So, I'm a writer now

[Vendetta21]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Missed you TRD I remember having good posting times with you

[hi19hi19]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Whoa. Blast from the past.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

This place is pretty quiet. Can't deny I was hoping for a few comments. Here, have the first bit of the newest story I'm working on:

The Rob-Inn

Intrepid explorer and all-around ace reporter, Clive King, sat hunched up in a small two-person lifeboat with his arms wrapped as tightly as his wet hands could muster around his only surviving suitcase. The other two, the lost ones as they would be forever known, were floating somewhere in the North Atlantic ocean to the north of Northern Ireland.

He wasn't even certain what supplies had survived, for the tags attached to each bag had washed away leaving the surviving bag nondescript, completely interchangeable with any other black medium sized bag. He silently rued his decision to purchase the set of three 'smart, modern luggage case (colour: Black)' for a reduced price compared to buying them individually. Perhaps if they had been of different sizes then it would be fine, he'd turn around and say oh of course, it's the small one with undies, socks, and pyjamas, but that foresight didn't occur to him at the time, only the price, which had temptingly persuaded him with its slashed out retail price and the large font, 'eighty percent off', emblazoned in no less than three places.

The faint outline of a coastal region that belonged to Inishtrahull Island could be seen to the north, and it was this land that the two men in the row-boat were heading slowly towards.

The man at the bow of the boat was rowing methodically while humming an old sea-shanty that sounded unusually complicated, changing pitch and tone and even time signature, switching from a rowdy four-four in the verses to a six-four chorus that sounded forlorn and desperate, bridged with a twelve-four section that required the man to purse his lips and sound out a few bilabial clicks as if greedily adjusting false dentures. Clive had to admit to himself that the man was pretty talented.

The boat was leaking. This seemed to bother Clive a lot more than the rowing man, which perplexed Clive for he rather felt he was showing the correct amount of worry for a leaking boat in the middle of the ocean with nothing but a faint coastline for company. The man would stop after every ten or so paces, shake off the water from the paddle, and use it to scoop some of the water overboard, never missing a beat in the song he sang within his head. Clive, trying to continue showing an air of confidence and calmness, was wrenching his fingers together against the side of his suitcase, fighting the urge to scoop fingers into water and try somehow to funnel it back into the sea.

The man began adding the most curious lyrics to his song, singing about the perils of sinking and the need to lighten their load. Clive's brain caught up with his ears as the man repeated his statement, spoken in measured tones without an ounce of trepidation, “Boat's gonna sink.”

“Excuse me?” Clive said, prodding a finger in his ear to squelch out water, merely resulting in adding more moisture to the mostly-dry lobe.

“Said boat's gonna sink. Too heavy. Water's gettin' in,” and the man returned to his humming as he continued rowing nonchalantly. He was the very visage of a captain going down with his ship, dignified and calm to the end.

Clive was not, expressed in a voice of growing concern: “We have to do something.” He stood, pushing on the heavy suitcase and holding onto the top handle for balance and support, “I mean we're pretty close, must be something we can do?” The boat sank a few inches, water rising up to the rowing man's knees as Clive tried to inch himself taller than his five feet and five inches frame would allow, craning his neck to see if he could find a quicker, leaner route to land.

“Come on, man,” Clive urged with panic, “row! Get rid of the water, paddle it out, paddle it.”

“No point,” the man shrugged and hummed a few seconds before speaking again, “too heavy. Water's gettin' in quick'r than I can remove it.”

“Well look at us, we're no sofa snugglers that's for sure, why you're practically a rake. If you weren't wearing clothes I could probably use that paddle to play music on your ribcage. And me, well I diet, I work out and walk four miles a day, I look after myself. So I don't see how we're so heavy you can't get us safely to land, I mean that's your job after-all, so you're doing a pretty poor job right now and you need to correct that. Where's your sense of pride, man? Come on now, think, there must be something we can do to lighten the load?”

The man stared up at Clive then down to Clive's hands, up, then down, before returning to his rhythmic rowing.

Clive stared down at the man, then to his hands, back to the man then around to his hands again. It dawned on him but Clive was not one to let a little stupidity hold him back.

“Why of course,” he said loudly with a finger pointed skyward, quickly returned to the suitcase as he nearly lost his balance, “don't fear, old man, ace reporter Clive King is on the case. Quite literally this time,” and he allowed himself a nervous chuckle at his witty repartee. “Just let me have a quick check first to see if there's anything important I might want to salvage.”

The suitcase was opened with a shaky hand as Clive plunged his arm within. After a few seconds of clinking and clacking he made a triumphant noise of success, “Jackpot,” he exclaimed as he pulled out a full bottle of Jack Daniels whisky and held it aloft as if it were a prize from a football cup final, “it is my lucky day,” he surveyed the vast expanse of water all around him, “well, almost.”

Feeling like Captain Clive, Pirate King and all around roguishly lovable scallywag, Clive placed one foot atop the suitcase as his hands worked together to prise the cap off the bottle. “A toast,” he cried to his long-suffering yet faithful steward, who he had named Finchley in honour of his newly born piratical leanings, “to new adventures.”

Clive kicked at the bag as he took a swig of alcohol, a multi-task too far as his standing foot slipped from under him and he toppled backwards. The bag splashed over one side with a thunderous bang as Clive fell over the other, his glugs of satisfaction changing into a splattered scream as the whisky splashed over his face on his journey seaward, hitting the water with a rather less vociferous splash than the bag had managed.

A few seconds passed before Clive resurfaced, spitting out salty water that had mingled with the whisky stuck in his throat. He scanned around for the boat, saw it about a metre away as the man carried on rowing as if nothing had happened. “Hey,” Clive spluttered between accidental helpings of briny water, “wait! I've fallen over, wait for me.”

He kicked his legs and thrashed his arms and concocted a kind of twist on the classic doggy-paddle that managed to propel him at a marginally faster pace than the boat was managing, reaching it after a minute or two, pulling himself back on board and lying cowering with his knees up to his stomach, for there was not enough room to stretch his body out, as he gasped in fresh air.

“Why didn't you stop?” Clive said between hiccuped wheezes.

“Boat's sinkin', no time to stop.”

Clive paused in silence for a second. “I guess you've got a point,” he said, “good thinking there. We're going to need all our ingenuity when it comes to infiltrating this mysterious island. Who knows what dangers will lurk within the shrubbery.”

“Uh-huh,” the man replied without really listening, rowing onward, the waves kindly lapping in the direction they were headed, soon to dump them ashore on a golden, untouched beach.

Feeling a little less nauseated, Clive managed to shuffle to his knees, then up on to his bottom with a squelch. His skin was sodden, soaked completely through his t-shirt, jeans and trainers. He looked to the sunny sky and heaved a sigh, “Thank god for Irish weather. Reliable. I'll be dry in no time.”

The rain started but a minute later, dark clouds covering the sun to blanket the ocean with a darker tint of blue, reminiscent of a silken blindfold being wrapped around your eyes.

Clive didn't even bother to cover his head, simply looked forward at the ever-rowing man, sighed, and said, “I wish I had a drink right about now.”

When the boat was a few metres shy of the beach, Finchley (for Clive had still not enquired on his name, not that it would have been proffered had the question been asked) jumped out, his legs sinking into the water up to his knees, and looked expectantly at Clive.

“I was thinking you would take us to shore?” Clive said in response to the man's ten-yard stare, which didn't falter for a second, “well yes, I guess you have a point. I am already wet here, what's a bit more water.” Clive hopped out the left side of the boat and his body sank, kept sinking past knees and thighs and stomach and caught his mouth unawares as it tried to grab some air, swallowed water, flung his hands and legs upwards and managed to surface. His hands grasped at the boat and hung on for dear life.

“That side's deep,” the man said as if Clive should have known that already.

“Yes. I found that out, quite skilled recovery skills though, wouldn't you say?” Clive continued hanging to the boat, “but perhaps a few more seconds recuperation? If you don't mind, maybe just drag me up there, it's only a few feet. I fear my strength is sapped and if I let go I might just sink into this damnable ocean. You wouldn't want a drowned man on your conscious?”

The man did not seem like the kind of man who cared about a drowned man upon his conscious. Quite the opposite in fact, and his stare implied that he would be more likely to be the one doing the head holding than the one drinking water into his lungs; Clive shivered, unsure if it was attributable to the stare or the cold or the rain or the flicker in the corner of his eye that may or may not have been a fin.

“It's only a baskin' shark,” the man helpfully confirmed.

“A...shark?” Clive's eyes darted to and fro as he tried to locate the murderous beast with the razor-sharp fin that would no doubt carve his body in two if he continued loitering on the side of this lifeboat. “Well, I must thank you for the brief respite but I feel myself reinvigorated and suggest we move this boat sharpish.” Clive tried kicking his feet but was unable to generate any forward momentum. The man shrugged and tugged the boat the last few feet up to the shore, Clive followed, dragging his body up to the sandy shore and collapsing in a heap.

Peace descended upon Clive as he stared up at the rain, letting it wash away the pain burning in his lungs, wishing he could take a heavy breath and appreciate just how great life was when you were getting up to all sorts of adventures.

“Boat's gone,” the man said as if reporting the weather.

Clive sat upright, rivulets of water falling down his sides, brushing away an inquisitive crab who had been a few seconds away from going for Clive's cavern of an earlobe. He watched the boat floating away on the waves, sinking with every passing minute as water invaded. “Well, can't you just go get it?”

The wind picked up, enough to cause Clive's damp hair to blow upwards as if re-enacting a scene from a fifties Frankenstein movie. He tried futilely to push it back down, soaking his hand, then tried to wipe the wetness from his hand using his t-shirt, getting sand between his wet fingers; he gave up and shook his hand in the air, causing sand to blow into his eyes. He attempted to clean out his eyes with his clean hand.

“Boat's proper gone,” the man said as a loud crack echoed from afar.

Clive opened his eyes, sand be damned, and spied through blurry eyes the vague image of an upturned boat, cracked in two by an errant basking shark that had slammed into it without meaning to, both ends sinking into the ocean, momentary wooden buoys that failed to fulfil their purpose. They disappeared beneath the waves with a silent pop, bubbles floating on the surface.

“This is not a disaster,” Clive intoned, “this is not a disaster. We'll think of something.”

From behind Clive, a swish arced through the air. He had no time to turn and inspect its origins before a large thud echoed inside his skull. Strange, he thought for a second as the echoes failed to dim, turning instead into a white-hot heat that morphed into explosive pain that roared within his head.

He blacked out from the pain.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

My writing has been coming and going in fits and spurts. The Rob-Inn made it three chapters before I went back to another idea. That one lasted 12,000 words before I stopped.

I blame Sony. Stupid Sony giving me Isaac: Rebirth for free, then putting Persona 4 on sale. And Gravity Rush. And Demon Gaze. Basically every game I had on my wishlist. I had to give up sleeping, there was just too many games to play. Multiplying every day.

But I found time to write a story last week without stopping midway through to get distracted. Some of the content in it could be called 'sexual' but really, it's nothing you wouldn't hear in a teen-rated horror movie.

As always, comments or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Naked

Garden of Eden, circa 2000, two thousand years after God forgave the snake his – forever his, for she walks without shadow and casts not the first stone – indiscretions and decided to let bygones be bygones. What's an apple amongst friends after-all when it comes to the eternal suffering of humankind?

Following forgiveness, sin was enveloped and overturned. Scientists blamed global warming, even as their instruments malfunctioned and grew greener and grassier and sprouted flowers and shoots.

Maliciousness was curbed, malign provocation stomped and envy became youthful exuberance developed meaningfully into creative output.

Destruction was removed from all vocabulary. People around the world lined up to throw their woes into the fire of purification. Those who attempted to hide contraband were found and, well, the word doesn't exist anymore for what was done to them but it rhymes with suction and begins with a phonetically spoken d's.

First went weapons, then words and finally, after a considerable look into the fashion industry and the terribly horrendous bitchiness spewing forth from within, clothing that caused provocation amongst the loins.

Positivity reigned supreme within the cosmos, which was shrunk considerably and kept confined to a single galaxy, each humankind picked up and placed into their own garden, all situated on the earth and within close proximity to one another. Just don't expect to travel. Segregation is the order of the day and God doesn't take kindly to folks who mingle interracially, too much contamination within the gene pool and his eyesight isn't getting any better.

Humans were, of course, always messed up, evolutionarily speaking. Millennia of inbreeding since Adam beget Eve, ignoring Destiny, Chloe, Beatrice and Annabel, God's original foursome. Citing the following problems preventing his breeding amongst the group: An unappealing birth defect (joys of being crafted out of the funny bone, you end up looking like a joke), the wrong hair colour (hair dye not yet created, the simplest solutions often being overlooked), eyes too wide apart (that would later become the inspiration for the noble sloth), and irreconcilable differences (later to be used as a defence against unwinnable arguments).

These four rejected specimens would become God's right hand, left hand, righter hand, and lefter hand. Theologians would later mistakenly call them the horsemen – always men – of the apocalypse and give them snappy titles like Conquest and War, never quite realising that they all had the same title: Wrath, for what is worse than the combined wrath of four scorned women with an eternity to stew it over.

Two thousand years of reconstituted heavenly elbow grease doesn't always necessarily remove the stain etched within humanity's consciousness from millions of sweaty encounters. Hence, human perversion was overlooked and very much alive today, transformed by nature and forced to evolve as we all are want to do in times of deep desire and longing and incredibly repetitive boredom.

Enter Charlie Parker of One Provincial Cloud, a nice little residential lay-by up past the respectable shrubs lining Escher Street. Each street was the same, each shrub equidistant to the next, each house aligned exactly as preordained by the one true almighty saviour of the human race.

Charlie had a secret yearning that had been nagging at the back of his skull like some annoying subconscious itch, perpetually berating him with thoughts most wicked. His dreams were laced with their contents: Fashion shows from a forgotten city called Milan; Wet t-shirt contests; Slumber parties with college students in their nighties; Raves filled with colourful leggings and slashed costumes; Mafia-operated strip-joints, those classy affairs where women wore nipple tassels and themed teases.

Charlie would wake each morning drenched in sweat – though part blame could be given to the newly introduced climate control required as a by-product of having all life clothed in nothing but the skin they were born in – and sporting an uncomfortable protrusion between his legs.

Oh but of course his assigned partner, Susie Stoker formerly of Ebony Bough Lane until plucked from her family and given the task of being the female yin to Charlie's male yang, satisfied the physical malady with much enthusiasm. Her head would bob and he would shuffle convincingly and naturally things would take their course and she would gulp and he would sigh as if satisfied before returning the favour – God is not a complete misogynist after-all, merely believing in the natural order of things: Men came first and thus shall it always be – in equal measure until her lower parts spat a little watery gush upon his face and she sighed and they began the day afresh.

Thus finished, they would part ways to do their daily duties of prayer and worship for this exceptionally blessed existence.

Except Charlie would get looks. Mr Kline of number fourteen down the road would cast a sideways glance of derision as he worked on Patty’s bush from number sixteen. Patty's partner, Greg, watched on approvingly and occasionally offered some slight alterations to the fringed hedge that separated their houses, the hedge that Patty adored and spent hours debating with Mr Kline the local gardener and twice award-winning horticulturist.
Those men had been satisfied, such was their softness between the thighs. Charlie sported his dissatisfaction like a torch, burning hot and bright and sashaying left to right as he walked.

Ben, the baker of bread, would tut disapprovingly as Charlie came in for his morning doughnut, the same routine every day, the doughnut held down and forever trying to hide the protrusion that stood unceasingly erect. Women seated within the bakery would find themselves groaning or sighing uncontrollably as they spied Charlie, his hands having to bat away their attempts to alleviate him of his obvious yearning, their god-filled mind programmed with the knowledge that a man engorged required instant rectification.
At first he had relented, had allowed the women their run of him, reciprocated on one and all until the whole bakery smelled of satisfaction, leaving with his doughnut glazed and his bulge already returning to faithful straightness. But this needless distraction, that solved nothing for his problems, merely resulted in a rush to catch up with his daily routine, which had not waited around for his bakery boudoir episode to finish.

Returning home, Susie would be right-angling over the kitchen table as pots and pans bubbled away on top of the oven, her nakedness spread and pre-warmed for his arrival. Charlie would sigh, thrust until her vocal chords cracked, before dutifully conceding himself inside her to avoid displeasing her or the eternal overlord who had organised this little routine.

There were no garments to hide his shame as his protrusion grew forth during the night again, unsatisfied loins sheathed under splayed, shamed fingers.

A day like no other started when Charlie exited the bakery one cloudy morning – it was always cloudy, for positivity required a medium that will allow one to say the glass is half full rather than becoming complacent with a full glass that never empties – and spied a woman that caused his muscular instrument to swell most resplendently, for she brazenly wore a pair of lace white panties. She removed them, twirled them atop her index finger, then let them fall across her knuckles as she bid him to come over.

She led him down a dimly lit alleyway that felt discarded, a leftover piece from God's Grand Reimagining, her lace underwear held tantalisingly over her shoulder to guide him onwards. They entered a door, a room, up stairs that creaked and groaned as if alive with their every step, through a red-rimmed door monogrammed with runic symbols, subtle protection against celestial eyes.

He was led to a bench and bid to sit, obliging. The girl guide left and returned a few moments later with four girls in tow. They lined up before Charlie. He was transfixed by their heaving racks, bulging and delicately balanced, filled as they were to the brim with clothes. Each woman sported a single tattooed letter emblazoned onto their collarbone that matched their names as they introduced themselves.

In time, Charlie would get to know each woman most intimately, but on that first day he was allowed only one choice. Her name was Desi and she brought her rack into the room with them and pushed it into a walk-in wardrobe. Charlie had never seen a wardrobe before, had merely dreamed about their existence and believed he was insane to imagine such a contraption existed.

Standing there naked before him, Desi did the unthinkable and began choosing articles of clothing. Charlie could not believe what he was seeing, that such an innocent looking woman could be so perverse, but he was freshly astounded as the woman flashed him a generous pair of underwear that she slipped into, the fabric covering all of her rear and front, leaving no slice of skin to sight. Charlie was panting heavily now as his dreams turned into reality before him and he felt his protuberance clamouring for more.

Desi obliged, selecting a flattering brassier from a shelf and expertly sheathing her bosom within, covering everything, even the line that bisected her breasts. Why to look at her now you wouldn't even know she was a woman, such was the coverage, and Charlie was trying to mentally control himself, feeling like a child let loose in the sea of satisfaction.

Desi was not finished, heading to the wardrobe and returning with a leather jacket taken off the rack. She seductively slipped one arm inside the sleeve, waved her naked hand from the exit hole before hiding it again. She slowly slid her other arm in, tantalising in her dreamlike movement, yet before he knew it she had done the impossible and shrugged her shoulders into the jacket, both arms fully elongated into the sleeves, and the piece de resistance: Zipped it up. He gasped, his breathing shallow now and filled with heavy longing.

They had passed the point of no return, he couldn't have stopped her now even if he had wanted to, such was her enjoyment of their taboo encounter, visible upon her brow that was glistening with the sweat of ecstasy. She followed the jacket with a surprise reveal of leather jeans that she thrust her legs into, one then two, quick jabs that Charlie felt reverberate up his legs and through his thighs. He gripped himself tightly in his hands. Now gloves, socks, shoes; she was really speeding up now, getting into it, enjoying the pleasurable torment she was inflicting upon her willing viewer.

Control lost, Charlie shuddered as his aching appendage released itself of his pent-up need, the gorgeous visage of this fully clothed woman before him. Shame followed quickly and he found himself blabbering for forgiveness. Desi walked to his side to put a gloved finger softly against his lips to shush his worries, a finger he couldn't help licking, if only to taste the sweetness of the course fabric upon his tongue, and before he knew it he was ready for round two. Desi was more than willing to let him play dress up and they spent the next two hours dressing each other and reaching plains of pleasure Charlie thought didn't exist.

Trixie and Clowy were strictly a twosome, Charlie was quick to learn, but their shows were filled with such debauchery that he often left feeling sexually invigorated, quickly returning home to satisfy Susie Stoker while the thoughts were fresh in his mind. He got so carried away after these sessions that Susie could barely reciprocate upon him the next morning once her legs had regained the blood-flow and the pins and needles had subsided.

Trixie and Clowy excelled in the visual tease. They would begin as we all do, naked, with an array of costumes ready to be used. Charlie would have the honour of choosing his restraints, leaping between options from session to session: Soft silken scarf one day; Harsh coarse nylon leggings on another. Tied to a chair, he would be helpless as they giggled and fake-bickered between themselves on what to choose.

This one? Trixie would muse questioningly to Clowy, holding it against her bare skin, Charlie holding back a groan imagining how those clothes felt against her skin, how they would look when worn, how her shape would change to accommodate the fabric.

No, no! A shake of Clowy's head as she grabbed the garment, tossed it aside, and picked another piece of clothing to hold against Trixie. Much better, indicated by a silent nod of her head and a corresponding smile from her partner.

They would dress slowly, often changing their mind and taking it off again, constantly teasing Charlie's sight by keeping him guessing as to which parts of their body would be clothed next, his mind in sensory overdrive. They would 'accidentally' get in each other's way, the naked one cruelly hiding the clothed one's visage from view as they argued over the proper accessories to match the dress being worn.

If he was lucky, Charlie would get a pay-off for all this teasing. The girls would acknowledge his existence as if he were a passer-by, oh excuse me kind sir, and they would teeter over to him on glorious heeled shoes that let the toes breathe – as alluring as having the nipple on a breast be barely covered, clothed to the minimum level of arousal – and they would request his opinion on this outfit or that. They would once more 'accidentally' brush their bra or their coattail against his face, apologising mock profusely at their illegal gesture, before letting an unhooked bra or a wrongly held glove fall into his lap and causing him to erupt all over it.

Those courtesans knew no limits of depravity. They would scoop up the afflicted accoutrement and put it back on, wearing it around the room and acting as if nothing untoward had occurred, his prior emission dripping down between hemlines, drying into dresses, seeping onto socks. It drove him insane with lust, instantly getting a rise again no-matter how little time had passed since he had previously lost himself.

Annie was perhaps the most captivating of all the women on offer. She excelled in the ancient art of spoken seduction. Unlike Susie Stoker, the bakery broads and their ilk, who spoke nakedly and with full transparency, Annie veiled her words in subtle illusions, never quite giving away her true intentions and leaving Charlie with quickened palpitations. She would merely imply and insinuate, through clothed lips draped in ruby red lipstick, leaving Charlie to figure out the rest, giving his mind a workout that he had never before felt in his life.

Lying naked – Annie's act needing no clothes to satisfy – together on the bed, Annie would gently take Charlie's hand within hers and trace his finger down the nape of her neck, bidding him to imagine how it would feel if the necklace she described in graphic detail was to be upon her neck at this very moment, how it would feel, how Charlie would personally feel getting to touch her most intimate of clothing.

She would guide his hand south, her mouth moving so close to his ear he could hear the silent smack of the lipstick as her salivating lips caressed each other, a whispered secret amongst the closest of friends. Explicit instructions guided his hands over her chest that she said could be held within a bra of his choosing, so convincing that he found his brain being able to ignore the nipple and feel nothing but soft and smooth globes of rarest lace, right down to the indent between the stitching.

Only once did he manage to last through her full act without his body expressing its weakness. Even as she pressed the palm of his hand against her groin, bade him to imagine how the wetness would coalesce to one solitary spot against her panties, how it would seep through the silk and distort the material, how the clothing would visibly darken right before his very eyes; Seduction at its finest as she remained mundanely naked, for at no point did she clothe herself and make good on her promises of feeling the touch of forbidden renaissance lace pushed against his body, the caress of corduroy against his thigh, nor the fleeting imprint of linen trailing between his toes.

His visits hastened to the point of being a part of his daily routine, expunging the bakery in order to make time for his illicit activities. He wanted to quiz the women on how they managed to hide such brazen activities from the eyes of God but didn't want to embroil himself in such trivialities if it meant having less time watching them get dressed.

He did, however, once have the courage of asking where they got all the contraband clothes. All four women had the same answer: The owner, the one who had first led him to this place of merriment. Every visit since that fateful day he had failed to spot her again and he often wondered where she was.

Charlie was becoming completely enraptured by his clothed escapades and it came to a head when he stole from Desi. It was only a swimsuit he surmised, pink and frilly with a bow at one side of the underwear to tie it against your thigh.

He waited until Susie Stoker was asleep then slipped the swimsuit onto her. She would fidget but otherwise stay asleep and he could spend a few hours silently ravishing her clothed body.

When it came to their morning routine he found it impossible to enjoy Susie's bobbing head, her nakedness repulsing him in its visibility when it came to his turn, try as he might to imagine the clothes on her, that he was licking a nice fur-lined pair of underwear, but it just wasn't the same and he was finding it increasingly difficult to fake his enjoyment of mundane nakedness.

The building occupied by the four ladies of infinite pleasures was closed when he went around that morning. He banged against the door until his knuckles began to bleed, was found slumped on the ground as Desi appeared at the door. He stood and begged to be allowed inside. She just shook her head from side to side. She didn't have to say anything more, he knew from her condemning stare, you stole from me.

Charlie felt as if he had been kicked from the gates of heaven itself, even though he was technically living in heaven, it was not the heaven he dreamed of every night with nightwear wearing women pillow fighting in their pyjamas and headbands. He grew reckless and demanded that Susie put on the swimsuit for him to enjoy. When she saw his contraband, she screamed and ran tearfully from the room. When he returned from daily worship he found the door to his house locked, the key he owned no longer working. On the doorstep was the swimsuit and a note: You're sick.

Mr Kline, Patty, and Greg all watched his slow walk away from the house, tutting disgustedly at what he held between his fingers. The bakery was closed for him and him alone, the women who grouped within being satisfied by others now, no longer reacting passionately as he walked by the window. He was shunned from the town, found himself wandering aimlessly.

Days passed. He tossed the swimsuit away once he accepted that it would not be worn, every woman he offered it to either turning a blind eye or physically deriding him. He begged for forgiveness from anyone who would listen but his hands were stained with clothes and those who came near could smell them on his fingers.

All was lost and he had given up hope until one day, as if by deja vu, the woman with the underwear appeared at his side. He had been sleeping and awoke within her shadow. She was smiling down on him. Curiously, everyone was walking by on their normal routines, giving not even the most cursory of glances at this law-breaking woman with the bright white underwear. She turned and began walking slowly away, right through crowds of oblivious people. Charlie followed, crawling up from his knees to hurry at her heels, pushing people aside to keep up and ignoring their angry insults.

They arrived back at that fateful door, the door that led to his darkest of dreams, and they ascended the stairs and went through the runic door-frame, except this time the woman kept walking and Charlie kept following, onwards through a set of sliding doors that led into an office drenched in white: White walls, white desk, white floor, even a white chair. The woman sat herself down into a comfortable oak-white chair and requested he sit opposite her.

She stared out the solitary window. Do you know why it's always cloudy? She asked.

Charlie shook his head.

Because positivity needs there to be the hope of something better. You will never feel happy if you always get what you want and don't have a counterpoint. If you always had clothes, would you get the same reaction from your body seeing them on someone or would you suddenly want everyone to be naked? Happiness is a feeling of betterment. It doesn't exist without sadness. Do you understand?

Charlie still looked perplexed.

The woman sighed. I'm beginning to think that snake had a point, allowing a bit of leg-room for people to experiment. This whole routine business is getting dull, and seeing people like you makes it all the more obvious that I made a mistake along the line. I want some excitement, and as she spoke those words she flicked her arms out and the white walls flashed a most brilliant orange for a few seconds. Listen, Charlie, you've got the right idea. Best to get a bit of a difference every now and then, but you need to centre it around a happy medium. If the glass was always full you'd expect it to be full, which just doesn't work. We can't always have everything, it ruins the moments.

Charlie was beginning to understand.

I've spoken to Desi and she understands that sometimes our desires get the better of us. If you return her outfit she will forgive you. And please, return to your partner. Don't worry, I've had the situation explained to her, all is forgiven. Be a good partner to her, whether you want to or not, and I'll make sure you get a bit of happiness every now and then.

Charlie smiled and nodded.

Good. But before you go. I have a very important meeting planned, lots of changes on the horizon, and I only have a thousand years to prepare. I'll need to try on a lot of clothes to ensure I get that perfect everlasting moment that'll have the people talking about me again. Can you help me pick out a nice outfit?

And Charlie was happy.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

So how's everyone been? Still no comments! But hey, from the views I hope at least some of you are enjoying what I'm putting down.

I've been pretty scatter-brained the last few months. I now have four different projects in various stages of progress.

Project 1 - currently 13,000 words - I don't even know what genre this one is, horror? The protagonist is me as an alcoholic racist, taking a holiday that goes awry when a mysterious release from the middle of the earth turns everyone into berserk, homicidal killers. Not sure why I stopped.

Project 2 - currently 10,000 words - I gave a sample of this one a couple of posts above, 'The Rob-Inn'. It started driving me mad when trying to figure out how I wanted to portray the duality of the book. I don't even know how to really explain what I mean by that, either.

Project 3 - currently 27,000 words - An erotic yet depressing mystery thriller about a woman who is telling her true life story to a journalist (think Interview With A Vampire, except not a vampire).

Project 4 - currently 15,000 words - It's a B-Horror story. A former-bouncer with one leg takes on a psychopathic Santa Claus and causes a ripple-effect that's going to end the world.


Story time:
I spent two months talking to a literary agent regarding one of my completed novels. By the time I ended our conversations last week, he ended up reminding me of Jekyll and Hyde.

He kept wanting me to explain the big mystery from the start, even when I told him that the whole point was that there was a big reveal at the end that made you question everything you had read.

He would call me at work and complain when I told him I was at work and was busy, shouted at me for sending him samples in the morning if I couldn't talk until the evening. Then he'd apologise and tell me it was fine and he would speak to me whenever I wanted.

After two revisions where I tried to yield to his demands and it wasn't good enough, I refused to change it more and emailed him an 'It's not you, it's me' email to end it. Suddenly he was telling me I had talent and he wanted to work with me. Which was great. His emails became friendly and it seemed like it would work. I went off on holiday to Disney World for two weeks at the end of February on the agreement that we would talk when I got back.

When I got back, I replied to his emails, telling him we could talk the following day because I was still jet-lagged. He called me thirty minutes after I sent the email, attacking me straight from the start. Told me my emails were unprofessional, my writing sample was horrible, and he was an agent not an editor and I couldn't expect him to edit it all for me (I had never asked him to edit a single thing). I had to cut him off after ten minutes of ranting and tell him I was done speaking with him.

The next morning I had an email from him, telling me I had talent and his door was always open if I wanted to send him any more stories for comments...



And a query for the artistically talented out there:
At the moment, I've designed all my book covers, but I'm not artistic. Would anyone be interested in working with me in designing a book cover for future books? Or even have a stab at improving my previous book covers (which wouldn't be difficult).

I can't offer money, because my books aren't selling until I get an agent and get a publisher to give me a minute of their time, but how about this: If I accept your cover, you can get a physical copy of the book when it's finished, paid for and shipped by me, signed too if you want. You'd also get a written copyright credit in the book as the cover designer.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

I've finished the first draft of the first five chapters for Project 4, which I'm calling Saint's Alive. I'm happy with how it's going, definitely a fun story to write.

Main problem is the front/back cover. I have a design in my head but I don't think I'm good enough to create it myself. If this thread continues to be my personal blog, I'll try venturing over to the art section, sticking a request thread there and seeing if it gets any responses.

I'll post an excerpt at some point in the coming weeks once I'm happy with it.

[Tibs]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Hi TRD I saw Judas Priest or Dream Theater with you and I can't remember which.

<3 How are you?

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Woah, hey. Never expected to see or speak with you again man, especially when your mobile number stopped working for me. What have you been up to these last few years?

I'm great, as you can see I have this awesome thread where I get to talk to myself, it's pretty sweet. But yeah, in all seriousness I'm good. Still with Krissy, still gigging (festival later this year will get me over 100 bands seen live) and took up writing as a hobby.

And it was Dream Theater in London during their Progressive Nation 2009 tour. Judas Priest was earlier that year and I saw them here in Belfast. You probably saw them somewhere in England. I'd always be up for meeting for a future gig.

They actually did another Prog Nation last year, at sea. No Dream Theater but it was organised by Mike Portnoy after he had been kicked out of the band. It was probably the best gig/festival I've ever been to.

[Tibs]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

MOTHERFUCK, brb PMing you my new number.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Makes all this coming back worthwhile.


Also, first chapter of Saint's Alive.

One

It was Christmas Eve 2014 and all through the night, creatures of innocence were sleeping soundly in their beds.

For proper debauchery, you needed only to go down to the Golden Mile, for this was where the true fun was to be had on a rainy Wednesday night in Belfast.

Of course you still had other options: Cathedral Quarter, City Centre, the area around Queen's University, innumerable side alley pubs and various other outlets including off-licences – Belfast was, if nothing else, truly resolute in having the highest alcohol availability per capita in the United Kingdom – but the Golden Mile was the original Mecca of Belfast connoisseurs.

Unfortunately this Mecca, much like the real-life counterpart, had gone downhill in recent years, overrun by those who didn't understand the history and tradition steeped within its dirty gravel paths. The Golden Mile had been warped from a great bunch of pubs to crawl through with your mates into the modern day equivalent of New York's sewer system: Simply put, it was overflowing with shit.

Walk the Mile today, especially around a Saturday night, and thank your lucky stars if you don't have to sidestep a puddle of vomit, a passed out student, or ignore a loud-mouthed guy slurring his love speech to a girl he's clumsily groping against the side of a building.

Outside the M-Club for example, a large building with multi-coloured panels that flashed erratically, attracting zombified drunken students with promises of cheap alcohol and cheaper company, you could spy on any given night a group of half-clothed people shivering away together: Muscled males and frilly-skirted females, their pale Irish skin given an icy-blue pallor by the chilly wind.

Next door to M-Club was Benedict's Bar. Bookies wouldn't acknowledge you if you asked what the odds on someone getting chucked out of there would be, such was the certainty. Opposite, Lavery's was a three-floor establishment catering to age discrimination: First floor for fifties plus only, second floor enticing the young crowd, and the top floor for fathers and sons with friendly staff, a jukebox, pool tables, and food served until nine in the evening.

Further North or South of these establishments lay more identikit pubs, long since losing their unique identity, all serving the same tried and tested formulas: Guinness, Heineken, Tennents.

On this particular night, a small film of snow was dropping from the sky, just enough to lay on the ground without washing away should it rain. It was picturesque, so long as you ignored the people, which was impossible.

Lyle Hill was working the door at Lavery's that night, alongside Greg. It was an easy job, very little aggravation. The most he'd had to do so far was turn away a group of youngish looking guys, even though they flashed their passports and stood there with angst written all over their faces.

Truth was, he knew they were of age, even knew one of the lad's fathers (though the lad didn't know him), but the pub was nearing maximum capacity and management would bust his balls if he let these guys in.

It was an unwritten rule: When near full, get girls in who can pull. The logic was that girls would attract the attentions of all within, possibly get a few drinks bought for them, bringing in a bit of quick cash, before some guy pulled her to take her off for a quick one night stand in his student accommodation or parents' free household.

Tom, another bouncer who did the rounds on the Golden Mile bars, played Devil's advocate in asking why bringing more guys in wouldn't be just as lucrative, surely they'd stay there getting pissed and buying up the bar? No response from management.

The general belief was that it was probably made up by a frisky barman as an excuse to bring in more eye-candy for him to look at, and who can blame a guy for wanting a nice view during a ten-hour shift?

As he did every time Lyle worked the door, Makeshift Mutu – so named as he resembled a botched surgery version of Adrian Mutu, the Romanian footballer – shuffled up, shaking away at a plastic cup that he held outstretched under the doormen's noses.

“Big Issue?” The Romanian refugee declared, “Big Issue.” The stack of magazines he was trying to flog were still back at his post, gathering snow as they perched in a haphazard pile against an upturned pallet no-doubt stolen from a Tesco delivery truck. “Big Issue?” The cup shook noisily as the one or two pennies within clattered against the sides.

“Not today, thanks mate,” Greg said, “maybe tomorrow.”

“Big Issue!”

Feeling generous, Lyle reached into his pocket and pulled out a few loose coins, no more than fifty pence in tens and fives. “Here, mate,” he said, “get yourself a cup of tea or something.”

“Big Issue!” The Romanian said with a smile on his face before walking further down the street and shaking his cup at anyone within reach. He shook it at the wrong person, Lyle saw, watching on as a man, walking hand-in-hand with a woman, was accosted, responding by smacking the cup away into the air, the noise of coins falling muted as they hit the snow.

Lyle shook his head at the scene. “What a prick.”

“Can't deny he deserves it,” Greg replied off to his right, “shouldn't be over here in the first place. Doesn't even have the decency to learn English, just goes around saying Big Issue, Big Issue to whoever listens, like we're going to read that shite.”

“Isn't Romania war-torn or something?” Lyle mused, “you telling me you wouldn't get out of Belfast if the troubles came back?”

“Fuck no, I'd be front of the line fighting them back, I'm no runaway ponce.”

A taxi pulled up and a young woman started getting out of the back, drawing the bouncer's attentions away from the Romanian with the bad luck.

“Look see,” Greg said, perhaps a little too loud to be appropriate, “we've got ourselves a Cross-Eyed Mary if ever I saw one.” It was one of their inside jokes, based on the Jethro Tull song about a schoolgirl prostitute.

Lyle eyed her up: Hair tied-up into a tight ponytail, three layers of make-up, near transparent black tight-fitting low-cut top from River Island that wouldn't have been amiss on a thirteen year old, – no bra underneath, nipples like beacons – red pencil skirt that cut off way above the knees, cramped looking black heels with six inches of height; Greg had a point.

Two other girls scrambled from the taxi, each one more provocatively dressed than the last, the one getting out of the front shouting her thanks to the taxi, the slur of a few pre-party shots evident in her voice.

“Well fuck, we got ourselves a whole harem of Mary's here,” Greg was laughing, “think fast Lyle, here they come.”

The girls beelined their way to Lavery's entrance, only stopping as the imposing figures of Lyle and Greg came into their intoxicated view and Greg put an arm across the door.

“Need to see some I.D. Ladies,” Greg requested.

“Oh, hey there big fellas,” the obvious ringleader of the girls garbled, the one who had left the taxi first, attempting to sound sexy but failing miserably, the other two pawing at their skin in parallel failed attempts to look ravishing. The ringleader opened her purse and mocked her way through looking for identification, coming up empty. “Oopsie,” she said, hiccuping after she spoke the word, one of her friends laughing garishly at the sound, “I appear to have misplaced my identification...I don't suppose I could be let in anyway? We'd be so appreciative,” the last word coming out as appreshituf.

“No can do, I'm afraid,” Lyle said, “no I.D. No entry.”

“Well, I suppose, for lovely ladies such as yourselves, we could let you in.” Greg winked to Lyle as he said the words, no subtlety required.

Lyle shook his head in dismay, knowing exactly what Greg was thinking. He activated his wingman mode, training his eyes over each girl in turn.

One was definitely too young, she had fifteen written all over her face. Lyle wouldn't be at all surprised to believe that the reason for their night out was because she had just turned fifteen. It was the eyes that gave it away, still full of innocence, a virgin drunk awash with those first mingling feelings you get within your stomach, that kind of acid smoothness only felt when alcohol settles inside you.

The other two were safer bets, especially the ringleader. Lyle sussed her as the older sister of Ms Fifteen over there, probably around eighteen, though cleavage was never a sure thing these days. Girls as young as thirteen could be seen walking around with an adult bust, make-up adding the years on. But there was no way she was below sixteen, so Greg would be fine.

Lyle gave a friendly pat on the shoulder of the ringleader, welcoming her in as he held a sly thumbs up behind his back to Greg.

“Here, let me help you up the stairs,” Greg said to the ringleader, “Lyle here will help your friends.”

Lyle ushered the other two girls upstairs, their heels click-clacking against the hard steps, listening out for the inevitable tumble that never came. Lyle had spent a fair number of nights in front of a paramedic, explaining what had happened as a broken-ankled woman was stretchered into an ambulance.

A few minutes passed without Greg returning. Lyle chuckled to himself, looks like he'd gotten lucky with her then. It was all too easy, really. He stared across at the M-Club, seeing the comings and goings of the student population in various levels of intoxication, wondering which of those would get up to something before heading home to their parents or dingy student flats around the University Quarter.

All he could think was thank god his daughter was too young for all of this, though she was creeping up fast, she'd be ten next June. He only hoped he could bring her up right, teach her to avoid places like the ones around here.

Too many parents tried outright banning drink but he knew that was the wrong approach. He'd make it fun, she could tell her friends how 'the old man' took her out for a few drinks. He'd teach her about drinking in moderation; the buzz was where it was at, not the blackout.

He went back and forth on whether or not to tell her the sobering tale of his alcohol addiction, that the only reason he believed in moderation now was because ten years of his life was nothing more than a blur, lost in a haze of alcohol-induced depression.

It was Karen's fucking fault. No, he shook his head, he'd not spent years in recovery learning to accept the blame just to throw it back in her face. Sure, they had been in frequent fights, the whole relationship had been one giant on-off will-they-won't-they saga, but it wasn't her fault. She'd done everything she could to stick with him through the rocky years and who could blame her for deciding enough was enough.

Breaking point had been Christmas 2010. Such a stupid argument: Lyle had wanted red baubles on a real green tree but Karen wanted a more modern black tree with white LED lights. He had got his way and they were decorating the tree when Karen let slip a complaint, something about red and white being cliché these days.

He'd been drinking all morning and the comment riled him up to no end. He had grabbed the tree and screamed “fine then, have it your way”, tore the tree down and tossed it across the living room, started pulling red baubles from a cardboard supply box and smashing them under his feet.

Thank god Suzanne, his daughter, was at a friend's house at the time, her parents on talking terms with Lyle and Karen from many a school run together.

Neighbours heard the commotion, thought someone was smashing glass and trying to break-in. The police arrived about thirty minutes later, at which point he and Karen were in separate rooms, Lyle on his third pint since the incident. Karen told the police it was all a misunderstanding, a fallen tree, a scared dog running around smashing up the decorations, and they left.

That was it for Karen. She'd grabbed a suitcase, packed away her things, and left a note. All Lyle heard of this was the door slamming shut. When he'd finally ventured out a little after midnight for a nightcap, he'd found the note taped to the fridge.

This isn't working out. I'll be with my sister until I can find a new place. I'll send someone round to grab the rest of my things. Lyle, please get help, you can't go on like this. I don't want Susie growing up without her father.

A commotion brought Lyle out of his thoughts. The Romanian was angrily arguing with a group of men, though the argument was pretty one sided with the Romanian's limited grasp of English stunting his ability to shout back.

A punch was thrown and the Romanian ended up on his back, blood pouring from a broken nose. The thug went in for another, straddling the Romanian and beginning to rain down punches, the Romanian already unconscious with eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Lyle rushed the group, shoving the punch-thrower off the Romanian and laying him out with a swift stomp in the solar plexus, winding him. The rest of the group weren't best pleased at his interrupting their fun and circled around him, throwing out taunts and insults.

This was trouble. Where was Greg? Had he really not finished with the girl after ten minutes? He swivelled left and right, trying to keep as many of the men in view at once. Four versus one, the odds weren't in his favour.

A punch hit him in the back of his head, he took it and swung his elbow back, felt it connect with someone's skull. Two rushed in with arms flailing. He smashed his head into one before the second grabbed hold around his waist, pinning his hands to his sides. They wrestled for a bit until he managed to pull a wrist free and swing a punch into the side of the guy's head, loosening his grip enough that he could sweep the guy's feet and watch as he fell sprawling to the ground.

A scream drew all their attentions, coming from a woman standing at the bus stop near the entrance to Lavery's. Lyle saw straight away why she was screaming: Greg stumbling out of the entrance with half his head caved in, blood pouring copiously out of the deep wound with part of his skull visible.

He ran to Greg's side, already faltering on his feet, landing heavily on one knee then slumping down face first. Lyle rolled him over onto his back and put his arms around his friend, tried to hold him up, but Greg was a big guy and right now he was nothing more than dead weight, so Lyle had no choice but to lower him to the ground and try to prop his back against the bus stop.

“What the fuck happened?” Lyle blared, “who did this?”

“Guy...” said Greg, still somehow conscious but finding it difficult to talk, spitting blood from his mouth between each word, “dressed...as Santa...” the words stopped as Greg's eyes dulled, the life fading from view.

“No!” Lyle screamed, “fuck no, this isn't happening, Greg, wake up mate!” But it was no use, Greg was gone, slumping sideways into the snow, his blood already beginning to stain the ground in increasing concentric circles.

He reached in his pocket for his phone to call an ambulance but it was hit out of his hand as a deluge of people began flooding from Lavery's, panicked screams mixing with the hard crunch of shoes on snow.

He was knocked to the ground and immediately on the receiving end of kicks from rushing people. He tried to crawl to safety as a pair of high heels used his face as a starting block, the heel scraping roughly off his cheek, another shoe kicking him squarely in the face before lurching onwards. A sharp pain bolted through his ankle as someone trod on him, the sound of cracking as a bone was put under immense strain.

With great effort, he managed to crawl over to the bus stop, take refuge behind the thin pane of reinforced glass and watch as people continued rushing out. Some of them were bleeding, others staggered out with broken arms cradled into their chest, a few individuals sporting grossly caved-in legs being dragged out by friends or crawling out themselves before collapsing in an exhausted heap wherever there was space, anywhere away from the stampeding procession.

A shrill shriek came from the entrance, an unlucky woman who was one of the last of those trying to escape, her hair grabbed by an unknown assailant with fingers covered in a thick black glove, pulled back beyond the view of the entrance.

There was a cut-off yelp from the woman before she came back into view, held at the nape of her neck by her attacker, pushed forward at full force until her face crunched into the wall, teeth snapping from her mouth as she was pulled back then slammed forcefully into the wall over and over, until her face began to disassemble, skull and flesh pulverised into a collage of mess.

The attacker let the woman slump dead to the ground, her face split open down the middle, before turning to face outside. Greg had been spot-on with his description, it was a madman dressed as Santa Claus. His belly was bulging, easily four hundred pounds of fat, with grossly oversized stumpy legs that rippled the costume as he took a step. He'd spared no expenses with clothing, this wasn't some cheap last-minute purchase from Elliott's Fancy Dress shop over on Ann Street, this was upmarket, custom-made clothing with fine stitching and expensive wool.

In one hand, the mad Santa held an overlong candy cane, the kind that resembled a colourful red and white hammer like you'd find in a cartoon held by a madcap villain, and an oversized cloth sack. Blood speckled the candy cane, with fresh wet blood dripping off the blunt end.

All around him, Lyle could hear people shouting into mobile phones, begging police to come and stop this psycho, describing the carnage in panicked details.

'My friend, oh shit oh shit, he's losing a lot of blood, his arm...fuck! He ripped his arm off!'

'Blood, blood everywhere, oh god please hurry, Santa's got some kind of axe.'

'My wife...oh god my wife, I can't find her, there's too many people, I can't find her anywhere.'

The man dressed as Santa stepped out, surveying the scene around him. Tiny golden bells on his suit jingled with every step. He spied a man leaning against the wall just to the side of Lavery's, clutching his chest as if having a heart attack. Santa's imposing shadow covered the man fully as he stood over him, Lyle could only see the back of the madman as he reached into his sack, humming a Christmas tune as he did so.

Santa pulled out a bowling ball and, for the first time, Lyle heard the loon speaking: “Ho ho ho, Christopher Kline of Locksley Gardens, Belfast, you've been a very naughty boy this year. If only poor Sophie knew about what you've been doing behind her back, for shame.”

The bowling ball was raised above Santa's head with ease, even though it looked to be one of the biggest bowling balls Lyle had ever seen, too big to appear practical, or would at least be banned from professional competitions for it was the kind of ball that could get you a strike simply by making it to the end of the bowling lane.

Christopher screamed, ended prematurely as the bowling ball was swung down and a loud crack of a shattered skull quickly melted into a soft squish as the bowling ball sunk deeper into the man, merging skull fragments, brain matter, muscle and flesh.

A woman howled from just down the street. “Chris!” She cried, “what have you done!” and she rushed towards the Santa with tears flowing.

Santa dropped his sack, gripped the candy cane hammer with both hands, and swivelled his hips as he swung the hammer into her approaching head. Her head was catapulted one hundred and eighty degrees around, with a thin spray of blood shooting up into the air from where the hammer connected just below her eye socket, neck snapping cleanly to see back on where she'd been, her body collapsing forward into the snow, lifeless eyes staring up at the stars in the sky, gone before she'd even hit the ground.

The mass panic continued, people running away in every direction, but Lyle was not one of them. Sitting beside Greg, he knew he couldn't run. His ankle was broken. He mustered all his strength and prepared for the inevitable.

Santa noticed him and smiled, showing two perfect rows of white teeth. He reached down and picked up the sack and waddled over to Lyle.

“Who do we have here,” Santa mused, rummaging through his sack. A confused look washed over his face as he came out of the sack empty-handed, “now this is unexpected.”

Santa reached into the sack again and came out with a scroll. He untied it at both ends and began reading, spools of paper reeling out over the snow, soaking up blood as the reading became more and more frenzied.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “here you are, Lyle Hill of Muskett Park. I see my error, I should have done you in last year, but that was a different time, a different life. Luckily for you, this year you haven't been a naughty boy, but be warned, return to wicked ways, this year or any year thereafter, and I'll be paying you a visit.”

Santa refolded the paper and shoved it back into his sack, which even though it had been filled with blood drippings, didn't drip anything onto the ground, meaning it was either made of incredibly thick material or there was a mountain of supplies inside it, enough to soak up blood without it reaching the bottom.

Lyle was left alone. Santa simply waddled off up the street, humming away to the tune of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

The sounds of police sirens were faint to his ears as he leaned against Greg, gasping raggedly for breath. They were coming from the wrong direction, from the city centre rather than from the Malone Road. He would need to tell them where Santa had gone, assist them in capturing that psycho.

He couldn't hold it in any longer, leaned away from his friend and vomited over the snow. His stomach was burning, empty and acid-fuelled and filled with the coppery taste of blood.

The ambulance would be here soon, Lyle held that thought in his head, it would be here soon. He allowed himself the safety of sleep, hoping to awaken and find that this was all somehow a dream.

[Arch0wl]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

interesting story. can't offer much in the way of useful feedback except that I liked the way you described people and the transition from two guys hanging in front of a bar to santa rampaging everything possibly wasn't as clear and big as you'd expect.

definitely not my genre though, but I'm glad you're writing anyway and wish you the best.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Cheers. Don't mind that you don't have much feedback, just appreciate the comments and always happy to have more people check out what I'm writing.

I didn't want the first rampage to be too big, just an unexpected surprise. There's bigger destruction in later chapters and even bigger planned for as of yet unwritten chapters, but I'll see if there's anything I can do about making it more clear.

And genre-wise, it branches out as the story unfolds. I'm trying to blend the absurd with realism by using two protagonists, Lyle and Cleary. Lyle gets the absurd side of things while Cleary is a police officer trying to solve everything like a normal police officer, his sections reading (I hope) like a crime-thriller.

What kind of genres do you usually read?

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

Forcing yourself to sit down and do something with the niggling thought in the back of your head that you're doing it for nothing is the biggest obstacle anyone can have to overcome. Be it changing your body, focusing your mind or honing your craft. Especially without feedback, never quite knowing if you're good enough or if you should just quit (or accept the middle ground of mediocrity).

For me, putting 60, 70, 100+ hours into a book is a draining process when there is the potential that only friends and family will ever read it. Same with the short stories (though they obviously take less time, Death Metal took about 4 hours).

I've always said I'm not in it for the money, just the fame and fortune and adoring stares of a nation. The movie adaptations and legendary status; Piddling little aims.

So I just want to take this moment to try to be positive. In the last 3 months I have sold 3 books on Amazon. To those 2 Americans (or Canadians? I'm not sure who exactly uses amazon.com) and 1 Australian, I thank you. All I hope is that you enjoyed the book.

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

I was feeling burned out so for the last couple of months I dropped all my projects and went back to what got me into writing: Sex.

Wrote a few short stories and published them under a pseudonym. I've also started rewriting my original unpublished story, which was a 400 page love letter to the Marquis De Sade. I'm going to tone it down and fix the poor writing (seriously, paragraphs that last entire pages) and probably publish that under the pseudonym too.

Under my own name I've started writing a new short story. I also designed a cover for my last story, Death Metal, and stuck it up on Amazon.



And on that note: From 29th -- 31st August Death Metal will be free to download. A sample of my writing for those who don't want to read an entire book or want to read it on the go. I would appreciate anyone posting the link on their facebook, twitter or other social media. I'd ideally want as many people as possible to check out my writing. I'd also appreciate anyone here downloading it and giving me feedback.

This is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Metal-Da...+david+m.+munn

[TheRapingDragon]

Re: So, I'm a writer now

So, this year hasn't been too productive so far. About the only thing I've finished is a sex guide under my pseudonym.

But yesterday I felt the desire to write something, anything. Started it in work and finished it today, just scribbled away until something came out. Would that be the right terminology? Similar to how an artist doodles, a writer scribbles?

Anyway, wrote a short story. Enjoy:

Tunnels & Tall Tales

In South Belfast there stands an innocuous looking tunnel. It is there to provide a shortcut away from the criss-crossing roads that weaved around the King’s Hall: A road-cum-bridge that stretched like a crescent moon and allowed safe travel north from one stretch of the Lisburn Road to another, a main road allowing the reverse journey, a path under the bridge that led to the Boucher Road and the stretch of road to the east past the Malone Presbyterian Church that took you to the Malone Road.

In truth the tunnel was defunct. There were sufficient footpaths that allowed you to bypass it in exchange for thirty extra seconds. A small price to pay for piece of mind, for you see, it was rare to see someone attempt the trek through the tunnel.

Day or night, standing at one end found you staring into an empty tube as if looking through a broken kaleidoscope. Even should you look to Google Maps for guidance, it would give you directions around the tunnel. Not even Google Maps dared advise you to enter.

The tunnel was roughly one hundred and fifty metres in length, smoothly rounded as a cylinder with both ends chopped off, made from granite and limestone with cement groundwork, with a cramped circumference that gave it a height of just under two metres; A parent would struggle to carry a young toddler atop their shoulders.

Snippets of sunlight tried to breach through but most failed thanks to the road-bridge that blocked the majority of the midday sun, leaving the centre of the tunnel shrouded in shadows throughout the day and in full darkness at night.

A bus had stalled beside the tunnel one day, filled with schoolchildren from the nearby Malone College. They had been heading for an activity day at a nearby squash court when the bus had popped a front tire and ground to a halt. Their teacher was outside, furiously gesticulating alongside the bus driver while talking into a phone.

Inside the bus, one girl seated roughly in the middle, though nearer the back than the front, had grabbed the attention of those around her seat. Her name was Jane and she was born for these moments, lapping up the attention as if she was on stage.

She had started by pointing at the tunnel and screaming. After being told to shut up by the teacher outside, who had yelled at her through an open window that people walking by could hear her, the girl had started talking about how it was the tunnel, that tunnel.

She was talking: “Let’s say you entered during the day, like poor Stacy Kemper. When you enter it, your shoes, regardless of material, will clack loudly against the ground. Doesn't matter if you're in heels, trainers, people have even tried taking off their shoes and walking in socks, but it'll just sound like someone's tap-dancing in there.

You can reach one end from the other in no more than a minute but it feels like a lifetime. Time doesn't work right in there, it's sucked away so a second drags on for a minute and a minute causes grey hairs.

If you try to keep walking, you’ll find your steps aligning with your heartbeat, both rapidly rising as you see the cloying tightness of the approaching shadows in the centre. Some of those shadows apparently appear to flicker or move but they say that's just your imagination and fear.

See how you can't see deep into it? When you hit the shadows in the centre, you’ll find it like walking in treacle. You’ll swear the shadows were playing with you, wisps of black swathing around your legs, your vision betrayed by flickers of movement at every corner, your body unsure of where to step next.

That’s when you’d hear it, a thundering crunch of descending rock, long before your eyes could adjust through the gloom, you'd barely get to catch sight of the sunlight evaporating behind a solid block of granite rock.

They say Stacy screamed when it happened to her and tried to run forwards, hoping to squeeze under the rock before it slammed shut, but she didn't make it. That's when she turned around and found the same sight awaiting behind, another rock door closing, trapping her in. Two directions with the same outcome. There’s nowhere to go and within seconds she was enveloped in pitch-black.

No doubt her panic was at fever-pitch as the shadows developed personalities of their own, dancing around her weeping body, pillorying her with their slight limbs and swallowing her fear like wine at a banquet.”

“What the fuck does pillar ying mean?” said one boy in a gossipy tone to a girl seated next to him.

“Open a book sometime,” was her reply, before she turned a cold shoulder to him and continued listening to the girl.

“Bitch,” he said, though quiet enough to go unheard.

“Don’t worry though,” Jane was saying, “she didn't have long being tormented before she started to hear it: drip-drip-drip. It started as a solitary drop, as if from a leaky faucet, but soon that faucet broke off and a torrent of water burst free. She could feel it around her ankles, her socks rapidly soaking as it rose higher and higher, bouncing ineffectually off the rocky walls at either end and simply rising in place.

Within seconds the water had risen to chest-height, then shoulder, neck, until she couldn't help but taste it, swallowing in a mixture of air and water and choking the water part back out. She tried to scream but the doors were soundproof so it was pointless.

She tried paddling for her life, just enough air left above her to keep gasping at. She probably thought she had a momentary reprieve to think of an escape plan but that was quickly dashed as she heard the hissing sound.”

“Snakes?” asked a girl.

“No,” replied Jane, “think lobster. She started to feel the encroaching heat of slowly boiling water, the point-blank ferociousness of a white-hot heat rising from below, as bubbles began rising to the top of the water. She couldn't see but the bubbles were popping all around her. She could feel them brushing against her face.”

“How do you know any of this when she was trapped inside?” asked a boy with an almost accusatory tone, “how can you have seen what happened?”

“Well,” replied Jane, “I can only presume how she felt but it doesn't change what happened,” and she ignored any follow-up questions so she could continue her story. “When the tunnel opened again after a few more seconds, it was empty. There may have been a hint of steam or a small puddle of water – nothing a Belfast weather reporter couldn’t easily justify – but there was no other evidence of her existence. She was gone, the perfect vanishing act that would make any magician jealous.

Of course the papers didn't report it. There was nothing to report, just another runaway girl who never came home. She probably got page sixteen of the Belfast Telegraph, then page thirty with a small plea from the parents, at most a five minute segment on The One Show. People quickly lose interest when there's no new news.”

“Bullshit,” cried out someone in the back of the bus, a boy’s voice, “how come no-ones ever seen the tunnels close? It’d be all over the news.”

“Simple,” said another girl in defence of Jane, “obviously it only happens when no-one else is around.”

“How would that even be possible?” said someone else in a nearby seat, a young girl with long blonde hair and a fashionable flower hair-tie pinning it all together.

“I've seen people walking through it all the time,” yelled someone nearer the front.

“By themselves?” asked Jane.

“Well, no,” he replied.

“Exactly,” said Jane triumphantly, “it's only when you're alone, that's when it gets you!”

“No, that bit is actually true,” said a boy nearer the front, his freckled face peering around the corner of his seat at the group that had assembled around the middle of the bus, “but it's not some stupid kind of horror story, that’s not true.”

“Fuck off, specky,” yelled a boy from the back. The bus burst into laughter.

“No, no,” said Jane, “let Phillip tell us, the truth is out there,” the phrase spoken so theatrically it could have been uttered to a skull held in the palm of your hand.

“I’m telling you,” continued Phillip undaunted, “it was built in the thirties, during the war. It was supposed to be like the German’s gas chambers. Any prisoners of war who got captured were going to be put in there and drowned. Except the rock doors are actually made of really fancy metal that closes silently and the whole thing is watched over by someone – or some team – who always have their finger on the button.”

Phillip believed he had succeeded in getting their attention, even those who disliked him were appearing to listen with rapt attention. Phillip was not a good judge of character.

“Once the war ended and the enemy never reached our shores, the military sold it to the government. They used it during the troubles to keep both sides at even numbers.

Once that petered out, parliament sold it to Bill Gates. He has someone assigned to the control panel twenty-four hours a day. They scan everyone who walks through it, check your search history, your browser preference, your operating system. Those who don’t run on Windows are the ones who get targeted.

When isolated, Bill gives the order and swoosh, down come the doors and up comes the water. It doesn’t stop, it continues until you’re drowning. The last thing you hear is the laughing voice of Bill Gates as he screams ‘Bet you wish you had windows now, don’t you!’”

Silence filled the bus for a few seconds, before a rock was thrown from the back and someone yelled, “Shove that up your windows you specky git.” The bus burst into a fresh round of laughter.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” cried Phillip, pouting now and choosing to return to his seat and stare out at the road rather than address them further.

“You're both wrong, though bits of it are right,” said a boy who was seated in the back corner of the bus, his mop of hair covering down to his eyes except for the few times he brushed it aside, where it stayed for a few seconds before falling back down. His name was Jack and he rarely spoke. When he did, it was words spoken softly, without timbre, yet those who listened often said that his words were wise beyond his years. If not for his love of swearing, he could almost have passed as the most mature of them all.

“What bits are right?” asked another boy.

“The tunnel does get dark,” said Jack, “it gets really fucking dark, and those shadows appear all the time, but they're not shadows, they're people.”

A couple of gasps came from around the bus, some laughter too.

“You mean ghosts?” said Jane, a finger nervously twirling her curly brown hair, “but they don't exist.” Her twirling intensified.

“Just up the road here,” said Jack, “is Musgrave House. They call it a private hospital but you fucking know what that means right?”

He paused, though it was clear he had no interest in hearing answers, he just wanted to ramp up the tension before he continued on.

“It means there's no reports when they do or don't fix you. Everything is on their own fucking books. Did none of you wonder why it's right next to Balmoral cemetery?”

A few people reactively lifted their feet, an old wives tale about avoiding the dead from grabbing you from their graves below always in the back of their mind.

“That's for the mistakes, the cemetery, that's where they put them after they've privately worked on them. You go in there with a leaky nose and instead they fill you with strange chemicals that knock you out and cause your hair to fall out and give you accelerated cancer.

That tunnel was one of their experimental chambers. That place is called Stockman's Lane, that's because back when it was built there was nothing but farmlands and sodding fields all about the roads”

“Then why did they build a tunnel?” asked someone who kept low in their seat, unidentifiable should they have asked a stupid question.

“For fuck sake,” said Jack, “for the sheep and cows and other animals the farmers took from field to field of course.” He swished his hair out of his face. “They don't know how to look left and right for traffic, even if cars could only travel ten miles an hour in those days, it'd still knock a cow on its hind legs in an instant.

So they built a tunnel to get from up there to down here and they called it Stockman's Tunnel. Musgrave House got wind of this and turned it into a medical facility. When the farmers walked through, the doors would close and they'd do all sorts of weird fucking things: Burning them and jabbing them with needles and watching the cows go insane and try to eat the farmers, shit like that.”

“That's so gross,” shouted a girl, “why would they do that?”

“For science,” replied Jack, “they were testing new medicines. Once Belfast got a bit too advanced, became a city, they thought the risk was too fucking high so they shut it all down.

It's just a tunnel now, but the murdered farmers and animals still roam up and down it late at night, thinking they're taking the animals to the new field when actually they're travelling to and from a cemetery.

When someone walks through when the ghosts are travelling, they think they're getting experimented on again. They go fucking nuts, grabbing you and clawing at your guts. If you can't get away in time then they completely rip you to shreds. The cows and pigs and sheep eat you up and shit you out and all that's left is some dirt in the tunnel that the sweeps clean away the next morning.”

“You're all idiots,” said a girl up near the front, “who believes in ghosts these days?”

“Makes more sense than a wartime defence system or medical experiment tunnel,” said Jack defensively.

The girl stood up and walked down to the middle of the bus, taking a seat that was offered almost reverentially to her by a sweating boy, the common response she received in school, her popularity and beauty preceding her need to speak. Still, she spoke well and spoke often, her name high on volunteer work and test results: Penny.

“You know the King's Head pub nearby?” asked Penny.

A few heads nodded their knowledge of said pub.

“Back when it was first built there was no tunnel, just a lot of roads and pavements. Men used to go to the pub and get inebriated and then try to walk home. They'd invariably end up staggering on to the road and getting themselves ran over.

The government blamed the King's Head and threatened to close it down. The establishment said they'd fix it and built the tunnel in response, a way for drunken men to get home without getting run over.

Except, these drunken men would go into the tunnel and it got so dark near the centre that they'd get sleepy, think they had returned home already, and would lie down and take a nap.

Soon enough there were whole groups of inebriated men sleeping in the tunnels. Some of them were homeless and took to the tunnel like a new home, a roof over their heads before their next drink.

Again the King's Head was blamed. Now they were causing a homeless crisis, creating bad publicity for Belfast and making the whole place look ugly.

The King's Head put an advert in the newspaper for a 'Night Steward'. The job role specified that it would be necessary to 'inspect assigned locations' and included the 'reporting of any grievous offences'. One of the main requirements an applicant required was a strong physical aptitude as 'heavy lifting may be necessary'.

My grandfather's brother's friend was the first one to get the job. He told my grandfather's brother how part of his job was to secretly herd the drunken men away. If they wouldn't move peacefully then he had to kick and beat them until they moved, even had to physically lift them and toss them out the other side of the tunnel if they wouldn't get up.

That same friend quit the job after a couple of weeks because, and I quote, 'they started asking me to get too violent, I was scared I was going to end up killing one of them.'

Whomever took the job afterwards clearly had no problem because the homeless problem cleared up within a few weeks, drunk men stopped sleeping it off in the tunnels and things quietened down. But believe me, go speak to any old homeless guy or old drinker at the King's Head and they'll tell you that the second steward did more than move people, he was a straight up serial killer.

Once things calmed down the serial killer steward wasn't needed any more. He was fired but kept his thirst of violence alive by stalking the tunnels late at night. Anyone foolish enough to head in there risked being pulverised.

Even though he'd be in his sixties or seventies by now, people will still tell you to avoid that tunnel. There's something supernatural about his strength even at his advanced age, he could snap your arm like a twig if you got careless.”

“You just said ghosts were stupid but now you're saying there's a supernatural geriatric serial killer on the loose, you're stupid,” said Phillip, one of the few not to find Penny irresistibly charming, “your story is full of inconsistencies.”

“Like yours is any better,” replied Penny.

“Yeah,” agreed Jane, believing herself to be Penny's best friend, “shut up, no-one asked for your opinion.”

Just then, their teacher reappeared on the bus with the bus driver in tow.

“This isn't looking good,” she said, “unfortunately we don't have time to wait about or walk to the squash courts now so we'll have to return to school. Can't have you missing your afternoon classes. Everyone file out and follow me.”

There were a few groans and a lot of stamping of feet but the class left the bus and congregated at a nearby traffic light. The teacher had already pressed the button to cross the road and was waiting for the green man to appear.

After crossing the road in single file, there were a lot of hushed whispers, then one or two squeaks of horror as the teacher walked up to the tunnel then, shockingly!, turned into it, her feet clacking off the ground as she headed further in.

The class managed to shuffle to the entrance but no one person was brave enough to take those first tentative steps inside.

The teacher turned around and yelled back: “Keep up, guys, we need to make good time here.”

“Look,” said Jane, “there are puddles all around the tunnel entrance, what'd I tell you.”

“It's Belfast,” said someone else, “it rains all the time. There's nothing unusual about that.”

“But look,” said Jack, “you can clearly see the wisps near the centre.”

“That could be fog, or smog, or just a trick of the light,” replied Phillip, peering around at where the granite and limestone ended and the steel door must begin.

“Look,” screeched Jane, “at the other end. Past Miss Jones, someone's there!”

“That's just a shadow,” said one of the boys, “from a tree or a dog or something.”

“No,” replied Jane with great strain as she tried to stop her teeth from chattering, “it's definitely a person.”

“It is, it is,” agreed a girl, “it's shaped like a human.”

“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind the hustled group, “are you going through or not?”

The children turned to face the man who had spoken, saw his thick white beard and moustache, the well defined arms and legs, the healthiness of his features even behind the wrinkles that showed him to be of an advanced age.

Screams rang out as the children ran, any way the pavement took them, any way except the tunnel.