by john | Nov 25, 2009 | Real Life, Vegas, Writing
So with Thanksgiving upon us, I guess I’m supposed to list things I’m thankful for.
I’m thankful to be employed. And most days in a job I like. I’d be thankful for a little more freelance work, because that would take a little financial pressure off, but I have limited time to chase that in, so I think I’m good with status quo and a few baloney sandwiches for the time being.
I’m thankful that the reception to our podcast has so far been excellent. With just two episodes released (next one drops Sunday 12/6!) we’re knocking on the door of 1,000 downloads, which is very cool to me. I went into this with no expectations other than to hang with Special K and have a good time, but I think we’re putting a good product out there and providing enjoyment to other folks as well. All that’s thanks to Special K, who does all the editing and the vast majority of the research for our episodes. I’m the funny fat guy on the show, and am perfectly happy to be the dumb one. So far I’ve been amazed at how intelligent he makes me sound, and the bumper at the beginning and end that Tragedy did for us is fantastic.
I’m thankful that my folks are still around, even though it’s less and less so every year. My mom has Alzheimer’s (or dementia, we’re not really sure and I don’t think I care enough to pay attention to the difference) so every year might be the last one that she’s really with us. Who am I kidding? She hasn’t been really with us for several years, but we still get flashes of the woman she used to be now and then, and as long as those flashes keep coming we’ll keep hanging on to them. She’s 76 and my dad is 80, so they’re pretty frickin’ old to have a 36-year-old son, but that’s what happens when you shoot out your last pup at age 40. I think every year that it might be the last one I have with them, so when I get another holiday with them, I’m pretty friggin’ thankful.
I’m thankful that I got Returning the Favor published and the reception has been good from the folks that have purchased it. If you want a copy and will be in Vegas, let me know. I can throw some copies into my carry-on and I will accept casino chips for book sales. A year ago I wouldn’t have considered publishing a book off my old blog posts and poetry, and now I have a copy in my backpack. That’s pretty amazing to me, and something I’m pretty proud of.
I’m thankful that in a couple of weeks I’ll be drinking with some of my best friends in Vegas. I can’t wait!
by john | Nov 24, 2009 | Real Life, Travel
Yeah, that whole post again tomorrow bit wasn’t working out, was it? Anyway, the front pocket of my backpack is pretty packed, but it gets a lot roomier moving backwards.
The second pocket is where I carry stuff that I don’t need that often, more for emergencies. I keep a USB-Car adaptor in there in case I’m in a rental car and forgot my car charger for the iPhone (happens more often than I care to admit). I also keep a small LED flashlight and a glow stick in there. Yeah, one of those snap it and shake it glow sticks. It’s kind of a just in case thing, but when the power’s out, you need a light source, and for less than a dollar, it’s worth keeping one on hand. I also keep one in the glove box of each car and a few stashed around the house for storms. They don’t give off much light, but enough to move around by, and they don’t run out of lamp oil or have their batteries die with no use.
My portable hard drive rides in this pocket when it’s not on the desk I’m working at. I carry a 500GB external HD pretty much everywhere, because it has a super-small form factor and holds all my music, all my family photos and pretty much everything I’ve ever written. And a bunch of porn, to boot! I picked it up for less than a hundred bucks, and it lets me keep my old MacBook plugging along without jamming up the hard drive.
I also carry a point n shoot digital camera with a 1GB SD card. It’s a Kodak that I picked up at Wal-Mart a couple years ago when I couldn’t find my Canon on the way to the airport. It’s worked out fine and takes decent pictures, and I typically am not carrying my SLR camera. I use it less and less since I got the iPhone, but it does take way better photos than the phone.
I turned an Altoids tin into an office emergency kit, with a few paperclips, binder clips and safety pins in there, along with a 512MB memory stick. I took a few rubber bands and wrapped them around the outside to keep the tin closed, and used them to hold an emergency sewing kit to the outside. There’s been more than one time when it’s been VERY important to have a needle and thread on hand, and a couple of spare buttons and safety pins are worth their weight in gold.
The last thing in the front pocket is a Do Not Disturb sign I swiped from a Marriott somewhere. The worst thing in the world is getting to a hotel very late at night and realizing that this is the ONE room in the building that doesn’t have a DND sign for door. So I grabbed one from a hotel and stuck it in my bag. It’s better than writing “Bugger OFF” on a notepad and jamming it into the keycard slot, which I’ve also done in a pinch.
Other things I always have with me are a book, a couple of copies of my book (because I have no idea when someone will develop a desperate need for poetry), a CAT5 cable (preferably 10′) and a notepad. If it’s a trip of any length I also have my noise-cancelling headphones, which I paid way too much for in the Atlanta airport one trip, but have proven themselves to be more than worth the cost every time I put them on. I also keep a couple of small caribiners clipped to the outside of the bag, just in case. Just in case of what I’m never really sure, but a couple of caribiners are usually pretty handy, and they’re lightweight enough not to bother me carrying them around everywhere.
Keeping this bag packed this way lets me grab it and go without having to think about packing, which means that there is less opportunity for me to forget shit when I’m on the way out the door. Having just gotten on blood pressure medication recently, the policy of keeping a few days’ worth of drugs in my bag is more important, as I recently found out what a flaming pain in the ass it is to get a prescription moved to another state in a hurry. So now I just drop in my laptop, portable HD and phone and I’m good to go. Now that cooler weather is here, I’ve moved back into my favorite jacket in the world, which has more pockets than I can keep track of, so I’ll be moving a few things back and forth from the backpack to the jacket, and adding a few trip-specific things like digital voice recorder, business cards, etc.
by john | Nov 19, 2009 | Real Life
Reading Pauly’s travel advice recently led me to think “Hey, you travel a lot, too, but kinda in a different fashion. Why not put together a few tips for frequent (or infrequent) business travellers?” So here they come – John’s tips on travelling light but travelling complete.
Most folks who travel often keep a “go bag,” that bag of stuff that is either ready to go at a moment’s notice, or just goes everywhere with them. In some cases, this is a suitcase with two pairs of socks and underwear, a dop kit and a change of clothes. In my case, my daily briefcase is my “go bag,” more for technology and other things that I find myself needing on a regular basis than a change of clothes. I’m not in a line of work where I don’t have any advance notice of my travel, so I can always swing home and pack before I roll out somewhere, and after spending the equivalent of 1/4 of this year away from home (and I’m not in what is typically a “travel” job) I’ve gotten my packing procedure down pretty well.
But back to my backpack. I replaced my briefcase with a backpack when I realized that two straps is just better than one, and I was swapping between bags when I flew anyway, so why not just settle on the backpack as a day-to-day bag? So I did. It’s a Jansport backpack, black, with a handle at the top that has a piece of neon green gaffer’s tape wrapped around the handle. The handle’s intact, but in a field where black is the color of choice, having something to distinguish your bag from every other black bag is important.
The bag that I carry has a laptop compartment where my Macbook lives, and there are plenty of pockets scattered throughout for all my stuff. Here’s a list of the pockets and the things that I won’t leave home without.
Front pocket – This is where I stash the things that I need to access quickly and frequently. Up front lives a Microsoft Arc wireless mouse.I picked this mouse because of the small form factor, and folding it turns it off, which is nice. Up front I also carry a power adaptor for my MacBook. I have three of these – one lives at home, one lives in my Charlotte office, and one lives in my backpack. It was worth the extra cash for me to not have to deal with wires in the two offices where I most frequently hook up the computer.
There’s also a couple of pens, at least one Sharpie, and a Leatherman in the front pockets. Obviously the Leatherman stays behind when I fly, but it’s an invaluable tool in so many ways. I carry the Leatherman Pulse, which is a newer model that includes scissors along with the traditional file, needle-nose pliers, wire cutters, knife and multiple screwdrivers. It also has a ruler along the back edge and a bottle/can opener.
Also up front live the headphones for my iPhone, which are more backup headphones than anything, along with a USB cable for the iPhone and the wall charger for my BlueTooth headset. I have the Jawbone Prime headset, which I like quite a bit. The headset itself livesin my car, but I keep the charger in my bag for two reasons – so I remember to take it out of the car when I need to charge the headset, and because the adaptor is a USB cable that plugs into a wall outlet, so I can unplug the Jawbone charger and plug in my iPhone USB cable and charge my phone or headset off the same device. I also typically carry my prescriptions in the front pocket, and when I’m travelling I transfer enough pills to get me through the anticipated length of the trip plus one day and leave most of the pills at home. That way I’ve got my drugs with me, but if I’m stupid enough to leave them in the hotel, I haven’t screwed myself when I get home.
Wow, that’s a bunch of shit and I’ve only gone through one pocket! I’ll be back later with inventory of the rest of the bag, which has a second front pocket, main compartment and then a rear compartment with some storage in addition to the laptop compartment.
by john | Nov 17, 2009 | Gambling, Poetry, Vegas
Does anyone have a good plugin or app to keep comment spammers off your WordPress blog? I’m by no means an expert on the format and I get tons of spam comments each day. So I’d love your help if there’s a solution out there that I just don’t know about.
Back in Atlanta this week, working (ish) ’til Wednesday afternoon. Got no plans tonight if you’re in the ATL and wanna get together, let me know. I’ve pretty much settled into a routine of staying at the Marriott Century Center, because it’s convenient to the interstate and thus my office in Midtown. It’s decent, and as of last night I’d locked up Marriott Platinum status until 2011, so I get the concierge level rooms. The nice bath mat and robe in the room is pretty spiffy, but I haven’t taken advantage of the concierge lounge yet. May check that out tonight.
Thanks for all the nice Facebook comments on my poetry contest win a couple weeks ago. It was pretty wacky to me to win the thing, since I’d never entered a poetry contest before. So I was shocked when I got the notification, and pleased because the way the poem came about was really neat. So I read the piece at the last meeting of the Writer’s Club, and it was very well-received. I kinda only started going to this club because my senior HS English teacher is on the board, so that gave it a measure of respectability in my mind. I gave her a copy of my book at the last meeting, and she was touched a little by the gesture.
Nothing really to report, since I had my crushing run at Omaha in West Virginia I’ve since given back $100 to the poker economy of Cherokee, NC on the electronic tables there, and dropped a gross $240 in my home game last week. I kept ending up second best, with draws that didn’t get there, or hands that wouldn’t hold up. I did manage to crack BadBlood’s aces with my kings in a hand that had we been playing deeper I could have gotten away from, but didn’t rake a significant pot for four hours after that.
In the AA v KK hand I had position on Blood, who was very early to act. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t UTG, but it was close. He raised preflop, his buddy Mike called and I three-bet. Now my preflop three-bet range is fairly narrow, and I need to work on expanding that, but I when I took his $3.25 raise to $8, I’d pretty closely defined my range as being a big pair or AK. Action folded around to Blood, who re-popped me to $31. Mike got out of the way and I thought to myself “He’s got Aces, but I don’t have any chips, I wish we each had a pile of money so I could get away from this hand.” But I had less than $40 in front of me, so I shipped it in. Blood called the five or six extra dollars, and I made a set on the turn to come from behind. I did have a bit of a sweat, as the Ks on the turn was the third spade, but I faded the flush and doubled up. It didn’t happen again all night, so I became the spewmaster. It wasn’t pretty.
Hopefully I can provide a better showing for myself in Vegas in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you there, and so is Suzy. We get in relatively early on Thursday and leave Monday, so we’ll be around to party and we’re both planning on playing the tournament. I bet I wouldn’t win a last longer with my wife.
A new episode of the Gambling Tales Podcast is coming up first of next week, with the inimitable Dr. Pauly as our special guest. We’ve got two more episodes in the can after this one, then we need to pick up more material for later shows. If you’ve got a great gambling story, drop us a line at gtpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded and publicized the podcast, the response has been great and we’re having a blast doing it. I think starting in the new year we’re gonna try to do some promotional things, maybe with Cake Poker (bonus code GTpodcast!) in a shameless attempt to monetize the podcast and get more listeners.
by john | Nov 13, 2009 | Gambling
I had seen in him in the cardroom since I sat down, he was obviously a local and was in there a lot. You’ll have that when you’re in the only casino within a couple hours’ drive. I don’t remember his name, it was something obviously Russian or at least Eastern European. We’re gonna go with Andre, even though I know that’s not right, but it’s something in the same phonetic realm at least.
Andre was playing $1/2 No Limit when I sat down, and it took less than an orbit to figure out that he was one of the more dangerous players at the table. He could lay down a hand after he bet it, for one thing, which put him head and shoulders ahead of 70% of the room. He understood the strength of position, too, and had a talent for exploiting weakness in others. In short, he had most of the gears and knew when to use them. He was only at my table that first night for an hour or so before his name got called for a $2/5 seat and he moved on to play at higher stakes.
The next day, we ended up at the same table again, and this time it was for a longer period. I noticed he had on a different sweater, but the medallion was the same. It was a big medallion, and there wasn’t another good word for it. It was probably 3″ in diameter, with a young man’s picture taking up the whole face of it. It hung to the center of his chest on a thick gold rope chain, and it obviously had some significance, as he wore it everywhere. After we’d shared the table for several hours, and shipped a few pots back and forth between us, I finally asked him whose picture it was.
He got very quiet for a moment, and this 50-year-old man, who looked not unlike someone who you’d find drinking straight vodka in a fuzzy hat in a Cold War movie, got misty-eyed at the poker table. He looked down at the medallion and very quietly said “My son.” I let it go at that, not wanting to intrude too much on the real life of someone who I just happened to share the felt with for a little while, but by the mist in his eyes I could see the story of a man who died far too young and left a father behind who will never forget.
by john | Nov 11, 2009 | Uncategorized
Because sometimes it’s all just a slimy mess around here. And the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. Since I got back from West Virginia, I’ve spent a few days in Atlanta, presented a seminar at a church construction trade show, lost $15 in a home game, won a poetry contest, and become (along with Special K) a real live podcaster.
Yeah, Special K and I are launching the Gambling Tales Podcast, which we’re tagging as the best in lies and legends about gambling and gamblers. Our first episode should be up on iTunes any day now, and features the inimitable BadBlood telling one of the few bad beat stories that I’ll listen to without charging the teller $1.
Speaking of bad beats, there were certainly a few laid down at the WSOP final table, more than one by our young champion Joe Cada. I think the kid will be a fine ambassador for poker, and I like the fact that his backing arrangements were all out in the open. It does the game no good for it to be a big secret that people are backed in poker tournaments, it makes things look even more shady than they really are.
I watched a little of the coverage, and thought that ESPN did a better job this year than last year. At least we got to see more than two hands of heads-up play! I did love the way they captured Ivey’s nonchalant response to the 3-outer that Moon laid on him to send him to the rail. Ivey got his money in with the best of it, and that’s all you can do as a poker pro – get your money in ahead and deal with the cards as they fall.
by john | Oct 26, 2009 | Uncategorized
So after spending 18 hours over 2 1/2 days to book a loss of $85 playing Hold’em this weekend in wild and wonderful West Virginia, I decided to throw caution and the remainder of my bankroll to the winds and take a shot at the recently opened 2/5 PLO game.
This is not recommended practice for someone with less than $500 in his pocket. Just sayin’.
But I took a shot for a couple of reasons. 1) I really wanted to play some Omaha, and it was the only game running, and it was atypical that they spread PLO in that casino, as they typically only spread 2/5 NLO, with an uncapped buy-in and a ton of $1,000 preflop raises. Maybe someday.
2) I thought that even with my mediocre skill in PLO, that I quite possibly had an edge over most of the players. While my home game is a haven for bad play on my part on that of others, the lessons in PLO I’ve picked up at Lee Jones’ place and Bad Blood’s joint this year put me in a position to, in my mind, have an edge over the self-taught gamblers who were more prone to play uncoordinated hands.
So I sat down with $200, by several hundred bucks the shortest stack, and proceeded to fold almost every hand for the first orbit. I picked up AAKx single-suited in early position and raised pot after most of the orbit had gone past, and saw a three-way flop. I flopped an ace, bet the pot, and took it down uncontested. I then proceeded to see a LOT of aces over the rest of the evening. I played for about an hour and a half, losing only those pots where I limped in and folded the flop, and cashed out up $450 to go to dinner.
There was a seat open in the same game when I got back from dinner, and it was to the immediate left of the player voted most likely to raise pot preflop, so I took that gladly, and put another $200 on the table. I bounced up and down a little until I got into a big mess where I flopped middle set on an A-J-8 board and called a big bet on the river by the guy who limped with his single-suited aces. I don’t like limping with Aces in early position, which is what he did, but it worked out for him to the tune of half my stack. From there I dwindled to about $125 when I decided to hit nothing but the nuts for the next two hours. I flopped nut straights that held, top sets that improved, and finally busted most of the rest of the table by running disgustingly hot.
We were three-handed when I dropped the ultimate cooler hand on the guy to my right. I had the button and limped blind, because there wasn’t really anything I wouldn’t play three-handed. He potted from the big blind and I looked down to find Ah-Ad-5h-x. I repotted, the small blind got out of the way, and BB called. Flop comes down Ax-Qh-9h, and bells are ringing in my head. But that might have been because I was in the middle of a massage as well as flopping the nuts with a nut flush redraw. He checks, I pot, he calls, and I’m confused. He’s shown a lot of restraint, and usually folds when I fire the flop bet unless he has a monster. So I re-check my cards, and yup, I’m ahead.
The turn brings the 4h, and he checks again. I pot again, and he calls again. Now I’m totally confused, because I’m pretty sure I’ve got a lock on the hand (barring quads), and this isn’t a guy to call off his chips when he’s way behind. But the river doesn’t pair the board, so with no quads there I have the nuts, he bets, I move all in, he calls and I double up after he shows Q-Q-Kh-Jh for the second nuts all the way around. Serious cooler on his part, and he was a little pissed at himself for not giving me credit for the nuts.
Eventually I ran it all up to a little over a grand, then gave a little away on a hand I should have gotten away from. I filled up on the river on a board of 7-10-4-8-7 with sevens full of eights, but called a value bet from the straight flush who tabled 5s-6s. No way I should have called there with the 6th nuts, so I only played a couple more hands and racked up. Certainly my biggest casino win in a long time, and it went a long way to erasing what had been a horrible run so far this year.
If any of you have ever played in my home game, then you’ve met Nate. Nate was the crazy old guy that chased everything in the world, and stacked your ass when he got there. I’m still not sure if Nate was the worst poker player in the world, or the best, but he was as gracious in losing as he was in winning. Nate passed away last Thursday night after a sudden heart failure at the age of 81 or 82. He was one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met, on the felt or off, and he will be missed. Somewhere, there’s a card game where Nate just hit a two-outer and tilted Jesus, I can tell.
by john | Oct 1, 2009 | Fiction
September 22, 2009
Still counting the days by how often the bucket of Frosted Flakes and milk comes around. Today I saw how it gets in here at least. I had figured that there was some opening in the main door, like a doggy door, and I was right. I sat right next to the door and fell asleep there so I’d wake up when they fed me, if that was how they were doing it. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep before I heard the slot open in the door, and I woke up instantly, trying to get some glimpse of outside light to figure out what time it was. But I guess they blacked out the room outside of this one, too, because I couldn’t see shit. Just a bucket sliding out with cereal and a carton of milk and a plastic spoon in it.
So I don’t know where I am, I don’t really know what day it is, and I don’t know what they want from me. Whoever has me hasn’t spoken to me once in the four days I’ve been here. The longer I’m here the more freaked out that makes me, like they’re not talking to me to keep from getting attached or something. Like how you treat an animal that you brought in just to kill – you don’t want to get attached.
At least lunch was different today. They brought me McDonald’s. It was a little cold, so I guess I’m a little bit of a drive away from anything, but it was soooo good to taste a hamburger and fries! When I was done, I looked around and said “Thank You. I don’t know if you watch me, or how, or whatever, but if you can hear me, thanks. That was really good.” A week ago if somebody told me that I’d ever thank someone for giving me McD’s like it was a 5-star restaurant I’d have laughed in their face, but now it just felt so good to remember that there was a world out there, that the whole world didn’t end right outside my walls.
I started working out today. I figured I was bored enough, and if I ever got a chance to try and fight my was out of here, I’d better be ready. I was disgusted by the terrible shape I’m in, though. I could only do seven pushups and only 20 situps before I was done. I did a few jumping jacks to warm up, but my equipment choices are a little limited in my two-room shack. Maybe if I exercise every day, I can get strong enough to try and bust through a door, or a window, or something. There’s got to be some way out of here. I’ve got a life to get back to – parents, a girlfriend, school. I can’t die here. I’m not ready to die yet.
by john | Sep 30, 2009 | Fiction
After re-reading what I stuck up here yesterday, I decided to blow it up and reconstruct the whole concept. So I kept the first-person point of view, but decided to tell the story through diary entries. I have an idea that this could be kinda long, but we’ll see where it goes.
September 18, 2009
Although, to be honest, that’s a little bit of a guess. I don’t really know what day it is, jut like I’m not really sure it’s even day. All I know for sure is that I’m in trouble, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of it, and I’d like to leave some kind of record of what happened to me if somebody ever finds this notebook. Which I guess is doubtful, but it’s about the only thing I’ve got right now, so I’m gonna hang on to that if it’s okay with you.
I guess I should start at the beginning. Or at least close enough to give you an idea of who I am and what the hell I’m talking about, huh? My name is Jason Shorham, and I’ve been kidnapped. I don’t know by who and I don’t know where they’re keeping me, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of here. By the best guess I can come up with I’ve been here for three days, and I haven’t seen anyone in that time. I’m being held in a cabin with one big room, one smaller bedroom, a kitchen, kinda, and a bathroom. It’s pretty comfortable, actually. I guess as jail cells go it’s really nice, except for the fact that all the windows and doors are boarded up so that I can’t even see whether it’s day or night and I can’t get out. Even the fireplace is blocked up with metal sheeting so I can’t even look up the chimney or try to climb out up it. Which with the way my luck has gone this week would be something I’d try, then get stuck up there and die. There’s a bed in the bedroom, and one lamp. There’s a couch in the big room, which I guess would be a living room, and a desk, which is where I found this notebook and some pens. Other than that, there’s a whole lot of nothing. The bathroom has a shower and toilet, and some towels and toilet paper, but nothing to read, which sucks. So while I guess it’s okay for prisons, there’s not much to recommend this place as a vacation spot.
I don’t know why I’m joking. I’m fucked. I’m probably about as fucked as fucked can get. I’m kidnapped, in the middle of nowhere I assume, in a log cabin with boarded up windows and doors, and I haven’t seen any food in three days. Yeah, I’ve been here three days I guess. Or at least I’ve gone to sleep three times and woken up three times, so I’m guessing it’s been three days. I don’t have any way to tell time, the fuckers that took me took my cell phone (of course) and like everybody else nowadays I don’t wear a watch. Why would I? I never go anywhere without my cell phone and usually my laptop, too. But I didn’t dress for kidnapping when I left home this morning. Or Saturday morning, however long ago that was. Fuck this, this is stupid. Nobody’s ever gonna read this shit, and if they do it’ll be because I’m dead anyway, so what do I care?
September 21, 2009
Me again. But then again, who else would it be? It’s not like there’s anybody else here. I figured I might as well write this shit down. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. My social calendar, as they say, is more than usually empty of late. Like I said before I’m not really sure of the day, or if it is day. I can’t manage to beat on the board on the windows enough to get any light through them, so I sleep when I’m tired and get up when I feel like it. Perfect life, right? Yeah, except for that whole locked in a cabin where you have no fucking idea what’s going on part. At least there’s food. I didn’t mention that my captors do feed me, so it looks like there’s a plan to keep me a live for a little while, anyway. I wake up, and there’s food in a bucket in the middle of the floor. Nothing specific, just some bread, some ham or deli meat, crap like that. Nothing to drink but water out of the bathroom sink, and I only have one cup to drink out of. It’s plastic. I guess they think if I had too much glass around I’d try to use it as a weapon, or maybe off myself. But they left me the lamp in the bedroom, with a regular lightbulb, so I don’t know what that’s about. So I started tracking my days by how many times I get fed. I figure when they send down cereal and those little paper cartons of milk, it’s breakfast. When they send down real food later, it’s lunch. There’s only been two meals a day so far, so I’m counting breakfasts to figure out what day it is. But who knows? They could be totally fucking with me and giving me a breakfast every three hours and maybe I’ve only been here for like two days. But that doesn’t make any sense. I know it’s been most of a week at least just by how much my beard’s grown. And how gross my clothes are starting to feel. If you’ve never worn the same underwear every day for a week, then just trust me, it’s not the best thing in the world. I rinsed out all my clothes in the bathroom sink, but then I was just naked and cold and when I put everything back on it didn’t really feel clean anyway, so I just decided fuck it. I’ll try and keep up this journal just to have something to do. I’m sure at some point whoever took me will figure out they aren’t getting any money and let me loose.
by john | Sep 29, 2009 | Fiction
A blend of an odd dream I had, an audiobook I’m listening to and a movie that Suzy made me watch part of inspired the beginnings of this story. It’s pretty dark. Lemme know what you think.
I never saw the face of the man that destroyed my childhood and made my life into something entirely unexpected until he was lying dead at my feet in the middle of the South Carolina woods with a pool of blood spreading out from the back of his head. Up until I leaned over, and with fear-palsied fingers pulled the ski mask and sunglasses off his face, I had no idea what the man who had controlled my every moment for six months looked like. Aside from the unfamiliarity of the face, the sheer blandness of his features took me aback.
This man, who had taken me prisoner, made me into something I never imagined I could be, and had now ultimately died at my hands, looked like nothing. Not even the pudgy innocuousness of a Gacy or the rakish handsomeness of a Bundy. He looked like nothing. Completely normal. Medium blue-grey eyes, mousy brown hair, slightly out of date chin beard. Nothing to distinguish him from thousands of other suburban soccer dads out there in the wide world. Nothing to make anyone think that he might be evil personified.
I stood there with a tree branch in my numb fingers for a while, I don’t really know how long, until finally I threw the branch down next to his body, which was starting to ooze other fluids than blood as the bowels and bladder released with death, and I walked out of the woods and tried to find my way back to something like daylight.
