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Ghost Garbage fire go!

Ok so I actually got off my ass and pirated me a copy of this trash and watched it with my mum. Tbf she actually liked it but there’s no accounting for taste and she has none haha.
To be honest I didn’t think it was that bad at the start, it seemed fairly entertaining, it looks good, the effects are ok, it’s not shot badly. I actually liked some of the ghosts which I found surprising, some of them looked pretty good.

The problems start early though, all the jokes are fart or poop or ass or front ass related, it’s so cringey it’s almost unbearable and it’s not funny beyond like a single pity guffaw.

I heard people talking about this pringle ad during the first ghost encounter scene and I was like ‘so she’s eating pringles, who cares?’. But whatever you heard it’s much worse, I mean it’s not like a one second shot, those pringles are in shot almost through that scene and she draws attention to them a few times and I was like ‘Seriously?’ it was shameless and it completely took me out of what should have been the first pivotal moment of the film which just turned into a silly gross out gag.

Seriously this movie is not funny, the funniest jokes in this movie were made by the editor when he was putting this together, every joke in this movie does not land, period. I saw a lot of reviews where people were saying Kevin, Chris Hemsworth’s character, the dopey secretary, was the saving grace in the movie. And I think they’re dead. His jokes were just as terrible if not more terrible, some of the jokes I was told were funny had no context, he just said them randomly with no setup. He was just saying dumb things, if any movie needed a laugh track it was. What’s so funny about his character exactly? He’s dumb, like monumentally ‘how has he stayed alive this long, seriously how does he feed himself dumb’ that’s it, that’s not a joke. What’s more its ‘offensive’ Janean (no fucking idea how to spell her name) wasn’t dumb, she wasn’t a scientist but she wasn’t a mouth breathing idiot, so why they thought about including a dopey male secretary as a gag I have no idea because there is no romantic sub-plot at all. They don’t even attempt one.
I think the worst part of this movie is that none of the characters seem like real people, they all seem like cartoon characters, every character apart from Charles Danse is just a walking talking silly gag. It’s just tiring and it makes you very aware you’re not watching a movie that has any intention of taking itself seriously so can have no drama or tension or engaging plot at all.

Ok on to the controversy bullshit, I honestly think having women ghostbusters made no difference, there isn’t a cast on earth that could have made this movie work, you could have re-united the old cast bring Harold Ramis back from the dead and they couldn’t have made this movie watchable. So really it has nothing to do with them being women and everything to do with the writing and direction being lacklustre.

On the whole the cast was probably the only thing about it that was any good, I’m not a big McCarthy fan but her character was probably the most interesting I guess. Kristin Wiig is great but she was pretty much the boring straight man. The other girl who was supposed to be Egon was terrible, beyond ridiculous. Lesly Jones was probably the most real character in the movie despite the stupid forced loud black woman jokes that made the world cringe. She was probably the most consistent character throughout.

But the problem really was that there was no chemistry, it was just a bunch of zany characters shoved together whereas the original film felt like a group of friends doing a dirty job for not much pay. It worked, they meshed, these new ghostbusters did not. They didn’t feel like real characters so I couldn’t care about their relationship.

The story didn’t make a whole lot of sense and it didn’t have a pleasing flow, it felt empty. It wasn’t a very satisfying film to watch because there wasn’t really a big arc or any characters you thought were central. It didn’t feel like a cohesive movie, it felt like an overly long and unfunny SNL skit, I know everyone is saying that, but they’re goddamn right.

Overall it wasn’t so bad it was good, but it wasn’t horrible, it was lame, a wet fart of a movie and a pitiful start to a franchise that seems like it’s already dead.

I mean we knew it would suck, it was marketed by idiots who remade a classic movie and intentionally alienated the original fans of the franchise failing completely to secure a new audience, so of course it flopped. This is what you get when you push ideology over actually creating things people will like, which is your job as a content creator. That being said there wasn’t any really overt political or feminist messages in the movie, so I can’t fault it for that.

But still I give it two raspberries out of five.

 

0

Green Sunday Chapter 11 Eggs, hash and grits (Edited)

Yo yo yo people. Don’t know what I was going for or why the big font today but fuck it. I’m back with another edited chapter. My editor is back from vacation or wherever she went. Probably battling the forces of evil in japan, fighting godzilla or something. But she’s back and hence a wild new chapter has emerged. First thing she said was the beginning sucked but she seemed to like the rest of it, thankfully the beginning is short haha.
And here it is a voila’.

Only seven chapters left, as usual follow the link to the full chapter in a more elegant format. Hopefully I’ll be going live with it on amazon sometime next year so keep an eye out for that.

Eggs, hash and grits.

~
The smell of sweat and blood and tears, the sound bare of feet on a concrete floor. Soft flesh and bone colliding. A loud chorus of people shouting and smoking and drinking. The smell of motor oil and leather hanging in the stale air. A group of people were huddled around two half-naked men knocking the shit out of each other.

“Where the fuck is Bernie?” Mojang hissed as he reclined on a large, high-backed office chair. The wheels and stand were broken. but he sat on it as if it were a low throne. A sexy biker chick in her underwear straddled him.

She leant over him with a needle and a trail of dental floss, and delicately sewed up what was left of his eye.

“Keep still baby,” she said as she pressed her slinky tattooed flesh against his.

Mojang had set himself up in a garage on the far side of town. The smell of motor oil, and the tools and spare parts clanging, put his mind at ease.

He’d holed up in the dilapidated office and the rest of his crew were getting lit on the garage floor. They took out a couple of scrappy survivors they’d picked up on their day’s raiding and set up a little fight club.

There was a ring of drunken bikers on the concrete floor of the shop. They surrounded a skinny office clerk as he pounded the cartilage of a fat barista against the concrete floor, until a satisfying, greasy, wet, snapping sound cut a swathe through the loud, drunken crowd. The clerk pounded his sweaty mitts into the stubbly fat face of the barista against the grey concrete: hot, wet, slapping sounds of meat and bone colliding on the cold, wet floor; rivulets of muddy crimson blood that would make Jackson Pollock cry manly tears. Eventually he stopped shaking and a viscous red bile started pouring from his nose and mouth.

“We got a winner!” A hairy biker in a leather waistcoat picked up the dazed office clerk by his slick, skinny wrist, propping him up. The office clerk, almost unconscious, panted out a relieved smile as his eyes rolled back in his skull.

Bernie watched from a darkened corner as they took the ‘winner’ and threw his almost lifeless body into the net of half-dead, twitching corpses, laughing as they did it.

Bernie perched in the corner next to an old payphone bolted to the wall. He rested the receiver against his ear and spoke softly.

“I hear you…tomorrow…can’t wait.” He tried to hold a smile back, tightening his face as he looked about the dim garage, lit only by unwieldy camp fires and generator-operated standing lights. He hung up the phone with a tight, satisfying click.

As the crowd got a little quieter, coming down off their wave of excitement, Bernie could hear his name being shouted.

“Bernie! Get your fat Jew ass in here!”

Bernie unfolded his arms and sighed with icy aggression as he peeled himself off the cold, concrete wall of the garage.

He popped the door of the office open. It was one of those thin plastic doors you were afraid you might yank right off. He stuck his head around the door like a temp.

“You call me?”

“Take a seat,” Mojang said, through the girl still straddling him, sewing up his eye. He didn’t move from his seat.

“There isn’t another chair in here”

“Then stand,” Mojang said as he moved the half-naked girl off his crotch. “Two minutes.”

The girl flounced out of the small office. She dragged a feminine, two-day-old musk behind her as she shut the door with a definitive bang.

“Was there something?”  Bernie said as he turned around looking at the closed door, his eyes careless.

“How does it look?” Mojang spoke to a rear view bike mirror he held up in front of his face. He tilted it down, revealing his sewn up eye. It was swollen and bloody; it looked like there was a red baseball stuck in his skull.

“Like shit.”

“You talk to him? The man? He called you?” Mojang reclined in the seat and tilted his head to one side.

“Yeah I talked to him.”

“You didn’t call me.”

“You were busy.”

“Uh huh. Well, what does he want? Do they have the scores?” Mojang seethed, his eyes scanning every inch of Bernie.

“Err, yeah but that’s not why he called. Said there’s gonna be a drop. Not even a block away – good shit,” Bernie said, grinning and rubbing his stubbly face.

“’Good shit,’ huh? OK. We’ll take it, tomorrow. This whole town is gonna burn. That fat boy and his bitch included.”

“I heard about that. Some kid did that to your face?”

“You heard about it, huh? From who? The man?”

“Around,” Bernie snorted as he pulled out a candy bar from his pocket and began opening it noisily. “Some pudgy twelve-year-old fucks you up, people talk about it.” He smiled as he took a bite out of the candy bar. Strings of caramel and nougat dangled from his bottom lip.

“Uh huh, yeah. It’s pretty fucking funny.” Mojang hopped out of his seat. He stood a good foot taller than Bernie.

“You gotta see the funny side: you lose an eye, you still got another one. We’ll get him tomorrow; his bitch too, you’ll see. You want a bite?” Bernie snuffled with the candy bar in his mouth. He smiled, breaking off a piece and offering it to Mojang as he closed in on him.

“Yeah, we will” Mojang said. A vicious smile was stitched on his face as he clutched Bernie by his jaw, forcing him against the chip board wall of the small office with a dull thud. He snatched the candy bar out of Bernie’s hand and forced it into his gaping face, wiping it all over with a forceful hand. Bernie’s neck snapped back painfully as he spat out the wrapper and he groaned as Mojang delivered a powerful uppercut under his ribs. He slid down the wall, stunned by the sudden controlled burst of aggression. “Now get the fuck out of here,” Mojang said.

~

Eggs, hash and grits.

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Green Sunday Chapter 10 ‘Romeo is bleeding’ (Edited)

Good morrow fine humans!

Back again just letting my asshole heal from the reeming of my day job. It’s been a crazy few days making dat paper. But without it I wouldn’t be able to pay for this fine editing or food.

But here we are with Chapter ten, should be on the way out soon so I can start something else.
I was thinking of completely throwing out my plan from nanwrimo and doing something else entirely but more thought is required on that, I’ll keep you posted.

Follow the hyperlink to read the rest of the chapter for free.

Peace!

Romeo is Bleeding

~

“There he is!” Dave said as he pointed over his Sikh billionaire boss’s shoulder.

“You littal caant!” Pete said as he cranked the pressure gauge in his custom air arrow launcher. He narrowed his eyes to keep track of a wily moving target.

The scope flitted around, trying to keep track of the ragged green form as it darted from cover to cover. “Keep still you little barstard!” Pete spat. “Think you can outrun me, you little facka?”

“He’s over there!” Dave screeched as he leant on the raised lip of the gun store roof.

Pete tried to steady his breathing; he tunnelled his vision down the scope of the rifle. A quick flicker of light and a sharp piercing feeling. Pete was sent reeling off his makeshift perch on the roof.

“What was that?” Dave said.

Pete patted himself down for injuries “Something came right at me.” He readied himself again at his perch.

“There!” Dave screamed. A lithe figure slipped through a gap in the wall of milling living corpses.

“You fuckin’ what?’” Pete said as he gritted his teeth, pulling hard on the trigger of the arrow launcher. With a satisfying release of pressure, an arrow soared into the crowd, just as the figure disappeared.

“Did you get ‘im?” Dave said.

“I dunno,” Pete said as he lifted the rifle up and rested it against the wall.

“Who the fuck was that?” Dave said, feeling a little buzzed and drained from the excitement. As if, for a fleeting moment, the shoe was on the other foot, he glanced back to the spot where he’d last seen the cornered animal through his binoculars. He had to catch his breath despite not having moved an inch. “Hah, does that one kinda look like Burt Reynolds to you?” he said as he looked out over the shambling corpses on the other side of the street.

“Another caant like us, I reckon. Didn’t get a good look at ‘im,” Pete said as he leant against the lip of the roof. He took out a hunting pipe and filled it with tobacco, lit it and took some measured pulls on the horn lip piece, with a faraway look on his face. He listened to the sound of his own heartbeat. As he put pressure on the wall, the other side cracked a little and pieces of mortar and brick crumbled.

Unnoticed by Dave and Pete, lodged a good four or five inches into the mortar was a shiny and very sharp-looking butterfly knife.

~

A sickly light trickled through the gaps in the shutters of an upmarket house on the more affluent side of town. The house was still and looked vacant in the bluing light of the evening. The night was on its way, bringing a much needed stillness to the busy town. The house was old-looking, reminiscent of some older New England town houses: a two storey affair, made of retouched white wood and roofed with grey tiles. The windows were partitioned with the same white wood. All the curtains and shutters were drawn.

Inside the house a deathly cold gripped the anterooms and the hall. A musty smell the owners must have gotten used to permeated the rooms. And the floorboards creaked like those in an old, haunted house.

The stairs were fairly grand, made of an elegant hardwood. They were cold as century-old bone to the touch. The faded blue light gave them a dreamlike quality, as if the whole house were some sort of display or diorama meant for looking but not touching.

Nevertheless, something lived there. Something stirred in the dull blue light. Little feet slapped the icy staircase as they descended, creating the slightest creaking noises on the old steps.

A little girl, maybe five or six, in a frilly night gown, descended the stairs, like a ghost. She held a stuffed iguana close to her little chest. She peered into the inky blue stillness of her home and saw a spark of light. There was a warm glow building in the furthest corner of her house, along with whispers and hissing sounds and a strange smell.

She tiptoed down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. As she got closer the angered hissing noises continued. She could hear a few choice words and laboured breathing as she approached the light source.

The light was coming from her living room. A small fire had been stoked in the old, wood-burning fireplace. There was a man sitting in front of the fire talking to himself angrily.

“I’ll get you, you asshole, you just wait! I know where you are! I’ll get you and I’ll-ergh!” The man muttered to himself as he nursed a wound in his shoulder. A bloody arrow had been tossed onto the hardwood floor by the fireside. He sat on a large green army coat in front of the fire, rocking back and forth like a caged animal, a blood-stained kitchen knife clutched in his hand.

“Santa, is that you?” The little girl said as she saw his scraggly beard and long hair. “It’s a little early. Where are all the presents?”

“Presents?” Carpenter said, furrowing his brow in a confused daze. Caught off guard by the little girl in her pyjamas, he gripped the knife tighter. “I don’t have any presents.”

“Oh,” the girl said, taking it surprisingly well. “Well, could you help me?” she said as she tightened her face a little. “My mommy and daddy are sick.” Her voice caught.

“Shhhhh,” Carpenter said. He put his finger up to his mouth. “Take me to them.” He smiled broadly, exposing his yellowed teeth. “Santa has something for them.” He stood up shakily, sliding the knife underneath his belt.

~

Romeo is Bleeding

 

0

Archangel by Alexander Skel – A review

Not a huge fan f sci-fi or fantasy for that matter, I just find myself sifting through too much bullshit that doesn’t need to be there. I just read all this stuff that’s completely irrelevant to the plot about thrusters or some kind of magic barriers or something and I’m just like ‘Why? Get to the point!’ I just don’t have the kind of patience for either genre and taken seriously I find them really hammy.
Never-the-less I found this entertaining and engaging and it reminded me a lot of some decent anime but that being said I think it would be better as a comic or an anime. Because as a novel without any art it’s sort of generic, there’s nothing that really stands out about it. I’m reading the first chapter and I’m thinking about how similar it is to some other comic/game rather than what was different. The whole time I pictured it as a mission in armoured core or some anime more than I saw it as its own thing.
The action is great but its contextless, nebulous and sort of self-indulgent. It doesn’t have a point, it’s like a ten-year-old wrote down what he wants to see in a cartoon and then a really great writer took those ideas and brought them to life.
I really think this has potential and you are a really good writer, there are a few errors here and there and some sentences that had me like ‘Did Dan Brown do this?’, an example of that would be ‘The grenade exploded’ well no shit, it’s a grenade. But overall it’s well written and isn’t overly verbose like a lot of my work is.
But there’s no real story and in the first chapter it’s tempting to just gallop past it but you have to have some hook to make me keep reading, you can’t just have one fight scene and call it a day. Who is archangel? Why should I care if he lives or dies? This is why I say the action is contextless. Action is tense because we care about what happens to the character, you’ve given us no real reason to care about Archangel yet.
And what’s worse is this chapter I think has no real room for story that wouldn’t just be painful exposition, but that would still be better than no story in the first chapter.
I found the transition from Archangel to Rachel to be a little jarring but I like how you skimmed over the whole ‘Casualties of war feels’ generic bullshit in every anime ever haha.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it, it was enjoyable to read and it really made me want to play a decent Armoured Core game, pity there hasn’t been one of those in a while haha.

If you wanna read his story you can reserve a copy here.
Archangel

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Green Sunday Chapter 8 ‘Motorpsycho Nitemare’ (Edited)

Friends, romans country men, lend me your braziers.
No stop that.
OK shit, why do I do these intros again? Oh yeah to make me look like a crazy dumbass, check!

As you can see making decent progress, getting a handle on getting the older stuff edited and working on new projects. I’ve even assigned days of ‘marketing’, which just boils down to a couple of hours of copy and pasting, spamming the shit out of Facebook and twitter. I laugh at your ban hammer Facebook, I laugh at it!

I’m also in talks with some other independent ‘zombie authors’ for some shared content and possibly some cross promotion in the future. So yeah plenty of nepotism yet to come, yay for cronyism! (I’m being sarcastic).

I’m having so much fun with the other project I’m working on and it’s tricky to resist the temptation to completely pan everything else and work on that. I’ve been trying to increase my writing output to something resembling 2k words a day. So far life and work and just plain laziness and love of blenders is getting in my way. I don’t hold out much hope of winning nanowrimo as much as I see it as a fun way to get a really good start on new project I think has the potential of raising my profile significantly.
Right back to earth haha. This is the start of some interesting shit happening now, lots of action in this one, the next one is probably my favourite but this is fun too. Looking forward to getting this done and dusted so I can properly show this to people. I added someone on Facebook I’m interested for a cover design, it’s all coming together folks.

Enough blathering, you can find the full chapter for free as usual on inkitt at;
Motorpsycho Nitemare

–

The stillness of the early morning was deafening. Cold and brittle as the morning before, it was shattered by hurried footsteps and the sound of frantic panting. A red-haired man in sweats jogged with a limping gait, taking cold, wet, terrified breaths. He choked as much of the damp morning air down as he could to keep his limbs moving. Lactic acid seeped into every joint and muscle as he tried frantically to make his body work as it was supposed to.

A bright light pierced the mist of the ambivalent early morning, accompanied by an obnoxiously loud and tinny Harley continental engine tearing into life. A black-gloved hand revved it for the pleasure of the vibration in his gut. He grabbed his leather-clad crotch with his gloved hand to rearrange the furniture. The sound and smell of creaking leather brought a smile to his greasy, stubbly face.

“Let’s go fuck shit up.”

He pulled his denim waistcoat tighter across his skinny frame. The name “Lamchop” was embossed above the left breast pocket. The biker dragged a chain across his lap, the end of which had a barbed hook that he hung over the side of the bike. He nudged the kickstand with his leather boot and screeched off down the suburban street.

The town was so still, dead and dying. The red-headed jogger could’ve heard the engine on the other side of town, but he was sure it was closer. His eyes widened and his pupils shrank as he loped into the mist. He doubled his pace, his muscles crying out in pain with every terrified step.

The biker let out some slack in the chain, one hand on the handles of his bike. He let it swing idly at his side as he drove. Noticing a shape form in the mist, he took control of its swinging motion. With the strength of his wrist alone he began to spin the chain, building up speed, keeping full control of the bike as he did so.

The swinging chain reached terminal velocity. The shape was within striking distance. The biker released the chain as if launching a dog at an unsuspecting rabbit from the barrel of a gun. All the force from his wrist snapped it at the shape coming at him from the mist.

The chain struck with snake-like, snapping precision. It tangled around the feet of its victim, locking into place at the ankle. The savage, biting barbs rent flesh from the bone and stuck stalwart in the calf of the bait.

No noise was heard over the thunderous engine, no screams, no pleas for help. The chain stopped for a brief moment, slack as it was, then it took on life once again as the bike pulled away. The chain snaked up with a vicious, snapping sound, yanking its victim off their feet and dragging them across the neatly tarmacked suburban roadway.

The meat sack hit the ground with a sad, wet trumping sound. Bones in a bag of wet flour collided awkwardly as they were wrenched out of the mist with a hiss and a slick grinding sound. The biker stopped and, lifting his goggles, he looked back at the zombie he’d caught on the hook. A proud fisherman, the biker smiled and pulled his goggles back down. The creature writhed, ground down teeth falling from its mouth like popcorn. Its face was hot and slick from its date with the smooth tarmac, most of its features worn down. It reached its arm up, reminding him of the canteen scene from “Oliver Twist.”

“More? OK, well, why didn’t you say?” He laughed to himself and revved his engine once more.

The red-haired man in sweats reached his front door, his breath burning his lungs. The air felt like sandpaper, going in and coming out. His sweats were drenched and the cold tugged at him as he propped himself up against the door. He tapped on it.

“Sheila, it’s me. Let me in! They’re coming! For God’s sake, lemme’ in!”. He whispered in a low, raspy voice as he tapped the window of the door.

He looked back into the mist as he heard the engine’s noises carried by the empty streets. “Sheila, open the fucking door, or God help me, I wil- “An abrupt unlatching noise cut him off. His wife opened the door a crack and he slipped through it, as if by osmosis.

“Will, are you OK? Did you find any?” A slight woman with mousey brown hair stood in front of him, bunching up a plaid dress in her two skinny fists.

“I couldn’t. They were on me, these guys. They were staking out the pharmacy. They knew people would come for supplies. It was a trap; I barely got away!” His voice was hoarse. He took in large, gulping breaths as he spoke. Feelings of shame and guilt and terror fought for space in his brain. All thoughts were barged out of the way though by his singular desire for all the stale oxygen on the landing.

“I can’t last much longer without my insulin,” she said, whispering into her dress, a maudlin expression on her pale face. “If you were a real man, you’d get it.”

“Yeah, and if you weren’t a total retard you’d have stocked up before the zombie apocalypse. But we can’t all be perfect!”

“It’s not the apocalypse. The army’ll come. They will. We just have to last a little longer. I don’t know how much longer I can- “

“It’ll be OK, I promise,” he said softly as he collapsed on the stairs. “We’ll find a way.”

Just as he got a little comfortable and the air particles started forming an orderly queue into his lungs, a sharp tapping taxman knock set the couple’s teeth on edge.

“Who… who is it?” Sheila said

“Shhhh.” Will’s panic and anger flared into a harsh, sharp shushing noise.

“I’ve come to read tha meeta,” the voice beyond the door said in a faux, mocking English accent.

“W-what?”

“Shhhhhhh,” Will said again, sharper and louder.

“Yeah I can definitely hear a leak. You betta let me in or-”

A dead silence fell as the couple inside tried to stop breathing for moment. “Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.” The voice became lower and more caustic. All the humour drained out of it, sending a chill down the couple’s spines.

Will’s breath creaked out of his mouth. Then a jostling of the door handle sent him reeling up the stairs, fumbling for the banister.

“Where are you going?” Sheila screeched as he fled.

“Little pigs, let me in!”
Motorpsycho Nitemare

 

 

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Green Sunday Chapter 7 “Take up Space” (Edited)

Time for exposition dudes and dudettes, I’m told I handled it less painfully than a full colonic irrigation by a clown making balloon animals, you be the judge.
Slightly hungover from a lovely wedding I went to last night, it was a good time, I didn’t know anybody there. It was an old good friend from uni and his misses only let him invite one of his uni mates, little did she know she invited the worst offender of them all haha.
It was a good night, I only wish I could have stayed longer if it wasn’t for my long journey and ill fitting suit.
Kinda makes me feel melancholic watching people so happy like that, so normal. Makes me wonder if I could ever have that without royally fucking it up. If it’s really that perfect or just seems that way and takes lots of work and compromise I’m too lazy/stubborn to do.
It’s a selfish thought to go to a wedding and think ‘but what about me’ I guess, but maybe it’s good I recognise that. I genuinely feel happy for them but it brings into question the life I chose. I wish I could see more of him and all my old friends but I’ve chosen a solitary path.
I knew I would have to take this journey alone, I had to seclude myself to find the best stories and be a success, there was no other options, to balance work and writing and friends would make me a failure at all three and too burnt out to do anything about it. I knew what I was doing but it still catches in my throat when I see that two people can be so happy and normal when I’ve always felt so broken and different. But there goes that narcissism again, too bad I spend all my money on knives and editing instead of therapy haha. Ah fuck it, as Tom Waits would; “It’s nothing that a hundred dollars won’t fix”.
Or a couple hundred thousand would be nice.
Anyway enough of this ceaseless faggotry, this chapter fills in a lot of the blanks so I hope you people appreciate this and I know you people exist. I was looking at the analytics for this on inkitt and Green Sunday has had just under a thousand reads since December/january I think, so they exist.

As always you can find the full chapter on inkitt by following this link;
Take up Space

~

The sun rolled down the hill faster than usual. Candlelight lit TJ’s mom’s little dining room. The sounds of knives and forks scratching plates filled the silence.

“So how did you and TJ meet?” TJ’s mom asked, cutting through the awkward silence of this intimate little meal. The table consisted of her and her son and a strange, green-haired girl he’d brought in off the streets who smelt faintly of dried blood.

“We met at the mall actually,” the girl said, turning a wry smile up at TJ who was sweating into his food.

“I’m sorry, did you tell me your name? I get a little ditsy sometimes,” his mother said; something wasn’t quite right. Like she’d walked out of one dream and into another unannounced.

“Sunday,” she said.

“Well that’s a pretty name. TJ, don’t you think that’s a pretty name?”

“Err, yeah,” TJ said, looking up from his plate of macaroni and cheese to glance across the table.

“Do you live around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before. I mean, I think I’d – I mean -”

“Ah no, I just got here. Err, my… dad travels a lot for work,” Sunday said, choosing her words surgically.

“Well I think the candles were a nice touch. We don’t get to use the dining room much these days; it’s just been the two of us for a while now.”

“Yeah, well, it was TJ’s idea; he said it would give the room some atmosphere, right?” Sunday said, watching TJ squirm.

“TJ and I aren’t used to entertaining. After his father left, we mostly kept to ourselves.”

“Mom,” TJ whined.

“That’s right, TJ hates me telling everyone our life story.” His mom smiled with a melancholy intake of breath. “Oh, you’re finished?”

“Yes, thank you. It was lovely.”

“What a polite girl,” TJ’s mom said as she collected the plate in front of Sunday, a warm smile on her face. “You’re welcome to stay in the guest bedroom across from me if you’re too tired to make it home.” She fluttered out of the room with the dirty plates.

“No, that’s OK. I think I’m just gonna bunk with TJ and fuck his brains out all night.”

TJ’s perfectly timed sip of milk sprayed down his shirt.

“That’s nice,” TJ’s mom said from the kitchen, clearly not having heard anything she’d said.

Sunday handed TJ a napkin and smiled trollishly. He snatched it from between her two fingers and began to dab his shirt.

“Do you think we should tell her?” he whispered.

“Why worry her? Nothing should happen tonight as long as we don’t light the house up like a Christmas tree. Or make too much noise. I thought the candlelight thing would be cute,” Sunday said, reclining in her dining chair.

“But she has to know.”

“She’ll find out.” She closed her eyes for a moment, putting her hands behind her head.

“Are we gonna die?” TJ said, a hint of anger in his hushed voice.

“Yeah, probably”

TJ’s mom barrelled into the room with some sort of lopsided cake and plonked it down in between the two of them, oblivious to the mounting tension she had just crudely carved in half.

“Dessert.”

~

The door to TJ’s bathroom opened like a sealed vault door, or an alien craft billowing steam. It had been closed for a good hour and a half. Sunday walked out barefoot wearing an old XXXL ‘Walking Dead’ T-shirt that went down to her knees. She rubbed her whole head with a towel as if she was trying to polish a lamp.

Her legs, clean, were surprisingly dainty-looking, covered with little cuts and plasters, but her skin looked soft and smooth. TJ stopped dead on his made up futon on the floor. She opened one eye underneath the towel and saw he was looking at her. She dropped the towel on the floor and crossed the room to the window.

“Thanks for the shirt.”

“Err, no problem.”

“Let me guess, you wanna know if the curtains match the drapes?” She smiled as she turned back towards TJ.

“Err, wut? No! I wasn’t!” TJ’s face turned a purply red colour and his tongue swelled up in his head.

She perched on the windowsill and looked out at the cool, quiet trees swaying in the dark. There were fires burning in the distance, muffled screams carried by the shiftless night. The smell of the smoke was sweet and homely to her. She sighed after taking in a lungful through the small crack in the window.

She cocked one of her legs up on the sill and TJ almost burst a blood vessel.

“Err, I made up the bed. I’m fine here,” he said, motioning to his crude futon.

“OK,” she said dreamily, staring out the window.

“What’s happening?” He bit his bottom lip as he said it, not wanting to know.

He could see her blank expression reflected in the black window. “It’s a game.”

“What?”

“I was brought here to play,” she said, her voice trailing off.

TJ furrowed his brow and got quiet. She looked over at him as he hung his head, trying to make sense of what she had said.

She sucked her bottom lip and sighed again. “They did it before, to my town. I was working in some fucking diner and then one day…”

“Please, I don’t understand.”

“This happened before, in Arkham; that’s where I’m from.”

“But, the TV, it said only one person survived,” TJ stuttered.

“The TV lied. Me, that guy you met before, and a few others: we’re all leftovers, survivors, but now we’re ’players.’” She turned her face back to the window, but didn’t look outside; she didn’t look at anything.

“How do I play – the game, I mean – how do you win?” TJ rose a little from his futon. A frustrated resolve boiled beneath the surface; he was sure there was a straight answer somewhere under that mess of green hair.

“You just have to survive.”

“What’s happening?” he asked again.

“In three days this place is going to be a ghost town. It’ll be wiped off the map, blamed on a nuclear plant leak or a fire or terrorists, whatever.”

“Three days? Why just three days?” TJ’s voice took on a frantic tremble.

“It’s how the game works. The zombies are just the first part; the second day is when it starts getting messy.”

“Messy? What the fuck does that mean?”

“If you win three games in succession you get to leave: a new identity, a new life, somewhere far away.” As she said it, she turned her head away as if she almost believed it. “The winner is the person that scores the most points. Points are allocated per zombie and recorded by a series of drone cameras flying overhead, as well as security cameras they’ve hacked throughout the town. There are no points for killing people, but on the second day, a backed contestant is worth double points.”

“Backed contestant? What does this all mean?”

“To be a contestant you have to have a backer. There are thousands of people watching: some just gawkers, stumbling onto the deep web; others are rich sickos who want to pay to control someone, someone like me. They take bets on who wins and they pay to keep you alive or watch you die.”

“Can we escape?”

“You can try.”

“What about phones? The Internet?”

“All cut off. Only they can access the net through their own satellite. That’s how they broadcast through the deep web.”

“What happens on the third day?”

“The third day, all bets are off. This town will burn.” She stood up, walked away from the window, wafting a sweet scent as she passed him, and climbed into TJ’s bed, which had never looked so neat.

“How did you survive?” TJ asked, still prone in his futon.

Her body was rigid and she spoke while still facing away from him. “I didn’t.”

~

 

 

 

 

0

Green Sunday Chapter 18 ‘Game Over’ (Raw)

Well the end of what seems like an era is at hand, this is the final chapter of book one of Green Sunday. I do have a planned sequel that could spin out into a series, we’ll just have to see how well this does on amazon or if someone picks it up. But I enjoyed writing it as much as I enoyed reading the comments I got on facebook and the glowing reviews I got on inkitt for such a silly ass book haha.
This has been a growing experience for me in my life and in my writing. I feel like I’ve already taken the first steps into a new world and I’m really excited about the new stuff I’m working. This is the beginning of something really great for me and there’s nowhere to right now but up.
I’m editing the first chapter of the novella I’m working on today, so I should have that up as soon as tuesday, maybe earlier. Then I’ll get it up on inkitt and see what the folks there think of it.
I just wanted to give a big thanks to people who read this blog and people who enjoy and support my writing today and in the years to come.

As usual you can read the full chapter absolutely free on inkitt by following this link; Game Over

Cheers!

~

Helicopter blades span slow. Giant straight blender blades whipping up the thin air. Making it as thick as eggs and cream allowing the helicopter to climb – Laura thought to herself as the large ex-military chopper lumbered into flight. The chandelier inside adding maybe another metric tonne. Ensuring a luxurious but unhurried flight.

Laura sat in the co-pilots seat securely fastened and with a headset on for full effect. She smiled at Carpenter who leaned over her seat, the gun on the headrest pointing sideways at Nigel. The aging pilot seemingly attempting an escape by sea, gradually filling the cockpit with sweat.

Carpenter erected a toothy grin feeling somewhat like a pirate, an air pirate. Riding into the wind, to freedom or death. What’s the difference he thought as he squeezed the head rest and rapped his fingers across the handle of the gun. Feeling a dramatic swelling, like he could hear ride of the Valkyries. And just over the those snow capped mountains rested a Vietcong rice paddy just waiting for a lick of fresh napalm.

~

A monitor glowed in a dark room. The image panned back on a small town gunstore with a what seemed like a mosaic pattern of blood and bones out the front. A tapestry of offel and brain matter spread over about a ten foot area radiating out.

“Well at least he paid in advance” Murray said with a wry choking laugh, choked off entirely by a stern searching glance from Evergreen.

“Indeed” Evergreen sighed.

“Well you know he signed a contract, what are we gonna tell his helicopter pilot?” Murray quickly tapped away at his personal monitors keyboard. “That reminds me, the team guarding it haven’t reporting in. Err- going on fifteen minutes now, should I send another?”.

Evergreen gave a small breathy laugh and seemed to suck the inside of his cheek. “Hnh no, I’ll go, I need the excercise”. With that he opened the mobile command centre’s door and stepped out into the bright noonday sun. Allowing it to penetrate the perfect dark of the little mobile mancave.

Murray called after him, his voice trailing off as he sat alone in the half dark “HEY YOU MIND!- closing the do- ass”

~

“tj-TJ-tj…..TJ!” A girl’s voice phased in and out, accompanied by an annoying ringing noise.

“I can hear you.” TJ said as he clicked his jaw and held his head. It felt like a balloon full of cracked drywall and every word sent sharp shards of pain throughout his skull. “Shit, did something explode?”

“Err, I don’t think so, you just hit your head.” Sunday said, her face blurred, then became focussed then blurred again. TJ gave up and just looked at the pavement trying to stop his head from spinning.

“I think I’m gonna throw up” He said as his breathing became long and laboured.

“At least you’re not dead” She said with what he could hear was a wry corner mouth smile.

“I feel like that would be an upgrade.” He said wincing as he put his hand on the pavement to lever the weight of his mighty girth.

“Big baby” Sunday said, punctuating it with a breathy bitter guffaw.

TJ lifted himself up onto two shakey feet and looked down at Sunday. She stretched out on a large broken no entry sign on the sidewalk like it was a beach towel.

He turned towards her and blinked a couple of times and put his hand out to her. She swivelled around in her lounging position to look up at him. Her hair was still that messy shock of toxic green. A little more matted and dirty with dry blood and good old fashioned dirt.

“M’lady” TJ said tipping an ironic invisible fedora in Sunday’s general direction.

Sunday squinted, turning her eyes into two sharp slits and shook her head smiling. She batted his chubby hand away like a playful kitten leaving its claws out. “I think I’m good” She said as she signed and made the painful ascent onto two legs. Dusting herself off completely unaware how like a Saturday morning cartoon character she looked. “What?”

“Nothing”.

“It’s gonna be dark soon, this town is gonna be swarming with mercs”

“What for?”

“Sweep and clear.” Sunday gave TJ a knowing glance but after no discernible nod of the head or recognition. She went on; “They’re gonna burn the whole town to the fucking ground. Round up the remaining survivors”.

“And?”

“And make them ‘un-survivors’”

“Oh”

“There can’t be any witnesses”

“But you said it was streaming live”

“On the deep web.” Sunday paused, tapping her heels together, thinking no place like home undoubtedly.

“Hah?” TJ actually scratched his head.

“Didn’t we go over this already, the deep web, it’s like err- you know”

“…”

“It’s like the dark side of the internet that can’t be reached with a regular search engine. Child porn, hitmen, drugs, slavery, live murder, and now this shit”

“O-k so?”

“So only a select group of sick fucks can see this. Sick rich pricks, dumb kids with more time than smarts. Regular perverts, criminals, gangsters, you know, not the fucking pta”

“Err I don’t get it”

“The point is they’re not the kind of people that would turn states evidence. Who would believe them anyway? ‘Err excuse Mr policeman. Err there’s a reality tv show on the deep web that fills a town with zombies and films it for bitcoins”. Sunday said in a mocking imitation of TJ’ voice holding up her fingers in a faux telephone shape. A patronizing smirk sealed onto her face. “No one gets out alive”

“What about you?”

“It’s different with me. They kept me, and a few others alive because this is a show, and shows need ‘characters’. It needs some kind of a plot, a story, drama. It can’t just be a bunch of people running around doing ‘stuff’. It has to have some progression, someone to root for, someone to watch die. It’s like any other tv show.” Sunday sucked the bottom of her lip after using air quotes twice in a single rant.

“But it kinda was just a bunch of stuff happening”

“If people are watching us. Enough people give us likes or clicks or votes or whatever, they let us go on into the next stage.”

“This is so fucked!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed”

“Shit” TJ looked down, squeezing his double chin.

“What!”

“Who wants to watch some fat kid kill zombies badly and shit his pants? My youtube career was exactly souring. People just tuned in to laugh at me.” TJ pointed his chin and sighed. “I got more death and rape threats than Anita Sarkeesian”

“Anita who?”

“Nevermind”

“Don’t give me that shit! What are you fishing for compliments like some Instagram camwhore? That could save you. There might be a huge demographic of people who want to keep you alive just to watch you do a Mellissa McCarthy impression, split your pants and shit. You could even have a goofy catchphrase like ‘That’s gonna leave a mark!’”

“Yeah she sucks and people love her”

“Her one joke is just falling over while fat, that could be you”

“Yeah you’re right” Tj mused on it further before shaking his head like a mini truffle shuffle.  “No fuck that we’re gonna get out of here, you’ll see, there’s a way out, I know there is!”.

“The tunnels?”

“There’s no way they could know about them. That guy kept them super lowkey, they’re not on any map, or blueprint. He built it all using his own guys, he was crazy paranoid, didn’t want anyone to know they existed. Only me and a few other kids even knew it existed.”

“Yeah you already told me. So why don’t we get the fuck out of here before some roided up merc puts a black leather size nine up our asses?” Sunday yawned picking up a parking meter and tossing it over her shoulder.

“Ok”

~

 

 

 

 

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

Green Sunday Chapter 6 ‘Smooth Sailing’ (Edited)

Another day another edited chapter, it’s almost over people, almost over and almost I mean never and by ‘over’ I mean bitches. That doesn’t make sense.

Ok well day job grinding and shitty and deadend as it is has given me the desired resources of my condensed wasted time to allow me to have more of this silly ass zombie novel I’m not entirely sure why I wrote edited haha. Of which will be coming soon.
I’ve only got one chapter left to proofread and then it’s all downhill from there.

In other news I’m reading some cool noir shit, some grade Richard Stark shit and it’s starting to show in some of the recent stuff I’ve done. I’ve actually made a start on one of those novellas I was toying with to keep me busy until nanowrimo when I unleash the beast of my next hurried giant word salad hah.
It’s turning out really nicely, I mean I actually gave enough of a fuck to open up google maps and plot routes for the story, research locations and plants and other such real life shit. I virtually walked the route of this story I’m doing and I think it’s turning out really nice, my style is evolving and it’s a lot of fun. It still has that evocative bullshit I like but it’s framed by this anal attention to detail which really nails the tension down.
Anyway the first chapter of that should be ready soon enough so you can ignore it at your leisure haha.

As per usual you can check out the full chapter on inkitt.

Chapter 6 ‘Smooth Sailing’

Peace out.

~

Roy held the camera low, trying to be discreet. It created a shaky low shot of TJ’s front door. A doorbell ringing sound; a cool morning mist starting to creep up on them.

“Who’s there?” TJ’s mom said from an upstairs window. The camera panned to the window as she leaned out in her yoga gear.

“Oh hey, Mrs Kincaid, a lovely morning, am I right?” Zed said with a tinny laugh, like he was selling Jehovah.

“Oh you’re those nice neighbour boys. TJ’s not home right now; he’s out getting milk; he can’t come out to play.”

“Err, yeah, you see… TJ kinda said we could come and borrow some of his stuff for our show, for the Internet”. Roy stumbled over his words, his frantic nerves stripping all charm from his voice.

“Oh well, he didn’t say anything to me about it. But I suppose, since you only live next door, and it’s for the Internet, you said?” TJ’s mom ditsily mused on what that might mean as she leant out the window.

“Err, yeah,” Roy said, a tired indifference climbing into his voice as he realised he’d been up all night. Was he holding up the camera or was it holding him up?

“The door’s open; his room is at the top of the stairs. How’s your mother doing, Teddy? You boys want some green tea and rice cakes?”

“Err, no, we’re good, thanks; she’s fine,” Zed said, surprised at how easy that was.

A brief cut and it was a shot of TJ’s stairs as they climbed up towards his room. All TJ could see was a POV shot of the back of Zed’s legs as he went up, followed by Roy.

Zed stopped on the stairs and turned to Roy with an odd smile on his face, the camera uncomfortably close.

“Dude, why’d you stop?” Roy said, behind the camera.

“How much you wanna bet the fat fuck’s a brony?” Zed sniggered childishly, forgetting the blood under his fingernails.

Another brief cut and whoever held the camera was elbow deep in TJ’s drawers. “Where the fuck is it?”.

“Dude, I found it.” The camera panned impatiently to Zed who stood in front of the closet, smirking.

“Friendship is fucking magic.” Zed chortled as he spoke. Parting the clothes in the closet, Zed revealed a secret ‘My Little Pony’ poster on the back of the wardrobe. “I fucking knew it.”

“Yeah, that’s great; the dude’s a fucking faggot who wants to fuck a horse. Can we get back to finding the weapons now, so, you know, we can fucking live through the night?” Roy snapped, gripping the camera harder, until it was audibly creaking.  He span the camera around and it fell on the red toy box at the bottom of TJ’s bed. “Here we go.”

“Yeah, I’m betting porn and an inflatable pony.” Zed chuckled in the background as Roy lay the camera down on TJ’s bed. He knelt in front of the box. Zed went through TJ’s action figures and miscellaneous cosplays, giggling fecklessly in the background.

Roy opened the box. “Look at this shit – fucking mall crap! Gotta bag this shit up.”

“Then what?” Zed said, some ice closing in on his voice.

“We gotta deal with Gil. If he’s bit, we gotta cut his head off; that bitch too, just to make sure.”

“I don’t know-”

“It’s fucked. It’s so different from how I thought it would be.” Roy sighed as he started to pack the weapons into a ‘Naruto’ duffel bag. “Fucking otaku pussy.”

He put his hand on his knee and eased himself off the ground.

Zed sighed; the character he had created had crumbled and he felt like a kid. His skin sticky and dry from where he had washed off Christie’s blood. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Roy fumbled as he picked up the camera and turned it off.

Another cut. The camera seemed to be resting on the edge of a sink, turned on by mistake as if placed there in a hurry.

Scuffling sounds, sounds of muffled whimpering. The camera was out of focus. A blurred figure came into frame and snatched it up. Fumbling sounds of plastic creaking. It was still being held low, around waist height; there was nothing to see just yet.

“You’ve got to do it.”

“Why do I have to do it?”

“Because I’m holding the camera,” Roy said, a cold smile in his voice.

Roy raised the camera, like a shield, to put the spotlight on Zed’s pale and drawn face. Zed sat on the bed in his room; he knew it had to be him. He swallowed hard, took TJ’s crappy mall sword in both his hands and unsheathed it a little to check it didn’t stick. He hesitated. “Oh, fuck it,” he said as he unsheathed the sword all the way. He threw the cheap scabbard across the room and held the handle as if it was a machete. The sword wasn’t quite a katana; it was one of those cheap ninja swords with a straight blade and no guard. He grabbed at his knee a little, rose with a jerky jolt of energy and began to march out of his room. Roy struggled to follow him out into the hall.

“Wait up, dude.”

They got to the inner door of the garage and Zed stood sullen with his hand on the doorknob.

“I thought he locked himself in?”

“He did, but I’ll try the door and then we can go around the front and open the garage door. He might be OK. Garage door makes a lot of noise,” Zed said.

“Yeah, best episode of ‘Zombie Stump Fuckers’ yet.”

Zed sneered and a sickly smirk passed over his face. He swallowed hard again and twisted the knob. The door opened with an uneasy jerk. Zed froze. He stopped breathing and then breathed out. Then in again with a low, shallow, silent breath.

He began to open the door wider, inch by inch, praying for it not to creak. It did. He took a deep breath and launched himself into the garage. Roy followed. The camera fell on Zed as he swung the sword awkwardly, nerves and adrenaline making it shake in his hands, creating an annoying rattling sound.

“What the fuck?” Roy said as he panned the camera up to a tense close up of the garage, lined with black bin bags. He zoomed out to Zed in his uneven warrior stance, a small pool of congealed blood on the floor. “Where’d he go?”

Just at that moment, a clichéd woman’s scream rang out and they both knew where he was.

“Mom?” Zed’s voice broke as he spoke, the sword shaking in his loose grip.

~

 

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