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TOTCB – Chapter 5 ‘Stranger than kindness’

Bonjourno, mi amigos. Probably butchering that, how many languages was that? I dunno, fuck I’m so talented, all that multi-lingual stuff haha. Yes I’m joking, no I’m not that narcissistic, pretty close though.

Ok so what’s new?
Not much, just being doing the day job thing as of late, picked up an addiction to Gwent (Google it). May get fired for playing it at work, well that would solve that problem wouldn’t it haha.

I got some writing done after a snaffoo with some of my software. But it’s all hunky dory now and I’m away, and honestly, I’m having too much fucking fun writing this book, honestly, wtf? Why is it this fun to write this much nonsense. It’s like writing it is reading it for the first time because I have like the outline and the characters but I don’t really know how it’ll take shape other than that. I don’t know how the characters are going to interact, or what they’re going to say or how they’ll act, what they’ll do or how they’ll do it.
It’s all flowing out of me like a stream of consciousness, like I type it and there it is. Like it’s not even coming from me and its fun. I’m really enjoying how it’s taking shape, it’s like a puzzle slotting into place and the nature of the book itself is fun. It’s almost like a portmanteau movie with all these different characters, different worlds colliding.

Yeah so that’s it, just really enjoying it, can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet but fuck it, better than writing some miserable crap that makes me want to hang myself haha.

Remember if you want a free review copy of the first book, hit me up on twitter or facebook and if you’re on my mailing list you get a free ebook just for joining.

Peace out people.

Oh yeah also here’s a chapter of my last book that everyone seems to hate haha fucking nano, yes I am blaming you haha.

Stranger than kindness

~

On the plane Johnny seemed nervous and Peggy could tell, but she couldn’t think of any reason why he would be. To her this was the end, this was what she wanted, he was home.

She turned to him as the plane slowed to a crawl, putting her hand on his and she said “Are you ready to go home Johnny?”

Johnny didn’t react at first, as if hearing his own name was so foreign to him. He could hardly believe where he was, what he chose, there was no going back now.

He smiled and nodded.

They got off the plane and there reporters with cameras waiting for him asking him questions he didn’t answer. They just pushed past them into the arrivals lounge and they didn’t follow them.

She held his hand, he was shy and she suddenly felt a shard of ice hit her heart and she thought what it might be.

She turned to him and looked at him and he looked away.

“Johnny, are you afraid Momma’s not gonna love you anymore or something?”

He didn’t say anything, he mouthed something and furrowed his brow.

“You don’t need to worry, you’re home now. We’ve missed you, we’ve all missed you, but it’s going to be ok now, I promise”

She lead him out of the arrivals area and through passport control and to get their luggage. He didn’t have much but that one backpack and the clothes on his back.

What if there was something wrong with him? What if he’d never get better, what if the Johnny she knew was gone, never to return.

She shook off those feelings and lead him out to the parking lot.

Still he was nervous, he couldn’t stop moving. Bouncing around almost, going to the bathroom a lot and watching people and watching Peggy. He was always watching her for some reason. Trying to pick up cues from her. Like he’d forgotten how to be him and somehow watching her would help him remember who he was.

Who he was dependent on her expectation at this point.

Peggy’s husband Brandon with his camcorder. Their son Carl and daughter Sarah. Johnny and Peggy’s mother Angela had all loaded up in Carl’s Lincoln to go get Johnny and his sister.

They waited at the end of a long tiled windowless hallway. It was white with white rails along the side, slightly bluing tiles stuck on the walls. Brandon started filming as he saw people passing them by. Lots of people, young, old, fat, skinny, men and women but none of them were Peggy and Johnny.

More and more people passed, more people than seemed possible. With each passing it seemed less and less likely that they would come out. For a moment it seemed like a bad dream, they’d lost one child and sent another to find him only to lose that one too. The big bad world just swallowed them up. With each passing stranger their hearts sank.

Until finally Peggy emerged carrying her one duffel bag, she looked warn out but happy. Her hair was a messy, probably from sleeping on it. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, her face looked content like she’d just been around the world and seen all seven wonders in one shot. She saw her family waiting their huddled together. Anxious, excited, a little fear there, fear of the unknown.

They were the only ones left, the last off the plane.

~

0

LCYE Chapter 13 ‘Confinement’

Just gonna be a quick update because I’m up to my neck in stage hand work right now for this grand show I put on for you kind people.

Again another shout out to my new subs on my mailing list, thank you very much for paying attention to this fucking train wreck haha.
I’m really busy, I got the edit back for LCYE and I’m just proofreading it again and making the changes as well still spamming for more subs haha. But it’s coming together. I just wanted to go over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it’s at it’s best when I convert it into a pdf/epub and send it to you lovely people.

As far as my writing is going, it’s going haha. I’m writing something a little sillier as a break. I was trying this new diet which I had to rework because I felt like a zombie and it put a kink in my weight lifting but it’s all good now. I thought I had writers block but it turned out I was just dying haha.

I dunno, this novella I’m working on is a little wet, just wanted to keep myself busy til I’m psyched up enough for GS two, or something new. It’s just not jelling as well, it’s a blast from the past, it’s sort of silly and stilted and doesn’t really represent the growth and the scope of my newer work.

But enough of me rambling incoherently.

Here’s chapter 13 of LCYE that is being proofread and will be in the inbox of hopefully everyone reading this blog within the month.

Without further ado here is Confinement

~

He fell into consciousness wide eyed and drenched in sweat. His breathe burning in his chest. He strained against plastic ties which bound his arms to the black metal struts of what seemed to be a weightlifting bench.

Was it a room?

It smelled dank, rotting wood and coppery smells of rust. It was too dark to tell.

He was lying in what felt like a dentist’s chair, his arms held down at his sides. He was restrained not only at the wrists but it felt like all the way up his arms and his legs. He had zero mobility in any of his limbs. His head equally was held in place by what felt like plastic wrap, wound tightly around his forehead. It was sticky and forming a lot of sweat but none of which allowed him any more mobility.

He felt powerless, his heart beat out of his chest for what felt like an hour of blackness and panic. Finally, when he’d given up hope of his limbs proving useful for escape he faded into despair. Taking deep breathes getting gradually shallower and more quiet until he heard someone else breathing.

A generator sprang into life, humming and coughing behind his head. A bright unshaded bulb was born cutting through the thick dark dank of what he now knew was a boxcar probably deep in the railyard. In a place no one could hear them.

An unseen scratching, and then music started to play.

“How much is that doggie in the window (arf, arf)

The one with the waggley tail”

As the record was started, James felt a sharp tugging and a shifting in his seat. A feeling of falling as the hydraulics in the chair dropped him lower and then bolted him almost upright. Instantly he was made aware of what he was supposed to see.

In front of him were two rows of something obscured by a tan hide tarp. They were spaced out as if they were seats on a train and behind them there was something hanging on the wall. Something that looked like an animal.

He heard breathing getting closer to his ear and then a voice he thought he knew.

“James, it’s good to see you. Are you resting comfortably?”

~

0

Ok fuck it, The one who came back, Chapter One ‘A little Rain’.

Ok so still the holiday season is kicking my ass workwise and I got a new phone so I was locked out my microsoft account and the lock out was supposed to end today so I could get to more edited GS Chapters but it’s a no go.
So I thought fuck it, why not just give up the first chapter of my NaNo novel. I may be releasing this on inkitt, I’m in talks with a publisher, so I’m not sure if I want to go through them directly but a glimpse at the first chapter couldn’t hurt.
As soon as christmas is over, I’m moving on to getting my novella edited and giving it away as a promotional gift to people who sign up to my  mailing list.

Also banned on Facebook again because some piece of shit sjw from the nano group (That group is full of cancer) flagged my cover photo which happened to have the word ‘faggot’ in it completely not being used in the context of a hatecrime or being directed at gay people at all. So banned for thirty days and today I was supposed to be getting to grips with Minds and launching there but I got caught up in some twitter drama instead, so fucking productive.

But for what it’s worth my Minds page.
https://www.minds.com/CallMeRyk

But here it is, the first chapter of The one who came back, the mystery novel set to take airport lounges by storm haha.

As per usual, this isn’t the whole first chapter but I’m too lazy to put it up on inkitt right now, actually fuck it, I’ll do it now.

A little rain

There you go you ungrateful pricks haha. That took longer than I thought haha.

I was kind of manic as fuck when I wrote it, I hope it shows, enjoy.

–

“Police, go ahead”

“My wife and me are here as tourists-“

“-We’ve found a kid”

“He’s about fourteen or fifteen years old-“

“- No id, no documents on him”

“He’s very scared”

It was raining.

The rain beat down, getting in all the cracks on the sidewalk. It dashed cars and made those little muted tapping sounds as it hit people’s coats as they walked by.

Neon lights of a sign, car headlights, streaked in the rain like they were melting.

The soothing sound of the rain falling, muted the sounds of thunder.

A boy tried to make himself as small as possible in the bottom of a phonebooth. The rain beat down, tapping on the glass, trying to get in.

He wore a hooded coat with a cap and a pair of running bottoms with white stripes up the sides. He sat curled up at the bottom with his head in his knees breathing steady, the receiver hanging by his head.

The phonebooth stood alone in the centre of a cobbled townsquare lined with caged trees reaching straight up. European style lampposts dotted throughout the square cast sickly yellow pools of light. There was a square roofed totem plastered with aging posters advertising bands in Spanish. Stark bushes behind it, all their leaves long gone, left with only boney finger twigs stretching out in all directions.

Long distant sirens going somewhere else.

The boy in the booth peeled back the sleeve of his jacket and looked at a digital watch, the time was ‘9:58pm’.

The bottom of the phonebooth was made of some cheap plastic like a black shower matt curling at the corners. It was wet with people’s feet, the rain getting in through the cracks. Dirty cigarette butts mashed into it, little pink pieces of paper, fliers with girls on them soaking up muddy water and a boy.

A police car pulled up in front of the totem with its lights off, the headlights filled up the phonebooth. They stopped the car and put the lights on, red and blue flashing. They got out of the car and left the lights on.

Two cops with their hoods down, on the passenger side, the bald cop approached the phonebooth speaking Spanish. Reaching out his hand like he was trying to feed a small animal.

The boy lifted his head to look at the light through the crack in the phonebooth door. He shivered as the cold damp started to get to him. The man approached slow and low, the boy made himself even smaller. He shrank into his big rain coat and tried to get away from himself. But he was in a corner.

The police man opened the door of the phonebooth and asked him if he was alright. The cop was average build, in his forties with a greying beard. The concern lines on his forehead painted a vivid picture of a man with his own problems, he didn’t need to be out here.

The rain poured down on him as he spoke, trying to be heard over the constant beating of water around his head. The boy lifted his head an inch, hiding his eyes behind the lip of a cap pulled down low on his head. He cowered with his hands in front of his face.

The cop getting rained on, lost his patience for a moment and reached out for the boy at the bottom of the booth. The boy pulled back pushing his hands up. He was shaking.

“Tranquilo, tranquilo” The cop said slow as he put his hands up and backed off just a little. He eased back and signalled for the boy to come “Vamos”.

The boy was ashen, his hands in front of his face, shaking nervously. He looked lost and frightened.

The cop took his arm and gingerly helped him to his feet.

He led the boy hunched like a refugee towards the brightly lit police car.

The boys legs seemed weak, his knees buckled and the second cop swam through the rain to prop him up on his otherside. They carried him arm in arm to the waiting police car, the sound of the windshield wipers screeching.

They put him in the back seat and shut the door. He ducked his head and listened to the rain.

–

“What is your name?” A woman said in a robotic tone.

“Tell us your name” She asked again.

They watched the boy’s face even as he tried to hide, on the monitors. His cap was pulled way down and he had a scarf almost covering the other half of his face.

“Where do you live?” She kept asking.

The pixelated camera zoomed out as he said nothing. Hung his head like a frightened animal.

“Do you live with your parents?”

The boy sat in a windowed interview room with the door open looking at nothing.

He sat still against a blank cream wall in the warm room, speaking rarely and in whispers.

“Did your parents hurt you?”

It looked more like a glassed office than an interview room. It was wood panelled with opaque glass all the way around. He looked out the door and saw people at desks lit by old fashioned lamps sifting through papers. Phones ringing, people talking, clattering of chairs and hushed breath.

His hands were deep down in the pockets of his coat. He got comfortable in the chair sinking further and further down into it.

It smelled like cigarettes and heady perfume in the office. Sweet and bitter smells.

He sat at a straight wooden table. As he looked around there were loose pieces of paper in Spanish tacked onto the wall around his head, notices, pictures of people.

The woman across the desk was pretty, in her mid to early thirties but with a strain of concern on her face like it had always been there. Her sandy hair was tied back in a tight plait littered with split ends. She was in a blue uniform adorned with shiney gold buttons. She continued to talk and he watched her lips move.

He looked behind her, on the wall were more posters. A laminated one behind her head had large pictures of people and said “MUY PELIGROSOS” in bold letters above them. There was a book shelf with hastily tidied files. Binders and large books that looked like phone books piled on top of eachother in no particular order.

In the outer office people were smoking and tapping away at old computers. The bald police man who picked him up was on the phone looking at him through the crack in the door. He nodded putting out his cigarette and hanging up the phone.

–

 

0

LCYE Chapter 10 ‘Dance of the Dream man’ Raw AKA return of the dreamer.

Yoyoyo this obnoxious intro was brought to you by someone that smashed NaNoWriMo 2016!!!!!!!!

Yeah I’m not that psyched about it, all I got was a crappy like certificate I had to download and put my own name on and a computer generated pat on the back. Even my mother was dissapointed, I somehow convinced her it was important and the prize wasn’t just 50,000 words of complete gibberish. Nah I’m fucking with you, its pretty good, it’s not entirely finished, should be done and dusted by december and I’ll start leaking proofread chapters on here and probably inkitt too although I’ve been in talks with this publishing house called quivering quills or some gay shit, I don’t know, but they looked at GS and thought it was a piece of shit but who knows they might like this, it may not be a complete piece of shit.

So yeah I was gone, almost sort of lost my mind there, everyday spent inside my head trying to hold on to some semblance of sanity as well as keep up with a 2k a day word quota. It almost made my day job feel like a break from the bleak blank insane scratching inside the wet wailing walls of my skull. Which reminds me the holiday season is upon us and I must go back to work and listen to same christmas type music over and over again and try not fucking impale people with a christmas tree.

Updates updates updates, it’s back to business, shock horror, I lied to you Ladies Close Your Eyes has been completed for months maybe, not actually maybe just a few weeks and I was just releasing a chapter at a time to tease or whatever but I just thought fuck it and I wanted to mess with inkitts algorithyms so I published the whole thing. But I will still keep posting individual chapters because I’m back and I need a constant stream of content and with the day job and proofreading and sorting out all the shit I need to do to get GS ready for amazon or a garbage fire I really don’t have time to just do wordy nonsense blogs or reviews so yeah.

With no more to do here it is, Chapter ten ‘Dance of the Dream man’ if you haven’t watched Twin Peaks you should, very much inspired by that, I love the mixing of the dark and the absurd. Absurdity and comedy sort of act as lube for the big black cock of horror you slowly slide down allowing it to get deeper and deeper inside the anus of your fetid minds. Whereas without the lube you might just sit on it and jump off straight away. (Metaphor excellence achieved).

As for today I’m gonna be chilling and probably christmas knife shopping for myself.

As usual you can get a preview here and check out the full chapter over on inkitt. I’m probably gonna be giving this away soon as a free ebook to people who sign up to my blog so please as soon as I do this forget inkitt exists please haha.

Dance of the Dream Man

Cheers!

–

James was standing in front of the blue door; someone had left it open. He pushed it and it opened with a rehearsed creaking sound. Allowing a thin shaft of daylight to spread in an arc across the floor.

James swallowed hard and in his head it was very loud. He gingerly entered the small room following the beam of light.

The light ended before the opening of a tiny bathroom. Looking inside, it had no windows. Just a shower bath combo with a shower curtain pulled closed all the way around in the right corner running along the wall. The toilet was to the left in the other corner but the room was so small they were almost touching. The sink was in the small amount of space in the right corner closest to the door in front of the bath. The bathroom was tiled all around in a black and white pattern that went from the floor to the walls. The ceilings and places untouched by tiles were the same desert tan colour as the outside of the building. The toilet seat matched the patter, the porcelain was naturally white but the seat and lid were black.

There was just something off about black in a bathroom, it hid the dirt but it also felt dirty.

There was a loud dripping noise coming from the bath tub.

James approached the bath and gripped the edges of the shower curtain which met at the corner of the bath.

He parted them swiftly, like ripping off a band aid.

The bath was full of a brown dark liquid, a putrid rusty water that had a dank smell. The bath itself was filthy, the gaps between the black and white tiles were black with mould. The shower head and bath fixture were also covered in the same black mould. He examined the taps and the shower head but there was nothing leaking.

Remembering himself he set to looking about the bathroom for any clues. Shy of sticking his hand in that filthy water and draining the tub there was nothing of interest in the bathroom. He could have stuck his hand down the toilet, but why would he do that?

He left the bathroom and returned to the bed/living room area.

The bed was un-made and showed signs of a struggle, the satin sheets were half off the queen sized bed. The long red curtains were drawn, the chair in the corner of the room was empty and there was nothing on the coffee table. The room smelled like sex and cheap perfume.

The old TV was in the same place as his dream but the screen was dark.

“Dream?” As he said it he started to feel light headed, his heart started to race and he couldn’t get it to stop. “Was it a dream?”.

He stumbled and knocked the TV off its stand leaving a large crack down the centre of the bevelled screen.

James collapsed into the chair in the living area and tried to catch his breath, he closed his eyes and tried to centre himself, stop the spinning. It felt like something unnatural was happening. Like his brain was rebooting, trying to make sense of two memories overlapping.

Just like that he felt something poking him from the side of the seat cushion. He put his hand down the side to see what it was.

It was a business card.

‘Dr. Alphonso Moral’

It had the second love symbol on it with a phone number on the back.

Now he started to remember, he had gone there, but something had gone wrong.

He shambled out of the room, a sheen of sweat across his brow. The sun was still high but the fresh air made him straighten up a little as he walked back towards the office.

The office was still open; he must have been gone only twenty minutes.

Like before the old man wasn’t at his desk so James rang the bell. There was something off about the front desk though, there was something missing and he couldn’t quite place it. The fan was still going back and forth and although it offered some breeze it was slight and pointed in the wrong direction. He tried to turn it around but it was affixed to the desk somehow.

He rang the bell again, remembering it took at least three rings for the old man to know you were serious.

On the third ring he expected to hear some commotion in the back but there nothing, just the TV on like before. An infomercial about old people losing the remote was playing. Advertising some kind of device that would let you find it, necessarily he thought what would happen if you lost the device to find the remote too.

He rang the bell a fourth time but still he couldn’t hear anything.

James sighed anxiously. The old man must have gone out or he was sleeping in the back. All he really wanted was to use the phone. He couldn’t know for sure but he was pretty certain he was in a hurry.

James went around the counter and put on a loud but unthreatening voice.

“HEY- ERR, OLD MAN? I JUST WANNA USE THE PHONE, I’LL BE GONE IN A SECOND. I THINK I BROKE ONE OF YOUR TV’S I’LL PAY YOU BACK FOR IT, DON’T WORRY”.

James entered the back room through the little alcove beyond the beads. The beads making an unnerving cacophony of clacking noises.

The old man was asleep in his chair facing away from the alcove towards a large TV set on a stand not unlike the ones in the rooms, sitting in the corner. A long hanging mirror on the wall next to it.

The phone was on a small side table against the wall on the right as soon as you entered the alcove. It was a weird novelty phone in the shape of a football. Which was particularly odd since he hadn’t noted any football memorabilia of any sort in the lobby or anywhere as he looked around now. The room was ‘cosy’.

There were more of those plants wilted in the corners of the room. There was no furniture apart from the easy chair the old man was asleep in which looked like real leather, real old leather. There was a small table next to the chair but it was knocked over with an upturned bowl of chips next to it. He must have just knocked it over while he was sleeping. The floors were hard wood for lack of a carpet. There were just some beaten up looking rugs with floral patterns. There was another beaded alcove which must have led to a kitchenette and a bedroom if he really did live here.

James quietly picked up the phone’s receiver and started to dial with the card cupped in his other hand and the receiver cradled in his neck. There was another mirror on the wall above the side table and James looked at himself for a brief indulgent moment of vanity. He looked a little younger in that Jacket he couldn’t remember buying, not that it mattered. The cut above his eye looked ok and his neck wasn’t hurting as much.

As the phone started to ring he noticed something in the mirror he’d missed on his way in. There was something out of place next to the TV, in front of the long hanging mirror. The phone was still ringing while he looked closer at it in the mirror above the side table. It was some kind of heavy rectangular object, four wooden corners embossed with a brass trimming. The brass seemed to be rusting but only on one of the corners and along the sides of the object adjacent to that corner. Possibly it was supposed to be sitting in the corner of the room and those parts were never polished.

He couldn’t see much else from that angle so he took a step the right and craned his neck, he didn’t want to turn around and whip the phone off the table. He was on hold; the music was some French woman whining about something or other.

There was a plaque on the base but he was too far away to read what it said. But in his new angle he was able to see a small fuzzy shape and he remembered what was wrong with the desk scene. ‘Fido’.

The stuffed Chihuahua from the front desk had taken up legs and moved here and was lying on the floor. A cold sensation gripped his gut and he swallowed hard as his eyes craned up from the dog lying on the floor. His jaw tightened as he saw a pale set of eyes staring back at him reflected in the hanging mirror into the mirror above the side table.

The old man was slumped in his chair, his hairy white arms hanging off the sides. His lifeless cloudy eyes staring into the mirror. His head was a mess of blood and bone and brain matter, caved in with the corner of the little stuffed mutt.

James licked his lips frozen. A man’s voice came on the line.

“Hello, who is this?”

“I’ll call you back”. James said as he hung up the phone.

~

Dance of the Dream Man

0

LCYE Chapter 9 ‘White Noiz’

It’s sort of finished now I guess, I stopped tapping the keyboard at least ha-ha. I like it, I think it’s the start of something new and good. I’m reading more of those Richard Stark Parker novels, they’re fucking infectious. Effortlessly cool, I just love them and the more I read them the more inspired I get to write like that. His style is bleeding into mine and I can’t get enough of it. It’s the perfect filler to stuff in that Dexter shaped hole in my life. I really want to read all the Dexter books again. Not just because I loved them and they spoke to me but also because when I read them I was deeply in love with someone and some music and I need to feel that again.
When I was reading those books it was the happiest and brightest my life had ever been and to see them end it brought in the end of that relationship too. And it’s fitting since those books are about someone trying to be human and failing at every turn. Trying to have love but lacking the vital component to make it work and keep it alive. Some people just aren’t meant to love, if not then what are they meant to do? Who knows.
Enough of that feeling sorry for myself bullshit onto the chapter and updates. I’m still in talks for the cover and the editing is coming along for Green Sunday. I think it’s going on amazon soonish. Still bricking it over nano, I just feel so fucking competitive, I want to win but I don’t think I can and give the story the attention and time it needs, I need to slow down, this is serious business. Oh, I also watched the new ghostbusters movie and yeah it was trash ha-ha, so I might do a review of that.

Ok this chapter is a bit of a departure, slipped in a little more action, bit of breaking bad crept in somehow, but I hope you like it. And yeah I spelled noise wrong on purpose haha. Its the title of a silent hill song.

As usual you can check it out for free on inkitt.

White Noiz

~

Con reached the bathroom down the narrow hall. The house was like a maze, it felt like there were too many rooms, too many doors squeezed into such a tight building. He passed two bedrooms on his way into what looked like a parlour with a set of carpeted stairs leading to an upstairs bedroom in the attic space. One of the bedrooms was completely empty, carpeted and painted in the same way as the rest of the house, the other was locked.

The parlour had a few black couch chairs and a pool table with what looked like a minibar in the corner. It had another set of glass doors which lead out into the yard and overlooked the pool. A big black ceiling fan span above his head as he stood, hands in pockets looking out at the pool.

He crossed the room past the pool table almost tripping over a black leather foot stool. He leant on the railing of the stairs looking up at the attic door. It looked locked too but it was worth a shot.

Just as he mounted the first step his ears pricked up to a muted cracking sound and brief fumbling from where he’d come.

He pulled his Glock 19 with a nervous jerk from the moulded holster on his hip and soft stepped around the pool table with the gun at his side. He shouldered up to the corner and took the safety off, he held his breath and rounded the corner with his gun high. The tight corridor was empty the door to one bed room still closed the door to the empty bedroom was open still. The closed door was closer on his left so he tersely slid along the wall keeping his eye on the edge of the hall where the sitting room was located. He got to the locked door and tried it again, it was still locked.

He popped out around the door of the empty bedroom and it was still empty. He continued at a quickening pace down the hall. He kept his breathing steady but his heart beat was fast and light.

He swung around the corner of the sitting room, it was empty. He did a further sweep to make sure there was no one in the kitchen or entryway. All the doors were closed and he opened them quietly one by one, revealing storage closets full of cleaning products and chemicals. The other was a study full of unopened boxes, a desk with a monitor on it, behind the last door was a tiny bathroom with just a sink and a toilet.

Making his way back into the sitting room he loosened his chest a little. The TV on the wall was cracked and there was a half-heeled shoe on the carpet without a foot. A couch cushion lay on the floor open.

He stalked into the kitchen and saw her lying on the floor, one shoe off. He swept to her side on one knee, his gun still in his hand as he felt for her pulse. It was weak but it was there. Her knight in shining armour breathing heavy over her, feeling nothing but burning in his chest.

His head got a little numb and he started to feel dizzy as he stood up. His tongue clacked dry, He pounded the side of his head with his balled palm around the butt of his gun. He opened and closed his eyes deliberately, as if his lids were glued together and he had to pull them apart.

He took a sharp snort of air and was straight again. His shoulders knotted up tight lifting the gun like his arms were on marionette strings. Wobbling slightly but long and straight and rigid. He took up his firing stance and paced through the kitchen trying to make as little noise as possible on the tiled floor.

There was a small alcove behind the breakfast bar adjacent to a set of two white wooden slated doors that probably lead into a small pantry. Con rounded the breakfast bar tightly, using his hand to toss himself around the sharp corner. He passed through alcove into a small carpeted anti-room. This room didn’t seem to have a purpose since it was too open and close to the kitchen to be a bedroom and too small to be another living room or sitting area. Despite that it had the same carpeting and the same type of ceiling fan with the daffodil shaped light fixtures. There was another alcove on his far left that fed back into the entry hallway, a door on the wall on his right which lead outside into the pool area. Another door in front adjacent to the pool was open at an angle.

He braced the ajar door and pushed it open with his empty hand, probing the stale air with the Glock. As the door opened he was in a small strangely angled smoking room with a large sixties style red stone fireplace. Against the back wall there was a beat up leather couch and a wood end table in front of the fireplace facing out. It looked out of place with the new coat of paint and the modern light fixtures running along the ceiling. There was a closed door on the right adjacent wall to the fireplace that probably lead out of the house functioning as a side entrance. The main focus was a strange door that jutted out into the centre of the room. The walls seemed to angle to meet it forming a trapezoidal shape taking up almost a quarter of the floor space. The door was so imposing it took all the focus off the bespoke fireplace and the entire room seemed to centre around it like it was a big flat screen TV.

Con glided over to the door, he gripped the knob and began to turn it, it was unlocked. He flung the door open and pressed against the doorjamb angling his gun through the opening.

It was black as pitch, a set of stairs faintly lit by the sunlight coming in from the window on the other side of the room. The stairs went down into a basement of some kind. Con craned his free hand around fumbling for a light switch. He got a nasty shock on an exposed wire and yanked his hand away like it was a rattlesnake bite. He fumbled around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his cell phone. There was no signal, they must have been too close to the mountains, he didn’t remember seeing a single landline throughout the whole house. With the gun lodged tight to his chest he held the cell phone out in front of him as his only source of light and started down the stairs.

~

 

 

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LYCE Chapter Chapter 8 ‘The Rabbit’

Running out of things to rant about, I guess I could rant about the nontroversy of the Trump tapes, as if that even matters, the news will report on anything these days it seems. I’m half expecting the next headline to be ‘TRUMP FARTS IN ELEVATOR’ ‘TRUMP LEAVES TOILET SEAT UP’ ‘TRUMP SEES MAN SNEEZE – DOESN’T SAY “BLESS YOU”‘. It’s kind of pathetic but there you go.

Almost finished this, it’s tough keeping it on the rails, my mind just wonders into the woods some times but I tried. I’m getting there, my work is becoming much more grounded as I put more time and effort into my research. Makes me hopeful for nano to see my progression but at the same time I’m thinking I should have done much more research for nano. But fuck it, I don’t really intend to win, I just think it’ll be good to switch off facebook for a month and do some solid work like I’m supposed to.
No fucking blogs, or twitter, or internet drama or trolling, any of that bullshit, just me and microsoft word and all the other shit I use.
It should be interesting, my first nano, I’ve got a blog share type thing coming up with a fairly famous zombie author, he’s more famous than me that makes him famous haha, John L Davis IV, so that should be interesting. I doubt he took the time to read my book but I picked up a copy of his and it’s pretty serviceable zombie fare.

Anyway back to the chapter at hand and yes, quite a few references to Lynch in here, a lot of twin peaks, a little wild at heart for some reason. I think it makes for a fun read, if anyone is reading it, my reviews seem to be getting more eyes on than any of my actual work for whatever reason that is. Ok well I’ll go kill myself then bye y’all haha.

Ok as usual you can find the full chapter for zero monies on inkitt by following this handy dandy linkamabob;

The Rabbit

Cheers!
~

The sign read ‘Twin Pines Lodge’ it was big and blue. The same colour blue adorned every door in the motel set into the cream colour walls. It was a common looking L shaped motel with the office closest to the street with a few adjoining rooms connected to it. Then you had the double packed rooms adjacent, facing out towards the street. There wasn’t a pine tree in sight. Just the large sycamores spaced out unevenly behind the back building.

The parking lot was nearly empty, there was a white minivan under a car port awning on the right of the entrance. And a white Toyota parked next to the office. He pulled into a space between the minivan and a big green dumpster that was facing out into street at an irregular angle. The dumpster was next to an oddly placed patch of grass that looked like someone’s front lawn. It was edged off by a black fence around the office of the neighbouring motel that had a nice little desert garden made up of cacti and orange rocks.

He got out of the car and looked around for a second with his hand cupped over his eyes. A curtain moved from one of the upstairs rooms. James felt exposed.

He walked slowly towards the small office building at the head of the fat snake. It was a tiny building partially hidden by some overgrown bushes. He entered and right of the bat got a trailer park feeling, the floor felt temporary, made of some sort of panelling covered in a carpet. There was no air-conditioning, just a big fan on the ceiling and one on the desk next to a nodding Chihuahua. He didn’t suspect the rooms had air conditioning either.

The room felt even smaller than it looked and even James not being of an advanced height felt it necessary to stoop. There wasn’t much to see, a beaten up couch that looked like it belonged in an airport waiting room. The carpet was blue, stained and pulled up at the edges, the owner probably had a dog. There was a small coffee table between the couch and a chair that didn’t match either the table nor the couch. A few tropical plants which also stooped.

There were a few framed pictures of what looked like stock photography of Caribbean islands, Barbados, maybe Jamaica. Some religious iconography above the desk, a picture of Jesus with the catholic heart and thorns. There was a crucifix next to it, just to make it doubly holy. The rest of the wall behind the desk was covered in framed plagues relating to some qualifications in motel owning and hospitality. Awards that looked like they’d been printed off the internet with the name; Howard Blum. An alcove behind the desk lead into the back where the owner probably lived. It didn’t have a door, just a set of those hanging beads that made a noise when you went through them.

James couldn’t put his finger on it but the room smelled stale, like the smell of rotting insect carcasses under a hundred-watt bulb. There was a bell on the desk, that on closer inspection actually looked like a doorbell that was taped to the counter, the wire running down the side. The desk itself was of some indistinguishable wood that was varnished to look like a hardwood. But it was patchy work and a lighter thinner wood showed underneath. Ringing the bell a second time he realised what the smell was. Taking a closer look at the nodding Chihuahua on the desk. He noticed it actually wasn’t nodding at all because in fact it was a real Chihuahua stuffed and mounted on the desk with a heavy looking ornate base. The plague read ‘Fido’.

He rang the bell again and listened, sounded like a TV was on in the back. He rang the bell again and heard a stirring, like someone waking up. He heard joints cracking, ankles creaked as they took on the weight of the body above them. A slow shuffling noise approached from the backroom.

A gaunt figure appeared mechanically and slow in the alcove. He parted the beads and entered as if he was coming out of an elaborate Swiss cuckoo clock. He was tall and thin but naturally stooped with age. He was wearing a string vest that really didn’t cover a lot up. His arms were sinewy and bare and there were visible tufts of white and grey chest hair sticking out of the places the old vest didn’t cover. His skin, wrinkled but looked as soft as a babies. His face was long and thin and looked like that of a sad horse with flecks of grey stubble and nose hair. He had full head of white hair sitting back on the top of his head. The style similar to that of Bob’s big boy, the mascot of the famous burger chain. A sort of fifties style swoop quiff. He was wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts and some fluffy pink slippers, hence the shuffling sound.

He shuffled behind the desk and cleared his throat.

“Err… this is going to sound strange- “James paused, suddenly flushed as he realised he hadn’t given any thought to what he was going to say. Or even what he hoped to find.

The old man’s eyelids fluttered as if he was dreaming and he lifted two weary grey eyes and pointed them at James with their bowed lids. “My dog barks some”.

James’ mind went completely blank as the old man stared at him “Err never mind, can you just give me a minute?”

“Mentally you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type dog which I have. Perhaps you might even picture Toto from the wizard of Oz” The man began to chuckle to himself. “But I can tell you my dog is always with me.” The old man said as he shuffled back to his room behind the alcove.

James went outside and paced some, he thought about lighting a cigarette but he remembered he didn’t have any. Come to think of it he’d given up years ago, so why that craving would come back now seemed odd. Maybe just something to do with his hand or a reason to be hanging around outside.

There was a small shooting pain behind his eyes. He put a palm against his eye and opened his mouth wide. Turning his head, he took a quick scan of the rooms to see if anything at all was familiar.

Every room looked identical moving across from the office, that same blue door. There was only one noticeable difference about the room on the end of the single story block. The door was ajar.

~

The Rabbit

 

 

 

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LCYE Chapter 7 ‘Sinnerman’

Hello hello, back again with another chapter of this trippy dippy attempt at a psychological thriller. I think its shaping up nicely. By that I mean spiralling out of control into a complete surreal David Lynch parody clusterfuck but atleast I’m having fun. It’s something to do. And since I’ve sort of run out of things to rant about and there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting going on that isn’t american presidential election related so I’ll just keep writing and throwing that at you. Not like you want to hear my unfetted opinion anyway, I’m pretty much talking to myself.

This blog has sort of become just an insane time captual of my gradual decline, like some stardate log on a doomed space vessel heading to the sun and possible alien rape.

It could be worse right, I could be the person taxed with keeping whatever Hillary Clinton is alive and fed with bugs and mice.

That being said… is a phrase that’s over used these days I noticed, that being said here is the chapter in question. Sinnerman named after the song of the same name, we get a little window into the psychology of the killer but not really. It’s a fun if cliche’d autopsy exposition scene. Done a million times in almost every crime show/movie but it never gets old. Hopefully I kept it fresh, if not, oh well.

As always you can read the full chapter and all subsequent chapters on my inkitt page for the one time offer of zero shekels down do not pass go do not collect three hundred rare Pepes #notallpepes.

Sinnerman

~

Con paced back and forth in his expensive suit at the side of the road. He shook his head as he hung it. Casting a weary glance at the big open plot of grassland at the side of the road.
He stumbled up onto the uneven grassy embankment to look out at the horizon. It was mid-morning and hot. The sun was pregnant in the sky, squatting on the California mountain range. He took a deep breath as and shook his head again. So much emptiness. There was only small wire fence running along the side of the road accompanied by the telephone poles running parallel. A large grain silo in the distance. He was surprised anyone lived here in all this emptiness. All that light brown grass all that fresh air, he stole away one wild west fantasy and let it go again.

After another few minutes of stamping his feet and licking his lips he walked across the street to the black Lincoln.

Harri was sitting on the hot hood with her sunglasses on, a pair of cheap truck stop aviators. Her arms folded as she put all her weight on her heels and her sensible half heeled shoes.

“Feelin’ better?” She called out.

“Sorry, just getting car sick.” He flashed her a winning smile on that handsome face and then dropped it again. “You ready?”.

“Sure” She gave her own conservative smile and peeled herself off the car.

Con walked bow legged towards the large flat building behind the parked Lincoln. Harri followed smiling and shaking her head.

The Riverside county coroner’s office was a large rectangular building. It was fairly modern looking in some respects, old in others. It was tan stucco all the way around sitting atop a large glass front that wrapped around the whole building making it look like an uneven wedding cake. The windows all looked black from the glare. Riverside County Sheriff’s Coroner embossed in big silver letters on the side of the building.

The surrounding greenery was well kept to a point. The grass had dry desert bald patches but that was to be expected. A few clusters of cypress trees were dotted around. Maybe to give the impression that this wasn’t the middle of nowhere and civilisation would greet you a few miles in either direction. Either side a great distance apart was a post office and what looked like a stationery store.

The entrance was another big rectangular box which jutted out in an awkward L shape. There was a strange red outcropping over the door. It looked like a red piece of prepacked cheese slice hanging from a sandwich at a jaunty angle. The whole building gave off an aura of flat-pack furniture.

Con waited for Harri at the door turning to shield his eyes and scrunch his face up, he looked pale and a little sickly. Harri brushed past him as she broke the seal on the door which made a sucking hissing sound that gave way to a cool blast of air conditioning. Thus completing the illusion of a walk in freezer.

Inside it was modern and simple. There was a small waiting area with a wooden table and matching furniture. A flustered middle age woman with an eighties haircut and blue blazer sat at a small light wood reception desk. A phone pressed tightly to her ear.

Harri did her usual bit as she liked to do. She strode up to the reception desk and flashed her laminate.

“FBI, you’re expecting us”

The flustered woman had no time to think and just nodded furiously and blurted out “Err room 3b, end of the hall”.

Harri smiled politely and quickstepped down the hall followed by a queasy looking Con squinting at the halogen lights.

It smelled like a hospital, but the smell of cleaning products was much stronger. As if the walls were soaked in it or there was bleach in the sprinkler system.

Harri marched down the narrow hallway, she could feel it getting colder. She knew that had to be a step in the right direction. The floors in the lobby were that locking wood flooring, now it was all clean squeaky linoleum like a hospital. The walls were all white with a few tasteful paintings and bulletins dotted about. Con plodded on behind her as she stalked the halls looking for 3b. She found it, it was a large stainless steel sliding door with a little porthole window at the side. She looked inside through the foggy window. She could see mounds of bodies wrapped up in see through plastic. They all looked like props in a scary movie lying on stainless steel shelves with raised lips.

“Oh you’re here” A shy perky voice behind her croaked out.

A small fat man in a lab coat peaked out from an office door on the other side of the hall. There was more of that pale wood lining the windows in the office and the writing surfaces. All the work surfaces were stainless steel.

“FBI right?” The small man said.

“Uh huh, Special agent Harriet Jaguer and this is my partner, Special Agent Con Folsome.” Con shambled along just as she introduced him. He looked a little better, the cold seemed to straighten out some of the wrinkles on his suit and his face. He was just in time for a vigorous handshake from a pair of very sweaty and inextricably hairy hands.

“Gary Dole, it’s good to meet you folks, don’t get many of you men in black fellas out here”.

The little man was bald and had the greying stubble of a plumber all over his face. A set of wire framed reading glasses resting atop his head. His face looked like someone had taken silly putty and put it on a boiled egg and frozen it. Squishy looking features that were left to set hard. A stubby nose and tight rounded lips on a small alert face.

Sinnerman

 

 

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LCYE Chapter 6 ‘Call from the past’

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

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

Call From the Past

Aurevoir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” James said.

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

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

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

The sound of running water.

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

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

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

It stung but he kept at it.

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

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

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

 

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Review of Black Gold by R A Sewell

Just got a lovely if a bit cunty haha review for Green Sunday so I thought, what with being a nepotistic shitlord I’d fire back and write a lovely review for the talented author and fellow traveller R A Sewell.

So thar she blows (that has literally nothing to do with the plot nor the quality of the work, I don’t know why I wrote that, probably because it’s a sort of nautical story but I can’t remove it now because I’ve written out this explanation, fuck it here’s the review).

I’m so sorry, I guess this rates my overall maturity level, as soon as I saw the captains name was James Woods, I instantly cast him as the actor James Woods and couldn’t stop thinking about videodrome (hence the odd title of my review).

Just had to get that out the way ha.

Now to the review.

I just read the first chapter so far and I thought the story was pretty good, I don’t usually like when stories get right into the action but this really actually catches you off guard. You almost feel exactly as I imagine the crew of the boat feel, caught completely with their trousers down.
It’s very pulp, with the femme fatal and the visceral violence, I really enjoyed the description of the gun fire and the use of sensory information. You could literally smell the bullets as they were fired and it added a whole new level to the description and put me right in the room.
Instantly it reminded me of a classic action movie from the mid-nineties like Die Hard three or something and that I really enjoyed, I loved that period of gritty, yet slightly campy/pulpy action movies.
The plot I found a little trouble with, not a lot is given to why this happening, I know right, der money but there are hints there that it’s something more with the mysterious tattoo. But I had to mark this a little lower just because I thought the plot was a little contrived, I liked what was happening but how could these terrorists/thieves/nebulous bad guys sneak up on this giant super tanker and take it over in a matter of moments?
Surely they have armed guards on a super tanker or radar or something they could use to detect pirates, it’s not like you really sneak up on someone in the indian ocean, least of all a giant super tanker named the ‘Goliath’, probably crewed by hundred of people, all not watching the horizon or any device that might tell them a ship full of heavily armed dudes is coming to rob them.
I do have faith though that this is probably elucidated on later in the plot but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t made clear that it was night time at the start of the chapter or listed on the date stamp. I’m sitting here imagining this is all happening mid-morning while they still have croissant crumbs on their shirts you know. Just a time stamp or just a little description of the night would go a long way to setting the scene and adding more plausibility to them being boarded like that without them having a clue.
I loved all the technical language in regard to the boat ‘stuff’, I didn’t understand any of it, but I’m sure somebody who knew anything about boats would, and that’s the point, it’s add something.
Frankly I don’t have much to say about the writing style and the grammar and punctuation, it’s very professional and very competent and it shows what I’m guessing is a lot of experience, so I can’t fault it in the slightest.
The only thing I feel like sticking to you for is fact you didn’t delete the ‘start writing here…’ bit. Schoolboy error mate haha.
I was reading the end thinking ‘Start writing here? they just got on a lifeboat, why are they writing, what?’ then I realised.
It’s not big deal, takes two seconds to fix, I just thought my being confounded at it for a few minutes was slightly amusing.

Overall I really liked it and I would read on and recommend it.

If you wanna read it you can check it out on inkitt by following this glowing title Black Gold.

Cheers.

3

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