The Ghost Toucher

Okay, I tried to Trademark the name, but it turns out that's pretty expensive.  But after that, I sent Hasbro an email to try to gauge their interest in creating a special edition, zombie Monopoly game.  Below is my email.  I'll post their response if I get one:

It's an idea so simple, it should have been thought of at least 2 years ago. Zombopoly. With at least several dozen versions of Monopoly out right now, why shouldn't there be one of our favorite horror sub-genre?

They're popular across the entire media spectrum. Novels, comic books, television, movies--and they're a constant every Halloween. They want to eat our brains and we love them for it. I don't know if Hasbro has a R&D department, but it doesn't take a statistician to see zombies are popular. I've started a Facebook page a few minutes ago and you can monitor it here to watch it grow in popularity. Or if you aren't comfortable clicking on a link, just go to Facebook and type in 'Zombopoly'.

I hope you can forward this message along to the appropriate parties and I would greatly appreciate a response at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Gerald Dean Rice, BA

Mama was really sick. Cole had asked her just an hour ago if he should call 9-1-1, but she’d said no. She was afraid of hospitals for some reason. She’d told him to close the door and he’d been sitting sentry outside her door ever since.

But now he had to go to the bathroom. He knocked on the door and put his ear to it and listened. She was quiet. Must have been asleep again. He crawled to his feet, his leg numb from the butt cheek down.

“Mama, I gotta go to the bathroom,” he leaned into the door and spoke. No answer. He told himself she was sleeping. Cole race-walked to the bathroom, a short distance away from his mother’s bedroom in their tiny ranch house. He closed the door out of habit and stole a glance at his reflection in the mirror. Even he knew a boy his age shouldn’t look this old.

Mama had gotten real sick a while back, so sick she’d almost died. So sick, the doctor told her she’d gotten diabetes. She had to take shots for her sugar and needles had always been hard for mama. Cole promised the doctor he would give her her shots if she wouldn’t. The doctor had told her to be careful, that she could come down with colds a lot easier, that they would be a lot harder to fight off. She would need to test her sugar every day. She’d need to get a flu shot every year. More needles. More doctors. Mama had begun stockpiling her medical supplies in her bedroom.

Cole finished his business and flushed. As he washed his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror again. Mama was a lot moodier than she had been. Had gained a lot of weight. Cole was barely five feet tall and skinny. He couldn’t really force her to do anything she didn’t want to. Once, he’d given her a shot while she was sleeping. Had managed to test her blood sugar and saw she was really high. He used the little booklet the hospital had given her to calculate how much insulin to take, thumped out the little bubbles as the syringe dangled from the little bottle, held upside down and swabbed her shoulder with an alcohol pad before injecting her.

She’d opened her eyes as soon as the needle went in and his heart skipped, thinking she’d awakened. But he steadied his hand, pushed the plunger down, and quickly removed it. Before his brain had told his body to relax, Mama shot up in bed.

“What was that?” she’d screamed, wide awake. “Something bit me!” Cole, in hindsight, wished he’d lied. Mama had changed since the diabetes. She was a lot meaner. A slap here, a biting comment there. But he’d told her, held up his hand and showed her the syringe. She’d tumbled out of bed on top of him, sat up, pinning him there, and as calmly as reading the Sunday paper, plucked the syringe from his hand and began poking him in the chest with it. Over and over and over.

“You see now? You see how that feels?” she’d kept asking him. He hadn’t intended to, but couldn’t help subconsciously counting the pricks into the thin muscle of his pectoral. He’d cried, wailed, but she kept on until she’d poked him thirty-two times.

Cole turned off the water and flick-dried his fingers. His stomach growled as he came out of the bathroom. Mama was sleep, it wasn’t like she needed him right then. Why not a sandwich? He could make two—one for her if she woke up. He could even cut off the crust just the way she liked.

He went into the kitchen and pulled the bread down from the top of the fridge. He had to hop just a little bit to reach. Cole took the meat and the mayo out and laid everything out on the counter. He worked quickly with a knife from the silverware drawer. A healthy smear of mayo on both his slices, very little on one of hers. He plopped two slices of meat on both slices of bread and then covered them. Cole cut his sandwich diagonally and was halfway through cutting Mama’s vertically when a muffled thump came from the bedroom. It sounded like a bowling ball had been thrown against the wall.

I've got a new novella coming out next month.  It's called The Zombie Show.  I wrote it some months back, matter-of-fact, right after I finished the eight story for Tales from an Apartment.  I've taken my time editing it and re-editing and the prospective release date is 6/20/2012.  I was going to do the weekend, but I figured, first day of summer, why not?

I'll be putting up a four page excerpt over a course of days leading up to the release.  Right now I'm trying to see if Amazon and Barnes & Noble will let me list it on a pre-sale basis.  If not, I have a plan to work around that.

Horror is a monster. But I used to think of them as foreign things, beyond human understanding, coming to kill, consume, or destroy indiscriminately, overturning an at least tolerable, if not happy, way of life.

11/22/63 and Mr. King have taught me better than that.

Horror is a monster. Unfortunately, the best ones—or worst ones, depending on your point of view—are people. And not just people, but people we know—love even, which is where the most horrific part comes in to play.

Oswald is a minor part of 11/22/63, in fact, he’s a bit player, a backdrop. Without checking, I guess he probably appears on twenty pages or fewer of the 849 page novel. Jake Epping or George Zimmerman, depending on which side of the timeline your seat is, has Oswald firmly in mind when he crosses through fifty years to 1958 on a mission to save the 35th President of the United States. So how does King fill a nearly 1,000 page beast of a read when the hero’s only goal is to kill a character who’s barely even in it?

Monsters.

No, not the kind that come from space or travel through time (although time travel, obviously, is a huge plot device). They don’t even bother dragging themselves out of dark, cavernous basements or creak down long unending hallways. The monsters are right there in the open to be read in broad daylight. From the would-be family murdering Frank Dunning, the Cuban bookie Jake meets in Florida, or John Clayton, the monsters either don’t, or barely hide. Including the biggest monster of all; Epping himself.

Oh no, you won’t get it out of me how the man—and his predecessor, Al Templeton—is the worst of all these monsters, but I think they all have a single motivation: selfishness. Something has been taken from each of these men and they would have it or an item of equal value back. Money, reputation, respect, life. Yes, when you find out how exactly the rabbit hole works, you’ll understand more. You’ll understand why the Yellow Card Man is probably one of the saddest heroes in modern-day literature (maybe that’s an over-exaggeration; I won’t qualify it, though). You’ll understand why every paragraph you read detailing what Jake Epping does in the mid-twentieth century is wrong.

But 11/22/63 should remind a sane and reasonable person how selfish human beings naturally are. How we want what we want regardless of consequences, how so like infants we continue to be even into adulthood. And how it takes near supernatural forces sometimes to sway us from our lone paths. It is a lonely path for Epping. It takes five years and two minutes at the same time and he passes by paradoxes and steps over quandaries in single pursuit of a selfish goal that he is constantly nudged away from from the moment he steps out of 2011 and into 1958.

Oswald is only the monster you expect; he is not the only one you see. Killing him seems the noble, reasonable thing to do if anyone were given a time machine to go back and do it. But would you listen if the universe whispered ‘no’?

About 5 years ago, probably more, I was bitten by about 3 spiders throughout the year. The first one in particular left a kind of bump-scar on my trapezicus. I thought it was there to stay, that the spider that had taken a chunk out of me must have been big enough to permanently disfigure me. About 2 weeks ago, the bump-scar swelled and felt like there was something in it. I left it alone and it eventually went down, but then it began to peel. It doesn’t hurt or anything, but honestly, how long do I have to live?

That was a little over a month ago, but apparently the bump is gone. I touched it sometime last week and it felt like it was peeling. Mind you, where it is I can't see it unless I'm looking in a mirror. I rubbed it with my finger, thinking I was only removing dead skin. I looked in the mirror 3 nights ago and saw I had rubbed all the skin off. No bump because there's a bald pink spot about 3 or 4 times the size of the bump. There had to have been something in that bump all those years.

I'm embarking on a minor social media experiment.  I haven't seen my best friend from grade school, James "Beany" Robinson since we finished 6th grade.  He moved back to Detroit and we fell out of touch.  Of course, with a common name like 'James Robinson' it's next to impossible to find him on Facebook, if he's even on there.  But he'd be about my age (35), went to Ferris Middle School in Highland Park, Michigan, and is related to the Cooper family.  If you know him, send him this way!

Here's the table of contents for Tales from an Apartment.  You'll notice that there are 9 stories instead of 8.

Slug

And on the Thirtieth Day…

Hay-Zeuss is Watching

Hungry Eyes

Chionophobia

How She’d do It

The Second Death of Timothy Moseley

Neighbor

The B-Side

As promised, here's the cover to Tales from an Apartment. 

In a little ore than two hours, stop on by to have a look-see at the cover I selected for Tales from an Apartment.

I happened across this review of Fleshbags last week, but wasn't able to translate the page through my Droid.  Finally, I got on a pc and voila, thank you Google.  Here's a pretty good review from www.swedishzombie.com:

Vill du ha dina zombier riktigt ruttna och äckliga? Would you like your zombies really rotten and disgusting? Då är det här boken för dig. Then this is the book for you. Rice gottar sig i magsäckar som exploderat och stinkande inälvor i en mustig rapport från zombieapokalypsens inledande timmar. Rice revel in the stomachs exploding and stinking entrails of a juicy report from zombieapokalypsens opening hours.

Ambulansföraren Gene och hans kollega Matt råkar på en man som uppenbarligen behöver hjälp. Ambulance driver, Gene and his colleague Matt happens to a man who obviously needs help. Så svårt skadad och stinkande att han borde vara död. So badly damaged, and smelling that he should be dead. Och att få med honom i ambulansen blir knepigt eftersom han envisas med att bitas. And to get him in the ambulance gets tricky because he persists in biting. Gene och Matt fattar att något är väldigt fel. Gene and Matt make that something is very wrong. Kanske borde de kontakta CDC? Maybe they should contact the CDC? Men de hinner inte överväga sitt bryderi innan det är för sent. But they do not have time to consider his quandary before it's too late.

Ms. MS. Mila är förskolelärare och sjukt trött på ungar. Mila is a preschool teacher and sick tired of the kids. Det enda som håller henne uppe är drömmen om förtidspensionen och planerna på att bosätta sig i ett område fritt från kinkiga småglin. The only thing that keeps her going is the dream of early retirement and plans to settle in an area free from fussy little boys. Hon har allt uttänkt i minsta detalj. She has everything planned in minute detail. Men där hon sitter i en park och vaktar de små monster som är hennes skyddslingar, rycks hon från sina dagdrömmar av att människor börjar bete sig jättekonstigt. But as she sits in a park and watch the little monsters that are her proteges, pressure her from his daydreams of people start acting really weird. Vad är det för såriga, illaluktande sluskar som börjar dyka upp? What kind of sore, smelly ruffians who are starting to appear? Det dröjer inte länge innan Mila har fullt upp med att rädda sitt eget och småglinens skinn undan utsvultna zombier. It's not long before Mila's too busy trying to save his own skin and småglinens away hungry zombies.

Exemplen ovan är några av de personer vi får lära känna under de här timmarna. The examples above are some of the people we get to know during these hours. Eller åtminstone nästan hinner lära känna. Or at least almost time to get to know. Långt ifrån alla överlever. Far from all survive. Det här är en kortroman som passar att läsa i ett svep. This is a short novel that is suitable to read in one go. Författaren är skicklig. The author is adept. Trots det höga tempot hinner han teckna personporträtt som låter läsaren ta del av personernas bakgrunder, med som ger dem liv. Despite the fast pace does he take portraits that let the reader take note of the persons backgrounds, with that gives them life. Det är en fantasifull och morbid text som blåser nytt liv (no pun intended) i den klassiska zombieapokalypsen. It is an imaginative and morbid text that breathes new life (no pun intended) in the classic zombie apocalypse. Språket är enkelt, som ofta är fallet i actionhistorier, men Rice är en skicklig berättare. The language is simple, as is often the case in action stories, but Rice is a skilled storyteller. Han hinner få med mycket detaljer utan att slösa med orden. He has time to include much detail without wasting words. Allt är noga övervägt. Everything is carefully considered. Perspektiven alternerar mellan de olika personerna på ett sätt som gör läsningen intensiv. Perspectives alternate between different individuals in a manner which makes the reading intensive.

Och det är som sagt äckligt. And again this is disgusting. De smittade får samma symptom som vid magsjuka, men tusen gånger värre. The infected have the same symptoms as stomach flu, but a thousand times worse. Till slut sprängs magsäckarna. Finally exploded stomachs. Det är bitvis väldigt slafsigt. It is at times very slafsigt. Och som om inte det vore nog finns många andra härligt absurda inslag. And as if that were not enough, there are many other wonderfully absurd elements. Som zombien som äter sina egna händer, eller när armén dyker upp och med iskall grymhet börjar rensa staden med eldkastare, utan att kolla särskilt noga om det är smittade eller friska människor de förvandlar till snubblande facklor. As a zombie who eats his own hands, or when the army shows up, with ice-cold cruelty start to clear the city with flame-throwers, without checking with particular care if it's infected or healthy people they turn to stumbling torches. Vi får också ett slags förklaring till förklaring till smittan och ett slut som är aningen märkligt men som passar bra. We also get a kind of explanation to explain the disease and an end that is slightly strange but that fits well.

Boken innehåller också novellerna The Dead Child och I, Keveny . The book also includes short stories The Dead Child, and I, Keveny.

Oh, crap.  Copy and paste grabs both languages.  I'm outta here, you're on your own.