brigid: B&W photo of Chicago skyscrapers against a broody sky (secret_chicago)

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At the same time the White City glittered and glimmered along the Lakefront, promising a bright future of electric lights, clean water, and a police force that prevented crime instead of chasing it after the fact, the man known as H H Holmes was firmly ensconced in his “castle,” murdering women with whom he’d had sexual affairs. Every light has a source of darkness, after all.

After his capture and arrest, investigators found a single, perfect footprint etched in the enamel of his incinerator door. They surmised that he had coated the floor with acid, and one victim had gotten that acid on her feet, burning her footprint into the door as she tried futilely to kick her way free. The City tore down the building in 1938, and erected a large post office on the site. As with most government buildings of the era, it has a bomb shelter in the basement.

The door to the bomb shelter is marked with a clear, perfect, dainty footprint.

The door has been replaced twice.

The footprint reappears.

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brigid: B&W photo of Chicago skyscrapers against a broody sky (secret_chicago)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

In folklore, when a baby smiles in its sleep that means an angel is near.

In actuality, when a baby smiles in its sleep it’s usually something far more prosaic: a bit of gas or a pleasant dream.

However, when a baby smiles while awake and begins looking about the room with such conviction that others look as well, and see nothing? That is the baby seeing the unseen. Something is definitely near. It is probably not an angel.

Should adults in the room become unusually chilled, it may be wise to take steps immediately to evict whatever presence is there.

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019 Onions

Nov. 19th, 2009 01:27 pm
brigid: B&W photo of Chicago skyscrapers against a broody sky (secret_chicago)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

It is an old folk remedy: when someone in the household is ill with flu, place a cut up onion in a crockery dish near their bed. Refresh the onion as it shrivels or dries. This will lessen the severity of the illness in those afflicted, and prevent the spread of the ailment to others in the home.

Some take it further; during flu season, they place cut onions in crockery dishes near all window sills and doorways.

Modern science scoffs at this idea, that germs can be drawn into a vegetable and absorbed.

It is not germs the onion absorbs.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There’s a small shop on Belmont, in a gentrifying area. It’s flanked by a doggy day spa and a shoe boutique, and it used to be a private residence that somebody converted into a store front. There’s a large window on the second floor which has an American flag with 37 stars tacked up like a curtain. It pushes against the window in places, where stacked up objects behind it have fallen forward.

All of the windows are grimy, streaked with grey dust and grit, and bits and pieces are stacked haphazardly: a canister vacuum cleaner; a display case of hummel figurines; a small book case; a red ryder BB gun; a mahogany chest; chippendale chairs. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, of a barricade. The front door, despite the “open” sign on it, is impassable with junk.

You will need to go around the corner and down the alley, and enter through the back door. If you have asthma, you would be wise to bring a dust mask. Come alone, and bring five silver dollars.

You will find five objects, each small enough to be carried away easily. Each will call to you, will feel right in your hand. Before you leave, put your five silver dollars in the crockery jar by the back door. You will cut your finger on the lid; do not try to avoid it.

Each object will answer a great need at some point in your life, if you can hang on to them. They have a tendency to vanish when you need them the most, however.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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It’s a hotel, one of the old ones. The rooms are large, spacious, with plenty of room to store clothing and shoes and your empty luggage; they’re large enough to live in genteelly, which was common once. The large windows, flanked by heavy drapery, look out over Lake Michigan.

One of the spacious, well-appointed rooms has a large dent in the wall.

This is an upscale hotel, and not the sort of place that accumulates dents and dings and stains. Every time the large, round dent is noticed, it is repaired. And soon the dent is found again. Sometimes there is an explanation: a hotel guest tripped and hit the wall with a bowling ball, a room cleaner banged something into it accidentally. It is quickly patched, only to become dented again.

The dent is probably there right now, although currently a large and heavy piece of furniture is against that wall, hiding the dent. Out of sight, the theory goes, out of mind.

Yet guests who spend the night in the room all report the same dream: that of a dark haired, large eyed child with no mouth standing by the side of the bed, slender arms outreached as though imploring wordlessly for some sort of assistance. There are heavy footfalls, in the dream, and the child looks over his shoulder. A rough hand closes on his shoulder, no other body part visible in the thick darkness, and drags the child away. There is a sudden wet smacking noise, and then silence.

The dent returns. The dream recurs.

It is an otherwise pleasant room.

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016 Need

Nov. 16th, 2009 12:23 pm
brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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They look like ordinary people: business men, children, homeless people, neighbors, barristas. They will ask you for something innocuous: a glass of water, to use your phone, a ride to the train station. Something about them will feel off, wrong, threatening. You will find yourself terrified of them. They will ask again, pleading. They only want something to drink; they only want to call someone for help; they only need a small favor. It’s always a small thing.

You may relent. You may give them what they want. A glass of water. Use of your phone. A ride. When you do, all the threat will evaporate from them. Their faces will take on a peaceful, beatific look. They have been reaching out, trying to connect with another human, for years; maybe for decades. Maybe longer. They have finally been heard, their need has finally been met.

The next day, you will ask somebody for a glass of water, to use their phone, for a lift to the train.

You will not be able to rest until your need is met.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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Forty feet below street level, beneath the water mains and electrical lines and telecommunications lines, there are 62 feet of tunnels and connections. Freight in the form of packages, deliveries, and coal (as well as removal of rubbish and ash) were moved beneath the streets from their construction in 1906 until their closure in 1959, and cool subterranean air was drawn upwards to cool movie theaters and businesses.

In 2002, Joseph Konopka was arrested on terrorist charges after being discovered secreting containers of cyanide and other dangerous chemicals in an unused storage area in the CTA’s Blue Line. The entrances to the unused freight tunnels were then welded shut, to the disappointment of urban explorers and the relief of those who know what non-human entities continued to use the tunnels.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There are places that are between places: hallways, doorways, stairways, elevators, alleyways. They are not places proper. People do not live there, they simply pass through from one place to another. Crawl spaces, the space under the bed, closets, the space between the ceiling and the floor above it: they are places that do not have life, that do not have light. Untouched as they are by humans, half hidden and in the heart of humanity, they are the perfect place for other things to set up homes in. People do not live there, but that does not mean they are uninhabited.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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Like many large, old cities Chicago is full of high rise buildings with marble entryways and dimly lit brass-grilled elevators. These buildings, when labeling the floors, skip 13. This is a desperate attempt to avoid the bad luck associated with the number thirteen.

It is rumored that if one stops an elevator between the 12th and 14th floor in certain buildings, the elevator will open its creaking doors to reveal a still and dusty 13th floor: one that is perhaps abandoned, perhaps the site of a great and terrible crime, perhaps inhabited by ghosts or demons or the trapped souls of dead office workers.

These rumors are false.

There is nothing magical or ominous about the thirteenth floor of any building, at least in Chicago.

It is the elevator shafts that one must watch out for.

(Happy Friday the 13th, everyone.)

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012 Green

Nov. 12th, 2009 05:43 pm
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Early non-Aboriginal settlers to the area described the river now known as the Chicago river as “little more than a sluggish, meandering, muddy ditch.” It has been widened, straightened, re-routed, and reversed. So much filth was emptied into it that portions of the river bubbled as methane gas from decomposing bodies, both human and non. Man has touched the river, and has corrupted and changed it.

Once a year, thick green dyes are dumped into the river. This hides the depths of the water, and the things that are born in it: things that man has created, that man does not want to see.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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Chicago, like all of America, does not have Fairies native to it. Some immigrants brought their pookas and brownies and kobalds and rusalkas with them, but most did not fare very well. Their places were already filled, for the most part, by the dark and secret beings native to this land.

The ones which did survive, of course, were the most terrible and stubborn. They are the blood drinkers, the shadow lurkers, and the stealers of children.

They do not literally steal children, no. They do not take a precious, tender infant and replace it with an enchanted stick or an elderly Fairy, some baby masquerade. Nor are they some groping excuse to explain away Autism or cerebral palsy or hydrocephaly.

No, they evict and devour the humanness of the child and fill that child’s body with themselves. The child looks and acts normal, grows and develops as normal, smiles and plays and throws tantrums as normal.

But at night, when you check on that child, and their eyes are open, you can tell. In the darkness their true nature is visible. Their eyes are sunken, dark pits; sclera, pupil, and iris all the same inky color.

When there are enough of them, when they are strong enough, they will begin preying on adults.

(Sorry this is late, Nesko had the day off for Veteran’s Day so we spent the entire day running errands. I need to set these up to auto post.)

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010 Noises

Nov. 10th, 2009 03:39 pm
brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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They keep you awake at night, jarring you out of encroaching sleep or else jerking you out of paralyzing dream. It’s the sibilant hiss, the raucous rattle and clank, of steam heat radiators. Sometimes the hissing of the steam sounds like whispers, voices, malevolent snake demons from the darkest pits of Hell. Sometimes the metallic clanks and clangs sound like someone, somewhere, is beating the radiators and pipes with a wrench; possibly from the inside. It is easy to imagine some spirit or energy inside the radiators, inside the pipes, burbling away in the boilers squatting in the basements. It is easy to imagine their attempts at communion, at threat, at hostility.

You can relax. There is nothing living in the radiators, the pipes, the boiler. They are a simple, albeit noisy and often poorly maintained, heat source.

Of course, their noise is enough to cover up quite a lot of other noise and commotion.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There is a small dry cleaner/tailor shop underneath the El. Across the street from it is the station, which has a snack shop and newspaper stand. It’s squeezed into a space exactly the width of the tracks, and the posters advertising services are sun bleached and faded. There is a closed sign on the door, and idle passers by who hesitate in front of the large window never see personnel inside the shop. It gives every indication of being locked and vacant.

However, if you try the door between 7am and 7pm, you will find it open. The bell over the door is loud and jarring, and it will summon a Chinese woman in her 40s. If you simply ask questions about prices and hours of operation, she will look at you stonily and not answer. If you bring a stained article of clothing, she will tell you to come back in three hours; when you do, the article will be cleaned of any and all stains, including those difficult to remove human protein stains.

The true wonder, however, is the tailoring services the shop provides.

Bring in a single article of clothing that is too large or too small, and state that it needs to be altered to fit you. The woman will come around the counter and measure your entire body three times, including parts of you that you wouldn’t think need measuring– the circumference of your skull, for instance, or the span of your hand. She will tell you to come back in one week, and charge you twenty dollars.

If you manage to return in one week, you will find that the article of clothing fits you marvelously and is immensely flattering; further, you will find yourself more charismatic and well liked than you normally are. People will show themselves eager to impress you and curry your favor. Each wearing of the article of clothing, however, will deduct one month extra from your life span.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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If you sleep Downtown on a night with no moon, whether in a hotel room or condo, apartment or park bench, you may have a dream. In the dream, a man (or possibly woman, but something about him feels masculine) stands with his back to you. The two of you are on a dirt road, a dark and scraggly tree ahead and to the right; the moon is bloatedly full, a lurid orange color, low on the horizon. Once you’ve noticed him, he will begin to walk. You may follow him, in the dream, or not. The choice is yours; it is always yours.

If you chose to follow him, you will have recurring dreams featuring him in a changing landscape. The dirt road becomes cobbled, then paved. Shacks grow up, then houses, sky scrapers. You will travel through places you know in the waking world, and places you know only in dream. Finally, after months of these dreams (which leave you feeling drained and unrested on waking), you will come to a dwelling you know. Entering, you will find the person you love most. He or she will be asleep in their bed, and you have a knife in your hand.

It is your dream, and at this moment, you still have control. You may walk out of the room, out of the dwelling. You may walk down the road and wake and never dream of the man again.

Or you may raise your knife and murder the one you love, in bed.

It is only a dream: on waking, your loved one will be healthy and whole– or as healthy and whole as he or she was before lying down to sleep. From that moment on, however, your relationship will strain and weaken. They know, deep down, what you are capable of; what you are willing to sacrifice. And what do you gain from this loss of love, this betrayal?

From that night on, you will never be lost. You will always know exactly where you are, and how to get where you are going. Upon your death, this may prove somewhat stressful.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There are fifteen buildings still standing in Chicago which have plaster and lathe interior walls. Some of the buildings are single family residences, others are apartment buildings.

If you live in one of these buildings for at least three months, it is possible to hide something in the spaces between the walls. No matter the size or shape of the thing you want to hide, it will somehow fit. Once hidden away, it will remain there until the building falls (or is torn down), or until the City burns once more.

There is no way of knowing if your building is one of the fifteen until you try to hide something within the walls.

At night, when you sit at your computer or watch television, when you lie in bed trying to sleep, and you hear a faint scrabbling in the walls; a rustle and a rattle that might be mice or might be plaster falling? That is the sound of secret things, of hidden things, trying to escape.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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He is beautiful, and all he wants to do is love you: love all of you.

He is pale; light skinned with soft brown hair and pale eyes like water over stone or sand. His smile is sad and his touch is soft. He rides the El, and you can find him there at night. His hair is a little too long, too shaggy; his clothes are a year or two out of date. Many people don’t notice. He doesn’t look out dated, just… slightly faded. If you make eye contact he will smile that sad, soft smile — a shy smile– and say hello in his whisper of a voice. The train is loud, it rattles and shudders and screeches, and he is quiet. You’ll lean toward him to hear him better, but you will be able to hear him. The feel of his fingers on your knee is electric, thrilling.

You won’t remember what you talk about, what he says. All you know is that you like talking to him; he fills something inside of you and when he is gone you feel empty. Once you two have spoken, you will see him again, and again. He will move in with you within a week. He will cook for you, and watch you eat. His food is amazing; his sex even more so.

You will start losing weight rapidly.

He looks at you so sadly, with those big pale eyes, each glance an apology. He loves you so much, and in return, you hunger for his every look; his every word; his every touch. Your performance at work or school starts to suffer. Your friends notice that you no longer go out. They also notice that your excess flesh is dripping away like butter held over a flame. You look tired, drained. They ask if you’re well, if anything’s wrong. They irritate you. You cannot wait to get back home to your lover.

If you do not kill him, he will devour every last bit of you. He will take you into him, body and soul. It hurts him so: he does love you, truly. He loves every bit and part of you, even the parts you think are ugly; even the parts the world thinks are ugly. Nobody will ever love you as he does. If you do manage to kill him, that thought will taint every relationship you have for the rest of your life.

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You see them, sometimes, squat square one story buildings made of limestone. The windows are narrow slits, or nonexistant, and there’s a square plaque over the door saying “post office” or “municipal building” or something else vague. Sometimes there’s a very PWA carving of a blocky eagle clutching lightning bolts, or a design made of three thick straight lines. There’s always the “Y” symbol that Chicago uses, that reminder of the Chicago River’s odd shape.

The buildings always look abandoned; abandoned, but pristine. The windows, if they exist, are dark. The doorways are gated with rubbish blown against them. The small parking lot, if there is one, is surrounded by a sagging chain link fence; the asphalt is cracked and weedy. But the building is untouched by grafiti, nobody has tried to make a home in the doorway, no windows have been smashed nor have they been borded up. The buildings simply wait.

If you enter one, you will find it larger inside than it should be. The floors are clean, although worn from years of being walked upon. The murals that line the walls, representing a City at work, a People working together, are fresh looking and unfaded.

There is a dim glow to the inside of the building, enough to navigate by. If you are able to get to the center of the building you will find a small trap door set into the floor. Oil the hinges of the door, grasp the iron ring, and lift. The open door will reveal a small storage area so dark that it seems to absorb light. Reach in and you will find a small, square box made of bark. Open it, careful not to snap the string made of woven grasses, and inside you will find a human eyeball.

If you swallow this eyeball, you will be able to see beneath the masks that people — and those masquerading as people– wear as they walk the streets and sit in their homes. If you do not put an eye of your own, voluntarily, in the box and reseal it in its hiding place, however, you will not survive the year.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There is a condo in Edgewater that is new red-brick construction with balconies and fireplaces and granite kitchens with stainless steel appliances. One unit has never been sold, and although it has been rented by the management company from time to time the residents always break their lease by the second month. The smell of smoke fills the unit some evenings, accompanied by raucous banging and thumping, especially coming from the closet of the smallest bedroom. That bedroom has a white-painted closet which is very ordinary looking save for the small, brownish, smudged, handprints that circle the wall about three feet off the floor. No amount of scrubbing can remove them; when the closet is painted, the handprints soon reappear. They are faint at first, but within three days they are as dark as they ever were.

If a woman who has been unable to bear a child walks into the closet and closes the door, kneeling down, and touching each of the handprints in turn, she will find herself pregnant within a month. The child will be a boy with solemn eyes. When he is five, a fire will start in their home, and somebody who lives there will die.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

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There is a small, delicate-petalled pink rose with long powdery yellow stamens that is native to the Chicago area. It is also very endangered.

A tincture made of 5 drops of that rose’s oil, 1 drop of almond oil, and 2 drops of dog’s blood, will grease any political wheels. It can be slipped into coffee, passed from flesh to flesh via handshake, or mixed into ink.

It must be reapplied daily or the results wear off quickly.

The rose will not grow outside of certain areas of Chicago.

Some have tried to substitute human blood for dog’s blood, thinking that will increase the potency of the tincture. It does, but the results are more likely to twist and betray the user.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)
For those of you who haven't been following my journal long, sometimes I do writing projects.

My current one is called "Secret Chicago" and is inspired by 200 Phenomena in the City of Calgary. I'm pretty much trying to do the same thing, only duh, based on Chicago. And they have to be at least 100 words long. I toyed with keeping them between 100 and 140 words, but thought that might be too limiting. My next project may involve the 140 word limit, with no minimum.

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