The original entry

Emily and I began out month long stint at The Haunted Mansion.

Years after you cease to be an actor for them, they begin to pay them. Headless Horseman always paid their staff, but what can you do? It was fun, and you liked improv enough to start a club for it in high school, as well as Halloween being the most intoxicating season. Some people go ga-ga for Christmas, but you hardly ever get to scream at people over eggnog and have them smile back.

It was where Jen and my relationship began.

With both of you cheating on others.

Who could have imagined forcing hormonal teens and twenty-somethings together in the dark, unobserved seclusion for hours at night would induce kissing and fondling?

It's a real mystery.

It is where Kate and my relationship ended.

It ended in Kate's bedroom when you wouldn't assume a parental role in her life over smoking a pipe (and because, more than likely, she had done other things you do not want to know about that you would not have been mature about). It was the same time of year, but it is a stretch to conflate the two.

I will, of course, exposition and explain about the Mansion's history in detail soon. However, it doesn't do well as a storyteller to reveal everything all at once, now does it? Suspense and the like.

Kurt Vonnegut would say otherwise. One gives the reader as much information as possible upfront and starts the story as close to the end as possible.

I do not know what constitutes the end of your story besides your death, which is not a conclusion for which I am especially eager. Instead, we can say that you tell a series of interlocking stories. That doesn't absolve you from dangling obscured information, thinking it is suspenseful. That's cheap. Give your readers more credit.

She combed her very curly hair out into a straw-like mess (which, gods help me, I thought was attractive) and chanted in a high-pitched voice, "Dead man, dead man." The girl is a natural.

She is a pip.

I lost many pictures in a hard drive crash, but I remember a few of her like this.

but one must take into account that I had no need of speech and creativity, the very things that make me an asset to the mansion.

You are a warm body willing to work for free for around sixteen hours every weekend.

You are on the same level as the drooling teens you complain about in this entry.

Twenty groups in, the original actor came in, laughed at me, stated he sweated his ass of in the costume, grabbed his soda and left to go back to hanging out with his friends on the FrighTrail.

I'm not saying you shouldn't hate them, though.

we are volunteers. Thus, anyone in the groups annoying us is truly a prick by virtue that they are harassing volunteers. That is like heckling a Salvation Army Santa.

Don't harass any volunteers (and I think the Santas might get paid), but the Salvation Army advocates against the humanity of people you love now or will. So, not your best example.

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Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.