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The Thinning Veil

In the stories of The Thinning Veil, art imitates life and reflects our human condition which fluctuates from moment to moment along with our ever-changing life experience of the times we live in.

My first short story collection, The Small Dark Room of the Soul and Other Stories was published thirty years ago and made references to the collective fears of those times. Much has happened over the last three decades since then with shifting geopolitics, explosive growth in science, technology, pandemics, school shootings, chaotic weather patterns, homelessness, and all the other problems we are still struggling with as we move deeper into the twenty-first century.

Though some of the cultural references are dated in light of current and recent events, the message is just as relevant now as it was then, maybe even more so, so I am repeating the introduction to The Small Dark Room of the Soul and Other Stories here.

There can be no light without darkness.

The sun cannot rise without the night preceding it, and the setting sun of the day must inevitably fade to black.  If life were all sunshine and roses, there would be no contrast. Perpetual sunshine would be both blinding and devastating. We need the darkness. It is an integral part of the whole.

Part of us.

Horror stories are a reflection of our darker side. In an age of very real terrors like A.I.D.S., cancer, and terrorism, stories that frighten us can perform a useful function by allowing readers to live out and experience fear in a controlled fashion and deal with horror on their own terms.  If it gets to be too much, they can always close the book and put it away.  Experiencing horror in this way works as an anxiety release because it is a tangible way to deal with and escape the terrors of modern living.

The emotion of horror keeps us in touch with the darker aspects of ourselves while allowing us to confront our own vulnerability and inevitable death.  Reading horror is a valve that allows steam to escape when the buildup is too great, yet the fictionality of it gives us an escape from a confrontation that could overwhelm us.  It provides a cathartic release without oppressing us with more than we can handle.

Too often we shun our dark side in hopes that if we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Yet give us an Ed Gein, Charlie Manson, Ted Bundy, Hannibal Lecter, Jeffrey Dahmer, or any other grisly example of the dark side of human nature, and we express a morbid fascination that borders on frenzy.

We can’t help but slow down on the highway to gawk at the carnage of another’s untimely, messy death or sneak that guilty peek at another’s deformity or misfortune.

We just have to look.

How many Jeffrey Dahmer jokes have we laughed at, then in the same breath said how disgusting it all is.

Strange creatures, human beings.

Fact is, our dark side is an inescapable part of our makeup. There’s a little bit of Hannibal and Jeffrey in all of us, the problem is most of us don’t want to acknowledge it.

Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room — one we are afraid to enter. If we can only push aside the dark door of fear that holds us at bay and rescue the part of our souls that cringes in the dark, we might come to a better understanding of what makes us tick.

We have to take this unmentionable part of ourselves out into the light of truth so we can know its nature, because if we are to confront the uncomfortable truth, we must look in the face of the demon and admit that it is in us. When we‘re finished, we can let the monster crawl back into its dark abyss until the next play time.

If you’re timid of spirit and afraid of the dark, it’s time to take a look at what lies behind your own door of fear so you can glimpse the twisted evil that lies in all of us.  Within these pages we can play with it, poke it, and probe it in hopes that we may better understand the wholeness that makes up our being.

Who says we can’t have fun doing it?  After all, the little monster is part of us.

March 1994                                                                                   M.P.

 

Twenty years later, my second short story collection, A Short Walk to the Other Side was published, following the similar theme of how close we all are to our demons, no matter how much we try to ignore and rid ourselves of them. We are all just a short walk away from a thought, act, or emotion that lets the monster out of its cage, taking us hostage into the abyss with it, sometimes with no escape.

The introduction to this second collection, A Short Walk to the Other Side follows.

Who are we really?

What or where are the boundaries between what we believe to be real and what we imagine?

Ancient tribal cultures gave equal credence to dreams, visions, and their waking worlds, treating them all as different degrees of one and the same all-encompassing reality.

Do we in fact know ourselves or our true nature?

How many times have we reacted impulsively, only to regret our actions later, often with the apology, “I’m sorry, I’m not myself today,” or “I don’t know what got into me.”

In these moments of intense feeling, if we are not ourselves, then who or what are we?

Where do we really live?

The fact that the question arises makes the “other” implicit within ourselves.  What is this “other”? Duality?  Plurality?  Divided self?  Are we possessed by something other than ourselves or are we in denial of our other selves because we find their behavior unacceptable?

Do we possess them or do they possess us?

This quandary became the theme of an old time radio show that started with: “Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

How well do we know our shadows as individuals and collectively?  Better still, how well do our shadows know us?

Regardless of who is “running the show” at any point in space and time, every choice we make can change our life forever, along with the lives and destinies of others. A momentary lapse of attention while driving can cripple, maim, or bring swift and sudden death.

One moment of careless passion can leave you responsible for another life or bring the imminent end of your own from any number of ghastly diseases. A brief moment of passionate anger can land you in prison for the rest of your time on this earthly plane.

What doors do we pass through when we choose and what are the consequences of our actions? Better still, where do they leave us?

Coincidences, synergistic moments, timing, attitude, emotion, and attention can all change in the span of a single breath. What really goes on in the human heart and mind?

We cringe when we hear of, or witness heinous behavior and inhuman cruelty, yet human beings murder each other with endless and ingenious weapons of death, often in the name of a higher power.

Such disregard for life is difficult to comprehend, yet humans kill each other more than any other species. We are all human, so all of us are capable of making that one life altering choice that brings us someplace alien and unexpected.

Most people stay deeply entrenched in the cultural mainstream.  Feeling safe and sane in their routines, they avoid those living on the fringes, believing that they could never sink so low and never think or act in such odd and terrifying ways, but we are all human, living within the same realm of possibilities. We all have our shadow selves.  How much does it take to send us over the edge?

The truth is that it is a lot shorter walk to the other side than we like to think.

This, my third short story collection, The Thinning Veil follows the same train of thought. In this case it doesn’t matter if the demons are locked in a small dark room, or just a short walk away, because the veil between the worlds is thinning and the boundaries have become blurred, bringing more weight to the question; what or where are the boundaries between what we believe to be real and what we imagine?