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Day 19 of the Tour

World Horror Convention Day 4 Kansas City, MO!

It’s Easter Sunday, and we’re still at World Horror. Somehow the World Horror Convention just doesn’t seem like the place to be on Easter. I feel like we should have a t-shirt that says, “He is risen, and wants to eat your brain, Cuthulu.” This message goes out to everyone who couldn’t be home for Easter, Astare, and Passover. (If I’ve left out any holidays sorry, but these are all the holidays my friends and I celebrate right now.) I woke only four hours by car from home. It was both too close and too far. I woke homesick. I want to be with my daughter, Trinity. I want to watch her find the Easter bunnies gifts hidden around the yard. Last year my friends Karen and Bear brought their daughter Darby, and the two girls scoured the yard in their Easter dresses, all flowers and bows, complete with hats, and patent leather shoes. The crows got to some of the goodies before the girl’s did, but no matter. There was enough to share. I don’t think chocolate makes crows sick. Keeping our three dogs from finding the treats early, well, they just had to stay in the house until after the hunt was over.

Last Easter was special for many reasons, but one important one, was that Art, Jonathon’s step father was able to join us. He’d spent a goodly part of that year out of country. For months all he could tell us was he was somewhere sandy and hot. He couldn’t tell us how close to the fighting he was, or what he was doing, and our imaginations ran wild. As you’ve guessed he was shipped out not long after 9/11. Art’s speclity is base defense against chemical, biological, and nuclear attack. He was suddenly in very high demand. When he was finally free to tell us more details he wasn’t as close to the fighting as we’d feared, but he also wasn’t as far away from it as we’d hoped.

Art retired from the military four months before war was declared. Otherwise he’d have been shipped out again. Nonetheless to say, we were relieved. Especially, Mary, his wife, and Jonathon’s mother. After all these years, they’re still cute together. It does a body good to see them.

This letter goes out to everybody, but especially all of you far from home, in hot and sandy places, close to the fighting, and faraway. I know we’ve taken Baghdad, but I also know that that doesn’t mean that all the fighting’s over. Keep your heads down out there, and watch your backs.

I woke not so far from home, still in the mid-west, and I was chokingly homesick. But no one’s shooting at me, thank God. I am not half-way around the world,in a foreign land, wondering what will happen next, wondering what orders will come down, and what I will be called upon to do. Our thoughts and hearts are with you all. Believe that.

Now that I’ve been all serious and sincere, let me try to share my Easter Sunday with you all. All of you who’ve never been to a science fiction, horror, or fantasy convention let me explain about Sunday, the last day of the con. Most people have gotten little, if any sleep, and they have hundreds of miles of driving ahead of them, or planes to catch, and Monday morning starts day jobs again for most of them. We were beat because it was the fourth week on the road for us, so we’re just going to be tired, but if you don’t believe the dead can rise and walk again, be at a big convention on Sunday. The walking dead are everywhere. People who have dressed up all weekend are in jeans and t-shirts, mostly black with odd, or macabre slogans on them. Most wearing sunglasses, me included. So we slither and slink down to the hotel restaurant, and find that the hotel has an Easter brunch. Reservations only, everyone fresh from church, dressed in pink and bright pastels. There were easter bonnets in the room. People sitting at white clothed tables with bright center pieces of giant eggs, and bunnies. There was a costumed Easter bunny walking around scaring small children, and groggy con goers. The restaurant that had been dim and rather bar like all weekend suddenly glowed with color, and I fought he urge to scream, my eyes, my eyes. There were Easter lilies everywhere, to which I have a rather pronounced allergy.

The lavender lady at the little podium tried to turn my husband and I away, because we had no reservations. I explained that we were guests of the hotel and no one had told us there would be no breakfast on Sunday without reservations. She deigned to let us sit at the bar and go through the buffet. I explained I could not sit at the bar because of the smoke, and was informed that for today the restaurant was smoke free. It had been a freaking smoke hazard the rest of the weekend.

Jonathon saved our seats while I went through the buffet. Okay, first of all I am wearing black; black jeans, black boots, black t-shirt. The t-shirt reads, “But soft what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is AAAAHHHHH The Sun!!! *FOOM* … Vampire Theater.” I thought it was funny. I am wearing sunglasses because my allergies make my eyes like sensitive, and occasionally I get light induced migraines. So I’m in line with all the bright, happy, pastel people. I looked like I’d crashed their party. They’re looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, and they have no idea what to make of me. Then I see the ice sculpture. It’s a giant bunny on it’s hind legs, rearing above us all with it’s front paws stretched outward like Frankenstien’s monster. It had already begun to melt, and heavy droplet of water dripped, dripped, from it’s outstretched limbs. I stood in the line of happy Easter people and stared up at that dripping bunny, and wondered how many small children had run screaming. I know it was the most frightening thing I saw all weekend.