Here are some short segments from ‘The Dweller’ just to provide a snapshot of what’s inside!
Dead Girl Writing on a blackboard:
https://hernanjmonzon.com/2014/09/27/dead-girl-writing-on-a-blackboard-dont-turn-her-around/
Facing Yourself Before the Fight:
https://hernanjmonzon.com/2014/05/16/facing-yourself-before-the-fight-dweller-chapter-15/
Voices Coming From the Walls:
I have a new horror novel out now on Amazon that delves into my musings on perception, dreams and the spirit world—and just in time for the holidays! You should definitely check it out!
I lifted my head and looked around me. Mist breathed out from beneath every door down the hallway as though on cue, lapping up against my feet, slowly reaching out for my face. I scrambled back and stood up with a start as it violently swarmed around my legs like bees upon a honey-covered child. Seeing that no harm came from it, I wandered through toward the light coming from a classroom at the end of the hall –unease building with each step. A flickering fluorescent strobe greeted me when I came to the doorway.
Looking into the classroom, I saw the back of an unfamiliar little blonde girl writing ‘I won’t let go’ over and over again on the dull surface of the blackboard. Her hair was tossed over her face like an old mat and she wore a white dress dashed with streaks of long-dried blood. Despite everything screaming for me not to and not knowing what I was hoping to find, I walked up to her between desks far too small for me, placed my hand upon her shoulder, and turned her around.
Her face was gone. It might have seemed like she once had one, but it was covered over by a sickly growth -a veiny veil of taut skin that wrapped like a suffocating shroud around her features. I could almost make out socketless eyes and maybe a hole where her nose had been. But her small mouth I could definitely see beneath as it was opening and closing, working to form the words that she was still writing out into the empty air now that I had pulled her away from the board. Seeing that this situation would be of no use to me whatsoever, I turned her little fragile body back to the board where she continued to scribble away in pretty handwriting – as girls always seemed to have– the same words, over and over and over again:
‘I won’t let go’.
Disappointed, I left the classroom and the sound of her relentless scribbling behind me as I made my way to a field behind the school where yet another phantasmagoric entity awaited to molest my conception of reality.
(excerpt from ‘The Dweller’ – coming out soon)
“So, you now have two choices.” She offered.
“What are they?” I asked as I walked around the bed towards my stash.
“Fuck or fight me.” Moon-girl grinned.
“How about a little of both?”
“Oh, I like the way you think.”
I turned back to the window just as the bedroom door burst open and Michael strode in, entering into the reflection of the glass like a ghost walking into the night sky. I turned around and shook my head. It was always a nice vacation here when he wasn’t around but it never lasted long between visits.
“Get rid of the groupie, now.” He adamantly demanded.
“She doesn’t have to go anywhere.” I replied.
“That’s right!” The groupie said. “I don’t…”
With a wave of his hand, Michael threw her off the bed as though she was moved violently by an invisible force. I really hoped that she wasn’t a journalist now. That would be hard to explain unless one had taken into account all of the booze and drugs that flowed freely through my place at any given time. Michael then, by moving his finger across the air, dragged the poor, screaming girl across the hardwood floor all of the way out slamming the front door behind her. Great, soon there would be a screaming naked woman down in the lobby. No wonder rent was so astronomically high.
Turning around and smiling at the disapproval on my face, he said, “Hey, I asked politely.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.” Michael rubbed his bald head in frustration.
Author’s note: This was an excerpt from my current project ‘The Dweller’ that I have slaved over the last few months and now can finally see the end drawing near. I had written this novel 14 years ago and chose to rewrite it, which was a large mistake as it would have been less effort to write a new book from scratch. Lesson learned, I think.
I was not dead, well, still half-dead but still here above ground. I had simply passed out from the overall strain of whatever I was doing which I could not exactly recall so it must have been very intense. For how long I was out for I wasn’t entirely sure but I had awakened to hands shrugging my shoulders with increasing intensity and so crossed my arms over my face to shield myself while shouting, “No! Get away from me, you Haggard Wench!”
Calm, cool hands brought my arms down gently and I ventured to open my eyes to find not the easily excitable (and extraordinarily insane) healing bag-lady but Sophina knelt down before me, peering into my face questionably. It was quite the contrast. Sophina looked so much more outer-worldly majestic than at any other time that I had seen her. It ached to watch her, even for a moment. Black dress, black lipstick, black hair, large black eyes and a white porcelain face from a dolls from a dream that you would not want to ever forget faced me and I somehow knew that she was not here to harm or terrify me, not this time.
‘Dweller.’ She whispered.
I gazed at Sophina as an artist would a fine painting. That she was here seemed nothing short of a miracle and reinforced what Jacob had said about her being my keeper. I still did not truly understand what that entailed but I didn’t have to, not right then. I had never been so close to her and I had just opened my eyes. That in itself was its own reward. The question of why Sophina was here or how she had got here did not seem too important at the time. The fact was that she was here. I felt as though I was staring at heaven, a dark heaven filled with impossibilities to be broken.
I reached out and touched her face. Sophina did not back away, instead her eyes grew with curiosity so I caressed her and she let me, even leaned into my hand. There was such sadness in her there that I did not see before. It was breaking my heart to look at her but would only break it even more to turn away.
(Excerpt from ‘The Dweller’ Chapter 11)
I was reading ‘The Story of O’ by the lamp late one night when the darkness beyond the light at the far end of the building called out to me.
“Come here.” It said. I immediately recognized her voice. Reluctantly, though employed by curiosity I began to wander in the direction from where it came, stopping just outside of being consumed by complete darkness. It was such a large factory floor of which I was the sole inhabitant save for the lost souls that wandered through from time to time and most of it was kept in total darkness -all of it actually except for the small area that I had made my home. I did not trust the dark, not since it rained blood on me in the kitchen then drained all of mine in the star room. I did not feel that it was a part of me and feared it still for good reason. But when you were as alone as I was any contact, any spark of companionship brought you out and made you brave. You did things because you longed for someone else and because you felt trapped you fell easily into any trap.
“Come closer. Come into me.” She pleaded. “It’s safe. I would never hurt you.”
As I moved forward entering into the darkness the light behind me vanished completely as though I were once again walking through the sheet of blackness that Michael had used to transport me from the cellar of my home on the night that I had lost everything. There was no sound as though it were a vacuum until her voice came from right beside me.
“I love you.” She said and her fingers dug like metal across the side of my torso immediately afterwards. Pain shot through me like fire as her laughter rang through my ears. It was all I could hear, all that I could feel and it was pure terror. I spun around trying to locate where she could be but I saw only darkness and heard nothing until once again her voice breathed out onto my face from right in front of me as if she were leaning in for a kiss.
“I love you.” Once again her nails tore at the flesh across my chest where my heart was stationed. It hurt enough that the skin felt split. I cried out and swung wildly in reflex, hitting only black air.
“I will never leave you.” She whispered from behind me, so close as though she were holding me and breathing into my ear before the nails came down my back like impossibly sharpened stones.
“Stop this!” I cried as I turned and threw my fists out into the place where she had just been. “Stop tormenting me! Please!”
“We will always be together.” She replied instead as her fingers clawed down my cheek. This time instead of fighting back I sprinted off not knowing if it was in the proper direction with laughter following close behind me the whole way until after a while of running in sheer panic I saw the lamp where I had been before all this had started and it gave me the breath to go faster toward it until I was there again, on the ground looking back at the darkness that was her home.
Sure enough her voice called out to me again, sweet in tone and full of promise as though nothing had happened. “Come to me.” She pleaded. “It’s safe. I will never hurt you.”
I crumpled under the weight of her words and the memory of her taunts, her nails. It drove Bethany back right into the foreground of my mind -me standing out in the cold as battered as any man could possibly be as she looked back at me like she didn’t even know me before getting into the limo. God, what kind of person would do that to somebody they were suppose to love? What kind of dark animal would treat someone so badly when they needed them the most? I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. It has haunted me ever since because it hurt me so badly and I never wanted to feel that again because it was all that I could see for so long and that was enough to break me down into the shell that I once was. And now this comes only as a spit in my face of the pain that I lived.
You win, I thought to myself as I buried my face in my hands and screamed out in anguish. There was no release, no respite, no reason -there was only her and her pain -the pain that she brought to me with a smile and it was too much to bear because time after time all that she was, all that she became was hurt and now it’s all that I had and maybe it was all that I would ever be to anyone.
“I can’t…I can’t fucking do this anymore.” I heaved, clutching at my wounds and sobbing as I brought my head down to the cold factory floor waiting for tears but no tears came. Not one.
Not anymore.
I have been struggling all week with the first three chapters of a novel I had written 13 years ago, my first born. Not sleeping and trying to do everything in one day didn’t help and I should have left it alone but I’m such a stubborn mule that I just kept at it until the point that I was so miserably frustrated with it that I was about to throw it away. I worked it over four times and at the end I knew that this was not how I wrote these days and it seemed too daunting of a task to take on when I should really be working on a new book like I have been wanting to ever since I started throwing my shit online but this meant something to me when I wrote it. The story had purpose. It was just written terribly. I had given up.
Funny that of all places the mechanics was where I had pulled out the pages and a pen and started cutting into it. I chopped away and moved things around and within an hour I had the three chapters how I wanted them. I had finally cracked this book and am certain of completing it within good time. I just wanted to take this moment to share that and say ‘Fuck yeah!’ It’s on now.
Don’t give up. Don’t kill yourself over a project either. I wish I knew how not to.
Happy Friday.
Link to the synopsis, which is totally getting an overhaul as well. What was I thinking?
It’s a funny story. I was working heavily on my third novel for over the course of a whole year fully intent on the finished product being the darkest, most horrifically intense and emotionally engaging cerebral masterpiece ever written! The problem was that I had never gotten past the first chapter. In fact, I kept on rewriting it so by that time I had twelve first chapters. Well, I don’t have them anymore. I purged all the files and burned the hard-copies in my backyard one night on the tail end of a whiskey bottle and my own sanity.
It was during this time that I started a new project, a complete reversal of the very thing I was trying so hard to create in both style and subject matter. It was the satire of a common fairy tale that surrounded two characters I had created based on my very colourful best-friend and his flighty hippy girlfriend at the time (God bless her magical soul). The whole thing started off as a joke with a very long punch-line and before you knew it I was halfway done and loving every minute of writing it. I had never approached comedy before but quickly became rather hooked on seeing what kind of off-beat characters and calamitous situations I could come up within the context of the story. Fourteen chapters and one-hundred and thirteen thousand words later I was finished.
That book is called ‘Tale of the Nightmare Princess’ and I am now going through the motions of putting it out on Amazon. Check it out:
Here’s the synopsis:
This was a mistake
In an age of utter calamity, two unsavoury monks about to be hanged for crimes against humanity and other, more interesting species are instead reluctantly brought before a drunkard king and given a task only slightly better than death: to guide his daughter, the Nightmare Princess, to an unholy matrimony with the Prince of Darkness.
Nobody is safe
The hastily formed dysfunctional group of outcasts quickly embark on a drug-laced, alcohol-fuelled journey fraught with disaster as they carve a path of chaos across the land, leaving a trial of fiery devastation behind them that consumes evil foe and innocent bystander alike.
Only death awaits
Haunted through the night by the ominous drumbeats of a vast army that pursues them solely intent on their annihilation, the group treads through forest, village and mountain facing unrelenting menace on their way to the ultimate battle that will decide the fate of all things to come…and it has never looked so horrifyingly bad!
And you are in my face
Untrusting of each other and the world around them, the group must battle with their own demons and survive one another first as only when the pills are gone, the flask is empty and the unknown army is closing in like the darkness that surrounds them will they find their greatest challenge –themselves (and their cat).
And here’s a sample from the book:
Hemer was having a bad night. His day was pretty shitty too. In fact, as soon as he laid eyes on the bald maniac parading around in a monk’s robe everything had turned into one big freak show. Upon awakening Hemer began to recall being eaten by two whores of Hell and dying in front of an exploding bar. As everything began to sink in and spin Hemer opened his mouth and it was dry. He wanted blood and lots of it. The more the better. Wait, there was probably something wrong with that. Hemer had never experienced such thirst for human blood before so that was definitely new.
“Fuck, I’m a vampire.” Hemer realized. Things could not possibly get any worse than this.
“No shit.” He heard a voice say from behind him. Suddenly things became very bright and very hot, very fast. Hemer didn’t need to open his eyes to know that he had just been set on fire. His night had just gotten worse. It might have been a contender for one of the worst nights in the history of mankind.
Coming out soon! (unless something else goes horribly wrong which I really wouldn’t be surprised if it did but I do suppose that you should have a sense of bravado when announcing such things so there it is)
Would love it if you would give it a look when TOTNP comes out and please let me know what you think. I have a few things I will be working on getting out in the near (and far) future and would like to know how I can improve so your feedback is valuable to me. Above all, thank you for your interest and support.
hernanjmonzon.com 