My Thank You

-- Okay. Alright. Wow.

Now that the dust is settling, I absolutely have to give you my sincere thank you letter. It's long-winded, like everything I do. Mercifully, Facebook will condense this so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. But I hope you do.

If you haven't heard, we raised enough money to release my next two books through Kickstarter, "Flip" and "Us", thanks entirely to you. You have no idea what this means to me. And I love you all.

And I keep saying that you have no idea what this means to me, and that I love you all, but you really have to understand why. So I'm going to tell you.

After I released "Them" and we raised the money to self-publish it, I felt good. There was and is still so much work to do, and so much more that I want to do, but I felt proud and felt that I was on the right track.

So, when I started my second fundraising event to make the second and final book, I thought it would be a slam-dunk. A natural progression. A next step.

And it flopped.

Hard.

I wasn't even close.

And I'm already an anxious and melancholy person, but it hit me pretty hard. This kind of stuff -- art -- is hard enough to do in groups, as a team. Alone, it's almost impossible. And having support and then losing it so quickly hurt. It honestly depressed me. Since I was a little kid with a stupid bowl cut, I've been using and misusing words with heartfelt passion and with a conviction that made me just know that this is what I wanted to do.

This is what I'm supposed to be.

So, after it failed, I didn't really know what to do. So I just stopped doing stuff and tried to figure out what to do next.

Nothing.

This part will be ironic to anyone who's read "Flip": yeah, I may have mixed feelings about religion and fate, but I do believe that things happen for a reason.  And I had to fail then because something else was coming.

Still defeated, I went to bed on November 1st.  Since I can remember, even as a little kid, I've always wanted to write a book about dreams but I could never break the story. I couldn't figure it out. But sometime in the middle of the night on November 2nd, I did. I broke it.

November just coincidentally happens to be National Novel Writing Month, where thousands of writers around the world try to write a whole story in just a month. So I decided to try, too.

If "Us" would have gotten the money it needed, I never would have tried this. I would have put all of my focus on it and "Flip" wouldn't exist. But, instead, it does exist.

And I thank the sky every day that it does.

It changed things. It took me out a box that I could have been packaged in. It stretched me, and it hurt me, and I wouldn't change it for anything.

And then people started saying nice things about it. People I don't know. People I know closely.

And I figured out that I wasn't ready to finish the first thing I started until I wrote this thing. And that's when the Kickstarter idea kicked in.

And now, with everyone rallying behind it and supporting it and really just kicking ass for it, it's done. The next stage can begin (and all the work's on me, so you can relax now). And it is all thanks to YOU.

Honestly. Seriously.

It is all thanks to you.

THANK YOU.

And I thank you from the bottom of a heart that I think is secretly big, but in all honesty you all probably know how big it is.

Because it's big enough for all of you nuts.

Special thanks to Kody Kile, Lora Mays and Matt Mays, Elizabeth Ferguson, Justin Schoeben and Magan Marie Schoeben, Cathy Lola Kleven, Lydia Siefken Fitzgerald, Stacy Scherer, Peter L. Vogen, Nicole Sublet, Jill Hanson, Nicole McDonald, Cat Havumaki, Poly Mendes, Blair Warnemunde, Bekah Fitz, Jackie Daugherty, Amy Kielmeyer, Krista R Baker, Wayne Zbytovsky, Eliana Hutchison and everyone else who supported me in this big, dumb dream.

Hopefully, someday, I can be the kind of person you can be proud to say, "I knew him when...!"

And if you want to donate any spare change until the last day, this Monday, February 24th, here's the address:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dennisvogen/lets-flip-to-us/backers

- D

My 2014 NYC Short Story Submission: Round One, "The Level"

-- Writer's note: My name is Dennis Vogen.  I guess this is technically my first blog on this site.  So, hi!  I'm participating in the NYC Short Story Challenge 2014.  This is my First Round Submission; I was given three specific things to include in my short story, which could not last more than 2,500 words (of which, I clocked in exactly 2,499). My Heat was 11; Genre: Horror. Event: An overdose. Character: A radio DJ.

- D

Oh.  The title?

"T H E  L E V E L"

Dennis Vogen

) ) )

They’re going to kill me.

I grabbed everything that is important to me, shoved it into my red backpack and ran to the mall as fast as I could, at three o’clock this morning; as soon as I found out that they were calling for our names.  They were openly hunting us.  Stalking us.  Killing us.  There was no one else here when I crept up towards the back door.

I took a set of metal clippers out of my bag and cut the chain behind the Dumpster.  I pushed aside the chain fence and unlocked the door, falling inside the cool opening.

I stood up, turned around to shut the door behind me, and a pale, skinny hand slid through the opening and grabbed my wrist.  It was a woman’s hand, and her talons dug into my skin, drawing color from my veins to match the color of her nail polish.  Her head snuck through the doorway.

“YOU KILLED MY BABY!” I read her lips move from the other side as I shook with shock and shaking silence.

With absolutely no other option that I could see, I took a step back and then shoved the door back with as much force as I could and, being a healthy man in my mid-twenties, it was a fair amount of force.  It first shattered her wrist, and she fell to her knees, refusing to pull her arm back.  I pulled the door back and slammed it again, with even more force, and her hand split from her forearm, blood pooling on the floor beneath me.  The fingers continued to twitch, reaching for something they didn’t understand.

I bolted the door, hard, so I could feel it lock.  I walked through the maze-like hallways until I reached the maintenance room, knowing of its large amount of chains, and then wrapped the back door in metal, and whatever else I could find: a broken shopping cart and a large statue of Snoopy the dog, a relic built to honor an historic artist from Minnesota, where I’m from.  I live much further south than he did.  Drawing a fucking cartoon would get me nowhere here.

The exit now braced, I pulled out my phone and checked the news.  Of course, my photo was on the main page.  The headline?

“The Last Living DJ.”

I didn’t mean to kill her baby.

I swear.

I feel bad enough about what I do.  A few years ago, an underground style of music called The Level started to become increasingly popular.  It’s a heavy, thick, throbbing kind of music that completely fills you and then throws you and then crushes you as you’re gasping for breath.  We didn’t know it was dangerous at first.

Until the first kid died.

And then a few more people.  But, to be fair, most of the people who overdosed on The Level had just had too much.  They listened to it over and over, awake or asleep, at work and at play and just all the time.  Just too much.  And too much of anything can turn you into nothing.  The few other deaths were because their bodies couldn’t handle it the first time, and for those losses, I am completely sorry.  It tears me apart.  Honestly.  But that’s art.  You can’t foresee the consequences.

They first tried to shut down the handful of us DJs playing The Level.  We refused, citing that besides the couple of unforeseeable deaths, almost everyone who died was just abusing The Level.  When we refused, more people – mostly conservative, parental types – started to protest.

Until one day, when they just stopped.

That was a week ago.  And then my phone started to vibrate relentlessly last night while I was in bed.  When I finally looked at it, almost all of my best friends were dead.

I have a lot to feel guilty for.  I feel completely devastated, my heart demolished to just bits and bytes.  But I have an extra reason to feel bad.  To feel like a hypocrite.  To feel like the worst DJ in the world.

Because I’m deaf.

I sit against the hard door in the dark room and I think about her.


( ( (


I went to the club by myself.  I had tried to convince some of my hearing friends to go, and even some of my deaf friends, but no one wanted to.

I didn’t care.  I wanted to be there.  To experience it.

I walked in, alone, and the lights were up and people were having drinks, conversing with one another.  It didn’t look like a dangerous place.

I walked up to the bar and ordered a brandy-7.  My voice is probably stupid-sounding, but I learned how to talk when I was little and it makes simple things easier.  Every time I see some stupid fucking redneck say something like, “If them there Mexicans want to live in MY country, then them better learn MY fuckin’ language!”, I wonder why that redneck didn’t learn mine.  Because I was born this way, and in this country.  And then I realize his tiny, ignorant brain couldn’t handle learning any additional languages (especially since he can’t even grasp the one that he thinks he knows), much less my amazing, expressive one.

I got my brandy-7, turned my head and was struck.

The most beautiful girl I had ever seen was looking right at me.  I felt rhythms within myself that I never had before.

So I did what any suave, handsome man would do.

I took a sip of my brandy-7, it went down the wrong tube and I threw up right there on the floor.

I looked back to her shocked face, but before I could do anything else, the house lights shut off and the show started.

Laser beams from every angle started to shoot and burst through every piece of matter in the building.  The DJ walked out, like a famous magician.  His name was DJ DJ Vogue.  No kidding.  But then the real magic started.

The music started.

And instead of hearing nothing, I felt everything.  I felt every beat through my chest.  I felt extraordinary.  I felt alive.

I started to dance, which I had never done before, because I had never heard, much less experienced, music before.  Sweat started to pour from me, and onto me from the crowd around me.

More drinks.  More dancing.

And then her.

She found her way to me.  She was blonde, but with a blue streak through her hair.  We made eye contact for an infinite coda, and then she turned her back to me, and pressed everything that she was tightly against me.  Her ass moved against me, up and down, faster and faster, to the exact, rapid beat in my chest and heart.

Someone else started to tap on my shoulder, and I shrugged them off.

I whispered into her ear, “What is your name?”

Another tap on my shoulder.

I turned to her soft, perfect lips and read:

“Day.”

Her name was Day.

Yet another tap on my shoulder, and I finally turned around.  I was floored.

It was another young woman.  Dark hair.  Bangs.  And her eyes were bleeding down her face.  She collapsed upon me, her blood covering me like a blanket.  I couldn’t breathe.  Her mouth was contorting in ways I couldn’t understand, except for the last thing she said as she finally passed away, on top of me:

“Help.”

She was the first one to officially die from The Level.  The house lights came up as soon as word spread, and we were all escorted to the exits.  Day sat next to me, her arms around me, as I talked to the police. Everyone outside the club was talking about how “awesome” and “hardcore” that show was.  I wasn’t as positive about what had happened as the rest of them, but I realized how important this music was.  It could change – and end – lives.  It brought me the only woman who I would ever fall in love with.

It brought me Day.

So that night, I became a DJ.


) ) )


I work at the mall, in the entertainment store, so I have every key, and I know where every exit is.  There’s only four.  I live in a small town, and our mall has less than a dozen stores.

With the back door secured, I ran to the other three ways in.

The front entrance: chained and blocked.  The back entrance: chained and blocked.  I was running to the last remaining entrance when I saw him drive his pickup truck into the parking lot.  The Farmer.

I stopped for a second, gasping and then reaching for my breath.

The Farmer was your stereotypical southerner.  Stubborn.  Stuck in his way.  Also, he was extremely racist, sexist and dumb.  None of us even knew the old man’s name, but we knew he owned a farm, though, ironically, he wasn’t a farmer.  It was an ironic moniker.

I thought he might park his truck in a spot, but my luck had run out.  He instead pointed his hood ornament in my direction and then revved his engine.

He was coming in.

I started running again, and I reached the outside set of glass doors.  I started to chain the outside doors as he began racing towards me.

I got the outside doors chained and jumped back inside, doing the same thing to the inside set.  He was almost here, going at least forty miles per hours.

Stacked some more shopping carts against the doors.

Fifty.

Pushed a snowmobile displayed on tiny, plastic wheels behind the carts.

Sixty.

Turned around to find anything else to stop –

Boom.


( ( (


We started dating immediately.  Day and I were in love.  She was everything I had ever wanted in a girl.  Smart.  Sexy.  Funny.

But she was wild.  She wouldn’t listen to me.  Even as she got older, she remained the youngest person I had ever known.

She made a lot of mistakes.

But I forgave her, and man, did I love her.

We dated for six months, and then we bought a place together.  I had lived with my parents up to then, which wasn’t that strange in the world we were living in, but we were in love and we were adults and we wanted the world to know it.

I was a pretty good DJ.  I felt every song before I played it, and my playlists were natural, emotive and I really did feel like an artist.

I felt like something.

Day couldn’t keep a job for more than a month.  She was terrible at everything she was asked to do.  Because she just didn’t want to do it.

But she was beautiful.  And she was mine.

She was going out every night, sometimes with me, sometimes without me.  Sometimes when I was DJing, I could see her with other people, but they were all friends.  She said they were all just friends.

At the same time, worldwide, more people were dying.  Like I said, most of the time it was because people wouldn’t – or couldn’t – stop.  It was constant, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  It was all about The Level.

And I was in control of The Level.

It was mine.

) ) )


I opened my eyes.

I was still standing.  The truck had only made minor destruction.

The mall’s glass was bulletproof, and The Farmer hadn’t even broken a pane.  But he was dead.  His windshield had shattered, and a massive shard had gone through his weathered face.

Good, I thought to myself.

With all the doors shut, I ran to the stairs that led to the roof.  I needed to see.

( ( (


Things with Day and I just kept getting worse, no matter how hard I tried.  In fact, things got worse the harder I tried.

She was hanging out with a lot of new people.

To get my mind off of where she was, to keep my thoughts away from living within my loneliness, I turned to my music.

I bought a big speaker.

I placed it on a desk, across from my chest.  So I could feel it.

And then I bought more big speakers.  I put them in the basement of the entertainment store.  So that, on my breaks, I could feel some more.

She stopped talking to me.  And then she stopped even looking me in the eyes.  One night, I found out later, she even brought someone home and fucked him in the other room, while I was asleep in our bedroom, blissfully unaware of the sound.

The fucking sound.

I was losing control.


) ) )


Dawn was breaking as I climbed atop the roof.  People were starting to gather around the mall.

They knew I was here.

This was it.

I couldn’t fully read their lips from where I was, so I stepped back.  I took a marker out of my backpack and wrote on a scrap piece of cardboard.  I walked back to the edge of the building.

My sign read: “I WILL NOT GIVE UP.”

The sign shook above my head, and I realized that someone had just shot it with a gun.  More and more people started to show up.  They started to push on the doors.  My control was going.  Gone.

Almost.

I ran back downstairs to the mall.  Ran back to my shop.  Nearly broke the doors down running to the basement.

Once I was there, I started to pull them up to the roof, one by one.

The speakers.

They were coming with me.


( ( (


She left me.  Obviously.  How could someone like me keep someone like her?

I begged.  I pleaded.  My confidence waned in and out.  Sometimes, I got it.  Most of the time, I didn’t get it, and I was positive I could get her back.

But before I knew it, I didn’t even know her anymore.

But I’m still positive I could get her back.


) ) )


I squinted.  One of the women far below said, “What is he doing with all of those speakers?”

I was happy to reply.

I plugged them into the roof’s outlet, and turned them all on, one by one.

And then I did it.

I started playing The Level.  As loud and as hard as I could.

At first people, just covered their ears.

But then they started to collapse.

One by one.

And then they started to die.

The bodies started to pile up, before the city just quit and left me alone.

The last living DJ.

And as I enjoyed the silence that I was accustomed to, I opened my mouth and let my awkward voice echo over the hills of flesh.

“I win.”