The February Featured Story is by Nicholas DahDah

Please feel free to email Nicholas at: lomgn@knology.net

AUTHOR OF DESTRUCTION
by Nicholas DahDah

Okay, you wanna know how it went down? Do you, really? Well, I’m tired of living this lie so here it is.

If they didn’t lie in the hospital file, you should know I was a struggling author living in the beautiful city of Savannah, Georgia, and I was making a grand total of one sale a year. Okay, I was living in a trailer in a Garden city, a small suburb of Savannah, but it was good for P.R. Obviously I wasn’t able to support even a trailer with my literary genius, so I had procured a job at a local body shop, breaking bolts and tearing off breaks, getting oil all over me.

Anyway, have you ever been to Savannah? It is a nice little town…if by a little town you mean a sprawling metropolis. They’ve got the Savannah College of Art and Design, producing many pretty college girls who were all too happy to buy me meals and join me in the bed chambers because I was a ‘real’ author. There’s a nice little 30’s style diner just outside of campus, that they actually won an art-deco award for (where everything is fried) that is the only place where I can afford to eat.

One of the most striking features of the city is that it’s swallowed up in weeping willows, y’know those big trees with the moss that hangs down? Yeah, I hate ‘em. I wrote a story about tearing them all down once, and  it was one of the first stories I’d ever sold, only after I’d battered it around a bit, finally being accepted by the one, the only, Weird Tales!

I mean, my God! Weird Tales was the shit! The greatest horror magazine in existence, the one the man had sold to! Yeah, I was following in the footsteps of H.P. Lovecraft, the whole reason I got into writing.

So, I had sold to Weird Tales, the only surviving magazine from oh so long ago, and then immediately sent everything I had to everyone, forcing them to read it. I was quite familiar with the editors of various literary magazines of the gothic tradition, and I made sure that my name constantly appeared in their inboxes.

They didn’t like me.

I’ve written plays, love stories, westerns, and dog stories for years without selling a single word, but my monsters have done well for me. How could I do anything else? That’s what Weird Tales wanted, and they have great taste.

But since Weird Tales, nothing. Other editors wouldn’t have me, and even my attempts at self-publishing failed. I naturally thought the problem was with me, though I had gone out and gathered more experience than anyone I knew. I mean, it’s an author’s job is to live, right?

Every day of my life is research for my work, and I was well learned. I had gone fishing off of Tybee Island, and when I couldn’t catch anything I managed to hit every cantina the barrier island had to offer, making friends with all of the barkeeps and forgetting who they were the next hung-over morning. I picked up dozens of women and fucked their brains out, and when I tired of the women I fucked the men, and I grew tired of them too. I smoked weed, snorted crack, shot heroin, and when that grew stale I traveled to Augusta, the Meth capital of the world, and sampled some of their wares.

So, I have lived; I have seen the highs and lows of what this thing we call humanity had to offer, and I decided it was time to die. I sent a letter to each of the editors who knew me, and said if they didn’t publish one of my stories, I would kill myself.

They bid me farewell with their blessing.

Have you ever tried to commit suicide? I mean, there I was: the worst job imaginable, career in the toilet, fat, surrounded by people I wanted to kill, and the only thing ahead was more of the same, suffering piling upon misery careening toward death. And you know what the worst part is? People are constantly telling you to be happy, saying life’s a gift and there’s something wrong with you if you can’t enjoy it, and threatening to cram a bunch of pills down your throat if you don’t fit in!

Lovecraft said, “Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world” and I agreed!

If my body wanted to die, why should I deny it? Why should I put up with the bitch of life, and then get that sweet reward after all this time? No man, I was gonna cheat, cut in line, and screw everybody else! Hooray, I win!

So, the first thing I tried was blowing my head off with a gun; I mean, you can’t go wrong, right? Well, it misfired. I put another bullet in it and it still wouldn’t work, so I switched the chamber and it misfired again. Fuck.

I tried putting towels under the garage door and fuming myself, but I ran out of gas. Double fuck.

There’s a little crick (yeah, we call it a “crick”) that I jumped into to drown myself, but I floated, I guess all that grease from my job screwed me again. I even tried tying weights to my feet, but the fish chewed through the chords and I floated back to the top.

I absolutely refused to slit my wrists, as I wanted to go out like a man, so I had one option left: the noose. I had to tie it pretty big for my bull neck to slip in, and I couldn’t get it to fit snugly, so when I kicked the stool, my neck snapped around, but not enough, leaving me with a bad scar and a crooked throat.

I wasn’t sure if I should care about the pain or not, hoping it would just consume me, but after a little nap, I decided I might was well live to die more successfully later on, so I managed to get into my car and drive to the nearest hospital. The doctors shoved a bunch of pain killers down my throat and told me to wait until a chiropractor could set my neck straight. They asked me how I came by this injury and I told them, and soon I had the head-shrinkers needling away at me.

“No, no!” I pleaded, trying to make them see reason, “I want to live now! My failed attempts have made me see the light! Life is worth living!”

“Do you really think we haven’t heard that before? For a writer, you’re not very original.”

“But…but I drove all the way here to have my neck set! Would I patch myself up just so I can die when I get back? That’d be a pretty crazy thing to do.”

“You’re a pretty crazy guy.”

I knew the straight-jacket and the funny farm weren’t too far away, so I had to think fast, shifting my eyes and licking my lips as the doctor scribbled on his clip board. “What about the magazines? I sent them notes saying if they didn’t publish my stories, I’d kill myself! I held myself hostage!”

The doctor considered me for a moment. “You actually alerted someone to your problem?”

“Yes!”

He took that under consideration, but still held me at the E.R. overnight, sending several letters to the editors, telling them they should publish my work for my own safety.

But the editors all responded “Tough shit.”

I’m sure they’d rather die in prison than deal with me, but the editor of Weird Tales explained my situation to one of his star writers, who happily agreed to help me however he could.

Henry Lipman was his name, and writing was his game. He was completely shut-in in his Rhode Island address, and few editors had ever met or seen him in person. Still, he managed to sell to all of the horror/sci-fi magazines, having at least one story per magazine every month. He didn’t communicate with fans, but he liked my situation enough to take an interest. He sent me a letter (who sends letters anymore?) which read:

Hello, I am the famed Henry Lipman, and let me congratulate you on actually trying, but not succeeding in killing yourself. I think it’s a unique experience, truly unlike anything dreamt of in my philosophy, but you can’t just give up. I’ve tried before, naturally, and I’ve realized that I could put all the energy I was using to kill myself into my creations instead, and become who I wanted to be. Please write back, I’m most interested in hearing from you.

I wrote back:

Henry Paul Lipman, hun? I’m pleased to “meet” you too, but I must inquire about the name. You have the initials of the master himself, is it real? I mean, is that your birth name or did you fabricate it? I’m sure you get it a lot, but you haven’t gotten it from me, so…

His response was:

No, I was born with those three dreadful names, and I suspect they’re the reason I went into horror. Of course there was Lovecraft, as you mentioned, whom I got more into because of the name than anything else. God, the nightmares he must’ve had… Jesus, with all of my rambling on, you must be ready to kill yourself again. Please hang in there and do write back.

I assured him I would.

Over the course of the next few months we had a lengthy correspondence, detailing plot sequencing, character development, the need to apply buttocks to chair, and all other essentials of writing. Lipman would never directly tell me what I needed to learn, always giving me hints and clues to guess around, knowing that it would stick better in my mind if I came up with it, or at least thought I did.

I applied these techniques to everything I wrote, everything I thought, put down on paper, communicated, talked, whistled…and I still didn’t sell shit. At first. By the next year I had made a record two sales. Two sales! And within six months of the second, I made another!

All of the editors liked me now, actually requested stories from my demented pen, and still paid me pennies for them. Bastards.

As my fame grew, Henry (yeah, we were on a first name basis) became very proud of me, proud of himself for culturing this young student. I often invited him down to the city, but he politely refused, saying he couldn’t go anywhere but Rhode Island. I entreated him to let me come up there, but he more forcefully refused, saying that his home wasn’t for visitors. I told him I’d stop by the next time I was up there.

He said if I did that, he’d kill me.

I wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or not, so I dropped the subject, prying into other aspects of literary life. I naturally thought this would help curry favor with him, which it did, and help me get into his house, which it didn’t. I had been growing rather obsessed over that damned house of his: it had been infiltrating my dreams and even crept its way into a couple of my stories, and I was going to see it, by God! 

I bought a plane ticket to Providence and alighted a few hours later, taking in the grand city for what it was: just like every other big city I’d ever been in. Shucking the chains of high skyscrapers and busy sidewalks, I made my way down to Swan Point Cemetery, and the saw the fan-established headstone of Ol’ Howie, stenciled with “I am Providence.”

Then I got on Broad Street and turned onto Seaview Avenue. There were some nice houses along the way, and I asked several people if they knew of a famous author who lived even further down, but no one had really explored further than where their property lines ended. Most of them didn’t want to go down there.

Well I did, filling up my tank and shunning the bright, sunny ocean for the overcast sky that lay ahead. I drove for over an hour, accompanied by no one but the hollow voices from the radio. There were no animals, no crabs or birds, even the fish seemed to have abandoned the sea. Just sand and the break shore beyond.

There was no gate at the house, just a longish driveway with no cars but my own. It was beautiful, just as I’d always imagined: stretching up two stories, with a cave-like door on the front of the side and two tiers of stone steps leading up to it. Next to this was a face with two rows of three windows, and a seventh window high on the far side, sitting beneath the steepest of gables. There was another gable around the side, but with the aforementioned exceptions, the roof was flat, though steep on all sides, with a bright red chimney crawling out of the top.

Around the side was a large bay window, looking out into the sandy wasteland. It was painted red and complimented by gold trim, but there seemed to be a paleness to the house, not because the sun had bleached the paint, but for the lack of a sun, like a human hide in darkness.

The door opened even before I knocked on it, being held by an old maid who could easily be mistaken for a man.

“Who are you?” she asked in a toneless voice.

“I’m that hot young author Henry Lipman has been tutoring. Surely he’s told you about me?”

“If you truly knew Lipman, you’d know he does not like to be bothered.”

“Well, too bad! I flew all the way up here from Savannah, Georgia, burned an ass-load of gas getting out here, so I’m going to meet him, even if he kills me!”

She stared at me a moment, and only then did I notice she never blinked. Those jelly orbs bore into me as she said, “You truly wish to see him?”

“Yes!”

“Of your own volition?”

“Yes, now let me in!”

Those unblinking marbles ran the length of my body, and she stood aside, allowing me to enter and closing the door after me. “My name is Edna. I am the keeper of the house.”

She paced away from me, down the hallway. I walked after her, taking note of the music that had been filling my ears. It was slow, melodic, like a requiem played on a violin. “Where is that music coming from?” I asked.

“Henry has a band stationed here. Perhaps you’d like to meet them too.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I kept walking, admiring the fine paintings hung on the walls, portraits of great historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, but they were wall trumped when I came across a gold framed photograph of Edgar Allan Poe (y’know, the real ugly one with the bags under his eyes?) with smaller pictures of his wife and parents cascading away from it.

I hadn’t realized I had stopped until Edna said, “You like the photo? Henry had acquired the oldest known copy and had it blown it up. He let it go, of course, on the insistence that only a museum could carry it.”

I admired the image for some time, quickly catching up with my hostess and continuing through the longish hallway, which seemed smaller from the outside. We passed by the entrance to the kitchen, wherein I spied a bloody sink with a prepared carcass lying in its own juices. I couldn’t quite distinguish what it was, but my attention was drawn away by the obtrusive specimen jars that were lining the cabinets, each with a pickled hunk of flesh inside that appeared to comprise an entire creature. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…by God, they were indescribable!

I caught myself staring at those horrid forms, and turned to follow the maid, though my head snapped again as something long and pointed dragged along the floor and out of sight. “Is…that a rat?” I asked, hoping it was a mammalian tail.

“We don’t have rats,” she answered without turning.

It was about here we reached the steps, each giving away its age as our feet fell upon them, squeaks echoing throughout the house. As we were ascending these stairs, I happened to glance at the shadowed alcove that the stars formed, and I’d be damned if something wasn’t glancing back at me. I dashed up the stairs, leaning against the wall and catching my breath. I jerked upwards at the soft tones of the maid’s voice as she said, “Something the matter?”

“What’s going on here?” I cried. “There’s all this strange stuff in the house, I mean, what was that thing under the stairs?”

She led on, simply reminding me, “You entered of your own volition.”

I followed her with my eyes for a moment, before relenting and pacing down the hall with her. As we drew further into the house, the ever present violin music had grown louder, deeper, was filling my ears more intensely. We came to a large black door with silver trim that the maid rapped on, the music cutting out so fast it was a like a gunshot of silence, drawing a startled breath from my lips.

She opened the door just enough to poke her mouth in, something fluttering out of the top and disappearing into the shadows. She said, “Master Lipman, someone is here to see you.”

A slithery voice echoed out, “Is it truly necessary?”

“Sir, he says he’s a protégé of yours.”

There was a pause, and then that almost unnatural voice relented, “Fine then, show him in.”

She tossed open the door, affording me a vista of the inside. I couldn’t go in, I stood there, transfigured as I witnessed not a man, but a skeleton, dressed in the suit of a gentleman and animated with the forces of life, scribbling words onto paper with its ink quill. All of this was build up, however, to when the thing’s dead eyes turned on me, and that slithering voice hissed out of those hollow teeth, “Welcome to the house of Howard Philips Lovecraft.”

My legs took flight, carrying me down the stairs and out the door. I dashed past my car and into the dunes, scrabbling up the grainy sand and somehow making it to the green water.

They assume it was several hours later when I washed up on shore, babbling incoherently and coughing up seawater. They tell me I’ve gone quite insane.

Nick Dahdah is a 19-year-old student at Augusta State University (or whatever the Hell they’re calling it these days). After being rejected by the Coast Guard, Air Force, Navy and refusing to try the Army or Marines, he has decided writing is the only thing left to him. “Author of Destruction” is his first published story, and was semi-autobiographical.