Trollheart

I'm currently working on submissions for a Halloween short story collection for another forum, and will (if yiz can be bothered) share the stories here. But I would like to ask others to contribute, if anyone likes to. All you need do is write a story with a horror/scary theme, some link to Halloween. Doesn't have to be novel-length, anything up to 3,000 - 5,000 words acceptable, but in no way do you have to come up to that limit. A few hundred words is fine if that's what you want to do. If Mondo is still around, love to see what you could do for the spooky season. Frown, I know you can write, and Ori, if you're out there, we need you. I know there are other undiscovered authors here. SGR, you're a good writer, I know that. I'm sure there are others. Now's the time.

Anyone interested let me know. I've no idea how it's going to turn out, but it might be fun.

Now running. Contents page here

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

When's the deadline?

I'll have to do some thinking on it, but if I can come up with a concept/idea I like, I'll submit something.

Trollheart

Meh, I guess have yours posted by Oct 30/31. Let's put a posting period of say from Oct 10 to 31, in case like me there's a bunch to post. Be glad to see some of your fiction, SGR; I reckon you're an author looking for a story.

FYI themes, if anyone is stuck, just off the top of my head:

Monsters (vampires. witches, werewolves, zombies etc)
Pumpkin attack (?) (See the Simpsons)
Magic
Murder
Inanimate objects coming alive
Spooky locations (haunted houses, graveyards, IRS office...)
Evil children
Non-evil children
Deadly party games (ducking for poisoned apples etc)
Bonfires
Fireworks
Estranged lovers meeting at masked ball
Alien invasions
Odd neighbours
What's he building?
Time travel
Medical procedures gone horribly wrong
Ghosts
Scary shops

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

It's been years since I've written anything approaching fiction (unless you count the nonsense I post here of course). Besides not yet having an idea that excites me, I'm also a bit stumped about what narrative viewpoint/perspective I should use. I guess I'd figure it out as I get writing.

Some great themes there, although there's a distinct lack of Bigfoot in that list.

Trollheart

Bigfoot goes trick-or-treating? I like it! Go for it! Narrative can be whatever you like. So far I've written nine, and of those three are first-person, so it's completely up to you.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

I'll figure out something

Trollheart

Marked

What the hell was she doing here, I wondered? I couldn't even remember letting her in to the house. This early-stage Alzheimer's is a bitch. Forget your own name.

I mentally shook myself and tried to look more closely at her, without seeming to.

There was something almost doll-like about her, now I thought about it: her skin was like porcelain, her cheeks just a little too perfectly-made up, the exact amount of rouge on the sweet apple curves, the lipstick carefully applied; she had never once gone outside the line of her lips, nor had she got the merest spot on her straight white teeth, which showed only as she daintily nibbled at the biscuit on the plate in front of her.

Dainty,
Doll-like.
Perfect make-up.

She was like some sort of ideal of a woman – a girl, really – someone's perfect fantasy, every line and curve perfect, every hair in place.

But then there was the smell.

I tried to identify it but could not, and I certainly did not want to remark upon it. Maybe she just liked to wear an unusual perfume, and who was I to challenge that? But the smell was odd, and it certainly did not smell like any perfume I've ever sniffed. Oh, I would know: in my youth I was quite the ladies' man. Don't remember dating anyone as young as her though. Couldn't be over, what, sixteen? I mean, I used to like 'em young, but not that young!

The problem of the aroma coming from my charming visitor took a back seat as anger began to simmer in me, and my thoughts drifted back to my usual hobby horse. Who the hell was this bastard anyway? Who had it in for me so badly that he was tracking down my former girlfriends and killing them? My own hand began to shake. I balled it into a fist, hoping she would not see.

Why did I care if she saw? What did it matter?
Who was she?
I couldn't remember.
But somehow I felt I should.

Lots I should remember. Couldn't tell you what I did yesterday.
Was that important?
Something told me it was.

My thoughts went back to the killer.

How the hell had he got into my house?

He had though; for ten years I had received a photograph – pictures I took of my lovers, pictures he had stolen – with a red X across the face. Every year, on the exact anniversary of the death of the only woman I had ever truly loved.

How the fuck did he know?

For years the mystery had occupied me, till I could think of nothing else. I felt I was missing something, something important. Something obvious. It was like those times – and we've all experienced them – when you search everywhere for the car keys and they turn out to be in your pocket all along.

But the solution to this dilemma would not be found in my pocket.
It haunted every waking moment, and stalked my dreams.

Sometimes I forgot, of course. This disease will do that to you. I suppose they were the merciful times. But they never lasted.

Nights, I could see the bastard. Oh, not his face, of course; that was always shrouded, or turned away from me, or blurred, or not in shot. But his hand. I could see his hand. Not a young man's hand; quite meaty, no distinguishing tattoos or scars. That kind of thing only happens on TV.

I would watch him take that damn red Sharpie, slowly and with what seemed to me like sexual excitement put the soft nib on the right-hand corner of one of the photos, draw it almost lovingly down to the opposite, bottom corner, then repeat the process on the other side till he had marked a thick red x across a face I had once loved.

And then, it just stopped. No more waking up on that day, that awful day, and dreading the clack of the letterbox. No more staggering downstairs, half-asleep, knowing what would be waiting for me on the mat. No more hands shaking as I opened the envelope, wondering which one of them it would be this year.

Again the question, the feeling of some crisis having been reached, some vital part of the jigsaw fitting into place.

I realised my visitor was looking at a picture on the sideboard, the one I'd kept from the funeral. The only one he hadn't got his rotten hands on. He couldn't deface this with his nasty red marker.

But there was something in her eyes. What was it? A flicker of... recognition? Impossible. Lana was in the ground before this kid was even a twinkle in her father's eye, never mind born.

Why did she look so familiar, this girl?

I looked again, my eyes drawn towards the faded photograph. Silently, I cursed the cancer that had taken her. I realised suddenly how seldom I had looked at that picture, really looked. Maybe it was just too painful. I turned my eyes back to the girl sitting across from me.

And then I saw it.
The resemblance.
The same eyes, the same half-bitter smile, the way she held her cup with the little finger poised just so.
It was like looking at my wife.

But... but that was impossible. She couldn't look like... she couldn't be...

My brain seemed to squirm in my head, like a trapped animal. Something was trying to surface, something in the back of my mind, shrouded now by time and by the Alzheimer's, something I did not want to face.

What the hell was it?
And hard on the heels of that question, another.
What was that smell?
Glue? Was it glue? Disinfectant?
Furniture polish?

Yeah, right, I thought. A divorced guy of sixty-six using furniture polish. Next I'll be carrying a feather duster and wearing an apron!

That smell again.
So sharp, so acrid.
Air freshener?

No, I'm allergic to most brands and I don't use them. Sets me off sneezing for hours. Fucking things. And it was a cinch she hadn't come in wearing a Magic Tree around that slim, pretty neck.
Not air freshener then.

It was as if she had read my mind.

“Formaldehyde.” She spoke the word without a trace of inflection, a hint of emotion, almost as if it meant nothing to her, or she didn't know what it meant.

“Excuse me?”

“Formaldehyde,” she repeated, just the barest hint of sharpness in her tone. I realised her voice was familiar too, but I couldn't place it. “That smell you're wondering about. It's formaldehyde.”

I stared. What the hell...?

“They use it,” she told me, her eyes never once leaving mine, and I felt trapped by her penetrating gaze, “to preserve bodies. Dead bodies.”

I still couldn't speak. That dreaded, terrible thing I had pushed to the dustiest corners of my mind was stirring, stretching, like a cat waking up.
I could feel its sharp claws reaching for me.

“Do you know what it's like,” she asked, a world of hurt in her eyes, “to be embalmed?”

A howling, roaring noise was in my ears. It felt like my head was about to explode. The room was spinning.

Her voice was sad, full of pity, but also bitter recrimination.

“All so that you wouldn't have to remember what you had done.”

I made no reply. Off somewhere in the distance, seemingly miles away, I could hear a loud knocking. I wondered if it was my heart.
But I knew, deep down, it was not.
Somehow, I found my voice.

“She – she was in such pain... I... I couldn't ... I couldn't...”

I realised I was babbling. She wasn't looking at me, her eyes fixed on the picture, as if communing with it.

“You've believed that for so long you've convinced yourself it's true.” Her voice was hard, sharp.

“It is true.” Mine was sulky, pettish.

She indicated the photo.

“Look at it,” she said, all but a command. “Look at the back. You remember speaking those words?”

I did. I thought. They sounded like mine. Inscribed in flowing black ink across the white/yellow card, her eulogy, or part of it.

Lana was such a beautiful person, and so forgiving. I know she's even forgiven her killer.

Her killer.

“I – I didn't mean to...”

The words sounded hollow, even to me. An empty excuse. A lie?

“And then... when you came in and... and saw... and I tried... oh god I tried to push you out of the room... I forgot how close the stairs were... oh god! Oh god!”

I hung my head. The words continued to tumble out of me in a torrent.

“You were so.. I couldn't ... not like that... I asked them... I told them.. make her... make her like she was. Make her...” I breathed the last word. “Perfect.”

“Perfect.” She repeated the word. Still she refused to look at me. Her voice was calm, dead, cold.
“Your perfect little doll.”

And now, her head swivelled, as if on a pivot, and she stared directly at me. For the barest fraction of a moment, there was something soft in her eyes. Then it was gone.

“They suspected you, but they could never prove it. Smothering doesn't leave a mark, does it? You'd know, of course. You got so much practice at it afterwards. Ten years, a new attempt at a substitute for her every year. But none of them could ever replace her, could they?”

Slitted, yellow eyes blinked open, oriented on me.
A sharp hiss.

“So you had to kill them.”

And the cat sprang, and it was no longer a cat but a tiger, slavering mouth full of sharp fangs, huge talons reaching to rend and tear my soul, rip the truth from me.

“And then, as some sort of sick anniversary present I suppose,” she went on, still not looking at me, “you sent those pictures to her, as if that proved you still loved her.”

As the Alzheimer's receded for a moment, everything was clear. Horribly clear.

I was standing in the hall, looking at one of the envelopes which had just popped through the door and plopped almost soundlessly onto the mat.
Reading the address.

Lana Maxford, 12 Oakely Gardens, London SW12.
Lana.
Not Brian.

“You've been sick for a long time,” she told me. “ Even before the Alzheimer's.” She paused, looking out the window. “Do you remember yesterday?” she asked. “How you went to the police to confess? They're out there now,” she told me, as I realised what the sound I had been hearing was. “They're digging up the garden. They're going to find her, and all those other women.”

She reached out and touched me. An electric jolt coursed through my body, as if I had grasped live wire. I found myself flung across the room, hit the wall hard.

“Daddy...”


When I opened my eyes she was gone.
As I lay on my back, I was dimly aware that something had fallen out of my pocket.
I reached for it, closed my fingers around it, drew it to me.
The door exploded inwards, armed officers were dragging me to my feet.
The red Sharpie dropped from my hand, clattering on the hardwood floor.

A blue-gloved hand snapped it up. I heard the whisper of an evidence bag being popped open.

“Brian Maxford,” a voice was saying, “you are under arrest for the murder of Lara and Amy Maxford, and ten other women. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you understand?”

I nodded dumbly. I understood all right.

Finally, I understood.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Gentlemen's Club

It had been with exceeding difficulty that he had resisted looking at his pocketwatch, but Barrett knew this would have drawn unwelcome attention to him, and that was the last thing he wanted. There was Sir Nicholas, his tall shiny top hat nodding as he listened to that fool Johnson, talking about quarter returns and expected growth. Sir Nicholas never took off his hat. Nobody knew why. Even when the London summer baked the stones outside and made the windows like magnifying lenses and all of them insects, he sat there, unbothered, his tie unloosened (so nobody else would dare loosen theirs), his collar buttoned up to the neck, his hat always on his head, and never so much as a bead of sweat on his smooth, bland face.

How could he stick the heat? Even during last year's terrible drought, when the very flowers in the gardens had been dying, when even the churches allowed their doors to stand open during services that the congregation might not faint, not a window would he allow opened. Then, as now, no evidence showed of the awful, draining heat, the steam coming up in thick clouds from the dry cracked streets, and Sir Nicholas gave not the slightest indication he was bothered.

The meeting was at an end. Barrett moved with the others towards the door, all but bowing their way out of the boardroom, as if leaving the presence of a king. He was just beginning to dare to think that he had made it when he heard the dreaded words that turned his spine to ice and his legs to jelly.

“One moment, if you please, Barrett.”

Shoulders slumped, he turned to face the chairman. Sir Nicholas Faust was, to be blunt, a huge man. The suit he wore seemed to be straining at the seams, ready to burst, as if there was not a tailor in all of London who could make a suit capable of containing his immense bulk. A prizefighter would have seemed small and frail beside the giant chairman of First Mutual Bank, and Cuthbert Barrett, inventory officer, felt positively minute in his presence.
It wasn't just his size though, he realised. Sir Nicholas made everyone feel small; the way he spoke to them, the way he looked at them, the way he treated them. As if they were a lower form of life.

“Yes, Sir?”

The words had to fight their way out of his mouth, as if they would have much rather stayed where they were. Sir Nicholas tapped the table meaningfully.
“Take a seat, Barrett.” It was not an invitation. Somehow, Barrett's wobbly legs got him to the table where he more fell into than sat on a chair. He felt sure the chairman could hear the thumping of his heart, loud enough in his own ears to drown out the pealing of the bell from the church down the road as it sonorously declared the hour of four.

Sir Nicholas looked at him, with that flat, cold, alien gaze that could reduce the strongest of men to a shivering wreck. Barrett felt like a fish wriggling on a line. The face of Sir Nicholas Faust seemed to fill up all available space.
“It won't do, Barrett.”

Barrett shook his head in agreement. Sir Nicholas leaned back in his chair.
“How did you expect,” he asked, after what seemed hours, but was merely a moment, “to get away with it?”

Of course it all came flooding out then, in a babble of words – apologies, excuses, the bills, the loans, his newborn baby, the price of this, the price of that, working for such low wages. The dam had broken, after months of being held back, and now Cuthbert Barrett's entire, miserable, pitiable life washed over Sir Nicholas like a torrent of mediocrity, despair and pity. The chairman listened with a face of stone.

“These are mere excuses, Barrett.”

There was no arguing. None was expected. He nodded.
“Yes Sir.”

Sir Nicholas stood, his powerful figure looming over Barrett like Tower Bridge over a steam tug.

“Of course, you realise you have left me no recourse.”

Desperation clutched at Barrett, and though he knew it was of no use, he threw himself literally on the ground at the feet of his master. Surely His Majesty would show mercy?

Was he really that desperate, to entertain such thoughts?

“Please, Sir Nicholas! I cannot afford to lose my position!” There were tears – actual tears – standing in his eyes as he pleaded, like a man who stands on the gallows and looks for a miracle to save him. “Dismissed without a reference, I will never find work again. It will be,” he dropped his voice in terror, “the workhouse for my family and I.”

To his utter amazement, and then hot, burning terror, Sir Nicholas was removing his top hat.

Too late, the unfortunate clerk realised why Sir Nicholas never took it off.
And now it was no illusion. The chairman really did fill all space, blocking out the light as he leaned down.

“I do not believe,” he assured the clerk as an awful grin split his face, “that we will have any need to trouble the workhouse.”
****************
The brougham jolted along the dimly-lit streets, the cobbles shiny with rain. Sir Nicholas tapped at the roof with his cane, and the carriage came to a halt. A moment later a small, rat-faced man emerged out of the shadows of a nearby alley, looked right and left. A policeman on his beat was slowly strolling down the road, his cape slick with rain and a most unpleasant look on his face. The rat-faced man waited till the constable had passed, then darted quickly up to the brougham. The window wound down, Sir Nicholas glared out.

“The box on the back. Be quick about it, man.”

The rat-faced man nodded, a greedy look in his eyes. He slid to the back of the brougham, located the box, untied it and hefted it on his wiry back. Sir Nicholas watched him go, then tapped the roof again and the carriage moved off.

Having reached his hovel, the rat-faced man opened the box, peering inside, his eyes wide. What a haul, he told himself.

For a moment, a small doubt pricked what was left of his gin-addled brain. Was it possible these were... human bones?

Then greed took over again, and the gin shop beckoned.

What did it matter if they were? Gentlemen have odd collecting habits, and if Mister 'igh-an'-Mighty didn't want them no more, Tommy down the rag and bone would. He'd pay a pretty penny for bones this good.
**********************
After a long day, it was good to relax at the Club. It was the only place he could drop the pretence, be himself. Sir Nicholas shook the rain from his coat, handed it to Jones, who took it away to hang it in the cloak room. Sir Nicholas's hat he carried in his other hand.

Sir Nicholas entered the clubroom, and immediately his horns became entangled in the low-hanging chandelier.

“Dash it all!” he snapped. “Have they not moved that blessed thing yet? This is the third time this month!”

Angrily, he shook his powerful head, bringing the chandelier crashing down to the ground where it exploded in a thousand shining fragments. A servant ran forward with brush and pan, and Remington watched him with an air of cold disdain such as only butlers can muster.

“I'm rather afraid, Sir Nicholas,” he said in that deferential tone their class have that can yet somehow be insulting, “that it is somewhat problematic getting tradesmen to come here. Word has got around,” he looked directly at the chairman, “that none who enter ever leave again.”

Sir Nicholas for once looked slightly abashed.

“It was only four,” he said, somewhat defensively. Remington gave a sniff, which could have been interpreted, were they of the same social class, as a snort of derision.

Knowing the butler, it probably was.

“Eight, at last count, Sir Nicholas,” he corrected the chairman. “Nine, if you include that apprentice.”

Sir Nicholas shrugged his massive shoulders. And found himself entangled in another chandelier.

“Oh now really!” he exploded, as, indeed, did the chandelier as he shook it free. “This is intolerable! One cannot even move in one's own club without being caught in – in – what is this thing, anyway?” He hunkered down to try to make sense of the fragments, but it was like looking at jigsaw pieces without benefit of a picture of the completed puzzle.

“It's called a chandelier, Sir.” Remington's voice betrayed a hint of sharpness, and Sir Nicholas caught it.

“I know what it's called, Remington,” he rumbled dangerously, in a voice that would have had his board members diving out the windows, notwithstanding that the board room was on the sixth floor. “I meant, what is the confounded thing for?”

Remington shrugged. “You would have to ask His Lordship.” He sniffed again. “I only work here.” And he walked off, somehow managing to radiate both impertinence and impeccable politeness.

Baron Gould looked up from the evening paper.

“I believe it is for what they call – oh, what is the word these humans use? Ambivalence? No that's not it.” His long, curved horns vibrated on his head as he frowned, and his tail could be just seen lashing behind the arm of the leather armchair he sat in. He snapped taloned fingers. “Ambience!” he declared. “Ambience. Yes, that's it. Gives the place a sense of ambience.”
Sir Nicholas, taking the chair opposite him and accepting the Financial Times from the servant, sat back and lit his pipe. As he puffed out a cloud of thick green smoke, he shook his head.

“And what, pray,” he asked, “is this ambience, of which you speak, Baron?”
Gould shrugged, his wings rustling on his back. He wriggled, like a man with an itch just out of reach.

“I'll be damned if I know, old boy!” He returned to his newspaper, and, not for the first time, Sir Nicholas cursed the trendy Lord Monroe. Why this obsession with humans, he wondered? This was the one place they could all be themselves, take off the mask, so to speak. The one place they did not have to pretend. Shielded from prying human eyes, nobody got in here who did not belong, because nobody who did not belong knew of the existence of the place.
Other than those tradesmen.

Which was why it had been necessary, he reminded himself, to dispose of them.

It had nothing to do, he had stressed to the other members, during the hearing, with how delicious they were.

But times were, he knew, changing. The world was on the cusp of a new century again, and that always meant trouble. every new era, his kind had more trouble fitting in, hiding away in society. People were getting suspicious. Which was why this new fellow he was meeting, for whom he had vouched, though he was not a member, might be the answer to his problems.

“Only the best organs, you are quite certain?”

His contact nodded. He had had to pull quite some strings to allow a human enter – or more to the point, to allow him leave again alive – but this chap intrigued him.

“Quality stuff, Your Worship,” the man assured him. “Soaked in gin, they is. You'll love the taste, I can promise yer.” Sir Nicholas studied him. He was tall, gaunt, grey in the face, yet there was something in the eyes that drew him to the man. His eyes. It was his eyes. They reminded him of his own.
The eyes of a demon.

“I cannot afford to be involved in a scandal, you do understand? Our association must remain entirely secret.”

“You're payin' me enough that I'd not squeal were I 'ung up by me goolies,” the other assured him. Sir Nicholas winced at the gutter slang, but needs must.

“Anyways,” went on the human, “They's all just whores, y'see? Ain't nobody cares for no whores. You just leave it to old Jack. I'll keep you supplied, I will.”

When the man had departed, Sir Nicholas Faust sat back and puffed on his pipe. A contented grin spread across his features. Something told him that human was going to be very useful to him.

Yes. Very useful indeed.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Coming Back to Life

The noise surprises me. I suppose I could say it shocks me, and that might in fact be closer to the truth – certainly more accurate – but then, technically I'm already shocked enough that the loud clang really isn't able to do more than surprise me. Why does it surprise me? Because I hadn't quite expected something so small and, really, relatively light to make such a loud sound. Maybe it didn't. Maybe the effect of its hitting the floor was merely amplified by my own sense of terror, dismay and revulsion, but it certainly rang in my head like the pealing of a bell. A death knell. I almost grin at the irony, but in my situation grinning is not only inadvisable but pretty much impossible, unless I want to go, or seem, completely mad.

I'm not quite sure when, or even why I dropped it, though I think that maybe I didn't: maybe it was all the blood that has made it slip out of my hand, or it could have been, too, that after the deed my fingers, losing their nerve, let it go automatically. It could also have been that horror and revulsion I was talking about a moment ago. Well, you'd be horrified and revolted too if you'd seen what I have.

If you'd done what I've done.

I find my eyes drifting downwards, almost reluctantly, as if pulled there by an undeniable call that has to be resisted, but cannot be. I think I see the knife first. It's lying on the ground, half-shrouded in darkness but still clearly stained bright red, making an odd kind of an exclamation mark with the droplets of blood that lead off from it, and make it, just for a moment, seem like the ultimate and absolute end of a sentence whose author will never write another word. Following its track my fiercely resisting eyes, iron filings dragged along by invisible magnets, uncover no final message, no clue left behind as to who had done this, no plea or last farewell or even a curse.

No more words. No exclamation mark, either – it was simply an optical illusion, like the sock that falls from the dryer into the shape of something else, the cloud that assumes a likeness to something recognisable, the image which eventually emerges out of a magic eye picture, as Jesus sometimes emerges from everything from a piece of toast to a pool of oil, visible clearly to some, to others nothing but a confused mess which shapes nothing.

No, the knife does not exclaim, nor does it question. The knife has had no say in this, though it has had the final say, you could say. Sorry for the somewhat rambling narrative here, but I'm sure you can understand I'm pretty much on edge. On edge! More irony! Iron! Well, steel. Iron. Steel. A sharp, dully glowing blade, lifted in the half-gloom to...

I push the image away. I'm not ready to deal with that just yet. Not now. Now I have another image to face, but before I do – and yes, I quite understand that all I'm doing here is delaying an unpleasant but inevitable task, but you would too if you were in my place – let me just complete that apology, which got a little off track when I started making silly puns. I suppose it's my way of dealing with this situation, though I'm sure any shrink worth their salt would tell me that the last thing I'm doing with this situation is dealing with it. Avoidance, they would say. Probably. Keep everything at arm's length, keep looking the other way, talking about other things, focusing on anything but the matter in hand (in hand! Sorry; there I go again) because the reality is too horrible, too scary, too real to face.

They'd be right. I'm sure of it. That's why they get to sit in plush offices in places like Manhattan and Chicago and Boston and look down on the rest of us, why they make more money than you or I could ever... Sorry, once again, I'm rambling. Time to take hold – no! No more puns! - and get this apology out there.

The rambling narrative I referred to earlier is due to this: I'm making this up as I go along. No, that's not as bad as it sounds. It also probably isn't phrased correctly. What I mean to say is that all of this is new to me, and to try to make some sense of it (if such a thing can ever happen) I've taken to writing down everything that happens, as it happens, and, well, it can get a little hard to remember details. My mind seems to be fragmenting, and sometimes I remember things before they've happened, if that doesn't sound like a crazy person talking. And if it does, hell, maybe it is. Maybe I am. Crazy, that is. You'd know. You're the shrink, aren't you? You're not? Oh.

You'll have to excuse me now for a moment. This is the part I always hate. I've come to hate it even more than... well, I'll get to that, and when I do, you might wonder how I don't hate that more than I hate this, but this is my nightmare and I'm trying to maintain whatever slim control I can over it, which isn't much I can tell you. But there I go again, rambling and going off track, running away on tangents while the thing I have to face is a mere flick of my eyes away. Off to the right. Just there. Just out of sight. In the dark.
Perhaps it's best that it is in the dark, but that won't save me. I know it's there, and if I didn't, like some frontier explorer looking for the source of a river I could follow the dark tide that has made tiny little lakes and then flowed onto the blade of the knife, follow it back to its origin, its wellspring. I won't be feted. No ticker-tape parades for me. Nobody wants to know about this particular discovery. I don't want to know about this particular discovery. But I can't ignore it.

As my eyes move right, my head turning with them, I find the rest of my body collaborating with them to draw me closer, and my knees begin to bend, my head lowering as indeed my body lowers, coming closer to the ground, my bottom descending until it's almost sitting on top of the backs of my heels. My hands, long and now limp since I dropped the knife a few seconds – a few days, months, years ago, reach out of their own accord into the darkness, groping through it like someone parting a screen, and my fingers, trembling slightly now, touch flesh. It's still warm, and it's sticky and wet too, and as I pull my fingers back, not in shock or horror this time, and certainly not in revulsion, I lift them to my eyes, touch them off my lips, taste the blood as my eyes register its presence.

It's by no means a surprise. This is not the first time I've done this. I think I've lost count in fact of how many times I've squatted in this very position and examined my kill, and it always makes me feel the same way. You're going to think I feel one of two types of emotion, I know you are, but you're wrong. You'll say she feels horror, shock, revulsion (yes, I've used those words, so why bother thinking of your own? They work, after all) at what she's done, but no, I don't. Not at all. So then, you'll say triumphantly, it's delight, satisfaction, a kind of manic pride in my work. Wrong again. I suppose it would be fair to say I do feel some sorrow, and maybe there might be a case for being satisfied, too, but they would definitely not be the overriding emotion. I don't quite know what that emotion is, or if it can even be described, but it leaves me with a very clear thought, one I can't ignore, or deny, one which I know is the truth, the reason I do this, the reason I've done it before and the reason I'll do it again.

This was necessary.

I don't hate her. I don't have anything against her. Hell, I don't even know her! Though that's not actually true. I feel I do know her, though I'm one hundred percent certain I have never seen her before. I don't know her name. I don't know any of their names. I don't know their backstories, I don't know where they come from or why they're here, and I certainly don't know why I have to kill them.

But I do.
Have to kill them, I mean.

Will I pay for it, you ask, in that oddly macabre interested tone people who read murder and mystery and horror novels use, knowing that the events cannot possibly affect them, that the people brought to life by the author's skill are in fact not real at all, and while some connection may, at some point, be forged between reader and writer, in few cases is the former going to sit and cry about the death of the creation of the latter. People cried when Dickens killed Little Nell. Dickens himself cried. I've cried over characters, but it doesn't last. It's not like losing a real person who impacted your life, who you grew up with, who you thought, when younger, would always be there and who, as you got older, you realised would not, and began trying to prepare for the day when they would not. No. It's nothing like that.

So you can be interested in the fate of a character, in a book or a film or on television, and either root for or against them, cursing the writer when the opposite to what you had expected or hoped happens, but then you forget it and tell yourself hell it was only a story. Who in the end really cares? We were shocked by the unexpected death of Robb Stark in Game of Thrones, and it hurt for a while, but then we got on with it. Poor Fantine's treatment at the hands of her creator was execrable, but once we'd finished Les Miserables she was put out of our minds, and when we realise Bruce Willis is dead at the end of The Sixth Sense, we're shocked (the first time) but hell, we know Bruce will be back in Die Hard 9 or whatever. The same thought comforts us through the most traumatic events in fiction, be they in print, on screen or even onstage.

It's just a story.
It's not real.

I wish I could say this wasn't real. Maybe it isn't. It would certainly explain – sort of – a lot of the things that have been happening. But I can't think that way. I have to assume it is real, and so to answer your question, will I pay? I don't know. As the man in the Carlsberg ads says, probably. But one thing I do know for certain, and I know it with a diamond-hard and laser-sharp clarity, surer as I have ever known anything in my life. If I don't do these things, I will pay.

I will pay with my life.

Kill or be killed? I suppose that's one way of putting it, though it wouldn't be fair to say, nor would I ever claim, that I kill in self-defence. Far from it. All my victims so far have been completely unarmed, defenceless, perhaps even innocent. It hasn't stopped me. I know I have to do this. Somewhere in my mind is the immovable, undeniable feeling that this is what I was put on this earth to do, that this is – no, not my vocation. Stop putting words in my mouth and trying to psychoanalyse me. I thought you said you weren't a shrink? Yeah, well then keep it zipped buddy. I'm no serial killer, no mad crazed (yes I'm aware they're the same thing; leave me alone) homicidal maniac. I'm not a sociopath. Of course I realise that if I were a sociopath that is exactly what I would say, just as many alcoholics will refuse to admit they have a problem or a junkie will confidently claim they can quit any time. But I don't feel an urge to kill. I don't enjoy it. I don't select and stalk my victims, I don't even have the kind of strong stomach you need for this. I hate blood; it makes me sick, as it made me sick just now. Sorry about that. But have you ever heard of a serial killer who can't stand the sight of blood?
Score one for me.

But if I'm not a natural born killer, then why am I doing this? Good question. I wish I had an answer. I told you a moment ago that I feel driven, feel a compulsion pushing me on, urging me, telling me I must do this. And yes again I know, thank you very much, this is from page one of Serial Killers Unmasked, or whatever treatise on murderers and what motivates them you wish to quote, and who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe I can be classified as a serial killer. After all, the main – almost only – criterion for one of them is that they have to have killed a bunch of people, right? And I've certainly done that. How many? I've really lost count. Dozens? Oh no, not dozens.

Hundreds maybe.
Could even be thousands.

I haven't been counting. Maybe that is another score for me in the game of I'm Not A Serial Killer, Get Me Out Of Here! Although if it is, the last part of that title is less than useless to me, as it seems there is no way out of here. Am I trying to kill my way out of here? Have I been taken prisoner, trapped, placed in some fiendish maze like a laboratory rat, and unleashed to see what I'll do to get out, how far I'll go? You know, over the – however long I've been here; time really doesn't seem to have any meaning in this place, I've considered it. Well, you have to, don't you? In those quiet moments between the time you spend stalking, hunting, killing and being violently sick, to get ready to go on and do it all again, you have to think.

Because otherwise you'd just go mad.

I've sat down and tried to work it out, often as I'm cleaning blood or brains or shit or some other unnamed substance off the knife, or axe, or chainsaw (that took a long time to clean) and trying to hold down my lunch, which I never seem to partake of – yeah, I must eat I suppose, for who can exist without food, but I can't for the life of me ever remember any meals, snacks, even drinking water, and yet I never tire. I go through the alternatives, the theories I've come up with to try to explain what's happening to me, where I am, and how I can get out of here. None are encouraging.

There's the one I mentioned just now, hopefully you were paying attention. Yeah, the rat maze one. Am I part of some dark and off-the-books government experiment to see what sort of atrocities a person will go to in order to secure their freedom? If I kill enough people, will I eventually be rewarded by being shown a hatch that leads out of here, back to the real world, back to a life I don't remember but must have had? Is someone watching me, even now, taking notes, charting reactions, drawing correlations and preparing reports? Could that shadowy watcher even be you? If it is you, you're hardly going to tell me though, are you? Can't spoil the experiment. Have to start all over again, and where to find so many more victims for me to kill? I could kill you, right now, except of course I'm pretty certain you don't exist. Maybe I don't exist. But that's for the next theory. Whatever my status is though, I hold to my belief that you are not real, and so I can't hurt you. You're just in my head, a way of dealing with the loneliness and isolation. Lucky for you. Because if you were real, I would kill you.
Believe it.

I'm not threatening you, understand. It would just be necessary. Something tells me this. It's just one of those things you know, like when the sky darkens and you know it's going to rain, or that tight feeling you get in your stomach when it's a mad dash to the bathroom before you have an accident. You don't question it, you don't doubt it. There is no ambiguity; it will definitely happen and it can't be stopped. That's how I feel. Anyone I see now, anyone I meet, has to die. It's just how it is.

But where was I? Forgive me, my head has started really hurting and I forget things, get sidetracked. What was I talking about? Oh yes: the possibilities, the theories that might explain where I am, what's happening to me. Well, I've told you one already, the one about some black-ops covert unlicenced experiment run by the government. Yeah, fetch the tinfoil hats, I know. But on one level it fits. Another option of course, quite possibly the most likely, is that I am dreaming. Again, it would explain so much that can't be explained, but that theory has a few small problems. Firstly, I remember little about myself but I'm fairly certain that I don't dream in such rich – and often repellent – detail as I seem to be. I'm not, so far as I know, one of those people who watches movies and documentaries and reads books about murders and killers, and yet I seem to have a natural talent for this, or maybe have developed one. I can handle weapons I've never used before. Of course, in essence anyone can handle a knife, but to use it – ah, now that's a whole different thing.

You have of course (assuming you exist, which as I said I don't think is true, but let's assume for the sake of my rapidly-failing sanity that you do) used a knife, to cut bread, meat, vegetables, cords on packages and so on. But that's just using it. You've never (I imagine) plunged a knife up the the handle in someone's head, or rammed it into their eye, or drawn it across their throat. Believe me, slitting someone's throat might seem a relatively quick way of killing someone, but when you feel that vein pulsing under your thumb, the harsh intake of breath as your victim realises their life is coming to an end, and then the pop as the air rushes out when you slide the blade across under their chin, it doesn't feel like cutting string or cheese or even meat. For one thing, meat and cheese and string don't move, not like a human head moves, not like the arms that fly up to try to protect their precious throat, try to grab the knife, try to push you away.

And then of course, there's the blood.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Cut someone's throat and you're going to get blood. Lots of blood. It leaks, it flows, sometimes it pumps if you cut an artery, and I'm no expert so I've done that a few times. It'll get on the knife, it'll get on your hands, and if you're unlucky it will get on your clothes, shooting out in a greasy scarlet fountain that splashes across your arms and chest, maybe even your face if you're too close. Serial killers may very well enjoy this, I don't know; they may get off on it, they may even need it, or feel they do. But it's abhorrent to me. The idea of taking another human life is anathema to my own nature, but to take it in such a close and personal way is ten times worse. Someone once said (I don't remember who, could be a fictional character in a book I've long forgotten I read or a movie or TV show I can't bring back to my memory) that it's easy (relatively speaking) to kill someone with a gun, because there's distance involved. You don't have to see the results of your work close up. But a knife can't – usually – be used at long distance. Oh, if you're very dexterous you might be able to throw one at someone and kill them (more likely though that you'll either miss entirely or just wound them, and have to go in then for the kill anyway) but usually you're going to have to get down and dirty in the trenches, as it were.

You're going to have to hold the person, restrict them (for who is going to let you stab and kill them without resisting?) and you're almost certainly going to have to look them in the eyes, see the fear or the arrogance or the hate or the mute cry for pity in those eyes, and then watch the light in them dim and be extinguished forever. You're going to have to hear their burbling cry as the blood fills up their throat and they begin to drown in their own blood. You're going to have to feel the thrashing of their limbs, the jerking from side to side of their head, the drumming of their heels on the floor as they die, and you're going to see, step in, kneel in or otherwise experience the slowly spreading pool of their life fluid in which they will eventually lie like a grotesque island in a red sea.

Oh yeah, it's up close and personal, and it's not something I would have thought I could ever do. But I have. And I continue to. I've become something of an adept with the knife now, which is good in one way, as now I can end the suffering of the victim pretty quickly, bring it all to a conclusion with the minimum of fuss and the least trauma. For both of us. You should have seen me in the beginning. Hack, hack, slash - I hadn't a clue. Achieved the same result in the end, of course, but it took a lot longer, there was a lot more blood, a lot more screaming, and also a lot more hunting and as you might (or might not) expect, a lot of screwing up my courage before the deed.

Like I told you, whether you believe me or not, I don't want to do this, and I certainly wanted to do it a lot less the first time. I couldn't imagine myself taking the life of another human, but I knew I had to, and I suppose that lent me strength and determination. When you know there's no alternative, when you have to do something despite your own feelings, you just have to get on with it. Removal of choice is one hell of a motivator. And I knew I had been left with no choice.

And I've wandered off on another tangent, haven't I? Sorry about that. I think I was just explaining, or exploring the idea that, if this is a dream, how I could have become so familiar with weapons I've never used. I just went on at length about the usage of a knife, but you shouldn't think this is my only weapon. I've used hatchets, hammers, guns, ropes, spears, swords, even, as I said, a chainsaw more than once. I don't know: they seem to just come to hand, as if... well, that's another theory I'll get into in a moment. But I said there were other issues with the dream one, so what are they?
Time is a major one. I don't know how much time has passed here, and if this is a dream world perhaps no matter how long it seems I'm in here, outside in the real world maybe only hours have passed, maybe only minutes. Who knows? But if time “out there” is the same as time “in here” it seems I've been here - “dreaming” - too long. I have no way of marking time: no calendars, no clocks, no watches, no sunrise or sunset, but I know that I have killed a lot of people. I don't know how many as I said earlier, but I'm pretty certain that the number couldn't be counted on the fingers of all the hands of a football team of Shivas, so let's round it out at a hundred. I feel, fear it's more, much more, but let's take that because it's a round figure and I'm not great with maths.

So if it is a hundred, and allowing for, let's say, an hour per killing (it isn't; many take only minutes but some take a long time, so I'm just going to average it at an hour) and then another hour for me to recover, and go seek my next victim, so two hours. Two hundred hours in total, which comes out at, what, ten days? Nearly. That's too long, surely, to be asleep. And that's another thing: I never have to sleep here (suppose if I'm dreaming what would be the point? Reminds me of that Poe quote about dreams within dreams) and I never have to eat, use the bathroom, or even rest. I do rest, but only because I need to gather my mental energy reserves, not my physical ones. They don't dull at all, they're constantly as sharp as the blade of the knife I just drove into this woman. But you can't go running after people and killing them, chopping them down like wheat stalks in a field, a human combine harvester, a reaper, or Arnie in T2. Mentally – unless you're completely insane, and maybe it goes for those people too; I wouldn't know as I've never been insane, so far as I know – you have to compose yourself, get ready for the next attack, plan it out, get your weapon ready.

I'm inclined to lean towards the dream theory, but as I say there are a lot of things about it that I'm not convinced about. Another one is that I'm mad. No, I know I said just now that I'm not insane, not so far as I know. But what if I am? What if I'm even now lying on some table, or crouched in the corner of a room with interior decoration inspired by the Michelin Man, grinning and drooling as I try to break my arms free of the restraints, while outside a light over the door will flash an urgent red if I should somehow manage that? What if there are drawings all over the clean white walls, in crayon and other substances generally not used in the writing arts, faces and symbols and equations that mean nothing equals nothing, and names and places and dates that mean as little to me as they do to the puzzled doctors who visit me from time to time?

Have I been locked up because these things I do – these things I think I do now – are reflections, remembrances of atrocities I have committed? Am I being punished for taking the lives of countless innocents, and unable to stand trial have been committed to this institution, shut away where I can no longer harm decent folk, strapped into a special jacket so that I cannot harm myself? Did the memory of what I did finally break on the blood-red shores of my mind and overwhelm me, pitching me headfirst into a grey, unforgiving sea in which I now drown?

Am I mad?

I must be.

And yet, I don't feel mad.

Does a madman (or in my case, madwoman) feel that they are mad, I wonder? Or do they consider themselves the only sane one, and everyone else off their trolley? Or do they even realise there is anything wrong with them? Do they realise anything at all? Do I, can I perceive the world as it is, or do I see what I want to see, or what my madness chooses or forces me to see? Am I a slave to it, or does it serve me?

And finally, is this all a game? I don't mean like the lab rat one, with myself as the pawn or puppet of unscrupulous faceless men in suits, whether working for the government, military (is there a difference?) or more private concerns. No. I mean, is this literally a game? The way the killing never stops, the way weapons seem to appear either when I think of them or need them, or just for no reason. The way none of the victims are armed, or seem aware of my presence until I'm almost on top of them? The way nothing outside of the killing and brief moments of consolidation and rest seem to exist in my world.
Can it be that I am not real, merely a collection of pixels on someone's computer screen, part of a programme in a video game, a character fated to kill and kill again, racking up high scores and gaining bonus weapons with each kill? Am I part of something that is rated MA for Mature Audiences? And when the kid or adult playing this game, directing my movements, making me kill tires of it and turns it off, will I rest? Will I find peace? Or will I just – what do they call it – respawn? Rise from the dead (though I don't have any memory of ever having been killed) and continue on with my pointless, savage killing spree?

To be perfectly honest with you, it could be any of these, or none. I really don't know, and the headaches get worse when I try to figure it out, so I've stopped doing that. Besides, I need all my cunning and agility now. I've noticed the last few kills have been progressively harder. The victims seem almost aware now that I'm here, like they're ready for me, and while none of them has been able to fight me, not being armed, they've struggled, resisted, and drawn out the end. This one lasted three hours. That's a long time to face someone with a knife and not die, but she seemed determined to survive. I made sure she didn't of course; her fate was sealed and there was nothing she could do about it. But she gave me my toughest challenge yet.

Which probably lends weight to the video game analogy, when you think about it. If the enemies, as it were, I face in the game are not armed, how can it be fun for the player unless their responses change, unless their reactions get sharper, faster, and they are better able to resist me, making it harder for me? Gotta make her work hard for the money, right?
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Funny how things go. Last time I spoke to you I mentioned that none of my victims had been armed, and they hadn't, but the last three have been. Also, they've been harder to kill, even allowing for the fact that they're no longer defenceless. This might confirm the video game hypothesis – hell, it could confirm any of them, including the one where I'm locked up in a rubber room! But I'm finding it more difficult now both to track and kill them. The last one even managed to cut me up, kinda bad really. Still feeling that one. Almost literally licking my wounds as I speak to you. Not feeling too well and though in my head my mission remains the same, and far from dimming the urgency has in fact strengthened, making me more determined than ever to kill these opponents, I got to admit it's not as easy as it was.

But I'll prevail. The last one, as I said, got her licks in and it might be a little longer than usual before I'm out on the hunt again, but a few flesh wounds won't stop me. Can I be killed? Good question, and one I've asked myself, but there's only one way to answer that and I'm not ready to go down that route just yet. From the pain I'm now feeling I can certainly assert that I can be hurt, so probably stands to reason that I can be killed. Not that I'm going to let anyone do that, but in one way it makes me a little more cautious. When I felt I was more or less invincible, I had no problem despatching these women. Why is it always women, I ask? Or do you ask? Am I talking to myself? No idea. Possibly not important, but the question is valid.

Of the surely hundreds, if not more, kills I've made, not one single one has been male. Not one. There've been women – lots of young women – girls of teenage years, younger even, older more mature women and even ones I might consider someone's grandmother. Not that age has stopped me. I feel nothing can. It's almost like I'm being, not quite controlled, but perhaps directed, advised maybe? Something is telling me that I have to do this, and I know that whoever or whatever that is, they're right. A child with blonde hair in pigtails clutching a blue teddy bear is just as much a target, just as much a threat as a powerfully-built, athletic woman of thirty or forty, and even the silver-haired granny seems dangerous, something that has to be eliminated.

I suppose if none of them are real it doesn't and won't matter. If I'm not real it sure won't. But I do on occasion take a moment to consider what will happen if they are real, and I survive to go on trial for all these, well, they'd be categorised as murders, wouldn't they? What else do you call the slaughter of unarmed women, and even if the latest ones are now armed, it's still hardly a fair fight. Oh, they've given me more of a challenge, these last specimens, but though I've had to work harder I've come out on top, and they never attack me: it's always self-defence with them. I can't ever expect any lawyer to offer me such a plea, nor any court to accept it. There's no mitigation factor for what I do: I simply have to do it, but they wouldn't understand. You wouldn't understand. You don't understand.

Neither do I. Not really. But I know there is no choice.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018