My relief was cheap at 40 cents
I had just cracked open a 20-ounce Diet Coke after finishing a steaming-hot Styrofoam cup of coffee when I pulled onto the Interstate 294 toll road in Chicago.
The day was freezing. An icy northwest wind cut across the eight lanes of traffic, buffeting the truck. It seeped inside. I couldn’t get my internal thermostat set; one minute I needed coffee, the next, something cold.
I was only half an hour from my destination, the Hyatt Regency in Lombard, Ill., after having driven that morning from northern Kentucky. I had visions of getting out of these clothes and taking a long, extremely hot shower once I reached the hotel.
The toll was only 40 cents. Fortunately, I had a fistful of change in the console between the two front seats. I hurled a quarter, a dime and a nickel into the basket at the toll booth and raced under the bar as it rose, rolling up the window to shut out the cold.
Traffic was heavy with wall-to-wall trucks, and big cars like Pontiacs, Chevy Impalas, and Lincolns. They were all driving 80 mph. As the lanes went from eight to four, I felt squeezed in.
Then I realized it. That squeezed feeling wasn’t coming from highway claustrophobia.
It was coming from my bladder.
I’d almost stopped before driving into Chicago proper, but by map reckoning the hotel didn’t look far away, so I’d gone on. “You can make it,” I’d told myself. “In half an hour you’ll be there.”
I drove and drove. The pressure increased. I really had to go. I thought back to the moment I’d opened the Diet Coke and wished I’d thrown it back in the cooler. Idiot. And I was getting cold, too. I had the heater on, but I was cold. Maybe it wasn’t the temperature. Maybe I was going into some kind of shock, from renal failure.
I started looking for an exit, a gas station, a blessed bathroom. That’s when I knew I’d died and gone to hell.
There were no exits.
I drove until I swear my ears were leaking, and there were no exits. Chicagoans must have cast-iron bladders, I told myself.
I needed to take the Eisenhower west off the toll road. I got the exit, and what did I see? A traffic jam – endless tanker trucks, panel trucks and salt-eaten Buicks.
“This can’t be right,” I told myself in a urine-induced delirium. “The road is supposed to go north, not west.” I peeled out of line and took the northern spur. It led me right back onto the damned toll road.
“Oh nooo,” I cried mournfully, seeing the endless stretch of crazed drivers and bathroom-less highway before me. “You FOOL! You IDIOT! You TOOK A WRONG TURN! AND NOW YOU MUST DIE!”
I’d begun to hallucinate. I imagined my bladder had taken on a life of its own and was laughing maniacally. It was a terrorist, holding the rest of the body hostage. Unless its demands where met, it would explode.
I went through the tollbooths like a madman, flinging coins at the automated baskets in a fever of pressure-filled desperation.
And then I saw it.
A toll road oasis.
A gas station, a Wendys, and – and – YES! A bathroom!
I won’t tell you what happened next, but that night they reported flooding along the lakefront in downtown Chicago.
I’d say they got their 40 cents’ worth.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, November 27, 1996 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Pavlov, about to get up to no good. Image by Del Stone Jr.
Today’s cat itinerary:
5 a.m. – Sit outside the big guy’s door and meow frantically, as if to shout, “The house is on fire!” When he’s standing in front of you, wild-eyed and hair sticking out at crazy angles and screaming, “What the matter, kitty?” stare at him blankly. Then walk away.
5:15 a.m. – Go spelunking inside the couch, using the entrance you just created by sharpening your claws.
5:30 a.m. – Make sure all the dirty dishes in the sink are licked clean.
6 a.m. – The big guy just got out of the shower. Lap up all the water in the bottom of the bathtub. Then take a long swig from the toilet.
6:30 a.m. – The big guy just got back from jogging and he’s all sweaty. Leap into his arms and rub all over him, especially if you’re shedding.
7 a.m. – Meow piteously, as if you were starving, as he replaces the dry food in your dish with NEW dry food. Look at it. Walk away.
7:30 a.m. – He’s brushing you. For no reason whatsoever, BITE him.
8 a.m. – He’s leaving for work. Follow him to the door. Gaze up at him with that I-Know-You’re-Leaving-And-I’ll-Be-Here-All-Day-Along-But-I-Guess-It-Beats-The-Kitty-Gas-Chamber-Down-At-PAWS look.
8:01 a.m. – He’s gone, thank God. Thought he’d NEVER leave. Now, down to business.
8:15 a.m. – Traipse across all the cabinets, the kitchen table, the stereo, the TV, and all the other place you’re not allowed to go when the big guy is here.
8:30 a.m. – Sharpen your claws on the BACK of the stereo speaker so the big guy won’t see it until they replace the carpeting.
9 a.m. – Wallow in that basket of fresh laundry, getting cat hair on his dress pants and work shirts.
9:30 a.m. – Take a break.
Noon – Have a brunch of VCR wiring.
1 p.m. – Practice Rappelling down his collection of Polo shirts hanging in the closet.
2 p.m. – Uh oh. It’s hairball time. Find a nice, clean spot on the carpet.
3 p.m. – Climb upside down on the bottom of the box springs, ripping the fabric in the process.
4 p.m. – Find the one breakable item in the house and accidentally knock it off the shelf, breaking it. Hide the pieces under the couch. The big guy will find it next time he moves.
5 p.m. – A door slams. It’s the big guy! He’s home! Hooray!
5:10 p.m. – Saunter downstairs to see what the big guy’s doing. Don’t be TOO friendly – he doesn’t need to think he’s wanted … very much.
6 p.m. – Hey! A strange cat approaches the sliding glass door. Bow up, raise your hackles, spit, hiss, then fight with the interloper through the screen door.
7 p.m. – The big guy is on the phone, which means he’s not lavishing attention on you. Look him squarely in the eye, rake your claws across the couch and run like hell.
8 p.m. – Use the litter box as he’s trying to clean it out.
9 p.m. – He finally sits down. Good. You needed a warm lap to curl up on and sleep. He really is good for something.
About that photo. … Jason’s off the hook. I was within a hairsbreadth of publishing the photo when a rush of nay votes spared Jason the indignity of having his, uh, girlish figure displayed before all. Next time, I’ll ask for our readers’ forgiveness, not their permission. Got it, Jason?
This column was originally published in the November 20, 1996 Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
This is a stock photo from Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar, but it roughly equates to the cat Mao, who nearly took off my arm as we sat after dinner and chatted in the living room. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/
Got a call from a lady in Navarre who wanted to point out the traffic lights in front of the Target store in Mary Esther are hard to see, and drivers are NOT seeing them, and they’re blowing through red lights at 40, 50 mph, and we can expect carnage, death, etc.
Don’t go cutting down those trees, Mary Esther, but the lights ARE hard to see – I think it’s that funky, hurricane-resistant design. Maybe put up a sign warning drivers that a signal is imminent?
Got a call from the mother of my friend who died of AIDS. Seems his grave has become a target for vandals, who’ve struck twice now. She doesn’t know who’s doing this foul deed, but she wants it to stop.
C’mon, you creeps. Find something better to do with your time, like vandalizing each other.
Speaking of AIDS, OASIS is having another fund-raiser, their Circle of Friends dinner benefit.
The way it works is, an individual hosts a dinner and invites guests who make contributions to OASIS. The dinners can be formal, casual, centered around a theme – anything that gets folks in the mood to give.
For more info, call Melissa Welch at 314-0950, or write to AIDS-OASIS, P.O. Box 35, Fort Walton Beach, FL 32549.
I’m holding in my hands a color photograph of Jason of 98 Rock fame. He’s holding a sign that says, “Braves Beat Those Yankees.” He’s standing by the road outside the station on Hollywood Boulevard, waving to drivers.
He’s wearing a bikini.
Hoo boy. Seems he lost a bet with Anthony, another DJ, over the outcome of the baseball playoffs. A fool and his bathing suit. …
I’m trying to decide if I should publish this photo in next week’s column. If any of you have strong opinions one way or the other, give me a call at the number at the bottom of this column.
This gem moved on the AP: “NEW DELHI, India (AP) – One day after it opened, India’s first McDonald’s restaurant was accused of consuming more than its fair share of electricity. McDonald’s denied the charge Thursday.
“ ‘We have done nothing that is against the law,’ Vikgram Bakshi, managing director of McDonald’s India, told The Associated Press.
“Electricity use is controlled in India to ensure an adequate supply for farmers and public institutions like hospitals.”
You deserve a (circuit) break today. …
If anybody out there has a hankering to buy me a Christmas present, here’s what I want:
Stamps. Specifically, 20-cent stamps.
I love to send postcards – they’re personal yet quick, and the postage is only 20 cents.
It stamps are out, I’ll settle for a three-bedroom, two-bath house in a cul-de-sac. Seriously.
A Brittany by any other name: We recently published a list of the top baby names for boys and girls. I didn’t see my favorites, Annie for girls and Kelly or Todd for boys. I’ll be checking The Public Record for compliance.
I had dinner with a unity (?) of Unitarians the other night, and a delightful unity it was. The hosts were even so kind as to remove Mao the cat, who had nearly gutted me on a previous visit. He left the room yowling, perhaps upset that a second opportunity would be denied him.
Isn’t that sad?
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, November 13, 1996 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
If you could be the star of a movie, would you?
Soon, you’ll have that choice because technology is becoming available that will allow you to create the world of your dreams.
Think about it: If you could “the world of your dreams,” what would it be? I world inhabited by people of your own design and desires – people who are exquisitely witty, or sexually dynamic (I’ve sold you already), or heroic, or dark-hearted, or beautiful?
Would your world be inhabited by lions and tigers and bears, oh my? Griffins, unicorns and dragons? Allosaurs, triceratops and raptors? Godzilla, King Kong, Gidra?
Would this world exist on Earth, or Mars, or far Neptune? Would rings traverse the sky, twin suns rise above the horizon, or bright nebulae illuminate the night?
Would this world exist in three dimensions? Would death shadow life? Would gravity keep things nailed down the way it’s supposed to be?
The point of all this is to get you thinking about the options that will be available to you in a few short years, courtesy of the stunning advances being rendered unto the computer industry. These advances will make today’s computers look primitive, as steam engines laboring noisily in a world powered by silent and efficient reactors.
This bewildering leap forward will be facilitated by dramatic improvements in the way information is exchanged – modems, and either coaxial or fiber-optic cables, that will transmit gigabytes of data in the amount of time (or less) that mere kilobytes are transmitted now.
The operating speeds and computational abilities of computers will be tens of thousands of times higher, making real-time video the norm for screen environments.
Advances in software will permit the creation of character-designing programs, plot-designing programs and other programs that address every aspect of storytelling.
Combine these advances with a recent evolution in Net-interfacing techniques, the “agent,” an electronic proxy that goes onto the Net and does what you want it to do, and you acquire all the ingredients for a fantasy world that you may create.
Farfetched? I saw John Wayne selling beer on TV the other day.
And what will you do with this imaginary world? Allow others to enter? Make little stories, like movies, and sell them on the Net? Go looking for other people’s stories to interface? Or will you kept it for yourself, self-consciously hiding the drama of you and John Lennon playing a canticle for Michelangelo on the 100th level of the revised Dante’s Inferno?
Unlike television, radio, books or other media forms, cyberspace will allow you to create these things, and worse (or better, as the Net advocates assert), you will have a measure of control over every process. Therein lies the allure – and it is a powerful allure. Hence the danger.
Think about it: a highly addictive media form where “truth” and “fantasy” mix freely; an unreal world controlled by a few entities chosen by profit.
This is not a development we should embrace. The Net is a fine library, and a handy way to keep in touch. But as it continues to evolve from its current incarnation, it will become a more attractive, more influential, and ultimately, an evil influence on us as a people.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, November 6, 1996 and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Damage in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida area caused by Hurricane Opal, which struck on Oct. 3, 1995. Image by Del Stone Jr.
On Aug. 5, 1995, and again on Oct. 3, 1995, something strange and wonderful happened in Fort Walton Beach.
Hurricanes Erin and Opal had roared through the days before. The town was in a shambles – trees down, boats sunk, houses destroyed.
People were busy restoring order. They helped themselves and they helped each other – but that’s not the strange and wonderful part.
Electrical service was out in most areas, which meant there was no air-conditioning, and no television. People were forced to go outside where – gasp! – they bumped into their neighbors.
Conversations began. Visits commenced. Cookouts ensued. Neighborhoods, in the truest sense of the word, sprang up literally overnight.
But more was happening. Information was exchanged. Values were formed and shared. Communication skills were honed. The compromises and adjustments demanded by coexistence were composed. The bonds of community and commonality were forged – in a single day!
How strange and wonderful. All the qualities that define the experience of communal man were emerging from the gloom of dead air-conditioners and TV sets.
Sadly, this reconnecting with our humanity ended abruptly when electricity was restored and people could go back to their cool, dark, television-illuminated homes.
Such is the power of air conditioning. But the larger draw is television, what family counselor and syndicated columnist John Rosemond calls the biggest threat to family cohesion ever. Rosemond correctly describes the behavior of watching television as a solitary and isolating act that separates people.
And that’s a relatively benign part of the process – what’s worse is this: The act of watching television is passive, an anesthesia for cognition, essentially transforming the brain into Jell-O.
Now, the internet looms as televisions evil progeny, a final desocializing technology that threatens to finish what writer Harlan Ellison’s “glass teat” started, to keep us all separated from any meaningful or realistic interaction with one another.
Never mind the deleterious health effects brought about by sitting on your butt all day, staring at a cathode ray tube. The Mass Mind behind the internet offers something even the fizzy brain candy of television cannot: the illusion of participating in a big, happy family.
Net proponents envision a global web of interconnectedness, where everybody and everything is equal – children, Nobel laureates, serial killers, rock stars – a global family to occupy the quaint global village we will become.
What they don’t mention is the fact that this “global village” isn’t real.
It’s a fantasy, an electronic simulation, a substitute for corporeality where people “interact” through a filter of anonymity, which allows for all manner of strange perceptions and behaviors. Reality is as elastic as your processor and modem will allow.
Is that we are stampeding to achieve? The cultural psychosis of leading pseudo-lives in an ersatz world, where reality unfolds around us, unnoticed and untended?
Next, I’d like to talk about the future of the net, and why YOU should tune out and turn off, right now.
Until the next hurricane. …
The column was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on October 30, 1996 and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image by Wikimedia Commons user Rock1997.
In “The Lost World” author Michael Crichton takes us on another hair-raising journey through The Land That Time Forgot Then Suddenly Remembered, a revisiting of “Jurassic Park.”
Almost worth the price of admission by itself, however, is Crichton’s indictment of the internet, which he lambasts as the final nail in the coffin of original thinking,
Crichton postulates the demise of our technical culture through an insidious process of intellectual homogenization cultivated by the ease and ubiquity of the Net. He borrows from genetics and chaos theory to describe a world bereft of the diversity and creativity necessary to give rise to new ideas. What television started, the Net will complete.
Grim stuff. Lucky for us Crichton writes fiction.
Or does he? Will his dystopian view of the future come to pass?
Sadly, the answer is yes. It is already happening. And forget the Arcanum of genetics and chaos theory. Much more accessible analogs exist: simple capitalism, for instance.
Give yourself this test. The next time you travel, stop at a shopping center and take an inventory of the stores. What do you see? The Gap. Payless Shoes. Morrow’s. Baskin-Robbins. Dominoes Pizza. Quincy’s Steakhouse. Levis.
Next, study the architecture of the buildings. Do you notice any particular style? Cape Cod? Plantation? Rust Belt Industrial? Anything at all you might call distinctive?
Listen closely to the voices of the people who are walking by you. Do you hear a preponderance of accents? Dialects? Colloquialisms?
Finally, is there anything about any of this that would give you a clue as to what part of the country you’re in?
Keep in mind you can order a Big Man in Freeport, Fla., or Freeport, the Bahamas. You can buy a pair of Nikes in Rome, Ga., or Rome, Italy. Blue jeans have currency in Moscow, Idaho, and Moscow, Russia.
The process of economic and cultural homogenization, facilitated by capitalism, is much nearer to completion there in the States than elsewhere. But it is happening all over the world, and soon, we will all be the same.
Which is not good.
It is differences that make us strong, our cultural, economic and intellectual diversities that compete and cross-pollinate and inspire and protect. These things need their own space to grow. Without them, the world becomes worse than monotonous. It becomes dangerous and evil, subject to an evolving tyranny of intellect, the same slow tyranny you see taking over the free market right now.
This Hitlerization of thinking is responsible for The Mass Mind, a pastiche of pop culture apocryphal stories, distorted history, and magical thinking. Doesn’t it scare you that people really, really believe in Roswell, New Mexico? Or that your children’s opinions lie in the capable hands of MTV? Wait until cyberspace becomes the dominant media form its practitioners say it will.
Forget this “global exchange of ideas” malarkey. That only describes the initial step in the transaction. Ultimately, the Net will weed out originality by encouraging whatever is popular or acceptable – insipid gruel for a world hungry for solutions.
Next week I’ll write about the antecedent to Crichton’s thesis of Net-leavened creativity: How the Net desocializes human interaction and ultimately cognition itself.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, Oct. 23, 1996 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
My greenlining correspondent, Gayle Melich, sends a copy of a recent Washington Post editorial that provides more fodder for the notion of restricting urban sprawl.
The editorial points out that local and state officials in Maryland are feeling the sting of conflicting interests – “… it’s called sprawl, and it’s killing treasuries, urban areas, forests and farmlands at an alarming pace,” opposed to policies that control “living patterns.”
Reaction was predictably political. “… the governor told a gathering of municipal officials that his intention is not to dictate prescriptions for halting sprawl but to lay some political groundwork for debate, recommendations and action over the coming months.”
What a load.
But the editorial continues along a more heartening path. The governor of Maryland wants money for encouraging development in communities that already exist, which would save those municipalities huge development and upkeep costs for infrastructure.
The editorial ends with this directive: “… the answers should not lie in exhausting the remaining spaces as well as public funds with open invitations to clear and build at will.”
If folks inside the Beltway can understand this common-sense frugality, why can’t the paragons of conservative virtue who rule the roost in Northwest Florida do the same?
Movies, movies, movies! This unwavering summer heat has driven me indoors, where I’ve seen more movies in the past month than I usually see in a year. Here’s my report.
“Independence Day”: A shameless parade of clichés, but who cares? This movie is more fun than cinematic pedantry allows. See the White House get obliterated! Watch Los Angeles disappear in a well-earned lake of fire! There’s much much more! Terror (the laboratory scene is about as spooky as they come); humor (did you catch the homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey?”), and action – on a scale that will even leave Arnold What’s-His-Name out of breath. A “Star Wars” kind of classic.
“Eraser”: Speaking of Arnold What’s-His-Name, here he is with Vanessa Williams, and they’re on the run from … and the bad guys are trying to … and the government wants to … does it really matter? “Eraser” has got bullets and explosions and Arnold. What else does a growing baby need with this formula?
“Phenomenon”: This movie was a test. Could I or could I not stay awake to watch John Travolta mumble and shuffle, like Jimmy Stewart on muscle relaxers, through this stultifying tribute to celluloid boredom? I didn’t fall asleep, but I wish I had.
“The Cable Guy”: I don’t like Jim Carrey. He’s more annoying that funny. But in “The Cable Guy” he has his moments, which I attribute to the streaky genius of the script, not Carrey’s manic comedy. I don’t know what to make of this movie; it was hysterical in parts, dark in others, and largely entertaining.
“The Frighteners”: Creepy special effects and the occasional witty line are no substitute for story, and that’s the big problem with this movie. It gives you no sense of place, no sense of character, no sense of story. It is to movies what malls are to shopping: You see one, you’ve seen ’em all.
This column was originally published in the July 24, 1996 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image by Del Stone Jr.
Note: This was an essay I wrote that later became the basis of a short story, “Aunt Edna’s Cats,” which was published in the Barnes & Noble anthology “101 Crafty Cat Capers.”
—
As I stand in my kitchen, hands on hips, gazing across the 900-square-foot empire of my townhouse, I see things bumped out of place, the dust rings showing like chalk outlines of crime victims, proof I’ve murdered my life with the appearance of neatness.
I can’t believe I’m living like this — everything disorganized and messy and, as I said, out of place. I swore I’d never live like this. What’s going on?
It’s those cats.
—
I never liked cats. I was a dog man. My sisters were dog men. My parents, and their parents too, were dog men. We were all dog men, except my aunt, who had three or five or 40 cats.
She was the nutty aunt. The one with all the cats.
Now I have two cats. It was a calculated move, which acquits me of insanity charges. I live in a townhouse, alone, and I’m gone most of the day. A dog would become an ax murderer under those conditions, and a bird would drive its owner crazy with all its screeching and seed-flinging. And you can’t pick up a tropical fish and scratch it behind the ears — you could, I guess, but I defy you to enjoy the experience.
So I have cats. I don’t talk about them much. I intentionally don’t talk about them. I know pet stories are the equivalent of summer-vacation slides. And I know people wouldn’t believe me if I said I had two of the most amazing felines God ever let slip into an earthly state.
If I were anyone else, I wouldn’t believe me either.
—
My female cat’s name is Magpie. I call her Maggie. She’s an orange tabby Manx, and her most famous accomplishment is this: When she was spayed, she had the smallest ovaries of any cat the vet had ever seen.
The male is anthracite black. His name is Pavlov — Pav for short. He was put on this earth to teach me patience, and lately I only threaten to kill him two or three times a day. The trend is downward.
He waits for me at the door when I come home at night. Crazy cat.
—
Every moving thing is a game to cats, be it a catnip-laced flannel mouse dangling from an elastic string, or a human foot sliding beneath the covers. I discovered that early one morning as I awoke to the feel of Pav performing a biopsy on my big toe, his claws hooked knuckle-deep in my flesh and his ears laid back against his skull, his BB shot-sized brain rattling around in there like a pachinko machine down to its last marble.
Pav and Maggie have been excommunicated from the bedroom.
—
I won’t tell you the worm story. It’s too gross. But I noticed none of the presidential candidates was talking about pet health-care subsidies during the last election, which was smart because with the money I’ve spent on vet bills I could have bought myself one of those baboon heart-transplant operations.
For example: Maggie had worms, which she got from fleas. I hadn’t seen any fleas, but we had a “smoking gun,” or in this case a “smoking worm,” to prove they were there. The fleas had to go, which meant Bob the carpet guy had to come to clean the carpet before Charlie from the pest-control place could spray for fleas while the cats were at the vet being dipped and dewormed and inoculated.
So $175 later, I found a flea dying on the kitchen table.
Be still, my baboon heart.
—
Assuming I go straight home from work, a moment arrives between the time I open the front door and the time I close the bedroom door when the day unreels before me. Lightning does not strike, nor does the earth move, but I have my quiet celebrations of things done well, and my regrets for the mistakes I’ve made.
And always, no matter how wonderful or rotten I’ve been, I can lie on the couch and close my eyes and within moments feel the pressure of small paws on my chest, the spreading glow of a kitten lying down, the vibrating compression of a purr monster warming up.
It is love at its very best, for no reason other than its own, simple transcendence.
I am amazed.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Photo by Del Stone Jr.
On Tuesday, Oct. 4, 1995, I was sitting in a staff meeting listening to the disaster plan should Hurricane Opal come our way.
I remember that day for two reasons. O.J. Simpson had just been found innocent of murder and Opal was in the southwest Gulf of Mexico, a trifling 90 mph storm predicted to move northeast and strike the north-central Gulf Coast sometime Thursday.
I remember the wrongness of it all – the wrongness of the verdict and the wrongness of the forecast. Surely after everything that had happened with Simpson a rational jury would convict. Hadn’t he tried to flee before a national television audience? And how could the National Hurricane Center believe Opal would dither in the gulf until Thursday when a vigorous cold front was approaching. Hadn’t previous experience suggested cold fronts act as siphons, pulling tropical weather systems along their boundaries at high rates of speed?
On the way back to the newsroom I told the editor I thought Opal would arrive much sooner – as of Wednesday. He expressed surprise. That wasn’t in the forecast. And of course I’m not a weather forecaster. Still, I’d seen it before, most notably with Eloise in ’75. I was sure the storm would strike the next day.
I don’t remember what I did that night but I remember being awakened at 5:30 Wednesday morning by the telephone. It was one of my feature writers, whose voice sounded thin as cellophane. Opal had intensified rapidly during the night and was racing for the Northwest Florida coast with winds of 135 mph. She wanted to evacuate – could she please evacuate?
Now now, I laughed. Let me take a look at the forecast and I’ll call you back.
I turned on the TV and dialed in The Weather Channel. There sat TWC’s septuagenarian hurricane expert, John Hope, who gravely confirmed everything my feature writer had told me. In fact the news was worse – Opal could further strengthen before moving onshore.
I called her back and said yes, she could evacuate. “OK thanks ‘bye” she blurted. No comma stops in that declaration. I imagine 30 seconds later her car was screeching out of the driveway.
Then I called my parents. They live close to the water and Mom has no love of hurricanes. I knew they’d want to evacuate. The sound of a phone ringing early in the morning can bring nothing but bad news but they took my storm warning in stride. The day would mean a long drive to Huntsville, Ala., where they’d rent a hotel room and watch it unfold on TV. At least they wouldn’t be here, where I’d worry about them.
I showered, shaved and drove to work. It was a dark, gloomy morning, but traffic was light and I made the trip quickly. I worried a little about my cats back at the townhouse. Would they be OK if I had to remain at the office during the storm?
The time was 6:30 a.m.
When I got to work few people were about. I called the editor and roused him from bed. He called the publisher. We’d have a meeting at 7:30. The telephones were ringing like crazy, people wanting to know what was going on and old coworkers who had moved on to other locales calling to ask if we were OK. Well, no, we weren’t OK. We were about to be clobbered by a category 3 hurricane. That’s never OK.
The editor and publisher showed up. We met. We discussed options – publishing a special edition before the storm, or another special edition after the storm.
Then, one of our columnists burst through the newsroom door and shouted, “The winds are up to 150 mph and it could become a category 5!”
I could think of nothing else to say except, “You’re lying.”
“No! I’m not! Check The Weather Channel!”
We turned the TV to The Weather Channel and sure enough, there sat John Hope announcing Opal had continued its rapid intensification and was now a category 4 storm with winds of 150 mph. Further intensification was possible and Opal could become a category 5 storm as it struck the Florida Panhandle later that afternoon. He said, “If you’re in the Florida Panhandle you need to get out. You’ve got to get out of there.” Or something to that effect.
My stomach turned to mush. Category 5. What would that do to our community?
At that point the publisher made his decision. We would not publish a Thursday edition. Most of the staff had left – not just the reporters but the press crew, mailroom employees and carriers too. Even if we could produce a special section, nobody would be available to print it or distribute it. And who would be available to read it? He urged everybody to evacuate. We were told we could shelter at the building or go to our homes. God help us.
About 8 a.m. I left the newspaper. I knew better than to shelter there. I would be up all night with no sleep. When the real work was needed, the next day, I’d be in horrible shape to do it. I decided to go home, ride out the storm with my cats, and report to work the next morning.
I drove to the main thoroughfare through town. All three lanes heading north were jammed bumper-to-bumper with cars moving at about 3 mph. All three lanes heading south were empty. I think that was the moment I became most scared – as I turned right and began heading south, the lone car on the road. It was as if the people in those cars heading north knew something I didn’t. I felt utterly and terribly alone.
I had to drive to the southernmost intersection of town to find a place where I could cross to the other side of the road. I took back streets until I found myself sitting in my parents’ driveway. Their car was gone and the house locked up. I became even more frightened. I was truly on my own.
I drove to my townhouse. There, everything seemed normal. The lights were on, the AC running and my cats were nonchalantly curious as to why I was interrupting their solitude on a work day. I vacuumed the house, made a pot of coffee and for the first time ever, filled up a five-gallon jug with drinking water.
Throughout the morning vicious rain bands rolled onshore dumping copious amounts of water. At one point the parking lot where I live began to flood. I knew from previous experience the storm drain gutter must be plugged up – it traps leaves and debris preventing the rain from draining. So I donned my wet shoes, grabbed a plastic bag and went outside to clean out the drain. It needed to be done. If not I might have a foot of stormwater sloshing around in the townhouse.
As I stuffed handsfulls of leaves into the bag a Jeep Grand Cherokee plowed through a lake in the road, sending a tsunami of foul stormwater crashing over me. I stopped, gazed balefully at the Jeep and shook my fist. The Jeep driver had stopped, but having thought escape was the better part of valor he drove off, leaving me standing there soaking wet.
Luckily the parking lot emptied once I got the storm drain cleaned out and I was able to return home and take the last hot shower I’d enjoy for the next four days. Then, perversely, the battery in my TV remote went dead. You wouldn’t think a dead remote battery would be a major concern with a category 4 storm approaching but to me it was a crisis – I needed a new battery. Otherwise I’d have to get off the couch and manually change the channel. Horrors!
I live across the street from a major shopping center – one with a Radio Shack – so I decided to stroll over there and buy a new battery.
Surprise. All the stores were closed.
That’s when the enormity of the impending disaster struck me – when I couldn’t buy a stupid battery for my TV remote.
This is the end of Part 1 of this narrative. I will post Part 2 later.
I was sitting in my Nissan Pathfinder, staring at a deserted shopping center at 11 o’clock in the morning, and I thought, This is what the end of the world will look like.
The parking lot, which should have been jammed with cars, was empty. Dim lights shone from the stores but no shoppers browsed the aisles. The streets on either side of the shopping center were empty. I was the only moving thing in that forlorn rectangle of commerce except for the stray piece of trash picked up the wind.
The sky to the south was the color of a nasty bruise, the deep bluish-gray some people describe as purple. A brisk southeasterly wind came in fits and starts, shaking the Pathfinder as I nudged it through the parking lot. Pools of standing rainwater rippled with the gusts.
I debated trying to find another store that might be open but finally decided to get myself back home and finish storm preparations. I had much to do. The computer needed protection and my floppy discs, which contained a lifetime of writing, would have to be put somewhere so that if a window shattered they wouldn’t be destroyed by water.
When I arrived the parking lot was blessedly free of lakes. I guess a dowsing was worth the peace of mind. Inside, the TV continued a never-ending, manic outpouring of storm “information,” most of it bullshit as the reporters and talking heads ad libbed their way into realms of coverage for which they were not adequately prepared. Disgusted, I turned to The Weather Channel. At least John Hope knew what he was talking about, even if he were a doomcaster.
At one point I found myself praying the storm would weaken. I am not an atheist but I don’t believe in organized religion. Don’t get me wrong. I think religion does a lot of good, despite the obvious bad wrought in the name of Jesus, Mohammed and other prophets. But I think God looks out for us after a fashion and I called upon him to look out for me and my community as this cyclonic devil bore down on us.
The 11 a.m. advisory had just come in and saints be praised, Opal had weakened! Winds were down to a mere 135 mph. Later I would learn Opal had passed over the “Gulf loop,” a whorl of super warm water in the central gulf that sometimes develops from currents flowing up from the Caribbean. That had contributed to Opal’s latest burst of intensification. But now Opal was undergoing what weathermen call an “eyewall replacement cycle” in which a tight inner eye cannot be sustained by the available heat and moisture so it collapses, to be replaced by a larger eye that diffuses the wind field.
Given time and energy Opal would redevelop that tight, inner eye. With luck she’d go inland before that happened.
I trudged upstairs and encased the computer in a plastic garbage bag. I put the floppies in a zipper-top bag and relocated them to the bathroom linen closet. Then I set about covering the windows with rows of masking tape. I glared balefully at my neighbor’s upstairs patio. The asshole had left a potted impatien in one of those macrame holders swinging from the railing. I could picture it being snatched up by the wind and dashed against my upstairs sliding glass door. I wanted to strangle her.
Sometime between 11 a.m. and noon the power went off. I felt myself frowning. The weather didn’t seem that bad just yet. Why had the power gone off? And it wasn’t as if I could call Gulf Power and report an outage. I shook my head and got out the candles and flashlights. Luckily I had set the thermostat to 68 degrees so the AC had been running all morning. It would be a few hours until the temperature inside the townhouse became clammy and uncomfortable.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
At about 1 p.m. the wind began blowing really hard. The trees were gyrating so violently I wondered why they didn’t snap in half and crash to the ground. The air was filled with flying leaves – that and the notorious sideways rain you hear about. Once or twice that afternoon I stepped outside to witness the storm firsthand. Just opening the door was an ordeal – apparently the pressure inside the house was greater than outside because I had to put some muscle into getting the door open.
You can’t really know what a hurricane is like until you’ve experienced one. The world outside your door is a cacophony of swishing – the wind is hurling itself against your house, your car and the trees in your yard. Anything unable to withstand the gale is swept away. Meanwhile a basso roar insinuates itself beneath the higher frequency hissing of wind. That would be the Gulf of Mexico thundering against the barrier island that protects Fort Walton Beach, my hometown. The island, which we call Okaloosa Island, lies a mere half mile from shore. It is a thin ribbon of sand that stretches from Destin all the way to Pensacola, 45 miles to the west. It rises above sea level a mere 3 or 4 feet, except where sand dunes tower to as high as 30 feet. Thanks to development many of these sand dunes have been leveled. The gulf is free to visit the mainland.
I could hear this as I stood on the front porch, and truth be told it terrified me. A hurricane’s most insidious power over a human being is its assertion of authority. You have absolutely no control over what’s happening. You can tape windows, light candles and pray, but the hurricane will do to you what it chooses. I felt tiny, almost insectile, as I stood there watching the world fly by me.
The next four hours were probably the worst four hours of my life. The townhouse shivered as gusts of wind over 120 mph battered the building. I heard loud knocks and thuds as debris struck the roof. The windows began leaking around the edges. At times the entire townhouse seemed to shrink, then expand, and the air pressure changed from one minute to the next causing my ears and sinuses to pop. I saw objects flying through the air – I didn’t know what they were. I went upstairs a few times to call the newspaper and make sure everybody was OK – I had a landline phone up there that was still working – and the building shimmied beneath my feet. I felt the constant urge to duck as something heavy and loud rumbled across the roof.
About 5 o’clock that afternoon the sky turned a sickening shade of green. Clouds raced overhead and I could see small objects sailing overhead – for God’s sake they were birds, flocks of birds! What would birds be doing out in a storm of this magnitude? Then I looked closer and realized they weren’t birds at all. Debris. Roofing shingles. Flashing. Flotsam and jetsam, picked up by the wind. I wondered how many miles they would sail, and who would puzzle over them once they descended to earth.
Then an incredible thing happened. I heard whoops of joy and saw a group of men dash from a nearby townhouse and hurl themselves into the courtyard swimming pool. They were GIs, probably from nearby Eglin Air Force Base. I guess they were having a hurricane party and had gotten drunk and would now enjoy a brisk splash in the pool as the eye of Hurricane Opal crossed the coast.
And indeed that was what happened. I’d brought downstairs my boombox and was listening to a local radio station that had a correspondent stationed at the local emergency operations center. The center of Opal crossed the coastline somewhere near Navarre Beach, about 20 miles to our west, at about 5 p.m. Finally – blessedly – the worst was behind us.
Darkness fell. I lit candles and turned on the flashlight. At one point I turned off the radio – I couldn’t stand listening to the frantic declarations of the announcer. Any and all rumors were being broadcast. Somebody had reported a major bridge had been toppled and they broadcast the information without any verification – turns out no bridge had collapsed. They reported a body had washed up on the northern shore of Choctawhatchee Bay. That wasn’t true either, although the real story was far more interesting. A truck driver trying to make the dash from Destin to Fort Walton Beach had been tossed from his rig and floated across the bay to land on its northern shore. What they did report, and what turned out to be true, was that the Gulf of Mexico had breached Okaloosa Island. Never in my decades of living in this area had that happened.
Late that night I trudged upstairs and went to bed. It was difficult finding sleep. The wind howled through the pergola on my upstairs patio and it sounded too much like a human being screaming … or maybe not a human being. At some point I fell asleep. …
… To awaken to gloriously blue skies and refreshing fall temperatures. Apparently the cold front that had sucked up Opal and spit her out on our shores had passed through. Our weather was splendid. I took a freezing cold shower, got dressed, cleaned out the litter boxes, gave the kitties an extra helping of food and water, then headed out.
My first stop was Mom and Dad’s house. I wanted to make sure everything was OK there. The drive over was dicey – trees were down and floodwaters still made some of the roads impassible. In some spots the road was clogged with debris or fallen power lines. Eventually I got there and was shocked by what I saw – giant trees I’d known all my life lay like fallen brontosauruses in the back yard. Something big had taken off the corner of the roof. The fence was crushed in several locations. Overall the damage appeared manageable but Dad would have his hands full the next few days.
I toured the neighborhood. I was horrified to see the water from Choctawhatchee Bay had come up over the street abutting Mom and Dad’s back yard. A few more hours of southerly winds and my folks might have had the bay in their house.
The trip to work was equally revelatory. Damage was everywhere – buildings with their roofs torn off, signs down, trees lying prone, debris wrapped around telephone poles. Each time my tires crunched over mounds of shingles I wondered if a nail would immobilize my Pathfinder.
When I got to work I was greeted by what struck me as an insurmoutable tableau of chaos. A Honda generator chugged on the sidewalk with extension cords running through the door to inside. The newsroom was pitch black. Reporters who had sheltered there staggered about, sleep deprived and unable to function. One reporter was bleery-eyed drunk, as was one of the management team. The phone rang endlessly. Most ominously, I was the senior editor present. How the hell would I make sense of this?
As the morning wore on the news became grim, then grimmer. The Gulf of Mexico had breached the island and everything there was in a state of destruction. We’re talking million-dollar-an-acre real estate, home to McMansions, giant condos and pricey restaurants. The main thoroughfare from Fort Walton Beach to Destin – U.S. Highway 98 – had been utterly destroyed. Boats and hotels were lying in the roadway in downtown Fort Walton Beach. The Sheriff’s Office had set up a blockade on the county’s borders.
I took out a yellow legal pad and began breaking down the catastrophe into manageable chunks. Our coverage would mirror our beats. We would fill the newspaper with stories and photos – especially photos – of what had happened. Every municipality around us would get its own story, unless the reporter covering that beat failed to make an appearance. I felt like a triage nurse, salvaging what could be salvaged. But I believed it was the only manageable way to deal with the situation.
Throughout the day editors and reporters came in and the business of managing the crises became easier and easier. It was all falling into place. What had seemed like a disaster of news coverage that morning had become a manageable – albeit difficult – issue of coordination by late afternoon.
Speaking of which, about 5 p.m. I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. I strolled past the electric meter on the side of the building and noticed an orange glow inside the meter. The proverbial light bulb clicked. Electricity. Somehow electricity was reaching the meter but not being transferred to the building itself. I tracked down the maintenance man and made him come outside with me. When I showed him the meter he slapped his head and declared, “Damn, I forgot!”
Prior to Opal’s arrival he’d shut off the main circuit breakers, fearing damage to the computers and AC systems. We made our way into the mailroom, where the breaker box was located. He shoved the switches up and the lights burst forth in a blaze of fluourescent glory! The ACs kicked into gear. We had electricity!
You could hear the cheer reverberate throughout the building.
Because we were a “priority customer,” due to our public information role, Gulf Power had worked hard to get us back online. Never was an electric pencil sharpener more welcome.
After that, getting out the newspaper became a snap. Our reporters were able to write their stories at their own PCs. Our paginators were able to design the pages. Our photographers could develop their film. The press crew could print the paper, and what carriers showed up could deliver it.
I drove home at midnight in utter blackness. Traffic signals weren’t working so we relied on the honor system at intersections. Those of us who remained behind fastidiously observed this system in negotiating major byways in town. When I arrived home the kitties were just fine. It was cool inisde. I had a lovely dinner of soggy, half-thawed hotdog buns and chicken bullion.
Over the next few weeks we would cover Opal like we’d never covered any story before. We were national news. Opal had killed 63 people and caused $3 billion in damage. Our shorelines were in ruins. And to this day we are still dealing with the aftermath – Opal wiped out many of the dunes on Okaloosa Island, which means every tropical storm that visits the Florida panhandle threatens to overwash the island, damaging the properties there and bringing floods to the mainland. Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis and Katrina exacerbated the problem. Even Hurricane Ike, which came nowhere near us, overwashed part of the highway between Fort Walton Beach and Destin.
But we are still here.
I remember a letter to the editor shortly after Opal struck. I can’t quote it verbatim but it went something like this: “No lights, no phone, no TV, no water. But by God my newspaper was in the driveway.”
I felt proud to be a journalist.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
[ Main image courtesy of SplitShire at Pexels by way of a Creative Commons license ]
The genesis of my story, “I Feel My Body Grow,” in “100 Wicked Little Witch Stories” was simple: I wanted to sell a story to “100 Wicked Little Witch Stories.”
During the ‘90s writer and editor Stefan Dziemianowicz edited a number of anthologies for Barnes & Noble, all of them centered around very short stories. Seems publishers love short shorts, and I’m not sure if that’s because they can get more in each books or that readers prefer very short stories. As a reader I have no druthers either way, though I will pause before committing to a novelette or novella. I didn’t read Stephen King’s “The Mist” for many years because of that bias.
When I heard Dziemianowicz was editing a book of witch stories I tried to come up with something that would fit his premise. I knew nothing about witches except what I’d seen in movies or TV. I knew a couple of people who claimed to be witches but their witchhood had less to do with eye of newt and hair of bat but the whole Mother Earth and Gaia thing, which I dismissed as a New Age hippie trend.
What I wanted was a witch for the modern ages, maybe not an evil witch but one who was vengeful. I came up with just such a creature:
Cancer.
Cancer is the modern scourge. We think of it as evil though it has no conscious intent – it merely is.
But I asked: What if it did have conscious intent?
“I Feel My Body Grow” is the answer.
This is a creepy story and when I re-read it recently I was gratified to see it holds up well, from 1995 to this writing in 2023. I think it would make a terrific feature in a horror anthology movie like “Tales from the Crypt” or “Twilight Zone.”
I don’t believe “I Feel My Body Grow” will leave you lying awake tonight jumping at every sound. I do hope it stays with you.
Oh, and one more thing. This story was converted into a vlog, which is posted on YouTube. Check it out! Witchy voice and all. Follow this link.
From Amazon
“I admit that when I bought this book, I didn’t have very high expectations for it. I mean, I’d never heard of it before, but I took a chance and bought it anyway. And I loved it. The stories are all so different; some were funny, others were dark and foreboding, and some were exciting.“
– Chayleen Anderson
The witches who populate these 100 delightfully scary stories include practitioners of white witchcraft and devotees of black magic. Most are female, some are male, and a few are thoroughly unclassifiable. They can be born witches or made witches, and may mix simple love potions or volatile concoctions that threaten all we hold dear. Some resent not receiving the treatment they feel they deserve from lesser mortals; yet other witches don’t even realize that they wield any special influence at all. The many writers who take on this ever-fascinating character (so fundamentally human unlike her more paranormal, ghostly brethren) include Juleen Brantingham (“Burning in the Light”), Joe R. Landsdale (“By the Hair of the Head”), Simon McCaffery (“Blood Mary”), Terry Campbell (“Retrocurses”), Lawrence Shimel (“Coming Out of the Broom Closet”), and a coven of others.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .