“The old man / hunched over / at the front door / will be prepared / to give you a tour, / but first he’ll ask / Scary, or no scary? // You should say / No scary.” – Zach Schomburg, “Scary, No Scary”
The kind folks over at Whisk(e)y Tit Journal published a haunted house story this week, “Remodeling,” and wouldn’t you know it, that’s my name on the byline! Look, I’m not very good or courageous about submitting my work yet, here’s my only other published fiction (before I was on staff at CX). So I’m taking a victory lap.
Besides, blogging’s fun, but fiction and poetry are the point. I’m not someone who paid for Twitter and is wondering why people still don’t like me as much as they like Mark Hamill. If you never read this blog again, but you obsessively follow my fiction and poetry? Well, that’d be weird, but I would be grateful.
So! Let’s look at some haunted houses. On Wikimedia Commons. For previous entries in this series, check out Ekphrasis, Ekphrasis: Ghosts Edition, and Ekphrasis: Crabs Edition.
Honestly, killer image to have as the very first image when you type “haunted house” into Wikimedia Commons. The machines don’t get much right, but credit where the banshees have screamed for it.
Also, if you type “brownie (” into Google search, the word FOLKLORE fills that open parenthesis with a quickness we haven’t seen since De’Aaron Fox’s rookie season.
THIS is the haunted house of the internet. Wikimedia Commons cannibalized Flickr and other places—I don’t really know what or how it went down, I don’t know anything beyond these are legally usable images if you cite the file—so now this photo exists, with its haunting composition, ghost of a human (I am not Googling Lawry Joseph Tilbury, I hope he’s enjoying a nice day at the beach somewhere), ghost of a 404-ed Flickr account, and strangely specific yet oddly low-information description. What are haunted houses numbers one through six? Is there a number eight? Is some photo of me floating around out there like this? Probably!
Does it give you 2020 flashbacks if I say “nature is healing?”
How did my actual house get in the Wikimedia Commons files. This is not supposed to be on the internet, this is where I am able to take my nightly technical dives. Chat with the Sea People. Takedown notice SENT.
Cut this house in half—but lengthen in by a third—and it’s akin to the house I was picturing when writing “Remodeling.” Not that the story is based on a true story or anything, I would be an awful candidate to help you with home repair. But this kind of remoteness, the way there’s a depressing voice in the back of my head—one that is completely out of step with my actual thinking or politics—that says “that land’s just waiting for a developer,” the way the fence just screams “there used to not be a house here, and it was not that long ago.” Shit. Just realized my whole manuscript might be pretty sad.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris