Typewriter Blood

By Mark Phillips

A collection of short stories ranging from mainstream to bizarre, contemporary fiction to horror. Mark Phillips shows you the bright side of human nature and the dark underbelly. A mysterious Bloodwell, a haunted computer program, a strange Feast and a mind-bending Paradox. All these stories and more are contained within. Let Mark Phillips take you down the roads not traveled and show you the shapes beneath the sheets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Phillips
• Release date: Aug 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311798022

Mark Phillips

Mark Phillips is the author of My Father's Cabin, and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Salon, Saturday Review, and Country Life. He has also worked as a beekeeper and occasional maple syrup producer in upstate New York.

Book preview

Foreword

I was hesitant about releasing a book of short fiction. I have always loved writing short stories and have always enjoyed reading them.

Yet, short stories are as much of a dying art form as poetry is. Poetry probably had a head start, but it won’t be long until both of them are almost extinct.

It doesn’t make much sense to me. Our world moves at a rapid pace—certainly faster than the 1950s and 60s, which could be considered the golden age of the American short story.

Short stories, by their very nature, are built for rapid consumption. They are the kind of thing that you can sit down and read in ten minutes or less. The perfect art form for our current lifestyle.

Despite this, the short story marches on towards death.

There are several possible explanations. Well known writers rarely work in short fiction anymore. There is simply no money it. I suppose you could call that my cynical reasoning, but it seems accurate to me. Short stories just don’t pay the bills. The only ones that you can make any real money from are stories publishing in the big magazines, like The New Yorker—and try getting into the New Yorker if you’re not a household name.

However, I don’t write for the money. You are free to believe or disbelieve this statement—that, my readers, is your choice, but I assure you that it’s true.

I would be lying if I said that the money I earn from writing isn’t nice. It’s very nice. But I look at it more as a bonus and not as the motivation. If I wrote for money I would be no better than the mercenaries of old who fought wars on the side of the highest bidder. Money and fame and prestige (and all the thoughts like it) are the enemy of the creative process.

All that leads me to believe that money (or lack thereof) is probably not a big factor in well-known writers penning short stories. After all, if I don’t write for the money it’s a good bet that most of them do not either.

Perhaps very few of them grew up reading short stories?

This is entirely possible. Writing begins by imitating what you love, and I know that many of my early short stories grew out of a love of reading Stephen King’s short fiction. Also, from watching reruns of The Twilight Zone on television. Every half-hour was another wonderful short story brought to life and narrated by Rod Serling.

Or it could be that the magazines are to blame.

Space in magazines that was once dedicated to publishing short fiction has increasingly been replaced by advertisement. Bigger money makers for the magazine but it seems to have sapped something vital from our culture.

Telling a story in quick bursts can be an exhilarating experience for the writer, and reading such stories can have a similar affect on the reader.

Short stories are likely fading away from culture due to a combination of all the aforementioned as well as a myriad of other factors that I didn’t address.

After much thought and debate, I decided that it was worth it to publish this collection. I did it because I love short stories. I love the art form, I love reading them and I love writing them.

I hope you, my readers, will enjoy reading them.

One additional note: The title of this collection was inspired by a quote from Ernest Hemingway (who, himself wrote many wonderful short stories). Hemingway said, Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

I tried to keep that quote in my head when putting together this collection. There is a piece of me in each of these stories—a bit of my blood. As always, my readers, it was my pleasure to give it.

The Bloodwell

I never understood true terror until I saw the Bloodwell.

I watched the sun glint off the desert as our car sped along the interstate. Sand, an occasional cactus and the rise and fall of a few dunes. The mountains were still ahead of us, off in the distance, framing the sky. The only thing that had any life at all was the sun. It burned like a nightmare furnace, huge and orange, towards the bottom of the horizon.

I'll guess we'll have to stop soon, my mother said.

I'll decide when we stop, my father replied. Besides, didn't you see that sign back there? Nothing for a hundred miles. Why do you think I stopped for gas?

Dad treated the road like it was Europe and he was Hitler. He wanted to eat up as many miles as he could until the car quit or he fell asleep at the wheel. Despite his obsession with time, he wouldn’t fly. 'Too dangerous,' he had said on more occasions then I cared to think about.

Are you excited to see Ann? Mom asked.

Sure. I guess.

You two used to be so cute together. You would tell us how you were gonna get married.

She's my cousin mom.

My Mom let out one of her annoyed sighs. The one that signaled that I just wasn't getting what she was saying. I know, but when you were kids you used to say that.

What Mom didn't know was that Ann and I had played a pretty aggressive game of doctor when we were seven or eight. It started out innocent enough (in her parents garage; where the grown-ups usually played cards) and ended up with us taking off all of our clothes and kissing. We never talked about it again and that was the end of our fantasies of marriage.

I think we'll have time to see Disneyland too, Mom said.

We'll see, Dad replied.

We would go to Disneyland; we always did. Every year. Every year since I was five-years-old. I still wonder, sometimes, why people go through the same script year after year. Doing so as if their lives were on repeat. I still wonder that sometimes but now that I'm older, and I've seen the Bloodwell, I understand a little better. It's the only way to keep the madness out.

Darkness invaded the landscape much faster than I would have thought possible. Usually, by that time of day, we were already past the desert and into California. We had been held up by construction a few hundred miles back. In Arizona or something. All the states seemed to blend together into one blob of sand and concrete.

Damn, I wanted to be there today, Dad said. We're still five hours out or so.

You can't drive another five hours, Mom said. Her voice was shrill and panicked. I think she was thinking about the last time Dad pushed it past midnight, when the blare of the truck's horn and a quick flick of the wheel had been the only things that stopped us from being road jelly.

I'll tough it out. It's fine.

No, you find us a hotel and stop for the night.

I wanted to put my headphones back on and listen to some music, but I was too interested in the outcome of this conversation. Not only could my life depend on it, but it was always fun to keep score with my parents. Who won this fight, who won that fight. It was like a game. If I had been more enterprising (or had any siblings) I would have even placed bets on it.

There ain't no hotels for a hundred miles, woman. I saw the sign. Dad shifted in the driver's seat and softened his voice. Clearly he did not want to have a big blow-up during the drive. By the time we get out of the desert and reach a hotel we'll only be a couple of hours from Jan and Dave's house. We might as well just power through it.

My mother crossed her arms over her chest and looked out her window. This conversation wasn't over, just put on pause for a minute. If there was anything about my parents that was a sure bet, it was that my mother would get the last word. It didn't matter if she was right, wrong, winning or losing; she always had something to say that ended the conversation.

Yeah well I think—Hey, what's that? Mom pointed to the right side of the highway.

I glanced over and saw it too, a neon sign blazing through the darkness. It buzzed and pulsed but I could make out two words; rest and motel.

It looks like a place to stop, Mom said.

The sign was right out on the side of the highway, but the building was set back in one of those rural turn-offs. Those exits that are basically just big circles. I suppose that farmers used them to get to different parts of their land, but I really had no idea. I was a city boy.

As we got closer to the sign I saw that it read: Nat-erel Rest Motel. Leave it to these hicks out here to spell natural wrong, I said.

James, don't you talk like that. Goodness gracious, what kind of boy did I raise?

The kind that knows how to spell, Dad said.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. Sure, it might make Mom cross, but, hell, it was funny and my Dad was rarely funny.

It looks like a shanty, Dad said.

I looked at the building and couldn't help but agree with him. It was short and dark—so dark that it almost blended into the landscape. In fact, we wouldn't have seen it unless the sign was out. There was only one light shining in the front window and it was dim.

I don't care, Mom said. You pull off into that motel or I'm getting out of this car.

What are you going to do, jump?

You have to stop sometime, don't you?

She'd do it too, that was the thing. I knew it and Dad knew it. She'd wait until he stopped for gas or something and then she'd get out of the car and take a cab or a bus or something.

Fine, I'll pull off and look at it, but if it doesn't start looking better quickly I'm getting back on the highway and driving until we get to a quality one.

Dad flipped his signal on and began to cross lanes when a horn sounded behind us. My head swiveled around and a small, blue sports car sped past us on the right. Dad had to swerve out of the way and the sports car rode on the shoulder for a second before taking the exit. Dad slowed the car down and followed behind.

This is what I'm talking about, Mom nearly screamed.

Oh don't even bring up the truck again. This is nothing like that. This moron doesn't know how to drive.

I resisted the urge to tell Dad that he shouldn't talk about himself like that and, in the end, only chuckled to myself.

The motel didn't really look any better to me as we got closer. Sand had built up around the foundation and one of the windows in front was broken out. There were still shards of glass rimming the window frame. Dad parked, bringing the total number of cars in the small lot to two. Ours and the blue sports car.

I got out and relished the release in my legs as they stretched out. I could see my mom doing the same. Dad simply got out and began walking over to the young man that had exited the blue sports car.

You could have killed us, you know? Dad said.

Mom stopped her stretch and her mouth dropped open. Her arm went out for me, it was clear she was expecting trouble of some kind.

Sorry there buddy, the young guy said. He had a thick brush of dark hair and blue eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dark. He wore a tight-fitting, black