Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (111 page)
Read Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection Online
Authors: J. Thorn
I did not
realize how deep this phenomenon ran until I had children of my own. If our
first child farted off-key, my wife would call the nurse’s line and hope to get
him into the ER, or at least the nearest urgent care. You worry about
everything because it all seems odd and deadly. If you do not have children, it
might be hard to understand these feelings. A former coworker of mine put it
like this:
“I love my
husband, without a doubt. I love my kids, too. But if a bus was heading right
for my kids, I would dive to knock them out of the way and gladly give my life
to save them. If the same bus was coming for my husband, I would yell, ‘Hey,
there’s a bus coming at you.’”
When
one, or two, or even three provide your only frame of reference, nothing seems
right. I estimate that I have taught over one thousand students in my previous
career as a teacher. That experience brings an ability to detect trends or
patterns. It also allows me to label behaviors as “normal” or “abnormal” based
on the frequency of recurrence from year to year. Behaviors that alarm parents
do not worry me, and sometimes behaviors that worry me do not alarm parents.
Imagine going to
a specialist for a specific disorder. The doctor has spent years researching
the disorder, continues to read journals on it, and spends every single day treating
people with the disorder. Imagine that this specialist gives you advice on
alleviating symptoms of the disorder. Would you accept it? I am guessing you
would. At the very least you might get a second opinion (or you might Google
it, you fucking monkey). This does not happen often in education. In fact, the
“patients” would spend most of their time and energy arguing the diagnoses and
claiming that the “doctor” does not “know” them.
Imagine going to
the doctor with headaches, and she suggests you take up smoking. On NBC’s
Mystery
in the Air
in the late 1940s, announcer Michael Roy stated that almost
twelve thousands doctors from every branch of medicine claimed that Camel
cigarettes were the most recommended by those in the medical community. Smoking
was “medically proven” to assist in the digestive process and to help the
smoker relax. The advice lasted well into the 1950s until the detriments of
tobacco became apparent and doctors distanced themselves from the product.
Would you accept this advice from your primary care physician today? I doubt
you would, because the health care industry (except for insurance companies,
who have devolved into greedy bastards) has evolved in the past fifty years.
Advances in technology and education have provided us with better health care
and doctors.
And yet parents
continue to insist that the education they received as children is the same
kind their kids should receive. It seems as though every other profession has
evolved, and people accept this, except in education. Just because you were
forced to handwrite an essay in cursive while in silent rows of chairs in 1960,
that does not mean it’s the best way to educate a child today. There is no
trust in the profession and, in turn, a severe lack of respect for those in it.
***
I came from a
solid, middle-class, Catholic upbringing. I had respect and guilt drilled into
my skull from the time I was old enough to receive a belt on my ass for
knocking my brother into the closet door. And yet on Friday nights in the
1980s, The Beast commanded my soul and allowed me to partake in all of Evan’s
debaucheries. Whether it was a bunch of college kids out drinking or a
middle-aged family man in a minivan, we provoked them all into a game of Chase.
Recently I heard
that Evan is unmarried and drives trucks for a living. This does not surprise
me, even though Evan nailed some pretty hot chicks in his day. Even in public
he showed them very little respect. Evan’s father was a truck driver and died
on the highway. I can only imagine what nights at the rest stop must be like
for him.
Suppose a Buick
full of rowdy teenagers pulled up alongside Evan’s tractor trailer and began
taunting him into a game of Chase? Maybe a roadside beating by an angry truck
driver would teach them some respect.
Conclusion
Kids
always ask why people in previous generations were so stupid. They cannot
understand how the obvious, identified in hindsight, remained hidden from those
who lived through it. Children marvel at the retelling of Gilgamesh or the
folly of Zeus and his cronies. They find it appalling to think that people of
Medieval Europe believed only royalty could lead through the direct blood line
of God or that the pharaohs of ancient Egypt enslaved generations to build
glorified coffins. Even more recent mindsets baffle the young with a dose of
cultural embarrassment. The kids wrinkle their nose at the shit-stink of
segregation, which seemed perfectly natural to their grandparents.
In much the same
way, historians will look back at this time and marvel at the ignorance of the
American Empire. Children of the future will ask why so many protested same-sex
marriage. They will not understand how terrorists could blow up two skyscrapers
in the name of Allah or how murderers could bomb abortion clinics in the name
of God.
“If they knew
the burning of fossil fuels was causing a global environmental crisis, why
didn’t they stop?”
“How could the
thirty-eight million Americans without health insurance allow the top 2 percent
of the population to own 98 percent of the country’s wealth?”
“Why did people
waste an hour of their lives every week watching
American Idol
?”
These are all
questions that will be asked of future historians even though we know the
answers today. It is extremely difficult to stand up and point your finger at
Mother Culture and call her a stupid bitch. So many have been drinking the
Kool-Aid that nothing short of a catastrophe or an alien invasion will wake us
up.
The upside to
this is that the children who have been taught resiliency, who have not been
coddled, will survive. These kids will know how to deal with adversity because
they will have faced it instead of being socially engineered on the playground
or covered in proverbial bubble-wrap through their preadolescent years.
Protecting children from the realities of life ill equips them to navigate the
real world. Until the aliens land, I will continue to peddle the truth.
I
owe an insurmountable debt to my former students and my own children, who have
taught me more about life than any job, workshop, prison sentence, or graduate
course ever could.
###
Acknowledgements
My life has
changed significantly since I finished the first edition of this book (
Educating
Zombies
). Several of my novels gained serious traction on Amazon and I
began to meet other authors. One in particular, Angela Addams, has become a
real friend (or at least as much of a friend as one can have through social
media and spanning an entire continent). I was ready to bury
Educating Zombies
until she read a few of the essays and encouraged me to keep the project
alive. I owe you big time, Angela.
I also want to
thank my editor, Talia Leduc, who was forced to sift through these torturous
ideas in the name of journalistic integrity and because I paid her to do the
job. She amazes me with her keen eye and intuition.
Carolyn McCray
continues to pull me through the current marketplace like escorting a kid
brother through the mall while shopping for school clothes. She knows what fits
me even when I turn my nose up at her suggestions. I’m grateful for her
abrasive, brutal, and 100% honest truth.
Thank you, dear reader, for taking this journey with me. If you enjoyed the book please leave a review on Amazon. It can be brief (20 words) and written in a few minutes. Authors depend on reviews from readers like you. And if you really enjoy my work, send me an email at
[email protected]
and I will reply with a free copy of a J. Thorn title of your choosing.
In addition, visit
http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/JThorn_
where I will personalize and autograph your digital book for free. Please do not hesitate to get in touch. I respond personally to every message.
J. Thorn
Cleveland, Ohio
July 20, 2012
Appendix
My Photo Album of Shame (er, Fame)
Blog Redux – Essays that began life as blog posts.
Raising Zombies
- What's in a
Name?
Quick Setup Guide for Parenting
My Photo Album of Shame (er, Fame)
I
began sorting through musty boxes and yellowing photo albums for family
pictures that would breathe life into some of the characters in my story. I
quickly realized that this part of the book would grow beyond what I had
anticipated. I have placed these in the appendix, in case you have no interest
in my family pictures. Honestly, I have no interest in yours. However, the
pictures and written recollections can hopefully provide different insights
beyond just the text.
Those
of you born after 1990 will find nothing spectacular about a collection of
photographs from childhood. You have been born into a world where digital
photography (and later cameras on phones) is standard and instantaneous. But
for someone born prior to 1980, it was harder to capture those moments on film
and even more difficult to preserve them for decades.
The
other images in the gallery are scans that have come from my attic. The ticket
stubs are real and belong to me. If you still think I’m a dork (and you’d have
good reason to think that) hopefully my arena-rock heritage will change your
mind. But it probably won’t.
The
Paternal Grandparents
As
you can probably tell from the dapper clothing and architectural style of the
neighborhood, these are my paternal grandparents circa 1973. When we were
younger, my brother annoyed the piss out of me by doing things like breaking my
toys for no apparent reason. Then again, he broke everything for no apparent
reason, which is why my maternal grandmother dubbed him “General Wrecker.” I
don’t think he was born yet, otherwise you’d most likely see him tearing the
rear brake drum off that fine-looking Gremlin sitting in the driveway.
My
paternal grandmother was a proud, yet strange lady. She legally changed the
family name (that of my grandfather, before they married) as she didn’t think
it sounded Irish enough. My maternal grandfather died young (for a
grandparent) after a life of constant smoking, evident in most family pics. He
fought in hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific during World War II and came home
with a blood-stained Rising Sun flag. I don’t remember him ever speaking of the
war. His fictionalized story appears in
Preta’s Realm
as one of Gaki’s
backstories.
The
Maternal Grandparents
