I’m writing a series of posts titled “Inspirations” to share background on what inspired me to write each of the stories in my short story collection “Our Greatest Enemy.”

Third in the collection: Inside a Concrete Box

I’ve had this story cooking in my nogging for literal years. Like a really, really long time.

One of my oldest childhood memories is from camping with my parents. I don’t remember where we camped, only that it had trees behind the campground that us children liked to explore. I remember that, and how happy I was. Take your kids camping. Seriously.

During my time exploring the “forest” of trees with my sisters, we stumbled upon a mysterious concrete monument. It was similar to the one described in the story, but was smaller and taller. We studied the monument for a long time, made up creepy stories for why it existed, but still to this day have no idea why it actually existed. And it bothers me that I don’t know.

Writing this story was a way of coping with that unsolvable mystery.

I first wrote about the box in 6th grade. It was a short short story about a “monster” that lived inside the box. I remember the monster being named “Bob”, and I remember him offering a cheeseburger to my protagonist. I can safely say that the story I rewrote many years later took on a much less humorous tone.

This is also the first story I wrote following the car accident that took dad’s life, which impacted many of the themes in this story. The entire ordeal of preparing dad’s body and selecting a vault for his coffin were haunting and surreal moment’s in my life. I walked through that time of my life in a daze, and I thank my wife for helping me through it. Death always comes much too soon, and we are never prepared.

The child character in this story is written based off of real life conversations I have with my son, Jaren, all the time. He’s a bright kid that loves fishing, and it was a joy creating a character in a story based on him. It was also scary when the monster took him, and it was horrifying to think about what I would have done in the same situation Arthur was in. Losing any of my children would be the hardest thing I think I could ever have to face, and I fear it daily.

I’ll end this my saying that there was an alternative ending to this story in its initial draft. In it, the father and the child both perish by becoming trapped inside the box. In this version, there was no Child Eater, no husk, and instead the box was a consumer of souls. By looking within, both Arthur and Jay became forever trapped. I liked that ending, but I think the ending I decided on was much better. I also like that Arthur and Jay both survived the endeavor. This is possibly the only story in the collection that could be described as having a happy ending (I’m not really a fan of happy endings in horror… but I liked these characters too much to see them die).

Again, don’t forget to take your kids camping. Just be wary of concrete monuments hidden in the trees.

Child Eaters are never far.

If you haven’t read the story yet, pick up the collection on Amazon. Free for Kindle Unlimited readers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7QW7VQ5

I’m writing a series of posts called “Inspirations” to share background information on what lead to each of the stories in my short story collection “Our Greatest Enemy.”

Going in order is: Wrapped in Silk

This is another story I first wrote in college. It was also (like Belt) another much shorter story (around 2k words), and it’s first iteration was… rough. I wrote it and set it aside for years before I picked it back up (around the same time I revisited Belt). This story has had more titles than I care to admit, as I struggled to find the right name for it. At one point I’d called it Prey for Spiders, but found the title too boring.

The inspiration for this story was its first scene, which could almost be a true story. The apartment I describe in this story was the same one I lived in for a couple of years: a grungy thing with two bedrooms and a bathroom that could have been a closet. I loved that apartment. I did a lot of soul searching there. I first rented it with a girlfriend and moved out of it single. It’s also where I wrote the first version of this story.

Erik in the story talks about the importance of long showers, and I do actually take long, hot showers. Some of the dialog in the story (where Gwen complained about Erik taking long showers) actually did take place. There is something therapeutic about taking a long shower to help reset a person after a long day. My wife is deeply annoyed by them. I often choose to take them an inopportune times. I, like Erik, also find them important.

In one such shower I did come across a spider in the very place I describe in the story. It was a small thing, but the thoughts in the opening section of the story are real. I did actually contemplate killing the thing only to change my mind about its presence. I felt it deserved to live, that it wasn’t my place to kill it.

Later that night (then a newly single man) this story came to me. As I was a senior in college at that time, symbolism was big on my mind. The initial idea was for Erik (Michael was his original name) to come to terms with himself being a kind of spider, an unwanted and disposable insect and somewhat dangerous. The spider was growing inside of him, and choosing not to kill it lead to his downfall. This, and the web of memories, are what I based the story on. I wasn’t proud of that first draft, but I remained excited about the symbolism. I’m glad I kept it and revisited it years later.

The idea of Audery and the child came during my recent re-writes. The initial story needed to “grow up” a bit, as it was laced with melodrama and angsty young adult emotions. I cut out a great deal of those initial sections, and added more dialogue with characters in their late-twenties instead of late-teens. I’m glad that I did, as Erik’s lax and disregarding behavior towards the child adds a dark layer to the story that I, as a father, find haunting. I love my children dearly, and it was hard to write about a character that seemed to not give a damn about his own.

Lastly, writing about the topic of suicide is really hard and really scary. It’s a place that no one wants to go to or discuss. I had to go there because it made sense for this character, someone that was deeply disturbed and struggling with his depression. I also think that it’s something more people have contemplated than they’d ever own up to. Erik thought little of therapy in this story, but I’m one that believes it should be more normalized in society. We all become victims to our own mind from time to time, and we all need a little help from others to climb back up the water spout.

As Erik says, life needs life.

If you haven’t read the story yet, pick it up on Amazon. Free for Kindle Unlimited readers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7QW7VQ5

Today, I’m starting a series of posts called “Inspirations” to share some background information on what lead to each of the stories in my short story collection “Our Greatest Enemy.”

Up first: Belt

This is probably my personal favorite story in this collection. This is for a few reasons. First, it’s my most worked on story. Second, the ending (in my opinion) comes out of nowhere with a left hook to the jaw. Thirdly, it’s a very personal story (but that’s all the stories in this collection).

It started as a short story assignment for a creative writing class in college sometime in 2010-11. The first version was a very short story (around 2,000 words compared to the 10,000 that the final version ended with). At the time, I called the story “He Gathered Them Together” in reference to Revelations from the Bible. In the many iterations this story went through, it was first simplified to “Gathered”, then “Shelterbelt”, until finally I landed on the callback to the twist ending with “Belt”.

The story back then was much simpler. In it, the title character (the young boy) wasn’t developed (which was my biggest critique from the instructor of the class), had a girlfriend (a thinly veiled callout to a girl in the class that I had a crush on), and was focused heavily on the father character (which was the best part about the story – and maybe still is?). The twist ending back then was that the boy survived the car crash, saying to his mother that “everything was fine.” And that was it. There were no references to shelterbelts, and no brutal ending (I’ll spare spoilers in this post). My biggest crime in that version: the boy (a supposed protagonist) was a paper thin character against the backdrop of his well-defined father.

I’ve worked on this story a great deal (double digit drafts and edits), mostly focusing on the boy. I tried desperately to figure out what kind of character he was, and when I finally figured it out, the story really came together. The boy was difficult to understand, because he’d lived his entire life in a real life purgatory, and this is what I needed to analyze with this story. It’s a tragic story about a boy that looked up to a father that let him down. I love the boy character, and I look forward to possibly continuing his story in the future as he continually seeks his dead father’s approval.

A theme of the story, the shelterbelts, came to me through an actual conversation with my grandfather about their purpose. In North Dakota, these belts litter the highways and roadways, and I didn’t know why until my grandpa explained why they were so important. Little did he know that he helped me establish an extremely important aspect of my boy character – a child stuck in between warring parents, protecting them from each other. Thanks grandpa!

In many ways, this little boy was me growing up (sans his… behavior at the end of the story). I often felt like I was stuck between fighting parents, and I would warrant this is a somewhat common thing kids deal with (shame on you if you do it!). My parents are wonderful and I had a fantastic childhood, but there’s room for improvement for everyone. Don’t stick your children in between your fights. Go to a sealed room and duke it out quietly and respectfully.

Lastly, those late night drives with dad on gravel roads were real, and yes, they did inspire the first edition of this story. Yes, dad did tell me never to get married. I know he didn’t mean it. We all say crazy things when we’re mad, and mom and him have a marriage that I’ve looked up to my entire life.

If you haven’t read the story yet, pick it up on Amazon. Free for Kindle Unlimited readers.
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Greatest-Enemy-Stories-Fatherhood-ebook/dp/B0CW1J8TM9