Argh.

So I have this condition you may have heard me mention, called anhidrosis. For some reason, and  no one has been able to tell me why yet, I lack all ability to sweat. I used to sweat. Used to sweat like a champ. Used to wish for some way to turn it down, maybe even off, just so I could get through a nice summer day without having sweat running down my face, stinging my eyes, and just, well, looking pretty disgusting in general.

Be careful what you wish for.

So then something happened, something all secret and weird, and whatever it was turned off my waterworks. Can’t sweat a drop. I stay bone-dry on the hottest days and no matter what I’m doing, from working to running to playing with my son. No matter what, I’m the ‘No sweat’ guy.

Of course, that does mean that I’ll just get hotter and hotter until I fall down in a stroke.

So, in the continuing effort to find someone who can tell me just what the hell happened and what we might be able to do about it (rather than just scratch their heads and say “I dunno, man,” (that last is pretty if you read it in Tommy Chong’s voice (wait, did I just put parenthesis inside parentheses? Holy @#$% wait, I just did it again-- hang on, I can fix this...)) ...whew! Almost went back in time or something there!) I went into Boston about six weeks ago and got a skin biopsy. The hope behind my simply lying there and letting them bore a plug out of my leg was this: “Hey, maybe something weird will show up that can point us in the right direction here!”

Why not, it works on House.

So they bored their hole and took their sample (which they said was small, but I saw the damn thing and it takes less tissue than that to generate clones in the movies. Yes, I know it’s the movies, not reality, but this is my leg we’re talking about here, so clones I tell you!) and told me they’d have it analyzed and get the results over to their specialist. Their specialist could then explain any findings to my general practitioner, who would then dumb it down by several orders of magnitude for little old me. The one with the hole in his leg.

Huzzah.

So they bandaged up the fresh hole in my leg and sent me limping on my way. I hopped on home and waited for them to run that tissue sample through their cloning device -- excuse me, I mean ‘lab’, and get back to me.

So I waited.

And waited.

And --  but you get the picture, right?   

Eventually the hole in my flesh closed up, leaving a mark strangely like a big, somewhat dark, freckle on the side of my calf. A month. Six weeks. I started to think it had all been just some twisted dream, that I had imagined that little spiral of my own skin floating in the specimen jar, looking so much like pork I was a little grossed out, and that the spot on my leg was indeed just a weird-looking spot created by sun exposure (a whole other thing to worry about, let me assure you)...

But then I got the call.

“Hello, this is your doctor’s office calling.  We understand that the lab you went to has the results from your biopsy. Apparently they found some irregularity you need to be told about, but your Primary Care Physician would prefer that you discuss the results with the specialist they have there (a neurologist, I believe) rather than discussing it with her - the specialist would be better equipped to answer any questions you might have. Please call this number, 555-blah blah blah blah and start a file with them so we can make the referral.”

An irregularity?

Fantastic!

This is the first time someone hasn’t simply scratched their head and said “ You know what? I dunno.”   An irregularity means they found something, and if they found something then maybe they can do something about it, right?

Right?

Come on, this is not a rhetorical question, people! Answer me! Righ-- wait, what was that? Oh. Really? Oh.

Apparently that was a rhetorical question. My bad.

Anyway. I called the new doctor. I got on their books. My doc called their doc and said “What’s up, Doc?” Now all I had to do was wait for the specialist to call to schedule an appointment. They call, they see me, they explain what they found to me, and maybe, just maybe we see if there’s something we can do about it. It was only the beginning of May, and all the hot weather, the weather that’s actually dangerous for me, is in the near future.

Man, I thought, if this works out I could have a whole different summer than I’d planned on.

My hopes were so high they were munching on Fritos and laughing at a DVD of “Reefer Madness”.

But then I got the call.

“Hello, this is Dr. So-And-So’s office, calling to schedule an appointment,” she said.

“Yes?” I said.

“Is this Rob?” she said.

“Yes-yes?” I said.

“I just need to let you know that Dr. So-And-So is scheduling into March.” she said.

“...” I said.

“Hello?” she said.

“March,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Of 2014,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“...” I said.

“Hello?” she said. “Are you still there?”

“Like,” I said, “ten months from now.”

She sighed.

“Yes,” she said. “Ten months from now.”

“Please hold.” I said.

I punched the ‘mute’ button on my phone so that she could no longer hear me.

If I were living in the world created  by Charles Schultz, in the comic strip we know as “the Peanuts”, you would have seen nothing but the underside of my chin as I threw my head back and filled the air above my head with the word “ARGH!!!” Birds up and down the street took flight as the word hammered through the quiet afternoon.   

I grew still.

The birds settled.

I punched the ‘mute’ button again.

In as calm a voice as I could muster, I said “So... about that appointment...”

They took the biopsy more than a month ago.

They found the irregularity this week.

They’ll tell me all about it... next year.

Argh.

Talk to you later!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

An Alarming Response

Hello, WYMOP readers!

First, a little bit of shameless self-promotion. Hell, I have the blog, might as well use it, right?

Ready?

Presenting the official Table of Contents for the upcoming (and soon to be named) Second Anthology from New England Horror Writers:

Introduction: Jeff Strand

Furious Demon by Addison Bowman
The Basement Legs by Robert DuPerre
Hungry For More by Michael Evans
The Secret Backs of Things by Christopher Golden
Blood Prophet by Scott Goudsward
Three Fat Guys Soap by Catherine Grant
Chuffers by Paul McMahon
Spirits by James A. Moore
Bleedthrough by Gregory Norris
Lycanthrobastards by Errick Nunnally
To Chance Tomorrow by Kristi Petersen Schoonover
A Night at the Show by Robert Smales
The Girl Who Wouldn't Break by Lucien Spelman
The Widow Mills by Trisha Wooldridge

Yup, that's me, third from the bottom. Yay me!

There. That's out of the way. So now...

...Here's the story:

It was a Friday, and I was in the mail truck working my way through my route. That’s important: It was Friday, not Saturday.

I pulled the truck into the small parking lot alongside the office of the Certified Public Accountant that I deliver to and gathered together the CPA’s mail as I hopped out of the truck. I was about an hour into my route, and I was moving along okay: I had hit my stride and had a certain amount of momentum going, both mental and physical. Besides all that I was in a terrific mood. I bounced my way up the three stairs to their front porch, laid a hand on the doorknob and, with a twist of the wrist and a little bit of flourish I stepped into the office—

—to the sound of the alarm going off, stridently woop-woop-wooping away. I stutter-stepped to a halt just inside the door and actually looked about the place for the first time that morning.

There was no one to be seen. There were no lights on. I turned to look through the big plate window fronting the establishment (through which I could have seen there were no lights on, had I but looked) and saw that I had booted my way through the parking lot without even noticing the complete lack of any vehicle in it but mine.

“Son of a bitch, I guess they’re closed,” I said. My only answer was the continued woop-woop-wooping of that siren coming from somewhere in the building.

I took two steps deeper into the apparently forbidden (and yet oh-so-inviting) business office and put the mail on the receptionist’s desk, the same place I put it every day during the week. I went back out onto the sunlit porch, closing the still unlocked door behind me. I looked at my truck, sitting lonely in the parking lot, then spun about and placed the top bar of the railing across my backside and leaned there, waiting for the police to come take me away. I was perched there, imagining two or even three police cruisers ripping around the bend and screeching to a halt in that nose-to-nose way they do in the movies, the doors flying open and then seeing nothing but gun barrels and mirrored shades pointing over those open doors while a bullhorn-enhanced voice ordered me to ‘Come out of the CPA with your hands up and lie face down on the ground, arms outstretched! Do it now, right now! Move!’

I was sure I’d wind up somewhere in the news, the local paper at least. I was just getting to the part of my daydream where, flashbulbs going off all around me as I left the local cop shop, I was quoted in the news as saying “I dunno what happened! I just turned the knob and walked right in!” when a sudden new sound jolted me from my smiling reverie. Somewhere inside, clearly audible through that big front window I mentioned, the telephone was ringing.

That’s probably the alarm company, calling to find out if the alarm was tripped in error, I thought. The door’s still unlocked — should I just go in there and answer it, tell them what happened?

Then I considered what might happen if the police really did see me come strolling out through the front door five minutes after the alarm was set off, and opted to stay right where I was, in plain sight. Besides, that railing was a lot more comfortable than it looked. I’d started looking at my watch by then, wondering what the police response time would look like. Granted, it’s a small town and I can’t imagine it seeing a lot of burglar alarm action, but its very size means they wouldn’t have to drive that far to respond…

The phone inside started ringing a second time. It had been about five minutes now, since I’d bee-bopped on into the closed office, so I figured maybe this time the alarm company was hoping the burglar might answer the phone himself so they could ask him to lock up when he left. I declined to answer, remaining where I was, perched on that railing like a 200 lb bird on a telephone wire. A very strong telephone wire. The phone stopped ringing, and I started looking at my watch with greater and greater frequency.

Eight minutes.

Nine minutes.

I heard a car engine, the slight squeal of tires coming around the corner, and looked up expectantly. A small sports car zoomed past, the reclining driver nothing more than mirrored shades and expensive hair. I waved, just to have something to do. He ignored me, far too busy working the gearshift like a conductor’s baton.

I sighed and remained on my perch.

Eleven minutes.

Twelve.

At fifteen minutes I figured I had had enough; I had done my duty. In fifteen minutes I could have walked to the police station from there. Backward. In my sleep. I got in my mail truck and slowly drove out of the parking lot and on to the rest of my route, on the lookout for any of the Boys in Blue who might suddenly spring into action and slap a ‘leaving the scene’ charge on me.

Nothing.

So, if there’s anyone out there who’s been just looking for somewhere the police have a terrible response time to start your out of control crime spree, drop me an email. I just might have a suggestion for you.

Talk to you later!

Whistle, Whistle, Who's Got the Whistle?

Okay... Here's the story:

I was taking my Jeep in to one of the local transmission shops because they offer free transmission diagnostics. My vehicle occasionally feels kind of … well, funny. Pulling up to a stop sign or traffic light and feeling it not shift into first gear until the Jeep has almost come to a complete stop, then downshifting with a bit of a thud.

Well, I thought, better safe than sorry. They can check out my transmission for free and let me know if there’s something horrible going wrong with it. I mean, that’s the kind of thing you’d like to know in advance, right?

Normally on my days off from work I stay at home and write until it’s time to pick Handsome up at school, unless I have errands to run. Those days I write until about noon, giving myself a couple of hours to get other stuff done before I have to be at the school; today was one of those days. I cut off my writing early and started for the garage. I was about half-way there when I heard the Whistle.

Now, I believe I’ve mentioned the Whistle before. Somewhere under the hood of my Jeep, in there with all the wires, hoses and moving parts, there’s something that’s supposed to be maintaining some sort of pressure, but I don’t think it’s quite doing it. There’s a small leak in there somewhere, in a hose, or a coupling, or something I don’t even know the name of, and the escaping air makes a whistle.

Not a fun whistle, either. I mean, if my car was zipping along the road performing the whistling part from Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger”, then Handsome might think it was pretty cool. If it was “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel or “Joyride” from Roxette, then I’d think it was cool. Or “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses. Hell, even if it was tooling along to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” then at least there’d be something fun about it, something I could whistle along with. But all my Jeep does is sustain one long, loud note, both high-pitched and loud. Oh, and loud.

Did I mention that it’s loud? Good.

And there’s stubborn me, driving along and still whistling along with it. I call it stubborn. Handsome has other words for it… none of which I feel like sharing with you at this time.

But I digress…

So there I am, driving to get the transmission checked out in the Whistlemobile. Now, Whistler’s Jeep is embarrassing enough when I use the drive-thru at Wendy’s, the apparently 12-year-old girl working the speaker-box shouting at me “Welcome to Wendy’s can I take your order oh my God what is that noise!?”, and I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to drive into the garage and have every guy there, all of whom probably have perfectly working vehicles, wincing and shaking their heads at me.

Probably not good.

Probably somewhat embarrassing.

I decided to pull over and wait it out.

You see, I think it’s a heat thing, but eventually the Whistle stops. Eventually, after some random time decided in part, I think, but those damn thefty Gremlins (See Post “Interlude II: Hungry Gremlins”), the hose, or connector, or whatever the heck it is, heats up and expands, the expansion causing the leak to swell shut.

Goodbye Whistle: Hello me driving all cool and stuff.

The thing is it’s random. ‘Random’ in this case means that it will whistle for three, five, even ten minutes, but as soon as I pull over to try to locate the whistle, it stops. Also, if I just start it in the driveway for the express purpose of finding the Whistle, it won’t make a sound. The Gremlins must just wet their little pants laughing about that one, let me tell you!

So back to me sitting in the parking lot listening to the Whistle and waiting for it to stop. People drove past me in the parking lot, most of them giving me the long, squint-eyed look that I now immediately translate as “Damn, man, is that you?” Oh, sure, I was embarrassed, sitting there giving the over-sized smile and nod which is the internationally recognized sign for ‘Yup, it’s me, ha-ha, now move along, Buster!’, but what else was I to do? I mean, I couldn’t really do anything until I figured out where the whistle was coming fr…

Okay, my brain is slow sometimes but contrary to the occasional popular opinion it’s not actually stopped. It only took me about five minutes of smiling and nodding to realize this was the perfect time to try to locate the source of the sound that was slowly destroying my car-driving soul.

I got out of the car.

Still Whistling.

I opened the back door to fetch the prop I have to use since the hood no longer stays open on its own (damn Gremlins!).

Still Whistling.

I closed the rear door and realized I had neglected to pop the hood before vacating the front seat.

Still Whistling.

I opened the driver’s side door and leaned in, reaching under the dashboard for the hood release.

Still Whistling.

I popped the hood.

The Whistle died.

Swear words, loud, varied, and creative, were heard echoing across the parking lot’s open air. People drove past offering up their squinty looks but I just shook my fist at them. Well, most of a fist. One of my fingers was occasionally waving in the air; apparently I was so incensed I’d forgotten how to make a proper fist.

My bad.

I slammed the hood down, got back in the Jeep and drove on to the garage. The technician who was performing the diagnostic grabbed a small hand-held computer he was going to attach to the car before driving it around for a bit, then asked me for the keys.

“Here you go,” I said, handing them over. “It’s the blue Grand Cherokee next to your driveway. Oh, and uh, it might whistle. It might not, but it might.”

He offered me a squint-eyed look that said ‘Are you serious?’

I looked at the floor and kept my finger-waving fist in my pocket.

Talk to you later!

He's not Gruff, He's Ram Tough!

Have I mentioned Estes Park lately? I believe I have. One of the things I find really cool about Estes Park (though I imagine the novelty has worn right off the residents) is that you can see deer and elk there. I don’t mean up in the hills outside the town. I mean in the town. Driving along the main road into town we saw a small herd by the side of the road. On someone’s lawn. Eating the bushes growing right in front of the picture window looking out from the living room. People honked their horns as they passed but the deer are so used to that their only reaction was to lift the occasional tail and fertilize the lawn.

From what I could see, those tails went up a lot. That dude may have short, gnawed-on bushes, but he is going to have the greenest lawn you ever did see!

Deer over here, elk over there, I kept half expecting Marlon Perkins to leap out of the bushes and wrestle one of the beasts to the ground in front of a camera crew.

Those of you old enough to get that one: Bravo, and thanks for reading!

Those of you to young to get that one: Ask your parents. Better yet, substitute ‘Steve Irwin’ for ‘Marlon Perkins’, and thanks for reading!

Those of you so young you don’t even get the Steve Irwin reference: Google it! Then go do your homework, or play outside… but after you finish here. And thanks for reading!

After spending some time wandering about Estes, (see previous posts “Book Store to Signing in Three Easy Steps” and “Pulled Pork and Pearly Gates”) it was time to head back down out of the mountains… and by ‘down’ I mean back to an elevation of just 6,200 feet. For those of you reading this in the Boston area or anywhere else that’s pretty close to sea level, either go outside or open a window and stick your head out and look straight up. Now pick a spot up there that’s a mile above your head. I’m not exaggerating — a mile. Got it in sight? Okay, now look about a thousand feet higher than that. That’s what I was heading down to, so I blame thin air and oxygen deprivation for what I’m about to tell you.

The road wound down the mountain, curving this way and that, with occasional widenings of the shoulder forming ‘scenic overlooks’, where people could pull their cars over to get out and take pictures of the view from more than 7,000 feet. We came around a bend at one point and saw a few cars pulled over, but the people with the cameras were all facing across the road and up the mountain rather than at the river view beneath the overlook.

“There must be some wildlife up there,” said SB as she pulled onto the shoulder.

She was right. A small herd of Bighorn Sheep were grazing their way up the steep incline, away from the road. SB got out her camera and we joined the two people on the overlook who were trying to get pictures of these animals, so reclusive when compared to the sheep and elk of Estes. One woman was actually over on their side of the road, trying to hold her camera up high enough to get a shot over the rise and through the trees, but I couldn’t tell you how much luck she was having. The herd moved a little higher up the slope… when suddenly some idiot ran across the road and started climbing. This moron was trying to get high enough on the slope to get a shot of the animals without the intervening trees, completely ignoring the fact that he was climbing up in full view of the herd, that these were wild animals without even the slight domestication of the Estes Park wildlife, and he was going up where they had a definite advantage of mobility.

Oh… did I mention that this idiot was me?

Yeah…

So there I was, half-way up this steep slope, squatting down behind a rock, trying to find a good angle for a photo. It was a digital camera, so I was taking shot after shot just hoping to get something that was worth all the effort. I had moved a bit sideways at one point, and now the slope below me dropped off in what amounted to a 10-foot cliff overlooking the road. I was keeping an eye on that drop-off as the herd moved a little closer. The little movie screen at the back of my mind had been looping that bit of film so many of us have seen when a hunter doused himself with doe urine figuring it would allow him to get right up to the buck. What happened instead was his wife took this sweet little video of a deer stomping her husband into the ground for a full two minutes.

Ah, yes: the real man dies but one death, while the true idiot dies millions of times on YouTube and FaceBook.

That dude had flat ground to run on, had good footing to fight and dodge on, and that deer kicked the crap out of him. I was on the side of a steep hill with a cliff below me. I had my eye on the herd buck, and as long as he kept on grazing I figured I was okay; it wasn’t like he was eying me aggressively or anything.

Suddenly, though I swear I hadn’t moved or made a sound, the herd buck’s head lifted and he stared right at me.

If I’d had a tail, it would have gone up. As it was I nearly fertilized the side of the mountain.

He stared at me as I slipped, as quietly as possible while keeping a sharp eye on him, slightly downslope and just a hair toward them, parking by one of the pine trees that grew right out of splits in the bare rock. My new position put the buck on the far side of a boulder that he could have gone over like you or I would step over the threshold into a house, and maybe 100 feet away. My plan was, should the buck come over that boulder toward me at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour, to use the tree as a shield while I screamed and cried like a baby, looking for a way to climb the thing without having my stupid ass smashed right over the cliff by about 200 lbs of raging ram.

I continued taking a few pictures as the herd worked its way up the steep incline, noticing they all meandered past on the far side of the staring buck from me. Not one of them chanced walking between us, though whether they were just being security conscious or were afraid to intersect with the intensity of the ram’s stare because, hey, who doesn’t hate the smell of burning wool, we’ll never know.

As I was wondering about that, the ram made a deft little move that included a four-footed hop, and suddenly he wasn’t behind the boulder between us. He was on top of it.

That little part of my mind that had reminded me of those videos of the hunter with the doe urine suddenly took it upon itself to wonder whether anyone down on the road had a video camera trained my way, and was curious to know the picture resolution they were using. Would it be able to record the exact moment when I wet my pants? I didn’t think I had done so yet, but I have to say I wasn’t 100% positive on that one. Would we be able to, as the sports shows say, ‘go to the tape’? Would I be in any shape to watch the tape after my visit with my new proctologist, Dr. Ram? Or would I first have to have my head pulled out from where he was going to stuff it? These were the questions running through my mind as my hands worked on automatic, taking picture after picture. The herd moved along, unhurriedly, as the biggest Billy Goat Gruff kept a wary eye on the two-legger with the camera, who was in turn looking about for a nice bridge to hide under.

I sat there as still as could be, wishing I’d had the foresight too bring a pulled pork sandwich to use as an escape route (and if you don’t get that reference, shame on you! Go back and read “Pulled Pork and Pearly Gates” for crying out loud!). Eventually the entire herd had moved higher up the mountainside, and the ram apparently grew bored with standing up on that rock posing and flexing. He clambered down the far side and began to move off with them. He did pause once, though, to look back at me one more time. “I’m going to start eating now,” that look said, “but I am well and truly aware of just where you are, so don’t get any of your bright ideas or I’ll see what kind of a hang-time I can get on the throw.”

The look I sent back only said “Yes, sir!”, but it said it a lot.

I hopped skipped and jumped back down to the road where I discovered I had managed to accumulate some really cool pictures, a neat little story, and an intense need to use the bathroom all at the same time!

Okay, that was a longer story than I’d intended, but hey, you read this far, right? Wasn’t it worth it? Just to make sure you feel that way there are some fairly cool photos posted at the bottom of this drivel. Enjoy!

Talk to you later!