Quick Tales

Sugar

2010-10-12T21:41:00.001+01:00

Martin sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. When he tried to drink it he found the coffee too bitter. After searching in the cupboard for sugar and not finding any, he shouted for Cassie.

She didn't come, and then he remembered.

Slowly he walked into the hallway to fetch his coat from the rack. Cassie's black winter coat still hung from the peg. Ignoring it, Martin put on his own coat and zipped it up. Returning through the kitchen to fetch his keys, he picked the cup of milky coffee up and poured it down the sink.

An experiment in style and form. Google "iceberg theory".

An Emo Fell Out of a Tree

2010-06-15T19:31:00.003+01:00

I was walking through the park yesterday and the strangest thing happened to me as I passed the duck pond. An emo fell out of a tree.

It had been hidden in the higher branches of a tree, concealed by leaves and surprisingly well camouflaged. So I had not noticed it, as I am, lamentably, not in the habit of wildlife spotting on my lunchtime walks.

The emo was not hurt. It managed to pick itself up after a few moments wondering what had happened. It was a red and black striped emo with matching hair. I did walk up to the emo to enquire on its well being. It seemed to respond that it was fine, and that it liked my hat. Then the emo started to climb back up into the tree again at the behest of calls from its fellow tree dwelling emos.

If I was an anthropologist I would have taken a greater and more detailed interest in the emo's general behaviour. My only observations are that it was polite, but confused. Maybe it had no real understanding of the concepts of causality and gravity.

Not being a linguist, I was unable to ask it more detailed questions and determine its level of communicative ability. Oh well, I told myself, I am content that it was not hurt, and that I got to take a close look at a young example of an emo in, what I was call, not its natural environment, as I am led to believe that they are primarily an urban species much like the punk.

Maybe these emos have crossbred with the raver.

However, I must note that an emo falling out of a tree was not the strangest occurrence of my day. But more about that at a later time.

Terminal 5

2010-04-03T04:49:00.002+01:00

This was written a month ago when I was in a not so great place (deadlines & crap), but had also been thinking about well the subject that this story is about.

There is a line of common thought that can be drawn from an email I wrote to some friends at new years about the state of fiction (genre & "proper") through most of my stories written in the first four months this year. This is one knot in that line of thought. Hopefully finally pushing it to the Internet will let me get on with the next thought after it.

Cameron heard and felt the taxi's wheels bounce over the chevrons painted in the road as the driver broke the speed limit. "Don't worry mate, we'll be at the airport soon. We've just cleared a large accident," the driver said.

"That's good," replied Cameron.

He'd never flown from Heathrow before. Luton and Stansted on holidays to Spain with his family a couple of times. Most of the year he was away; deployed on operations with his unit. Before his two families, the SAS and Cathy, he'd never had the opportunity to go away. He knew the layout of Heathrow airport perfectly though from his briefing sessions.

The taxi slowed down. "Almost there mate. We're just joining the M4. Where are you flying to, anyway?"

"New York."

"How long you going for?"

"Just a weekend. That's why I've only got the one bag. Hand luggage is far easier than checked for short trips."

"Sure is. My wife always wants to take everything with her when we go to the Costa Blanca though. Costs a fortune on Ryanair." The driver laughed.

Cameron grunted, and driver after getting the impression that his passenger didn't want to talk turned the radio up. Listening to the evening drive time programs Cameron thought about his wife and kids. It was almost two years since the terrorist attack in Wotton Bassett. An Islamic militant drove a car through the roadblocks on a repatriation day.

They had travelled to the town to watch the bodies of Cameron's friends return. Cathy had gone to be with her friends. To stand with them, and help them, through a time she never hoped would come.

Rebbecca and Sam's bodies were found in a demolished nursery on the high street. Cathy's body had never been found. Cameron had heard at the inquest that she'd been spotted on CCTV next to the bomber's car.

Cameron checked his pockets for his passport and ticket information. He did not need them, but if checked he'd have them. Terminal 5 appeared outside his window and the car stopped. "We're here. I'll get your bag from the boot."

The driver stepped out and went around the back of the car. Cameron undid his seat belt and joined the driver under the spotlights. His bag sat on the concrete. "Everything okay?" asked the driver.

"Yeah," Cameron said, looking at his watch, "plenty of time. Should be able to get a pint in as well."

"Sounds good. Have a safe trip."

"I will," Cameron said.

At the check in desk he presented his passport and a printout with his ticket code on. The woman on the desk asked him to put the bag in a steel basket to check the size. It just fitted in. When asked about a window seat Cameron responded that he didn't mind, because it didn't matter. She gave him his ticket, and then she warned him that it would be best to go through security now before it got busy in half an hour.

Cameron went and sat in The 5 Tuns with a pint of Stella. He put the bag under the table with care, and he waited for the security lines to get busier. The mobile phone in his jacket pocket buzzed with a text message from his MI5 handler. "Are you at the airport?"

"Yes. I'll be heading through security soon," he tapped into the phone as his reply.

Savouring every last drop of the Stella Cameron decided that this was going to his last drink. The mission brief meant waiting for the moment when the security lines were at their busiest. A tactic decided with cold logic to cause the maximum shock and awe. But Cameron knew he could only evade detection for so long. He knew that other groups within MI5 would be after him. Groups with different and wrong agendas.

He was not doing this to avenge his Cathy, Rebecca and Sam. He was doing this for his country.

Mark, his oldest friend, sat down opposite him. He had a pint of Guinness in one hand and a new phone in the other. "Good evening Cameron."

"Good evening."

"I've got a new phone for you. One that hasn't been used." He put the phone down on the table. It was the same model as his. "Take it. We'll get rid of your old one."

Cameron swapped the phones, and when he put his hand in the pocket he kept the phone he felt a small plastic wallet. It was a laminated picture of his family that he always kept with him. "Can you take something for me?"

"Anything."

Cameron pushed the photograph across the sticky table.

"Oh I see," said Mark. "Do you have any other personal items?"

"Just the passport I was given."

"Good. Remember that not being identified is important."

"I know. Can you make sure my parents get told something positive? Caught in an IED trying to save some orphans, something like that."

Mark smiled. "Of course. You are being a hero after all."

Cameron drained the bottom of his pint glass. "It's time to go and be the hero. You'd better leave."

"Godspeed," said Mark, as he left The Three Tuns. Cameron picked up the rucksack. It was filled with fifteen kilograms of plastic explosives and nails. He put it on his back, and walked towards the security line. The line was was spilling out of the marked lines and into the check in area.

Cameron was not seeing people in the line any more. He saw no children holding their mother's hands; he saw no businessmen looking forward to returning home; he saw no young couples eagerly waiting to go on holiday; he saw only numbers. Standing in the middle of the queue of hundreds he took the mobile phone that Mark had given him out, and he dialled the number he'd memorised the night before.

The phone on the other end of the line was in his bag attached to the bomb's detonator. It didn't even ring once.

Three Words

2010-03-25T00:28:00.003Z

This story was written for Short Fuse which is a monthly spoken event that takes place in Leicester. I performed this story on Tuesday 18th of March 2010.

You banged your head this morning and ignored it.

After arriving at work, and turning on your computer, you go to the break room for your first coffee of the day. On returning to your desk you see Toby in the corridor. You say, "hello," to him, and he says something back. You don't catch what he says. Toby mumbles a lot.

You shut the door to your office, and start to perform triage on the emails that have arrived over the weekend. A task that normally takes all morning, and everyone here knows that you need to be left alone for this. It is an hour before Mark, the intern, interrupts you. He starts to speak to you, but all you hear is gibberish. It is as if he has started speaking another language.

"Excuse me. Can you say that again?" you ask.

Mark repeats himself. All you hear is the same nonsense.

"I can't help you right now." You start to panic. "Can you please get Chetan for me? It's important."

Mark closes the door behind him. At least he understood you. Your emails are all legible; no problems there, but you could not understand what Mark was saying to you. Chetan pushes the door open slightly and taps on it. He says something. A different nonsense this time.

You explain that you don't understand what he's saying and that he'll have to write down his half of the conversation on the whiteboard. "Have you hit your head?"

"I think so. The side of my head hurts," you answer.

"Go to the hospital. I'll drive you there now. Do you want me to phone Cassie?"

Cassie, your girlfriend, is at home. A day off from work. "Leave it. I'd better find out what's wrong first."

You are driven to the hospital. At the reception desk for A&E he explains the problem you have as he understands it. The receptionist looks skeptical, but a nurse does come to see you eventually. He tries to talk to you. You tell him that you really can't understand what he is saying. He takes a pen out of his pocket, and he scribbles a message on the corner of a free newspaper. "I'll be back in a minute."

The nurse returns with a doctor after ten minutes. This doctor is carrying a spiral bound notebook. He opens it and writes very slowly. "My name is Dr. Neale. I'm a neurologist here. Follow me."

You follow him through the hospital. The nurse stays behind. You become lost in the white floored white walled maze, and are totally disoriented. After ten minutes of walking you arrive at an office. The doctor leads you inside, and he sits down behind his tidy desk. On the notepad he writes, "I don't know what is wrong with you yet, but we are going to get you an MRI. And then, from there, we'll try and see what we can do."

You get an answer to what your condition that never goes away is. It is called pure word deafness. Six months later and you are at home on sick leave. The prognosis is vague; the problem might go away, but the problem is more than likely not going to. There are the weekly treatment sessions, a condition of your paid sick leave, but their effect has been minimal; even if they have helped you develop coping strategies.

You are still in love with Cassie, although your relationship is strained. She comes home from work one day, and you ask how her day was. A habitual tick that you've not gotten rid of. A habit that you think has helped you both. She replies, "good," and you hear that.

"What was that? I just caught something you said."

Cassie answers, and it is all word salad apart from the fact that she'd had a good day. "Wait I just heard you had a good day. Maybe I'm getting better."

She smiles at you, and she shrugs. "Coffee?" you asked. She nods.

While making the coffee Cassie comes in to watch you in silence. You wish she'd talk to you more often. You don't quite know how to tell her, but just hearing the sound of her voice makes you feel better. It makes you feel as though one day you'll understand the babble. Besides there are only three words you want to hear again. You know that presently you wouldn't understand them as words if she said them. But the meaning would be clear to you if she said them. It'd still be those three words.

You know when people lie, even the small innocent everyday lies, because you hear them. That is all you hear coherently. When you are watching the news if a politician is talking you hear a tangle of half sentences.

You tell your neurologist about this at your next meeting. He laughs, and then he writes down his reply which tells you that what you've told him is impossible. You ask him to say this aloud. You can't trust the written word anymore.

"Two plus two is five," he says, testing you with a confident smile.

You correct him. "Two plus two is four."

When you arrive home after that session with Dr Neale you find Cassie in the bedroom crying. You sit next to her, and you wrap an arm around her to comfort her. You whisper in her ear, "what's wrong love?"

She replies "I love you."

Saving the World

2010-03-12T16:42:00.003Z

"Have I saved the world? Sure, I've saved the world. Only once though. I'm not going to claim that I'm one of those superheroes who saved the world more than once from the Nazis, the Russians, the Chinese, or even aliens. I'm not going to claim what I can't explain fully. I saved the world something more horrible than can be imagined in fiction and it taught me a lot.

"I saved the world, but I didn't save myself. I saved the world by talking time backwards until the world was as it was before. There was no other way.

"Saving the world, now there is a reactionary idea. There's an inherent conservatism in the whole thought process that allows you to decide that the world needs saving. The drum beat of humanity is always to move forward, and to make mistakes, but mistakes that are recognized and built upon. To save the world from these mistakes is saying that the present is no longer as ideal as the past.

"And this is normally not true.

"Of course when the killing fields stretch from Shanghai to Baghdad then turning back time is no bad option.

"And slightly more about saving the world than say stopping some superpower enriched hulk setting a city and its habitants on fire. Which is saving people and a city. Not the world.

"No, saving the world was, for me, about sacrifice. Even in the world that burned I had a family. In this world, the world that was turned back, they are gone. My memories of them are all that's left.

"So yes, I have saved the world; although no one would know it looking at me, a simple crusty homeless man, and no one is certainly going to reward me for my efforts and loss. But then I saved the world. You don't save the world for anything other than the fact that the world needs saving.

"Although it would help if you tossed us a few quid for a burger and a warm drink."

Written for the Leicester Casuals writers group March challenge of "saving the world."

Subject: AWOL

2010-03-03T01:13:00.003Z

Written as part of my first attempt at a story for Short Fuse. There's more, but it is less good and not interesting (really). The story was going to be bookended by two emails. The email you can see below, and the one from the return trip. Either that or the reply to email from who it was sent to.

Subject: AWOL.

There is no good way to start this email. I'm going away! You won't be seeing or hearing from me for a long while. I can't tell you how long for.

I can't even tell you where I'm going. Protocol and all that. Although if I tell you that I'm sitting in Dubai airport waiting for a military flight, then you can fill in the blanks. If I tell you that tomorrow on my schedule I have three hours of "Basic Weapons Familiarization and Handling" I hope that I don't have to say anything else.

I'm not going to lie to you, this is dangerous. I'm going to be, and I am now, scared. There is a good chance I'm going to come back fundamentally changed, and there is a chance that I won't be coming back alive at all.

I'm telling you this because even though our friendship has been strained recently, I still trust you. I still want you to trust me as well.

It would be unrealistic for you not to worry. I won't ask you not to. Just remember that no matter what happens, I went into this knowing the risks.

Love,

Jamie.

Avenue of the Sun

2010-03-02T23:21:00.003Z

I've done loads of stuff this month; just for different venues. Stuff that I haven't been able to post here. More stuff will come. But here's a comic script from my ready to pass to J.R. Random artist when required.

Title: Avenue of the Sun.

Writer: Will Ellwood.
Artist: ?

Date: 27 Feb 2010.

Tags: Cat Burglar, Climbing, Dubstep, City, Theft.

Playlist: Burial & Four Tet - Moth. Soom T - Dirty Money. Röyksopp - This Might Be It.

Intro.

This is me using a comic panel I imagined a month ago. While listening to three tracks on my mp3 player while in transit to nowhere in particular I arrived at how to use this panel. The three tracks are obviously the play list above.

Style Notes.

I do not use sound-effects so I'd rather they were avoided. I also tend to imagine seeing comics in black and white instead of colour. So while I provide descriptions of colour as a guide to the artist it is not an expectation of the final form of the work.

Characters.

A.

Small, athletic, a cat burglar. She is of no specific or identifiable ethnic origin. She carries a small rucksack with tools in it, and dresses in black free-running clothes.

B.

Large, square, the man. He is dressed in a bad suit. He is WASP'y McWhitey. He does not look like he belongs in the nightclub.

Locations.

The Club.

Small. Dark. Intimate. Crowded. A proper club filled with punters dancing on the dance floor. A DJ in the booth at one end, and tables in bays ringing the dance floor.

Museum of Antiquities.

A Victorian high-rise block of stone. A museum of antiquities (like I've called the set). Filled with old stuff (obviously) that is not secured very well at all. Dark and badly illuminated even during the day with the lights on.

The Avenue.

An east west avenue in our fictional landscape. A canyon of buildings in the sunrise.

The Script.

Page 1. (5 Panels.)

Pic 1.

The Club. A full dance floor. The DJ booth is on the lower left side of the page. The dancing crowd fills most of the available space apart from a border of seated booths around the edge. Everything is lit by a solitary strobe light.

Caption: Burial & Four Tet - Moth.

Pic 2.

One of the side booths. The strobe is off. Two figures. A Woman, A., and a man, B., are sitting on opposite sides of a table. The man has a hand on the table. There is a whisky glass on his side of the table. She has a bottle of water. The strobe light is off.

Pic 3.

Close up on B.'s hand. He is pressing a folded slip of paper into the table. The strobe light is off.

Caption: My fence wanted to talk.

Pic 4.

Close up on the unfolded sheet of paper. It says, "Museum of Antiquities. The Diamond Skull. Bring it to me and your sister lives. Security will be off." The strobe light is on.

Caption: He had my sister.

Pic 5.

The side booth with just B. sitting in it. He is drinking his glass of whisky. The strobe light is off.

Caption: The bastard.

Page 2. (3 Panels.)

For this page divide the page in half vertically. The first panel takes up the left half. The other two panels slot in on the right hand side taking up half the page each.

Pic 1.

The picture that I want here is the side of a building. The Museum of Antiquities from top to bottom. We have here four images of A. climbing the building superimposed over the top. One of A. at the bottom looking up, and scouting the route out. Another of her up about a third of the way. Climbing naturally and cat like. The third image is of her still climbing two thirds of the way up. The last image in this picture of A. climbing over the edge of the buildings flat roof.

Caption: But I'm a pro. I'll do what I have to do.

Pic 2.

A. is kneeling next to a skylight. Below her, in the room, is a pedestal with a skull on it. Other details are hidden in the murk.

Pic 3.

A. is cutting out a square of glass from the skylight large enough for her to fit through.

Page 3. (3 Panels.)

Pic 1.

A. dangles near the bottom of a rope that has been dropped into the room with the diamond skull. A small blanket has been placed over the edge of the cut glass in the skylight to prevent it from shredding the rope.

Pic 2.

A. stands next to the diamond skull. It is sitting on a velvet cushion. A. has her rucksack open in one hand, and her free hand is reaching out to grab the valuable skull.

Pic 3.

A. climbs out of the room using just her arms to pull herself up the rope.

Page 4. (1 Panel.)

Pic 1.

The black outline of an avenue lined with skyscrapers. The Museum of Antiquities is next to A. who stands with her back to us as a silhouette. On the ground next to her is her rucksack. The sun, rising, is a bright white disc low on the distant horizon.

Caption: I do what I have to do, and my sister will live to see the sun.

How I Became A Fox

2010-02-10T02:23:00.002Z

I wrote this at the weekend. Saturday. An artist currently has this script. But I'm promiscuous with stories, and little else, so here it is.

Title: How I Became A Fox.

Writer: Will Ellwood.
Artist: ?

Date: 06 Feb 2010.

Tags: Urban, Fantasy, Wildlife, Foxes, Terrorism, Magic, Surreal.

Intro.

I am sitting at my desk listening to Alymysto and waiting for the Caprica pilot to finish downloading. My life recently hasn't been full of roses. Sad, but true. But I do seem to be on a bit of a productive streak. Writing to keep the blue demons down. I'm writing because that is all I feel that I can do sometimes.

The origin of this story starts last Monday (1st of Feb) walking away from my climbing partners house towards the bus station. Without going into too much detail our friendship is a bit strained at the moment. However, walking past the train station in Leicester a fox ran in front of me out of the train station and into the road. This is the starting point for this short comic, as in an email this friend said she wanted to see the fox. The idea occurred to me as I tried (and failed) to get some sleep last night.

Style Notes.

I do not use sound-effects and I'd rather they were avoided. I also tend to imagine seeing comics in black and white rather than in color. So I provide descriptions of color as a guide to the artist and not an expectation on the final form of the work.

Characters.

The Fox.

A red fox. Look on Wikipedia for plenty of cute images. A city fox though, so will be well fed and muscular. A tough little thing. The size of a dog. Under the street lights the red coat has a dirty quality to it. Female if you feel able to convey the differences.

Red Fox.

Again, a red fox. Male, so larger than the Fox.

The Man.

A man in his early-twenties. An everyman really. Neither thin, fat, tall, or short. Just normal.

The Woman.

Slim, almost starved even. Young, although ageless really. She has long white hair (this won't be obvious if done in black & white so isn't important).

Locations.

Train Station.

Specifically I am thinking of Leicester's train station. The Wikipedia page has information and photos.

The Street.

The area with the trees and bushes on page 3 is based on New Walk Leicester. A very long street that is pedestrian only and lined with trees.

The Script.

Page 1.

Pic 1.

THE MAN is walking past the front of the train station at night. He is looking down at the ground. His hands are in his pocket. His breath is condensing in the cold night air.

Caption (top left): I was in a foul mood.

Pic 2.

THE MAN has stopped. THE FOX is crossing his path, as it leaves the train station, and running into the empty road.

Caption (top left): But things change.

Pic 3.

THE FOX is sitting in the middle of the road looking towards THE MAN. THE MAN is standing on the pavement outside the train station looking at THE FOX.

THE FOX: Change.

Page 2.

Pic 1.

An explosion of fire and masonry erupt where the front of the train station once was. THE MAN is caught in it.

Pic 2.

We are looking at the ruined facade of the train station. Bricks and twisted steel lie in the road. In the rubble, covered in a layer of dust and bits of broken brick is a RED FOX curled up in a ball.

Caption (top left): And I changed.

Pic 3.

In the middle of the road, where the fox once sat, is THE WOMAN standing naked. She is looking at the ruin. RED FOX is pulling himself out of the debris.

THE WOMAN: Follow me.

Pic 4.

THE WOMAN is walking down the street, still naked, past shops closed for the night. RED FOX follows a short distance behind.

Caption (top left): So I followed her.

Page 3.

Pic 1.

Bushes and trees in grassy courtyard surrounded by Georgian houses. THE WOMAN is crouching at the edge of the thicket. She is reaching into the bushes; she is getting something out from underneath it.

THE WOMAN: My den was under there. It's yours now if you want it.

Pic 2.

THE WOMAN has pulled out a dirty dress from under the bushes; she is pulling it over her head. RED FOX is sitting at her feet looking up.

THE WOMAN: I'm sorry that I did this to you. You'll have to work out how to change back yourself.

Pic 3.

The RED FOX is sniffing around the edge of the bushes while THE WOMAN sits on the grass putting on a pair of tennis shoes.

THE WOMAN: I had to work it out myself. It took me a while, but I did in the end.

Pic 4.

Standing up THE WOMAN is walking away from the bushes towards a tree-lined pedestrian avenue lined by posh houses. RED FOX follows.

THE WOMAN: However, I suspect you'll enjoy being a fox. It's in your nature. Think of it as the change you need.

Pic 5.

RED FOX sits close to our viewpoint in the middle of the street. THE WOMAN is walking away towards the distance with her back to us. She's raised her hand and arm in the air to wave as she looks back towards us.

THE WOMAN: It was a change I needed for a while.

THE WOMAN: Ciao.

Two Tickets to Heaven - Teaser

2010-02-04T01:57:00.001Z

Title: Two Tickets to Heaven

Writer: Will Ellwood

Artist: Danny Ferburton

Written December 2009.

Tags: future-noir, hitman, criminal life, space elevator, black and white, violence.

Random Thoughts.

Somewhere in my head while I was thinking about this comic I thought it might be cool to make each panel like a non-widescreen image. So every panel on pages where it is N number of panels running down the page should be drawn so that the image doesn't reach the edge of the panel making a squarer image.

The reason I was thinking this is due to watching a repeat of a BBC documentary on film noir called, “The Rules of Film Noir.” This documentary highlighted a very important facts about film noir. Film noir films were mostly B-movies. And B-movies in the 1940s and 1950s would not have been shot in the wide-screen format. Anyway this is just an idea. It might not work visually on the page but it'd be interesting to see. I'll sketch a diagram if you need some more clarification.

This comic is set in the future. But draw everyone in modern day clothes with an eye for current trends. It will date the comic later but keeps the cognitive load down and will probably date the comic less than you trying to imagine what people in the future will be dressed like. Follow this general principle for designing buildings and objects as well. The question you should be asking is: how would I design this? Not how would someone in the future design the same object.

I believe that you were intending to make this a black and white comic. I agree this comic should be black and white. However like Sin City and Automata (the Penny Arcade noir) there should be highlights of colour. Things like blood and neon lights should be in colour.

NOTE: STRICTLY NO SOUND EFFECTS!

A City Sunset

2010-02-04T01:16:00.002Z

This isn't going to get used in anything, I suspect. It is just an image that occurred to me while I was traveling on the bus. It is based on the Manhattan Sunset. I do not know where this would occur in a narrative. Initially I saw it as a first page. Maybe an ending, or a big reveal. But right now I don't know. Again, I do not think I will use this image in anything (at least anytime soon) because I can't think beyond this one panel page.

Okay, that's a lie. I can think beyond this page onto another one; however I at the moment I can't think of a neat way to panel it.

Yes, my blabbing is longer than the panel description.

Page 1.

Panel 1.

The black outline of an avenue lined with skyscrapers. A slim woman stands with her back to us her form visible only in silhouette. On the ground next to her is a rucksack. The sun, setting, is a bright white disc low on the distant horizon.

Above

2010-02-02T19:33:00.004Z

I looked out of the open side of the helicopter. Below me, in the equatorial noon, a city is falling apart quickly. Parts of it burn. Other parts of it smoulder. Gunshot, from automatic weapons, echoes through the city. For the child soldiers below this is their dance music.

My security team, UN soldiers, are looking at city below with eyes that had seen this before. The civil war and power struggles. They had been here, attempting to keep a peace, for months. Now as they were leaving, setting the people free, violence flairs up again.

Not that the violence had ever gone away. The young boys below me running along the street with a RPG launcher have been trapped in violent times since they were born. They are running, barefoot, hungry, high and desperate towards a group of older boys. They are fighting a small battle against some other boys. It is hard to tell sides apart in this conflict.

The laws of war do not apply here. The Geneva convention, well, that's just something for rich white imperialists at this point to argue about. My security have insisted that I'm armed. A breech of standard journalist behaviour. I know this, but there is no other way to guarantee my safety.

Not that my safety is guaranteed here.

The boys have reached the end of the street. They've ducked down low and passed the rocket tube to one of the older boys. The soldiers next to me are growing concerned. I am ignorant and simply scared. There is fumbled movements on the ground as the RPG is prepared. The sergeant next to me raises his rifle and points down towards the distant ground.

We have been noticed and the boys below have started to take pot shots at us. They are unlikely to hit us. AK-47s made in workshops aren't accurate weapons. Boys filled with cocaine are not good shots. It is still terrifying. The RPG is being pointed at us. The sergeant taking careful aim fires three shots. Years of training, and the best equipment mean he hits someone.

The boy with the RPG drops to the ground. Maybe not dead yet, but he will be. Someone else picks up the RPG, but for them it is too late. They were fighting two battles and have lost both. The kids from across the street have made a banzai charge on their position. One of them had a grenade and after the smoke clears it is clear that the other kids have won another street corner in their tiny empire.

I do not know who made the helicopter that I am flying in. My security team are Pakistani. So I guess that this is an American machine of some kind. Not that it matters. As long as it flies. We break away from the small battle below and travel deeper into the city. Next to the beach-side slums.

A beach covered in human shit. We set down on it. I hop out of the helicopter and sling my rifle over my shoulder. Someone passes me a blue battle helmet. The words "PRESS" are stamped on it. There are four of us on the beach now. The sergeant, the one man left in the helicopter, starts to pass out cardboard boxes.

We all run across the beach now. The helicopter takes off for its own safety. Over the local radio loop I'm tuned to the pilot tells me that he'll be back when a red flair is lit on the beach. He tells us this as he reaches a safe altitude.

The smell of the beach and the slum is faecal. There has never been any sanitation here. Part of me doubts that there ever will be. Tight wooden shacks with corrugated tin roofs make tiny streets. Women and young children crowd around us. They're following tightly behind us as we run to the field station that has been established in a church.

Inside there is only human suffering. Tired medics attend to the victims of the messy battle. Civilian and combatant. Although the distinction is only clear when it is a raped woman lying beaten and infected on a filthy improvised bed. It is hard for me to consider any of the men here innocent.

"Is there anyone that we can take?" the sergeant says, as he puts the box of medicine down.

"One. A child. You might be able to save him," a medic with blood shot eyes says.

"Show us."

We are shown to a bed at the far end of the church. A young girl lies with a IV drip in one arm. She's fever ridden. A thick web of badges covers her body. She's burned.

"Do you have a stretcher?"

The medic nods.

"Quick. Get her on the stretcher."

We are running through the streets. I am carrying one end of the stretcher. The medic has taken the other. The soldiers have us boxed in. They've got their weapons drawn. Just in case a local warlord decides to make a show of force by killing some UN. In broken French I cry out for people to get out of the way.

On the beach the sergeant breaks the cap of a flair and throws it into the sand. It burns bright red and the smoke drifts towards the sea. Moments later the helicopter is landing slowly and we are putting the girl on board. The medic takes the stretcher away and starts back towards their never ending work back at the clinic.

Travelling along the coast we return to the airfield we left from. The girl is rushed to the base's hospital by waiting surgeons. Our route has been a triangle across a crisis. Tomorrow I am going to go into the city on foot. Seen from above the horror seems remote. Child soldiers killing other child soldiers. Girls injured as collateral damage.

Tomorrow I am going to talk to the victims. The good it will do will not be direct; unlike today's medicine delivery. But it will put human faces to the pictures currently showing on the news networks. And that, while I am here, is all I can do.

I watched a documentary about Liberia at the weekend from Vice TV. Called, rather obviously, The VICE guide to Liberia. It was, to put it bluntly, a harrowing experience. I've linked to the trailer. You should be able to find the full film without much difficulty.

This is an attempt to exorcize the experience from my brain. Although, even now, I've still got the image of a thirteen year old boy, high, spraying an AK without a care in the world.

Will.

Mocha Silk Pie

2010-01-30T21:52:00.005Z

She looked at her watch. "Are you going to make the pie soon?" she asked him. He was sitting next to her on the battered old sofa reading a book.

"Are you sure you are ready?"

She nodded. "Very sure."

He got up from the sofa and left for the kitchen. Laid out on the marble counter top were she'd laid out the ingredients for the pie. Pr-weighed. Pecans, Kahlua, instant coffee and chocolate. The recipe she'd printed earlier that afternoon and stuck onto the fridge with a strawberry shaped magnet.

He loved her deeply. He even believed in the cause she was fighting. And he understood that her method, her weapon even, was a well tried method of resistance. But he loved her, so didn't want to see her harmed. Still he was compelled to follow her wishes, and a compromise had been agreed on.

With the pecans, he made the pie's crust and put it in the fridge. She walked in just as he was closing the white door. Walked over to him and gave him a hug. "How is it going?"

"Well. I'm just about to make the filling. Want to watch?"

She smiled. "Yes. Do you mind if I put the radio on?"

"Go for it," he said.

She turned the radio next to the sink on. It was tuned to BBC Radio 4. The clean English accent of the woman presenter was reading the news. "Members of the group Save the NHS have pledged to go on hunger strike in response to David Cameron's recent announcement that major cuts in all sectors of the National Health Service."

"I don't need to hear this love. Can you change the station? Planet Rock?"

"I understand. Too close."

He nodded and carried on mixing the filling. When it was finished he spread it on top of the crust and put it in the fridge to set. "Two hours minimum until it is ready. What do you want to do?"

Outside it was raining slowly from the gray sky. "I don't know. I've already updated the Save the NHS blog and twitter feed. I don't really want to deal with it for a while. A film maybe?"

"Did you finish watching Six Feet Under?" he asked.

"No," she said, "we could watch a few episodes of that."

They returned to the living room. She put in a DVD of Six Feet Under and hit play all on the menu. While she was setting up the TV he took his boots off, and then leaned back into the sofa and took out the hair tie he'd put on while making the pie. She cuddled up to him as the HBO static started.

"It looks good," she said to him, as he took the pie out of the fridge after the DVD had ended. He put it on the kitchen table and grabbed a sharp knife from the draw.

She hadn't wanted any ritual with her last meal. She just wanted the best pie she'd ever had. No cameras. No record. Just memories. "Can you get a plate?" he asked. He hadn't dried the dishes so they were all on the rack drying next to her.

The ceramic plate clunked on the wooden table. He was cutting a generous slice from the pie onto her plate.

"Eat," he said, while hoping that she'd eat again in a few days.

---
Written on the 22nd of January 2010. A character and situation study. This was on my mind when I wrote an essay on Social Realist SF. Originally sent to Weaponizer, but I grew impatient and kinda wanted to share this.

The story was inspired by this recipe which I hope to make sometime.

Will.

Drone

2010-01-29T01:32:00.001Z

The drone above them watched. A threw a cigarette to the floor in disgust and walked away from B. The drone saw the embers fade away in infrared.

"Stop for a moment, come here" said B.

A turned back and approached her. They hugged.

"Are you okay?"

"Not really," said A.

He walked away not looking back.

The drone moved on.

The Death of Della Smith

2010-01-24T01:52:00.005Z

Detective Ikari stepped out of the Aberdeen district subway station into the weak morning sun. Last stop before the end of the northern line. A woman's body had been found below one of the strip clubs on the seafront. A suicide, apparently. But the officer on the scene had been nervous, so a superior has called central investigation and put a detective on the hour long train ride to the rim of City 23.

She lay half on the pavement and half on the road. Arms sprawled out into the flow of traffic; her face down in the petrochemical soup that flowed down the gutters. Her red hair was soaked in the stew. Dressed in a little black dress she had a high heeled shoe strapped to her left foot. The other shoe lay next to her head. She'd come from above.

"Who is she?" Detective Ikari asked the police officer who'd found her.

"Don't know. Never seen her before."

"Have you checked her purse?" Detective Ikari asked, making reference to the small silver purse that was over he shoulder.

"No. Thought it best to wait."

Detective Ikari nodded and put on a pair of latex gloves. "Let's take a look at see," he said, crouching down next to the woman he opened the purse and removed the contents. A leaflet for a strip club, a wallet and some papers.

The nightclub was the one she was lying dead outside of. The papers were immigration papers. She was from Earth, and a recent arrival; a matter of weeks. Detective Ikari had guessed that from her pale freckled skin though. The Cities network of domes minimized ultraviolet light levels in the city. People who lived in the city didn't have freckles.

The wallet had a few small bills in and a Starfish travel card. Her identity card matched the immigration papers. This ruled her out being a girl from the central city looking for adventure. She had a name as well: Della Smith.

What was she doing here wondered Detective Ikari. Miss Smith's papers said she had a bachelors degree in science. She could have been working for one of the refining companies based here. But dressed like that; it seemed unlikely. The companies all kept their public faces in more glamorous locations. And a suicide three weeks after moving from Earth to City 23.

A suicide didn't seem right.

"You've taken scene of crime photos?"

"Yes sir. Uploaded them to the local network as well," said the officer.

Detective Ikari pushed her legs and arms. He was looking for broken bones, and there were none. She'd fallen limp. Her broken face had just been the last injury she'd received. On her wrists there were signs of a struggle. She had tattooed on her left wrist in black ink a double helix. Detective Ikari made a note to get that recorded.

Ikari put her hand down gently. Back into the road. He stood and looked up at the club front of them. It was dead and abandoned. There never been any windows to break; a concrete do it yourself club that had been bolted together to skim money from the refinery workers at the end of the shift. But the buildings external screens had been broken or torn away from their housings.

The building was only three stories tall. Detective Ikari guessed that she could have fallen from there. He'd have to look later for answers. But it seemed plausible.

"Is there anything you can tell me about this place?" he asked the officer.

"Not a lot sir. Closed down a few months ago when the refinery that owned it was closed. Wasn't anything special about it really. Just another strip joint and bar. I don't remember there being any trouble. Maybe the odd fight out front. Nothing too unusual."

"Who owned it?"

"Baur. They closed the refinery down because they were moving their operations to a new oil field before you asked."

Detective Ikari remembered reading about the plant closing now. In public they were moving because the oil was no longer off the coast. There had been rumors though that Shinra, City 23's owners, had forced them out so they could move into the business.

Still that didn't explain Della Smith's death. Not on its own.

I am building towards something. I think this is the start of a novella. At the very least an exploration of the style and themes of some future novella. Food for thought anyway.

Dork & Hat #3

2010-01-15T00:43:00.006Z

This is the last Dork & Hat comic I plan on writing since it kind of finishes a single story and because I think I've had my fun with the concept. I found this one much harder to write than the previous two. Because I'm feeling really depressed and forlorn at the moment. Vile hugs are needed I'm afraid.

Anyway, enough of my own personal shite problems. This is the last Dork & Muffin and It has collateral damage in it.

Dork & Hat #3

Page 1

Panel 1

This panel should fill the top half of the page. Close up, with dynamic lines, of OLDHAT power screaming and swinging her giant sword over her head.

No dialog.

Panel 2

Quarter of the page panel. On the left.

DORKMUFFIN is clinging on top the side of the Zeppelin with one hand. Her staff is falling away into the distance metropolis below.

No dialog.

Panel 3

Quarter of the page panel. On the right.

Mid shot of the Zeppelin deck. DOCTOR CROMERTY's ray gun is charging up. Electricty is crackling from the sides of it. OLDHAT is running towards DOCTOR CROMERTY.

Panel 4

Rest of the page.

OLDHAT hits DOCTOR CROMERTY with her sword. The ray gun is thrown out of his hands and spins in the air.

Page 2

Panel 1

Close up on the ray gun hitting the deck. The business end of the ray gun is pointing up at an angle out of the top of the panel.

Panel 2

DOCTOR CROMERTY is bent double clutching his middle. The ray gun in the background can be seen firing a bolt. DORKMUFFIN is halfway through pulling herself up from the side of the Zeppelin.

Panel 3

Long shot. The Doom Zepplin's gas bag exploding above the city.

Panel 4

DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT walking away from the burning Hindenburg style wreckage of the doom Zeppelin. They are in a park. It is snowing ash. DORKMUFFIN's staff has embedded itself in the grass just in front of DORKMUFFIN. OLDHAT is walking alongside DORKMUFFIN. Her sword is being rested on her shoulder.

Oldhat: Do you think our insurance will cover the collateral damage?

Dorkmuffin: Possibly.

Oldhat: Good enough.

Dork & Hat #2

2010-01-12T16:15:00.002Z

So I went and wrote another two pages of Dork & Hat. These follow on directly after the first two pages.

Dork & Hat #2

Page 1.

Panel 1.

The plaza from the previous two pages. DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT are still in their superhero form. Police officers are taking the thief away in handcuffs. Snow has started to fall from the sky.

Dorkmuffin: Is that snow? At this time of year.

Oldhat: It's probably nothing. The Super Squad alarm hasn't gone off.

Panel 2.

Close up on a small civil defence siren[1] attached to the corner of a buildings roof.

Siren: Calling all heroes. Doctor Cromarty's Doom Zeppelin sighted.

Panel 3.

DORKMUFFIN is giving OLDHAT the "I told you so" expression.

Dorkmuffin: Well let's get going!

Panel 4.

DORKMUFFIN and OlDHAT running towards the camera, swinging their weapons, the waiter from the café where they were is in the background. He is looking at the mess (turned over table etc.) with his hands in the air.

Oldhat: What about the bill?

Dorkmuffin: I dunno.

Page 2.

Panel 1.

We are on the deck of the doom Zeppelin, which is more like a sailing ship suspended below a giant bag of gas, as DOCTOR CROMARTY [2] zaps a giant ray gun bolt towards DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT who are diving out of the way.

DOCTOR CROMARTY I don't know how to design his appearance. I want him to have a big bushy science beard and be wearing a kilt. A mad scientist with a giant ray gun and a doom Zeppelin that controls the weather.

Caption: Twenty minutes and one misadventure with rockets later.

Panel 2.

Close up on DOCTOR CROMARTY.

Doctor Cromarty (shouting): Die!

Panel 3.

DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT are standing on the edges of the deck. DORKMUFFIN on the left and OLDHAT on the right. They are facing the camera. DOCTOR CROMARTY is roughly in the middle with his back facing us.

DORKMUFFIN: Why are you doing this?

Panel 4.

Close up, with dynamic lines, of DORKMUFFIN being blasted in the chest and pushed over the side of the Doom Zeppelin's railings by a bolt from the ray gun.

Doctor Cromarty: Because I can!

[1] Civil Defence Siren - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren
[2] Shipping Forecast - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast

Expect another two pages and then I'm done.

Dork & Hat #1

2010-01-08T12:15:00.003Z

So for some context to this very short comic script you need to go and read this and then look at these two incredible drawings. Okay, you've looked at those and got the concept. Amazonian Valkyrie Superheroes who are also artists.

Take a gander at these two pages of script then.

Dork & Hat #1

Page 1

Panel 1

Wide panel across the page.

DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT (in normal starving artists clothes. OLDHAT has her beret on despite the heat.) are sitting in wrought iron chairs at an outside café in an Italian city centre. The sun is high and a beautiful fountain flows in the background. The crowd around them are a myriad of mythical creatures (fauns, centaurs, giants, elves, pixes, etc) intermixed with humans.

DORKMUFFIN is drawing the waterfall on a sketchpad. OLDHAT is playing with the settings a DSLR camera. On the table in front of them are ice cream bowls, opened green glassed bottles of water, and espressos already drunk.

Dorkmuffin: So I was thinking we could go to the galleria d'arte later.

Panel 2

Half the page width. Below panel 1 and to the left of panel 3.

Close up on OLDHAT's face.

Oldhat: Hmmn.

Panel 3

Half the page width. Below panel 1 and to the right of panel 2.

Close up on and old lady faun and a human teenage male. The human is running away from the faun. He has a handbag in his hands. He is heading towards the point of view.

Old Lady Faun(shouting): Stop! Please someone stop him!

Panel 4

Mid shot on OLDHAT and DORKMUFFIN. They are in their superhero costumes. Manga style panel with no background. The table and chairs, including drinks etc, are being scattered by their explosive awesomeness.

Page 2.

Panel 1

Both DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT are standing in the path of the escaping purse-snatcher. DORKMUFFIN has laid her staff down in his path. He is looking behind himself with a smug expression. The old lady faun is shouting and gesticulating rudely towards the thief.

Panel 2

The thief is lying on the floor still clutching the stolen handbag. He has tripped over the staff which we can see beneath his feet.

Panel 3

Point of view shot from the thief's perspective looking upwards at DORKMUFFIN and OLDHAT. They are looming over him, two giants, armed with a staff and a sword the height of a mortal man.

Oldhat: Excuse me.

Panel 4

OLDHAT is holding the thief down by one of his shoulders as he presents the stolen handbag back to the old lady faun. The old lady faun is thanking the two of them. DORKMUFFIN is standing next to OLDHAT.

Old Lady Faun: Thank you.

Dorkmuffin (text getting smaller and closer together): Not a problem. It's a service we provide free of charge. We're just starting out on our supers career and need all the experience we can get. Would you minding signing this assessment sheet? But you don't have to. It'd just be...

Caption (bottom right): END!

Approval was sought from both Dorkmuffin and Oldhat before I shared this widely. Their reply was a collective and enthusiastic: FUCK YEAH!

This comic pretty much writes itself as well.

The Last English Dragon

2009-12-31T19:22:00.006Z

And here is the second of two stories I'm sharing this week. This one is a fantasy tale. It is also an episode from a Bildungsroman style story.

This story was written for a friend to be given as a Christmas present from the friend to her younger brother. The brief I was given was to write a story for an eleven year old boy who is smart and likes dragons and stuff.

The kid has received a very pretty printed copy of the story and there isn't much else I feel I can do with the story apart from share it. So there isn't much more for me to say about "The Last English Dragon." The story itself is about two and a half thousand words long and you can download a PDF of the story from here.

As I am on my laptop at the moment I don't have a plain text version of the story with me to copy and paste here. I will put the text of the story below when I am next at my desktop machine.

This is very likely going to be the last post I make to this blog this year. While we enter a new year every second (think about it); I'd still like to wish everyone who follows me here a healthy and awesome Gregorian new year.

Edited 1/1/10: Full story below.

The Last English Dragon

Will Ellwood

I was eating lunch when I first saw George Smith. It had been
early in the spring and I was up on the moors helping my father
and brother tend to his employer's flock. George Smith had been
walking along the old road over the tops heading towards me. He
was well dressed like a lord.

When he reached the break in the wall where I was resting he
introduced himself and started to ask me a queer set of
questions. "Good afternoon young sir," he said, "these walls,
could you tell me how long they have stood?"

"As long as I have lived," I replied truthfully.

He looked me up and down. "That isn't very helpful. How old are
you? Sixteen?"

"Fourteen."

"Quite."

"My father says that the walls were built when he was a lad. He
must be forty five now."

"What is the point of these beastly things?"

"Well sir, to keep all the lords sheep in one place. To stop them
from escaping and to stop things from stealing them."

"Ah I see. It's about control then. Things have not changed much
since I was last in the area then."

"Shortly after the Glorious Revolution," he said in a casual tone
of voice.

That was impossible. The man standing before me looked no older
than my father. I would have easily believed that he was much
younger had he not been wearing a white wig. "I don't believe
you."

"Of course you don't," he said, as he reached into the pocket of
his waistcoat pocket. "Take a look at this coin. See what you
think? Keep it even."

I took the coin. The year on the face dated the coin to 1695. I
still didn't believe this strange man. He could have gotten the
coin from anywhere.

"Tell me lad. Do you attend a school of some kind?"

"I did," I answered, "for five years in the seasons where I
couldn't be put to useful work. But that was years ago. I can
read and write a bit. I know enough arithmetic to help my father
with his accounts." I was proud of that fact then. My father and
brother had never learned to read or write. Our employer, who is
our landlord, had often tried to exploit my father into paying
more money than he owed by taking advantage of this.

"You should go back to school again. That coin is very valuable.
It should find you the start of an education at a local grammar
school."

Of course this is when I asked the obvious question, "why are you
giving me this?"

"Because a boy needs an education, and because George Smith has
more money than he needs."

We talked a little while after he gave me the coin. About small
things like the weather. But soon he made his excuses and walked
off across the moors. I returned to repairing the wall of an
enclosure and watching over the flocks of sheep around me.

The money was more than enough to send me to school for a term.
It was decided jointly by my mother and father that as the
opportunity was there that I would start school again on the
soonest possible date. Books were bought for my studies and
instead of spending all my hours in the fields with my father and
brother watching sheep I spent the hours I could afford catching
up.

It was fortunate that I was an able student who eventually won a
scholarship, because soon after I had started at the grammar
school there was a spate of poachers. The bodies of mutilated
animals started to turn up among the lord's flocks and the money
given to me by George Smith had to be used to compensate the lord
for loss of livestock.

During the summer break I returned to the moors to shepherd and
once again I met George Smith as he walked along the old road.
"How is your education progressing?" He asked me after some small
talk.

"It is going well sir. I have gained a scholarship; which is most
fortunate because most of the money you gave me had to be used to
cover another unpredicted debt."

"I had heard about sheep going missing while in a tavern. I am
sorry that it has affected your family."

Now my father never visited the taverns as he was a teetotaler .
He had also been sworn to secrecy on the matter by the lord who
had not wanted news that his flocks were apparently disappearing
to get out. I assume then, as I do now, that such secrecy was
required by all involved in this part of the lords business.

"Terrible. But it happens so I suppose that it must be accepted
and anticipated," he said, smiling.

I was growing suspicious of the man and resolved then and there
to find out where George Smith was traveling to.

Again after a short conversation, only our second, he made the
excuse of being later for tea and carried on his walk across the
moor.

I followed him at a distance and kept myself low behind the
opposite side of the wall that followed the road. Not once did I
see him look back behind him, as he just walked on without a
care. He turned off the road after he had walked a while and
followed a faint path through the short brown grass to the top of
a low hill.

It was on top of this hill that I thought I had lost track of
George Smith. When he was climbing the hill so I would not be
spotted I had stayed hidden behind the wall until he had
disappeared from my sight over the summit of the hill. It was
then I climbed the hill and it was at the top of the hill that I
had hoped to catch sight of him and to pick up his trail from
there. But there was no sign of anyone or anything in the valleys
around me apart from sheep. A cairn of stones that had been there
since ancient times had been disturbed. When I examined the side
of the cairn I found a hole large enough for a man to fit
through. The bottom wasn't far down. Deep enough for me to climb
out of. I jumped down into it. It was there that I saw a narrow
tunnel leading down deep into the hill.

Crawling down that narrow tunnel into the darkness I know was a
foolish thing to do. But I was convinced George Smith was not as
he seemed. Consider the situation: he was wealthy, he claimed no
knowledge of the sheep enclosures and the only time I had seen
him had been walking from nowhere to what seemed to be nowhere.
When I'd asked about him in town, no one had heard of him. The
money he had given me we had to explain as savings that had been
acquired over time. We had managed to hush the existence of the
coin up by intimidating the banker we exchanged it with into
silence.

My father and brother had a side business when the shepherding
season was over or slow that was best described as criminal.

At the end of the tunnel it opened out into a magical chamber at
least the size of the church we attended on Sunday's. Piled to
the roof was a hoard of gold and silver coins mixed with brightly
colored jewels that glowed in the dim orange light of the
creature that was sleeping on a bed of gold.

Attempting to approach the creature in silence failed because I
slipped on a stack of coins. I cursed loudly out of habit. The
light from the creature's serpentine scales grew warmer and
brighter. The temperature increased. The creature opened its
eyes. It stretched out its short legs which ended in black
talons. Then it spread its tattered wings out disturbing piles of
gold which made a noise as the coins tumbled to the floor.

I guessed that it was trying to threaten me. While I was scared
it was not filling me with the dread that it hoped to inspire.
Mostly, these days, I attribute this to the creature's pot belly
but also to what it said next.

"Oh bother. I'll have to clean that up now," it said, with George
Smith's kind voice.

"Oh bother," I repeated, "those aren't the words a dragon is
supposed to say."

"Really now? And how many dragons have you met?" It looked at me
like a stern teacher.

"Including you, if you are a dragon."

"Which I am," it added.

"One."

"So how do you know what dragons are supposed to say?"

"Well in the stories dragons are always being canny and sly. They
don't say, 'oh bother.'"

"Do you believe every story you hear?" It looked at me that way
again.

"No."

"Good. What are you doing here anyway? I am trying to sleep."

"Well I was trying to find George Smith. I wanted to know where
he got the money from."

"Well my name when I am among your kind is George Smith," it
said.

"And the money?"

"Look around you. You are standing on it. Honestly I thought you
were a smart one. That's why I gave you the money for an
education. Money, my kind acquire wealth just by living. You need
the education though. The world is changing. I can feel that in
my bones and see it in my dreams. There will soon be no place in
England for dragons and I will become part of this hill forever.

"England has never been good for us really. All the uplands where
we live are covered with people which means we can't fly for fear
of being noticed. "

I thought about the missing sheep. "Did you take those sheep?"

It smiled. "Of course. The one advantage of being an English
dragon is that food is very easy to find. Lots of sheep and
cattle to pick right from the land in the old days. Of course
now, without my wings, I have to go out as George and take them
like a common poacher. But time changes everything I suppose.

"You have been born in interesting times lad. I heard on my last
trip into town that a new land has recently been colonized. A
place first sighted when I was last awake. Australia. Terra
Australis Incognita. The Unknown Land of the South. Surely there
must be no more unknown lands. No places marked here be dragons.

"What do you want to do in life?" the dragon said, changing the
subject abruptly.

I had, at this stage of my life, given the question little
thought. I had always assumed that I would follow directly into
my father and brother's work of shepherding when it was available
or the other business when more legal work was not available. Now
with the benefit of hindsight this was foolish, even childish,
thinking as with the education that the dragon's money had
provided me my prospects in life had improved far beyond what my
father and brother could hope to achieve.

I admitted the truth to the dragon that I didn't know.

"Well," said the dragon, "do you think that you'll be able to
shepherd sheep for much longer? Aren't you tempted to explore the
places you'll have read about in your studies?"

"A bit. But I don't know how I'd go to those places. Not unless I
get sent to Australia as a convict. There's the army. But that is
no guarantee. It is likely that wouldn't get very far and end up
fighting the French."

"But if you don't take the chance..."

"I don't fancy them. There is the navy or a merchant ship. But
I've never seen the sea; let alone been on a ship. So that
doesn't really seem to be an option."

"How are your math and science studies progressing?"

"I am the best in the class," I said with pride, "My teacher
tells me that I have a natural talent like no other he has
taught. Although he has often said my gift is likely to be wasted
as it will be impossible for me to attend a university to further
my studies."

"Money can be provided. A letter of recommendation from George
Smith I promise would help. Have you considered furthering your
education and exploring how the world works?"

"That would be interesting.

"Then I will do everything I can to see that you can. You must
make me one promise though. You must promise not to waste your
education. I want you to explore what is left of the world to
explorer and to learn as much as you can about how it works. When
you stop finding answers to your questions in books I want you to
find the answers through experiments and observation. Do not
believe in magic. Because, when I am gone magic will be to."

"I promise," I said.

"Good. Now please leave me to rest. I will see you soon."

I left the dragon's cave the way I had entered it. When I came to
the surface again the sun was setting. Making my way down the
path to where I had been watching the sheep I decided that I
would do everything I could to not let the dragon down. He had
given me a glimpse at my potential after all.

Two years later I moved south, on my own, to Cambridge. Five
years after that I traveled aboard a ship to Africa and beyond
ready to catalog the world.

Still despite my later adventures I have never forgotten the day
I first met George Smith. In the fifty years years since that
first meeting many changes have come to England, as have many
changes come to the world. There are no more real dragons. Only
the dragon fires of dark satanic mills that have caused the
cities to swell in size.

I write this story of how I came to find myself in the position
to see the world now because I do not wish the story of George
Smith to be lost. I believe that George Smith not only wanted me
to go out into the world and explorer but I also believe that he
always wanted to be remembered. Not to die forgotten in the
middle of a lonely English hill.

The Black Rose

2009-12-28T19:36:00.002Z

Oops. I meant to post two short stories on Christmas day. I sort of forgot because I was engrossed in reading lots of new books. But free stuff is better late than never isn't it?

Anyway here is the first of two short stories that I am going to make available. Licensed under Creative Common 3,0 Share-Remix-Attribute.

The first short story is called The Black Rose and might be the start of a small series. Might be. Either way for me this was a bit of an experiment. You can download the pdf from here. Of course the whole story is also below.

The Black Rose

Will Ellwood

A Klaus Schenk Story

I had been eating my breakfast in the hotel suite when a porter knocked on the door with a telegram addressed to me. I took the telegram and paid him for bringing it to me. I was in the city to play violin for a private client and had only an afternoon to myself before the performance. After that I was due in the capital for another performance. However my movements are well documented in the press these days and my reputation always precedes me.

"Mr. K. Schenk services required. Employee murdered. Police not investigating. Wish your assistance. Will arrive 11AM for consultation. Mr. Baker," said the telegram.

I was annoyed that Mr. Baker would be arriving uninvited, as I had hoped to spend that morning practicing the pieces I would be playing in the evening. I readied myself for the man's visit and scanned through the newspaper's society pages to find out who the gentleman was.

A banker of some considerable wealth and scandal it seemed from a story about the weekends society ball. I waited patiently in my suite for the man to arrive. He Arrived on time. I greeted Mr. Baker, a small neat man, at the door and led him to the suite's dining table.

"Your telegram was interesting," I said.

"I thought you might be curious. You are aren't you? I can of course compensate you for your time."

I looked at my fingernails. "Compensation, aside from expenses incurred, won't be necessary. I just need to know a few facts before I begin my investigation."

"I'll tell you as much as I know."

"Good. Can you tell me about the murdered man?"

"His name was Hubert Cooper and he was a clerk at my bank. He went missing three days ago. I was informed last night that his body had been found in Central Park. He had no family; so they told me. However."

"However?"

"I have been harassed by a group of rival businessmen. They call themselves The Rose Club. I fear they might have murdered Hubert as a warning to me," explained Mr. Baker.

I thought about the man's claim. I had heard of The Rose Club and I had also read in the more lurid newspapers about their supposed activities. I accepted his offer and showed him out of the suite before going to find the porter who I hoped would be able to give me directions to the city morgue.

***

A young man in a shabby suit at the morgue's front desk greeted me with indifference. He was reading a racing newspaper and eating a cheese sandwich.

"Good afternoon sir. Is the pathologist in?"

"No. Dr. Moore is out to lunch. He won't be back for several hours."

"Might it be possible to examine a body within the mortuary while he is away?"

"Why would you want to do that?" He asked and then took a bite out of his sandwich.

"Inspiration."

"What for?"

I raised my right arm higher so it was clear I was holding a violin case to the man. "I am a musician and I am playing a particularly tragic piece of music tonight. Do you think you could help an artist?"

The young man looked at me. I put down the violin case and reached into my the inside pocket of my jacket. I took out a leaflet for an old performance which had my name on and a small bribe tucked between the folds of the paper. I gave it to him.

"My name is Klaus Schenk and I am a violinist. Now will you let me take a look inside the morgue? I only need ten minutes, alone, to gather up the appropriate atmosphere."

The young man looked inside the leaflet and then put it inside his own jacket. He stood up and walked to a set of double doors at the far end of the room behind his desk. "Certainly. Ten minutes only though. No funny business as well. You will get us both in trouble if caught doing anything unseemly." He unlocked the door and I made my way through into the short corridor leading into the morgue itself.

The cold room of the morgue chilled me as I walked in. I took a folder from a small table by the door and flipped through the papers inside. Gas lamps illuminated the room and I walked in silence across the diamond tiles to the four tables in the middle of the room. Only one body rested in the room; according to the papers I was reading it was the cadaver of Hubert Cooper.

His file, written by Dr. Moore, said that he'd died of sudden but natural causes. There was bruising around Mr. Cooper's neck. Sudden causes indeed. I examined the body in detail and found no clear signs of illness. Hubert Cooper had not been overweight and for a bank clerk had been athletic. There were also no signs that any detailed pathological inspection of Mr. Cooper's body carried out. One anomaly I found was that his mouth had been forced open. Inside it I found a black rosebud. I removed the foreign object and wrapped inside square of cloth from my violin case.

One of the stories I had read about The Rose Club was that they used a system of colored roses to communicate. Roses placed in their lapels to send simple messages about their ranking within the organization. One tabloid article, which carried a macabre twist, suggested that they had enough influence over the police and judicial system to escape the penalties of the law. The article had insinuated, although not outright said, that they
used a black rose to tell the police to look the other way.

This tabloid, although of low quality and usually filled with fiction, had been correct. Reason enough for me to continue my subscription. I turned to leave the morgue and put the file back on the table by the door. I hoped that Dr. Moore would re-examine the body when he returned and find the rosebud missing leading him to carry out a proper examination rather than perjure himself for the sake of The Rose Club.

***

After the performance I declined the complementary carriage back to my hotel. Instead I walked across central park in order to collect my thoughts and make plans for my journey to the capital. Walking alone under the gaslights in the early hours of the morning has always been one of the mains ways that for me to relax after a concert. The silence and loneliness only broken by my footsteps on the path as I find my way back to the hotel.

In some cities this is a dangerous habit and is liable to attract the attention of undesirables elements of society who wish to rob you or do much worse. In light of my venture to the morgue earlier I should have expected what happened next.

I had been followed from the penthouse where I had played from the moment that I had reached the street. I had not been playing attention when I should have. A giant Scandinavian with closely shaved blond hair had been constantly behind me, or in my vicinity, even after I had noticed him and had started to walk a random path back to my hotel.

It was under one of the bridges crossing the lake that he confronted me. "Stop and turn around," he shouted in a thick accent. On the lapel of his winter coat I spied a rosebud, but could not discern the color. He was pointing a revolver at me. "Put your hands up."

I put my violin case to the floor and followed his instructions to the letter. He proceeded to interrogate me. "Have you told Mr.. Baker the results of your investigation?"

"Not yet."

"You won't."

"I won't. How do you mean?"

"If you tell him then you die. We have already fixed the mess you caused at the morgue. There won't be a rude and unnecessary investigation into Mr. Coopers unfortunate, shall I say, poor health. It would not take much effort for me to make you to make you go away. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," I said, "I suppose you will want the rosebud I took from Hubert's mouth. It is the only evidence that I have. I swear I am telling the truth."

"I believe you. Yes, I want the rosebud. You have it with you?"

"In my violin case."

"Get it. Get it slowly," the Scandinavian ordered.

I bent down onto my knees slowly. I kept my arms above my head until I could open the case. Inside the lid I always kept a single action revolver because I never knew the trouble I was going to get involved with. I pulled out the revolver from its housing quickly and shot the Scandinavian in the leg. He dropped his gun which fired when it hit the ground. I closed the lid of the violin case and approached the Scandinavian who lay on the ground clutching his ruined knee with gritted teeth.

"I am a musician. I am also a marksman. Now tell me why Hubert Cooper was murdered," I said, pulling back the revolver's hammer.

The Scandinavian said nothing.

"Now I am not a cruel man. I don't wish to harm you any more than I already have. But if you don't tell me, then I am going to have to do a rather beastly thing to you. I know you have enough composer to speak. Your silence betrays you; since a lesser man would be screaming to the heavens now."

The Scandinavian said nothing until I pointed the revolver at his other knee. "Alright. Rose Club members wanted to buy Mr. Baker's bank cheap. They intimated him. Then threatened to him and his employees harm. Hubert was just the first. He had no family; so the only person that would care would be Mr. Baker."

"I see. Are you alone? Are you being followed?"

"I'm alone. What are you going to do now?" asked the Scandinavian.

I pointed the revolver at his chest and said, "Send a message."

"You wouldn't."

I fired a shot into the man's chest and he died in an instant. Possibly he was frightened for the first time in his life. I crouched down next to him and put the revolver back in the violin case. I took the black rosebud and opened the Scandinavian's dead mouth and placed the flower inside before closing his jaw.

I looked around. The park was still silent. The three shots might have been heard but they had most likely been ignored. Even still I proceeded directly towards the exit of the park and back towards my hotel.

The following morning Mr. Baker met me for breakfast in my suite. "Mr. Baker you were correct in your assumption that Hubert was murdered. However you will find no recourse with the law, although I did try to attract their attention. The Rose Club has the authorities firmly in their pockets. I am sorry that I cannot even guarantee your safety," I said.

"And what of this Scandinavian. What became of him?"

"He is dead. He admitted to me that he was the murderer so I shot
him."

Mr. Baker looked shocked. "The police aren't involved are they? You broke the law on my behalf."

I poured myself a cup of tea from the hotel's fine china. "I don't think they'll be involved. It's all about roses and I just happened to have a black rose upon my person."

"Oh. Are you going to explain anything else to me?"

"No. That would not be smart. Best to leave some mystery. If the death of the Scandinavian is troubling you then let me assure you that it was self-defence. Now if you don't mind could you please leave. I am leaving for the train station in half an hour and would like to finish my breakfast in peace,"

Mr. Baker left in silence. As he opened the door to leave the room he turned back to look at me. It looked as though he wanted to say something. "Good luck," I said, as he paused before he walked out into the corridor.

The Black Cab Fragment

2009-12-20T23:30:00.005Z

David Lewis got into the black cab last, the cameraman made sure he filmed that. He took his seat by the door opposite Mr Yates who sat next to the cameraman. David was squeezed next to Robert who was dozing after the large lunch that he'd just had bought for him.

"Make sure you do your seatbelts," the driver said, "elf 'n' safety."

There was a chorus of seatbelts clicking and then the taxi driver pulled away from the kerb. "Where are you heading to?"

"Nowhere. Just drive around the centre until I tell you to stop," David said.

"Not a problem governor."

The cameraman recorded the exchange between the driver and the interviewer. He pointed the camera at Mr Yates next to him to get some additional footage to edit in. Jason was looking at the window and watching the raindrops slide down the glass. "Jason, do you mind if I start the interview now?" David asked Mr Yates. "We may be the BBC but we do have budgets."

Jason looked up, "Course."

"Excellent. I'd like to ask you the first question. What inspired you to start writing?"

"I don't know really. It's just always been something I've done. I fell into the habit and kept with it I suppose. Like an open well or a rabbit hole."

"That's remarkably succinct as answers go."

"Maybe. I think it reflects my style."

David turned to Robert who had started to pay attention for the benefit of the camera. "David, could you explain why you started writing and how you started writing and got into the business?"

"Well I don't know quite when I started to write as an amateur. Like young Jason here, it has always been a habit, a habit that I started young filling up exercise books with stories and bits of dialogue. My first properly published piece of work was forty-nine years when I was twenty-four ago after I had finished my studies at Mieville Collage. It was in a shady science fiction magazine and I was paid enough that I made that weeks rent when I finally received my cheque. I got into the business by writing. Constantly writing and accepting no opportunities to slow down."

"Is that what you would attribute your success to?" asked Jason.

"Certainly. Constantly writing is a major part of why I have graduated from the lower runs of what was then considered the lower rungs of literature in the tawdry pulps to now be fated as one of Britain's best writers," Robert answered. He'd been asked the lead question hundreds of times over the last forty-nine years and everyone in the back of the taxi knew this. It was a practiced answer. One that Robert had written on an index card thirty years ago when he realized that he was going to have to answer the same set of questions repeatedly.

"I have another question Robert, if you don't mind, and this one comes from my generation's experience of the media being highly personality driven. But do you think that part of your success can be attributed in you projecting an image that your readers are able to buy into?" Your writing in fanzines and letters."

Robert considered the question. He had not thought about science fiction fanzines and the mailing lists he'd belonged to in his youth for decades. They had been his doorway into getting published and continue being published. "Now I think about it they were absolutely vital. Worthy of me thinking about more."

David sat leaning forwards against the resistance of the seatbelt. "Jason I'd like to ask you another question. Could you explain to me why you set your first novel in an anonymous city identified only by the number twenty-three?"

"I like cities. I have lived only in London and have visited maybe three dozen other cities in my life. They're all different and have different architecture, different rhythms, different people, different histories and different stories. But they also share a lot in common with each other. There's an overlap between say Edinburgh and London and there's an overlap between Liverpool and Dublin for two quick examples.

I've been under the weather/in a haze/feeling a bit shite and sorry for myself/etc for quite a few weeks now. I guess it could be the weather or lack of sunlight. Although I have no idea as to the causes really.

I wrote this fragment a few weeks back, and apart from something that'll get published on Christmas Day (I promise) this is all the fiction I've written. I think. I might have written a few scraps elsewhere, but I can't remember. It really is that kind of haze I'm under.

Anyway, this isn't finished or edited or even read since I last typed it out weeks ago. But I want no more of it and I'm feeling guilty for not posting material here. So here it is.

The situation was just one that I had been thinking about for a while in idle moments.

This of course breaks the cardinal rule about never writing about writers. But consider if I'd written about software hackers you'd mostly have fallen asleep by the time I started to geek out over the GSM protocol.

Will.
20/12/09

Eilean Buntata: It's free folks.

2009-11-13T19:51:00.001Z

Eilean Buntata it's free to read. Creative-Commons, share, remix and attribute. I'm kinda bored of asking for donations for this story (although I am seriously fucking grateful for the ones I've received) and I'd rather just give stuff away for free.

This experiment is over. Observations have been made and lessons have been learned.

The next experiment begins now. If you enjoy the story please do consider donating some money. Not huge amounts. Just a few quid or a couple of dollars. Every little helps.

No preview in this post. You can download a zip file with the story in various different formats by right clicking and saving the target of this link.

As ever I hope you enjoy what you read.

And to those awesome awesome people who donated you are stars. Because of you guys I can almost bring myself to say I'm a professional.

Peace & Love,

Will.

The Writer's Room

2009-11-08T02:24:00.007Z

It happens. Sometimes there are tenants that just go missing. Often they do die while staying here. It is always a tragedy having to tidy up after their lives. I hate having to short through their belongings and get in touch with family members or loved ones. Often there are none. This is sometimes easier and it is sometimes harder. But no one comes to stay at my boarding house because of the service. They come because of work or sometimes pleasure, although they pay by the hour, and if they live here then it's because they are a step above living on the streets.

The worst feeling I ever had cleaning out a room was a room that belonged to a man named TK. You'll have heard of him I am sure. It turned out that he had been writing for a major newspaper anonymously and been sending most of money to charity. He kept only enough to keep himself barely living in my flea ridden boarding house. He died in a traffic accident. Hit by a car when he'd been crossing the road without looking. He never struck me as a man that would take risks.

Although at the time I did not know he lived a life of poverty through choice I always considered him to be a very diligent and well dressed man. Not one to take risks and when he was to be seen in public he was always dressed in a clean pressed suit and a hat that he kept in good condition. He was of course very well spoken even though he tried to hide his education. He passed off his mannerisms and learning as time spent in the library growing up. A bit disingenuous maybe because if half the guests here had his expensive education they'd waste no time in letting people know.

But that was the kind of man he was. Or at least the impression that he gave me.

I opened the door into his tiny room on the third day of his disappearance with a detective watching over my shoulder. I walked into the room first to check that nothing had been damaged in his absence. The detective followed. He'd just informed me of Mr TK's death at the hospital that morning from internal injuries. He was investigating the room in an attempt to find information about next of kin or even a will.

None was found until later when the newspaper got in touch with the police.

He hadn't filed that week's report.

It was a small room that he rented. It had it's own bathroom though and he was one of the few to have such luxury in the building. The room had been kept clean and tidy. Above the cupboard was a small supply of cleaning chemicals and inside it were the usual products like toothpaste and a pack of razors and spare soap. It was all laid out exactly along a regular pattern. I commented about this to the detective and he said it reminded me of a story he'd read in the newspaper once.

Little did he know.

The only other room in the apartment was where he worked and slept. I didn't allow guests to keep hotplates in their rooms because of the fire risk. He had an electric kettle though and a jar of instant coffee though. The wardrobe which the detective searched through had a second suit in and a supply of shirts and collars. Nothing else. No papers or hidden caches of money.

He'd made the bed the morning he'd left. I sat on it and looked at the desk. The chair was at a slight angle as if he'd left expecting to come back. There was a bottle of red wine on the desk as well. A third of the liquid was left in the bottle and he'd left the cork out. In a tumbler next to the bottle there was an almost full tumbler of the stuff.

He'd expected to come back.

At the other end of the desk were two small stacks of books. The detective inspected them both. He said that one was a pile of library books, still with a week left to go, and that the second were books he'd bought second hand from a shop on the corner of the block. There was an empty address book as well. The detective looked very disappointed when he opened it expecting the answers he'd been sent to find.

In the center of the desk was a typewriter. A marvelous green typewriter. Well used the machine had faded keys. It was on this that Mr TK worked from. That typewriter now sits in a glass cabinet in the national museum. I believe that they display it as they found it. The machine had a clean and unused sheet of paper in it. There were no notes or written documents in the desk draws. That was his last sheet of paper. The only one we could find.

Maybe he'd gone to get more.

The detective thanked me and left me alone in the room. He'd told me to leave everything as it was for a month at least. He'd get in touch if the situation changed. Which it did. The newspaper editor that Mr TK had written for came to visit me a week later. He'd been named as the executor of Mr TK's estate and he took everything away in a van.

He was kind enough to settle Mr TK's outstanding rent though.

Written as part of Nanowrimo as a slight distraction from other matters. The photo (which prompted this) was supplied by Becky.

Eilean Buntata: An Update.

2009-11-06T14:47:00.002Z

Good afternoon ladies, gentleman, squid things and aliens from beyond the visible stars. I am going to give you a update on my fiction ransom experiment since it's been going for about two weeks.

At the time of writing this post I have made a grand total of twenty-six quid. This is good. For a start it is more than I expected and on some level, deep down, feel that I deserve for simply writing what came into my head on a daily basis for a month as a side-effect of breathing. Although it's £26 that I would not have had otherwise. In that case I believe that this is definitely a time where shout outs are required.

So I'd like to very publicly thank: Becky, Tom, Steevo, Brittany, Elvis and Alex for their kind donations. You are fucking wonderful people.

I should also thank the good people on twitter who have reposted my begging and shaking of the collection plate posts to gain me wider exposure. Also to everyone who has blogged about this experiment. Thanks. You are also fucking wonderful people.

Because while I have not yet reached the first target of £60 I am as close to halfway as makes no difference and further than I expected. So I am going to release just over* the first half of the story to act as a further enticement. That will be at the bottom of the post past the further ramblings I am going to give.

The first observation I have and this is one that I suspected before the experiment, is about eyeballs and exposure. I fear that this will come off as a complaint and a moan about people who are let's face it more established than me. It is not meant to be. The ability to be able to ransom off a short story or fiction is about exploiting the idea of 1000 true fans. It's the phenomenon that Eliza Gauger and Amanda Palmer are both exploiting. Well that and the fact they've had respected people endorse them. I will touch on that subject again briefly later.

I don't know how many people I have reading what material I produce that I could consider "true fans."

It is not something that I really intend to think to hard about either. I don't even have a way of tracking how many people read my various blogs because I fear getting hung up on looking at the numbers and that's a distraction I don't want to have. But I either way suspect I don't have anything close to 1000 true fans as I am still growing a network of readers and people who enjoy my the thoughts that tumble out of my brain via my fingers.

Because it all comes down to eyeballs in the end.

An SF writer's biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn't know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version.

- Cory Doctorow Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet.

Eyeballs don't you see? Obscurity is the problem and right now I am pretty obscure. There is not really anything else to say on the matter. I can say anything but in the end you need as many people as possible to look at what you're doing and you need to understand that only a small percentage of those people will take the step and donate or buy what you are selling. There are several ways to get people to look. A good way is to get recommendations from other people who already have peoples attention. I have not had that and I have not asked for that. I am stubborn and always have had problems asking for help.

The trick is to get people to look. It's the same as any other business model really.

Anyway, I guess you people want to spend less time reading me rambling about disembodied eyeballs and more time reading more Eilean Buntata for nothing. I will start again from the top but I shall stick a line of hyphens in where the new materials starts off.

Remember if you enjoy it and want to read more please donate using the donation button on the side. The current spread of donations have either been £3 or £5 and every little really does help.

If anything, consider that if you donate you will get to read the final half of the story a lot sooner.

Ah one last thing did I mention that Robin LeBlanc is selling prints very cheaply? No. Then look here and here and consider donating to her as well because she is really rather good at taking pictures.

Eilean Buntata

The Steamship Black Rose had already sank into the ocean by the time me and my employers, Matthew and Eliza Gauger, arrived at the shore of the barren beach. With us in the rowing boat were three travelling trunks and the ships cat. We beached the boat and Eliza started to give orders. "Well get to it. The sun is about to set and we need a fire as soon as possible."

"With all due respect cousin. I believe that our first priority should be get the boat further up the beach. Do you not think so Fred?" said Matthew.

This presented me with a hard choice. I could side with Mr Gauger and good sense whilst risking the scorn of Miss Gauger for a hours. The other option was to follow Miss Gauger's plan and make a compromise.

"I think Miss Gauger that me and Matthew should take the boat and its contents up the beach. While you look for some firewood."

Miss Gauger glared at me. "If that is what you honestly think. Will one of you help me onto the shore?"

I stepped out of the beached boat and into the surf. Mr Gauger did the same a moment later. The boat rocked as the weight redistributed. "Be careful cousin," said Mr Gauger, as Eliza stood up. She extended her gloved hands towards the two of us and we helped her to the shore.

We were sitting around the camp fire behind the first dune in a break from the wind. Mr Gauger had recently returned from the beach with freshly caught fish. I was busy preparing our desert island feast when Mr Gauger made one of his unusual comments. "Eliza, what do you think was within that create we were escorting to San Francisco?"

Miss Gauger looked into the fire and smiled. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well it's strange the sea around where I suppose the SS Black Rose must now rest on the seabed appears to be glowing."

Miss Gauger got to her feet and declared, "you must show me."

"By all means. Fred, are you coming?" said Mr Gauger.

I followed Mr and Mrs Gauger over the top of the dune. The effect that Matthew had described was quite clear to see. On the horizon a patch of tangerine light glowed from underneath the waves.

"I do not think it is anything we need to worry about," said Miss Gauger.

"The ocean is glowing orange," said Mr Gauger.

"No need to worry," said Miss Gauger with confidence. "Shall we go back to the fire?"

"Yes," said Mr Gauger. "I'm sure Fred will prepare us some culinary delight for us with whatever scraps he can find."

Within my trunk I had kept a supply of basic culinary supplies. A bottle of white wine vinegar held prize place in this cache. I used this to flavour the fish that Mr Gauger had caught. Eventually we all retired to our improvised shelters. Me and Mr Gauger had constructed a rudimentary structure from the boat for Miss Eliza's use. Mr Gauger slept under a bivouac made from sticks and blankets. I slept by the fire under a woolen blanket.

It was early the following day that we had our initial meeting with the locals. A group of four fishermen dressed in a European style from my grandfather's generation had come down to the beach to cast their nets. We heard them speak in a language I had heard once in my travels to the north as they passed us.

"What language are they speaking? It sounds to me as if we are in the presence of elves from the old stories." said Miss Gauger.

"I don't rightly know Eliza," said Mr Gauger. "It sounds like a most queer language. Quite musical. We should introduce ourselves."

Mr Gauger strode across the beach, his long black coat blowing in the morning breeze, shouting at the locals, "hello, do you understand me?" They gave him some attention as he marched in the sand, but continued repairing their nets. Miss Gauger rolled her eyes and followed after her cousin.

"Why does he always insist on being loud and speaking English to the locals?" she said to me as I escorted her across the beach.

"Miss Gauger, your cousin, he once confided in me that it was his strict and sincere belief that English is a universal language, and can be communicated to an African tribesmen just as efficiently as it can be to an Englishmen with patience and clear pronunciation," I told her.

"Then why is he speaking so slowly? Can't you communicate with them Fredrick? You know a thing or two about languages."

"I will do my best," I said.

I approached the group who were still ignoring Mr Gauger despite his best attempts to attract their attention.

"Make them talk to me Fred," he said. "They are being very rude."

"Hello, do you have a moment to talk?" I said, to the locals in rudimentary Scots Gaelic.

"Hello," said the oldest looking man who was repairing a net. "We might have a moment for you. Who are you and how did you get here?"

"Well, me and my two companions. That man there and the women in the ruined dress were shipwrecked on your island last night. Do you happen to know if there is a way off?"
The old man stopped working on the net and looked at me directly in the eyes. "I'm sorry young man there isn't. I came to this island as a young boy, a victim of a shipwreck myself. You are the first newcomers in all that time."

This was, as you no doubt understand, something of a shock to me. The island although I had explored no further than the dunes was not without its charm. However an island this remote would bring on the disease of depression and boredom that has afflicted me and my family for generation within a small amount of time. I relayed what the old man had told me to Mr and Miss Gauger. Their response was as expected similar to mine.

"Well are their anymore of them? Any other survivors from their wreck?" asked Miss Gauger.

I could only ask the old man.

"Yes, there is a small town of us now. You are welcome to join us. It would please Eilean to have new comers," he said. "I will escort you to the town shortly. Just as soon as I have finished attending to this net."

The town was a short walk inland and was hidden behind a series of hills covered in scrub. It covered both sides of a shallow estuary spanned by numerous bridges. The materials used in the we grey stone, no doubt extracted from a quarry further inland. The roofs have been made from turf placed at low angles. The largest building in the town was a circular structure made the same way. Smoke from fires inside the building rose from under the roof. I could smell cooking constantly as we were lead through the market surrounding this building.

At the doors of the central building a guardsman stood in a uniform of earthy hues.

"Who are these people?" he asked.

"Newcomers. They were shipwrecked last night. No doubt on the same reef that your father was wrecked on," said the old man.

"Are you taking them to see the mayor?"

"Yes, where else would I be taking them?"

"He's busy," said the guard.

"Oh, well I think he'll make time son," said the old man, raising his voice.

The two men argued. The Gauger cousins were standing still trying not to look anyone in the eye.

"I didn't know you spoke the language," said Mr Gauger.

"What language is it?" asked Miss Gauger.

"Scots Gaelic. I learned it as a child from my father," I said.

"How very useful. I wonder why they speak it all the way down here in the south Atlantic," said Mr Gauger.

I explained what I'd found out to both of them while the two men were continuing to shout at each other.

The guard relented soon enough and let us in. The building had only one room. In the middle of it a statue of a potato. The mayor was standing behind a desk that had been put at one side of the room. We were lead towards him and he stretch out his right hand to greet us.

"Welcome to Eileán Bunta`ta. You have met Seoras. He's in charge of the fishing we do here. I am Graham. The mayor this town. What are your names?"

"My name is Fredrick Evans. Personal aid, and accidental translator to one Mr Matthew Gauger and one Miss Eliza Gauger," I said as I shook his hand. "Pleased to meet you sir," said Miss Gauger, in English.

"I see they do not speak Gaelic. They will have to learn I'm afraid. May I ask how you know the language?" said Graham.

"My father. He brought me up to speak English and Gaelic. He was a proud Scottish nationalist," I said.

Mr Gauger leaned over to me and whispered into my ear, "do you think you could find out about the potato?"

I paused as I wondered if it would cause offence to ask around the statue which I found rather curious so soon.

"Your friend Mr Gauger. He wants to know about the potato in the centre of the room. Well we have a lot to tell you about potatoes. While you have a lot of time to learn," said Graham.

Over the next four months we spent our time integrating with the peoples of the island. I stopped using the titles of my employers when declared they would not be paying me for the duration of our stay on Eilean Buntata. Deference costs money. I taught Matthew and Eliza the basics of Gaelic over the weeks until they were able to converse with the locals. I spent as much of my time helping Matthew, an engineer at heart, devise a more efficient system of irrigation for the islands many potato fields.

Neither of us were sure exactly what Eliza did in those four months. In the morning before I left for the beach to help the fishermen she often left the modest house we shared prior to my rising. She would take a revolver from her trunk, and at noon we would hear a single gunshot from within the island's interior. At sunset she would return from her walk saying nothing. Matthew refused to ask.

Of the potatoes, we only really started to learn about when my two associates had learned the basics of the language. In working in the fields we learned quickly that the major arable crop on this island was the potato. The fields muddy soil and the temperatures both providing the ideal conditions for them to grow free of defect. The importance of the potato to the mental condition of the survivors of that first wreck had emerged in a form of naturalistic worship around the crop.

We learned that the major events of worship occurred at the four equinoxes. Following in the patterns from in degenerate and primal faiths. On the first day of each week the town met in the meeting hall in the center of the town. Hymns were sung about the potato and the good it brought to the island. Me, Eliza, and Matthew took part as earnestly as possible, although always we were always trying to hold back laughter. The mayor of the town led this service and other religious events in the manner of a Anglican vicar.

The populations daily spiritual life was no less rich. Before each meal, which always involved potato, a prayer was said thanking the potatoes about to be consumed personally. Those that tended to the fields would sing work songs to encourage the potatoes to grow bigger.

The life of fishermen and tradesmen was no less linked to the potato. They would trade their services and goods for potatoes grown by farmers. Although to ensure that no one suffer when sick or old each citizen of the island donated a portion of their earnings towards a communal store of food. This would be shared according to need. Because of the temporary nature of this store at the end of each week the oldest goods in the store would be shared out to the people of Eilean Buntata in a lottery of all the households.

Matthew summed up their way as life with characteristic glibness as concerned only with the potato, the chip and the holy crisp. His assessment was not entirely inaccurate, as our presence on the island, and some of the ingredients we brought with us did start a minor sectarian division among some of the inhabitants.

* If I'm going to leak this out I am going to try and leak it out in chunk that make some sense.

I am broke!

2009-10-23T16:43:00.012+01:00

I am broke! To give you a wee taster of how broke let me just say that looking at my bank balance is an exercise in gazing into the jaws of infinity and losing sanity points.

So I am asking for you help*. Obviously I am going to give you something in return. I've got a 3975 word story which I have been sitting on since April. So if you send me as much money as you feel like donating** I will send you the story in whatever format you require that I can produce using OpenOffice.

Simple, eh?

And the first of two bonuses to sweeten the deal is that once I reach a certain value then I will release the story to the public. Let's say that considering that the commercial value of the story at pro-rates of five cents a word*** is $198.75 or £121 or €132. I feel a bit uncomfortable asking for such a large amount so I will release the whole thing for free to everyone (licensed under creative commons non-commercial attribution and remix) if I get a minimum of $100 (£60 or €66).

The second bonus is that if I get the full value of the story, apart from being over the fucking moon, I will do a short podcast and Q&A session about this story.

Oh and for the person that donates the most money there's a small prize. As I'm currently writing a thematic sequel to Eilean Buntata the person who donates the most will appear in the sequel. Or they can nominate a name and basic character trait for a character. Whichever works best.

Because buying stuff blind sucks have a gander at the first 400 words.

Eilean Buntata

The Steamship Black Rose had already sank into the ocean by the time me and my employers, Matthew and Eliza Gauger, arrived at the shore of the barren beach. With us in the rowing boat were three traveling trunks and the ships cat. We beached the boat and Eliza started to give orders. "Well get to it. The sun is about to set and we need a fire as soon as possible."

"With all due respect cousin. I believe that our first priority should be get the boat further up the beach. Do you not think so Fred?" said Matthew.

This presented me with a hard choice. I could side with Mr Gauger and good sense whilst risking the scorn of Miss Gauger for a hours. The other option was to follow Miss Gauger's plan and make a compromise.

"I think Miss Gauger that me and Matthew should take the boat and its contents up the beach. While you look for some firewood."

Miss Gauger glared at me. "If that is what you honestly think. Will one of you help me onto the shore?"

I stepped out of the beached boat and into the surf. Mr Gauger did the same a moment later. The boat rocked as the weight redistributed. "Be careful cousin," said Mr Gauger, as Eliza stood up. She extended her gloved hands towards the two of us and we helped her to the shore.

We were sitting around the camp fire behind the first dune in a break from the wind. Mr Gauger had recently returned from the beach with freshly caught fish. I was busy preparing our desert island feast when Mr Gauger made one of his unusual comments. "Eliza, what do you think was within that create we were escorting to San Fransisco?"

Miss Gauger looked into the fire and smiled. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well it's strange the sea around where I suppose the SS Black Rose must now rest on the seabed appears to be glowing."

Miss Gauger got to her feet and declared, "you must show me."

"By all means. Fred, are you coming?" said Mr Gauger.

I followed Mr and Mrs Gauger over the top of the dune. The effect that Matthew had described was quite clear to see. On the horizon a patch of tangerine light glowed from underneath the waves.

"I do not think it is anything we need to worry about," said Miss Gauger.

"The ocean is glowing orange," said Mr Gauger.

"No need to worry," said Miss Gauger with confidence. "Shall we go back to the fire?"

Does that sound cool? Do you want to read more?

Then click on the PayPal button at the side and donate away. Remember any amount gets you the story in a collection of readable formats and that if I reach $100 then I'll release the story for free for everyone to read. If I get $199 then I will do a podcast and a Q&A session (so do send those questions via comment or email). Don't forget to make clear what email address you want the story sent to. Of course send those questions. I will send a zip file containing the rich text version, the plain text version, a word version and a pdf version of the story as soon as possible.

Oh wait why am I doing this? Aside from the fact that I need the dough. Well there have been a few people on the Internet (Cory Doctorow, Hal Duncan, Eliza Gauger, Amanda Palmer and Trent Reznor) working this model. And if I've entertained you with that extract then I reckon it would be a fair trade to have a small amount of your moneys.

* And I really hate having to do this. I'd like to give the story away for nothing.
** If you want a minimum let's say 3 quid ($5) because that's the price of a bottle of my favorite beer at "The Pub".
*** That number is slightly debatable as well according to evidence here. But enough quibbling; I'm happy with five cents a word.

Last Tuesday's Horoscope

2009-09-25T16:48:00.003+01:00

Dear Emily Star,

I have always been an avid follower of your horoscope column since you moved to The Daily Prospect from The New Independence Times. I have been fascinated by how accurate your predictions have been for me, as a Gemini, but particularly I would like to write to tell you about last Tuesday's prediction.

You wrote the follow: "Today is a day to make an important choice. There will be obvious obstacles be that financial or interpersonal, but it is important that today you make your decision free of those obstacles and only consider if the choice you must make will make your life better."

Last Tuesday I left my husband of ten years and took our children away from his destructive and dangerous habits. Thank you Emily, your words finally gave me the confidence to break free of his influence and flee to safety.

I do not know how to thank you enough and still I have one question. How do you produce these horoscopes? Do you use tarot, runes, or some other method?

Yours,

Melissa Banks.

Dear Melissa Banks,

I truly do not know how to start with this response to your letter. I often get letters sent to me and they normally fall into three categories. Letters telling me how great my horoscopes are, letters letting me know that my horoscopes are wrong and pseudo-science at best and at worst blasphemous witchcraft, and then there are the letters asking me how I produce my horoscopes.

I never answered any of these letters and this if the first response that I have written to a reader. In general the people who send me the most praise send it over the most trivial matters and report back to me coincidence. You were moved to thank me for making a genuinely life changing decision. I have a secret to tell you and I hope that you can keep this in strict confidence.

You had it within you to leave him all the time; I just gave you the tiny prod that allowed you to take action. The critics of my horoscopes are right they are a fraud and are not guided by any astrological process at all. It is important you realise this as I believe that you are a stronger individual than you think yourself. If you still wish to know how I produce my daily horoscopes then read on further. If you do not then all I can offer you is an apology for breaking an illusion that you held so dearly.

My horoscopes are written according to a formula I developed a long time ago. This allows me to produce twelve short pieces of text daily with ease. I edit these into the form you read daily in the newspaper. They hold no real meaning and are nothing more than randomly produced words. That my is secret. My justification is that they can bring a small amount of hope and provide a seed of insight that can grow into something larger.

I hope that you are still safe and well.

Yours,

Emily Star.

No comment.

Untitled Superhero Story

2009-09-20T17:25:00.003+01:00

There is pecking order when you are a professional hero. Just like sports really. The young and the good join the A-Teams, and the rest join their local team and try to suppress all hope of international fame and fortune.

Then there are the old timers. The ones like me who were the best in the world and refuse to stop trying to save the world until reality catches up with them and they are flying over an anonymous conurbation protecting the residents from bored teenagers and desperate criminals. And the only people you are saving are the folk who have traded in their heritage and souls to buy a big TV and a traditionally styled five bedroom house that a kid could punch holes through the walls.

Traditional my arse.

Twenty years ago I was coming to grips with my otherness just as Thatcher and friends demonized us. All this while she was attempting to sell the atmosphere to her analogue from the Earth next door because it was a new market and the nation's resources should be fully exploited just like she'd revolutionised the nation's coal assets.

Ten years ago I was a coverhero. Top of the game and running strike missions into Thatcher 666's Empire of Many Earths. I even managed to liberate a few. That helped to sooth my soul when I took part in Dr Tomorrow's operation to glass the Earth next door.

Five years ago and the new government was making a good stab at fixing all the problems heroes can't fix on their own. Social problems and society. Poverty, utilities, global warming and a shit education system are not within our sphere of influence. I was still in one of the A-Teams back then. Although I was no longer in London I was still doing my part.

Two years ago I caused too much damage on a standard meteorite grab. I'd gotten slower than I was in my prime and failed to send all the fragments back into space. Part of the Lake District is still on fire. The damage was limited by Mistress Mystery using one of her ten wishes. I have never felt more embarrassed or ashamed than when I had to watch her cut of one her pretty little fingers off so selflessly to fix one of my mistakes.

So now I am here: middle-aged, going broke, and losing all hope as I fly around stopping hoodies for just above minimum wage. I should really just chuck it all in and train to become a social worker.

This is based on another pitch by Maicro because that's apparently what he does. "*SUPERHERO* moves to crime-free suburbia."

This is also riffing on The Filth by Grant Morrison and probably other, let's face it, British superhero comics I've read.

Suggestions for titles include Ferburton's "The tights don't fit" and atavistian's "The Young and the Good."

The Fifth Order

2009-09-09T20:05:00.005+01:00

The mayor went pale when I told him what Robocop had done the night before. The very idea offended him; it offended me but it was not the worst crime commited by Omni Consumer Products that I had investigated. I will never forget what they did with the orphanage they bought from the city. This was just an example of their excesses and strange powertrips.

"Could you explain what happened? Slowly," the mayor said. He poured a glass of water for himself and loosened his tie.

I explained again. "Robocop had an extra order and he followed it. This extra order is 'Suck Omni Consumer Products executive's dick when ordered to.' The executive, one Adrian Anderson, gave the order last night unwittingly and is now recovering in hospital. Do you want to see the footage we recovered from Robocop?"

I think that's when I saw the mayor throw up inside his mouth. "Not really. But if this goes to trail it will become public anyway. Just pause it before anything too bad happens," he said.

I put the tape in the machine on the mayor's desk and pressed play. The footage was taken directly from Robocop's vision and hearing. Exactly what Robocop experienced. It was one of the large grey corner offices that Omni Consumer Products had a five floors filled with in their skyscraper down in the finance district of the city. Robocop was standing still while looking at Mr Anderson who was shouting at Robocop over the kneecapping of a major shareholder's estranged son who was caught attempting to hold up a grocery store for drug money. Robocop gave the excuses that he was programed to give. "Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Uphold the law."

Mr Anderson was fuming and to my eyes he looked like he was fearful of losing his job. Red faced he shouted at Robocop, "Suck my fucking dick Robocop. I'm fed up of your excuses; just suck my dick," and that's when Robocop moved towards Mr Anderson. Arms outstretched Robocop got down on his knees and ripped Mr Anderson's tailored trousers from his legs.

"Affermative," Robocop said, in a monotone. His left hand reached towards Mr Anderson's crotch and gripped hard at his flaccid penis. Mr Anderson screamed in pain as Robocop leaned in closer to the scared executive.

"Please stop," Mr Anderson, the second before I stopped the tape for the sake of the mayor. It only got worse from there. Ten minutes of Robocop chewing on Mr Anderson's dick with his hydraulic jaw. I was not going to explain that to the mayor who looked faint. I walked over to the window and opened it for him. Just a touch of fresh air to stop him from falling over.

"That's the most horrible thing I have ever seen," he said.

"Isn't it just?" I said, humouring him.

"What is your police department going to do about it?" the mayor asked me.

"Pretty much nothing. We can't prosecute Robocop because apart from him not being legally human he was technically the victim since he was forced to perform the act. We should be charging Mr Anderson for the rape of Robocop. We could also prosecute Mr Anderson for necrophilia since Robocop is not alive. But that might be pushing it. In the end though how would such a prosecution serve the public interest? Mr Anderson has been horribly injured by his actions and prosecuting this case further would just cost money that my department quite frankly does not have," I explain.

"I see," the mayor said.

"As long as the case does not leak to the media then I propose that we do nothing except put Mr Anderson on the sex offenders register," I said.

The mayor nodded. He stood up from behind his desk and hurried towards the door that lead to his en suite toilet. "If you can make all the necessary arrangements and keep it quiet just do that then. Now if you don't mind me I have to go to the bathroom."

"I will do so sir. Thank you," I said.

"I just don't know how you boys cope," he said closing the bathroom door.

I left his office to the sound of the mayor dry heaving into his toilet. I agreed with him on the last comment he made. I really don't know how we cope on a daily basis. Maybe we become desensitised to it.

I blame @Vklaus for this entirely. The prompt he gave me a few months back was something along the lines of: "Robotcop gives corprate blowjobs."

I've only just worked up the courage to write what I had in mind.

I'm so sorry.

I think this is technically fan fiction as well.

I feel dirty.

The Cancer

2009-09-08T22:03:00.002+01:00

He had never known a world where he was never not running away. His father, the reason why he was running away, had died soon after they had started running. It was his father that they were after; but he couldn't just stop and tell them that his father was dead. Besides he carried his fathers blood with him.

Under a road bridge where homeless people gathered he warmed himself by a fire. He coughed hard. "How are you doing?" a woman wearing a florescent vest said to him.

"Fine," he said.

"You don't sound it," she said. She had a stethoscope around her neck and was carrying a plastic tool box. "Do you want me to take a look at your chest?"

"No," he said, coughing again.

"Okay, fine I can't force you," she said walking away, disappointed and looking for the next potential patient.

He wrapped his blanket around himself tighter and carried on looking at the fire. Old Alex was glaring at him. "What do you want Alex?" he asked.

"Nothing much. What are you running from that's so bad you can't see a doctor kid?"

"Monsters," he said.

"Monsters? Look, I know there are a lot of mentally ill people down here. I'm one of them. But you aren't convincing anyone with that story," Alex said.

He coughed again.

"See. Get up and go see that doctor. She's a good woman and will see you right."

"Fine, fine," he said to Alex. He stood up and walked to the doctor who by now was checking someones eyesight with a pen torch. "Excuse me," he said, "I know I was rude earlier but could you take a look at my chest for me."

"Can you give me five minutes? I just need to finish looking at Miss Burroughs' eyes for her," she said to him.

He decide to wait and sat down on the concrete next to Miss Burroughs. His father had never fully explained what they were running from to him. He'd called it "The Cancer" and in his mind he was still running from the giant zodiac crab. They had been forced to leave their home early one morning before people wanting money came. These people had told his father that if he'd give them a lot of money then The Cancer wouldn't kill him. They'd started running in a truck and his father died painfully in a forgotten city years ago.

"I'm ready to see you now," she said to him. She put her stethoscope to his chest. "Now can you take some deep breaths?" He followed her order and breathed in and out as deeply as he could. It hurt him but be managed to do it without showing any signs of pain. She sighed. "I'm going to need to take a history. This sounds serious."

"What does that involve?" he said.

"Answering some questions. Like how old are you? Are there any occurrences of heart disease or cancer in your family?"

"The cancer?"

"Yes, cancer," she said.

"The cancer killed my father. It made him cough up blood. He died a long time ago. Is it after me now?"

"I'm sorry to hear about your dad. You don't have lung cancer though. I think you have a chest infection," she said. "How old are you?"

"I've stopped counting. I was in elementary school when I left with my father," he said.

She closed her eyes for a moment and then reached into her pocket to use her phone. "Hey Phil, I've got someone here that you need to see immediately under the bridge I'm working tonight. Can you get out here and help me?"

"Who's Phil?" he asked.

"Phil's a social worker. You are going to need to go into hospital," she told him.

"But it was the hospital that took all my father's money," he said.

"Don't worry, everything is free now," she said.

The prompt for this was given to me by Rootfireember in the Whitechapel IRC room. The prompt was: "Chased by Monsters."

I'm not very happy with it. Feels simplistic. I've not been writing for ages (weeks) and I think it shows. Bah!

The Cattle Song

2009-08-31T16:31:00.004+01:00

Earl stoked the camp fire with a stick. "Well for your first day on the farm you've done well. Tomorrow we ride to the creak to check the fences," said Earl. Teddy and Cody sat wrapped in blankets against the cold night listening to Earl. They had both come to visit Greenhorn Gorge ranch as a two week get away from their jobs and their families. "Have I told you boys about cattle song yet?"

"No. I don't think you have," Teddy said.

"Is it like whale song?" asked Cody.

"Well I don't know so much about that; never having seen the sea except on TV. Never seen a whale either. Except on TV. We get the Discovery channel back at the homestead, and it said that whales deafened submarine pilots with their songs of navigation," Earl drawled. "No it's not like that. I reckon that you greenhorns should listen tonight for the cattle song."

Teddy had curled up in his sleeping bag an hour later tired from a long drive and the lessons in horse riding. The old rancher was speaking literal folk bullshit he thought. Tall tales for the dudes from the big city. How could someone have not seen the sea? Earl was in his sixties at least. Sixty years and he'd never seen the big blue sea with his own eyes. That was the point when Teddy stopped listening to Earl's stories. Cows don't sing.

"Well did you hear anything?" Earl said, as he made breakfast on the embers of the fire.

"Not really," Teddy said. "Just Cody snoring."

Cody was grinning under his new Stetson. "I heard the cattle song," he said. "It was magical, it was this deep rumble in the ground from twenty miles away as a herd of cattle wandered across the plains and in the still morning the elaborate mooing sounds they made to greet the rising sun."

Cody was always the first to believe in the fantastic and the improbable. His wife believed in faeries, and lay lines and the healing properties of crystals. Teddy had sat through some painful dinners at Cody's house listening to her lecture on about homoeopathic medicine being better than going to the doctors who were owned by the big pharmaceutical companies. Earl gave Cody his plate of breakfast and winked at him.

Taking Earl to one side while Cody was getting his horse ready for the day Teddy asked Earl a question. "I'm smart and I know that this cattle song it's bullshit. Isn't it?"

"Of course it is, but don't go telling your friend that. It's a load of bullshit like you said. Your friend Cody is an easy mark and it's kept him entertained with harmless rubbish. You are on a dude ranch after all. If you promise not to tell him about the cattle song I'll show you how to hunt Golden Snipe later," Earl said.

"What is Snipe?"

"Oh it's this beautiful tiny golden bird that can be found in the long grass. Very rare in most places, but quite common round here. Taste delicious," Earl said.

"Interesting. I will hold you to that. I have not been hunting since I was a kid," Teddy said, believing every word.

"We'd better get back to the horses before Cody knows we've gone," Earl said, chuckling.

This is based on the following pitch: "DegenerateBoy @fragmad the emotional impact of cattle song might make a good #600words".

Man I feel rusty.

A Sketch More Than Anything

2009-08-19T23:30:00.002+01:00

He walked into Dr Fox's office and stood by the door nervously waiting for me to acknowledge his presence. "Good morning. Please lie down on the coach over there," Dr Fox said, gesturing to the green leather psychiatrist's couch in the corner of the room. He was a overweight man wearing a pale pink shirt, top button unbuttoned, tucked into black trousers which led to polished black shoes. A business man guessed Dr Fox, and probably in middle management somewhere.

"Over there," he said.

"Yes, over there," Dr Fox said, as he stood up and moved to sit in a matching armchair next to the couch. The patent cautiously lay down on the sofa. He seemed to be concerned with putting his feet on the leather.

Dr Fox took a fountain pen and an open notebook from his desk, and he rested the notebook on his knee. "Could you please tell me in your own words what your name and occupation is?"

"My name is Llewellyn Jones and I work at the paper factory in sales," he said, as Dr Fox wrote these facts down.

"Why have you come to see me?" Dr Fox asked.

"Because I'm feeling anxious and I don't know what to do with my life," he said.

For Dr Fox this was the common answer. On occasion he saw patents with anger issues or addictions. These were usually, at least for Dr Fox, the more interesting cases with the more interesting causes. Of course he could never tell anyone else what happened in these counseling sessions, unless something illegal was mentioned, but thirty hours of listening to bored housewives say they couldn't love their husband because their daddies either loved them too little or loved them too much was easy yet painfully boring money.

"Now as this is our first session I'd like you to tell me about your childhood.I will be taking the occasional note, but for the next hour I won't talk except to ask you the occasional question. Is that okay?" Dr Fox asked.

"That sounds good," he said.

"Then please tell me about your childhood."

"Where shall I start? I guess I had a rather unusual upbringing. My parents owned and ran an old peoples home on an island south of Swansea in the middle of Bristol channel. They sent me away to boarding school during the school term, but during the holiday's I'd return to the island. I was friendly with a few of the residents. I tried not to be, but somehow I always ended up playing chess or talking about the past with them. They'd say goodbye when I left for school and then a term later I would arrive back and they would have gone. Died while I was away.

"So I had a lonely childhood. I didn't make many friends in boarding school, and it was only when I went away to university to study English that I started to make real friends.

"The only way to the island was by a boat that my father owned. That boat was how food came to the island. Once a week he would go to the shops in Swansea and ferry the supplies to the island. That was also how bodies left the island.

"I remember when my parents moved away. They sold the business and moved inland away from the mist and into their own retirements. The home had been empty for months. The last resident had stubbornly died there rather than leave alive, and I was old enough to pilot the boat by then. In the middle of the night, and during a storm, I had to pick up a paramedic and the undertaker from the mainland. Then I had to ferry them and the body back. This was the only time I'd done my father's job and I hated it," he said, stopping himself.

Dr Fox looked at his notebook briefly. He'd not been taking notes; instead e'd been listening. "Do continue," said Dr Fox.

I'm not having a very productive month this August. I've hit a miasma of sorts.

This is based on a prompt from Maicro: "A boy is brought up in an old peoples home."

The Band

2009-08-06T02:00:00.004+01:00

Interview room eight of the District police station was covered with jade coloured tiles. A hundred watt light bulb screwed behind a grill flickered. Louis a waiter at "Schwartz's Deli" was being interviewed by Detective Etienne.

"It would have been just another day. I take orders from customers, pour coffee and deliver hot plates for eight hours for the sweatiest diner in the city. It would have been another early morning shift if the Band hadn't rode into the District and done their thing. I don't understand what the deal is with the Band, do you officer?" Louis said.

"Oh shit, no one understands what those guys are up to. They just turn up and break everything. Especially our numbers," Detective Etienne replied.

"You don't say. Do you mind if I smoke?" asked Louis.

"By all means. I was waiting for you to ask," Detective Etienne said, as he put a packet of Red Apples and a disposable lighter from his coat pocket onto the table. "Want one?"

"Much obliged," Louis said. He took took a cigarette from the packet and lit it. "Do you want want me to continue?"

Detective Etienne nodded, "Of course."

"Morning shift is always the same people. A few street workers coming in from a night working, clubbers back from partying all night depending on the day, and the rest of our customers are mostly cab drivers and truckers either getting ready for the day or heading home from the night. There's a lot of money running through the tills and none of it shifts until the bank opens. The Band you just know that they're the band and you're fucked. They pull up and hang about outside and make sure they're seen. It's like they want to get caught. Why haven't you caught them yet? This is the fifth robbery this month," Louis said.

"We've been trying," Detective Etienne said.

"Try harder."

"Then tell me more about what they did. I'm taking notes just so you know."

"Fine fine. They hang around outside in the parking lot for fifteen minutes by their cars. Big black modded muscle cars. They put on their leather jackets and one of them pulls out a shotgun. He fired at the window. That's why the glass was all shattered. Didn't break though. The boss got reinforced for that reason. Then the four of them burst in. Start demanding wallets and money from the till," Louis said.

"How did the guy near the front door buy it?" asked Detective Etienne.

"Earl, he tried to play the hero. He was a trucker and carried a revolver with him. Had the permits and all. They come in and fire a warning shot. Well Earl pulls out this little snub nosed revolver and fires everything he's got at them. He misses of course, shoots up a sign, some wooden benches and makes a fool of himself because he was always boasting how he was a crack shot and down the range every week to practice. The four of them turn on him like animals and fire everything they've got at him just to make a point."

"I see. Can you explain how your boss was shot?"

"Well that's what they always do isn't it? They collect all the money and valuables. They make a mess and kill anyone that tries to get in their way. Then they call out someone in charge. And this isn't some chain cafe, as this place had been given to my boss by his Pa; so they really do get someone in charge this time. They called him out and made him get on his knees. They stick a gun in his mouth and make him beg for his life. He begged. They shot him," Louis said. He stubbed out the end of the cigarette into a steel ashtray in the middle of the table.

"Sounds like the Band alright," Detective Etienne said, rubbing his eyes with his right hand. "It sounds just like them."

"Well what are you going to do? Are you every going to catch these animals?" asked Louis.

"Keep on trying to I suppose," Detective Etienne said. He stopped the tape recorder and stood to leave.

"Yeah, keep on trying. It seems to be working."

This is based on two photographic prints taken by Oldhat and were sent to me in the post. The two images this is based on can be found here and here.

Never quite sure how interrogation scenes turn out. Never sure how anything turns out really. I keep referring to some vague city as well.

Delusion, a history by Roy Kelly.

2009-08-02T01:45:00.005+01:00

The most curious case I came across while researching this history was the story of a Joseph Robertson. He was an artist who worked during the twenty teens and twenty twenties. Little known now, but influential in his time. He is a tragic illustration of how bad the heath care system of the United Kingdom became after Scotland and Wales left the union and effectively dissolved it in all but name.

His story starts in 2011 when the 25 year old artist published his first collection of comic strips. The collection was well received in the media and he became a minor celebrity. His initial sympathy for the Conservative government at the time led to him getting a job as a cartoonist in a new political magazine called "Green Lands." The weekly schedule of a full page comic strip and editorial cartoon left him without time to work on his web-comic. This however is not the interesting aspect of Joseph's case.

In his early twenties he was diagnosed with solipsist syndrome. At the time of diagnose the condition was thought to be a form of paranoid Schizophrenia. For those not aware Solipsist syndrome is a debilitating condition now known to affect individuals in deeply connected to the 'wyred'. The condition presents itself worst in artists and writers; individuals who spend their time taking reality and editing it for the purposes. The connection to the 'wyred' with these individuals means that reality changes around their creations depending on the number of people that view the work. It is as you should appreciate a confusing and stressful condition to suffer from if the individual is not aware of what is happening; causing them to be able to have difficulty holding the infinite number of previous realities they have altered and the current timeline in their perception. If they are not believed by those they tell what is happening then the state of contusion, anxiety and self-doubt worsens. The condition when successfully treated often leads to a life as a trained mage or shaman with further training and support to allow the person to control more accurately when the solipsist syndrome applies.

Of course Joseph was a political cartoonist for a popular magazine. I should not been to explain how this could be a problem; especially in a society that refuses to acknowledge that the sufferer is not delusional when they claim to have caused the MP for Haltemprice to break away from the Conservative party, and form a breakaway far-right group dedicated to overthrowing David Cameron's government. What other cases of reality morphing around the works of Joseph Robertson are not known, as before he committed suicide he burned all of his journals, his online diaries have been taken off the Internet by GCHQ citing national security concerns leaving us with no record of what he believed happened. Further more extensive study by various mages and shamans have had great difficulty in prising apart the layers of the onion skin of reality which Joseph contributed to.

What drew me to Joseph's case was the fact he was one of the first publicly known sufferers who outed himself in a time when much stigma was attached to anyone stating that they had somehow altered consensual reality. But ultimately his bravery went unrewarded in his life time, as it was the government that he commented on and originally believed him that condemned him to a strict regiment of anti-psychotics and confinement to hospital away from his beloved sketchbooks believing that the compassionate cure was to be balanced with free markets being allowed to run the health service up to including deciding on appropriate treatments.

Maybe someone who has solipsist syndrome will someday write in a popular fiction that he lived happily ever after so rendering this introduction into non existence.

Again, I don't know what to think of this.

This is based on the following pitch sent to me from PkmnTrainerJ: @fragmad Late night pitch idea. Artist suffer delusions making them believe the things they've drawn are real...but maybe they are.

One Bullet Only.

2009-07-30T01:18:00.004+01:00

"I have the finest plug in babes on the strip. All fresh from the Dubai factory, and best of all hardly fucked. Best gold plated lovers money can buy time with. Two breasts, three breasts, however many breasts you want brothers. I can provide exactly what you want," I heard the Prince say as I walked through the market.

"Hey Prince, how's business?" I said to him, as I walked into his shop.

"Good, good. This new generation of fuckbots are fantastic," he said, flashing me a golden smile. "They're going to make me rich. Once I'm rich then I'm out of the game."

"You want out. Why?"

"Damn you know why. Pimping robots to greasy suits is a fools game."

He was right. Every other shop on the strip was someone selling time with fuckbots. The technology got better every few months, and the customers always went with the shops that had the newest and cleanest models. It was a constant game of going one better than your neighbour. My line of work was far more stable and profitable. Someone always needs murdering, and no one gets caught in the city if they ain't stupid, and of course bullets are cheap.

He asked me, "Why are you out tonight?"

"I need the air," I lied.

"Do you think you can help me out with a little problem I've got?"

"Depends what it is."

"I need you to use your gun. One bullet only," he said.

"I didn't think you were the kind of person to make enemies. I misread you. Who do you want dead?"

"Not who, but what. It's in the back," he said, leading be into the storeroom of his shop. In the corner in chains on a filthy mattress, which I assumed was his bed, was a platinum princess. It heard us come in and opened her eyes.

"Hello handsome," it said.

"What's the problem?" I asked Prince.

"It's nympho bruv, utterly nympho," he said.

It started to crawl towards me on all floors.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Not normally. But this one has got kinks that not even I can find customers for. I can't sell her, and I don't know how to reprogram it," Prince said.

I pulled my forty-five from my waistband and pointed it the bot. "Are you sure?"

"Oh you tease," it said, trying to seduce the both of us.

"Yes," Prince said.

It took more than one bullet.

It took seven.

I didn't know robots could bleed.

I don't know what this is.

Based on this pitch from antifuchs: "The Arabian Prince's Insatiable Automaton"

Names

2009-07-27T18:06:00.004+01:00

Owen was sitting on the turret of his tankette with Bullshit, Pink, Hot Case, and Viking who were waiting in the back of the vertibird over Iceland. Hot Case was feeding a belt of fifty cal into his tankette's magazine. "You've never done a combat drop before have you new guy," Hot Case said to Owen.

"No, never," he said.

"Well we've all got to earn our call sign sometime. Just don't be like Bullshit here and end up with a name you can't tell your momma."

"Hey Bullshit, why don't you tell the new kid what happened to you in Greece," Pink said, smiling with broken teeth.

"Do I have to?"

"Yeah, that's an order," Fifty Cal said. "Think of it as an instructive warning on bad luck and how a tanker's fate is owned by the wind."

"If I must. Well the twenty-third were deployed in Greece six months ago like Pink said. I was the newbie of the squad then, and the first combat drop I made was with these guys. Attacking a farm house where a bunch of special forces had holed up to run missions painting our convoys with lasers. The weather was perfect. Sky clear, sun rising, no turbulence. Just how your first jump ought to be.

"So we drive out the back of the Vertibird, which is circling around the farm and it goes: Viking on the road leading up to the farm, Hot Case in the farm house through the roof, and Pink is dropped perfectly at the back of the farm house. I go last right after Bigshot (who you're replacing 'cos he got himself injured) and the jump goes fine. I drive out five seconds after Bigshot and the parachute deploys correct and proper. I'm watching Bigshot drift toward this field full of cattle and then bam," explains Bullshit, hitting the side of his tankette for effect. "l smash through the roof of the barn."

"You left out what the barn was filled with," prompted Hot Case.

"Man, it should be obvious, and I'm getting to that. Damn thing was full of cow shit. So I drive my way down this big pile of stinking shit. My tank is covered in the stuff. I'm hearing shells being fired from Bigshot ; everyone else is tearing up the farm house with fifty cal and flame throwers. I drive down this shit and I'm pissed off, angry and buzzing from my first combat drop. So I'm eager to go, and I shoot the first thing I see with my big gun. It's this bull, horns and all, that's broken free from somewhere. Damn thing explodes everywhere. First thing that the guys hear me shouting over the radio in the middle of this massacre is, 'bullshit bullshit.' That's how I got my name kid," said Bullshit.

The red light at the back of the Vibrocopter turned green. "Target. Two minutes," the pilot said. Owen climbed into his tankette at the back of the line. He pushed the ignition button as the cargo door dropped opened to the midnight sun, which welcomed the twenty-third revving their engines above Reykjavik.

"@fragmad The origin of the phrase "bull shit". Go write some eymtomological(?) folk lore. #flashfic #600words"

That's my pitch from @VKlaus. Sure it's not exactly what he wanted. But I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it.

Hope Cake

2009-07-25T23:08:00.003+01:00

I have met many people who can be called evil and insane. All hope is lost; we do not deserve to live as a species if the evil I have seen continues to outweigh the good. There was a point of course when I did not think this. When I was young I earnestly believed that good would triumph over evil. Let me tell you about the man who made me change my mind.

It was in Ruritania in eighty-six when I first encountered the man known as Dr Hope. A popular revolution had recently failed and the revolutionaries who had not fled the country were being rounded up to be reeducated under the watchful eye of Dr Hope. Vast prison camps had been built on his orders to house the prisoners. Mostly they were forced to work as hard labour in coal mines, or in the heavy industry that the country had lost workers willing and able to work in.

One of worst jobs that I heard that the prisoners were forced to undertake was to inspect nuclear reactors without any form of safety equipment. I hope that was just a rumour.

I interviewed Dr Hope once. I was driven from the border in a ZIL limousine with blacked out windows. It was just me and my photographer. The driver never said a word as his lips were sealed. After three hours of silence and rutted roads we came to a stop outside the home of Dr Hope. Ushered into the courtyard of a medieval castle my photographer was told to take no pictures. There was an orange truck with a woodchipper attached to the back. The engine came to a stop as I stepped out of the limousine. The doctor was climbing out of the trucks cabin. He walked towards me in blood stained blue overalls. He his gore covered hand outstretched to shake mine.

"Good morning Robert. May I call you Robert? Or is it Mr Varney?" he said.

"Robert is fine," I said.

"I've been reading your journalism for a long time. I am a fan of how you cover the human tragedies . I enjoyed your writing on the Ethiopian civil war very much. It was delicious," he said with the enthusiasm that reached into obsession.

I took a cigarette from my winter coat pocket and put it too my lips. "Thank you."

"I am so glad you came. I wanted you to cover my great work. For many years now I have been overseeing a problem that my country has suffered much from. We have a problem with law and order. I don't expect you to understand as a Westerner but here in Ruritania there is the ruling class and then there are the masses. If the masses do not understand that it is the members of the ruling class who know what is best, then we must educate them on this matter more thoroughly. Of course with the disease called freedom spreading around the surrounding counties the problem has been growing. We have made them work hard, and we have shot them, and we have starved them. Nothing has worked well.

"Ruritania is running out of adult men who can do the work. And if we do not produce more food then the few people who still see sense will die. I am here presently running experiments to try and solve our financial and food shortage," Dr Hope said.

As I talked to the doctor the woodchipper's feeding chute was being filled by three scowling men who were emptying bags of white powder into the machine. They shouted in Ruritanian after they had finished. "Excuse me Robert," Dr Hope said, before he shouted orders at the men. These men they disappeared into a shed next to the woodchipper and brought out a body which they started to load into the machine.

"My Grandma, she was a very strong woman, she led my family during the great wars. She had a saying which dated from the second civil war. She always said to me that you should always ice your cakes with your enemies."

"Are you sure that was meant to be taken literally?" I said, exhaling a small cloud of smoke into the cold air.

The doctor smiled, "We take as much as possible literally here Robert. We have a food problem. We have a lot of, erm, useless meat to dispose of. Why not mix that protein and fat with what is left of our wheat supplies? It's a solution to the problem is it not?"

I said nothing fearing for my life.

"Start the machine," said the doctor for me in English, before repeating himself in Ruritanian.

I do not know how I managed to leave the castle and the country alive except by chance.

I've never seen Fargo before you ask. This flash fiction is derived from the following message sent to me via twitter: "@bmewsed from a tweeting session this morning @DegenerateBoy @bmewsed y'know that strikes me as a great way to ice a cake. With your enemies."

One Alien Parasite, a Wedding and a Suicide.

2009-07-23T23:45:00.003+01:00

"If anyone objects to the marriage of this fine woman to this upstanding alien parasite let them speak now or forever hold their peace," the vicar said, looking at the bride and the grooms host over his spectacles.

"I object," said the grooms host, "I object. Furthermore I was forced here against my will."

The alien parasite which had attached itself to the bottom of the man's back. It had coiled it's self around the man's body until it reached his neck where it made one final loop before a serpentine head rested under the man's jaw. The parasite constricted tighter. The host tried to say, "stop it," but only the faintest whisper was uttered.

The bride looked on at the groom and the host fighting. I don't know why he objects so much to me marrying his alien parasite. It's his fault for catching it and besides Jim has always fancied me. It'd be his body (although thankfully not his mind) I'd be using to impregnate myself she thought. "Jim, stop being such a child and say that you agree."

Jim heaved in a deep breath. "I agree, but only because this thing attached to me was trying to kill me."

"That will do," the vicar said, "don't think you are the first person who's been forced into a marriage of convenience."

"And I have a name Jim. Chloe, what's my name?" the parasite said.

"Bealdavarq. And I love you," Chloe said.

The vicar gave a polite cough. "If we may continue..."

"Of course. We're sorry," Bealdavarq said.

"I'm not," interrupted Jim.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride Bealdavarq," the vicar said, closing his little black book.

Chloe moved closer to Jim's body. Bealdavarq forced Jim to move his body in on Chloe. I can't take this any more thought Jim. I must do something. Jim looked away from Chloe as she removed her veil. He looked down the crowded family filled aisles towards the font at the front of the church. Jim screamed as he ran down the aisle using every ounce of concentration he possessed to fight against Bealdavarq. He reached the font filled with clear cool water and he forced his head into the water. He took in a deep breath and water filled his lungs.

Earlier today I received via twitter a message asking if someone could marry my hair. This is not the first time I've been asked that. I'm never sure if I should be scared or flattered. But it did give me the idea for this flash fiction pitch centred around the phrase: "attached dependent."

Doc Ellwood's Diner

2009-07-17T20:53:00.002+01:00

"Come dine at Doc Ellwood's waterfront diner of death. Come and dine on the most exquisite poisons. Try our ninety-nine deadly cocktails. Come and wander the white light tunnel far enough to glimpse the infinity beyond before resurrection in a genuine ancient alien artifact.

Come and try our special deal of two for one on bayonet baguettes.

Bring the family for a great night out."

This is another riff on, "the restaurant that serves poisoned food to willing customers."

Flat and Thick

2009-07-17T16:07:00.004+01:00

Late one Friday night, after the the pubs had closed, Lou climbed the steps to his front door and reached into the left pocket of his tight black jeans for his keys. "Martin, I don't have my keys. I must have left mine inside."

"I don't have mine either," Martin replied.

"Is Chris out tonight?"

"I don't know. Did you check the front door to see if it's locked?"

Lou attempted to open the door and the door rattled in its frame. "He's out then. What are we going to do man? Wait until he gets back or something?."

Martin took his phone out. "I've got an idea of who could help us," Martin said, as he put the phone to his ear. "Hey Mike we've got a problem. We don't have any keys to get into our house. I know this sounds stupid man, but could you come and help us?" Lou listened to the reply. "Yeah, yeah, I know it's late. But we really need to get in. It's cold out here. Could you do this for us as a friend?" Lou thought that was a low comment to make. Mike's disability was not something to be exploited. "OK, cheers man. I'll see you in ten minutes," Martin said, before putting the phone away.

"Did you just do what I thought you did?" asked Lou.

"Yes. Mike'll be here on his bike in a few. He can crawl under the door and unlock the door for us," Martin said, he was smiling.

"Don't you think we are, you know, exploiting him?"

"Nah. He's got a gift man. With great power comes great responsibility. He should start making money of out of. I'm sure there are lot of things a flat men can do that us thickies can't," Martin replied.

Lou said nothing and with silence agreed. Although he felt he should have disagreed. Mike was cycling around the street corner on a rusty BMX moments later in a dressing gown. He dismounted and walked up to the front door.

"I'm so sorry about this Mike. But Chris is out and we left our keys inside," Lou said.

"It's no problem man. I've got a gift," Mike said, he removed the dressing grown and started to crawl under the door. The latch was released on the other side and the door opened onto a messy hallway. "No problem at all Lou. But you could make us a cup of tea by way of saying thanks."

@antifuchs "is 'flat mate who is actually 2-dimensional' a valid 600words theme? (:"

That was tricky and took me a few days to think of a possible situation to explore the theme. Another idea I had was to interview a character who had been a three dimensional character but had for some reason (budget reasons probably) become a two dimensional character. Someone who had faint memories of being interesting, but was no longer such.

Alas that wouldn't have been a flat mate.

No Licence

2009-07-16T01:08:00.002+01:00

"Excuse me sir, do you know that you were travelling at seventy miles per hour in a forty mile per hour zone?" Officer McIntyre said as the driver of the puke coloured station wagon rolled down the driver side window.

The driver was an amorphous mass of pink flesh and was strapped into the drivers seat. One hundred eyes faced forward looking at the road ahead. An eye and a mouth grew on the side of the horror to face McIntyre. "I'm sorry officer. I just didn't realise," it said in a scraping and dissonant voice.

McIntyre swallowed hard to stop himself from being sick. "You also drove through a red light."

"I just don't know how I could do such a thing," it said, "I'm such a careful driver normally. But this fog is awful thick isn't it?"

"If I could just see your licence."

The quivering mass stopped moving. More eyes popped out and gazed out of the drivers side window.

"Sir, if I could just see your licence," repeated Officer McIntyre, who took a step back from the car.

"I don't have one," it said.

"Please step out of the car."

"I can explain everything." The door of the station wagon swung open and three legs grew out to touch the ground. Standing up the horror was taller than McIntyre and it's formed gradually came to approximate a humanoid form. "As you can see I am not one of you, and it would be not stretching the truth at all to say that I am not from around here."

"I can see that quite clearly sir," Officer McIntyre said, "but the law is the law. You have to follow it even if you aren't from around these parts. Now what is your name?"

The horror said its name and part of McIntyre died inside.

"And how do you spell that?" Officer McIntyre struggled to say.

"You don't," it said.

Officer McIntyre removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt. "I'm going to have to place you under arrest...."

"I don't think that is going to work," the horror said as it dissolved into another universe.

Officer McIntyre was left struggling to restrain air and come up with an explanation.

"Inter-planar immunity meant nothing to DC traffic cops."

I probably didn't tackle the pitch that Maicro sent me as intended. I've not really explored the legal implications of being a great old one and following the law. Of course this reminds me of the UN and the New York City police struggling to get diplomats to pay parking fines.

Cuisine Macabre

2009-07-14T19:25:00.005+01:00

Marco drags me into the restaurant and past the line of people waiting to get in. Marco tells me that he is a very important person and I am his guest. The maître d' greets us with enthusiasm. He is standing in the reception in his fine cut suit waiting for guests. "Good evening and welcome to La Mort Mr Riva. You will be pleased to hear that your special order will have matured in a month. Do you wish for your regular table?" he enquires.

"Of course," Marco says.

"This way then Mr Riva," the maître d' says, leading us through the doors into a room with art gallery white walls and perfect wooden floors. Every table is full of well dressed diners eating haute cuisine. I feel entirely out of place and become spooked when I see a young man pass out. A waiter calmly walks up to the man and injects him with a hypodermic needle to revive him.

Marco's table is in a private room with one table and two chairs. Two menus, two crystal wine glasses, two sets of cutlery laid precisely on the table in the centre of the bright whitewashed room.

We are seated and the maître d' says he will return in a few moments to take our order personally.

"You get good service here," I say to Marco.

"I should do. I eat once a week here and invested a lot of money in their business plan," says Marco showing off.

I open the leather bound menu and attempt to read the calligraphy and the French. "I don't understand any of this," I admit. "What do you recommend?" I ask.

Marco smiles. "Well that depends on what experience you want. Do you want to get the full experience or just a small taste?"

I pause and look at the menu again.

Marco comes right out, "Do you want to die?"

"No."

"Then you will want to avoid everything on the left hand pages," he says.

"What are you going to have?" I enquire.

"Something from the left hand page of course," says Marco, smiling again. "I don't know what though. Maybe I am getting tired of neurotoxins. Always my favourite as the numbness is interesting, and the intensity of feeling your body sleaze up muscle by muscle is fantastic. But I think I tire of it now. It's so nice and simple. One moment you can't breath and the next you can. I might have something laced with cyanide for a change. I don't know. I think I will just ask for something special and see what the chief has come up with tonight."

"I see. Could you pick something relatively safe for me?"

"Of course. I recommend the puffer fish if you haven't had it. It is probably the safest dish sold here."

The maître d' returns and takes our order. We sign forms explicitly stating our order and that La Mort is not legally responsible in the event of any permanent injury or death and that we want to be cured.

In a small amount of time and small talk our food is wheeled in and we start to eat.

Marco explains to me that the puffer fish should leave your mouth feeling just a bit numb from the small amounts of poison left in the fishes flesh. I am eating my meal with care and Marco is diving into small bloody steak he has just doused in diluted snake venom.

He stands up shaking. "Oh God this is fantastic," he is shouting. "The taste is so bitter. Get the chief quickly. I must thank him." Blood trickles out of Marco's nose and tear ducts. He is getting paler. The chief runs in with the maître d' and takes the thanks from the rapidly deteriorating Marco well. "This hurts so much. I've never felt a pain quite like it. Where is the neutralising agent? I need it now."

"What neutralising agent?" asks the chief.

Marco screams inside a soundproof room.

The maître d' goes pale.

"But he ordered the special," the chief protests. "Why is he complaining. It is not like Mr Riva to complain about anything."

Marco collapses on the floor. His breath is growing shallower.

I stand up and I step over Marco's body to shake the hand of the maître d' calmly. "You have an very interesting restaurant concept here," I say. "But sometimes accidents must happen, no?"

"It's not my problem," shrugs the chief.

"Never. There are never any accidents at La Mort. We're finished. I read his order statement and it explicitly asked for something that could be neutralised," the horrified maître d' says. He points at the chief and tells him he's fired.

I leave.

Marco dies.

The pitch for this story came during a meeting with a writing group that I attend in Leicester once a month. The pitch is: "the restaurant that serves poisoned food to willing customers."

I am listening to 'Lux Aeterna' at this very moment.

There Will Be No...

2009-07-10T18:30:00.004+01:00

In an well lit conference room in the middle of a reconditioned mill that the firm of "Davis & Adams Advertising" called "The Factory" the companies best and brightest sat around a desk drinking Fiji Water.

There was Comedy Dave, called that because everyone thought he should go into stand-up; there was Martin and Mark the twins, called that because they went to the same school; and there was Mr Davis, who everyone called The Boss.

"Are you already gentlemen?" The Boss asked, not caring if they were ready. The employees nodded and readied expensive stationery so they could pretend to take notes.

"I have our new assignment. I am not going to lie to you, but this is a big one. It's a very important contract and we have to sell this effectively. There is no budget, that is not a consideration for this project. Our clients have promised to back us one hundred and ten percent with whatever we need.

"Our client is a large consortium of: biotechnology and big pharmaceutical corporations, computer hardware and software businesses, telecommunications firms. Everything high tech gentlemen. They are pitching this as the last big advertising job in history. They want us to sell the singularity," said The Boss.

"The what?" said Comedy Dave.

"The singularity. Come on people I thought you were the best and brightest. Didn't you learn anything at your expensive schools?"

"I think I read about it once in a magazine," said Martin. "Isn't that the point where technology and science start to develop so fast that it renders our notion of what it is to be human and the concept of history meaningless?"

"In a word - yes," said The Boss. "I want you to sell that. Our employers expect it to be coming soon and they need a positive spin on it."

"Well it's the future. We know how to sell the future. We do that all the time; it's easy. All we do is just say that it's the next generation. That it's the new improved model, and we say that it costs less, weighs less, looks better, and lasts longer," said Comedy Dave.

"We can't do that though," Mark pointed out.

"Why not?"

"Because like Martin said we are trying to sell the end of history and anything we say now will be wrong. There will be no flying cars or jetpacks. There will be no teleportation or warp drive. We can't use that approach to sell something when we don't know what shape it is. We aren't science fiction writers. When we make those claims about it being faster, lighter, cheaper, and so on, it normally is those things."

"The man has a point," The Boss said, trying to stay relevant.

"I don't follow you Martin," said Comedy Dave.

"I'm just saying that we've got to sell an idea and not a product. It doesn't have those qualities," said Martin.

"It's like nothing we've had to advertise before. It is almost a political campaign. There is nothing to sell but agreement with an idea. But this is an idea with no slogan and no fixed expiration date. It's existential and we can't sell that," said Mark.

"This isn't going to be easy," said Comedy Dave.

"I didn't say it would be. I'll leave you gents to it. I've got a lunch to get to. I expect to see your first ideas by close of shop," said The Boss, leaving the room.

This is based on my pitch to Texture who runs the website Weaponizer. The pitch was: "The meeting where an advertising company try to workout how to sell the singularity."

Quite frankly I could write a lot based on that one sentence. The humour and the horror of trying to sell and explain such an abstract idea fascinates me. I shall return to this.

There Are Pills For That!

2009-07-09T23:04:00.004+01:00

You should not read this if you are any of the following: easily offended, a patriotic American, a potential employer, are related to me, or have had your sense of humour removed.

"Trust me I'm a doctor," he said to me. We were standing in the back room of the future. His office looked one hundred years old. His surgical instruments looked older.

"Are you going to use those?" I asked, pointing at the blades in the glass cabinet.

He smiled. "Oh no, those are just for show. Don't you worry yourselves with them." He scribbled words on the back of an envelope. "Take this to the chap outside. He'll sort you out."

"Thank you," I said. I left the office with the envelope. In the reception area, outside the doctors office, there was a heavyset man in a stained nurses outfit sitting at a desk groping his crotch.

"Before you ask, he makes me wear it. It's for show. Do you have the prescription?" the man grunted.

"Do you mean the envelope?"

"Whatever Do you have it?"

I put the envelope down. It was then I saw the stamps of the city prosecutor and the health department. The receptionist picked the envelope up and attempted to read the scrawl on the back. "It's no use. I'm sorry about this," he said.

"Oh no need to be sorry," I said.

"Paging Dr Smelly cunt. Did you write tranny pills?" the man shouted through the wall without shame.

I blushed.

The voice of the doctor came back through the wall: "Yes, you miserable cocksucker. Give him the real thing and not the sugar pills. I like this one." The receptionist opened the draw of his desk. It was lined with bags of multicoloured tablets which he reached into and took out a bag. He put them down in front of me. "Take the whole lot. Drink lots of water. Have a fun night," he said, before adding, "now piss off."

I left with the bag and went back to my squalid hotel room. I swallowed the whole bag and drank a liter of water. Before I went to be I checked my appointment with the travel agent and went to bed.

I didn't sleep that I night. No one thankfully came despite my screaming. I left the room in a bloody state and I put on my best dress before calling for a taxi to the entertainment district.

"Have a good vacation Miss," said the orange tanned man as he left me at the door of the holosuite. In front of me was the Union encampment at Gettysburg. I wandered the camp looking for the real people; for my needs I needed a real man and not holo-actors. I was about to give up when I saw him. His long limbs, his beard, his perfect face. He was the one. He was the man I'd loved since I was a boy.

"Mr Lincoln," I said, "I'm here to have your babies."

He looked surprised but that didn't stop him from taking advantage. What happens on holo-vacation says on holo-vacation.

Well, except Lincoln's twins.

You'll never guess the pitch this is based on. Okay you probably will. But when life gives you weird you just grin and piss on the idea of a line.

"VKlaus @fragmad MOR U SAY?! "His craven lust for civil war reinactments drove him to pregnancy"

Captain Space Bastard

2009-07-09T20:21:00.005+01:00

"This is the voice of the Mysterons," was the phrase that two-hundred years ago would have made thousands of children piss themselves with fear. Ten years ago, it would have made the twenty scholars of culture who knew about the TV series Captain Scarlett laugh slightly. Now it's a phrase that if I hear anyone say would make me vent them out of the fucking airlock for making sick jokes, thought Captain Crveno. Life on Mars, there is no life on Mars, because it's a small rock with no appreciable atmosphere, no magnetosphere, and hardly any fucking gravity. But some stupid sensor on an orbiting satellite started sending back data that made a room full of scientists orgasm simultaneously. No don't send a probe the world government said. Instead send a manned crew on one of the new sleeper ships we've just commissioned. Go use one of those state of the art reconditioned asteroid with fusion engines attached because goodness knows we need some positive publicity. Oh and send Captain Crveno and his crew because he insulted me once by making the reentry to Earth a bit too bumpy for my tastes last time he piloted Government 1.

Space travel is never comfortable and it's not something that humans were ever designed to do. Captain Crveno would rant about this endlessly. He also ranted about the films that had been selected to watch in the hours that the crew would be awake on their voyage to Mars. It was all old and it was all about Mars. "You aren't paranoid if you know they are after you," Captain Crveno said to his science officer.

"No sir," the science officer said, "I accept that. But would you please put some clothes on. With all due respect I don't want to see you naked or naked in no gravity."

"What are you intimidated? Uncomfortable are you?" said Captain Crveno.

"Yes sir. A little bit."

"Bah!"

Captain Crveno floated to the door of the science officers office. "Do you have any results back from the imaging probes? Does it look like something we should worry about?"

"Not yet. I'll inform you when I have examined them," the science officer said.

"See that you do. I'll be in my office."

Captain Crveno floated naked in the lotus position, he was upside down relative to the orientation of the door frame, and he was smoking a joint while watching the wall sized view screen. It showed puppets.

"I have the report for you..." said the science office who centred the captain's office with care.

"And can't you see I'm watching Captain Scarlett? He has the same name as me," Captain Creveno, said blowing a thick cloud of smoke at the science officer.

The science officer coughed. "I see. Do you want to hear my report?"

"Not really. What are the bullet points?"

"It's not life. It's machines."

Captain Crveno interrupted, "I saw that film. It was shit."

"Machines that we made and destroyed in the jihad a generation ago," said the science officer.

"Oh. Is that all?"

"They want to see you sir. They have some unpleasant things to say about humanity. They've been watching us and they have some comments they wish to make."

"Excellent. I have some unpleasant things to say about humanity as well," said Captain Crveno. "I think we might get along."

"That's what I feared sir."

"weaponizer: @fragmad #flashfic #pitch Near-future: Earth expels nanobots from atmosphere and de-activates all AIs, but they migrate to Mars and colonise"

This was tons of fun to write.

I have nothing else to say on the matter.

Full of Stars

2009-07-09T17:49:00.005+01:00

My mum hugged me as soon as I walked through her front door. "Come in, come in," she said, as she led me into the living room she'd redecorated since my last visit. We sat down and she asked if I wanted some tea. I told her that would be nice and she went away into the kitchen to boil the kettle. When she came back into the room I had worked out what I would say. My mum put down a tray of biscuits and two cups of tea. She sat down next to me on the new sofa. "Now tell me are you alright?"

"I'm fine mum," I said.

"Are you in any pain?"

"No, not anymore," I answered. "And they didn't find any cancer during the biopsy."

"That's wonderful," my mum said.

"But they did find something...."

My mum sipped her tea pretending she hadn't heard what I just said.

"Mum, they did find something. I don't know how to explain it to you though," I said.

She put the cup down and looked at me and asked me without hesitation: "Is it bad?"

"No. Well yes, it is bad. But it was wonderful," I said, as I reached into my handbag to take out some pictures. I put them on the coffee table in front of my mum. She reached for her reading glasses and picked the first picture up.

"What am I looking at?" she asked me. I don't know anything about astronomy beyond what I have learned from TV documentaries. But I knew what a galaxy was. And the doctor had explained to me that there were such things as "superclusters" of galaxies which could contain up to thousands of individual galaxies. The picture my mum was holding was the cyst that had been growing on the outside of one of my ovaries under a microscope with trillions of stars inside it.

I told her, "It's complicated mum. It's not anything wrong with me. I don't know how to explain it. What does it look like to you?"

"Stars, Julie, they look like stars."

"That's what it looks like to everyone else as well," I said.

I picked up the next picture and showed it to her. "This was taken an hour later. Do you see all of that redness? That means the stars were dying. I think, and my doctor thinks that it was sustained by being inside me, and when it was removed it all started to die."

She said nothing for five minutes. When the doctor had shown me the pictures and given me that explanation to me I had been silent for far longer.

My Mum, always one of the most philosophical members of our family, asked something which I thought was rather profound and was something I hadn't considered. "Do you think that those stars had planets and that those planets had life of any kind?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"DrNautilus @fragmad Tiny universe in an ovarian cyst"

Yeah, this was hard to write. Okay I lie. It was hard to find the correct approach. I enjoyed writing this one. It's quite a bit outside my comfort zone. My original intention was to do a version of Star Maker, but I couldn't work out how to get the doctor to examine further details than really macroscopic without resorting to wholesale ripping off the Star Maker in a way that I'd have botched.

Long Live The King.

2009-07-09T02:15:00.009+01:00

On a misty autumn morning two brothers stood at opposite ends of the courtyard of their father's castle.

"So father's dead then," said William, the older brother.

"Yeah. Died a couple of hours ago," Patrick, the younger brother replied.

"Did he say who's going to get the crown?" asked William.

"No. He lost the ability to speak yesterday afternoon."

"Shame. A real shame. That means we'll have to decide this the hard way," said William.

The two brothers reached for their pistols. William, always the quicker of the two brothers, shot his first. The bullet hit Patrick in the chest and bounced off a hidden breast plate. Patrick fired his pistol and missed. Both brothers threw the pistols away. They were useless now their single shot had been fired. Servants and courtiers came running to the doorways to watch the spectacle. Both brothers reached for their swords. Patrick who had recently returned from a trip to the far east held a thin curved blade. In Williams hand there was a crude lump of shaped iron with a handle. His sword was still notched from recent use.

"Are you still pretending to be a barbarian?" Patrick, shouted from his end of the courtyard.

"Are you still pretending that you know how to use that thing?" William shouted back.

"Do you really want the crown this badly?"

Will raised his sword. "Yes I do."

The audience kept to the side of the arena. None of the brothers wives or families were here. Patrick had his follower with him and they were watching with interest. William had traveled overnight from his citadel had come alone. The castle guards ignored the fiasco and the king's priest had been restrained by the captain of the royal guard but he was still shouting for the two brothers to stop fighting.

"Are your cronies going try and stop me?"

"I don't think so," said Patrick. "But if any man interferes in this fight on my behalf then they will be sentenced to death on my orders. Do you agree to do the same?"

"I do. And if any man interferes on my behalf then they will be sentenced to death as a traitor," said William.

"Goodbye brother," said Patrick, who started to run towards William.

"Idiot," William said, as he shot his brother with a derringer hidden in the cuff of his coat. Patrick collapsed to the floor with a hole in his head.

"PkmnTrainerJ @fragmad a king passes in fantasy-medieval times, and the sons find a way to name the rightful heir...with weapons of course." Okay I'm skipping a few suggestions because this is immediately easier than the others. I don't really do fantasy-medieval, because I'm lame. But I'll quite happily do enlightenment.

My brother is called Patrick. This means nothing. It's just two names picked because I'm lazy.

Edits made because I'm tired and stupid when tired. Expect more maybe.

Can't Say That.

2009-07-07T21:31:00.003+01:00

[Ginja] I'm really happy with this story. I've always been concerned about what can happen to writers when a small group of extremist decide violence rather than dialogue is the best way to express their rage at what is normally quite a silly story.
[VKlaus] i can't wait to read it. are you going to put the whole thing on your blog? so people don't have to search twitter.
Sure sure. Just give me a few minutes to stretch my legs. I've just spent the past two hours editing it.
* VKlaus nods.
[Ginja] Okay, I've put it up on your blog. Here's the url: http://bit.ly/1bstBD
[VKlaus] Wow that's pretty good.
[Ginja] Thanks. I'm going to bed now. it's a wee bit late. Night man.
[VKlaus] Night.
* Ginja has quit (Quit: leaving)

"Will there's some post for you. I think it's from the newspaper," Will's mum shouted up the stairs. Will opened his eyes and rolled out of bed. Five minutes later after he'd read the letter, made the phone call Will was an employed fiction writer working on a weakly serial for a national newspaper.

[Ginja] You can read all the new stories on the website. Although obviously if you can buy the newspaper please get that. There will be illustrations by an artist who's wicked and awesome and batshit crazy. I'm still in shock really. It's the power of twitter.

He walked up the short path to the front door. Anger and hate suffused his thoughts. He rang the doorbell. The justification for what he what he was about to do was he was doing the right thing. The door opened, and a short half-naked man answered.

"Hello, can I help you?" said Will.

"You do not insult God," the man said. He pointed a machine pistol at Will's chest and pulled the trigger.

"It started as a twitter flashfic, it ended in murder!" That's the message VKlaus sent me and that's what I've tried to do. This one was kind of hard.

Make the Punishment Fit the Hero.

2009-07-07T19:46:00.003+01:00

"I thought I had it all. I thought that I had a great boyfriend and career as an A-list superhero helping people, and I thought that would last forever. I suppose I first got suspicious when he asked me to knock on the front door of our apartment when I came in after my shift at the cave. He said it was so he could meet me at the front door every day. I now know better.

"I forgot to knock that last time. I walked in through into the bedroom casually to change out of my costume. He was there in our bed with Ultra. I didn't know that Ultra was gay. He was the all American hero that wore the American flag before the scandal. I broke into a rage. I saw red. I'm not proud of myself for this and that is no excuse. My ex, I refuse to say the bastards name, I ripped his arm off with my teeth. Ultra, he power blasted me through the wall into the street. And that was the end of everything as far as I'm concerned.

"We may have been superheroes. We may have been celebrates. We may have been regarded as three of the top ten most powerful people in America. We may have been these things but there's no hiding an explosion in the middle of New York and two angry super-queers fighting in the street like some perverted comic book. There are no excuses. There is nothing I can do to make amends or fix that damage and the deaths that I've caused. Sorry isn't enough, but it's all I can say. Sorry," said Shark Man in his final statement to the Court of Heroes.

The judges teleported away to deliberate. They repappeared half an hour later. Shark Man had stood the whole time waiting.

"We have reviewed the evidence," the first judge said.

"We have taken your admission of guilt into account," the second judge said.

"We have considered your situation," the third judge said.

"We have decided," all three of the judges said.

The first and most senior of the three gave the sentence: "You are guilty and you will be sentenced to five years in solitary confinement."

The second judge gave the details: "Because of your unique physiology it has been decided that you will be shipped to the uninhabitable water planet designated B20 to serve out your sentence alone."

The third judge asked, "Do you accept this sentence?"

"I do."

I put out a request on my twitter account for people to send me one sentence pitches for flash fiction stories (max 600 words). This is the first and was suggested by Magnulus in the following message: "Sharkman is left alone after he caught his boyfriend making out with The Ultra."

This was written listening to the Dark Mean "Lullaby" and Apoptgyma Berzerk's album "Rocket Science." It is a unpolished sketch as well.

Moon Station 5 - The Press Conference

2009-07-04T00:12:00.003+01:00

The press room was full, not just with the usual core of journalists assigned to the office of station administrator, but with journalist from the rags as well. Isabel took her place at the lectern

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. You will have all seen the statement realised by Administrator Ezteves last night and you will have a chance to ask questions after the regular daily briefing," Isabel said, before starting to talk about soy bean production, progress on the repairs of sector IC0, and the station to station trade dispute between two neighbours. The journalists from the rags were bored and slept. The journalists from the press core were also bored, but they paid attention and took notes just in case they got to ask about anything mentioned in Isabel's statement.

"And that as they say is that. Questions, does anyone have any questions?"

One hundred hands shot up in half a second. Isabel looked the crowd over for someone she didn't dislike. She picked someone from the press core. They'd have a sensible question.

"Did Administrator Estevez know that the 210 people who died in the IC0 fire were all men serving prison sentences as indentured servants for minor crimes. Did he their presence into account as part of his choice to vent the sectors atmosphere?" James Pecked, the chief political correspondent from the Athena Chronicle asked.

"Yes Administrator Estevez did know there were 210 prisoners working in that sector. The decision was taken under expert advice and was judged to be the action that would result in the least loss of life," Isabel said.

"Are these the people that Administrator Estevez was referring to as the stations most vulnerable people?" asked a reporter from a tabloid that Isabel tried to ignore most of the time.

"Yes it was those men that Administrator Estevez was calling the stations most vulnerable. In a few days we will be announcing a new policy on the use of indentured servitude as a punishment. This policy will included measures to protect the welfare of people currently imprisoned under this scheme and will set a road map out to the abolition of the practice," Isabel replied.

The press room had a mixed reaction to the news. Isabel checked the time. "That will have to be the last question as we appear to have ran out of time," she said, lying so that the last statement would be the major news story of the night.

I'm not sober at the moment. I've just typed it up. I wrote it about a month ago. Need Red Bull.

Not the Only Option.

2009-06-15T20:32:00.001+01:00

"You can't say that sir," said Isabel.

"Why not? It's the truth and it's as much of the truth as they need to hear," said Martin Estevez.

"I understand that, but you really can't say it like that."

"Then how should I say that two hundred people who we should have been looking after died because I ordered that sectors atmosphere to be vented? How should I say that?" said Estevez.

Isabel waited in silence. Estevez was staring her down. He felt certain he was right. He was a former commercial pilot. She had been editor of "The Luna."

"I think that you need to highlight the fact that it's a great loss for Moon Station 5 and that there was no alternative course of action," said Isabel.

"You mean you want me to lie, and ten you want me to dress up a lie with words no one wants to to hear."

"Excuse me sir."

"Do you know who those vulnerable people were?"

"No," said Isabel.

"They were prisoners. That sector as we keep quietly not mentioning is not a habitation sector. It's an industrial sector, and they were left to die by their guards."

"So it'd be politically unsound to morn them too much, just easier to say that they were vulnerable. I understand sir."

"Good."

"One question before I leave."

"Go on," said Estevez, looking up from his desk.

"You said lie. What do you mean? Do you mean that venting wasn't the only option?"

"It was not the only option; it never is. It certainly wasn't this time," said Estevez.

Moon Station 5 - The First Order

2009-06-10T20:10:00.003+01:00

"Sir, you have to give the order now if you are ever going to give it," said Ellison, chief of security.
"There is no later with this situation is there?" asked Martin Estevez.
"No sir."

Estevez leaned back in his chair and looked over his new office. The room was tight on space, the administrator's office was a practical space and not ceremonial. Ellison, a aging ex-military man was standing waiting from Estevez; he was holding a single sheet of printed paper. Hundreds of years of space travel and orders still had to be printed and signed onto paper for some archaic reason. What a waste thought Estevez.

"So how do I do this? Do I sign the paper and you give the order?" said Estevez.

"That's exactly how it works," said Ellison, who put the paper down on the desk.

"One last question; how many people will die if I sign this?"

"I honestly don't know sir. Less than if you don't sign it."

Estevez signed the bottom of the document without reading it. "Hell of a first order to give. Do it Ellison, put that fire out, even if it means sealing that sector off and venting the atmosphere."

Ellison left the office.

"Martin, he said that he didn't know how many people would die. There is a good chance that most people will make it to the shelters. We practice for events like this all the time for a reason," said Dr Wood, who had been sitting quietly in a chair listening.

"I'm not worried about most people Sue. Those aren't the people who needed our help today," said Estevez.

I have some thoughts about this. They'll go here later.

The Craftsman

2009-06-08T20:06:00.002+01:00

The blacksmith's workshop made me sweat. It was hot and the craftsman was not leaving his forge on my account; he had work to do. The craftsman was working on a white hot bar of steel with a hammer while we talked.

"Are you Juji Honma?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said.

I presented Juji Honma with a photograph of the sword.

"Is this one of your blades?"

Juji Honma took the photograph from me. He nodded.

"Yes. This is one of my finest. Who are you? What do you want? You don't look like a collector. Where did you get this photograph?"

"I am so sorry I failed to introduce myself. I am detective Ikari. I found this sword next to the body of Gendo Katsuragi. He was headless so I took it. The photograph was taken at the station. I am simply trying to find out who would kill Gendo Katsuragi."

"Show me your badge," said Juji Honma.

I showed him badge. He seemed satisfied with it's authenticity. He nodded again and I put the badge back into my pocket.

"I had heard that Gendo Katsuragi had been murdered. You hear news like that. There is a rumour about his death," said Juji Honma.

"Can you tell me this rumour?"

"Of course. It's nothing you would not hear in the right bar if you spent five minutes listening. The story goes that he was executed by the Jade Clan for not paying a debt. As I said it's a rumour, as you know well as I do that Gendo Katsuragi would never leave a debt unpaid. At least one that could cost him his life. I suppose you want to know more about the sword. It's part of a a set don't you know?"

"I didn't know that. Tell me more," I said.

"Two swords commisioned by Gendo Katsuragi. He came here personally to pay me half the cost. That's how fastidious he was with money. The second sword he said was going to Yasuo Iwakura," explained Juji Honma.

"He was the lieutenant of the clan wasn't he?"

"Yes. He's in charge of the Gold Clan now. He owes me the other half the payment for the set of swords. I doubt he will pay me; that is why I am telling you this."

"Last question: do you know why he ordered the set?"

"Not really, but I have my suspicions. Gendo Katsuragi mentioned an upcoming meeting between the three clans. It is not uncommon for Yakuza members to go a bit crazy and attempt to show off their wealth among their peers. In the end he was still Yakuza."

"Thank you. I will leave you in peace now," I said, as I left the workshop.

This is linked to the last piece posted. I've been struggling with this and another, now finished, story for the last month. I think I have almost cracked this. But I am not sure that my prose has the right rhythm.

Questioning/interrogation

2009-05-17T17:32:00.002+01:00

I wrote this on one side of a page in my moleskine in about ten minutes, and I suspect it shows. It is probably going to grow outwards into the current short story I'm working on. The geisha in this extract is traumatised by a violent murder she witnessed. The time period is an ill-defined steampunk Edwardian era Japan. The challenge was interrogation.

The geisha had been put in the family room. Gas lights not paraffin, padded chairs and not chairs cheap enough to break on purpose. Her eyes were still red, and I suspect she hadn't slept last night. As I moved a table in front of her a constable came into the room carry three bronze ring binders. He put them on the table as I sat down in from the her.

I tried to be compassionate.

"Do you have a name?"
The girl didn't say anything. She just nodded.
"Okay, do you know what these books are?"
Her head shook. I opened the binder to the first page. It had a sepia photograph of a Yakuza soldier.
"Did you see this man in the hotel room? Did he murder Mr X?"
She shook her head and I turned to the next page.

Four Sea Villages.

2009-05-04T01:10:00.001+01:00

"I went past a fishing village way back where all the houses faced the sea like how sofas and chairs face a television. Make something poetic of this please. I think it deserves it."
- Becky W. Received 01/05/09 very early in the morning.

1.

I got off the train at the last station. The driver told me that the track could go no further. I saw why as I started to walk along the coast road and the erosion on the cliffs became evident. The road I walked along was a single lane, and was shielded from the wind coming off the sea by a bank of earth. I continued along this road for a number of miles until I came upon the first village. It was called Heathfield, and the sky was getting dark.

The village was arranged so every inhabited building faced the sea. The harbour was empty and there was no sign of any industry. I walked into the village store and was met by a woman with blue rinsed haired.

"Can I help you?" she said to me.

"Yes," I said. "I'm trying to get to Green Hill. I was given directions but I was not told how far it was."

"Well I've never gone much further than here. But I have been told, on good authority, that it is the next village down the old sea road. About thirty miles," said the woman.

"Oh, that isn't so bad. It should only take me a couple of days to walk there. Not unless I can get a boat from here," I said.

"You won't be able to get a boat from here. There are no sailors here."

"Oh, why is that?"

"Because we are all widows waiting for our beloved ones to come back," she said.

I would have in my previous life thought that this was strange. A day ago I had been a middle-aged man dying of heart failure. But now I was my younger self again with fair skin and red hair, and I had been told that I had my own boat waiting for me to build in Green Hill. I understood her predicament.

"You can stay in the hostel. It is the last building on the main road. You can't miss it. Do you wish for me to ring ahead?" said the woman.

"That's very kind of you."

"What's your name? They'll need to know your name, so they know you are coming."

"James Ramsay," I said.

"That's a good name," said the woman, as she picked up the telephone.

She spoke on the phone for five minutes. She had booked a bed within thirty seconds and spent the rest of the time gossiping about village life. I looked around the shop and tried to make my self unobtrusive by looking at the walking sticks. When the woman had finished I went up to the counter holding the stick I fancied.

"They are now expecting you. They'll have some food ready by the time you arrive. Do you mean to buy that?" she said.

"Yes," I said, although in truth I did not know if I had any money with me. "Don't worry about the cost lad. We don't worry about money any more. Who needs it when we are all dead?"

"Thank you," I said to the woman, as I left the shop clutching a new walking stick.

In truth I did not know quite what to make of the woman's statement. Earlier before the train, all I remember was a busy platform and a ticket in my hand. As I walked towards the hostel I worried about how I would pay for my stay there. Surely that would not also be provided out of the charity of the owner.

The owner of the hostel was a young woman called Miss Summers. She met me at the front door of the hostel. A two story building made of stone and covered in lime. The light had been left on in a window on the top floor facing out towards the sea. She served me soup with some stale bread. She apologised for the quality of the bread. I simply said to her it was the first thing I had eaten since I arrived in this land so I did not mind and that I was simply glad to have the food.

"What do you think of our little village?" Miss Summers asked me.

"From what I have seen it's very nice. If I had not already been given an address to travel to, and a boat to sail on when I got there, then I would have no problems staying here. But I understand that I would not fit in here. The woman in the general store told me that you were all sailors widows," I said.

"Yes, that's true. I'm waiting for Gregor. The woman that runs the store is waiting for her Alex. She said he drowned when his flying machine crashed into the sea. She used a word I'd never heard before, helicopter. Someday when the sea has had enough of them, or they have had enough of the sea they will return to land here. I will be here for my Gregor, and Joanna will be here for her Alex."

"Why are you waiting for Gregor? I mean if you don't mind me asking, how did he drown?"

"I don't mind you asking James. Some might I guess. But I don't mind people knowing. He died in the war. He was forced to leave England because he was German. He had to join their navy when he arrived back there. He died at Jutland and I was heart broken," said Miss Summers.

After that answer I refrained from asking her any more questions about. I asked her about the road to Green Hill. She knew nothing beyond the village. Miss Summers took me to the dormitory I was to stay in. I was to be the only guest that night. She said goodnight and went back to her room. Tired I took one of the bottom bunks and went to sleep.

I left early in the morning and walked towards the next village. The sea road carried on much as it had before reaching Heathfield. A single track that ringed the cliffs, banks of earth or stone walls to stop the elements from hindering any travelers on one side, and the eroding cliff face on the other side.

I walked.

2.

And I walked.

The only signs of life I saw apart from grasses and seaweed were occasional solitary sea bird flying in from the sea. In the afternoon the road eventually went upwards onto the top of the cliffs. The view I was treated to was one of grasses extending towards the horizon inland. Behind me, in the direction I had come from, I could see Heathfield with all it's houses facing the sea laid out like chairs in a living room facing the television.

Green Hill was not in sight, but I could see a shelter some distance away, so I set my sights on getting there. The house was basic. It had a roof, and it had some canned meat stored inside so I had no complaints. There was no wood for the hearth, but I had yet to feel a chill. I had to keep faith that this warm spell would carry on at least another night.

There was a wooden sign fixed to the side of the house which said, "Fiddler's Green - 50 miles. Port Knock - 25 miles. Green Hill - 15 miles. Midway House - Here. Heathfield - 15 miles. Train Station - 20 miles."

I found this a helpful yet curious sign. It listed two places which I supposed I would never visit if my time in Green Hill was to be spent like the widows of Heathfield. It gave no suggestion of anything beyond Fiddler's Green, but it would be appropriate, at least in my mind, if nothing was further from the last train station than Fiddler's Green. Because of this sign I spent the night eating a little of the canned food. Although I could not help but feel guilty that I had nothing to replace the cans I ate with.

I had nothing to read on me, and I had nothing to do except think. I had been in hospital a few days earlier. I had been seriously ill, and the doctors had said they would take me into surgery to fix a blood clot in my leg. I went to sleep in Huddersfield, and I woke up in an unknown train station with a ticket and some direction, and the urge to step on the train the ticket said. Most of the other passengers on board with me had got off the train at a holiday camp one stop from the station.

It was easy to come to the conclusion that I was dead and in some afterlife. Strange that there was no God, or his choir of angels running everything. Everyone just seemed to find their place and carry on making lives for themselves. There was a place for everyone. I wondered what my place was.

In my pocket I had found an unsigned letter. It said to travel to Green Hill, and that there would be a house and a boat waiting for me. That was all. I thought about Meredith, my wife, and my daughter Jess. They would be distraught that I had died. However I had to make a life here. Certainly when I got to this Green Hill place I would be able to spend time fishing. I suspected that I would spend a lot of my time also thinking about what fate Meredith and Jess would find when they arrived in this strange land.

I rose as the sun did after a night huddled in the corner of Midway House. I ate another of the cans, and I left the shelter as close to the condition I had found it in. I had fifteen miles to walk and hoped to be in Green Hill by midday.

The weather became worse the closer I got to the village. An hour after I had started walking I walked into a thick fog. This was apparently normal because as a safety precaution a rope had been trailed along the centre of the road which I grasped onto fearing to tread too far towards the cliff edge. A drizzle started as I saw the first lights of Green Hill in the distance.

3.

I came to the surface of the sea in a thick fog. I took my first breath in fifty years.

I was in luck and had surfaced in a harbour of some kind. It was full of small fishing boats, but as far as I could see empty of people. I swam to the edge the water and pulled myself up onto the wharf. I looked into the boat nearest me. It was a tiny wooden boat with an outboard motor on the back. On it was a red haired man smoking a pipe and reading a book.

"Excuse me," I said, and the man jumped.

"Oh hello. I didn't see you there. Oh, you've gotten a bit wet," he said.

"Yes. I don't know how to explain it. I was in a sea battle. The ship I was on was hit and I went down with it. Now I am here. Where am I?"

"You are in Green Hill. A port for fishermen waiting for those they love to die."

"So I am dead."

"Unfortunately," said the red haired man. He stood up and offered me his hand. "I'm James."

"My name is Gregor," I said.

"Gregor," he repeated my name as if he'd heard it recently.

"Did you happen to be married to a woman called Miss Summers?"

"Yes," I said, taken aback by his knowledge.

"Then I believe we need to talk," said James, as he walked along the wharf.

02:13 [Ginja] Writing another "dream of the afterlife" to the sounds of Amanda Palmer, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, My Bloody Valentine, and the Lost in Translation OST.
02:14 [tmtx] oh boy
02:14 [tmtx] that's going to be interesting to read!

02/05/09

Midsummer Night

2009-04-22T17:10:00.003+01:00

I was dozing on the side of the hill watching the sunset with a bottle of Jameson whiskey when I first saw her. She was a new arrival to the land of the dead and was heading into the woods. That was where everyone went once the night had started. I drained my glass and started on walking down the hill. In the woods I gave the bottle of whiskey to Bertrand and ask him if he’d seen a new raven haired girl. He shook his head and poured himself a glass.
“Maybe you should go looking by the kitchens. Most new people are hungry. When you got here you spend three nights just eating pasta,” said Bertrand.
He was correct in telling me to look there. I found her heaping salted fish onto a plate.
“Hello,” I said. “Are you new here?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m Jason.”
“I’m Hildur. I’ve got some questions about this place. Can you help me?”
“Sure,” I said.

Hildur had been here for a year now and still hadn’t adjusted fully. We often spent hours on the side of the hill. In the day we’d watch people go about their business. Attending to vineyards and fields in the day and at night we’d watch the stars. She still hadn’t grasped everything about how the underworld works.
“Is that a satyr I see over there?” I said pointing at long grass in the distance.
“Do they have those here? Oh, I think I see it moving.” She said as the grass swayed in the wind.
I smiled. She looked at me. “You’re making fun of me aren’t you? Next you’ll be saying that the woods are full of fairies and goblins.”
“There are,” I said.
“You tell some terrible white lies.” Hildur laughed. “Now pass me the wine.”

“How come the season hasn’t changed since I got here? It’s been summer for a year,” asked Hildur as we sat under the trees in the forest drinking gin.
“The year’s longer here. About a century in the land of the living is a year here. I got here in the winter and it was magical,” I said.
“You did? How long have you been here?”
This is the hardest question to as a citizen of the underworld. Almost as sensitive as asking how someone died. “Sixty-one years.”
She stopped to think. “Do you know when I was born?”
“No,” I said.
“Twenty Fifty. You died forty years before I was born. Can I ask how you died?”
“Sure, there isn’t much to the story. It was a few days after President Obama had been elected.”
“I remember him.”
“Well I was crossing the street and then I was here. Veles, god of this place said I’d been hit by a car and died instantly. Not a big deal really. I didn’t even notice.”
Hildur looked away from me.
“Can I ask about your death?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. But I have to tell someone sometime.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said.
“I’ll tell you. Just don’t ask more questions beyond the basic facts.”
I was getting worried that it was something ugly.
“I was murdered,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. She’d died a few years younger than me and it always made me feel guilty to meet dead people younger than me. Hearing that she’d been murdered made that feel worse.
“Don’t be. That was when I was alive and the land of the dead is better.” Hildur finished her gin.

The leaves of the forest had changed into gold and scarlet paper and the gentle summer rains became day long deluges. It was Autumn and I was sitting under a canvas canopy with a bottle of whiskey and a book. I hadn’t seen Hildur for weeks. She’d grown sick of my drinking. Not because I was drinking too much, because this land of the dead is for those that love liquor, art and discussion. She drank as much as me in the end. But where she decided to never get drunk and only keep a mild tipsy buzz so she wouldn’t slur her words. I’d falling into a habit from life. I drinking until it hurt me and those around me. I tried to explain that was who I was. Hildur just shouted at me and said that was why I’d been ran over. That hurt because it wasn’t true and because I’d decided to quit drinking the day I’d died. She didn’t believe me. Called me a lying drunk before walking off beyond the forest and the green fields claiming she was sick of this pastoral bullshit and that she wanted to be in a city.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that underworld was all like this. Ten perfect square miles of green fields and idyllic forests tessellated over infinity. It reminded me of my first and only break down. I’d been sober for ages and was starting to become a real bore to those around me. It was Bertrand who told me that I was ignoring my essential nature by not drinking. He’d spent his life trying to be rational, and always attempting to have a explanation for everything. When he’d died and found himself standing next to Veles, the snake that encircles the world tree he decided to accept it. He then carry on as he had before. Edmund, who in life had been a great mountain climber had confided in me that at first he thought the low rolling hills to be a terrible place to spend forever explained that he’d started making wine to distract himself.

Hildur wrote me a letter once. I sent a short reply back wishing her luck in finding the edge of heaven saying no more. I went back to drinking, waiting for the world above to be reborn and waiting for someone to spend the middle of winter with. But mostly I spent my time drinking under the trees and arguing with Bertrand.

This was published on Random Kitty back in Janury. I felt it was time to post it here. The original story, and the comments it recived can be found here.

Tommy Bullet and the Delayed Revenge.

2009-04-12T01:46:00.002+01:00

Tommy Bullet ran upstairs the moment he heard his wife scream from their hotel room. As he kicked the door open he watched Jane being forced into an impossible hole in the wall by German soldiers. Tommy took his service revolver from the desk and shot at them as the hole sealed itself.

"Damn it man," said Toby, running into the room moments later. "Why are you shooting at my hotel? Where has your wife gone?"
Tommy tossed the revolver onto the bed. "She has been kidnapped by Von Engle's men. You won't have heard of him. Don't worry, I just need to use your telephone. I need to contact the Brigadier."

The army scientists came to the hotel room, they looked and acted like children who had been given a new toy to play with as soon as they were told about the impossible hole.

The Brigadier and Tommy sat in the recently redecorated restaurant.
"Tommy, do you have any idea why the Germans might want to kidnap your wife?"
"Revenge no doubt. It is just a shame they had to take it now. I was enjoying my honeymoon," said Tommy.
"You said they were wearing the uniform of the Erich von Engle's Battalion. I thought you disposed of him during the war," said the Brigadier.
"I did. Maybe he didn't die. Very rude of him really. Do the boys upstairs have an explanation for how they got into the room?"
"Yes, they've seen a few in their time. It's a doorway between two places and times. All very interesting, although quite frankly I don't understand half of what they say about it," said the Brigadier.
Tommy started to clean his revolver.
"Are you worried about Jane?"
"Of course I am. Sir, do you mind lending me your service revolver?"
The Brigadier smiled and removed his gun from its holster. "If you are that worried then it is my honour and duty to."

The bedroom had been cleared of everything that made it a bedroom at the insistence of the hotel owner. Men with wild hair and lab coats played with bundles of wires connected to banks of batteries. The person leading the operation was carrying a clipboard and shouting at the others. Tommy noticed that he also had the most burns in his lab coat out of the scientists.

"Oh Brigadier, good to see you. We are almost ready. Is that Tommy?"
"Yes, I am," said Tommy, reaching out to shake the scientists hand.
"It's good to meet you. Your accident during the war is most puzzling. Such a fascinating side effect," said the professor, as he shook Tommy's hand.
The Brigadier coughed. "Are you ready?"
"Yes, yes. We think that going through this new hole will take you to only a few minutes after the original."

The scientists retreated into another room within the hotel. Tommy held both of the Webleys ready as the air in the room crackled with static electricity. An beam of green light flooded where the original hole had been. A new hole opened and Tommy could see Erich Von Engle sitting in a wheelchair. His beloved Jane was being held in an arm lock by a stern looking youth. She had been gagged with a strip of cloth. Tommy decided that he would suffer. Taking a deep breath Tommy jumped through the wall.

Once through the hole and into the dungeon the first person Tommy saw was a technician attending to exotic machinery. Tommy shot him in the leg. The technician cried out, "Oh Gott," and fell to the floor sobbing. The door to the room was a heavy iron door taken from a submarine bulkhead. It had been closed from the inside, and looked soundproof to Tommy. The soldier who was holding Jane took out a knife, and he held it to her neck. Tommy pointed both of the guns at Erich Von Engle.

"You do not dare," said Erich.
Tommy looked Erich in his cold eyes. "How do you know?"
Erich got angry. "Because you would have killed me when you had the chance. Instead I have been stuck in this wheelchair for six months. I had had to watch that damn armistice being signed, and I was unable to stop it because of you."
"I'll make sure I do a proper job this time," said Tommy.
"Oh I do not think you will. Herr Schmidt kill her. And make it painful."

Herr Schmidt pushed the knife into the skin of Jane's neck. She shrieked, and blood ran along the knife.
"It is so good when they scream." said Erich.
Herr Schmidt yelped like a dog, and dropped the knife. The young man was on the floor holding his crotch. Jane had started to kick him as she untied the gag from her head.

"Jane, I remember why I fell in love with you again," said Tommy.
Jane flicked two of her fingers in a V sign aimed at Tommy.
Erich pushed on the wheels of the heavy wheelchair without going anywhere. Tommy emptied the revolvers into Erich's chest.
"Jane we need to leave now. I don't know how long that hole is going to stay open."

"Hello Brigadier," said Jane, as she emerged into the hotel room.
"Hello Jane. I trust you are quite safe," said the Brigadier.
"Oh yes. I suspect I would have escaped even without Tommy.
"Quite possibly true. I have seen your file."
"But it is good to know that he cares ever so much." Jane smiled.

Tommy arrived back in the room. He gave the Brigadier his weapon back.
"Thank you for lending me that. I made sure this time that Von Engle was dead," said Tommy.
"Goodman. I shall leave you two alone now. Toby tells me that drinks will be served in an hour. Your room is now the penthouse suite to make up for the mess caused by our scientists," said the Brigadier, who after he finished speaking, saluted Tommy, and then turned to leave the room.

This story was originally published in The Penny Dreadful. The issue it is in can be found here. I'm sorry that it requires registration to see. That's why I'm posting it here. I do recommend you find a way to read the ezine though. It's got some good stuff in.

The High Life.

2009-03-22T18:16:00.001Z

Liam walked out over the canyon across a fifty meter red ribbon. He was dressed in shorts and a parachute. His bare feet slowly moved along the line above space which slowly oscillated from side to side. His arms outstretched he looked only ahead of himself towards the end of the slackline. A group of men, some dressed in police blue, others in park ranger uniforms had gathered at the far side. Liam looked over his shoulder, balancing still on his toes for a moment to see the same sight behind him.

Liam hoped they would not interfere with the slackline. His rigging was bomb proof and would be hard for someone to dismantle without knowing what they would doing. But, Liam considered, they could always cut the cord. He would fall and they might pick him up at the bottom. However, this close to the canyon wall Liam feared that they would be picking up his corpse. He walked out into the centre of the line and stopped still.

"Liam Hunter, you are under arrest for vandalising park property and posing a risk to others within the park. You will be arrested when you finish this tightrope walk," said one of the men in blue through a megaphone.
"It's not a tightrope," shouted Liam. "It's a slackline."
"Whatever. Please continue to this side or the other side so that we can arrest you."
"Is there anyway that I won't be arrested?" said Liam.
"No," said the officer.
"Even if I do a trick for you?"
"Not even if you do a trick."

Liam bounced on the line. The pack of men in front of him drew deep breaths.
"Do not do that again," said the officer. "Come to the edge of the canyon."
"That doesn't really seem like a choice," said Liam.
"It isn't. It's an order."
"Well I could jump and escape."
"Then we'd catch you at the bottom and still arrest you. We'd charge you with evading a police officer as well," said the officer.
"What if I fall? Does that count as evading a police officer?" said Liam, he smiled.
"What do you mean?"
"Well I might get scared and simply fall of the line. It's quite hard keeping my body tense and talking to you. Almost impossible really."
"Then we'd still arrest you. We'd have a harder time proving that you were deliberately trying to avoid arrest. But I'd still try and get you charged with it."

So the choices in Liam's mind were to either accept the police officers ultimatum and get arrested at either end of the canyon. Or jump, and attempt to escape. He knew that he would still be arrested. That'd he'd be thrown in jail and have to pay a fine. But he could still try and avoid being arrested. Avoiding the arrest for now would almost be worth any extra jail time. He'd be spitting in the face of the police officers that had to walk up the side of the canyon to arrest him.

Liam reached for the pilot chute with one hand.
"Don't do that. I am warning you," shouted the police officer.

Judge

2009-02-09T17:45:00.002Z

I judge people. That is what I do. I have being doing this for so long that I have become very good at it. What I judge isn't legal matters. I don't even pass judgment on morality. Although I'm not an advocate of all morals being relative. No, I pass judgment on an individual. On their future deeds based on their person. To dress it up in mystical terms I foresee the future. However it would be fairer to say that I am simply fantastic judge of character. I spot the dishonest, the superficial, and the bad and I paint them as such. The honest, deep, and good don't get judged. They get left alone. I am always waiting for a person to stumble so I can mark them.

Do you know what I have been right? Well I have spotted a violent psychopath from a handshake. And I have know when an individual was a con-artist from a conversation. You must trust me on this matter.

Do I allow for the fact that I could be wrong? Yes, but until now I have never been wrong. If one judgment was wrong out of the countless I've passed then would that put the others in jeopardy? Maybe if each one was a progression from the last. If I used the inductive method to pass my decrees. I have known a person like you so your fate must be the same as them. But I do not work this way. How could I? It would be missing the vital fact that all people are different shades of the Almighty.

What about the fact a person can change? Please all I can say is the more things change the more they stay the same. One lie to a loved one and a hundred more will follow to hide the first. Time and good circumstance will make a person do anything to keep the good times. The promise of a better tomorrow is the only reason most need to start the march to hell.

Why judge the superficial? Everyone has the capability for the original and the profound. In their own small way of course. To live a life in the imitation of others is a half-life. A lazy escape for those not wiling to accept the consequences of failure. People like that are beyond contempt. One day they will hurt themselves and others with their weakness.

You say: "Judge not, least you be judged yourself." I say to you that one day I will be judged and on that day I can only hope that I am not found wanting.

That Divine Spark

2009-01-25T22:01:00.006Z

Earlier today I spent some time shifting through old notebooks of mine. I was looking at notebooks from just after high-school. A period which I have through accident lost a large part of my memory of. While I have reclaimed many of the memories which others can provide accounts for there are still gaps of time which remain unaccounted for. I found this extract interesting enough to warrant reposting. I do not know who this monologue is intended for. However I find it hard to believe that the feelings expressed are entirely fictional.

ACT V

Scene 1

The whole cast are on stage in a semicircle. Jacob is standing in the center of the stage, surrounded by the entirety of the cast. He faces the audience.

JACOB

You have the Promethean fire deep within you at the very core of your being. You are an expression of the creative forces we all wish to have within us. You use that divine spark to craft objects of exquisite beauty beyond comparison. I have known geniuses as dull and uncreative as an automaton. But you abstain from such profane mediocrity. Your personality glows with that still same innate fire, and, it gives you a curious and unmalicious desire for to know the world and her people. What's more you have a physical beauty is greater than that of the Muses and comparable to only to Venus the abstract ideal from which beauty is defined. I am only worthy to gaze upon your form because the smallest glimpse of your heavenly form improves my heart, mind and soul beyond all other means. This improvement is always total and draws me away from my corrupted half-life to the edge of your godly presence. Only through my own weakness do I decay once more into the shadows. If I was as strong as you I would remain a virtuous soul. I would appeal to you to let me spend an eternity in your presence. However such an decision should be made only by yourself unprompted at your volition. I ask only that you gift me a minor token created by your awe inspiring abilities. A token to amplify my fallible memory of your being for when I inevitably decay in to corruption.

Start of Something.

2009-01-17T00:42:00.002Z

This is the start of a blogpost I'm working on for Random Kitty.

Stoic Will: Seriously writing a blog post about your dreams. How lame.
Other Will: Shut mate. There's a serious health and safety warning here.
Stoic Will: Well I suppose he could have been in the dreamlands.
Other Will: Stop with the Lovecraft shite. This is more like Dada.
Stoic Will: Oh like Dali?
[Other Will picks up a empty bottle of Corona.]
Stoic Will: You've been drinking Corona. How sad.
[Other Will smashes the bottle against a nearby table.]
Stoic Will: Drinking Corona and blogging about dreams. What next?
[Other Will stabs Stoic Will in the face.]
Other Will: Shut up and listen before being a prick.
[Unintelligible screams from Stoic Will.]

Sunday Short

2009-01-11T01:27:00.000Z

The car park is a grim collection of second hand red Vauxhalls and blue Fords. My grubby white van is parked at the far end away from the huddled masses smoking near the door. The cabin is a mess because I spend my life in here, rather than at home. Plastic sandwich cartons and mostly empty bottles of coke litter the dashboard. If this were one of the kids rooms I'd be disgusted with it. Now I don't care.

I sit in the drivers seat and turn the radio on. The presenter is reading out listeners emails and texts. They are all rightfully criticizing the BBC. I leave the Wetherspoons behind and head back to work.

There are buses and fucking cyclists all around me. I hate cyclists. They are all fucking wankers who always have to cut me up in traffic and skip red lights. I wish someday that one would end up under my wheels. I'm coming up to some treacherous crossroads that they love to skip the lights at. Maybe today will be the day.

Fuck. A cyclist, dressed in bright yellow has smeared himself across my van and I am forced to break hard by instinct. I can hear the bike rattling under my wheels. Shit the windscreen has shattered. The poor sods helmet was useless. Half of it is sitting in the passenger seat. As the van comes to a rest the cyclist slips from the front of my van onto the road.

I step out to see what state the cyclist is in. I am really scared that I am going to get done for something by the law. I have started to sweat. The cyclist is twitching, but his legs are now lifeless husks of muscle clad in lycra.

Mt Elbrus

2009-01-11T01:16:00.002Z

Imagine a kid strapped to the top of Mt Elbrus with a "big fuck off bird" (trademark of Hot Topic) circles ahead. In the distance an MTV film crew with a telephoto lens and a PA system booming whatever the kids are into these days. Further down, at the base of the mountain a helicopter waiting with a new liver and several liters of blood ready to be airlifted to the kid.

The fact the "big fuck of bird" doesn't peck the kids liver from his body is immaterial. It'd be a great television show. Perhaps the climax to a series which involved selecting the candidate to be pecked to near death repeatedly in a 300 style workout show.

Wednesday Short

2009-01-07T01:37:00.004Z

"I'll keep buying in an attempt to fill the empty void in my SOUL."

"My credit card is maxed out," I said.
"Which one?" said Doug.
"All of them. Every single last fucking one. I've got fifteen of them. They're all red now. I've got to get another one or get a loan to cover the debt."
"Oh yeah. I've seen the adverts on the TV about that. 'One convenient loan to cover all your pre existing loans.' It sounds like a good bit of common sense."
"I'm thinking of remortgaging as well. For a bit of spending money over the holidays," I said.
"You can never have too much money to spend over the Christmas period. What are you thinking of getting?"
"First I was thinking of going to get another pint. Want one?"
"Sure," said Doug.

I stood up and went to the bar. The Weatherspoons was spacious and 'traditional'. My shoes shuffled along the filthy carpet. Screaming children in the family area of the pub reminded me that it was lunchtime. Plates of microwaved pub meals glowed on peoples plates. At the bar I saw a group of disgusting smelly old men drinking. A young man (too-young) served me. "Two largers mate."
One of the old farts tapped saddled up to me. "You drinking Stella?" he croaked at me.
I glanced at him. Is that what I was going to become? I gave the barman a fiver. He have me no change.
"Expensive isn't it?" said the old fart.

"Old fuckers bothering you?" said Doug. I put his drink down in front of him. "That's great Dave. I'll get the next round or owe you."
The bastard would not get the next round. He'd pretend that he'd just got a text message on his mobile phone and leave. I got him the drink because he's the only person that will listen to my moaning. The wife won't. The daughter has gone of the rails. The son just wants the latest games machine. None of them have jobs and mine is on the line.
"What are you going to do this Christmas?" I said.
"Don't know. Probably just going to have a quite Christmas. Maybe go see the family on Boxing Day. Might come here on New Years; if the wife wants to do something fancy."
"Getting anything good?"
"Getting one of those new high-definition TVs. For the football."
"Oh? I've been thinking of getting one of those as well. Know anywhere that sells them with a good payment plan?"
"Electronics shop near the bus station," said Doug.
"Oh, I've got a few thing from there. We got our last fridge there."

Doug reached into his jacket pocket. He looked at his mobile phone and signed.
"I've got to go Dave. Work needs me. Sorry mate." Doug stood up and drained the bottom of his glass.
"Alright. I've got to go soon anyway. Stuff to do," I lied.

National Novel Writing Month - One one thousand.

2008-11-01T01:59:00.003Z

This is the first part of my novel for National Write a Novel Month. The emphasis of the exercise is to write 50,000 words in one month. A quantity not quality exercise. This is the first 1080 words. The novel is tentatively called "Atari <3" with the "<3" pronounced as "love."

The sun was rising over the Essex horizon and Paul was sitting sprawled in a metal chair at Gate nk in Standstead Airport. In one hand was a early morning copy of "The Guardian" folded so he could read it while he drank coffee. The coffee he was drinking he'd gotten from a kiosk just after exit from the driverless trains. The coffee was too hot and wasn't helping Paul wake up.

Two hours earlier Paul had woken up in a hotel room near Standstead airport It was a boring business room. Nothing but a single bed, a TV, an attempt at a desk and a chair along with a tiny bathroom. After a quick shower Paul had taken his kit bag and rucksack down with him to breakfast. The breakfast room was full of other early morning businessmen getting ready for flights. Paul had taken a croissant from a basket and grabbed a cup of black coffee from the machine. He'd turned his phone on and took a glance at the news. But nothing had happened since he'd arrived at the hotel seven hours earlier so he turned his attention to the cup of coffee.

Paul had once formulated a theory that the more fancy the coffee the less a person liked coffee. Case in point there was a group of business women in their mid-thirties each pulling a suitcase on wheels. They'd each gotten an enormous caffe lattes and had spent several minutes cooing about how it was the only form of coffee they could drink. A balding gentleman in his late fifties had taken a coffee from the machine then taken a handful of plastic creamers and white sugar from a baskets next to it. The theory had no basis so Paul had stopped using it a few months after he'd thought of it. But he often thought about it when sitting in hotel breakfast rooms.

After finishing the coffee took the plate which had the croissant on and the coffee cup to a table that was filling up with dirty dishes. He walked to the reception desk and still bleary eyed checked out of the hotel. Silently handing over his credit card when required. Grunting when he handed back the invoice they made him sign and saying "thank you" when the tired receptionist said it to him.

It was still dark when he'd stepped into the cold morning air. There was a bus that the hotel had provided to take guests to and from the airport. It's engine was running and he could see people shuffling along the aisle backlit in dim orange light. The driver stood next to the open cargo door and was helping people put large suitcases into the hold. Paul tried to walk past him but the driver pointed to his and then to the hold. Taking the hint Paul put his kit bag in the hold and walked onto the bus.

The bus ride took five minutes and dropped its passengers off at the front entrance of the airport. His bag was near the front of the hold so he took it and walked into the glass and steel airport. Glancing at the departures board he noticed that the flight desk he needed to go to was open so he dealt with that first. Handed over his passport and the printout with his booking number to the woman in a bright orange fleece. She asked him some basic security questions. Then handed him the printout and passport with the real ticket tucked inside it. She'd probably told him what gate he needed to be at, but Paul hadn't been listening.

At a newsagent he'd bought a copy of "The Guardian" with the last of his UK money. Then at the security gate he'd spent sometime minutes explaining that his Eee PC was a real laptop and not a toy with a bomb in it. While Paul's jeans rapidly tried to descend to his ankles without the belt he used to keep them up. But the security attendant's partner had corroborated his claim and let him through. Once through the gate Paul had found his gate and taken the train to it.

As the sun had risen Paul had lightly dozed while he read the news and drank coffee. He occasionally looked up from the newspaper, took a sip from the cup of coffee and glanced out over the airport apron which was abuzz with activity. Looking at his watch Paul noticed that there was half an hour until his flight was due to depart. He closed his eyes.

Somewhere in the departure gate a mobile phone was ringing. The ring tone was the music from a 90s video game that Paul recognized as one he was fond of. He tried to ignore the phone for a while and rested his head on the spine of the row of chairs.
"Excuse me sir," said an old lady with a thick German accent, who Paul ignored. She jabbed at his shoulder.
"Excuse me sir," she said again, "is that your bag on the floor next to your feet?"
"Yeah."
"Then I think your phone is ringing."
Paul stopped dozing and opened his eyes.
"Oh, wait, thank!" he said, as he dropped his newspaper and put his coffee cup on the floor.
"It's not a problem. Just make sure you turn that thing off when you get on the plane," she said as she walked carefully back to her seat.

Unzipping one of the rucksacks side pockets Paul took out his mobile phone, look at the screen, which showed the number was unknown. He answered it.
"Hello, is that Atari Love?" said a woman on the other end.
"Yes, this is the artist formally known at Atari Love. Who is this?"
"Julia. You don't me. I was a friend of Ryan."
"You were a friend of Ryan's. What do you mean? Did you fall out with him? Or has something happened?"
"Somethings happened," said Julia.
While Paul waited to be told he took a sip of coffee.
"Are you still there?"
"Yes, yes, I was just waiting for you to tell me what had happened."

He's Gotta Gun

2008-10-21T02:33:00.002+01:00

I'm looking at the gun he's holding and he's looking at me. He's got me. The windows were boarded up years ago and he is standing by the door. I don't know who he is. I know what he is here for though. Three days ago I stole a lot of money from a mafia strip joint. He's come to collect and I'm all out of ideas. He's shaking a little. I don't think he's a real hitman. Sure he intends to kill me, but I am starting to doubt that he can go through with it.

"Are you a religious man? I ask only because I want to know if a brother is sinning to get me dead." Maybe I can talk him out of this.
"Yeah," he replies. The gun isn't pointing at me anymore. It's aimed just to the right of me.
"Christian?"
"Yes, Catholic."
"Me too, of course."
"I don't think I've seen you at the church on main street." He says, forgetting he's here to kill me.
"I'm from out of town."
"You're always welcome to come along." He won't kill me now.
"I'll keep that in mind." I say as I smile, and reach into the waistband at the back of my trousers.
"What you doing?"
"This!" I pull a Saturday Night Special from behind my back and while he hesitates plug a bullet between his eyes.

I leave him and the gun on the floor. I open the door he was blocking.
There's the real hitman.
"Oh..."

Cat & Cthulhu - The Blog of Cthulhu

2008-10-17T18:58:00.002+01:00

Cthulhu (onewhosleeps) wrote,
@ 2008-10-17 18:22:00

Current location: R'lyeh
Current mood: Surprised

Something has come to my attention

I just woke up quickly and had a hard time getting back to sleep again. I thought I'd check my email and blog feeds. In doing so something has come to my attention and it is rather disturbing to me. Apparently I am worshiped by humans. Humans who for a start think that I am real. Quite obviously I am not real. The starts have been correctly aligned hundreds of times over the last million years. At any of one those alignments, I would have, if I was real rose from my tomb of horrors in R'lyeh and done "bad things."

But I haven't done any of those things because I'm a fictional character. I get that some people who worship me do it because I'm a fictional character. That they see me as the archetype of some eternal evil in the universe. Or as some uncaring keeper of some natural force in the universe. Whatever they think the only truth is that I'm a fictional character. They are mentally exercising whatever fantasies they have.

But those humans that worship me in a non-ironic post-modern way don't bother me that much. Because they recognise the inherent nature of my intangible and incorporeal existence. It's the people that think I'm real and treat that blasted book (Necronomicon) as some sacred text equivalent to the bible. It annoys me so much.

Not only should they know that the book is a fake. Fake, fake, fake. But they ignore the documentary evidence that tells them that it is a fake. They claim that it is based on "ancient Sumerian" mythology. Bullsquid! There nihilistic attempts to be evil annoys me to. The universe is a harsh place sure. If I was real (which I'm not) I'd be out there making it a "bad place" supposedly. But with the natural state of the universe being so horrible I don't see why beings try and make it more so. My actions would be detrimental to humanity and I'm sorry about that. But I have my own spawn to look after.

Do you know what else I find uncomfortable? The fact that if people do worship me that they might expect miracles. I can't perform miracles. I'm not real. Yes I keep saying that. But even if I was real I would not do anything of the sort. Bunch of lazy good for nothing cultists. If they want something done they can alter with reality directly instead of invoking my bloody name.
Oh yeah, and do you know that thing people keep saying about all the cultists get eaten first? It's total bullsquid. If I was real I'd have no specific order. I can't tell one human from the other. You all look the same to me. Like little specs running around screaming. The only order I'd have depends on which way I'd start walking around the world. Would I reach Asia or America first?

I still sigh about all this. I doubt the message will get through. Or that anyone thinks that this is a real blog post from a fictional character. How is this happening? I'm going back to bed.

The One Who Sleeps,

Cthulhu.

Cat & Cthulhu - The Sorcerer and his Cat.

2008-10-05T17:26:00.002+01:00

Every night, despite magic being banned by order of the king, William climbed out of the bed he shared with his wife to study occult knowledge, as he had done each night for fifteen years in his ground floor study. Fifteen years of study that had brought nothing: no curses, no hexes, no summonings, no transmutations. Just wasted time and money. Watching him this night, like most nights, was William's cat, a mangy old tomcat that had been a kitten when William had started his experiments. Sitting at the oak desk in his study William wrote symbols and numbers on the paper. His extensive study into the lines of power that ran through his property was not going well. His dream had been to harness the energies they carried for sorcerers deeds but he was starting to think that it was all nonsense. Magic was banned because it was a pointless activity; not because of its apparent danger. As his pen scratched down the page totting up numbers it snapped. Frustrated, William finally gave in and resolved to burn everything occult he owned the next night.

He hid the papers and books in a locked draw and went back to bed. The cat was left alone in the room looking outside through the window. The red harvest moon illuminated the gardens of William's household. The power lines that William believed in started to shine a faint blue. The cat watched in eager delight as a giant in shadow grew out of the lawn.

"Is anyone there?" said the giant.
"Yes," said the cat.
"Oh. That's good. I wasn't aware anyone could perceive me in this universe."
"Well I can. Why can't things perceive you?" asked the cat.
The giant hesitated. "Well it's quite hard to explain. You are if I can say this without sounding rather mean a lower form of intelligence."
"Oh, but I can still see you. That must count for something. Explain. If I don't understand then I don't understand. There is harm in trying is there?"
"Well I'm not from this universe. I'm a projection from my original universe into yours. Except in my universe I exist in more dimensions than you can count. Here I am being projected into six dimensions. Most beings I have encountered have very narrow perceptions of their universe that they can perceive and no idea about a rest they can not. Not even imagining that there are parts of the universe that they cannot see. It appears you can see the extra parts of the universe they cannot. The ones that render my projection more complete."
"I don't follow you," said the cat.
"You see quite interested. Would it help if I explained slower?"
"I doubt it. Although I do have one more question."
"Go on."
"How am I talking to you?"
"You aren't talking to me. I'm talking to you."
"That doesn't really help."
"Like I said earlier, you have a far simpler mind than mine. It is a trivial task for me to manipulate your mind so we can have a conversation. Enough questions from you though. I have a few of my own."
"In our universe we feel tapping from this universe. In the location you are sitting almost exactly. What goes on there?" said the giant.
"Magic."
"Magic?"
"Yes, magic. Or rather my owner's attempts at casting magic. Using these strange pictures and chantings more random nonsense than he does during the day to do something. I've been watching him for years. It does nothing."
"That's interesting. Maybe when the stars are right here something really interesting will happen. You should try and encourage him to carry on. The stars are almost right for something minor, yet still quite interesting to happen." said the giant, who vanished as a passing cloud covered the moon..

In the morning William entered his study with a cup of tea to conduct his business of shipping tea to the Americas. He looked embarrassed at the sight of the bottom draw of his desk. Later in the day he ordered a servant to make ready a fire. That night as William's cat made a wretched noise he burned his occult books in shame.

Dead Drop

2008-09-15T01:47:00.000+01:00

He held his head high even as the pack jeered at him. He didn't shout back at them. He couldn't throw back any of the rotten vegetables they'd thrown at him because his hands were tied behind him. But standing on the back of the wagon he held his head high and looked on at the rabble.
They called him, king killer. They called him a bastard pagan and the Devils Hound. They didn't respect or understand him; they just wanted a new ruler.
When the crowed looked at him they feared him. The guards had not covered his heard. They wanted to make an example out of him. But he didn't want to hide. He wanted the masses to see he'd turned into a beast for them.

A week ago he'd followed the same road he was on now. He'd taken the old king from his bed and personally dragged him down this road to Execution Hill. Looking around he saw a few familiar faces. They'd done the same to the old king. He wasn't surprised that he was getting the same treatment. His deal with the devil failed. His change from man to beast had wrought him great physical strength; but had lost him support of the Church. As soon as he'd torn the head from the last king they were onto him. He'd done what they wanted in removing a despotic ruler who'd paid little attention to the religious leaders. With their support gone so had most of his army.

The wagon stopped at the bottom of the gallows. He stepped from the wagon and onto the wooden platform. The freshly laid planks creaked under his weight and his hooves clomped as he was pushed towards the noose. He had spent hours the night before asking why he'd be as dignified as possible. He could fight through half of the mob and die in battle. The king he had disposed begged for his life in the most shameful manner. He knew to be dignified in death. It was how he had been brought up. Someone, the hangman he assumed shook his hand to measure his weight.

That man was the hangman, and he looped the thick hemp rope around his neck. The guards stood back. A church rang its bell. The trap door opened and he dropped. The rope snapped. Praise Satan he thought as anarchy took hold.

A Black Cat Crosses The Great Detective.

2008-08-29T01:34:00.005+01:00

A Black Cat Crosses The Great Detective.

The telephone rang on the Great Detective's desk. When the Great Detective had found the telephone under the accumulated clutter of years of work a young woman's voice shouted at him through the receiver.
"Is this the Great Detective?" I've a long distance call from San Fransisco. Do you wish to accept this call?"
"Who is it from?"
"Oh, right," said the Operator, who was the Great Detective assumed was new to the job. "The telephone call is from a Detective Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department."
"I'll accept it."
"One moment," said the Operator as she moved plugs around on the switchboard.
"Great Detective, it's Detective Callahan here. We've got a murder for you to solve. You're the best," fired Callahan down the wire.
"I accept. I can't ignore a murder if it needs me to solve it," said the Great Detective.
"Good. Your travel documents are waiting at the airport. Do you wish for a car to be sent? Your plane leaves in two hours."
"A car would be good. Yes, send a car."
The Great Detective put the phone earpiece down. He took his suitcase from the top of a filing cabinet and threw in a tatty hardback book into the case. Then the Great Detective went to find his hat.

Detective Callahan sat in a squad car parked outside the airport. He was drinking a coffee with cream from a paper cup.
"I hear that the Great Detective is hideously deformed," the driver, a uniformed officer said to Callahan.
"I heard that as well. No one knows. He refuses to have his picture taken. And those who have met him are sworn to not to describe his appearance to anyone."
"What happens if someone does take a picture?"
"The negative is black. Overexposed or something. No one knows why."
"How come no one has described him? How do we know it's him?" the driver asked.
Callahan wounder the window down and threw the last of the coffee out of it.
"Look you've got questions kid. That's good. I do as well but no one knows what some low life hasn't blabbed to the news. Maybe they forget."

There was a knock on the front window. The hand was in a leather glove. Callahan opened his door and stepped out.
The Great Detective extended his right hand towards Callahan. Callahan looked at the hand and decided it was strange.
"Detective Callahan I presume."
"Yes. You must be the Great Detective," said Callahan, who shook the hand.

"He's hideous," cried the driver.
Detective Callahan looked the Great Detective in the eyes. The first impression that Callahan formed was that the Great Detective was a green skinned cigar smoking octopus on legs. He wasn't wrong.
"It's congenital, and I'd care if you didn't mention my appearance again," said the Great Detective.
"Of course. I'll put your suitcase in the trunk," said Callahan, feeling embarrassed.

The drive to the crime scene was in silence. Callahan wondered what provisions could be made to avoid distressing the general public if the the Great Detective had to go sightseeing.The driver just felt stupid and tried to avoid looking in the mirrors.

The squad car pulled up at the sidewalk outside the murder scene. The Great Detective put his hat on and stepped out onto the street. Callahan looked towards the Great Detective and saw a plain middle aged gentleman.
"Could you lead me inside?" said the Gentleman.
"You're the Great Detective?" said Callahan.
"Oh yes. But don't tell anyone." The Great Detective smiled.

The wooden house was painted white and had a large front garden. The windows on the second floor had their drawn curtains. Inside the Great Detective observed that everything was as it should be. In the master bedroom things were not.

A man in a dressing gown was spread across the floor. He had been dead for days Callahan explained. The body showed no signs of injury or decay.
"Does he have a name?"
"J.R. Random," said Callahan.
"Does he live here?"
"We don't know. Hence the name. I'd guess so; he's wearing a dressing gown."
"Who owns the property?"
"A charity. The Order of Eternal Light."
""Have you heard of them?"
"No," said Callahan.
"I have. And I know what happened to J.R. Random."
Detective Callahan didn't look surprised.
"Black Cat did this and this man isn't dead. Get an ambulance now," said the Great Detective.

The ambulance came and took J.R. Random away. Detective Callahan sat in the passenger seat of the squad car. The drive had been told to follow the ambulance.
"Explain everything," said Callahan to the Great Detective, who sat in the back."It'll take some time," said the Great Detective.
"Then give me the abridged version."
"The Order of Eternal Light are a fraternal organization that go back hundreds of years. They are an open secret. I guess that's the best way to put it. They deduced many years ago that the best way to hide is to hide in public. As just another fraternal group; like the Free Masons. They hire assassin to silence those they consider disloyal to the order. Black Cat is one of those assassins. J.R. Random is still alive because you found him in time. The order are sworn to protect life. So, incidentally they can not directly take a life. However through the use of various toxins they can induce a paralyse in a man such that he dies of thirst."

Detective Callahan considered the facts. The crime of murder hadn't yet been provably committed by this group yet. The J.R. Random case could be prosecuted as aggravated assault with the intent to commit murder in the first degree. Which while a serious crime did mean that the case would loose importance if a real murder took place. He had to get this case solved quickly.
"Driver, take us to City Lights bookstore," said the Great Detective.
"Why are we going there?"
"I keep books there. I need to get one of them."

The Great Detective walked out of the shop carrying a leather book. He threw it into the back of the car and got in.
"Careful with that. That looks expensive," said Callahan.
"It's a fake. Driver, Union Square, post-haste."

They pulled up in Union Square.
"Hit the horn son," said the Great Detective.
A small man in a dark coat and glasses crossed the street to meet them. He got in the car.
"Hello Jim," said the Great Detective.
"Hello sir. You said you wanted information. Do you have the book?"
The Great Detective tossed the book onto Jim's lap. He grunted in pain.
"Drive anywhere," said Callahan.
Jim said "It's a fake."
"You deal in fakes. It's perfect for you. Now tell me where I can find Black Cat?"
"No. I wanted the original," said Jim.
"You're being unreasonable Jimmy. You don't want to see my bad face do you?" The Great Detective was still wearing his disguising hat.
"No, you're the one being unreasonable. I said I wanted the original. The information I have for you is worth a copy of the real book. Not some knock off fake. You know that. I know that."
"Now Jimmy. Where is Black Cat?"
"Don't know."
The doors of the car locked. The Great Detective took off his hat.
Jim saw instead of a kindly old gentleman a alien horror. Jim with the full force of the Great Detective's malicious intent directed at him started to scream. Freaking out he tried to open the door. The Great Detective put his hat back on and waited for Jim to calm down.
"Where is Black Cat?"
"I'll tell you..."

It was after they'd dropped Jimmy at a local psychiatric hospital that the Great Detective started to wonder what the outcome of the case would be. Sure, they'd catch Black Cat. But they'd never stop the Order. The hotel that Black Cat had holed up in was cheap and seedy. The management discrete. But as the Great Detective learned, very willing to cooperate with the police when the right colour of money was shown. The Great Detective sat in the car outside the hotel with his driver. Detective Callahan was inside with an arresting team. The Great Detective had his book open. He was copying the strange icons from it onto the back of the daily newspaper. Above the noise of the city the Great Detective heard a shotgun fire five floors above ground level. The arrest was going badly. Black Cat walked on all fours out of the front of the hotel. Casually, without caring for the police presence.
"Shit, he's gone invisible to mundanes," shouted the Great Detective.
"Who has?"
"Black Cat you idiot. He's tuned himself outside of your perception," said the Great Detective jumping out of the car, taking the newspaper with him.

Black Cat reached the side of the road. The Great Detective moved though the crowed. He rolled the newspaper up with the symbols on the outside. He reached the edge of the sidewalk, next to Black Cat. Black Cat was invisible to normal people. The Great Detective was invisible to everyone except those he let see him. The Great Detective swung the newspaper at Black Cat.
"Bad kitty," said the Great Detective.
The driver caught up with them. Black Cat jumped into perception hissing. In a frenzy to escape Black Cat ran across the road and into an oncoming tram.

Callahan and the Great Detective sat in the break room at police headquarters.
"I'm afraid that's just how things are Great Detective," said Callahan. "Sometimes the bad guys just escape justice."
The Great Detective grunted in agreement.
"Not the best ending to the case really. We're never going to solve it all are we?"
The Great Detective just grunted. A secretary came into the room.
"Is there a Great Detective in here?" she snickered. "Is anyone here the Great Detective?"
"Me," said the Great Detective.
"Telephone call for you. They say to tell you it's about the Order of Eternal Light," said the secretary, as the Great Detective rose to his feet.

Cat & Cthulhu - A Portrait of Three Dreamers.

2008-08-11T02:01:00.000+01:00

On average an adult human requires between seven and eight hours sleep a night. This is below average for an omnivorous mammal. In contrast to this animals whose diets consist of only vegetable matter, the herbivores, they require much less sleep. With giraffes requiring between only three or four hours per day. Carnivores such as domestic cats require more. With the cats sleeping on average between thirteen and fourteen hours a day. Of course these are averages. I have been sleeping roughly nine or ten hours a day recently and the family cat Kaos (named after his farther Havok) probably spends about sixteen hours or more on someones bed asleep or dozing.

Sleep then is vital and intrinsic to remaining healthy and intelligent. The capacity for humans and for the higher animals to dream provides a place for thoughts to run unfiltered.

Cat slept on the bed in a curled up ball. The sheets on the bed had become unmade by the combination of the kneading and rolling around that Cat had done before drifting to sleep. Soft evening light shone through the window of the room with the bed and Cat. The Cat dreamed of cat things. Of hunting mice in farmyards, of stealing tuna from the fish market and of sitting next to a cozy fire.

Cthulhu slept in an aquatic sarcophagus carved inside a mountain of basalt. The chamber which contained Cthulhu ought to have been in pitch darkness but the sleeping Cthulhu emanated an ethereal light of his own. The walls of the sarcophagus had been cut out long eons ago by the servants of Cthulhu. On the walls many a fresco of life under the Great Old One had been etched by the slaves. Life it appeared must have been brutal and terrifying even for the alien creatures numb to the horrors of their foul living god.

I have been sleeping badly of late. Somehow I have slipped into a bad sleep habits once again. I've attributed it mostly to the habits of my brother as he often stays up into the early hours of the morning. But, it would be unfair of me but the blame on him entirely. If you are to become a dedicated explorer of the dreamworld. Then one must make sacrifices. Currently I sleep from the hours of four in the morning until two or three in the afternoon. This is more then the human average and distinctly not a good thing. Hell, I'm writing this at 01:59 on a Monday morning. I do however make my bed. Only for Kaos to unmake it.

Fin.

Cat & Cthulhu - Fishing Trip

2008-08-07T01:28:00.003+01:00

Cthulhu sat in a little wooden boat in the sea. He was trying not to be sick.
"Why are we out here Cat?"
"Because fishing is fun?" said Cat, who took a swipe at the sea.
"But why in Canada? Why not down the local canal? Or, the neighbors pond, You know? Like all the other cats," said Cthulhu.
"Cthulhu Cthulhu Cthu-oh-well you know I'm not like all the other cats."
"Well you're a bit more deranged. Why do you expect me to do? Sit here, not watching TV while you splash about in the big blue."
"Well," said Cat. "You could always try fishing. There's a rod in the bottom of the boat. Try it. It's restful."

"Do you mean the stick and string?" said Cthulhu.
"Yeah, that old thing," said Cat, who peered into the brine.
"So I do what exactly? Just throw the hook in and wait."
"More or less."
Cthulhu threw the hook into the sea. Soon the nausea passed and was replaced by a deep, relaxing restfulness. Cthulhu closed his eyes.

When Cthulhu opened his eyes he grunted. The boat had drifted closer to the beach. They'd gotten caught in seaweed and stopped moving. Cat was still looking in the sea.
"Oh good you are awake," he said.
"I've not caught anything," said Cthulhu.
"Neither have I. It's not the point."
"Then what is the point?"
"Don't know."
"Why are we here?" said Cthulhu.
"I told you. This is fun."
"Is it really?"
Cat didn't say anything he arched his back.
"Are you really going to jump in?"
"Of course. I think I might have caught something," said Cat.
"A fish?"
"Not sure."
"A rubber boot?"
"No idea," said Cat, who jumped into the sea.
"But you don't like getting your fur wet."

Cat surfaced and jumped from the water into the boat. He had something covered in seaweed in his mouth.
"That's disgusting," said Cthulhu.
Cat dropped it onto the floor of the boat.
"You don't even know what it is yet," Cat said.
Cthulhu removed some of the seaweed.
"It's a foot."
"Oh!"
"Indeed. Are you going to eat it?" inquired Cthulhu.
"Of course not. It's all dead. I don't know where it's been."
"A fish would be dead as well. Do you know where the fishes have swam?"
"It's a severed foot."
"So what? I wonder how it got here."
"Probably pirates. I think I should throw it back in the sea," said Cat.
"Why? I think it'd make a great ornament."
Cat looked at Cthulhu.
"Quite frankly even for you that's disturbing."
"You had it in your mouth," said Cthulhu.
"Only because I didn't know what it was. Now throw the foot overboard."
"No. I refuse to. I want to keep it."
"Cthulhu, please."
"Only if you do a kitten look."
"Do I have to?" said Cat.
"Yes."
"But."

Cat looked up at Cthulhu. His eye wide open. His tail flopping from side to side on the bottom of the boat. Cthulhu picked up the foot.
"Fishing is fun," he said, tossing the foot into the sea.

Cat & Cthulhu - The Rise and Fall of R'lyeh

2008-08-04T19:39:00.004+01:00

A play.

Cast List.

NARRATOR played by Cat, wearing a fake beard.
CAT played by Cat, wearing a top hat and monocle.
CTHULHU played by Cthulhu.
CULTISTS played by Mice.

Stagehand duties by Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Act 1

Empty Stage

The NARRATOR walks onto the center stage.

NARRATOR: The story I am about to tell you is the final part of my grand adventure of 1886. After a year of traveling the world from London, to Berlin and onwards through Russia, passing through Japan I found myself commanding a dreadnought in the South Pacific. A year of fighting against the worst kinds of people imaginable. Degenerated cultists whose sole intent is to initiate the destruction of mankind, catkind and all other forms of recognizable life on our blue world.

NARRATOR pauses for a beat.

NARRATOR: I almost failed in my mission. If I had succeeded sooner I would not have found myself commanding a warship of His Majesty's Royal Navy against the horror from beneath the seas. But, my being here is testament to my success.

NARRATOR walks off stage.

The stage dressing is now made up of a cardboard island stage left with a cardboard Greek temple standing on the top of a hill. CULTISTS scurry around the island. Blue and green fabric waves extend from stage left to stage right. A cardboard dreadnought ship dominates stage right. CAT sits atop it.

CAT: (shouting as if to unseen crew members)Look there it is. There is R'lyeh. Watch it rise.

R'lyeh moves to the center of the stage.

CAT: Full steam ahead.

The dreadnought moves also the center of the stage. The two props are almost touching. The fabric waves are still rippling.

CULTISTS: (chanting) Rise CTHULHU. Rise CTHULHU from your billion year sleep. Dream no more CTHULHU. Awaken CTHULHU Lord of Seas.

CAT: We must stop them from finishing the summoning. Fire a broadside at the island.

The dreadnought's cannons have a small cardboard flame pop out for a second as as the sound of cannon fire is played. Whistling and then from the island cardboard explosions appear for another second to coincide with a second explosion.

CULTISTS: It's CAT again. We thought him dead in Japan. Rise Cthulhu. The stars are right once more.

CAT: Fire!

The dreadnought fires again.

CULTISTS: Too late! Cthulhu rises.

The "Greek" temple folds away to the sound of rumbling and a thick fog. CTHULHU appears in the temples place. The island prop moves center stage forwards.

CAT: (whose monocle falls into the sea) Damn! Double damn and blast.

CTHULHU: (stomping up and down in a most exaggerated manner) ROAR!

CULTISTS: Praise CTHULHU.

Cthulhu takes a handful of CULTISTS and eats them.

CULTISTS: It is an honor to serve.

CAT: Insane degenerates. Fire!

The dreadnought fires another volley. The island is littered with explosions again. CTHULHU is hit a few times.

CULTISTS: Stop him!

CTHULHU moves across the island and into the sea. CULTISTS scream with glee as they are crushed.

CAT: This is our last chance men. Fire!

The dreadnought fires at CTHULHU. It provokes no reaction from CTHULHU who moves forwards at a steady pace.

CAT: We're done for. Our last hope is to ram the bugger. Full steam ahead.

The dreadnought moves quickly from center stage to center forwards.

CAT: (shouting) For Queen and country!

The dreadnought collides with CTHULHU. They both start to sink.

As the dreadnought sinks under the waves a wooden lifeboat prop made from cardboard appears underneath CAT. CTHULHU is gone. The island of R'lyeh starts to sink beneath the waves.

CAT: We've done it. The stars are on our side lads. But at what price?

Stage lights down.

As the lights rise the set is gone. The NARRATOR has center stage.

NARRATOR: There you have it. The tale of the rise and fall of R'lyeh. The year was 1886. We floated for two moon cycles before rescue came to that empty ocean. A steamer from Peru took those who survive home. All of us changed. I myself watch the night sky constantly, wondering when the stars will be right for that eldritch horror from R'lyeh once more.

The lights dim and the curtain drops.

Cat & Cthulhu - I am not a Washing Machine!

2008-08-02T21:14:00.001+01:00

Cthulhu sat in next to his open tome of horrible horrors willing alien mathematical symbols onto a page. When Cthulhu had finished he called Marvin over to him. Marvin the Paranoid Android walked along the book shelf towards Cthulhu.
"Yes, what do you want?" said Marvin.
"What do you mean? What do I want?" said Cthulhu.
"Well," said Marvin, "you only ever talk to me when you want something. When you want some sums working out, when you want to talk to something, when you want to play a game."
"Well I."
"What? Don't want anything. You just called me over here for your own pleasure. 'Oh yes Marvin come over here and waste some time shuffling across the shelf.'"
"Actually, I did want you do check some sums for me," said Cthulhu.
"Oh, really now. You, want me, to do some sums. Here, I am, brain the size of a planet. And, you, want me to do some sums," said Marvin.
"Well you don't have to," said Cthulhu.
"Really?" said Marvin.
"If you don't want to," said Cthulhu.
"But then I'd have walked over here for no reason."
"That is true. But, if you're going to take that point of view. Why don't you just double check my sums?"
"I suppose I should. I'd hate to waste a shuffle," said Marvin.
"That's alright," said Cthulhu, who pointed towards the page of hideous mathematics.

Marvin looked at the page.

"It is correct," said Marvin.
"Thank you. That's just what I needed to here," said Cthulhu.
"Two things though," said Marvin. "Firstly, is this another scheme to implode the minds of humanity? Secondly, I do wish you'd stop treating me like a calculator."
"Marvin, it's always going to be a scheme to implode the minds of humanity. It's what I do. Secondly, I'll stop treating you like a calculator once Master stops treating the washing machine like a washing machine."
Cat peered over the edge of the shelf above Cthulhu and Marvin.
"I think that might be the problem," said Cat.
"What? That Master treats the washing machine like a washing machine," said Cthulhu.
"Does the washing machine ever work correctly for Master? Do you not hear his foul language echo to our shelf whenever he attempts to wash some clothes?" said Cat.
"Of course I hear his swearing," said Cthulhu.
"Well what if the washing machine refuses to work for Master because he treats it just like a washing machine?"
"You aren't making any sense Cat."
"Ok, what if Marvin stopped doing calculations for you? Would you be annoyed?" said Cat.
"Well yes. But that'd be because he was being rude."
"Or he'd be responding to your rudeness. Does Master ever say please to the washing machine?"
"No, but how is this related to Marvin."
"I was wondering that myself," said Marvin.
"Ok, the washing machine is made of gears, motors, transistors just like Marvin. Don't they deserve the same amount of respect?" said Cat.
"I guess," said Cthulhu.
"Finally someone understands me," said Marvin, almost, but not quite sounding happy.

Cthulhu looked Marvin in the eyes.
"I'm sorry to have treated you like a calculator. I'll treat you with more respect next time," said Cthulhu.
"Thank you. I doubt you will though," Marvin said.
"Oh, but I really will," said Cthulhu.

Stabbings

2008-07-14T19:00:00.000+01:00

"See it's supply and demand innit. I stab people and the local party pay me. It's simple innit. If enough people aren't stabbed the people caught aren't going to be shown a victim. I fix this. It's what I'm good at. I'm doing my duty says my parole officer. It's fun as well. The look as I slice them is priceless. I've taken pictures before. Of them bleeding and shit. My friends think it's great. If I get caught I get walked into the station, given a brew and then let out after we've had a good laugh. The party say they have plans for me. I'm their best man they say. They want me to stab the Prime Minister and it's going to be fucking great."

Bad Coffee

2008-07-06T19:06:00.002+01:00

x-posed to Write Unite.

I meant to post this earlier. But last weekend I got caught up in visiting family and this week I've just been lazy.

The genre I'm attempting here is Kafkaesque. There are gaps in the story. Please excuse them I wanted to try my hand at several different scenes. Including the attempt of magical realism in the final paragraph.

Bad Coffee

"You make terrible coffee," said George,to his friend Max.
"I know. You aren't the first to tell me."
"Then why do you continue to make it? You used to make such good coffee. It's the reason we meet on your floor and not mine."
"Company rules. They changed the coffee beans and replaced the machine to save money."
"They did that to us last year. Do you know what they did next?"
"No," said Max, sipping his cup of coffee.
"The company made us all use the same color ink in our pens."
"To save money?"
"No, to stamp out free-thinking and creative filing."
"Oh of course. Saving money is only the second priority of the company. The first being make more money by being more efficient."
"Hear, hear," said George, who drank more coffee. "This is really bad."
"Stop complaining about the coffee George. Why are you here?"
"I need some help. I know you're a clerk in a different department but do you know what postbox form GHB30Z has to be sent to?"
"Are you joking?"
"No, absolutely not. Why would you ask that?" said George.
"It's just that I was going to ask you the same question."
"Why do you have to file a GHB30Z? That's a form at the back of class four unusual material requests."
"It's a deceased worker notification form for employees in group triple E. Did you ask your manager about the form?"
"I did. He said that he'd never seen such a form. Although he did say that what I showed him was real."
"I told mine about the problem. He said nothing."

The two clerks sat silently drinking the remains of their coffees.
"I'm going to look in the 'Green book of procedure'," said George.
"You can't do that. You're not allowed to read that at your pay level," protested Max.
"Why not?"
"Because we are not allowed. We can only read our 'Red Book'. It says that in the first paragraph."
"That's silly. We need to know where to post these forms to. That book will tell us. I don't care if the 'Black Book' tells me everything about your job that I don't need to know. I'm not going to use that knowledge to give myself a promotion by forging the correct forms. I just want to do my job properly," said George, who threw his plastic cup into the bin.
"I'll see you at lunch tomorrow Max. If you like I'll tell you where to post that form to," said George, leaving the break room.

[more here]

When George returned to his desk he felt hopeless on seeing that more documents had been filed in his inbox. George had been working as a clerk for six months in "Material Resources". The majority of his time was spent sorting his inbox into different bundles of letters, stamping each letter to show he'd seen it before putting the letters back into the internal mail. George was the bottom of his department. No decision making and no meetings. George understood that this was the normal and proper position for a recent graduate of his age to be at within The Company. Start at the bottom and rise to the top was the effective hiring policy of the business. To further this The Company had stratified it's bureaucratic rulebooks into four layers: red, green, violet and black. Each strata was a different level of access, control and privilege. Knowing material from a higher level rulebook then the one you were cleared at George had been warned was discouraged. Because while it was understood by the policy makers at The Company that an employee of George's class (red) might need information from higher clearance rulebooks to do the work assigned to him. Having to know all the information from all the rulebooks would they thought make George's job harder. The distributed access to information was phrased as "what they need to know on a day to day basis." George understood this, but still thought the company was full of shit.

[...]

George knocked on the door of office 515. His knuckles made a dull thumping sound.
"Please be in," said George.
He knocked again.
"Oh come on."
George put his right hand on the doorknob and opened the office door. George perceived that the office was infinite in all visible directions. Evenly spaced in the office were steel shelves far enough apart to roll a trolley down. These shelves while normal in size covered the floor of the infinite office. A desk was placed in front of the door. It had a set of all four rulebooks and an additional volume with the word "Index" written on the spine in gold letters. George stepped towards the desk. He put form GHB30Z down on the desk and left.

[...]

Never Look Back!

2008-06-27T19:09:00.001+01:00

Never Look Back

Will Ellwood.
June 24th 2008.

'We shall die! Remember, that death is lighter then a feather and duty is as heavy as a mountain. We shall die! We will die in the mountain passes. The fire bombed cities will burn us. But we shall never look back. We shall die and so will they. Our freedom is predicated on their deaths. Our duty is freedom. Duty is as heavy as a mountain and we must all take its weight as one. We shall never look back. We shall die and never look back.'

Page 1.

1.

Close up of a woman's face. She has high cheek bones and her hair is pulled back into a tight pony tail. She is THE SPEAKER. The background is a wash of grays and blacks in a smokey haze. There is a black flagpole running through the panel behind THE SPEAKER's head to the right of her.

The SPEAKER:
We shall die!

2.

The view is slightly further out now. We can see her whole figure apart from her feet. She's slim and dressed in a gray military uniform. A silhouette of a war ravaged high rise city seen through a thick cloud of smoke and inclement weather dominates the background. She carries an assault rifle in both hands. The rifle looks like a high tech Kalashnikov.

THE SPEAKER:
Remember that death is lighter then a feather and duty is as heavy as a mountain.

3.

The view is further out again. THE SPEAKER is standing on a junked car which has been written off by an I.E.D. and subsequently burned out. A flag pole four times the height of THE SPEAKER has been placed behind the car which is acting as an improvised stage. The flag on the pole is at full mast and is made of a red material. The image on the flag embodied in blue is of a circle with an equilateral triangle inside the circle. Just above the triangle is a half circle. This flag is meant to represent a stylized mountain and feather. THE SPEAKER is wearing heavy black boots on her feet.

THE SPEAKER:
We shall die!

4.

This panel is mostly a repeat of the previous panel. Extra detail needs to be added though. In the background the shadowy outline of mountains is reveled by the cameras distance. The detail is not high as the mountains themselves are distant and the view is covered with fog and pollution. There also needs to be a wispy white streak in the top of the background with a black blob at one end of the streak. This is a fighter-bomber aircraft and it's contrail. I'm trying to set the beat to a slow reveal of the full picture of what is happening.

THE SPEAKER:
We shall die in the mountain passes.

5.

The final panel of this page should take up the bottom third. THE SPEAKER is still in panel, as is the flag and the junked car. A large yellow and orange mushroom cloud is visible to the left of THE SPEAKER in the background. It's an explosion (remember the fighter-bomber in the last panel).

THE SPEAKER:
The fire bombed cities will burn us.
THE SPEAKER:
But we shall never look back.

Page 2.

1.

We see burned bodies in a fire stormed street. The ashen remains of a city street are all here: cars, chairs, signs, people, televisions, radios, laptop computers, dogs, cats, bags, trees stand or lie in the street. The televisions are large were attached to the buildings. Now some of them have fallen from their fixings. Other are hanging on fixings. The bodies are behind defensive positions made from sandbags and oil drums. They form two different opposing forces which can be identified not by their uniforms which are as burned as the bodies but by their different battle rifles. One side is carrying the future Kalashnikov as seen with THE SPEAKER. Another side carry a different weapon. Modelled on something else. Maybe based on the M16 - but that might make the differences too obvious.

CAPTION:
We shall die and so will they.

2.

I don't know what to put here honestly. One could either switch back to THE SPEAKER and her "Mad Minnie the Minx Goes to Tokyo" stage scene or a metaphorical image of freedom. I'm going to give an image of Elysium here on the basis that if you really think that it is best to carry on with the previous style of direction then by all means do. Freedom looks something like this for this group of people. The city scene we saw in the last panel is tidy and apocalyptic awful. There are lots of people. There are naturally no sandbag and oil drum fortifications with armed people. The people sitting in cafes and bars which sprawl out on to the street. Because since this is Elysium the sun is always shining. Children and animals play in the street. Large TV screens from the previous panel show a pop concert in a sunny open air arena.

CAPTION:
Our freedom is predicated on their deaths. Our duty is freedom.

3.

Back to THE SPEAKER on the junker stage. Extreme pull out. Massive reveal of the scene. THE SPEAKER is about fifty meters away from where our view point is. In front of here are solders of both genders and all creeds. They are dressed in the same gray battle dress as her. Some of them are wearing helmets. They all carry future Kalashnikov rifles. Some of them have even attached bayonets to the ends of them. There are flags with the same symbol as described in page 1 panel 3 dotted around the assembled crowd. This panel should take the middle of page 2 up.

THE SPEAKER:
Duty is as heavy as a mountain and we must all take its weight as one.

4.

Mid-shot of THE SPEAKER. Same as page 1 panel 2 in details.

THE SPEAKER:
We shall never look back.

5.

Close up of THE SPEAKER. Same as page 1 panel 1 in details.

THE SPEAKER:
We shall die and never look back.

Page 3.

Page 4.

Page 5.

I wonder if Blogger can cope with comic scripts.

Genre Play

2008-06-21T00:11:00.001+01:00

I'm endlessly fascinated by genre fiction. It makes up the majority of my reading and from a young age (well 13'ish) I've enjoyed the works of Robert E. Howard. I've also had a longing to be able to enjoy sword and sorcery fiction. This is I guess my attempt to emulate such work in my own terms.

I hope it's enjoyed and I don't know what kind of criticism I want from this. If it's enjoyed and appears to those reading it as a work of "serious" sword and sorcery then this exercise can be seen as a success for me. Any other flaws or merits found are obviously good for me to know about and improve on as this is a hastily written and not edited bit of work. My raw narrative spirit in this genre if you like.

I've a feeling I'm going to be writing more short genre plays with this mutable stock character named Red. Who may or may not be an author insertion character.

Also please give suggestions for what genre to play with next. I'm tempted by something distinctly 19th Century (obviously) but am also thinking of something "Kafka" like.

Red's Story #1

The end of all things had started hours ago. The sky was a lurid and unnatural velvet. The walls of the last city were decimated and the remains of the apocalyptic battle outside the gates poisoned the land. The few that survived - the archmages and sorcerers of the Imperial School of Magic hide deep in the school's vaults. The last freeman Red crept through the silent halls of the school searching for a way down to the hidden vaults.

The last act of magic in the world was being orchestrated by the final nine. They made markings on the stone floor with multicolored chalk. They chanted and danced. In their collective insanity they believed that this desperate act would create a gateway into another world. An escape that while anywhere was better then staying here on this inhospitable dead world.

Red moved a tapestry. Behind it was another plastered wall. The purple sunset of reality was declining. Red had to hurry. As he stood on a carpet from antiquity he fell through it down a hidden flight of steps.

The wooden door to the vault rocked in it's hinges. The magical dance carried on in blind ecstasy. The nine assembled men chanted the song of a dying world.
The latch on the door lifted.

Red in leather amour painted with white dyes stood in the rooms door. He snarled and threw of of the two war spikes he carried at the nearest magical fiend. The iron tube two hands long was sharped to a deadly point at one end. It stuck in an elderly sorcerer who was at the verge of exhaustion. Red ran past the pan and pulled the spike from the frail old man's chest. Gore spewed from the would. The gate opened.

The excitation of magical energies exhausted the dying world. The world around the magic circle poured away into nothing. Red stepped through the white iris.

He arrived in a place with an orange dawn. A palace of glass and iron was in front of him. Red coughed his lungs suddenly full of the soot of a blacksmiths forge.
"I say where did that painted savage come from? I thought the exhibition was about man made wonders. I didn't know it covered anthropological exhibits," a pale man in alien clothes said in conversation to the woman next to him.

Coal

2008-05-15T00:03:00.002+01:00

Coal

"We have no coal, no gas and no oil," said the speaker.
NKN1, Minister of Energy removed his cigar.
"What do you mean? The lights are still on. We must have the coal."
"That's just it," said the speaker. "How long do you intend to keep those lights on?"
"As long as necessary," said NKN1.
"As long as necessary. Are you doing all that is necessary now?"
"Of course."
"Then we will run out of fossil fuel within the year. Then you'll have more then a revolutionary underground to deal with," said the speaker.

The group mobbed Carlos and beat him. He tasted blood and dirt. The kicking of the crowd was punishment for his past life. It stopped and Carlos got to his feet. He was standing in a jungle clearing. The crowd of men had formed a circle around him. An old man in surplus military fatigues stood in the center with him.
"Do you renounce the junta?" said the man.
"Fuck the junta!"
"Fuck the junta!" roared the crowd.
"Do you promise to devote your life to the revolution?"
"Yes," said Carlos.
"Are you lying?" The old man smiled.
Carlos opened his shirt to reveal his bruises.
"You still have a city watch tattoo. You have some cuts and bruises. What am I looking at?"
"A man that can't lie. Do you want my new brothers in arms to kill me? Would that prove I'm not a fucking watchman?"
"Fine. But you are still a watchman. Carlos, do you see any of your fellow watchmen here?" said the old man.
Carlos looked around the circle. He saw one. NKN2, someone who'd run over protesters for fun. Someone that Carlos thought had supported the junta with more zeal then the speaker of the council.
"One," Carlos said, pointing at NKN2.
"Just one. Who is he?"
"An evil man."
The circle broke to restrain NKN2.
"I don't recognize him. He must be a spy. Do you agree?"
"He could be. Do you do this to everyone that wants to help the great cause?"
"Yes we do. You didn't answer my question. Answer it or you're both junta spies."
"He's a spy," said Carlos.
"How do you know? Did he tell you back in the plaza of law? Or are you sacrificing him to further your mission?" asked the old man.
"You just said. You beat and question all new solders. If you don't remember him then he must be a spy."
"If you say so," the old man gestured to the mob, who dragged NKN2 away.
"You also have a mole. The person that brought him here."
"We'll find them."
A pistol fired.

"Fact #1 - We have no coal. Fact #2 - There are no plans to explore the jungles for more. Will you join the revolution to save mankind?" said a fresh poster pasted to the side of a shopping arcade. It was Carlos' job to remove posters like this and catch the perpetrator. Carlos intended to do neither. The agitator who carried a tin of weat paste knew this. He stood in sight of Carlos. He'd kicked Carlos in the head during his 'commitment test'.
"Carlos!" shouted NKN3. "Arrest that man. Don't ignore the bastard."
NKN3 raised his stick. The agitator panicked. He looked betrayed, dropped the tin of glue and ran down an ally. Carlos met NKN3 at the head of the ally.
"I had no idea he was an agent," said Carlos.
"Does it matter now?" said NKN3 panting. "I'm going to split that fuckers skull open."
Carlos struck NKN2 around the face. He cried out in pain and tried to fight back. They struggled to the ground. NKN2 pleaded for mercy. Carlos kept hitting him. NKN2 coughed blood and became another problem.

"Fuck the junta!" Carlos shouted down the ally. "Fuck the junta! The watchmen is dead. Brother help me hide his body," Carlos' voice echoed down the side alley. The sound of running stopped.
"Fuck the junta!" shouted the agitator back. The foot steps returned.
"That's quite a mess you've made there brother," he said.
Carlos tried to lift the corpse.
"Are you going to help me?"
The agitator took the corpse by the legs.
"I know a place. But we are going to have to make him unrecognizable," said the agitator.
"Unrecognizable?"
"His face, his hands, his papers. They have to go," he said, leading Carlos down the ally.
"Can't we just throw him in a sewage drain or through the Stargate?"
"Do you want to be caught?"
"No," said Carlos.
"Then we do it my way."

This is to be finished later hopefully. I've just become stuck so won't be using this for my SFX Pulp Idol entry. Maybe something riffing on the same ideas. But not this. I might write something about why this failed to work. I'll also write something about why this does work well (at least for me).

A Very Special Cat & Cthulhu.

2008-05-03T02:23:00.001+01:00

"Oh, Cthulhu when will you learn not to leave a shoggoth behind the toilet?" Cat said.
"Oh I don't know. When it stops being funny." said Cthulhu.
Boo squeaked.

Hang on a minute! I can't write this stuff now. Sorry, but writing a comedy skit with a plush toy Cthulhu (who thinks he is the real Cthulhu) seems kinda trivial now. There are 1,043,761 people in London who need kicking the the crotch right now. It seems totally unfunny when 1,043,761 people elect Boris Johnson as mayor of London. Someone who is documented making racist and homophobic comments. Who made no real commitments other then 'reduce crime and improve transport'. You know - someone who is actually pretty horrible. If a shuggoth or ten doesn't erase the City of London from the map in a oozing of primordial digestion then reality isn't self correcting enough. Frankly Cthulhu is disappointed. Why vote for the lesser evil?

Boo squeaked.
"Well it isn't funny when someone gets hurt," said Cat.
"Have you never seen a silent movie Cat? It's always funny when someone gets hurt. You just need silly music and a callous attitude to life," Cthulhu said.

Richard Nixon Interviews A Reformed Satanist.

2008-04-06T01:08:00.004+01:00

Richard Nixon Interviews A Reformed Satanist.

Onto the stage a man in blue overalls walked and put a large jar on a stool opposite a sofa. In the jar full of transparent liquid Richard Nixon's head floated sleeping. A frog horn sounded. The audience clapped and cheered.

"Uh, wha?" said Richard Nixon, waking up. "Oh right. It's time for Richard Nixon interviews Saul Diggs," said Nixon.
A tall thin man walked onto the stage and took a seat on the sofa. He had a hardback book in his hands.
"Good evening Saul," said Nixon.
"And good evening to you Mr President," said Saul.
"Ah, it's no longer Mr President," said Nixon. "Once you loose your body; well you can't keep that title."
"Oh, right. Who knew eh?"
"Now I've read your book and it's a fascinating account of your journey from Satanism to working for the Vatican Special Branch. Now what interested me most was the moment you decided to walk away from Satanism. Could you please give a brief account of that for our viewers?" said Nixon, from memory, since he'd never read that book.
"Certainly. Well I was at this ritual in a graveyard. It was dark - obviously. More then a little creepy. See theatricality is important in Satanism. They're important in all religious and magical ceremonies. It was also raining. So I was getting very cold and wet digging this grave. Our high priest and priestess stood under umbrellas chanting in Latin. Now I'm standing in this hole, with a degree from Miskatonic University in Classics, covered in mud while these two jokers are mispronouncing Latin. We'd broken a lot of laws as a coven. Gotten a bad rep with the cops. While also getting a very good rep amount the occult underground. So, I'm digging into this grave at stupid O' clock in the morning and I think to my self that if this is the best Satan can muster I'm joining the other side."

Nixon hadn't expected that.
"So you just decided became a Catholic like that. Pure economics," said Nixon.
"Yes," Saul said, without a hint of sarcasm. "As soon as I'd made that economic choice as you call it. Well I confessed my sins and a great weight lifted. Once I'd let Jesus into my body, heart and soul it became more then economics. It became love!"

Quit.

2008-03-31T01:34:00.002+01:00

Quit.

"I want a fucking fag," said Tommi, slamming his fist on the table in the pub.
"Man, quit smoking. You street magi are one walking collection of bad stereotypes," Patrick said.
"What do you mean? I just want a smoke."
"Yeah, you're going to stand outside in the rain. Smoking cigarettes through shitty teeth. While wearing a grubby trench coat. How many other magi do you know like that?"
"Shit!" Tommi said, feeling foolish. "I still need a ciggy though."
"Quit," said Patrick.
"Why? I'm happily addicted."
"Because you'll be dead. Not able to do any more magic ju-ju."
"I think I'll worry about being dead. Not the lack of magic."
"That means you should still quit," said Patrick smiling.
"No, because I'm happily addicted and protected by magic," said Tommi, smiling back as he pulls a small canvas bag from a pocket.
"Fucking street magi. Think you're so bloody canny. Well if you ain't got owt money. You can't get owt cigarettes," Patrick said.
"You're a cock! You know that right?"

Sleeper.

2008-03-09T16:15:00.002Z

Fred Hutton was an ordinary man. Who if asked to murder someone could not. Who if shot at, would have cracked and turned inwards on themselves into a catatonic shell. He was for all his life this man. Then he answered his phone.
"Mr Fred Hutton?" The voice said.
"Who is this?"
"No one," said the voice.
A burst of modem noise came down the line into Fred's ear.
"Listen to me Fred. You are going to Scotland. You are going to get to an offshore oil platform in the North Sea. You are going to kill. You are not going to ask questions," said the voice, before hanging up.

This reached a dead end. Will go back and start in medias res.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Twenty Four and Twenty Five

2008-02-27T23:50:00.001Z

Day 24.

More work today. I mentioned that I'd spent the day in London. Not entirely sure that was a smart idea. It may implicate me later. However to lie now would only create more suspicion. It is I admit a difficult balance to keep. The checkout while an improvement over being a shelf stacker has its own problems. While stacking and unloading cages is physically demanding. The checkout leaves you mentally fatigued by the end of the shift.

I hate to say anything disparaging against the unclean ones. Apart from the obvious facts that they are unclean heathens. But some of the people I had to serve today. It makes you wonder how they could have survived the process of Darwinian evolution. Their existence can only be seen as further proof of unclean intervention in the natural order of things.

Day 25.

I've been working on the technical problems of making an explosive device small enough to slip into someones bag. It has to be lightweight obviously. Or else it would be noticed. This naturally limits the size of the device. Although according to my calculations a mobile phone could be packed with a suitable compound. I'm making devices zero and one at the moment. Device zero is just a compound test. Device one will be the prototype of the detonation system. Device two will be the merger of the two systems. To test devices zero and two I'll need to head into the wilderness. At least away from prying eyes. I should also use a reduced amount of the compound.

Stuff happend today. Still posted on the correct calender day just about.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Twenty Two and Twenty Three

2008-02-26T00:03:00.000Z

Day 22.

The second of two days away from work. I spent today deep in worship. Shaving my body again of hair. Also practicing the sacred martial art the most revealed one taught us. My younger brother wishes to be taught. I shall endeavor to do so after the attack. He can join me then. The plans have been made for the attack. Now it is just a question of making the bomb and recording a public message. Those shall be done in time.

Day 23.

Work again. No one asked questions about the camera. Honestly I don't think that anyone has noticed that it's gone missing. I shall remember this next time I need equipment. Checkout work is a mild improvement over stacking shelves and unloading cages. It means I get to see blessed sunlight. Although tomorrow I'm working the late shift at night doing checkouts. So there won't be much work to do or any sunlight.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Twenty and Twenty One

2008-02-25T00:37:00.000Z

Day 20.

Twenty days after the world was meant to end and there have been no signs. I was watching the news (again by accident) and they talk of the most revealed one in foul terms. I hope they die! Another day at work. Avoiding conversations with my co-workers. I wonder if they suspect me of being the 'missing member'. More lifting and carrying work done today. My manager has noticed that I'm a naturally hard worker. He promised to get me moved to working on the checkouts as soon as a space opened.

Day 21.

London's called me. The train journey was not eventful. I spent the time reading the newspaper columnists spread more lies about my faith. I hope they soon see the truth. I spent my time wandering around the major landmarks. Taking photographs on the digital video camera I'd taken from work. I now have all the material needed to plan the attack. The London Eye, a spectacular monstrosity of hateful architecture shall burn.

Mextacy and Line Dancing.

2008-02-24T01:32:00.005Z

Over the Christmas period of 2011 a new music scene bled out of the underground. Youths identifying themselves as 'Rednex' started to appear in clubs all over the American south. Their music a blend of Country and Western with Trance. Their style dreadlocks, dusters and cowboy boots. The drug of choice for these youths, a cocktail of moonshine and Ecstasy called 'Mextacy.'

Influential members within this new subculture claim direct influence from the Swedish novelty act called 'Rednex.' The group who went to number one in 1994 with the single 'Cotton Eyed Joe.' The group in the year 2007 attempted to sell themselves on the defunct auction house eBAY.

The trend can almost be directly linked to European youths called Steampunks who share a similar backward looking aesthetic and nineteenth century moral outlook. However nothing can be as weird as attending a rednex ho-down and having a pink dreadlocked cowgirl off her face on moonshine and Ecstasy asking you to court her.

This is post 101 to this blog. I'd like to thank no one. Except the people that provide me with coffee and red bull. Which no one does. The idea for this is in part not mine but a friend of mine called Iain. I'd also blame alcohol if I'd drank more on the occasion I was writing this or having the idea.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Eighteen and Nineteen

2008-02-23T01:29:00.002Z

Day 18.

While at work today there was an accident. I was helping unload one of cages that had come off a lorry and I heard this scream come from the bakery. Everyone just carried on working as if they had heard nothing. I went to investigate as soon as I'd unloaded the cage. It was a woman. She'd been taking something very hot out of the oven. Her glove had burned through. Someone, a manager had made sure ambulance had been called. But still the reaction of my co-workers was callous. I hope never to display such behaviours in my journey to the unrevealed lands.

Day 19.

Another late shift. This time spent restocking shelves. Very boring and unproductive to my mission. I bought an A-Z Map of London today while I was on my break. It made for handy reading while I drank my sweet tea. The list of targets has been drawn up. The next step is to sample them. In two days I'll be off and going to London.

This is Friday's issue. I'm not going to update this over the weekend. I'd like to play with some different ideas for a few days. Besides I was due to be in Snowdonia over the weekend. So wouldn't have got it done anyway. See you Monday all you invisible people.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Sixteen and Seventeen

2008-02-22T02:27:00.001Z

Day 16

Today I have another day off work. I went for a walk along the canal considering its effects on the environment. The fact it both distorted an environment but allowed nature to survive. Not many unclean ones have considered this. However nature would not have needed help surviving if the unclean ones had kept things in balance. When I came to a field near the canal that was close to my mental image of the unrevealed lands I broke down into tears of joy.

I also did some clothes shopping today. Work requires a certain protocol of dress. Which is easy for me to meet. However I need more clothes to wear outside of work. Clothes have gotten really cheap. I pray for the poor exploited unclean thing that made them.

Day 17

I got paid today. It is a meager sum of money. But it means I can go to London on my next day off. I look forward to it. The money also means I can buy myself a rudimentary camera. I spent today unloading lorries. I hope I don't have to do this much. It has left me aching all over. This has been the first real physical labor I've done in years. I managed the website before the end that didn't come.

Sorry for the lateness. This is Thursday's set of days really. I was just standing in the cold talking about D&D for two hours. It was one AM when I got back in. Friday's will be done in about nine hours and posted soon after hopefully.

Will.

Waiting For the Apocalypse: Days Fourteen and Fifteen

2008-02-20T17:04:00.002Z

Day 14.

No work today. This means I got to spend the whole day contemplating the nature of the unrevealed lands. During my break from contemplation to eat some food I caught sight of the news on TV. My parents were watching it. It wasn't by choice I caught sight of such an infernal device.

They have found the remains of the temple. The police are investigating. They have found the remains of my brothers and sisters. Obviously I didn't make the fire burn hot enough to fully remove their earthly bodies. The remains the police claim are in a suspicious pattern. They are investigating foul play. Not good! They know what the temple was being used for. Information about my faith has been all over the media it appears. Lies mostly. They have taken small elements of my most pure beliefs and taken them out of context and blown them out of proportion.

They've also said many unpleasant things about the revealed one.

Day 15.

Another working day. This time the late shift. This gave me time to shave my head and body in the morning. To become more clean.

My co-workers were talking about the discovery of my brothers and sisters. I said nothing. Better to say nothing. Better nothing then lies or implicating myself.

I'll get paid soon. I'll make a reconnaissance trip to London soon.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Twelve and Thirteen

2008-02-19T23:51:00.001Z

Day 12.

Work is boring and foul. The induction was a simple, boring task. Filling in forms. They don't care much just as long as they have a bank account to pay you in. Suits me fine. The searching on the way out for stolen goods was highly unnecessary. Although I suspect my other unclean coworkers will be found guilty of theft. They evidently have been in the past if they have instituted searches. While working under the harsh lights of the supermarket I contemplated what would become of places like the supermarket when the great cleansing comes. In the end I decided that it's destruction would benefit everyone. Maybe this could be a an secondary target.

Day 13.

Worked more. Still very bored. This will not get any more interesting. I've successfully avoided getting into too much deep conversation with people about myself. I don't care about them and it seems that they don't care about me. Thankfully no unpleasant searching as I was clocking out of work today. I found instructions of how to make a bomb on the Internet. I'm not sure how reliable the instructions are. I should really just rely on my own knowledge of chemistry.

Waiting For The Apocalypse: Days Ten and Eleven

2008-02-18T22:58:00.000Z

Day 10.

While waiting for responses to my job applications I studied potential targets for my act of devotion and calling for faithful. London is the closest major world city to me. That would suggest it immediately as a suitable location. An attack on the London Underground would result in untold for casualties like the events of July 7th 2007. They would be perceived by the majority of the unclean uncritically as mass-murder. Not as the beacon for evangelism. I have a feeling in my gut that the London Eye would be a suitable. It is not a major monument of national pride like Nelson's Column and it is not anything 'real'. It's simply a folly. One which critical damage can be done against without inflicting too much terror against the unclean. I intend to build up the terror as more faithful come to the calling of the Great Cleansing.

Day 11.

I have a job now. It's at a supermarket as a shelf stacker. How demeaning. I've a university education. Although I technically don't since I'm still legally dead. I start tomorrow morning with an induction day. It'll be just like the first day at a new school I suspect. A lot of paperwork (questions I'll need to provide answers to) and polite introductions. If I keep myself to myself I'll be getting paid. Which means I can fund my trip to London. I'm looking forward to it.