MICHAEL PICCO
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My contributor copies for Stranded: Lone Survivor Deserted Island Horror Stories
arrived in the mail yesterday! This anthology from Dark Regions Press, contains my flash fiction short story, "Isle for One?" — which took Fourth Place in their writing contest this last summer! December 18th, 201812/18/2018 I felt that this story would've been a good capstone to Scenes… but, due to deadlines and space, I didn't quite have time to squeeze it in. Like the story All of Yesterday's Yesterdays, it deals with the unaware dead and the afterlife — particularly as it relates to the notion of the Bardo {from Wiki: “Used loosely, the term "bardo" refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions.”}.
I found the idea of the Bardo similar to the Christian idea of Purgatory, except that in the Tibetan tradition, the Bardo offers “a state of great opportunity for liberation…” or can “impel one into a less than desirable rebirth.” I found this concept fascinating and a lot more imaginative (and constructive) than the place envisioned by Christian theologians. Nevertheless, I did borrow heavily from various afterlife accounts (including, but not limited to: Dante’s Divine Comedy and Greek Mythology) — in what I lovingly refer to as my “Neil Gaiman” writing style. The title of the story is tentative. I was trying to estimate just how many hours I spent putting this collection together. I thought maybe a couple of hundred at first, but then calculated that amount to be only a couple of months! This project took YEARS to complete...many thousands of hours, I suspect. Great to finally have it FINISHED and in hand!
Excerpt from The Wheel5/17/2018 {Author's note: although this story won't find its way into Corpse Honey (I simply do not have the room for it), I was happy with how it turned out, that I just had to share it. I think my regular readers will find it delightfully twisted and macabre. My thanks to Rob Mosher for inspiration and collaboration on the piece.}
The ones who screamed the longest were the first ones to die. Cimarron, the stone mason’s daughter, had been the first to go. Her desperate pleas had changed to cries as the wheel turned. Those cries steadily dissolved into ragged screams as she was lowered down, into the trough. Sebastian could still hear her Archives
January 2024
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