Tag Archives: monsters

Franklyn de Gashe’s Audio Entertainments

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Franklyn Feels Your Pain

Reading can be a terrible pest of an activity and I entirely sympathise the general indolence that flourishes throughout our community. As a considerate fellow I feel duty bound to lighten your burden by recording a pair of my adventures upon a wax cylinder and fire them through the webspace at you like auditory torpedoes.

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The King’s Cross Entertainment

After a spell in the country I returned to the city and immediately delved into its debauched netherworld.

The Simian Entertainment

My attempts to create the perfect servant rather backfire at the club.

I do hope they fill a void within your aching heart, an ache I would be only to happy to cleave from your suffering flesh.

Should you have the gift of literacy and desire to gorge yourself upon words, you may read them below:

The King’s Cross Entertainment

The Simian Entertainment

The Eldritch Entertainment

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The gnarl-tongued lizard man coiled itself for another strike. I slapped it firmly about the scaly chops and earned a moment of respite. My incarceration in the Halls of the Soulless Ones had been alternately tedious and freighted with menace. Worse still I had long exhausted my supplies of travelling brandy and caravan opiates. It was doing my nerves no favours at all.

The nameless horrors grew more horrible and nameless by the hour. A fearful dread struck me whenever they laid their cold unidentifiably alien minds upon me. The chill terror they wrought in me I diffused by allocating them disparaging nicknames. ‘Old Cock Stalk Eyes’ was unamused when I named him so and through my hysterical laughter I stepped back from the brink of madness.

They tormented my frail humanity in that weird place between the stars and moon. Only my environment seemed fixed while time ran amok like an epileptic lady-gibbon: the hours raced by or dilated for seeming days. The hands of my watch disported themselves energetically which helped not at all. I sprawled, bored and confused upon a slab of stone so unusual in hue that I hesitate to grant it colour at all – perhaps its colour was in my mind only and there are not words to represent it. Walls of stone rose high above me. I imagined that they met in a vast arch in the sky – if sky there was. The vault was filled with windows subtly aglow with a gross tantric haze and behind them a darkness that grew blacker the longer I looked, as if I were being drawn into a bleak pupil of my own death. Gloomy.

I contented myself with staring at the floor, for the windows were too terrible to contemplate. Through the floor I grew dimmingly aware of another man such as myself, leaning against a similar slab of prisonhood. I attempted a tapping Morse upon the stone, with hopes of conveying a greeting through its resonant essence. He stirred not, though the sound was returned to me thrice-fold and punchy to my ears. As I watched (in a manner unlike voyeurism, for I was lonely in this space with only the grimming faces of ‘Old Gashey Face Spume’ and ‘Lady Horn Buttocks’ to oppress me) the man started in alarm and cowered by the slab.

My heart leapt into my mouth and I was obliged to swallow it lest my fevered pulse choke me. Approaching him clawfully was a vile nightmare brute: half fish-scaled goat and half horse-lobster, its head a single hugely glistening eyeball rimed with bloody sleep. The poor fellow fled, but the eerie chimera was before him at every turn. My unique eyrie gave me an unrivalled view, though I’d have traded it for a blinding. The ocular beast held the man down, and its dire pupil widened as if plunged into night. A chitinous nether spout unfurled from the gaping orb and jerked ominously before loosing a wetly spurting string of ichorous insectile oospore into the man’s terrified eyes. He screamed, which struck me as entirely reasonable, as the monster’s roe burrowed into his face.

The cackleberry-headed thing retreated, with its spiny recoiling pistil. I realised the rime was not bloody tears but the crusted rudiment of its own lost progeny. The man lay on the unhueable slab, hands over his eyes sobbing with horror. As the only other human present I felt I ought to pat him on the shoulder, or offer him a handkerchief. Some well-intentioned platitude or other in this dark and gruesome place. He was unreachable – as cut off from my cotton kerchief as man is from the mind of woman. He began to shudder and buck as if swiving a reluctant tiger. For the eggs were hatching. Those appalling nuclei of the Soulless Ones delivered by Captain Jism-Eye himself had completed their awful gestation in mere seconds, though to our time-shagged senses it might have been years.

The man threw back his head and his face was seamed with writhing ridges where those horrid oculist spawn roved. The spectral germs opened his mind like an origami crane handled by a child, rippingly and without grace. His inner eye floated free and was drawn into the future. I saw what he saw, a future rife with flames and misery: the Soulless Ones returned to our realm with their cold hatred of our life, a terrible insight into the future these creatures desired for us. It was as I shared in these visions that I had cause to wonder how it could be that I, pitying this fellow’s plight from above whose fate I envied not at all, could be twinned with him for this portentous glimpsing…

Aaagh! The worms wriggled under the flesh of my beautiful features – it was I, not he! For there was no he – only I suffered in that hellish Hall. It was my eyes into which that opthalmic bastard had spurted its embryonic eyeballs. I bellowed and raged, scratching at my face as I blundered about the hall cursing the Soulless Ones with all the names and mockery my gifted tongue could muster.

Apparently displeased by my description of its majesty as ‘Buttock-clad mal-faced leper-fist of faecal croco-chickens’ one of the ancient creatures stirred into motion. I named each one of those cruel and unfriendly gods and derided them loudly in their sacred space. With a victorious squeeze of my cheeks I exploded a gout of wriggling oculant horrors from my flesh. I took no little pleasure in stamping them to an ectoplasmic smear. It was perhaps this which roused their wrath for they all rose from their slumber; walking, dragging or even hopping dreams made flesh (albeit from half a hundred ill-chosen species, blended with the skill of a coprophilic artiste) hating at me with their emanations of terror.

I was beyond their reach, so agog with their seeding of my brow that my anger impelled my imprecative oratory to ever greater heights of insult. I realised I might have pushed the cockish jerk monkeys too far when I found myself standing in one of those bleak window arches, the darkness pulling at me- a mortuary ghost suckling on life. With wide, crazed eyes I stared defiant into their many, many eyes and found myself free. A roaring filled my ears and I fell backwards into the gloom.

A billion stars rushed around me and were still. I lay in a rose bed, ringed by the concerned faces of my neighbours from Harleigh (a small town temporarily unstained by my reputation). They helped me to my feet and I was grateful for the warm crush of their hands. Laughingly, I attributed my battered state to a gardener’s combat with an aggressive weed. I fended off further aid by declaring that whiskey and a hot bath would doubtless set me aright.

It was as I lounged in my tub, steaming clean the stink of the ancients that I felt a popping by my ear and heard a splash. An undulant tremor of horror ran through my belly. A grub of optic flesh waggled through the water. I splashed it ineffectually in my panic before anger strengthened me. I leapt from the bath and seized a jar in which I trapped the disgusting parasite. I sloshed it full of with paraffin and grinningly set it ablaze. The worm thrashed and swelled alarmingly, growing to the size of a burning horse in mere moments. Resuming my panic, I hurled the remainder of the oil at its maddened head-orb. The explosion blew me into my drawing room where I dazedly seized the bare necessities of life and fled the house.

I squatted in a robe, sopping wet and drinking whiskey in the street, and watched the flames spread through the neighbourhood with dreary predictability. The ghastly optomobeast ululated its immolatory end in a slow death of taking its pyre to the rest of the town. At least I’d leave this place with my reputation intact, for it seemed there would be no survivors. Damn those Soulless Ones, I feared that their bitter reign already begun.

Hunter

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She stood at the top of the stairs, tall and glamorous. Her fur coat snapped and howled at the light fittings, her long blonde hair danced in the breeze from the open window.

Then the drug took effect. The air shimmered about her like a haze of heat rising from the sultry street. The foxes snaked around her,  their heads diving through and out again like worms through an apple. Her already long fingers lengthened, the nails twitching into talons.

The light bulbs exploded, showering her in a fine glass rain. Out of the fresh darkness came a deep moan, and a growl. Her paws descended the staircase with a soft step and click of claw.

I stepped back behind the curtain and activated the twilight-sight. The gloom became a blue efflorescence as the device drew on the magical energy in the room and gave me a clear view of my love.

Magnificent. Nine feet at the shoulder, her fine features drawn into a toothy snarl, the fur coat’s animals a Medusa swirl of sinous foxy tentacles.

She click-clacked across the foyer and nosed open the front door of our home. The hunt was on.

The Beach

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The beach was within reach. At last.

At first we ran. Then we walked. Some of us crawled. Some had stopped: too tired, too weak, injured. Infected.

We few stumbled onto the wet sand, our feet sinking deep and wet into its cloying embrace. We hadn’t heard the beasts for days. Not since Adam, the guy with the two kids had fallen behind one evening. We did start to go back for him, but by the time we realised he hadn’t made it out of the woods… Well. The howls started up, hoots and screams carried by the wind. And in them all that hatred, all that vicious, incomprehensible envy for the blood in our veins.

We didn’t go back for him. Or his children. We just kept going. Over the hills and far away. To the beach. Where else was there to go? That’s where it ends. We have could have gone inland, to the heart of them. We’d have been surrounded; consumed. Here we could see freedom. The waves thundered with hope. None of us noticed the tide was coming in, that the waves were against us, keeping us there.

They let us touch the water at least. They gave us that. But no mercy. The beasts rose out of the sand, it fell away from them as they stretched, soaked, waiting for us. I can’t imagine how long they must have been there. How patient hatred can be.

I was lucky. They fell upon us, tooth and claw ripping and clutching at men and women. Blood spattered the sand, tears fell like rain. I fell backwards into the sea. Arms reached up, closed around me and bore me down under the waves.

I drowned, but everyone else was torn apart.

Posted for fun and inspired by a picture on: TheShortestFiction.com

Alex Trepan in Midnight Shopping – Chapter 3 of 3 Jam and the Maiden

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Chapter One – Shopping and Shouting

Chapter Two – Prawn Ring

Chapter Three – Jam and the Maiden

The gloom in the supermarket was broken only by light of the emergency exit signs. The soft green glow reflected off the shards of glass and shells that writhed in the ooze of jams. The crayfish seemed utterly absorbed in their gluttony and Alex figured he’d just watch for a bit and see if a plan presented itself to him. Clearly the shellfish wanted their jam back and were prepared to kill for it.

Alex was growing accustomed to the weird factor, until he leaned on the edge of the shelf and a hand slid on to his arm. That made him jump, but it only got worse when he followed the arm up into the staring dead eyes of the cashier girl, Maybe Alice. A yelp escaped his throat. Not too loud – he managed to suppress it by clamping his hand across his mouth. Not the one under Maybe Alice’s hand, but his right hand: the one holding the shopping basket. Now that was loud.

The sticky crusty mass snapped alert and roiled forwards – they advanced in a strawberry scented wave of tar. Alex fell back, struggling to keep his eyes off Maybe Alice and on the sluggish crawl. Abruptly, the crayfish seemed to give up the chase and coagulated into a dripping mound which rose into the shape of a man. It hissed and clacked at him, its arms made of chains of creatures reaching for him.

“More jam-filled man to eat? Ooh, such sweet meat,” the creature made a horrible gobbling sound and one of the smaller crayfish ran down its throat theatrically, “come to The Crayfish.”

Alex just knew it was capitalising itself. He felt obscurely grateful to have a name for the beast. As one of his mentors in South America had said: “name it, know it, kill it”. Excellent advice. Alex could feel strange tendrils of thought reaching for his mind. It was unlike any connection he’d ever had with another person. It was sharp, clicky and distinctly unpleasant. Its voice crooned into his head as the sound rolled into his ears like seashells being shaken in a bucket.

“Jam, jam, jammy jam-filled man. Come for my jam? Sweet sweety sweetened man make you soft softened edible mandible chew. Take you thoughts and send you out to get more. Have some jam.” It reached for him with its claws and mind, stretching out as more crayfish ran along its arms.

“Sorry mate, I’m more of a Marmite person.” A shriek of rage assaulted Alex’ mind so hard that he stumbled backwards. The mound of shell shuddered and spat angrily, ejecting a pair of jam-smeared crayfish at him. Alex snatched up the fork he’d stuffed into the basket and smashed them out of the air. While pretty damn slick, that may not have been the best possible plan: now he’d really annoyed the chitinous aggregation. It was hissing and moaning to itself, drawing in the two shattered projectiles.

With a garden fork in one hand and a basket full of firelighters in the other Alex felt like he’d been separated from an angry mob. Time to up the ante. He struggled with the child-proof cap of the barbecue lighter fluid – it spun endlessly under his sweaty palms. The Crayfish slid towards him with its gelatinous crawl. Alex gripped the bottle top in his teeth, bit and twisted; splashing lighter fluid down his t-shirt. Alex shook the fluid wildly at the encroaching molasses mass of crustacean. Half full, he threw the bottle at the beast. It stuck to the assemblage’s face. It didn’t seem to notice, but it paid more attention when he ripped open the packet of firelighters and tossed them into the jammy pile, followed by most of the lighters.

It continued to burble about jam in its own hideous way, trying to persuade him to have some too. Alex didn’t fancy that. Dave had had some jam, he didn’t turn out too well. And what about Maybe Alice? Had she been in on the jam ring too? It was getting worryingly close, though it had thankfully not tried flinging its composite crayfish at him. Alex flicked the wheel on one of the lovely transparent green lighters, twisted down the wheel to keep the flame on and turned it up to a huge ribbon of fire. Then he tossed it gently into the stream of fluid between him and The Crayfish.

The aisle went up beautifully. The lighter fluid had trickled into all the crannies of the crustaceaous monster and its every orifice was agape with flame. That distracted the crayfish. Alex dashed off for more bottles of lighter fluid, intent on burning the fucker out before the sprinklers kicked in. As in any good supermarket, the section he wanted had disappeared. Shit. He ran back with handfuls of match boxes and candles instead.

He tossed the match boxes half-open, spilling their igniting tips into the blaze. The candles were more disappointing – they tended to just stick to things and drip. But the lighters were melting and spraying fire, the firelighters were taking hold and the jam that saturated the aisle was bubbling and burning. In that horrid mess The Crayfish had collapsed and were desperately trying to escape their mire of fire. But the gummy filth clung to them like the mud of the Somme. They clawed their way on, as the fire licked at the shelves, tonguing the cardboard and plastic with flame. The flames were reaching Maybe Alice and Alex felt bad about leaving her there to burn with the freaky sea food. He seized her by the arm and heaved her still warm (re-warming?) body from the shelf, to find that there was only her top half left. Oh well, less to carry.

The signs that swung merrily from the ceiling were starting to catch fire and the sprinklers were ineffectually pissing on the conflagration. He headed for the fire exit. With a snap, crackle and pop, a length of crustacean chain flung itself up out of the flames. It scrabbled along the ceiling leaving sticky black stains on the alabaster tiles.

In genuine action man style, Alex kicked at the fire exit bars (it really hurt) and they gave way with surprising speed so that he fell through them and jarred his ankle on the ground. He dropped Maybe Alice and turned to close the doors. They’re really hard to close from outside – apparently it’s good form to leave them open – so Alex was trying to slam them shut when the tangle of blackened crayfish leaped from the ceiling into the gap between the doors. The lead crayfish was massive and gnarly, snapping its pincers at the Alex’ face. Alex smashed the doors together, kicking and slamming them over and over again, a pulp of chitinous ruin oozing out of the emergency crack.

A series of minor explosions inside made him step away from the gooey murder pile into the car park. The fire alarms had been going off for a while now, Alex realised, joined by rising sirens in the distance. He felt no desire to hang around and explain himself, or why there was half a woman outside the fire exit. Absently he checked her supermarket ID badge: Mary. Bollocks. The flames were reaching out of the windows now. Alex was hopeful that any evidence of his entirely justifiable but unbelievable arson would be destroyed. He walked out of the car park, brushing soot off his jacket and failing to notice that the rusty white van was gone. It was now 3 am so at least the ASDA down the road would still be open.

Alex Trepan in Midnight Shopping – Chapter 2 Prawn Ring

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Chapter One – Shopping and Shouting

Chapter Two – Prawn Ring

Dave. It was Dave. The head was Dave. It was Dave’s head. His eyes were still moving. Alex could feel Dave looking at him, with a sharp but fading burst of fear. And the words “brain jam”. Dave’s face settled into a frown of confusion and a small pool of blood and prawns. Dave was the nicest security guard Alex had ever met. After his third visit they’d had a quiet chat to establish that Alex definitely wasn’t here to creep around Alice (almost certainly her name), the check out girl who always took the night shifts; he just had trouble sleeping. After that potentially difficult conversation Alex had bought some weed off him. And now here he was, Dave’s vital juices mixing with a product Alex would forever associate with Kerry Katona.

Cautiously Alex stood up and looked over to where Dave’s head had come from. (He’d assumed the traditional cringing posture when the fridge jumped.) The lights flared for a moment and then slipped inevitably into an unnerving horror film slow-strobe. Alex’ eyes kept being drawn to irrelevancies in the stuttering light – Aunt Bessie’s face beaming creepily over her Yorkshire puddings, Captain Birdseye smirking before being hidden in the thick blackness again. Alex heard a weird clattering noise circle him steadily up and down the adjacent aisles, like wooden cutlery falling down a spiral staircase. Now Alex wasn’t stupid, but he’d cheerfully admit that he wasn’t that bright either. Not bright enough to just walk away. Besides, Dave had always sold at a reasonable price and Alex figured he owed him something. In the flashes of darkness Alex heard a snarl and the clattering receded into the store.

The thing (Alex was trying really hard to persuade his brain that calling it ‘The Decapitator’ would not be in their best interests) sounded like it had headed for the bakery and spreadables section. And so that’s where Alex would be heading. Damn. Anything capable of tearing a man’s head off was bad news. Dave was a big chap too, in the mould of failed police applicant or ex-bouncer looking for an easier life in the store security game. Quieter than coppering, but it kept the kind of action you see around sports discount shops. Dave had certainly enjoyed taking chav shoplifters down. So this probably wasn’t a shellsuit-clad illiterate. And what was the deal with ‘brain jam’? Maybe that’s just how it feels when your mind is dying and all those half finished thoughts and sensations are jammed up with nowhere to go. Alex didn’t know how to feel about sharing Dave’s dying thoughts, but the fear felt like sound advice.

With that in mind Alex took precautions. He debated taking Dave’s head with him, and wondered why it had even occurred to him. He picked up his basket again and chose a circuitous route. Following the typical logic of supermarket layout, between frozen foods and sandwich spreads he was able to pick up a pack of disposable lighters, liquid barbecue lighter fluid, a garden fork and a torch, but no batteries. The fork was really hard to fit into the shopping basket but he managed to wedge the tines (surely they’re still tines even if they are a foot long) through the mesh. He also found sewing kits, recordable DVDs and shitake mushrooms in oil; they were less useful for now, but he noted their locations for future shopping trips. Carefully he crept around the croissants and the fresh crêpes.

The first thing he noticed were the feet. They were two feet (which is usual), but they were two feet, two feet off the ground. The intermittent gloom hesitantly revealed the rest of the body. Alex knew it was Dave from the faux-police epaulettes. And his missing head. Something was holding him up. The lights chose that moment to return; Alex craved the darkness. The, well – there were lots of things that leaped into Alex’ mind but he felt a sudden kinship with H.P. Lovecraft’s apparent inability to describe the nameless horrors in his stories. Alex went with ‘thing’. It took a while to resolve what he saw into sense. The ‘thing’ was a writhing mass of tiny crayfish swarming over each other in fountains of pincered shells, the flow creating a continuously tumbling and rising man. It manipulated the headless corpse like a ghastly toy.

As he snuck (snook? sneaked?) closer, crouching behind a stand filled with cookies and tiny muffins he realised that the collected crayfish thing was talking quietly to itself. It sounded like shells spilling down a slide. In the rattle and scrape he picked out a grinding spech.

“Oh Davey, oh poor Davey, couldn’t help us-selves could we Dave? Mmm, trusted Dave helping yourself to our jam. Oh dear, poor Dave. Lovely jam.”

Okay. Tesco; two in the morning; just Alex and a sack of mental crayfish. He reflected that his life had gone very badly wrong somewhere. The crayfish thing was still burbling to itself while puppeteering Dave’s body.

“Our brain jam. Not for the thieving. Just had to put it in the boxes and let it go. But no… you had to get a taste. Greedy Dave. Bad Dave. Selling our brain jam.” The crayfish waggled Dave’s body back and forth violently, like a child that wouldn’t stop crying. “Stupid Dave. We knew you took it. Shouldn’t have tried it. The jam’s ours. Could have worked out for you but no… Too greedy. No jam now. We’ll take it all back.”

Abruptly the heap of crayfish roared to itself and burst into a flood of scuttling which ran over and under shelving into the next aisle, taking just a moment to rip clawfuls of flesh off Dave’s body as it fell to the ground. They stuffed the clots into their mandibles without breaking stride. They were heading for the preserves. Jam. An almighty crash of glass followed. Alex stepped away from the tattered corpse of Dave. He was slightly glad the man’s head had already been removed. Hard to believe a drug dealing security guard was mixed up with a dodgy jam ring. Do drug dealers get their drugs from crustaceans? He’d never worried much about the chain before.

Alex peered round the corner at the sticky, glassy mess of jars and jam. It looked the tide had gone out and trapped the crayfish in glutinous heaps where they gorged on the goop. Clean up in aisle three.

Chapter Three – Jam and the Maiden

Alex Trepan in Midnight Shopping

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Chapter One – Shopping and Shouting

Alex slammed his front door behind him and stormed into the street, his mind full of other peoples’ anger. Fucking terraced houses. Great for saving a few quid on gas by absorbing the heat of your neighbours but the walls were paper thin and it made everyone’s life your own. Tonight, both sets of couples had enjoyed blazing rows. From the left (25) Alex had endured hours of shouting; the booming tones of the guy and the screechy wailing of his harpy. They had followed that up by throwing stuff. In the right corner (21), Elaine and her current man Kevin (they were all on nodding terms for hedge trimming) had gone from spitting vitriol at the tops of their voices to angry, bitter sex with no noticeable change in tone. You can only turn the television up so far.

Finally, unable to contain the four-pack of anger, anguish, bitterness and bile Alex had simply left the house. The psychic backwash trailed behind him as he walked down the street, clinging to him and irritating cats who prowled through the stream. There were a few benefits to being highly empathic, all negated by living near other people. When Alex was much younger and the voices started he’d thought he was going mad. Eventually he realised that everyone else was mad and he was just listening in. That was after he’d put holes in his skull though.

Ideally Alex would find a lovely chalet on a hilltop, or near a stream. In the middle of nowhere. One day he’d be able to flee all that pointless mental jabbering. Sure, he’d learned a few mantras which helped to block it out, but meditating with mantras blocks everything out and sleeping tablets do that just as well. But Alex didn’t like the next day fuzziness of pills, like walking through a squeaky polystyrene landscape. So instead he put up and made quite a lot of noise to himself about it. Occasionally his talents were actually helpful, though in order to focus on anything other than the general vibe of another person they had to be getting really passionate. Alex was good at winding people up to that point; it’s why he often had a black eye. What he excelled at was recklessness; Alex was unsure whether trepanning himself had preceded or succeeded his ability to do stupid things.

The cold night air helped to shift the useless load of their minds and the headache that had swollen all evening was dissipating. Alex had no desire to return home where the lovebirds were likely fucking each other to death and number 25 were onto the power tools. Deep inner sigh. Deep outer sigh. The roads were dead so he took the opportunity to amble down the dashed white line like a teenager with an iPod. He was startled out of his reverie by a rust speckled white van that came out of nowhere, honked like a bastard goose and swerved across the road and off up into town. The sudden adrenaline boost got him to the pavement in an accelerated heart beat. Great, now Alex was even more awake. In his newly hyper-alert state he briefly noticed the slick of water left in the van’s wake and the faint scent of brine: “hope the dick drowns in it”. He grumbled further about how terrible white van men were, mainly spouting old clichés since he’d little experience in dealing with anyone who performed a useful trade in society.

In theory he could wander the streets like a lost stalker or go a bit further and fall over in a field. All night Tesco was his only hope. When you need to shift someone else’s bullshit only retail therapy will do the trick. Initially Alex had scorned the rise of the twenty-four hour supermarket as further evidence of how depressing humanity had become. The very idea that someone would choose to shop at two in the morning. Absurd. Alex dropped in at least once a week. It was a boon for the insomniac driven insane by twenty-four hour news. It had become a private nocturnal playground for Alex.

The car park was almost empty, save for a handful of staff cars and that bloody van. Hopefully it was just a seafood delivery and the store’s karma wouldn’t be upset. He pushed through the sea of trolleys into the glaring capitalist wasteland. The land was covered in its comforting blandness of produce, populated by desperate brands begging for his notice. He felt like the Snow Queen of Narnia, roving the aisles of excess in search of something new, something special to turn into stone. Ooh, Turkish Delight. He relished wandering the forest alone, finding peace in the gentle buzz of the lights and hum of the refrigerators.

From a distant part of the store came the sound of breaking glass. Alex chuckled to himself at the thought of Mr Beaver being told off by Mrs Beaver over some Dolmio-related mishap. He fought the sudden urge to cheer – this wasn’t a bar. Or if it was, it was the kind with no customers, and no staff either. There was always a skeleton crew lurking somewhere, smoking outside the fire escapes and avoiding the harsh fluorescent glare that robbed them of their diurnal rhythm. But not tonight. Perhaps it was spirits re-stocking time at the far end. Alex didn’t really care though; he’d had his fill of people.

He moseyed past the frozen foodstuffs, marvelling at the life-bestowing properties of Omega-3 in fish fingers and how delightful the lives of chicken breasts must have been before they became chicken breasts. He could never quite avoid the image of the bucket of chicken heads and spines being pounded into nuggets. He was so intent that he missed the next few breakages and the first flicker of the lights. There was an astonishing selection of party foods which thoroughly distracted him, so vile did they seem. He was half tempted to buy some and burn off the adrenaline shakes with grease.

He noticed the next crash of glass though. The vertical freezer rammed tightly with prawn rings bounced up in the air next to him before smashing back down, scattering glass and tiny crustaceans everywhere.  This was not just bad shelf stacking, this was sackably poor shelf stacking. It had frightened the living crap out of him, along with his headache. So that was good. The human head that bounced over the top of the freezer wasn’t.

Next week: Chapter Two – Prawn Ring