Jeg smider sgu lige min anden short story "House Call" her også. Jeg har fået lidt forskellige reaktioner på den. Dog vil jeg ikke komme med dem her da det er bedst folk læser den uden forudindtagede holdninger baseret på andres udtalelser. Den er lidt længere end "Watch" men ikke mindre ond og mørk. Booyaa!

House Call

He looks at this mother and smiles. She doesn’t smile back because she doesn’t see it. She’s too busy worrying about the welfare of her little girl. Katie went quiet 4 minutes ago and it has been the longest 4 minutes in this mother’s life. She feels like praying but is there any point when you don’t believe in God? Does God hear even the non-believers? She can remember when her parents took her to church and she sat there listening to the priest talking about salvation, belief, love and devotion to God. She spent most her time in church counting the stripes on her dress or looking in her father’s notebook even if she didn’t understand half of what was written. She has never prayed in her entire life but now it seems like the right thing to do…the only thing. It’s funny how people become religious when tragedy hits them. She can remember actually believing in life after death when her mother died. All of a sudden it seemed logic that her mother was in heaven and that she was with grandmother and granddad and that they were happy. It helped her get through the pain of losing her mother. But even then she didn’t pray and God never entered her mind.
He stands up from the chair he’s been sitting in for the past five minutes and walks into the kitchen. She wants to run into the bathroom to see what they’re doing to Katie but she can’t. Arms and legs are not supposed to bend back this way. But they are and it hurts. At least she’s no longer bleeding. She can’t stand the silence and feels like screaming but she remembers that that caused the bleeding to start earlier. She has no more blood to give. Except for Katie whom she would die for if necessary.
He comes back into the living room. He looks at her. His eyes seem black even though she noticed they were green when the three men entered the house. He has a scar on his forehead and his hair is crew cut military style. Perhaps that’s where he got the rifle that was pointing at her and her daughter just minutes ago. Katie had started to cry because her arms were tied back too tight. One of the men asked her to be quiet, but she wouldn’t listen. Her crying was what brought this mother back to her senses. It felt like she had been asleep for days. Opening your eyes only to see your daughter being slapped by a stranger holding a rifle only makes you want to close them again. This mother had screamed along with her daughter. The shortest of the men had kicked her hard in the back of her head causing her to fall down from the couch where she was seated. As if being tied up wasn’t bad enough, lying on the floor face down, tied up, was even worse. At one point she was close to drowning in a pool of her own saliva, tears and blood. Now the only life that matters is her daughter’s. The house is so quiet.
“Did you see how my friend was looking at your little girl?” asks the man and looks at this mother still smiling. She had seen it and she had hated it. She opens her mouth to answer the man but no words come out. Not even the only word worth saying: why.
“I would like to tell you that my friend is being nice to your little girl,” says the man and wets his lips. “Unfortunately, that would make me a liar. I am a lot of things but a liar is not one of them. Remember when we came into the house and I told you that we were here to pick up something? Again, no lies.”
Now he’s laughing. This mother is still trying to get the one word out that she’s been wanting to get out ever since the first knot was tied when they forced her arms behind her back.
The man leans forward. “How old is she anyway? Nine? Ten?” This mother coughs but finally manages to say something. “Ten,” she says and lets her head fall down to the floor again.
The man, seemingly not too interested in the answer, gets up again and this time he goes to the bathroom. This mother is starting to lose hope. She mouths the words “my baby” but no sound fills the room.

Her legs are spread apart and her panties are cut into laces. This is not the havoc created by a pair of scissors or a knife. The damage was done with simple words. Words so simple that they seem even normal and mundane. Words like, “bitch”, “whore”, “honey”, “slut” and “precious”. The words were spoken only minutes ago and yet they have destroyed 10 years of evolution. She cannot see anything. She knows the damage done to her because she has felt it with her own hands, her own mouth and her own soul. The remains of her soul are in those laces. The passing of the soul numbed her briefly but she can still feel. Anger, fluids, shame and guilt drench her body.
Her palms itch and her shoulders hurt from being in this position for what feels like an eternity.
A conversation goes on about her state of mind. Again, they laugh and she wonders if she’s been punished for not understanding what’s so funny. Maybe she’s the cause of their laughter. She remembers the man at her school who told her class that one of the greatest gifts a person can have is the ability to make people laugh. Even if achieved via agony and death it has to count for something. She tries to smile but fails to make use of whatever muscles make that happen. She frowns without any problems.
The men still smell sweaty but she has learned to live with it. She spent an entire school year learning how to add three or more digits together but this she learned within minutes. After she vomited upon having the smell of sweat violently forced into her noise, they made her take back what was once hers. She had started to cry but they made her do it. After a couple of tries she succeeded. She never asked what the point was since her mother usually just cleaned up stuff like vomit and never spoke of it again.
Now it had become a thing that triggered further punishment and a radical change of likes and dislikes in connection with what you ate. “You are what you eat,” one of the men had said and here it became truer than ever.
It sounds like somebody is singing somewhere. She sees a tunnel of light and remembers seeing this sort of thing in movies. Knowing what it usually means there, she is scared. Her ankles touch as her legs are violently crossed and she can no longer support the enormous weight of her own head. It drops and so does she.

My mother takes my hand and together we walk on what seems like a path made of stone. The wind is blowing and I feel the remains of my panties graze my thighs. My palms still itch and it’s being made worse by my mother holding my hand. She looks at me and I want to make a comment about her using too much red on her cheeks. However, she tells me to be quiet even before I finish the thought. The man is there. He’s looking at the both of us and he smiles. He’s dressed in black from head to toe and he’s clean-shaven. He looks like everyone she has ever seen.
“Welcome,” he says to us and tells us to sit down in the chairs in front of us. We sit down as told still holding hands.
“I hope you like the chairs,” he says and looks at my mother with an angry look. “My son made them. He is quite the craftsman.”
I look at my mother and I see a look of terror on her face that I have never seen the likes of before. Her bloody bottom lip is moving, dancing up and down and the side of her face gets wet.
He looks at me. “Katie, are you ready?”
Even though deep down I know the answer, I want to ask what I’m supposed to be ready for, but when I try to speak my mouth fills with vomit and blood. It stains my naked body.
“So dirty, so used. Such a little, filthy bitch!” The man stands up and points his little finger at my left arm. The itching in my palm gets worse and all of a sudden my arm is ablaze. I laugh and the vomit and blood runs like a river out of my mouth. My mother screams and I swing my flaming arm at her to make her shut up. Her hair catches on fire and she panics. The man looks at her and does nothing. My mother’s wings catch fire as well. Her screams now seem to annoy the man as he goes over to her. I stop laughing and swallow the vomit in my mouth.
The first punch floors my mother. The first kick keeps her down. The first stomp makes her quiet. The final kiss turns her into ashes. I look at the man and I wipe my lips. My one task in life has been completed.
“Is it necessary for me to tell you why this happened to your mother?” asks the man and sits down in the chair next to me.
“No,” I answer and look through the flames coming from my arm and see a blue dot slowly disappearing in the horizon. He puts out the fire by gently blowing on it and he embraces me. It feels good and warm and for the first time in this life I feel happy and complete. The sky is filled with birds and the sun shines through a hole in the clouds. A little white dove separates from the other birds and lands on my right shoulder. It looks at me with sweet, comforting eyes and I smile. I make a little sound with my tongue to make the bird come near my face. It does and the man smiles too. I get up with the dove still on my shoulder and shake the man’s hand.
He says, “Now Katie. The understanding of life is difficult and few have succeeded. It’s not about believing in me or believing in someone else. In fact, it’s not even about believing in yourself. My job is to oversee the doings and especially wrong doings of all mankind. Someone makes mistakes and lives on without scars. Others make mistakes and never get the opportunity to tell others about them. The men told you that you are what you eat. That is true. You are what you place inside your body. But it’s also true that you are what you leave. Whether it’s a house, a womb or a family, it becomes a part of you even after you’ve left it. The spawn of evil must be destroyed. I’m truly sorry.” He looks at me still smiling. I wonder why he’s sorry, but the air is so warm and everything is so wonderful that I won't be bothered with it.
I start walking down the path which has now turned to sand and it weighs down my feet as I walk away. After eight steps, I stand still. I turn my head and see the face of my mother in her final agonizing yet peaceful moment and I scream. The white dove twists its little head like a dog hearing a sound for the first time. It chirps, “see you in Heaven my love” and rams its beak into my eye.

Fredag suttede røv - så er det sagt. Jeg tilbragte stort set hele dagen under et tæppe imens jeg enten halvsov eller så TV. Forkølelse, hovedpine og ondt i halsen var på programmet.
Det går lidt bedre i dag men er ikke på toppen endnu.

Jamen hvor meget rules det ikke at have så ondt i halsen at man er nødt til at stå op kl. 5? Jeg begyndte at få lidt kriller i halsen i går aftes og det er da kun blevet værre siden og kulminerer altså nu hvor jeg så er stået op (og føler mig sjovt nok utroligt udhvilet efter 4½ times søvn).

Her er så min short story "Watch". Enhver kritik vil sføli blive mødt med glæde. Enjoy...

Watch

I leave the gas station, walk past an old man with a dog and start walking down the street. For some reason I start wondering about whether I’m really going up or down the street. My apartment is somewhere “down there” so I guess I’m walking down the street. But then again, maybe my apartment is “up there”. I look back to see if I’m leaving any footprints. Strange really since I have never heard of visible footprints being left on hard, dead and cold asphalt.
With me I have a plastic bag containing 2 bottles of coke, a bag of potato chips without flavor and a can of dog food. In itself this is strange because I have no dog. I stop to check the plastic bag only to find that I haven’t bought dog food. Did I leave it on the counter? Did I ever contemplate buying a dog?
I cross the street for no apparent reason besides the action of crossing it. No cars in sight. No honking of horns. No witnesses to my trip home from the gas station.
I know she’s at the apartment. She’s waiting for me but not in a good way. Not in the way that lovers usually wait for each other when one of them is on the way home. When I left she was on the couch. She was watching me but without seeing me. I remember I stopped and thought about how strange she looked sitting there watching me but without seeing me. How long can a person look without blinking? Maybe you have to see to blink. I stop again and switch the plastic bag from my right hand to my left hand. It’s not that my right hand hurts or anything and the bag is not really heavy. Sometimes you just have to switch hands.
I hear a dog barking and again I think about the dog food that I never bought and the dog I may never have thought about buying. I laugh but not out loud. It’s the kind of laugh you only experience yourself. The kind of laugh that is the reaction to something no one else would have seen as funny. Essentially, the reaction to life.
She never said goodbye when I told her I was going to the gas station to buy something to drink. She didn’t remind me to get her a diet coke even though she knows that I know she likes it. I never liked diet coke. I never liked diet anything. I’m a man who likes flavor when I eat or drink something. To make up for the lack of diet coke I eat the potato chips without flavor. With the sugar and the fat goes the flavor and you’re left with a copy of something that once tasted good but now has lost all color, smell and taste. Like a copy without the qualities of the original. It’s like every bad sequel ever made to a great original movie. I like my original, my Coca Cola with the entire flavor. She never understood it though and I never understood why she wanted the bad copy of it. It doesn’t really matter anymore.
Two blocks to go and I’m home. My place of refuge used to be such a secure, warm and comfortable place. Perhaps it still is. I will find out in a few minutes. The idea that it has changed comes every time I’m on my way home to it. It’s like I fear it has transformed itself into a diet apartment without the things I liked about it.
She will be there on the couch waiting for me. Perhaps her head is tipped back a bit so it touches the window behind the couch. Her breath will leave no mark on the glass. Her skin will leave no greasy spot on the window. I suddenly remember I forgot to buy dog food. I do have a dog. A thing that cares about me and doesn’t care about whether I buy one kind of dog food or another. The dog will eat it no matter what. The dog is dead.
I cross the street again but this time with a purpose since my apartment is on the other side. I enter the building and start climbing the stairs. The plastic bag was back in my right hand as I entered the door but I need that hand to hold the banister as I’m going up the stairs. It’s not that I need to hold it. It just wouldn’t make sense not to use it when it’s there.
I stand before my door. I take a deep breath and get ready for the argument since I didn’t buy diet coke for her. I open the door, enter and close it behind me. I start counting backwards from 10. As I reach 3 I notice that the door to the living room is closed and I wonder why. I remember leaving it open. I hear a siren somewhere and I finish my countdown. Without noticing it until 4 seconds later I finished the countdown with “the end” instead of “zero”. I’m walking towards the living room door. I pass the dead dog and kneel down to pet it. How could I forget the dog food? I want to cry but can’t and I stand up. I take a deep breath and open the door to the living room and enter. It all happens in one swift motion. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The air comes in, the door goes up and the air comes out again. Life has been to hell and back.
The first thing I notice when I enter is that a candle is burning on the coffee table. I never drink coffee and usually just refer to it as “the table”. She drinks tea but for some reason never calls it “the tea table”. It’s a board and 4 legs all made of wood. Why does it even need to have a function and a name limited to hot beverages being placed on it?
I blow out the candle and through the smoke I see the couch is empty. Is this even my apartment? I turn around and go to pet the dead dog again. I go back into the living room and sit down on the couch. A few seconds go by before I realize my hand is in a small puddle of blood. The blood is slowly disappearing into the fabric of the couch. As I wash my hands in the kitchen I try to remember where I bought the couch as I was told by the salesman that the fabric would not absorb liquids. He mentioned water, soda and coffee as possible liquids but not blood.
He probably mentioned coffee since I bought the so-called coffee table on that day as well.
I look at my watch. It’s 4pm and I’ve been gone for 2 days. In the kitchen I find the knife I used before I left the apartment. I take it and go back to the dead dog. The wounds on the side of the dog are still there. I stick the knife into the wounds to see if my knife did the damage. Perfect fit.
I turn on the TV and turn it off. I go to the bathroom. The bathtub is still red. The handprint on the wall is still visible. A complete print of a hand with all its details. You can even see where the ring was on her finger. I turn on the water and wash away the red. I leave the print on the wall since I’m a firm believer in holding on to the little things: movie tickets, letters etc.
I stop to wonder why there is no red on the floor from the journey from the bathroom to the couch. Her last journey. I get down on my hands and knees to look but there is nothing. I’m in the hall again. I pet the dog, this time stroking its wounds as if to close them.
I search all the rooms in the apartment but I cannot find her. I open a bottle of coke and enjoy the real taste of it. Always Coca Cola. If everything else were gone tomorrow, we’d always have Coca Cola. I finish the bottle and run my tongue across my teeth to get the whole flavor of the coke. I hate to lose good things.
I try calling her parents but when I ask for her they hang up. Didn’t they use to like me? I look at the time. It’s 8pm. I sit down on the couch and start reading a magazine. She coughs and I look at her. Her red tears stain her naked body. Still she is watching but without seeing. I stroke her hair and go to wash my hands again. I look at her. For a second it seems she is looking at me too this time also seeing. I catch a hint of a smile and I feel bad about not getting her the diet coke. I turn around to get the bag of potato chips. When I sit down on the couch again her eyes are closed. She doesn’t cough. She doesn’t cry. There is nothing but silence. I look at the time. It’s 2am. She’s gone again. I choose not to go look for her. I go to bed. I change the sheets first since the color of red is unbecoming in this situation. I stare at the ceiling and hear something in the distance. A dog is barking. I get up and write “dog food” on a note and put it on the kitchen counter.

RAW denne uge var udmærket. Openeren med Benoit, Regal, Tajiri & Rhyno vs. Flair, Batista og La Resistance var rigtig fed og publikum var med hele vejen. Den fik kun 10 min men som Scott Keith skriver kunne den godt ha klaret 10 min mere. ***1/4 i hvert fald.

Jeg savner allerede Benoit som champ. De pops han fik i openeren på RAW var blandt de største på showet og rent ud sagt så er Randy Orton altså lidt en tøsedreng som babyface. Han var 1000 gange sejere som heel. Han ER stadig cool meeeeen jeg savner nu heel attituden.
Forventningerne til Unforgiven er lidt blandede. Et eller andet sted håber jeg Triple H vinder bæltet men det sker næppe så hurtigt :D

Jeg fik i dag set The Passion of the Christ som faktisk var rigtig god på trods af min svigtende interesse i relgion og tro på Gud og Jesus. Meget kan man sige om Jesus men he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Der var scener som nok var lidt for lange efter min mening. Fx. tog det jo en evighed at nå igennem byen med det skide kors over skulderen. Selve korsfæstelsen og afstraffelsesscenerne generelt var brutale men ikke så meget det rørte mig. 9 med pil op på 13-skalaen til den.

Jeg har fri i morgen men dagen skal vist mest bruges på at få A Tale of Two Cities færdig. Den svinger lidt i kvalitet men er overall ret OK.
Jeg har fået sendt min short story "Watch" til engelskstudiets eget lille magasin "Workshop" og det viste sig at jeg kender en af redaktørerne på det. Med lidt held burde "Watch" komme i sep/okt udgaven. Jeg har gang i en anden historie som hedder "Housecall" som handler om afstraffelse, ondskab generelt og ikke mindst blodets bånd (i dette tilfælde forholdet mellem mor og datter). Efter jeg havde set Passion fik jeg en ide til at give historien en religiøs (og dermed endnu ondere) undertone hvilket gav den nyt liv (synes jeg da selv) og gjorde at den blev nogenlunde færdig.

Dagens uddrag taget ud af en sammenhæng:

He looks at me. “Katie, are you ready?”
Even though deep down I know the answer I want to ask what I’m supposed to be ready for but when I try to speak my mouth fills with vomit and blood. It stains my naked body.
“So dirty, so used. Such a little, filthy bitch!” The man stands up and points his little finger at my left arm. The itching in my palm gets worse and all of a sudden my arm is ablaze. I laugh and the vomit and blood runs like a river out of my mouth. My mother screams and I swing my flaming arm at her to make her shut up. Her hair catches on fire and she panics. The man looks at her and does nothing. My mother’s wings catch on fire as well. Her screams now seem to annoy the man as he goes over to her. I stop laughing and swallow the vomit in my mouth.The first punch floors my mother. The first kick keeps her down. The first stomp makes her quiet. The final kiss turns her into ashes. I look at the man and I wipe my lips.

Hallmark here I come :)