'Wrong Rooms' Free Short-Story PDF Available

The debut short story 'Wrong Rooms' by Ryan Price is now available as a free PDF, which is also optimised for iPhone, iPad and iPod and can be opened in iBooks, plus any other e-readers that support PDF imports. 

But it's only available by invitation! To get your copy now, please email rycariad@gmail.com. 

In exchange for your free copy, please leave an honest critique/review below!

Thank you so much!

Hell - A Short Story by Cecilia Weightman

The woman in the post office queue the other day was mouthing off angrily about doing something, “The day after hell freezes over.” I smiled from the inside out.

It is a commonly held notion that Hell is hot. I suppose that rumour got around because the Old Testament was written in hot countries. Those old style leaders were good at what they did. The populace could vividly imagine burning heat but had little or no concept of burning cold and so, between suppressed imagination and corny leadership, the fallacy of a hot Hell was born.

Think of the coldest that you have ever been and then some. Have you ever got stuck to the inside of the freezer or experienced chilblains? You know a little of the true heat of Hell. Hell is so cold that your urine freezes in your bladder. Oddly enough, your blood keeps moving and your heart keeps on beating, for Hell is not about a living death it is a living punishment.

On first arriving in Hell you are still able to walk about quite freely whilst at the same time somehow recognizing that a place has been allocated for you and that on reaching that place you will somehow adhere to the permafrost. In that spot you will spend eternity – or what is left of it at any rate.

It seems that you are only just in your allotted place when, comfortable or not, you find yourself frozen to the knees. Time passes by with an amazing slowness even though events seem to occur with startling rapidity. I suppose one way of describing it is by drawing on the analogy of watching a movie recorded on long play played back at standard play: fast, jittery and nauseating.

You would think that being slowly or rapidly – depending on your point of view – encased in ice would add to or enhance all those negative qualities that got you to Hell in the first place. Surprisingly it has the opposite effect. You become caring, thoughtful and considerate before the ice is even halfway up your thighs. By the time that it has reached your chest you are almost good enough to be considered human. In fact, by the time the ice is chest high, you are considered good enough to begin your punishment. Reminiscent of the fairy story hot Hell, the punishment lasts through all eternity, and there is no remission for good behaviour.

So there you are: stuck in Hell, encased in ice, then the floorshow begins. Your negative life begins to play and replay itself “live” for you. It begins with the childish indiscretions of the schoolyard – perhaps a little bullying that you indulged in. Remorse immediately fills your heart as your victim’s life unfolds before you. You see all the things that went wrong for them as a direct consequence of what you did. You are watching a chain of events that you could have stopped. You shake what little of your head that you can in disbelief as you see their life played out as if you hadn’t been such a bully. The pain is indescribable, the cold is eating in to you and the tears that just ran down your cheeks are freezing before building up to drop off in big chunks, taking huge pieces of skin with them.

So it goes on. Each inconsiderate moment, each small act of theft or treachery. The large things about which you had hoped you had managed to cover your tracks and obviously hadn’t. Your lying, deceit, envy and greed playing over and over again until the very idea of them cuts your soul into julienne strips and serves them up for dinner – yours, of course.

Each time this happens your soul is cleansed a little more, your sense of right and wrong is ingrained a little more in you a little more deeply and the pain gets more and more intense. Each child that was never born, each genius unfulfilled. How many cures for say, cancer, have slipped through our hands because of our sins of commission and omission caused their discoverers not to be born?

If I am making your skin crawl, you with your spot-on average misdeeds, just think of how Hell pays back the really bad guys. I dare say that Hitler, with six million souls on his conscience, will never see too many replays of his sins even through all eternity. His heart, and he has got one, must feel as though it wants to leave his body. Hell has enough pain for the relatively childish misdeeds but when you do something deliberately after you had the opportunity not to… Well, Hell does a little unfreezing and refreezing from time to time.

Oh yes, the Devil. That is another thing that people have got so wildly wrong. Hell is not presided over by one big boss with lots of little helpers, that is far too reminiscent of Santa Claus. The Devil is each and every one of us. He is the part of us that denies common sense and indulges selfishness.

Hell is, quite simply, the perpetual remembrance of every single thing we have ever done be it right or wrong. It is the relentless asking of questions that can only begin with “What if?”

Hell is home made, an icy freezer full of ready frozen sins and snack-sized mistakes.

And remember, you cannot escape Hell because there is no such place as Heaven.

Copyright © Cecilia Weightman 2000-2010. Reproduced with permission. Original source:
http://weirdsid.tumblr.com/post/1381539517/hell-a-short-story

Posted via email from uselessdesires

How to be Alone

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were you were not okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find its fine to be alone once you’re embracing it. We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books, your not suppose to talk much anyway so its safe there. There is also the gym, if your shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in. There’s public transportation, we all gotta go places. And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation. Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on avoid being principles. The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouse work across town, and they, like you, will be alone. Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone. When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out to dinner to a restaurant with linen and silver wear. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were. Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst fleeting community. And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no ones watching because they are probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely move to beats, after-all, is gorgeous and affecting. Dance till you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back, like a brook of blessings. Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself. Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile no one is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it. You can stand swaffed by groups and mobs and hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cause if you’re happy in your head, and solitude is blessed, and alone is okay, Its okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses can’t think like you, this keeps things interesting, life’s magic brings much, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, the community is not present, just take back to you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it, if you have an art that needs practice stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it. You could me in an instant surrounded if you need it, if your heart is bleeding, make the best of it, there is heat and freezing. be a testament.

Posted via email from uselessdesires

The Living Bible ~ A True Story

His name is Tim. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it,

jeans, and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire
four years of college.

He is brilliant. Kind of profound and very, very bright. He became a
Christian while attending college.

Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative
church. They want to develop a ministry to the students but are not
sure how to go about it..

One day Tim decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his
T-shirt, and wild hair. The service has already started and so Tim 
starts down the aisle looking for a seat..

The church is completely packed and he can't find a seat. By now,
people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says
anything.

Tim gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he
realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet.

By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is
thick.

About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the
church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward Tim.

Now the deacon is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair, and a
three-piece suit. A godly man, very elegant, very dignified, very
courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this
boy, everyone is saying to themselves that you can't blame him for what he's going to do.

How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?

It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy.

The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man's cane.
All eyes are focused on him. You can't even hear anyone breathing. The minister can't even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do.

And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With
great difficulty, he lowers himself and sits down next to Tim and
worships with him so he won't be alone.

Everyone chokes up with emotion...

When the minister gains control, he says,
'What I'm about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget.'

'Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will
ever read!'

* * *

I asked the Lord to bless you
As I prayed for you today.
To guide you and protect you
As you go along your way....
His love is always with you,
His promises are true,
And when we give Him all our cares,
You know He will see us through.

Only if you feel led to, pass this to 
People you want God to Bless.

* * *

Thanks to Rev. Mair Bradley for this weeks Sunday Submission.  

Posted via email from uselessdesires