I have been writing for a long time. It has always been something I have done just as a pastime, something just for myself, but over the years a lot of what I have written has been lost. The copies or notepads I wrote on have long since disappeared, so a couple of years ago I decided to start typing up what I can remember having written in the past along with anything new that I came up with, and instead of keepint them to myself I thought I'd put them up online. I never really thought much on what I had written as to whether or not it is any good.
Before I came across short-fiction.co.uk, I'd post my stories to my bebo page and when I had a fair few typed up, I began reading short stories that were online mostly to see if what I wrote could stand along side what I read. As I said I never really believed what I wrote was particularly any good, but what I was reading online got me thinking, what I was writing isn't all that bad. So when I came across short-fiction.co.uk I saw that not only could I register with that site but I could also upload my stories too. Even though it is a site that people primarily go to for it's adult content, and that I don't write stories of an adult or erotic nature I thought I may as well stick with that site and see how I get on.
In or around Febuary or March of 2009, months before I came across short-fiction.co.uk, I had a dream one night, quite a few of my stories come from dreams that I have had, but on this particular night I dreampt that I awoke in a dark room, chained to a chair and basically in this dream I was tortured. During being tortured, Recieved injuries to my left hand and to my nose, while also having hot wax poured onto my knees. When I awoke I had be sleeping in a fetal position. My knees in general are not in great shape, my left knee in particular had been badly injured in an accident from when I was 19 so when I awoke from my dream my bad knee was inflamed, my left hand was under my right elbow and the hand had 'gone to sleep' and my nose had been bleeding during the night. Weird how the injuries I recieved during my dream had been injected to reality. When I got up I completely forgot about this dream I had, and it was about a week or so later when it would come back to me.
In this 'torture' dream I manage to escape my experience and make it to a petrol station where I collapse. The petrol station from my dream is an actual petrol station, a place I happened to be walking near to a week or so after I had my dream and all of a sudden I was his by this De Ja Vu feeling and the memories of this dream came rushing back to me. It was such a strange experience that I couldn't help myself, that I had to write a story based upon this dream. Naturally enough the story is entitled 'TORTURE'. It is a story which is very different to anything else I had written. I usually tend to write about the strange and bizarre, weird stuff that happens and stories about death and the afterlife, so when I wrote Torture I was initially afraid to put it up online. I suppose it is a violent tale and I felt that it was so different to anything else I had wrote that maybe I should just keep this one to myself.
Eventually I did add it to my bebo page, and later after I had come across that short story website I put it up there too, and to my surprise TORTURE was getting more views and more comments than anything else I had added online. What people were telling me was that they liked the story but wanted it to be longer, and I was being asked if there were more parts to this story, and if there weren't more parts that there should be, so this got me thinking. There was quite a bit more I could do with this story. So i continued to write and soon I had five parts to my TORTURE story, with it not just focusing on physical torture but mental torture too.
I continue to be surprised by the responce to this story. As I mentioned earlier I had never really taken my writing seriously, I have never entered any competitions, I have never submitted a story for publication anywhere else but having them online, so imagine my surprise when I was contacted in October of 2010 by the editor of an American short story magazine asking if they could publish my TORTURE story. I told the editor that she could indeed pblish it, she had just read the first part so when I told her that there were five parts in total, she asked that I send on to her all five parts along with a brief bio of myself, something which of course I did do.
So if you do read my TORTURE tale I hope you read all five parts and I hope you like what you read. Take care until next time. KARL.
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