Eric Brooks, Author at WHUZZUP!

Ground Zero: My name is Maria

Posted on Wednesday September 4, 2002 by Eric Brooks

PREFACE: This was part of a series of true stories I compiled last year called “GROUND ZERO: THE UNTOLD STORIES“.

It’s not about the act. It’s not about the politics. It’s about the people affected by it. The events as seen through their eyes.

It’s still merely a .txt file in my hard drive. After the media basically ran September 11th to the ground (as I suspect they’ll do again in the next few weeks…) I felt people didn’t need this.

I also worried how people would take this particular story as there is more than enough real-life tragedy of the attacks in N.Y.C. and D.C. to fill a thousand lifetimes.

The following story is grim and horrific. Those easily upset may want to skip it.

It’s the “fictional” story of a woman buried alive when the towers collapsed. The sights, the sounds… the terror.

I put “fictional” in quotes… because I sometimes wonder, given my connection with the other side. I wrote this in Mid-October 2001… when the screams of the long-dead still haunted my dreams. I was possessed. My fingers couldn’t stop writing.

When I finished, a woman’s voice whispered “thank you” behind me.
I didn’t bother to turn around. I knew I wouldn’t see anyone.

I feel it’s time for her story to be told….
Continue reading “Ground Zero: My name is Maria”

Weird phone call day

Posted on Tuesday September 3, 2002 by Eric Brooks

Well, it’s official… Skarlet is my first official ping for her “Weird Phone calls“.

Only three people in the entire country *DIDN’T* know yesterday was a National Holiday…

…and they *ALL* seemed to find her.

I do believe today’s message came darn close though. It was anonymous left to our editor, which I had to hear in case the story ran on the web. It involves the closing of a chain of stores and the photo had an employee crying at the prospect of losing her job:

The phone call:
“I can’t believe you put a BLACK WOMAN on your front page!!! I swear to God, I’ll never buy your paper again if you don’t remember that WHITE PEOPLE come first…. those goddamn Blacks are ruinin’ everything here!!!”

Of course my only response was “well, a ‘heil hitler’ to you too, sir!”, followed by much laughter and jokes involving generations of inbreeding by our staff.

We will miss his patronage… as well as “Mr. Bunker’s” wit and wisdom.

Aw hell, we were also called “Socialists” in the “Letters to the Editors” page today, because we all think Ashcroft is a totalitarian asswipe (my words, not the papers. I’m paraphrasing.)

The phone call was anonymous, of course.
And if it makes a difference to anyone out there, the woman was Puerto Rican, not Black. I know her.

Welcome to 1950’s Mississippi.
*pops alka seltzer, yet still can’t control the giggling over stoopidity*

Message from Astaroth, Supreme Ruler of Anarchtica

Posted on Monday September 2, 2002 by Eric Brooks

Your absolute ruler, Astaroth...FEAR HIM!!!

(Transmitted from the near future – 2068 AD)

My loyal subjects…
From this day forth, you are hereby ORDERED to ignore the dangerous rantings of the one known as Ezrael. He has been deemed a threat to our society, and his words dare to challenge our way of life here in our dark realm.

Surely you remember him as the mortal prophet known as Matt Rossi. Six decades ago, he had written a rant entitled: America, you will be rounded up and shot. You wisely ignored his words back then.

Your broken and terrified people gladly surrendered your useless freedoms in exchange for a government given carte blanche to overrun the world as they saw fit. They played on your fears and issued the false promise that you would one day have those so-called “freedoms” back…

MORTAL FOOLS!!!!
That is the time I, and my hellish demonic army of trolls, began to plan our conquering of your world…

World War Three, and the devastation that followed, was a great source of amusement to us. You thought you knew suffering then… you knew nothing!!! We threw your entire world in chains after that… and now you finally know happiness.

Because we have told you it is so.

What good has ever come out of liberty anyway? Various global changes like your American Revolution? The end of Apartheid in South Africa? The end of a divided Germany where an attempt to cross a wall meant death at the hands of your captors? What manner of foolishness is this anyway? You gave it all up when you surrendered to your fears. Now you are safely wrapped in my iron fist… where none dare to challenge me.

You brought this on to yourselves, foolish mortals…
Ignore the foolish rantings of the false prophet Ezrael…
Our plans have already been set to motion…

There is no hope.
There is no future.
There is only the glory of Anarchtica.

Your Supreme Ruler.
A S T A R O T H

When love hurts (sometimes even kills)

Posted on Monday September 2, 2002 by Eric Brooks

Well, much to my surprise, the conversation of violence against women is still going on here on this site…

It’s an important topic.
You know, I may be a guy. And I may not be an expert.
But I *do* have very strong feelings about the subject.

I try very hard to understand how a person gets to look upon their spouse as a “possession” rather than a “partner”.

Worse yet… when does one cross the line between love and hate? Is it insecurity? Is it guilt over their own infidelity? Is it obsession? Is it a sense of being “incomplete” in and of themselves? Is it an upbringing where there’s no repect for women?

I know this sounds kind of slanted… I mean, there are such things as “battered husbands”, but I kinda laugh at those guys. I shouldn’t, but I do.

The question of the day is: What makes a person love someone one day, then want to hurt them the next?

Things I wont be doing at work no more

Posted on Sunday September 1, 2002Thursday November 17, 2005 by Eric Brooks

Since I’ve been asked nicely by the powers that be, I will no longer…

Walk in singing “Cuban Pete“, and try to start a conga line with the sales staff.
Talk to my “imaginary friend” in the lunch room. See, it’s a vicious cycle. No one wants to sit with me… I wanna talk to someone, but now they’re claiming this is why they dont….
Ask about “the office weirdo”. Everyone keeps saying we have one, but I’ve never seen him/her.
Ignore my phone. I keep forgetting, I’m not home.
Tell everyone taking a smoke break on the loading dock how easy it would be for someone to drive by and mow us all down with Mack-11’s

I’ll be good from now on. I swear.

I guess I owe you an explaination…

Posted on Sunday September 1, 2002 by Eric Brooks

Why are you such a self-absorbed, evil, hateful, arrogant, spiteful little prick?
I’m an only child?

Why can’t you talk about the…?
Because I can’t. All my friends were privately emailed about what’s happened.
Drop it, okay?

You mean it didn’t…?
No. it didn’t.

Why did you leave Surreally?
I love kd with all my heart, and I owe her the world for so many things. I hate seeing her stuck in the middle every time I decide have, uh, fun. She has a business to run, and having a guy that feels the internet is his litterbox there is not a good thing for it.

Truth be told, I was simply planning on finishing out the rest of my sentence offline (hey, it’s only another 5 months…). Next thing I know, Faith and Patti had a spot set up for me.

Not sure if I’m up to blogging again… not that it’s ever stopped me before.

Are you gonna stay at *this spot* for a while?
It would appear so… but don’t look for daily updates, okay?

What’s it like being dead?
Very abstract… like a weird dream. Sometimes, I turn around and look out the window. Sometimes the window isn’t there. It’s very, very cold too. Like permanent Autumn.
Continue reading “I guess I owe you an explaination…”

Mutilated by her husband

Posted on Saturday August 31, 2002Friday June 3, 2011 by Eric Brooks

oh. my. God.
(Don’t click that link if you have a weak stomach.)

“Holding her captive, Iqbal accused Parveen of having an affair. Parveen insisted that she had never been unfaithful to him, but Iqbal didn’t listen. Instead, he gagged her, bound her feet and hands and hung her upside down from the ceiling. As he beat her with a wooden ax handle, blood began to drip from her arms and legs….”

“Then Iqbal, a barber by profession, traded his ax for a razor. He cut off the lower lobes of her ears, then sliced her nose at the base. ‘He next used a metal rod to poke out my eyes,’ she continues, ‘and then put his finger inside each socket to make sure nothing was left.’… “

She had her eyes gouged out, the base of her nose and her earlobes cut off… all because her husband accused her of having an affair, to which he did he never provided a shred of evidence.

It’s called “Honor Killings” or “Honor Violence”. An all too common practice in places like Pakistan. It mainly goes unreported, and the offenders are rarely punished.

In the case of what Mehmood Iqbal did to his wife, he was given 14 years… which is considered a “life sentence”. Amnesty International was surprised he was even convicted.

“Though Parveen [the wife who was mutilated] rarely ventured outside, when she did, she often overheard people wondering aloud what she had done to deserve the way she looked.”

As always, it’s “what did the victim do to deserve this”… right?
Somebody tell me what century are we living in again?
(Via Rachel Lucas)