Damp Creepy

The Damp Creepy

 I strain my eyes to locate the exception. Too many-colored layers of life and evolution in hues of green, brown, and black, with sounds muffled by the devouring. 

     The very scary very dark has yet to arrive and cloak my surroundings in excitement. I must focus or loose equilibrium, for to loose equilibrium is to fall and be found. 

     In my youth, there were no distant breaking twigs to warn me in a cobblestone alley. 

     Drops of rain falling from balcony overhangs above teased the quiet calm of foggy nights on the east coast. Why should the damp creepy be any different?  When in the city and I’m walking alone in the dark, I whistle aloud to calm myself; I tell myself I’m whistling a warning to the dark, “I am coming, stand aside!”, sometimes I sing out loud, sometimes I blindly run for my life. But at this moment, I realize standing in the middle of a rain forest with the very dark coming fast can be intimidating and very different from standing my ground on wet cobblestones, street lights abound.  

     Some things are very different here. Standing alone in a rain forest with muted sounds can be deafening if you’re hoping to hear something else. A passing trolley or the cry of a distant cat, even drops of rain water hitting cobbles would be nice. Any familiar sound to remind me I’m not alone would be nice.     But here in the rain forest, sounds that annoy on the cobbles are sadly missing.  Here off the cobbles, the damp creepy is upon me and fills all my senses with the same imagined dread that I envision when lost in a ghetto at night. 

     Should I talk to myself or whistle while walking home, or dart invisibly through the thick moist air?  The rain forests hot wet quiets your breath while watching you stumble through lichen covered moguls. 

     In the rain forest, the life under your feet dissuade the invisible darting that once worked in the ghetto. Here in the damp creepy, the spongy decay won’t make a sound if you fall and don’t get up! In the damp creepy, no one is coming to lend a hand; no one will eventually arrive on their way to work with that first cup of coffee and a crisp newspaper to find you laying there. 

     Unlike the tall buildings of the city, high canopies, moving shadows, and silhouettes of trees standing in the mist greet you in the damp creepy. Make no mistake, whispering creatures make it a point to know you are here. 

     Historic myths tell us “if you hear the creatures breathing once, you have lost; for the damp creepy is upon you!” 

     I pause to look up into the forever trees and like rats running past dumpsters in the city, the damp creepy has tiny birds darting from moss laden tree to moss laden tree mocking me.   Their flight is silenced by this stage of wet hangings and they know it. 

     They use silence and movement to confuse intruders into thinking they have great numbers. Darting from one spot to the next and calling out at each location to give the impression you are surrounded, when in fact there may be only three in the game, you, the birds, and the damp creepy. 

     Interesting enough, their darting flights appear as tiny black rips in the fabric of a damp creepy canopy. They tease with repeated screeches and warnings, while deafening moisture passing over their wings exaggerates slow motion flight. 

     The natives say “they mock one another, and tease all intruders”. 

     I’m thankful for their warnings from a hundred feet on-high to keep me company. I realize nature surrounds me as I watch water droplets fall from leaf to leaf reflecting images of life as they race to the ground. 

     Sweet scents of decay emanate from a ground littered with natures dead, and living. 

     Suddenly the cold is upon me and just for a second I thought I heard something.  A feeling of dread overtakes me as I realize the night grows very dark in the damp creepy and my chirping friends have fallen silent on the thick air. The dark is blinding now, and I can’t see where I’m going. 

     I can hear the muted crackle of soft wet twigs all around me now, and whispering from way over there.  I can’t decide which one of my alone and scared to death at night ghetto courage tricks to use, talk to myself, whistle out loud, or dart invisibly through the thick moist air talking to myself and praying if survive.

      Exhausted and laying on the dark wet ground where I have fallen, some huffing puffing stinky smelly big something brushed passed me and interrupted my favorite tune….

Reviews

[Charles J. Carmody]

It appears I have made a fatal error; that is assuming people reading my short story are familiar with nature and natural occurrences, in addition, that many persons reading what I write are indoctrinated in the passed on writing etiquette force fed to them to garner a passing grade from another who was force fed the same B.S. Like many, and over years of following the "lemmings" doctrine, way too many individuals simply cannot comprehend that which is, unless it "templates" that which they were taught, form, format, diction, paragraphs, punctuation, etc. In the future, and albeit I'll be the first to admit I did not learn much before leaving home at the age of thirteen, I may try and copy that/those formats which many of you digested in your youth. If not, and I may choose not to, please take my stories, most derived from dreams, with a grain of salt, and perhaps break out screaming and look something up for yourselves that you may not understand or comprehend, not to say you should beat yourself up because you haven't a clue regarding what you are reading, but rather try using your imagination, try fitting in the missing pieces so you feel comfortable; my stories will always be mine, look like mine, be faulty like mine, but you will know at a glance, "oh, Charlie wrote this", and to quote one of my other rags, "I explained that I would not want to read another's work for fear the influence would ‘taint’ my writings; albeit crude examples of literature by any standards. The change in style may help the indoctrinated, or 'learned' reader, but not me. I would feel rebuked and very much saddened if I were to hear someone say, “Your work looks familiar, sounds familiar, and is familiar.” I never want to hear “oh, he writes like Shakespeare”; like an abused runaway, my breath would not return. Hearing my uniqueness is but another’s folly would greatly sadden even me. I would rather hear "oh look... one of Charlie's..it's obvious.... his familiar stain of ignorance always rubs off the pages, my fingers are blackened by one who is blind as well as deaf; I'll not despair, for I have this rag with which to bathe, ha, ha. Fortunately, if people did compare these pages with someone else's, their familiarity with my writing would be purely coincidental. Perhaps arrogant, yet I would never purposefully learn the traits of he who sought the ear of the wealthy during a time of boredom and the great pursuit of nothing. Only a lazy pig would cherish so simple a thing..." Paint my stories to reflect that which you know, allows you to sleep, and feel good about yourself, at my late age, as I am running out of time to learn all that I must to be like my teachers, but for now, I am so thankful someone cares enough about what I wrote, it's hard for me to swallow as I write this short excuse for not being recognizable for those that need to hear it. For this one time, I will apologize to those of you who find my writing hard to read, or don't know what I am saying, I do not mean to trouble anyone, nor make myself feel sad like a blue collar worker on the steps of an expensive frat house teaming with the arrogant wealthy that purchase fame and imagination from those who truly possess it, I simply was searching for a place that I could learn from; with that, I thank you again for your trouble, for your compassion and consideration taking the time and help me to be like everyone else in the class. All the best, Charlie.

[Relic]

I don't want to sound like I'm piling up on you because of the last comment, but this was hard to read. I don't know why he was in the dark creepy to begin with unless I missed that. The words dark creepy were repeated too often, words were misspelled, lack of paragraphs made it hard to read, and the punctuation was off. There were also lines that made no sense to me.

There's always a chance to revise though. Good luck with your writing.

[JayG]

First, with no paragraphs, it’s unreadable. A reader who looks up and loses their place is literally lost.

• I strain my eyes to locate the exception.

Look at this, not as the all-knowing author, but as a reader. For them, lacking context, someone of unknown age, gender, and situation, is in an unknown place, trying to see the exception...to what? Lacking context, the reader is lost. And they will not read on if confused.

• Too many-colored layers of life and evolution in hues of green, brown, and black, with sounds muffled by the devouring.

Layers of life? What in the pluperfect hells are layers of life? And how do they relate to evolution? I’m sure you have intent as to the meaning of the line, but for anyone but you the only response can be, “Huh?” because you supply none of the context, the backstory, and situation that makes it meaningful to you.

You need to do your editing from the seat of the reader, knowing only what they know, or, you supply. One trick that helps is to have the computer read it to you. It picks up a lot.

But in general, this isn’t how fiction is presented on the page. Remember, when you read, the emotion you intend to be there is. But the reader can’t know HOW they were supposed to read it. Nor does your intent for the meaning of the words make it to the page. Your reader has punctuation, and what the word suggest, based on THEIR life experience.

The thing we forget is that they offer degree programs in fiction. Would they do that if the skills they teach are optional? Of course not. And when we read fiction, we see only the result of the tools being used, not the tools.

More to the point, readers will reject any writing that doesn’t show the result of using those tools. So spending a bit of time digging into them makes a lot of sense.

Try this: Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict is a good introduction to the basics of adding wings to your words. You can read or download it from the site linked to below. I think you’ll find it eye-opening.
https://archive.org/details/goal.motivation.conflictdebradixon/page/n5/mode/2up

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow