Amphetamine Daydreams: Volume Two: Amphetamine Daydreams, #2

By Mike DeFrench

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

A woman gets a tattoo of crow on the back of her hand in celebration of their bands' first album wrapping up the initial recording...only the tattoo is cursed (so she believes). A man in a sanitarium sees reptilian beings masquerading as humans, but no one believes him. The ghost of a woman who died tragically returns to her killer begging for forgiveness...every, single, night. A man with nothing left to live for in a dystopian future finds hope in an unexpected place. A boy finds a flash drive that contains the most powerful and sophisticated hacking program on the planet...and he decides to use it.

This Volume of Amphetamine Daydreams contains 8 short stories, part one of the serialized novel VOYEUR.exe, and one piece of flash fiction.
It comes with a dozen detailed illustrations in full color. (physical versions only)
Last but not least, Amphetamine Daydreams Volume Two 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, either on their phone or on a computer!

Praise for 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

"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: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215874035

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

Introduction

Well...finally getting around to volume two of Amphetamine Daydreams. I have to say: putting these things together is a bit more of a task than I’d originally thought it would be.

The original vision for these books, just having a simple Mass Market Paperback version, with no extra stuff at all, just the stories and a different picture on the cover...that was so much easier than this.

I am quite happy with these volumes though. How they are turning out. I’ll admit, I still have a lot to learn about doing more advanced layout designs, implementing illustrations more expertly, etc, etc.

But for my first go at this stuff (second, with this volume, I suppose), I am very proud of how they turned out. And I look forward to these becoming better and better as time goes on.

My original hope was to be able to get the first 3-5 volumes completed and out in quick succession. But seeing how much time and work this actually takes, after having done two of them now, I don’t know if I will be able to publish at the speed I’d hoped for at the start.

I think once a month sounds reasonable. As long as I can keep up on the actual writing of new stories...all the time spent doing interior layout, cover design, creating illustrations—it’s all time not spent writing. Need to find a balance. (And I haven’t even mentioned the whole ordeal with Raymond Conner’s estate...)

I don’t know if he knew what he was doing to me when he made me his sole inheritor. Part of me thinks that he did know. Probably thought it was funny.

My old friend, in addition to being a well-accomplished short story writer of his time, was also a disgusting hoarder. Of physical things and digital things. Of everything. I’ve barely even started on going through all of the books he’d had hidden away in his tiny apartment. Then I find out that he had more...so much more—in a storage unit!

Mountains of boxes. Many filled with books. Old magazines (many of them his name on the cover!) Boxes full of toys. The man collected so many toys. He was an 80 year old child, I freaking swear.

It will take forever to sort through all of this stuff. And that will cut into the writing time, no doubt. And it will cut into the time I can spend on getting these volumes of Amphetamine Daydreams into a publishable state.

I plan to go through it slowly. Both the apartment, and the storage unit, were completely paid for. He actually owned the apartment (I don’t even know how one goes about owning an apartment, but he did it), and the storage unit was paid fifty years in advance...and there are still twenty-seven more years to go before I would have to make a payment on it. So those don’t need any urgency on my part. My only interest is trying to find out what really happened to Raymond Conner.

Don’t believe what you read on the internet. Don’t believe the rumors. They are trying to say that it was a suicide. That the note that he left for me was a suicide note. No way that’s what really happened. It was a goodbye note. But not a suicide note.

Look: I knew him. And I know that he didn’t kill himself. And I have serious doubts as to whether or not he’s actually dead at all. I don’t think he is.

But I still have no idea what happened to him.

There is one thing that Ray said to me, that keeps bothering me. I keep thinking about it. Wondering what it meant. He said, they’ll come for you next. He said it in multiple places. In that not-a-suicide-note that he left for me before he disappeared. But also in a separate note which I found on his computer after I went back to his apartment.

(That note, by the way, solidified my opinion that Ray is, in fact, not dead.)

Who is going to come for me? I don’t know.

I might not think that Ray is dead, but I’m not sold on he wasn’t going batshit crazy right before he disappeared. He kept talking about someone (or multiple someones—it wasn’t always clear in his writing, and it seemed to change from singular to plural multiple times). Kept saying how they needed him to find the one.

And now, since he’s gone, he says they’ll come to me...

Ray wasn’t clear, at all, *who* these people (or person) were. It was all very vague. Very...crazy.

But now, I can’t help it—I’m paranoid. I’m waiting for someone to stop me on the street.

Or for these CIA-type dudes in suits to show up to my house. Tell me that they have a government contract for me to write short stories.

That’s what Ray made it sound like. Or maybe that’s just in my head. Maybe that’s just my imagination.

Maybe it’s nothing at all... But I don’t think it’s nothing. Ray was too obsessive about it. Wrote too much about it.

And that hard drive? It had so many stories in it that were never published. Never even sent out to anyone.

And I mean: a lot of stories were on that hard drive. Thousands.

I haven’t counted them all up yet. They are not organized. There are folders within folders within folders. A maze. And when I try to search through with just a *.doc or something like that, it literally crashes my computer.

Why was he writing so much and not sending them out? Not publishing at all?

Just writing and writing and writing and writing and doing nothing with the stories?

And what was with all of the cryptic shit when I went back to his apartment???

I went back the other day, just looking around, trying to maybe find some kind of clue—something that pointed to what the hell happened with Ray.

Maybe try to find out why he went so crazy there at the end. (Or if he even did go crazy...)

And I find this legal pad on his bed. Scribbled with the most insane writing you’d ever seen.

Long series of letters and numbers:

4D 2191 6B 65 20 2191 20 63 6F 2665 6C 64 220F 27 2663 20 66 2191 220F 64 20 2663 68 65 20 6F 220F 65 2E 20 220F 6F 77 20 2663 68 65 2660 20 3B1 211C 65 20 3B1 66 2663 65 211C 20 6D 65 2E 20 2663 68 65 2660 20 77 2191 21D0 20 66 2191 220F 64 20 6D 65 20 73 21D2 220F 2E 20 391 220F 64 20 2191 27 21D0 20 62 65 20 67 6F 220F 65 2E 20 42 2665 2663 20 2191 20 73 77 65 3B1 211C 2C 20 2191 20 6B 220F 6F 77 20 2663 68 3B1 2663 20 2191 20 63 211C 65 3B1 2663 65 64 20 2663 68 65 20 6F 220F 65 2E 20 2191 20 68 3B1 64 20 2663 6F 2E 20 4C 21D2 6B 20 2191 220F 20 2663 68 65 20 6C 2191 62 211C 3B1 211C 2660 2E 20 211C 65 3B1 64 20 2663 68 65 6D 20 3B1 21D0 2C 20 2191 66 20 2660 6F 2665 20 68 3B1 2207 65 20 2663 6F 2E 20 4D 2660 20 4C 2191 42 211C 391 211C 2660 21 20 2663 3B1 6B 65 20 2191 2663 20 77 2191 2663 68 20 2660 6F 2665 2E 20 42 65 66 6F 211C 65 20 2663 68 65 2660 20 66 2191 220F 64 20 2191 2663 2E 0A 391 220F 64 2C 20 6F 220F 65 20 6C 3B1 73 2663 20 2663 68 2191 220F 67 2C 20 2663 68 65 2660 20 77 2191 21D0 20 6C 2191 6B 65 6C 2660 20 63 6F 6D 65 20 2663 6F 20 2660 6F 2665 20 73 21D2 220F 2E 20 391 73 6B 2191 220F 67 20 66 6F 211C 20 3B1 20 73 2663 6F 211C 2660 2E 20 44 6F 220F 27 2663 20 62 65 20 3B1 66 211C 3B1 2191 64 20 2663 6F 20 73 3B1 2660 20 2660 65 73 2E 0A 2660 6F 2665 20 68 3B1 2207 65 20 2191 2663 20 2191 220F 20 2660 6F 2665 2E 20 2191 20 2663 68 2191 220F 6B 2E 0A

I took the pad home with me. Just because it was so weird... especially when I kept staring at for long enough. Things started to change within the jumbled nonsense. Shapes start to appear. I’m staring at it again, right now. Jumbled insanity. But...then I see my name. Yeah... I can clearly see it. Or something like it...

M↑ke

More letters and numbers. More nonsense. More symbols.

I'm staring into the madness when shapes I couldn't see before start to become vivid on the page. I start to notice symbols, maybe even words where I couldn't see anything but nonsense before.

It's like: those pictures where they show it to you, and they're like, This is a drawing of a rabbit. You look at it. Yep, sure as shit, it's definitely a rabbit. Then they’re like, actually that’s a duck. And you’re like: "shit, it is a duck!

The words and symbols take shape. It's almost like...like the stuff on the page is moving right before my eyes.

"M↑ke ↑ co♥ld∏'♣ f↑∏d ♣he o∏e. ∏ow ♣he♠ αℜe αf♣eℜ me. ♣he♠ w↑⇐ f↑∏d me s⇒∏. Α∏d ↑'⇐ be go∏e. B♥♣ ↑ sweαℜ, ↑ k∏ow ♣hα♣ ↑ cℜeα♣ed ♣he o∏e. ↑ hαd ♣o. L⇒k ↑∏ ♣he l↑bℜαℜ♠. ℜeαd ♣hem α⇐, ↑f ♠o♥ hα∇e ♣o. M♠ L↑BℜΑℜ♠! ♣αke ↑♣ w↑♣h ♠o♥. Befoℜe ♣he♠ f↑∏d ↑♣.

Α∏d, o∏e lαs♣ ♣h↑∏g, ♣he♠ w↑⇐ l↑kel♠ come ♣o ♠o♥ s⇒∏. Αsk↑∏g foℜ α s♣oℜ♠. Do∏'♣ be αfℜα↑d ♣o sα♠ ♠es.

♠o♥ hα∇e ↑♣ ↑∏ ♠o♥. ↑ ♣h↑∏k."

Glad this volume is finally complete. I was starting to worry that I would never get it done. That Amphetamine Daydreams would simply just be one-and-done single volume. That all of my ideas would be just pipedreams that I never got to actually complete.

Now I’m gonna go work on sorting through some of that hard drive of Ray’s again. Maybe find a story that I can publish in the next volume of Amphetamine Daydreams? I’ll see if there is one that fits the vibe I’m doing here.

The Hand that Feeds

There it was again . Same pain. She could tell the difference between the pain that the tattoo caused, and the pain from what she did last night. It was in the same spot as it always was: the back of her left hand. Right where the tattoo was—somehow it was still there. Even after everything she’d done...it was still there.

What now? Why was it hurting? She wasn’t even doing anything!? What did it want from her now? Maybe it was biting her because...

Cause it knew what she was planning to do tonight.

Madilynn Hill was laying on her bed when it happened. Too tired to move. Her mind so close to breaking. So hungry but unable to eat.

It wouldn’t let her.

Her bedroom was a disaster. Piles of dirty clothes. Cigarette butts on the carpet spilling out from overflowing ashtrays. Empty bottles of Fireball all over the place. She didn’t know why the tattoo was doing it to her now. What had she done? She’d barely eaten anything in days. Was it going to take away the only things she had left now? Until she just withered away?

She would die if this kept up. She’d die soon. She’d tried everything that she could think of...except one thing. She could never do that. That is what she thought last night. And the night before that. But tonight? Tonight it didn’t seem so bad. Tonight it seemed like the only logical thing to do. The thing she had to do. The thing she wanted to do.

But she would have to get a little more drunk before she did it.

After fishing through piles of empty plastic bottles for a minute and finding a full one, Madilynn drank another shot of the cinnamon whiskey and felt sick to her stomach from it. She used to love Fireball but now (after tonight) she was never going to drink it again for the rest of her life.

The stale smell of cigarette smoke clung to everything in the room but Madilynn was so used to it by now that she barely noticed it. It even clung to her clothes, which was not an easy thing to do, since she’d been wearing what seemed like 90% leather for the last year or more.

It was the middle of the summer and hot as hell outside (and in her room) but she felt cold chills over her weak body. She’d been in a cycle of doing coke and drinking coffee in the morning, so that she could actually think or do anything. And then drowning herself with booze at night to fall asleep and kill the hunger and fear. But now she felt hollow. Dead inside.

The taste in her mouth would’ve made anyone that kissed her sick. Ash and whiskey. That’s all that she’d been allowed to have for the last few days. Fucking cigarettes and whiskey. She couldn’t even brush her teeth anymore, because she wasn’t allowed to use the green toothbrush. And she wasn’t allowed to leave her house to get a new one. She thought about texting Owen or one of the others to bring her a new one—but things had gotten so much worse now, in just a couple of days. If any of them saw her now...

She’d been alone in here for three days now. At least she thought it had been three days since Owen showed up asking for her. It was hard to tell in this hungry and frightened daze.

Owen hadn’t understood what she was saying. No one understood her. They worried about her, tried to tell her what to do, how to fix it. But they never heard her. It wasn’t an eating disorder. It wasn’t the coke. It wasn’t any of that.

You’re not getting it you stupid bastard. I want to eat. Good God I want to fucking eat!!! So...hungry...

But she couldn’t.

Because it wouldn’t let her eat.

It did, at first. It would let her eat some things. But bit by bit it limited what she could eat. One thing at a time, it was taking everything away from her. It started with the food. It still was mostly food stuff. But there was some other stuff too. Little things that she had to do (or couldn’t do, more often than not), but it was mostly the food stuff that had her going crazy.

It started the same day she got the tattoo. It was a celebration of finishing the recording on their first album. To remember the moment they were all going to get tattoos. Not matching ones or anything like that. Just something to commemorate the accomplishment. Madilynn’s was a crow. She knew it was going to be a crow before they’d even decided that the whole band was getting the tattoos. She even knew exactly where the tattoo was going to be on her body: the back of her left hand. It wasn’t something she was planning (though at the time she did have plans for about twelve different tattoos she wanted to get). This idea had come to her in a single flash of inspiration.

She went to the same tattoo parlor in Broadshore Village just outside of Indianapolis. Mystik Ink. She’d gotten her last two tattoos there: the stoned Squidward on her leg and the snake on her shoulder. But when she went to get the crow done a month and a half ago, Jessi (the badass chick who’d done the other two) wasn’t there. On vacation or something—Madilynn couldn’t remember. So she’d gotten the new guy, Tripp. He seemed dope enough. Didn’t talk much. But nothing really off about the dude.

And his concept sketch was sick. So Madilynn hadn’t felt any issue with going with him. Plus, impulsive as she always was, she had to get the tattoo that very day. No fuckin waiting. She was always the type where, if she went to the store to buy herself something (say a particular book she wanted) and the store didn’t have that thing, you could be damn sure that she was still leaving with something else.

So Tripp gave her the crow. It turned out great. Better than she had expected it to. It was creepier than she thought it would look, somehow sickly-looking or demonic or something. But she kinda dug it even more that way. She paid Tripp the cash for the job and then a pretty decent tip too. Then she left to meet up with the rest of the band at the Mexican place off of 62nd Street. One of her favorite spots. Never had any problems there. Ever.

Until that night.

They got the chips and salsa at the start. Ordered some beers and shots of tequila. Those went down easy. But when she grabbed a chip and went to dunk it into the salsa, she got this pain in her hand. It was so sharp and sudden that she dropped the chip and winced.

It was right where the tattoo was and felt worse than a pinch. It hurt more than getting the damn tattoo did! And those ones on the back of your hands weren’t pretty.

She’d had stinging from a fresh tattoo before. But this was worse. It freaked her out a little. But not much. Figured it was just the spot on her body with this one. Might sting a little bit more than usual for a while.

But instantly, already, she knew that she shouldn’t eat the salsa. So weird. Made no sense at all. She didn’t even try to make it make sense in her head. There was no point. And she didn’t really even have to convince herself of anything. There was no logic to it. No thought at all. It was just: okay...can’t eat that salsa. Let’s do another shot of tequila!

The pain, though...it kept happening. At dinner she’d decided that she wasn’t even hungry, so she didn’t order anything. Just hungout with the guys and kept drinking. But when she got home late that night, drunk and little stoned, she was starving. So she goes to the fridge to find some random junk to smash before passing out. Goes to grab the leftover fried rice from last night: nope. Can’t