Old 04-9-2015, 06:28 AM   #21
TheRapingDragon
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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.
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Old 04-16-2015, 10:21 AM   #22
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Hi TRD I saw Judas Priest or Dream Theater with you and I can't remember which.

<3 How are you?
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Old 04-17-2015, 09:52 AM   #23
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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.
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Old 04-19-2015, 04:24 AM   #24
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MOTHERFUCK, brb PMing you my new number.
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Old 04-20-2015, 12:56 AM   #25
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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.
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Old 04-20-2015, 06:28 AM   #26
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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.
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Old 04-20-2015, 10:41 AM   #27
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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?
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Old 07-6-2015, 01:49 AM   #28
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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.

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Old 08-28-2015, 10:01 AM   #29
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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

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Old 06-10-2016, 08:06 AM   #30
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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.

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Old 06-10-2016, 08:43 AM   #31
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Default Re: So, I'm a writer now

I just read an old post in this thread where you said you struggled to sit down and write just to write. I love reading writers' stories of writing their stories. Sometimes, it's more interesting than the story itself!

A bit that made me laugh:
"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."

I'm not a great reader... Just to make sure I understand the story correctly:
It's the story of children in a bus looking at a tunnel, making tales about it, and basically ending up scaring themselves by believing their own tales?


I think you definitely have a nice prose. Keep at it, never give up!
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Old 06-10-2016, 09:21 AM   #32
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Originally Posted by MarioNintendo View Post
I just read an old post in this thread where you said you struggled to sit down and write just to write. I love reading writers' stories of writing their stories. Sometimes, it's more interesting than the story itself!
I agree. I once read a foreword about an author's struggle to get a book published that I ended up enjoying more than the book itself. Then there's stories like how A Confederacy of Dunces got published and what the author went through (he killed himself), though that's an amazing book.

Quote:
I'm not a great reader... Just to make sure I understand the story correctly:
It's the story of children in a bus looking at a tunnel, making tales about it, and basically ending up scaring themselves by believing their own tales?
Pretty much, though I'm always happy to leave it open to interpretation. The premise is non-fiction. As a kid, we genuinely told each other not to go into that tunnel because you would get trapped in there. Very few people ever walked through it. I once walked through it as part of a school day out with a teacher and a group and a lot of the kids wanted to walk around but the teacher wouldn't let us because we 'were being silly'.

This is the tunnel

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I think you definitely have a nice prose. Keep at it, never give up!
Thanks. I write to keep myself sane so I'll definitely keep at it.
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Old 08-16-2016, 12:34 PM   #33
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Default Re: So, I'm a writer now

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Not sure if back for posting

Or to sell shit and disappear.
Nearly two years ago and still here. Guess that answers that. Though I really wouldn't mind selling a shitload of books and disappearing into the sunset. You know, whatever I can take.

Saw this when looking back through to see if I ever posted any sample for Godskin, which I haven't. Finally feel comfortable emailing submissions again and thought I'd try Godskin this time as it's probably still my favourite full-length. Wrote it in 2013. Still hoping to get the impetus back to finish one of my unfinished projects this year.

Here, enjoy what the publishers get to see and feel free to critique or ignore it much like they will likely do.

One
Fun fact number one: All gods (or Gods, God, God-like, and God-centric beings) are real! Phew, I bet that's a weight off your mind, right? I know it is for me. I used to worry about the realm beyond our own, the one with the fiery brimstone and the caked walls of molten lava and burning flesh. The one with the endless screams to accompany my infinite afterlife of torment. That which should not be named for fear of invoking its wrath for it shall smite you down before you have a chance to raise up arms against it. The great beyond, the big over-easy, the red room draped in red and constantly bleeding over your nice mink rug.

Was I innocent enough to avoid the pit of a thousand avarice? Or did I speak the language of the damned and let it manifest into physical torture? Life was a million and two questions and the two always beat the million over the head with a migraine-inducing decision: Heaven or hell? Light or dark? Good or bad? For me or not for me?

I would lie awake at night pondering tiny dilemma that didn't even matter, given the circumstance it led to. What happened after? When did it happen? How long did it take to get your bearings or did they just hand you a welcome bag filled with all your essentials: Map to everlasting peace and glory, envelopes to send ethereal signs to your loved ones, some tissues as you remember all you've lost, and some pocket change because tips don't die with you, they're eternal.

So I would lie awake at night, as I said, and think about all of this. About that fantastical journey past those pearly white gates with the winged cherubs and the white bearded man with his impossibly large book. You know, the one with humanity written inside on each of the billions of pages.

Must be a large book really, have to wonder how it gets turned by idle fingers instead of forklifted from page to page on skyscraper sized paper. Imagine: A tree felled and lost to the great beyond each time there is a tragedy, each time a hurricane wipes out a small town or a tsunami drowns away your family and friends and co-workers and casual acquaintances, all to fill out the page required to put their names down before they reach the gates.

Talk about a major guilt-trip, not only have you stupidly thrown your life away due to a 'natural' disaster but you've also taken a lonely little tree with you too, you insensitive monster.

So I would sit and stare at the ceiling and ponder these infinitesimal details, these dandruff sized problems that felt like battering rams between my ear drums, these ever-present never-leaving headaches that made my teeth chatter and my gums pound in rhythmic agony. Just how do you ensure your maker in the sky that you deserve to sit beside him, her, or itself basking in love and eternal happiness? I mean there are so many out there, which one do I pick?

Do I take the popular vote and go for old J.C., he of the Christian variety with the pushy preachers and the millions of adoring, highly dedicated to the point of lunacy fans? Nothing wrong with settling with safety but in the world of Gods there are no safe bets.

Maybe I should go for one of the other Gods, I would think to myself during those lonesome nights: Buddha, Mohammed, or even take a risk with Karma, Chi, or Spirit Guidance. I wouldn't even know where to begin. A religious text, to me, is a series of ways to trip you up: Don't do this, definitely don't do that, and afterlife help you if you do that, this, or those. If they aren't trying to guilt you into submission then they're sending you into a shame spiral the likes of which would fit nicely into a God-sized water-park as the ultimate slide ride.

No, I would eventually decide around two or three in the morning, another sleepless night ahead of me as my brain refused to shut up, as my body continued to sweat profusely from fear and anguish at the life beyond my life, the life I stopped living every night to ponder what would happen when I stopped living it. No, I can't pick any religion. What if one is wrong, then I'm screwed.

But what if I'm right? It would be like winning the lottery. Imagine finding out a long lost relative is rich and recently left you a large sum of money to forget all your earthly fears for the next few decades. It sure would help in distracting me from this. I could spend all night thinking about what type of car I wanted to fill that empty spot in my third garage, or deciding upon the perfect shade of mahogany for my grand dining table for when I have guests over. Oh, and who should I invite, and what food should I serve, which celebrity chef would cook for them, and what subjects should I learn so I can appear eloquent and well-versed. That would get me through a few nights at least.

When that ran out I could think about collections I could afford to take up: Fabergé eggs, rare authentic Chinese coins from the Ding Dynasty, weird antiquities that each hold a story that I could tell to enraptured guests. Or hobbies I could join: Fencing, tennis, swimming, polo. I've always wanted to try polo, just to try to think in the mind of the guy or gal who invented it. I can't imagine sitting on a horse and thinking to myself: You know what would make this racing adventure better? If I was swinging a big rod around while riding on this thing. Perfect!

Oh, but I suppose you're still stuck back at the start there with the whole 'all Gods are real' thing. I wouldn't really ponder too much on that, it would just lead to sleepless nights. I should know.

Not good enough? Okay, so you're asking yourself: Hey! How does this guy even know all this, is he a reliable source? Who is he anyway, some kind of awesome preacher, an all-knowing deity, or just a fool? I guess I'm each in a way, depends on who you ask.

Won't you just accept my word for it and leave it at that? That there are thousands of gods and that's just how it is. That I've met one, been one (for a short period of time at least), and even defeated one?

Well, I think it was a god. Had a funny accent, walked with a real aura of 'I'm in charge', and didn't fall to conventional bullets and verbal insults. That scathingly put together insult you throw at your co-worker to shut him or her up just isn't going to cut it with a god. No witty one-liners or pump action shells to rip, shred, or tear mind and flesh respectively. No back-handed bitchiness will fell these mighty beings.

No, what you need is good old-fashioned hocus pocus and a heavy dose of luck and guidance. A quick pair of feet never goes amiss either. When gods are throwing verbal insults at you they sting. It's like lightning barbs. Those things don't tickle your tonsils, they fry them and cook them until crispy and charred.

So you still need to know? Even if it's a long story full of improbable situations? Even if I ramble and go off-track, oh and believe you me I'm going to ramble. If I'm going to tell you about this then I get to speak my mind. This is a mind that has seen some things.

Fair warning. It's probably longer than the time it would take you to go make a cup of tea, watch it cool, then drink it sip by sip, but definitely shorter than a cruise. Well not those short-haul cruises, unless they had a machine malfunction and stranded you for a few days, a medium cruise at least. The kind with an all-you-can-eat buffet twenty four hours a day and at least two swimming pools.

It all began with a woman wanting a tattoo, for me anyway. I suppose you should get the whole story in chronological order, the parts of the story that were given to me retrospectively after all was said and done. Admittedly, might make it more interesting.

Personally I couldn't care less about what had happened when all was said and done, I just wanted a shower and a shave, together if possible to save on time before I got some sleep.

So okay, yeah, it started with a book.

Two
There was a cathedral or a mosque or some kind of mausoleum. I never got a great glimpse of it on the way out so I can't be sure. That and exploding brick and mortar tends to disrupt the intended architectural vision:

Okay so here we have the new building plans, financial breakdown, concept art in the event of explosion, natural disaster, and alien attack. I've gone for the green-man alien and classic design UFO and you can really see how the alien death ray would make a horrible slice straight through floors ten to fifty, necessitating a two million investment in laser death ray protection and titanium alloy support beams.

It's not the building that was important anyway, it was what was inside the building. Or at least, what should have been inside those walls when they stood strong and firm.

Go through the entrance, past those oak-panelled doors the length of two full-grown men, past the rows of uncomfortable seats that bring back childhood memories of stiff backs and rubbing sore necks and future years of chiropractic reconstruction of a bent spine, right up to the altar at the back of the room.

The altar was watched over by a bespoke figurehead with four blue-tinged outstretched hands of welcome, upturned for humble gifts to be bestowed, eyes that gazed upon variations of itself etched into the windows. A figurehead made in the image of all major religions: You had the long flowing hair and white beard, a portly pot-belly with inwards pointing belly-button, and an elongated elephant nose. Eyes that stayed focused on the windows, not like those paintings that followed your every step, this figurehead had no time for trivial matters such as your life, it was far more interested in the goings-on of itself.

There was the primarily red window with the figurehead figure-skating upon the blood of the wicked, the primarily green window with the figurehead chastising the ill-gotten gains of corporate businessmen, and the blue window where the figurehead rose above the clouds as it flew above us using those four arms as wings like a human dragonfly.

The altar upon which the figurehead stood was inconspicuous. Simple marble white covered it from every angle and candles adorned most of the surface area.

It was what was behind the altar that was much more interesting. Well, not the actual physical thing unless you find stairs particularly interesting by themselves. They were wooden stairs and maybe had a few splinters here or there and they did go down for at least a hundred decently spaced steps in a circular pattern.

But it was the prospect of there being stairs, that there was a hidden path to explore that was interesting; unless you're a stair person, in which case let me add that the stairs were designed by an Italian painter named Domici who took his idea from the motion of a three-legged dog trying to catch its own tail. He admired the dog's tenacity at trying to make a perfect circle within an impossible situation. Therefore, when he designed the stairs he used no marking devices, simply went on instinct and what nature told him was right. That was why the stairs were notorious for tripping up the uninitiated with differently angled steps, differently spaced steps, and a rotational pull that differed with each dozen steps taken.

Those steps are not fun to run up while the building collapses around you, let me tell you now.

So say you manage to get down the innocently designed, devilishly nightmarish to traverse steps. What then? Well, then you'd be greeted by the catacombs of course. What self-respecting church or house of worship or secret monk burial ground wouldn't be complete without a confusing catacomb? Not this one anyway, it does things properly, fills in the choking air with that damp, never-been-cleaned fragrance.

The walls, should you ever have had the honour of touching them, would be clammy and reminiscent of touching a wet rock from a paddling pool down by the beach. The kind that gets washed daily by the rise of the tide, ever bathed in a new batch of slimy seaweed infested sewage.

At least these rocks had the decency of being in a place where you expect the rocks to be dirty to the touch. No-one expects a parish or abbey or strange nunnery to hire a cleaning maid to touch up the catacombs once a week. Can you imagine the medical insurance you'd be liable for just to cover them for the stairs up and down? It's enough to put a religion out of business.

Depending on which way you travelled through the catacombs you would come to one of five different places: A room with a prison cell, a room resembling sleeping barracks, a room with a second altar with a smaller figurehead (same features in a conveniently travel-package size), a room with a pedestal, and a room that wasn't really a room for it was actually a storage closet but it just happened to be empty and confusing to the sight.
The prison can wait until later, at present it's empty. Well, at present it's buried under a pile of rubble but that's neither here nor there. Needless to say it doesn't get an occupant until we get some other things out of the way.

The sleeping barracks aren't very interesting unless you like uniformity: Beds of equal size spread equally apart in perfectly measured symmetry (Domici was not hired for this job you see) each with a bedside drawer that held two changes of clothing and a religious book. Not a bible or a Qur'an, more an amalgamation of everything found throughout religious literature. The best bits anyway: Peace to all, look upon the Earth as a shepherd looks upon his flock, eat your greens and grow up strong to serve the lord(s) well until you shake the mortal coil and join them in whichever dimension they dreamed up for you. That sort of shtick.

The pedestal room was where the action was as a man, at some time or another, ran out with an awkward half-run half-gallop. I personally never saw or knew this man or was told of his features so I can't really tell you what he looked like. Maybe you want to presume he was a religious monk, shuffling his bare feet through the catacombs in urgent haste as his long black gown flowed behind him. You can picture his bald head covered by a hood, penetrating eyes pushing through the darkness created by the cloth cave as he ponders the meaning of existence.

Perhaps you think it was actually a woman, a nun, with long flowing jet-black hair, smelling of jasmine and rose petals. Her long bare legs cutting through the thin fabric of her habit as they escaped into the cool air of the catacombs, goosebumps forming on her smooth skin as her hair flicked across her face, across the gorgeous sultry jade-green eyes that made love to your body with their very sight, the pouty lips that smacked invitingly between a slightly parted mouth, dappled with roguish red lipstick as they caressed the very air itself. If so, can I find out what religious buildings you attend and how to get a membership card.

Me? I like to imagine it was a Charlie Chaplin character running from that pedestal room. A character from a silent movie where actions were exaggerated and everything was accentuated: Each step taken as if jumping over a perilous river, each hand gesture a desperate cry for help and attention, each flick of the eyes a knowing nod to the audience that this was all farce and everything would be alright.

Now Charlie here, he was jumping rivers and fighting off crocodiles and jumping on an ostrich and speeding straight through the catacombs with an encyclopedic knowledge of direction straight to the room with the smaller figurehead, a room where a man sat praying to whichever deity this place worshipped. As much as I'd like to say this was a smoking hot woman and they had an electrifying conversation full of double entendre and subtle body language, that they had already skipped foreplay by the time they'd finished talking, well, I'd be lying. You see, I know who Charlie went to talk to and his name was Sin. Don't worry, there will be smoking hot women later, I promise.

Sin, or Cardinal Sin to give him his full title as he liked to be called, was the keeper of the book and he took his job very seriously. The book also comes later but if you really must then imagine a picture book for the criminally insane. A colour-by-numbers that Lucifer would give to his grandchildren on their damned day. A book where the pages themselves were fashioned from what looked like human skin with a dozen finger bones for the spine, parts of innumerable species stitched together to create the cover.

Charlie, or whatever his name was, was the assistant to the keeper of the book. It wasn't the kind of job or job description you could put on a job application. In fact, I find it hard pressed to figure out how exactly one goes along to apply for these kinds of positions in the first place. Are they printed in the paper?

Interested in religion? Know how to stand in place for long periods of time in dank squalid conditions? Find Sin such a turn-on? Apply today and you too could be guarding a secret religious text by tomorrow!

Perhaps they just get moved up through the ranks like an army officer turned secret service agent. Except bulletproof cars, fast women, and nifty gadgets are replaced with ceremonial scripture and a strange ache in the back of your throat that just won't go away.

Even then, how do they explain it on their job application if they ever wanted a normal job? I was just going through a phase?

I'm sure the scene was very foreboding and Sin was full of menace and Charlie (or whomever) was quaking in his boots (or red skinned high heels if you really must persist) and the whole thing was terrifying but really, I'm still picturing the silent movie treatment. So Charlie is waving his arms about in frantic panic and tears are falling from his face and they hit the ground and he stares at Sin and says some silent words: It's gone!

Sin stood up from his prayer position, half crouched half squatting with his arms up at right angles on either side of his head with his index and ring finger pressed together, mocking the shape of a crab with confusing religious ideologies, and stares straight through Charlie (or Charlotte if you will) towards the exit to the catacomb. The figurehead even seems to move from shock.

Sin seems to scream the words but nothing echoes, nothing belts out, words simply appear with a white ringed border for company: How could it be gone?

So Charles (or the entrancing Charlotte with her curvaceous figure or a puppet master nobody) continues waving around pointing at nothing in particular, eyes nearly bulging from the socket to convey the true horror of the moment: I went to check on it and it's gone. It's not on the pedestal. It's not behind the pedestal. It's not in front or beside the pedestal. The pedestal has not swallowed it and the air has not been disturbed. It's just...gone.

Sin must have been pretty miffed by this and I can imagine his face bulging at the seams as invisible hands squeezed and wrangled him like an old worn-out towel. No doubt his tongue did that stupid little flicking motion as he tried to mimic the snake who deceived mankind. Admittedly, he does have a forked tongue so the effect is pretty convincing. His tongue darts out and splits apart and he pulls the muscles taut so they flick back inwards to resemble pincers. It's pretty impressive, now if only it were made of metal instead of flesh, could sever and cause harm rather than give you two separate strands of saliva at once. The only way it would be more menacing would be if he had a bad case of halitosis. He doesn't, or so I've been informed.

So bulging Sin would spit out his invisible dummy and scream at Charlie (the most beautiful woman in the world) about how he only had one job in the entire world and he still managed to screw it up.

Charlie would point to nothing and say that, technically, he had never been trained and so it was the establishments fault that he failed to keep the book within the building.

Additionally, he would add with roving fingers, the book might still be in the building. He just wasn't sure where it was exactly. And in actual fact, he would theorise as a grand finale, he hadn't actually looked under the silk wrap so he wasn't sure if it was gone. It just felt gone. Like he had went in there numerous times before and felt the presence of the book, known it was there, could feel heat coming from beneath the shawl. Now he just felt despair, which could be from the fear he felt from his pounding heart, or could be because the book had gone and the loving warmth it exuded had been snatched from the pedestal.

Sin would flick his tongue out and hiss menacingly. It had all the venom of a frog set loose in a nursery but, again, visually impressive no doubt. Sin would step forward and grab Charlie by his clothes, pulling him closer to peer down into his very soul, to pierce his flesh with his anger before grabbing Charlie's shoulder and pushing him out of the room and through the catacombs to the pedestal room.

They would stand together as Sin ventured forward, nervously peering left and right as if ensuring no traffic would run him down en-route to the pedestal. Charlie would just stare on (her bosom rising and falling with exhilaration at finally getting to see some action, her high heels clicking against the floor with each nervous movement).

Sin would have told Charlie to avert his eyes, to look away from that which should not be seen for fear of losing your sight. Charlie would still peer through cracks in his hands as he held them against his face, never before having seen the book, desperate to get a glimpse.

Sin would pull back the silk scarf from around the glass protector sat atop the sturdy pedestal made from solid rock, carved from the walls of the catacombs themselves. They would both count the ticks of seconds as the shawl flapped around the glass clockwise, layer by layer making the glass a little more transparent. Their eyes would open wide as the final layer flicked off and fell to the floor, no-one watching its descent, their eyes too trapped in what lay under the glass sat atop the pedestal.

Charlie's hands would fall from his face but his eyes would keep bulging and you seriously should worry that they're going to pop and splatter the back of Sin's head.

Sin's mouth would lie slack-jawed, slithery tongue flopping out as he formed the words in his mind, tried to formulate the best way to describe the situation they were in right now.

The hiss would bubble up from Sin's throat, up to the lips being licked wet with two strands of saliva, up to the tonsils vibrating from sonic motion.

Oh ssshit....he would say

Three
It's amazing how sleepless nights can do wonders for your complexion. It's also amazing how much powers of self-deception I can muster after a night staring up at my idea of heaven. It was often heart-breaking to have to say good morning as those pearly gates disappeared in a haze of imagination, dissolved much like my hopes and dreams.

Better than the nightmares I guess. The nightmares really had it going on for me. When they weren't trying to incinerate my mind they were killing me in a dozen fun ways: Everything from hanging and dissection to plain old shooting and a knife in the gut. When my mind wasn't thinking of the great beyond it was thinking of how I got there. Not the journey mind you, nothing so complex or imaginative for my nightmares, no thanks sir, just the process by which it happens. The agonising, painful, torturous physical hell of being stabbed, shot, and pierced with hooks all night long.

As I stared into a mirror and pulled a gaunt eyelid down to check for signs of life, I pondered on ways to improve my appearance. Not that it really mattered but it might help with my self-improvement strategy. I hadn't exactly started it yet but I had the plan down in my head: Step one- Get a few more tattoos, tattoos are awesome. Step two- Get a tan. I hate tans but women seem to love them. I love women, women love tans, simple science. Step three- Get out of the workshop more often, not just when I need to get some food or a replacement pair of jeans.

My eye stared back at nothing in particular, zoned out, spaced out, lost in the twilight zone. Might as well be an inner eye for all the use it gave me. I checked the other one and found a better reception, not much mind you, enough to maybe cover a support band slot but there was no main band hubbub going on within that blackish brown pupil of mine. At best it could be called a lazy eye, at worst a glass eye that had been socketed incorrectly.

I had twenty-twenty vision in both eyes, it made no sense. I considered surgery but when they told me the price I laughed in their pristine faces and walked out again.

Throwing on a greasy white t-shirt and a baggy pair of jeans, I left my makeshift bedroom. Comfort clothes. Not going out clothes. Guess I could call them work clothes if I opened up the shop clothes. Laundry was murder on my back anyway so it was better to have so little I could simply carry the clean clothes back in a plastic bag.

Yes I could have more clothes and simply make more journeys but who wants to waste time doing that? No-one who came into the store cared about how I looked anyway, just that I could ink them up and kick them out again. Some even liked the grubby look, said it made me look like a mechanic rather than a tattoo artist. Working on cars, working on people, it's all blood, sweat, and ink.

I headed down the stairs connecting my one room apartment with my one room business. Rickety stairs that had a new hole or stain each time I walked down them.

They're artistic stairs, or so I told anyone who managed to see them or my apartment. By anyone I mean her, and by her I mean the one woman who was stupid enough to move her arm to sneeze while I was in the middle of inking her up. Not like she had two arms and could have used the other one, no that would have been logical and why should she have to make sense when she was the one paying me.

So anyway, she gets a nasty scrape and sneezes at the same time. Of course she still didn't reach her tissue and she covers me in mucus and I'm cleaning her up and the ink is mixing with the blood and creating this wavy little pattern that almost looks like it was intended but the blood just doesn't stop and the mucus is drying on my hand and it feels disgusting, like drops of drying mercury. I told her I had some bandages up in my apartment but she was screaming and bawling and refused to let me leave her so I had to bring her up with me.

She commented on the stairs and I told her some rubbish about letting artistry take over my entire life, including the go-between my apartment and office and my apartment itself, citing it as an ode to dishevelment. I think I made her believe it but I was really just focused on avoiding getting her blood anywhere. I could imagine the crime scene, the investigators, the evidence piling up as they found blood stains and hair samples in my apartment. Hook, line, and you're gone.

I got her cleaned up and waived the bill, told her to come back when her arm healed and I would fix her up. She never did come back and I sometimes wonder how it turned out. Did she go to another tattoo parlour to get it re-done? Did she leave it and keep her half a dolphin as some kind of macabre message to others? A warning on the dangers of aquatic mammals not mixing with land mammals. Probably just got it zapped off and swore off tattoos. Some types just aren't meant to have them. I'm in that type, believe it or not.

Oh sure I have a couple of tattoos to show the punters I love my craft but it's all show, I get no pleasure from them. I just have to believe they're awesome to sell them, like a door to door salesman selling fake massage beds to the infirm and elderly. The first one hurt like hell, or at least how I imagine a part of hell might hurt if they damned you to eternal poking by needle. By the time the guy had finished my back was numb and that was after too many visits to count. It took damn near a year but once he had started I refused to stop.

Even when Jack Burton was on there with gun in hand and Gracie Law was hugging him and looking up at my empty shoulder blades the pain had to continue, the tattoo had to be finished. Lo Pan came next, towering over them with his huge clawed fingernails and green hands, that awesome empty-stare of his filled with a mixture of malice and corruption, his black and gold hat towering up to just below the nape of my neck. I persevered, getting the gangsters and ninjas and that iconic truck and the bridge in the background. I stopped just short of adding in the movie title, deciding to keep it mysterious.

Those first few years of having that tattoo I was a complete dick, as much as it went with the territory of being a teenager but still. If you didn't know the movie then I didn't want to know you, usually told you where to go and it wasn't no sunshine state.

Eventually I mellowed out and now, if someone comments on it while I ink them bare-chested, yeah I tell them. Big Trouble In Little China, I say, great movie, worth hunting down.

The 80's was the best decade for movie posters, when real effort was made to make the movie look badass, when action heroes kicked ass and the plot was a secondary device to the acting and raw pull of the main stars.

My second tattoo kept to the theme on a smaller scale. Escape From New York this time. I got Kurt Russell posing with his gun on my right upper arm, flames all around him and eye-patch covered.

I get them touched up now and again to keep them fresh and awash with colour. Best to show the potential punters that I know a quality tattoo and how to keep them looking good for years to come. Half my business is in touch-ups, the other half on new tattoos.

So I'm staring around my workspace and I'm trying to pull myself together and get a bit of blood pumping to get me through the morning, a bit of juice to wake me up. I spot it on the chair and grab it, pull it to my lips and take a swig.

I needed to start remembering to put the lid back on. Worms are fine and finish the bottle off nicely but when flies start getting in there I might reconsider my open-swig policy.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and headed for the door, unlocking the latch to swing the door open wide, open for business. Don't all rush at once as you push through the empty corridor. It smelled worse than yesterday and I think a rat is lying somewhere, figured out the trick to the great beyond and has left itself behind to give me a smelly wake-up call. None of my business, let it rot.

Staring across the hall, I was still disturbed by the foreclosure sign hanging on the door of Freddy’s Colonoscopy & Yoghurt Shop.

I missed Freddy. Sure he was an illegal doctor who thought yoghurt made a rectal exam feel better if you ate some while he shoved a tube up your ass.

Sure he prepared and served that yoghurt to other patrons in the same room and sometimes you found a bit of faecal matter on the counter or at the bottom of your yoghurt cup or on those little plastic spoons they gave you with each purchase.

Sure his prices were absurd and he had no customers and those he did have inevitably went to the health authorities and they shut him down faster than he could pull the tube from your ass and yell abracadabra while you yelled holy hell what the fuck.

Sure, sure, but damn if he didn't have the best tasting yoghurt I ever had. He even gave me free samples to give to my own customers. I usually ended up eating those for myself, the clean ones anyway. The dirty ones I wiped down as best I could and told the customers he put chocolate sprinkles on top, that it was his unique selling point. Nobody ever thought of putting chocolate on yoghurt, I would say, just on ice-cream, well Freddy is ahead of the curve, Freddy knows that chocolate goes with everything.

They lapped that shit up like it was chocolate and bounded across the hall to Freddy's and bought some more. In return, he advised his patients to go get a tattoo, that the pain of being stabbed by a needle would lessen the pain of having a tube up your ass, distract your brain or some such nonsense. It was a good partnership and I got at least five, maybe six customers thanks to Freddy.

I think he's down in Nebraska now, opened up his own gynaecology and ice-cream shop. I hear his strawberry (or raspberry or cranberry depending on the colour and what he's selling it as) is bloody marvellous. Me, I'm not too fond of the female crimson glory so I won't be heading down there to try it anytime soon.

I headed back into the store and got my tools ready for the day. I don't even spot her come in, she made no noise until she cleared her throat, a cute little hum-hum that made my neck twist before my body had time to react. Hot damn was all I can think staring at her.

It took me a few seconds to drag my eyes up to her face, languishing down at the silky crevice of those two mounds holding that tiny little rockabilly dress in place, more a corset really. I never was very good with defining clothes, it's all about length and this thing was short, barely reaching down to her belly button, the glint of a piercing just below the fabric catching my eye as I dragged it back to her face.

Her eyes were huge, open, looking at me with a cute little expression of wonderment. They were the nicest shade of brown I'd ever seen. I didn't even know brown could have a nice shade but here she was standing in front of me as living proof.

Her eyelashes were brushed out to make the eyes look even bigger and my mind wandered, thinking oh god is that a hint of a tattoo on her breast. I could see a pink point that went down beneath that corset, top, mound holder whatever, it even had that fifties style of pattern with the cherries and a little pink bow as if I could reach across and unwrap her as an early Christmas present.

Oh help me now she's looking at me with those koala bear eyes with the brushed on eyelashes and they're blinking and looking at me and her lips have moved but I'll be damned if I caught the words with my thoughts in overdrive. Those lips as red as the cherries on her clothes and just as edible. Those eyes staring at me for a response as an eyebrow, plucked to perfection, arched itself as she stared me right in the face, right in my lazy eyes, egging me on. She doesn't even realise what she's doing to me but it's torture and my palms were sweating and my mouth was cotton dry and I just stood there motionless like some kind of idiot.

I managed to say hi and feebly put up a hand as if welcoming her to planet Earth, to the confederation of dimwits who've never seen a chick with tattoos and airbrushed quality eyes and a blemish free face and tits that could hold up a dress with the minimum of fuss.

'I see you like tattoos,' I add as if orchestrating the world's worst conversation. I might as well have said 'so, do you come here often Tattoo Tina?'

Oh god I hope her name isn't Tina, or Christina, or Christine, because that nickname is going to stick in my head forever and I'll never live it down.

She's still staring at me and my eyes aren't locked in hers, they're back down where the line of her flesh bisects and those bad boys are bouncing in my mind as if we're on a trampoline and I'm grabbing them and she's laughing and we're rollicking around in a grass field and she's got stains on her skin and I'm licking them off and she's still speaking. Words are actually coming out of her mouth but I couldn't hear them, they're lost in the smoke of her body, the heat of her skin, the haze of my mind.

She stared down at her arm, at the criss-cross of tattoos covering her from shoulder to wrist: Birds flying around red, white, and pink roses as they rotate around her arm. Clouds and thorns and rising butterflies. The more I looked the more I saw details coming through the collage of images: There's a blue ribbon tied around one of the thorny branches, pierced by one of the thorns; A rabbit frolicking beneath a rose bush oblivious to the fairies throwing pixie dust above it, above the bushes and the roses and the flowers and the birds.

The art was admirable and the execution astounding. She looked up at me and smiled, appreciating my appreciation of her artwork.

I'm still trying to talk but the words seemed empty, lacked the power of conviction to tell this woman how crazy she looked, the good kind of crazy, the kind of crazy you don't show your mother but still take home to bed every night. A man's dream kind of crazy.

I told her the tattoos are skilfully done, that I myself would be proud to have done such work.

She smiled and oh god that smile. It's enough to distract me from the fun below and drag me back into those brownies. It's the innocent smile of a young girl dragged out into the sensualist world of a woman who gets tattoos and knows what she wants. Not to be crude but it's like that saying: Men want a woman to be a lady in public but a whore in the bedroom. This girl exuded that quality with that one perfect smile. She could add a sultry wink and I'd have probably lost it right there right then or she could add an innocent little giggle and I'd want to help her find her father, carry her bags across the street, buy her some sweets like an eccentric old grandfather.

'Thanks,' she said and I hear the words, feel the words between my legs.

I'm staring back down at those cherries and I need to stop it, need to drag myself back before she walked away and my life ended.

I snapped my head up and she wasn't even staring at me, hadn't noticed my downward gazes, she's just staring around the room at the walls of display tattoos.

Every tattoo I've ever done is on those walls, even the rubbish ones I don't like and the ones that didn't go quite as planned and got the customer complaining.

'That isn't what I ordered,' they would say as if I was some kind of fast food clerk and hadn't given them the diet free version of their fat ass meal.

'Not my fault,' I would reply, I worked with what I had.

It's not my fault if the fat rippled in your flesh made that face look like it came from a thirty stone man shaped from lard. It's not my fault if your scrawny little arm can barely fit the design you've requested so I have to squeeze it all together until that ultimate reaper comes across more as a ghastly paper-boy with a high metabolism. And it's definitely not my fault if you can't handle the pain and you keep fidgeting as I work and that epic battle scene looks like it was captured through a shaky lens by a camera operator with parkinsons disease.

This girl seemed impressed by the designs and I tried to draw her gaze to my best work: The Viking warrior with axe and shield in hand standing before a zombie horde, the pixie vixen standing in front of a tree as petals and leaves fall down around her, the floral wreaths draped around a ribbon with a heart in the centre with Mother written inside, the dolphin splashing out of the water on a moonlit night still in mid-spin with water droplets falling from its body.

I found myself guiding her breasts to each of the designs, my finger pointing but my eyes leering but she didn't notice as she stared around the room and I found myself falling, dropping down her body, down past the belly button piercing and the black pencil neck business skirt, down her legs to the yellow heels with matching red cherries, heels that had somehow managed to stay clean on their journey to my shop.

I started thinking to myself, wondering, how did she manage to stay clean? I pictured the journey from the nearest street to here. Okay, I could see those fine pins having some decent flexibility but to avoid everything in the back alley obstacle course was pretty impressive.

To start, she would have had to squeeze in-between a few dozen rancid boxes of discarded rectal tubes and decaying yoghurt. I could see that with those petite hips but what about when it came to rat central, did she really have the timing required to zip past the rats who crossed from side to side as they looked for more food to steal into their homes or did they just let her pass on through like some kind of Minnie Mouse queen, gnawing each other for first digs, not even noticing her swift passing before having to slink back home to their plain old ratty partners with a meek look down and a forget-about-it attitude.

Okay okay, so she might manage to step one-two pirouette and a big ballet leap over the zipping rodents but how did she then know to open the degraded wooden door with no handle. I mean you literally had to shove your hand in and open it from the inside and that hole is dark. Nightmare dark even on a sunny day. It takes a brave soul to shove their hand into a shadow hole and open a dirty wooden door and, no offence or anything, but cherries and heels here didn't really strike me as the adventurous type.

Right so she squeezes between the boxes and jumps over the rats and finds the door that has no handle and shoves her hand in the hole and pushes it back out towards herself, making sure it doesn't knock her on her ass right into a puddle of rat piss or lumpy hardened yoghurt, right okay sure, but you're telling me she then walked up the stairs and through the hallway? The stairs that creaked with every step and the hallway with the constantly flickering light. If scary movies had taught her anything she'd have backed herself up, turned one eighty, and sprinted as fast as she could away from this desolate place.

Why did she venture forward still, a dare? Was there secretly more hot little things waiting outside that door giggling and pushing each other to be the next to go into the creepy, abandoned building. Doubtful, I would have heard something, I'm sure of it.

Current circumstances notwithstanding: I could usually hear people when they talked to me, their voice didn't usually turn to smoke and waft over me in an enticing fog. This woman was just different, that was all.

Not to mention how did she even know about me? My advert in the local pages was just the name and an address. No unique selling point, no pithy one-liner to attract the punters, no photograph or anything. I couldn't afford more than the name and address and even that had crippled me for a week. I briefly considered putting it in text speak to save a bit of money but the thought of attracting the text lingo generation Xtreme crowd stopped me in my tracks. I didn't really want to spend my time tattooing horrible Latin phrases, wispy tribal patterns, and lower back bend me over here stamps. Then you'd have the ones needing me to erase an ex-lover or tattoo over a horrible drunken mistake with a sober, bigger mistake.

Now before you knock the lack of hygiene evident throughout here I need to tell you how expensive it is to live here. Where's here? That doesn't matter does it? Be it Tokyo, New York, or Birmingham; It's all the same. My features don't change, the story doesn't change. It's not as if Godzilla is going to come rampaging all over my shop any second now because I'm living it up in Asia eating rice balls and squid cakes so forget about it. All that matters is that it's damn expensive and I'm the one paying.

Fine, yes, it's New York. Will you please stop worrying about Godzilla now?

So I'm sure you know that New York is expensive and I came here with nothing so I had to find the cheapest place I could.

I found this dump and converted it into a work and home with the last of my money. If the tapestry of junk was anything to go on, this place had been a whore house, a crack den, and a back alley abortionist; Three staples for a perfect life. I found myself cleaning up busted needles and stains that just wouldn't go away regardless of how much spit I flung on it.

Punters often commented on how much drapes and blankets and such that I put around the place.

'For ambience,' I would say with a nod and a wink and a tap on the nose as if hiding some secret interior design knowledge.

They didn't need to know about the suffocated rats with used condoms lodged halfway down their throats that left a stain of half puked up come-vomit on the floor over there that I just couldn't get rid of for love nor money. They didn't need to know about the cracked needles that filled the sink where I now offered water, how the contents probably still stuck to the sink and residue mixed with the water, why they always seemed to leave my place with a buzz and a high and a strong desire to return days later for another quick fix of a tattoo.

Best part was that it's not technically registered as an abode or business and, let's face it here, law and politics don't really mingle around these parts. Means I can keep this place open rent free. Electricity is done through a simple generator that gets a bit of juice (not my juice, proper juice- flammable juice) every now and then to keep the place lit up. A small battery powered heater kept the place warm and, weather permitting, it wasn't usually needed except during winter.

I got by on repeat customers, word of mouth on my cheap prices for great artistry, and hand outs from generous punters who saw my plight and wanted to do something about it. They were the best kind, the nicest kind, the kind who made me feel like this godforsaken world had a bit of love left to give and a penny spare for a soul to survive on.

Maybe Ms Cherries heard about me from one of my satisfied customers?

Did I actually have satisfied customers or merely customers who didn't bitch and whine about their little puppy tattoo turning out like a rabid dog with herpes fashioned from their freckles?

I did once look on the internet to see if my place had any reviews. It was a complete waste of a two block walk and entrance to the internet café. Couldn't find my shop listed anywhere. According to the big wide web I didn't exist. Probably better that way.

I realised I wouldn't learn anything, wouldn't find out her reasons for being here, from staring at her heels so I pulled my gaze up, my mind coming back with me, to find her with her nose in a book.

Where did the book come from. Was I really so distracted with her face, cherries, and heels that I didn't even notice her carrying a book? It's not like it was even one of those small travel-size books you bring on a plane and dump on the first bin after the flight is over, it was big. And thick. And throbbing? No, just her hands holding the book too tight. Her pulse going through the book and making it look that way. She was really engrossed and I used the time to check out the cherries one last time before I spoke up.

'So,' I said as more of an attention-grabbing cough than a conversation starter, 'interesting book?'

She pulled those big brown eyes from the pages now set in a square pair of trendy glasses I saw some of the young teenage punks down at the station wearing.

Seriously, I think to myself, I missed glasses too?

No, she definitely wasn't wearing those before, just pulled them out from a pocket or from the top of her head or something. I wasn't big on fashion trends, unless the white t-shirt, dusty jeans combo had made a big rumble back in Milan and was the next big craze to hit the world.

Imagine it, a whole pile of me walking around in ketchup stained t-shirts and artfully applied mayonnaise like some kind of walking canvas. Restaurants would become art studios where burgeoning artists experimented with chip grease on their lapels and running milkshakes down their shirts. Fast food joints would dominate the world as cutting trends of new styles of art. Nouvelle Cuisine would become passé because the trend was around a demographic who couldn't afford a clean shirt and they didn't serve enough food to properly create a great work of art.

She stared at me with those amplified brownies and set another of those smiles prowling in my direction. Even prepared, I was caught off guard and melted inside a little. My mouth gurgled but I caught it and pulled it back down my throat, coughed with a hand politely over my mouth to appear civilised. The attempt was somewhat ruined as a I wiped the saliva hacked up onto my t-shirt, a new stain for the group, a new painting in progress, and started trying to talk again.

'What's in the book,' I asked.

'Wanna see,' she replied as she rotated the book over to my eyes and stood beside me to give me a view.

I had a view alright, straight down into that chasm, that neat little valley where the cows mooed all the way home to momma with enough milk to feed the family for a week. It was short lived as she pulled the book close to her chest, balanced it on those cherries like they were made for support.

The book was littered with drawings, some crude, others the work of geniuses, and in the case of a lot of them, unfinished.

She flicked through the book and talked in quick bursts. How she'd flicked through the book a hundred times since she got it and each time she saw new details, new flicks of a paintbrush that she didn't notice before, colours that seemed to change each time she closed and reopened it.

She told me how she found the book on a recent holiday in the Caribbean, how a market stall down by the beach was selling antique books and this one was going cheap. She had asked the man why this book was cheap compared to the others that were easily ten times the price. He told her the book was stolen, cursed, and had, in a phrase she swears is verbatim, 'some bad voodoo mojo goin' on.'

All I could do was laugh at her horrible attempt at an accent. It sent another smile up in my direction, like she knew I wasn't mocking her, was just appreciating her story. It still caught the laugh in my gullet and made the heat rise to my face. I took a step away, afraid to cook the cherries too quick.

The drawings in the book were some of the best, most intricately detailed scenes of madness I'd ever seen. Not that I'd read many books, even comics with the pictures and easily digested stories left me bored after a few pages. The only pictures I liked looking at were the ones that I inked into someone's skin. That leaves a real kind of lasting impression, one that you can look at anytime and remember memories, moments, happiness. Not easily lost like a comic in a fire or a book with a kid who doesn't appreciate it and tears it up. No, a tattoo is yours and unless you go around losing limbs or getting lasered it stays with you through thick and thin.

I watched her fingers turn the pages, occasionally bringing them to her lips to lick the dryness from her fingertips. Her mouth would open and this pink little appendage would dart out and lather up the tips, swish-swish, one-two and the fingers were ready to turn another page.

The pages themselves crackled with every turn as if made from parchment rather than paper. They didn't bend or crease, it really looked as if she had ironed them before coming out but I knew that was ridiculous, that the pages were probably just coated in some kind of special material that kept them rigid. Like laminate.

Each page of the book, or set of pages, was dedicated to a series of drawings. She took me through tribes of people with unpronounceable names, just a series of syllables apparently thrown together with reckless abandon, might as well have been speaking Welsh.

Tiny passages of text were seen here and there describing the pictures and I caught brief paragraphs before she flicked on to another page: The Shikatitan people who carried things in their hair, wrapped up on top of their heads to keep objects cool or warm as the weather dictated. The Gurdecitonaa people with webbed feet and six fingers on each hand that allowed them to carry four daggers simultaneously and wield them all with deadly accuracy.

Swish-swish, fingers sweetened and pages quickly skipped forward as she explained how the pages went on for a while showing similar looking tribes, how the next section was even better. I noticed her nails were light red and wondered if they tasted of cherries, if her page turning technique wasn't just a ruse to get a taste every now and then, if I could slip them in my mouth and taste a little slice of cherry pie.

I didn't know if I was hungry or horny as I dragged myself back up just as she was pointing out a new series of pictures.

They were stunning, these pictures in the book, with detail so fine it would take a week to pick out each individual brush stroke required to make it all up. The current section of the book she was showing me had all sorts of mythical creatures, fantastical monsters, and all sorts of creepy bogeymen made up by the creative minds of mankind's history.

There you had a myrmidon, a warrior with the best parts of man and fish combined with hardened scales and bronze armour with two sharpened broadswords.

Even with no real light filtering into the room you felt like the swords were really glinting, that the sunlight bounced off each individual scale and sent light beams careening off in different directions.

Now a half-drawn Cthulhu rising up out of the ocean amongst the pouring rain and thunderous clap of lightning. Tentacles the size of ocean liners falling over its half a face as some bounced out, one hitting the lightning and electrifying a small portion of its half a frame, showcasing eyes with the depths of a well, the darkness of infinity, the compassion of finality.

Two pages dedicated to a group of what appeared to be vampires, all female, standing or kneeling around one seated on a throne. No detail had been left out in exemplifying just how majestic these women were: Fanged teeth that sparkled and glowed with a glint of crimson blood, voluptuous figures that would entice many men and probably quite a few women too; jewellery so magnificently drawn you'd think they'd plucked it from royalty for the experience: Ringed fingers of jade and amber and ruby, choker necklaces in red lace and black silk and indented with black and white diamonds; clothes that flowed like wine, laced and buckled and sewn as if holding their flesh together in all the right places; shoes that bent their feet into a vertical position as if standing on the pointed tips of their toenails; heels that made them tower easily over seven feet in the air.

The throned vampire was all this and more, seated on top of a dozen corpses, their blood flowing freely from sliced veins into the cups of the kneeled vampires, a beaded veil on her head and a bloody spill on her face just beside her lips.

Text filled the pages, receding into the spine as it spilled from one page to the other then back again: The venerable, cannibalistic group known as Staami were originally created to cull overpopulation in the early 1700s. Developed with the best qualities of Elizabeth Báthory, including the love of blood, they enjoyed an exemplary success rate. Offshoots were created in the 1800s (see: vampyre, vampire, nosferatu) but success waned, population settled and they were all eventually shelved after a vote of five to one in favour of expulsion. Although the offshoots would go on to gain notoriety and, strangely, commercial success, Staami were quickly forgotten and only Báthory herself remains remembered.

The book had hundreds of pages: Pixies frolicking in non-existent fields with half-drawn wings, dragons with flames sprouting from half a nostril, unicorns heavily scraped over until half the image was buried under thick black lines, Chimeras of all different configurations including one that had the head of a rabbit and the body of a dinosaur, dinosaurs themselves from frightfully large tyrannosaurus down to fledgling baby velociraptors.

It was a mess, as if someone had just doodled down the first thing that came into their head then tried to somehow stitch it together into different sections.

She looked up at me as I was staring at a Minotaur, was reading about how it used to protect labyrinths before labyrinths became obsolete so they had to revoke its existence and dump it into the ever expanding labyrinth of eternal hell-fire.

Wasn't even her eyes that caught me, was the glasses as they hit the side of my eye and made me jump back in shock. I hadn't even realised how close we'd huddled together as we read the book, how involved in the book we'd been so as to not even realise our heads were touching, that strands of our hair were touching and twisting around each other and had initiated some kind of messed up mating dance.

She took off her glasses and attached them to a small, almost invisible clip on the back of her skirt, looked back up at me with those brown eyes wet with not blinking for so long. I realised my own were sore and gave a few shallow blinks, rubbed them with the back of a knuckle to get them working again.

'So what do you think,' she asked, all enquiring eyes and pointed hip, almost a defiant pose as if she expected me to challenge her. I just looked back, through her, not really staring at anything as my eyes continued to flash images from the book. The designs felt like they had scarred themselves into the back of my retina, had crafted new stems in my brain for the sole purpose of remembering their image.

'You are Max, right?' She asked as smoke rose from her mouth and I thank the day I decided not to buy a smoke detector because I'll be damned if she wouldn't set it off and drench us both. Not that a cold shower alone wouldn't go amiss, or a hot one together. No, definitely a cold one, ice-cold and isolated.

I nodded my head.

'And this is your place?' She asked as I thought to myself that you really shouldn't be barbecuing cherries on a hot summer day because that's how fires start and in this enclosed place it's going to be pretty damn tough to put out the fire.

I nodded my head again.

'So you can do it then?' She asked and I was feeling like I should be scratching my head right about now because I had no idea what she was asking and my head was hurting from the images burned into my brain and the last thing I needed right now was cherries to mix with dragons. I couldn't stand the combined heat.

I just nodded my head again, safest bet I thought, and headed over to get myself a glass of lukewarm water laced with god knows what. My legs felt alien. The floor felt uneven.

She followed me over, dropping the book on a blanketed counter along the way, introduced herself as Eloise and proffered a hand in my direction.

I took her hand in mine but my wrist was limp and my arm was shaking and water was dribbling down my mouth as I tried to take a few gulps.

Must have looked like an addict or something because she was staring at me real funny and those brown eyes of hers looked worried and I felt upset at being the cause and I wanted to hug her and say I'm sorry but all I could think of was at least she wasn't called Tattoo Tina before my vision went and I plummeted towards the ground in a jumble of limbs.

TLDR: Story, characters, dialogue.

Last edited by TheRapingDragon; 08-16-2016 at 12:34 PM..
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Old 08-16-2016, 01:07 PM   #34
Dinglesberry
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Default Re: So, I'm a writer now

FFR fanfiction when?
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Old 08-16-2016, 01:12 PM   #35
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Default Re: So, I'm a writer now

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FFR fanfiction when?
there are plenty tgb / odi fanfics probably still around
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Old 08-16-2016, 01:30 PM   #36
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Default Re: So, I'm a writer now

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FFR fanfiction when?
http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...ad.php?t=64867
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