The Monster Who Ate Steve

A story written in honor of Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves performing in the play Waiting for Godot.

The Monster Who Ate Steve

By Bryce Bull

Ryan and Brian sit alone in the dark at the end of an alley. They are trapped on an island with the monster who ate Steve. A cold wind blows between the two buildings they are nestled between and chills them. 

“Cold one tonight.” Ryan says puncturing the silence. 

They both laughed quietly.

“So, where were you when the monster ate Steve?” Brian asked.

Ryan thought for a bit. It was hard to remember because so much had happened since the monster that ate Steve had shown up and now.

“I was in the bathroom, taking a leak.” Ryan finally remembered.

“Ah. It was gross, it walked up to him and ate him whole like a snake.” Brian said, filling in the details that Ryan had missed. “Unhinged jaw and everything.”

They both heard a sound in the darkness and went quiet. Ryan thought about how the last person besides Bryan he had seen alive was Karen who had told them the monster was coming this way and had run to get help. That sound could be her, but they needed to let her make the first move.

Silence.

“Can you believe it’s just us two left?” Ryan said. 

“Yes, wait, I’m not following. What?” Brian asked.

“Well, now that I’m pretty sure Karen isn’t coming back, that leaves just us two. And we basically have the same name. You know, Ryan and Brian. It’s kind of weird, that’s all” Ryan continued.

“Oh, sure that makes sense, I guess.” Brian said.

“Like, we are the only two people in this friend group that have rhyming names, and we never hang out. Waiting for this monster to show up make me whish we had hung out.” Ryan finished.

Silence.

They were alone on an island, trapped with the monster who ate Steve. They sit motionless as the sun slowly comes up.

My ADHD is a constant battle when it comes to reading

This is a vibes based post, if it doesn't make perfect sense. I'm fairly sure you will get my gist.

First, I'm going to start with background. I've had ADHD all my life and dyslexia neither was diagnosed until my mid 30s. I read books all the time from the library and stopped doing that when I got too busy to go and at that point digital was an option but I couldn't read for longer than about 5 minutes without getting confused. Growing up and into adulthood,I thought I read the same as everyone else and let me tell you figuring out that I was different was a struggle. I fought the diagnosis and tried to push through my problems by doing all the same things that didn't work before. Yes, somehow everything will be different. 

So, when that didn't work I avoided reading, but kept purchasing things that I know I couldn't use like digital ebooks. I figured I would just print them all out and read them that way. For context, I hated reading on my phone, tablets, and my PC. 

Cut to a couple months ago when my wife and I decided to do a wife and also wife bookclub and started to read a Christopher Pike book together. That went great because it was a physical book I could hold but I knew I owned a lot of digital books. So we decided to start reading those. I struggled at first, but I knew my wife had figured out a way to read that worked with her ADHD, so it could be possible for me. I downloaded a bunch of different book reader apps and got out my Kindle and the library that went with it. At first, the same issues cropped up, but I persisted and looked up helpful ways to adapt what I was reading to my dyslexia and downloaded some fonts for dyslexia which did help but I needed more. I did more research and started to try to adjust backgrounds which I didn't like but then something I did actually helped. The font size. It was too small and the paragraphs squeeze together. So I kept adjusting it bigger and bigger and now I've got the sweet spot and I can read again. Which has, oddly, helped me start writing again. Reading some, I will say, lower quality work showed me that I could write work that I could be proud of. So now I'm writing every idea I have or had back in the day and finishing them too.

I just wanted to finish off with a positive note. Don't try to force things, maybe there's a better way that you haven't thought of. The Internet is a friend.

Obligatory Update post for July 31st

Well, that was a year. As opposed to most blogs that go dormant, me disappearing for a long time actually meant my life is better than it has ever been. Let me explain, I am the main person that works in our household and that includes basically a second job. I have finally got financially stable enough to not have to do an eBay job thanks to my job actually giving annual raises. So, I don't have to scrape to survive or look for a new bank that might be better for us or make money somehow on the Internet by selling out and grifting by becoming a Mormon Influencer or something like that. I'm from Utah originally I'm sure I get swing something like that. That was a joke, kind of.

So for the update, I decided to be more creative with my free time. Which started with trying to make short form horror content and transitioned into writing YA level short horror fiction. I've been fighting this writer label for years and I'm finally going to embrace it. I've also used less and less of social media. It sidelines me from actually doing productive things and makes me depressed. So I'm thinking I should to write what I would on social media over here especially with Twitter basically not existing anymore. 

Also, I'm taking my old stories that I was trying to turn into films and rewriting them into stories. I don't know what I'll post on here bust some of it should be writer talk and snippets of work.

Looking forward to three months from now when I will be almost off social media and hopefully President Kamala Harris and I can relax more.

You should watch The Lodger (1944)

The Lodger is a parallel story, or is it, to Jack the Ripper about a man with an assumed name moving into a room in a house owned by a husband and wife and their adult actress daughter. It's moody, creepy, and evocative with  camerawork that puts you in the heart of the action and great sound design that reminds me of Italian giallo movies from the 70's. It's also somehow a musical and fans of Disney animation from the 60's will be happy with the casting choice of one of the leads. 

8 out of 10

Witch's Pranks: Frog's Fortune CE Review

 It's not often I can't wait to get home to play something these oh so jaded days. For some reason this is the one that did it for me. I don't know if it was the pleasing art or that I was able to make progress in the little bit of time I had to plays this in. So, if you like goofy and cute read on even if you are a gamer tm, branch out and have fun. 

 WP:FFCE has one of the worst names but it is kind of par for the course in the Hidden Object world which this game is most like. I say most like because it heavily leans on Adventure game logic and moving around to different scenes much like old ZX Spectrum games would back in the day. You'll end up traveling through a mirror to different inventive and frankly stunning worlds trying to transform frog princes back to just princes and probably have it completed in under 4 hours.

My only complaints are the fmv footage is fuzzy and stutters like an old PS1 game and I wish it had one more story in it since they didn't make any more of these. 

10 out of 10

Signalis - Review

This is the game I would tell me to play if they have never played a horror game before. It's such a good example of doing everything right and not doing the things that drag this genre down. It has just the right amount of gunplay but also let's you run around and not kill most things. It's perfect for Halloween. 

10 out of 10

Below is unfakeable proof my Tiktok video on Signalis had 666 views. 

Endless Fables: The Minotaur's Curse (Review)

 I will start with the positive and then go to the negative because the positive is very good and I don't want you to run away. The puzzles in Endless Fables are very well done. They are challenging but also extremely well laid out with lots of variety and they won't bore you. 

Okay, now let's talk about the constantly getting stuck because everything looks the same and oh my god I've been here thirty times already I'm just going to click hint, oh I'm in the wrong place, I'll just go back a screen and I'm still in the wrong place. This game likes to make the walking around it's world a slog. 

Also, FMV graphical issues due to how old it is I'm guessing. Basically, they were blurry and hard to make out even when they weren't blurry. Outside of Fmv problems the game was par the course for the time with good art that you can mostly make out.

Now story was fairly boring to me and not the least bit compelling. I was constantly trying to remember where this game even started and how we got here and should I care. 

5 out of 10