Perchance to Scream

By Allan Davis

Thirteen creepy tales (and one poem), to make you squirm, and to send chills up your spine. It's got a haunted house, bloodsucking feathers, ancient evil entities with unpronounceable names, cybernetically enhanced zombies, mutant human-dragonfly hybrids, and a particularly nasty breed of psychic eel. Being scared has never been so much fun!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allan Davis
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311250889

Book preview

Perchance to Scream

Allan Davis Jr.

Cover design: Kathy White

Interior illustrations: Allan Davis Jr.

Published by Allan Davis Jr, Auburn, Alabama

Copyright © 2014 Allan Davis Jr.

For A and J, who sparked change in my life...

For C and N and J and B, who remind me daily why I'm even here...

...and most of all for She...for encouraging, and reading, and critiquing...and especially inspiring...

...and putting up with my &()*)*_$$%##*&**^+)(&.

Contents

Quill

Obsession and the 8:15

The Road

Recursive Stack Overflow

The Disconnect

Luis Came Back

Tentacles - A Love Story

Creele’s Halloween

Avalon 2.0

Lost in Translation

Spore

Offline Backup

The Whispering Worms of Wazeral

There’s something all writers know and understand.

When you’re a writer, the words are in your blood.

Literally.

Quill

Alex didn't know who sent it. The package arrived in a plain wrapper, mixed in with the morning's usual batch of bills and junk mail. She set it on the counter near her coffee pot and went back to work.

At least, she tried to. She sat down at the computer, and started the word processing program, and stared at a blank screen for an hour.

Wonderful writer, she said to herself. You can't even come up with three words to get started.

She answered three emails, started a solitaire game, and then angrily shut off the game when the first ace appeared. This was writing time, not play time.

After the end of the second hour, and after the third sentence had been typed and erased and typed again, she gave up the search for her elusive muse. She remembered her coffee, and downed it, half choking on the bitter ice-cold brew. Then she remembered the package, sitting there, next to her coffee cup.

She tore the paper off, and found a small box. On the outside were two phrases, From a Friend and Use With Care.

Inside was an old-fashioned quill pen. There was no ink to go with it, and still no hint of who the gift had come from. Definitely someone's idea of a joke, she thought. She hadn't written anything by hand since middle school.

Still, it was a serious gift, a gift for a writer; a quill was a very powerful symbol. She stood the box carefully on one end and put it at the back of her desk, where she could see it. It would remind her of what she gone into writing to do--even if the ideas didn't seem to be flowing lately.

Three days later, she still hadn't had any success at wringing legible prose out of her subconscious. The quill that had seemed like a cheerful and inspiring gift was now a mocking insult, laughing at her from beside the monitor.

She grumbled about her writer's block to a friend, who offered some advice: If you're not getting anywhere, then change the rules. Try writing by hand, or while lying in bed. Don't try to change your entire writing concept...just take a break from it, long enough to get the creative juices flowing again.

She picked up a pen and a notebook, and propped her feet up on her keyboard. Still the ideas did not come, and still the quill smirked at her from beyond her feet. She scribbled nonsense on the page, and drew designs on the borders, but the words just were not there. Fine, she said, and walked out. When she came home again, she was carrying a small bag from a stationary store, and inside it was a small bottle of ink.

The quill felt comfortable in her hand, which amazed her. She had been expecting her hands to cramp up with the first word, from holding the feather so carefully. She dipped it into the ink, and set it to the page, and after just a moment's hesitation, wrote an entire sentence...and then another. In no time, she had filled a page, and gone on to the next, and three hours later, her first short story in months was complete. It had been so simple, like the story had wanted to write itself. She congratulated herself on breaking the barrier to her writing, and stayed up into the early hours of the morning typing the story into the computer.

Forgotten in the excitement was the new bottle of ink, sitting on the edge of her desk, barely used and drying away.

Her new story sold on the first offer, and she looked forward to writing more. She outlined her next novel, and typed up notes on four more short stories.

But she couldn't do anything more than that on the computer. Background material, outline, character sketches, all fell easily into the keyboard...but exposition, dialogue, narrative, they refused to be pried from their hiding places in the nooks and crannies of her mind. So be it, she thought, and reached for the Quill--because, in her mind, it wasn't just any pen, it was a miracle, and it deserved that capital Q.

Five chapters later, she was feeling exhausted, lightheaded. A quick glance at the clock told her that she had been writing for nearly nine hours straight. Her fingers were cramped, and her legs were asleep; she had totally lost track of time. She forced herself away from the desk, slept for ten hours, and got back to work on her novel.

The novel sold, producing a near-record commission, and the largest paycheck she had ever received. It was published to rave reviews, and each new short story was greeted with fanfare and applause. She was grateful for the newfound success, but also troubled, because the only stories that were being sold were the ones that came from the Quill. What little she had managed to type out at the computer went nowhere.

She went to her annual physical feeling rundown and exhausted. A few blood tests later, and the doctor told her she was suffering from minor anemia.

Her second novel sold as well, and the publisher threw a small party to celebrate the record-breaking sales she was seeing.

Quite an accomplishment, her agent grinned. What, eight years of work to become an overnight success? Alex managed a weak smile. She was feeling exhausted from the push to get her second novel retyped by the deadline, and was only staying as long as was polite. You've managed to tap into a vein of major creativity this year. Congratulations.

Her third novel didn't flow anywhere nearly as quickly as the first two. The anemia left her drained and tired. The