Bathroom Monologue: “How do you put out a fire with a can of gasoline?” –a friend

“Make sure the can is dry,
then use the flat bottom to blot out the flames.

Like a human being,
even if it’s filled up with something useless or dangerous,

it can still be put to good use.”

Bathroom Monologue: So Open, He’s Inaccessible

Dear Mrs. Welsch,

This letter has nothing to do with our legal trouble. As of this morning I’ve informed the school that I won’t press charges and want them to do the same. You need to know that as upset as some people are about this, I’m still only interested in what’s best for Darius.

Darius is an unusual student. I’ve encountered very few boys like him, yet every one of them was exactly like Darius. Your son is so open about himself that he is inaccessible. When I attempt to correct his conjugation in French, he interrupts me and yells the completion of the correction, chastises himself, and apologizes to me. It is always in that order.

Multiple times during the week before the incident, I observed him approached by other boys for conversation, but once invited for an opinion, he announces his beliefs and sets about examining them aloud, not allowing the other boys to converse with him; if they get a word in edgewise, he course-corrects his monologue and continues on, refusing to let anyone else in. I understand why your husband was offended at my earlier recommendation that he see a councilor, though I assume he is receiving help at the present time.

Whatever the root of his issue, he is suffering from a radical self-definition that refuses social connection. Every day he builds walls of his inner thoughts around himself. He is too open to be accessible, and it is preventing him from learning in the classroom and connecting with his fellow children.

Monday I gave him a moleskin in which to write some of his thoughts; as of Thursday, he had filled less than half a page. His radical self-definition only occurs when people try to talk to him. That kind of silence when alone could be part of what’s wrong. And to the end of finding out what’s wrong, I thought you would find my account of Thursday afternoon useful.

When I arrived at the cafeteria, Darius was already insisting on buttering all the other boys’ toast, and was enthusiastically explaining how it is to be done. One boy, whom I will not name, didn’t enjoy this lecture and tried to pull his plate away early. I do not believe Darius swiped the knife at him intentionally, but was rather pulling himself away to disengage. He cut his own cheek and I could see there was a fair amount of blood. When I approached to examine the wound and take him to the Nurse’s, he began rambling about a history of anemia in your family. His tone was a warning, even though his words were merely explanatory. I disregarded and tried to apply a napkin to his cheek, which is when he stabbed my shoulder. The other boys tackled him shortly after that and the police were phoned.

I checked on him twice before the officers arrived. I’ve never seen him talking that fast; the second time, I couldn’t even make out the words. I believe he was explaining himself to the plastic model skeleton in the Nurse’s station.

I don’t know what is wrong with Darius. From what I’ve heard, he won’t be allowed back in public school for some time. It is my hope that you’ll find him what he needs. If he’s ever ready to come back, I’ll do what I can to help him.

Sincerely,

Diane Caddell

Consumed Podcast: Horror Edition

Delayed by long travel times and Hurricane Sandy, John and Max finally got together in the wee hours of Halloween to discuss some great and accessible Horror. In particular, three unusual takes on staples of dark fiction: serial killers, vampires, and ever-loving zombies.

First was The Perfect Host, starring David Hyde Pierce as the world's most polite hostage (and possibly a terrifying murderer). If that movie was too cheeky, then they moved to John Ajvide Lindqvist's breathtaking vampire novel, Let the Right One In, and its bar-setting film adaptations. The podcast closed with discussion of the phenomenon around The Walking Dead - the little indie comic that turned into a blockbuster TV show, a novel, two videogames, and quite possibly a movie, all in shockingly short order. The Walking Dead is all about human morality tested by the zombie apocalypse, and the boys discussed how Telltale's videogame adaptation relishes in putting the hard choices into your hands.

So, feel like a little scary chat? Then you can get the latest Consumed right here.

Bathroom Monologue: Devil Gone Missing, Redux

Pat shot out of his chair when Conner finally came home. The boy’s clothes were crusted in brown grime and he was breathing with heavy excitement.

“Where you been, boy? Gone for four days without a word!” Pat said, pulling him inside. Conner followed his old man’s lead to the kitchen with such a smile that Pat could barely bear it.

“You look devastated. Like you found Jesus.”

“Is he missing, too?” The boy sucked in air in little bursts, like reverse laughter. “I just spent days finding the devil. You’d have been so proud, Pat.”

He reversed-laughed some more and bent towards the sink. When the water ran over his hands the brown turned a little red and circled the drain. Pat’s eyes widened at the change of color.

“You did what, boy?”

Conner beamed at him from over his shoulder, scrubbing his hands with lava soap. “Finally cornered him at the dump. His tail stuck in an old box spring, and he’d dropped his pitchfork.”

“Boy?” Pat moved nearer to the door. “Boy, what did you do?”

Smoke began to rise from the sink.

The Books That Scared Us

Earlier this month I asked any visitors who felt brave enough to share the fiction that had scared them the worst. There were a few take-backs, but ultimately ten readers and writers were willing to share titles. The first two were William Shakespeare and Michael Crichton, which tickled me, and it got weirder from there. As promised, here are all the fit-to-print entries, including my own confession of the book that got me to try to hide under my bed as a kid.

Jai Joshi said:Macbeth scared me quite a bit actually. That bit where Lady Macbeth asks night to "pall in the dunnest smoke of hell" so heaven can't "peep through the blanket of the dark" to stop her. *shiver* When Macbeth keeps seeing the knife in front of him is creepy. And when Lady Macbeth can't get the blood off her hands it just brings up all this icky scary feeling inside me.


Danielle La Paglia said:
I didn't read a lot as a kid, but in high school and junior high I read a lot of Poe and even a little King, but neither ever gave me nightmares. A lot of movies have, but the first book that did was actually Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. There was something about being stalked through the jungle and then when they found out the T-Rex could swim, it was all down hill from there. As far as I can remember, there have only been two other books to ever give me nightmares and those two I read in the last three years.


Sarah Ann said:
Feast by Graham Masterton freaked me out and scared me the most. People chopping off their own body parts, then cooking them and eating them... That novel pops into my head frequently.


Jessica said:
I really like And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Both are wonderfully creepy. Lots of Michael Crichton for scary parts (Sphere, Congo, Jurassic Park). The basement scene in The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The final story in Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. The one that used to give me nightmares as a child was Tailypo. My mother had to ban the librarian from letting me check it out every few weeks. And, of course, the Scary Stories trilogy for the pictures.


Erin Cole said:
This may sound weird, but the ending of Shirley Jackson's, "The Haunting of Hill House," freaked me out, one of those punch-like endings. More obvious though, was "The Relic," by Preston and Child and Dean Koontz's "Phantoms." The build-up in some of those scenes was intense.


The Elephant's Child couldn't help harkening back to television:
Books I could cope with. The early Dr Who with the Dalects terrified me. Exterminate. Now I think that expression has real charm. I read 'We have always lived in the Castle' recently. Not a comfortable read.


Vanessa Grasso said:
"Harold" from the Scary Stories trilogy scared the ever-loving bejesus out of me, and still does, if I think about it hard enough. The illustrations in those books were scary enough, but something about the way this scarecrow came to life slowly with nothing but hatred and malice inside of him... and then what he does to the farmers... ugh, I totally won't sleep tonight. THE WORST. [Also], Sphere by Michael Crichton actually freaked my shit out pretty badly, but I can't remember why (I think it may have been the jellyfish scene, actually). And the raptors in Jurassic Park (the book)... when they're besieging the compound towards the end of the book and EVERYONE is getting eaten... their intelligence... I dunno, that scene was about a thousand times scarier to me than the kitchen scene in the movie.


Sonia Lal said:
Brave New World was creepy, yeah. Very creepy.


Your host, John Wiswell, said:
Some Horror got to me at some points, but nothing so affected me as Gandalf's apparent death in Fellowship of the Ring. I was visiting my grandmother's house, and had the book out after bed time. Part was that I read it too young for my own safety, either in my early teens or before that. Part was that I'd never envisioned fiction ever killing the powerful, wise mentor like that. Obi Wan had died, but in a brave puff of Jedi smoke. Gandalf, who was essentially Merlin and every other wizard in history to me, was dragged into the deepest shadows of the world by a whip and the foulest monster Hell ever spat out. It was fear of the dark, fear of falling, fear of losing guidance, and breaking what I saw as symbols of safety and empowerment all in the same couple pages. I tried to hide under the bed, but the guest mattress at Grandma's was too low to the ground.


Last and most pressing is Katherine Hajer'a description of a comic to which she can't recall the title:
This is terrible, because I remember the story very vividly, but don't know the title or character names (never mind the author). Okay: I was about eight, and my dad would let me pick out a comic book to get if he was in the smoke shop getting cigarettes (they had an amazing, rotating rack of comic books near the counter. I became a Stan Lee fan in that shop. But I digress.).

I never followed series properly, just got whatever had the coolest cover that month. So I wound up with some stuff that would probably be very rare and esoteric if I had been allowed to keep any of it.

And there was this one: the heroine, the title character of the comic, was on this SF world that was sort of like Earth's Dark Ages, in that she was an outlaw and it was a dangerous, backwards place to live. So her and her band of outlaws are always on the move. Apparently she always had a different outfit every issue. In the one I had, she wore a skintight camo catsuit with only one sleeve and one leg (yeah, totally practical).

They came upon this castle run by a beautiful and autocratic queen who always wore a golden mask over half her face. They are welcomed, but in the course of the stay the heroine and the queen come into conflict... in the end the heroine throws the queen over a staircase or something, and the mask comes off...

The artwork of the queen's burned, destroyed face gave me nightmares for weeks, yet I couldn't stop looking at it. The story had built her up so credibly as this regal-yet-cruel character, and the anguish the injury must have caused her was so palpable for me. It was so, so haunting, and all the more horrifying to have all this sympathy for this not-so-nice dictator.

The following issue the heroine was wearing this pure white disco outfit (remember, outlaw on Dark Ages-ish science fiction world -- totally impractical). Even though it looked cool, I stuck to the X-Men or something, because I didn't want to get that freaked out again.

Sorry, wrote you a very long answer to a short question. Hope that's okay.

Wish I could find out what the comic was!

Do you recognize Katherine's comic? Or do you have a particular piece of fiction that got under your skin? Share with us in the comments!

Bathroom Monologue: Hole of Evil

“The President says evil will always be a part of the world. We can intervene, arrest, try, analyze, medicate, rehabilitate and execute. No smart person is saying you can't do anything about any of the evil in the world. The President and I both recognize evil, and what you can do about it, which is why he hired me.

“Evil will persist, because it's a part of us, and its causes are so often so easy. That's where I come in. Where you can't eradicate it, socially and chemically, legally and ethically, I will dig my hole. I will dig deep and long, and erect walls thick and unyielding, and wrap their bonds around the vile. They will not see daylight or innocents. It will be my life's last work. The President’s work is to send as few souls to me as he can. My hope is that you will keep him honest.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Dark Man, Interrupted

“The Dark Man rose from the roiling ocean. Seaweed dangled from his many ears, and in his left hand he clutched a suffocating fish. All The Dark Man looked upon was grim--

“No, I don’t mean he was black. If he was black, I’d say he was black. The color of his skin doesn’t even matter. The guy has a bunch of ears. Listen.

“For you see, The Dark Man ruined the ground beneath his feet. It was tainted, soured, and all civilization within the reach of the sound of his footfalls trem--

“He was not Hispanic! His darkness has nothing to do with ethnicity. This is clearly a spiritual darkness.

“When the men of the world at last drew courage to confront The Dark Man, he raised his heinous gaze, and it fell upon their works, and their works--

“It is not like Black Comedy. He is neither ‘dark’ as in African nor ‘dark’ as in Coen Brothers comedy. It’s ‘dark’ as in Satanic! You know what?

“The Dark Man walked back into the ocean and never came back. Nobody knew why he came out. The end.

“Oh. Oh, you liked the ending? Well… thank you. I thought it was clever, too.”

Bathroom Monologue: The God of Suicide

Thuone is not like most gods. Aphrodite wants romance. Ares wants war. Meanwhile, the God of Suicide is trying harder to save your life than anyone else in the cosmos. He’s actually sacrificed himself thousands of times. His first gig was back when Gaia spat out the gods to replace the titans, when he posed as the first gargantuan that Zeus slew; the other gods saw it, suddenly believed they could stand against the giants, and lost their animal guises to fight. Zeus didn’t learn that his first kill was a god until eons later.

Thuone did less with the gods after that era. Like Prometheus, he was more interested in humans. Immortals just needed to take over the world; mortals needed their lives saved. Sometimes he’d descend as a great bull or lion for a hero to kill, giving him the courage to fight for others thereafter. In much less famous stories than his work with Theseus and Odysseus, he would challenge the underprivileged in full divine form (though always under pseudonyms). Even the most depressed mortals got a huge boost from thinking they slew a god. They were dumb enough to think a god could die the way they did, so there wasn’t much helping their intellectual development, but going under for them gave them spirit. Time and time again he fought, bled and fell, making little heroes who never again thought of killing themselves.

Bathroom Monologue: Herman Crab, Zombie Shield

After his third car, Herman finally embraced his nickname. Kids back in elementary school had called him “Herman Crab” because his skin burned like a boiled lobster at recess. It didn’t matter to those kids that hermit crabs weren’t bright red. They hadn’t gotten to that unit yet. Now, years after they’d all be done with school, most of those people were probably dead.

What defined a hermit crab was its soft exterior and inability to make its own defense against predators. Herman presumed, if hermit crabs were also fending off the zombie apocalypse, then they were in constant search for shells under undead seafood. Herman certainly needed them, though his shells came with four tires.

The first night that Detroit was waylaid by the undead, Herman had been in a fight with Clarice in the front seat of his Smart Car. She was the love of his life, but he was a disappointing meal ticket to her. She hated that little car, and said so in her last words, before slamming the door and walking up the street. He watched after her, uncertain of what to say until a zombie dragged her into an alley. Then he knew what to say: a lot of swear words.

The undead fondled his windshield. One seemed to try to make out with his driver’s side window. They were many and terrifying, but they were also inept and unable to make a fist. At dawn they were still smooshing up against his windows. At dawn, he finally lost the terror of the apocalypse and drove away. He felt awkward, not having been eaten. It seemed rude, at least until his Smart Car got stuck in a mire of human remains.

That was when the Herman Crab came to life. He climbed out through a rear window, hopping into an abandoned Jeep. That had much less trouble running over corpses. Two miles later, he shed the Jeep for a Chevy Silverado that turned zombie into speed bumps.

As the apocalypse wore on, Herman came to realize leg room was more important than company. Groups of survivors shot at you, or held conferences on whether you were trustworthy, or screamed about infections. Cars didn’t do that. Cars sat there, abandoned on the highway, waiting for a patient man to siphon their gas, or to move enough out of the way so that he could drive off in the biggest one.

Today he stood on the roof of a Ford Bronco, squinting a new dawn. He shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned an overpass for anything reliable. He crossed his fore- and middlefinger over his eyebrow, hoping against hope for a monster truck.

Bathroom Monologue: The End Times Are Over

"Fifty percent of Americans think the end times are coming for good reason: they already have. There’s a general feeling on earth that bad stuff is going down, and because you can’t see the ravages of the spiritual war, it’s easy to misconstrue them as coming. But the Apocalypse already came.

"You see, Jesus and his Apostles all thought the war to end all wars was going to happen soon. Revelations was like a trailer. A coming attraction. They wanted the audience to know what was up and to be on the lookout for any Jezebels and lakes of fire.

"Publishing the New Testament actually accelerated the whole thing. Satan got an advanced copy, having always had great connections in publishing, and was wickedly pissed at how little face time he got. There was about as much sex-bashing and Satan-bashing up until the end, and then at the end, Revelations was all about how he would lose. It was smack talk.

"Because you can’t sue God for libel (being omnipotent and omniscient, anything He says automatically becomes true and thus not libelous), Satan speed-dialed his side. Up went the Antichrist, the Horsemen, the many-headed hounds, the armies of sinners – the whole infernal deal. And because mass transit was a thousand years away from being invented, they arrived in a barren desert. The Hosts of Heaven fought them to a gory end with nobody in sight. With nobody in sight, nobody could write about it and the Newer Testament end to the Bible Trilogy went unwritten.

"But the end times are over. I’m sincerely sorry you all missed it."

Bathroom Monologue: On Compensation

The other evening I was out with Alice and Woodrow, on our way back from the range, and we spent several miles behind an enormous pick-up truck. I don’t know the model because they all look the same to me, but it seemed about one class below a monster truck. It could have crushed my little Corolla on a whim. He was ogling its size when Woodrow snickered.

“Somebody’s compensating for something,” he said.

Alice nodded, holding up a pinky finger. She flexed it in the direction of the truck. “Probably can’t even get it up.”

Even though they had the tone of joking, they didn’t laugh, and their expressions weren’t quite smiles. They were like joyless imitations of smiles, which is probably what got me thinking. I stared through the rear window of the pick-up, but it was too shady for me to make out the occupant. I could only tell that he was alone, which seemed appropriate as Woodrow started riffing on his likely insecurities.

Was this man in his giant truck insecure on account of his penis? If so, why? Who could have ever come into contact with it to make him feel insecure? Possibly his family. Possibly his lovers. Possibly his doctor, and it sent a pang through me thinking that a doctor was the least likely one to shame him over whatever was wrong with it.

Family and lovers. Maybe a prostitute glancing the wrong way at the wrong time, but no, mostly it would be a wife, or a boyfriend, or his siblings as he grew up, or a parent. And these people, in whom he’d be so emotionally or sexually invested, would have so hurt him that he’d spent something like $20,000 on several tons of gasoline-powered steel, just so he can feel better – feel adequate.

Alice poked my shoulder and said, “I bet his right hand tells him it’s a good size.”

Sometimes I feel alone. It’s usually when there are other people around.

Bathroom Monologue: The Other Place Sam Went, Redux

"Don't cry, honey. Your friend is in two places now, rather than just here. When a werewolf dies he splits.

"Sam has gone to wherever humans go - I don't know where that is, but it's probably a nicer place than around here with everyone persecuting him.

"The wolf side, though, goes straight up. See the moon? That's the source of his wolfish side. See the dark blotch up there? How it forks on the right, like the ears of a bunny? You can kind of see his arm, and back there are his legs mid-stride. That's the rabbit in the moon. He's running from the great pack of werewolves.

"All the wolfish ghosts to ever die ascend to the moon, to chase that rabbit. They're ghosts, so they don't hunger. They don't need to catch him, so it's okay that they still haven't. They just chase him forever, with thousands of their own kind. All those thousands running are why the moon revolves, making it spin under the scampering of their invisible paws.

"Sam's wolf-self is up there helping the moon spin now. If you ever miss him, you can look up and cheer him on to catch that blasted bunny."

Consumed Presents: Paranormal Activity 4

Consumed rises from the grave! I managed to browbeat Max Cantor into joining me for Paranormal Activity 4 this weekend, and we recorded a fresh podcast about it last night.

If you know, you know I love Found Footage flicks. They are my cinematic opium, and Paranormal Activity has been my favorite annual dealer until now. PA4 is nearly incoherent, and Max bravely joins me in diving into how it falls apart, from lack of innovation with their cinematography and scares, to just failing to deliver a plot even though it’s on fictional rails. If you like rants, you’ll enjoy Max swearing he’ll never pay to see the fifth movie. Me? I know I’m doomed to repeat it.

You can download this episode from Consumed’s officialwebsite right here.

If enough listeners enjoy it, we’ll do a bigger retrospective episode on the franchise. It seems only fair to give it some praise, especially with how many times I’ve re-watched the first film.

Bathroom List: 8 Things Hollywood Can No Longer Make Creepy

1. Toys, especially humanoid dolls. It’s been a few decades, but I’ve come to realize I would beat the hell out of Chucky in a fistfight.

2. Exterior shots of old houses, no matter how poorly tended or ill-lit they are.

3. Non-threatening songs played suggestively. “Jeepers Creepers” was the breaking point. If it’s a slow-tempo version sung by a children, I will openly mock your trailer.

4. Children. Let’s get them out of the way here, because they had their moment, but it’s time to reckon that a miniature adult that needs help finding the potty is not creepy. Was Damien creepy in a tiny suit thirty years ago? Yes, but since then we’ve had the time to envision the devil’s son going tux-shopping, and whining, and screaming at the top of his lungs until the babysitter has to run out of Men’s Discount Warehouse without having bought anything. Kids aren’t scary. They just suck.

5. The hero/heroine/stoner-best-friend leans into the unlit house and asks if anyone is there. There’s no response. The house either rumbles quietly with ambient noise, or the soundtrack goads us a little. This was never actually creepy, but you don’t seem to have learned it, so I’m pointing it out.

6. Any lone person standing still on the sidewalk/yard/street, staring up at us. I’d just send some Jehovah’s Witnesses to annoy him until he went away.

7. Festering piles of bugs. Centipedes. Scorpions. Lady bugs. It really doesn’t matter, because any of these in significant quantity will freak out my girlfriend. Now you think that’s great, here’s an item that’s creepy – but it’s not creepy, because she’s raking her nails down my arm and squealing, leaving me not creeped out, but annoyed and bleeding. So, stop that.

8. Skeletons, and this really was an achievement, because there should be nothing more unnerving to a sentient mammal than seeing our insides put outside, dried out, in a calcified signifier of death. But you have placed so many skulls on so many posters, in so many trailers, in so many marketing campaigns, that I actually don’t care.

Brief list of things that are still creepy: we’re not sure if the killer is dead but he’s not moving and we have to get around him, or unlit hallway with open doors (I will sprint to the bathroom tonight, I just know it).

Bathroom Monologue: Empire Logic

“Of course we have scientific evidence that tyranny keeps the world safe. Science is based on what? Empirical evidence. And nothing is more empirical than an empire. And as our empire is what began recorded history, all recorded peace and justice has transpired during the empire’s reign. Any decency beforehand is hearsay and unsubstantiated superstition. Do some legislators in the legal or policing branches abuse their power? It’s possible, but also a matter of record. And the record is also a matter of record, revisable, amendable, a matter of conquest, no different from the world. The world to which we bring peace. You’re welcome.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Infection World

It was the infection that changed the world. Everything was dead for the longest time – no one realized this, because they were all busy being dead. They drifted around stars, and bubbled in seas, and the majority of everyone blinked in and out of existence on idiotic quantum whimsy.

Then something went wrong. The wrong parties rubbed against each other, stray chemicals colluded, and before anyone could vote on the matter, life swam under the sun and clouds. This nightmare immediately began devouring the dead – drinking other chemicals until it reproduced to be fat enough to swallow them. It ate the dead, and when it reached a pathetically small number, it ate itself. They climbed from the water and weren’t even dry before they began killing each other wholesale, and they ate other living things, and they ate dead things they’d killed, and those things that had always been dead became unfashionable, and were thus kicked, tread upon, shat upon, scooped up, shoveled, piled, constructed, burned and exhausted.

In the blink of a cosmic eye, life climbed onto other planets. From shore to shore, from star to star, and there was nothing the dead could do about it. They were muted and petrified while life animated and analyzed. Life immortal? Life in other universes? What mechanics would pry apart the fabric of space, render time’s tail vulnerable to tug upon, and allow them access to everything else.

The dead could do nothing but lie there. They were inert, which meant they were helpless to the colonialism of this monstrosity. If only they could do something to stop life. If only something lurked on the other side of rainbows and invisible spectrums that could undo life. And so the dead did one thing: they prayed, after their fashion, to whatever was beyond the gaps, or whatever wasn’t. Perhaps whatever wasn’t was the answer. They couldn’t know. They were dead.

What Stories Scared You?

Daguerrotype of Andrew Jackson

What book scared you the worst? And what did it? Was it the voice? Was it a particular scene? Was it the premise of a monster coming after you in your dreams, a killer lurking until you took a shower, or just a hero rendered vulnerable in a way you’d never seen before?

It doesn’t have to be Horror. For some, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft were the masters. But Brave New World’s vision of the future might have disturbed you more than any story about mummies and werewolves, and Tom Robinson’s situation in To Kill a Mockingbird sent shivers through plenty of people. I’m saving mine for later this month, but I guarantee it’s an unusual pick, even though it's the only book to ever drive me to try to hide under a bed.

With luck, we’ll gather a whole list of unusual ones and share them on All Hallow’s Eve. You have until October 29^th to write up a brief explanation of whatever book or short story scared you the worst (or the best), and I’ll post them on the 30^th. That way anyone looking for one last scary read in October can hit the library on Halloween with a healthy list.

Goodbye, Grandpa - Scattered Look at a Life

At 12:06 on October 15th, my grandfather passed away. I've been prepared for this for too long, and it's left me with too many thoughts about a man whose life was too much larger than my own.

When my grandmother passed away, I feared I was too sentimental in talking about her. There are many good uses for sentimentality when dealing with death, but I gilded her character, ignoring harmful flaws and major dimensions of who she was. This is not to attack her, or my grandfather, but to recognize the complexity of any given life. The whole package is who now lies dead, not only the good or the saddest or the most popular parts.

Patterns are real and narratives are useful, but they can also oversimplify people, and delude us into thinking life isn’t messy. With your permission, I’d like to share a few things about my grandfather, not in any particular order, since every item is true. You can consider this prose poetry, or meta-non-fiction, or simply the eulogy I’m not going to say on Thursday. Regardless, these are some things I’d like to relay about a man I knew.

-My grandmother forced him onto a diet around when I was born. It grew increasingly strict, and he chaffed for junk food. My first memory of visiting them alone was Grandpa putting a hand on my shoulder, almost hiding from her behind me, even though I was tiny. I remember his voice going cagey as he said, “Well, I have to take John out for pizza.”

-He was one of six boys in an Irish Catholic household. His mother died so early he never knew her, and his father had little time for him. When he came back from World War 2 almost bedridden with malaria, his father told him to, “Quit your bellyaching.”

-He lied about his age to sign up for the marines early. His service put him in the Pacific, where he was issued one rifle. His unit was instructed to decapitate the dead bodies of Japanese soldiers and keep their skulls to protect the barrels of their rifles from rain. He kept the skull after the war, usually hidden in his attic, up at least until ten years ago. Why he did that is a subject of family urban legends.

-He worked with Job Corps on the East Coast of the United States, and helped hundreds of poor black families find work in a tense city. He made some friends during that period who still visited him even in his last year. I never met any of them, but heard amazing things.

-He was never comfortable visiting a Chinese restaurant. I watched his fists clench and eyes dart around the waiters; they made him nervous, giving him flashbacks to combat with Japanese soldiers.

-He held the most exuberant conversations with Jehovah’s Witnesses I’ve ever seen. They never came close to converting him, nor did he seem to try on them, yet he always perked up when he saw them coming.

-He and my grandmother helped finance my college education; it wouldn’t have been possible without them. One time, when I needed to get home but Mom was busy, he picked me up, driving from Connecticut, to the college in Vermont, to Mom’s in New York, and then back home to Connecticut. He didn’t seem to mind it at all. During the drive, he lectured me on how fiction was evil, being fundamentally a manipulative lie. When he couldn’t convince me to give up fiction, he said he was certain one day more articulate people would show the world that it was only deception.

-His senility and dementia humbled him in ways that saddened me, even though I’d often been at odds with him before it. One great change was my writing. On no day could he remember what I wrote about, and often he forgot that I wrote novels at all. Yet whenever I mentioned that I was writing, he would encourage me, tell me I deserved to be proud of myself, and say that I seemed very serious about the work. For someone who could remember so little, every few months he’d ask how my book (or “your thing”) was coming along.

-Every single time in my adult life that I told him I loved him, his warmest response was awkwardness. His typical response, even at his most senile, was disdain. He enjoyed affection and sentiment from his wife, daughters and granddaughters, but not from any man I ever recalled. Over a hundred times in the last two years I accidentally ended a phone call with, “Love you, Grandpa,” to which he’d respond with something like, and often exactly, “Uh, well, goodbye.”

-There is an infamous Christmas in my family. It was the winter after my father moved out, and my grandparents made a power play. I was withdrawn from religion and holidays at the time, and made my desire to abstain explicit at multiple points before the day. I simply attempted to sleep in and let the family do what they wanted. My grandparents visited early in the morning with presents, commanding everyone to open them in order, woke me up and urged me into the living room. They told us where to sit, what to do, letting us know they were in charge, and I remember how helpless and uncomfortable my mother looked in the throes of what should have been kindness. I tried to avoid the gift-rituals by making coffee and fetching things for people. When I said I didn’t want anything, my grandfather stormed up to my face, a fist clenched suggestively at his side. I saw his eyes soften with concern when he realized I was taller than him, and the taint of fear that I might win. Before I could say anything to calm him, he circled around me and walked out of the house. I did not talk to him for several years after that.

-After my grandmother died, the family quickly realized he was too senile to live on his own, or even in a private house with live-in care. He was placed in the best nursing home they could find, but I knew he hated it. Readjustment is even harder for people suffering from dementia, and at the funeral one thing I clearly saw he longed for was family contact. The next night I called him, and we chatted for a few minutes. I repeated that for almost every night for the next two years, sometime between 5:30 and 7:30. We did the math last month, and counted around 700 calls – we’d talked more recently than in the rest of my life. It took very little time from my day, and meant unfathomable things to him. At his absolute cognitive worst, he still recognized my voice and, according to anecdotes, would brighten when someone said John was calling later.

-My sister was incredible about visiting him at the nursing home. My visits were fewer, since my distance was greater and health weaker, but I remember my first visit to him vividly. He hadn’t enjoyed the home’s lunch very much, and Mom worried about how to appease him. I put my hand on his shoulder, standing side-by-side with him, and told her, “Well, I have to take Grandpa out for pizza.”

Thank you.

Bathroom Monologue: Like a Silver Bullet?

The official story was that the priest simply lost his mind. While there’s no science to support, it’s long been believed that people are more likely to act violent, to commit crimes, and to go mad at the full of the moon. It’s why “luna” is in our word “lunatic.”

Police arrived to find what the children had described to 911. The priest was dead on their living room floor, near the shattered window. He had wounds on his abdomen consistent with their story that he’d broken in through it. The wounds were graver because he was only wearing the ragged remains of a pair of pants. They were stretched to odd proportions. Forensics found traces of feces, swamp mud and dog or wolf hairs on them, and presumed he had been out in the swamp for a long time before the attack.

The children’s uncle confirmed their story and handed over the revolver that killed him. There were no bullets in the revolver, which was registered to the uncle. The suspect had a single bullet wound, and autopsy retrieved smashed remains of the bullet from his skull. Retrieval was difficult because the bullet was not made from typical armament metals, but rather silver. The uncle said the children had it forged as part of a game for Halloween. Tragic they had to use it. Doubtless the holiday will not have any joy for them.

Their uncle was treated for a concussion and related injuries. He had been thrown through a cabinet, where he dislocated his shoulder and sustained several gruesome diagonal scrapes on his chest. Officers on the scene did not feel the need to photograph them.

On full moons, one of those officers will occasionally wish he photographed the injuries. If you get him drunk, he will paw at his own chest, and if you get him especially drunk, he will explain how much they looked like the claws of a giant paw. But you’ll have to get him especially drunk. Otherwise, the officer will conclude what everyone else did – that the priest simply losing his mind one full moon is the only rational explanation. The poor lunatic didn’t even have a history of mental illness, but it can happen to anyone.

How I Wrote My Novel - (The Last House in the Sky)

This is a follow-up to the journal of how I wrote The House That Nobody Built. Many people found the day-by-day transparency refreshing or useful, so I'm pulling back the curtain on how I wrote the follow-up novel this year, The Last House in the Sky. I'm still afraid this sort of thing appears self-indulgent. If there’s anything you’d like clarified about the below, please hit me up in the Comments.

The Last House in the Sky was a much choppier trek. I knew it would get interrupted. Production would run into the summer when I had many travels planned, and my grandfather’s health was poor, which might necessitate emergency visits. I was still waiting on beta readers for my previous novel to get back to me, I had a new idea that I loved, and increasingly felt like a vacation was a waste of time. Thus, off I went.

May 21: 2,554 words (counting the outline I made that morning; am deleting bits from outline as they are written)

May 22 4,307 words

May 23 5,624 words
May 24 7,568 words
May 25 9,564 words (this may be the most productive five days I’ve ever had)
May 26 11,429 words
May 27 13,024 words

13,000 words in seven days was about as fast fiction production as I’ve ever had in my adult life. It was exciting, but towards the end of the week I found it very taxing. My syndrome started kicking back around May 25. This got worse daily, and by May 28^th, the syndrome pain was much worse than usual and interfered in my ability to focus on anything. Bitterly ironic, then, that I was constantly desiring to exceed my 1,000-word minimum. Perhaps if I just stopped at 1,000 it wouldn’t be as bad.

May 28 14,325 words
May 29 16,413 words
May 30 Decide Wednesdays will resume as the weekly day off

On my first “day off” I found it difficult to shake wanting to write notes and dialogue in the morning, but quickly found enough errands that my whole day was consumed until about 10:00 at night.

May 31 18,000 words

June 1 19,334 words

June 2 21,395 words (high anxiety mid-afternoon; returned on a whim at 9 that night to double the day’s word count; considered leveraging it to take tomorrow off)
June 3 22,522 words
June 4 24,110 words
June 5 26,235 (high anxiety returns, is 4:30 PM before word minimum is hit, lots of shaking; broke, got a pizza, wound up finishing a scene and blew through the word count)
June 6 27,554 (Wednesday, but have company coming this weekend, and at 9:30 that night had nothing pressing to do; banged out a short chapter from the perspective of a minor but funny character, exploring prosthetic tentacles)

June 7 Family and friends visit, no progress
June 8 Family and friends visit, no progress

June 9 Get free at 9:00 that night; write a little, and reorganize the novel into individual chapter .docs so it will be easier to navigate.

June 10 29,608 words

June 11 31,118 words

June 12 32,396 words

June 13 35,377 words

June 14 36,539 words (Ahead of schedule, but skipped the Wednesday off because of previous weekend; agreed if I hit 40,000 words by Saturday, I could take Sunday off)

June 15 38,036 words

June 16 40,099 words

June 17 Sunday - Day off, as planned

June 18 41,728 words

June 19 43,024 words

June 20 Wednesday, typical day off. Also the week when it became apparent my cousin Will was in fatal need of a liver transplant and I began organizing a donor drive online. Used most of my free time on that this day.

June 21 45,075 words (begin hammering out unusually long chapter I’d avoided for a few days)

June 22 46,426 words (hopped to a concurrent, shorter chapter; wrote whole thing in one day; still takes excruciatingly long)

June 23 48,304 (past three days have been very slow processes; today I could not get a flow before 3:00 PM; questioning if this is the first stretch of days where my foggy head and dragging the work out is actually hurting the material, as this period’s stuff doesn’t feel as punchy and the chapter-in-progress is the longest to date; counter-arguments are that a lot happens in the chapter, including setting changes)

June 24 50,016 words

June 25 51,695 words (thought it went well, but found my limbs shaking for hours afterward; neuromuscular syndrome worsening?)

Normally I’d question if I was bound for Writer’s Exhaustion at this point. However, I was two chapters away from the end of an arc in the novel, and expected the last of my test-readers to return her copy of my previous novel by July 1^st. Mid-July was the point at which ChiCon7/WorldCon was rumbling their submissions for novel workshops would open, so I wanted a final draft by then. I decided to aim to finish the two chapters, then break from all writing-based work until July 1^st, at which point I’d start the final draft of the other novel. It had always been my plan to pause or postpone this work-in-progress, though I felt particular angst giving the characters up just as something tremendous was about to land on them.

Also nervous to see how productivity on the novel works after what would be at least a two-week break, and quite possibly a lot longer given family obligations over the summer. Quite possible that I’d only have a spare week here or there to compose on it.

June 26 52,722 words

June 27 53,963 words Wednesday, allegedly my day off, and I was on the run until 3:00 PM. Came home utterly exhausted. But with only one chapter to go, and it seeming like a fun one, I took a crack at it. Nailed the chapter, finished the existing work, and moved to finishing the previous novel.

This break stunk. It hurt to be away from this book for so long. Many days I wanted to abandon the old nearly-perfected novel to complete a crappy rough draft of this one. Would only get back to it for a few days, though, before Otakon in late July and several more trips for family/business/health.

July 17 57,174 words (was incredibly excited to get back to it today; wrote two full chapters before 5:00)

July 18 59,446 words (another chapter in one sitting; then a second, very short one late that night – have actually finished the entire block of chapters I’d intended to write before Otakon in another week)

July 19 61,507 words (completed a longer chapter midday; have now completed the arc in the novel I’d desired to finish before Otakon in Maryland, which is a week from today)

Notes from self: “I’m not sure why the last three days have been so good. I’ve been overwhelmingly preoccupied with writing the events, the plot points, and most specifically, the little character moments in these chapters, seldom checking word count while intensely aware that I was producing a lot. While I’ve always been immersed in the novel, there’s something unique about this mindset. It is a genuine focus on narrative and character progression rather than getting the words down that you’d think would be easy to achieve, but for whatever reason, has simply not been. It certainly helps that this chunk of chapters is the most dire in the book. Greatly prefer this mindset over the word-count mindset.”

July 20 Impromptu day off; family invaded the house for the weekend. Saw Dark Knight Rises, recorded podcast and spent day helping sister move. With the house overrun and interruptions frequent, I’m falling back on diagramming and setting up how the rest of the book goes rather than writing the scenes; everything after this point is the rush to the climax, which I don’t want interrupted by family or a trip to a convention. Also using this time to apply copious notes for editing to the existing 60,000+ words.

July 21 62,297 – the word count now including outlines for the final 15 chapters

July 22 63,103 words; organized remaining notes once family left; feeling sicker and with family emergencies, decide to cave in and break until I return from Maryland August 3^rd. Feeling supremely lazy despite rational thought. This is the summer I signed up for, I say.

After this break, I come back feeling emotionally and mentally exhausted, and it’s harder to pick up the project. Feels reasonable; any time I put down a work it’s a roll of the dice on how the return works. My hope is to hit a certain chapter-benchmark between August 4-14, after which I’m hosting a reunion that will halt any progress for about a week.

August 4 64,117 words (had interim chapter sketch from train ride home; wrote the chapter in one sitting today)

August 5 65,444 (all work on a new chapter; unfinished)

August 6 66,724 (was inspired, skipped to a new chapter, wrote in one sitting)

August 7 67,653 (finished August 5 chapter; sketched some of the next)

August 8 Wednesday – day off to do errands and dig the rain ditch in front of the house

August 9 69,265 (wrote first thousand words early, then broke, then wrote the rest across the afternoon and evening; coming up on plot precipice that might be a good pausing point)

August 10 70,421 words (very shaky health; wrote short chapter from heroine’s perspective; decided to write heroine’s chapters up to the plot threshold, then will break for travel/reunion on the 15^th)

August 11 71,446 words (short chapter; set up tomorrow’s)

August 12 73,034 (last heroine chapter completed; shaky or busy all day, wrote it at 2:00 AM)

On August 15^th people began arriving for my college reunion. Hosting it, I had little privacy and knew I’d get no writing done. Unfortunately family emergencies cropped up as soon as the reunion ended, sapping my time and energy, and soon I had no free days before ChiCon. Critiquing other manuscripts for the conference and reading up for panels consumed the time I had, along with my brother stopping in out of nowhere. Post-convention, I had publishing offers I had to follow-up on, making the break from the novel stretch through early September.

Being this close to the end of the book was alternately irritating and worrisome – worrisome because I feared I’d lose the passion and threads that had led me to such progress previously.

On September 10^th I sent out queries for the first novel. That was the cut-off for excuses in the new book – figuratively and literally. On the evening of the 10^h and afternoon of the 11^th, I dove back into The Last House in the Sky. Both days were efforts on the same chapter, so I only have the final word count for the 11^th.

September 10: 73,034?

September 11 74,962 words

September 12 Syndrome bad, long day of errands, body crashed when returned home; only got up to write at 10:00 at night; no log of word count

September 13 77,070 words (finished two chapters)

September 14 79,071 words (one chapter in one day; shuffled listing of events in remaining climactic chapters)

September 15 81,030 words (one chapter in one day; sets up climax)

September 16 Impromptu day off; personal emergencies

September 17 84,107 words (one big chapter in one day; climactic events rolling)

September 18 85,624 words (most of a chapter over the course of a day, kept falling apart, feeling very ill)

The 18^th was a very rough day for my syndrome, and I spent something like eight hours struggling to eke out 1,500 words, and left the chapter with many skeletal bits to fill in. I felt terribly guilt for not finishing it, particularly since company was coming the next day and I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish it immediately. This made me reflect on how shifting from words-per-day to chapters-per-day might affect my satisfaction levels. Will have to work on that.

September 19 Company

September 20 Company

September 21 Company

I think I remember the Sept. 10/11 resumption feeling much harder than the days that followed. Writing on Sept. 22, I know this resumption feels ridiculously hard to get into; by the 23^rd, it was much easier. Have memories, but no records, that most resumptions after breaks have been irksome.

September 22 86,265 words (finished the chapter from the 18^th and rewrote a few broken sections)

September 23 88,822 words (wrote first post-climax chapter; realized there was one pre-climax chapter had never written, from same perspective as post-climax, so wrote that too)

September 24 91,832 words (two chapters in one day; novel done)

And that’s how the beast was slain. It was awful on the 25^th when I had nothing to do. No one wanted me for anything. If they could only have waited until now.

Bathroom Monologue: Saturday the 13th

He slept in. His alarm clock didn't go off, and he didn't rise until the mosquitoes were particularly thick over his face. Even then, he left his eyes closed until the sounds of playful teenagers grew to an insufferable pitch. For an hour, he sat at his shadowy window, watching through a used sporting mask as they skinny-dipped and pranked each other. How he would have loved to snare one of those pranksters, crushing his windpipe and replacing him, so that at the moment his girlfriend expected a joke, she would instead receive a machete.

One hand twitched on learned reflex, raising for the row of tools on his shed's wall. His arm brushed the calendar, and it rustled, haunting him with the date. He had to reach out and stop his hand from clasping a pitchfork, for "close" wasn't good enough. It was Saturday the 13th, and that meant one particularly doleful weekend for the homestead.

Bathroom Monologue: Cleansing

This absolutely did not happen, and is especially not about me or anything I said to my niece, no matter what anyone tells you. It is entirely a work of fiction.

Once there was a family of three, a mother and father struggling with their impulsive daughter. Despite buying her anything she wanted and bribing her with trips to the movies and theme parks, she refused to do any chores. This girl loathed cleaning her room with the passion that God loathed sodomy. Eventually they said she could not have dessert on any night when she didn’t at least make her bed. On the first night, she tore the sheets from her mattress and screamed so loud the neighbors phoned the police.

This girl had a loving and helpful uncle. He went over for dinner on the second night and witnessed her punting her iPhone across the house. When he inquired why, she yelled, “It’s a form of protest!”

After her parents explained things to this loving and helpful uncle, he asked for a moment alone with her. He shut the door and had a private chat in her room. When he re-opened the door, her anxious parents found their little girl hastily putting toys away in her closet. The parents took it as a miracle and hugged this genius uncle with a gratitude he wishes they remembered now.

When they inquired what he’d done, he said he’d merely talked reasonably to her.

When they inquired to his niece, she pursed her lips together, avoided their gaze, and asked if dessert were available.

Immediately after school the next day, she put her Adventure Time knapsack in exactly the right spot. After her father made her a sandwich, she washed her own plate for the first time in her life. As dusk rolled in, she rushed to her room to make sure it was tidy, and no sooner was dinner over, then she nervously circled the table and ensuring her parents’ chairs were pushed in correctly.

This routine lasted a few days, until an unusually strong storm knocked out the power in their neighborhood. The entire family woke up late, and she almost missed school. Her father honked from the car twice before going back indoors, discovering her hastily smoothing the sheets on her bed. He had to drag her away from the room, at which point she punched him square in the groin and threw an incomprehensible tantrum, yelling something about “him finding us.”

When her father asked who “he” was, she froze up and babbled that she couldn’t talk about him. He’d come sooner then.

While her father was befuddled, her mother was suspicious. She’d never been as nice to her brother as she could, and needlessly sought to blame him first. She phoned him in the middle of a very busy writing session, completely breaking his train of thought. It was only because he was preoccupied with writing-thoughts that he let slip that, maybe, he’d told his niece a fib.

The mother asked, as rudely as humanly possible, what story he’d told.

The uncle answered, as polite as could be, that there might have been an axe-murdering clown loose in the city, psychically attracted to families who left their rooms dirty. He tended to sleep in closets that were not properly organized or beneath unmade beds.

The mother went utterly hysterical, forcing the kindly uncle to drive all the way to their house and explain to his niece that there was no such clown. It took two hours of his day to convince her that the whole thing had been a joke and none of her family were at risk of axe-based homicide. Even after using his whole afternoon to debunk it, her parents showed no gratitude, screaming at him on his way back to his car.

The kindly uncle has since heard that his niece is back to leaving the entire house a mess, and that she broke some expensive plates when they asked her for help tidying the garage. He chooses not to believe the story. Let his sister and her husband learn on their own that monsters are absolutely real.

Bathroom Monologue: One Vampire Allowed

I mean, I’d like to live with you forever. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, even if you drank my dad, and really, if we live forever, then we can live to the point where humans go to space, and then we don’t have to worry about the sun killing us anymore. That’s pretty much living in a night sky, which you don’t seem allergic to. And I think rolling around with a vampire space-buddy would be bad ass.

But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Dad won’t be the last person who tries to plant a stake in you, and you’re kind of helpless during the day. Rough as shit at night, but not during sun-up. And I don’t know if you know this, but insurance people, and meter readers, and the IRS, and cleaning ladies – they all visit during the day. It’s only luck that a tornado or hurricane or terrorist hasn’t blown up a wall and bathed you in killer sunshine. What if you need to evacuate? We’re going to have to live in this world for a century or something before we can blastoff into space, and buddy, you’re just not equipped. You’re a creature of the night, but also a special needs case.

So I’m thinking, at least for right now, I’m going to stay human. I can finish my Registered Nurse training, and maybe even get paid by the government to take care of your ass. That’d be funny, right? Their tax dollars at work, assisting a predator.

Also, you’re not eating people anymore. At least not in front of me. Dad was a premium asshole, but… yeah, I can’t take many more homicides. Do a blood drive. Or, I’ll do a blood drive, since those are mostly during the day.

See, though? I’ve got to stay flesh-and-blood, not flesh-and-blood-and-blood-and-blood. It’s better for both of us. Just hope that, you know, they figure out robot bodies before I get too old. I really want to see space.

True Story of John: A Haunting?

I lived in the same house for most of my life. My parents brought me home to it the night I was born, they made pencil marks on a wall as I grew taller, I lay in a bed crippled there are 13, dragged myself to the bathroom and learned to walk again in its halls. It became a ward where I thrived and recovered, and over time I almost convinced myself it loved me back. But eventually Mom had to put it up for sale.

The packing was intense. I spent one entire morning dividing things from my filing cabinets. Near noon I hungered, and because our fridge was unplugged and appliances packed, our only hot meals were takeout. I paused for a moment, looking out my door to Mom’s, which was perpendicular to mine, and so I could see hers was open. Listening, I heard papers rustle in her room, and so I called out.

“Hey Mom, want anything from the deli? I’m thinking about lunch”

I heard the sound of papers being set down, but she didn’t answer. When I called again there was still no reply. I got up and walked over to her door, and found while there were folders on her bed, she wasn’t around. I could see every corner, even the door to her private bathroom. Unless she was hiding the bathroom with the door open, no one was there.

Thinking I must have been mistaken, I returned to my room to get a little more work done. Once Mom returned, I’d ask her what she wanted for lunch. But almost as soon as I opened my desk drawers, I heard the distinct sound of someone walking into Mom’s bathroom.

I called one more time, something to the effect of, “Hey, Mom?”

Water began running through the pipes. My sister was downstairs doing laundry, and the laundry room was relatively close to our hall, just a flight down, yet I could swear I heard water running through the pipes into Mom’s room. As I walked toward her bathroom, the sound of water in the pipes stopped, though continued faintly downstairs. I checked through the open bathroom door and saw that it was empty; the window was closed, and the shower stall open and vacant. The sink was dry, making me doubt my hearing. I looked around impotently, for there was no other way in or out of her bathroom than through this door.

A little while later, back in my room, I heard water running through the pipes again, and this time the inclusion of water splashing in her bathroom sink. When I yelled for her, no one responded, and I went straight for her bathroom. The sink was off, but now it was wet. I put my hand to it, just to make sure.

When I asked my sister, she had no idea and seemed unnerved by the story. We’d been alone in the house. Mom arrived home some time later; she’d driven out for some moving-related errands. She had no idea what I’d been hearing, and joked that the house was going to miss me.

I don’t think our house was haunted, or that it had gone sentient and messed with me on my last days of residence. I do wonder about it, though, from time to time.

Bathroom Monologue: Boy of Steel

I remember when the Man of Steel first learned how to turn his skin. He was the Boy of Steel back then, living in the Hawkins’s basement since his parents ran out on him young. He was a confused boy even before he turned bulletproof. Just struggled with his C-average and afterschool job at the dog pound.

He had all the opportunities in the world. You develop a talent like o that, and you’re set for money. The military would have drafted him if it was legal. The NFL threw money at him, and two of the crappier cable networks offered him his own show. I saw someone from the Google annoying him on the walk home from school, trying to talk him into being the official mascot of Chrome. Whatever the hell that is.

The other kids were miserable to him. They’d stick magnets to his back, or steal his homework and leave it in the cans-recycling bin. Boy of Steel just needed companionship, which is probably why he kept his job at the pound for so long, and started adopting when he had the money.

He adopted all the dogs that bit – the traumatized ones that didn’t know better – to live in the Hawkins’s basement with him. Because he was steel whenever he wanted, they couldn’t hurt him, and he could really gradually get them comfortable around people. This was near the end of his teens, but I think they helped break him in, too, because shrugging off all that biting makes talking to girls easier. The dogs that never could get comfortable around people, I guess he kept. He still has twp Springer Spaniels and a Corgi of Steel living with him. It’s kind of a family.