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Chapter 6 Smooth Sailing (Raw)

Apologies for the people that follow this blog religiously (all 2 of you I imagine) my ‘internet girlfriend’ came to visit me over christmas (Yeah I met her online and that makes me a loser but I’m getting laid over christmas so fuck you buddy) so I’ve been busy living life like a fucking happy douche in between episodes of Jessica Jones. So I haven’t had time to dream up any misanthropic rants or do anything really creatively destructive, so I thought I’d just post another raw chapter of my fun zombie novel while the next chapter is being edited.
I hope you enjoy this excerpt of the sixth chapter of Green Sunday and as always you can check out the full chapter and the other chapters on inkitt http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/6
Roy held the camera low trying to be discreet. Creating a shaky cam low shot of TJ’s front door. A doorbell ringing sound; a cool morning mist starting to creep up on them.

“Who’s there?” TJ’s mom said from an upstairs window, the camera panned to the window as she leaned out in her yoga gear.

“Oh hey Mr’s Kincaid, a lovely morning am I right?” Zed said with a tinny laugh at the end like he was selling Jehova.

“Oh you’re those nice neighbour boys. TJ’s not home right now, he’s out getting milk; he can’t come out to play.”

“Err, yeah, you see… TJ kinda said we could come and borrow some of his stuff for our show, for the internet”. Roy stumbled over his words, his frantic nerves stripping all charm from his voice.

“Oh well he didn’t say anything to me about it. But I suppose since you only live next door, and it’s for the internet you said?” Tjs mom ditzilly mused on what that might mean as she leant out the window.

“Err yeah” Roy said a tired indifference climbing into his voice as he realised he’d been up all night. Was he holding up the camera or was it holding him up?

“The door’s open, his room is at the top of the stairs, Hows your mother doing Teddy? You boys want some green tea and rice cakes?”

“Err no, we’re good, thanks, she’s fine” Zed said, surprised how easy that was.

A brief cut and it was a shot of TJ’s stairs as they climbed up towards his room. All we could see was a POV shot of the back of Zed’s legs as he went up the stairs followed by Roy.

Zed stopped on the stairs and turned to Roy with an odd smile on his face, the camera uncomfortably close to his face.

“Dude why’d you stop?” Roy said behind the camera.

“How much you wanna bet the fat fuck’s a bronnie?” Zed sniggered childishly forgetting the blood under his fingernails.

Another brief cut and we’re elbow deep in TJ’s draws “Where the fuck is it?”.

“Dude I found it” The camera panned impatiently to Zed who stood in front of the closet smirking.

“Friendship is fucking magic” Zed chortled as he spoke. Holding open the closet. Parting the clothes, Zed revealed a secret my little pony poster on the back of the wardrobe. “I fucking knew it”.

“Yeah that’s great, the dude’s a fucking faggot who wants to fuck a horse. Can we get back to finding the weapons now, so you know, we can fucking live through the night?” Roy snapped, gripping the camera harder, audibly creaking.  He span the camera around and it fell on the red toy box at the bottom of TJ’s bed. “Here we go”.

“Yeah I’m betting porn and an inflatable pony”. Zed chuckled in the background as Roy lay the camera down on TJ’s bed. From the angle of the bed we could see Roy kneeling in front of the box. Zed going through his action figures and miscellaneous cosplay, giggling fecklessly in the background.

Roy opened the box looking under the hood “Look at this shit, fucking mall crap, gotta bag this shit up”.

“Then what?” Zed said, some ice closing in on his voice.

“We gotta deal with Gil, if he’s bit, we gotta cut his head off, that bitch too, just to make sure.”

“I don’t know-“

“It’s fucked. It’s so different from how I thought it would be”. Roy sighed as he started to pack the weapons into a naruto duffel bag “Fucking otaku pussy”.

He put his hand on his knee and eased himself off the ground.

Zed sighed, the character he created had crumbled and he felt like a kid. His skin sticky and dry from where he washed off Christie’s blood. “I don’t know if I can do it”.

Roy fumbled the camera as he picked it up the bed and turned it off.

Another cut, the camera seemed to be resting on the edge of a sink, turned on by mistake as if placed there in a hurry.

Scuffling sounds, sounds of muffled whimpering. The camera was out of focus, a blurred figure came in and snatched up the camera. Fumbling sounds of plastic creaking. It was still held low around waist height, there was nothing to see just yet.

“You’ve got to do it”

“Why do I have to do it”

“Because I’m holding the camera” Roy said, a cold smile in his voice as he spoke what he knew was the truth.

Roy raised the camera like a shield in front of his face to put the spotlight on Zed’s pale and drawn face. He sat on the bed in his room, he knew it had to be him. His swallowed hard. Took TJ’s crappy mall sword in both his hands and unsheathed it a little to check it didn’t stick. He hesitated a little “Oh fuck it” he said as he unsheathed the sword all the way. He threw the cheap scabbard across the room and held the handle like it was a machete. The sword wasn’t quite a katana, it was one of those cheap ninja swords with a straight blade and no guard. He grabbed at his knee a little and rose with a jerky jolt of energy and began to march out of his room. Roy struggling to follow him out into the hall.

“Wait up dude”

They got to the inner door of the garage and Zed stood sullen with his hand on the doorknob.

“I thought he locked himself in?”

“He did, but I’ll try the door and then we can go around the front and open the garage door. He might be ok, garage door makes a lot of noise” Zed said, a little steel clacked in his voice.

“Yeah, best episode of zombie stump fuckers yet”.

Zed sneered and a sickly smirked passed over his face. He swallowed hard again and twisted the nob and the door popped opened a crack, with a an uneasy jerk. Zed froze. He stopped breathing and then breathed out. Then in again with a low shallow silent breath.

He began to open the door wider inch by inch, praying for it not to creak. it did, he took a deep breath and almost launched himself into the garage. Roy followed him three or four seconds behind. The camera fell on zed as he swung the sword awkwardly. Nerves and adrenaline making the sword shake in his hands. Creating an annoying rattling sound.

“What the fuck?” Roy said as he panned the camera up with a tense close up on the garage lined with black bin bags. He zoomed out and saw nothing but Zed in his uneven warrior stance, a small pool of congealed blood on the floor. “Where’d he go?”

Just at that moment a clichéd woman’s scream rang out and they both knew where he was.

“Mom?” Zed’s voice broke a he spoke, the sword shaking in his loose grip.

The camera cut again, he must have pressed the button by mistake. He saw that it was on and picked it up with one hand. His grip loose and shaking, Roy breathed in, his breath ragged and forced.

“It didn’t go well, err, he, err, well it’s fucked. It got bit, I took it off”. His voice was quiet and his words fell over each other in a lightheaded daze. The camera jerked to his arm which was missing from the elbow, hacked off unevenly by a blunt knife. “I did it myself with one of those turkey carvers. I think it turned out ok, well I guess if anyone finds this tape I err, oh fuck it-“

The video ended and TJ took the view finder away from his eye and felt naked. Like he was watching a movie and now he he’d woken up on set. All the monsters sleeping in the next room for another big day.

He paused and put the camera down on the side table in the hall. A shiver ran up his spine and he licked his lips swallowing a little warm bile. He inhaled through his nose and began to sheepishly move around and check the lower level of the house. Everything seemed still, the lounge was empty. A little lived in but otherwise normal. A big tv on the wall, a leather couch, pretty minimalist, glass and wood coffee table.

The dining room looked unused, a slight film of dust on everything and the room was cold. The room was sealed off with flimsy glass and wood doors that looked like they’d make a noise if he opened them. So he didn’t. He moved on towards the kitchen.

The kitchen was a different story. The back door was wide open and the wind banged the door ominously like an old horror movie. The wind was cool, the day was getting a little brighter. A warm light coming in from the east, touching the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It stretched over the semi-dry blood stains and turned them a noxious orange colour.

TJ followed the blood, cold fingers crawling up his spine. He saw the turkey carver Roy mentioned placed neatly on the counter. Bits of ragged flesh still clinging to the flimsy blade.

He approached it slow, picking it up like it was a strange artefact from a day time tv show. He looked it over and thought about it, he swallowed hard and depressed the button. It jolted into life making a vicious whirring sound. TJ jumped out of his skin and pulled the plug out of the wall. He tossed it back onto the counter and edged out of the kitchen.

In the hall again he heard movement upstairs. Feet creaking a wood floor. Slow then quick thudding footsteps. An odd scraping metal sound that went right through him like nails on a chalk board. Then the pressure came off the floor boards with a slight inflection and TJ’s heart stopped in the hall. A crash of glass rang out like in an old 1940’s monster movie and the sounds stopped. TJ paused a good five minutes keeping his breath shallow to make sure the sounds stopped. Then exhaled as soon as the coast seemed clear.

Since he hadn’t found any of his weapons and the turkey carver didn’t turn out that well. TJ knew his only option was to investigate the next level. That or take his chances with found garden implements and ramshackle sportswear. No, he’d prepared too long to have all his shit taken at the last minute and it be for nothing. All those mowed lawns and all those chores for were going to mean something. He was going to get it back and put his personal apocalypse back on track. It hadn’t gone to plan so far but it wasn’t over just yet.

He took the first step on the flight of stairs. And of course it made a tremulous creaking sound. One which forced TJ to tense his sphincter like he was trying to create nuclear fusion in his underwear. He stopped to make sure he hadn’t created any dark matter. When he was sure nothing was reacting to the noise he took another step. And then another and then another and he thought he was getting the hang of it. He reached the top and looked back and got a little dizzy, braced himself against the wall. He put his hand against the dry wall and felt something slimy. He put his hand out and he could see it was blood and there was a trail on the wall he hadn’t noticed leading up the stairs.

TJ held his breathe again. He was becoming accustomed to the sight of blood now but this was different. This was still warm.

~

 

Green Sunday Chapter 5 Little man, what now? (Raw)

I’m having the second chapter of this edited as we speak so I should be releasing that shortly, been falling behind recently on actually writing it because of you know what 4 so I’ve almost run out of content from this book to post, ‘almost’.
Let me know what you think and as always you can check out the full chapter here http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/5.

~

“MOOOOOOMMMMMM!?!?” Tj screamed frustration and a hopeless terror filling the emptiness in his chest. He heard the shower turning off and waited a few seconds, breathing restlessly through his mouth, his throat burning, child tears queuing at the corners of his eyes.

“WHAT?” He heard as the bathroom door opened.

“WHERE’S MY STUFF???” He shouted to stop from bursting into a tearful downward spiral of self loathing and impending doom, inflated his chest to keep his lungs from collapsing.

“YOUR LITTLE FRIEND FROM NEXT DOOR CAME OVER WHEN YOU LEFT, HE SAID; YOU SAID HE COULD BORROW SOMETHING FROM YOUR ROOM, IS EVERYTHING OK?” Her voice trailed off at the end and Tj felt pricks of looming dread on the back of his neck.

“YEAH MOM, JUST STAY INSIDE, I’M GOING NEXT DOOR!”

“OK”.

He picked himself off his bedroom floor, he felt like throwing up, his legs were hollow and he struggled to stand, but he had no choice. He swallowed hard and put his hand on the knob of his bedroom door, he closed his eyes and whispered a pathetic prayer to himself to any god that would listen and when he opened his eyes he was outside the door of his neighbour’s house.

Their house was almost identical, they were built at the same time but apparently everything was the opposite way around, Tj had never been there before because his neighbours were massive douchebags and he had hated them since childhood when they would pour lemonade on his head and roll him in the sand pit. He got a really good look at the interior purely because the door swung wide open as he put his hand on the knob.

The hallway was a crime scene, pictures smashed on the floor, furniture looking off kilter, shoes tossed aside, small drops and telling trails of blood. It looked staged, fake, like the set of some cheesy rural crime drama.

He stepped in through the door frame gingerly trying not to touch anything or make a sound but instantly his visions of a silent entry were broken by the distinct sound of glass crunching under the rubber soul of a dora the explorer slipper. Why he didn’t change into some more practical shoes he wondered to himself, but his reflection was distracted by a flashing battery light shining through a bloody shirt.

He pinched the corner of the shirt bending at the knee awkwardly leaning over a turned over wardrobe at the bottom of the stairs, he pulled the damp shirt towards him and it drew across the device with a slow stickyness, the damp blood throwing up a musty copper smell as he pulled it closer to him.

He pulled the shirt all the way off revealing a small digital handycam, the same one they used in the backyard to record their show. He picked it up gracefully by the handle strap and turned it around to look at the viewfinder.

~

Thanks for reading, don’t forget to check out the rest of the chapter and the previous chapters at http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Sunday Chapter 4 Everyday is like Sunday (Raw)

Another excerpt from the next chapter of Green sunday. I’m losing a lot of hours in the day, still under the power armoured boot of fallout 4 and this new workout is really killing me so I didn’t have much time to do anything else today but copy and paste this excerpt. Well I hope you like it and as always if you want to read the rest of the chapter you by going on inkitt http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/4

~
On the edge of town, halogen lights burned cold with a tinny buzzing sound that was both soothing and nauseating with a hangover.  Early morning was shaking its head and wondering what happened, it was dark, the air was thick and electrifying. A gas station sign flickered on and off, it was empty, a dead time, the cold concrete forecourt stood bare and desolate and dirty and drab, cricket sounds etcetera etcetera.

The stale, sterile light inside the gas station, lit everything up with an off colour sickly blue tint. It was just a small town gas station like you’d see in any crappy slasher movie. A one story affair with minimart inside stocked with all the essential corn and meat based snacks and energy drinks that turned your piss green and soupy.

“Daryl! You better not be sleeping again, anyone else steals any gas I’m gonna take it out of your ass!” A booming cigar scarred voice came from somewhere in the back, through the thin corkboard walls of the gas station. A young man with his feet up on the counter slid the magazine covering his face off one eye and opened it casually, before fixing his chair to the upright position and surreptitiously letting the magazine fall into his half cupped hands giving an ever so effortless yawn.

“Shut up you old fuck, I’m still living, nobody out here” He said in a semi raised voice which he then quickly lowered to address himself “Gotta be four in the morning, no one needs gas in this goddamn town no more, everyone driving those piece of shit rollerskate cars they got”.

Daryl rearranged himself in his seat and got as comfortable as he could get with his eyes open, reclining only slightly. Pausing to look around and take a whiff of the cool night air cut with the smell of disinfectant on top of latent smells of puke and piss with a definitive lingering scent of really cheap booze that would burn your gut worse than drinking straight from the gas pump. But it was probably cheaper to drink from the bottle.

He took a second and resigned himself to the fact nothing was going on and the roads were dead and dark and he rationalized a resting of the eyes. Gradually letting his heavy lids close and become hazy. Taking last winking glances at the transparent glass doors of the minimart entrance. Just as he hit the point of no return with his dozing the doors parted soundlessly and then closed again quickly giving him pause to whether he really saw anything.

His eyes opened and rolled to the attention position as if waking from a coma, he could have sworn he saw someone come in. He strained to hear, slight padding damp noises, a stray wondering off the street drawn by the smell of stale complex carbohydrates.

He straightened up into his seat and stepped back into his body he was on the cusp of drifting off from and looked around. “Err can I help you?”

A rustling sound, cans rattling; instant foreboding crossing the brow beneath his trucker cap, a dry damp grease formed where he rested the magazine while he was sleeping and sweat rolls off it now as he feels the urgency of being alone. “Hello?”

Sounds of gumming and biting, ripping, crinkling, a dog for sure, he curved around the counter picking up a tire thumping bat from under his seat. Walking briskly full of action around the front of the counter until reaching the door at which point all his nervous energy left him with a cough and he became lifeless and limp trying desperately to hold the bat firmly in a clammy palm, dangling by his side like a twig.

“Who’s there?” Daryll called out like all those other clichés in the movies, and he cursed himself for falling into that trap but a new sudden fear of the unknown twisted in his guts now and he felt compelled to ask.

A scuttling sound of bare feet on linoleum, sent a cold shiver up his spine and a dry gob of spittle down his throat, the noise got deeper in the back of the store and he felt his feet dragging him listlessly in the direction of the sound, the bat swinging at his shins languidly.

“Hello” He called out again groping at the wet walls of his sanity trying to come up with any number of reasonable conclusions to this event; a dog, a cat, a racoon, a crazy homeless guy, a drunk chick, some hungry pothead or all of the above.

He turned the snack isle slowly, which was oddly paired with feminine hygiene products. He rested his shaking hand on the side of the metal shelves and forced himself to look around it from where the noise emanated. His body felt numb and pulses of adrenaline coursed through his brain and sent shocks all the way down to his fingertips.

Hunched over a small mound of assorted snacks and raw or semi-raw meat products, he saw the naked back of what appeared to be a child. His skin looked cold and drawn and wet, like a fish or a lizard almost. He was so pale he looked almost blue and he hunched over the food making soft sopping gnashing sounds.

“Hey! What’s going on here, you’re gonna pay for all that” Darryl said beginning to trail off at the end as some of his strength came back briefly, breathing in, pumping up his chest and breathing it all out again.

The child almost without turning lurched at Daryll, who with a sudden surge of nervous strength kicked him to the ground again dropping his bat with the feral rush of energy. The child staggered back and twitched frantically on the ground, his mouth frothing with a pink and red substance that came from all the openings on his face, deep red veins rising up on his cheeks and forehead. His teeth exposed, with the look as if they’d been cut on bone or razor wire, his eyes rolled back and forth in his head, cheetos crumbs stuck with blood to his fingers as they scratched at the linoleum floor trying for some traction like a beetle knocked on its back.

~

Thanks for reading and again if you want to read more you can at the following link;
http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters

 

Green Sunday Chapter 3 Step right up (Raw)

Yeah you got me, too fucking busy playing Fallout 4 to do a proper blog so I just copied and pasted a chapter from my zombie novel, but come on, this game is like fucking crack, it’s better than just completely dropping off the grid like Jessie Ventura.

“I despise your killing, and raping”
“You’re… despicable”

“Are you, my judge?”

“It’s just… you should be punished”
“I’m going to chop off your arm, so are you ready?”

TJ sat on his bed half watching a kung fu movie he had on in the background, trying to learn kung fu from osmosis. He polished his sword, checking for minor imperfections left by the douche in the knife shop, before wiping it off. He lovingly slid it back in the sheathe placing it gently in a red trunk at the bottom of his bed.

TJ’s bedroom was the standard unashamed man-child room every man secretly desired but had taken away from them at some point by age or shame or usually a woman. TJ seemed immune to all; happy to like the things he’d loved all his life with only a slight sour tinge of regret rolling around on his tongue before he swallowed it down with some mountain dew.

His room was a fairly boxy affair in a reasonably sized two story house. He chose the room when he was a kid because it had one of those cool sloping roofs that had what was like a little skylight window that let in all the moonlight. And he could put posters on it too.

Movie and anime posters adorned the walls in no particular order from Dragonball z pride of place above his tv and ps4 to Cowboy Bebop over his bed the one where Faye Valentine had her ass facing out in those little yellow hot pants. Full Metal Alchemist brotherhood, Samurai Champloo and Attack on Titan and Berserk, his door hiding a slightly cute pink Elfen Lied calendar that was way out of date. He had a really cool Gantz wall hanging on the wall behind his desktop monitor that his mother sneered at, the tight black uniforms she thought looked sort of ‘bondagey’ she commented once. To which TJ, reddened of cheek quickly informed her that it wasn’t the case and it was his room and she should always knock before entering.

Then you had the various zombie related paraphernalia; you had your walking dead shirts and cap, Evil dead bobble heads, which made various chainsaw noises and spouted the relevant catchphrases when tapped. Original Night of the living dead and Dawn of the dead posters both signed by the Tom Savini, a return of the living dead tarman ‘action figure’, return of the living dead 3 playing cards, Shaun of the dead airfreshener, zombies on a plane travel sweets… you get the picture; ‘nerd likes zombies trope’.

His real pride and joy lay dormant in the red trunk, an assorted collection of crappy fantasy knives and cheap knock off kung fu weapons he picked up at various flea markets and gun shows that rolled through town. He didn’t really get much of an allowance to splash out on any one piece, or even a reasonably priced but painfully drab cold steel machete. And the thought of working some nine to five job just seemed antithetical in a world that he believed would be all teeth and rotten flesh by the end of the year.

So he just picked up what he liked the look of, not really knowing what he wanted or what he wanted them for. They were all basically tacky wall hangers, despite that his mother wouldn’t let him hang on his wall because they made him look like a ‘weirdo’. There they remained in that box or under his bed, ready to be viewed with a satisfied smile as soon as he looked inside his little man-crate full of toys. When he closed it he felt a little hollow thud inside and instantly felt maudlin, he stared at the bluing sky as night crawled out of the caves and crags to blanket the sky.

TJ’s house was in a fairly secluded part of town. The town itself was rural and mountainous, a small town lined by high trees and cliffs with a whole lot of nothing in between, think Twin Peaks meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nightmarish small town America in all its horrible banality and tremulous quiet beauty only ruined by its noisy stereotypical inhabitants.

He took to starring off into the trees, trying to imagine hordes of his dead facebook friends tearing through the undergrowth and him savagely cutting after them, sword flashing above his head like a hun on heat. Then he really started to think about them, their frozen stock photo faces, twisted and rotten coming at him through the trees and it was real for a second and he wanted nothing more than to buy a big gun and hide under his window drinking and peeing in the same bottle waterworld style for fear of moving. It came in waves and he settled back into his fantasy comfortable in the thought of its unlikely occurrence but also wanting nothing more than having his mundane existence upended by throngs of the flesh nibbling inclined.

Well what little life there was, he thought to himself as he stared off into those dark esoteric woods, if only they’d come then he could be who he truly wanted to be.

~

As always you can find the full chapter on inkitt by following this link http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/3

Thanks for checking it out.

Green Sunday Chapter 2 This Charming man (Unedited)

This is the second chapter of my romzomcom novel work in progress Green Sunday, it’s currently in the process of being professionally edited but in the mean time I thought it would be fun to post an excerpt from the raw manuscript.
I just posted this as an excerpt because the whole chapter is about four thousand words long, which is just way too long for a blog. So if you want to read the rest you can on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday

An old TV sitting on a greasy looking shelf played in the background in a local greasy spoon diner on the edge of town. Accompanied by the sounds of knives and forks sword fighting and people taking value deluxe bites out of reasonably priced burgers and washing them down with complimentary milkshakes.

“The Pudgiwara corporation said they were sorry for dumping the one thousand tonnes of toxic waste in the bay and they said they’d never do it again” The news anchor furrowed his brow sincerely before quickly moving on to the next segment “In other local news a young boy of fourteen was arrested after a prank backfired outside his suburban home. The boy; who is yet to be named for legal reasons, was tricked by his friends into believing that another biological outbreak like the one in Arkham, Louisiana was occurring. Police state the boys wore make-up and ragged clothing and pretended to be the undead. The boy fearing for his life retrieved his 22. Calibre rifle he received for his third birthday and slaughtered them all in his back yard”

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Incongruous laughter broke out and it seemed like all the knife and fork sword fights ended abruptly but the laughter went on regardless as the story played out in between mouthfuls of raw hamburger meat.

“The fourteen year old boy, then fearing for the fate of his family, went into his suburban home and strangled his entire family to death with a draught excluder”

“Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha!” A dirty hand, topped with dirty chipped nails scooped up a clod of hamburger meat from a bowl as he laughed.

“What’s going on out here?” A fat sweaty man in an apron and not a lot else came out of the back and stood quizzically next to a middle aged red head waitress with a face like a leather riding saddle.

“Some crazy guy, all he ordered was a bowl of raw hamburger meat and he’s just been sitting there eating it, then he just started laughing” The middle aged woman said, her face wrinkling up in places never before thought possible.

The fat man’s sweat patches grew under his apron; he started to look like he belonged in a sauna or in a tropical plant house as he breathed heavily.

“The boy is currently under observation at Hellspass psychiatric hospital” The man’s laughter began to run down like the motor of a car slowly sliding into park, a greasy hand touched the arm of his salvation army coat and the slow come down took a sudden bump.

“Hey buddy you’re freakin’ people out, can ya keep it down? People are trying to eat” The fat chef said in an apologetic tone as he furrowed his brow into painful ‘v’s, which seemed to stretch all over his slippery bald head.

“What’s that?” The man said without turning his head, a chunk of un-chewed hamburger meat falling from his mouth onto the semi-clean counter as he opened his mouth and turned his bloodshot eyes in his skull.

“I said-“

“I heard what you said”

“Huh?”

“I just can’t tell what I’m looking at” He picked his teeth with a dirty nail and sucked his gums, dislodging raw meat from his teeth.

“Look buddy, we aint looking for no trouble, I think you better just pick your sorry ass up and leave- right now!”

“Did you make this?” The strange homeless guy squeezed the hamburger meat in his hands, letting it ooze through his bony fingers. He had shoulder length mousey brown hair with a beard, completing the homeless chic, his features were thin and gaunt, dark eyes hidden under heavy lids. He wore a long olive drab army jacket that went all the way down to his ankles just barely hiding the fact he was wearing plastic bags tied with string around his feet instead of shoes. To complete the ensemble a threadbare shirt and pair of pants that looked like they were stolen from an old people’s home washing line. Printed across the front of the jacket was a name written in bold dark green lettering ‘CARPENTER’.

“What’cha talking about buddy? That’s raw hamburger meat, aint nobody ‘made’ it, drifters like you don’t belong here, it’s time for you to move on now!”

“You know, I used to be just like you”

“Get ou-!” A glob of hamburger meat cut off the chef mid sentence, the slimy gelatinous meat by-product getting in his eyes and nose. It felt like a fist made of lumpy snot hit his sinus wall and he felt disorientated long enough for the dishevelled man to kick a bar stool under his feet from his seated position. The chef fell forward as the stool hit his shins, tripping him; Carpenter rose like a jack in the box from his stool to slam the chef’s dirty face into the counter.

He pressed the chef’s face into the clean-ish off colour lime green diner counter spreading blood and raw meat and spit all over it, the chef strained dreamily as his skull was pressed against the hard surface.

“You know it’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re eating.” Carpenter, squeezed the chef’s head with his forearm pressed against it tightly, the veins on the chef’s head stuck out like rail road tracks, pumping hot kitchen grease. Carpenter took his other hand and ran his finger up from his face taking up some of the hamburger meat, getting under his nails, he sucked his finger.

He took the pressure off and sat back on his stool like he got up to get the salt and the chef stuck to the counter with blood and sweat and hamburger meat, peeled off and his unconscious body hit the linoleum floor of the diner like a sack of dried hams, parting stools and chairs and brows as he fell. The diner fell silent, food went un-chewed in open mouths, coffee cups shook uncontrollably, babies continued crying, the dishevelled man went back to watching the news and laughing.

~
If you’ve read this far you can check out the rest of the chapter on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday.

Green Sunday; Ramblings of a Zombie Apologist

I know the first instinct you have when you hear ‘zombie horror’ to the most cynical of hipsters is to utter a collective angsty yawn. But give me a break. I’m writing a zombie story, Green Sunday is a for lack of a better term, coined by Shaun of the Dead a RomZomCom. Just give me a chance, come back! Hey! It’s nothing like Walking Dead!… Hmm that may have backfired.
Well for the people that got through that and are still reading which is probably all of three people, I thank you and now I shall begin my zombie apologetics.

The reason I wrote this story is two-fold, I wanted to write a zombie story, but every motherfucker wants to write a zombie story, especially every crazy motherfucker like me that wants it to actually happen. But I wanted to write it from the perspective of someone like me, someone who wants it to happen. I thought this might help me understand why I want that and why that’s crazy. I realise it’s a state of cognitive dissonance, I want the zombie apocalypse to happen so I can use my collection of sharp pointy things and have a blast but I also don’t want it to happen because I like not having to cut my friends and family into bits because they’re trying to eat me and more importantly Fallout 4 is coming out next month. Maybe next year.

Zombie stories are tricky because essentially they’re too easy, you can’t write a story just about zombies. Zombies are just an inciting incident, they’re just a framing device for what is essentially a disaster movie and overall a character drama. It’s not about the zombies it’s about how the characters react to the zombies. The zombies aren’t characters, they don’t have back stories or motivation, they’re just flesh eating monsters that could be replaced by nearly anything; Aliens, flesh eating penguins, fish men, the world’s worse case of herpes.

They’re not important to the story except as an obstacle and to be honest people like watching people kill people, they don’t really want to see people killing animals and with aliens that’s sort of a grey area. There must be something in our brains that just prefers to watch people die, harking back to the coliseums.

So why choose zombies if they’re so overdone? For that exact reason. I wanted to write a story satirises the oversaturation of zombies into our culture and to mock from the inside people like me. Nutters that are preparing or at least fantasising about it really happening. Saying something is overdone is just a way of trying to lower the market value so you can do it when no one’s paying attention and come out the omega hipster, like me ha-ha. No.

I’m a writer nothing is overdone if it’s done well, everything can be turned on its head, when someone has an expectation that’s when they’re the most vulnerable to have their expectation completely levelled and you have them by the seat of their pants.

I wanted to write a zombie apocalypse story that wasn’t really about a zombie apocalypse and to mock zombie apocalypses and this spate of summer teen movies like Hunger Games just a bit. So I thought instead of making a straight up zombie apocalypse story or a post apocalyptic story, I’d write a post-post-apocalyptic story.

It’s always been the case that the most far-fetched thing about a zombie apocalypse is the idea of it actually happening or indeed ending the world. Even an air born virus probably wouldn’t end the world, it could kill 80% of the worlds’ population and would definitely change the world but it wouldn’t end it. So how could a virus spread by touch/bite spread so quickly, and how could it overcome every army/police force/pmc of the world? Or indeed happen in a country like America where ‘There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass’ as Isoroku Yamamoto Fleet Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II is according to wikiquote is misquoted as saying.

But obviously I don’t live in America, I live in England, but we still have armed police and despite what you may here about our gun laws, we still have guns, knives, cricket bats. I set it in America essentially to mock America and open it up a wider audience. America is always rife for parody as it has the delightful habit of taking everything to its greatest extreme. Although this ‘prepper culture’ has spread to the UK, it started and it lives in the US. And really for the story to work it needed an isolated are and although there are small villages (like the one I’m from) and lots of open spaces and countryside. I wanted a small mountain town to really capture the isolation possible even in a semi-thriving small town.

Ok I realised I’ve been waffling around the point, the story is I suppose a little more like Dead Rising the videogame. I.e. This shit is done on purpose, it’s not an accident or a virus, this is an isolated incident done for a specific reason. Not as a test but for fun.

Green Sunday is named for the main character, Sunday is sort of a modern homage to Red Sonja, and before I start pandering telling you how she’s a ‘bad ass/asskicking’ woman and the quintessential and much sort after ‘strong female character’, I posed her as more sort of a Don Quixote character or a Sherlock Holmes. She’s the main character but as a whole She is left a mystery and the story is told through the eyes of her cohort, her Dr. Watson; TJ.

That way I felt that she could remain a mystery and through TJ she could be this tough character but waves of softness could be intermittently shone on him from time to time for a potential romance (I say potential because I’m in the process of writing it and I’m not sure Sunday really likes him, sometimes I have a scene planned out and it goes down a completely different path which better fits the character themselves).

Waffle fit yet again, tangents, tangents everywhere! The story is about a zombie game show, I got it out, there it is. Beautiful isn’t it? Not really *Shakes head*.

Ok so the generic ‘Sinister Corporation with ties to the government’ moves into town and seals it off to play their own little internet zombie game show. So it’s basically Battle Royale meets Dead Rising or Resident Evil. I’m trying to capture the irony of the main characters being zombie obsessed Youtubers caught in what is essentially a zombie internet reality show. And they have to fight for their lives over three gruelling days of bloody violence.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I’m having a hell of a lot of fun writing it, the zombie stuff is always good fun, with a feckless neckbeard fanboy character propelling the story and lots of crazy people brought into the town to fight and rich assholes paying to hunt zombies, it’s a delicious clusterfuck of gore and black humour.

The first ‘beta’ chapter is up for you to read on inkitt, I’ve proofread it but it’s still away with my editor, so hopefully within the month I can re-upload it after it’s been professionally edited and then move onto the next chapter.

Follow this link Green Sunday to read the first chapter and review it and tell me it sucks ass just read it ha-ha.

See ya.

Welcome to Bat Country, breakdown of the first issue.

I wanted to do a breakdown of the first issue of Bat Country, try to make some sense out of the whole mess that is Bat Country, try to lay that whole twisted bag of snakes out, and if you’ve read any of it, you know this is going to be a long one.

If people would ask me what I wanted to achieve with this book, I don’t really know if I could sum it up in a few words. But I guess the closest thing I could say would just be a fear of open spaces. I wanted to cultivate and exacerbate my fear of the outside world. That’s basically what the title means; the world is full of carnivorous flying rodents that want to suck your blood.

Basically I’m just trying to make excuses for why this comic makes no sense ha-ha. It’s told from the perspective of someone who can’t see in straight lines, everything enters his brain differently and since he’s the narrator of his own story, the narrative is unreliable.

So the first page I get my sneaky twin peaks reference in to Big Ed’s Gas farm (I’ll look a right twat if that’s wrong now ha-ha) and get into my thing about sugar, I’m sure if I was some hypersensitive writer for the guardian I’d call it ‘sugarshaming’ ha-ha. But since I’m not I tend to think people associate lots of sugar with childishness, as if growing older means you no longer see a reason to enjoy ‘the sweet life. I wanted to introduce Ransom as a character that relished in his childishness and was almost petulant in his reaction to people trying to shame him into conforming to their own way of thinking.

TLDR: Motherfucker like his coffee sweet.

I think maybe a year or two ago, I began this strange fascination with cooking shows or just food shows in general. I watched come dine with me just to watch absolute cunts sit and try to withstand each other for a few evenings in a row, talking shit about each other in the backroom. There was something delicious about uncomfortable silences shared by complete strangers who had never the less grown to hate each other over the course of one evening ha-ha. English people like myself have such an acquired taste for awkwardness.

Then I started to watch Man VS Food, for those that haven’t watched it, it’s basically a show about a chubby American fellow going from town to town taking up eating challenges. Eating a giant burger or a colossal omelette or something, or a really hot curry. I really enjoyed it for the food (I love food) and the competitive nature, it was just a fun show.

But this was when I was little more social justicey, so I started to spin my Marxist (did away with those thankfully away, just a nice empty space now ha-ha) and it made me think this show was everything wrong with America. It was decadent, ‘people are starving’ I said to myself as I watched this pudgy American stuff his face with a hotdog the size of a skateboard.

I was both in awe and disgust with America and the American way, a fine line between love and hate indeed.

One of my many fantasies is that of walking the earth like Cain in Kung fu, I’ve often thought about just walking, getting into some adventures and just travelling. Then to hit the ground realising I have no money and my shoes are made from inedible canvas. The realities of it were just too glaring, how would I eat, how would I make enough money to travel and survive? But then I realised that in America those two things could coincide. In the wondrous USA you can be paid for eating, so something that could have been just a throwaway piece of plot filler became almost the crux of the story.

On a whole the basic joke of the story is that it’s almost as if to America thinks it can reach enlightenment through eating. Purely by how much they eat and how much of science they honed of gluttony.

This was going to by my satirical comic poking fun at the American dream, the hypocrisy of modern culture and capitalism and religion and all that good stuff. But after a while those things started to bore me and realised that trying to force people to think like me through a comic made me as bad as the assholes I was critiquing, so I cut that shit out. Now I just want to make people laugh and make them think and deliver something so fucking out there, they’ll never forget.

Diagnosis love is another reference to Twin peaks, well the first season, which is my favourite. It had this soap opera running in the background of the occasional episode, the story of which was cheesy but was a mirror of what was happening in the show. I really liked the feel of it and how it added another layer to story, making it seem self aware. I initially was introduced by this; I don’t know what you call it really in Max Payne 2. The idea that you can’t tell if you’re mimicking the art or it’s mimicking you. Obviously Max Payne must have copied it from Twin Peaks.

I suppose in a way a part of me wanted to mock most other webcomics where this type of storytelling isn’t intentionally cheesy and ridiculous ha-ha. It’s there to contrast the goings on in the ‘real world’ but mirror them just enough to seem relate-able.

It’s choked full of odd references, Night of the Hunter, Wild at heart, dune, Beetlejuice, I want to get across to the reader that outside to Ransom is literally an alien planet, these diners in the middle of nowhere are like ‘safe spaces’ from all that nature trying to get him.

Liberty or the cowboy is another matter all together; I guess he’s a reference to the Big Lebowski in a way.

The first issue that makes me cringe is the dialogue; yeah my own dialogue makes me cringe. I wanted to copy the style of Max Payne, Address Unknown and Twin Peaks, so essentially I wanted the dialogue to be as cheesy and as hackneyed as possible. I want it to feel fake and strange and just wrong, like a 90’s TV show. And gradually if people keep reading that’ll fade away and it’ll grow with the reader. It’s very much, I hate to say like Natural Born Killers (I hated that movie), the style, the critic of American culture. That niggling feeling that all that freedom and all that space gives you. I can’t help feeling that that feeling is intoxicating and addictive and the reason for all the evil in the world and all the good.
People can be so free they feel trapped, they have all this power to do whatever they want but they stay where they are, pacing back and forth in a cage of their own making. Or they toss it all away like Ransom and burn out rather than fade away. That’s conflict we have here, that’s what I think American culture is, ultimate freedom driving people mad, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact.

Now the second part of the story, some paranoid people are actually being followed. Now I can’t hope to hide this, this entire scene was inspired by my favourite scene in Mulholland Drive, the hitman scene. I thought that scene was so funny, I couldn’t resist. I really love that film and I feel robbed that it wasn’t turned into a full TV show as it was intended, I would have really loved to have seen more from that bungling hitman. I can’t help feeling if Netflix existed in the 90’s Lynch would have been even more popular than he is and not this cult god we admonish him as now.

This scene where the henchmen are going through his apartment is a back story hint, the story of Bat Country just like Twin Peaks starts in the middle. The reader will have to work back as the story moves forward to understand why Ransom is on his journey and who he’s running from.

I got a lot of influence from Silent Hill 4 the room. That game really stuck with me for the voyeuristic nature, and its dreamlike interpretation of agoraphobia. Despite it bombing I found it really intriguing. Another influence is Oldboy, but that might be too spoilery ha-ha.

I was listening to the new Nick Cave album when I wrote this scene and for some reason I decided to put lyrics from Higgs Bosom Blues directly into the scene, don’t ask me why.

Ransom is on a journey, he’s trying to find the American dream and these two bumbling killers are following him.

He wakes from his dream for a minute then he’s back in it again harder than ever. The idea for this comic sort of came from the idea of the idea of the hero. What is a hero? To me a hero is a normal person who has no regard for themselves whatsoever, they’re not afraid of pain, they’re not afraid of humiliation or getting things horribly wrong. And that’s what Ransom tries to be.
I wanted the combat to be real and disgusting and brutal and just… messy and Florian really delivered with this scene. He really captured the brutality and the inelegance of an actual fight, no kung fu bullshit, no gimmicks, just blood and cuts and tooth and nails.

…and then it ends as abruptly as it started. I wanted the first issue to be a snapshot, a glimpse into this dream world, something that would make someone want to dig deeper and discover the underlying meaning. But shit, I’ve rambled enough.

Just go read it already ha-ha.
http://tapastic.com/series/Bat-Country

Green Sunday Chapter one ‘No Pussy Blues’

I’ve been trying my hand at writing prose recently and I thought I’d use this place as a bit of a sound board maybe, up my content at least, I’ll be posting it on Inkitt too, so these posts aren’t too long, and it keeps the chapters in order the link is at the bottom. Thanks for checking it out, I’ll post chapters intermittently throughout the month. Cheers.

The wind blew through the cherry blossoms in the Sakuragoaka gardens. Musashi knelt and cleared his mind, letting his cares drift on with that wind that blew the trees. He saw without seeing as he closed his eyes, his mind clacking in the dark of his dreams, sparking silently as he smelled the fires burning in the distance, food cooking in the town over, dogs’ barks travelling over the mountains, whispers in the cool afternoon air carried by the silence of the coming night.

The ground he knelt on was soft and grass stained his dark brown robes, he hadn’t washed for days or combed his hair. Cleanliness had become a pretence he didn’t much care for.

Suddenly the air became tighter and sharper and pin pricks of air hit his skin. His eyes cracked and let in some light as his mind came soaring back like a demon raking up the pits of hell, as it hurtled into this world. A foot touched down on the grassy earth and sent shockwaves through the ground and then another and another and another and another and another.

Three sets of two, his eyes closed again as he listened, three men or one six legged demon, he’d know only when he cut it, they’d only exist when his blade touched them and then only for a moment after.

He took a deep slow inhalation of breath as they approached, steel breathed out sharply as their swords loosened from their ramshackle sheathes; the air took on the smell of iron and copper; they approached from behind as Musashi meditated; their steel quivered as the light hit the blade; he could see it in his mind’s eye, feel them slowly oxidising.

With each step their hearts beat faster and lost more ground to his own steady beat; his heart beat like a leather drum of a mighty ship approaching a certain destination.

His attackers could feel it in the ground as they got closer to him; the vibrations through their feet made them feel numb and light headed, they lost the tip of their swords to a strange feeling of giddiness as they got close to the kneeling man.

His breathing remained steady and smooth; he breathed in deeply, taking in the last of the sweet smells of the cherry blossom tree; the pink petals fell and swayed on the wind. Musashi brought his sword forward in his waist wrap and turned the blade in its scabbard pushing out his bottom lip as he did. His grizzled lower jaw cocked to the side as he felt the greasy stubble on his face with his other hand. He sighed a little as he turned the blade up in his belt and slowly pushed the hilt, gently popping the blade from the sheathe with a slight jerking motion from his thumb, the blade sticking with the coming cold of the autumn months.

The blank figures flapped slightly as the sails of a ship in a changing wind and their nerves were caught on a wire, cutting deeply as they sprang into life having come too close to turn back. Their fear pushed them onto this mortal stage to face blood and sweat and bone and will in an afternoon showing only the sky would be far away enough to enjoy.

They tense their legs and took stances each similar and dissimilar from each other, trying to gain strength from the earth that bore them vagabonds. They swallowed and took their pride up like an iron flag and bound towards the old man resting his eyes in the cool breeze, listening to the gears of the world slowly turn, smelling the sweet and tart smells of the grass and the blossoms mixing in the dying evening over the hushed voices of careless people.

Their swords were heavier than his and they bolted unsteadily forward shaking like they were held together with string, his sword was that of a dancing feather and cut through the air like a blossom from the cherry tree. His hand had barely touched the sword; his grip was light and nourished the blade with his will; it stayed straight and did not falter in the wind; it moved with it, flowed on it and cut it like a ship parts waves. A natural exhilaration of what was meant to be; men travelling towards their destinies, whatever that may amount to.

The men set up on him, their movements that of men underwater encountering a great eye seeing all their movements but recognising them only as insignificant shapes in the dark depth of a boundless ocean. His mind only thought of cutting, his blade sharpened by his burning will, a searing desire to be seen by the ambivalent god of the moon and stars.

They scattered like leaves; their bodies wanted to be cut; they were made complete by his blade, a cut for each and each in place; not a drop of blood fell until it was ready to fall and Musashi sheathed his sword once more.

Suddenly as if from the sky itself a crack appeared and Musashi felt a foot on his shadow, a tightness in his chest as his guard had been penetrated by some unholy force; he quickly drew his sword again; it was already halfway out when he heard it’s scream tear through the heavens, a star falling with the force of the earth itself, eclipsed him like an insect in the wake of a great mountain.

“TJ STOP SCREWING AROUND IN THE YARD AND TAKE OUT THE TRASH!”

“MOOOM, I’M FILMING FOR YOUTUBE!”

“-AND YOU BETTER NOT BE PUTTING HOLES IN MY FENCE WITH THAT SWORD!”

“NO MOM”.

TJ sighed heavily as he looked at the jagged cut in the water cooler bottle he picked up on his way home from school; it bled out on the unevenly cut grass as his fantasy faded into the corners of his mind. He scratched his neckbeard as he looked at his crappy mall katana sticking out of fence that ran around the back of his back garden, still twitching from the force of the swing. He must have let go when his mom called him.

He looked into his digital camera and sighed audibly into the vacant lens.

“Hey fat ass” A nasally voice rang out from over the fence and TJ turned like Michael Jackson in thriller.

“Yeah you, neck beard, over here” His neighbour leant on the fence that parted their gardens like a crow with a superior sneer sitting atop his pointy douche bag goatee looking like a hipster Ming the merciless with a pair of poser shades dangling from his fingers over the fence.

“You better watch it son, you almost put another hole in my ass with that pig sticker of yours, hommie doesn’t play that, my exit hole remains an exit hole feel me?” His neighbour flailed his sunglasses in his fingers and tried to sound like a black guy for some reason.

“Err Wut?”

“What are you doing man? No one wants to see some fat re-re in his mommies yard cutting up bottles with a butter knife when they can see handsome motherfuckers like me and my associates chopping on some real meat with some big… mmm weapons!” He smiled and motioned with his sunglasses at TJ’s camera set up and his bottle massacre, sneering and preening in one self satisfied breathe.

“We’ve got over sixty thousand billion subscribers nigga, wut chu got, like one-two thousand maybe? Some tight fisted jackers fapping their flaccid nubby dicks over fat retards getting sweaty in black extra large tees.”

TJ averted his gaze as he attempted to jossle his sword free from the fence, his pits were wet and stinging, shame and anger swelling as he said nothing and shook his head from side to side trying to get his emo black bangs out of his sweaty face, he just took it.

“Stay off my fucking youtube asshat, and keep that mall sword crap in your pants.” He hopped off the fence laughing.

“Now where the fuck were we? Oh yeah” He said as he turned to the camera as it focused on his goateed smug face, putting his sunglasses back on; He slicked his floppy black hair back on his head.

Thanks for checking it out.

You can read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.
http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507

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