GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #155: THE END OF THE NIGHT

I ready myself to leave Days of the Dead. I want to be there for every day, but I don't have the money, and I am denied a vendor table. I leave early. I say my goodbyes to the one friend who showed up as a fan, and as I go through the revolving door, I see an Arab gentleman entering. He wears a turban, and snow has frosted the top of his headwear. Then I see the outside world, and I curse it. Snow falls heavy and hard, flakes the size of pennies.


I have a long walk back to the parking garage, and I can feel my entire body being infected by these flakes. I follow the path through the parking lot, and a young woman with a big umbrella approaches me. She is looking at her iPad and pays me no mind, but I can hear what she's looking at. The X-Files theme echoes back to me as I watch the snow fall in front of me. The mad calliope drifts to me in the soft breeze, and I can see every individual snowflake fall before my eyes.


A hush falls across the land, and I'm alone. I blink, and I can see a freeze frame of the falling snow. In the distance I can see trees, bare of leaves, skeletal branches reaching toward the powdery sky. I pause, and I look about me. No one is present to see this silent beauty, and I feel kind of important. This moment is for me, and for me alone. I snap a picture which I will eventually post to my Twitter, but it doesn't do that hushed silence justice. It's a frozen moment in time, and it's gone, never to be replicated. Never to be explained.


I move on to the parking garage, which is also silent. I feel a moment of fear when I realize that I'm alone, and if anything were to happen, my slightly pacifistic self would be left alone to deal with any threat that might present itself. I see a man approach me, and I can only guess what he sees. An overweight man with a fresh goatee and his hair and shoulders frosted with the fresh snowfall.


He ignores me. I ignore him. Our worlds are not threatened. I get in my car and drive home in the first blizzard of the year. Snow flows around me like star beams in hyperspace.


I arrive home. The beauty is still out there, despite my attempts of capturing it. But that's all right. You will all find it without my help. I hope it serves you well.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #118: PAINKILLER NIGHTMARES AND SOME KILLER FARTS

Last night, I had a few drinks. I wasn't hammered, since it was only Captain & Cokes, and rum doesn't have nearly as much alcohol as my usual whiskey. However, when I got home from the bar, I felt an incredible pain where I just got a gum graft. I decided to take one of my pain pills, because I have a high tolerance of booze and pain medication (morphine, for example, does nothing for me; it takes Dilaudid to get through to me when I'm in pain). It didn't help, so I took another. I still felt shitty, so I did something I probably shouldn't have done: I took a third.


Booze and pain pills don't mix. Just ask Heath Ledger.


Anyway, I'm fine. But at the time? Yikes.


I dreamed that I was trying to go to sleep, except I didn't realize it was a dream at the time. In fact, looking back, I knew my eyes were closed, but I could still see through my eyelids. That probably should have been my first indication that I was dreaming.


But then I felt something pushing on my soul. It's hard to describe. I've never had old hag terrors, but I imagine that's what it feels like. I couldn't control my body as some force shoved itself into me, paralyzing me until there was more of it in my body than me. I tried to turn over, to turn away from whatever was doing this to me, but it wouldn't let me get away from it. It seemed like we battled in my body for hours, and finally, I managed to beat it back.


But I could still feel it. Every inch of my body undulated with its force, as if it were trying to get me to do its bidding. I managed to stumble to the bathroom, where I looked into the mirror and saw my face . . . swirling. I don't know how else to put it. Dents formed and squirmed in my face as if my own muscles were fighting against me. It's kind of like what the Vomit Comet does to astronauts in training, except all movements were measured and calculated.


I ran around to my family and tried to beg them for help, to tell them that something was inside me, trying to force me to do things. Everyone was too sleepy, though. They didn't want to hear it. No one believed me. No one would even look at me. I screamed for them to at least look at my savagely twisting face, but they just wouldn't do it.


Finally they looked, and whatever was in me chose that moment to stop. My family looked at me like I was crazy, or they were annoyed because they wanted to sleep so badly.


As soon as they looked away, it started again. After that, I don't remember much, but I woke up shortly after to the horrid sound of loud, near-diarrhetic farts. The smell formed a wall around me. Only then did I realize that I'd been dreaming. Some of the relatives I ran to for help aren't alive in real life. Details about the houses I ran through didn't match up with reality. I should have known that I was dreaming, but for some reason, it didn't register to my stupid mind.


But holy shit, these farts were nearly killing me. I was maybe three gassers away from becoming an urban legend. They were so close to messy shits, I knew that if I didn't get up, I ran the risk of shitting myself. Most of my body wanted to stay there and go back to sleep. It still felt dulled by the meds, and I wanted to relax and let the pills do their work. However, at the same time, I didn't want to shit myself for the second time in the same year as an adult. I didn't even want that ONE instance, but that was beyond my control, since I was dying at the time. Now? No. I couldn't allow it.


I dragged myself out of bed to the bathroom, where I sat on the toilet for a half-hour, dropping gassers so deadly they burned. No diarrhea, even though I'd expected it. But then again, painkillers tend to block me up, so I shouldn't have expected that, anyway.


Finally, I got up, wiped my customary three times--nothing, of course--and looked at the clock. Much to my surprise, I had only been asleep for ONE FUCKING HOUR. It had felt like an eternity.


I went back to bed and tried to go to sleep. I still had a bit of painkiller funk in me, so I had a slight smile on my face, but I just couldn't find slumber again. I twisted and turned, but nothing happened. Part of me was tempted to take another painkiller, just to get to sleep, but I'd been through enough. Besides, that way leads madness. So far, I've been able to avoid an opiate addiction. Hell, I bested the king of Elmhurst Hospital, Dilaudid. I'm not going to give in to these measly pain pills. In the end, I had to get up for work and go through the motions, exhausted out of my mind. The painkillers had worn off by then, but I felt so miserable, I almost didn't go to Days of the Dead tonight.


The brisk walk through the cold night from the parking garage to the hotel woke me up considerably, of course, but when I got home, I couldn't stay up for very long. I'm surprised I managed to write a GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS tonight, especially one this long.


Seriously. I'm on my last leg. I think I'll last long enough to post this thing, and that's it. Don't wake me for anything tomorrow. Hugs and kisses, all. --JB

A NOTE ON WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO 2013 COVERAGE

As most of you know by now, Wizard World turned down my press pass for 2013.  This enraged me quite a bit, and as a result, I said that I wouldn't be covering that stupid fucking convention this year.  However, I realize that this might hinder the people in Artists Alley, and they don't deserve to be shit on like that.  So here's my compromise:  there will be no coverage, and there will be no formal reviews.  However, if I picked up a book in Artists Alley that I really enjoyed, I'll plug it here.  Cool?


I'm going to try one last time for a press pass for C2E2 next year.  If they don't give it to me, then I'm going to retire my coverage of comic book conventions.  It sucks, but cons cost waaaay too much money to cover them on my own dime.  As it turns out, I've discovered horror cons are a lot of fun.  Flashback doesn't offer press passes, so I won't be covering them, but Days of the Dead is coming up in Schaumburg in November.  They DO offer press passes, so I'm thinking if I can score one, I'll start covering that con instead.  (That is, I will if I don't wind up stepping on Forced Viewing's toes.)


EDIT:  I should mention that I'm making an exception for MISERABLE AMERICANS.  Since practically nothing came out last week, I didn't get anything I could review for Wednesday.  I decided to go with MISERABLE AMERICANS because I'd never heard of the guy who does it before.