Let’s start October off on the right foot with a new blog feature, “From the Slushpile.” I’ve decided on this title as many of the stories that I will share in serial form here were either too extreme for the publishers (as in the case of our first story), did not work for the publishers/editors, or simply did not find a home in print for one reason or another.

I’ve held onto these for some time, even though they continue to get good reviews from select people who have read them. And I cannot afford to pay a cover artist for each story so I can place them on Kindle. As a result of being a broke guy with dark, eclectic, and often whimsical tastes in fiction, you will have the opportunity to read these on my blog in serialized form. All for free. Well, mostly free. I will ask for a small sacrifice of your time, attention, and if you’re being constructive or complementary, input while these tales reel out for your perusal. But be forewarned, not all of these stories made it to final formatting. There may be a few errors hiding in the text.

This story was written for Seventh Star Press’s Southern Haunts 2, although it was deemed too extreme for their PG-13 rating. I was asked to cut my drug references, sexual situations, adult language, and graphic violence. I doubt there would have been much of a story left at that point, so I pulled the submission. The submission guidelines called for a story about demons, based on a real life event in a real place. So I chose to fictionalize a story about an occurrence in Jacksonville, Alabama that I cannot fully explain to this day. Without further adieu, I bring you the beginning of “The Devil & Klaus Kristiansen.”

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The college party at the Wind Song Apartments, located in a real Hellmouth, a rather picturesque college town called Jacksonville, Alabama, stretched into the early hours of the morning. Until the flabby arm of Johnny Law saw fit to end it. As with so many events in my life, it started with revelry and ended in tragedy.

A few others and I sought the nearby refuge of our friend Klaus Kristiansen.  We clustered into his cluttered, cramped apartment to smoke the kindest of the kind and drink the stoutest of the stout. But most of all we talked.

As we became comfortably numb, time like topic became relative. Quite relative indeed. Our numbers dwindled as the sun crept toward the horizon outside of Klaus’s smoky den until only he and I remained. As we sat on the edge of consciousness, the conversation turned to the ephemeral, the heady stuff of dreams. We each shared our disparate visions for the future of humanity before discussing our own personal versions.

We saw ourselves as crafting our reality based on something we’d seen with our sleeping minds’ eyes. As a result of his dreams, King Klaus Kristiansen sought a path of conquest, using his inborn abilities to create a modern version of a medieval fiefdom that would allow him to reign supreme over lesser men. As an extropian and staunch believer in the power of the human spirit, I sought to help my fellow humans cast off the shackles of pyramidal control structures and evolve past the limited thinking produced by a society based on the specter of scarcity. He called me a fool. And I called him a fascist.

One might ask why I was friends with such a person, someone I knew to be diametrically opposed to most everything I believed. I’d listened to my medicine father’s songs and stories as he taught me the indigenous ways of my people, the ways of the pipe. Though I heard his cautionary tales of all the mysteries of creation, both great and small, I didn’t believe them at the time. It took confronting the forces of darkness and losing the battle for someone’s soul to make me a believer.

I’d met Klaus Kristiansen when he’d come to attend school in my hometown, a sleepy but sinful town nestled among the foothills of the Appalachians. The self-described Rock ‘n Roll Satanist claimed to be the grandson of an SS Colonel who helped Hitler develop the world’s first flying saucers. In short, Klaus was larger than life, an id, an ego, and superego wedged into leather pants two sizes too small. A man most would call crazy, or comical, if it wasn’t for the .40 caliber Glock stuck into his waistband.

As a keen observer of human behavior, Klaus fascinated and infuriated me, in the fashion of a noisome bee, unsure if it’s simply annoying or actually dangerous. He could be elegant, chivalrous, and noble one moment and selfish, sadistic, and cruel the very next. He vexed most people. But I took his offer of friendship as a challenge.

We had reached a philosophical impasse, as we often did in our debates. The conversation hit a lull. Blue smoke swirled in the stale air between us. And then a knock at the door cut the tension with the ease of a razor’s edge. Paranoia replaced my concern for my troubled friend’s post-apocalyptic vision for humanity’s future. Who could be knocking this time of the morning? Was it the police again? If so, we were going to jail.

Klaus shifted his black eyes from me to the door. As one hand slid his tray under the lip of the sofa, the other edged the semiautomatic pistol from its holster. Before he could draw the pistol, the Turtle entered in spectacular fashion. His Krameresque entry startled us more than his sudden rapping on the apartment door.

The Turtle–nicknamed for his smooth head and hunched back–made wild claims to various abilities, including but not limited to psychical and martial prowess. To us, he was simply a talkative, imaginative friend who happened to resemble a pink-skinned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. And this morning he provided the catalyst to jumpstart our flagging conversation. But Turtle became a catalyst of a different sort, for he too had been led by his dreams…to us.

“Guys, you won’t believe what happened to me last night,” he blustered, plopping down onto the sofa. Slender, almost waifish Klaus toppled over onto his side as the weight of Turtle’s bulky frame jarred the couch’s sensitive springs.

“You got laid,” I guessed, taking the sheen of sweat on his bald head as evidence of an evening of pleasant exertion. And as a virginal male, sex was always on my mind.

Recovering, Klaus quipped, “Only in his dreams.”

I laughed madly, and he joined me. The tension between Klaus and I evaporated as we shared a joke at Turtle’s expense.

“How’d you know it had to do with a dream?” Turtle shook his head in disbelief, his eyes bulging as he stared at us. “Creepy.”

“You’re creepy,” Klaus jibed.

“What had to do with a dream?” I inquired, too tired and too stoned to follow a madman’s riddles.

“What I came to tell you guys about. Though showing you might be easier.”

“Show us? What the hell are you talking about?” Klaus demanded.

“Exactly.” Turtle replied.

“Exactly?” I asked, flummoxed. Putting on my best British accent, I said, “That’s a bollocks answer, old chap. Spit it out before the Zulu overrun the bloody perimeter.”

“Hell!” Turtle exclaimed, almost shouting. “Well, a dream about hell anyway. And you guys were there. We were all there.”

“Thanks, man.” I retorted, sounding annoyed. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m going to hell but didn’t expect it from the acid-dipped spawn of Flower Children.”

Turtle’s gypsy parents had travelled the length and breadth of the country during the Counterculture Movement.  His aunt and maternal grandmother had joined them, touring the nation from shore to shore on a tie-dyed school bus converted into a camper. The Turtle’s clan finally settled in the piney hills of Alabama before giving birth to our fantastic, if fanciful friend.

“And I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz, so suck it, Turtle,” Klaus added.

“You don’t believe in Hell?” Turtle asked. “But you’re a Satanist.”

“I believe in Hell as a metaphorical construct not a geophysical reality.”

“Yeah, what he said,” I seconded. “It’s a philosophy that involves not creating your own hell on earth. And the idea that you can only believe in yourself and your own power. It’s really an extreme form of humanism, a selfish, self-aggrandized one at that.”

“Damn right,” Klaus said. “It’s all about me. I create my own heaven or hell wherever I go, with whatever I do.”

“Something like that,” I said, “only you could be using that energy for the good of all mankind, instead of wasting it on pursuits that benefit no one but yourself.”

“Hippie.” Klaus hissed.

“Devil worshipper,” I quipped.

“Guys! Do you want to see what I was talking about? I can show you.”

Sighing, Klaus said with disgust, “Fine. Show me your version of hell, Turtle.”

And then he did.

*** TO BE CONTINUED ***

This story was written by Jeremy Hicks. It is his original content and cannot be used anywhere else without his expressed written consent. However, this blog may be shared, reblogged, etc. on social media for the purposes of promoting the author, his blog, and his other creative works. 

Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events real or imagined, etc. is entirely intentional. This is a work of fiction but draws on real events and references the real world at times. Any reference, product placement, or pop culture quote is not intended to impinge on any trademark, patent, and/or copyright; rather it is flavor text for the dialogue of characters raised within the context of our pop culture.

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