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GREEN SUNDAY Chapter 13 ‘Sunday Mourning’ (Edited) Sunday returns, finally.

Ok ok finally getting around to going over these edited chapters of GS fresh out of the girl and cat publishing bakery of fine editing. Thanks as always to Nat and her time and effort and really great comments.

I’ve fallen behind on these and now seeing a gap in writing I thought it was best to strike now and get them out of the way so I can move onto editing for my newer stuff and get onto a new project.
I’m taking a little break, which isn’t really a break and will last til january. I’m just not starting any new projects at the minute and focusing on editing and cleaning older stuff up as well as plotting new stories mainly a sloppy as shit Dexter fanfic. I’ve got big dreams people, I’ve got Jeff Linday on facebook and we’ve exchanged like five words haha. I’m sure he’s just chomping at the bit to have me take the reigns of his mythos haha.

Honestly, I don’t know why I’m doing it, I should be plotting out my fantasy story or laying the solid ground work for a new Green Sunday but I just felt like doing some Dexter stuff for fun. It just bubbled to the surface of my mind and I felt like hammering it out a little for when I eventually start reading the books again and getting straight in my head.

In January, I’ll be jumping into another novella probably, just to break the pace up a little, do something a tad different, a little fantasy/surreal horror. Which now thinking back sounds pretty much what Ladies Close Your Eyes turned into but I didn’t intend it to haha.

It’ll be another adapted comic strip and I have a rough idea which one I have in mind but I’m a fickle cunt so whichever sticks best in my head on the day will be what goes down, new year new head, new flesh.

So here we are back again, I’ve got all the chapters done now, just gonna doll them out to you on here and of course you can read them all, because I’m just putting them all up as they’re done on my inkitt page which I will leave a link to below.

I’m probably going to launch the full book on amazon some time next year when I get the cover back from an artist friend of mine and do some marketing giving away LCYE as a free ebook, which I’ll do on here and facebook and twitter and probably minds.

Here it is chapter 13 ‘Sunday Mourning’, let me know what you think and don’t forget to check on out on twitter and minds.

https://www.minds.com/CallMeRyk

As always the full chapter can be found on my inkitt page.

Sunday Mourning

See you…

–

A drone camera buzzed over the scene behind TJ’s house, out of sight, too high up to be heard. Its ambivalent gaze documenting everything. Its lens flitted about like that of an insect’s eye. The monitor feed from Evergreen’s deployment truck glared as he grinned back, the feed reflected in his goggles.

“She got too close to the perimeter of the game zone. Looks like she was taken out by beta team,” The nerd at the console said as he looked over the footage again. “Very clean; she won’t have felt a thing.” Murray straightened his glasses with a morbid sense of appreciation. “They really are the best, sir”.

“Uh huh.” Evergreen’s grin shrunk a few sizes, listening to the tech gush. “It’s time.”.

“Yes, sir, beginning stage three,” the tech said as he turned back to his console.

~

Helicopter blades cut through a violent wind, casting rain in wide dispersal patterns as the heavy behemoths rocked back and forth.

These were military transport helicopters, for carrying battlements or vehicles to the field: four in all, carrying heavy metal containers. They looked like smooth industrial shipping containers, but both the containers and the choppers were completely unmarked.

“Roger that. We’re estimated four hours out of the drop zone. Good morning. If this rain lets up, it’s gonna be a beautiful day,” the chopper pilot said over his radio.

~

“You kept me waiting,” Carpenter whispered as he twisted the barbed point of the arrow under Dave’s chin. Dave grimaced, dropping his torch and kukri.

“Killing me will do you no good. I’m not a part of the game; I’m just his assistant!”

Carpenter took Dave by his shoulders and threw him down on the dirty linoleum floor. Dave offered little resistance and fell at the side of the dead woman drinking the milkshake. His fall caused her to shift in her seat, sliding down the bench until her face rested right next to Dave’s as he attempted to dust himself off. By the dim light of his torch he could see he was in kissing range of the gaping exit wound in her face.

“Oh, shit!” He gaped.

“‘Oh, shit’ indeed,” Carpenter chuckled as he picked up both Dave’s torch and his kukri knife.

“What do you want?”

Carpenter put the torch under his chin and smiled like a ghoul in an old monster movie. “A way out.”

“Why would I know the way?”

“Do you like scary movies?” Carpenter said, smiling. He poked each yellow tooth with his tongue in turn. “You don’t think there was someone like you and your butt buddy up there the last time?” Carpenter let out a bitter little breathy laugh. He shook the beam of the torch around, feigning hysterics. “It’s a sick world we live in.”

He marched up to Dave and stomped on the leg closest to him; Dave let out an anguished cry like an injured animal.

Carpenter crouched down next to Dave, shining the torch in his face and Dave cowered under the beam, guarding his eyes with his hand. Carpenter saw it immediately and snickered to himself, thinking of something poetic to say at this karmic justice he’d send on its way. “Feeling all right? Fever? Dry mouth? Itching under the skin? E-rectile dysfunction?”

Dave looked up at him and swallowed a dry gob of spit.

“There’s a helicopter. North side of town, by the abandoned railyard, but it’s guarded; you’ll never make it alone.”

Carpenter gave him that wide devil grin and turned to walk away, tossing the torch and the kukri away as he left Dave scrabbling in the dark.

“I’m not alone; not anymore.”

~

TJ couldn’t move. His body was rooted to the ground by chains of empty regret. His limbs felt hollow and heavy at the same time.

“TJ, it’s Sunday, I know we just met, but you have to trust me. I used you; I’m not a good person. But I can make it up to you, if you live,” Sunday whispered in TJ’s ear where he lay on the cold, damp grass of his backyard. A light drizzle was approaching, accompanied by muffled threats of dull, aching thunder.

TJ remained perfectly still. Sunday swallowed and turned him over. His eyes were open, vacant and grey. His mouth hung open a fraction and fluttered as if he was trying to say something but didn’t have enough energy. “TJ, can you hear me? We need to move. You’re gonna come with me, OK?” She hooked her dainty little hands under his sweaty pits, lifting him with some effort. “Urf, fuck, you’re heavy!”

She turned him around and dragged him in the direction of his house. “Ergh! This would be a lot easier if you just – hrrff, hrrff – stood up and, you know, walked.”

She got him back into the kitchen, which felt a lot colder now. Closing the door, she looked out the window. His mother’s body, lying there, looked almost beautiful. Sunday breathed in and out, feeling her icy breath swirling around in her chest. “It could have been worse,” she sighed as the rain rolled in.

~

 

0

LCYE Chapter 6 ‘Call from the past’

Ok back again with some weird shit. Yeah it started pretty stable and but now we’re getting into the silent hill max payne elements and it’s all down hill from here folks. Trippy shit. I tried to reign it in a little and for the most part faught my natural inclinations to go down the rabbit hole and I think it happens rather gradually and hopefull comes off as chilling as I fantacize it to be.
Well let me know what you think as always, busy, busy, busy being busy. Still writing this stuff, hopefully I’ll get it squared away before nano.

As always find the full chapter on inkitt for no monies.

Call From the Past

Aurevoir

~
A phone was ringing somewhere. A distinctive chirping analogue phone.

It seemed to swing in and out on a bedside table in a room he couldn’t piece together in his mind. All the parts were scattered.

He took a sharp intake of breath, a sudden feeling of falling catching him. His head bobbed. His hands tightened on the faux leather steering wheel. He was driving, how long had he been driving? Where was he going? Where was he? Who was he?

He rolled down his window and let the wind batter his cheeks as he craned his neck trying to stop his eyes spinning in his head long enough to read a road sign.

He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw a sign for Poplar avenue.

He was driving in the slow lane of a highway sectioned off in the middle by a line of cypress trees. Driving past a motel with large bulbous palm trees collected almost like a bunch of flowers in the parking lot.

It didn’t really tell him much; he wasn’t familiar with the area.

He wound the window up as the air started to sting his cheeks. He turned the rear-view mirror down quickly and looked at his face. There were light scratches already fading on his cheeks. James turned the mirror up again and didn’t give it much thought.

He passed a small one story building, yellow brick with red trim. Only the words ‘CHEAP CIGARETTES’ embossed on the side. There was a McDonalds that looked like a texmex restaurant on his right and a gas station. He checked his dash, he didn’t need gas.

His reactions were slow, even moving his head was a grand gesture a colossal effort. He didn’t see the car in front slow down for the light. He slammed right into the back of a Honda civic. His face hit the steering wheel hard.

He could see the coffee cup, but he didn’t try to stop it. It was white and made of stained porcelain, it said ‘CHINA’ on the bottom. It hit a deco floor of black and white tiles, shattering and spreading a brown gritty liquid on the floor, that could only be coffee. He straightened and took in another sobering breath bracing his neck. Pain worked its way through his body, like a hurdler jumping all the vertebrae in his spine.

A waitress galloped over with a fresh pot of coffee as if that could put humpty dumpty back together again. She was small and girlish and had mousey brown hair, a pale pretty face with delicate features. Wearing a green plaid skirt and apron as some kind of uniform with a white blouse. Her name tag read; ‘Becky’.

“Are you alright? What happened to you?” She said, a genuine tone of concern in her voice.

“What?” James said.

“Your eye is bleeding” She pointed to her eye and held herself delicately.

James padded his eye with his hand until it came up wet. “Oh yeah, I think I was in a car accident”

“Oh my god, I’ll take care of this, we have a bathroom in the back you can get cleaned up.”

The sound of running water.

James opened his eyes, there was someone in front of him, through the steam, he wiped the glass. It was a man, a man with brown hair, he had a cut over his eye, light scratches on his face. There was blood. It took him a moment to realise it was his own face. It felt alien to him, was he wearing a new face or was it always like this?

The poet Pool, in his poem “Somebody’s been wearing my face again” wrote: ‘In this hall of mirrors/Built by liars, I am a pale reflection of myself.’

The water was running hot, he dipped his hands in it and slowly padded his face.

It stung but he kept at it.

After a few minutes it was clean and he felt a warming sensation under his collar. The steam cleared and he took another look at himself. He was still wearing his work clothes, a jacket he’d never seen before. It was maybe one size too big sitting on his shoulders making him look like a tailor’s dummy. It was a leather bikers jacket with a yellow stripe running up the arms.

He patted the pockets, they were empty. He opened it and put his hand inside the inside breast pocket and came out with a peculiar matchbox which had the same pattern as the floor. A hatched black and white, with a strange symbol that may have been a bird of some kind. Embossed in black it read “Twin Pines lodge” With an address ‘West capitol avenue, Sacramento’.

Puzzled he turned it over, it was blank but someone had drawn a set of lips on the back with red lipstick. As if it was a kiss.

 

0

Ladies Close Your Eyes Chapter 5 ‘Hole in the Silk’ (Raw)

Ok this in the overall book when it’s done will be the start of part 2. This is where we get introduced to the side plot with the fbi characters I pulled out of my hairy well-toned ass. Originally this story was intended as a small comic maybe around 3/4 issues long so I didn’t feel the need to go into depth and have characters investigating the murders from the other side for context but now I have free reign to do whatever the fuck I want. And goddamit I want slightly weird fbi agents looking at dead hookers!

So here’s the start of that, my main inspiration for them comes from movies like Surveillance and again tv shows like True Detective. So I wanted introverted slightly quirky people who could do the job of a toughed fed.

Updates on general shit, my day job has gotten a little crazy right now, hence the lack of content but I’m still going strong making that paper to fritter away on editors and marketing schemes. I was thinking of just giving away free money and see how that works, bribe motherfuckers to read my shit haha.

Also been reading a fellow zombie authors book and I’m actually really genuinely enjoying it. It’s like the walking dead novels but good haha. So I plan on doing a review for that sometime in the future if all goes well.

As always you can check out this whole chapter for the exclusive price of no monies on inkitt with the link provided.

Hole in the Silk

~

A black Lincoln town car pulled up along a dirt road on Riverview drive in Jurupa valley CA.

The car parked on the sidewalk in front of two green plastic garbage bins. The sidewalk consisted of a curb bracketing a patch of dirt and grass from the road. It was way out near the train tracks close to Riverside municipal on the other side of the valley.

It was a small back road, penned in by verdant hills on one side dotted with lonely single storey houses on the right. On the left looked like some kind of little ranch with a white picket fence made of metal out front. The fence of which had a wreath on it and a broken mailbox. Large trees surrounding it on one side, a small wire fence on the other. A single horse stood with its head dipped under what looked like an overturned sandwich box. Of the kind of sandwiches you get in gas stations, chewing silently. A small single storey house shrinking into the distance. Behind the overgrown shrubbery and white picket arch ways.

A shapely black woman got out of the driver’s seat. She leaned on the car door and looked around with an air of disenfranchisement. She wore a dark blue pant-suit with a grey camisole under her buttoned jacket. Her shoes were sensible black work shoes with raised rubber heels. Her hair was straight, tied back into a loose bun. She took a deep breath of fresh air, as if against her will and turned back to the car. She leaned on the open car door and craned her neck to look at the passenger seat. She was pretty trying to look dower with a practiced set of frown lines. Around her mid to early thirties, but it was catching up with her quick. She had a wide mouth, thin drawn on eye brows above small downturned almond eyes on a round warm face. Her nose was a thin strip down her face ending in a petite rounded nose. She wore no jewellery at all.

In the passenger seat was her partner. A man in his early forties, slim but well built. His suit looked more expensive than hers, just plain black with a white shirt and black skinny tie. He sat with his legs knotted playing Sudoku on his phone.

“Bored with Pokémon go already?” She said comically exasperated.

He looked up and smiled a cheeky ten-year-old smile “Too much walking”. He was handsome. Designer stubble left a little too long turned into a small shaggy salt and pepper beard. His hair was darker, slicked back tight on his head, his hairline dipped a little at the corners but it held out. He had a strong chin which dominated most of his face. The rest of it was pure jowls which sagged just a little more each day, hence the beard. He had a slightly flushed colour on his cheeks and forehead. Thin lips and small sincere eyes above a large ruddy nose with a few chips missing out of it.

She let out a breathy laugh shook her head, looked down the road and sucked her cheek before turning back to him. “Are you coming?”

He looked up, brow furrowed sincerely. “Hnh no, I’ll sit this one out”

“You sure?”

“I’ve seen it before”

“Ok” She sucked her gums and made a playful chupse sound as he smiled and shook his head. He was still looking down at his phone as she shut the door.

She straightened up and walked to the end of the drive towards a yellow sign with an arrow pointing right. The road itself looped back around the hills to a larger residential area.

She took her time walking down river view. She stopped out front a black set of gates in a walled off area of dirt. Probably for the horse to walk around in when it wasn’t pretending to be a truck stop sandwich.

She hung her hands on her hips and cast a glance down Avenue Juan Diaz. It was a reasonably nice area, quiet but for the trains. It was out of the way, in the dark you could come and go without crawling over too much bubble wrap.

The closest house was one on the corner. A single storey with a big driveway. A white Pontiac on the sidewalk out front and little red number on the driveway. Another white car in the open garage. It has a little stone path leading up a raised embankment shaded by large shaggy trees. There were two cop cars parked ‘cop-like’ at intersecting angles across the curved curb.

On the other side of the street on top of the hill was what looked like a sprawling villa or a large sand castle with large arched windows in the front. There was a large white unmarked van parked out front.

Her head on a swivel she turned back to the dirt road with the yellow sign. She was met by a steel gate almost at right angles to the black one for the horse. The gate was open at a slap-dash angle and dug into the loose dry earth. She lifted it and eased it across, it swung loose and scrapped to a stop, lifting up a layer of clay dust.

The path was too narrow for a car, lined on one side by a drainage ditch of some kind. The path itself looked well kept.

She walked without great haste down the path about a quarter of mile in the direction of the river. It lead her down a steep embankment overlooking the viaduct. One of the largest in California she’d been told.

The viaduct was a great concrete deco construction made of several arches. A train track ran across it and little else. It was slim bridge almost like one you’d expect ending in a large fort or a castle. There was only room either side for a walkway. Probably reserved for maintenance on trains that got stuck or upkeep on the bridge itself.

The embankment was overgrown with a crude path cut out leading down towards the river. She praised her sensible shoes as she gracefully descended the haphazard path towards the edge.

As she got further down the greenery thinned out and she could see them now.

~

Hole in the Silk

 

0

Green Sunday Chapter 17 ‘Fatal Hesitation’ (Raw)

Ah dayjob how you get in the way of the things I truly love. Like online gaming… oh yeah and writing and blogging and junk haha.

Ok too tired and out of fucks to give a full update, I’ve mainly been doing innane shit to make paper while I write in my mind in the shower and read on public transport. Other than that I’m proofreading the last chapter of GS while listening to Filthy Frank music. And the editing is coming along, I should have that all out maybe as soon as the end of the year then I’ll probably put it on amazon or something if I can’t find an agent by then to take it on.

As usual you can find the full chapter on inkitt fresh and raw and uncut and all that good stuff.

Fatal Hesitation

“WAIT!”

Sunday, half conscious, her face pressed against a concrete pillow as a giant boot rested it’s weight against her. Applying more pressure a pound at a time and stopping at this rude intervention.

The giant foot came off of Sunday’s pretty face and she lolled lifelessly into the dry gutter. Jeffrey turned theatrically to focus on this voice. Coming to him over the sounds of small fires burbling against a slight breeze, an idyllic scene.

TJ stood, shoulders knotted around his ears. His hands behind his back in the entrance of the multi-plex.

“I got your doll or whatever!”

“Lamby? Gimme!” The hulking sub-human lurched towards TJ, his knuckles dragging along the smooth tarmac. Looming over TJ, his warm breath swirling all around him.

“Err, fetch?” TJ squirmed and then tossed the small plushie into the middle of the street.

“LAMBY!” Jeffrey leaped in the direction of the doll like a giant horny dog.

TJ’s panorama cleared of this giant monstrosity. He had the room and the presence of mind to run to Sunday’s side, like the good white knight he dreamed of parodying. He tripped over his feet and stumbled to a crawl beside her lifeless body.

“Sunday?” He said as he craned his chubby body over her, her portly romeo, maybe a little too late.

“LAAMMMBBBBYYY!” Jeffrey sifted through the debris. He tossed cars and bikes like tissue dispensers. Tossing up concrete chunks the size of dirty Brooklyn pigeons. Until his frantic eyes focused on something fluffy and white. “Lamby! I finally found you. The monsters, they took you away from me.” Jeffrey folded into an almost curtsy as graceful as possible. He pincered it with a giant finger and thumb not unlike the claw grabber machine it just came from.

He picked it up. Childlike glee projected on the grotesque potmarked mountain range that was his face. He floated it in front of his sloped brow turning it gracefully in his monstrous hands. Seeing it in it’s entirety sent a wave of clumsy emotions across the mottled canvas that was his face. Confusion and sadness, taking the express train to rage and desperation. The cogs began to turn with great purpose. As he realised what he was holding in his fingers and thumb was actually a plush snowman. The orange carrot nose and bead smile, a mocking endictment of a viscious ruse.

“This not lamby! Where lamby? WHERE LAMBY?”

~

“Ooh the fack are you?” The pilot said with no hint of incredulity that he was indeed being fucked. His face scrunching up looking like a map of the London underground.

“I’m your new co-pilot.” Carpenter said as he grinned and prodded the pilot in his soft side with the barrel of the assault rifle. “And mind your language, there are children present”.

“What the fack are you talking about mate? I don’t see any kids. This is all in your ‘ead mate, you want to mind yourself, you’re out of your depth ‘ere son. My guvna’ will ave your balls as a wedding present for ‘is missus”

“Start the engine”

“You’re asking for it son.” The pilot said as he started to spin the blades with a beligerance of a teen going to be late to her own sweet sixteen.

“Phweeeep!” An obnoxious whistling cut above the background hum of the engine and the quickening blades overhead.

“See you’re in for it now.” The pilot said as he turned the engine back of with an anti-climatic sigh from both him and the engine.

Carpenter looked over the control panel, peaking out the domed front window. A man in the same tactical gear as him stood statuesque in front of the helicopter. Laura by his side. An uncomfortable smile and a raised brow on her face as the figure raised a shiney pistol to the little girls head. “Drop the gun and step out of the helicopter.” The statue said grinning, reluctantly wearing the mask of the dutiful villain.

Carpenter tossed the rifle out of the helicopter door, landing soft in a bush. He de-choppered one angsty step at a time.

The statue moved around the side of the chopper to meet him. He was just under six foot, average height. He wasn’t wearing a gas mask, just a smirk of indifferent malice.

“My name’s Malcolm, I’m a fan” The man said as he dropped the little girl by his side to raise a hand for shaking. The shiney pistol was a lot larger close up, a chrome desert eagle, very ostinatious. “Go play over there now, there’s a good girl” He said as he shooed Laura with the gun.

Carpenter looked at his hand and looked back at Malcolm.

“It was smart to use the kid, not very chivalrous, but effective. Might be a little played out now” He lowered his hand and raised the gun at hip height. “We’re just going to wait here until the end and then a team can pick you up for nap time, easy.” He smiled like a dentist and tongued his front teeth. “The girl can come too, she’ll be fine, what with her big mean protector, wont she?”

Carpenter grimaced at this guarded insult. The tactical gear also came with a lovely usmc knife which Carpenter was yet to use. But there it was still hanging vertically on the front of his tactical gear. He reached for it slowly, eyes locked with Malcolm.

“Ah now that’s not very smart is it?” Malcolm hardened his face and rattled the gun around like it was getting too heavy for him. “Leave that alone”.

Carpenter eyes didn’t move. His hand possessed, unsheathed the blued knife from it’s molded kydex sheathe.

“Be a good lad an put that down eh.” Malcolm stretched his arm out, the heavy gun jossling in his grip. “We have a large investment in you, don’t make me shoot”.

Carpenter’s arm dropped to his side holding the swathy knife. His feet fluttered dreamily and he floated forward carried by an ill wind.

“I SAID STOP! NOW!” Malcolm squeezed the gun hard and it shook visibly in his grip “I WILL SHOOT YOU!”

Carpenter couldn’t hear him over the sound of his heart beat marching closer to his ears. Beating like the wind against an ancient castle wall. The blade cast no light and no shadow. It whispered promises to him of perfect cuts and no drag, slices of neat flesh falling into place. Enchanting dancing rivulets of blood pirouetting on its head as it hummed a death rattle in D. Torrents of blood beat inside his ears, he could almost hear the music. It was something like how he imagined Wagner. Ride of the Valkyries with a steady staccato drum beating faster and faster until you know it had to stop.

“STOOOPPPP!”

CLICK CLICK!

Malcolm caught Carpenter’s wrist with rattlesnake speed and grip. All the blood drained from his arm as he squeezed and gave him a quick love tap to the temple with the barrel of the eagle. A seering white light and a ringing noise in his ears as Carpenter went down onto the grass, soft and limp.

Malcolm turned to face the Laura as if his hips were that of an action figure with kung fu one hundred and eighty degree turns. She stood with the little gun in her hand clicking furiously trying to find the unspent cylinder.

CLICK CLICK CLICK!

The gun jumped out of her hand with the last clicking, giving off a soft squeaky pop and a brief flash and sizzle.

Malcolm crouched and picked the little gun off the ground.

“I must have missed this.” He tried to open the cyclinder but it was fused shut. He threw it in the dirt and stood back up putting his hands on his knees with an unhealthy clicking sound. “Looks like a misfire, you’re lucky it didn’t take those pretty hands clean off. Looks like both of our lucky days eh?”

“Is the badman dead?”

“No, he’s just sleeping, you don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’ll take you somewhere safe, the game is almost ov-.”

Malcolm’s breath was caught by a pair dirty hands wrapped around his throat. Dirt under the nails digging into his protuberant adam’s apple.

A wirey grip, thin hands tightening around his throat. An intense urge to kill coiled around his throat and gave zero ground to a hungry lung or a thirsty vein. Malcolm fell to his knees blue lipped, his face turning a shade of mauve. Spittle on his lips sputtering out. The last cubic milliteres of oxygen expelled from his lungs.

His vision went white and spotty. He couldn’t feel his lower extremities but he remembered he had a gun, a big heavy one. He sent a signal to his arms if they were still listening. His hand hovered next to him, dragging the heavy gun to his side. His grip locked onto the handle like an action figure with kung fu grip.

His arm floated up as if carried by a rising tide of water in an airtight phone booth. Carpenter couldn’t hear or see a thing, blood in his eyes. The israeli kiss on the side of his head the desert eagle gave him opened a theatrical wound. It bled hysterically like a wwe wrestler doing an impression of a tampon.

Malcolm lifting the gun up to his head height. Hovering where he imagined the gnarled head of Carpenter sat aloft. His arm jossling like a marionette puppetted by a drunk with low blood sugar. Struggling to keep the gun from plummeting into the ground as it so desperately wanted to do. Drawn magnetically to the earth. It swayed back and forth like a heavy pendulus artificial growth on the end of Malcolm’s arm.

Carpenter’s hand’s just seemed to get tighter and thinner, a wire man come to life to choke the life out of the world. His hands didn’t exhale a millimetre. A bottomless well of loathing self and otherwise driving his muscles like the hands of a clock. Unfeeling cogs clicking into place, murder o’clock.

Malcolm’s index finger tickled the heavy trigger. The shaking of his numb digit squeezing it pound for pound until…

BANG!

~

 

0

Perfect Porridge

Yo, just want to first tell the people who will reverse image search the header to go die in a fire ha-ha. (You’re doing it now aren’t you?)
Ok this is just a little update/buffer before I post a new chapter of GS, I dunno I just hate the look of two chapters together in my blog postings. It just looks lame.
So just gonna give a quick update on my writing. My brother recently came home for a visit, and brought with him an idea I thought I’d written down but seemingly did not.
He had mentioned this great documentary to me maybe a year ago but I never got around to watching but for some reason he felt the need to recant the story at the perfect timing of Green Sunday coming to a close.
Hearing it again just clicked perfectly with the timing. For at least a week I’ve been agonizing on what to do next, rifling through the cavernous files of all my ideas and loose story synopsises. Feeling a little like Goldie locks; ‘This is too short’ ‘Too long’ ‘Too weird’ ‘too stupid’ ‘makes no sense’ ‘oh that’s just an empty word file with a cool title’.
At that point I’d resigned myself to the idea of doing a few short stories or novelette just to pad out of my repertoire while I shill for GS and build on whatever I had planned for nanowrimo which was probably that Dexter fanfic I had rattling around in my tormented little head bowl. And I’m still probably going to do that just to pump up my views on inkitt page and what not, just to keep my head above water, maybe enter them in a few writing contests. I’m just dying to do something completely different and not have to be locked into this possibly yearlong commitment like with GS.
I really enjoyed writing that but towards the end I started to think if it really had an audience, and I sort of came up with all my best ideas for social commentary while writing it but it was too late to put them in so just pushed them off onto a sequel, that might never happen.

Anyway so I watched this documentary and instantly had before me at least 13 pages of raw notes and ideas of how to further the story and really make it my own. For anyone that hasn’t searched the image like the little Miss Marple’s you are, it’s a true story about a boy that goes missing but is then discovered in a foreign country years later.

The bones of the story are all lined up for a perfect faux murder mystery psychological thriller conspiracy story akin to the changeling. I just need to add the meat, my own characters, sub plot, the life and soul of the story. I’m going to breathe life into it and make it my own the only way I know how. Maybe add a little true detective/twin peaks “magic” ha-ha.
It’s something I’ve longed to write since I started, something dark and gritty and also melancholy and suspenseful with a truly captivating plot full of twists and turns and danger and intrigue of which I will add.
A gripping thrill ride that will have people’s head scratching weeks after and give them pause in their beds before they lay their heads down to sleep.

It’s still in the planning phases as yet, I only have 16 pages of rough synopsis, I’m going to go over it and see if I can double it, adding my own sub-plots and characters as the weeks progress. Alternating between writing the novellas I already have synopsisized (That’s a word) blogging and plotting this potentially award winning airport novel ha-ha.
Honestly I think GS taught me to not be so self-indulgent, I ned to focus on stories that will really make my mark, that will give me a voice and put my name on the map before I can re-visit ridiculousness of that calibre. It’s why I chose to side line the Dexter fanfic, it’s too self-indulgent, I can’t just finish a series I love and just think I can jump into writing the next wave of those books just yet. And even if I did, what am I going to do just ask Jeff Lindsay to endorse it, hope he’ll see that mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery and not sue me ha-ha. It’s something I’d love to do but I think I need to put it off til I get some leverage in the industry as opposed to the zero I have now ha-ha.

Ok so that’s what I’m doing, I don’t really have a title for this next project of which I will be doing for nanowrimo. The working titles I have right now are; “(The)Wanted Son/(The)Wanted boy/boy in the backyard/the boy that came back”.
I didn’t fuck around this time, I googled all those titles to make sure I would be the top search result if it was paired with the word ‘book’. My first title was ‘The stranger’, fucking retard I am. I’m not fucking around this time, I want this to be an original book title, that’s interesting and thought provoking and mysterious without being derivative.

All things aside my life pretty much fell apart a week or two ago, but to be fair I didn’t have much use for one any way, and it was definitely getting in the way of my writing. That’s all I can say on the matter really, I could sit and mope or I could ride the crest of this new wave of energy I feel from these new projects. Onward and upward and all that inspiring shit people say and don’t really believe ha-ha kill me :’).
No seriously, all good, I just need time and maybe prescription medication.
Oh shit, this would have been the perfect opportunity to write something about the Orlando shooting, fuck I’m self-centred, ah never mind, maybe next time.

Peace be upon you…. ALLAH AKBAR!!!!!!!!

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Dexter is Dead… again.

Ok been letting my blogging slip for a while because of this and that excuse, work, travel, romance, all that shit. But that’s all gone now, back to business as usual.
I recently finished the last of the Dexter series, if you don’t know already the blog is a play on the title of the first book ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’. And although the series isn’t what inspired me to become a writer myself it has influenced a lot of thematic choices I later came to love.
So needless to say I’m a big fan of the show and then I just got done reading all eight of the books and it’s fair to say I really liked them since I read them back to back, which is pretty is pretty rare for me. I think the last time I did that was when I first discovered pulp and read all the Philip Marlowe books by Raymond Chandler one if not THE godfather of literary pulp/noir, whatever you wanna call it. I personally think he beats the pants off of Dashiell Hammet although I love me some Sam Spade and I really enjoyed the first Parker novel I read by Richard Stark I think it was. I was actually thinking of filling the hole left by Dexter with some Parker.

Parker is like a more amoral version of Philip Marlowe I guess, like half way between Dexter and Sam Spade maybe. He’s just a straight up, hard edge career criminal. I was almost shocked when I read the hunter. There’s a scene where he kills this innocent woman by mistake and that wasn’t really the problem it was the way he just brushes it off, like ‘oops’ and I thought even Dexter would have had a moment of contemplation over that. And that’s why that character is really memorable, someone so focused on what they want that they burn everyone and anything in their way and feel nothing for them. A really powerful character I thought. It’s like you’re reading this like “Am I the baddie?”

Ok so I really enjoyed the Dexter series, I felt it flagged towards the end a little, like Lindsay was just in no mood to continue it so just ended it. I was a little disappointed by the prison sequence (Oh yeah spoilers Dexter goes to prison ha-ha), because I expected him to shank a fool or whatever but it was pretty boring monotonous, nothing really happens.

I liked the change of pace, overall I thought the books were weird because they became less about serial killing and more about Dexter’s life getting in the way of his serial killing but I guess that’s realistic and a great parralel for real life getting in the way of the things you love.
I’m not sure if this actually is the last book because the ending was very and obviously intentionally open ended. And the show also played around with an open ending although mercifully they thought better of that because that show really started to drag. Looking back having read the books I can see it was dragging its heels as soon as it left the starting block of the first season. They really really really shouldn’t have killed off the ice truck killer. He’s a pivotal character in the books, well sort of, but I think that was a mistake. They could have dragged out that familial conflict into later seasons allowing them to not have to rely on really over used tropes and shameless filler.

I liked the show for what it was, it was almost an expanded universe, exploring things around his dad and his mom, they took the books and ran with them and it was very entertaining. it got me through a lot of stressful shit at uni when the new Dexter ep came out. I could sit and watch it and talk to my friends about it

Anyway, enough of that bullshit, what I really wanted to talk about was that I really do feel like there’s a Dexter size hole in my life. So I was thinking of doing a fanfic of sorts, a continuation surrounding Dexter’s grown up daughter Lily-Anne. Essentially I want to get deep in the shit and explore some of the stuff I think Lindsay shied away from and fill in the blanks myself.

Because I think I mentioned in the past that the Dexter lore has some supernatural elements, he essentially #spoiler alert# squares off with a demon or old god or whatever in the third book and then after that it was just dropped like an old guy’s jock strap in the men’s locker room at the gym. I think it must have got panned or received a lot of criticism for taking what was essentially a mystery/crime thriller book into the Dan Brown illuminati/Alex Jones territory. And honestly I have nothing against that sort of shit. I really liked that book, it was such a jarring change of pace I was a little disappointed it wasn’t gone into in more detail or at the very least touched upon at least one more time. It was just sort of side-lined. Just like how in the books he’s promised to train the fledgling killer kids he’s raising. He never gets around to it, so I want my story take on that to be the result of his inaction.

I was thinking of having the ancient society from book three come back and hunt down Dexter’s progeny to harvest their dark passengers. Structure it the same way as the other books, have her as like a crime blogger who investigates murders and gets tangled up in this web of intrigue because of her innate morbid curiosity. Then out of nowhere the murders seem to be spelling out a message to her. I essentially want to make almost a copy of the first book, almost an ‘homage’ force awakens that bitch. That’s about all the spoilers I want to give away. I may turn this into like a fun side project of short novellas or full blown novels maybe if I can get in contact with Jeff Lindsay, I’ve exchanged a total of three words with him on twitter so I’m in like flin motherfucker ;).
I dunno it just seems like there’s so much that could have come from the Dexter mythos, it just feels unfinished, unloved, like Lindsay was just tired of that headspace, which I can totally understand. I think Dexter was a character I related to in a scary way and I was very invested in his struggles and I just think it didn’t end quite right. I mean I never expected him to live happily ever after, but why not? Yeah it’s fiction and bad guys always have to pay but do they? Do they in real life? Not really, so why should fiction have to conform to that standard?

I just thought it would be interesting to keep the series going with a woman at the helm, especially in this current political climate. I could see myself having a lot of fun with that. I’m not sure if I should do it for nanowrimo because I already had some lovecraftian thrillery type stuff lined up for that or maybe something odd and lynchian, completely surreal and off the wall. But we’ll see if I can come up with a synopsis in time. I might just start those other things as soon as I’ve released every chapter of gs.
Anyway my facebook ban should be lifted soon and I’ll be posting more shit on there and on twitter, I have to get my thumb out of my ass and reignite my social media platform, reanimate that sucker.

Peace out my african brothers and have a killer day ;).

 

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Spyderco Delica review

This knife was a bit of a weird fascination for me since before it I wasn’t a huge fan of folding knives and I’d never even heard of Spyderco let lone would I ever be able to admire their unique beauty.
They’re odd looking knives but they’re so iconic and functional that you have to respect the craftmanship and utilitarian nature and the subtle curves of an effortlessly elegant knife such as a spyderco.
I became fixated on this knife in particular after I saw what was close enough to it in a punisher comic.

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I really loved the idea of such a small nimble deadly little knife like that taking on someone with a machete. That sneaky way you can open it without looking using the spyder hole. Finding the edge alignment just right, waiting for the moment they’re close enough for you to launch one quick strike before they can even raise their knife. The serrated blade cutting evenly and quickly.
The knife is tiny, its probably the smallest folder I own since I collect just for show, so I like bigger flashier folders not so much utilitarian edcs. But something about it’s vicious utility and the idea of such a small knife being so deadly like a spider bite really intrigued me and I had to have one similiar.

The delica is the closest I could find, the blade may be a little rounder, the knife from the comic is more like a smaller version of the spyderco police which has that little top unsharpened swedge. But I never really liked the police and I wanted a three inch hide away type knife and there was something that irked me about having the word POLICE on the side of my knife, and I wasn’t really feeling the stainless steel handle scales.So the delica fit perfectly.

JQqP4eN.pngThe delica 4 is just under 3 inches of serrated cutting mini-samurai sword haha. Made with beautiful vg-10 all the way from seki city japan. The only knife I think I have from seki city so far.

Black frn handles, a tight back lock, and 4 way pocket clip. Its a really snug grip in the hand, weighs almost nothing. I’ve had this knife in my pocket and completely forgot it was there. It chokes up really nice and favors, due to the size, a forward filipino knife grip. That’s like a forward sabre grip with the thumb on the back of the knife. It has some really nice jimping so it stays perfectly still for cutting.

The blade itself is very strong and ridiculously sharp, the serrations are probably the sharpest serrations I’ve ever encountered, kicks coldsteels ass cold haha. Once you have the edle alignment right this little thing cuts like no other knife I’ve ever owned, it’s scary smooth cuts.

Overall I just love how small and compact it is and how much deadly power you can get from such a delicate knife. If you need it for household shit as an everyday carry I’d recommend it, it carves through cardboard and plastic like it’s possessed, it cuts anything. And I wouldn’t be that hard pressed to use it for defence if I was inclined. Not home defence, I’d probably go for the more traditional baseball bat, my personal favourite the cold steel brooklyn shorty. But if you were in a country that allowed legal carry of lock knives under 3 inches, I’d say take this.

Not if you’re fighting the punisher though, fuck that shit haha.RBRLwo2.png

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First impressions of Fallout 4 (totally not a review)

I’m a little ashamed to say I’m on my second play through. Not because I have no life but because when I got into work, one of my friends told me he was on his fourth and I was dismayed.

I’m gonna try and refrain from fangirling too hard because that makes me sick and it just isn’t me. And this is by far a perfect game but its pretty freaking close.

The game itself didn’t take too long to install and load up although I wished I would have just downloaded it so I could have had my own private mini midnight launch instead of waiting feverishly for the post and deluding myself that it might have come a day earlier like that one time ages ago I may have imagined. Although obviously I fucked it up and had to reinstall it because I let it download the update mid installation so it was all installing from the net and I couldn’t see the entire loading bar which drove me nuts so I had to reinstall for sanities sake.

But when it was finally loaded, I started and found myself oddly gripped by the opening live action cinematic and then created my character of which I based on David Morrissey’s depiction of the Governor from Walking Dead. And before you jump down my throat calling me a philistine for using that version and not the fu manchu moustachioed comic and novel version (all of which I’ve read exhaustively, except the latest novel I think), I say fuck you David Morrissey is better looking, face it.
I think his face and his depiction of the Governor is also a lot more rounded and likeable and I was actually sad to see the show stick with the comic storyline and his death, when they went off the rails mid season and used the books a little I thought he might have been remodelled into an ongoing character and that would have been more interesting than just sticking to the source material with a few deviations.
I think his character was perfect for the character displayed by the voice actor for the male protagonist in fallout 3 Brian Delaney. I was initially sceptical about the voiced protagonist as the previous games had silent protagonists and voiced protagonists in rpgs like mass effect can get a little annoying and break immersion slightly because it feels less like you are the main character and more like you’re watching the main character do stuff.
But I have to say it really sold the immersion and the emotion at the start of the game, the game didn’t kid me and expect me to care about the main characters wife or kid (like in fallout 3 where you’re supposed to care about your fictional dad played by Liam Neeson) but I was very aware purely through the voice actor’s acting that the main character did care about his wife and child and that sort of sold the emotion of the game.
And when the ‘event’ happens, I really felt like someone who had been tossed into this hostile landscape, whose home and everything he’s known had been destroyed and had to sleep on the floor of truck stops office while it rained and radiation clouds blew through with only a dog to keep him company. It really felt morose and beautiful and that you had to live another day to get revenge and to rebuild a life for yourself and make something beautiful out of all the ugliness that surrounded you and I really loved it.
Despite that, I was proved right about the downsides of the voiced protagonists, mainly and I see a lot of chatter about this, it’s almost impossible to be evil.
Now I suppose you could just kill everyone but its hardly enslaving people and eating babies a la Fallout 3 is it. And the evil dialogue options just sound angsty and mean in Brian’s voice, he just seems too nice a guy to do all that fucked up shit. So twinned with my David Morrissey Governor smooth talking gunslinger character, he came off less monstrously evil and more misunderstood monster. Less Count Dracula more Frankenstein’s monster.
And to be honest I really dug that, good and evil are so subjective so losing the karma system and making good and evil more ambiguous seemed like a step in the right direction. If anything the karma system just evolved into the companion approval system, so depending on which character you pick to come with you, determines what you want to say or do to impress them. But again not one companion is Hannibal fucking lector, where would be the practicality of that? Every character, evil, cruel, vindictive or not has to be in some way likeable or redeemable so that you enjoy their character and want to follow their progression and I think Bethesda delivers on that well.
The factions are also really interesting and have their own sort of style; on my first play through I sided with the minutemen and set about uniting the settlements of the commonwealth, basically creating a people’s army. I don’t know what it is about this game that’s different from elder scrolls, in Skyrim and Oblivion I really didn’t see a problem with joining the mages guild and using the magic I learned for a little bit of thieving on the side. Or joining the fighter’s guild and then turning those talents to assassination, but in F4 the factions are a little more involved, a little more compelling. I couldn’t swear allegiance to the minutemen and then swear an oath of service to the Brotherhood of steel, it really feels like you’re either one or other and each faction is heavily tied into the main plot of the game unlike in Elder scrolls where each faction is its own quest line in a way. I can’t say which I like more to be honest; I think they both have merit.
The game play is great, the exploration (which is always the crux of rpgs like this) is top notch, the anal crafting is minecraft levels of addictive, I literally had to pull myself away from it just to actually play the game main game it’s so intoxicatingly addictive.
I think they really nailed the levelling and perk system too; it’s perfect for someone like me that likes to create a lot of distinct characters and loathes everyman grinders who spend ages making a character that’s good at literally everything. I’m sitting her playing my talker, small guns character and I can’t wait to start a big guns character who swings bats at people, now I’m playing that character and I can’t wait to play my slashy stealthy character who uses silenced weapons and crafts his own explosive traps.
But the game as a lot of people have said; is not really an rpg, the dialogue wheel is a little stunted and the voice actor does make it seem like you’re further away from the actions than you’d like.
Overall, I’m enthralled by it, I want to get lost in it, I almost feel like I rush it just to try and absorb everything I can get, I want to experience everything and I can’t wait for dlc.

 

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Dexter vs Dexter

As usual I have nothing more than a topic in my head to start this semi-literate ramble brainfart type endeavour and the longer I stay away from fallout 4 the harder it gets to breath. But I really enjoyed the dexter books hence the name of the blog. I also really liked the show and I wanted a somewhat side by side comparison, keeping the spoilers to a minimum.

The first book is called ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’ and it’s essentially the basis for the first season of the tv show. Which I shamefully admit I watched before I started reading the books because I’m a pleb, there you go, happy now?

I do this a lot in fact, I watched the walking dead before I read the comics and then I read the novels but the comics came first so that doesn’t count. I watched the silent hill film before I even knew they were games, the same with the resident evil series. So all around I’m a big media pleb, ain’t life grand?

After the first season of the show it gets a little squiffy. In the first book it wraps up nicely, ok I lied there are gonna be some spoilers. But in the show it wraps up a little skew because in the show, he kills the ice truck killer but in the book he lets him live and he recurs later on in the fourth and fifth book and becomes somewhat of a pivotal character.

The book is a lot more morally grey since he doesn’t actually have inner conversations with his dead adoptive father Harry and instead communes with a supernatural entity inside himself which he calls the ‘Dark Passenger’. He alludes somewhat to this in the show but it’s done a little cack-handedly in my opinion because it’s brushed off as if it’s an addiction whereas the book goes full fahrenheit/indigo prophecy syndrome with fucking demons and voodoo and ancient Babylonian gods.

… Which I actually rather liked but someone obviously conked that on the head because it never really goes back to that in the book and the show gives it a wide berth for probably good reason, it begs beliefs I guess. Too tinfoil hat, Alex Jonesy I guess, I thought it was fun but I guess that was a rabbit hole that might have taken the books up the garden path and since I really liked the following books and I’m still reading them into book seven tells me it wasn’t all that bad.

The first things you notice between the books and the show, in the show he’s this bad ass judo serial killer who kicks the entire ass all the time for some reason. It was cool but in the books he is less John Wayne and more John Cusack… in con air, the film where he didn’t do much.
It’s not that I don’t like him being more vulnerable but I feel like a lot of the time he doesn’t get to be the hero of his own story and after like the tenth time he’s faced death but been saved at the last minute it gets a little annoying.
I mean I don’t begrudge it for using a device like that, I try my fucking damnedest to avoid that ‘ooh he’s about to be killed but then someone saves him at the last minute’ thing, but it’s like literally an unavoidable tension building device. I can’t really think of one of the books from the series where it doesn’t happen except the first now I strain my brain.

Another massive difference is the scope of the book, in the show we follow all these other characters like Batista and his sister Deborah as they have their own arcs but in the book it’s a first person narrative from Dexter’s perspective so these characters become window decoration. And this may sound like a criticism but when you’ve got a TV show about a blood spatter expert by day serial killer by night, I don’t really give a shit about how his friend’s love life is going unless it somehow connects to the serial killy stuff you know, it’s just fluff, useless TV show filler nonsense and the book cuts through it like crate paper to get to the good shit.

That being said the structure of a TV show meant that he had to kill someone per episode and the show handled that quite nicely, a little like the freak of the week supernatural/Buffy style. But in this case the monster was human. But even supernatural couldn’t keep that up and the books don’t even really try to have a murder per however many chapters. On average he’ll killer around one or two people a book, which is perfect because it really allows for a lot of emotion and tension and it really gets into the right frame of mind, it’s deliciously descriptive without making you want to gag like American Psycho levels of gore. It’s subtly macabre, casually sick and twisted, I love it ha-ha.

I think the biggest difference is that Dexter’s kids are fully fleshed out characters… somewhat in the book, whereas in the show they’re just flaccid annoying extras, in the book they have inner workings of their own. And spoiler alert, although there evil father isn’t in the books, what he left behind inside them is enough to make them interesting as they turn out to be just like Dexter. That being said, Lindsay hasn’t really gone into that aspect of their characters yet. Dexter has promised to ‘show them the ropes’ but he never seems to get around to it. He’s always so wrapped up in himself and his work and his ‘other work’ to really take the time and I can’t help empathising with that I guess.
Dexter is an animal and he deals with things as they come I guess, his own self interest and self preservation will always trump training his foster kids how to murder people.
In terms of where the story is going I think that’s going to be a big future problem because spoilers, his brother, the ice truck killer seems to take a keen interest in the kids and there may be a clash of who’s wings they’ll be taken under, Dexter being discernibly the lesser evil.

I genuinely love and get swept up in these books, I suppose in a scary way I and Dexter (Jeff Lindsay the author) have a similar inner voice and I love his style and his wit and the more and more I read the more influenced I get by his dark wit.

That’s fangirling enough for one blog haha, thanks or reading/.

 

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