Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls
its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write
down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote,
website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will
simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test
or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes
of them.
H Trope: creepy
basements
Current Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175774/JonBenet-Ramsey-murder-New-clues-revealed-detective-shed-new-light-case.html
Mattie Capp Washington – I hated her. She was
cute where I was ugly; she was short where I was tall; she was light where I
was dark; she was popular where the world loathed me.
Everyone mourns
her passing which the police and the rest of the country suspected was a
murder. I’m the only one who actually saw anything, but if I talk about it,
then I’ll be a suspect and even though their suspicions wouldn’t be entirely
true, it would probably be enough to convict me.
It would certainly
be enough to get me sent to the electric chair (if they had one any more) in
the courtroom of public opinion.
I suppose I should
back up a bit. I could probably start at the part where the world loathed me.
I’m pretty sure you think I’m exaggerating when I say that, because there’s
pretty much nothing that the world uniformly loathes. On the other hand, a
paper I read once stated, “In virtually every culture there has existed some
word for evil, a universal, linguistic acknowledgment of the archetypal
presence of ‘something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity...’”
So if every
culture has a word for it, then the word must have been invented to describe
something – ‘cuz that’s what Humans do. We put labels on stuff as soon as we
want to get a handle on it. It’d be interesting to see which came first – the
word for “evil” or the word for “God”.
I’m it – the thing
that every culture has named. And almost without exception, I live in dark
places. In the middle of the 21st Century, while there aren’t many
caves left, there are lots and lots of basements. That’s where you’ll usually
find me – evil lurking in basements.
It’s funny, ‘cuz
bad guys always act like they’re looking for me. The real nut cases say that
they’re seeking me to worship me. Those are the ones that amuse me the most
because no matter how hard they tried to find me, no matter how many millions
of dollars they spent or how many people they murdered to come to me
face-to-face, the second they look at me, they completely lose it and beg to
leave; they grovel, roll around on the ground, mess themselves and volunteer to
sacrifice to me anything and everything they have.
And I’m not even Incarnate
– I’m excarnate. I’m the one who DOES the dirty work because I am the one who
is Unmade flesh. I was alive on Earth at one time and when I joined the ranks I
became excarnate and now I serve. In basements. All the time.
Someone came down
the stairs: thud, thud, thud; male heaviness. The young Ms. Washington was
here, too. But there might have been a surprise or two in the offing.
I smiled an
excarnate smile and opened my mouth.
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