Yesterday, my aunt died. It inspired me to write this story. That's all I'll say. Enjoy

To Be a Psychopath

I wish I was a psychopath. To feel no emotion, or at least not remorse; that would be great. After all, what is the point of remorse, and sympathy? Nothing. It is bad enough having to worry about yourself, but with those stupid emotions, you have to share in everyone else’s misery. It is simply no fair.

That is why I have been training myself against emotion.  The way I do this is I simply tell myself that nothing really matters. Nothing has any real meaning behind it, that is just what your body tells you as a survival mechanism. Everything just simply is. I mean what really does matter? Life? Why does that matter? No matter what we do with our lives, we are all simply going to die someday. Anything we do is to stay alive and to enhance our lives, but if life does not matter, then nothing matters. So why have emotion? There is no reason.

Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. Emotions are buried into the very core of your being. So to fully eradicate them, you must continuously tell yourself that nothing has any meaning. You must then imagine scenarios that should create a large emotional response, and then tell yourself it does not matter, and keep telling yourself that, until you truly believe it. This is how I have overcome my fear of dying. If my death does not really matter, then why should I be worried about it? There is no reason.

This is all very well, but the thing is, you can never really know how you will respond to something until it actually happens. You can tell yourself all you want that you truly believe nothing really matters, but the only way to know you truly believe that is to put yourself in a real emotional situation.

That is why I am here. I am right outside a Marathon gas station, peering through the window at the woman sitting behind the counter. She is my target. I feel the heavy silver revolver in my pocket, and check to make sure it is loaded one last time. I am about to test if I have truly rid myself of emotion. I start to walk up to the small building, and as I get closer the adrenaline takes me and a fall into what is close to a sprint. I get to the building, fling open the door, and shove myself inside. The woman barely glances up from her People Magazine, when I raise the heavy gun, point it at her head, and pull the trigger.

I was not in there long enough to see what I had done. All I really made out was the red spatter of blood on the wall behind her. I ran down a side street nearby, then cut into a neighborhood. I could hear police sirens in the distance. I did it. I killed someone.

When I got home, I did not try to dispose of the weapon, or change out of my black clothes. I just sat on the couch, and flipped on the TV. After watching a low budget Western film, I went up to bed.

I was doing well so far, I thought. I had not yet thrown up, or broken down crying. I had not lost my appetite, as I scarfed down a large bag of Doritos over the duration of the western. Perhaps I had truly trained myself out of emotion.

I sat in my car across the street from the cemetery, where the service was being held. I watched as the close friends and family members of the deceased weeped. I watched as those who did not know her as well looked solemn. Then I watched as her four year old son was held in his father’s arms. He was too young to understand the concept of death.

“I want Mommy,” he probably complained. “Where’s Mommy?”

Then his father would say,”Mommy isn’t here anymore, bud.”

“But I want her,” he would say, not understanding how his mother could be there at one moment but gone another.

“Well she’s gone. She went away, to a nice place... to heaven,” his father would say, trying to blink back the tears in order to not frighten the child.

“Why did she leave?”

“Well.... God needed her. So He brought her to Heaven. But don’t you worry. She will always be right here, looking out for you.”

“But I want her now!”

His father just hugs the motherless child, while the two cry. One missing his mommy, the other missing his wife.

I watched this, and imagined these words, and felt nothing. No emotion, no sympathy for the boy who would never again feel the warmth or love of his mother’s hugs.

I felt nothing, because nothing mattered. That’s what I told myself, and I believed it, truly. So if nothing mattered, then what was the point of living? There was none.

I felt the heavy revolver in my pocket.

Nothing mattered.

I took the gun, shoved it in my mouth and pulled the trigger.

I wrote a story. I don't think it is my best work, but oh well. Enjoy

Down, Down, Down to the Bottom of the Abyss

I tried to be a good person. I said please, and thank you. I held the door open for people. I never killed anyone. Yet, somehow I ended up here: in Hell.

The reason I am here, if you can believe it, is because I’m vain. If you ask me, it was not really vanity, but more of self confidence. My act of sin, as my administrative demon told me, was that I looked in a mirror, and thought I looked decent. That is it. Normally this kind of thing would be forgiven, but since I died right at that moment from an exploding toilet, there was no time for me to be forgiven. So now I have to take some stupid test to see if I can escape this place, and be allowed to go to Heaven. I am not really sure what kind of test it is, but I have decided it is something terrible, as I am in Hell.

I am currently being led down a long black hallway by two large, red, spiked demons. They are very ugly, and not real friendly, for when I tried to talk to one, it simply glared at my for a moment, then continued on its way.

We continued down the hallway until we got to the end, where an iron door stood. I figured this was likely the entrance to the test.

“Well,” I said nonchalantly, “I guess this is where we part ways.”

The two demons glared at me. One then opened the large door, while the other threw me into the dark room on the other side. I landed hard, and when I looked back through the door, the demons closed the door. It was pitch dark for a moment, but then several feet away a spotlight lit up, as if from nowhere, around a pedestal. On the pedestal sat a beautiful, perfectly crafted cake. I stepped up, and as soon as I got as close as six feet away, my stomach growled, with lust for even a morsel of the delectable pastry. When I was right over it, I saw there was a card on top. It read:

Your test: Eat the entire cake within the hour. Your time starts now.

Behind  me, large red numbers appeared, counting down from one hour.

I dug into the cake, without hesitation. It tasted like heaven. It was hard to believe that  something this heavenly came from Hell. As good as it was, however, it was still massive. It had four tiers, and the first tier had a diameter as long as my arm. Even if I had the room to eat it all, speed would be an issue. Oh well, if I hesitated, I would have no chance. I continued eating.

I only had twenty minutes left, and half the cake still remained uneaten. I was sitting on the ground with a clump of cake in my hand, trying to force it down. I could not. That was it, I was just going to forfeit.

“Alright, “ I said, “I give up. I can’t do it. Go ahead, just drag me off to the abyss.”

Silence for a moment.

Then a deep, disembodied voice boomed and said, “Congratulations, you have successfully completed the test. You have proved yourself not to be gluttonous. The reason you are here must truly have been a fluke. Go, now, and ascend the stairway to heaven.”

When I heard this, I was angry at first for being deceived. Then I realized I was not going to Hell, and I decided to look past this one indiscrepancy. Behind me, where the large, unfriendly demons had thrown me into this room, the door opened.

The hallway had changed. The light seemed to come from nowhere like before, but now it was brighter. That, and instead of dark black, the walls and floor were reflective, like mirrors.

I looked down, at my reflection. To be honest, I  didn’t look half bad for just passing a trial of Hell.

That’s when the familiar disembodied voice boomed down and said, “You have failed the test. You have proven to be vain.  It is off to the abyss for you!”

Then the floor gave out, and I fell. I fell into pitch black hole, which is the abyss.

I am currently writing a short story about zombies. It is not finished yet, but we will see where it goes. However, as I continue to think about where the story could go, I find myself  thinking  about a great plot, that is really too sophisticated for a short story. I feel that it would be a good topic to use if I were to write a novel. I am not sure that I am currently at a level of writing where I would like to take on a novel, however it is something to keep in mind. I would like to outline the plot, however many aspects would be the same as in the story I am currently writing, so I do not want to spoil it.

This is the first part of my zombie story. I am not yet finished, but I figured I would at least post what I had.

The Flesh Eaters

Something seemed somehow off while I was walking Polo. It was a nice day. Warm, green, and there was a nice breeze coming from the west which kept one from becoming sweaty. Some bothersome birds were twittering their heads off at each other, but other than that, it was quiet.

It was quiet.

That is what was off. It was a beautiful Saturday, and yet not a soul was out. Not a car, or pedestrian, or bicyclist. Normally, the park would be littered with kids, and one could not go on the path without every five seconds having to step to the side to allow a jogger to pass. It was pleasant without the crowds, but now that I realized the deadness of it all, it was also quite eerie.

I passed the McDonald’s and noticed on the sign that they had come out with the triple McManwich. The sign had a cartoon of three cartoon Ronald McDonalds tucked inside of a bun. I just about gagged at the thought of someone eating one of the things. The double was a sufficiently disgusting portion as it was.

I continued my walk until I reached my porch. As I unlocked the door, my next door neighbor Laird stepped out of his house, and without even closing the door, ran down the street. I yelled to him, asking what his hurry was, but he continued his path, as if not even hearing me. I was just stepping in when several other front doors around the neighborhood opened, and the residents followed the same path as Laird.

I thought this odd, sure, but it did not seem to concern me, so I stepped inside, wiped my feet, and sank into the couch. Expecting to watch last night’s recordings, I found it very disappointing to find the president giving a speech to me on every channel. It took me a moment to fully process what he was saying. Apparently the country was in a state of emergency. He was saying something about the meat factories, but the whole thing was out of context.

I looked at the news on my iPad, and what it showed was extremely disheartening to say the least.

I read the article and it said that CannaTech, the only human flesh producer in the world, had shut down production completely. They were not going to make any more shipments, and they gave no reason as to why. The article showed footage of huge masses of people huddled around restaurants and grocery stores. No one was let into the stores, and fights were breaking out everywhere. The police had arrived, it appeared, but it would be like holding off a lion with a toothpick if things came to force.

I put down my iPad, and turned off the TV, soaking in all of the information. I had to leave this place, lest my door get knocked down and get torn apart. As quickly as I could, I packed an overnight bag, a box of canned food, survival gear, a first aid kit, clothes, and finally, a doggy bag for Polo. I piled all of this stuff, and Polo into my SUV, and opened the garage.

Since I had been inside, a large crowd had amassed outside of the grocery store, with hundreds, possibly thousands of people all trying to claw their way inside. I tried to ignore them, by driving right on by, however the crowd was so large that many people flooded into the street. Those on the outskirts of the crowd began to gather around my car, pounding, and shouting. I continued driving however, and fearing getting run over, the sea of lunatics around me stubbornly parted. I was almost out when Laird came up to the driver’s window, and with a heavy smack, cracked the window, nearly shattering it. I floored it.

Perhaps I should explain.

Several years ago there was a major outbreak of a peculiar disease which affected approximately ninety- five percent of the world’s population. This disease, had no symptoms, except for giving the afflicted an all- consuming desire to eat human flesh. If the afflicted was fed a sufficiently satisfying fill of human flesh, then they were completely fine. However, if the afflicted was for any reason denied human flesh, he or she would gradually become more and more desperate, eventually coming to the point of attacking anyone who was unfortunate enough to cross his or her path, tearing the flesh right from their body. There was clearly a high demand for human flesh, but no obvious means of acquisition except through murder.

Then, as if from nowhere a corporation called CannaTech declared that they had found a way to humanely mass produce human flesh. Nobody really knew their means, for no one really wanted to know. Since then, they have had a monopoly on the human flesh industry, the largest industry in the world. Clearly, something that huge simply shutting down without any warning whatsoever would shake the world.


Two nights ago, I had a dream. This dream took place in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and it gave me an idea for a new story. I know that many writers have dream journals in which they write, and get ideas. Well, I'm not going to make an actual journal, but I will take an idea from a dream. Now, these were not just any zombies. They were real people, who just had an affliction that made them want to eat human flesh. As long as their flesh craving was satisfied, they were completely sane. So, there were factories that produced human flesh to be distributed to the flesh eating population. However, one day all of the factories were shut down, so all of the flesh eaters went crazy for human flesh. There was rioting, and people ate each other, and the whole thing was just a big mess. So, that is where the story would take place, from the point of view of a guy who did not have the flesh eating affliction, and had to survive.

I have finished reading the first story in The Miniature Wife collection of short stories. The one I have read is called "William Corbin: A Meritorious Life". It is really more of a fictitious anecdote about how clowns came into being.
Apparently, long ago there was actually a race of man called the Klouns. They were strange looking people who were often found performing for carnivals or some sort of show. William was not a Kloun but wished to be one, and so taught himself the ways of Klouns. He later began impersonating a Kloun and traveled to the Klounkovan territories. He was discovered however, and was run out of the Klounkovan territories. After that, he began to teach others the way of the Kloun. These people continued the craft, and taught others even after the Klouns went extinct.
It was a short fun read, which taught me a few things. First of all, it showed me that the stories do not always have to span a short amount of time, or be in real detail. This story just gave the broad outline of an entire life in three pages, as opposed to, say, The description of the events in an hour spreading over twenty pages. I will try to continue reading and postig about the stories in this book.

I have acquired another book of short stories. This one is called "The Miniature Wife" by Manuel Gonzales. I finished a few stories in the last book when I decided to get a new one. The stories in "Vampires in the Lemon Grove" were intriguing and entertaining, but I don't think they are my style. They were also, as far as short stories go, rather lengthy, and I just do not have the time these days to read and really absorb the material. In "The Miniature Wife" however, the stories are really short stories, ranging from about three to ten pages. Not only does that make them more convenient for me, but that's also closer to the length that I write.