Date:         Fri, 16 Oct 1998 11:24:38 MDT 
From: "Robyn M. Herrington" <rmherrin@UCALGARY.CA> 
Subject:      [WRITERS] SUB: Halloween: Go away, you're dead 

Guys, it's been brought to my attention that one story on my
voting list didn't make it through... so I'm resubbing it.
Sorry!  Moving offices, changing mail systems... It's a wonder I
know what building I work in!

GO AWAY, YOU'RE DEAD


You're not fooling anyone, you know.  You're not her; you are
someone else entirely, someone who is alive, not a long-deceased
wife; you're a sick-o, someone who gets off on scaring people.

Those midnight noises that awaken the peaceful sleeper, those
creaks on the stairs, those dry, rasping half-sounds as of some
long-ago entombed corpse dragging itself across the floor outside
a bedroom door, those weak telepathic-innuendoes that echo in
receptive minds, warning, describing in detail the tortures of
hell you intend to put the hearer through when you finally catch
him and grab hold of his leg with your avenging finger bones;
all these are merely manifestations of your deranged mind.

Who are you?  What do you want?  Are you one of her relatives,
someone she confided in, a close friend, perhaps, in whom she
implanted lies and half-truths?  Did she tell you of an abusive
husband who drank excessively, and who gloried in boasting of
sexual encounters with women who were far superior to her own
feeble attempts at pleasing a man?  Did she whisper to you of
how, when she objected to her husband's harshness to the
children, he flew into a rage and punched her on the shoulder so
hard she couldn't use that arm for almost a week?

You are deceiving nobody.  You are not her eternal spirit who has
somehow recreated itself into some hideous, crypt rotted,
physical horror that scrape, scrape, scraped its way through
coffin walls, burrowed through packed cemetery soil, wriggled
between dense atoms of the dirt of intervening city lots and then
on through black-loamed acres of countryside pastures.  You are
not an avenging ghost, unable to rest until the tormentor
has been caught and appropriately punished.  You are not.

Last week you made a mistake, you know.  When you thought all
were sound asleep and you somehow broke silently into the
adjoining bedroom and began to scratch, scratch, scratch at the
wall.  A pair of waiting ears were alert, anticipating and
listening for your feeble theatrical tricks.

Your mistake was easily detected.  For, if you had really been
her, you would not have been able to get into that other bedroom
so easily, because my new protector, my newly obtained attack
dog, Guardian, would have sensed  you.  So, you have now proven
yourself to be a human tormentor, not a supernatural one, a live
person, and one who is highly skilled in animal handling, in
calming even the savage instincts of a trained watchdog.  You are
knowledgeable, that's for sure, but you are not her.  You are
not her.

Tonight you are especially active.  But your loud rasps of
fingernails clawing through wooden walls again deceive no one.
Tonight you are to be unmasked.  The vicious Guardian has not
been fed for three days.  Hear him snarling? He is waiting for
you.  You seem to be closer now than ever before.  The sounds of
your approach are almost deafening to the ear.  You are close.
You are very, very close.

The wall behind the linen covered pillow on the bed somehow
appears to be moving, crumbling.  Cracks in the dark green,
red-flowered wallpaper are appearing, spreading.  Something is
emerging from one of those cracks.

Oh, no.  Oh, no.  This is not real.  You are not real.  Oh, no.
Oh. . . .


"Sorry to disappoint you, Detective, but the remains, what=92s
left of them, show no evidence of human involvement.  The autopsy
revealed that cause of death was entirely due to an attack and
subsequent frenzied feeding of a starved and horribly abused
canine.  Although, it is hard to believe that  even a dog of that
size could consume so much in so short a time,  your case,
Detective, is definitely closed."

--
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Robyn Herrington,Editor                         rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca
InfoServe                                       www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin
New Currents in Teaching and Technology         Com/Media
University of Calgary                           Ph: 220-2561
                      == Inter tormentia latitia ==
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