Bottle of Shadows
When we give a gift to someone else, there’s always an element of risk.
That risk is doubled when the gift is something we’ve written — you can give away the story or the poem you wrote for that person, but it never really stops belonging to you. And, regrettably, should the relationship that inspired the piece run its course . . . well, it takes a while before you can look at that piece again on its own merits.
I spent a year thinking about this story before I wrote it. And I spent a surprising number of years trying to come to terms with it afterwards.
It’s about gifts and how we aren’t always as careful as we should be — either with what we’ve been given or what we’ve given to someone else.
An audio recording of “Bottles of Shadows” is featured in Episode Zero of The Gospel of Thomas podcast.
Summer Salt
This whole story, from start to finish, comes directly from a dream. I wrote it out exactly as it happened, changing nothing. The little coda was all I added after the fact.
It was years ago. It haunts me still.
An audio recording of “Summer Salt” is featured in Episode One of The Gospel of Thomas podcast.
The Pink Lady
This is a true story. She’s really there. You can even visit her grave, I’m told. They tell her story even now.
For some reason, I wanted to tell it as well.
Needle Exchange
I’ll be honest with you, some people absolutely hate this story.
Naturally, this is not what I intended. I started writing with just this voice in my head. All I did was listen in on what he had to say. The foul language, the drugs, the sex, the racial slurs . . . it’s all him. Honest.
But I do have to admit, I love this one. It came to me early in my writing, when I was young and had a lot to learn about myself — Full Disclosure: I’m old now and still have a lot left to learn, maybe even more than before — and there are moments in this story that I’m very proud of, even if I’m still not sure where they came from.
So I feel more than a little affection toward it. It might be crude and ugly and even frightening, but it’s mine.
An audio recording of “Needle Exchange” is featured in Episode Three of The Gospel of Thomas podcast.
The Whispering Boy
I’ve long held the theory that the best ghost stories work not because of how scary they are but because they have, at their core, a genuinely sad story to tell.
Ghosts are, after all, sorrowful things. I mean, just imagine…
I’ve lived in places that were, for lack of a better term, haunted. And however strange and disturbing that could be, it wasn’t difficult to see the ghost for what it truly was: Someone sad or hurt or alone… Someone reaching out… Someone desperate to be noticed, to be recognized.
Not to hammer the point home, but that’s all of us.
Maybe that’s why ghosts show up in so many Christmas stories — well, perhaps that’s overstating it. But there’s Dickens at the very least.
And, of course, there’s this one.
An audio recording of “The Whispering Boy” is featured in Episode Four of The Gospel of Thomas podcast.
If you would like to know more about T.M. Camp’s work, feel free to contact him directly. He’s really quite nice.