Lauren Chen and the realities of OnlyFans

Conservative YouTuber Lauren Chen has made a worthwhile video about the realities of OnlyFans, the much-hyped autoporning website.

In many ways, OnlyFans is nothing new. Amateur porn sites are as old as the Internet. Cam sites appeared as soon as the bandwidth was sufficient. Before the Internet, there were 1-900 phone sex lines.   

But these things were always confined to isolated subcultures. And while the mainstream media may have occasionally reported on their existence, there was none of the cheerleading that surrounds the OnlyFans phenomenon.

Watch Lauren Chen’s video. She spends a little too much time going on about how appalled she is by sex work of any kind. (Yes, Virginia, conservatives engage in virtue-signaling, too.) But she highlights some stark numbers.

To be in the top one percent of OnlyFans creators essentially means that you make about as much as an average fast food worker. And you do this at the cost of starring in an online library of nude photos and videos. These will exist forever, and can be dredged up by blackmailers, jealous partners, and snooping acquaintances at any time.

The stratospheric OnlyFans numbers are for celebrities, and perhaps a handful of outliers. But what about those outliers? You’ve seen the headlines: “Nurse quits her job to make $20K per month on OnlyFans!”

Chen doesn’t mention this, but the handful of woman-next-door outliers are largely self-reported, or rather, journalist-reported. Are liberties taken with the truth? Well, what do you think?

To be clear, I’m not here to make the case for censorship, but rather for awareness. The mainstream media is selling one narrative (instant riches on OnlyFans await!). The reality is something else. (You probably won’t make much money, and you’ll create numerous liabilities for yourself that will last as long as the Internet.)

-ET

Bare minimum Monday may come back to bite you

Bare minimum Monday is the latest thing on the Internet—especially TikTok, that wellspring of youthful oversharing. 

Bare minimum Monday means what it sounds like: doing the bare minimum at work (especially office jobs) on Mondays. 

Slacking on the job at certain times of the week is nothing new, of course. And it isn’t limited to Gen Z white-collar workers. During the 1970s and 1980s, the prevailing wisdom was that you didn’t want to purchase a UAW-made automobile that rolled off the assembly line on Monday or Friday.

But Generation Z seems to be putting its own spin on the concept, to the cheerleading of the mainstream media. CNN gushes that younger workers are using “’bare minimum Monday’ as a form of self-care”. 

So goldbricking has now become yet another version of seeking safe spaces and avoiding microaggressions. Just what the younger generation needed: yet another reason for older folks (who still do most of the hiring) to perceive them as effete, fragile, and incompetent.

Of course, there has never been a shortage of 40- and 50-somethings who believe that the younger generation is leading the world straight to perdition. I’m from the original “slacker” generation: Generation X. When I joined the so-called “adult world” as a newly minted college graduate in 1991, I endured the subtle jabs of older colleagues and bosses who quipped that “young people nowadays just don’t know how to put in a full day’s work”. And that was more than 30 years ago.  Continue reading “Bare minimum Monday may come back to bite you”

A crime novel that came from a casino visit

One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)

I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak. 

(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )

Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.

My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?

What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead. 

All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?

That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.

Watch the Venetian Springs trailer below.

View Venetian Springs on Amazon.

Read the first 8 chapters of Venetian Springs here on Edward Trimnell Books.

Wishtender: a paypig and his money are soon parted

WishTender was trending on Twitter this morning. It’s a new app that allows online “content creators” to ask “fans” for gifts.

But not just any content creators and not just any fans. You probably won’t find your favorite indie rock band using the site. And if you’re a writer thinking about WishTender…stick with Patreon instead.

Certain hashtags were predominant in the WishTender Twitter thread: #paypig, #findom, #footfetish, etc. If some of those terms are unfamiliar to you, I’ll let you do the Googling. But you probably get the general idea.

During the COVID lockdowns, there were numerous stories about enterprising women making millions by autoporning on OnlyFans. Sex—or the mere hint of it—sells, in case you haven’t heard. One young lady, an adult content creator who posts under the nom de guerre of Amouranth, claimed to have made $2 million in a single month.

A former pretzel store worker told the New York Post that she makes $99K per month posting risqué photos online. She quit her job after making $20,000 during her first month on OnlyFans.

On one hand, I’m skeptical of such claims; but we can assume that the OnlyFans millionaires who make the news are the outliers. No one asserts that all OnlyFans content creators make this kind of money. I’m sure it takes persistence, and more than a little luck.

And then there’s the target audience to consider. Many men are easily led around by their…noses…when placed in the presence of a woman they find attractive. Even a virtual presence. And it’s sooo easy to spend money online. I can’t visit Amazon without finding at least two or three things that I absolutely need.

WishTender takes the digital sex panhandling economy to yet another level. Here one can make a naked (pun fully intended) exhortation for anonymous Internet saps to send them stuff. “Get your Prada/groceries/coffee funded by your fans” the site promises its users.

This is all perfectly legal, and it should be. If there are people (almost exclusively men, one can assume) who are that eager to be “paypigs” and “findoms” to strangers, more power to the content creators who are raking in the cash…and designer shoes.

But I can’t help wondering: at what point does this particular sector of the online economy reach its saturation point, especially when you consider the likelihood that the broader economy will slow down in 2023?

But then…silly me. I’m forgetting the gullibility that arises when you combine (some) men with photos of attractive women they’ll never meet, and the ease of spending money online. There are no doubt men out there who will prioritize the purchase of digital porn over food.

Southern Ohio’s Dead Man’s Curve

Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve

The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.

According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.

Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.

Creepy, right?

Yeah, I think so, too….

Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)

That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes loose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.

In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes. 

As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.

But it wasn’t.

In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.

Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night. 

Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.

Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?

I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.

I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?

Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!

***

Hey!…While you’re here: I wrote a novel about a haunted road in Ohio. It’s called Eleven Miles of Night. You can start reading the book for FREE here on my website, or check out the reviews on Amazon.

You can also start reading my other two novels of the supernatural in Southern Ohio: Revolutionary Ghosts and 12 Hours of Halloween. 

Check out my FREE short stories, too….many of them have macabre elements.

And stop back soon! I add content to this website every day!

An American trapped in North Korea

New trailer for: THE CONSULTANT

A lone American, kidnapped and taken to North Korea. He has one objective: escape!

A story ripped from the headlines, and immersed in the deadly politics of North Korea.

A thriller for fans of Tom Clancy, James Clavell, and Dale Brown. A riveting story about an ordinary man who is forced to take on the most evil regime on earth!

**View on Amazon**

Memorial Day, 2022

Today is Memorial Day 2022. This is the day when we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom.

But that’s not all it is, of course. The Memorial Day weekend is also the beginning of the summer travel season. When I was in school, I especially looked forward to the Memorial Day holiday because it was usually the last weekend of the academic year. The gateway to three months of freedom from homework, tests, and sitting in stuffy classrooms in a Catholic school uniform. 

It’s fine to have other associations with Memorial Day. No one can be solemn and reverent all the time. But it would be worthwhile to spend at least a few moments today thinking about the dead of Iwo Jima, of D-Day, of Bastogne. 

Russia’s immoral, bloody attack on Ukraine reminds us that there are still evil men, and still people willing to follow evil men. All the more reason to appreciate those who gave their lives, so that we can enjoy pool parties and car trips on Memorial Day.

The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, 1977

Yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, one of Cincinnati’s historic tragedies. On May 28, 1977, 165 people perished in a fire in Southgate, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Most of the dead were youngish adults in their twenties and thirties. Many were parents of children my age.

This tragedy strikes somewhat close to home for me, even though it was a long time ago, and even though I didn’t actually lose anyone. 

My parents, as chance would have it, were supposed to be there that night. My mom wanted to see John Davidson perform. 

This is not as noteworthy a coincidence as it might seem. In the late 1970s, entertainment options were not what they are now. An appearance by a star like John Davidson, at a local venue, was quite the event.

In the end, my parents decided not to go. They did not have premonitions of doom. There were no omens. Something mundane simply came up, preventing them from going. Two of my parents’ acquaintances did go, though, and they died in the fire. 

Tragedy directly struck a girl in my third grade class. Both of her parents, just thirty-two years old, died in the fire. The girl was in our class the Friday before the Memorial Day holiday. On the following Tuesday, she was not there. 

She was subsequently raised by relatives. None of us ever saw her again. I have, though, seen her appear in local television interviews as an adult. She was interviewed about a decade ago, on one of the annual observances of the grim May 28 anniversary. 

There were lawsuits over the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, of course. The litigation went on for years. It remains a blight on the history of this area, and will likely remain so, until the last survivors and the last children of the dead are gone.

There have been various explanations for the fire, too, from faulty wiring to arson. The latter supposedly involved the Sicilian mafia, which used to have a significant presence in Cincinnati. This theory remains unproven.

Most of the people who now commemorate the tragedy each year are adults in their fifties and sixties who lost parents that night. Also, some of the actual survivors, who are now in their seventies and eighties.

I had a happy childhood and wonderful parents. If my parents had gone to the Beverly Hills Supper Club as planned, my early years might have been very different. My life would be different today, for that matter.

Each year at this time, I count my blessings, and remember how fragile we are. All of us. 

Happy Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day: some words of wisdom from Mr. T, that actor and cultural icon from the 1980s.

(Mr. T. actually did say this in an interview sometime in the 1980s, by the way, when the interviewer slyly asked him if he was too much of a tough guy to care about his mother.)

Happy Mother’s Day to all of my readers who are mothers. If your mother is still alive and you have a relationship with her, be sure to give her a call today, at the very least!

Trick-or-treat hours, HOA shenanigans, and my Halloween 2021 report

Halloween 2021 went fairly well in my part of the world, with pleasantly warm weather (and the departure of an extended pattern of rain that left the Cincinnati area just in time).

I live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association, or HOA. The HOA is a Sovietized institution that is always meddlesome, and occasionally a creative outlet for aspiring Stalins and Pol Pots. Participation in the administration of an HOA is voluntary, and tends to draw personality types who don’t like minding their own business. 

The parents in my HOA got together this year and voted to extend trick-or-treat hours for one hour beyond the 6 pm to 8 pm time frame designated by the local government. (Another thing about HOAs: they regularly mistake themselves for governments.) So trick-or-treat in my neighborhood was set at three hours this year, lasting from 5 pm to 8 pm.

I thought this was unnecessary, but you have to pick your battles in this world. I went along without any outward grumbling. I enjoyed Halloween as a kid (a theme I explore in my novel 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN), and I don’t begrudge today’s children the pleasure of trick-or-treating.

But three hours of trick-or-treating turned out to be more hours on foot than the average child or parent in my neighborhood could handle. The net result of the time extension was that everyone in the neighborhood went trick-or-treating from 5 pm till 7 pm, and the streets were empty during the hour from 7 till 8.

The ambitious members of my HOA at work…

Speaking of parents and Halloween: I have written before of the downside of helicopter parenting; but there is one upside which I must acknowledge: less youthful mischief on October 31. During my youth in the 1970s and 1980s, Halloween was basically a free-for-all, with kids running wild. Sometimes they victimized homeowners with vandalism, and other kids with bullying.

There seems to be much less of that nowadays, at least in my pleasant suburban part of the world. Change is rarely all good or all bad. It almost always involves a series of tradeoffs, with some things getting better, and some things getting worse. 

Horror fiction: sharks in the Ohio River

I have had a lifelong fascination with—and dread of—sharks.

I have also been a lifelong resident of southern Ohio, a region that borders the Ohio River. As I type these words, the Ohio River is but a short drive from here. (I could walk there, in fact.)

A few years back, I started reading news reports about bull sharks turning up in the Mississippi River. The Ohio River, though far to the north, connects to the Mississippi.

I got to wondering: what if there were sharks in the Ohio River?

Hey, what if?

The result was the short story, “By the River”, which you can read for free here on Edward Trimnell Books.

“By the River” is one of the stories in my 2011 collection, Hay Moon & Other Stories.

The Maze: Chapter 2

Approximately one hour later, they arrived at their destination, about five miles south of the Columbus metro area. It wasn’t what Evan had expected.

The scenery here was still rural. There were plenty of cornfields, high and dark green in their late summer lushness. On the far, flat horizon, Evan could see a scattering of barns, and even a grain silo.

Following the directions generated by the Camry’s GPS system, Evan guided the car off the interstate at the designated exit.

“Is this it?” Evan asked, doubtful.

“This is it,” Hugh affirmed.

In the rearview mirror, Evan saw Amanda glance up at him, mildly annoyed.

The exit took them around a long, sloping curve that dead-ended in a two-lane highway. The android voice of the GPS told Evan to turn right.

“That’s Lakeview Towers over there,” Hugh said, pointing in that direction. Evan made the right turn; and as the Camry traversed the rural highway and crested a small hill, the office complex called Lakeview Towers came into view.

The glass-plated, ultramodern architecture looked more than a little out-of-place here in the middle of the Ohio countryside. True to its name, Lakeview Towers consisted of four towers that must have been ten or twelve stories high. The towers were connected by a series of shorter segments that were perhaps three stories in height each.

“It’s big,” Evan observed.

“Yes,” Hugh said. “It’s big.”

Evan kept driving.

How many office suites would there be in Lakeview Towers? Hundreds, at least. A lot of space to rent this far south of Columbus, Evan thought.

They continued to approach at about thirty miles per hour. Lakeview Towers seemed to grow even larger as it drew closer.

This was only an optical illusion, Evan decided. Down at the exit, the structure had been partially obscured by the topography. As they came upon the entrance to the main parking lot, though, Evan found himself growing more impressed by the scale of the office complex. The morning sunlight glinted off the glass-plated columns.

Evan saw a massive shadow pass over one of the glass columns. It was fleeting—as if something huge were flying by overhead.

He looked up through the Camry’s windshield. A shadow that large could only have been cast by a low-flying airplane.

Or a very, very large bird.

But Evan saw nothing unusual in the blue sky above the two-lane access road.

The shadow came from a cloud, he concluded.

Returning his attention to the road, Evan turned into the parking lot. The immaculately manicured “campus” (as it was now trendy to call corporate facilities) was filled with plenty of green space between the parking areas. A pair of artificial ponds dominated the weed-free lawn opposite the main entrance. In the middle of each pond was a water jet.

Evan also noticed a small gaggle of white geese distributed between the two bodies of water. This was a good place for the birds, he figured: There would be no hunters to disturb them here.

Had a goose cast that shadow? Evan wondered. No. Impossible. No way a goose could throw a shadow like that.

Then he recalled what he had concluded: The shadow had been cast by a puffy white cumulus cloud. There were plenty of those in the sky today.

Fortunately, there were plenty of open parking spaces, too. Evan found a space located reasonably close to the main entrance, adjacent to the two ponds, and parked.

Before killing the engine, he looked at the dashboard clock: It was 8:37 a.m. They had time to spare before the appointment, even with factoring in the time needed to set up the projector for the PowerPoint presentation.

Evan stepped out of the car, then leaned down to smooth his tie and his white dress shirt in the driver’s side exterior mirror. The right breast of the shirt bore a monogrammed “MSS”, and the logo for Merlesoft Software Systems—a generic computer motif.

Hugh and Amanda exited the vehicle as well. Finding the key fob in his pocket, Evan pressed the button that opened the trunk automatically. He reached down to lift the projector out of the trunk.

That was when Amanda pounced.

***

“Did you remember to include a slide containing the timeline of the four quotations we submitted?” Amanda asked, not quite casually.

Evan stared back at her, nonplussed. He had remembered everything, or so he had thought. He had spent hours preparing the PowerPoint slides, and additional hours preparing himself to deliver a flawless sales presentation.

But he had not thought to include a slide depicting the timeline of the quotations.

He could easily imagine what Amanda wanted: A visual representation not only of the successive changes in pricing, but also something that summarized the technical change points. This would demonstrate how Merlesoft had recommended cost-effective changes to the original specifications provided by Rich, Litchfield, and Baker.

It wasn’t a bad idea; but it was the one thing he hadn’t thought of—and the one thing that Amanda saw fit to remember, less than thirty minutes before game time.

“No, Amanda,” he said, pausing with his hand on the handle of the projector’s carrying case. “I didn’t think to include a slide showing the timeline of the quotations we submitted.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Evan realized that he had delivered them flippantly. This hadn’t been his intention. He had meant to express the idea of, “I see what you’re getting at, but no—I forgot!

That admission would be bad enough; it would add to the long list of black marks against him. This was a list that Amanda Kearns maintained, he was certain, in one form or another.

But now it was clear that Amanda perceived his words as a challenge to her authority, the one infraction that any manager at Merlesoft despised more than anything else.

“Don’t think that I don’t hear the resentment in your voice, Evan. I wouldn’t have to ask you this sort of thing, if only you would think of it yourself.”

Evan felt a wave of anger and resentment suddenly surge through him. Amanda was addressing him as if he were a slacker, a ne’er-do-well. The truth was that he had thought of many things. He just hadn’t thought of that particular thing—the one thing that she had chosen to ask about.

And in all the sales presentations prior to this one, he had never prepared a visual timeline of the quotations. Early quotations, in fact, were generally regarded as irrelevant. Final sales presentations usually focused on the most current quotation.

He now saw what Amanda was doing to him: She was using the process of elimination to trip him up. She had rigged the game so that he would inevitably lose it. There was no way for him to win in a situation like this.

Finally his temper snapped. “Do you want me to create the slide right now? I have my laptop computer back here.”

“Evan,” she replied with an air of calm superiority. “We both know that there’s no time for you to do that, when we have to meet with the client in a matter of minutes. My point was that it should have been done earlier.”

That was when Hugh intervened.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said, gently squeezing Evan’s arm and interposing himself between Amanda and him. “There’s no time now, buddy. She’s right about that. Let’s just focus on doing the best we can with the presentation we’ve got now. We can talk about next time later on. As it stands right now, we’re going to be on in about fifteen minutes.”

Evan nodded silently, allowing himself to be mollified by Hugh.

Amanda, too, allowed this to be the last word about the matter—for now. (There would doubtless be further recriminations later—especially if an order from Rich, Litchfield, and Baker failed to materialize.) Evan noted (and not for the first time) that Amanda sometimes allowed Hugh to exert a subtle form of authority, as long as he didn’t step on her toes in the process.

Loaded up with gear and presentation materials, they walked toward the double doors that formed the front entrance of the Lakeview Towers office complex. Evan could see their reflections bobbing in the glass face of the building.

He again recalled the vague warning that Hugh had given him while they were sitting in the McDonald’s—or the warning that Hugh had tried to give him.

And then something else happened.

***

Evan saw a reflection in the glass of the front entranceway. The reflection was distorted by the glass, the sunlight, and the angle; but it was unmistakably there.

And it was very close to the three of them.

It was a large, winged beast—not quite a bird, and not quite a mammal or a reptile. A brown-toned monstrosity that might have been covered with fur, or maybe with scales.

It flew behind and past them near ground level. In that fraction of an instant, Evan discerned a tapered snout filled with long, jagged teeth. A stout body topped by two batlike wings.

And then, behind the beast, a long tail, twitching back and forth as the creature swooped low toward the earth.

A second later, it was gone.

Evan whirled around, nearly dropping the load in his arms. He clutched the projector just as it was about to slip away from him.

When turned around, Amanda looked straight at him.

“Something wrong, Evan?”

There was plenty wrong. That had been no ambiguous shadow, prone to a half-dozen explanations and interpretations. That had been something—if only evidence of his own overstressed mind, now subjecting him to paranoid delusions.

“No,” Evan told Amanda. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Well, then,” she said icily, “what say we keep going?”

***

Evan was still shaken, but he turned back around and kept going.

Don’t try to process that now, he told himself. That thing you just saw—you can think about that  during the long drive back to Cincinnati.

And it was just your imagination, anyway, right?

Sure. That was all it had been.

They pushed through the entranceway. Evan exercised extra caution so as not to drop anything.

Once again, he imagined the projector slipping out of his hands and crashing to the floor. Then the whole sales presentation would be ruined, all because of his momentary blunder, his failure to anticipate. The resultant recriminations would be unbearable.

Even worse than that reflection he had just hallucinated in the glass.

The lobby was state-of-the-art, contemporary office chic. There was wall-to-wall, low-pile grey carpeting. Soft, frameless chairs in the waiting area. Strategically spaced, abstract paintings.

The three of them headed immediately to the wood-paneled security enclosure, where two security guards—a heavyset woman and a rather frail-looking older man—sat beneath soft cove lighting.

Amanda motioned for Hugh and Evan to complete the sign-in procedures before her. She wanted to check the messages on her phone before signing in, apparently.

She likely wanted to check for messages from Oscar, Evan thought.

While Evan and Hugh were pinning on their temporary access security badges and waiting for Amanda to finish with the security guards, Hugh pulled him aside and said discreetly:

“Stick with me while you’re here. And don’t talk to any other security guards you might happen to see here. Only these two at the front desk are okay.”

Once again Evan found himself wondering if Hugh was suffering from some sort of a delusion, or possibly setting him up for an elaborate practical joke.

What I just saw, that was my imagination, he reminded himself. The power of suggestion. There was nothing real to it. Couldn’t have been.

“You’re really serious about wanting me to not wander off in this building, aren’t you?” Evan asked.

He smiled in an attempt to break the tension of the quarrel with Amanda, and the imagined reflection in the glass. He needed to calm the butterflies in his stomach. He often felt a slight degree of nervousness just before a big client pitch, but his jitters were now approaching a terminal level. Too much to think about.

And Hugh was making it worse.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Evan asked, hoping for some levity in return. Maybe Hugh would break the joke now. Because this had to be a joke.

“Evan,” Hugh said, his voice low and deadpan. “You saw something, didn’t you? Just now, as we were coming in.”

Evan felt his heart leap again.

“Did you—?”

“That’s not important,” Hugh replied. “I don’t have the time to explain this to you now. But if we make it out of here okay, then I promise you I will.”

“What the hell are you talking about? ‘If we make it out of here okay’?”

“Maybe nothing more than my imagination, buddy. But maybe something. In any case, safety is the best policy. Just remember what I said.”

Evan opened his mouth to ask another question. Then Amanda appeared, her temporary visitor badge pinned to her blouse.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?”

“We’re ready,” Hugh said, answering for both of them. “Follow me. I’ve been here before, after all.”

***

Evan and Amanda followed, as Hugh led them down a hallway adjacent to the lobby, toward the law firm’s first-floor office suite.

Evan was conscious of the combined weight of the portable projector and his laptop. Amanda was carrying her briefcase, and a satchel that contained the handout materials for the presentation.

Hugh, meanwhile, was carrying only his attaché case. Given his heart condition, neither Evan nor Amanda would have expected him to carry anything more.

They passed by a number of office suites, Hugh leading the way. Each office suite was enclosed behind a stately wooden door. There were windows on both lateral sides of each door. This made it possible for Evan to look into the  suites. He saw comfortable-looking office settings with modern office furniture, but no people.

Strange that there were no people. How much vacant space was there in Lakeview Towers? It seemed that most of the complex was vacant.

Miles and miles of space, Evan thought, for no reason that he could fathom.

On and on forever…

A wave of unexpected dizziness hit him. He nearly stumbled at one point, as he felt abruptly light-headed. He feared that he would drop the projector—for real this time. He experienced a moment of genuine panic, a sense that he was about to faint.

Then he quickly recovered and righted himself. As suddenly as the odd feeling had come upon him, it was gone now.

Since he was walking behind both Amanda and Hugh, neither of them had noticed, he was glad to see.

What’s wrong with me?

He detected a faint whiff of something unpleasant in the air. It was a burnt, sooty smell—not exactly organic, but not exactly chemical, either. Perhaps it was this odor that had made him suddenly dizzy. It might be the result of a problem with the ventilation system here.

Evan felt almost himself again when they finally arrived at the door with the decorative brass plaque that read: “Rich, Litchfield, & Baker, Attorneys at Law.”

A receptionist was stationed immediately inside the suite. Her desk was in the center of a small waiting room. The receptionist—a young, redheaded woman who caught Evan’s eye—informed them that they could proceed directly down the rear hallway to meeting room 1A—the law firm’s media room.

Meeting room 1A contained a large oblong oak table, surrounded by about a dozen high-backed, leather-padded chairs. The attorneys had spared no expense to make their office space attractive, it seemed. At the far end of the room, Evan spotted the roll-down screen that he would use to project the PowerPoint presentation.

Being careful not to make direct eye contact with Amanda, he went about setting up the projector and connecting it to his laptop. Luckily, there were plenty of electrical outlets in the room, and he had brought extra lengths of extension cord.

Hugh had warned him not to talk to any other security guards. Now why would Hugh say something like that? What did he mean? Evan could have asked him—if not for Amanda’s hovering presence.

Evan had just finished setting up the equipment for the presentation when the lawyers filed in. Introductions were made.

Evan was still feeling a bit light-headed, and he was still more than a little angry at Amanda. He was also dreading the inevitable follow-up confrontation that would surely result from today’s exchange with his boss. When they returned to the Merlesoft office, there would surely be hell to pay—in one form or another.

But now he had a job to do. He would spite Amanda Kearns by doing it to the best of his abilities.

***

“First, I want to thank all of you for taking the time to hear Merlesoft’s presentation today,” Evan began.

He was the only one standing in the darkened room. Seated closest to the projection screen around the oblong table were four attorneys from Rich, Litchfield, and Baker. They were joined by the firm’s accountant, and an information systems person. Finally, Amanda and Hugh were seated toward the back, behind all the client representatives.

The first PowerPoint slide featured an image of Rich, Litchfield, and Baker’s logo alongside an image of the Merlesoft logo. The idea was to suggest that the two companies were in an ad hoc union of sorts.

This was a standard bit of sales psycho-strategizing. The idea was to spin the (hopefully) imminent purchase order as a partnership—not a transaction. Then the client representatives wouldn’t feel that they were on the receiving end of a sales pitch. Even though it was very much a sales pitch.

While not exactly sinister, the whole thing seemed vaguely duplicitous. I’m no more a salesperson than a software guru, Evan thought.

Nevertheless, he launched into the presentation, clicking through the slides with the projector’s remote control. He had studied his lines so much in advance that he was almost able to run on autopilot. This was a good thing—as the dizziness that he had briefly experienced in the hallway was now returning with a vengeance.

And once again he was aware of that peculiar smell. The odor might best be described as a mixture of gasoline fumes and burning vegetable matter.

The smell was all around him now, as if it were coming through the air ducts.

The dark room and the soft glare of the projection screen began to shift before his eyes. He knew that his voice was wavering, because everyone in the room had turned their attention away from the screen at the front of the room. They were looking at him—no doubt wondering what was wrong.

That was a question that was acutely troubling him, as well. The partially illuminated faces around him began to shift, to melt into the darkness. When he tried to read the slide that was currently projected up on the screen, the words ran together.

I’ve got to get out of this room, he thought. Something’s wrong with me.

Then an additional complication arose. He was acutely aware of the large breakfast that he had eaten—the one that was supposed to give him energy to concentrate on his presentation. It was churning and bubbling in his stomach, threatening to erupt and spill out onto the meeting table.

To pass out before a roomful of customers would be bad enough. To upchuck in front of clients would be an unmitigated disaster.

Evan made a snap decision. He placed the projector remote on the table between Hugh and Amanda. One of them would have to take over.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he announced to the room. “I’m afraid that I’m going to be sick.”

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First frost

There was a distinct chill in the air this morning, as the temperature in the Cincinnati area dipped into the upper 30s. When I awoke, the heater had kicked on. (I set my furnace’s thermostat to 64 degrees before going to bed last night.)

When I walked outside, I noticed a light frost on my lawn. If you look closely at the above photo, you can see the thin coating of the white stuff.

The first frost means that the summer weather is really, truly over, and the real cold is not far ahead. The first frost means an end to grass mowing, insects, and walking outside in shirt sleeves.

Winter, as they were fond of saying in Game of Thrones, is coming. It happens every year, you know.