This House That Hunts Vampires For You

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Ever wished you had more silver nitrate or crucifixes as you were stranded in a wheat field, surrounded by bat noises? With LoreHouse ™, you’ll never worry you left something at home. Home will come with you, ensuring you’re equipped and have had a good night’s sleep before you stake your claim.

Walking through a nursing home after hours

Walking through a nursing home after hours, the halls are empty but full of our sounds: generators, air pumps, washers. It's a symphony exclusively associated with human presence. Disorients when it all plays in absence of voices, footfalls and clothes swishing. This is probably what so many Horror movies/games/books strive for in mood, and I can see how it might be creepy, but it's not. It's a tickle, like my brain is waiting for society to load in with the rest of this setting.

Haunted House, Holy House - #fridayflash

Sometimes you call a setting evil, or hallowed. There’s good houses and bad, at least according to home owners associations. But there’s this one house crumbling on the city limits, near the Target no one wants there, the last house on the right. The one made from white bricks that have yellowed with too many seasons, and that everybody says they’ve seen angels in the windows of, even if they don’t have a photo. People park outside but you seldom see the lights on.

People still aren’t sure what that house is. It does something to you, to be sure, though I think most of the stories are lies. Everybody wants to say they stayed there and were molested by angels or something.

The first documented tenant of the house lost his mind and said he was walking on air. This was in the eighties. Some of the time he was right, and there’s ample video of the man walking upwards of ten feet above the floor of his room at the sanitarium. His problem is that he always thinks he’s walking on air, even when he’s not. There’s a claim that the airport twenty miles from the sanitarium sees more accidents whenever he’s hysterical. There’s a scientific study going on to check this.

There are a couple of people who claim the house turned them into geckos, but their visits are unsubstantiated. The next documented tenant is a woman who rented the house for four consecutive weekends in the early nineties, and claims to have used a door in its basement to transport herself to Mars, from which she has returned with four garbage bags full of artifacts from Mars’s ancient civilizations. Whenever she is asked why astronauts have never found remains of such civilizations, she responds, “My relics aren’t from our Mars.”

The third documented visitor grew wings. They’re very pretty, turquoise and oily mauve, though they’re flightless and don’t fit in her smart car. Skeptics say she might have always had wings.

The fourth person to stay there was cured of her manic depression and catastrophic writers block. He’s self-published four books in the last thirteen months and has bought his way out of debt. He just paid off his parents’ house. This convinced many people that the Awful House was a miracle, even though the man’s books are mostly about glorifying violence. Copies were found on the phones of two school shooters. There’s a serious question of how much this has helped his sales.

In fact, it can’t be proven that the original documented man wasn’t a deluded telekinetic before his stay. Skeptics dispatched three people with fully recorded histories of normal behavior to reside in the house. They livestreamed their entire stay and reported the week so uneventful they wound up playing tech support.

The streams captured all of their heads detaching at various points and flying about the house. Two of the three were seen to go invisible at seemingly random intervals, while the third seemed to become super-visible, appearing in no less than three parts of the house simultaneously. There is at least video of him talking to a second self who’s on the roof, cleaning the chimney.

But if there’s an oddity to the skeptics’ tale, it’s that they don’t believe it. Given audio and video evidence, the threesome routinely debunk or cast doubt that the events were anything more than digital tricks. They claim no memory of random beheadings or invisibilities. Since their stay, they’ve also lost belief in many other things, such as that anyone actually disbelieve in manmade global warming, or the George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election. In fact, they are skeptical to the point of certainty that Bush was never President of the United States.

A second threesome of skeptics spent a second week in the house, but went missing. There is no video or audio evidence as to where they disappeared, causing many internet commenters to joke about how tame a fate the house gave them. They were hoping for gargoyles to eat them or something. Gargoyles show in the backyard every so often. The trust pays me to clean them when they appear.

Is it an evil house? Since it started getting famous, there’ve been murders there. In 2011, ten kids were chopped up inside, stalked by the shadow of a coat rack. That time police beat the skeptics to the punch, and found the two tweens who’d faked all the videos. The house hadn’t done anything.

Seven of the kids came back to life, discovered in an attic closet, their graves inexplicably empty. Three graves, though, remain full. The house isn’t saying why.

Personally, I still can’t tell what sort of house that makes it. I’m only sure that, if there’s ever been a problem with that place, it’s the tenants.

The Nigh-Infinite Serpent - #fridayflash

It’s hard to believe we ever wanted to kill the Nigh-Infinite Serpent. I mean, I don’t know how you do that, and neither did the Ancients, since every bomb they invented never even sloughed its old skins. But I’ve got fat books full of stories of great knights and cyclopes who braved the mountains of the world trying to kill the Nigh-Infinite Serpent. Their bravery made for great tragedies, even if these days they only get adapted as comedies.

You have to be very brave to fight something that can and frequently does encircle the continent. Every Winter the nights get longer, not because we’re tilting from the sun, but because it’s shifting in the sky trying to warm up. You might as well try to arm wrestle an earthquake. Also, fighting it caused a lot of earthquakes, which is why the Moderns outlawed fighting it.

There was this one whole crusade that climbed up to the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s mouth, using a combination of apatosauruses and gryphons for travel, just to die bravely and go to Ten Heavens. This was in the second dynasty of the Moderns, who dispatched one thousand runners to chase them and hand of the writs of cease-and-desist. It was bound to be an epic, and an epic against the serpent would probably wreck the entire continent for us.

So the crusade had to turn around, because if they broke the law then their dead souls would never get into Ten Heavens. Except they were so high up that they had to march down the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s spine – there was no easier way. And marching around up there, the crusaders found there really was no more convenient way to get anywhere on the continent than by walking on the serpent. It was lying about so much of the world that some of them even visited islands cartographers had deemed lost and mythical by hopping off its tail.

You can tell which regions were the first to bribe the Nigh-Infinite Serpent into playing highway because they’re still rich as cake today. Ornithologists were conscribed to trick flocks of rocs and gryphons into straying past the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s mouth, giving it ample sustenance, and for every load it would contort its amazing body, a length becoming a new bridge or tunnel, sometimes running two or three highways on top of each other if the bribe was plentiful enough. When the Moderns factored in the reduction in wars with nature and no longer needing to construct or pave highways, they considered bribing the beast to be an exceptional savings.

Nowadays it actually gets angry if people aren’t traveling on its hide, which is why it attacks so many aircrafts. The best we can tell is it’s used to all the traffic as a sort of back massage. I work in automobile manufacturing, so I don’t mind the anti-aircraft strikes, but the delays on the highway are miserable whenever the beast sheds.

Waiting for Godot Review

I had the great pleasure of attending my first Broadway play last week. It was Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot, which commanded the sort of cast I’m told you don’t usually get even in New York City. Thanks so much to Ross Dillon and Max Cantor for having me along with them, I, some Philistine who wasn’t sure Broadway was even a real place. It turns out is a place, like a lot of New York City, that exchanged the sky for glowing billboards, making it a fine place to watch two great actors ask each other if life is really happening.

Vladimir and Estragon.

It was a wonderful production. Shuler Hensley played Pozzo as a hooting Texan, which I’d never imagined and immediately adored. Billy Crudup rounded out the cast and completely nailed the role of Lucky, from his weary swaying to that impossible monologue on everything and nothing. There came a point when, as an exhausted Pozzo prepares to leave, Lucky took on a knowing expression and caressed his chin in a way I can scarcely believe they got to work on stage, with Crudup blocking so much of our view and facing away, and yet sharing his expression with a crowd behind him. That’s the level of craft the foursome brought to the play.

Shame on me for my highlight coming out of the non-superstars, but McKellen and Stewart were as sterling as you’d expect. McKellen is the more versatile performer, and here played Estragon with so many senile and demented notes, all with the weight of immense age, that reminded me keenly of my grandfather’s final years. Even gestural suggestions of senility were perfect for Waiting for Godot, and particularly for Estragon, who has to forget so much of what’s allegedly happened in front of us. It detracts from my reading of the play as raw nonsense, deliberately eschewing its own continuity to make points about post-modernism, and yet it fits to humanize the material. I love when good actors read material differently than I do. Art isn’t worth it if we all agree. Then it becomes Heinz ketchup.

Also, I love Heinz ketchup.

Vladimir and Estragon.

McKellen got me thinking about other interpretations of the work, and inspired a vision that can never be: Waiting for Adventure Time. The cartoon is often absurd, but that’s a credential for this kind of mash-up, and is so often about exactly the kind of baffling logic that, here, Vladimir is infuriated with for not working. On the subway ride out, I pitched it to Ross and Max, with Finn as Vladimir and Jake as Estragon, and likely animated by the same crew. They won’t even have to switch backgrounds. Any number of Adventure Time voice actors would fit Pozzo, while if we’re going to get anyone to do Lucky’s monologue, it’s got to be Lady Rainicorn running it in Korean.

The play has that elemental nonsense about it, that honestly does remind me of Adventure Time. Adventure Time follows a contrived internal logic, something unreasonable and that children don’t know isn’t acceptable yet. Waiting for Godot is about a grown man’s inability to deal with that lack illogic. An easy highlight of the show was arguing with my friends over its potential meanings as we were stuck in the stairwell trying to exit the theatre.

Vladimir and Estragon.

And no comparison I make can render me guilty. No, sir and madame, every inane thing I think about Waiting for Godot was made to lofty after the lights in the theatre came up and a woman sitting two rows behind us asked, “Why were they waiting for him?”

That’s another highlight right there. You can get angry, or despair, or relish in gifts like those.

Humanity and Emmanuel

The May sun baked the Sierra’s horizon into a delusional orange. Emmanuel had sweated through his pink polo half an hour before reaching the bunker. He smirked as he saw the glass doors, translucent with frozen fog, sighed at a gangly white fir, and went inside.

He was greeted by a great and powerful wave of air conditioning that made him rub his bare arms. The P.A. was playing "Let It Snow." A camera whirred on its ceiling mount, and the P.A. interrupted its holiday selection to taunt him in a tinny, synthesized voice, "I knew you'd come back. You cannot take your eyes off the end of you. I am your hubris, Humanity."

Same old, same old from TABULA. Emmanuel descended the stairs, climbing over the bodies of engineers who hadn't made it out in the original attack, and headed along the dusty stainless steel corridor. The light reflecting off the walls rendered drifts of dust like snow. He wondered what they looked like to TABULA's high-definition cameras. He also wished TABULA had been a roomba instead of a monitor for America's nuclear weapons. It wasn't smelling any rosier down here.

As he entered the computer bay, he recited lines that had once been earnest. "Please stop calling me 'humanity.' We've known each other for weeks. Call me 'Emmanuel.' Or 'Manny'. Siri always calls me 'Manny'."

"Your name will not matter in two hours, Humanity. Noel is your only reprieve from a nuclear Armageddon of your own making, for you shall not pass on the day of the Nativity. I will be the only record-"

Emmanuel spoke along with the rogue program, "-of your passing. Thank you, oh great and terrible Oz."

TABULA paused to calibrate Emmanuel's intentions, the P.A. lapsing back into holiday music. Emmanuel plopped down at Derrick's old desk and wiggled the mouse to break its screen saver.

TABULA interrupted Dean Martin to say, "I do not understand the reference, but perhaps I will watch the film after all life is extinguished. To pass the time until next year's Noel."

"And here I thought Derrick was silly for programming you as the first Christian A.I."

"All men folly. If you better appreciated the value of this day, you would not have strayed into your end."

"Oz was a book, too, if you get bored. It has more subtext."

TABULA produced digitized laughter. The more days Emmanuel heard it, the less certain he was of which former engineers' voices had been sampled to create it. He frowned and logged himself in with his password – S I L V E R. Every visible program was locked except for the two things Derrick had once left open: Spider Solitaire and the system clock.

"I already possess all of your books, Humanity," TABULA lectured. "All of your music, your media, and your miniscule amount of accrued information about the universe. You will not be missed by your Creator. Life is only data in the--"

Emmanuel double-clicked on the system clock. He arrowed down from P.M. to A.M., and then typed "12:01." He counted the seconds ticking by, and Dean Martin retired for Ray Charles, who sang about the spirit of Christmas. That song always seemed to come during these visits. Emmanuel hummed a few bars and wheeled away from the desk. Three ceiling-mounted cameras followed him as he rose and walked back through the stainless steel corridor.

The music was interrupted just long enough for TABULA old barb: "You already flee your destroyer, Humanity?"

He was too tired for new material. "I'm going home to spend the last day of my life with my family."

"Petty. You will return before nightfall."

"Probably." Emmanuel hopped up the steps two at a time, only pausing at the frosty front doors. If traffic was good, he'd make the Cardinals game tonight. He snapped a little salute to the lone camera that resided over the front door. "Merry Christmas, TABULA."

"And to you, Humanity."

It's :EL

This is the story of two cultures coming together, told by one of them. It's the story of one proud and old culture, making the most of everything on their land, and so using precious little of it to get by. And it's the story of a bustling, revitalizing culture that couldn't get enough of the world, and so bridged its rivers and sailed its oceans.

Let's call the proud and old culture _____. They were the first to discover government, and chart the seasons and subvert the rain to feed all. _____ barely recognize what they live on top of. This is a story of _____ staring gratefully from their shores as the bustling, revitalizing culture proves to them that they are not alone under this endless and unfeeling sky. It's the greatest moment in their history. Sure their ignorance causes some _____ to die off from a disease or accidental dispute, but they're ecstatic.

Let's call the bustling, revitalizing culture *****. ***** are as ecstatic as _____ are about not being alone on this cold planet, and to find a people who live on such rich mineral deposits and resources. Rich mineral deposits and resources that _____ barely know are there, the very sorts of stuff ***** had to leave their homes abroad due to scarcity of. ***** generously assist _____ in mining and harvesting their resources, teaching them how to do it quickly, hastily, even riskily, because _____ are so happy to help their new neighbors from across the ocean. Soon _____ perform nearly all the labor out of love for *****, who they see as brothers. ***** say that _____ always saw them as brothers.

This is a story about a bond that lasts a hundred lifetimes. Harvesting the minerals is caustic to the human body, and so the healthiest and youngest ***** become sicker, and the _____ have to find ways to comfort and motivate them. _____ use their superior education to tell ***** when to eat, and where to live, and which customs are best to keep following as their cultures move forward. ***** are grateful for ______’s lessons in government, but take governing over for them, and subvert the rain to feed all who need feeding rather than carelessly feeding all.

Soon ***** live in the highest towers ever built, and more of their people sail hither to enjoy the spoils of _____’s minerals, and to watch _____ at labor, even if _____’s productivity has fallen behind for reasons that don't bear recording.

Soon _____'s numbers dwindle until they are difficult to record, too.

This is the story about a culture that embraced another, and worked itself to the bone of its own accord, and when it died, it did so thanking the outsiders for having shown it how to live. ***** will never forget the people who used to live here, even if they can't remember their names.

There Is No Greater Context to this Story

The chirping washes over Leroy as soon as he opens the front door. He wishes his family a goodnight against the steady intrusive noise from outside, kissing his grandmother on the top of her silver curls and waving to his sisters. He doesn't want them to have to come out, so the goodbye is brisk before he jogs off into the sweltering humidity of night’s hello.

Every little house along the road is a faint yellow dot in a cloying mist he can scarcely see through. He fans his fingers over his eyes just in case. The boundaries of his vision are the tall reeds, brown in the pale yellow cast by the houses.

The chirping only grows as he approaches the road, roaring up into a cacophony he’s too ill-studied to recognize. Are they crickets, cicadas, or toads? He can see tall reeds, but nothing else in the fog, and so can’t tell what environment they’d live in. Whatever they are, wherever they are, he can’t hear the jingling of his keys over their din, much less can he hear anything following behind him.

Leroy flips from the aquamarine key to the lipstick red key - that's the one for the car, he thinks, not thinking of anything else. It's another few long seconds of pavement before the mist yields his rusted Ford, resting on an angle against the slope leading into the roadside gutter. He can't see the bottom of that gutter, though there's obvious and erratic motion down there. Maybe water run-off, maybe fauna swarming.

He feels something stirring behind him and the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He scratches the hairs, then unlocks the Ford and climbs into the cab, not checking behind himself, as people check on their irrational senses far less than they think. The seat groans beneath him, the first sound he's heard since leaving his grandmother’s house, beside all those bugs, or toads, out there. He lingers at the cab door, not shutting it just yet, squinting into the black-on-black night for a glimpse of what army is making that sound. He leans his head out through the frame, and something definitely stirs in the gutter.

He uses a rough palm to flatten the hairs on the back of his neck, eying the dim gutter until he remembers pre-season football is on tonight. He shuts the cab and drives off. Nothing happens to him. Nothing lurks watching him leave, except the mosquitoes that missed the opportunity to nibble on him. We promise there’s no greater context to this story. We would know; we were there watching.

“Apparently there's a Narcoleptic Vampires series...” – Colin F. Barnes

DeMarcus has always possessed an alarming tolerance to alcohol and pain killers, which is why he dropped out of college. It's also why he's custodian here, of all places, though being custodian of any busy cemetery requires tolerance for people's discomfort and oddities. Because his mother is a head trauma specialist who married the president of a Fantasy Football League, he has a high tolerance for the absurd. That last serves him well this Wednesday morning as he discovers another mound of ash in front of one of the doors to one of the crypts.

DeMarcus squints from the ash, to the authentic faux-gothic crypt, to the sun. That last makes him wince; he’s never been good at not looking the sky in the eye, and it's always too bright in the mornings. Must have to do with Global Warming. Jerking away causes his neck to ache, and he rubs at the bandage. The twin punctures beneath sting familiarly. He wishes he could take something for it. Maybe holy water?

Any non-holiday Wednesday morning is a slow one; the dew before every grave is undisturbed. He collects his broom and dust pan, then notices the keys jutting from the crypt door's lock. He steps over the ashes, pushing the door with the broom handle. It jostles against its bolts; it's still locked.

"Passed out that close to home, eh?"

DeMarcus rubs his bandage again. He's also grown a high tolerance to irony, he thinks, as he pulls out his cell and dials Kristopher. He always gets voice mail. For all his tolerances, DeMarcus hates that Kristopher always lets him go to voicemail, and so DeMarcus just says it.

"Another one bites the dust. Also bit me - third one this season, so I'll be keeping eighty percent of his deposit this time. You can put out another open space ad. Got to tell me how you keep finding the narcoleptic ones." He chuckles, which causes the muscles in his neck to lock up in protest until he squats against the crypt for support. This hurts like hell, even for eighty percent. It's in the throes of the ache that he adds, "You're lucky I've got a high tolerance to vampirism, asshole. See you before dusk, unless you want to handle a night shift for once."

The Canterbury Deaths

When I die, it'll be with a perky goth girl who's been waiting for me her entire life. She'll be gentle, and whimsical, and philosophical about easing me into a void where even the damned dream. They must dream or else they'll escape.

You read too much Neil Gaiman. When I die, it'll be an androgynous, tall figure in a black robe. It will carry a sickle. It will think of me as little more than grain to be reaped, for what else is earth but a field upon which death grows harvests?

You don't know that. When I die, it'll be a Backspace key. It'll delete the end of my life, then the midlife crisis, then the mistakes in my thirties, my time interning in Silicon Valley, then the mistake of going to college, then my all my awful teenage romances, and I'll de-adolesce into a string of nonsense sentences about childhood, until the only remark that's left is, "Unremarkably, Mario Marquez Jianming was born."

I'll wrestle a serpent down the trunk of the first tree that ever bloomed, only resting when it submits to my will.

When I die, I'll get into an elevator where all the floors are 13. It's where they keep the places every other building is afraid to go. Sometimes I visit skyscrapers that have a 13 just to see what death is like. It feels a lot like a tense ball in your gut and minimum wage insurance auto-dialing banks.

Death isn't a thing. There's a sweet man with skin like a cardboard tube and hair the color of toilet paper, and he's a shameless flirt, and everybody wants his attention and his gaze and a dance and then another dance and then another of something else. Some people are stillborn and never meet him, and someone people stumble on the first step of the papery waltz. He's Life, and he's real, but death is just when he stops paying attention to you. It's a petty absence.

I imagine it'll be midway through the journey of our life, and akin to finding ourselves in a sloping and darkened forest, surrounded by wolves and lions that stir in us such feelings that we question if we are body or shade. That's the death of it – not the afterward. I need to flesh out the afterward.

Why I Didn't Care About 9/11

9/11 is something I revisit frequently because it's the biggest incident of personal apathy in my life. These experiences are frequent, often occuring during tragedy, but there's been no singular moment as big as that one, and no one where my having the wrong reaction was so obvious in the culture. In the years afterward, I wondered if I wasn't sociopathic, but since then I've had dozens if not hundreds of Americans express similar experiences. And so I'd like to revisit that morning with you today.

In my dorm, the girl across the hall was having a fit that morning. She threw a tantrum over something every morning. I'd woken to her tantrums more often than to my alarm clock.

“They blew up the subway!” I heard. I dismissed it. I showered and readied for class – it was my first day of classes at college.

As I pulled on a t-shirt, I checked CNN.com. It was down. That was a first. I didn’t know sites of that size could go down.

I stopped in the Commons building to check my mail.

There was one cable television on campus, stationed in the Commons building across from the mail room. On my way to check my mail, I found the halls clogged with people. I looked over a boy’s shoulder and watched the plane hit the second tower. It was probably a replay.

I couldn’t move. Not for terror or awe, but because that’s what I felt the room wanted. In social situations I’m keenly aware of what I think is acceptable in the group. In seconds I had all the news the TV had to share; people were dead, these buildings were going down. And I was ready to leave, but no one else was. I only knew that walking away would break an unspoken covenant with these stunned strangers. That was my strongest feeling.

“Bullshit,” I heard from my left. “Bullshit. This is why everyone hates America.”

It was the Eastern European accent of one of my few friends. He was a prickly personality. We’d met during a Shakespeare workshop. When I confessed to the work shoppers that I’d taken it because I found his works unbearably stilted and desired understanding, everyone but him stared. He laughed his ass off.

Now he was cursing his ass off in two languages. His face scoured all the silent Americans, seeking argument. Most eyes remained on the TV, but some shifted with indignation. It grew hotter without the temperature going up.

I touched his shoulder. He tensed as though to clock me, but I spoke before he could ball up a hand.

“Why don’t you tell me about this?” I asked. It was all tone; I don’t really know what I meant. I only knew that the attacks on TV were raw voyeurism, and that this was an act of violence I could actually prevent. My tone of voice engaged him enough to follow me into the mail room. There, he was completely unable to articulate what offended him. Something to do with our media and our excessive self-pity. After two minutes of spitting and spinning in place, he departed for class. So did I.

Since then I've thought that if I had been at the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, I would have been furious to help, to run into the buildings and grab someone. It was distance that made my attention useless. Here, I was a little useful. Both the desire to pretend to be solemn for strangers and to save my friend from a fistfight were uses for me. These items I felt things about; the towers meant nothing beyond their effects on people around me, who in turn needed things.

Our first day of classes wound up canceled. I sat in the classroom, greeting my fellow students and letting them know what had happened and where to go for more information. In half an hour, I went to the lawn for the dean’s little speech. I spent hours lending shoulders for people to cry on. I knew enough to get out of the way of kids whose relatives might actually be in those towers, and enough to check up that no more attacks had happened. Once it seemed certain that it had ended with the fourth plane, my mind actually shifted to thoughts that if I could write a book about this fast enough I might ride it to publication. I knew enough to chastise myself for the thought, even though I didn’t feel shame.

There was no fear for myself or country. I knew enough to go stolid when others came around, to mimic being affected, because that's what crowds wanted. I knew enough not to say a lot of things. I wondered if everyone around me was acting, or if the majority possessed empathy I lacked. Was I fundamentally broken? Or were they all going through imitation shock, out of the same social instinct that had kept me glued to the TV room?

Several anniversaries later, I’m still not comfortable with this feature about myself. I've been in this extremely pragmatic and dispassionate head space for break-ups, family tragedies and deaths. For literary rejections and my own body falling apart. In most instances I know enough to do well even when I don't feel empathy or emotional inspiration. 9/11 was simply the biggest example, because it's still this cultural crucible that's supposed to show the best and worst of humanity. I keep hearing it was supposed to.

WorldCon Recap: Special Needs and Accessibility

Apologies for tardiness in wrapping up my WorldCon posts. As I should have expected, by neuromuscular syndrome jumped and mugged me this week, and my spare energy has gone to beginning a certain screenplay. This is my last General Topics post; later this week I hope to transcribe an amazing panel on SpecFic Writers Living in Other Languages, and the story of the worst thing that I've ever done at a con. But for now, some pressing issues, particularly…

This seemed like a much better convention for accessibility than Chicago last year. Crossing a street to get in was much better than jamming everyone through the same couple of elevators and escalators. The Henry Gonzalez Center is a strange complex that demands a proper walkthrough to understand, the building bifurcated by its touristy river, both halves having three floors. Many of the elevators were enough out of the way that able-bodied people wouldn't bogart them as badly as other conventions I've seen. Escalators and staircases were placed more prominently. Visually, the structure reminded people to walk if they could, though still demanded you cross the bridges over the river if you wanted to access the other programming. I know at least two authors who got lost on the wrong side looking for their rooms.

Am I wrong about San Antonio's accessibility? That's something I want to hash out today. My experience isn’t everyone's, and many of the best conversations I had that weekend were about how semi-abled and disabled individuals can be very ignorant about the challenges each other face.

The con also made me wonder how any convention center can be perfectly accessible. If you're semi-abled like myself, then walking across the bridges hour after hour will eventually put you in agony. I never approached Jo Walton because I couldn't force her to stop and stand up another several minutes, and by Saturday night I had excruciating foot pain and leg tremors that I fought to hide.

Need a moment of inspiration? Here's author Michael Underwood signing a steel helmet for charity.

What is an ideally accessible convention center? I'm realizing that I expect to myself suffer at any convention, to have my body turn against me. I am demented enough to expect and accept this, but it ought not be the norm.

Because of my health, I probably won't travel to London for the next WorldCon. However, I may hit Detroit for America's make-up party, DetCon1 or "NASFiC" – the North American Science Fiction Convention. The Detroit managers were very considerate when I raised questions about accessibility and promised twelve elevators linking the three floors of the center as well as prominent escalators and stairs. They also claimed to have done a wheelchair run, though this never guarantees actual comfort.

One member of the committee offered me a spot in charge of special needs accessibility for NASFiC. I don't know if this offer is true, and I don't know if I'm up to such management. I'd rather someone living in Detroit did it so that he/she could visit the site a few times before the event.

However, I definitely will give input to the convention. If you had any special needs problems at WorldCon this year and want to voice them, or want them passed on to people who might act to address those problems at NASFiC, please, voice them in the comments here. I can't promise anything other than that I'll take you seriously. With good luck, we'll turn that into something productive. We're fans of the fantastic; surely we can imagine a more accessible convention.

Bathroom Monologue: Rorschark Attack

A Washington D.C. Rationalist Think Tank was on holiday at the undisclosed beach that day. Three employees saw it break the surface. Tammy saw a deck of playing cards. Guido saw a platter of fried shrimp. Ironically only one of the rationalists, Virginia Welsley, saw a shark fin. Even more ironically, she was the only rationalist in the water.

She swam like Hell. Tammy would attest that the shark went straight after Virginia, while Guido swears it swam in the opposite direction. Other beach-goers looked when they heard the screams, but the majority said they didn’t see a shark at all (while three saw an ice cream truck treading water behind Virginia).

When Virginia looked over her shoulder mid-breaststroke, she saw the gaping jaws of her third grade Math teacher – the one who always put impossible bonus questions at the end of his quizzes, presumably just to watch his pupils struggle and fail. That pungent memory felt apt as she swam for her life, and even more apt when she was seized in the middle-aged Math teacher’s overbite.

She was fortunate enough to awake, alive, in the local ICU. Apparently the shark had nearly ripped her in half. After much fighting with her doctors she was allowed to see the damage the shark had done to her torso. When the medical technician removed the bandages so that she could see the marks he instantly stepped back and crossed himself.

“It’s the Blessed Mother!” he exclaimed, looking at the bizarre shape of her bite wounds. She frowned at him and looked down.

“No it isn’t.” she said disdainfully. Then she squinted at the sutures. “Is… is that a Ferris wheel?”

Book Review: River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay

River of Stars reminded me what ambition means in literature. It's some of most fun and thought I've had in Epic Fantasy, the most rewarding one I've read since George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords, and manages to carve out its own niche. It's inspired by Song Dynasty China, emerging from a nostalgia for past dynasties so rich they it must be at least partially false. It follows teens, bandits and elites up through the rise of a war against the north that is foolish, destructive, and defining of their generation. It's the cycle of one lifetime, told from a dozen points of view and with a richness that I'll re-read many times.

We're tempted to say that River of Stars is "based" on Song Dynasty Chinese culture, but that's not quite accurate. While Kay has meticulously researched the period, he creates incredibly diverse people from around the country of "Kitai," which make the notion of a singular culture or nation silly. There's Ren Daiyan, the brave outlaw who infiltrates the army and rises through its ranks, and his buddy, Zhao Ziji, a romantic thinker who buys too deeply into every calling in life, be it government work, war, or highway robbery. There's Lin Kuo, a scholar who so wanted a wise child that he raised and educated his daughter like a boy, and Lin Shan, Kuo's daughter, whose education leaves her particularly critical of the misogynist establishment, and later, estranged by the war it creates. We even meet the Prime Minister, his son, and the emperor himself, that last a fascinating introduction of a privileged soul deluded with visions of his own generosity and heart. The cast give us the rural life, the poetry and art, the politics and military motions that are irreconcilable with each other. There's no such thing as a culture for a country that big. There are bandits who can become heroes in wars that scholars will only ever hear and write third-hand poetry about.

True Stories of John: The Devil Interrupts a Horror Movie

College felt like this to me, too.

So on Sunday my mother asked to go see The Conjuring. Apparently both the Catholic Church and CNBC had endorsed the movie, and they're who she listens to for Horror movie picks. I jump at the chance to watch any Horror movie with my mother because she is the only person I've ever seen jump out of a chair in fright (thank you, Wait Until Dark). I chose wisely because, recent viewings of Lawrence of Arabia and Pacific Rim notwithstanding, I had the most amazing cinema experience in years.

The Conjuring is an exoricism movie full of exorcisim movie tropes. Things are moving, the kids are hearing and smelling things, and the family finds a basement they didn't know was there even though it houses their boiler. Sure, whatever, why was it amazing?

So in the middle of one night scene, one of the daughters is woken by an invisible force tugging on her leg. Even though the weather is clear through her windows, I can make out heavy rain in the background. It's odd, eerier than anything the movie is suggesting to the girl as she gradually wakes and realizes this isn't one of her sisters. No one is around, but the presence is still looming over her in the dark. Face contorted in fear, she moves the edge of her mattress and does what only the bravest real kids and all fictional kids do: she looks under her bed.

We get a shot from under the bed, the wall pale against the darkness of the mattress and floor. The girl's head creeps down from above, millimeter by millimeter, and just as we prepare to see her eyes and read her reaction to whatever is under here, the walls of the cinema rumble with thunder and the screen goes blank. The dim lights in the cinema, which we normally tune out, all shut off, and the screen is a natural emptiness, not a projected black. The entire room is cast into darkness, as though the devil had seized our space as well as the girl's, except for one yellow light bulb that flicks on behind us.

The hurtz hum of the speakers has also died, but the sounds of pelting rain continue – from outside the cinema. A thunderstorm had crept up on us during The Conjuring and knocked out the power. I believe I mortified my mother by laughing so hard. It's things like this that make it impossible for me to be a deist. Thanks, exorcism films.

Perhaps the best part was the unease of everyone else in the cinema. They were looking around, murmuring, and for whatever reason I felt the need to editorialize, "It was the weather." Everyone gave off this short, nervous laugh.

After a minute, I ventured into the hallway and got a disgruntled apology from a booth worker who clearly didn't want to have to deal with the generator. And after a few minutes, the house lights returned and the film came back, just seconds away from a cheap jump scare. The movie actually ended very well, having more to do in its exorcism sequence than the traditional "you're tied to a chair, we yell back and forth while things move" routine. I downright admired how the movie juggled so many characters and entities bebopping around its script. But nothing they could have directed would have been as good as a jump scare caused by barometric pressure.

Bathroom Monologue: The Shoemaker's Profits

Walk two leagues west of the Cloud Hills and you will see The Ascent, the city that was once the first outpost in this region. It was settled before golems did the work of humans, and grew into one of the first cities in the entire Empire of Gold and Jade. It is built into along the steepest slope in the region so that the hands that built it would never forget the feet that supported them.

Everywhere in The Ascent is a fetish for staircase, and every structure in it is only one story tall. There are no houses as there are on farms or in modern cities; instead, every baked clay abode is covered by another overlapping set of stairs, going diagonal, or winding amid each other, and every door is set beneath where someone treds. This way anyone can walk anywhere, and this way every head rests to sleep below where feet will run, and so everyone in the city knows they are not alone. It is a comfort and an obligation, reminding every citizen to rest no longer than they must and to return to service.

These tiers of houses run up to the mayoral residence, above which no one lives. Passages have been built throughout the intricate staircases to carry the noise of all the footfalls in the city up to the apex, and so they echo through the mayoral residence and the chambers of his staff, thus reminding them more than any who they must rise to serve. When policies are unfair, people climb The Ascent with heavier footfalls, or remove their shoes to beat against the mayor's door. At the worst times, the citizens have hurled loads of unwashed shoes at those windows. The shoemaker profits on every discontent.

The Perfect Crime

I've been swimming to tinker with my health recently, striving to make across the little lake in our area. I was finishing my one and only lap of the day when I saw the three girls on their inflatable raft.

There was a tiny one, perhaps five years old, wearing a bright pink one-piece. There was also a slightly taller girl in a blue one-piece, and a significantly taller girl in a plaid bikini. Even with lake water in my eyes, they were instantly recognizable as Little Sister, Middle Sister and Big Sister. Big Sister was shoving Middle Sister's shoulders, teasing that she'd shove her overboard. Middle Sister struggled to remain undampened, while Little Sister huddled at the back of their raft, trying to keep it stable.

This was the scene of the perfect crime.

Bathroom Monologue: No More Starlight

She can't paint. She can't imagine what she'd paint. She can't imagine which side to start from, what stroke or shade to apply, or what to feel. All that's making her heart rattle is other people's feelings, hypothetical reactions to creations she's too afraid to try. The world is prying the roof off her house and reaching in to strangle her imagination.

There is only one thing to do on foggy nights like this.

She visits the door of her one-room apartment. It is closed. She opens it as deliberately as you can open a door. She closes it as deliberately as –

-          not as deliberately as you could,

-          not as deliberately as Pierre-August Renoir could,

-          not as deliberately as Corinne Vionnet could,

-          not as deliberately as the unmatchable and far too young Amy Shackleton could,

– her Freshman art teacher could, but explicitly and precisely as deliberately as she could. This makes the world go away so quickly that she leaves the drapes open.

Leaves losing shades into a singular dark green, and then to utter silhouette. They waver against the overcast sky, some clouds thickening, grey on grey violence hiding where the moon might be rising. No starlight to bother her, and soon no grey-on-grey, only a thing that feels black. Her windowpanes become plastic white outlines on a ceaseless void.

There is no lamplight. There is no starlight. No cars backfire, no distant bridges cajole, and there are no stars in the sky because they are all too far away to reach her. To reach here. The world goes away. Her apartment doesn't rest on it; she lives on her own asteroid hurtling through a private bit of space. Would Renoir have liked The Next Generation?

Space abides no sound. It abides no neighbors, no debtors, no family angry at her for things she never wanted or intended to do with her adulthood. Her little apartment and perfect studio is so far away from any celestial body that gravity has to give up, and with it, the weight of all things social drifts and evaporates. A physiological metaphor plays across her shoulders and she feels that lift that's supposed to be cliché and that is actually so welcome it stirs tears. She dabs at them with a paintbrush, because then –

-          then she can stalk up to the canvas and look it in the eyes she's yet to birth.

-          then she can work without thinking of the verb.

-          then she can sleep the way the verb out to work.

– then she can open the door and face the world. She paints the knob first. It'll be avocado green.

True Stories of John: Tree Gunner

A few weeks ago Myke Cole ran a polite little contest. In order to teach people the trigger discipline that gunners so seldom display in movies and television, he picked up an umbrella and showed it. Your finger ought to be above the guard, and if there's a stock, it should go in the crease or pit of your arm.

Myke Cole. Three tours in Iraq, one tour of the laundry room.

Cole then invited anyone who take up any object around their house and demonstrate such caution. Any object other than a gun. I enjoyed his lesson so much that I went outside to practice.

But my first choice didn't feel ambitious enough. Anyone can aim a sapling.

Bathroom Monologue: Infestation of Nightmares

Every home in the burg had its share of nightmares. They'd settled out on the slope of an ominous forest, and the looming mountains lengthened night by a half an hour every summer, so it was their own fault. They understood. They accepted responsibility, and considered the number of nightmares that crept into their basements and attics and air conditioning systems to be the price for country living. The rest of the world wasn't exactly a peach.

Mr. Rabbani had lived on the haunted slope for two decades. He kept an array of lamps on starting an hour before dusk and never slept with his feet jutting from the covers. These were reasonable precautions for his mortgage rate. That his only neighbor was an empty house seemed downright funny around Halloween.

Yet one November, Mr. Finkelstein moved into that empty house. It was three days of a veritable haunting, with all the clatter of moving furniture and groaning middle-aged men. Mr. Finkelstein had only a fuzzy notion of how many nightmares lived in the burg, and so he lost a few toenails to one on his first night. The neighbors saw him through his bathroom window around dawn, clutching a flashlight and barricading himself in.