Tag Archives: stories

Carpe Diem III – Getting the Band Together

Posted by Grim Jim on
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I think I gave up on this story after this, but then went back to the same structure for The Dastard.

“You really climbed down into that shit pit to get a madman’s map?” Bel looked at them incredulously as the story – and the second round of beers – came to an end. The Toll was quiet tonight; there was some sort of riot at the gallows round Bloxton way, and most of the regulars had gone to try their luck looting.

“Yes,” Jape and Dinn said together with a hint of exasperation.

“The map’s real, the chance is real, we could all be rich as butter biscuits, if you’re in,” Dinn’s fist slammed down on the table, spattering spilt beer.

“Why the fuck would you want me?” Bel frowned and grumped. “I know you only keep me around because you think I’m funny as I flail around and try to get by. What good am I in all this?”

“You know people, Bel, people uptown. We’re going to need people from north and west of the river if we’re going to pull this off. We need you, mate, no horsecrap,” Dinn held Bel’s gaze.

“Plus, you can’t run for shit,” said Jape, lifting his mug. “Anything nasty is going to catch you first and give me time to get away,” he grinned and took a slug of the thin brew.

“Cunt,” said Bel, emphatically. “Alright then boys… what’re we going to need?”

Dinn sat back in his seat and leaned his head back until he was looking up at the candelabra and its fat, smoky candles, “We talked about this a bit on the way home. First thing we have to worry about is getting across the Wilderlands to the Keening Ruins, and they’re southeast of the city; none of us has been out before.”

Bel raised his hand. “I went out of the walls once, hunting, with my uncle.”

“An hour or two in a hunting reservation with a troupe of arquebusiers doesn’t really count, Bel mate,” Jape interjected between swallows of beer.

“Well, who then?”

Dinn leaned forward again, the chair rocking on its legs. “There’s that Bremma from the Watergate market. She and her father go to and from Dunlunn and Bergenholm on a regular basis, and she ain’t died yet.”

“Rare bird,” Jape muttered. “I don’t reckon she’d give us the time of day.”

***

Dinn didn’t come to the market very often; he had money for someone living in his part of town, but that wasn’t it so much. The few people who tried to scrape an honest living in River’s End tended to congregate around the market and liked to think they were better than anyone else. He could feel the disapproving glances from three streets away.

There was no choice this time though, so he thrust up his chin and marched into the market, into the tangle of barges, stalls and wagons and the deafening yells of the hawkers.

“Dove breasts! Get your dove breasts!”

“Raaaaat onna stick, raaaaaaaaaat on a stick!”

“Bergenholm ale, fresh off the cart!”

“Leather bought, sold, repaired!”

He ignored it all as best he could and fixed on his goal, the big wagon with the red tarp.

As he rolled up to it, he caught sight of Bremma. A big lass she was, broad, ‘thick’ Jape would call her. Her biceps were as big as his calf muscles, and she dressed like a boy, britches and tunic, hiding her piercing blue eyes and golden curls under a hood. She wasn’t like the street girls Dinn grew up around, but she had that same hard look, rough hands, and more scars to boot.

“You boyin’?”

It took a moment for his brain to adjust to her accent, “Buying? No. I have a proposition for you, if you’re willing to listen. There’s this treasure see…” he leaned in, conspiratorial, but from the gleam in her eye, he could already tell she was hooked.

***

“Now she might get us there, but according to the map, we’re going to have to deal with some magic. Locks, gates, guardians, that sort of thing, and I’ll be buggered if there’s a mage worth the name south of the river,” Jape’s gaze settled on Bel, who, uncharacteristically, wasn’t saying anything. “That’s your cue, Bel.”

“Oh, right, well, I suppose there’s someone I might ask. I still get to go North sometimes to visit family, but not as much as I’d like to.”

“You know a mage, then?” Dinn arched a single brow curiously, well used to Bel’s embroidering of reality.

“Sort of… he washed out of the White Tower and just kind of… exists these days. I think he might be up for it, for the money.”

***

Bel hated going north of the river. True, the houses were nicely painted, and you weren’t ankle deep in week-old excrement all the time. True, the sausages were made of beef rather than rat. True, you could go out at night without a knife and reasonably hope to get home again with all your money and no stab wounds. Still, it reminded him of what he’d lost, what his family had lost and, now that he’d seen how the other half lived, it sickened him.

Of course, anyone who knew how far Bel’s family had fallen gave him the evil eye in the street, and that was a lot of people. That didn’t make things any better for anyone. In and out, that was the ticket. He hurried through the streets as early as he dared, scurrying to his old friend’s house like a thief in the night and hammering his fist on the door.

It was a small place, for north of the river, and dilapidated. You could even see the river from here. He must be down on his luck with his family too, and that made Bel a little more hopeful.

“What fucking time is it?” Came the yawning voice through the door, after the third hammering against it.

“Three bells.”

“Come back at nine.”

“I can’t. Curfew.”

“Martyr’s shit…” the door creaked open, and a pale and flabby face peered around the edge. Rank air, stale tea and staler body-odour wafted out and made Bel pale. “Well?”

“Best if we talk inside Uno.”

“Right, whatever.”

The door swung wider open, and Bel gave it a moment to air out before he followed Uno in.

“Nice, uh… nice place.”

It wasn’t. It was a dank little hole. Three crystal balls glowed with watery images, scrying here, there and everywhere around the city. Bel thought he caught a glimpse of naked flesh before Uno shut them all down with a wave of his hand and sat on the mound of rags he called a bed.

Bel chose to lean against the dresser, drawers open, piled with muck. Starting away when the red-skinned little demonette in the tiny cage jabbed him in the arse with her miniature pitchfork.

“Ow… fuck…”

“Bel, come on, man, what do you want? If you don’t spit it out, I’m going back to bed and you can scurry back to River’s End as a squirrel.”

“Well, we’ve got this map…”

***

“Supposing we get those two, we’re still going to need someone who can handle locks, traps, and machinery. You know all those old tomb sites and ruins are packed to the gills with things that’ll stab, poison or crush you,” Bel’s voice took on more of a whining tone the more likely this foolhardy expedition seemed to get.

“You ain’t going to get a locksmith cheap,” Dinn mused, stroking his chin with his fingertips. “Unless…” his head turned pointedly towards Jape.

“Oh no. Not a fucking chance,” Jape shook his head. “None of them are cheap, and that includes her.”

“She might help you, for old time’s sake.”

“Who?” Bel blinked at them both, this part of the conversation soaring over his head like a lazy falcon.

“Sys. Jape’s first true love,” Dinn snorted. “You did always say she was good with her hands.”

“Shut the fuck up. I dumped her, remember? She’s not going to want to do dick for me, for us.”

“Well, the other tinkers aren’t going to go for it, are they? She’s pretty much all we have. Use your charm Jape, convince her.”

***

“Oh fuck don’t cry,” Jape held out his hands by his sides and rolled his eyes skyward.

“I loved you, you bastard!” Sys screamed at him through a face full of tears and snot.

“You’re crazy! I couldn’t deal with it!” Jape shouted back and then checked himself. She was making a scene here on the street, and people were coming out of their windows and onto their balconies to watch, listen, and pass comment.

“There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for you!” She came at him, little but tough, a whirlwind of hair and fists and tears.

“That’s the problem, you had your own ideas about what that meant! You never bothered to ask me!” He held her off as best he could, one hand on her head, keeping her tiny five-foot frame away from him like a child. “Breaking into my fucking house, hiding there, stealing shit and giving it to me. The watch nearly arrested me, you blood klepto!”

“I thought you liked gold!”

“I do! Just not like that!”

“What do you want then, just here to use me and cast me aside again?” She sniffled and wiped the snot away from her nose with the back of her hand. She’d never looked less attractive to Jape in his life, even the night they broke up and she tried to stab him.

“We’ve got this job, a treasure hunt, down in the Keening, we, Dinn, at least, think you’re the right person for the job.”

“Dinn huh? Not you?”

“Dinn. I didn’t want you along.”

“Bastard. Fine then. I’ll come and listen. Where do I need to be?”

“My place,” Jape turned and began to walk away at a fast clip, calling back over his shoulder. “You know the way, you’ve broken in enough times.”

Folk Horror Short Story: Cichol’s Children

Posted by Grim Jim on
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This is just an early draft of the first part. The whole story can be read as part of the neo-pulp collection, Pulp Nova.

Genealogy, that’s the thing. People like to know where they came from, who they’re related to, what their heritage is, and what it means to be them. It’s nonsense, of course, who we came from doesn’t make our destiny, doesn’t dictate what we do. Still, my mother’s always been kind of insistent about this sort of thing and about our roots, nostalgic for ‘merrie old England,’ and she always hit a brick wall when we got back as far as that. I wasn’t going to pass up a free trip to England, and so, here I was.

I’d wasted as much time as possible in London. I came from a small New England town, and life in the big city fascinated me. I’d never even been as far as New York before, let alone somewhere as exciting and foreign as London. They spoke English at least, and that meant I wasn’t completely out of my depth as I would have been in Paris or Berlin. It also meant I had a really good time out drinking and seeing the sights, but sooner or later, I had to get off my ‘arse’ and set about what mom wanted.

I’d rented a car and headed out, following the ancient map my mom had given me. It didn’t even have all the roads marked on it that were signposted, and as I drove deeper and deeper into the countryside and nearer and nearer the coast, I began to wonder if it even existed.

Out of season, it was cheaper, that was one thing, but outside the city, England was not the rolling green hills I’d been led to expect. Britain has this peculiar quality sometimes, where everything is grey. The sky is a cool slate grey, the mist swirling around you is the same, and when you see the sea, it’s the same damn colour. Top to bottom, grey to the point where it seems to stretch away into infinity, and you can’t tell where you are or even how blind you’ve become.

I finally found the turning that was supposed to lead to the village. Mom was on a mission to have me find the old church records so we could trace the family further back. Maundbury – my home town – took its name from this village. Early settlers weren’t too creative with the names when they first came to America. Our settlers were particularly lazy, not even bothering to put a ‘New’ in front of it when they founded the place.

The road, such as it was, was now more of a track, and this did not bode well. The car bounced and shuddered along, wreathed in mist, and I was shaken nearly out of my seat. Suddenly, the road fell away in front of me, vanishing into nothingness, and it was all I could do to bring the bone-shaking car to a halt, the front wheels mere inches from falling away into the unknown darkness.

With my heart in my mouth, I opened the door and stepped out into the swirling grey. The wind was blowing from behind me, weakly, out to sea. I could hear the waves, some distance below, washing against the shore, and if I crouched, I could find the very edge of the cliff, tufted with sickly grass, but there was no way to see the sea or how high up I was from the ground. The only way to tell where anything was was the misty glow of the car’s headlights, and further away, off the road, a distant, glowing porch light.

Perhaps I’d taken a turning too soon, and the one I’d wanted had been the next one, but I daren’t try to move the car in this mist. I reached in and turned off the engine, cutting the lights and leaving the car behind. I’d have no choice but to wait for it to clear and, hopefully, get some help moving it when it did.

The ground was soft and crumbly, like a hard cheese, under my feet as I trudged. Swirling mist clinging to my hair and clothes and making them damp as the distant glowing light slowly resolved itself into the shape of a run-down Victorian house, weathered by the rain and the salt with rotting window frames and mould-speckled glass. Simultaneously hopeful and worrying was the sight of a sun-faded sign in the window of the door marked ‘rooms available’.

A glance at my watch told me it was only eight in the evening, but it felt much later. I’d hoped for a pub or an inn to stay at, but there were no other lights around, and this seemed to be the only place to go. I hammered my hand against the door and stepped back to wait, trying to put on my best all-American smile for whoever opened the door.

The door opened sideways, and the rush of hot air that issued forth was almost stifling compared to the cold air without. I blinked and smiled and smiled and blinked again and gave my best and most cheerful “Hi!”

The person who stood there in the light was a wizened little dwarf of a man. All hunch and hair with the occasional, sparse little cluster of red hair in the snow-white of his beard and sea-green eyes that peered up at me from the depths of constellations of wrinkles.

“Can I ‘elp you?” He leaned against the door, seeming pretty confident for an old man confronting a stranger on his doorstep.

“My car’s stuck,” I shrugged apologetically. “I was hoping that, perhaps, I might be able to get a room tonight until I can get it sorted out tomorrow?”

“Of course you can, come on in before you catch your death,” the old man’s face creaked into a smile, and he stepped aside to let me in.

The air outside was a soaking blanket of cold, but inside it was steamy and hot. The moment I crossed the threshold, sweat began to pour down my back. The place was cramped; it even looked like the walls were sweating. Ancient central heating rattled away as I stood, taking in the Bible verses on the walls and the peeling wallpaper.

“Got nothing with you?” The old man led the way to the stairs and the threadbare carpet that covered them.

It took him an interminable time to climb the steps, and the moving shadow caught my eye as I replied, a pair of feminine shadows watching me from the hallway below.

“It’s back in the car. I won’t be able to find it until the morning. Not to worry, so long as I can have a shower, it’ll be alright.”

“Bath.”

“What?”

“No shower, just a bath.”

“Oh, that will be alright.”

The women’s faces were framed by red hair, one old, one young, staring unsettlingly until they slid out of sight when we finally reached the landing. The floorboards bent under my weight as the old man shuffled up to one of the doors.

“Here we are, mister…?”

“Bremer, John Bremer,” I smiled at him again and assured him I’d be alright and that I’d take breakfast in the morning. All but slamming the strange old gnome’s own door in his face as I escaped into the room.

The room stank of damp, and the window frame was crumbling and stained black. The single pane windows rattled as the draught wended its way out through the frame, and the bed had the firmness and the wet smell of the unused. It groaned as I sat on it, and I knew how it felt as I flipped on the bedside light – it barely made any difference.

Mark 1:17 peered down at me from one wall, gilt, in a frame and an old, local map glared down from the other, showing the peninsula we were on ‘The Tongue’ and the village, on the part of the peninsula that didn’t seem to be there any longer. Was Maundbury even there any longer? Was this all that was left? This whole trip was a bust. Mom was going to be pissed, but if the village wasn’t even there, there was nothing to be done.

Looking out the window told me nothing more than it had before. Outside the glass, the whole world was a sea of grey, making it seem as if the house were the only thing that existed, and the only sounds were the distant wash of the sea and the constant, unpredictable rattle of the heating. No television, no radio, it seemed odd. I wondered if they were gathered below me, in silence, listening up towards the ceiling.

Whatever the case, I wasn’t going anywhere until morning. So I slept. Swathed in mist, surrounded by Bible passages and the ghost of a missing village. The very past I had no real interest of my own in.

Short Story: Mimsy Burrogrove, Psychedelic Detective

Posted by Grim Jim on
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Another of my Pulp Nova stories, at least an early draft of the first part. You can buy these neo-pulp stories in a single book at Lulu.

Deep in the devilishly decadent district of Soho, above the luminous light of the lanes and the inebriated intonations of the imaginative industry that calls it home, lies the flat of that most flirtatious and fiery fighters for freedom, Madu Bandara, also known as Mimsy Burogrove, perhaps the world’s only psychedelic detective. See her now, safely sat upon silks and satins, silently supposing and mute as she meditates upon the mysteries of the mind and this mortal coil.

Mimsy is a small woman, perfect and petite, charming and comely in her coffee-coloured cut-off kaftan that blends with her caramel skin until it looks like all is one. Lying upon the cushion in a lotus, her limbs aligned languidly, the lissome lady of love and learning, sable shorn, has no reason to suspect the scandalous scoundrels that slip and slide through the shadows toward her sanctuary.

The Hashishin are heralds of the hate that her hirsute rival, The Guru, now feels for our famed feminine figure. Silently, they shimmy open a shutter and slip within, sharp shivs held in sure hands, eyes shining as they slide towards her. Their steps may be virtually soundless, but she is aware of them and, as they approach her, intent on assisting her into the afterlife, her eyes open, and the bindi that she bears upon her brow begins to burn with a brilliance that blinds and baffles the brutes who have come to bleed her.

She floats, she sees, through their minds as though she were rooting through their pockets. She sees the hatred that they have for her, instilled in them by their mentor. She sees the promises that they have been made, the heaven that they have been promised. As they hesitate, she strips out of her body and steps naked into their minds.

Wadi was a pleasant little boy, until his father shut him in the hut with the spiders. All night long, he could not sleep, feeling the webs brushing his face, hearing their skittering legs – imagined or not – feeling them dance across his skin. He is grown now, a man, a thug, a killer, brave in the face of almost any danger but…

Wadi’s mouth opens wide in a wail. Under his skin swarm a slew of spiders, and he screams as he slaps and stabs at them, sprawling backwards through the sash and down to the street below with a sickening splash so high is our siren’s shelter. Her impossible iris turns its ire upon the other interloper and infiltrates his intelligence.

Haider, on the other hand… Haider just wants to be loved. In the secret gardens of The Guru, he has met the dusky maidens who serve in the afterlife. He wants to carry out his missions so that he can be returned to their embrace. He doesn’t know that this heaven is a fake; he doesn’t understand that no right-thinking deity would ever accept a murderer, however much they thought they were doing the right thing. Mimsy takes pity on him. She breaks apart like a kaleidoscope of curves and lips, of soft eyes and warm kisses, and she enfolds him within her, she tells him she loves him, and her one becomes many, surrounding and stroking, murmuring sweet words in his gullible ears.

Haider slides to the floor with a subtle and serene smile and sighs as he stares into the stars only he can see. These two thugs are not the only transgressors, though. Their task was to trouble her, to throw her off, to tempt and taunt and turn away. At her door, the deadliest of the dangerously deranged dealers of death delays, determined and – he thinks – destined to kill her. Luck is with our lady, at least as he leans in, a latecomer looms large over the lowlife.

Detective Inspector St. John is an imposing individual, intent upon ingress when he identifies the ingrate intent upon inflicting iniquity upon our illustrious ingénue. Maddened at the malice of this malcontent, the man makes his move, laying his mitts upon the miscreant and mashing him against the marmalade-coloured mass of the door until his mandible is mincemeat and his muzzle is mushroomed across his mug. With that accomplished, the agent of the law seeks access and admits himself to the scene of anarchy and amour that has become of her accommodation.

“Mimsy;” St. John nods, wiping his hands, leaving the unconscious body of the Hashishin assassin behind him. “Trouble?”

She uncoils from her crouch over the barely-conscious cur and crosses the carpet to give him a kiss upon his cheek. “Nothing that I couldn’t take care of, Christian, but thank you for your help.” She smells like jasmine and jam, honey and hashish; she’s warm and wonderful, but he’s here for work, not women.

“Well, we do have trouble, down at the station. A murder that seems like your sort of thing.” He screws a cigarette into his kisser and sighs as he sparks it, taking a deep and soothing suck upon the slender cylinder. “Gruesome business, but strange. If you’re finished playing with religious fanatics and cults, we’d like you to take a look at it. For payment of course.”

The psychedelic princess pouts prettily. “It’s always business these days, Christian, never anything fun. If I am going to help you with this, you have to agree to let your hair down.” She fondles his follicles, and he must confess that his fine features have been flattened by the cutting of his flowing locks, but he falls in with her feeling.

“Agreed.” It was no hardship to hang around the happening with this hepcat; she was honest and happy and had to be humoured, at least here and now.

“Did you see the victim? Investigate the murder yourself?” Her hand hesitates over his, and her eyes turn heavenward as he hesitates.

“Yes, I did.”

“Then we don’t need to go anywhere.” A touch and her ten digits tingle at his temples.

She slips into Christian’s mind; they know each other, they’ve been lovers. It’s like sliding into a warm bed next to someone you care about. For a moment, he’s alarmed, but she’s done this before, and he tries to relax. She walks through his structured and ordered mind, bare feet slapping against the hard surfaces of laws and duties, of honour and decency, leaving little footprints of chaos in her wake.

She stops, a moment, a glittering barrier around his thoughts, cutting her off from his memories, his fantasies, though through the shield she can make out the shape of herself and hear the words they once shared. He’s so nervous, she finds it sweet and skips on, giggling, deeper into his mind.

A giggle is not appropriate here, not in this dark corner where he buttons down the bad things that he’s seen, the bad things that he’s done. Here, the horrors and the guilt wait behind walls far stronger than those used to keep her out, but these are to keep these memories in, suppressed, hidden.

Mimsy closes her eyes and steps through, and what she sees she can scarcely believe.

A man stands naked in a room as the ghost of her astral body watches. A screwdriver in his hand, the body of another man before him, dead and bleeding, his skull stabbed through and leaking, right above and between his eyes, deep into his ajna chakra, into the pineal gland, the gate to the higher planes and the imagination.

She dissolves into a cloud of butterflies and returns to her body, opening her eyes to her friend, the Inspector.

A moue of disgust mars her marvellous mask as, in a moment, she opens her mouth and mumbles. “A horrible murder, but you know who did it. Why do you need me?”

He shrugs his shoulders and, with a shudder, speaks what has been unspoken. “The man we caught claims not to remember anything. The man he killed is his friend, his business partner. They have no reason to kill each other. It’s motiveless, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it happened, we would never have thought it would. We need you to look inside him and to tell us if he is telling the truth.”

She taps a fingertip, marking time against her top lip and as time passes, she takes in a terrible something in the man’s eye. In his eye, as though perched in an aerie, is an eerie entity. A yellow man yells at her, a man she has a yen to understand. Determined, she decides to dive once more into his dreams, this derangement indicative of something deeper than the dead man at work, but the little man is gone.

She realises then that St. John’s radio is unwrapped and he is ranting. The radio is rushed away again, rapidly, and he reaches for her hand. “We really do need you.”

“Oh?”

“There’s been another murder, the same method, a different man, a different victim.”

“Curiouser and curiouser…”

Pulp Adventure Story: Doc Osmium

Posted by Grim Jim on
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This is an early draft of the first part. You can find all my neo-pulp stories collected in Pulp Nova via Lulu.

Heat haze shimmered over the salt flats, making the surface look like water. Doctor Green took a swig from her bottle of water, grimacing at the tepid warmth of it, and she’d only been out of the car for a short while. You could see for miles on a good day, but today the view was obscured by smoke. Wreckage lay over some distance, wheels and foil-thin aluminium and titanium. The kind of thing yokels might mistake for a UFO crash. She sighed and flipped open her notepad, rechecking her notes while the medical team zipped up the body bag and the police hovered around her.

“Can you tell us anything yet?”

The depressingly and ostentatiously Mormon sheriff had been a pain in her backside since she’d arrived, standing over her shoulder while she examined the body and the wreckage of the Swift IV, the latest foolhardy attempt at a land speed record with a rocket-powered cigar tube on wheels.

“Anything I tell you is only going to be preliminary.” She sighed, pushing her hair back from her face, the sweat slicking it out of her eyes. “I think it’s safe to say he died almost instantly when the steering column pierced him, speared his heart and broke his spine in two places. That seems the most likely cause of death. As to the vehicle’s cause of failure, you’re better off asking the mechanics.”

“How fascinating.” This new interruption was a deep, basso rumble of a voice that almost made her jump out of her shoes. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and she and Sheriff Bralan turned as one to look at the source.

He was a towering man, unbelievably not sweating in the noon sun as it glared off the flat. He wore a thin white shirt and tan-coloured trousers, heavy walking boots, his only concession to the sun a pair of classic, black, Ray-Ban sunglasses and a white cloth tied as a bandanna around his neck. Inexplicably, he wore heavy gloves over his hands, one of them holding a slung pack over his shoulder. There wasn’t an ounce of spare fat on him. He didn’t look like a gross, overblown caricature, not a body builder, more like an anatomical diagram or a classical Greek statue, though the look was marred by the strange tattoos that covered his cheek, jaw and neck, vanishing down beneath the shirt.

“He with you?” The sheriff drawled, hand going down to his gunbelt, a move that the giant reacted to with only the barest flicker of a smile.

“No.” She said. “I’d remember him. He’s not part of the car crew either.”

The sheriff drew his revolver and levelled it at the big man. “We’ve got to account for everyone here, mister…”

“Doctor.” The big man interrupted.

“…and this might well be sabotage. So you’re going to have to come with me.” The sheriff finished, undaunted.

“A crashed supercar, a dead driver – judging from the bag – the police are suspicious and what I take to be a scientist or doctor already on the scene, and you want me to waste my time coming with you to answer tedious questions?” The big man stared at the sheriff as though he were something one might find upon overturning a rotting log. “I am Doctor Oswald Stone, and I was out walking. If I am to get to the bottom of this intriguing mystery, I cannot afford to waste time with you.”

She went to open her mouth and interject, but his authority questioned, the sheriff was in no mood to play nice. He cocked back the hammer on his revolver as his deputy crab-scuttled behind the giant man, hand to his own gunbelt.

The big man gave her an apologetic look, and then there was an abrupt blur of motion. One muscular leg snapped back as straight as a laser beam and hit the deputy just beneath his ribs. There was a brief, loud, woof of expelled air as he flew back several metres and slid to a halt, slumped over himself, desperately trying to breathe.

The sheriff did no better. The big man’s gloved hand grasped his pistol with impossible strength and tore it from his hand in the same motion as he kicked the deputy, flicking the gun away with a casual gesture that sent it flying out across the flats, vanishing into the heat haze.

“If you can find your gun, you’re welcome to try and take me in for questioning.” The big man said, returning to his casual, relaxed stance and turning to her.

“If you’re a doctor as well, this could get terribly confusing. Call me Doc or Osmium, and you are?”

Her heart pounding in her chest with fear, she swallowed it back and answered him. “Doctor Susan Green, pathology mostly, but I dabble and do medical support for things like this. What are you a doctor of?” She felt like an idiot saying that, given what just happened, but banal pleasantries were better than being kicked.

“Oh, life, the cosmos, everything and anything interesting. I’ll call you, Susan, then, if you don’t mind.” Doc shifted his pack back into place on his shoulder and began pacing over towards the wreckage. With the sheriff swearing a blue streak and chasing after his gun and the deputy trying to work up enough breath to vomit, she followed hurriedly in Doc’s trail like the tail of a comet, finding herself babbling about the accident.

Eli Grange had been the best driver, on paper, with three previous record attempts, jet fighter experience, and inhumanly good reflexes. The car had been checked over a dozen times. The safety harness and other life-preserving equipment were all in good order. Everything had some form of redundancy and safety, and yet… something had gone wrong. On the first proper run, the rear end had drifted, and the car had tumbled end over end, side over side, until it was completely wrecked.

The Doc crouched amongst the main body of the debris, listening, asking questions, technical questions about the wheels, about the chassis, about the engine. Intelligent, seeking questions that she couldn’t always answer, but he seemed to be finding his way. She glanced about her in a panic and saw the rest of the pit crew heading over, angry, curious, wondering who the hell this man was, perhaps, just as she was.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Mick, the chief engineer on the project, lumbered up, a big guy but heavy with it, unlike this ‘Doc’ person.

“Doc Osmium,” Susan answered, without a trace of humour, still unsettled from the brief fight. “He’s dangerous.”

“AHA!” The Doc shouted, emerging from the debris holding a tiny piece of metal, startling them both as more of the engineering crew arrived.

“You can’t go messing with that! We need to work out what caused the accident.” Mick thundered, stamping towards the Doc with a look of murderous intent. The Doc thrust the tiny piece of metal beneath his nose, bringing him to a halt.

“The lox regulator valve. There’s a tiny grain of sand between the washer and the nut, keeping it fractionally open. I surmise that this caused a tiny fluctuation in the fuel feed to the car’s rocket, which was enough – at full acceleration – to throw the tail off, leading to the crash. As to the rest, the abruptness of the crash and the fact that it was side on seems to have tumbled the car in such a way that your safety precautions were only minimally effective. An enormous string of bad luck…”

Mick stared at the washer as the others arrived. “Bad luck?”

Before the question could be pursued any further, the Doc abruptly froze, slowly raising his hands from his sides. Susan’s head jolted around, expecting to see the sheriff threatening the big man again, but it wasn’t; it was Jose from the pit crew, an ugly slab of an automatic pistol in his hand, levelled at the Doc.

“Couldn’t just let me get away, could you, Osmium?” Jose’s voice was different, hard-edged; he meant to use the gun, she could tell. “Had to follow me, all the way out here, track me down and put me away. Madre de Dios man, they were only samples.”

The Doc’s face twisted into a feral snarl. “Irreplaceable samples collected by Charles Darwin himself, priceless. Would you believe me if I told you that I wasn’t actually here for you? This is the most terrible coincidence.”

Jose shook his head and laughed. “That smooth tongue might be a hit with the ladies, Osmium, but it’s not going to get you out of this.”

Susan saw his knuckles tighten around the trigger, and she acted. Her boot caught Jose – if that was his name – in the back of the knee and sent him down to the ground. The pistol barked, the bullet going wide, sparks flying as it ricocheted off the car’s wreckage. With Jose down, the Doc moved with that unnatural precision and speed again, grabbing a blackened piece of metal and hurling it like a discus. The heavy sheet slammed into Jose’s throat with a sickening ‘Chud!’ and he fell back, stone dead to the flat ground, the metal embedded halfway through his neck.

Susan stared wide-eyed at the Doc as he picked his way out of the debris, the rest of the crew keeping well back from him now as he crouched over Jose’s body.

“Carlos Ortega, a thief and a murderer, wanted by Interpol for theft to order. The funny thing is that I wasn’t here looking for him at all. I really was just walking.” The big man looked up at Susan and frowned, his face creasing, the tattoos on his cheek twitching as his jaw muscles worked.

“I happen to be walking here, he happens to be here, there’s an accident that is wildly unlikely stemming from a tiny flaw in an otherwise perfect machine… and you’re here.” His steely eyes settled on Susan.

“So? It’s just blind chance, isn’t it? Things like this do happen… synchronicity they call it don’t they?”

The Doc stood up again. “Synchronicity is what we call it when causally unrelated events occur that seem to hold meaning beyond coincidence. In a truly random universe, we might brush it off, but I’m afraid I’m still a bit of a stuffy old Newtonian, clockwork universe fan. I’m a big supporter of cause and effect, even in quantum physics, and this seems to stretch the odds a little too far for me. Something more is going on.”

He stepped forward, those Olympian features twisting into a wry and enticing grin as he offered her his massive, gloved hand.

“Let’s find out what that is, shall we?”

SLA Industries Ficlet: Severance

Posted by Grim Jim on
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“David. I’m afraid we’ve decided to let you go.” I said, straightening my tie as the limo slunk through the streets like a panther, spiralling down and down, sheets of water rising like oily wings from every wheel.

He didn’t answer me; it’s hard to say much of anything with a plastic bag over your head. Hard to do much but try to breathe through that tiny gap where it’s attached to your neck. It was pretty funny, really, high-flying Dave, red-faced and panting, bug-eyed, hair all wet with sweat and fear. He did love his hair… must have spent half his income on implants and dye jobs, styling and product. Fat lot of good it does you with a bag over your head and your wrists and ankles bound together.

“We feel that the station needs some new blood calling the shots, new programming. We need to take things to new extremes to keep the audience interested and happy. We feel that your way of doing things isn’t conducive to this agenda and… what with you trying to sleep with all the talent and giving them diseases, it’s probably about time you retired.”

He wasn’t paying attention, so I kicked him, once, hard, in the chest, scuffing my New Parisian loafers. It was worth it.

“Are you paying attention, David? You’ve blocked all of us younger executives from rising in the ranks for far too long because you’ve been afraid of us. You were right to be afraid of us as it turned out, but only because you’re such a cock-blocker.”

I kicked him again; I’d wanted to do that for a long time.

“I took my performance evaluation at head office last week, and you know what they said? No, because you never read a fucking thing that I send you, do you? That’s why none of my ideas or those of the other guys ever get implemented. Right? Well, David, they said I was ‘failing to show initiative’ and ‘lacked that killer instinct’ that’s needed in marketing. Do you agree, David?”

I gave him my smile, the one I give to my secretary, but he was still too busy trying to breathe. Shame, I’d had this little speech worked out for a while. “The big credits are at your level and above so you see, you’re in my way, you’re in our way and as I said. It’s time for you to retire.”

I took the stapler out of my pocket. He noticed that at least.

“Here’s your retirement package, David, old son.” I grinned as I began to staple 20 uni notes to his chest, piercing him over and over, ka-thunk, ka-thunk with the staple gun until his expensive Orientan silk was stained with blood and a month’s salary was coating his chest like the feathered breast of some exotic bird.

The limo came to a halt, and I opened the door. I could already hear the hooting calls of the Parasites, sensing prey, coming out of their hovels and their gang hideouts, hoping to gut a corporate or steal a hubcap. I dragged Dave by the tie, out of the limo and threw him to the ground.

“Enjoy your retirement, old man.” I snorted.

The gold watch hit him in his wheezing, covered face when I threw it.

“I’d piss on you, but then they might mistake you for one of their own.” I gave him my middle finger and clambered back into the limo.

“Home, James and don’t spare the horses.”

SLA Industries Ficlet: Keen’s Last Stand

Posted by Grim Jim on
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“I fucking hate Conflict Worlds,” I said to nobody in particular, hunkered down in what was left of the bunker. I didn’t have anyone else to say it to because they were all spread around the area doing a passable impression of a strawberry smoothie, with the bits in.

I’d been shot in the tit and it fucking hurt. There was a gaping hole in my breastplate, which, honestly, at this point should just have been called a ‘plate’. I was out of just about everything right about now, ammunition, hope, armour, medical kits and even drugs.

A Frother without drugs. That was a bad joke, right? I mean… our blood courses with the fucking stuff. We were born high, and we die high. Isn’t that the motto? I’m old school, highland clan, and I’m not going to die curled up in a bunker, sober, like some sanctimonious straight-edge cockbag. If I’m going out, I’m going out high as a fucking kite and spitting in the face of my enemies.

What did I have left?

A quick inventory of the smoking crater that used to be a bunker turned up this short list.

  1. A bunch of dead friends.
  2. A power claymore.
  3. Broken armour.
  4. One tit.
  5. One bent cigarette.
  6. A double dose of Alice, my recreational drug of choice and fuck-all use in a ruck.

I sighed deeply and tapped my mic.

“Control, this is Operative Keen. I’ve found the renegade Genocide Suits. Any chance of claiming the completion fee now and putting it into my LAD account?”

The cunts put me on hold. I was buggered if I was going to go out to tinkling muzak, so I tore my helmet off and gulped back the Alice, letting it take me away on a warm wave of strange as I dragged my claymore up and used it as a walking stick, scaling the crater wall to face the bastards.

The custard smelt of elderberries and coughed butterflies in my marzipan as I danced to the tune of distant drums.

“It isn’t so bad.” Said the elephant in the kilt as the hornets nested in my hair and whispered that they wanted to mate with my television.

He was not wrong. Not wrong at all.

SLA Ficlet: The Last Suit You’ll Ever Need

Posted by Grim Jim on
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Asta slammed up against the concrete panting hard, his heart was pounding in his throat and his mouth was dry, concrete dust stuck to the blood that was dripping from his Deathsuit turning him into a grey ghost. The suit massaged him, held him, cooed soothing emotions, trying to keep him on an even, sensible keel, but it was a losing battle.

The roar of the Thresher cannon wasn’t a sound, it was more raw, physical. It was like being clubbed in the ears with a baton even with deathsuit blunting the worst of it. Chunks of concrete the size of Asta’s head were being blown out of his cover, piece by piece and the air was filled with clouds of grey particulates. His deathsuit wrinkled and puckered as the depleted uranium in the air settled on its surface, making it blister and sizzle.

There was no time, no chance but one chance. Asta gritted his teeth and leapt, plunging through the smoke, running as fast as he could over red hot shards of broken armour, rubble and the slippery remains of what had once been people, friends.

The suit hadn’t seen him, too much dust in the air. He grasped his flintlock as tight as he could and edged quietly around another pillar as the cannon’s roar punched him in the ears again. He had the drop on the fucker. That great armoured back to him, shell casings piling on the ground beside it like drifting snow. He levelled the flintlock and concentrated, his suit drawing the glyphs in the air before his perception, the two of them as one, formulating and channelling the ebb, storing the power until…

Heat and cold struck the suit as one and it burst asunder like an egg in a microwave, ceramic and metal flying in all directions, exposing a yolk of wiring and amniotic oil.

But it was empty.

There was a double bark of a heavy pistol and time slowed down. Asta span, desperately, trying to throw himself to one side but there was no escaping it. The Thresher pilot, clad only in the interface suit, had fled the armour and set a trap.

It had worked.

He was aware of the bullets, twin black-holes in the ebb, laced with DPU, streaking towards him and he braced himself for pain. He’d seen Deathsuits flee their owners, move out of the way of such bullets and he didn’t expect…

His suit moved in that fraction of a second, not fleeing but gathering itself at the point of impact, stripping itself from the rest of him to absorb that blow.

A double hammer, but he didn’t feel the impact. He only heard the scream as the bullets smashed into the suit and bored deep, fragmenting, burning, burrowing, corrupting. The suit howled on a frequency that only he could feel and that he could not endure. It sloughed from his flesh like burned skin, bubbling and ulcerated, smoking and evaporating as he tried to hold it in his hands and it dissolved away.

He was left, naked, crying, helpless, cutting himself on the rubble, clawing at the dirt, the ichorous remnants of the dead suit under his fingernails, smearing what was left it it against his bare chest as tears coursed down from his burnt-black eyes.

He didn’t hear the crunch of the Thresher pilot stepping closer. He couldn’t sense or feel anything but a profound sense of loss, as though he himself had died, as though part of his mind had decayed, as though he had gone mad, was not himself any longer. He was lessened, diminished, unloved, never to be understood again. He’d lost his lover, his child, his parent, his confidante, his world.

He didn’t even feel the barrel of the pistol smack against the back of his skull. He just choked out “Ayee’shala” the name of the suit, nameless until now, known only when it was gone.

And then they were together again.

Where to find me

Posted by grimachu on

25024554_146590269453529_6640429029172183040_nI’ve had a bit of a spring clean and a re-brand of all my sites. So it seems like a good time to show you where you can find me, contact me, talk to me, bother me with questions and so on.

This is just my social media/website presence, but from this site – at least – you should be able to find everywhere that you can buy something of mine – should you be so inclined.

 

  • My main ‘hub’ website is this one, where you can find most of my links, stores and so on as well as the most regular updates.ch as
  • Community support is necessary to make things viable for creators such as myself these days and as such, please consider donating a buck a month to my Patreon.
  • My writing/stories website can be found here. Here I talk about stories, writing and issues around it such as censorship.
  • I have a Youtube channel where I provide game reviews and discussion, social and political commentary, humour, stories, ‘choose your own adventure’ poll games and more.
  • On Facebook I can be found at Postmortem Studios, JGDGames and JDWriter as well as, as myself.
  • G+ is still surprisingly active in a lot of ways, you can still find me there.
  • There’s a Machinations of the Space Princess group over on G+ as well.
  • Of the New Media alternatives, I find Minds.com to be the better one, you can find me there.
  • I also run a roleplaying oriented group on Minds which you’re welcome to join.
  • If you want to send me questions and queries, I have an Ask.fm.
  • If you like random pictures of cats, countryside and me, then Instagram is here.
  • My Twitter remains active and can be found here.

I also write stories

Posted by grimachu on

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Did you know that I also tell STORIES?

You can buy the finished and expanded versions at Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu and so on, but you can read the rough-and-ready first versions raw and dripping with metaphorical inky-blood over on the blog.

 Here’s the last few stories from the blog:

Rink Rash – Post apocalyptic, spicy, lesbian roller derby (no really).

The Dastard – Sword and sorcery, thievery and adventure.

Cichol’s Children – Mythos horror.