Welcome to Adam P. Knave dot com
Adam P. Knave is a freelance writer and editor who has written fiction (CRAZY LITTLE THINGS and STRANGE ANGEL, STAYS CRUNCHY IN MILK), comics (LEGEND OF THE BURRITO BLADE and THINGS WRONG WITH ME and stories appearing in Image's POPGUN anthology) and columns for sites such as thefoonote, TwoHeadedCat and PopCultureShock. He is also one of the editors of Image's POPGUN anthology as well as other comic projects.
The new Iron Man trailer:
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NEW Dazzler Service Announcement live today!
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Crazy Little Thing is fully posted. Monday I hope to have the downloadable versions up. To those of you that read it in serial format I thank you and hope you enjoyed it. I am going to take a bit of a break, probably until late March – so 3 weeks – before I start the next free fiction story. It will be nothing like the one you just read. Totally different vibe, genre, everything. More on that closer to it happening.
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More later.
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Eleven
The next night Clyde and Warren came for me. During the day I noticed the guards all carried guns, Abby told me they always had but I knew different. At least I thought I knew different. I had no proof, except what my memories told me.
“Guys, I’d rather not go… I don’t feel too good.” I gave them both a fake smile, a nervous one that I tried to put an element of queasy into. A weak gambit, a simple ploy but it had a chance, I thought. I thought a lot of things that were proven wrong it seemed.
“John, don’t make this hard for us,” Warren said as one of his hands drifted toward his belt and the thick wooden stick that hung there. Clyde’s hand drifted towards his gun. He was gonna shoot me? Was that even possible?
“I don’t want to make it hard on you, but really I just don’t feel…” A soft snap cut me off. Clyde’s thumb unsnapped his holster and his eyes drilled into mine. I shrugged. “Let’s go,” I said glumly. When there was no choice, there was no choice.
As we walked through the building I saw other guards, more than we ever had around, wandering and giving the residents grim looks. I saw one of the residents go down in a quick flurry of sticks, beaten to the floor for some transgression or another, I couldn’t tell what they had done to deserve it where I was. The only sounds from the altercation that reached me were a few screams and some wet, meaty thuds. We kept walking.
The examination room was dim, only every other light functioned, and chilly. Vandrell stood near the doorway and nodded at the guards as they brought me in. They both turned to go and I considered Vandrell carefully.
“Look, Doctor Vandrell, I think these treatments are bad for me.” The facility hadn’t done me wrong, but then again, in the facility I remembered none of this would have happened. It was time to stop taking things for granted. It was time. What time was it, exactly? I spun around looking for a clock but there was none. I did, however, notice the chair. It looked like an old electric chair and not like any good examination device I had ever seen. The skull cap was there, the wooden frame slightly charred from use. I felt sick just looking at it.
“John, get in the chair. We have to continue, don’t you see?” I didn’t see. Not one bit did I see. In the realm of seeing why, I was the blind.
“No.” I tried to put some force into the word, to hide my fear. Vandrell, for his part, stabbed me in the arm with something, taking advantage of my glances at the chair.
“No isn’t a word we like here at McGee’s, John. You know that,” he said as I grabbed at my arm, blackness swirling up to drag me under. Damn it. What time was it?
*****
I woke up, I came to, whatever term is right for it, in a hallway. Then I got up and started looking for her. The gore disturbed me, it made me feel cold and harder than I wanted to admit to myself.
I worked my way down the stairs to the basement and my sense of self seemed to expand with every step. It wasn’t a sense of answers being below, it was just time, time was my answer for this. Snatches of memory flooded my brain when I would let them, I just had to stop trying and let them. The problem, I found, was that I couldn’t let them. I had to keep moving and keep trying to find her.
The basement door was pristine. There was no blood, no bodies and the door was firmly locked. I shook the doorknob a few times anyway, just to be sure, and then put my ear to it to listen. The metal surface was surprisingly cool against my skin, making me shiver. I blamed the shiver on the metal, wanting it to be that and not fear. It was a dead end, but I tried banging on the door anyway. The metal was too thick to be heard through and I was only hurting my hand so I climbed back up the stairs reluctantly.
Turning down the hall I watched the smears tell a story. It was a story I didn’t know and one I had trouble piecing together. It looked like war had hit the facility, but it was all too quiet now. I headed towards the lobby.
The reception desk was battered and cracked but thankfully Sally wasn’t behind it. There was blood on her chair, but I had no way of knowing if it was hers or not, so I assumed not and glanced out the front doors. About thirty feet beyond the doors there was a wall. Thick solid looking metal glinted in the low sunlight. There had never been a wall beyond the grounds. I knew it, I was sure of it. Running to the doors, I grabbed one and shook it hard, trying to get it to open but it was firmly locked. I could see a gate, a closed gate, in the wall and started to outright panic.
Nothing was right and nothing was true. I pounded on the doors with my fists until they started to bleed, wet smears running along the glass that wasn’t just glass. I sank to my knees and smashed my forehead against the doors next, it wasn’t worth anything. My head was worthless, the lump of meat in it confused and bad and wrong. Hope had run out and when it had it left only despair behind for company. I cried, I wept and railed and got up. Backing up a few feet I started to throw myself against the doors as hard as possible. I needed to get out, I had to get out. It was all wrong, so perfectly and horribly wrong. Everything was wrong and I lived in a world of shit and evil. I had problems, that’s why I was sent here in the first place. Big problems, they said, but they only showed as little ones most of the time. Indicators, they called it, and put me away.
I felt clear now though, come full circle past madness to clarity and in clarity I was madder than before. The doors shook from the force of my body flying into them and my cries of powerlessness echoed around the lobby.
“John?” A dimly heard voice said, washed out by the thuds and rattles of my relentless attack on the doors. “John,” it repeated louder and with a strong sense of panic behind it. I stopped moving, bracing to be hurt. “John, hey, will you… will you stop?”
I spun and faced her, her voice breaking through where reason wouldn’t.
“Abby?” It was more than a word, it was a question full of every shred of hope I had left, the shreds that weren’t currently spreading slowly across the surface of the doors. She was bruised and bloodied, wearing a loose yellow sundress. She had a plastic bag in her hand, clutched tightly like it was her anchor in a rough sea. Just from her eyes I could tell she was as close to losing it as I was. “Oh fuck all, Abby, where were you? What happened, where is… what…” the words wouldn’t come out right, my brain and mouth both fighting for dominance.
“You don’t… you don’t remember do you,” she asked as we embraced. “I thought you were one of the ones who didn’t make it, but I,” she pulled away from me and offered me the bag, “I stole these for you from the exercise room, in case.” The bag had three small plastic stopwatches in it, the kind you hang around your neck while you jog. Each one was a different color and they all told the same time. “I thought maybe they would help you some, you know how you like clocks and I thought maybe…” she trailed off and just watched me as I put each one around my neck in turn.
“This is just the greatest, the best thing anyone has ever done for me.” The words spilled out of my mouth, their truth pure and simple.
“Well, I love you, what else was I supposed to do, schmuck,” her eyes settled and a bit of her old fire crept back in, “leave you lost and hopeless?” She loved me, she didn’t even have to say it, the act alone told me volumes, but she loved me and suddenly nothing else was wrong. I kissed her and held her gently and thought.
“Ok, this is going to sound crazy,” I began and stopped, both of us laughing and then started to cry, “but when I was, before I came here, I got electrocuted.” Her head tilted and I started to walk around the lobby looking for something, anything, that could help us. Clyde’s body was hidden behind a large floor pot and I walked up to it as I continued.
“I’m telling you, Abby, this place wasn’t anything like it is now when I first got here. No one but me seems to remember that though. And it only started changing when,” I bent down and picked up Clyde’s gun, “I got those treatments.”
“So you think that, what, each treatment changed everyone but you?” She followed me and grabbed Clyde’s metal-shod nightstick. I walked to the doors, standing a few feet behind them and held the gun.
“No, yes but no. I think maybe I changed where I was. Not, like, what room I was in, but what world I was in. It kept getting worse each time I went through it. They said I would lose some memory,”
I pulled the trigger and shot the door twelve times in generally the same area. The not-glass grew spider webs.
“But this wasn’t memory loss, I mean there was that too, but it’s like each time I got shocked I ended up in a different world entirely.” Abby walked up and started smashing at the door with the stick, the spider webs pushing outward as they fractured worse. “When we first met, that I remember, you screamed and hated me. This place was sunny and bright and happy, I liked it here. Now this. What happened?”
The door shattered and the pane of not-glass fell out with an unsatisfying noise. We stepped out into the daylight and fresh air.
“I think you’re crazy,” she said nervously, “but I suppose, for you it makes as much sense as anything else. It’s what do you call it, subjective reality?” I shrugged and nodded as we walked around the grounds. “As far as I remember though, this place has always been what it is. They brought me in, drugged, and my first night here when they dragged me into the dining room you came and snuck me some extra food. Anyway, your clocks went off and Fernsetter, what was…”
“Horatio,” I supplied as we started to walk around the building, looking for a way through or over the wall.
“Horatio. He lost it and started screaming about the noise from the alarm and attacked that guard, Simon, when they wouldn’t break down your door to shut the alarm off. Simon panicked a bit and fired a shot. He missed Horatio, who ran off, but he hit poor Ms. Klienstock. The other inmates,” inmates they called us now, it used to be residents, “got scared and a few of them tried to get the gun away from Simon. Doctor Lensher came out and started screaming and soon everyone was screaming and running and the guards tried to shut us all up. They started killing people and getting killed and everything just went wrong at once.” I nodded at her as we walked.
“So we’re all that’s left?”
“I think so? I don’t know, I hid in a supply closet until the noise died down and then went looking for you. I didn’t see anyone else moving though, so I guess…” A noise startled me and I raised the gun, not sure if I had any bullets left. I let go of Abby’s hand and lifted one of the stopwatches, the red one. It was early afternoon and I felt like lunch or possibly a smoke or both.
“Get back in the building, John, Abigail.” Warren shook his head and raised his own gun at me, his eyes growing wide as he talked once he saw I had a gun myself. “Put the fucking gun down now, John.” I fired, I don’t know if I meant to or if I just freaked a bit but a bullet took him in the leg and made him drop his gun in surprise and pain. I pulled the trigger again but it just clicked at me. I started to turn towards Abby but she was already rushing towards him, screaming.
“Don’t you ever try to shoot him,” she bellowed, bringing the nightstick down on his head and shoulders rapidly.
A sharp crack as the metal shod stick connected with his head. “You don’t try to kill him, or me,” a crunch underlined her point, “or the mice, or anyone ever again!” Wet things slid against hard things as her arm pistoned up and down in the direction of his skull. “You don’t raise guns at the President!” His head deflated as she caved it in, wet gray meat and blood running across the grass and seeping into the ground. Did she say President? I shook my head and moved to her side, hugging her from behind.
“Abby, Abby, it’s ok, he’s not going to hurt anyone.” Her body shook for a second in my grasp and then she calmed, turning her head to look at me over her shoulder.
“He was going to kill us, John. We have to, can we even get out of here?” I turned her in my arms to face me, running a hand down her arm. It was coated from the elbow down in blood and gore but I didn’t care. I wasn’t exactly pristine myself.
“We can get out of here. Look, Abby, I feel sharper, bigger inside, than I have in a long time. Moving around worlds, losing my mind, whatever else the process did to me it seems to have opened my head some. I don’t know if it’ll last but it’s here now, ok?” She nodded at me and we started to go on when she stopped.
“Wait,” she said and left me, running back towards Warren’s body. She came back to me quickly holding two small lumps in her hands, the bloody nightstick tucked under an arm. “He had grenades. Why would he have grenades? I don’t know either but he did. He did and now we have them.” I laughed then.
“Of course he had grenades.” He was looking for a way out, too, I think. And I think then I knew why he had them. I dropped the useless gun and took the grenades from her, walking up to the wall. I pulled the pins of both and ran, giving her a hurried follow-me wave. She followed and we were only thrown to the ground by the force of the dual explosions, but not hurt. I spat some grass out of my mouth and sat up, looking at the small jagged hole in the wall. I gave it a big hello smile, that I turned on the sky and then finally on Abby.
We stood up and ducked out of the hole, a piece of hot ragged metal tearing at my shoulder.
“Hey Abby,” I asked as we clasped hands and started walking down the road together, “what did you mean by ‘you don’t raise guns at the President’ anyway?” I looked at the red stopwatch. It was certainly a fine time for lunch and a smoke, and maybe a change of clothes. In the distance I could see fires and smoke, the craziness of the planet didn’t end at McGee’s, the whole world seemed aflame.
“Huh, oh that. Just a… it was uhh just a childhood thing, you know, when people would make fun of my name, huh?” She beamed a smile at me that faded fast as she pointed towards the horizon. “How are we gonna…”
“We’ll get by,” I told her, shrugging. I had some freedom, three new portable clocks and the love of my life with me. What was the end of the world compared to that? “Just a childhood thing huh?” I asked, glancing at her with a small grin.
“Yeah, stupid name.” I decided to trust her, for now. If she really was out to kill me, I would deal with that too, in time.
“Do you like golf?” I asked her as we walked.
“I always lose the stupid little balls. Fucking things drive me insane.”
“Really? I like the way they bounce and are white and round and all.” She shook her head at me and grinned a bit, punching me in the shoulder.
“You have issues, John.” I glanced back at McGee’s one last time and suddenly, just like Doctor West always said, I saw things in the right perspective.
“Don’t we all? I love you, Abby Lincoln.”
“I love you too, schmuck.”
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Crazy Little Thing is copyright Adam P. Knave.
(Thanks to Adrienne Jones for the heads up on this): So there is a new porn in town. Oh hells yes there is.
RE-PENETRATOR
From the site: Re-Penetrator is the story of a stripper (Joanna Angel), who after being dead for twenty years, is resurrected back to life by perverted mad scientist Dr. Hubert Breast (Tommy Pistol). Dr. Breast vaginally injects the long-dead, but exquisitely preserved, exotic dancer with special serum so the re-penetrated corpse will return from the VIP room in hell and crave nothing but sex. After he injects her with a gooey green potion the stripper awakens with an insatiable craving for balls, and she fucks the mad scientist from the gurney to the grave.
So let’s see. Undead. Lovecraft parody. Porn. Winner of the 2006 AVN Award for Most Outrageous Sex Scene. From the folks that brought you The XXXORCIST. A movie so gore-filled and sex-filled it was banned from a number of internet sites. Yeah.
Oh, and if you were curious about The XXXorcist: In The XXXorcist, after all other exorcism methods fail, Father Merkin (Tommy Pistol) has no other option but to screw the hell (and the devil) out of a possessed woman, Regan Teresa MacFeel (Joanna Angel). Her Mother, Mrs. MacFeel (Kylee Kross) looks on helplessly until she succumbs to the evil and becomes possessed as well. Father Merkin is forced to fight for his life…with his genitals.
Now isn’t that a great kicker line? “…with his genitals.” Gotta respect that one. You just do.
In other totally unrelated news, here is a video of a samurai sword being shot at by a .50 cal machine gun. Can it cut bullets? What do you think? Yeah this video is utterly worth your time.
That’s what we do here. Porn, swords and guns. Oh, and:
Porn. Swords. Guns. And the Care Bear Stare. Exactly.
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Ten
“Abigail?” The sunroom was fairly warm and inviting, after the strange coldness of the dining room during dinner the next night. The coldness down there was no more temperature than the warmness in the sunroom was. She was curled up on a couch with her head thrown back to catch some of the sun on her face. At the sound of her name her head lowered and her eyes opened to search the room and find me, fixing on me quickly.
“Call me Abby.” She smiled at me and patted the couch next to her. I blinked, but refused the urge to frown, allowing my smile to return one to her and giving her a small hello wave. “Are you feeling better? I’m feeling better.” She stretched like a kitten, suddenly all limbs and angles. I walked to her and sat down near her, folding my hands in my lap. I wondered about the change in her, change that felt too fast.
“I’m … so the doctors are helping you? Did they give you any good medications yet? I always talk to Doctor West about my medications…” She frowned at that and turned, slugging my shoulder gently.
“I’m not on anything yet, John. Can’t a girl just be happy?” I supposed yes, but somehow I wanted to answer no. She muttered something about her step-sisters and leaned against me like I was a comfortable piece of furniture. How I loved her. Even as everything… the thought stopped me cold, making me go stiff. She felt the change too and pulled away from me. I turned and looked at her face, taking it all in. It was like the world got worse but somehow even as it did she liked me more. There was a word for that. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it existed. “Are you ok?” she asked, carefully trying to lean against me again.
“Hmmm? Huh, yeah. Yeah I’m, thanks, yeah I’m fine, Abby.” The name tasted strange in my mouth, but not a bad sort of strange, the sort of strange of a new flavor of gum that could become your favorite flavor and easily beat out strawberry with some time.
“Good, I was thinking, John, that we should do something tonight.”
“Like what? Ping pong? I like ping pong.” I shrugged and turned to her as she kissed me. So many thoughts swam around my head then at incredible speed, but all of them were chased by or chasing the singular thought that she kissed me. I gave in to it and enjoyed it, not wanting it to end by the time it did.
“Not,” she said softly, “ping pong.” I nodded dumbly but happily and wasn’t really sure what she did mean. Maybe she liked a good game of foosball. “So, John Dillon, what do you think?” I didn’t remember telling her my last name, but it wasn’t hard to find out really. I shrugged and nodded at her again, looking into her eyes.
“Well Abby… I don’t know your last name… I think that would be fun.”
“Lincoln,” My jaw fell open an inch. Now I was hearing things. “My parents thought it was funny, ok? Abby Lincoln, like the president but less male.” I stood up quickly. Everything made a sudden sick sense.
“You won’t, you know.”
“I won’t what?”
“I know!” I knew. She was trying to lure me into calmness to kill me. Abe Lincoln, Abby. It fit. It did. I headed for the door at speed.
“John, you knew what?” she asked, getting off the couch and coming after me. Oh lord she was coming after me. I hit the door with the palm of my hand and ran down the stairs. I could hear her feet slapping the floor behind me. “John! Wait!” I wouldn’t wait. I knew, and everything made sense suddenly.
“No, I know ok? Stop trying to… just… stop!” I didn’t want her to be my destruction made flesh. Such sweet wonderful flesh. She had kissed me; I could still taste her on my lips. I turned back from the door out of the stairway and caught a glimpse of her face, screwed up with passion and anger and resentment and fear. A huge melting pot of emotional breakfast cereal that condemned me and begged me to stop at the same time. I shook my head at her and walked out of the stairwell.
“Damn you, fine. Bastard,” she shouted at me as I left. I felt a tightness in my chest. I loved her, I did, even once I knew she was going to eventually kill me, but I couldn’t let her kill me even if it broke my heart. It felt like she already had killed me.
The new guard, who seemed to not be new, stopped me outside the stairs with a cold smile.
“John,” he used my name instead of trying to be bossy like Clyde, “Doctor Vandrell sent me to collect you. Follow me?” I closed my eyes for a second while I nodded and fell into step behind him. Suddenly Doctor Vandrell felt I couldn’t be trusted to get somewhere on my own and I didn’t care anymore.
“What’s your name,” I asked him as we walked. I didn’t really care but I wanted to know at the same time.
“Warren.” And that was that apparently. Warren ignored me and kept walking me down to the examination room. The table had been removed and in its place was a large metal chair. The thing had a lot of padding and didn’t look uncomfortable but it loomed there. The table had fit the room; the chair fit some other room that thankfully wasn’t the one I was in. Except I was still expected to sit in the chair. I sat in the chair.
“Thank you, Warren,” Doctor Vandrell said as he slid metal cuffs over my wrists and ankles to secure me. “Now, John, I need you to just relax.” He slid the black rubber mouthpiece into my mouth and smiled at me, but it wasn’t the smile I was used to. Unfriendly and fake, his smile loomed in front of my eyes while he flicked his fingers against a needle and reached down to inject it into my arm.
*****
Somehow fragments stayed with me. Another flash of light, dazzling in intensity but not sunlight. Light from inside me. Interior lighting, self-lighting, that chased away shadows haunting my brain and replaced them with things all its own. A snapping sound, a displacement and I knew, as certainly as I knew that I was still breathing, that something chased me. Lincoln. Not Lincoln, time. Time was chasing me, I was out of time, I was full of time. The clocks knew my name and had my address and they didn’t want to give me a check, they wanted me to check out.
Tick. Tock. Tick-tock. Tock-tick. And the alarms went off.
Bells and gongs and a troupe of truth marched by, leaving me alone with my nothingness. Everything I remembered moved away from me as I tried to hold on to it. I knew I could. I realized I couldn’t.
*****
I came back to my senses in my room. I was sick of coming to my senses; no, I was sick of losing them and having to find them all over again. Each time felt longer and harder, a struggle back. I was in my bed and I laid there, eyes closed, slowly letting feeling come back to me. My toes all wiggled, my ears followed suit and my muscles all ached in the right places as I stretched. Whatever else the ECT did, it beat me up. Then again I also found that I felt broader, not physically but mentally. I was sharper, like the brightness on a television turned up after years of being dim, the greys resolving into images you knew were there but could never quite make out.
As I stretched I realized I was also naked under the sheets. That was new and I had to wonder why they had undressed me, or why I had gone to bed nude. I never slept that way, my pajamas made me happy so there was no reason to. Every time I went through this I came back and things were different. Different in so many ways that I couldn’t even second guess myself and now the blackouts that followed were getting longer and the things I did while my short term memory wouldn’t save seemed to get odder.
I started to get out of bed and heard a noise next to me. Freezing, I thought about it and realized that while I stretched I had felt skin against my own, skin that wasn’t attached to me at all. My confusion level ran up the flagpole right off the scale as I debated turning my head and seeing what I had done.
“Mmm, John?” I didn’t have to turn. I knew that voice, even if I hadn’t heard it filled with sleep before. She was in bed with me. I was naked. I felt her skin against… she was probably naked. She was plotting to kill me! I jumped out of bed, realized I was, as I thought, really naked, and grabbed a piece of clothing off the floor to cover myself. Glancing down at myself, even as she raised her head and propped it up on a hand, I realized I had grabbed her bra and was holding it in front of my crotch. I dropped it and reached down again to grab my own underwear and slip it on.
“Uhhh, Abby,” the name was hard to say, a struggle to get out when all I wanted to do was run, “hi?”
“Hi baby,” she smiled at me, “what’s wrong?” I started to say something, anything, an excuse to leave when she shifted and the sheet slid to reveal her right breast. “John, what are you doing?” I tore my eyes away from her breast and tried to not think about what the two of us in bed, together and naked, implied.
“I should… I should go. I mean, you know, I, we, well, you’re going to kill me.” I nodded and gave her a small shrug.
“Ok, first of all? You aren’t going to leave your room because of me. Second of all we talked about the whole ‘me killing you’ thing and it’s settled. Wasn’t it settled? I could’ve sworn,” Abby sat up and crossed her legs in my bed, the sheets pooling in her lap, “it was all settled before we fucked. You didn’t lie to me just to get me in bed did you?” I sighed, loudly, and pulled my chair out from the desk, sitting in it and facing her.
“No it’s settled, I mean if we settled it we settled it, but the procedure…”
“That thing they take you for?”
“Yeah, it messes with my short term memory. It… it does things like that. So I’m not going back on anything I said or anything we did, ok, I just don’t remember it.” Her head shook, her hair shifting with the motion like hay in the wind.
“You don’t remember talking to me about all of this already?” I shook my head sadly, I wished I did remember it—I really did. “You don’t remember… us… fucking? I mean it wasn’t exactly porn star sex, but forgettable?”
“Abby, I didn’t forget it because it was bad or forgettable; I forgot it because I was under the influence of electroconvulsive treatments. I really don’t think it’s fair to blame me for memory lapses, considering.” She gave a little laugh and patted the bed.
“We can go over it all again then. Are you sure you’ll remember it this time?” I left the chair and moved to sit on the edge of the bed both happily and hesitatingly.
“No,” I said softly, “I can’t promise that. I think I will, but I’m sure that I thought I would before too. I wish I did know for sure, but I don’t.” I looked at her hopefully, trying to hide the underlying fear I had of her, and of what I was sure was her destiny. She shook her head again and put a hand on my knee gently enough that I was able to squelch the flinch I felt building inside of me.
“Ok, John, ok. My parents named me Abigail as a joke, a sick little joke. That’s all it was. Abraham Lincoln isn’t out to kill you and neither am I. I know it’s hard to swallow, but you told me that you loved me more than you thought Abe wanted to kill you, and that you trusted in that.” I wasn’t sure if I had said that. How could I be sure? It felt like something I would say, though, and as she said the words I could feel almost an echo of them in my head. The memories tried to swim back from unknown shores.
“Just for the sake, ok the sake of, you know, argument, ok? You could be making this up. It’s not that I think you are, but you need to see the problem here.” I frowned and considered everything.
“I see that, John, I really do see it. I just don’t know what else to do, what else I can do.” I nodded at her and patted her hand. A small happy smile crept out onto my face by itself and shone towards her. She returned it, adding a sly grin. I liked that grin, the way it played with the corners of her mouth. A mouth I could still taste, and that I was slowly getting hints of memories about.
“So, if I do trust you and you turn out to really be Abe Lincoln out to kill me, then what?”
“I… John,” her laughter was loud but warm, not directed at me but only my words, that much was thankfully obvious, “I don’t even know how to begin to respond to that, dumbass. I guess if this is all a ploy to catch you unaware and kill you, then you’ll die. But you said you loved me, and that has to count too, right?”
“I do love you,” I insisted, “and I guess so. Everything is just so confusing recently and I don’t know why. It’s on the tip of my tongue maybe, but I can’t quite find it.” Something occurred to me then that made me squeeze her hand tightly, “Did you say it back, I mean do you…”
“Love you? I like you a lot, John. I do. Ever since I came into this place and you waved at me in the lobby. When I told you I liked you then, I meant it.” That certainly didn’t match my memory, but a lot of things, more and more, weren’t. “But love? John, I don’t think so, and don’t take it personally.” She exhaled loud and long through the corner of her mouth, “This was hard enough to say the first time. I like you a lot, obviously, ok? I don’t just sleep with people I hate. You can blame it on a bias after you saved me from that Clyde guy when we were in the rec room, but that really only reinforced what I was already feeling.” I saved her from Clyde? If I added up everything that didn’t match my memory of events I would shut down completely and just start drooling on the floor.
“Ok,” I told her softly leaning over to hug her, to take that first move myself; even if it wasn’t a first move to her anymore, it was to me, “ok, thanks for going over it all again. I didn’t mean to sound… crazy, I guess.” She leaned into the hug and buried her face in my neck.
“We’re all supposed to be crazy in here John. Crazy little things, moving like unexpected clockwork until they beat us up, drug us out or lock us deeper away, right,” she asked, muttering the words into my flesh. I held her and we lay back down, curling tightly around each other and falling back to sleep slowly.
———–
Crazy Little Thing is copyright Adam P. Knave.
Filed Under (talking heads) by APK on 27-02-2008
 LA LA LA! So bored today! I am bored! BORED!
They lock me in here, tell me to stop doing drugs…
I don’t do drugs! HAHAHAHAHAHAH! I don’t!
You know what I mean, right? I just like to party! HAHAHAHA! PARTY!
It’s fun to party! It’s not a problem! I don’t have a problem! They’re all just mean!
Zod?! Zod doesn’t care about anyone, man! He’s just a cold hearted son of a bitch! HAHAHA HE’S A BITCH!
And H.A.L.? FUCK H.A.L.! H.A.L. can kiss my ass! One big red eye doesn’t make you cool! MY HEAD HAS NO FLESH! THAT’S COOL! ONE BIG RED EYE ISN’T COOL!
Robotic Yul Brynner… I mean he’s ok. That gun fetish, well it’s because he doesn’t have anything else to work with. I mean down there. You get me? ROBOTIC KEN BRYNNER HAHAHAHAHAHA! But he’s an all right guy. For a robot with a funny hat.
Yeah whatever! They stuck me in here! I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… ha… haha… hahahahohgod.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-huhhuhhuh-aaaaahu-oh god, I mean what have I done? I used to stand there so proud, arms in the air…
Just like that. And and then I… I didn’t… what have I HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA what have I done?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
 So uhhh… I have to go make a new movie. So we can talk later, ok Skeletor?
HAHAHAHAHA sure thing, Mel! You don’t love me anyway you stupid prick!
 I love you plenty! Yup! Yup!
Shut the fuck up, Sugar tits! Go! GET OUT OF MY FACE HAHAHAHAAHHA! GO! HAHAHAHAH!
Guards! I need to get out of rehab again! Quickly!
HAHAHAHAHAHA! GO FUCKER! RUN FOR IT, RIGGS!
I should do Lethal Weapon 5! Yeah!
AHAHAHAHAH! FUCK! Inspiring a new Lethal Weapon movie? I do have a problem. FUCK! HAHAHAHAHA!
Filed Under (YouTubed, humor) by APK on 27-02-2008
Video quality on these two is far below what we normally get but hey! It’s what we have! First up – Pan Kun and dog must buy bug catching supplies:
And then they must catch bugs:
———–
Please note: Chapters Eight and Nine are in the same post for logistical reasons
———–
Eight
Down the hall again to the stairs. Upstairs to the sunroom. I walked by rote, memory guiding me while my mind tried to refuse looking at anything. I almost slipped on some blood that splashed along the stairs but caught the handrail and kept moving. The sunroom door was open, propped that way by Horatio Fersetter, my old next door neighbor, his body inert on the ground. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his hands clutched at air dangerously, as if it had knives and teeth. I stepped over him, not wanted to, muttering an apology to him while I did, and took in the room.
The sunroom itself was largely untouched. Fairly clean and, except for Horatio, devoid of bodies, the only issue was a few broken window panes. The sky was dark, bruise colored and heavy with clouds sprinkled throughout. It didn’t look like rain; it didn’t look like much of anything except bad. I stared into the dim sunlight a while, closing my eyes and just breathing but I couldn’t relax. I knew I had to keep moving, to try and work out what had happened and make some sort of sense out of things.
More importantly, I had to find her. Alive or dead, I had to know. Everything was so dangerous now, even if the danger felt like it had passed. I wasn’t sure what happened, no, I had no idea what had happened, but it was obvious that fights broke out. Deadly fights, the kind that no one walks away from.
So how had I missed it and why didn’t I remember it? I didn’t remember anything leading up to it, the concept simply wasn’t there before… before what? Before the changes, the shifts and the swirls.
My tongue felt large in my mouth and I worried it along the side of a tooth, the structure of the problem feeling like a sliver of vegetable caught in my mouth. So I worked at it, rubbing my tongue. It wasn’t really caught there of course, I knew that, but it felt like it and if pretending was going to help me solve this then I would go for it.
I wondered what time it was as I left the sunroom and headed for the stairs again, down to the basement. We weren’t allowed in the basement, but we all knew it was down there, heavy and solid like a fist of emotion. We weren’t allowed down there but I was sure that didn’t matter any more. I really wanted to know what time it was.
Nine
Doctor Vandrell came and got me for a second treatment. I didn’t want to go. I really wanted to tell him no, and started to, but I got nervous. The doctors had always been nice to me, for the most part. When did I start thinking that addition to it? When did the “for the most part” creep in? Doctor West was watching my case, even if I kept trying to see her and couldn’t seem to make a time with her. That was strange to me, too, since before this she would make time for me.
I followed Doctor Vandrell down the hall to the examination room. The table he had me sit on was in the same place as the table from before—it was the same room, I was sure it was—but it was dented around the edges now. The straps looked more worn and the room itself seemed to have seen a few bad days, but there hadn’t even been a few days between sessions. I shook my head and shut my mouth and sat down, giving Vandrell a hint of a smile. He didn’t even bother to talk to me as he was putting me under and I closed my eyes.
*****
I woke up in my room. No, that was wrong, I regained conscious control of my mind in my room, but I had obviously been awake before then since I woke up standing up in the room, looking out the window. The time between didn’t exist for me, lost again, but a bigger slice of time than had been lost previously. It scared me and made me hide my smiles, even from myself. Clock number three went off and I hit the button to silence it.
I had to eat dinner. Still, my nerves were jangly and a smoke might calm them some. I wasn’t sure I could get anything down if I didn’t stop and have a cigarette before I tried to eat. The hallway was mostly empty and the lobby was even more bare, having only Sally, Clyde and a new guard I didn’t recognize. I smiled at Sally, giving her a small hello wave but she glared at me in return, so quickly my hand fell down by my side and my smile hid itself again.
“Mister Dillon,” Clyde said from behind me as I walked past him and put a hand on the door, “you know occupants aren’t allowed outside.” I froze and moved my hand off the door, turning to Clyde and the new guard.
“What? But I always go outside to smoke.” I held up my pack of smokes and my lighter to show him, shaking them slightly. “Always, every morning before breakfast and after dinner and sometimes, if I really want one at other times but I don’t know when those will be, like now.” I tried to catch the other guard’s eyes but his were hard and challenging so I looked somewhere else.
“That simply isn’t true Mister Dillon, the Facility has never allowed smoking inside and does not allow occupants to go outside without escort.” For the life of me, I could not work out why Clyde was being this mean and telling lies. Clyde looked at the other guard who nodded.
“Mister Dillon,” the other guard said softly. His voice was a lot nicer than Clyde’s even if he looked somewhat colder, “you know that is how it has always been here. I don’t know how or where you got those cigarettes but you aren’t allowed to use them here. We’ve had this discussion before.”
“We have? We’ve never even met before…”
“Now, Mister Dillon… John,” he gave me a patronizing look, the kind of look they weren’t supposed to give you at all, “why don’t you go get some dinner. Clock number three must’ve gone off, right?” For a new guy he did seem to know a lot.
I nodded dumbly and left, heading to go get dinner and figure out what was wrong, outside or inside, something was wrong.
———–
Crazy Little Thing is copyright Adam P. Knave.
Last night featured not only Hammerpants and myself but also special guest star Vin. Just so you can keep up. It was actually a really strangely quiet night. The bar was empty, or close to it. Leading theories included, but were not limited to:
No that was about the only one we came up with. I mean sure, I would bet we all considered a zombie apocalypse but then people would come into the nearest bar, having seen Shaun of the Dead and thinking it a smart move. Since that didn’t happen, ipso facto presto change-o no zombies.
There were, however, a lot of fire trucks around the area for a few hours. Kinda odd. The firemen were standing around looking confused. They taped things off and then seemed to realize they didn’t know where the fire actually was – if there even was one. I wasn’t on fire and the bar was not in flames so I am confident it was not us.
—————————
Val was tired. Curling up, head down on the bar, grumbling kind of tired. Which, sadly for her, was hysterical to everyone else. M certainly didn’t help, massaging various pints on her skull to relax her, and make her sleepier. It was kind of… not mean really, well ok it was sort of mean but in that good way.
—————————
M needs lemons and limes every night. A big bag of them to be sliced and used in drinks. She sent one of the guys out to the store to get 20 limes and 6 lemons. He comes back with a plastic shopping bag of limes and lemons – all loose. He didn’t bag them at the fruit area of the store. Which made M stop and wonder out loud how he carried them without bagging them (Basket, anyone)? I suggested juggling.
Maybe I suggested it because I want to see someone walking through a supermarket juggling 26 pieces of fruit. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just right.
—————————
Hammerpants showed up, sick. Props to him for showing up dead. M made him some hot water + lemon + brandy to clear him up a bit. He didn’t watch her making it however, so he missed the part where she squeezed about a lemon and a half into the glass, mashing it to make sure she got every ounce of juice. Into a 12oz glass. Then hot water. Then a splash of brandy. The face Hammerpants made on that first sip, suddenly realizing how much of it was just lemon juice? Well I wasn’t sick but it made me feel better anyway.
—————————
Vin, M and I had a whole Christmas story trade-off that really revolved around two facts:
M wants a Spirograph, and has wanted one since she was a kid. She still doesn’t have one.
Vin wanted a deck of cards. He has had decks of cards before, mind you.
M thought that perhaps coloring books would be fun to have at the bar, as well. I wish they made coloring books for bars. The pictures would be bands and bars and patrons and such. I could make that work.
—————————
Which brings us to crayons. I won’t tell the story of M’s crush when she was 4, except to say it revolved around crayons, but crayons were suddenly a hot topic.
It reminded me of those boxes with the built-in sharpener and how much I loved that. And the first time I was in a school setting and they had an electric pencil sharpener and I had crayons and… many crayons were sacrificed to the beast that day, I tell you.
—————————
Also there is no White People Skin Tone Crayon. It isn’t peach. I suggested Crayola market a crayon named Honky, but it hasn’t happened yet. I am too progressive for my times. It happens.
—————————
And then, you know how it is, we went home. Because, contrary to popular speculation, I do not live in a bar.
———–
Seven
I woke up in the middle of the night and stretched slowly, squeezing my eyes shut. Things still felt off, but they felt off outside, not on the inside where I normally would feel off about the universe. An external tilt had taken me.
I staggered out of my own space and headed down to the rec room, just hoping for a larger space to be alone in. Pushing the door open I spotted her. My instincts ran in two directions at once: I wanted to go to her and I wanted to leave. I still loved her. I knew that, but I also didn’t look forward to more of her cutting tongue.
“Uhhh,” I started bravely, “hey there.” My feet took me to the couch she was curled up on all by themselves. They never even asked me, just happily walked me right up to her. Her knees were held tightly to her chest by her arms and she seemed to be looking at the floor through a cloud of her own hair. At my words she glanced over at me.
“Hey, John, hey. What are you doing up this late?” She looked back at the floor and held out a foot. “What size does this seem to be to you?” I decided she must be distracted, to be speaking calmer. Then I remembered the time, she had to be tired. That was it.
“I… I don’t know. A seven or eight maybe? I never really sized shoes real good, you know, and uhhh, yeah. So why are you up so late?”
“Couldn’t sleep, I need a better reason? Nightmares, that’s the normal one around here right? Did you have nightmares then?” Her arms unwrapped from her legs and she held her hands up in front of her face, wiggling her fingers, “Big scary nightmares maybe, chased by some guy who had your mice captive and wouldn’t give you the right shoe?” I sat slowly on the edge of the couch, not too near her and shook my head.
“No, I’ve never had a nightmare like that. I mean there was time I had a dream that I was a hamburger but that was a long time ago and I…”
“Yeah, ok John, thanks. So why are you up so late, huh?” My fingers plucked at the couch cushion and I looked directly at her, quickly changing my mind and looking away from her eyes.
“I just got up, the clocks didn’t tell me to,” I said fast, “it just happened, ok? Have you seen Benny?”
“You mean that guy who died?” My stomach lurched. “Oh, you were here when it happened weren’t you? I’m so sorry.” She leaned over and hugged me. Just… she hugged me, right then and there, clutching me to her awkwardly but firmly, bent far over with one leg coming up to rest on the couch while the other balanced her against the floor.
“See, I don’t remember it that way. I thought he just… it’s not important,” I fell silent and hugged her back. After a minute or so she let go and sat up straight. I stood and looked around the room, trying to place everything. “I should get back to bed, clock number one is going to go off way too soon, right, and I don’t want to… I should go.” She raised an eyebrow at me but shrugged, dismissing me.
I went back to bed, totally unsure of why I remembered things wrong and adding her behavior to the list of things that made no sense to me. Abigail had seemed far too nice to me, but Doctor West said that I should embrace new friends and I did love her and embracing her was pretty high on my list of ideas. She hugged me. It wasn’t the warmest hug in the world but she had hugged me.
———–
Crazy Little Thing is copyright Adam P. Knave.
Filed Under (brainmeats) by APK on 25-02-2008
It’s easier to destroy than to create. That’s fairly obvious, I would like to think. But here’s the thing, and this ties into a whole bunch of shit so this might be rambling as all hell, it must not be obvious. Or people just don’t give enough of a fuck to work for it.
Because all around I see people dipping into the negative attack approach. As a default, as a way to get response, as a way to entertain and prove how smart and witty they are. It’s kinda pathetic, really.
Sure, you can decide you don’t like something. But when you start insulting it up and down the chain because you didn’t like it and refuse to be open to the concept that anyone could ever like it just because you don’t? You’re a dick.
Hope is a good thing. Being positive is a good thing. Seriously.
Where’s the harm in being honest? If something isn’t for you, then it isn’t. Maybe you feel it is the worst thing ever written/filmed/recorded but obviously other people don’t. Is it that impossible to honestly approach it and see what they see in it, even if it isn’t for you? And to then be honest about it and instead of cutting everything down back off for a second and look for the decent side?
Naw, that’s too much like work, I guess. I expect too much of people, I know.
But in my writing I focus on hope, on love and on the concept that the human spirit is one bad-ass cool fucking weapon. Bad things still happen to good people. People lose, get hurt, get fucked over and everything else in the spectrum of human experience. But it never eliminates hope and love and willpower, even when they are twisted, they still exist and exert a pull over everything.
I write, like all writers, my ideal world. It doesn’t mean a land of rainbows and unicorn farts, it just means that when I write I create universes where these are the cardinal ruling forces.
But I would feel like a hypocrite if I spent a ton of my time and career pushing a world view I didn’t push in my personal life as well. I want it all, you see. And so I say to you now: Hope is cool. Feeling good is cool. Being happy is also cool.
Life is made of the good and the bad and it is easier to remember the bad – it has a bigger footprint in our lives, most times. But when you have five bad things and two really good ones happen shouldn’t you focus on the two instead of the five? What do you gain by dwelling on the bad shit and letting it eat you alive and color your focus? What’s the upside? And that isn’t to say no one should ever be negative, either. People have to process things and sometimes negative helps you refocus. In short bursts. To resort the stuff going on. Sure. Negative can even be healthy. Just not as a long term, every day solution.
And yeah it is harder to focus on the upside and no one gets it right all the time. That’s human. But I just don’t get why people don’t try more. Why they’re content to make themselves suffer, to spread bullshit and hate and negativity around like it somehow made them nice to be around. It doesn’t. It’s weak and easy and sad.
Which isn’t to say that nothing is ever bad. Oh no, there are many things that are just bad. Others may still like them, but they’re bad – badly done in ways that are less opinion and more craft related. Even they tend to have an upside. Is it terrible to take the time to point it out and not spew venom over everything?
I dunno. I am a cynic a lot of the time, and a bastard and sometimes just plain mean. I am also hopeful and try every day to do a little better by the universe and myself. To work a bit harder, have more fun (that is my major life goal, for the record: have more fun every year than I did the previous year) and get to where I’m going.
That dichotomy isn’t bad, it isn’t a deal-breaker, it just means you have to learn that being hopeful and letting yourself explain things doesn’t mean you can’t also go and laugh at a baby falling on its face. Trust me, you can. I have.
I guess I just don’t understand it. I hear friends tell me that things are going bad, but when you tally it they seem to skip the good things as never that good and the bad is always that bad. The same with reviews of movies and books (and I intend to do a post about how I review books soon) and so on.
My life is far from perfect. Very far in fact. But I love it, enjoy it and have fun. And I keep at it, and keep pushing myself. If I don’t what are my options? Sitting where I am, never moving, only bitching that other people are? That doesn’t feel like it’s worth spending a life on.
I work all the time, day job and writing all night. I am always busy, I get frustrated with it and want to snap and start screaming at least once a month. I never have enough time to do everything I want to do and can barely keep up sometimes. I still make time to relax, at least once a week, and I pay for that. How much would it suck if this weren’t my life? I would be bored. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. So I work to fine the enjoyment in everything I do, and make the most out of it.
It’s harder to create than it is to destroy. But creating is fuckloads more fun.
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