action thriller

TOTCB Chapter 17 ‘Wayward Stranger’

Super quick today, wasted too much time already arguing with spergs about weed today haha. But seriously if you want to see some spergy shit tell a stoner that weed is degenerate and see that motherfucker flip out so hard haha.

Ok so still working through the proofread of this beauty and if projections are correct and I don’t get side tracked into some shitposting flame war it should be up and ready for circulation some time next week, shooting for the first tuesday of the month but I’m already walking that back in my head maybe opting for another proofread.

I dunno, anyway as you know free copies for emails, that’s how this works my dudes and as always you can check out the rest of it unedited and raw on inkitt where I keep all my raw and rough work.

TOTCB

The house on J street was only twenty minutes from the rehab clinic, it was handy. Every thing seemed to be twenty minutes away in this town. He had some time before nightfall, that was when things would get interesting. He lit a cigarette and sat low down in the dodge.

J street was a loose string of flop houses kept standing with popsicle sticks and spackle. A glorified trailer park without the charm. Lots of empty cars and grey sky to look at as the red light on the end of his cigarette got closer. There had to be more cars per square foot than people, it was a regular grave yard. The dodge didn’t look too out of place, a pick up rarely did in any part of texas. He could be a contractor on a job or an honest crook taking a break from lifting copper wire. Either way no one would likely turn a pickled eye in his direction, cop nor crook alike.

He sat watching the house in his side mirror as he was likely to do. He had to assume Jack had seen his face, the amount of time he spent watching them. Someone had followed him to the meet with Mickey and the list of interested parties was limited. He had to think there was a reason not to kill him or there was just no reason. Maybe Jack thought someone might care if Porter Carraway PI turned up dead. And maybe someone would. But he had to know no one would care about Mickey getting some attic space in his head. Just going round in circles, none of it mattered now.

The house he was watching was a single storey yellow wood building with no garage. A small yard that pincered a concrete driveway and a metal wire fence around the sides. There was an ash tree off to the right and a yellow mustang parked around the right side in the shade on the grassy lot. In front of the tree there was a lot of garbage and debris that spilled out into the street. Broken furniture and cinder blocks with a sign behind it that read ‘No dumping’.

There were four windows in the front. The blinds drawn tight but two had lights on that must have been on throughout the day. They were on and he didn’t remember them switching while he kept watch. Working his way through his pack of cigarettes. The two windows on the left that had lights on had to be for the living room right at the front. The side on the right was probably the kitchen and the bedrooms were in back. The front door was a no go, it was locked and had a metal screen on it, standard for this neighbourhood. He might be able to jimmy it but it would make too much noise. Only then to be greeted by whomever was waiting for him in that living room.

There was a large gap between the house and the building neighbouring on the right. It looked like an abandoned chapel. A long building stretching back from the road covered in sheet metal. Probably to keep out copper thieves away.

The house on the left looked empty too. There were cars parked out front but were likely parked there because no one would complain. He hadn’t seen much activity, no lights, no coming and going. It was a small blue house with wild agave plants growing in the front yard. A tiny plastic kids swingset and slide and a medium sized green plastic lawn table with two chairs.

It got dark quick there and when it got dark on J street it meant it. There wasn’t a street light for a good quarter mile and none of the houses had working flood lights. A dull glow from the shaded lights inside, shadows flicking back and forth. Curtains creeping back and forth, furtive glances felt but unseen.

It was about time. He fell out of the dodge, quick and quiet, shutting the door without a sound. He crept around the truck ducking from car to car in the street, hopping them closer to the house.

He circled around to the left and traced around to the left of the blue house. He walked quick tracing the fence, passing the kids swing set that now looked like a tetnis trap. Around the left side of the house, the windows were dark and it looked like they boarded from the inside. He slipped around the back, the yard was empty and it looked like someone had been digging, the dirt was fresh. There was only a three foot fence separating the back yard of the blue house and the yellow house. Porter hopped it giving out a slight tinkling sound that reverberated down the line. Could have been the wind if there was any wind but there wasn’t. The night was still as a picture in a frame, the air hung cold and dank. There was a lot of moisture in the air and he felt like he could feel all the molecules and none would shake. Time was frozen and he was the only one awake.

The backyard of the yellow house was bare but for a few tipped over lawn chairs and old beer cans. There was a small back porch which lead into the kitchen. Porter circled around the right side, sticking as close as he could to walls of the house. The car was where it had been sitting for a few hours. The old yellow mustang was definitely the same one he’d seen Jack driving. There was nothing that interesting he could make out inside without a torch. Looked like the regular fast food debris and stuff like that and a gun on the backseat. He tried the handle and it was unlocked, the door creaked open but the light didn’t come on. He palmed the gun, it was heavy but he couldn’t make it out in the dark dimtime. It felt like a 45. It was long and squared away with smooth edges, the handle was wood and smelled of oil and smoke. He tucked it in the back of his pants and closed the car back up quiet.

Satisfied he was in the right place he crossed over back into the yard and to the back door. Taking great care as he mounted the back porch. Listening for creaks and voices of the people inside. As he got closer he could hear talking. But it was the static rehearsed talking of a loud television left on in the background. He could hear the pauses and the clicking of teeth and tongues.

The back door was open but for the screen. The door frame was thin as fire wood and he popped it open with a shrug and stepped into the dark kitchen. It was cold and lit only by a warm light coming from the living room where the tv was on.

The kitchen was small and tucked away, boxed in by an adjacent bathroom or bedroom or both. It was rectangular with linoleum floors and unpainted wood cabinets high and low. A fridge next to the door and a washer dryer in the far corner. It was a mess even in the dark. He could smell the plates rotting in the sink. Hear the bugs crawling through the damp under the cabinets. Surged on by a constant drumbeat of a leaking tap.

There was an alcove that lead into the lounge through a little sitting dining area. He walked light footed through the alcove, past a small table and chair under a broken lamp and into the lounge. It was warm and smelled of smoke and other things. Burning plastic. The lounge came from the dining area and snaked around the front. The front door to the left of a big bevelled television sitting on top of four cinder blocks. There was some kind of movie on, one of those late night movies you watch when you can’t get to sleep. You sleep and wake up and it’s there waiting for you.

The lounge was a mess, clothes tossed all over the place, more fast food garbage and beer cans. The walls had dark brown stains on them he could only see when the movie got bright. There was writing too but he couldn’t make it out, cabinets off to the right with weird taxidermy animals in them. Looked like rodents, and a few birds in there. The whole cabinet stank of fermaldehyde and had little bones in it, rat skulls. Something a little bigger a cat skull maybe, it’s good to have a hobby.

Scanning from left to right there was no one there, he could see the back of a coach bathed in dry tv light and not much else. He rounded the coach in front of the tv and saw there was a door that must have lead to the bedrooms. He pulled the gun out of the back his pants and shook it a little to get used to the weight. In the light of the tv he could see it was an iver Johnson Trojan standard .45 auto, a nice gun if you could afford it. He held his hand out for a moment like he forgot why he drew it in the first place, he let it drop to his side.

A small thin hand wrapped it’s skinny fingers around his wrists soft. He was looking down at his right into the sunken eyes of brunette who looked half there. Lying almost flat prone across the dirty old coach covered in what looked like a white painters tarp. She lay on her front and could barely summon the strength to lift her head. She looked like she recognised him. Something that was definitely a bad habit because she was a stranger to him.

She was naked lying on her front. He could see her ribs and her ass looked like a flat piece of flank steak. Dirty dark hair sticking to the sweat on her back.

His eyes peeled up and there was something scratched into the walls above the coach. A crude cave painting etched into the chincy wallpaper. It looked like a woman with wild red hair but the face of a bull with a ring through it’s nose. A set of big tits at the bottom and the rest of the body faded behind the coach.

He stepped away from the coach and her hand fell limp on the floor as she drifted out of consciousness again. He checked the clip, seven bullets and one in the chamber made eight. He walked out of the living room into a dark hallway which connected the bathroom and the bedroom. The bathroom door on the right was shut, it had a little window over the top of the door, so he knew the light was off inside. On the left the bedroom door was ajar and had a weak thread of light bleeding out.

He lined up the Trojan and tiptoed towards the door. There was only the sound of the tv from the other room and a building crescendo of crickets outside. He got to the door and there was a familiar smell, acrid, strong and getting stronger. The hairs on the back of his neck rose and his guts did a little dance. He poked the door open with the barrel of the Trojan and nosed it through like a dog under the covers.

It was anti-climatic, he knew it already but he liked surprises, liked lying to himself too much. The butterflies in his stomach were there because he put them there. As soon as he got to the door he knew the truth already but it was too disappointing to put into words. Lying there sprawled on the double bed, a mess of dirty sheets was Jack lying on his back with a needle in his arm. Eyes wide open looking pleased with himself as he stared unblinking at the ceiling fan.

His skin was waxy and pale, eyes glazed over, vomit on his shirt and on the pillow, an overdose for sure. Porter sighed and holstered the gun in the back of his pants and started to push deeper into the room. He must have been dead the whole time he was waiting or the smell was on account of him emptying his bowel. Either way Porter wasn’t that interested in learning the specifics. Or sticking around too long. A cursery glance of the room didn’t turn up any suicide notes. No journals written in red pen with the title ‘I did it’ on the front. But the sawn off mossberg shotgun under the bed said something. It smelled like it’d been fired recently. The calibre ammo accompanying it seemed to fit the size of the hole in Mickey’s head, as they say, if the shoe fits.

Suicide, that was stupid, this was like the rest of this mess, that’s all it was. He wanted this to be big and complicated but it wasn’t, it was a big mistake, the whole thing.

There wasn’t much else to the room, a double bed benal paintings on the wall. Clothes strewn about, drug paraphernalia. A couple of side tables with full ash trays.

He stepped back and took a mental picture of dismay. A snapshot of purest self-destruction. Then ducked back into the hallway where the air was a little more fresh. The girl was still there but she’d shifted onto her side with her other arm still trailing along the floor. He skin was so white he stopped to check whether he had two corpses for the price of one. He put his hand in front of her mouth and he could feel her breath, it was weak and probably smelled bad but it was there.

He thought about asking her questions but small of her back was in no mood to talk. He got himself off and away from that coach and started walking.

“Are you looking for that kid that was here?”

Porter turned to the coach, she hadn’t moved, maybe she couldn’t but there was no one else.

“Are you his father?” She said into the coach cushions.

“Where is he?”

“They came here together and then they went out and then he came back alone” She hummed. Her voice had a dreamy faraway quality as if she were talking to herself.

Porter was convinced he was talking to a ghost now and he liked his ghosts to get right to the point. “Where did they go?”

“J has a shack, he goes there when he’s hiding from someone, it’s a dirt road off interstate 33 near his old house.” She said dryly, no hint of inflection in her voice, she spoke as if reading a script written on a coach cushion.

“Thanks”

Porter started to walk off again when she asked “Is he dead? Did you kill him?”

“He did it to himself.”

That seemed to fit and she stopped talking like she ran out of quarters and Porter saw that as his time to exit.

He went out the way he came, cutting around back, out the kitchen and into the back yard. He took the Trojan out of the back of his pants, wiped it with the cuff of his jacket and tossed it over by the chapel. He snaked around Jack’s car working his way back to the dodge. Starting it up without putting his lights on and pulled out into the night.

March 28, 2018 0

Gage Chapter 4 ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Cry’

Before anyone says anything, yes I’ve just been watching battlestar gallactica and I know Cyclon is dangerously close to Ceylon, but I don’t care haha.

I might change it but, I dunno. I do like that show though, been watching while I lift and it’s a lot better than I expected it to be. I like to watch sci-fi shows to add a little meat to my elite dangerous head back story you know and I love the claustrophobic feel of the ships and the humming spaceship asmr noise. Can’t get enough of that.

Ok so hi, how y’all doing. Been busy this week unfortunately with my actual day job and not so much writing but I have a big day of spamming and blogging and proofreading the editing on The One That Came Back today I’ll hopefully have that done for circulation in my mailing list the first tuesday of next month. So the wait is finally over haha.

Writing wise I went back into the rut after I finished Gage, erm, trying to write that Lovecraft story but ironically it’s turning out to be sort of formless and unameably horrible haha.
But I’ve been reading the witcher novels (well the first one) and I was hoping to get inspiration for some hard fantasy novels I’ve always wanted to do but it’s weird because the more I read the more I think about that stupid clown samurai comic I wrote and how much effort I put into the villains and anime backstories haha.

It’s kind of annoying because I’m trying to get inspiration for fantasy and my mind is drawn to diesel punk clowns. That comic sort of went nowhere not because I ran out of ideas but because artists are fickle potheads who need constant babying and reassurance to tie their own shoes. So I had scripts and ideas up the ass but that wasn’t enough to get the ball rolling on the other end so ultimately it went nowhere.

I had been thinking of turning it into a novel lamenting the lack of fun visuals but I think with the right tone akin to the witcher books it could work. I’m reading the first book which is sort of a loose connection of short stories and I really like the style. It’s just perfectly descriptive but also leaves a lot to the imagination so it builds up characters but not to a point that it’s too much.

I dunno I just try to piece this fantasy together in my head and it goes nowhere because I don’t have a decent villain or villains yet. It’s not gone it’s just benched, it needs to go in the oven longer and I can’t really choose when the anvil of inspiration sparks, I just have to go where it tells me to go.

So I’m gonna sleep on it a little more and read more witcher and write more lovecraft until my path becomes clearer.

That’s about all.

See you…

As always you can check out the rest of this story and more on my inkitt page.

Gage

–

It was sometime after that in the hours past midnight that Gage would stumble home to his lodgings. Which was little more than the floor of a store closet in a rundown church which had been long abandoned and burnt out.

*Note to the reader; at the time of writing the religion of men in the western world was Christianity. A religion celebrating a man who sacrificed his life to end all sacrifices. But at this late time in the Cyclon occupation it had fallen into a state of stagnant degradation. The alien media branding it as Speciesist or partial and depicting it in their tubescope programs as inherently morally corrupt. Lacking any sense whatsoever and thus it had become wholey unfashionable for those to practice it and instead were encouraged to ‘enjoy their lives to the fullest’. Which usually meant indulging in debauchery such as excessive drinking, sex and gambling of which the Cyclon made a profit off of all. This lead to a great and unyielding erosion of morality and virtue in man, creating a confict between the spiritual and bodily existence culminating in what we in present time call the ‘wild west’. Any remnant of Christianity in the more affluent suburbs was horribly bastardised. Usually changed to fit modern social norms and practices and used to disseminate any morality the system wanted for the people at the time.

He stumbled home barely able to walk as he carried all his ill gotten winnings now in his gut in the form of high proof liquor. Pickling his senses his limbs large and dull and rounded without points as he attempted to carry himself. He’d spent a little longer than he wanted as it had started to rain by the time the game had finished and he was running out of money for drink. But the rain hadn’t subsisted and when the landlord eventually tossed him out with the help of a lug that worked with him. Otherwise even in his current state Gage wouldn’t have been so agreeable.

So now he trudged home in the dead of night with only the moon as a source of light and rain pouring down turning the streets into a soupy cold mess of black tar mud and horseshit. He pulled his collar up and trudged through it. His feet sticking in the sucking wet muck as he weaved drunkenly in the middle of main street. Heading out of town to the church on the hill where a warm pile of vestments waited for him to curl up on and pass out upon.

He’d only traversed about ten twenty feet from the saloon in his drunken stupor before he heard a loud cowboy whistle. The whistle drew his attention to the otherside of the street and a darkened alley. He could hear the whineying of a horse but couldn’t see it for the shadow of the buildings.

Then there was a high pitched whispering he could hear as if it was all around his head but he couldn’t understand it. The noise penetrating his drunken stupor only for a moment before it went silent again. It filled him with a strange familiar feeling like someone was scratching at the inside of his skull but it was different this time.

Gage stopped cold, frozen like a rabbit starring into the night and the shadow cast by the livery building where he heard the first noise. Some time past as the rain pelted down and then something hit the moonlight. Something metallic glinting and then a squelching tromping sound came from behind. Something hard and big hit him and sent him reeling gasping for air into the thick mud. A viciously strong gargoyle claw pinned his head in the thick wet mud and he took it in as the thing pressed down on him. The mud in his mouth and the dirty water in his lungs.

He was held there, unable to move, the booze in his system making his limbs heavy and useless and his senses dull and pointless. All he could do was try and hold his head up and not swallow his tongue. There was no noise but the sound of the rain and the slight squelching noises drawing closer.

And then they stopped and a high pitched voice said.

“Hold his head up”

The clawed hand grabbed fistfuls of his hair and yanked his head up so it could be rained on, his body still pressed flat against the mud. His face was covered in mud and the metal frames of his prosthetic were bent and it hung off his face like the mask it was.

“What do we have here?” The voice said.

“Face” Gage sputtered feebly.

“Well let’s get a look at you” The cold voice said as he bent down letting out a curious little laugh. He lifted the prosthetic off and stood back up remarking on it. “Very interesting” He looked down at Gage and then dropped the mask in the mud. “My god, that face”. He bent down again squatting with his hands on his knees.

Gage’s head lolled forward.

“Keep his head up!”

“Sah” The thing on top of him said. As it reached it’s rough clawed hand under Gage’s head to keep it in place.

“Well you are ugly aren’t you and you’re terrible card player” He tutted “Quite a brazen little cheat”. The cowboy with the pristine hat bent forward trying to get in Gage’s field of vision and said “Do you remember me?” He waited and got no response and sighed.

Gage could barely keep his eyes open, he gurgled mud and babbled incoherently to himself. “I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson.” The man from the saloon took out a device from his coat he recognised, it was a Cyclon control rod. “Now we’re going to try this again, it didn’t seem to work the first time. Must be something to do with that booze turning your brain into horseshit, speaking of horse shit”. He chuckled as he turned it on and held it to his throat and said in a buzzing tone “I want you to eat mud until I tell you to stop”.

Nothing happened.

“Well let go of his head you idiot!” The man from the saloon said as he kicked angrily at the thing holding Gage in place.

The beast yelped almost like a dog and let Gage’s head slump forward into the mud.

“There you go” The man said as he squatted next to Gage’s head. “How does that taste?”

Gage with great difficulty lifted his grotesque head out of the mud with a sucking squelching noise “Well, how does it taste?” The man asked again.

Gage opened his one good eye and glared at the man before spitting mud in his face. Splattering his nice clean cowboy hat.

The man hissed angrily as he looked at his nice clean white shirt ruined by the mood and blood and spit of a human.

“Hold him!” He ordered.

The thing on top tensing and gripping him, his claws biting into Gage’s flesh through his clothes.

“Why isn’t this damn thing working all of a sudden” He sneered glaring down at Gage who looked at him with a righteous air of defiance. “Rip his arms and legs off, slowly.” The man said without any inflection whatsoever.

“Sah” The beast grunted.

Then thunder, a righteous hammer of god striking steel and cleaning away the filth of this world with a great wind, a mighty anger.

The beast was tossed aside by the blast of the thunder and lay twisting in the mud, it’s entrails splayed out and rained on.

The man in the cowboy hat spun around reaching for his gun, a cute little six shooter with an ivory handle and silver inlays. He aimed all around as he had no idea where the shot came from, there was just the sound of the thunder and the strike from the dark.

He fumbled for his control rod and tried to put it to his throat and command the night and god himself to heel but god couldn’t hear him from all the way up there. There was another shot, nicked his arm and the control rod fell into mud and was gone for good.

Then another shot and it put him on his knees and he let out an inhuman screeching noise. Then the waterworks and the begging, he pleaded with the wind and the rain and storm clouds themselves to save him. Have mercy on him and be like brothers once again but they couldn’t hear him and a final shot cut him in half like ripe fruit.

And then there was silence, nothing but the metronome of the rain beating down on their corpses. His brand new cowboy hat sinking into the muck.

Gage lay on his side gasping for air and coughing up dirt. The sound of spurs and clomping muddy feet drew closer and then the neighing of a horse as he started to lose consciousness.

He awoke again not knowing how much time had passed, only that he was drier and warmer and not covered in shit. He opened one eye and could see a fire roaring in a real fire place, the crackling embers setting his mind at ease as he stared into them.

“They like to do that sometimes”

Gage groaned as he moved quickly to find the voice. The pain in his ribs apparent now. The strain in his neck made moving his head feel like there was dirt and silt between all the joints in his neck grinding against the bone.

He crumbled on to the bed, which was made of furs and wood and smelled like wet dog. He groaned again after a pause letting the words trickle through his brain and he said in response “Do what?”

“Rough it with the locals-“ The man’s voice was rough and deep and he spoke slowly and powerfully like he was making some kind of speech. “Cyclon dignitaries, mostly their kids, it’s like a vacation for them. Wearing a disguise pretending to be one of us, walk on the wild side, live on the other side of the fence, know what I mean?” He chuckled. “This one was a real mean bastard”.

Gage just lay there looking at the light from the fire dancing on the wood beams of the ceiling. By the looks of it he was in some kind of big cabin on the outskirts of town. He couldn’t of travelled too far since it was still dark outside.

The man let out a breathy laugh and said “Dead now. Maybe he was writing a book or something. Some of them like to watch us, report back, just to gauge our response to things. Some try to influence us, organise human groups, make it seem like they just sprung out of nowhere.”

Gage tilted his head to find the source of the voice, it was a tall grey man, thin and gristled. He stood shirtless with his back to Gage, he couldn’t make out his features, just that he had shoulder length grey white hair. He spoke not looking at Gage, staring off at the mantle. By his side resting against the fire place there was what looked like a makeshift long rifle with some kind of scope attached. The fire glinting off it’s barrel.

“Sometimes they even make anti-alien groups to create fake crimes against aliens they can use to pass new laws. They’ve been running both sides of the game. When you control your own opposition no one can stand in your way.”

The tall grey man turned and said smiling. “But with a face like that, I reckon you already know all about it.” The man was older in his late fifties maybe but he was long and lean and weatherbeaten.

Gage snarled, too weak to say anything cutting in return.

“I don’t mean no offence by it partner, just making conversation.” He was gristled old coot with big thick white mustache and rough white stubble on his chin. “I don’t get a lot of visitors out here-

Especially not ones that got a face that looks like a cayotes leftovers.” He laughed.

Gage swung at him with one of his huge booze softened fists and tumbled off the bed like a giant dumb baby. Lashing out angrily coming out of the other end of his mean drunk.

“Woah there partner” The stranger laughed.

Gage rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling again and said “Whiskey”

The stranger laughed and picked Gage up with ease and dropped him back on the bed. “I think you’ve had enough son, sleep it off and we’ll talk some.”

Gage fell asleep again and awoke some time later when the sun was up. The light through the shutters burned his one good eye and filled his head with a painful crackling.

He pulled himself off the bed and tried to stand, he got up on his two feet using a rough bedpost and got his head to stop spinning long enough to look about him. He was in the same room as before, but alone and the fire was out, the gun was gone. The room was a single room cabin that was quite large. A bed covered in furs and a few chairs, all the furniture looked rough and unfinished. And there was a crude cooking pot over the dead fire where a few embers still cracked.

Gage stood there for a moment trying to stop the room and spinning just staring at a single point in the room and then at the mantelpiece. There was a single photo of a young girl in a crude wooden frame whittled by hand.

The door creaked open and the tall Grey man came taking off his hat and coat hanging it on a rack next to the door, resting his rifle next down next to the door. Gage eyed it and then back at the grey man.

The Grey man smiled and curtly said “What does a big fella like you need fer a gun?” He laughed and lifted up a pair of dead rabbits and said. “Thought you might feel a little better if I got some breakfast in you.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“The gun?-“ The old man smirked and said “I made it.” He took Gage by the arm and sat him down on one of the crude chairs covered in fur. “Now you just wait right here and I’ll whip us up something and we can get to waggin our chins like a couple’a school marms” He chuckled.

It didn’t take him very long to skin and gut the rabbits and although he wasn’t a great cook after eating Gage did feel a lot better. But even after they’d finished he kept his eye on the rifle near the door.

“I hid some after that thing happened up north, I knew they’d come take’em away sooner or later. Its funny, all those in town, said they’d die before they gave up their guns. They were some of the first to hand them in willingly, fucking cowards. Clinging to their flags, and their constitutions, following along mindlesslike. Not knowing this aint their country, not no more”

He got up and went back to the pot where he was brewing some coffee and poured two tin cups full and brought them over and handed one to Gage who drank it gladly.

“I used to make things, outta wood and sometimes metal, folks around here just call me the Carpenter.”

“Gage”

“Pleased to meet you.” He laughed.

“You made that alien brat pretty mad pretty damn quick, must have a knack for it, hell it’s written all over your face” He chuckled.

Gage sneered but continued to listen.

“I say I used to, not much call for it now, not now them got them new-fangled machines spit out a chair like it was a loose tooth from a drunks mouth. Looks like hell and about as comfortable as sitting on a boney mule but it’s cheap and fashionable- whatever that means.”

The old man took a sip of the coffee and made a face, it was good and bitter and never would touch sugar.

“Used to make toys too but much the same. Kids don’t want no old wooden toys if it don’t make noise or lights or steam don’t come out of it. Aint got no kids of my own after my woman run off to become some whore in new york city”

“Call’em ‘actresses’ just gussied up whores you ask me. Put any alien piece in their mouth if’n they set’em up right. Make a fella wanna burn it all down- I don’t go near those goddam talmoscopes, whatever they’re called, goddam garbage.”

“Been alone up here ever since and I wouldn’t have it any other way”.

He inhaled deep and said nothing for a moment, Gage just looked down. Their stories echoed eachothers but there was no certainty that this man knew what Gage knew. Nevertheless a silent bond was forged, an unspoken realisation that something was wrong with this world. Something that was broken that only men of a different age could fix. Men completely outside this new alien world watching with bitter disdain as everything their ancestors had built was torn down and replaced with something unholy and disgusting. Their women whores to alien entertainment, their children slaves to alien industry. Every ideal humans had forged, twisted and manipulated and bastardized beyond all recognition until it was a shadow. Turned inside out and made sick and hollow for the amusement of an uncaring race who saw humans as cattle.

And they didn’t do it with a show of force strong arm fascist take over but by using our own ideals against us. Attaching the chain to our throats one link at a time. They tricked us into voting ourselves into servitude through conditioning and constant subtle manipulation. All the while the humans were the frog in the pot complaining about the heat but never jumping out.

Gage had long listened to the bellyaching of men he worked with about the system of government they lived under. It had become a hobby to complain incessantly about it all with the idea of using the systems own mechanics to change it from the inside. And now as he recalled them he realised that not even they believed that was possible. That even these people he now considered to only be partially conscious knew their struggle to be pointless. For how could a system so inherently corrupt and given over to an alien consciousness ever serve humanity ever again. How could we hope to allow a people who’s mind had been jellied with alien media for this long to vote themselves out of their own slavery when they had been taught to love it? How would they even know the words to declare it? To Gage it was like a chicken in a pot asking for a lower flame or less garlic in the broth.

“Living up here grants a body lots of privacy though, not much to care about for them big wig aliens up north. They raided me one time, took a bunch’a irons but I made do making some of my own. Bullets too, gotta keep it hush though all them folks in town’ll rat me out, go shooting mainly at night or in the early hours. Good fer when it’s thundering out, if’n I don’t get struck by lightning” He laughed.

“I tell ya you need a good iron if’n them freed lugs come around, only reason they listen to is at the end of one of those. Rape and kill anything that get in their way. Without them that control them they’re as bad as wild beasts. Worse, some can even use an iron if you’d believe it, some of’em aint even smart enough to tie their own boots, if’n they wear boots.” He snickered.

*Note from the editor, there was a spreading trend of the kaftas breaking free of their control or having masters who passed away and did not dispatch their beasts or in some cases Kafta’s that killed their masters and roamed free creating savage bandit gangs preying on the human population. All criticism of the use of these beasts and the rampant and disproportionate crimes commited by them, were batted away as speciesist and then ignored.

“I don’t know about you, but I’d sooner shoot one down than look at’em, no beast like that should be here in the land of men, nomatter what no one says. We can carry our own damn steel.”

“But folks don’t wanna believe it, most folks just wanna go along to get along and they’ll take as many licks as they need to. As long as they can keep their bellies full and their hands clean they can live like dogs getting scraps off the table. Not me, I’d rather be out here alone than in all that muck.”

Gage nodded in agreement as he had nothing to add, the old man in the crudest sense had echoed Gage’s own reasoning in some small simulacrum. They were both outcasts to be sure and there was no world for them that existed except one they made themselves.

A silent minute of contemplation passed over the two men and they realised there was no disagreement to be had, a silent pact formed.

The old man chuckled and said “Lemme show you something.”

He took gage around back. Gage getting a look at the place could see it was a small farmhouse with a barn and one out building but nothing seemed to be grown there at all.

“Soils no good here” The old man said “Too dry”.

He lead Gage into the out building which was small ramshackle shed or shack. The old man opened the door and went in first Gage followed shakily as his eyes adjusted to the darkened room. It was cool and smelled of dust and was rammed full of useless looking junk and broken tools. Old bicycle parts, and even what looked like an coal engine from an airship.

“I dug that out of the sand after that crash in 41” It was hydrogen, no helium I think, burnt up like hell fire”. He said sounding somewhat satisfied. “But that aint it”.

He signed and his knees creaked as he moved a heavy calfskin rug off the dirt floor revealing a wood storm door in the ground.

The old man opened it up with a creak and made his way slowly down the wood stairs which bounced with his heavy footfalls. He lit a lamp and poked his head out of the hole beckoning for Gage to come down there with him.

Gage was hesitant at first but had followed through on his assumption that the old man was harmless to him. He descended the steep rotten steps and reached the earthen floor of the storm cellar.

“I used to use this place for keeping fruit cold” The old man said. “Now I use it to keep these hidden” He said gesticulating with the lamp. He waved it around him illuminating a stack of wood stocked long rifles and an assortment of junky looking revolvers. Gun parts on wooden racks built up off the floor and some shelves higher up with ammo of varying calibres.

He took the lamp further and set it down on a small workbench which looked like it had a bullet press on it. Newer looking well kept tools hanging in a specific order in regards to their size and use.

Something on the wall caught in the corner of Gage’s good eye as the light just brushed it for a moment. A colossal hunting shotgun resting on two bent nails dug into the wall. A breakaway action with two triggers, no there were more than two. It struck him He’d never seen a gun like this even in pictures. It was long with three etched barrels and a long ornate looking stock made of mostly wood with some engravings. Also horn and leather closer to the shouldering point.

It was for hunting that was for sure, but not for any dear or rabbit, this was for hunting something much larger.

“You like the elephantman gun huh?” The old man chortled “Pretty special aint it?”

Gage looked at him and then looked back at the gun.

“See I call it the Elephantman gun cos you could shoot right through an elepant to kill the man behind it if you needed to” He laughed. “You wanna try these first” He said as he held up a small break action schofield revolver.

Gage looked at it and said “Sure”

March 27, 2018 0

Diana in the Dark Chapter 11 ‘Dark Lines’

Hello again,

Don’t really have much to update from yesterday so brevity is the brother of victory or some other such quote I just made up. Still trucking along with editing this beauty, with the help of the wonderful Chrissy Szarek, my polish friend told me her name is pronounced ‘Sharek’. Makes her sound like some kind of bond villain but she’s a nice lady, a published indie author and a great, prompt and reasonably priced editor.

This is my official recommendation of her, if you just type her name into facebook I’m sure you’ll find her and her work and you’ll be glad you did. It’s been a very pleasant and easy process working with and she’s very hands on and attentive. My last editor I literally had to email them three times each time ramping up the passive aggression before they’d even respond, with Chrissy it’s literally the other way around but without the passive aggression haha. I haven’t had to chase her up once, she’s constantly emailing me with updates on her progress, it’s really a refreshing change and she’s been really good with flexibility in terms of payment processes.

So that’s going on and speaking of my last editor, I’ll still be working through The One That Came Back today, hopefully in time for the folks on my mailing list, but I won’t send it out until I’m 100% happy with it. I’m not even going to give away something I think is a pile of shit haha. But I’m sure if anyone is looking forward to getting it by now they have the patience of a saint haha.

Ok so that’s about the skinny of it, off to editing and spamming I go.

See you…

Of course if you want to read the previous chapters head on over to inkitt where they’re all neatly collated.

Diana in the Dark

I guess locking doors was for poor people who weren’t literally encircled by a small army of trigger happy ex-cops. I knew because she was out prepping for the prom she wouldn’t be here. I also knew she had a brother but he was rarely home in the day, myths of an expensive heroine habit abound. So I was guessing he’d stumble home much later if at all. The house should be empty possibly 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 that meant 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 did say I loved animals but not that particular one.

I took a quick precautionairy 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.

When I was sure no one was looking I slipped into the house and closed the door firmly behind me. As I stood in the cool sweet smelling entryway I felt ok. I was just a pretty rich white girl coming home from yogalates, walking into her own home no big deal. Nobody could call the cops over that. It’s not like I used a grappling hook and scaled the wall garden.

The interior was fresh and clean, cream interior walls with off white, I guess eggshell tiles on the floor. A stair case carpeted in a darker cream snaking off from the oddly angled front door up to the bedrooms on the right as you entered. A big curtain-less window at the turn of the stairs letting in lots of light. I stopped in the entryway and just listened to the steady creak of silence. When I was sure the house was empty I let go of my breath and began to pad 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 which seemed to take up a whole corner of the house. It was very eighties deco, devoid of colour with a high ceiling that spanned both floors cut off by a balcony onto the second floor. A door off to the left lead into a relatively small galley kitchen which was nevertheless very nice.

But needless to say I wasn’t here for the tour. I doubled back to the front door and started a slow ascent up the stairs. Looking 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 her 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 possibilities but it seemed unlikely. But who knows. 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 she 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 would leave some trace of it behind.

I figured 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 neighbouring 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 but ok.

The second floor split off in two directions leading to the bedrooms. As far as I could remember her bedroom was off to the left and her parents ensuite was off to the right. But considering her parents weren’t in the picture anymore it made little sense to not occupy the empty ensuite. It’s what I would do, you’d 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 opted for a set of flat tread-less pumps.

Taking the right looking over the second floor balcony down at the living room and the large windows. It seemed like an average sleepy day in this neighbourhood, 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.

Really there was no rush, I’d started as early as I could. Depending on the schedule they’d be at the preparations until late into the afternoon. Factoring in frappachino and pastelito breaks, maybe some California tuna rolls, suddenly realising skipping breakfast was 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 distinctly 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 opened the door and was sort of surprised that the room was so small then I turned my head and realised that I’d stepped into her closet, oh.

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

It was so… so-

Neat.

Horrifying, truly horrifying.

I knew she was sort of anal and a bit of a control freak. But beside from the smell and the obvious personal effects the room seemed like a movie set or a window onto a dolls house. The bed perfectly made, almost creaseless, like it had been ironed, big and fluffy with pillows that seemed to go on for days. Not a sock on the floor not a sagging poster, the walls were bare and smooth. No litter, not even a bin with litter in it. Her dresser was immaculate, the mirror looked like it was brand new and all her makeup was neatly arranged almost seemingly with a ruler.

It was for lack of a better word; ‘creepy’ even for me.

The room was large and the closet was basically a room on its own. It wasn’t even a walk in closet it was just a room the size of an average bedroom only a little smaller than my actual bedroom, turned into a closet filled to the brim with clothes and shelves full of shoes hanging over my head.

The room like all the others in the house was sort of an odd asymmetrical shape. The ensuite was on the right wall at something like forty five degree angle from the rest of the room. And of course it too was spotless and it seemed pointless rooting around for clues in there.

I was hoping her online activity was a little less neat.

Walking around the room with a spectral lightness of foot. I opened a few draws on her dresser until, oh you’ve got to be kidding me, could it really be that easy? I started to get a little nervous, first the door and now this. Her diary was lying right at the top of the first draw down. On top of a stack of neatly pressed pink panties that smelled like lavender and dollar store candy.

I picked it up carefully and thumbed through it, sadly it was putridly average. Vomit inducingly so, saccharine and pointless and banal. So much so I felt myself slipping into bored unconsciousness as I scanned it. I hardly expected to just stumble upon…”Dear diary today I was thinking about how I poisoned my dear papa for cash, oh how silly of me”.

I clapped the little purple book shut and put it back in the drawer just as I found it. Feeling slightly deflated, nothing, not a chuckle not a whisper from the darkness below, just dull ringing silence.

There has to be something, I looked about the room planning to save the laptop sitting on the desk by the window for last.

I had some time to soak the room in, it was pretty, like a little girls room honestly, lots of pastel colours and stuffed animals. It was a fairy princess room for a little latina fairy princess. Maybe I was jealous, there was a picture on her side table. The whole family, her mom and dad and their little princess in the middle with the toothy grin missing the two front teeth. She must have been around six or seven. Maybe I was jealous of her, she had everything I could only dream of, and to my estimation she’d tossed it down the dark well. Only to live a long and empty existence here in this castle alone. Or that’s what I assumed. I found myself staring into the black gap of her tooth and hearing some building scratching in the dark back seat. I flipped the picture over and there was a small pieces of paper hidden in the frame. They wouldn’t have even been noticeable if there weren’t so many of them.

Check stubs, made out to Denny Vargas, Her brother, the amounts seemed to fluctuate, growing larger by increment. My guess was because of his little habit Wendy was put in charge of the estate and was dolling him out an allowance. Hmm. A small tick coming from the dark well, a drip.

Was it blackmail I was smelling, was I in some noir mystery? Still not nearly enough, no telling the amount of scandals a girl her age with her money could get into besides murdering her father. A tiny blip on the dark radar.

Ok time to skip to the good bit.

I strode across the room starting to feel a little rushed. I needed to find something good enough to justify a house invasion at the very least or I would feel very silly. And would have to reconsider a great many things about myself.

I sat at a white wicker chair she had at her clear desk, her laptop positioned perfectly central to the desks edges. I opened it and let it boot up, it was password locked but it wasn’t too hard to crack. Went through her parents’ names, her birthday, ‘Smoochie’ the name of her annoying little dog, of course it was the same as her password at school, let no one accuse her of being an original thinker.

I was in, no notes on the desktop, no elaborate confessions or future suicide notes stored away for good measure and her wallpaper was a pink glass slipper with pink fluffy trim.

I opened up a browser and started looking into her history. I wasn’t expecting to find much on the surface, after all, this all transpired what, a year ago, maybe two. So I wouldn’t even expect this to be the same laptop let alone that she didn’t delete all her search history. But considering how neat her room was I expected she was the kind of person who took care of her toys. So there was a chance this was the same computer she used back then, or at the very least it was backed up with files from her previous computer.

Despite the fact she probably deleted her search history, it’s never really gone, nothing deleted ever truly stays deleted. It’s always there in some form or another, waiting for some clever little nerd to pick up and dust off.

It didn’t take too long because I had a rough idea of what I was looking for, key words; ‘poison’, ‘murder’, ‘getting away with murder’. Ethylene glycol, that was anti-freeze to the uninitiated. A perfect household poison, colourless and odourless and with a sweet taste that allowed it to be ingested rather easily. But resulted in a slow painful death after consuming very little. When broken down in the blood stream it was almost impossible to detect unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. And most hospitals didn’t even have the facilities to test for ethelyne glycol. According to Wikipedia.

A dull humming laughter sent ripples through the dark water. A suspenseful breathing from the dark watcher, it was enough, more than enough for him. But this was nowhere near enough for Brodsky. I’d need something hard, some proof he couldn’t deny.

Bending a knee I probed under the bed, the wide window giving me ample light to see all the nothing underneath. No dust or cobwebs or bloodied baseball bats to be found. I took a closer look and ran my fingers underneath the frame of the big white bed. My fingers coming to rest on something that felt jagged and creased and out of place. Stuffed between the mattress and the frame of the bed were what appeared to be wads of paper. As I pulled them out I saw them to be what they were, opened lettered with a women’s central jail postmark. They were from her now convict mother, no doubt she was still awaiting arraignment before sentencing. The wheels of justice turn so slowly here in this laid back state. It was not uncommon for someone to be warehoused in a jail awaiting trial for years at a time.

They were carefully opened but not so carefully pressed under the mattress so I didn’t see the need to put on gloves and a hazmat suit.

I just opened them and eased the paper out of the first letter and allowed it to unfold. The first letter was fairly average, talking about her trial sprinkled with general niceties, ‘how do you dos’, stuff normal people say. No damning Shakespearean pros or accusations, no hamlet uttered at all but as I scanned on I noticed some parts were for lack of a better word ‘Redacted’. That is some parts were scribbled over with a black marker. Not unlike you would with a yellow marker if you highlighting a portion of text but instead they were blotted out. Conjuring a wry chuckle from the dark watcher.

The letters seemed to be kept in the order they were received. As I got further along the lettered got a little juicier a little more frantic and raw needing a lot more redacting. Whole paragraphs were taken out of this to a point where I wondered why even keep them at all?

I really doubted these were admissible in court since I assumed prisons read the letters of inmates coming and going.

Some terminal sentimentality I could never understand. Some piece of the puzzle I thankfully lacked.

There were small portions that had been drying out for so long I could read in the light, “I understand, he was…” The letter was written in an odd way too. It didn’t seem like a mother writing to a daughter it felt more like a student writing to a teacher. It was laced with a manic devotion, an obsessive maternal bond. I felt like I was reading a fan letter to the night stalker. “I love you, I’ll do anything to protect you-anything”.

A flutter, a swift uplift of dark wings and I knew it was satisfied a while ago but this might be enough for Brodsky. Scribbling out a sentence with a black marker I was sure was not enough to hide the truth. Some lab geek with a laminate at Brodsky’s behest in Washington undoubtedly could cast some sort of forensic wizardry on it. And that would be the tip of the iceberg of circumstantial evidence to sink Wendy. Although how well it would hold up in court would be anyone’s guess and I would assume Wendy wouldn’t go down without a fight.

She’d hire the best lawyers available and she’d probably beat it.

None of this would hold up in court of course, but there was a totally different court we were arranging for Wendy with a very different type of judge and the sentences were a lot more creative to say the least.

The last letter was thicker and although I thought I would have enough I could see no harm in probing further.

I gently removed the letter and tipped the rest the content of the envelope onto the soft carpeted floor. A few pictures came tumbling out, little passport photos of them together as a family when she was a baby, cute couple. There were a few more shots of her as a baby forming a little pile on the cream carpet.

I gave a dry breathy chuckle as I saw the letter was merely one page of entirely blacked out letters. Maybe I should buy her a shredder for her birthday.

There was a standard high gloss photo of Wendy in a diamond tiara at her sweet sixteen, her hair done up like a princess. I was pretty sure I went to that. I remember wearing some hand-me-down dress that looked like a black vacuum bag. She had a professional photographer take our pictures like this in front of a painted screen made up to look like a tropical sunset. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the one that would be at the prom.

I turned the picture over and there was no secret esoteric message written on the back with blood just a regular photo.

There was another from that day but it was a little different. It was her in her brother’s lap but there was something strange about it, something in the way she was smiling. His faced was turned into her neck with his arms around her waist and hers around his head. There was just something off about it, her eyes shut like that, her smile not of happiness but of almost. I wanted to say ‘shame’ or something like that, she looked almost like she was being tickled and she liked it, a little too much. But not being an expert on human emotions I didn’t put too much stock in my evaluation. But it garnered some attention from the dark backseat, some probing question, some lingering intrigue. A dark smirk projected onto the inside of my skull.

I idly flipped it over like the picture before, not sure what I was expecting but it seemed vital in the moment and I wasn’t disappointed. I froze, spittle welling up in my mouth and I suddenly felt very small and very thirsty, my heart tightening with a vice grip in my chest. Written on the back in pencil were the words ‘DO YOU SEE?’

I had no time to think how he knew or how he got in here but I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

A car horn outside, shit. Calm down Diana, this isn’t some shitty rear window knock off. She isn’t coming home in the middle of your little fishing expedition. She isn’t putting her key in the lock and she isn’t talking loudly in the hall on her cell phone. Or loudly walking up the stairs as we speak and I’m definitely not frantically stuffing the letters back under the bed and hiding there myself.

This was not how I expected today to go.

She came in and sat on the bed and I could do nothing but admire the excellent spring retention, you really get what you pay for. I guess guilty consciences are no match for space age mattresses.

She was talking on her cell phone, to whom I couldn’t fathom as I was desperately trying to remember if I’d left anything out of place in her room. I was sure I closed the computer, I put the check stubs back. I hoped.

I mean, I guess I could have played this off “Oh hey this isn’t my house, my bad”. But that was really a longshot. And I was already in the doghouse for missing the set up, I didn’t really want to add breaking and entering to that list of friendship testing events.

She didn’t seem too pre-occupied with searching her room. She was having what could have been described as a ‘heated discussion’ with someone on her cell phone. The doubt came from the fact she was talking in fast fire Cuban which was like Spanish which remember I suck at but working against an imaginary clock. It was pretty much completely beyond me.

So it was hard to tell if she was actually anxious or was having a perfectly normal conversation about sandwiches. It was only when she broke into a few sentences of rushed English that I picked up the reason she was home.

“I got another one”

“Another what?” The small voice on the other end said. I could barely make it out over the sound of her breathing, evidently speaking Cuban didn’t allow for breathing pauses.

“Another one of those fucking notes, someone knows Denny, someone fucking knows!” She said in a harsh whisper.

“You’re talking crazy” Denny said.

“I got one in my locker the other day and now I found one in Smoochie’s basket, someone knows and I have no idea what to do” She sounded frantic and teary eyed.

“Ok calm down, I’ll come over in a day or two and we’ll figure something out. If someone does know they would have gone to cops, this is just straight up blackmail, we can make that go away.”

How would they make me go away I wondered. He was so sure he could. Almost like he’d done it before. But then something stuck out at me.

I didn’t write a second note.

And I certainly didn’t put it in her dog basket while prepping for the prom since I was here. And as far as I know didn’t have a clone and thus could not be in two places at once.

I had been very busy but not that busy. I left the first note just to gauge her response, see a flicker of something certain and deadly behind those eyes, some glimmer of guilt and fear. I wanted her to see the slowly descending guillotine, just for a split second, just enough to know she did but so little that she could tell herself she didn’t. But that was all, I had what I needed, a second note would just be more of the same. Psychological torture sending her into this messy flurry of emotions and planning and readying. I wanted to nudge her not send her over the edge like this.

So then who sent the second note and why?

I had a rough idea but it seemed petty and silly and childish almost like a deadly prank. Someone wanted to see her rushing around like a headless chicken for their amusement. They wound her up like a toy and sent her reeling at me. It didn’t seem like something a cold blooded killer would do. Someone circling, waiting for the right time to strike making me feel like he was god’s hand. Everywhere, always watching, knowing my every move before I made it. Knowing that at any moment he could reach down and snuff me out.

It felt almost like a game.

March 22, 2018 0

GS2 Chapter 13 ‘Le Samourai’

Hola senors and senorita, what’s a lack of accent marks between pals huh?

Facebook ban lifted and I’m ready to spam like a motherfucker haha.

Back to that crazy trolling shit I do until I get banned for another fucking misplaced spongebob meme, oh holy jeebus save us from the offensive spongebob maymays.

Ok so down to business, so what have I been up to, not much, case close. Err been trying to write this lovecraft story but the plan I have was written by my past self and it’s not as structured as my present self would like so I’m spending more time just staring at it than I am actually writing which is good or bad depending on who you ask. I kinda feel like I’m in a rut again or I’m just so confident about Diana being a success I just can’t focus on anything else.

I so want that to be it I can’t help putting all my eggs in that basket even though I know I shouldn’t. I just feel like the time is right, I need this to be it, I need it to be now because of where I want my life to be heading. I need the success and I need the money to be with the people that mean the most to me, to be where I belong and not just have to keep visiting like a stranger.

But all I’m going to be doing today is doing a thorough read through and then cleaning up The One That Came Back to give away to you wonderful people that put up with my bullshit. I just want to get it in the best state possible, so I’m going through it with a fine tooth comb for the edits and then I’m going to probably go over it again just to be sure and then I’ll send it out I think at the beginning of next month.

I have nothing more to say, peace out my dudes.

As always you can check out the other chapters of this story and all my others on inkitt.

GS2

“Omfg, I’m so sick of waiting around here!” Kat said to no one in particular pacing up and down the storefront.

“We’ve been here like an hour”. Roch said, perched on the end of a booth seat in her own little corner of the store.

“Well it feels like forever”

“Why don’t you do like Nita and eat some fucking donuts and sit down.”

“I-don’t-do-carbs” Kat said getting in Roch’s face again. Roch just seethed quietly and turned her head.

“Do we really have to wait here three days?”

“Well we wouldn’t have to if Nita didn’t kick up that stink with that asshole in the army navy store.” Roch said.

“It’s not my fault I’m gorgeous, I didn’t asked to be harassed, I didn’t ask to be born a woman.” She called from the kitchen.

Juanita was in back again eating frozen donuts rather loudly in earshot.

“We’ve got no choice, if we go out there with nothing but our pussies in our hands we’ll be torn apart by flesh hungry monsters”. Roch said.

Kat went to the window and peered out through the closed venetian blinds and said “I don’t see anything”.

“That’s because it’s not set to start until tomorrow morning around sunrise.”

“This is so fucking stupid.” She said as she snapped her fingers away from the venetian blinds and started to pace again. “Only a fucking old white guy could come up with some fucked up shit like this!”

“Yeah that’s why we’re here, trying to stop it, right?” Roch said.

She frowned, “Y’all white people wanna kill eachother with the fucking living dead why do I care?”

“Then why are you here?” Roch said.

“I’m starting to wonder that myself” She said as she started to pace up and down again.

“Can you like stop fucking pacing, you’re driving me crazy!” Roch shouted.

“Don’t you micro-agress against me” Juanita said from the kitchen.

“What?”

“You can’t say ‘crazy’, you know I’ve got ptsd, it’s ableist to stigmatise the mentally ill.”

“She has ptsd?” Kat whispered.

Roch rolled her eyes and said “From people calling her fat on twitter”.

“Have you been to a doctor?” Kat called out.

“I’m self diagnosed, I don’t need a doctor to tell me I have ptsd, I know my own body better than any doctor.”

“O-k then.”

Jaclyn was half asleep leaning on restaurant table in front of her laptop. Sliding off from time to time and waking herself up and then going back to sleep again.

Her laptop was open and another call came through marked as ‘Urgent’. She wiped drool off her face and almost fell off her seat trying to answer the call.

She clicked it on and said “Hell-“ But was knocked right off by Juanita barrelling back into her seat.

“Hey Maccy sweety, what it do?”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

The manlet with the hipster haircut, cleared his throat and said “I’ve got some urgent news non-gender conforming people like entities.” He cleared his throat and went on. “I’ve got some disturbing chatter from my guy on the inside.”

“What is it?” Jaclyn said trying to get in shot, quickly bounced out again by Juanita’s girth.

He made that sucking tutting noise for effect and said “I think they’re onto us.”

“What do you mean, are they coming for us?”

“Eergh, in a way.” Ergh in a way.

“What are you talking about” Roch interrupted, leaning over Janita to be in shot of the webcam. Juanita put her chubby hand on her face and pushed her back after an uncomfortable struggle with lots of fishhooking.

“Yeah what dya mean, are we in danger?” She said as she flicked a quaff of green hair out of her fat face.

“No, well, maybe.” He made that sucking noise again as a full stop.

“Spit it out already” Kat said over Juanita’s shoulder.

“Well, they’ve upped their time frame.”

“What?”

“Well I didn’t think this was even a possibility.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“They’re making the drop in a couple of hours, the three day time frame is bust.” He made a noise in his throat and said “They’re rushing the end game.”

“How could they know we’re here, we were so careful to cover our signal. We bounced it around all over, the money we paid to get in was crowdfunded, there was no way it could be tied back to you.” Jaclyn shouted from off screen.

“I don’t know, my guy couldn’t tell me anymore.” He paused again and swallowed. “Ergh but it doesn’t change the plan, it just excelerates it by two days. They couldn’t have changed the drop locations on such short notice. You have all the intel you need, just be in the right place at the right time and you should be golden.”

“Hey you see, you don’t need to wait around anymore” Roch said in the background to Kat.

“Great and twisted abortions of science are gonna rain down from the sky.” She replied sarcastically.

“Since when were you anti-abortion” Roch responded.

“Fuck you.”

He coughed and Juanita was about to say something and he cut back “What about the prototype?”

“We shocked it and reattached the head but it didn’t seem to work, it probably needs more time.” Jaclyn elbow said meekly in the corner of the screen. Juanita scoffed and vacated her seat and Jaclyn sat back down in full view of the webcam.

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Mac said.

“Actually no” She said ditzilly.

–

“I can’t.” TJ’s voice rattled in his throat, a wet sucking feeling down deep in his esophagus.

She looked up at him, her eyes hollow, her skin looked cold and damp like a corpse and her face was tired. The look of an old nag with a broken hoof preying for a quick death from a merciful shot from a kindly gun.

She couldn’t talk anymore, her lips were frozen, her tongue growing fat in her mouth, her head spinning. She hung it forward like she couldn’t bear the weight of it anymore. Revealing to TJ; her kaishaku, a perfect strip of white flesh at the back of her neck. A smell hit TJ, that beautiful fresh earthy smell, now it smelled like a little damp got in, a little rot.

No, this had to be a dream, a dream within a dream. A sick fantasy from a tight fisted lonely jacker, Japanese love pillow fucker. This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be her neck calling out for the flash of a naked blade. ‘Lift my burden TJ’, the neck said.

Seemingly an eternity had passed and Jimmy hated eternities so he wound up to bat shrieking “Fuck it! I’ll do it if your bitch ass aint man enou-“.

A lighting bolt hit the room, a white hot flash of cold steel making every ear ring. Jimmy stood frozen, a victim of a paparazzi bulb, the harsh gaze of a cameras eye, a deer in headlights. His eyes sewn together by the point of an elegant blade poking it’s nose between them.

The point of the blade close enough to pick the hairs off Jimmy’s eyebrows. TJ stood, tall, not looking in Jimmy’s direction, the long arm of the blade in his one hand, straight and tight and lean pointing right between Jimmy’s eyes.

“Ok, ok” Jimmy said as he backed off.

He took the sword in both hands and closed his eyes and when he did he could hear them. The things on the outside and the slow building flames like rushing waves of a hungry ocean.

He took a deep breath in and he tried to find her there, try to find her alive and well. A smile maybe, a laugh, something he could hold onto but there was nothing, just pure cool emptiness.

–

A little girl’s laugh floated on cooling corpses in a long hallway on the second floor of the cop shop.

A thin hand with dirty nails snatched a back up boot knife out of a kydex sheathe on one of the dead cops. Disappearing it up the sleeve of an old green army jacket like a magic trick. He padded the corpse down and found a spyderco edc folder, an old endura two possibly, full serrated edge. He pocketed it.

There was glass on the floor. But he already found a set of boots that fit since there was an ample selection of boots just lying around. Some filled with blood, others not.

Carpenter picked out a nice long shard of glass and wrapped shreds of a curtain around it to make a handle. Wrapping it around the shard and his own hand to make a tight reverse grip, feeling like he grew a ragged claw, a dirty serrated iceaxe.

“He went this way” The little girl whispered.

It was quieter now, a graveyard waiting quiet, like the eye of a tornado, chaos waiting for it’s turn in some cosmic jrpg. He rounded a corner and saw a heavy metal door open ajar. The word ‘Morgue’ written on the sign outside. It creaked open a little, being coy but he’d seen that shit before and the darkness coiled behind it could tell.

“I see you” He said.

A burst of white, the thing crashed through the heavy door launching at Carpenter like a quarterback with a firework covered in hot sauce up his ass. It was on him, numb jaws snapping behind a fabric mask. A giant white rabbit took Carpenter clear of his feet and was humping him feverishly with no bite, no claws, no teeth. All encased in soft cuddly fur, turning this mauling into little more than the exuberant greeting from a cuddly toy.

He smiled pushing its soft flailing limbs away from his face and burying the shard of glass deep in it’s big padded eye. Snapping it off a few inches in he felt scraping bone but no joy. He flipped it’s limp frame off of him.

He got to his feet and delivered a satisfying kick to its plush underbelly. The white rabbit moaned, almost human and started to crawl to the window at the end of the hall. Carpenter looked out the window, and back at the white rabbit as it limped down the hall.

“What, you lose your nerve?”

Fast fumbled padded steps, the rushing and scraping of hungry fur, before he knew it he was neck deep in the shit. They were all over him, a tucan’s soft beak pecking at him. Soft claws and paws padding him all over, plush jaws biting with no purchase. It was kind of funny, kind of disorientating, hard to believe even in some stoners wet dream. It took him a few seconds to even capture what was happening but by then it was too late, they were on him. A fat elephant, a muscular tiger, cartoon plush humanoid animals crushing him. Piling on top of him cutting off his air, his vision covered in fur, felt like he was drowning in it, buried in it. Six feet under and some god with a sick sense of humour was tossing shovels full of furbies on top of him.

It was hot, there was no air, just paws and huge cartoony eyes and fake multi-coloured hipster haircuts. A nazi werewolf trying to skull fuck him. His muscles slackening in sure disbelief, surrendering to the grave in pure irony. To die like this was too hilarious to turn down. His eyes rolling back in his head, lids getting heavier. The muscles in his ribs getting weak, lungs wanted to collapse, why not let them, give them a rest, they deserve it.

“Follow the white rabbit” Laura’s voice said.

A bolt of lighting shot through his muscles. The waking pistons of a train engine pounding hot and heavy. An opening in the fur calling him out, he saw that fucking white furry bastard at the end of the hall in front of the window.

Before he knew it, carried by angels wings and devils’s farts he was slipping the furry rainbow noose. Their grips had no nails, their jaws of death had no teeth, death’s scythe was a toy that couldn’t cut a microwaved banana. He was swimming through fur, slick with sweat and grease and blood, sucking it in. Slipping through a crack in space and time, lunging like a dog chasing a car at the white rabbit shape in front of him. A white hot headlight of a subway train car rushing at him, hearing only the blood in his ears rushing. Telling him to strike and to fly and to kill and to cut.

He lunged through that fucking rabbit both flying through that second story window. Glass popping out floating like little snowflakes, some song playing. A little Christmassy in the distance and he was gone like saint nick.

–

A snipping of a stem, a green rose falling softly on a concrete floor. TJ, the gardener frozen in a state of morbid elation, synapses firing all over his body. His blood rushing to all points charged, electrified, his heart pumping he was sure was audible to the whole room.

It wasn’t like he imagined it, her head flew off and rolled across the floor. Her body fell limp a little blood and a strange liquid leaking out of the hole in her neck.

The head kept rolling until it was stopped by a boot gently pressing down on her porcelain cheek.

The Frenchman closed the garage door behind him and said “Am I interrupting something?”

March 21, 2018 0

TOTCB Chapter 16 ‘Well of Misery’

Stellar news space cadets, no it’s not that I don’t feel like death warmed up in an easy bake oven, thanks to my new weightlifting and not eating regime I feel like oprah winfrey covered me in bathroom scales then smashed them with a hammer then sat on me then drove a free mobile home over me.

Doctor Ryk prescribed lots of protein coffee and elite dangerous playing.

But no the news, well after much poking and prodding and passive aggressive english awkwardness I got the edit back for The one that came back, huzzah, now I can finally get pub- oh wait all the two people who wanted to see copies of it have probably long forgotten about it, well shit.

It doesn’t matter, shit happens, got a new editor now, it’s all cool and the gang and a way better book to shill. So I figure just carry out the original plan and give it away for free on the mailing list which I should really keep updating but my memory and my fucks are not what they used to be.

Anyway that’s my plan for the day, work through the edits, get it smoothed away and then slap together a cool cover of sorts and make it a nice pdf or mobi or something like that in time for my ban on facebook to be lifted, freeing me to spam once more.

That be all.

Bye now.

TOTCB inkitt link

The clinic on Calebra was a small practice pinched on one side by a dollar store and some fleabag hotel on the other. It had a great green empty lot in the front. He expected something a little bigger like a hospital or a resort. Not a building that looked like a family dentist’s office. The weather was hot as usual, sun in the sky, starting to get a little darker, with a slight cool breeze blowing.

The clinic was a flat brick building painted a light brown all over. Even the roof tiles were the same wet sand brown colour. It looked almost like a residence with all the curtains shut tight. A small concrete parking lot out front with a single palm tree sticking up in the middle. The entrance was off to the right and looked like a little house or a big garage. The treatment rooms must have been in the back or slung over to the left in the bulk of the building. There were quite a few cars parked out front and a white van parked at the side. Porter looked at it and sqoffed at it imagining it was for catching runaway dope fiends.

From left to right there was a red prius, a black ford, a silver Chrysler, a black hundai. So he wasn’t here or if he was he was using someone else’s car. Or maybe he was staying at the fleabag and just walked.

He glanced over at the fleabag, there were no cars out front as far as he could see.

Porter parked the Dodge behind the prius and got out and went inside.

To his surprise the reception area was all the same colour as the outside of the building. The desk and furnishing were varnished wood of the same colour. Whether that was intentional or not was anyone’s guess. Unless their decorator was also a patient that mystery would have to remain unsolved.

Porter stood around the lobby for a second, the layout seemed odd. The desk was further back than he expected and he couldn’t see anyone behind it. The waiting area was bunched very close to the door and gave a strange perspective. Probably intentional to make the building seem larger inside.

He looked around, it was sparsely decorated, subtle tones. Not much on the walls except calming benign paintings of plants and kittens. There were a few magazines on the coffee table in the waiting area that looked dated and well thumbed. Other than that there wasn’t much in there that would tell you you were in a rehab clinic. No pamphlets or posters or pictures of people. For all intents and purposes it just looked like the inside of a very sterile and strangely laid out house.

“Err… ahem, excuse me”

Porter turned his head towards the squeaking noise from behind the desk. He moved closer and saw that there was someone behind it, she was just obscured by a rather large monitor. She was a petite and pale redhead with glasses on her face that looked like they were screwed too tight. Her hair tied back in a loose ponytail of dull orange. She was perhaps around her mid twenties. Fairly attractive with a sort of boxy squished nose lightly dusted with freckles.

“Yes can I help you with something?” She said leaning forward on her chair trying to make herself more visible to get his attention.

Porter put on his horker smile and went closer to the desk. Now he could see just her head which was disconcerting. The rest of her body obscured by the monitor and the needlessly high desk.

“Yeah I’m looking for my brother, I was wondering if you could help me, he’s got our mom really worried.” Porter said to the floating head.

“What’s your brother’s name?” She said returning a limp half smile.

“Jack Hide” Porter moved closer to the desk and leant on it with a single elbow watching her face closely.

She turned her nose up and then scrunched it up a little bit. Her eyes flitting up and down his face and body, his clothes, maybe she could even smell him now. The point is he was trying to make her uncomfortable by incriminent and it was working. The sooner he got what he wanted and was gone the better.

Satisfied, she started clacking away as loud as humanly possible on a large old grey keyboard. With every tap Porter could almost see bony fingers popping bubble wrap made of plate glass. It was like nails on a chalk board but the board was the inside of your skull and the nails were dirty toenails.

He smiled still looking at her face now from the side, leaning more of his weight on the desk and crossing his legs. She had a nice long smooth neck but not much of a chin to speak of. Not that a woman needed a big chin but it was necessary to stop your head falling off your neck. She caught him looking in the corner of her eye, which was fine, he wasn’t hiding it, quite the opposite. The more heat he put on her the faster she’d work.

“We have one Kyle Hyde, but no Jack” She looked at him and then looked back at the monitor.

“That’s him, do you have an address?” He flipped over on the desk and put both elbows on it angling almost to lean over and see the monitor.

She swivelled the monitor away so he couldn’t see and said “I’m sorry. We can’t give out the addresses of our patients, unless you can prove you’re next of kin.”

“How do we do that? You wanna take my blood, check my prostrate?” Porter smiled, it was so easy to tell with redheads, pale skin like that flushes, you can see it from space. He waited for it to die down and didn’t say anything, he just left it hanging there, letting the silence build.

There are two kinds of people when it comes to facing awkward silences. Those that will embrace it and get belligerent like a teacher dealing with a naughty kid. An authoritarian personality. The other type is more common. Most people will do almost anything to make it end shy of selling their mother at a discount. Most people just want to help and make other people happy. Even if it means throwing out everything they believe in a split second of awkwardness. It becomes hard when you have rules. That is to remember them all in a stressful situations. So all you need to do is apply pressure for them to forget one or two for a long enough window to slip past them. No ones perfect, people are like locks. And there are no locks that can’t be picked if you poke at them long enough and with a long enough stick.

The blushing came back and Porter smiled, he didn’t want to pull the waterworks or the fire alarm or have to lie. She was making her own story in her head by now. His sad ‘whore with the heart of gold’ smile was producing the screen rights to the movie.

“Look…” Porter said breaking the tension. “All you need to do is step away for a second and get a cup of coffee and you’ll never have to know anything happened.”

She was flustered good now, he was impatient and he’d worked her hard and maybe too fast. Laid it on a little too thick but he’d given her an out and she had to take it or call security. If this place had any, maybe she was it and there was a shotgun pointing in circumcision range as they spoke.

“Erm, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.” She put up token resistance, just a stalling tactic.

“Look all I need is an address, I just want to make sure he’s alright, that’s all”. He talked emphatically, adding a little shakiness to his voice.

“Ok I’m going to go to the bathroom and I expect you to be gone by the time I get back”. She said as she stood up from her chair.

A little too much information but that was fine.

Porter smiled and mouthed thankyou. As if she’d done him and his imaginery family a big favour that he could never repay. She’d literally cured cancer by going to bathroom. If she washed her hands afer the dalai llama would give her a standing ovation.

He watched her go and as soon as she turned the corner he went around the desk. There was no fixed address listed for Jack at all. The alias Kyle and no address, he wasn’t making this easy. But Nancy had found him under his original name. Or maybe she just searched ‘Hide’ and this was the only one she found in rehab in a city of about four million people.

There was one forwarding address listed but going by the rest of it seemed like this was a coincidence. It seemed unbelieveable that this was our guy. The address listed must have been somewhere he’d been staying at some point. Most likely coach surfing or squatting. There was something about the address that seemed familiar. Standing in front of monitor wasn’t the best place to think about it. The address was 147 J street in the warehouse district.

He went out to sit in the dodge. He looked around and there was nobody in the parking lot. He cleared his mind for a minute and tried to think whether or not that address was worth his time. This was it, this was the only lead he was given if this was bust it was back to square one. If Jack left the state or the country this was finished. He knew he’d never get anything out of Angela, she’d probably forgotten more than she remembered by now. If the fbi couldn’t get her to talk. Some half decent confidence trickster wasn’t going any deeper without getting dirty.

Peggy probably knew something but wanted to forget. Getting close to her would be near impossible now. She’d be on the defensive nonstop until this died down and all the reporters forgot she existed. Plus she already knew him and he really didn’t want this to get any messier than it had to. Getting involved in their family drama wasn’t his plan. The kid was no good, he didn’t know anything, he probably had to struggle to remember his real name.

Plan? Now that he thought about it what was his plan? Was there a plan? Was there ever a plan? What was he doing, why was he doing it? It started over money. Then it stopped being about money and started being about getting a good nights sleep. Without seeing that kids face and then it became about money again and now was it back to sleep?

He sighed hard and drifted off into thought. Until he heard a little pipping noise and was made aware that some time had passed. The girl from the front desk wanted to move her prius and he was blocking it with his big unsightly truck.

He sort of fell out of his daydreams with a jump like falling. His heart hitting a cold floor and he felt flustered suddenly and was looking for his keys. Opening the glove box and then the sun visor, remembering that he put them in the ignition already.

He caught a glimpse of something in the glovebox. He put a photocopy of Johnny’s missing person’s flier in his car. Incase he needed to jog people’s memories or maybe it was some sentimental reason he didn’t want to delve too far into. Maybe looking at it would be enough to stir the angels to help him and rouse his spirits. Make his heart grow ten times bigger and his brain ten times smaller.

Then he remembered, it hit him like a tonne of bricks and he cared less about little red’s prius. The tattoos, the cross was a given. But the other letters didn’t make any sense and they didn’t have to at the time. Kid gets a little tattoo most adult tattoos don’t mean a damn thing. He thought the J might have just been for Johnny or Jack or something like that but the rest seemed meaningless. ST meant something but maybe it wasn’t two separate words. Just an abbreviation for street and maybe he was leading himself on a wild goose chase. Maybe anything he saw he’d make fit so that he could be on the tail of some great mystery. Not scratching in the dirt in someone else’s basement.

Thinking wasn’t doing any good, thinking lead home and nowhere, who was he kidding? He was going whether he liked it or not, like he was on rails. Spirred on by destiny and all that stuff that made us feel good and powerful but meant the opposite.

He turned the engine over and drove out of the lot.

–

Nulidad was sitting in a room in the san Antonio detention centre. They moved him from the childs centre to the jail proper across the street. After his record from Interpol came through.

He was wearing a white pair of pants and blue shirt. They almost looked like hospital scrubs as opposed to the orange jumpsuits you see on tv. Sterile looking.

His cell was small as you might expect. It came equipped with a blue phone imbedded into a white column in the middle of the back wall. A small old tv on top the plugs were in the middle of the wall right next to his bed, which consisted of a single cot. The walls were white and green on adjacent sides and there was a mirror over his bed embedded in the wall.

He’d spent most of his time sitting on his bed making collect calls to whomever would answer. He was looking for something, shopping for something. A new identity a new family. He got a taste of something, maybe he’d had it before and that’s why he did it. The love of a family, or something close to that. The tv was on but the reception in the centre wasn’t great and the volume was broken on the quietest setting.

There was something else, he was waiting for and then it came. The phone rang and he answered and an unfamiliar voice answered and he asked. “How did you get this number?”

“Mom gave it to me” The voice was sly and slow and contained a threat of some sort.

“Who is this?” Nulidad said.

“I could ask the same question, what was your name again, your real name?”

“What do you want?”

“The real question is what do you want? I can pay your bail, get you out of town and you can keep on keeping on ya feel me?”

“Why would you do this for me?”

“You know why, you’ve got a big mouth.”

“So you can kill me, like you kill Johnny?” Nulidad hissed.

“Now who said that? I didn’t kill Johnny and if I did, I wouldn’t talk about it on a phone in a jail”. He paused and sucked in some breathe.

“You don’t know me, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I want you out of my hair and you want out, it’s a winwin for you to skip and I can help but you have to make up your mind now.”

Nulidad breathed through his nose making a whistling sound and said “Ok.”

March 15, 2018 0

Diana After Dark – Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’

Gonna keep this real short and sweet today, I woke up feeling like amy schumer fell on me. It must just be a mix of pushing myself really hard with the weight lifting and maybe too much staring at screens or not drinking enough. But I don’t see how it could not be not drinking enough because I literally drank three whole litres of green tea yesterday, don’t ask me how I know that but I did.

So yeah I feel like the inside of amy schumer’s toilet bowl today. Maybe not that bad, maybe the rim of of her biddy. Which is worse, I don’t know. Too shitty feeling for jokes, I just want to retire to the dark with my protein shake and silence.

But I bring updates, I was supposed to be writing but I had no idea what, got talking to another south african lovecraft fan recently and I really should get back to writing that but I felt a real urgency to keep the Diana train rolling because I think she has a real shot.

So instead of writing lovecraftian stuff I decided to do the pitch doc and query letter drafts for Diana After Dark. A lot more effort went into this and I’m pretty pleased with it and the blurb I think is probably the best I’ve ever done. You be the judge, I’ll leave it below for your viewing pleasure.

That’s pretty much it, I went over the editing Chrissy did up to now and I’ll wait for her to get enough done so I can make a complete pitch and then start sending it out to agents, see if I can’t get this thing off the ground. Although I think even if this book doesn’t get me attention from an agent I might just do another one and try to get that picked up as a series because I have some really good ideas for a second and third and even a fourth instalment.

That’s about it,

See you…

Diana Harrison is the girl next door but be thankful she doesn’t live next door to you.

Under her shy pretty girl exterior lives something a lot darker.

On the surface Diana is a happy go lucky senior at university high California. smart, funny and will laugh at all your bad jokes. She has a strapping boyfriend and a terrific grade point average. she seemed to have everything going for her. But her bold future is tested by a dark fascination with serial killers that borders on obsession.

Although some might find that strange and may not want to invite to their house party or to the prom she manages to keep her desires a secret.

However, when a real killer moves to town her inner and outer worlds begin to collide. A series of strange dreams and some haphazard internet snooping has landed Ditzy Diana in between the sights of the real thing and now she has no choice but to ‘come and see’…

Cutting 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. Here I was waiting in an ‘interview room’. It was sort of a bland egg shelled colour and it smelled vaguely of crayons.

It was just a square room that could have been an empty storage closet but for the table and chairs. There was no long two way mirror, just a camera, I was sure was on. But they would see nothing of interest, no tell or wink or talking to myself. I was without guilt of any kind, incapable of feeling it in fact and as far as I knew actually innocent of any crime larger than an overdue library book. My fantasies aside I was a pretty solid citizen, on paper. That was as far as I knew. Two or probably thirty minutes from now a detective could walk in here with a video of me robbing a jewellery store wearing the barmaids head as a hat.

I’m sure I’d look quite surprised, then again maybe not. I had dwelled on the possibility that the dark back seat driver might have 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. But it seemed fanciful even for me. Although it would explain why I feel so rundown recently, 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 Cartwell saunter in looking down at a bland manila folder as if I hadn’t been waiting at least an hour at this point. Sipping a hot cup of coffee probably one of many. Our tax dollars at work.

There was something I liked about this place though. There was something beautifully impersonal about everything I saw. Men and women in and out of uniform shuffling about in a trance pretending they belonged, all separated out in little cubicles and cubies. The smell of justice a dank bitter smell like burnt coffee and cigarette butts. People brought together working towards 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.

He looked up at me like he didn’t expect me to be in here causing deep creases to form on his smooth chocolatey 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 I was sure.

I could have said something, that was sort of the point of me being here. 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 you spill the beans entirely.

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

“Do you know why you’re here” He asked some, I was assuming, very guilty looking coffee granules at the bottom of his cup.

“Err” Eloquent as always. “Something to do with the heads in the lockers?” I asked myself, the words tiptoeing 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.

He 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 up at me with half lidded eyes and made a sucking noise with his teeth before setting the empty cup down. The sound of the empty cup touching down on the table echoing went right through me. We had so much in common.

He then 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 have been truly incriminating. Especially if he found my adolescent fan fic shipping the two. My mind was wondering 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.

He 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 don’t know what was more shocking, the picture or the fact not even the police could decide on a definitive name for him, Head-hunter, headsman, pick one.

I looked up at him and gave him 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 walk, how I envied Manson. He’d just make a funny face and say 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 that you would be the one to find those heads.” He sat back in his chair laying out some figurative diorama of events with his hands on the table separating us. “And only a day later photographed leaving the scene of another murder in your boyfriends car- and that is your boyfriends car isn’t it?” The question was mute, 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 even a nice shot from the front, my ghostly white face projecting through the tinted glass windshield. So alien looking, that whole night slid past me, I didn’t remember any of the drive back, just got filed away, burnt in a fire. He could show me cell phone footage of me drinking someone’s blood and flying away on a broomstick next and I would have shrugged. My heart was pounding now, jumping up and down. I could feel something rising, but it was slow and pleasant like the steady beat of Wagner through paper thin apartment walls.

Termites crawling through drywall, making a steady humming sound of tiny feet.

“You want me to believe this is a coincidence?”

That would be helpful. But neither of us were that dumb. I started to feel small and put upon like I was sitting in the principal’s office and I was about to be ambushed by my parents. Who would inevitably take the side of law and order and all things good and abandon poor Desecrated Diana.

I didn’t say anything, they can’t give you the electric chair if all you do is nod and drool. Was there a precedent for that?

“That’s you on those tapes.” He said it defiantly almost as a question. But there was something in his voice and the way he pointed and moved his head. Pointing at an imaginary VCR that made me think he didn’t really want to believe it. He didn’t want evil to be this cute. Something about that really troubled him.

I shrunk a little more away from him into my own little world.

He readjusted and sighed making some exaggerated face wiping gesture with both hands. As if he’d been the one waiting in here all this time to be accused of multiple murder that you probably didn’t actually do. “Look-

I don’t think a teenage girl is capable of all- that.” He said now with an air of divine leniency, a saint ready to let the sinner have a quick and merciful death instead of a long awkward one sitting atop a dull pike lathered in goose fat. “But I think you know something, I think it could even be someone at your school- your boyfriend maybe?” He nodded at me he was fishing now, the fight he had a moment ago, the hot spark of discovery was gone. He must have thought I would throw up or burst into tears when I saw the photos, not stare blankly at them hiding the rising tide of- something.

An air of almost perfectly crafted indifference. “I was just-“ Yes? “My boyfriend was taking me for a driving lesson” Weak Diana, that is terrible.

“At two O’clock in the morning, through central city?” He scoffed.

Oh Jesus, I was better off as the strong silent type, I should have asked for a lawyer, no that would have made me look ten times guiltier, don’t you watch TV?

Just as the silence between us had elongated to an incredibly unpleasant cacophony. The door opened again with the sound of Tupperware popping and the head of a tiny red-haired woman poked around it.

“Cartwell, captain Hughes wants to see you in his office”.

“I’m in the middle of an interrogation”

I thought this was the ‘interview room’ that’s false advertising!

“He says it can’t wait” The woman said.

He got up without saying another word, just a gasp or another sigh and a quick searching glance in my eyes, he’d find nothing and that’s what scared me the most. An odd expression crossed his face like he’d suddenly realised he’d been talking to a Burmese python this entire time. And I was just waiting for him to lie down and stop wriggling so I could unhinge my jaw and fit him footways into my mouth.

“Excuse me for a minute” He said before awkwardly angling himself around the desk, almost like he was trying to jump over it.

“Err” I said.

I waited for another ten or twenty minutes, trying not to look up at the camera or blurt out anything incriminating. Now that I thought about it I couldn’t even muster a confession. All the events leading up to this point were so disjointed. Despite actually being there, I doubted I could relay it in any particular order that made any sense. Not without needing to talk to a priest first.

I sighed, saddened by the fact even if he did rake me over the coals for hours and break me I wouldn’t even make enough sense to muster an insanity defence. Despite the fact I technically didn’t do anything but I had nothing really to bargain with either, no names to give no hard evidence. It crossed my mind to throw them Wendy like some sad tired over made up life preserver. Then remembering I still didn’t have any of that evidence they loved so much. It would just be a pathetic witch hunt spurred by a false confession based on ‘women’s intuition’.

Just as I was starting to feel sorry for myself and think of ways I could maybe accessorize or dye my hair in a toilet to go with an orange jump suit. Cartwell came bounding in looking a little flustered. He looked stolid, hiding a streak of glacial anger, like he’d received a swirly for good behaviour and was now looking to take it out on someone small and cute.

He stood aside from the door and made a flat dull donkey-like face. “You’re free to go”

“Err, whu-?” Kill me now.

“Word from on high is you’re a state case, I can’t touch you” He said it like I was covered in bugs or something to that effect.

A shard of glass came off my back and I felt a distinct shiver, what did that mean? Was I supposed to know? Was it the FBI? I just did a little harmless amateur hacking I swear, it’s not like I back doored the pentagon.

He cocked his head to the side motioning to the door and I got up awkwardly picking my heart up off the floor. Bundling out of the opening brushing past him as he held it open.

Something like a restrained growl coming from inside. A hushed pained yelping from a wounded dog was there something sharing space inside the good detective? Probably not, not everyone is a nutty serial killer Diana, get over yourself already.

I breezed down the hall finding some air in my lungs and some blood in my legs, it felt like I hadn’t used them in hours. I walked up and down feeling a little lost. I remember there being a bunch of surfer dudes busted for partying too hard. Trying to start the party all over again in the hallway cuffed to a bench. They were gone and the hallway was empty and samey looking, a graveyard quietus holding me in place.

An alien noise erupted from my purse and I jumped like an idiot in a slasher movie, it’s just your phone Diana.

I closed my eyes smoothing out my shirt and taking a deep calming yoga breath putting the phone to my ear.

“Diana?” The rugged voice said.

“You called me” I answered.

“You see you do need me after al.l” Brodsky croaked, a hoarse hissing laughter eking out like the sound of two planks rubbing together.

“You got me out of there?”

“What, don’t want to know how some OC detective who couldn’t find his ass with two hands and a Sherpa got his mitts on that footage. And only a few days after the incident in question?” He cleared his throat, it needed a lot of clearing “Warrants have to be issued subpoenas given out, it can take weeks. How would he even know to look at that stretch of road or that gas station in particular? He’d have to look at the security footage of a five block radius of the house. And why would he even bother for some low life gangbanger?”

“So it was you, you’ve been shadowing me?”

“Not me personally, I don’t get around so good anymore. I can help you or I can bury you under so much red tape you’ll wish you were dead. Do we understand each other?”

“You brought me here”

“I brought you here and with one phone call I can keep you here for as long as I want.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want and I think I know what you want.”

“I’m working on it” I said.

“Good”.

A few days of inaction passed, school, home, sleep. That process continued on for a short time until the weekend got the better of me. I realised procrastination was getting me nowhere and prom was getting ever closer. So now, as fortunes would have it Dumb Dawdling Diana found herself snugly entombed in the cool dank dark of the fairly roomy trunk of a Lincoln town car. Black as far as I can remember, terrible for this heat.

Maybe I should have been more alarmed but I was too busy listening for the turn and feeling the speed bumps to think about my immediate future. Muffled voices of inane pleasantries exchanged, you’re regular ‘How do you do’s’ and all that, ‘isn’t the weather lovely, what a nice day for a vivisection’. And then a mechanical noise of a gate rising, engine biting and rising and nosing through the gate.

I waited for a moment for them to clear the checkpoint. It was a five mile zone in this neighbourhood so I opened the trunk and stepped out quick and low and braced into a walk as casual as Larry, whomever Larry was. ‘Yeah I live here, just an average girl walking her- nothing.’ Shit should have brought a leash or something, maybe a clip board and stick on tie to look official, life a teenage garden inspector.

Oh you thought? Dashing dark lit Diana trapped in a trunk by some dastardly dude? Nay, I mean no, not yet anyway. Not if I had anything to say about it.

It was just the slickest way I could think of breaking into a gated community unannounced.

I’m getting ahead of myself, what am I doing? I asked myself as I started to feel like I was walking aimlessly as my eyes adjusted to blaring mid-morning L.A sun. Forgot my sunglasses, who does that? Oh how I pity you, ditzy deadly Diana.

I felt pressed, moulded, pushed along by hands seen and unseen and possibly one cold claw. A little field trip was of vital import.

Wendy Vargas, my dear old pal and for all intents and purposes; blood sister, lived in a nice little three bed three bath Condo in the Anaheim hills. About a thirty minute drive from school in a gated community known as ‘Viewpointe north’. Very glitzy, I must say.

It was a Saturday, of course it was, you wouldn’t expect a solid citizen, model pupil like me to skip class to do what exactly? A drop of home invasion, some measured manslaughter perhaps? I could be so lucky.

I picked this day for two reasons, school being the latter. The former was that today I knew exactly where Wendy was going to be because I was meant to be there with her. Today was supposed to be early prep work for the senior prom which was only a couple of days away, now I thought about it. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

Just benign things like hanging up streamers and sticking up posters, she had the whole committee helping I’m sure she wouldn’t miss me. I already called in sick ahead of time and subsequently turned off my phone. Promising her I would be buried under a mound of sheets and clothes sweating out some summer cold. Hoping to be rid of it before the ‘really like seriously important dance’. If I had had a conscience this is the moment it would popping up like that little Microsoft paper clip; “It looks like you’re trying to break into your best friend’s house to look for evidence implicating her in a murder”.

Of course lacking any of those oh so human draw backs I walked the streets without a care. Almost considering whistling a happy tune as I strolled the carefully pruned lawns and shrubberies of the block looking for her house in particular.

It was a very nice neighbourhood, reserved only for state senators, criminal attorneys and, I guess one ex-sandwich shop magnate.

I had been to her house before of course, being best buds and all. I could probably make some excuse with the gate keeper guard guy, say I forgot my iPod or whatever at her house. ‘Oh please mister guard could I go get it?’ Batting an eyelid or even two. But then there’s the problem of signing in and out. There’d be a record of my coming and going and although I didn’t plan on leaving any evidence there was a good chance she’d be told that I was here. And that was something I was willing to climb into the trunk of strangers car to avoid. In case you were wondering how I knew where the car was heading, they all have these stickers on them. Sort of a sign of status but helps easily identify peoples cars at a distance. So then the guards can decide when walking up whether to put on the fake shit eating grin. ‘Good morning Mr rich asshole’ or the stern Pitbull scowl ‘fuck off Mr nobody guy, no one’s buying bibles today!’.

Even their mail must have been sorted through that booth. I wandered if they filtered their internet too, maybe they warmed their toilets seats before they sat down. Who was I kidding? Of course they had heated toilet seats, goes without saying.

Actually now that I thinking about it, it had been a while since I’d visited her, maybe as far back as middle school play dates. But even then I think that was just an excuse for my ‘Aunt’ to see how rich people lived. Larp as one for an afternoon while Wendy showed me her collection of ethnic Barbie’s from around the world. Even then I found that tiresome and I could only dream of sticking all the heads of her Barbie’s on the gate surrounding Casa de Barbie’s dream villa. Complete with a real working hot tub and sauna.

In all honesty she didn’t really interest me back then, we’d stayed in contact, this was all before the ‘unpleasantness’ that befell her father. After that quite coincidentally we reconnected in high school. No one really interested me if I was being ‘really’ honest, not any further than I wondered what their insides looked like. Even then I felt like a shaved fox walking the cramped halls of a battery farm chicken coop licking my lips and asking only ‘when?’

The answer to that question always a shrill and chilling ‘Soon’.

Always soon, never now.

I had of course tried to get the area up on google so I could ‘walk the streets’ so to speak but even my digital footprint was denied access. I guess google wasn’t even good enough to set foot on these hallowed grounds, how privileged I felt even breathing their air. It was sort of heady and crisp, maybe they had it pumped in from aspen. It wouldn’t surprise me.

The houses of course were all perfectly breath taking. Smooth and gorgeous like they’d all been cut from one piece of stone, just giant liveable sculptures, little Mount Rushmore’s. Each distinctly wonderful and in keeping with the high end aesthetic. Without falling into the trap of being carbon copies of the other, wouldn’t dream of it.

Sprawling but perfectly modest two story buildings with beautiful well-kept lawns on all sides. Without any fences or gates surrounding them. Why bother when all the riff raff are kept out by armed guards and probably dogs, lots of angry dogs.

Finally after a couple of minutes of half purposeful walking. That’s half ‘I belong here’ confident, a little arm swing, fleet of foot, ‘I have somewhere to be, don’t stand in my way’ and half ‘shit, I’m lost’, have you seen fluffy? Is this my house or? Have you been drinking in the morning again?’ I came across a house I was sure I recognised.

It was a large two story condo, a sandy almost salmon pink colour, something like lime sandstone maybe I dunno, I’m not an architect. High school kid remember.

A huge almost church window on the front of the second floor and a giant white garage door below it. Tastefully dusted with trees and shrubs with some spikey looking desert plants put in for good measure. Gave it an overall atmosphere of look but don’t touch, sadly I could not comply.

The front door was for some odd design choice not actually at the front but sort of tucked at an odd angle almost in the house’s elbow. With raised partition of walls on one side and the full structure of the house on the other. Which was decidedly to my advantage as it would hide my advance around the house. To anyone given to an idle glance it would just look like a little rich white girl walking to her front door and then disappearing into the splendour she so rightfully deserved.

I know what you’re thinking; ’really you’re going to break into a probably nearing five hundred thousand dollar house in the middle of the day. Guarded by a team of armed ex-army and moonlighting cops? Yes, yes I was. I was that stupid, that desperate.

Really, honestly, you think I wouldn’t think of a way round this? Ok yeah you’d be right. I was just hoping something would come to me in the time it took for me to walk up the drive and open the unlocked door. Holy crap, you have to be kidding me?

March 13, 2018 0

Gage Chapter 3 ‘Colony’

Ok ok, in pretty good spirits today, although in the good spirits where I can’t tell my head from my arse and I really don’t know what to do with myself but it’s something.

I got the first nice little chunk of Diana After Dark, might be sticking with that name after all, I dunno, more sleep needs to be on it. And I’m kind of in a tizzy over what to do now, I’ve started reading the witcher books and I was hoping to be struck by some inspiration lightning and it isn’t even raining yet.

Nevertheless I finished the first go around of a plan for the second Diana book and I was triffling with ‘Delta Gamma Di’ or ‘Delta Gamma Diana’ because it’s all about her going through college and joining a sorority to track down a killer that’s using their front lawn as his own personal stage for displaying some cut on girls on. But now I might go with ‘Dearly beloved Diana’ or something like that.

As I said more sleep is needed on top of that, but how much sleep can a man have when there is work to be done.

Work time which I spent playing kingdom come deliverance as it teases me with a penultimate chapter only to throw a fetch quest at me, a series of boring fetch quests right before a big battle. I mean wtf.

I do love the game though, this just feels like padding, which tbf is understandable because it’s followed by two huge battles in a row and then a stealth sequence which had a mandatory failed state which pissed me off. I made a stealth character and then they give you a stealth sequence where your failure is unavoidable. Just fu game haha.

Nah but it’s all good, it’s still an awesome game, I love it and shall review it but I fear my passion won’t be matched by my hateful reviews, I tend not to want to analyse things I like and feel incapable of not analysing things I hate haha.

So I’ve got a lot to be getting on with, first and foremost I need to start putting a package to try and sell Diana to a literary agent and I need to stop dreaming about writing and get back to actually doing it. I think I might just go back to that lovecraft piece I dropped just to keep sharp until I get hit good and hard by a lightning bolt.

That’s about all.

See you…

*For the purposes of this record and continuity a transcript from Dram Johanessen (a close personal friend of Gage in his early life) original diary has been added to the text as a first hand account of events and Fords account has been removed as it was noted to be riddled with contradictions, over-exageration and outright fabrications.

September 13, 1848

Oh god’s it’s horrible, I saw it happen but I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe she’d actually do it. As soon as that tall man walked away and got into his carriage I went to his side sure he was dead, his face, oh god his face. I prayed he was dead, his suffering could no doubt be immense.

But by god he lived, his breath in his chest. His heart beating like a steam engine’s hitting the tracks, his will to live reaching up out of hades to grab at life jealously. With the use of Madame Souchang’s carriage we got him into town as quickly as we could. He reacted to no stimuli the entire hours journey and I was sure he couldn’t hold on much longer.

But there was that steady breathing through the hole in his face. There was very little blood, the hole it seemed was quarterized at the moment of penetration. But who was to tell the extent of the damage it had done to the vital organ inside. He’ll certainly never see again out of his left eye, as far as I can tell it’s completely destroyed, oh god. My stomached kicked everytime I looked under the sheet we put over him.

Madame Souchang was inconsolable, she acted almost like it was her brother that ordered it. She claimed no responsibility and was reticent to speak at all about what transpired. Fearing my own head I pressed no further and thanked her for the use of her for the gracious use of her personal motor carriage.

We got into the town of Porterville proper. Which was at the time was simply two rows of wooden victorian style building facing eachother with a well trod dirt road inbetween them.

The sawbones of the town had a practice next to a large furniture store and a grocery on the otherside. It had big protruding castle like struts with what I could only assume were weathervains attached to them. Which to me reminded of something of those books written by Shelley of the monstrous man that came back to life through arcane scientific practice.

Me and a few other of the men took him down from the motor carriage as easy as we could. The large man we had come to call friend who was once as strong and tall as an oak was layed low and meak and lifeless as we carried him through the thin wooden door of the doctors practice.

The inside of the doctors smelled stale, the wooden floor was stained with splotches of god knows what. The doctor was sat with his back to the door at a small writing desk, we set Gage down on a large wooden inspection table of which he barely fit on with his legs dangling off the edge.

The nurse was hanging off the edge of the desk smiling at us as we came in.

The doctor took one look at him as we took the sheet off and his eyes got very narrow and curious his nurse let out a silent scream holding her mouth open. Covering it with her hands screaming quietly with her eyes and then rushing out of the room bounding clumsily into a cabinet stocked with oddly shaped bottles of medicine. Almost knocking it over as she evacuated the room with a loud sound of stair foot falls and doors slamming.

The doctor was a short squat man with bared hairy fore arms under a grey shirt with rolled up sleeves, all of the hair of which was white and grey. A stern appearance with a pair of circular glasses placed at a peak of a receding hairline. He looked confused and angry at first and said something like; “What you bringing that here for? The morticians the street over! Get!”

After we’d assured him the man was still alive (which took some doing) he told us to lift him up on the table as if to humor us. He must have thought we were mad or stupid and if I were him I wouldn’t believe it either for at the time it looked like a train had run over his head or a horse had stomped it in.

He took out his instruments with a sigh and an aggrieved air of wasted time and started to poke and prod at him and then was seemingly struck by a curious itch. He reached back to get his stethoscope which he was about to warm but then thought better of it and placed it on the man’s chest after ripping his shirt. He took it away and his face turned as white as a sheet and he mumbled something the exact line from Shelley’s story, or so as my memory recreates it.

“He’s alive!”

After he’d got over the initial shock of it he started to lick his lips pointing and motioning hurriedly at a drawer one of the men was next to. A young man by the name of Gotfried.

“Get a bottle!” He instructed.

The young lad reached inside and pulled out a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and brought it over. The doctor wrenched it out of his hands like it was the last drop of water on earth and took a long drink and then slammed it down on the table. After he’d sighed and belched a few times he wiped his brow and went about collecting together knives various saws and articles I couldn’t quite identify as a layman. And he yelled for his nurse who was still in the back vomiting.

Eventually she came out and took one look at his face again and rushed back upstairs.

I looked at all the knives and saws that he collected in a metal dish. He coughed and then looked around for something before letting out an aggrieved sigh and bathing the instruments in a splash of his bourbon.

I asked him what they were for and he said almost with an air of incredulity “Surgery, he needs surgery.”

I was confused, not a man of great learning especially not of the medical variety so I asked again, “surgery for what?” thinking he didn’t need to lose more of himself and then it struck me as he said it.

“Goddamit can’t you see the thing sticking out of his damn head?”

Oh god his head was such a mess it didn’t even cross my mind that the rivet would still be lodged in his skull. It was shot right up under his chin and the spike of it was coming right out of the top of his head through his left side and out the top right out of the front like a horn.

“Oh god” I said.

The surgery took hours, but it felt like days, we sat in the doctors while Gage was worked on without anaesthetic in the surgery in the back room.

We didn’t see any of it but we could hear it, the sawing and the smell of hot bone. The shock of it sent some of the men outside and some who were lodged in town decided to head back and rest leaving just me and Gotfried.

20th September 1848

It was a week before he opened his eye again and I would swear in front of a jury it was not the same man. It was like someone had plucked our Phineas Gage and replaced him with another man entirely. He’d been sleeping, fed only liquid solutions administered to him by the nurse. His face mercifully bandaged. Unmercifully the doctor was unable to remove the rod itself. Fear further damage remove the thing might cause. And the black metal horn tip could be spied sticking out of the bandage.

Besides all that there was something about him that was just not right. The way he spoke, the way he looked at me. I’d never known of him to have a temper or a violent streak but he brought one back with him, from wherever he’d been. He snapped at anyone and everyone and I feared that if he were not unable to move he might do injury to himself and others.

I was almost hesitant to wire his wife in new Hampshire. Would it have been kinder to tell her her husband was dead than introduce her to this misshapen shadow of the man she loved. I wondered about their children, without the money he sent how would she care for them?

The doctor said the changes in mood were the result of his injuries, his brain was damaged. Specifically something about his nerves were severed he’s lost almost all sensation in his body. He can’t feel heat or cold or pain or even touch. The affects to his mood he did not further elaborate on. But it’s as if all his other non-tactile senses are heightened and his mental state is not comparable to the man we all knew.

2nd October 1848

His wife Catherine came up from new Hampshire today although I had told her to leave their children with their grandparents. The shock of seeing their father mangled like that would have been too much for them. But when she arrived Gage wouldn’t see her. He outright refused. I thought about what she would think about his face but not just that. The room he occupied had been fitted with a tubescope to keep him occupied during his long recovery but he’d smashed it almost as soon as it was installed. I’d noticed also all the newspapers I’d brought him he’d shredded. And it seemed like any knowledge of the outside world enraged him enough to put him in fits of unadulterated anger.

3rd October 1848

I put Catharine back on a train this morning, she’s a lovely woman, delicate in features and manner. It is truly saddening to see her go without meeting her goal of seeing her husband, but I honestly didn’t know what to tell her. All I could do was assure her that he would be well enough to work soon and we both hoped that once routine took hold he would return to the old Phineas Gage we once knew.

31st October 1848

After nearly two whole months of convalescence the doctor says Phineas should be well enough to continue his life and more imporantly his work. The doctor even made up for him a remarkable prosthesis to cover his scars so as not to alarm the general public. It was a piece of a light wood and some waxen substance painted and moulded to resemble a part of a mans face. He made it from a picture of Phineas we had supplied to as closely resemble his face as possible. Although minor changes had to be made, he was never a spectacle wearer but now a lensless pair was used as a frame to hook the prosthetic on so that the arms of the glasses would hook around his ears to hold it in place. To cover the horn he was instructed to wear a wide brimmed hat at all times.

The rest of the scars and missing hair could be easily covered in the same manner. It looked a lot better than I expected and from a distance you could be mistaken for thinking it was the man. But up close it gave the illusion up as the one unblinking staring glassy eye seemed to follow you around the room.

I felt for the man I truly did. It must have been even more of a crushing blow that his injuries and the time spent off work had resulted in a demotion and I had taken over his role and would do so for the foreseeable future.

Although this did not seem to anger him as much as effects of his surgery. His lack of tactile senses made it very difficult for him to complete the simple tasks I had set him. Many times he would injure himself and others and not even notice. It became very off putting for the men and resulted in vicious conflicts in which Gage was invariably the bloody victor. It was a horrifying sight, he seemed to have reverted to some earlier state of man, a vicious throw back to an earlier age.

His physical presence was also off putting yes but he also seemed to have strange new idea of life and the ruling government which was very unsettling for the men and struck up tensions between the men and the luggers.

He seemed to have gotten it into his head that there was some grand conspiracy of some sort. And that all the news was manufactured lies concocted to keep humans from rising up or some such nonsense.

15th December 1848

Unfortunately today at the behest of the company I had to let Phineas go.

The doctors had cautioned him about drink but he did not care. The great stress sent him deeper into the bottle and unfortunately I had no choice but to fire him.

It has burdened me with a heavy heart but he had become too much of a liability to keep on.

Nevertheless the company has awarded him a sizeable severance package and an early christmas bonus, although I fear he will only drink that.

I feel responsible for all of this I really do. When I told him he was to be let go he didn’t even seem angry, he almost seemed like he expected it.

A great melancholy grips me as I doubt we’ll ever meet again. I suspect he’ll return to his family in new hampshire and grow old and die a happier man now, I hope for his sake he does.

*Ford’s journal continues from here.

After that Gage fell off the face of the earth, he didn’t feel human, he wanted the earth to swallow him up.

He became a wanderer and a thief and a rogue, a bad gambler and a cheat only making enough money to keep his belly full of whiskey and his head dulled and stupid. Returning to his family would have been a lie for he did not feel like the same man. The old Gage was dead and in it’s place this man shambled on.

Sometime in the start of the new year He found himself in a small mining colony in Arkansas, in a town called Rush. They mined zinc up there, the stuff is used in certain alloys they use to make weapons for the capitol.

Needless to say it was a fairly rowdy town without a conventional form of law enforcement but people ususally kept to themselves. a It wasn’t in any great threat of bandits as zinc wasn’t high on their priorities to rob. And most of the miners money was pissed away on booze or women or just gambled.

Miners are off a disposition that any day there could be a cave in and kill them all, so they live each day as if they could be buried under rock the next.

Something Gage seemed to admire, moreover it made it easy to blend in with the revellers who on a good day couldn’t see further than their own feet. Not enough to notice a stranger with an oddly mask like face and a horn on his head.

Although on this night they were especially jovial as a recent election had taken place. A new president had been appointed, A man named Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Spanish American war. It was amusing to them as he had been somewhat of a colourful character before his presidency. Not only that but he’d riden a rising wave of anti-alien sentiment and people were sure that this would mean things would improve for their kind. To them he was the warrior messiah they had hoped to pull them out of their perdition. Although all alien media at the time had done their best to assure humans that things were better than ever for them and they were exceedingly priviledged. There had been a growing resentment formenting in the humans. As although they could fill their bellies for the most part and they were kept distracted with sportsball and a dull harmonic suggestion given off through their tubescopes. They had on an instinctual level felt control of their destinies slipping out of their hands. Sadly they were right but completely unable to understand how right they actually were. And not being smart enough or awake enough as a group to realise this it fell to petty concerns about their jobs. Replacing humans with luggers or with the coming of the industrial revolution high tech machines who would work for less. Bringing the prices down of all goods but destroying the class of people that could buy them. But it was to mask the feeling that they were no longer at home in their own world. So this election had given them hope for some kind of change and reversal of fortune for them and theirs.

The alien media had cemented this notion in them by elevating Taylor up to the level of a mustache twirling villain. A speciesist who would round up aliens and un-normals and send them to die in quarries. Bringing up the history of their supposed persecution Cyclon had underdone from the humans of the past who were to them barbaric and cruel. But this resentment the media had for him and their attempt silence him made the public clamber for him all the more to know what they were not meant to know.

But Gage could not share their optimism and joviality as to them this was a sign that the system was not corrupt. For how so could it not be a democracy if this man who the system hated could be elected to lead it? Sure that proved to them that the system was indeed impartial and this man could free them of corruption.

Gage who could see and was far more cynical and could understand. This was exactly the kind of move the system would make to assuage the fears of corruption in the populace. That this entire conflict was manufactured by the system itself. The previous eleven presidents They’d had were at least partially or ambiguously human. And each time promised the humans whatever they wanted and when their vote was assured carried on whatever policy the president before him had carried out in an unbroken chain of control.

How could there ever be a true democracy when the freedom of choice was between two alien puppets. The freedom to choose being an illusion created for this very feeling the miners were feeling now, of hope and change and a brighter future. And then within the next couple of years they’d be cursing this new president and blaming him for all the problems the system created. And then before anyone could notice they’d swap him out for someone else and the whole thing would start over again.

One thing that was key to the Cyclon agenda was that humans had a short memory and could be conditioned to forget the past. Dooming them to repeat it, allowing them to be kept in an ideological stasis. Never moving forward and always being just on the cusp of acquiring everything they wanted but never fully being able to realise or bring it into reality.

This election was different only in that it was a false triumph. A move calculated by the Cyclon to make the humans think they had beaten the system entirely by simply engaging in it. Thus deflating the rising tensions between human and aliens by making the radical human element think they’d won. At which point the majority of the useful idiots in that movement would think the fight was over and stop entirely. Leaving the more radical elements without a force behind them which meant they could be disposed of without causing too much of a fuss. The radical voices asking for changed would be exposed and defeated by their own victory. The normal people would happily put their heads back in the sand safe in the knowledge that the future for their children would be sunshine and roses from then on. Purely for their signing their name on a piece of paper.

Gage knew better than that, he knew as all men instinctually knew but had been bred to forget. That no change worth having comes without blood, torrents of blood, rivers of blood. Human and alien alike, mountains of corpses that a king would set his throne atop and then and only then would his people truly be free. Only when the system was entirely torn down and burnt to ashes and every alien and human traitor lay dead would there be hope for a brighter tomorrow. And it was this reluctance to accept this price that found Gage living like Jonah but instead of being in the belly of whale he was trapped at the bottom of a bottle.

He could not hope to see his wife and children again because he was not the same man they knew. And he would not burden them with this new terrible knowledge he had. He would forever cloister himself away in the cave of his consciousness with whatever booze he could get his hands on. For fear of what his realisations could bring about for the world and for himself and his family.

By that time booze had become his only comfort, without it he feared he might go mad. Although another man might blurt out what he had come to realise about the world he lived in, he did not. But was secure in the idea that even if he did, it would be considered the raving conspiracies of a mad drunk with a pickled brain.

Later that night he found himself in a card game with a number of these ruddy faced miners who were or at least reaching the same level of drunkiness as Gage himself. Gage was cheating, badly, but everyone at the table was too drunk and happy to notice or care.

All but one man who silently seethed under a firm cowboy hat that looked new and unused which covered most of his face. He was an odd little man with a slightly tanned aspect but with very deep blue eyes that seemed to behold everything with the most profound disdain and curiosity. Through clasped hands he rested his rounded unstubbled chin.

His manner of dress was strangely costume in it’s appearance. Resembling what a cowboy of the previous age might look like in one of the serial fictions they had in new york that cast cow chasers as these romantic figures. Killing villains and romancing farm girls in between eating lots of beans by the campfire. He wore a long black duster a white shirt with an indio looking pattern and a brown waistcoat below it with a necktie with a steerhead clasp. With his hat pulled down he smoked long black cigarillo’s that must have been imported. Nobody paid him any attention least of all Gage who was a long ways into a raging drunk almost falling over himself to spend his ill gotten winnings on more whiskey.

The man with the piercing blue eyes in the unusually tanned face that made him look like a spaniard eyed Gage vociferously. He stubbed his cigarillo out to chew a wooden toothpick in its place. Never once taking his cruel cold steely gaze off Gage who laughed and cracked up with the other drunkards happy for a fleeting moment in their meaningless existence.

After the man had lost a great deal which didn’t seem to bother him all that much. He got up from his chair and bid everyone at the table goodnight with a tip of his rigid cowboy hat before clasping his hands behind his back in an unnatural gesture and clomping his way out of the saloon.

The room went silent for a moment as they watched him go and then burst into uproarious laughter as they assumed he was out of ear shot on the otherside of the saloon door. Which to anyone but a drunken man made perfect sense.

March 7, 2018 0

DDD Chapter 8 ‘Love in High Places’

Hows it going bros?

Felt like copying pewdiepie since I’ve taken up a new hobby of watching people play walking simulator games, saving me time and money haha. People who pay for that shit are retarded, Outlast is basically condemned without any gameplay or worthwhile story at all. You just run around and hide and look for maguffins until something kills you and rinse and repeat. So I’ll happily watch someone else do that while I play something worth my time like Kingdom Come which I plan to review and Elite Dangerous which I plan to play into my eighties, if I live that long.

Feeling a little low energy this morning because I started lifting weights again and it feels like my body is trying to eat itself. I ate my body weight in meat and eggs this morning and I still feel lethargic as fuck. Gonna invest in some whey protein powder see if I can perk myself up a little and chase dem gains bruh.

On top of that I got banned on facebook again this time for a spongebob gas chamber meme haha. Pictured below.

I don’t even remember what it was in response to, some poz shit I saw on facebook, I mean it’s so full of poz shit. You can’t turn your head on fb without seeing a little boy wearing make up or becoming a drag queen or some heartfelt appeal to let migrants crawl inside your body and take your guns haha.

I really just hope facebook crashes and burns I mean I know I was trying to be offensive with the meme but seriously, this is just ridiculous. Eventually facebook is just gonna go full 1984 and ban any words even remotely connoting negativity and people will end up saying “minus good, ungood, double plus good”. All they do is shrink the ways we can express ourselves about gas chambers until we can’t even think about gas chambers and then we find all we want to think about is gas chambers and then we’re in the gas chambers haha!

Makes perfect sense haha.

Censorship is fucking bullshit, unless it’s to keep like poz away from kids, kids should not know what drag queens or know anything about gay stuff until they’re old enough to understand it. It’s just messed up man, I didn’t even know what drag queens were when I was a kid. How can a kid be something he doesn’t even know exists? There’s a reason we don’t tell kids about this stuff, because they’re impressionable and they don’t know what’s best for them.

That’s why it’s so subversive to have these shows that are about low level degeneracy like that drag race show, because you’ve got like these weird liberal parents letting their kids watch it. And kids just wanna emulate everything their parents like. We really need to have some standard of decency when it comes to kids and adults.

Kinda just rambling because my brain feels like pancake batter right now.

A little bummed out because it seems to be really over for me and my babymama, I guess we just turned a corner in our loathing for eachother, and in a way I don’t feel sad because if it can break so easily, without even trying is it really worth having? Is something so fragile really worth being so broken up about?

I dunno, I just miss the little one, really badly.

Maybe I should kill myself haha.

See you…

Diana After Dark

I did as I was told. What else could I do? I don’t seem to remember a montage of ninja training in my backstory, no secret swat teams backing me up, rappelling down the roof as we speak. My one and only knight in shining armour was probably on the other side of town with a hangover. And here I was making little jokes to myself when my head was probably going to be decorating my own mantle in a matter of minutes. Goodbye cruel world, we were going to have so much fun together.

I walked gingerly into the living room with the air of someone who’s hand was permanently glued into the cookie jar. The proverbial curious cat about to meet a sticky end.

It was dark, because of course it was, how else to set a mood. I couldn’t see a thing, completely pitch. But I felt a wave come over me, a sibilant ring from the dark back seat driver. A cold feeling at the back of my neck I assumed wasn’t the kiss of a channel number five lipstick but the barrel of a gun.

A hushed voice with a slight Latin twang told me to walk closer and as my eye adjusted I saw my aunt. Silent and solemn on her knees in front of the couch in our living room. She wasn’t making a noise. Her head hung like she was Marie Antoinette awaiting the headman’s axe with a cloistered dignity as if she were about to let her captures eat cake. I hope they choke on it.

‘They’?

Then it struck me, the gun at my neck was still there and there was another, a knife, a knife at my aunts neck. There were two of them, two killers. That made it a lot easier to lug all those parts I imagined.

“What now Cuz?” The gun at my neck croaked with a boyish whisper.

“We do them here, no witnesses, the older bitch is yours, I’m gonna take my time with this one”. The voice I recognised said.

Hi Antoine, great party last night.

He dropped my aunt, the knife coming away from her neck, something deep inside told me that was good. She was still and stoic, taking on the doer nature of a good martyr, no tears just a distant and tacit acceptance. A cold detachment to the earthly realm.

The gun at my neck came around my side and Ruez got close enough so I could smell his breathe.

“I bet you thought that was pretty funny, me all tied up like that, naked. I bet it made you feel really – powerful.” He smiled in the dark but I could see the odd white tooth and feel the knife twist under my chin but I wasn’t afraid, there was something else. A shiver of cool excitement rising up from the darkness. The black gently shifting building silently beneath the waves trying to tell me what? ‘I told you so’. “How do you feel now uh?”

“I-“ I was rudely interrupted by a crash of glass. The room almost turned red with their fear, their shock. Their perfect bubble burst by some idle cat burglar or maybe my neighbour Gary got carried away showing someone his backswing.

“Go check it out” Ruez whispered.

“Why me?” The younger boy croaked.

“Because I said so” Ruez hissed. Turning his head to spit on our nice carpet, yuck.

“Fuck me man” The younger voice said as he tiptoed out of the room.

He got close again, his breathing rising and falling on my face. “I bet you’re wondering how I found you. It wasn’t the phone-“ He stopped, breathing heavily as if he wanted me to ask. Wanted me to play some guessing game. I just looked at my aunt. There was something strange about her, something unsettling. She said nothing, looked at nothing, like she expected this, like she was already dead. Like she’d been waiting for this the whole time. “My cousin Emillio, he goes to your school, aint that a trip? I described you and he knew right away who you were, I think he must have some kind of crush on you.” He laughed. “Maybe I should let him drill you when he comes back, maybe we’ll take turns before we mount your head like you did my boys.”

School, it didn’t even cross my mind. All the faces in the crowd, blending together. So hard to pick one out, one looking at me, seeing me, waiting, watching. That was the last place I should have let my guard down but I did. Probably sat behind me for years and we wouldn’t have exchanged a Qué pasa? I guess my Spanish is getting better.

I was surprised, no silent alarm from the dark watcher, no ring on the black bat phone? A distant sibilant chuckle fading in and out. An unintelligible whisper, a game of hide and seek. Oh you were playing possum. I’m being punished, for what? What did I do? Dreadfully dim Diana didn’t do anything wrong. That was exactly the point. I was being punished for being a goodie two shoes.

What now?

“I know you didn’t do all that alone, little girl like you had help.” He was breathing heavily now, looking around, feeling darkness coming soaking into his flesh, getting closer. He got close, putting the knife against my throat “Who you working for huh? The Diaz brothers? They closing in on my turf? Tell and I’ll only cut off on ear and leave your pretty face alone, how bout that?”

Another crashing noise coming from the kitchen, the sound of a muffled breath and a deeply disconcerting thud.

“Hey Emillio, hurry your ass up!” He whispered harshly into the dark empty hallway.

“Maybe he tripped, it’s pretty dark”

“Shut up!”

“You should go check on it, maybe he grazed his knee”

“I said shut up” He hit me with the base of the knife and the room shook, a pulse of pain radiating down through my neck and shoulders. I felt my knees buckle and I started to feel nauseous almost instantly.

My vision fading in and out and I see something, I feel something, I can see right through him, the animal roar. The shrill cry of whatever it is inside him, that’s like me but not like me. Sending vicious feral war cries out in answer.

Two shadows stretch and cross but then another, deeper darkness swallows them both. Eclipses them, blots them out, fills the room with a deep impenetrably darkness thicker than ink and tar and I feel my knees wobble and he feels it too.

“Emillio, what took you so long man?”

Emillio stands in the door way, doing the strong silent type thing as I feel the room shaking around me, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. The eye of the hurricane tossing my little world up into the stars as I try to hold on for dear life. I’m falling pulling at Ruez, trying to stop the room spinning, just keep still, can he feel it?

“Talk to me man – get off me, crazy bitch” He throws me to the ground.

I spread my fingers out on the carpet praying for this feeling to stop, the pressure inside building. The cry of the dark thing inside growing louder and louder, telling me to watch.

“What the fuck, say something, you’re freakin’ me out, man”

He strides to the door and then he feels it, the pressure, the animal fear, the dagger intent, the murder dripping from the walls, but it’s too late. I hear the rustling of dark wings unfurling, spreading across the walls casting a shadow darker than pitch. The thing inside Ruez, I see spark for a moment, turning its ears up like a mouse just before the owl swoops.

I can see it in the corner of my eye but moreover I feel it, I have sonar, echo location. I can see the whole room like it was a water colour, every pixel laid out in front of me in stark detail. The darkness like a piece of pin art, it’s solid, I can touch it.

I’m crawling, I see the knife. The figure at the door is slow, like he’s moving in water, but I can’t seem to get out of the way, Ruez is frozen, the knife in his hand at the end of a long tunnel. It takes forever for the signal in his brain to cross the lake of circling sharks and tell him that’s exactly what he needs. His movements slow and shambolic. He lifts the knife as if he were conducting an orchestra raising the point not knowing where exactly he wants to put it or if there is even a place for it. The shadows surround the man at the door, bind him, make an armour, a shield. He’s riding them, flowing on them, I want to cover my eyes and ears, if I could, if I thought it would keep the screaming out. The dark fires lapping at me, the blinding black light.

The man at the door was a dark god cutting through the air. His movements slow and powerful, uncaring, unfeeling, unwavering. He passes Ruez like he was made of spider webs. Passes through him like he wasn’t even there, like he was a memory, a ghost, a far gone conclusion, a sentence waiting for a full stop. Cutting him once across the neck with an effortless flourish, an afterthought someone else’s mess cleaned up, my mess.

His head drops to the floor and rolls towards me and I see nothing in his eyes. A voided emptiness, a perfect mirror of my own.

I look up, I try to look at him but his face is blank, a mask or something else. I feel it rising, the part of me deep down, screaming and laughing, I can’t tell if this is the end or the beginning. A triumphant cavalry cry or the last gasp of a dying lizard about to have its head crushed under a desert rock.

I can’t take it anymore, the crushing pressure, the blackness folding over me, getting heavier and heavier. I feel myself letting go, a giddiness and a drowsiness, I can’t keep my eyes open. The rattling thing inside tells me it’s ok that I can sleep.

I hear a muffled scratching noise and a voice too close to my ear say “You see it now?”

A sharp scratching sensation and then at my neck, and then nothing but sweet black nothingness.

-A sound like dripping water, things coming into focus.

“Wake up wake up”. A little boys voice says.

A little girls voice says “Look what you did”.

“It wasn’t my fault, he made me do it,”

“Made you do what?” A low hushed voice said.

I felt a swimming heady feeling and my eyes roll back in my skull, I felt groggy, my head full of silt and naughty pictures of what could and what had been. The light was on and it peaked through the crack in my eye. It was bright and burned.

“Diana?” The voice said again. Then I felt it on my skin, that cold implement pressed unfeeling, clamped on my wrist. Completely alien, unaware entirely of its own weight and the pressure it applied, or the shock it delivered. Every trip to the gynaecologist thrust back into my mind.

I hissed away from the shock of the cold and the static and the fear of familiarity. Freddy Krueger leaping out of my dream about to give me a shiatsu with a happy ending.

I crawled into a corner of the couch I’d been laid on and looked around like a cornered animal. Hiding my eyes from the harsh light, trying to catch glimpses of the person talking. Of course I knew who it was but my brain seems to like surprises.

“What are you doing here? Where’s my aunt?” I croaked out.

“Your aunt is in the kitchen- she’s alright” The man said with the cool brisk calm of an EMT. As if holding the good news hostage for greater effect. A scary feeling a pause can make, the power it can hold.

It was the man from the Starbucks, in what I could only assume was my living room bleached almost white from the morning OC sun and every light in the house. I couldn’t see his face, the light was too bright but who else could it be?

The wheelchair and the cold metal grip.

“Are you alright?” He spoke softly this time, like he was talking to a child. His whiskey scarred throat made his words sound like they passed through a dirty coffee filter to get to my nice clean ears.

Good question, am I alright? I looked about myself, everything seemed to be attached. I wasn’t looking at the inside of a burlap sack, I got the crap stung out of me by mosquitos though, California man.

But other than feeling like an inside out gym sock I was ok, a little muggy, a little fragile but I was all there. As all there as an amateur teen psycho can get.

There was something else though, something missing.

I looked about my living room slowly moving my head with a deliberate painful tossing of heavy wet sand in my skull. Like some kid on Christmas morning with an eggnog hangover.

“What are you looking for?”

Why the ‘parts’ of course. “Err nothing, I dropped my phone, I guess.” Some blood, some sign that it wasn’t all some euphoric fever dream. The hand of god come down to swat me on the butt and then tiptoe off back into the clouds.

Anything would have been good, a toe, a blood trail, a bloody handprint on the wall. Some Poe maybe written in brains on the mirror above the TV.

But there was nothing, not a trace, not a fingernail, not a hair, not even a pillow out of place. The living room was how it always looked, unlived in and boxy in the same sandy colours as the outside of the house. A dark old TV in the corner reflected the room at an odd bevelled angle in black. Only a feint smell of cleaning products remained.

Was it all a dream? A twisted fantasy of a twisted fantasist? I wanted so badly to be in the middle of this, did I just dreamed it into existence. Created my own boogieman to toy with myself?

So then what was all this, why was he here? “Can I see my aunt?” Posed as a question it sounded strange like I was a prisoner. But I knew she would hold some shred of it if it was real. Some shard of it would be in her eyes even if she lied. There was something there I could hold onto, but maybe I wanted to believe enough that I would just see it regardless.

“Not just yet, I wanted to talk to you.” He really did sound like a councillor now. His voice was softer and his face hidden by the light made him look far less like some Halloween mask come to life on a broken scarecrow.

“Shoot” I said, probably a poor choice of words.

“Tell me what you remember about your parents” He asked like he could cross his legs and he had a clipboard.

But the question seemed to linger and suddenly I could hear a tingle of bells ringing on a line. An intruder stepping over the dark divide from the happy preppy sunshine world of Diana the day dreamer into Diana the dweller of the dark. I could hear myself swallowing, the unknowing of things suddenly a weight across my shoulders.

“They died in a car crash” Something said using my lips.

“Who told you that? Your aunt?” He asked, now intently listening behind the light. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were even open, it was just one bright blank canvas, shadow pooling in the crags and scars on his face. “Do you want to know how they really died?”

“Do I want to know?” I asked myself out loud. A sudden bobbing sinking feeling gripping me like headlights in the bright deep darkness lunging at me.

“Your father was a very- neat, man, but he got involved with a lot of – messy people” He stopped to take in a wheezing breath through his scarred nose.

“…”

“Needless to say it ended badly”

“Badly”

“Yes, as in your mother got her skull caved in with a baseball bat and your father drowned somewhere off the coast of Biscayne Bay, his body was never found.” I didn’t say anything but I could hear my breathing like I was in a dark tunnel alone and my pupils must have shrank. Everything thereafter sounded like I was a in a deep long empty hall. “But that’s not what made you the way you are, no that came later”

“The way I am?” My voice echoed down that long white hall.

“Don’t fuck with me, the time to fuck with me is over” He said softly like he meant it.

“Why are you telling me this? How do I know you’re-?”

“That I’m telling the truth? You don’t, you won’t ever know, not for sure but I came to you.” He was smooth and diplomatic now.

“Was it him?” There I was being dumb again.

“Wouldn’t that be nice and simple? A neat little ball” He cleared his throat and jangled around in his chair, moving the bulk of his large torso around. “No, this is a lot more –complicated.”

“Complicated” I felt like a child now, small, cradling my knees like he was some old relative about to tell me about the birds and the bees. Very very awkward.

“He was- different, neat, clean, sharp but he got careless, too caught up in himself. I helped him with a few of his ‘messes’ and he helped get me out of a few of mine – he was a good guy, when you stripped him down.” He said making a croaking noise in his throat as if unsure himself.

“I. Err”

“All said and done he would have been a good father- but it just wasn’t meant to be.” He made a sucking sound in his mouth and got lost somewhere and came back.

“My aunt, I-” I was sounder dumber by the minute, starting sentences I couldn’t finish.

“She’s not your aunt, you can stop calling her that”

“She’s not?”

“No, she’s not, it was very fuzzy after what happened, a lot of courts, a lot of foster homes a great big chuckle clusterfuck-

Your aunt, your real aunt” His face suddenly got more lines, shadow forming in the cracks, he touched his face as something like pain from an old wound danced like a devil in the cold moonlight in his mind “She’s dead.”

“When my parents died?”

“No, this came later, like I said.” He made a noise in his throat like he was getting tired of explaining something so obvious and flat to a complete dullard, Diana the dullard. He sighed “Look, I’m not doing this well, explaining it. I guess she wanted to be the ‘cool aunt’ instead of the dead eyed older sister” He said with a little mirthless chuckle. “She wanted to protect you.”

“Sister” I have a sister. What came later? “Protect me from what?”

“Half-sister on your mother’s side.” He cleared his throat and worked the ants out of his ancient pants. “After what happened I managed to pull a few strings and I buried the both of you six feet under a mountain of paperwork. No one could find you, you could be whoever you wanted to be, make a fresh start in a new town. Get away from all this mess and have a chance at something close to normal. I felt like I owed it to your father, but there was one thing I didn’t account for.”

I knew exactly what he was going to say, the little lithe fingers at the back of my neck told me, the whispering thing, the dark dancer snickered.

“You” He said pointing a shiny claw at me. “I’m not a tech savvy guy as you might expect. Not my generation. I prefer the kind of tech that needs to be oiled and cleaned every day, all this computer crap just goes over my head but not over his.” He cleared his rattle snake throat. You didn’t know it, you couldn’t know it but every blog, every post, every tweet was a red flag to someone who was looking, a bread crumb leading him closer to you.”

“Does he want to kill me?” I asked.

“If only it were that simple.” He sighed.

The next day after school instead of taking me home Paul and I had planned a little trip up into the chino hills, about a half hour drive from school. A spur of the moment kind of thing for me but something he’d apparently been eagerly awaiting to do that didn’t involve putting anything in my butt. We had everything we needed packed up into the back of his dad’s hummer.

The sun was still where it ought to be, just hanging in there, tired but ready to give us enough rope to hang ourselves with this warm afternoon.

We took the state highway through Anaheim, the traffic was delightfully manic, no one took a shot at us but no one dared. Paul’s dad’s mobile fortress of solitude could part the waves with ease. Only a semi had the chance to come out of a head on collision with anything less than a broken axle. It rocked like a boat as he over took the angry Orange county drivers on their way home from a busy day of working in paradise or just surfing. His driving was precise but with a necessary measured violence, each turn, each gear change was a tactical strike. It was really the only way to survive California traffic, squash or be squashed, of course it helped to be the biggest dog on the road.

But all the carnage outside the bottled aggression pent up from hours of staring at computer monitors. Or talking about air conditioning parts released on the commute home from the good people of Orange County wasn’t enough of a distraction for me. My head resting on one side looking out the window but not really looking at anyone. Maybe idly flipping people off as we passed which was a custom, a learned response, like an ok sign.

My mind drifting to the couch and the words of the strange old man in the wheelchair. Stored and kept and remixed a little in my head, distilling it, boiling it down to its most sweet base elements. My eyes opening and closing as the scenery drifted by through carbon canyon. The dry dusty hill covered in anaemic greenery drying out in the noonday sun.

“Your blog, or whatever it is, why did you make it?” The old man asked me.

“I don’t know, it’s just something- I needed a way-.” I stumbled, it started to feel like I was describing rubbing up against a washer dryer.

“To talk about it?” His voice was harsh and scratchy and getting scratchier. This wasn’t how I pictured telling anyone about this, had I thought about telling anyone at all. I think everyone does, everyone wants to tell eventually, they want people to see them, the real them, one way or the other.

“…”

“Why serial killers?” He asked, as if it wasn’t obvious

“I-“

“I almost didn’t want it to be true, you’re the same as him.” He got uncomfortable for a second, I almost felt like I should blush. “Something inside you” He pointed the claw at his chest and said “It talks to you?”

“…”

“What does it say?”

“I doesn’t say anything”

“Well then what does it do?”

“He, it, it just makes it seem like a good idea.”

“Killing?”

“…”

“Have you ever?”

“No” I said incredulously.

“Not even an animal”

“…”

We were rounding the dune-like sandy hills, the grass was a desert khaki colour, we had to drive around the whole park to get to the entrance on Elinvar drive.

We parked up at the end of the street and hopped out into the muggy mid-afternoon. Paul got out jangling keys without saying a word circled back around the car and opened the trunk.

“Here grab this”. Innuendos aside, He took out a small black case and handed it to me, I took it, it was a little heavy but I ate my Wheaties this morning.

I was feeling a little giddy, maybe it was the slight elevation. The air was a little thinner and smelled different, less like people and more like dirt.

He pulled out something long and thin and hard wrapped in a piece of shamy leather and set off quickly up the trail at a medium paced stride.

“You coming” he yelled back at me, he was feeling it now for sure, all those juices flowing. Must have felt like he was straddling a camel in Baghdad with an m60 strapped to his back.

I kept up pace as we hiked further and further away from the road, getting a lot quieter as we did, only my minds wanderings to keep me entertained.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask her, my ‘aunt’.

“I don’t know, I just- it just seemed right.” There was something contemplative in her words. I was being shielded even now from something darker than even my imaginings and it made my heart skip thinking about what it could be. Dancing just outside my peripheral vision, gliding along the edge of a wine glass, ready to crack it and slip off. “I wanted to give you a chance. A chance to be whole”.

My aunt looked at me, her eyes welling with a cocktail of emotions all of which I couldn’t begin to understand. She was looking into my eyes knowing, and knowing that I knew she knew. That there was nothing behind them. I was empty and she’d known all along. She’d hoped and prayed but her worst fear had come true, I was a monster, a shadow, a poor reflection of a human. No different from the ones she was running from.

She burst into tears on the breakfast bar in the kitchen. All I could do was stretch out a puppet like hand and pat her head saying “There there.” Dropping my hand on her head like it was made of wood.

I couldn’t feel anything but my heart pounding and my legs chaffing lugging the case around. There was a little bit of wind coming off the coast and reaching the high-ish peaks. The empty hilly landscape stretching out now on all sides. I regretted the jean shorts this time. The brittle dry grass slashing and scratching my legs as I walked passed. The sun was slowly losing its grip on the sky, starting its shambolic descent into a watery grave. Only to rise from the dead the next day with a cock crow and a “Hey what’d I miss, no gruesome murders I hope” expression on its face.

It was warm but the breeze and the coming night gave you all the heady air you needed to feel a slight buzz. Maybe I was sharing a high.

I could feel the smile in the back of his head. Beaming like a Boy Scout heading to a magical Indian pow wow. Somewhere between that and hunting bin laden in Orange County.

When it was quiet enough, secluded enough. Far away from the road and civilisation we stopped and he set the thing in the wrappings down and unfolded it.

“You can put the case down on that rock” He said as he stood the rifle up looking it up and down. It was a regular hunting rifle, probably one of his. Just a regular wooden hand cocked hunting rifle. I guess he thought a tactical black semi-auto AR would have been too scary and most likely illegal in this super liberal state. Anything black and scary and pointy was usually banned in California, all the good it did.

I watched as he patted it fondly, cocking and shouldering it, looking down the iron sights.

I set the case down on the rock and opened it. Inside was a four pistols of varying calibre, don’t ask me what they were, I’m a girl. One was a revolver, I knew that much. There were two like that one out of the matrix and then another. And a little one that looked like the one James bond uses but a little more boxy.

“Pick one and we’ll start.” He was walking over by another rock about fifteen feet away from the spot he put out the mat that had wrapped the rifle. Now spread out like a picnic blanket. And I forgot to make sandwiches.

He set up a can of diet coke on a rock, I hasten to think where he found it, only fat girls drink diet coke. I like water, of the mineral variety, the mineral being steel from the faucet. But what about the fluoride in the water turning the ‘friggin’ frogs gay Diana’? I’m not that type of crazy. Sadly.

February 22, 2018 0

Diana After Dark Chapter Seven ‘Darkness on the Doorstep’

Good day once again fine people, some normalcy returning to my page thank Jeb and all his guacamole.
Ok so here’s the next chapter of Diana After Dark, still playing with the title in my head. (Before you even think it, hell yes I am going to do a last jedi review as soon as I get a decent pirated copy because I’m paying to let Mickey Mouse shit in my mouth.)

Again ignoring the inkitt bullshit, that page is just a waste of time full of teenagers who stick crayons up their nose and middle age women touching themselves to werewolf homosex haha.

I saw the benefit of reviews at one point but it’s sort of incestuous how the reviews there work and it’s really just a load of nonsense and frankly I’m sick of reading the same fantasy story about some girl using her magical cooch to find the hidden whatever before she finds out she don’t need no man. I mean there are only so many stories you can read like that before you want to start huffing hot lead.

So I’m just gonna post full chapters on here and when I want reviews I’ll reach out to people on facebook for unbiased takes on it.

Still coming down from new years and it is a harsh steep decline. So many emotions kicked up it’s like all my other functions have shut down trying to process them all. Feeling like I’m in a rut again my writing has slowed down, still trying to finish Gage, kinda feel like the legs have been kicked out of my motivation but on a brighter note I randomly stumbled onto a new editor who seems to be really good and prompt and cheap.

I was just spamming that three book deal thing (which is having it’s last day tomorrow) and I just spotted her ad out of the corner of my eye and messaged her and she got back to me with a quote, so it’s gonna be full steam ahead with Diana After Dark editing and then it’s just trying to get it out there to agents and make my fortune like the dickens character at heart that I am.

So have a good one, check out that three book deal in my last blog post and fuck inkitt haha.

See you…
Diana After Dark Chapter 7 ‘Darkness on the Doorstep’

Hot, sticky, red.

It’s blood isn’t it?

Blood?

All over the floor.

It smells, I don’t like it.

Why is it here?

All over the carpet.

Where am I?

Why did you do that?

A big puddle.

Blood all over the floor, spreading and getting thicker like a dark red plastic spreading and dripping and coating everywhere. A child’s room, bunk beds, bright colours. Where is this place?

Something rising from the blood, the sea of thick hot red plastic. A head coated in it like it was hot molten wax and then another and another bobbing up like croutons in a rich tomato soup.

My vision is a tiny cone surrounded by blackness, small hands, a child’s hands reach for the heads, turning them over one by one. I recognise their faces but can’t place them. Buried somewhere, a tinkling, a mocking laugh and a slamming of a heavy door and they’re gone.

A feeling of loss, of loss of loss. Losing something that never existed, something you never had taken before you even knew it was there.

The little hand reaches for mine and it tells me to come and play and I want to. I want to so badly, but I can’t.

I wake up again, a cold sweat, it’s dark. I maybe got two hours sleep on Paul’s couch.

We could have used the bed of course but I couldn’t drag him much further than the living room. He is a big boy.

And once I’d got him down I wanted to stay with him and make sure he was ok. Some motherly instinct kicking in Diana? Channelling a little Florence Nightingale perhaps? Hardly, a good mask needs a touch up now and then like anything else. But soon enough after lying down next to him the sandman had snuck up and wrapped the ten pound fishing cord of sleep around my neck and I was his. I’d fallen asleep right next to him. But now I was awake again in the wee hours of the morning and he was gone.

It wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it was. He came in after a minute or two with a glass of water and sat back down on the couch like he didn’t even notice I was there.

He cleared his throat and took in a big deep breath and then proceeded to take sips from his water and yawn.

“Oh you’re up” He said. “I was just getting some water.”

“I can see that”

“Here” He said as he handed me the glass. I took a big gulp from it. I suddenly felt utterly bottomless and wanted to down the entire glass before handing it back to him.

It felt like we’d never talk about it and that’s kind of how I wanted it. Pretend like it never happened. Just let it slip off the cuff, a very interesting dream soon forgotten.

“What happened back there?” he said rather ineloquently breaking my fantasy of a night lost. Murderous pirate ships passing in the night.

“You don’t remember” I stalled.

“No, I remember drinking a little and then, I dunno, I guess someone jumped me and everything went black and I woke up here and my gun was gone.” He sighed like he was talking about a botched boy scouts camping trip “My dad is gonna kill me”.

“Doesn’t he have lots of guns, I’m sure he won’t notice one missing” I added Diana deft subject dodger.

“You don’t know my dad” He scratched the back of his neck “I’ll have to tell him it was stolen.”

“Yeah you can’t tell him you lost it in a fight in a drug dealers house” Shut up Diana.

He laughed. Phew.

We gave up on sleep after that and had a quick shower. I had to change back into my previous set of clothes. Which was a little disgusting for dainty deleterious Diana but I couldn’t exactly skip school the day after another massacre. I suppose the whole finding body parts at school thing could have bought me a little credit. I dunno.

I stood in front of my locker again staring at the space left by the volleyball. I breathed and sighed, taking in all the smells of the pretty people passing me. Their talking all mixing together into an interminable cacophony. The occasional chortle and hushed whisper. Did I hear my name?

I closed my locker and as if by magic, a poof of smoke and the wicked witch of Orange County appeared.

Wendy engulfed me with the most over-exaggerated but nevertheless fake hover hug I had ever received. Her arms and chest barely touched me. But her movements were so verbose I thought she was going to poke my eye out with one of her fake tits or impale on a hoop earring.

“Omg are you ok?” She stopped for a brief second to look at me. “I’ve been trying to call you all weekend”.

Well we both knew that was an exaggeration but it was the kind you could overlook. The kind of happy shit people fling carelessly.

“I’m ok, I just-“

“Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re alright”

“I forgot the fliers, sorry” I cocked my head to the side, doing an attempt at an ‘aww shucks’ face.

“Fuck the fliers, you could have been killed.” She shivered and looked around the hall “He was here, he walked this hall, he could have done whatever he wanted and he chose our lockers. Also I picked up the fliers myself yesterday”.

I scanned her face and there was something there, but I couldn’t tell if it was genuine fear or excitement. The goose pimples were a nice touch. I knew without knowing what she was capable of but right now she looked like a cartoon a little Latin mini mouse rubbing her bare golden arms. Afraid of the big bad wolf.

Maybe I was wrong about her, after all I wasn’t that sure, and my big brain hadn’t proven much use as of late. It was sort of a romantic notion I’d conjured up about her. Spiced up her little half Cuban buns.

“I think we’re gonna be ok, if he wanted to kill us he probably would have done it already.” I looked into her face as it froze in an awkward expression, so I summoned up more comforting platitudes. Like pulling a drawstring in grief councillor Barbie. “It was probably just a coincidence he chose our lockers.”

“Well it’s over now, the cops have a suspect and he’ll have left the state by now if he know what’s good for him”.

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t seen?” She went into her purse and pulled out a smartphone in a hello kitty case and started tapping away at it and then turned it over so I could see her screen. On it a blurred out picture of the bodies on the couch. The picture was really good this time, and I could swear it might have been taken at the same time. I could have been passed out on the floor just out of frame. “There was another murder last night, it’s some kind of gang bullshit, this psycho dealer kills four of his own guys and then bolts.”

“But how do they know it’s connected?”

“That’s the fucked up thing” She said as she opened her purse again to put her phone back at the bottom. “They found a head from the previous victim right on the motherfuckers coffee table.” Kitchen table/breakfast bar but reporters, you know, can’t get anything right.

That’s why the bar maids head was there. What a neat package. A picture was starting to form. A nice little picture framing Antoine as the Head-hunter. It seemed like quite a promotion, small time pusher to the serial killer hall of fame. I had ruled him out from the running as I assumed it was nigh impossible to tape and plastic wrap yourself to a bed. Offering yourself up as a meal to young velociraptor. But who knows, maybe that was just what he was into. It didn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibilities.

But I doubt he’d paint himself into such a corner as this, but maybe I’d over-estimated him. Maybe I’d over-estimated them all.

So what was the plan? If I killed Antoine would I have been next? Would Antoine have disappeared forever sealed as an open shut case? And because I didn’t kill him what then?

Was this part of his plan?

The word ‘kill’ set my teeth on edge, throwing it around so nonchalant in my head. I had my chance and I wasted it. I could feel now more than ever. It was this annoying buzz in my ear before, a single moth hitting a lightbulb in some deep dark cellar and now.

Now it was like fire ants screaming in my veins, crawling under my skin, the whispering a cacophony of good ideas.

It was almost unbearable, it took every social grace I had stored up over the years not to scream and pull my hair out.

It was whispering so loud now, right inside my ear. I felt hot. I could feel my mask melting, chipping, falling away. I was becoming some base creature. What was I supposed to do now? Go to the library for some montage on how to prevent lycanthropy? Maybe pick up some garlic and wolfs bane and make a smoothie with some kale.

I’d come so close, it could taste blood, smell it, it wanted nothing more to be fed, to cut, to take and I held back. I denied it and it was hungrier than ever. But something about denying it felt good too, delayed gratification. ‘Delayed’, was it really delayed, implying it was coming, it was inevitable.

I was roused by an obnoxious clicking sound.

“Hello girlfriend, are you home?” Wendy snapped her fingers again trying to get my attention.

“Oh sorry” Shit, I completely blanked, glazed over, I really am slipping. “I was just-“

“Happens to me all the time” A mysterious voice emerged behind Wendy, had he been there the whole time?

“Oh yeah Di” Wendy smiled and kissed the high chin of the man in the letterman jacket towering over her tiny self. “You’ve met my new bae right?”

“Yeah sure” Brahma, Bradie, bromide, brontide? “You sit behind me in biology or something right” Complete guess.

“Chemistry”

Close enough.

He was tall and well built, definitely a line-backer.

“Brodie just became the school’s new quarterback”

Close enough.

“I don’t like to brag” He said smiling, looking down at Wendy, crinkling his highbrow. He had a boyish face with kind of a button nose and a floppy haircut like he was in a nineties boyband. His entire person seemed like it was picked out of a saved by the bell episode.

“You better be bragging about me mister” Wendy said standing on her tiptoes for an actual kiss. Excuse me while I purge my stomach contents.

“I heard about what happened to you” Brodie said taking his soppy wet lips off Wendy’s sticky glossed Botox pillows. “That really sucks, I hope they catch the guy”

“Nothing happened to me” I said “Still got my head, see?” Did I really just point at my head?

“Right” He laughed like a big dumb idiot and then soured his face like he just barely got the joke. So this is how she liked them, big and dumb and pretty. He was good looking but something about his face soured on me. Too familiar, it felt like a face I’d seen everywhere and seeing it now locking face with Wendy did make me feel oddly queasy. Like walking in on my aunt getting ploughed by her reiki healer part time life guard part time boyfriend, Darren.

“Oh yeah where’s Paul at?” Wendy took her head out of the clouds “I haven’t seen him today”.

“Oh we’re just giving each other some space today I guess” I laughed.

“Something up?”

“No, we just, kinda had a fight, I guess, sorta”. Technically true, the best kind of true.

Truthfully, Paul had got a little closer to my inner sanctum, my dark fortress of solitude than I’d have liked. The dream whatever it meant was a message. And I just needed a little distance so we could better compartmentalise what happened. Pack it away in neat little boxes and pretend it never happened. I knew he was good at that. He was unpredictable last night but I had no reason to believe I couldn’t trust him to keep it secret. After all he had much more to lose than I did.

“Wow” Wendy said wide eyed “You two had a fight, that must be the sign of the apocalypse”

“I’m sure you guys will work it out” Brodie adding his pointless platitude with a dull dough eyed smile. Oh Brodie, what white teeth you have.

“Thanks”.

The rest of the day was one humid slog of nothing really that remarkable. Paul and I managed to avoid each other for most of the day, exchanging only one awkward glance in the lunch hall.

I was struck by a sad soggy urge just to get home and lay face down on my trash heap of a bed and just sleep until the sun came up again.

I walked home, it was pretty early. The serial killer was on the run, don’t you know. It was safe to walk the streets yet again fair citizens.

I couldn’t exactly use that excuse again on my aunt to come pick me up. Considering we hadn’t spoken since the other day and she probably already thought I was dead in a ditch somewhere. Maybe she was surrounded by FBI right now crying and trying to sell them dreamcatchers or aligning their chakras or something.

Yes, I did that to punish her, yes it was petty and but hey what did you expect? I’m a little monster after all.

I don’t know what I expected honestly.

Would she be happy to see me, would she be mad? Did I care? I’d take whatever meek tongue lashing she could muster out of her mousey give peace a chance voice box and then be sent to my room, exactly where I wanted to be. So it would turn out either way.

Of course I was planning to do the human thing, which was? I don’t know, apologise I guess. Or was that the Canadian thing? What was the teenage thing to do? Just storm in and start yelling and shifting the blame, nothing says good defence like a crazy offence. I could just completely blindside her with crazy accusations long enough to get to my room and lock the door with no supper.

That could work, she did kind of sick a crazy bond villain on me. Or did she? I dunno, I felt like I was getting a lot of things wrong lately. My usually big brain under a bushel had been leading me astray or worse it was outright lying to me. I was overthinking everything, getting paranoid and crazy… er.

Maybe I could go teary afternoon special and just burst out into a fit of crocodile tears, tell her the whole sick sad story. Nah that never works.

The walk went quite quickly thinking of things to practice saying, or maybe I’d just storm into my room and not come out ever again. Learn to photosynthesise, nah I’d need to open the blinds for that. The sun was just over the hill working its way down. It was still pretty bright, walking past all the matchbox houses. Hybrid cars puttering passed me at ten miles an hour.

I turned into my block and felt an intoxication of a coming night wind. The smell of the palms and the little quaffed bushes surrounding the houses. A primal rushing wind forcing its way into my lungs. I almost felt like skipping the rest of the way home.

But there was something incredibly tantalizing about resisting about holding off. Delayed gratification, as I said. It was something I’d honed over the years. There was no other way, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my adolescence looking at people through plexi-glass. Doing my best teen Hannibal Lector impression.

I walked as casually as I could as the sun was slowly going down, ripping broad swaths of red and orange along the sky.

The neighbours two houses over were having some sort of semi-noisy party. I say semi-noisy because it wasn’t loud house music or drunken shouting. Just refined loud excited talking knives and forks scraping. The barbecue sizzling on their quant veranda over their garage.

“Hey Di, how’s your aunt?”

“She’s-err fine” I said.

“Give her my best” Gary from next door said as he went back to flipping burgers and smiling at nothing in particular. He was a nice guy, kind of forgettable, one of those software engineers who grew a beard because he had no chin and wore only plaid. His wife was kind of a bitch though.

“Will do, have a good evening Mr Harvey” I said with a smile in my voice which he didn’t see. Politeness and cleanliness, next to godliness. I hopped up my driveway and to the front door about to knock remembering I had a key. Knocking would only give her enough time to think up a line and a face to sling it from. I was feeling righteous indignation. Her plan was probably the same as mine, come out guns blazing. Quickest draw would win, just bowl over the other, like women do. Making themselves completely impenetrable to logical arguments and explanations. Then resorting to waterworks when the other party wouldn’t just roll their belly up in the air for the final attack.

I jangled my keys out of my purse quickly finding the right one, oh so proud of myself. I can’t kill a helpless gangbanger taped to a bed but I can find my keys super quick. I slipped my key into the door and was slightly deflated to watch the door shrink away from my prodding. It swung loose from the jam.

Ditzy aunt stereotype forgot to lock the door again, what a cliché’. This was the sort of neighbourhood you could leave your door unlocked in but my aunt wasn’t the sort of neighbour to do it. In fact she’d been double bolting the doors again since the murders started.

Eh, it’s probably nothing. Maybe she’s out canvassing for me, stapling my picture to phone poles and in her haste just forgot to lock the doors. I’d call and she’d discover me home safe and sound and once I paid her back for the printing cost of the fliers, everything would be copasetic.

I closed the door behind me making a disconcerting clicking noise and instantly the air was heavier. A wry whisper, a hiss from the deep dark, a warning from the dark driver. The hair on my neck shot up. I held my breath and just listened. Nothing. Silence.

I breathed slow and quiet and got low and contemplative.

I could feel it, was it him? Had he come for me? I failed him. I didn’t play his game, didn’t dance to his tune and now he was coming for me and my aunts head.

Oh fuck.

He probably put it in the fridge waiting for me to stumble in and scream and then the bag goes over my head and the darkness comes. And then leaves and is replaced with bright light. Not god but a masonry light and a camera and a sharp blade and then snicker snack goes the Jabberwock. And then it’s nothing but cold concrete and darkness and then maybe flames and damnation if you’re into that.

This was it, I was making jokes but this was it, I knew it. Here in my home, there was nothing keeping him out, he got in before just to watch. To prod me, mock me for being unable to see the obvious truth. Which was?

I could run and I could scream, I could call Gary in here with his spatula and he could maybe slow him down for as long as it took for his head to hit the ground. The cops, the man in the wheelchair, could they protect me, could they save me from myself?

I had to try.

I made my way into the kitchen, it was dark, all the lights in the house were off.

I crabbed low, moving towards the phone in the kitchen. I know I should use my mobile but it makes a lot of noise and lights up like a Christmas tree and I couldn’t risk it. I needed the dark and the quiet low murmur of the party outside.

I squatted under the phone and released it from the cradle, slow and quiet and started tapping 911. Shit what was I gonna say? “Please send police my imaginary friend thinks there’s a serial killer in my house because it’s scared of the dark”.

Well it didn’t matter anyway, phone line was cut. Of course it was, that was dumb.

I slid Ruez’ iPhone out of my pocket and unlocked it and started swiping through his really cluttered layout to find his dialler. I starting tapping 911.

Just as I hit the last 1 the phone rang with a loud DMX song and I froze.

I answered like a fucking idiot.

“H-hello?”

“Come into the living room Diana” A hushed voice said.

January 17, 2018 0

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Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

Where weird shit hits bizarre fans.

Tag

TOTCB Chapter 17 ‘Wayward Stranger’

Gage Chapter 4 ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Cry’

Diana in the Dark Chapter 11 ‘Dark Lines’

GS2 Chapter 13 ‘Le Samourai’

TOTCB Chapter 16 ‘Well of Misery’

Diana After Dark – Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’

Gage Chapter 3 ‘Colony’

DDD Chapter 8 ‘Love in High Places’

Diana After Dark Chapter Seven ‘Darkness on the Doorstep’

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