Audio books – Craig Spence

Harassment

Lucinda MacDonald hasn’t made direct contact with her abusive father Carl MacDonald for 20 years, but after a celebration of life for her brother Larry, whose death she blames on the old man, she starts receiving harassing phone calls from him. She wants to throw away her phone and contact the police, but her husband Josh tells her not to…

The phone calls began just a couple of days after Larry’s celebration of life. Every day, at least once a day, my phone would summon and—if I answered—I’d hear his raspy voice burrowing into my ear, clawing deeper and deeper into the thinking flesh.

That first time I tailspinned into utter shock and terror. How did he get my number? I wanted to throw my phone down onto the pavement and stomp it, as if it was a cockroach or a rat that had somehow wheedled its way into my purse, where it would spawn and infest and infect me if I didn’t kill it.

“Don’t do that,” Josh admonished, gripping me by the shoulders and fixing me with his gangster-eyes.

“Why not?” I shouted. “I’ll get another phone!”

“Yes, let’s get you another phone, but keep that one and—I hate to say this, love—but you’ve gotta take his calls, not always but from time-to-time.”

“Why the fuck would I want to do that?”

He sighed. “Because that phone is his only means of contact right now. If you cut the connection or refuse to answer, he’ll start looking for another way. He’s bat-shit crazy. He wants to get back at you…”

“Get back at me?” I howled.

“Don’t try to think it through, love,” he forced me to look at him, bracketing my head in his hands. “Bat-shit crazy. Just remember that.”

“I’ll go to the cops. Det. Drennan. Get a restraining order.”

Josh shook his head, like a teacher frustrated by a student playing stupid.

“Why not? He should know about this, shouldn’t he. It will help with his investigation.”

“Your old-man isn’t going to obey any restraining order, hon. How many times have you read in the news about a woman being assaulted and killed by a husband who was under a restraining order. For christ’s sake, it will only make him madder.”

He was right, of course. I slumped, all the fight gone out of me. He held me in his arms and rocked us consolingly. My fear subsided. Josh soaked it up like a sponge, calming me through some kind of emotional osmosis, comforting me like a child.

“What are we going to do?”

“It’s going to be hard, love. Really hard,” he warned.

“I know.”

“We’re going to keep him on the line, like a fish on a hook, and reel him in.” He ogled and squirmed like a cod flopping around in the bottom of a boat before you whacked it on the head.

“Stop talking in metaphor,” I shoved him away.

We laughed.

“Seriously, you’re going to have to play him, hon, until we figure out what to do. In the meantime, keep a record of every call and download his messages. Just because we’re keeping this secret doesn’t mean we’ve got anything to hide. Consider every exchange with your old-man as evidence. We may need it for our day in court, if it ever comes to that.”

“Where did you learn all this stuff?”

Josh looked nobly over my shoulder, an aristocrat posing for posterity. “My depths are in a different lake from yours, sweetheart, but they’re just as deep and just as dark.”

“Fuck off,” I shoved him again, and he received my benediction gleefully. If I didn’t love that man so much, I’d have to hate him.

***

Date/Time: 20100802-1143

Location: Oswego Street, Penthouse

CM: [Breathing heavily, not talking.]

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: [In a taunting tone of voice] Why don’t you say something, sweetheart?

LM: I’ve got nothing to say to you. Stop calling me.

CM: Nothing to say? After all these years?

LM: Nothing to say. Ever. Stop calling me.

CM: But I’ve forgiven you. You don’t have to feel ashamed.

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: My wounds healed up a long time ago—except the cuts to my heart, lovie. There’s not even any scars. You’re forgiven.

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: Don’t you think it’s time we became a family again?

LM: We never were a family. You were—still are—a tyrant and a perv. Stop calling me.

CM: [In a sneering tone] That’s not a very nice thing to say! You were delusional that night, honey. I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted to console you, is all.

LM: ‘Fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!’ You don’t remember yelling that?

CM: Yeah! After you hit me with a shot of bear spray!

LM: ‘You’re all alike, you bitches!’ Don’t you remember saying that about me and Mom, down in the kitchen, before you came up to lovingly attack me?

CM: [Getting angry] I was grieving, for christ’s sake! Out of my mind with grief!

LM: And breaking down my bedroom door was part of your grieving process?

CM: I’m not that man anymore, Lucinda. I’ve got over my grief.

LM: I’m happy for you. Now, stop calling me.

CM: How come you keep saying that? Don’t you want to be a family again?

LM: You’re not part of my family, Father. Never will be. Stop calling me.

CM: I regret having said it out loud, dear, but you really are a bitch! Aren’t you?

LM: Stop calling me, and you won’t have to put up with my bitchiness anymore.

CM: I’ll never stop calling you, hon. I’ll never stop trying to pull our family back together.

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: I’m a grandfather now. I want to see my grandson. Get to know him.

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: D’ya hear me! I want to get to know my grandson. Be a grandfather to him.

LM: The same way you were a father to Larry?

CM: I was a good father. Larry needed toughening up. Needed to become a man.

LM: [Angrily] Was spray painting his mural and kicking him half to death inside his tent part of your making ‘a man’ him?

CM: You’re nuts! I never had anything to do with that!

LM: [Listening, waiting.]

CM: You can’t keep me from seeing my grandson! I’ve got rights as his grandfather!

LM: Try to see him and I’ll get a restraining order slapped on your ass before sunset. I’ve still got all the evidence I’d need to make an order stick, and I won’t hesitate to make our sordid details public. There’s no need to keep them secret anymore. If you want to share that bit of family lore with my sisters, go ahead and try me.

CM: [Silence]

LM: [Ends call]

Funeral Box

Larry’s sisters Lucinda, Loretta and Louise MacDonald, joined by Lucinda’s new best friend Brenda Tanner, have convened over dinner at an outdoor café in Victoria’s Bastion Square. They’re planning Larry’s Celebration of Life. He had sustained serious injuries after being attacked in the parking lot where he was camped out while working on a mural commissioned ‘retrospectively’ by Brenda. His assailant had defaced the mural, which Larry had just completed and dedicated to Lucinda’s son Manny. But that assault wasn’t the cause of death; Larry died of an overdose in a nearby back alley. A homeless person and recognized graffiti artist, Larry had been living on the streets for about five years, after fleeing the haunted house of his and the MacDonald sisters’ abusive father Carl MacDonald…

***

We wouldn’t go for fancy, would leave Larry’s ashes in the provided black plastic, standard issue funeral box. “It’s what he would have wanted,” I argued. “I don’t want to make his death anything other than what it is by putting his remains into a fancy urn or scattering them to the four winds from some mountaintop you can only get to in a frigging helicopter. He’s dead. The cremated contents in that heavy black container we received are all that’s left of him. The only place Larry lives is in our hearts and minds.”

For a minute we sat in silence, immersed in our private thoughts, oblivious to the soundscape of our outdoor café and Wharf Street.

Brenda and my sisters agreed… eventually.

Cheapskates, Echo chided.

I had taken Larry’s cremation tag to a jeweller who fashioned it into a necklace. My sisters bridled when I showed it to them. “That’s morbid!” Louise made a face. I teased her for looking like an emoji. “Who’s going to wear it?” Loretta wanted to know.

Weird, Echo jumped into the fray.

“It’s symbolic,” I explained. “I want people to ask your question, Loretta; and I want them to cringe like you just did, Louise. Consider it a piece of functional art, a sort of fashion statement…”

I quavered, near tears. They backed off, giving me time and space.

“Who’s going to wear the medallion?” Brenda quietly insisted after a while.

“Good question,” I conceded. “I want everyone to wear it, I suppose.”

Stupid answer, Echo challenged.

I described what I envisioned as Larry’s memorial: a small, round table draped in black; the funeral box on it, elevated by a little pedestal; a commissioned portrait of Larry placed to one side; the cremation-tag necklace on the other; the whole display positioned in front of Larry’s mural—we had already determined that Larry’s life would be celebrated there, and that his temporary shrine would be placed next to his dedication of the wall to Manny.

Brenda had commissioned an artist to restore the mural. She told him to begin with the inscription, and ‘continue with your healing strokes from there.’ She also instructed him to time-lapse the restoration with a camera located on the opposite side of the lot. “We’ll record a piece of art in the remaking to share with the world,” she said. “Love defies entropy,” she proclaimed mysteriously.

Larry would have appreciated the ironic subtext of us using his remains to remind mourning celebrants that, As long as there are eyes to see and minds to remember, this work of art will be envisioned—it will not fade. For him, the fact that eyes develop cataracts and eventually go blind, and memories are ephemeral as plucked harp strings, didn’t constrain or limit consciousness. Larry believed in a universal spirit—chords that resonate and are forever resurrected in the network of awakened, believing souls.

God! And I thought I was the certified philosopher in the family!

I didn’t dare attempt to describe the twisted intellectual rhizomes he’d germinated in the rootball of my infested brain, but I did want to weave what I could make of them subliminally into Larry’s celebration of life, which we were planning. The thought of discussing his memorial indoors stifled me, made me feel like a wrapped mummy in a stone crypt. En plein air, I insisted. Whether out of compassion or enthusiasm, I couldn’t say, but they agreed, and we met at Bastion Square.

It was a bright, sunny evening. We shared an unspoken sense of guilt to be enjoying the breeze, the vibrance of passing traffic, the restaurant chatter and clatter, drinks, good food and—yes—even merriment while we were making arrangements to say our last goodbyes to the canister of ashes that had once been our brother and new-found friend. Larry would have forgiven us. But there was another foreboding source of darkness creeping across the pavement as the westering sun declined and shadows lengthened—Father?

What should we do about Father?

Loretta and Louise didn’t know he had tried to rape me; they only knew we’d had a ‘terrible row’ and that I’d left for good—‘and good riddance’ he’d complained. “If she wasn’t my daughter, I’d report her to the police,” he told them. “She attacked me with a fucking knife!”

I never corrected his version of events. How could I tell my sisters they were living under the same roof as a pervert who had tried to rape one of his own daughters? How could I report him, and have social services step in and shuffle my sisters and brother off into foster care? I did what I had to—warned the old bastard to keep his hands off them, and did my best to keep in touch with my siblings. Brenda was the only one at the table who I’d confided to about my father’s attempted rape; she shot me a warning glance when Loretta asked, “What do we do about Father?”

My whole body cramped. I wanted to shout, How can you even ask that? But managed to keep my mouth clamped shut. Hadn’t they made the connection between Father’s drive-by and the night-time assault on our brother? Wasn’t it obvious that his vicious upbringing had permanently damaged Larry—that he’d verbally battered our brother from the moment Larry had offered the first tentative, shy glimpses of his artist’s soul? Couldn’t they see what a FUCKING HYPOCRISY it would be to invite that piece of shit to my brother’s celebration of life?

“Of course they know all that, hon,” Brenda consoled later. “But they’re prepared to give him the benefit of their doubts; you don’t have any doubts. He destroyed any possibility of doubt that night he tried to rape you.”

In the end, before we left the café, we’d agreed that one of my sisters would invite Father, but that they’d also deliver a letter warning him not to approach me, or my son Manny, or to try communicating with us in any way. I’d walked to Bastion Square, but didn’t feel up to the return trip home and asked Brenda if she’d give me a lift. I felt defeated, knew I’d be increasingly fretful and oppressed at the prospect of meeting the real-life-ogre who had tried to rape me—my father. I wanted Brenda’s companionship. She walked me up to the penthouse instead of dropping me off out front on Oswego Street. I imagined her tucking me in and kissing me goodnight on the forehead before she crept out of my boudoir. Silly me! For the one-and-only first time, she stayed the night.

Talk about The Agonies and the Ecstasies of Lucinda MacDonald’s fucked up life!

Dance of Destruction

Homeless street artist Larry MacDonald is camped in the parking lot of the Inner Worlds Gallery in downtown Victoria. He has just completed a mural on the gallery’s external back wall, and has been commissioned to do another by gallery owner Brenda Tanner. The lot is enclosed behind a locked wrought iron gate. That’s not enough to make Larry feel secure though… nothing can make him safe from the threatening spectre of his abusive, tyrannical father, Carl MacDonald…

Imagine yourself a gentle spirit, camped—with permission—in a downtown parking lot. You don’t know what time it is because you don’t own a watch or a mobile to keep track of your days, hours, and minutes. You’re alone, a tiny node that exists in an infinite, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent network of connected conscious being.

Something has awakened you, and you’re instinctively alarmed, alert to every sound emerging out of the darkness. Might have been nothing, you think. But your body remains tensed, your breathing paused, heart thumping. Possibly an imagined sound? The fading clank of metal against metal conjured in a dream, a nightmare.

It’s gone. But you listen intently, trying to detect its echo merged into the background noise of urbanity: the hum of electricity through a faulty circuit; the distant throb of a motorcycle…

There! No mistaking it this time. It’s a sound you’ve heard before, one that matches a pattern most people would recognize, the sound of a chain rattling as it’s removed from a wrought iron gate and dropped to the ground.

Brenda? That doesn’t make sense. Why would she be here?

Another sound torques your anxiety, the unmistakable rattle of metal wheels on concrete, the gate opening. Not all the way. Just wide enough for a person to sneak through.

Should you unzip your tent door-flap and look to see who it is? Would you be able to identify them in the darkness? Should you shout, Who’s there? Let them know their trespass is not going unobserved.

No! Best to remain perfectly still, to pretend you don’t exist. Be invisible!

The scuffle of boots on gravel moves toward the far end of the Inner World Gallery’s back wall. Then there’s the sound of something being dropped to the ground, a backpack. Its owner rummages around, grunting, annoyed. You know who’s making the rooting, grunting sounds, but refuse to let that knowledge surface. It swims like a shark in its murky, unconscious depths; if you name the source of your terror, you will make it real.

Another sound sends tremors of panic and agony shooting through your nervous system. It’s the sound of a steel ball ricocheting against the inner wall of a shaken spray paint canister. Nooo! Your spirit shrivels like tissue paper thrown into a flame. Nooo! You want to block your ears. But you have to listen. It’s your day of judgment; refusing to give it voice by not listening would be a sin. You will be punished for that act of rebellion. It’s your duty to pay attention to the sputtered hiss of retribution. You will be chastised for denial.

Again and again, the canisters are shaken, the paint sprays. What colours is he spewing to obliterate my art? You ask the question as you infold, arms hugging knees, head tucked, eyes shut. ‘Whimpering like a whipped dog,’ as he would describe it.

Does it even matter which frequencies of light would be absorbed, which reflected in this vandal’s aerosol, his obliterating mist? It’s all black, and white, and shades of grey out there in his monochrome universe. His is the joyless satisfaction of a nihilist, of one who measures his stature by the piles of rubble and mounds of corpses he leaves behind.

I hate you! You want to shout. But you bottle and cork your rage because you know it’s pathetic. It would only fan the vitriolic fuel of his pleasure. He knows you’re helpless. You cannot stand up to him. Your petulance would only prove how successful he’s being with his torture.

Then the spraying stops. He turns, his boots rasping in the gravel, and faces your fabric shelter. He’s breathing heavily—not because he’s exhausted by his acts of desecration, but because he’s inflamed and needs more oxygen to sustain his obliterating passion. His boot smashes into the side of your tent with the force of a boulder dropped out of the sky. He’s stomping, kicking, trampling, an avenging demon come to destroy you. Not content to feel the collapse of willowy poles and fabric underfoot, this pulverizing Shiva continues his Dance of Destruction until he’s stomping and battering the human shape within its flattened shroud.

Only then do you comprehend the true nature of his furious assault—that he has come to kill you.

The Toast

Author, Craig Spence
Reader, Craig Spence
Production by Books Unbound

In this excerpt from Entrapment Lucinda MacDonald, her sisters Loretta and Louise, and their new friend Brenda Tanner celebrate their partnership as the guardian angels of Larry, the MacDonalds’ damaged brother, who Brenda has commissioned to do a mural on the outside back wall of her Inner Worlds gallery. It’s a transitional moment for Lucinda, and she breaks down…

Larry accepted Brenda’s offer.

“He bobbed his head and mumbled something like, ‘Sounds good,’ as if he was speaking from under a blanket with a mouthful of peanut butter,” she laughed. “I said to hell with it, grabbed him by the shoulders and hugged him hard, like a mother gorilla. He went stiff as a poker of course, but at least he didn’t struggle.”

“What part of him went stiff?” Louise joked.

We four hooted, raising our glasses in a toast to success. The ringing of our crystalline cluster-clink—barely audible over the rumble of passing traffic out on Wharf Street and the clatter of dishes in the sidewalk café—marked a beginning and an ending. Larry, dysfunctional genius that he was, had brought us MacDonald women back together as family.

Til death do you part, Echo intruded.

Shut the fuck up!

And, because of him, I had met Brenda, another love of my life…

I’ll shut the fuck up for now, Echo grumped.

And forever hold your peace! I snarked.

But it is getting kind of crowded in that heart locket of yours, don’t you think?

I said shut the fuck up!

When a glass breaks it makes a tickling sound. Hearts break silently within.

If you were real, I’d throttle you.

I am real…

“Lucinda?”

Brenda frowned, puzzled; my sisters looked on, concerned.

“You okay?”

“Oh!” I flustered. “I’m just a little overwhelmed.”

I wanted to take her hand, to kiss her a second time—or at least be kissed by her. I hated myself for feeling so desperately passionate, weakened by our celebratory moment. So pathetic!

“It’s going to be okay,” Brenda massaged my shoulder and the back of my neck.

“Let go,” Louise consoled.

“What?” I didn’t understand. What was I supposed to let go of?

“All these years, Luce, you’ve been the one who’s held us together. You’ve been our centre of gravity. Let go. We’re all grown up now. We’re fine. Even Larry, in his weird way, is becoming who he’s meant to be…” She paused; I waited. “You don’t have to be at the centre anymore, Luce; we’re all of us in mutual orbit, okay?”

I bowed my head, trembling, grateful, not wanting them to see me cry.

Loretta rounded the table, pressed her lips close to my ear, and whispered from behind, “Watch me spin, Sis.”

She flew away from us like a startled bird, weaving her way through and around the café tables, twirling out into Bastion Square. She couldn’t pirouette on pointe because she was wearing her sequinned thrift-store sandals. It didn’t matter. She floated effortlessly up and down the steps, buoyed by a musical spirit I couldn’t quite hear, but which I felt in every vibrant bone and nerve of my body. Some people stopped to watch her ballet; others hurried on, pretending not to notice.

“Oh my god!” Brenda gasped.

Gorgeous! Echo sighed.

“That’s because of you, Sis!” Loretta embraced me from behind when she’d flitted back to our table. “It’s all down to you!”

First Kiss

In this excerpt from Lucinda’s journal she and her sisters approach Inner Worlds Gallery owner Brenda Tanner to see if they can secure a safer lifestyle for their brother Larry. He’s been living on the street, earning money doing sketches and gaining a reputation as a graffiti artist. He’s pitched his tent in the gallery’s parking lot and started a mural on its back wall—getting enthusiastic approval from Brenda after the fact. The sisters want to talk to Brenda about Larry’s well-being, but Lucinda has someting else on her mind, too…

If Larry couldn’t be lured off the street, we’d make his homeless existence as safe and comfortable as possible. We approached Brenda with our plan because we wanted to do whatever we could to secure his place in her parking lot. “Of course he can stay there!” she countered. “Homelessness isn’t the same thing as placelessness. Larry MacDonald has a place right here!” She patted her left breast. “As long he wants to make my parking stall his home, he’s welcome.
“In fact, I’ve already talked to the tenants and owner of the building on the other side of my lot. I want to commission Larry to do a second mural on their wall. If they agree to it, and he accepts, he’ll be camped out in his patch of gravel for at least a year. Probably more.”
God! I wished in that moment I could stop loving Brenda so much. But I couldn’t help thinking and feeling like a romantic poet whenever I found myself within the ambit of her radiant being, a glow that suffused my waking and sleeping dreams. Shamelessly, I took advantage of her enthusiastic announcement to hug her; and she took advantage of my taking advantage by kissing me on the neck stepping back from that sudden embrace. I didn’t dare exchange a glance with my sisters, who had witnessed that subtle collapse of my known universe. I knew they knew; didn’t want them to know that I knew they knew, which would have entailed confused and embarrassing elaboration.
Some kisses are ephemeral—token gestures of affection that evaporate the instant they are bestowed; others stay with you, an intoxicant infusing your blood. I’ve never gotten over Brenda’s first kiss.

A Kik addict’s choice

Note: Beta edtions of Mural Gazer stories at MuralGazer.ca

…when he saw his mother’s purse, sitting on the kitchen counter that day of his downfall, he froze, a tightrope walker quavering, struggling to regain his balance. The moral math was simple: He craved his cola; his mother had deprived him of the sugary libations that made life oh so sweet; tit-for-tat, he would deprive her of enough grocery money to buy himself a pleasure-sustaining supply of Kik. Still, he wavered. Get a Kik out of life, his jingoistic nature crooned; get a kick in the arse with a pointy shoe, a fatherly voice from up on high threatened. He teetered on the edge for a moment, then…

Harry glanced through the window, out into the garden, where his mother was busy weeding and pruning. Opportunity had presented itself, the thirst was upon him, he could either take his chance or leave it, and not expect another any time soon.

Still, he resisted the gravity of his yearning, aghast. How could he even think something so dastardly, so cunning, as to steal from his own mother… As he excoriated, himself his body slipped into an altered state, beyond the pale of ordinary consciousness. He witnessed sadly, as if in a dream, his hand reach out, fingers scrabbling like spider’s legs, prying open her purse’s lips, rummaging its contents for her wallet. He pulled it out. His breathing quickened and eyes widened as he riffled through the week’s house money, a sheaf of bills neatly sorted into their coloured denominations…

The Cat’s Ass Trophy

“Help! I can’t move my legs!”

Taken out of context, I can understand how that plea might trigger thoughts of collapsed mines, bombed out apartment buildings, avalanches or any number of natural and man… er, human made catastrophes. You could add car crashes to the list, strokes, falls off ladders, the tally goes on.

That’s not what I intended, though, lounging in one of the blue plastic Cape Cod chairs out on our back deck, watching the progress of another home run for God arcing through the infinity of blue sky over Mount Brenton.

“You weren’t thinking at all!” was how Ashley put it. “You scared the crap out of me!”

Actually, I’d been thinking about a lot of things, before Plato came along and jumped onto my lap. Good thoughts, mostly, about how lucky I am to be living my retirement era in Chemainus. As suburbs go, Cook street rates pretty good. It’s got a crime rate that flat lines somewhere near zero, there’s not a single traffic light in town, strangers wave and say hello on the street and in the aisles of the Country Grocer store, and it’s located in the mild temperate zone of Southeast Vancouver Island—accurately fabled as a bit of paradise afloat on the Salish Sea.

There’s some irredeemably grouchy types who grumble in their coffee mugs down at Nic’s Café that the best thing about Muraltown is it’s within easy driving distance of Nanaimo in one direction, Victoria in the other. I say to them: If you can afford a patch of turf in either of those two places bigger than a dish cloth, go for it. I’m happy where I am.

I was especially happy to be out on the back deck that day.

Not that I don’t like company. I do. And I really like Serena, even if she is smarter than me and can’t help delving excitedly into the details about her research into ‘mitochondrial DNA and the role it plays in aging and degenerative diseases’. She’s ‘good people’, our niece. And my wife’s good people too. But put them in the same room, and you might as well stick your head inside a beehive, the way they natter. A quiet guy like me can’t get a word—or even a thought—in edgewise.

That’s why I retreated out onto the back deck. Once they’d talked their ways through the agony of childbirth, how to get your lemon poppyseed muffins out of the tray, the best deals to be had at the hospital auxiliary thrift shop, and so on, I decided it was time to take out the recycling and stop off on the way back for a snooze in the waning light of a balmy spring afternoon, while they continued with the task of sorting through the family photo albums.

“Oh look, there’s you uncle Martin, fifty pound lighter, with hair and no wrinkles!” “Aw! There’s Panda. Remember the time he ate your socks and we had to watch like expectant parents for him to poop them out.” “Auntie Ash, you were such a hippie. I love that dress, and the army boots are ever so chic! Ha, ha, ha!” “The Half-Lemon! Oh My God, we actually drove around in a yellow VW beetle? Look at the price of gas… 48 cents a gallon! Christ, they don’t even mint pennies anymore, and gas is measured out by the litre.”

Even though I was happy for them, I have to admit to being pinpricked by envy, watching Ash and Serena babble on like partners at a quilting bee. I’m not a feminist or anything, but I was thinking, if more men could get themselves into that head space, there’d be fewer Putins in the world, and the people of Ukraine might not be suffering through a senseless armageddon, watching their cities getting pummelled into dust like 21st Century Sodoms and Gomorrahs. I’m ashamed of my male gender sometimes. Wish I could have a bit less Y in my jeans and a bit more ‘Why?’ in my brain.

We have strange thoughts in that fantastical zone between awake and asleep. There I was, reclining in the Cape Cod chair out on the back deck, the brilliant sunshine lighting up the inside of my eyelids like lava lamps when, plop, Plato landed on my lap.

Cat’s paws are the closest thing I can imagine to an angel alighting… until they begin kneading that is, their claws tugging at your clothing and pricking your skin. Plato circled round for a couple of laps, like he was tamping down the grass under a tree on his vast savanna, then settled in and started purring. I sat perfectly still, trying to make my bony thighs soft as down filled cushions. The rumble of his contentment echoed through me. You have to feel a cat’s purr to really appreciate it, let it permeate consciousness.

Please understand, Plato is not a lap cat. He’s aloof, a strutter through our lives, more likely to show you the pink petunia when you make a move to pat him than to rub up against your leg. Usually he stumps off like you’re beneath his dignity. Ash and I are lap-cat-people, though, yearning for that mystical connection between cat’s fur and human skin, and that reassuring deep vibrato of feline contentment. He was deigning to settle onto my lap for a snooze that afternoon. But lap time with Plato? It’s like cuddling a land mine. Don’t touch, don’t move, don’t even breathe, or he’ll be off.

Ash and I share the joys of those moments as if we’d experienced a second coming. I often wonder what it is we’re missing in our lives, that we hanker so desperately after our cat’s erratic affection? We have each other, isn’t that enough? Our death-defying circle of friends? Our kids, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, our dog Sophie, neighbours who wave hello wherever we go in Muraltown? Isn’t that enough?

Not unless Plato loves us back, I guess.

How could I be so selfish as to not share that glorious interlude with Ash? So, risking all, I slipped my fingers like a bomb disposal expert into the hip pocket of my ever tightening jeans, pinched the top of my mobile and slid it ever so gingerly out from under Plato. He was still purring when the phone came to life and I pointed it at him in camera mode. His enlarged rump filled the bottom of my frame; my hiking boots—propped on the deck table—the top.

‘Click’ went the camera. Plato purred on. I dared not breathe a sigh of relief.

Kids can thumb in a text quicker than ‘u or i’ can let go a fart. I punched my mobile’s runes the same way you’d poke at an elevator button, my pudgy index finger hitting the wrong key half the time, so that I’d have to go back and try again, and again, hissing like a kettle too long on the hob. But eventually I got the message into the allotted space beneath the distorted image of Plato on my lap, then zip, off it went.

‘Help! I can’t move my legs!’ it said.

Panic is instantaneous contagion. It zaps the collective consciousness of a room like the sudden glare of a flood light. It’s another sort of bomb, its shockwaves radiating out into the neural network, forcing adrenaline to squirt like juice from a squeeze bottle into the guts of its infected tribe. On the one hand, panic gets us moving before the bus runs us over; on the other, it doesn’t give us time to think. The autonomic nervous system kicks in and we get jerked around like puppets. If we’re lucky enough to survive, we analyze ‘the event’ after the fact, picking apart the threads of mayhem.

My theory is we’re predisposed to panic. The Doomsday Clock is always ticking closer and closer to midnight, shaving off half the remaining time, then half again, until the calculus of destruction tells us there’s nothing, no measurable allotment of milliseconds left between us and…

Duck, cover and hold! We don’t want to hear that bomb go off!

Ash, for example, is predisposed by images of me snacking on potato chips and sneaking chocolate bars, munching toward the imminent possibility of a heart attack; she has witnessed my shuffle-footed stumbling often enough to anticipate my tumbling down any convenient flight of stairs; tick, tick, tick, the clock keeps blinking, until…

‘Bing!’ The text message slid into the corner of her screen, minus the cute, explanatory photo of Plato snuggled in my lap. It shouted: “Help! I can’t move my legs!”

So there I sat, swaddled in the joy of Plato’s fidgety affection, while Ash and Serena dashed about the house looking for the corner I had collapsed into, or the staircase I’d toppled down, expecting to find me dead, my finger still touching the screen after I’d shot off my desperate expiring plea for assistance…

“You scared the crap out of me!” Ash shouted without preamble once they’d zeroed in on the back deck. She slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to bruise, maybe even trigger some kind of cardiac event. “Serena was about to dial 911!”

“It was an accident!” I protested. “There was supposed to be a picture…”

“You’re the accident,” she shook her head. Case closed; sentencing to be announced over dinner and executed over some indeterminate length of future time.

Thoroughly harangued, I was left standing on the deck by my two saviours, who marched back into the house through the sliding door, shaking their heads, words like ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘stupid’ reverberating in their wake. I turned round, and looked wistfully at Plato, inscrutable as ever, purring away on the Cape Cod chair.

“You little shit,” I said. “I really do love you.”

~ The End ~

What is a D2W Book?

**Screen views of *The Mural Gazer*, a Direct-to-Web novel**

What is D2W? The easiest way to answer that question is via a link to my Direct-to-Web novel The Mural Gazer. But before you click let me point out a couple of advantages D2W has already made available to you as reader and me as author:

First, I can share my novel with you in an instant, just about anywhere on the planet you can pull in an internet signal;
Second, you don’t need any dedicated technology to get into the story. Your laptop, mobile or desktop computer are your eReaders.

So back to definitions: A Direct-to-Web book is published as a website.

More specifically, it’s a website formatted as a book that reads like a print edition. If you’ve visited The Mural Gazer, you have seen its landing page, which introduces the story as would the front and back covers of a conventional book.

From there you can follow links to either Pullout, the opening scene, or the Episodes menu item, which takes you to the Mural Gazer’s table of contents. It’s the same type of decision you might make browsing a volume pulled from a bookstore shelf.

If you dive right into the story via the Pullout page, you will see an audio link at the top, which lets you listen to a reading. That’s handy if you happen to be riding on a subway or driving to work.

You can always jump to another page, or get back to where you were when reopening the novel on another device via the Episodes table of contents link.

Beneath the audio bar and at the foot of each page are links to the next episode. Every page links to its following episode, so you can read or listen to the entire novel as if you were turning the pages of a print edition.

That pretty well sums up the Direct-to-Web concept in terms of what you might expect from the design and layout of any book: accessible, convenient, portable and navigable.

There are a few extras, though.

You don’t need a light source to read a D2W thriller! You can be right out there in the dark and stormy night, scrolling through its pages in situ, while glancing over your shoulder for any ghouls that might be in pursuit!

The Mural Gazer can be readily shared via email and social media, so you can invite friends into your reading adventure. At the top of each page are social media and email icons that allow you to instantly send a link from the page you are reading to anyone on your contacts list. Books are meant to stimulate conversations.

Up in the menu bar there’s also a Contact tab, so D2W readers can connect with or follow authors if they want to share some ideas, ask a question or keep up with new releases. This feature is especially important if, like me, you are an author who sometimes chooses to write ‘dynamically’, inviting critique as the story unfolds in real time.

Not showing on this excerpt form the Mural Gazer are internal links. But say in the seventh paragraph of Pullout I wanted to give readers a snapshot view from the Malahat Summit on Vancouver Island, up Finlayson Arm? I could put a link into the text and take them there. Or I could link to a side story from the narrative, or provide supporting description for a word or phrase some readers might not be familiar with.

Of course, because the reader happens to have their internet device in front of them, they can do a quick Google snoop any time they choose to check out a scene or expand on a bit of information.

Finally, if you look at the widget area on both the Pullout and the Episodes table of contents pages, you will see a description of the book and a button that allows readers to ‘Buy-In’ to the story. Readers can get a sense of the story before – at any point – they choose to buy, and authors can choose just how far they want to allow readers to go before buying.

Eventually that space will also allow readers to purchase print and ePub editions of The Mural Gazer. D2W books complement their print editions, giving readers who like to read on screen the option – they don’t replace hard copy editions, which will long remain the preference of most book lovers.

The capabilities we’ve shared will be the subject of future posts in the Books Unbound series. The objective of Direct-to-Web publishing is to make it easier for readers to buy books and authors to share and sell them.

Sustainable Literature is the goal.

We’ll delve more deeply into the features of a D2W publication and how the reach and scope of literature can be broadened through the use of digital and online technologies in future posts. In the meantime, thank you for visiting what is, in fact, a Direct-to-Web book in the making: Books Unbound.

Up Next: Getting books off the online shelf

Is Direct-to-Web a way to go?

The Mural Gazer is being published Direct-to-Web at **MuralGazer.ca**

Since December, 2019, I have been writing and publishing The Mural Gazer, a Direct-To-Web novel set in Chemainus B.C. I’ve posted 63 episodes to-date, and have 17 more to go. My best guess is I’ll be finished the ‘first draft’ of my online edition by the spring of 2022.

It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m emerging from it more convinced than ever that Direct-to-Web books have a place in our writing and publishing mix. But I know I’ll go about it differently when I launch my next title, and that a conversation about D2W with follow writers and publishers would prove invaluable.

So in the coming months I am going to review what’s been done, why and how, inviting people to join me in a critique of The Mural Gazer, not only as a literary work, but as a mode of writing, publishing and distributing ‘books’. Questions I’d like to address include:

Why is literature more important that ever in the 21st Century?
Why should it be necessary to expand the definition of a ‘book’ in the digital era to include D2W?
What are the features and benefits of Direct-to-Web writing and publishing?
What are the obstacles to books as websites?
What steps can be taken to overcome those obstacles?
How will writers and publishers incorporate D2W into their creative and business processes?
How do writers and publishers derive income through Direct-to-Web releases?

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I’m not used to thinking in these terms; I’m more of a hands-on type. But if Direct-to-Web is to be viewed as something more than a gimmick (and I think it has to be), questions like these must be answered. I hope you’ll join in the conversation. Please subscribe to my email list if you want to receive updates and notifications.

Thanks,
Craig Spence

The Squirrel & The Owl

Click up above for a Video Reading
Excerpted from the children’s novella, Flibber T. Gibbet, this story-within-a-story sees a quick-thinking squirrel trying to avoid being eaten by a predatory, but not unsympathetic owl.

Ptero was going about his business one evening, searching for nuts, berries and tasty insects to eat, when – whoosh – Bubo, the owl swept down and snatched him up in her talons.

He struggled and squirmed, but she held him fast in her powerful grip, and he knew he could not survive long. He had to think quickly if he was ever to see his nest again.

‘Bubo!’ he gasped. ‘Bubo, why would you bother eating a scrawny little squirrel like me. Winter has just ended, and I’m not much more than a skeleton right now. Let me go, and I promise to return to the very branch you snatched me from in three month’s time. Then I will be plump and delicious, and make a mouthful… er, a beakful.’

Because squirrels always keep their word, Bubo agreed to Ptero’s request, and returned on the appointed evening to find his prey, plump and well-fed, on the same branch where they’d first met. Bubo swooped down and carried him off again.

‘Bubo,’ Ptero pleaded this time. ‘Why would you tear me to pieces and eat me up now, when it is the season I am preparing to make many meals for you?’

‘Explain yourself, and be quick about it, for I am hungry,’ Bubo demanded.

‘It’s springtime, and I must mate. Soon there will be many of me scampering amongst the branches for you to catch and eat. Three more months, and I promise to return so you can me carry off a third time. But by then there will be many more like me for you to feast on.’

To Bubo this made good sense, so he returned Ptero to their favourite branch. ‘I shall see you in three months my little friend, then – sadly – I will have to gobble you up, for that is my nature,’ she said as she flew off.

So Ptero met a mate, and they had a family, and after the three months past he returned for Bubo to catch again.

‘What am I to say now,’ Ptero fretted, shivering with fright. He thought, and thought, but no new ideas came to him before Bubo glided silently overhead and snatched him up a third time.

‘So Ptero,’ the owl said as they flew away, ‘what reason are you going to give me tonight to keep me from my dinner?’

Ptero had nothing to offer, so he went limp in Bubo’s talons, closed his eyes, and prepared for his grisly fate.

‘Before I devour you, let me ask a question,’ Bubo said.

Eager to postpone what was surely coming, even for a heartbeat – and I can tell you, a squirrel’s heart beats very quickly when he is afraid – Ptero replied, ‘Please ask, and I will do my best to answer.’

‘What time of year is it, my scrumptious little friend?’

Now, to Ptero this seemed a silly question. But he pretended to be puzzled, and took as many wing beats as he possibly could to answer. ‘It is the season of long days and warm weather,’ he said at last.

‘Indeed,’ Bubo agreed. ‘It is also the season of abundance, is it not, when an owl can catch more food on a single night’s hunt than she could eat in a week.’

‘True,’ Ptero agreed.

‘And what season will arrive in three month’s time?’

‘Why that would be the season of falling leaves and withering fruit.’

‘So what might a wise owl do – and there is no such thing as an owl who-hoo-hoo isn’t wise – what might a wise owl do with a bit of prey, if her stomach and larder were already full, but winter was on its way?’

Ptero hesitated, fearful of making a guess. But he finally screwed up enough courage to say, ‘He might return a little squirrel to its branch and come back again in three month’s time, when his larder and belly will both be empty?’

‘Ah!’ Bubo hooted happily. ‘Excellent idea. Why, if you weren’t shaped like a plump little rodent, I might mistake you for one of my kind.’

And so for many seasons Ptero and Bubo have been getting together for their pleasant flights, and neither has figured out in all that time why one should eat the other. You could even say they’ve become good friends.

~ The End ~