Beautiful Souls
by John McGroarty
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: A young bestselling American author seeks her uncle's help with a sockpuppet.
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My room, Possum Creek, Epiphany, 2012, 3.30 a.m.
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from me after all this time but Mom’s worldly form has been dead deep down in the grave and her soul up with the Lord for two years now and I thought it was time to contact her only surviving brother. Besides, I have insomnia and can’t sleep. I’m going to be honest here. I am a pretty open and honest person no matter what other jealous bunnies might say. Most of the time. It’s one of my virtues. I have vices too and, depending on how this correspondence goes, I might even reveal some of them to you. Grrrrr. But I am getting ahead of myself; I am a person who is always getting ahead of him or herself. Except when I get ahead of other people. Which is all the time nowadays! I’m high IQ now, Uncle Frankie, and member of the Mensa Possum Creek writers group and a big time blogger in the Christian Lit virtual world. Do you get Facebook and the Internet in the booby hatch? I do hope so. I am also a very honest, open, sincere person and I always speak my mind. I know this can hurt sometimes but is the only way to be true to yourself and to the Saviour of the World. So I won’t be pulling my punches here. Well, Uncle Frankie, I’m not being completely honest, we’re not actually members of the Mensa, we are pretty brainy though, but the name is a sort of ironic reference and a cocked snook to pretension. Oh, I blush, Uncle Frankie. But no majors! I mean it’s not like lying, which is a sin as you well know (just sayin’!). Soooo. First I want to say how sorry I am, and Meredith is, and Little Brandon, and Mom, who is now up in Heaven, that you ended up in the loony bin. It was I’m sure you will admit your own fault and you have nobody to blame but yourself and the booze. That’s where the Devil is. I’m now certain that that’s where you first ran into the Archfiend. At the bottom of a whisky bottle. If you still have the old craving, sit up and take notice, Uncle Frankie, sit up and take notice! That’s antanaclasis and a literary technique. How right Mom and Reverend Klampitt were. I don’t believe in guilt. It’s an indulgence. So I don’t feel GUILTY. Not one iota. And don’t go thinking that Mom felt guilty; because she did not. That you have won; cause you have not. There was nothing she could have done for you if you didn’t turn to the Lord, renounce Satanus and all his sulphurous works, and save your insignificant minuscule-soul all by your little old self and sheer sweat from your brow. Not your forte I’m afraid, Mom always used to say! You can take a donkey to the market but you can’t make it eat cabbage or cry an honest hallelujah or sweat a hard day’s labor. That’s a parabolic metaphor, Uncle Frankie, so don’t go getting your Federal Lunatic Asylum Issue underpants twisted up all nasty and rancorous like you always used to. But, like me, she was truly sorry that you were sectioned. Well, as I am a truly honest person I must tell the truth, she was more embarrassed and ashamed than sorry. If anyone should be guilty here, it’s you, Uncle Frankie. YOU are the one who consorted with the Dark Lord. I am only writing to you now as I can’t sleep and as I think that your sensitivity and deep loony understanding of the sick perverted criminal mind will help me in my battle with my new self and my new found fame. And with that stinky snake’s ass Jebediah Stookey! No loving friend of mine! I know that I should rely purely on the Lord and the power of prayer but sometimes in life one must turn to the dark side to gain a higher understanding. Mandy Klampitt and I are firm believers in the power of the mad and deranged satanic mind to see deeper into the ultimate nature and reality of all things. You dingbat Devil worshippers are really privileged in worldly ways. You get to see thru the cracks of space and out into the eternity of things. Which is pure Evil, but really cool. The rest of us just have to imagine, fear, and tremble, and we never really know for sure. It was Mandy’s book The Young Werewolf of Fishpike Point that made me think about you. It was a truly gorgeous story by a gorgeous mega-talent. Wonderfully written. Mandy’s now a protean mega-talented mid-career writer, and my best friend. She has written seventeen books. Two before the braces were even off her teeth. Her stories are simple but to the point. That’s what a good book should do, Uncle Frankie. It’s about this wolf boy who is able to see the exact moment of death of everyone he meets. He knows because he’s going to kill them, of course! That’s why it’s so simple and ingenious, and funny too! I’ll send you a copy for your birthday. Maybe you and your little loony friends could read it in the day room and take some inspiration from true genius and moral rectitude. Though killing people and eating their flesh is wrong! Last week Ewok got a chicken bone stuck in his esophagus and vomited blood all night. What a sentimental wuss I can be at times! Don’t EVER give the loony bin dog CHICKEN BONES!! (or small children!!!). I love that dog like it was my own flesh and blood and couldn’t live without his snuggles. I can understand you being insane, Uncle Frankie, as I am insane too. About Ewok. Kathryn Lark, mega-talented authoress of the Beforetimers series, says in her blog it’s the sublimation of our desire to be cannibals into chic lit. She’s one of the biggest brains in the Mensa Possum Creek writers group and some suspect her of being a Satanist but the jury is still out on that one. I know, I know, I don’t need Reverend Klampitt to tell me, sublimation is a concept of the Devil. It’s like saying we aren’t all PERFECT children of God. WHICH WE ARE THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Maybe you remember her; she’s the mega-talented daughter of your old friend the mega-talented Judge Lancelot Lake. It was he AND Reverend Klampitt and Sheriff Billy Hogg who finally put an end to your black masses and your luciferian lunacy. That, Uncle Frankie, is a good example of alliteration which the Bain Brothers taught me (but more of them later). Dogs are not human beings! Repeat this a hundred times before bed!! The important thing is that you can describe simply in one sentence what your book is about. That’s what the publishers are looking for, Uncle Frankie. I thought you could write something about being a wingnut or about how you kicked your drink and drug habit and found redemption. It’s great material and shouldn’t be left just lying around. Maybe Mandy Klampitt and I could help you get it all down. But I’m getting off the subject. This is just an idea and is not the real reason why I am writing to you. Honestly, Mandy Klampitt is right, I sink and succumb and slither off any subject. That’s more alliteration and a literary technique. But more of that in my next letter. Ewok has snuggled up and from his breath I know that it’s time to go to beddy-byes. He is NOT a human being!!! Repeat a hundred times! I’ll write again soon. Please feel free to respond to the address at the top of this letter if you are allowed sharp implements in your padded cell.
23rd January, 2012, Midnight
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Soooo. It’s me. I’m back. To begin at the beginning as all good books always do. One day I was at the Mall looking for something pretty ungross to wear to Harry Henhouse’s big hooter party when I met the Bain brothers. They’re the weird twins of old Theodor Bain the mortician. I’m sure you remember them. He was a character witness at your trial. Fat lot of use he was, eh? I mean Mom’s testimony was enough. Nobody believed that story that you were just trying to invent a new type of glue that would stick to everything except human skin when you blew up the basement. We all knew you had summoned up Beelzebub. There were hoof prints everywhere. You were a danger to yourself, to Mom, to us young’uns, and to the whole town of Possum Creek. The nuthouse was the only safe place for you! Well anyway, we went to Starbucks for a smoothie and they started to tell me about their writing career. They write sci fi Christian romances. Tommy is really good at spelling and knows about adverbs and literary techniques and Brian is the imaginative one. They are a mega-talented team! They wrote the bestselling From Zargon with Love together in just one weekend. It’s really cool, it’s about a young guy called Charlie Bone who finds his long lost faith and falls in love with a buxom wench in Jerusalem as an asteroid hurtles towards the Earth in the year 8946 CE. I’ll send you a copy for your birthday. It has a nice tasteful soft porn illustration of the wench on the cover with the asteroid speeding towards the Dome of the Rock. I’m sure all you lonely loonies will love it! Soft porn, did I say that!? Oh hell’s bells, Uncle Frankie, you being a loony and a Satanist is having effects on me at a distance I do believe. I shall not succumb. Nor slither or slide. I shall be lifted up once more on wings of eagles! Soooo. I soar thru the storm. You are really wicked, Uncle Frankie. The Bain Brothers explained how I could serve the Lord with the pen and my very own little tiny voice would be raised up in praise. And so I started to write for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months. That’s hyperbole, Uncle Frankie, and a literary technique. Soon I had written 250,000 words of my first novel. Later I had to cut 70,000 words, but no biggie! That’s meiosis and another literary technique. See how high IQ I am now, Uncle Frankie! My first novel, The Archer’s Daughter, was number forty-two for six weeks on the Amazon Christian Historical Novels section. Do you get Amazon in the loony bin? Tamara Pidgin Moore called it masterful medieval fiction and an awesome gem of a debut. It’s the story of Abigail Bunyan, the daughter of a famous gentleman pure-hearted archer in Medieval England who is viciously and cruelly slain by an evil king. She is hunted by the evil king and his barons and a pack of greyhound dogs and has to live alone in the forest with all the little forest animals. It’s weird I know but Ewok helped me to write it. She is taken in by an old monk, who it turns out was a knight templar and is really the girl’s grandfather, who became a secluded monk after contracting leprosy in a whorehouse in Medieval Mesopotamia. He can redeem himself too. Everybody can be redeemed. Even the evil king and the greyhound dogs find the Lord in the end. Though I’m not so sure about you, Uncle Frankie, you naughty necromancer! He starts to teach her the ancient art of archery and she becomes a real virtuoso on the bow with the help of a scurry of squirrels and finally overcomes herself and gets revenge on the evil king, gets her antique lands back, and marries a handsome aristocrat gentleman and at the end they all go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and kill a lot of Mohammedans to thank the Lord for not abandoning them. The thing is, Uncle Frankie, she never lost her faith! Some of the scenes were a little bloody but I did a lot of research and I knew that that was what war was like back then before we had nice guided missiles and everything was done by computer and was on CNN. I received some bad crit from some Satanist whining liberals. And jealous little talentless bunnies! They said that the violence was just too gory and gratuitous. But did I invent history? No, not I. I do love medieval history, Uncle Frankie, it was my minor. But I am not responsible for it!! It happened. Get over it. Remember guilt is an indulgence. Life was hell, yeah, but there was hope and redemption too! That’s what I was trying to say. No matter how hard life gets, you must put your faith in the Lord and all will come out right in the end! Try to focus on that, Uncle Frankie! You might be saved yet. I am now sure of it. I’m also going to send you Mandy Klampitt’s wonderfully gorgeous new modern Christian uplifting trilogy for your delectation. Live Love Laugh; Sing Dance Dream and Fall Pray Rise Again. We’re all very excited at the Mensa PC writers group as the books are going to be made into a great American Christian film by the splendidly mega-talented Pastor Bobby Bullock right here in little old Possum Creek! We all hope and pray that they will help America to rise on eagle wings and become great again. Mandy Klampitt has a simple faith and at the core of the three books are the commandments for a new American Revival. Here are the commandments, which I think you would do well to try to follow every day, Uncle Frankie.
Listen to your heart
Know when to say sorry
Use kind words and always say please and thank you
Smile and respect one another
Give alot of kisses hugs and love all you have always
Love God your country and your next door neighbour and upstairs/downstairs neighbour too
Keep your promises
Forgive even when it’s very hard
Always tell the truth
BE HAPPY!!
Grow old together
Laugh every day!
Have candlelight dinners on Saturdays
Abide with the Lord
I feel really emotional now and I have to close this letter. Once again I haven’t told you the real reason why I am writing. That’s narrative hook and a literary technique. I promise to tell you in the next letter. Maybe I have some sort of resistance but I must start trusting you again if we are to be uncle and niece once more. Ewok has been snoring for over an hour now so I’m going to snuggle up and try to get some shut eye. I have to write 400,000 words tomorrow at the very least or I’m finished as a Christian historical novelist. There’s a tornado blowing somewhere far off but it can’t penetrate our bubble fortifications here in Possum Creek so I know I’m safe. Don’t you just love being in bed all snuggly warm when there’s a wild tornado blowing and destroying everything in its path outside the bubble? God bless you, Uncle Frankie. Good night, you old idolater and cuddly son of Satan.
10th February 2012, just before breakfast
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Hope this epistle finds you in good mental health for once. I was rereading the last letter we received from the Asylum and I’m thinking of acting as your guarantor and safe haven in the world. I only have to say the word and you could be back home very soon. Sooo. With that in mind I’m going to tell you my unpleasant recent experiences and hope that you can find it in your deranged mind and corrupted heart to wisely advise your innocent young niece who only wants the best for you and has always loved you. After the publication of The Archer’s Daughter I then went on to write two more wonderful little books, A husband for Jenny Tyndall and The Whispering Winds of the Prairie. They were both gorgeously successful and Pastor Bobby Bullock is also talking about making Whispering Winds into a mini-series on his evangelical channel. Well, one day I was in the book shop in Possum Falls Mall and I saw this guy reading the blurb on the back of my book. I got a real thrill. It’s the sort of moment all writers hope for so I sidled up to him and casually started browsing. Then he suddenly burst out laughing. It was a nasty satanic rancorous laugh! I don’t know for the life of me what there is to laugh about in the description of my book, I really don’t, but he then started to giggle uncontrollably and there were tears starting to roll down his cheeks. Everybody in the bookstore was looking at him. He staggered out of the shop and I could hear his laugh echoing thruout the Mall. And thru the crevices of my brain for months. I even stopped writing for a couple of days and very nearly fell into a depression and could only write 50,000 words a day for weeks afterwards. Then just when I was almost completely recovered I took little Brandon to a kiddies’ party (I’m Mom to the little bastard son of Meredith as she is on the same slippery satanic slope as you) and there, to my utter shock and awe, at the pool, was the same guy! Well, as you can imagine, Uncle Frankie, I couldn’t take my eyes off him and followed his every move but somehow the little weasel escaped me. I went to get a chocolate milk shake from the drinks table and when I turned he was standing there directly behind me. He had a sneering look on his face. He stood leering at me for a couple of minutes and I was going to call security. I don’t think he was from Possum Creek and I don’t know how he got into our fortified idyllic little town. Then he said, half-laughing, “Why, isn’t it the great historical novelist?” I just blurted out that I was indeed she and that yes I had written alot of words and stories and I didn’t know why he was laughing. He licked his lips and continued, “But come on, it’s not like real literature, is it?” He started to laugh again and then turned and quickly left the party. I never saw him again. Mandy Klampitt and all the good people at the Mensa Possum Creek writers group slowly reassured me of my talent and I finally got my confidence back. Time went by and one day, to my utter horror, I saw a really nasty comment on Mandy’s blog about her Trilogy. And guess what? It had my name at the bottom!! Mandy instantly unfriended me on Facebook and refused to answer the phone for weeks. Then disgusting satanic comments started to appear under my name everywhere. On Amazon about the Bain Brothers gorgeous stuff. On all the blogs of my friends. People were unsubscribing all over the place from my medieval armaments blog. Sending my books back to the publishers. I was frantic and being unfriended and pilloried on social media everywhere. I was blackballed and disgracefully expelled from the Mensa Possum Creek writers group. Sales were affected and my editors at the Treehouse in the Sky publishers were getting edgy. Then in my darkest hour an angel of the Lord bearing hope came to me and I got to thinking about that guy and I did a bit of research and discovered that his name was Jebediah Stookey and that he was a failed sad creepy little literary writer. The rancorous little skunk had sock puppeted me!! He was one of those writers who write from their egos about taking drugs and drinking and about how bad the world has been to them. Most of the stories were written when he was drunk I think! Get over it!! It was him. He wasn’t even very clever. The trail on the Internet led directly to his smelly little page with his gross and pathetic stories and poems. But would you believe it, Uncle Frankie, I couldn’t do anything to get him off the Internet or erase all the stuff he put up there in my name!?! He even sock puppeted a glowing review by me of his idiotic collection of satanic short stories Barbed Wire Life. So when I was rereading Mandy Klampitt’s wolf boy story I thought that maybe you could use your contacts with the unholy powers to have him have an accident. You know, like in the Omen or something like that. A falling cross pierces him and stakes him to the ground and he dies an agonizing death. Please, Uncle Frankie, I’m really desperate here!! I promise I will write, as soon as I hear from you, to the authorities saying that Mom made it all up and that you’re really a wonderful gorgeous person and that a great injustice has been done to you. That you’re no more a Satanist than Reverend Klampitt. There might even be some compensation, which we can split. I’m begging you, Uncle Frankie, please say you will! Ewok is looking at me with hungry eyes so I’m going to make us all some breakfast. I am losing the dream. I am lost. Only you can save me now. Until I hear from you, my lovely gorgeous Uncle of my heart and soul!
May 22nd 2012, 4 a.m.
I am really mad with you, Uncle Frankie. Madder than I’ve ever been with anyone. Even with Jebediah Stookey! Or with Ewok the time he had a gippy tummy and pooped all over the white rug in the lounge. It’s been two weeks now since I finally received your expletive full response to the kind loving letters I’ve been sending you in the loony bin. You are a black-hearted worshipper of the Devil, indeed!! I write to you in a desperate state offering you a perfectly reasonable exchange of actions and you respond LIKE THAT. You say that me and Mandy Klampitt and the Bain Brothers are “f*cking awful writers” who should devote our time to anything but writing. No-one, not even mad satanic loonies like you, have the right to say that. Writing depends upon the reader and if you don’t like it you don’t have to read it!!! We have sold thousands and thousands of books and are all FULL TIME authors! You also say that you “can’t just wake up one day and decide to be a f*cking writer”, that “you have to suffer, really f*cking suffer, and then, just maybe then, you can write”. Well, really, Mandy and the Bains and me have all suffered!! Alot more than you think, Uncle Frankie!! And I did not appreciate your correcting my grammar, I know perfectly well that alot is normally two words but we all write it like that at the Mensa Possum Creek writers group. We are breaking all the literary rules! Even we Christian writers are postmodern too! Well, your letter is now with my lawyers and in the hands of Sheriff Hogg. He says that he’s going to speak to the Asylum authorities and that you will never ever get out of the bin. So there, you dark horrid little person and silly jealous bunny! The following document, which you attached with the letter, is in the hands of Reverend Klampitt, you may also be guilty of blasphemy you should know:
Swearwords: None.
Description: A young bestselling American author seeks her uncle's help with a sockpuppet.
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My room, Possum Creek, Epiphany, 2012, 3.30 a.m.
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from me after all this time but Mom’s worldly form has been dead deep down in the grave and her soul up with the Lord for two years now and I thought it was time to contact her only surviving brother. Besides, I have insomnia and can’t sleep. I’m going to be honest here. I am a pretty open and honest person no matter what other jealous bunnies might say. Most of the time. It’s one of my virtues. I have vices too and, depending on how this correspondence goes, I might even reveal some of them to you. Grrrrr. But I am getting ahead of myself; I am a person who is always getting ahead of him or herself. Except when I get ahead of other people. Which is all the time nowadays! I’m high IQ now, Uncle Frankie, and member of the Mensa Possum Creek writers group and a big time blogger in the Christian Lit virtual world. Do you get Facebook and the Internet in the booby hatch? I do hope so. I am also a very honest, open, sincere person and I always speak my mind. I know this can hurt sometimes but is the only way to be true to yourself and to the Saviour of the World. So I won’t be pulling my punches here. Well, Uncle Frankie, I’m not being completely honest, we’re not actually members of the Mensa, we are pretty brainy though, but the name is a sort of ironic reference and a cocked snook to pretension. Oh, I blush, Uncle Frankie. But no majors! I mean it’s not like lying, which is a sin as you well know (just sayin’!). Soooo. First I want to say how sorry I am, and Meredith is, and Little Brandon, and Mom, who is now up in Heaven, that you ended up in the loony bin. It was I’m sure you will admit your own fault and you have nobody to blame but yourself and the booze. That’s where the Devil is. I’m now certain that that’s where you first ran into the Archfiend. At the bottom of a whisky bottle. If you still have the old craving, sit up and take notice, Uncle Frankie, sit up and take notice! That’s antanaclasis and a literary technique. How right Mom and Reverend Klampitt were. I don’t believe in guilt. It’s an indulgence. So I don’t feel GUILTY. Not one iota. And don’t go thinking that Mom felt guilty; because she did not. That you have won; cause you have not. There was nothing she could have done for you if you didn’t turn to the Lord, renounce Satanus and all his sulphurous works, and save your insignificant minuscule-soul all by your little old self and sheer sweat from your brow. Not your forte I’m afraid, Mom always used to say! You can take a donkey to the market but you can’t make it eat cabbage or cry an honest hallelujah or sweat a hard day’s labor. That’s a parabolic metaphor, Uncle Frankie, so don’t go getting your Federal Lunatic Asylum Issue underpants twisted up all nasty and rancorous like you always used to. But, like me, she was truly sorry that you were sectioned. Well, as I am a truly honest person I must tell the truth, she was more embarrassed and ashamed than sorry. If anyone should be guilty here, it’s you, Uncle Frankie. YOU are the one who consorted with the Dark Lord. I am only writing to you now as I can’t sleep and as I think that your sensitivity and deep loony understanding of the sick perverted criminal mind will help me in my battle with my new self and my new found fame. And with that stinky snake’s ass Jebediah Stookey! No loving friend of mine! I know that I should rely purely on the Lord and the power of prayer but sometimes in life one must turn to the dark side to gain a higher understanding. Mandy Klampitt and I are firm believers in the power of the mad and deranged satanic mind to see deeper into the ultimate nature and reality of all things. You dingbat Devil worshippers are really privileged in worldly ways. You get to see thru the cracks of space and out into the eternity of things. Which is pure Evil, but really cool. The rest of us just have to imagine, fear, and tremble, and we never really know for sure. It was Mandy’s book The Young Werewolf of Fishpike Point that made me think about you. It was a truly gorgeous story by a gorgeous mega-talent. Wonderfully written. Mandy’s now a protean mega-talented mid-career writer, and my best friend. She has written seventeen books. Two before the braces were even off her teeth. Her stories are simple but to the point. That’s what a good book should do, Uncle Frankie. It’s about this wolf boy who is able to see the exact moment of death of everyone he meets. He knows because he’s going to kill them, of course! That’s why it’s so simple and ingenious, and funny too! I’ll send you a copy for your birthday. Maybe you and your little loony friends could read it in the day room and take some inspiration from true genius and moral rectitude. Though killing people and eating their flesh is wrong! Last week Ewok got a chicken bone stuck in his esophagus and vomited blood all night. What a sentimental wuss I can be at times! Don’t EVER give the loony bin dog CHICKEN BONES!! (or small children!!!). I love that dog like it was my own flesh and blood and couldn’t live without his snuggles. I can understand you being insane, Uncle Frankie, as I am insane too. About Ewok. Kathryn Lark, mega-talented authoress of the Beforetimers series, says in her blog it’s the sublimation of our desire to be cannibals into chic lit. She’s one of the biggest brains in the Mensa Possum Creek writers group and some suspect her of being a Satanist but the jury is still out on that one. I know, I know, I don’t need Reverend Klampitt to tell me, sublimation is a concept of the Devil. It’s like saying we aren’t all PERFECT children of God. WHICH WE ARE THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Maybe you remember her; she’s the mega-talented daughter of your old friend the mega-talented Judge Lancelot Lake. It was he AND Reverend Klampitt and Sheriff Billy Hogg who finally put an end to your black masses and your luciferian lunacy. That, Uncle Frankie, is a good example of alliteration which the Bain Brothers taught me (but more of them later). Dogs are not human beings! Repeat this a hundred times before bed!! The important thing is that you can describe simply in one sentence what your book is about. That’s what the publishers are looking for, Uncle Frankie. I thought you could write something about being a wingnut or about how you kicked your drink and drug habit and found redemption. It’s great material and shouldn’t be left just lying around. Maybe Mandy Klampitt and I could help you get it all down. But I’m getting off the subject. This is just an idea and is not the real reason why I am writing to you. Honestly, Mandy Klampitt is right, I sink and succumb and slither off any subject. That’s more alliteration and a literary technique. But more of that in my next letter. Ewok has snuggled up and from his breath I know that it’s time to go to beddy-byes. He is NOT a human being!!! Repeat a hundred times! I’ll write again soon. Please feel free to respond to the address at the top of this letter if you are allowed sharp implements in your padded cell.
23rd January, 2012, Midnight
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Soooo. It’s me. I’m back. To begin at the beginning as all good books always do. One day I was at the Mall looking for something pretty ungross to wear to Harry Henhouse’s big hooter party when I met the Bain brothers. They’re the weird twins of old Theodor Bain the mortician. I’m sure you remember them. He was a character witness at your trial. Fat lot of use he was, eh? I mean Mom’s testimony was enough. Nobody believed that story that you were just trying to invent a new type of glue that would stick to everything except human skin when you blew up the basement. We all knew you had summoned up Beelzebub. There were hoof prints everywhere. You were a danger to yourself, to Mom, to us young’uns, and to the whole town of Possum Creek. The nuthouse was the only safe place for you! Well anyway, we went to Starbucks for a smoothie and they started to tell me about their writing career. They write sci fi Christian romances. Tommy is really good at spelling and knows about adverbs and literary techniques and Brian is the imaginative one. They are a mega-talented team! They wrote the bestselling From Zargon with Love together in just one weekend. It’s really cool, it’s about a young guy called Charlie Bone who finds his long lost faith and falls in love with a buxom wench in Jerusalem as an asteroid hurtles towards the Earth in the year 8946 CE. I’ll send you a copy for your birthday. It has a nice tasteful soft porn illustration of the wench on the cover with the asteroid speeding towards the Dome of the Rock. I’m sure all you lonely loonies will love it! Soft porn, did I say that!? Oh hell’s bells, Uncle Frankie, you being a loony and a Satanist is having effects on me at a distance I do believe. I shall not succumb. Nor slither or slide. I shall be lifted up once more on wings of eagles! Soooo. I soar thru the storm. You are really wicked, Uncle Frankie. The Bain Brothers explained how I could serve the Lord with the pen and my very own little tiny voice would be raised up in praise. And so I started to write for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months. That’s hyperbole, Uncle Frankie, and a literary technique. Soon I had written 250,000 words of my first novel. Later I had to cut 70,000 words, but no biggie! That’s meiosis and another literary technique. See how high IQ I am now, Uncle Frankie! My first novel, The Archer’s Daughter, was number forty-two for six weeks on the Amazon Christian Historical Novels section. Do you get Amazon in the loony bin? Tamara Pidgin Moore called it masterful medieval fiction and an awesome gem of a debut. It’s the story of Abigail Bunyan, the daughter of a famous gentleman pure-hearted archer in Medieval England who is viciously and cruelly slain by an evil king. She is hunted by the evil king and his barons and a pack of greyhound dogs and has to live alone in the forest with all the little forest animals. It’s weird I know but Ewok helped me to write it. She is taken in by an old monk, who it turns out was a knight templar and is really the girl’s grandfather, who became a secluded monk after contracting leprosy in a whorehouse in Medieval Mesopotamia. He can redeem himself too. Everybody can be redeemed. Even the evil king and the greyhound dogs find the Lord in the end. Though I’m not so sure about you, Uncle Frankie, you naughty necromancer! He starts to teach her the ancient art of archery and she becomes a real virtuoso on the bow with the help of a scurry of squirrels and finally overcomes herself and gets revenge on the evil king, gets her antique lands back, and marries a handsome aristocrat gentleman and at the end they all go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and kill a lot of Mohammedans to thank the Lord for not abandoning them. The thing is, Uncle Frankie, she never lost her faith! Some of the scenes were a little bloody but I did a lot of research and I knew that that was what war was like back then before we had nice guided missiles and everything was done by computer and was on CNN. I received some bad crit from some Satanist whining liberals. And jealous little talentless bunnies! They said that the violence was just too gory and gratuitous. But did I invent history? No, not I. I do love medieval history, Uncle Frankie, it was my minor. But I am not responsible for it!! It happened. Get over it. Remember guilt is an indulgence. Life was hell, yeah, but there was hope and redemption too! That’s what I was trying to say. No matter how hard life gets, you must put your faith in the Lord and all will come out right in the end! Try to focus on that, Uncle Frankie! You might be saved yet. I am now sure of it. I’m also going to send you Mandy Klampitt’s wonderfully gorgeous new modern Christian uplifting trilogy for your delectation. Live Love Laugh; Sing Dance Dream and Fall Pray Rise Again. We’re all very excited at the Mensa PC writers group as the books are going to be made into a great American Christian film by the splendidly mega-talented Pastor Bobby Bullock right here in little old Possum Creek! We all hope and pray that they will help America to rise on eagle wings and become great again. Mandy Klampitt has a simple faith and at the core of the three books are the commandments for a new American Revival. Here are the commandments, which I think you would do well to try to follow every day, Uncle Frankie.
Listen to your heart
Know when to say sorry
Use kind words and always say please and thank you
Smile and respect one another
Give alot of kisses hugs and love all you have always
Love God your country and your next door neighbour and upstairs/downstairs neighbour too
Keep your promises
Forgive even when it’s very hard
Always tell the truth
BE HAPPY!!
Grow old together
Laugh every day!
Have candlelight dinners on Saturdays
Abide with the Lord
I feel really emotional now and I have to close this letter. Once again I haven’t told you the real reason why I am writing. That’s narrative hook and a literary technique. I promise to tell you in the next letter. Maybe I have some sort of resistance but I must start trusting you again if we are to be uncle and niece once more. Ewok has been snoring for over an hour now so I’m going to snuggle up and try to get some shut eye. I have to write 400,000 words tomorrow at the very least or I’m finished as a Christian historical novelist. There’s a tornado blowing somewhere far off but it can’t penetrate our bubble fortifications here in Possum Creek so I know I’m safe. Don’t you just love being in bed all snuggly warm when there’s a wild tornado blowing and destroying everything in its path outside the bubble? God bless you, Uncle Frankie. Good night, you old idolater and cuddly son of Satan.
10th February 2012, just before breakfast
Dear Uncle Frankie,
Hope this epistle finds you in good mental health for once. I was rereading the last letter we received from the Asylum and I’m thinking of acting as your guarantor and safe haven in the world. I only have to say the word and you could be back home very soon. Sooo. With that in mind I’m going to tell you my unpleasant recent experiences and hope that you can find it in your deranged mind and corrupted heart to wisely advise your innocent young niece who only wants the best for you and has always loved you. After the publication of The Archer’s Daughter I then went on to write two more wonderful little books, A husband for Jenny Tyndall and The Whispering Winds of the Prairie. They were both gorgeously successful and Pastor Bobby Bullock is also talking about making Whispering Winds into a mini-series on his evangelical channel. Well, one day I was in the book shop in Possum Falls Mall and I saw this guy reading the blurb on the back of my book. I got a real thrill. It’s the sort of moment all writers hope for so I sidled up to him and casually started browsing. Then he suddenly burst out laughing. It was a nasty satanic rancorous laugh! I don’t know for the life of me what there is to laugh about in the description of my book, I really don’t, but he then started to giggle uncontrollably and there were tears starting to roll down his cheeks. Everybody in the bookstore was looking at him. He staggered out of the shop and I could hear his laugh echoing thruout the Mall. And thru the crevices of my brain for months. I even stopped writing for a couple of days and very nearly fell into a depression and could only write 50,000 words a day for weeks afterwards. Then just when I was almost completely recovered I took little Brandon to a kiddies’ party (I’m Mom to the little bastard son of Meredith as she is on the same slippery satanic slope as you) and there, to my utter shock and awe, at the pool, was the same guy! Well, as you can imagine, Uncle Frankie, I couldn’t take my eyes off him and followed his every move but somehow the little weasel escaped me. I went to get a chocolate milk shake from the drinks table and when I turned he was standing there directly behind me. He had a sneering look on his face. He stood leering at me for a couple of minutes and I was going to call security. I don’t think he was from Possum Creek and I don’t know how he got into our fortified idyllic little town. Then he said, half-laughing, “Why, isn’t it the great historical novelist?” I just blurted out that I was indeed she and that yes I had written alot of words and stories and I didn’t know why he was laughing. He licked his lips and continued, “But come on, it’s not like real literature, is it?” He started to laugh again and then turned and quickly left the party. I never saw him again. Mandy Klampitt and all the good people at the Mensa Possum Creek writers group slowly reassured me of my talent and I finally got my confidence back. Time went by and one day, to my utter horror, I saw a really nasty comment on Mandy’s blog about her Trilogy. And guess what? It had my name at the bottom!! Mandy instantly unfriended me on Facebook and refused to answer the phone for weeks. Then disgusting satanic comments started to appear under my name everywhere. On Amazon about the Bain Brothers gorgeous stuff. On all the blogs of my friends. People were unsubscribing all over the place from my medieval armaments blog. Sending my books back to the publishers. I was frantic and being unfriended and pilloried on social media everywhere. I was blackballed and disgracefully expelled from the Mensa Possum Creek writers group. Sales were affected and my editors at the Treehouse in the Sky publishers were getting edgy. Then in my darkest hour an angel of the Lord bearing hope came to me and I got to thinking about that guy and I did a bit of research and discovered that his name was Jebediah Stookey and that he was a failed sad creepy little literary writer. The rancorous little skunk had sock puppeted me!! He was one of those writers who write from their egos about taking drugs and drinking and about how bad the world has been to them. Most of the stories were written when he was drunk I think! Get over it!! It was him. He wasn’t even very clever. The trail on the Internet led directly to his smelly little page with his gross and pathetic stories and poems. But would you believe it, Uncle Frankie, I couldn’t do anything to get him off the Internet or erase all the stuff he put up there in my name!?! He even sock puppeted a glowing review by me of his idiotic collection of satanic short stories Barbed Wire Life. So when I was rereading Mandy Klampitt’s wolf boy story I thought that maybe you could use your contacts with the unholy powers to have him have an accident. You know, like in the Omen or something like that. A falling cross pierces him and stakes him to the ground and he dies an agonizing death. Please, Uncle Frankie, I’m really desperate here!! I promise I will write, as soon as I hear from you, to the authorities saying that Mom made it all up and that you’re really a wonderful gorgeous person and that a great injustice has been done to you. That you’re no more a Satanist than Reverend Klampitt. There might even be some compensation, which we can split. I’m begging you, Uncle Frankie, please say you will! Ewok is looking at me with hungry eyes so I’m going to make us all some breakfast. I am losing the dream. I am lost. Only you can save me now. Until I hear from you, my lovely gorgeous Uncle of my heart and soul!
May 22nd 2012, 4 a.m.
I am really mad with you, Uncle Frankie. Madder than I’ve ever been with anyone. Even with Jebediah Stookey! Or with Ewok the time he had a gippy tummy and pooped all over the white rug in the lounge. It’s been two weeks now since I finally received your expletive full response to the kind loving letters I’ve been sending you in the loony bin. You are a black-hearted worshipper of the Devil, indeed!! I write to you in a desperate state offering you a perfectly reasonable exchange of actions and you respond LIKE THAT. You say that me and Mandy Klampitt and the Bain Brothers are “f*cking awful writers” who should devote our time to anything but writing. No-one, not even mad satanic loonies like you, have the right to say that. Writing depends upon the reader and if you don’t like it you don’t have to read it!!! We have sold thousands and thousands of books and are all FULL TIME authors! You also say that you “can’t just wake up one day and decide to be a f*cking writer”, that “you have to suffer, really f*cking suffer, and then, just maybe then, you can write”. Well, really, Mandy and the Bains and me have all suffered!! Alot more than you think, Uncle Frankie!! And I did not appreciate your correcting my grammar, I know perfectly well that alot is normally two words but we all write it like that at the Mensa Possum Creek writers group. We are breaking all the literary rules! Even we Christian writers are postmodern too! Well, your letter is now with my lawyers and in the hands of Sheriff Hogg. He says that he’s going to speak to the Asylum authorities and that you will never ever get out of the bin. So there, you dark horrid little person and silly jealous bunny! The following document, which you attached with the letter, is in the hands of Reverend Klampitt, you may also be guilty of blasphemy you should know:
"Blessed are the poor in everything,
for theirs is to provide all for the few.
Blessed are they who play along,
for they shall receive a good job.
Blessed are the pushy,
for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for electronic goods,
for they shall be satisfied beyond the limits of the Earth.
Blessed are the merchant bankers,
for they shall receive their reward with excessively high interest.
Blessed are the pure of righteous heart and lovers of FREEDOM,
for they shall feel morally superior in their iniquity.
Blessed are the warmakers,
for they shall be called the Children of Democracy.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of the economy,
for theirs is the kingdom of debt.
Blessed are the truly awful writers for they shall never tire of blowing their own trumpet.
for theirs is to provide all for the few.
Blessed are they who play along,
for they shall receive a good job.
Blessed are the pushy,
for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for electronic goods,
for they shall be satisfied beyond the limits of the Earth.
Blessed are the merchant bankers,
for they shall receive their reward with excessively high interest.
Blessed are the pure of righteous heart and lovers of FREEDOM,
for they shall feel morally superior in their iniquity.
Blessed are the warmakers,
for they shall be called the Children of Democracy.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of the economy,
for theirs is the kingdom of debt.
Blessed are the truly awful writers for they shall never tire of blowing their own trumpet.
This document, which you arrogantly said was your last word on “the whole f*cking f*cked up Possum Creek excuse for a way of life” is also being studied by the legal authorities. It is certainly treasonous and might even put you in the electric chair when America recovers her greatness!! You can count on that, Uncle Frankie! The last one is particularly cruel and lacking in psychological insight as we are not “blowing our own trumpet”, you messenger of Satan, we are blowing the trumpet of the Lord! It is, I also note, and will testify so, only nine “commandments”. That is a beast number. Three less than the perfect twelve of the Apostles. Three times three, a divisor of the number of the beast. Half of the three sixes. Add the one and the eight and you get the demonic nine. You won’t stand a chance in any court in America when our day comes! And by the way I must tell you to expect a visit from Sheriff Hogg and Reverend Klampitt and some of the good ol’ boys one of these days soon. We all demand to know what you meant by saying at the end of your letter that “America now belongs to you and all the f*cking beautiful souls like you”. I think you are being facetious and the Sheriff thinks that it might be some sort of terrorist codeword and has promised to beat its meaning out of your Devil worshipping ass. I hope you rot in the loony bin, Uncle Frankie. I really do. You shan’t be hearing from me and Ewok ever again. Oh Lord, hold me in your wings. Though I walk in Possum Valley in the shadow of the beast with evil demons and rancorous jealous bunnies all around I shall use kind words and always say please and thank you, I shall laugh every day, I shall listen to my heart, I shall BE HAPPY!! Amen, and go to hell!!!
About the Author
John McGroarty was born in Glasgow and now lives in Barcelona, where he works as an English teacher. He has been writing short stories for many years. His long short story Rainbow, his novel The Tower and his short fiction collection Everywhere are McStorytellers publications.
You can read John's full profile at McVoices.
You can read John's full profile at McVoices.