The Recreational Entertainment

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

A night of nonsensical dreams and a persistent headache left me washed up lke a beached whale upon the chaise longue in my night room. The most I could achieve on my road to morning humanity was to loosely tamp my pipe. My drooling lips could scarcely support the trembling pipe stem which spilled smouldering shag down my shirt. The possible  ignition caused me no worry; a-squint through my eyelids I saw that fire would only improve the room in which I had wrought much party.

I bellowed for aid. Mr Tribblings flew into the room (for this was in those pleasant days before his revolt), a lemon tea resting upon a silver tray. It was his own drink and he teased me with it. Despite his preternatural ability to brew tea I had become averse to the beverage, finding it faintly reminiscent of simian urine.

I insisted the goose-ape pull me to my feet and commence grooming. He disliked getting his fur wet but I was in powerful need of water’s erosive touch and had no desire for his fumbling mitts to draw insects from me. At length my bestial manservant supplied me with a towel followed by a vast breakfast spread. When finally my repast ended with a pudding I realised that my only hope for true wakefulness was a stroll in the park. Fully en-spatted and en cravate I departed the house, snug in the embrace of my latest invention – the Ele-Chair.

Part ordinary seat, part elephant it was the ambulatory chaise to end all mobile furniture. The recent fad for steam-powered carriages had quite inspired me but I was more comfortable with vivisection. I had taken a pair of young elephants (Afric for their convenient expanse of ear upholstery). One I’d flattened along the back, the other glued upon it in repose so that I’d legs to motivate the chair, another pair to rest my arms upon and the final pair to drape a roofing over.

The lower walking limbs I’d stripped to the bone and varnished as one would a table, which achieved an aesthetically pleasing grain. Naturally I’d decapitated the beasts for their features are monstrously penile. The trunks I’d re-stitched as simple cranes (for shoppping and such) while their tusks made a rather vicious forward-facing ladder for attaining one’s seat.

By means of gimbals I maintained a gentle ride while the Ele-Chair ploughed through the streets, scattering pedestrians with cries of awe and admiring shrieks. As the chair negotiated a junction (I’d naturally endowed it with the delicate mind of a badger I found in my garden one opiated night, for such matters as navigation are beneath a gentlean’s concern) the other road users gave ground gracefully as we turned into the park.

A wondrous expanse of baise green beneath the smoggy sky. My mount picked up speed as it relished the grass between its skeletal toes. With my peasant-beating spear I directed my chair towards a certain copse in whose leafy shade I was confident of finding gentlemanly diversion.

Within the trees’ penumbral umbrella stood a trio of hamnsom carriages, two of which bounced jovially upon their wheels. A quintet of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies ringed the cars, their gaze intent and breathing heavy. When I drew up my pachyderm armchair I elicited a gasp of surprise and a satisfying swoon.

Wordlessly I offered my hand to a finely clad maiden (the unconscious lady would be too much effort). A smile of secret sorts passed between us and I helped her up the tusks and into my lap. With the depression of a bony lever the chaise’s hood rose over us, the four ears of the elephants fanning around to enclose us in an amorous and faintly hairy screen. My ill health was vanishing in a lady haze…

Something was awry. I first noted it when the earth gave the impression of greater motion than I had anticipated. Indeed, the quiver of thighs I’d attributed to my sensual ministrations was a disturbance in the outer world. The smooth travel of my elephantine stool had belied our true progress, for as I peered between petticoats and leathery folds I saw we were far from the restful grove in which we had begun our courtship.

My chair’s tusks were slick with gore and from one of them dangled an impaled swan,  the other boasted a child’s pram. This was potentially awkward. My companion’s alarm was irritatingly evident so I applied a calming chloroform to her and activated the chair guns. It would be dreadful if word were to escape the park that yet another of my creations had run murderously amok.

Accordingly I took aim at a gawping bystander and silenced his potentially slanderous tongue. Our bloody route was easy to retrace for it was strewn with flattened pedestrians. As the Ele-Chair bounded and capered, those few which it merely maimed I drew upon and finished off.

With the noisome folk extinguished (for they did bemoan my actions), my mount calmed and contented itself with uprooting daffodils.

It seemed unlikely that I would return to the passionate grove for it was now a blood spattered boneyard. At least I’d rescued this charming lady who drooled unconscious on my waistcoat. In time the chloroform would wear off, and before then we must find ourselves a fresh copse to revive our romance. “Ho chairephant – to the heath!”

Shadows on the Moon (Alphabetic 20)

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Atypical shadows on the moon’s surface were the first hints of something unexpected in the second extra-solar system mankind had reached. By the time the images of those anomalies had been analysed and inflated by the media, the first manned mission to its surface was underway. Complications dogged their journey, from equipment failures to broken bones.

Despite all the problems the eight man crew achieved orbit only one day behind schedule. Each man had his face pressed up to a porthole to get the best view of the lunar landscape. For Charlie, captain and leader of the expedition the sight of the moon’s uneven surface gave him an unaccountable tightness in his chest, but as it matched the usual tension in his stomach just before a mission he dismissed the feeling.

Gel sprayed into the gap between man and machine, filling the exotic armoured spacesuits to pressurised perfection. High-fiving and joking, Charlie, Alex and Samuel climbed into the orbital shuttle and prepared for their lunar expedition. In between the release of the docking clamps and the shuttle sliding free something went wrong. Just as the three men began to fall towards the surface their ship exploded – that image of the shuttle falling away to the moon was the last thing mission control saw.

Knowing that they were going to die on the moon was a secondary concern for the three astronauts. Light from the explosion had briefly blinded them and its force sent their shuttle into a dangerous spin. Maintaining their even approach was vital and they had almost regained it when they hit the ground. No one was hurt; their cushioned armour protected them and had drawn out their lives. One hundred days had been the target length of their mission – there, and back: they would surely be dead by the time help arrived.

Petulance gets you nowhere in space and so the trio of stranded astronauts were determined to do something useful for the three days worth of air which they had left. Quickly, but without haste Samuel established their location and found they were only slightly off target. Riding high with each step they strode across the barren landscape. Soon they reached the area of unusual shadows which had inspired their disastrous journey.

The ground sloped sharply upwards and the rock thrust out in strange conical structures. “Unless the termites got here first, someone made these,” commented Charlie. Virtues in space include calmness and reason – both of which were forgotten when Alex started screaming. When Charlie had idly joked about termites he had no idea how accurate he was. Xenobiologists from home would find the creatures fascinating, but as they gnawed their way through the spacemen’s armour they were terrifying. Yellow gel leaked and mingled into the dripping blood as the alien insects dragged the men into their nests.

Zooming in from space, only the abandoned shuttle and the bloody trails gave any indication of how badly the previous expedition had ended.

Erratic Scribbles

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

All quiet on the Pigheart front eh?

Yes I’m afraid so. I do have a couple of stories of the piratical knave in the works but I have been neglectful this past week. That said we’ve had a pair of de Gashes of late which I’m quite pleased with: The Eldritch Entertainment (in which poor Franklyn takes a sideways slide into some more HP Lovecraftian territory) and The Recreational Entertainment (a tale of dogging, of all things, and a general massacre in the park). I have been adding pirate stories in audio form onto Reverbnation, which assuages my guilt somewhat.

How Scrawleth Thee?

Their development has caused me to muse on my writing process, such as it is. Both of the de Gashe stories above have been hanging around for a while in various stages of development. This is because I tend to write in flurries – scribbling as much as I can on a given topic or storyline until the muse deserts me. And who knows when she will return? Some stories I find I can pick up again easily and add to or write it through to completion.

In The Recreational Entertainment‘s case it was a straight scribe of half the story in one go and then caught it up the next day. The Eldritch Entertainment hovered at three paragraphs for about three months until I stumbled across it in my writing book, chuckled and proceeded. That’s nowhere near a record for me – the most recent Captain Pigheart, The Selachian Damsel Adventure was started two years ago with the opening drowning story. Then… nothing. That’s all I had, so I left it. The Booty Adventure was scribbled over three weeks during one of my favourite writing slots – the half hour I carve out before the weekly climbing session.

Musing Away

I try to write whenever I’m inspired to do so – almost all of the pirate and de Gashe stories start with a phrase or sentence which pops unbidden into my head. If it’s not captured in a writing book, on Twitter or tapped into Evernote I know it will be lost. This butterfly attention span can be beneficial – when I’m stuck on one story I can flutter over to the next, and back again. The best bit is when I finally hammer out a first (hideously handwritten) draft and get to type it up, then print it out and scribble all over it again with pink ink. Not all of them need it though. The Harmonious Adventure did – that was a bastard to hammer into the shape I knew was lurking within. Some just write themselves – it’s great! I’d really like to know what makes the difference.

Discipline (is in the eye of the beholder)

I’m trying something new. Well, something old that I haven’t done for ages. My sleep habits are generally terrible, but I’m fixing my life (sort of) by getting up at a set time and having a half hour after breakfast and before work for writing time. I originally found this practice labelled ‘morning pages’. The idea is that you write something, anything, dear god whatever pours through your pen just to be in the flow of writing and creating.

So you should be seeing more very short stories which will be fairly rough around the edges. I’m aiming to write a 300-800 word story a day (unless I get involved in something like I did today and stretch it across a couple of mornings) which I then need to type up (I cannot deal with keyboards in the morning), tidy a bit or discard. I reckon that’s going to equate to at least two stories on’t site per week. If it’s not – complain. I will listen, fret, and sort it out.

For now I’ll be posting them under Morning Pages – I hope you enjoy them, and that I manage to keep it up! Please let me know.

The Butterfly Day

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

The cloud of butterflies descended upon the small town in the early afternoon. When the swarm struck its roofs like an exploding rainbow it scattering into delicate shards of colour. They fluttered into windows, perched on rooftops and flowers; they followed cars, bicycles, children. The butterflies were crushed underfoot, sucked under lorries, caught by cats and pulled apart by cruel fingers. Those unlucky ones were just a fraction of the painted horde.

Adults and children rushed into the streets to witness and marvel at the dainty creatures. Hundreds of photographs documented the remarkable phenomenon, newspapers and TV shows raced to include the bright and beautiful images. They gave the day a carnival air and everyone felt obscurely happier with returning to their jobs and schools.

Later in the day people’s interest waned as the sun slowly fell. In the evening they withdrew into their homes and the banality of their lives, the vivid shimmer of gossamer wings already a fading memory. Some few were pinned to boards or trapped in poison jars, awaiting examination and cataloguing on another day.

No one noticed where the butterflies went at night. No one noticed that the birds who had swooped into the cloud during the day to feed their hungry chicks had fallen to the ground, dead: these butterflies were not an easy meal.

Adam Smith was putting his seven year old daughter to bed when he found one of the butterflies roosting on her bedside lamp’s shade. He was a gentle man and blew the insect off it and towards the open window. The butterfly promptly wheeled about and returned to the bedside. Little Helen didn’t like things fluttering around her face at night so he redoubled his efforts. He cupped his hands over the insect and carried it back to the window. As he was about to release it into the night he gave a cry.

“Ow, it bit me.”

“Butterflies don’t have teeth Daddy,”

“Stung me, then.” He sucked at his palm and sat heavily on the edge of his daughter’s bed.

“They don’t have stingers Daddy. That’s bees. Daddy?”

Adam keeled over, trapping Helen in an awkward hug.

“Daddy?”

The open window flooded with butterflies. They covered Adam and Helen in a thickening patchwork blanket of Lepidoptera until Helen stopped calling for her father. When Maria, Adam’s wife and Helen’s mother came up to check on them she found the bed utterly covered in the gaudy twitching wings. She barely spoke before they leaped into the air and bore her to the carpet.

At nine o’clock precisely the next morning the first of a long convoy  rolled into the centre of town. The streets were silent. No cars raced to work, no children rushed to school. Four men in thick suits and masks climbed out of the van and unloaded basket after basket into the road. They climbed back into the van and waited.

A vast sheet of colour roared into the air and funnelled down into the baskets. Eventually the last stragglers crawled through the hatches and they were sealed in and loaded back into the van. With the butterflies safely stowed, the van drove on to the next town.

In Remembrance of Colour

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

A ghost of a tear crawled down Alice’s face. Even though it wasn’t really there she knew how it should feel. The heat welling between her eyelids, the tremble of eyelashes as the tear overwhelmed them, rolling down the side of her nose and into the laughter lines which had deepened with age. Finally meeting saltily with her lips. She missed crying. Alice missed a lot of things. Like lying in a park under the hot sun, absorbing its wonderful heat.

The thought returned Alice to the memory of tears. She couldn’t remember how a tear would fall on the left of her face. Had she only ever cried on the right? Perhaps this was just another of her mind’s deceptions. It was difficult to hold on to the memory of sensation without being able to test them, to confirm whether a thing feels as you think it does. Nothing could feel the same twice; the experience of remembering itself a trick of memory recreated each time through comparison and repetition until we believe we know how it feels to be ourselves.

The sky used to be blue, the bluest of blues that there could be. Holding the memory of it seemed so clear. Yet when Alice conjured red (a glorious colour) and compared it to the blue she knew they were different but was unable to recall how they varied from yellow.

Cold blue lights flickered and arced along the long white and grey walkway, disappearing around a distant curve. Ribbons of bright lights sprouted from edges, illuminated glassy panels and ran along the letters that spelled out Alice’s name. Two men in drab olive clothes followed the path of the light down the corridor. They were trailed by a large wheeled cart. It kept pace with them as they chatted amiably about nothing in particular.

Halfway down the corridor they started to read names until they reached Alice’s.

“Surname: Tars, Forename: Alice.”

A quick check of the tablet on the cart, “Yep, this is the one.” Charlie manoeuvred the cart in close to the wall while Joe pressed buttons.

Alice wondered about love, that faint flowering of passion she half-remembered. But she didn’t want to think about crying anymore. A day in the park returned to her. Lush green grass, daffodils. Swans and children milling around and in the water. The tall trees magnified the sky’s blue, or at least she remembered that it did. She felt happy.

A sensation of extension intruded on her and she felt suddenly elongated, then bifurcated, and again. Stretched and teased out her mind filled this new volume. With it came action. Alice raised a hand, in it was a glass which refracted the sunlight. A series of shapes shot across her vision: hexagons, squares, circles triangles in achingly clear colours. How could she possibly have forgotten how different they were? They hovered until she acknowledged them and then fled into her imaginary environment, hanging or rotating around the trees, swans, children.

She looked hard at the thickly clustered yellow hexagons which followed the children as they played. She blinked. They became hot red triangles. A series of tiny movements in her extended awareness. Alice thrilled to the dexterity, the minuteness of the movements. And the red lights blinked out in a stutter of light. The children were gone. Alice felt a familiar unease, a coldness settling over her punctuated with hot parallel lines of focus.

“She’s coming back,” Joe commented as Charlie twisted a dial on the cart and idly tapped a lever with his thumb.

Alice’s beautiful park dissolved, colour draining into the pond until only the swans were left with their glowing green circles. Grey light poured in from the top of her world seeded with white streaks that plummeted to where the ground used to be. Charlie continued his adjustment and the image resolved. A tiny man stood beside Alice, twisting and turning her qualian translator. She felt it as a cold ripple through her abdomen. A yellow hexagon lit up over his head.

“Ready?” Joe asked Charlie.

“Ready,” he confirmed.

More buttons, more cold flushes of sensation. Then came a glaring heat that travelled the length of her body as control returned. Slowly Alice rose to her feet; metal and plastic slid together in harmony and she stepped off the cart. Her feet spread. She could feel her enormous weight and the pressure of the deck underfoot.

The two men had moved back to give her space to move, and remember how big she was. The yellow hexagons danced on them.

“Welcome back ma’am,” said Charlie.

She heard the man, dressed in a dirty green surrounded by the bland white corridor. Was this what she had missed?

“Your combat drop will commence in,” he checked his watch, “forty-seven minutes.”

Alice looked down on the two men and frowned. She tried to frown. She couldn’t frown. Alice focussed on the hexagons instead, blinked. They wouldn’t turn into triangles.

Joe chuckled politely, “Combat functions will be activated during the drop ma’am, apologies for the inconvenience.”

Alice felt a sheer pulse of frustration and longed for her park, however poorly imagined.

“Please come with us, the rest of your team is being incorporated now.”

Alice looked back at the wall where she had been kept. Tiny blue lights ran down the letters of her name like tears. She wished she could cry.

The Triffic Adventure – now with sound!

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Ahar mates – I keep forgettin’ to remind ye that I’ve been recording me tales on a ball o’ twine and a magnetic banana for ye listening pleasure, should you be too busy or lazy to read. This is me tribute to one of the finest science fiction authors, the wonderful John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris – a lengthy but worthy name for so fine an author.

And so – ye may listen to  The Triffic Adventure,  or read it below:

Gaargh, I awoke from a night o’ disturbin’ dreams. We’d been swiggin’ vodka for a change, since takin’ it off Danish merchants just after dawn. Me final memory o’ that night were haulin’ Billy aboard after ‘e leapt from the bow to catch a shootin’ star. Yarr, all night the sky’d been full o’ light streakin’ down as if aimin’ for the giant crabs crawlin’ across ye sea-bed. ‘Twere pretty, like a rainbow on fire, though technically it boded ill for us all. Read more…

Timothy’s Little Helper

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Warm amber light crept under Timothy’s eyelids and softly poked at his dreams. He stirred, not much, but enough to startle the tiny robot that stood on his chest. It back-pedalled furiously, its single balancing wheel weaving back and forth on the bed clothes. Sure that its master was not yet waking up it cycled over the bed, compressed its central spring down and jumped to the bedside table. There it steadied itself again, bumping against the base of the lamp and busied itself preparing the morning pills.

Red, blue, white, oval, circular, diamond, orange and brown, green. Meticulously the robot counted them out into a tiny china dish and re-sealed all the bottles. Then it unsealed them again and began a furious count of their contents. All the bottles were short. It double-counted those it had prepared. Correct. But there were six days of missing tablets. Six days… to its horror it checked its internal clock and discovered that it too was missing six days.

The robot hopped off the bedside table and rolled into the kitchen. It eyed the calendar suspiciously. Timothy’s familiar crosses went nearly a whole week past the robot’s date. There was no doubt about it. Six days lost. It had been dormant, but why? Had its counts been off? Surely not – it existed to measure Timothy’s doses, exactly as he had programmed.

The sound of footsteps stopped the little robot in its tracks. That wasn’t Timothy. The footsteps had come from the always unused, always full of boxes spare room. The robot bolstered its nerve and hopped through the cat flaps which Timothy had cut into each door, when he could still care for a cat. There – the footsteps had moved to the bathroom. Even from the end of the hallway the robot could see an unmade bed, a suitcase and clothes lying on a chair. It was not alone with its master.

An intruder. The robot raced back into the kitchen and opened a door made especially for it. Within was his power point and those tools that Timothy had designed for all the household tasks he not might be capable of. One of them was an electroshock stun weapon. The robot reversed into the dock and the weapon clicked onto its back, the pronged barrel resting across its shoulder, and the trigger in its claw. The sound of the shower slowed, dripped and stopped. Perfect timing.

Almost skidding over itself with the extra weight the robot reached the bathroom door just as it opened. A cloud of steam gusted out, temporarily blinding it. Then a woman, wrapped in a white towel, legs still wet from the shower emerged. The robot darted forwards and jabbed its electrodes into the leg. The human woman barely had time to gasp “you again” before falling twitching to the ground, cracking her head hard against the doorframe.

Satisfied with its defence of Timothy’s house the robot replaced its accessory and returned to the old man’s bedside. Somehow the robot had failed to notice there had been additions to the room – a stand next to the bed dangled a tube into Timothy’s arm and a trolley with a series of screens and panels blipped and beeped in the corner. None of these were part of Timothy’s bedroom layout. The little robot pulled the needle out of Timothy’s arm and pushed the stand into the wardrobe. The monitor stand was larger, but easily unplugged from the wall. The robot climbed and hopped back onto the bed to detach all the messy wires.

It looked anxiously into the face of its master as it unstuck pads and rolled them up along their wires. This was all very wrong. By now Timothy ought to be having breakfast and should certainly have taken his pills. They still sat in their china dish. The robot considered feeding them directly to its master, it would need to remove the mask from his mouth first.

A voice came out of the corridor: “That damn robot’s awake again. No, I don’t know how. It bloody well tasered me this time – seriously. I’ve got a lump the size of an orange on my head,” the footsteps drew nearer, “No – from falling. Just get someone here now. Oh my god.” The woman from the bathroom walked into the bedroom as the robot tugged free the tube from Timothy’s throat. “I’ve got to go.”

She snapped the phone shut and stood nervously in the doorway, her eyes torn between the old man, the robot and the silent equipment. The little robot froze and stared at her. The stun gun was back in the kitchen. The robot whirred forwards, straight off the bed and bounced onto the floor, keeping its balance as it rushed to the door. The woman panicked and seized the walking cane which stood beside the door. The robot swerved to get past her legs but she swung the cane hard across the front of her body.

The wheeled robot flew across the room, smacking into the wall where something cracked loudly and it fell, twisted, to the floor. In its final moments the robot watched the woman tear his master’s sheets off and urgently pound his chest with her hands. Timothy wouldn’t have liked that, not at all. He would be needing his pills. The robot tried to get back up, but the movement separated something inside and its little mind became dark.

The Grass Knight

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

A stillness lay across the glade. It froze the twinkling motes in sunshine that daggered between trees. Even the birds were quietened from their song. The verdant grass over which butterflies and bees normally bumbled was flattened and spread in long dragging streaks into the centre of the glade. There a man lay, obscenely splayed; his open chest seeping red blood into the green grass.

He had crawled this far into nature’s embrace, clawing at the earth with bloodied fingers. But no further. He had rolled onto his back so that his last memory might be of the glowing leaves. His chest rose and fell in fast aching bursts. Blood leaked from his many wounds to the rhythm of his breath. He had discarded his armour, for the weight was too great and carved a furrow into the turf. He fingered the edges of the holes made by the sword and pike thrusts, his jerkin and trousers greasy with draining life. He felt a need to be closer to the greenery and thrust his hands into the grass.

The glade waited patiently. The light scarcely changed in its marmalade glow that lit the dying man’s features. When his breath finally ceased to come he gave a final bubbling choke and was still. The glade returned to life, but slowly. The motes twisted in the shafts of light and funnelled down through those streams into the dead man, soaking into his body with the sun’s heat.

The grass that was crushed by his dragging passage unfolded itself and his tracks vanished. The grass beneath his body thrilled at the influx of nutrients from his congealing blood and sought out more. The grass sprouted vigorously around the dead man and jabbed fresh new blades into the wounds that had laid him low.

The insects resumed their dance from leaf to flower. A single butterfly alighted on the fresh grassy tip protruding from the cavity in the man’s chest, and was drawn down inside him as the grass spread through the man’s ribs. It grew, and hugged close to the broken flesh, weaving in and out of the gashes and holes that perforated him.

The sunlight dwindled as the day faded away. The flowers ceased their gaping at the sky. Shadows fell over the corpse, now cloaked in grass, and chased he hungry blades back into the earth. Moonlight took the place of the sun, stretching the glade into a rainbow of greys.

The dead man stirred. His hands moved automatically to the rips in his chest and stomach. Unsteadily he climbed to his feet, pulling free of the verdant embrace.

He felt light and curious. Once dead, and now returned. He thought of those who had wrought their havoc upon him and felt a fresh writhing in his heart and a tight bunching of his guts. His sword and armour lay spotless and sharp against the roots of an ancient oak. He buckled the armour on and slid the sword into the scabbard that hung from his waist. The Grass Knight looked to the moon and left the glade behind.

The Peninsula Creature: part 1 of 5

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

This is the first part of a story based closely on a dream I had last week which I’ve been writing up for my morning pages – I’m tidying it a bit and putting it up in roughly 600 word chunks. Enjoy!

Part 1

Tales of the Ultrashark had drawn us to the tiny port town of Mongolith which lies on the tip of the Northern continent where it projects into the steamy waters of the Aberrian sea. The town was the link to the popular Holiday Archipelago which sprouted in a chain of beautiful tiny islands dotted with hotels, chalets and beach camps. Fear of the Ultrashark had kept us on the mainland for days, like the holiday-makers not already in their bathing suits on the islands. No one wanted to take us across the water with a genuine sea monster on the loose, indeed there was much grumbling from those whose vacations were being spoiled. Instead we absorbed the local gossip, examined the remnants of boats and the terrifying images captured of the creature.

That it was real we had absolutely no doubt. Dozens of small fishing craft had disappeared, as had the larger fish. Until the town finally prohibited swimming there was a steady stream of fatalities. The clearest picture of it, taken by a man on a fleeing vessel, showed a huge maw chomping through the hull and cabin of a fishing boat. We were eager to get closer to it, but still no amount of money (what little we could afford in bribes) would take us to sea. Of course, if we’d still had the university’s research ship we would have been out there already. But the Spirit of Inquiry lay in pieces at the bottom of the Invex Gulf. The creature was disappointingly elusive and we suspected it was prowling the (belatedly) safety conscious waters between the islands.

After six days of frustrated pacing of the beach and half-glimpsed fins our search was ended. A fisherman was found suffering from an hysterical fit. The constables followed his footsteps back down the beach and discovered the decapitated head of a gigantic shark specimen. They assumed it had been washed up with the morning tide. I mused that the enormous head – with a mouth wide enough to drive an omnibus through without scraping the roof on the cleaver-like teeth – had been tossed up the beach, since it lay some fifty feet beyond the tide’s reach. The fierce predator’s head had been severed by something even larger. The brief relief that its death brought was overshadowed by a very real fear of whatever had pushed it down the food chain. There was little doubt that this would be quite bad for the tourist industry, but for us this was gold. We took our measurements and records before the locals whisked the evidence away and transformed it into a gruesome tourist attraction.

We determined to charter a flight instead which could put us in the heart of the fragmented peninsula. Finding a suitable pilot and plane was difficult: you see, I travel always with my two companions, they are friends and colleagues from the university. The first, Harvey is a giant sentient millipede from the Southern Continent (professor of Diverse Biology) and the second is Maxwell, my black and white cat. Cramming the three of us in is often a challenge, though I admit that Maxwell is not the one who presents the problems. Our former aircraft (its lifespan was sadly too short to achieve a christening) had been destroyed while we escaped from the Bitter Forest. As with the Spirit, our employers had been lax in its replacement. Maxwell successfully found us an alternative, a somewhat reluctant gentleman predictably named Bob, whose aquaplane had sufficient space for Harvey to coil within.

Part 2 coming soon….

This week, Monday 16th July 2012

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Mucosal Delays

Ye captain’s been grossly beleagured by hayfever this week – tis as if Neptune’s swept some bastard trees out to moult upon me face for bangin’ his merwench daughters. Tis ticklesome in the faceholes. Regardless, though in some way held back by the sheer itching horror and incessant sneezings I’ve continued me mindless scrawlings. I’ve been especially annoyed not to be able to contribute to the magnificent Flash Pulp for a few weeks as my speaking voice is completely shagged.

This weeks’s scribbles

Tuesday:  the second part of the mini-serial The Peninsula Creature. Tis going well I think, and the action and mega-beasts are hotting up for the luckless adventurers.

Thursday: Cecily’s Adventure. This is a super-short morning scribble written using the Alphabetic principle which successfully engages my mucoused brain with peculiar results. I hope you like it, it features a servant girl who discovers terrible things in the cellars beneath the kitchen.

I’m also hoping to finish a pirates vs. zombies story which might go up on Friday – if my brain starts functioning correctly (hmm). The morning pages writing discipline is working well for me, and I’m finding time to at least edit or type up other stories even if I don’t get to write a new one.

Poetry for your ears

Right now you can enjoy some Shankanalia (super-short Twitter verse) which I recorded a little while ago and forgot to upload to my Reverbnation page:

Round Up of Last Week

5th July: Timothy’s Little Helper – a short dose of robotic science fiction

10th July: The Grass Knight – vegetation and warriors unite!

12th July: The Peninsula Creature – Part 1 – fantasy adventure expedition into the Northern Continent…

The Peninsula Creature: part 2 of 5

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

 

This is the second part of a story – read Part 1  first!

Part 2

The sea sparkled bright and clear from our high vantage and we were perkily alert for more anomalous monsters. However, the only shadows that marred the water were those of ordinary fauna: shoals of Goading Fish and the huge but harmless Rooted Jellyfish which are common in the Aberrian shallows. As we flew over the picturesque reefs and atolls our pilot grunted (more than he had so far uttered) and said he couldn’t get through to island control. This was unusual enough to set him grumbling about the safety of his “bird”. Our intention had been to set down on the farthest island and work our way back using the endless string of hotels and rustic ferries for transport and comfort. But the crackling radio and Bob’s rising anxiety about the silence from the islands prompted a reluctant change of plans.

Harvey, Maxwell and I held a brief conference. We agreed that we ought to proceed, but with perhaps a mite more caution than usual. Accordingly we requested that Bob set us down near the middle of the archipelago. That was when we caught our first glimpse of the thing that had casually snapped the head off the Ultrashark and spat it onto the sands.

We were passing over one of the larger islands with an apparently jungle-themed hotel dominating the shoreline, when fire erupted out of the complex. Billows of thick black smoke rose upwards as Bob banked the plane sharply to avoid being blinded. The smoke obscured our view but between the clouds we could see movement – a huge shadow within the murk darting back and forth across the island. We circled it, trying to get a clear view of the animal but it plunged back into the sea as the smoke began to blow away. Its length was swallowed by the deeper water.

The fire was short-lived, burning itself into a blackened smear. We could see no one on the beach, not even people running from or to the hotel. It seemed that our investigation might not be as merry or straightforward as we had hoped. But we are scientists (with the exception of Maxwell; he is an enthusiastic amateur) and mere discomfort would not impede us.

We chose the beleaguered island for our beginning (which Bob informed us was named after a local saint – St Balm’s). Although this appeared wildly foolish to our pilot we had our reasons. We knew the beast had been there so physical evidence ought to be widely available. There was also a good chance that it would not be returning if it had already denuded the island of life, and we would be able to pick up its trail. Clearly the creaure was dangerous and carnivorous and we preferred to be behind it than in its path.

I referred to my holiday guide. St Balm’s was the second largest island and sported two hotels: the beach front jungle-hotel and another set into the lightly forested centre of the island. There were also cabins dotted about and a range of recreational activities. It sounded lovely although none of it gave the impression that it would withstand anything with more teeth than the rain.

Bob touched down lightly on the sea and we splashed awkwardly onto the shore. We prepared for our expedition by piling Harvey high with the bags and packs Bob hurled from the plane. Bob declined the opportunity to wait for us and was in the air again almost before our feet left prints in the sand. He had promised to stay near the radio though and would keep an ear open for our inevitable cries for aid. We gave him an optimistic wave as he vanished into the distance.

 

Part 3 coming soon….

Cecily’s Adventure (Alphabetic 21)

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Cecily clomped down the hall in her orthopaedic shoes. Down the corridor were such delights as the Wine Cellar, the Salt Cellar, the Cool Room and the Potato Cupboard. Every time she had ventured this far into the culinary catacombs beneath the manor she had wasted hours in complex adventures. For three weeks she had had the head of a fish and lived in an aquarium. Good job the Vinegar Tender had been doing his rounds or else she would probably still be blowing bubbles.
Her heart thumped a little faster as she passed the Can Cave, partly from fear but also a romantic stirring at the memory of the brave knight who maintained order in that terrible realm. It had been nearly six months since she had come to his aid, dealing out vicious twists with a tin opener as he lay trapped under a mountain of corned beef. Just thinking about those rebellious misshapen tins made her hands shake.
Kindred spirits, at least that’s what the knight had said before stealing a kiss and lancing an enormous tin of tuna in sunflower oil which was sneaking up on her. Leaving him had not been easy, though she had kept the armour they’d fashioned from that punctured can even though it was too weak and reeked of fishy oil. Maybe it was just not meant to be.
Nearing her destination in a sort of daydream was unwise. Ordering herself to pay attention, Cecily noticed that the door to the Potato Cupboard was already subtly ajar. Prying it open further with her foot she drew her twin weapons – the silver masher and a nine-inch slab of sharpened steel she called The Dissuader. Quince, or rather quince’s slightly sour smell came from the shadows… but that was impossible.
Rory, the Provisions Master, had sworn to her that the quince was safely imprisoned. Seething, vicious fruit whose embitterment at being sidelined by larger, sweeter fruit had utterly soured them and they had sworn vengeance upon the new staples. That included potatoes, whose own turnip forerunners were merely a sulky stew-doomed bunch with no ambition to former glories.
Under the sacks of potatoes that filled the chamber Cecily could hear a sour chuckling, which grew louder as she tore open first one then further sacks with The Dissuader. Violated hollow spuds rolled out. Within each potato lives a potato fairy, from whom it obtains its magically versatile properties. Extinguishing the fairies was an unimaginable crime – if the Potato Fairy Queen still lived then perhaps all was not lost. Yet there was no sign of her, just the darkling shades and tuberous corpses.
Zoetrope-like, the quince rolled and hopped out from their hiding places. Arms borne aloft Cecily mashed and slashed at the fiendish revenging fruit. Boots many times larger and heavier than normal footwear proved their virtue, pulping the fairy-slayers. Cook would doubtless scold her when she returned without his ingredients, but perhaps he’d like to make some quince conserves.

This week, Monday 23rd July 2012

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Stag Action

Ahar, tis a fractional delay in posting this week. Me apologies. Tis the result of spending all weekend engaged in stag party activity for me dinky brother. A splendid and fun weekend, with very little sleep in Cardiff.  My Dad and I took advantage of the post-hangover Sunday to visit the Doctor Who Experience!

I very much recommend it – there’s a great interactive tour at the beginning (get menaced by Daleks and Weeping Angels) followed by a happy hour wandering around staring at cool props, Tardis sets, costumes and villains. There’s a lovely range of Daleks,  including a few from the ’80s series that I don’t recall at all.

I had a marvellous time, and managed to leave the gift shop with only a few sets of badges and postcards (it was damned close though). It was a beautiful day and the Experience is in a huge warehouse building right on the edge of the bay. I imagine it’s slightly different when raining.

This weeks’s scribbles

Tuesday:  the third part of the mini-serial The Peninsula Creature. It’s all going very wrong for our mismatched heroes.

Thursday: The Lobster Adventure. Finally! A return to Captain Pigheart. This one’s been tormenting me for a while. As you might guess it features some lobsters. But not just any lobsters, oh no! These babies are bad.

 

I’ve started writing a follow up/prequel/something or other  to The Peninsula Creature in the mornings. I’m also ambling along steadily with the next Alex Trepan / Galaxy Team story. I think it’s going to be a detective story, likely with some new Galaxy Team characters. So long as the heat doesn’t kill me I should have either one of these or something completely different for next week.

Round Up of Last Week

17th July: The Peninsula Creature – Part 2 – a cryptozoological expedition gets into serious trouble

19th July: Cecily’s Adventure – a cellar full of monsters delay the kitchen assistant

The Peninsula Creature: part 3 of 5

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

This is the third part of a story – read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Part 3

We spiralled inwards from the shoreline, keeping an eye out for the creature while scouting for tracks and survivors. Every human structure, from kayaks to chalets had been destroyed and scattered violently. The beach resort had been pounded into the sand. Fragments of furniture and roof sloshed gently in the surf. We were somewhat shaken by the degree of devastation and flinchingly sifted through the wreckage, fearing what state the casualties might be in.

Following the trail that had been beaten into the forest we came to the flaming beacon which had lured us in. The fire appeared to have come from the hotel’s power generator which lay behind the main complex. It looked as if it had been stamped upon, rupturing the boilers. An avenue of smashed trees and flattened cabins led away on both sides of the smoking ruin.

Either fear of the Ultrashark had dissuaded the holiday makers from their annual vacations or the creaure we’d seen skulking into the sea had been disturbingly thorough. We found no survivors or even any bodily remains, beside a long red smear within a footprint. The beast’s tracks were plentiful and had provided most of our footpaths; Harvey and Maxwell measured them while I took photographs.

The creature, we surmised, had the gait and rough anatomy of a large aquatic reptile but was far larger than anything found even in the Southern Continent. Some of the clearer markings where the animal had paused before changing direction showed a length between forelegs and tail tip of fifty feet. We had no idea of its head shape as yet, though there were grooves in the sand where it might have ducked to graze upon its prey. Harvey expostulated that it was naturally at home on the bottom of the ocean where it would feed on anything that came within reach until the stimulation of the Ultrashark brought it to the surface. Maxwell considered it an interloper from distant waters. It was an exciting discovery and a number of papers were likely to emerge from its study.

Our intent had been to island hop with the ferries or local boat men, but there were no longer such facilities available. The detritus of boats and the buoyant stern of a ferry were visible from the beach. Some of the islands were only a few hundreds of feet apart (even less at low tide) so Harvey proposed that we travel on his back instead, as we had often done in the lakes of the Eastern Mood jungles. This was not the most appealing prospect but past attempts at raft building had met unfortunate ends. It was only a little water after all. I tucked Maxwell into his perspex box; he hates the water, but not as much as being unable to see.

That first passage between the islands was tense, but brief. Harvey’s light step skimmed through the shallow waters and up the next beach before we’d had time to truly unsettle ourselves. Harvey shook his articulated length dry and I released Maxwell onto the sound. Perhaps we’d find a whole boat on this island. Without an aerial view we had to trust that the creature was still ahead of us. On reflection it would have been the ideal time to unhook the radio from Harvey’s pannier and check whether Bob was still airborne.

Even now I find it hard to believe that a creature so large could move with such stealth. Indeed, the noise we heard, which alerted us to the imminent danger, was only the sound of water cascading onto wet sand. We turned; Harvey instinctively circled around us like a wagon train. We three watched the enormous head of the creature rise out of the water. It had a long broad snout with the appearance of a salamander or newt save the powerful jawline and rows of wicked teeth which gave it an alligator’s grin. Instead of eyes set into its head, it boasted a pair of mobile eye palps resembling horns. They rotated smoothly towards us with alien grace and its cave-like nostrils flared. Maxwell named it for us, in a low mewl of disquiet: “it’s a… a… a Colossal Death Newt!”

Part 4 coming soon….

The Lobster Adventure

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Twilight snuck upon us as a lobster does its pink fleshy prey, its pinchy pincers sneakin’ out in wispy streamers of cloud. Gaargh, we’d good reason to spout purplish in our fear of the night. I’d begun to see a mandible behind every branch, every rock the crusty carapace of horrible doom. Terror had ceased to thrill and I’d only a dreadful lurking fear whenever the moonshine tricked us with shadows.

Ahar! Twelve men and I had been abandoned on this isle following a minor disagreement regarding ship management. Fine; twas a mutiny if ye must have the word. It seemed the quest for me merlass love was not shared by all of me crewmen. Gaargh, our nightmare began within moments of being tossed into the spare long boat. We had front row seats as a krakenish monstrosity rose from the frothy waves, for ye see backwards when rowing forwards. It smashed the ship in two and feasted upon my rebellious crew. We rowed faster.

The isle we hastened towards was naught but a large rock pool – a ring of stony land encircling the blackest water whose depths hid all but the creepiest fronds of anemones and maybe a grinning skull. Twas already fading to dark so we sheltered sleep-wise beneath our boat and suckled from the knitted tuna bag o’ fresh water we’d been allowed. On waking we found to our horror that Alexander Gimpskin’s feet had been nipped off at the ankle. At first we were suprised at his not calling out, for surely twas a thing o’ some annoyance, but then we discovered his head was also missing. Thank goodness that mystery was resolved. The sky was clear and bright – a beautiful day and we were all going to die, for the tuna bag was and without water we were doomed. The prospect quite distracted us from the vastly more pertinent point o’ poor Gimpskin’s noggin pruning.

Daylight revealed a secret what the night had hid: at the pool’s heart was a circular atoll upon which were a heaping of man’s treasures: drink, swords, gold and dainty china crockery. To my finely honed senses it had the scent of a trap. However, our usual caution competed with an abundance of ill temper and thirst. Twas surely not a terrible danger to men such as we pirates. Now a stranded nun and her gelded serf, well they’d probably not even know it for a trap. As I explained to the lads, since we expected it to be a trap then it were no longer a trap – for we knew it to be one. Ye see? Ghostly Steve alone resisted me logic. Gaargh, he was ever troublesome when deciding where to go out for meals as well.

The remainder of our party rowed across, elbows tucked in and rows barely patting the water. Our passage was undisturbed. With caution we probed the barrels and chests. I allowed Billy No Mates to test the water. He gargled a mouthful and snorted it from his nose. (Well if ye know a finer way of testing water’s purity, be sure to share it). We had salted apples, water, swords and rum. Aye we were still marooned but now it felt like a holiday.

We hailed Ghostly Steve across the way with a mug of rum. He took a running dive into the water and began his fateful swim, “Nay,” I bellowed, “We’ll row back for ye.” But it was too late. Perhaps it was his thrashing paddle, or else the gleaming glare of his pallor but he swam only half the distance before a look of pure terror distorted his pasty features. A moment later he was gone – naught remained but a glut of bubbles. I was glad we’d used the boat.

Well that quite dispelled the beach atmosphere. We continued to enrum ourselves (o’ course) but we did so clutching our swords. The moon lingered sickly in the night sky, offering scant light for us poor pirates to which we added rummy brands. A chorus of chitinous chinklings set our nerves a-quiver; the feel of feelers fingering our faces pushed us to breaking point. When they finally came for us we were almost grateful. Massive lobsters bristling with sharp hairs and claws emerged from the black water. Gaargh those terrible click-clacking claws! Even now they disturbs me otherwise bawdy dreams.

They rushed at us, seizing men with rending pincers, flinging them out into the salty water from which they’d not return or squeezing ’em to popping. Nimble and armoured, they danced around us while our sword points rebounded and we grew desperate. With a mighty bellow, Hamish McMuffin belly-butted one of the beasts, knocking it stunned to the ground. I seized me chance and drove my blade into the gummy scabs between head and neck. I stamped upon the hilt and kicked it through the creature’s brain. When dawn came they retreated and we found we’d traded five mates for two lobsters. If we were to survive another night we’d need of plans – and good ones. Thankfully ye captain’s a veritable Pandora’s box of notions. We’d two of the menacing buggers cracked open before us and a day to fill.

With the tedious repetition of life, night returned and so did the Nefarious Night Lobsters emerge from their hell water. Gaargh, and what surprise for them to meet lobsters in opposition to their cause? We’d spent the day hollowing out their comrades, hauling their shrimpy guts onto the barbecue. No Hands Mick and I then donned the beasts’ shells, swapping ourselves for their organs. Gaargh, ye cannot imagine the sensation – twas like climbing into a gristly sleeping bag reeking of pasteurising cockles.

Ahar! With our armourous extensions we turned the tide on our seeming cousins. We swung our great claws, and darted hitherwise, ripping off eye stalks and whipping them by their curly tails. We pulled ’em apart and punched them in the nether pits till we stood atop a mound o’ crippled crustaceans, victoriously thrusting our feelers in the air.

No more lobsters crept from the black, and now lumpy waters – we were safe, and yet still marooned. On the morrow we feasted upon lobster-flesh till we’d carapace enough to contain the crew and blubber enough to fill the shells. Full fitted to our crusty suits we dove into the ocean and swam for home. Twas a sea voyage o’ joy and terror in equal parts for we battled Vile Eels and demonic Sea Lettuce across the sea bed, and discovered shockin’ truths about the habits o’ lady lobsters. But tis for another time.

When finally we were trapped in a rock pool high upon the shore we’d lost all sense o’ manhood. A pack o’ children descended upon us armed with poking sticks and the jovial cruelty of youth as we anxiously awaited the tide’s return. We were reborn into humanity mewling, weak and naked in the shattered shells, grimed and reekin’ of lobster grue… Gaargh, twas not me proudest striptease.

This week, Monday 30th July 2012

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Oh, it’s another week… already.

Okay, sort of back on track… every weekend seems to be busy at the moment. This weekend contained lots of being awake and improv shows with MissImp, which was great fun, despite a tiny Friday night audience (damn you Olympics) and having to be awake on Saturday for Nottinghamshire Pride shows in the comedy tent. Not to worry – it won’t stop the yarn-spinning.

I also caught the new Batman film today The Dark Knight Rises – I enjoyed it, but have not been thrilled. They tried to wedge too much stuff and characters into it without maintaining a decent action quota throughout; it’s almost like they’re reluctant to put the Bat on screen. I still prefer the first of Nolan’s Batman films. I am however, absolutely loving the current series of Primeval. They’ve upped the stakes from dinosaur hunting adventure to apocalyptic science fiction on a low, trashy budget. I can’t get enough of it – this week we got to see a hideous Gollumesque future predator rip one of its mates’ arms off in a Graeco-Roman wrestle and beat it to death. Awesome.

This week’s scribbles

Tuesday:  the fourth part of the mini-serial The Peninsula Creature. With the beast revealed it’s munching time for the archipelago.

Thursday: My Grandfather’s Watch. I love HP Lovecraft and can scarcely resist scribbling what I think of as homages, but are probably just bad parodies. Anyhow – enjoy!

Pleasingly I have some travelling to do this week so while my absence from work will undoubtedly generate quite a bit of stress I will at least get some extra writing time on the train (in the exciting run up to a week off I’ve ended up with just two and a half days in the office). There are a couple of short flashish stories that I need to tidy up and I’d lke to put some effort into Alex Trepan too. I have a determination to get my sleep back on track this week in readiness for a week of my own time wasting, so that should get me some morning writing time too.

Round Up of Last Week

24th July: The Peninsula Creature – Part 3 – a cryptozoological expedition gets into serious trouble

26th July: The Lobster Adventure – Captain Pigheart faces marooning and evil lobster monsters

Slightly Broken: Awake and Tense

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

I find myself awake in the early hours of Monday morning, a burning knot of tension in my stomach -well, not my stomach, but that odd place in our abdomen where we somehow transmit emotional stress into a muscular churning. It’s a curious and deeply unpleasant sensation. Believe it or not, I used to be unable to distinguish it from simple hunger, and at one time I think I could reduce that tension simply by filling up. I think eating something actually just distracted me, so was a good in itself as I’m a devil for skipping meals when left to my own devices.

This is lovely prevarication. It has been far too long since I’ve sat myself down to write something self-indulgent, despite really needing to. The fact that I am wide awake and really ought to be asleep seems to be as good a reason as any to return to the self-analytic fold. I can guess at my reluctance to write and think about myself – a lot of it is related to my decision to self-refer to ISAS (Incest and Sexual Abuse Survivors) which has itself generated a lot of stress. I’d finally managed to get myself to call them (I’d chosen to make contact myself rather than let my Brain Lady do so – on the basis that I needed to make decisions for myself, otherwise I wouldn’t have demonstrated to myself that I wanted to…) but I didn’t get a call back when I’d left a message. That cut pretty deep – deeper than I’d anticipated. I hadn’t even poured my heart out and already I’d been rejected.

Of course, that’s just me swimming in the self-pitying waters of egotism. ISAS are appallingly busy. And that kind of makes it worse for me. I usually say of myself, and of what happened to me that it wasn’t really that bad – I wasn’t beaten, violated repeatedly, enslaved, destroyed – y’know, it could all have been so much worse. So who am I to take up time that others need? I’ve no doubt that there are much more damaged folk out there whose needs are greater. But this is minimisation, and an excellent avoidance strategy. It’s one that keeps coming back to me – I accept that what happened to me happened, and I pretend that is all there is to it. However, here I am again at one in the morning, a bundle of tense nerves and a powerful desire to draw my own blood.

So I’m not fine. I do need help. Of some kind, of some sort. I have drawn a temporary compromise with self-harm I believe. It’s something I have to resist – because it’s easy. And addictive. And maybe because I don’t know what its purpose is. There’s a distraction there and a seizing of control – but it’s false. What fucking use is carving a groove out of myself? Or burning my hands in near boiling water – that’s a good one. It vibrates all down the nerves and flips from awful pain into a glowing pleasure and warmth. It’s a peculiar temptation. Right now I’ve settled for the vastly more mundane glass of water and some co-codamol. I realise that sounds a bit odd, but in twenty minutes or so it will have taken the edge off my tension. Yep, that’s a drug addiction to resist as well. Sigh.

What’s brought this lot on eh? I reckon it’s a bunch of stuff – I’ll just list them, because despite my general habits as a story teller and improviser I’ve totally shagged up any narrative here so far. Y’know, I’m in the mood for bullet points. Sorry.

1) I got myself to make a second phone call to ISAS the week before last. It was really difficult to call a second time, but I made myself do it at work, at lunchtime. Somehow that seemed optimum… I called, I left another message. They said they had a long waiting list and it might be weeks, even months before someone called me back. I felt worse. I felt better – there was every reason to think I had not been forgotten and I could possibly be assured of weeks before I had to do anything decisive.

They called me back the next day. It was a shock. I was just heading out for lunch and standing in the bike sheds answering  a string of the usual sort of questions asked in the most gloriously matter of fact way. You see, despite my knowledge that being abused doesn’t make me special, and I’m very aware of how widespread this crap is, I still clearly feel that I am special and that somehow these questions ought to be asked in some esoterically gentle and obtuse way (so yeah, I do need help). I powered down my obfuscation circuits and seized the first possible date the nice lady offered me for an initial assessment. That’s this Wednesday.

2) Work is a mess. I’m a drifter by nature and have drifted into a decent enough job purely by chance and avoiding any serious decisions. In fact the prospect of making decisions often fills me with dread. I seem pretty decisive to others, but I think that’s just because I’m clear and speak forcefully – good trick. But it’s a frustrating workplace where I do very much enjoy the company of my immediate co-workers but the organisation itself is packed full of twattery and self-destructive irrationality. All that with the looming spectre of massive budget cuts and privatisation (oh and an utter obeisance to some appalling management consultants who are beyond doubt the worst kind of lying blood-sucking homeopathic-efficiency pushing scum you can imagine). Makes for a stressful environment sometimes.

3) A couple of bad – well not bad, just disappointing improv shows over the weekend. I know that I hang too much on them personally. There are few things more satisfying than getting on stage and doing clever and silly things for the appreciation of strangers and your peers. So when it doesn’t work out that way it’s quite crushing. I certainly rely on the lift that it gives me. I’m afraid of not being good enough, and envy the skills of those who are better at it. At the same time I hold myself back from investing the time and energy I’d really like to – just because (I think) I’m afraid of failing further at it. I find it hard to imagine myself taking the risks one of my friends does in pursuing it. I suppose I’ve trapped myself with my work and making enough time to do things I love becomes difficult. There’s also a lot of stress with one individual in the group who just is not gelling and is causing, I think unintentionally but with a terrifying lack of self-awareness, a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration for me and many others. I have so far failed to find a way to resolve this. I think I have some stress because I have a bunch of work to do for a show in three weeks time and this weekend has given me an unhelpful slap in the confidence gland. That makes it harder to then do that preparation. Stupid self-destructive impulses.

4) I’m coming up to my thirty-fourth birthday (this Sunday) and I’m filled with a dreadful apathy about it. My girlfriend, The Lady M wants to make sure I get everything I want and am happy, but I’m just worn down and don’t know if I want anything. I don’t wish to disappoint her and I don’t want to disappoint myself either. I know that if I did nothing I would feel I’d utterly cheated myself of the things I love – opening presents, affection, the company of friends and rambling conversations. And yet it feels so hard to plan. So hard to consider the future even a week from now.

5) Two days before that is a much more important occasion – I will have spent fourteen years of my life with The Lady M. I don’t want to pretend that they haven’t been tough at times for both of us- they have been. We’re both fucked up in our own charming ways. I love her though, she’s a part of me. And I’m utterly ashamed that I’m also finding it near impossible to look even these four days ahead to spend time with her. I’ve gone as far as taking the day off work and planning the card to make for her (we always make each other birthday, Valentines and anniversary cards), but I just feel like a failure. I feel like I don’t give her enough and that feeling just makes me back away more, which is the last thing I want to do. If I could just be with her all the time and rediscover those fun, free parts of myself. Where the fuck have they gone?

6) The weekend before last (after getting an appointment with ISAS) was my little brother’s stag party. I can’t believe he’s thirty – that means I’ve done almost literally fuck all for the last decade. Anyway we’ll try to skip a little self-pity if possible. I spent most of the weekend with my Dad – three hours or so each way and we had a hotel room together (we’re both too old for six to a room and shots till dawn!). It’s more time than we’ve spent together since I left home and it was quite wonderful. Dad makes me feel incredibly sane because he’s so damn calm and supportive. I’ve always kept Dad more or less in the loop with where I’m at mentally and emotionally and I knew we’d be talking about all sorts of stuff in the car. And we did. We got very deep into stuff indeed. It’s this point six that I suppose is bothering me the most – let’s get away from the bullet points.

I can’t hope to recall the whole conversation but I think what disturbed me most, and disturbed Dad most was me realising that I still don’t know how I feel about myself, and about my abuser. I have no illusions about what actually happened, that I was exploited and preyed upon, influenced and used. But I am confused about the man himself. This is a guy who was a close friend of my Dad’s, very much a trusted intimate with whom much of life was shared. He was (I thought), a good friend of mine, someone who took an interest in my life at a time when I was vulnerable and badly needed a friend. He got me into improv (an endless headfuck for me – the thing I love doing most inextricably linked with someone who caused me to cut holes in myself), into films I would never have seen; made me happy and less lonely. Did the same for my Dad and step-mum.

Except when he was trying to touch me, when he’d let me get drunk and stay in his house. I was a physically very tense teenager (I’m a fairly tense adult; I just hide it really well) so a friendly massage made a kind of sense (no, I’m well aware that makes no kind of sense), and if hands just happen to drift well… that must just be an accident right? It won’t happen next time, probably. Oh, well, I’ll just drink some more and it won’t be so bad. It’s the realisation that you’re completely in someone else’s power and that’s why you -why I found myself doing things I would never even contemplate. Who lets an adult watch you in the bath or “help” you towel dry afterwards? Jesus fuck, these aren’t even things I’ve specifically thought about for years. But the dread, the scar of remembrance lurks in me always. But the thing I struggle to reconcile – the bit I don’t get and the part I had difficulty even expressing to Dad is: what was real?

I don’t mean that I fear I’ve made this up, that it’s some messed up “repressed memory”, I’ve got my diaries from the time and the scars to remove any of that occasional creeping doubt. No – I mean… this guy made me happy so much of the time, he was a good friend. Except for that other stuff. You see? It just doesn’t hang together for me – the good friend of the family and the sexual predator… How do we reconcile that? What of it was a lie? Was he ever my friend, my Dad’s? Or was it always just tactical? But all that effort, all that time – years of building and maintaining relationships just to fondle some teenage boy? Seriously – what the fuck? I just can’t grasp it. I just cannot understand how you can be bothered to do all that just for – well, something that I don’t consider to be of value I suppose. And maybe that’s the point. It’s certainly the point that Dad struggles with – that betrayal of his trust and friendship too. But these people are monsters. They are prepared to invest this huge amount of time in a long confidence trick – fake lives just to get close to vulnerable kids.

I don’t know how that makes me feel. I fear that he could have made me like him. That in the right(/wrong) circumstances I could find myself doing the same things that were done to me. I’d rather die. My Dad was horrified by that idea. He had a lot to say about that (I love my Dad) and he’s right I think: it’s possible to overthink this stuff. I have never had even an inkling of a desire to touch kids – I’ve had the opportunity in spades and I’ve never wanted to do anything; the idea makes me sick. I think what is in my head is a distorted notion – to take on from what was done to me some sense of sympathy with my abuser, that maybe he was a victim too and that this cycle might repeat. Because then he wouldn’t be just a monster – he’d be a victim too, and the good things he did, the friendship – well that could be real, and it wouldn’t all be a lie.

Yeah – that’s where I am in the head. Trying to convince myself that I might also molest kids because then it would mean that the good times I do remember between the bad weren’t lies and I can be allowed to take happiness and good memories from them. Because to me, if it was all a ploy, all a long con to abuse a teenage boy then it was all a lie. And none of it was true. So how can I do something I think I enjoy when it came from him? Fucking cunt. I’m not a great person, I try (sometimes) to be better than I am, but I don’t deserve to have this sort of bullshit in my head – no one does. I don’t know where this leaves me. I still don’t know how I feel. I am though convinced that I do still need help. Guess Wednesday’s going to be painful.

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The Peninsula Creature: part 4 of 5

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

This is the fourth part of a story – read Part 1 , Part 2  and Part 3 first.

Part 4

In pursuing and investigating unusual creatures we have found that there are three choices when confronted by what is supposed to be our quarry: make a great deal of noise to either scare it off or establish our dominance, remain terribly still and hope to be ignored, or flee. The decision is usually made instinctively, and quickly. This was no exception. As the rest of the Collossal Death Newt’s blue black bulk slid smoothly out of the sea and its mouth gaped at us, we ran. For fear of separation I scooped up Maxwell even though his nimble cats feet are quicker than mine, and tried to keep up with Harvey’s fluid scuttle.

Before we knew it we had reached the other side of this isle and pressed on across the narrow sandy spit to the next, on which we saw lights and smelled cooking meat. The resort was fully occupied and families ate, played and slept in a broad clearing ringed with chalets. We had no choice but to lead the beast into their midst as we bellowed at them to run.

The creature flattened trees and cabins under the weight of its low-slung body. Its locomotion appeared to confirm Maxwell’s newt thesis, although unfortunately we had little time to examine it in detail. Our fears about the former inhabitants of the first island were confirmed as it made a point of snapping up screaming holiday makers, or knocked them down with its long tongue and sucked them in over its teeth. From our selfish perspective the holiday camp gave us good cover and we were in the lead as we continued our escape, dashing from that island to the next.

The Death Newt’s progress was quite evident behind us – not only was it huge enough to be readily visible but the collapsing trees, buildings and panicked people scattering outwards pinpointed it perfectly. It seemed intent on eating every person in its path. While it was busy we hopped across to yet another island and fell to the ground for a moment’s respite. Harvey still bore most of our equipment in the saddlebags strapped across his shell. Several of the bags were torn and others had been left behind in our scramble, but we still had the bulk of the photographic kit, specimen jars, and food. Our rather feeble store of weapons – a rifle, a pistol and some caving explosives were also intact. How I rued the butchering of our armaments budget.

Most importantly the radio was still present, and dry. With some haste I hailed Bob. His voice was a tonic. He had returned to the mainland and reported what little he could to the authorities. They were now in the important governmental stage of dithering. Meanwhile, yet more smoke was visible rising from the Holiday Islands and its population was rapidly diminishing. I explained that we were now ahead of the monster – a wholly undesirable outcome and were in urgent need of assistance. Bob was quite clear that he wouldn’t land anywhere near the creature, but he would come and fetch us – if we made it alive to the Petits Dansons island, the closest to Mongolith.

There was only forward (or South as the maps will have it) left to us and even as we set off we could hear the monstrous newt’s earth shaking tread behind us. Our expedition had degenerated into a blind race across islands and splashing through waist-deep water. It was constantly on our heels, except for whenever we passed through a holiday village or hotel resort. Then the behemoth would ignore us for a few minutes while it hunted down the luckless vacationers with its terrible flickering tongue. I soon gave up stopping to photograph the carnage. As Maxwell pointed out with the grip of his claws, those brief distractions were all that kept us ahead.

By the sixth hour of our flight Maxwell and I were beyond exhaustion and had taken to clinging onto Harvey’s panniers as he deftly wove through the foliage. Evening was preparing to condemn us to night when we burst through a final stand of shrubs. Before us there was only open water, and perhaps only a mile away – the mainland.

Quite why its prospect seemed any more secure than the ravaged islands I do not know. The amphibious terror would be equally at home mangling the thriving shore of Mongolith – but the port-town positively hummed with safety. I would of course wish to be a very long way inland, but nonetheless… to be away from the sea outweighed even my desire for a cup of tea.

The end – Part 5 coming soon….

Slightly Broken: Initial Assessment with ISAS

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

I went for my initial assessment with ISAS (Incest and Sexual Abuse Survivors) this afternoon. Naturally I’ve caused myself quite a lot of stress and anxiety in the run up to it and developed a fine tension headache which I’m now self-medicating with codeine and alcohol. The lady was lovely and supportive and I enjoyed (kinda) our conversation. I’m starting to realise that I really do want to get into all this stuff – I’ve lived with the pain for too long and I just don’t want to anymore. So I’m oddly impatient with the (necessary) delays in getting to the point. I believe that though I fear it I am ready for therapy, and I’m ready to be challenged.

I didn’t enjoy the stupid questions which the government makes them ask in order to secure their funding. They start out okay, with questions about seeking support, previous pyschiatric care, self harm and suicide: the usual stuff. Then they hit the qualitative and it all goes to shit. Being asked to assess your own confidence and trust in others on a scale that goes ‘all the time’, ‘most days’, ‘less than most days’, ‘sometimes’, ‘never’ quickly becomes ridiculous. The questions degenerate into self-esteem, social network and addiction with a scale including the mind-numbing ‘others’ ‘self-reliant’ and ‘professional support’. Does knowing a drug dealer count as networking? Am I self-reliant because I can use the internet to find like-minded individuals?

Just dumb.

It highlighted for me once again the horror of involving government in anything about people (especially a Conservative government). These aren’t just the wrong questions and answers but the output data will be utterly worthless. I work with stats and such dumbass questionnaires every day and they are rarely insightful. That ISAS have to depend on getting stupid answers to stupid questions is dreadful. There are people out there in genuine need and our government makes them jump through these hoops. In fairness it proved an excellent icebreaker and  I was at least amused/appalled by the mind-bending difficulty of simultaneously answering ‘do I like alcohol’ and ‘do I drink too much’. Um… yes?

Anyway, I’ve successfully distracted myself from the more important matter of how it was. I’m optimistic, I think. We always have to identify goals for therapy, and I said I want mental peace and freedom from thoughts and ideas which are so frequently present in my mind. I also want to resolve the confusion I have about truth and reality  – separating or understanding the good things that I associate with the friendship I had with my abuser and the abuse itself. Understanding I guess, whether the good things were real, or remain real for me now. It’s problematic philosophically and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to a better understanding than “he’s a monstrous psychopathic bastard and you’ll never be able to see it from his side”. Maybe I don’t want to. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t understand why you’d set up such an elaborate network of lies just to get close to a young boy. Also, how can I love improv so much when it’s intimately tied to a man I would gladly set on fire and watch die? Tricky.

It also made me think again about the nature of improvisation – how it is bound up in consent and trust between the improvisers. I find it interesting that I’m so committed to the practice and theory embedded there. I guess it’s important to me, having been denied consent in the past, that we do choose to play together and make choices which are supportive rather than destructive. I have some stuff to think about.

Sometime next week I should get another call to arrange who my counsellor will be and when our sessions will take place. I’m fearful of what I’ll need to go through to make myself well, but I know I have the strength and capacity to do it and that I have the love and support of those closest to me to make sure I do it.

I’ll keep ya posted.

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My Grandfather’s Watch

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

After the sudden death of my grandfather I had discovered that I was his sole heir. It came as some surprise to me as I had spent many years estranged from my family and had only recently returned to town. It came as an even greater surprise to my kin. During a tense reading with daggerous looks between his remaining relatives, his house and properties were willed to me alone. I was uneasy with the estate for my prior experience of home ownership extended little beyond possession of a sleeping bag and a talent for cadging a sofa by night. Failing even those luxuries I had camped out beneath the stars in a series of tents and rough spots. Drifting, always drifting. Yet I had returned home at long last and thanks to the quixotic will of my grandfather I had a reason to stay.

I had a house of intriguing and oddly shaped rooms to do with what I wished, and the considerable enmity of my cousins. So it was that I came to be alone for much of my time browsing aimlessly through my grandfather’s vast collection of intriguing trinkets and the countless leather-bound tomes of strange subjects and suggestive titles which littered every room of the house and surface within it. There is something tiring to the eye of such incessant jumble and I sought out quieter vistas.

Amongst the seeming endless ring of keys that had been pressed into my hands by the sweating fingers of my grandfather’s executor was one labelled ‘attic’. I had not yet ventured within. Indeed I had not yet gone above the second storey of the tall Victorian house.

As I fingered the key and ascended the stair to the third storey I felt a speeding quiver in my heart – is there not always a thrill to exploring an attic or cellar? Somehow they bind a house with mystery and potential. I left behind the halls of open doorways and found myself in a hallway in which were five doors – two to my left and right and a fifth facing the stairs.

All locked and unmarked, save for one which must have been at the back of the house (I had gotten somewhat turned around in my ascent and there were no windows in the hall – a room must have been built to enclose the sources of natural light). That door was also closed, but held an ostentatious lock on its outside with a bolt that plainly ran deep into the wall. Its frame was deeply scratched around the lock and lacerations ran its full height from ceiling to floor as if something had deeply desired entrance, yet lacked the key. I felt little desire to test it myself.

At the end of the hall a hatch was set into the ceiling, directly above the fifth door. The attic key was the only one so marked and it fit smoothly into the heavy padlock which lidded the attic shut from beneath. A twist and a tug removed the chain and the hatch swung open eagerly. I was almost struck by the shape which thrust at me with sudden violence from within the darkness above and fell back in alarm. My shock gave way to laughing relief as I realised it was just the folding ladder leaping to greet a visitor.

Heart still pounding and resolute I climbed the ladder and pulled at the cord which hung from the ceiling. Dim lights flickered into life along the length of the attic, blocked and channelled by the hundred trunks and crates which populated the space. A weave of dust hung in the lamplight and tickled at my nose and eyes. With no particular aim I wandered about the huge room, which plainly stretched over the entire plan of the house. I marvelled again at my grandfather’s fascination with collecting and wondered how I would ever manage to dispose of his assets.

I opened a few trunks and examined the disturbing contents: a series of child-sized death masks, a quartet of verse on The Nature of Unions in Undeath, candles and statuettes depicting crude physical acts, a necklace made of teeth and a straw doll with the face of some amphibious creature. I felt dizzy with confusion and the dust eating at my lungs and restacked the oddments where I had found them. I prepared to leave, taking a last look around this warehouse of intriguement. Perhaps I would be able to find a specialist evaluator to examine the house’s contents.

My attention was captivated by the light rebounding in a dazzling arc from an object which hung above the trunks and parcelled books. The arc was almost a rainbow in shape, though it offered none of the rainbow’s jolly hues. The singular item which cast the achromal arch swung by a lightbulb from a leather thong binding it to the rafter above. It was a slender tube of around a foot in length made of some supple and slick artifice that my fingers could barely grip. My eyes slid off the patterns embossed on its curious surface. The shapes hinted at hidden meanings and glamorous twists in perspective.

I gazed at it, entranced by the mandalas and I was scarcely aware of removing it from its resting place and sitting cross-legged upon the floor with the unusual cylinder in my lap. The glyphs and script upon it seemed as if they might be the cousins of a text I’d perused in my grandfather’s study. There they had been described as the words of an ancient people who claimed to perceive time in reverse and whose rites prescribed mutilation and promise of fearsome revelation.

Idly I traced a spiderweb of ancient wisdom with my finger. The tube hummed, grew warm and separated with neat clicks… like the teeth of a skull. Within lay an object which seemed familiar to me and yet had not the familiarity of such items as I had handled before. It was, perhaps, a time piece, for its shape resembled that of an ordinary wristwatch. Yet the chronometry which ringed its face meant nothing to me, telling only the time belonging to an occult and ancient calendar.

The hours were too many, or at least those things I assumed to be the prime divisions of an inhuman day were too great to match our revolutions. The hands were numerous and sprouted in interlocking shapes across the face. Worst of all, it appeared to be made of a glistening gristle; it lay swaddled in the velveteen packaging like a stillborn bone child.

A tremor of fear thrummed in my heart and yet my fingers reached out of their own accord and plucked it from its bed. It was wet and cold in my hand, like a bleeding fish. The lights in the attic dimmed until I was left in blackness. A grisly ticking commenced immediately and with its beat a rush of blood filled my head as if my heart were powered by the engine of a monstrously vigorous furnace. I felt hot, heavy. And then nothing.

I awoke in the dark, though not the dark of the attic but that of night. I lay on my bed, in the guest bedroom (my grandfather’s chamber is too rich with his interests to permit a peaceful slumber). I faced the open window and the starry night sky beyond. Often have I gazed in wonderment at the vastness of the universe with hope that there must be beauty in its vastness and a future for mankind out there. I felt also a calm contentment with our tiny slice of it. For all the petty annoyances of man’s life (and mine had had its share) there are fresh air and butterflies to balance it.

Yet tonight I felt different. My heart ached still from its earlier pounding and there was a dry nausea in my mouth. Frowningly I regarded the starscape anew. It was… wrong. A perverse irreality of the night intruded upon my senses. Where were my astrological friends whom I nightly greeted and goodbyed before I slept?

The Hunter no longer hunted. Instead he cowered, shrinking back from his spectral quarry. New constellations, or rather – ancient skies? I saw the hints of stars I knew, but paled in comparison with the devilish reds and putrescent yellows that dominated the night, threatening my astral familiars. The wrongness of the air threw my head into a spinning dread.

I drew the curtains to evade the portentous sky. It was then I noted the grotesque time piece which lay like a streak of eviscerated organ upon the bedside table. It seemed to me that it throbbed hungrily for the witch lights I had curtained. I resolved to ignore the foul thing and so I swept it into a drawer and resumed my slumber, for even these brief minutes of wakefulness had wearied me.

I fell into bleak dreams pierced by strange threads of symbolism which drew me into a tapestry of sweating horror. Great staring eyes tormented me and penumbrally monolithic structures haunted me vertiginously. At the end I was repeatedly horrified by a trilobite crawling in and out of my slipper as I lay alone on a cold wet floor. I felt unable to draw them forth from beneath the bed when I awoke, slick with fear. I stepped barefoot and fearful to the window and steeled myself to draw the curtains asunder.

The world was as it normally was in the afternoon. I had slept late and the sun was beginning to diminish. Red tinged shadows stretched across the roads outside, their talons reaching through the gardens and scratching at the window, keen to be let in. I looked up to where the dark moon was rising, jaws spread wide to consume our native satellite. I thought nothing of it and turned away from the outside. My hand was drawn to stroke at the cartiliginous thing that wrapped about my wrist, its hands whirling and its pulse beating blackly in counterpoint to my own.

This week, Monday 6th August 2012

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

I am free – for a week

Woohoo. It’s my birthday (yesterday), so I have toys to play with, many books to read, oddments to oddinate and a week of peace and laziness ahead of me. In celebration I shall have some extra time to scribble and improvise. Happy bags. I’m afraid part 5 of The Peninsula Creature has ended up slightly longer than the preceding parts but hopefully you’ll forgive me.

I’ve got a wonderfully diverse range of things to read: Jeffrey Deaver’s Carte Blanche (007), some classic Jack Vance (The Blue World), Elizabeth Bear’s Chill (which, godammit I’ve just discovered is book two – I cannot tell you how upset I now am), Anna Kendall’s Crossing Over, Reckless by Cornelia Funke, Rupert Thomson’s Air & Fire, Gavin Smith’s Veteran, White Cat by Holly Black (co-author of the amazing Spiderwick Chronicles), The Secrets of the TARDIS (with a UV sonic screwdriver to read hidden things) and Charlie Higson’s The Dead. There are more, but they are underneath those written above. What should I read first?! It’s all very exciting.

This week’s scribbles

Tuesday:  the final part of the mini-serial The Peninsula Creature. How will our investigative heroes possibly escape the terrifying beast?

Thursday: End of Line. A short piece of morning fiction about being a clone. The character names are odd and I belatedly realised they were all from things in our medicine cabinet. Well, that’s morning pages for you.

Round Up of Last Week

31st July: The Peninsula Creature – Part 4 – a cryptozoological expedition gets into even more serious trouble

2nd August: My Grandfather’s Watch – eldritch mysteries in a house of strange things

The Peninsula Creature: part 5 of 5

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

This is the fifth part of a story – read Part 1 , Part 2 ,  Part 3  and Part 4 first.

Part 5

We were only minutes away from certain death (a mantra Maxwell had become overly fond of and purred stressfully under his breath). We had splashed and struggled across half the island chain, a bloody and broken trail of destruction behind us. I could hardly believe that we had made it as far as Petit Dansons; sanctuary, or at least the chance of it was less than a mile away – the mainland glittered with promise, seeming far nicer than when we left it only half a day ago.

On the other side of the island was a pool and beach resort which would distract the Colossal Death Newt for a while. The terrifying beast had taken a malicious delight in chasing us across the archipelago. Never assume that nature is merely predatory; we are not the only creatures capable of spite.

Harvey crashed to the sand, exhausted from carrying us while Maxwell took to a tense pacing of the sands. I tore the radio out of the pack and tried not to shout into it. In the loudest of whispers I called up our pilot and breathlessly explained that we had reached the rendezvous, barely. Wonderfully true to his word, we saw Bob’s plane rise from the mainland only moments later. My elation at the sight of his aquaplane competed with the raw fear swelling in my gut.

The next few minutes were an incomprehensible blur of nightmare. First came a familiar crashing behind us, and then Harvey vanished – ripped backwards into the tree line – all fifteen feet of tough chitin and mandibles disappeared scarcely leaving a groove in the sand. Maxwell and I backed into the surf, (he in my arms, his claws dug firmly into my shoulder after climbing up me) as the sound of Bob’s plane grew louder. We twisted and turned in the shallows, trying to keep both our saviour and nemesis in view.

The plane slowed, making ready to glide onto the sea before us. We were ready to dive into the water but he reared up and away. I feared Bob had lost his nerve, catching sight of the fearsome monster lurking in the trees with our dear friend Harvey. We could even see the expression of alarm on his face and then the whole plane was whipped out of the sky by a monstrous tentacle that jerked suddenly out of the sea.

We stepped wetly back onto the beach as the plane cart-wheeled over our heads and into the trees. A deep roar of pain and outrage shook the ground beneath our feet from which we inferred that it had struck our pursuer. I fell to my knees wondering what arrangement of organs enabled such an outburst, doubtless a consideration for another time. The Colossal Death Newt showed itself. That vast flat head rose up above the foliage, the jaws gaping to reveal the rows of devil teeth and the tongue tasting at the evening air. It lunged forwards and we saw the yellow aeroplane wing embedded in its neck. It looked furious.

I fully anticipated our deaths but a foaming and crashing of water tore our attention seawards once more. An even more appalling creature of tentacles and snapping beak was thrashing its way to land. It resembled a purpling heap of paella grown insane and to titanic proportions. Our attacker snarled from deep inside, and bunching its sinuous length, uncoiled in a sprint directly for the marine assailant. The creature’s feet slammed straight past us, so close that I could have reached out to touch it (had I felt any such desire to do so). The leviathans embraced in a deadly whirl of teeth and tentacles.

Maxwell and I were shocked, to say the least, by this turn of events. So much so that we felt compelled to watch as they smashed into each other. We were even more shocked when the trees rustled again and we quivered in anticipation of some new threat. Our relief was profound when we realised it was Harvey. That relief faded immediately that we saw it was only a part of him. Just his head and first three segments staggered between the trunks and drunkenly weaved towards us. He took a few paces and fell to the sand, ichor gushing horribly from his abdomen. He died in my arms, his mandibles clacking feebly.

The two monsters thrashed away behind us, foaming the water and tearing great chunks from each other that arced over sea and spattered onto the beach like a rain of gore. This was a fantastic opportunity for zoologists such as ourselves to witness a miracle of nature, a contest of kings. Reluctantly I also acknowledged that this might be our best opportunity to cross the sea. I had little doubt that whichever giant survived the battle, its next meal would be us.

With this in mind I cracked open Harvey’s helmet-like head by jamming my knife into the crease by his left eye socket. The armour split smoothly and I parted sacs of insectile fluids until I found what I was looking for. The soul-grub whimpered faintly as I cut it out of the gristly nest it lodged within. I patted it gently and folded it into a wax paper envelope. I bundled Maxwell (who did not entirely agree with my plan) into his case and tucked Harvey’s next incarnation in beside him. I unlaced my boots and placed them on the beach facing the sea. With a last fearful look at the raging titans I dove into the warm waters. Pushing my friends before me, I swam into the coming night.

The end.

Pulp Pirate 11

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Flash Cast 67 – Candy Shanks

Gaargh! Well how can I not approve of that episode title? Shanking for GB right now… And I’m at least a week behind with this, but then I’m more than a week behind listening to the pulpish marvels put forth by @SkinnerCo in their weekly FlashCast (never mind the endless stream of high quality pulp fiction shenanigans, cartoons and wonder). This FlashCast includes The Bloodsoaked Adventure (a dark tale of being hunted by an armada and beasts in the fog) and another remarkably dark Bothersome Thing from Jeff Lynch.

Listen to it now: 

http://flashpulp.com/
http://skinner.libsyn.com/rss
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/flash-pulp/id367726315

End of Line

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Benzoate was the eight clone of an eighth clone. That is to say he had a proud and fine genetic heritage but those fabulous chromosomes were creaking quite badly by the time they took yet another piece and tossed it in his birthing dish. DNA is a tough little devil. It can take a lot, but it likes to mix and match. It doesn’t like being stamped out with a cookie cutter. The edges get worn and what should be a hand looks more like an ear. The natural copying and pasting process that takes place during sexual reproduction, for all of its faults and messiness does do the job. Sometimes though, that’s not an option.

Benzoate was the lucky recipient of those eighth hand genes. He couldn’t really complain though – it was either these genes or nothing. There wasn’t much diversity to go around these days. He stumbled up the road. His left foot dragged reluctantly, twisted in as it was, and sent a wake across the puddles. The streets would have been busier had the local industry not crashed and burned ten years ago. The decade-long depression that followed had chased anyone of real worth off-world and only the losers and defects were left.

The streets were filled with dust and disappointment. His footsteps stirred them only a little. Benzoate hadn’t worked for more than a week for two years and survived on the same repro-handout as everyone else. Food was bland but free, housing was free – no one could sell it so no one got kicked out. He coughed up a little more blood and spat it into the dust.

With little to do but hope for work Benzoate chose the only alternative. He ambled into The Pig of Nine Tails and was greeted by a boisterous chorus of “Benzie!” Benzoate nodded to the barman (a big Six named Mack, like all barmen) and walked the length of the room to the gang’s booth in the ill-lit murk. He slumped into a rickety chair. The booth was already tightly filled so he sat with his back to the bar.

“Benzie!” the bellower was penned in by the other eleven men and women who clutched their drinks and raised them in mocking salute. Mamalex, the bellower continued, ”Benzie. Bad news dude – I hear they’ve retired your stock.” Benzoate wasn’t sure how he felt about this, so he poured a glass from the pitcher of deathly-looking ale in the middle of the table.

“Probably just as well Mam, they don’t make us like they used to.”

The ancient gag cracked up the gang and Benzoate received a flurry of slaps on the back which did nothing for his loosening cough. Mamalex continued to shout at his default volume, even though they were the bar’s only customers:

“End of the line Mack – another pitcher for end of the line.”

“And who’s paying for this one?” came the even response.

“I’ll pay,” volunteered Benzoate, “man should pay for his own funeral right?”

“Aw, don’t take it so hard Benzie,” squealed Saratogen, her huge eyes almost lighting up the back of the alcove, “they never worked no line like yours.”

“Yeah, who ever heard of an Eight? Even Caromex only went to Seven.”

“And that twice!” chipped in Hyparomine.

“I heard the repro docs got drunk and forgot which tube went in which centrifuge.” Loradatune broke down in a fit of giggles and snorts.

“No, no. I heard of one other eight,” said Mamalex, “long time ago.”

“Ah, hush your nonsense,” laughed Hyparomine. Mamalex ignored him and with expansive arms reached out and drew in his audience.

“Way back when, in the early years – back when folks forgot how to breed and started cloning their kids, there was another man: end of line. They’d pushed his genes, copied ‘em, spliced ‘em for as long as they could. Them genes didn’t want to live no more; couldn’t take it. But they did it again. One last time. They needed him you see – there was something special about him, in his blood was magic.”

“Magic? Geez Mamalex, pull the other one.”

“Not magic-wizard-magic. Magic. Whose blood you think you got?”

“What?”

“This guy’s blood – this Eight. They’d bred him for the secret of his blood. He had the type to beat all the other bloods. The ultimate neutral, taken by anyone. So they pushed the line till they got what they needed – got what we all needed. Because sometimes, when you get to the end of the strands… something special happens.”

“And that’s why they’ve pushed Benzie?” asked Saratogen, her eyes lighting on Benzoate as he twitched gently.

“Sure – along with the intensified genetic illnesses, predisposition to muscular weakness, joint pain and early death. They get through us faster these days,“ continued Mamalex, “there’s miracles in the genome waiting to be seen – super-powers, if you like.”

The table was crowded round, intent on the possibilities in Mamalex’s tale.

“Psychic powers”

“Flying”

“The secrets of immortality,” breathed Mamalex.

There was a thud as Benzoate’s head hit the table, and he slid off his stool.

“Well, maybe not for Benzie. End of line Mack! Another pitcher!”