Dandy Darkly

Grave Cliche

Mrs. Bond looked down at little fourth grade me, all dark eyes, pale skin and serious demeanor and cautiously asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

My reply, "Dead."

The class had done water color and crayon drawings of our future ambitions, all of them worthy of inclusion on any family refrigerator. There were brave astronauts, United States presidents, happy mommies... and mine. I'd drawn a house with smoke swirleys coming from the chimney. My dog, Possum, woofed in the front yard, and beneath the meticulously drawn blades of green grass was a little coffin. And there I slept. My arms folded across my chest.  

The principal called my mother, of course. It hadn't been the first time. Wouldn't be the last.

Having met the dead version of myself almost two weeks ago, I wonder if ten year old Dandy Darkly would find some bit of comfort knowing his revelatory artistry eventually comes to fruition. But then again, it doesn't take a psychic to know we all end up dead. It's the coming back from the grave that's the tricky part.

And about that...  

I am a bit concerned that I'm all icky and Voldemort-ified when I, presumably, have my First Death and come back. Really? Tattered robes? Skeletal frame? Black coffee with no milk? As an out and proud gay necromancer, I'd hope to be more of a fashion icon for aspiring young, gay exorcists... 

I've been processing what I saw that night on the floor of my former waitressing job. And also considering what to do with the Metrocard given to me by the alternate-me, the rotting self who finally responded when I conjured a witch's brew in search of an identity. The brew was a nasty one, really old recipe. ... I can't help but smile because... as vain as it sounds, the rotting me seemed pleased that I'd decided to use such a dark means to communicate with it. 

I remember rotting me squatting above waitressing me. It was bitchy. Very me. Everything was freezing cold. I do remember flashes of something else though, a blue business suit. I really want to believe it was me. A future me who eventually regains his power and comes all the way back in time to save me!

That's awfully sentimental, ain't it? There's really no room for sentiment around these parts. More than likely future me ends up pledging my eternal soul to some lower power, who in turn gives future me enough influence to put the dominoes in  motion to my ultimate demise... And let's consider those flashes of the the blue suit, and the cliche nature of the robes, the swarm of flies, the skeleton... this entity, whether it truly was me or an illusion, was deliciously malevolent, enticingly so...

Sure bells and whistles are sounding off, but when gauzy sentiment meets power hungry madness, the resulting combination is wonderfully distracting.

I haven't discussed any of this Ms. Margerie. She had been helping me down a less wicked path as of late, but now... I honestly can't live like this. Powerless. Useless. So fuck it. If this is the path back to even some sliver of the abilities I once had, I'll be skipping down that aisle wearing toddler skin slippers. I mean it! Line the toddlers up!

... Alas, who am I kidding? Of course I have reservations. I'm not the soulless demon in booth twelve. Yet. I can't help but think some (all?) of my past misdeeds are the reason this shitstorm was brought down on my goat's blood drinking ass. But I can't start playing mind games. Thinking about past lives or future selves. I have "Lost" for that. All I can focus on is the present. And presently I have this worn out, expired Metrocard given to me by an undead future version of myself.

I need to do research before I swipe this thing at a train station. I've written before how such places are powerful areas of spiritual influence. I also need to read up on accounts of meeting oneself, dead or otherwise. 

At least research is painless.

Curiosity Killed the Kitty Cat Clock

Try this at home, kids.

Take a jagged shard of glass, let it touch down on the surface of that milky white, twitchy moon that is your eyeball. Then dig out that fucker like it's a carton of vanilla ice cream and there's a line of screaming brats holding plates of birthday cake that need a la mode-ing. Then if THAT doesn't make you pass out, begin hammering a half dozen steel carpentry nails as hard and as deep as possible into the bloody remains of your former baby blues or greens or browns or hazels. THEN take a welder's torch and set the whole thing ablaze so the heads of the nails fuse into one molten, metal candle, and the imbedded ends of the things grow hot enough to singe the surrounding tissue, and you'll ALMOST have the headache I have endured for the past week.

It's all my own fault.

I tried to discern the identity of that mystery spirit sitting in booth twelve. And the backlash busted every blood vessel in my head, knocked my legs out from beneath me, caused a discernible panic among all the patrons (they fled into the night) and I chipped a fucking tooth! Oh and I lost another job. Patrick the perpetually sweaty fired me for being a clutz. That was after he ventured back into the ransacked diner, dishes broken, glasses smashed, frost covering the floor in patches. I'm lucky my walking papers didn't come with a court summons.

So Saturday night, there I was toiling at Hipster Burger. I was totally slammed, but still booth twelve was vacant the entire night, except for that familiar spectral presence. I won't deny I'm a competitive asshole at times. But now, here we were packed and still the hostess refused to sit booth twelve with customers. Alas the subtle influences of the paranormal world kept my booth empty, night after night. Sure I had other customers, but when you're so focused on the evil in an empty booth, how can you possibly be on top of refills and ordering some drunk asshole's burger medium rare. Goes without saying my tips weren't that great. Who the hell comes to a greasy spoon for exquisite service anyways? 

The Devil, that's who. (Or so I thought...) So there I was. On the wall, the smiley cat clock's little paws were inching towards midnight, the witching hour. Patrick continued to remind me to refill the sugar in booth twelve, food getting cold, to restock clean dishes, blah, blah, blah... but all my senses were aimed at the shadow form with his long skeletal fingers stirring that black cup of coffee...

I don't know when I decided to risk it. I'd brought some things with me, but who doesn't carry bits of human bone in their pockets? Enough was enough. This entity, his passive aggressiveness, had pissed me off. The kitty cat clock struck twelve. It was go time! I poured myself a cup of hot water. I nicked my finger so a droplet of blood formed. I pulled a few items from my back pocket; dried bone, a small brown and white feather. Facing booth twelve, I spoke beneath my breath:

Old crone's stew

Poison foul

Rancid marrow

And feathered owl

Crooked finger

Child born of sin

Pull back your hood

Fiend or friend!

With the final syllable, I downed a shot's worth of the bone, blood, feather tea and my physical world tripped out HARD! Patrick's sweaty face spun completely upside down. He was rattling off food orders backwards from his forehead. And then, like a raindrop rippling a swamp, his face simply collapsed in on itself leaving a featureless orb in it's place, like he had a beige egg on his shoulders. Everyone in the diner had featureless heads, yet they all watched me. Then the pain hit. I crumpled. The eggheads all reacted as one group mind and bolted for the door, screaming.

I'd fucked up the spell. Something had gone wrong. Why were they reacting this way? (Logic would suggest because I'm a freak, but again what use does logic hold in my world?) I was vomiting blood at this point, not all of it mine, most of it a distasteful after-effect of stirring up such a nasty, old-world witch's potion.

And then I felt the chill. What had spooked the cattle wasn't my distress: I'd finally gotten the attention of the ghost in booth twelve. It was no longer sitting idle. Now it was standing above me, the dirt crusted linoleum began to freeze as the entity regarded me at it's feet.

The kitty clock mewled like a feral cat, spinning on the wall before launching itself across the room. All the tables jumped and shook. Germ covered silverware rattled likes tambourines. Dishes and glassware cracked and shattered.

I looked up, barely able to open my eyes from the blinding pain. The thing's image shifted between dirty black robes and a midnight blue suit. I felt it crouching towards me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to drag myself behind the service bar. This was the end. The final, fucking bitter end! "Do it!" I thought. "Let's get this shit over with." The thing's breath was close to my face. A putrid combination of rotting meat and stale coffee.

"Finally, you asshole," it bitchily hissed in my ear. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for you to grow the balls to do something? ANYTHING?! God, you're pathetic." I gazed into it's sunken, gaunt face. I felt the brew's charms working. I gasped. Like, seriously gasped!

"Yeah, yeah... Listen take this," the creature pulled forth a worn Metrocard. It pushed the bit of plastic into my hand. "Don't lose it. You'll need it again... someday."

And then the spirit vanished into a cloud of buzzing flies. And immediately the police and fire department stormed into the diner. Right on their heels was my manager, his piggish features sadly returned. He seemed unphased by the enchantment and sfter a weak "I think we're going to have to let you go" speech, Patrick ordered they carry me out on a stretcher. I refused and proudly limped out of the diner to find myself a cab.

Remember when Pandora opened that box and all the evils of the world came flying out? But for all the pain and suffering she'd unleashed, there was still a tiny glimmer of hope at the bottom? For all my vomiting blood and painful headaches and loss of power, I have seen my own glimmer of hope in the darkness. But my personal salvation hides in a despair darker than the bleakest of mankind's trivial worries. And the being in booth twelve has given me the means to begin my journey into the abyss.

The entity in booth twelve, it was me.

Half Empty

Humanity craves the Extreme sandwich.

They put french fries on a sandwich, along with mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers. A swaggering jock-bro named Tommy seeks immortality with the invention of his very own Extreme sandwich. But Tommy will only get his name on the menu if our over-achiever-over-eater consumes five Extreme sandwiches in under forty five minutes. Tommy fails and vomits in a trash can. Folk legends aren't what used to be.

And up next on "Extreme Pig Outs" is the Heart Attack Cafe where waitresses (too-dog-faced-to-strip) wear nurse's uniforms and serve calorie soaked lunches to grossly obese, chauvinist pigs. A sweaty, chinned beast that resembles Tommy-at-fifty propositions a nurse-waitress for "mouth-to-mouth" after sucking on a lard slathered "quadruple by-pass" burger. The burgers are named after cardiac procedures and the establishment's owner is named, simply, Dr. Jon. 

Dr. Jon is not a doctor, by the way. Yeah, your world is rocked. Mine was too.

"Dr. Jon" informs the viewer that there's a grand reward for the littlest of sins: gluttony. Eat the whole thing and your choice of nurse will roll you out to your car in a wheelchair, and if you weigh over 350 pounds then you eat FREE, for LIFE! 

FUCK YOU HUMANITY! 

Fuck you. I'm HAPPY I'm powerless to save you. I've spent months freezing and starving in third world ghettos pursued by the nastiest creatures unimaginable, all for this? So fat Tommy can eat for life at the Heart Attack Cafe? Yep, I'm feeling bitter. Yep, I'm feeling useless. And for the first time in my life, I'm watching daytime television. And it's not a good thing! 

My new nighttime occupation serving less-than-Extreme sandwiches continues this miserable eve. Where once I vanquished nightmares and creatures of darkness, now I'm the vanquisher of midnight munchies at a Williamsburg greasy spoon. Once in Hungary a ghoulish horde cried for my brains. Now a hungry horde of guylined hipsters cry for organic, "violence free" fare. My secret words of power, once so familiar and now powerless, have been replaced with "do you want fries with that... sir?". 

And every single night, a shadow sits in booth twelve. 

And it recognizes me for what I once was, and what I am now: a failure. It pours sugar into a phantom cup of jet black coffee. And Patrick, my persistent manager, constantly reprimands me because booth twelve's sugar is half empty, but he doesn't understand what is sitting there! HE DOESN'T SEE IT! NONE of the sickening cattle who squat in those filthy booths and stuff their smacking mouths SEE it. You're all meat and bone and chicken fingers and nacho cheese ... and there was SO MUCH MORE to my life before all the death was taken away from me, and by the very fuckers who claim to protect you, the Church! That's the hilarity of all this. 

Maybe it's Death himself sitting in booth twelve? Is the master of The Void stirring his black coffee with a crooked, boney finger; his eyeless sockets fixated on my repetitive actions. 

Fill the sugar... 

Place the sugar... 

Fill the sugar... 

Place the sugar... 

Fill the sugar... 

Suddenly I'm one of the trapped repetitive specters I so pity. No...

I think I'm more like fat Tommy (aka fat Humanity) than I realized. My skills were renowned. I was on that menu board. I practically wrote the menu! Five extreme sandwiches? Fuck that. Give me eight, ten, a dozen! Destroy me and I will still be stronger than anything you can shove down my throat! (Vaguely sexual, yeah?) But it wasn't that midnight world who made me choke. It was Man himself.

In all my pride (another of our littlest sins) I failed to see my own arrogance had corrupted my journey. And here I am. What will happen if I don't fill that sugar? If Death runs out... will it be Patrick (humanity) who snaps first - or The Void in booth twelve?

It might hurt... but let's find out.

Dandy Declawed

I'm powerless. And they know it.

It began shortly after last year's visit by the Pope. Whatever dragged me into my bedroom wall and spit me out on the other side, it stripped me of my Mojo. 

Fuck. It sucks. I've tracked down very little information regarding the ritual, The Purification. It's also known as a "tarpit baptism." It's pretty much a high fiber colon cleanse of the arcane kind. I guess I should consider myself lucky. Everything I've read says the loss is instantaneous and results in madness. I've been capable of exorcism, but with less and less success, and am I mad? Honestly not sure. So don't know if this speaks to their skill or my primary attempts to banish the mark, but life has been hell for the past six months. 

It happens like this. You know that sensation you get when you're with a special someone (or in my case utterly alone) and things are getting sweaty and heavy, and you're about to... you know? Well, when I got a spook in my sights, and those words are rolling out and I can feel this vibe from the ground running into my legs, reaching up and grabbing my hands, running up my backbone, into my brain, and that euphoric sensation when you're about to... you know? 

BLAM! 

It's like a sniper puts a bullet through my brain. Nowadays the pain put's me on the ground. It started off just as numb headaches. Now the pain lasts about three days; needles behind my eyes. It's awful.

And as I said, the deadly ones know this dandy has been declawed. I feel them following me. Hear them while I sleep. And the shame of it all. Faces push forward from walls, sidewalks, tree bark and mock me, leering and laughing. Whispering and hissing.  

But the passive ones. The ones I used to talk to, bid goodbye to softly and serenely. They're too weak to even see me, to realize I'm there to help them. I'm invisible to them. They'll stand there for an eternity before stepping in front of that moving truck, or flying a kite on an overcast day, over and over and over. And I can't set them free.

Its gone. All of it. So... welcome back.

Life sucks.

T’Ain’t No Valley Low Enough

Snow on the first day of spring? The forces of darkness are afoot.

Those Black Party boys better double-stuff some seriously high pig bottoms this weekend, because I expect glistening rosebuds (of the floral kind) by Sunday, not the destroyed catcher’s mitt kind that will be on display following the annual leather-sex-party- celebration of spring’s glorious return.

Seriously.

I’ve never been to the Black Party myself. (But I do certainly have an opinion of it!) However my occult studies in London did take me to a sacred valley in Ireland where I witnessed the conjuration of satyrs and an embodiment of Ostara, a fertility goddess – the Celtic incarnation of Persephone, herself. Let me tell you bitches something, it was breezier than a Summer’s Eve commercial!

So there I was, a guest as a favor of a friend of a friend. Honestly, those lesbian priestesses did NOT want me there. Said I had too much “taint” on my soul – they didn’t like my reply that I’ve "barely had enough t’ain’t anywhere on me!" That didn’t win any smiles from the high Gaelic priestess who relegated me to a far away patch of grass and said if I interrupt the proceedings I’d be kicked out of the stone circle. So me, my t'aint' and my tainted soul sat there and watched (yes, very impressed) as these womyn of the wyld worked their charms, and brought spring back to the Emerald Isle.

They sang a chorus of songs. As each song progressed their singing was accompanied by the sound of flutes. And one by one an orchestra of small, hairy, hoofed and horned men gently pranced from the tall grasses. They walked first as though curious, but then quickly joined in the revelry. They spun and danced. Their wooden flutes trilled delightfully.

I’m not sure if it was the witches’ spells, the presence of the mythological creatures or the hallucinogenic seeds I was fed before the ritual, but something seized me. I suddenly found myself clasping hands with the womyn and skipping-to-my-loo among the circle of stones. The High Priestess smiled and allowed my entrance freely. My taint had dissolved!

And then the whitest, purest light flooded the ritual space. And the High Priestess suddenly appeared taller, even more regal. Her ears tapered into fine points and her blond hair cascaded down her narrow body and seemed to weave itself into the vibrant green grass. Her features were sharp and delicate, like a fairy queen of Celtic mythology. All around us flowers of every shape and hue grew and unfolded. Yet, something darker was happening in my periphery, was it the sacrifice of a pig? A frantic,  high pitched squeal became mixed within the chorus of singing voices. The satyrs wove the flowers their beards, and we laughed and sang. Everyone laughed. I laughed! I actually laughed!!!

And then I passed the fuck out. I ALWAYS pass out!

When I awoke, I was back where I’d been sitting. The witches were cleaning up from a picnic feast. The High Priestess came and sat with me. We discussed what I’d seen, the satyrs, her embodiment of Ostara. It was all very surreal, but very serene, very peaceful…

Perhaps I’ve been too judgmental of the Black Party. In many ways my transcendent experience matches the jubilant reports I’ve heard from my friends; horny, furry men with “flutes” in their mouths; women taller than life, glammed out of proportion beyond everyone else; a pig’s frantic squeals; music and decorations, men passing out.

I now regret deriding the annual party earlier in this discussion. In fact such a catharsis, Black Party or woodland valley witchy Celtic Goddess summoning, would likely leave anyone super-jazzed for springtime, regardless of wobbliness hobbling home or unexpected snow on the streets. I respect you, satyrs. I’m simply not ready to relinquish my t’ain’t to the beat of the Black Party.

Yet…

Quoth the Raven, “LOL.”

Associates of mine have berated me as of late for apparently losing my sense of humor. They say all the doom and gloom and portents of the spectral apocalypse have really been bumming them out.

Well, whatever!

Perhaps in another incarnation I had more of a jovial regard for what is comparably the fleeting fire of a match stick next to the eternal, frozen torment of undead existence. Being me isn’t exactly whoopee cushions and knock-knock jokes, but that doesn’t mean the world of spooks isn’t without a sense of humor.

Being from Georgia originally, I can attest that little of merit crawled its way over the state line from Alabama – unless you’re counting ghost stories. Alabama has a rich heritage of such tales – and one such legend is the many supernatural encounters of Alabama’s very own Arthur Dropsy.

Now Arthur Dropsy appears across several eras of Southern folk legend and across many states – pre and post War of Northern Aggression, colonial expansion, Trail of Tears, the 1996 Olympic Games. In some portrayals he’s African American. In most he’s white. In all of them he possesses a penchant for getting himself in trouble and being a bit of a scaredy cat. There are so many Arthur Dropsy tales, that I’m led to believe he was a dabbler in the occult himself. He was also what we’d consider today to be a homeless beggar and a pitiful drain on society.

But here I go taking the fun out of a simple story.

So one fine day our irascible tramp Arthur Dropsy was hanging out at the blacksmith’s begging for anything that could be spared, when the smithy offered a simple challenge:

“Arthur Dropsy, if you can spend the night up on Haunted Hill in that old witch woman’s abandoned house, I’ll give you the sweetest, biggest watermelon out of the patch behind my shop here.”

Well watermelon was Arthur Dropsy’s favorite food (again, Arthur Dropsy tales do retain a bit of that classic Southern charm) and when he peeked out back behind that shop, he just couldn’t help but let out a little squeak at the size and splendor of those green, ripe watermelons.

“I’ll do it! Ain’t nothing in this world that can scare Arthur Dropsy outta himself a delicious watermelon dinner!”

So that night Arthur Dropsy went a sneaking up Haunted Hill past crooked trees and hidden things in the dark until he found the battered shack from which he’d emerge victorious.

“They say this old witch’s shack is haunted. But I’m not afraid!”

You go, Arthur Dropsy!

And he did - right into that shack. At first he wasn’t afraid. Arthur sat boldly in that shack with broken windows and the wind whistling through the rafters. He even started a little fire in the oven. This was his mistake. Because that flickering flame cast shadows, and from those shadows Arthur Dropsy’s imagination began to work. And before he knew it, he’d done summoned the Devil himself.

Sitting right across from him, the Devil said, “Hello, Arthur Dropsy.”

This Devil was as red as the insides of the juiciest watermelon and his black eyes glittered like tiny seeds. His teeth were so long they cut through his rubbery lips, and his forked tail waved ever so lazily. A pair of long curved horns reached as high as the ceiling, and he patiently tapped the shack’s rotting floor with a pair of goat’s hooves as Arthur Dropsy stuttered out a weak reply.

“Hello, Mr. Devil.”

And then the Devil lunged at Arthur Dropsy to steal up the tramp’s soul and snatch him away to Hell. But old Arthur was too quick. He dashed out of that witch’s shack and hauled ass down Haunted Hill back towards the town. Wolves cried in the night. Bats screeched overhead. And the Devil himself came roaring down the path to catch the soul he’d chased now for years.

Arthur ran for what seemed like hours until he heard the tiny ringing of the blacksmith’s iron. He could feel the hot breath of the Devil right on his neck, but still he ran and ran and ran. As he ran, the clanging got louder and louder. And when the smithy came in view, Arthur Dropsy didn’t slow down one bit.

Instead he cried to the waving blacksmith, “You can forget them watermeloooooooooooooons!!!!”

And Arthur Dropsy kept on running right through the middle of town and out past the county line. And that was the last time they saw him (or the Devil) round those parts.

Hilarious, right?

Bricks and Blood

It was London, and I was twenty two or twenty three. I managed to crawl across the bedroom floor towards the prone form a guy around my age. I pried his mouth open with both my hands. He twisted his head and attempted to vomit blood upon my face. Hateful!

We were both exhausted from our prolonged wrestling match, but I’d managed to pin him with a few secret words – and a lot of rope. And now the ugly part… I hefted a b rick and slammed it into the open orifice. Teeth, blood and rubbery skin mashed in a disgusting crunch. And then four more crunches as I hammered the block of stone deep into his throat. He stopped convulsing and finally laid still.

No stake through the heart. No crosses. He didn’t turn to dust. He didn’t evaporate when I opened the window to let some early morning sun into the room. Instead I dragging the body to the lower floor of the Tottenham flat, retrieved a shovel from my equipment and buried the fiend facedown in his own backyard. And then set fire to the hovel in which he’d digested a baker’s dozen of tramps and almost yours truly. 

So that’s how you kill a vampire in the real world. I’ve only taken out two, but both were extremely arduous affairs. I much prefer exorcising non-corporeal entities. Whereas the “science” behind banishment has evolved over the centuries, the means of bludgeoning a bloodsucker really haven’t. I was reminded of my efforts by a recent article in NewScientist which detailed the uncovering of an ancient skeleton believed to be one of the first vampire killings:

(Italy) A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of
a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.

Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological "exorcism evidence against vampires".

You can find the article (and additional photos) in it's entirety here. Mr. Borrini, be extra wary you don't let the right one in should a mysterious stranger come knocking at your door.

Soul Food

Welcome back to Dandy Darkly's Memoir Macabre! When last we left off, our conflicted protagonist prepared to combat the horrors of the dreaded Soul Eater...

Dandy Darkly returned that Sunday night to retrieve the essence of the young man who'd been discovered decomposing in McCarren Pool's utility shed. He stood before the massive carapace of the rotting building. Powerful emotions: hate, anger and even more hate poured from behind the cracked windows. Dozens of horrid faces floated in the darkness. They smacked their lips in hungry anticipation of the Dandy's grand entrance.

He sashayed toward the door - not quite runway but very, very close - and with a forgotten word from a forgotten time, blew the chained doors off its hinges.

He stepped into the darkness, "I'm here for the boy."

Lord, aren't I always? Hey everyone! It's me in the first person. I'm trying something new tonight because my witch doctor (of course I have a witch doctor) is treating a recent scrape I had with some pretty rockin' painkillers! Wooooooo! I know that speaking of one's self in the third person is a little un-hip right now. Thank you, Suede. But I'm tossing caution to the wind in favor of dramatic license. Enjoy!

Leering faces surged forward from within a wall of inky darkness. A sea of cruel mouths with jagged teeth swarmed towards Darkly. They snapped at him from every direction.

"Phyrex."

An opalescent bubble encapsulated the exorcist. The fearful faces of the Soul Eater reeled from the light, some screaming with seared lips and blistered noses. Others recoiled as though they hit a wall, now missing entire rows of teeth. Their drops of black blood turned to smoke.

Dandy Darkly stood with his eyes closed and quietly chanted to himself.

The white light became a faint yellow glow. The inky wall of hissing faces floated just beyond the amber aura. Judging by the the Soul Eater's size, it'd been eating Williamsburg's bleakest for decades. The many faces pushed forward to attack, to beg for release, to weep, to feed, to share their personal horror stories.

A gaunt woman's grim face appeared from the darkness. It strained as though escaping from tar. She had pretty, deep set eyes. A heroin addict. Her daughter died in childbirth. Some dude took her here on their second date. A homeless man was squatting here. A fight. She awoke hungry for souls.

A tiny ball of the yellow light pulled away from Dandy Darkly's protective circle. It pressed into the black. Darkly shuddered. The madness and misery of the entity was intoxicating, like pressing a golden fork into a slice of decadent chocolate cake.

Another face pushed from the black. An elderly man. Liver spots on his bald head. A World War Two veteran. Boom! His neighborhood became a ghetto. Boom! He cried every night in his pillow. Boom! The damn rap music. Non-stop. Non-stop! Boom! He found the pistol in the laundry. He walked to the pool which Margaret loved. Boom! He awoke hungry for souls.

Dandy Darkly's breathing quickened. A look of pain crossed his expression. A corrupted soul managed to press through the light. It bit Darkly on the hand. The golden ball darted through the blackness nonetheless.

Another snarling face. A cab driver. He sat his entire life in traffic. Streets full of cars. Tonight is the night I get held up. I know it. A car swerved into his lane. He awoke hungry for souls.

Dandy Darkly's hand bled freely. His blood dripped to the floor. Still the golden glow searched.

A murder. A young couple awoke hungry for souls. She was the head cheerleader and he was the high school quarterback who took the team to state. He called her disgusting names and demanded she perform degrading sex acts. Death cured her eating disorder as she frantically gnashed her teeth in Dandy Darkly's direction.

He continued to chant with his eyes closed. Another mouth snagged his pants leg. The tiny golden ball flickered from deep within the murky darkness, but didn't go out.

More pitiful images sought an audience. A suicidal beat cop. Two sisters so horribly burned from an apartment fire that their faces seemed to melt into one greasy wedge, like a floppy slice of pizza. A young man who'd stumbled into a shed looking for a blowjob. HIM!

"Phyrex Mundi!"

The tiny yellow flicker exploded into a brilliant burst of blinding white light. The silver image of a young hipster was sent hurling from the side of the terrible essence. The faces howled as one and turned in ravenous pursuit of the released soul.

"I OFFER AN EXCHANGE." The exorcist held a toothless skull before the black cloud which immediately halted its pursuit, but still hung near the silver form - like an ominous thunder cloud above a shimmering horizon.

What had so caught the attention of the Soul Eater? In the physical world the skull had belonged to a confessed murderer, but in the spirit world it chained a malevolent soul. The hulking figure still kicked and jerked just like it had in that Texas electric chair.

The petty soul of the mugging victim was a morsel compared to the hateful, murderous, sumptuously evil buffet which Dandy Darkly daintily dangled as barter.

"This one for him!" Forked tongues licked cracked lips. Pupils dilated as they examined the offer. The heads nodded as one. Darkly casually tossed the skull into the far corner of the room.

The Soul Eater lunged for its dinner.

The murderer's soul howled in pain as countless vicious mouths gnawed into him. Dandy Darkly briskly walked to the liberated soul. He swiped a small ring through the shimmering image. The young man's form vanished. Outside the building, the little Ghost Girl pointed and giggled as though to tattle on Darkly. He merely rolled his eyes and walked away.

The howls of the murderer echoed across McCarren Pool, but eventually became one with the satisfied burps of the engorged Soul Eater.

***

The next weekend I personally delivered the ring (his high school class ring - gag!) to the client who'd contacted me. She was a close acquaintance of the deceased. The soul wasn't exactly happy, but "he" was now able to receive a proper goodbye and ended up in a better place. The family too. And I got a nice wad of cash as payment. Oh, and my costly materials are included in the final bill.

Executed murderer skulls with soul attached are neither cheap nor easy to come by, ok?

Night Swimming

The Little Ghost Girl ran around the perimeter of McCarren Pool screaming for help.

"Help! Help! ... Help!" Her pale arms waved in the July night.

"HELP!"

I was in the center of the drained expanse, sitting in lotus with my eyes closed. A tiny white candle flickered - sending wobbly shadows across the empty pool's walls.

"HELP! ... HELP!!!"

"SHUT UUUUUUPPPP! No one cares! I'm not here for you, anyways."

The ghost retaliated and showed me her death mask. Suddenly I was underwater. The little girl hung limply above me. A bubble escaped from her lips. Her eyes matched the color of the water, and her blond curls were a halo framing a peaceful, angelic face. Two more small bubbles. A lifeguard launched himself from his observation chair, and a blond mother in a corset style swimsuit shrieked.

"Help! HELP!"

...and I was back sitting crosslegged in the empty pool. The Little Ghost Girl of McCarren Pool dashed in the opposite direction around the massive (originally built to hold close to seven thousand swimmers) concrete bed. Her cries for help eventually faded away.

But she's not the only ghost that haunts McCarren Pool - just the most famous. Behind the rotting walls angry anonymous eyes glared from broken windows. In some places the grafitti moved - slinking together to form vaguely humans yet vaguely feral faces. The Greenpoint music venue simmers with indifference on weekends as area Hipsters cram skinny jean leg to skinny jean leg - and it absolutely burns with malevolence once the sun sets.

Ghosts HATE Hipsters.

Tonight (especially) the haunts were in a ruckus due to the morning discovery of a badly decomposed body in a nearby shed. With local imaginations dreaming up all sorts of spooky shit, The Void was sucking up the fear. And all the OD'd junkies, murdered vagrants and one little drowned girl were out in full force as a result.

I was there to reach through all the uproar and track down the soul of the dead male discovered in that shed. Unfortunately - I'm pretty sure any trace of the poor guy's soul was dragged into the abandoned building hiding what now felt like a particularly nasty spectre we call a Soul Eater.

Soul Eaters are when two or three particularly corrupt souls perish (usually via a death pact) and merge into one and then have to eat souls to maintain and grow. The more souls gobbled up means the bigger it gets. NOT a pretty sight after a few decades. The more I thought on it, the more certain I was that the many spirits I had originally felt were actually just One. Big. Pissed-off. Soul Eater.

And the soul I was searching for was in there too... poor thing.

I'd need to come back with some firepower. Good timing too, the NYPD showed up. I blew out my candle and discreetly left. Apparently, someone heard a little girl screaming for help.

So I'm heading back to McCarren Pool this weekend... Fun. 

Alligator Tears

The bent form feebly leaned against the stained wall, totally ignored by the morning commuters. But I noticed him, of course.

Love handles (the result of a good life) and in his late fifties, he wore polished alligator skin shoes. Like some lost used car salesman who accidentally wandered off his Texas lot and into Gotham's labrynth, he also sported blue polyester slacks and loud tie. But curiously, "he" wasn't really there-- not in the same way that a departed soul manifests in a fixed spot. But wow - whatever he was, he was really bright.

Bright is a term we purveyors of the paranormal use to describe a spectral manifestation's visual accuity. Imagine an image ranging anywhere from a grainy, black and white screen to a high definition color monitor. (Some MIT parapsychology professor created a scientific scale and mathematical formula for defining brightness, but I leave the numbers to the amateurs who host those retarded ghost chaser shows on America's suckling teet, the television.)

Back to bright. Like I said - whatever he was, every detail was availabe, from a tiny teardrop rolling from under his giant reading glasses to a pale band around his ring finger where a wedding ring had recently been removed. Such vivid encounters are a rare treat.

It was 2001 - almost a year after 9/11 and I'd only been in New York for a month. I was considering  wandering further northeast to explore Boston, but this very encounter convinced me to stay in Manhattan.

I continued to examine the crying man, his face now cherry red and his back leg shaking violently. He cradled his limp left arm like a delicate new born. And then I felt it.

I felt a soul - but not his soul.

This soul belonged to a young man with wavy hair and kind eyes - but desperately not wishing to be seen, He had obfuscated himself quite admirably. But now he stood watching the collapsing man - a figment of his own manifestation.

He looked at the space around him. More people's images, but less detailed, appeared either brushing past the young man or standing with newspapers open but their eyes keenly focused upon the ailing gentleman in those slick alligator skin shoes.

But no one did anything to help.

Panic and anger flushed hot and salty around the young man's blurred form. He stormed down the subway platform. I chased after him, bumping through a crowd of Asian tourists as they disembarked a train in the real world and real time.

The young man's ghost stretched his neck peering over a mass of forms who materialized to block his view. He pushed through them and darted down the subway platform. I followed. His aura spoke of helplessness, but paired with an overwhelming anger toward the authority he was so desperate to find yet so desperate to avoid. The fabulous combination made me dizzy.

His frustration battled a desire for a typical nonchalance that was suddenly rebuked by the unexpected (and pathetic) sight of a total stranger in dire need of help. But no help was available.

The fluffy haired ghost blew back past me towards the brick wall. More figures, the young man's memories of that moment materialized - his memory of the many commuters who stood by and said nothing and did even less to help the dying man.

And yet, the young man, so desperate to remain an anonymous face in the crowd also said not a single word nor offered a hand as the dying man continued to sink towards the sticky floor of that subway platform.

Suddenly a rush of adrenaline flooded my senses. My own pulse quickened as he ran towards the stairs leading up to the ticket booth. Finally the apparition spoke, "Get help! There's a man--", but an approaching train drowned out his plea.

And another wave of blurred forms pushed him down the stairs as more commuters hurried to catch the express train which had just arrived. I caught my breath.

It was the young man's train too.

Indecision now - a huge inhale of it, that pivotal left or right, yes or no, Marvel or DC decision. That moment when we ask ourselves to step up and make the hard - before I could finish savoring the conflict, the young man's ghost made up his mind and stepped onto the train.

I suddenly saw the scene from his eyes. The doors slid shut and the train slowly began to move. The brick wall approached - and there he was in those alligator shoes. The man kneeled slumped against the wall and didn't move. He looked dead.

I thought the young man's thoughts, "Look at those shoes - he deserved it. Fuckin rich prick." And the young man's anger at the man's wealth and his anger at the absent police swallowed his guilt for not doing more.

"I said excuse me, please!"

I startled from my trance. I was standing on the platform where I had originally seen the older man slumped against the wall. His form was gone. The young man's specter/aura had vanished as well. His soul faded back into the crowd as it so desired. Had I even moved at all? Trippy. And that's when I decided to stay in New York.

***

And speaking of New York... the prolific posting prior to my auspicious absence was quite exhilarating. I admit that I hadn't realized the potential for education that this electronic journal represents.

And call me paranoid, but I've no doubt The Void did indeed work its influence to regain the dis-harmony it so prefers. A little blabber mouthing about ghosts and The Void freaks my shit out because of it. Luckily The Void doesn't hold grudges. It blusters, but I can tell it's curiosity is piqued as well.

The Void is weird.

So following my (fated it turns out - more later) encounter with the Pope's modern day witch hunting squad, I spent some time away. I'm pleased to acknowledge that all the portents originally malevolent have returned to a lovely shade of pale lavender, a most calm and spooky color. I use the word acknowledge because I've learned that to acknowledge something brings it into being. Thus it's true. Yay. I love the internet.

So - I'm back.

Also pleased to report that I pretty much quit my temp job - and as Libra's balance would have it, I floated peacefully into a dream job at (set your phasers on nerd) a gaming company.

I am single again, but such is for the best right now. That's just fewer movie dates to cancel at the last minute.

In closing--

There's a calmness that some of the more talkative ghosts refer to before they met their first death. Its like the world simply slows down and the soul which is about to leave that mortal shell can finally take the time to appreciate those last few seconds as it passes into a different reality.

For once in a long time, I feel a smiliar focus and clarity and calmness - and potential. Maybe it's wearing shorts and flip-flops to a job I love, perhaps it was my two months of meditation - I hope it's not that gross out blood baptism courtesy of the Catholic Church, but whatever the reason - things are good now.