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The Following season 3 review – sorta

Ok, this is not really a review. It’s more of a rant, but when do I write anything but half assed rants?

So I the Following, I watched the first two seasons and honestly it’s kind of an ‘eh’ show for me. It’s the kind of show I watch while I workout or I cook to, its not some cerebral show that eye fucks me on the regular it’s just kind of a chewing gum show I watch to fill time while I do other stuff.
It has fun themes and decent actors but is otherwise unremarkable. It’s sort of normie-tier Dexter. Well Dexter is sort of normie-tier Dexter if you read the books which are much better but I digress.
It was ok, it was a little sloppily written, the plot was sort of jumbled and all over the place and it struggled with characters. Because it has so many and Kevin Bacon and all his cohorts are sort of generic as fuck, like seriously they could swap them all out and it makes no difference and none of the main ones die so there tension is sort of lost but you don’t really care about them either.

But it was a great show for knives, lots of cool microtechs and cold steel knives on show. And in season 3 I actually saw my favourite killer using a knife I actually own which just touched my heart haha.

I dunno, I mean the main characters are sort of unlikeable and the bad guys are sort of between being too angsty and cunty to being too likeable. Like it gets to a point in season two where Joe Carroll the main killer cult leader played by James Purefoy who is awesome see Solomon Kane and Ironclad. He is so likeable to a point where it’s bad, it gets to a point where he’s almost a foil, he stops being scary, you forget he’s a serial killer. He’s just fun ol’ uncle Joe. So you have a real clusterfuck in terms of characterisation going on and the plot is sort of middling and predictable for the most part but its watchable.

Now here comes season 3 and it’s actually very different and its apparent from the start, it’s handled really well, written really well and it fools you, it takes a completely different path from the other two seasons. It sort of builds slowly to this midpoint where a new killer is revealed and at first I wasn’t that impressed because this show sort of throws out killers like hot dinners. In a way not dissimilar from Hannibal but in lots of ways I think this show is so much better than Hannibal because it has a lot more substance, Hannibal is all style, just freak of the week killerfest. It’s dull honestly and the following has a few throw away killers too but then this guy starts getting more and interesting.

It started to make feel like I was watching the first season of Mr Robot, the guy is like a serial killer version of Elliot from that show without all the shit show psychodrama of season two. But I won’t get into that emperors new clothes bullshit again. He even almost looks like him actually, although he’s a mulatto I think, not egyptian like I think Rami Malik is. But this dude could play a Kang if pressed haha.

I really liked his character, he had a lot of depth and was genuinely scary as well as likeable in a Dexter kind of way. The concept was great. But the show sort of fumbles him a little bit because it’s a bit one sided, the killers don’t really get away with much honestly, the fbi is a bit too good. Like they kill them all and not too many of the main characters are even scratched so it gets to be you’re rooting for the bad guys because they’re like the underdogs.

Because this guy is this awesome killer, like a total badass but he’s foiled constantly by these stumblefuck fbi agents and it can’t help but take the sting out a little.

But the season ended in a really nice open way because you have this awesome killer Theo, the hacker hacker haha. But it also leads into this rich kid serial killer social club a lot like Hostel and I think that could have been even better. Also Joe the serial killer from the first two seasons is executed but lives on in like a yoda ghost sort of way but creepy haha.

Sadly, just typing season 4 into google while I was looking for header images and it turns out they cancelled it which really sucks. Because although I wasn’t really invested, it was like Lucifer I just sort of watched it and took whatever I could from it. I had through the third seasons seen something really great blossoming and to see it cut short like this just when it was getting good is a little disappointing but eh there’s more fish on amazon prime haha.

Maybe I’ll do a black sails review just to talk about gay pirate kiss endings haha. Maybe not, might get kicked off the internet.

 

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DDD Chapter 3 ‘Come into my head’

Hey there dudes and dudettes, back again to let me shovel more interesting tripe into your noodle. well good. Got some doozies for you today.

Ok well not much to report on, got my first royalty report for GS and I’m too afraid to open it and admit I suck at marketing haha. Yeah, a fair few copies sold but probably not enough to warrant a release of a sequel which is depressing but you know if someone actually went right for me I’d have to eat my fucking hat, now wouldn’t I?
I sound saltier than I actually am, I know people like the book, what’s not to like, not tooting my own horn, its just a fun book. But I never really looked at it as my magnum opus or anything like that. It was never the book to save me from the poor house but nevertheless I want it to do well and hopefully with some time and elbow grease it can and then I can release the sequels.

I can’t really get down about it, because a) I have a lot better more traditional things to depress me a la life in general haha and b) I have two more serious book franchises in the works that have a lot more potential to do well and hopefully get me a fucking agent which is what I really need. I can’t be doing with this indie shit anymore.
I’m obviously talking about this and maybe the one who came back, after extensive work, actually now I think about it it might not even be long enough after the editing and DDD is a Dexter clone so I’m pretty fucked either way, but I have to dream because otherwise what do I have? What reason do I have to go on if I don’t keep the hope alive that this is all worth something? And what is that something? Money? Fame? Love? Immortality?

Who knows?

Come into my head

~

The steady metronome of waves gently beating the shore, the smell of the spray. I open my eyes but it’s just blackness and then a light comes on but it’s not a light, it’s a moon rising out of the sea. The sea, am I on a boat? I ask myself stupidly.

Then I can feel it, the cold cloying embrace of the ocean in answer.

I kick my legs but I don’t feel I need to, I’m bobbing, cold and wet, just with my head floating above the surface of the water.

I can’t see the shore, the ocean seems endless and the only noise I hear are the waves parting and my heart beating. A rising anxiety sets my teeth on edge and I can feel it all around me. Is this what it’s like inside? Is this it’s world? A cold endless black ocean. I can’t feel the bottom, why would it have a bottom?

I can feel something, something moving, circling, rising. Waves and bubbles rising to a crescendo peaked by an anticlimactic blub blub and something bobbing on the surface of the water.

It floats towards me and I know what it is before it the moon can cast it’s bright bitter smile down on it.

It’s a head.

A perfectly lopped head of a woman. It floats towards me and in the glare of the moon it rolls open and it’s wet hair parts like a flower and it’s my dear old aunt Mary Beth. I should feel things, I should feel earth shaking, bone clattering terror and cold sweat but I feel nothing, nothing but a joyful wonder. A question answered, a life revealed, a lie told and taken away just as swiftly and my heart races and in an instant. I’m surrounded by more perfectly lopped heads, floating and bobbing like rubber ducks floating in crude.

I wake up in the same cold sweat, no maybe even colder, as colder as that black ocean, or maybe I just left the fan on, yeah it’s the fan. I slop the sheets off my damp body and walk on over and turn it off.

I need a shower and maybe a ritualistic burning of my sheets.

The water washes over me and I’m expecting revelations, a brief aside into Jungian psychology. Did I even care what the dream meant, if it meant a thing?

The sea, the darkness, fear of the unknown, the oldest fear, pretty standard. If you’re not afraid of the unknown you don’t have a very good imagination. The moon, well that was easy. I felt my teeth clicking thinking about it, getting responses up my legs and back as I just let the water flow over me.

The heads were a gift from my new and anonymous friend, but why did I recognise them, why her? I often thought about my aunt, about how I would feel if she would die. To tell the truth, if I could love anyone it would be her. Her absence in my life would be the most notable. A sapping noticeable emptiness that could be called loneliness or sadness. Something close to that but sadness was a foreign concept to someone completely bereft of any feeling whatsoever. A blessing and a curse, a crisp clear almost chipper emptiness. Like a smile with no teeth.

Where did that come from? I turned off the water and towelled off, it was a Saturday so much less care was taken in regards to time and form. As I towelled my head I heard something like the door opening and whispering.

I opened the door and looked down the hall but all I could see was my aunt holding tight to the door and looking at whomever was there. I tried looking past her but all I could see were their feet, well one foot, the other seemed to be, well not there. The stump was pressed against the stirrup of a wheelchair. The other foot not looking much more useful next to it.

She whispered harshly and shut the door latching it with the chain and the deadbolt and scurrying into the kitchen.

It took me a few minutes to get ready. I ran a comb through my hair, when I found it and put on a loose t-shirt. Then a pair of jeans more hole than denim and walked down the hall of the minimalist bungalow we shared.

She was waiting for me in the kitchen nursing a mug of gourmet instant coffee and mumbling to herself as she was one to do when something was taxing her.

I’d ask her what was wrong but she’d usually outright tell me as I was the only one she could tell her in insular little world. She really needed to get out more, like me, at least in my dreams. She owned some kind of crystal hoodoo voodoo shop in town that was run by a couple of kids. She came in to visit occasionally but most of the time she didn’t have to. Especially not on weekends. The shop did well, that kind of crap always does in California.

I came in and leaned on the the sparkly faux marble breakfast bar, none of it was new. It had all come with the house and I didn’t need her to tell me that. It has a sort of flat pack feel, like everything could be folded up and carried away at a moments notice.

I put some bread in the toaster and pressed the plunger down imagining it was some sort of small flat animal.

“What did I say about carbs?”

“That they’re delicious?” I said.

She scoffed and went back to her coffee and nothing.

“Who was that at the door?”

“Oh just the mail man, you know how chatty I can get” She took a sip waiting for my reaction “Poor guy couldn’t wait to get away.”

Now I was no expert on the hiring process of the postal service. But I was reasonably sure someone wheelchair bound and missing vital appendages couldn’t make up the required walking speed. So that was either the result of liberal diversity policies running amok or a sweet little lie rolling off my aunts lips to my ears.

“What were you talking about?” I prodded catlike, fighting a smile at the corner of my mouth.

“Oh you know, the usual stuff” She said tossing her long hair around in my face. She had it tied back with one of those seventies bands things that gave it a little lift on the top and a floral loose fitting dress. “So what are you doing today?” She asked, skilfully changing the subject as she sipped her coffee, the smell of which was driving me nuts.

“I was planning to go to the library and catch up on some studying” Of what was a need to know basis of course.

We lived in a nice but relatively secluded part of orange county. Turtle rock was a picturesque little hamlet made up of cute little match stick houses. Street names that sounded like they came straight out of fairytales. Sweetwater and rainbow falls, morning dew, sandpebble, gumdrop lane, I made that last one up. It was a good area but in comparison to the homes around us we lived in a shack. It had privacy but was incredibly secluded. You couldn’t get anywhere without a car and that was something I was sorely lacking.

“Ok”

“So I was wondering if you could drive me there and I could maybe get a ride back?”

She seemed to not be listening to what I was saying and took another sip, her head bobbing and then caught like she skipped a beat. “Sure” She said giving me a laboured smile. “Wait the library? As in at your school?”

“Uh huh?”

“It’s fifteen minute walk versus a two minute car journey” She said pausing trying to register how much I cared about carbon emissions.

“Didn’t you hear? There’s a serial killer on the loose” I said trying my best not to glow as I said it.

“I heard” she said with a ringing tone in her voice like it jumped and fell down a well. “You sure you don’t want to go the mall or something, all that work on the prom and you haven’t bugged me for a dress or shoes.”

“I still have time” I shrugged.

“Ok” She said. She picked up her unwieldly keybang off the kitchen counter with a clattering noise. Various useless keyrings like peace symbols and weed leafs. Cool aunt persona mastered. “Shouldn’t you be out with your friends? It’s a weekend.” She said clapping the keys in her hands. She almost sounded hurt, like I wasn’t fitting into the fantasy she had for a kid my age. Frolicking through piles of maple leaves and having water fights with the local kids. Taking breaks in between licking giant circular lollipops and braiding my hair. Maybe her childhood was on rainbow falls but mine fell somewhere a lot darker on the map and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Who says my friends won’t all be in the library?” They weren’t, Paul was at basketball practice and Wendy was probably at a salon somewhere getting her nails ‘did’.

“Ok sure, I can get some stuff done in town and pick you up around six?”

“I was planning on staying late, I’ll just get a ride or catch a cab or something”

“How late?”

“As long as it takes, I don’t know, are you gonna take me or not?”

“Ok fine”

“Thanks” I said in my most chipper getting my way voice.

We left the house, it was still early afternoon, I slept til about twelve which was odd. I never usually needed much sleep but these dreams seemed to leave me feeling drained. The sun was hanging lazily in the sky and the birds saw fit to fill the silence of turtle rock with their incessant happy chirping.

Most people here didn’t stay on the weekends so the place was deserted apart from the sound of sprinklers hissing. They were probably all out on the beach with their jetskies making lots of noise.

We lived on the tip of a little culdesac called whitewater, probably the least fairytale sounding name in the area. It had a mini garden in the centre of what was supposed to be a roundabout but was a tad too small. But it left more than enough to allow whatever bike or hybrid car the neighbours were packing. The place was a little too metropolitan to have front lawns opting more for the shallay feel. Little neatly formed shrubberies and trees sticking out of perfectly shaped garden strips hemmed in by the bricked driveways. Their mail boxes all nicely shaded by god knows what trees, do I look like a tree surgeon?

The houses all looked the same or similar. The same matchstick wood with sandy coloured tiles matching the tone almost perfectly. They looked almost like unpainted monopoly houses in their uniformity.

Little balconies on top for relaxing two car garages that seemed to take up most of the space in the house.

She opened the garage and drove her little rollerskate car out of the needlessly huge garage. She saw fit to fill it with useless nicknacks, a fooseball table we never used and some piece of ethnic art she picked up in a flea market. Anything to fill the void left by the tiny car in the huge garage.

The car was so small it was basically a motorized rickshaw but complaining would be pointless and eat up too much air in the car. I was getting a free ride after all. A chance I sorely needed to get a leg up on whomever was in the shadows of the internet so interested in little old me.

I opened the car door careful not to break it. I eat all my green vegetables after all. And settled in the front passenger seat, sans legroom. No complaints uttered. She started the engine and the dull hum of the electric motor made my fillings ache.

It puttered along like a milk float down the end of the drive turning right on Sweetwater. A left onto Sycamore creek and then it was another left and a straight shot onto Turtle rock drive. Only coming out of the neighbourhood noticing how much it looked like a cult compound from the outside. Trees planted there like it was a model of some Swedish fishing village and the grass cut so fine it looked like it was just paper mache painted green.

We drove for what felt like miles of an endless stream of near identical houses. Neatly topiared bushes pointing up at the bright clear pale blue sky. Were there any clouds in Orange County?

I couldn’t bare to look at their near perfection anymore. Choosing to just follow the bumps of the dry dusty hills on the otherside, reminding us all that in fact we live in a giant desert.

I opened my window because of course AC was broken in the boxy car, I was lucky the window still worked. I poked my head out for some fresh air, taking in the smell of chlorine as we passed a walled off little compound. The tops of a slide poking over the high walls. Probably owned by some cartel money man that liked quiet swedish fishing villages and indoor pools.

After about a minute of watching shadows slide over the almost non-existant crumple zone of the car. We were pulling into the flat patch of concrete that was the campas parking lot. Which was nice and empty with it not actually being a school day.

Despite all the space my aunt parked at a jaunty angle trying to take up three spaces. I got out and rounded the car to peck her on her cheek narrowly missing her pair of fake DG sunglasess. Planting a bird like poke of hard dry lips on her freckled sunkissed cheek.

“Don’t work too hard” She called at my back as I walked into the shade of the foyer.

“I wont, thanks for the ride” I called back waving at the glare of the sun, covering my eyes with my forearm.

Now onto business.

~

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Possibly the most savage review I’ve ever done. Paragon By Benjamin Peck

Piggy back rides?

Sorry what? I just read that and it just caught me off guard, why are people giving each other piggy back rides at the hospital? You’ve said ‘Crows peak’ twice now and I don’t know if you mean widows peak, I have no idea what a crows peak is, there are crows feet and there are widows peaks I had no idea there was such a thing called a crows peak.
Ok I just had to get that out, so first impressions are kind of cringeworthy, the names. It’s like trying to be a serious gritty story, stepping away from comic books but you still have all these cheesy comic books names, ‘Slayt’ ,’Zeke Blackwell’, ‘Glacier city’. It just took me out of it, it made me aware I was reading a story as opposed to being in an actual world.
I think it would have been better to just set it in a real world town because it seems a little pointless to create a fictional city but do little to no world building around it. You might as well just set it in new york and then people know what new york is like.

The fight scenes are ok, they’re not too self-indulgent but they’re not really jaw dropping either. I was about to drop this down for plot because there didn’t really seem to be one but then you have the thread of the cops taking people to that tower, so you have a nice hook to get people to want to read further to see what they’re doing to them at the tower.

Now honestly I hate the way Zeke is immune to the nullifiers, it’s just too tropey, ‘the main character is immune to the thing that’s holding everyone back’. It’s just been done to death and it completely drained all tension away from that scene with the cops. There was this great tension you’d created because here was this guy facing down people who could permanently wreck his powers and he does it anyway but no two seconds later he’s immune and all the tension is gone.
I like the premise of the nullifiers, I like the idea of superheroes being sort of second class citizens but it’s also been done. I mean this entire plot line is ripped almost entirely from the marvel civil war and to some extent incredibles and I just cant say this competes with those.
The writing is a little sloppy, there’s so much telling when you should be showing, just block paragraphs of exposition dumps, it’s tedious to read and it really weighs down the story. If you can’t deliver your exposition in an interesting way that isn’t just directly telling the reader, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time.
The prologue seemed kind of pointless to be honest. I don’t see why it was relevant to see that his father dies (also really tropey) right at the start and not just have him mention it later or come up in a flashback or a dream. Why is it so relevant that it has to be right at the start?
Honestly the whole thing is too wet, it feels like it was written by a thirteen year old. This is an edgy teens idea of gritty realism. The mohawk and tribal tattoos on the main character just had me cringing so hard, 3edgy5me dude haha.
Don’t get me wrong, if a thirteen year old wrote this I would think he was talented as fuck. There’s a lot of potential here it’s just weighed down with some bad storytelling, some place holder cardboard cut out characters and tired tropes. I’m not saying it’s bad or shitting on it to be mean, it has a lot of potential its just not there yet.

*Update*

Ok this review might have been a little too savage haha. This guy was so butthurt he left me the saltiest three line review for DDD just taking some lame jabs at it that make no sense haha. Like he mocks it for her saying shit like ‘Leet’ hacker. Like he doesn’t get the joke, she’s using it ironically, she’s making fun of herself, it’s self-deprecating humour. But evidently if this guy knew what irony was or had a sense of humour he wouldn’t be this butthurt haha.
Just saying I went out of my way to tear him down and the usual shit like ‘you didn’t read enough of my story man’. Dude I don’t need to get through a whole shit sandwich to know what it tastes like. And why would I randomly want to tear down someone’s story on inkitt a place where reviews don’t even really matter. Like if this was on amazon it would be a completely different thing but inkitt is just a place to basically beta your work. But most of the time it’s just fucking pussies licking eachother’s assholes and just wanted the same in return so when someone like me comes along with the real honest biting criticism they need to hear they need a safe space haha.
Because that’s all I did, I just told the truth, I didn’t go out of my way to attack this guy. I just gave him the full unvarnished truth he needed to hear, one man to another but this little bitch couldn’t take it I guess and that’s really the death nail for a writer, if you can’t take the savage criticism you’re done honestly. If getting one not even really bad review, just critical review sends you into this much of a hissy fit how do you think you’re gonna take that long slog of rejection when you actually are looking to get it published.
Why the fuck do you think so many people self publish? Because they’re terrified of rejection. Just to chime in with a sexist note haha, it’s probably why more men in history are writers because men are more used to rejection than women.
Anyway I could have spent hours arguing with this dipshit for fun but I decided just to side step it, arguing on the internet is just too fucking time consuming and utterly pointless.

If you wanna check it out the drama for yourself, head on over to inkitt with the link provided.

Paragon

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GS2 Chapter 6 Master of the Flying Guillotine

Hello there,

Just doing that usual zombie mayhem shit, you know.

Not many updates really, just been writing my serial killer book, going a little crazy myself. Little stir-crazy, day job and love life situations still suck but I find not talking about it helps haha.

Just trying to get more sales on my damn book which is a pain in the ass since all social media is fucking retarded and facebook is the only place you can really advertise books properly and even they are shiftless greedy assholes trying to charge you to be seen by even people that follow and like your stuff. So you literally can’t win.

More whining, blah blah blah. Just fucking frustrating, feel like I’m fighting upstream or screaming over a choir of voices all trying to be heard at the same time, it’s fucking maddening.

But hey you know fuck it, I chose this bullshit. I could be working in some office somewhere getting fucked in the ass that way.
So….

See you…

Oh yeah this chapter is sort of cool, named after a dope martial art flick, this is where it starts getting real. Also sneak peek of the cover for part 2 featured. Thought I’d just drop that in there haha.

Master of the flying guillotine

~

“Here’s fine” The nasally voice said.

The grip on his arms loosened and he slipped the grip like a runny egg. Snow crunching under his knees, the cold rushing all around his neck. The wind was picking up and his body heat was creeping away to warmer climbs.

“Do you know who I am?” The nasal voice said,

TJ felt a little dizzy, suffering some advance head rush. He hung his head and breathed in and out slow, his greasy black hair draped across his face. They’d taken him around the side alley of the army navy store, in the relative privacy, sandwiched between two frozen stucco walls. It was too dark and there were no security lights or cars passing who could see a thing.

“Garylynn” The girl with green hair said.

A giant hand with delicately painted and manicured fingernails wrapped around TJ’s neck. Squeezing all his chins into one purple and red mess, lifting him off the ground.

That woke him up, his eyes were wide and frantic now and he kicked away at nothing clawing at the huge and well kept fingers gripping his neck. His vision in and out he looked at the giant that had him. It was some kind of woman, maybe seven, eight foot tall. A long blonde wig, hiding bright round eyes and lots of caked on make up, an adam’s apple sharp enough to poke your eye out.

“I have your attention now?” The nasal voice said. The fat girl with the green hair didn’t get a response and nodded angrily at the behemoth that had a hold of TJ. The monster squeezed. “Yes?”

“Errrgh Y-es” TJ croaked and coughed.

“Why did you approach me?” She asked.

“I- thought- you were- someone else”. He coughed.

“Sunday?” The fat girl laughed and said “So you’re her little fanboy huh?” She got close and looked him up and down with a crick in her smirk “Well now you’ll be mine because I’m here to replace that skank and I’m ten times the woman she was.” She said rolling her head back and forth completely lacking self awareness.

TJ coughed out a hoarse laugh.

“What’s so funny fat boy? Huh?” She screeched getting too close, spitting in his eye. She smelled like cotton candy and sweaty packaged ham. “You know who I am?” She clicked her fingers and the monster loosened it’s grip dropping TJ in the snow again, the cold setting in fast to his knees through the thin sweat pants.

“Juanita, we can’t stay out here, it’s gonna start soon, we need a place to hold up and report in.” The purple haired girl with the nose ring whined stepping forward in the snow in her knee high boots.

“Oh well thanks Jaclyn, you just fucked up my whole introduction” The fat girl barked back at the purpled haired girl, Jaclyn. She turned back to TJ and looked down at him and shrugged. “Guess the cats out of the bag now. I’m ‘the’ Juanita Horker. You might have heard of me. I created an algorithym on twitter that blocks shitlords from seeing any of your posts. Thus saving the internet from people with the wrong opinions.” She said. This is Jaclyn Case” She said pointing at the Purple haired girl “A blogger and tech expert.” She turned to the short haired masculine girl in the tank top under the winter coat and said “Rochelle ‘Roch’ Edwards, feminist and mma fighter”. She turned again and the black girl with orange dreadlocks. She stepped forward with her arms folded at a slanted angle like a 90’s breakfast cereal supervillain. “Blaque Kat, proud woman of colour, queer ‘af’ author and blogger.” She came forward after all the introductions were done and put her hand on the huge misshapen arm of the monster seething in front of TJ. “And you’ve already met Garylynn Smalls. Trans-activist and spokesperson for our group; Women against zombie profliferation WAZP for short.”

“Jaclyn’s right, we don’t have time for this, we’ve got a job to do.” Roch said, the veins on her neck popping up like the strings in a piano, accompanied by overly verbose hand gestures.

“Well I’m the boss of this group and I say, this fat retard has information we need on the skinny green haired bitch, ok” Juanita whined.”

“Who died and made you boss?” Kat said turning her head incredulous. “And I hate that fucking name.”

“Also ‘retard’ is really ableist Nita” Jaclyn said verbally frying all over the show gripping her laptop case to her chest.

Garlyn towered over TJ saying nothing, could it even speak? it breathed in and out seething, laboured breathes like that of a bulldog interbred to fight but not to breath correctly. It’s eyes burning like white hot coals behind the veil of blonde hair hanging mask like. The creature was wearing a custom pink jacket and a long fleural dress that did nothing to extenuate it’s boxy almost full size wardrobe shape. Two hard mounds that could have been breasts or medicine balls.

TJ couldn’t take his eyes off it. He didn’t want to move fearing he might trigger a boss fight and it might throw it’s clothes off and grow tentacles. His mind then trailing off to hentai and then a large round blimp filled up his vision and a shrill voice. A fat hand slapped him across the face and his eyes rolled in his head.

“Where is she?” Juanita croaked.

“Who?” TJ said as an instant reaction.

“Sunday, you know her, she’s here isn’t she?” She screeched.

TJ shook his head, his greasy hair shaking solid almost strawlike. “She’s dead, I saw it.” He said.

“That’s not possible” Juanita said.

“Nita, we can’t stay out here, shit is about to get too real, we stay out here, monster or not we’re gonna be in trouble.” Roch said.

“Did you just call Garylynn a monster?” Juanita bounced up her belly lagging as she moved. “I’ll have you know she’s a stunning and brave woman and you better respect her. She’s programmed to follow my orders and if I say so I’ll have her pull your arms off and fuck you with them.”

“Guys, guys, we need to work together, we can’t fall apart.” Jaclyn said.

“Fuck this Sunday bitch, she’s not why we’re here” Kat said.

Roch stepped up to TJ and squatted next to him. Her face was drawn and plain without make up, cigarrete scarred at the corner of her mouth. “He’s seen our faces and he knows our names, shit you might as well monologue our whole plan.” Roch said as she looked back at them jockeying to tear eachother apart. She turned back to TJ to look into his eyes. “We gotta kill him”.

“She’s right” Kat said looking at Juanita who scowled at her but couldn’t disagree.

“Fine fine fine! I’ll find her on my own and then we’ll settle things.” Juanita said as she walked towards TJ, smiling. “Garylynn, would you kindly tear off this fat boys head and kicked it down the street like a soccer ball?”

“YES, RIP, TEAR, KILL.” The thing responded, moving robotically, rising to it’s full height of around nine feet tall. It’s shadow engulfing TJ and Roch. Roch smiled at the monster coming and then at TJ.

“Well it’s been fun kid” Roch said as she hopped out of the way.

TJ swallowed dry, his throat felt scarred and lined with razor blades after just a minute of having his larynx massaged by the lovely Garylynn. Maybe it would be quick, quicker than someone in an isis video at least, maybe having your head ripped off by a giant monster tranny wasn’t that bad.

The monster got close enough for him to smell it’s breath, like raw meat and babyfood. It was hot almost like steam, swirling all around his head, almost pleasant. He squeezed his eyes shut and made a stupid face and at the very last moment he could hear a strange whirring whupping sound like a helicopter blade.

–

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Semi-savage review- Keep Your Promises by Sabitha Kiritharan

Conversers?

Is that a shoe or some kind of hightech weapon? A jetpack maybe haha. Just messing with you. I assume it’s converse shoes. Paragraphs, use them, please god use them. Is English even your first language? I didn’t even know she was in a hospital, all this pointless description just going over my head. We get it, shes worried about her sister. Honestly, I can’t read this, it’s too tedious and sloppy and it just keeps going on and one without any story with these huge blocks of texts. It’s a chore to read and it barely makes sense. I’m just gonna give it a four because it’s not terrible and if English isn’t your first language or you’re using some sort of translation tool then it’s great, it makes some sense, it can be followed. It just not grabbing me. It’s not horrible, it just needs loads of work.

If you want to read it for yourself, to inkitt you must sojourn.

Keep your promises

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TOTCB Chapter 9 ‘Wings of flies’

Yo,

Gonna make this a quick one, my days are seemingly getting shorter and shorter, doing all this reviewing and dealing with the ensuing butthurt (I’ll elaborate on that later haha), the proofreading is murder since I started doing longer chapters. Boohoo woe is me right? haha. And I’m pretty much exhausted everyday now I upped my weights, feeling like death everyday but I shall be larger soon haha.

Still chugging along with Diana Dreams Darkly, it’s going pretty well but most importantly it’s fun as fuck, so there’s that haha. Still working on getting GS2 out and faffing about with this The one that came back, editing it slowly and surely with the help of the wonderful Nat who helped me with GS and stuff before that.

So that’s all I’ve got time for folks haha.

Cya

Wings of flies

–

“This is eye witness news at ten” A voice over said as graphics for the news station rolled over the screen.

An anchor with short slick hair and a pressed blue suit faded in with his name under him “Bob Hurley”. He said straightfaced “He disappeared without a trace three years ago. Tonight a san Antonio boy is back home. Johnny Bartlett” A video was played over him, an upward shot of Johnny. He looked paler than ever with the washed out stage lighting. The dark glasses on, that wide brimmed cowboy hat on his head. “Now sixteen years old, he vanished when he was thirteen. Johnny says he was kidnapped and taken to spain. He says for three years he was repeatedly drugged, beaten and raped. All part of a sex slave operation involving dozens of missing children”.

A young female anchor with her hair in a short bob and too much blush continued. Her name super imposed under her reading ‘Sandra Hawkins’. “Well Bob, the FBI is not taking this case lightly. Somehow a thirteen year old boy from San Antonio ended up in spain, without a passport.”

It cut to a street shot of the same anchor woman on the streets of san Antonio. The sky was slate grey and she stood under a metal sign outside fort sam Houston.

“On the night of his disappearance. Johnny had a fight with his family so came out here to Fort Sam Houston to play basketball. Two young boys approached him. He started talking, the next thing he knew, there was a clothe over his mouth and Johnny passed out.

It cut to an old photo of Johnny before he was taken wearing a blue baseball cap and hoodie.

“He claimed his captors changed his appearance to make him unrecognisable.” It cut to the interview of Johnny. Sandra was wearing a dark suit jacket over a turtle neck sweater and dark trousers. “He was no longer allowed to speak English”

The interview took place in a lounge in the studio, mocked up to look like an old lady’s living room. There was a long cream couch along the wall with a wheat pattern on it. The walls had pictures of old ships on them. Johnny sat in a cream armchair with a leaf pattern embroidered onto it. Sandra sat across from him in a white leather chair.

Johnny leaned forward, his feet off the teal carpet, Susan had her legs crossed. It was filmed from the side, to get them both in shot.

“Did they rape you every night?” She asked with a slight inflection as it cut to a close up of his face, pale and angular.

“Me? No, uh uh, because they- They didn’t rape me every night. Some of them they like more” Johnny smiled and released a sort of pained laugh. “Some of the kids they like more, they rape them usually, two or three times a week.”

“Was there a religious component to it, were they worshipping the devil?”

“Err”

Porter was set up in a booth behind the cameras, standing watching from the dark studio. Peggy was sitting down on a couch somewhere in back watching on the monitors.

The booth he was standing in had been where they’d briefed the news crew on the basics of the story. They had Johnny’s missing photo and a few others they pulled from the news archives. They’d stuck them on the wall of the booth.

The angle he was standing he could see the monitors of the interview and the pictures of Johnny as a kid at the same time. Just instinctively he started comparing them. In the old pictures the boy in them had blonde hair and blue almost steel grey eyes. Johnny on the camera now had deep brown eyes, but that wasn’t what he was looking at.

Porter started to feel warm, the hairs on the back of his neck started to stand up and his breathing quickened. A light rushing feeling in his chest was building. There was something wrong. A fly landed on a picture of Johhny on Christmas morning opening presents. It was taken from his side with his head down as he tore into the wrapping paper.

He pulled it off the wall, letting the tack hit the carpet. It was the best picture he could get of him in profile.

He’d read about a man who was caught by Scotland yard in heathrow airport by identifiying his ears. Ears were just as unique as fingerprints. He held the pictures up to the monitor and compared their ears.

They weren’t a match.

He looked back at Peggy. She was still watching the monitors and hadn’t seen him pluck the picture off the wall so he slid it into his pocket.

–

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Review for “The Kings Game” by Remini UDA

It’s pretty interesting.

The start is well written, grabs your attention,, gets some set up and then goes straight into the plot very confidently. Got lots of Harry Potter, also weirdly got some John Carpenter vibes, maybe some anime sneaking in there. It’s a strong start but then the first chapter does get a little bogged down towards the end, lots and lots of talking and then it ends with talking. Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with talking but to have such a strong start and then sort of trail off towards the end of the chapter is a bit of a let down. It would have been much better if it had built to some sort of crescendo. First chapters almost need to be complete stories in themselves. But other than that I have no real criticisms., it’s well written, confident voice comes through, the story seems solid, the world building isn’t cringeworthy at all which you get with a lot of fantasy type stories. I don’t see many massive grammar/spelling mistakes. All in all it’s pretty solid stuff.

The kings game

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DDD Chapter 2 ‘Do you see what I see?’

Hey,

Been kind of in a funk recently shouting at my tv, losing at Gwent haha. I wish after all the money I sunk into it I wasn’t so shitty at it haha. But I can’t stop playing it, what an abusive relation it is haha.

Talking about abusive relationships, nah, no more of that nonsense. All business now.

Pretty much been business as usual, keeping up my usual pace, can burn out about 8k a week as long as my day job doesn’t get in the way and we’re entering that busy season and the weather isn’t helping. I’ve got two fans on me as we speak and I already bought a third. And not pussy fans either, one is a big tower fan for about sixty quid the other is a powerful little clip on one attached to my desk.

This heat is insane man. I mean shit if people can use a snowball as proof that global warming isn’t real I can show the stains on my couch to prove the opposite, let’s not fight. It was joke. It’s just so freaking hot, this is England not fucking Zimbabwe, jesus.

Its going pretty well, pretty much the only thing in my life that is. I’m really enjoying how it’s turning out, it’s fun even for me and the response so far from beta readers is great.

So keep on keeping on.

See you…

~

Paul drove his dad’s car when he was out in the field doing what I could only dream about, literally. But in an all together less neat and ritualistic way. That’s a level of trust you can’t kill for. His dad was obviously very confident in the offspring he’d carefully chiselled out of clay. That or he was indelibly stupid.

It was an older model olive drab hummer with leather interiors that smelled like discipline and spearmint gum. The thing ran like it was brand new, the old man kept it in peak condition and his son took it just as seriously. I opened a bag of chips in her once on the way to an Ariana Grande concert and he made me get out and finish them on the side of the freeway.

Did I mention another thing I love about Paul Alan Jnr? He rarely talks, sure there’s strong silent types. And then there’s types who are conditioned to levels of ‘being seen and not heard’ that teeter on ‘culty’, is that a word?

They taught him well, sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t as damaged as I was. But instead of breaking the mould he’d been hammered perfectly into it. A living Ken Doll with no visible cracks or creases.

I am a big fan of comfortable silence but sadly in Orange County, near the coast, it’s in short supply. But inside the sealed air conditioned mobile command centre that was Paul’s dad’s car, it was preserved. Like some kind of orchid, hermetically sealed for freshness. I could almost taste it.

Just watching the anemic palm trees go by. Baking and cracking in the sun while I felt like a lizard on a cool shaded rock, bliss.

And with a full stomach it was even better. He took me to this little taco place we like near the beach because it’s quiet and he knows that’s why I like it. I had the vegan taco, I’m not vegan but I like their food and for some strange reason I like animals. Not really people or kids, although I don’t hate them. I just feel a callous indifference for everything that doesn’t walk on four legs. There’s something about them I like, their raw natures, their lack of pretense, lack of filter. Their natural instincts just accepted, not sanded away by school or television.

Although sadly the feeling is not mutual. Every cat or dog my aunt brought back would rather jump under a semi than let me pet them. I won a gold fish at a fair once, got it a bowl and a little castle, the whole bit. As soon as we put it in the bowl it climbed those castle steps and was never seen again. It chose a life of solitude like some hunchback. It starved to death rather than see me for all of the five seconds it would take for me to sprinkle food on the surface of the water.

He paid for the food, of course, perfect gentleman, did I mention that? Feminism what’s that?

“Are you mad at me?” He asked as he kept his eyes straight, hands at ten and two.

I looked at him and sighed, smiling with the corners of my mouth like a snake. “No.”

“Is that a real ‘no’ or a woman’s ‘no’” He asked still refusing to look at me.

“No as in no”. I just couldn’t get those dreams out of my head. Picturing the city under the blanket of night and me stalking it’s street like some carrion bird picking off the weak and the strong alike. It was a mix of horror and sheer splendour mixing in my chest. A feel so unexplainable, to try would be blasphemy.

“You just seem-“ A sound of leather shifting, from the seat. “-Different”.

Should I tell him about my dream, maybe just to shut him up. I don’t have to tell him about the good bits, I can keep those to myself, locked away in Dear Diana’s vault of diabolical deeds.

I make a bit of a show of it, lick my lips so he can hear, maybe not over the air-conditioning. “I had this weird dream is all” I shrug and smile.

“What kind of dream?”

Two questions in one day, my aren’t we the inquisitive type today?

“I was walking- walking at night”. I said tapping my front teeth together anxiously.

“Like a vampire?”

I scoffed.

“You really shouldn’t be walking alone at night” He said sounding like the father I never had.

“Oh really?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Apparently not” I say losing a sliver of patience,

“You didn’t watch the news?”

“Not if I don’t have to, boring show.” There goes another one.

“They found bodies washed up on Huntington beach.”

“Bodies?” Happens every other day here. Some fat tourist from pittsburg pennsylvania goes belly up in a rubber dingy and we have to pretend to care.

“Headless bodies” He said making a chopping motion at his neck like I didn’t know what headless meant. “They think it’s a serial killer.”

A shock of something, a cold laughter in the dark, a tiny voice speaking a language only I could understand. Those words setting my teeth on edge, my skin to a cool burn.

“Really” I said trying to sound like I wasn’t chomping at the bit to google this on my phone right in front of him. I swallowed, trying to pretend like it didn’t phase me at all like it wasn’t the most rapturous news I’d heard in my life. Like there weren’t alarm bells ringing all through Diana’s dark deep depths. Like a light didn’t go off in my head telling me somewhere somehow this is what I’d been waiting for.

But what else? Of course I need to feign some sort of fear, some kind of concern, for the victims for their families maybe. I realised then that it had been a minute since I last spoke. I just threw out a stock “That’s horrible – those poor people” I added for effect. No tears, no screams? Too much.

“Don’t worry – I’ll protect you” He smiled into the rearview mirror.

“Did they find them?”

“Did they find what?”

“The heads” I asked quietly, trying to restrain myself, biting my lip.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think they mentioned that.”

“Oh, terrible, I’m so scared” I said almost shaking with excitement. What could it mean, why take the heads? Was it just a gang thing? Maybe it was the cartel. They love murdering random people and scattering them all over the place. But what happened to the heads? Maybe they just washed away to become a house for a family of California Dungeness crabs. But not to find one, it could have just been Paul forgot but it seemed to strike a chord with Diana’s dark double. A shrill laughter, a tingle, a shiver up my spine, electricity on my finger tips. Every hair on the back of my neck standing up, I had to check my lip to make sure I wasn’t drooling. Something seemed so right about it, something I had no idea I was waiting for.

I had to find out.

The moment he stopped the car I bounded out the door like a dog seeing another passing car full of burning cats.

Tossing back a feeble kissing noise and something like “Bye babe, see you tomorrow”

He tossed something equally as vapid back and drove off down the street.

I quickstepped to the door of our ’reasonably’ priced Orange county that looked like a little beach hut. Complete with beach towels drying on a spinner in the tiny front yard.

I was trying not to break into a full scale sprint. Trying to keep my hand loose enough so I didn’t break the key off in the lock. All so as to avoid any unnecessary time wasting conversations with my aunt. So I’d be free to sit down at my computer as quick as humanly possible.

The keys on my chain rattled and it took me too long to find the right one and get it to keep still enough to go in the lock.

I turned the key closing the door behind me and striding through the halls passed the living room which I followed with my eyes. The tv was on, the news, something about the killings. What a coincidence but something in me told me this had to be a private moment, shared with no one. Not even my own flesh and blood and I also didn’t want any spoilers, no fluff, or padding. Just raw stark reality, no artists impression for Diana of the Dark.

I hurried past slurring my words “Hey, I’m home, had a great day, no hungry, kinda tired, going to my room kthxbai!”

Bustling past what felt like a crowd in a trainstation. Fighting a wooden hatrack I thought was cute on amazon but had yet to buy a hat for. I barged into my own room and shut the door.

I know what you’re thinking, possible psychopath girl. Her room must be silence of the lambs, American psycho levels of neat freakery, well you’d be wrong. My room is for lack of a better word, a hovel.

Clothes, clean and dirty in piles throughout the room and on my bed. Posters of bands I don’t listen to anymore if I ever did in the first place peeling off the walls. Containers of soft drinks and burgers, I never said I was vegetarian, I said I liked animals, big difference. They could be vegie burgers, I don’t remember.

The curtains were drawn and the room was dark and humid. I put on the fan and it started to cough and move warm air around my small room.

My laptop sat atop a throne of dirty clothes on my bed, half open like a clamshell.

I snatched it up and almost tossed it onto my dressing table slash desk slash landfill.

I turned it on and found a swizel chair with a sock wrapped tightly around one of the wheels. It’s swivelling days were over it seemed. I sat down and waited for my laptop to boot up which seemed to be taking much longer than usual.

Punching it wouldn’t make it go any faster. So I didn’t do that.

It finally booted up and I quickly logged in. My fingers almost tripping over themselves to type in my password ‘Dahmer7’.

~

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Driftwood Tales By Ambrose Grimm – Savage review

Just far too slow and dithering, the pacing isn’t great and the hints at the start are kind of cheesy.. The story takes itself far too seriously and it’s just kind of derivative. I feel like I’ve seen this story a million times before. This is something you’d get from a seventies portmanteau movie and it wasn’t really scary then and it isn’t now. I just didn’t find it very interesting, even if it was a dream, the part with the ghosts had zero bite to it. There’s no setup, he’s just talking to this old woman about nothing in particular, then boom ghosts, feel sorry for these dead kids for reasons. It just couldn’t hold my interest long enough to finish it, you really need to have some hook right at the start or people’s eyes just glaze over. The characters are also just place holder characters, they have no real depth so it’s hard to care about them. I can see you’ve tried to make it somewhat descriptive and I like some of the Lovecraft words, gibbous. But this is no Lovecraft. Lovecraft isn’t the best writer but he captures the atmosphere and the attention from the word go and leaves a lasting sense of foreboding. I mean there could be a great story here but I’m not going to read it because it’s weighed down with the poor pacing. It;s by no means bad and trust me, I’ve seen bad, it’s just ok.

I actually can’t link to this story because this was review was so savage they took it down haha (I’m not proud of this). I actually wrote back and gave them some more constructive feedback and they thanked me for being so honest so it’s not that bad. I did write back and gave them some ideas I thought might improve the pacing so I’m not a monster, well… ah.

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