777 Meme response.

  I was tagged by Laurel Amberdine (Laurel Amberdine @amberdine), with the memetic tag for 777. Since that's a rare occurrence and the meme sounded like a fun chance to force me to show some of my writing to you, I'm going to play along.

Here’s the meme: Post 7 sentences of your work, start on page 7, count 7 lines down.

  I'm working on a novella called "Blackjack Thorne & the Ace of Spades Save the Universe!" A sort of pulp-action adventure story set in a strange universe where magic gave humans the 'technology' to finally solve interstellar travel and AI.  This then is from page seven, seven lines in.

  It's not every day you find yourself locked in a cell, cuffed to a wall and awaiting torture at the hands of demons and a mad scientist, but let's not dwell too much on that.  I mean, after all, Ace was still out there, somewhere, and she wouldn't let me down. Or at least, that's what I kept telling myself. Keeping my spirits up, building morale, that sort of thing. I knew I was going to have to reach deep into my bag of tricks if I was going to get out of here, reunite with Ace, and maybe, if I was lucky keep the entire universe from being overrun by demons from Hell. 

  That's when the door to the cell opened. 

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

Sorrow-Eater

This happens with great frequency.  If I sit down in a public space, eventually someone, a complete stranger, will talk to me telling me things of a deeply personal and painful nature. Maybe they cry, maybe they stare into space while biting the words off in a monotone, but it happens to me more often than you might think.

Last night, I walked to my local pub for dinner and a quiet drink, and maybe to catch the last period of a hockey game.  I hadn't been in the place more than perhaps 15 minutes when a woman with an aura of sadness and long delicate fingers sat at a stool one down from me at the bar.

She ordered a drink, and I having been briefly distracted by her passing and motion, went back to watching hockey and waiting for my food.

"Cheers," she piped. "I'm not drinking alone!"

I turned, raised my beer saluted it in the customary fashion, asking "What are we drinking to?  A celebration?" I smiled, being polite.  It's a thing I force myself to do, politeness.  There's not enough of it in the world, so I'm trying to do my part.

And then began the litany of things; her son's maturity and impending move out of the house, the betrayals by her sister, the painful re-emergence of her son's father, the recent death of her grandfather, the horrible betrayals of her mother.  She cried. Multiple times. There was no room for words from me, even though she would pause and look like she wanted an answer. As soon as I had spoken a word, there were more from her, boiling, gasping out of her.

I offered the only solace I could, I listened. For almost two hours. I grew sad but when she wandered away she wasn't crying any more.

It's happened before.  Years ago, in LA, I was waiting for a bus.  I couldn't have been more than seventeen at the time, when a young man sat on the bench next to me and told me his life story in a monotone for an hour. I listened, nodded at the right places, and listened some more.  The details of his story have long faded, but I remember him walking away from the bus stop, his story told, with a lighter expression than when he'd seated himself.

It happens to me in diners, bars, parks, concerts. The speakers are all races, ages, sexes. Some have looked affluent, some destitute. Every one was profoundly sad.

There's an archetype out there in the world of the Sin-Eater.  These people would consume the sins of the dead, either preventing them from a undead state or allowing a burdened soul entry into Heaven, depending on your faith.

Perhaps that's a role for me, but instead of Sin, I eat Sorrow.

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

A tiny little bit on depression and how I cope.

I don't like myself very much most days. Some days, I practically loathe myself. Those are the days where I stay in my house, fail to shave, eat too little, drink too much and ruminate on all my failures.  Those are days when I long for someone, anyone, to look at me and say with such conviction that even I can believe it, "You're all right, you know?  A decent sort."  I don't want or need sympathy or pity.  Just to know internally that I'm all right.

Honestly though, the one person who can tell me that thing and the only one from whom I could ever really believe it is me. We're not wired to believe the opinions others hold of us. We all know that if only those people could see inside, see the real us, they'd loathe us too. That's our brains, lying to us. That's our mechanism that helps us be social, gregarious, helpful people run amok.

We're wired up, all of us to feel good about things that make us good people.  And to make abhorrent to us the things that would make us bad people.  Crank that baby up, and the lowest worm of a person will feel guilt and shame.  This mechanism is useful.  It makes us do the right thing when doing the wrong thing would feel good. It helps us understand and feel compassion for the failures of others.  It makes us want to help, not hurt.   But when that mechanism gets running over the recommended specifications, oh man do we suffer.

So I work on telling myself that it's just my brain lying to me.  I tell myself that my foibles aren't that bad.  That mistakes have been made, but nothing from which I couldn't pick myself up and still succeed.  Telling myself these things a process.  Like a twelve step program for my soul. I have to keep working it.  Can't give up.  Can't let that shitty part of my brain lie to me all the time.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, who feels like a worthless or shitty human being some days. If you're out there, locked in your own house, feeling crappy about everything - remember this - your brain is lying to you.

You're all right, you know?  A decent sort.

Keep telling yourself that.  When you forget, pick yourself up and dust yourself off.  You can do this.  You really can.

Because you know what?

You're all right, you know?  A decent sort.

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

An Untitled Snippet

I was noodling around with the opening to a horror story and at about half a page in it had become another story about Three-Finger Finnegan.

His world doesn't really have "monsters under the bed" tales in it, so these paragraphs didn't work for the story I suddenly found myself telling.

These few paragraphs aren't half-bad so I decided to preserve them here.

* * * 

  Most days it's impossible to tell the world the truth.  Some days you lie to yourself.  There are a few days, a few precious, hopeful days when you can look your reflection in the mirror, right in the fucking eye and tell yourself the straight out, unvarnished truth.  The trick then, is knowing when those days are upon you and knowing when to hide from mirrors.

  I'm won't to bore you with the mundane.  It's enough for our purposes to tell you that I know two truths about myself. I know them right down in my bones, in that place where you keep all the things you hope you'll never let yourself know.  I'm a liar and a coward.

  What man will say these things about himself?  What man can keep these two truths about himself right there in the front of his mind without skulking away from the world to hide in darkness away from decent, loving, normal people?  Not me.  I want to hide away every second of every day.  Turn my face, cast my eyes down, and pray no one notices.  But I can't.

  You want to know why?

  'Cause I'm afraid of what's in the dark even more.

* * * 

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.