By Kris Dreessen
When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was, Max lived underwater in a new, fancy aquarium in India. He was one of the first visitors, leaned over a little too much to get a better gander at the clown fish and fell in. Instead of letting him out the staff was excited at the prospect of a "larger" exhibit. They tossed him a regulator and scuba mask, placed a new lid on tight and have held him captive for 2 years. He gets fed through an opening in the wall. But no one knows this because when he speaks, only gurgles come out.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
That's the Spirit
by Marcy
When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was that Max had been dead for 15 years, and he was tired of talking to people. He tried to tell the latest group of ghost hunters this on their EVP recording device, but what he had said as “leave me the Hell alone” had turned up on their recordings as “give me the telephone.”
They then brought in an old school rotary phone and swore that it would ring when not even plugged into the wall because the entity in this dwelling was so powerful. Frustrated, Max instead made one of their cell phones ring just to spite them, and the energy his spirit had to draw from the room sapped the battery in their video camera so they couldn’t get it on tape. That would show them.
But it didn’t. When people hear that things happen in the apartment building at 105 Franklin Street, every ghost hunter team, psychic, clairvoyant, and hack show up just to have a piece of the easy proof. Max used to enjoy it, but after 15 years it had gotten old.
The only person Max wanted to talk to these days was Andrea, a clairvoyant who had lived on the fifth floor of the apartment building he lingered in. She was quiet, and funny, and oh, would that he were still alive … well, it couldn’t be. But at least she could hear him, and talk back. When she had first moved into the apartment she had sensed him right away. Other tenants had burned sage – a smell that Max abhorred – and filled their apartments with crucifixes. Others held séances and begged Max to tell them things from the beyond. Max avoided their apartments, as they seemed the most likely to try and either raise him from the dead or have him exorcized.
But when Andrea had moved in, she did none of these things. Instead, she casually acknowledged him over her shoulder while unpacking dishes in the kitchen. She said “I know you are there. And I don’t mind, as long as you don’t try to harm me.” Max tested the water by speaking, asking her how she knew. “I sensed you,” she said, without looking away from her task.
Max lingered a while and she told him little things, like where she got this particular painting she was hanging, or how her great-grandmother knitted the afghan she was unpacking. Each day, when Max’s travels around the building brought him back to her apartment, she greeted him kindly, said a few things, and went on about her day. It made the ghost hunters and cuckoo psychics that visited the building at the landlord’s whim more bearable, back then.
She stayed in the building for two years, but fate took her elsewhere. The day she moved out she said goodbye to Max and thanked him for being a good roommate. Max hadn’t seen her since, but his travels never really took him out of the building so that was no surprise. What was a surprise is how sad he felt. He missed her. And now he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but more came to find him than ever before.
So sometimes he played their games, and sometimes he avoided them. And still other times he tried to make them go away. But they still listened when he spoke. They recorded it and catalogued it and chalked it up to evidence of life after death. When Max spoke, people listened.
But no one had talked to him like Andrea.
When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was that Max had been dead for 15 years, and he was tired of talking to people. He tried to tell the latest group of ghost hunters this on their EVP recording device, but what he had said as “leave me the Hell alone” had turned up on their recordings as “give me the telephone.”
They then brought in an old school rotary phone and swore that it would ring when not even plugged into the wall because the entity in this dwelling was so powerful. Frustrated, Max instead made one of their cell phones ring just to spite them, and the energy his spirit had to draw from the room sapped the battery in their video camera so they couldn’t get it on tape. That would show them.
But it didn’t. When people hear that things happen in the apartment building at 105 Franklin Street, every ghost hunter team, psychic, clairvoyant, and hack show up just to have a piece of the easy proof. Max used to enjoy it, but after 15 years it had gotten old.
The only person Max wanted to talk to these days was Andrea, a clairvoyant who had lived on the fifth floor of the apartment building he lingered in. She was quiet, and funny, and oh, would that he were still alive … well, it couldn’t be. But at least she could hear him, and talk back. When she had first moved into the apartment she had sensed him right away. Other tenants had burned sage – a smell that Max abhorred – and filled their apartments with crucifixes. Others held séances and begged Max to tell them things from the beyond. Max avoided their apartments, as they seemed the most likely to try and either raise him from the dead or have him exorcized.
But when Andrea had moved in, she did none of these things. Instead, she casually acknowledged him over her shoulder while unpacking dishes in the kitchen. She said “I know you are there. And I don’t mind, as long as you don’t try to harm me.” Max tested the water by speaking, asking her how she knew. “I sensed you,” she said, without looking away from her task.
Max lingered a while and she told him little things, like where she got this particular painting she was hanging, or how her great-grandmother knitted the afghan she was unpacking. Each day, when Max’s travels around the building brought him back to her apartment, she greeted him kindly, said a few things, and went on about her day. It made the ghost hunters and cuckoo psychics that visited the building at the landlord’s whim more bearable, back then.
She stayed in the building for two years, but fate took her elsewhere. The day she moved out she said goodbye to Max and thanked him for being a good roommate. Max hadn’t seen her since, but his travels never really took him out of the building so that was no surprise. What was a surprise is how sad he felt. He missed her. And now he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but more came to find him than ever before.
So sometimes he played their games, and sometimes he avoided them. And still other times he tried to make them go away. But they still listened when he spoke. They recorded it and catalogued it and chalked it up to evidence of life after death. When Max spoke, people listened.
But no one had talked to him like Andrea.
Hacky New Year!
Greetings, 2008!
The No-Talent Hacks welcome you.
Our Hack resolution, though challenged by distance, time, and workloads, is to try and have more Hack posts on this here blog than we did for 2007. So here goes.
Write on!
The No-Talent Hacks welcome you.
Our Hack resolution, though challenged by distance, time, and workloads, is to try and have more Hack posts on this here blog than we did for 2007. So here goes.
Write on!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Happy Hacksgiving!
Greetings Hacks Fans!
Props to Brian, our faithful west coast Hack, for keeping content on the Hack site over the last few months. A Hack-laden wedding sort of got in the way of our postings for a bit, plus it is commonly known that we hacks tend to take a blog-hiatus during the summer. But fear not, we have returned! Stay tuned for new and exciting Hack literature from your favorite slacker hacks!
- Hack Central Command
Monday, October 08, 2007
DUCKED UP
If I were a duck, he thought to himself, then I probably would not spend my time imagining I was a person.
The logic of this assertion was reassuring given the utter reckless chaos that his life had become in the last week or three.
As long as I know that as a duck I would not wonder about being a person that I can handle the rest of it.
The problem with the rest of it was that he knew, deep in his gut that the rest of it was completely ducked up. But he had an enormous difficulty describing the exact nature of the problem to anyone else. Idly he wondered if perhaps the ducks would understand, and then abandoned that line of reasoning. Too much duck-think could get a guy lost just when he was about to hang on to something tangible. Like apples or Slinkies.
Everyone seemed so cool with it. The it which he could not describe but knew was wrong. Wrong in the way that kept him up at night, wrong in the way that none of his heroes of the screen or written word would have accepted for a second.
The heroes would have not only called out the wrongness, but been able to clearly and articulately explain the exact nature of wrongitude to the audience at large. Then, suffering for their beliefs, they would launch a campaign of right-setting which would cost them everything, but vindicate them in the end. It would be worth it they would gasp with their dramatically compelling but dying quack.
He wondered if waddling more would make him feel duckier and allow him some relief. The heroes always knew how to talk about the dragon – they never wallowed in abstract duck wondering or frustrated mumblings. He would need to take action. Action needed to be taken. He just needed to put his words to the world and come out with the thing which was the matter with the stuff.
Maybe tomorrow. After TV and games and internet and stuff.
The big it had something to do with goals or values or the confusing of the two, he was sure of that. But any time he mentioned it to someone, they would nod and smile and talk about their goals and values. Usually skewing the two together which was the whole problem. Could he make the M-noise with a duck bill? What if he was a duck and had to explain that the whole problem hinged on making money or milking monotonous moments? Might he, at that point, as a duck, wonder if he could be a person, if only to speak those bill-forbidden consonants?
M-m-must m-m-make m-m-money. Yeah. That might be something. Got to pay the bills, but you can’t say money with a bill… hmmm… getting closer.
He should share this with his friend. Tomorrow he would have to make one. Then he would share it. Then he could get rid of his friend because friends just expected things from people and that dragged down the whole glow of friendship thing. Bastards. Why couldn’t they leave a guy alone? Mallards probably never crowd each other. Expecting things. Of course they can’t even say what they are. “Hello, I be an ‘allard. Quack.”
Totally ducked up.
-Brihac
The logic of this assertion was reassuring given the utter reckless chaos that his life had become in the last week or three.
As long as I know that as a duck I would not wonder about being a person that I can handle the rest of it.
The problem with the rest of it was that he knew, deep in his gut that the rest of it was completely ducked up. But he had an enormous difficulty describing the exact nature of the problem to anyone else. Idly he wondered if perhaps the ducks would understand, and then abandoned that line of reasoning. Too much duck-think could get a guy lost just when he was about to hang on to something tangible. Like apples or Slinkies.
Everyone seemed so cool with it. The it which he could not describe but knew was wrong. Wrong in the way that kept him up at night, wrong in the way that none of his heroes of the screen or written word would have accepted for a second.
The heroes would have not only called out the wrongness, but been able to clearly and articulately explain the exact nature of wrongitude to the audience at large. Then, suffering for their beliefs, they would launch a campaign of right-setting which would cost them everything, but vindicate them in the end. It would be worth it they would gasp with their dramatically compelling but dying quack.
He wondered if waddling more would make him feel duckier and allow him some relief. The heroes always knew how to talk about the dragon – they never wallowed in abstract duck wondering or frustrated mumblings. He would need to take action. Action needed to be taken. He just needed to put his words to the world and come out with the thing which was the matter with the stuff.
Maybe tomorrow. After TV and games and internet and stuff.
The big it had something to do with goals or values or the confusing of the two, he was sure of that. But any time he mentioned it to someone, they would nod and smile and talk about their goals and values. Usually skewing the two together which was the whole problem. Could he make the M-noise with a duck bill? What if he was a duck and had to explain that the whole problem hinged on making money or milking monotonous moments? Might he, at that point, as a duck, wonder if he could be a person, if only to speak those bill-forbidden consonants?
M-m-must m-m-make m-m-money. Yeah. That might be something. Got to pay the bills, but you can’t say money with a bill… hmmm… getting closer.
He should share this with his friend. Tomorrow he would have to make one. Then he would share it. Then he could get rid of his friend because friends just expected things from people and that dragged down the whole glow of friendship thing. Bastards. Why couldn’t they leave a guy alone? Mallards probably never crowd each other. Expecting things. Of course they can’t even say what they are. “Hello, I be an ‘allard. Quack.”
Totally ducked up.
-Brihac
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