Brought to you by author Tally Harbour.

• Visit author Tally Harbour and his “Strange People, Scary People” at his website here.

Hello, people.   Especially do I hail you if you consider yourself a bit strange or even scary.   I say this, you see,  because I wrote a book titled Strange People, Scary People.  It is chock full of weird entities who fit into this category.  And not all of them are human—or even bipeds.  For example, there is a tale about a special species of armadillo.  Now, I consider these creatures repugnant enough, but this particular breed—bred by the way, by a malignant old fucker just as repellent as his “pets”—are especially unwholesome.   They are  monstrous offshoot mutants, helped along by a bit of black magic.  They are completely gross.  But if you ever came into close contact with them, they would do much worse to you than simply “gross you out.”

Then there is your traditional witch.  Glendy Grey is her name.  Or you may call her “Miss Glendy.”  Or, if you have ever been unfortunate enough to visit with her in her cabin, you might refer to her as “Glendy with the iron teeth.”  That’s how Benji, Tommy, Nathan and Kenny refer to her—because they actually did visit her in her cabin one night.  And they will forever wish they had stayed away.

Now strange person or not, it would behoove you to be good in this world.  Treat your fellow sojourner to the grave with respect; for there are karmic forces at work on this speck in space and this tick in time that do determine our destinies.  If you are a naughty person, you might end up as an amorphous, hideous blasphemy to existence itself.  Just ask Sidney J. Shannon: a person who lived on this planet without one bit of decency or humanity.  And if  he could answer you at all—and if he didn’t eat you—he would tell you so in a bubbly, no longer human voice.

Do you know how to really respect the dead?  If you live in Gullybully, U.S.A. you do.  And how have you learned to really respect the dead?  Through two gentlemen named  Pumpandump and Pitchinditch, that’s how.  Yes, these two undertakers—excuse me—“funeral directors”  taught you, if you are a decent Gullybullian, to pay only the proper respect to your recently departed loved ones.  Yes,  they taught you to pay for more expensive caskets , more expensive tombstones, and more expensive burial wear.  Because after all, we are discussing the people closest to God—dead people.    It just goes to show … you can never pay too much respect for the dead.  (Nor can you pay too much money to Pumpandump and Pitchinditch for helping you respect the dead.)

Okay, I have discussed the characters in four of the stories in my book.  And there are ten more tales to go—with many more strange and scary entities wanting and waiting to trouble your dreams.  To read about all of them, I urge you to purchase this book.  It’s just five bucks—chickenfeed , really—less  than the price of two brews at a bar.  Yes, read Strange People, Scary People, my friend; and meet psychopaths, demons and spooks galore!

Thank you to author Tally Harbour for a great guest blog!