Quincy and That Unusual Friend of His

[Paul_and_Paco]

I ran across this nice little serial novel in the YoungFriends section of Nifty a few days ago. It is written by Brian Roberson. The story is not the typical love story found on Nifty, and especially in the YoungFriends section.

At present there are eleven chapters, and he seems to be posting every three days, so the wait will not be long before the finish. I had no problem with the editing, and it seemed to flow quite well.

Below is a short excerpt...

Later that night, Quincy all of a sudden found himself awake in the

dark. He looked at the clock and it said 2:30. As he looked at the time,

the digital image of the numbers began to flicker in and out. He then heard

that same giggle as he did earlier, only this time it wasn't distant. As a

matter of fact , it came right from inside the room. His heart froze in his

chest as he heard the giggle again. It sounded like a boy. He quickly

turned over towards the sound. On his desk, in the dark, he saw a figure

sitting indian style on top of his desk. He bolted for the lamp and turned

on the switch. To his utter shock and disbelief, he saw a nude blond boy

sitting on top of his desk. He had a big grin on his face and his hands on

his knees.

"Hi!" The kid said as he waved.

"Wh....who....who are you...?" Quincy asked, his voice trembling.

The boy leaned back and laughed. It was a friendly and hearty laugh. "I'm

Erik. Who are YOU?" He laughed.

"How did you get in here? Why don't you have any clothes on?"

Erik laughed and jumped off the desk. Quincy could see his little dangling

penis bobbing around as he hit the floor. He then ran giggling into the

closet and shut the door.

"Hey, hey, wait a minute!" Quincy said. He then got out of bed and ran to

the closet. He then opened the door, and to his utter horror, there was no

one in there.

"Mom! MOM! MOM!!!" Quincy cried out.

Quincy's parents came running down the hallway full speed. Dad was in his

underwear and Mom was in her nightgown.

"Quincy, what's wrong? What happened?" Steve croaked.

"I don't know, I ...I..." Quincy then hesitated. He suddenly didn't think

that it was a good idea to tell his parents that he saw a naked boy in his

bedroom who suddenly vanished into thin air.

"I ...had a nightmare I guess." Quincy finally said. Quincy's parents both

stayed and comforted him for a few minutes before shuffling bleary eyed

back to their bedroom. After they left,he sat for a few seconds and tried

to figure out what had just happened. He also thought about that freaked

out mover from earlier in the day. Eventually he got his composure back and

decided to try to go back to sleep. As he was about to turn off the lamp,

he heard the closet door squeak a little. He watched as it opened

halfway. He then saw the naked boy peek around the corner of the door. He

sat and watched in horror.

"Thanks for not ratting me out to your folks." He said.

"R-r-ratting you out...?"

Qunicy And That Unusual Friend of His can be found at http://www.nifty.org...unusual-friend/

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, and if you do... give Brian a thumbs-up email.

[Paul_and_Paco]

ding

[Cole Parker]

Looks interesting.

C

[Paco]

I've just finished chapter ten. Well worth a read or two!

[FreeThinker]

I've already been reading this. It has a clever premise, its well executed and very fun. I agree that its worth the time.

[dude]

Think I'll pass on this one..... drugs... alcohol and violence all in the first chapter! A litle kid getting run down by a car doesn't sound like a fun read to me.

NOTE: This post was made before I relented and read on. The story turns out to be well written with engaging characters. I still reel at the description of the boy's death at the beginning of the story... but all in all... it's an excellent read!

[FreeThinker]

That's actually only the set-up. The rest of the story is quite good. There's a reason for what happens in the first chapter and nothing like that happens in the rest of the story, at least as far as I've read. It's really quite a sweet story. I promise.

[Paul_and_Paco]

Think I'll pass on this one..... drugs... alcohol and violence all in the first chapter! A litle kid getting run down by a car doesn't sound like a fun read to me.

I would not steer you wrong Dude. The story is really very good. Please give it a chance!

[dude]

Well, having worked part-time in my youth at a funeral home - which in the times before the day of government provided emergency services both operated ambulances and buried those the hospitals couldn't save - I was appalled with the description at the outset of the story. Nothing is as sorrowful as preparing the broken body of a young child to present to it's grieving parents. It's something I'll never forget.

The words evoked that but, I'll try to get past that... I understand that young folks these days are mostly desensitized to this kind of thing thanks to TV and video games... but it is harder for me.

Mike

[DesDownunder]

My older friend was the same, Mike. He had served in WWII and when we went to the movies together, he would turn from the screen when some act of physical violence occurred, whilst I kept munching away on the roasted almonds.

Nowadays, I see much the same thing happening with young audiences, who, as you say, are desensitised, whilst I react to realistic violence on screen with repugnance. It took me a while, but now I understand what my friend had known from the war...how easy it is to kill and how death affects the survivors, and that it is truly horrendous to witness.

I remember a movie which very realistically showed the needless slaughter of Native Americans by the white man. Soldier Blue.

When the movie finished the three of us were shouting at each other because we were so distraught at what we had seen. It was quite cathartic in many ways, and we each had one of those ways which we wanted to share with each other. Sometimes we need to experience horror as seen by others, just so that we know we are not alone in our reactions to reject it.

I don't mean this to be a comment on this story. I'm just sharing my experience on violence with Mike.

[Cole Parker]

I'm much the same way: older, and very averse to graphic violence. My heart even races if I see two guys on the screen face off for a fight. I just don't like it. Perhaps it's too much imagination, but I get no pleasure out of it at all.

As a result, I never saw The Sopranos TV show. Just the mood of violence that permeated the episodes was too much for me.

Friends seem to think I'm looney, refusing to watch this sort of program, or go to violent movies. I don't know whether it's an age thing, but it well could be. Des, Mike and I seem to feel the same way, and spring chickens we're not.

What about you, James Merkin? That would be another well-aged voice on the subject.

C

[The Pecman]

It's a very unique story that has some good moments. I see the Dude's points, but you can't have a ghost story unless one of the characters has died. That's pretty much the way it works.

Me, if I were confronted by a ghost, I'd ask all the hard questions: what was it like to die? why are you here? is there a God? what's the point to life? where do you go when you die? is there a hell? And most importantly... is wrestling fixed?

I'd expect to get a lot out of a story with this much potential. Otherwise, it becomes a gay teenage version of "Casper the Friendly Ghost."

[Cole Parker]

But remember, the protagonist is 12. I'm not sure he'd be worldly enough to ask philosophical questions.

But yes, I'd ask those too. Maybe not at 12, though. Then, it would just be kewl to have a ghostly friend.

C

[Merkin]

This 'well-aged voice' spent much of his childhood playing cops and robbers or other games of destruction designed around bad guys hammering on the helpless until a hero came along to rescue them. My juvenile sense of what was horrible vs what were acceptable behaviors was seriously undercut by daily news from the front lines throughout the duration of WWII. I grew up thinking that mayhem was an essential component of life on earth. I am not insensitive to horrible events nor do I lack empathy for the victims of brutality. However I do not regard scenes or stories depicting violence as anything other than glimpses of life as we have tailored it according to our distorted notions of what civilization has to offer.

James

[DesDownunder]

Cole, I was asking, 'Why?' at the age of 5, and it was definitely in the philosophical sense to at least, some degree. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people (and kids) were thought of as being a certain type. This didn't mean that the individuals were brilliant or even 'special', it was just a way to describe their basic personality. I learned years later that my 'type' was a 'Seeker', as it used to be called. I was of course conflicted with also being a little bit of an artist. However it took me years to work out whether I was a spectator or a performer. My mother would have said I was 'show-off'.

So what would a 12 year old Des have asked a ghostly companion? Probably, I would have been too naïve to ask anything other than, "Can I touch it?"

All other questions at that stage of my life had been drummed out of me by religious indoctrination, the overcoming of which was subject to the 'Seeker' in me asking questions the indoctrination could not answer. In many ways, those questions were the ones that Pecman would ask, but it is really learning that any answers are always to be questioned further, that is important. That concept is one that requires the encouragement of rational open-mindedness, and that might well be difficult to maintain under the influence of any indoctrination. At the age of 12, our relationship to reality poses many questions. Why we ask those questions, how we answer them, and what we discover, is the beginning of our own self-awareness...our maturing consciousness, which happens to coincide with puberty. As if puberty isn't enough to cope with, we're also faced with finding a meaning for existence. It's going to be a busy day, week, year...lifetime.

Failure to question life as a means to realising the impermanence of any answers, is the same as brutish thought spawning solutions of physical violence. Irrational thoughts are so often the source of the violence under which we all suffer.

I have just listened to Kevin Swanson attacking the whole concept of civilised education, thought and philosophy, and replacing it with a Christian Biblical model of indoctrination. This is no joke, he's serious. Listen here. You probably won't want to listen to the whole thing. My point in raising this is that violence is not just physical, and as much as I detest gratuitous violence in stories, movies and real life, the real horror is in the proliferation of what I call 'violent ignorance' which limits our investigation of truth, reality, human compassion and love.

No, I'm not expecting Quincey's story to touch on these ideas to any great depth, and if it does turn out to be a Casper the Friendly Ghost type of story, I'm happy to have the diversion of an entertaining tale.

[The Pecman]

But remember, the protagonist is 12. I'm not sure he'd be worldly enough to ask philosophical questions.

Guaranteed, I could come up with most of these questions when I was 12. I might add a few more: if you're a ghost, how come we don't see everybody who's dead? What happened to the kid that accidentally killed you and then committed suicide? Do you know other ghosts? Can you say hello to my dead Aunt Martha? What are the limits of your ghostly powers? Can you feel pain (or pleasure)? Is there any place you can't go? Do you sleep? Why don't you wear ghostly clothes?

The little dead girl in The Lovely Bones asked quite a bit of these questions, but didn't always get answers. That's a very thoughtful book, but not a very good movie.

[Cole Parker]

I liked the relationship between the girl and the would-be boyfriend in Loney Bones book.

Pec, I agree those questions would be asked eventually. I don't think they'd be asked right off the bat. At 12, kids tend to accept things much more readily than they would as adults. Some are very openly inquisitive and some more reserved. I don't find the fact that Quincy didn't ask these things right out of the starting gate at all peculiar. And Eric, the ghost, was very vague on many things, which I think is consistent with Quincy limiting his questioning.

My view, of course.

C

[Paul_and_Paco]

Since Eric died at a very young age, I believe he was nine... and, the prevalant idea that ghosts are tied to one time and place, might be a good reason he was vague in his answering philosophical questions. Cory was the twelve-year-old. I can see him asking some tough questions, as soon as he got over being scared out of his mind!

[The Pecman]

Since Eric died at a very young age, I believe he was nine... and, the prevalant idea that ghosts are tied to one time and place, might be a good reason he was vague in his answering philosophical questions. Cory was the twelve-year-old. I can see him asking some tough questions, as soon as he got over being scared out of his mind!

There is that! They deal with this stuff very well with the original novel of Lovely Bones, where the girl simply has no answers, and there aren't too many people to talk to, except a few people that come and go (apparently on their way to the great beyond). I agree with Cole, the scene where the dead girl momentarily gets to inhabit the body of her sister -- if I'm remembering the story right -- and gets to make love with the boy she was in love with at the time she died, was a beautiful scene. Also not in the movie.

The novel's opening rape and murder scene was so horrific, there is no possible way you could film it. I'm bewildered as to why Peter Jackson would even attempt doing a movie like this and then trying to clean it up and sanitize it. There's a few dozen movies that I think are not filmmable, and movies about dead little kids are high on that list. No less than Hitchcock said long ago (in that case, about his movie Sabotage): you can't kill an innocent child on-screen in a movie, because the audience will never forgive you. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of movies where directors have gotten away with it, but usually, the movies are very unpleasant and don't do well. Another one I can think of is the 1980s remake of The Blob, which I found disturbing as well.

[DesDownunder]

Yes, the story has now been completed.

I don't think my comments can be considered as a 'spoiler', I merely want to convey that I found this tale quite wonderful.

Whatever grief we may feel at the opening of this story dissipates for a higher experience at the end.

It is a story of the spirit of life, but I will say no more because it deserves to be read for its own beauty.

[Lugnutz]

I just read it. The first chapter was the set up for the rest of the story. I also agree that it's the Casper the Friendly Ghost type of story. I like this and will be reading it again. It reminds me of Drake's "Danny's Story", four chapters that is also a gay ghost love story but in a college scene. It's to bad that you may only find part of it on the wayback machine now. Luckly I kept a copy of the story for my files along with everything else that was there before his site went down.

Read it, you'll like it.

[dude]

Lovely story!

[Lugnutz]

There was a couple places in the story that made the hair on the back of my head stand up.

[JamesSavik]

aw shoot. now i'm hooked too.

[Lugnutz]

I read this again. Found bits I missed on my first read. It's like reading a editors cut. I'll keep finding bits every time I'll read it too. I wrote the author and let him know I liked his story and sent him the link to this thread so he can see what others arer saying about it.