October 17, 2018 :: Halloween

CO LO R A D O'S LG B TQ M AGA ZINE | F R E E

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CONTENTS OCTOBER 17, 2018 VOL42 NO13

13 Sounds of October 25 The Images Will Be Disturbing 33 Heavy Monsters 34 CASE #66528: THOMAS CLARK/HOLLYWOOD ST. 46 My Father is not a Cloud 4 \\ O C T O B E R 1 7 , 2 0 1 8

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Experience the tradition, food, art and fun of DAY OF THE DEAD!

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GIVE A GIFT FOR A FAIR AND JUST COLORADO!

One Colorado Education Fund (OCEF) is the state’s leading advocacy organization for LGBTQ Coloradans and their families. With their published resources and surveys on health care and safe schools, OCEF has led the way in making Colorado a national model for equality for all.

WITH YOUR SUPPORT, WE CAN CONTINUE BUILDING ON THIS PROGRESS.

Colorado Gives Day is an opportunity for all members of our community and our allies to give to nonproots that make a difference in people’s lives.

THIS COLORADO GIVES DAY, CONSIDER GIVING TO ONE COLORADO ON DECEMBER 4TH!

www.coloradogives.org/OneColoradoEducationFund

Thank you for your support!

- The One Colorado Team (Daniel, Pinky, B, Garrett, David, Cara, Sarah, Jordan, and Heidi!)

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SPONSORED CONTENT

Top 5 Tips for Planning the Office Holiday Party from Jessie Secord, Events Manager Secret Sauce Food & Beverage (Ace Eat Serve, Steuben’s and Vesta) 1. Don’t Wait – Event venues book up fast for the popular holiday season, so don’t delay. Book your desired space as early as you can.

2. Think Outside the Weekend – You may want to plan your office party for a weekday, since weekends tend to fill up fast around the holiday season. Lunchtime or early afternoon gatherings often work well, as do weekday evening celebrations.

3. Go Early or Go Late – Consider booking your holiday party in November before the season gets crazy. Another idea? Plan the event for January, when schedules are more open and venues have more availability for prime weekend evenings.

4. Bring the Party to the Office – Instead of booking a separate venue, hire a food truck and bring the fun of a mobile food and beverage experience to your office. If hosting at your office isn’t an option, rent out a public space such as an art gallery or dance hall and have the food truck meet you there.

5. Get Competitive – Pit the sales gang against the HR team for a friendly ping-pong tournament with silly prizes, or center the competition around a special cause or charity. Make it a costume contest with a theme to add some excitement to a sometimes lackluster holiday party routine.

Ace Eat Serve in Uptown can host an event in the pong room for 20-60 guests with buffet, cocktail server, and ping-pong. Book the whole place for a larger event for 60-500 people, complete with A/V capabilities. Dining options include seated dining, passed appetizers and cocktails, and multiple buffet lines.

Steuben’s Food Truck helps you bring the party to your people for a memorable holiday celebration. During the winter months, the Steuben’s Food Truck specializes in hot, tasty beverages and satisfying comfort foods including chili stew and their signature macaroni and cheese.

Vesta in LoDo offers a more formal space for a holiday event, where the intimate setting and bold flavors create an enchanting atmosphere. With internationally inspired dishes and thoughtfully crafted beverages, as well as options for set menus and cocktail receptions, Vesta is a fine choice for any group size.

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Lipstick DISCOTHEQUE Brandon Estrada

OUT FRONT worked with photographer Jeremiah Corder to highlight each of Denver's queer bars in the spirit of Halloween. Enjoy!

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Blush & Blu Caitlin Dyck

Sounds OF

October

BY RYAN HOWE

“H

appy Halloween!”

The fresh-out-of-the-package door hanger fit perfectly across Trish’s screen door. It was the newest edition to the ‘Dollar Store decor’ that littered the gravelled front lawn of her doublewide. Every October, she took what little was left of her paycheck, put her employee discount to good use, and bought one or two new decorations for her lot. On October 1, she began to decorate.

Collected from years past, a disjointed skeleton lay sprawled in front of a shrine to Satan and paper mache tombstones.

Reusable, pre-carved pumpkins already held tea lights and lined her parking spot.

Wailing bats hung from the large oak tree that a worn witch commanded dominion over. The oak’s limbs were lined with

purple and green lights, like poisoned veins, that leaked synthetic cobwebs and plastic spider rings.

Trish stood beside the pothole in the middle of Pebble Beach Way and marveled at her creation this year. In 30 short days, she would be sitting under the tree with a few scarecrows made of an ex’s flannels and the fallen leaves. If she cut down to one pack of cigarettes a day, she would be able to bring home a few more decorations on the next paycheck.

As the sounds of the trailer park life—kids riding bikes, a couple arguing, roaring cars from the interstate, and the smack of an aggressive screen door—filled her ears, she planned what she could add to the yard and puffed on a Pall Mall.

“Happy Halloween!”

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Trish whipped her head around and caught a glimpse of a strobe light before being smacked in the face with the split ends of her ponytail.

She would rather that slap in the face left her blind. When it didn’t happen, her hazel eyes were subjected to her first actual competition in years—only he waited until the 13th to set up.

The newest addition to the Riverside Mobile Home was, quite successfully, spreading his own cobwebs between the three, random fence poles that were firmly planted in the small stretch of grass that lay adjacent to his mobile home. He had already set up the strobe, most of the cobwebs, and a giant, screeching spider that hung from his protruding windowsill. A box of decorations still sat on the tailgate of his 2014 Dodge Ram. As Trish took another drag from her cigarette, the taste was stronger, the inhale was harder, and the exhale was dragon-like. She was furious. Trish took one more puff, threw her half-smoked cigarette to the ground, and stormed inside. The gravel, then wood, echoed down the street under her heavy steps.

“Happy Halloween!”

A little boy with Kool Aid-stained lips and teeth smiled up at Trish from the other side of the counter. His mom was clutching a toddler with one arm as she dug through her purse for loose change with the other. Trish listened to the soothing yet unsettling sounds of ruffling receipts, jingling keys, gravel shuffling along cheap fabric, and frustrated sighs as she marveled at her coworker piecing together the Halloween pop-up.

Most of the decorations were the same as last year. The new additions, however, were gorgeous. Trish was already budgeting her next paycheck.

For five dollars, Trish could snag a pack of three hanging, fabric ghosts. For 10 dollars, she could get a singular, hanging, fabric ghost that howled at random intervals. For eight dollars, she could could hang a gothic candelabra from the oak; that didn’t make much sense in her mind. For seven dollars, she could post three “Enter If You Dare” signs in her yard. As she methodically thought of all the different placement ideas for each decoration, the woman on the other side of the counter snapped her back to reality.

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“Happy Halloween!”

On Halloween Day, Trish stood in front of her rock lawn and bit at the hangnails that lined her fingers. Her eyes rapidly shifted as she examined the decorations that filled her lawn.

This year’s newest additions included six small, hanging, fabric ghosts; two howling, hanging, fabric ghosts; nine “Enter If You Dare” signs that she transformed into a ladder; an empty noose; and two gothic candelabras.

She could hear her stomach shift as she looked at the pumpkin bucket filled with Smarties. It was the first food she had bought in nearly a week. She took loud, deep inhales to replace the nicotine she ditched two weeks ago.

Occasionally the howling, hanging, fabric ghosts or wailing, hanging, bats would break the consistent growling.

The strobe from down the road replaced the sun around 7 p.m., and the sounds of adolescence began to fill the street. Trish sat down beside the flanneled scarecrow and waited for the first trick-or-treater to collect candy. Excited laughter came screeching down the road, and two witches sprinted through the light—their smiles shining brighter than the blinding, fluorescent flashes.

“Happy Halloween!”

One of the young witches opened her plastic King Soopers bag revealing a king-size Snickers bar. Looking embarrassed for Trish, she dropped the Smarties on top of the chocolate.

As the girls ran down the street, the crunch of gravel turned her attention to the right.

Her neighbor was walking towards her carrying a cigarette in one hand and a Reese’s Cup in the other. Her vision blurred as she heard the old fold-up chair squeak, a few more crunches of gravel, and a loud snap. The sounds of a body being dragged to the oak tree, rustling with a rope, her own grunting, tearing of a wrapper, the squeaking of her lawn chair, and a flick of a lighter guided her through the next moments until another neighborhood kid ran up with an empty grocery bag. She listened to the sound of a lifeless body thumping against the great oak until dawn.

“Happy Halloween!”

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LI'L DEVILS Kenny Enalls

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The Images WILL BE

Disturbing

BY RICK KITZMAN

B

eady, red eyes zeroed in on his head; razor-sharp claws reached and clenched, and as sharp teeth were about to bite his throat, Joe woke up, crying out. His eyes boinked open like a cartoon. He sat up, gasping, shaking, squinting from white, fluorescent light. Its electric hum buzzed in his ears. He tasted blood, shivered from the cold air, smelled its stale nothingness.

Then Joe remembered: a van of beasts, his escape to an airfield, a long flight, nothing after celebrating with vodka and caviar.

“Hate those damn fish eggs,” he thought. “Libtards,” Joe laughed, “gone for good.” He ached, struggled to focus, looked around. This was not the situation he had been promised.

He sat on a gurney. Loose straps wound around him like snakes.

A hose coiled in the corner of the stainless steel room, and the cement floor sloped to a drain in the center. On a steel table sat a tray with a razor, a hair clipper, a steel bowl with clumps of hair. His hair. He swiveled, staggered, fell, crawled to the sink, and hoisted himself up.

In a mirror, his bloodshot, brown eyes stared at his scalp and face and neck, baring bloody, scabbing cuts and scrapes. He thought of the ditty, “shave and a haircut, two bits.” He snorted, then grinned—exposing grody teeth—because he still wore his favorite t-shirt, stained and ripped, bulging over his beer gut. He was hungry and thirsty, turned on the faucet, cupped his hands, gulped, coughed, choked.

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A bank of television screens lined one wall, all labeled with weird symbols or foreign words, some in English with logos of networks he recognized. Some screens were clear; some flickered with stripes of interference. Loud, incoherent babble roared in Joe’s ears. His favorite channel was the only screen that displayed static like a billion gnats.

A woman entered. Joe jumped. They stared at each other. She wore a white, medical smock. She was tall with teased blonde hair, blue eyes, heavy makeup, scarlet lipstick. Her hands and feet were big. Her fingers ended in sharp, red nails, her feet in red stilettos. Joe’s focus was blurry, but not blurry enough to see her long legs that went from here to way, way up there.

He grunted and grinned.

“This might not be so bad after all,” he thought. Pain changed his mind, and he sat in a chair. The woman turned a knob on the console lowering the volume.

“Velcome home,” said the woman in a deep voice, “comrade Joe.” “Have—have I been in an accident?” Joe panicked. “Oh, God!” “God is not here,” the woman said. “I had to shafe your hair.

No more lice babies.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I am Dr. Dick,” she said. “I vill take care of you. Ve neffer leaf our comrades behind enemy lines.”

“What’s—” Joe gurgled, “—happened?”

“You got your vish,” said the doctor. Her blue eyes crinkled; her voluptuous red lips smiled. “Isn’t that glorious?”

The doctor flicked switches on the console. All the screens, except a network Joe hated, blacked out. The video was striped and jumbled, the audio hissy and garbled. The doctor mumbled something that sounded like foreign curses and fiddled with a few knobs. “Reception can be very bad up here. The snow,” she paused, “so much snow.” She smacked the console. Joe jerked. The screen and audio cleared up. “Sometimes you haff to boss the technology.”

A talking head spoke in mid-sentence. “—brutal attack on the White House leaves many questions unanswered.” The announcer stopped, his hand pressing his earpiece, then hung his head before resuming. “It has been confirmed. The president and cabinet secretaries present at the meeting are dead. Other members of the president’s staff have not been located. The following video of yesterday’s attack, retrieved from security cameras, provides a horrific testimony. No audio accompanies the sporadic video. The images will be disturbing.”

The screen cut to the broad perspective of a camera high in a corner. In a meeting room, voiceless conversation appeared animated, attendees smiling. Silent laughter followed the president’s moving mouth.

Suddenly, a door flew open and a horde of beasts rushed into the room, leaping onto the attendees, chomping their faces and necks. Mouths opened in mute screams, bodies scrambled over furniture, over each other, grabbing and hiding behind those nearby, trying to exit, the beasts leaping onto their backs. Blood

squirted on white walls; gaping eyes were soon blinded, and detached limbs were tossed in the air. Secret Service personnel arrived and began shooting, only to be attacked themselves, succumbing to the horrific claws and gnashing teeth of giant beasts with beady, red eyes.

A commercial with cartoon bears and toilet paper followed.

Joe uttered retching sounds, bent over, vomited. “The president, dead?” He wiped spittle from his mouth. “That’s not what was supposed to happen.”

“Ve boss the technology,” said the doctor.

“They told me—supposed to kill f*ckin’ libtards!” Joe staggered to his feet.

“They lied,” said the doctor.

Joe leaped at the doctor, but she stepped aside, and he fell to the freezing floor, delirious, moaning. Lifting Joe like he was light as a babe, the doctor helped him back into the chair.

The TV announcer returned. “No word yet as to what happened at Fox Noise affiliates around the nation. During the attack on the White House, all Fox Noise stations went dark. The attack seems to have begun when this unknown man drove a van near the White House and opened its back door, releasing the horror. The man’s whereabouts are unknown. He is considered armed and dangerous. Once discovered, his name will be added to the deplorable list that includes John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald: traitors to America.” A picture of Joe flashed on the screen. He wore a mullet and a long beard.

“No, no, no, I’m a patriot,” screamed Joe, “the best f*ckin’ patriot ever!”

The doctor looked down on Joe. “I brought your hat.” She placed on his head a red baseball cap with Make America Great Again emblazoned on its crown.

“What—” Joe rasped, “—what are you?”

“I told you the truth.”

“What have you done to my country?”

“Vhat do you care?” the doctor replied. “You got your vish.”

“My what?”

“Your vish.”

Joe shook his head, frowned in confusion.

“On your t-shirt.”

Joe did not have to look down. It was his favorite with big capital letters: “I’d Rather Be Russian Than Democrat.”

“Velcome home, comrade Joe,” said the doctor.

Joe lurched. “You b*tch!” Missed, fell again.

“No, comrade Joe,” she corrected. “Dr. Dick to you. Dr. Diva Dick.”

Joe heard a scratching noise getting louder, closer. He crabcrawled backwards into a corner. Something large with beady red eyes and sharp teeth and claws leaped upon him and ripped out his throat, his flung voice box, trailing his last scream, “MAGAAAAAAaaaa!” fading into the frozen silence.

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R&R LOUNGE Chris Hostetter

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#VYBE Johnny B.

Tracks Ed Ruiz

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DADDY'S BAR & GRILL Sama Corpuz

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Heavy Monsters

BY ADDISON HERRON−WHEELER

D

uring our first years inside, we used to run through the halls, jumping over pipes and dancing in the hissing steam. We would hide behind the old machinery, ready to jump out at each other and scream, shrieking through the halls. With everything going on outside, I don’t know why we craved the rush, but we did. Sleeping all day to avoid the poisonous gas outside made us restless.

We used to steal candy along with canned goods when we went out with our gas masks, raiding the stores. It was sealed, so it was safe to eat, and we also loved the way it made us feel, the tingling sensation in our temples as we chased each other around.

It must have been October when the bombs first fell, because the stores were also full of costumes. We needed clothes, and being a superhero, a ghoul, a demon, was safer than being us, dirty kids with smudged faces in the rubble of an old building, sharing gas masks to go out and scavenge for food.

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Most of us were too young to remember, but there must have been some kind of virus along with all the radioactivity, to create the monsters that lived outside the walls. Some of them were just corpses, ghouls in their own right, but we knew they couldn’t really hurt us. Others were still out there, their eyes glazed over, skin gray and waxy, shuffling through the streets, eating something from a can or staring at the sun.

They were probably harmless, too, but they looked like the monsters imagined during the time before, when such monsters needed to be created.

As we grew, we still scavenged for food, always bringing the gas mask, grabbing candy and canned peaches. We still craved the sweet feeling of chocolate in the back of our throats or the crunch of sour fruit candy, but we craved something else, too. Other survivors like us were older and had already discovered another rush before the bombs fell. We would trade our cans for alcohol brewed in an old bucket used for laundry, crudely grown cannabis plants from their warehouse, and something else, something white and powdery that they said used to cost more than both put together.

And there were still costumes. It must have been customary for adults to celebrate, too, because we found all kinds of things: a bright, red, flashy thing with sequins glistening in the sun; just a leotard, great for showing off legs, a cape; and a huge gorilla costume, another thing that was good for the frights we still craved.

There was makeup, lipstick, wigs, even hair dye, although we wondered how safe that was.

As we grew older, we still went running through the steamy halls, hiding from each other and jumping out, but this time we planned ahead.

Those we traded with became our guests, and we flipped our mattresses across the wall and adorned the old rusty pipes with spiderwebs and sequined bats from the store. They brought the drinks and drugs, and we brought the candy, setting it out in dishes, secreting it in our pockets for later in the night. We all smell a little sweet, and we always have candy on our breath.

I still remember the night we brought out the most candy, when the halls of our warehouse were the most full. There was someone in every corner, slumped over, drinking or smoking, laughing in clusters, or wrapped in an embrace.

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I danced through the halls, hiding behind every corner. I was wearing red velvet with sparkles across my face.

I first saw her sitting behind some old pipes, softly crying and eating Starbursts on the floor.

She would unwrap one, look at it closely, and then nibble on it, all while tears ran down her face.

I asked her what was wrong, and she said they tasted of childhood, like memories. She said she remembered her father unwrapping them for her after a night of going door to door collecting candy when the world was safe. I closed my eyes and tried to remember my father, or my mother, or going door to door to get candy, but the only memory there was the one that was always there, a little girl alone and crying, holding a gas mask, outside the doors of the factory.

“They just remind me of filling up on candy before bed when it was cold, but maybe that’s better,” I told her. “Take some home with you.”

When we kissed, it was like an explosion behind my eyes, like the first time someone jumped out and scared me inside the warehouse and I knew it was just for fun, the first time I ran as fast as I could and slid on the cool metal ramp that led down to the room below, the first time I tasted a strawberry Blow Pop. We both had glitter on our faces. When her tears were dry, we got up, and, hand in hand, went to look down at the street below. The grey people shuffled past, moaning, some eating out of cans, some groaning, others too sick to walk and slumped on the sidewalk. Why that wasn’t us, I still wasn’t sure. Maybe they had purposely put the children into a place where we would be safe? Maybe we ran and hid from our families?

She leaned her hand out of the cracked window pane and tossed down the Starburst wrapper, watching it wind its way down to the ground like a fall leaf. I pulled a handful of glitter out of my pocket and tossed it after her wrapper, watching it slowly fall against the grey-black sky.

Her eyes looked like the night sky, pink glitter set against smoky smudges made darker by tears. She was still sniffling a little, but she was also smiling.

“Let’s go find some more candy.”

BOYZTOWN Brian Numbers

CASE #66528:

THOMAS CLARK/ HOLLYWOOD ST.

BY KEEGAN WILLIAMS

Dr. Klein: Last time, you mentioned your panic about moving and facing that change.

5TH SESSION BETWEEN ALBERT KLEIN, M.D. AND MR. THOMAS CLARK MONDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 1982 AT 3 P.M. Dr. Klein: Hi Tom. How ya doin’? You said before you had figured out a better living situation?

Mr. Clark: Yeah, I moved in three weeks ago with my friends Will and Daniel. It’s an older house on Hollywood St. 3 4 \\ O C T O B E R 1 7 , 2 0 1 8

Mr. Clark: Well, getting settled in was easy, and I like those guys. So, the first weekend after I moved in, we’re sitting around, having a couple beers. My roommates say that the neighbor who lives in the basement told them this rumor. There was apparently this family who lived there in the 60s, 40-something dad and mom and a 7-year-old girl. I guess she was hit by a car.

Dr. Klein: Was she OK? Mr. Clark: Not OK. Her parents carried her inside and called an ambulance, but she bled to death in the living room.

Dr. Klein: That’s terrible.

Mr. Clark: The parents lived there for a few years and moved out. No one lived there for like a year. Daniel said that the girl’s ghost is still in the house. They both said they’ve heard footsteps, upstairs, in the attic.

Dr. Klein: Is that something you believe in?

Mr. Clark: My anxiety is getting worse.

There’s something wrong at that house.

I hadn’t heard the footsteps in a while, but two nights ago I was in my room studying, and I noticed that my light was reflecting strangely. It was shifting, changing. It was like it was moving, somehow. I looked up at the light. It’s a glass dome, and it looked... something was crawling inside of it. I got a step stool; I climbed up; I took it off.

It was filled with maggots.

Dr. Klein: Oh, my God. Mr. Clark: No, I don’t buy into that kind of thing. I didn’t believe them. I figured it was just some weird initiation to the house. After a while, I kind of forgot about it. Then, over the weekend, the guys were out, and it was late. I was watching TV, and I thought I heard, like, a creaking noise. I thought maybe someone was outside, at the door. I turned the volume down and said, ‘Hello?’ And then, with the volume down... I actually heard small steps and creaking, coming from the far end of the house, by the kitchen. I sat there and listened, and after about 30 seconds the footsteps were above my head. I was horrified. I couldn’t move...

I didn’t do anything. Just a few minutes later, I heard the footsteps go back the other way. Then they vanished. And I don’t know what to say, really. This isn’t logical. I still struggle to believe it’s a ghost. I was up all night thinking I might hear the footsteps again. I told my roommates the next day. They said, ‘I told you so.’ We didn’t know what to do about it.

Dr. Klein: Well, how is it living with Will and Daniel otherwise?

[REMAINING TRANSCRIPT OMITTED] 6TH SESSION BETWEEN ALBERT KLEIN, M.D. AND MR. THOMAS CLARK FRIDAY OCTOBER 15, 1982 AT 12:30 P.M. Dr. Klein: Come in. Sit. Tell me what’s going on. You look stressed.

Mr. Clark: I almost dropped the glass.

My roommates came in and saw it too.

They didn’t know what was happening.

We kind of thought the whole thing was maybe over, you know? I’m shaken by this. I’m having trouble sleeping. I feel like something is after us, after me. It’s only my room.

relieved. I feel like I can live in that place now.

Dr. Klein: If that’s over, I’m sure you are feeling better.

[REMAINING TRANSCRIPT OMITTED] PHONE CALL BETWEEN ALBERT KLEIN, M.D. AND MR. THOMAS CLARK WEDNESDAY JANUARY 5, 1983 AT 8 A.M.

Dr. Klein: Do you need further care?

Are you safe?

Dr. Klein: Dr. Klein speaking?

Mr. Clark: I think I’m just letting this all get to me. We should call the landlord.

Let’s talk about something else.

Dr. Klein: Thomas? Slow down. Just got in. Tell me what’s going on.

[REMAINING TRANSCRIPT OMITTED] 7TH SESSION BETWEEN ALBERT KLEIN, M.D. AND MR. THOMAS CLARK TUESDAY OCTOBER 26, 1982 AT 4:00 P.M. Dr. Klein: Hi Tom. Have a seat. Catch me up. How is the house?

Mr. Clark: It happened again, like a week ago, the maggots. I ended up sleeping, trying to sleep, on the couch for a few nights. Then, a couple nights ago, there was this stench. It filled the house, and it smelled like death. Daniel and I decided to go up into the attic, finally, and investigate. It was filled with flies, dark. We couldn’t see. We soaked a few socks in cologne, just to overpower the smell. You know what it was?

It was a tomcat. A tomcat was rotting in the corner of my attic.

Mr. Clark: I’m losing it.

Mr. Clark: I hadn’t talked about the whole cat thing with Will and Daniel, really, since it happened. Months... I brought it up last night, in passing. They were confused. They acted like I was messing with them. Will got mad and told me to stop making things up. It’s like they didn’t even remember. I begged to Daniel; he was in the attic with me! He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about!

Dr. Klein: Did any of that, before... really happen?

Mr. Clark: I don’t know. I don’t know!

I had to go to my room, just to relax and breathe for a sec. Those two left.

I was just laying silently, and I heard them again.

Dr. Klein: Them?

Dr. Klein: Explains the footsteps.

Mr. Clark: The footsteps. Over my head, in my house. But last night, they were louder. Heavier.

Mr. Clark: Yeah, and the maggots. I’m

[REMAINING TRANSCRIPT OMITTED] OUTFRONTMAGAZINE.COM

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My Fathe IS NOT

BY MIKE YOST

I

a Clou

feel it as I cross the empty street, walking past a parked truck with rusted rims for tires. I feel a pair of icy eyes crawl along on the back of my neck, eyes unblinking as the sun begins to fall beneath the tops of the pines. A congregation of trees that surrounds the derelict house, ever-green and ever-bowing together with the wind, prostrating themselves before a hollow home.

The base of my skull grows cold, and I feel icy fingers stretching through thick shadows that cut across the street.

Thin fingers with sharp fingernails that scrape lightly just above the surface of my skin, pulling at the fine hairs on my neck.

I stop at the edge of the street, holding my camera against my chest. I turn my head, feet still planted in place. The 4 6 \\ O C T O B E R 1 7 , 2 0 1 8

home stands silent, sunk slightly into the earth. A mute echo of lives lived.

Windows as black as the night sky, void of any human gaze. I bring the camera to my eye, adjusting the shutter speed for the dying sunlight. The lens slaps open for a fraction of a second. A thin slice of time now tucked safely away, protected from the oblivion of the past as it constantly consumes the present.

I turn forward, scratching heavily at the back of my neck. A few jagged rocks grind and roll against the cracked sidewalk under my shuffling feet. “No one was there,� I say out loud, shaking my head with a nervous smile, letting the camera dangle from my neck.

Well. Not anymore, an anxious voice in my head replies. But what if someone was watching before you turned around?

I shuffle away faster. The abandoned

er

ud

The laptop is the only light in my room, as I scan through photos that flash across the screen, the night sky seeping in through windows that face the edge of town. In the distance, an unseen mountain range rises into the universe, swallowed up by an obsidian sky with a few stars burning through the city’s amber glow.

“I’m not sure,” I reply, scratching the

I take a sip of black coffee that almost burns my tongue as I examine the snapshots I took of the abandoned house. Those walls once housed fathers reading bedtime stories or mothers kissing scratches on chubby arms.

have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Now those walls are naked, peppered with holes made by angry fists. Windows with cracked glass ready to slice open your arm. A dead rat curled up in the middle of an empty bedroom, the rat’s open stomach swimming with maggots.

pair of glowing eyes in the corner of one

These photos are f*cking creepy, the anxious voice in my head says. And what’s with the eerie graffiti messages?

poorly-lit room. Just some weird graffiti

kids having a bit of fun. Pretty cool, I think. These shots turned out really nice.

I wonder what that means. My father is not a cloud?

Sure. Let’s run with that, the anxious voice replies. It’s just some kids. You Nothing to worry about at all.

I flip through the rest of the photos, looking closely at each picture. I really don’t have anything to worry about. No of the windows staring back at me. No unexplained shadows slinking along empty hallways strewn with wrinkled cigarette butts. No dead children with black eyes standing in the corner of a messages.

“It was all just in my head,” I say to myself.

All in your head? The anxious voice asks.

But you felt something crawling on your...

“I’m tired,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I

house slowly sinks beneath the clamor of the city. The siren of an ambulance slithers its way between the rows of homes, most of them nested behind tall weeds that spill out onto the sidewalk, knocking at my knees.

don’t have the energy to argue with my anxiety. I need to eat. I need to shower. I need to masturbate and get some sleep.”

Wait a minute, the anxious voice replies.

I look up at the screen and scroll back

I pass under street lights that lean precariously over the street, only a few turning on their yellow gaze to the face of a growing dusk. “No one was there,” I say out loud, staring up at a sky quickly turning blue to black.

to the picture of the freezer. Didn’t you open it?

It’s then that I feel it again, those icy fingernails lightly scratching at the back of my neck, pulling at the hairs.

A sharp breeze kicks up the first dead leaves of autumn, a vortex of amber, red, and brown rises at my ankles. I stomp my feet to wake them from the cold.

“But there was nothing in the freezer,” I say out loud.

The laptop suddenly slams shut and the entire room goes dark. I try to jump

“It’s just all in my head,” I say out loud, thrusting out my arms and dancing inside that leafy, swirling saffron as my camera swings wildly from my chest.

--

back of my neck. Probably some bored

from my chair, but a pair of heavy hands clamp onto my shoulders, pushing me back down. I hear a voice whisper into .

my ear, Get outta of my house.

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