What with being on call this week, something that has consumed a great deal more of my time than I had anticipated, and with my own self-inflicted web server problem that chewed up even more of what few precious minutes I have for personal endeavors, I feel as though I’ve been ignoring you this week—and it’s only Wednesday!

Nevertheless, I feel guilty because I have this terrible impression that I’ve taken no notice whatsoever of your needs.  I’ve not posted any photos or videos, I’ve not offered any memorable tales or creative writing to feed your imaginations, and I’ve barely commented on a few things here and a few things at some of my favorite blogs.  I mean, it’s as though I’ve become a digital recluse.

Because I’m so ashamed of this withdrawn approach to my normal online activities, I’m offering you something I swore I wouldn’t sacrifice even in the name of desperate want.  What priceless artifact could I be dangling in front of your browser-based noses?

How about a snippet from Dreamdarkers?

Let me first caveat this unexpected gift with a few pieces of information I think you need.

To begin with, work has taken the wind from my sails with regards to this novel.  For that alone, I’m beyond upset, angry, disappointed.  I’m forced to a desperation I otherwise did not think necessary.  If I’m to complete Dreamdarkers as quickly as I want need to so that I might immediately get to work on End of the Warm Season, there are things in life which must give.  Work is the first thing on that list.

How to make that happen is presently beyond my grasp.  But don’t think for a moment I will languish in writer’s hell longer than necessary.  I still intend to pursue a relocation by the end of the year that will take me away from Dallas—away from the big city.  Meanwhile, I also need to pursue whatever options are available that might enable me to spend more time on the novels whilst not ignoring my other obligations (The Kids, family & friends, living & surviving, and so on).

Another thing specific to this excerpt is that I wrote it a few months ago as the new beginning for the book.  The words spilled from me in a single sitting less than 15 minutes long, and I’ve not looked at this text since then.  In fact, I’m not even proofreading it now because I haven’t the time.  Please don’t blast me for typos or contextual errors; do, however, mention them if you find them.  Because this portion of text hasn’t undergone a single rewrite, the extra eyeballing could give me a few extra clues as to its disposition in the final draft.

Additionally, I feel as though I somewhat robbed you with the the last post I offered.  That was meant to be a significant piece of the work, something that would spit in the face of those who had claimed bloggers and online creative writers were nothing more than “webscabs, [those] who post their creations on the net for free.”

Lastly, the manuscript is well over 500 pages at present.  I still expect it grow and shrink and change—all dramatically—throughout the course of my manipulative and creative exploits.  Do I think the final product will be longer than your average mass-consumption paperback?  Yes… at least right now.  Dreamdarkers will not be a short book at all.  That much I know.  But will it be a voluminous epoch or just a long novel?  That question remains unanswered.

Okay, let’s get on with the show.  Please don’t assume I’ll make this sacrifice again.  Doing so now stems from the feeling of guilt that torments me at present.  My blogging has been anything but interesting lately because of work.  For that, I apologize and offer this one-time-only concession.

And now the first part of chapter 1, Dreamdarkers:

Darkness surrounded me, its depth so complete I felt certain I had buried myself under heavy covers while sleeping.  Yet I immediately dismissed that assumption; Texas summers didn’t call for blankets or bedspreads.  Nothing more substantial than a cotton sheet had been pulled over me before I lost consciousness in an alcohol and marijuana induced stupor.  Or so I told myself since I had no way of knowing precisely where I was or if I was even awake.

I had no difficulty remembering the previous night in the sunroom despite the chemical fog shrouding my brain.  I’d been working on my latest novel, Compassion in Annihilation’s Caress, and feeling rather pleased with my progress as I neared the end much sooner than I’d expected.  As I’d done for two years when completing a manuscript, I had used more and more mind-altering accoutrements over the past several days.  Writing didn’t happen without investment, I knew, and I’d always assumed most respectable authors had their vices.  Mine happened to be drugs.  Whether alcohol or marijuana—or even cocaine from time to time—no one understood better than I what indulgences fueled my success.  The realization I had deluged the night before with ample supplies of adult beverages and cannabis inhalants did nothing to explain my confusing whereabouts.  Memorable dreams were rare for me, bizarre dreams were next to unheard of, and confusing, empty visions, as far as I was concerned, were alien concepts best left to the characters in my books.  Nevertheless, I couldn’t deny what I was experiencing.

Irrespective of what I could remember from the night before and self-assurances I hadn’t gone beyond my normal routine, a new existence took shape while I struggled to understand it.  I failed utterly in that quest.  All of the darkness and my inability to determine what mental playing field I was on proved that much.

In whatever circumstances I found myself, there was no need to play possum, so I glanced out toward the window that faced Kingswell Lake—assuming I was still on the couch in the sunroom.  The water’s surface and the far shore would normally be visible even on a moonless night.  My eyes consumed only blackness.  I then turned and looked toward the doorway into the hall where perhaps a small bit of light from one of the other rooms would confirm I was not in a coma.  The kitchen at the other end of the house always provided a luminescent offering, a bit of light proffered by the overhead lamp dialed to its lowest setting.  Still, I saw only darkness.  It encompassed me so completely that I was convinced I had fallen from my perch and banged my head against the corner of some nearby piece of furniture.  Was I bleeding?  Was I unconscious?  Was I even still alive?  As I willed my head to rotate first this way and then that way, even my body failed to provide any proof it was responding to me.  Maybe I’d been decapitated.  It certainly could explain some things in spite of the proper feedback telling my brain the rest of me was intact and functional.  Nevertheless, my senses denied any participation in the goings on.

To my right, in what would be a northeast direction if I was in the real world, a brief ethereal movement in the darkness far out from the windows caught my attention.  I tried to focus on it, but it was gone.  I understood the science of human eyesight in the dark.  Knowing my peripheral vision provided the best way to see details in a featureless night, I spun my head and looked toward the lake—or at least where it should have been at the north end of the room.  Any movement or light to my side would be more recognizable if I didn’t stare directly at it.  So I looked into the nothing and waited.  There was no certainty in my head that my eyes were even open—or working.  It was even plausible to think I had gone blind.  Wouldn’t it be a funny thing, I thought, if I was sitting upright in the sunroom where I’d fallen asleep, bright morning sunlight surrounding me, and was still unable to see a damn thing?  Unfortunately, my immediate response was clear: No, Dave, it wouldn’t be funny but it sure as hell would be a pretty fucked up thing.

And then I saw more movement outside.  Or I thought I did.  It was to my right toward the northeast.  Or had it been in a few other places as well?  Surely I had seen something.  Of that much I was convinced.  In fact, the sense of it was more than just vision.  There was another quality to the experience, some innate knowledge that confirmed what my body seemed unable to validate.  I had felt it, and that feeling told of ruby embers floating in the dark.  They had drifted in blackness some distance from the house.  It had been another momentary glimpse of. . .  I couldn’t be sure what I had seen.  They were out there; that much I knew.  The assumption was a confident one.  That was the only thing I was certain of at that moment.  The chills running down my spine told me I had seen something; the hair on my body standing at attention only reinforced the impression.

Trying to focus on anything was an exercise in futility, yet I couldn’t deny the growing unease I felt.  Traces of shifting glows dashed in and out of my field of vision, and the darkness itself seemed to ebb and flow around me.  All the while I remained unable to see anything clearly.  Then came the feeling that most frightened me under such disconcerting circumstances: I’m taunted prey.  The very thought of being quarry immediately cemented in my mind my role in the bizarre place I couldn’t identify: I was being hunted.  I suddenly knew it with every fiber of my being, every bit of the essence that was Dave Lloyd, and it scared the hell out of me.  Predators were watching, circling.  And I was the center of attention.

My best efforts to see what was out there proved fruitless as I snapped my head to and fro trying to see.  No matter how diligently I stared, there was nothing to see except a blank, lightless canvas occasionally marked with…  Well, marked with something.  Whatever I was seeing refused to be identified or even confirmed.  All the same, my worry grew as I became more and more convinced I was seeing eyes in the darkness, blood red eyes filled with visions of me surrounded by transparent glass, me lying there like a slab of meat, me looking like an old stack of ribs tossed into the butcher’s display cabinet.  There was no doubt I was being stalked.

Even as I wondered about the world I found myself in, light began to form all around me.  My first response was to look up.  What a fruitless move.  The light beginning to fill the room illuminated the ceiling where I could plainly see the overhead lights remained dark.  The light emanated from every direction and no direction.  It was there all around me, falling on and under everything, and its intensity continued to grow.

At first there was nothing more than faint whispers of light.  My breath caught in my chest as the world brightened ever so slightly, ever so slowly, and eventually I could make out the walls of the room and the couch where I had lain the night before.  My confusion changed to fear, and my fear gave rise to panic.  If I was in fact dreaming, I was having nothing short of a nightmare.  That thought terrorized me.  I had never before experienced so vivid a dream.

“Is that you, Dave?”

“Jesus!” I yelled.  Or had I only though it?  Something about the surreal world in which I found myself was keeping me from knowing what was real—if any of it was real—and what was thought.  Had I really heard a woman’s voice?

“Don’t be frightened.  I won’t hurt you.  I’m so happy I found you before they did.”

Although faint and weak from distance, I was hearing a female speak from the darkness.  It was a directionless sound that seemed to fill the room—seemed to fill my head.  The utterance was no more a sound than it was a song, yet I had heard it as plainly as if it had been screamed.  I thought I was losing my mind.  Thinking of the voice produced a single idea: I’m hearing someone’s thoughts.

My heart was racing as I gasped for each breath.  The increasing light and the darkness outside were smothering me.  As the blackness billowed in brilliantly invisible ways, inside it felt as though the air itself was working into a lighted frenzy.  And I remained frozen on the couch watching and listening, my body having become like a stone, a rigid and stoic thing made inflexible by absolute horror.

And that voice.  It seemed eerily familiar in some way, a haunting reminder of someone.  With all the distractions suddenly coming to life around me, the frightening increase in movement beyond the glass continued tempting my attention away from everything else, yet I still could scarcely think of anything other than the voice.

I couldn’t see through the darkness.  Regardless of that, nothing could convince me there were not more eyes peering in from the black soup encompassing my home.  I shuddered at the realization I had already accepted.  What I was seeing out there were eyes.  Hungry eyes.  Hunting eyes.  Eyes intent on consuming me.

I was jolted from my consideration—and thankful for the interruption—when the woman’s voice said, “Please tell me I’m not too late.”

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded before immediately wondering if I had spoken the words or merely thought them.  Despite that, I knew the sentiment was clear even though I felt my own doubt.  This has to be a nightmare, my mind offered, and I’m so jacked up on booze and weed that I can’t see straight—or at all.

“There’s no time for doubts.  This is quite real,” she continued, “and you have to listen to me.  They’re coming.”

Tears began welling up in my eyes as I finally realized why the voice sounded familiar.  It was Beth’s voice.  I was hearing my dead wife.  Insanity had never seemed quite as insane before.  I hadn’t dreamed of Beth since she died two years earlier.  It was not a good sign to suddenly start, especially under the circumstances.  The deepest part of me screamed in denial, It’s not her!

I neither listened to myself nor cared.  There was increasing activity outside and I turned to look.  The darkness had come alive with movement.  There were more eyes, I was certain of it, and they were watching me with greedy hunger.  Only then did I consider the possibility that they were somehow related to the arrival of my dead wife’s voice.

“Don’t look at it, Dave.  They only want to frighten you.”

“It sure as hell is working, I’ll tell you that much.  And who are you, damn it?  Beth is dead and has been for two years, but I’m sure you already know that.  Tell me what the fuck is going on.”  I was petulant, an insolent child demanding answers from a room full of nobody, a crazy man yelling at a bodiless voice in a dream.

“I’ve come to warn you, babe.  I’ve come to help if I can.”

“Help with what?”

“The Dreamdarkers.  I’ve come to warn you—”