. "Sounds good by me. We've got a lot to plan..."

      Yeah, thought Tanya cautiously, we sure seem to...

      Punched tin ceiling overhead, a raised seating area to the left, and an ancient, 19th-century wooden bar along the right, Ruby Begonia's was a haven of dry warmth after the chilly March winds, outside. An hour before the lunch crowds would descend, it had just opened for the day. Tanya wrinkled her nose at the lingering scent of the previous night's tobacco smoke, but made her way after Steven towards the non-smoking section in back.

      They chose a table and looked over the menu before the waitress took their order and departed, leaving them with a couple mostly-full water glasses.

      "So," began Steven looking at Tanya enthusiastically. "How do we deal with that thing? Heck, what do we even call it? A ghost? An apparition? How about..." He trailed off as she glanced at him with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips.

      "What?" he asked, distracted from his plans by her expression.

      "I'm trying to decide," she said, pausing to sip her water, "If you're high because you just survived death at the hands of a supernatural critter or if something else is responsible for your sudden mood shift."

      Steven blinked. "Excuse me? This is something we have to deal with..."

      Tanya nodded and put down her glass. "No doubt! In fact, I daresay we'll need some help. But, come on: you went from being morose -talking about 'fragile' Stillwater- to Joe Commando: Ghost Hunter, in about two seconds! What's the story, Steve-O?"

      "Tan...?"

      She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. "Yes?"

      He sighed and shook his head. "It's just that..." An annoyed tone crept into his voice as he looked his friend in the eyes. "Look, how can you be so blasé about all this? Don't you realize how ...extraordinary... that was?"

      Tanya shrugged. "Yeah, it was pretty rare..."

      "'Pretty rare'?" he echoed, chuckling. "You can't tell me you've ever seen anything like that, before..."

      She honestly looked surprised. "Of course I have! Come on; I've spoken about some of the things I ran into in before my initiation when Dad was stationed in Alabama..."

      "C'mon; you said you saw pixies!"

      "Wisps, actually," she corrected him. "And there's more I've never told you..." She leaned back against the wall behind her stool and smiled. "Just because your encounters with the supernatural have never been of the Hollywood special effects variety, doesn't mean they don't happen..."

      "So, how can you act so ... nonchalant?"

      She grinned and picked up her water for another sip. "Hey; seems to me that you're enthusiastic enough for us both."

      Steven grimaced and didn't answer.

      Finally, Tanya leaned forward and repeated herself. "So, why the shift? Why are you suddenly so gung-ho about doing the whole Ghostbusters thing?"

      For a couple minutes, he didn't answer. Their waitress came back and re-filled their water glasses before slinking away, again, to go stand and watch the small TV at one end of the bar.

      "Ok, look, it's just that ... well, this whole thing is different, you know? It's not often that an actual big event drops in your lap. Most of the time, people have to engineer their own motivations. How often do you get a quest or crusade delivered to your doorstep?"

      Tanya smiled warmly. "Honestly? All the time."

      "Hunh?"

      "Let me see if I can sum this up for you, Steve-O," she said, all traces of cynicism vanishing from her voice. "You've gotten into a slump and don't like the fact that life is what you make of it. On some level, you wish that you didn't have to make the big choices mostly because they're illusions: there are no 'big choices' ... just little ones that you advance piece-by-piece and day-by-day..."

      Steven rolled his eyes. "Get that from that psych course you took?

      "Naw, this isn't so superficial. I get this from 'Life 101'."

      "Fine, so what's my problem?" he asked, rhetorically.

      "Honestly? I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that most people are perfectly content to lead lives that happen to them when they realize that it gets tiring to always take the bull by the horns and chart their own destiny. It's not lazy, it's just human nature."

      "Sounds like laziness to me," he muttered over his water glass.

      "Well, then, maybe that's part of it, too," Tanya answered. "Maybe you see it as a moral failing and -therefore- don't want to admit that, right now, you are handling things one day at a time."

      Steven stood up. "Look, dismantle me all you like..."

      "Thanks, I will!" she inserted, brightly. Then, seeing the scowl on his face, she softened her tone. "Ok, look; it's like this: I think you've been in a rut for a long time and you see this as a 'watershed moment.' This is a big thing and I think you're grasping for it because it's a way out. But, really, you should be aware of that before you go any further."

      Steven looked at her, silently, her words sinking in.

      "We lead magickal lives, Steve-O; that's not without risk and you could get hurt if you don't, as they say, 'Know Yourself'."

      A moment passed in silence.

      "I'll be right back; bathroom."

      Turning without adding anything else, Steven walked towards the back of the bar to the stairs that led to the upstairs restrooms.

      Steven climbed the stairs in back of the bar, up to the restrooms. Idly, he wondered how any person with a wheelchair or crutches would make it up the narrow rise, but dismissed the concern for his own immediate feelings.

      It wasn't that Tanya was being mean or even presumptuous; the problem was that -at least in part- she was probably right. On some level, a level that bubbled through his subconscious' attempts to deny it, he knew that she was partly right. Steven hadn't felt motivated in almost a year and nothing seemed capable of jarring him to action.

      And it's a moral failing, he thought to himself. It's my failure...

      He entered the single-person bathroom and stared at himself in the dingy mirror. While the staff had been keeping the room clean, the glass of the reflective surface was so old, it was cloudy around the edges. It made him look like he was under a soft-focus lens.

      Leaning on the edge of the sink, he looked into the basin and sighed.

      Ok, so I'm in a rut; so I can't finish what I start; neither can Tanya! Where does she get off telling me what my problems are?

      "She's telling you what your problems are because at least she understands them," he replied, out loud.

      But what's the point? To make me feel bad?

      "Yeah," he said, sarcastically. "She only acts to make me feel bad. Geez, Steve; get a grip! She's just trying to be your friend..."

      Yeah, maybe, he thought, bitterly, but what's the answer? If I'm unwilling to chart my own course, how do I fix that? If I'm so lost and unable to push my own life forward, where is she with helpful solutions?

      "It's not as if I actually gave her a chance to finish," he concluded, sighing. "Gods, I'm such a jerk..."

      Running cold water from the tap, he wet his hands and splashed his face. It felt good, cleansing himself like that; more out of habit than any need to wash up. But, after a fashion, it was a good sensation. I really need to apologize and think this out some more, he thought, standing up.

      The reflection in the mirror wasn't his.

      His face, lean and slender as always, was missing it's eyes. A cold pit opened in his stomach as he stared directly forward into two, gaping, black holes in his reflection's face, staring at him with a surreal hunger. Horrible though the vision was, it began to worsen. Riveted to the sight, he felt his heart begin to race in fear as -without any action on his own face- the thin lips in the mirror spread into a slender, awful smile.

      Behind him, in the reflection, he could see the shadows of the room darkening; spreading to cover the walls in an absence of light.

      The food came while Steven was still upstairs.

      Tanya nibbled on her reuben sandwich, thinking about what she'd said to him and pondering if there would have been a better way to broach the subject. It was true, what she'd said: self-doubt in anything that touched on magick could be disastrous. If he was deluding himself with regards to his motivation, that could blind him to traps, ahead.

      Picking at the small carrot sticks that came with her meal, she looked up at the punched tin ceiling and sighed.

      Something moved.

      Tanya blinked, staring harder at what looked like a slender, dark ribbon, sticking out between two of the ceiling tiles and waving in the breeze. As she watched, though, it seemed to grow thicker and thinner -longer and shorter- as she watched. In her mind's eye, she could feel it: the same dark dread that they'd encountered on the bluff.

      Springing to her feet, she knocked the stool over and darted towards the back of the bar.

      "Honey, you Ok?" called the waitress to her as she dashed past the small, unoccupied music stage.

      Tanya ignored her and took the stairs two at a time, quickly reaching the second floor. The narrow hall only had four doors in it: a storage room, the entrance to some sort of dinner theater dining room, and the two bathrooms.

      Even if she hadn't seen the dark tendrils of fog whipping, snake-like, from under the men's room door, she could feel the manifestation on the other side.

      Setting her jaw, she tried the doorknob, but it was locked.

      "Steven! Steven; are you all-right?!"

      There was no answer.

      Pushing the fear into the pit of her stomach, she summoned up her courage and reached out to channel nature's nearby energies as she braced herself and kicked at the door.

      Her booted foot struck the knob, making the door shudder, but it didn't give.

      Again, she kicked, and again the door resisted.

      Muffled from behind the wooden obstacle, she could hear a gasping, grating moan and -very faintly- what sounded like a human voice. Although she couldn't make out the words, she gritted her teeth, and one last time, kicked the door.

      The wooden frame splintered around the lock and the door flew open.

      Darkness filled the room on the other side, and a wind pulled at her almost immediately. She grabbed the door frame to keep from being pulled as shouts from downstairs indicated that the staff, below, felt the sudden winds, too.

      "Steven!" she shouted into the darkness, feeling with her senses for any sign of him.

      Over the keening of the wind, as if incredibly far away, a slender, shred of a voice responded.

      "...Tan...! It's not them, Tan! ...Something ... else...! Tan-ya...!"

      "Steven!"

      With a roaring rush, the darkness flooded away from the open door, spiraling through the far wall of the restroom and leaving nothing but an echo and the slowly overflowing basin of the sink.

      Tanya, panting, bit back the fear that threatened to engulf her.

      Steven was gone.

Chapter Two

      Oliver, his short, red hair catching the light in the dimly-lit hallway, stayed balanced on the chair as he hung the license-plate-like sign that read "THE WRITER'S BLOCK." In the middle of the hall on the fourth floor between the Holman Building's four apartments, there, he'd strung a narrow length of aluminum chain from one wall to its opposite and fastened the metal sign to the middle with nuts and bolts.

      Hopping down, he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

      "Well," he said, glancing into the one open door, "It's official: we're now moved in!"

      "Yayyyy..." responded the monotone, unison voices from his trio of friends.

      Straightening his "Watership Down" t-shirt, the slender Oliver pulled the chair after him into the room, and returned it to its position next to the dining room table.

      Like all of the apartments in "the Hole," his was a converted office, once used by shipping clerks and management when the building had been a partial warehouse during the early 1900's. His friends, Tai, Kyle, and Cheryl were sitting in his living room -Tai sitting on the floor opening boxes of Chinese take-out- as he re-entered his small home.

      "Now everyone will know where to come for a lack of finished work," Cheryl said, leaning back on the couch. "'The Writer's Block' doesn't exactly instill confidence, you know."

      "Its alliterative," Oliver said, defending his sign. "Besides, how many times has your editor had to give you an extension for one of your articles?"

      "He's got you there, Cher," said Kyle, elbowing the long-haired brunette next to him.

      Cheryl poked Kyle in the side, and shuffled away from him taking a stack of paper plates that Tai had just unwrapped, and putting them between herself and her tormentor. "Easy for you to say; you don't write at all, unless you count oils..."

      "Oils, watercolor, foot-pumped air brush, you name it," he responded proudly. "But if you think I don't get writer's block, you're delusional."

      "And that's never a word that'd be used to describe Cheryl," Tai said, adding a few plastic serving spoons to the various boxes.

      "Looks good, Tai," Oliver said, sitting down on the floor between Kyle and Cheryl to end the good-natured ribbing.

      "Yeah, my Uncle's cooks really earned that 'best of' rating from the Tribune last year," Tai said, dishing himself a plateful of shrimp dumplings. "Even if I didn't work there, I still think I'd be eating their take-out every other day..."

      Tai Jimenez's Uncle owned the Lucky Cat Restaurant just off Broadway in NorthEast Minneapolis. While his mother's brother -a full-blooded Chinese immigrant- kept him on the payroll as a waiter, the half-Asian/half-Mexican playwright mostly kept the job for the free food at the end of each shift.

      Sitting in the living room of Oliver's apartment, his friends weren't about to question it.

      "Still," said Cheryl to Kyle, snapping up a piece of bar-b-cue pork with a chopstick, "You've got to admit that writing is a very different process than painting..."

      Kyle nodded, kneeling off the couch to serve himself from the various boxes. "Yeah, I won't argue that, but -still- the term 'Writer's Block' still applies. I can't count the number of times I've stalled on a piece because I couldn't find the right composition of color or shape." He looked up at her as he finished. "It's still telling a story, you know; just without the printed word."

      She nodded. "But that's what I was saying; isn't calling our little cluster of apartments by that name just inviting bad luck?"

      "Not with Lucky Cat Dim Sum for lunch it isn't," Tai interjected, sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

      Oliver smiled and withdrew with his plate to the dining room table next to the couch. "Well, it wasn't lucky for Steven and Tanya; where'd they go, anyway? Think we'll have to start the game without them?"

      Cheryl shrugged. "Tanya's probably off at play rehearsal or snugging with Sandi; as far as I know, Steven's car wasn't downstairs when I went out for groceries around Noon."

      "He's probably off at Savoy's office," Tai suggested, biting into a pork bun.

      Oliver nodded. "It'd be a first, though: finishing an article before deadline..."

      "Hey," Cheryl said, with an annoyed tone, "Have some sympathy. It's not easy writing on deadline!"

      "You'd know all about that," Kyle said with a grin. "Still," he quickly added, seeing her mock-glare at him, "You are the only one of us making a living at this whole 'art' thing..."

      "If you'd just apply yourself, rather than drawing sketch after sketch of your D-n-D characters, you might get a showing, you know," she retorted. "It's not like speculative fiction sells all that well..."

      Kyle sighed, nodding. "True... Maybe if a little science fiction, fantasy, or horror would rear its head in the real world, once in a while, people would stand up and take notice."

      With a loud, abrupt >BANG<, the apartment door flew open, revealing Tanya standing in the hallway.

      "Oliver! Guys!" she shouted. "Steven needs help: some freaky undead thing's dragged him off through a dark gateway or something!"

      The quartet of friends stared at Tanya, still panting and framed in Oliver's doorway. Her hair was disheveled and her face flush from bounding up the stairs to the fourth floor. There was a tear in her jeans over the right knee and her skin color was paler than her exertions would seem to allow.

      "Uh, what?"

      Oliver's voice flowed off of Tanya, the rush of her own blood in her ears blotting out most other sounds. She could see their faces, however, and clenched her teeth, refining her statement to counter her friends' expressions of befuddlement and disbelief.

      "Steven's hurt, guys; he's in trouble. Seriously; we've got to go, now!"

      Cheryl stood and swiftly walked up to Tanya, looking concerned. "What happened? Where is he?"

      "And what was this about 'undead'?" Tai added, looking confused.

      "Forget about that," she responded, brushing Cheryl's hand away from her shoulder, brusquely. "Look, I don't have time to explain; for all I know Steven's lost, injured, or ... or worse!"

      "Ok, ok," Cheryl said, stopping in her efforts to usher Tanya to a chair. "Just calm down and tell us where he is. How is he 'lost' or 'injured'?"

      Tanya gritted her teeth and tried to figure out what to say. Her friends understood her but most of them weren't religious or students of the arcane. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out how to describe what had happened without sounding crazy.

      "We went to Stillwater to look at antiques when Steven decided to give me a little tour," she started, honestly enough. "We went to this old Indian memorial site and found it had been razed for a condo development. Steve got pissed and hiked up a steep slope to look down at the place, and..."

      Tanya trailed off, trying to think.

      "Wait a second," Oliver interjected. "You two went antiquing? I thought you were still shy half your rent!"

      "Olllie!"

      The color had come back to Tanya's face and she scowled angrily at her friend. "We were looking; not buying!"

      "Yeah, besides, what happened to Steven?" Kyle interjected.

      Tanya shook her head slowly, "I ... I don't know. We met this ... woman. She screamed at us; acted like a total nutcase and ... and..."

      "Well?"

      Tanya sighed and mingled the truth with her response. "We ran away from her back to downtown and got lunch. Steven got up in the middle of it to go to the bathroom and, well, he vanished."

      "'Vanished'?" echoed Cheryl, looking as if she suspected this was leading to a joke. "What kind of 'vanished'? Was he kidnapped?"

      "Yeah," echoed Tai, "What did the Police say?"

      "I didn't go to the Police," Tanya responded with exasperation. "Look, you're not going to believe me until I show you. Come on; can't you guys just trust me?"

      "This from the woman who conned me into buying tickets to Ladies of Penzance last year when the show had closed early and the money was going to pay off the theater's debts..."

      "Come on Kyle," Tai interjected, "She wouldn't lie about something like Steven being kidnapped..."

      "Do you know where he might be," Oliver asked, joining Cheryl at Tanya's side.

      Tanya was fuming. "Look," she said in measured tones, "I'm going to march outside to Steven's car and head back to Stillwater with or without you. I thought I could get some help but, frankly, none of you seems willing to charge the gates without asking a bunch of stupid, fucking questions!"

      Her voice had risen to a shout by the end and Cheryl winced. "Tanya..."

      "Look, Tanya," interrupted Oliver, "We're not asking stupid questions, but -really- it seems strange. You didn't talk to Police, you can't tell us much..."

      "I'm leaving!" she shouted, feeling embarrassed for her lack of a story to tell her friends. "Follow me or stay; I don't care..."

      Her auburn hair snapping about in it's long pony tail behind her, Tanya spun about, jerked the door fully open, and stormed out of the apartment into the hall. Her footfalls echoed on the wooden floorboards with her retreat and they all heard her reach the stairs and start pounding down them.

      One-by-one each of the four exchanged glances.

      "I'll go stop her," said Cheryl, heading out the door.

      Oliver nodded. "Get your coats, guys; let's see if we can figure this out." Stepping into the hall he looked at his earlier handiwork and sighed. The newly-christened Writer's Block officially had it's first crisis.

      A few minutes later, the five of them stood outside "The Hole" in front of Steven's car, it's motor still running and Tanya drumming her fingers nervously on the roof. "Get in," she said shortly, and slid behind the wheel.

      The others, slowly, followed her example and got in the car, keeping silent lest they trigger another outburst. As soon as they were all inside, Tanya spun the car around 180 degrees in the slight dusting of snow on the street, and revved the engine in the direction of the highway.

      "Jesus Christ!" Cheryl exclaimed, holding the back of the driver's side headrest with both hands. "Tanya; if Steven's hurt, we're not going to help him if we're dead!"

      "Or arrested," added Kyle from the seat next to Tanya.

      Tanya darted across several lanes as she passed slower-moving, early rush-hour traffic en route to 35W. "I know," she said through gritted teeth, "Gods, I wish I hadn't left him, there. I ... I just couldn't think of what else to do...!"

      "Tanya," Oliver said, quietly from the back seat, "Now that we're all here and have a bit of a long drive ahead of us, could you please, calmly, tell us what happened?"

      "Yeah," added Tai, "and why don't you start by explaining that whole 'undead' thing you began with when you crashed Ollie's apartment?"

      Tanya scowled, her thoughts running 'round and 'round in her head, trying to find a solution that her friends would believe. It was clear they already didn't trust her lame story; in fact, she'd not really told them anything except that Steven had been kidnapped by forces unknown ... probably the apparition she'd seen over Battle Hollow.

      The fact that a ghost was involved would only make this harder.

      Turning onto the Interstate, Northwards, Tanya brought Steven's Saturn up to 70 miles per hour and started passing traffic as safely as she could.

      "Ok, here's the full story," she said, her voice calmer. "I don't know where Steven is. The last thing I heard was his voice before it got swallowed up by darkness..."

      "'Darkness'? Is he lost in one of those caves up there?" Kyle asked.

      "I doubt it; he was in a bathroom at the time."

      "What?" The in-unison response from Oliver and Kyle steeled Tanya's resolve to tell the full story.

      "In short," she said, ignoring their incredulity, "We disturbed an ancient, Indian war site; stirred up some black, misty spirit that screamed at us; managed to push it away with magick; got to town; thought we were home-free; and -then- when Steven went to the bathroom, well, I think it snagged him."

      The car was silent.

      "Look, I know how this sounds... I went to check on him after he'd been gone a bit and -honestly- the bathroom was full of black smoke and this fucking, inhuman wind! It all faded through the back wall -darkness and everything- but, just before it did, I heard Steven's voice saying something about it not being them, whoever 'them' is..."

      "Uh, Tanya...?"

      "No, Kyle, I haven't been smoking pot, today," she responded, guessing his question. "And, yeah, I know how this sounds. I know how crazy I seem. But -shit- look at my eyes: they're not dilated and other than my pulse, I'm completely normal!"

      "Still, Tanya," said Cheryl from the back seat, "Uh, if this is all true..."

      "It is," she snapped."

      Cheryl nodded, swallowing nervously: whether in reaction to her seemingly irrational friend or the prospect of ghosts, even she didn't know. "Ok, fine. But, Tanya; what do you want us to do about it?"

      "Hunh?"

      The question hung in the car for a few moments as Tanya's mind tried to digest it. Oliver was a Secular Humanist; Kyle, an agnostic. Cheryl was a Lutheran and Tai... Well, he studied astrology, but more out of an interest in ancient astronomy, which was his real love. None of them had what could be called a supernatural inclination.

      "I don't know," she said, shaking her head as they merged onto Highway 36 to Stillwater. "I haven't been part of a Coven in years and I don't have any real connections outside of 'The Hole.'" She looked plaintively at her friends in the rearview mirror. "Frankly, I don't have anywhere else to turn..."

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 14

2005-03-29T14:59:45Z

      A few minutes later, the five of them stood outside "The Hole" in front of Steven's car, it's motor still running and Tanya drumming her fingers nervously on the roof. "Get in," she said shortly, and slid behind the wheel.

      The others, slowly, followed her example and got in the car, keeping silent lest they trigger another outburst. As soon as they were all inside, Tanya spun the car around 180 degrees in the slight dusting of snow on the street, and revved the engine in the direction of the highway.

      "Jesus Christ!" Cheryl exclaimed, holding the back of the driver's side headrest with both hands. "Tanya; if Steven's hurt, we're not going to help him if we're dead!"

      "Or arrested," added Kyle from the seat next to Tanya.

      Tanya darted across several lanes as she passed slower-moving, early rush-hour traffic en route to 35W. "I know," she said through gritted teeth, "Gods, I wish I hadn't left him, there. I ... I just couldn't think of what else to do...!"

      "Tanya," Oliver said, quietly from the back seat, "Now that we're all here and have a bit of a long drive ahead of us, could you please, calmly, tell us what happened?"

      "Yeah," added Tai, "and why don't you start by explaining that whole 'undead' thing you began with when you crashed Ollie's apartment?"

      Tanya scowled, her thoughts running 'round and 'round in her head, trying to find a solution that her friends would believe. It was clear they already didn't trust her lame story; in fact, she'd not really told them anything except that Steven had been kidnapped by forces unknown ... probably the apparition she'd seen over Battle Hollow.

      The fact that a ghost was involved would only make this harder.

      Turning onto the Interstate, Northwards, Tanya brought Steven's Saturn up to 70 miles per hour and started passing traffic as safely as she could.

      "Ok, here's the full story," she said, her voice calmer. "I don't know where Steven is. The last thing I heard was his voice before it got swallowed up by darkness..."

      "'Darkness'? Is he lost in one of those caves up there?" Kyle asked.

      "I doubt it; he was in a bathroom at the time."

      "What?" The in-unison response from Oliver and Kyle steeled Tanya's resolve to tell the full story.

      "In short," she said, ignoring their incredulity, "We disturbed an ancient, Indian war site; stirred up some black, misty spirit that screamed at us; managed to push it away with magick; got to town; thought we were home-free; and -then- when Steven went to the bathroom, well, I think it snagged him."

      The car was silent.

      "Look, I know how this sounds... I went to check on him after he'd been gone a bit and -honestly- the bathroom was full of black smoke and this fucking, inhuman wind! It all faded through the back wall -darkness and everything- but, just before it did, I heard Steven's voice saying something about it not being them, whoever 'them' is..."

      "Uh, Tanya...?"

      "No, Kyle, I haven't been smoking pot, today," she responded, guessing his question. "And, yeah, I know how this sounds. I know how crazy I seem. But -shit- look at my eyes: they're not dilated and other than my pulse, I'm completely normal!"

      "Still, Tanya," said Cheryl from the back seat, "Uh, if this is all true..."

      "It is," she snapped."

      Cheryl nodded, swallowing nervously: whether in reaction to her seemingly irrational friend or the prospect of ghosts, even she didn't know. "Ok, fine. But, Tanya; what do you want us to do about it?"

      "Hunh?"

      The question hung in the car for a few moments as Tanya's mind tried to digest it. Oliver was a Secular Humanist; Kyle, an agnostic. Cheryl was a Lutheran and Tai... Well, he studied astrology, but more out of an interest in ancient astronomy, which was his real love. None of them had what could be called a supernatural inclination.

      "I don't know," she said, shaking her head as they merged onto Highway 36 to Stillwater. "I haven't been part of a Coven in years and I don't have any real connections outside of 'The Hole.'" She looked plaintively at her friends in the rearview mirror. "Frankly, I don't have anywhere else to turn..."

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 13

2005-03-28T19:31:29Z

      The quartet of friends stared at Tanya, still panting and framed in Oliver's doorway. Her hair was disheveled and her face flush from bounding up the stairs to the fourth floor. There was a tear in her jeans over the right knee and her skin color was paler than her exertions would seem to allow.

      "Uh, what?"

      Oliver's voice flowed off of Tanya, the rush of her own blood in her ears blotting out most other sounds. She could see their faces, however, and clenched her teeth, refining her statement to counter her friends' expressions of befuddlement and disbelief.

      "Steven's hurt, guys; he's in trouble. Seriously; we've got to go, now!"

      Cheryl stood and swiftly walked up to Tanya, looking concerned. "What happened? Where is he?"

      "And what was this about 'undead'?" Tai added, looking confused.

      "Forget about that," she responded, brushing Cheryl's hand away from her shoulder, brusquely. "Look, I don't have time to explain; for all I know Steven's lost, injured, or ... or worse!"

      "Ok, ok," Cheryl said, stopping in her efforts to usher Tanya to a chair. "Just calm down and tell us where he is. How is he 'lost' or 'injured'?"

      Tanya gritted her teeth and tried to figure out what to say. Her friends understood her but most of them weren't religious or students of the arcane. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out how to describe what had happened without sounding crazy.

      "We went to Stillwater to look at antiques when Steven decided to give me a little tour," she started, honestly enough. "We went to this old Indian memorial site and found it had been razed for a condo development. Steve got pissed and hiked up a steep slope to look down at the place, and..."

      Tanya trailed off, trying to think.

      "Wait a second," Oliver interjected. "You two went antiquing? I thought you were still shy half your rent!"

      "Olllie!"

      The color had come back to Tanya's face and she scowled angrily at her friend. "We were looking; not buying!"

      "Yeah, besides, what happened to Steven?" Kyle interjected.

      Tanya shook her head slowly, "I ... I don't know. We met this ... woman. She screamed at us; acted like a total nutcase and ... and..."

      "Well?"

      Tanya sighed and mingled the truth with her response. "We ran away from her back to downtown and got lunch. Steven got up in the middle of it to go to the bathroom and, well, he vanished."

      "'Vanished'?" echoed Cheryl, looking as if she suspected this was leading to a joke. "What kind of 'vanished'? Was he kidnapped?"

      "Yeah," echoed Tai, "What did the Police say?"

      "I didn't go to the Police," Tanya responded with exasperation. "Look, you're not going to believe me until I show you. Come on; can't you guys just trust me?"

      "This from the woman who conned me into buying tickets to Ladies of Penzance last year when the show had closed early and the money was going to pay off the theater's debts..."

      "Come on Kyle," Tai interjected, "She wouldn't lie about something like Steven being kidnapped..."

      "Do you know where he might be," Oliver asked, joining Cheryl at Tanya's side.

      Tanya was fuming. "Look," she said in measured tones, "I'm going to march outside to Steven's car and head back to Stillwater with or without you. I thought I could get some help but, frankly, none of you seems willing to charge the gates without asking a bunch of stupid, fucking questions!"

      Her voice had risen to a shout by the end and Cheryl winced. "Tanya..."

      "Look, Tanya," interrupted Oliver, "We're not asking stupid questions, but -really- it seems strange. You didn't talk to Police, you can't tell us much..."

      "I'm leaving!" she shouted, feeling embarrassed for her lack of a story to tell her friends. "Follow me or stay; I don't care..."

      Her auburn hair snapping about in it's long pony tail behind her, Tanya spun about, jerked the door fully open, and stormed out of the apartment into the hall. Her footfalls echoed on the wooden floorboards with her retreat and they all heard her reach the stairs and start pounding down them.

      One-by-one each of the four exchanged glances.

      "I'll go stop her," said Cheryl, heading out the door.

      Oliver nodded. "Get your coats, guys; let's see if we can figure this out." Stepping into the hall he looked at his earlier handiwork and sighed. The newly-christened Writer's Block officially had it's first crisis.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 12

2005-03-27T18:35:54Z

Chapter Two

      Oliver, his short, red hair catching the light in the dimly-lit hallway, stayed balanced on the chair as he hung the license-plate-like sign that read "THE WRITER'S BLOCK." In the middle of the hall on the fourth floor between the Holman Building's four apartments, there, he'd strung a narrow length of aluminum chain from one wall to its opposite and fastened the metal sign to the middle with nuts and bolts.

      Hopping down, he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

      "Well," he said, glancing into the one open door, "It's official: we're now moved in!"

      "Yayyyy..." responded the monotone, unison voices from his trio of friends.

      Straightening his "Watership Down" t-shirt, the slender Oliver pulled the chair after him into the room, and returned it to its position next to the dining room table.

      Like all of the apartments in "the Hole," his was a converted office, once used by shipping clerks and management when the building had been a partial warehouse during the early 1900's. His friends, Tai, Kyle, and Cheryl were sitting in his living room -Tai sitting on the floor opening boxes of Chinese take-out- as he re-entered his small home.

      "Now everyone will know where to come for a lack of finished work," Cheryl said, leaning back on the couch. "'The Writer's Block' doesn't exactly instill confidence, you know."

      "Its alliterative," Oliver said, defending his sign. "Besides, how many times has your editor had to give you an extension for one of your articles?"

      "He's got you there, Cher," said Kyle, elbowing the long-haired brunette next to him.

      Cheryl poked Kyle in the side, and shuffled away from him taking a stack of paper plates that Tai had just unwrapped, and putting them between herself and her tormentor. "Easy for you to say; you don't write at all, unless you count oils..."

      "Oils, watercolor, foot-pumped air brush, you name it," he responded proudly. "But if you think I don't get writer's block, you're delusional."

      "And that's never a word that'd be used to describe Cheryl," Tai said, adding a few plastic serving spoons to the various boxes.

      "Looks good, Tai," Oliver said, sitting down on the floor between Kyle and Cheryl to end the good-natured ribbing.

      "Yeah, my Uncle's cooks really earned that 'best of' rating from the Tribune last year," Tai said, dishing himself a plateful of shrimp dumplings. "Even if I didn't work there, I still think I'd be eating their take-out every other day..."

      Tai Jimenez's Uncle owned the Lucky Cat Restaurant just off Broadway in NorthEast Minneapolis. While his mother's brother -a full-blooded Chinese immigrant- kept him on the payroll as a waiter, the half-Asian/half-Mexican playwright mostly kept the job for the free food at the end of each shift.

      Sitting in the living room of Oliver's apartment, his friends weren't about to question it.

      "Still," said Cheryl to Kyle, snapping up a piece of bar-b-cue pork with a chopstick, "You've got to admit that writing is a very different process than painting..."

      Kyle nodded, kneeling off the couch to serve himself from the various boxes. "Yeah, I won't argue that, but -still- the term 'Writer's Block' still applies. I can't count the number of times I've stalled on a piece because I couldn't find the right composition of color or shape." He looked up at her as he finished. "It's still telling a story, you know; just without the printed word."

      She nodded. "But that's what I was saying; isn't calling our little cluster of apartments by that name just inviting bad luck?"

      "Not with Lucky Cat Dim Sum for lunch it isn't," Tai interjected, sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

      Oliver smiled and withdrew with his plate to the dining room table next to the couch. "Well, it wasn't lucky for Steven and Tanya; where'd they go, anyway? Think we'll have to start the game without them?"

      Cheryl shrugged. "Tanya's probably off at play rehearsal or snugging with Sandi; as far as I know, Steven's car wasn't downstairs when I went out for groceries around Noon."

      "He's probably off at Savoy's office," Tai suggested, biting into a pork bun.

      Oliver nodded. "It'd be a first, though: finishing an article before deadline..."

      "Hey," Cheryl said, with an annoyed tone, "Have some sympathy. It's not easy writing on deadline!"

      "You'd know all about that," Kyle said with a grin. "Still," he quickly added, seeing her mock-glare at him, "You are the only one of us making a living at this whole 'art' thing..."

      "If you'd just apply yourself, rather than drawing sketch after sketch of your D-n-D characters, you might get a showing, you know," she retorted. "It's not like speculative fiction sells all that well..."

      Kyle sighed, nodding. "True... Maybe if a little science fiction, fantasy, or horror would rear its head in the real world, once in a while, people would stand up and take notice."

      With a loud, abrupt >BANG<, the apartment door flew open, revealing Tanya standing in the hallway.

      "Oliver! Guys!" she shouted. "Steven needs help: some freaky undead thing's dragged him off through a dark gateway or something!"

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 11

2005-03-27T14:40:00Z

Ok, I forgot to add this chapter, yesterday. I got busy with life and even though it was all written, I had forgotten to post it! Now, here it is, and part 12 will be posted later this afternoon/evening.

      Steven climbed the stairs in back of the bar, up to the restrooms. Idly, he wondered how any person with a wheelchair or crutches would make it up the narrow rise, but dismissed the concern for his own immediate feelings.

      It wasn't that Tanya was being mean or even presumptuous; the problem was that -at least in part- she was probably right. On some level, a level that bubbled through his subconscious' attempts to deny it, he knew that she was partly right. Steven hadn't felt motivated in almost a year and nothing seemed capable of jarring him to action.

      And it's a moral failing, he thought to himself. It's my failure...

      He entered the single-person bathroom and stared at himself in the dingy mirror. While the staff had been keeping the room clean, the glass of the reflective surface was so old, it was cloudy around the edges. It made him look like he was under a soft-focus lens.

      Leaning on the edge of the sink, he looked into the basin and sighed.

      Ok, so I'm in a rut; so I can't finish what I start; neither can Tanya! Where does she get off telling me what my problems are?

      "She's telling you what your problems are because at least she understands them," he replied, out loud.

      But what's the point? To make me feel bad?

      "Yeah," he said, sarcastically. "She only acts to make me feel bad. Geez, Steve; get a grip! She's just trying to be your friend..."

      Yeah, maybe, he thought, bitterly, but what's the answer? If I'm unwilling to chart my own course, how do I fix that? If I'm so lost and unable to push my own life forward, where is she with helpful solutions?

      "It's not as if I actually gave her a chance to finish," he concluded, sighing. "Gods, I'm such a jerk..."

      Running cold water from the tap, he wet his hands and splashed his face. It felt good, cleansing himself like that; more out of habit than any need to wash up. But, after a fashion, it was a good sensation. I really need to apologize and think this out some more, he thought, standing up.

      The reflection in the mirror wasn't his.

      His face, lean and slender as always, was missing it's eyes. A cold pit opened in his stomach as he stared directly forward into two, gaping, black holes in his reflection's face, staring at him with a surreal hunger. Horrible though the vision was, it began to worsen. Riveted to the sight, he felt his heart begin to race in fear as -without any action on his own face- the thin lips in the mirror spread into a slender, awful smile.

      Behind him, in the reflection, he could see the shadows of the room darkening; spreading to cover the walls in an absence of light.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 10

2005-03-25T15:10:10Z

      Punched tin ceiling overhead, a raised seating area to the left, and an ancient, 19th-century wooden bar along the right, Ruby Begonia's was a haven of dry warmth after the chilly March winds, outside. An hour before the lunch crowds would descend, it had just opened for the day. Tanya wrinkled her nose at the lingering scent of the previous night's tobacco smoke, but made her way after Steven towards the non-smoking section in back.

      They chose a table and looked over the menu before the waitress took their order and departed, leaving them with a couple mostly-full water glasses.

      "So," began Steven looking at Tanya enthusiastically. "How do we deal with that thing? Heck, what do we even call it? A ghost? An apparition? How about..." He trailed off as she glanced at him with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips.

      "What?" he asked, distracted from his plans by her expression.

      "I'm trying to decide," she said, pausing to sip her water, "If you're high because you just survived death at the hands of a supernatural critter or if something else is responsible for your sudden mood shift."

      Steven blinked. "Excuse me? This is something we have to deal with..."

      Tanya nodded and put down her glass. "No doubt! In fact, I daresay we'll need some help. But, come on: you went from being morose -talking about 'fragile' Stillwater- to Joe Commando: Ghost Hunter, in about two seconds! What's the story, Steve-O?"

      "Tan...?"

      She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. "Yes?"

      He sighed and shook his head. "It's just that..." An annoyed tone crept into his voice as he looked his friend in the eyes. "Look, how can you be so blasé about all this? Don't you realize how ...extraordinary... that was?"

      Tanya shrugged. "Yeah, it was pretty rare..."

      "'Pretty rare'?" he echoed, chuckling. "You can't tell me you've ever seen anything like that, before..."

      She honestly looked surprised. "Of course I have! Come on; I've spoken about some of the things I ran into in before my initiation when Dad was stationed in Alabama..."

      "C'mon; you said you saw pixies!"

      "Wisps, actually," she corrected him. "And there's more I've never told you..." She leaned back against the wall behind her stool and smiled. "Just because your encounters with the supernatural have never been of the Hollywood special effects variety, doesn't mean they don't happen..."

      "So, how can you act so ... nonchalant?"

      She grinned and picked up her water for another sip. "Hey; seems to me that you're enthusiastic enough for us both."

      Steven grimaced and didn't answer.

      Finally, Tanya leaned forward and repeated herself. "So, why the shift? Why are you suddenly so gung-ho about doing the whole Ghostbusters thing?"

      For a couple minutes, he didn't answer. Their waitress came back and re-filled their water glasses before slinking away, again, to go stand and watch the small TV at one end of the bar.

      "Ok, look, it's just that ... well, this whole thing is different, you know? It's not often that an actual big event drops in your lap. Most of the time, people have to engineer their own motivations. How often do you get a quest or crusade delivered to your doorstep?"

      Tanya smiled warmly. "Honestly? All the time."

      "Hunh?"

      "Let me see if I can sum this up for you, Steve-O," she said, all traces of cynicism vanishing from her voice. "You've gotten into a slump and don't like the fact that life is what you make of it. On some level, you wish that you didn't have to make the big choices mostly because they're illusions: there are no 'big choices' ... just little ones that you advance piece-by-piece and day-by-day..."

      Steven rolled his eyes. "Get that from that psych course you took?

      "Naw, this isn't so superficial. I get this from 'Life 101'."

      "Fine, so what's my problem?" he asked, rhetorically.

      "Honestly? I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that most people are perfectly content to lead lives that happen to them when they realize that it gets tiring to always take the bull by the horns and chart their own destiny. It's not lazy, it's just human nature."

      "Sounds like laziness to me," he muttered over his water glass.

      "Well, then, maybe that's part of it, too," Tanya answered. "Maybe you see it as a moral failing and -therefore- don't want to admit that, right now, you are handling things one day at a time."

      Steven stood up. "Look, dismantle me all you like..."

      "Thanks, I will!" she inserted, brightly. Then, seeing the scowl on his face, she softened her tone. "Ok, look; it's like this: I think you've been in a rut for a long time and you see this as a 'watershed moment.' This is a big thing and I think you're grasping for it because it's a way out. But, really, you should be aware of that before you go any further."

      Steven looked at her, silently, her words sinking in.

      "We lead magickal lives, Steve-O; that's not without risk and you could get hurt if you don't, as they say, 'Know Yourself'."

      A moment passed in silence.

      "I'll be right back; bathroom."

      Turning without adding anything else, Steven walked towards the back of the bar to the stairs that led to the upstairs restrooms.

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 9

2005-03-24T21:17:29Z

      "Time to go," Tanya said with a glance down the tree-covered, rocky slope. The trailing wisps of dark fog had dispersed in that direction and appeared to have gone. Her voice wavered slightly, betraying her emotions; blatant appearances by supernatural entities were the stuff of faerie tales, not day-trips to Stillwater. "Let's keep an eye out, though; if we triggered that thing by climbing over its grave, I don't want a repeat performance."

      "I think we can handle it," Steven said, his voice a bit lighter than it had been at the base of Battle Hollow. "It may have caught us off-guard at first, but -wow- we fought off a ghost! An actual, real ghost!"

      Tanya heard the tone in her friend's voice and frowned.

      Steven walked back to the edge of the cliff that looked down over the construction-filled canyon, below, but -now- ran his eyes along the steep slope they'd climbed to its north. His body was hard to read, but his jaw was set and he was glancing -almost furtively- along the route they'd taken.

      "What are you saying?' she asked, walking up to stand by his side. "We just had an encounter of the undead kind and you're saying 'we can take it'?"

      His smile answered her, his eyes alight. Even though she wasn't touching him, Tanya could tell that Steven's heart was still racing from their experience. In truth, so was hers, but in a more cautious sense of the word.

      "Look, Casper's probably never tangled with two witches, before. She never knew what hit her! If it comes again..."

      "If it comes again," Tanya interrupted, annoyed, "I'm going to run the other way! Sheesh, Steve-O, you get your jollies from picking fights with banshees?"

      "Look," he replied, turning from her and starting back along the ridge towards the top of the slope, "I'm just saying that we can handle it. We proved that..."

      "Hey! I proved that, 'Doctor Venkman'!"

      He raised an eyebrow and sighed. "That energy you felt, in the darkness? That was me."

      She paused, thinking back, and started to correct herself. "Fine, 'we.' But if you think..."

      "And," he continued, unperturbed, "We can handle it, the next time." He stopped at the edge of some birch trees, and looked at his friend. "We just fought a ghost, Tanya; a real, manifested spirit who tried to suck the life from our bones! I've never... I've never seen anything like that, before!"

      "I ... see..." she replied, slowly, considering his words.

      A few gusts of wind blew past the rocky cliff-top, filling the wordless void between the two friends with a faint breath of river air.

      Taking her few words for assent, Steven nodded, turned, and began his decent to the base of the slope. Tanya followed a few paces behind, her eyes watching the slope for any sign of their misty attacker while turning Steven's words over and over in her mind.

      The way down was uneven and the thin coating of snow and ice on every other rock, branch, and log but despite their concern about rousing the dark apparition again, their slow climb was uninterrupted. Even so, both of their hearts didn't slow down until they had reached the bottom. Once there, the two walked across the edge of the construction site parking lot, got into Steven's car, and drove back towards downtown Stillwater.

      "Tan," he said, as they passed a small coffee shop, "Do you mind if we get lunch early and look for antiques after? I really need to sit down and make some notes."

      "Nearly getting your soul sucked out of you is some sort of artistically-inspiring turn-on?"

      He snorted, dismissively, in response.

      Tanya thought it over for a moment more and nodded, pointed across the street to a parking lot sandwiched between a bookstore flying rainbow flags and a gas station. "There; park there. We can walk across to Ruby Begonia's from there."

      Steven pulled into the indicated spot. "You know, it's not really giving me any ideas for my writing, but -really- before we get too distant from what we saw, we really should write it all down."

      "Ok, I'll bite: why?"

      Steven got out of his car, locking it as Tanya emerged from the passenger side. "Well, we can't just leave it there. That ...thing... is only going to hurt someone if we don't do something about it. One way or another, this has become our problem..."

      Tanya nodded, slowly. "I suppose that makes some sense," she said. "But, first, let's get you fed and take stock."

      He shrugged, pocketing his car keys, and started across the street towards the bar. "Sounds good by me. We've got a lot to plan..."

      Yeah, thought Tanya cautiously, we sure seem to...

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN

Writer's Block - part 8

2005-03-23T16:42:04Z

Yours,
David J Rust
Minneapolis, MN