The Ministry

In the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty, Ernest Marples, the then Transport Minister, took it upon himself to unilaterally introduce a new law upon the nation…

It didst go something like this: ‘If you, as a member of the great unwashed, dare to drive your second or third hand heap of crap car on the Queen’s highway, at least the bloody trafficators should work. And you should yearly pay at least £2 for the privilege.’

Of course, I’m talking about the MOT test. The test which causes annual panic attacks in saner men than me.  The Dandymobile went in for her ‘Yearlies’ last Saturday and she failed miserably.  Well, I say miserably, there were lots of silly little things wrong with her that I’d been living with for the prior six months with no real problems.  Things like none of the brakes working (Including the handbrake) one headlight pointing directly upwards and the other backwards. And as it turns out, it’s also an automatic fail if your bonnet if welded shut – who knew? (It stops the pixies scampering off with all my Horse-Powers, don’t judge me.)

Anywho, it seems there weren’t enough grease monkeys available to re-align my flanges on the day, so I had to reconvene on the following Wednesday to have my tyres rotated (Which I thought was kind of the whole ‘raison d’etre’ with tyres – But I’m not an automotive professional.)  The day came, I delivered the Dandymobile to the garage and gave strict instructions to the owner about the care and maintenance of the currently incumbent boot-panther (And not to poke him with sticks, I’ve found that Wilberforce doesn’t like it when you poke him with sticks)

As an aside, many people have recently asked me how I initially came across the MKII Dandymobile. Firstly, I thank them for downloading my video from PornHub, then I relate the snatches of story that I can remember… All I shall say here is that it involved a heated game of full-contact Spillikins, with a Nepalese gentleman called ‘H’rum’ and a scar to my inner thigh in the shape of a seven place setting Chinoiserie dinner service, which I still have to this day (the scar, not the dinner service). It itches loudly during meteor showers.

But back to our story, I had dropped off the Dandymobile, and had been offered my choice of courtesy cars. My choice was simple – Amongst the plethora of Porsches and BMWs and the single beige Humber Scepter, there stood, glistening in the early morning sun, my Nemesis, my High-archdeacon of hell, my own personal Eleanor… The Audi Quattro.

This is her, look upon her and tremble

I’ve driven cars that would curdle a nun’s milk, I’ve driven cars that would make a strong man see in black and white, I’ve driven cars that would make popular BBC Radio2 DJ and alleged Top Gear presenter Chris Evans vomit in excitement – And they’ve never affected me.  But the Quattro, the Quattro shook itself like a wet Alsatian as I walked up to it.  The handle of the driver’s door was unusually warm, and the windscreen wiper arms seemed to pulse with an unearthly vigour all their own. As I mounted it, and performed the complicated series of button pushes and lever… erm… lever… whatever it is that the current participle action of levers is, I felt the slightly too snug seat below me constrict, as if readying itself to bind me steadily as it propelled me forward with the voracity of a rabid SCUD missile.  I’d be a liar if I said that I didn’t seriously consider walking the 60 miles to work.

The Quattro however, had other ideas.  It was four miles from the garage to the petrol station, I arrived there some nine seconds after initially leaving the garage. I regained consciousness lying on the back seat in a pool of my own tears with my trousers around my ankles. £20 worth of petrol was all I was willing to give to the beast as tribute. It turned out that that single amount was only just sufficient for the round trip that day.  The Quattro showed her displeasure on the way home by making me do seventeen circuits of the dual-carriageway island near my house, faster and faster we drove, until finally the back end of the car broke traction and we left the road, plummeting into a nearby hedgerow and viciously squashing a family of crested newts.

The message on the answering machine from the garage saying that the work on the Dandymobile would take another day filled me with panic. I freely admitted that I cried like a natural soprano on the verge of becoming a castrato. Down on the gravel drive, the Quattro belched loudly as it spat out a broken flurry of peacock feathers.

Shake it all about

I wasn’t going to Blog. I really wasn’t.

I wasn’t going to get involved with the doom mongering and the ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got in in for me!’

I wasn’t going to mention how smug some of the ‘Leaver/Brexit’ campaigners have acted and I certainly wasn’t going to mention the bile that’s being spewed by some of the ‘Remainers’ about how HMS UK is on fire and sinking and it’s all due to a deluded racist minority who managed to raise their normally dragging knuckles high enough off the floor to fill their ballot form in with a pen that they’d bought from home so MI5 couldn’t rub out their pencil mark and put it in the box that was less inclusive… The box that had taken us one step away from Global Citizenship and membership of the Justice League and the United Federation of Planets.

I wasn’t going to launch into the ‘How the Baby-Boomers have destroyed the future of the Millennials with their Death-dealing spikey Nazi Jackboots of Death’ debate. And I certainly wasn’t going to point out that our polling system is based on anonymity and the age-distribution figures that are being bandied about are from a YouGov telephone poll of 1,652 people over 2 days who just happened to be at home when the market researchers called (So, Students and pensioners) and are therefore, not massively representative.

And I certainly wasn’t going to put the Jackie Chan meme WTF meme at the bottom of every Facebook status that said ‘I am so upset by the UK giving up on the EU and just unilaterally leaving – which I (the original poster not me) think is a proper dick move, that I am going to give up on the UK and unilaterally leave.’

Neither was I going to answer anything slowly explained to me by a hobby-economist with ‘So, is that a fact or is that just a guess.’ Or ask a weekend-politico to ‘Prove it to me or show me some clear evidence.’

What I might have said, if I had blogged, would probably have been something like:

I agree that a lot of the leave campaigners have lied to confuse the weak, and that many of the remainers are only upset because they can finally see their personal gravy-train rolling to a halt.  I have no idea whether our long, drawn-out exit from the EU is going to be good or bad for the UK in the long term. No-one does, people can offer their opinions and go through their detailed forecasts and I’ll acknowledge that some of the things they forecast will be right – but just as much won’t be.

You can argue for the difficulty or otherwise of renegotiating trade deals, you can tell me how hard whoever the Prime Minister will be in October will have to fight tooth and nail for our rights once Article 50 is triggered, and I’ll nod, and I’ll agree because I know that whatever challenges we face in the future, they’ll be overcome by people who’ve had to realise, like it or not that we’re on our own that we are the Captains of our future now. There’s no EU safety-net for those who believe there ever was.  Our government will have to work harder because they’re our last line of political defense now, no running off crying to Brussels when a bigger country has stolen our dinner-money and poked us in the eye.

The only thing any of us can be sure of is that: if you took the time to vote yesterday, got off the sofa, turned off Jeremy Kyle and made a cross in a box, you did the right thing – Whatever box you ticked… Congratulations.

Southcart Book Club May 2016

Let’s just imagine that a couple of weekends ago, hang on, it might have been last week. No, it was definitely… Oh, I don’t know, I’m not Doctor bloody Who (Although I would no doubt, make a bloody brilliant Doctor Who. Admittedly, there’d be a lot less reversing the polarity of the neutron flow and a lot more ‘Hold my beer and watch this’ before all the running and yelling started)

Anywho, 3... 2... 1... back in the room… Where was I? Oh yes, one weekend in the recent past, I was invited down to Southcart Books, the only independent book shop in the Black Country (Where Lenny Henry comes from) to talk about all my books – Past, present and *Whisper* future. You’ve heard me talk about Southcart before – I bang on about it like it’s going out of fashion, you should really go there and spend lots of money. Also, say it was my idea that you go there, I might get a free coffee out of it or maybe some vodka at Christmas – Because everyone knows that that’s what authors live on, coffee and vodka.

It wasn’t just me that got invited. Well, it was that time, but… Well, what happens is that every month, on the lunchtime of the last Saturday, they hold a book club in the shop. It’s where they get a local author, or other person of note, to pop down for a couple of hours and chat about stuff and things, maybe do a reading, maybe recount some funny story from their past and generally hold sway with their feet on the table like a cut-price Tyrion Lannister until it’s time for them all to leave so that they can pick their kids up from ballet, or football, or organic weasel plaiting or whatever it is that passes for children’s weekend entertainment in the West Midlands nowadays. The punters also get the chance to buy copies of whatever book the author’s hawking at the moment. It’s like the thing that Waterstones do with authors you’ve actually heard of, but without all the nasty queueing out of the door and not being able to eat an ice-cream while you’re looking around the shop.

I got there early, spread out some signed copies of ‘The Pangolin Yodels’ and sat on one of the shop’s comfy sofas to await my audience. Before long, Lucy, the organiser of the whole book club thing arrived – Calling her an organiser is selling her short really, she’s a successful author too, and a musical photographer (in that she specializes in taking photos of bands, she doesn’t spin around whilst whistling the Sugar-Plum Fairy as she works – Although who am I to judge? She may well do that too.) and she’s the lead singer of a massively popular soul band – I hate her actually, she’s so bloody talented that it makes my teeth itch.  She let me know how these things usually played out, and confided that usually it followed a pretty strict timetable of five minutes of the author bigging up their book, then a break for cake, then the remaining hour was reserved for random knob jokes and comparing favourite flavours of crisps, then a couple of people would buy a copy of your book and we could all go home (via the Organic Weasel Plaiting Foundry Est. in Walsall December 1749, obviously)  

So then the fine upstanding members of the book club started to arrive and some of them talked for a while about the damage caused to their boobs by rabbits, (Plus other famous local author James Josiah whom I may have mentioned in passing before - Wait, no, I don't mean that James Josiah caused them some boob damage too... Oh Christ I can see the litigation now!) I sat at the head of the oversized oak table, with a line of completely normal people down each side, some with more damaged boobs than others. They looked at me like jackals in a kebab shop, ‘Go on,’ I could tell that they were thinking, ‘do something literary, I dare you.’ I started off with telling them who I was, just to let them know that they were in the right place. And gave them a quick five minutes of why I do what I do, and where I stared and stuff like that. Then I was asked for a reading… I’d prepared some stuff, but I was requested to read the Gullible Steve story ‘The Concussion Chilli with Rottweiler Sauce’ – I read it, stopping every few minutes to wait for people to stop laughing, and told them that this story wasn’t actually in the book that was available for sale, it was in my previous one (Luckily, I’d bought a copy of it with me for advertising purposes). I got through ‘Thermodynamics,it’s the law’ about my Dad and a pigeon from the 60’s and I think that there might have been one other, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

Then I read ‘Bek’ – Now, I can’t tell you what ‘Bek’s about, because it’s a story from my next book, which includes both some extended versions of existing (fiction) stories and some completely new stuff – I’m trying to get it out for Christmas (2016 before you ask) – I’ll keep you in the loop.  This is the cover:

Yes, that's my daughter there, well spotted

It promoted some interesting reactions, there were yelps, there were covered faces and various cries of ‘No!’ from people.  At the end there was a stunned silence for a few seconds, and one person asked, “How can that story have been written by someone who writes things like that.” (Pointing at ‘The Pangolin Yodels’) another remarked that it felt somehow comfortable and horrific at the same time (I’m paraphrasing as I can't remember exactly what words he used, but I know that I was quite pleased)

I looked up at the clock and we’d over-run by about half an hour. I inscribed some books for people, and every single person who was there bought a copy (apart from the people who already owned it, obvs) – We even had a Viking film director come in off the street to buy a copy (And by Viking film director, I don’t mean someone who directs Viking films, I mean he directs films, and is also a Viking)

(Don't tell anyone, but there has even been talk about the possibility of one of the stories from 'Forever Girl' being made into a film - Remember, Mum's the word. Shh...)

Another funny thing happened, all the people who were there, every man-jack of them, are now my friends on Facebook – I’m very social you know – And one of them has given me permission to screen-grab something she posted so that you can see that, despite your better judgement, it’s not just me that enjoys my books. (I also enclose a picture of her preparing to read the book, for science reasons *cough*) I’m going to be there again probably on Saturday the 25^th June, so that people can ask me questions about the book – You could come too, it’ll be fun. There might be a bouncy castle*

Not gratuitous in the slightest...

Frankly written and beautiful? Open? Me? Surely some mistake... Anywho, Southcart might have some signed copies left, or if you get a copy of whichever book/s you want and get in contact, I'll scribble something unintelligible in them and send them back to you, free of charge (inc postage within reason) when I remember.

And what do you get for nothing nowadays?

*There almost certainly won't be a bouncy castle.

Help Southcart Books - You're their only hope

You know me right? Living on the edge, Lone Wolf, loose cannon, Maverick, One shot Trevor, The shiniest haddock in the shoal.

What I mean to say is… Everything I’ve ever done, every success I’ve had, every award I’ve ever won and achievement I’ve ever unlocked on the Xbox and Steam has been totally down to me and the sweat of my brow.

And if you do know me, if you have had the honour of meeting me in the flesh at one of my tremendously infrequent public appearances, you’ll know that the previous two paragraphs are complete balls.  Firstly, I’ve not achieved very much at all, and those things I have, have been with the help of people who have a lot more faith in me than I do.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a boatload of things – I’ve even done some things that didn’t have the capacity to kill me if my faith in blind luck had ever petered out even a little. (Which is why I have a large tattoo of a blindfolded lady on my back. Her name is PISTIS (Πίστις) and she’s the Ancient Greek personification of faith… Blind Faith in this case)

I’d never have written a book without the support of my friends, I’d never have published it without my family, (I’m writing my fifth, sixth and seventh books at the minute, all at the same time – Go me!) And I’m sure that most of you guys are the same, easy stuff is easy… The clue’s in the name, but to get the difficult stuff done, you’re gonna need help.  I consider myself really lucky that I’ve managed to surround myself, both literally and figuratively, with people who are willing to help me do some massively stupid things, purely because they’ll probably be funny.

One such institution has now asked for my help in return – And it’s only fair that I pass that burden on to you people, because you’re friendly types and probably have a lot more money than I do. 

Southcart Books in Walsall. Run by the odd, but tremendously friendly, Scott & Amy. Because of their tremendous financial skills (And the fact that their landlord is doing his best to sell their shop out from under them) are trying to move to larger premises avec le grande vitesse.

They’ve set up a Crowdfunder to cover the cost of fitting out the new place, having a decent frontage installed and helping towards the deposit. There are any number of pledge levels with rewards, from £1 - £500 (Although they’re almost halfway to their £4,000 target already, you see – it really is the type of place that has loyal customers – If only BHS had been so lucky.) There are many more fine photos like the one above on their Crowdfunder page, but you'll notice that none feature me, those pictures are saved for specialist customers and there is a waiting list as long as my... Well, let's just say that there's a waiting list.

But here’s the rub… If you pledge an amount, any amount, they will give you that amount back, in books, it’s as if you’ve not spent any money at all!. So, if you were to pledge, let’s say, £20.00, not only would you get free coffees AND your name painted lovingly on the outside of the shop, you’d also get £20.00 worth of free books. If you were to pledge £500.00, you’d get to run the shop for a day AND get £500 pounds worth of free books – I don’t know, you might get to name a bookshelf after yourself and hold your own Pagan rituals there too, I’m not really involved in the decision making process (for good reason, probably).

So, you lovely, lovely munchkins, click on the link below and swap a pledge for some books, and coffee, and the warm, tuberculosis-like tickle in your chesty-box that comes when you help good people do a nice thing.  Remember, without them, there’d be no me…

Actually no, forget that, I am the Captain of my own fate… I did it all on my own *cough*

Click here to support 'The Southcart Books Big Move Crowdfunder'

Neil's Birthday Story 2016

As a lot of the 'keener' (or is it 'more keen'?) followers out there will know, some of my friends get a story, rather than a card or a present for their birthdays each year.  Mr friend Neil is one of these people.

Hope that he doesn't mind me sharing it with you... He won't, he's pretty chilled.

-oOo-

Arkon looked over his shoulder into the night, their camp was small and the torches that their bodymen had sunk into the ground only illuminated the pale sand directly below them. The Tyrnus Desert was a thousand square kintyres of featureless flatland. They were still a full day’s ride from civilisation; from the terminus of the first part of their quest.

“Lord Arkon?” asked Lord Bilthor, looking up from the firepit, “Are you sure that the seer will be in Forthang City when we get there?”

Lord Arkon nodded slowly, then took a long drag on his Yantha-bone pipe, “That’s where the Sand-Kin said he would be; I’ve had no reason to think they would lie.” The curl of pale green smoke from his pipe momentarily obscured the stars that made up the constellation of Jory the Merrywalker; Arkon waved it away before Bilthor had chance to remark on this new ill omen.  “Is Lord Teletorc in his tent?”

Bilthor nodded, robbed of the opportunity to point out the ill omen, “He’s still suffering from that nest of woodgrubs that he ate yesterday. I told him that he should have let his bodyman singe all the hairs off it before he ate it, but what would I know?” He made the complicated hand-gesture that meant ‘It is as something known by a child.’ In his native language.

“We will enter Forthang tomorrow, the seer will be on top of his pole in the market square and he will be able to tell us where we can get High-Lord Sehmbhy’s yearly tribute.

“I hope it’s easier than last year’s quest, the air was very thin at the top of the mountain. I lost three bodymen to that final avalanche…” both men nodded, “Lord Kalkreith’s wife still hasn’t recovered from losing her husband you know?”

Arkon pulled the tiny crystal vial from under his shirt, “I’ve still got the sample of the creature’s blood.”

“Does it protect you from harm?”

“Well, brother, I’m not dead yet.” The deep laughter of the two lords was interrupted by a bodyman bringing them each a glass of Jumen wine, which they drank silently and retired to their tents for the night.

The next morning was bright and hot. The three lords sat whilst the camp was struck, and packed carefully aboard their tame Yanthas. They headed towards the shining towers of Forthang behind its giant defensive wall of sand-glass. The strong legs and barbaric claws of the Yanthas ate up the distance as if it were nothing, and even though they had to stop twice for Lord Teletorc to be put back onto his mighty steed, it was just after Second-Prayer when they arrived at their destination.

The Lords’ bodymen cleared the way in front of them, as they made their way from the stables to the market square – and right to the base of the seer’s pole.

“Good Seer, I am Lord Arkon of the Guild of Tribute. We…” He looked at Lord Teletorc’s prone form, lying on the worn cobbles, “We three have travelled from far Ithnia to gain your counsel.” Arkon paused, but the seer just sat at the top of the pole, his eyes closed. “We have been sent so that we may know of what the High-Lord requires as his tribute this year.”

The seer’s eyes flickered open, their cloudy white pupils reflecting the harsh sun. He coughed, his mouth dry from not speaking for the three hundred days since he had last spoken. He fixed the lords with his blind stare, “The High-Lord requires one of the remaining two Chumchurras in existence. One is located in the highest tower of the Dark Citadel on the dead continent of Chumchurrasel. To reach it you must cross the Blood Sea, braving the ravenous Sea-Chibs who are known for their ability to separate a sailor’s head from his shoulders between breaths. Then, when you make landfall on the rocky coast of Koranth, you must travel across the Plains of Death, against the Mirror Wind that will show you your greatest desires to try and divert you from your task. And finally enter the Invisible Valley by choosing the one true door from amongst the eighty-three exactly similar ones, knowing at all times that the wrong choice will bring instant death.”

Arkon and Bilthor looked at each other and gulped. “Can I just stop you there, what about the other one? – You said there were two.”

The seer blinked, “What?”

“You said that there are two remaining – So how do we get the other one, claiming the first one seems a bit… involved. Not to mention dangerous.”

The seer deflated slightly, then he reached for the jug of ice-water next to him and took a long, slow drink. “There’s an Argos Extra on the corner of Hadras Street,” he pointed over their heads, back the way they’d come, “It’s catalog number 734/7624 – You get a choice of colours. Only one per customer though. You know, no offence, but I don’t think you’re really entering into the spirit of this ‘quest’ business.”

Mirror

As some of you know, I often write stories for people as birthday presents - It's because I'm cheap, I make no bones about it. I could warble on about home-made presents meaning more, but neither you nor I really believe that do we?

The following story was initially meant as a birthday story for my agent, Andy... But it sort of took on a life of its own, then it got a bit dark, and a bit long, so I thought I'd put it here rather then on his Facebook page where people might accidentally see it.

Anywho... Here we go... This story is 'Mirror'

-oOo-

He winced at the grinding noise from the gearbox as he changed down into second. The engine note changing pitch as the tires fought for grip on the loose, rocky surface.

“Mirror, this is three-eleven, checking in.”

“Roger three-eleven,” the tinny voice from the radio was almost lost in the static that seemed to always haunt this stretch of road, “We see you at the base of the South Escarpment, anything to report?”

“Looks like there’s been a rock fall, lotta loose shale on the road. Might put me behind by a few minutes, wouldn’t want you getting worried about me and sending out the dogs or anything.”

“Negative three-eleven, we don’t worry about anything, you know that. Though for your information and safety, the dogs are already out.”

He spat a word that his Mother would have beaten him senseless for using, “Has there been a breach?”

“Seal broke during the last delivery, four confirmed losses and another two had to be annulled in the bay. They’re still hosing it down. Six dogs released, three have enabled stealth.”

“They’ve picked up the trail then.”

“Watch yourself, they weren’t coming towards you, but between the stealth and static - they sometimes drop off the grid.”

“Thanks Mirror, that’s brightened my Birthday no end. Three-eleven out.”

He peered out of the window into the fog, in this weather it would be almost impossible to spot the escaped animals until he was close enough to run over them, which he was legally bound to do. It wouldn’t be much easier to see the dogs, even the light coming from their sensors would probably be masked in the mist. The image on the dashboard scanner flickered and then cleared, for a second he thought he saw a blip amongst the fleeting interference. He knew that hitting it wouldn’t help, but he did it anyway; regretting it instantly as the pain shot up his wrist to his elbow.  “You’re getting old Andy.” He mumbled to himself as he flexed his fingers, “I'm glad this is the last run.”

The truck continued to climb towards the lip of the escarpment, the ride getting rougher as he got closer to what he assumed was the source of the rock-fall. His whole cab lurched as one of the front wheels dropped into a pothole and the ever-present noise from the cargo compartment behind doubled in volume. He banged on the panel behind him, the pain once more shooting up his arm. “Son of a…” he yelled. He was still yelling a stream of obscenities, when he crested the rise and the tire pressure alarm sounded.

The truck juddered to a halt in a cloud of gravel as he hit the brakes and he sat with his head in his hands until the strident alarm annoyed him enough that he muted it. A check of the screens told him that the front offside tire was punctured beyond the capacity of the self-inflating system to fix.

“Mirror, this is three-eleven, I have lost a wheel – Going to have to replace it manually. Any update on the dogs?”

“All dogs are now in stealth mode, it’s only a matter of time. Last track puts them over one click to the North. Do you require assistance?”

“Negative Mirror. Shouldn’t take me more than a few minutes,” he looked at his still tingling arm, “No problems here. Just let me know if there’s any update.”

He jumped down from the cab, the chill from the fog immediately dampening the sleeves of his fatigue jacket. Moving towards the rear of the cargo bay, he punched his access code into the arm that held the 2 meter high spare wheel and, as he watched, the wheel made its way forward, along the siderails of the truck, until it reached the cab. Whereupon words started to flash on the keypad’s tiny screen. Andy sighed, then looked around as he heard a rock clatter to the ground behind him. Convincing himself that it was just a remnant from the rock-fall he shook his head and looked closely at the warning. ‘Automatic hub release disabled. Please disconnect manually’

“Really?” he shouted at no-one in particular as he set to work with the contents of his emergency toolbox. He removed the hub cover and started to loosen the nuts holding the hub.  He had released seven of the twelve when the radio burst into life. The message was more interference than words. “three-elev…. Dog… three hun… Not respon…”

The wrench fell from his numb hand as a sheen of sweat instantly appeared on his forehead. “Mirror? Mirror! Goddammit Mirror – Call the dogs off!” but the rest of the message, if there was one, was completely lost in the cloud of static. He picked up the tool and feverishly started to work on the remaining five nuts, praying for the fog to clear.

Another rock fell. This time it was not from behind him, not from the way he had come, but instead it came from the North, from the direction of the Mirror… From the direction of the dogs. He finished loosening the last nut with his fingers. As it dropped to the ground, the indicators on the spare wheel went green and the auto-jack started to slowly raise the truck into the air. “C’mon you bitch.” The compressor laboured as it rose, and he lovingly stroked the truck’s smooth paintwork, willing it to move more quickly. A ram pushed the old wheel off, letting him see the huge jagged rip in the thick rubber for the first time. The arm moved the new wheel into position and stopped. Once more displaying a flashing warning on its screen. ‘Manually replace twelve wheel nuts.’ it said.  He stared at it, dumbfounded, before dropping to his knees to try and find the discarded fasteners amongst the gravel. He was replacing the third one when he heard it.

His entire body froze, except for the hand holding the wrench. He had definitely heard movement. The toneless silence of the fog had caused his ears to become so sensitive that he could even hear the thick beat of his own laboured pulse. “Hello!” he called, without turning his head, still looking at the screen, “I am Animal Delivery Technician three-eleven. Inbound, full, cold, tired and scared. Check with the Mirror.” The display changed to ‘Manually replace nine wheel nuts.’ And the noise of movement came again. He rested his head against the wheel and took several deep breaths before turning around.

She was about nine years old, covered in dust, with two clean streaks on her face where she’d been crying.  Her breathing was as ragged as his was, and probably for the same reasons.

“Please, can you help me… My Daddy said to run… He pointed this way,” She looked over her shoulder, “I ran… He said he’d be right behind me… I’m cold.” She took a step towards the truck, still frightened, but with the beginnings of a relieved smile on her lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s nothing I can do. You’ve already…” He took a step backwards, maintaining eye contact whilst reaching for the Taser clipped to his belt. 

Her eyes widened. “Please Mister, please help me.  I want my Daddy…”

She didn’t even notice the dog before it grabbed her. The electrical charge in its jaws knocking her unconscious before she had time to scream. It was probably for the best, she’d suffered enough.  The dog stared directly at him, the little girl dangling limply in its jaws, he raised his hands - moving them as far away from his Taser as possible.  There was a pause as it scanned him to confirm his identity, then it gave a derogatory sniff as it turned its two tonne bulk towards the Mirror and padded back into the fog.

He replaced the remaining nuts in record time and boarded the truck, leaving the destroyed tire where it lay. Reaching for the starter, he paused, then slouched back into the seat and started to sob.  The Earth was dying, some would say that it was already dead. It wasn’t so bad when the oil ran out, giant solar mirrors were built around the planet, collecting limitless free energy from the Sun. It was a boom time almost, the population skyrocketed. Nobody realised that we were running short of other key resources though. We lost Sodium first, then Molybdenum, Silicon and Vanadium. Suddenly there were millions of consumers with nothing to consume. 

It was then that they passed the worldwide ‘One out, one in’ law, where children could only be born if a member of their family died, zero population growth. They just fined the parents that had the ‘unauthorised’ children. Until they realised that the human body contained trace amounts of every element we needed, and that those elements could be released simply by feeding a living body into the lightstream of a solar collector.  They just took the 'surplus' children at first, but it wasn’t long before they took the parents too… Entire families sometimes.  It depended completely on how much space you had left in the collection truck.

The cries from the cargo compartment were getting louder, and he knew that he’d made the right decision to hand in his notice.

Insomnia

A story based on a sleepless night I had a few months ago. In actuality, it went on for about another five minutes or so, but... Well... Some things are best left undescribed.

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781

-oOo-

My bladder woke me at 03:30 – and I briefly tried to convince myself that I could hold it until the alarm went off; but the bastard part of my brain, the piece that visualizes dripping taps and waterfalls and gurgling drains, had more immediate ideas. Pulling back the covers as quietly as I could, I padded through the cold darkness to the bathroom, careful not to stub my toe on the laundry basket, or tread on the cat as I so often do.

I fumbled for the light, which only had two settings, ‘Off’ and ‘The heart of a supernova’, or so it felt in the early hours of the morning when the house was quiet and peaceful but for the hushed snores of my wife and slightly louder ones from the dog in the next room. I screwed my eyes closed and tried to flip the switch slowly, willing the light to fade into life, rather than springing upon me like a startled leopard. I saw details of the bathroom furniture through my tightly closed lids and could almost hear the sizzling noise as my retinas shrank.

Immediate business completed, I washed up and tried to put the hand-towel back on the radiator through pupils the size of pinpricks. Turning the light out as I left plunged me into the darkness usually reserved for particularly deep dwelling badgers and professional kidnapees. I stumbled back into bed, offering thanks to whoever had initially thought of en-suite bathrooms for making it so that I didn’t need to go out onto the landing and enter the domain of the inquisitive, but vision impaired, dog that sometimes haunted the corridors.

Pulling the covers up to my neck, I chanced a look at the clock. The bright green LED numbers displayed 03:37. I closed my eyes, planted my feet flat on my wife’s previously warm thighs, smiling at her grunt of mild discomfort as she turned over, and tried to go back to sleep.  The clock showed 03:51 and my attention was drawn to the light shining from the gap above the curtains. Was it getting lighter? The sun doesn’t usually rise until 06:30, until after I had fought my way out of bed, which meant that the sun was lazier than I was, or significantly more clever. But what if it was Saturday? Is it Saturday today? I looked at the clock and saw the single LED in the corner that showed me that the alarm had been intentionally set; so no, it wasn’t Saturday. Perhaps it was a Bank Holiday and I had set the alarm in error – There’s always that hope. I thought about setting the alarm on a Friday night, just so that the alarm would sound at ‘Stupid O’clock’ on the Saturday morning and I could just turn it off, roll over, and go back to sleep, with all the feelings of empowerment that came with it. I thought of my own confusion, I thought of the dead-arm that would unquestionably result when my wife discovered what I’d done, I hastily thought better of my plan. It was 04:07, less than two hours until the alarm went off and the repetitive electronic screaming presided over the birth of another dull, soul-less day.

I stared at the wall between the wardrobe and the door to the hallway.  It seemed darker than the rest of the wall. It wasn’t a shadow, the dim light from the curtains bathed that entire wall, but the specific area I looked at was darker, and the longer I looked at it, the darker it became.  I scanned along the wall, until I was looking at one of the small pictures that my Wife had bought in a desperate bid to give the room some ‘character’. I remembered that old writing exercise where lazy English teachers ask you to write a story about a generic picture that had far too many elements for you to adequately cover in your allotted time. Mine invariably featured devious Lovecraftian experiments, or an underground butchery ring, or a trusted upstanding member of the community being unveiled as a cannibal. Jesus Christ, was it any wonder that none of my writing ever sold? If you look up the words ‘Formulaic’ or ‘Derivative’ in the dictionary, there was a picture of me, looking self-satisfied. In later editions, I often had a revolver pressed to my temple. In the Children’s editions, it had a flag, with ‘BANG!’ written on it sticking out of the barrel.

My eyes lowered to a point on the wall directly below the picture; almost immediately, the wall began to darken in a clearly delineated circle around the point I was staring at. Sweet Baby Jesus, I was going blind! At the very least it was cataracts, I’m not even 50, a failed, derivative writer, trying to make enough money to keep himself and his family fed on a diet of watery soup and second-hand crackers.  My children would point and laugh at my crumpled Dickensian form, panhandling for sixpence pieces by the side of the road. My wife would leave me for her tennis coach and she doesn’t even have a tennis coach. She would take the last of our money, hire a tennis coach, and leave me for him. I would change my name to Michael de Santa.

04:21. Should I just get up? I could see if I’d had any more life-affirming ‘likes’ on Facebook. I could go through my backlog of unopened emails to see if my Agent had received any life-changing acceptance letters. I could see if those pictures from my tequila party were ‘Trending’ on Twitter. Who am I kidding? I’d either be playing an on-line game until I made myself late for work, or opening an ‘Incognito Window’ on Chrome and hoping the floorboards didn’t creak too rhythmically and wake someone up before I had experienced a personal ‘petit-mort’.

I’ll make a cup of tea. Can I be bothered to make myself a cup of tea? Maybe coffee? Maybe I could make a pot of coffee and score some brownie points with the wife when she woke up. Would it stay warm long enough? It was 04:45, it’d be close. I’ll do that, I’ll make a pot of decent coffee.

I woke up to hands on my chest, warm hands, a palm resting gently on each of what I laughingly call my pecs, but everyone else calls ‘moobs’. I slowly open my eyes to the yellowish light streaming through the kitchen window, a bright day, a warm day. I’m lying on the coffee table, maybe eighteen inches off the ground. The smell of fresh coffee permeating the air. I look up, along the bare arms of my masseuse, to the shoulder of the fitted mini-dress, rising to a thin, pale, neck, sporting a golden necklace finer than a human hair, from which hung a gold and diamond crucifix nestling in the valley where her translucent skin was barely covered by the sheer material. I blinked, trying to clear the slight blurring of my vision, “Aren’t you…”

She smiled, “Just call me Madeline.” She took a step forward, her manicured nails moving through the hairs on my chest, down to my stomach; her parted thighs gently brushing the tops of my ears.

“Madeline… Smith? I saw a film with you in it… Last night… You were…” It was then that the alarm chose, in its infinite wisdom, to go off.