Day 304 - Triduum Story

Triduum Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

In the distance the wind blended with the cars on the highway until it became impossible to tell the two apart. Somewhere in the night there were sounds of people, of travelers, of those who dared to explore the night. Then there was laughter. And gasps of fear and anxiety from the young who weren’t quite sure if they should be afraid of the dark night or enjoying it. There were the sounds of adolescents fooling around, running and screaming and yelling to one another, and scaring strangers and their friends alike, and picking on anyone that reacted. It was all so very far away and too quiet to be clear, and it was hard to tell what was real and what was imagined or a trick of the winds.

Somewhere beyond all of that, there were the other sounds. There were the creatures that howled at the moon, and the eerie moaning of wailing spirits. The dead whispered and the living trembled. The victims screamed and the haunted cried and begged for their lives.

Even that blended together until it was unintelligible and mostly negligible.

It was all distraction. It was a diversion. There was what went on, what most people thought went on, what they wanted to be going on, and then there was what was really happening. The Triduum of All Hallows was a misguided attempt to remember and honor the dead. It was mostly forgotten, replaced by masks and pranks and candy. But the Triduum had been important. Very important, even if that importance had been forgotten.

The line between the living and the dead had always been a terribly thin line. When the cold and darkness came at summer’s end, the line grew weak. There were holes. There was a blur and a mix and many many things came together to intermingle and cross over.

Honoring the dead had kept them at bay. But time had moved on and the people had forgotten. The line disappeared and the spirits were unappeased.

The Sinner’s Saint closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of chaos. There was a whispering voice telling him to look and see and to judge. He found a sense of clarity within it, a sense of understanding all things both good and ungood. He was given three days to live and experience life again. He was given three days and three nights. At the end of it Death would come calling and he would have to return. But for now he had three days and three nights where the dark blended with life and chaos was king. He had three days and three nights to do as he pleased. And he intended on having himself quite a bit of fun.

Day 303 - Dinner Story

Dinner Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Holiday dinners were the worst – unfinished business and buried resentments always lingered in the air. They gathered because it was the change in seasons. They gathered because they believed in the old holidays, the end of summer – Samhain, when the darker half of the year began and the spirits of the living and dead were close together for one special evening.

Willie didn’t hate his family; he just couldn’t stand them sometimes. He hated feeling trapped. He hated being forced into seeing all sorts of relatives that he wouldn’t otherwise choose to ever see. There were the expectations, the family impositions. He didn’t want to feel frustrated and overwhelmed; it just worked out that way most times.

Kitchen duty – everybody had a job. No matter their ability. Everyone made something. And on the years where distant distant relatives arrived, they made something too. There were always too many dishes, too much commotion, and too much food. It was a feast when a meal would have sufficed. Space was always at a premium. There was only the one stove inside and the grill outside. More relatives meant more dishes which meant longer lines and longer wait times at each station. It was a miracle anything ever got finished in time. Too many cooks, not enough kitchens.

Cousin Lydia brought a friend who had nowhere else to be. When Willie first heard the news he was instantly annoyed. Just because someone had no place else to be didn’t mean they should get to come to his family’s celebration. Willie made sure everyone knew his opinion. When Lydia arrived with her friend Casiopea, he instantly regretted being so stubborn and vocal. She was beautiful with a pale glow to her skin. She was quiet and collected, with a look of tortured wisdom hiding behind her innocent eyes. It made her seem brave, experienced, and a little bit dangerous. Willie was instantly enchanted. He was sure everyone saw his reaction. He wondered if she knew what she was doing. He didn’t really care either way.

Lydia introduced her to everyone, but Casiopea didn’t speak. Willie wasn’t sure if she was incredibly shy or just extremely careful with her words. Some people believed words had power and perhaps she wasn’t one to waste any. Willie planned to ask her about that later, but he had kitchen duties to perform and his cheeks were flush with infatuation, so he quickly fled the room.

Willie’s sister Alexandra was in charge of the kitchen. She had been learning the craft from their mother and this was her year to shine. She made the schedule and she assigned the dishes and tasks. It was her kitchen. She had cleaned it and prepared it and made sure all the proper ingredients were there. She was making something special for each course of the meal. She had a secret dessert she wouldn’t tell anyone about, except to promise them it would live up to the suspense.

Cousins Mikhail and Nadia, twins, crafted a stew which had been brought over from the old country and handed down for generations. They swore it held special ingredients that promoted heart health and mental astuteness. Willie swore it held special ingredients that made a repugnant smell beyond belief. Everyone would taste it though, because that was what they did.

Aunt Rochelle rolled dough for meat pies. She never let anyone know what exactly was in the filling. She wouldn’t even say what type of meat it was. She cooked it there, but she always premade the filling, not wanting to reveal what it was. “A touch of this a touch of that,” was what she’d say when asked.

There were too many people trying to work and not enough space. The fires were burning and the stove was on, so the room was far too hot. Willie couldn’t stand it. He was sweating from the heat and from his embarrassment. He told his sister he would come back. Alexandra didn’t care. She had more important things to worry about at the moment.

Later, they ate. Plates were full and dish after dish was brought forth from the kitchen. Alexandra managed things with a smile, even though she was nearly uncontrollably anxious inside. Willie made sure to grab a seat next to Casiopea. Her reticence continued, but she finally did say a few choice words to him. He savored every one of them, even though he didn’t always know what they meant.

They sat around the table and feasted. They ate like beasts. Grease and juices ran down their faces. Bits of meat and drips of sauces stained their shirts. Blood mixed and fingers tingled. They licked their lips and felt the flavors wash over them. They drank it up and felt the spirit of forever inside them. There was a family connection and love and kindness and smiles and general good cheer.

At one point Casiopea tried one of the meat pies. She licked her lips and nodded in approval. She looked to Aunt Rochelle and quietly asked, “What is it?”

Everyone looked back and forth from Casiopea to Aunt Rochelle. The room was silent. Aunt Rochelle never told anyone what was in her pies, but there was something so sincere about Casiopea. She had been so silent all day; everyone knew her words were precious. They all watched the confrontation with bated anticipation.

Aunt Rochelle smiled and in a deadpan serious voice, replied, “Not ‘what’, dearie. Who.”

There was a moment of silence. The family looked back and forth.

Finally Casiopea laughed a loud boisterous laugh. Then they all did.

Alexandra sighed in relief.

Dinner was a success.

Day 302 - Roast Story

Roast Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Telling ghost stories around the bonfire at night was a time-honored tradition at camp. Almost as common and endearing as roasting marshmallows and making s’mores. Countless boys and girls had spent countless warm summer nights at Camp Stony Rivers telling tall tales and exchanging humorous anecdotes while gorging themselves on junk foods.

Clichés about camp always took a similar turn – there were the horror stories and then there were the love stories. Boys became men and girls became women. New arrivals always had the hope that theirs too would be the classic tale of youthful indiscretions that surrounded the summer camp mythos and inundated the dreams and expectations of adolescents everywhere.

There were many typical types at the camp. There were the misguided youth. There were the dangerous types. There were the mischief makers and troubled teens and everything in between.

Like all summer camps, there were the arts and crafts projects, along with physical challenges and the opportunity to handle violent weaponry and act like it was educational. Target practice with BB guns. Bow and arrow marksmanship tournaments. During the day they swam in Lake Handsome, but never at night. No, never at night. At night it was something else altogether.

At night there were the bonfires. There were songs and dance. They learned to cook over an open flame. They told their stories. There was comradery. There was the group. The bonding and togetherness of the unit. Camp was never an individual event.

They told ghost stories at night and tried to scare each other. They told them all and they smiled and laughed. They poked fun at those that jumped, at those that were scared. They did all this, with outward bravado and false swagger, if only to cover their own true fears.

There were so many tales – rumors and urban legends of terrible terrible things that had been done. There was a crazed loner in the woods who wanted to punish children because of their innocence. There was a hunter who hungered for human flesh. There were ancient and evil spirits, awakened by the campfire songs they sang, that wanted to possess the bodies of the young. There was a beast, a mammoth creature, half Sasquatch and half man, trapped as one because of an ancient curse. There were witches that used children’s souls for their spells.

They told stories, and by telling their stories the spirits came true. The wicked and wild energies swirled around and infected everything within its grasp. Their fears fed the furies. Their anxieties became bloodlust. They looked into each other’s eyes and the wicked was where there had been innocence before. The darkness rose up inside them all and transformed the night. They danced the Dances of Dreams. They performed the Ceremonies of the Ghosts. They called to the underworld and the underworld answered.

Horror stories always told the tale of corruption and evil deeds, and that was what they had become. They had become the living embodiment of those stories. They embraced it and gave in to it and transformed fully. The others, those that did not, would soon become sacrifice and pay the price.

It was camp. They had a bonfire. They did what people did at camp. They whispered into the night. They embraced that which would be fright. They sat around and had a roast. They roasted their friends, quite literally. They cooked fingers instead of hotdogs, baked organs instead of tin foil wrapped potatoes, and looked their former friends in their eyes and ended up toasting those instead of the marshmallows. In one night, they became the very stories they had previously so gleefully mocked.

Day 301 - Beach Story

Beach Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Hamilton came to the beach and waited. He watched the waves and felt the sand between his toes and tried not to think about it. He couldn’t help but think about it. It was impossible not to think about it. He could feel the death all around him. That’s all there was here. It overpowered everything else. Certainly other things had occurred here from time to time, but the death was overwhelming. It was all he could feel.

Behind him in the woods there was darkness. He did not want to turn around. He did not want to look at it. It was perhaps darker than the beach itself. He didn’t want to know. The beach was enough. It was almost too much. He didn’t think he could handle any more than that at the moment.

The voices were everywhere. The shouts. The pain. They all called to him. He could feel every single one of them. So much pain. So much suffering. It was all so needless.

Hamilton had been hearing them for days. He had been feeling them for days. He was drawn to the beach. It was like a beacon, reaching out to him. He didn’t want to go, but he needed to find a way to make things stop. It was driving him mad. It was too much to handle. He needed it to stop.

It was a lovely beach. The waves came in calmly and gently. There didn’t seem to be too many rocks or anything dangerous like coral reefs. There was no indication as to what killed them all. It was just an ordinary beach.

Except that it wasn’t an ordinary beach. It was a beach of blood and death. There were souls that had been ripped apart and scattered to the winds. There were spirits trapped in agony. It was a powerful force that emanated and rippled forth from this spot. It spread in all directions across time and space. The spiritual energy created from that one moment of tragedy created a spectral life energy that could not be undone. It was too powerful.

Hamilton had spoken with the dead before. He had helped a few ghosts and dispatched an unruly poltergeist. He had never wanted this ability, but it was one that he had and he couldn’t ignore it. At first he believed that they had called him here, that they were looking for a way to move on, and that they thought he would be able to help them. But there were too many of them, their power was too great, and there was nothing that he could do.

Hamilton sat on the beach and listened to the waves crash against the shore. It did nothing to muffle the screams of sorrow, but it gave him something else to try to focus on. They were like the tide. They came in waves. They were like ripples in a pond. Their energy had to spread and hopefully slowly dissipate. Over and over the screams came. Slowly. Over and over. He sat and waited as they slowly played themselves out and moved on. The ripples spread over time. He had no idea what was important about this beach or why there was so much blood and death here. Perhaps there was a great battle that had happened here in the past, or perhaps there was one yet to come. Many people had died. They had been slaughtered. Their misery to be felt for years to come. Hamilton sat on the beach and let them wash over him and felt what they needed him to feel, and slowly, ever so slowly, they began to wash away.

Day 300 - Neanderthal Story

Neanderthal Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Two point five percent. It seemed like such a small number. It seemed perfectly logical to try and do better. To maximize potential. To make things better.

Two point five percent. They had been bigger. Stronger. More adaptable. Biologically prepared. They were survivors that didn’t survive. Certainly that could be corrected.

Two point five percent. Give or take a little. But as an average it worked. Two point five percent was what remained. The Neanderthal was gone, but not forgotten. The Neanderthal still walks free today. They are everywhere – around us, beside us, inside us. Most people had no idea what they possessed inside. They all still had Neanderthal DNA – somewhere around two point five percent. It’s an average, a reminder of just how close at hand history still stands. Gone but not forgotten.

Why had Homo sapiens survived and the Neanderthals died off? Testing suggested that human and Neanderthal DNA were nearly identical – ninety-nine point five percent or greater. So close, and yet so far. They co-existed, cohabitated, and yet the Neanderthal was gone. Homo sapiens survived, for any number or reasons, and that was seemingly all that mattered.

In truth it’s never that simple. Two point five is so very little and yet it’s an incredible amount. The human genome had been mapped out, so they went to work on the Neanderthal’s.

The quest was to make a better person. The question was how. They looked for the answer in the DNA. They wondered what could be increased or decreased or changed or spliced or removed altogether. They were looking for the magic number, the perfect balance. They were trying to make things better. What they ended up with was entirely different.

The urges were dirty urges. The desires of the flesh. The desires for blood. The beast inside. The animal. Just waiting to GET OUT and run wild. It begged to be free. It fought to be free. The beast was coming, and there was no stopping it.

They wanted to make things better. What they made were monsters. They didn’t mean to. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t control it. They couldn’t master it. They unleashed in into an unsuspecting world. What never should have been suddenly was, and the blood and destruction that would follow was all that mattered now.