action thriller

Dragged Across Concrete review

I really don’t know where to start with this movie, I went into it expecting the unexpected and it still managed to wow me.
I just don’t know how to even classify Zahler’s movies, they’re like if David Lynch and Tarantino had a baby raised by David Ayer. His movies sit in this weird place between cartoony violence and absurdity verging on surrealism and gritty hyper realism.
Somehow he manages to catch this almost like documentary level of gritty realism in his movies which is done purely so that he can hit you with a sledge hammer of goofy shit in the third act and it works so well that three movies in I have no idea what to predict from this guy.

It’s film making that just leaves me thunder struck nonstop and I can’t even think to react, I can’t tell if it’s just really good slocky nonsense like Taratino or genius levels of nonsense like Lynch.

His movies just leave me at a loss for words because I’ve just never really seen anything like them before and that’s high praise alone.

This is Zahler’s third movie as I’ve said, I think he did a puppet master movie but I couldn’t give a fraction of a fuck about that. I tried to get into the puppet master movies but even me, someone that loves shitty horror movies couldn’t get into it, the series is pure garbage. They’re just movies made because someone made some cool puppets then thought it would be cool to make a movie about them. None of them have enough stories to fill an episode of tales from the crypt and the characters are just garbage. They’re awful movies and I really tried to like them, I watched like four of them before I just gave up on the series.

Although if anyone can make them good it’s Zahler, so I might have to watch his version.

So his other movies are Bone Tomahawk, which is like Open range meets the hills have eyes, I’m not kidding. It turns from a totally realistic western into a campy grindhouse horror movie and it’s awesome, Kurt Russel, Patrick Wilson and Mathew Fox from lost was especially great in this movie.

Then there’s the instant cult classic Brawl in Cellblock 99, hands down his best movie. Vince Vaugn plays a stone cold mountain of a man bad ass who goes to prison and has to save his family from gangsters from behind bars. Starts off as a gritty crime/prison drama turns into a fucking grindhouse videogame by the end and it’s awesome. Like more awesome than you would think possible in this current generation. Hands down the best action movie for ten years because there’s almost no competition except marvel cape shit and fast and furious and John Wick and those movies don’t really count in my mind. They’re more like post ironic spectacle movies as opposed to actual movies. They’re self referential to the point of parody.

Is it time to discuss this actual movie now? I think so, yeah so I liked it, obviously, The end.

Ok so seriously, it’s a slow boil movie and its pretty long, I see people complaining about that but honestly it could’ve been three hours and I would’ve been fine with that, it uses it’s length really well, it never feels like it drags and you know the pay off is going to be something special, because that’s just a Zahler movie. Long build up to epic pay off, and he doesn’t disappoint.

The story is about, well it’s about three stories colliding (technically four). So the first is about this ex con who gets out of prison and I guess he’s supposed to be the main character because we’re introduced to his story first. But the guy is pretty unlikeable honestly and there was more time spent on the other characters. He’s sort of meant to be a thug with a heart of gold but he just came off as a total asshole to me haha. From one total asshole to the other.

But I guess all the characters are sort of flawed, I just identified more with the flaws of the other characters.

Obviously it goes without saying Mel Gibson is the best character, it’s fucking Mel Gibson, you put him in anything, he’s gonna be the best thing in it hands down. And he’s sort of going through a bit of a resurgence right now in the action genre, between this and Blood Father, he’s doing pretty good and I hope to hell he keeps it up. I personally want to tear down heaven and earth for the travesty of not casting him in fury road over political bullshit cuckery. I don’t give a shit what the dude says when he’s drunk you don’t just take a shit on your movie franchise to avoid ‘bad press’. Obviously dumb people still liked it because it had ‘big splosions and fire breathing guitars’ *soyboyopenmouthsmile.jpeg. I just thought it was ok and Tom Hardy just delivered his standard ‘I’m here for my cheque’ performance tippified in venom. But I mean I was never a huge fan of Mad Mad anyway, there’s like one good Mad Max movie in a list of four, it’s hardly good odds.

Mel plays an embittered old cop who’s been passed over for promotion over and over because he’s too much of an un-pc loose cannon who doesn’t know how to ‘play the game’ of politics, more acquainted with ass kicking than ass kissing. And Vince Vaugn plays his suffering partner, honestly I still want a Brawl sequel, I don’t care, bring motherfuckers back from the dead haha.

Mel gets caught on someone’s phone being a little too rough with a gentleman of colour and he’s suspended. But he’s living in shitty neighbourhood full of dark skinned gentlemen who are harassing his teenage daughter. I mean if anyone is gonna have a teenage daughter pushing sixty it’s the immortal Chad Mel Gibson. The only man to portray my favourite book character with any justice (it still wasn’t perfect but he made it his own, he was ‘Porter’ not Parker), don’t talk to me about Jason Statham’s Parker, he just turned it into a generic action movie like all his others.

He needs money and he stumbles upon plans for some kind of robbery and decides with his partner they’re going to rob the robbers. So that’s the movie basically. I mean fuck, can you imagine making a movie with this premise in 2019. Fuck imagine casting Mel Gibson as a cop suspended basically for manhandling brown people who wants to rob people so he can live away from said brown people, this is anti political correctness they couldn’t get away with in the seventies. Even Charles Bronson had to shoot some white muggers in Death Wish. I mean come on.

So just imagining the set of balls it took to make this movie has me at a loss. And it’s all delivered in a way that makes me feel like it’s not really trying to push a message either way or just trying to be edgy for the sake of it. It just seems matter of fact. The ending was also slightly infuriating, which I won’t spoil.

My main criticism of the movie is that I think it could’ve been longer honestly. I think the bank robber characters were well set up but didn’t have a very satisfying pay off. I wanted them to have more screen time, it just feels like that part was rushed a little and more could’ve been done there with their characters.

Ok well *spoilers* Mel Gibson dies at the end which sucks, it sucks double because the sort of unlikeable main character gets all the money and tosses his family a few gold bars to say like “sorry I killed your old man for basically no reason lol”. But it isn’t delivered in a punitive way. The movie never takes a moral position, he’s not being punished for being a naughty racist which he kind of is and isn’t. He just wants his kid to not be harassed and live in a shitty neighborhood, he never uses the gamer word or comes off particularly prejudiced. But I mean what is Mel Gibson famous for other than Mad Max and Lethal Weapon, it’s for saying crazy racist stuff while drunk off his ass haha. So you have to think his casting and in particular this role is for a reason.

He’s not playing this cuck who has to suck black dick like in some gay Tarantino cuck movie about racial vengeance, he’s just a guy trying to get some money for his family. So I never felt like the movie was political, it’s just a fun cool hard hitting movie that pulls no punches.

I really could talk about this fucking movie for days, there’s just so much there, there’s layers upon layers from the weird fucked up scene with Jennifer Carpenter to the awesome ending shootout. There’s just so much I can get into and I can already see this stretching to the 2k mark so I’ll leave it there and just say, see this movie asap.

See you…

August 13, 2019 0

Diana in the dark chapter 16 ‘Dark Descendants’ (remurdered)

Hey there what’s up?

Don’t really have much to talk about this week, just been working and watching the expanse which I still really love. It’s just really well written and every character that annoys when they’re first introduced has grown on you by the end of the season and I really love that.

They introduced this ‘stronk empowered wamen’ character in season 2 who just seemed really generic and annoying at the start of the season and now I really like her arch. They just really developed and rounded her out from her introduction. She like starts off as this generic badass and then she becomes sort of a fish out of water character to a rebel and then comes full circle to be really bad ass again but by then I was really rooting for her. I mean yeah it doesn’t really make sense for her to be ability to beat the shit out of grown men especially considering she’s a martian and supposed to have weaker bones and she’s fighting earthers who live under higher gravity. But martian marines are supposed to train under higher gravity and she isn’t tiny and skinny, she does look kind of built a little. Not overly so but it’s more believable and then of course she’s most effective when wearing power armor.

All round, I’m just loving the show and the world and the characters, just another great- I was about to say show on amazon but then I googled it and apparently it was originally on scy fy but then got cancelled after season 3. Which just seems fucking crazy to me, unless it dips in quality in season 3 dramatically to a point where you would drop the whole show which would have to be drastic I’d say it was budget related because looking at the visuals in this show it cannot be cheap to make. So if it’s pulling in good to fair numbers I can see why it might get axed by scy fy for just not be cost effective. But I love it and I hope it keeps going on amazon like Bosch and Sneaky Pete.

I also watched the Shazam movie and it was ok, I don’t really want to do a review on it because I didn’t really have strong feelings about it in either direction. Just a pretty solid fun movie. I didn’t think it was as good as aquaman which I think is the top of the shitpile of modern dc movies.

The story is basic, the characters are ok, the action is good, I liked the feel and the tone and how it really puts you in the ‘Big’ mindset where you’re like ‘What would I do in this situation?’. I think it takes the perspective of the audience and makes it a lot more relate-able than other comic book movies.

But I think the message of the movie is shitty and half baked and it suffers from the same syndrome most movies do today where it has no real middle. It’s like some surgical nightmare where a chick has huge fake tits and a huge fake ass but their waste is too small to support them both and they just snap in the middle under the pressure haha.

The middle of this movie is basically one five minute montage and then all we’re left with is a really bloated first and third act. This is the only reason aquaman is top for me because it was more balanced, it had a really satisfying second that made the film feel more like a journey. It felt like a movie from the eighties and it was great.

There really just isn’t enough meat to the story or the middle bit to carry us through to the end, which is why it’s just ok.

And the reason I said I hated the message is because the message is basically “family” in air quotes but then proceeds to totally shit on the family. Because the message isn’t really family, it’s totally anti-family as it represents real blood related families as shitty people who hate and treat you like shit and abandon you because someone else can do a better job. Your actual parents will neglect you and fuck you up and you’ll kill them or forget they exist and instead embrace a group of ethnically diverse strangers as your ‘real’ family to take on the big bad guy who had his real family screw him up.
It’s very subversive and I don’t take kindly to this narrative that ‘anyone can be your family’ any group of random people cannot be a family. A family is defined by blood relation, any other definition is an attack on the family, attempting to water down and erase the meaning of the word, which if you’ve read 1984 isn’t a good thing. Words are nice, keeping their meaning is important, so let’s stop trying to undermine them and reinvent for a silly political agenda.

The most healthy and enriching environment for a child is still the nuclear family, no matter what some trendy buzzfeed article might say, having a mom and a dad is still much better than not having them on average. I’m not trying to say some people can’t be shitty parents or single parents can’t be great, or foster kids can’t turn out great. I’m talking about averages, not one off, I’m talking about the rule not the exceptions that prove the rule. You coming to me and saying ‘but I was adopted and blah blah blah’ doesn’t prove anything, you’re one of like a billion people, your anecdotal evidence is meaningless when compared to the stats of the thousands of other people that didn’t get so lucky.

Anyway rant over and I don’t think a review is necessary, it’s ok. Pretty standard for comic book movies today just being alright. Kids will love it but hopefully wont internalise the subversive message.

I don’t really think it’s worth a cinema visit because the budget isn’t that amazing, it’s sort of a smaller movie, you’re not gonna get as much out of it as you would seeing the avengers in the cinema. But it’s worth a stream.

Anyway, got proofreading to do for the latest chapter of Cur 2, didn’t get much done this week because work stuff completely kicked my ass but hopefully next week will be different, probably wont be though haha.

See you…

–

I just sat there for a moment looking down at it, turning the would-be weapon in my hand, getting a feel for the weight. The weight of his words swished around in my head. I didn’t have to ask if everything was true; it just made some sort of insane sense, a puzzle piece falling into place.

This was what I waiting for.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Whatever you want.” Brodie—my brother—smiled that prepackaged smile.

A lapping feeling of black waves poured over me, covering me, feet first. It was like a dream, like a wish realized. A whole dark world opened up before me, welcoming me like some returning hero from long exile.

I was home, whatever that meant.

I went from a sad emo only child with a serial killer blog to Dark Diana Mistress of the Damned with not one but two siblings of the night at her side, more or less.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, suddenly rising to a mid-crouch, the ceiling was far too low for his stature. He leaned over Wendy, and opened each eye, then gave her a few little love taps to bring her just to the brink of consciousness. “I gave them just a little more than you to keep them under. I didn’t know whether you wanted them to talk, sometimes I like them to talk, confess, scream, spit, whatever.” My brother paused and looked down at her like she was Christmas ham and looked back up at me. Smiling that plastic smile. “It seems necessary sometimes, but it’s up to you. I think she’s past a confession at this point.”

“I know all I need to,” I said stonily.

“I figured as much.” He smirked.

Wendy’s eyes rolled back and forth under her lids and then fluttered. She looked around, obviously confused. Unable to move her head, as it was pinned with plastic wrap across her forehead. She saw me and her eyes went hot and spicy; I could almost see blood squirting out of them.

I could feel it then, my heart pounding, the dark dancer gripped the knife, moved my hand, and my feet went on their own. I let go, let it take me, as it purred incessantly in my ears.

I stood, as if someone yanked my strings, and glided over to her side, staring down at her.

She was beautiful, a perfect specimen, really. It was a shame. A beautiful tragedy.

Wendy was my friend, kind of. That was what made it special, the setting, the night, the company.

She looked up at me with wide terrified eyes now, she’d seen the knife, she could no doubt feel the squashing pressure of it now. The helplessness, the hopelessness. The cornered animal; anger leaving and being replaced with a dreadful reflection. She could feel it now, no doubt see it in my empty eyes.

Wendy knew she was about to be swallowed, there was no other way. Not a muscle she could move, not a penny she could spend, not an eyelid she could flutter. Nothing would spare her this, this was fate, this was the end, her end, and it was as beautiful and poetic an end I could ever hope to see.

Only one question savaged me; where to start?

I put my hands through her hair, making a soothing mocking cooing noise. It’s sibilant voice humming below my own.

Tears leaked from her eyes, and she made a pitiful mewling noise, a white frothy spittle gathered under the tape around her mouth.

I felt the boney fingers curling on top of mine, squeezing the knife, lifting my hand like Abraham, but no one would call out, no loving god would stop this.

It came down like a guillotine falling, such beautiful effortless purpose, a thread through the head of a needle.

The knife entered her torso just under her ribs, she gasped as the cool steel touched her. An almost ecstatic sound of breath escaped and held, resisting, then relenting. Her body tensed and went limp. Only her eyes held onto some tiny spark of something.

I stood there for a moment feeling it. Life, death, power, powerless, emptiness. A tingling sensation traveled down my back and to my legs as I continued to cut.

She breathed raspily over spurts of disgusting sticky blood. Her fingers dancing and convulsed under the plastic.

I was somewhere about two inches into her chest cavity when she finally died, near her heart. I felt it stop beating, listlessly clinging to life just for the sake of routine.

Wendy slowly wound down like a clock, just slipping away. Her golden skin; pallid and white, specks of blood on her face.

I’d managed to keep most of it contained the plastic did the rest. There was something there, a tremendous feeling of relief, something I’d been holding onto let go. Like I’d discovered a phantom limb left to atrophy. A balled fist finally unclenched, a third eye opened, a set of wings stretched for the first time. A complete unwinding of a tension I didn’t even know I’d stored up over a lifetime.

Released all at once and all at once I knew I’d have to do it again, and soon.

–

May 21, 2019 0

Diana in the dark chapter 15 ‘The build up’ (remurdered)

Hey there,

So I got fuck all done this week, call it ‘writers block’ if you want but I don’t really get that I just need to think about a scene in the shower and it usually unravels, don’t ask me how that works. But it leads to like hour long showers and stupidly high water bills to create well structured scenes no one reads haha.

But this week I was busy with work and other things and I just couldn’t focus so I ended up writing about a line or two max. Don’t fret imaginary people I still have content for thursday.

I worry less about keeping to schedule than I do churning out garbage and half of me is thinking I shouldn’t have started this book in my current state because I’m ruining it and there’s really no going back. But I mean fuck what am I ruining? No one cares, why should I? I’m gonna keep on keeping on basically.

Weird enough though I was thinking I should’ve done Diana 2 instead of embarking on fantasy epic trilogy. I dunno why, I was just thinking about how I felt when I wrote that and the music I was listening. A lot of my feelings are tied up in that idea. Because when I was reading the books that inspired it I was deeply in love with the woman I thought would be the love of my life, safe to say that’s not the case now.

But at the time, it’s like that music and that subject matter conjures up those feelings for me. Which is pretty fucked up since those books are like the least romantic books ever and mine are exactly the same haha. I guess there must be something romantic about serial killers or people wouldn’t love them so much. Regardless, this book was crafted with that love and part of me recently has been longing for that.

Maybe absence is making the heart grow fonder or I’m just forgetting all the stuff that made me mad.

Funny I watched that new Ted Bundy movie, the one with Zach Efron and it was a pretty shitty movie honestly. Because it couldn’t decide who the main character was and the editing made it feel more like a music video than a movie. It was just badly directed and written and paced, Zach Efron was incredible in it though and it did a good job making me doubt he actually did it. Because I mean if you look at all the evidence against him it really is just a pile of circumstantial stuff. There’s no hard evidence and we see all the time that the police fake this stuff when they like someone for a crime and need to close it. DNA apparently is about as reliable as a chocolate condom but we’re made to believe it’s the nail in the coffin. Also fibre evidence was debunked as basically a hoax not too long ago. The fbi was exposed as completely fabricating it. It was just something they could use to seal a case they didn’t have a lock on.

We see this kind of dishonest tactics used by the police constantly because the focus isn’t on finding the truth it’s just on closing cases to appease the public and the media. They don’t care about finding the right guy, they just care about finding someone that fits. And the person that fits is the one who can’t prove they didn’t do it.

Like you always hear people say “He was the nicest guy” when they talk about friends of serial killers but what if they were just really nice guys and they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and they’re using this to try and skew our perspective and make us believe something that goes against our own initial sense of a person.

I mean you can never really know and people ‘well he confessed’ yeah but for years he protested his innocence despite facing the death penalty and he said he confessed just to buy more time. When you put people against the wall they’ll confess to nearly anything. It amazes me how little actual evidence there is in cases like this. I always thought the murders that happened after he escaped jail were the nail in the coffin, but there actually isn’t a lot of evidence he did those and they didn’t even fit the MO of the original murders and it makes a lot more sense that they just had these murders with no suspects but since he was on the run it made sense to just pin them on him. It’s a pretty easy sell to the media.

Also in the movie, I’m not sure this happened in real life, but a cop totally lies in a deposition. You’d have to be a moron to believe his testimony, it’s so blatant. He says Bundy confessed off the record but it’s legal to bug interviews in that but somehow mysteriously the bug wasn’t working and just when he made this huge confession that he was a vampire. I laughed my ass, it was so silly, how did he think that would sound in court? It’s just nonsense.
It reminds me of this documentary I watched where this guy joked that he must have done the murders while he was sleeping but the cops took it literally and he spent the next 20 years in prison until he was released. They took an obvious joke as a confession and nailed him. It’s ridiculous, it makes ‘innocent until proven guilty’ look like a joke.

The legal system is totally broken.

But I suppose the movie was interesting just for that but I guess this is the biggest reason I’m against the death penalty. Because Bundy is dead, we’ll never know the truth, ever. He could’ve been working in prison to prove his innocence or writing books about the crimes proving his guilt once and for all. But that’ll never happen now because he’s dead.

Just not knowing and knowing I’ll never know makes me mad haha.

Anyway bit of digression, I guess. I’m just thinking things over and I even though I said I didn’t think it would work out with her and I believed that I always wanted it to. I always thought or I hoped that we would eventually end up together. Part of me still believes that and I know she believed that too considering how crazy she went over me dating someone else.

I kinda thought if I dated someone else it would break that spell but it really didn’t, it might have made it even worse. I’ve probably fucked it up for good now, but I suppose it’s better to think that than to dream that someday we’ll make things worse. Not just because it’s sad but also because I don’t want to become complacent and imagine it’ll fall in my lap and then it just never does. If it’s real then I want to go out and get it myself.

Obviously it’s not my only motivation for wanting to move but it’s up there.

Anyway I’ve rambled enough, I think I might be a sad manbaby neat and do a review about Mary Poppins haha. Or look for more work, actually plan a future that isn’t a fucking smokescreen.

See you…

–

The outside air was hot, a tropical wind like a hair dryer blowing in my face. My caked make up courtesy of Wendy melted like a wax mask off my face.

Sirens in the distance crept over the shoreline, a sudden feeling of impending brain fart looming.

What could I do, except throw myself on the mercy of a barrage of police questions with only my cute-girl routine to fall back on. “It wasn’t me, Mr. Scary Policeman, it was the one armed man.”

It was a toss up to what disgusted me more; the thought I’d actually have to resort to that, or that it might actually work. Good looks didn’t last forever.

My number one priority was finding Paul, and getting as far the hell away from there as possible. With Wendy more or less dealt with, that only left her little commandment breaking brother, Denny. Although, I struggled to think which if not all the commandments he’d broken, surely he didn’t honor his father or his mother. Incest and drug-taking were apparently just a given.

My plan was pretty slick; escaping out the rear fire door, since doubling back through the main hall might put me back on Wendy’s warpath. Considering she wasn’t buried under a ton of chipboard, which seemed a likely resting place for the wicked witch of the West Coast. Or even worse; an awkward conversation with Dharma over a dead cop. Also, I couldn’t pretend to hope Denny hadn’t heard the shots. Or for that matter had missed the waves of startled human cattle stampeding into the parking lot and disappearing into the night.

It was a good bet he thought he was well on his way to enacting some kind of bloody revenge on my hapless ‘aunt’ who wasn’t home. For—of course—ruining what could’ve been a lovely evening for his demented sister/possible lover. Or, option two—he was waiting with his hand on a large knife or gun for either me or his sister to come out. So they could then ship off to Aspen in the middle of the night and blow Orange County a kiss from the slopes with new names and probably new noses.

I opened the fire exit with a mechanical clunking noise followed by lots of banging and scraping and a distinct smell of week-old garbage. The back of the laser arcade was a tight and cluttered alley opening onto a strip mall behind the arcade.

The sirens were getting louder, so if Denny was still there he’d have to be getting more nervous and trigger-happy by the second.

I looked down at myself, at the silly pink prom dress. What was it I was planning to do exactly? Teen movie him to death?

A grave scraping, like death’s scythe in the shadows around my feet sent icy shivers up my bare ankle. It was followed by a bitter mocking chuckle from the dark back seat. I breathed out, and reached down to pick up whatever the hell I’d almost tripped over.

The moonlight lifted its lidded eyes a slant to shine down on this unholy implement. It was just a pipe, some kind of gas pipe maybe; no clue, really—I wasn’t a plumber. It was heavy on one end with a gnarly looking gauge or something sticking out.

Clue it is.

Who did that make me? Miss Scarlett or Madame Peacock? Was there a pink Clue character?

‘This will do nicely,’ the thing inside said; but not in so many words. Its teeth bared behind its leathery wings, sending a rush of blood through the tips of my fingers. It made me feel magnetized, electric, like I was sticking to the walls. Like I was Spiderman, crawling unseen above everyone’s heads, as I traced through the dark in my ridiculous pink dress—ruffles and all. Quietly, I worked my way along the side of the laser arcade, back around to the front.

The alley leading onto the strip mall was cramped, and smelled like old hamburger meat. No doubt it was filthy. But the darkness was kind to it and me, as I peeked around the side of the pastel-colored building at the now more-or-less vacant parking lot.

Except for one stretch Hummer.

The parking lot was pretty well-lit but the moon had given me a few dark pools in which to wallow. There was a large billboard on wheels facing the road, and a few trucks dotted about. They probably belonged to the furniture store on the other side of the arcade.

With the pipe in hand, I hiked up my skirt like Lady Chatterley about to descend her carriage or walk over a pothole, skittering along the ground as low as possible. I came up behind the billboard and peeked out for a closer look.

There was no movement. Although, the tinted glass and the inherent clash of the shadows against the bright parking lot lights made it impossible to see inside. I smelled axel grease and looked down at my hands and dress. I was covered in it. The pipe was the obvious culprit. I made a silent yuck face and slipped back into the dark mask.

My body felt loosely coiled, the sensation of letting go mashed against the rising tide of ultimate control. Black powerful waves tossed tiny boats aside like they were in the bath tub of Cthulhu’s baby brother.

Slinking low, I made it around the back of a white truck, edging nearer to the limo, The sound of the sirens were getting closer, but not close enough. I wagered I had time, but for what?

Was I going to play with him right there and now before the cops could come and whisk me away to the local funny farm?

A quick bludgeoning, I had probably about two minutes max to deal with him, but no time to escape. Escape? Why would I do that? I was a hero, wasn’t I?

I’d dropped the castle on the Wicked Witch, and I was about to get the butler with the lead pipe in the parking lot. It would wrap up nicely, a neat little bow; not exactly how I expected it to go, but it was definitely a memorable evening.

I was actually surprised the cops weren’t here already. Cantwell really must have been going solo up until now, and I assumed hadn’t told anyone where he was on his unwarranted and illegal stake out of yours truly. The siren might have been for someone else, sirens are not an uncommon thing to hear in California. But surely one of the fleeing masses must have taken the time to dial 911. It was possible that a frantic crowd might just assume that everyone else was dialing 911 and they didn’t have to. Nevertheless staying around waiting for them wasn’t my best option for tonight’s entertainment.

I slipped around the truck, trying to keep the rustling noises of my dress to a minimum. As I got closer to the limo, I could hear music and now I could see around the other side. The driver’s side door was open and the music was coming from inside. Some obnoxious dub step, blaring from the front seat but there was no movement. Maybe Denny was taking a nap, or had stepped out to take a leak. Was it even remotely possible he hadn’t noticed the stampede of teens in the parking lot?

Maybe heroin makes you deaf.

He could’ve just been dead on the front seat with a needle in his arm; that would’ve been neat albeit anti-climactic. I edged along the driver’s side of the limo. I was low, but kept my eyes on the wing mirrors to see inside. It was too dark to make out anything interesting, or hear anything above the annoying music and my heartbeat.

The heat of the tropical night gave way to a cold shiver from the pit of my stomach. A loose tittering of pronged chicken feet pricked my skin, as the dark one wrestled into the front seat and pulled me closer to the door. I was scared but it pulled me closer, and I couldn’t hope to resist, I was on rails, a twisted passenger on a ride in Dahmerland.

All the hairs on my neck raised and licked the air, feeling the vibrations. The night, pricks of light dancing on the head of a pin, so clear and sleek not black but a luminous detailed gray.

Through the mirror, I could see him. Denny was just sitting there bolt upright; not moving. Creeping closer, the wings at my back, a righteous wind made my foot fleet, and I closed the gap quickly and quietly, keeping flat against the limo.

Peering in at a low angle I could see one of his sneakers under the uniform, a splotch of what looked like cranberry juice on it.

–

May 7, 2019 0

Diana in the dark Chapter 11 ‘Dark lines’ (remurdered)

Here I go again recycling material. Well hey there, that wont be too long because I just finished furiously beating out the plan for Cur 2 and it turned out pretty nice and easy.

Although my plan to turn it into a five part series was sort of torpedoed because I basically decided that the structured would be better if I mashed two of my book ideas together. Otherwise I’d have had to come up with a bunch of filler to water down each concept and I didn’t want to make this middling story full of filler unconnected to the lore and plot.

Also laziness, pulling unconnected story out of your ass is hard and all I’m really doing with this is taking the actual mythology and give it connective tissue so it seems like a story and not just a bunch of stuff happening. So it’s not just X god did this, you understand their motivations, you know why they did it and how they feel about it.

So I’m just reciting mythology, I’m giving it life and taking a hell of a lot of liberties to do it. So I could insert huge swaths of unrelated story from different sources for instance some of what I added was from Arthurian legend and I added a tiny bit of Lovecraft because that’s just fun and forgive me for thinking a race of evil fish people should be a little lovecraftian haha.

But I didn’t want to take away from the plot and just have this little padded book, I want to write something I would read, I want adventure, I want a journey. I don’t want my characters to go to one place and be there the whole time, I want them to feel like I’ve gone with them. So to give it more scope I scraped two books and made one cohesive story.

It’s set to be a trilogy and I might just write them concurrently with clown shit in between haha. I basically don’t want to drip feed people this story or try and stretch it out like this is just a middle book, I want it to stand on it’s own and surpass the first which this definitely will. This book will make the first look a tiny in comparison by it’s scope. And then by the third book it will make the leap to epic fantasy, this second book is like the bridge from tight sword and sorcery pulp fantasy to epic sprawling huge battles fantasy.

Yeah so probably gonna start that next week but I feel like I should finish Loverman first just for the sake of my sanity. I’m imagining one person out there just ripping their hair out longing for a conclusion lurking just around the corner. Of course this person doesn’t exist or is more or less me. I’m just sort of feeling fantasy right now, sword and sorcery, also want to finish this boring red scare Shadow book so I can get back into Conan, which I’ve been really looking forward to.

Anyway that’s about all, just gonna be looking into more places I can send Cur to, maybe try and get more feedback on it because I think it sags a little towards the end. I dunno, I’ll wait for some objective opinions.

See you…

–

Locking doors was obviously for poor people who weren’t literally encircled by a small army of trigger happy ex-cops. Because Wendy was out prepping for the prom, it was certain she wouldn’t be here. I knew she had a brother but he was rarely home in the day, myths of an expensive heroin habit abounded. He’d probably stumble home much later, if at all.

The house should be empty but for an annoying little yappy dog she was banned from taking into school in her purse. Hopefully since the prom wasn’t at school, she’d probably have the annoying little rat with her, and I wouldn’t be tempted to pulp its head into an eight hundred dollar Persian rug.

I loved animals, but not that particular one.

I took a quick precautionary glance across the street, but thankfully aside from a team of illegals gardening two houses over, they were quiet. I guessed everyone was out living the good life, lounging around a golf course or a yacht or something. Aside from one guy eating noodles in his underwear and crying in a house he soon wouldn’t be able to afford.

I slipped into the house and closed the door firmly behind me. As I stood in the cool, sweet-smelling foyer, I felt okay. I was just a pretty rich girl coming home from yogalates, walking into her own home—no big deal. Nobody could call the cops over that. It wasn’t like I’d used a grappling hook and scaled the wall garden.

The interior was fresh and clean, cream interior walls with off-white, eggshell tiles on the floor. A staircase, carpeted in a darker cream snaked off from the oddly angled front door up to the bedrooms on the right. A big curtain-less window at the turn of the stairs let in lots of light.

I stopped in the hall and listened to the steady creak of silence. This confirmed the house was empty, so I let go of my breath and padded the tiles and dust off this new set of leathery predator wings.

The entryway opened up into a huge but very minimalist carpeted living room, it seemed to take up a whole corner of the house. It was very eighties deco, devoid of color, with a high ceiling that spanned both floors cut off by a balcony onto the second floor. There was a door off to the left, leading into a relatively small galley kitchen which was nevertheless very nice.

I wasn’t there for the tour, so it wasn’t like it mattered. I doubled back to the front door and started a slow ascent up the stairs. Looked outside the huge window at the turn, hoping not to see some nosey old woman staring at me and memorizing my face for a sketch artist to reproduce.

I figured if I was going to find any evidence at all of Wendy’s guilt, it wouldn’t be lying between the pages of a copy of Teen Vogue on the coffee table.

“Hey remember when I poisoned my dad and framed my mom for the money? Lol smiley face smile face xoxox.”

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but seemed unlikely. But who knew. She wasn’t like me, not the same kind of monster; a normal killer for a normal reason, a sane reason to do something insane, money was the root of all this.

So there was a chance Wendy wasn’t like me at all; there was a chance she had emotions. One of those possibly being guilt, and if that was true, she’d leave some trace of it behind.

My best bet was finding her computer and working a little slack hack magic on it, basically shake it and see what fell out.

I turned the corner, checking the window, but it was just the bare windowless face of the neighboring house staring back at me. I continued on up the second flight, noting an open bathroom off the stairs—seemed an odd place to put a bathroom.

The second floor split off in two directions, leading to the bedrooms. As far as I could remember, Wendy’s bedroom was off to the left, and her parent’s en suite was off to the right. Considering her parents weren’t in the picture anymore, it made little sense to not occupy the empty en suite.

It’s what I’d do, would have to be crazy to let all that closet space go to waste because of what? Sentimentality? Ghosts maybe?

I padded the carpeted floor delicately, hoping my light frame wouldn’t leave any telling footprints. Thankfully I’d remembered to not wear heels, and had opted for a set of flat treadless pumps.

I took the right, peering over the second floor balcony down at the living room and the large windows. It seemed like an average sleepy day in the neighborhood, not a curious dog walker in sight. Just sun shining and birds chirping.

Oh how I longed for the huge savage moon, and that black canvas of night to paint red. ‘Soon,’ it hissed, and I knew it was right.

Soon I’d have my starry night and my bloody moon.

There was no rush; I’d started as early as I could. They’d be at the preparations until late into the afternoon. Factoring in Frappuccino and pastelito breaks, maybe some California tuna rolls. Skipping breakfast had been a mistake.

New rule; never break and enter on an empty stomach.

The hallway got a little narrower, I passed an airing cupboard and I could smell signs of a lived-in nature. More specifically, Wendy’s perfume; it seemed my estimation of her and our shared desire for closet space was on-point.

I entered, and was sort of surprised that the room was so small. Then I turned my head. I’d stepped into her closet.

I opened the door to her actual room and was instantly taken aback.

It was so… so…

Neat.

–

If you want to read more of this lovely book I’m probably going to be giving it away to people on my mailing list by the end of the year so join that and hold on to your butts. If you can’t wait that long just head on over to my inkitt page and read the raw version. It’s not all prim and proper but you’ll get the thrust.

March 19, 2019 0

Diana in the dark Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’ (remurdered)

Hey there,

Another bit of fille- I mean a glimpse at the finished product, time, sweat and tears and lots of blood. Not my blood, but it’s the thought that counts.

Not been up to much recently, watched the latest season of American horror story as I keep telling people on facebook when I wasn’t banned and it’s pretty fun. I mean it never really sticks the landing but it always starts off fun. It’s like a toybox full of nice new toys you know one kid is going to take a dump in.

Like the last season was about a cult sort of surrounding Donald Trump but not really. It started off pretty partisan and wasn’t too heavy on politics on one side or the other, sort of making fun of them both but towards the end it’s picked a side and surprise surprise which side it is haha. I didn’t really mind that but the ending is so forced it reminded me of the ending of Law Abiding Citizen. Just one of those endings that seems really forced and doesn’t really make sense in the logic of the film world.

So yeah this super genius guy who can kill people from a prison cell is basically going to take over the city by blowing up the mayor but he can be outsmarted by this attorney who has basically just been a bumbling idiot until now. But no magically he not only finds the bomb but puts it under the super geniuses bed and he dies. Like “Ooh can’t wait til that bomb explodes and crumbles this corrupt system that’s broke, oops whats that smell?”
I hate it when they make smart characters dumb. Why is the character a genius up to this point but now he’s suddenly dumb because the script asked him to be dumb. It’s so contrived, if you set up a character to be this evil genius but can’t come up with a good way to defeat him then the natural course is to let him win. Not to just tack on a good ending where he slips on a banana peel and dies. You have to establish a flaw for him to fail or he wins, you can’t just go ‘ok now the good guy win!’
It’s cheap and tacky and it completely just feels hollow and shitty.

So basically the ending of Cult, oh yeah spoilers ahead haha, is the cult leader played by Evan Peters is in prison but he’s sort of indoctrinated the prison and he’s fucking the female guards and they help him escape so he can go kill the person who squealed on him which is Sarah Paulson’s character.

So he escapes and he gets on stage to kill her but the gun is empty and the ‘twist’ is that Sarah Paulson’s character had a little ‘chinwag’ with this indoctrinated guard and somehow unindoctrinated her and she gives him an empty gun so when he pulls the trigger nothing happens and then someone else shoots him. And to a normal person you’d just go ‘ok the bad guy loses cos reasons’.

But I was instantly like, literally none of that makes sense. One how did these people even meet, so this person is indoctrinated but travels god knows how far to meet someone who escaped the cult, why? The prison probably is nowhere near this person and why would the indoctrinated person even think of doing this? And if it was Paulson did she talk to every guard in the prison? And if she really unindoctrinated her why did the guard still have sex with him and help him escape after, i.e committing career suicide? It makes zero sense.
If she was really not under his power he would’ve never made it out of that prison in the first place. It just makes logical sense within the real world or it’s own world. It was just ‘Bad guy loses’.

And the politics and message are sort of cancerous, it makes reference to that Ashley Judd speech where she read out this poem that I doubt that many people know about really. And Sarah Paulson’s character is a crazy murderer too so it’s not really ‘bad guy loses’ it’s more like ‘male bad guy loses, female bad guy wins cos reasons’.

Also lena dunham is in it playing the chick that shot andy warhol and that episode was just fucking aids tier, I almost stopped watching after that, it was just pushing too hard on the parody wall to be taken seriously. It stretched credulity to a point it was obnoxious. The story sort of fell apart after that and the ending was just small and unsatisfying and it made me mad haha. Even though I knew it was coming. It reminds me of a really good movie I watched recently called Upgrade and I wont go into it for spoilers but you get to the end and it starts to get formulaic and me I’m watching it like ‘oh here comes the generic ending’. Like you can just tell, a story is building to this one ending but you know it’s gonna cuck out and take the easy way out like Law Abiding Citizen. The super genius character is suddenly gonna just not account for an allergy to pollen or something really fucking dumb.

But no, it gave me exactly the ending that I never expected, the ending that actually makes sense and it was ten times more satisfying. That ending alone made that movie for me, but all around it’s just an awesome little movie, I recommend you watch that and skip every season of american horror story haha. I’m watching it out of curiosity, it’s just something to put on while I pump iron haha.

So, down to business, Kur is done, sort of, not really and it’s time I work on something new. And honestly I dunno, I feel like Diana and Kur are both sort of up in the air and I don’t know what to do with them just yet. I need some direction, I need to follow my instincts because this is a lot of time investment to waste on a book maybe nobody wants to read. I mean if no one like either book what’s the point in writing a sequel?

I’m starting to think I’d be better off writing more clown samurai nonsense haha. I do have something I was sort of working on a while ago and I think I might go with that and instead of writing something intended to be a series just write a one and done book like fight club (but not like fight club haha). Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin and not putting the focus where it needs to be.

So I had this idea about a super hero going through Burnout syndrome, basically a superhero who tries too hard and his powers are too strong and he ends up killing innocent people by mistake and goes to prison. And in prison he slowly begins to see the world is much too broken to be the hero he wants to be and he essentially becomes a villain. I mean he’s still the hero but the “government” becomes the villain.

I likened it to like Hancock meets 1984 meets american history X but in reverse I guess haha. Maybe old boy would be a better description but he doesn’t become evil in oldboy. It’s complicated. The reason I said that is because I want to play the politics card like ahs cult and have an evil but relate-able nazi character for fun. Like a mix of Patrick Bateman, the guy from american history X and the comedian from Watchmen. A villain who is vile but still oddly likeable, so much so you feel dirty for liking him haha. Characters like that are always fun and really make even bad media good, like Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, any wonder the second season fizzled out? Killing him off was their death nail. I heard netflix is axing all that cape shit now, good riddance, it was terrible imo.

I think I’m gonna spend some time with the notes and materials I have for Kur 2 and this superhero story which is called ‘Burnout’ now but I toyed with a few others. I wanted to call the main character burnout but of course it’s already taken haha. I was looking through the notes for it, because it started off as a comic as does a lot of the stuff I write now. But the notes I have are pretty extensive, I’m a little impressed with past me haha. I mean it’s funny looking back at my world view then comparing it til now. It’s like reading Alex Jones’s wank material haha.

But there’s a lot of good stuff there ready to be moulded into an actual story, so I think that’s what I’m gonna do for the next couple of days, just see where my head is at, see what I’m feeling. But baring a sign from god I’m feeling the super hero story mainly because I a lot of the song titles I have for chapter titles haha. Stole most of them from the excellent american psycho soundtrack haha. So yeah, American Psycho meets hancock haha. I guess that’s a thing maybe.

Should be a lot of fun, I’m gonna take my time and play it out a little, see what I can do with it.
Oh also the starship troopers pilot screenplay is done, now I need to decide what I’m gonna do with it haha.

That was a long one but I think that’s good for today.

Also did another newsletter, first of the year, sorry about that haha. I attribute it to laziness and forgetfulness. But I haven’t really been spamming much since I’ve been getting banned so much recently.

See you…

–

We cut out a lot of walking through bland bleached white halls, not too dissimilar from the inside of a hospital. Complete with the smell of death and cleaning products. I waited in an interview room. It was sort of a bland eggshell color, and it smelled vaguely of crayons.

A square room that could’ve been an empty storage closet but for the table and chairs. There was no long two way mirror, just a camera that was no doubt watching. They’d see nothing of interest, no tell or wink or me talking to myself. I lacked guilt of any kind, incapable of feeling it in fact; and as far as I knew, I was actually innocent of any crime larger than an overdue library book.

My fantasies aside, I was a pretty solid citizen, on paper. Two—or probably thirty—minutes from now, a detective could walk in here with a video of me robbing a jewelry store, wearing the barmaid’s head as a hat.

I’d pull off surprised, then again, maybe not. I’d dwelled on the possibility the dark back seat driver might’ve been taking me around for a spin in the wee hours of the night. Slipping his driving gloves on, and sidling over into the front seat while I was away with the faeries. That seemed fanciful, even for me. Although, it would explain why I felt so rundown recently, but I could just be getting my period.

I was about to delve deeper into another dark daydream, when the seal on the door behind me was broken. I turned awkwardly to watch detective Cantwell saunter in, looking down at a bland manila folder, as if I hadn’t been waiting at least an hour at this point. He sipped a hot cup of coffee, probably one of many. Our tax dollars at work.

There was something I liked about this place. Something beautifully impersonal about everything. Men and women, in and out of uniform, shuffling about in a trance, pretending they belonged, all separated out in little cubicles and cubbies.

The smell of justice was a dank bitter scent, like burnt coffee and cigarette butts. People brought together working toward something that could never truly be but was worth their time anyway. Like a maid constantly making a bed for others to sleep in, only to have to make it again the next day. Making order from so much chaos. What a daunting task, I liked it.

The detective looked up at me like he didn’t expect me to be there, causing deep creases to form on his smooth chocolaty forehead. He then proceeded to slap the folder on the table, as if it had pictures of the Kennedy assassination from an until-now, unseen new angle.

My money was on Jackie this time around. Maybe it was the butler with the candle stick.

He took a sip of his coffee, waiting to say something, this whole thing I guess was to soften me up, let me stew, all protocol no doubt.

I could’ve said something; that was sort of the point of me being there. But, I felt it impertinent to be the first one to talk in this situation, surely that would break some sort of criminal code. At least let the cop ask a question before one spills the beans entirely.

So I sat, adjusted myself in my seat a bit and looked at him as he continued to peer down and sip his coffee. I cleared my throat quietly, readying myself.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked some very guilty looking coffee grounds at the bottom of his cup.

“Err…” Eloquent as always. “Something to do with the heads in the lockers?” The words tiptoed out playfully.

The heads seemed like a distant memory now, a memento from a special day I never got to keep; I didn’t even keep the ball.

Maybe I could still get it out of the trash.

Cantwell made a face at his coffee like he got all the way to the bottom only to discover the body of a fly in a set of tiny Bermuda shorts.

He looked at me with half-lidded eyes and made a sucking noise with his teeth before setting the empty cup down.

The sound of it touching down on the table echoed right through me. We had so much in common.

He readjusted himself in his seat and made a sighing noise, like he was about to open some grand grimoire of Diana’s mistakes past and present.

A catalogue of all my thought crimes recorded for all to see. Probably even had my tween fascination with Justin Bieber and Edward from Twilight in there, too. That would’ve been truly incriminating. Especially if he found my adolescent fan-fic shipping the two. My mind was wandering, trying to distract from the dark hissing noise.

A black punctured tire, whispering to me in that mock reflection of my own inner voice.

A quiet siren ripping through the dark foggy depths of the ghost town called Diana.

The detective opened the file and split his lips as he looked at me, flipping a Photostat copy of a picture over in my direction.

In it; a blurry night still from a security camera, the vague outline of a hummer pulling out into the night.

“That picture was taken from a gas station security camera of a car fleeing the scene of the latest Headsman murder.”

I tried not to fall out of my seat. What was more shocking? The picture or the fact, not even the police could decide on a definitive name for him, Headhunter, Headsman, pick one.

I gave my best teenage ‘so what’ face. Trying both, not to look completely blindsided and also trying not to open my eyes wide enough for him to see that there was nothing behind them. Too much emotion, and too little would both be mistakes. What a tight rope I walked, how I envied Manson. He’d always just made a funny face and said something vaguely intelligible.

“I—err…”

Great work Diana, you’ve got him eating out of the palm of your hand.

“Now what would be the chances you’d be the one to find those heads?” The detective sat back in his chair, laying out some figurative diorama of events with his hands on the table separating us. “And only one day later, were photographed leaving the scene of another murder in your boyfriends car. That is your boyfriend’s car, isn’t it?” The question hung in the air devoid of any inclination of doubt. He slid a few more pictures across the desk, these ones were less blurry. Different angles of the car—and even a nice shot from the front—my ghostly white face projecting through the tinted glass windshield.

–

March 12, 2019 0

3 ring samurai part 2 Chapter 6 ‘The long way of drums’

Hey there time for some excuses from a really lazy dude with no real life to speak of.

Yeah so no poem tomorrow, I don’t know just personal life stuff and work stuff getting in the way and likely to get in the way until january.

I’m just in a really weird place which is not too different from any other day. I just feel kind of like I’m drifting, not really sure what I want to do, instantly bouncing between manic happiness and basement depression. Because I’m like in this place where I’m not only losing lots of time due to work and other such nonsense but also I feel like I’m making the best use of the time I have and it’s driving me fucking nuts. I want to finish the edit for Diana and take my time going over it but I also just want to get it the fuck done and stuff keeps getting in the way.

And then the cloud of looming doubt comes back telling me I’m never going to get it done and even if I do it’s going to suck and no one is going to like it or pick it up and I’m just going to be a loser sitting in my bath robe writing nonsense no one is ever going to read and have nothing to offer any other living person ever in my life. Ultimately dying alone and miserable after wasting my life chasing a dream I know is impossible.

Fuck I hate christmass haha.

Also didn’t get to read any more shadow pulps and I still can’t review red dead 2 because I have no real desire to play it. I mean I get on it for a couple of hours but I just find myself sort of not really drawn to it. I mean I like the world, the gameplay is great but the story is a fucking dead weight, the characters aside from Arthur are a little flat. The villains are a little lame. It just sort of feels like a safe easy game they made that they knew would make money and didn’t put much more effort into over the lighting and graphics and stuff like that. I mean it’s good it just sort of lacks the heart of the previous games that makes you want to get into it. And I wonder if it’s because I heard that their game development is run like a sweat shop, that they’re just churning this game out as fast as possible, I dunno. I just don’t find it that compelling or necessary. Like the title says it all, you have the first game Red dead and then red dead redemption and then this is just red dead redemption 2 not red dead revolution, red dead revenge, red dead revocation, its just red dead here’s another one give us money please.

Don’t get me wrong, I like it, I think it’s fun at times, I love robberies, I think it’s got solid mechanics and costumes and all that, I just think it didn’t really deliver on hype and maybe the hype was too high. Not really from me because I didn’t expect much, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game, I’m a niche retard who thinks L.A Noire is still the best rockstar but we’re never getting a sequel to that or Max Payne for a while, although I heard a bully sequel is coming out which would be great. It’s basically Gta as a coming of age story for a highschool kid haha. It’s great.

Yeah well those are some thoughts for the day, enjoy the new chapter and sub to my mailing list because it gives me warm happy feelings.

See you…

–

“I’m sorry about your brother” The stranger said as he poked at the small fire in the centre of the darkened shack. One knee raised, a sword behind it resting against the wall.

“Juan was a fool, always rushing in headlong.” The first born said, a large tanned Mexican with a barrel chest and a pencil thin moustache.

“When he heard about the man you wanted us to kill, he wanted all the glory for himself, he got what he deserved.” The second born said, almost as large as his brother sporting a goatee.

“We won’t fail you” The firstborn said.

The man at the fire lifted his head, the light from the flickering flames licked the strange acrylic clown mask on his face. “I admire your pragmatism, I know what it’s like to lose a brother.” He said.

–

Click, click!

“Wait Pookie! You’re only supposed to pull the trigger once per turn!” Efron squealed as she reached for the gun. “Why?” Pookie said with the gun still to his head “This is faster”

“Its not ab- Nevermind” Efron frowned.

Pookie put the gun down on the table and slid it over to Canard who was completely devoid of expression.

“Ok now just on-“

Before she could finish Canard had already put the gun to his head.

Click click! “-ce! What did I just say, now there are only two chambers left so it’s a fifty fifty chance that the next chamber has the bullet in it.”

“And it’s your turn” Canard grinned as he slid the revolver across the table.

Pookie’s face stayed the same as he picked up the gun concentrating on the chamber, emptying it with his mind. Breathing in deeply and tensing his finger around the trigger.

KATHOOOOMMM!!!!!

A giant wrecking ball crashed through the window and tore a giant hole through the thin walled saloon. The walls splintered like kindling sending glass, wood and shards of metal shrapnel everywhere.

The giant wrecking rested in the destruction attached to a chain which snaked on the ground. Slowly the chain retracted and then quickly whipped away taking half the building with it.

Pookie coughed as he cleared his lungs of dust and looked around the saloon that now looked like an apple with a giant bite taken out of it.

He looked around.

“Everyone ok?”

“Great” Canard said from underneath the booth seat he was only a minute ago sitting on.

A little hand with a gun in it came up from behind the bar “I’m ok” Efron said.

The bartender, a balding middle aged man with an unflattering haircut popped up next to her “What the hell was that, a hurricane?”

“Yeah, hale stones the size of your head.” Pookie shook his head like there was dust in it and got up off the ground dizzily looking for his sword. He found it underneath a pile of old magazines from a broken spinning rack.

“A little help for the cripple?” Canard voice muffled by the furniture on top of it.

Pookie sighed and attempted to push the couch off of him.

“IF THERE’S ANYONE STILL ALIVE IN THERE YOU’VE GOT TO THE COUNT OF THREE TO COME OUT!” A booming voice with the slight twang of a spanish accent said.

“I guess that’s for us” Pookie said as he strained with the couch.

“Just for you, I’m guessing” Canard retorted.

Pookie sighed and dropped the couch back on him. “I guess so” He said with a melancholy tone in his voice as he went to climb out of the hole in the side of the saloon.

Outside it was hotter than before, the sun was bright and glaring blotted out only by two round figures standing in the middle of the street.

Pookie walked out squinting at them.

“You’re him”

“The man who killed our brother”

“Who?”

“Juan Ramirez”

“Oh that guy, well that was kind of an accident, but yeah I guess that was me” He sighed “So you’re the masters of swallowing or whatever huh?”

“That’s us” The first born said.

“So you really think they’ll let you in the circus if you kill me? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“It’s more than that now”. The second said.

“There’s a blood debt to pay.”

“So hows this gonna go down? We gonna duel one on one like last time?” Pookie asked.

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Both brothers laughed.

The brother with the goatee didn’t laugh with his voice only his face as his throat started to bulge to an enormous size like a toad. His jaw unhinged and a giant black ball appeared in his mouth.

Pookie squinted in disbelief as he watched this inhuman display. There followed a grotesque suction popping cracking noise as the wrecking was spat with a tremendous speed.

The ball hit like a meteor right at Pookie’s feet. The clown samurai jumped at the last second and under the cover of the dust it kicked up he ran along the chain towards the two assassins.

His sword at his side, his finger in the ring pull.

“There he is!” The second born said his voice sounding like he had cotton balls in his mouth.

The first born cut off his laughter, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. He opened his mouth and started to wretch, his throat distending with a long spherical shape. The opening in his mouth a pitch black emptiness.

Pookie caught sight of it in the corner of his eye but couldn’t make out what it was and then at once he knew he was staring into the barrel of a cannon.

“Oh crap” He whispered.

The firstborn leaned forward to ready for the recoil and somehow through some internal mechanism he fired.

Time slowed and Pookie saw the chain shot swirling at him, a ball connected by a thin chain swirling destruction aimed right at him. Without thinking he pulling the ripcord on his sword and it roared with laughter cutting the chain in half. The cut freed the two balls which shot off at either side of him.

One of the balls hit the ground and exploded with a dull thud. The other took out a storefront, both explosions bouncing Pookie like a skipping stone, skidding along the ground.

He came to a stop, his naked sword in his hand quivering. The clown samurai stabbed it into the ground raising himself to a knee, breathing heavily.

“Interesting” The firstborn said. “You’re the first to survive that”.

“What are you made out of, rubber?” The second born asked.

“He’s too dumb to die” Canard said.

Pookie scowled as he scraped himself off the ground.

Efron giggled, “It’s still your turn”.

“Can’t ya see I’m a little busy right now?” Pookie shouted.

“Are you forfeiting?” Efron sounded shocked.

That weird suction noise again ending the brief pause as the wrecking ball came barrelling at Pookie again. He rolled out of its way as it carved a hideous scar into the earth. “I’ll just skip my turn and get the next one.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Hmm, but that means if this chamber is empty the next one has to be the bullet.” Canard scratched his chin, weighing his options.

“So if you live-“ Efron looked away.

“He dies”

–

Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt. The long way of drums

December 6, 2018 0

3 Ring Samurai Part 2 Chapter 3 ‘Shaolin Cowboy’

Ayo it’s your boi- I don’t talk like this in real.

Hello there fine people, I’m here again speaking the queens english with more lovely examples of why it is wasted on me.

Didn’t get any time to read last night because I was up all night pumping my guns haha. Which is why I feel wiped today, you always know when you went heavy when you feel like a zombie the next day but it’s good.

I had a good long sleep and I had a good dream, one of those great dreams where you feel like you’re in love and it’s so fleeting and perfect and then you wake up feeling like it was real. Then reality sets in and you realise that love like that only exists in dreams. It’s been so long now since I’ve felt anything like that and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel anything like that ever again. I’m sure I will someday.

But until then I just have to keep going, keep exercising, keep following my dreams, floating lazily along the river of life.

I don’t really have much more to say, I must do some proofreading today nomatter my level of deadedness haha. Diana must be ready for her big day, which is fast approaching.

See you…

–

On the otherside of the fence there were no torches at all. The only light coming from spill from over from the fence and a dull glowing radiating from the walls.

No sound but a scratching a shuffling which both seemed far off and all around.

Then a sound he recognised, the laughing of the sword being drawn, turning to the sound there was a small pool of red light flickering into existence.

The eyes of the laughing clown hilt lit up and for a brief moment he saw something, or someone.

Lots of someone’s.

A quick glimpse of grey flesh drawn taut over an angular frame.

Pookie stood still and held his breath trying not to make a sound. Just listening to them, trying to discern numbers and strength. They must have heard him land over the fence but maybe the commotion outside covered it.

He inched slowly, keeping low on the balls of his feet. Creeping towards the flashing glow of the red eyes, trying not to look at the maudlin shambling figures in the darkness. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dark now and could see their outlines against the dull glowing surface of the cave wall.

Naked gaunt figures with pale skin peeling from their bones shivering in the darkness.

It was in reach now, he could see it. The sword had come loose from the sheathe in the fall. The eyes were blinking on and off and the naked blade was stuck into the dry dirt of the cave floor, the scabbard a few feet away.

He took it by the handle and wiggled it gently free trying to make as little noise as possible.

Taking it one hand he went for the scabbard and like a total idiot he resheathed the sword causing it to make that loud canned laughter noise. The figures shifted in the dark, the air getting heavier and the sound of sniffing and opening of mouths, the smell of desiccated death all around.

“Ah crap.”

–

On the otherside Canard crawled on his belly like someone trying to sneak out of a married woman’s bed. Through a series of tunnels comprised of robed legs trying to kick and stomp him to death.

Luckily kicking people in a flowing robe was pretty difficult especially in a big crowd of total morons.

“Just a little further” He spat trying not to let his lungs collapse.

“There he is!”

“I’ve got him!”

“WAIT!” Canard shouted as he crawled toward his stick.

And oddly all of them did, being the sort that takes orders. They stopped crowding and grabbing and kicking and just stared in dumb silence. Canard took his staff and used it to raise himself into a sitting position with them all crowded around him. “Just one minute” He said as they all surrounded him looking at eachother as if they’d all ran in here and forgotten why it was they ran in here.

Canard sighed and flicked the blade out of his staff and said “Ok continue.”

They all rushed at him at once Canard hesitated for a second then it became clear. He rolled his body forward throwing out his shoulder over his good leg and launching himself forward into a roll. The blade of his spear sweeping in a broad low arc cutting off the legs of all the cultists in a three meter radius of him.

Still not rising to his… foot, he did what I believe in yoga is called a ‘teddy bear roll’. Leaning onto his lower back using his hips and thighs to leverage him into another spin. Sweeping the blade up cutting arms and hands off and pointedly one with a decorative revolver in it.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this.” Canard said as his breakdancing spins picked up speed. Violently slashing at whatever was sticking out like some terrible blender from hell.

For a second he lost focus and his guts started to churn and he felt dizzy.

“I think I’m gonna throw up.” He said as the spin he was currently in started to wind down, in the centre of a radius of blood and carnage at least ten foot in all directions. Spreading out like some kind of expressionist painting dotted with severed limbs and entrails.

“Did I do that?” He said as he used his stick to raise himself to his foot wobbling slightly.

But there was something off about it. The men on the ground were still moving and some even were picking among the maelstrom for lost limbs and organs, seemingly trying to reattach them. This both amused and bemused Canard until he started to realise that what they were attempting, was working.

Efron too saw something she liked. She smiled broadly as she picked up an arm holding a decorative revolver. She carefully pryed the fingers free and let the arm drop to the ground, the arm twitching slightly.

“Ooh pretty” She said as she regard the gun with the care and finesse of an effienado. She held it out in front of her with two hands “Pew pew”.

–

Check out the rest of the chapter here.

Shaolin Cowboy

October 25, 2018 0

Diana in the Dark Chapter 5 ‘The Magic hour’ (remurdered edition)

Back again with more fill- I mean excellent content haha.
Yeah you’ve seen it before but this time it’s new and improved and you can only see some of it because of copyright reasons I guess haha. Also why I call this Diana in the Dark when the actual title is probably Diana After Dark but I haven’t really decided, I go between either. But I don’t want people just copy pasting my chapters when I’m trying to sell this book if I ever sell this book and it doesn’t just go nowhere and I start giving it away for free like I did with my last book haha. That sucked but I guess people liked it. Not enough to fill my mailing list with thousands of emails but eh, better than some people I know and at least I’m not getting rich off weird werewolf/vampire fetish books because having all that money would suck haha.

So mostly been wrestling with the ending of 3 ring part two and reading this latest Parker book which seems much longer than the previous books. Because a lot has happened already and I’m not even half way through it which is great because what’s happened so far was pretty good and I like the power dynamics at play right now and how all the characters are shaping out.

There was also this great scene where this mob boss who doesn’t know who Parker is calls another mob boss who’s had dealings with him and instantly just tells him to pay nomatter what. It was really satisfying, because when you get down to it the only real power a mob boss has is fear and when you encounter someone like Parker that is incapable of feeling fear he’s unstoppable. And the reason Parker is incapable of feeling fear is he really has nothing to lose. Up until now he had nothing but a fake name, and you never actually get to know his real birth name, but he has no mother, no father, no family or friends at all he wouldn’t abandon in a heartbeat, he has no address or car. He’s a ghost, you can’t take anything from him because he has nothing, he loves nothing and he can be anywhere and nowhere because he doesn’t exist. Which is something I think Westlake is trying to weed out, introducing a love interest in Claire so he has some motivation other than money and some fear of losing her.
But when you encounter someone who has no fixed address or anyway of tracking him or hurting him you have to look at yourself and see all the ways they can find and hurt you, so even if your a mob boss someone like Parker with no real life at all other than the job is terrifying because you have so much to lose and he has literally nothing to lose but his life. Which makes a great dynamic, between real power and imagined power. The power of someone with connections and money versus the power of a boot on your neck right now. I really like that. It’s almost I wanna say ‘faustian’ but I don’t know if that fits, I guess it doesn’t, could delete that but I wont. Like an ancient fantasy, someone going up against a dragon and winning against all odds just from sheer grit and strength and perseverance.

It’s almost like a superhero story in that respect, but good haha.

Was gonna talk about sneaky pete because I’ve been watching more amazon originals that are decent while working out but I’ve spent too much time faffing about with my alt accounts on facebook haha. I’ve just been used to being banned for so long I forgot how much of a timesink facebook is. But I’m unbanned on my main now so I can do something with that now I guess.

But I have to bid you farwell as I have more proofreading to do today.

See you…

–

He took me back to his place in French Court, about a two minute drive from Starbucks. It was a nice little bungalow that looked like it should have a picket fence but it didn’t. It was small, red brick with white trim and a brick chimney. The small patch of lawn in the front was, of course, neatly manicured.

I suspected the bushes were tested with a spirit level. The house was pristine, it looked brand new, could’ve single handedly raised the property value of the entire neighborhood.

Paul lived directly opposite the elementary school he’d gone to as a kid.

The area wasn’t too bad, well-kept palms, and lawns. It was quality middle-of-the-road Mediterranean style housing; home to some of the best seafood in the OC.

There was a restaurant called Ambrosia he seemed very proud of. It was a beacon in the least shiny part of Orange County. The birds chirping on, resilient in their fortitude for this too, to be a slice of paradise.

Nonetheless they all had wrought iron fences guarding their lawns, except Paul’s house. Just a small white porch with roman style pillars. There was something about it sitting on the corner like that, looking like a model house.

Like a house sitting on a nuclear test site about to be blown up, full of wax fruit bowels and mannequins sitting at dinner tables. It didn’t look lived-in; it looked like it was a trap house begging for someone to step on that carefully trimmed lawn. Teeth gnawing and clicking and tensing against each other. Praying the mailman would plant a foot off the path and then something could be unleashed, some dark righteous fury bottled up just for this moment. But that never came. The birds just chirped on incessantly.

It was Sunday, so the elementary school was quiet and still, which was a welcome change, I imagined.

He parked in the lot behind the house and led the way into his cool house. “Come on in.” Paul smiled.

It was a show house all right. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been here. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Paul; despite us being girlfriend/boyfriend. We didn’t really know what that meant. We appeared places together; we were together at school but when the curtains came down, the actors went back to their trailers and rested. Nothing more.

That was really as far as our interactions went. A pantomime for an audience of slack-jawed watchers, probably begging to be us and having no idea about the truth. We just liked our own space.

He cleared his throat and threw the keys down on a Formica top kitchen counter. “Well?”

I smiled back and took in a lungful of the cool musky air in his house. It didn’t smell bad or like dust, just old leather and new plastic and rubber. “Well what?”

“What was that all about?” he asked, almost stuttering.

I sat at a small functional kitchen table and sighed. “Some weirdo just tried to grab me, it’s nothing.”

“Some guy tries to grab you and that’s nothing?” Paul almost coughed and screeched. His face became a shade redder and his tone was strangled off by some violent shifting of gears in his throat. “How are you—I mean, how is…?”

I arched an eyebrow and massaged my temples. “I’m fine.”

The house was dark even though none of the blinds were drawn, it seemed shaded somehow. It was pleasantly cool, like the underside of a rock. Probably just the position of the house relevant to the sun.

I took out my phone, completely ignoring his concerns; they seemed too banal to even want to press. Why should he care if Voldemort tried to grab me with a boney claw? What could Paul have done to prevent it? He most certainly couldn’t make me un-see the heads with a back rub or a sonnet. I wouldn’t want him to.

Did the posturing and planning make him feel better; should I entertain him just for his own peace of mind?

Wasn’t I the one who’d been through two supposedly traumatic events? Why should I be responsible for setting things right in his world?

Humans, why did I bother?

Who was that strange metal pincher man? My mind drew back to one of those toy grabbers you got at the beach arcades. I guess that made me a hapless stuffed animal.

Deer in headlights Diana.

Did he really know about me? What was there to know? A naughty search history, a little amateur hack magic…hardly seemed enough to raise the dead. Hardly the most alarming thing to happen to me all week.

I swiped on my phone back to Twitter and I pointed the screen at him. “Do you know this guy?”

Paul took the phone with a curt urgency.

What had my phone done to him?

He turned the screen back to me and pointed. “Is this the guy who grabbed you?”

“He lives around here?” I asked.

“Yeah I know this scumbag, deals dope out of a house in Central City; has these wild parties…” He trailed off.

“How do you know him?” I asked tilting my head to one side.

He tilted the screen back and looked at the picture again. “We went to the same elementary school” The look on his face was hard to decipher, sadness and anger, possibly regret, what do I know? “He dropped out.”

“He dropped out of elementary school? See a future in orange sherbet or something?”

“Or something.” Paul sighed. “He’s a pretty bad dude, heard a lot of—rumours, I guess.” He shook his head and scrunched up his eyes as he said it, as if he really wasn’t sure.

Central City was the unofficial gang hub of Orange County. A veritable hive of scum and villainy. Surely every nice little berg had one. One could get almost anything down there, drugs, unlicensed guns, prostitutes. Maybe even human lives and knock-off Levi’s.

The kind of place someone went when they hadn’t discovered they could get all that stuff on the internet without having to leave their mom’s basement.

“So?” I asked in my best pixie-dream-girl voice.

He held up the phone, then caught himself. “You wanna go there?” He gaped, ruffling that long handsome brow of his.

I nodded and kicked my feet like a kid on a swing set. Trying to hide a rising tide of dark angel trumpets calling me. A shrill laughter in the stygian depths, a shock doing a Mexican wave across the invisible microscopic fine hairs I failed to pluck. I waxed too, hairy pits in California heat? No thanks.

“Tonight?” Paul asked, his voice almost shaking, with something I couldn’t quite fathom.

Was he afraid, or was it something else?

The way he’d said it, it was almost like a challenge.

“Is he having one of the parties tonight?” As soon as I’d said it, I felt dumb again. Getting to be a bad habit today.

He made a hissing sound in his mouth and shook his head. “Every night, these people don’t have jobs to go to, or school.”

It was a school night.

Of course I knew that. I was just awash with some new profound feeling of the unknown and the fact we had school in the morning made it seem twice as delicious to try tonight.

Why would I go there? Just to see him for myself, and then what? ‘Hey Antoine, have you been leaving a trail of body parts for me to follow?’

Was it even him? I didn’t want it to be him; the Twitter activity alone had shattered a lot of the mystique around him.

If he was the one I’d be…deflated. What would he do when he saw me? Would it be ‘off with her head’ or ‘Hi, friend, you got the message, let’s play’?

Either way if I could get Paul to go along, it would be to my advantage, if only to be a distraction in case I needed to run far and fast away.

Was I really that callous? Maybe, maybe not.

“Okay?” I said, rising to this illusory challenge.

He shook his head and let out a breathy laugh. “Sure.”

Cloistered in his mother’s bedroom I got ready. Her room was perfectly preserved from the time she left, or had she died? I forget. All her makeup was neatly arranged, but her clothes were unfortunately a few sizes too big. The whole room was a mute seventies baby sick brown color that was actually quite charming with the blinds drawn. A few slivers of dying light poking through the cracks.

Undressed, standing in a black bra and panties I looked at myself in her long hanging mirror. . It wasn’t particularly glamorous, but I hadn’t been expecting to go to a potential serial killer’s house on a school night.

Pulled my hair back and made a puffy duck face. I was pretty good looking, genetically speaking. Long and lean in the right places, and round in some other places, those places being my boobs and my butt, skipping euphemisms. Wasn’t especially endowed but I had a desirable shape. I kept fit, green smoothies and all that, but mostly it was just luck and genes. Turning to my side I continued to inspect myself.

A stern knock at the door had me jumping away from the mirror.

The knock I imagined imitated his father doing some kind of room inspection. Maybe I should stand at attention in my underwear.

Through a crack in the door I could see Paul’s dull soft face was waiting with a sad lilting smile.

He shied away bashfully.

“Come on, Paul, you’ve seen me naked.” Putting my hands on my hips and doing my best tinkerbell impression.

“Not, recently,” he said with a sigh.

I shrugged it off as I took the stack of clothing he had in his hands “Well it’s just been so hectic with finals and all, you know. Soon.” But where ‘soon’ fell on the calendar was any bodies guess. He looked at the clothes I was trying to take from him. “Err, these are from…you left them the last time you were here.”

Was it really that long ago?

Poor guy.

My boyfriend released the perfect square block of pressed clothes. He’d clearly taken a lot of time and effort to clean and iron them, or maybe it was just a routine he couldn’t shake.

I took them and laid them on the bed, leaving the door open a crack so he could see.

It was nothing too flashy, or too slutty. That’d never really been my style; I was more of a boutique-chic kinda gal. A little like my aunt, but without the mumbo jumbo, none of that Native American head dress feather hippy crap. It was either that or pressed blues for her, nothing else.

The shirt was just a low cut flowing top with some lame skull pattern in black and gold. It was kind of corny; maybe I’d been going through an emo phase I’d forgotten about. Paired with it were a pair of regular tight jeans with rhinestones along the sides and a pair of strappy shoes I didn’t recognize, but fit all the same.

I dolled my hair up the best I could, somewhere between hooker and transvestite hooker. Basically trying to get it as high off my head as possible, which was easy with the pixie cut. Just a little gel and a little elbow grease and my hair could cut glass.

A black choker with a little gem charm completed the look; badass without a clue. I looked in the mirror and sighed. My makeup was okay, but I still looked like I was doing a cameo on an eighties cop show. Too much eye shadow, was I planning to kill this guy or join his harem? So much of this seemed to be the stumbling’s of a homicidal Hannah Montana, just falling over myself to dissect or be dissected. I pretended I had a plan, told myself what I was going to do, but I really had no idea, and that was half the fun of it. Feeling my pulse rise, thinking about the variables I couldn’t control. All the use careful planning could be, dashed on the rocks of pure impetuous impulse.

–

Sorry eh-guy, you’re gonna have to buy the book when it comes out to get the full edited chapter haha. But you can read the unedited raw version right here.

The Magic Hour

October 24, 2018 0

Diana in the Dark Chapter 4 ‘Heads over heels’ (remurdered edition)

Ok so right off the bat this is just shameful filler, not even hiding it haha.

Not to say I’m not proud of it but it’s padding because I ran out of Green Sunday chapters and I don’t have any 3 ring chapters proof read right now, just pure laziness haha. But I’m having a great time going through the chapters of Diana again (the fourth time now I think) with a fine tooth come just making sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed for when it goes out to agents which should be soon, before the end of the year at least.
I know there will be people that want the full manuscript because there were people who wanted it for TOTCB and that was a piece of shit I wrote in 30 days haha (not a piece of shit, by comparison haha) so I don’t want to fuck around this time, I want it to be the best it can be. Not perfect because then I’d never get it sent out but damn near as close as I possibly can get it.

So that’s what I’m doing today haha. And despite it being proofread multiple times and edited, still finding minor errors, doing some reading out loud, things like that. I’m getting excited for it but also really impatient.

Personal life as usual in the toilet, might be looking to get a new job maybe cut back on my writing/gaming/jerking off haha. It’s like I’m straddling the fence of destiny and I either fall off or get on that ladder, if Diana gets zero attention I’m pretty much fucked. I mean I invested a lot of hope in Cur for a back up because my ex was telling me that Diana wasn’t me. Something I disagree with, but I get what she was saying, because I was inspired by Dexter but the reason I loved Dexter was because it resonated with me, it was me. So in a lot of ways Diana is me, maybe the best of me, it’s still definitely the best thing I’ve ever written to date. I was so inspired writing it.

Cur went well but I feel like I kinda lost it towards the end, the subsequent chapters fall short of the fire in the first chapter and I think it requires a lot of work to attain the same level of greatness. A lot of time needs to be spent going over it I think. Maybe my expectations of it were a little too high.

Anyway, Parker novel I’m reading right now is kinda ok, I don’t really feel like I’ve got to the meat of it yet, they’re kinda just faffing around and I haven’t had much time to read it lately because my body is still wrecked from doing the exercise thing haha. And every time I get down to read I want to sleep instead haha.

Ok, I gotta finish this otherwise I won’t get any ‘real work’ done today.

See you…

–

I squeaked my chair back an inch. I felt…numb, like I was vibrating, happy, satisfied, complete. Like lighting up a cigarette and leaning against the board of a four poster bed.

What was this, what was that?

Could it have been real?

It could’ve been faked, easily. Movie magic and all, clever editing, a fake head. Something in her eyes and something, that thing, deep inside, deep in the dark well told me it was all too real. Its tinny little laugh rang like a hunchback swinging on a church bell screaming ‘sanctuary’.

My skin was damp, a refreshing tingling sensation going up and down. Working up my spine and down my legs. My heartbeat slowing, breathing going back to normal.

I’ll have what she’s having, or what he’s having.

Dazed, tension working loose on my muscles, making them slack, weak, shaking as I logged off and stumbled goggled-eyed out of the library.

My arms were like limp noodles, useless pieces of string pulled along by a runaway kite.

It was…good.

I almost ran through the halls, tripping over my own feet; hearing only my shoes screeching against the cool silence in the empty school.

I meant to get printouts of the newspapers, and some of the juvie records but I forgot and it was already nearing closing time. So I decided to drop off the rest of my stuff in my locker and walk home.

Tomorrow is another day, Diana.

The lock on my locker came off easy, like I hadn’t locked it. I must’ve forgotten, in my daze. Not like I kept anything valuable in there, unless futures in deflated volleyballs had sky rocketed in the last couple of hours.

I unloaded my satchel into it. Put the notepad and pens back in their rightful place.

Casting a wanton glance at the volleyball, almost like a mascot, I might as well paint a face on it and start talking to it. Something caught the corner of my eye.

There was already a face on it.

Someone had drawn a big smiley face on the deflated ball, complete with eyelashes in black marker.

Funny.

Then there was a strange noise, the creak of a pirate skull’s lower jaw opening, then the feeling like a giant boulder was going to roll down the hall. As if I’d stepped right on an X someone had carefully placed just for me.

The noise was coming from Wendy’s locker, to the left of mine.

I closed my locker and locked it this time.

Wendy’s locker was ajar. The lock was sheared off, as if it’d been cut with a set of bolt cutters.

Bolt cutters?

Why use those on her locker and not mine? Maybe I really had left it open, or he knew the combination.

This was getting to be too much, I was getting carried away. This was silly, all in my head.

Not everything is about me. I’m not the center of the universe.

I was going to open this locker and there was going to be absolutely nothing inside it because this had been a simple robbery.

Maybe someone saw Wendy leave a MacBook in it and just had to have it.

A simple explanation for a simple buttoned down world.

Was I going to open it?

That was what he wanted me to do.

Does that mean I should?

Should I play his game. That was what he wanted, he wanted to play.

I want to play, too. I really do.

A shiver danced up my spine, as my true intentions became known to me. The darkness inside stretched like a cat, clawing the inside of my head playfully pricking my brain.

I put one finger inside the tiny dark opening and nudged it open, then let gravity do the rest.

The door swung open slow, creaking all the way, giving me that long lost pirate ghost laugh. Behold ye, not-so buried treasure.

I wanted to gasp but all my breath was stolen.

There it was.

There he was.

“Hello, Benjamin,” I said. My voice had an echoing that vibrated through me.

Both voices coming together and smirking as a puzzle piece fell into place.

A man’s head, bisected at the neck sat atop the top shelf of Wendy’s locker.

There was no blood, the head was clean and perfect, it looked like a mannequin head.

A ghost remained of the color it once had.

The cut was clean and even, one fast perfect kiss, and it was free. It looked like it could be reconnected, or it might start reciting Shakespeare.

I wanted to touch it, wanted to keep it. The head was for me, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

I knew what I had to do.

I called 9-1-1.

The cops were there within the hour. The Orange county sheriffs department were notoriously laid back. Unless it was an active shooter or a terrorist bombing, a dead body—not even a full one didn’t get their juices going.

How terribly anticlimactic.

But what else could I have done?

They wouldn’t all fit in my locker.

All four of them to be exact.

It took a step back to really see the full glory of it, what was it called?

A Tableau?

Four lockers, four heads.

The four lockers in a row, on either side of mine. It was on odd scene, all four open, with mine closed in the middle.

Evidence techs in full body suits went over it like they were searching for Barb from stranger things. Looking for trace evidence and dusting for prints, spraying for blood and shaking their heads.

Needless to say, I took the time to remove the deflated volleyball with the face on it; that was mine after all. Of course they’d search my locker eventually, so anything that could link me to this had to be disposed of.

What good would it do me to call this in and put a big red X over my name?

That was assuming there wasn’t already a big red X over my name just for finding them.

Four heads.

One was missing, the woman’s head; the German barmaid without a name.

Why?

Well I’m sure it’ll turn up.

“What’s this girl doing here?”

I heard a nasal voice say off to my right.

“She’s the one that called it in,” One of the techs in the mask said without looking up.

“And why is she still in an active crime scene?” He didn’t wait for an answer. His eyes landed on mine. “Come with me, Miss, you shouldn’t have to see this at your age.” The man stepped to my right. He was a tall slim black man with a shaved head and a light complexion. A sort of dull friendly expression on his face, like he’d forgotten how to frown. “Would you mind coming with me and answering a few questions? Has anyone called your parents?” He made one of those fake-concern faces news anchors made when they were pretending to care about tragedies. But the dim smile was still there, as he made deep lines appear on his brow.

“Err,” I said, eloquent and erudite as ever. “I live with my aunt.”

He led me outside like I just came off the short bus, with a light but firm grip on my upper arm. Told me his name was Detective Cantwell, and repeated he was going to ask me some questions.

“What were you doing when you found the…umm?”

“Heads?”

“Diana! Are you all right?”

I heard my aunt’s voice.

She rushed to my side, her legs looking like they were chaffing against her little bike shorts. Dharma grabbed me in a really uncomfortable hug, like she’d just seen my face on a milk carton. She looked up at the cop, then back at me. “I heard your name over the radio, and I came as fast as I could.”

I believed her, because she was still wearing her pointy cop bike helmet and shades.

She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder to look at Cantwell. “Is she all right, can I take her home?”

The detective made a noise in his throat, like a punctured bicycle tire and sucked his bottom lip. Then he looked at me again. “Yeah, she can go.” His tensed jaw betrayed his reluctance, and he exhaled loudly again.

I’d already left my name and address with the arriving officers, so I was only a hop skip and a jump away. Slipped the net once but the pool was small enough, and they could trust my true blue aunt to wrangle me in if need be.

Before I could make any sense of the day’s activity, I was back in the front seat of my aunt’s car, like I was coming home from an especially stimulating field trip. For some reason, she wasn’t saying anything.

Dharma held the nervousness of a getaway driver as she hunkered over the wheel. She backed out of her crude parking spot, and back onto Campus Drive.

The rest of the drive wasn’t much different. I watched her keep her eyes locked straight forward; only glancing up to check the rear-view mirror once in a while. Her muscles only relaxed as we pulled out of sight of the school.

I was still feeling sort of buzzed and happy so I didn’t feel like popping that bubble, silence it was for all of the two-minute drive home.

It was darker now, the sky bleeding red and orange, one way to waste a day.

It seemed like a jump cut in a movie and I was standing in the entryway of our house, bouncing on my heels as my aunt dithered locking and dead bolting the door, top and bottom.

I wanted to collapse on a chaise lounge.

Dharma disappeared into the kitchen without a word, and I heard frantic dialing of the kitchen phone.

The receiver was missing, and she was behind the locked door of the bathroom in the laundry room.

My mental capacity was in tatters at this point and for all intents and purposes, used up.

Kicking off my shoes I stumbled into my room ready to crawl under a pile of dirty clothes like some sort of happy insect who’d been rolling dung uphill all day.

A glance at my phone, revealed lots of missed calls from Paul and Wendy. I had it on silent for the library. After narrowly missing two awkward conversations in a row, I decided to quit while I was ahead and turn my phone off. Not like I was going anywhere. I didn’t really want to know how they’d found out so fast, but word gets around easy enough here.

Body parts start turning up around someone, and people find things to talk about, and have to tell all their friends.

I went to the door of my bedroom and there was an odd jolt of electricity from the door handle, not just static.

A warning, from the deep depths. The dark sea from my dream bubbling.

I opened the door cautiously.

My hovel of a room materialized one piece of trash at a time. It looked the same, but it had a different aura, like I was playing a game with the Mad Hatter. As if everything had been picked up and swapped around and put back exactly in their places again. Only to give the illusion of things staying the same but keeping that static energy of a wicked prank.

The room hummed with potential. A cloistered violence clinging to the sheets. I could almost smell it. The pheromones of another monster stalking through, poking into the dark crevices and laughing.

It wasn’t a dream; it was real.

I’d seen the heads, almost took one home. Where would I have even put it? The pictures would have to do. My only souvenir. To come that close without even a picture would’ve been a crime.

Someone had been here.

No, I was paranoid, tumbling down the rabbit hole of my own narcissistic personality disorder.

Did that mean the heads were a fluke? A cruel coincidence?

Someone just happened to pick the day I went to the library and specifically chose to skip my locker when they were giving out heads?

Maybe.

I grabbed my laptop from my bed and smirked. All those articles from all those ‘real journalists’. They couldn’t dream of pictures this good, this rife with meaning.

Clean and crisp, without their tacky headlines and small minded narratives or nicknames. Out done by some amateur hack, some nobody on the internet, scooping them and mounting them as the tired beasts they were.

I set my laptop on my desk and booted it up. I found my computer chair on its side; just where I’d left it, and wheeled to the desk as the computer took its sweet time to fire up.

Wait.

That feeling came rushing back, long cold and pointy fingertips working their way down my back.

The wheel had rolled—the sock was gone.

I jumped off my seat and let the chair fall. All the wheels spun.

I scanned my room, waiting for some ghost-faced killer to spring up out of the pile of clothes on my bed with a hunting knife gleaming in the wicked dim daylight.

No such thing came, just a cool quiet calm, and the incessant song of crickets outside.

I searched my room for my own peace of mind, turning over wrappers and empty bottles. Nothing was taken, there was nothing to take. My laptop was the only thing of value in the room, and evidently he found value enough in it to take a peek at it. My closet was in the corner. I rarely used it, as my bed and floor seemed to be working just fine.

I opened the door and clicked the light on, the magic clicking of the lamp dispelling all evil spirits and cleansing the dark dingy space.

On the floor was a Malibu Barbie I got when I was eight. It was naked and missing its head, but admittedly, that was probably me.

However, I remembered it being in a box with my other ‘victims’. Old toys in varying stages of dismemberment.

Silliness crept over me again; I was getting caught up in coincidences. My aunt probably moved the sock—or I did and forgot about it.

But who took the doll out, and who put its head on the top shelf to stare at me?

–

If you want to read the rest the of the chapter you’ll have to buy the book when it comes out sucka haha #trolled. No seriously though you can find the raw unedited copy on my inkitt if you’re that impatient and cheap haha.

October 16, 2018 0

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Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

Where weird shit hits bizarre fans.

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Dragged Across Concrete review

Diana in the dark chapter 16 ‘Dark Descendants’ (remurdered)

Diana in the dark chapter 15 ‘The build up’ (remurdered)

Diana in the dark Chapter 11 ‘Dark lines’ (remurdered)

Diana in the dark Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’ (remurdered)

3 ring samurai part 2 Chapter 6 ‘The long way of drums’

3 Ring Samurai Part 2 Chapter 3 ‘Shaolin Cowboy’

Diana in the Dark Chapter 5 ‘The Magic hour’ (remurdered edition)

Diana in the Dark Chapter 4 ‘Heads over heels’ (remurdered edition)

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