Wandering Amongst Imagination's Headstones

By Tim Sabados

What does an emergency room, a store front, a cold corridor, a sunlit ceiling, a tired nurse, a rocking chair and a woman running from the police have in common? Nothing. Then again everything, especially when you realize that it comes from the vivid imagination of Tim Sabados.

Take a moment and dig up stories filled with touches of thriller, dashes of mystery, spoonfuls of paranormal and smidges of adventure. Mix in a few drops of horror and soon you may find yourself thinking in ways that you never have before. These stories include:

Caught in the Net of a Shadowed Memory

Two patients in an emergency room find they have more in common than they realize.

 Life in Plastic Parts

Can inanimate objects have life? If so, how would it influence the actions of three acquaintances staring out a store front's window?

 Radiance at the Ceiling's End

Something lies at the end, or is it the beginning, of a cold corridor. Whatever it is, it needs to be found. Does Austin have enough strength to lead his friend to it before it's too late?

 The Regret a Storm May Bring

 It's late night, stormy and Laura is waiting for her food to be delivered. But, something lurks behind her that may explain the odd behavior of her most recent patient.

 Rocking the Chair of Delirium

 A clock ticks. A cat appears to be sleeping. Pearlene knits and impatiently waits. Whatever it is she's waiting for has the potential to expose her darkest secrets.

Outside the Altered Interior

You can change the way you look. Reprogram your thoughts. Can someone else do it all for you and expose a reality that you never knew existed?          

Whichever story you chose, you'll be glad that you gave your mind the chance to lose itself on a vibrant mental journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Sabados
• Release date: Nov 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393126867

Book preview

FOREWORD

Writing can be a fickle friend. Some days the friend is kind and allows the ideas to flow out of you with ease. Then there are those days when it shows you its stubborn side. No matter how you try to coax it, in the end you sit for hours, barely able to form a single paragraph. Try to fight that obstinacy and you strain the friendship. I know, because I’ve tried. And for some unknown reason, probably my own stubbornness, I continually do so with not-so-great results. You would think that I would know better by now, but obviously I don’t. Maybe persistence is a character flaw. Once an idea is in my head it’s difficult for me to set it aside. I know deep in my mind all of that creative energy is struggling to get out and I’m more than willing to force it out, friendship be damned.

On this particular day, I’ve found a happy friend. The dialogue is zipping through my mind like a runaway train. My hand is struggling to keep up with my thoughts as I attempt to write it all down. I’m working on the last story of this book when someone comes up to me and says, Hey, whatcha doing?

Working on a short story, I answer.

You write?

I do.

I never knew that, the person says.

My thoughts come crashing to a halt. So does my hand. My pen quietly lies down on its side and falls asleep atop of my notebook. I’ve even written a few books.

You write books, too? The person stares at the piece of paper before me and tries to decipher the scribbles scrawled across the page. What do you write?

Well…

This is where the conversation can easily fall apart. Too short an explanation (by short I mean a few seconds) leaves the person uninformed, possibly confused. If I go the other way and leave too long an explanation (that is only a few seconds longer then above) the person’s eyes glaze over. What to do? In this day and age, a person’s attention span has seemingly become shorter and shorter. My words need to be precise. Unfortunately, I have yet to find those exact words that leave the person adequately informed and ultimately interested in my work.

There seems to be an intrinsic need to place things into categories. We do this all day long, whether we realize it or not. For instance, if you look out your window you’ll be bombarded with all kinds of information that ignites your senses. In order to process this information, it’s only natural to categorize it into groupings that assist us in defining our reality. Think of the ways we classify things such as buildings, stores, food, trees, plants, animals, the sky, colors and ultimately people. This in turn allows us to choose how we interact with such things at any given moment.

It is only natural that there’s a need to categorize books. We live in a world where information has never been easier to obtain, spread and share. Given the vast amounts of it, there is an obvious need to keep it organized. Just ask my wife to show you her planner. The process of putting it together and seeing it all organized is something that pleases her immensely. Color coded and divided into individual subjects, each day is charted weeks in advance. I, in turn, am the total opposite and it drives her crazy. I’m not a procrastinator, by any means. I’m just not willing to have my life planned out that far ahead. Why ruin the surprises that may be waiting for me around the corner, just as long as it’s nothing catastrophic.

I’m continually amazed at the number of book categories that exist. I believe I hear a new one popping up every few weeks. There are categories, then subcategories and then those subcategories can be broken down even further. It seems endless. So when I look at my writing, I have difficulty assigning it to a specific category and this makes it all the more difficult to explain it to a potential reader.

I believe my writing can be assigned to a variety of different genres, including a bit of thriller, a dash of mystery, a spoonful of paranormal and maybe even a smidgen of adventure. Recently someone suggested that my work could fall under the genre of horror. Horror? The word echoes through my mind and disappears into the deep valleys of my cerebrum. I instantly think of all those slasher movies. You know—the ones that are overflowing with blood and gore. I also think about those over-the-top creepy films where people morph into some super-humanoid creature with overly twisted joints that allows them to move in a way that no normal human ever could.

I have to ask myself, Does my writing really fall into this category? My first reaction is to say, No way. However, horror is a much broader genre than I initially perceived it to be. On a much broader scale it incorporates the eerie, the frightening, the supernatural, the afterlife, religious beliefs, folklore and even the macabre, to name a few. So when I ask myself that question once again, I realize that I need to accept the possibility that it is horror.

Embracing the thought that my writing falls within this genre, I came up with the following title for this collection of short stories: Wandering Amongst Imagination’s Headstones. Why do you ask? Why something so dark as to suggest my imagination is possibly dead?

One of my other possible character flaws is that I can easily spend a great deal of my day daydreaming. Again, talk to my wife. She’ll swear that male selective hearing should be a medical diagnosis, possibly treated with repetitive questioning and extra-loud vocalization until an appropriate response is obtained. My affliction with this hearing problem is worse when I’ve come up with a new idea for a story or any other artistic endeavor that I may be pursuing. I consider an idea to be birthed once I’ve set my mind on a specific plot. It’s nurtured the more I think about it and eventually it matures as I write it out. The storyline reaches adulthood when I’ve finished writing; however, like a fine wine it ages even more as I journey through the land of excessive editing.

Once the edits are finished and I can finally say that the story is complete, I’m able to put the idea to rest. Don’t get me wrong because I do experience a great sense of satisfaction when I complete a short story, novella or most particularly a novel. This sense of accomplishment will last several weeks, but eventually it’s put behind me as I move on to my next project. I wish I could explain this ever-burning creative desire that exists within of me, however that’s a whole other subject for another time.

So in a sense, once the story is finished the idea is put to rest, or in essence, buried. If you’ve ever wandered through a graveyard and gazed at the numerous headstones, you may have wondered what type of people are buried beneath them. What was their life like? What did they accomplish? How did they live? What was their story?

Opening this book of short stories not only affords you the opportunity to gaze at the various titles scrolled across the headstones, but also allows you to dig up that tale and delve into the many facets of my imagination. There are six in all. It’s been an enjoyable challenge to write and complete these stories with a limited number of words, and it’s my hope that you’ll take the time to stroll through them, open one, if