The Party Train, Part One - "The Night Of"

"It takes only one drink to get me drunk.
The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth."

                                                  George Burns

---

     That night.

     That one damn night.

     College is an experience unto itself.  You meet people you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll prepare yourself to finally face the real world, and you'll do things society will undoubtedly frown on four years down the road.  The people are cool, but the parties are what it's all about.  Most of the time, you'll walk out of a party the same way you walked in, but sooner or later you're bound to do something that separates one party from the rest of the pack.

     And that night.

     That one damn night.

     Well, that shit'll stick with ya.

     So I'm sitting on the couch with my two best friends, Alex Mantel and Allan Oakes.  We're already drunk and watching America's Best Dance Crew in Oakes' room in Gamma Chi Sigma.  Alex has been dating this girl Prudence for a few months now.  She's okay.  Haven't really "met her" met her.  But he seems cool with it, so it's cool with me.  Oakes, however, is single, and probably looking to score with the ladies at the party tonight down at Epsilon Tau.

     "Fuck it, let's just kick it here and drink."

     Or not.  Me?  I've been single since the start of the year, and I wouldn't mind getting some action.  Then again, my last two experiences down at Ep Tau weren't exactly nights to remember, so I'm fine hanging out here tonight.  One o'clock.

     "You know what, let's hit up Ep Tau."  "Alright, let's go."

     We stand up, trying hard to steady ourselves.  We're concentrating hard, as if simply standing is a monumental feat.  That should've been our warning sign.  Right there.  But instead, we're down half a bottle of Jack and half a bottle of SoCo apiece, stumbling our stupid asses to Ep Tau.

     And that night.

     That one damn night...

     One fifteen, we get to the party.  Immediately, we lose Oakes.  All was going well until her.  Mae Plantz.  She tried to flirt with Alex, who appeared to be pretending she was invisible.  She was... unattractive.

     "How are you doin' tonight?"

     ...but I was too drunk to give a shit.  "Pretty good, how 'bout you?"  "Better now."

     Okay, what happened next after she brought me into the dark corner, I'm not proud of.  But it happened, and it's important, and two years later it gets me identified by face in this same darkened room, by someone who probably isn't even a student yet when this happens, so...

     "Hey, come here."  One thirty.  Thank god for Heather, she saved me from a girl who was pretty much eating my face and brought me back over to my circle of friends.

     "Hey you."

     Shit.

     The remainder of my time in the dark gets pretty graphic, and Alex and Heather disappeared around that point, so instead I'll just say this.  The only way I could have gotten further with this girl, in a dark corner behind a subwoofer, would have required lying down or a stronger pair of arms.

     One forty-five.  "I should really get back to my friends."  "Nah, you should stay here."

     Two o'clock.  Closing time.  "Seriously though, I should get going, they're finishing up."  "That's okay."

     Two fifteen.  Please black out, please black out, please black out...

     "Hey, do you wanna come back to my place?"  "You know, I gotta get up early tomorrow, for this... this thing..."  "Promise you won't tell anyone anything bad about this later?"

     ...okay, in my defen"ROB!"  "Shit, someone's calling me."  "Oh okay, go ahead then."

     Two thirty.  Freedom.  I have never run so hard or so fast in my life.  I fly up the stairs, grab my coat, and get the fuck outside before she or anyone else can stop me.  The first thought that hits me... where the fuck is everybody?  So I call Oakes.  No answer.  So I call Alex.

     "...hello?"  "Hey, Alex!"

     "...hello?"  "...Alex?  Where the hell are you?"

     "I don't... I don't know."  "What?  Do you know where Oakes is?"

     "I gotta go."  "Wait, Alex!"  click  "...what the fuck?"

     So now, drunk, lost, violated and confused, I stumble back to my apartment and resolve to sleep this night away and pretend it never happened.

     But that night.

     That one damn night.

     It wasn't over yet.

continued in part two

The Party Train, Preface - "Art Imitating Life"

     This next one is actually something I wrote in the beginning of 2010 as a stageplay, which was produced as a part of WPI's New Voices 28 festival.  Some minor alterations have been made, but the story itself is unchanged.

     As much as I'd love to take credit for coming up with this series of unfortunate events, this story is actually based on a completely true story of what happened to me and my two best friends one spring night in 2008.  Any bits that aren't true are either misremembered bits (one detail of Alex Mantel's story has been fixed) or tweaked to help the story (Rob Pulley was actually two people: the one at the party, and the one with the same name as Rob Desrosiers).  And actually, as of now (two and a half years later) those were the only two untrue portions of the whole story.

     Punchline?  The person who inspired Mae Plantz has a best friend who was my landlord's daughter and previous tenant two years ago.  Awkward.

     And no I won't say on this blog who is who in real life.  Do the homework if you really wanna know.  Cheers!

d

The Stuff of Nightmares

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

                                                  T.S. Eliot

---

     It seemed like only yesterday that they appeared to us.  Perhaps because it was.  The entire world, gone to hell in a single day.  We should be revolting against our governments for declaring the world at war with itself, on every street, in every home.  We would be.  If we weren't so terrified.  Roosevelt told us we had nothing to fear but fear itself.  Roosevelt had never seen a Ghost.  But I have.

     Last night, I found myself standing in a field in the pitch black.  But something felt wrong, something felt... present.  It wasn't the feeling of being watched, it was more like the feeling of being ignored.  The sound of grasshoppers suddenly seemed to be silenced and the air froze in place.

     Then it came.  The light.  A blinding, searing light.  The sickening yellow burned my eyes and while I could not see I could neither close my eyes.  And the silence gave way to horrors beyond description.  It felt like gunfire.  It felt like gunfire, but the sound was... tangible.  Biological.  Like something was trying to force its way into me, something I couldn't comprehend.  But nothing seemed to change.  I wasn't being shot, or hurt.  I didn't feel any pain.  I didn't bleed.  I started to wonder what exactly was happening.  And I began to worry what was happening.  And the worry became discomfort.  And the discomfort, paranoia.  I understood, finally.

     Fear.  It wasn't just frightening me.  It was making me afraid.  A fear so deep I stood paralyzed, terrified what would happen should I resist, should I turn.  An eternity seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.  I was no longer in a field, alone.  I was standing atop a building overlooking the city, a hundred feet above the courtyard.  A wave of memories flooded my head of the day that followed.

     "We are facing an unknown threat.  We know not the nature of these visitors, these Ghosts.  But we will try to make peace with these beings.  I urge you all to stay calm and not take any drastic measures.  Any dissent may mean the end of us all."

     The President's words rang hollow as the military began sweeps through major cities, in an attempt to take down these... things.  As it turned out, these beings were invisible by nature.  At least, they could not be seen unless they were harmed.  So the military was forced to fire blindly into the city below.  I watched as tanks fired mortars into the air and suddenly... a brilliant flash.  A hit.  And just as suddenly, a vicious strobe of creatures bore down on the tank.  They were impossibly fast.  A blink of the eye and you would be annihilated.  It was too much for a mind to perceive, and all I could do was stare.

     And then it came again.  The fear.  A paralyzing terror.  But somewhere, buried in the back of my mind, a calm sense of relief.  I would be alright.  Because, as I rose into the air, I knew I would not face this unspeakable horror.  The creature mere inches behind me had put so much fear in my soul that all I could freely do was climb to the top of the guardrail.  But I didn't jump.  If they were going to attack with fear, maybe I could hurt them too.  Could they feel guilt?  Or sorrow?

     The push finally came.  They were not above violence after all.  The President's words hung in my ear.  "Any descent," I thought.  Maybe it won't be the end of us all.  Maybe we can take them.  Maybe, just maybe, we

The Stuff of Nightmares, Preface - "Sweet Dreams"

     So, this wasn't planned.  At all.  I fully intended to post the first part of Shots next, hence my prologue post before.

     Then I went to bed.  So, 4am for those keeping score.  And I had one of the most bizarre, disjointed, and vivid nightmares of my life.  And thus, The Stuff of Nightmares was born.  I forced myself, at 8am, to do anything to prevent myself from falling asleep, back into that haunted battlefield.

     So, enjoy this tale of war against the Ghosts.

d

Shots, Prologue - "Cross"

"Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys."

                                                  Emma Bull

---

     The Oasis.  The local watering hole.  A friendly, run-down bar separated from the noise and intensity of the city.  The subdued nature of the Monday night crowd is drowned out by the cries of men playing poker in the corner of the room.  The bartender silently pours three shots while observing the scene.  The street outside the plate glass windows is unusually quiet, even for a weeknight.


     Three men sit silently at the bar, side by side.  They are all lost within themselves, hardly even acknowledging the existence of their neighbors.  The bartender slides them their shots as he walks past.  The man on the left is staring into another dimension.  He wears a smart black jacket and a red shirt.  His dress speaks young business pro, but his eyes tell a story of terrible misfortune.  To the right sits a large ball of hair in a green hoodie.  Every now and then, a mumble of protest seems to bleed through the fabric of his jacket.  At the turn of the bar sits a young man holding a panicked internal dialogue.  He is dressed to impress, in a black suit and tie and a blue shirt.  His nervousness seems to put the other men on edge even more than they already are.  With a single glance, it is plain to see what runs through his head.


     He takes a breath, sighs, and reaches for his shot.  The other men do the same.


     "It's gonna be okay.  We're gonna be okay. ...right?"


     "Yeah... right."

to be continued

Shots, Preface - "Start at the Beginning"

     So the first thing I've chosen to publish to this blog is a story called Shots.  It was an idea originally conceived in 2009 as a short film screenplay, as part of a "pitch competition" held by Broken Wall Films, following the completion of the Something Remote film and web series.

     While it ultimately lost (to an eight-part web series), I continued to rework the story and mold it over time, eventually connecting the narrative to other stories I had invented over the years.  The connections aren't made obvious in Shots (and really, the story should be considered solitary, for now anyway), but in its current form it is in a sense a "pilot" for a complete universe of characters and locations and events.  Sometime in the future, I aim to publish at least the two stories that branch from here outward (Davian City Blues, a story I've been working on since 2003; and Crusaders, a much more recent addition to the narrative).  A character named Connell Vito (whom you'll meet over the course of Shots) actually sets off the entire Davian City Blues story, on the same day this story takes place.

     As an added bonus, I've recently started operating my own independent film company called Two-Bit Pictures which, hopefully in early August, aims to produce a short film version of Shots.  But that's a ways off and all subject to availability and all sorts of other things.  Something to look forward to.

     Well, I've gone on too long.  There's more I'd love to say about Shots, but I always feel it's better to let the story do its own talking.  Enjoy!

d