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TOTCB Chapter 18 ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’

Bonjourno,

Well here we are with the final chapter of The One That Came Back raw and unedited cos I’m mean like that, if you want the lovely polished edited version you’ll have to sign up to my mailing list to get it winged to your inbox in a lovely digital with a cover and everything that I spent ages on ms paint making haha. I wish I was kidding.

Shit, I spent god knows how much money getting it edited only to give it away now I’m supposed to spend a small fortune on getting someone to do me a cover. I got lucky with the Ladies Close Your Eyes cover, I got someone from my comic book connections (when it was supposed to be a comic) to do it for free with a bit of cajoling and ass kissing.

So ms paint is all you’re getting, hey it’s the content that matters, all that thirty day nanowrimo content that kind of sucks but what do you expect it’s free? Nah it’s good, it’s not my best work to date, it’s rushed, it’s kind of raw, a little cheesy but overall I like it because it’s as close to the real life events as I could get it.

My main aim when writing it was to add an element of the supernatural and an element of mystery while keeping it as grounded and realistic as possible. A little like true detective, keep it gritty and real even a little boring to hit harder when it gets a little crazy.

I don’t really think I got the emotional weight I could have gotten or spent enough time making people like the characters but I wanted almost to treat it like a documentary and just present the characters as they are and you end up liking them or disliking them. 

I dunno, I kind of like that, I’ve been watching Battlestar gallactica recently and it’s hard to describe because the characters are really grounded and I find myself not really liking any of them but not hating them either. It’s weird, they just are. I’m not rooting for anyone but I still find it oddly compelling and interesting and I love spaceship cabin asmr noises in the background and the sort of claustrophobic feel. Because it’s basically about the majority of the human race being destroyed by evil robots they created and now they have to live in a nomadic convoy of space ships looking for a new home. I think it’s a great show, not usually a big fan of sci-fi, but it’s sort of so realistic it’s almost like watching a tv show aboard a naval ship a thousand years in the future.

It gives me that hit of starship troopers feels I didn’t get from the animated series. Because I recently read the starship troopers book and it’s written by a guy who spent time in the navy and he just wrote a book imagining a navy in the future with space travel and killer bugs and that’s how it reads. And it’s why I found the book super fucking boring haha.

It’s not a bad book, just nothing really happens in it, it’s just slice of life kind of crap but its only interesting because its a slice of a guy who kills bugs in a mech suit haha. But it just goes to show how perfect Paul Verhoeven was to direct the movie, he added the perfect tone to the movie, just enough campy silliness to make it fun and make the gorey fucked up moments hit harder. Because really there’s no other way it could have been done, it stretches credulity too much to be taken seriously so Verhoeven just took it to it’s natural ridiculous conclusion and it worked really well.
Obviously he was trying to parody a fascist space dictatorship but he just made it look really cool haha.

Updates updates, ok well 3 ring is coming along pretty well actually. I’m finding it really easy to write, just flows really naturally, I’m not sticking strictly to a word limit for the chapters like I usually do, so just letting them fall where they fall because I have a lot of content for this, no shitty word salad filler (I don’t do that).

I originally planned it to be like a sixty issue long comic series so I watched a buttload of kung fu and samurai movies as ‘research’ and I have ideas out of the ass. So I’m just gonna write this first maybe as a novelette and just see where it goes, end it where it feels natural. Maybe I could get it published in a magazine in an episodic format if it’s short and wraps up nicely.

Yeah I was surprised by how well it’s going to the point where I did something pretty clever that was kind of unintentional, but mostly I think it’ll be a fun read, I think I’ll do the next Diana book after this seeing where the wind blows. Maybe I’ll do Cur for nano if I do nano this year. I fucked up and was late last year and just failed by like a day haha.

Getting some good stuff for Cur, still not fully formed, reading more Witcher which I’m enjoying for the most part. It’s fun because it’s basically written almost as a fantasy noir, it’s very stark and gritty and not at all fanciful or verbose, it’s literally like if Richard Stark or Dashell Hammet said “Fuck it, I’m doing wizard shit now” haha. 

So it’s right up my alley but there’s no real story to the first book, it’s basically a collection of not really connected vignettes pastiching classic fairy tales like snow white and things like that. So I like it but there’s nothing in it that makes me want to get back into it. I kind of have to force myself to set time aside whereas when you read something like a Richard Stark Parker novel I can’t wait to find a minute just to see what Parker does next because I know it’s going to be fucked up, usually rape and child murder. Actually has he raped anyone? I don’t think so but he definitely killed a kid in one book haha. He is not a nice person.

But that’s one of the reason I love those books, because I spent so long reading noir detective novels to read one from the opposite side of the law was just so refreshing and every book in the series is just consistently good. It’s a lot like Dexter in that respect but a lot more stark and realistic. No dumb jokes about fruit or whatever haha. No I love Dexter but reading the books back, he is kind of a goof haha.

Anyway Jesus, I waffled a lot today. 

Shit I need to do some real work. I hope someone out there likes the ending and wants to read it in it’s final form until then you can read the raw copy with the link below and have yourself a peachy day.

See you…

Nobody’s baby now

~

A week later they had his funeral.

Porter came to watch people. He blended in, that’s what he did on most days. There was no guest list at a funeral and he knew Jack for a split second or two. Maybe he owed Jack a headache he’d pass on to the nearest relative, so he figured that made it sit right, for now atleast. Some of the heat had died down from the Bartlett case.

The imposter supposedly skipped town after he got bailed out by a family friend. Without him to interview the press had run out of blood to squeeze. He was the centre of it all and with him gone it all fell apart. Jack’s death made him the perfect scapegoat. For the fbi at least and any news source that didn’t make the imposter the focus of their stories. For anyone that could see past a desperate conman to the potential murk underneath. They’d seen enough and were willing to pin it on the junkie that killed himself.

So why was Porter still here?

The funeral didn’t go on too long.

It wasn’t overly dramatc, it wasn’t raining, no one cried. The priest said his part and they put him in the ground and threw dirt on him.

They buried him in Holy cross cemetary near Bracken because it was the closest to their house. It was just a field at the side of the road like so many others. But it had some privacy with the surrounding trees and the long chapel barring it from the road. It was a small and private.

When it was over he watched as what remained of his family walked to their cars. They were parked at the bottom of an embankment. A blonde haired kid that looked like Johnny should have looked at his age got in the drivers seat of the Lincoln. Peggy and her husband Brandon helped the mom, Angela into the passenger side. They were ready to set off when Porter worked his way up to them.

Peggy clocked him straight away and her irises shrunk to full stops or the dot at the end of an exclamation point.

“You remember me?”

“I remember you, you’re that detective right? The one who took Johnny for the interview.” She looked curious but cautious and hung on the edge of a car door, half in half out.

“What did your father do to you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did he touch you?”

She scoffed and started to get into the car, Brandon worked his way around the side and balled up a skinny fist. “I don’t have time for this”. She said as she began to sit down.

“I found him, it is him isn’t it? Buried in the backyard of your old house.” He said looking at Brandon shrink as he said it. All the strength drained out of skinny limbs.

Her face got long and her ears seemed to dip, her eyes looking around as if for somewhere to be sick.

“You get the hell out of here!” Brandon screeched coming up on Porter but stopped short to looking at him. Revealing the emptiness of his threat. Expecting Porter to look away or flinch but Porter looked straight back and said nothing. His eyes like steel ball bearings in his head.

“Stop” Peggy sighed.

Brandon stepped back and flopped around the side of the car and got in behind Peggy.

“Two minutes mom” She got out of the car and started to walk up the path flanked by gravetones. He was supposed to follow but he watched her go and then went to find her.

The cemetary wasn’t that big or old. It was just a patch of land in the middle of all that texas nothing. Dolled up to look like a tasteful oasis of trees and restful sleep. She was standing in the back under a large oak tree looking down.

He approached her slow, evidently she did have time for this.

“He was yours, Johnny?”

“I don’t know where you get an idea like that”, she said folding her arms indignant.

“I have my story, you have yours.” He lit a cigarette and waited.

“Let’s hear your story first.” She said cocking her head to the side and plucking the cigarrete from his mouth, taking a slow pull.

“I think he had his fun with you and you got pregnant and Jack found out and killed him for it.” He stood and waited for her anger, when it didn’t come he went on. “Then when Johnny was old enough he found out. Then he found what was buried in the garden, there was a fight and he had an accident.” Porter said checking off boxes in his head. Going back to the pack for another cigarette and lighting it like dejavu. Waiting for his pat on the back.

She got quiet and thought about it for a minute, like she was rearranging things in her head. He expected tears and bittereness and denials. She sat down at the base of the tree and stared up at him, squinting as the sun dipped in the sky.

“You heard that story before or did you come up with that on your own?” She breathed out and cocked her jaw like she was trying to cry or stop from crying. Just taking another long pull from the cigarette she felt entitled to. “He wasn’t a bad man, my daddy. He was just a drunk. He didn’t know better and I wanted a baby so bad.”

Porter walked to a gravestone and sat against it like a teenager cutting class. He started the tap running now, she’d go until she was spent.

“It was my fault. He was drunk. But I couldn’t tell Jack or my momma that” She took a puff from the cigarette and said “You know the rest, or close to it”. She said looking at him through lidded deep set eyes.

“Is that all?” He said flat.

She rubbed her chin with her hand the cigarette dangled from. Her eyes focusing on nothing in particular. They were shakey, getting heavy like clouds about to rain. She looked up and smiled and said “This really bugs you doesn’t it, not knowing?” She took another drag still smiling. Her eyes still shaking. “It kills you not knowing, not being there, not seeing it yourself, having to trust me and every other idiot you ask”. She was mad now but at whom she didn’t know.

He looked at her and smiled back. Focusing on little details, the stain on her collar, the yellowing of her teeth. The pitch of her voice, split ends. Anything to stop him from boiling over and breaking her nose with the flat of his shoe.

“Right now you’re thinking you can hurt me and make me tell you everything but you can’t. You know you can’t, not really and it wont make a difference anyway. I can’t tell you everything because I don’t know I can’t know.” She said it not looking at him. She looked off at the horizon like it was some grand epiphany. She knew she was getting under his skin, she wouldn’t be the first.

She smoked a little more and said “You know the funniest thing about all this.” She stopped to bite her fingernail and take another drago on the cigarrete. “Is that people think we took in a complete stranger to cover up Johnny’s death.” She stopped again to pull the cigarrette in her shaking hand. “-but in all that time, we were the only ones who gave a damn about him.” The water works started slow and built from there. Her voice shaking with cool anger and bitter tears. “When he disappeared it didn’t even make local news, because they knew how he was, we did too. He was like that Bart Simpson kid, always getting in trouble. Terrorizing the neighbhorhood.” She wiped her tears with the edge of her hand, the skin taught and pale. “They thought he’d turn up in a couple of days and the whole thing would have been nothing, but he didn’t”.

“What happened to your father?”

“I don’t need to tell you anything, you know why? Because if you had anything I’d be talk to the cops right now.” She was indignant now, her face wet. “And even that wouldn’t do any good since the only people that really know the truth won’t say a damn thing to anyone about it.” She swallowed, her throat burning, raw. “because one is my momma and the other is buried under our feet.” She stopped and shook her legs, to check they were still there. Her movements were light and fast like a moth under a lamp. “So you’re wasting your time, he took it to his grave and so will Momma.” She smiled but at what he couldn’t say.

“I can tell you one thing, I’m glad of whatever happened to that French piece of shit, you ever find him? That’s what I want to know.” She shook her head and put her hand on her hip and looked like a cartoon character for a second.

“I looked” Porter breathed in, sealing his lips tight.

“What did you find?” She asked wistfull, suddenly not interested in the answer.

“Blood and feathers.” He said.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” She looked up at him scrunching up her brow, her temper fraying.

“Doesn’t it?”

“No it doesn’t, not a god damn bit”. She spat.

“He had a place, Jack. Way out in the boonies, a little trapper shack.” He finished his cigarette and flicked it.

“So? What does it mean to me?” She folded her arms again, getting catty.

“Blood and feathers.”

Peggy grimaced and turned away. She staggered to her feet and began to dust herself off.

“Well if that’s everything, I think I’ll be on my way.”

“Is that good enough for you?” There was a challenge in Porter’s voice but his eyes stayed fixed on the gravestone. As if the challenge was open to all takers.

“It’s enough for me. I can live with not knowing, it’s the only way. But this isn’t about me, and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think I see that itch you got.” She smiled cockily at the back of his head and hiked her purse up.

She started to walk away and turned her head to watch him as she walked. Shouting back to him “Is it enough for you?”

Porter didn’t turn around to look at her and she just carried on down the path and got in the car and drove away.

0

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.

0

TOTCB Chapter 7 ‘Sorrows Child’

Bonjourno people,

With the launch of my first book (officially) around the corner, let’s take the time to look at this other, less good book I wrote over nanowrimo which I curse to this very day for making me rush this could have been master piece haha. Nah I don’t really care, it got my word count out of the dirt. My rate now is up to where I can write a full novel in like two months give or take proofing and what not and that’s with days off to market my old stuff so it’s cool. It was a good excercise for my mind. Got me out of that devil may care attitude, it was a kick in the butt I needed. But never again haha.

But who knows, after the edit, it might be bareable and Brian my publisher might like it and it could make money someday, but for now it shall be free for the people.

That’s pretty much it, only update I really have is I suck at gwent online haha.

As usual, the link is below, and an excerpt.

See you..

Sorrows Child

~

The party had waned, people with full bellies and rosey cheeks rolled out to their cars and trucks. Peggy waved them off. Johnny said he was tired and locked himself in his room for the rest of the day.

Peggy was about to call it and get an early night with some true crime shows and a cup of hot tea when the phone rang. Which was strange since pretty much everyone she knew was either here on their way out or were on their way home.

She answered the phone with a curt “Yes”.

“Hello, is this Peggy Carson?” A woman on the other end said.

“That’s me”

“This is special agent Nancy Jageur of the federal bureau of investigations. I was wondering why you hadn’t brought Johnny in for a formal interview yet. It’s been almost two weeks now since he arrived isn’t that right?”

“Yeah well we just wanted to get him settled before we got into all that, you know?” Peggy seemed nervous she put the phone in the crux of her neck and fiddled with her wedding ring.

“I understand but I have an investigation to follow up on and the longer we wait the colder the trail will get. I’ll need you to meet me as soon as possible”

“Ok, I can do that”

“I’ve organised a room for us at the San Antonio missing children’s centre. How’s Monday afternoon for you?” Nancy said idly as if she was booking a nail appointment.

“Err, yeah, Monday is good, we’ll bring him in then”

“That’s great, I’ll see you then”.

“Bye” Peggy said as she clumsily hung up the phone, her nerves were a little shot maybe she drank too much. It was time for bed at least.

–

As soon as Nancy put down the phone Con looked up from the report he was reading and said “So?”

“Monday”

“Monday?”

“I said Monday” Nancy smiled.

“You’re excited?”

“Anxious” She said as she looked at the colour Photostat picture of Johnny. The san Antonio missing children’s centre had sent it over. He was a good looking blonde haired blue eyed kid no more than thirteen years of age.

Con and Nancy had been set up in a small back office in the Bureau’s San Antonio field office. It was a simple and old looking room with white corkboard walls. Halogen ceiling lights blaring day and night. A paltry ceiling fan that did next to nothing. The desks were brown chipboard like the ones you’d get in a community college classroom. Still there were free donuts and the coffee wasn’t half bad. Lots of Mexican style pastries.

“Did she say why she didn’t call as soon as they had him?”

“Something like that” Nancy rocked back and forth in her swivel chair. Tossing thoughts in her head like bales of hay.

“What is it?”

“I dunno, there’s just something off about her, she seemed really nervous.” Her voice got distant as she reached for a blank white coffee cup on her desk.

“But she’s not the one coming in for an interview, it’s the kid. Maybe she just doesn’t like cops”.

“We’re not cops” Nancy smiled and turned her head sideways.

“Yeah but you sound like one” Con gave a sharky grin.

Nancy chupsed and squinted.

Con snorted.

She reached into the pink pastry box on her desk and threw a chirro at him that he deftly dodged laughing.

–

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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

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Ghost Garbage fire go!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still I give it two raspberries out of five.

 

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It hurts when I Brex-sit

Hello human people!
That’s right all you un-human people can fuck right off! Yeah! I don’t know where I was going with that.
Anyway what’s up? Oh right the title and the meme, yeah about that.
In case you haven’t heard my little island decided to end its participation the seventeen yearlong experiment known as the ‘European Union’.
Now the meme might give you some sign of what side I was on in said occurrence, but you’d be wrong. Although I was leaning towards leave because of the information I’d received from family and friends and other such sources like the internet of all places, I actually didn’t vote.
I just didn’t feel like I had enough knowledge to vote either way for the future of my country and rather than being a little bitch and voting to remain, I decided to just let the chips fall as they may.
And I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised. Not just to see that my country actually grew a set of balls overnight and voted for their own sovereignty ending their servitude to an un-elected un-democratic political body but to see all the butthurt statuses of my remain friends on facebook. That shit was too funny.
I mean the depths of salt, it was incredible. I saw discussions where people were literally saying that democracy was a problem. That people having the right to govern themselves is the problem. These people would rather suck up to an un-elected political cartel than accept the will of the actual people that live in the country.
The meme pretty much covers the basics of their arguments against the leave people. ‘Leave people are racist because I say so, old people are stupid because they don’t agree with me.’
Ok first point, to boil leaving the EU down to a race debate is so reductive it’s silly to even debate, it’s so selective it can only be used to beat people over the head with when you don’t have an actual argument against leaving. Who exactly are the leave people racist against? Muslims? Islam isn’t a race. Arabs? Arabs are an ethnic sub-category of Caucasian so in fact the same race as the leave voters.
But we’ve been seeing this tactic employed all over the place after Donald Trump, calling someone a ‘racist’ is really meaningless. I had an argument with someone once who claimed calling someone a racist was just a colloquialism as in it didn’t mean what it actually meant and thus the context and effect of that label didn’t matter. Can you imagine if someone publicly called you a paedophile and made that same argument claiming they intended it to mean someone who has a fondness for children?
Anyone can clearly see it’s just a silencing/shaming tactic bait and switch. You call someone a racist dragging along the full weight of that accusation and then when someone challenges you to explain why they just their shoulders and probably call you a racist.
Ok so old people are stupid and shouldn’t be allowed to vote if they disagree with me was something people genuinely said to me because older people made up the biggest block of leave voters. The people who remember what it was like before the eu and can see what it’s like after don’t have the right to vote to take their country back?
The argument being that it’s not their future because they’re going to be dead soon or something equally as moronic. The salt levels, I mean I get if someone isn’t mentally fit, but who decides when someone is too old to vote?

Children can’t vote for obvious reasons; we actually don’t want the guy with the welly on his head to win. But to say old people who worked all their lives for this country don’t have the right to decide its fate is ludicrous. It’s true it’s not their future but they have the wisdom and experience to decide what’s in the best interest of the seventeen year old morons saying old people shouldn’t be allowed to vote because if they had their vote the streets would be paved with fucking gummy bears and the taps would run with redbull or something.
I know the vote was pretty close and people as we speak are trying to institute a second referendum and our government is very pro-eu because they all want to retire to those cushy six figure eu jobs when they leave parliament and their home country bruised and bloody. So it might be overturned purely because they’ll keep bringing it up until people vote in their favour, democracy right.

Because when you lose at bingo you just put a gun to the person spinning that ball thing’s head and tell them to draw again til all your numbers come up and you don’t have to shout bingo as you spray his/her brains over a row of single mothers just looking for an outlet.
Although the petition I saw for a second referendum turned out to be a scam or a 4chan prank because most of the millions of votes came from Vatican city and korea.
The triggering, it’s real, people on my feed are so butthurt, for a person who loves chaos like this, a fan of schadenfreude such as myself, this is glorious. I saw no real reason to stay in the eu other than the racist rhetoric and some sketchy stuff about jobs and maybe some warm and fuzzy ideas about staying ‘fwuends’ with the rest of Europe while they legislate on what kind of toothpaste we can use. Europe are our friends true, but they’re the type of friend that steals from you and puts up post-it’s all over the house telling you how hard you can flush the toilet to save on water.
I have nothing else really to say about it, I just saw this and I thought I would publicly revel in other people’s discontent because that’s just the sort of shitlord I am ha-ha. But I gotta say, for the first time I feel some sort of national pride it’s a strange new sensation.

And for the people on the remain side, in the immortal words of the philosopher known as Papa Franku; “I gotta little bit of that anal cream for your asshole”.

See ya around.

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