Archive for the 'Footnotes' Category
“City of Pillars,” Chapter 4 is Now Live!
July 17th, 2008
Damn. Took me long enough, didn’t it? But you’ll definitely get your money’s worth with this chapter of “City of Pillars,” as it takes you into the North Tower of the World Trade Center after the impact of the first plane, and…well, let’s just say that the impact is the least of the survivors’ worries. Check it out:
There were three men pushing the stairwell door shut but Raj threw himself into the gap shouting, “No, no, not yet—there’s still someone in there!” and the guys started arguing with him, telling him they had to shut the door or they’d all suffocate, and they were pulling him, trying to get pull him back in so they could shut the door but Raj said, “Stop it, goddamnit, I got him! I got him!”
And then Raj just disappeared.
One second he was there, the next…gone.
One of the men at the door went in after him—I guess they thought he’d gone back into the stairwell for Ray. We all heard the man scream, but it was cut off almost instantly. The last two guys on the door were calling him—“Bob! Bob, what happened?!”—and then the…the worms came through the door.
Well, they looked like worms. Like earthworms, but big and purple, big as firehoses. And covered with ash—there was ash all over them, like they’d come out of the fire…and I think I even saw one of them still burning.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Two of them whipped out of the smoke and wrapped around the man closest to the doorway and he didn’t even have time to say anything—he was gone. They’d pulled him into the smoke. “Close the goddamned door! There’s more of them!” somebody shrieked and then I was throwing myself at the door with a bunch of terrified people and the heavy emergency exit door slammed shut. I had my hands on the door and felt something hammering against the other side. Hammering. Hard. The door was jumping beneath our hands and everyone was saying, “Block the door, block the door.”
Oh, it gets a lot worse than that, too.
So take a look, and lemme know what you think!
Footnotes down for the count…but not for long!
June 4th, 2008
OK, folks—take note, ‘cause this is kind of important: PEGRITZ(.com)!’s sister site, Footnotes to the Human Species, is currently M.I.A. The reason is simple: for some reason, WordPress 2.5 stopped working correctly on the site. It simply wouldn’t allow me to edit previously published posts or publish new ones. I upgraded the site to WP 2.5.1, but that did not help one bit. So…the only thing I could think of doing was wiping the installation clean, deleting the SQL database containing all the text, and just starting Completely Anew.
Oh, don’t worry: no content (aside from maybe a “Here’s what I’ve been doing lately” post here and there) has been lost, as I’ve got all that stuff backed up in about five thousand different places. But it will take me a little time to get the site back up and running, with all its plug-ins and enhancements running smoothly (especially since several of them have new versions that are very incompatible with previous versions). Ohwell. Might take a day to get the site back up and running, but remember:
All of the chapter to “City of Pillars” that I will be publishing on the site, Chapters 1 through 7, are the revised versions—many of which are so heavily revised they bear little resemblance, if any, to the originals. You might as well just start back at the beginning, because this thing needed major work to come even close to my standards of quality.
Never, ever start writing something in the middle of a semester of teaching and “make it all up as you go along.” I’ve learned you can’t even do that with a short story of only 1,000 words…let alone a beast that started with an expectation of novella length, but is clearly demanding to be treated as a full-scale novel.
Here’s a heads up on the newly revised “City of Pillars 2.0” that all readers so far hooked on the story should keep their multiple three-lobed eyes peeled for:
Look for a tangential character in “City of Pillars” to be the protagonist/narrator of “Naming the Nameless City”. Also look for Yours Truly, me, appearing in a later chapter that sets up the basic concept of “Iä!”, the story which contains most of what readers familiar with the first incarnation of Footnotes will recognize as the first part of “Trois Frères”—expanded with plenty of sickening details revealing just how horrific the March of the Squidheads is for Humanity as a whole. “Trois Frères” will return as a wholly separate tale, a direct sequel to “Iä!” that sets up much of the action in “Goodnight, Antarctica” and “The Fifth of Five Forms”.
Please bare with me, folks. I want to give you THE best free fictional experience you can possibly get, and I will admit: I’m aiming to be known as the premier literary descendant of H. P. Lovecraft (though, of course, I’ll gladly settle for being known as a really good rip-off artist, as well). If you know me, chances are you’ll probably find yourself in one of these damn stories—but I must warn you: just because we’re best friends, that doesn’t mean you’ll survive. Hell, it doesn’t mean I will survive any of this!
Remember the Footnotes to the Human Species motto: “Who are we to stand before the Gods Themselves and beg for their forbearance”?”
Indeed…who are we? What is Humanity to transcendent alien minds like the Great Old Ones, utterly incomprehensible minds like the Other Gods, and even post-Singularity entities like the Great Race, the Fungi from Yuggoth and their Million Favored Ones, and the Elder Things themselves? Think about that. Are we cockroaches between their feet, or can we be something more?
“City of Pillars” Chapter 6 now in theatres! Shown in Sense-O-Rama!
April 23rd, 2008
Just like the title says: The long-awaited (since last week) sixth chapter of “City of Pillars” hath been posted on Footnotes to the Human Species.
But some of you may still be skeptical. “Do I really want to read about giant betentacled transdimensional monsters destroying a city? I mean, you’re clearly ripping off Cloverfield, Pegritz—that’s sooooo obvious.” Well, yeah, I am. Unabashedly. But here, why don’t you read this and then tell me what you think:
I don’t know how many times I almost fell. Wainwright wasn’t a real big guy, but he was still wearing most of his gear, and I had him over my right shoulder, so I kept leaning right. Muroni’s jumping down the stairs like he’s a fucking kangaroo and Kelly’s neck-and-neck him. “Wait for me!” I yelled again and again but they didn’t even here. I wasn’t even paying attention to the floor numbers, I was just running, jumping, practically falling down the stairs just like this paramedics we’d seen coming down in Stairwell B who’d said there was something up on 36.
We were outpacing the thing—we were actually getting ahead of it!—and I was, like, We’re gonna make it, we’re gonna outrun the Thing From Another World and then we ran into another unit coming up—I mean, we literally ran into them.
No one could see each other in the smoke. These guys must’ve been coming up the stairwell dragging hoses behind them to put out individual floor fires. Next thing you know there’s a pile-up and I’m falling facefirst down the stairs in a big crush of bodies and screaming and water—somebody had pulled the valve on the hose. I dropped Wainwright. I don’t even know where he went—I just fell. I hit the landing so hard my forehead cracked off the tiles and oh, Jesus Mary and Joseph, the pain blacked me out for a couple of seconds.
And then I came back to myself. I heard men screaming like girls and the guy lying next to me just flew up into the air; those worm-things had bit into him and just yanked him straight up. I looked up and oh, my God, the entire stairwell was…there was a ceiling of thing, and it was reaching down with worms and now these long, jointed bony hooks, picking up men and just stuffing them into itself. My mind went blank then and I got up and I ran; shoving past any body in my way, grabbing men and pushing everyone out of my way, fuckin’ throwing them down the stairs. Another guy beside me screamed and shot up into the air and that was it—no way was I going out like that. That was the point that I lost my mind like Wainwright had. I barely remember what I was doing. Shoved anyone out of my way, just kept going down, stiff-arming my way through that bottleneck in the stairwell like I was Jerome Fucking Bettis.
Chapter 6 is told from the point of view of one Rudy LaCava, an FDNY fireman who runs into some pretty awful things in the North Tower and narrowly misses dying in the collapse…only to discover that the worst is yet to come.
More “City of Pillars” Evil Has Arrived!
April 9th, 2008
Wow. After so many busy weeks, I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of writing, and that means that the fifth chapter of “City of Pillars” is online! Here’s a sample:
“The world did not end with the destruction of Manhattan,” the bored old general in charge of Project Reclaim Manhattan had said to close the pre-tour briefing. “America did not end with the destruction of Manhattan. Not even New York City ended, though it was grievously wounded. Despite the incredible loss of lives and property on September 11, the Azifist mission to wake the Great Old Ones did not, after all, succeed. Great Cthulhu still sleeps. Irem, the so-called ‘Nameless City,’ today is secure under Coalition forces. With the loss of their capitol and their leadership, the Cthulhu cultists have been driven underground like rats; they will be hunted down one by one, if necessary, and made to pay for their crimes against Humanity. The Great Traitor, George W. Bush, is no more and his Xinaian cabal has been driven back to K’n-Yan to face prosecution by their own people. As President Obama recently stated, ‘Now is not the time to think of all the terrible things that have passed, but of the fruitful, bountiful days that are just now beginning. ’ The Revised Manhattan Rebirth Initiative is both a practical and symbolic example of our nation’s willful resilience. Manhattan will someday rise again; the Five Boroughs will be complete once more. So remember, all of you: what you will see today is going to be disturbing. But you must not dwell on the sundered past. Look beyond the wreckage to the future: Manhattan reborn like a phoenix from the ashes. The clean-up has, for all intents and purposes, only just begun. It will take many more years. But never forget: this is a time of beginnings. And the rebirth of not only New York City but of the United States begins here.”
It was obvious from the way that he read the speech from a typescript and never once looked up at the audience that he didn’t believe a word he was saying. Desultory applause followed him off the podium and out the back door. We were divided up into groups, given packets of information containing “all we needed to know” about the Project and plastic protective overalls to wear over our clothing, then we were hustled out to the waiting choppers. Once I was seated and strapped down, I closed my eyes and listened to the speeding beat of the rotors, trying to think of nothing but the whup-whup-whup of metal slicing air. The helicopter lifted off so smoothly I didn’t even know we were off the ground until Greg leaned over to me and muttered: “Look at that. Dave. Dave. Look.”
See what I did there? It’s horror plus witty, contemporary political commentary! Hell, y’all might as well start calling me The Bill Maher of Lovecraftian Fiction!*
*Please, don’t. My head is big enough already.
Chapter 4 of “City of Pillars” is now live!
March 31st, 2008
For those of you who follow this blog but may not be aware of my grand fictional exercise in blatantly ripping off H. P. Lovecraft, Footnotes to the Human Species, please hop on over there and check out my novella “City of Pillars,” the fourth chapter of which has just gone live! If you enjoy my nonfiction writing, there’s every chance you might dig my fiction as well—but do be aware, however, that my fiction is relentlessly depressing, frequently so violent it would make dear little Alex of A Clockwork Orange shrink in fear, and always, and I do mean always, very vicious and despairing. Here’s a little sample to try out before jumping in headfirst:
The only way I knew we’d made it out onto the 107th floor was that there was noise all around me again and the heat and smoke were a little less horrible. I opened my eyes and Raj was there, asking me, “Where’s Ray? What happened to Ray?”
“He let go,” I choked, “But he was right behind me. Hasn’t he come up yet?”
There were three men pushing the stairwell door shut but Raj threw himself into the gap shouting, “No, not yet—there’s still someone in there!” and the guys started arguing with him, telling him they had to shut the door or they’d all suffocate and they were pulling him, trying to get pull him back in so they could shut the door when Raj said, “Stop it, stop it—I got him!”
And then Raj just…vanished. It was like he was yanked into the stairwell.
[Cressida pauses again to take a bottle of pills out of her purse. She takes two of them—Klonopin, to help control her anxiety—then resumes with a feverish urgency, clearly desperate to tell the rest of the story and be done with it.]
One of the doormen went in after him. I heard the man scream, but it was cut off almost instantly. The last two guys on the door were calling him—“Bob! Bob, what happened?! BOB!”—and then the worms came through the door.
[“Worms?” I ask.]
They looked like worms—that’s how I keep seeing them. Like earthworms, but big and purple, big as firehoses. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: two of the things whipped out of the smoke and wrapped around the man closest to the doorway and he didn’t even have time to say a single thing—he was gone. They’d pulled him into the smoke. “Close the goddamned door!” somebody shrieked and then I was throwing myself at the door with a bunch of terrified people—people who must’ve seen the same thing I did—and the heavy emergency exit door slammed shut. I had my hands on the door and felt something hammering against the other side. Hammering. The door was jumping beneath our hands and everyone was saying, “Block the door, block the door.” I was shoved aside and two boys in black-and-white waiters’ uniforms came through the smoke carrying a metal desk. They threw it up against the door but the…the worms on the other side were still pounding—pounding so hard it sounded like someone was throwing bricks at the door. People were standing on each side of the desk holding the door shut while the waiters and some others went back and forth dragging dining tables and chairs behind them, heaping them up in front of the door. “Get out of here if you ain’t helping,” someone said to me, so I just…wandered away into the crowd.
So there you go! Intrigued? You know what to do.
