DRIVEN INSANE

Horrorwalker Travel Guide Presents:

DRIVEN INSANE

Excerpts From The Journal Of Gerry Masterson Perrault

(Western North Carolina Insane Asylum)

(Entry 2379)

So sad, so sad... so sad you are.
You were distressed and angry. And no one realized the trouble you were in. You tried to live your life in and outward show of fun and games, but actually it was lived in waves of horrid mental pain.

(Entry 2380)

For a time, you thought you were actually full of hatred, you did. And so, at the end of another day, at thirty-three years of age, you felt as though your life was no longer worth the effort of trying to live it sane. You decided that you were a failure. To date, you had accomplished nothing you thought was worth bragging about because you never really changed the world.

(Entry 2381)

You waged your own private war inside your mind. You battled against a mighty enemy. You realized that you had little chance of winning this battle, though, since they kept telling you that the enemy was yourself!

(Entry 2384)

Over thirty years of a conflicted life has now gone by.
So much time is passing as you scream aloud your frustration on a daily basis.
You have pulled at those short strands of life.
You felt as though you were dangling before the gates of a private hell.
And you always have had thoughts of:
DEATH!
SUICIDE!
DESTRUCTION!
BLOOD LETTING!
GORE!
KNIVES!
EXPLOSIVES!
MURDER!

(Entry 2388)

The bouts of depression can be severe. You have always done your best to control it. But the times are hard on a man with severe mental problems... and you are skewed... and you have continually cracked under the strain... and your time has finally come to shift the blame... oh, the world must pay, you have declared... and the payment will be severe.
And it was, for a time.
You do remember the best old days... when you were in the institution and the medication kept you kind of sane and possessing of hope.
You had dreams during those days... of a life with money and a beautiful wife and a red Italian sports car that cost over two hundred thousand dollars and got really shitty gas mileage. That was a damn good dream... when you did dream.

(Entry 2395)

And one day, when you had drug induced clarity, you saw “it” on the television. What you saw changed your life and brought you to the new reality you grasp onto today.
Some fool religious jerk was using “it” to justify the end of the world event that was to occur Tuesday of next week. He was talking like a crazy person... but, that thing in his hands was the “it” that you needed to get your hands on to perhaps help you to find yourself.
You focused on your clarity for three weeks. You then took twenty dollars of the money in your change jar and asked Nurse Parham  if she would pick up “it” for you from a bookstore. You begged her throughout her shift until she agreed to bring it to you... if Doctor Middleton approved it.
She told you that she would be back on Monday. She also assured you that when she returned from the weekend that she would either have “it” for you, or give you back your money.
It was all OK with you. You were focused right now and surely you could keep it together until Monday.

(Entry 2406)

The weekend was long and the television was boring during this time of the year. But, you kept it together without a single incident between you and the staff. Some of them even told you that they were proud of you for not yelling out aloud at the whispers inside the walls of your mind.
And when Monday came... and Nurse Parham returned with a package for you to take back into your room... you thanked her once before rushing to your room to covet your new possession -- a brand new copy of The Horrorwalker Travel Guide tome.

(Entry 2415)

By proxy of what you have read in your new possession, you now know you are not as crazy as you thought you were.
And the thoughts of causing your own death are gone now.
The desire to own an M-16 have faded, too.
You no longer dream of throwing a grenade into a transit bus.
The stories inside this horror tome has given you a focus into the horrors you have always know to exist to drive you mad... but were drugged out of your head by the staff of one hospital facility after another since the first “incident" at your parents house when you were six years old.
You never really wanted to cut out the heart of Missy the cat and Franklin the Saint Bernard, but they were weak willed and became possessed by two of the demon monsters that surround us all... and you HAD to eat their hearts in order to make sure the monsters were completely destroyed.

(Entry 2419)

So sad, your life... or so you have been told.
To be distressed and angry and a total psychopath.
You have lived your life within this warped bubble of insanity.
And sure, your played-out derision caused many deaths.
And, of course, you have tried to take your own life many times.
And though there was justification for the horrors you perpetrated... you now realize that the murder of an animal, or a human, is not the way to rid it, or him, of the monster you can see inside it, or him.
And the real tragedy is?
You will never again get the chance to practice what you now have learned outside the walls of this heavily guarded asylum for the criminally insane.

(Epilogue: Entry 2427)

This is not a mental snap from reality. This shit is really happening to me... right now! Holy shit... the Horrorwalker is standing at the foot of my bed. This is not the nightmare of my crazed mind. It is really going to make me hold its actual horror tome to read a story from those magical pages.
Or, is it going to slice off my head with that weapon it carries with it. Is it my messenger of death to force me to pay for the crimes I have committed during my quest for a clearer warped reality?
I am getting out of my bed now. I can not even feel the always ice cold linoleum floor underneath my bare, sockless feet. I am walking toward it now. Toward what fate of life, or death?
I hope that I will write down my upcoming experience in my journal after the Horrorwalker finishes with me and leaves my room.
What can the Horrorwalker show to a man who has lived most of his life locked down in a fortified asylum? I will write it all down in my journal, after the fact... if I am to actually survive this moment in time.
Oh oh... it is extending its hand toward me and...

GMP

DUST ON THE MOON

horrorwalker travel guide presents:

DUST ON THE MOON

(Midlothian, Virginia)

You can just call me Igor. 
That’s all you need to know about my name.
If you are reading this missive... then, 
 I have probably confronted my mortality.
Let it be known that I am a staggering 211 years old. 
And, my timeless existence of undead darkness has been long and arduous. 

I started my life as a human in the old country of Bavaria. I have existed so long that I have forgotten much of my life before I was turned into what I am, but pieces of memories still fall through the cracks of my mind to reminded me of what I once was.

One of the lingering memories that I have always retained is the events of the final hours before I was attacked by the random feral vampire on that All Hallows Eve night, so long ago.

The atmosphere was cold and crisp on that dark October night. It was the first full moon night of the annual Werewolf Hunt festival. As usual, the village only expected to capture one Werewolf that night. That successful hunt would be the undoing of one more monster that would not be able to terrorize our village, kill our women or children, or bite someone else to infect them with the full moon monster madness.

That particular event was my first Werewolf Hunt. Peter, my eldest son, had just turned 13 three days before, and as the rules of the hunt state… men with children are not allowed to hunt until their eldest sons are old enough to take over the household to protect their mothers and younger siblings, in case the father is killed during the Werewolf hunt.

The rules of our community are strict… and what they state is that a boy of 13 years of age must become a man  in the event of the death of his father… immediately, if he is killed during one of the hunts.

Everyone involved in the hunt goes into the danger with the full knowledge that if he is bitten by the werewolf, then he will be immediately shot in the temple with a Silver Bullet of Absolution.

There is never hesitation when it comes to executing an infected human. Once bitten, the fever of lycanthropy immediately begins to affect the infected person’s mind causing him to swiftly become feral. Within minutes, the bitten is overcome by the overwhelming urge of feral self-preserve and only the swift escape into the wild gives the infected peace… until the infection completes its cycle of completion within the time of  two to three days. That process, in which the infection changes the insides of the person to ready him for his first change appears to be very painful as it affects the mind, as well as the body, of the affected.

It is not a pretty sight, because of the pain involved with the process sometimes involves the infected ripping away at the flesh of his body.

I know this knowledge because my village dealt with Werewolves for thirty-two years before the elders finally decided that it was impossible to continue the futile attempts at rehabbing our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters… those who survived the initial attacks… to try to save them when they were driven to destroy and kill under the glow of the full moon.

And, during the rest of the year... when the infected were in human form... their aggression and feral biting of their fellow villagers was simply too dangerous to allow in the community. And so, Elder Markova, like those before him, continued to created the special silver bullets to only be used in the case of absolution.

A silver bullet to the brain, special or not, is the way to make sure the Werewolf never returns to the infected. During those dark times, the nights were blacker than black and the days were as gloomy as the night. Thirty-seven of us had to die by silver bullet. Twenty-two died from the wounds inflicted by the Werewolves.

Dark times, indeed.

I have never seen a werewolf since the time of my turning. According to the monster lore, I am suppose to be mortal enemies with Lycanthropes. I have survived this harsh existence  of mine by fighting against the physical elements of the planet for my very “life” and traveling around the globe, moving from old world Poland to deep down cowboy-centric Tyler, Texas.
  
I have always thought that this mythological war that I have heard so much about that is occurring between my kind and werewolves is ridiculous nonsense…  absurd… alternate reality hokum.

I will not discount the existence of werewolves. I mean, really, I am forced to walk the night time earth in order to avoid the death rays of the sun. As absurd as my very own existence is, so then too… werewolves must exist.

But, they have to be my mortal enemy? I don‘t know about that.

Of course, if I ever meet a werewolf and he is as feral as his mythology paints him out to be… then there will obviously be a real… problem. And maybe I will gain first hand experience as to how the Vampire verses Werewolf story line began.

I guess if I can continue to hold on with my overly long existence, and avoid a painful undead death by sunlight or by sharpened wooden stake, then I will discover an answer... one day.

And now, to do what my kind must do… hunt for the blood that my human prey carries inside its warm, inviting veins before the moonlight dips below the horizon and the sun rises to burn me to dust. That is kind of like the caveat for the relationship between the moon and the werewolf. We both are cursed by our relationship with the moon… and the sun.

Where will it all end?

Maybe the end will come when this vampire, and that werewolf, finally meet. Maybe, one day, we can end the curse of each other’s cursed existence by doing each other in.

Damn... as usual, when I begin to reminisce about the origin of my own conversion from human to vampire, my mind drifts to the werewolf on my mind. Can it be that fate is preparing me for an eventful confrontation to come? Or, can it be that my mind is simply full of the dry dust on the moon.

Dust on the moon...

IVM

January 6th -- The Countdown To Horror Zero Presents: DEMON CLAWS!

http://www.thecountdowntohorrorzero.blogspot.com

January 6, 2014

(sometime during the ominous day)

Welcome to the next chapter of --

The Horrorwalker Travel Guide horror anthology blog:

THE COUNTDOWN TO HORROR ZERO!

Here,

Presented for your horror perusal,

The next horror tale:

DEMON CLAWS!

Presented in its expanded long form, 

This classic Horrorwalker Travel Guide Tale,

Is your warning into the future for how to handle this possible encounter.

There will be blood!

There will be the rending of human flesh!

There will be death and unrelenting hopelessness,

If you Encounter:

DEMON CLAWS!

RLJ