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LCYE Chapter 11 ‘Ashes and Ghosts’

Bonjour people, gonna keep this short, cos reasons.

Nah I’m on a new diet which basically involves starving yourself for brief periods of time for fun. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Got the latest chapter of Ladies Close Your Eyes, it’s all up now on my inkitt page which I’ll link below,  but I’ll keep churning it out on here for the content. I’m gonna be having it edited soon too so hold your breath for that.

I hope all of my three readers had a good christmas, you know who you are. I got some fun gadgets and games and stuff to steal my much needed time away. Still on a writing fast, got my next project lined up for January and I’m just using this time to flesh out new future projects.

Ok so here it is chapter 11.

Ashes and Ghosts

 

~
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’

 

~

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The Butcher of Barclay’s Hollow by Nick R B Tingley – A review

Well written but underwhelming.

I first chapter just didn’t really grab me. I moan about this constantly on inkitt. People just plonk a first chapter down and then move on to the next one, but the first chapter is really the most important. It’s like a summary of everything to follow. It has to be linked to the overall plot somehow and it’s the first step into this greater world, so stuff, a significant amount of stuff needs to happen or if it’s even very little it has to be pretty powerful. I mean what really happens in the first chapter? A butcher saves a little girl from being maimed and then gets criticized by passers-by. And although I expect their distaste for him to be a theme I doubt it ties to the main plot at all. So really this incident is irrelevant as a starting point.
I get you probably want to ease into it and I usually like pieces like this and reading this encouraged me to get out my copy of Hound of the Baskervilles. And even in that, a flowery period piece published over a hundred years ago the first chapter gets to the point. They’re not talking about the Hound but they’re talking around it, building up to it. but it’s clear that its building to something and then the next chapter is called ‘The curse of the Baskervilles’. We have none of that here, it’s just one scene with no foreshadowing or hints of an overarching plot at all.
I think this entire chapter could have served better as just a flashback or a story relayed by the girl at a later date and you could have started further on in the story to start at a more relevant point. Giving the main character a little more mystery. You hinted vaguely at a tragedy backstory, so I expect he had a wife and child that died and thus builds a connection with the little girl over the course of the book. As it stands now it’s sort of throw away.
It’s well written, I like the period style although there are some typos and errors. It needs a good proof read because these obviously slipped through spellcheck. I have to say I cringed at some of it because it just seems like it’s trying too hard to be period even in the non-diegetic stuff and it’s kind of unnecessary when it could be done better. When I read a modern period piece I expect to be hit in the face with the research involved rather than just flowery language and period accents. I want to be shown more than I’m told. It was easier for Conan-Doyle because he was obviously immersed in it. But it’s not really an excuse, what in this story really justifies a period setting? You could take that entire chapter and just change the carriage to a car and it would be no different.
Overall, it’s very serviceable if a little cliché, I save my harshest criticism for the work I think has potential. I like the title, I like the premise, the style is good but frankly your first chapter is boring. The skill is there but the hook is not.
I hoped this helped, I wish you the best of luck with it.

The Butcher of Barclay’s Hollow

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little rain

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

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

–

“Police, go ahead”

“My wife and me are here as tourists-“

“-We’ve found a kid”

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

“- No id, no documents on him”

“He’s very scared”

It was raining.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long distant sirens going somewhere else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

“Tell us your name” She asked again.

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

“Where do you live?” She kept asking.

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

“Do you live with your parents?”

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

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

“Did your parents hurt you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

 

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LCYE Chapter 7 ‘Sinnerman’

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

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

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

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

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

Sinnerman

~

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

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

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

“Feelin’ better?” She called out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“FBI, you’re expecting us”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“FBI right?” The small man said.

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

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

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

Sinnerman

 

 

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Ladies Close Your Eyes Chapter 4 ‘Women in Fridges’

I had a fucked up neck yesterday from doing manly shit so I couldn’t work out and I was doing some writing and I wasn’t really feeling it like I usually do. I couldn’t my whole yogi-yoda meditation shit. But it wasn’t too bad. I chose a house for this fbi scene I’m working on in a later chapter. Oh if you didn’t know already I literally go on google maps and look at houses and locations and stuff haha. I’m a fucking cheater ok.
Yesterday I literally went on a like a property website so I could look around a California house in Belvedere where I set this fbi scene. It was too good to be true, the house had a virtual tour, I could flip through pictures like I was walking through the place. It didn’t have any furniture but my mind ‘furnished’ it with … furniture. It really helped me visualise the scene. I felt more like a director than a writer. It was fun, still kinda pissed about my neck and it still hurts but I got a haircut today which has successfully eaten up all my writing time so I have turned to some self-indulgent whiney blogging instead.
And hark on the horizon, here comes my day job to fuck it all up again. So that’s happening.
I never really cared if this blog was doing well, it was more of a nice sounding board for me, just talking to myself then maybe when I’m long dead someone will look at it and say “Well he didn’t totally suck the sweat off a dead man’s balls”. But it’s perked up a little bit so that’s nice. Still can’t be fucked with that mailing list. GIMME YOUR FUCKING EMAILS! Why did that sound that Hillary Clinton in my head?

This was a pretty fun chapter to write, getting into some of the trippy dream stuff a little, strap in folks it’s only getting weirder from here.

As usual you can find the full chapter for no money down on inkitt;

Women in Fridges

Cya.

~

It’s cold, he awakes from his dream to the sound of running water. Cool night air brushes his cheek and he opens his eyes to see the bank of a stream leading into a larger river. He seemed to recognise it but couldn’t quite place it.

He was sitting on the bank of a stream under an overpass, but he couldn’t hear any cars going by. It was a cloudless night with a few stars tossed up into that mess of a sky. The moon was nowhere to be seen.

His back was against concrete. He was under one of the arches, his head felt heavy, it was hard to lift. He realised after some blank staring and heavy blinking that he was in a storm drain not on the bank of a river. He was lying on a raised embankment on the far side under the bridge. It was just cool dull yellow concrete lit by the ambient glow of the night as far as the eye could see. A trickle of a stream flowing under his feet. He saw a few whisks of grass in the distance beyond a chain link fence on the other side of the bridge.

His back felt wet as he leant against the wall. His legs splayed out in front of him in his work clothes, his black shoes covered in a film of light brown dust. His head felt dry and taught and it hurt to move his neck. He sat there for a minute trying to collect himself.

He leaned forward and pulled himself onto his knees. Crawling like a baby over to the small body of water running through the storm drain.

He splashed his face a couple of times and put a cold wet hand down the back of his neck. It felt dirty, the dry sweat made his clothes itch and hang heavy. He felt starched and sickly.

James looked down at his reflection. He looked tired he could taste blood. He bore his teeth, his gums were raw and dirty looking. He sucked his gums and spat a wad of blood into the trickle of water running through the storm drain.

It spread out fast. A brown and deep red viscous liquid hitting the water hard and dispersing as the stream started to pick up.

James stood up, stumbling. His flat shoes scraping away out from under his feet on the slick raised concrete under the overpass. He slipped back down to his knees with a bone jarring jolt. The fall sending questions all over his body, where is all this pain coming from?

The stream started to get faster and thicker and he didn’t know why, the sky hadn’t changed. Maybe a dam or sluice-gate opened. Were there any dams in California? Was he even still in California? He had to get out of there one way another. His heart started to pound, his mind rushing by trying to find answers to questions it hadn’t settled on.

Then a noise.

Plinking and then something larger, a splash and a hollow plonking sound. He walked out from under the overpass and looked up at the bridge. It was well lit with deco lamps lining either side only three or four feet apart. A waist high guard rail along the footpath. There were no cars pulled up along the side of the road, there were no cars going by. He waited thirty seconds but nothing came.

The stream was a black and dark brown like his blood now. Probably some filthy rain water from a storm drain higher up.

He squinted up and down the stream for what broke the water. Then he saw it, it was white which made it easy to pick out against the murk. It bobbed on the surface on the water like a fishing lure. It looked light but also hard and slick reflecting some dull twinge of moonlight from somewhere.

It crept closer to him bobbing in and out playfully. Before he could feel it. He was standing in the now knee high water. He stood unmoving watching it approach, taking shape in front of him. It was long and thin, delicate looking, it’s subtle curvature giving way to long thin fingers.

He bent down to pick it up.

It was the left forearm of a female mannequin. He starred at it quizzically, turning it around in his hands trying to discern its origin. He turned it over, there were scratches on the underside. Scratched on to its wrist were the words “SHE HAS DYED HER HAIR RED”.

He dropped the arm into the stream and it bobbed off down into the distance.

A torso, legs, hip, arms, hands, and a head, all the pieces, maybe more than one mannequin he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t know why just yet. They were blank, featureless, pale white parts. Perfect, only for the leaves and the debris that surrounded them in the vile manmade river.

He breathed in and out slow. The chill getting up his back, his shoes squelched full of water and silt, listening to the night music.

~

Women in Fridges

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Ladies Close Your Eyes Chapter 3 ‘Strange and Unproductive Thinking’ (Raw)

Yoyoyo people, not sure what I was doing there, forget that.

Updates, updates, updates, what schlock can I use to fill this space, why do I do this again?
Ok right well pretty much nothing amazing has changed in my life since I posted the last blog, just writing editing and spamming as usual. Still really enjoying doing a serious crime fiction story, it’s a little out there a la Surveillance/Memento but it’s written by me it was never going to be normal. Fuck I just made one of my fbi characters a carsick pokemon go player. C’mon, what do I get for that? Oh that’s right nothing haha.

It’s still smooth sailing as usual, trucking along, trying to build a mailing is gonna prove difficult since I have no free shit to give haha. So I may just plonk GS or this on amazon when I have some reviews and give one away to promote the other as an ebook.

I dunno haha.

As usual you can check out the full chapter on inkitt and if you like it give it a review and a share and don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing list on this page so I can shill you books when I have books to shill haha.

Strange and Unproductive Thinking

~
James woke up in a muggy haze, his head feeling two sizes too small. He squinted, he was lying on his back, the way his doctor told him not to. He saw the fan was still going but not doing a lot of anything. The night had taken with it it’s cool countenance and the morning glared at him through his unshaded bedroom window.

His alarm told him it was six am.

She was gone, her indentation still lingered.

It wasn’t that unusual. She usually got up much earlier than him and pottered around for a little bit before she went to her volunteering at the homeless shelter. Serving them breakfast made her feel better about not having to line up for breakfast.

He showered. He had one of those old fashioned shower baths with a curtain.

He got out of the shower and dried himself. He wiped the steam from the mirror and looked at his reflection. His hair slicked back in the two door mirrored cabinet over the sink. The seam of which was right in the middle. The door hinges were a little loose and they buckled in the middle causing the doors to sink inward a little. Thus resulting in an almost funhouse mirror reflection of James’ sallow face split down the middle. He looked at himself and saw a face that was still quite handsome but time had added a few extras where they weren’t needed. A bit too much neck fat made him almost afraid to tilt his head down. With his hair slicked back his hairline was disheartening. His face sagged in places it didn’t use to. The bags under his eyes were now permanent fixtures next to the flecks of little grey hairs that he struggled not to notice.

Other than that his forehead was relatively unlined and his eyes still looked youthful, the result of years of not being very expressive. This gave him some comfort as he stared blankly at his own reflection.

He continued to floss and brush his teeth, gargling mouth wash and spitting. He skipped shaving, his face was still fairly smooth from yesterday.

He was dressed now in a short sleeve shirt and tie, bent over the kitchen sink scratching the black off a burnt piece of toast.

He sat at the kitchen table alone reading the paper. A plate of abused toast sitting next to a glass of store brand orange juice. It was just one shade dingier than the name brand and came with it a slightly coppery after-taste.

The kitchen was new looking, but just as the bedroom it was bare. Aside from the slight messes, the toast ash in the sink, the jam and butter fingerprints on the counter. It looked like a show house. Beautiful in its emptiness.

It wasn’t a particularly large kitchen, mid-range, stone floors. The counter was some type of imitation granite. He sat at a small breakfast bar which corralled the fridge and stove and combination oven. He was sitting on a minimalist chair made of plastic with metal struts. The kind you get in sandwich shops that force you to lean on the counter like hipster bar stools. He read the paper with his back bolt upright.

The door on his left lead to the utility room, the door to his right lead to a small dining room and the door behind him lead into the hall.

Across from the breakfast bar which jutted out like a little pier in the middle of the kitchen. The sink and dishwasher which overlooked the only window onto the small AstroTurf back garden.

Both of them knew they couldn’t really afford to live here. So they rented, and neither of them really lived in the house as much as they just existed there. A stop over until they could get something more liveable and secure their place on the ever shrinking island of California’s middle class.

The headline of the paper read;

“MATCHBOOK KILLER SUSPECT IN CUSTODY (Pictured page 30)”

He padded his way through the sport section and quickly shirked the relationship section. The politics section was as grim as usual given a brisk scan. He mouthed the words but they didn’t really go anywhere. On page twenty-nine he thumbed the corner as if it was a crumpled copy of playboy stored under a neighbours shed.

He got his hopes up for nothing. Just a few glossies of cops with their backs turned and a white tarp with an arm sticking out of it.

He sighed and felt a little dirty, he could have just looked it up online if he wanted to but he was running a little late now.

He closed his eyes and remembered something he’d seen before but he couldn’t quite remember if it were real or a dream or both. A picture of a tree at dusk, there was a plane crash he thought or at least that’s what he was meant to think. Arms and legs hung from the tree, clean and perfect like doll parts. In fact, they looked just like odd mannequin pieces. So recalling it didn’t alarm him as he was sure even if that picture did exist it was fake or some tween’s edgy art project.

He then proceeding to eat his burnt toast with long teeth and wash it down with glugs of gritty orange juice.

~

James’ car was parked out front. A Hyundai with a sagging bumper. He left his single story house on North 12th street which was located in a suburb of Colton. He lived opposite the park which consisted of two fenced in basketball courts with a shaded eating area in the centre. Sparsely decorated with an array of trees ranging from sycamores to the standard palm. It was pretty much empty except for a handful of kids that should have been in school. They were playing some form dodge/basketball hybrid he’d never seen before.

It was an ok neighbourhood, the houses and lawns were well kept. All single storied with wire fences around the lawns and carports.

He took a right and then another past the park onto North Mt Vernon Avenue towards the river. He passed a new looking truck stop with a big blue bud light truck out front and a sign that read “LQUOR”.

There was a 7-11 on the other side and a cosy Mexican restaurant off the highway.

He continued along South Mt Vernon past a motel and a garage selling discount cylinder heads. It took him over the highway and snaked around to join it. He got onto the I-10 towards Redland and found himself in a conga-line of early morning commuters.

The glare on the windshield reminded him he forgot to wear sunglasses driving in California.

Despite that he had some time to take in the scenery squinting at pretty much flat nothing. A drainage canal ran underneath the highway and lead to a strange grouping of green trees walled on either side by thick concrete. The other side of which was a lot containing several mounds of brown dirt, the result of digging or some kind of construction.

On the left there were sickly looking spruce trees poking over the top of the freeway. He took the time to read some of the billboards which were suspended along his side of the highway. The first was for a pest control business, a picture of a suspicious looking cockroach. The next has a big red truck on it claiming to be the #1 at something vague. The one that followed just had “$720,000” written on it with a phone number below it. After that was a movie poster with a blue guy strangling a blue woman, it didn’t look that interesting.

~

Strange and Unproductive Thinking

 

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Ladies Close Your Eyes – Chapter 2 ‘I Want You’ (Raw)

Trucking along nicely with this now. I’m really enjoying writing this, it really feels like home. Like I’m where I should be. It’s flowing really easily and I can feel myself growing as a writer, it’s so energizing. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

Anyway a few updates, as you can see my site looks less like a pile of shit. I upgraded my account and got my own domain and started clearing the place up a little. Unfortunately I know about as much about web design as my asshole from a hole in the wall. So bare with me while I fuck around with it. But it looks ok right? Look a little like a creepy little girls notepad but I guess that works for me haha.

As usual you can find the full chapter on my inkitt page, gotta see them analytics grow mufucka!

I WANT YOU

PEACE!

~

His eyes grazed the floor wantonly, seeing what he’d done. Where he was, watching the moonlight grow and shrink in waves on the cream carpet of his new house. The moon was high and proud now. Cars passed. Their headlights probed the room, their engines made a soothing sound which reminded him of the ocean. The trip to long beach with his parents when he was a kid.

He lay on his side taking up as little room as possible. The window was open, the night was warm but the white sheets were cool and crisp. The bed was all white, the pillow cases, the comforter. It was a fairly new double bed, made of chrome like the ones you get in college dorms. A steel headboard that left gouges in the drywall when the bed moved.

The room was bare, they’d only moved in a couple of weeks ago and the bedroom windows didn’t even have curtains. They were just left exposed, the sky seemed so large from that window but the floor was more appealing.

The bedroom was small and neat, it looked like a guest room in the corner of the house. The closet was empty. They’d still been living out of their suitcases as the jobs they had were only temporary and they might have to move.

“James, are you even awake?”

He breathed in and out deeply but didn’t say anything.

He was facing away from her, she sat up in the bed knotting her hands together. Her hair was tied up in a tight dull auburn bun. Her face was pale, her cheeks a little sallow, with a high forehead. She had a small but bulbous nose that he found cute at one point, with its light spattering of orange freckles. Her upper lip was thin and pursed with a more rounded bottom lip. She had a round face and looked to be in her early thirties. A sheen of some mixture of creams and balms on her face made it hard to tell. She wore a baggy men’s grey sweatshirt to bed, concealing her shape. She breathed in and out wheezing as she wrung her hands making squelching noises working in more cream. Pushing her chin to her chest indignant at her lover’s silent response.

“This is not what I wanted”

James couldn’t help but agree. He breathed in deeply again, closing his eyes. He lay on his right side facing the window, the covers half off. He was a little younger, with sandy blonde hair. His face was long with flat cheeks, a long straight nose and thin lips. He wore just a pair of striped boxer shorts and white t-shirt to bed. He was of average build with a little extra weight around his mid-section.

He sighed again and closed his eyes. Without warning he saw her there, behind his eyelids. Her red hair was vibrant now, she had dyed her hair red and it seemed to glow. Her hair was naturally red but she dyed it a deeper shade to wash out her freckles. He hair was all around his head and he could feel her body on his, her smell, like fresh sandalwood and sweat. Her lips on his, the taste of her spit, her breathe on his neck.

“I need you to be present, all of you.”

He opened his eyes and looked at the egg-shell white wall of his bedroom. The bed felt hard, the air, stiff like a hotel room.

She’s still talking but he can’t hear her. Her words seem disjointed and they become white-noise. He closes his eyes again.
He’s on top of her now, thrusting deep. A cool film of sweat on his back. The window is open. An ancestral chorus of crickets keep a constant metronome. Her body is soft and responsive; she digs her fingers into his back. He buries his face in her hair, slick with sweat. He hates her now for some reason. Her eyes are wide and beautiful, her face like the moon reflected in a puddle looking up at him. A shy smugness that could have been mistaken for rapture on her face. His fist’s ball around white linen, creasing the bed sheets. A sudden sinking feeling, the bed swallowing them. He slapped her once and her face rolled with it and back to where it was returning with an excited smirk.
He snatched at her throat grabbing clumps of her hair in his sweaty fist. Her eyes got wider, her mouth opened. He gripped tighter and he could feel her throat shifting as she tried to swallow. Her cheeks became flush and the look in her eyes became like a long hallway. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she gasped and tried to swallow again. Her face becoming a brighter shade of red.

He opened his eyes again all he could hear was the ceiling fan spinning.

~

 

 

 

 

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Ladies Close Your Eyes Chapter one ‘Crazy Clown Time’ (Raw)

Ok well here it is. I was going to post this tomorrow but I got a shift at work on my prime spamming days, lucky me haha. So I thought I’d post it today and get it out the way because I’m smug as fuck about it. I really like where it’s going and where it’s taking my writing and how it’s evolved over the years.
So this is the culmination of my years of toiling and bad choices.

As per usual, you can go read the full chapter for free on inkitt;
Crazy Clown Time
~

A fly tossed and turned on the bed it had made from the inside of a street lamp. It writhed, flitting it’s slow burning wings. The sound of its buzzing echoed and shook the dried up husks from the night before. It lay down on its back, it’s underbelly exposed to the warm glow of the synthetic sun. Fading off into an incandescent permanent state of blissful sleep.

“Pauly had a red shirt”

“Pauly had a red shirt”

“-Suzy, she ripped her shirt off completely”

Outside the lamp the streets of Highland were laden with a thin film of dry dusk. It cooled, solidified into a thick cold sheet of night. It was quiet, so quiet if you stopped walking you could hear your own heartbeat. The streets seemed frozen in this part of town at night, like a photograph. A car radio played an obscure slow song.

“Pauly had a red shirt”

“Pauly had a red shirt”

“-Suzy, she ripped her shirt off completely”

A grey oldsmobile cutlass idled under the street lamp. A bare stretch of land. The car at the side of the road parsed between a large empty lot consisting of nothing but light brown dirt. The California mountain range by moonlight backdrop. On the other side a church that looked like the taco bell symbol edged in by anoemic looking palm trees. The parking lot of the church was almost empty but for a large white sedan, other than that he was the only prowler out.

“Danny poured the beer-“

“-Danny poured the beer all over sally”

A man’s hand drummed against the driver’s side door. Stiff fingers fumbling out an awkward beat. In the driver’s seat he sat, bathed in artificial night. The cone of unnatural light cast a deep dense shadow. The radio continued to play as the car idled.

“Danny poured the beer-“

“-Danny poured the beer all over sally”

The hood of the car was broad, it menaced the sidewalk. Hummed and seethed. A low hungry growl rising and falling over and over. The headlights dipped. Sucked the night air through its teeth.

“Danny poured the beer-“

“Danny poured the beer-“

“-Danny poured the beer all over sally”

The tires clawed the road, and then released it again. Padding it like a cat. Tensing and jostling, it waited.

“Ah, ah“

“Buddy screamed so loud he spit”

“Buddy screamed so loud he spit”

A waft of cool night air carried the dank smell of cheap perfume. The hairs on the driver’s bare arm raised in anticipation.

She leaned against the passenger side door, she was perfect. He withdrew his arm as she pressed herself against the car. The smell of her dimestore perfume sent his head swimming. A blissful day dream of a hot summer day, pushing a girl on a swingset. The balmy smell of wheat, dried sweat.

She pressed a weapons grade set of fake tits against the glass of the cutlass. Her skin was milky white, almost translucent. The skin of her breast stretched to the point of revealing all those thick blue veins. Almost like a steak. A sheen of sweat over them made them look like two moons sinking into a leopard print tank top. The word “Juicy” embossed on the front.

“We all ran around the backyard-“

“-we all ran around”

She leaned forward, balancing herself with one arm cocked over the roof. Taking those cold slabs of flesh off the glass. He watched her from his dark seat, as she lowered her head to talk. But she seemed to stop short of her eyes. Only revealing a set of dark red lips, her liner even darker, made her lips look like burnt leaves. As she mouthed “Open up” tapping her tacky toxic green stick-on nails against the glass.

He waited a moment, looking at the veins on her neck, her pale flesh like the page of a book. He followed her green stick-on nails as she motioned to him to open the window. And back to her neck, seems like someone couldn’t resist to doodle all over her. Crawling up her neck the words; “Prudence never pays”. His eyes drawn to her obscene breast. The words “He never even looks at me” tattooed across them in the same style.

He could sense her rising impatience. Stretch marks carefully hidden began to poke out above the exposed top of her bra. She had flabby white arms. He imagined her as a german barmaid type, crudely throwing plates onto tables. Giving up that life to stand out here getting goosebumps looking at strangers.

“We all ran around the backyard-“

“-It was crazy clown time”

He wound down the window slow. She seemed to flood through, her smell vile and intoxicating and stronger than ever. Perfume junk food. He knew it wasn’t good for him but he kept breathing it in, drinking it up.

“You want some company?” She said as she perched herself on the edge of the window. The night panned around as it was ought to do. Getting a good look at her. Her ass squeezed into a pair of camo yoga pants that seemed two sizes too small. Despite that being impossible. Who knows what she was hiding under those, more stretchmarks, some cigarette burns.

He didn’t say anything, the night air danced on the back of his neck. Tiny cold feet tapping up and down his spine, telling him it was right, tonight. He didn’t notice his hands on the wheel until they were tensing up on the faux leather. The noise of flesh tightening as he squeezed harder and harder. Rhythmically building until it felt like something might burst.

He pressed a button on the dash, the door unlocked.

She slid into the car with a practiced hip wiggle. She fell into the buckets seats like a catcher’s mitt. The door slamming shut behind her.

Up close she had sullen eyes and a wide flat face. Her hair was a washed out brunnette imitation of something Marilyn Monroe may have had at one point.

“Quiet type?” She said.

He breathed out and kept his face hidden by a nervous hand at his mouth as he leaned his arm against the window.

“Crazy clown time”

“-it was crazy clown time”

The music was much louder in the car, masking the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. It was all around him, the inside of his car felt like it was filled with cotton balls. He couldn’t look at her, she was too close, he scanned her up and down from the corner of his eye.

“Do you have a place we can go?”

“Crazy clown time”

“-it was crazy clown time”

~

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