Sanity has no meaning in this place

Hey, my name is D.D., I write horror for fun and therapy. this blog is a place for me to share my work and connect with likeminded folks, and maybe -just maybe- find an audience Everything I post is my own original work. If you steal it, I'll find you and reclaim something of equal value. TW: Gore, Violence, Slurs, Foul Language, Abuse, challenging concepts, Mental Illness, Body Horror, ect. The quote in my header is from Johnny Sims

[iwilleatyourenglish]

"sometimes you absolutely ARE required to do things in life for the good of other people, even if you hate it" loud incorrect buzzer noise

pure individualism is a disease that kills communities, isolates individuals, and leads to things like the anti-vax movement.

you are not so important that you aren't bound by social responsibility and decency.

others are not so insignificant that they don't deserve help and sacrifice.

[marinella-ela]

[photozoi]

Site Supervisor

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Real sound! No stupid music! You can hear it say moo!

[bookcub]

i think it is unrealistic for fans to expect sequels to be published a year after the first one and also want the book at its highest quality. it's okay to expect a few years in between and i think it weird how much pressure authors face to publish their next book immediately. that's a lot of stress on authors and i think it often leads to books being put out before they are ready.

[mlerpwonders]

If you truly enjoy books, you should be used to a slower consumption experience.

Apply this to time between installments.

Accept that if you get into a good series with multiple books to go, you are going to be following it for a decade or more.

[skiagraphe0-deactivated20250401]

A bad book published on schedule is on time once, but bad forever.

A good book published on a delay is late once, and then good forever.

Ultimately, you're getting a book either way. The question is, would you like something satisfactory that you can look back on fondly for the rest of your life, or do you want something that the author rushed out over the course of a bunch of sleepless nights that reflects the quality of those working conditions?

Good work takes time. If you're really pressed about authors not handing you a novel each year, go write fanfic - and find out for yourself how hard it is to produce a novel's worth of good, solid, well-paced, well-plotted story regularly.

[the-haiku-bot]

A bad book published

on schedule is on time once,

but bad forever.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[dduane]

Reblogged as much for the haiku as anything else... :)

[clownboybebop]

if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!

1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.

2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.

3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes

it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.

It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.

so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know

[kyraneko]

fight the unkillable god, because you may be mistaken about its unkillability.

fight the unkillable god, because you may be the first bacterium to take a successful bite.

fight the unkillable god, so as to set foot onto the path which leads to the god being killable.

the bacteria that couldn't eat the tree and the bacteria that could eat the tree had the same general understanding of the tree.

might as well take a bite.

[theotherwesley]

He was as tall as he was tall, and his eyes were the color they were. To describe his hair one would say that he had some. His face had all the features you'd expect, and none of the ones you wouldn't. "There he is," people would often say of him, but only when he was there. And they were right.

[herssian]

deepen the shadows bro. it'll be ok

[herssian]

i meant art-wise but if any dark sorcerers see this. you do you

[my0clonic-jerk]

[cardassiangoodreads]

Genuinely, one of the measures that's stopped book banning the most when districts implement it, is having the would-be banners fill out a form that demonstrates if they've read the book or not. Like where they have the summarize the plot and characters and do a mini book report and give a review. It stops them in their tracks. This is why in my high school, every time someone wanted to ban a book it ended up going nowhere. There was one where a conservative student wanted to ban the manga "Legal Drug" for having a marijuana leaf on the cover, then got the form that required them to actually read and either balked, or read it and realized it was not pro-drug at all. (The other one that reduces book bans even further is "requiring the would-be banner to be affiliated with this actual school in some way, either by being a student, faculty/staff or a parent of a child at the school" because the vast majority of bans are "activists" with no affiliation with the school who just travel around trying to do this in districts all over the U.S. IIRC a few years ago someone crunched the numbers and just 51 parents were responsible for all the book bans that year nationally. 51! In a country with 50 states, with over 300 million people total!)

[beardedmrbean]

This is legitimately one of my fav quotes from him

[redfagdiver]

Shout out to "enunciate" for being one of those words that forces you to do itself.

[duckbunny]

"Irish doesn't have a word for please, you have to say if it be your will" buddy do I have news for you about "please"

"Irish doesn't have a word for hello you have to use a shorthand religious blessing" buddy do I have news for you about "goodbye"!

"In Polish the word for car is that which walks by itself" BUDDY what do you think an AUTOMOBILE is?

you have got to understand that your mother tongue is not the model of language. all your words have secret histories and layers of meaning just the same as other people's words. the word you think of as just a word has etymology, it wasn't handed down from God as a finished word. English doesn't have a word for movie you have to either refer to the recording medium or use a short version of "moving picture", isn't that cute?

[dionysiaproductions]

[asparrowdraws]

Gaming Dice.

I learned a lot about edges and light and color relationships here.

[greywolfheirs]

PAINTING!!! THIS IS A PAINTING

[sensoryscorpio]

CHAT THIS IS A PAINTING!!!

[almaignismare]

I went over this post twice before realising. I was like "oh it's just set up like a still life painting, right". NO IT'S FUCKING NOT!

[sistertaxon]

i do think people need to be like, more aware of the distinction between "there are no women in this story because the author is sexist" and "there are no women in this story because the author is saying something about the absence of women"

[sistertaxon]

in the movie The Thing (1982), a film about an isolated all-male group wherein they are the only people they have contact with and yet are so resistant to homosocial contact that they are unable to tell the difference between their friend and an alien that has replaced them, what could it mean that the only "woman" in the movie is a computer that the main character destroys in the first act after he can't beat it?

[sparrowlucero]

your dark fantasy novel doesn't need a logic-based magic system it needs a bear with a human face

[sparrowlucero]

the human-faced bear principle of storytelling: the amount of people who will remember the exposition about the rules of magic or the history of elf culture inherently pales in comparison to the amount of people who will remember the scene where someone gets mauled by a bear with a human face

[sparrowlucero]

this isn't a call to necessarily include a literal bear with a human face (though you should at least consider it. obviously.) but pointing out that, while a lot of sf/f writing advice places heavy emphasis on fleshing out the small details of a fictional world as much as possible, there's often little attention given to the value of including effective "bear attack scenes", for lack of a better term; tense, scary, shocking, weird, or otherwise visceral scenes or concepts (the pale man, the chestburster, the sunken place, the raptors in the kitchen, artax in the swamp, the annihilation bear, the basement in parasite, the blood test in the thing, etc) despite those having a significantly higher hit rate of making a story striking and memorable to people

[sparrowlucero]

#okay but those things are only striking and memorable BECAUSE of the well fleshed out laws of the narrative#we understand the world we’re inhabiting in those texts so when the weird stuff happens it doesn’t break suspension of disbelief#i agree that without the weird and wacky sf/f can be pretty boring and lame#but you need the weird and wacky to be grounded in the world you’ve created#otherwise it’s just either tacky or makes readers confused and angry

I'm sorry i just don't think people remember the horse drowning in the neverending story because of the fleshed out narrative laws around it

[bogleech]

This is one of those true, declassified government things that always sounds made up but one of the things Henry Kissinger did with his career was use the CIA to help turn small, prosperous socialist nations into fascist dictatorships just to keep those nations powerless and possibly to keep socialist systems *looking* doomed and futile to the American public, like maybe just to scare Americans out of demanding better infrastructure or universal income. Yes it sounds like an insane conspiracy theory a maniac would invent. It also happened multiple times and several generations of people around the world are still living in misery because of it.

[luxflora]

[pfaugh]

Operation Condor - Wikipedia

[xeansicemane]

Remember folks, the two types of conspiracy theory are "Things the CIA or FBI has admitted to doing" and "Antisemitism"

[ragewritings]

Hey guys, my name is D.D. and i'm a horror writer/ aspiring Horror Novelist. This blog is just going to be a place for me to talk about and post the short stories that I've been writing, find other writers to connect with on Tumblr and stuff.

If you see this and have any interest in horror as a genre or you're looking for new reading material, maybe give me a follow! If you're a writer yourself hit me up. I'm always looking for new writing friends

[ragewritings]

Revelation

By: D.D. Campbell

A man on edge discovers a new way to slake his appetite.

Horror

Tw: violence, murder

What does one do when the soft layers they have placed between themselves and the world are stripped away?

When one sickens of drink and excess; when their gut, hung heavy with the ghosts of cocktails past, finally ripens into cyanosis and crippling pain? When the risk of cancer becomes just high enough to chase one away from the smoke and vapor?

When the spirit goes from one's loins from too many years of indulging the cock's every passing fancy. When one must delve deeper into the deranged, diving the depths of depravity just to ignite that damned and damning spark. Even then, only finding a pale shadow of the lust that once pounded there?

Christ, the sepia tones of a world without vice.

Vice lends the world color. And damn me, but I was a fucking virtuouso. I made art of naught but my body, a bottle and a thousand sultry nights.

And yet here I sit in the stinking August heat sinking steadily into my sofa, watching some inane docu series about serial killers and trying to ignore the oompah oompah coming up through my floor.

Have you ever thought about how funny H. H. Holmes would have been to watch in action? Because it makes me laugh until my eyes tear up. This murderous bastard, itching to kill someone, feeling the addiction like a vice at the base of his spine, right? And what does he do, go strangle some folks? Beat a man to hamburger meat barehanded? Nope, he pulls a McCauley Kulkin, sneaks around a tiny hotel setting his little tricks and traps.

In my mind, I can see it so clearly. Holmes, walking down a hallway with arms spread wide showmanly, describing the perks and amenities of America's first Blood and Breakfast. He steps lithely around a loose floorboard, and when the petite granny who rented suite 7B hits it? Wham, two by four full of nails to the face. Of course that doesn't do the job, granny lived through the dust bowl, she's a tough old bird. But it makes her stumble back to the stairs and slip.

That does the trick. The second impact enough to snap her spine, but she keeps ragdolling. Blood sprays from the new holes as she pinwheels down. Holmes steps on a pedal opening a secret door to the cellar where Oma Mendelson lands on a pile of other guests. Splat!

Of course, like all my other lovely little hobbies, the world does not let me keep this. The documentary reveals the long held secret of H. H. Holmes we've all been waiting for on the edge of our seats. He was boring.

Kevin McAllister The Ripper was just a common fucking conman. Every single bloodthirsty kill and bloodstained Victorian drama? Just a desperate attempt to cover up shifty little white collar crimes. The murder hotel? Made up for the papers after the perfectly normal building burnt down. My laughter dies in my throat. Color abandons me. The sepia creeps back in.

Desperate frustration drives me to the bathroom. I rip down a gray box full of nicotine gum, and dump the contents into the sink. Six sheets of blister wrapped bits of gum sit there innocuously. I struggle to pop one out for a full minute, guttural cursing escaping me the whole time.

I catch sight of the mirror, and what awaits on the burnished glass is a vision from pre-history. Hair in disarray, foam flecked lips, blood shot eyes. Forehead jutting like a caveman amongst crude cut features. Breath boils out of me, laced with petty frustration more black and potent than any rage. Finally, I manage to claw the foil off the entire pack in a single motion and a half dozen pieces clatter on the mildew and piss stained floor.

There isn’t a moment of hesitation. I snatch the closest few sticks and cram them in my mouth.

It tastes like inadequacy and artificial fruit.

The music starts pounding again next door.

…

You're not even wearing a hearing aid you old piece of shit.

The sounds of polka damn near drowned that thought.

“I'm sorry Jefe I don't mean to bother, you know” Old Jank was half hollering over the music, which stoked the rage in my stomach even higher. It meant he knew full well how loud it was. His liver-spotted hands pawed at a sweat stained wifebeater, out of which a carpet of graying tangle peaked, and a piss-yellowed pair of Jockeys.

Why did society tolerate old men who gave up common decency at the first excuse?

Old Jank was called Old Jank because the man looked like a Scooby Doo stereotype. He belonged in a shack next to an abandoned gold mine or some defunct amusement park somewhere, not in here stinking up the high rise. Over his shoulder was an apartment piled high with the sort of trash that got you a reality tv intervention. Stacks of old magazines and yellowing newspapers, boxes of trash used as packing material for Hummel figurines. The sort of mess you didn’t end up living in if you had anyone on earth who loved you.

“Just fuckin.. turn it down man. Don’t make me come down here again.” The menace lacing my tone did nothing to him. His shallow unconcerned gaze didn’t waver for a second. Fucker.

Deluding myself into thinking he was intimidated, I turned and stormed away. The fact that the music became slightly quieter fed the poor starving self deception. The fatass-shaped mould in my sofa called to me, and I filled it gratefully.

Ed Gein was up next. Now there was a true American Hero. Killed like, nine people, and grave robbed a dozen more, and made modern fucking art with their bits. I mean, the man wasn’t any good at arts and crafts, a middle aged mom could have made better corpse chachkis, but hey points for style. Maybe if they’d taken a bit longer to catch him, he could have refined his art a bit better.

Of course, in a stunning repeat of their last performance, the documentarian saved the disappointment for right at the end of the episode. Gein wasn’t an artiste. There was no passion. He was just trying to build a fucking mommy-suit. My god, never meet your heroes. No one in this world is worth saving.

In disgust, I killed the boob tube, and flung away the remote. Guess there was nothing to do but nap. Better the dreamless void than the itch growing in my spinal cord. The couch would do well enough for a few hours.

Oompah

OOMPAH

OOMPAH OOMPAH OOMPAH.

THAT MOTHERFUCKER. The slam of my front door rattled the pictures on the wall almost as hard as the bass boosted music beneath my feet. I barely remember the flight down to 14C. Jank was smiling knowingly when he finally opened the door, wearing an apron over his grungy duds that said Cafe Esteban in ancient faded vinyl cursive. After maybe five minutes of knuckle-bruising knocks. I didn’t know what i was going to say, but that fucking smile made up my mind for me. No words. I just cocked my fist back to teach the old fuck a lesson.

GLURK

Jank wasn't standing in front of me, I couldn’t fuckin breathe and everything was bursting with pinpricks of light. The rings of bone that ran round my adams apple felt like they’d gone a few rounds with a cricket bat.

“Can't be acting like fucking animals, Rat-shitkowski” I couldn't breathe enough to get mad. His words sounded.. more than pleasant, the man sounded genuinely excited. I felt his bony hand clench around my shirt, with that long hairy bare leg against the back of my knees, and before my sluggish instincts kicked in, he launched my ass into the apartment. Some kind of body weight momentum type shit, jiu-jitsu maybe?

Take-off to touchdown was maybe a half a second. I rolled onto my back after a second to see Esteban saunter towards me.

“This tantrum shit that young people do in this country? No, good my friend. If you want to hurt me?” He paused to punctuate his point, contemplating me. I shot my left hand out to snag his ankle hoping to yank the old bastard down. Too slow.

Esteban took a half step back, easily dodging my clumsy attempt, then brought his full weight down on the offending limb, heel first. There was an internal snap, and the sepia retreated from the world. The blue in his eyes was electric.

“Just hurt me. Don’t fuck around.”

The smell of over-spiced Cuban beef hit my senses, followed by the sizzle. Then the pain, as the shriveled old scrotum of a man drew up a bare foot and stomped full force on my crotch.

He missed my testicles on the first try, slamming his heel into my public bone, but that must have helped him calibrate his efforts because the second shot caught the fellas. I threw up. Vomit streamed through clenched teeth, painting the front of my hurricanes jersey with that distinctive orange brown. Coughing followed, as the rest slid back down the wrong pipe.

Esteban was so kind as to bury his heel into my diaphragm, and the explosive exhalation blew chunks all over his face. He didn't so much as flinch.

Fists after that. Somewhere around the third blow I realized I was laughing. The pain felt right. This was real life, stripped of all its drab covering and exposed to the cold air of reality. No shrinking back from the pain as the old Cubano threw a vicious jab into my gums. There was a pop and a crack as I parted ways with a lower canine and chipped something else. Hands gripped my throat, pulling me from the grimy linoleum, then bashing me back against it.

He was flagging. Youth had long since abandoned my Jank, and it showed. A few more shots from his bloody knuckles and he was done, pushing himself agonizingly back to his feet, and stumbling away chest heaving.

“I… am glad.. you enjoyed yourself, gringo” he forced out. I choked over my dying laughter and spit a wad of bloody phlegm and enamel onto the floor. “I trust you can see yourself out” he limped away from the little kitchenette, and my amusement died.

He wasn't going to fucking finish me? He was going to turn his back to me and fucking walk away?! I forced my ruptured core to engage, every fiber of muscle in my body protesting. Sitting. Vomit again onto the peeling tile patterned plastic. Roll over. Push myself up? Nope, left wrist is clearly broken, and every shift made whoever had their hand around my balls squeeze.

Fuck it. The pain was just color. Jenk and I had made art together just then. The palette was brown and yellowed white and utterly gorgeous, breathtaking RED. But it wasn't perfect. Esteban had forgotten his main course on the stove. It was starting to smoke and blacken.

I did the old man a favor. I reached out with my right hand and clicked the gas burner off. My hand closed around the handle of the formidable weight of the wrought iron pan. Jank had made his way towards the decaying leather armchair in the living room, but when he heard the music he stilled. I tipped the beef onto a chipped, gold-rimmed China plate.

Five limping strides carried me across the room. He didn’t move, turn around, flee. My mouth curled slightly. Burning grease dripped onto my wrist as I raised it above my head.

“Thank you"