Tag: Joe Stanley

December 14, 2017 Add Comment

The One

by Joe Stanley

HE WAS NOT THE SORT TO FALL IN LOVE. No, love them and leave them… wanting more was his style. How many fragile hearts tore themselves apart when they realized they were not the one? Who could say, the counting was for other things, after all.

But all of that was before Her.

Just to look at her, you might have been confused. Why a playboy, rich and handsome, would have been so smitten by such a rather ordinary girl was a fact unfathomable to his friends. In her plain-Jane wrapper, she hardly even seemed feminine. Granted she was sweet, and her voice set smoldering the passion of all who heard it, but still…

He must have been in love, else he had become blind to the picture-perfect maidens that sighed at his approach and pouted as he strolled by. He was decidedly less fun after then, according to life-long friends, though all of them took no more than a casual dismissal to be forgotten.

But there came a question, unasked by those friends and never even pondered by him. How can life allow such a heart-breaker to find bliss when this same treasure was one he had denied to so many? How many sweet hearts had forfeited their most closely guarded treasure, only to realize that gift, given only at great cost, was discarded without so much as a second thought.

On the bridge where they first met, he waited, a dozen roses in hand, a ring in his pocket. Scanning the banks, his eyes failed to find her and he was seized with the dreadful notion that she wasn’t coming. Nothing, not fame or wealth or the army of replacements he could summon, was sufficient to ease the painful turmoil of rejection.

His stomach twisted into knots, his mind regressed into a state of helpless infantile fury. In the throes of his amorous madness, even the grim specters of suicide and murder were not beyond its depth. For if this could not be had, nothing else could matter.

Panting, he collapsed onto the bridge’s railing and gazed down into the water. A river of tears gleamed up, their waters still icy like a broken heart that has become numb. In the splashes and gurgles, he could almost hear a sobbing. At its sound, his world swam in guilt and regret.

Afternoon became evening, each moment a hellish eternity of anguish. With the darkening of the sky, the day, and all else, was done.

For her… he was not the one.

-end-

December 11, 2017 Add Comment

Archon

by Joe Stanley

IN THE DARK STREETS OF THE CITY, corruption hangs in the haze. The stink of garbage rises from the gutters to kiss the graffiti, profane and vile. The blessed few are not good but apathetic, seeking refuge in their towers of crystal and light. For a maniac, a monster, rules the world of shadows below.

In those dark and quiet streets, a timeless game plays out.

She comes, heels clicking through the silence, rough but pretty like an uncut stone. Seemingly lost, desperate, and frightened, she scurries and glances nervously from time to time, but sees and hears nothing. Still, she knows she’s not alone.

From shadows darker than his soul, he lurches. He seizes and stifles her, his heart surging. His sick and simple mind thrills at what he believes to be ultimate power. He begins to chuckle at her muffled pleas and helpless struggle. He promises her he will make it last.

He likes it when they fight and is little surprised when she bites his suffocating hand. But this bite is more than he bargained for, owing to her hungry fangs. In an instant, he no longer has her, but she has him. And with no small pleasure she finds his filthy neck and brings death to a killer.

She drops him in the garbage, thinking it suits him… him and his kind. She regards his staring eyes and nearly pitiful expression. This is a moment to convince herself that she is not what she is, that she is somehow different from him.

Then, the night draws close and deeper. The streetlights flicker and dimly glow. The air is colder and, at its touch, she shivers. The swollen shadows stir with motion no mortal eyes could see.

Staring out are a multitude of lingering shells that were once living beings.

Somehow she knows they are jealous, jealous of her facade of flesh. That they would rip her spirit free and drag it down to depths of darkness she cannot comprehend. She knows that they would save her from the lies she tells herself.

Despite her terror, she readies herself to fight or flee. But even as she takes a step back, it dawns on her, how strangely familiar all this seems. Late, too late, does she sense the danger behind her, and know she is the prey.

Wheeling, she sees it. A hideous thing, it towers in a form mocking man’s. Shadow clings to it, darkness drips from it, and oblivion radiates from it. Whatever it is, even the elders are like nothing to it.

It feels closer.

She wants to run, but something holds her. Memories flood her mind as life flashes by. As they fade, it pierces her with cold, silver eyes.

It is closer.

She wants to beg and plead, though words will serve no purpose. Her powers are distant and forgotten and meaningless as it draws away her life.

It looms.

No, please… cries a voice from somewhere far away, Please, I don’t want to die.

Darkness overcomes her, she understands…

Nothing wants to die.

-end-

November 4, 2017 Add Comment

Nemesis

by Joe Stanley

HEAVY STEPS CLAPPED THROUGH THE SILENCE of midnight. A drizzling rain had left the air chill and the streets glossy beneath the lamp lights. Around, great historic buildings slumbered darkly, as if dreaming of their former magnificence. With the growth of the city, what had once been its vibrant heart now lingered on its edge, a vestigial burden.

Even the historians and antiquarians had little use for this place. Crime had seeped in along the venerable streets and it was not uncommon to find vulgar graffiti leering from the aged stone. It was a sad observation to note that the most frequent visitors came to explore the once great cemetery.

Made in another time, its tombstones, monuments, and mausoleums were sculpted with care, with reverence for life and its inevitable end. Now, trees and shrubs, long untended, had turned the splendor of yesterday into a forgotten sprawling jungle. Besides the drunks and junkies, only thrill seekers visited the dead.

Ghost hunters… he thought with contempt as he mounted the crumbling steps.

Decrepit or not, this was his neighborhood. These were his streets, and he felt the need to watch over them, badge or not. For a moment, he quivered in rage at the thought of the squalor and degradation.

Overhead, branches wove into a broken canopy. When the clouds allowed, moonlight poured down in patches, gleaming from the marble and swallowed by the shadows. An occasional street light peeked through the leaves. But in the quiet he became aware that he was not alone.

It was a feeling he had known many times before. He began a search for the tell-tale signs of vagrants or vandals. He checked his anger, recalling more than a few cold bodies that had sought nothing more than a peaceful place to die. But to his well-honed instinct, there was another impression he could not describe.

Cautiously he threaded the overgrown footpaths and strained to hear voices or laughter. The silence warned him only that anyone present was set on privacy and he anticipated the worst. On more than a few occasions, graves had been opened and robbed, and remains desecrated. He swore that, should he ever catch such miscreants in the act, police brutality would not begin to describe what he would like to do. But to this fresh surge of fury came a disarming thought.

What could rouse the dead if not such violations? To be forgotten, to be gawked at or joked about… If there was a place where the dead were restless, this would be it. He shook his head and nearly laughed, but even as he chided himself for such thoughts, a faint sound of grinding stone froze him in his steps.

Since he was a young boy, he had believed in goodness. He knew the world could be wicked, he had seen its horror as a soldier and as a police officer. Always he had believed that one good man could set right the wrongs of a hundred villains. In his eyes it was a sacred duty to go into the darkness and face its fiends.

But now he stood trembling, not in rage, but in fear. The instinct that had served him for so long told him only this could not end well. But he shrugged it away and stepped toward the sound, working his way along the weed-choked rows.

One by one he found them clear, but with each the foreboding grew. He hoped that whoever it was had gone and immediately cursed himself for cowardice. When the grinding came again, from just ahead, he swallowed and took a long, deep breath. He ignored the voice within, one screaming and pleading for him to get away.

But how could he? He was an officer of the law, this was his duty. And, more, he was a good man, or believed he was, and there was no way he could turn back and live with himself. He readied his flashlight and his pistol and stepped around the corner.

The moonlight shined brightly from the row of tombs. It was a glimpse into some sleeping netherworld of silver stone. There a door yawned wide, a portal into darkness. And standing beside it was a strange and terrible sight.
“Hold it right there!” he called to the figure, ashamed by the tremble in his voice. As it turned toward him he understood this vision to be no man.

It was tall, nearly seven feet he judged by the tomb. It was gaunt with a smooth round head and sharply pointed ears. Its claw-like hands reminded him of the stabbing legs of a spider. It appeared in silhouette, not even his light could piece the darkness that clung to it.

Out of this darkness, two tiny points of silver light stared cold and silently. As they fell upon him, his flesh felt numb and heavy. As it advanced, he could not see it step. He heard himself give the command, “Halt!”

As it surged forward, shots rang out into the night.

In the light of dawn, they found him where he had fallen. How he died, none could be sure. They could not account for the terror on his features, nor the cobwebs of white in his hair. They speculated he had surprised some grave robber, but that his heart had failed him under strain.

He was buried in the cemetery, and some thought it was just that a body was given for one that was taken.

-end-

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October 31, 2017 Add Comment

The Shrieking Skull

by Joe Stanley

ON A MUGGY NIGHT, TWO POLICE OFFICERS CHASED AN ARMED ROBBER through the darkness. The suspect led them to an abandoned industrial complex where he disappeared among the clutter of buildings. Unable to locate the man and unwilling to split up in the dangerous environment, they had decided to regroup and return with a larger search party. Then an unearthly scream filled the night.

“It was a sound of pure anguish,” stated one of the officers, “It was pain, fear, and rage all mixed together. I’ve never heard a scream like that, like some tormented soul.”

Fearing someone else had fallen victim to the desperate gunman, they entered the structure from which the sound had come. They encountered the suspect, who fired at them. They returned fire and the man fell still and silent.

The scene was investigated, and no other people were found, but a grisly discovery was made. Atop a pile of concrete rubble, they discovered a human skull. An excavation beneath the mound found the remainder of the skeleton.

The suspect survived the shooting, though he lingered in a coma for several months. When he awoke, he made an eerie confession.

The remains belonged to a homeless man known as Grey Jack for his long, gray beard. He was a member of a small community of people who squatted in the area.

Jack was the subject of many rumors though he was friendly. He was often known to talk about a grave he had purchased in better times and it was some comfort to him to know he would be buried among his family someday. He was never known to panhandle, but always seemed to have some food or a bottle of cheap booze.

“They said he had money,” stated the suspect. “And I wanted it.”

As winter came on, most of the transients had already moved south to warmer climes. Only he and Jack remained and he saw his chance. At gun point, he demanded Jack hand over the cash. Jack refused.

“I shot him. He didn’t die right away. He begged me to contact a lawyer, I forget the name, to tell him where he was and that he was dead. I shot him again and went through his pockets.”

The murder yielded nothing to the killer, who quickly went south like the others.

“I started a rumor,” he continued, “I told other people the place was haunted. When I came back the next year, it was empty. I had it all to myself. People told me I was crazy to go there. Maybe they were right.

“I heard things in the night. At first they were just sounds, like someone far away crying. But there was a mumbling that got clearer night by night. I heard it at last, a voice begging, ‘I don’t want to be buried here.’ it said.

“I went to the spot I buried him and I found the skull. Somehow, it came up, out of the ground. I buried it again and the noises stopped for a while. But they came back again, louder and louder and, for a second time, the skull came up out of the ground. When I buried it a third time, I put the concrete and rocks on top. I thought that would finish it, but I left that place and swore I’d never go back.

“But there are only so many places I can go. The night I robbed those people I had nowhere else to hide. I didn’t mean to go back, it was like my legs had a mind of their own. I thought I had got away but the next thing I knew I was standing at the mound.

“I saw the skull, sitting on top… and then it screamed.”

The gunman was found unfit to stand trial and committed to a state mental hospital. Speaking off the record and anonymously, a doctor commented on the inmate.

“He suffers from a combination of conditions, antisocial personality disorder and paranoid schizophrenia seem apparent. On the night of his apprehension, he came face to face with the horrid nature of his crimes. Under the stress of the pursuit, facing inevitable capture, the sight of the skull was too much. Certainly it was him, and not the skull, who screamed.”

When asked how it was that the skull was placed atop the mound, however, the doctor had no comment.

The true identity of the man known as Gray Jack has never been determined. His remains were interred in a grave provided by the city. Whether he has found peace or not is impossible to say, but perhaps there is more to the legends, some recent, of muffled sobbing that can be heard in graveyards late at night…

-end-

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October 13, 2017 Add Comment

Musicbox

by Joe Stanley

THE HORIZON WAS AN ANGRY MORASS OF DARK, roiling clouds. I was grateful for the sagging roof and dusty window glass. Around me were the discarded baubles and trinkets of a family, long picked clean by the vultures left behind. Between the growls of thunder, the quiet swept back in. In the stillness, I knew this place to be a grave, a hollow, empty shell.

But this tomb would be my shelter, it would shield me from the storm. I welcomed the deepening shadows to hide me from the world, for I found the gloom befitting my mood. And this place, no doubt, was once a happy place, like the places I remember from when I was a child. Though I was left to wonder, when all was considered, if such happy memories were real. Perhaps, truly, they were nothing but distorted phantoms, delusions of how we wish things had been.

And here the wind howled and slammed heavy upon the walls, as if to smite me for such thoughts. But the cracking sound above me, from the dilapidated frame, spoke to the truth of how nothing lasts forever. I could not help but to recall the faces all now gone, with equal measures of anger and love. This, I think, the bittersweet, tugs harder at the heart and my melancholia found company in the pattering of raindrops. It was well, since I had no more tears.

I struck a match, more to ease the growing chill than to banish the encroaching darkness. And with this little torch, I looked closer at the relics strewn about. On a rickety table and also on the floor, there were pictures discarded sans frame. But is it not appropriate, nowadays, for the present to roll on without a thought for who has been? Why I looked is a question I can’t answer, but I suppose it was a way to connect with those forgotten, the best I could do to thank them.

There was nothing remarkable to be seen, save for time. I saw them as a family, mother and father, two daughters and a son. I saw the two as a younger couple, smiling from an images of silver-gray. I saw again with multitudes of grandchildren all around them. I saw them throughout their lives and wondered if they still lived in memory or were but baggage too tragic to bear. And at this, the lightning flashed and the thunder cursed me loudly.

In that brilliance, something in the room glinted brightly. With some trepidation, I crept forward to view it in my lesser light. On the mantle, standing lonely, was a music box. A ceramic man and woman stood atop it, their arms around each other as they walked along and smiled. Perhaps it might be cheap, but it was sweet, and a mended crack showed that someone had valued it enough to make repairs. As I turned it for a better view, it came to life.

Notes, simple and pure, rang out to echo from the walls. It played its timeless tune as it must have countless times before, and in its melody there seemed a longing to be heard one more time. Turning slowly to the music, they were a beautiful sight. I watched them dance with a painful weight in my heart. Even my eyes found raindrops to spare.

Then, as it must, the music began to slow and the dancers with it. The notes came as the beats of a breaking heart, the song a final, whispered goodbye. Stillness and silence swelled to fill the world.

-end-