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.