Trollheart

Thing is, Mondo is a good writer. This can just be a case of getting lost within the narrative. I've done it, especially when regressing a character through memories and you forget where it all began, kind of hard to find your way back to the "present". It happens in conversations too, if you forgot a character is narrating something that happened and you're writing in the present tense. But as I say, once you read it over once you should see the error and correct it. I just see this a lot in Mondo's writing (what I've seen of it) and I'm pointing it out so that he realises this is something he needs to get on top of. But yeah, I agree: if the writing looks sloppy it will stop you from reading it.
I'm not sure what the chances are of anyone seeing this forum anyway, but most of my stuff goes through so many rewrites it probably won't end up as it is published here, and anyway, these are tiny extracts from a planned series of large novels, so when I hit the big time I doubt MacMillan or Penguin will risk losing making millions out of me for the sake of a few extracts from chapters posted on an obscure music forum.

Years later, having been thrown out of the offices of every respectable publisher with the same response, Trollheart regrets his impulsive posting on that damn forum. Out of the darkness he hears a whisper: "Turned down, eh? Previously published? I can publish anything you want for nineteen ninety-nine, no questions asked!" ORI, he exclaims....
Quick! You can still cancel the cheque on that Ferrari!!!

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

This is the only relevant statement from your post. Yes, it is an easy mistake to make, but when somebody is actually reading your material it doesn't matter one iota how easy the mistake is, it just looks ****ty and makes the reader want to bail unless they're the kind of person who reads Twilight. No matter how easy those glaring mistakes are to make they should be cut out like a cancer because any reader worth their salt will see it as cancer. Prose is not something that gets an award for "good enough", it simply has to be good or **** you.

__________________

Trollheart

I know, I know: get all the kinks out before you post it. I was just trying not to come off as a condescending asshole. Which I am, of course.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I see plenty of people do that, and honestly it's useful, but is still coddling. Reading stops as soon as the words make you cringe. Unless you're reading ****ty fanfiction that you expect to be ****ty and so you give it some leeway, wonky prose for an entire sentence at the beginning of a book is all that is needed to drop an entire book like a bad habit. Shoot that **** in the head and don't give anyone the idea that it's anything different.

__________________

Trollheart

Well I suppose it's as well he learns it here rather than when he's sitting in the offices of Sphere Books or whatever and waiting for their reaction....

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Mondo Bungle

they're all unedited info placards anyway, like a seedy tv commercial

but I did start paying attention

__________________

Frownland

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Trollheart

For anyone who's interested, here's my attempt at a horror story. I couldn't enter it for Ori's competition as it was too long, thanks Hitler. If anyone doesn't love this I'll personally come around to your home and kill you.

Waiting for that day

I: Foundations

As I was going up the stairs I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d go away.

I’ve been seeing men who aren't there for so long now, it's hard to figure out who’s real and who’s not. I meet people on the stairs, in the kitchen, in the garden- I have no idea if they're actually there or if I'm just dreaming them. Sometimes I even wonder if I'm the dream; maybe all I am is a phantasm, a ghost haunting a house that isn't mine. I see pictures on walls and tables and bureaux and I don't recognise the faces smiling out at me. Smiling. Always smiling. People in photographs always seem happy, or if they're not, they make out that they are. I suppose it makes sense; who’s going to want to look at pictures of people scowling, or crying? You want happy memories. Not real ones. I guess that’s when they always make you say “Cheese!” Not quite sure why, but photographers always seem to think cheese makes people happy, or smile at least. Not me: I hate the damn stuff. Curdled cow’s milk in solid form. Ugh!

But though these people are invariably smiling in the pictures I look at, I don't know any of the faces. I try - Lord knows, I try. Sometimes I give myself a headache just trying to recall their smiling faces and fit names to them. A woman in a hospital bed with a tiny baby cradled in her arms, smiling of course: is that me? Me with my mother? I don't remember ever having a mother, though I suppose I must have had, at one point. People don't just spring into the world from nowhere. Even if I am a ghost, as I fear more and more these days I am, I must have had a mother once. Ghosts are just dead people, and every person, even if they're dead now, once had a mother. But if this is mine, she is a stranger to me. As is the silent, solemn looking baby. If that's me, then I don't even recognise my own face.

A man stands in another of these unfamiliar yet familiar photographs. He is holding what appears to be a fishing rod and wearing angling gear. Beside him is a young boy, maybe thirteen, fourteen years of age. The older man’s arm is around the shoulder of the boy, and they are of course smiling towards the camera, seeming to display what I would consider rather too much pride in the few tiny silver fish that dangle from the older man’s hand. Father and son, surely. But my father? Am I the boy looking pleased as punch (who is punch, and why is he always so pleased?) Standing beside my father? The man’s face is kindly, but betrays lines which speak to me of suppressed anger. Is the photograph a sham; a moment frozen in time, a lie captured for eternity? Do darker currents run beneath the surface of that placid face?

And here, standing in pride of place in the centre of my writing bureau, where I am now sitting as I write this, yet another photo. This time it is a colour one, the colours bright and vibrant despite the obvious age of the picture. Two people, very clearly in love and having just expressed that love by agreeing to share the rest of their lives together. The woman is not beautiful in the normal way one would consider beauty, but something about her speaks to me, and tells me that I am the other figure in the picture, beaming and sliding my eyes to the left, in her direction, just as the shutter clicked, as if I (if indeed it is me in the picture) can't bear even to tear my eyes off her for the brief moment the photographer requires us to look into the camera.

If there truly is such a thing as the look of love, it's passing between these two people.

And then, like a tragic postscript to the left of the wedding day photo, another one. This time, it's her alone, enclosed as if trapped by a small oval at the top of a piece of card that, while white in colour somehow contrives to be dark. There are words upon it, her name, age, address, in lovely tasteful flowing script. A poem, some more words, culminating in a wish: May she rest in peace.

Looking at the picture causes me sadness I can't explain or understand. The woman in both photographs, and the man in the wedding one, mean nothing to me. I have a feeling both should, but no matter how hard I try, no memory will surface, if indeed there is anything there to uncover or reveal itself.

If this is not my house, then those pictures have nothing to do with me, which would explain why I cannot recognise the people in them. If I am an interloper in someone else's house, these are someone else's photographs, someone else's memories. And yet, such thoughts bring me no relief, no peace. Somehow I know this is my house, those are my photographs and I should know the faces smiling out at me, but I don’t.

As for the men on the stairs (and everywhere else) who are not there but are there, they seem to have been here for as long as I can remember. Or not here. There doesn't seem to have been a time when they weren't. Though I'm sure I once lived here alone. I can't point to a specific time or date when they arrived, I couldn't tell you how they gained entrance to my house, or why I let them in, but a tiny voice in my head, growing quieter and more distant every day, whispers that it was not always so.

I suppose it would be fair to say I used to live mostly in the dark. I tended to be frugal with my electricity, to the point where I would ensure that if I was leaving one room to go to another, I would switch off the light in the room I was leaving. Save the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves. I was never a rich man - this much I know - and was constantly struggling to pay my bills. These days, I no longer let such things concern me. These days, lights burn in every room through the night, and voices mutter as I try to sleep. I once found myself worrying about my electricity bill, but oddly it never arrived. Nor did any others. Fearful that I would either be cut off, or that an even larger bill would drop onto the mat in the hallway, replete with warnings scrawled in red pen (though really, I know, printed out by a cold, unfeeling inkjet printer that does not even know what a red pen is, or any pen, come to think of it) about final payments and penalties, I rang the electricity company.

That is, I tried.

I remember distinctly punching out the number on the dialling pad on the landline, holding the receiver to my ear, hearing the chirruping ring sing its happy little tune like some imprisoned songbird trapped inside the phone's workings.

The next thing I remember, I was waking up the next morning, with (at the time) no recollection of having even made the call. Had I remembered, I could have checked the last-dialled number, to confirm if I had actually called the electricity company or had just dreamed it. Had I remembered. Which I did not. And so I didn't check. Because there was nothing to check.

But despite a lack of communication with – and more importantly, any payment to – the electric people, my supply was not discontinued, and though power continued to be expended and consumed throughout the night, every night, even at weekends, no bill ever arrived. And I don't just mean no electricity bill. No bills of any nature dropped through my letterbox. In fact, no post at all was delivered. No junk mail, no one-time-only special offers to join gyms, no cutprice sales at carpet and tile shops, no screaming adverts for holidays. No letters. No cards. No flyers. Even the ubiquitous agents of the local Indian takeaway seemed to give my house a wide berth. Look outside and you will see every single doorknob, letterbox, windowsill and gate festooned with menus from A Taste of Mumbai, but my house stands as a pariah among houses, like the kid not picked for the soccer team or the wallflower at the disco, alone, untouched, avoided.

Unclean?

My memory, which I know will soon degrade like badly-stored fruit in the summer heat, tells me that it was not always this way. In fact, it reminds me that on more than one occasion I had made irate phone calls to the manager of A Taste of Mumbai, the improbably-named Gerald Lynch (very Indian!) and had even visited their premises once, to complain about the practice of their little munchkins slapping a menu on anything that didn't move (and, I'm perhaps not too reliably informed, but I would not be surprised, some things that do). My efforts had been rebuffed, and when I had in impotent anger phoned their head office, I had been left on hold for so long that there was only so much bad Indian covers of fifties rock and roll songs (the Indian Elvis? Give me a break!) that I could take, and I had hung up irritably, my mission unfulfilled.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

So I know that my house used to be like all the others, a target for the roving ninjas of A Taste of Mumbai and its parent corporation, Blue Fish Industries. But then, one day, it all stopped. No more did I find menus extolling the virtues of Biryani, Chicken tikka or other stuff I would never dream of eating. I found – to my initial delight, though that did not last – that I could open my door in the morning and not see the ominous cardboard menu with its half-hook hanger swinging precariously from my doorknob like some climber who had lost his hold and was trying desperately not to fall. It was great for a while, but then some nagging voice inside me started asking why?

Why was my house the only one – and it was the only one; the Indian takeaway ninjas even continued to put their menus on old Mr. Bennett's house, and he's been dead now for six months and the house vacant – that the indefatigable agents of A Taste of Mumbai ignored, even avoided? After a while, I began to feel an outcast, left out, ignored, shunned. There was a time when I would have given anything to have seen one of those stupid, badly-printed menus hanging from my door, just once.

But my door remained menu-less, and still does.

My letterbox never rattles, my door bell never rings, no footsteps wend their weary way up my pathway to breathlessly inform me that Virgin are doing a great deal right now if I switch my TV and broadband, or to try to convince me to switch to prepay power. How I used to loathe these people, who badgered and annoyed me and always seemed to call at the most inconvenient moments. What wouldn't I give now to watch one smile his or her plastic smile and rattle off a list of benefits, screw up his or her face in surprise when I inform them that I'm an “old-fashioned sort, not prone to change”, and send them off, shaking their head? Well, now I wouldn't be so eager to see them off. I'd even invite them in, make them a cup of tea. I might even sign their form, make their day, earn them a few quid in commission. What, in the grand scheme of things, does it matter if I have Sky or Virgin, or get my electricity from this or that supplier? Just to have human companionship...

The mention of electricity supply brings my already staggering mind back to the recollection of the bills that never arrived, and the huge amounts of electricity being consumed, and for a moment I'm confused. I don't use that much electricity. I don't stay up late at night. So who is using this power?
And then I remember, as I believe I continue to forget, and remember, and will forget, and remember again; as I perhaps always have done, and always will do.

I remember when they came.

II. Cockroaches

This is not quite true. I don't remember when they came. I don't even know for certain if they ever did come, or if they have been here all along. Perhaps this is their house. Perhaps, if I am not in fact a spirit wandering these halls without realising it, I am the interloper, here for some strange reason I can't fathom. If so, then who actually lives here? A relative? A friend? Business colleague? But no: I do not know these people, though I know them very well. That is to say, I am aware of them. They are always here. They are always around me. Perhaps they always have been. I know they are here. I know they may always have been here. I know they probably always will be here. But I don't know who they are.

My fragmenting memory throws shards at me, like a drunken knife-thrower who knows he is about to lose his job, but some weird sense of ... I don't know, call it honour maybe? Dedication? Professionalism? Whatever it is, it compels him to see out his last night. Which, given his profession and his current state, is probably not wise. It's a pretty safe bet someone is going to get hurt, perhaps badly. My memory surely knows this too: bombard me with too many unrelated pieces of my past – if it is my past, I can never be certain: my brain may be playing tricks on me – and one may take my very reason out, reduce me to a gibbering simpleton.

Perhaps this has already happened. Perhaps I am, even now, sitting at a metal table in a featureless grey room, the table bolted to the floor to prevent my using it as a weapon, I myself shackled to the chair and locked into a jacket without sleeves, drooling and humming quietly to myself. Behind me, perhaps I have scrawled on the wall messages I believe terribly important, but that nobody will read, or even come close enough to decipher. The stench drives them back, but I just laugh. It is not a happy laugh.

If I am mad, then in a really strange way all of this makes sense, because it makes none in the real world. One of the memory grenades impacts upon or near me, showering me with jumbled images and sounds, and I see a man arriving at my door. He does not knock. He does not ring the bell. Somehow, he is inside. He has not spoken one single word. His eyes are hidden behind dark mirrored sunglasses, although it is a cold morning. A line from Poe flits through my tortured memory: “Distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December…”

Yes, that’s right. There can be no doubting it now. A hundred-and-seventy-year-old poem confirms it. The day everything changed, a thin sleet was in the air and I was feeling cold, and making vague plans for Christmas.

December. It was definitely December.

And the man was standing inside my house. I had not invited him in. He had not asked to be invited in. But by the same token, I have no recollection of having tried to stop him, to question him, to bar his entry. Somehow, it seems almost laughable that I would even think of having done such a thing. It hurts my head to think; it always brings on those headaches I so live in fearful anticipation of. A voice in my head, to which I try unsuccessfully not to listen, tells me that the man has always been there, and why should he not? It whispers seductively: some things are fixed. Day follows night. The sky is blue. This man is in your house. There is no need to ask why, it is enough to know that he is, that he should be, and he is. There is no conversation to be had. Here is some music...

And as naturally as the man arrived in my house, others came too. I have hazy visions of black vans, SUVs, people moving equipment into the house, the man directing them – or was it him? Suddenly, there are two, three, four, exactly like him. No, ten. Fifty. A hundred? How can a hundred men fit into one small house, I ask myself, and I am told Here is some music. I listen to the music. It's quite good. Ambient. I forget my reservations. There are a hundred men in my house. A thousand. I have lost count. Every single one of them is identical, and none of them have spoken a single word, neither to each other nor to me. I believe, with a quite earth-shattering faith, that they never will. I don't believe it's that they can't speak, I just feel that in some odd way I am beneath their notice, as if I were an insect, and who speaks to insects? By the same token, who requests from a cockroach permission to enter as they walk across the threshold? That's what I am to them: a cockroach.

And yet, to me, at times, the description better fits them. They have taken over my house. They all dress identically, in black. There is no way of ever even conceiving of getting rid of them, and every day more arrive, till the house seems like it will burst if it has to accommodate any more. It doesn't, though. How many hundreds of them are there now? How many thousands? They swarm all over my house, surging up the old rickety staircase in huge numbers like a black wave, swirling around the kitchen (though they never seem to eat) and constantly banging, hammering, kicking at the walls as if testing for something. There is barely room for me to carry out my daily activities, few as they are.

They have infested my house.

Cockroaches...

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

They don't sleep, or at least, they never seem to. Nor do they talk to, or even seem to really interact with each other. Just as I am seemingly beneath their notice, they seem to be beneath each other's notice. I can't even tell which is the original man who arrived, if he is even still here. They have all melded now into one giant, shapeless entity, and the phrase hive mind flits briefly through my brain, (Here is some music...) and I think yes, that is what they're like: a bunch of drones, all working to (presumably) the one purpose, all of one mind, and quite possibly each unaware, or uncaring of, the existence of the others.

And yet, for all that they do not speak (or at least, have never done so in my presence), they do make sounds. I lie awake and listen to them, their deep, sibilant hissing, that unnerving scratching that goes on till well after dawn. I once had mice make their nest in this house and I remember lying awake and listening to them scratching, clawing, nibbling at my walls. They sounded just like that. In the end, I had to put down poison.

For a mad, giggling moment when insanity seems to beckon me, its promise of sweet oblivion and no longer having to care, no longer having to work anything out or worry about anything, seems so seductive, I wonder if I should buy some more poison. Will it clear my infestation? But cockroaches do not succumb to poison: they are one of the hardiest creatures on the Earth, and will probably be one of the last, when we are all gone. They would laugh at poison, if cockroaches can laugh. And these are not cockroaches. These are men, or seem to be, and yet, I feel certain that they, too, would laugh at my pitiful attempts to destroy them.

Cockroaches...

Not that I have ever heard them laugh. Or speak. Or evidence any sort of emotion, or even acknowledge my presence. More than once, I have come up against one of them trying to get past (with who knows how many hundreds or thousands of them constantly crawling through the house this is inevitable) and though there has been no communication of any sort, and neither of us has turned or moved out of the way, somehow, I have never bumped into one of them, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, none of them have ever bumped into me. I have never looked one of them in the face. I fear what I might glimpse behind those ubiquitous mirror shades, and though I would not consider myself a coward, I feel even the bravest man would rather not see beyond those darkened lenses. Thankfully for me, though it may be odd, they have never once removed their shades. Perhaps they can't. Perhaps they're blind, afflicted by the light in some way. Perhaps...

Perhaps they're vampires.

No, no, that's ludicrous. Vampires do not exist. And anyway, I've seen them out in the garden. Not relaxing of course – they never seem to take any leisure time – but measuring, charting, checking things in the garden while the admittedly weak but still present sun beats down. Vampires burn in the sun. They can't be vampires. Also, vampires don't exist. Here is some music ...

I almost came close to speaking to them when they first entered the garden. I love my garden. It is my sanctuary, my refuge from – from .... where do I work? Do I work? I can't remember. I think there's a place I go during the day, tasks I perform, but if so I do them in an almost sleepwalking state and never remember afterwards what I have done or where I have gone. Perhaps I go nowhere, and I simply dream this other life. Or perhaps this other life, this life with the hundreds of mirror-shaded, unspeaking men and a house that is no longer mine is the dream, and I will at some point wake up. I hope so. But something tells me that no, this is the reality, and if there is a dream, well, I don't remember my dreams.

But every man has his limit, and I reached mine when they went out into the garden and heedlessly trampled my prize lupins and sunflowers. I had spent years cultivating them; they were my children, and nobody was going to hurt my children. Yet, when I opened my mouth to speak, one of them, as if registering my presence for the first time turned his head just the tiniest fraction and looked at me. His hand (gloved, I now remember: they all wear white gloves with black fingers) rising just to brush off the sides of his shades, and I remember running, back into what I somehow stupidly thought of as the protection, the shelter of the house. Silly really, when you consider that it is now completely and irrevocably infested by the cockroaches. Still, at least I didn't have to look these ones in the eyes. Have they eyes?

Here is some music...

When I checked on the damage later, once I had mustered up the courage, I found that every flower, every stalk that had been touched and crushed underfoot was scorched, burned to a cinder. But it didn't stop there. As if some strange malaise had infected my garden, everything green – my bushes, shrubs and trees, the grass, the hedge, even the little ornamental pot plants I had placed at some point just outside my back door – all died, as if shrivelling up at the touch of a destructive hand, a hand that reached out and drained the life from everything. My prized garden, for so long my refuge, my sanctum, the one source of light in an otherwise blighted existence, was destroyed in a day, laid low, erased as if it had never been. My children, murdered by an unseen hand, their lives snuffed out so cruelly and so casually, without thought or consideration, were taken from me, cremated and given to the cold winter winds.

That was bad enough (and believe me, it was bad: I actually cried physical tears about it. Mock me if you want, I don't care) but after a very short period of mourning (shut up) I came to a rather stunning realisation. Nobody else's garden had been affected. I'm surrounded by houses, both adjacent to and opposite mine, and they all have front and back gardens, and not a blade of grass, not a flower, not a leaf on a tree was touched by the mysterious cancer that had ravaged my garden. You can see the demarcation line quite clearly, where my garden wall ends and my neighbour's begins. His is lush and verdant, a lawn with many colourful flowers and plants, and two apple trees, one in the front and one behind his house. Neither have been in the least infected. And on the other side, the same. It's like my garden has been singled out, and stands now naked and shorn, like a man in sackcloth and ashes cowering amidst the ranks of the wealthy and uncaring. Almost a judgement upon me, a punishment for daring to try to stand up to the faceless men? Or simply a by-product of their contact with the ground, spreading a disease that raced through all my greenery, killing it all by the time the sun rose the next morning, yet spreading no further, as if to say to my neighbours you're all right. We have no quarrel with you.

Once I realised that simple but stark fact, I felt – and I continue to feel – more alone than I ever have done.


III: Neighbourhood Watch

In times of trouble, you turn to your neighbours, don't you? The people you see every day, the people you go to work with, the people whose children play with yours (if you have children. Do I have children? Here is some music...) and the people who, in leaner times, band together and can be relied upon. My own memory is faulty, but surely that can't be true of everyone else who lives here? Perhaps someone remembers these cockroach-men arriving, perhaps someone even knows why they are here, what they are doing?

Perhaps someone has spoken to them. I don't know in all honesty whether the men have ventured beyond my house – with so many to keep track of, if I wanted to, which I don't, it would be fallacy to say they never did – but if they have, could they have chanced upon one of my neighbours? Could they, in fact, fail to do otherwise, unless they had gone out in the dead of night? Surely someone saw them and can tell me more about them? If nothing else, I can at least discuss with the likes of Peter Farrell or Janet Grissom my unease about them, and perhaps we can mull over theories.

Men in Black.

Yes, Janet is a real UFO nut, a conspiracy theorist. She'd have plenty of ideas as to who these people were. Most if not all would be crackpot, few would be likely to hold water, but at least we could discuss them. It seems so long since I have actually spoken to another living being. If nothing else, I can convince myself I'm not going crazy.

Those are my thoughts as I step out into the chilly but bracing afternoon air, choosing a time when there would be people around. As it happens, it isn't Janet I bump into, but the big bus driver Keith Mallet, whom I know casually. I think. He may be a friend. I seem to remember sharing a drink with him on occasion, and there is something about him, some interest we share ... I can't dredge the details up from my sluggish memory, but he sparks them into life as he approaches, a broad smile on his big round face.

“Rob!” he grins. He suddenly stifles a yawn. “Oh, excuse me. Up watching the Boss on TV last night. Did you see it?”

All I can do is muster a weak smile in response. I can't for the life of me guess what he's referring to.

“Always gives good value, does Springsteen,” he goes on, all but ignoring my confused smile. Then I remember.

Bruce Springsteen.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018