Daniel Phillips > Recent Status Updates

I watched them put her in and Ruth adjust the shower nozzle to send the scorching spray up slowly over her legs and thighs and belly and finally up over her breasts to shatter across her nipples while her arms strained desperately to break free behind her and everywhere the water hit suddenly went red-red, the color of pain-and at last I couldn't stand the screaming.
And I ran.

It was as though in failing herself Meg had failed us as well.
So we turned that anger outward. Toward Meg.
I did too. Over just that couple of days I flicked a slow mental switch. I stopped worrying. I turned off on her entirely.
Fuck it, I thought. Let it go where it goes.
Where it went was to the basement.

The bedroom light went out.
Suddenly the house went dark.
I could have smashed something.
I could have torn that house to bits.

She knows that pain is not just a matter of hurting, of her own startled body complaining at some invasion of the flesh.
Pain can work from the outside in.
I mean that sometimes what you see is pain. Pain in its cruelest, purest form. Without drugs or sleep or even shock or coma to dull it for you.
You see it and you take it in. And then it's you.

The grounds were hemispherical, within the line of beach and the great curve of woods. They found the remnants of a tennis court, and much more interesting, an old cemetery with tilting nameless tombstones, way off to the west, beyond a grove of trees.

Aunt Elizabeth looked down the corridor before following Ben into her room which faced, beyond a large and dying elm, the vast field sloping away from the front of the house. There was a huge fourposter and a silk-covered chaise in the room, a fanback Windsor, and several early Primitives on the walls which delighted Aunt Elizabeth as much as the ancient gas heater in a corner of the room.

The house, especially in the color prints, gleamed-pure white against the lawn and the bay beyond; the rails and balustrades were whole, the windows unbroken; nothing seemed patched or faded or crumbling. The trees shading the house were full and there were beautifully sculpted hedges. It was exactly the way it should have been, and obviously was-at some time. Overwhelming.

He had wanted to write a great poem for several decades, but the civil war had intervened. His hope was to write an epic that would rival those of Homer, Virgil, and Tasso or a tragedy that would rival those of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The aspiring epic poet, following a pattern established by Virgil, was to begin with pastoral apprentice work before graduating to the sublimity of heroic verse.

Before I get started, I should note that this was one of the primary influences for Stephen King's 'The Shining', along with Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House' and Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death'. I read a non-fiction book on the horror genre, which was full of reviews written by authors on a select book in the horror genre of their choice, and Stephen King chose to write about this one.

After a while, I feel my body floating naturally through the water, as if riding on a soft wind. The only sound reaching my ears is that of my own regular breathing. I'm floating on the wind like a bird in the sky, looking down at the earth below. I see distant towns and tiny people and flowing rivers. A sense of calm envelops me, a feeling close to rapture.

"That's good enough," said the lieutenant, using his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. "OK, now, try to do it in one good, clean swing. Don't let him suffer."
What he really wanted to say was, "I don't want to do this any more than you do. Who the hell could have thought of anything so stupid? Killing a guy with a baseball bat . . ." But an officer could never say such a thing to an enlisted man.

Banging the doors, knocking on the windows and the roof, and scratching at the walls, it by turns threatened, cajoled, and subsided briefly, only to throw itself down a chimney the next moment with a joyful, treacherous whoop; but the logs in the stove were blazing, and the fire confronted its enemy with the ferocity of a chained dog - a fight began, then after it came sobbing, screaming, and an angry growl.

Banging the doors, knocking on the windows and the roof, and scratching at the walls, it by turns threatened, cajoled, and subsided briefly, only to throw itself down a chimney the next moment with a joyful, treacherous whoop; but the logs in the stove were blazing, and the fire confronted its enemy with the ferocity of a chained dog - a fight began, then after it came sobbing, screaming, and an angry growl.

>What you say is a little vague and difficult for me to grasp. You say you've gone bad, but what exactly does that mean? I just don't understand. Tomatoes go bad. Umbrellas go bad. Tomatoes rot and umbrellas get bent out of shape. But what does it mean to say that you have "gone bad"? It doesn't give me any clear image.

The room was so utterly still that when I held my breath I was overcome by a sense that the world had stopped in its tracks and everything in time would be swallowed up by water, sinking to eternal depths. But no, the world was apparently still moving. Before long, a woman opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.

May Kasahara sat there for a long time taking small, regular breaths. There were no other sounds, no bird or insect cries. A terrible quiet settled over the yard, as though the world had become empty.

May Kasahara sat there for a long time taking small, regular breaths. There were no other sounds, no bird or insect cries. A terrible quiet settled over the yard, as though the world had become empty.

He finished his recital. It hadn't taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

He finished his recital. It hadn't taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

I moved through the darkness as the woman drew me on. I could hear the doorknob turning slowly. The sound sent chills down my spine. At the very moment the light from the corridor pierced the darkness, we slipped into the wall. It had the consistency of a gigantic mass of cold gelatin; I clamped my mouth shut to prevent it entering. The thought struck me: I'm passing through the wall.

The surface of the earth was flooded with blinding summer light. I pictured to myself a stream sparkling in the sunlight and green leaves trembling in the breeze. The light up there overwhelmed everything, and yet below it, down here, there existed such darkness. All you had to do was climb a little way underground on a rope ladder, and you could reach a darkness this profound.

The grass underfoot had lost the living, breathing greenness it had seemed to possess during the spring rains, and now it wore the dull look typical of summer grass. From among these blades a green grasshopper would leap out now and then as I walked along. Sometimes even frogs would jump away. The alley had become the world of these little creatures, and I was simply an intruder come to upset the prevailing order.

...he struck. Struck mortally...and the warp-smith, eyes gone somewhere cold, somewhere beyond the pain, faced death like some albino samurai and insolently stared it down...for just one vital instant longer.

...he struck. Struck mortally...and the warm-smith, eyes gone somewhere cold, somewhere beyond the pain, faced death like some albino samurai and insolently stared it down...for just one vital instant longer.

Adrift in these erogenous zones. I hear gorgeous thunder sound in distant rooms and feel the energy she's freed, a grid of quickened pulses that sparks blue across the arc-gap between fingertips upon a cafe table, fires the human dynamo until its coils blaze white with power enough to make songs true...
...and stop the night...
...and turn the world.

“His thoughts are like poetry or something. And his emotions… his emotions are so pure. When he loves you it’s gigantic. His love is so strong and direct and clean… when I love you it’s all tangled up with who’s not doing their share of the washing up. And twisted, neurotic little things like that. Sometimes I want to be him all the time and sometimes I wish he’d just vanish and leave us alone."

“His thoughts are like poetry or something. And his emotions… his emotions are so pure. When he loves you it’s gigantic. His love is so strong and direct and clean… when I love you it’s all tangled up with who’s not doing their share of the washing up. And twisted, neurotic little things like that. Sometimes I want to be him all the time and sometimes I wish he’d just vanish and leave us alone."

“His thoughts are like poetry or something. And his emotions… his emotions are so pure. When he loves you it’s gigantic. His love is so strong and direct and clean… when I love you it’s all tangled up with who’s not doing their share of the washing up. And twisted, neurotic little things like that. Sometimes I want to be him all the time and sometimes I wish he’d just vanish and leave us alone."