March 29, 1939

Got up still feeling sick ate breakfast & dashed out of the house. Got to work in time but just made it. At work I did not have much ambition but did the best I could. Then there is a phrase that makes no sense but could easily be the opening line of a story: the horse was upset because Lou Ostnowski had just finished cleaning the house. This book belonged to Ted Mieczynski and he evidently received it on 2/1/39. There is a book mark on July 4th, a blank page, a ditty about PANNING THE BED PAN and stamped in purple by the Thomas W. Roche Lumber Co., with a phone number like they used to be in the good old days, KILdare 7435. As a kid, my number was POTomoac 8744. (Remember CET Television Repairs? Call MOhawk 4-4100, C E T...C E T...) I bought this book, along with a 1922 copy of BEN-HUR for three dollars from a father son book dealership that went out of business, as so many others did when Borders and B&N came to town. Not certain why I chose to post this, just feeling a bit nostalgic, as I always do when the spring weather begins. I hope that Ted M. had a great and hopefully long life, as I sit here feeling immortal, typing while most everyone in the neighborhood is asleep and a gentle breeze flows through my window.

Frank Bullitt

Bob and Lana have commented on my Steve McQueen action figure. I think Sid had awhile ago, and I probably answered him. Actually, its Lt. Frank Bullitt, one of the characters McQueen is best known for, and I purchased him at a place called Suncoast Video in Ford City Mall, where everything always seems to be marked down. They have the best selection of action figures, most of which I buy for my nieces, Disney tie-ins or Jack Skellington and Sally from NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. I had Marv from SIN CITY once until the dog thought he was a chew toy, and I still have Hartigan, the Bruce Willis character, only he is missing a hand, something you really don't want to be checking dog crap for. I bought Frank not just for his cool outfit, the blue turtleneck under the leather jacket, but because his gun is always point at me, forcing me to write. That's the plan, at least. So, Bob and Lana, anybody else curious, go online and look up McFarlane Toys, he is putting out the cooleest stuff for people that are Bob's, Sid's, and my own age (though you young'uns like etain and steve malley might need to be hitting wikipedia about now). If only I can see a line of Robert Mitchum figures, Rev. Harry Powell from NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, Max Cady from CAPE FEAR, Jim Garry in BLOOD ON THE MOON (possibly the only crime noir western ever made), I could go on and on. "Would you like me to tell you the little story about the right hand/left hand?" Oh, and a Richard Kimble figure would be great, as well. (Oh, and I'm sporting a Jesse Ventura hairstyle the next few days, for those curious).

Next Blog Over

Sid made a point in that those bloggers who hit the One Blog Over button might not really need to see my nosebleeds or broken bones or palsied writing, so I am posting a neat photo from back when I wore glasses. I love walls or fences like this in Chicago, with torn movie posters running for yards and yards. (Plus, now that I've suckered potential new readers in, they'll be stuck scrolling through the earlier posts. You know they will, mentioning broken bones is like knowing you have a tooth missing but still poke at it with your tongue. It cannot be ignored.) Thanks for the idea, Sid, old chum.

No More Photos, I Swear On Elvis's Grave

I am pretty much at the end of this portion of this second life. Seems as if complete strangers to my blog, like jane is dating, along with regulars like Lucas Pederson insist I stop with the photos. OK, so no photos of me with a pig nose, or with the bandages off and metal sutures in my nose (I thought one was a nose hair and battled pulling it out, bad idea). By 1995, I had had 12 operations, both on my arm and my head. The following year I had a kidney stone, but that is not even worthy of a tale, unless you want graphics about a clamp being placed into...well, I can't even continue. Instead, I have posted two simple shots. The first is my little laboratory by the computer, with Steve McQueen threatening to shoot me if I stop writing, The Gentleman (from Buffy) and my favorite pest, the Psycho-Pirate. The second photo shows my handwriting close up. Pretty good with my left hand again, 17 years after the accident. The damn right hand still sucks donkey dick at anything (my big joke is that if I try and masturbate with my right hand I might as well be trying to push my dick through a Play-Doh Fun Factory), and the writing still shows like a damn EKG chart. I had to use my right hand to sign medical documents, bills, even a few books. Why the HELL was I using my middle name even when I was signing an agreement that it was OK to put me under anesthesia? Regardless, it was during this time that I started using gel pens. I'm hurting as I type this, simply from using donkey dick to write three words, the brain impulses are flying all over, maybe the hand will think it can turn into that movie monster Beast With Five Fingers. Peter Graves, right, Sid? Charles? (I think Sternberg was actually in the film, through his latex time portal). I may be writing with no real direction here because I am listening to a CD of Afrikaans music that Etain mailed me and my blood pressure seems to have flattened out by listening to Laurika Rauch and Anton Goosen. It is like music you would hear in the background of a film that involved a journey of some sort. Which kind of brings me back to the stasrt of my second life. Obviously I continued writing, for better or worse, til death do I part. I have been saddened at the passing of writers from the generation before mine, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Bloch, and Evan Hunter. I'm watching new writers like Lucas Pederson, Barton Fanning, Drizel Burger, and others put their toes in the literary pool. And I remain in the trenches with Sid and Larry and Bob and Roger, moving forward story by story, getting closer to The Big Break. My luck, I'll finally get noticed but will lose in a coin toss to a transgendered dwarf named Vinnie Cthulhu and fall back into the relative obscurity I live in now. Glad I'm not being graded on this essay. Over and out.

To See If I Could Feel

Note: photos posted after my 12 hour shift at work, promise. The plates in my arm broke, literally snapped. I could hold my arm in front of me and not see my hand. As I stand here at the computer, Glenn Smid gives me a funny look as I stretch my left arm and run my left hand over an invisible ridge. To a small extent, if I stretch the arm out and you look over my shoulder, you can still see a bit of a roller coaster kind of arm. But the effect changed my future days more than seeing David Janssen in the false dawn. June, 1989. I pretend nothing is wrong, my arm is just healing. July, 1989. I am chewing on my brain, finally giving in to my own frailty. The scar widens, my circulatory system in my left hand is gone forever. Over one week, the operating rooms blurring because my glasses were taken from me before I was wheeled anywhere, country music playing as the anesthesia filled my lungs, something about the Queen of Memphis. i awaken because my arm is being suspended in an ice bag and the pain is both hot and cold, needles and liquid tar, simultaneously. My brain could not process this and I begged for Demerol, I begged for something else than began with the letter D. The doctors knew my life was over if my left arm could not be fixed, so much of the bone powder now, because my right arm will always be the useless little fuck it has been since my unforgiving birth. The last resort, part of my right hip is grafted into my left arm, what the hell, make the insides a fucking video game. My new keloid scar will turn white when my arm tans, but I will not know this for two more summers. August, 1989. I am allowed to go home on uncertain legs, still on uncertain terms with my fate. September 1989. I turn 30.

Sid's Early Warning

Note: This is the second post today,the story is continued (vervolg in Afrikaans). A week before the accident, I was with a friend and we passed this bar named Sid's. I did not know Sid Williams (Willy Sid in my links)until later that year. The place just looked seedy enough to take a photo in front of, it could have been named Nick's or Vince's. Here's the thing, though. The following Saturday, I was wearing everything I had on in that photo, down to the Pancake Pantry cap. I had hair then, it poked through the torn cap after I lay on the ground. The black turtleneck and jacket were shredded by my bones. My copy of Nelson Algren's book lay beneath my right hand as if it was a Bible. In a comment to my post earlier today, Sid his ownself mentioned meeting me at the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle that October. I had my third of nine casts on by then, and damn if I didn't have the strangest wardrobe back then. MIAMI VICE was off the air; maybe they were just offering good deals at Chess King. Well, this brings you up to date on Sidney Williams, one of the finest writers I know, and a guy I'd want at my back if we were fighting a war with zombies, werewolves, or literary agents gone goofy.

Days And Nights of The Scarlet Sponge

At work today, I could see sunlight coming through the skylight at around 2:30 PM, a neat way to not the lengthening of daylight, the passing of winter into spring. Not so at Holy Cross Hospital, my room had a window that faced the back end of the credit union on Lithuania Avenue, and for many days I could not even look at the bricks without the entire window moving like a metronome in my eyesight. Every day, Dr. Shaefer would check the three contusions above my right eye, there were countless MRIs, each proving my brain was still a scarlet sponge (my final breath, my sins expunge)and my arm could not be reattached. The bones, you know what I mean. I might bleed out on the operating table, a joke almost a decade later when my letterhead decreed I WILL FLATLINE BEFORE I GO ONLINE! I learned to dial the phone with my tongue between my teeth, and you really don't want to know how I improvised my pissing. No hands, big head. The throbbing in my head sounded like a washing machine full of sneakers. The photo of me in bed, ice around my arm to ease the burning, was taken on day 22. Mid-April, people on the outside scurrying to finish their taxes. I was on being fed Tylenol#3 every half hour and Demoral shots in my ass every two hours. I still regret to this day, that being so out of it, I never even knew the show COP ROCK had been on and cancelled within a few episodes. Many months later, I still bled at odd times, as the second photo shows (I always have disposable cameras at my, well, disposal, and had been taking photos for possible insurance purposes). I eventually had laser surgery into my brain, but that was later. This is sill Spring 1989. Finally, plates were put into my arm, those later broke, this will be in a future entry, and there was my first look at my withered arm, as they changed casts on day 65, before I went home. Page 243 rolled out of my Smith-Corona like an ancient scroll, the dust motes in the sunbeams like a plague.

Stepping Into The Twilight Zone With Dr. Richard Kimble

Back in 1989, the sign in the first photo read GAGE PARK FINER FOODS, and I marveled as I read the words from impossible angles. The break in the traffic in the second photo shows where I was standing, on the yellow line. It was 11:11 AM. When I hit the ground, everything in my mind split open and outward; the best that I can explain this is by thinking of a wet handful of sand hitting cement. I was unconscious for 20 minutes, and when I woke up, the first thing I heard was the Pakistani grocer calling out "Not to touch! Not to touch!" I could not see my arm, my head was bleeding, and in some only-Wayne-could-do-that way, after my arm broke, my own fist knocked four teeth out from behind my left jaw. While I was gone, because I to this day KNOW I was no longer part of this life, I was in a grey fog, like the false dawn an hour before the sun rises. I recall looking around, shrugging, and walking forward. There was no light, no flashing neon, no wisps of blackness swirling around my ankles. I walked for awhile before he came into view. I swear on the Polish Bible on my shelf, I came face to face with David Janssen, Dr. Richard Kimble, THE FUGITIVE himself. Dead at the age of 49, on Valentines Day, 1980. Kimble was always on the run, looking for the one-armed man who killed his wife. My subconscious was still functioning, trying to tell me I had one arm now, at least for the next 68 days. Kimble had this quirky smile, he'd use it when someone like Ed Asner or Terry Savalas said that he looked familiar. He stood before me and I could not pass him. He gave me that smile, somewhere between Elvis's sneer and Etain's smirk, and said that it wasn't time yet. Nothing about my Creator, my Higher Power. There was nothing around us, no deserted streets, maybe it was false dawn because The Fugitive was filmed in glorious black & white. I am sitting here, my chin in my palm, recalling the image. He put his hand on my shoulder and patted it, as if he knew I was going to make it. The television doctor, my emissary. And then he was gone, I was staring at gravel in my eye and listening to the Pakistani man. Not to touch. Not to touch.

The Clues Were There

March 18th 1989, the anniversary coming soon enough, I already have the heebie-jeebies, the restlessness of recalling being very close to my Creator. The night before, I had watched DOA, that Saturday morning, a rainy, icy, pitiless day, I left home for my doctor's appointment with page 243 of my novel in my Smith-Corona. I saw the dust on that page 68 days later. Another clue, besides the Edmund O'Brien movie, was that I had been rereading Nelson Algren's NEVER COME MORNING. I left the office and 30 seconds later the nurse at the front desk saw me flip up into the air. My first real memory of that day, I recalled earlier moments later during my recovery, was of the EMT cutting open the sleeve of my new and expensive suede jacket sleeve. I asked him not to and he told me, quite matter-of-factly, that it really didn't matter because both bones in my left forearm were sticking through the other sleeve. Above are the photo of me on Day 2, my hand like a sausage, useless as my right hand because the bones took on lives of their own just below my elbow. The other photo, again forgive my glasses and overall scary face look as my hairline receded, shows the torn jacket. I kept it until the tenth anniversary and then I burnt it.

Strangers On A Blog

Most of you are aware of the Hitchcock film STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, where two killers swap victims so that they both have the perfect alibis. A friend of mine, let's call him Thibedoux, is giving some thought to change some of his intend blog entries with another friend, let's call that guy Boudreaux. This way, either can write entries about their specific jobs at, oh, say NASA and the hidden military base near Dulce, New Mexico, and no one could find entries on Google; say someone typed in Tyler Thibedoux NASA and found a blog entry where the guy wrote about a secret project where chihuahuas were being raised from birth in zero gravity. Well, he'd likely be fired. Or disappeared, as they say in novels. But if that same Google entry was for Stashu Boudreaux NASA, either nothing would come up, or if by some bizarre circumstance, that same secret project info came up, well, NASA wouldn't find anybody with Stashu's name. (If you need to know, Stashu is Stanley in Polish, and he is the guy Who Stole The Kishka? in the famous polka.) Well, everyone by now knows how convoluted my stories and ideas are. Mother Mary save us if I ever try to do something with Stewart Sternberg's flash fiction assignments. I suppose everyone is concerned with the graphics posted above my babblings. I work a crappy little Xerox machine at, uh, the hidden military base near Dulce, NM, yea, that's right, and this is what I get to print all freaking day. 196 page booklets on some freakish cult in Philadelphia that are an off-shoot of Freemasons. That job took almost 20 hours, yesterday and today. The root canal procedure was rather fast, but Elvis, Gladys and Vernon, is it too much to ask that I get to run the ten-color press when they are printed 32,000 copies of a blonde eating a vanilla ice cream cone? (Myself, I'd have chosen a redhead as a model, but I suppose the decision for a blonde was decided by some ad agency guy with a fixation on Kathryn Heigl or Lassie.) OK, "Thibedoux," the balls in your court.

Murder Is My Beat, The Miami Motel Is Just Plain Creepy

Wish I had gotten around to typing this up on Friday, as the walk home and my thoughts are under the surface now, but I had to write a story with a three-hour deadline that evening, send it on to Maurice Broaddus, then go to the post office early the next morning to mail a huge box full of stuff to Johannesburg and buy some DC superhero stamps, then promptly leave for an Ice Cream Social at the 57th Street Bookstore near the University of Chicago, to hear Larry Santoro and Marty Mundt read from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. You can find each of the people mentioned above in the blog links to the left. Well, not Lovecraft's, but you can always Google the crazy old sock if you might be inclined to do such a thing. (By the way, I missed the readings because I got off the bus on West 57th, not East 57th, amost immediately realizing my mistake when faced with an intersection bordered by four vacant lots.) Here's what I would have typed Friday night, as I walked in spring-like rain for the two miles from the place that gave me my tax refund to my home. I love walking in rain, preferably when it is not freezing rain, because I had Lasik corrective surgery done back in the year of double-ought, and whereas I can never know the convenience of driving a car, I can revel in looking into a sky the color of torn plums and watching droplets of water hit my open eyes. To get home, I walked though the suburbs of Oak Lawn, Hometown, then a slight wedge of Chicago, before turning towards my home in Burbank. I passed in always creepy Miami Motel, which has somehow found the need to trademark their claims of offering "Four Hour Naps," uh-huh, right. My highlight of any walk in the vicinity of Cicero Avenue and the train crossing at 88th Place is to see the amount of cars parked in the lot; once I actually counted five. The joint was jumping. While I typed that story, one-fingered as usual, later that night, I listened to the CD pictured above, which has songs from films such as KEY LARGO, LAURA, DARK PASSAGE, and MURDER, MY SWEET. The kind of music I will hear in my head as I walk the dark streets in the rain, having my long thoughts about both the days ahead and of the days already behind me.

Six Feet Somewhere

No more scribbling the loops in my name on yellowed ghosts decades gone, a half-dozen paper cuts will never heal. No more dreams encased in nightmares, copper in my ears, magnesium scalpels my scalp. No more half-written tales, one town over and 15 years later, suicide windows, when its said and done, and that sad, sad city with no second chances where a cop named St. Cyr drinks in a tavern called Uptown Jo's, served soda water over his shakes by a woman more defined than parts of his own daily existence. No more more. Is there Heaven? Is there a God in man's image and if so, will St. Peter punch me in my balls as I stand in front of graffiti-covered gates? Is this life a continuation of the Hell I lived until I died in 1959 along with George Reeves, Lou Costello, and the 99th victim of the Our Lady of Angels fire, serial killers Harvey Glatman and Charles Starkweather leaving just before that. I just want to keep my memories, is that so selfish and bad? I want to remember the bartender, the cop whose name means sincere, my hatred of snow, the glass in my bones. And my paper cuts will never heal, ever again.

WTF?

here i am working another 14 hour shift and just now i find out it is farken snowing out all over everything, what the bloody hell?! kate, you would know more than i do at this point, if sternberg's blasted omega beams weren't on the fritz, maybe he could help us out. elvis, gladys and vernon, when will this winter end? we do the daylight savings time thing in four farken days!!! everyone reading this, call your congressman or state ambassador, harley-driving gramlich or gauteng bossman or even the tallest guy on the detroit pistons and just say to them...WTF, dude?

Contents of A Dead Man's Briefcase

Thanks for all the comments regarding the posts since I've come back online. I'm glad everyone got to see what the Faceless One will find in my wallet before the morgue attendant, and Sid has given some thought towards a similar post. Well, this post is one I should have made months ago, but I need to do it now before the briefcase is given back to the Salvation Army. I had purchased this now somewhat beaten up satchel for a buck forty at the local SA when I had a temp job on the far northside. It was in pristine condition, the kind of thing you find at apartment sales or even estate sales. One day, I noticed a lower pocket below the one I kept my bus schedules in, and I unzipped it, expecting to find nothing. Rather, there was one folded piece of paper, still crisp. I am only assuming it belonged to the owner of the briefcase. It was a letter with lab results stating that the 29 year old man had an inoperable brain tumor. It made me wonder if this is why the briefcase was in such excellent condition; of course, now it is ragged, after two winters and being dragged along almost each of the last 700 days. I bought a backpack, because I really don't need a briefcase when I no longer wear a suit and tie to work, and a backpack allows me to run for the bus (or from zombies) (or Sternberg) without getting out of breath. And so the briefcase gets recycled, yet still I wonder if the original owner ever made it to the age of 30. There are always things I end up thinking way too much about.

Tying Up Loose Ends, Dead Man's Pockets

Going back a week, when my computer dissolved under the omega beams of stewart sternberg's eyeballs, I had tried to post the bit about what might be found in my wallet, along with the note about the poor Mr. Curry. Kate S. mentioned the mugging and I thought I'd add the photo, which I took from my old blog. Sad to say, I've been mugged five times over the decades, but twice the pazst two summers. In this photo, blessedly grayscaled for youir viewing pleasure, all the blood is from this idiot high on weed punching my eye with a ring on his hand. The cops who responded to a passing car's cell call were kind enough to take a cell pic for me, as I cheerfully explained that I was a horror writer and this visual might help me in a story one day. I just have a tiny scar in my right eyebrow; its my 37th scar. All the body modifications I have are purely by accident. The second mugging, last July, was worse. In a popuring rainstorm, I decided I would fight back that time. Dr. Frankenstein always rebuilt his Monster, I don't need the assistance from the old man anymore. But that event brought the scar count up to an even 40. On that cheery note, have a great weekend.

my nemesis has returned

after my boss was ready to call homeland security because he took a call from the best buy geek squad idiot who referred to himself as agent gerardo--c'mon, shorten my name to wayn al-sallee, not much of a stretch--everything was straightened out and we had a good laugh like at the end of the barney miller show when the frame froze with everyone slapping their knee in laughter. well, aol is up and running, though i am typing this from work because of the lower case, and i swear its because the area is so so so cramped that i cannot even put my right hand anywhere near the keyboard, yes i know i could cap lock type cap unlock, but that would be too much like dancing with the stars with bill gates in a windows-colored thong as my partner, no thank you and put me on that island steve mcqueen tried to escape from. i swear to christ that that geek squad fuckburger almost got me in for a nice q and a session with jr. and sr. both. but later tonight i shall make my way past the still falling snow, wondering when western society will cave in on itself, think about young kids headbanging in johannesburg and fellow writers' workplaces being shot up in texas, the giant dome of sternberg hovering over the entire northern hemisphere like a big chewy gumdrop full of doom, and get caught up on my emails. so watch out, kate and charles and etain and sid and bob and von and, yes, even you, stewart. peace out, i'm back. wayne

in the mist, my werewolf calls

long day of cussing and swearing a blue streak, reminiscent of my years in purgatory behind a cheap desk downtown, my computer finally repaired on the cheap, the hard drive gone like a freight train gone like yesterday gone like a soldier in the civil war bang bang. did i have a back up disk? me? kinda sorta. i shall start a new blog of scanned photos, because these words, these photos will be here long after the beetles have feasted on my brain. each of you reading this, inundate me with photos. they will be safe. my belief is that the blogosphere will be the equivalent of the talking, spinning rings in the time machine. wayne allen sallee, alsip, illinois, thursday evening, 01 march 2007.

PS I HAVE FOUND OUT THAT THE HEALTH INSURANCE THAT I DO NOT HAVE COVERS MY CO-WORKERS FOR--GET THIS--BLACK LUNG DISEASE. HOW QUAINT AND DIRE AT THE SAME TIME. WORKING IN THE COAL MINES, GOIN DOWN DOWN DOWN...