Even in the Gothic community in Chicago I felt like an outsider among outsiders – there is a void because no one can relate to the imagination I have nor the depth that I come across in the community. There were quite a few who made me think I wasn’t welcomed in the community – one of them is Carrie Monster and the other is DJ Pathogen. The one had the gift of casting stones at people, and she was the one willing to cast the first stone.
     “Your job is a fucking troll and a stalker,” were her words. I wonder if those words haunt her to this day when she sees my name I the paper. Saying that to someone who got stabbed five times for thinking about things that made him not fit in the community is disturbing – sometimes wrong because I’ve seen an entire community betray someone before. I’ve seen this many times when I lived in Iowa for one reason or another, she was very much like the townspeople in Hampton, Iowa, when I went to the county fair. The kind of thing she invoked when she said that were the old nightmares about wandering around in places where people had no face and they would cast stones at someone because they thought differently than them. When I returned to Chicago, back in around 2001 I had the strange nightmares again about a crowd of people casting stones at me in a public place for one reason or another – perhaps that is God’s way of saying one isn’t fitting within them.
     “You’re not one of us, you’re not one of us,” I heard the one without a face chant as he had a baseball sized stone and getting ready to pelt it at my head.
     “Fuck! What in God’s name mean that I am not one of you?” I screamed. There is a sense of horror to my face because this took place right around the time of the photo shoot in 2001 that Dave and Jamey set up for everyone in the Gothic community, but there was a part of me that didn’t fit back then. Carrie Monster and DJ Pathogen were the two that made it clear that I wasn’t one that wouldn’t be welcomed because of the way I thought – as dark and morbid as it is. It was like when I lived in Mason City, Iowa, all over again. The darkness I felt there in the dream was like the darkness I felt when I was sitting among the news crew in Perkins of KMIT because I got the stinkeye there too because what I knew about a kidnapped co-worker of theirs.
     The world I was in was something I didn’t belong in when I lived in Iowa but when I was in Chicago – my thoughts were too disturbing for some people to comprehend especially when I documented the nightmares such as this one. They took place again some time before my second book signing after I left Nocturna, and this time around one of them was chanting “fucking retard, fucking retard, you must die in the stones really fucking hard.”
     “It was like that since Carrie Monster said the troll and stalker remark without having the heart to say it to me personally – that was around the time I was being harassed by DJ Pathogen. I got this more because I do also believe in God – being that contributing factor along with the illness I am diagnosed with they wanted to contribute more to the exiling insanity that would be the reoccurring nightmares. They in some way contributed to the nightmare on elm street that is in my mind along with the madness that kept returning within the infinity of my nightmares when I stay in hotels. These nightmares were quite dark and extremely vivid, and in the faceless ones as I describe them Carrie Monster and DJ Pathogen appeared in the latter versions of them – along with my long time best friend who came in with the baseball sized stones to pelt them right at my skull. It was if they really didn’t want someone like me walking among them – it was like Christ when he returned to Nazareth, saying not even their own hometown will welcome them.
     I thought about this nightmare often when I sat late at night looking at one of my projects and how would I go about relating it to people as they come by and read what I’ve written over the years. It played out again just before I went to 96.7 Will Rock in 2003 and just as I slept on the train going to Baltimore, Maryland.
     “When I saw the ones without faces I screamed.
     “What the fucking hell is wrong with you?” I felt like the days when I was involved with The Christian Fellowship and while I was barred from the library in Mason City – cut off from the world. They stirred in my mind, those nightmares as they waited in there time and again. I felt like an outsider among outsiders back then as well because in middle school I felt the isolation among a crowd because all I received was the harassment. This was true in the sense of being the subject of this in the community as well when I got called a retard. The darkness stirred as I was being tested by God – or that is what I thought.
     They almost played out in a way my Gothic stories would often play out – making me feel like I was the character of my own work especially when a community like that in Chicago is much like a small town like Chapin. Everyone has their eyes watching everyone, and that is sort of creepy – they were often played out when I see people without faces wandering around downtown Chicago or sitting in a diner anywhere I went or gone. I had the sort of nightmares like that when I lived in Iowa as well, about the time when I had my first nervous breakdown – just that they haven’t played out in the detail they played when I returned to Chicago and would fall in the apartment.
     They would in terms cause the trigger for the felling of falling without end, and the ones without a face had shoved me from a high place. I don’t always understand this or why it’s in the subconscious, that it was stirring, breathing as an entity of the supernatural – the kind of things that come about when the moon emerges from the darkness. Within the darkness they cast the stone – the two that triggered the nightmares had done this repeatedly by saying I was a stalker or a troll. That thought stirred often when I would see the things written of me over time – knowing it was that fear of being hunted played out in my mind where I was the prey.
     In the Gothic Community as it is now – the old nightmares have their way of making themselves manifest. The faceless crowd staring right at me saying, “Cast the stone to the skull – I will allow you to die by my hand.”
     “One can only imagine how disturbing that can get as it wanders within the mind – it’s up there with seeing people in the nightmares casting themselves in front of the train as it passes then seeing them get knocked apart. It is the ganged up mentality that some of them have that leave me with the old nightmares reappearing once again – the nightmares that stirred around when I first attended The Christian Fellowship in Iowa and when I felt left on the road in Albert Lea, Minnesota.
     “You are not fucking one of us – because of that you shall meet your end,” one of them chanted as they held the baseball sized stone preparing to throw it at me. I felt that in the nightmare hit my head, felt as it was bouncing off the concrete twice when I got hit by the high end car. Sometimes in the nightmare when I got away from the faceless crowd Carrie Monster would end up driving the Lexus and ram into me as I was standing in the street all over again because that is what she did when she called me the troll and the stalker. She would be the one again who was casting the first stone.
     I was the subject of this because of the things that I was the target of over the years – because of her and pathogen I was reliving them all over again in my mind. They were ripping the wounds on the back of my head open when they were doing the things they did, some people might not understand their mentality but it is the kind of thing that shouldn’t been done to a person who did get caught up in the special education system. They would be damning me to the nightmares I had when I lived in Iowa – being the outsider among outsiders as they would cast the stones at me.
     “You are not fucking one of us, you’re one we will chew up and spit out your entrails,” the faceless crowd jeered. This went on for the good part of the duration of the disturbing dream as it played out in my mind – somehow my imagination does get away with me when people have called me the retard or troll because I keep thinking about those years in middle school where I had the nightmare about wandering in a sea of faceless people waiting for them to cast the stone at me. It was that sort of thing all over again, “been in special education then the retard has to die once more – in the name of the many, cast the stones upon him,” the faceless crowd would collectively scream. It kept going on for no end and when I tried to get away it was like painting myself into a corner and couldn’t get out. What came of it and then continued on for I don’t know how long, just couldn’t wake up from it for some reason – and it was there in the mind sometime in 2002 before I headed to New Orleans as well. It played in the mind over and over as I would take down this narrative, knowing there is someone out there who felt like they were a man in a faceless crowd.
     “You’re not fucking one of us,” they would shout as they would cast a stone the size of a baseball. This time around Pathogen was the one who casts the stone at me, it was a huge thud and felt like it was when I hit the concrete or when the metal ripped into my flesh at the back of my head. It was if they were saying, “Get the fuck out of my world you sad excuse of a freak.” I’ve seen this throughout my years – especially in Iowa when I tried to talk with people civilly they ran like hell because they were scared of the man in black. It was like that once again when I returned to Nocturna and after I left when I moved in with Michelle Russo, and the nightmares about the faceless crowd appeared on the nights when I was confined to bed sick with bronchitis.
     When I was ill I was isolated, and when I have this nightmare it comes when the isolation is closer nigh. Especially when they come to cast the first stone. I was isolated and felt alone in a crowd full of people – despite the recent momentum I gained. It was the old nightmares playing themselves out as they were when I was hospitalized for the bronchitis of crowds without faces. The kind of thing that would play itself out when Carrie Monster would say the thing that damaged what I tried to establish in Chicago after escaping from Russo because I had the nightmare again when I was coming out from the MRI and a day later of someone without a face putting a needle in my arm saying, “this won’t hurt one bit.”
     That played in my mind as I dreamed about the coffin I was about to be carted into that made a lot of noise – the kind of noise that some of the faceless made when they were casting the stones. Time ticked away over the years and the nightmares had reappeared from time to time – more so when I was out and about. They stir around, breathing and clawing their way around inside my mind when I slept.