I want to get better at writing. Can you guys give me any tips?Story:https://novels2.com/novel/infierno-a-series-of-horror-stories-87998/ed-at-colonus-2657212Audiobook:https://voca.ro/14IQOfcH3wyl>“When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”––J.F.K., before being shotHi, I’m Ed. Nice to finally talk. We might’ve known each other from another life. This is the new me.Most guys in here don’t forget my name. But, a long time ago, before I was in here, the gals on the outside never even knew my name. They never even looked at me. I guess I’m ugly. Chin too small. Little lips. Misshapen brow. Got a doc to look at the darned thing. He said I got some sorta growth shit. I don’t know. And the glasses. Forget it. Who wants a poindexter? But I ain’t smart. Not book smart, anyway. Not ‘til now.On top of that. I’m far, far too tall. Last time they measured me, I was almost seven foot. And maybe I’ve grown some more in here. I heard parlour palms grow in the dark. I heard rat’s teeth grow infinitely, until they grow into the rat’s own brain.The darkness has got me thinking. All I can see is this dictaphone’s red dot, glowing. It reminds me of a campfire on Loma Prieta. But, maybe, just maybe, it’s also an eye. Looking at me for my crimes, my sin, my taint.Well, here it goes. I never spoke good. I think that’s why girls never liked me. Biggest boy in school and girls just regarded me as an oddity. A weird giant among the nymphs. I never read good neither. Never went to college. Never had the high school prom. Never had a hookup in the car. Never got to run my fingers down her neck, down her jeans, down her cleft.It made me mad. I guess you can tell. Oh, boy, my hands are shaking. I’m mad, alright. That’s why I’m leaving this voice message. Long story, I guess I’ll get into it later. I never got to be with girls, not as I should anyway. Coz I was holed up in the bughouse over state lines. After I got out, all I did was pump gas, jerk off at home, and shoot the shit with other angry young men. Y’know, blue collar types.My mother works at UCSC. Or, should I say, she did. Not a professor. God forbid they dress up women in tweed and call them professors. But the world has changed a lot since the sunny seventies. Drugs and earthquakes and bloodshed and all. Free Love weren’t a thing for me. On account of being in the asylum. Love wasn’t either.Mom never loved me. Always called me names. Said I was just like my pop. I never knew him. He was in the army. Not green, neither. I don’t know what outfit, but he was there in the thick of it. Starting in ‘43, up ‘til the end of it. We all know how that war ended. Fireworks. That’s what my father did, I hear. Atomic testing. I wonder if he lit up all those little paper houses himself. Ha-ha.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. I blame my bitch of a mother for the way things are. I could never talk to any of those sweet, sun-kissed California gals. Mom never showed me how to. All she knew was complain and drink, usually at the same time. Add that with her profession at the university. Nothing worse than a woman at a university. Real stuck up. Real condescending. But she wasn’t smart or nothing. Admin. Annoying bureaucrat type. You already know the ones. Something out of Kafka. Now, I ain’t usually the reading type. It’s just they gave us plenty to read here in the hole. I read them aloud. Of course, all books, all stories, all poems, must be read aloud. I read them for the blind. But I know they already see me for what I am. I don’t know why I killed mom. I think it was the last thing I had to do. After what I did. I even used her car. I even used her head. Oh, God. I guess it’s for the best I’m in here. If you’re listening, I’m sorry. I gotta. I gotta. I’ll try again next time.#Here we go again. I got sidetracked by someone in the next cell. He’s in here for something real bad. So am I. I guess. But I’m trying to better myself, aren’t I? I read to others. Try to build them up. Try to fill them with stories and pretty ideas, nice images. That sort of thing. I like reading to the blind. I found out the guy who wrote the Odyssey, uh, Homer, he was blind too. I’d wanna read to Homer if I could. But, y’know, he’s dead and all. They got me to read about Jason and the Golden Fleece. I didn’t know Jason’s journey was a retelling of all sorts of stories. That’s because of the poet who wrote it. I forget his name, but Jason is another type of Perseus, another type of Odysseus. One cut off Medusa’s head. The other slept in Calypso’s and Circe’s bed. Whoever this poet guy was, he worked at the Library of Alexandria. He taught Pharaohs. That’s what I would do in a past life, if I could start it all again. Remake stories and teach Pharaohs. Ha-ha. I guess that’s what I do now. But there’s no fire, no flame, here in the dark. My library is all on this dictaphone. So, I better be careful what I say, I guess. And you can be the Pharaoh for me. With my words, I can resurrect these memories from the crypt. I dunno if a dung beetle or a mummy is gonna come out. I hope it’s both.#The one story they got me to read recently was by Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. I really thought to myself. Wait a minute. This is the best thing since sliced bread. Why didn’t I know about this before? It felt like apple pie on my tongue. Sweet for my heart and brain.
I think the guards, and the prison warden, said it was my best performance yet. They told me to get in character as much as I could. It was easy to do. ‘Til the guy next door started speaking in tongues and crying and screaming about nonsense. Something about Christ. Something about stigmata. Jeez Louise. The hole is just that. A hole. I wonder if I’ll ever see the daylight again.I know. I know I don’t deserve it. But that scene when Oedipus starts recalling the Sphinx. How she’s a singing bitch. How people weren’t never free because of her riddles. And how a prophet needed to go and solve her riddles. Well, I guess that made me want to see the sun. I wanted to say that all out loud. That monologue. And feel the dawn touch my skin. So that I know it’s all true. That I’m a prophet. I had to cut out her tongue. Coz a Sphinx always lies. Just like a Medusa turns a man’s heart to stone. Stone. That’s what I am now. That’s what I was then. Hard as stone. #She always petrified me. Even when I was a kid. She’d throw me in the basement. Hit me. Call me a little faggot. Say I was just like my pop. But she never let me have him. Worthless, weird, ugly. There weren’t an insult she didn’t use on me. Once, when she threw me in the dark basement, I just screamed my head off. I’ve never screamed like that since. I punched walls. I threw myself into the blackness. I pulled and tugged my hair. I screamed and screamed, ‘til my throat was almost bleeding. Taste of iron. So raspy I couldn’t speak no more. But I tried to scream. Soundlessly. ‘Til my eyes felt like they’d fall out. That made her ticked the hell off. She came down to the basement, yelling and carrying on. The light poured into the dark well. Into that city of Dis. That’s the first time I hit her. I threw her across the basement. I didn’t kill her, but it looked like I did. I went up the steps. My little sister was there, bawling her little eyes out. I just walked past her, went into her room, and pulled her dollies’ heads off. And threw her dollhouse around the room. Threw ‘em ‘til all the parts went flying and breaking everywhere. I don’t remember much after that. ‘Cept when mom came back up, bloody tangled hair and all. She said, “Ed, you’re going to have to stay with your pop.”My pop? Aw man. Maybe I gotta do this more, I thought to myself. Coz I’ll get just what I want.#Ed. There is no chicken and egg. Only sperm and men. The cycle of Ed begetting more Eds, until the whole world is filled with Eds. Ha-ha. Like father, like son. My pop weren’t Laius, or nothing. Still my father, I guess.
