Ye Dare Not Cross Over The Threshold That Are These Doors; All That Dwells Beyond Them Are Dark And Lie... Waiting... Here Is The First... Of Many Tales That Lie In Waiting For Ye. It Is Called "The Midnight Bed Check." By Douglas J. Moore (that's me.) This Site Is Still In The Process Of Remodeling. Look For New Additions Soon. Each Still Image, Film, Music, Sound, Text, The Name Douglas J. Moore And The Name Macabre Mansion Publications LLC And The Title Given To Each Work Of Fiction And The Fiction Itself Is A Registered Trademark And Also Is Copyright Protected By The Posting Of This Symbol And Is Under The Protection Of All Existing United States And Overseas Copyright Laws.
The doctors had remained silent. They did not have to remind each other about how they had agreed not to say another word about what did happen in that room. Not a word was said when they had met in private consulation about a patient. Nor was anything said in a group meeting of medical specialists from other fields, for which they were all gathered together and then put in a conference room, who were there to discuss the treatment of this now deceased woman and how to treat any other patient who might be exhibiting similar symptoms.
The man in the dark suit had quietly slid into a carefully chosen place between them and a fat and balding doctor clutching a stack of notes. He turned to look at this little fat man just the way the uptight rear ends in their religious garments did when they had just sentenced another woman to death by stoning and or burning, she had been accused of witchcraft by a teenage girl who spoke in tongues and screamed in agony as if there was some hideous witches familar bedeviling her, at the stake because none of her children had gone crazy with fever or had the scratch marks made by the devil that had cursed their children with the madness fever and had the marks that he had left on them so it could come back and claim them as his own. A smile seemed to eat up more than half of his face and had revealed perfect white teeth.
"Little Doctor Potbelly," the man said, showing sharp white teeth. "This is not a good time to discover that your wife ... who has been having hot sweaty sex on your bed and on your desk with the garbage man who is pounding her ... on your desk ... where you pound the keyboard and write the crappy articles that your medical collegues laugh at every time you publish one in some obscure medical journal ... has not ripped away your scrotum after all. We can agree on that, right? Of course we can. Now why don't you go over to the buffet table and eat something and think about what you are going to do to your wife and how you are going to get your kitchen knife and slice the testicles away from the body of the garbage man and then put them in your favorite drinking glass. Thank you for leaving now, Doctor Potbelly."
The teeth that now seemed sharp enough to devour a small child as a sacrifice
His teeth have devoured half of his face and if they grow any more,they will be wide enough to swallow me whole. he thought, wiping the sweat away from his face.
had not, of course, eaten up half of his face and the little doctor had stumbled off to the buffet table with a odd little look on his face. He filled his plate with assorted sandwiches, potato salad, a pickle and a soda can and that was the last thing that he had done at the medical conference. Much later, a college student who was majoring in special education with a minor in religious studies and had been working at the buffet table when she had handed him that plate would remember the last words he would ever say in this order "Chop and slice them up real good and put them both out for pick up in my shiny new garbage cans. But not his testicles. They will look good in my glass trophy case and will be right next to the overies of my wife."
They hid behind medical charts and the case history of the other patients that they had been asked to read and might then be called upon to provide a new medical opinion on how to treat the life threatening illness that was killing them. "Use them to avoid getting spotted by the reporters of third rate rag newspapers who were hiding behind a vase filled with flowers or a newspaper bought in the gift shop," the custodian said, holding of box of light bulbs. "This breed of vermin is here to get you to say something that will be printed in a rag paper read by fat women and guys who are one beer can away from having no brain cells left.
"Do you know how crazy you sound," the second doctor said. "Even if there are any people like the ones you have-"
"They are very real," the custodian said."You can find them pushing a shopping cart filled with the store brand boxes of cereal, frozen food and beer if they have a husband and live in Florida."
"The people you have described," the second doctor said. "They all can't be that stupid. Can they?"
"They believe the headlines about aliens having babies with earth women," the custodian said. "And look at the pictures of a ghost haunting a Texas family and of Bigfoot on a rural highway in Georgia."
"They sound stupid," the first doctor said. "And worse than crazy for thinking that all of that printed garbage is real."
"Talk like that," the custodian said. "And one of the rag newspapers will get it twisted into half truths that will be linked to your name and the name of this hospital where the ghost has been seen in different places that are familiar to it."
This is just a small inkling of some of the tales that are dancing around in the regions of my brain that is not in rem sleep nor is in a fully awake state. I hope you like what I can bring out of there.
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Greetings And Welcome To The Only Offical My Space Profile For Macabre Mansion Publications LLC., The Exclusive Publisher For All Of The Works Of Fiction Written By Douglas J. Moore.
Mansion Muse
Welcome to The Mansion Muse E- (The E Always Stands For Eerie Of Course! What Else Could It Ever Stand For?) Magazine which will be home port to some information and links to articles that center around taking the right roads (and staying off of the wrong roads.) as you take slow and safe path to form a limited liability company to publish your own books and put the profits back into your very own indepenedant publishing company and pay your own bills on time and without any late fees or second, third or fourth notice to pay your bill now.
Disclaimer Notice. If You Follow Any Of The Steps That I Have Outlined Here, You Do So Because You Chose To And, In No Way, Did I Make Any Promises (To You) That You Will Become The Next Big Time Author.
Editor's Note: This will feel like you're turning over your first born to a bunch of well meaning strangers who will find both the strengths and the weaknesses of this child and help you make it better than it could be if it were to be left alone out in the wild and causing it to survive on it's own. But this is a must do task.
It is my suggestion that you go do something else that you like to do and will at least take one week or longer to finish. It could be anything. Repairing a bike or rebuiding a old computer or ___ (fill in this this space for your own hobby).
This will keep your mind from misleading you into thinking about what horrible things that they will have to say about your work once they have finished reading the hundreds of words that make it a story that will not only entertain that reader but will make that reader willing to purchase your work from your online store/ or a bookstore that has it in a in a display near the cash register.
THE FIRST RULE:
Family members should also read it (To tell their own friends about it. Remember you always have to have good word of mouth out there about your work or you'll have a room full of unsold books covered with dust.) and then listen to everything that they have to say.
Ignore nothing that they think might be off when they have given you their opinion (After they have finished reading the early stage that your book is in at this point.) and long before you have prepared it to be printed and be sold in your online shop or from a online book seller or staged events at smaller venues.
Editor's Note: Create a written log of what was said and needs to be changed according to the first opinion of family members in what I'm calling a opinion log in a notebook that could be found in any dollar store near you.
Now it is time to move on and hand over your book for the next two opinions that you are going to need.
What your family can do while you are waiting for the next group of opinions to come back in from the hand picked reviewers of your choice.
Put them and you to work! Place you family in charge of printing, sending out the press releases, the media kits and (when done with the opinion stage and the final rewrite when it is needed) arc copies of your finished book for reviewing to small town newpapers or to radio stations who have air time to be filled during their broadcast day.
THE SECOND RULE:
The next person to read your first stage book should be a friend of yours (Remember you already have the opinion of a family member.) and be willing to give you their opinion.
This person does not have to be your best friend the way your best friend was your best friend when you were five years old and the only thing you cared about was how high you could go when you were sitting on the park swing set.
They should not be a writer. What you want them to be is a book reader who is willing to turn off their flat screen television sets, dvd players, cd players and the computer to read the first stage book of yours.
If you can't find a friend who has the time to do this for you, then you might want to try this .... The book review clubs that meet at the local public library where you live are filled with people (you only need one person) who will jump at the chance at reading a advance copy of your work.
Then, when they have finished reading your work, they will offer you their own advice on what did work and what did not work in your story and you should add that to what your family had to say about what you wrote when you showed it to that member of your family.
Make sure that you make them feel they are preforming a important task that you are not able to do for yourself. When they have done this for you, send them a gift of a t shirt with the book logo (more free advertising when they wear it) or give them a signed copy of the printed book with a handwritten and personal comment thanking them for the time that they took to read and comment on it.
THE THIRD RULE:
Remember your book should still be in a pre published form in order to make any last minute changes that you still might need to make based on the most recent opinion log that you have been keeping in your notebook.
Turn it over to the third person (I'll be using a english teacher who wants to do some moonlighting and for what little money that teachers make in Florida ... finding one won't be a problem.)that you have hand picked to check it for punctuation mistakes and when they have done what you asked of them, collect the last of the story changes notes for entry into you opinion journal.
Now comes the hard part, compare the notes about any changes that the the three people of your choice have indicated are needed in your story.
If the notes match or if just one of them pick up on something that needs to be changed, change it. You will need to do revisions. No one writes a good novel without revisions. Sorry, but that is just the way it is.
1-12-30 Research on typesetting now under way. new article coming next week. DJM.
Here Is A Sneak Peek At The Graphic Images That I Have Designed For My In The Works Website.
before it is made format ready for (I'll be farming that work out to someone who knows how to do that type of work) printing and release into the wilds of the internet and in book stores.
publication that you could be giving to other trusted family members (I'll be paying a family member to do this for me.) be farming out to others.
that are about publishing my own works of fiction. doing your own marketing to gain and keep the attention of the hardcore and casual book reader for your current book who went to a real or online bookstore and paid for a copy of your book.
Marketing Methods To Use In Advance Of Your Book's Official Release Date.
[Muse Memo: The attention span of the average adult when working on a computer .... what was I just doing .... Oh yes, is one second or less.
Anything that takes longer than that, like a mouse click, will cause the human brain to begin to wander off of a task that must have full attention at work or right in the home office of a work at home person or in the home office of a (like me) independant book publisher who is publishing his own books and making all of the important decisions about it and keeping all the profits instead of depending on a tiny royalty check from a big or small publishing company.
That Is All The Time That You Have To Keep The Attention Of Someone Who Just Might Buy Your Book. Words, In My Opinion, Will Not Work. Not in A World That Is In High Def And Or In Blu Ray And Has 32 Inch Flat Screen Television Sets On Living Room Walls And Has The 17 Inch Or Larger Monitors Linked To Your Work Or Home State Of The Art Computer.
So What Is The Book Writer To Do In A World That Has Been So Seduced By Video Feeds?
The Answer To That Question Is, Really It Is, a Very Simple One And Is Based On A Very Old Quote By Someone .... But I'm Not Sure Who Said It.
But Here it Is, If You Can't Beat Them....Join Them. This Was Sound Advice When It Was Said And Is Still Sound Advice Right Here, Right Now.
Advice That I Took. I Urge You To Take It Too And Make Use Of It. Thank Me Later.]
12-28-07 More To Follow Tommorrow. DJM. Goodnight.
If You Have Been Looking Around My Profile [You Have Been Looking Around, Right? :-)] You Must Have Noticed The Slide Show That That Features My Book Cover For "Skin Monsters" In Which The Monsters Are Not Who You Think They Are Or, in some cases, What You Want The Reader To Think They Are.
For Example, During Some Parts Of My Own Work There Is A Cat That ...... Well You'll Have To Find "Skin Monsters" For Yourself When It Is Released And See What This Cat Shall Be Doing To The People It Comes Into Contact With As The Story Moves Along ....
Also Present, In A Halloween Based Slide Show, Are Samples Of My Artwork. I Hope You Enjoy Them And They Will Soon Be On Everything From A To Z.
Each Item Will Be Made Available For Purchase at Each One Of My Blogs (I'm Still Working Out The Details .... I'll Have More Information To On This To Share With You Very Soon.)Where There Will Links For You To Use From Inside The Content That Is At The Core Of This Always Updated E-Magazine.
Or ..... Maybe I'll Just Be Making A Small Number Of Bookmarks And Tee Shirts Out Of My Book Covers And Out Of My Art Work Just To See How Many Units Of Each Item Actually Do Get Sold.
All Of This, Of Course, Is Very Subject To Change As This Year Is About End .... While Next Year Is A Brand New Ballgame For All Of Us.
These Blogs That Shall be Home For Some Fun Things For You To Do While You Are There To Read What I Have Left There For You. Remember That Old Saying: "All Work And No Play ..." Well I Think All Of You Know How The Rest Of That Old Saying Goes You Do Know How The Rest Of It .... Ends ....
Here, in this dark tome, are my detailed observations on how I shall be bringing Macabre Mansion Publications Limited Liability Company into the real world.
The Macabre Mansion Publications LLC internet version will feature all of my blogs, my art and links to where my art and my novels can be found for sale.
Taking the first steps in putting together this detailed research paper on just how one can begin the creation process of a Limited Liability Company for the purpose of becoming a self publisher, should always begin by focusing on the self publishing groups that are on myspace and are spread across the internet.
Brad has done a great job at building up this group on his own and those who have become a part of it since day one are also filled with good advice.
The advice that these people have posted there, has earned this group a five star rating of their own for their sage advice and experiences with everything from where and how to take out affordable magazines ads announcing your work and many other tips that all future book publishers will find noteworthy and should be visited often for the quick reply to posted questions and to find answers that have already been asked and answered.
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http://groups.myspace.com/selfpublishing
Out there in the vast space that is the internet are groups that will help book writers who just want their book publisher to print their work and then they will do everything else and those who are doing all the work of self publishing and everything that comes with taking on such a not so easy but rewarding task.
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http://groups.yahoo.com/publishingsndpromoting
Also at the other end of your internet connection are the following helpful sites with a treasure chest of information about.
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http://www.spannet.org
(Note: all of the well known search engines will provide you with a wealth of links about a L.L.C. and which one you choose should only be based on which one of them that you are at ease with.)
I used the search engine provided by Yahoo and typed in the the words Florida/Limited Liability Companies and waited to see what the results would be found by them. I did not have to wait very long to see the staggering amount of information that this search engine had found for me. Now it was time for me visit them and to start the process of weeding out the ones that I would not feel comfortable using for what I had in mind.
After I had visited some of the sources that the search engine Yahoo had found for me and either deemed them useful or not useful for my purpose, I had found what I was looking for.
Now that I had settled on who I was going to use,the next step that I had to take would be taken at The Division Of Corporations Florida Department Of State at the sunbiz.org website.
At the sunbiz.org website,look under the Popular Links Section that is located on the left side (at least that is how it looks on my monitor) of this website. There you will find a in page link with the title of Document Searches.
What Documents Searches offers you is many options to discover if the name you want to use is already in use by someone else under the banner of Corporations,Trademarks ,Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies and it is the last one that you want.
One mouse click later, you will be shown a series of search options to (I suggest you use them all.)find out if the name of your company is already in use by some other company or it is unused and still there for you to use for the name of your limited liability company even if you are only just thinking about forming a LLC for some very good reasons.
Here is a sample version of where I did look for my LLC name at sunbiz.org and found out it was not in use by any other company.
1.Inquire By Name. 2.Inquire By Officer/Registered Agent Name. 3.Inquire By Registered Agent Name. 4.Inquire By Trademark Owner Name.
Also under Documents Document Searches is the link for Fictitious Names and one mouse click later this is what I found when the page loaded.
Having feasted on the holiday bird and ample side dishes of sweet potatoes, stuffing, rolls and apple cider and watching a recording of the parade in New York and - slower than usual because I now have more stuffing in me than the bird did - it is now time to continue my detailed notes on the creation of a limited liability company. .
While I Redesign This Profile, Click On The Link That Is The Dead Nurse And She Will Take You To ... Or Click On The Link That Is Under It For A Article About Fun (?) In Texas.
Fun (?) In Texas
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"In the shadows is the one place I can be comfortable," The old nurse said. "For reasons ... reasons best left unsaid."[10]
The young nurse forced her eyes to open wider and hoped that they would take in some more of the faint room light to get a better look at her. After what seemed like a hour, but was only a few minutes, her eyes began to ache and her vision began to blur and if asked she still could not offer any description of this woman's hair color, eye color or even if she had one tooth, or all of her teeth or more than a single mole.[11]
"Unless you come out of the shadows and let me see you," the young nurse said, feeling the ache fade as she let her eyes resume the normal shape and look on her face. "and show me that you are on the hospital staff and have the on call doctors' authorization to be on this floor... I will have to...[12]
"Have to ... what?" The nurse said, her voice sounding like as if dirt had been lodged in her mouth.[13]
"I ... I ..."[14]
"I ... I... I..."the old nurse said, mocking her. "I'll tell you not only what you will be doing but with who until ..."<15>
"You have to leave. Now. Before I call the hospital security guard" She said, scared and taking a step closer to the old man in the bed.
I don't know and began to badmouth many of the doctors. But never to their faces, of course. And only about those who had treated us ... well like nurses. We could continue to spread rumors that some of the other doctors were drunk when they operated on the living and in a hurry on the patients, now dead patients because they wanted them off of their operating room table so they could get that next drink. Or we can continue to be the cause problems for the other medical staff as well.
"The work conditions here are HORROR-ible. Get it! HORROR-ible! No! I won't be DEAD CALM! Is that your idea of FUNNY! Just because my skull is empty, that does not mean I'm a AIRHEAD! Who writes this junk? Do you think it is easy working with every skull in your family staring at you with those empty eye sockets while I'm looking at you? I DIDN'T THINK SO. OK, I'll stick to the script! The author of the last story you read is the author of the next story too and would like your input in the form of a comment posted here. There, I'm finished. Call my agent, have him call Tim Burton about his next movie ... get me a supporting role .... anything but this. Go ahead then, call the Crypt Keeper, he won't be doing this. Give a bag a bones like him a series on HBO and a few movies that DIED at the box office and he gets a swelled head that is going to explode like that guy in Scanners. Now there was a guy who lost his head... The next story by the hack writer who wrote the last thing you read here also wrote THE RED PATIENT which starts right after this line."
"But never to their faces," The nurse said, her lack of height made it hard for the others to see her.
They paid close attention to monitoring the vital signs of the patients - some of them in critical condition - that appeared as wavy lines on the monitors at the nurses station. A few of them even had placed bets on which patients would not make it through the night. It was clear to everyone that they had made no secret of the fact that her nurses uniform made not met with their approval and a few of them had said " her dressing like a nurse out of some b science fiction movie casts us all in a bad light!" and when this did happen ... it had come as no surprise to anyone who could be considered hospital staff, as one group of older and more powerful nurses had voiced a strong and negative opinion on her choice to anyone who would listen to them engage in a verbal rant about how she was going to set back nursing by at least fifty years; and some in the second group of younger nurses who had less clout than their older counterparts and had thought, to themselves, that this style of nurses uniform was just like the one the school nurse wore when they were just eight and nine years of age and, unknowingly, had iinspired them to take the right classes and study in order to become a nurse just like her. (dialogue next line - some private pleasure in scaring them so much that they peed themselves.
All this was taking place because of the kind of uniform I was wearing set back the image of a nurse by fifty years in their minds, she thought and shook her head. And the fact the hospital department heads took their complaints to the high mucky mucks on the hospital board of directors just reinforces the fact that this hospital is staffed with more that one real jackass. If anyone had bothered ask her just why she had chosen that so out of date uniform, she would have told them that in her opinion the end of life patients found her appearance comforting because it reminded the elderly patients of how different the world was if their youth and then go back to something that was so damm interesting that it could hold her attention for five full minutes. [edit out or change to dialogue the next lines.] she would have looked up at them said something like this: "there are so many veins cont. tues.
"The kitchen workers that pushed the food carts on this and other floors. They were the first ones to talk about it." The nurse said.
"Talk about what? What did they have to say?" The young man asked.
"It was hard to tell what they were talking about." She said, raising her voice.
"And why is that?" The young man asked.
"There are hundreds of reasons that make perfect sense and hundreds more that make no sense at all. That is why it was so hard to tell what they were talking about." She said.
"Come now," he said. "I know from the records made my your teachers that, in their own words, your have keen eyesight and hearing and above average skills in word recognition." LIP READING. you mean
how did you about that. what are you a cop?"Are you able to find one?" The young man said.
"The cafeteria workers that pushed the food carts on this floor said she has the look and coloring of a dead body while still alive." The nurse said, searching the withered arm of the old woman for a pulse and a vein.
"I have seem them. Lingering outside that door just long enough to get a good look at her. The young man said, his hands on the sides of the chair.
"Using some english and spanish words, they had sounded frightened and then said that she looked like the resucitado. That means zombie. The real thing and not the movie kind," The nurse said, her fingers feeling a feeble beat not too far away from the purple bruises on the arm of the old woman."
"These men .... and of this I have no doubt." He said, the same expressionless look that always had been there had begun to fade and reveal his true face. "Are from outside the country. Are they not?"
"Yes." She said, her fingers feeling the faint pulse and counting the decreasing number of beats. "From just over the state line of Texas."
"Then then were educated by the church. And what a fine education it was that they were rewarded with in the daylight hours." He said, thin and pale lips drew back. They made a cracking sound. Teeth slowly revealed themselves. But not just any teeth. They were just too perfect looking. Blinding white and razor sharp at the edge. When he first noticed how sharp they had become, he had joked about it to himself and called it just a little side effect and a little something for me to impress the goth girls with.
"I'm not sure about your train of thought and where it is heading. But I do have a question that I would like to ask you" The Nurse said, now starting to understand that the purple bruises on the arms of the old woman had been caused by the restraints that were ordered by the doctor and placed around what was thought to be the only working vein - by the other nurses on the day shift - left in the body of the old woman.
It was disgusting and was something that no one - other than the goth girls who saw them and were in awe of them - would want to see for the first time or again if they had already seen it once. One man who saw it had said they gave him the creeps; a old woman said that they were the kind of teeth that she'd expect the grim reaper to have and show to the person it had come to collect; a little girl said they scared her so much that she was going to have nightmares forever and she was quite sure that she never wanted to see them again; One of the goth girls had said her parents would never find them as hot as she did because they were so cold when she licked his teeth and her mom and dad would never see them and if they did they would always describe them as something that a person with a unbalanced mind would do to himself and then tell she she was not to see him again before they would go back to reading a daily newspaper or a tabloid that had a headline about some movie star bitch who had her stomach stapled and then took one extra bite of food and then exploded into pieces at a table in some fancy movie star hollywood restaurant. And by night, ah, by night ... the learned the old stories from the now old Navaho elders. Elders, who when they were young, had heard the history and commited each work of the history to memory so that they could tell it to the net generation
"These men... and of this I have no doubt," He said, the smile gradually fading from his face and was replaced by the same expressionless look as before. "Are from outside the country are they not?
The nurse tried not to stare at the purple bruises that had been caused by the restraints that were around what was thought to be the only working vein left in the old woman's body."
"Something's odd,"The nurse said, counting the beats of the pulse and watching the second hand moving slowly and loudly - to her -across the face of her watch. "No mention of a weak pulse and bruises that I think are from the restraints we use most often when we are dealing with a drunk or someone mentally unbalanced due to illness or drug use have been entered into her chart."
In her sharp white and heavily starched uniform, white stockings and matching white shoes, she looked like she just stepped out of some old and out of date textbook on nursing. Her choice of a nurses uniform, while not meeting with the approval of the others nurses and doctors who voiced a strong and negative opinion to anyone who would listen and to the hospital department heads who took the complaints to the names that made up the set number of those folks who sat on the hospital board of directors. Over the few hours, they debated and read the employee handbook and issued their findings that "there was no cause to keep her from wearing what she was called her "nurse whites
Is something wrong," he asked, not moving a inch in or from the chair." Have her vital signs made a change for the better or for the worse?"
..
She set the needle down in the middle of the sample tray that has the words blood lab printed on one side of it. The sharp end of it was pointing away from her. The passing memory of a long ago lecture about how getting a accidental stick could expose anyone to any number of life ending illnesses had surfaced - if only for the moment - and then had vanished.
["Twenty one years, give or take a day." The nurse sai