Ringing

By Lucus Anthony Ren

This is what happened as I was told. I’m going to keep as true to what was said to me, since I’m a person of fact and rely upon it heavily for work including my own soundness of mind, but even in this, I found it almost unbearable inasmuch having heard it, contemplate often rather I myself have gone mad, and frequently reminded I might very well have.

I have to also remind myself that some people grow up slow from an extended childhood, whereby they pass directly into old age. This was the case of both Marty and Billy in their story.

Marty Wellock didn't do what they said with all those people. It is true he killed his brother with a pair of chopsticks through the top of his skull when he was eleven. And it’s true he was at Willnard Asylum for a good part of his youth. Till twenty-four actually. But it’s not true Willnard cures. Things went on there most people don’t wish to know about. But some do. Of what happened afterward. Mostly what happened to a side of his son Billy causing even the damned to loathe in terror.

It all started when Billy crept into their minds unhinging the most frightful forgotten nightmares knowing their savageness would eventually devour its hosts. Finishing his Event Day speech not a sound from the students except occasional whimpering and their teacher Mrs. Randen who’d lost control urinating herself, those few final drops sounding that of someone taping the bottom of an empty metal cooking pot with a finger, landing between her legs where she stood lips partially open, eyes held glazed images penetrating back to the time she was brutally attacked twenty years before, could be heard. She’d forgotten that event including the entire class and their own worst fearful memories, which now flooded into reality right at that very front of each child’s mind, a damned and hostile evil itself shied from.

And Billy did all this while they sat listening, feeling that itch in their brain where the side of the skull meets its back they’d be thinking, ‘why that itch feels mighty fine, if only I could reach it.’ They just listened wondering was it all true or had it been dreamt, later forgotten, while together like members of a finely honed orchestra reached for the back of their heads searching that uncomfortable note’s sensation. Billy’s family knew it too, the sisters, mother and especially Marty who faced the treatment after he admitted killing his younger brother, the only uncle they’d never meet. Billy knew it was the cause. He also knew it was just the start.

But no one else did. Till the annual bonfire held at the Palm Vista Park where most from the Mesquite Springs Stallions High School student body showed up torching an end to the school year, where Billy now the junior and senior class woodshop teacher was employed. Where nobody knew him except as the shop teacher. Where nobody knew Billy’s father except as the kook working at Bowmens Construction Company, who knew every piece of material on every shelf, knew its usage, and price without having to look it up in the register... all seven hundred and twelve pieces of merchandise. Just knew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucus Anthony Ren
• Release date: Dec 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370430680

Book preview

Ringing

Lucus Anthony Ren

Copyright © 2017, Lucus Anthony Ren

Self-publishing

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. Limit of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty: The author / publisher has used its best efforts in preparing this book, and the information provided herein is provided as is, and makes no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Table of Content

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1 – Bonfire

Chapter 2 – A Master From That

Chapter 3 – Joint Gas

Chapter 4 – Task of The White Haired Man

Chapter 5 – In The Screaming Came An End

Chapter 6 – Meeting Under The Door

Chapter 7 – There Was No Cure As No One Was Well

Chapter 8 – Horizontal Line

Chapter 9 – True Black

Chapter 10 – Glasslight

Epilogue

Other titles by Lucus Anthony Ren

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Preface

What if we could, as the temporal lobes of the brain holds most of the memory, compressed that?

I think what happens to all the data on my hard drive once its deleted, which is now well into the three-digit GB mark. It’s still there of course, but not linked to its reference telling the computer it is there. It’s lying. So I can keep piling it on.

One night I was reading about episodic memory, the memory of autobiographical events associated with emotions, times, places including the who, what, when, where, why’s. Things such as what you ate for breakfast last week Tuesday, what you wore the day before yesterday. They have interesting qualities but what caught me was one in particular; they, the data, are forgotten rather quickly. We just don’t remember.

It’s primarily because we only have enough space for storing memory in the brain, such as many electronic devices. But in most cases, we can add memory to these devices. The brain though, just dumps what it doesn’t need, can’t find, or deemed useless, such as these episodic memories.

Actually, it’s still there too, those memory’s, just fragmented. Because memory is produced and stored throughout the brain it runs all over trying to gather these fragments but after a while doesn’t bother because they aren’t important and finally stops searching. In any case, after a long period of usage, an entire life, for example, the brain can, and indeed often does, form illnesses such as dementia among others, from all we put it through.

Our brain is comprised on average of sixty percent fat. Ringing clues in on these fatty cells and how they can be repackaged, allowing space for new memory cells to develop just as you would add memory to a device.

How that would transpire, as I didn’t want to have some typical asylum-crazed-slasher-doctor running around performing grizzly detailed operations removing or adding parts of the brain without the victims being anesthetized or offering such activities for those willing to pay, came when placing an ear next to a cello having lower bass notes played, with effects from sound waves produced of those particular notes, assist with establishing this story. In-part.

For the rest, as usually I looked into my own past, seeing my dad bought a used Lincoln as Dr. Malocht’s when I was about thirteen. This thing literally floated along, massive, ominous, feeling and hearing little riding inside, only soft purring as we cruised off for just the joy.

The accident with the wood planer, I took from my senior year of high school when our wood shop teacher’s hand slipped, cutting his thumb off completely while using the table saw. I was standing a couple of feet from him when it happened, he simply said, damn picking up the thumb which from the force of the blade flicked off onto the ground some five feet away, and walked to the administration's office holding it in place. It was full recovery but in away dreamlike, the man had thirty years’ experience without an accident, survived the Japanese Bataan Death March during the Second War, was a close friend of my dad who himself survived three months fighting on Iwo Jima, and here calmly making his way, at least a fifteen-minute walk to the office holding his thumb blood jumping every which way.

There’s nothing against Wisconsin. Fine people residing in a wonderful state having great natural beauty, but I wanted an area somewhat north, cold, with forests for the location of the Willnard Asylum. Shandon is fictional as well as Holmsgate Institute of South Alabama. Mesquite Springs in California, also fictional reflects the small hi-desert community where I grew up.

I don’t write dialogue. Much. There is little conversation in most of my work. Ringing is no exception. I write what I think is going on in the mind of the character. They’d learn little from constant dialogs with other characters as true to life some would say, and I tend to agree, what the hell can you learn from yourself babbling along? People sometimes just talk too much.

I also write about ‘time’ because it’s nearly the only thing running ceaselessly through all our lives. And it’s very strange because it can be shaped. Just as here…

As too the characters - there aren’t many, and glasslight, which I’ll leave all for you.

The Jackrabbit dream, like some dreams, is smooth. Or not.

Prologue

This is what happened as I was told. I’m going to keep as true to what was said to me, since I’m a person of fact and rely upon it heavily for work including my own soundness of mind, but even in this, I found it almost unbearable inasmuch having heard it, contemplate often rather I myself have gone mad, and frequently reminded I might very well have.

I have to also remind myself that some people grow up slow from an extended childhood, whereby they pass directly into old age. This was the case of both Marty and Billy in their story.

Marty Wellock didn't do what they said with all those people. It is true he killed his brother with a pair of chopsticks through the top of his skull when he was eleven. And it’s true he was at Willnard Asylum for a good part of his youth. Till twenty-four actually. But it’s not true Willnard cures. Things went on there most people don’t wish to know about. But some do. Of what happened afterward. Mostly what happened to a side of his son Billy causing even the damned to loathe in terror.

It all started when Billy crept into their minds unhinging the most frightful forgotten nightmares knowing their savageness would eventually devour its hosts. Finishing his Event Day speech not a sound from the students except occasional whimpering and their teacher Mrs. Randen who’d lost control urinating herself, those few final drops sounding that of someone taping the bottom of an empty metal cooking pot with a finger, landing between her legs where she stood lips partially open, eyes held glazed images penetrating back to the time she was brutally attacked twenty years before, could be heard. She’d forgotten that event including the entire class and their own worst fearful memories, which now flooded into reality right at that very front of each child’s mind, a damned and hostile evil itself shied from.

And Billy did all this while they sat listening, feeling that itch in their brain where the side of the skull meets its back they’d be thinking, ‘why that itch feels mighty fine, if only I could reach it.’ They just listened wondering was it all true or had it been dreamt, later forgotten, while together like members of a finely honed orchestra reached for the back of their heads searching that uncomfortable note’s sensation. Billy’s family knew it too, the sisters, mother and especially Marty who faced the treatment after he admitted killing his younger brother, the only uncle they’d never meet. Billy knew it was the cause. He also knew it was just the start.

But no one else did. Till the annual bonfire held at the Palm Vista Park where most from the Mesquite Springs Stallions High School student body showed up torching an end to the school year, where Billy now the junior and senior class woodshop teacher was employed. Where nobody knew him except as the shop teacher. Where nobody knew Billy’s father except as the kook working at Bowmens Construction Company, who knew every piece of material on every shelf, knew its usage, and price without having to look it up in the register… all seven hundred and twelve pieces of merchandise. Jut knew.

It was weird and everybody agreed it was weird because things like this are weird that normally the brain can’t do this. Shouldn’t do this. But here it was, the small hi-desert town of Mesquite Springs having its very own freak. And Billy as a child remembered watching his father calmly talk endlessly about the mechanisms and stress loads of cars and pickup trucks if placed on a roof, which Billy thought how funny seeing why’d you want to put a truck on a roof, but it was multilevel car parking Marty was informing about, while customers stood there looking at the man as if he’d grown an extra nose, because that sort of parking just wasn’t common thinking for residents of Mesquite Springs. He’d discuss the heavens and all its holdings of constructed elements saving workers labor, time, and money while Billy always eyed him from a distance working some part or tool in his hands with no particular purpose acting as if not hearing his fathers notions waiting for him to finish his work so they could head home together.

Most laughed at his father. There were a few who thought he was rather clever. Practically everyone saw him and his entire family as something to stay clear of. Billy grew up with that and knew time was always having a laugh, knew we held on to it for dear life because it took everything you owned. He understood at the very end we became nothing more than a limp sack of bones and guts slowly weeping out holes rotting till nothing remained. He was aware his father drove a pair of chopsticks into the top of his uncle’s head because he was sick of listening to all the bullshit. Drove it deep into that place a newborn baby’s skull hasn’t grown together, where it’s still soft, where if you look closely you can see it pulsing full of life most precious fluid. Drove it deep and hard. His father told him he even held it lightly afterward those ends of the sticks against the open palm of his hand feeling for a beat, just as he’d seen in a movie once when Burt Reynolds shot some hillbilly with an arrow. ‘Shot that son-of-a-bitch just as you’d shoot a wild pig which of course he was but much worse. Naturally they came after them, but they didn’t do that with me the arrow part anyway. The bit before that arrow loosened, that they did do to me often and with extreme delight,’ Marty told him once. Billy didn’t understand till he saw the Deliverance film his dad referred too.

Marty never saw trial due to age also when they took one look at him knew something had gone astray. They didn’t look hard, or maybe they didn’t want to look closely. If they’d had, things would have run a whole lot different. They just noted he’d killed his brother, was crazy as hell and off he went to the Willnard Asylum for the chronically insane in Wisconsin. And that’s when things began.

They had various code names for such projects and operations keeping results well organized and confidential. Willnard had no intention of anyone discovering what was going on especially people of a caring nature come knocking at their door asking…what’s all this hollering we hear goddamn it, we want some peace and quiet around here!!? In fact had the local establishment known more they wouldn’t have cared much for the simple reason Willnard paid the entire community of Shandon a little over a mile from its main gates to keep still,