She was a horror writer, but one who didn't write of characters that belonged to her, and bastardized the characters of a writer who didn't agree with she did.  Her name was Alice Thompson, and she liked to write what they called slash fiction - the writer who she idolized was named Albert Joseph Poe. Though what she did was something Albert wouldn't approved of,  and some of the people who read his work sent her electronic mail saying what she did should not be done.  The images seen within the writing of Albert Poe was that of a technological horror but had elements of an era that was long forgotten or almost forgotten  -   a horror genre that had no way to be classified as such.  The thing that she overlooked  - the very strong detail that every person who read his work would know that he was a born again Christian.  She didn't care,  because she often read writers that are on the other end of the spectrum.     
           This continued for a few years  -   the fan fiction writer was in her late forties but the writer she idolized was in his mid 20s though had a mentality of someone who came from the old world because one of his correspondence was a horror writer that she absolutely hated with a passion, that writer wrote a style of horror that was similar to Frank Bellknap Long, R.L. Stine,  and Frank Perretti. Someone she knew about who openly voiced his opinions about writers who bastardize characters that are not their own. She ignored every electronic mail she received from other writers who speak up for the traditional style of horror saying, "Alice what you are doing is a disgrace to the horror genre;  find a different profession that suits you better." It figured as much because she did work at a fast food eatery,  she was a cashier for a McDonald's.
           Though the thing that she wanted to do was write but she wrote only fan fiction. The horror writer she read  though dropped out of college had a mastery of the genre that no one was able to match,  even when the writer writes of his dreams the horrors are written within the passage of time.  Though she didn't really understood why he wrote this way she liked what he wrote but continued to bastardize what she was doing with them.  She would brag about it to her friends and saying how she would make up these stories about writing it based off the characters of Albert Joseph Poe.  Though she didn't care what she did was an abomination in the eyes of God,  and the instant messages that she got from people who read her work on various fan fiction sites were quite pissed that she would do that to a writer that she had much respect for.  She was the practitioner of the blasphemy of nature,  shunned every bit of what Albert believed and basically refused to set foot in a church.  She wanted nothing to do with the church.  She is what the Christians called the Spirit of Sodom. The writer that she was bastardizing had a learning disability and a mental illness;  but when she send him an electronic email  -  he gave her a piece of mind,  "I read your work you did off what you did of mine.  Listen to me when I say this,  why do you even do that kind of work of something I never intended it to be?  If you are going to do that,  write it with another writer who agrees with that shit  -   don't do it with my creations.  It pisses me off when some little fan fiction writing hack  bastardizes what I wrote,  no matter what it is.. I hope what I say here lives within your nightmares.  No one should have the right to do that,  you are nothing more than a thief with a word processor."
           Alice didn't really understand what he meant by what he said,  "I hope what I say here lives within your nightmares."  It really bothered her,  but she didn't really know how much it bothered her though.  She was from the deep south,  New Orleans, to be accurate  while Albert was from the Midwest.  A very conservative town in Iowa,  and still lives there now.  Somewhere in Charles City, Iowa, though he wasn't always from Iowa. He grew up in Joliet, Illinois,  though his family moved out to Iowa when he was in high school.  The question in his mind was what he wrote   -  the motivations for writing it.  Some would say it is the same reason that Bram Stoker wrote,  that being one thing  -  -  revenge. There was something in his mind that always haunted him  -  even when they are written as they are.  That his damnation became in form of the illness that drives him to write what he wrote,  from the nightmares that Ms. Thompson openly bastardized.  It was on April 13,  1998, when the events that unfolded according to one of her younger siblings but what came about of this day would start as a minor system failure into what would become the nightmare that made her swear off writing.
           It was sometime about midnight when she decided to write another story off a title of his  - taking his beloved characters and making them into something they were never meant to be.  She ate too much from the tree of knowledge of good and evil within the Garden of Eden, and when she ate from the Garden they drove her into the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. As some would say  -  even her own brother would tell her not to write what she is doing especially since he knew that Albert Poe was a born-again Christian.  He saw the inspiration to write horror from the tracts written by Jack T. Chick,  some of the imagery would remind one of those tracts.  He knew of the horrors he wrote about first hand because of the time when was committed to the place called Five East.  He wrote more to keep his mine sane while he has to spend the rest of his life on disability   -  the horrors in his mind were written so he stayed sane,  but that was something a fast food worker as Ms. Thompson wouldn't even begin to understand.  The horrors she writes aren't even hers to begin with. That from his dreams he would see the skeletal bird staring back at him within a shadows that rise from the ashes of hell, and within the brimstone they would dwell within the tattered remains of his psyche.
         Alice would just sit there with her brother's computer and write without some kind of worry to her mind and in her online journal she would published this "writing." Each entry on that journal was in a sense of the way it is laid out   -  -   she started writing fan fiction right when Albert Poe appeared to on the internet in 1997,  so she had been reading him from the beginning. Though as she was writing the next paragraph of her story,  the computer screen began to flicker in and out without a warning it dies out.  She was using WordPerfect and a Windows 3.1 operating system.  "Shit, "  she said to herself, "His God must had something to do with this one.  Well it is getting late and must be getting some sleep  -   have to open the shop tomorrow at five in the morning."  She was looking at the clock thinking,  why did that computer go out on me  -  it cannot be something supernatural.  That cannot be because of what Albert Joseph Poe had mentioned  -   but then again I cannot be too sure though these days.  The words that Albert said to me via that electronic email seemed to be getting to me.  I have to find some sleeping pills so I can fall asleep.  I got a lot of e-mails like that but nothing like what he said.  It was almost if he had some kind of supernatural authority to it.  It must be the things that are going on inside my head but that is really starting to haunt me  -  -   nothing like that ever happened before.  Damn those Midwesterners.
          "I really must get some sleep,  I cannot let that 21 year old's words get to me like that.  I am almost twice his age.  I have been writing as long as he was but never had anyone get to me like that as he did.,"  she muttered to herself,  "those sleeping pills are taking effect and now I can get some sleep." 
          She began to dose off without a single worry until she began to dream.  "Awaken, "  the voice said to her.  She rose from her bed while the rest of her physical body was still asleep.  She didn't realize what was going on  -  until she was standing within  a darkness she cannot begin to fathom.  The voice said to her,  "Charon awaits."  He was clad in a long gray robe and smelled of burning sulfur.  He had a look to his face that lacked emotion,  "I am an Angel of God who overlooks those who had been sent to Damnation,  welcome to the place because you have done things with a man of God's work that shouldn't of been done." 
         "What do you mean?"  She asked with a terrified look to her face.  She didn't understand until she was walking within the gates of purgatory,  "I don't understand.  I am just a mere fast food worker who writes fan fiction. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. How could this even be my Judgement?"  She began to become even more terrified;  then she began to see if she was dreaming.  She kept thinking one of those tracts that were left at her place of work but couldn't understand why it was placed there.  But she kept seeing the lake of urine and feces;  one could not begin to describe the look of an absolute horror until she sees Albert Poe writing on his word processor  -   she becomes the subject of one of his stories.    "No,  this cannot be real  -  I am dreaming,  dear God,  let me be dreaming." 
          "Where is the Book of Life?"  The voice said,  "is her name in it?"  She began to grow even more terrified;  still in her nightgown she felt every creature in hell gnawing upon her flesh though there was nothing she was able to do about it. Then she started to see the rest of Sodom and Gomorrah stand before her in flames as she watched   -  -   slowly her body was becoming as Lot's wife was,  her nightmare was to suffer the death that Lot's wife suffered at the hand of God.  All the screams in the lake of piss and feces smothered her uttered screams of mercy;  the shades looked on and did nothing. They looked at her in the sense that she desecrated the writings from a man of God.  This was her fate for the blasphemy she did before God  -  the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost.  She saw him reading his Bible and prayed with his wife.  Then began to write more into the details of her fate,  "Albert,  no  -  don't write anymore.  What are you doing and why are you doing this to me?"   
          In Iowa,  Albert staring at the computer screen and continued to write what he was writing,  "How can I continue this one?  Honey,  do you have any ideas how I should write this story?  Since you are also a horror writer as well."
           "Albert  - let me take a look at this one," Patricia smiled,  "I  know."  She began laughing insanely when she started typing the next few paragraphs.
        "What are you doing,"  he said laughing. 
          "Turning the bitch into a pillar of salt. You remember the story about Lot's wife when they fled Sodom and Gomorrah.  His wife was concerned about everything they left behind,  ignored the angels warning and turned into a pillar of salt," Patricia responded.  She had this wicked grin on her face,  while she wrote the paragraphs,  Alice looked from below in Purgatory while she was being gnawed by all the creatures in hell.    No one could tell what they were writing from the glow of pixels was the hell that Alice Thomspon was suffering, the nightmare of damnation before her eyes  -   being shoved face first by a skeleton and a pitch fork within the lake of flames.  The water she was boiling in was not water at all but that of piss. 
          Albert responded with morbid laughter,  "Now I see why I married you,  the imagination you have is much more demented than mine will ever be.  It is going to be strange how the Pastor reads our work,  it is almost if it inspired a few of his sermons. Do you think that Ms. Thompson learned her lesson not to even begin to bastardize characters that didn't belong to her  - true she might be a fan of my work,  but what she did with my characters was just wrong in the eyes of God. I could only imagine what our pastor would of said to her if she got an email from him."
        "Honestly I had no problem with aspiring writers writing fan fiction off my work but when they do the things that she is doing with my characters,  that was just wrong,"  Albert said with a strong conviction to his voice.  His beloved wife smiled, "Albert, this is going to remind me a bit of that Jack T. Chick tract about the journalist who witnessed to that activist.  The  comment that the journalist said, ‘Don't you think that you are 5000 years too late?'  It was about him facing off with the modern day Sodomite.  Also this is going to remind me some of that tract about the woman in hell,  and her best friend was a Christian but did not share her faith."
        "I remember that one, "  Albert responded,  "it is a fortunate thing that our pastor does like gothic horror.  Though some of the other members of the church were not comfortable with what we write,  especially you.  Though it would be in the mind of them of what goes on  -  they saw the subject of mental illness as the great taboo." 
         "I could hear them talking up there but I cannot see what they are saying,  are they talking about me  -   if it pissed you off that much I apologize,"  Alice responded with a look of horror to her face,  "is this what you meant by your words giving me nightmares? You pulled me into a word world that would be said of the inferno by Dante. Am I alive or am I dead?"  She was able to still see her body sleeping in her bedroom above but she was not able to awaken.  Her body was numb to the touch as her brother,  Jacob, went in to check on her.  He tried to shake her,  "Alice,  are you there,  could you please wake up?"  Frightened by what he had in his mind,  franticly,  he called for the ambulance on the phone; "Yeah it is my older sister,  she won't wake up.  I cannot explain why she cannot wake up, but seems she's in a diabetic shock.  Could you get an ambulance over here.  I was trying to wake her up for work but she won't wake up."
          "Could this mean I am, "  she said with a frightened look in her eyes,  "dead? God   -   I cannot be dead. I had my entire life to look forward to, but I have to spend eternity in a lake of piss?  Is this what I get for what I did with characters of a favorite writer;  especially no matter someone would call it a blasphemy." 
            She kept looking at the EMTs trying awake her from the prison of flesh;  that in horror she sees them carry her body off to the hospital.  Spending the rest of eternity in a coma,  that would become the fate she was to suffer.  The words that Albert said to her basically got to her in her sleep,  that she has to spend the rest of her days within a fleshly coffin. Her death was not a psychical death but that of a spiritual one.  She was thinking,  I cannot be dead  -  -   dear God,  what have you done to me and why are you making me suffer like this?  Is this the fate of what happened in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah?  God let me wake up,  please,  I will swear off writing,  I didn't realize writing slash fiction was such an abomination before your eyes.  I never thought I would be the subject of someone's cerebral matter.
           Cerebral matter would be the subject of the mind that comes when someone has an imagination of this magnitude;  horror from the mind when the eyes of someone who suffers with bipolar allows the imagination to tell the story within the mind.  That from the bastardizing of a story written by one who is a Man of God that is as much of a blasphemy as committing a blasphemy of the Holy Ghost.  As the doctors looked over Alice Thompson  -   saying they are going to keep her tied to the machines even though her body is nothingmore than a coffin of skin. No one will remember her,  all she was to New Orleans was a mere fan fiction writer who was a glorified thief with a Windows 3.1 operating system and WordPerfect. She wrote without repentance,  and this would become the fate of her. A fate of damnation submerged in a lake of piss and fecal matter;  watching others of her kind burning within the lake of fire. The thing that Albert Joseph Poe said to her in that electronic email,  the words he said would become the fate of her  -  a damnation in hell as Charon awaits.

Nickolaus Pacione is the author of multiple short stories on various websites, he owns the website Writings From The Grave and writes for sites FictionPress.com and AuthorsDen. He's been published on downwarden.com, Temple of Dagon.com, and GothicUnderworld.com. His journal at diary-x is the first webjournal to get the HorrorFind.com freaken scary award. He sites H.P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and Frank Perretti as influences of what he does. He co-runs Web of Horror on yahoogroups and runs a message board of his own creation for writers of the old style of horror. He's devoted in looking for the younger talents in the horror genre. Especially since he knows there are many talented writers out there. He's tired of gothic.net ignoring them.