Michael M. Hughes

Here’s a little gift to anyone who came to my reading at Horrorfind (or anyone else, or that matter): my short story, “The Milk Man,” as a PDF download. Enjoy with a glass of ice cold bovine glandular secretions.

the-milk-man

Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry Anthology

My short story, “Invocation of the Incisor,” will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry by DarkHart Press. Details forthcoming.

Well, thanks to my current craptastic web host (cough… uplinkearth… cough, cough) I lost a bunch of posts. Which really, really sucks, as my brain is too soft to remember what I wrote. I’m quite sure it was brilliant.

So it goes. All life is suffering, said the Buddha.

I’m working on a very interesting article for the Baltimore City Paper about the Johns Hopkins studies on psilocybin and mystical experiences and a few of my short stories are circulating and looking for a home. I’ll be doing a reading of my short story “The Milk Man,” at the upcoming Horrorfind Weekend on Friday, August 15th at 8pm. It’s definitely not for the lactose intolerant or easily offended.

And on Saturday, August 16th I’ll be heading up to West-by-God-Virginia for the 15th Annual Briary Bottomstock Beer Bash and Camporee. (PDF flyer download)

More soon.

 Timothy Garon, a Seattle musician, was refused a liver transplant because he used medical marijuana to control his nausea. And medical marijuana is legal in Washington State.He died last night.Nice job, Drug Warriors and University of Washington Medical Center ”doctors”—you’ve exterminated yet another immoral druggie scumbag to keep our children safe. May you sleep well tonight.

The anthology is apparently breaking all sorts of records for regional books about West Virginia and is going into its second printing. I’ve found a couple of reviews, both very positive, and one which singled out my story, “The Blackwater Lights,” as “simply haunting.” FearZone.com also reviewed the book.

David Simon and the writers of HBO’s “The Wire” have put together a damning indictment of the War on (some) Drugs that deserves wide circulation. And I completely endorse their prescription for civil disobedience:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

I’m a Baltimore resident, and last year I sat on a jury. A 15-year-old black kid was on trial for allegedly distributing tiny bags of powder cocaine. Each bag was worth about $10 on the street, and the total haul was perhaps $2-300. He didn’t have a gun, and neither did the other kid who was arrested with him. They were busted by some undercover cops cruising their neighborhood.

The evidence was thin—the drugs had been hidden in a nearby transformer box in a vacant lot, and the cops only saw the kid taking money from someone else. He also had roughly $200 in cash in his pockets. No drugs were found on him, but it was quite possible—even likely—that he was selling. I know plenty of people who would have jumped at the chance to throw the kid in jail.

He was enrolled in a vocational program, and was working as a plumber’s assistant. He had no criminal record. If he was guilty, he was clearly not a major trafficker—just a kid trying to make some extra cash. A stupid decision, sure, but I didn’t think it was worth putting him behind bars. So I did my best to convince my fellow jurors to let him go. Surprisingly, most of the jurors felt the same as I did. Most believed that he probably was guilty, but only one person wanted to convict.

Eventually, that one person relented. We let him go.

After the trial, I caught up with the judge in the hall. “What would have happened to him if we had convicted him?” I asked.

“He could have gone away for twenty-five years,” he said.

Twenty-five years. A kid’s life utterly and completely destroyed by a so-called justice system seemingly designed to turn him into a lifelong criminal.

Now I can hear some people saying: “Hey, drugs destroy lives, too. I have a cousin/friend/spouse/father/mother whose life was destroyed by (insert drug here). The kid made his choice, and if he was guilty, he should pay the price.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that argument.

When I drive around Baltimore, I see parts of it that are a fucking war zone. Poverty and race seem to define those areas. I do not believe, and I can’t condone, a war against my fellow citizens who happen to be born into blighted circumstances, with poor schools, chronic unemployment, and little chance for escape. That’s not to say I wouldn’t throw someone in jail for committing a violent crime—as a proponent of nonviolence, my rule is simple: If you physically injure another human being, you can expect no mercy from me. But sending a nonviolent drug offender to prison is not a solution—it’s part of the problem.

Simon et al have taken a bold and principled stand, and their courageous call to civil disobedience deserves to be heard, loudly and widely.

The Wire’s War on the Drug War

David Simon’s story from The Stoop Storytelling Series.

Well, beaten to the punch, that is.

A few months ago, I started working on a short story that I’d been turning over in my mind for a long time. The story was about an unfortunate fellow who pulls into a decrepit rest stop on a seldom-used highway to use the bathroom—a Port-a-Pot. Unfortunately for him, some punk-assed kids decide to have some fun with the man with the out-of-state license plate, and they tip the Port-a-Pot over, trapping him. I was thinking along the lines of Poe’s “Premature Burial,” just nastier.

So I nearly shat myself (figuratively) today when I read this on Hellnotes:

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Issue 27, expected out early this summer, will feature a new Stephen King short story, “A Very Tight Place.” Here’s what King had to say about his inspiration for the story, “Let me give you an example. There’s a story that’s written, it’s been accepted for publication by a magazine. It’s called ‘A Very Tight Place.’ And we live part of the year down in Florida, and I have a walk that I go on every day, that’s fairly isolated. Which is good, because people don’t bother me or anything. I get a chance to read a little bit, to think a little bit. And one day while I was on that walk, I saw one of these Porta-Potties. You know what I mean? They stand up, and I thought you know what? There’s nobody around … the house that it belonged to was under construction, and the workers had all gone home for the day, and I still had a mile to go to get home, and I thought, you know what? I’m going to go in there and I’m going to take a leak. That’ll be good. Why not? It’s there. I’ll get comfortable.

“And I did. I went in, and the thing had been undercut, not a lot, just the tiniest little bit. So that when I stepped into the Porta-Pottie, I could feel this thing rock a little bit on its base. And I thought to myself, you know, if … if one of those things fell over on its door, and a person was inside, that person would be in trouble. And immediately I’m thinking Poe, ‘The Premature Burial,’ I’m thinking about all the buried alive stories that I’ve ever read, and I’m thinking, but I’ve never read a story about anyone trapped in a Porta-Pottie. And there are so many interesting things that you can do with people who are in tight places, people’s feelings of claustrophobia are easy to bring out. I’m not a particularly claustrophobic person myself, but I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is wonderful!’”

Lesson learned? Hurry up and write. Maybe King has put his own “shining” to work, and is peering into my head. If you read this, Steve, please refrain from etherically snatching any more of my ideas. Or pony up some cash, bro, and I’ll keep my mouth shut the next time.

Ira Levin was a phenomenal suspense and horror writer. His knack for infusing the ordinary with menace and dread is something I can only hope to emulate in my own work.

I had the opportunity to star as the young playwright in Levin’s play, “Deathtrap,” when I was in college. It remains one of my favorite roles, and I’ll never forget getting stabbed by my onstage adversary, my good friend Mark Briggs, in the chest with an arrow—repeatedly—while the blood bag stubbornly refused to pop. When it finally did, showering us both with blood, the audience gasped. But those few seconds felt like hours, and I was dying in more ways than one.

We’ll miss you, Ira.

Here’s an obituary. 

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

—Winston Churchill

Johns Hopkins Magazine did a very nice write up about my performing and my writing. Check it out here.

(photo by John Davis)