Notice

Terribly sorry for the delay, am transcribing the first "real" story of this collection into a Word document, as I have it in physical form before me, but alas, not in a way for any of you to be able to read. I am pretty close to the end of the transcribing process right now, so please be patient, and I should have the first post of the new story up in short order.

I almost left this one out, worried that this one didn't fit in any theme I was devising for this collection, and then I had to remind myself that this collection is a bit theme-less, in a sense. And it fit in better than I could give it credit for. I think the only thing I will be taking out of the original collection is an impromptu poem I wrote in it, right after I wrote the first story in the collection. I suck at poetry, so suffice to say, it will remain OUT of the finished product. I will, however, be adding a story that was never in the original collection, because, baby, it just FITS. It actually creeps ME out, when I think of it.

Ah well, I suppose I should be going back to finishing this project up, so I can post the first part of the damn thing.

The Boogeyman: Chapter One, Part Four (End)

The the medication was actually a shot, and it came three days later, via an orderly who had shown exceptional kindness to Prascher during the time that he had been there.

Eventually, when the orderly got to explaining what to expect from the puzzling medication, he learned that he would only be receiving this one shot, possibly only this one time. This confused Prascher, to which the orderly only could give him a sympathetic shrug, admitting to the fact that he didn''t know much more about the mysterious medication, outside of what he had been told about it. After a beat, the orderly readied the package the shot came in, and Prascher, feeling a sense of panic, asked him if he had any way of knowing why it was that the drug had not yet passed the finish line to become patented. The orderly shrugged, offering his earlier excuse, that he was just supposed to give him the shot today, and that he did not know its history.

The orderly handed Prascher a syringe, wrapped in a thin plastic and filled with clear liquid, and stared expectantly at him, his eyes locked onto Prascher's hands, onto the syringe.

“So.. I guess I should do it now, right?”

The orderly shrugged noncommittally, which Prascher took to mean that he should.

Unwrapping the plastic, Prascher pulled the syringe free from the packaging, and begin to roll up his left arm sleeve, readying to stick the needle in the muscle that he had been shown on his arm. Wincing, Prascher quickly sank the needle in, and slammed the plunger into the bottom of the syringe casing. As he took the needle out, the nameless orderly give him a bland congratulation, and directed Prascher to the nearby biohazardous waste disposal bin.

The Boogeyman: Chapter One, Part Three

About week after his first day, Prascher had decided he would rather get a certain aspect of his stay over with. He proceeded to walk over to one of the many receptionist desks and made an appointment that day to see the doctor he had been assigned to, Dr. Aliele. It was around noon when Prascher was to see the doctor, and so he walked over to the long series of hallways that served as the offices of the many doctors worked in the facility. At the end of the last hallway, Prascher found the unnaturally clean and bright office, where a man in comfortable-looking and worn street clothes was busy reading by the light of the large and opened windows behind his large easy chair.

Prascher knocked his knuckle against the door frame and softly asked to come inside. Dr. Aliele turned around and beckoned to him, his book resting on his gesturing hand.

After settling into the large couch that sat facing the easy chair, Prascher waited as Aliele placed the book he was reading back into the shelf. The man began a benign conversation, relating to his love of material books, as opposed to ones in a digital reader. Prascher took to the talk easily, all the while wondering as to the nature of the talk to come, but he soon found that as Dr. Aliele rested back into his chair, talk turned to one of a professional nature.

“So, you've never come to a psychiatrist's?” Prascher partially shook his head, but was cut off by the doctor. “Never mind; I already know the answer. I'm sure you know as well as I that I am aware of your past. Everything of note is here, and we have other, more important things to get to. What are some of your concerns about this new level of your life?”

Prascher got the feeling, that, despite the air of safety that the administration had probably labored to keep, to this man he was suddenly no more than a bug speared to some cork with his species and genus labeled underneath him. He tried to shake the feeling, reminding himself that Aliele was likely only trying to get to unimportant niceties out of the way, and not try to lead them to believe that he knew everything about him.

Prascher cleared his throat and answered, “I honestly thought that I would be in jail instead of... in here. I don't think that gotten over the shock.”

Aliele laughed, an unexpected sound that made Prascher tense up. “Oh, don't worry, you'll be used to being here.”

I don't plan on staying here for long, herr doktor, Prascher thought angrily, mustering a smile for Aliele. “This facility is large; I'm sure it's nice to live here.”

Aliele said, sagely. “This place has been created as a place to clear the mind. I must say, the lucky wind that carried you here was... serendipitous.”

Cockiness crept into Prascher as his mind went to the news that he had heard about the after effects of his case. “I'm sure you guys'll have a lot more exposure because of me.”

“Certainly.” Aliele's demeanor, and his voice, turned cold as he turned his gaze from off of Prascher's. Prascher shifted uncomfortably in his seat, waiting for Aliele speak.

A few days passed between the first day Prascher spoke with Aliele, and the next day when he was told that it would be beneficial to see the doctor once more. Prascher had been reluctant to return to what he regarded as an interrogation, but as time passed, he asked himself why what that he felt uncomfortable around Aliele, and, because he could not come up with any reasonable evidence for why he felt disliked by the doctor, he grew to believe that the man was only doing his job. After all, Prascher was not fond of niceties, and it was possible that the man had gone down to brass tacks, thinking that Prascher looked as though he was uninterested in small talk. When finally Prascher arrived at Aliele's office, he forgot about any reasons for why he would feel unwanted in the doctor's space.

Aliele greeted Prascher, asking him if he was allergic to chocolate, or was perhaps lactose intolerant. Prascher said no to both, and was then ignored. When asked why the doctor wanted to know about any allergies he may have, the doctor responded by disappearing into his ever-mysterious back room, closing the door behind him, and then returning with a large ceramic pitcher and with two red mugs. Aliele said something about being sorry that the only cups he had were the two large, gaudy mugs that he had been given as a gift by from his daughter, and had neglected throughout the years; Prascher answered that it did not matter to him as Aliele filled the mugs two-third of the way with brown liquid, which Prascher assumed to be hot chocolate or coffee.

When he was done pouring, the doctor apologized once more, this time for not having any toppings for what he said was hot chocolate. Again, Prascher assured him that it did not matter.

Prascher managed to get a sip of the actually rather lukewarm chocolate before Aliele asked about his past experiences with medication.

“Um, I had a problem with my immune system when I was a kid... I needed medication for that, though I'm not on any, right now. Why do you ask?”

Dr. Aliele leaned forward in his seat and clasped his hands together in front of his chin, a thoughtful look coming into his eyes. “I want you to understand, that, despite the fact that you are required to stay in this facility, you do not have to accept any medication that the doctors recommend to you.”

“Are you saying that you're recommending that I take medication?”

Aliele slowly extended his hand out, the signal for “stop”. “We're not quite ready to begin talking about medications or future plans, unless, of course, you are, and as I was saying before, you have total control of what you with into your body, here. That being said, I will not lie – sometimes it can be to your advantage to comply with doctors orders, especially when it comes to meditation.”

“How could it come to my advantage?”

“Think about it this way, Jim; what do you think will look good when you decide that it's time to go up for an evaluation to leave the facility? Complying with recommendations can be a great way to show your faith in the healing process that we implement here. Faith... well, it supposes you have your head on straight. So to speak.”

Prascher digested the information gratefully, happy about the unexpected help he was receiving. After the initial moment of joy, Prascher began to wonder why the doctor was being so open about the ins of psychological evaluations. Looking over his mug of hot chocolate, Prascher said, bluntly, “Why are you helping me?”

Aliele smiled warmly. “It's like you said – you're a great help to this facility, and anyway, this place has more than its share of lifers, and what we want to do here is to allow the mentally troubled to be able to one day assimilate back into mainstream society. All we want to do here is help you, but really, we can't say you are willing to help yourself if you don't take the first step in the right direction.”

“What do you propose for now?”

Dr. Aliele reached over to his side table and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “I was thinking about starting you off on a simple tranquilizer.”

“Why do you think that I should be on a tranquilizer?” Prascher asked, slow panic creeping up his spine.

“Oh, for a variety of reasons, the most important being the fact that they're perfect for enhancing your inner thoughts and for taking away much outside interference in the healing process. This will help in diagnosing you, and may allow you to remain more in thought as you try to discover what it is that disrupted your life.”

Not knowing what, exactly, to say, Prascher nodded and murmured in agreement to what Aliele said. “That's good enough for me...” he said, trying to piece together an understanding of why tranquilizers would even be an option for him.

“And one more thing... What I believe you should also take is a certain drug that evaluation board always approves of in these sorts of cases. It has been known to cause a few sleeping problems and depression, but it is believed that when does is allow individuals to become acutely aware of their sense of sympathy. Now, it is not a certainty that you are, in fact, a sociopath, but if you show a strong reaction to the drug, it is believed that you may show a few traits that a sociopath usually possesses.

“Now, it's technically in the experimental phase, but because we are a premier facility, we are able to make use of various experimental drugs. I have studied this particular drug for over three years with several different patients. With four patients I can say that I have seen signs of vast improvement through the continued use of the drug, and they were all allowed to leave the facility, permanently, after facing the board.”

Somehow, Prascher knew that the answer to the question that he was going to ask was not likely to be a good one. It never was a good answer, for Prascher. “Why didn't everybody who started taking the medication not stop taking it, if it could lead to them being allowed to leave the facility?”

Aliele sucked his lips, and thoughtful expression came over his face before he smiled, softly, and said, “You've got to understand, Jim, there has got to be some give and take to be able to heal as quickly as the meditation allows for, and you'll not likely enjoy it, but in doing this, maybe it is best to think of it as penance. Are you a religious man, Jim?”

The Boogeyman: Chapter One, Part Two

Prascher smiled that same secret smile that he had on that silent night. His innocence had shattered on that night, and, oh, how it had broken apart, like the snow globe that the boy had been holding only an hour and half before his demise. Certainly, there had been much rationalization on his part for the monstrous atrocities he had committed, but deep down, he knew that he was no insane man, and he also knew that, no matter how hard he pushed it down and away, the way he was going on was far from what would be considered in any pretense of normal.

He might have lost track of how many years had passed when he had first made his home, three states away from his hometown, where he committed his first acts of violence and depravity. It would seem that his newfound hobby had somehow re-energized him, allowing him to effortlessly enter the school system of the town in which she had implanted himself. It was in that town that he quickly grew to be a part of the local middle school, as the science and math teacher for most of the children in the county. Although he had believed that the reason for his crimes had been due to the stress of losing his job and losing his girlfriend, even when he had a good paying job and a quiet place to now call home, he found that his ruthless, secret desire had not, in any way, diminished.

Prascher put his all into his lessons, eventually becoming known as one of the most lenient teachers on the staff, as well as a favorite of almost all of the students. When he took the first elementary school child (he could now just barely recall that he had tied the body down with rocks, so that he could toss it into the nearby lake) he had been frightened that his popularity in the community would lead to him being easily fingered as the murderer. If anything, however, his popularity in the community worked as a shield against any accusations that may have otherwise come his way, and any general doubts that may have been cast on his character.

The body had been found, and, despite any worries that he had, Prascher was surprised to find that the community had damned the boy's grandparents as the murderers. The elderly couple were, in a sense, excommunicated from the community in total, and Prascher came to the fearful conclusion that the two boys that he killed were now enough. He found that the fear of waiting for somebody to discover that he had committed a murder was far greater than the fear he felt while waiting for someone to find out that he was a child rapist. The more he interacted with the children in the community, however, the more certain that Prascher became that he would be safe from any insinuation or allegation. As Prascher rested comfortably into his role of an educator, thinking always about the thrill of the illegal, he rested well every night, knowing that he was safe.

It was on a nondescript morning that the world finally came crashing down on him. It was roughly three years after he had fled his hometown, and Prascher was halfway through teaching his first Math class of the day. He was shocked, and the shock hadn't worn off a week after he found himself in jail.

They found the kids that would come forward - first in his current town, and then, eventually, in his hometown, they have found the girl, and then moved on to find the boy's body, which had long been a mystery in the town, since it had been found after the area had undergone a long period of rain that had washed the corpse off of the side of the hill that it had been buried in.

It was a bad time, then, for while. It was a certainty that he was going to jail; if he hadn't been certain that it was likely to be his fate, he became certain when the news went worldwide. After that, there was absolutely no chance that the courts would be able to find an unbiased jury for Prascher. It was awhile before his attorney actually decided to tell Prascher that there was talk that he may have a chance for an insanity plea. At first, he had completely pushed the the thought of there being any possibility of his pleading insanity and actually being believed. When Prascher had told his attorney that he had his doubts that he would ever be considered insane, his attorney had initially shrugged, telling him only that he believed that Prascher had no chance that he would ever have a “happy ending” at the end of the day. It then became about the search for the lesser evil.

Two weeks later and it was then that what both Prascher and his attorney considered to be a very long shot had increasingly become the man's last resort. He knew he was, by no definition, insane, but a conversation had erupted in the wake of his crime spree; it seemed that somebody had used his actions as a means to reopen old wounds, as an example of these “sick times”, in which mental illness was treated by throwing people in jail, or by throwing them out of civilization and onto the streets. It was beyond amazing; Prascher had gone from child rapist/child murderer to the poster boy of the new movement in the treating of psychological illnesses, when he, himself, was in no way, in any definition of the word, “insane”.

His case became a movement for asylums to be reopened, and for more to be created when there were shortages of asylums that could be reopened, and Prascher being declared insane or mentally stable became a topic of discussion seemingly everywhere. Even though he was grateful for the apparent god-send, Prascher felt an immense pressure to always be aware of his actions. In court, he took up to tying two of his ties together as a belt, and made great pains to remain oblivious to everyone in court, most obviously including the families of the children accusing him of his various crimes. As he came into court, he waved and smiled broadly at the family members, in one case asked the father of one of the children if his oldest, who had recently gotten into his last math class, had still had been struggling with homework.

All was not lost on the part of the prosecutor; Prascher watched them with hidden amusement every day as they attempted to inform the biased jury, that, despite what they personally believed, insanity was a vastly different definition in the world outside television dramas and movies.

Despite how assured the prosecution had been that the the jury understood the correct definition of the term insane, to everybody else but the prosecution, it was too obvious that the world, by large, was willing to ignore any correct definition of what it was that Prascher was, and assumed that the contents of his mind were, in fact, disordered.

It came as little surprise when the end came and Prascher dodged a life sentence for a semi-permanent stay at a state-of-the-art facility. It was to be his retirement, after five years of child stalking and bludgeoning. Although he had initially thought that his life was ruined by the courts, the fact was that he was now the new face of movement in American health care reform, and he had been especially careful to pay attention to the new buzzwords in this future of health care reform. The buzzwords were recovery, and then returning to normalcy. He figured that he could very easily stage the mental recovery of the suburban boogeyman and and return to the real world, where he would have to eventually find somewhere where nobody would recognize him.

Prascher's long journey through the American justice system had taken him to the sprawlingly large Higgins-Straley historical mental hospital. As Prascher first met the building, he was unable to think of anything more proper to call the “hospital” than a hospice. Very quickly, Prascher realized that the patients there were in there for longer periods than a weekend “Get well soon”, and had to prove that there was something dire that was wrong with them in order to get them into the ivy-covered walls of the building that so reminded Prascher of a plantation. To get inside required knowledge and persistence more akin to that of a star student entering Harvard than the babbling insanity of a homeless man. This institution was not interested in vanilla flavors of insanity, but was, instead, interested in credentials and in case-study fodder in return for what was, likely, for many in this institution, to be a life-long stay. Although Prascher certainly was glad that he was sound of mind, he could not help but be a little envious of some of the screws who were treated like the last living specimens of a near-extinct species.

Prascher was told that he was allowed to lounge around in his spacious apartment and in the various rooms in the massive building for a week before he was required to see the doctor. that had been assigned for him after he had completed the entrance examination.

The entrance examination proved to be as odd an experience as he had imagined it to be. No less than four people, dressed in clothing that could have been collectively worth more than the apartment that he had lived in before his capture, sat behind a table that looked to be more expensive than he dared to guess. The group of people then began to painstakingly question every aspect of his mind, his life experiences, and delicately tiptoed around the subject of his crimes. Despite his worries, Prascher was escorted out of the room after the interview was over, and he got the overall feeling that the examination, was, in fact, a mere formality, and he was escorted into what was to be his new home without any hesitation to otherwise.

The Boogeyman - Chapter One, Part One

(Warning: Parts of the following story may be too disturbing for some readers)

Jim wasn't dumb; that fact was a large part of how he got away with his secondary role in the school system.

As a young man, leaving college, Jim knew that he had wanted to teach, had always been told that he would make a superb teacher, but the first mistake that he had made was his ignorance of just how bad high school would prove to be for him.

A week in, and Jim Prascher lost any rose-tinted beliefs that he had garnered while in college. He had idealized the process of education, and of the goodness of high school children. He's aware, even where he lays now, that part of the blame belongs solely on him, believing that he could chance a return to high school, or that he was equipped to handle young adults.

He left his position at the middle of the first semester of his first year teaching, originally planning to sign up to work at the nearby primary school. By the following week, Jim was obsessively searching for hints of any job openings that would allow him to put his teaching degree to good use, but was finding none, since he was, sadly, searching for a teaching position in the dead of the school year.

A month went by, and no matter what he tried to do - and prove - to his girlfriend, she had nevertheless decided to move back to her old apartment while he was out grocery shopping one day. She had not left a note, and would not answer his phone calls.

Jeff took to going around the town primary school, imagining that if he tried hard enough, look like he cared enough, he could get a job as a substitute teacher. This quickly became an obsession of his, and he grew to believe that if he could somehow prove himself to the school's principal, or a member of the staff, that he be would be allowed to stay on as a teacher, not only as a substitute. As unemployment continued to roll in (after phone calls and letters from debt companies) cynicism and anger began to devour all of his hopes and dreams.

The first incident happened a few weeks before Christmas break, after regular school hours. It was a little girl, but, as he learned later, it could have easily been a boy. His memory clings often to the memory of the first, moreso than to any of the others.

He had told her that her parents had told him to come and get her. He was sorry that she could not remember him - surely she could remember him from a Christmas party in the past – no? Maybe she had met his son – she must have seen him at some point in school. He had seen them playing in the park once before, with her mother and father watching from a distance, along with him.

No matter what he told her, she remained nevertheless wary of him, pulling away from him as he tried to grab hold of her arm. He backtracked then, realizing that she had, more the likely, been taught stranger danger by somebody. Working to this logic, Jim managed to make the girl believe that he lost a dog, and that he needed somebody's help to locate it.

He imagined that his heart sang, as the girl looked up at him, and tried to give him a childish show of kindness by smiling up at him. She never seemed to falter from the belief of what he had told her, even after having walked three blocks with him, she seemed to slip further and further into the delusion that they were looking for his lost pet. Walking all of those blocks, John was looking for a suitable place. He had finally found an empty-looking alley (it was not difficult to find one in the dead of winter), so he fabricated him having seen his aforementioned lost dog in it.

As they walked partway through the alleyway, he clamped a hand over the girl's mouth and, while she was still in a state of shock, he overpowered her and dragged her beyond a pile of garbage. The place he had shoved her into was perfectly secluded, but the ice and snow on the ground began to permeate every article of his clothing, and as a result of him struggling with the girl to force her into compliance, snow had been shoved into his shoes. Oh, Jim had certainly not dressed well for what he was doing at the moment. He winced as cold snow sunk and slipped into every article of his clothing, but he kept up a frantic pace to beat his discomfort.

He had knocked her small body, hard, when she attempted to struggle. Eventually, she stopped making noise and flailing, despite the fact that he had long since removed his hand from over her mouth.

During, he felt wondrous, made a new. Afterwords, he felt like Jim Nobody, horrible, and, despite how much he tried to delude himself into believing that he had been pushed into what had happened, he felt like some sick being, not deserving to be known as a person.

A part of him believed that if he killed the girl, it would destroy a lot of the guilt he was already feeling, and would help in stopping any paranoid fears of him being caught. She could talk; or somebody could suspect what had happened to her.

He let her go, only after warning her about telling anybody about what had happened. He forgot, eventually, what, exactly, he had told the girl, whether that it was threat against a pet she could have owned, or family member, but he remembered that eventually he arrived at the front door of his house, sweating and breathing heavily.

He felt as though he was only able to catch his breath after the incident, a month later. Although he became unnaturally afraid of the place, Jim came around the same school again. Remembering his creeping up the sidewalk to the school later, he told himself that his only intention that day was to see the principal of the school, to beg for a job. It was easy to believe, to himself, that he was desperate enough to barge into the principle's office, begging for a job; he was feeling desperate enough to beg for a job; any job. When he got there, however, he found that the principle that already left for the day, leaving them with nothing to show for the whole day.

As he walked out of the building, he could not help but pay attention to the many kids streaming out of the school, running to meet their parents, their buses, their friends. He tensed a bit, thinking of the girl, wondering if she could, possibly, be one of the many snowsuit-clad children that poured past him. It was possible that she could see him as he stood there, watching them, and with her watching him.

Paranoid, Jim rushed back home, slamming himself inside his home. He tried to ignore any noise he heard from outside of the house, but he soon became aware of the sounds of children playing outside. As if hypnotically drawn to the noise, Jim pushed aside the shades covering the window by his couch, peering out onto the street beyond the ice-covered glass.

There were no girls playing in the snow, only small boys, varying in ages that were likely to be between six and twelve. A snowball fight took all of their attention, and none seemed aware of Jim watching them, or, at least, the danger posed from a man so intent on watching them.

The boy arrived late to the game, or he was trying to get around the group of boys to go somewhere, but either way, when he hollered at the boys, he attracted their violent attention. He was pelted with snowballs, then small blocks of filthy ice, which caused him to sink to his knees, yelling and crying.

Jim emerged from the house, not certain of what it was, exactly, he was doing, only that the boy's cries to stop were not being fulfilled by the other boys or by any adults that should have heard him by then and run out of their houses or cars to investigate his pitiful howling.

As the sound of the door permeated the chilly late-afternoon air, Jim managed to catch sight of the boys scuttling away, believing, rightfully so, that they had been caught in the act. The only one that remained in the street was the one who have been pelted with snow.

Jim hadn't gotten a close look at the boy from inside his house, but as he got a close enough look at the boy, a feeling of pity was deeply aroused in him. It was so cold that to even have the door open for those few moments as he stared at the boy was bitterly cold. The boy, caked in snow and ice, was dressed in clothes that looked, at best, to be clearly autumnal. Even from where he stood, a good distance from the boy, Jim could clearly see that he was shivering heavily, pitifully.

The sexually deviant thoughts were not what crossed his mind initially; pity struck him for the boy, and only increased as he got the chance to finally speak to him. The way the boy spoke, answering Jim, was bizarre, and at first, Jim figured that his way of speaking was a symptom of the cold. He managed to get out of the boy that he had been on his way to the town park, because he had been told to get out of the house by his father as soon as he had gotten home from school. Jim had asked the boy why his father had seemingly sent him out of the house wearing practically nothing that could cull the wind and snow that buffeted him, but the boy appeared to either have not heard him, or he was intent on ignoring his question.

Jim invited the boy inside, and was surprised to find that the boy seemed to have no qualms with entering a stranger's house. He let the boy, shutting the door behind him. As he turned into the house, he became aware of the fact that the boy was not completely normal; he seemed to have the mind of an infant and was curious about everything. On turning to face his living room, Jim found that the boy was completely fascinated by a wall compartment that Jim had filled with travel knick-knacks. At that moment he was holding one of the snow globes and shaking it furiously, without pause. The thought crossed Jim's mind that the boy simply had no interest in watching the little snow particles settle on the little city. Maybe he was interested in the purely chaotic aspect of the snowstorm.

Jim came over to the boy and rested his hand on the his freezing shoulder, and asked, him: “Do you want anything warm to drink or eat?”

The boy paused for a long while, answering by saying the name of something that Jim could not recognize. After a moment, he asked the boy if it would be alright if he just made some cocoa for them. The boy eagerly accepted, walking past Jim to turn on an ancient radio that Jim had once collected, and plopping down the ground in front of it.

Jim disappeared into the kitchen, and came out with a tray carrying two large mugs, a can of whipped cream, and found that the boy had been oddly complacent with listening to a series of long commercials, most of which spoke cheerily about the cold and about getting summer-hot deals.

Jim did not ask the boy if he would like the hot cocoa that he had prepared for him, but instead sat the hot mug down in front of where the boy sat, cross-legged on the ground. The boy did not react to Jim, instead wrapping his hands around what had to be a searing hot cup. He kept his hands touching the mug, ignoring the heat of the drink, or not even feeling any pain at all. Jim sat on the couch, wondering what he was planning on doing. He had his own cup of cocoa still sitting in the tray, but he did not want, particularly, to drink it. The idea of slugging down the far-too sweet, hot drink wasn't pleasant. Before he had invited the boy side, Jim had been comfortable in his gloom, watching It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, not caring that Christmas had been almost a month past. Jim had been complacent, completely complacent, with running on a seemingly endless spree of gloom, until the boy had appeared on the horizon of his world.

At some point, as Jim sat on the couch that his girlfriend had bought and had decided to leave behind, he was unable to keep his mind from off of the incident that was almost a month old. It had been something amazingly exhilarating, but he had never been as paranoid in all of his life as much as he had been in the last few weeks. Whenever he got the courage to, he would turn the television to the local news channel and look for any sign that the police may have been on the lookout for a rapist. How was there any way to know that she had not told anybody, that she would never bring his house down around his head?

The stress had been killing him; he had thought constantly about moving, going anywhere to escape the small town that seemed to swallow his life, and could, easily, swallow all of them. He was more frightened about the prospect of running away, wondering how far and for how long he would have to run before he could find a place to call home.

Why did he have to choose whether or not to leave the only home he'd ever known? He had made mistakes, many of them, but didn't his own society believe that, mistake or not, everybody deserved a new chance?

Jim reached over, and, on a whim, took a small sip of the hot chocolate. Looking over, Jim saw that the boy had quickly downed his own now-empty cup of hot chocolate, and was currently focusing all of his attention on the radio, watching it as though it was doing something visually stimulating. Jim waited, patiently, until a commercial break broke up the radio show, and then he reached down and pulled the boy up, murmuring to him, pulling him towards the bedroom.

Jim didn't know why he thought that the boy would have been hard to control, but he was pleased to find the boy could not have been more passive. The thought crossed Jim's mind that the boy may have experienced abuse once before, but he had to remind himself that the boy was more than likely not right in the head to begin with.

Afterwards, Jim did what he felt that he should have done with the girl. It was a powerful crescendo to end a stirring performance, and it seemed to perfectly couple with the experience. He had located a random, heavy object that had been in arm's reach, and had beat around the boy's head until a dull look came over the boy's wide, frightened eyes. The question of what to do with the body came later, as Jim laid on the ground of his bedroom floor until but need to toilet came over him, and he rose up to look at the mess he had left behind.

He hadn't asked for the boy's name. In retrospect, Jim regretted it. He was, after all, the last person that the boy was - could - talk to. The thought crossed his mind that the next time he would do it, he would remember to ask what his – or her - name was. He did not contradict this thought, but instead smiled a soft and secret smile.

Welcome to Dis' Black Fairytales!

I supposed that this would be a good place to "drop-off" the brainchild that I have been working on since near the beginning of last year.

It started when my mother Fed-Ex-ed me a package containing two beautiful, leather-encased journals. One was black, the other red.

I took the red one for myself, and gave the other to my fiance, and I began to think about a collection of short stories. I have been obsessed with the idea since I heard of Sherwood Anderson's collection of short stories, "Winesburg Ohio", and I have been feeling a little anxious about completing a work of longer fiction, since I am such an amateur author.

I started with my writing in this notebook, I got an initial idea from some sort of a conversation that came up in my Ethics class. The idea itself sounded more Science Fiction than, well, horror, but as I wrote it, I began to feel the influence more of my favorite horror literature than my favorite science fiction. In a sense, I began to enjoy the "polish" and the sheen of the idea behind the story than the people themselves. I enjoyed focusing more on the symbolism and the dark underlying shadows in this first short that I wrote, and I enjoyed the experimental feeling that writing it gave me.

It was then that I began to feel a unifying theme that would begin to establish itself in my work. This loose collection that I wrote became about a lot of different things for me. A kind of sarcastic expression of innocence, a sort of experiment with old stories that I have always felt were always inside of me, a mirror on my obsession at the time (the urban legends and the scary short stories from the internet (especially creepypasta.com) that I was entrenched in at the time), a play on the structure of nightmares, and, what I can feel strongly, a personal expression of some of the underlying fears and phobias I have growing inside of me.

These stories have a frame story which I planned to "wrap" around this collection, like the covers of the journal itself. I think I can try to keep just that semi balance of order from the original text that I wrote, and the rest of the stories I am trying to find an order to that makes sense to me, on some level. Their order does not matter, at least, at this point I cannot see any importance that can be made of ordering them in a certain fashion.

I am crossing my fingers that someone could read these for me, someone who could help me understand what an outsider to my writing would think of it. I am a little apprehensive, as some people may understand, about uploading my work so freely on the internet. Do I care about this collection, even though I am not charging for it? Yes. It was my labor of love and paranoia, and it was how I practiced my crude craft for a long while. Like many other authors, I would be devastated if someone took my work as their own, and rest assured, I would fight if something ever tried to extricate my work from me. Copyright is on my side, and I keep everything I have ever written that regards this work. I have hard copies everywhere, and I have dated every short story in this collection.

That aside, how I will do this is to upload excerpts of what I have put on my computer from the hard copies, heavily edited, carefully proofread, and I will wish that someone - any one - takes positive interest in it, and that I can have the feedback I desire and need for my writing. By my estimates at the moment, I have somewhere around twelve - maybe thirteen - pieces that I wrote that I believed fit into the collection like a makeshift puzzle piece. They're all quite different from each other, there may be some that you have no liking of. I just hope that you enjoy at least a few, maybe even just one.

I'm going to have fun with this, and I hope you will, as well.