Search

Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

Where weird shit hits bizarre fans.

Open Search
Tag

Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dance of the Dream Man

Cheers!

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a business card.

‘Dr. Alphonso Moral’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hello, who is this?”

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

~

Dance of the Dream Man

0

GS Chapter 12 edited ‘Live through Death’

Hola people of ‘teh’ world, me again here to spout a mini blog type thing that I do over the chapters of my insane meandering in the world of fiction.

Gonna keep it mercifully short today because reasons, just usual shit. I’m gearing up for nano, wrapping up Ladies Close Your Eyes, I’m pretty happy with it, and the reception on that nepotisitic fart box known as ‘inkitt’ is fairly good. But who gives a shit? I’m enjoying writing it, it was a nice change to do focus on something smaller and different. I’ll try and find a place for it some magazine or contest when it’s done, maybe I’ll get it edited, but judging by the amount of time it’s taking for GS to come back I’d be lucky to get it out before the next ice age. Oh also currently in talks with an artist acquantance of mine for the cover, which should be fun, his art is really… arty. I look forward to spend too much money on that haha.

I’m excited about nano (Almost said about the next ice age), my personal life is in ruins, got no career to speak of but hey I can write some decent shit and that’s a reason not to off myself which is wearing thin haha.

This chapter is the more feelsy one, grab those tissues lads and laddettes, its about to get real up in here.

As usual head on over to those good smarmy twats over at inkitt to get your peepers all over it for free by following this here link. And if anyone wants to send me more pictures of green haired chicks, feel free haha.

Live through Death

~

Candlelight flickered on the counter top in TJ’s kitchen, a weary flame tossed back and forth by a careless breath or a sigh. TJ, his mother and Sunday huddled around the small kitchen table and ate in silence.  A restrained rattling of cutlery hid polite coughs and awkward glances across the table. No one dared utter a word.

TJ’s mom smiled at whomever cast an eye her way, but her smile was a little cracked on one side.

They finished a humble meal of frozen pork chops and a garden salad from a re-sealable pack, which TJ’s mother put back in the crisper at the bottom of the fridge. She cleared their plates.

“Mom, let me help you.”

“It’s fine. You two wash up and get to bed. I set you two up on the couch until we can get your room tidied up.” She sighed. “It’s such a mess; you said an animal got in?”

“Yeah,” TJ said as his hands slipped from the plates. He turned his head away and felt a cold steel ringing in the emptiness that was growing inside him.

His mom smiled as she took the plates to the dishwasher and loaded them in.

“It’s OK. I didn’t like any of those posters anyway; we can get it cleaned up in no time.” A weak laugh tried to escape her diaphragm, but it didn’t quite make it and instead came out as a pained hiccup.

TJ sat back down and looked at Sunday anxiously. She sat with her feet up on her seat, poking at a very dry piece of lettuce, trying not to be noticed.

“I’m done,” she said as she pushed the table away and hopped off the seat. She swam through the tension in the little kitchen and escaped to the cosy solitude of the living room.

TJ bit his bottom lip and swallowed a dry lump, his chest feeling tight and hot.

“Good night,” he said as he got up from the table and walked away. His footsteps, light, barely made contact with the floor. The image of his mother at the kitchen sink got smaller and smaller as he left the room. That image of her burned into his memory.

~

“It’s almost time,” Evergreen sighed. He felt a strange elation washing over him. He kept it to himself. “What do we have in stock?” he said through gritted teeth. A closeted eagerness leaked out in his voice as he leant against a high back chair in the operations van.

“Err, a couple of chimeras, one of those big bastards and that new one,” the tech said as he handed Evergreen a small tablet computer over his shoulder.

The tech seemed to be getting high off of Evergreen’s steely excitement. He sat in his chair, craning his neck to watch. Evergreen smiled, flipping through the pictures on the tablet as it lit up his dark, shark-like face. The mobile command centre was dark, lit only by a series of monitors. They covered the inside of something that looked like a large tanker truck from the outside.

Noticing the attention he was getting from this eager little whelp, Evergreen cast a disparaging eye towards the tech. He was a young guy, maybe late twenties, early thirties, with shaggy blond hair. A set of boxy glasses perched on his sharp nose. His name tag said his name was ‘Murray’. Tossing the tablet into his lap, he said, “Fuck it, ‘Murray’, use ’em all.”

Murray, feeling a little exposed, tilted his eyes down, cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses and got back to work. “Yes, sir. T minus two hours to full release of specimens.”

~

In the dimly lit living room, Sunday had commandeered the roomy sofa and had spread herself across it like Cleopatra. She wore another one of TJ’s zombie-themed shirts with no bottoms. ‘Evil Dead’, this time, with a picture of Ash lifting his chainsaw, ready for root canal work.

“Got a big day tomorrow,” she said as she rolled onto her side, away from TJ, revealing a set of pink panties with a picture of a little cartoon, a smiling green ice cream cone, on the back.

He turned away, trying not to look and burst a blood vessel; a sudden rush of sadness hit him. “Tell me…” He pulled a blanket off the coffee table. His mother had set out a bunch of folded bedding for them both. He began to lay it down flat on the wooden floor. “…Are we gonna make it?”

“What are you doing?” She turned to watch him laying the blanket on the floor. “There’s enough room for both of us on here.” She rolled back over onto her side.

“Err.” A cold sweat began plummeting down to TJ’s ass crack, like cold corpse fingers running down his back “What?” His breath came out in short bursts now.

“You need to get your rest for tomorrow.” She paused and took a deep breath. “You can’t sleep on the floor; I won’t let you.”

TJ swallowed hard, harder than he’d ever swallowed, and began to shake his head up and down like a dog.

“O-K.”

TJ edged his way closer to the couch. Each step felt like jumping on a slippery rock in a fast flowing stream. The image of Sunday’s warm back jostled in his field of vision as he tried to get closer. He reached the edge of the couch. He stopped dead, trying not to make a sound.

She rolled sleepily onto her back.

Without opening her eyes, she yawned and said, “TJ, get on the fucking couch.” She then rolled back onto her side, showing him her lovely back again, with that signature green quaff of hair sticking up from where she had just lain on it.

“Yeah, I’m just…”

He turned away and edged his roomy behind onto the tip of the couch, praying to himself in his head, Please don’t fart. Please don’t fart. Please don’t fart. When all his weight was equally distributed, he let out a little sigh, followed by a small yet squeaky fart that he hoped only dogs could hear. He froze, swallowing hard as he waited for her to say something. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! he said to himself. She stirred. His heart pounded in his chest. His throat became drier than a cough sweet sitting at the bottom of an old lady’s purse.

After a moment of nervous pause, he deduced that she was asleep and hadn’t heard, so he began to gradually lower himself into position on the couch. Pulling the cover up over himself and Sunday, he ever so delicately slid his large body in next to hers. His belly pressed against her warm back and, as he put his head down to rest next to hers, he could smell her hair. It smelled a little musty but not bad musty. Like the stump of a tree with fresh moss growing on it, fresh and rich and intoxicating. Her smell made his hair stand up on his pudgy arms. He tried to position his arms behind her back without touching her butt or making too much noise.

Don’t get a boner, don’t get a boner, don’t get a boner, don’t get a boner, he said to himself, under his breath, as he slithered his arm around her waist, angling for a more comfortable position while holding his breath. It was not unlike someone trying to defuse a bomb in an eighties action movie.

Sighing and releasing the tension in his arm, he grinned like a monkey and took a large inhalation of her hair as he settled into his dream position: the big spoon of a girl he couldn’t have imagined would say more than three words to him if the world wasn’t ending.

His heart leapt in his chest as if it wanted to climb out of his throat and give him a high five. For a minute he forgot what he was even doing on the couch. Oh, yeah, sleep.

He settled and forced his eyes closed. And he glided off to sleep on rainbows and bullshit.

~

Live through Death

0

LYCE Chapter Chapter 8 ‘The Rabbit’

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

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

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

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

The Rabbit

Cheers!
~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shuffled behind the desk and cleared his throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

The Rabbit

 

 

 

0

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

 

 

0

Draco’s Demon a fanfiction by Laz. R. Gray – A review

Sorry I couldn’t resist.

I’m just too big a fan of Constantine not to read and review some fanfic. Not that into Potter but it’s decent. I know you wanted a review on your earthquake story but as the title says, I couldn’t resist.
I was actually really impressed with the overall plot right off the bat. A lot of the negative comments I have for stories I read on inkitt are that nothing tends to happen in the first chapter. Like they’re just kicking their legs waiting for the story to get going, they don’t get that the story has to get going from the start or it won’t garner enough interest for people to read the second.
But this swept me up from the start. I’m a big fan of Constantine, Hellblazer is one of my favourite if not my favourite comic of all time. I absolutely love Constantine and if anyone asks my favourite DC character, they say Batman I say John Constantine haha (tips pretentious twat cap).
So the start was great, it felt almost like a neo-noir Harry Potter. Lots of fun fan service and the cheeky scouse magic con-man being his typical caddish self.
The writing style is very competent and confident, it’s very functional, it feels practiced and wasn’t overly verbose or cringeworthy.
Technical writings skills were spot on, it was very easy to read and I didn’t see any typos or grammatical errors. There’s a bit where the dialogue of the demon rhymes with the description of his voice but I’m pretty sure that was intentional. The urge to rhyme is addictive.
Ok no some of the negative points. I have to say although there was a lot going on it seemed pretty safe and by the numbers. It felt a little fanfictiony and it didn’t feel like it took any risks or did anything different. I mean I know the HP world is strictly pg-13 or whatever but that’s not Constantine’s world. So when I see John Constantine going to Hogwarts I want Hermione naked on an alter covered in pig’s blood haha.
I just felt it was a little weak, not as edgy as a Constantine fan like me would like, gotta channel some edgelordiness from the man himself Alan Moore haha.
Also I found Constantine was a little too smug, I mean I know he is pretty happy with himself most of the time but it was a little over the top although I loved the hint at him shagging Harry’s mum, that was nice haha.
Overall it was a lot of fun, maybe my expectations were just a little too high.

If you wanna check out the whole story for yourself head on over to inkitt to read it for free.

Draco’s Demon

0

Green Sunday Chapter 11 Eggs, hash and grits (Edited)

Yo yo yo people. Don’t know what I was going for or why the big font today but fuck it. I’m back with another edited chapter. My editor is back from vacation or wherever she went. Probably battling the forces of evil in japan, fighting godzilla or something. But she’s back and hence a wild new chapter has emerged. First thing she said was the beginning sucked but she seemed to like the rest of it, thankfully the beginning is short haha.
And here it is a voila’.

Only seven chapters left, as usual follow the link to the full chapter in a more elegant format. Hopefully I’ll be going live with it on amazon sometime next year so keep an eye out for that.

Eggs, hash and grits.

~
The smell of sweat and blood and tears, the sound bare of feet on a concrete floor. Soft flesh and bone colliding. A loud chorus of people shouting and smoking and drinking. The smell of motor oil and leather hanging in the stale air. A group of people were huddled around two half-naked men knocking the shit out of each other.

“Where the fuck is Bernie?” Mojang hissed as he reclined on a large, high-backed office chair. The wheels and stand were broken. but he sat on it as if it were a low throne. A sexy biker chick in her underwear straddled him.

She leant over him with a needle and a trail of dental floss, and delicately sewed up what was left of his eye.

“Keep still baby,” she said as she pressed her slinky tattooed flesh against his.

Mojang had set himself up in a garage on the far side of town. The smell of motor oil, and the tools and spare parts clanging, put his mind at ease.

He’d holed up in the dilapidated office and the rest of his crew were getting lit on the garage floor. They took out a couple of scrappy survivors they’d picked up on their day’s raiding and set up a little fight club.

There was a ring of drunken bikers on the concrete floor of the shop. They surrounded a skinny office clerk as he pounded the cartilage of a fat barista against the concrete floor, until a satisfying, greasy, wet, snapping sound cut a swathe through the loud, drunken crowd. The clerk pounded his sweaty mitts into the stubbly fat face of the barista against the grey concrete: hot, wet, slapping sounds of meat and bone colliding on the cold, wet floor; rivulets of muddy crimson blood that would make Jackson Pollock cry manly tears. Eventually he stopped shaking and a viscous red bile started pouring from his nose and mouth.

“We got a winner!” A hairy biker in a leather waistcoat picked up the dazed office clerk by his slick, skinny wrist, propping him up. The office clerk, almost unconscious, panted out a relieved smile as his eyes rolled back in his skull.

Bernie watched from a darkened corner as they took the ‘winner’ and threw his almost lifeless body into the net of half-dead, twitching corpses, laughing as they did it.

Bernie perched in the corner next to an old payphone bolted to the wall. He rested the receiver against his ear and spoke softly.

“I hear you…tomorrow…can’t wait.” He tried to hold a smile back, tightening his face as he looked about the dim garage, lit only by unwieldy camp fires and generator-operated standing lights. He hung up the phone with a tight, satisfying click.

As the crowd got a little quieter, coming down off their wave of excitement, Bernie could hear his name being shouted.

“Bernie! Get your fat Jew ass in here!”

Bernie unfolded his arms and sighed with icy aggression as he peeled himself off the cold, concrete wall of the garage.

He popped the door of the office open. It was one of those thin plastic doors you were afraid you might yank right off. He stuck his head around the door like a temp.

“You call me?”

“Take a seat,” Mojang said, through the girl still straddling him, sewing up his eye. He didn’t move from his seat.

“There isn’t another chair in here”

“Then stand,” Mojang said as he moved the half-naked girl off his crotch. “Two minutes.”

The girl flounced out of the small office. She dragged a feminine, two-day-old musk behind her as she shut the door with a definitive bang.

“Was there something?”  Bernie said as he turned around looking at the closed door, his eyes careless.

“How does it look?” Mojang spoke to a rear view bike mirror he held up in front of his face. He tilted it down, revealing his sewn up eye. It was swollen and bloody; it looked like there was a red baseball stuck in his skull.

“Like shit.”

“You talk to him? The man? He called you?” Mojang reclined in the seat and tilted his head to one side.

“Yeah I talked to him.”

“You didn’t call me.”

“You were busy.”

“Uh huh. Well, what does he want? Do they have the scores?” Mojang seethed, his eyes scanning every inch of Bernie.

“Err, yeah but that’s not why he called. Said there’s gonna be a drop. Not even a block away – good shit,” Bernie said, grinning and rubbing his stubbly face.

“’Good shit,’ huh? OK. We’ll take it, tomorrow. This whole town is gonna burn. That fat boy and his bitch included.”

“I heard about that. Some kid did that to your face?”

“You heard about it, huh? From who? The man?”

“Around,” Bernie snorted as he pulled out a candy bar from his pocket and began opening it noisily. “Some pudgy twelve-year-old fucks you up, people talk about it.” He smiled as he took a bite out of the candy bar. Strings of caramel and nougat dangled from his bottom lip.

“Uh huh, yeah. It’s pretty fucking funny.” Mojang hopped out of his seat. He stood a good foot taller than Bernie.

“You gotta see the funny side: you lose an eye, you still got another one. We’ll get him tomorrow; his bitch too, you’ll see. You want a bite?” Bernie snuffled with the candy bar in his mouth. He smiled, breaking off a piece and offering it to Mojang as he closed in on him.

“Yeah, we will” Mojang said. A vicious smile was stitched on his face as he clutched Bernie by his jaw, forcing him against the chip board wall of the small office with a dull thud. He snatched the candy bar out of Bernie’s hand and forced it into his gaping face, wiping it all over with a forceful hand. Bernie’s neck snapped back painfully as he spat out the wrapper and he groaned as Mojang delivered a powerful uppercut under his ribs. He slid down the wall, stunned by the sudden controlled burst of aggression. “Now get the fuck out of here,” Mojang said.

~

Eggs, hash and grits.

0

LCYE Chapter 6 ‘Call from the past’

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

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

Call From the Past

Aurevoir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” James said.

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

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

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

The sound of running water.

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

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

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

It stung but he kept at it.

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

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

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

 

0

The Eyes of Goldfinches by June – A review

Let me start on the wrong foot, this is never something I’d ever really read unless there was a massive messed up twist halfway through or something. Which I wouldn’t know because I probably wouldn’t read that far and it would take it being made into a movie for me ever to know haha.
But if it is like that I don’t really expect there to be much foreshadowing in the first chapter. I think the dialogue is good and it’s always nice to see a first person narrative that isn’t entirely stale and annoying. But it gives way to a habit of telling instead of showing. You had the main character just telling us how he felt about people when it would have been more effective to show it somehow that was relevant to the plot. Because to be honest not a lot really happens in the first chapter and this is the chapter publishers and agents will read and unless your hook/summary/blurb is really amazing then they probably won’t read any further.
It may not be your style but you may want to start at your inciting incident and work back, think of it like a film that starts with the character hanging from the edge of a cliff or something then you find out how that happens while he goes about his average day of being painfully average haha. It’s a little cliché’ but it’s cliché’ for a reason, it works.
I mean what really happens in the first chapter? He goes to school, he does some school stuff, gets a detention then meets a girl. It’s not a lot to work with but saying that the title is great and it’s what initially what brought me to this story. So if you paired the catchy title with an even catchier blurb/pitch that would nail it.
Because the writing style is there, it obviously needs an edit because it’s a bit sticky in places but it shows talent, it flows. The characters of the little we saw in the first chapter are distinctive and likeable and the main character has a good voice, very fun, very self-aware and smart. I like it, it works and I can see someone who isn’t me enjoying this a great deal haha.

Here’s a link to the story so you can read it for yourself.

The Eyes of Goldfinches

0

Green Sunday Chapter 10 ‘Romeo is bleeding’ (Edited)

Good morrow fine humans!

Back again just letting my asshole heal from the reeming of my day job. It’s been a crazy few days making dat paper. But without it I wouldn’t be able to pay for this fine editing or food.

But here we are with Chapter ten, should be on the way out soon so I can start something else.
I was thinking of completely throwing out my plan from nanwrimo and doing something else entirely but more thought is required on that, I’ll keep you posted.

Follow the hyperlink to read the rest of the chapter for free.

Peace!

Romeo is Bleeding

~

“There he is!” Dave said as he pointed over his Sikh billionaire boss’s shoulder.

“You littal caant!” Pete said as he cranked the pressure gauge in his custom air arrow launcher. He narrowed his eyes to keep track of a wily moving target.

The scope flitted around, trying to keep track of the ragged green form as it darted from cover to cover. “Keep still you little barstard!” Pete spat. “Think you can outrun me, you little facka?”

“He’s over there!” Dave screeched as he leant on the raised lip of the gun store roof.

Pete tried to steady his breathing; he tunnelled his vision down the scope of the rifle. A quick flicker of light and a sharp piercing feeling. Pete was sent reeling off his makeshift perch on the roof.

“What was that?” Dave said.

Pete patted himself down for injuries “Something came right at me.” He readied himself again at his perch.

“There!” Dave screamed. A lithe figure slipped through a gap in the wall of milling living corpses.

“You fuckin’ what?’” Pete said as he gritted his teeth, pulling hard on the trigger of the arrow launcher. With a satisfying release of pressure, an arrow soared into the crowd, just as the figure disappeared.

“Did you get ‘im?” Dave said.

“I dunno,” Pete said as he lifted the rifle up and rested it against the wall.

“Who the fuck was that?” Dave said, feeling a little buzzed and drained from the excitement. As if, for a fleeting moment, the shoe was on the other foot, he glanced back to the spot where he’d last seen the cornered animal through his binoculars. He had to catch his breath despite not having moved an inch. “Hah, does that one kinda look like Burt Reynolds to you?” he said as he looked out over the shambling corpses on the other side of the street.

“Another caant like us, I reckon. Didn’t get a good look at ‘im,” Pete said as he leant against the lip of the roof. He took out a hunting pipe and filled it with tobacco, lit it and took some measured pulls on the horn lip piece, with a faraway look on his face. He listened to the sound of his own heartbeat. As he put pressure on the wall, the other side cracked a little and pieces of mortar and brick crumbled.

Unnoticed by Dave and Pete, lodged a good four or five inches into the mortar was a shiny and very sharp-looking butterfly knife.

~

A sickly light trickled through the gaps in the shutters of an upmarket house on the more affluent side of town. The house was still and looked vacant in the bluing light of the evening. The night was on its way, bringing a much needed stillness to the busy town. The house was old-looking, reminiscent of some older New England town houses: a two storey affair, made of retouched white wood and roofed with grey tiles. The windows were partitioned with the same white wood. All the curtains and shutters were drawn.

Inside the house a deathly cold gripped the anterooms and the hall. A musty smell the owners must have gotten used to permeated the rooms. And the floorboards creaked like those in an old, haunted house.

The stairs were fairly grand, made of an elegant hardwood. They were cold as century-old bone to the touch. The faded blue light gave them a dreamlike quality, as if the whole house were some sort of display or diorama meant for looking but not touching.

Nevertheless, something lived there. Something stirred in the dull blue light. Little feet slapped the icy staircase as they descended, creating the slightest creaking noises on the old steps.

A little girl, maybe five or six, in a frilly night gown, descended the stairs, like a ghost. She held a stuffed iguana close to her little chest. She peered into the inky blue stillness of her home and saw a spark of light. There was a warm glow building in the furthest corner of her house, along with whispers and hissing sounds and a strange smell.

She tiptoed down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. As she got closer the angered hissing noises continued. She could hear a few choice words and laboured breathing as she approached the light source.

The light was coming from her living room. A small fire had been stoked in the old, wood-burning fireplace. There was a man sitting in front of the fire talking to himself angrily.

“I’ll get you, you asshole, you just wait! I know where you are! I’ll get you and I’ll-ergh!” The man muttered to himself as he nursed a wound in his shoulder. A bloody arrow had been tossed onto the hardwood floor by the fireside. He sat on a large green army coat in front of the fire, rocking back and forth like a caged animal, a blood-stained kitchen knife clutched in his hand.

“Santa, is that you?” The little girl said as she saw his scraggly beard and long hair. “It’s a little early. Where are all the presents?”

“Presents?” Carpenter said, furrowing his brow in a confused daze. Caught off guard by the little girl in her pyjamas, he gripped the knife tighter. “I don’t have any presents.”

“Oh,” the girl said, taking it surprisingly well. “Well, could you help me?” she said as she tightened her face a little. “My mommy and daddy are sick.” Her voice caught.

“Shhhhh,” Carpenter said. He put his finger up to his mouth. “Take me to them.” He smiled broadly, exposing his yellowed teeth. “Santa has something for them.” He stood up shakily, sliding the knife underneath his belt.

~

Romeo is Bleeding

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑