“Did you see him?” demanded Murray. “Did you get a good look?”

“I don’t know, Murray,” said his friend George. “I can’t really see from here. Besides, I’ve never even seen yours. I wouldn’t know anyway.”
 
“I saw it. It was real. Just like mine.”
 
“Maybe, I don’t know.”

Murray gripped his glass of wine so tight it appeared ready to burst. “I’ve got to find out,” he said. “This is serious.”
 
“I know. Be careful, Murray.”

“I should be careful at my own retirement party? He’s the one who should be careful.”

Murray handed his glass to George and waved to Professor Applegate, the chair of the History department and hostess of the party. Engrossed in a conversation with a group of alumni, she waved back at him absently. He mustered as much courage as a 74 year-old man could, and then went to confront the server with the vile tattoo. 
 
The caterers were enjoying a break in the corner of the banquet hall when Murray approached them. The server in question was large and dark-haired, with a slow, easy grace. His relative youth and casual confidence reminded Murray of some of his less-favorite students from years past.
 
“So, what do you have to say for yourself?” accused Murray, and the group of caterers turned toward him, curious.
 
“What’s the matter, sir?” asked the server. “Was there a problem with your dinner?”
 
“Forget your dinner,” said Murray. “I saw your arm back there. Is that some kind of awful joke?”
 
The young man jumped to attention. He disentangled himself from the cluster of servers and walked over to Murray with a dangerous look in his eyes.
 
“Listen,” he said. “Let’s talk about this somewhere else.”
 
“If not here, then where?” asked Murray. “I need to know. Why those tattoos? Don’t you know what they mean?”
 
“When did you see them?”
 
“When you served me the chicken. Your sleeve got caught on the table and I got a good look.”
 
The young man nodded to himself. “I need to be more careful.”
 
“This is funny to you? Not to me!” Murray pulled up his left sleeve to reveal the faded black numbers 90417 on his leathery arm. He thrust his arm into the stranger’s face. “There! See the real thing. I was there, you son of a bitch! I was there!”
 
The young man was silent. “So,” he finally said. “You were in Auschwitz?”
 
“I was. Two awful years, I spent there,” said Murray. “I was only a child, but I watched my parents die there. I only made it out because of the kindness of strangers.”
 
“Didn’t we all,” said the young man, pulling up his own sleeve. His left wrist bore the numbers 90202 in the same faded black as Murray’s. “My tattoos aren’t a joke, or an insult. I was there, the same as you.”
 
“Come on!” said Murray in disbelief. “You’re young enough to be one of my students!”
 
The young man looked over Murray for a second, weighing something in his mind. “I’m older than I look, see. I’m not like you humans.”

“What then? A werewolf? A vampire who sucks blood by night and serves dinners on the side?” Murray was an avid fan of folklore and ghost stories, but his belief in the supernatural began and ended at the movie theatre.
 
“Something like that, yeah. I was a soldier. I should never have been captured, but I got careless, something that happens a lot.”
 
“If you are such a creature, then why don’t you remove the tattoos?”
 
The man looked at Murray curiously. “Why don’t you remove yours? I keep them hidden as best I can, but removing them is out of the question. This is something that should not be forgotten.”
 
Murray nodded in agreement. “You’re right about that. At least this isn’t a joke to you. Let me give you a piece of advice, my son. Get those tattoos removed. People are going to misunderstand them for as long as you live.”
 
“You still don’t believe me, do you?”
 
“Look, it’s a hard story to swallow. I’m glad to talk to you, though. I was about ready to come to blows, and at my age, that’s never a good thing.” He stuck out his hand, a proper gesture this time. “I’m Murray Tenenbaum. This is my retirement party.”
 
“I’m Joe.” As they shook, the young man looked over Murray with a small smile. “Murray Tenenbaum… I remember you now. Of course, you were a lot smaller back then. When we first met, I didn’t know if you’d ever shut up.”
 
“Say that again?”
 
“When they killed your parents, all I could do was give you a hug. I wanted to do more, but then I would have been shot, just like your dad. And I had to keep you quiet, or you would have been shot, too.  Do you remember what I said to you then?”
 
A tear formed in Murray’s eye. “I do. ‘Chin up, young soldier,’ that’s what you said. ‘It’s going to be alright.’”
 
The young man nodded.
Murray looked him up and down in amazement. “So you were the Russian?”
 
“I was. I still am.”
 
“Then I guess I owe you a lot more than an apology. I owe you everything.”
Joe nodded, deep in thought. Regret ran deep in his face, and a single tear strummed down his cheek. Murray was fortunate- he had been blessed with friends and family that helped him to make sense of the horrors he had seen. But this creature, for reasons of secrecy and survival, had no one. The past sixty years would have been a silent hell, and Murray could think of no fate worse than that. He took Joe into his arms and embraced him.
 
“Chin up, my young friend,” Murray said, “It’s going to be alright.”

_________________________________

©2011 Charles Bush

Charles Bush is a college fundraiser. His fiction has appeared in Anotherealm.com, and his scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of Information Technology Education. He lives with his wife and son in upstate New York.

Tell our readers about your upcoming book.

“Ashes in Her Eyes” is about a female cremator named Stephanie Garris who gets the ashes of a murderer accidentally blown into her eyes. Throughout the novel, she experiences harrowing flashes of this murderer’s afterlife as she’s being gradually possessed, for the afterlife of the “cremated” is much different than the “buried” dead. Throughout the story, she keeps waking up in the middle of grizzly murder scenes that would appear to be perpetrated by her hands, but it’s really the killer inside of her. The big conflict is what she can do to stop this killer from his ultimate plans, and that is bringing the cremated dead back to life by shoving their ashes into people’s eyes. The novel’s not for the squeamish or easily offended, as there are many gruesome killings taking place.

How did you first come up with the inspiration for this story?

Most of the ideas I get stem from the question: “What happens when you die?” Since nobody can give you a straight or “right” answer, I can play with the possibilities in many of my books, “Ashes in Her Eyes” being one of them.

What do you think makes your main character relatable to readers?

Stephanie and Ryan Garris are the two main characters of the novel, and they’ve experienced a certain number of challenges in their marriage, as many of the readers have had, I’m sure, in their lifetimes. For example, the two have supported each other through college, decided to wait to have children so one can succeed in their career over the other, and they’ve also gone to counseling to deal with a short spat of infidelity. The two characters survived every obstacle a marriage can pose, and they survived. These are real people dealing with a tough situation, and they have to use their love for each other to overcome it without having superpowers or being able to shoot the antagonist in the head and the evil just magically goes away.

This novel frequently asks the reader to consider what happens after death, and the answers to that question can get under your skin.

This project required about three to four months from first draft to editing down, but I’ve submitted this novel to many publishing houses, and its has changed a lot during the five years of its existence.

Are you working on other projects that you’d like to tell us about?

I’m always cooking up something. I’ve got several novels circulating out there, including vampires hiding out in a cider mill, the book of b-horror movie characters coming to life, and the latest, the zombies with power tools project.

The book I always wonder why they haven’t made a movie for was “Necroscope” by Brian Lumley. I don’t know if I could “make over” a great novel like that, but it certainly deserves more attention.

What do you like to read?

I like to read just about anything, though my favorites are Joyce Carol Oates, Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, and T.M. Wright.

Tell us who your favorite “bad guy” is in your story, and why?

My favorite bad guy is Michael Demner, because in “Ashes in Her Eyes,” he’s the villain who’s been watching those he’s hated and sworn revenge against from beyond. He knows their routines and who they are, and he can play that against people as he takes possession of Stephanie Garris on and off during the novel. This guy’s pent up, to say the least.

Do you like to set a particular mood for writing? Do you work at a particular time of day?

I prefer my writing time to be the first thing I do for the day. This allows me to put one hundred percent of my focus into it before I deal with everything else the day has to throw at me. In my basement, I have a glorified closet big enough to fit a desk and some shelves, and it’s my “writing room.” It’s a private place where I can get down my thoughts, and most of all, seclude myself from everything else except for writing.

The most challenging thing about writing is the business side of it. Writing marketing pitches and cover letters and finding the right publishing house can be challenging, especially being a new writer whose still relatively unknown.

On my writing desk, I have a corner where I keep all of my published works side-by-side. I look at those accomplishments, and I get a sense of achievement from the finished product.

Read everything you can, both in your genre and outside your genre. Get a sense of what it takes to write believable characters from the best of the field. Have your own opinions of what a good plot entails, so you can compare and contrast against the professionals. Editing, though, is very key. If a reader can’t enjoy your working manuscript without it feeling muddled, it won’t matter how good of an idea it is. Work out the kinks. Take your time. Send if off when its had some time to be scrutinized.

The fear of death is prominent in many of my books. Not knowing what it is that will transpire when you close your eyes for the final time is outright creepy. It haunts many of my characters. On the other hand, taunting death, or slapping it in the face, is also a theme in some of my other works.

Do you have a writing quirk?

One editor on my previous projects said I had a fetish for “knocking people out.”

The biggest element I can think of is writing likeable characters. They can sit around doing nothing, if the audience enjoys them. Also establishing a purpose, or a conflict, is very important, early on in the story. Get your conflicts rising from the beginning, so the reader keeps turning those pages to resolve it.

————————

 ©2011 Lori Titus