Search

Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

Where weird shit hits bizarre fans.

Open Search
Tag

satanism

TOTCB Chapter 16 ‘Well of Misery’

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

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

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

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

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

That be all.

Bye now.

TOTCB inkitt link

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Err… ahem, excuse me”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little too much information but that was fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is this?” Nulidad said.

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

“What do you want?”

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

“Why would you do this for me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

TOTCB Chapter 14 ‘The Carnival is Over’

Guten Aben, Just gonna phone this one in, not that many updates exept it’s a go with the new editor and she seems raring to go. I realise I forgot all about the mailing list over the holidays, and I actually still haven’t got the full manuscript for the TOTCB off my old editor who is studying to be a priest or something in israel, or something like that.

Anyway, so I can’t do the mailing list really until I get that back, which sucks. But I’ll still be posting free unedited content and reviews of whatever dumb shit I see. I don’t have a clean copy of the last jedi to rag on yet but I did get the misogynist copy which is like a version with all the women scenes cut out I think haha. But it’s a cam so fuck that, I want high quality theft, only the best quality piracy will do.

Also I remembered why I use inkitt, it’s a good respository for my work I guess, makes it easier to thumb through each chapter on any device so I guess it has it’s uses. I’ll start putting Gage up there when it’s finally done, been dragging my feet recently where that’s concerned. Elite Dangerous addiction really getting out of hand haha.

So I’ll be putting links up like before so people can read the chapters in order. Like right here; The Carnival is Over

See you…

~

Nancy was sitting in her makeshift office in the San Antonio field office. She was on edge already then the phonecall she was waiting for came and time slowed. She picked it up and didn’t say anything.

 

“Hello? Is this Jaeger?” A thick spanish accent said confused by the silence.

 

“Yes, sorry, this is Nancy Jaeger”

 

“I’m Legate Dargento. We have analysed the data you’ve sent to us and forwarded that data to Interpol and they have a match. We’re faxing you the information as we speak. I hope this helps you in your investigation.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure it will” Nancy was elated but felt a hint of sadness creeping in from an unknown place, a cold shiver. “Thank you”.

 

“You’re most welcome”.

 

She hung up the phone and just sat there for a minute with her elbows on the desk.

 

“What is it, did the tests come back, was that Interpol?”

 

“They’re faxing it over now.”

 

–

 

Porter thought the kid looked hungry and he might loosen up if he put some food in him. So he took him across the street to Raising Cane’s chicken fingers, ordered some texas toast and lemonade.

 

It was a standard diner set up in any roadside chain. Booths running down the windows with blue seat cushions. The walls were all red with pictures of dogs and old movie stars on them. There were square tables running along the centre of the room at right angles to eachother. It was busy enough to cover whatever they had to say to eachother without anyone hearing it. Kids having birthday parties, old people, teens, college kids, the works.

 

He picked it because it was close and on a busy road out in the open. He picked a booth facing out so he could see any cars coming. The kid was facing away with his cap and dark glasses on, plasters on his face. It was awkward the kid didn’t want to talk but by this time Porter knew he remembered him.

 

“Do you remember me?”

 

Johnny nodded.

 

“I heard you scared your mother pretty good, that stunt you pulled”

 

The kid, shrunk back into his seat, the hairs on the back of his neck brushed backwards. His lip quivered, but with what it wasn’t clear. After a moment in a harsh whisper he said “That woman is not my mother”.

 

Porter’s heart gallopped and hurdled his stomach. His blood started rushing in from all over and he could almost hear it. His breath getting hot in his lungs as he tried to calm himself, tried to keep his face poker.

 

The kid looked at him and he was scared, really scared this time. He took the glasses off and threw them across the table and rubbed his eyes. He slumped in his seat and suddenly looked older and he looked Porter in the eyes, with those deep brown eyes.

 

“Who are you?” The words shook in Porter’s throat. They seemed to make the ground shake, like he was talking to devil himself. The angel Gabriel from high revealing himself in human form. His bones quaking at the revelation of truths to come. Come flowing out in a torrent that wouldn’t stop until they washed everything away.

 

The waitress came with their food. They sat across from eachother waiting for her to put it down and go back to the counter. She put it down and Johnny smiled at her and she walked away. His eyes hung down and he turned back to Porter. He breathed in deep his hand on the counter scratching at his thumb with his forefinger.

 

“My name is Cisco Nulidad and I’m wanted by Interpol”.

 

–

 

Nancy fought the urge to bob on her heels, she speed walked down the hall to the fax machine. She could feel the eyes on her but this was her moment, she couldn’t let the excitement get to her. She could hear the fax machine going as she walked. She sped up, Con was behind her.

 

It spitting out page after page after page, some in English some in Spanish. There was so much of it she could hardly believe it, she felt like a kid on Christmas. She could barely look at the pile afraid one part of it would be revealed too quickly and spoil the whole surprise.

 

When the fax machine stopped she scooped up the hot pieces of paper and bundled them into a folder she had ready. Then speed walked them back to her office pushing past Con, she hardly even noticed him at this point. She needed to get back to her office. There was something about it that told her she needed the privacy of a closed door to see. She didn’t need anyone to share in this moment.

 

She slapped the folder down on the desk and started from the start.

 

Con opened the door, coffee cup in hand. It was hot so his jacket was draped over his chair. He was just wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a tie tossed over his shoulder.

 

“What is it? Who is he?” He asked not stopping for air between questions.

 

She speed read through first page. Her mind reeling to keep up, She passed it to Con and started on the next as he looked at it and tried to process the scope of it.

 

It was a black and white sheet, a fingerprint card with a picture of man with dark hair on it. “Cisco Nulidad, it says he’s French, wanted by Interpol, twenty three years old, Christ!”

 

She burned through the next page and passed it over to him.

 

“Wanted for impersonating minors to gain access to children’s shelters. known Alias; Frederic Beard, Benjamin dianason, Jimmy Peter Manfred, Hurny Wright.” He flipped the page over in disbelief. “The list just goes on and on, these are all missing kids he’s impersonated. This is all over Europe. Luxembourg, spain, france, Germany, Belgium, Milan, Glasgow, Bosnia, paris, bourdeaux, this is crazy”.

 

She finished another page and passed it to him.

 

“Known nationalities, Australian, Uruguayan, Canadian, Mexican. A history of lying about abduction and sexual abuse. Suicidal tendencies, designated an extreme flight risk”. He looked at Nancy and back at the page in sheer disbelief.

 

“He’s a fake”. He said.

 

–

 

Porter steadied himself, his food growing cold in front of him. “How?”

 

“From the start?” Nulidad said.

 

“From the start”

 

Ciscoe cleared his throat and started to look around. He took his cap off and Porter noticed he had somewhat of a receding hairline and his roots were even darker now.

 

“Well I make a phone call and I pretended to be a couple who found a missing boy. I said he was scared and lost and they picked me up and I pretend to be very scared. I put into their minds they have a child, I don’t even need to tell them I was abused, they say that.”

 

He took a sip of his lemonade and he almost looked pleased with himself. There was something fun about it for him, like a magician revealing his secrets to the world, the world of one.

 

“They take me to the shelter and they tried to find out who I was but they couldn’t. I didn’t let them print me take photos, but they threaten to. I just wanted to stay in the shelter. So I say to them leave me alone in the office at night. Because I tell them I’m an American and because of the time zone difference I need to call at night”.

 

He breathed in. “So I search, I know on the phone in that office, no one can hear me, I can convince anyone on the phone. I called police stations in the U.S. I tell them I am police and we have a missing American child. I try to find a child that matched my description. After a while I found a woman in San Antonio who told me about a missing child, Johnny Bartlett”.

 

He looked around at the children at the birthday party, the cake came out candles and sparklers lit. He swallowed and went on. “She sent me a fax with his picture and I looked at it and I saw the date. Been missing for a few year, it was old picture, I know there would be a change and I tell them they had a match. I call Peggy on the phone pretending to be err police and I tell her we found Johnny. ” He paused and a little something wormed into his smile, regret maybe. “I washed her brain.” He went on fresh. “The next day I proved to the people at the home who I was and they called the embassy and the fbi.”

 

“I didn’t stop because I didn’t know what I was doing, I couldn’t stop”. He started to eat, taking bites of the toast, chewing while he continued speaking. “But fuck, when the embassy they sent colour pictures of Johnny, I see he has blue eyes and blonde hair, fuck me, I burn them. I wish I could burn every word I say up to that point. So I had no choice, I dye my hair, I get the dark glasses and cover my face and I get a girl in the home to do the tattoos. I thought if I could get the hair and tattoos and she couldn’t see my face she wouldn’t know I wasn’t her brother, I’d have a chance.”

 

“I didn’t even know if he was left or right handed. I couldn’t be him because I didn’t know him, I couldn’t think anymore. I just think of what prison will be like when I go.” He said taking a slurp from his lemonade.

 

“I thought about running away, I thought about it but it was too late, Peggy was on a plane and coming to get me, I was trapped. She show up and I hide, I didn’t think she’d accept me. I thought as soon as she see me she say ‘Who the fuck is that? That’s not my brother!’. I knew I was about to lose everything I had no choice, I knew I couldn’t wait no more, it was too late to run, I couldn’t disappear. So I open the door and I went down to meet her and she didn’t wait two seconds. She jump on me. She starts kissing and cuddling me and telling me she recognise me. She accept me right away, to her I was her brother, no question.”

 

“She tell me everything would be fine, only god knows why she would do that. Then she started showing me pictures, dozens of pictures. ‘You remember this is when you were playing with scotty.’ ‘Jason looks older’, just over and over, drilling it into my head.

 

He swallowed “I wasn’t pretending to have another identity, I stole one.” He sighed and went on as if it was a play or a game.

 

Porter stayed still like he was listening to a radio play.

 

“All I had to do was get on a train and go anywhere, but something tell me to stay. I can’t describe, I wanted to feel loved, because I never have that before. My mother have me very young and didn’t want me so I thought I could steal one who did”.

 

He looked off out of the window at the busy intersection and all that nothing. “I think America, I think big city, skyscraper you know? But when I get here it’s all this nothing, all this country, so much space.”

 

He was talking louder and more confident than he had since he got here and he smiled and shook his head. “And then I met you, I already leak to the media about me. Because I thought if the media, the whole world see me and hear my story, it would make Johnny more real, even to me”. He looked down at the table “I wanted people to feel sympathy, to love me”.

 

“How many French adult live the American dream?” He laughed a little as he said it.

 

“How did you get away with it? The embassy doesn’t just throw out U.S passports to anyone.” Porter voice came out of nowhere. He’d just been sitting there listening dumbstruck for what seemed like hours he’d forgotten how to talk.

 

Nullidad didn’t seem to notice and he looked off past him. “I had help.” He clenched his jaw and said. “I thought I’d fooled them but I fool myself, I see now they were the fakes from the start”.

 

“What do you mean? Who?”

 

He looked into Porter’s eyes. “She help me, I see now she coach me. The embassy they give me a test they show me pictures from Johnny family and they test me to see if I remember. ” He licked his lips and leaned forward with his hands on the table. “Peggy she tell them that I haven’t seen them but she’s telling me over and over showing me pictures. ‘Do you remember this, do you remember this person, you remember this, you remember that? That’s your uncle this, your aunt this, your cousin, your mother, your grandmother’. She did it over and over and she make me remember, she coach me and I passed”.

 

“Who your sis- Peggy?”

 

“Yes” He paused. “It was just so much I couldn’t think at the time that she knew they would test me. She helped me to cheat, it was such a normal conversation. I couldn’t see what she was doing, I just thought she really wanted me to be him, she wanted it so bad for me to remember”.

 

Nullidad swallowed and said “I thought she just really wanted me to be her brother. She made me her brother, she didn’t believe it for a second. She knew I wasn’t her brother, she wanted me to be him, nomatter what.” He looked down and breathed in. “I was convince, it was luck, I realise now there was no way they couldn’t see through me, who wouldn’t know there own child? They pretended.”

 

He swallowed and kept rambling. “I thought I was the fake, the imposter. I’m just a stupid person who wanted to be someone else, they were the real fakes. They knew Johnny was never coming back and they used me to hide that. I was the fool all along.”

 

He poked at his food and said “My lie was small, I lied about being someone I was not. Their lie is everywhere, it touches everything, it’s all around, it encircles me and I can’t escape.”

 

Porter banged his fist on the table, a sudden surge of nervous rage shooting through him. “What about Johnny?” Cisco looked up his eyes narrow and frightened. “I’m sick of listening to you feel sorry for yourself, what happened to Johnny?”

 

“They killed him”.

 

Porter shrunk back in his seat, all the hairs on his arms felt electrified, standing on their ends. He got that cold feeling in his stomach like he knew it all along. He knew it.

 

Nullidad looked down at his feet. “Some of them knew about it, some of them kept quiet about it, some of them did it”.

 

Nullidad licked his lips and filled the silence that was growing. “For a long time I worried that the real Johnny would come back. But one night, Angela, she drink, she was drunk and she tell me. I heard her say, Johnny is dead, it was an accident, but Johnny is dead. I knew it was true and I never worry about him coming back after that.”

 

“Why did you do that to your face?”

 

“I knew no one believe me, I could’t be Johnny anymore.”

 

“What about Jack, why did you run?”

 

“I don’t know, I have bad feeling and I wait for him to go pay for the gas and I run”.

 

Porter’s eyes glassed over and his face was flat and expressionless. “Why should I believe any of this? How can I believe you?”

 

Nullidad paused and rolled his head back and forth looking for an answer and when it didn’t come he said “You can’t.”

0

TOTCB Chapter One ‘A Little Rain’ (edited)

Ok, being a little lazy.

Just rereleasing the first chapter because people kept bitching at me for showing off DDD when it hasn’t been edited but it’s hard not to want to show my latest work to people when I’m the most excited about it but I have to wait until its more polished and in the mean time I have the first three chapters of this book edited and ready to go and will be releasing it for free on my my site for everyone on my mailing list as soon as it’s completed which is looking to be sometime next month.

Otherwise everything is good, still feeling a little uninspired recently but I’m enjoying doing the lovecraft inspired story and relistening to all his stories for inspiration. Despite that it’s still coming along quite slowly and I’ll release some of it on here when I can be bothered to proofread it. So keep your head on a swizel for that.

Anyway, here’s the remastered first chapter of The One That Came Back for your rereading pleasure.
Don’t forget a free e-copy of this and my last novella ‘Ladies Close Your Eyes’ will be winging it’s way to all the nice folks on my mailing lists so stay tuned for that and peace out.

~

Chapter 1 A little rain

 

“Police, go ahead.”

“My wife and I 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 as if 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 phone booth. 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, with his head in his knees, breathing steadily, the receiver hanging by his head.

The phone booth stood alone in the centre of a cobbled town square, lined with caged trees. European-style lampposts, dotted throughout the square, cast sickly yellow pools of light. There was a square-roofed totem, plastered with ageing posters, advertising bands in Spanish; stark bushes behind it, all their leaves long gone, left with only bony finger twigs stretching out in all directions.

Distant sirens.

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 phone booth was made of some cheap plastic, like a black shower mat, curling at the corners. It was wet with people’s footprints and the rain getting in through the cracks. Dirty cigarette butts were 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 phone booth. They stopped the car and put the lights on, red and blue flashing. They got out of the car.

Two cops with their hoods down. On the passenger side, the bald cop approached the phone booth speaking Spanish, reaching out his hand as if he was trying to feed a small animal.

The boy lifted his head to look at the light through the crack in the phone booth door. He shivered as the cold damp started to get to him. The man approached, slow and low, and 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 policeman opened the door of the phone booth 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 lost his patience for a moment and reached out for the boy. The boy pulled back. He was shaking.

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

The boy was ashen, shaking. 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 boy’s legs seemed weak. His knees buckled and the second cop swam through the rain to prop him up on his other side. 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 covering the other half of his face. “Where do you live?” she kept asking.

The pixelated camera zoomed out as he said nothing. He hung his head like a frightened animal. “Do you live with your parents? Did they hurt you?”

It looked more like an office than an interview room. It was wood panelled with a wall of  opaque glass.. The boy 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 wooden table. There were loose pieces of paper in Spanish tacked onto the wall: 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 that looked 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 shiny 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. There was a book shelf packed with hastily tidied files, binders and large books that looked like phone books piled on top of each other, in no particular order.

In the outer office people were smoking and tapping away at old computers. The bald policeman who had 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.-

–

The boy sat in a waiting room, on a long leather couch that looked like the backseat of an old car. A hand-painted mural behind his head looked like storm clouds. He sat with his head down. A woman at a desk was speaking Spanish into a telephone.

She put the phone down with a surly click and got up, walked around her desk and sat on the front with her hands in her lap.

“Please tell us who you are. Why don’t you have any ID? Are you from Spain?”

He was in the office of a children’s home. It was a large room filled with desks and computers. On the wall, behind the director’s head, was a large map of the world and pictures, of her family, a holiday, a mossy cave, a beach somewhere, school pictures, children sitting in rows, children’s drawings.

She dipped her head as if to implore him. “If you can’t prove to us who you are, we’ll be left with no choice but to fingerprint and photograph you right now and pass them on to the police. Do you understand?”

He looked up, his eyes searching her face. She looked like she was trying to comfort him but she was also disappointed that he didn’t exist.

–

“Peggy, it’s your mother, are you sitting down? You’re not going to believe this.” An old woman’s whiskey-soaked voice rattled down the phone line.

“Mom, what is it?” The girl on the other end sounded startled; it was late.

“They found your brother, Johnny. They found Johnny in Linares!”

“Oh my God! What part of Texas is Linares in?”

“No, it’s not in Texas. Linares, Spain!” Peggy’s mother, Angela, coughed.

“Spain? Isn’t that on the other side of the country? When can we see him? When can we get him back?” Peggy was rushing now, almost slurring her words, her heart jumping up and down like it was on a pogo stick.

“They gave me a number of the shelter he’s in. Peggy, can you call? You have to be the one that goes and gets him. You have to go get your brother, do you understand?” Her mother was begging now; there was no one else she could rely on.

“OK.”

Peggy’s mother quickly rattled off the number and Peggy jotted it down on a piece of note paper by the phone.

She hung up the phone without saying goodbye, or even thinking, and let it sit in the dark spot of her mind for a moment. She took a few hurried breaths, feeling a little light-headed. The room felt like it was getting smaller. Finally she took the phone out of the cradle, an old-fashioned grey phone with big buttons. She put it to her ear and dialled the number.

The phone rang for a moment and then a man with a European accent answered.

“Hello, this is Peggy Carson. I was told to phone this number.” She paused with a sudden shortness of breath. “Johnny, Johnathan Bartlett.” She sucked her bottom lip. “Do you have him?” An eternity passed as she waited for a response. “Hello?”

“Yes, we have him, Johnathan Bartlett. He’s sitting right here next to me. I am Joan Dorian. I work at the children’s centre and we are sure it is him. You must understand, he is very scared. He has been through a traumatic experience, do you understand?”

“Please, can I talk to him, just for a moment?” The concern in Peggy’s voice rose. She’d begun twiddling the phone cord between her two fingers.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Carson, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, as of this moment. He’s been through a very hard time. We believe he may have been abused by whomever abducted him and he’s not in the right frame of mind to talk to anyone.”

“I can’t talk to him at all? He’s my little brother!”

“Please, Mrs Carson, understand, this is not the same boy you knew. He’s been through a hell of a lot. He’s going to need a lot of time to come to terms with what happened to him. He’s going to need a lot of love and understanding and patience right now, OK?”

“Alright, please give him my love.” She stopped to take a breath. “Does he remember us? Does he remember his family?” Her voice croaked and shook, as if she was scared to ask.

“He doesn’t remember much. He remembers you, but not a lot else, I believe.”

“Please just let me hear his voice.” She was desperate.

Another eternity passed, before a strained child’s voice came on the line.

“Hello?” it said.

Peggy welled up and burst into tears.

“Hello, Johnny? Johnny, is that you? We missed you, baby. We’re going to get you back soon. Don’t worry, we’re coming. I love you.”

“I love you,” the voice said.

~

0

TOTCB Chapter 13 ‘Red Right Hand’

Heyo,

Back again with another chapter, got some interest in this actually, had a few literary agents ask for the completed manuscript but I’m still waiting on my editor to reply to my fucking emails haha!

But it’s a good feeling, it feels like with every step I take it’s a step further and although I didn’t really hold much stock in this book well not as much as I do with Diana in the Dark, it’s nice to know I’m getting closer to my goal. That this wasn’t all in vain and one day I’ll be where I want to be and it will have meant something.

Despite all that’s happened along the way, I can’t say I’d change a thing, happiness and misery only waiting over the horizon.

Still feel a little in a rut recently, victory or the chance of victory has defeated me for a time and I’ve been trying to write a lovecraftian story this last week but it’s proving trickier to manage my time with so many distractions. But I’m steadfast and I’ve been reingesting a steady diet of Lovecraft and bloodborne to try and get in the right frame of mind.
Don’t get your hopes up though, it’s not really meant to be scary, I’m writing something that’s a little like a Lovecraftian superhero origin story hence the title ‘Loverman’. It’s basically call of cthulhu meets the crow.

It should be a lot of fun once I get to the knitty gritty of it.

Anyway, back to the day to day grind.

See you…

Red Right Hand

–

Johnny was being held in Bexar county sheriff’s department in the centre of town. Con and Nancy were watching him through two way glass as he sat in an interrogation room. They were waiting for someone to brief them on what happened.

Johnny looked nervous, lost. Like he was searching for something, lost in his own head and he didn’t know where to start. He was pale with white bandages over portions of his face.

A sheriff’s deputy breezed in with a report in his hand, he was a short man with a beer gut and greying beard.

“Are you the fbi people?” He said without a hint of irony, chewing some kind of blue gum that made his breath smell like popcorn.

“That’s us” Con said, standing with hands in his pockets.

Nancy was still watching the kid, transfixed, her arms folded.

“Well I’ve got the report here signed by his mother. We’ve got her in a separate room waiting for the warrant to come through on the blood samples. But we should have that soon. We already have the boy’s DNA, fingerprint, palm print, photophraghed, the whole shebang”

“That’s great, forward it to our office and we’ll put it through our database and send it on over to Interpol.” Con said without removing his hands from his pockets, furrowing his all too handsome brow.

“Interpol, wow, this is some serious stuff huh?” The man smiled and swapped glances with Con and the back of Nancy’s head. He almost bowed and started to take the gum out which he now realised he’d been chewing loud. “Oh sorry, trying to quit smoking. I can leave the incident report here for you take a look at or I can give you the hightlights.”

“Highlights are good” Con said forcing a smile.

“Well alright then” The man said as he straightened up. “Well this is all from his mother and the boy doesn’t contest it. The subject, that is the young man, found what we’ve determined to be a flare gun. His mother said was out in the garage, she doesn’t have any idea how it got there. Possibly bought by her husband and put in storage”. He looked up for minute to check they were still there and he went on. “The subject took said flare gun and discharged it into the refrigerator, accidentally.” He said that last part looking at Con.

Nancy sneered as she kept looking through the glass. “What about his face?”

“He did that himself, the mother says it was an accident too. Boys will be boys and all that and she doesn’t want to press charges. After we’ve executed the search warrants we have no cause to hold them any longer”

“Is that everything?” Con said.

“Pretty much, I’ll leave you folks to it. We’ll keep you informed on the state of the warrant and forward any samples to your office.”

“Thanks deputy?”

“Kline, good to meet you folks, I heard you were from out of town, I hope its treating you well, you two have a good one ok.” The deputy closed the door behind him and left them alone in the cold darkened room. Watching Johnny squirm.

Nancy seemed to quiver from a draft as the door closed. She’d been standing with her arms folded facing the glass. Now she started to rub her arms as an almost nervous reaction. Con could tell something was wrong, he walked a few steps closer.

“You ok?”

“Mmm”

“What is it?”

“Just a feeling” Her mind was somewhere else.

“A feeling?”

“Like someone’s moonwalking on my grave” She was looking at her reflection in the glass now.

“The kid’s got you spooked?”

“It’s not just the kid, it’s the whole family, and the kid. I knew there was something off about him the minute I saw him.”

“Selection bias at it’s finest, you’re just remembering it that way to make sense of how you feel now”. He smiled knowing that would rile her in the right way.

She scowled at him and chupsed.

“There’s something wrong, it’s like he doesn’t exist. Like everything he does is out of time, out of rhythm. I can look at someone usually and see what they’re gonna do, or what they’re thinking. When I look at him it’s like static, cold white static.”

“What about the family”.

“They’re hiding something, but everytime I think I know what it is it just falls away. It’s not just that I feel like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back. It’s like we’re not moving at all or even if we find out what happened we’ll never quite know the whole truth.”

“That’s always how it is, only an idiot convinces themselves they ever have the whole truth of anything.” He was getting maudlin for a change. As soon as he said it he got that cold feeling like it was contagious.

“But it’s like even they don’t know the whole truth, like they’ve hidden it even from themselves, every one of them.”

“It shouldn’t take too long to have the test’s analysed, and once we send them on to Interpol we can put this to bed.” Part of him wanted to pat her shoulder but he knew how that would go so he kept his hands in pockets.

–

0

TOTCB Chapter 8 ‘God’s away on Business’

Hey there,

First official book is out and it already has a handful of great reviews, seven to be exact. I’m pretty happy about that, one or two in there really get what I was going for, that’s great. But as my publisher tells me ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’, so more will come in given time and effort and I need to get back to the daily grind of writing and editing.

Oh yeah almost forgot, I finished Green Sunday part 2 yesterday. It is done, just needs a little proofreading from yours truly, then off it goes to get edited and back to me for another proofread and then into your hands hopefully and I haven’t even got my author copies of book one yet haha.

I should be really excited, it feels like an eternity I’ve been waiting to start that Dexter spin-off/spiritual successor/inspired book and I’m finally going to be let loose on that. It feels almost sanctified, like all I’ve done has been building to this, the wacky loose comedy and violence of Green Sunday and the stark disturbing dreaminess of Ladies Close your eyes and the stark reality of The one that came back coming together to make this next series, bringing all those elements together to make a whole stronger than all of them.

I say I should be happy about it but bummed out from a day of sucking at Gwent haha.

I am happy, but there’s always that sliver of melancholy that sneaks in when you finish anything you put your heart and soul into. It’s like a reward in a way.

Anyway, the next chapter of TOTCB or an excerpt of is below, you can find the full chapter on the inkitt page with the link below as usual. Still having it edited so if you sign up to my mailing list you can get yourself a free copy when it’s finished.

See you…

God’s away on business

–

It was happy hour.

Porter was sitting at the bar with an untouched pink flamingo cocktail in his hand. His other hand held his chin as he leaned with his elbow on a damp beer mat. It was dark outside but still warm.

“Phone for you Porter!” Patrick said at the back of the bar. Porter didn’t even hear it ring. The bar was full, locals mostly and a couple of college kids that looked lost.

Porter walked around the bar trying not to fall over a guy in a hockey jersey who couln’t find his feet.

The phone was on the end of the bar itself, all the way in the back.

Patrick wasn’t waiting he left the receiver on the side and Porter picked it up and put it to his hear.

“Porter”

“Dear god, you sound terrible”. A quick snippy new Yorker accent rattled around in his ear like a bad penny circling the drain.

“Wrong number, god’s away on business”

“It’s Phil” He sounded, his voice rising at the end like that should mean something.

“…”

“Phil Robertson from Channel eight action news.” He said it almost like a chant, ‘I think therefore I am’.

Porter licked the corner of his mouth.

“You remember me you prick” Phil smiled on the other end.

“I remember, what is it?”

“You been watching the news at all?”

“I don’t have all day” Porter was used to long stories from people who liked to talk but not on the phone.

“Sure you do, who are you kidding? All you micks do is sit around that bar waiting for someone to bludgeon you with a chair leg”

“Is it a job?”

“It’s a job.”

“Yeah?” Porter was waking up now. His eyes were half open and he slipped a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket and pushed one between his lips. He looked up and saw his brother signalling for him to put it away with a soggy bar towel twisting between his hands.

“Usual rate plus expenses”

Porter grimaced and put the whole pack down. He glared at his brother who smiled like a cherub, tossing the bar towel over his shoulder. Slapping himself in the face with it on accident to the great joy of a local tout

“Better not be anything to do with a sextape, I’m done with celebrity bullshit.” Porter felt antsy, he needed to put something in his mouth. He reached for a handful of bar nuts and started crunching them into the receiver.

“No it’s nothing like that, are you hearing a crackling sound?”

“No”

“Must be on my end. There’s this kid, he was on the news, it was leaked by someone on the inside. We don’t know who and we can’t get in touch with anyone from the embassy who’ll talk to us”.

“The job?”

“Ok ok, I just want you to track him down so we can set up an interview that’s all. He’s in San Antonio but that’s all I know, that’s not too far from you right?”

“Right”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yeah, I’ll do it”

“Great, great, the kids name is Johnny Bartlett and his sister’s name is Peggy Carson. You might do better going through her. Supposedly this kid has been missing for over four years. Do you need me to spell any of that, are you writing this down?”

“No”

“You sure?”

“Yeah”.

“Ok keep me posted, I’ve already got a crew set up in north san antone. The address is K335 Northwest Loop 410, it’s along the freeway, you can’t miss it”.

“That all?”

“Just find’em and get’em there, that’s all”

“Right” Porter said as he hung up the phone.

–

 

 

0

The One Who Came Back – Chapter 3 ‘A Little Trip to Heaven’

Herro der.

Ok so getting off my ass, really making good use of my time recently my personal life falling apart aside.
Keeping pretty tight to my new 2k word goal, spitting reviews out of my ass like confetti and getting lots of proof reading done and I got a few more people on my mailing list by offering them free shit that’s not out yet haha.
It’s coming out soon, calm your tits. Just getting it edited, we’ve already been through the quote and I have the cash. I even have an artist lined up to do the cover, which isn’t cheap considering this is a novella I’m giving away for free. I just want to make sure the product I’m giving out is the best possibly quality, but that takes time.
I will probably be selling it on amazon in hard copy as well just because why not when I’ve put so much time and effort and money into it. So you can pick that up if you feel like it just to support me but you don’t have to do obviously, you’re getting your free digital copy as soon as possible.
Been working on my latest novella just to prepare for when I wade into my next big novel project. It’s just a kind of wet silly horror novela, should be fun. I’ll be posting it on inkitt when I start proofreading it and I’ll probably be giving away ebook copies of that too when it’s edited.
But enough of my rambling updates. I just want to welcome the new people who joined my mailing and following my blog, thanks a lot for the support if you’re reading this, if you’re not I fucked your mother haha.

Ok so here’s the next proofread chapter of my nano novel which I’m really impressed with, I think this is the most professional thing I’ve done.

Here’s an excerpt from chapter 3 ‘A little trip to heaven’

If you want to read the full chapter head on over to inkitt by clicking on the hyperlink so you can get it in a mobile format and all that good stuff.

Anyway thanks again for reading this garbage haha.
Cheers!

–
“Some more pictures-“The tv was on, a home movie was playing. On the screen was a young girl’s room. White walls covered in pictures and cabinets lined with stuffed animals. “This is Peggy’s room, her bed, she even gots tv in her, aint she lucky?” A little boy’s voice said as the camera panned clumsily around the room.

“What if he doesn’t remember me?” Peggy said as she sat on their maroon couch next to her husband Brandon in their darkened living room.

“Well you’ll never know if you don’t go there and your mother sure as hell can’t make that trip, it has to be you.” He sighed and put his arm around “I wanna go with you but I’ve got work, you know that.”

“The birthday girl.” The boy on the tape said. The camera swayed into a canted angle on a young woman smiling, sitting at a table with her family. “Aint she beautiful?” Sounds of indistinct conversation could be heard as the the camera swept through the room looking around the kitchen and dining room. “And here is her brother, Johnny.” The camera jerked around as the boy aimed the lens at his own face. Giving the camera a semi-toothless grin and a direct view into his nostrils.

–

Peggy fidgeted in her seat on the plane. Taking long breathes and playing with saint christopher hanging around her neck.

She got the earliest flight she could, terrified but also eager. She’d never left texas before nevermind the country. Her heart raced and as soon as she sat down in her seat she swallowed and seemed to forget. All the hurrying and packing and walking on strained tight calves as she rushed to her flight. The hairs on the back of her neck. She felt like she was carried along by a sense of immediacy she couldn’t explain. She had to see him and touch him and kiss him and know he was ok or…

She couldn’t sleep, not on the flight and not the two days before it. Her heart wouldn’t let her, it beat and beat and it wouldn’t stop until she knew it was real and it wasn’t a dream.

The plane was crowded. She didn’t remember picking her seat, it was an aisle seat in coach. She couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t keep her eyes on one thing or another. No faces were clear, she felt like she was in a doctor’s waiting room. Something about not moving but still moving set her teeth on edge and it made her want to walk the whole way to spain. She took a mirror out of her purse and poked at one of her eyes.

Peggy was a fairly pretty texas flower with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Maybe just a little too much eye make up to cover up the lack of sleep. Hey eyebrows were so thin they looked drawn on. She had a strong Nordic looking face and jawline she softened with flowing bangs and a dimple in her chin. She looked tired though and she knew it. She was just past thirty and the lack of sleep did nothing for the sagging under her eyes. Her mouth was slightly downturned with a touch of natural lipstick

She couldn’t see out the windows. Everyone around her was either asleep, eating or watching a movie. Three things that didn’t cross her mind. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was in a box. She barely noticed the plane taxiing for take off. Only the tight feeling as her heart sunk into her seat as the plane took off.

It was a night flight so as soon as they got going they turned off most of the lights.

She laid her head back and closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

It didn’t work.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑