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joegodaOkay... I don't have much time to write, because I have other irons in the fire that take priority, but I'm up to 1500 words on day 3. Figured I ought to at least do SOMETHING for Nano this year. So... here's what I've got so far.
No! No. Yer kidding me! Well, okay, I got that one beat. Hold on a sec, while I get a new beer. Yo! Bartender... what's yer name? Joe? Joe, bring me and my friend another round, okay? It's on his tab. I'm kidding. Just bring me a beer, okay? Okay.
Okay. There's this guy I know... knew... he's not around anymore... anyway, there's this guy I know who had the ultimate story, far as I'm concerned. Let me get that beer and I'll tell it, cuz it's a long one and I'll need to have my Wessle whitted. My whistle wetted. Funny ol things, words.
Thanks Joe, just what I needed. No, keep the change.
Okay. This guy... I'll call him John Smith, not because he gives a crap about being anonymous anymore, but because he has relatives and they're kinda sensitive, if you know what I mean. Small town folk like to talk trash, you know.
The smallest town I ever saw had only thirty-four people in it. It was so small.... huh? Oh, yeah, right. John Smith.
John Smith lived in this tiny little one rat town called Ramona. Now, don't get me wrong. Ramona was and, far as I know, is a great place to live. They support their kids and their church and their schools, just like every other near dead town in the world.
Near dead? There are less than 600 folks that live in Ramona. That kinda near dead. It used to be called Bon-Ton back in the 1800s. Changed it's name cuz of some silly novel title. Anyway.... John has family there, and you know how small town folk talk.
So, I'm sleeping one night. Right in the middle of one heck of a dream. Big ol' steam engine, lots of pretty girls, the whole Freudian, Fellini dreamscape, and I was digging it, when the phone rang. You know how sometimes external things translate to internal dream things? Well, it did here too. The phone rang and one of the show girls hands me a receiver attached to nothing at all and says "It's for you, Herb".
Now, I don't know who Herb is, but I wasn't about to correct her. There are just some times when it's just best to not correct a half naked woman, and this was one of them.
So, I take this phone and put it up to my ear and go "hello? hello?", just like that, and it keeps on ringing, you know. "Hello? Hello?" and it just rings and rings. Well, I get seriously pissed off, throw the phone on the floor, where it disappears into some sort of misty sort of cloudy stuff all over the floor, and I wake up. So now I was awake, pissed off, and my real phone was ringing.
So I grab it quick as I can, so not to wake the wife. She works hard, you know, doing that home health thing. Drives a hundred miles, maybe more, a day just to look after sick folks. Old folk that can't get around so good any more? Pretty amazing if you ask me. Not a job I'd want to do. So, I don't want to wake her, but I do anyway.
"Who is it, honey?", she asks me.
"How the hell should I know?" I says to her. "It's three in the morning." Yeah, I know. Pretty harsh, but I was pissed off. I don't have to tell you that was not the way to start the morning. I made sure I apologized pretty quick. I love my wife, but she can be hell on wheels when she's not happy. Ain't that the way it goes for all of 'em though?
So I take my cell phone out of the bedroom, flip it open and say "I don't know who this is, but you better have a damn good reason for waking me out of the dream I was just having." I gotta tell you, I wasn't too nice about it, either.
It was John, of course. "Buddy," he says, "I gotta problem."
Well, we all got problems. It's just that some of them can wait for a decent time to raise their ugly head, you know? And I tell this to John, who it doesn't phase a bit.
"Yeah, sorry and all that," says he, "but this couldn't wait. I need your help." He paused like it was really important or something. "Your professional help."
My job? My profession? Well... it's kinda hard to explain. What I do is look at things... weird things, strange things, and I figure them out. And I charge for them. Lots.
What sorta things? Ummm... Okay. You don't have to believe me, but I'm kinda what you call a 'ghost hunter'. I investigate hauntings, things that go bump in the night... you know. Weird things that freak the hell out of the ordinary person.
No, I don't believe in that sort of crap. I just know there's tons of folks that do, and they'll pay to have someone find out what causes that chair to rock in the middle of the night, or what's causing that weird moan around the fireplace or the basement or whatever. Shadows and imagination is what I usually find. I have never found a single thing that I couldn't explain... and get paid for it.
I never found a single thing until that night, that is. And even then, I guess I explained it, but it wasn't a logical sort of thing. Not a darn thing that science, as we know it, had an answer for.
Whoa! Did I just say that? Sounds like one of those creepy old TV shows, didn't it? Hmmm.. Maybe I should go on TV with my own show. Yeah, I know. There's a ton of them on TV already. But none of them focus on the spooky stuff that happens around here. And there's plenty of it, chum. Plenty of it. Oklahoma is probably some focus point or something. What do they call it? Oh yeah. A nexus.
I gotta chum in Tulsa who claims... now get this... claims to be a wizard. He's told me stories that would turn your hair white. Well, if you had any hair. Monsters. Dead folks walking. Hell, he even told me a story about meeting a Sasquatch. You know... yeti. Those abdominal snow men things up in Oregon or some such. I don't pay him much mind. I think he's a bit loony, if you ask me.
Anyway, John calls with this really important something or other that he needs my 'professional' help on. So I sneak back into the bedroom, get dressed real quiet, which doesn't keep the wife from waking up. Find out she was awake from the git-go.
"What's he want?", she asked me.
"Aw honey... just go back to sleep," I tell her. "It's John. Probably heard an owl outside his house and got freaked by it. You know how weird he's been since his wife died."
"Whatever." She wasn't sounding real happy by now. "Go tell him to get stuffed, then come back to bed."
Gotta love my wife.
"Hon", I tell her, "I'll run over to his house and be right back." Now, normally, whoever called at 3 am would definitely be told to get stuffed, but this was John, and we go way back. He's a straight up guy, ran the local grocery in Ramona till the town dried up even more and then his wife died. Since then, he's holed up in his little shack of a house, living on Social Security. He's a good guy, like I said, though a bit weird. So I kinda felt... obligated to go see what was on his crazy little mind.
"Bring breakfast," she said by way of goodbye.
I kissed her, told her I'd bring eggy mcmuffs and finished tossing on my clothes.
It was a cold and misty morning, like it tends to do early in the am on an Oklahoma Fall. We live in B'ville, and there's some serious low lands between B'ville and Ramona. Still, I kinda liked driving through the mist and fog. Kinda pretty in it's own spooky sort of way. Just gotta watch out for the deer, who don't care if you're driving a semi or driving a bicycle. Crazy suckers get spread out all over the road and there goes a couple thousand worth of repair on your car.
It's only 15 minutes to Ramona, but because of the fog, it took me a good twenty, twenty five. I got to John's house about four, and all the lights were on.
No! No. Yer kidding me! Well, okay, I got that one beat. Hold on a sec, while I get a new beer. Yo! Bartender... what's yer name? Joe? Joe, bring me and my friend another round, okay? It's on his tab. I'm kidding. Just bring me a beer, okay? Okay.
Okay. There's this guy I know... knew... he's not around anymore... anyway, there's this guy I know who had the ultimate story, far as I'm concerned. Let me get that beer and I'll tell it, cuz it's a long one and I'll need to have my Wessle whitted. My whistle wetted. Funny ol things, words.
Thanks Joe, just what I needed. No, keep the change.
Okay. This guy... I'll call him John Smith, not because he gives a crap about being anonymous anymore, but because he has relatives and they're kinda sensitive, if you know what I mean. Small town folk like to talk trash, you know.
The smallest town I ever saw had only thirty-four people in it. It was so small.... huh? Oh, yeah, right. John Smith.
John Smith lived in this tiny little one rat town called Ramona. Now, don't get me wrong. Ramona was and, far as I know, is a great place to live. They support their kids and their church and their schools, just like every other near dead town in the world.
Near dead? There are less than 600 folks that live in Ramona. That kinda near dead. It used to be called Bon-Ton back in the 1800s. Changed it's name cuz of some silly novel title. Anyway.... John has family there, and you know how small town folk talk.
So, I'm sleeping one night. Right in the middle of one heck of a dream. Big ol' steam engine, lots of pretty girls, the whole Freudian, Fellini dreamscape, and I was digging it, when the phone rang. You know how sometimes external things translate to internal dream things? Well, it did here too. The phone rang and one of the show girls hands me a receiver attached to nothing at all and says "It's for you, Herb".
Now, I don't know who Herb is, but I wasn't about to correct her. There are just some times when it's just best to not correct a half naked woman, and this was one of them.
So, I take this phone and put it up to my ear and go "hello? hello?", just like that, and it keeps on ringing, you know. "Hello? Hello?" and it just rings and rings. Well, I get seriously pissed off, throw the phone on the floor, where it disappears into some sort of misty sort of cloudy stuff all over the floor, and I wake up. So now I was awake, pissed off, and my real phone was ringing.
So I grab it quick as I can, so not to wake the wife. She works hard, you know, doing that home health thing. Drives a hundred miles, maybe more, a day just to look after sick folks. Old folk that can't get around so good any more? Pretty amazing if you ask me. Not a job I'd want to do. So, I don't want to wake her, but I do anyway.
"Who is it, honey?", she asks me.
"How the hell should I know?" I says to her. "It's three in the morning." Yeah, I know. Pretty harsh, but I was pissed off. I don't have to tell you that was not the way to start the morning. I made sure I apologized pretty quick. I love my wife, but she can be hell on wheels when she's not happy. Ain't that the way it goes for all of 'em though?
So I take my cell phone out of the bedroom, flip it open and say "I don't know who this is, but you better have a damn good reason for waking me out of the dream I was just having." I gotta tell you, I wasn't too nice about it, either.
It was John, of course. "Buddy," he says, "I gotta problem."
Well, we all got problems. It's just that some of them can wait for a decent time to raise their ugly head, you know? And I tell this to John, who it doesn't phase a bit.
"Yeah, sorry and all that," says he, "but this couldn't wait. I need your help." He paused like it was really important or something. "Your professional help."
My job? My profession? Well... it's kinda hard to explain. What I do is look at things... weird things, strange things, and I figure them out. And I charge for them. Lots.
What sorta things? Ummm... Okay. You don't have to believe me, but I'm kinda what you call a 'ghost hunter'. I investigate hauntings, things that go bump in the night... you know. Weird things that freak the hell out of the ordinary person.
No, I don't believe in that sort of crap. I just know there's tons of folks that do, and they'll pay to have someone find out what causes that chair to rock in the middle of the night, or what's causing that weird moan around the fireplace or the basement or whatever. Shadows and imagination is what I usually find. I have never found a single thing that I couldn't explain... and get paid for it.
I never found a single thing until that night, that is. And even then, I guess I explained it, but it wasn't a logical sort of thing. Not a darn thing that science, as we know it, had an answer for.
Whoa! Did I just say that? Sounds like one of those creepy old TV shows, didn't it? Hmmm.. Maybe I should go on TV with my own show. Yeah, I know. There's a ton of them on TV already. But none of them focus on the spooky stuff that happens around here. And there's plenty of it, chum. Plenty of it. Oklahoma is probably some focus point or something. What do they call it? Oh yeah. A nexus.
I gotta chum in Tulsa who claims... now get this... claims to be a wizard. He's told me stories that would turn your hair white. Well, if you had any hair. Monsters. Dead folks walking. Hell, he even told me a story about meeting a Sasquatch. You know... yeti. Those abdominal snow men things up in Oregon or some such. I don't pay him much mind. I think he's a bit loony, if you ask me.
Anyway, John calls with this really important something or other that he needs my 'professional' help on. So I sneak back into the bedroom, get dressed real quiet, which doesn't keep the wife from waking up. Find out she was awake from the git-go.
"What's he want?", she asked me.
"Aw honey... just go back to sleep," I tell her. "It's John. Probably heard an owl outside his house and got freaked by it. You know how weird he's been since his wife died."
"Whatever." She wasn't sounding real happy by now. "Go tell him to get stuffed, then come back to bed."
Gotta love my wife.
"Hon", I tell her, "I'll run over to his house and be right back." Now, normally, whoever called at 3 am would definitely be told to get stuffed, but this was John, and we go way back. He's a straight up guy, ran the local grocery in Ramona till the town dried up even more and then his wife died. Since then, he's holed up in his little shack of a house, living on Social Security. He's a good guy, like I said, though a bit weird. So I kinda felt... obligated to go see what was on his crazy little mind.
"Bring breakfast," she said by way of goodbye.
I kissed her, told her I'd bring eggy mcmuffs and finished tossing on my clothes.
It was a cold and misty morning, like it tends to do early in the am on an Oklahoma Fall. We live in B'ville, and there's some serious low lands between B'ville and Ramona. Still, I kinda liked driving through the mist and fog. Kinda pretty in it's own spooky sort of way. Just gotta watch out for the deer, who don't care if you're driving a semi or driving a bicycle. Crazy suckers get spread out all over the road and there goes a couple thousand worth of repair on your car.
It's only 15 minutes to Ramona, but because of the fog, it took me a good twenty, twenty five. I got to John's house about four, and all the lights were on.
