Back End of the Bell Curve

PREFACE

Ever since I was a young child, I’ve had very vivid dreams and daydreams with clear dialog and settings and smells and colors. And it’s not uncommon for anything at all to trigger a fantasy: a phrase, a mishap, a wish. It’s similar to Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but usually it’s other people in the fantasies, and that’s who I write about.

Over the years I’ve gotten better at recording my thoughts: I text myself ideas to remember, I collate dozens of categorized lists in Excel, and I write. Writing is a way for me to take an idea and make something meaningful out of it: maybe an invention I will never patent or manufacture, or maybe a funny thought that could brighten someone’s day, or even my own day, down the road. And it’s a sense of closure that I haven’t squandered that idea which may never come again.

For me, part of the fun of writing for a living is to keep learning. Some of this manifests itself in science fiction, but also in historical fiction, and details from world-wide locations, customs, and peoples. I relish doing the research so the tales feel authentic.  I’m sure you picked up this book to be entertained, but you also might learn something about scuba diving, or Paraguay, or skinny-ass horses.

I wasn’t always a writer – as a kid, and younger adult, I leaned on math and science, seeking the right answers. But through my non-writing career I found out you need a little bit of persuasion to go along with facts and figures and a good story is sometimes as important as the right answer. Conversely, I’ve found the more I write, that there is a science to it – ways to say things that are effective and provide the reader with a wonderful experience.

I still love science and technology, but I don’t think they hold all the answers we seek. Sometimes we have to fill in the gaps with hope and faith. That’s where speculative fiction comes in. Sometimes you just have to make up the answers. And the questions.

I’ve often seen the advice, Write what you know. Well, I think what I know is that we know nothing. Crazy, inexplainable stuff happens all the time. 

When I start writing a story, I usually have some nugget of warped inspiration, but no details. I rarely have a beginning, middle, or end in mind.  The stories just flow out, and I have to make decisions about what’s going to happen. I like being surprised and I hope you do too.

For me the short story format is my bread and butter. I love the sense of accomplishment and get the same high finishing a 500-word short story as an 80,000-word novel. So why not? I also love the technicality of getting everything into the story efficiently – getting the reader to love the characters in a very short timeframe, setting up the plot and having a satisfying ending, with a little bit of foreshadowing and flashbacks for good measure.

Not everyone dies in my stories, but I’ve chosen this group of stories for my introductory collection because the characters all face challenges that change or end their lives. Some of them make bad decisions, with brutal consequences. Some of them are just dealt a poor hand of fate.

And is it horror, or thriller, or speculative, or sci-fi, or something else? I don’t know. All I want to do is write entertaining stories. I hope you like these and are entertained.

HENRY THE HORSE

Henry the Horse was constantly being bullied by the mustangs and other stallions at the horse farm. When they were in the stable, the neighboring horses would pee on his hay, and when they were in the corral, they would kick dirt in his face and make fun of his skinny physique and thin mane.

One day Henry decided to run away. He made a break for it when the corral gate was closing, headed across the meadow, and barely cleared the three-foot fence at the edge of the property.

It started to rain, but just when he was almost out of energy, he saw a gray metal building. Shelter. He made it to the building and slept just under the eave. In the morning, some humans found Henry, and he heard them say, He seems to be a stray; we better take care of him, which really lifted his spirits until everything went black and he was made into ground meat for $1.99 a pound. Other horses got $2.99 a pound, but not Henry.

THE FALL

Garrett called out from the back room, Guys, put it on channel 10. They're showing that gymnast dude who died at the WAAC.

Eddie and I changed the channel: supposedly some guy fell over 200 stories during the World Aerial Athletics Championships. This event was pretty popular due to the danger element: guys and gals doing parkour on cranes and giant robots, called grobots, used to build massive skyscrapers in places like Doha and Hyderabad. To date, no one had died. Even though there were several falls, the sport employed a technology where most of the participants wore suits fitted with magnetics. Safety drones with large electromagnets had caught a dozen or more unlucky athletes, usually within the first few meters of the fall. However, in this case, one of the top competitors, a skilled Latvian named Ralfs Ozols, wore his own trademark all-white, non-magnetic form-fitting suit, which had started a fashion craze all around the world. Ralfs cited the rigidity, the weight, and the slight pull on metal apparatus as reasons for not wanting to wear the safety suit.

Ozols was a well-proportioned man, with high cheekbones and spiky blonde hair; his look, a marketing dream, though he preferred to lead a private life, shunning the media and keeping to himself. His interviews were often very short - one or two words, then gone. He rarely smiled, which added to his mystique; he always seemed so serious, all business, always. On the courses, he was graceful, like a cat, moving from structure to structure, rarely breaking speed. Sometimes criticized for lack of difficulty compared to some of the other competitors, he won some and lost some, relying on his speed and fluidity to win. His choice to not wear the prescribed safety suit, although adding to his danger element, was not allowed to be considered in his scoring.

Breaking news: Latvian Aerial Athletics World Champion Ralfs Ozols has died in a fall in Shenzhen, China. Sports10 has the footage from a camera drone and warns that this footage is extremely graphic, and should only be seen by mature audiences. Ozols, who refused to wear the standard magnetic suit, risked death every time he performed, and on this fifteen-foot drop to the moving crane on your right, as you’ll see, he misses the surface and goes into free fall.

The long-distance camera showed a falling Ozols, not flailing as you would expect, but instead, dropping, posed, as if at attention, arms at his side, heels together, body erect and facing forward, like a kid jumping off a train trestle into water twenty feet below, but, in this case, he was falling from over 1000 meters and rapidly accelerating as if he was a missile.

The station went to a split-screen where a close-up camera drone, one of several programmed to follow the athlete through the course, was fixed on Ozols' face. What was odd was the look on his face: he showed no expression of fear or panic, rather, he maintained his familiar, emotionless persona like one of the guards at London’s Buckingham Palace.

The camera stayed fixed on his profile, capturing periodic ripples across his tight jaw, created by the increasing wind resistance.

His eyes stayed open and fixed ahead as he plummeted: twenty meters per second, then forty, then eighty. The rippling got faster and faster, as if his face was made out of crepe paper, and still, he stared ahead as he passed the 70th floor, the 60th, the 50th, without breaking form. But at about eight to ten seconds into the fall, as he was approaching a terminal velocity of over one hundred meters per second, a large tear formed, and over the next five seconds, streaked upward, toward his hairline.

Maybe it was just moisture from the abrasion of wind on his unblinking eye, or perhaps, instead, it was a tender memory, finally humanizing him in front of his audience.

The close-up camera drone pulled away as it got within fifty feet of the ground, and as the view switched to the distance camera, the streaking Ozols closed the last fifteen meters in a mere tenth of a second and jackknifed into an unrelenting concrete slab, still at attention.

After the twenty seconds of footage drew our mouths agape the announcer returned. Ralfs Ozols was twenty-eight years old.

SKULLCRUSHER

Harold Kogler’d lived a good life, and if not for a case of mistaken identity, would probably be living one now.

Born in Austria in 1895, Harold emigrated to the States at age ten. He was a large kid who grew into a giant man. In school, Kogler excelled at strength sports, and at sixteen, and a robust six foot five inches and 360 pounds, he left school for a job in the Gransby Brother’s Travelling Circus. For nine fantastic years, he traveled all over the eastern United States wowing the crowd by pressing heavy objects over his head, bending iron bars, and breaking chains.

But all that ended in 1920.  As Kogler was walking downtown in Huntington, West Virginia, on a day furlough after three shows at the fairgrounds, police arrived at the scene of a bank robbery in progress. In a confusing series of events, the cops arrested Kogler as an accessory, based solely on his proximity to the crime and his appearance as, Someone who would rob a bank if he so chose.  The Gransby Brothers tried to help, hiring a local lawyer for fifty dollars but they had to leave Harold behind. The show must go on! 

Harold, though strong of stature, was weak of mind. His attorney, a fast-speaking slickster named Willi Lundy, who had already been paid as much as he was ever going to get, convinced Harold to plead guilty for a lesser sentence. The circuit judge sentenced Harold as a bank robber to thirty years in the State Penitentiary.

Conditions at the prison were awful, and Harold, used to being on the open road and seeing nothing but happy smiling faces, sank into a deep depression. He had no idea where either his real or circus families were. The people in the Pen were nothing like a family.

Because of his size, most of the inmates left Harold alone. But one day in the yard, Moose Hawkins' gang recruited him to play basketball. Harold was familiar with the game from school, but he’d never played: he was too slow, and running tired him too easily.

He politely declined, but the diminutive Moose, who, in comparison to Harold, should have been named Mouse, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He goaded Harold, calling him a stupid palooka, a dimwit, and a sap. Harold didn’t want to play, but also didn’t want any trouble, so he told Moose, Okay. I will play with ball. One time.

Moose ordered, Just stand here by the basket, you dumb palooka, and when I give you the ball, you throw it in. Don’t ever move from this spot.  And to the other team Moose boasted, Now we’ve got the secret weapon! You guys said he couldn’t even talk. Two packs of butts for the winners.

Harold stood in his designated spot and darned if he couldn’t even make one shot. Moose became more and more irritated, and, near the end of the game, losing fifteen to two, Moose kicked Harold in the knee and called timeout. Harold howled in pain as his knee buckled backwards, but he didn’t go down. Instead, he took the ball from Moose, and placing it between his huge hands, he crushed it until it popped with a bang.

Moose was flabbergasted. Those who didn’t like Moose applauded, in awe of Harold’s strength. Moose wasn't happy when the opposing team told him that he’d forfeited and