Amphetamine Daydreams: Volume One: Amphetamine Daydreams: The Collected Stories, #1

By Mike DeFrench

What should you expect to see inside of Volume One of Amphetamine Daydreams (now in full technicolor)!?

A man is tortured by a noise that only he can hear. An addict must create the perfect painting to prevent the world from ending. A group of young band mates have a very bad trip. An undercover reporter discovers a ghostly voice on a recording.

This Volume of Amphetamine Daydreams contains 9 short stories and the novelettes "A Voice in the Static" & "Lucy in the Sky with Demons." The genres range from science fiction, to historical fantasy, and (of course) a heaping helping of good ol' horror and suspense.
It comes with almost a dozen detailed illustrations in full color. (Note: in the eBook version of Amphetamine Daydreams: Volume One, please see the note at the beginning and end of the book to view the illustrations in full color online. No illustrations are present in the eBook)
Last but not least, Amphetamine Daydreams Volume One comes with a QR code that leads to an additional short story, told in the format of "Interactive Fiction" (or a text-based adventure game), that anyone can read/play completely for free, either on their phone or on a computer!

Praise of Amphetamine Daydreams:

"'Amphetamine Day Dreams' is a well-crafted collection of stories, each unique in its own way. The best way I can describe the book is, imagine waking up, soaked in sweat, from a hellish fever dream or drug induced hazy nightmare, these stories are those nightmares." - Mariah Whitehouse

"I could not read through the stories in Amphetamine Day Dreams fast enough. DeFrench has a talent for capturing the inner turmoil of characters whether they are recovering addicts, plotting a murder, or trying to determine if something they see in a dream is real or not...If I were to compare him with well-known names, I'd put him in the same realm as H.P. Lovecraft and Neil Gaiman. His stories fall into that magical blend of reality and fantasy, but the way he portrays the things happening to his characters is very psychological." - Jessica Leibe

"Great collection of short stories by a new-to-me author! While they all had a bit (or in some cases alot) of the spook factor I love in a story, there was so much variety here.
While I loved every story without exception (four and five stars only here folks) here are my top three:
The Tapestry of Time. This one was more on the sci-fi side and super clever. Very timey wimey ?
To Never Say Goodbye. This has a very interesting and believable concept. Could this happen someday? Yup. I may have shed a tear reading this one.
My absolute favourite story though is Lucy in the Sky with Demons. This one brought the scares, the spooks, and the heebie jeebies. It's dark and twisted and has in my opinion the best line in the entire collection." - Natasha Pei

"I loved the journey Defrench takes us on. I liked how these stories were being told & I loved how I didn't know the way they were headed most of the time! This is a variation of different beautiful created stories & I love all of them. Reading through you feel like you're actually in the stories, this is not often done well & I love the feeling of getting lost within the characters like I did in this one! ...If you enjoy stories with a splash of bizarre, a little darkness & often chilling vibes, then this is a good pick for you." - Instagram user @samsdarkreads

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike DeFrench
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215890110

Mike DeFrench

Mike DeFrench is a horror, fantasy, and science fiction writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. You can follow him on social media @defrenchwriter. Or go to defrenchwriter.com. To read the stories as they come out, and to stay up to date on any news, subscribe at defrenchwriter.substack.com

Book preview

Amphetamine Daydreams: Volume One

Here I am: supposed to be writing an introduction f or the first volume of Amphetamine Daydreams (which I am very pleased with, by the way!), when I just got the news about Raymond C o nner.

It has since become the only thing that I can think about. I look over the stories in this volume, and I can see his influence over everything.

Lots of writers get asked what made you want to start writing? well, for me it was all thanks to Raymond Conner. None of this would be here (not the book you’re holding, the stories within them and the visions and dreams they contain), my life wouldn’t be the same without having met him.

That is why I have dedicated this first volume (of what I hope will become a very long-lived series) to him. It is only fitting.

You probably know Raymond Conner’s name, seen it on books on the shelves. He was a very popular writer, in his time.[1]

Back in those days, I was working on my first novel. I only had a dream about writing books (novels, I mean, as opposed to anything shorter...). But Conner was famous for his short stories. Wrote more of them than anyone who ever lived—or at least I think that’s what he said.

It's still so weird to think that he’s actually dead...

But they never found a body or anything. I guess he left a note (like a suicide note, presumably—no one has let me read it yet), and then they found his apartment empty.

No one had heard from him in days. I hadn’t talked to him months. Almost half a year! I can’t believe it now. I don’t know what he was going through (we mostly talked writing—and the business of writing), rarely bringing up our personal lives.

Unless we’d had a decent amount to drink. And then he would (sometimes) tell me about his past. But he kept most of the stuff private, even to his close friends. Even to those that he considered to be his student. His protégé.

I am the only one. At least that I know of right now. He didn’t take to anyone else. But I can remember a bunch of times, sitting around his old apartment, smoking cigars and drinking beer, he’d open some fan mail (he had literal mountains of it!), and it’d be some aspiring writer, begging for inspiration. For the tips. For the secret trick to writing.

He'd generally say the same old shit every time. About how everyone thinks they could be some hotshot writer, some big name, they just didn’t have the time to write. He said that 99% of the people he met would tell him they had an idea for a book.

They think it’s so easy, he told me once. "This little precious idea of theirs is just such a golden shit that it is sure to make them rich and famous, become a classic, become a movie! They just don’t have they time to sit down and write the damn thing.

They think their idea is special, that it’s unique. As if it descended into their minds from the heavens!

"I thought that was where ideas came from?" I said.

"Hah! You... This is why I keep telling you that you’re doing it wrong!

"Do short stories first! I’ll say it a million times until it starts to sink in! Starting with a great big novel is a disaster waiting to happen. Cause you’re big idea, this amazing thing that you’ve got in your mind?! It’s gonna be shit when it comes out on the paper. Your first ten books will stink. Mark my words."

He looked back at the folded paper in his hands, the fan mail.

"None of them have an idea what it really takes to be a writer. They don’t know the sacrifice involved. If only they had time. I’ve spent how many years of my life doing this work? Fifty?!

I still haven’t found the one.

I took another sip of my beer. There had always been the age difference between me and Raymond. When we used to get together like this (I was still a very early writer at this point—and I truly have no idea what made him take a liking to me at all (though I have at least one suspicion of what made me attractive to him)), our conversations were generally nothing more than me, nodding and drinking, while Raymond rambled on and on about this or that.

Usually some gripe he had with the way the publishing world worked. Or all of the misconceptions about the art of writing that were propagated by English teachers around the world.

But usually he didn’t ever say anything negative in regards to his own work. It was like part of his religion or something.

What did you mean by, ‘still haven’t found the one?’ I said.

The tone of the room had suddenly gone serious. And there were very rarely ever any sort of serious moments between the two of us. We met at a bar. Didn’t have a clue who each other were.

We commiserated over the shit in our lives and a few pitchers of Bud Light. I was still smoking like a chimney back then, so whenever I went out to have a cigarette, this drunk old man with pale white hair and these black-rimmed glasses that were the thickest I’d ever seen in my life (bifocals, maybe even trifocals!), comes following me out to the patio and asking to bum a cig from me.

God—I loved that man from that night. Didn’t realize how much I would miss his old ass now.

It wasn’t just that he taught me how to write, and encouraged my writing even when I thought I was complete shit (and I was shit, so Conner obviously knew it was shit, too), he kept me going.

But more than all that: he gave me a mission. Some sort of...spiritual mission. I don’t know what you call it? Destiny? Maybe.

The same mission he had himself.

Find the one.

He hadn’t found it that night. Don’t think he did before he died. So now I have to be the one. It’s on me.

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One Last Brush Stroke Before Sobriety

Joseph Metzger was gonna get clean. He was done. After tonight.

Because he had to shoot up tonight. He fucking had to. It wasn’t about getting high. It wasn’t about needing the fix (just one more time man—just one more FUCKING time!!), it wasn’t about the drug at all. Not really.

It was about tonight. The importance of tonight. The need to have everything in place so that he could just finish it all tonight and be done with it.

If it didn’t work this time, if he even after all of this, everything that he’d done, if he still couldn’t stop it...then he would just kill himself. Because it wasn’t going to matter if it didn’t stop. If he couldn’t stop it tonight, then no one would be able to stop it. Nothing could prevent the doom that was to come. So fuck it. He’d just jump off the roof and be done with it. Be done with dope. Be done with this fucked up world that was going to be doomed to die anyway.

But he had to at least try.

Just one more time.

The stars were right tonight, he could feel it. The moon was right tonight too (that much he could see just looking out of the open window of his third-story apartment). That fucking big bright moon! It shined its light into his bedroom, strewn with garbage—empty beer cans, ashes and cigarette butts everywhere, random needles and spoons that were no longer usable, a thousand canvases with the previous attempts on them in strokes of madness etched in acrylic paint. It was the same window that he would jump out of later tonight, if this last effort didn’t work.

A blank canvas lay on the floor in one of the only cleared spots in the room. An empty can which once contained black beans sat beside it, filled now with a dozen different ragged-looking paint brushes. A plastic tote was on the other side with a huge assortment of dollar-store craft paints.

Joseph’s hands and arms, his shirt and pants, all of it was covered in paint. He hadn’t looked in the mirror for days, but he imagined his face was covered in paint too. So many different colors. He’d tried so many different colors but none had worked. Nothing worked!!!

But tonight it would. Yes. It was because of the stars. Because of the moon. All of it. It all had to be just right for his trick to actually work. It all had to be right. And tonight it was. So it would work. It had to.

There was one spot on his left arm where the paint had been scratched away. It showed the red flesh beneath. It showed a vein.

It was getting late...he was running out of time.

God he wanted to quit the dope. He fucking wanted to. But he needed it. He needed it for this. For one last painting.

Joseph paced back and forth, biting his fingernails though there was nothing but tiny nubs there now. He’d done this for hours now, debating, rationalizing, trying to figure out any other way to do it. But this was the only way. He just...he wanted—no needed—to be sure that he was doing this for the right reason. It wasn’t just some insane chaotic reason that his addicted mind had come up with. Some reason to shoot up one more time. There’s always one last reason. Always.

But this was legit. Wasn’t it?

Fuckin Mags, man. It was all Maggie’s fault. That bitch. She was the reason that this torturous burden was placed on him. She was the reason he couldn’t sleep at night. She was the reason that he couldn’t get clean. It was because of her that when he lay on the floor at night, trying to resist the desire to get high, he saw it in the dark ceiling above him. That fucking thing that made no sense. That impossible shape. That demonic evil. The cosmic monstrosity. The doom.

God! Fuck it. One last time. He was gonna try to stop it one last time. It was only him that could do it.

Only him.

He’d met Maggie in rehab about six months ago. They were both getting clean. Had been clean for about two weeks. It was going fine until she told him about her dreams.

They’d got onto the topic one time when they were talking about their rock bottoms in a group session. And then the conversations had strayed into the fucked up shit, the trauma and stuff, that had gotten everyone hooked in the first place. Everyone had fucked up stories (you usually don’t start shooting up dope without one), and many of them were much more fucked than Joseph’s own story was. But it was Maggie’s that stood out to him. He had to find her after the session, have her elaborate. He had to know more about it. There was something in her story that he connected with. Something that felt so familiar...but he couldn’t figure out what it was. It was like a fleeting sensation of Deja Vu when she described the dreams that she used to have as a kid. It was like he was remembering a forgotten memory. A forgotten dream.

They started when I was I think seven, Mags told him as they smoked at the tables in the yard. That’s at least the farthest back that I can remember. And I don’t really remember much of them, you know? I just remember being scared. But I assume that they were the same kinds of dreams that I had later, when I was a teenager, right before I started using.

So what were the dreams, though? Joseph said, stubbing out his cig and sparking a new one. What was in them? You started to talk about it in there, but you know, time got away.

She looked at him with brown eyes that were tired and sad and maybe even a little afraid. Not of him. Of the memory. Joseph knew that he shouldn’t have pried. No. Don’t make someone go back to the triggers when they are trying to get clean. But he had to know. He wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until he learned it. Best just to ask now. Just to see if...

You don’t have to talk about it, you know, if it’s gonna be an issue for you. I totally understand. But he really wanted to know.

No, Maggie said, getting out another of her own cigarettes. She smoked Camel lights while he smoked Marlboro reds. It was good, while they were in there, cause they never ended up bumming off of each other.

No it’s fine, she said, lighting up. I can tell you.

Joseph waited, smoking.

Well it was my mom that told me about it, only after we started going to therapy when I was in high school and started getting into trouble. She said that when I was little I would tell her and my dad about how I used to leave my body when I went to sleep.

Like a lucid dream? Or like an out-of-body experience?

"Well they didn’t think anything of it at first. Cause you know, everyone basically leaves their body when they sleep you know? You go and see weird shit. Kids don’t really know how to describe their dreams. But I started being able to tell her about things that happened when I was asleep. It started to freak her out. I told her that I saw it when she cut her hand doing dishes one night after I’d gone to bed. She thought I just heard the noise in my sleep, the yelling and the ambulance coming. That I just internalized those things and made some kind of story up in my mind to explain it to myself. But dad was real fucked up when I told her that I saw mommy going to the hospital last night. But they explained it away, both to me, and maybe more to themselves than anything else.

But stuff like that kept happening.

"So they were out-of-body things then?"

Out-of-body experiences had always been a fascination of Joseph’s. He’d never personally had one. But he had tried many times back in his spiritual days, before he started using. When he used to meditate and do yoga and shit.

Yeah, Maggie said. Yeah I think so. My mom started to think so too, after I saw my dad die in a car crash while he was on a business trip in Denver. It was so real. I was there. Scared me so bad that I woke and went to my mom’s room. Told her that dad was hurt really bad. That someone in a big truck had hit his car and rolled over. And he was bleeding really bad and yelling for us.

Maggie started to cry and then she laughed, wiping away her tears. She tried to take a drag but the cigarette had gone out. She relit it and then continued.

She had a horrified look on her face. I mean what a fucked up thing for a kid to say to you in the middle of the night, right?

Yeah.

But she just told me that I had a bad dream and to go back to sleep. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just stayed awake until the morning. And that day my mom got a phone call...

She started crying again. But only for a second.

So he really did...you know?

Yeah, she said and her voice cracked when she did. "Yeah. He died. And I saw it. I knew it was real even back then. And that was when shit just started to go really downhill for me. I stopped sleeping. I would just keep myself awake for days and days. I looked so fucked up as a kid. Hah! Even worse than I looked when I was a junkie.

"My mom tried taking me to doctors and stuff. Thought it was insomnia from anxiety and the trauma of dad dying and everything. But it wasn’t insomnia. I was tired. I could sleep if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I never wanted to. She would have to hold me down at night and force sleeping medicine into my mouth. And even then I would just spit it back out. Poor mom, you know? God how fucked up I must have made her. Still do. God love her. She kept her shit together through all of it, you know?"

My mom too, Joseph said, thinking of the stress he’d put his own poor mother through over the last four years. All the heartache. The pain. Him stealing from her, but her still opening her home to him every time he came crawling back swearing to God that he was gonna get clean this time.

They were both silent for a minute.

Then finally Maggie spoke.

But that wasn’t really what you were asking about, was it? she said. Those weren’t the dreams you wanted me to tell you about, huh?

Well... Joseph felt terrible for wanting to ask more. She was obviously feeling a lot, talking about all of it. But he did want to know. He wanted to know so bad. Only as long as it’s not gonna fuck you up to talk about it...

I can tell you about them, Maggie said. "Cause those ones...those ones I remember really well."

She told Joseph a long story about a downward spiral in her dreams that happened right before she started using dope. About how her waking life was getting worse and worse. And as it declined, her dreams became more and more terrifying. She said that she stopped having the usual out-of-body dreams, or at least she thought she had at first. And she started to see the same thing every night. A thing that terrified her to her core.

It... she struggled to find the right words. It was something that couldn’t be explained. And I don’t mean in the same way that most dreams are hard to explain. Those are hard to explain because they are hard to remember. Those things, they make sense to you when you’re in the dream, you know? And they continue to make sense after you wake up, at least for a short time. This...thing that I saw, it never made sense. It can’t make sense. It’s not supposed to make any fucking sense. It never did in the dreams. And never did when I was awake either. And I remember my dreams. Every single one. Always have. I remember my dreams like you would remember yesterday.

Joseph thought about telling her that he couldn’t remember fucking shit from yesterday, but stayed silent.

The only time that it ever made sense was when I was using, she said. When I shot up. I would see it then too. Even though I was awake. Or...partially awake. Sometimes. But I would be able to start to comprehend it.

What was it?

In a word? Evil.

Joseph didn’t know what to say.

"Or at least it was: not good," she said, looking at Joseph, trying to see if that made any sense at all to him.

There was this desperation in her eyes. A hope. Like she was finally so close to having someone, anyone that could understand what she had gone through. Maybe this boy from rehab would finally be the one. Joseph could see the years of hurt in her soul, through those sad brown eyes. He could see the years of trying to talk to therapists, trying to get them to understand what she’d gone through.

I think so, Joseph finally said. Like that’s what evil is, isn’t it? It’s the absence of good?

Maggie started crying again.

Yes, she said.

So then, Joseph hesitated to say what he wanted to say next, knowing that he shouldn’t, that he should just fucking leave it where it was and stop making her talk about it. But he couldn’t help himself. "So