staying behind

I looked over the crowd of relatives I had been able to assemble on short notice. I'd succeeded in cajoling most of the family nearby to come, and even one of Grandpa's old poker buddies. Eleven people in total. If the Yahoo Answers folks were to be believed(and really, who else can you trust?), it should be enough.

I flicked through the three pages stapled together of the wikipedia article I'd hastily printed out and stood at the podium. Whichever of my family members owned a podium and brought it over(seriously!) I had no clue, but I didn't have time to get caught up on something like that. I cleared my throat and tried to take charge of this thing.

"All right folks, everyone grab a candle and light it. If we can get this done in like an hour, we'll be able to go to the diner for the early bird menu."

Aunt Janice(actually about my age but still my aunt), who had been struggling with her two children(aged two and four) since they arrived, shot me a look. "Even the kids? Seriously? Fire?" She whipped around to grab the wrist of her older son, stopping him from wailing on his younger brother for at least thirty seconds. "ERIC! DON'T HIT SHAWN! HE'S YOUR BROTHER!" Eric and Janice both gave me exasperated glares. Shawn, at least, seemed to enjoy the fugacious reprieve from violence.

I flipped nervously through my papers. The procedure they outlined was pretty vague. I decided I was allowed some discretion. "Give 'em a candle, but don't light it."

This answer seemed to satisfy them. But I had to regain momentum. "All right. Join hands. Stand around the piano."

My cousin Danny piped up. "Join hands? We're holding the candles."

I was becoming agitated. "Okay, forget the joining hands part. Come on. Circle up."

Eventually, everyone gathered around the piano. Improvising madly, I raised my candle. "Grandpa, friends and family have gathered here today to help you. You were loved in your lifetime. You accomplished a lot of great things and touched many hearts. You need to move on. Abandon this cold hard world and embrace the warm, bright afterlife you truly deserve. Go, with the blessing of all of us. You need not linger here and watch over your family. We take care of each other, in your memory, and out of love."

It was silent. We waited. Nothing happened.

I tried a different tack. "All right, Grandpa. Enough dicking around. Quit haunting the piano."

The candles went out suddenly. A chill blew into the room. The keys began to dance on their own. There was no piano roll inside, but the piano began to play. Thing is, Grandpa was never actually much of a pianist. Cheerily, the tune "Camptown Ladies" filled the room. The assembled guests looked at each other, frozen in place.

I pressed on. "Seriously, Grandpa. Cut it out. We're selling the piano to the Thompsons."

It started to play "Baby Elephant Walk." It was not a good rendition.

"Don't make this harder than it's gotta be, Grandpa. I got Father Simon down here. He'll exorcise the shit out of this piano. Priests can do that, right? If that doesn't work, I'll get one of those voodoo guys."

Father Simon looked very upset. I tried to shrug at him apologetically. The piano launched into "Chopsticks". I was undeterred.

"Yeah man, a witch doctor. So give it up."

More "Chopsticks." Louder. But I had a secret weapon. I brandished a hacksaw I'd grabbed from the garage on my way in. I brought it closer and closer to a leg of the piano, but it kept on playing. Grandpa was calling my bluff, and the Thompsons weren't going to buy a piano that was missing a leg.

I threw up my hands in defeat. "You got me, Grandpa! It's out of my hands now. Wherever you end up, don't blame me!"

The family was already halfway out the door. It really was a good early bird menu.

The whole ordeal turned out to be moot, of course. As luck would have it, as soon as I put up the "haunted piano" posting on Craigslist there was a handful of interested parties. Ended up getting a decent chunk of change for the old thing.

Anyway Grandma, this letter took way longer than I expected it to. Sorry I sold your husband's ghost to a weird couple in Michigan. See you at Thanksgiving.

With love,
your grandson

ain't no corn in The Karate Kid

Steven glared bitterly at the corn on his plate and pushed it around a little with his chopsticks.

Master Chu stroked his fine beard pointedly and shot the young boy a fierce look. You could nearly imagine it being accompanied by the noise of a whip-crack. "You must eat for strength, young man! The body cannot run on vengeance alone!"

The 12-year old rolled his eyes and slouched in his chair. He let his head roll back lazily for effect. "Vengeance? What are you talking about, dude? Also, this is supposed to be rice." He set down the chopsticks and folded his arms.

Master Chu concentrated his intense, malevolent gaze on a single point of the wooden table before snapping it sharply onto the boy(presumably the table would have burst into flames otherwise). Steven winced reflexively but continued to slouch in defiance.

"Such impudence!" The old man trembled with rage. "You should be more careful with your tongue, lest you find it plucked out by a master whose patience you have eroded!"

Steven looked incredulous, but mostly bored. "What? Dude, that is gross and creepy. Do you like, know my mom? When will she get back?"

"You do not have time for such concerns, whelp!" The old master twisted his long wispy mustache between in his fingers. "Now finish your meal, and we will begin turning your body and will into deadly weapons!"

The boy screwed up his face and sighed petulantly. "Your fake fu manchu's starting to come off."

Master Chu's rage boiled over. As he quickly smoothed his mustache back against his face, he plucked Steven out of the chair and lifted him bodily into the air by his shoulders. He carried the boy out the back door, into a meticulously landscaped backyard. The old man dropped the 12-year old roughly onto a stone bench near a small pond filled with koi. A large stone statue of Buddha overlooked the peaceful tableau.

Steven crossed his arms again. "Dude, this is lame as shit. I can hear the ice cream truck going down your street. It's playing the Mister Softee song."

Master Chu said nothing. Steven snorted and began to pipe up again, but the now-furious old man silenced him with a hateful grimace. He then turned to the statue and closed his eyes. Turning one palm to the ground and one palm to the sky, he bent his knees into a low, open stance while inhaling slowly. The birds stopped chirping and the air seemed suddenly still. Then, with a subtle twist of the ankle on his leading leg, his back foot flashed out, almost invisibly, in an upward arc. A great gout of water leapt up out of the pond, shattering the silence, and moments later the stone statue slid apart, cleanly bisected on the diagonal. As the sounds of birds and the Mister Softee truck filtered once again into the back yard, the old man nudged a displaced fish back into the pond.

Steven's eyes boggled, but he regained his unimpressed expression quickly. "Nice special effects, old dude. I especially like the water fountain."

Master Chu turned on Steven, pulling off his fake mustache as he grabbed the boy by his shirt. "Look, kid, I'm gonna level with you. Normally the Wizened Old Master shtick works pretty good, but I can see you got some sort of problem with that. But this kung fu shit isn't a trick, and I'm getting kind of close to stopping your heart with some ancient Chinese technique. So do you want to settle down learn how to break a guy's neck four times before he hits the ground or what?"

it moves

This should not be happening. This was ridiculous. This was insane. I seethed. I raged. I could feel my fingernails digging deep creases into the palms of my hand as my fists clenched and unclenched at my sides. His face warm and convivial, hands folded earnestly, my monster sat across the table from me. Not that anyone called him that anymore.

Of all the indignities, that was the worst. I had such high hopes. They would call it Schrader's Monster! And then just a Schrader until some pedant would remind them that that was just the name of professor who made him, not the monster itself, blah blah blah. But now... It was unfathomable what they called him. It was unbearable. It was intolerable. It was oppressive. They called him Darrin.

And now he sat before me and tried to smile sympathetically. It was a gruesome sight - I'd cobbled together his misshapen jaw from an unmatching top and bottom. The resulting underbite should have been a prominent characterization in legends, myths, and Sci-Fi channel movies for years to come. Instead he was kind of meekly self-conscious about it. He steepled his fingers and cleared his throat.

"Father." It was cute at first, and I had let it slide. Now it made me mad. Well, angry. You know what I mean. Anyway. He continued, "I've been meaning to have this conversation with you. I think it'd be a lot more conducive to my development as an individual if I moved out of the castle."

I was livid. I boiled. I erupted. "This is your home! This is where you were made! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a castle in New Jersey? How will I look, here in my castle, without a monster or anything!"

"Dad!" He looked hurt. It was pathetic. It was feeble. It was wretched. "I've requested many times that you not call me that anymore. It's detrimental to my construction of a healthy self-image!"

This is how he talks to me! Whatever happened to "fire bad!"? I wasn't going to stand for it. "This is not up for discussion, Darrin." I spat as much venom as I could into the name. "Here is where you shall stay, and you are not going to read any more of those absurd books! And we are going to drive this filthy hamlet into a pitchfork-and-torches hysteria whether you like it or not!"

He sighed and rose from his chair, his grotesque, hairless head nearly touching the ceiling. "Alright. I tried. If you'd noticed I'd been packing my stuff for the last two days, you would have realized that I hadn't asked to have a conversation with you today because I sought your permission." He turned and walked out, closing the heavy palisade behind him as he left.

I was crestfallen. I was dejected. I was crushed. He'd pay for this. They'd all pay!

clean, renewable power

Terry glared at me from behind thick frames, his beady eyes magnified into normal size by what must have been a near-legendary prescription. I hadn't exactly expected him to be thrilled to see me, but I'd hoped for at least a smirk. As it was, I couldn't even say for sure if the glimmer behind his steely glare was a spark of recognition, or if I was a total stranger to him now. Or worse, a non-person, exorcised from the realm of people he would ever have to consider again. After all, I was the first one to leave the fold. To pursue a life outside the laboratory. Away from the white coats, the formulas, and the long stretches of hours hunched over diagrams spanning six tables pulled together. I looked away.

The atmosphere probably wasn't going to improve, so I just waded right in.

"Hey, Terry." I mumbled. "Good job with the matter-integrator thing. I heard the UN considers you a national-level threat."

"Yeah." He frowned. "Well, they're a bunch of pussies."

"This is my fiancée, Laura." I gestured vaguely at the area beside me, which surprised me by being entirely empty.

She had apparently been hiding behind me up to this point, but seized it upon herself now to step forward and try to ease the tension a bit. Laura was better at these things than I was. She shook his hand warmly.


"So you're the mad scientist Tim used to run around with, huh? I really like your place. It's very uh, bright. Very modern."

The foyer, if you could call it that, went far beyond bright and modern. Every surface was jet-black, spotless, and polished to a shine. The lighting, all bare and fluorescent, was somewhere between dazzling and oppressive. But Terry seemed to loosen a little anyway. That was one of Laura's specialties. If she gave you a compliment, you believed it. They just sounded sincere.

He shifted a bit. "Yeah. Well, I designed this whole place myself. The whole facility. It runs on its own power, an engine that converts my own self-loathing into electricity."


"That's... wow. That's totally incredible. That's brilliant, Terry."

The hallway dimmed. Terry's expression went cold again. "There are some limitations. It's a work in progress." He spun on his heel and motioned for us to follow as he opened a door to go deeper into the complex. The lights slowly flared up even beyond their original brightness as we fell in step behind him.

return of another beloved feature

"I've worked enough in marketing to know that everyone breaks at some point, that no one needs anything outside food, air, water, and shelter, and that our whole lives are corporation-conducted symphonies. The only way for this to end is for the president of Coca-Cola to stand up before the world and announce that everyone should just start drinking water."

I look forward to this day too, Tim.

pretty sure I washed it twice this morning

Dear human condition,

What the hell, man? I don't mean to overstep my bounds, but I think you really dropped the ball here. Of all the different things that could have encapsulated the emotional baseline of our species, you chose some pretty rough stuff: loss, malaise, the ever-present feeling of want for things you can't have, etc. Why couldn't the human condition have been something a bit tamer, like "that feeling you get when you're taking a shower, and you aren't sure if you washed your hair so say aw hell and just wash it but you still kinda think you might have just washed it twice"? I think that would have been a whole lot less unpleasant for a lot of folks.

You know, it's not too late to change your image, man. Give it a thought, yeah? Lemme know what you think.

Regards,
S.

Mysteries abound

Going to Pennsic this year. Not very sure why! Right now I think primarily it is sort of a fitness goal. Also I may do the Dungus House, which is a stupid idea that may have the benefit of keeping me entertained.

What I'm trying to say is,

the events in my life feel like a big deal to me. I'm more than happy to grant you the same leeway.

Say no more

I need to learn (another) instrument so I can write catchy songs with powerful lyrics! I was listening to Black by Okkervil River (thanks, Pat) over and over (and over) again, and that is what I felt! But I am kind of concerned that my life is sort of a cushy, uneventful joke. Now, I don't feel that way - from my perspective, every third day is a goddamn struggle against my own molehills-made-mountains. Now, does "powerful" necessarily mean "personal?" I'm thinking it probably does! So that's why I need to be able to do it on my own. Maybe my mom will teach me piano! This is a very weird post, it is not my writing voice!

Whoops!

I am so very fickle with my creative projects. Yesterday I wrote most of a goofy song, decided to see if I could invent a bassline or simple melody on the DS KORG, and get a recording up of something, even though it'd be far from finished, and get it out that night because I was super excited. I never got past writing half of it because I spontaneously decided it was either too silly or just bad. OH WELL. You can see my list of abandoned blogs, but I often think about doing entries for them. Today I need to prepare my D&D campaign. The remainder of this entry has been omitted due to conflict of interest.

New blog

To be totally honest, I just like starting new blogs! I kind of miss my old Myspace blog, which I used for many things, some of which I don't want to bring over into a Facebook context. So I'll be using this one as my place to complain about my life on cold Monday mornings.

Wondering about the title? And the url is just something I thought would be easy to remember.