A Teaser (a new direction of writing?) - Now updated!

Sometimes I get fantastic ideas that only span one sentence. From there, I have to determine what kind of story it is and how it will progress. The first sentence came to me seemingly out of thin air. At first I was confused and had no idea what to do with it. However, after a day or so of thinking, it slowly came into focus (albeit only in a small chunk). I remember reading from Stephen King's book, On Writing. He describes this as a better way of storytelling. As he states (loosely quoted) "It is like digging up a fossil. Little by little you uncover and discover how the story will progress." I am eager to write this one as I feel that I am not limited by that "tool called plot." Thank-you Stephen King, Thank-you.

So far, untitled

A story by Cory Kutschker 

(just started, very much not finished)

Somewhere, where two metal staircases wound almost endlessly upwards and stacks of books cast long, dim shadows upon a dusty and rough floor, there sat a man named Jack. He was writing a novel. And by the crumpled and ripped bits of paper that lay around him, he could tell that he was failing. His fingers ached from typing on the cold steel keys of the typewriter that he had recovered from the county dump. His back protested from being hunched over for several hours and his bum was in agony from being presented with greatly uncomfortable ridges on an overturned milk crate. He had several ideas regarding his introduction; this included a verbose narrator that was currently describing his misery, but figured that somebody had undoubtedly written that already. He even searched the floor for that particular ball of paper to amuse what he presumed was a male narrator.  However, he still did not have interest in the exhausting effort it would take to write a boring and pretentious story exploring reality and the merits of choice, so he resisted. Suddenly, he had an idea. He started typing out an outrageous and comedic introduction regarding a man and his pet poodle, when the bell rang. Jack was startled. He did not think that his place was outfitted with a doorbell and also pondered how amazing it was that in his universe a doorbell had magically appeared. He was also equally amazed that somebody would even consider coming to his door. Nevertheless, he got up, picked out some boogers from his nose, slicked back his hair, and proceeded towards the door. Jack opened the door, but only a crack. Through the thin sliver, he saw the superbly lithe figure of Samantha, his landlord, who had been spending the majority of the month working up the nerve to evict Jack. Inside, Jack was conflicted. He was remarkably attracted to her and yet suspected that she was not here on a social call.

“Hello?” he answered timidly.

“H-hi” Samantha faltered.

“What do you want?” Jack replied. He regretted being so rude and tried smiling, thereby revealing two rows of absurdly crooked teeth coated by a sheen of plaque. Samantha curled her lip, reminded herself to be professional, and formed her mouth to resemble something like a smile. She tented her fingers together and gained her composure.

“I have not received the last three month’s rent from you so I…you are being evicted.”

“What?” Jack threw the door open revealing the fact that he only had a bathrobe which was far too short and thereby revealed his two grotesquely hairy legs and barely covered the fact that he only had a skimpy pair of white underwear beneath the robe. Professional, Samantha thought to herself and took a step back away from the door frame, baring her teeth as a supposed smile.

“I expect you to be vacated by the end of the day tomorrow.” With that she turned, winced, walked down the stairs and nearly tripped over a large squeaky toy that was placed there by the predilection of the narrator who had far too much time on his hands and enjoyed watching his characters squirm. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that in 5 seconds, which is the time it ought to take to read this significantly long sentence, when Jack stepped back to his reading station, he stepped on some rather sharp thumbtacks and banged his head upon a bookshelf and fell headlong into his typewriter. Jack got up. He took a seat upon his milk carton and angrily began typing.

This is a story about an author who took bizarre and sadistic satisfaction from his characters suffering. Every day he would sit down on the keyboard possibly at his desk or even at his kitchen table, which doubled as a collection area for important papers and other rubbish. At the far right quadrant of the table he had two plant pots which had two shoots of bamboo each and a few sprouts of ivy, which he loved dearly. He often wondered how the bamboo, in the larger of the two, always started to turn yellow at the top. This was a frequent distraction from his writing as he would often stretch and turn his gaze that way; also, perhaps if he was a little thirsty, he would take a small swig of egg nog from the glass to his right, as it was the season for that sort of thing.

There is no real explanation for the poor treatment of his characters. Some had attested it to poor sleep patterns. Others suggested that it may have been some sort psychological issue, like he was lashing out due to boredom, or that he was deeply frustrated with some decision in his life. But whatever the cause, he showed no sign of relenting his unfortunate pleasures.

Jack yawned, he had not slept for at least 48 hours and had visible bags underneath his eyes. 

Outside the norm: a writing assignment

The Potato Bombers

A Short Story by Cory Kutschker

            “Yes sir, we blew those potatoes to smithereens!” Jake answered the police officer suavely. “There ain’t no way to have fun in this here town without blow’n some’n up.” That was his story and he stuck to it. That was what they did after all. But underneath those suave words was a painful regret.

There was Jake, Louis, Chuck, Doug, and Blake. Jake was the head of “The potato bombers gang.” That’s what they called themselves. It was not to necessarily sound tough you must understand, but they loathed the sound of calling themselves a “prissy club.” Louis was in charge of munitions. He knew better than any pre-teen in that town how to mix up a brew and send starch flying 20 meters in any direction. Chuck and Doug, who were brothers, paired off for collecting goods. Either Chuck or Doug would collect the “‘taters” and the other would be cover. Those hucksters were good at what they did. The townsfolk knew those boys were trouble and had weathered eyes for either of them. Nevertheless, those two got in more trouble than probably all of the kids in the Tri-State area put together. And those townsfolk had neither a guess to the level of patience their mother had, nor had they any rhyme or reason for why those two weren’t beaten within an inch of their lives by their Papa. Then there was Blake. Blake was simply quiet, which was his main skill. He was in charge of location and placement. He sought out the shady spots that were to be “starched.”

            As Jake recalls it, the first instance was a “harmless gambit for later days.” It started on a Friday evening underneath the trestle bridge located after the Jackson turn-off. The brothers had brought a tent and all the boys had a pillow and sleeping bag. Jake was sullen over the sudden destruction of his brief romance with Sally Crutchenson.  The brothers were arguing who was the cutest between Susan Merchaud and Karen Cordeen. Louis was fiddling with a box of cherry bombs he had put together with a bit of fertilizer and some gas that he had pinched from old man Barden. And Blake, being Blake, was pouring over the latest issue of Infernal Man. It was Chuck who saw Blake’s pillow lying next to a forlorn cherry bomb. It was not two seconds later that his equally mischievous brother caught the connection. Chuck grabbed the pillow while Doug grabbed the stray cherry bomb and they both plodded down the river bank giggling like hyenas. In all this time Blake had only just managed to scrape his gaze from the comic and utter a small protest before the explosion. “T’was a flurry of white.” Jake remembers with a smile. “Weren’t nothin’ more beautiful ‘sides the stars in the sky than watch’n those singed feathers drifting down.”

The next morning, Jake and the gang met in Louis’ room. On his desk were various electric circuits, wire strippers, power drill, and various tools and things that Louis had scrounged together from his Pa’s garage and various other places. In the midst of all the clutter sat one regular russet potato. “Was the first starchin’ we did that summer. Boys was nervous an’ stuff, but we was fix’n for some fun.” Said Jake wistfully, “Was to be once and only once with the ‘tater. I wanted to scare that sour girl Sally fer breakin’ up wit’ me.” It was Louis that rigged the system. He tied some twine round the middle of the russet and placed the cherry bomb in the dead center of that potato. Next was Blake’s turn. And Blake, the monkey he was, used the drainage pipe on Sally’s house to climb onto the roof. And somehow he managed to loop the other end of the twine around the edge of a loose shingle so that the potato was dangling in front of Sally’s window. Louis had also affixed a 20 inch fuse coming out one end of the potato so a single person on the ground could light it without too much difficulty. That honor was given to Jake, which he did with his prized zippo that he won the previous summer in a card game against Bob Grovers, his papa’s friend, whom he affectionately called “uncle.” The gang hid behind the neighbor’s house and awaited the explosion. “Twasn’t that loud.” Recalls Jake, “’Tater smotha’d up the sound, but boy did it make a mess on ‘er window! Haha, hope she got that one in ‘er scrapbook!”

Later that afternoon, the gang went to Purdy’s Diner, where they laughed and chided Jake. And he, being the leader, made the boys swear secrecy on their lives, “to cross their hearts and hope to die.” That was when Chuck and Doug suggested that they do more. Blake fussed but was soon overcome by the other boys. The first of their targets was old man Barden’s place at the edge of town. Next was the sour puss librarian’s place. Then came Principal O’Connell’s two story house where Blake planted two potato bombs: one for the front porch and the second for the balcony at the back. Every week they had a new target.

The last incident that summer planted a shadow on their memories. “Blake, ‘e will be sorely missed.” Said Jake, “Yeah, Blake argued that ‘e wan’ed a chance to light the fuse. Then things went to shit.” Jake explains, “He was walkin’ slow like. Chuck an’ Doug was tellin’ him t’ hurry up. Blake looks back at us grinnin’ y’ see an’ that’s when the crap happens. ‘E trips on a pothole an’ somehow lights the thin’ way too close to the explosive and Bam! Thin’ blows up in ‘is face.” An investigation was made posthumously and the officials theorized that the area around the bomb was too thin giving Blake the full force of the blast. The autopsy report showed shrapnel cutting through the eye socket and into the optical cortex of the brain and further. Blake’s death was devastating to the community and a full requisition was made for the Sheriff to hold no stops to the extent of the law. Parents were furious and soon the gang were brought in for questioning. Chuck and Doug were separated for individual questioning. Both claim “the other squealed first”, but both could not retain their tongues from flapping when facing the deputies alone. All four of the boys were sent to Juvee that year and now hold solemn jobs around the town. They scarcely even look at each other, never mind chat.

At the end of it all, Blake’s funeral was held. It was a big-to-do thing for the town and its atmosphere was changed forever. Most folk here will avoid the topic and get all antsy at the mere mention of explosives. Requisitions were made for a stricter curfew for the children and restrictions were placed on things such as fireworks and the like. People still visit Blake’s grave to this day. And there is always at least one thing sitting on top of his grave; it is a large, and uncooked russet potato.

Completed! The Prophet

The Prophet

A short short story written by Cory Kutschker


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.
In the early morning a silence overcame the globe. In the wilds there were no night calls of birds, or even the chirping of crickets or growl of nocturnal beasts. In the locales that already observed light and were into their day or perhaps just entering into evening, they also saw no activity. There was no cacophony of car horns or the loud baying of dogs or even the joyous laughter of children on the playground. The swing sets lay still making no squeaks and any cars were parked and silent, not an engine running. There was not even the light fluttering of a newspaper being dragged across the street by a breeze. All that made noise drew still, as though in some anticipation.  Then came the noise. It was not earthly by any means, but every man distinguished it as a distant whine until it grew to a vociferous and monotonous din of a deep horn being sounded.
In the dawn, instead of the sun, he came, the effulgent terror. What words I have for that day are not enough, but it was as though the sky boiled and peeled. It scraped from the black folds, exposing us to the gloom, the monstrous and yawning cosmos, still and black, oddly giving little light from the stars. Every eye grew mad by that great blackness spread over and around them. The arbitrator was inattentive to the long pleas wailing from mouths and lungs being starved of oxygen. Caves were lined with nail marks as asylum seekers were withdrawn into his gaze wherein they wilted onto their knees in deluges of tears. All the 'scapes of the earth were tilled and plained as he walked with eyes aflame.
He had an odd effect upon the earth, for every step of his would command a most verdant growth of grass to spring forth from the ground. Long dead plants would regain vigor and limp trees emboldened their trunks as pillars. Queer shadows grew long and challenged with hissing maws but were easily slain by him as they were cast into that abyss that seethed and rolled over itself, hungry for more.
A city had descended, magnificent and radiant enclosed by four walls equidistant.
What of the jubilant you ask? The four walls were built for them. But outside, There were long lines as the gavel was swung making hard rapping terminations as they took the long walk into that same abysmal mouth, licking over them. There they remained writhing, tortured and screaming back through the eons, coming under my ink.

I know I keep on starting projects but...

... It's so much fun! I don't normally go for sci-fi but then there are just some genres that work really well for some concepts and poor for others. This project is a derivative of an idea that actually was started by a friend of mine which I took and expanded and changed. Luckily, he's ok with me writing a story using it. This is another teaser.


Blasphemy Came

A short story by Cory Kutschker

Eternal and limited strands twisted and turned, careening along unknown folds. Over it all and interwoven was the cosmos, the stars and planets in their respective orbits, cyclopean boulder asteroids ploughing into dusty and grey moons, and miasmic nebulas sustained in gaseous colours. These fields of worlds and many substances thereof his mind knew as he sat upon the rock underneath the white dotted sky of Pt. It all shone in the night and remained Shal'ma'at.

Speaking of reboots...

              There have been numerous reboots of movie franchises in the past few years and I find myself restarting my oldest project that I started somewhere in the vicinity of 2008 entitled "The Dream Journal." The aim was simple, write a story where dreams were a form of divine communication addressing the main character's worldview. I had written close to sixty pages only to find that the character's despair was more a misery and the prose fraught with incessant whining. And I simply could not find a way to have his dreams and interpret them as well. Thus, the project entered phase two, scrap the first draft and reboot it under the new Cory Kutschker writing OS, which had been subjected to and heavily utilized the programming language of weird fiction and horror. There was a small excerpt that I posted some time ago on this blog that displayed that level of writing. So here is the the reupholstered introduction.

The Synopsis, or expectation of what I hope to achieve in the story:

       The story consists of journal entries written by Hugh, a nihilist, who is in a mental institution. He receives dreams and encounters a world that is far more than he knew or expected. Through this he gains understanding of the gospel.

The Dream Journal


 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
  Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
   On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
  when the morning stars sang together
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
  when I made clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
   and prescribed limits for it
    and set bars and doors,
   and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
    and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

Job 38:1-11

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
    and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
    and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
    and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
    but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
    there they flow again.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-7

The Private Journal of Hugh

October 1, 2015

Emptiness, All I can think of is emptiness. It does not bite. It smiles - an obscene, jagged and empty black maw.  I have stared into its eyes, soulless paths into an infinite thick oblivion. It has a name, Nihil. Despite my injuries, I can feel it in my bones, a sickening malaise. My head throbs. I have a broken leg, a broken arm, and my skull is fractured. Doc says I was lucky. Nah, lucky is not the right word.
A storm was approaching this morning. When I saw it I found dread, No control. It was absolute, an immense black and boiling object pressing forward and unstoppable. There was an object that had pure power unlike myself, an insignificant piece of flesh quivering in the autumn air. This storm is very much similar to Nihil. It knows the smile - but it is its offspring, having the same vestiges of malignancy.  But this menace does not smile, it stares.
I am alone, watching the rain as it sloshes across the window, smearing and distorting the city. Elizabeth, she would have found this beautiful. She always loved the rain.
I had a roommate earlier. He was Latino and barking mad I think. I had awoken with a yell from a nightmare. To this, he responded, “wwh-wh-wh-what-where-problem?” He had stammered and then started nibbling at his fingernails, gazing nervously towards my side of the room, looking this way and that, side to side. Shortly thereafter, the putrid rankness of excrement reached my nostrils. A nurse came in. She was rather portly but had a kind and endearing face.
“Oh dear!” She had exclaimed as she became aware of the stench. She followed my gaze to him and proceeded to amend the situation.
“Come, let’s get you cleaned up” she said in a voice as though to a child.
She gestured for him to follow.
I don't know why I am writing in my journal. Perhaps the feeling of writing is therapeutic, a release? But the dry whispers of the pen dragging across the paper is one of the few familiar sounds in this hospital. This pen scintillates under the lamp. Not too many with a nub anymore. I had felt the tip, nearly sharp. It drew a neat line across my thumb.

I have a pen...

October 7, 2015

I was not successful.
Despite losing a lot of blood, a nurse had walked in just after the act. I was revived by the hospital staff. They did not have room in the psychiatric wing for another, so I was moved. I was relegated to the St. Agnes's Hospital for mental disorders. It is out in the countryside and has a 15 acre property. The building has two wings that curl around the front courtyard, which has two grand elms, each in front of their respective wing. The gate was high, made of wrought iron, and joined with an equally high fence line that circled the property. The grounds were a vivifying display of colour, the grass a deep green and flower beds awash with the colours of violet, rose, and sunflower yellow. Something, I am told, meant as a mood setter.

Another Hors d'oeuvre

The Drowning Man

A short, short story

Written by Cory Kutschker

A calm, a peace and then panic. An arrhythmia sets in and that grotesque overturning of the stomach upon that sight. The black is extending to me, swimming upwards, overtaking the grand blue of the sea. Within this time, a throttling of my limbs churns and distorts my field of vision as those precious and fleeting bubbles are produced from my mouth in abandonment. Oh dear Clara! Shall I never return to you?

Hypnotic. A field of terrible boiling light is before me, yet beckons.

A choice. To chance the abyss or to make agreement with this mystery.

I have chosen. A ring of orange with four black stripes splashes onto the surface of the sea. Oh! If only I could reach it! I cannot, but reach out to that fearful luminescence. With half a mind, I observe myself ascending slowly. My head breaks the water as it chops around me with caps foaming white as sturdy gales pile them up to staggering and frightful heights. But I remain atop of them as I grasp the ring firmly. The sea heaves and the skies churn as I bob along. I am small on this plain. A vessel is behind me, riding the rolls of the water. Loud cries erupt from the crew for me to "swim as [my] life depends upon it." I am dragged up onto the deck. As I gag and sputter, spewing out reams of vomit and swallowed water, I peer over the edge to know the nightmare, countless more heads bob out of the water wailing for help, as the vessel pursued a distant land on the horizon.

A larger excerpt of A Life In Requiem

A Life In Requiem