Hey there,
Back again for a quick one, anyone not on my mailing list just wanted to shout out this cool anthology I’m in. It’s a rare occurence because so many of these projects just fizzle out, but Valerie pulled this off and it turned out really nice.
So head on over to Amazon and give it a buy maybe, it’s available of course in paperback and ebook.
Henlo human folk,
Back again with more chapters, finally finished the second draft and I’m proud of it, if a little deflated and rudderless feeling. Now I need to spend money on it I don’t have to have it edited. I guess I’m gonna have to pull the plaster off week by week or something to that effect which is really frustrating since I haven’t even finished paying to have TOTCB fully edited but that should be done soon and everyone on my mailing list will receive a free copy as promised in their inboxes, soon-ish.
On shittier note, inkitt changed it’s rating system so now all my stories over like five reviews are four stars because of grammar and spelling which really rustled my jimmies.
Right now I feel a little lost, I’m trying to plan this new sci-fi/steampunk/western alternate history thing and it’s not going amazingly well so I’m listening to some audiobooks hoping for some inspiration because right now I feel bleh. Like I don’t feel like I’m using my time effectively right now and it drives me crazy.
But at the same time, the love of my life came back and brought a little ray of sunshine into my shadowy existence so in a lot of ways I feel less of a drive right now. I just feel sort of comfortably numb, like things are going right for a change and I don’t need to scurry about spinning plates and trying to crawl out of the crab box or whatever that saying is.
Which is great, but at the same time utterly maddening.
Exactly as it should be.
–
I stepped over the doorman and through the door. The house was dark and smoky and smelled like weed and burning plastic. Don’t ask me how I know what they smell like.
Loud music playing, it sounded like a mix of salsa and dubstep. A mongrel jungle beat getting deep down into your veins and shaking them like a tensile rope bridge.
It was a relatively cramped house, a corridor connected a series of dimly lit rooms. Two bedrooms otherwise occupied by people in varying stages of undress and intoxication. Writhing like they were about to be turned into pillars of salt at any minute. The house was almost like a living thing, I felt like I was walking on a carpet of raw nerves. There were eyes everywhere in the dark watching and not watching. Peeling back to view the insides of their skulls. And there were literally just people lying on the floor in the hall and I may have stepped on a couple of them. Sorry.
People talking in varying dialects crossing English bad English and Spanish. None of which I could understand over the loud beat drowning out all my senses. It was so loud and thick it was like my head was in a box.
All the while it was building and building shaking the walls of my chest. My heart beating just out of time with the rhythm as we worked closer to the source of the sound. I clung close to Paul as he walked in front of me, my hand in his, my face at his back. I could feel the gun under his jacket, I could smell the strong scent of his cologne. A fresh musky smell like pine cones. It was oddly comforting, soothing as we waded through this den of iniquity together.
We reached an opening in the wall a light coming from it. We entered the living room which was uncharacteristically lavish and well lit. A large flat screen on the wall playing one of the fast and furious movies with no sound. God knows which one, they’re pretty much indistinguishable at this point.
A large leather couch pointed at it with a glass coffee table laden with a veritable banquet of Chinese takeout. The varying smells drifting and mingling into one greasy mass at the back of my sinus wall.
The room was decked out almost like a small nightclub. A disco ball on the ceiling spinning pointlessly as the light was on so there were just odd dots of dim sparkling orbs around the room. A small kitchenette in the corner had been converted into what looked like a real granite bar. Complete with a stalwart bartender in a santé muerte mask and bowtie standing with his hands behind his back. The smiling skull face staring out with empty black eyes a mid a red tribal pattern. Very scary.
Was it like this every night I wondered.
The music was coming from two huge speakers connected to an iPhone either side of a fake fireplace under the flat screen.
We entered softly trying not to draw too much attention almost tiptoeing on the hardwood floor. The safest thing to do seemed to be go to the bar at the back of the room. Get a drink and maybe try to gravitate to a dark corner and pretend to watch the movie.
We crossed the room completely oblivious to the other people in it. A certain shy sheepishness had come over me and I couldn’t raise my head for fear of it being bitten off by a bigger dog.
“Hey” A hoarse voice fought over the noise of the speakers.
‘Who me?’ I froze.
“Yeah you” I turned my head like a wooden figurine on a rusty cuckoo clock and looked over at the couch in the general direction of the voice.
A moment past, charging feet over my grave. Stomping down the dirt flat and dancing and laughing. The little hissing voice inside the dark well chuckling silently. Spitting into a crescendo of ever faster beating wings rising from the deep dark murk.
It was him.
No mistaking it, I can’t say I was too surprised, I was in his house after all.
He sat on the leather coach wearing a pair of baggy jeans and basketball jersey. Sandwiched in between two ethnic looking prostitutes. Large Hispanic men who were definitely carrying guns or machetes or both under their Hawaiian shirts stood like bookends on either side of the coach. His face was young and he looked very short sitting down, a wispy dark goatee on his chin, his hair slicked back on his head in a wavy pattern. Very thin with almost puppet like movements.
I looked around again feeling dumb and drowning in the spotlight pointing at myself literally like ‘who me?’. Paul was at the bar already ordering some drinks which seemed like an ocean away his back turned as I stared intently at Ruez’s sneakers.
“Yeah, you! Are you deaf or something?”
My eyes flashed up and caught his and he gave me an odd look, almost like he recognised me. I heard a catatonic purring noise inside. He didn’t stand, he just stared at me up and down, probing me. I felt naked and almost like I’d forgotten how to stand. Every gesture seeming practiced and awkward, how-to-human?
Did he know? Could he see it, could he hear it? Was this it? Was I about to have a cap popped into my ass and spend the last few minutes of sentience rolled up in a cheap rug?
“Yeah can you like get out of the way?” He said with his hands. “We’re trying to watch a movie here”.
“Err sorry” Said dumb dithering Diana smiling like an idiot.
–
The chapters are pretty short and they’re fairly easy to read, if a little mechanical in their delivery. It reads almost like a journal because it’s very matter of fact and even when he’s talking about falling down the stairs it sounds like he’s describing tying his shoes. some spelling and grammar errors but that’s pretty irrelevant when it comes to inkitt, 99% of people don’t have the professional editors to pick over their work.
It’s not bad, just kind of middle of the road, I don’t know how old you are but it seems like something a teen would write and if that’s the case it’s a solid effort, it has the makings of something fairly interesting. It kind of reminded me of like death note or silent hill. I don’t know if that was your intention or if you’ve seen that show or played that game but it might be worth checking them out because they could have the elements you’re missing to really nail the atmosphere down.
What Lies Beyond Smoke by Ben Burns
Bonjour, short and sweet is the name of the game, in and out and all that.
Been wage cucked for the last week so no content of meat was possible. I just got the wordpress app on my phone so I could only lie awake in bed writing haikus as I dreamed about … something.
But they seemed to go down quite well.
–
“We have to keep moving Sparkles” Mr fuzzles said panting like a dog.
They were on the cold streets, it was dark and quiet, snowing calmly. The lack of noise made them feel like they were in a snowglobe, the sky an open vacuum of stars staring down with bleak ambivalence. A building cacophony of silence following them, whispers, whispers, moans, bones creaking. Squelching noises, hungry breath and padded feet crunching up the snow.
“They’re coming Mr Fuzzles, we can’t outrun them forever, we need to go somewhere, find a place we can hide.” Sparkles said, fighting for breath as Fuzzles pulled her along.
“Hmm” He said putting his paw to his purple chin.
It was dark, pitch, the streetlights waned, the moon was the only one on their side and it was known to play both sides when it was full. Figures moving slow but resolute under the glow of the orb floating in the sky, the glow from it’s teeth touching only their outlines. So many outlines and the sparkly one stood out the most, all those sequins. Leading his army of beasts, beasts of the new world. All those mascots climbing out of the murk like ghosts from a Saturday morning cartoon coming to claim the town.
Muffled screams, glass breaking, the slow roll of furry death unfurling on the sleepy town.
“I think we should go to the police Mr Fuzzles”. Sparkles whispered.
–
“Cut it”
The sound of bolt cutters biting on the hanging lock on the back of the building. The shaded figures pushed passed her into the building through the back.
“Put her down on the counter”
“I don’t think we can lift her”
“And what do we do with her head?”
A fat but well manicured hand flipped on the lights, they popped and croaked into life. First the kitchen, stainless steel everywhere, deep fat friars, fly buzzers buzzing in the corners. The smell of cinnamon and cold chiros.
“Why did you pick a donut shop of all places?” Roch said.
Juanita turned her head and looked her up and down and said “I don’t need to answer that.” She marched through to the front of the store. The lights were all on but blinds were tightly shut and there was a steel rolltop door protecting the glass storefront.
The donut shop was standard in a small diner feel, but tighter and more like a dispensary for a bake shop than an actual restaurant. A few stools up against outcroppings from the wall functioning as small tables. The floor space had a handful of small circular tables with tall backless chairs dotted around them. Very modern. Pictures of happy donuts on the walls.
Juanita could have found it by the smell alone but she couldn’t mistake, even in the dark, the giant metal donut sitting on the roof of the shop, beckoning her.
“Fuck this bitch is heavy” Kat said.
“Don’t body shame her, she’s a stunning and brave larger woman” Jaclyn said as she cleared a place for her on the counter. “Can you get her up here?”
Roch and Kat strained as they pressed the lifeless body of Garylynn against the counter and struggled to leverage her up onto the wide counter top. “Why are we even doing this? Her fucking head is off!” Roch screeched as she lifted one side of the giant woman, straining, her neck getting as veiny as a weighlifters stool.
Jaclyn passed them and put her laptop down on a circular table in the middle of the restaurant floor and took a seat in front of it and started taping away.
Roch and Kat got Garylynn’s body hoisted onto the counter, Kat reached down and dropped her misshapen soggy head on her chest. Roch was hot and bothered, her frustration apparent physically and mentally. Panting, she said “Jace are you hearing me, I’m talking to you.”
Jace spoke without looking up continuing to tap away at her laptop “I’m working on it, I just need to tap into the satellite and we can get some help.”
“I thought the phones were down?” Kat said leaning on the giant’s corpse.
“Phones are but we’ve got our satellite to play with.” Jaclyn smiled looking up briefly, the light of her laptop illuminating a set of adult braces.
“But he’s not here, what can he possibly do?” Roch said.
“I wont know until we get him on the line and we can do a full diagnostic”. She turned and looked at the body and squinted. “Err, can you, erm, pass me the head please?”
Roch looked at Kat and shrugged, lifting up the head with a straining noise, it was like a big medicine ball, deceptively heavy and bulky. She dropped it heavy on the small round table, looking at her hand and grimacing wiping a thick goop onto her tank top. “Gross”.
“O-k” Jace said as she pulled a cable out of her laptop and thumbed the misshapen ball of a head, moving the hair looking for something particular. “Aha” She said as she pulled back what must have been a horribly deformed ear. She plugged in the cable and sat back down in front of her laptop and started typing. The screen was blue and blank, a bar climbing that said ‘Establishing connection’ a picture of a floating satellite with a smiley face on it.
“Oh no no no, this isn’t right.” A nasally effiminite voice came out of the speakers, a feed of some dark room. A close up on a man’s head moving and then the camera being fixed in place, a close up on a man’s face. “What have you done to it?” Macintosh Lysander said as he looked down at his feed of the diagnostics report.
“Erm well” Jace said.
“Is she alright” Juanita came around the counter.
“Where were you just now?” Kat said as she pushed past her into the restaurant.
Juanita dusted icing sugar off her face and shirt and said “I was just checking we were secure”. Quickly changing subject she said “You contacted Lysander without me?”
“Well, I needed to send him th-“
“I’m the leader of this fucking team, you got it???” She said as she bounced her fat ass at Jaclyn knocking her off the high stool and taking her place in front of the laptop. “Hey Maccy darling, its me, she just had a little accident.” Her voice was sweet but then switched on a dime “It was that transphobic bigot Sunday. She cut off her head, but its no biggy right you can fix her, can’t you?”
“Nita that is a one of a kind prototype, do you have any idea the strings I had to pull to get that out of dad’s lab without him knowing?” He breathed in making that cloying sucking noise that he does. “If he finds out its missing, he’ll kill all of us. I’m not kidding.” His voice dipped in and out of the effeminate voice. He realised this paused and did that annoying clicking tutting noise reseting his voice to max effeminate swagger. “I can reboot the system from here but you need to reattach the head yourselves. I can walk you through it, but first I need an update on the mission, did you get the samples I asked for?”
“Maccy it doesn’t start til tomorrow, we’re early. We’ll get them, don’t you worry. These animist assholes wont continue their sick oppression any longer than they have to. We can put a stop to the whole fucked up Animarchy.” She said raising a fist doing a cringeworthy rosie the riveter pose.
–
Hard boiled second grader
I read this with much ‘perspicacity’, new word learned haha.
I actually really liked this, I don’t know why people are down on it. I wanna say it went over people’s heads without seeming too pretentious. People who aren’t a fan of this kind of genre like I am wont really get it. it’s like a fun kiddy version of a Sam Spade novel.
I see it for what it is, a nice neo-noir almost essay or an opener. It’s a nice little show piece. Fun kiddy noir style diaglogue and characters, i don’t see what’s not to like. I can’t say I’d like to see you do an actual noir story with adults because that would lose it’s uniqueness but maybe you could use this as an opener to a book with a bigger mystery down the line or a series of cases like this for a children’s book.
I think it has a lot of potential.
Henlo my dudes,
I’m using ‘dudes’ like california people do now, it’s gender neutral over there.
So what is up? Haven’t been that busy recently if I’m to be honest still kind of coming out of that funk, dealing with the constant and ever present rejection of literary agents, I never know if I should respond, maybe send them bags of burning dogshit, I dunno. But honestly I didn’t expect TOTCB to get much traction, that’s big brain nibba stuff for sure, way above some fucking cat lady literary agent who’s just looking for a new harry potter but with more preferably non-white vag to stock her portfolio with.
But I’m getting the editing wrapped up with Nat and I’m working on a second draft for Diana and trying to decide on a title, taking this one much more seriously. I have high hopes for it, it ticks a lot of catlady boxes and I enjoy writing it and subverting their expectation. It’s like writing a harry potter book where harry drops out of wizard school to join the third reich and do meth. I dunno haha.
Like it fits these normie cat lady parameters but in doing that it lets me slip in a lot of my own counter-subversive hyper-sanity. If that makes sense (I know it doesn’t).
So yeah, just underway with that and playing the surge, which you won’t be getting a review for because I actually like it, it’s like an awesome mix of dead space and dark souls. Gets that risk and reward hierarchy down perfectly, I actually returned prey and got this in exchange from amazon, only paid postage on the return so I’m really happy. Traded one shitty sci-fi borefest for an all out grindcore balls to the wall sci-fi dark souls action rpg.
That’s all, enjoy the stuff haha.
Also my book is on sale as if you care haha. www.hyperurl.co/kcio3t
–
He took me back to his place in French court, about a two minute drive from the Starbucks. It was a nice little bungalow that looked like it should have a picket fence but it didn’t. It was a small red brick building with white trim and a brick chimney. The small patch of lawn in the front was of course neatly manicured. The bushes I suspected were tested with a spirit level. The house was pristine, it looked brand new, could have single handedly raised the property value of the entire neighbourhood which had seen better days. He lived directly opposite the elementary school he went to as a kid.
The area wasn’t too bad, well-kept palms, and lawns. It was quality middle of the road Mediterranean style housing and home to some of the best seafood in the OC. There was a restaurant called Ambrosia he seemed very proud of. It was a beacon in the least shiny part of Orange County. The birds chirping on resilient in their fortitude for this too to be a slice of paradise. Nonetheless they all had wrought iron fences guarding their lawns, except Paul’s house. Just a small white porch with roman style pillars. There was something about it sitting on the corner like that, looking like a model house. Like a house sitting on a nuclear test site about to be blown up, full of wax fruit bowels and mannequins sitting at dinner tables. It didn’t look lived in, it looked like it was a trap house begging for someone to step on that carefully trimmed lawn. Teeth gnawing and clicking and tensing against each other. Praying the mailman would plant a foot off the path and then something could be unleashed, some dark righteous fury bottled up just for this moment. But it never came. The birds just chirped on incessantly.
It was Sunday so the elementary school was quiet and still, which I’m sure was a welcome change. We got out of the car. Parking it in the lot behind the house and he lead the way into his cool still house. “Come on in” He smiled.
It was a show house alright. I can’t remember the last time I was in here, funny enough. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Paul, despite being my boyfriend he and I didn’t really know what that meant. We appeared places together, we were together at school but when the curtains came down the actors went back to their trailers and rested. Nothing more.
That was really as far as our interactions went. A pantomime for an audience of slack jawed watchers probably begging to be us and having no idea about the truth. I guess, we just liked our own space.
He cleared his throat and threw the keys down on a Formica top kitchen counter and said. “Well?”
I smiled and took in a lungful of the cool musky air in his house. It didn’t smell bad or like dust, just old leather and new plastic and rubber.
“Well what?” I sighed.
“What was that all about?” He asked, almost stuttering.
I sat at a small functional kitchen table and said “Some weirdo just tried to grab me, it’s nothing”.
“Some guy tries to grab you and that’s nothing?” He almost coughed and screeched. His face became a shade redder and his tone was strangled off by some violent shifting of gears in his throat. “How are you- I mean how is-?” A clever aside from ‘What was it like to see severed human heads’.
I looked up at him with a raised eyebrow and massaged my temples. “I’m fine”.
The house was oddly dark and cold. Even though none of the blinds were drawn it seemed shaded somehow. It was pleasantly cool, like the underside of a rock. Probably just the position of the house relevant to the sun.
I took out my phone completely displacing his concerns, they seemed too banal for me to even want to press. Why should he care if Skeletor tried to grab me with a boney claw and what could he have done to prevent it? And he most certainly couldn’t make me un-see the heads with a back rub or a sonnet and moreover- I wouldn’t want him to.
Did the posturing and planning make him feel better, should I embellish him just for his own ease of mind? Wasn’t I the one who had been through two supposedly traumatic events? Why should I be responsible for setting things right in his world? Humans, why do I bother?
Who was that strange metal pincher man, my mind instantly drawing back to one of those toy grabbers you get at the beach arcades. I guess that made me a hapless stuffed animal. Deer in headlights Diana. Did he really know about me? What was there to know? A naughty search history, a little amateur hack magic, hardly seemed enough to raise the dead. And hardly the most alarming thing to happen to me all week.
I swiped on my phone back to twitter and I pointed the screen at him.
“Do you know this guy?”
He took the phone off of me with a curt urgency, what did my phone do to him?
He turned the screen back to me and pointed at it and said “Is this the guy who grabbed you?”
“He lives around here?” I asked.
“Yeah I know this scumbag, deals dope out of a house in Central City, has these wild parties” He trailed off.
“How do you know him?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“We went to the same elementary school, he dropped out”
“He dropped out of elementary school, see a future in orange sherbert or something?”
“Or something” He sighed. “He’s a pretty bad dude, heard a lot of – rumours about him, I guess.” He shook his head and scrunched up his eyes as he said it, like he really wasn’t sure.
Central city for the uniformed was the unofficial gang hub of Orange County. A veritable hive of scum and villainy. Surely every nice little berg has one. You could get almost anything down there, drugs, unlicensed guns, prostitutes maybe even human lives and knock-off levis. The kind of place someone goes when they haven’t discovered you can get all that stuff on the internet without having to leave your mom’s basement.
“So?” I asked in my best pixie dream girl voice.
He held up the phone and then caught himself “You wanna go there?” He asked agasp, ruffling that long handsome brow of his.
I nodded and started to kick my feet like a kid on a swing set. Trying to hide a rising tide of dark angel trumpets calling me. A shrill laughter in the dark depths, a shock doing a Mexican wave across the invisible microscopic fine hairs I failed to pluck. I wax too, I said feminism didn’t interest me. Hairy pits in California heat? No thanks.
“Tonight?” He said, his voice almost shaking, with something I couldn’t quite fathom. Was he afraid, or was it something else? The way he said it, it was almost like a challenge.
“Is he having one of the parties tonight, it’s a Sunday” As soon as I said it, I felt decidedly dumb once again. Getting to be a bad habit today.
He made a hissing sound in his mouth. “Every night, these people don’t have jobs to go to, or school.” It was a school night.
Of course I knew that. I just felt awash with some new profound feeling of the unknown and the fact we had school in the morning made it seem twice as delicious to try tonight. But why would I go there? Just to see him for myself, and then what? ‘Hey Antoine, have you been leaving a trail of body parts for me to follow?’ Did I even think it was him, no, well I didn’t want it to be him, the twitter activity alone shattered a lot of the mystique around him. If he was the one I’d feel decidedly deflated. And what would he do when he saw me? Would it be ‘off with her head’ or ‘Hi friend, you got the message, let’s play’?
Either way if I could get Paul to go along it would be to my advantage, if only to be a distraction in case I needed to run far and fast away. Was I really that callous? Maybe, maybe not.
“Ok?” I said, rising to this illusory challenge.
He shook his head and let out a breathy laugh. “Sure.”
–
Yo,
Gonna keep this short and sweet because I’ve been sending out querys to literary agents all day and I have some leftover fajitas I made calling my name. So quick updates, moving forward a little bit prematurely with The One Who Came Back. I don’t really know what I hope to achieve because I’m really that sure of it and I only have three chapters edited so far and trying to rush my editor seems to be in vein, I’m considering hiring someone else but I’m sort of broke and I can’t find anyone cheaper and she’s a really nice person, I don’t feel like an asshole giving money to.
This is sort of a dry tun I guess for Diana, just scoping out the thriller lit agents, seeding the ground before I unleash that insanity on them. Got all my women centric ones bookmarked because they might get a kick out of a female Dexter, I know I did ha.
Not that it really matters but honestly, have you ever googled literary agents? Like literally 90% of them are women, maybe even more so, it’s ridiculous and the amount that are looking for ‘women centric stories’ or just ‘women’s fiction’ is astonishing and you wonder why so many of the big authors this decade are women *Hmm emoji* haha.
Ranting aside, I’m edging my way out of the completionist funk, just by doing something and hopefully tomorrow I can throw myself into a new project just to get the gears spinning again.
That’s enough for now.
See you…
–
Bobby rummaged around in a large key bang as he entered the station’s jail muttering to himself in the near darkness. Only the orange emergency lights giving off an anaemic glow that lit nothing except the hands in front of his face.
“This is the last straw, he’s lost his fucking mind, fuck. First he’s making me bury bodies in the back lot, now he’s shooting people right in the office, he’s losing it, this is it, this is it!” He panted and took in disjointed slakes of breathes like he was having a panic attack. “Gotta, gotta let you guys out, gotta get out, gotta let you and we can leave this fucking mess!” He screeched.
The back of the cells were in complete darkness. He got closer, the hot nervousness in the back of his throat made his fingers and thumbs thick square blocks of dull round weiner meat. Which made finding the right key near impossible. The jangling of the key bang summoning fits of excited hackles from something akin to a dog.
A shadowed figure uncoiled, a dank smell and a quick fluttering of what seemed like wings and the voice. A hot stinking breath that smelled like raw potatoes and meat said right by his ear “Maybe I wanna be in here.” The voice said. Breath was hot and wet and burning like raw onions on the deputies face. He jumped back, tripping over his own feet and tumbling, the back of his head trying to make out with the corner of a metal desk not ending well.
He lay on the floor twitching, blood and brains spreading like hot homemade jam.
“Oops” Carpenter said as he slipped back away from the bars with a slithering sqeaking noise as his arms retracted into the dark cell.
–
Hey, hows it going my imaginary audience.
So, it’s done, sorta. I finished Diana After Dark, if that’s even what I’m still calling it by the time I post this. And I’m sinking into my usual funk. That completionist depression, when you walk away from a book. Like when you finish a videogame that really gripped you and then it’s over and you’re like ‘I want more’. Same for books I guess but my first experience with that feeling was videogames, just getting engrossed in that world and then having to leave it behind because there’s nothing left to do. It’s depressing.
That’s done, I say ‘done’ what I really mean is it needs shitloads more editing and fixing and tweaking which could take months but I’ll happily do it, also I think I might change her aunt character into a cop. It just might make more sense later on, give her more leverage in the story and it sort of makes sense in regard to the character she’s based on I guess.
It’s finished and I feel lost once again, trapped in that miasma of deciding what to do next. Because honestly the first thing I wanted to do was just say fuck it and write the sequel right away. Start drafting up the ideas floating around in my head and put it on paper, I literally have ideas for at least two more but I don’t know if it’s healthy to stay in that headspace for so long and listen to the same music. I figure I should put something in between.
I’m thinking I might do something that’s a twist on a bunch of Lovecraft stories. I did do a sort of weird almost Lovecraftian super hero story a while back that I could revive. It might be fun, like a cosmic horror thriller novella. Then maybe I could do another Diana or that fantasy novel I’ve been planning to do or that other fantasy novel I’ve been planning to do.
I dunno, just feeling bummed the fuck out recently and I need to get reinvigorated and throw myself back into something and I need to get this stuff cleaned up and start talking to agents again and try to get some money out of it so I can start getting deeper into potential series’.
Also planning on making a pilot or something for a Starship troopers tv show, I was just at a party recently and I thought how awesome would that be if netflix dropped all this gay ass superhero shit (Punisher not included, The Punisher is awesome, they could still fuck up his standalone show though) and started a high budget live action starship troopers tv show. I mean shit I would watch that in a second.
I mean I would be happier if I didn’t even write it, if I just gave the idea to a good screen writer and then I could just enjoy it. But it’s netflix so they’d probably still fuck it up haha. Or shit even worse if it was taken on by AMC and it couldn’t have any nudity or swearing like Preacher, fuck me sideways that was fucking retarded.
Anyway, enough of me ranting about bullshit, got another chapter of The one that came back for your viewing pleasure. You know the drill.
See you…
The Boy with the Thorn in His Side.
–
Porter couldn’t let it go. there was something about it that he knew would haunt him if he didn’t get something squared away. He figured a few questions, a couple of hours out of his life. That would spare him the sleepless nights, tossing and turning thinking about it.
So here he was sitting in his truck on Swallow Street. Outside Johnny’s old house. He looked into the old case reports on the boy’s disappearance online. They were bare enough for the cops to not care who looked at them and all the addresses were old anyway. This is Johnny’s old neighbourhood, he was taken in a park not too far from his home. The family moved out after his disappearance because of a new job across town.
He thought about watching the kid at first. As far as he could tell the neighbours he had. The friends he had back then were still kicking around here so they might have more to say. As far as he was concerned the person he met and the boy that went missing were two different people. So following him wouldn’t teach him anything he didn’t already know.
He’d gotten hold of a Photostat copy of his missing poster. He went over it a couple of times trying to get a picture of the kid in his mind.
Johnnathon William Bartlett Missing Since Jun 13, 2013, Missing From San Antonio, TX. DOB Dec 31, 2000. Sex Male. Race Caucasian. Hair Color Lt. Brown. Eye Color Blue. Height 4′8″. Weight 80 lbs.
Identifying features; Has three tattoos. The letter T on his left hand between his thumb and forefinger. The letter J on his left shoulder, and the letters L and N on the outside of his left ankle.
What’s a thirteen year old doing with tattoos? He thought to himself. He made the drive out to fort Sam Houston where the boy was abducted. It was at least a twenty minute drive, maybe an hour bike ride away, or a three hour walk from his house. A picture of this kid was forming already. The missing poster said he was diagnosed with adhd. So this wasn’t your average kid. Normal kids don’t have tattoos or take hour bike rides to go play basketball away from home.
Swallow street was a normal neighbourhood. Lined with modest single story homes in reasonable condition. Nothing out of the ordinary about it, no gangs, or drugs or undesirables about. The house he was looking for was 14118 Swallow Street.
The house was a small red brick building with a tiny covered porch at the entrance and a single car garage at the side. A black mailbox outfront. The lawn was small and sloped down with a single tree in the front that looked like a hand sticking out of the earth. Bare of all its leaves. All the houses in the neighbourhood were pretty much the same sandy colours. Like they all just rose out of the desert.
It was early and there weren’t too many people out, the odd dog walker or baby stroller. A squat Mexican woman one yard over was raking leaves and mumbling to herself in Spanish.
He didn’t think it would do much good asking the new owner about the missing kid. Chances are he wouldn’t have even known about the thing at all. Not exactly need to know information for a realtor to give out. ‘Oh by the way a kid who used to live here disappeared’.
But he figured it couldn’t hurt to talk to the guy. Maybe if he got talking something might tumble out and he’d get to look around a bit.
Porter parked on the sidewalk next to the black mailbox. The sidewalks were those little strip sidewalks. Like they expected you to walk single file.
Porter crossed the lawn, it was well kept, a little too short even, dry looking.
He passed through the little alcove and tapped on the glass in the door. No one answered, Porter went around the side and peeked through windows. It didn’t look like anyone was home.
“HE NOT HOME!” A shrill voice called.
Porter looked towards where the sound came from. The squat Mexican woman was looking at him from across the yard. Holding her rake close to her as she bagged leaves. Porter put on his best smile and hopped across the lawn like a little bunny. Pretending to be out of breathe when he reached her.
“Mr Hostelle not home, he work in construction travel a lot, he come back next week.”
“Right, thanks” He was surprised, he didn’t even need to ask any questions yet.
“Something you want?”
“As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you knew the family who used to live here?”
“You here about the boy who disappeared, Johnny whatshisname?” She said tutting trying to remember his name. Waving her hand trying to pre-empt Porter correcting her and progressing the conversation.
“Bartlett” He said flat.
“That’s it Bar-lett, the news people already been here, you with them?” She probed the air with the end of her rake acquisatorially.
“Not really, I just wanted to know more about the boy, can you tell me anything?”
“Si, I remember.” She said curtly as she tied up the garbage bag full of leaves a little too tight. She looked up from the bag and cocked her head to the side. “You want me to say he was the pefect little angel who flew away, is not true. That one was a little puta!”
Porter thought it best to keep quiet and pretend he was taking mental notes, which he was.
“The policia, they come around all the time for this kid, and this a good neighbourhood”. She swung around as if to give him a good look at the neighbourhood, her house was simple but nice. A single story house with a slanted roof, a large two car garage with a 4×4 taking up one a half cars worth of space. The windows outside looked almost like church windows, three in a row. Twin cedar trees dominating her lawn. “We don’t get much trouble, but with him always trouble. He come home late, screaming and shouting and fighting and drug”.
“Drugs?”
“That’s what I hear, I never see, and that not the first time he run away either. Last time he was hiding down the bottom of my yard. Tearing up my flower bed.” She started to get fidgety now. “And these not little kid fights. When they fight, they fight, they use knive, the mother she have boyfriends and they no good.” Something told Porter she was enjoying this a little too much. The reporters didn’t let her get to the nit gritty. Like she wanted.
“Do you know what happened to Johnny’s father?”
“No, we moved in after he was already gone, they say, err, he run away” She shrugged.
She started looking a little more nervous than aggravated. She started rubbing a cross that was hanging around her neck. She made the sign of the cross. “Madre dios, that’s not all, one night we call the police because we heard noise”.
“What kind of noise?”
“Like an animal cry and like singing, err not singing, like a droning noise. The police come and the man, err what his name J- something. He answer the door cover in blood”. She moved her hands to signify the blood was all over and her eyes were wide now and he could see the whites. She was excited, a little theatre crept in.
“What did the cops say” Porter stayed cold and flat like a frozen flank steak.
“He say, the man, that it was chicken blood. He kill a chicken for dinner, no way, in mehico we kill chickens, very little blood. You see a chicken, they very small, not very much blood. Head to toe. The policia, they leave him alone”. She shrugged and wrinkled her bottom lip.
“Was this around the time Johnny went missing?”
“I don’t remember exactly, maybe. It get so bad, with the boy that they had to bring in his Uncle to come live with them because the boy was so violent. He was hitting his mother so they bring in the man J-something to keep the boy, behave, you know. But you know the news they only want to hear how good he was. Cute little blonde boy with blue eyes go missing. They only want to hear nice things about him” She chuckled to herself.
“Thanks, you’ve been a big help”
“Si” The woman said as she raised her eyebrows and got back to raking leaves.
Porter went back to the dodge and got in and sat there for a moment, tossing gravel in his head.
–
A great read, it hits that spot for me that sits right between your Dan Brown schlock and your serious crime thrillers, your noir mysteries. The opening is tense and sets the scene well and then the inter cutting with the past is a nice touch to build upon the mystery further and bring in a fresh additional level of intrigue. I really love stories that do that, it just adds something out stretching the story entirely, linking the past and the present. Honestly it’s a little slow, a little dry and a little too cerebral for me I like what I like, you can tell in my writing.
I prefer hard hitting action from the start and this story is very methodically paced and I have a very short attention span, But I’m fairly young, so I’m guessing it’s not really aimed at my age bracket and I think an older lover of mystery/thriller epics would be thoroughly engrossed in this if and when it goes to print. Overall, solid, well researched work, a great deal of time and effort evidently gone into it.
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Darkly Dreaming Demographic. 
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