grueberfest round one - the blizzard (882 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.42 on 29 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by katy (View user info) at 2008-09-29 00:00:41 EDT
Ball and Chain or The Blizzard
There's a lot of driftwood up for grabs on the dunes. Sometimes it makes good furniture, or I can sell "driftwood art" to all the tourists in the summer. Peak times end around October. After they've filled up on lobster and antiques they head back to the cities, all that kitschy garbage, we settle in for the winter. First the autumn storms come, then the winter snow.
I was walking one day out on the dunes, looking for more wood and I saw something black and damp crawl up from the high tide line. It looked like a cat from where I stood. It was dark, with hair plastered to its body as if it had been dipped in oil. It dragged itself a few feet into land with sand sticking to its greasy fur and vomited more oil covered blobs into the beach like it was giving birth. Then the sea came and swallowed them all.
I forgot about them for a while.
There isn't much on the Cape in the terms of living in the winter. I run a B&B and run of the summer months' worth of income. Mostly there's groceries to be got, books to read and fires to make. The trees grow stunted and fat along the shore. We cut those first and run on gas. Other than that I burn the extra driftwood.
My property runs up against the 20 mile bike trail and the coast. My house is on the beach with a little rough pine fence. The dunes climb on either side with a long trail to the actual water. The ride to the bike trail is through the little scrubby forest. Just more fat evergreens as far as anyone could see in either direction. It's pretty isolated, but it's why I like it. Only half a year of dealing with people is a pretty good trade for doing whatever the hell I want for the rest of the year. That reasoning stands, of course, until you need someone else.
I saw the oil-covered cat again about a week later doing the same thing. I was looking for driftwood, it was dragging it's lifeless hind legs up the sea shore to deposit another clutch of black, dripping orbs into the sand. This time it went farther up, to the edge of the dunes where they had begun planting grass for preservation. I wandered up to its slick, rainbow -tinted trail just in time for it to die.
It turned to me, with blue and purple eyes to hiss and gasp, black oil dripping from its mouth. The "eggs" sat and wobbled in the sea's wind. I pushed one with my walking stick, also made of driftwood. I seem to live by things deposited by the ocean. The egg burst, spilling a bubbly black liquid over the end of my stick. There were five more, jiggling and moving with the sway of the air. I looked at the dead cat. I was sure it was a cat. Ears, legs, tail - all of it was cat. Soaked in something grimy and slick. I couldn't smell oil, only sea. I didn't bother touching it. People do fucked up things to animals when they think no one's watching, or when they know no one cares, this was probably just another extra mouth to feed, leftover from spring.
The wind picked up as I headed back up the sandy trail to my house. Another storm coming, more snow. At least I had enough wood, even enough to make a table or two. This one was supposed to blow for a couple days. The drifts would pile up against the sand and the grass slowly covering my pitiful little yard and smudging my house into the grey landscape. This would be a good weekend to curl up with a fire, or work on next year's sales.
MyB&B has 8 rooms. Most of them are weather sealed by the house itself is over 300 years old so it's a bit difficult to really proof against the wind and the water. The salt eats at the paint and the metal hinges slowly making everything fit just badly enough to let the wind in. All the weather sealing in the world wouldn't stop the winter from coming in some parts. I seal off everything but the main house.
The first few hours of the blizzard were pretty standard. The high-pitched winds and rattling windows almost fell into a rhythm with my plane. My fire and the whooshing sound of the gas into my heating system made a nice humming noise. I almost didn't hear the scratching at my door through all my white noise.
I went to my front door and opened it. The wind quickly threw some snow across my slippered feet. There was a white-out going on. I couldn't even see my fat, shrubby pines 10 feet away at the border of my yard. At my now snow-covered feet lay a wobbly black ball and a trail of goo leading around the house. It throbbed and pulsated like a dripping eviscerated heart. I grabbed my walking stick from inside the door and pierced it, letting it ooze over my doorstep before stowing myself back into the warmth of my house and went back to work.
Another hour later, in the bluer light of evening, the scratching came back. I ignored it this time. The blizzard howled around my house. The windows might have well have been made of brick for all the good they did me showing the world. The silvery bluish light of the world was all i got from looking out. Frost and condensation drew lines and forest of their own up my old window panes, rattling still as every gust shook them. Living alone had some benefits. I had the freedom to work all day on whatever I wanted, but I didn't have anyone looking over my shoulder and out the windows and doors with me.
Blizzards hide a lot of things. That's a cliche of course. Storms always hide things. Between no one going out in the cold and no one being able to see through the snow and move through the drifts, it makes you pretty aware of how isolated you are from the world. So when strange noises come begging at your door you do what I do and try to drown it out. You convince yourself it's just because your neighbors are 5 miles down the road and you haven't been to town in a couple of days. It's nothing but a lack of human interaction.
When they keep coming even after you've turned on the radio and the tv and the computer and everything you could think of to turn your white noise into real words and a connection to the outside world, then you start wondering. I checked all the upstairs rooms. There's five. Two to the east and two to the west and one right below the little cupola with my favorite view. They were all empty, windows rattling, wind howling. I checked the locks, everything was fine.
The downstairs was the same. My part of the house locks off from the last three guest rooms and the guest living areas. Nothing was wrong, nothing was open, nothing was out of place. I double-checked the lock to my house. The scratching came back after I was done checking things. I went again to the front door. This time there was a trail of eggs along with the faceful of snow. I closed the door to my little vestibule and put on my boots and coat. It would just be a trip around the house. Just to see where they were coming from, or maybe where they ended.
They went right out of my doorway and then around the covered woodpile. One black gooey blob after another, each shivering in the wind more than I was. Along side there was a grey smudged trail with blotches of oil spattering along in the trough. The snow just barely made it possible to see the path. I stepped on one of the eggs as I went. I noticed it made my foot warm.
I thought about all the things that came around when all the people left. There are always stories about strange ghosts and Kilkenny cats. Every region's got it's story of someone or something going just a little mad because they didn't talk to someone else enough. They didn't get to catch up on the kids and wives and lawn mowing and making pies. I figured after 5 years of this winter solitude I was finally getting to the point where I'd need to buy a dog to make it through the season with my sanity.
Then I thought that sometimes there's a reason for the stories. They can't all be imaginary. The trail lead to behind my woodpile and into my toolshed. Basically it was full of all the furniture making tools I thought I needed but turned out not to. The metal rusted from the salt and damp air in the warmer months, and made great bedwarmers in the winter when I put them over the fireplace. The door was open.
I went inside to see another dying cat thing and another clutch of eggs. It must've been at least 20 or more. They were each the size of my fist and throbbing and swirling with some sort of life. I looked down at my feet. The cat looked up at me and opened its mouth far too wide and vomited up another egg. Then its life was exhaled and the eyes went dim.
I heard a wet smacking sound and looked over at the pile of throbbing eggs. One of them split and a snake-like writhing mass uncurled itself from its wet shell. It thrashed around a bit and then coiled up. I watched on with the open door letting the snow blow over my shoulder.
All of a sudden this small, dripping, black, shiny endless snake shot towards me. It travelled up my leg and under my coat, under my sweater, under my shirt. I screamed and felt it burrow into my skin. My blood poured out and soaked into my wool sweater, into the cotton of my underwear and flannel of my lined of my pants. I threw my body to the floor in the hopes of beating it out of me. I thrashed and screamed, the wind howled and the snow blew around me.
Then I felt the warmth of this thing coil around my heart. I felt it take away all the things I was afraid of and all the worry. I walked into the blizzard and it told me again, "Don't worry."
And that's how I came to you. Five miles is a long walk to a neighbor's house in the snow and the cold and the wind. But sometimes these things have to be done. Don't be afraid. After all, you've heard my story right? You won't be able to be afraid when it's done...
User Reviews
Submitted by morello (user info) at 2008-10-03 15:11:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
NOT a JM work.
Submitted by Adamdidit2u (user info) at 2008-09-30 09:52:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice job.
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-30 03:05:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2008-09-29 19:58:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hmmm. This was almost a 1.
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2008-09-29 18:21:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
:)
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-29 15:44:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-09-29 14:31:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i agree about the ending. i put the last period on the end of the last sentence at midnight so i didn't really have much time to work on it.
my fault though.
Submitted by no1hasdis (user info) at 2008-09-29 14:02:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Decent. The end was a little anti-climatic and could have had the fials uspense flushed out more, but all in all a good concept and a decent read. Bonus point to make up for Jack using his harmon alter to try to bring down your rating.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:38:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:43:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Either Method or Apollo below, I'm not sure which.
I'm sorry you got dragged into this.
=====
It's like a line from the worst movie I'll never see.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:19:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
wait i thought harmon was an oathmeal one.
goddamn schizophrenics.
Submitted by stucker (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:54:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Harmon below, *obviously*.
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:53:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow Jack, you're a real piece of shit
Submitted by Harmon (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:51:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
STFU DIPSHIT!!!!!!!
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:45:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Harmon (user info) at 2008-09-29 16:38:11 BST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:43:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Either Method or Apollo below, I'm not sure which.
I'm sorry you got dragged into this. Thanks for an enjoyable read.
Submitted by Harmon (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:40:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
My ASS could write a better story than THIS!!!!
Submitted by Harmon (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:38:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:34:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by stucker (user info) at 2008-09-29 10:47:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yes.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-09-29 07:35:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
oh that was amazing
i lie i never read a word
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2008-09-29 03:45:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
little clunky, but rather good regardless
Submitted by Gyro_Gearloose (user info) at 2008-09-29 02:14:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by UnknownEntity (user info) at 2008-09-29 01:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
kinky
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:36:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey, you wanna make out yet?
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:31:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:27:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/m/88378 is my expectation of writing from you.
On an unrelated note I've an idea to make a series of porn movies call Double Stuffed Oreos.
You can figure out what it means.
How would I go about doing this?
--------
you can sell it to an agent or video company, or raise the money yourself for a crew and performers. if you do it right you can make it under $5k.
adn seriously i've had too much tot drink and rushed. all of my horror stories are based on nightmares i ahve though. i will try to have better nightamres :p
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:28:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:12:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The ending was a bit anticlimactic, and it could have used a bit more proofing.
====================
Certain -0.06 reviewers should shut the fuck up.
Good job, Katy.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:27:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/m/88378 is my expectation of writing from you.
On an unrelated note I've an idea to make a series of porn movies call Double Stuffed Oreos.
You can figure out what it means.
How would I go about doing this?
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:15:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
dude i've had a bottle of wine and four hbeers and did this in 45 mins. YOU do theproofing. i am incapacitated with the advent of a day off :p
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:12:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The ending was a bit anticlimactic, and it could have used a bit more proofing.