The Blackened Page

The page blackens at a deadening fast pace.  The words flow from his finger tips in a fever dream state, and that is where the art comes in.  Taken out of context, the words lose all shape and meaning, yet when placed in the sequence of the blackening page, meaning takes shape.  A poetic sense of justice for a man who is just desperate to find someone to understand.

A consequence, then, of the hallucinatory agent he took mere hours ago.  His mental state at the cusp of going in any singular emotional direction - albeit, even if very temporarily, it feels the most pure to him as he experiences it.  The senses have heightened and he believes what he sees.  He writes as he feels.  The elegant poetry, while lost in the initial intent, forms a bond with what is between the lines.

He sees no monsters you typically hear the stories about with such substances.  The room just feels more vibrant.  His head takes the shape of his greatest desires and grandiose ideas.  Still, in the purity of his emotions, words flow.

This man knows a thing or two about where art comes from.  He indulges in every emotional state he can.  He justifies experiences with knowing that they will shape his tomorrow in ways he could not otherwise fathom, and won't fathom until he can process.

This is where his appreciation comes from, while also fully understanding just how slippery the slope of imposing emotions can be.  So he finds himself in solitude with his hallucinations, still bringing him pure, unadultered emotional madness.

A memory inside him sparks.  A long lost love - his childhood dog, the kind of love that is absolute and pure, without the messy complications of human complexity.  It is far from a pleasant memory, however.  He remembers wanting to protect the dog and being unable to as tears begin to flood the ground beneath his chair.

Still, the page blackens even more.

He processes the emotion even more, the only way he can in this state - nearly incapable of doing anything other than writing about it in some convoluted, twisted story.  He will spend tomorrow editing it to make sense, but right now it is more important to get the words upon the page.

The room is filling with his tears and he begins to feel claustrophobic, but still the words are pouring out of him.  They've taken control now, as his hands turn into blurs before his very eyes.  Still, the image of that dog - him standing in front of it while his mother holds a belt and is ready to whip the dog into shape - has been etching itself, detail by detail, as a pure emotional image inside his mind.  

The tears clear the top of the chair.  His face, feeling as though it is melting.  He is too far gone, but tomorrow he will question whether he over indulged.  His hands have never moved as fast as he sees them moving now.  The dog, whimpering behind his legs as it knows what it did wrong.  The man, only as a child, doesn't care what the dog did wrong.  He knows the dog doesn't deserve this.  He knows that he must stop his mother from doing the damage to the poor, innocent dog, but he is too small and easily gets pushed aside.

The tears are to his mouth now while his face begins dissolving into the salty liquid.  His hands, obscured and slowed by the water, now look like they are darting in all sorts of odd directions as the pool of tears splash around the room.  He must finish blackening the page.

The tears rush over his head as he takes his final breathe.  His head topples onto the desk between his arms, which are still extended to the keyboard.  The room is dry.  The memory has subsided.  For now, he dreams of things he could only hope to remember.

He awakes in the morning, feeling refreshed and new.  He looks at the blackened page.  It wasn't black.  In fact, there was only one line - "I love dogs."

- Dustin S. Stover

There's no Tune

He tries to find the note, but it is like searching for something that doesn't exist.  The light feels blinding, The throbbing behind his eyes is mind numbing, but still he searched.

The guitar drops onto the guitar rack as he pulls out a bottle of pills.  He pops a couple to relieve the tension building behind his eyes, but it will take quite some time before the relief comes.  An argument forms inside his mind - does he give up on it all or does he fight to hold onto what he cherishes.

The keyboard, perhaps, will be easier to find the tune he searches for, so he sits at the bench.  His hands can't even reach for the keys - the effort feels to be too much as his eyes feel as though they are bulging out of his skull.

Years ago, it was discovered that he typed best while he wasn't looking.  It was as though he could sense the keys before they struck, and he could correct as he went along.  He opens his laptop and begins to type up a story, or song lyrics, or even simply words to fill up a page; however, as his eyes open, they reveal little more than a blank page. 

A memory appears as though it is filling the entire room.  A woman rolling her eyes and speaking about how much time and money are wasted on these instruments.  She takes a violin and smashes it into the desk, shattering it into a million pieces.  The words become more sympathetic, but not towards him.  "You are ruining our lives."

His eyes open again to reveal the keyboard in front of him still, but once again he does not reach forward.  He gets up and walks to his room without the note or tune being explored.

The bright light is still intensifying the pain behind his eyes.

Another memory - this one of a better time, a time of hope - fills his mind.  The notes come easy no matter what instruments he picks up, and he can hear them fitting so perfectly.  The beat he devours into on drums and the rhythm of the bass set the mood.  Synthesizer adds more atmosphere.  The melody of the lead guitar adds a real punch.  It doesn't even feel real at this point.

A lump works it's way up his throat before he swallows it back down.  It is a hard swallow, but he presses forward with it and it slowly reaches back down to his stomach.

An image of the broken violin fills his mind again.  Maybe this is what he should be doing, but he has lost everything else anyway. 

The headache has started to reside, but still fills a very prominent space. 

"Not tonight," he tells himself.  "Not fucking tonight."  He presses a key on the keyboard and it rings out, but it still doesn't fit what he is trying to find.  A chord, but still wrong.  He tries another position, but still wrong.  He glances back at the guitar, but interest just doesn't come. 

His head still has yet to escape the pain.  He closes his eyes one more time, reaching his finger and thumb to squeeze the bridge of his nose.  It helps slightly, but there is too much pain.  His eyes open, he gets off of the bench, and walks out of the room - flipping the light switch as he exits. 

Stumbling through the pitch black hall, feeling the walls for guidance, he eventually finds his bedroom.  His head hurts so badly that he refuses to even so much as turn on the light.  He knows where the bed is, he plops down into bed, and closes his eyes for one final time tonight.  Memories of the arguments, the broken violin, the feeling of worthlessness do not grant him the same luxury.

-Dustin S. Stover

A Mildly Horrific Story

There was no frame of reference – like being in the void of space, only he felt gravity pulling him towards something.

His shoulder slams with too great a force into what feels like a cliff. His body bounces and spirals. The inertia makes him feel as though he is going to vomit, and he does, but there is no means for him to slow the spin now that his shoulder is dislocated, at best, and completely shattered if worse.

He feels his foot catch on something, but whatever that something is breaks and allows his fall to continue. His foot dangles without control, but at least he has stopped spinning.

A moment passes, just long enough of one for him to realize the excruciating pain he is in. He lets out a yell, a blood curdling scream from the bowels of his most miserable point of existence. The only comfort he received was hearing the echo of his own screams.

“This is a nightmare, it has to be,” he says aloud, but he knows that he feels it all. He knows, deep inside, that this is really happening.

He tries to recall the events that led to this tumultuous fall, which he realizes he is still in the midst of, but cannot remember anything before this point. It is as though his entire existence has never come to fruition and he is just living the journey into Hell.

A deep, boisterous howl of a voice comes from nowhere. “Now. Now is your time.”

As the voice finishes it's long bellow his body stops abruptly. His body slams into the most solid piece of anything that he has ever felt, and his whole body is destroyed. The pain is so intense that he can't even so much as whimper. The only point of relief is that he has stopped falling, but of course he can't even form enough of a thought to come to that realization.

Lying there, still absolute darkness and still in absolute pain, he can feel his heart beat start to slow – too slow, he thinks, but he is ready for death. He would be begging for it if he could form sounds.

A flicker of light forms in the distance, down a long hall that is now beginning to look like stone.

“Welcome,” the boisterous voice from before says from all around him.

A swarm of small creatures, half the size of a human – roughly the size of a child barely able to walk – pour into the room as the torch finally illuminates the room. He is surrounded by hundreds of the little things. Unable to turn his head, the one holding the torch walks to him.

The small creature, whose head is now looking down at him, is as black as the fall with what appears to be a gray ash covering his body sporadically. The creature looks back at the rest of the swarm, back at the man, back at the swarm, and then starts making a noise unlike anything the man has heard before. Before he knows it, every one of the swarm is on top of him, pulling the skin from his body and feasting.

The pain from before feels as though it had happened decades ago and this new pain sets in. The creatures' claws are all like dull, rusty knives cutting his skin away. His flesh rips away like cheap wrapping paper being cut by even cheaper scissors.

As the last piece of flesh had been devoured, the creatures scatter. As the light creeps down the hall, the man moves his eyes as much as he can to see nothing but exposed muscles – not a single piece of skin is left anywhere that he can see.

The booming voice enters his head once more, “Are you having fun, yet?”

The man just wants to cry, but nothing comes out. He wants to yell, but it all falls into silence.

The sound of rabid dogs strikes off in the distance. The howls are rushing towards the man. It sounds as though there are thousands of them, and they are very near.

There is no means for him to see what is happening as light never entered into the cavern, but a sudden slam of one of the dogs lands on his body followed swiftly by what feels like hundreds of teeth dig into his exposed muscle.

The first dog jumps down but immediately a second leaps atop him and takes it's chomp of muscle. He jumps down and the next. This agony continues for what feels like an eternity as the man still cannot make a single noise. He still cannot cry, and he cannot beg. The pain is, again, so intense that all his previous pain forces itself deep into the past.

As the final dog finishes his bite, it pauses and shifts its body. It then let's out a siren like howl before jumping down and leaving the man with nothing but the sound of hooves stampeding into the distance, but the man is entirely unable to hear anything any longer.

“How do you feel?” The voice booms into the man's mind again, but he is still unable to utter anything.

The room illuminates with the most intense light that anyone could imagine, but all that is left of the man are his organs and bones encasing them. His eyes dart around the room, but the light is blinding and nothing can be seen.

As his eyes adapt and he can finally see, dark, nearly see through, floating creatures flow towards him. He thinks about how it all must end at some point, it is his last form of hope.

The ghastly things hover over the remaining parts of his body, pulling each individual organ from the his skeleton. One of them positions his head so that he is forced to watch everything. His bones are shattered all around him, and what is still attached by the cartilage is cracked all over. Blood covers the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the table in which he fell atop.

The ghosts each tilt what appears to be their heads towards the large hole in which the man fell from. As they do this, every organ – other than the brain – start turning black and shrivel into near nothing. There is no pain, but the man feels absolute disgust at the sight.

The ghosts vanish just as quickly as the light arrived, and his skull falls to the ground. The brain remains. He attempts to contemplate all that has happened to him, but nothing makes sense.

“I will give you the ability to speak to me now. What would you ask me?”

“Why are you killing me?”

“Oh, my dear son. This isn't death. This is life.”

-Dustin S. Stover


If you enjoy my writing then please purchase my collection of short stories, Happiness in a Void of Darkness.

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Definitely not a Story of Love

He looked at her while she didn't even so much as give a glance.  Every day was the same story.  He had this misguided belief that if she would just look at him then he had a chance with her, but we all know that a look is just a look with little to no meaning more than that.

Still, his gaze didn't falter. 

He watched as she spoke to many other people, usually in a sarcastic manner to ensure everyone around her knew of her place in the societal hierarchy.  She knew she was better.  That just made him desire her even more.

There is always that point in time when a person comes face to face with what they believe they want only to discover just how wrong it is for them.  This story isn't about that, though it will definitely feel as though it falls along that line.

Our lonely hero decides one day that he will force her acknowledgment.  He bumps into her causing quite an awkward moment. 

"Why the fuck did you bump into me, asshole?"  Her voice is shrill and condescending.

"It was an accident."

"You gross mother fucker, just leave me alone." 

And just like that, our lonely hero felt completely crushed.  Their eyes met, at long last, and only for her to shut all his desires down.

Of course, that was a few decades ago.  Our lonely hero has had many failures within those fateful years - all of which contained fruitful nuggets of information he learned from.  His memory of youth was little more than memories of many mistakes, the likes of which he would never want to repeat.

Our antagonist, on the other hand, made but one mistake.  One mistake that she has had to live with ever since - marrying the first person who treated her like the condescending bitch she was and letting him make her into his submissive housewife, a mother to his obnoxious and bratty children.  Her memory of youth was full of fond memories, memories of dominance and being wildly desirable. 

Our lonely hero rarely ever thought about women who rejected him, especially the one who called him a gross mother fucker.  Meanwhile, she longed for someone to idolize her the way he did back in those long since passed days.

She knew he stared at her.  She knew him running into her was an attempt to gain her attention.  That just made her even more fierce, thinking that was the way to ensure he kept going the way he had for so long.

That didn't work, though.  The last day he ever looked at her with longing eyes was the day our lonely hero performed his little stunt for attention.  It was also the day, he would never find out, that she met the man that would transform her from the fierce bitch into the docile puppy.

The hero of this story learned, in no short part from his experience here, that the amount of effort one puts into winning someone over does not equal the amount of love a couple has for one another.  The antagonist learned what it was like to put forth all the effort and never learned that equality was far more a sign of love than effort.

The two would go on with their lives, never to meet again.  He traveled throughout the world, finding meaning in every little thing he did.  She stayed in their hometown convincing herself that her life had meaning.

-Dustin S. Stover

Happiness in a Void of Darkness is my collection of short stories and can be purchased at either of the links below.
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Authenticity

It was a terribly gray sky, though the rain wouldn't fall.  He sat with eyes sharply peering at the peak of a neighboring house, yet if he was asked what he was looking at he'd have no idea.  He had no idea. 

The funky bass line roars and her voice rips the sky wide open, at least inside his mind.  There is a synthesizer that breaks up the sounds of traditional instruments while fitting so effortlessly that without knowing better you'd believe it was being keyed the way a piano would.  Jazz drums is always his favorite to listen to.

It was all fitting perfectly for his day.  Solitude, contemplating life's trials and temptations, gray skies darkening everything around, and music that felt as though it was just as much a part of the scenery as the clouds in the sky.

Of course, this says nothing to what he was seeing while staring at the roof top.  He was seeing his former life fading from present day into the past.  His best friend died a few short days ago from a drug overdose, yet he was entirely oblivious of his friend's habit.

He is reminded of some quote he heard many years ago - one he cannot fully remember - that states something about never truly knowing someone until they are under extreme suffering.  It never made much sense to him at the time as he simply believed he could know someone with relative ease, but now thinking about his friend he understood that he never saw him suffering.

He tries to summon memories of his friend suffering.  Memories clear from distant fogs in which he would get drunk with his friend over some girl or the loss of a job - that time he had to sell his favorite guitar to make rent that month.  There was a feeling, at the time, that this was suffering, but it wasn't.  It was the evasion of suffering and he only now has he begun to understand.

A tear creeps out of the corner of his eye as he begins to think back on all the little signs of heroin usage.  The lame duck excuses of being too busy to reply to a text message after days.  The memory of how often his friend had been sick within the recent months.

More than those memories and the feeling of stupidity crawling around in his mind, he found a great sadness in how he would never be able to laugh at some stupid shit a customer said, or share this great jazz he was listening to now with his friend. 

This is life, though, and he knows that no matter how he feels that he will have to get up tomorrow and pretend everything is alright with everyone he interacts with.  The only break he will get from pretending is the point in time he is at the funeral services, but even that will feel so impersonal as everyone else there will be feeding off of the emotions of one another.  Aunts and uncles will be crying immensely even though they hadn't seen him in years and people who only knew him in passing will be talking about how great of a person he was, how terribly he will be missed.

He begins to acknowledge that life is just one big swath of falsehood.  A display of what humanity is supposed to look like - a heroin addict near killing himself playing it off as though he is just a little sick, people mourning the loss of a life they knew nothing about, and even his job of interacting with people with a fake smile to sell whatever shit he was pushing onto the people.  It is all fake.

Could authenticity exist at all in a society that rewards the inauthentic far more?  The creeping thought of this was increasingly spreading throughout his mind.

He then remembered his friend, the moment in time the two met.  They sat on the back steps of a house, party in full force inside, and discussed just how fake everyone inside the party was.  How everyone was showing off in order to one-up one another or just to get laid, how it wasn't either one of their scenes. 

They both went back to an apartment - he couldn't remember if it was his or his friends - and listened to albums all night long, critiquing the guitar playing, the drums, the vocals, and how well it all pieced together.  He remembered how authentic they were with one another about it all, unashamed to hate a song or band the other loved.  It was the start of an authentic friendship.  It was the start of an authentic friendship, and now he had a greater appreciation for that than ever before.

-Dustin S. Stover

If you find pleasure in reading my short stories, please consider supporting me by purchasing my writing.  It allows me to continue to pursue this crazy little hobby of mine as I attempt to turn it into a profession.

My collection of short stories is called Happiness in a Void of Darkness and can be found at the following links:
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A Mildly Depressing Chapter with Little Purpose

A handful of people sit, by pure coincidence really, while a jazz band plays covers of music spanning nearly a century. The band alters the songs drastically to fit their jazz style, but the lyrics remained the same as those ultimately influential tunes.

The small crowd, mostly of an ethnic majority, parades themselves in fancy clothes as though it is a fancy night, though they don't do a tremendous amount to support the band or the establishment. One couple buys a drink, splits it between the two of them. Another patron doesn't even turn from the bar to acknowledge the band's hard work.

A group of friends, though, found themselves here by chance and begin to thoroughly enjoy the music.

The awkward silence after the first song suspends in the dimly lit air as though it would last forever, but then the pianist announces the next song and continues anyway.

The audience hasn't a clue that this fateful night was not supposed to have a band – this was a special event that had as much publicity as the homeless person sleeping on a park bench not even a mile away.

The song's original context of a few minutes extends well beyond ten in this format and contorts in such a way as to not even be recognizable if it were not for the lyrical content, which only interjects itself at random points.

The group of friends are really enjoying themselves as one of them turns to another to announce that jazz is their favorite type of music to see live – the way the band members converse with one another using their instruments as though speaking their own distinct language no one else understands and taking the conversation in seemingly random ways has always appealed to him.

The audience finally claps as the song ends, all it took was that one person to start it all. The pianist announces the next song, a cover of a famous Beatles song.

The couple sharing the drink looks at one another in disengagement. The man at the bar still hasn't peered up from the drink in front of him, now on his third or fourth. The group of friends seem to to be the only ones engaged in the music at all.

The song ends with the group of friends peering around to one another, presumably waiting for someone to give acknowledgment of how good the band played their cover song. The acknowledgment never came.

Etta James was next on the list of covers. They really did it good justice, even though the voice was nowhere close. The guy at the bar turned around, even forgetting about his drink for a minute or two. The group of friends bobbed back and forth to the rhythm of the music. The couple, one of which had slipped outside to smoke on his cigarette, had abruptly put it out and slip back inside the door and enjoy the pleasantry. The woman declines another drink as she refuses to take her eyes off the band.

A group of college age kids walk by, peaking through the windows as they giggle to themselves about how few people are being entertained. A snide joke is made about how the business is such shit that it will be closed soon.

The patrons, nor the band, hear any of it. Their entertainment trumps what they would consider the ignorance of youth.

Etta James' song ends and a round of applause loud enough to be three or four times as many people as there were bursts out as the closing line ends.

The music continues while each of the patrons leave. The man at the bar walks out slowly and unnoticed. Next the couple of single drink smokers, not even remotely caring if they are noticed. Finally, all that remains is the small group of friends, two of which want to stay but know they can't. They leave, begrudgingly. The bland finishes their last song a few minutes after the group leaves with no one remaining to applaud their work.

-Dustin S. Stover

For short stories of varying degree of intellectual stimulation and entertainment can be found on both Nook and Kindle with the links below.

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The Perplexing Condition of the Youth and the Elderly

A child, young enough to be a great grand daughter to the old man, tells him a story about how a chicken makes a “po” sound. The old man sits confused as this is the most perplexing thing he has heard. “No, child, chickens make a 'cluck' noise.”

Noticeably upset, the child gets louder, as though the loudness will make the old man change his perception. It doesn't. The old man, worn from old age yet still defiantly stubborn, refuses to raise his voice as much as he refuses to change his mind.

The argument continues on like this for quite some time – the child now red in the face and flustered as she continues to convince the old man as to how wrong he is. The old man, having lived a great deal longer than the child, also knows her to be wrong, but as he tries to explain to the child that it is simply a matter of geographical understanding that has led each of them to the different perspectives the child interrupts with the explanation of just how wrong he is.

The old man attempts to change the subject now. Perhaps music would be a more appropriate topic, he thinks. Of course, the child has opposition to this as well. See, she is hip on all the modern music and the old man, well, his prime was decades ago. He couldn't possibly understand what constitutes as musical today.

He tries to explain to her how sounds have textures, how they create emotion with the various depths in which the instruments get played, yet modern music has little of this. Timbre, he calls it while describing what it is. Of course, the youth don't care. They know what sounds pleasant to their ears without the critiquing aspect. In a way, the old man is jealous at the simplicity of the little girl's life, yet he knows that eventually she is going to have to grow up and face the harshness of reality. Teaching her depth about the pleasurable things in life is just his way of trying to prepare her for the world to come - to look at things from a deeper perspective without suffering consequences in the process.

Then the child plays the old man a song – some new song that has a diabolically simple bass line with a few blip noises to hold time. She dances like a mad man as the old man sits back wondering what it is she is dancing to. It makes no sense to him as there is no rhythm to dance to, but he lets it happen anyway. He has gotten to that point where he understands resistance is futile and trying to understand her is worthless. Being perplexed stays, though.

He has to ask anyway, “what do you like about this music?” The old man asks in a very sincere, non-offensive way.

“I just like it. I don't have to know why,” the girl answers quickly.

The admiration of the simplicity fades into an annoyance, yet remains enough for him to still wish he could be so simple.

That, however, is when politics enters into his mind. Remembering the past, having watched so much happen that has led to the point they are at today – socially, economically, politically. The simplicity in ignorance is what has led to such a catastrophic state. The unemployment numbers may be down, but the average income is extraordinarily low compared to the cost of living. Slavery may have ended, but it has arguably changed to prison labor instead. Political parties work their damnedest to divide a country while neither side is working to benefit the society as a whole. This is the world this girl will have to face and the old man fears that if she can't even understand that her admiration for the song is nothing more than because of how familiar it is then how will she ever have enough comprehension to know that every action is equal parts good and bad – how will she know that the politicians she votes for, if she even votes, are going to use her lack of understanding to ensure they get her support?

The old man has lived too long, he feels, as he sees now that he is alone in paying attention. The rest of the world is like this small child – trying desperately hard to enjoy things as superficially as possible, and finding hope in the promises of those who would manipulate them for their own personal gains and the gains of those they support.

Teaching someone of any age to care is difficult, but a child? That is downright impossible when they feel they know better. Of course, the old man knows he can't live forever. He just wishes better for the future.

-Dustin S. Stover

White Light, Blinding Room

The light is piercing, almost painful.  A solid white room with the brightest sunlight I could imagine pouring in from above as though someone placed the sun directly outside the clear glass surrounds me.  Painted on the walls, with invisible ink, are all the mistakes I've made in my life.

The room is so blinding that I can't find the door.  I can open my eyes only with the smallest of cracks.  I'd hoped that my eyes would have adjusted by now - has it been days?  Months?  Years?  A lifetime?  It definitely feels like a lifetime.

The brightness may as well be a thousand tons of weigh pressing down on me.  Still, I find myself pawing at the walls in an attempt to find the door.  All I feel, however, is the texture of the painted mistakes slightly raised off the walls of this deadly white.

I feel like giving up, but I'm so lost within in this room that even if I had the capability of doing so I wouldn't be able to see my way to doing it.  This is why the light is so much more dangerous than the dark.  At least when you're in the dark you can use a flashlight if you'd like, or just stay peacefully blissful.

Still, the textures, as uncomfortable as they feel, give me understanding.  Understanding of how I got here, how I trapped myself here in this never ending cycle of blinding pressurized existence.

Strangely, though, the room is absent of heat.  It is freezing, the way the air feels in the dead of winter, open field, and snow littering the landscape as though it is all that has ever existed.  I, however, am not cold.  It is just a feeling of brisk, frigid cold air surrounding me as these mistakes are my main companion.

I suppose that since my choices have always been that of my own, I only have myself to blame.  Still, it feels like a strange sort of relief to curse something else even though it is only a momentary relief as I release that I, in fact, am still the reason I'm here.

It is better to keep my eyes closed; however, that is too simple.  I have to keep them open, hoping I can see the painted mistakes and have them point me to something I've not yet seen.  The cracks in my eye lids opened as little as possible, but it is still hopeless.  Just white.  My hands are the only vision I have.

Crawling on the floor just renders more risen painted lines, but it still feels absolutely hopeless in deciphering anything.  It would be easier to give up searching.  I just... can't.

Sometimes I wish I could just go back into the dark like everyone else, but if I can just survive this experience then perhaps I will have knowledge coming out the other end that surpasses what I could imagine.

Simply have to keep hope alive long enough to find out.

-Dustin S. Stover

Humanitarians

We approached the big, brooding building.  It struck me the way an old plantation owner's house would strike a former slave, and perhaps that was the point.  No one buys a house like this without the intention of proving to those who gaze upon it that they are more important than everyone else around.

The giant white rectangle stretched three stories high and what felt like half a mile from one end to the other.    I'm not sure what I've done in my life to be affiliated with such people, but I find myself to be quite uncomfortable now.

The things we do for love, knowing it's futility and inevitable decline into the mundane, should always be a perplexing notion.  Here I am, though, walking towards the big double door entrance into a former slave owner's home.  A representation of every founding principle of a country that claims to have been for freedom.

The woman who answers the door, of course the mother of my fiancee, looks the part - a home maker wife of wealthy proportions with the most important decision of the day being what she will have sitting on the table when her all too wealthy husband gets home from fucking his mistress after a long day at work.  Or, perhaps, just the mistress's apartment he pays for.

Jamie never told me that this was the type of house she grew up in and, perhaps, that is why it bothers me so much now.  We met at a distribution of wealth protest on Wall Street.  Her and her well worn clothes and good weed, we spoke of how fucked up society was.  I was raised on the opposite side of the spectrum - getting a job at fifteen to help pay for rent and food for my siblings and mom, as her job didn't pay enough to support the rest of us.

That was years ago, though, and since then we've established a good routine of responsible adulting along with a healthy coping mechanism of occasional sex and limited communication, the way that married couples find themselves.

"Well good evening, Jamie.  I'm so glad you kids could make it for the weekend."  Jamie's mom gives her a hug and just peers at me while her head is behind Jamie's.

"It is good to see you, too, Mrs. Andrews."  Even the name sounds like she'd own slaves if she could.

The first thing I notice as we are walking through the massive, open entryway that stretches clear to the roof - balconies lining both sides with pillars supporting it all - is that there are women cleaning things.  Their french maid outfits look just innocent enough to be sexually submissive, but being fit upon black women seems quite an odd thing.  It isn't often, after all, that one sees African American women wearing french maid outfits in porn and where else does one see french maid outfits in today's society?

The deeper into this house I get, the more I feel like I am taking a trip back in time.

Jamie's attitude and demeanor instantly change with the scene.  Her flowing dress and unkempt hair now looking even more out of place on her body than I feel inside this building. 

One of the maids is sheltered off in one of the corners - a baby bump forming a relatively noticeable in the black and white dress she is wearing.  At least she isn't beaten for getting pregnant.

"Ah, kids.  Welcome, welcome.  Make yourselves at home.  I won't be long."  Jamie's dad, Roger, sits inside an office adorned by two big wooden framed glass doors, one of which is opened allowing the odor of cigar smoke to pour out of the room and into my nostrils.  Roger sits on a luxurious leather swiveling chair with a phone in his hand - an old phone that is still connected by chord to a box with physical numerical keys, hold and forward buttons.  I have no idea where he would forward a call to.

"The old fuck won't even know what hits him!" Roger's voice is boisterous and full of bravado, which leads directly into a cackling laughter before he says his good byes and hangs up the phone.

Out back there is a porch with an overhang and spacious seating.  It overlooks the yard which, in the distance, features a massive pond that is almost big enough to name.

"Do you have any new work coming in, poppa?"  Jamie says with a polite and subordinate tone.

"Oh, my little girl.  Don't you worry about me.  You know I'm always on top of the world."

"Oh, your dad, Jamie.  Never one to be humble, you know."

It is like I am sitting in some parallel dimension .

"Of course I have more work coming in!  The work comes to me!" 

The lemonade on the table seems more interesting than where this conversation is heading.

"What do you do for a living, sir?"

"Sir!  That's it, my boy.  I am a sir!"  Roger cackles with his boisterous laughter.  "I make deals, my boy.  I make deals happen.  What are your plans?"

"Me?  I was planning on starting a non-profit to help at risk children get off the streets and establish a new life."  Roger's boisterous laugh is more prevalent than the times before.

"Oh to be a youth again!  Wild dreams, wild dreams.  Let me tell you something, son.  You can't help other people.  You've only got to help yourself."

"You definitely help yourself a lot," Margaret, Jamie's mother, says under her breathe.  It is quickly ignored by everyone.

"Maybe, sir."

"Oh, daddy!  You have to show Kevin your collection!"  I swear that the Jamie I know was abducted once we got here and replaced with an identical copy.  The one I know would have scoffed at the idea of collections.

Roger leads me back through the massive open hallway and down into the cellar.  "This, my boy, is worth more than what most people will make in a year."  He pulls out a vintage wine bottle as I am noticing that the collection he is so proud of is a wine collection.  He holds out a bottle of unopened wine with what looks to me to just be old, but I'm sure he is right. 

"Wow, sir." 

And on it goes, Roger pulling bottle after bottle and telling me information that easily slips in one ear and out the other.  "This really is a remarkable collection you've got yourself here."  Maybe an hour has passed, or more, when I finally tell him we should get back to the girls.

"You go ahead, my boy.  I will be back up in a few minutes.  I've got to use the bathroom."

"Are you sure it is his?" Jamie's voice is weak in the distance, but still understandable.

"Yes."

"Hey, ladies.  That was quite a collection your father has, Jamie."

"Yeah, he has been collecting those since before I was born."

"Let me show you kids to your bedroom."  It comes as almost a shock that they wouldn't be forcing us to stay in separate bedrooms, but then again it is two-thousand and eighteen.

"What were you and your mom talking about?"

"Oh nothing, Kevin.  Nothing you need to worry about."

"I am going to go for a walk."  Jamie nods in agreement and gives her approval, but stays behind.

As I'm walking around the giant pond I am contemplating how easy it would be to get into the car and drive off.  The only things I've unpacked have been my toothbrush, soap and shampoo.  I wouldn't even need to grab those things they are so cheap.

"Oh, I'm sorry sir."  I was so lost in my own thought that I hadn't even noticed I had stumbled into someone else's thinking spot.  It was the woman with the baby bump.

"No, no.  I'm sorry.  I didn't realize anyone else was out here.  What are you doing out here?" 

She peers into the water without a response, but she had to have heard me.

"Do you mind if I sit next to you?"  Her hand gestures to the spot close to her.  I notice that this particular spot is shrouded in shrubbery to be unseeable from the house.  "Are you out here hiding?"

"No sir."  Her voice frail and fickle.  The lie is as clearly read as a children's book.  "What would you do if you got someone pregnant and you didn't want to keep it?"

"I mean, I would talk it out with the girl I got pregnant.  If she decided to keep it then I would do everything I could to be as best a father as I could be.  The act of creating the child would be equal part mine as her's and it isn't her choice to be born as the one who would carry the baby for 9 months like it wasn't my choice to be the one who doesn't."

Her eyes squeeze so tight that her face shrinks before a drop of water falls down her cheek.  The drop turns into a full stream as her body bobs as she is gasping for air.

"What if... what if she decided to have an abortion without... without you?"

I tilt my head back to the sky and take a deep breathe.  "Ultimately, I would hope I'd be a consideration in that whole ordeal.  I would really hope, but ultimately..."  A let out a sigh.  "Ultimately, it is her body."

"He says he will have me killed if I don't have an abortion."  Her voice is less frantic as her tears and gasping for air slow. 

"Is it your boyfriend?"

Her eyes squeeze tight like before.  "No, sir."

"Please don't call me sir.  We're all equals here.  Sir is just a bullshit word to make someone feel more important than others.  Even calling Jamie's dad 'sir' is my little way of mocking his smug ass."

She chuckles between gasps.  "It's his."

"His?"  I turn my head to face her.  Her face still pointed to the water, eyes closed with tears still flowing.  "Roger's?"

"Yes.  He rapes me.  Now he is threatening to have me killed if I don't abort his baby."

There's nothing I can say.  There's nothing I can do, but I know I have to try.  I put my arm around her and pull her close to me.  "I'm so sorry."

We sat there like that, not saying anything, for long enough for me to feel like someone was going to start looking for me soon.  "I know there is nothing I can do about this situation.  I am just so, so terribly sorry."

Jamie lays sleeping on the bed, but I shake her awake.  "Jamie.  Your dad.  She got one of the maids pregnant."

"He does that."

"What do you mean he does that?"

"She isn't the first one.  She won't be the last one.  Why do you think they all walk around wearing those outfits?  You think my mom wants to see short skirted black women running around the house?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Look, this isn't any of your business.  This is my house."

I look at my suitcase, still packed and ready to go.  I get my keys and grab the suitcase and begin walking out.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" 

"I'm going home.  I'm going home and I'm packing up all of the shit you have there.  You're not the girl I thought you were."

"Kevin, what the fuck?"

"Jamie.  The woman I fell in love with was someone who believed in equality.  Someone who believed that no matter what your social status was financially, you should always be regarded first and foremost as a human being.  Your dad raped a woman, got her pregnant, and now you're defending his actions by telling me that this is your house.  If you can't see the irony in that..."

"Any woman who takes the job here knows what it involves.  She should have been on birth control.  She is just trying to take my daddy's money."

"Fuck this."  I close the door behind me, but it wouldn't have mattered either way as Jamie was clearly not following me. 

As I approach the car I remember what started the whole argument in the first place.  I remember the look in that woman's face as it shrunk and began to cry.  I remember holding her in my arms and why my shoulder is still soaked.  I shove my bag into the car and run back to the spot I found her at as quickly as I can, using the light from my cell phone to guide me.  Not even a candle lights up anything inside the house.  The light from Jamie's bedroom is still as dark as it was when I walked out. 

I arrive, but no one is there.  Nothing, not even a trace.  I think about how it is perhaps the wrong place, but no, this place is shrouded from the house.  Nothing remains here.  I look all around for any signs of human life, but it is too dark and too late to find anyone.

Defeated, I turn and make my way back to the car, quickly, but no longer as fast as before.  Once at the car, I open the door but before I can get in I hear something faint. 

"Take me."

I look around, but it is no use.  It is still too dark and the light from the car door isn't illuminating enough. 

She crawls out of the woods beside the car, the woman from the pond still wearing that ridiculous maid outfit. 

"Get in.  Get clothes from the suitcase and change out of that bullshit if you want."

She slides into the back seat of the car as I start the car and drive off.  Her head rests upon the suitcase, her eyes closed, and her body looking at peace - a peace like she has never known before.

-Dustin S. Stover

Business

"Life is lonely, we all know this," Johnathon says as he swaggers around the large conference room table, surprisingly not trying to sell something - he is quite the salesman.  "The job, fellas," of course, the women in the room are every bit as attentive as the fellas, "shouldn't make us feel even more lonely.  Our team work, that is what we have to pull us through!"

Of course, this line of bullshit is only built around the singular vision of making himself look good for all the higher ups.  Just last week, while trying to negotiate with him taking a few of my leads in an effort to start weaseling my way away from selling to allow more personal time with my clients, he declined.  See, as he put it, he didn't earn those clients so he didn't want them.

He just has his nose up the corporate's brown eye.

Of course, he is striking a prominent chord in me here.  This job makes me feel like I'm wasting away - it doesn't matter how good I am at it, or how good the pay is.  I'm just a cog in the endless wheel.  I leave and they replace me.

"Terry, over there, he is a prime example!  That man, fellas - I tell you, he is king of the hill!"  Johnathon's fingers pointing directly at me.  "This guy could sell goat skin to a goat farmer!"

I've never heard that expression before - fucking weird one.

"But, even Terry is lonely!  I bet he has too many clients to deal with.  Why, I bet he could even afford to pass a few of them off to someone else and with as well as he gets to know his clients, he could really help out on getting information about them out there to really lock in those sales!"

Bastard.

"And that would strengthen the whole team.  Imagine if we all had a secured client base like Terry!  We'd only have to replace people once they passed away!"

What a morbid mother fucker.

"Of course, that is a horrible business strategy.  Of course we'd just need to expand!"  His swagger is full of grandeur now, like a peacock in full display mode.  I've never seen a man showing off like this unless there was some pussy involved.

"Get to the point, Johnathon."

Finally.

"Alright, alright.  So I think we should implement a new training method that really focuses on the client, and I think I'd be perfect for the position."  His pace and expression frozen as dead as someone who was found frozen to death.

Well, that's ballsy.  Saying that in front of a whole group of sales people who all have roughly the same amount of experience.

"Johnathon, we will need to talk after this meeting."  Patrick, the boss, said in the most stern voice I've ever heard him use.  He, normally, is the most pleasant person to be around - someone more akin to making everyone in the room feeling happy to be alive than to making them feel as though they were on the verge of death - here we all are, though, frozen like that dead body.

"Terry, I want you to stay behind as well."

I have tried my damnedest to stay out of trouble.  I couldn't imagine what I've done wrong.  I just want to collect my fucking paycheck and go home.

Maybe this could be a good thing.  Maybe they will fire me and I will be able to collect unemployment while I really focus on my life - what I want out of my life.

I have always found it perplexing how people can stick to the same job for so long when there is so little psychological fulfillment in what they spend so much of their lives doing.  Waste away in the hopes for a pension, a healthy savings account, and a lack of life lived in their prime.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised - the majority of people still believe some imaginary person in the sky watches what everyone does and if they don't do what he wants them to then they will burn for the rest of eternity.  Living in that kind of fear would most certainly take away your desire to fight back against a system that destroys your whole will to live.

I suppose I should have been paying more attention because now everyone is walking out - all of which looking like they dodged some kind of bullet.

As the final person steps out, Patrick closes the door behind them.

"Alright, Johnathon.  You're fired.  We know that Terry offered up some of his clients last week and we had no idea why you turned them down, but now it is obvious - you wanted to turn it into your idea to look better."

"Wait... what?  What gives you..." Patrick's face was getting more red than I'd have ever imagined possible as Johnathon changes his tune.  "Fuck you, Terry.  Fuck you.  You're doing this to make me look bad!"

Aflood with confusion, "I... I'm completely lost here."

"No, Johnathon.  Terry comes in and puts his head down.  He just does his work, and he excels at it.  He has turned this company around from a run of the mill sales team to a team where the clients actually feel like we help them."

I was just doing my job.

"Then who the fuck ratted me out!" The conference speaker sets sail directly to the wall and shatters into twenty pieces.

"Someone who cares about how this job operates.  Now get out of the building."  Two armed security guards step inside the room as Johnathon walks out.

"Now.  Terry, what Johnathon was getting to is right.  We do need someone to really lead the charge on training our team on how to make our clients feel like family.  We want it to be you."

Fuck.


-Dustin S. Stover

Left Hooks

The fist comes from the right this time, and I absorb it.  Our eyes are locked in a dead stare, neither of us even daring to blink because we know, on an unconscious level, that it could be the point in which the other one strikes and we're caught off guard.

I jab a couple small jabs from the left, just attempting to break his concentration more than anything else, but it isn't working.  A tight right hook comes at me, but it whiffs into thin air.  Now is my chance and I lay it all out.

A solid right lands directly on his face, two left jabs while I regain the momentum with another solid right. 

He falls back and I pounce towards him.  My right lands on his glove, but he is dazed.  He has regained his footing, but he took a couple solid hits that is sure to wear him down.

Our eyes have again locked in a dead man's stare.

A ding and it is the end of the round.

I drink my water and the sound of voices in the distance keep me company as I stare across the ring at the enemy.

Any other day, I could sit and have beers with this mother fucker, share stories of wasting money and women, but today we are at war.  I've got to get this out of my head.  Makes me weak.  This mother fucker needs to die.

I left that round with a big lead.  I can take him out in the next one.  The pain of those solid right handers have to be hitting him hard now that his adrenaline is coming down.

We get back up and the ding starts the next round.

He is playing it safer now.  His guard is up further, his face has been hurt, but that just means I've gotten him weaker.  Just have to wait for my moment to land another good solid hit.  He'll be done for sure.

I jab a couple quickies, again, trying to break his concentration, but his hands are planted.  His guard is secure. 

His jabs are weaker now, but my eyes aren't leaving his.  Fuck that.

I can see it in his eyes, they dart a quick little dart to my left hand before coming back to mine.  He's lost it.  His edge is gone.  Just have to wait for the perfect time.

A right then a left, my jabs are getting more intense as I try to break his guard.  I notice his right is flinching just a bit.  That's his weakness growing.  Just a little bit longer and he is done.

His eyes dart over to my left again and I force a right directly towards his face.

It catches glove and then I notice it - a left hook coming straight for my face.  All I can think - I blinked.


-Dustin S. Stover

All Encompassing Madness

"How does that make you feel?"

Well, how the fuck is it supposed to make me feel, doc.  I come to you for answers, not to question my motives.  Psychologists are such bullshit.  Give me the hard sciences, not someone to talk to me until I feel like crying enough to flood the Earth in some biblical, forty-days and forty-nights nonsensical way.

Fuck you, doc.  The shit happened and now it doesn't matter how I feel about it.  It doesn't fucking matter how I feel about it because I have to wake up tomorrow morning and go into work like every other damn day of my life.  I have to put food on the table at the end of the day.  I have to pay the light bill.  I have to do the same shit as everyone else.  How do I feel?  I feel like I need a mother fucking break from life.

"Norm, are you going to answer?"

"I'm figuring it out."

You condescending piece of shit.  You sit there in that chair and you ask me these simplistic answers, attempting to get me to dig deep for some answers through equally simplistic responses.  I know what you're doing, but again, it doesn't matter.

I  had damned dreams.  I had goals for my fucking life before shit hit the fan.  I wanted to make something out of my life and now I just wake up and feel like grabbing the fucking bottle.  

"It is odd, Dr. Shrellin.  I just don't know how life got to this point."

"Norm, I've told you before.  Just call me Alice.  I'm your friend, but let's talk about what choices you made to get here."

You're not a fucking friend.  A friend is someone you meet at a bar, someone you have common interests in, Alice.  I have been forced to come see you as my therapist.  Someone who I pretend isn't just as fucked up as I am.  But I know, Alice.  I know you hit that bottle like there's no tomorrow once you're done with your work day.  You've probably got escorts on speed dial, or hiding some inner lesbian cuckhold fantasy.  You probably have to smoke a thousand dollars worth of weed a week just so you don't get so pissed off you slam someone's head against a wall.

How I got here, though?  How I got here was fucking simple - I made choices.  I made the choice to drop what I wanted out of life because I played the safe bets and found excitement in the wrong places.  Well, all bets fail sooner or later.  That's how I got here.  Living with the failure of those bets, how the fuck do I deal with that, Alice?

"I'm not sure, doctor.  I mean, I kind of just floated along the river of life and now I'm waking up to where I've floated to."

Where I've floated to?  What the fuck am I even saying now?  I sound like some children's after school special.  What I've done is taken unfulfilling jobs because it is a paycheck, dated shitbags because they offered excitement in my life, and been completely unable to find a balance between those things and my goals.  That's what the fuck I've done, Alice.  And now I'm stuck being hyper-aware of my situation in life.

"So what do you plan on doing now?"

So yeah, after my wife left me for the younger, more exciting artist, that mother fucker, I went off on my boss.  Sure, maybe I even threw the phone book at the wall, conveniently placed behind his head.  Yeah, I probably caused a scene when I got up out of my chair and yelled the word fuck at the top of my lungs, which led me to the office and phone book in the first place.  Can you blame me?  I mean, really?

"I don't know, doctor."

"Well, how does all this make you feel, Norm?"

Again with this fucking question, Alice?  Can't you reword it with your fancy ass degree?  Can't you make it seem more interesting?  Can't you do something other than just fucking ask a question?

"Mad.  I feel mad."

-Dustin S. Stover

If you find my writing interesting and desire more of it then please support me by purchasing my collection of short stories on Kindle or Nook.

Surviving the Storm

One would imagine that after months, years, or even decades that we'd have gotten used to this. The bullets screaming far beyond our post and into the never ending abyss beyond us. I suppose that to an extent we have done just that.

Families no longer duck for cover. Families no longer cower in fear of when they will lose their mother or brother. Instead, they simply go about their business as usual, and yet, the bullets still whizz past into the abyss.

In a society that picks around the bloodied apples to find an untainted one, a society that admires when a building only has one hundred bullet holes in the outer walls, a society that finds it more abnormal to hear that you've went a week without losing someone you know then it would be little more than obvious to state that hardships are simply a way of life.

And yet here I am, again, carrying away another dead body from outside my front door. Carrying it around to the back, where places have been strategically designed to extract the lifeless corpses by specially appointed military personnel. You know the ones – the ones freshly recruited and sent into the city, having never seen the atrocities that have become such normal life.

I can remember a time before, though. A time in which the city hadn't been ravaged by greed, by the strongest enforcing their survival on those of us who would rather think about a way to make tomorrow a better place. Speaking such things out loud, today, would lead to a public hanging.

Still, I enjoy talking to the freshies. I enjoy hearing about their tales of life beyond the death. And this is why I carry the dead now, at dusk, with the little remaining sunlight bursting through the remnants of buildings and illuminating the dulled browns of the sand and the buildings that look as though they are apart of the ground.

“Good evening,” a freshy says with nothing but trembling nervousness in his voice.

“Another one to add to the pile here,” I push the wheelbarrow with a full grown woman, beyond skinny and frail from the lack of motivation to make it outside for food.

Of course, the government does everything it can to ship as much food to us as possible. It is there for the taking, but in order to obtain it one must dodge the metallic shards flying through the air so fast they cannot be seen. Some try it, usually the young and fast teenagers. Sometimes the elderly who have lived beyond their years and have decided their sacrifice would be worth it if only to save their children.

“So... Where... where did you get this un?” A strange accent, one I had never heard before.

“Out front of my shop. They post up down the road and wait for people to try to get into my shop for food and shoot them dead as they are walking in. I took the door off to let them get in faster, but then they stopped coming in all together – said it didn't make them feel safe to have it open like that – so I put it back up for them.”

“Strange...”

“Where you from, kid?”

“What is left of the USA.” The USA, much like here, was torn apart when both sides of the political spectrum let things get so bad they declared war on one another. Eventually there wasn't much left other than burnt down cities with two capitals on each side of the country. They simply declared it a draw, threw down their guns, and resorted to cyber warfare to sway support. They are still equal, but most of their citizens don't even have a computer any longer so it ultimately ends up being the rich arguing back and forth while every one else signs up for wars they don't understand. Just to keep food on their plate.

“Is it rough over there, too?”

“I thought it was. Until... well... I got here...”

“Yeah, things here are pretty bad. Get up closer to this wall. You're out there making yourself the perfect target.”

“Thanks....” His tone still shaky, like a glass of water in the middle of an earthquake.

“You get used to it. Say, you and your compadres want something to drink? Eat, perhaps? When was the last time you had a decent meal?” I was unlocking the back door and opening it up, holding it open so as to entice them on in. “Don't worry, I've got a deal worked out with both sides. They let me by for the most part. Can't say the same about my customers, but you'll all be safe.”

“Fuck yeah!” Another freshy jumps out of the truck, a sharp, tall girl who looked to be all of 19 years old at most. “I ain't eaten nothing good in a week.”

I prepared the two of them their meals, even threw in a couple glasses of the best wine I could muster up – admittedly, it wasn't anything of quality, but no one ever complains about wine after they've endured a week or two here.

The meal with an equally unimpressive bowl of pasta with some very bland type of white sauce. I did manage to get a shipment of Parmesan Cheese in. It adds just enough taste for it to be considered the best bowl of pasta in the city. That's what the sign on the wall says, anyway - “BEST PASTA IN THE CITY!”

“This tastes like shit compared to back home.” The female freshy piped up after devouring half her plate of food.

“Well, you're not quite home now, are you?”

“No. That's not what I meant.” She interjected quickly. “I mean, I just miss home. Fuck, man. I'm sorry.”

“It tastes better than I thought it would...” the young freshy, still timid and fearful, said.

“Look. I don't get my choice of ingredients. I do the best with what I've got. Here.” I hand them each a plate of a jello-like dessert.

“No thanks!” they both said quickly.

The sound of their truck, still parked out back, fires to life and takes off with tires squealing.

“Hey!” the female freshy says while attempting to lift from her chair. “Is that... is... that... our... truck...?” Her body falls limp, first hitting the table and then plummeting to the ground.

The male freshy's face had already landed square on top of the table.

I picked up the phone and dialed a series of numbers until the ring started. “Hello. Got a couple more.” I hung up the phone.

-Dustin S. Stover

Iron and Ink

Isolated iron is always cold.  Always.  Even on the hottest of summer days, heat radiating off the harsh metal, the sight of iron fills one's self with a cold darkness that captivates the imagination of some and fills another with desolate despair.

That was what filled his mind as he felt that painful heat through his work gloves, handling the huge iron beam thirty some odd stories above Earth's surface.

The pen always held such a warm and passionate feeling pinched between the fingers.  A universe of knowledge, passion, longing, lust, despair, and sadness she thought as she tried to push the keys on her laptop down in rhythmic fashion.

She couldn't find the words or passion or even a glimpse of that universe she longed for.

The philosopher in both of them begins to question why they are doing anything they do.  The reasonable voice knows they'll die if they don't - or at least be forced to find a new way to survive.

He takes the long drink of ice water, symbolic of the end of another torturous day of ten hours worth of heat - he had to sign on for that overtime pay.

The pay was great.  The pay is great.  The week is almost over and the pay is great - the chant repeated in his mind.

She held in her hand, between her fingertips, that old Montblanc pen she bought herself after her first big story broke.  She hadn't used it for years but believed it was the key to her next big ticket.  Of course, the doodles on her page didn't translate to her next big paycheck.

Before arriving home, he stops at a local liquor store to buy the beer that will get him drunk the fastest and for the least amount of money.  A necessity, he thinks, if he is to endure such coldness again tomorrow.

He rolls a joint before leaving the parking lot - this to prepare himself for all the commands of his wife once home.  He takes the first hit not long after he leaves the parking lot.  The first of many.

A page full of doodles lay upon the page as she brushes her teeth in an attempt to hide the smell of cigarettes.  Frantically, she sprays perfume and flushes the toilet to dispose of the butt.  A deep breathe fills the empty space and a tug to straighten her shirt sets her in motion to start dinner.

She peers down into the empty sink and realizes she forgot to lay out the meat for dinner.  Knowing it is too late to thaw now, she hits the number three on speed dial for takeout Chinese.  A distinctly American voice answers and she realizes her mistake - Chinese was four, three was the stress relief she was trying to give up.

He arrives home significantly more stoned that he wanted to be.  Trying desperately hard to hide it from his wife, he yells his hell while walking directly to the shower.

The shower loses him for far too long and his wife opens the door with hushed anxiety.  "Are you drunk or high?"

"Both," he answers while his wife shuts the door without a word more.

She springs to life when the door rings - perfect timing, she thinks as she ponders where she wants her story to go next.

He gets out of the shower and sees a notepad open upon the table, full of drawings and no words, next to a bag of Chinese food.  She is in the garage speed dialing number three.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

The Explanation

I have always been terribly interested in why someone would cut themselves.  I suppose that deep down I understood it - a physical interpretation of the pain one feels inside, a frustration that needs an external release in some fashion and the pain doesn't run off into someone else's life.

I've just never been one to follow suit in that type of performance art.  My personal belief is that there must be some other type of expression that leads to far more productivity.  And, you know, not having to explain the scars to anyone else is always a bonus.

But, I suppose that in itself would be a test of sorts.  If a lover can see past the battle scars of externalizing an internal problem then doesn't that in some kind of way prove that love triumphs?

The hypocrisy, however, is hilarious.

Everyone has the problematic affairs that we are dealing with.  From the man who drinks incessantly to the woman who buys herself into ruin - or the woman who drinks incessantly and the man who buys himself into ruin.  It is all just a means to deal with the internal struggles of life's existential problems that no one wants to face up to.

And as I'm laying here, I grow increasingly tired, exhausted.  Like the life is just seeping from my veins.

I believed that if you had unlimited money then the world's problems didn't touch you, when I was young.  It was like the penguins having water just run right off their body.  A type of bullet proof vest that made it impossible for life's turmoil to trouble you, but that was just young naivety.

The rich find themselves equally as troubled as the poor, but that is also when it came to me that it isn't a class problem, it is a societal one.  A society that wrings the life out of every person placed as a cog in the working wheel can never have room for a society in which the human life has more value than the productivity of their job, and being rich still leaves no value in the individual's life - just a dollar sign sitting next to a name.

And that is why one must stand in protest.

As I'm doing now.

As my veins drip the remaining drops of my blood upon the floor, and with it my ability to be another cog in your systemic decay.

The systemic destruction of the human condition.

And this is my...
explanation...
for these...
scars...



A morbid short story by Dustin S. Stover

And You Said Life Would be Easy

There is a radical design stitched into the very presence of every human being. From birth we are molded into what others perceive and expect us to be, never fully grasping any individuality in those desires.

Then, as we age, we begin to understand the world quite beyond that in which we've been forcibly exposed to. Whether it be through television, music, the introduction of new people, books, or whatever other external sources that could influence our otherwise pristine conservation of familial and close proximity world's desires. The rebellion of such things is what begins that massive chasm of separation between the world of old and the world in which one creates for themselves.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the chasm always maintains distance. Most people end up conforming in massive ways – their rebellion of underage drinking and casual drug usage is found out to be the same coping mechanisms of their parents, the same ones that refused to acknowledge their own usage of such things at the same age. The conformity of finding a job that satisfies just enough, typically through the paychecks that come in from said job, yet leave the rest of life unfulfilled. The conformity of giving up on the things enjoyable in youth – the discovery of things outside the pristine world in which one was raised in.

Raise a glass to yourselves if you can pretend the satisfaction of such things is enough for you. Down the contents of said glass in an effort to dull the pain of pretending, go to tuck your children into bed, and proceed to post more pictures of what you made for dinner on social media in an effort to bring an encouraging vindication to your very conformed notion of what reality should be, all the meanwhile keeping that pristine barrier around your own children.

There are those of us who are philosophers, artists, believers that the value in our lives are created solely by the things we leave behind – not the value of ourselves, but the value of the things we do to make tomorrow a better place. We live and die by the sadness we're forced to face, clinging to the threads of life's fragility only because we understand that someone has to suffer the consequences of societal norms as a means to bring greater understanding to it tomorrow. We do that through our words, our paintings, our drawings, our songs, and any other means we can birth our pain and suffering into the world as a form of educational entertainment.

If love is but a mechanism to ensure a mating process, then an artist's pain is only a mechanism to ensure purity for a better tomorrow. The next time you see that painting that disturbs you, or you read a passing paragraph in a book, or you hear a song that hits an emotion you don't want to experience take it as a sign to pay more attention. The reason you feel the way you do about it isn't because the painting is ugly, those are easily ignored, it is because you don't want to face the emotion the painting is making you feel.

-Dustin S. Stover

And don't forget, if you want to support my writing then buy my collection of short stories.

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Just Another Day at the Office

Susan, like always, beat me to the office.  It never seems to bother her that she beats the boss every day.  She deserves a raise.

I settle down in my chair after grabbing my cup of coffee from the break room, of course started by Susan as soon as she got in, and just enjoy the aroma.  Then, it happens, the real start of my day.

"..That's when I found out she had been cheating on me.  It was with an old coworker.  Apparently they had been... screwing.. God, just thinking about it makes me want to vomit... they had been doing it since I worked with him.  That was twelve years ago.  Twelve years of the two of them fucking... The two of them doing it behind my back... like... how did I not know?  How?  Just... I don't know how I was so stupid...."

"Before I got busted with all that coke, I mean, I was on my way up to being a big time executive.  Who gives a fuck if I was snorting coke like it was candy.  I mean, who gives a fuck?  I was fucking productive, man.  I tell you, I could work circles around every other fucking clown in that office, but no... no, I get fired.  I get fired because they found some white powder in my office.  Fuck them, man.  Fuck them in their assholes."

"I don't really know how to say it... I mean, I know he and I had an agreement.  I know we were supposed to do it together, but... I just couldn't... and I just... watched.  I didn't know what else to do.  I just watched, and cried.  I don't know what is worse, that it was the first time I saw a boy touch himself and it brought me to tears or if it seemed to make him more excited... Am I always going to cry when I see a guy touch themselves?  Do you think I'm a lesbian?"

I go into the break room for a refill on my cup of coffee, but I notice the back door is propped open by a little block of wood.  I walk to the door, open it, and find Susan taking a puff of a cigarette.

"Mind if I take a drag of that, Susie?"

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Yeah... You're right.  I guess today wouldn't be a good day to start, either."  I used my foot to put the block of wood back against the door frame before gently resting the door against it.

"My wife tells me I just make bad choices.  I mean, no fucking way, right?  It isn't my fault if I blow ten grand at the poker table. I mean, fuck, I could be on a winning streak and then, bam, wrong bet.  Shit, that's all down to luck.  It isn't a bad choice, it just means my lucky day hasn't struck yet."

"He touched me in my private parts.  That's what mommy told me to tell the police officer.  That's what I told the police officer."

"I blame it all on my mom.  She is the one who didn't teach me how hard life would be.  She let me have my favorite blankie in bed with me until I was 12!  It is her fault!  It is all her fault!"

"...I don't really know how to come to terms with it.  Every time I close my eyes, I see his hands wrapped so tightly around my wrists that my hands are going numb.  I can see outside my body, and I see my mouth screaming, but no sound is coming out.  I see his grin as he... I just..."

"Look, doc.  Are you a Doctor?  Did you earn that PhD?  Look, I don't belong here.  I don't have a problem.  It is just the fucking courts.  They ordered this shit.  If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"I just pray every day and hope things get better, but nothing is changing.  My prayers just aren't getting answered, but maybe that just means that God's plan for me is to suffer like this.  Maybe God just wants me to suffer for all the sins I've committed in the past.  Maybe that is why he isn't answering my prayers."

"I bet you just doodle all day long in that notebook of yours.  Seeing patients day in and day out, have that little notepad out pretending to be jotting down bullshit about your patients."

As they say this, I am just doodling.  It is the fifteenth time this patient has been in here and it is the fifteenth hour he has spent accusing me of doodling in my notebook.  It is now the eighth time I've actually doodled in my notebook.

"I... I know I am so quiet.... my wife tells me all the time that I need to talk to her, just talk... but... I don't even like to order food at the fast food drive through.  She says that our sex life is boring and she wants to spice things up by wearing sexy lingerie.  I don't know how to tell her that I want to be the one wearing it...."

"Well, that ends our session.  If you see Susan at the.."

"Yeah, yeah.  I fucking know.  Susan.  Front counter.  Next appointment."

I close my notebook.

"Have a good day."

I pour out the remaining bit of coffee into the break room's sink, watch the black liquid form a small puddle near the drain, refusing to join the rest, and then twist the knob to force the water to wash the puddle away.

Just another day at the office.





Written by Dustin S. Stover

So, This is How Stories get Made

For some of us, the darkness of night falls and we get lost.  We become terrified of the things in which we cannot see, the things we must see within ourselves, and especially the things we hear that we'd otherwise be too distracted to notice any other time.

This is what it is like when we first begin to research ourselves.  You know that fear of the doctor the very first time you get tested for sexually transmitted infections?  That's what it feels like every day you decide to introspectively look into yourself, as if what you will find out is something you never wanted to know.

I suppose, then, that is why so few people ever actually take the time in doing so.  It is far easier to go the rest of your life without that dreaded doctor's visit, but the only way to know for certain that you're not contaminating someone else is to either not have sex at all or go for the check up.

Sure, having that cotton swab shoved down your dick hole hurts the first couple times, but you probably thought that it was just going to be a matter of shooting your piss into a cup anyway.  And yeah, while you're looking back on all those slutty fun times you had you are probably sweating bullets - that one time the condom ripped, the girl's name you forgot to get because you were too drunk to care and the headache you had upon waking up to her naked body didn't invoke the kind of emotions that rendered those words upon the tongue.  Maybe she had already escaped out the door before you awake to the blade of the sun in your eyes.

Coming out of the other side to find out that you're clean, though, proves that those experiences are stories worthy of the scar from where that one girl stabbed you in the side because she thought you were kinkier than you really were, and of course you went with it all because she was climaxing a great deal more than you thought she was capable of, just like how the knife went a bit deeper than she anticipated.  Still, the scar is a permanent visual tell of a tale worth telling - at least to those worth telling it to.

Realizing that it all interlinks is the first step, of course.  It could happen at your favorite restaurant.  Maybe it is your favorite restaurant because it became your escape from the passing of a family member that particularly struck a deep and sensitive kind of pain, and it was the first experience with such things.  One minute you're tasting the delights of some oriental food, the next your sifting through the darkness of your mind to remember, oh yes, the whole reason you stepped foot into this place is because your sister passed away from a car accident.  You had no taste for Chinese food before that, but it was different, looked quiet, and was secluded away from everyone you knew who would be talking to you about it to look like the perfect place.  Without a care of the wasted money spent, you ordered a random menu item and now, years later, you've come to love the place as a kind of extra appendage that has become more functional than the originals.

It is terrifying to see those connections, though.  They can paint the ugliest of pictures.  Perhaps they paint the most beautiful, but we seldom know until we roll up our sleeves and trudge through the dark, scary, mucky swamp of why we are the way we are.  It can, for some pretty obvious reasons, lead to a craze, but to put it into perspective, how is it any crazier than spending a hundred dollars on a pair of pants simply because a law states that we need clothes in order to be decent and you've decided that spending extra money on something to cover your legs, ass and genitals makes you somehow different than a person who spends twenty on something that, inherently, does the same thing.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness