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October 15th, 2004
06:00 pm - HEATHROW 2014
Keith was having a bad day and that was before the x ray machine picked up the ass eels.
What had started as a Japanese only spectator sport was now the underground craze amongst the youngsters. Protests and an ad campaign from PETA had only made the damn thing more popular. Keith was thankful that the wrigglers he spotted were trapped in the back passage of a young girl so he could hand over the job of wrangling them to a female colleague. She led the forlorn girl away with a scowl in Keith's direction. "These bastards shoot out like bullets…"
Keith hoped she remembered to keep her mouth closed.
9.30am and he was free of the lines and on his way to the staff room when the alarm sounded. Sighing he slowly made his way back to the security area as armed police jogged past carrying shields and batons.
By the time he got to his designated desk the police were already knee deep in passengers who had not been quick enough in handing over their passports. He absently picked up a handful of legal injury forms and hit the button that released the prozac gas into the departure lounge, waiting for a little tingle himself before he pushed in his own nose filters.
A teenager in a t shirt depicting Prime Minister Brown in an orange jump suit with a knife to his throat was picking his teeth up from the floor when the back swing of a baton intended for his mother's throat caught him behind the ear and laid him back down.
Keith yawned.
Outside the tanks would have crushed the taxis and knocked the coaches out of the way as the airport shut down. Those inside were now all potential terrorists and fair game.
A ticker tape message ran across the bottom of Keith's console telling him that a plane had exploded on the runway at Gatwick. Third one this week. Overtime for the baggage handlers and the pick of the remains. Lucky bastards.
A TV crew appeared in front of him. Some reality show about toilet cleaners was being filmed in the terminal but the crew now found themselves in the unlikely position of being the only media within the airport. Keith looked into the dead lens safe in the knowledge that any outgoing feeds had been cut before the alarm sounded. A woman with venom-injected nipples was pushing her microphone at him.
"Can you tell us what is happening?"
Keith held a finger up to indicate he needed a moment as he flipped through the manual on his desk looking for the entry on journalists. Ahh same as the clergy, and shutting the book pulled up a large can of mace and gave the entire crew a generous spraying .
He stepped around the twitching bodies, roll of stickers in hand and began attaching the correct colour codes to passengers as the police kicked them his way.
Most white people got a green sticker and would probably be home within a day or two. Anyone not white or sporting a beard or annoying badge/t-shirt was given an orange sticker which meant at least a week's holiday at the taxpayer's expense. The red stickers were saved for anyone who looked French.
When he had a pile of ten or so all stickered up he rolled them onto the conveyor belts were they would be further sorted before being thrown into the back of the vans.
Thirty minutes later and the airport was empty and it was finally time for that coffee.
He wandered away from the desks just as his replacement arrived and the doors opened to allow the next batch of passengers back inside and out of the smoke and slowly dispersing tear gas.
As he pushed his code into the door, Keith caught site of something small and pink going around on the nearest carrousel. This just wasn't his day. He went and stood near the machine waiting for the rubber track to bring the little parcel around again. Here it comes. Couldn't be more than four months old but at least it was wearing a nappy. As he picked it up he wondered why something always got left behind and why he was always the idiot who ended up sorting out the mess.
The baby gurgled happily as he turned it over looking for the tattoo tag on it's foot but instead of the usual 10 digit bar code there was only a hand printed url:
www.alqaeda.com.
But it's my coffee break, thought Keith as the baby exploded, taking him and most of Terminal Four to a better place.
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July 22nd, 2004
10:49 am - Older and ongoing stuff: part five
This is part of something I co-wrote with a friend to kick start The Napkin before it evolved into something else.
Zombie Fishing in America
A Brautigan Romero Western
1 The School
They sat on the edge of the school roof, watching the dead people stumble around below. It was the summer of 1902 in California.
They hadn't said anything for a long time. They just sat there watching the dead folks half remembering how to walk. What they saw did not make them happy.
"We should make a move soon" Greer said.
"It's a bastard all right," Cameron said. "There's another half dozen since this morning".
"I don't think I can shoot the fresh ones. It don't seem right somehow," Greer said. "I never shot a woman in my life."
Most of the newer corpses were female. Some of them, the younger ones, didn't have a mark on them. Greer figured they must have been holed up somewhere and when things got bad one of the adults must have slipped something into their food or water.
Better to die that way than the way most people in this town had gone.
Greer had his favourite gun with him: a 30:40 Krag, and Cameron had a 25:35 Winchester. Before things had gone to hell Greer liked to kid Cameron about his gun. Greer always used to say, "Why do you keep that rabbit rifle around when you can get a real gun like this Krag here?"
Now there was little time for joking and besides, that little rabbit rifle had saved their lives more than once.
They started intently at the schoolyard.
"Well, there goes some prime pussy rotting in the sun," Cameron said. "If we had found where they were hid we could have rescued their tight little asses and then enjoyed their gratitude. It's been weeks since I saw a live woman. One who didn't have her guts trailing behind her".
Greer sighed.
The trip out of San Francisco to the town of Foree had been one of the most terrifying experiences Greer and Cameron had ever gone through. It had started with them having to shoot a deputy sheriff ten times but he wouldn't die. Greer had finally broken down and started begging for the deputy sheriff to quit getting back up when Cameron had put the Winchester to the back of the kid's head and blown his brains through a saloon window.
After that things happened fast.
While most folks were trying to work out what was happening Greer and Cameron were just doing what they always did. They put one foot in front of the other and dealt with each problem as it arose. While others were calling town meetings and buying up food and ammunition Cameron decided that the simplest thing to do was leave. Getting out of town was complicated by the fact that US Marshals had decided to try and quarantine the city.
Thankfully Greer and Cameron were as adept at shooting live people as they had become at shooting dead ones. The only thing they had added was the final headshot to everyone who stood in their way.
"Last thing we need is some lawman coming back and biting off my dick for the want of an extra bullet", Cameron had said. "Besides, the more people we kill badly the more things we will have to kill later. It's a false economy".
The things in the schoolyard had finally seen them. Or smelled them. Or whatever they did to find food. They were scrambling over one another to try and clamber up the sheer wall of the school. Cameron leaned over and spat.
"Fuckers," he shouted. "Come and get it if you can."
Greer watched as his partner picked up his rifle and started firing down into the crowd of dead things. He raised his eyes and looked over the empty street. Still half expecting people to come out running at the sound of the shots. No doors opened. No windows moved. This town was dead.
"God-damn!" Cameron said, "I can't believe it's come to me shooting pretty girls in the face. By all rights I should be giving them the thrill of their young lives and a slap on the ass but here I am taking cheap looks down their dresses before I turn them into buzzard meat".
"Let's get off this god-damn school roof," Greer said.
4 The Library
The building was old.
It stood on the hill and overlooked the town as it had done since its construction in 1692 as a place to hold and question those poor souls accused of witchcraft by the town's forefathers.
It was ironic that a building built upon superstition, lies and fear was later used as a home to education, facts and calm.
By 1900 it was the largest library outside of the capital and housed an archive so vast that ten full time librarians worked in shifts simply to maintain it.
That all stopped the night of the comet.
No new books to catalogue.
It was as if the silence that had always permutated the building had somehow escaped and took a hold of everything else.
No wonder RJ was so pleased at the way things had turned out.
No more people to annoy him. No more people to ruin the order of things. No more people to make noise and ask stupid questions.
No more people period.
At first he had missed the children though.
Of all the visitors to the library he liked the young ones best. They were the ones most interested in learning and even the ones that sometimes teased him about his hump were preferable to the people in the town. It was beyond belief to him that such idiots could produce such delightful offspring. He felt sorry for them and always had 'special' books set aside for them.
And sweets.
All the children liked the candy that he had specially brought in by stage from New York along with certain periodicals that he kept well away from public view.
Not everyone in Cleveland appreciated the arts quite as much as RJ.
But that too had stopped with the comet's appearance. RJ was probably the only person in town not excited by what he saw as nothing more than low brow astral hi jinks. While the rest of the town had busied itself shooting guns in the air and falling off horses RJ had slipped into a hot bath with a good book.
A more superstitious man would have raised his hands to the heavens and cried 'WHY' but RJ merely raised an eyebrow and shuffled back into the library as soon as the first hint of what was happening reached the library door.
He kept a close watch from the upper windows as the town ripped itself apart. Thankfully none of his former colleagues made it even as far as the foot of the hill before they were taken while the rest of the town had only ever had a passing interest in the building and so kept their distance. Even in death they preferred to hang around the saloon and the whore house.
RJ Made notes. Perhaps when this was all over he could write a piece for the Washington Post. Or better still perhaps a full book. As much as he had loved the library he always thought his own talent had been overshadowed by the names on the perfect spines of all the books in his charge. He sometimes pasted his own writings together and dreamt of a day when they would be professionally bound and actually read by others. Perhaps now at last with the death of this terrible little community he could put his withered back behind him and seek the celebrity he knew he deserved.
It was during one such musing that he spied the little form of Annie Andrews making her way up the hill towards his door. Annie had always been one of his favourite visitors. Even now he smiled at her approach despite the way one foot was twisted unnaturally beneath her. She also seemed to be drooling something black and foul. Her perfect small tight mouth was distorted and her eyes milky and unseeing.
"My oh my" thought RJ. "She's been spared the pain of adulthood. My little orphan Annie needs me now more than ever."
And he rushed down the stairs as fast as his misshapen form could carry him to make a home for the first of the children who would never grow old.
6 Planes, trains and necrophilia
The wind lashed against Wilbur's goggles. His gloved and bloody hand held the controls of the Kitty Hawk while he struggled to keep his other arm around his brother as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
"Stay with me Orville or by God I'll let you fall!"
Most of the threat was lost in the air but Orville groaned slightly and Wilbur was relieved to see brother's outstretched hands grip the body of the machine a little tighter.
They had been in the air for almost an hour.
The brothers had been bound for San Francisco from Dayton, Ohio when the train they were travelling on had jolted to a halt miles from the nearest station. Orville had shrugged and continued to read his newspaper but Wilbur was immediately agitated. They had an appointment to keep with Government officials in Frisco and any delay was an annoyance. He and his brother had sunk their whole family's fortune into what lay four carriages behind them strapped down under the green tarpaulin and at last it looked like there may be some profit to be made.
He was damned if he was going to miss his chance on a military contract just because the damn fools who ran the railroad couldn't keep a train moving.
Leaving his brother to read of showgirls and dying Indians he purposefully opened the door to the carriage and jumped down to the side of the track.
He was just in time to see the conductor's head separate from his body and hit the metal engine with a dull thud. A jet of almost black arterial blood hit the side of the train and steamed off in a red mist.
Wilbur Wright aviator and inventor promptly soiled himself.
Through the red shower he could see the thing that held the conductor's kicking body in one hand and the driver in the other. It stood six-foot-six and weighed two-forty-five, kind of broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, wearing the rotted remains of a blue army uniform. Wisps of long yellow hair were still fixed to the thing's skull and it still wore a sabre at it's side.
"Holy mother of fuck!"
He reached up into the train grabbed a hold of his startled brother's leg and pulled the bewildered man ass first down off the train.
"Wilbur! What in Christ's name... what's that awful smell?"
Wilbur reached out and grabbed his brother's head and turned it ninety degrees to the left so that he could see what was unfolding at the front of the train.
It was the intestines of the unfortunate driver that were unfolding onto the ground as the dead thing pulled him apart like a rag doll filled with pig guts.
Orville vomited his half digested breakfast onto his brother's shoes somewhat diluting the smell of human excrement.
Wilbur grabbed his brother's puke stained morning jacket and pulled him to his feet.
"We have to get the Kitty Hawk airborne. It's our only chance."
"But what about the people on the train?" Orville looked up at the faces now pressed up against the carriage windows. "We can't take them all. I mean the Hawk will hardly carry the two of us."
Wilbur dragged his heavily moustached brother to the rear of the train.
"Fuck them," he bellowed. "They aren't scientists of the stratosphere!"
It took them a good ten minutes to unfasten the Kitty Hawk's moorings by which time several other dead army soldiers had joined the first dead thing. They were making slow but determined process through and around the train. A few passengers fled to the hills but the heat beating down on Wilbur's baldhead convinced him they would be just as dead as their eviscerated colleagues in a day or two. A few others had made a determined stand in the first class carriage but Remington Repeating Rifles were no match for the undead.
Wilbur hoped the group of convent girls and nuns that he had spoken to that morning over breakfast would keep the fiends busy long enough for he and his idiot brother to get airborne.
The Hawk was now resting alongside the train in all her flimsy wooden glory.
"Fuck the Montgolfier brothers" thought Wilbur as he looked at his creation.
A hideous scream brought him back to the danger at hand and he turned in time for something wet and soft to strike him full in the face.
"Wilbur are you ok?"
Wilbur pulled the meat from his face and looked at it.
"I'm fine Orville, it was just the ripped quim of one the nun's or their charges." He looked down at the hairless slit meat in his palm. Either way it's probably a virgin's he thought, "Get on board!"
He ran back to the plane and slapped the ragged vulva to the right wing.
"A pussy for the Kitty" he chortled as he stepped into his over sized goggles and manned the controls.
A few seconds later the plane was hurtling across the desert away from the slaughtered train. Orville was still trying to get his passenger straps tied when the Kitty Hawk took to the skies.
A full four feet from the ground.
"With the government's money I bet the next plane will get even higher!" shouted Orville relieved that the carnage was now far behind them.
"We'll only get that Government contract if we can prove that aircraft can make effective weapons. This is the perfect opportunity to test the new addition."
Orville looked on in horror as his chrome-domed brother tugged on the stick and swept the Kitty Hawk into a sweeping U turn.
"Man the scythe, Orville." Wilbur screamed, "We're going in!"
Having little choice in the matter Orville triggered the release of the 6 foot scythe below the aircraft and carried out a few test swipes so that his brother could maintain a steady flight during combat. He looked up from his wooden handles and saw the train coming into focus on the horizon.
"Oh my fucking God!"
At first Wilbur and Orville both reached the same conclusion that the things had freed a cage of penguins intended for the Frisco zoo. But as they drew closer they realised what they were seeing. The undead were rutting with the schoolgirls and the nuns.
Being dead for so long had obviously made the soldiers horny.
Even the ones whose tallywaggers had long ago rotted off were busy simulating sex with twitching bodies or simply fisting the poor females into the next world.
Wilbur's face became a twisted mess of rage beneath his goggles and he managed to coax another few inches out of the prototype plane.
"Wilbur, you can't take her any higher! She'll break apart!"
"Shut it you little shit and wave that blade for all your worth!"
The Kitty Hawk flew like Icarus with a pointed hard on at the rape loving corpses and made bloody work of their kneecaps and lower torsos. It took sixteen passes to reduce the soldiers into a mess of twitching guts but for once the undead were no match for modern warfare.
"That wasn't so bad now was it, Orville?" Wilbur was pleased with the machine's performance in combat and was already envisaging future American armies flying seven perhaps eight feet from the ground spreading democracy where it was needed.
"Orville?" No answer.
Wilbur turned back to see his brother impaled on the sabre of the original undead corpse who himself spitted on the scythe had managed to pull himself along the blade and find his brave brother at the controls of the weapon.
"Nooooooooooooooooooo!" Wilbur screamed and put the Hawk into a steep dive. Again the machine was not built to withstand such sudden altitude changes as it dropped from five feet to just a foot off the ground in sixty seconds.
Wilbur heard a terrible ripping noise and looked to his right to see part of the superstructure begin to tear. The Hawk was breaking up.
So be it.
Wilbur released the controls and dove forward onto the last of the undead soldiers, using his weighty goggles as a blunt instrument he rained down blow after blow on the snarling death fuck's rotten head.
The intensity of the barrage of blows caused the thing to tumble away from the plane and crash to the dirt centimetres below.
Wilbur had grabbed a hold of the thing's shirt as it fell and now clutched the remains of the material in one hand as he saw with relief that Orville was still breathing. He held the piece of blue army shirt over his brother's wound. The dark blood failing to hide the single word sewn there in gold braid:
CUSTER.
Wilbur pulled on his goggles and turned back to the controls, amazed not only that his brother had survived but also that the plane had held together. He looked to the crack running along the right side of the Hawk and smiled when he saw the tear had stopped when it had met the elasticity of the dead nameless girl's snatch.
"Use a crack to stop a crack..." he muttered and held the plane steady in the direction of the West Coast.
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10:42 am - Older and ongoing stuff: part four
An aborted idea that didn't really go anywhere. Saved here just so I can canibalise it later:
DAY JOB
One
I was out of work and out of luck and out of money. I wasn't looking for a job and couldn't be sure that one was looking for me. I had a girl but she was back home. The only thing I could think to do was have a drink and see what happened next. I sat right up at the bar with my back to everyone else and watched them drink and talk in the mirror. No one raised their heads towards me. I was a stranger but not an interesting one.
I'd been thinking about leaving and going to call the girl to see if she'd come and pick me up when the guy sat down beside me and started talking.
"You drink in here every night?"
"No, I'm just killing time."
It was the truth. I'd been killing time for over a year. No direction, no motivation and no desire to change a single fucking thing.
The guy ordered himself a pint and told the sag titted barmaid to refill my glass. I didn't argue. He was about my age but wore a suit. I couldn't even imagine what that must feel like.
"I just moved here." He raised his glass, "Fucking dump it is too."
The barmaid raised an eyebrow at this. Home town pride - last resort of the feeble minded.
"I'm from the city. Friend of mine told me there was work down here."
"He lied?"
"She lied."
"Well don't blame her too much. Its always handy to have a friend with a cunt. Never know when you may need one."
I drank my drink and that was how I met Eric King. Ric to his friends.
Two
I fell into a cycle.
Every other weekend while my girl was working at the hospital I'd go leave the city and go and find that ever elusive job. I'd always end up in The Green Man and Ric would always appear just after I'd finished my first and buy me a second drink.
We'd talk about everything and nothing. I couldn't have told you if he was married or not, whether he had brothers or sisters, whether he had a dog. I could tell you that he hated fax machines("waste of fucking paper"), was hooked on foreign movies ("Hollywood is bollocks in a sick bag") and liked to drink Newcastle Brown Ale. In a half glass.
June fell away and I found myself sat there thinking about a second drink. Rik was late. We never arranged to meet, never thought of hooking up at any other time and never even exchanged numbers. In fact, sometimes I'd get there at nine and sometimes as late as ten but no matter what time I arrived and how fast or how slow I drank that first pint Rik always managed to walk in just as I was putting down my empty glass.
But not this evening.
I was actually on my third and thinking if I should away when he sat down beside me and ordered a double whiskey.
"I think we can do each other a favour, my friend."
I looked at him. His usually impeccable suit was creased, the collar looked grubby and his pockets were bulging with what looked like notebooks and lined paper.
"Oh yeah?"
"I think I may have a job for you."
What kind of job?
He was lost in thought for a minute
"My sister just died."
My hand stayed where it was reaching for the glass. From no information to too much detail in just four words. He had a sister. Had had a sister. Was she an ex-sister now? Is that how the gag goes?
"I..."
He cut me off.
"Sorry. That's not what you asked is it?"
He turned and smiled and I shivered a little at what was being left unsaid.
"It's a day job, that's all." Another swig of scotch, "A nice and simple day job."
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10:39 am - Older and ongoing stuff: part three
A quick stab at some Captain Kronos style genre fun.
One
In which two friends meet a third and in finding him not to their liking leave him to his business as they leave to attend their own.
1773
On a cold, bitterly cold morning in January, two men make their way across a field just outside the village of Appledore in Devon. The men seem unaware of the weather, one man, the younger, strides ahead every now and again only to pause and await his companion. Both wear black cloaks and tri cornered hats pulled down low to resist the grabbing wind. One of the men carries a leather bag over his shoulder, something inside jingles from time to time and this is the only sound to be heard. They both wear swords at their waists.
At the edge of the field stands a group of trees and as the men get closer a crumpled shape at the bottom of the thickest oak begins to take shape. The younger man again slows his pace but this time so much so that the elder overtakes him. They still do not speak but instead keep their lips tight pressed and their thoughts hidden.
The shape at the bottom of the oak resolves itself into the form of a third man. He is lying as if dead and perhaps he is. Dew has begun to form over his shoulders and he lies face down as if kissing the roots of the old tree.
A horse whinnies in the distance and both men stop short of the third and look around. Seeing nothing they take up positions either side of the third and at last one of them speaks.
"Well, I'd say he was dead alright."
This from the younger man. His voice reveals his accent, a local lad, and his age. He is younger than his stature suggests.
The older man bends down saying nothing and lays a gloved hand on the gentleman whose health is now in dispute. No response. He leans closer and he sniffs but detects nothing in the air that would hint at decay. The lying man is dressed in the garments of a labourer and no exposed flesh can be seen under the many layers.
"We'll have to turn him."
The older man when he speaks has no discernible accent. He is either much traveled or hides his origins well.
The younger man reaches down to assist but no sooner have they got their hands on the prone figure they are pushed backwards as the man, apparently not as dead or as indisposed as he seemed, suddenly gathers himself into a kneeling position, arms out clutching at the tree as if in suppliance.
The younger man laughs boyishly as he picks himself up from the cold wet grass not noticing that his companion's hand is at the hilt of his sword.
"You gave us quite a turn there sir! We were about ready to have you dissected and buried before you even had you your breakfast."
"Quiet, Robert and stand back from it."
The younger man, Robert, immediately does as he is told but his expression is one of conflict.
"Sure is nothing worse than a fellow out for a few drinks who didn't quite find his way home, John?"
"Look at his hands Robert, and then tell me what kind of ale he has been at so that I can report the landlord to the Lordships up at the manor."
The young mans eyes move to the hands now clutching at the tree in such a vice like grip that the bark has begun to split. The skin itself was of such an unnatural pallor that the smile dropped from Robert's face faster than his sword cut the air.
The kneeling figure began to pull itself up, still facing the trunk but now that it was mobile and its joints moving a faint unpleasant odor was carried from it making both men shake their heads in the early morning wind. Neither man took their eyes from the third, who was now standing fully. Both men noticed that the clothes that a moment ago seemed to half bury the man now seemed tight and short at both ankle and wrist.
It was as if in standing that the fellow had somehow retrieved a few inches that he had dropped when he fell.
"Turn and face your betters so that we may see what we must kill or should we run you through the back in the manner that you yourself have undoubtedly killed others?"
The figure turned sharply, bark from the tree still attached to its now claw like hands and before they could take in the awful visage it is at them, arms outstretched, mouth open and screaming like the devil itself.
"Damn you Robert, you talk too much".
Even as the young man is extending his blade the older man has brought his own down and through the shoulder of the advancing creature. It howls with pain and it is a relief indeed that the thing feels at all, for judging by its appearance it would have troubled even an educated man to hazard a wager as to whether the thing was alive or dead, despite its animation.
The ghoul's face was caved in on the left side as if struck by a rock or horses hoof. The bloodless wound was terrible and caused the side of the face to remain frozen as if stroke ridden while the mirrored side spat and stretched as if to make up for the lack of movement besides it. One eye was clouded and seemed to weep while the other showed a bible black iris more like that of a cat than a man. It showed nothing of the soul and much of the abyss. The face, such as it was, was framed with a mop of greasy black hair that became lost in the grizzled unkempt beard below. For a second Robert fancied he saw an insect move through the dirty weave but his eye was distracted as his blade found its mark and he ran the thing through the heart.
The arms immediately dropped to the sides as if the thing knew the fight was over before it had begun and it's jaw snapped shut with such force that the ghoul's own black tongue was caught out of its lair. The second the teeth clamped down through the meat the very tip shot from the maw in a bloody black stream and struck Robert on the cheek.
"Damn and blast it!" Shouted Robert in fury and wiped the filth away with the back of his free hand as his friend pulled free his own weapon and with a flourish sent the blade forcefully back to the right, severing the head from the shoulders.
Robert fell to the grass and exclaimed a long breath of air even as the sundered head was rolling to a halt.
"Another morning akin to this and I'm writing to your Dr Johnson to add my name to his dictionary. Right next to the word 'outrage'."
John, well accustomed as he was to his companion's laments was busy wiping his blade on the now headless corpse's jerkin which was tottering slightly but remained upright.
He had seen stranger things.
"It was you who suggested we take respite in your birthplace, Robert, and it wasn't I who offered to go investigate a possible corpse the moment an out of breath urchin storms into the inn exclaiming that a tree is raining dead folk. Nor was it I..."
He was interrupted.
"That's as may be but I am not dragging that thing back to Appledore no matter what I may have said previously," Taking a handkerchief from his sleeve he began to dab harshly at his cheek. "We can send the landlord and a priest and a cart."
"After we have ordered our breakfast anew and got a dram or two resting in front of that fire." Sword now back in it's sheath John extended a hand down to his friend who grasped it and is pulled to his feet just at the moment that the dead thing behind them lost it's own footing and pivoted backwards to the wet grass that even then was being warmed by the ever rising sun.
"Aye, one dead demon spawn bastard son of the devil himself should equal at least two breakfasts and two barrels and a tumble with two daughters."
"I think our gracious landlord has only the single daughter, Robert."
"Well you had first thrust at the monstrous so I think it only fair I get first thrust at the beauty."
Both men are laughing and in good spirit as they leave the field. As adventures go this was a trifle and hardly worth the mentioning but as an introduction to new friends it will do more than well.
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10:33 am - Older and ongoing stuff: part two
This was something written simply to spite my friend Boag and his love for the open source character Jenny Everywhere.
PAPERBACK WRITER
A JENNY EVERYWHERE ADVENTURE
1. A Hard Day's Night
Jenny never heard him.
She was concentrating on Ringo's face as he thrust into her. This was her third Beatle in as many nights and so far, despite his reputation, he was the best. Lennon would have to make quite an effort to beat this little session. She was still undecided whether to Shift over to their pre-Cavern days or Shift into the time just prior to the assassination and maybe get a little Yoko-pogo action going. She was lost in contemplation and the threat of yet another Liverpudlian induced orgasm when three things happened almost simultaneously.
One: Ringo came
Two: A tranquiliser dart imbedded itself in his neck.
Three: Everything went black.
2. The Long and Winding Road
Jenny awoke trussed on the back seat of her car. She shook her head to try and clear it of the fog that she was lost in but the movement only caused her to ache more. She groaned.
"Ah, the princess is awake."
The voice came form the front seat. She forced her eyes open and the back of a head came slowly into focus. She tried to speak but was suddenly aware that her aviator goggles had been quickly but securely improvised as a gag. She correctly guessed that the scarf missing from her neck was the material that was keeping her wrists bound together behind her back.
Her panties were probably still wrapped around Ringo's empty balls.
"Don't worry Jenny. We're almost there. "
"Errrh?" she managed to grunt.
"Why, The City of the Dead of course. It's where I live."
This was bad.
Jenny had the ability to Shift from dimension to dimension, time to time and place to place but there were rules. Rules that this bastard knew only too well it seemed. Whenever she Shifted her immediate belongings always Shifted with her. Occasionally they would change to match the period but this chameleon quality did her no good in this situation. If she Shifted to escape then her loyal goggles, scarf and car would Shift in place also. They may all change colour and adapt automatically to whatever fucked up place she landed next but she would still be bound gagged and in the back of her own car.
She decided to risk it anyway.
At least she'd leave her captor behind and at the moment being tied in the back of a runaway car somewhere else was preferable to being taken to The City of the Dead. Wherever that cheese hall was.
She closed her eyes again and wriggled her pretty nose and the world dropped away.
3. Ticket To Ride
She opened her eyes and she was still on the back of her seat but the leather had changed from crimson to black. The goggles had a slightly metallic taste to them that hadn't been there a second ago and if she had been able to turn her head 360 degrees she would have noticed her stripy day-glo scarf was now white silk.
Her vagina was still exposed to the elements that rushed into the now suddenly open top sports car but at least the Beatle sperm was no longer running down her leg.
Thank fuck for small mercies.
"Neat trick. I always wanted to try that."
It was the same voice. But that was impossible. On previous Shifts she had run into people that were different incarnations of other people that she had met interdimensionally. However, the odds of her kidnapper's counterpart sitting in the exact same place in a completely different dimension were too large to calculate. Besides which, the very fact that he seemed to be carrying on a conversation with her across the Shift led her to a terrifying but logical conclusion.
He was Shifting with her.
"Worked it out yet, Jenny? I can see by the frightened glint in your eye that you probably have."
She strained to look up and saw his eyes caught in the rear view mirror.
The eyes of a madman.
They moved slowly to the road and then back to her, this time taking more of her in.
"I see that the rumours are true about that signature hairdo of yours being a dye job..."
Jenny looked down at her own tightly bound body and saw that the micro skirt she was now wearing had hiked up as she moved around on the seat and a flash of golden blonde hair was visible.
She blushed.
"Bad show Jenny! Cuffs and collars should always match!"
And with that he let out an almighty roar of laughter that was so fierce and unexpected Jenny automatically wriggled her nose to escape it.
4. I Am The Walrus
All in all she Shifted eight times and eight times he Shifted right along with her, his laugh growing more insane and louder with every change of scenery. Not that Jenny could see much. Twice she saw that they moved from day to night and one time the sky changed to a shocking neon pink colour. Through all of this her captor only swerved the car once, breaking off from his laugh to shout, "Get off the road you bloody brute!" Jenny was thrown to the right side of the car as she saw a quick flash of reptilian skin towering over them and the unmistakable roar of a tyrannosaurus rex filled the car.
Not being able to compete with the Jurassic vocals her kidnapper never bothered to pick up his laugh.
Instead he pulled the car into a tight skid that flung Jenny to the opposite side of the seat, giving her head a nasty wallop in the process, and turned off the engine even before the wheels had stopped spinning.
Blood trickled down her face.
"Ah Jenny. Sorry about that. But pain is refreshing isn't it? Lets you know that you are alive. It's time I introduced myself."
He turned around in his seat and faced her for the first time.
"My name's Sizemore," his face was a mass of facial hair and pizza crusts. "I'm a writer."
She coughed a little at this. She'd been kidnapped by someone with a porn name who resembled a fat Viking. It was all too much. Tears trickled down her face and began to pool in the cups of her goggles.
5. Helter Skelter
Sizemore reached over and pulled the goggles gently from Jenny's mouth. She looked up and again found her voice.
"Is this The City of the Dead?"
He smiled, "I'm afraid I made that up. I was playing with the readers."
"What readers?"
The smile turned wolfish.
"You really don't know do you?"
Jenny swung her legs off the seat and managed to sit herself upright.
"Know what?"
"Jenny, my dear dear Jenny Everywhere. I hate to be the one to break this to you but you're not like other girls. You're fictional!"
Great, Jenny thought. The guy was a whacko. "Sure I'm fictional! And you have a girlfriend!"
That smile again. "Right on both counts. But if you think it's hard to believe that a monster like me may have time for a loving caring relationship why don't you take a good look at your own life?"
"My life is fine thank you." The sentence was delivered without a hint of irony despite the fact that she was tied up, half naked and could smell dinosaur excrement.
"Not a tad... how should I put this? Episodic perhaps?"
The weirdo had a point. It did seem like she'd been jumping from one crazy adventure to the next with increasing frequency lately. It was a little like one of those crappy sci-fi TV shows like...
"Like Sliders?"
She was not used to other people finishing her thoughts. She was the one girl that was usually way ahead of the pack.
"Nice trick. Are you a mind reader?" She'd unmasked a charlatan mind reader once before during The Case of the Horn Rimmed Actress Affair Adventure.
"Nothing so clever I'm afraid. Like I said I'm just the writer."
"The writer of what exactly?"
"Oh lots of thing's. A lot of dull political tracts, some book reviews, short stories. Wrote a terrible novel once, I'm currently working on a magazine and that's how I was introduced to you."
Jenny took a good hard look at him again.
"We've never met before."
"Not quite what I meant. Let me read something to you."
He reached into his pocket and came up with a folded piece of A4 paper. Her stomach dropped away and she struggled again with the stupid scarf cutting into her wrists.
Sizemore either didn't notice or didn't care and in a startlingly quiet voice he began to read what lay on the page.
6. Altogether Now
"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."
7. Help!
Jenny vomited into her own lap, at last covering her split tail from prying eyes.
"Sounds familiar doesn't it? Of course it was never intended that you be confronted with it. That's the problem with open source though. It never turns out as you imagine."
And he was right. Those awful words were familiar. A half glimpsed sign behind her local bar, a note half lost in a pile of papers that had been kicked over in a kung fu fight with a Nazi lawyer, part of a tattoo she had seen on the severed arm of a man that had she had used as a club in Paris.
What the fuck was going on?
"Watch and learn."
Sizemore took a pile of paper from his other pocket and began to scribble notes, pausing to hold them in front of her puke dripping face before moving on to the next one.
'UFOS SWARM OVER HEAD BEFORE VANISHING'
Jenny looked up to see an armada of alien ships hover for a moment before blinking out of existence.
'JENNY SUDDENLY REMEMBERS HER AUSTRALIAN CHILDHOOD'
Images of Sydney swam in her mind, the gardens over looking the harbour, boats beneath the bridge, the heat and her first sexual encounter with another girl while working in the Koala reserve at the zoo...
'JENNY GRASPS THE AWFUL TRUTH AND FEELS HER MIND BEGIN TO SHATTER'
It was too much. She felt dizzy. Was the car moving? Where was her bi plane? What had happened to Krypto? Who the fuck was she?
'BOAG MAKES AN UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE AND TAKES A SOUVENEIR BACK TO GLASGOW WITH HIM.'
"'Scuse me," said a Scottish flavoured voice from the window. Jenny jumped and turned to see a giant friendly face looking back at her. "Sorry about Mike. This is all kind of my fault, He gets carried away sometimes."
"Don't you have a train to catch?"
Jenny looked helplessly between the two, drooling slightly.
"Aye, that I do Michael." He leaned in and gave Jenny a kiss on the cheek. "The guys on Barbelith will never believe this."
He smiled and made his way out of the story. No one mentioned the specks of vomit that clung to his sideburns.
"Time to put you and the readers out of your collective misery I think"
One last card.
'JENNY EVERYWHERE, OPEN SOURCE HEROINE AND SCOURGE OF THE COPYRIGHTED, CEASES TO EXIST'
And it's over...
8. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
Sizemore yawned and looked at the computer's clock. 1.30 am. Jess was already asleep and the alarm would be going off much sooner than he liked to think about. He quickly read through the story and checked for spelling mistakes and dumb Americanisms that may have slipped in.
Scratching his head he thought about pouring another coffee and then dismissing the idea as a terrible one he started to shut down the laptop.
"Fucking Boag!" he whispered, "Always putting dumb ideas in my head..."
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10:29 am - Older and ongoing stuff: part one
This is the first page of something Jess and I have been working on for the last week or so:
HURT
_ACT ONE_
FADE IN
EXT. SMALL SEMI TERAFORMED ISLAND - DAY
Bizarre cloud formations scale an enormous rock face that fills the screen. We pull back and the rock face falls away on either side into the rough shape of a mountain. Stubby flying vehicles that are anything but graceful shudder past. We chase one of the vehicles down the left hand side of the mountain but stop following as it banks away from us and makes for a way-station that belches smoke and light on the horizon. We dip down and find ourselves at a rudimentary base camp at the foot of the mountain. Large tents are scattered in groups of four and fastened down with large heavy red ropes.
EXT. BASE CAMP NAVAHO - DAY
The red ropes disappear into a lake of mud that the tents seem to float on. We float around the outside of the tents keeping our feet dry. In some places above the howling wind we can just about hear rock music. We settle near a tent whose window flap has blown open and for a moment we hear Mick Jagger express his sympathy for the devil before a huge hand appears at the window, pulls the flap back down and leaves us once more with the wind. At least we know we aren't alone out here.
The memory of the music and the noise of the wind is gone in an instant as the scream of engines fill the camp. We look and see one of the ugly ships screaming towards the camp. The steadi-cam becomes decidedly unsteady as our POV tilts backwards and we fall over, our asses in the mud, in time to see the thing skim the tent tops. The white underbelly of the thing fills the screen as it passes. Someone has scrawled a 12 foot message in red paint onto the metal:
MERRY CHRISTMAS
As the rest of the ship passes above a digital title card appears in the bottom right of the screen and our eyes are drawn to the information that appears letter by letter before fading away:
ROCK TY763/52 TERRAFORM CAMP NAVAHO 16.00 HOURS DECEMBER 25th 2299
The camera tilts back from the now empty sky, ignoring the crazy paving of lighting and dirty pink clouds and we re-focus onto the bottom of the adjacent tent only realizing we are still in the mud when two sets of heavy boots appear, sinking into the filth almost to their tops and splattering us with brown wet alien sludge.
FADE TO TITLECARD:
"HURT"
The wind dies away and Johnny Cash sings us through the title sequence.
"I hurt myself today…"
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July 16th, 2004
06:39 am - Crowning the Kitten
I didn't think I'd ever need a livejournal and I'm still not convinced. I have a bunch of blogs already and other corners of the interweb to squirrel away my stuff but so many people I know use this thing now that it seems like a good idea to at least try it out for a while.
This will be for fiction only.
I'll start by archiving the story I did for the Guardian/Moorcock thing before they delete it.
Crowning the Kitten Chapter Four
Brutus Terrorcom
"Is that what I think it is?"
Mrs Persson rolled her eyes. "If you think it's the world's deadliest illegal handgun doing its best to be conspicuous then you'd not be far off the mark."
The vibragun spat a wad of green phlegm on to the Archbishop's pandaskin boots.
The vicars had formed a dog-collared curtain around them. Any of the Royal Guard that happened to look their way would be satisfied that the ring contained nothing more interesting than a female member of the clergy relieving herself into the gutter or a priest giving confession to a newly found 'altar boy'. Or both.
"You'd better tuck that little thing back out of sight before it brings the Inbreds down on us," said the Archbishop, deftly wiping the barrel mucus away with the edge of a communion wafer. "Once I have you escorted to the rear of this bunch of flag-waving Tabloidists I can get back to those bastards and their damn technology."
He clicked his fingers and the circle opened a moment allowing a woman to step forth, head bowed, twin blades crossing the back of her figure-hugging black habit.
Nunjitsu.
"Can't have you taking pot shots at babies at the same time as my own crusade now can we?" smirked the Archbishop.
"Wait!" Mrs Persson said as she strapped the humming gun back to her thigh. "The Banning wasn't the only piece of illegal hardware I brought with me."
Confident the gun was secure she reached into the inside pocket of her overcoat.
"Slowly Una," The Archbishop softly whispered. "Once those blades are unsheathed it's a sin not to let them drink."
The woman standing next to the Archbishop hadn't moved an inch but Mrs Persson had seen a single Nunjitsu once take down a zeppelin. She slowly, very slowly, revealed her left hand. Coiled around her wrist, head resting in her open palm, was a bulbous-headed green creature.
Scarred but still legible were two letters tattooed into the flesh.
"Holy Mother of God!" The Archbishop exclaimed and crossed himself. Twice.
"A BT organic wireless node modem. Guaranteed to destroy any Interweb connection that it comes into contact with." Una tickled the creature and it let out a small happy crackle of code. "I figured if things got hairy I could use it to disrupt the firefight downloads of the Royal Guard but I hadn't figured how to get close enough to use it. Then again, I'm not a trained Sister of the Little Mercy, am I?"
"If I got that under even one of their robes it would kill their download and they'd be helpless."
Mrs Persson allowed herself a smile. The BT tech creature had been expensive - outlawed in just about every country except China, where it is still used to stop the general populace from connecting to the Interweb - but now it looked like it was about to pay for itself.
"It's yours Dennis. All I want in return is one tiny favour..."
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The rest of the story can be found here
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