Podcast That Dares 37: Gramma

After a bit of prevaricating, Rish presents Stephen King's classic 1984 tale "Gramma."

Come give this episode a hug.

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Logo by Gino "Diagramma" Moretto.

Podcast That Dares 33: The Ash Tree

Whoops. I should've put this one out a couple of months ago. Sorry. 

Rish presents M.R. James's 1904 story, "The Ash Tree," sadly, with accents.

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Logo by Gino "Arse Tree" Moretto.

July Sweeps - Day 170

The group of kids I was semi-complaining about yesterday decided to camp out outside their cabin last night, which meant there was chatter, giggling, and the occasional whoops until surprisingly late at night.  That's no big deal--again, I wasn't trying to sleep or record, though I have thought about going down to my dad's room in the basement and recording something when I'm here sometime, since it's closed-off, windowless, and always an icebox, even in July (which is why I never go in there, regardless of whether it was my dad's room or not).

There's a very high chance I won't be coming back here until August, so it's nice I got a full weekend here as I never manage coming on a Wednesday and returning on a Thursday.  It's just surprising that nobody in the family would've come here in the three days, in the middle of summer (in a plague year, no less, when one might want to go somewhere where they'd not having to wear a mask or be around strangers--or as it is when I come in the middle of the week sometimes, see another living soul).

I often ask my cousin why he doesn't come here, since his kids enjoy it, and it's available for anybody in my and his family, not just me and my brother and brother-in-law.  But he doesn't like the outdoors, he's addicted to video games, and the prospect of being cooped up somewhere surrounded by his family is absolutely unappealing to the guy.  He needs Twitter and Minecraft and Netflix and podcasts to keep him from self-reflection and his own thoughts.*  Oh, and he would not have appreciated the mosquitos and seventy-three degree temperature yesterday.

Gosh, why doesn't George R.R. Martin have a place like this he can go, to isolate himself from whatever distractions have kept him from finishing his book, what, nine years in a row?

Does anybody remember what it was that sparked the Murder Was The Case drop I used to do on my podcasts?  I stumbled across that Snoop Dogg track, and I honestly couldn't remember why I used to use it.  But I'd like to do it again.

So, we talked about my goal of 3333 sit-ups in July, and 1000 sit-ups this weekend, and today, it looks like I might reach both.  But just one would be fine.

The wood floor of the cabin is really hard on my tailbone (almost said taint there), so I sometimes toss a blanket or throw pillow on the floor before I do my sit-ups.  And I pity the fool that uses that throw pillow for a pillow one day, for they are not going to have good dreams.

Yesterday, I thought it would be fun to try to do sit-ups every hour, just fifty at a time.  I counted in my head that, if I did it a few times throughout the day, I'd reach my goal easily, and fifty sit-ups isn't going to get me sweaty or exhausted.  I should have set a timer, because I did let a couple of hours go by without doing any, but I managed quite a bit--probably what I got in the first week I started doing the sit-ups.

I brought three cans of soup, a loaf of bread, a can of fruit cocktail, and one of green beans (they just struck my fancy, even though they're the only thing I haven't touched).  I also brought two whole boxes of Marvel Legends action figures, to take out of their packages, and use the cardboard to cook my meals with.  I made it through about a dozen boxes, but it was actually too warm for a fire one of the days, and I had to open the windows, which let in all the noise from next door.  I've heard no crickets or frogs this entire trip, and certainly no owls or coyotes (which are way rarer).  But I have heard the generator buzzing next door, which should be incentive to only do this on Wednesdays in the future.

Even so, it has been a fairly good trip.  Lots of time by myself, lots of exercise, some editing, some writing, almost no reading (fell asleep again today when I tried), but plenty of time to think and reflect on life.  If it's nearly reached the end, I'll die with a ton of regrets (not quite a metric tonne, but certainly the American version), but I don't think coming up here so often will be one of them.  My dad used to say, "The worst day fishing beats the best day working," and this is something like that, I guess, even though I haven't fished in a year or two.

Come to think of it, maybe it was Travis Tritt that said that, not my dad.

I got a bit of editing done just now (got half of a two-part Delusions of Grandeur episode edited), then decided to do some more sit-ups.  I thought I'd count them up to see how many more I need to do to reach my goal--and I've already passed it.  That's kind of cool.  I wish I were that way with writing, like I was in February.  But I was on fire that month, feeling inspired, floating around on a cloud, going to the library to write and only leaving when my time was up (I even paid for an extra two hours a couple of times), and eager to start on a new project even before the last one was done.

This morning, I thought about Lara Demming, and where I left her back in May or so, when I had broken her heart and was about to have her fall in love again, with some boy who may or may not be too good to be true.  I really like Lara Demming, and oddly, I really like Old Widow Holcomb too, and was thinking it would be a blast to write one or two other stories like "Remember the Future," where Holcomb curses somebody who is unkind to her "daughter."  Maybe a bully who becomes clumsy at the most inopportune times, maybe some kind of prom queen type whose boobs get a little bigger each and every day until she becomes something out of a sideshow (or a Japanese comic book), maybe a teacher who makes Lara feel dumb in class, who starts to feel dumb himself in inopportune times.

If I were a real writer, these prospects would excite me, and I'd get to work--RIGHT NOW--at writing them.  But instead, I sit here blogging, hearing the neighbor kids shrieking over and over (and over and over and over and over), debating whether to cook those green beans or continue watching JANE EYRE, or to just pack up and go home five hours early.  Don't think I'll do that last one.

Sit-ups Today: 343
Sit-ups This Weekend: 1102
Sit-ups In July: 3473

Only a fully-trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, can conquer Vader, and his Emperor.

Let's see.  What was I saying?  Oh yes, so I jotted down some thoughts about love, about Lara Demming grappling with what she's feeling for this boy--is it real?  How do you know?  And I gave her a new best friend--Kayla--who she's having this conversation with, and that seems to open up the door of: what happens when Kayla finds out Lara lives with a witch?  And what happens when she finds out Lara is herself a witch?

It doesn't exactly write itself--otherwise, why the devil am I blogging right now--but it makes me want to write it.  Maybe I am a real writer, just not a very good one.  Anyway, I've got 585 words on it for today, which isn't a lot, but is more than some days.

My imagination, which I never tire of talking of in my podcasts, has been both a tormenter and a comforting friend to me.  Two days now without speaking to another soul, but I imagine that someone else is upstairs, walking around, making the occasional noise, perhaps using the sink or the balcony . . . and I am forbidden to go up there.  I can hear her footfalls on the wooden planks, know that she's agitated about something, but I can't speak to her, and she's not about to come down here where I am.

I imagined Victoria Holcomb, having traded her only son away to an evil, evil man decades ago, discovering that that son is out there, full grown, and what has become of him?  Is he cruel and spiteful, like his parents?  Or is he gentle and decent, like Lara is?  Like Holcomb might once have been, a hundred years ago, before absolute power corrupted her?

I also wrote quite a bit on my egg story, which I'm thinking of calling "Hatchling."  Good title, n'est-ce pas?

Words Today: 2381
Words In July: 19,593 (and with that, I'm up to a thousand words a day again)

I put on the acoustic version of Foo Fighters' Everlong while I was eating a sandwich, and the song hit me really hard.  It felt good to be so moved by a piece of music.  It made me wonder if I could ever create something that would so reach and speak to another human being, that my own art could be as powerful as And I wonder when I sing along with you,
If everything could ever feel this real forever,
If anything could ever be this good again?

Guess I've got to keep at it, keep creating, keep putting things out there, in hopes that one day I can get there.  Or just get lucky.

Rish Outfield 7-19-20

*That reminds me, though: I was walking on the far side of the lake last night, trying to get my video done, when my phone beeped.  "Oh no, its battery is dead too?" I thought, but I looked down at it, and I had just gotten a text message from my friend Jeff in Germany.  "What the--?" I next thought.  I looked it over, and I had just gotten a text from my cousin, a text from my sister, and one from Big Anklevich.  Somehow, way out here in a place remote enough that nobody commented on my singing, there was cell service.  Except when I tried to text my sister back, it wouldn't go through. No Service, my phone said.  I found that a little strange.

May Sweeps - Day 108

This MIGHT be it.  The day I just throw in the towel.  I don't much feel like writing (what else is new?) and I don't have any ideas (I thought it would be cool to sit down and just try to write a flash fiction piece, all in one sitting . . . and I didn't even make it to the sitting before I realized I had nothing going on between my ears), and once again, we're past midnight with zero words in the bank.

But . . . and here's the thing: I'm aware I haven't written, and I'm actively thinking about it, which seems like not the time to break my streak.  Instead, it should be on a day that I'm busy or tired or distracted, and I don't even realize I didn't write until the day is gone.  To deliberately give up is somehow more of a sin than to accidentally miss my one hundred and eighth day in a row.

So, I'm going to try.  That's why I'm typing this, to get my mind leaning toward writing.  I got this idea for a Lara and the Witch story yesterday, and I have thought a bit about it.  It would be a high school Lara who gets her heart broken by a boy (or girl--yeah, I haven't forgotten about you sweet, sweet lesbians out there.  You're number one in my heart, ladies), and then, what does Holcomb do about it?  The joy of writing that character is (and I'll keep on saying it) that she's legitimately evil, and if you are loved by someone both powerful and amoral, you're apt to have a very interesting life.

My thought is, a boy breaks poor Lara's heart, and then . . . well, something happens to him.  What that something is depends on how horrific I want this story to be, but my attitude is that it's probably going to be pretty awful, considering that Victoria Holcomb cursed a girl with the inability to ever look someone in the eye after making fun of Lara Demming in front of her classmates.*  And when something inappropriately ghastly happens to a guy who, say, felt Lara up in a booth of an all-ages discotheque . . . well, Lara's going to suspect this was not just a freak accident.

So, she has some harsh words to say to her new parental figure, and absolutely forbids her to interfere with ANY of her relationships, good or bad, in the future.  Holcomb can roll her eyes--it's one of the things she's best at--and Lara, not being based at all on Rish Outfield, can continue her life, both flirting with and being flirted by cute boys (OR girls, you smooth Sapphic angels), and maybe fall in love again.

But . . . what happens when she does?  Can she trust it?  Will she, metaphorically, look over her shoulder with every kiss, every sweet whisper in her ear, every date that ends with the possibility of more to come?  Hell, the scene pretty much writes itself:

Old Widow Holcomb could sense the girl's wariness as she came into the room.  She smelled like suspicion, doubt, fear, and misgivings.  "Anything I can help you with?" she asked, so sweetly it instantly made Lara upset, which was much preferred to nervousness and worry.
"Hope so."  Lara's nostrils were flaring, and this made the old woman amused, which only served to anger Lara more.  "I need to ask you something."
"I'm sure you do."
"What do you mean by that?"
Holcomb shrugged slightly.  "I mean, you obviously have something weighing on your rapidly-developing little mind, the way you came barging in here, pink-cheeked and hyperventilating."
Lara wasn't sure what hyperventilating was, but she wasn't about to do it in front of the witch.  "Yes, I do have something on my little mind.  And I want you to answer me truthfully."
"Of course," the witch replied, as though she didn't lie every single day by her very nature.
"Scotty.  You know about Scotty."
"Oh, yes.  The boy you're always on about with your friends on the phone.  Seems you even deigned to bring him up with me once."
"Did you do something to him?  Cast a spell or something?"
"I've never even met this junior Adonis, Lara."
Lara ignored whatever obscure devil-related reference the witch had just made.  "Never?  You've never seen him before?"
"I haven't a clue what he looks like, except when you told Sadly that his blue eyes sparkled."
"Hadlee.  My friend's name is Hadlee."
"Oh, right.  'Sadly' would be ridiculous."
"So, you've never met him or seen him?  You promise?"
Holcomb shrugged again, a move designed to show the girl just how little she cared.  "I may actually have seen him at one of your school functions or around town, but I wouldn't know it.  As far as I am aware, though, no, I've never met the man."
"Boy.  He's a boy.  He's seventeen."
"I stand corrected."
"And you've never cast a spell on him, or one on me, to make him like me, or treat me good, or tell me I'm special?"  Lara's eyes were big now, and expressing of just how vulnerable she was at this moment.
Holcomb sighed.  "Could it be, young lady, that he likes you naturally?  And that you are special, and he's simply noticed it?"
Lara's eyes--amazingly--got even bigger.  "Is he?  Am I?"
"Well, I certainly think so.  But what do I know?  I'm only a century old and smarter than anyone you have ever encountered in that scant lifetime of yours."
Lara's smile was one of relief and bliss, but she squelched it.  "Did you promise?"
"Did I promise?"
Lara showed her teeth.  "I need you to swear.  Swear by . . . your mother's soul, or the life of your only child, or by the devil's pitchfork or something."
"The devil's pitchfork," commented the old woman, "that's the most sacred vow a witch can make, going back through known history all the way to the one killed by that awful Hansel and Gretel."
Lara was surprised she had identified something so deeply significant in the life of her--  Oh.  She was being made fun of.  Again.  "Swear to me that you didn't use magic on Scotty or on me."
"I've used magic on you practically every day since I met you, girl.  You'd have died on four occasions without it, and been put on a respiration device for the rest of your life in one other."  Lara opened her mouth to say something, but the witch put up her index finger.  "But in regards to your oh-so-important lovelife, I have cast no spells, planted no suggestions, hexed or entranced no souls to your benefit.  I swear it on my mother's soul."
Lara watched her, looking--ostensibly--for some kind of tell from a woman who could teach deceit to a lifelong politician or hypocrisy to a religious leader.  She found none.  Because the girl had very little guile in herself, she accepted the woman's word.  "Okay."
Holcomb smirked.  "Sadly, you seem to have won the heart of blue-eyed Scotty and his burly worm all on your own."
"Burly worm?" Lara repeated, then scrunched up her face in understanding.  "Ew, yuck, no.  It isn't l . . . we're not there yet."
Now Holcomb looked surprised.  "No?  I thought your generation traded bodily fluids first, and telephone numbers second."  She chuckled, though nothing she'd said had been remotely funny.  "Well, get out there, then, start making beasts with two backs.  Three, if you're curious."
Lara nodded, happy this conversation hadn't ended with her in tears.  But again, she studied the witch.  "You wouldn't use magic to help me with boys, right?"
"Bathory's bathtowel, girl," swore the witch, "didn't I just answer that question?"
"But I mean, you won't do it, ever, in the future, will you?"
Holcomb leaned in.  "I am starting to doubt you'll believe me when I tell you this, but . . . my whole world does not circumgyrate Lara Demming.  I don't concern myself with your dalliances or flirtations.  I have better things to do than weave spells to keep you from adolescent malaise."
A lot of big words, only some of which Lara comprehended, but she understood the tone, and the character of her foster mother.  Basically, the old lady was saying she didn't care enough to interfere.
And that hurt to hear, while at the same time, reassuring her that her boyfriend was really her boyfriend, and that felt pretty great.
Lara surprised them both by throwing her arms around Old Widow Holcomb's shoulders and hugging her tight.  "Thanks," she said, "but I care about you.  And your own opposite-of-adolescent mayonnaise."
Holcomb didn't quite hug her back, but one of her hands rose and touched the girl's back.  "I think that would be geriatric malaise.  Or venerable.  I really wish you'd read a book once in a while."
Lara slowly released her from the embrace.  "I just read The Crucible for History, remember?  It was very funny."
"Agreed."  Holcomb gave the girl a smile.  A brief one.  "Now, get out and do whatever it is you do on Saturday afternoons.  But be sure to use protection, you dense, winsome child."

Okay, that's over a thousand words right there.  Guess there was gas in the tank after all.  Or maybe it's like my dad's old truck (my brother's now, I suppose), where you flip a switch and the engine gets fed by a second gas tank.

As a reward, yep, you guessed it: I'm going to run around the neighborhood.  Oh, and I'll do ten more sit-ups, just to make it a record.

Sit-ups Today: 106
Sit-ups Total: 725

Words Today: 1026
Words In May: 17,693

P.S. I am nearly finished posting these.

Day 48. Gonna go with "Shout" by Tears For Fears. Boy, I loved that when it was new, but boy, do I hate it now.

*Look, I know that story wasn't all that wonderful, and that I may actually (there's the word, kids!) not be all that talented of a writer, but I describe "Remember the Future" with those words, and it just seems like a tidy little masterpiece to my ears.  And it was that story that got me back in the Lara/Holcomb business, so I'll not naysay it any further.

Rish Outcast 78: Remember the Future

So, a year or so back, Rish went into the woods and recorded this episode in front of a campfire. He shares the story "Remember the Future," about a teenage girl who receives a rather unfortunate gift (with an appearance by a character or two from past Rish Outfield tales).

Warning: A bit of TMI.

Do you really want to download this episode?  Okay, just Right-Click HERE.

Do you really want to support Rish?

Do you really want to hurt me?

Buy My Story "Remember the Future" On Amazon

Just can't get enough of Rish Benjamin Outfield?  Of course not, or you'd be kilometers from here.

If you're up to it, check out my short story "Remember the Future," available at this link.

It's a story I wrote not long ago about a high school girl, Tali Murray, who gets cursed by a witch: when she makes eye contact with someone, she sees how they will die.  She meets a boy, sees his future, and wonders if it is set in stone.

I know, I know, you didn't need all that.  I had you at high school girl.  Well, feel free to go over and buy the story, if you wanna know how I handle that particular ubiquitous premise, done to death, I fully recognize.  I'm still deciding whether to run it on the Outcast, but while I deliberate, check it out!

Rish Outfield, Quoter of Debbie Gibson Songs

Rish Outcast 57: Rest Stop

(written months back, then shelved until winter came 'round again)

Although it's easier (and takes less courage) to just produce episodes of me driving and talking about whatever comes into my head, I thought I'd present another story on the Rish Outcast.  This one is called "Rest Stop," and I highly doubt anybody will like it.  But hey, it's got a dog in it.  Dogs are cool, right?

Yes.  Dogs are cool.



If you're up to downloading the episode, Right-Click on this here link.