FJ GOULDNER - WORDMAN

What: LIVE CHAT

When: July 21st 2008 at 9pm E.S.T.

Where: www.fjgouldner.com

Special Prize for first 10 people in the chat room!

THE BOX IS EVIL …

I looked down at the four words I had just written and shivered. I wasn’t sure if I could write another word. But my pencil was drawn back to the page and I began writing. Slow at first, gradually quickening until everything became a furious scrawl. It looked as though a doctor had gone haywire with his prescriptional handwriting.

I don’t remember the exact technical name for this hideous device; I replaced it long ago with a name that suits the almost mystical effect it has had on my life. I know it only as “The Soul Stealer.”

A buddy of mine brought it over as a token of his friendship. He had just been through a bitter divorce and he wanted to thank my wife and I for the support we had given him throughout. He told us to beware of the unusual pull that the box seemed to possess. At the time I thought it rather odd for him to have said this, but now I understand perfectly. I also understand that he escaped it and I did not.

Years before I had removed a similar box from my home simply because it was a distraction. I was a writer by trade and I could not afford to be distracted from my work. But I was younger then, and obviously stronger. It began to control my life this time around.

It was as if this box reached out an invisible arm, plunged it deep inside of me, and shut off some kind of internal emotional circuit breaker. I became apathetic towards my work and my wife. Nothing mattered more than the box. Religiously I sat before it and stared. It was stealing things from me. My language. My vocabulary I had worked so hard to build, thousands of words maybe millions were being bulldozed out of my mind. Brick by brick, word by word.

My wife left me. I hardly noticed. The box was all that mattered. The box was a Godsend. It was doing many things for me. It was doing everything for me. The box was holding before me all the mysteries of the world. I didn’t even have to move. The box was I and I was the box. It was all I could be. I was imprisoned.

I suppose I was found by the same friend who had given me “The Soul Stealer.” I don’t know what kind of shape I was in when he found me, but I can pretty much form a mental picture.

I do believe I am slowly recovering from my bout with that terrible thing. And slowly but surely I think I’m becoming a writer again.

I put my pencil down and smiled. Suddenly, I heard the door to my room being opened. A young black man that I vaguely recognized as an orderly was wheeling what appeared to be my new roommate into the room. Good, I thought. I hadn’t had a roommate for quite some time. The young black orderly helped my new roommate into his bed and left. For a long time there was a still silence as neither one of us made any attempt at speech.

I studied my new roommate’s face for a few minutes and felt as though I had seen him somewhere before. He turned and looked directly at me. His gaze seemed lost and empty. Then I realized! It was the friend who had given my wife and I the box. “The Soul Stealer!” I trembled slightly, and then the old friend/roommate spoke. In a cold dark whisper he said:

“How did you like the television set I gave you?”

I did not answer. Instead, I wrote four words in neatly printed block letters:

THE TELEVISION IS EVIL …

In a small town in upstate New York an old man sits on a bench at a train station.

Every day he comes and sits on the same bench at the same time. 3 p.m. sharp.

When the train arrives at 3:15 he raises his hands up to cover his ears.

A bystander might think that the old man is covering his ears to avoid the loudness of the train.

But the number tattoo on the skin of one of the old man’s forearms tells a different story.

He comes to the station everyday to pay homage to the departed.

3:15 p.m. is the time that his entire family boarded the trains to the camps.

He raises his hands to his ears to muffle the long ago cries of his loved ones.

The old man will continue this ritual until he is reunited with everyone taken from him on that fateful day.

Charlie was a young boy when he learned the truth about Santa. He waited up one Christmas Eve, fell asleep behind the couch in the living room, and awoke to a horrible scene.

            He heard loud screams coming from Mommy and Daddy’s room so he got up and walked down the hall. Daddy was lying still on the bed with what appeared to be a knife in his chest. And Santa was on top of Mommy beating her about the face with a small black object that looked like a ball peen hammer. The thing that Charlie remembered most through the years was that Santa’s pants were down and Mommy’s face was all cut and bloody.

            Charlie hadn’t known that Santa was really a homicidal maniac who not only delivered presents to kids all over the world, but he also delivered death sentences to the adults. And he certainly didn’t know that the title of Santa was passed down through the generations, and he would eventually be named the next Santa.

            Of course he accepted to become the next Santa. The alternative he knew would not have been pleasant. They sent him a videotape of one of the chosen that had refused. It was not a pretty sight.

            Well, it’s almost Christmastime again, Charlie thinks as he walks down a hall into a room with a hidden compartment in the wall. He pushes a button and the compartment opens revealing various guns, knives, and torture equipment. Hanging on a costume dummy behind glass like a Batman suit is the Santa uniform. Charlie reaches out and touches the head of a shiny, razor sharp axe. A smile rips across his face and he mutters something under his breath:

            “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”