Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection

by J. Thorn

  The upside to this is that the children who have been taught resiliency, who have not been coddled, will survive. These kids will know how to deal with adversity because they will have faced it instead of being socially engineered on the playground or covered in proverbial bubble-wrap through their preadolescent years. Protecting children from the realities of life ill equips them to navigate the real world. Until the aliens land, I will continue to peddle the truth.

  I owe an insurmountable debt to my former students and my own children, who have taught me more about life than any job, workshop, prison sentence, or graduate course ever could.

  ###

  Acknowledgements

  My life has changed significantly since I finished the first edition of this book (Educating Zombies). Several of my novels gained serious traction on Amazon and I began to meet other authors. One in particular, Angela Addams, has become a real friend (or at least as much of a friend as one can have through social media and spanning an entire continent). I was ready to bury Educating Zombies until she read a few of the essays and encouraged me to keep the project alive. I owe you big time, Angela.

  I also want to thank my editor, Talia Leduc, who was forced to sift through these torturous ideas in the name of journalistic integrity and because I paid her to do the job. She amazes me with her keen eye and intuition.

  Carolyn McCray continues to pull me through the current marketplace like escorting a kid brother through the mall while shopping for school clothes. She knows what fits me even when I turn my nose up at her suggestions. I’m grateful for her abrasive, brutal, and 100% honest truth.

  Thank you, dear reader, for taking this journey with me. If you enjoyed the book please leave a review on Amazon. It can be brief (20 words) and written in a few minutes. Authors depend on reviews from readers like you. And if you really enjoy my work, send me an email at jthorn.writer@gmail.com and I will reply with a free copy of a J. Thorn title of your choosing.

  In addition, visit http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/JThorn_ where I will personalize and autograph your digital book for free. Please do not hesitate to get in touch. I respond personally to every message.

  J. Thorn

  Cleveland, Ohio

  July 20, 2012

  http://www.raisingzombies.com

  Appendix

  My Photo Album of Shame (er, Fame)

  An Interview with Don

  An Interview with Emily

  First Edition Cover Art

  Blog Redux – Essays that began life as blog posts.

  Raising Zombies - What's in a Name?

  Quick Setup Guide for Parenting

  Obligatory Charts

  60/Day for 365

  My Photo Album of Shame (er, Fame)

  I began sorting through musty boxes and yellowing photo albums for family pictures that would breathe life into some of the characters in my story. I quickly realized that this part of the book would grow beyond what I had anticipated. I have placed these in the appendix, in case you have no interest in my family pictures. Honestly, I have no interest in yours. However, the pictures and written recollections can hopefully provide different insights beyond just the text.

  Those of you born after 1990 will find nothing spectacular about a collection of photographs from childhood. You have been born into a world where digital photography (and later cameras on phones) is standard and instantaneous. But for someone born prior to 1980, it was harder to capture those moments on film and even more difficult to preserve them for decades.

  The other images in the gallery are scans that have come from my attic. The ticket stubs are real and belong to me. If you still think I’m a dork (and you’d have good reason to think that) hopefully my arena-rock heritage will change your mind. But it probably won’t.

  The Paternal Grandparents

  As you can probably tell from the dapper clothing and architectural style of the neighborhood, these are my paternal grandparents circa 1973. When we were younger, my brother annoyed the piss out of me by doing things like breaking my toys for no apparent reason. Then again, he broke everything for no apparent reason, which is why my maternal grandmother dubbed him “General Wrecker.” I don’t think he was born yet, otherwise you’d most likely see him tearing the rear brake drum off that fine-looking Gremlin sitting in the driveway.

  My paternal grandmother was a proud, yet strange lady. She legally changed the family name (that of my grandfather, before they married) as she didn’t think it sounded Irish enough. My maternal grandfather died young (for a grandparent) after a life of constant smoking, evident in most family pics. He fought in hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific during World War II and came home with a blood-stained Rising Sun flag. I don’t remember him ever speaking of the war. His fictionalized story appears in Preta’s Realm as one of Gaki’s backstories.

  The Maternal Grandparents

  My maternal grandmother was known affectionately as “Babi,” which was a title adapted from her native Slovakian tongue. We called my maternal grandfather Pap-Pap, because one Pap was clearly not enough. Babi lived the last two decades of her life with severe dementia, which could be really funny at times but really depressing most others. She was one of the most loving people I’ve ever known.

  Pap-Pap, on the other hand, was a selfish, mean, racist son of a bitch. It’s hard to write that about your grandfather, but it was true. He took me golfing when I was nine years old and bought me lunch at the clubhouse, which was awesome. However, he charged his own daughter (my mom) rent when she turned eighteen and billed my sister monthly to keep her car in his extra garage. He’d drop thousands of dollars on cars (he bought a new one every year) and electronics while Babi shopped the clothing outlets for polyester pants. Pap-Pap hated “the niggers” except for the ones on his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. My brother (General Wrecker) can be seen in this photograph from Pap-Pap’s birthday party. My mother is restraining the little bastard, who is clearly trying to blow out the candles before Pap-Pap can. General Wrecker is also responsible for memoralizing Pap-Pap by placing a Terrible Towel in his casket at the viewing.

  Middle School & Junior High

  Sweet-ass boombox, right? Attending a Catholic school in the 1970s provided its share of forbidden sexual tension. In these rare photos of “casual dress” days, captured on the Kodak Instamatic 300, appear a few of the characters in Raising Zombies. The group shot contains four of my buddies, a few random girls, and that sweet-ass boombox. I’m sure Journey was spilling from the speakers as that’s all that was played (and permitted) on school grounds. The only kid without the black eyebar is the motherfucker that tortured me for years, Bobby Halloway. I had to leave his eyes unobstructed so you could see the pure evil residing within. He had either just finished punching a kid in the nuts or was thinking about punching me in the nuts as I was taking the picture. Nice fucking Izod, douchebag. And thanks for that Shout at the Devil cassette. Seriously, thanks for that.

  Notice the Journey t-shirt on the cockblocker to the left of Jackie. Yep, that’s the Jackie of the infamous “pin the love note on the bulletin board and destroy a child’s life” incident. How could any red-blooded Catholic school boy not be titilated by that feathery hair? She had real boobs back then, but like most girls her age, she liked to keep those puppies hidden.

  Fleeting Moments of Athletic Prowess

  Glory days. You already know the story behind the mighty, mighty Midnights. Here is the clipping that my mother saved from the local paper. Notice that she underlined the place where they mention me (as if we needed the underline to find it) and the pre-spellcheck era typo committed by the underpaid stringer who wrote it.

  How do you follow up the championship run on a team like the Midnights? You go travel select soccer, bitch! Here I am in my green and white striped Monroeville traveling team uniform, even though I played goalie and only wore my game shirt to church in hopes of impressing the ladies as I walked to communion (never worked). That is some damn fine hair, if I mus
t say so myself.

  The Rock of Ages

  I had the Pyromania, no doubt. Can you guess what cassette might be playing in the boombox? The collage is a collection of cropped photographs from our annual family trip to Ocean City, Maryland. The pictures span approximately three years in the early 1980s, including the transition from “Def Leppard Chic” to the short-lived “Japanese Cool” phase of 1983 (bottom left picture). More on the evolution of my Def Lepparditis on the following pages. . . .

  Umm, Awkward

  Behold the anatomy of a halloween costume culled from 90 percent real clothes and 10 percent rock-star dreaming! At Bonanza Steakhouse, where I was hired at age fifteen, the employees would dress up every Halloween. Running cold, slimy plates through the dishwasher in costume was a real joy.

  I was sixteen in these pictures and clearly not over my Def Leppard phase, which began three years earlier and most likely peaked two years and fifty weeks earlier. The black suede hat came from Wilson’s Leather in Monroeville Mall and reminded me of Dawn of the Dead. I’d wear it in the mall, secretly pretending I was in JC Penney’s, taunting the nun zombie. I purchased the Union Jack headband and sleveeless t-shirt on the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland, at a smelly rathole run by Indians (bathing in Ganges, not casino in Arizona) charging 125-percent markup on cheap cotton shit printed in Malaysia. Notice the Mötley Crüe headband tied provacatively around the upper thigh with whitewashed denim sporting Joe Elliotized vertical rips. A nod to the King of Pop sits on the right hand, the fingers sliced from the goalie glove that won the Midnights that glorious championship. Throw in a white denim jacket with band patches on the back, a random black kneepad, a pair of cheap aviator shades, guyliner, and a blond wig, and you’ve got yourself a “rock star” Halloween costume.

  In this frame we get a distant, lonely, forlorn shot of the owner of “The Beast” as he fills one of the final orders of the night from the front grill. That is not a Halloweeen costume. That was the employee uniform. I know.

  I found these name tags at the bottom of an old box. When I left a job, I usually set the uniform on fire, so I was shocked to find these. The Bonanza name tag garnered me an official reprimand on numerious occasions, which did not stop me from wearing it. The Camelot name tag has the coveted “1 Year” golden CD on it. You’re thinking that one year is nothing. Big fucking deal, right? The truth is that one year in any retail position is like dog years. It is a big deal, you asshole. Out of the many jobs I had during my teenage and young adult life, these two represented my longest tenures, the source of my best friendships, and where I met my wife.

  Teenage Wasteland

  Working in a record store did have certain perks that my peers at the gas station did not. For instance, at some point in the early 1990s, the Bulletboys did an in-store performance/autograph-signing at Camelot Music in Pittsburgh. Being a huge fan of hair metal, I was able to get into the stockroom with several managers (jerks with ties) and the band prior to the performance. I’m in the bottom right corner wearing acid-washed jeans, the beginnings of a mullet, and a Great White T under a semi-buttoned white shirt. I believed my fashion statement said, “I don’t have a Bulletboys shirt, but I am a fan of hair metal, so please except this Great White shirt as a token of my sincerity.” On the left, you may notice a fine spread of cheese, crackers, bottled water, and Pepsi, which I am sure the Bulletboys appreciated. No doubt they had become sick of backstage booze, pussy, and blow.

  The two gentlemen flanking my disembodied head (I’m buried in the sand and did not decapitate myself for this picture, in case you were wondering) usually sat in the backseat of “The Beast” during Chase. After our junior year of high school, seven of us convinced my old man to rent us a condo in Ocean City, Maryland, with his ID and security deposit. In return, we promised no parties, no noise, no women, and absolutely no drinking.

  Here is our beer pyramid, constructed from two empty cases of Natty Boh—shout out to my Baltimore peeps, “From the Land of Pleasant Living.” I cannot legally include any other photographs from this week. This was the one and only trip we made to Ocean City, and I hope to go back there someday when the statute of limitations runs out.

  The bitch who taught psychology hated me, and math was clearly not my thing. However, I’d like to draw your attention to the bottom right corner, where you will notice a cumulative grade point average of 3.4 (rounding up) and 9.5 days absent with 6 tardies. I graduated from high school with a 3.5 GPA (rounding up the rounding; you already know I suck at math) after getting a low D and two low Cs in my senior year while enjoying Senior Skip Day every single Friday in April and May of 1989. Those days were spent drinking warm beer in the wooded areas of Billings Park and sleeping off the buzz until I was sober enough to come home at the normal time school would have ended. Blame the number of tardies on Eat'n Park and their delightfully delicious breakfast menu followed by a free smiley cookie.

  The C in Advanced Composition was probably put there by the assholes giving me one-star reviews on Amazon. Dicks.

  I have no idea why these two senior pictures were in a box with the rest of my photos. They’re both female, which does explain something, but neither are old girlfriends. I have not spoken to either girl since the day I left high school. I had a slight crush on the white girl and a slightly bigger crush on the black girl. I hope putting the black eye bar on the white girl and the white eye bar on the black girl doesn’t make me racist. Or reverse racist.

  Somehow I have managed to insult and ridicule everyone in my immediate family except my kid sister. She was the accident and arrived when I was nine years old, which means I did not have the opportunity to battle her the way I did General Wrecker. In lieu of an embarrassing anecdote, I have decided to include this picture of her in MARCHING BAND!

  Influential People in My Life

  This picture is from a trip to New Orleans with the boys in the spring of 2001.Those are plastic trees inside raised marble beds sitting in the hotel’s main lobby. I could not have found anyone more deserving of this book’s dedication than its recipient, pictured here. We should have specified where and which kind when we told him to “go to bed, you’re fucking drunk.”

  Proof of Coolness

  Hit Explosion

  The incredible K-Tel release known as Hit Explosion hit the shelves in 1983 and was the first commercial recording I purchased with my own money. The cassette was loaded with hits practically exploding from the tape heads. I wish I could find some small kernel of hipness that I could salvage from this piece of memorabilia, but alas, I cannot. “Eye of the Tiger?” Maybe.

  Def Leppard

  Thankfully, I did not get sugar poured on me at this show. As you know by now, my kinship with Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot bordered on a mancrush. However, by early 1988, I had begun to relent and stopped writing him letters begging for a private Leppard show in my backyard. This was a landmark tour for various reasons, including the debut of Rick Allen (the one-armed wonder) on his custom electronic kit, Def Leppard playing arena shows “in the round,” which meant there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and Tesla as the opening act, clearly one of the most underrated bands in the history of late 1980s Los Angeles hair metal bands.

  Monsters of Rock

  Although not my first concert (that was Mötley Crüe at Pittsburgh Civic Arena in about 1984 on the Shout at the Devil tour), Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock was the first outdoor stadium concert I attended. My friend Jeff, a coworker Rob, and I loaded up Jeff’s Datsun 210 with a moldy cooler (empty) and a cassette deck stuffed with Iron Maiden before driving down to Three Rivers Stadium for the eight-hour show. I vividly remember standing three rows from the stage in front of Metallica’s new bass player, Jason Newsted, while people hurled drinks and insults at him as if he were somehow responsible for Cliff Burton’s death. I was stuck there on the AstroTurf infield for the Scorpions set without drinking water but did get the benefit of being doused with a fire hose as temperatures on the field approached ni
nety degrees. Jeff and I left midway through the Van Halen set without our buddy Rob, who had gotten too drunk to remember to find us at Gate A. In the days before cellphones, you showed up where and when you were supposed to, or your ass walked home. Rob’s ass walked home. He didn’t speak to us for months afterwards.

  1988

  This seemed to have been a huge concert-going year for me. Seventeen years old, working after school, and several friends at or near age twenty-one provided the perfect storm of loud, sweaty, rock goodness. While not all of these shows were memorable, and some kind of sucked (Whitesnake), they all gave me the opportunity to ogle poufy-haired metal chicks in their natural slutty habitat.

  1989