Deviltry

[Zephalephelah]

Deviltry

Chapter 1: Stranger



“I can teach you how to never feel pain again”, he said. He was an older man, perhaps sixty. But the boyish grin he emoted from behind his well-trimmed mustache and beard suggested a much younger man. Dressed in a dark-colored suit with a pair of tennis shoes, the man seemed to have the fashion sense of a school boy. He raised his eyebrows as if asking me, ‘well?’

“I’m not in any pain”, I replied, and walked past the man. ‘Damn strange freaks, I hate this city’, I thought.

But it turned out the man in the suit and tennis shoes was going to be persistent. He touched my shoulder, startling me somewhat although the touch was simply that- a touch. I turned around, feeling a little perturbed that he would be so forward. He repeated, “I can teach you how to never feel pain again.”

“Look, I told you. I’m not in any pain. Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

I tried to turn again, but his hand was still on my shoulder. He kept me for a moment longer, then let me turn away. I managed to get about five steps when he said, “Your back.”

I suppose to many people, that would have sounded odd. He could have simply noticed someone on the street and made an observation- ‘your back’. Or, he could have been talking about my back injury. It would have been just as likely that he was talking about me being back again, even though I was leaving. None of the explanations made any sense. I realized that I had stopped in my pondering. It was probably that he was so strange to me, a little scary to tell the truth. However, I really was busy. I had to get back to work with the other ladies, we were having a secretary’s meeting on the 7th floor of the McNeil building.

“I said leave me alone”, I replied in case he was still talking to me.

He was talking to me, and when he said the other thing, I started to get a little worried. Maybe this was some freak stalker Alex, my dumb ex-husband, was sending after me to punish me for sins against him. The older man’s voice stopped me again when he said, “You hurt your back two nights ago.”

I was in mid-decision. Run or turn around and deal with him. Only, people didn’t run around in business dresses and high heels, not even in the rain, not unless there was a real reason, and I didn’t know if there was a real reason yet, but it was getting closer to be a real reason. I turned. He was close. His boyish smile was gone and in place he seemed to be smiling from his eyes instead. Pale green eyes, almost gray. “What is it that you want from me?”

“That’s not how it is done.”

“How what is done exactly”, I asked.

He changed his entire demeanor. At one moment, he was the odd stranger, then he suddenly felt and looked like an important figure in the business world. It was as though he had changed from a mildly exhausted, middle-aged, only partially successful lawyer and became a vice-president of a large national bank who had simply lost his shoes. His slight slouch and less than commanding voice were replaced with every fiber of this man becoming utter authority, a man that is used to people saying yes to him and cleaning up after kissing his ass on a daily basis. He said, “I can teach you how to never feel pain again.”

I believed him. But then, just as quickly as I had believed him, I disbelieved him. My eyes fell to his tennis shoes and I wondered how rude it would appear if I were to look at my watch. ‘Dammit, this guy is going to make me late for my meeting’, I thought.

“Please miss, let me just show you, then if you want nothing of it I promise not to bother you again.”

“How long?”

“Two minutes. Please.”

He was charming. “Okay, two minutes. Then I have to go. I mean it.”

“Yes, of course. This way please.”

He brought me back to where we had met, and to his car, a Lexus. He opened the door, to which I immediately stated, “You said two minutes. There is no where you can bring me in two minutes. What is this all about?”

He smiled with that boyish smile again and told me, “I’m not bringing you anywhere. This is what I want to show you.”

“Great, a Lexus car door. How much are you selling the door for? Look, I really have to go.”

“Your purse.”

“Screw you, my purse. I’m leaving.”

“Miss, please. Your shoe then. I need something that you know isn’t mine.”

I was caught between my decision to leave and my own damnable curiosity. I reached down and pulled off my right shoe and handed it to him wondering whether he was fitting himself for some cross-dressing Cinderella. I asked, “You know, it’s been troubling me since I met you. Why are you wearing Nikes with a business suit?”

He stopped as though he were locked in timelessness- frozen. Then he moved again, his eyes met mine, those strangely beautiful eyes. He must have had many lovers in his time. He said, “Thank you. A question focused directly to me, instead of all this power I am about to show you. Funny how the human nature keeps us grounded, don’t you think? I am wearing these shoes because the shoes that go with this suit used to make my feet hurt so I always changed to tennis shoes when no one was looking.”

“But I’m looking.”

“Yes, I know. Ok, now, here is a shoe. You know that this is a real shoe. Let me just place it here, and there you go.”

He had placed the shoe between the door and the doorjamb. “Kick it, kick the door with all your might.”

“Oh! I get it. You’re a magician.”

“In a sense. Kick away.”

For a few seconds I wondered what I would look like walking down the avenue with one shoe and a very angry look on my face because I'd ruined a good pair of shoes. But then I decided to just chance it and kick the door because this jerk wasn’t about to let me go until I did and I knew it as much as I knew I was going to be late for my meeting. Oh well, at least I’d have something interesting for the others. I kicked it. It felt pretty good, especially when I saw the dent in the Lexus I’d made with my foot. Then the doorjamb opened slightly and the heel of my shoe fell. Wasting no time, the man opened the door. The rest of the shoe fell into the gutter. He placed his arm where the shoe was and said, “Again.”

“What about my shoe?”

“It’s broken.”

“Yeah”, said I, with growing irritation.

“Kick the door.”

I kicked the door. The dent got a bit bigger. But the man didn’t seem phased at all. He withdrew his arm from the door and pulled up his sleeves. ‘Nothing up the sleeve’, I thought. Well there was nothing, except a growing welt on both sides of his arm. “You have some serious issues”, I told him.

He opened the door and put his bare arm back inside the doorjamb. He said, “This time slam it as hard as you can.”

“You know they have places where you can get help.”

“Screw you.”

“What?”, I exclaimed, alarmed.

“Slam the door!”

“No, you freak. I’m leaving.”

“I broke your shoe.”

“You masochist. I’ve heard about freaks like you. You don’t have a conscience so you have to inflict pain on yourself so that you will feel something.”

“I’m a sadist. Now slam the door.”

“You’re an idiot”, I said, then I slammed the door. Hard.

What happened next was a series of fascination and pain. The door bounced off his arm. It had made a weird soft sound, instead of the usual rubber and metal chunk. I saw purple and red color his arm as if a unseen child had gone mad with magic markers. At the same time, I’d pulled my back out again and felt nauseous as spikes of pain brought me to the pavement. The pain was so great I thought I might black out. My vision blurred. Motes of white played in random paths before me. Through this half-blind pain I saw the man withdraw his arm from the door and blood was pulsing from an open wound from which a substantial nub of bone protruded through fat and skin. I felt as though I might vomit. Then I saw his smile, his boyish grin. I blacked out.


Chapter 2: Fascination


I came to consciousness, seeing the strange man smiling above me. I was only vaguely aware of what had transpired, but it was coming back to me quickly, much like when you wake up late for work and the dreams disappear quickly and your reality is a rather bitter one. The pain in my back was still quite hard to bear and motes played through my vision like dancers under the strobe light of a disco ball. Beyond the motes, I looked at the man’s arm. It was a broken blackened mess. He nodded and pulled his sleeves down over it as though to suggest that it was just a scratch. I recalled the many movies in which you think the lead character is dead from a bullet, but later find him bravely stating that it was just a flesh wound, nothing to write home about and worry your mother.

“I can teach you how to never feel pain again”, he repeated.

“So you keep saying.”

“Yes, but I really can do it. That’s the difference. No magic tricks. You won’t ever feel any sort of pain ever again.”

The motes were dying off, going where the moths and mosquitoes go in the daytime I presumed. Why was this happening to me? I was late for an important meeting. I was rarely, if ever, late for anything. I believed that punctuality was a merit of good manners and professionalism. If only I hadn’t spent so much time waiting in line for lunch; a meal that threatened to be tasted again at any moment. I shook my head a little, and thought how comical I might appear to the passersby, people that lived in the city and had seen so much that whatever the older man and me might be involved in was just an everyday occurrence of the daily weirdo, the freak on the street with the end-of-the-world sign. But still, I was ashamed, embarrassed at my lying on the ground.

I forced myself to stand up, but it was too soon. My back fought against me, but I managed to grit my teeth and hide the pain from myself mostly I suppose. I said, “Well, I’m late for my meeting now. So what’s the story here? Do I have to give you money? Do you want to have the rights to my unborn child?”

He appeared suddenly perplexed, utterly confused. His normally idiotic grin was replaced with a very serious expression that suggested regret. He replied, “Are you pregnant? Perhaps I’ve made a mistake inviting you into this…”

“No, I’m not. But I did miss my meeting. Don’t pull that sympathetic, savior crap on me. You aren’t very good at it. I hurt my back and I want to go…”

Where did I want to go? Not to work. My dress was wet from the crap in the gutter that seemed to never dry. I just wanted to go home. Yes, in fact, that’s exactly where I wanted to be. I’d hide my head in that hole in the wall place I called home. The city didn’t afford much luxury for a struggling up the corporate ladder girl such as myself, but it was better than most places even if it was still quaint compared to what I was used to in life. I continued, “I want to go home now. Please, just stay away from me.”

“Miss, I will do no such thing. Now you’ve obviously hurt your back. You are practically speaking through your teeth you are in so much pain. And I can make it all go away, for the rest of your life in fact.”

I relaxed my jaw muscles. I had been speaking through my teeth. I thought I’d sounded relatively good too. But he still caught it. Every time I tried to get away from this man…; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name. I closed my eyes, thinking, don’t ask him, don’t ask him. I felt a worried expression on my brow and then I was asking him.

“I’m Urgen Beldam. And you?”

Urgen Beldam. What a very strange name. Almost as disconnected, I replied, “Dana. Dana Strauss.”

He reached out with his broken arm and extended it to me for a handshake. I felt some of my lunch regurgitate and gulped it down before I had to taste it. It made me feel nauseous again and the motes returned for a moment to say hi.

I shook his hand, wincing all the while.

He said, “I’m sorry you hurt your back.”

He’s sorry? I shook my head. “You broke your arm.” I still felt like I wasn’t doing the talking, as though someone else were speaking through me.

“Actually, you broke it. Well no, the door broke it. Does it matter? It doesn’t matter to me.”

I said, “Well, whether you feel it or not, you should get some medical attention. It could get infected. You might not feel it, but infections are dangerous.”

“Yes, of course, I’m well aware of human limitation.”

This struck me as quite an odd thing to say. Is he suggesting that he is inhuman? Super human perhaps?

“Painlessness is a great benefit. You will see for yourself soon. There is a liberation to it. Can I tell you something personal?”

I said, “Okay Urgent.”

“Urgen”, he said, “Urgen.”

I nodded, wondering why I tried to say his name in the first place. It felt like I was reading someone’s name tag and calling them by name even though I did not know them. But then again, I guess that is exactly how it was. This whole interaction was quite confusing.

He stated, “When I was given the gift, I became obsessed with it. I tried to see how much damage I could do to this body without actually killing myself. It is said that often people die of shock when the pain of an injury actually kills them, like an overdose of an addictive drug. I did everything that I could think of. I fell from four stories up, I shot myself with a .45 colt pistol. I lifted weights that I should never have been able to lift because the lactic-acid build up that stops us from continuing had no effect on me. I purposefully placed myself in depressing and stressful situations in order to find out if there was a pain I could feel beyond the physical, but nothing happened. I know my arm is broken, but I’ll be fine. I know how to care for myself regardless of the lack of pain.”

I heard him speaking, but I didn’t care to remember anything beyond the statement that even mental pain was exiled from his being. This was the turning point for me. My curious nature became fully endowed with interest. I was so overwhelmed with stress and anxiety, and from nowhere came this man who promised to make it all go away… to make my back feel whole again. I nodded. I found that I was nodding a lot to this strange man.


“Dana, please. Let me show you. It will be so wonderful. It will change your life forever. I promise you that. I cannot show you how to cope with that different life, that life without pain, but I can tell you that those that I have shown before have never gone to the extremes that I have gone. For the most part, they simply lived on happily without the constant pain that this world presents on a never-ending basis. But Dana, the choice must be yours, and I will not offer it again. If you choose yes, we must go now. If you do not want this gift of painlessness, then you never see me again. I promise nothing other than what I have offered. I will give you nothing more and nothing less.”

In my short life, there have been many decisions such as this. Boyfriends, with their ultimatums; family, with their advice; career decisions that must be made. This was just another choice. In the end, all choices are uninformed to one extent or another. I nodded.


Chapter 3: Memory

He opened the door to his car for me. That door which had so much potential, and so much unquenched pain attached to it. I saw the button crushed against the locking post, held there by some moist pressure that remained. I had completely crushed his arm, not like a vice, but by far more damage than I had ever inflicted on another in my short life. As I got into Urgen’s Lexus, I watched as a fragment of the button fall to the pavement. I sat down and felt both empty and full, almost like sex. There was something waiting in front of me down the road of time. Urgen opened his door and sat down, turned and smiled his odd boyish smile.

“I live in a strange place. I hope that’s okay.”

I felt strange. Tingling. “Yes”, I replied, still detached from my own usual stubborn refusal to do anything someone would want to coerce me to do. “What the hell is happening!”

He touched me then. It was the first time, really. The handshake was nothing compared to the beautiful sensation that he was able to bestow upon me. My back’s hateful anger subsided to a dull throb and I relaxed while the man I had just met caressed my hair. It wasn’t long, it didn’t seem to mean anything and it was a fleeting sensation. The terrible pain came back upon me as he released his touch and smiled again, turning the key to the ignition. We were about to embark on a journey that held no discernible destination.

We did not talk. He did not need to. I did not want to. If this was a dream, it was an intriguing one. If not, then I desperately wanted to know the old man’s secrets. If I were to let my mind go, I would probably begin asking ignorant questions; asking him what we had to do and how I wanted the pain to go away. Not just the physical pain in my back, but the stress and the emotional baggage I’ve learned to carry all this time to protect myself from previous mistakes. If this man had the answers, then I wanted to listen to him. Yes, he was odd, perhaps only insane, only feeling pain as a decision rather than a requirement; however, he had touched me as no other in my life (the closest being to my mother when I was young and ill with a terrible case of the measles).

We drove through the downtown streets of Seattle until we came to the highway ramp. I felt a real pang of fear, and found the strength to overcome it and ask him a quick series of questions.

“Where are we going?”

“Tacoma”, he said.

“Tacoma”, I repeated, “I haven’t been there in several years.”

“I know.”

Again, that real pang of fear, the kind of fear that makes the bottom of your insides settle strangely. I asked, “How do you know?”

“The same as I know you have back problems, but I cannot offer that gift.”

A sorted envy attacked me from all sides. Why not? Why can’t he give me everything? I felt robbed and cheated. ‘I’m being kidnapped’, I thought, but I did not express it outwardly.

“I can teach you how to never feel pain again”, he iterated.

I know. So you keep telling me. But why not the whole book? Why just a chapter. And what else can you do besides read lives and permanently heal pain?

“Why me?”, I asked at last.

“Because I chose you. Why do the stars choose their place in the sky? Why is the word fork spelled f-o-r-k? It doesn’t matter why. Does it?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.”

I slowly became aware of a lust for power that I had not previously known. I suspected that it might be like a stock holder during the time of the Internet maturing into its adolescent age when it fooled everyone with it’s insanely overpriced stock growth only to fall to the earth like a bullet fired directly into the sky. What comes up must come down.

“We never discussed the price…”, I suggested into conversation.

“No, we have not.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Much, and perhaps nothing at all.”

I actually managed a little chuff of laughter. Then replied, “That’s just a little to cryptic for me, especially since I’m entrusting you to bring me somewhere safe.” I said the word safe with a certain sense of demand - an order.

“I will bring you to a place that is full of people. You will be safe. We will work it out.”

“Well then, why not where we were? The streets are full of people.”

“Not the right people”, he stated.

The rest of the ride was silent. I contemplated using my cell phone to tell my co-workers that I was safe, but after thinking it over if this man was genuine then I wouldn’t really feel any guilt at all. No emotional pain whatever. No guilt, no felt remorse for anything at all. It was exhilarating and fearful all at once. I would feel nothing in a sense. I understood that on some level. I also realized that I was into this situation without my complete permission, and that this was quite a bit over my head…. Over anyone’s I would assume.

Eventually we pulled off the highway and onto 56th street. He said, “We are very close now.”

I didn’t like that he used that adjective ‘very’. It seemed to imply too much about his own excitement. He turned up a road which seemed like a cul-de-sac, but ended up being open. Still, when he turned to the left toward the large building, I felt as though I had made a serious mistake. The building in question was nondescript and although close to the highway I felt far away from society. He stopped the car at the front double doors and I read the sign that hung above it in faded letters. It read, “Tacoma Mausoleum”. I had a strange sense of de-ja-vu, as though I had been here before. But I had not. I never lived here. Yet it was insistent, a sure feeling.

He got out of the car, came around and opened the door for me.

“Why here?”

“Because the gift is inside.”

“But you said that there would be many people where we went.”

He said nothing.

We walked inside. My back was feeling better, but I still was hurting. I followed him as he eagerly walked ahead of me as if his boyish smile had become a totality of his entire disposition. He started mumbling, and I tried to both keep up with his quick pace and his bizarre ranting.

“Lot 310, lot 13. One, the same. My child, my mother, my wife, my sister. All here. All one in actuality. Lot 310, lot 13. One, the same…”

We walked onward, deeper into the labyrinth of the mausoleum. I don’t know why I would follow someone into such a place. I am strangely excited and desperately wanting the power he had promised me.

“Lot 310… lot 310… appear now!”, he ended.

The hallway began to move. The length of the hall extended and continued to extend well beyond what I suspected the actual length of the building to be. It pushed out farther, until we were at the beginning of a long hall filled with new additional drawers of the dead- previously unseen.

He turned to me, with his boyish grin on his older man face and grasped my hand. He almost laughed, saying, “It is time to meet the.”

“The what?”, I asked.

“No, you do not understand. There is no name for the. It merely is. And it will give my gift to you until the day you die.”

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“For?”

He nodded, but I did not understand why. Then he pulled me forward toward the end of the long hall. At the back of this hall, I could see that there was a sculpted stand which held a bowl and the bowl held flowers of many colors, and along the ending there were new branches to the hall, one to the left and one to the right. As Urgen pulled me forward, I tried to understand the long hall. The place was all gray with tall ceilings. We passed between the walls of the hall; walls which held a myriad of drawers. I knew instinctively that the drawers held dead people - men, women, and children. What I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, was how Urgen Beldam had made the hall stretch, but even more odd was that the stretching made new drawers as if the hall were always there, but only hidden to the naked eye like stars in the daytime.

We reached the end of the elongated hall and he tugged me to the left. But I wanted to see what the other direction held, and I saw only more drawers and more halls ending with more halls. I realized that I would soon have to depend on this man, Urgen, as strange as he and his name seemed to me. He tugged me right at the next T intersection. I tried to understand what this place might mean to him, but he seemed so determined to get me to where I would no longer feel pain. He seemed genuinely determined to help whether I wanted it or not and I simply followed him into the caves of the mausoleum as though I believed he meant me no harm. But in truth, I was hiding from him in my mind. I had a vague understanding, even then, that he could decipher my thoughts or at least just figure me out. I had secretly put my hand into my purse and grasped onto the key-chain which held a small canister of pepper-spray. I had never used it on anyone, but I intended to use it now if necessary.

The lot numbers seemed to increase as we went onward. I began to notice at the 280th lot # for the drawers we passed by on our way to wherever it was that we were in such a hurry to get to. 290, now. We turned left. 300. 305. 308. 310. We stopped.


Chapter 4: Fear

“This is my home. This is the place where my 13th wife will one day stay. This is your lot, this is your drawer.”

Chapter 5: The Gift

I feel like I’m drowning, weak; but I am certain that I cannot show this weakness. I say, “Where do we go from here?” I mean to say that I want what I feel is coming to me, in a greedy way. I think I somehow pull it off. His reply is a bit more hopeful than standing in front of what he would believe to be my death home of silent dark, lying within a drawer with a number.

He pulls me onward, looking back to smile with his whole countenance not unlike a rather good mime. When he speaks, the spell falls into many pieces as it should. He says, “We will find my throneroom, deeper than anyone can go, deeper than the ancient graves below the mausoleum. We will find the, and ask him the proper questions. He would destroy us if we could not do so, pain or no pain. But that is the nature of the. Come now, quickly, the hall is going to close soon.

I followed behind him, his broken arm extending toward mine; us hand in hand, falling under a spell that felt like ecstasy. I followed behind him eagerly, hoping to find a miracle. And while I followed, I began to make plans to sell my ability to heal. This man was a fool. He handed out a power that should be purchased. I knew then, whether or not I would be able to sell the power I would inherit, that I would be a multimillionaire in short order. My office workers would wonder at the sudden and swift change, as would my family, but it wouldn’t matter. I would find some comfortable lie for them to be able to settle into and agree with. Yes, I would become…; beyond my wildest dreams I would be someone- someone important.

I peered behind me, somehow not surprised as the hallway dwindled to a point. The whole hall fell under a spell of perspective and simply became a two-dimensional picture at the end of the hall. It was a pathway leading out from this place, I knew that, but I also knew that somehow that exit was blocked by whatever Urgen called the ‘the’.

He pulled me forward, and I realized that I was beginning to tire from all this running about. I asked for a break and he replied rashly that we were nearly there. I tried to stop, but his power and momentum was undeniable. Soon, the walls and drawers fell away to bedrock. I began to realize that we were traveling on a slight descent. My mind and emotions began to understand that this was still a stranger, with no one around (no one that was living), and that I could be killed or worse.

A glow ahead.

Why did I come here? This is a terrible mistake. I’m late for meeting, probably missed it completely. I don’t feel right anymore. In fact, I feel as though I’m wrapped in mud. The scent is thick with earth, and the crushing feel of surface above me embeds me with a certain dread. The glow ahead is sickly green. I have seen all sorts of plants, pictures, shades of green in my life and there is no comparison. It is as though it is a brand new color to me, both hideous and beautiful.

The hall, cave, begins to empty into this light revealing a cavern of immense proportions beyond my imagination. Once, when I was a child, my father had brought me to the kingdome. It was made of pure concrete and steel rods. It felt heavy when you entered that arena, like something was going to happen. That is exactly how I feel. The cave opens before Urgen and I and I see the expanse completely enshrouded by the dark earth light. That light is coming from a source at the far end of the huge cavern.

I tell my strange companion that I cannot continue, that it is too much… too much for me to handle. He smiles.

“I can teach you how to never feel pain again”, and he then adds the oddest of statements, “But you have to have faith.”

I realize ever so slowly that I am frightened. No, that is too subtle a word. I have no word to describe where I am at. The green glow is something.. Something ahead.

The light announces itself. I fall to the ground in terror. Urgen Beldam is holding my hand. The beast of gray green shouts, “Bring the next to the!”

I am crumpled. But with a strange power, Urgen pulls me onward, dragging me behind him with his arm wrecked and bones broken. He gives me quick glances, smiling each time. It was a smile I had thought of as boyish because of its apparent sexuality, but in fact these smiles are not such, they are far removed from lust or love (especially love). His smiles are really sickly grins. I am a captive. I am kidnapped. I am doomed.

I stretch, kick, and bite. Nothing breaks his iron grasp. Instead it becomes a hurtful grip. With every attack, his defense becomes more. The awaits. The light grows; that sick green that makes my fate feel like coal, dead and long dead. Slowly, I am able to see through the fog of green When I see that a creature, a thing is causing it, I begin to scream. The begins to laugh and Urgen joins in with his laughter, finally, at the last, releasing my wrist.

I cower before the and hope that somehow I am invisible under its green gaze. Of course, it is not so. I vomit my lunch as the voice of the speaks to me, saying, “I can give you freedom from pain or pain from freedom.”

I retch my whole lunch in violent spasms under the gaze of the green light. The sick green light feels cold, like an anti-sun. I begin to realize that I am in the company of a great demon. Having no experience with such things, I understand that I am lost. I fail.

The green light touches me everywhere. I have accepted it without a word, but by my belief I have failed and accepted it. The green washes over me and through me. I am the green. I am the demon. The demon is me. I feel him like a new lover and I begin to smile. It is an odd smile, a girlish grin.

[Zephalephelah]

I write all the time. I've written 2 novels & many, many short stories. I thought that after all we'd been through together that I would share one with you. I did not pick it out because I thought it was good, I just picked the 1st one in the series.

If you like it, then good. It may help you to understand why I am hard on SRD. I find his books full of imagination, but always coming from something he'd read before. My books aim for the lack of reading. In truth, I have read very few books. Perhaps 40, just a little more than I have years. This I did purposefully, because I felt that surely I would copy everything I read which I found to be good. And I do copy things & I know it to be so. This is why I say that SRD is nothing more than a very, very good pirate.

I love the TCTC. They are awesome! But it is painfully obvious that they were made only because LOTR was made. Without it, there would not be a TCTC. Some argue that SRD did it better & I'll agree. But I'm completely against the mad cows who would begin to suggest that there are not tens or even hundreds of simularites. I find these people to be closed-minded in their love of SRD.

Now again SRD is excellent at his work. If he were to write my little short story, you would feel more of whatever you felt when you read it. He would be better at description, dialogue, and everything. He's a far better writer than I. But don't worship the guy. He's just a man!

And wouldn't it be funny if you learned that I was SRD? You would say, man I always liked you. You were difficult sometimes but I always liked you. You would be a fanboy to me. Everything I said from the time you knew I was SRD would be to worship me & to bow down before me. PATHETIC! Treat the man with more respect & disagree with him. How can he learn if he is surrounded by yes-men all the time? It would be like Episode 1, where the Lucas fanboys bowed down & said yes master JarJar is a good thing, people will like him, I love you George, can I have your autograph.

What I'm saying is that you should think for yourself. Some of SRD's stuff is silly. If you tell him so, he'll probably agree, and he might even learn from it & do better. But if you bow down & yes man him then he's not going to do any better. He needs rational thought, not fanboy idiocy. This is why I say, TCTC comes from LOTR, so that possibly, just maybe, the 3rd Chronicles will be slightly, ever so slightly different. Perhaps SRD lurks here & he reads what people say. Do you think he gives a damn at all about people that worship him & yes man everything he says? They teach him nothing!

Teach me something. Make my little short story better. Attack it. Or tell me it was good. But don't give me society's little politenesses, because they don't help me. I want the real McCoy of your thoughts. If your thoughts are that it is good & you love it, then good. If not, tell me why. It won't hurt. Writers get tough skin when they start to get good. It's that loose crap that keeps them from becoming anything at all. Be straight with me & teach me or honor me, but please don't patronize me, that has nothing of value to a writer.

[I'm Murrin]

We have the 'Hall of Gifts' for this stuff, ya know?

[danlo]

Looks very interesting but it should be in the Hall of Gifts...

[Tulizar]

Zeph,

I hope you don't avoid reading to improve your writing. Look at reading as a tool to improve your writing. The more you read, the more you'll learn. You'll find out what not to imitate at any rate.

You probably should post this in the Hall of Gifts. You might get more responses.

With that said, I really enjoyed the story. The writing style was concise and sharp. The brief sentences/thoughts carried some serious impact. The story moved quickly and ended with the requisite, so-whats-gonna-happen-to-her-next, twist. A nice twist at that! I liked it!

My problem with the story: I wasn't convinced that Dana was the type of person who'd fall prey to Urgen's charms. Why would she forgo an important meeting to smash a car door on a weirdo's (albeit charming one) arm? After passing out, then awakening in a fit of back pain, why wouldn't she get the hell away from him? Dana seemed to easily fall for his repeated promise to teach her to never feel pain again. Was Urgen seducing/charming her, or was Dana simply overwhelmed by other problems, that she didn't care what she did with her life?

[Zephalephelah]

Thank you for your input. I agree that we need to see more about the charm seduction to understand why she let's herself be taken.

As to you prudes whining about this is posted in the wrong section, I hope a bowling ball falls from an airplane & hits you square on the head.

[Worm of Despite]

My small knowledge of physics and bowling balls makes me think "ouch".