It started when he was 15. Pieces of her to play with...it didn't sound like the worst idea. Probably wasn't his best. His teachers would have told you the same, had anyone bothered to ask. Knives to filet and carve with. Cleavers. Hell, machetes, hatchets, axes, all in the shed and as handy as a sword. His mind was on which pieces and the best possible game. It should have just been a simple play on words, but it turned into a lifelong addiction. Words and ideas came quick then - much quicker than now. His beat, his attack...all slower than before. Even the fire burns more sluggishly now. He'd be the first to tell you - the idea came from movies. Such bad, bad movies. Poorly written, and filmed for budget audiences; the types that frequented the drive-in picture shows on a Tuesday night with a case of Hamm's in the back seat. He noticed the audiences loved every moment, predictable as it was. A group of friends. Some pretty teens. Lack of supervision. Cigarettes, re...
Aging sucks. He found that out the hard way. The beer and liquor no longer flowed. The pills didn't do the trick anymore. A lifetime of crafting tales that thrilled a generation - gone. The well ran dry. It's the fear of every writer. What happens when the ideas stop coming? No mere 'writer's block' - the reality outside his door was more terrifying than any fictional fear or foe he could cobble together from his own neuroses and phobias. The government had come clean. It didn't give a damn about the people, the laws, or anything else it was supposed to. It came down to two things: money and power. Enough of either one assured the other. The people could live or die, it didn't matter. There would always be someone to take their place. Someone who had no choice, no say. The Constitution had all but been abolished. Decades of embedding partisan plants in the judiciary had guaranteed it. The media, before it was forced into piracy, claimed that it all happ...