Call Me Kolchak

New fiction from Arbogast

“Call me Kolchak.”

That’s it. That’s how I began the last story I would ever write. The message was received in my editor’s inbox, read, and then discarded. Teresa V. Scarfo, the wunderkind of the so-called Sincere Journalism movement, treated my greatest contribution to literature like malware. I was spam, and not the good kind. Teresa let me know that via a direct message over Slack.

“You handed me utter garbage. Not hot garbage, but cold, run-over shit.” She then added more expletives and accused me of milking her publication for a thousand dollars.

Poetic, if you think about it. At the time, I hated her guts for it. She had not only cancelled my story, but she later cancelled my contract. I was sent out on my rump and told never to write for Open Skies again. That guaranteed $200 and subscriber bonus went up in smoke. I was tempted to look at the wreckage but nixed the idea. I got drunk instead.

But back to Kolchak. You see, once upon a time in the 1970s, there was this TV show about a guy named Carl Kolchak. Kolchak was a reporter in Chicago (and Las Vegas and Seattle before that) who always stumbled upon bizarre, supernatural cases, like finding out a serial killer is a real vampire, or a dinosaur is the reason why a multi-million-dollar dig can’t get done. Kolchak always wrote these incredible stories up, and every time they got axed and kept out of the newspapers. The same Sisyphean process would play again every week, and poor Kolchak never got to see his name in print. He always wrote the stories, though. Got to give him credit for that.

The Cedarstone Villages story made me feel like Kolchak. I knew my experiences would be too outré for Open Skies, and I also knew that my write-up was more likely to be cut and dissected than not. But still, a small part of me still held out hope for a full exclusive. After all, every part of my story was true, and it involved what was then the biggest viral story of the year. In case you don’t remember it, let me remind you.

***

Weird things happen during election years. Even nominally peaceful epochs are punctuated by strange happenings every four years. In this country, it’s almost a given to keep on your toes and your head on a swivel whenever a new president is needed. Well, during the summer of 2028, the most important thing that happened was not only strange, but it also underreported. There was mostly radio silence when it came to the Cupid’s Grimoire story, and virtually no outlets covered it all. That was my angle at Open Skies—I was going to be the first ink-stained wretch to give the full 4-1-1 on the story. Teresa liked it at first, and she gave me an unusually effusive blessing when the greenlight was sent via Slack. I almost sent back a kissy face emoji as a reply.

The whole mess began in Egypt in 2025. Following the discovery of Pharaoh Thutmose II’s tomb in the shadow of legendary Luxor, a small-scale version of Victorian “Egyptomania” captured the minds of university and amateur archaeologists alike. The military government in Cairo cashed in on the mania by sponsoring several digs, with teams from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and France taking full advantage of “free” money. One of these teams—an outfit partially funded by the University of Pittsburgh and headed by a Classics scholar named Dr. Charles Eleanor Rigby—found several scroll fragments in canopic jars located near the ruins of the Greek colony of Naukratis. From what I could gather online, Naukratis was an ancient settlement that had been established by either Mycenaean Greeks or even older Minoans as a permanent trading post where the bountiful Nile met the Mediterranean Sea. Every article had made sure to note that the city had once boasted of a cosmopolitan culture where Greek and Egyptian (and later Roman and Christian) culture had intermixed to form something uniquely Mediterranean. But only scholars and sophists cared about that part; everyone else went gaga over the scrolls. The frayed pieces of papyrus were carbon dated to the tenth century B.C., which meant that they were rare artifacts from the so-called Greek Dark Ages. That fact alone drew international attention, but it was the contents that got the hoi polloi to pay attention.

The scrolls proved to be part of a larger work of magic. No, not card trick magic, but ancient magick. Think spells, curses, and step-by-step instructions about how to change the weather or insure that your neighbor isn’t stealing your wheat. As one Romanian professor put it, the Naukratis scrolls belonged to the sub-class of magick dealing with eroticism. Sex magick. This got pulses racing. The papyri not only had formulas for obtaining flesh, but they also had handwritten images depicting sacred positions and whatnot. Love was included too, and the Naukratis scrolls quickly became a meme: the Greek Kama Sutra.

Except these scrolls were much older than the infamous Hindu text, and after another find in Greece itself, the Naukratis scrolls came to be appreciated as the oldest and most complete example of a kind of underground literature—not exactly pornography but something close to it. A pornography for an elite class of Ancient Greek wizards or adepts who needed supernatural help in inquiring a kiss or something more vulgar. For three feverish months, archaeologists across the Eastern Mediterranean kept stumbling upon more and more sex magick papyri, and it was one discovery in western Turkey that gave the entire genre its name: Cupid’s Grimoire.

You see, the Turkish papyri (or the Ionian Papyri, as the government in Athens insisted on calling it) explicitly said that the author was the god Eros. The little that could be translated proved to be a sort of “About Me” section written by none other than the beautiful boy god with the white wings. Soon enough, this fact got bastardized in the popular imagination, and the manuscript was misattributed to Eros’s Roman cousin, Cupid. Posters sprang up and alt accounts bloomed with the image of a cherubic and very erect Cupid penning his love manual via candlelight. “Literally me” became the rallying cry for lovesick accounts who saw something familiar or aspirational in the figure of Cupid, the wizard of copulation. Even more bemoaned the fact that the papyri could not fully be translated due to both wear and tear and the use of an idiosyncratic dialect that borrowed heavily from the undeciphered Linear A script of Crete.

People decried the lost wisdom. Entire forums of incels used it as yet another excuse to abandon all hope. Others cheered, especially very online feminists who regarded the papyri as nothing more than rape guides that could do untold damage if ever fully translated and released online. One particular voice spoke out against the papyri but did so for a reason that caused laughter and derision from most of the commentariat.

An anonymous Twitter user named Archilochus’s Shield went online on August 15, 2025, and wrote a long thread composed of thirty-three posts. The thread was picked up and shared until even the Vice President of the United States read it and found it worthy of sharing. By September 1, Archilochus’s Shield was doxed and exposed as a twenty-three-year-old programmer from Stillwater, Oklahoma whose highest scholastic achievement had been graduating cum laude from Oklahoma State. The New York Times and CNN used these credentials against the young man, calling him a mediocrity and a lackluster loaf from Nowhere, America. In response, Fox News came to the account’s defense by invoking populism and standing for all autodidacts in the face of scorn by the elitist mainstream media.

The storm of the thread was fierce, but also very, very stupid. Archilochus’s Shield used objective facts to point out that Eros and Cupid were different gods. “By falsely attributing these magical texts to Cupid, we lose sight of the true nature of the author, Eros,” he had written. The Greek god Eros was a chaos god—a primordial, pre-Olympian deity who had come from the void and bestowed desire upon the first humans. Eros was wild and unpredictable; the classic tales often saw him bedding gods and mortals alike. When rebuffed, Eros was not above using violence to achieve his revenge. Sometimes his orgasms required abuse, and diverse liquids frequently dripped from Eros’s oft-used arrows. The cult of Eros was likewise known to feed into madness, with celebrants engaging at times in bestiality and other forbidden acts. The Erotic cult on Hydra was notoriously scandalous, and their rites supposedly involved the consumption of blood. Archilochus’s Shield pointed all of this out and was celebrated and excoriated for offering caution. After all, any magick created by Eros was bound to be unpredictable, he said.

The enthusiasm for Cupid’s Grimoire died a little as summer turned to autumn. The usual excitement for the presidential election cooled all conversations about ancient lovemaking. The brouhaha kicked up by Archilochus’s Shield disappeared, and no news outlet would cover the papyri again. Even I forgot about it until that year’s Halloween.

The second, far more disturbing phase of Cupid’s Grimoire was orchestrated by a singular entity: Jax Andressen. Pronounced like un-dressin,’ Andressen was a grifter par excellence who had become a minor TikTok celebrity after first cutting his teeth in what was left of the PUA community. Tall, skeletal, pale, and covered in face tattoos, Andressen styled himself as the Master of Sex Magick. All the put-downs and sniping done by ceremonial magicians, who never failed to call out Andressen for his lack of learning or knowledge regarding Crowleyan practices, could not deter Andressen from marketing himself as an occult guru. Even when I interviewed him over Skype, the man remained in character.

“There are energies all around us, and every particle is imbued with erotic energy,” he had said to me. Everything he did was a performance. Even when he shooed away his fat Persian cat from the monitor, the scarecrow-like conman used his hands like flourishes or extra arpeggios on a solo. He was extravagant and unnecessary at all times.

I learned little from the man himself. He spoke in riddles and nonsense, which, when said without the benefit of background music or clever editing, came off as pitifully stupid. But, when Andressen was in his natural element, he was a great enchanter, especially for those whose brains were permanently fried by the algorithm. From Halloween 2025 until April Fool’s Day 2026, Andressen created a weekly series of TikToks dedicated to translating the Naukratis papyri for the benefit of America’s perpetually single men.

“Cupid loves you,” his wildly popular shorts will begin. “And the god wants to you to be fruitful.”

The posts, which never lasted longer than sixty seconds, drew in millions of views. In each instance, Andressen would translate two sentences of the Ancient Greek text, then interpret them for his audience. Like an old school carnival barker, Andressen spoke loudly and over-the-top. Every new translation was HUGE NEWS. Every new charm was a GUARANTEE. The man put his entire body and soul into selling Cupid’s Grimoire as something that every man should know.

“If you want to get the girl of your dreams, do this,” his most famous upload said. “Cupid says to create a Cup of Kings, then use a Hand of Glory at your local graveyard. There, an illumination will highlighted buried treasure. Once this treasure is in your possession, and it should be gold, you will use it to buy the following items…”

This video in particular was singled out by one state government for the promotion of antisocial behavior. In particular, a rash of grave desecrations erupted throughout the United States and Canada, as teens and young adults (and some full-grown adults) searched for suitable corpses. A Hand of Glory needed to come from a suicide after all, but in most cases, the grave robbers turned over and turned out any and every grave that they could find. In other instances, hundreds of high school students were hospitalized for consuming the Cup of Kings, including one Texas junior who eventually died after digesting an especially toxic brew of cat’s blood, wild berries, sorghum, hyacinth, and his own semen. Andressen refused to apologize, even after he was arrested in his Tampa home on charges of child endangerment. (The arch “anti-simp” turned out to be a deadbeat dad.) Prison did little to dilute Andressen’s power, and weeks after all of his videos were taken offline by the nationally-owned version of TikTok, a new Cult of Cupid appeared in the suburbs north of New York City.

***

Cedarstone Villages had originally been designed as city commuter townhouses for those working in the North Bronx or the more gentrified portions of East Harlem. Located in Peekskill, developers abandoned the project and left it to the wilderness sometime in 2014 when the recession came roaring back. For over a decade, the fine residents of the sleepy Westchester County town left the development unmolested—no graffiti, few midnight parties, and no eyesores beyond the basic rot that comes from prolonged neglect. In 2024, the townhouses were the butt of local jokes and some minor grousing. By 2026, the same abandoned homes had taken on a darker reputation and were the source of a macabre local legend.

The Cedarstone Children.

I took a rental car north during an unseasonably cold day in mid-April. The electric Tesla handled well, but even if it hadn’t, I found the Westchester roads as smooth as a newborn backside. All those tax breaks and well-heeled residents made for nice amenities. And yeah, as a longtime resident of the unfashionable borough of Staten Island, I was a little jealous. Hell, anytime I went outside and didn’t hear horns or smell trash, I was jealous.

Peekskill made me very jealous. The town had all the quaint charm of New England while still being a sneeze away from the city. I found the residents friendly too, almost as if nobody had ever told them about New York nastiness. They even smiled and proved helpful when I admitted that I had come to their town to ruin its reputation.

“I am looking for more information about the Cedarstone Children and the possibilities of a Cupid Cult in this town. I hear the local one is very…fecund.”

“Sorry. Can’t help you there.”

“It’s a bullshit.”

“Yeah, I can see some of the local punks leaving their kids in that place. But no, I don’t have any specifics.”

“You may as well write a novel, pal. That story is pure fiction.”

These were the answers I got until I finally caught a break. The break’s name was Misty Gennaro. A fiery redhead with a Bensonhurst accent, Misty overhead me talking loudly in the Bean Runner. She approached my table just as another interviewee got up and left.

“You want to know about Cedarstone, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I can tell you that that place has been a dumping ground for a year now. Horrible what goes on, and it’s those damn kids from the high school. D’Sean and his friends.”

Intrigued, I asked for clarification. I could tell that Misty liked talking to me because, to her, my job equaled attention, and normal, everyday people like Misty Gennaro crave attention more than money or love.

“D’Sean Seawall is a super-senior at Peekskill High. All the cops know him around here. He’s a drug dealer and a hustler, and according to my Angelo, he’s also the guy you’re looking for.”

“D’Sean is into all the Cupid stuff from TikTok?”

“That’s what Angelo says. D’Sean and a couple of his friends are big believers in that stuff, and every girl they meet gets a taste of Cupid’s magic. To me, in my opinion, they’re drugging up half the girls and raping them.”

“Jesus, let me get this recorded.” I put my cellphone on the table and let Misty Gennaro ramble to her heart’s content. The Hudson Valley housewife proved to be loquacious; I learned from her that D’Sean Seawall ran a small gang of loverboys, with most members either being Peekskill High students or offenders fresh out of juvie. Sometimes they were both, but every member of D’Sean’s crew believed in and practiced what Andressen preached from Cupid’s Grimoire. They dug up corpses and swapped more than spit with each other in order to become the great big gigolos of the town. Each member of the gang had a string of girls obsessed with them, and these girls all bore children.

“I’ll bet that there’s over twenty of those bastards left alone at Cedarstone. Such a shame, too. Kids are probably dying from malnourishment.”

“Ok, wait a second. I guess I’m having a hard time believing all this.”

“But you came here to prove it, right?”

“Yes and no. I was open to the idea, and I’ve been following the whole story since the Egyptian digs, but even now I find it tough to accept that there’s some empty townhouses in upscale Westchester County being used as breeding dumps. I mean, where are the police? CPS?”

Misty took a long sip from her coffee before looking twice over her shoulder. “I have some ideas why,” she said softly. “You got to promise to keep them to yourself.”

“Ok,” I said.

“Most people like to write the whole thing off as gossip. Can’t blame them; it’s a crazy story. Others, especially the people in power around here, they like it.”

I raised an eyebrow to show my confusion. “They like it?”

“Yeah. First of all, it’s objectively true that D’Sean’s gang is popular with the kids. The boys love him for what he does for them. Oh, D’Sean gets them drugs and gets them laid. Even my Angelo credits D’Sean’s methods for helping him to get his girlfriend. She’s a sweet girl, by the way. Very clean.”

Misty finished her coffee and ordered another before continuing with her story.

“I can understand why teenagers would be gaga over this stuff, but what troubles me is that our mayor and his team seem into it too. You know, a few months back, I was at a party with Ben Greene, and he was drunk. Red wine drunk. He talked a little too much that night, and what he talked about the most was birthrates. Our old Mr. Greene said he was very worried about our nation’s declining birthrates, and furthermore, he said that a better society would accept an era of widespread procreation for the greater good. No marriage necessary, he said.”

I could tell by the way she shook her head and scrunched up her face that Misty was not a fan of Ben Greene’s words. Greene, who I learned was the senior PR staffer for Mayor Douglas McQuaid, had offended the Catholic Misty, who massaged her crucifix as she talked.

“We may need more kids for the economy, but not that way,” she intoned. “But even Ben Greene’s ideas aren’t that bad. Not nearly as bad as what the others believe.”

“The others?”

Misty looked over her shoulders again. She sunk down low in her seat and called me in close so she could whisper in my ear.

“Powerful people in this town and this state use those kids for awful things. Sex and murder. Think Epstein’s island, but it’s smalltown New York. Adrenochrome might even be at play.”

I made sure to take handwritten notes alongside the recording. The newfound juiciness sent me into an apoplexy. Misty had just given my story some serious red meat, and I was thrilled because I knew Teresa would love the conspiracy theory angle. “Q-Anon in Hillary Clinton’s Backyard” would make for a good subtitle, I thought to myself. I let Misty play—the Westchester housewife and mom of a teenage son proved to have a vivid imagination. Words like “cannibalism,” “pedophiles,” “blood ceremonies,” and “videotapes” rolled off of her tongue. I did not interrupt her for over twenty minutes; she let me know when she was done.

“Look,” she said. “If you want to see it for yourself, go out there tonight. It’s a Saturday night. I’d be surprised if they didn’t show up.”

“Go out to the Villages? Couldn’t that be dangerous?”

“Don’t you do dangerous stuff regularly?” Misty gave me a gigantic sneer that told me a lot about her beliefs regarding journalists. I had failed her by being a coward. She stood up, thanked me for my time, and then said something about a soccer game. I thanked her right back and tucked myself into another round of caffeine. I wasted a few more hours trying to get more residents to open up, but I kept getting the cold shoulder. Eventually, I called it a day just as the sun started to change from golden yellow to burnt orange.

Go to Cedarstone Villages.

The idea lingered in my brain. It was so simple and so obvious, but some part of me rebelled against the idea. After all, I had no idea what I would be in for. If all the rumors were false, then I’d be trespassing through abandoned homes full of broken glass and vermin. If the rumors were true, then I’d find a horror show of neglected children. The duty to report it all to the police would then be on me.

But I also had a duty to my story. I had a duty to my wallet, too. I pulled out the square-shaped piece of black leather from my back pocket and noticed that it was light. I put the wallet back, then brought out my phone. I selected my bank’s app, even though I knew the balance. I looked at it again and remembered how close I was to skipping my next meal, or maybe my next five meals. I put the phone away and made my decision.

***

I arrived at the Cedarstone Villages well past midnight. I parked my rental near the entrance and left a plastic bag hanging from one window to fool any passing motorist. Just another victim of car trouble.

All I had with me was my cellphone, a small notepad, and my car keys, the latter of which contained a very small pocketknife for protection. I felt naked, but excited. For the first time in my fledgling journalism career, I was taking a risk. I said a little affirmation asking God to make it all worth it.

The entirety of Cedarstone Villages formed a sort of stretched-out octagon. The individual townhouses stood next to each other in batches of six, with each block forming a kind of node that interconnected with others via asphalt sidewalks. The original intention was for the development to mimic a typical suburb, but a more compact and hopefully cozier one. Little gardens and green spaces peppered the whole ordeal. Had it been anything other than empty and quiet, I would have found it charming. Instead, on that night, I categorized Cedarstone Villages as creepy and made sure to walk delicately down its well-organized streets.

Most of the townhouses looked untouched—no graffiti or boarded up windows. Had I wanted to, I could have walked right into those homes and made myself a squatter. The state of New York would have rewarded me for it, too. However, other homes—the ones farthest away from the county road—bore the telltale hallmarks of petty vandalism. One door numbered 1654 had a leering devil painted on it, while another (door 1656) was partially destroyed. Someone or multiple people had kicked it until the wood had splintered and collapsed in on itself. The 1700 block was just as bad as 1600, and it appeared more lived in. But that wasn’t the right word, actually. 1700 through 1706 looked as if they had seen a million illicit parties come and go. 1700’s door had been completely ripped off. I peeked my head inside and saw a small sea of empty beer cans and discarded handles of cheap vodka. I also saw plenty of fast-food wrappers and at least one used condom that had been on the dusty ground so long that the latex has started to disintegrate and became part of the carpet itself. 1701 was no better, and ditto for 1702 and 1703.

I stopped my search at 1704. This townhouse was noticeably different from all the others, even the other gutted monstrosities next to it. For starters, while the other buildings were all painted a neutral gray, 1704 had a dash of color to it. Streaks of red and green held fast at the base, and the second floor was entirely black. It was a strange domicile fit for a mental patient. The windows too were different in that frayed curtains blocked any wannabe spies from looking in. My heart fluttered when I noticed that the curtains were stapled to the windowsill. A deliberate and malevolent move.

I circled behind the townhouse, squeezing my body between the limited space between 1704 and 1705. I yelped when I bumped my knee on a disabled AC unit. To my surprise, my screech caused a tittering inside of the townhouse. I placed my ear close to the vinyl siding and heard it again: a small, delicate shifting on the carpet, followed by the faintest laugh. The noise shocked me, and I instinctively ran. I stopped myself once I reached the tree line behind the home. A copse of dark oaks made me turn around and reevaluate the situation.

Critters, I told myself. Critters like mice or even stray cats had gotten into the home. Nothing to freak out over. I took a few deep breaths, then started walking back towards 1704. I pulled out my cellphone and hit “Record.” I did my best to capture the entire scene.

“I am here at the abandoned Cedarstone Villages complex. This is building 1704,” I said aloud. I started documenting every movement. I started to sound like a realtor going over every noticeable aspect of the building. I realized what I was doing—delaying the inevitable.

I had to find a way in; I had to enter 1704.

The front door proved to be locked. Even a strong shoulder thrust accomplished nothing more than pain. I rubbed my wound until it felt marginally better, and then I looked up in time to see something move in an upstairs window. A slight crack in the curtains showed an impenetrable darkness.

“Hello?” I said like an utter idiot. I repeated myself.

The darkness remained. I put the phone in front of my face and tried to focus the camera on that small crack. My eyes darted back and forth between the window and my phone’s screen. Slowly, I started to see small flecks of light in the window. The lights looked blue in the nighttime sky. I looked closer on my phone and realized that they were eyes. Little blue eyes.

“Shit!” I screamed. I dropped my phone and cursed some more. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said as I massaged the case. Nothing was broken, so I went back to recording. I scanned the upper floors of other buildings and was shocked to see other sets of eyes staring down at me. Blue eyes, green eyes, and brown ones too. The night had come alive with eyes, and even in my panic I could tell that they were the eyes of children.

A growing ambience of light forced me to turn away from the eyes. A pair of headlights crept closer to my position, so I bolted for building 1700. I waded through all the trash and took up a post by the window. I set my knees upon the deleterious of multiple Burger King runs and saw a nondescript sedan slowly round a corner and come to a stop mere inches away from 1704. Had I lingered longer, I would have been dead meat.

Two men exited the vehicle. One was noticeably tall, possibly north of seven feet. The other was averaged-sized and older, with a trim beard and steel gray hair. Neither man spoke as they walked to the door of 1704. One of them produced a key and entered the building. My positioning meant that I couldn’t see too much of their activities, and I worried about moving around too much. I didn’t want my fumbling in the dark to tip them off. So, I waited and stayed still.

The men were in the building for five minutes or less. I heard one of them say, “This is the right one.” His accent was generic and indistinct. He spoke with neither a dialect nor a noticeable inflection. The perfect voice for a gray man. The other kept quiet and walked back towards the car with something in his hand. I peeped just over the windowsill and saw that one hand grasped another. The smaller hand was dark and naked. I lifted myself up a little more and saw that it was a child with filthy skin but dressed in clean clothes. The tall man was gentle with the child and even lifted him a little to place him in the backseat of the car. Once the door was shut, I saw the child’s head turn slightly. A pair of brown eyes looked directly at me.

I dropped to the floor with a thud. It was an audible thud that sent paper and plastic racing across the floor. I stayed on the floor in a puddle of my own sweat. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst. I tensed up expecting a pair of boots to stomp on my face until unconsciousness, but the pain never came. Eventually, after exhausting myself with anxiety, I worked up enough courage to look out the window again.

Nothing. No car, no men, no child. I picked myself off the floor and walked quickly back to my rental. I looked back several times, but the eyes were gone. I checked my phone and saw that yes; the videos were still there. I saved them all and started my long drive back to the city.

***

I wrote the entire article in a single night. I came out to about 6,000 words, and to prove my point, I embedded the videos in the draft that I emailed Theresa at five o’clock the next morning. Besides the Q-Anon angle, I also made sure to get mileage out of one small gem that Andressen had told me during our strange conversation.

“Kids born from Cupid’s method are different. They are not necessarily evil, and they are not necessarily better than your average kid, either. They’re just different. Like psychopaths, their mental makeup is not like ours.’ The brainwaves all flow in a different direction.”

That was my big hook—D’Sean and others like him had unwittingly bred a separate species of human, and in a small town in Westchester, some individuals were taking advantage of that. I didn’t bother to try and wrap it all up with a single answer. One strange night was not enough to give me insight on the whole conspiracy, and after I sent the manuscript to Theresa, I did my best to stop thinking about the experience altogether. It was just a story, after all, and I was sure to get other ones.

Except I didn’t. Theresa gave me the boot, and I haven’t written a story since. The closest I’ve come to new literature are emails sent to Misty Gennaro and the police in Peekskill. The police always leave me unread, and Misty’s answers are always evasive. I think she suspects me now that my promised article never materialized. I’ve become part of the conspiracy, in her mind. I don’t think I can convince her otherwise.

So, months after the fact, the world can call me Kolchak. Just another bum writer telling tall tales for nobody in particular. I don’t feel like writing anymore, if I’m being honest, and I frankly don’t know why old Carl Kolchak didn’t give it up either. Would have saved him a lot of heartache. Sure, I sulk a lot about my lost career, but most of the time I don’t miss the music of the keyboard.

I’ll find another job soon. Hopefully, something that doesn’t require much brainwork. I want to be boring and droll like the masses. No ambition and no desires. I want to be devoid of anything that could ever entice me to Peekskill again. I want to kill the curiosity inside of me, and maybe then I can finally be rid of those little eyes that I keep seeing everywhere.