What are you Writing now?

Trollheart · 11-10-2017, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubber soul

Nice read, Trollheart. I was going to ask how you would know you didn't remember making a phone call until I notice you said, 'at the time.' I'll read your next entry tomorrow but I'm surmising you're supposed to be a ghost (boy, I should be Sherlock Holmes, huh?). I'm curious to find out whether you're reviewing your life (before you became a ghost) or whether it is a new family that has taken over your house. But, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find that out.

You're very good, Trollheart

Thanks for the compliments. Always nice to get some feedback.

Spoiler for As for your theory....:

Mondo Bungle · 11-10-2017, 06:07 PM

I'm writing a story about clandestine subterranean transit systems and and neo-space age indoctrination and enlightened lunar communes

The Batlord · 11-10-2017, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mondo Bungle

I'm writing a story about clandestine subterranean transit systems and and neo-space age indoctrination and enlightened lunar communes

Pretty sure [Merit] already has that copyrighted.

Mondo Bungle · 11-10-2017, 06:10 PM

he may think that because he's been brainwashed by my fictitious organization

it's all very complex you see

Trollheart · 11-10-2017, 06:42 PM

IV: Darkness on the edge of town

The old broken run-down ruin of the carnival which, once upon a time, had thrived and prospered here, in the boom times, but which had long ago fallen into disrepair, looks up at me with weary, sad, hungry eyes. Hungry for business, for the sound of running feet and delighted screams, for the smell of candy-floss and toffee apples, the wails of tiny children and the empty threats from parents about taking their children home if they don't behave. Hungry for the chiming sounds of fairground music, the shouts of the barkers and the con-men, the whoops of delight as another plastic ring settles on a prized object, the grunts of the ring-toss stall owner, who wishes he had not been so honest after all and is losing money hand over fist.

Abandoned by its owners, abandoned by its clients, The Devil's Playground (It used to be called Dave’s Playground, but one night some enterprising youngsters climbed through the fence and subtly renamed it, and ever since then this is how it’s been known) now stands empty, an eyesore, yawning its silent misery and loneliness here right on the very fringes of the town. Efforts had been made to knock it down, but there was some legal hangup – something to do with the owner, the eponymous Dave, dying and there not being any heir. I didn't understand it, never particularly cared. There were a few token protests, people concerned their kids were in danger from the crumbling former monument to the human desire to be scared, but they petered out quickly, and we all got used to the sight of the graveyard of shrieks and thrills just on our doorstep.

It is, anyway, outside of the town, so unless you really want to make the effort to visit it (as some of the local kids invariably do) it's just one of these things that exists, like a coal mine or a nuclear reactor or a firm of lawyers: unpleasant and a little scary but out of sight, out of mind. The Devil's Playground though takes on a new and disturbing aspect as I watch it now. Oddly, it's at the very mouth of the long-abandoned and shut down ghost train where .. something ... is concentrated, making me feel that it's entirely appropriate and at the same pathetic that the very ride that had so scared me as a child is now the focus of a new and seemingly very real terror. The rain, falling heavier now, beats a steady tattoo upon the deserted carousel, the eyes of the tin horses staring dumbly ahead, their backs nevermore to know the welcome burden of a child, or indeed an adult. As the rain slides down the painted faces, it is almost as if the horses are crying.

And it seems to me that the carnival now has a very different hunger...

Rain begins to pool around my feet. The road leads down, and at the bottom there are puddles forming, as the raindrops hit the ground and splat on the concrete, turning it slightly greyer and making of the surrounding fields a small marshland. If the carnival is in mourning, it would seem the sky is crying in sympathy.

It isn't so much that there is something there, more a sense of the space being occupied without there actually being anything there to occupy it. I don't know how best to describe it. It's as if the space is filled up by something ... something other. Something foreign. Something that has no business being there. It feels ... I don't know ... alien. Dark. Evil. Disquieting. Wrong.

Yeah, that's the word. Wrong.

It feels wrong.

Not just wrong that it is where it is, not wrong that it even is, but wrong that it ... exists? It's like seeing something so totally outside of your experience that you can't even begin to describe it, but you know it doesn't belong. It's not supposed to be here. It's out of place. It’s as if someone had moved the sun down on to the Earth, though of course the sun would be bright, blindingly bright, and this … whatever it is … is somehow intrinsically dark. Blindingly dark. It’s a darkness that seems to swallow the whole carnival, the whole road, and stretches shadowy fingers up the hill, towards the town itself. It’s so dark it’s like it’s as if there’s been a total eclipse, and yet it’s not even perceptible, not to the eye. The eye tells you it’s not there, it can’t be there.

And yet it is.

But what is it?

I suppose if you threatened to pull out my teeth with pincers unless I described it for you, I'd be forced to say that it was a shimmer, a haze, but not like the kind of thing you see at summer (and this is not summer) or even after rain. This is, well, an aberration, a twisting, a warping of the fabric of space itself, and the road ahead, though visible to me, is seen as if viewed through a wide angle lens with a dark filter on it. You can't really see anything, but then, if you look really carefully, you can.

Sort of.

I'd say my skin begins to crawl, but it has been moving ever since I dropped the newspaper in Benny's, and now it seems to want to run right off my skeleton and leave me a walking pile of bones, exposed and afraid, staring at something I really can't see.

But I can feel it.

Palpably.

There's some sort of crackling energy coming off it, malevolent tendrils of dark power that seem to reach out for me, and I recoil from it, and yet am drawn to it. I want to run, turn and run, run far enough away that I can outdistance the very memory of this thing, but my traitorous feet will not obey me, and bring me closer and closer to the thing that is not there, and yet is. Like a man dragged to the electric chair, fighting all the way, though only in my mind and in silence, I watch as my feet proceed down the hill, closing the gap between the thing and me, drawing me closer, ever closer, bringing me into its malevolent presence. Like the weird photographs in the newspaper earlier, I feel that if I come close enough this thing will suck me in, pull me towards it, pulverise and destroy me.

And yet, I know without knowing how I know, this is not an entrance.

This is an exit.

And it can be for the use of one only.

He is coming.

For one brief, almost magical moment, I'm able to turn my head away from the encroaching darkness and turn my mind towards saner, more realistic thoughts. My brain, rebelling at the idea of the thing that is there and not there, turns itself to the problem of making sense of what has happened up to now, almost like a mother (did I ever have a mother?) telling her child everything will be all right, without any reason to assume this to be the case. I think - my brain thinks - I've solved the mystery. I think I know who is coming. Suddenly, it’s all so clear to me.

Why did Keith want to sell his tickets, what seems hours but probably is only minutes ago? What did he say: “No point, not now that He is coming.” Well of course. That has to be it. Springsteen. Springsteen is coming. The Boss is coming. I read nothing about it in the newspapers, but surely that was some crazy, nervous episode I suffered, probably as a result of being cooped up in the house (for how long now? Here is some music…) and these damn headaches, which keep getting worse, and are getting more frequent now. But that has to be it. He is coming. Bruce is coming here.

It’s all so obvious.

I almost feel the dark cloud lift from me, and a smile makes a brave attempt to curl up my lips.

But then, reality asserts itself.

Question: what would young Fiona Hutchinson care about Springsteen? She surely has no idea even who he is, so why would she talk about his coming? And what about Benny? Benny’s a classical nut, and thinks music attained its perfect peak with Mozart, so he wouldn’t give two damns about some rocker from New Jersey. And why would a priest care, especially enough to refer to Springsteen’s advent as his last words, dying in agony?

No. It can’t be that. That can’t be right. It just doesn’t make sense.

As if anything else does!

And like a man sitting in a dark room for who knows how long, who suddenly sees a flame flicker in the distance, engendering sudden and unexpected hope in his heart, only for that hope to die as the flame goes out and he is returned to the ever-present darkness, my brief shaft of light is swallowed by the night, and I am again plunged into endless black.

Then, perhaps a chink of light? I see a familiar figure standing outside the amusement park, just by the road. I recognise the short-cropped bleached blonde hair, the dark sunglasses (not mirror shades, at least, though their appearance does send a shiver of fear through me momentarily) and the silver jumpsuit, and I recognise our resident conspiracy theorist/UFO nut. I quicken my pace without making it too obvious; I want to talk to her. Hell, I want to talk to anyone whose conversation will include something other than “He is coming”. I know Janet will not have succumbed to whatever it is that has overtaken my town, the thoughts planted in the minds of everyone here bar me - and hopefully her. She will not have fallen for it. Janet Grissom is an individual. She is an outsider. To use her own description of herself, she does not drink the Kool-Aid. She may not know what is going on, but I’ll bet she has a theory. Probably more than one.

But I don’t know her that well, so I can’t call to her, and if she moves off, as she looks like she might do any moment now, I don’t have the heart or the will to follow her. After being driven (if I am being driven by some unknown agency and am not just imagining it, blaming the heaviness of my limbs on some supernatural force rather than simple weariness) to this location, and having no idea why I'm here, I’m suddenly finding every step I take more difficult, as if I’m wading through thick muck, and I’m almost surprised not to hear the squelching my shoes make as I drag them out of, and back into, the thick mire. It’s as if an invisible hand, which had been propelling me forward, is now pushing against me, forcing me back, trying to impede my progress, or make me turn back. But I’m not about to go back yet. Not to that house. My house? Not yet. Perhaps not ever. The thought of it fills me with a cold dread, and I force my legs to move, the exertion almost killing me.

In moments that seem like hours, I am standing near Janet Grissom, and she eyes me with a look that asks what the hell do I want? She’s a solitary creature, our Janet, and she is very particular about who she spends time with. She believe most people are laughing at her - and she’s probably right; I’ve done my share of mocking her in my time, though not to her face of course - but rather than feeling mocked, she feels only contempt for these people. These idiots who can’t see the truth, the plain truth of what’s in front of them. They’ll never see it, she has said before, until it’s too late.

Perhaps it’s already too late.

Here is some music…

~~[MERIT]~~ · 11-10-2017, 10:37 PM

I'm penning a report about freelance journalist "Jim Stone."

rubber soul · 11-11-2017, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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...

This is starting to sound a little Kafkaesque. I also notice that you like to write in first person, present. Some people at my old forum tend to frown on that but, truthfully, that's how I like to write too.

I did find one grammatical glitch. I highlighted it in red. Virgin is a single entity I assume, so it should be 'Virgin is doing a great deal right now.'

Anyway, now you really have me curious as to who is what. You're not a ghost and I'm guessing those people aren't really cockroaches. I'll read more tomorrow and I'm sure I'll get the answer soon.

Keep writing

Trollheart · 11-11-2017, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubber soul

This is starting to sound a little Kafkaesque. I also notice that you like to write in first person, present. Some people at my old forum tend to frown on that but, truthfully, that's how I like to write too.

I did find one grammatical glitch. I highlighted it in red. Virgin is a single entity I assume, so it should be 'Virgin is doing a great deal right now.'

Anyway, now you really have me curious as to who is what. You're not a ghost and I'm guessing those people aren't really cockroaches. I'll read more tomorrow and I'm sure I'll get the answer soon.

Keep writing

Hmm. Interesting catch. I think it's one of those things, is it they or is it it? Like when your favourite football team is playing, do you say, Aston Villa are playing or Aston Villa is playing? I always say the former, as the club is made up of separate individuals, and in the case of Virgin, yes it's a single entity but the corporation is made up of millions of little cockroaches, sorry salespeople, who offer the deals. I'd probably still say "are", just because it sounds better.

I actually seldom write in the first person, as you'll have seen from the extracts from my novel, since I like to be able to shift scenes and do things from different perspectives. It just happens to suit this story better.

Glad you're enjoying it anyway. On we go!

**Frownland** · 11-11-2017, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Hmm. Interesting catch. I think it's one of those things, is it they or is it it? Like when your favourite football team is playing, do you say, Aston Villa are playing or Aston Villa is playing? I always say the former, as the club is made up of separate individuals, and in the case of Virgin, yes it's a single entity but the corporation is made up of millions of little cockroaches, sorry salespeople, who offer the deals. I'd probably still say "are", just because it sounds better.

Nah it should be is or else we would apply this to countries as well.

Trollheart · 11-11-2017, 11:07 AM

I stand beside her, not sure how to open a conversation, not even sure if she wants to or will deign to talk with me, a professed unbeliever, as just about everyone in this town is. But the promise of human contact is something I long for, more, as I realise it now, than I had thought. Human. I taste the word, as if its flavour is unfamiliar, strange to me. Human. Somehow, for some reason, I find myself discounting all those I have met and spoken with - if you can call it speaking, when all they say is “He is coming”! - as if somehow not human, or at least, not any more. Even Benny. Even Benny has been got to, and is in some weird way no longer human. Listen to me: I sound like her, I snort to myself, and then realise she is talking to me.

“Weird, isn’t it, Charles?” she says, without turning to face me, her back to me as she seems to gaze over at the ruined park. “You spend all your life looking for conspiracies, making websites, writing blogs, checking footage, and all the time, it’s right here in front of you.”

This is it! I think triumphantly. She knows! She knows what’s happening. Good old Janet! The nut has figured it out. She knows what has happened, she probably knows how and why, and if I know Janet Grissom, which I don’t, she has a plan.

Of course, she is borderline psychotic, but let’s not worry about that now.

“I should have known,” she says, more to herself than me, still not turning around, and I realise now there is something odd about her voice, something … not stuttering, as such, but as if, well, as if she’s having difficulty pronouncing words. I once met a kid who had Down’s Syndrome, and she sort of sounds like him now. Slurred, but not from alcohol or (as far as I know) drug abuse, her voice is flat, toneless, devoid of any emotion. “Charles, it’s so obvious.”

I don’t take offence at the use of my surname. A long time ago, Janet came to the conclusion that the alien invaders (who were definitely here, and had infiltrated the highest levels of government, to the point that when she went to vote she always jeered “Shall I vote for the Pod Man or the Tentacled Queeeblepled?”) had acquired control over humans by usage of their first, or as she called it, Primary, name, and so she never used hers, and never used that of anyone else, always addressing them by their surname. She would probably have called her husband by his surname too, if she was married.

I’m not sure if I should speak now, and I take a moment to wonder how she knows who I am, how she even knows anyone has walked up behind her, when she has not turned around to see me? But I deem it best to keep silent, as she obviously has something to say, and since, at the moment, even if only in my own mind, she is my only ally, I hesitate to interrupt her.

In reality, I realise I just don’t want to be abandoned. I don’t want her to get the hump and walk off if I say the wrong thing, leaving me in this town of … of …

“All my life,” she’s saying, and it’s very clear now she’s talking mostly to herself, as if a younger version of herself were standing in front of her, and I just happen to be in earshot “I’ve worried - been convinced - that aliens are here. You remember my T-shirt? Look at it.”

And she turns to me.

I feel a scream bubbling up inside me, but it won’t come out. My voice is silent, my scream is stillborn, I feel the world wheel around me and a sense of dizziness takes me, coupled with the most violent nausea.

I see now why Janet’s speech has been slurred. It’s not, as I had originally thought, due to tiredness, like everyone else I’ve met so far. No. I realise that it’s very hard to speak properly when your face is disfigured by what looks like the word “coming” traced in deep red and black through, from below the nose to the chin, travelling across like an obscene badge of honour from one side of her face to the other. Her lips are split, her cheeks torn. Folds of flesh flap at the sides of her head, reminding me of a fish I once saw gutted, all red and glistening. Blood is running freely down what remains of her face. She seems not to heed it; perhaps she does not feel it.

Her teeth are broken and crooked where the knife has carved that hateful word, and as I drag my unwilling eyes higher, I see that two roughly parallel lines trace their way from the top of her forehead, passing through her left eye, which is red and bulbous and dripping. Just above them, where her eyebrows should be, another red line bridges the two, making what I suppose is a passable effort at a “h”, when you consider the effort it must have taken to have carved it out of flesh. The right eye is similarly marked, but by three horizontal lines joined by one vertical, a reasonable approximation of an “e”. It’s hard to tell really though, as her right eye has fallen completely out, and I’m left staring at raw, red flesh, through which I think I can actually see her skull.

That’s two words, and the third is ripped across her nose, which is hanging loose. Seemingly completely oblivious of the horrible wounds that have been inflicted on her face - I have to assume by her own hand, then - she smiles, forcing the grotesque, broken lips apart. Although she asked - demanded, really - that I do so, I transfer my gaze to her chest automatically: anything not to have to stare into that awful, awful mockery of a face. The calm, serene face of a smooth-skinned alien looks unconcernedly back at me, underneath it the words THEY ARE HERE.

“They are here!” she spits, literally, the words out: two or three teeth eject from her mouth amid a spray of spittle, blood and other stuff I don’t wish to think about. “They are here!” she repeats, rather unfortunately shaking her head, which dislodges some loose flesh. It falls to the ground like the leaves from a tree in autumn, and she pays them as much mind. “How could they be here?” she asks me, a quizzical tone in her voice. “How? Tell me that!” I feel like she is going to advance on me, touch me, and for all the pity I feel for her, I do not want her anywhere near me. I take a step back. She does not advance. “How could they be here?” she asks, “when He is coming? How is that possible? What a fool I’ve been!” She snorts in derision, which has the unfortunate consequence of shaking what remains of her nose loose. She takes as much notice of it as she has the various other wounds on what was once a human face.

I wish I could be sure, but given how ruined her mouth is I can’t. It looks to me as if her destroyed lips are mouthing one word, which gives the lie to what she’s saying to me. It’s just one word, and I wish I could obey, comply, if that’s what she’s saying, because right at this moment it’s about the only thing that makes sense.

Run.

But I stay where I am, as if gripped in some invisible vise, as if something is going to happen, something important and certainly very terrible, and someone or something wants me to bear witness to it, won’t let me turn away, won’t let me take heed and put into action the wordless instruction, the prayer, the warning I fancy I see on Janet Grissom’s bleeding and torn lips.

No, no: there is a show to be seen. Be patient. Here is some music…

The sound her mouth makes, however, the words she actually forms, that I can hear, are “I waited too long, Charles. I waited too long … Rob.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her call someone by their first name, certainly the first time she’s called me by mine. I feel, somewhere deep down, in a place that has been closed off to me, that I can’t access, that this is a cry for help, a confirmation that she is being made speak words she does not believe.

“I waited too long,” she repeats, a sad, mad look in the one eye that remains, its ravaged, bleeding pupil unblinking. The eye is wet. She may be crying, or it may just be all the blood and goop that’s spilling from it. She turns her back on me again. I almost scream with relief, and feel vaguely ashamed, and selfish. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, Rob,” she counsels me. “Don’t wait to accept Him into your heart. You have no choice. He is coming.”

Then she steps out into the road, directly in front of a large semi truck.

I’ve never even seen a traffic accident before, and I have never seen anyone die. It’s surreal. Janet literally explodes across the front of the truck, her skin, her bones, her exposed insides exploding through in a burst of dark colour and a horrible plopping sound, spread across the highway, some of what was a woman, a human being, only moments ago, splashing back on me like rain. Repulsed, I take a step back, a wordless cry still struggling for release in my throat. The truck does not even stop, just sounds its air horn as I watch, horror-stricken, and continues on its way.

“Now, sir! Step back there if you don't mind!” A heavy hand is suddenly on my shoulder and I start, realising in amazement that I am suddenly surrounded by men in uniform. Dimly, I perceive them as police, their bright yellow hi-viz jackets slick with rain, their faces dripping too, as if they too are crying, but these are not men who cry easily. You can see that as the waning sun strikes sharp reflections off their mirror shades.

Cockroaches...

“Restricted area, Sir.” The cop in charge is consulting a notebook and nodding to a colleague. I don't see what the colleague does, but he disappears from my line of sight. “I'll have to ask you not to cross the cordon. Can’t have anyone getting in the way when He comes, can we.” His frown deepens, as if a suspicion has formed in his mind. “Didn't you see the police tape?” he asks. It’s almost a challenge. How could you not see it? It’s all over the place!

As if shaken awake from a dream, I now see that my left arm has a twisting yellow strand of plastic tape adhering to it, and behind and in front of me is more of this tape, marking out an area which protects the entrance to the carnival and, more importantly, seems to roughly encompass the thing I cannot see, but can feel, and have been drawn towards. I had obviously blundered through the cordon, unaware even of its existence, as my feet took me down towards the thing.

11-10-2017, 06:42 PM	#355 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	IV: Darkness on the edge of town The old broken run-down ruin of the carnival which, once upon a time, had thrived and prospered here, in the boom times, but which had long ago fallen into disrepair, looks up at me with weary, sad, hungry eyes. Hungry for business, for the sound of running feet and delighted screams, for the smell of candy-floss and toffee apples, the wails of tiny children and the empty threats from parents about taking their children home if they don't behave. Hungry for the chiming sounds of fairground music, the shouts of the barkers and the con-men, the whoops of delight as another plastic ring settles on a prized object, the grunts of the ring-toss stall owner, who wishes he had not been so honest after all and is losing money hand over fist. Abandoned by its owners, abandoned by its clients, The Devil's Playground (It used to be called Dave’s Playground, but one night some enterprising youngsters climbed through the fence and subtly renamed it, and ever since then this is how it’s been known) now stands empty, an eyesore, yawning its silent misery and loneliness here right on the very fringes of the town. Efforts had been made to knock it down, but there was some legal hangup – something to do with the owner, the eponymous Dave, dying and there not being any heir. I didn't understand it, never particularly cared. There were a few token protests, people concerned their kids were in danger from the crumbling former monument to the human desire to be scared, but they petered out quickly, and we all got used to the sight of the graveyard of shrieks and thrills just on our doorstep. It is, anyway, outside of the town, so unless you really want to make the effort to visit it (as some of the local kids invariably do) it's just one of these things that exists, like a coal mine or a nuclear reactor or a firm of lawyers: unpleasant and a little scary but out of sight, out of mind. The Devil's Playground though takes on a new and disturbing aspect as I watch it now. Oddly, it's at the very mouth of the long-abandoned and shut down ghost train where .. something ... is concentrated, making me feel that it's entirely appropriate and at the same pathetic that the very ride that had so scared me as a child is now the focus of a new and seemingly very real terror. The rain, falling heavier now, beats a steady tattoo upon the deserted carousel, the eyes of the tin horses staring dumbly ahead, their backs nevermore to know the welcome burden of a child, or indeed an adult. As the rain slides down the painted faces, it is almost as if the horses are crying. And it seems to me that the carnival now has a very different hunger... Rain begins to pool around my feet. The road leads down, and at the bottom there are puddles forming, as the raindrops hit the ground and splat on the concrete, turning it slightly greyer and making of the surrounding fields a small marshland. If the carnival is in mourning, it would seem the sky is crying in sympathy. It isn't so much that there is something there, more a sense of the space being occupied without there actually being anything there to occupy it. I don't know how best to describe it. It's as if the space is filled up by something ... something other. Something foreign. Something that has no business being there. It feels ... I don't know ... alien. Dark. Evil. Disquieting. Wrong. Yeah, that's the word. Wrong. It feels wrong. Not just wrong that it is where it is, not wrong that it even is, but wrong that it ... exists? It's like seeing something so totally outside of your experience that you can't even begin to describe it, but you know it doesn't belong. It's not supposed to be here. It's out of place. It’s as if someone had moved the sun down on to the Earth, though of course the sun would be bright, blindingly bright, and this … whatever it is … is somehow intrinsically dark. Blindingly dark. It’s a darkness that seems to swallow the whole carnival, the whole road, and stretches shadowy fingers up the hill, towards the town itself. It’s so dark it’s like it’s as if there’s been a total eclipse, and yet it’s not even perceptible, not to the eye. The eye tells you it’s not there, it can’t be there. And yet it is. But what is it? I suppose if you threatened to pull out my teeth with pincers unless I described it for you, I'd be forced to say that it was a shimmer, a haze, but not like the kind of thing you see at summer (and this is not summer) or even after rain. This is, well, an aberration, a twisting, a warping of the fabric of space itself, and the road ahead, though visible to me, is seen as if viewed through a wide angle lens with a dark filter on it. You can't really see anything, but then, if you look really carefully, you can. Sort of. I'd say my skin begins to crawl, but it has been moving ever since I dropped the newspaper in Benny's, and now it seems to want to run right off my skeleton and leave me a walking pile of bones, exposed and afraid, staring at something I really can't see. But I can feel it. Palpably. There's some sort of crackling energy coming off it, malevolent tendrils of dark power that seem to reach out for me, and I recoil from it, and yet am drawn to it. I want to run, turn and run, run far enough away that I can outdistance the very memory of this thing, but my traitorous feet will not obey me, and bring me closer and closer to the thing that is not there, and yet is. Like a man dragged to the electric chair, fighting all the way, though only in my mind and in silence, I watch as my feet proceed down the hill, closing the gap between the thing and me, drawing me closer, ever closer, bringing me into its malevolent presence. Like the weird photographs in the newspaper earlier, I feel that if I come close enough this thing will suck me in, pull me towards it, pulverise and destroy me. And yet, I know without knowing how I know, this is not an entrance. This is an exit. And it can be for the use of one only. He is coming. For one brief, almost magical moment, I'm able to turn my head away from the encroaching darkness and turn my mind towards saner, more realistic thoughts. My brain, rebelling at the idea of the thing that is there and not there, turns itself to the problem of making sense of what has happened up to now, almost like a mother (did I ever have a mother?) telling her child everything will be all right, without any reason to assume this to be the case. I think - my brain thinks - I've solved the mystery. I think I know who is coming. Suddenly, it’s all so clear to me. Why did Keith want to sell his tickets, what seems hours but probably is only minutes ago? What did he say: “No point, not now that He is coming.” Well of course. That has to be it. Springsteen. Springsteen is coming. The Boss is coming. I read nothing about it in the newspapers, but surely that was some crazy, nervous episode I suffered, probably as a result of being cooped up in the house (for how long now? Here is some music…) and these damn headaches, which keep getting worse, and are getting more frequent now. But that has to be it. He is coming. Bruce is coming here. It’s all so obvious. I almost feel the dark cloud lift from me, and a smile makes a brave attempt to curl up my lips. But then, reality asserts itself. Question: what would young Fiona Hutchinson care about Springsteen? She surely has no idea even who he is, so why would she talk about his coming? And what about Benny? Benny’s a classical nut, and thinks music attained its perfect peak with Mozart, so he wouldn’t give two damns about some rocker from New Jersey. And why would a priest care, especially enough to refer to Springsteen’s advent as his last words, dying in agony? No. It can’t be that. That can’t be right. It just doesn’t make sense. As if anything else does! And like a man sitting in a dark room for who knows how long, who suddenly sees a flame flicker in the distance, engendering sudden and unexpected hope in his heart, only for that hope to die as the flame goes out and he is returned to the ever-present darkness, my brief shaft of light is swallowed by the night, and I am again plunged into endless black. Then, perhaps a chink of light? I see a familiar figure standing outside the amusement park, just by the road. I recognise the short-cropped bleached blonde hair, the dark sunglasses (not mirror shades, at least, though their appearance does send a shiver of fear through me momentarily) and the silver jumpsuit, and I recognise our resident conspiracy theorist/UFO nut. I quicken my pace without making it too obvious; I want to talk to her. Hell, I want to talk to anyone whose conversation will include something other than “He is coming”. I know Janet will not have succumbed to whatever it is that has overtaken my town, the thoughts planted in the minds of everyone here bar me - and hopefully her. She will not have fallen for it. Janet Grissom is an individual. She is an outsider. To use her own description of herself, she does not drink the Kool-Aid. She may not know what is going on, but I’ll bet she has a theory. Probably more than one. But I don’t know her that well, so I can’t call to her, and if she moves off, as she looks like she might do any moment now, I don’t have the heart or the will to follow her. After being driven (if I am being driven by some unknown agency and am not just imagining it, blaming the heaviness of my limbs on some supernatural force rather than simple weariness) to this location, and having no idea why I'm here, I’m suddenly finding every step I take more difficult, as if I’m wading through thick muck, and I’m almost surprised not to hear the squelching my shoes make as I drag them out of, and back into, the thick mire. It’s as if an invisible hand, which had been propelling me forward, is now pushing against me, forcing me back, trying to impede my progress, or make me turn back. But I’m not about to go back yet. Not to that house. My house? Not yet. Perhaps not ever. The thought of it fills me with a cold dread, and I force my legs to move, the exertion almost killing me. In moments that seem like hours, I am standing near Janet Grissom, and she eyes me with a look that asks what the hell do I want? She’s a solitary creature, our Janet, and she is very particular about who she spends time with. She believe most people are laughing at her - and she’s probably right; I’ve done my share of mocking her in my time, though not to her face of course - but rather than feeling mocked, she feels only contempt for these people. These idiots who can’t see the truth, the plain truth of what’s in front of them. They’ll never see it, she has said before, until it’s too late. Perhaps it’s already too late. Here is some music… __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

11-11-2017, 11:07 AM	#360 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	I stand beside her, not sure how to open a conversation, not even sure if she wants to or will deign to talk with me, a professed unbeliever, as just about everyone in this town is. But the promise of human contact is something I long for, more, as I realise it now, than I had thought. Human. I taste the word, as if its flavour is unfamiliar, strange to me. Human. Somehow, for some reason, I find myself discounting all those I have met and spoken with - if you can call it speaking, when all they say is “He is coming”! - as if somehow not human, or at least, not any more. Even Benny. Even Benny has been got to, and is in some weird way no longer human. Listen to me: I sound like her, I snort to myself, and then realise she is talking to me. “Weird, isn’t it, Charles?” she says, without turning to face me, her back to me as she seems to gaze over at the ruined park. “You spend all your life looking for conspiracies, making websites, writing blogs, checking footage, and all the time, it’s right here in front of you.” This is it! I think triumphantly. She knows! She knows what’s happening. Good old Janet! The nut has figured it out. She knows what has happened, she probably knows how and why, and if I know Janet Grissom, which I don’t, she has a plan. Of course, she is borderline psychotic, but let’s not worry about that now. “I should have known,” she says, more to herself than me, still not turning around, and I realise now there is something odd about her voice, something … not stuttering, as such, but as if, well, as if she’s having difficulty pronouncing words. I once met a kid who had Down’s Syndrome, and she sort of sounds like him now. Slurred, but not from alcohol or (as far as I know) drug abuse, her voice is flat, toneless, devoid of any emotion. “Charles, it’s so obvious.” I don’t take offence at the use of my surname. A long time ago, Janet came to the conclusion that the alien invaders (who were definitely here, and had infiltrated the highest levels of government, to the point that when she went to vote she always jeered “Shall I vote for the Pod Man or the Tentacled Queeeblepled?”) had acquired control over humans by usage of their first, or as she called it, Primary, name, and so she never used hers, and never used that of anyone else, always addressing them by their surname. She would probably have called her husband by his surname too, if she was married. I’m not sure if I should speak now, and I take a moment to wonder how she knows who I am, how she even knows anyone has walked up behind her, when she has not turned around to see me? But I deem it best to keep silent, as she obviously has something to say, and since, at the moment, even if only in my own mind, she is my only ally, I hesitate to interrupt her. In reality, I realise I just don’t want to be abandoned. I don’t want her to get the hump and walk off if I say the wrong thing, leaving me in this town of … of … “All my life,” she’s saying, and it’s very clear now she’s talking mostly to herself, as if a younger version of herself were standing in front of her, and I just happen to be in earshot “I’ve worried - been convinced - that aliens are here. You remember my T-shirt? Look at it.” And she turns to me. I feel a scream bubbling up inside me, but it won’t come out. My voice is silent, my scream is stillborn, I feel the world wheel around me and a sense of dizziness takes me, coupled with the most violent nausea. I see now why Janet’s speech has been slurred. It’s not, as I had originally thought, due to tiredness, like everyone else I’ve met so far. No. I realise that it’s very hard to speak properly when your face is disfigured by what looks like the word “coming” traced in deep red and black through, from below the nose to the chin, travelling across like an obscene badge of honour from one side of her face to the other. Her lips are split, her cheeks torn. Folds of flesh flap at the sides of her head, reminding me of a fish I once saw gutted, all red and glistening. Blood is running freely down what remains of her face. She seems not to heed it; perhaps she does not feel it. Her teeth are broken and crooked where the knife has carved that hateful word, and as I drag my unwilling eyes higher, I see that two roughly parallel lines trace their way from the top of her forehead, passing through her left eye, which is red and bulbous and dripping. Just above them, where her eyebrows should be, another red line bridges the two, making what I suppose is a passable effort at a “h”, when you consider the effort it must have taken to have carved it out of flesh. The right eye is similarly marked, but by three horizontal lines joined by one vertical, a reasonable approximation of an “e”. It’s hard to tell really though, as her right eye has fallen completely out, and I’m left staring at raw, red flesh, through which I think I can actually see her skull. That’s two words, and the third is ripped across her nose, which is hanging loose. Seemingly completely oblivious of the horrible wounds that have been inflicted on her face - I have to assume by her own hand, then - she smiles, forcing the grotesque, broken lips apart. Although she asked - demanded, really - that I do so, I transfer my gaze to her chest automatically: anything not to have to stare into that awful, awful mockery of a face. The calm, serene face of a smooth-skinned alien looks unconcernedly back at me, underneath it the words THEY ARE HERE. “They are here!” she spits, literally, the words out: two or three teeth eject from her mouth amid a spray of spittle, blood and other stuff I don’t wish to think about. “They are here!” she repeats, rather unfortunately shaking her head, which dislodges some loose flesh. It falls to the ground like the leaves from a tree in autumn, and she pays them as much mind. “How could they be here?” she asks me, a quizzical tone in her voice. “How? Tell me that!” I feel like she is going to advance on me, touch me, and for all the pity I feel for her, I do not want her anywhere near me. I take a step back. She does not advance. “How could they be here?” she asks, “when He is coming? How is that possible? What a fool I’ve been!” She snorts in derision, which has the unfortunate consequence of shaking what remains of her nose loose. She takes as much notice of it as she has the various other wounds on what was once a human face. I wish I could be sure, but given how ruined her mouth is I can’t. It looks to me as if her destroyed lips are mouthing one word, which gives the lie to what she’s saying to me. It’s just one word, and I wish I could obey, comply, if that’s what she’s saying, because right at this moment it’s about the only thing that makes sense. Run. But I stay where I am, as if gripped in some invisible vise, as if something is going to happen, something important and certainly very terrible, and someone or something wants me to bear witness to it, won’t let me turn away, won’t let me take heed and put into action the wordless instruction, the prayer, the warning I fancy I see on Janet Grissom’s bleeding and torn lips. No, no: there is a show to be seen. Be patient. Here is some music… The sound her mouth makes, however, the words she actually forms, that I can hear, are “I waited too long, Charles. I waited too long … Rob.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her call someone by their first name, certainly the first time she’s called me by mine. I feel, somewhere deep down, in a place that has been closed off to me, that I can’t access, that this is a cry for help, a confirmation that she is being made speak words she does not believe. “I waited too long,” she repeats, a sad, mad look in the one eye that remains, its ravaged, bleeding pupil unblinking. The eye is wet. She may be crying, or it may just be all the blood and goop that’s spilling from it. She turns her back on me again. I almost scream with relief, and feel vaguely ashamed, and selfish. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, Rob,” she counsels me. “Don’t wait to accept Him into your heart. You have no choice. He is coming.” Then she steps out into the road, directly in front of a large semi truck. I’ve never even seen a traffic accident before, and I have never seen anyone die. It’s surreal. Janet literally explodes across the front of the truck, her skin, her bones, her exposed insides exploding through in a burst of dark colour and a horrible plopping sound, spread across the highway, some of what was a woman, a human being, only moments ago, splashing back on me like rain. Repulsed, I take a step back, a wordless cry still struggling for release in my throat. The truck does not even stop, just sounds its air horn as I watch, horror-stricken, and continues on its way. “Now, sir! Step back there if you don't mind!” A heavy hand is suddenly on my shoulder and I start, realising in amazement that I am suddenly surrounded by men in uniform. Dimly, I perceive them as police, their bright yellow hi-viz jackets slick with rain, their faces dripping too, as if they too are crying, but these are not men who cry easily. You can see that as the waning sun strikes sharp reflections off their mirror shades. Cockroaches... “Restricted area, Sir.” The cop in charge is consulting a notebook and nodding to a colleague. I don't see what the colleague does, but he disappears from my line of sight. “I'll have to ask you not to cross the cordon. Can’t have anyone getting in the way when He comes, can we.” His frown deepens, as if a suspicion has formed in his mind. “Didn't you see the police tape?” he asks. It’s almost a challenge. How could you not see it? It’s all over the place! As if shaken awake from a dream, I now see that my left arm has a twisting yellow strand of plastic tape adhering to it, and behind and in front of me is more of this tape, marking out an area which protects the entrance to the carnival and, more importantly, seems to roughly encompass the thing I cannot see, but can feel, and have been drawn towards. I had obviously blundered through the cordon, unaware even of its existence, as my feet took me down towards the thing. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

11-10-2017, 10:37 PM	#356 (permalink)
~~[MERIT]~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Missouri, USA Posts: 4,814	I'm penning a report about freelance journalist "Jim Stone."