Category: Horrordailies

A Dimmer

My mind is a bit muddled tonight, like my brain is saturated in goo, owing to a whopping two hours of sleep. I just didn’t feel tired when last my head hit a pillow, perhaps because I forgot to turn on my blue light filter, f.lux. That app is a lifesaver when I remember to use it. It gradually turns your screen a dark salmon color as the sun sets outside. The idea is to keep your eyes from tricking your brain into thinking it’s daylight. Daywalkers need that like a hole in the head, so I’m glad for the wonders of modern technology that counter the other wonders of modern technology.

No, this is not sponsored content. I’ve been using that app for years. An ex-boyfriend who was partially color-blind hated it, so when I stayed at his place and wanted to keep him from looking over my shoulder while I was reading or writing, I’d turn it on.

See, one night, before you could stream YouTube directly out of your TV, I VERY STUPIDLY agreed to hook up my laptop to his huge flat-screen so we could indulge our sadistic humor with some FAIL videos. I had another tab open on my browser which just happened to display an old private blog of mine that had some randy fiction I had written when earthly pleasures like that still interested me. He clicked on the tab and the first line to the story on the screen was a doozy: Jake was always up for a good, hard fuck.

“NICE.”

“Oops. I had forgotten about that.”

“Who’s Jake?”

Ah, crap. Here we go.

“Don’t worry. This entire blog is fiction.”

“But who IS he?”

“It’s FICTION.”

“Who’s it ABOUT?”

“NO one.”

After about four rounds of that I said, “Will you look at the date on this, please? It was before I divorced my ex-husband.”

“So it’s about HIM?”

“No. I said it was FICTION.”

“So you made it up?”

“That’s what fiction is, yes?”

“I guess.”

I don’t think he bought it because for three months after that he kept trying to figure out who Jake was.

Anyway, that’s when I started turning f.lux on as a deterrent whenever I was reading or writing on my laptop at his place. That was about 12 years ago, so it’s an old app.

And this, kids, is why you don’t go poking around your beloved’s laptop when your beloved is a writer. You might up in said writer’s public blog years after you break up.

Now I need refreshment, so I leave you with this:

An oil slick, with a haiku that says "dark prism/slips over surface/suffocation"
Image: Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

Batty Boo!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again: Time for Horrordailies! This is the precursor to Holidailies, and while only a few of us have signed up for the spooky stuff, I’m looking forward to it. Check out my nifty bat tumbler:

It goes with my bat earrings, which have purple sparklies:

My plan for Horrodailies is to offer up a dark poem, likely a Haiku, with photos from photographers I think you need to see and, if they’re looking for work, hire.

Unfortunately, I got thrown off my plans already because of the not entirely unanticipated letter that was stuck to my door by my landlord tonight informing me that my lease will not be renewed when it’s up on December 31. It’s a long, ugly story, but the short version is that my apartment has had mold issues for three summers running and this summer they actually had to remove and replace panels from the ceiling and wall. So, rather than do what Virginia law requires of landlords who must do a mold remediation, which is put the tenant up in another unit or in a local hotel for up to 30 days at the landlord’s expense, they’re just not renewing my lease. This way they can take their understaffed crew their usual infernally long fix-it time to correct the moisture problem that’s causing it.

Am I sad? Not really. Not like I was about a month ago when it became apparent that I was going to have to move, either voluntarily or involuntarily. I’ve lost some minor property to mold here, things like a leather jacket that couldn’t be restored (that I didn’t wear anymore anyway because it doesn’t go with my vegetarianism), some old Salomon winter boots that were good up to -20 degrees F, and this summer, an ironing board.

But I also lost something VERY precious to me this summer, which was the box of birdie mementos from Inigo the Nanday and Jimmy the Green Cheek. I had cleaned Inigo’s wood perch after he passed, but one day this summer when I opened the closet in my home gym, I smelled something rank coming from the birdie box and it turned out that the perch was covered in green mold. All of the soft materials, like rope perches and palm and fabric toys, had spots. Then, when I opened the plastic baggies that held wooden toy parts, Jimmy’s old and smaller toys, and Inigo’s leftover popsicle sticks that he loved to chew so much when he was healthy, they all smelled of mold and mildew. I managed to save some of Inigo’s half-chewed toys, but the only toy Jimmy has now is one tiny blue wooden star with one tip chewed off that I put inside the little tin that holds his ashes.

To say I was devastated by this loss would be an understatement. And yet I am SO very grateful that last winter I decided to take the baggies of feathers from Inigo, Jimmy, Louise the Alexandrine (who lives my ex-husband), and an ex-boyfriend’s birds out of that closet and put them in one of my nightstands. The baggies are doubled and sealed well, and I believe my bedroom furniture is made with cedar, which is mold-resistant, so they’re safe.

At any rate, I knew this was coming and I cried my tears over it a month ago—enough so that the problems and annoyances I chose to overlook about the place are now on my last nerve. I even got annoyed that a seam on the light fixture in the dining room is where you can see it instead of facing a corner. I just didn’t expect to get this letter until Halloween, 60 days before the lease ends, but instead they gave it to me today. It threw me, even though I know it will work out in the end. New year, new apartment, and I’ll likely have to cheat on Holidailies and write a few in advance in December.

But first Horrordailies. Here’s an oldie but goodie vamp poem that I originally made with Magnetic Poetry online, titled “Velvet and Cake.”

More tomorrow, friends and fiends!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! As we close out the month and Horrordailies, I thought I’d revisit a few of my more memorable costumes from over the years:

Cinderella, ages 6/7. Remember those plastic masks and highly flammable polyester costumes? Yep, one of those. Mine was a lot like this one, only my crown was gold.

Raggedy Ann, age 8. Same kind of deal.

A ghost, age 9. The ol’ sheet with holes cut out for the eyes. Worst hat-head EVER. Looking back on it, I should have cut a million holes into it like Charlie Brown.

“I got a rock.”

Nowadays, Halloween is very different. Parental competition has entered the picture the way it has with everything from Little League to science fairs, so you don’t see too many kids in prefab costumes or even masks unless it’s a superhero costume that Mom sewed herself. I suppose that’s a good thing: At least you know no kid is going to go up in flames if they lean back against an old-school radiator or another kid goes near them with a sparkler.

Halloween is very different for adults these days, too. Heaven forbid a woman isn’t a “sexy” version of something–sexy nurse, sexy cop, sexy witch, sexy nun, sexy yacht captain, sexy bull’s backside.

I was a little more creative back in the day. For instance, in 1985, I went as Madonna in her Desperately Seeking Susan era: Black crop-top lace tank, black bomber jacket, black floppy bow in my hair, black leggings, a bazillion of those black rubber bracelets, and the words “Boy Toy” written across my stomach in black eyeliner.

Oops, that was kind of sexy.

Another year I went as the Clinton Health Plan: Black top and jeans, a cardboard tombstone on my chest that said “H.R. 3600, Health Security Act” (the name of the bill), one of the famous Hillary headbands, and red duct tape everywhere. I’ve since seen the light, but it was a fun costume. Some people needed an explanation, but this being Washington, D.C., many didn’t. All the people who worked on the Hill knew what I was right away. Definitely nothing sexy about that.

These days, I don’t dress up. It’s too much trouble so I just walk around with my fangs out. Maybe next year I’ll fly around as a bat.

And now, the final candy, the one you’ve all been waiting for and may or may not despise with the searing heat of 1,000 suns: Candy corn!

Come on, did you really expect anything different? Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re Halloween in candy form.

And thus concludes this year’s Horrordailies. See you in December, for Holidailies. Be good, kids!