Month: August 2025

Ghouls

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Picking awkwardberries from the tree of life

A subway car injects the city with shaking souls

Human fluids in the test tube

With windows and lights and broken dreams and cataclysmic days

Green and amber are the aching colors of another dark noc (night)

Round heavens bloodied with tar

Heroin tracks are stars

Red forests all alone

Black trunks and branches against a pale pink horizon

Motorized carts rolling overhead

Heaven is a shopping mall

You must have money to get in, to play the game of life

Then the mechanical beep beep beep when someone goes backward into a wall

Holiday maze mess head

Christmas in September

Halloween in July

That doesn’t click with the elves and the ghosts

Murmured nonsense ticks through my brain like numbers on a ticker tape:

Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 to 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a stock ticker, which printed abbreviated company names as alphabetic symbols followed by numeric stock transaction price and volume information. Source: Wikipedia

That’s the Internet for you. Is it true? I don’t know. Is anything true these days? What exactly is truth?

I don’t believe in the corporate news. They’re ghouls.

It’s manufactured bullshit. They feed us to control us. They brainwash us with fiction while we read fiction to escape the horrors of the real world. Horrors flooding America, the globe right now. We all need to escape to a better world…

I went to a bookstore in a little town on the coast of Maine. I was wearing a toboggan. (A toboggan hat is a type of knitted wool hat, often referred to as a beanie in many regions. In the southern United States, “toboggan” specifically refers to this warm winter headwear.) That’s what the AI machine says.

It’s black, my brain emissions keep it warm.

I was reading some Kerouac, and the words took me back, forward, present…

I am mentally exhausted and spiritually discouraged by this shit of being, of having to do what everybody wants me to do instead of just my old private life of poesies and novelies of yore.

~ Jack Kerouac

To an alley, a greasepaint store, a yellow funeral home

The bodies would come out at night and walk up and down the street looking for their homes

But they never find them

They have to crawl back in

Before the very first crack of dawn

In through the heavy, ornamental front door of the funeral parlor

Down the hidden staircase where the realities of death glisten with fluids

Silver tables, chains, tubes, instruments…

And they climb back into their $10,000 coffins to be covered with dirt forever

In a cold, wormy ground

To never ever see the sun again

Only blackness, stillness, quiet

Forever tapping to get out

By
Aaron Echoes August
Corn of the Aliens (2)

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Harold jumped up and ran outside. The screen door slammed behind him as Bruce Springsteen music played from the clouds. The stars, hidden by the grunt of daylight, were there in the pointed universe. He made his way across the warm grass of the yard. He opened the gate on the white picket fence and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked both ways, and each way was the same—a long, straight and tree-lined street that was quiet. The homes were large. The trees were large, bushy like broccoli, and the air smelled like clean skin. Now he had to choose: Left to the lake or right toward the forbidden frosty forest burning foil green now in the late aspects of summer.

Harold chose the heart of the forest. He was scared but he forged forward. On the way, he tried to shake the image of his mother on the table with that awful Ted on top of her. He turned toward the curb and threw up in the street. When he looked up he saw an old glowing white woman standing in the picture window of a grandma house painted the color of marshmallow circus peanuts. Her hair was silvery gray, her expression demure and judgmental. Harold stared at her a long while. Then she suddenly smiled and held up a tray of cookies. She motioned with her head for young Harold to come to the door. For some reason his heart pounded. Then the old woman held up a glass of pure white milk. Her smile got even bigger, but it was unsettling. The boy wanted to run but his legs were like cement and it was like how it is when a dreamer tries to run in a dream.

That’s when the old lady stepped out onto the stoop and called for him. “Boy,” she said. “Come here boy. I have some wonderful treats for you. And I’m so lonely. Won’t you please come in and keep an old lady company for just a while?”

Harold turned his head side to side. The world suddenly seemed completely empty. A breeze made his hair dance. “Okay,” he said, and he walked toward the house and followed the old woman inside.

Her house smelled funny. Antiseptic. Surgery. It was overly neat and clean. There was old-time music playing. Music from a different era, dimension. He followed her into a room with large windows and old furniture.

“Have a seat and I’ll be right back,” the woman said as she put the tray and jug of milk down upon a low table in front of a flowery couch.

Young Harold sank into a cushion. He looked up and saw a clock on the wall, but it had an extra number: 13 where the 12 usually goes.

When she returned she was shockingly holding a large trapezoidal blade with a handle. “Do you like machetes?” she asked the boy. She whipped it through the air, and it sang a dead song. “I myself love machetes.” She flattened her feet to the floor and made a fighting stance. “Yee ha!” she cried out, and once again she whipped the blade through the air.

Harold was terrified and started to get up to leave.

“Wait!” the old woman cried out. “Where are you going?”

“I have to go home,” he answered. “My mother will be worried.”

The woman relaxed her stance and smiled at Harold. “No she won’t,” she said. “Your mother hates you. Sit back down and have some milk and cookies. And then maybe you can take a nap. I have a very comfortable bed right upstairs.” She pointed toward the ceiling with a crooked finger.

Harold looked at the machete flicking in her other hand. He sat back down. She set a gaze upon him with sparkling silver-blue eyes. “Enjoy now,” she said with a nod of her glowing head. “Eat as much as you want.”

Harold opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling. The room was too warm, but the bed was soft. He got up from the bed and went to the one window in the room and looked out. There, down in the front yard, the old woman was trimming bushes with her prized machete. She suddenly stopped and then turned her head to look up at Harold as if she sensed him there. The boy ducked away and went to the bedroom door to get out. It was locked from the outside. He pounded on the door. “Let me out of here!” he yelled. He went back to the window and looked out again. This time the old woman was no longer there.

Then there was the sound of unlocking and the door swung open. The old woman stepped in. She was sweaty from the late summer sun. The blade of her machete had green on it. “Don’t pound on the door,” she said. “You might break it. Just settle down and take it easy.”

“Why did you lock me in here?” Harold wanted to know.

“It’s for your own safety. The world out there is a very dangerous place for a young boy such as yourself.”

“I just want to go home.”

“Home? You have no home. Haven’t you heard?” She motioned toward a small radio sitting upon a small table. It’s all over the news. Your home burned down, and your mother and her lover died.”

“What? No! You’re lying. This is some sort of psychological torture.”

Once again she motioned to the radio. “Turn it on and listen.”

Harold did as she said. A voice came through and explained in horrifying detail how indeed his house did burn to the ground and that the woman who lived there and a strange man had been trapped and died inside.

Harold began to cry. “No,” he said. “It can’t be true.”

“Of course it’s true,” the old woman told him. “It’s a truth radio. Everything that comes out of it is the honest truth, regardless of how harsh it may be.”

Harold’s eyes went to the window. “I want to smash through that glass and jump,” Harold said. “I have nothing to live for now.”

The woman chuckled. “Funny how life can drastically change in a mere fraction of a second.”

By
Aaron Echoes August

My new book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. Available in both e-book ($2.99) and print ($14.99) editions! Thanks for reading and supporting independent writers.
Red Toast

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Red toast and tequila in a dust storm on the far reaches of some blown out city in the desolate west. Liplock, Tejas. The land of dirt and death. Treeless scrapes and scars. Pitchforks, boredom. Hot houses and hay fires. HP butterheads play Roman soldiers. The sun is relentless. The decay is precious and accepted.

Knives talk beneath the shimmering sun. Blades flicker. Blood spatters in the sand. Droplets and rivulets of agony and guilt. Knees on buckled asphalt. Prayer hands play shotgun to the heavens. God is too scared to do anything. He lets his believers and the world burn. Where’s the love and mercy? Just a Dumpster fire parade. Men of faith butcher the brown-skinned and the alternative lovers. They behold a book they’ve never read. Have they read any book? Big fat guts and stupid hats and asses. Boisterous breasts and sour trailer sweat. Ignorant swastikas and dumbfounded religion. Dirty pools and hoarding. Disrespected flags flutter in the hot wind. Yellow teeth make a stupid grin at the polling place. Statues in stunning sun have bigger brains and know better.

Red toast at a western picnic table scratched with love hearts beneath a New Mexican baby blue sky and burning pinon in the air. Melodious flute people, paranormal pastors, congested congregants. A covered veranda with a concrete floor. Bolted benches. Prayer circles and circle jerks. Howling to a peyote moon. That hollow, green moon with the little blue men inside. A hippie death star, alien bases on the dark side. We’re being watched and laughed at. The universe thinks we’re nothing but a bunch of ignorant, selfish, hateful jerks. And they are right. The jerk store called, and they’re overstocked with humans. It’s getting late. Time to shut out the fractured world, the dead America. Time to dream of magical castles and Norway.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Dance for Armageddon

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I have licorice guts. Seemingly endless balls of fire, balls of fortune telling. The osprey float. Warm coffee in the desert. 112 degrees out there today. I had to take an ice bath in a crystal tub. The doorbell rings, incessantly, at the most inappropriate time. Everyone wants to talk to the wonder man. The ringing changes to hard knocking. I hear, “Hello. Mr. Goldenfear!”

I’m very anti-social and impatient and this person at the door is really driving me bonks. I reluctantly get out of the tub and put on my luxurious navy-blue robe. I go to the door and yank it open. “What do you want!?”

The man there tips his fedora and smiles. “Name’s George Tulane. I’m with the Daily Times newspaper and I’d like to do an interview.”

“The Daily Times? I despise that rag. Please go away.” I start to close the door, but George Tulane sticks his foot out to block it. “Please Mr. Goldenfear. I won’t take too much of your time. The world wants to hear your story.”

“There was a dark menace over the supper club… and then the log splitter came to life, and soon there was a grand clustering of devils in the ballroom.”

“I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense.”

“You wanted a story? That’s your story… Senselessness. My senses are all screwed up, but not as badly as my emotions or mental state.”

“But, what exactly happened at the supper club?”

“Here you go… Senseless murder.”

“But what did you see?”

“I already told you. A dark menacing, a log splitter, the devils.”

“What about the log splitter?”

The devils put the heads of the patrons in it and split them open.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Of course it’s horrible. Violence and death are very horrible things.”

“What did you do?”

“I hadn’t finished my veal cutlet yet and so I was upset about that. I hesitated at first, but then I swung into action. I took out my Walther PP7 and shot at them.”

“Like James Bond?”

“Exactly like James Bond, minus the gratuitous sex with half-clothed cave women.”

The reporter scribbled feverishly. “Tell me more, Mr. Goldenfear.”

“I saw the evil bodies drop and the others scattered through veranda doors of glass and crystal. I called out to those bastards: ‘Someday, you’ll get what you deserve! In the end, we all get what we deserve.’”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Of course I do. Just like the Ministry of Bigotry and Hate. They’ll all get theirs in the end.”

“Do you have any hobbies, Mr. Goldenfear?”

“Hobbies? Well, I like to make my own candles. I believe in lighting my own path… But I don’t understand why you’re writing this article anyways. Nobody gives a damn about anything I do.”

“Because you’re a hero. Everyone loves a hero.”

“For about five minutes they do… Would you care for a bologna sandwich.”

“Oh. God no. Do you realize what bologna is?”

“Enlighten me.”

“It’s all the leftover bits and pieces of meat and whatever. They sweep up the killing floor and put all the gunk in a big metal barrel and mix it up. Then they squeeze it out into a circular shape and package it up and people actually eat it. Makes me want to spew.”

“So you like a good organic orgy?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. That flew over your head like a flying saucer, like a piece of bologna.”

And now we must leave this place in order to come back around again…

The reporter named George Tulane sat in his car smoking a cigarette and looking at the odd home of one Mr. Goldenfear. “What a nut,” he said aloud to no one but himself. “I’ll just fill in the voids of this story with my imagination. The idiots in this town will never know the difference.” He didn’t care that it was unethical.

He cracked open a beer and took a long drink. He spoke Catalan. “Osca.” Which he believed meant good, but he had no actual proof or real understanding. His life was a mess.

George Tulane started his car and drove off. He was expected back at the office for a meeting but decided to get drunk instead. He went to the local grocery store and bought high-gravity beer. He took it out to his car, rolled down the windows, turned the radio up, and began to drink.

Soon, the parking lot all around him became a warm graveyard…

By
Aaron Echoes August

My new book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. Available in both e-book and print editions! Thanks for reading and supporting independent writers.