Construction Time Again

I’ve been reading a lot, lately, about the Winchester Mystery house.

According to legend, the widow and heir to the Winchester fortune, Sarah Winchester, believed that she shared her home with the spirit of everyone ever killed by a Winchester rifle, and was compelled by this belief to continually add to her home. Rooms, wings, fireplaces, stairways, basements, elevators, beyond meaningful utility, beyond sanity, without rhyme, reason or any thought as to what purpose the finished building might serve her.

Because she did not intend that the building ever be finished, and so she had no conception of “finished” as far as the building went. Rather she worked to continually confound the spirits of the dead, hoping that they would become more and more lost as her home became more and more labyrinthine, hoping that they would never find their way through the maze she was continually constructing, to where she lived, like the Minotaur of old, at that maze’s centre.

In essence, she believed that if construction ever stopped, even for a moment, the ghosts would get her.

She was quite mad, obviously.

And yet, as I read, I couldn’t help but think about how much damn roadwork goes on here in Calgary.

Because it does at times seem as though the city’s constantly working on some major construction project or other and, while Mayor Nenshi doesn’t seem mad, the maddest among us never do.

Or, if he’s sane, perhaps he knows something the rest of us don’t, with regard to the occult.

I can’t off the top of my head think of anything that might have drawn the spirits of the dead to our town, but I suspect that were they here, among us, the roadwork outside my work right now would certainly confound them.

So perhaps there’s more rhyme and reason to the endless construction than I give my hometown credit for…

Although, if so, this would, in light of the fact that I’m not directly involved in planning or executing the construction myself, lead to a rather uncomfortable question.

 Am I living in the house? Or am I simply one of its ghosts?

Weekly Prompt Story: Mirror

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=27929

Mirrors

By Christopher Munroe

I’ve replaced the ceiling of my bedroom with mirrors.

The walls too.

My quilt and sheet set are now made of reflective material, and I’ve covered what furniature I have with mirrors as well. This way, wherever I look, I can’t escape the vision of myself, reflected back at myself, all the way to infinity.

It’s been suggested that this will drive me mad, and it might. There are days where I feel like it’s driven me mad already…

Nonetheless, it is necessary.

Something, after all, had to be done, to compensate for my own lack of capacity for self-reflection…

NaNoWriMo (Part I)

….and then came NaNoWriMo.

I was excited, yes, but moreso I was ready. More ready than I’d ever been for anything in my life.

I’d wished my friends goodbye for the month, booked time off work, even had my cable and internet cut for the duration that I might do my work free from any distractions.

My fridge was stocked with thirty-one days worth of food, so I’d have no good reason to ever leave the house, and the numbers of two pizza places and my favorite Chinese delivery restaurant were programmed into my phone, for the days when I couldn’t tear myself away from the page even long enough to cook. Within my self-imposed literary exile, I reigned supreme…

…and, most importantly, I’d procured one hundred twenty four tabs of LSD.

Two for every morning.

Two for every night.

I had a book to write. A simple story of a man eating LSD in isolation, trying to write a novel and going slowly mad.

And nothing would stop me.

Nothing…

Weekly Prompt Story: Border

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=23599

Bordering on Madness

By Christopher Munroe

We have to secure our borders with Madness, immediately!

For too long we’ve allowed Mad Men to cross freely, taking jobs in advertising from our own native-born citizens, and this must stop.

We must build a wall, and patrol it with drones, lest this unfair illegal immigration continue unabated, to do otherwise would be mad!

If we allow the free travel of the mad into our nation, before long we’ll be nothing more than a madhouse!

A madhouse!!!

Also: Make the wall soundproof. I like Madness, but if I hear One Step Beyond one more time, I’m going to snap…

Grieving

After the funeral, once he was buried and gone, she, still in widow’s garb, trudged back up the hill, forsaking relations and the comfort they offered, to seal herself within the mansion the two of them once shared.

It’s said that she’s up there still, in her mourning gown, gazing from her window down upon an unsuspecting township, lost in self-imposed isolation, long since mad with grief…

…or maybe she’s dead.

In fact, so far as I can tell we haven’t delivered food up there in nearly a year. She’s probably dead.

We really ought to send somebody to check.

The Shadow

It was always there, I could always see it out of the corner of my eye, but I could never quite focus on it.

A dark flicker, a shadow across my peripheral, almost man-shaped, which I could always almost see but which, whenever I turned to focus on it, would always vanish.

I could never quite make it out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it either, wondering what it was, who it was, and what it might want with me.

It was never far from my mind.

I feared it might one day drive me mad.

Now I’m much calmer, here in the dark. Do I miss art, or a sunrise, or the smile of a child? If I have to be honest I’ll admit that I do, on occasion, but that’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind I’ve achieved. After all, I knew that one more flicker in my vision and I’d be driven to mad, desperate action that I might some day live to regret, and so I had to head the problem off before it got to that point.

And, while the solution I’ve found might strike some as extreme, I regret nothing of what I’ve done. It seems, to my mind, only right and proper.

Mine eye offended me, after all.

And so I plucked it out.

Knife

Late at night, the knife whispers to me as I go to sleep.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t command me, it would never try to control me. It‘s not that kind of knife.

It simply whispers.

It asks about my day, what I’ve been doing. And I know it genuinely cares about my answers.

It comforts me when I’m feeling low, and congratulates me when I’m feeling well.

It tells me it loves me.

And I know that love’s an important thing.

That’s why, if it ever does ask me to do anything for it, I will. Without question.

Behing Your Eyes

We live behind your eyes.

We watch as you go about your days, seeing each act, knowing every secret. We watch, and wait.

We wait to catch you at your weakest. Your moments of anger, of despair. It’s then that we seize control, driving you to action you’d never be capable of.

Rage.

Violence.

Personal destruction, utter and complete.

And then we return you to you. You face consequences for our actions. And if you try to tell anyone the truth, they’ll surely think you mad.

They’ll have to.

It’s either that or face what lives behind their own eyes.

Oh, and for today:

My story shant be appearing here, since i've been published in the excellent online mag Dark Recesses. I heartily recommend you read me there:

http://www.darkrecesses.com/?p=1926

...and while you're at it, cruise the site, it's a pretty cool collection of stories.

The Takeout Window at Wendy's

The takeout speaker at Wendy’s keeps urging me to kill.

It asks if I want to upgrade my fries and drink, and tells me everyone I know plots secretively against me.

It tells me my total is $6.79, and reminds me that I, the Angel of Death, have a duty to rain vengeance down upon the heads of the infidels.

It tells me to pull up to the pickup window for my meal, then go home and butcher my family before eating it.

I worry I’m going mad.

And wonder how boring working the takeout window of Wendy’s must be.