Closed

Dennis looked up at the clock and saw it was nearly 6 pm. His coworkers had left to enjoy the holiday weekend, since there wasn't much work. He volunteered to stay and close up. The quiet of the office hung heavy among the noise of the air conditioning kicking on and his typing. Dennis's pale boney fingers showed their age as they moved across the smooth black keyboard. Like a rusty typewriter he worked on finishing up his last bit of work.  The paper he was looking at nearly glowed in the fluorescent lighting making the black lettering nearly leap off the page. Dennis had to adjust his thick glasses because of the brightness bothering his bifocals. A click of the mouse brings his work to an end just before the top of the hour and he decides to pack up. He makes a few clicks and his monitor shows his computer shutting down. He rolls his chair back and gets up. He grabs a set of keys that lay under a calendar on the wall of his cubicle. He turns, heading to the warehouse. It is a large room with a table for shipping out products. Along one wall boxes lay on a skid waiting to be made and taped. The far wall has two large garage style doors for the docking of trucks picking up or dropping off and a side door for emergencies. He walks over to each of the doors and locks them. As he leaves the warehouse he turns out the lights. The light from the office shinning behind him casts a shadow into the dark warehouse giving him a tiny startle. "Silly," he said to himself, as he closed the door to the warehouse and locked the door with the keys. He turned and headed to the bathrooms to turn the lights, when he heard what sounded like a voice. He stopped, looked around and listened. There wasn't anything but he yelled out anyway. There wasn't any response. He opened the bathrooms and turned out the lights. Dennis headed around the cubicles and toward the front door. Hey turned out the lights for the office, but heard a noise behind the door to the warehouse. He stepped forward and called  out. Nothing came as he listened. He turned back to the door out and then a thud from the warehouse. Dennis hurried to the door yelling out, "hello?" he said. He reached in his pocket pulling out the keys and fumbling them into the lock. He opened the door and looked in. His shadow was the only thing he saw, and as the keys jingled to silence, nothing else was heard. Dennis stepped in and turned on the lights. Just as the room was illuminated a pop made the lights go out. "Damn," he said. He walked into the warehouse a few feet, knowing there was a flashlight on a desk near the door. His hand met plastic and his thumb flicked the torch on. The circuit breaker was located on the far right wall by the shipping table and he managed to find his way there. He opened the panel and pointed the light inside. He scanned all the switches and didn't see one tripped. He checked the panel door to see which breaker number went to the warehouse. A box made a thud as it hit the floor across the room and Dennis swung around shinning the flashlight around. He didn't see anything except the box on the floor, about three feet from the skid of boxes. He knew something had to have moved it off of the skid and onto the floor. He was frozen briefly half confused, half scared. "W-who's there?" he asked the dark. He stepped away from the wall and toward the closest dock door. Dennis had to put the flashlight under his arm in order to work the lock that kept the garage door closed. But just as he was working it, he felt a brush of something across his shoulder. Paralyzed with fear his arms went stiff and the light dropped onto the floor. Dennis whirled around yelling, "hey!". His eyes tracked through the dark room looking for someone that stayed behind and was playing a joke on him. He bent down and picked up the light and as he got back up a hand reached for him in the dark. Terror gripped him. This hand was like nothing he had ever seen before. As white as paper and nearly entirely skeletal, with cloth remnants as white as the hand they partly covered. Dennis flung backward in horror and hit his back against the dock door. The hand was no longer in front of him so he ran for the door to the office to get out, his flashlight streaking around in front of him. His heart was pounding as the door came into reach. And as his hand pulled the door open he felt a pain in his chest like no other. His hand went to clutch at his heart and he saw the hand coming out of him, through him. He felt breath on his shoulder and turned. A bleach white skeleton looked back at him as his whole body throbbed. He was unable to hold himself and fell to the floor. His eyes fixed on the two voids on an otherwise blindingly white face. The two bottomless pits grew to encompass Dennis's entire view and he was gone.  Two days later a woman came in to open and found Dennis's body sprawled out in the doorway to the warehouse. His eyes as white as paper. She called the police and the owner, and after a little while it was determined that he died of a heart attack. The owner called all the employees and told them what had happened and explained that the office would stay closed a few days. After, he went around and locked everything up. As he walked his way through the cubicles in the office from the back there was a thud from the warehouse door.

Dark Knight Rises (spoiler free)

The conclusion of the Nolan Batman trilogy is a wonderful movie. A great story with a slew of interesting new characters that work well, save for Catwoman. Bane as the main bad guy is ominous and merciless. All in all this is everything one could want to close out the series, a few minor grips aside. On my scale of Good to Not Good, it gets a Good

GenCon Bound

I am so excited to find out my event at GenCon has finally found a table. I don't have to worry about that anymore. And come to find out 10 of my 12 tickets have already sold. I am so psyched I nearly climbed the wall. I have a lot of work to do to be ready. As we speak I am feverishly working on my cover for the book and doing rewrites for my game master section. I signed up for Kickstarter and as soon as my cover is done I can push that art piece as the game's masthead. If everything goes well at the convention I can drum up enough interest to at least get started on full color production by October. 

To Have And To Hold

John gets up from the bed and pauses. He turns back and looks at her. Her naked figure interrupted by tufts of sheet. Her outstretched arm strung across his pillow from where he had to lift it off of him to get up. On it, her ring reflected the streetlight glow from the window, in an otherwise dark room. He turns to the dark room ahead and steps onto cool tile. He pulls the door closed a little going in. Even in the pitch black he is able to navigate his way to the toilet. John begins to piss causing the silence to be broken by his stream. His mind wanders to far off places and times. Back to when he was just a boy and was afraid to get up and pee in the night because of the dark closet that he thought contained a grisly beast of some sort. "How silly," he said to himself as he finished. The bathroom door opened and the silhouette of his wife stood before him.  "Jesus, you scared me," he said, shaking the last bit of urine away. "It wasn't so silly John," she said. "Whaa...," is all John managed. Two yellow orbs opened where his wife's eyes were. "It wasn't silly to be afraid John," she said. She reached for him and the light from outside gleamed just right on her hand and John went back to being 6 in his bed staring at the closet as a scaly claw emerged from the abyss, yellow eyes staring back at him.

American History X

This is a fantastically acted and well thought out movie about the choices you make and the ripple effect of them. The story follows a Neo Nazi and his brother following in his footsteps after their father's death. The older brother goes to jail for killing two guys that were robbing him. Locked up for three years he learns that nearly everything he was wasn't all he made it out to be. Meanwhile his younger brother on the outside was well on his way to his brother's fate. The older brother gets out of jail and sees the world with fresh eyes and tries to make amends to his family and stop his brother down the road of hate.   On my scale of Good to Not Good, it gets a Good

Friday the 13th Part II

No matter what comes of today people will be extra conscious of the bad simply based on a number. Fear paralyses people and makes them slaves of simple things. Numbers have mathematical meaning, but other than that people find ways of making them significant. Do something for yourself for just a moment, go look up the history of Friday the 13th. Then pick another day of the week and number and look that up. You will find that people jump to conclusions and think that a day is "bad" more than another. And while a lot of people do associate today with the popular slasher film series of the same name, they are works of fiction that prey on the subtle fear and magically have a Friday the 13th every year around the same time of year. 

The Shadow

The heat of the Midwest pours into me as I step outside, the sun baking all that lay before it. I step towards my car and reach for my keys. A soft breeze blows and I look up into the brightness. Fear grips me as I see it. My heart begins to pound as I am frozen, eyes fixated on the searing sun, the nearly invisible object holding its position in the center. Tears welling up from the pain I am forced to blink. When my eyes open only darkness.

Friday the 13th

Greetings Reader, This blog will be an interactive journey through my mind. Along the way stories, reviews and rants will fill the space.  Enjoy H