Retcon Punch, Episode 05: Stuff

Retcon Punch, Episode 05: Stuff

Nov 03

New to Retcon Punch? Start at the beginning.

“Here’s what I was thinking.

“Basically, we’re dealing with a big-ass safe, that’s like decades old, right? So it’s not too big a problem because it’s old. Old means, if you break in, it just sits there broken into. It’s not going to start shouting and inform the authorities.

“So all I really need is A, the proper equipment, which is basically a trip to Home Despot”—she actually said “Despot instead of “Depot”—“and then time. A nice, solid, clear chunk of time.

“If, for example, I were to come in tomorrow night while you were in the store anyway, doing whatever the fuck it is you do, then I could torch away in the back room while you do that stuff. A few hours later, we’re open. I grab the comic and it’s bye bye Superb Comics, I’ve become airborne.”

“Airborne?”

“Chuck Berry,” she says. “Buy a CD once in a while.”

“I do.”

“Okay, what was the last CD you bought?”

“Um…the soundtrack to The Dark Knight.”

“You mean, like, the strings and orchestra and shit?”

“Yes, the strings and orchestra and shit. Hans Zimmer. James Newton Howard. Legendary.”

“No, Chuck Berry is legendary. Movie music is for…well, people like you.”

She’s busting my chops, but not in a mean way. More in a slightly flirty way that allows me to believe I have a one-in-a-thousand chance at making time with the abnormally cute girlfriend of my boss, who is a vindictive, petty man-child, and as we’ve already quite clearly established, a huge douchebag.

But first, I’ve just got to put my livelihood on the line to help her steal a very old comic book out of a very old safe.

**

I stumble into my one-bedroom apartment at about 11:30, flip on the TV, collapse into my crummy recliner.

A stranger would not be misguided in assuming my hovel was scheduled for an appearance on one of those cable hoarding shows. The line between kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom is blurry when there’s comic books and toys everyplace. Also blurry: The line between garbage and collectible, trash and treasure, worthless curio and precious memory.

For me, it started at a spinner rack when I was thirteen; for you, maybe it was a pack of baseball cards from a pharmacy up the road, or a Star Wars action figure you begged your mom to buy for weeks before she finally gave in. Something small, packed with meaning as your age advances, a reminder of how you imagine things were, even though they weren’t at all that way. Nostalgia. Oh, how the ghost of you clings.

Eventually, if you’re not careful, the act of saving itself becomes a way of fueling a nostalgia machine that constantly demands something new so you can eventually pretend it’s something old. So I collect comic books, even though the issue of Hulk that I pick up at work for $2.39 with my employee discount isn’t worth the energy I spent to carry it from the shop to my car. It gets read, which is fine, and then it gets bagged and boarded—a comic book geek term that conjures images of corpses zipped up tight and shipped carelessly to waiting graves—and it gets saved, filed, catalogued, and forgotten about. That issue of Hulk will exist for years, maybe decades, in a box in my home in my life, not as a single item for which I have any concern whatsoever, but as part of a larger entity for which I have an irrational attachment. They are My Comics.

My Comics, rather than an active thing I enjoy on a regular basis, are more like this huge heavy pulpy albatross hanging constantly around my neck. Every six months or so, I try to corral them into some kind of semblance of order, and it stays sorta-tidy for a week or two before every available surface is once again saturated by ephemerea.

In spite of debt, in spite of loneliness, in spite of becoming bitterly resigned to their awfulness years ago, My Comics continue to grow. They enter my home in stacks fresh from the shop; they slip into my hands at yard sales, thrift stores, and conventions. Friends I’ve had since high school stuff them into envelopes and mail them to me unannounced, with a simple note inside: “Do you have this one?” My great aunt still buys me a subscription to Amazing Spider-Man every year for my birthday.

Comics, and toys and books and DVDs and all the other detritus that attaches itself to the geek lifestyle, like barnacles on a Titanic plummeting endlessly into a bottomless ocean—they follow me around. They’re my past that devours my present. If I’m not careful, they could become my future. You might say they already are.

Next Week: Ripoff!

Peasant Problem, Part 1

Peasant Problem, Part 1

Nov 01

The autumn air was crisp and smelled of lake fog and tart apples. In the dawn half-light, the paths that crisscrossed the forests of Camp Lavery were abuzz with bustling silhouettes, all heading toward the Lodge, where the Boy Scouts who used to summer there had their parade grounds. They came in cloaks and mantles, padded leather, denim jackets and wool peacoats, some still wrapped in their sleeping bags, some still wearing prosthetic ears and beaks. Mostly, they dressed to fight off the chill in the air.

Wayne had his hands lashed together behind him. One of the new players, an elf girl whose name he didn’t know, gave him a prod with her staff. The foam tip gave against him, even as he stumbled forward, freshly stoking his indignity. A newbie was his jailor. Wayne had been there for years, since that first silly, fumbling weekend. This was how he was repaid. He squinted against the coming dawn and felt the sting of green makeup in his eyes.

The anonymous elf led Wayne up a rocky incline, past the volleyball courts and delivered him to the parade ground. As he crossed the green rectangle in front of the Lodge, dew kicking up and clinging to his brown wool trousers with each step, Tom Courts approached him. There were five Toms at the LARP, so everybody called Tom Courts by his full name all the time. He didn’t seem to mind. From his fake white beard and off-white robe, Tom Courts was fully in character as Pastor Sukor, leader of the local temple and the most powerful healer in game. Sukor proffered a canteen and Wayne shrugged, trying with limited success to indicate his bound hands. The pastor lifted the canteen to Wayne’s lips and tipped the mouth of the canteen forward, fresh water spilling out. Sukor dismissed the elf girl with a nod, taking Wayne by the shoulder and leading him forward, silently, to stand beneath the bare flagpole amid a line of eleven other green-painted faces. Not twenty-four hours before, Wayne thought, the dozen of them had stood on the volleyball court scheming. In the harsh light of day, they were failures. The whole thing had seemed so perfect. Where, he wondered, was the hole in things?

Wayne was still puzzling it all out when The Count arrived. Instead of a horse or a chariot or a regal palanquin, the ruler of the Battle Country arrived in a puttering golf cart. Wearing a puffy shirt from a Renaissance Faire clearance rack and a cape that epitomized ‘dainty’, Darren unfolded himself out of the cart. He’d always been tall and lanky like that – Wayne remembered sitting in the sixth grade cafeteria, watching Darren fumble across the cafeteria under the weight of kids chanting “Lurch!” and grimaced again reflexively. Wayne had known Darren since before his freakishly tall friend had helped to found the Battle Country LARP, but now The Count stood in judgment against him. It was a betrayal, Wayne was sure.

An orc on Wayne’s left – Fat Chris – yawned, and Wayne was exhausted, too. He had been up all night, part of it in captivity. Tom Courts supplicated his fake pantheon for mercy and kept order over a line waiting to have oatmeal doled out of a giant pot by two sprightly gnome girls. Darren strode through the crowd, stopping to hear the entreaties of the LARP-populace.

Wayne wondered how these assholes could stay in character at this hour. He imagined asking Tom Courts this question and saw Courts in his mind’s eye, asking Wayne how he could not.

Darren reached the center of the parade grounds. With a flourish, he spoke.

“CITIZENS OF THE BATTLE COUNTRY! We arise this morning to find our lands shaken by tragedy. I have summoned those accused to stand here before you in judgment, and I assure you, citizens that justice. Will. Be. Served.”

Give it to Darren, Wayne thought, the man can act. For someone so unassuming in real life, so uncomfortable in his gangly body, The Count really came out of his shell when he was role-playing. Wayne considered that this was probably because he was pretending to be someone else, and wasn’t sure whether or not the thought made him sad.

“Those of you in The Vale last night have told me what occurred,” Darren continued, Count voice booming across the camp, “but the Battle Country is governed by laws and a spirit of fairness. There will be punishment for the guilty.”

Several of the orcs were blubbering, inchoate whimpers in their throats. Just to the left, Fat Chris had tears rolling down his face, streaking his shoddy makeup. Wayne had been stoic until now – had to be stoic, but now a worm of a thought crept into his mind. I’m doomed, it said. I’m doomed, I’m doomed, I’m doomed I’mdoomedI’mdoomedI’mdoomed.

“But,” The Count intoned, “we believe in equal time, and the perpetrators that stand accused will have a chance to speak. That is why I am convening my Privy Council to hear testimony from Grimgnash Hordecaller, chieftain of the Seven Skulls orcs.”

It took Wayne several moments to realize that he was Grimgnash Hordecaller.

Some Time Ago

“And then, just after midnight, during the bonfire, we were attacked by a hippogriff stampede!”

It was tenth grade and they were huddled around a round lunch table on Rib-B-Q day. Darren’s cousin Ralph had taken him live-action role-playing over the weekend, to a game in Delaware. It was called Ioun, which Wayne knew had to be a rip-off of the Ioun Stones from Dungeons and Dragons.

“Right,” Wayne countered through a mouth half-full of Rib-B-Q, “but guys in hippogriff costumes. How do you even take that seriously?”

“It’s suspicion of disbelief, Wayne. When I’m in cos-”

“Suspension, Darren. Suspension of disbelief.”

Darren fired back immediately: “Your face suspends disbelief.” Across the table, Jimmy Yeung slow-clapped while a few other sophomores groaned. “Really, though,” Darren went on, “when you’re out there and you’re dressed up, it’s easy to ignore the fake masks and the fact that an elf has a Slayer t-shirt on under his armor. It’s like…it’s like doing improv. Like you’re playing D&D and acting at the same time.”

Darren’s face was all twisted up from the effort of trying to articulate something that he didn’t have the vocabulary to communicate. “Look,” he said, with a bit of a stammer, “there’s another event next month. You guys should come with me.”

Wayne broke the silence first. “You really want us to drive two hours to play Hobbits in the woods all weekend? We could stay home, order some pizzas, and roll some dice.”

Darren gave a snort. “Well yeah, except that there are a lot more girls there.”

A month later, most of the table went down to Delaware for the weekend. Most of them told their parents that they were just camping. Jimmy Yeung had mononucleosis, so he had to stay home.

Now.

The Lodge only got used a few times a year, and now it was covered in dust. The waxing light filtering in through the shaded windows made the air look grainy like old film, enhancing Wayne’s ever-growing sense of dread. He stood in front of a long mess table as Tom Courts stood behind him, untying his hands. His wrists were raw where they’d been tied by a pair of overeager fourteen year olds. Mike J. and Mike R. he remembered, who were inseparable and dressed in all black; they used asinine swords, designed to look like giant keys. Anita the blacksmith had told Wayne that the swords were from a videogame. With Disney characters. No wonder, Wayne resolved, that those kids were terrors.

One of the Mikes had knelt on Wayne’s back, holding his hands steady, while the other Mike tied the knots – good, Boy Scout knots. Wayne could still taste the peat in his mouth from where the Mikes had tackled and held him. They had come at him from behind.

The Mikes were going to get hailed as heroes. They’d get titled, at least, for taking down the orc chieftain. Which was preposterous to Wayne. Wayne had been here for four seasons and still had no title. Because he was Darren’s friend. Because the staff wanted to avoid the perception of bias. Darren had told him as much when he’d pressed the issue. That talk was just one thing piled onto the list of problems with the game that led to what Wayne was already thinking of as the Volleyball Court Coup.

Darren sat at the center of the table, surrounded by his staff – Anita, Tom Courts, Sendhil the king of the dwarves with his atrocious Scottish accent, all the rest of Darren’s staff of cronies. Their stares bored into Wayne, and he felt himself starting to sweat.

The Count slouched in his folding chair, the facade dropping; he was just Darren again. His head sunk for a moment, and when it came up again he asked, simply, “What the hell, Wayne?”

It was a question that Wayne hadn’t really considered. He was angry. He felt slighted and betrayed. But not just on a personal level. He thought about the Mikes again, how he couldn’t understand why someone would want to play somebody else’s concept instead of making something on their own and there, maybe, Wayne found clarity.

“Count,” he said, launching into the gruff Tom-Waits-as-a-Caveman voice that he used in-game, “I don’t think we should proceed without the Orc councilor present.”

The council expected contrition. It hadn’t come. They were taken aback.

After a beat, Tom Courts looked at Wayne. “There is no orcish councilor. As chieftain, you know this.”

Anticipating where Wayne was going, Anita added, “The dark elves don’t have a seat on the council, either.”  She was trying to be conciliatory. She probably should have known she was making things worse. Some of the elves and gargoyles at the table realized this, as did the swarthy, beardless dwarf: Sendhil buried his face in his palm.

“They’re evil races,” one of the other voices at the table blurted out. Again, Wayne thought, not helping.

Grimgnash’s eyes lit up. “Then you admit this body has no authority over me,” Wayne improvised. “You openly admit your prejudice against the Seven Skulls orcs and expect me to submit to your rule? Laughable.”

Through his cleric’s beard, Tom Courts spat, “There are rules, Wayne. Procedures. You can’t just tinker with the plot.” Of course he’d say that; Tom Courts was head of Plot on staff.

Dropping character for a second, Wayne fired back. “Tom, there hasn’t been any decent orc plot for over two seasons. No orcs have title. Orcs can’t sit on the council. We’re ignored, we’re ostracized from the rest of the player community, though they’re content to accept our aid when there’s a mod that they can’t defeat on their own.” He paced in front of the table, stopping in front of Anita, the treasurer. “We pay to come out here each month and be ill-used. I refuse to accept that the only way out of that is to quit and go elsewhere and I refuse to play a game in which I have no agency.”

Wayne and Darren locked eyes. “You’ve had ample time to fix this imbalance. You haven’t. My people no longer recognize your authority to adjudicate us as a result of that. And you bring me in to punish me for playing the game the way I wish to play it. Weak.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen. I am going to walk out of here, take the other orc players with me and return to our campsite. From there, the ball is in your court; send an emissary with a truce flag to us by sundown, or we are at war. And this time, it won’t just be the orcs. It will be the dark elves with us. It will be the other disenfranchised races. The guilds without influence. They will rally around the orcs, my friends, and we will come for you. We are relentless; we are orcs.”

With a deep bow, Grimgnash Hordecaller, chieftain of the Seven Skulls orcs, stormed out of the Lodge. Wayne was certain that he’d just done something awful and irreparable, but he knew that he’d take none of it back. As he walked across the parade grounds, the other orc players fell into line behind him, a bit hesitant at first, not knowing what just happened. Along with them came a handful of dark elves and some other stragglers of various races. The Country Guard brandished their weapons and created a human barricade, but the orcs kept walking. They knew that, stripped of their weapons, they couldn’t fight back in-game. They were willing to be martyred. At least, Wayne hoped they were.

The guard captain, a particularly hawkish teen who Wayne never liked, was about to call the order to attack, when the voice of the Count broke out from the doorway to the Lodge. “Guards, let them pass!”

The players all looked bemused. They were all anticipating the fight. Wayne smiled at the hawk, knowing his cockiness would result in bruises later. He no longer cared.

The Hawk looked back at Darren for instructions. Once more, the Count’s voice boomed, “Escort the townsfolk back to their camps and then we will meet to discuss our defenses. Let all the Country know we are at war with the orcs!”

Just like that, Wayne knew the end had begun.

With Violet Light, Part IV

With Violet Light, Part IV

Oct 29

Okay, folks—this is the last part of our saga. The end!

But is it…(dun dun DUN)…THE END?! As in, the ultimate fate of these characters? The period on their unwieldy, reference-laden sentence?!

The answer is simple: I don’t know. This does feel a bit like a natural stopping place, but sometimes random things (like the phrase “male Star Sapphire”) make me think of other random things and then it leads to writing words down and suddenly I’m asking Paul if he can draw Julie in a Green Lantern outfit.

So. We’ll see. Enjoy the final installment of this little story, and please come back next Friday— I’ll have a special behind-the-scenes extra to share!

—Sarah Kuhn

**

“There is something…sort of funny about all this.”

Layla and I are sitting on the Comics Bee’s slightly grotty carpet, propped up against the counter, my head leaning on her shoulder for support. All the other customers have long fled. Braidbeard and Evan are having a hushed-but-spirited debate about Ghost World over in the indie corner, a soft chorus of passionate whispers and the occasional “actually…” wafting through the shop.

“Oh?” I snuffle pathetically into a crumpled tissue. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

She smiles at me, zen-like. “Well. Tonight we learned you and Jack have yet another thing in common: really bad gaydar.”

“Oh, shut up,” I say, but there’s no heat behind it.

“Just teasing,” she says. She squeezes my shoulder. “He’ll come back.”

“Maybe,” I say, frowning into space. “He turned his phone off, so I have no idea where he is. I’ve just…never seen him blow up like that.”

Layla nods and we sit there for a second in contemplative silence. My eyes zero in on a Witchblade poster plastered to the wall above us. There’s something almost soothing about scrutinizing the ridiculous, anatomically impossible lines of her form, something that turns my brain off and keeps me from thinking. I trace my gaze over her mostly-naked ass.

“Listen…Jules.” Layla’s voice cuts through my borderline pervy thoughts. “I know our matchmaking plan didn’t exactly work out like we thought it would, but I gotta say: it was really fun hanging out with you? Like, in a girly way? Maybe we could do it more often?”

“Eh?” I sit up straight and shoot her a puzzled look. “We do hang out. Like, all the time.”

“I know, but I mean…just us. Without the boys. And maybe we could do girly stuff, like, um…get our nails done? Get cocktails…”

“…with little umbrellas in them?” I finish, cocking a bemused eyebrow. “You really do want us to be like Sex and the City, don’t you?”

She nods eagerly. “I think we could pull it off. And I get a little sick of all the comics-and-action-movies talk.”

I laugh. “Okay,” I say. “You are, honestly, the first real girlfriend I’ve had. And I couldn’t ask for a better one.”

“Hold that thought,” she murmurs, her eyes fixating on something over my shoulder. I turn, following her gaze to the Comics Bee entrance. And there’s Jack, looking exhausted, sheepish, and just a little bit lost.

He crosses over to us, and I stand, trying to prepare what I want to say to him. But before I can open my mouth, Layla’s positioned herself in front of me, hands on her hips.

“Listen, you,” she says, jabbing her pointy index finger into Jack’s chest. “Jules is my girl and I’m not gonna let anyone stomp all over her. So you better be ready to explain yourself, or I’ll…I’ll kick you. In a not nice place! Cause that’s what girlfriends do for each other!!”

Jack holds up his hands in surrender, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I have a really good apology prepared,” he says. “Awards-worthy.”

“Well…okay.” Layla steps to the side, still frowning at him, then turns and lays a hand on my arm. “How was that?!” she asks anxiously. “Super Charlotte-y?”

“More like Samantha,” I say, patting her hand. “Beautifully done. A-plus.”

“Yes!” she exclaims, pumping her fist in the air as she trots off toward the indie section.

Jack stuffs his hands in his pockets, his gaze shifting from side to side and finally meeting mine. “So. I overreacted.”

I cock an eyebrow and look at him expectantly. “Uh-huh…?”

“What I said, the way I acted, that was…incredibly dumb. Almost He-Man grunty, in an energy drink-chugging, Maxim-reading kind of way. I’m an idiot.”

I reach over and gently tug one of his hands out of his pocket, threading my fingers through his. “Lucky for you, you’re a cute idiot.”

He gapes at me. “You’re gonna forgive me just like that?”

I shrug. “Usually it’s me flying off the handle and acting like a demented wildebeest. I guess you’re allowed a turn?” I squeeze his hand. “And I’m sorry, too. Bringing you here and ignoring you like that was really shitty.” I bite my lip, trying to put the words together. “I just got so…preoccupied. Trying to help Layla. And Braidbeard, even. But you have to know: you could never be an afterthought. Not to me. You’re, like…the opposite of that.”

He regards me thoughtfully, then takes my other hand and pulls me close. “I love you,” he says, those blue eyes piercing right through me. “You know that, right?”

Tears prick my eyes and I nod quickly, not trusting myself to speak.

“I…can’t do this long distance thing anymore,” he says slowly, reaching down to brush my hair off my face. “I, um, hate it. Like, really hate it. A lot.”

“Me, too! A lot!” I squawk. “But I didn’t want to freak out on you by saying…that. I was trying to act, you know, like a normal person.”

He shakes his head at me, exasperated. “Since when have you ever done anything like a normal person?”

I give him a look.

“Sorry, that came out wrong.” He exhales slowly. “When I saw you with Evan, my brain sort of…spiraled. I realized he’s someone you could hang out with every day, just because you share a city. You could get comics every Wednesday and fall asleep together every night and…and…do all the little things. Like grocery shopping. And laundry.”

I frown. “Those are little things,” I say. “Kind of stupid little things.”

“Stupid little things I want to do with you,” he says.

I stop breathing for a minute, my heart crumbling like a three-day-old cookie. I realize, suddenly, that I want to do laundry with him, too. Desperately. If someone handed me a basket of dirty clothes right now, I would sort the shit out of the lights and darks.

“Let’s move in together,” I blurt out.

He opens his mouth, closes it. And gives me a somewhat peevish look. “That was supposed to be my line,” he says. “Are you ever gonna let me do anything like a real manly man?”

“Probably not.” I give him a tentative smile. “Can you, um…live with that? So to speak?”

His gentle hands cup my face, his eyes taking in every inch of me. He’s the only person I know who looks at me so intently, so earnestly. Always seeing me for what I really am.

“Hell yes,” he says softly.

I throw my arms around his neck, drawing him closer, our bodies fitting together like they always do.

“Oh, hey,” he says, pulling back and rummaging around in his pocket. “This was supposed to be for you.” He pulls out the ridiculously pink Star Sapphire ring.

“Me?” I laugh, holding out my hand. “Since when?”

He tries fitting it on each of my fingers, but the plastic loop is way too big—designed for more fanboyish hands. He finally slips it onto my thumb.

“Perfect,” he says, bringing my fingertips to his lips. “And I really think you ascended to Star Sapphireness just now. By proposing the whole ‘moving in together’ thing.”

“But you had the same idea!” I protest.

“Doesn’t matter. Come on, say it: ‘for hearts long lost and full of fright, for those alone in blackest night—’”

I shut him up with a kiss. It’s probably a Star Sapphire-y thing to do, but damn—it sure is effective.

**

“Wow, that’s really pink.” I narrow my eyes suspiciously at the perky concoction Layla’s set in front of me. We’re sitting in a too-loud bar, wearing too-short dresses, trying for something resembling a conversation over all the noise.

“It’s a cosmo,” she admonishes, gleefully piling tiny umbrellas in the glass. “It’s supposed to be pink!”

“Yikes.” I snatch the fruity thing away from her before she can attack it with yet another umbrella.

“Here’s to us!” she cries, clinking her glass against mine. “I’m having sex again and you’re on the verge of cohabitation!”

We both take healthy guzzles.

“Speaking of,” I say, as the vile pink stuff burns my throat, “we finally made a decision: I’m moving to L.A. And I need you to help me figure out how to break it to the guys.”

She freezes for a moment, frothy glass halfway to her lips, and her eyes get very bright. “You…you’re telling me first?” she asks, her voice tremulous.

“Well…yeah.” I give her a little half-smile. “I was also thinking you could help me drive everything down—you know, road trip-style. Like Sex and the City-type girlfriends do? Or so I hear?”

“Oh, Jules!” She throws her arms around me, splashing alcohol all over my stupid dress in the process. I hug her back, trying to ignore the sticky feeling of the flimsy fabric clinging to me.

“Hey, I have to show you something.” I whip out my iPhone and tap the Facebook icon. “Check out Braidbeard’s new avatar,” I say, gesturing to the screen.

“Ohmygosh!” she exclaims. “What an adorable shot of him and Evan!”

“Mmm,” I agree. “And it’s the first documented instance of B using a photo—rather than a comic book image—as his icon.”

She smiles at me: a sweet Layla smile, full of optimism and fucking sunflowers. “Was I right or what?” she beams. “Love for all: anti-social misanthropes included.”

I twirl a tiny umbrella through my fingers. “You said it, Charlotte.”

Retcon Punch, Episode 04: Strategery

Retcon Punch, Episode 04: Strategery

Oct 27

New to Retcon Punch? Start at the beginning.

What the fuck did I do?

I wake up in my recliner way too late, and feel like garbage–not physically, but mentally, like someone took a shit in my head.

“I’ll think about it.”

I’ll think about it?!

What the fuck I was thinking when I tentatively agreed to participate in a fucking heist at my job with a total stranger?

Let me tell you what I was thinking. When I was in fourth grade, I love love LOVED my teacher, Ms. Mendelbaum. She had big poofy red hair and wore lots of pencil skirts. I actually wrote her a letter when June came around–I told her very seriously that I loved her, and I always would, and I hoped that someday we could meet again, when we were older. I enclosed a picture of myself, and she moved to Cincinatti that summer, with her husband.

You will think me a fool, but I tell you true: Every relationship with a woman I’ve had is just a pale echo of Ms. Mendelbaum.

Agreeing to help commit a felony, however, is beyond the pale. I’ve sat through Vonda Shepard concerts, and I’ve purchased maxipads, and I’ve even read The Bridges of Madison County, all for the love of a girl…but I’ve never broken the law.

And I don’t even know this girl, so it’s not that quite yet; I know she dates assholes and I’m pretty sure I’m not one. I do know, however, that I’ve had fucking credit debt looming over my skull since I was nineteen years old, and to be free of it forever without taking a handout from my parents or declaring fucking bankruptcy…I think I’d steal a dickwad’s comic book to pull that off.

This is all swirling in my head as I arrive at Superb to open for the day; there’s a note on the door, and as soon as I’ve read it, I swipe it off and stuff it crumpled into my pocket.

It says, “Ercoles, 9 p.m. tonight. –V”

So much of the commercial space down by the ocean has been taken over by mainstream yuppified touristy bars and restaurants, barely a step above Applebee’s. Joints like Ercoles that have served mostly locals since the 1960’s are a rarity.

I like it because the rum and cokes are strong, and because there is next to zero chance of running into a client from the shop. With televisions perpetually tuned to any kind of conceivable sporting event and weekend nights full of trashy twentysomethings in clothes their mothers would not approve, it’s not a geek hangout.

Tonight, I order a Miller Lite and grab the first booth I see; it’s 9:30 before Veronica shows. The black jeans remain, topped off by a vintage Boy Scout uniform shirt; her hair’s up in a ponytail. She spots me, grabs a beer of her own at the bar on the way in. She sits down across from me and gives me a warm smile, like we’re old pals and she’s meeting me for drinks to tell me all about her crummy boyfriend. At least I have no doubt that her boyfriend is indeed crummy.

“Does Sid know you’re here?”

“He’s in Anaheim at some shithole, seeing a band.”

“That’s what he does.”

“Don’t I know it.”

We drink in unison, almost as though we’re relieved neither of us has to follow up on that classic bon mot. It’s like a very small and shitty Algonquin round table.

“So like I said,” she says. “I owe my ex-boyfriend twenty thousand dollars.”

“He can’t give you a payment plan for old time’s sake?”

“He froze the vig for old time’s sake. That’s the best I could do.”

“And what, he’s going to break your legs if you don’t pay him back?”

“Eventually. His patience is wearing thin. I can tell.”

“That’s a bullshit story,” I spit. “You expect me to believe that you’re in debt to some thug you used to date, and if you don’t get him paid he’ll rough you up, like some low-rent Sopranos parody?”

“Believe it or not. I’m telling you. I can’t control what you do with the information.”

“I should tell Sid about your little visit to the shop last night.”

“You won’t.”

Pause. “Yeah, I won’t,” I say.

She’s done with her beer, and the waitress brings her a second without her asking. I wonder if she’s a regular.

“So, did you think about it?” she says.

“I suppose I did.”

“And?”

“I’m just–I’m having a hard time getting my head around it.”

“You said it yourself–it’s easy. I have a buyer lined up for these comics, the Fantastic Four and the Batman. He’s going to pay me $60,000 for the pair. We split that, and I still have enough to pay off Hector and maybe buy a shitty used car so that I don’t have to rely on the fucking Sidster to get me around South Bay. You can do…whatever it is that people like you do with a lot of money, I have no idea. But I’m serious, and this is real. This could get scary and ugly if I don’t take care of it, and I think quietly stealing a few comic books from a piece of shit former Rude Boy who spraypaints his bald spot–“

“I fucking KNEW it. It never looked real.”

“Sorry to shatter the illusion,” she smirks.

“Why are you with that asshole? No offense, I don’t really know you, and I’m not sure I care, but I just have to know.”

“He has a massive–“

“Stop. No need. I knew that too.”

“You think I’m too good for him?” She puts on an expression of mock sexy that reads as real sexy to me. It’s been a while, and I’m surprised at how hard it hits, how lonely I am.

“I know you’re too good for him.” I blush into the bottle.

“He’s tried, you know. Telling me my ass looks fat in jeans, ogling skinny fake boob bitches at the beach, that sort of thing.”

“And yet, you stay.”

“Well, there’s his…you know, and then once I decided to pull this caper, it made sense to stay close, to read the situation and gather as much info as I could. Why are YOU still around, anyway?”

“Me? That’s a big question.”

“We have time.”

I contemplate telling her about that mild warm glow that comes deep in Wednesday evening when I’m working customers, rattling off wisecracks about ROM Spaceknight and Gorilla Grodd, but I’m not quite there yet.

What I actually think about, in the tiny span between her words and mine, is why I haven’t bothered leaving. Ennui, I guess? Getting stuck in a moment, in a place, in a job and a mildly addictive hobby that only provides redeeming moments deep in the dark black of a long night spent alone with an ever-growing pile of STUFF. Bad reasons, but reasons.

Then I remember this one time when Sid happened to be in the shop, pretending to rack some new trade paperback stock, and a very recognizable geek filmmaker walked in, alone and undefended. I knew who he was instantly, and so did Sid; I greeted him with my usual, “Welcome, let me know if you need anything,” and Sid POUNCED. This guy was submerged for at least fifteen minutes in this bizarre mix of fanboy worship, pathetic salesmanship, and mock-humble recitation of Sid’s slight resume of pop culture success.

Which was sad, sure, until it got mean, and he started talking about how he opened the shop to meet “cool geek chicks with low self-esteem” and hired “losers like this flabby asswipe” (meaning ME) to keep it running. I turned red and left the room; I saw the filmmaker guy turning red too, but unfortunately he could not escape as easily, and it was at least another ten minutes before Sid slammed open the door of the back room and started bragging and berating me at the same time.

“Where the FUCK were you dude? You know I can’t work the cash register. What the FUCK am I paying you for? That guy was awesome and he was totally into a collabo.”

(Sid called “collaboration” a “collabo.” That goes on his douchebag list, for sure.)

“You’re a worthless piece of shit and I should fire you right now,” Sid finished up. “Good thing you’re so pathetic no one else would hire you and I’m a decent guy.”

Suddenly, leaving seems like the best idea I never had before. Back at the bar, I finish peeling the label off my beer bottle.

“I’m due for a job change,” I say. We spend the next few hours plotting our crime.

Next Week: Stuff

3AM, Banshee, Part 2

3AM, Banshee, Part 2

Oct 25

[In September 2008, Jeff Stolarcyk participated in a professional paranormal investigation. He survived, and this is his unvarnished account of the incident. A version of this essay appears in Grok #3 – Nameless Horror.]

There are at least two major groups of ‘ghost hunters’ in Northeastern Pennsylvania; Joe’s group is the one I’m most familiar with. As I helped the crew – team leader Joe and his investigatorsTony and Jeff – set up their equipment, I took the opportunity to talk shop with them, camcorder in hand.  They run down what each of the cameras, recorders and meters does, what bells and whistles each has, and how each piece of gear is used in documenting or disproving a haunting.  All of the equipment they use comes out of their own pockets, and they don’t charge clients for investigations or canvas for donations.  Even after an hour with them, it’s clear that they’re not doing this to make money, get famous, or sign a TV deal.  During one of our conversations, Joe even admits that he suffers a lot of teasing from his coworkers.  “But later, I’ll be alone with them in the break room, and those same people will be asking me for advice or asking about something they saw or heard,” he says with a smirk.

The group is amicable and frank, joking with me about the super-serious youths on A&E’s collegiate reality series Paranormal State. “We are now entering Dead Time,” Jeff jokes in allusion to the show. They talk about conducting an investigation with TAPS, the ghost hunters on SyFy’s aptly named Ghost Hunters; Joe doesn’t divulge any details out of respect for the other team, but he does remark that there are concessions made for the television audience. Over Cokes in the barroom (none of us are imbibing alcohol), we talk about their recent investigations at Fort Mifflin near Philadelphia and at Andy Gavin’s, another Irish pub in Scranton. Earlier in the week, Joe emailed me a collection of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena – phantom voices on digital recordings) from Gavin’s, the most striking of which is a husky, Irish-brogued voice that seems to be counting, though it’s far from crystal clear sound. The voice is warm and jocular, and according to anecdotal evidence from the Gavin’s owner, the speaker is a former employee – an unlikely proposition, considering the man in question is dead.

Joe became involved with paranormal research after a personal experience that he couldn’t explain. Like me, though, Tony and Jeff are simply lifelong horror buffs out to satisfy their curiosity about the paranormal.  The team is passionate about its work, but it’s also rational, and Joe reminds me several times that their primary goal is to debunk as much of a reported haunting as possible. Far from being crackpots or wild goose chasers, the investigators are methodical and skeptical. Maybe more importantly, they are each normal guys with day jobs and families doing this to learn something about the nature of the world.

That doesn’t mean they haven’t had personal experiences, though. On a recent investigation at Fort Mifflin, near Philadelphia, Tony was accosted by an unfriendly entity. ‘Entity’ is the term they use for ‘ghost’. “We’re not certain what they are,” Tony tells me as we check camera batteries and set up equipment. “They could be ghosts, or elementals, or maybe even something demonic. We don’t know.” But Tony, like the others on the team, and like the home and business owners that invite the group to investigate claims of supernatural activity, believes that something is out there.

We have recording equipment on each of the Banshee’s floors – the main dining area on the ground floor, the private party room on the second floor where many report seeing an apparition of a small girl, the attic which is mostly used for storage, and the basement – where the majority of experiences befall the Banshee’s employees. “Whatever is upstairs here is not malicious,” the waitress who pushed for the paranormal investigation tells us, “but the thing in the basement is.” She tells us that she’s been shoved by the basement entity and has a distinct feeling of being watched whenever she’s in the room. It was a feeling I had minutes earlier when I was shadowing Tony and Jeff. I held my tongue.

In addition to the little girl in the white dress, there is also a man in a black suit and hat. He’s been spotted on the stairwells to the second floor and basement, and according to one story, a young boy was found wandering in the basement, claiming “the man in the black hat” beckoned him to follow. In the boy’s version of events, the man in the black hat was carrying a rope. What nobody knows about these apparitions is how they are related to each other, to the presence in the basement, or to the history of the structure they haunt.

The building where the Banshee stands now was not always a pub. Prior to its current life, the building was a department store, and its identity before that is something of a mystery to me. The waitresses claim that, during an epidemic at the turn of the century – TB, flu, yellow fever, depending on who you talk to – the basement of the Banshee was used to store corpses from a nearby hospital. At the time of the investigation, no evidence had been uncovered that this ever actually happened, but the story has managed to become a potent part of the pub’s lore among the employees.

Once all the patrons had cleared out for the night, the investigation team and I got started. I went to the second floor with Joe and Tony. Jeff took the basement by himself.

When Joe told me we were going to try to use a Ouija board, I was almost ecstatic. Almost. Pop culture has set us against the things since, well, forever. I also knew from the Witchboard movies that sometimes what comes through the board is worse than a ghost, but I also told myself to keep an open mind.

The Ouija isn’t a standard part of a ghost hunter’s arsenal; Joe’s brought it along to see what will happen. He attempted the same experiment at a prior investigation and got surprisingly active results. Aside from a few tics, bumps and jumps, the board’s planchette stays silent and immobile after nearly an hour of questioning. If the Banshee is haunted, its spirits did not want to communicate with us.

In the quiet dark, we asked questions without expecting answers and trained our cameras on the blackness, searching for electronic proof. Earlier in the night, one of the team remarked that ghost hunting was incredibly boring except for the short bursts in which interesting things happened, and it was so true that the act of waiting became painful.

That’s when Jeff, clearly spooked, asked for extra help in the basement.

Trailing behind Tony, we dropped our hands off of the planchette, snatched up our flashlights and hustled from the 2^nd floor through the barroom and down into the basement. I half expected something to grab me as I rushed out of the stairwell; nothing did. Jeff was safe, though he had been rattled pretty badly by the sound of a breaking bottle.  Using our lights to scan the room, we couldn’t find any trace of the broken bottle until we found two employees still hanging around, one of whom had dropped a bottle while taking out the night’s trash.  Our first scare of the night had been debunked.

That brings up back to three AM in the basement.  After our first sweep of the basement, we found an inexplicable EMF hot spot in the middle of the basement’s front room.  We also discovered that all of the cameras and recorders set up in that room were now either dead or nearly out of power, despite everything being fully charged before we started only a few hours ago.  My own handheld recorder was behaving erratically, but still had full power.  We started questioning and monitoring the responses we’d get on the meters.  I’m not going to say we were communicating with something, but I will say the timing of the spikes and beeps on the meter were definitely intriguing.

After a cursory walk through the rest of the building, the entire team gathered in the basement to try another EVP session.  It’s three AM, and the temperature in the basement is dropping rapidly. It’s gone from 65 degrees down to 52 over a period of thirty minutes. To my right, Joe asks, “Are you a male entity?” No answer.

“Make the device go off twice for yes,” he instructs we-don’t-know-who, motioning to the meter placed on the floor two meters away from any of the four of us. Within thirty seconds, one beep sounds in the silence, followed after a pause by another. Two lights.

“Are there other entities in this room with you?” we had already asked it. Beep Beep. Two lights.

“Is there an evil entity in this room?” Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep; no delay at all. All the lights are bright and steady.

Using this schema, we confirmed that the male entity’s name began with the letter Q, and that he had a daughter who was here with him.  In the best of circumstances, thorough research can corroborate these details, but the consistent problem of  this investigation has been a lack of reliable history to refer to. Perhaps with a few hours of library time we might be able to nail down a more accurate history of the premises or look deeper into what could be a clue or erratic behavior caused by an unshielded line.

My initial instinct about the investigation is to say that whatever has happened in The Banshee to the waitresses is most likely the result of them scaring each other with ghost stories.  But what happened in the basement isn’t easily explainable.  Was it all a fluke?  Possibly.  We didn’t see any apparitions, didn’t hear any voices, and didn’t experience any poltergeist activity; the Ouija planchette did not move on its own.  Though none of the events that earmark a movie haunting manifested themselves, there’s still research to be done on the hours of film, audio and photographs that were taken during the investigation to be combed through and they could likely contain spectral images or EVP, and analyzing that data takes longer than a commercial break.  As always, reality is never as glamorous as reality TV, but it can be just as rewarding.  Accordingly, the trio of investigators confess to a certain boyish glee whenever they can find a piece of evidence they can’t explain away, bringing them one step closer to finding out what really is out there.