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THE CRIMSON BLIGHT Arthur J Burks

Does anybody have a problem with this premise... a mad scientist who unleashes a terrible threat on the world is actually a surviving Cro-Magnon, thousands of years old. (Mentioning Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, Shablitz scoffs, "He was a child -- if he existed. I am an old man.") We are informed that "the Cro-Magnons were the most intellectual people who ever inhabited the Earth", but they were unfortunately exterminated. "It is too bad.. that the brutish Neanderthals saw fit to destroy the Cro-Magnon. They succeeded because of their vastly greater numbers -- and because the Cro-Magnon realized, as they realized everything, that they were fully twelve thousand years ahead of their time. Perhaps more."

Eh? I dunno, does it sound like the author got something mixed up there?! In any case, THE CRIMSON BLIGHT by Arthur J Burks is a lively if confused horror story that appeared in serial form in THRILLING ADVENTURES from January to March 1933. It's not particularly well written, full of choppy sentences that seem dropped in out of place from other stories and there are a number of moments that just don't make sense no matter how I interpret them. I get the feeling it took about as long to write this story as it takes to read it, so the general effect is listening to someone hysterically telling you about what a bad day they had over the phone.

On the other hand, the story has a good solid premise and it does have some scary images. In the Dominican Republic, a strange character named Dr Felix Shablitz either creates or unleashes a weird red substance which flows out of a cave and devours every living thing in its path, growing and expanding rapidly. Whether you're thinking of the Blob or Bill Cosby's Chicken Heart, this is a basic nightmare that works well in horror stories -- the mindless, ameba-like monster that can't be stopped.

The tale is feverishly narrated by a Marine second lieutenant who takes it upon himself to save the world from being engulfed by the red horror. His plan is to order an airtight suit of armor with oxygen supply air-dropped, so that he can wade through the seven foot high mist into the cave where he thinks (with no real basis) that Shablitz is still active and directing the monster's activity. Good luck, old man.

The story has some neat moments of uneasy disgust as the flood of crimson smuck wipes out acres of sugar cane and digests every person and animal it can catch. It seems clear it will soon cover the entire island and keep spreading out into the ocean, until the entire globe is red. The Marines throw a few grenades with no result and give up in dismay. What? Hey, how about trying a flame thrower or some Molotov cocktails on the monster? For that matter, grab a sample in a jar on a long pole and do some basic tests on whatever it's made out of. Maybe it's vulnerable to some poison or acid. No, they just run in horror. Before it's all over, the red flood is chasing battleships at sea and engulfing them.

Toward the very end, I lost all track of what was going on. Apparently, the red mist was actually composed of incredibly tiny miscroscopic particles of life (finer than protoplasm0 which was storing information about all the life forms it digested. Due to the Marine's meddling, it started reconstituting gigantic hairy ogres, dinosaurs and sea serpents which the surviving islanders and servicemen then have to fight. Then there are the recent victims, which reform as living beings but without their skeletons. So they're just bags of flesh flopping around. What a mess.

There's a certain amount of the casual racism taken for granted in pulp stories of the time, as the Marine is assigned to evaluate the Haitians and determine "how many were voodooists, how many were the usual nitwits and how many had a modicum of brains" and as the worried Haitians throw two young women to the monster as a hopefully propitiatory sacrifice. Then we have an interesting insight into human nature as, when faced with a lava-like mass of gunk that's eating everything in sight, "Young girls grew hysterical and ripped their clothing from their bodies to run naked along the roads and streets and alleys -- and nobody so much as noticed." You know, I haven't observed this sort of activity in all the cable news coverage of the various disasters which have been happening. Evidently CNN has a lot of good footage they're not sharing with us.

Arthur J. Burks (1898-1974) was a former Marine officer who started selling stories to WEIRD TALES in 1924 and then turned out thousands of yarns to every conceivable pulp on just about every subject. I don't know if there's any way to begin to find out who was the most prolific pulp writers of the 1930s and 1940s, considering all the house names and pseudonyms used, but Burks logically should be a strong contender for the title. On the other hand, it doesn't mean the stuff he cranked out by the bucketful was any good.

Burks founded the American Fiction Guild ("Fictioneers") and there's a mention of this pulpster group in Russell Millers's BARE-FACED MESSIAH (which is surprisingly available on the Web): http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm04.htm

"A few days later, [Frank] Gruber took Ron [L. Ron Hubbard] along to Rosoff's restaurant on 43rd Street, where members of the American Fiction Guild met for lunch every Friday. Most of the successful pulp writers in New York were members of the Guild and most of them gathered at Rosoff's at lunchtime on Fridays. They were names familiar to millions of pulp readers: Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage; George Bruce, acknowledged ace of battle-in-the-air yarns; Norvell Page, who was said to earn $500 a month for his stories in THE SPIDER; and Theodore Tinsley, a regular contributor to BLACK MASK. President of the Guild was Arthur J. Burks, who had been dubbed "King of the Pulps" in a NEW YORKER profile and quoted as saying that any pulp writer who did not make at least $400 a month was not worth his salt. It was a remark that was to cause him considerable embarrassment, for it was common knowledge in the Guild that Burks never earned that much, despite turning out around two hundred thousand words every month."

Raise your hand if you would like to go back in time every Friday night and have a few drinks at that table, listening to these guys grumble about their editors, swap story ideas and generally throw the bull around!

Hey everyone, first time posting on this sub! This is mostly me sharing a rather unique dream I had but if someone has an interpretation I'd love to hear it. This happened about a year ago:

It started out as a fairly typical dream (for me) and this first part isn't terribly interesting. Usually I'm in the middle of some cool sci-fi/action sort of scenario and in this case I was a member of an inter-dimensional demon hunting squad. We would go into these Stargate-ish portals to find monsters and kill them. One in particular proved to be more than we could handle and before I knew it I was the only member of the team left alive. This lead to a sort of chase scene where I kept jumping through portals with the demon in pursuit. Unfortunately it caught me and this is where things got really weird. It pulled off the top of my skull, scooped out a roughly golf-ball sized chunk of my brain, and vanished. Here I am panicking a bit as I know I will die unless I get to a doctor and have this chunk of gray matter replaced (woo dream logic). To keep it safe I decided the best course of action was to put it in my mouth. Now I've only ever experienced visual and auditory perception and sometimes touch in my dreams as far as I can remember, but I vividly remember the taste and texture of this chunk of brain sitting in my mouth. As you can imagine it was slightly slimy and sort of... gritty with the approximate squishiness of a sponge. The taste wasn't unlike tripe (for those who have had it) but slightly acidic; kind of like the aftertaste left by a grapefruit. On my way to the hospital I accidentally swallowed it, again feeling it slide down my throat against my uvula and cutting off my windpipe. I gagged loudly and say upright, waking up and thus ending one of the strangest dreams I've ever had.

Thanks for reading and I'm curious to see what you think or if anyone has had a similar experience.

EDIT: Please note I am not religious and I am simply using the word "demon" to describe the monster in question. It was your stereotypical large horned/toothed/clawed monster.

Last night I had a dream that I was walking down a sidewalk with a human-sized banana with legs. We walked by a man who yelled "Hey, are you sure that's the way you want to go?"

I responded by saying "No, it's not." and I turned around and started walking in the direction I came from, and the banana continued on.

Any thoughts?

Premise: A young woman's murder causes the subjects of a century-long mission to populate a new world to question the true nature of the project as they approach the point of no return.

Cast:

• Brian Van Holt as William Denninger
• Tricia Helfer as Viondra Denninger
• Brandon P. Bell as Executive Officer Oren Gault
• Andrea Roth as Dr. Juliet Bryce
• Tiffany Lonsdale as Chief Astronomer Emily Vanderhaus
• Ryan Robbins as Chief Safety Officer Duke Vanderhaus
• Jacqueline Byers as Nora Bryce
• P.J. Boudousque as James Toback
• Gil Bellows as Harris Enzmann

Links:

• IMDb

• Wikipedia

• Official trailer

I'm copy and pasting this from a chat I originally used to send this story to a friend, but i'll try to make sure it flows. If I mess it up, I'm sorry.

Okay. so it starts out where I'm driving my car down this LONG, WINDING, RAISED (as in, high up in the air) highway. I could look around and saw lots of other highways, some of them incomplete and we were so high up I could barely see the ground at all, but you could tell there was a city underneath. As im driving, I finally see where my destination is. It's a huge tower that appears to be made of scrap metal in the distance. It's kinda shaped like those the tops of the Taj Mahal, if you konw what those look like. Curiously, instead of approachign the bottom of the tower and going up, the highway actually ends at the TOP of the tower and I have to drive down this winding corkscrew path to the bottom. And remember, it's made out of rusty scrap parts. I get to the bottom and get out of my car and enter the center column and a screen on the wall and a robot voice turn on and basically tells me to scan my: eyes, wrist and butt. Yes my butt.... Once I do that, I'm whisked away upward to the center of the tower. Inside it is dim, lit with red light bulbs (i think there might have been more colors too but i specifically remember red at the entrance. Not to far in I see this girl dressed up in a maid outfit. I approach her and..... and this part is hard to describe. She looked like a human but I could somehow TELL she was a robot. Since I knew she was a robot, I bent her over the nearby table and started to have my way with her. So yeah, basically within a minute of getting inside, I'm having sex with this sex-slave-robot-girl. I dont remember if i finished or not, but eventually im done with her and move on deeper into the tower.

That's when Kim Jong Ill shows up

KJI, as in, the former leader of North Korea. He basically welcomes me to his pleaseure tower, comments on how he doesn't get too many visitors and then tells me about all these weird "rules" which i promptly ignore, thinking how weird they were. Things are getting slightly hazy now but i think i did it with another robot. They would speak to me too, asking how much I enjoyed my stay here, if they felt good, etc. I do remember small details like there were lots of bookshelves scattered about and nicely kept tables with tea sets on them, couches, etc. In a way, a person could relax here in a non-sexual way. Now here is another weird part. I leave the tower but I get lost, so I wind up driving away down an incomplete highway and FALL OFF AND DIE....but I respawn back on the right ramp heading back to the tower. This time I accidentally drive off the tower (it's tall with a narrow circular path! I went too fast! haha) but this time I just get respawned like playing a video game and end up back on the tower's path. I get to the bottom, enter, do all the scanning and get back inside.

This time around, I notice there are one or two other guys here, enjoying themselves too. I remember playing around with another "normal" robot but I didn't finish, because I saw another one that was "fairy sized" and went to go use that one. While im using the fairy robot, I notice....a CO-WORKER LADY there who was leaving. I dont think she was there for sex (and God, i hope not, she's huuuuge). She's a doctor so I think she was treating Kim Jong Ill or something. I just know I looked down at the "task at hand" and hoped she didn't see me. She didn't. I dont know if this is too much detail or not, but with the fairy one, If I went all the way, you could see my dick come out of her mouth >_>. After a while im done with this one and I continue on. Kim Jong Ill greets me again and spouts of stuff about how im always being watched, etc etc. I basically ignore him and continue on. Deeper inside I enter this LAAARGE, gymnasium-sized room where at least 4 other people are, sort of spread out. I remember two are fucking these furry tiger-ladies. (damn furries) and two others are fucking these weird blocks, while looking at them with what basically amounted to a Nintendo Wii U controller. (the one with a screen in it) I go up to one of the blocks and, as if I knew exactly what to do, I look at the screen, and pick my scenario and start looking at the block with the screen. Basically, I picked "doing it through a glory hole" and the block simulates the texture and feeling of a bathroom stall wall and a girl on the other side. I could pick other options too, like "just the girl" or "bamboo wall" etc etc. and it would simulate the feeling of that I remember ther being an awkward moment where I'm fucking the block and this guy comes over to talk to me.... so rude, right!? I dont remember what happens but I suppose I finished or got bored or something and left the room and the whole tower Got back in my car and drove away. I got lost AGAIN and drove off an incomplete highway, but this time I landed on the RIGHT highway, and left Fantasy Sexual North Korea....

I usually have crazy dreams like this but it's rare for me to remember them THIS vividly, enough to describe them in detail. I just HAD to share it with others.

I had this dream maybe 3 or 4 months ago, I can recall it far better than most of my other dreams. it was a very creepy, trance-like, dream and digging back into the imagery, I find myself with chilled bones. I'll do the best I can to out it into text, and I apologize for any typing errors, I'm pretty sleepy.

The dream started with me waking up on my bed, in my small, perfectly square, tile-floor, room. It was late, in the AM. This dream feels so real that I am completely unable to distinguish it from reality. I felt very clear-minded. It was after I arose from my bed and peered out to the moonlit windowed door in front of me, that I felt engulfed by an unexplainable urge to venture out of my door, towards the driveway. (Donnie Darko style) I open the door and close it behind me. I began to feel like it would be safer to get in the backseat of a car in the driveway. I have no clue why. Though, I continued on, trusting my gut feeling. Minutes after I find myself in the backseat of this car in our driveway, I glance to my right, towards the gravel parking place. My eyes find themselves upon an elephant like alien creature, long trunk, tusks, and grey skin. Only it stood on two legs, was built like a human but had a rather large head. It also grasped the hand of teddy bear, which hung from one arm.

This creature stared into my soul. Communicated with me which seemed to be telepathically. I couldn't determine if this creature was good or evil. Then, my little sister appears outside of the car and I roll the window down, she assures me over and over that it has good intentions. Which is weird coming her being only a child.

So I listen to her, and open the car door as the elephant is still gazing into my soul... The closer I walk towards it, the more I cannot stop walking forward. I lose control of my movement as my legs slowly venture forth.. Soon after with every step I feel the world around becoming bigger. I realize that I am shrinking, smaller and smaller with every step. My hand raises towards the elephants and I am now the size of the teddy bear, the elephants hands turn malevolent with long fingers that grip around my hand. The elephants ascends into the sky at warp speed, holding me like a dangling stuffed animal, it took me out of reality, it took me out of my body until all that existed of me was a ball of light. I felt like a soul ripped of my body in complete purgatory.

Then I awoke, in my bed for real this time, moonlight painting the window much too similar to that of my nightmare and cold chills kept attacking me when I would stare out of the windowed door I exited in my dream.

I hope you all enjoyed this. It was creepy.

It's like giving birth to freedom!

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