DEEP BLUE DREAM BY RAISTLIN SKELLEY

“When the movie finally ended (the way he remembered), Sham stared at the TV for a while. Listening to the hum of the VCR, he wondered if there was anything else on the tape. There would be about four and a half hours of black left on it if the label was correct. After fast-forwarding to the end, he found it was. Getting ready for bed that night, he felt differently about himself. He also felt differently about everyone else.”

Deep Blue Dream is the second of our announced features in Volume One of The Needle Drops...

Before clouds and fibre-optic controlled media, it required a bit of legwork to find what you were looking for. For Sham Darby, it required a shovel. Murphy’s Law had all but yanked the single film he was searching for out of existence, leaving only riddles and sideways glances in its wake. But Sham knows that nothing that was once popular ever completely disappears. Yesterday’s blockbuster just becomes tomorrow’s bargain bin find. But when a movie slips into the underground, he has to start asking why. And how dirty he’s willing to get to find out. Maybe Murphy’s Law has less to do with it than he thought. It’s only a movie, right?

"Over the city, under cement

Over the counter, under the lens

Over the limit, under arrest

Over the bra, under the dress"

- Hail Mary Mallon (Smock) Rhymesayers, 2011

Raistlin Skelley hails from the rapidly deteriorating Rust Belt of Southwestern Pennsylvania where he splits his time between writing and seething over the demise of the Kane Road Drive-In. A student of the hard-boiled tradition of the 40’s and 50’s, he taught himself to write by stewing in conspiracy theories, true crime, Tom Waits lyrics and the stories his family told about strange happenings as children. Raistlin self-published two books during quarantine, the neo-noir thriller The Five Year Trip and a collection of short crime stories titled Neighborhood Watch, along work featured in North by Northeast. His writing evokes the world he grew up in and the one that passed him by, where houses were lit with incandescent bulbs and mom jeans were a joke.

Find him on Instagram: @teamhatepress.