Hide and Seek

The first story I actually had accepted for publication was “Hide and Seek.”  It appeared in Danse Macabre XXXIII, Erzählungen (March 2010).  Danse Macabre subsequently changed servers, and my story is no longer available there.  I’m hoping eventually to have some of my short stories republished in a collection, but first I have to get more of my short stories published period.

I remember clearly the inspiration for “Hide and Seek.”  One day during lunch I’d wandered to the space around a vacant building.  It was one of those single-story, multi-purpose monstrosities with no real character or charm.  The parking lot had weeds breaking through the pavement, and the building on either side, probably built by overly optimistic speculators, also stood vacant.  It was rather peaceful.

Having been a writer since a very young age, I habitually carry either paper or a notebook in my pocket.  I found a bench with chipping paint, sat down, pulled out my paper, and began to write.  The story began as a description of the desolate scene around me, explored by a single wanderer.  The loner wondered where all the people had gone.

They had, of course, fled from him.  It wasn’t the most profound story—in fact, it was mostly written in fun.  Nevertheless, the alienation expressed was real enough.  Like these abandoned buildings, our society produces us and alienates us.

Every profession to which I’ve ever expired is now considered obsolete.  I teach, but my fellow professors—some of them my best friends—have found themselves displaced as universities leave behind the liberal arts and become more like unimaginative businesses.  I had considered other careers in my life, but I’ve watched as they’ve slowly followed the brontosaurus into not just extinction, but utter non-existence.

The well from which we draw our fiction is the well within our souls.  My experience of life has been that of the outsider.  The alien.  My hopes and dreams are fairly simple; I’ve never felt entitled to much in life.  Yet even those hopes and dreams frequently remain out of reach.  And so I write.

I’m not naive enough to suppose that my stories will ever find a wide following.  Some of them, like “Hide and Seek,” have already disappeared.  The response of the writer, however, is to stay the course.  Write the revolution.  And maybe some day somebody will listen.