I Met a Man as I Lay in My Grave

 Okay, here's the thing. I had just confirmed the existence of an absolutely fantastic character who had up to then just been a shadow haunting one of the the smallest corners of my little fantasy world. I knew his name, one that I had heard in the background but now knew for certain. He appeared there on the Bajazid, sharing an evening at that creek-side campfire, and I learned just a tiny bit about him, scarce enough to matter but overloaded each and every word. I'm not touching any of that outside of the fact that I knew that Abel had not been back in this area in twenty years. I also learned in "Roots Is All Evil" that Abel Johnson has some rather horrendous personal traits.

As soon as "Roots Is All Evil" was finished, I was pretty much obsessed. This is how this stuff is happening. I had two primary directions I felt I could go, the first being telling that story that happens up there on the Bajazid basically as a story about that event. The second idea was to follow Abel around and see if I could squeeze a snapshot of his world. It very shortly became a heated discussion within the confines of my creative directions with some rather harsh words uttered by several conceptual entities. In fact, I have a short sub-list in the List now that is just stories wherein Abel Johnson has potential to appear. His time on the Front in France during those dark days of '16 should be fun to write about.

It was a voice other than Abel's which finally broke through and there I was studying American Civil War history again. I needed battlefields, specifically ones which allowed for mobility even in a locked campaign. The further west I could go the better and, well, Grant's actions around Vicksburg and the associated activities of the siege left lots of such opportunities. This story does take place on June 2, 1863... oddly enough, the anniversary of when he was up on that creek now called the Bajazid. This was a weird accident, I'm just going to say that. I was needing the proper phase of moon for description in each story and using a full moon during the time of that siege landed me on this coincidence. Like I have said, weird shit, man.

The title for this, risen when I locked on this particular story of all the possible which had bloomed, is "I Met a Man as I Lay in My Grave". I rose from the study I was doing, giving reason for what I knew Abel to be doing. The location and time, along with the activities he and his unit were engaged in being consistent to historical record, I had pretty much all I needed. I just needed the encounter... and being small encounters were always big contributors to causalities and that units such as his were in the field and accidents happen...

Who would have known that looking through all those Civil War photographs would have proven so useful. Seriously, I was a serious buff when I was a wee one. I was tracing battlefield maps in books and lining up my toy soldiers to suit when I was five. When I was in 7th grade, I transferred to a new school and was instantly hated by all my new fellow students for those two years because the first social studies test I took there was on that subject. Since the teacher graded on a curve, well, I was really hated especially by all those who got in trouble for getting not even Bs but Cs for that test. Yeah, by junior high, I had seen enough Minié ball wounds to know the pleasantries of what one could do.

I had my set-up and I had my hero, one Gabriel Pendleton from a respectable, devout Pennsylvania family, in a position of irrevocable loss. He is lying as many have on the edges of battlefields, ruined beyond hope but without means to hasten his end and left to the agonies and the animals... or the benevolence of visitors passing by in the night. Herein begins the Tale...

Oh, I knew right away I had a winner here. I liked everything about this Tale as it came out and it fit all the requirements of what I needed in order to bind this character to these Tales so that I could not ignore him, so that he could not evade me. The only other thing that would ensure his existence, prove him to be real in this world, would be for him to appear in a printed book.

"I Met a Man as I Lay in My Grave" will be published shortly in a collection by Soteira Press. When the details are ready, I will edit as needed to ensure my links are good. As it is, this story came in at 4,945 words and was completed on June 25, 2019. Following this, there will be two more stories added up to this point with Abel strong in both and I'm starting to get concerned... With the Butterfly Man and Mama Death and the Strawman and the Patchwork Witch and Jonathon Kearns and Leo Tarkenfeld... and let us never, under any circumstances, forget the most wicked of all, little Millicent Flores Kearns, how the hell was Abel going to get any page time? I mean, seriously, I've got a pretty good Rogues Gallery developing here... and these are only the ones I've let you see so far. Each one of these characters named has minimum of a dozen Tales attached though stories of Millie are also always stories of her grandfather and the Strawman goes where Mama Death goes.

Basically, at this point, I have no excuse to ever say that I do not have any stories to write when I know much of the untold histories associated with these names.