Angry

My next post was going to be all about what I wanted to do with this blog and with my website: With Intent to Commit Horror. However, as important as that is, it will just have to wait.

The other day I took my beloved wife shopping for her anniversary present: A shopping spree for art supplies. We went to an art store named Prizm and bought many interesting things. Unfortunately we had our youngest son with us. The babysitters were willing to watch our daughter but not so our autistic son.

Aidan loved being in the art store but only because he wanted to finger everything and move them around. We were these over an hour and that was an hour of me constantly thwarting my son so that my wife could find just the right supplies. As you might guess, young pre-school aged children do not take thwarting very well and autistic pre-school aged children handle it with even less grace.

Although he screamed angrily a few times I was fairly successful in redirecting his attention and keeping him walking around the store so he didn’t have much time to touch things.

Our last stop was a mega-sized craft store named Michaels. My wife and Aidan went in alone while I quickly checked out something at a near by computer store. When I found them in Michaels, Aidan was even crankier than before. I took charge of him and eventually found a bench where I could hold him and sing songs. (When he gets cranky, he can sometimes be comforted by being held and squeezed as this reminds him of his physical boundaries and that he isn’t hurt. Other times, it only reminds him to try and head-butt Daddy in the nose.)

Later in the car I described a late middle aged couple who seemed awfully impatient with the time it took for the cashier to ring my purchases up and for me to pay her. Lots of sighs and murmurs about how the other line was already through. I was merely amused by their disposition . . .

UNTIL . . .

Deena told me that they were the couple that seemed very put out by Aidan’s screaming. The woman even “screamed” in a low, mocking tone of voice so that only my wife and Aidan would hear. Luckily Aidan didn’t, otherwise it would have set him off into total meltdown. Unfortunately I had a meltdown.

I saw red. I was filled with road rage and we hadn’t left the parking lot yet. I wanted to smash their car with my tire iron. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow them whole. I wanted to let my dog go potty on their garden.

But what I really wanted was the chance to be there when she gave her “mocking” scream and ask her, “Are you normally this ugly or do you just enjoy making fun of children who are mentally handicapped? My son is an albino which means he can’t see very well. And he’s autistic which means he doesn’t think like normal children and he isn’t as emotionally developed as other children. He can no more help screaming when he’s upset than you can help looking like a dried up stick of asparagus.”

I guess parents of autistic children can have public meltdowns too.

Happy Anniversary

Seven years and two kids ago, I married the most wonderful, intelligent and creative woman on the face of the planet. Since we live in the Greater Cleveland area, this anniversary/Valentine's Day we spent in the house -- the dinner plans aborted and the mail not forth coming -- because the city is pretty much snowed in.

I had plans to take her on a shopping spree for a bit of impulse buying at a local art supplies store while my wife had ordered a book for me from Shocklines -- Your One-Stop Shop for Horror. She ordered a book that I have been saving my lunch money for weeks to purchase.

The book is Prodigal Blues by Gary Braunbeck. You can check out the book here on Shockline's website or on Cemetery Dance Publications website.

Gary writes books that are classified as horror, but here's the secret: they're really stories that, emotionally, gut you like a fish. His most powerful writing draws upon the tragedies of his past and then his craft hones the words to scalpel-sharp edge so you barely feel the cut until you're bleeding. And you love him for it.

I urge you to check out In Silent Graves by Gary if you can. It is a paperback edition, with some revision, of an earlier hard-to-find small press novel called The Indifference of Heaven. Check your bookstore and see if they can get it for you, or your library. If the library doesn't have it see if they can inter-library loan it from another library -- maybe by using worldcat. It's worth searching for. Although Barnes and Noble Online doesn't offer the book anymore, you can sometimes find a used copy through them.


In Silent Graves
You can find out a lot more about Gary Braunbeck in the semi-autobiographical work Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of Life. Not only will you get some excellent reviews of movies and music, you'll get context by way of the life of the reviewer (which is Gary himself) and insight as to why somebody would write horror novels and short stories in the first place.


Fear in a Handful of Dust:
Horror as a Way of Life
Meanwhile, I am waiting with bated breath for my copy of Prodigal Blues. It will be his first non-supernatural horror novel and promises to be his most emotion-flaying story yet.

Did I mention that my wife really loves me?