The Backstage Pass is becoming a bit of an online literary magazine of sorts. How exciting! We have and editorial, regular columns, and story serials. Why, I do believe all we are missing is a Letters to the Editor section! Which we would love to setup. However, our inbox remains empty. So, no Letters section for the time being 😭
There is still plenty to enjoy without a Letters to the Editor to peruse. House continues, as our protagonist leaves the house to find sustenance; our elder vampire is no longer alone as he thaws out a youngling in A Vampire’s Vengeance; we dive into cosmic horror in this week’s classic horror presentation, The Shambler From the Stars; and with Halloween only a week away, we revisit some cinematic classics that have spread the horror genre out into various avenues. Let’s get into it →
⚠️ HEAVY CONSTRUCTION AHEAD ⚠️
There remains quite a bit of focus and attention on revamping, rebuilding, and augmenting the current carnival infrastructure. We have the scaffolding raised for the Carnival Records plugin, a vital piece of infrastructure we will use to maintain clear records of attractions in development, articles, columns, and other editorial elements that make the Carnival of Calamity possible. Just because the stories are calamitous doesn’t mean our backend processes ought to be!
The main focus this week with regard to building this plugin is hammering out all the little issues in the development of the Carnival Network to get every story vault talking to one another. Why is this important when instead you could have more horny vampires? Or, well, some horny vampires. You haven’t read about the horny ones yet. Shit, this is a tangent, back to the network. Why is a Carnival Network important? Why, for posterity! And well documented backups. If the Carnival of Calamity ever burns to the ground, rebuilding it will be simple.
Until much of this work is complete, I fear it may be some time before more attractions can be built. Still, we have much to share with you backstage, so dive in and enjoy the articles and columns below.
Our protagonist investigates a lack of delivery services to the house. This house can’t be that bad, can it?
The interrogation continues! Let’s see how our vampires fare:
I do believe this is the first cosmic horror story we’re sharing here! How exciting. Please enjoy this presentation of The Shambler From the Stars:
There’s a lot of love for some of the horror classics. The Exorcist, Poltergeist, and others hold special places in our hearts, being the predecessors for modern paranormal horror. In this same vein, classic slashers remain popular. But have they survived the test of time, or is their notoriety based solely in their place in history?
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The gift of time is, for many, an incredible gift indeed. Unless, of course, it is not a gift at all and arrives with a cost in excess of what one may be willing to pay …A tale from the Odds ‘n’ Endings Boutique.
Our bus driver had themselves an existential crisis when we last rode with him. The responsibility of his part in the whole scheme weighed heavily on him. If you have yet to catch up, you can read the details of his heavy moment here. Despite this, they travel on. What will they find up ahead? Let’s find out.
The merry band of passengers fell silent as the miles passed. The bus driver, lost in his world of realization and acceptance, did nothing to stimulate conversation. The highway wound north, angling toward the east. They were approaching the pass that would take them up, over, and through the mountains bordering the region to the north. Once through, they would course through the high desert before arriving at their first stop.
The high desert was where they would most likely make their first contact with larger groups of infected. The bus was built to withstand swarms to some degree, but this knowledge did little to curb the rising anxiety in the bus driver. First, the anxiety of leaving the compound. Next, the fear of encountering a Wanderer. Then the acceptance of the burden of responsibility. And now the realization of how much trouble might lie ahead, a realization born out of its growing reality, rather than some ephemeral idea of what existed far beyond the compound walls.
Sure, Wanderers could call a swarm in urban centers. But these were few, far between, and easily dispersed with the mechanisms urban survivors had cultivated to deal with these situations. The bus driver recalled a training module where the compound militia had funneled a swarm through a narrow corridor and into an alley. He and a few others were at the other end, masked and layered, with spiked baseball bats and sledge hammers. It was their job to see to it that no infected made it out of the alley. This was basic survival training for everyone in the compound.
But it was controlled. If you failed and even one infected shot past you, snipers were ready to take it down. If your resolve failed, specialists were standing by to pull you out. You were then reenlisted for the same exercise until you learned to steel your nerves and deal with the threat. Those who performed well in these exercises were recommended for the guard. Everyone else found their place in the safety of the compound.
Guards learned how to effectively manage swarms before they became a threat to the settlement. But even they would balk at managing swarms in wide open spaces. Defense in rural or desert areas was something completely different and not much discussed. The bus driver wondered what it looked to have to defend a homestead or waystation. He didn't much like the thought of it. Just imagining being pressed on all sides by hundreds of infected left him feeling claustrophobic. The steel door to his right didn't help matters. He tried to turn his thoughts to other things.
An explosion went up to their left. It was far enough away to cause little disturbance to their travel, but still loud enough to capture everyone's attention. From his vantage, the bus driver could see very little on the ground but was able to guess what was happening. The regular reports of rifles spread out around the area suggested a swarm had been called and was in the process of being dispersed. This was not uncommon, as earlier survivors had learned the necessity in eliminating infected wherever and however possible. No one knew how it happened, but the infected appeared to multiply on their own. Here was yet another cause for concern as they moved further away from the walls of the compound. Once they crossed over the mountains, there would be no regular drills to whittle down the infected population.
The rifle bursts began slowing down, sounding like popcorn when it is just about finished popping. The passengers rubbed their hands together as they left the mayhem behind, a symbolic gesture of providing support to those involved in the dispersal, and also a touch superstitious, as if by acknowledging this effort, they hope to encourage more of it. The bus driver didn't want to take both hands from the wheel, and so rubbed his chest in solidarity with the passengers. Then the moment was over, and all of the thoughts pummeling the bus driver returned along with their resident anxiety. He wondered what was worst, dealing with a clear and present danger, or imagining the worst of what you might encounter.
The bus driver wasn't sure he wanted to find out.
Well we haven’t seen any of the wonderfully horrific things the bus driver has touched on throughout the past few chapters, and it would be in the bus driver’s best interest if we never came across them. However, that would make for quite a boring story, don’t you think? There are rumors of infected out in the desert that have drawn my own curiosity, and yours as well, perhaps. Too bad for our bus driver; he and his passengers will come face to face with cosmic horror sooner or later.
Oops! I have said too much. If you want to know more, you’ll simply have to return next week!
Phew! Here is quite a bit to consume! And there’s a little bit for everybody. I do hope you found something worthwhile to engage with. The stories are developing and you’re watching attractions being raised right before your very eyes, and we here at the Calamity are so desirous of your being entertained by it all! Please, we would love to hear from you. Reply to this email or use the buttons below to send us a message and tell us a story, or what you think of the Backstage Pass, or what you’d like to see in the Backstage Pass, or anything really. Just talk to us. Please. We’re begging you.
Cordially,
Mad Alex
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