Spooktacular

Introduction: Fear in Stories by Tim Truzy

We recognize fear as an unpleasant, disturbing, or uncomfortable feeling. This feeling occurs when facing a person or situation which presents a threat or danger. Every human being has this emotion at some time in their life. It could be triggered by the simplest of things: visiting relatives, taking a test, or going to the doctor. It has ranges, peaks and valleys. It can be sweeping, like a hurricane’s wind, or narrow in breadth, like a hiking trail.

I remember with satisfaction going camping as a child. We would build fires and tell spooky stories with the setting sun. After eating a packed dinner, we would climb into our sleeping bags with caution and a bit of dread. Yet, most of all, we would be smiling from the tales, looking forward to the morning hike.

Now, I can’t help think about the warmth of those camping expeditions and the fire of the oral tradition in mankind. Telling stories filled with adventure, caution, and terror has always been part of our burning heritage. Demons, devils, and dragons flashed before our eyes, and we as a species veered away from the heat from the tales’ advice as we grew. Today, the element of fear in stories is delivered in television shows, screened dramas, and digital debuts on the internet.

But books have always been my favorite choice for getting an energizing spark of fear.
My coauthors and I recognize that fear is probably as essential to the human experience as any other emotion. It can ignite powerful motivation for change and ultimate development: psychologically, mentally, spiritually, socially, and physically. We also understand fear as an instrument of torment, terror, and trauma. Just as easily as a factor for making substantial changes in one’s development, fear can crumple us inward, like an imploding building. This is not the response we seek. We wish to tantalize the mind while fueling the brain with our kindling in these pages.

Nonetheless, primitive portions of the brain have been trained and genetically prepared to react to signs of danger in our environment or the potentiality of such threats. The important component of this fear is the question of whether we will survive our encounter. Thusly, we respond with the well-known choices of fight or flight.

However, whether we flee or combat the challenge, we prefer fear dosed with the strong reality that we will come out alive. Or rather, fear with low risks. We like being scared. We enjoy being frightened from a safe distance. We want any horrors before our eyes to be viewed or listened to with us in control of the radio, TV, internet, or book.

Maybe that’s why the influence of fairytales has held such a prolonged sway on children and adults. These are usually terrifying stories with a moral and a positive ending attached. Modern horror stories borrow some of the characteristics of these tales, but the final parts of the stories can be unpredictable. We enjoy being scared, but not too close to the threshold of death, not thrown like coals into the fire.

I suspect this is why some of our most memorable events involve being scared without sizzling consequences. Who can forget the most frightening ride at a fair as a child? Or, staged haunted houses during Halloween with their menageries of ghouls, goblins, witches and the like? We enjoy frightening movies and read terrifying books and think highly of many of the writers of literature which causes fear to step nearby, whisper in our ear, stare us in the eyes. Adrenaline feeds that fear, but we have the power to press the off button and shut fear down by closing the book, ending the ride, walking out of the creepy haunted house.

Authors such as Stephen King, R. L. Stein, and others, have been successful in bringing us a bit closer to facing our mortality and morality from the comforts of our favorite place to read. In this short story and poetry collection, my coauthors and I follow in these writers’ path. All of these works of poetry and short stories are meant to reach out to you and trigger a response from your nervous system without you having to move from your favored reading spot.

My coauthors (Erin Bernstein and Lori Truzy) and I begin with poetry on the subject of fear and how it impacts us as a species in chapter two. Throughout this collection, photographs by Lori Truzy will leave the mind wondering about what lies inside of us as human beings. Following poetry, tales are placed on these pages to spark your imagination about what happens when the campfire dies.

Perhaps, we will tingle your spinal cord. Maybe we will cause a little fright for your evening or morning. Take us with you when you sit alone or by the warmth of a blaze; cuddle this collection to keep the chill inside. May the experience be rewarding.

In any case, all of these works are fiction and any resemblance to people or places real or imagined is completely coincidental. Enjoy “The Essence of Fear: A Collection of Poetry and Short Stories.”

Poetry of Fright

A Monologue of Madness
By Lori Truzy

Sometimes I feel I am
wearing the paper thin skin of humanity
like the ill-fitting clothes
of a long-dead relative.

The spiders in my head are spinning webs
connecting things never
meant to be connected.
The infernal spans stretch across
my conscious mind and into the infinite
often pulling into the light shrouded prey
that I dare not unwrap lest
it devour my soul.

The constant crawling keeps me
awake at night,
a scratchy sort of
mental rustling that
sharpens to a whine as
another piece of web draws tight
Psychic shivers torture me
with the rhythmic brush
of bristled feet on silk.

Is it a wonder that
I am not afraid of the dark?
No darkened house or
half-open closet door
could hold anything darker
than the space inside my head.
No earthbound ghoul or ghost
could touch the living hell
that dwells in the
deepest part of me.

Whose voice is this
crying to be heard
in the wilderness of my mind?
Calling, calling, louder and louder
until I feel like screaming
IT’S NOT ME!

While others grow out of
teenage death-games,
I have grown into them
Held static in time by forces
I don’t understand.
Heavily pregnant with
the instrument of my own destruction,
I am loath to hurl myself
into the tempest
yet, afraid to hesitate
lest
something catch me unawares from behind.

 

When Night Odor Awakens
By Tim Truzy

Encapsulated in stews of soil,
Prayers chained my movement to naught,
Wooden box imprisoning my ambitions.

I couldn’t sleep while night beckoned,
I couldn’t sleep while dark reckoned
With the living in their soups of sorrow.

The scent of herbs above in my dominion,
Smoke to heal and grow intoxication,
Hallucinations they will plant to internalize.

They sat on my tombstone,
Dragging poisons into lungs—
Thrusting dreams best reserved for the sleeping.

I pushed open my lid and pulled. . .
Down, forward, through to me!

Disturb the slumber of the dreaming?
Observe the night of the quiet?
Find better spots for fantasy of THC.

The night is fragranced with dew and honey,
Futile flights of sex for money,
Robust the smell of peace from struggles so yummy!

Death has its own flavor in air,
Blood and animals with diligence care,
Don’t wake me with your perverted stinking affairs!

 

Soul-Eater
By Erin Bernstein

O young daughter of the cloth
What hast thou wroth?
Thou searchest for a diversion to purify thy mind
A way to forget all thy’d left behind
But ah – oh! What didst thou see?
A way to end thine despondency!
Lock’d away for centuries in a dusty nook
Thou found a book of incantations, a most curious book!
Ta’en from a lost soul suffering through some malady
Thou didst say thy life too the very picture of calamity!
Little knowing what phrases thou spake
Thou conjured me, a being of evil make!
They call me Soul-Eater – I hunger and feed
‘Til I am satisfied and my opponent concedes.
I know, dear girl, thou kneweth not what thou didst say,
But I was thine to command, by night or by day.
Because thou didst desire to make others pure,
Thou beckon’d to me with an open door.
I settled into the air thou breathed and settled in thy soul –
And until thou died would I be in control.
Thou attempted to scream and to claw at thy face,
But thine sounds went unheard and no one made haste.
I made you flee from the convent in your godly attire,
Against thine own will did thou run like fire.

Thou pummeled the first door thou could find
Whilst I whirled and twirled inside thy mind.
The widower could not keep his eyes from thy comely hips,
And so a curse did fly swiftly from thy lips.
Thou didst glare at him and his skin grew red,
An unsightly burn would appear ‘til he dropped dead!
Yea, any woman or girl of the female sex he spied in a way that was lewd
Would render a fresh burn on his body ‘til he be ashen-hued!

Thou pummeled the second door thou could find
While I whirled and twirled inside thy mind.
The tax-collector gave a smile when he spied your shiny jewel,
Thinking of its value instead of its meaning, the fool!
He said “Come in, Sister! Refresh thyself!”
And thine eyes saw the golden goblet he chose from his shelf.
Thou allowed him to fill the bejewel’d cup with water and took a swallow,
He oblivious to what was to follow.
As the droplets in his cup eased down his greedy throat,
They became gold coins and he began to choke.
Soon he would have a body gleaming with gold,
And must I describe how his end would unfold? Hee!

Thou did not dare try door number three,
Instead heading to the village bak’ry
An old biddy was there, green-eyed to the nth degree -
Thine lithe figure causing her great jealousy!
Thou opened thine arms wide to embrace her in The Carpenter’s name,
And she closed her eyes as you held her without shame.
But when she released herself to be on her merry way,
She found her eyes glued shut, never again to feel the light of day.

Thou ran to the tavern to find any helpful soul
Who knewest how to exorcise spirits taking a toll.
But – hee! – you saw a sea of blank stares meet your gaze!
A bride of God in a seedy place seemingly in a daze?
‘Twas Sunday morning now and thy watchful eye
Saw a porcine man downing bubbling brew nigh
Expand! Expand! Thou were shocked to hear thyself cry to the consumer
His supposed death via implosion was, come the morn, quite the rumor!
Oh yes! Hee! The bubbles did make his overeager stomach burst apart,
I made thou smile as if thou had no heart.

Thou sped away, still not knowing how to set me free,
And next thou tried a haberdashery.
A man was admiring himself in a mirror with perfectly coifed hair,
And it was not until thou made the bell jingle did he notice thou there!
“I don’t believe a hat would look good on a penguin,” the man chuckled.
But what he saw next in the mirror made his knees buckle.
The proprietor assured his client that he was still as handsome as ever,
But the vision in the glass was of a man neither handsome nor clever.
I knew this man did not deserve as swift a demise
When the image he saw would bring tears to his eyes,
Punishment for his belief that his beauty had no peer –
Preening would now be an exercise in abject fear!

When next thou tried to release me from thy mind,
Thou spied a constable who appeared less than kind.
“Art thou mad, woman? A demon? Whatever dost thou mean?”
“Good sir, this is no nightmare or walking dream.”
“The station will be open for business in just a few short hours.”
How dare he tell thee to stop and smell the flowers!
Thou were taken aback by his apathetic reply,
Labeling him lazybones and beginning to cry.
Little did thou know thou had rendered his skeleton indeed terribly slow
Now to live an unhappy life, taking days to travel to and fro!

At last thou vowed to return to the convent and seek repentance, hoping to be exonerated:
Here we are now, each of us deeply hated!
We ruined lives and didn’t bat an eye!
We told six to say their last goodbyes!
In the quiet of the morning thou whispered to me:
Shall I hang myself from the nearest tree
Or risk execution, for being a witch or worse?
O Lord, the things I did were quite perverse!
Oh, how to undo what I have done?
I ordinarily would never harm anyone!
Like Eve I gave into temptation and was made to suffer,
And like Cain I shall be cast out for harming my brother.
We shall sink into Hell, hand in hand, for what I’ve done.
I’ll no longer do your bidding; I’ll no longer run.

The good lady took a glass, hurled it across the room, and heard its satisfying break.
I, not of physical form, could only watch and then ‘twas too late.
The Sisters came running but did not move in time to hold her back –
A piece had slashed her throat and crimson now mingled with black.
The nun’s self-hatred had been her mortal undoing, ‘tis true!
And before the petals outside are painted with dew,
I’ll find another hapless soul to cling to.
Hie, sayeth I: my time on Earth’s not yet through! Hee!

 

Of Heartlessness
By Tim Truzy

Curing broken
Hearts choking
On roads
Dry and unwoven.

Arteries strangled
Circulation mangled
Death scuttled with scalpel
Blood tangled.

Pure criminals
Who cut citizens
Their dissonance
Went to State Seminole.

Never caught
Sin I did not
Until cast in fire
Spirits knew my plot.

Rid world of harm
In my surgery farm
Suicide is calm
Slicing my own arm.

 

Earth Mother by Erin Bernstein

“Scary story time!” Buck cried, a spark of fiendish glee in his eyes. We were

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Bildmaterialien: Lori Truzy
Lektorat: Tim Truzy and Erin Bernstein
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.11.2015
ISBN: 978-3-7396-2129-6

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Widmung:
We dedicate this book to: Christopher Moore, T.S. Eliot, Stephen King, Troy Denning, R. L. Stine, Isaac Asimov, Edgar Poe, Stan Lee, Terry Brooks, Salman Rushdie, any author attributed to Quirk Book, Alexander McCall-Smith, Dan Johnson, George Lucas, and Gutenberg, because, well...duh.