transcend the tartaran veil for a free trial. and when you're ready to condemn your wicked soul to your personalized torture for eternity, use offer code 'please im sorry' to save 10% off your first month of endless punishment. and start your suffering within the next 30 days and you get a special deal, as much burning sulphur as you can hold in your mouth, you can keep in your mouth forever. that's 'please i'm sorry' for 10% off

The Planting, Part 2.

That morning, which morning I did not know for I no longer counted the days, the sky was painted orange and I felt its warmth on my bark and the thick curve of each of my leaves, and drank goodly from it. I now looked down on the plot of land which was my own, and saw my friends and felt it soon would be time again to change in the way which I did each year, the change which the chill of the first winds asked of me, and the change felt good.

Then I still retained some hearing and some sight, but it was as through a veil of gossamer, a distant sensation remembered but not present in the place I lived, and I could see the field, and I could see the dirt road leading to Mr. Friend’s field, not used for years, now, for the field around me was overgrown and I no longer thought of it as Mr. Friend’s field but as my own, and I could hear my birds and I could hear the swaying of the grasses, and I could see far, for these past years I had grown some many rings and some many branches and I now towered as high as the treeline that obscured the road to town.

There was an ugly sound, a gutteral, grunting sound, that I did not recognize, or almost did not recognize, but it reminded me of another time, another place I had been, and it grew louder and my hearing was no longer distant but I focused on it intently, and my leaves trembled with it, for what it reminded me of was not a pleasant time nor place. And then a second sound, which I realized was coming from the trees, and it was laughter, ugly laughter, the ugly laughter of three men which had planted me here many long years ago. Then I grew scared, and fear seeped up my trunk like sour water, and I could taste the fear.

Mr. Tice’s Studebaker sneaked out from between old old oaks and grumbled and grunted its way to the bare earth before me where in these long years nothing had ever grown, stained as it was with ugly things that I could not name. The Studebaker was worn, rusted, and barely able to move, but it moved, and in it it carried Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend, but Mr. Miller was not with them, and for this at least I felt some relief.

I saw to my surprise that Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend were old, now, the roundness of their backs bulging through their threadbare cotton shirts, their hair thinning and shot with gray. They were both smoking, and their near constant, manic laughter coughed clouds of smoke from lungs that I could almost see through their chests, throbbing with their laughter, their bones jangling loose inside them, their skin jangling loose atop.

They were speaking in between bouts of crazed giggling and their words sounded alien to me, I could not follow their words as I knew I once could, and they passed a bottle between themselves and though I tried I could not work out their intent. Were they here to finally destroy me, had they brought axes and saws and hammers to destroy me, even now, had they remembered, were they here to do as they had intended, years ago?

They tottled around to the Studebaker’s trunk and opened it, and I thought, here it is, here are the tools of my destruction, but instead they hauled out a young man, black as wet earth and dressed in an undershirt and briefs, his hands bound behind his back with jute twine. They danced around him, joking in their cruel way which was familiar to me, and dragged him to my base, to my roots.

Never did they look at me. They had forgotten me. I felt a sensation which I had long lost, but I found with a readiness which surprised me, and it filled me with warmth, but not the goodly warmth of the sun, but a burning, a fire, and I recognized it as anger. Fury. There was a horrible fury building inside of me. Not just at their actions towards this man, or the sorrow which they subjected me to long ago, but for being forgotten, forgotten! Bitter fire spread through me.

They handed the young man a spade and insisted he dig with wrists still bound behind him. He lay curled on one shoulder, and I could see now he was weeping, his face covered in sores from where they had beaten him, and he scratched at the soil at my base ineffectively, barely moving an inch at a time. They ignored him and leaned against the Studebaker, conversing, passing the bottle back and forth, watching the young man’s impossible task with disinterest.

Mr. Tice leaned over to Mr. Friend and whispered something, and that brought Mr. Friend’s laughing fit back. I watched down on them in my fury and did not know what to do. I prayed to God in Heaven for guidance. I wished lightning and roaring wildfire upon them, I wished for tornadoes and flood, for rot to fill their trunks and for sickness to weaken and blight their branches, and for blindness and disease.

But I could not reach them, for I was not able to move, nor speak, nor did God strike them down. Mr. Friend trod forth and spat hard on the boy, who had lost hold of the spade, and hauled him up to his knees and cut loose the twine with his bowie knife, and bade him dig hard and dig deep at my feet, which he began to do.

One long and spiteful Winter weakened me terribly, I tasted no sustenance and felt my own death riding near, a chill ran through me which I could not temper. I grew stooped and crooked, and even with the coming of a late Spring, my new branches paled and were laid through with weaknesses like brittle bones. The hale years which followed allowed them strength, but still I felt their weaknesses, spiraling, hidden fault lines which crossed their breadth.

I grew five new branches that bad year, four which came with faults, and I saw now that two of these laid over the dig site, over the young man, over the old men, over the rotting Studebaker.

And I found, with careful pressure

with careful pressure, at the right juncture, at the joint that I could feel the line’s crest

The fault burst and the first branch, a long, thin branch, but heavy, for it had grown in these past years, cracked off my body, and it crashed down upon the Studebaker’s windshield, bursting it and caving inward, knocking the steering wheel from its column, scattering glass and plastic through the cabin.

The old men leapt and cursed and tossed aside their cigarettes and the nearly empty bottle, and held their heads in their hands and circled the vehicle, its body caved. They howled and were no longer in such a hilarious mood, and chattered and cussed.

In their distraction, the young man with the spade rose, and instead of running away, as I had wished him to do, ran towards Mr. Tice with the spade raised, and brought it down on him. Mr. Tice turned quickly away and caught it on his shoulder, but it was a new spade with a sharp edge and went deep, separating tissue down to the bone. Mr. Tice cried out and swung a fist at the man, but missed, and the man used his foot to push Mr. Tice down and pull out the spade from the meat to protect himself from Mr. Friend, but Mr. Friend had gotten to him already and was tearing at his face and eyes with his fingernails.

They collapsed down in the dirt, and I had another branch I could loose with some effort but I did not want to hurt the young man. They rolled, and there was blood from both, the young man was knocked about the face by Mr. Friend’s open palmed hand, and they both screamed an awful, animal sound. The spade fell aside, and the young man looked as if he was lost, but then, he rolled over with a quick flip of his mass and pinned Mr. Friend down, down, his face in my dirt, and Mr. Friend could not breathe, he could not breathe and he could not reach the young man to pull him away, who was holding him by the scruff of his hair with one hand and pressing down on his neck with the other, and Mr. Friend jerked, and writhed, and jerked, and then lay limp in the pale earth.

The young man stood, and went over to Mr. Tice, who was rolling around on the dirt and moaning something terrible, and did something that I could not see, and then Mr. Tice was still and silent.

The young man thought for a very long time, and then he began to dig. He dug two deep holes and he buried Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend at the base of my roots, and he cursed my roots in his digging but I did not mind. He put dirt back on top of them, and got into the Studebaker, and drove it some where, and then returned hours later, and spat on the ground where he had buried Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend, twice, and then patted his hands on his bare and wounded thighs, and began to walk back towards the road.

I have not seen anyone since. I no longer see nor hear. I am happy. The seasons or years I have seen since have been good. I am well watered by the rain. I am safe. I am well fed by the bodies of Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend.

and like they said on the radio only they didn't say on the radio but i heard them the rock i found was the source of it all and that was why i was so laid up because the rock you see not because of what my doctor said only it was the rock you see because they told me there on the radio that it was the rock i found down by the bay and that makes sense the bay is big and old and carries with it many a curse and that is how i found out about what daddy was doing and that is where i found out that many things carry souls including the rock i found which is why i am here on this day at least that is what they said on the radio only i don't know whether or not they were talking to me or they were talking to the folks who are looking for me but i know now at least that it is public knowledge like perhaps the racing news which came up after anyhow like they said on the radio i have to take this rock i found and put it somewhere safe like where my daddy hid all those things and he was good at hiding and i know because i found those things he was hiding and that's how i found out that many things carry souls including the rock i found which is what i heard on the radio about the rock i found down by the bay and i am laid up because of it but i don't think that i need to be laid up about it any more instead i can go on and do the things my daddy tells me to do even though he is gone these seven years past even though he has been taken away and put on d e a t h r o w and even though he is there he is still telling me things to do such as find this rock down by the bay and i was curious about it but now i know what to do because of what they said on the radio in between the racing news and the tuna fish advertisement for the best sort of tuna fish around which is apparently canned even before the tuna fish lay around for an hour or two which must mean they're not canned down by the bay because those tuna fish lay all over for days and days upon their nets turning all sorts of shades and smelling of rot before the men take them away but with this rock i found down by the bay i can change all that and it is good to know that as they said on the radio

Party game idea: Halloween egg hunt. Easy setup. Don't find all the eggs on Easter.

When anon I first clambored into this barrel, I thought enlisting a particularly burly onlooker to hammer in the nails would both be an act of heroic showmanship and also a keen one which would keep me in safety were the tumble down the waterfall to knock me asconce and keep my unconscious form from drowning. However, I now curse that precaution, for I have been in this god damned barrel for what must be several days now, and those watching my death-defying stunt have clearly lost track of me. Still I attempt to call out and roll around, but I am caught in some tangled thicket, and can hear water rushing all around me. I cannot move an inch and my curled body aches terribly. I am dying of thirst surrounded by water. I would take some solace knowing that my public disappearance and death will drum up much needed publicity for my magnificent stage act, but --curses upon curses-- I will be too dead to perform it!

The alarm blares from its spiraling minaret. We huddle together in our improvised shelter, but we can't know if it will save any of us, won't know until it's over. It's time for the Froggy Freakout. The Hopping Hour. It starts, as always, with the music, the shaka-shaka Bo Diddley beat and Day of Judgement trumps, and we clamp our hands over our ears, but even so, it's louder than we can bear. We know they're coming, now. The distorted wak-wak of the guitar joins, and The Froggening has begun. How many of us will survive their pestilent doomed boogey boogey jitterbug of the Ribbit Jump? How much more can we take? How can we hold onto hope in the face of Ultimate Frog?

Ship Time: 0001408092, whatever that means.

Dear diary. I thought stowing away on this ark would be a good idea, but the “life support systems” just administered high doses of morphine to the legitimate passengers and they all fuckin died within moments of takeoff, except for that one guy Sven who survived the OD and asked me to kill him. I guess I should have, because he died anyway and the expression on his face and the claw marks on his throat when I found him a couple days later was NOT happy. Real bummer.

Anyway, so I’m just chillin in the ark. There’s a lot of nice amenities here, and enough canned food and canned water for probably the rest of my life, but man if it isn’t sort of a downer to be the only one alive here. I guess it’s better than dying scratching at my throat like Sven. None of the video game consoles work and there’s like four movies total, and how many times do I want to watch Cannonball Run. There are knives in the kitchen so I guess I’ll just, what, cut my wrists? My throat? with one of those once I get bored enough.

Can’t go into the lower decks for now, stinks of dead guys. No good place to ride my board, all the hallways are too narrow, NOT fun. Keep hearing weeping in any of the admin decks tho but I think that’s in my head because I’m going totally b-a-n-a-n-a-s. Gwen Stefani.

i'm a little teapot

short and stout

this is my fate

for stealing from a witch

"No, mother, he's real, you've got to believe me! Jenny and Bobby didn’t just get into an accident, like the newspapers said, they were chainsaw teethed to death! We all saw him on the stage at the midterm dance. The kids at school are all calling him Chainsaw Teeth Man."

“The Chainsaw Teeth Man? Why, I’ve never heard such ridiculous nonsense.”

“That’s what they’re calling him! I know you think it was just a dream, but we saw him, we saw him! I swear we did!”

"Stephanie, that's absurd, there's no such thing as Chainsaw Teeth Man. You're just upset that your friends were chainsaw teethed to death, I understand, but this happens all the time here in Harrowing Grove, it’s upsetting, but these things just happen at your age. Now, don't you have homework to do?"

"Like I can focus on homework when Chainsaw Teeth Man is running around chainsaw teething all my friends!"

"Oh, Stephanie, what am I going to do with you? Wait until your father gets home, he’s been sheriff for twenty years in this little burg, he can set you straight.”

“Just think about it, mother, Jenny and Bobby couldn’t have just gotten chainsaw teethed by accident. How do you even fall into a mouth of chainsaw teeth? They must have been chainsaw teethed on purpose!”

“They were just drinking at the midterm dance and fell into some chainsaw teeth because of their own recklessness, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit, knowing Jenny’s mother, and that’s all I’m going to say about that!”

“Mother!”

“Now if you won’t listen to me, being chainsaw teethed to death will be the least of your worries! To your room, miss, and I won’t hear any back talk!”

"Oh, Mother, what will it take for you to believe me! The Chainsaw Teeth Man is real! And you're going to regret saying he's not!"

Dog Sause.

• skeletons without flesh, scary
• flesh without skeletons, even worse
• half one half the other? just sort of upsetting, not really frightening, more confusing
• just hair, not scary, barbershop floor
• flesh with no skeleton but yes hair, slightly less scary than flesh by itself, but much grosser
• skeleton with hair, very cool, probably rides a motorcycle

The Planting, Part 1.

They say I hurt the Harper girl only I didn't that was Mr. Friend and I know because I saw it. I say just ask her, she's my friend, and they say she don't do much talking any more because of what you done only I ain't do anything. And then as I was walking away from them Mr. Miller grabbed my arms from behind and they bound me tight with jute twine from momma's shed and momma saying no no no the whole time and shaking her head but Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend held her back. And then they hooked my feet with more jute twine to the back of Mr. Tice's Studebaker and drove me slow down the gravel road to the field behind Mr. Friend's house, and it hurt something terrible and when they got me up I was all covered in blood and dirt and autumn leaves and couldn't move my head on my neck no more.

Then they said I looked like a tree, all covered in leaves like that, and they seemed in a wild mind and full of beans and kept laughing when they spoke to me. They kept saying I was a tree and I said no sir I am not but then they cut loose the jute twine on my arms and handed me a shovel and bade me start digging in the field and so I did. The ground was rocky and full of hard clay and I was weak from being dragged and I only got a few feet down before they got restless and said it'll have to do. I couldn't help myself and I threw up my breakfast in the hole I dug and Mr. Friend laughed and said it was good fertilizer and Mr. Miller and Mr. Tice laughed too.

They had me set indian-style in the hole I dug and it was cold and wet with my puke and alive with creepy crawlies. I said please let me go home but the world was fuzzy now and I was having a hard time staying awake to look at them much less talk, and I am not sure they understood me. They said lay your roots out, tree, and I said what, and they said lay your roots out, and I saw they meant me to put my hands to my side and I did, cold earth and scrambled egg and coffee beneath my blistered fingers.

They did not talk while they refilled the hole and when I said please please please they told me to shut up and I did. Their air of humor had gone, this was now the silent work of men, with men's grunts and muttered curses, dirt and clay and rocks hitting my outstretched hands and body, the hole filling up as they took turns with the shovel, burying me up to my chest. They patted the earth with the shovel and nodded and said well that's that.

Mr. Tice said doesn’t he look like a tree now and the other two allowed that I did. He said, don’t you look like a tree now, and I started to respond that I cannot see whether or not I look like a tree, but he told me to shut up and that trees don’t talk, and shoved a handful of yellow leaves in my mouth, a bitter, earthen taste.

Then they left to go to find something to whet their whistles in town and said don’t go anywhere and then laughed, their good spirits returning. Then they climbed into Mr. Tice’s Studebaker and drove off and as its tail lights and the jute twine they tied me to it with disappeared away down the field I spit out some of the leaves but was too hazy and spiritless to get them all out.

The day passed and I was hot and tried to move, but the earth was too heavy. I could feel creepy crawlies moving around my body, tasting as I struggled against the weight of the dirt laid on me, and I imagined that they were tasting their dinner as it was prepared for them like when I steal a spoon of beans on momma’s stove while it is cooking.

My sight, blurred as it was, the shapes of the field melted into one another, and I had the feeling that I was melting into them, too, and if I didn’t escape then soon I didn’t know what would happen. But no matter how I struggled the heaviness of the earth held me fast, and I could not get even an inch in any direction.

I was faced East and so I saw the sun setting as the soft shapes of the field turning orange and black shadow spilling from them longer and longer like hosewater into a garden. Breathing was hard and I tasted irony blood and the bitterness of flecks of dead leaves on my dry tongue each time I did it, and my throat made whistling sounds like, and I thought, like a tree creaking in the wind.

Night came, and the cold grew colder. I was surprised to find I was not shivering, instead, I felt very warm, up through my middle. I could barely see in the blackness of night, for there was no moon. I wondered where the three men had gone, and if they were coming back, but it was late and they had not. I was very scared.

The night seemed to last forever. Maybe it did. Strange thoughts wandered through my head, and I welcomed the warmness of the dirt piled around me, which had been cold at first but now was heated by my body and the leftover heat of the sun. I saw less and less, and closed my eyes to the world, for all I saw or imagined I saw frightened me.

The part of me which grew from the earth was cold, but I could feel the warmth in my middle rise up to warm it. I was hungry, but more-so I was very, very thirsty. The leaves stuck to my body with blood and clay shuddered in the breeze from the east, but did not flight away, and still I did not shiver. In some way their presence soothed me, and I was grateful for their protection against the night chill.

Sounds. The sounds of the night frightened me, distant wind, animals of the night, moving and calling for each other in primal want. I felt trapped, in this place where I had been planted, and struggled still, but my struggles grew less and less violent. The thought of my thirst overwhelmed me. I drifted, dreaming of water, cool draughts from the sink, from a glass, from a hose, to nourish me, replenish me, and I prayed to God in heaven for the men to return, even to throw water on me in their cruel jesting way.

Fear. The fear ran through me like water, oh God, please, send me some water. My lips were cracked like oak bark. My spine ached, stuck in this position, ground by my roll behind the Studebaker to raggedness, to bare, aching pain, coated in dirt which caked to mud with my sweat, dried to woody patches in the freezing breeze. And still, I did not shiver, some warmth inside of me, from my lowest point rising to the crust of dirt which surrounded me.

Fear. Sounds. Distant crashes, booming across the field, sounds I know, not the crack of a gun, the sound of a post being driven into dry earth, but distant, staggered, and part of me perked to it, though I do not know why. I closed my eyes tighter against it. Please, please, please, I thought, but did not speak aloud. Please, please, please.

The crashes grew nearer. And only once they boomed, twice, overhead, did I recognize them for what they were, and then I heard the smatter of first rain hitting the earth around me, water, water! From the heavens! I yet could not move my head, to crane back to catch it in my mouth, but something in me told me to wait, I did not have to. The rain had come, a gift from God, a response to my unspoken prayer, and He would provide.

So I waited, until the smattering became a downpour. It was a roar of rain, thunder crashing overhead, my eyes squeezed closed and unable to see lightning, but I did not need to. The rain was real enough, dashing into me in solid stalks, the wind blustering me, and I moved as I could with it. It was as if a floodgate had been opened above me. The lifewater pooled in the mound I sat in, sank through the earth, and I felt it move around me, seeping into my limbs, my belly. I absorbed the water into me and it gave me life, life! I felt more alive than I had in years. Glory, glory!

Glory, glory! Praise to God in His Heaven!

In time, though I did not know how much, the storm waned, stuttered to a shower, and ended. I did not mind its ending. I had supped my fill, and was satiated. The night no longer held terror over me, as it had before. I allowed myself to simply live in it, washed, clean, anew.

When the sun rose, I felt its warmth on me as sweetest honey, golden and glowing through me like nothing I’d felt before. I no longer wanted for anything. I was warmed, and I straightened my trunk as I could in my spot, what I now thought of as my spot, and felt myself growing in the warm glow of morning sunlight.

Haunted by a egg.

The egg does not leave me alone. I have burnt sage and done many cleansing rituals. I have meditated on this for hours and I have diffused bergamot and also eucalyptus. Still the egg remains. It is a bad egg. I can tell from its aura. I am practicing gratitude and have sent out letters of thanks. Crystals have done jack shit to this egg. I have breathed in many different healing patterns and methods and still the egg lingers. I have journaled about the egg. I have gone to a yoga class and though it did not go very well it should have been enough to banish the egg. I have several apatites and amethysts around the space where the egg haunts me and still it haunts me. I have purchased a Taurus Judge .45 Long Colt/.410 Bore Revolver with a 3” barrel and if that does not do the trick against the egg I am going to start killing government officials and local co-op members with it until the egg is satisfied. They are very easy to find and I have a list written in my manifestation notepad pages that when laid out end to end are as long as my two arms outstretched in Virabhadrasana II pose. The egg is here right now and is telling me many ways in which it can be satisfied and it will not stop until I have satisfied the egg. The manifestation notebook paper is made of reclaimed material. For whatever sins I have committed I seek absolution. I shall find it.

The shower of blood has come for twenty days, and we dance beneath the shattered skull of the new moon, and though we swear fealty to the same Death, still my fellow acolytes whisper beneath their breath, "Why is he dancing like that," and "Can someone please teach him to dance better," and things of this nature. My companions, the eschaton is immanent, please, let us dance without judgement, please, stop recording me with your phones, for I am simply trying to bring glory to our... listen, guys, I'm not doing anything weird, we're all dancing in the blood fall, please, guys, I-

Everyone! I plead, take heed, or steed, if you need! This farm-cur has sold me and my hungry tummy a tomato which has no bones! He’s the real pill in this farm-I-see. Well, farmpoke, you’ve made a chomp chump out of this mater matey for the last time, and no bones about it, you’ve deskelated the situation. You’ve made a real marin-error, what a boneless boner! Take a seed over here as I ketch-you-up that you’ve broken the cherry-tomato of blight your repu-tomat-ion. When I bite into a juicy tom-tom, I expect to bust a molar all over your face. I shall take my business else-wise?

Hi =)

Just a reminder that other people live in this building =X haha

Please keep the noise down after 10 P. M. =) and if you are raising ghouls that’s totally ok with us! WE DON’T CARE and will NOT TELL THE SUPER AT THIS TIME!!!! =) but PLEASE clean up after them, and be sure to discard of the bodies in the FLESH REPOSITORY not the regular RECYCLING. The earth thanks you! ;)

Also, just a reminder that if you DO use the flesh repository, please CLOSE THE LID! We have had problems with neighborhood spectres in the past and would like to avoid problems in the future. We know you just moved in a few months ago, but hopefully this will be the last of the reminders we have to give you. =X DON’T WORRY about it, just want to make sure we’re all on the same page! =P

Thanks =) =) ;P Have a great day!

LORD BURLEIGH’S JOURNAL

October 3, evening.

After waking at the appointed hour, we gathered once again in the estate’s well kept library, which Mrs. Harker had been good enough to clean of the remaining body-parts and blood of our former hosts. We who remained were the good Doctor Fielding, Mr. Blothem, the railway man, Mr. Dockett, the gardener, myself, and Mrs. Harrier, who appeared to have slept quite little, with deep shadows beneath her blood-shot yet still quite pretty eyes.

The good Doctor lit his pipe, and began. “Our defenses have held quite well over-night. I have inspected the larder, and we should have provisions for another two weeks or so, which will surely be enough time to allow for our rescue. In the mean-time, I have invented a distracting enough game using a deck of playing cards I discovered in our host’s bedchambers. Adding to our amusement, the suit signs are all quite comic depictions of French politicians, which should entertain us until help arrives.”

“A game! How delightful!” exclaimed Mr. Blothem. “I adore a game. Surely we will all forget of our troubles. Please, Doctor Fielding, explain to us the game rules which you have devised.”

“Sirs, if I might interject,” said Mrs. Harrier, her voice cracking with womanly emotion. “My husband and brother are still blockaded within the garden shed, and they are without food or drink for two days now. Surely we must mount an expedition to save them and bring them in with us, where their wounds can be tended and their bodies nourished and brought back to strength.”

We men were all filled with sympathy for this poor deluded woman, clearly destroyed by grief and fear.

The good Doctor Fielding set down the comic playing cards, and cleared his throat before speaking. “Ah, my dear Mrs. Harrier, how wondrous it is! You sometimes appear almost to have the mind of a man, utilizing logic and sound reasoning, and yet it gladdens me to perceive that you still you retain the heart of a woman. While us men contemplate survival, at all costs, your heart aches for your husband and brother, no matter how foolish such thoughts might be. I do not question God’s wisdom for making you so! And am glad that He created Woman that she might show Man these gentle things, folly or no.”

“Yet, Mrs. Harrier, I am heavy hearted to need to explain to you that to open our defenses, even for a moment! may open us five to the dangers outside our doors. You, more than anyone, has seen what these creatures have been capable of by their wickedness and inborn evil. Your husband and brother would not begrudge us our own safety for the slim chance of their own lives.”

As the good Doctor spoke, Mrs. Harrier’s eyes filled with tears, which saddened us all, and I was glad for the knowledge that soon we would be learning a new game to distract us from this sorry interlude.

“Please,” she spoke, through gathering sobs. “I could hear them from my bedroom window, they cried for help, all night. It is only twenty strides from the servant quarter’s door to the garden shed, and we know that these creatures sleep through the day, and only prowl at night.”

Mr. Blothem rose from his chair, to lecture the hysterical woman. “Now, Mrs. Harrier, we must forget these men. They were doomed from the moment they chose to fight off the creatures that we might close ourselves in this house. It is better to put it out of your mind! Come now! Do not dwell on the past!”

Mrs. Harrier turned to me, trembling in her way. “Lord Burleigh, I beg of you to listen to me. Peter served with you in the Army, surely you must wish to rescue him!”

I spoke to her, as gently as I could, so that I did not enflame her female emotions any further. “Your Peter was a fine soldier, and any fine soldier would feel gladness if given the opportunity to sacrifice his life for a commanding officer.”

Mrs. Harrier staggered back from us, a sudden, inhuman rage behind her eyes. She looked as if she were to dash for the door herself! The good Doctor cried out: “Restrain her, Mr. Dockett! Before she endangers us all!”

Mr. Dockett leapt forward and grasped the woman in his thick hands, using a rope of twine to secure her as she struggled. “I’m roit so’wry ‘bout this, Missus,” he said, in his incomprehensible way. “Yer husbind is a good man, and yer brother is a good man too, but the Doctar knows whass best fer yaer. Now I’ll bring yer up to yer bed, and when yer feelin better we’ll teach ya the rules o’ the Doctar’s fun new game.”

We all found it quite an upsetting episode. However, by the time Mr. Dockett had restrained Mrs. Harrier to her bed upstairs, and returned with a bottle of fine brandy, we were all in good spirits once again, and learned the Doctor’s game with aplomb.

The campground turned out to be much smaller than the photos on their phones had suggested, a forty foot square plot of matted, rotting leaves and discarded cellophane wrappers and rainbow-slicked seepage. A rusted can of a fire pit lay smack in the middle of the ground, canted, and when they got the fire going after dark it spat sparks and oily smoke at them like malevolent vengeance for the impudence of its waking.

To each side of the camp was a thin stagger of dying, recently planted birches, with the aborted idea of separating the area from its neighbors, idiot recreational vehicles and their idiot habitants. The vehicles spewed pollution, chemical, audible, into the night, competing nu-metal setlists billowing along with the pigrotten smell of something horrible burning on the propane grills.

The firepit stank of gasoline. They sat around it, plans for s’mores abandoned, instead ritualistically passing a handle of cheap gas station rum and a two liter of Sprite around the ring.

“This tastes like infected piss,” said the sous chef, approvingly. The maître d', wrapped up in a Patagonia sweater and a knit hat, shrugged. “Well at least I brought something.”

The executive chef, who accidentally had not brought any food or supplies, pretended not to have heard him, but in his head, logged it for a later point of discussion.

The owner, who was 63 and had a serious drinking problem, smiled gamely at everyone around the circle. He was proud of himself for having come up with this great idea of a motivational outing for his staff, and due to his car ride six White Claws and 6.8 fl oz of peach Johnny Bootlegger, did not recognize the general malaise or poor state of the camp. He was smoking a long cigarette.

“I have a good idea,” he slurred, yellow cigarette smoke drooling from his small mouth, “Let’s tell spooky campfire stories.”

The sous chef did his best Brian Blessed, who he vaguely resembled and which added to the effect: “Once upon a time, there was a failing restaurant, and instead of getting monetary compensation for several awful months of service, they were dragged out to a campground and forced to be around each other outside of work hours.”

A smatter of bitter laughter passed around the ring of kitchen staff. The camper to their left began piping out the opening screeches of Freak on a Leash, covering the sounds of an escalating domestic dispute. “No no,” said the owner. “Like hook hand guy. Once upon a time, there was a guy with a, uh hook hand. He had escaped from a mental asylum. And he sounded, like this!”

He scraped the arm of his chair with his manicured fingernails, which created a dull and not very scary sound.

“Hum. I’ve got one,” muttered the heavily tattooed chef de partie, who until now had been silently musing on whether to give two weeks notice from the restaurant, or just walk out, head to Mason, Georgia to live with her uncle who fixed appliances, and let them sort it out.

The owner, who didn’t seem to have heard her, continued his very bad story. “It was a night, and there was a boyfriend and girlfriend who were in their car, up on Makeout Point, and they were, you know… doing it…”

“Doing what,” inquired the sous chef.

“I’ve got one,” repeated the chef de partie, louder. She took a long draught of the rum, chased it with Sprite, and handed it over to the maître d'. The orange light from the pitfire cast shifting shadows up her dour face, two points of dancing flame in the dark hollows of her eyes.

The other members of the circle watched her, waited as she gathered her thoughts. When she began, her voice had an odd tremble to it, that none of them had heard from her before, but each of them had heard coming from their own mouths, in the dark and hopeless corners of the night.

“I used to know this guy. Mid thirties, nondescript, heavyset, patchy beard. Each year, each October, he does these little writing exercises, little ironic scary stories, maybe a couple lines, maybe a couple paragraphs, and posts them on Facebook every day, or every other day, or whatever.”

“Facebook still exists?” asks the maître d', and no one is quite sure if he’s joking. The chef de partie ignores him and continues.

“He posts these little stories, going on nine years, now. It started off as just a little goof, something trivial to throw away as a joke while he worked on bigger and better things, but as time has passed, more and more of his dreams have fallen by the wayside, his hopes have fizzled, and the grand things he thought his life would be are rapidly slipping through his fingers, if they haven’t already slipped completely. ”

“So now, these little stories end up being a highlight for him, something to look forward to. ‘Got some good ideas for some Spooktober Stories,’ he’ll slur drunkenly to one of the few people who still speak to him. They just smile and nod, but why would they care? Most of his other relationships dissolved once they realized he’s a dead end of a human being, consumed by pride, vanity, and some misplaced conviction that he’s a ‘good person,’ which makes him sick with inaction, an unwillingness to change, improve himself, dig himself out of the hole he is sinking into.”

“This year, I imagine he’ll do it again. And, if he’s still alive next year, as his body bloats with disuse and hedonistic indulgence, he’ll do it again. Twenty, twenty five Facebook posts, each year, to no greater purpose, his failing brain dribbling out these nothing stories to the void, to three or four ‘likes’ apiece, and then… death, I guess.”

She stops there. The rest of the circle waits for the punchline, but she doesn’t produce one. Instead she just lights a Pall Mall, blows tar smoke at the oil smoke from the firepit.

“Uh,” starts the sous chef. “I mean, that’s kind of sad, but this is supposed to be a scary story. That’s not scary.”

The chef de partie leans forward, incensed, the reflection of the fire now blazing in her eyes. “Not scary? No, no, you’re wrong. You’re dead wrong.”

She grins at everyone, flames licking the wetness of her teeth, black shadows and firelight dancing along her face. “Because these sad, little stories, written by a pathetic, useless failure… oh, babes…”

“You’re IN one.”

WELCOME, TO SPOOKTOBER STORIES

YEAR 9