My Empty Chair

The apartment was dark except for the flickering light of the television set. It had been like that for days, maybe weeks; I didn't really know. The concept of time had lost much of its meaning. I could tell that time was passing from the vague fluctuations of dimness through the blinds, but what did it really matter? I suppose realizing that you're dead has that kind of effect.

Finding myself dead in my easy chair had created a rather substantial existential crisis for me. What do you do with that kind of information? I mean, there I was, dead and bloated with a bottle of whiskey hanging from my stiff fingers and the TV flickering on and on. What was I supposed to do now?

Besides sitting here and staring at myself, that is. How morbid.

It was overwhelming. Sometimes so much so that I would find myself back at my door thinking I had just come home to find an intruder in my apartment. It took me a while to realize that's what was going on. I had to come to grips with my death over and over again, but each realization was a little easier, and those events were becoming less frequent. It's hard to go through that kind of trauma, especially when you have to relive it every time you begin to break down.

The worst part, though, was that I couldn't remember dying. Once I was able to get over... I was going to say "get over my death," but I wasn't over that. I don't think you can get over that. I was stuck in this room, now, with a corpse and, even if it was my own corpse, it was gruesome. If I could have left, I would have, but I couldn't move anything or affect anything. Everything was as solid as if it had been cast in stone. I couldn't even pry the whiskey bottle from my cold, dead fingers and, believe me, I needed a drink! It was the only thing I could think about other than my corpse.

My corpse and trying to figure out how I'd died, which I couldn't remember. Once I was able to focus beyond re-living the moment of discovering my body, I could remember leaving home for the bar a few blocks away: I remembered getting out of bed and puttering around with making coffee and eating something vaguely identifiable as leftover Chinese food. Opening the blinds and quickly closing them again, all of them, because of how bright it was and how much the light hurt my eyes. I remembered the splitting headache of my hangover. I contemplated turning on the TV but decided against it because that, too, would be too bright, and I didn't want any noise at all. Then deciding that what I needed was a drink and fumbling into my clothes and going to the bar...

That was pretty much it.

I didn't remember coming home again. Or turning on the TV, though, from the low volume, I must have still been suffering from being hung over and from being drunk. I didn't remember getting the whiskey, either, and I was only just realizing that I must have been a raging alcoholic. A breakfast of beer on cereal was pretty common for me, after all. But I couldn't remember how I died and wondered if that had been it.

There was a noise at the door and, as it opened, someone said, "It's not even locked." Then, "Holy Hell! That's a smell I'm never going to forget," and the door closed again. A few minutes later -- or hours, how would I know? -- two men came in with Matilda, my neighbor from down the hall, my only friend in the building.

Matilda was saying, "Of course, I knew it wasn't locked, but I couldn't just come in. That would be breaking and entering."

One of the men said, "No, Ma'am, that's not breaking, and you didn't have to come in. If you'd just looked in the door."

"But no one answered when I knocked."

"Because he was dead."

"Hey, how long do you think he's been dead?"

"I'm not the M. E., how should I know?"

"I've been knocking on his door for over a week."

I couldn't keep track of it all. Maltilda was crying. The men were looking around the apartment using sticks or something to poke at my stuff, and one of them was taking pictures of my body. It was enough to make me sick, and I gagged and dry-heaved and found myself back at my door disoriented and confused. Matilda walked straight through me as one of the men escorted her back to her apartment, and that made me feel even sicker but, still, nothing came out.

Somewhere in all that was happening another man and some other men came in. The first one poked and prodded my body and said his guess was that I'd been dead somewhere around three weeks, and the other men loaded me onto a stretcher and carried my body away. I felt like that should have made me cry or, at least, feel sad or a sense of loss or something, but I was actually kind of glad. I was tired of looking at my corpse.

Finally, I was left alone in the room; all of the men were gone. The TV had been turned off. The bottle of whiskey was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I still couldn't pick it up.

It was only then that I realized that I was alone in the room. Alone in the room! Again! And I couldn't get out. I didn't want to be stuck in this apartment that I'd died in. Stuck alone in this one room for the rest of my... life? Death? Un-life? I didn't even know what to call whatever kind of existence this was.

I think I went kind of crazy for a while, beating on the door and walls and screaming for someone to let me out, someone to help me, someone to do anything.

Even ghosts, or whatever I was, can get exhausted, I guess, because I woke up later lying on the floor near the door. There were people with weird equipment walking around the room, and Matilda was with them. She kept telling them that she thought I was still there and that she was sure she had heard me yelling to be let out. Then, at some point, she turned in my direction and looked... well, she didn't quite look at me, but it was close enough, I guess, and said, "It's okay, John. You can go now."

I blinked and looked at the open door. I looked back at her and she nodded. The other people milled about the room with their beeping and blinking equipment and talked in low voices about cold spots and electrosomethingorothers. I looked back at the door, and Maltida said again, "You can go."

So I did.

I walked out the door and into the world, and it felt like I had never been out in the world before. Like I was seeing everything for the first time. Like I was being reborn. Reborn without my addiction and without my bills to pay or, even, a need to eat anything. I walked out into the world and for the first time in a long, long time... I was happy.

*****

If you enjoyed this story (all three parts, so make sure you check the previous two days for parts one and two if you missed them), which I have posted here for free, I would strongly encourage that you support the author (that's me!) by buying one of my other works. Seriously, it really helps.

Also, if you enjoyed this story, please share it with your friends. That's not a difficult thing to do. You can share it on Facebook or Twitter or, even, google+ (for now, at least)! The point is, spread the word.

Oh, and this won't be up forever. I'll leave it here a few weeks, but, then, it's coming down to be collected together and will no longer be free. So enjoy it now. I sincerely hope you did!

Some Body in My Chair

The apartment was dark as I entered it, which was not unusual, as I never left the lights on when I left. It's just that it seemed darker than usual, more foreboding, even with the television set on, its light serving only to deepen the shadows in the rest of the room, broken only by the flickering of people moving about on the screen. The low murmur of voices, not quite intelligible, gave the room the feeling of a hospital room with doctors and family whispering just outside of the rooms of dying patients. It sent a chill through me and turned my arms to goose flesh.

The television being on was a problem; I was sure I hadn't left it on, hadn't even been watching it before I'd left my apartment earlier in the evening; yet, on it was. A shiver began to work itself through my body as I watched the eerie light glinting off of the hard surfaces in the room. The surface of my little dining table. The glass in the picture frame on the bookshelf. The whisky bottle dangling from the fingers of the body in my easy chair... The shiver turned violent as I realized there was somebody in my easy chair.

What the fuck! There was somebody sitting in my easy chair!

I stood by the door trying to get my shaking under control and trying not to breathe. Trying to hear beyond the sounds and knocking of my body. The beating of my heart. The rushing of my blood. The ocean roaring in my ears. Trying not to give in to the vertigo I felt as the room spun around me.

I stood there, frozen, like a squirrel in front of a car... like a squirrel in front of a car... like a squirrel...

There was something about a squirrel. A squirrel leaping from my hands and dying. Unless I was the squirrel. Was I the squirrel? Was I the squirrel about to leap and die, or was I stuck in place and about to get run down? Was death my only option here?

I stared at the body in my chair and realized that his face was turned toward me and that one large eye was open and staring at me. I quit breathing. I had already been seen!

Dizziness began to overtake me, and real panic set in. Even more real panic. I was going to pass out right in front of the intruder in my house! I was just going to fall down and die for him, and there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it. Not literally die, of course, except in the way that he would be able to kill me without a fight when I fainted. As if I was any kind of fighter to begin with.

Can you black out while standing up? I don't know if that's possible, but I think I did. All I know is that time passed, some quantity of time that I'm unaware of but enough of it that I knew that time had passed. Time had passed and the person in the chair hadn't moved. At all. Not even blinked, from what I could tell. At least, once I came back to my senses and continued to stare at the intruder, he never blinked. And his mouth was slightly ajar, chin slack, and he never closed his mouth. His tongue must have been completely dry; I had a sympathetic gush of saliva at the thought.

Was he asleep with his eye open? Because I realized, soon, that the eye wasn't looking at me. It was just staring... at I don't know what. It was flat and dull and as unmoving as the body. I felt drawn to it and, without really meaning to, took a step toward it.

There was a smell in the air, a stench. Or, at least, I imagined there was. Dead bodies are supposed to stink, right? But I don't know if there was anything I could smell or not. Even once I found myself standing over the body, the smell may have just been the result of my revulsion. My revulsion at having someone break into my apartment and die in my chair while drinking my whiskey. How sick is that?

The body was already bloated... Wait, how long did it take a body to become bloated? I don't think it's at all possible that there would have been time for that. I wasn't gone all that long. Had someone broken into my place for the purpose of dumping a bloated corpse? Who would do something like that? I felt sick...

But I kept staring at the dead thing in my chair, the t-shirt spread too tightly over the now expansive belly, the taut skin, ...the empty eyes. A chill spread through my body as I began to realize the person in the chair, the ex-person in the chair, seemed familiar. Very familiar.
The body in the chair... was me.

Someone in My Chair

The apartment was dark as I entered, which was not unusual, as I never left the lights on when I left. It's just that it seemed darker than usual, but, perhaps, that was because the television was on, the sound turned down to a vague hum, and the dim light from the screen highlighted the darkness in the rest of the room, filling it with weird shadows and flickering lights.

The television was the problem. I was sure I hadn't left it on. I hadn't even been watching TV before I left, but, yet, there it was, its pale light glinting off of the hard surfaces in the room. Glinting off the whiskey bottle dangling from the hand of the man sitting in my easy chair...

There was someone sitting in my easy chair! What the fuck?

I stood silently by the door, not moving. Not breathing. Trying to still the sudden slamming of my heart in my chest through force of will. The pulsing of the blood in my ears and the hammering of my heart drowned out all other sound and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if, maybe, an earthquake hadn't started while I was standing there. The room seemed unstable enough for it.

But, no, it was me. My world spinning. Someone in my home, sitting in my chair, drinking my liquor. I was frozen in indecision, not unlike a squirrel in front of an oncoming car.

I held a squirrel once. It was injured, and I picked it up with thoughts of helping it. I'm not sure what I thought I would do to help it since I don't know the first thing about first aid or medicine, especially to do with animals, or anything of the sort, but that's what I had thought. Its little heart pelted my hand with tiny blows as I picked it up to carry it up to my apartment. I spoke softly to it hoping to soothe it, but I could tell it was freaking out. As I was going up the stairs to my building, without warning, it sprang from my hand and bounced down the stairs. I retrieved it quickly but, by the time I had gotten up to the door, it was dead.

I felt like that squirrel, gripped by some strange hand holding a whiskey bottle. Frozen but ready to leap. If only I knew where to leap. To the phone? Could I make it to the phone and dial 9-1-1 before the man reacted to my presence? What if he had a weapon? Not that that would matter; I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't really a lover, either, but I certainly wasn't a fighter.

Should I back out the door? Matilda was just a few doors down. I could use her phone. But it was Wednesday... She wouldn't be home. Wednesday was bingo night. Leave it to me to have an intruder on the one night during the week when my one friend in the building wasn't home. Which left me wondering why I had never bothered to make any other friends in the building. Not that I really had to wonder. I knew what kind of person I was, the kind who hung out in bars with people who were your friends as long as you were buying the drinks. People whose names I couldn't remember from one night to the next. And who couldn't remember mine.

Matilda was only my friend because she'd taken it upon herself to befriend me, bringing me actual food for dinner rather than allowing me to subsist on an all alcohol diet. In exchange I did the occasional chore for her, like carrying her trash down to the bin or...

Well, it didn't matter. She wasn't home, and my only other option was to go banging door to door, and I wasn't going to do that. Not only wasn't I going to do that but doing that might arouse the intruder from all the noise, so I certainly wasn't going to do that. If only pay phones were still a thing! But I couldn't think of the last place I'd even seen one...

Other than the bar a couple blocks over, the bar I spent most of my evenings in. They still had a pay phone! It was a pretty far way to go to call the cops on an intruder in my apartment when I was standing in the door to my apartment, but I didn't see what other option I might have. Which, I suppose, serves me right for never bothering to get a cell phone. Which I didn't need. Since I never called anyone.

Really, I just hadn't seen the need after my partner died three years ago. He was the social one. The one who liked to have friends over and who, evidently, maintained all of our connections. Right up until he got really sick and people quit coming around. Despite all of the talk, it seemed people still had that same 80s fear of AIDS and, yes, people still die of it. Excuse me, people still die of complications caused by AIDS. Why bother with a cell phone; I didn't want to talk to any of those people.

A low moan drifted up from somewhere in the vicinity of my chair -- my chair! -- and I was reminded of what I needed the phone for in the first place. Stupid stupid to let my mind wander around like that with an intruder sitting in my chair not much farther away than spitting distance from me. What was wrong with me? I hadn't had that much to drink. I hadn't even needed a ride home from the bar..

The pounding of my heart in my ears was making it hard to think. I just needed to get away but, when I reached for the door so that I could ease back out, I bumped it closed instead. The noise was deafening. Or may as well have been. It was enough to attract the attention of the intruder, and his head slowly turned toward me.

You'd probably expect that someone intruding in someone else's house would have a stronger reaction than to slowly turn one's head at an unexpected noise, but he wasn't just holding the whiskey bottle, it seemed. The bottle was nearly empty. Not that I really noticed that at the time. At the time, I was frantically trying to get out the door of my own house. That's somewhat more difficult to do when you're trying to move against the opening of the door.

It didn't help that I was being stared at by a bleary, bloodshot, yellow eye.

Maybe there was another moan. Maybe it was me trying not to scream. Maybe it was the squeaking of the chair. I couldn't tell over the pounding of my heart and the scrape of the door as I wrenched it open. Then I was gone. I don't even know if I shut the door behind me or not. Not that it mattered since there was already someone in my apartment. At that moment, I didn't care. I just wanted away. What to do about the person in my chair was a problem for some other time.

Angels Are Coming... (pictures I like)

...but is that really better than the Demons?

Skin (pictures I like)

Get Your "Soul Cakes" Here!

If you've been around here for any length of time, you'll know that it's that soul cake time of year. If you haven't been around here, you're probably asking yourself, "What the hell is a soul cake?" Which is a very appropriate question since a soul cake is like a get-out-of-jail-free card but for Hell. Yes, a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cake.

If you'd like to know more and see what they look like, you can go here and, for an actual recipe, here. They're pretty tasty treats.

Unfortunately, we didn't make any this year. It's just been that kind of year. Of course, we didn't make any last year, either, but that's because Sonoma county was on fire last year, and we just didn't do it. Of course, I am writing this ahead of Halloween, so I suppose we could still make some, but I don't think it's happening this year. If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll make pictures about it.

Anyway! Even though we didn't make any this year, you can still get yours by buying my story of the same title and which features soul cakes prominently. Come on, it's a Halloween story, and who doesn't need a Halloween story? NO ONE! That's who! So pick up your copy of What Time Is the Tea Kettle?... Oh, right! You get stories for the price of one! Because it's "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" and "Soul Cakes"! What a bargain!

Come on, help a guy out. It's even got a flying cat! And, no, he wasn't launched from a catapult. He does the flying, of sorts, all on his own.

Look, I don't ask (tell) you guys to buy stuff from me very often, so pick up your copy today and READ it. It's fun!

Oh, and, hey! There's another story featuring the man and his cat coming soon!
Just soon, okay!
As soon as it's finished!

Skin Game (a book review post)

Am I all caught up now? I think I'm all caught up now.
Actually, I know I am, because I checked. I'm so caught up there's not even a release date for the next book. And, my goodness, there are a lot of these now!
Butcher seems to be playing quite the long game with the series at this point, each book moving the over-arching story a few inches closer to wherever it is he's going with all of this, which may be feet or may be miles away.

My biggest criticism about this book remains the issue of Dresden and his association with pop culture. I get that it's part of Butcher's schtick with Dresden, but it's gotten beyond the stage where it makes any sense, if it ever made sense. I mean, come on, Dresden has been stuck on an island in a cave for a year (at least) when this book starts but, yet, Dresden is still up to date on the latest pop culture references. And, yeah, it's funny (to an extent) but, now that I've noticed that Dresden shouldn't be aware of any of this, I can't get it out of my head as I read. Plus, in this one, the parkour joke ran on a bit far. Running jokes should be more related to sprints than to marathons.

So, yeah, that's the biggest fault I found with this book. In fact, this is the first book in a while where I felt Butcher was really hitting his stride (and we all know how long Dresden's legs are, so that's saying something), again, with Dresden, pop culture aside. Maybe it was dealing with the Nicodemus and the Denarians again or, maybe, it was having Michael back. Maybe, Butcher was just hitting the right beats. Maybe it was the absence of vampires, not that I don't like Thomas, but there have been a lot of vampires for a lot of while in these books, and there wasn't anything like that this time. No stuff with the council, either.

Oh, wait, there was one other thing:
A clever author will hide a twist in a story in plain view by giving you the pieces of the puzzle but in such a way that you don't really know what you're seeing or how to put them together. A good example of this is The Sixth Sense. When the reveal happens, you kick yourself and realize you should have seen it the whole time.
A not so clever author hide the twist by hiding the pieces so that you can't figure it out at all. Sure, I suppose you could guess the twist, but that's just guessing. A good example of this is The Illusionist, a movie which has, like, 10 minutes of flashbacks during the reveal to show you all of the things it didn't show you during the movie.
And that's what Butcher does here, stops and almost literally says, "Oh, here's what I didn't tell you about that happened earlier in the story." There are ways you can make that work but probably not in a first person narration where the narrator is the one holding stuff behind his back.

Anyway... I suppose I got over that bit fairly easily because I almost forgot to include it at all despite the fact that I was quite annoyed at that point in the book.

This book feels like it has a lot of significant events in it. Little events. Not huge things like when Dresden died or when Dresden became the Winter Knight but lots of little things, all of which would be spoilery, so I'm not going to mention them. And there's one thing that happened that the un-happening of is never mentioned, though it's kind of implied that the un-happening happened, but that also seems like it should be more significant than to mention that it happened, or un-happened, and I don't know if it's significant or not! And it's kind of niggling at me and I want to know what it means!

Damn you, Butcher!

Well, as I'm sure I've said before, if you're a fan of the Dresden books, you're almost sure to like this one. If you're not a fan, it's probably because you haven't read any of the books. Or... well, I'll just say it: There's probably something wrong with you.