Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine My brain is cruel to me.

See, I have all these ideas for stories. Problem is, my wicked brain gets up, runs and hides after it spits something out that I think might be fun to write.

Last night it spit out "Last of the Dead Hot Lovers" for a title. Then it spits out a quick bit of "the magic returned in 1973. for my part, I now have a ghost of a former lover haunting me, looking for resurrection. Problem is, she was a bad guy, a powerful witch, and I really don't want her back. But she wont leave."

From there, I know I can start to write the story, and get three or four pages into it, then my brain will bunk off for a quick smoke and disappear on me.

My brain doesn't like me.

Some of the best stories in the world are just a few pages long.

Writing is pretty much all about discipline. I've got none, which is why I have nine single paragraph blurbs for every completed story. I just lose interest. Sometimes the story is completely written, in my head, and it just isn't quite interesting enough for me to sit down and type it out, so it just floats around in there, sometimes forgotten for years, until something reminds me of it, and I again think, 'Nah, not worth writing down.'

I have crazy amounts of creativity, and just lack the will to sit down and type when I'm *not* 'in the mood,' which is pretty much what separates real writers who get paid for their work from people like me.

Agreed that writing is discipline. It also involves writing multiple drafts and giving oneself permission, in the words of Anne Lamott, to write a "shitty first draft."

Creativity is easy. Coming up with ideas is easy. Seeing an idea through to fruition takes hard work.

Well said.

HHW said "follow through is my biggest enemy" much better than I could.

Yardwork has taken over my leisure time universe. I love my greenery but I miss writing. Though I think overall the gardening yields more tangible returns and I'm better at it.

Still, if it weren't for the whole fanfic thing I wouldn't even be here.

See, that's where my perfectionist tendencies fight me. I tend to craft the first paragraph until it's "right" before even starting the second. That method takes forever and wears me out.

Then a few months ago I had to write something, and my internal censor must have been on vacation. I just threw down some thoughts for the whole piece, jumped around in it and developed bits here and there, moved stuff around or threw it out. It was still work, but it felt more free and it got done a lot faster. Why didn't I give myself permission to do that a looong time ago?

Last of the Dead Hot Lovers

The year was nineteen seventy-three. The world was in the grip of post-hippie terrorism, grim and gritty realism movies, and hidden away from the rest of the world, magic returned. Don’t ask me why, how, or for what reason it returned, I’m one of the little guys. We aren’t told anything because if we were, according to the government, we would lose our shit.

Personally, I think that’s just a cover for them to do their dirty deeds in the dark and get away with them. Anyway, the magic came back, and suddenly the world wasn’t just dealing with uberpowerful countries, rich people that controlled the world with money, but with people that might have been considered nothings before, but suddenly had the power to melt people into puddles of goo with a spoken word, or turn acres of forest into towers of ash, or crystal, or basselopes.

The amount of power these people wielded, the range of talents went from being able to barely change the color of their eyebrows to making 50 megaton nukes sit up and dance in pinafore’s, was staggering. I hear that one woman took about 3000 acres of Nevada that was pure desert and turned it into her own personal jungle, complete with mythological animals.

I got a talent too. I get to see and speak with dead people that I have known in my lifetime.

I can’t tell you just how thrilled I am about it.

Take my great grandfather, for instance. I was three when he died. He was an abusive alcoholic that died when he drove his truck into an electrical station by accident. Just imagine the wonderful conversations I have with him. Then there’s the guy that used to work at the gas station that died when I was fifteen. I think I said maybe five words to him in my lifetime. Turns out he was a sexual predator that liked to abuse little boys.

It’s not all bad. There was Ginny. We were childhood friends until she moved away. Turns out she died three years later from childhood leukemia. Such a joyful gift. I like talking with Ginny, but even in death she's still just a child. It’s gone such a long way to change my life for me. I mean, I’m at the top, baby. The pinnacle of my career. I am the manager of the Zippy Mart. That’s right, I didn’t get transmutation or the ability to create whole spells out of thin air. No, I got dead people yakkin’ in my ear all hours of the day and night. Nothing like waking up at three a.m. to hear some dude you met three times in your life’s ghost masturbating to the three stooges.

But, the world has changed. Along with Homeland Security for terrorism, we have HORSE, or, less colloquially known as Homeland Occult Restraint Security Enforcement agency. The HORSE agents are more known by color than anything else. You know, Red HORSE are enforcers, White HORSE’s are healers, Black HORSE’s are combat mage’s. And their authority is…well, they are like the IRS of magic. They were given the power by a scared government, with the rules they were to play by to be figured out later. If you get that I don’t trust them, it’s okay. No one else does either. Even the government that created them is scared of them.

And because of it, we are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s more like we are the land of the constantly monitored and home of the stepped on by boot jacketed thugs.

But, most folks like me are pretty much ignored by the HORSE agents. We simply don’t rate. Our abilities are so slight that you could put hundreds of us together and we wouldn’t amount to much more than a man with an extra arm in a hole digging contest. We would still lose to the gal that can move things with her mind.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t paranoid. HORSE can conscript anyone they want any time they want with no notice. People have been disappeared by them never to be heard from again. I freely admit to being paranoid about HORSE. Doesn’t mean they aren’t watching.

So, after three days of seeing strange cars parked on my street, in that dead giveaway cheap-government-no-frills make that they use, I started to get edgy. And it was closing time. I had about fifteen minutes to go when I could lock the doors, close the till, and make my way home to my crappy apartment, my crappy tv, my crappy internet service. I was seriously considering just crashing in the back when Aunt Harry burst through the wall the drink freezers were against and yelled at me.. “Jonas, they’re coming for you! HIDE!”

“What?”

“HORSE, Jonas. I heard them. They’re coming for you when you leave. You’ve got to hide!” Aunt Harry was frantic, which was worrying. Aunt Harry had been the towns only known transvestite. Harry James, called Aunt Harry by nearly everyone, was a calm person in life, not given to acts of panic or stressful actions. And given that Harry had died from hypothermia after saving a dog that had fallen into a pond and going in to save it himself, Harry was one of the few ghosts I trusted. Panic was not his thing.

“Where did you hear it, Aunt Harry?”

“The dark car in front of Bassett’s. There are two men, wearing those secret service earpieces. The radio in their car was giving confirmation for your pickup. They had a photo of you on the dash and there was enough coffee in their to make Hollace Hall Senior Citizens dance the mambo, honey.” Okay, I said Harry wasn’t one to panic. I didn’t say that Harry never queened out at times. “Oh, and the third one, in the back seat… Third Eye, baby.”

Shit! Third eye’s were powerful mages. They had the sight. They could not only see the dead, they could control them a bit, they could see futures, and do divination about a person with only something that person had ever touched before. Shit agin’.

“Harry, thank you. Now get out of here. Go, before they drag you into this.”

Harry ghosted towards the wall of drink freezers again. “Allll ready gone, Honey. Be careful!”

I started thinking furiously. HORSE was after me. Why? I was a nobody. A nothing in the scheme of things. I wasn’t involved in any underground groups. I wasn’t part of a resistance. What could they want with me? At the same time, my mind was thinking of exits. How the hell could I get out of here without HORSE catching me? It’s a freaking convenience store. It didn’t exactly have panic rooms or secret exits that led underground to someplace several stores over…

Dammit! Yes, it did in fact have a secret exit. Well, not a secret exit so much as a hole in the back wall that had been boarded over when a couple of guys had broken into the store with a sledgehammer a couple of months back. They had mostly stolen things that amounted to a bad case of the munchies since no money was left on the premises outside of the steal vault in back. And that was only the quick change money for opening in the mornings.

I checked the till. Less than a hundred bucks. Okay, I didn’t give a shit about that little money. Trying to act natural, I headed for the office in back as easily as I could. Inside, there was a hammer that I started using to bust the two foot by four foot piece of plywood over the hole in the wall. On the other side of the wall was our store trash bin, which stunk to high heaven. When the hole was big enough to climb through, I headed back to the front and pretended to work the counter again. Satisfied that no one was headed for the store, I again went in back. But this time, I left a note for Jimmy, the owner, saying I was sorry for leaving like this, and dove for the hole.

I kicked the plywood out of the way and found the edge of the trash bin. As quietly as I could I pushed it far enough away from the outside wall to squeeze through. When I was fully outside, I waited for a moment, trying to hear over the hammering of my heart. As far as I could tell, nothing was headed for me.

My crappy car was out. They would be watching that. And I figured I had maybe five minutes left before the agents would be in the store. That’s if the Third Eye wasn’t watching me now, which I had to assume it was.

I’m not rich, I’m not special. I’m a nobody. But the one thing I am is a runner. I don’t mean a coward, I mean a runner. I love to run long distance. I regularly do five miles a day and never get sore from it. So, I did what I know. I ran. Down the alley, out onto Prescott Street, sprinting a block until I could make the small alley beside Tamlin, and then I quarter doubled back through the parking lot of the pharmacy until I was out of the business section and into the residential. Zippy Mart has a loose dress code, so I ditched my shirt and was down to shorts and sneakers. Just another jogger in a town that seemed to have way to many for it’s size.

All the while I was thinking. Where could I go? How could I get there and avoid HORSE? What could I do for money? The thoughts seemed to spring to mind in the same rhythm as my footfalls. Out of habit, I was checking my heartbeat with my watch as I ran when I noticed a young woman up ahead of me. She was dressed in a green long coat and had jet black hair that hung around her head and shoulders in waves. I was almost up to her when I suddenly realized why she looked so familiar.

Sally Fortham.

Sally was my first lover. She had broken my heart when her abilities manifested and she realized she could do much better than me. And she was stone cold no doubt dead as a doornail. I put on a burst of speed out of pure terror and dodged out into the street to swing round her. No good, she simply stuck out a leg and tripped me…from over ten feet away.

That’s when the headlights I had been to stunned and distracted to notice before blazed up on high and shuddered to a stop in front of me. Two men dressed in black stepped out of the car and looked down on me the way a kid with a magnifying class would look at an ant.

“Jonas Lynch! HORSE wants you!” There was a flash of light, a sudden moment of blinding pain behind my eyes. And then, mercifully… things went black.

Gonna try to finish this. I'll keep dropping updates to the story as I get them done...If I do. >sigh< I don't have high hopes for that though. I'm already losing the story.

I woke up in a room with no view. Literally. The only view possible was of the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor of the room itself.

We're rooting for ya, Rick! You can use this thread to get more ideas and support for your story.

It's shaping up quite nicely, and you use the "narrator" style very well.

Thanks, Ibby. I appreciate it.

I had been stripped while I was out and now wore a plain brown jumpsuit. No socks, but I had those hospital slippers on that did nothing to keep your feet warm. They felt like blocks of ice, so did my hands. The lights, what lights there were, were recessed and behind what looked like lexan plexiglass. Thee were no seems around the lights, so there was no way I was going to pull them down and screw with the electricity.

The cot I had awoken on was a simple army cot with nothing on it either. The door was a sliding lock door that disappeared into wall when opened, so no place to hide.

So, lets access. I'm locked in a room with no tools, no way of opening anything I could crawl through since the air supply came through line vents only six inches high around the floor and the door was out, no way to fake any kind of weapon. There was no toilet or sink. Basically, I'm screwed. That's when the ghost walked through the wall.

Holy Shit! It really was a ghost. It was dressed in a manner that was consistent with clothing from the 1920's. The ghost was male, and wore a suit with a top hat, like you might see in an old black and white movie with Myrna Loy and William Powell.

Get it? There's no way in hell I knew that ghost in life, because he was an old man when he died, and that was long before I was born. What the hell?

Okay, be shocked and wonder about it later. I need information, so...

"Hello. I'm Jonas."

"Are you a murderer? You look like a murderer."

"What? No. No, I'm not a murderer. I'm a store clerk."

"Just as well, I cannot abide murderers. Filthy bastard did me in for my money. Never trust accountants. They can kill with a pen stroke."

"That's...good advice. I'll remember that. Umm...like I said, I'm Jonas." I didn't hold out my hand.

"Millard Hamilton, Esquire. At your service.' He raised his tophat and saluted me with it.

"Nice to meet you Millard. I wonder, can you tell me where I am?"

"Given your present location, it would seem perfectly obvious where you are. Prison, young man. If not murder, may I enquire as to what you did to wind up here?"

"Millard, I can honestly say I have no idea why I am here. I wasn't lying when I said I'm a store clerk."

"Hmmm. Well, you obviously have a touch of the eldritch about you, as you can clearly percieve me." Millard stroked his ghostly goatee and seemed to lose himself in thought.

Any time, pal!

I think it's awesome having a protagonist who can speak to the dead who ISN'T scared of that. It allows you to explore the ability with a lot more depth.

that's what I'm going for here. Plus, action, intrigue, and maybe a little hot monkey somewhere's to spice it up a bit.

Can we have a gorilla instead of a monkey?

And now, somehow, there will be a zoo and a ghost gorilla.

Millard stroked his ghostly goatee and seemed to lose himself in thought. He was a bit portly, even in ghost form, but Millard carried himself with a certain dignity that men of wealth seemed to in his day. Even so, a bit of him seemed to fuzz around the edges. I had found that to be common with ghosts, especially the older ones. Over time, their essence seemed to fade a bit and they became less… I don’t know..”real”, to me anyway.

I had tried to find out as much as I could about ghosts when my “gift”, use the term loosely, had shown up. It wasn’t going away as far as I could tell as a kid, so I had to make the best of it. I had found out that, unlike the stories, ghosts weren’t “tied” to their place of demise. Instead, they could move around as they liked. But, some just couldn’t seem to shake the events that led to their deaths and were sort of shackled in place by their own inability to come to terms and simply leave. As well, they couldn’t harm me physically. There wasn’t enough about them in the physical world to allow them touch anything, much less be dangerous with objects or themselves.

Ghosts could, however, cause you to harm yourself. I had met one particularly nasty fellow by the name of Cletus Wentz. Cletus was just like he sounded, a nasty redneck in life that thrilled to bully and harm others. His ghost walked around with a meat clever in his skull. He beat his wife one damn time to many, I suppose. But, just because he was a sadistic redneck, that didn’t mean he wasn’t smart. Cletus figured out how to lay an illusion over small things, maybe in a radius of about fifteen feet. Doesn’t sound dangerous until you realized he could cover over pits or holes, disguise a skill saw as a lint remover, or trick you into using a pistol to blow-dry your hair. And because of Cletus, I discovered one other thing about my “gift”.

I can end ghosts. They can’t touch me, but I can touch them. I can end a ghost, and if I choose to, take their memories as my own.

Nasty. Who in their right minds would want the memories of a guy that changed tires for forty years and retired to sit in a lawn chair all day reading Hollywood rag magazines and farting continuously? Took me two weeks to get rid of old man Townsend’s memories.

So I looked at Mr. Hamilton’s ghost and thought about pulling his memories in to find out where I was, but didn’t. Firstly, it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. I had no idea what the hereafter was like, but I didn’t really want to go there with a bunch of red on my ledger, just in case. Secondly, if I did, then I couldn’t use him to scout and warn me of any problems…if, that is, I could convince him to do so. Thirdly, he might know a way out of this cell. I don’t always get to choose which memories I get. Depends on the strength of the ghost. And frankly, even though he was hazy on some edges, to still be around after nearly 90 years meant that he would be a formidable take-down.

“Millard, are you familiar with computers?”

“No, Sir, I am not. They are, I fear, beyond my scope as an ALE.” That was a new one.

“ALE? What’s that?”

“After Life Entity. An unfortunate phrasing that I have picked up during my short time here.” Okay, progress. He obviously knows where he is.

“And here is…?” I left the question hanging. People just seem to respond like that. Something else else inside most people pushes them to fill in blanks.

“The Lighthouse, of course.” Millard regarded me with a thoughtful look, again. I was hoping he was doing so favorably, but I suppose a bit of lawyer’s poker face remained after all this time.

“The Lighthouse?” Okay, lets hope it’s based on a literal idea, not a figurative one. “So, that means that wherever this is, it’s near a coast? A coast…”

“I can see no harm in locating you. The Lighthouse is a government holding facility in Maine. It is used to house those with abilities the government deems dangerous. Quite simply, Here Be The Worst Of The Worst!”

“Maine!? Damn.” There went all thought of possibly getting a message to one or two people that might, possibly, maybe, sorta…be able to ask some questions for me. “Millard, the last thing I remember is running from some HORSE agents. I was working at the Zippy Mart. In Denver, Colorado. Sally Fortham, an ex-girlfriend…who’s also an ALE, by the way, stuck out a ten foot long leg and tripped me, two agents hit me with something, there was pain, and I woke here. I promise you, that’s all I know.”

“As a defense attorney, I have no doubt that some innocent souls have been the targets of pursuit by the constabulary over the centuries, Mr. Jonas. But I have no way of determining if you are such. I am sorry.”

“Mr. Hamilton, if you cannot get information from the computers, would it be possible for you to overhear what is being said about me and tell me? I would at least like to know why I have been kidnapped from my life by these thugs.” I didn’t hold my breath, but it was a close thing.

“It is possible, all except for the Warden’s office. It is guarded most powerfully. No spirit can enter as a barrier of some sort, impenetrable by myself at lest, has been erected around it.” He paused and looked at me. “It should be noted by you that while I will attempt to fathom what has occurred with you, should I find your story to be an untruth, henceforth there will be no communication between us. And as you are in solitary, and they have devised a means by which you can have absolutely no contact with the living if they so choose, I may be your only companionship for some time. Are you still certain you wish me to investigate?”

“Yes. But please realize that the government can say anything they like, the little guy rarely has a chance to refute.”

Hamilton looked at me gravely over his glasses and goatee…and then faded from the room.

Alone again. Maybe he would return, maybe he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. I looked at my cell again, trying to figure where the listening devices and camera’s would be. I settled in for a long night.

-------------------------

Cardimon settled back into his chair, thoughtfully. Jonas Ashe had been in the cell for nearly twenty four hours before regaining consciousness. Cardimon wasn’t happy about that; his agents had been informed that time was now a factor and to bring him in as easily as possible. Instead, they used the Scrambler on Ashe and knocked him the hell out.

Cardimon didn’t realize that he had sighed heavily as he sat back in the cheap swivel chair. But his assistant, Melanie Brant, Mel for short, heard him. She had never seen Cardimon be anything other than infinitely cool and calm, never rattled. He never showed fear, and he never seemed tired. But right this moment, waves of fatigue were rolling off her boss. She glanced down at the clock, did a little calculation and realized that her boss had been awake for almost thirty hours.

Mel knew that Cardimon wasn’t young any more, he had been a fixture at the Lighthouse since before she had even known of it, and she had been with the Complex for nearly eleven years, straight out of college. There was more gray in his hair than black now, though it was the color of iron, and not washed out white. He was whipcord lean, even in his had to be fifties (Mel had no idea what his real age was, she wasn’t cleared for that knowledge), with age and responsibility lines in his face. He didn’t smoke or drink as far as she knew, but he had that weathered, beaten look that so many women of a certain age find incredibly sexy. Mel didn’t think of the Boss that way, but she knew other women that did.

“Which ghost was he talking to? Do we know?” His voice was quiet, but rough, like a lifetime spent outdoors in bad weather. Deep bass, it reminded her of a rock avalanche.

“No, Sir. We can track them sometimes, but we have no real way of identifying them without a talker. And with Genovese…” Mel faltered there.

“Genovese is dead, Barnett. We have to move forward.” Cardimon said, with a flat inflection. He wasn’t unkind, but people would never figure him for warm and cuddly.

“Sir.” Barnett’s voice didn’t crack, but it was a close thing. She had seen Genovese’s body, what was left of it.

Be patient, Ibby. I have to write when I get the chance. Still working on the Gorilla.

Aw Rick, I'm just enjoying your story as you unfold it! Don't feel pressured on my account.

Hey, i'm just glad you posted. i came here today to check to see if you had. That was one helluva storm. Glad you are okay.

Aww rick Thanks, your concern means a lot. Thankfully, my area was spared from the brunt of it.

Mother Nature sure is a harsh mistress.

So, google drive...

I had taken this stuff and put it on google drive, and added some to it, but not ready to post it here, first. Go to look for it, and the whole entire file is gone.

I think I'll invest in some memory cards.