Dining out will never be the same again, after you’ve read Isolation Space by Mark Cantrell

THERE’S a macabre twist in store for vampire lovers in Mark Cantrell’s first paperback anthology of short fiction, but some people might feel he’s rather made a meal of it.

Certainly, it’s not for those with a weak stomach when he introduces the gruesome world of a vampire slayer who boasts he ‘eats vampires for breakfast’. Join him on the hunt – if you dare – and you’ll find he isn’t joking.

Welcome to the grisly – not to mention ghoulish – world of wealthy gourmets with a taste for the most exotic, the most dangerous of culinary experiences.

As if that’s not enough to whet the appetite, Mark introduces a few further dark twists and turns to the vampire mythos that will put the bite back into the genre and turn the tables on the age-old predators stalking human fears.

Vampires may be an acquired taste – but once bitten you’ll never be the same again.

There’s plenty more to Isolation Space than meets the eye. It’s not all vampiric; the anthology combines 20 short stories to paint a tapestry of the macabre and the horrific, the chilling and the heart-shocking, with some thought provoking works of a more satirical nature.

Many of them have appeared on this site, and prior to that in various small press magazines over the years. Now, they have been updated and improved even more, to create an explosive collection of short fiction in the tangible form of a paperback book.

The result is a powerful amalgam of horror, science fiction and fantasy that provides plenty for the imagination to chew on.

Isolation Space is published by Lulu and can be ordered online from its website, or coming soon from leading online retailer Amazon, as well as ordered from good bookshops.


Reviewing the anthology in #50 (August 2009), Jim Palmer, editor of Writers’ Muse said: “As well as the horror and science fiction pieces, there are some wonderfully observed satirical stories. It’s hard to write satire that leaves the writer helpless with mirth, rage and realisation of the truth behind the story, but Mark achieves it brilliantly. His pace when writing these types if pieces is inestimable.

“Like many of the best science fiction and horror stories, there are twists in the tail of many of these pieces, and, also like many of the best in those genres, then end, when it hits you, is not at all expected.

“If you love being thrilled, frightened, intrigued, fascinated and engrossed, you can do no better than get hold of this book.”

Category: PLUGGED

THE sun is still low in the sky, but the future residents of Containment Facility 1.01 have already been hard at work for hours. It’s a show of their dedication to the scheme, but also the enthusiasm it has inspired in these former housing association tenants, that they are prepared to undertake such labours.

Dressed in their orange jump-suits, they provide an eye-watering splash of colour to an otherwise drab construction site on what is a cheerless winter morning, but their back-breaking activity shows a hardiness of spirit fit for pioneers – which in a way they are.

Containment Facility 1.01 is but the beginning of a vast – critics might say utopian – vision to change the social landscape of the country. It marks the launch pad for the Archipelago Project, a far-reaching plan that aims to create a string of such satellite facilities around the country’s major towns and cities. The purpose is to forge a two-pronged strategy of both social and economic revitalisation, and finally eliminate the problems that have dogged planners and policy makers for decades.

So there’s a lot riding on a successful outcome to this pilot scheme: not just the realisation of the vision, or the homes for those most in need, but also hard cash provided by funding bodies and – much more crucially – private sector investors. Naturally, they will want to see results where it matters most.

Much of the techniques brought to bear on the project are intended to maximise cost-efficiency gains, but this is about more than just bean-counting – those socio-economic aspects are not mere window dressing, but an integral part of the efficiency drives.

One of these cost-efficiency measures is to involve the future residents in the actual construction of the site. They were decanted out of their old estate in one fell swoop and put up in a ‘tent city’ within the site’s perimeter. That released the former estate for sale to development partners, thereby releasing capital, and also provided an on-site labour force that reduces development costs. The use of heavy – and costly – machinery is avoided wherever possible, making the fullest use of human muscle power to give the residents a physical stake in their new community.

This ‘self build’ initiative is one of many important innovations that have made the Archipelago Project such an exciting venture for its stakeholders. It is intended to give the residents more than just a sense of involvement in their future, but also a sense of ownership. When it is completed, they’ll be able to take pride in knowing that their own sweat helped make it real.

“The work is important to the process of building a sustainable community, both to foster a sense of having a place and being in that place,” said Tony Lubyanka, Chief Executive for Drezhinsky Square Housing Trust (DSHT). “That way we forge the strong moral fibre our modern economy needs to sustain shareholder value. By working on their own barracks, they will gain a sense of camaraderie and community needed to help foster social cohesion. As well as providing a sense of ownership it will also teach these people the value of hard work.”

The Government has expressed great interest in the outcome of the scheme, and not just in the form of the Home Office’s direct – though ‘back seat’ – involvement. A number of Government departments are watching the scheme closely.

A spokesman for the Secretary of State for Municipal Morality, Community Cohesion & Social Control said: “Containment Facility 1.01 is a wonderful scheme and we wish it well. We are excited by its potential and are especially pleased to note that it shows how the principles of philanthropy are alive and well in the private sector. This isn’t about base money-grubbing but about providing for the neediest in our society. As a Brand New Labour™ Government we are proud to work with private sector partners in the fulfilment of our party’s founding principles. The working class can rest assured we will continue to fight the cause of poverty.”

Drezhinsky Square, as the actual hands on development body, is at the sharp end of making Containment Facility 1.01 a reality. It was established as an executive agency of the wider Consortium responsible for the Archipelago Project. The members include the Home Office, Cheka Security plc, and Guantanamo Developments inc., along with a variety of contractors and specialist advisors.

The Consortium members put significant capital into the project, but also received massive contributions from regional development grants and Government funding, as well as investment from private sources looking to house aspects of their business operations close to the site. After a quick whip round among staff, the Tony Blair Foundation for Social Justice also provided a special ‘Noblesse Oblige Award’ worth a whole £3.42 and, as it turned out, a five pfennig piece. Guantanamo donated the residents’ orange jump-suits as an added show of the company’s faith in the scheme’s potential.

Lubyanka was appointed for his extensive experience in handling tough scenarios and making projects happen. His no-nonsense approach stems from a rather colourful and unusual background which further testifies the ‘beyond the box’ thinking that is being applied to the Archipelago Project.

As a former United States Marine, then ‘specialist contractor’, he has – as he put it – gained a wealth of experience “pacifying problem communities” in areas as diverse as ‘Git’mo’, in Cuba; Afghanistan; the former Republic of Iraq; and other parts of the Middle East. His manner is brusque and efficient, and every bit the military specialist even in civilian life. It’s the kind of experience fellow executives in the Consortium feel is needed for the Archipelago ahead.

He added: “One thing my experience has taught me – success demands discipline, planning, teamwork, leadership, a clear vision and corrupt officials. Get that mix right and the ability to kill a man with two fingers and a watchstrap becomes a mere perk of the job.”

According to the literature, Containment Facility 1.01 is a ‘ground-breaking mixed use residential/industrial scheme’. When it is complete, the three sub-compounds – one each for men, women and children – will house around 30,000 people. There will also be a smaller test-facility for housing asylum seekers. Later Archipelago developments will accommodate at least twice that number.

The compounds will be located adjacent to an industrial park constructed as part of the wider complex. The aim is to offer light industrial, warehousing, back office functions and other employment tasks suitable to a low- to semi-skilled labour base. So not only does the Archipelago Project aim to deal a blow to the nation’s housing crisis, it also fosters a work-based initiative that is intended to create a boost to the local and regional economies nearby each facility.

As Lubyanka said: “The Facility’s secondary role is about restoring some much needed economic viability to what has hitherto been so much redundant livestock. Instead of being a burden on society, they’ll have a chance to make a positive contribution to life in the 21st Century. That’s got to be good for us all.”

In addition to tackling unemployment and deprivation, the scheme will also provide key worker accommodation so that essential services can overcome the problem of labour depletion, due to high local housing costs. Along with other higher skilled workers in other economic sectors, who also find they have been priced out of the market, they will gain both a home and employment opportunities.

This is where the higher tech end of the scheme will come into play. Security is considered a very big deal indeed at Containment Facility 1.01, so for their own security and peace of mind, every resident has been implanted – free of charge – with a GPS locator. These devices, no bigger than a grain of rice, are implanted at the base of the skull. They monitor the owner’s whereabouts and ensure they need never get lost: an important security and safety consideration. This will enable key workers and others granted right of passage beyond the perimeter to find their way easily to the location of employment.

“Security and peace of mind is always an important consideration in any development like this,” Lubyanka added. “Those transponders will help us identify and keep track of work unit members who are permitted beyond the perimeter. As well as providing the GPS capability, the inserts also integrate fully with local city and regional security grids. We know where they are 24/7 – and so will our neighbours.”

And, of course, in those bright orange jump-suits they’ll tend to be highly visible.
Such security measures are important, but these matters start very much at home. That’s why the construction of a rugged perimeter was deemed paramount and so work on the security fence began at once, before the newly-arrived residents even pitched their tents. Resident teams, under the guidance of skilled contractors, have been working hard this aspect of the site. Only a few posts remain to be erected and connected with a stout web of military-grade razor wire. Once it is complete, the fence will be hooked up to its own dedicated power supply. Work will then commence on the remaining security components.

No expense has been spared in this regard, courtesy of Home Office funding, and the full package will feature CCTV, infra-red motion detectors, ground-based localised tremor-sensors, pheromone-signature ‘sniffer’ sensors, face recognition, DNA profile scans and, of course the embedded GPS locators. So the future residents can sleep sound in their beds knowing that their community is safe.

While work on the fence is nearing completion, the rest of Containment Facility 1.01 currently doesn’t look like much. For such a ground-breaking scheme, it looks more like an impromptu refugee camp, but the residents are working hard with pick and shovel to prepare the pits for foundations and the trenches for the utilities. It speaks volumes about the extent of their dedication that they are prepared to slum it under canvass through this cold winter.

Once this work is complete, then they will begin work on assembling the actual accommodation blocks. The plans feature the latest in modern methods of construction. Each accommodation block is being manufactured in pods and panels off-site and will subsequently be delivered in kit form. The design makes them ideal for assembly by low-skilled labour, which means the residents shouldn’t have many problems. Once complete each communal barrack will house up to 100 people. The residents will surely be glad to sleep under a roof rather than canvas, but for now there’s plenty of work to keep them busy – and warm – until the site is ready for the barracks.

Meanwhile, DSHT is working on redeveloping its retained portion of the estate from where Containment Facility 1.01’s population was taken. In partnership with land-sale recipients, the Consortium is developing the Stepford Lives Scheme. This will be a luxury mixed use community, fully integrated with parkland and water features. As well as luxury apartments and family housing, the development will see shops, offices, restaurants and the creation of a complete neighbourhood tailored to the needs of the modern consumer. Once complete, it will be a far cry from the neglected and run down housing association estate it once was.

The Consortium has high hopes that this twin regeneration approach will achieve the Grail of solving the housing crisis, with all its attendant social problems such as crime.

“It’s the ideal solution,” says Lubyanka. “Statistics show that most offending is carried out by the offensive – the poor the deprived and the low paid. Our approach here protects the community and promotes social peace of mind. We will take the dregs of your society, the discarded, the social trash and turn them into productive economic units. And we guarantee a low-cost per unit maintenance charge. It makes sense – economically and socially. We have a winning solution here at Containment Facility 1.01.”

Of course, with a scheme as far reaching as this, it is impossible to please everyone. Some of the residents expressed some discontent, but the subdued manner in which they spoke provided clear evidence that such dissenting views are the minority.

As one sullen soul said: “They took my house. I owned that house. It was mine. They stole it and dumped me in this gulag! That’s not right. I was a trade unionist for thirty years and I tell you this is wrong!”

In such a large population, such instances of anti-social behaviour are perhaps inevitable, but it’s something they take a dim view of at Containment Facility 1.01, as this hapless troublemaker discovered. Thanks to Cheka Security, there are stern measures on hand for transgressors of the social peace.

Joe Steelman, the site’s Public Order Manager smacked his discharged electric baton into his gloved hand for effect when he said: “They give us any lip, we give them a 50, 000 volt rim job. They don’t give us no bother after that.”

So both the residents and the neighbours can rest assured that anti-social behaviour and instances of poor public morality will not be tolerated. That’s probably why the few nay-sayers are so subdued in their bile; they know they are on to a losing streak and most of the residents are behind the scheme.

This was made clear by Alan ‘Salsa’ Nitzin, chair of the residents’ liaison committee. A nervous man, clearly not used to public speaking, he read from a prepared statement: “We are very excited by this exciting and forward looking innovative new development to house the poor and deprived members of our free communities. [Smile.] As the future residents of this very exciting Containment Facility 1.01 we are really very pleased and excited to have been chosen to take part in this initiative that has so much to offer our community and our country. [Grin.] We are proud to work with Drezhinsky Square Housing Trust and its partners. This is an exciting time for us all. [Tug forelock.] We will be very happy here.”

And who can argue with that?

Containment Facility 1.01 – and beyond it the Archipelago – won’t be everyone’s idea of an ideal home, with many doubtless preferring a more traditional form of tenure. For the vast majority struggling under the elements of modern living, however, the Project offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to find themselves living in a secure environment. It is, as the Consortium says in its glossy literature, the final solution to a swathe of social problems – for the benefit of every stakeholder.

“It’s about the future of our communities and our society – and our whole goddammed economy,” Lubyanka added. “These people here, they’ve got to bite the bullet for everyone’s sake. What kind of world do we leave our kids? How safe is it going to be for them? For our own peace of mind, for the freedom and prosperity we enjoy, we have to tackle this crucial issue fast. There’s some tough choices to make and you’re either with us or against us. That’s what Containment Facility 1.01 and the Archipelago Project is all about: protecting and preserving our way of life!”

So, the future’s bright, then? Time – and Containment Facility 1.01 – will tell.


NEXT MONTH: Get me outa here – I’m a journalist. An in-depth look at Fourth Estates latest project to convert a historic mediaeval correctional establishment into accommodation designed exclusively with media professionals in mind.


LEGAL NOTICE: This article has been produced and independently verified as fit for purpose under the provisions of Home Office anti-terrorism guidelines ‘Integrity & Honesty in Media®’. While independent scrutinisers take every effort to ensure it matches current legislative requirements of suitable truth, errors can slip through. Therefore, if there is something about this article that offends, or you know to be otherwise inappropriate, then contact your local police station or the Home Office Direct™ contact centre and report the author/publication. Lines are open 24/7 and are maintained in strictest confidence. Thank you for your due diligence and co-operation in these matters of national security.

ENDS

Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
10 September 2006

This story appeared in Writer's Muse magazine, #45 October 2008

Copyright (C) September 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

Speak Now, Or Forever Hold...
By Mark Cantrell

First they came for the unemployed
And I said nothing, because I knew
They wouldn't listen.
They came then for the single mothers
And declared them unfit and idle and I said nothing
Because I wasn't a single mum.
Then they went for the council tenants,
And said they were the wrong sort,
So I kept quiet, for I did not live on an estate.
Soon after, they went for the sick and the disabled
And I looked the other way, because I was in good health.
More and more, they savaged the refugees and
Seekers of safe haven, and I said nothing
Even as they made war and ever more refugees to
Slur and torment – and even hound to death.
Next they went for the smokers
And I said 'hang on', but not too loud
Lest they heard and saw the fag I’d just lit.
After that they went for the young and poor
And battered them with ASBOs, and I kept quiet
In case I got one too.
Then they went for the terrorists and still I said nothing
Because it seemed fair enough, even as they manufactured
More and more hate and fear and bombs and wars.
Then they went for the Muslims,
And I said nothing at first because I was not of that faith,
Then worried, I spoke,
But nobody listened, or heard, above the sound of
The snarls emerging from foaming mouths.
Soon they went for the protesters defending our rights,
But by then it was too late to speak for I was afraid,
While many more failed to notice as they browsed
The trendy shops and gorged
On celebrity gossip.
Finally, they came for me
And thee, and all those chattering mall-rats writ large
But by then it was far too late to say anything,
They'd locked us all up
And thrown away the key.


Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
18 November 2006

This poem was previously published in the small press journal "Horace" (July 2008).


Copyright (C) November 2006. All Rights Reserved

Category: POETRY

I hate repeating myself, but the pub was at that boisterous hour where I had to lean closer to be heard: “I said, I’m a VAMPIRE HUNTER.”

This time my guest understood. The man’s face was incredulous but his eyes held laughter. “What? Like Buffy?”

“No,” I replied. “Not like Buffy. Obviously.”

I sighed. I knew it was a mistake, but the third beer had loosened my tongue. And, well, he did ask. I don’t advertise, but neither do I hide my trade. In my way, I have professional pride and I am well regarded in the relevant circles. Enough to be self-assured and thick-skinned when faced with the amusement of fools. Sometimes, however, it rankles.

He flapped his mouth, but I pointed my beer glass in his direction and cut him off. “And not like Van Helsing either. Whichever version you pick. Nor any other character you might choose to name.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything!”

“Then one of us must be developing a bad dose of telepathy.”

The man grinned, as if there was actually some humour in my tone. He was trying his best to retrieve the situation. I can only suppose I was in a good mood, because I allowed him to succeed. If anything, it showed a certain sincerity to his curiosity.

I inevitably sit at the centre of a web of gossip. It is one of the drawbacks of my trade, but it sometimes helps to draw a little custom. Filtering the fools from the genuine is an unfortunate necessity. An early assessment of their disposable income helps some. And, of course, I have to vet them to their tastes; my prey has often sought me out, but it is a rare creature indeed that can pass itself off as sufficiently human to fool my instincts.

I wasn’t yet certain which way my current guest might develop. He was in his late twenties, I would guess. Not quite out of the laughing boy lager phase and therefore happy to have an easy joke at what he thought was my expense.

“So, how do you kill these vampires? Stakes, holy water, that kind of thing?”

Delicious. I almost laughed.

“A stake is good. If you can persuade them to hold still. Holy water is good also – for a parched throat or to wash the blood from your hands.”

He frowned, looking for the joke I guess. He found another question. “So how do you kill them, then?”

“By whatever means appropriate at the time, and only if there is a lone creature. I do not go up against packs. I am not suicidal.”

I tried to remember his name. He did tell me, but I hadn’t being paying too much attention. I’d thought to humour him. Now I had this disgruntled notion to really show him what he mocked. I can be wicked that way. Sometimes a man just has to unwind. And bait is always useful in this trade.

“You don’t believe me do you?”

“You believe it. That’s good enough for me.” He swigged some beer and smiled.

“I’ll show you if you want. Tomorrow night.”

His brow furrowed. He hadn’t expected me to call my own bluff (as he saw it). I am known, occasionally, to display a generous side. This wasn’t one of them, but my unbidden guest wasn’t to know that.

“I got a date tomorrow night,” he said. “No offence, but she’s hotter than you.”

“I would hope so. I fully understand your fear. If you lack the stomach...”

His face darkened. Some people are ridiculously easy to manipulate. It’s why they have their uses. “I’m not scared. Okay. Tomorrow night. Where?”

I had him. I told him. Then I downed my beer and left. Poor fool, but he did ask, didn’t he?


HE regarded himself as a creature of the night. I would show him the full nature of his illusions, before I stripped them away. For the moment, I left him waiting in the pool of orange neon. I let the impatience build. The frustration. His fear and his self-mockery at being suckered and stood up. Then I took him.

I stepped out of the shadows and approached from behind. Pure stealth until the final moment. “I never did catch your name.”

The lad jumped. If I had been a vampire, then such easy meat he would have made. You need to be smarter than that with my sanguinary prey, but there’s a certain satisfaction to watching these self-indulgent fools leap near out of their precious skins. It pales compared to what follows, as their fantasies and mockeries are prised apart by the crowbars of experience. That’s when I reach into their souls and tug away those illusions.

The man recovered and stammered a reply. “Name’s Bomber.” Something like that, although it always comes to my mind as ‘dumber’. His tongue was trembling a bit and mashed the words. It would do for me. I never told him my name. He didn’t need to know. I just nodded.

“Then the game is afoot, Mr Bomber.”

I breezed past, like wind in shadow. I heard his feet shuffle on the flagstones as he struggled to keep up. His jacket flapped and scuffed. A vampire’s hearing is not infallible, but with this fool’s sartorial ensemble, they hardly needed to be.

“So what are you going to show me? It better be worth it!”

The hint of the laughing boy was back. I smiled at his shell of bravado and kept pushing the pace. “I shall show you the night,” I said. “And if you are lucky – you may participate in the kill.”

“You’re serious?”

“Deadly so.”

“How… how many vampires you killed?”

“More than many, less than some. I kill enough for my purpose.”

He grunted, lost for words. I do believe he was finally beginning to wonder what alcohol and mockery had gotten him into. I was beginning to enjoy it myself.

“They burn up in the sun right? So if they got to hide in the day, why are we out here in the middle of the night?”

Another smile. Sunlight! As if. “I enjoy the night. It’s more fun this way.”

“Right.” I saw that he was not convinced. Well, the night would change all that.

I kept us walking through the city. The hour was late. We had the place almost exclusively to ourselves. I knew there was a vampire in this city, but for the moment we were nowhere near its hunting ground. I wanted to walk some of the arrogance out of my companion first. Let it moulder into fear and impatience. Both are excellent ingredients for stupefying common sense. Alcohol and machismo too. Why else was he here with me – a stranger – in the dead of night? I will show him. Later.

Another question blossomed in my companion’s mind. His brain was indeed working. “Is this some kind of quest to vanquish evil, then?”

I rolled my eyes. “What is evil? They’re like you and me but perhaps they have acquired less of the bullshit that civilisation has smeared upon our sensibilities. They are animals. They hunt their prey. They breed. They struggle to survive in their ecological niche. No different to us. Predators killing predators. Parasites feeding from parasites.”

He looked bewildered. As indeed he should. “So... so why do you hunt them?”

Why indeed.


THERE are certain people in this world who crave the highest prizes. They will pay handsomely for the rarity of the esoteric. I provide the means to the fulfilment of their elaborate passions.

It truly is nothing to do with good or evil, god or the devil; these are abstractions for which my practical trade has no use. Since you need to know, I will suggest that some of my clients – rich men, powerful men, but of necessity demanding discretion and anonymity – are far for evil than any pack of vampires. They are certainly far more capable of damaging the human race. I make no judgements to such things. They pay. I provide.

When all is said and done, the vampire is a sad and pathetic creature. Just its ill fortune to be highly prized by some. And my good fortune.

All right, I will admit it; they are a thrilling and dangerous prey.


MY companion was brooding and sweating at the pace I maintained. Despite the lesser number of years that tallied on his shoulders, he was far less fit. I might sit in bars and drink, but I do not let my body grow flaccid. I place much value on my skin.

The time was upon us. My companion, as well as having the swagger walked out of him, was thoroughly disorientated. He would never find his way back to our hunting ground now. I steered us to where I knew a vampire lurked. A young one. Inexperienced. Ideal as an easy kill to show my young companion the falsity of his humour.

“How much longer?”

I shushed him. I had detected my – our – prey.

I pulled him into the shadows and he had the good sense to hug the wall as I did. I saw the vampire shambling up the road. Yes, it had fed. It was unlikely the victim was dead. Contrary to myth, a vampire seldom kills its prey. Their stomachs are far too small to accommodate all the blood in a human body. They take what they need, leaving the victim unaware as if recovering from a drunken fugue. There lies their continued anonymity. Remember, however, they are not infallible.

The blood intoxicates the vampire. The experienced know to take enough to satisfy their needs without affecting their faculties. This young one was – for want of a better phrase – pissed as a lager lout. I always wait for them to feed, because inexperienced or otherwise, it makes them easier meat.

The vampire was humming to itself. There were snatches of words. Slurred and drunken. It staggered unaware of its location. To any human passer by this was just another lingering drunk left over from the city’s night life. A kind of camouflage, but not this night. I felt a moment’s disappointment, but remembered my companion was no expert in these matters. A kill is a kill.

I made my move.


THE vampire was as bewildered as my companion. In a beat of his hurried heart I had grabbed the beast and had my arm around his neck. I gripped and twisted. A sharp crack as the cervical bones shattered and ligaments tore. The vampire went limp and became a dead wait in my arms.

Taking hold of the creature beneath its armpits, I hissed to my guest: “Help me!”

Even in the pale neon of the lamp lights I could see the blood had drained from his face. He moved forward on auto-pilot, taking hold of the vampire’s legs before he even realised he was an accomplice to ‘murder’.

Well, not quite. I will explain as we shuffle my prey to a nearby workshop. I lead the way, bearing I am sorry to say, the greater part of the burden. This workshop is long abandoned and derelict. I keep a few things there for my purposes.

You see, the vampire is not dead. Ringing its neck merely breaks the connection between its central nervous system and its body. Until it regenerates the damage, the beast is helpless and crippled. My companion catches on quicker than most.

“It... he.... he’s still breathing.”

“Naturally. The vagus nerve is undamaged.”

He must have paid attention in biology lessons, for he obviously understands. I kicked at the boards blocking the entrance to the old workshop, and together we manhandle the vampire into the shadows within. Some light filtered in from the street and I used that to scan the premises. Sometimes down and outs crash out here, but the place was clean.

We dragged our prize deeper into the old place and then dropped it unceremoniously onto an old table. The body landed with a meaty thump that brought forth a moan from its damaged throat. My companion dropped his end with a relieved but frightened sigh. I moved to light a small lantern suspended from the roof.

My mouth was watering with anticipation now. I turned to my companion. There must have been something about my face, there in the flickering light, the broiling shadows around us, the excitement I felt coiled in my belly. My companion took a step back. His terror was palpable. I laughed. Oh yes, my lad, just what have you gotten yourself into? Between us, the heap of vampire flesh whimpered.

“You wanted to know why I hunt and kill these things.”

He nodded and licked his lips. His hands dangled limply at his sides.

“First, I’ll show you how I kill them. I just hope you have a strong stomach, because, my friend, you are in for a treat.”


WHILE Mr Bomber held onto his bowels, I got to work. I slid a rope along the guide rail suspended from the roof and then tied it securely around the creature’s ankles. My companion slipped back again, as if the distance took him away from his surreal and terrifying nightmare. He’ll change his mood in time. That I promise.

Ordinarily, the vampire is dead by this stage. It was this creature’s poor fortune that my haste to show my guest the ropes as it were, meant that I had to forego my usual finesse. I quickly donned my long rubber apron. Then surgeon’s rubber gloves. A glance at my friend told me his confusion was growing. I smiled. Then I turned to my other guest. It was conscious now; its half-open eyes stared at me with a mix of fear and hate. I winked at it.

Now, the stake aside, these are hardly standard vampire killing tools, I know – the butchers knife and cleaver – but bear with me and all will make sense. I wanted to test the strength of my friend’s stomach. Perhaps it was a little cruel, but I do have that kind of humour I am afraid. With one hand I tore open the vampire’s shirt. Then with a deft stroke I punctured its belly just below the sternum and sliced down. The creature’s shrill cry was harsh on the ears, as was my companion’s sympathetic chorus, but both soon faded to pitiable whimpering.

I pulled apart the folds of skin and muscle and the vampire’s coiled offal steamed and bled and glistened. I was surprised that my companion had not emptied the contents of his own belly.

“Now,” I said. “This is how you kill a vampire.”

I picked up the stake and plunged it into the mass of damp flesh exposed by the incision beneath its sternum, the hollowed tip angled towards the heart. It was soft all the way through, only the briefest resistance as it punctured the heart, then a grunt of effort as I broke the tip through the creature’s back. There is a hole I cut in the table specially beneath the vampire’s back. It provides clearance for the tip – and the hollow point and ‘flute holes’ allow the blood to drain freely from the heart.

Next the cleaver. I am sure you are aware of what comes next. The vampire certainly was. One last pitiful whimper before the crunch of the cleaver crashed through skin, meat and gristle to sever the vocal chords from their air supply. The head rolled clear and thudded on to the concrete floor. I didn’t look to see if the vampire was still conscious. Three minutes or so before oxygen starvation is all the creature has left. I kicked the head aside and moved to the block and tackle. By now the sound of spattering blood was joined by the splatter of Mr Bomber’s lunch.

I lifted the vampire into the air and slid it along the rail until it was clear of the table. The blood flooded from its neck, from the gaping gash in its belly, and from the hollow stake. You need to understand, it is important to remove as much blood from the organism as possible.

By now, my companion looked truly grim of complexion. His skin glistened in the light, and he was leaning against the wall ready to drop. I don’t think he had many illusions left by now.

The vampire was deceased, so ordinarily I can take my time, but I needed to be done before the last dregs of my guest’s stamina and nerve failed. I judged him to be close. The carving knife made short work of the vampire’s already severed offal. So you see, there was purpose, not sadism, to my first stroke. I pulled out the intestines, severing the mesenteries as I did so, cleaning out the carcass. A couple of swift strokes freed the bloated blood bag that was the stomach. It bounced across the floor like a wet football. Kidneys, liver and up into the thorax. Despite my haste, I made a thorough job of eviscerating the beast.

By the time it was done I was fairly exhausted. It is hard work, but just the one more task. I walked over the far side of the workshop, always keeping an eye on my companion in case he bolted in screaming terror (it has been known to happen, even at this late stage). I turned the squeaking taps and returned with the hose in hand.

First I hosed myself down, hands, apron, boots. Thoroughly. You don’t take chances with vampire blood, trust me on this. Then I hosed down the carcass, tearing or removing its clothes as I went. Once done, I wearily threw the hose aside. The water drained into the blood grooves etched into the old concrete floor and sluiced the blood into the sewers. I stepped back and dried my hands by rubbing them against my trouser legs. Just enough to safely enjoy a cigarette.

I offered the pack to my friend. He stared dumb then shook his head.

“Well,” I said as I ignited the nicotine tip, “that’s how I kill a vampire. Now are you ready to know why?”

He nodded, still mute.

“Good. I’m hungry,” I laughed. “So I’ll tell you while we eat. That’s if you haven’t lost your appetite!”


IT is something of a personal tradition: I like to celebrate a successful hunt with a hearty meal. Our supper was ready. I’d prepared the meat, cutting it into strips and then feeding it into the meat grinder. The garlic sauce marinated the meat and filled the old workshop with its ozone odour. My mouth was watering, my belly was rumbling, but I could sense that my companion was having his doubts.

He wanted to know. I showed him the truth. There are few who have tasted the experience. Normally, one must pay me handsomely to partake of what he has experienced. I set the bowls on the table and sat down. My dinner guest looked less than enthusiastic about my humble fare. Should I have been offended? No. I am used to this.

For today, for speed, I served up soup. To prove its merit to my companion I ate heartily, encouraging him with every mouthful. There is much to say about the conformity of the human spirit, but I shall not bore you with it here. Suffice to say, my companion dipped his spoon and raised it to his lips. With one last imploring look at me, he placed it in his mouth and swallowed the contents.

This was the moment.

He stared at me. Then looked down at the bowl. All the horrors and textures of the evening were concentrated into that mouthful. I saw the change. The taste had him, and he began to eat the meal with relish.

Vampire flesh is an acquired taste, but a sought-after delicacy among those who can afford to pay. That is my business. Killing the vampires is a pleasure that happily furnishes me with my meat to trade.

“So now you know,” I said. “I eat vampires for breakfast.”


WELL, that was to have been the punchline to my story. My revelation to raise your eyebrows, but as it turned out there is a little more to this morsel I serve.

You will remember that I was most careful to remove the blood from my victim. This is extremely important in the preparation of vampire meals. Now, these creatures are flesh and blood, just as humans are. However, despite the fact that much of the myth surrounding vampires is as much offal as that blood-filled stomach I removed earlier, there is indeed certain supernatural characteristics to the vampire.

I have not made a study, but I am sure it makes for the appeal of the meat. Science will one day understand these things, and will perhaps use artificial means to incorporate some of the (more positive) aspects of a vampire’s organism to the benefit of mankind. As long as they leave the essence of my trade alone, I care not.

Certain aspects of the vampire’s nature do of course necessitate much care.

My companion soon dropped his bowl with a pained expression. He belched and then he groaned and rubbed his stomach.

“Bloody Hell! My guts are playing up!”

A little amused, I said: “Perhaps I used too much garlic. Gives you wind does it? Well, if you’re going to fart I trust you will do so outside.”

No sense of humour. “No. My ulcer’s playing up.”

Ah! Oh dear indeed.

My amusement went the way of the vampire. There was nothing I could do. Nature must take its course. There is always a certain risk, partaking of such a meal (it adds to the exquisite sensuality of the delicacy), although I may say I am an excellent chef in these matters, so ordinarily the risk remains in the textbook, but there are certain issues…

My companion screamed and arched his back in the chair. The painful wail slithered to a burbling whimper and he looked at me with a pleading face. “Help me!”

I stood up, took hold of the knife and stepped back. The poor fool writhed in the chair and clutched his stomach. Beneath his clothes, his flesh undulated and bulged like a rubber sheet.

You don’t want to eat this stuff if you’ve got a bleeding ulcer. Perhaps I should have told him. Such is life. You see, blood reacts with the vampire tissue. (The garlic, you ask? I am afraid not…) The vampire, simply, was regenerating inside my guest. Just as its own matter was reconstituting itself under the upsurge of blood, so it was using whatever matter around it to make up the lost tissue. Yes, that’s right: my companion’s stomach, his internal organs all in the process of becoming incorporated into the vampire corpus. And with it came a greater infusion of blood – his blood.

I stepped back against the wall, and readied myself with the carving knife.

Mr Bomber wasn’t screaming anymore, which was a blessing to my ears at least. His lungs were part of the vampire. He was dying and he knew it; his harried face beseeched with a pathetic intensity. He lived long enough, I think, to witness the birth. Don’t think of John Hurt in Alien. This creature didn’t burst from my guest’s rib cage. Why bother when there is a softer, easier escape route? The vampire ripped through the man’s belly. Its scream was the high-pitched caterwaul of a new-born infant. It looked something like one too.

The new-born vampire gave me a look of pure hate – it must have retained a few shreds of the old vampire’s memories – and then shed its humanoid chrysalis. I needn’t have worried about myself; though there was always the possibility of it attacking. This one was rebirthed with enough sense to realise in its current state it didn’t stand a chance.

It scurried for the exit. I let it go.

After all, it left me with plenty of meat for my needs, and I can always have it for lunch another day. Would you care to join me?


Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
7 September 2005

This short story makes its début appearance here on Tyke Script Redrafted. Own this story, and many others from this site, in print with the publication of the anthology 'Isolation Space' coming in 2009 from Lulu. Catch the further news of this forthcoming publication from New Word Order.

Copyright (C) September 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

People Of The Book
By Mark Cantrell


So it spirals,
Howling high in frenzied lust,
The bitter cry of vengeance.

Violent rage, violent acts, all
Fuel the fire of fury,
Until nothing remains
Of Reason, real or but imagined.

Unjust hurts stoke the ire a’plenty,
Until both side’s cause is lost;
Collateral damage lying butchered in the crossfire.

Exit blocked, buried,
Piled high in victims’ corpses,
And no hands willing to clear the way
To peaceful resolution.

Where now the scales of justice,
If not broken or wielded like a flail,
This is the inheritance,
Bequeathed by bitter father to embattled son,
Hopeless mother to wailing daughter.

Tit for tat,
This belligerent revenge fuels only
More reasons to crave bloody murder.

In this madness, this frenzied need for
Oblivion,
The dread principles of eye for eye
And tooth for tooth
Lead only one way...

Towards the Kingdom of the Blind
And toothless,
Stumbling hungry and angry
In the dark...


Mark Cantrell,
Manchester,
7 March 2008


Copyright © March 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

Oddity
By Mark Cantrell


I know I’m odd.
I must be odd,
Because there’s only one of me.
And one
Is an odd number,
The first odd number
Of many, of course, but still prime
Number One,
Numero Uno
Of oddities and odd numbers,
So I am the first.
The one,
The only one of me,
So of course I’m odd,
Very odd indeed.



Mark Cantrell,
Manchester,
10 July 2008


Copyright © July 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

The Yorkshire Motto
(said tongue in cheek)


‘Ear all, see all, say nowt;
‘Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt;
An if ivver tha does owt fer nowt --
Do it fer thissen!


And a little saying:

Shak’ a bridle ovver a Yorksherman’s grave – an’ ‘e’ll gerr up an’ steal t’ ‘oss.

Category: QUOTE

THE video camera’s glassy eye stared with almost as much clinical detachment as the psychiatrist, but he was used to this charade by know.

David met both observers with his own blend of detachment; no doubt they’d call it a sullen lack of co-operation, but screw what they thought. He didn’t care about their university theories, any more than he cared for these bullshit theatrics. This was all the motion of the job, the framework of their ignorance.

“Tell me about your problem, David. When did you first begin to get these urges?”

Boredom sighed. “I haven’t got a problem. What’s your problem, Mister Thought-Cop?”

The orderly at the door, standing for all the world like a nightclub bouncer, glared at his response – well, fuck him – but the doctor smiled at the defiance, as if he’d expected much the same and had now won some bet. “David, you admit to killing a good number of people over the last five years – in a most gruesome fashion. Surely, you can see this is not entirely normal –”

“Maybe not for you, but me – I’m just being what I am. Why can’t you understand that? I’m a hunter. I hunt and kill my prey. It’s what I am. It’s what I do. Perfectly normal!”

“Ah! So we’re back to that again…”


THE sun blazed a reminder of why she didn’t like hitching, but Sarah was stuck with it. She didn’t have a car, couldn’t drive in any case, and she lacked the money for the luxury of train or coach. Besides all that, she didn’t have a plan or a destination, so she took her direction from the randomness of strangers.

The important thing was it took her ever further away; even these tiring excursions on foot put more distance between herself and ‘yesterday’. The further the better. So, she toughed it out; the heat, the sticky sweating, the glare and face ache from squinting against the light, despite her sunglasses.

To add to the discomfort, the air was thick with exhaust fumes and dust stirred up by the thundering vehicles scurrying towards the motorway. Occasionally, she stopped and tried to catch some driver’s attention, but like her they all appeared focused on the road ahead. Three hours ago, her last ride dropped her in the city centre. She must have left her luck in his car.

Two days she’d been hitching now. It felt longer. Two days of hard walking and – too many times – fending off creeps. They soon discovered she could handle herself; yeah, they discovered what a scary girl she could be. But it was a hassle she could do without.

Until a year ago, she’d been a normal fifteen-year-old. Days of blissful ignorance, if not quite innocence. Then the changes started. She didn’t understand what was happening. She knew her parents didn’t get it. She hadn’t wanted to leave home, but there was talk of doctors, tests and psychiatrists. She didn’t want that either, so after the incident with the cat, there was no choice but to leave.

That’s why she was wearing her legs out and roasting in the sun trying to escape. The dark, dusty sheet draped round her head may have kept the sun off her sensitive skin, but it absorbed much more of its already draining heat. A long, cold drink would have been a blessing; maybe her next ride might oblige.

Sarah adjusted her rucksack and stuck out her thumb half-heartedly, not really expecting a response. To her surprise a van pulled up about 15 metres further on. About time. She ran towards it, but as she approached the passenger side, the driver sped off with a laugh. She waved him a finger.

“Wanker!”


“NINE months and we still haven’t made any progress.” Dr Morcroft froze the playback and zoomed the image, staring into the monstrous certainty captured in David’s ghost-pale eyes. “He’s so unshakeable he’s beginning to get me thinking he is what he says.”

Morcroft’s colleague threw the folder on to the desk in front of him with a grim laugh. “I’ve got news for you. He might as well be.”

“Come on, Richards, you can’t be serious.”

“Deadly serious. It’s all in here. Routine genetic tests showed it up. You know what they’re like; only look at certain parts, ignore all the rest. The lab stumbled on it by accident, but he has the genes. He is, technically, everything he claims.”

Morcroft picked up the folder and quickly scanned the report. He read aloud: “DNA sub-listings in subject’s chromosome pairs show a high correlation to the discontinued Mythologika Series Five Vampire Repromorph…. Bloody hell! He’s a reproduction?”

“Rather good for a repro, wouldn’t you say?”

“Richards, what is he?”

“He’s human, and he’s one of them. His entire medical history is in there. Not much as it turns out – he’s always been remarkably healthy. The genes, you know. Birth certificate, social security, it’s all there. A burgeoning criminal record, too, just petty things to begin with until he dropped off the map and went, well, wild. It’s a potted history of a normal kid who started to go off the rails when he was about 14. Now we know why. For all intents and purposes, he is a real vampire. No wonder he’s nuts.”

“This artificial DNA in his cells, some hotshot has released virus code into the gene pool? Christ! There could be thousands like him roaming loose.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope he’s just an aberration. David’s a lot stronger than the average man. It took five constables to bring him into custody.”

Morcroft threw the folder back onto the desk. “So what do we do with him? Has he shown any urges whilst in care?”

“He hasn’t shown any heamophagic tendencies, apart from telling anyone who’ll listen what he is. We’ve had him on medication to keep him more or less quiet. It also seems to have suppressed any neuro-psychological manifestations of his genome.”

“Really? Curious. I wonder why.”

“The design agency that created David’s rogue DNA went bust years ago; the entertainment industry moved away from the fad for bio-realistic snuff horror, but I managed to track down the current owner of the intellectual property rights. Apparently, the act of drinking blood, rather the ingestion of certain indicator proteins, triggers the release of engineered neuro-chemicals. Quite an addictive brew, I‘m told. My theory is that the drugs we’re giving him are damping this addiction system. I suppose you could say he’s effectively treated, but we don’t want to be releasing him back into conventional custody. We’d lose him into the criminal justice system. He’s a medical curiosity. Our curiosity!”

“We should make a study of him, you suggest.”

“The emergent recombination of designer DNA into the natural human genome? Absolutely. Who knows what might come out of what we learn. A friend of mine heads up Recombinant Sequencing Sciences at the University of Liverpool. It has a… secure facility. I suggest we have David removed there for further… discrete… tests.”


DAVID stared blankly at the van’s floor. From the passenger seat, Dr Richards watched the countryside speed by, and only occasionally bothered to check his ‘patient’ in the rear view mirror.

Behind him, Lester, one of the hospital’s security staff sat opposite David, providing all the proxy scrutiny Richards needed. Lester regarded his charge with a passive expression of boredom. At his side, a holster held an automatic pistol. Not quite regulations but – given their ‘patient’ – covered by certain Home Office guidelines left over from old anti-terrorist measures. Never rescinded, rarely invoked these days, they’d still provide cover in the unlikely event of an auditor asking awkward questions.

David grinned a taunt via the mirror and rattled the cuffs that secured him to the security frame. “Stop the van! I need a piss!”

Richards groaned. “You should have thought of that earlier.”

“Come on! I need to piss real bad; don’t want me sluicing this guy’s boots, do you?”

“Pull over somewhere.”

“Are you sure, Sir?”

“It’ll be all right – he’s still doped up.”

The van pulled to a halt. The guard leaned forward to unlock David’s cuffs. Then he fastened one bracelet to his own wrist. The keys he passed over to Richards.

David appeared passive enough, but he jeered at Lester: “Now don’t you feel intimidated when I spring the big guy!”

“Shut it!”

The pair proceeded to some bushes. Richards left the van to stretch his legs. The driver ambled a few paces up the road, cupping a lighter to his mouth. A cloud of smoke wafted in his wake. Richards fanned the fumes away from his face with an irritated motion of his hand. A shot interrupted his annoyance. He exchanged a glance with the driver. The man’s expression – hey, I just do the driving – offered no support.

Richards straightened up, uncertain, listening intently to a frustrating nothing. “Lester! Lester! Come on, answer me, man!”

There was nothing else for it; he bolstered his nerve and walked cautiously towards the bushes. Beyond the curtain of foliage he found Lester sat on the grass. The bracelet on his wrist dangled a broken chain. He stared with eyes pleading wide. His mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. Blood gushed from ragged holes in his carotid and jugular vessels, staining his clothes, spray-painting the bushes.

There was nothing that could be done, but even so a reflex took Richards a step closer. A hand gripped his arm and pulled him round. David raised Lester’s gun and pressed the muzzle in the flesh of Richards’ left cheek.

“What’s your diagnosis of this then, Doc?”

Richards found that he couldn’t reply, only tremble as he stared at David’s malign, bloody grin.

“Come on!” The creature placed the gun against his ribs and dragged him towards the road.

The driver gave him a little relieved wave as he appeared from behind the foliage. Richards wanted to shout a warning, but he couldn’t pull the words from out of the trembling limbo – he couldn’t even pull the man’s name from memory. David pushed him to the ground. Hard asphalt bit his knees. The driver – Gill, that was it – swore and turned to run. Richards watched helpless while David blasted the man’s legs out from under him. He smacked to the ground and rolled over, screaming in pain. There was nothing he could do.

“The keys.” Richards tried not to sob as David stood over him. The trembling fear made it all the harder to fumble in his pockets, but he found the keys and threw them onto the road. David smiled at his token defiance.

“And you guys are supposed to be so smart. Never give a human dose to a vampire, Doc – it doesn’t work so good.”

He brought the gun up. Richards flinched but bit down on the bladder-wail and just closed his eyes. There was a sharp crack, a flash of light, a sense of impact, a promise of pain swallowed by a dark tunnel.


A sharp blow to the head eased the good Doctor’s trembling fits. He gaped in surprise and fell sideways unconscious. That only left the driver. The man was still wailing; the irritation went up a pitch once David began his stroll towards him.

Despite his mangled legs, he tried to shuffle away on his backside, and even began to babble some kind of plea. David couldn’t help chuckling. There was no point wasting a bullet, so he gave him a taste of the Doctor’s medicine. A sharp blow to the head with the gun’s steel-hard muzzle. The snivelling wreck had a harder head that his boss, though, and it took a good few whacks to shut him up.

He might find it a good deal harder to wake up than the Doctor, still that wasn’t his problem. David used the man’s shirt to wipe the blood and hair off the gun’s muzzle, then slipped the weapon into his waistband and went for the keys. The bracelet was turning his fingers numb now.

It clicked free. He threw both it and the keys back to the recumbent doctor and massaged a little feeling back into his wrist. Then he turned to the van. For one instant he thought of taking it for a ride, but this was the one vehicle they’d certainly expect him to nab. Better to find a ride elsewhere; just one more stolen vehicle lost in the day’s crime stats. He walked casually round to the side, squatted down and took hold of the undercarriage. Despite his strength, he felt the grunt bellow out as he lifted and tipped the vehicle on to its side. That’ll slow things down a bit.

Now he was a free man again, he pondered his next move. That was the trouble with snatching an opportunity; often the moment didn’t fit into the broad plan. Still, he’d work something out. Stooping, he reached through the van’s rear door and retrieved the meagre possessions the hospital had permitted him to keep. The bag was tauntingly light as he slipped it over his shoulder, but it wouldn’t take long to re-stock. At least he had a few essentials. A few moments of fumbling recovered his sunglasses. Frowning against the rising solar glare was bringing on a headache.

“That’s better,” he muttered, setting off for a relaxing cross-country jaunt.


TWO hours later, he emerged on another B road and walked along it for about a mile. He was getting tired of this britches-arse-steam. He needed a ride; his exposed skin was beginning to feel sore from the sun’s rays. A distant buzzing broke the rural idyll. David turned to listen intent.

“About time. What kept you?”

He saw the motorbike appear from round a curve in the road. Quickly, he ripped a length of wood free from a fence bordering a field then continued his casual walk, just a harmless pedestrian, the wood hidden by his body.

The bike approached at a powerful speed, but David timed his lunge to perfection. The wood struck the biker a jarring blow to the head and clipped him from the machine. Discarding the makeshift weapon, he leapt to the side as the biker tumbled and rolled across the tarmac. The machine toppled and clattered metres ahead in a shower of sparks.

David winced, hoping the damage was nothing but superficial, but first things first, he rushed towards the clearly dazed biker. The man was groaning, but just to be sure, he slammed the biker’s head twice into the road. Once he’d worked to remove the helmet, a quick punch rendered the man fully unconscious. There was money in the biker’s pocket, always a bonus, so he helped himself to the man’s scuffed jacket too.

Despite some ugly looking scars to the paintwork, the damage to the bike was only minor. David mounted and restarted the motor, taking a moment to savour the thrumming power between his legs. He liked the guttural, visceral energy coiled for action. He slipped the helmet on, welcoming its protection from the sun, and set off at a leisurely pace.

Once he felt more confident in handling the unfamiliar machine, he threw back the throttle and unleashed its sheer exhilarating potential.


LATER that evening, tired and dusty like the faltering sunset, he pulled into a service station. He needed fuel as much as the bike, but since it was time to trade rides, the machine would have to go hungry. By rights, he should have ditched the beast hours ago, but he’d enjoyed its raw vitality.

David shut the bike down in an empty corner of the carpark. He removed the helmet, and left it perched on the seat, then he stalked towards the complex for the nearest cafeteria. He removed his glasses and blinked his eyes to help them adjust to the artificial light.

The girl at the check out looked right through him as he paid for his coffee; cow-like eyes, fat face, lank hair, definitely not his blood type, he was glad to pass her by. The café was almost a quarter full, so he more or less had the pick of the chairs, if not the mobile menu. Even that looked set to be as rank as the brew – still needs must.

He chose a seat in the corner, the dying sun casting its rays behind him, so he could get a good overview of the place. Dumpling girl at the check out wandered away, no doubt the end of her shift. She was replaced by a slender vessel with dark hair peeping out from below her hat. Better, in more ways than one; still a case of slumming it, but so far she looked the best offer all day. The girl saw him staring, he gave her a quick smile she shyly returned, then he looked away. No sense in unnerving the poor thing; besides maybe sweeter meat might show. There was time yet.

David sipped the coffee, savouring the hot streak down his throat and the warm bloom in his belly, if not the actual taste of it. Enough for now, but the need for another kind of liquid heat was rising. So far the choice was dumpling or chicken breast. Really he wasn’t enthused by either portion, but they were the choicest selection in the place. The cafeteria looked like a tired throwback to the ‘noughties. It reminded him of trips with his folks as a young boy. Not a memory he wanted: it triggered an upswell of isolation and loneliness, reminding him he was the alien in a hostile world.

He drowned the feelings in a shot of caffeine and damn near scolded his innards with the oversized gulp. To hell with it; alien he was, but he was the predator, not cattle like this fodder. He wiped his mouth on a sleeve. The door banged. David looked up.

The girl froze him; his gaze locked on her. She appeared unaware of his focus, just grabbed some cold drink and went to the first clear table. Her face was partially veiled by a dusty, dark coloured headscarf, but she unmasked her eyes, discarding her sunglasses on the table. David mapped the contours of her slender face, noted the almost luminous pale blue of her eyes, the silvery blond of hair peering out from beneath the scarf. Better than sweet meat; so much better.

For a heart-stopping instant the girl turned her head and met his gaze. The electric sensation of looking into her eyes unfroze him and he almost physically jerked. He managed to hold his composure to offer up a smile. She looked away in haste and drank as if trying to hide in the cup. David realised he was sweating; his breathing was deeper and his prick throbbed a hardening interest.

She was getting away. Drink downed and she was out the exit on the far side of the cafeteria. David followed, but damn she had a good head start. Chicken Breast smiled hopeful as he went by, but he just blanked her.

Outside, there was no sign of the girl. He cursed, almost whined at the sense of loss. This was too much. Then he caught sight of the girl’s slender form walking towards the exit road. That was an unexpected blessing. Hitchers were easy. He just needed transport; well, this is a carpark.

Only trouble, he was spoiled for choice when it came to run down loser cars and dad-mobiles. No time for this shit, she was getting further away. Damn that girl can move. He had to take something, before some other motorist picked up his little delight.

A car growled to a stop close to where he’d emerged from the building. A Jag, not a new one, not really his style, but it had more going for it than this scrap dealer’s orchard. He walked casually; the driver paid him no attention as he climbed out, locked the door, and turned towards the entrance. The CCTV caught David’s eye and gave him pause for thought, then he muttered ‘fuck it’. The old guy from the Jag paused at the door. David took the moment.

The sign on the door said ‘pull’ so he just had to ‘push’. It was his nature: the man’s head made a satisfying crack as it slammed first into the door’s wooden frame then into the reinforced glass panel. A web of cracked lines added a lightning display to the butterfly splat of liberated blood. The man groaned. Someone inside screamed. David grinned at the middle-aged frump staring wide-eyed in fright.

He found the man’s keys, took his wallet as recompense, and winked at the frightened woman on the far side of the glass. Push button car theft, the only way to travel. He triggered the key fob and unsecured his ride, then he flung open the door and climbed in as if he owned it. To the victor, the spoils. With a casual air he immobilised the immobiliser. The girl can’t have got too far ahead, but he was aware how easily a rival motorist might bag his ride.

No problems, she appeared illuminated in his headlights and he slowed to a stop. He leaned across to open the passenger door and called out: “Take the weight off your feet?”

Her pale face was poker neutral; no clue if she recognised him from the cafeteria, or if she even cared. This was a girl living out on the edge – easy pickings for the wrong sort. Again, did she realise, did she care? Lucky for her, he’d turned up.

“Okay.” She was so quiet, he barely heard. Might have taken it for ‘no’, which would have made things interesting, if she hadn’t clambered inside. She threw her rucksack into the backseat, hastily strapping herself in. “Thanks,” she added a little more breezily.

David checked the mirrors, noted the lack of witnesses, moved on, making his way back onto the motorway. The girl sat quiet, hands clasping her sunglasses in her lap, knees together, staring straight ahead. She kept the headscarf – shawl as he now realised – around her head.

“Name’s David.”

“Sarah.” She didn’t turn her head.

“So, where you headed?”

“Away.”

“Okay, got a destination?”

She shrugged. “I’ll know it when I find it.”

“Best way to be.”

She was clearly uncomfortable. Talking, sitting in a car with a stranger, either or. If she didn’t want to talk that was fine. He enjoyed the driving. She yawned. It brought some colour to her cheeks; rose tint that reminded David he was hungry. He felt the sympathetic throb between his legs and fought the urge. This was not the place, nor the time.

“Get your head down, if you want. Don’t mind about me.”

Sarah nodded and pulled the shawl from her head, releasing a shimmer of long hair so blond it was near white, just a few strands of brown streaking through. She settled back, and turned her head to the passenger window. Soon, from her breathing, from her reflection, he knew she was asleep.

He let his glance stray for as long as was road safe; her knees were still locked together, but her skirt had ridden up and those stockinged thighs looked damn good. She smelled good, too. The car was already flooding with the taste of her; octane nectar making his head buzz with anticipation. Not just his head, either.

David licked his lips and grinned. Things were looking up.


THIS time the sun had caught her unawares. She woke up swearing at the light shining bright through the windscreen. Hastily, Sarah reached for her glasses and shawl, veiling herself from the sun’s cruel radiation. The car’s interior soon became stifling, so she rolled down the window and allowed a little cool morning air to freshen her up. It was no substitute for a good shower.

There was no sign of him. The man – she remembered his name – David. There was something about him that was frightening, but at the same time had drawn her to him. She couldn’t explain it; there was plenty she couldn’t explain these days.

The car was parked on a quiet street, by a parade of shops. The kind of dreary urban backwater that might have been anywhere. At this hour it was practically deserted; a newsagent open, that was all. She stared out of the window, mindlessly gazing at the world. Almost opposite there was an electrical shop. Televisions ran through their silent schedules behind the security grid, mouths of blandly handsome presenters miming their routines.

Flickering images of a world idled away the moments, a montage of the banal, everything she was running from because she was anything but, yet a place she longed to return. She watched and remembered and tried to forget. A new face stared out of the TV, sullen, even feral, but she recognised the features. Him! David. Text scrolled beneath his image and the sombre presenter‘s. She squinted but still couldn’t make it out. The headline, however, leered: Blood fiend killer escapes.

On the verge of panic, she couldn’t breathe properly; a real creep this time, a real fucking weirdo creep. She’d never out-scary this one. Shit. Where was he? Did he know she knew? What was she going to do? The driver’s door opened.

“Wakey, wakey rise and shine. It is a beautiful morning!”

With a shrill cry, she lunged for the door to throw it open and almost fell out on to the pavement. She kept her balance and began to scream.

“Hey, something I said? Oh, that. Yeah.”

“HELP! HELP ME!”

The freak reached her and grabbed her arm before she could run into the newsagent for help. She struggled, shouted louder, managed to turn into the creep’s embrace. Her fist slammed into his face and he fell back. The chance to run. She took it, shouting for all she was worth until a few people finally appeared. Don’t just stand there – do something.

“HELP! ME!”


THE punch actually hurt. David rubbed his jaw. The girl’s noise was drawing attention, reaching into people’s protective shells of ‘I’m not involved’ and forcing them to come out to play. He cursed; too early in the morning for this shit.

He ran, fast, caught up with her. Sarah tried to land one on him again, but he was ready. Her swipe missed and she unbalanced to fall into him; David threw his arms around her body in a binding embrace. There was nothing he could do about her gob – HELP! HELP ME! – except maybe kiss her, but this just wasn’t the time.

He started to pull her back to the car, but her resistance was strong. She slipped out of his grip, began to bombard him with slaps and punches. People were appearing out of doorways, windows, the street, gawping like sheep, trying to pluck the courage to intervene. Sirens far away, but not far enough. Shit. No time for finesse.

He punched Sarah unconscious, or into a torpid stupor, didn’t matter which, and dragged her back to the car. He fumbled with the door – never enough hands for this shit! – and began to manhandle the girl’s weight into the seat.

“Hey!”

A white-bearded Asian man glared at him. The have-a-go-hero’s face was frightened but determined in the manner of a bystander scared to take a stand alone, but too outraged or shamed to do nothing. David wanted to laugh in his face, but settled for a clenched teeth response more fitting to his mood. “Fuck off!”

The man took a step back. David finished ‘tucking’ Sarah in, and slammed the door shut. Two men, burly, young, joined the old man. Sons, probably. Their faces meant business with youthful bravado. The day didn’t get any worse. He slipped the gun from the waistband at the small of his back and thumbed back the hammer.

“Fuck off means FUCK OFF!”

A few screams from the gawping onlookers, the shopkeeper and his offspring backed off. David glared at them and kept the gun ready as he moved round to the driver’s seat. He got in and hurled a string of obscenities at the dashboard. In the mirror he saw the sheep watch him drive away. The motor was way too hot now; no doubt one of them had reported the license plate. Still, he’d planned on ditching the ride soon anyhow, so it wasn’t totally a lost cause.

Recovering his composure a little, he tried to drive carefully; just another motorist, not a fugitive making his getaway in a hot vehicle. No point drawing the cops’ attention unnecessarily. They’d be on him soon enough, sooner if the CCTV boys weren’t too busy picking noses and zooming down women’s cleavages.

Traffic lights pulled him up. He forced some patience into his demeanour, but couldn’t stop his fingers tapping irritation against the steering wheel. The girl recovered consciousness. This was not a good time for further hysterics.

“Please. Don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Irritated, he turned to look. She was shaking. The vulnerable, pleading fear shocked him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated, more gently than he realised he was capable. He reached out to stroke her cheek; she cringed back against the door. The lights turned green. Some impatient arsehole hit his horn.

“Shit!” He gave the guy the finger, then moved off. The girl sat rigid, staring straight ahead. Every so often he stole a glance at her profile, her cheeks were gleaming wet. More turmoil swirled in his head. This was not working the way he imagined. The whole encounter had gone pear-shaped.

The decision was reluctant, even out of character, he figured, but right now he didn’t know what else to do. He pulled up in an empty street, leaned across the girl. He ignored the way she flinched and snivelled. He especially ignored the way her breasts brushed tender strokes against his cheek. The door clicked open and he pushed it wide. A calculated risk.

“You can go.”

The girl’s breath caught in her throat. She moved to slide out. He grabbed her arm, light grip but firm. She froze.

“Just hear me out first, okay?”

She didn’t reply; just edged towards the door.

“There’s something about blood that really turns you on. The sight of it. The smell of it; you can smell it can’t you – more than any normal person? You’re drawn to it and you can’t figure out why.”

She froze. She wasn’t looking at him, but her head was turned half his way.

“’Course, if you can’t get to grips with it, what chance has anyone else got, eh Sarah? You’ve had all kinds of problems; doctors, psychiatrists. What was it tipped you over the edge, what sent you running?”

She gasped, choked by the sound of it. Tears brought a sob.

“Why’d you leave home? Come on, sweets, confession’s good for the soul, you know, and I won’t demand a single penance.”

“I…”

She sobbed again. David sat back. Pure patience.

“I… our cat was savaged by the neighbour’s dog. I went to help it; it’s only a kitten, but I… I…”

Somehow it was so predictable. “You were fascinated by the blood; you wanted to know the blood – and that overwhelmed your feelings about the cat? I understand.”

“NO!” The shout made him jump; the ferocity in her face too. She stared at him with rage bordering on feral. Despite himself, he was impressed. “The cat was bleeding, it was howling. I tried to get the dog off’ve him. My Dad tried to help… I grabbed the dog and bit its neck. I bit its neck. It howled, and my dad was shouting and the blood was spurting and it went down my throat, and I lapped it up. I didn’t hurt my cat. I tried to save him.”

She tore the dog’s throat out. Damn. He tried not to grin; this was just too good.

“That’s okay, Sarah, relax. I understand. The dog hurt your cat: you hurt the dog. Your folks didn’t get it. You had to get out of there. The herd-stock just doesn’t understand us. I’d have done the same as you.”

“Fuck you! You’re saying you’re as weird and fucked up as me? I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I got in the same car as a fucked up nutcase like you.”

“I know why. You’re not weird, Sarah. It’s normal for what you are. The changes are scary, I know, but you don’t have to face them alone. Not like I did.”

“You’re crazy,” she said, but it lacked the earlier rage. Resignation or acceptance. Time will tell. He reached across and gently fondled a lock of her hair. She flinched, but made no effort to escape.

“You’re hair, was it blond?”

“No,” she sniffed. “It was brown. I told my parents I bleached it.”

“And now it’s nearly white. It will turn white, believe me.” Gently he touched her chin and turned her face towards him. He stared into her pale, red-rimmed eyes. “And those pale blue irises will fade ever more, and your skin tone will fade, and they’ll all become even more sensitive to sun light. They are sensitive, aren’t they? Sore, even. Bet you’ve got a touch of anaemia too.”

Poor Sarah. She sat there, looking down to the side, but he sensed his words gushing into the private space within her skull, clanging into place. She sat motionless, but he found it too easy to imagine the turmoil in her head. He’d been there. Maybe he eased some of that storm, maybe not. She’d adapt in time. It’s not as if she had any choice.

“We’re two of a kind, Sarah, two vipers in a basket. And you don’t have to face it alone like I did. I knew it, first time I saw you. I can smell it; we’re made for each other. Maybe we’re the only ones. Two mutations, two improved models, the birth of something new. We can be Adam and Eve making truth out of myth, rather then the other way round. How about it, Sarah, want to stay a sad runaway, or live life to the full and make a new race of vampires?”

“FUCK OFF! You’re crazy!”

“You’re still here. Guess that makes two of us.”

She turned to face him at last. He took the chance to deep scan her face; every contour, every dimple and tone and hue. Nice. Nature wasn’t such a bitch after all, ‘specially if the rest matched her face.

“So, how about it, Earth Mum. At least a date, what do you say?”

“You’re creepy fucking weird.”

He grinned. And squeezed, just so. The gesture revealed his teeth. Sarah’s eyes widened.

“And you’re still here. Guess that’s a hopeful sign.”

He took the plunge and leaned forward, gripping Sarah – gently – behind the head as he pressed his lips against hers. They felt good. They tasted fine. She stiffened – funnily enough so did he – and she let out a tight whine. Her eyes widened, shone with a little light, but no revulsion. He let his tongue do a little silent talking inside her mouth, probing, exploring. She moaned lightly; doing her best to make it sound unfavourable.

Parting left her breathless and confused and a little flushed. David leaned across to close the door – since she clearly wasn’t going anywhere – and took the opportunity to cast discerning eyes over her chest.

“We’re the same all right; the taste of you is something else! Your teeth are loosening. New ones coming through. Won’t be long before you’ve got the traditional dinner set. So, I’m gonna take you out. Our first date. What do you say?”

She said nothing, which clinched it. He grinned, and set off. He knew the perfect place. Shame it lacked candles, but you can’t have everything.


“THAT’S the way – just keep looking dazed and bewildered.”

Sarah looked over and snorted. “I am dazed and bewildered. Why did I let you talk me into this?”

“’Cos I’m sexy, charming and adventurous, with a delicious hint of danger.” He grinned from his cool pocket of shade within the bush’s foliage. He gnawed on a grass stalk, and enjoyed the smell of country living. Sarah scowled in his direction, her face flushed in the red-shifted evening sun.

“This engine’s hot. I’m baking.”

“Well, don’t lean over it then. Stop hiding behind the bonnet. We want some stud to come to the rescue, don’t we? So let the world see that lovely face. Let ‘em work that imagination picturing the goods beneath. I know I do! Shame you’ve not got a shorter skirt. Bloke’s like a little thigh.”

“Fuck you!”

“Later, my sweet. Look pretty – I think we got a nibble.”

A car was indicating, slowing, pulling up. David crawled deeper into his hideaway, but moved ready to slip out quietly. Sarah stepped away from the bonnet and moved her hand through her hair. That’s the way. Reel the chump in. The car stopped in the lay-by. A young looking man in a crumpled suit climbed out. Boys will be boys; they love to perform for the damsels in distress. David loved it; people were so easy.

Pure stealth; David edged towards the likely point of contact between bait and prize. On cue, the chump sauntered towards their soon-to-be-abandoned ride. Catching on, Sarah played it grateful and pretty. Good girl.

“Need a hand with anything?”

The bloke grinned; a contrived mix of friendly innuendo and manly know-how to the rescue. David studied him. Young, brash, salesman type. The kind not quickly missed.

“I don’t know,” Sarah wailed, causing David to wince. Don’t over do it. “The damn thing just packed up!”

Boy wonder smiled and gave Sarah a wink. “Let’s take a look under the bonnet, then, luv. See what we can manage.”

Sarah stepped back and followed the wannabe rescuer as he moved to look under the bonnet. He leaned into the engine compartment, testing cables and connections, but David saw his face turn so that his eyes could study Sarah discretely from behind the bonnet. Another grin almost turned into a chuckle. Look away, pal, she’s mine.

The man obliged. David slipped out of the bushes and quickly crawled into position. The man pulled out from beneath the bonnet and straightened up.

“Can’t find –”

There was clearly a knack to this he lacked. The gun smacked the man’s crown but he didn’t go down. Instead, he bellowed hurt, clutched his head and turned. A scowl of pain and rage twisted his face, his mouth quivered around an obscenity. Before the man recovered his poise, David slammed a fist into his face. This time he went down. Sarah stared, eyes wide, mouth slack with pure horror. David winked at her, and caught the man’s slumbering weight in a fireman’s lift.

“We’ll take your car,” he told him.


THEY drove in silence for hours. Sarah sat hunched up in the seat, watching the darkened streets blur on their way to nowhere, the pools and pits of light and dark merging through an urban kaleidoscope of colour.

Behind her, she felt the frightened stare of the young man. She turned to glance his way, couldn’t complete the turn and studied him in the rear view mirror instead, as if that would keep a distance between him and her conscience. Bound and gagged with duct tape, he sweated and trembled in the back seat, his eyes wide and staring. She looked away.

This was too much. All she wanted was to get away. Get away from her crumbling life, from her parents, from the entire backdrop of normality that her troubles had made so obscene. There was no escaping herself; no removing herself from the misery of what she was. Whatever she was, whatever this mad fantasy of David’s said she was.

He contemplated the road ahead, ferocious concentration, determination, impatience to be somewhere. That was the hungry mask of his face. She shuddered, and turned to stare at the outside world. She was a long way from home and getting further away with every passing moment – but that’s what she had wanted, wasn’t it? Not like this. Never this way.

Hours later, when she woke up from a doze, or just a half-dazed wander through her thoughts and fears, she found they’d stopped outside some old building. It looked like some kind of old farmhouse or a country pub. Derelict and boarded up now, the old stone brilliant in the headlights, but the rest of it lurked in the sultry shade of the trees and the night sky. David’s door was open. The night air was chilly. She shivered and glanced in the mirror. The man was gone.

Then she saw David emerge from a garage, or an old coach house, at the side of the ruin. He was brushing himself down and walking back to the car with a cheerful swagger. Sarah shivered at the chill.

“Home sweet home!”

“You live here?”

“Home is where the head rests, sweet stuff. Just one of my haunts. Never brought a guest round before, so excuse the mess. Never bothered to tidy up. Blokes, eh? Maybe you can domesticate me!”

He leered through the open door, then killed the lights and the idling engine. Darkness descended, blurring everything into the night, but there was a near-full moon and Sarah was surprised at how well she could see once her eyes adapted. David’s face gleamed with a silverfish sheen.

“Everything’s got a bright side. Never been beyond the city lights, have you? Now you can really see. Come on.”

She pulled her rucksack out from the back and struggled to drag her sleeping bag from its crowded recesses. She set a nervous foot outside the car, pausing to wrap the sleeping bag around her shoulders. David watched, encouraging, then he moved towards the old structure. She followed, amazed at how much she could see. The dappled light twinkled from the leaves, the shadows leapt into meaning, greys and silvers shimmered in her focus like a misted but still clear photograph. The detail was staggering, outside the drowning pool of artificial light that had previously overwhelmed this dazzling visual finesse.

To that, she found favourable sensual companions in the rich scents on the air; moisture in the leaves, the earthy tang of dead leaves, of moss and stone scenting the air. Even the sounds of the night were sharper, the crisp cushioning grass beneath her feet, the rustling of fine twigs, and the whispering conversations of the many leaves in the air. She began to feel dizzy with the overwhelming sensory delight.

David took hold of her hand and pulled her back down to Earth. “Something else, isn’t it? We got an edge on them, that’s all; they’d see almost as much as we do, if they didn’t clog their senses with their urban fog. Remember that.”

She nodded, still enraptured by nature’s sensual balm. They passed inside, where the light of the moon dribbled into harsh battery lamps and the softer, homelier glow of candles.

“See, I even managed to find some candles,” David said, impatient elation rising in his voice. “That makes it perfect. Got ‘em while you slept. Risky, but worth it. I was worried before, but now we can do it all romantic style. This is going to be great!”

She failed to share his enthusiasm. Doubts were creeping through her mind, wondering what she’d landed herself in, nagging her far too late to make any saving gestures. Then she saw the heart of her misgivings – and knew that it was way to late for her now.

Hunched on his knees in the centre of the room sat their anonymous guest. There was a large wet patch at his crotch that ran down his thighs. He trembled helpless. His hands behind his back; his wide eyes stared at Sarah. Fear blew slime snot out of his nostrils when David took a step towards him.

“Why is he still with us?”

“Thought we could have a little ménage a trois.”

“Stop it. This isn’t funny. Let him go now. We’ve got his car, we don’t need him.”

The man’s head turned this way and that, imploring Sarah, back to David, beseeching pity.

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweet stuff, he’s an essential part of your education. First time hurts, always does, but after that little bit of blood comes one hell of a ride. One little prick and it’s bye bye cherry girl.”

She felt her face blush hot, but before she could tell him where to go, he’d pulled out a flick-knife, bared the blade and plunged it into the man’s neck. The blade flashed crimson on its way out. The man’s eyes bulged and his body began to convulse. Blood seeped from his nose, trickled through the tape’s imperfect seal until it began to peel away. Even more gushed clear of his neck.

The smell of it flooded into her nose, swept into her mind, brought a rush of nausea, surfed by a chilling thrill of elation. The moan escaped her lips. Even as she felt her heart pound with shock and fright, she wondered if it was horror or lust that made her nostrils flare with hot breath. There was no mistaking the moist buzz flourishing between her legs, the butterflies caressing her belly. She tried to rebel at this carnal response, even as some primal part of her brain geared her up for more.

Life was fading from the man’s eyes. Blood gurgled from his mouth, dribbled from his nose, spurted from his neck. Before his heart stopped pumping, David leaned down to nuzzle the gruesome knife wound. The blood ran down his chin, stained his clothes, it slurped down his throat in a way that made her feel both sick and hungry.

The fabric of her clothes chafed at her tingling, feverish skin. She took a step closer to the bloodied pair, realised what she was doing and stopped – frozen between flight and fight.

David released the dead man and rushed towards her. She shrieked at his sudden frenzy; maybe more the electric sensation of his hands taking hold of her waist. Her breasts tingled. Compulsive spasms sucked air deep into her lungs, flooded her with the intoxicating aura of the dead man’s blood, of David’s personal scent of sweat and something else, some unique signature of his very own that set her blood racing. It melted her reason, like chocolate on her tongue, swallowing her into this macabre lust.

David pressed his mouth against her own. His lips tasted sweet metallic, felt soft and yielding. Twin swellings beneath her canines throbbed in sympathy with the pulse heating her loins. He squirted blood into her mouth. It flooded into the back of her throat. The taste of it exploded in her mind. She felt her body shudder as the blood blossomed warmth in her stomach. A murmur of pleasure exploded in a lusting shriek – the intoxicating alien passion claimed her for its own.

She kissed him hard, pushed her tongue into his mouth and felt the sharp edges of his fangs. Her hands groped for his clothes, loosening them, until he got the message and began to remove his shirt. Sarah pulled at her own clothes, hot, clinging, suddenly unbearable, and hurried them off. The air felt fresh against her liberated skin; every soft breath of its motion an act of sensual foreplay.

One final whispering doubt wondered what she was doing, but she was too far gone now to care; she saw David slip out of his underpants and watched as his bulging prick aimed itself at her. It was an odd looking organ, really, but right now an older, less discerning part of the brain watched it with a craving. She bit her lip and yelped as her own bodily demands push her forward.

She wasn’t this bold; but she was doing it anyway. David looked momentarily startled as she threw herself at him. She forced her mouth against his, pressed her body against him, her breasts squashed against his chest, felt his prick hard against her belly, sandwiched between their bodies. His arms wrapped around her, his hands moving, stroking her charged skin. They gripped her buttocks and squeezed. She yelled out. She rubbed herself against him. He groaned.

Then she was pulling him towards the floor. They rolled and writhed, crawling and caressing and wrestling, as each tried to domineer the other. The dead man watched impassive – and never flinched once even when Sarah’s shriek of pain streaked through the rising decibels of passion.


SARAH woke feeling sticky, but otherwise relaxed and refreshed. It took her a few moments to recall why. The first thing she remembered was sex; the way it made her feel, the way it felt, the energy, the overwhelming intensity of its finale. She murmured at a ghostly sensual echo of the previous night. Then she remembered how it began.

She sat up, suddenly cold, nauseous, sweating with fear and revulsion. A man was murdered last night. She turned, eyes briefly registering David’s slumbering form. There he was: the man, the victim. His dull eyes stared from an ashen face. The body was stiff, unnatural posture, the wound in his throat a dried scab of gore peeling from a puckered hole. Quite horribly dead.

Tears soaked her face. Something flipped inside her stomach and she leaned over to puke. Nothing came. Just a muscle wrenching spasm, a croaked exhalation of pure pain, and a thin sticky string of sputum.

She spat it out, wiped the dregs away with her hand, and crawled towards her discarded clothes. She was sobbing as she pulled them back on. The corpse continued to stare; no sympathy.

“Hey, babe, what’s the matter?”

David grinned at her. He was lying on his back, arms behind his head, legs lewdly bent apart. His prick was throbbing erect, but it stirred no needful response in turn. In the cold light of day, without that horrible chemistry that had intoxicated her sanity, it just looked obscene and faintly ridiculous.

“You murdered him!”

It was meant to be a shriek of rage; it emerged a whimper.

“Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes. So you don’t want to serenade the morning, then?”

“What? You are a fucking weirdo! I can’t believe I let you fuck me!”

“Let me? Hey, sweets, I almost had to fight you off. It can be overwhelming at first, I know. The blood and the big guy down there. Heady combination. You’ll take it in your stride eventually. Trust me. So, how about it, one for the road?”

“Fuck off you freak!”

His prick was deflating. David stared up at the ceiling and sighed, with all the air of disappointment.
“We’re vampires, Sarah. You can’t change that. We proved what you are last night. You wouldn’t have reacted that way otherwise. Sure, there’s some freaked out humans who might have got into the action, but not the way you did, not like that. No, they’d be too calculated, even in the frenzy of a blood-lust; there’d be too much calculation there. Cold bastards, humans. Can’t trust the fuckers. But you and me, that’s different. We are the same. I know, it’s mind-blowing afterwards. You feel revolted, disgusted, it’s only natural. You got to get used to what you are.”

“I’m not a fucking vampire!”

“Last night says otherwise. You were great, by the way.”

“I’m not a vampire. I’m not…”

“I think the lady does protest too much.” David stood up and reached for his clothes. He looked decidedly frustrated as he pulled his pants back on, but his eyes were mapping her body as if he could see her through the cloth. Well, he had memory to work with now. Sarah felt her skin crawl.

“You can’t fight what you are, sweets, believe me. I tried. Can’t change nature. Learn to live with it or the humans will have you. We might feed off the fuckers, but let’s not forget what a bunch of fucked up crazies they are. They’re mean and dangerous. We have to remember. Darwin’s dance, you know?”

Sarah slumped into an old chair and hid her face in her hands. “I want to go home.”

“There’s no going home, Sarah, not for the likes of us. I’m sorry.” He almost sounded sympathetic, but then he blew it. “Anyway, three’s a crowd – it’s time to lose the chump.”

He moved towards the corpse and tried to heft it towards the exit. It moved awkward, limbs and posture locked by rigour. “Bugger it – some people just can’t loosen up.”

Something fell out of the man’s jacket pocket with a plastic clatter. It bounced towards Sarah. She reached down to pick it up. The device was a PDA. It vibrated in her hand suddenly so that she almost dropped it. The screen flashed an icon and told her there was a new message. The man’s life was calling. She dropped it, and felt the tears spill again.

“I didn’t kill him,” she whispered, wiping her eyes.

“Are you going to give me a hand or just sit there looking pretty?”

“I said I didn’t kill him. You did. You forced the blood down my throat. I don’t have to lie. Just not tell them all the truth. You made me do it. All I wanted was a ride.”

He dropped the corpse and looked at her. “Well, you got that didn’t you? Damn fine ride, too, I thought. But you’re talking nonsense. There’s no going back, Sarah. We’re the same you and me. The only two of our kind. Now that makes us special.”

“Somehow, I’m going home.”

“You’re leaving me? So soon? Is it something I said? Come on girl, didn’t I rock you’re boat? Is there any other man out there who can do it for you like me? We’re made for each other, sweets!”

He grinned.

“Don’t call me sweets! You’re not taking me seriously. Take me seriously you arsehole!”

The grin faded. “I am, Sarah. I’m trying to help you through this the only way I know. Okay, so I’m doing a piss poor job. I’m sorry. This is a first for me too, you know. I had to go through this all alone. Nobody to help me with worldly wisdom or a piss-taking jibe. Just trust me on this – you’ll adapt.”

“No, I don’t have to.”

“No, you’re right, you don’t. At first. Eventually, it’ll drive you nuts. Remember the dog. Remember last night. The change is happening – nothing you can do to stop it. You won’t last five minutes without me.”

“Watch me!”

She reached for her sleeping bag and turned towards the door.

“Sarah! Wait!”

She stopped. Something moved outside; a fleeting movement flickered the light peering in through a crack in a boarded up window. She looked again. Felt the fear.

“There’s someone outside!”

She stepped back from the door, trembling. David cursed behind her. She heard the PDA buzz against the floor, a short taunting burst from beyond the grave.

“ATTENTION IN THE HOUSE!”

David rushed to the window and peered outside through another crack. “It’s crawling with cops. Shit! Armed cops. How the fuck did they find us here?”

“David, I am DC Peters. I just want to talk. That’s all. But first, I need to know that the girl and the young man are unharmed. Please talk to me, David. There’s a way out of this if we work together.”

Sarah stared at the dead man and began to tremble. The terror and the guilt felt bitter cold inside her belly. “I didn’t kill him. It wasn’t me. I want to go home!”

“No shit, sweets, well thanks for the support.”

“Let me go. You can slip away while they take care of me. I won’t say anything. Just let me go.”

“David! Please respond, David. I need to know your hostages are all right. Help me to help you.”

“HELP ME! HELP!” Sarah leapt for the entrance and pulled the makeshift door open. Light flooded in and stung her eyes; she grimaced against the glare and yelled for a way out of the nightmare. “Oh God he’s dead. He killed him. Help me. I don’t want to die.”

Strong arms gripped her round the middle and pulled her back into the gloomy recesses. For a moment, she saw the harried features of the man with a megaphone, staring stern. Here and there, peering from points of cover, men in black body armour, eyes masked beneath tight peaked caps, stubby guns focused on the building.

“David! Talk to me, David! We can all walk away from this if we stay calm!”

“Nice one, sweets, that will give ‘em pause for thought.”

“You’ll never get away. There’s too many out there.”

“’Course, we’ll get away. They don’t want to hurt the hostage now, do they? Don’t worry.”

David edged towards the doorway, careful not to expose himself to anyone’s line of sight. He warned her to back off towards the back of the building. At the door, he peered out carefully.

“Back off!” he yelled, and quickly waved the gun into sight. “I mean it. You want this to end okay, then remember there’s two of us. I can easily make it one if I have to!”

He winked in her direction. Almost a whisper, he added: “Convincing enough?”

“Take it easy, David. We’re just concerned for everyone’s safety. You’re in charge here. Okay.”

“Yeah, right,” he muttered.

“What are you going to do?”

“Grab the car I reckon and take off.”

“What?”

He grinned. “No problem. Remember where we first met? I’ll pick you up there a week from today.”

“You aren’t going to use me as a hostage?”

“And risk you getting hurt? You’ve not finished changing, sweets. Like I said, I’ll get clear – pick you up later once they’ve done with you.”

“You’re just going to stroll out and get in the car? You’re fucking crazy!”

“Something like that. In the process, I’m also going to scare the living shit out of them.”

This was insane. Way beyond macho bravado and bullshit. She didn’t want another death on her conscience. Even David’s. “They’ve got guns! They’ll shoot you!”

“Yeah. Figure it’ll hurt like fuck, but when I keep going they’ll drop a load. You wait and see. I’m a full fledged vampire, sweets, nothing they got worries me.”

“Don’t be stupid. That’s all myth and make believe. You can’t go out there like that! Give yourself up!”

The laugh was playful, but his face was deadly serious. “Still need the proof, don’t you sweet stuff? Watch this!”

He blew her a kiss and took off out the door. Sarah backed into the wall, and crouched down in terror. She heard barked voices. Harsh commands. More voices bleeding into one another, increasingly urgent. Three shots in quick succession. She screamed at the finality of the reports, felt the tears begin to flow. Another gunshot broke the mood. A few heartbeat’s silence. Two more shots barked. Then it all went quiet. The dead man stared, his cold face split by a rictus grin.

She couldn’t look away. It was just the two of them now. Trembling, she hugged herself. It was all her fault. If she hadn’t got into the car that night…

“I’m sorry. I’m sooo sorry…”


HURRIED footsteps outside; two men appeared at the doorway, one on either side, swinging into sight like dancers, but armoured and armed. They ended their dance with two guns focused on her body, bright beams of light glaring from beneath their stubby muzzles.

Sarah screamed, and wept, and held her arms out and up, palms showing empty. The fear pounded painful in her heart, pumped into her bladder with humiliating pressure.

Another figure appeared in the doorway. Sarah watched, fearful. The newcomer casually looked around the gloomy interior, letting his eyes study the corpse, before he finally gazed over towards her.

The gunmen backed away. The man moved towards her. He squatted down. “It’s all right now, Sarah. It’s over. You’re safe.”

He reached into a pocket to remove a handkerchief. She hesitated when he offered it, but then took it to wipe her streaming eyes and nose. “I want to go home,” she said.

“I don’t doubt it.” He smiled, not unkindly. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

She let him help her to her feet, and then leaned on him gratefully as he guided her outside. She felt tired, so horribly tired, and ached for her own bed in the safety of her own home.

The cop – Peters? – guided her towards a police car. An ambulance drew up close to the house. Paramedics climbed out. She watched. As her eyes followed them, she found herself looking at their stolen car. She saw him, then, almost waiting for her.

David grinned at her from where he was lying on his back. Most of his body was hidden behind the car’s rear side, but she had a sudden image of him lying legs splayed with his prick bulging hard for attention. It was that kind of grin. The chest was bloody. His eyes stared through her at nothing in particular very far away. A breeze wafted a strong scent of him her way. The aroma entered her nose like a possessing ghost and made itself at home.

She gagged, and sobbed, and stumbled. Peters grabbed her tight in support and pulled her away towards his car. “Don’t look, Sarah. It’s not a pretty sight. Just realise – he can’t hurt you any more. You’re safe now.”

A cop threw a blanket over David’s remains, Sarah felt herself released from his empty gaze. She rested her head against the man’s shoulders, inhaled the aromatic cocktail of his individual aura; the sweat, the hint of tobacco, soap, beneath it all, almost on the very edge of perception, the living essence of blood.

“He thought he was bullet proof,” she said. “He told me he was a vampire. He made me watch; he took that poor man and drank his blood. Can you believe that? He was crazy. He drank his blood!”

The memory of the blood smell tickled her mind, the taste of it, the echoes of sensuality it stirred deep inside; her body yielded to the memory with the first stirrings of a physical response. Sarah felt the lustful cravings whisper deep within. She closed her eyes, and tried not to think about the intoxicating pleasure of blood.

She began to cry. The cop’s comforting arm squeezed reassuring.

“Shush now,” he said. “It’s okay. You can go home to your family. They’ve been worried sick about you, but the nightmare’s over now. The vampire’s dead.”



Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
16 September 2007


This story makes its first appearance here on Tyke Script Redrafted.


Copyright © September 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

Birthday Present
By Mark Cantrell


On my birthday,
I was given,
Brand-spanking new
And shiny,
A life of my very own.
I never used it.
It stayed on the shelf
And there it remains today,
Not shiny now, but dusty,
In memory of might have been.
You see,
I’ve never understood
How
To switch it on,
Let alone
How
To make it
Work.



Mark Cantrell,
Manchester,
11 January 2008


Copyright © January 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

Robert Wilensky,
US mathematician, expert on artificial intelligence


Category: QUOTE

Last Breath
By Mark Cantrell


Here we sit
waiting, for the door to open
and the spirit to sail away.
She lies, our mother,
quiet,
knowing a peace of a kind
at last.
When sombre tragedy first struck,
she was denied the peace of old age
and grand-daughter’s pleasures
by a bitter storm of blood
that gushed into the machinery
of her soul.
A stroke tore the delicate flesh from her spirit,
and left but a ghost
of the woman she was,
the mind she was, until only
a fragile remnant was left, lost to fear
and wailing lament.
Quiet now,
at rest, dozing off into the final
sleep in the bedtime of mortality,
her suffering is almost done.
The reaper waits among us,
patient, polite, biding the time
he has left to this mortal mother’s coil.
We sit and wait,
and look back along the path,
of life’s journey we shared
with the woman who made us, raised us...
We wait.
We wait for the moment,
when our mother takes her leave,
the awful moment, when our journey together
ends.


Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
Longton Cottage Hospital,
19 June 2008


Copyright © June 2008. All Rights Reserved.

---

THE night air kissed her shoulders like an unwanted paramour. She shivered at its chilly touch and pulled her jacket tight around her slender body. The cold and the dark were terrible. She hated them, but they seemed like perfect companions for somebody alone.

It was dangerous, hanging around street corners. Supposedly she was the one to be feared, but so far they hadn't convinced her. She just looked down at her feet, and hoped nothing in the world would notice her fear. That was supposed to be the victim's problem.

"Shade!" She looked up. They called her that because she was afraid of the dark. She hated the name - it was meant to be a joke - but she didn't mind when Damien used it. Now his broad shoulders and tall body loomed up from the darkness. The figure brought a sense of security and she felt her body relax.

His hand took her own. Big, firm, reassuringly warm. She let him pull her deeper into the shadows. She knew what he wanted. What she wanted too, in a way. The bile rose in her throat but she fought to swallow it.

"You'll get over it," Damien said. A memory. It felt like telepathy all the same. He was like that. He sought to ease her into the life. Not like the others who simply laughed. That was Damien. He was the first man who ever tried to make her feel worthwhile.

Just as her body was unused to the frigid night, so her eyes were not yet accustomed to the shadows. Not like Damien, who could read them like a book. Even now, they told him what he needed to know. Shade watched his silhouette. He'd found something, she could tell by the delicate shift of his head. He was smiling. That much she knew.

The sounds of traffic emerged from the distance, laughter, and shouts of joy and despair. Revellers on their way home. A world she longed to rejoin. She swallowed her tears, and watched her lover intently. At least she had him. Company, a guiding hand, some kind of affection.

Damien beckoned her forward. She moved reluctantly. A boy squinted from the shelter of a doorway. His eyes stared dully from a wasted face, cracked lips moved: "Spare any change?"

Darkness flowed in a blur. Light glinted from a pale face, from a blade. The boy struggled. His legs kicked uselessly at the air. No sound from Damien, even of exertion. A gurgle followed by a jet-spray of fluid. Shade felt her legs liquefy, her stomach heave. Damien's firm but guiding arm pulled her in until the blood took hold. It smelled of living death, yet it triggered the terrifying lust that took her with strength far greater.

Tears felt hot on her cheeks and stung her eyes. The blood felt hotter on her lips. With Damien's heat by her side, she found herself at the centre of a cocoon of warmth. Her tongue darted into the wound of its own volition, channelling the boy's heat until his struggles weakened.

A grunt from the shadows as Damien's lust neared its peak. Shade felt her own rising. A tooth pricked her tongue, mingling her blood with the boy's. She whimpered. Her skin rippled with electricity. A ball of energy tightened at the base of her skull until it exploded down her spine like lightning and discharged between her thrumming thighs. She screamed and the fear retreated into the shadows.

EVEN through the dark glasses the city's glare stung her eyes. Not that she cared. Damien's arm held her waist and she felt wonderfully alive beneath his touch.

He stopped suddenly and pulled her in. She moaned at the sensation of his lips pressed against her own. Here was a hunger she could understand, not fear. It spoke of life, and the promise of life. Now she felt her own enhanced and fulfilled.

She tried to speak, but Damien's lips swallowed her words. Instead their bodies communicated, and she enjoyed his hands mapping her body. The sound of a car back firing interrupted their passion. Damien flinched. Shade began to laugh but her giggles were squashed by his increasingly painful grip. He grunted. His mouth jerked and his fangs pierced her lip. Her knees buckled under his weight and she went down with him. He slumped to his knees and looked up with gaping eyes and a mouth that belched blood.

"Nononoooo -" her shivering voice seemed to come from somebody else. A low rattle in Damien's throat turned to silence. A few moments, that's all it took. All it ever took. She was alone again. A wave of numbness froze her body.

The outside world returned with a savage click. Shade looked up through her tears and saw the few scurrying figures and their screaming faces. A man smiled from the midst of the panic, and raised a shotgun's hungry muzzle. Before she could even fully comprehend the scene, the primordial urge to survive took hold. Her loss forgotten, she ran into the maze of alleys.

THIS time the shadows welcomed her, or maybe she welcomed them. It didn't matter anymore. The fear was no longer all around; it was focused to a point closing from behind.

She turned corners blindly and stumbled over rubbish. Somehow she kept her balance. Even with her eyes closed, she couldn't tell where she was going. There was no heat, even if her eyelids worked properly. They tingled, but there was only the occasional blur of an ill-formed image.

Something snagged her feet. She flew forward and landed heavily. Pain brought tears to her eyes. In the poor light she saw the boy. His stiff fingers were tangled in her skirt as though trying to hold her back. The footsteps grew louder, the boy's eyes stared, the gash in his throat looked like a grin. The killer turned the corner and came towards her.

She cried and broke free. Then she was running unsteadily until she came out into the light on the other side of the alleyways. People scattered from her path. Muttered voices and shouts followed in her wake. She scarcely noticed - she could scarcely see - it was just background detail to terror. It wasn't until the city centre was left behind that she eased her pace. Her lungs ached and her throat felt sticky. Sweat was clammy beneath her armpits and there was a painful stitch in her side. At least the streets were darker now, and that eased the burning in her eyes.

Without people around, she felt somehow lonely and exposed. She hurriedly glanced behind, and scanned the shadows for any hint of human heat. Police sirens sounded distant but comforting. It seemed safe. Maybe - just maybe - she'd lost him. She hoped so, prayed it was so, and with the hollow ache of grief opening in her heart, she headed for the only home she had left.

NOBODY was laughing now. She almost wished they were. Even laughter would be better than the awful silence. She could feel the eyes of the gang staring from their hideaways beyond the firelight.

She looked at Morgan. She'd never been able to look at him directly before. Now his dead face held a horrible fascination. His eyes peered up at the ceiling; one partially closed in an eternal wink. His mouth retained its cruel sneer, though his lips were wet with blood. She could smell the stench of his spilled life, still dribbling from the rib-fringed crater in his chest. The others were scattered nearby, watching with the unflinching stare of the dead.

The warehouse had always been a place of unease. Only Damien ever made it seem welcome. Now, empty, it was alive with hideous motion. The shadows danced beyond the firelight, and each flicker brought a fresh urge to crawl into a ball and hide. She didn't know what to do, or where to go. She was completely alone; everything that gave shape to her life was gone. The old was forever closed, and the new was lying cold all around.

A sound of metal on metal echoed through the warehouse. Shade stopped breathing, and peered into the gloom. She closed her eyes, but saw nothing except for the heat-glare of the fire. She swallowed a whimper and staggered back out of the light, edging precariously towards the way out.

When the door creaked it felt like her insides were being torn apart. The sound was that loud. She froze and listened to the night. Her breathing sounded too loud, the blood rushed in her ears, her heart pounded like a hammer on the hollow walls of the warehouse. She ducked into the shelter of a twisted girder embedded in a concrete block and peered into the gloom.

Someone emerged from the warehouse and walked across the rubble. She felt her body tremble, but part of her mind simmered with a burning rage born of sheer terror and grief. That rage forced her to stalk the killer. No man could do what this one had. It went beyond belief, beyond reason. They were the ones to be feared. That's what they always said. But now they were dead, and this man walked away so casually.

He stopped. Shade froze and hoped the shadows were enough to shield her from sight. The man pointed at a silver Jaguar. It beeped, and then he opened the door and climbed inside. A sense of desperation stung Shade as the man started the engine. She couldn't lose him now, not so easily.

On an impulse she ran into the road and forced a taxi to stop. The driver leaned out of his window and began to shout abuse, but Shade ignored his rage and climbed in beside him. The driver's expression turned from anger to uncertainty. "I'm off duty, luv," he said, suddenly nervous.

She lunged. The engine screamed. She was a wild thing. Her snarls sounded strange in her own ears. She watched herself from the calm place in her head, as this stranger chewed at the man's neck. He tasted bad, the smell was even worse. The teeth were useless. She knew she should have used her knife. The taxi driver struggled and lashed out. A blow caught her face but she didn't let go. She gripped his head with the strength of madness, kept on scraping and chewing until she was finally rewarded with a powerful jet of blood. It cascaded into her throat and she let out a reflex yelp of elation.

The man's struggles became more intense. Shade tightened her grip and widened the gash. Soon the man weakened and began to whimper helplessly. Shade regained control of herself and leaned over to open the driver's door. She flung out the dying man and clambered into his seat. "Don't call be luv," she said, and slammed the door.

FRESH from the kill, her head buzzed with confidence. She was the hunter, Death prowling the shadows. She wiped her sleeve across her chin, slipped the car into first, and moved off.

This first solo kill had changed her in some way. She felt different, bigger, stronger. For the first time the world made sense. No longer was she the lost thing, afraid of the shadows. Now she had a purpose, a reason. At last she knew what and who she was. She would find Damien's killer, and explain it to him in painful detail.

Trouble was, she'd delayed too long over the kill. She cursed her useless teeth yet again. In the films they always seemed so perfect. What did humans know? They didn't have to live with the sore tongues and punctured lips; that's all her teeth were good for. The trademark wasn't a patch on a good solid blade.

Turning a corner, she suddenly found her prey. The Jaguar cruised across the junction ahead like a great white shark patrolling its feeding grounds. She tensed. Her knuckles whitened on the wheel, but she forced herself to relax, flexed her fingers and casually followed. Just a taxi driver cruising for trade, that's all. She kept the killer in sight, but otherwise held back.

This discrete pursuit kept on for more than hour. The tension knotted Shade's insides. They left the city behind. The traffic dwindled as she found herself in quiet country lanes. The roads twisted and turned until she began to worry that she would lose him, and then the shark turned into short driveway leading to a solitary house. This was it, her mind screamed, time to put her thoughts into deed. Fear returned from its brief sojourn.

SHE stalked the lane and flitted through the night's comforting gloom. The house looked sinister in the shadows, as though there was more of it than there should be. The windows were dark; no sign of life, but the Jaguar gleamed in the glow of a solitary street lamp. The engine was still warm, and she savoured the heat by running her hand over its graceful bonnet.

There was no turning back now. She swallowed her fears and stealthily headed for the door. To her surprise it was unlocked and she slipped inside. Just enough light filtered in from outside to allow her to see. Compared to its brooding exterior the inside of the house was disappointing. The hall was perfectly normal; it might have been a flashback to her childhood, until she glanced down at the umbrella stand by the door. The shotgun's muzzle peered out, no longer menacing, just an object. She stared at it for a few moments, and then picked it up. Finish the man with his own gun. Damien would have appreciated the symmetry.

She became a cat prowling a rival's territory. A faint light flickered from a door at the end of the hall. She stalked towards it and carefully edged through the opening. The stairs creaked slightly, and she winced with each noise.

The cellar was filled with candles. A large coffin dominated the floor. Its silver furnishings glinted like something from a horror movie. Posters of those very same 'B' movies covered the walls. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee stared from the walls. Anthony Hopkin's rendition of the duel-scarred Van Helsing studied her until she began to feel like Lucy, trapped in the unforgiving tomb.

Reminding herself that she was the slayer, Shade wandered over to a bookcase and ran her fingers along the book spines on the top shelf. Each one related in some way to vampires. A desk nearby was littered with papers. A skull held them down. From the teeth it had obviously once belonged to a vampire. She pushed it aside with distaste and flicked through the papers.

More vampires, but the papers made no sense. She scanned a yellowing newspaper clipping. 'Escaped vampire gunned down,' the headline screamed. She felt an ache in her chest as she thought of Damien and she threw the clipping aside. She picked up an official looking document and tried to understand the language. Complex, scientific jargon, it meant nothing. Something about retroviruses, activators and genomes. She threw it aside and ransacked the pile for something she could understand.

"You should always know your prey, don't you think?"

Shocked, she turned round. The man was casually leaning against the doorway, his arms loosely folded, his piercing blue eyes mapping her face. She'd heard no movement, sensed nothing - not even the slightest shift in the air. Shaking, she raised the shotgun and watched him over the wobbling muzzle.

"Do you like my little museum? I find it fascinating, this cult that people have made." He unfolded his arms and stood up straight.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!"

"Of course." He slowly began to walk around the coffin, allowing Shade to creep towards the door, and some sense of escape. "By the way, we haven't been introduced. My name's Kemp, Simon Kemp. And you are?"

"Sh... Shade."

A little smile touched his lips. "Please, no games, your real name?"

"Emma."

"Such a pretty name," he said, leaning against the desk. "You know, I've been looking forward to meeting you in the flesh. I was worried I might have lost you."

All her confidence was gone. She trembled with fear and edged back towards the door. She didn't dare take her eyes off him. She sensed some underlying threat, yet his body seemed so relaxed and unassuming. He watched her with mild curiosity, as though the shotgun was nothing more than a child's toy. Despite her fear, she couldn't help the question that formed in her mind.

"Why?" she blurted.

Kemp laughed pleasantly and then looked her over. His face turned serious, sad even. "Your kind are an abomination, Emma. You're freaks insulting nature. Man-made vampires. They made you to entertain, you know. Nothing more chilling than the real thing they thought, until one got loose and learned how to pass its genome into wider circulation. They shot it, the original."

He stepped forward suddenly. Shade's nerves snapped and jerked her finger. The shotgun sounded deafening in the confined cellar. Kemp's chest exploded crimson and he flew backwards against the wall. Shade struggled to chamber another round. She pulled the trigger. The shotgun knocked her off balance and stung her ears. One more time. The shotgun clicked its impotence. Kemp slithered down the wall.

Shade stood frozen. Her ears rang. Her arms ached from the shotgun's weight. Her lungs ached for air until she finally remembered to breathe. The smell of gunsmoke mingled with the blood and the candles.

"You... see... I'm a traditionalist." Kemp spat blood and struggled to stand. Shade moaned in dull fear, and watched the blood ooze from the wound in his chest. She looked up at his bloodstained face and was horrified by the revelation of his smile. Two fangs slid from hidden recesses to form a perfect cutting point.

Shade dropped the shotgun, and backed away as quickly as her shaking legs would let her. This couldn't be happening. She felt confusion and terror in equal measure. People died when you shot them. Damien had died. The others had died. Yet this man walked.

"Mortals playing at vampires, Emma, that's what you are. I find that so offensive. So you have the trappings demanded by this strange cult, thanks to some creative genetic engineering, but that only makes you a worse caricature of my kind."

"We're not fake, we're real, I am what I am!"

"No. You're a figment of the imagination. You don't exist. You never existed. But I'm real."

She fell backwards onto the stairs. From somewhere a clock chimed the hour, a strange intrusion of normality. Kemp approached slowly as though savouring the moment. She crawled up the stairs and was amazed at her sense of detachment. It was as if the urge to survive had sealed her terror and panic in a glass cocoon, safe from harm's way.

"You should feel special," Kemp said as he stepped onto the stairs. "I've never killed one of your kind this way."

Shade finally dared to turn her back and run. She raced to the front door, only to find it locked. Kemp laughed from behind. "Looking for these?" He stood at the cellar door, and jangled a set of keys.

This couldn't be happening. There had to be a way out. She rushed towards the living room, feeling a knife-blade of fear as her feet took her closer towards Kemp. He stood where he was, smiling so the light reflected from his fangs with an eerie luminescence. He was the cat to her mouse.

Inside the living room, it was too dark to see. Some light filtered in from the hallway but not much. She stumbled over furniture and placed her arms out like a blind man to feel her way through the unknown. She heard Kemp shuffle into the room

"There's no way out," he calmly said. "Don't fight it. It's a beautiful way to die - two souls flaring in the void of lifelessness, one shining all the brighter until there's only me left."

"No!"

The panic was beginning to break from its cocoon. It rushed into her mind like a tornado. She turned round, her eyes desperately trying to pierce the veil of darkness for some avenue of escape. Suddenly a shadow appeared in front of her. The smell of blood rushed into her nose and brought with it the usual feeling of giddying lust. She stepped backwards, frozen by the shape like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlamps. A hand lightly gripped her shoulder. She screamed. "It's getting late, Emma. Time to go," Kemp whispered.

His lips brushed her cheek. She whimpered and tried to pull away. Pain. Sharp with a white-hot intensity, so that it took her breath away. She looked down instinctively and saw the dawn sunlight peering through a crack in the bottom of the curtains. Already her calves were bubbling with porphyric blisters. Kemp's lips explored her neck with a lover's sensitivity, moving towards the fatal spot.

With a yell of fear and rage she found the strength to push Kemp away. She turned and leapt, grabbing handfuls of the thick fabric. As she fell to the floor, her weight tore the curtains down. Light flooded into the room and bathed her in pain. Kemp's scream stung her ears.

Blisters bubbled on her hands. Her face already felt swollen. She moaned and struggled to stand. The cellar was all she could think of. Shelter from the sun. Safety. Relief from the pain. Not even Kemp mattered now. She rushed for the door and saw him stumbling ahead of her, his body shrouded in smoke. A vague thought wondered what was burning, and then she pushed past him. A brief glimpse of charred flesh and then they were falling together: a nightmare of choking smoke and tangled limbs, terrible pain and monstrous images.

They landed heavily in the cellar. The fall left her dazed and she found herself staring at Van Helsing's image. There was something knowing in the eyes. In her dazed state, she almost felt as though he was trying to speak. Eventually, she struggled to sit up. The movement brought a fresh burst of pain. She looked down at her raw legs. Her skirt was damp with the excrescence of ruptured blisters so that the thin cloth clung to her flesh.

A rattling gurgle sounded from Kemp, and he stared with horribly white eyes. His burned body looked ancient, just like in the movies. She couldn't understand why he didn't just blister, but a rising sickness pushed away the last of her rationality. It no longer mattered as the revulsion brought the bile to the back of her throat.

She swallowed hard, and tried to recall Damien, but the memories were gone. She no longer remembered his touch, or saw his face. The tenderness in her lover's eyes was replaced by the ferocity of his killer. She especially hated Kemp for that. Now, she saw the fear in his eyes. It gave her the strength to overcome both the revulsion and the pain. There was only one thing left to do. This time she would do it properly. She fumbled in her pocket, and pulled out the knife.

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 21 February 1999

First published in Monomyth #40 vol 6.4 November 2006

Copyright (C) February 1999. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

“PRAISE be to God, God the Creator…”

“Praise be to Sol, Sol the Lifegiver…”

“Praise be to Gaia, Daughter of Sol…”

The chanting nears its peak and my eyes close in fearful anticipation. Soon the melodic voices will fall silent; the High Inquisitor will read out my charges before he plunges the torch in to the kindling beneath my stake. Right now, I don’t know which is worse: the anticipation of melting skin or the agony of the plastic strips that bind my wrists.

Life is full of regrets, I suppose, and like an old man all I have left is the chance to mull over mine. If only I hadn’t written that damn book. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many condemned men, I wonder, felt the same of their crimes?

Actually my charge sheet is quite simple. Just one sentence: that I, John Cavendish, am guilty of the gross crime of heresy. The Inquisitor, of course, knows his job. The man is a conductor; a virtuoso at guiding the orchestra of human emotions. He learnt his trade well, on game shows and later as a chat show host. Quite a media personality is the Inquisitor. He drew out my simple charge into an elaborate display of theatrics that guaranteed the audience would not only condemn me but also give the show its typical ratings high.

Here at the finale I am sure we will make for an excellent performance. A perfect double act. I always wanted notoriety. But this isn’t quite what I had in mind when I first put pen to paper and dreamed of literary renown.


SUZANNE has gone. Just like that. Not a good day. The night’s no better. Fitful sleep mixed with dreams of happier times. I can feel the warmth of her body in my dreams; it emphasises the emptiness of the bed beside me. The clock ticks away the seconds that take our lives further apart. Time is cruel that way.

I don’t know how long this has been building up. Suzy’s been argumentative for days, and when she isn’t tearing into me she’s distant. Or is it me that’s distant – too engrossed with my book? The reviews were bad. I expected that. Politicians were slandering me. Again, no surprise. I took one look at the sales figures and let it soothe away the ruffles. Then I return home and she is gone. Nothing – not even a note accusing me. Just an empty flat filled with the shadows of memory.


MY eyes won’t stay shut. I’d like to block the horrific sight of what is to come, but my eyes want something to do. Plenty of time for the darkness. Now they crave light and image, the subtle play of the sunlight on the leaves of the endless sea of trees, the clouds floating gracefully in the darkening sky, that explosive red on the horizon from the dying embers of the day. My eyes want to see all this. Soon I will be mingling with those clouds; I shall add my own small part to the dawn’s fiery magic.


BRANDY with a hint of lemonade and ice is already on the low table by the window. Axel is good that way, never one to skimp on the hospitality. I shuffle out of my coat and vaguely wonder about the stranger. His face is familiar. I’ve seen him on TV, but his name escapes me. Evidently the man knows who I am. He watches intently and I wait with growing impatience for him to speak.

“John, about time. Your ice is melting.” Axel, from behind. He waddles into view and carefully lowers himself into the chair beside the stranger. I ignore the mild rebuke. Axel knows my punctuality is terrible. I’ll probably be late for my own funeral. I just sit, reach for the glass, and gulp. Nelson watches with stony-faced jealousy from his column rising above the autumn-bronzed trees.

“Have you read the proposal?” Axel asks.

“Yes.” I break away from the stranger’s steely gaze.

“What do you think?”

“Interesting…”

“You have misgivings?”

“The Gaians –”

“Don’t worry, that’s all taken care of. I’ve cleared it.”

The stranger shifts in his seat and glances through the window. “Don’t worry, Mr Cavendish,” he says. That voice! Metallic sibilance. I know it. “I have assured Axel of our interest in the project. He has great faith in your abilities to conduct the necessary research. Can you?”

“Yes, I can do it.” I resent the disdain in his tone.

He smiles, briefly, but says no more. “Will you do it, John?”


MY eyes fall on magic of a different kind; the chanting women waving their sprigs of mistletoe and dancing naked around the mock stone circle. They are a new feature, part of the ratings war with the other media conglomerate. At once encouraging and appealing to the voyeuristic delights of a bored middle class.

Axel, my friend, my employer, obviously thinks so. His eyes seldom stray from these delicate creatures, exposed as they are to the elements. Is it shame, or lust that prevent his eyes from meeting mine? The man who effectively put me on the pyre is safe from the flames, even though we should burn together. Did he not commission my book, publish it? But he is a rich man. No strict Gaian upbringing for Axel Neustadt – and no Gaian pyre at the end.

Not that I am bitter. It has to be this way, how else could we arrange for his people to broadcast the show? After all, isn’t Axel my friend?


“DON’T worry,” he says, wiping the incessant perspiration from his face. He stands by the door, framed in the pale light filtering in through the window high above my head. His beady eyes stare out of his pudgy face with a doll’s sincerity. Almost it hides his embarrassment.

“Axel, they’re going to burn me!”

“It won’t come to that.”

“No?”

“It’s just for show. That’s all – a pure formality.”

“Exactly!”

He looks away sharply and glances at the walls. I can see his disgust at the mildew. That’s nothing, compared to the banging of the pipes in the middle of the night – the ones intended to keep the dungeon damp and unpleasant. I’d tell him that, but he looks troubled enough.

“I’m sorry,” he suddenly says.

“What?”

“I’m sorry I pointed the finger. They didn’t leave me any choice. You know –”

“It’s all right, Axel. I know what they’re like.”

“I may be a rich man, but it carries no weight with them.”

“No.”

“But I do have some clout. I’ll take care of things. I promise.”

I have to confess, Axel is starting to annoy me, but I bite my tongue. Here I am facing death, and I don’t want to make him feel worse. I just ask, “What things?”

Yet another furtive look at the walls. Is he worried about bugs – in this damp? He showed no such reticence before. “Trust me,” he quietly says.


AT least it’s a beautiful evening. The air is pleasantly cool as Sol plunges into the treeline. They say the forest still hides the remains of Birmingham. The Terra-formers didn’t quite demolish it all, so the story goes, and now it’s a haven to vagrants and outcasts. I wonder what it looked like, before they shipped most of the population offworld? They say it was a vast city – it must have been something wonderful to behold.


FROM somewhere a loud noise disturbs my dream. Or is it part of the illusion conjured from memory? I can't tell. I try to make sense of the world around me. But the world inside gets in the way. Then I am falling and the floor hits with a thump.

The impact pulls me away from the abyss of deep sleep. The room leaps into focus. Unfamiliar smells taste sharp in my nostrils. Booted feet look huge and bloated before my eyes. There is a hoarse susurration that rises and falls in a harsh chord symbolic of fear. I raise my head until the muzzle fills my vision. The dark tunnel smells of oil and death. Framed through the sights of the machine pistol, the cop’s masked face stares with terrifying inscrutability. He barks one muffled word and Suzanne fades from memory.

“Heretic!”


AN island shrouded in forest. Such is my homeland; such is England. I guess it looks something as it did millennia ago, when the first Palaeolithic settlers ventured into mystery. Except, of course, for that transmission tower there to the Southwest, the very same monolith that will beam my forthcoming death to the heavens.

My fiery demise will bounce from the fervid birth of new stars. Is that what they mean by the immortal soul in this age of telecommunications? For all eternity, my life will be nothing more than an unconscious ghost of death sandwiched between the commercial breaks.


THEY’RE watching again. That eye staring through the peephole makes my blood feel cold. They keep doing it, watching. Silently. I hear the footsteps thundering into the distance and I know I am alone again. But I never hear the footsteps before they stare into my cell. Now they’ve gone again. Left me here in the dark, just the screams for company. Why do they have to scream so loud? I can’t stand it. I want to go home. Where’s Suzanne?

The cell is damp and cold. The mould glows on the wall. Actually glows with a sickly luminescence. Slimy ooze dribbles down the walls too, it’s collecting on the stone floor and I have my feet pulled up onto the small, rat-nibbled bed. I hate this bed, it’s hard and you need to be a contortionist to sleep… try to sleep.

I don’t know how long it’s been since they pulled me from my bed. There was an occasion when they took me to see a psychiatrist. It may have been days ago. There’s time of sorts here. I can tell by the weak light that sometimes filters in through the tiny window. But it keeps no regular pattern. It seems only to be the here and now passing in endless circles.

I must have done something wrong. But they won’t tell me what it is. Sometimes I hammer on the door and yell at them to tell me what I have done. They never reply, but the screams fall silent and the dank air is filled with a dreadful sense of too many listening ears. It shuts me up. Even though the silence is more frightening than the screams and the footsteps.

Suzanne laughs pleasantly. She tells me that she loves me and I feel her arms around my waist. I know I am going mad when I smile at the private thought she whispers in my ear.


THERE was a Pagan, Christ, who died a heretic. Like me, he went against the powers that be. Like me, the masses were cajoled into condemning him. They say he went meekly. They also say he found resurrection on his death stake. Perhaps I should have asked Axel about this, but did that ancient heretic also feel my dreadful impatience?

My fingers are senseless. At least they won’t feel the flames. I wish I could say the same for the rest of me. The ceremony is winding down. The director is signalling off camera. Join us after the break, the studio announcer is telling my audience. The last grains of life are trickling through my numb fingers and Axel has yet to acknowledge I exist. Do as you must, Axel, but soon – I am the modern Christ and I crave my resurrection.

“INTOLERABLE! Do you know they even threatened me? How dare they!” The first words Axel says to me. He adds something more, but the slamming door drowns his words. I stay seated on the bed, trembling with cold and fear. It’s nice to see a familiar face. I haven’t seen another human being for… too long. The tears spill over.

Now Axel is pacing. No mean trick in that confined space. I just look up at him through the blurring tears and thank Gaia for some company. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he turns towards me and looks down. “I’m sorry about this, John,” he says, wiping the perspiration from his face. “One of the other cartels moved against us. They tried to come against me, but they haven’t got the clout for that. This thing has gone right to the top of the Gaian Ascendancy. Might work to our advantage, that – it just might tear them apart.”

“What about me?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll be okay.”

“Axel! I’m on trial for heresy!”

At least he has the grace to look embarrassed. By rights he should be here too. But he is a powerful man – with a lot of favours owed by influential Gaians. I must pin my hopes on that, and just pray that he is owed enough.

“It isn’t all bad news,” he adds after a pause. I just look up bemused. The tears have died, but the salt stings my eyes.

“They haven’t been able to stop my presses. The book’s doing well. The money’s rolling in. There hasn’t been a publishing success like this in decades. It’s being read out there on the industrial colonies. People are reading what you’ve said – millions of them – and it’s got the Gaians scared. You’re going to be a rich man.”

I can’t help laughing bitterly.


NATURALLY, I will be forced to take on an assumed name. Axel will take care of the details. All I have to do is assume my new identity and enjoy the comfortable life that the Royalties will bring. I am sure I will be able to write. I shall literally exist under a pseudonym – Axel can take care of that too. The only thing that concerns me is Suzanne. I miss her and I want her back. Will she return when I am a new man?


LIGHT gushes from the opening to Gaia’s womb. It glimmers from her pregnant belly painted with the continents of the world. On either side of the portal – symbolic of Gaia’s open thighs – are the benches where my judges sit in shadow.

A figure appears in the depths of the light. It emerges in the form of a young woman wearing the ceremonial robes of a Gaian priestess. She walks to the centre of the hall, her brazen eyes fixed on me, her swaying hips perversely creating flutters in the pit of my stomach. Close enough to touch, but for the chains, she stops and leans forward. The smell of musk mingles with the lavender and beeswax of the hall. Her breasts and eyes vie for my attention. Then she smiles.

“Heretic!” the priestess whispers, and with a flourish she turns to raise her arms high above her head in an act of revelation to make old men weep. Gazing with flagrant excitement towards Gaia’s open belly, she clutches her breasts before longingly reaching out. Another shadow appears in the shimmering depths.

“Behold! Justice made flesh. Son of Gaia. May the righteous know delight. The wrongdoer dread. For it is he that…” her voice rises until her speech is lost in the embrace of ecstasy. The shadow flits towards her, places an arm round her slender waist, kisses her and leaves her staring breathless in his wake.

The Inquisitor looks so different to that urbane man in the business suit. Bare chested, his tattooed, muscular torso glistens in the candlelight. His long hair is wild and his kohl-rimmed eyes are hypnotically dark.
Suddenly he screams as though in agony. “Can you hear Gaia’s pain?” he cries to the assembled hall. “One of her wayward children has fallen from the light. Gaia weeps for her lost one. She feels such pain but we will soothe the Mother!”

The sounds of weeping come from the witnesses in the shadows. Tears spilled for Gaia.

“Who does accuse this man?”

Axel appears in a flood of green light. The halo of cigar smoke makes him seem unearthly. He does not look at me. “I do,” he says in the voice of an old man.

The High Inquisitor turns on me like a fox. “John Cavendish. You are accused of heresy – the worst of crimes – is there any possibility of a plea on your behalf?”

On cue my attorney rises to his feet like a condemned man. A flurry of folders scatters across the floor and he struggles to stem the flow with trembling hands. The Inquisitor’s stare has him pinned like a rabbit in the rushing headlights.

I want to scream, but the bit prevents anything but a dull grunt. Heresy shall speak no evil! The attorney turns to the judges. “My client can offer no defence. Only throw himself upon the mercy of our Mother.”

The words leave me numb. The priestess wails and weeps in horror at this poor sinner. The judges stand and recite in chorus: “From the womb do we come, and to the womb do the virtuous return. You, John Cavendish, are declared an orphan. Let the heretic’s soul be released and cast out into the cold night.”


THEY approach in procession. The Inquisitor leads the congregation, guiding a priestess dressed in green. Feminine curves peek through her thin robes. Shining eyes gleam through the veil. They approach my pyre. The torch sputters in the Inquisitor’s right arm.

Finally Axel deigns to see me. His face looks like a child’s model in dough as the Inquisitor turns to face the televisual crowds. The torch sways precariously as he raises his arms in the air. “Children of the Mother! See how we cast out the sinner!” He leans forward to kiss the priestess’s hidden brow and I pray to Gaia for Axel to hurry.

The woman takes the torch. All I can do is watch, like the cameras that observe on the viewers’ behalf. The veil is cast aside and I choke on the sudden urge to cry. Suzanne smiles at me and breaks my heart. “It’s time to go, John,” she says. “Only one thing sells more than a heretic – and that’s a martyr.”



Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 27 November 1998

This story was first published online at Peridot Books, circa 1999. It was since re-published in The Writers' Compass Winter 2007/2008 edition in December 2007.


Copyright © November 1998. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

More information: http://www.courtesyorchis.com or http://www.myspace.com/courtesyorchispoet

“ps/ Courtesy Orchis will have her revenge on..... ‘The first rule of any game, even before how do I play this game? is ‘know your opponent’’ – poet Courtesy Orchis.”

A postscript to a poem buried deep within a poetry collection is no doubt a strange way to begin a review of said poet’s work, but it proves to be apt advice not just for would-be games players, but for reviewers too. For surely, it’s equally apt to note that ‘ye who would delve into a poet’s work might do well to ponder – “who is the poet?”

Okay, so who is the poet, Courtesy Orchis? The glib answer is the author of this collection, simply entitled The Collection. Within its pages can be found an amalgamation of the author's previous chapbooks published between 1997 and 2007 – but here brought together in one hardback edition.

For a more detailed answer, however, well the poetry knows and the poetry tells, but its manner is cryptic, its meaning veiled, as its author plays with the reader’s sight and perception. So the answers come in enigmatic fashion, through lengths of prose, poetry and short stories, together with snapshots of sentences poised between the moments of the page, to tell scenes and vignettes of life lived and endured.

There is the essence in these pages of life lived on the edge of ordinary perception; of a soul-cry calling out to the humans lost in the wilderness that is a banal society. There is suicide and pain, loss and love, and angsted (sic) questions, self-doubt and recriminations. Yet it steers a course away from the morbid rocks. The works prove uplifting; thoughtful streams of consciousness that fill one’s emotional sails. Orchis, here, is no siren wailing us onwards to shipwrecked despair.

Her poetry begs... nay demands thought and reflection, it provokes an essential questioning, the perpetual sense that a revelation, if not an epiphany is just there on the tip of the tongue. There is an almost surreal quality to much of the material presented, especially in the later selections, when she presents what can be best described as verbal collages. To say surreal, however, belies the easy lucidity present on the pages; there is meaning and there is purpose and it defies us to ponder what remains unsaid.

No easy reading these collages, but the effort is worth it; dense bodies of prose or poetry is surrounded by cut and pasted snippets. Short poems, scribbled observations, lines of text like a singular moment of thought frozen on the page. To read them, the book must turn this way and that. These are dense, crowded pages, begging an almost claustrophobic response as one trapped in a maelstrom crowd. Some might find that off-putting, but let the mind unwind, the eye wander free and the crowds disperse to leave space to ponder the montage at ease. This is no easy read, but the reading is easy for those capable of being undaunted.

So what is the answer to the question that began our inquiry? Well, the poetry still knows, as does the poet, but in the end it is neither the one nor the other's role to provide the answers, but to provoke the reader to find their own answers to their own questions. The Collection provokes that so well, that it might be wise to suggest – here is a vessel of poetry that reads its reader.

MC

---

---

Category: QUOTES

---

"OH no, not again!"

Sisyphus watched in dismay as the boulder tumbled down the hill. It bounced and clattered as it gained momentum. The day's idle crowd scurried out of the way of the broken fragments and then turned to cheer and laugh.

With a sigh he started to walk back down the hill.

"Here I go again."

More chatter from the crowd as he reached the bottom. They were mostly from the local villages, some from even further afield; his reputation had gone far and wide over the years. The boulder sat there in front of them. For a lump of lifeless stone it looked pretty damn smug. For the millionth time he cursed the thing. He cursed the crowd too.

"Go on Si! You can do it!"

He couldn't see the speaker, but he could imagine the snide smile and the mirth gleaming in his eyes. The voice had a youthful quality. Typical young layabout. Nothing better to do but come out here and take the piss. As if the job wasn't tough enough.

A cheer went up as he heaved against the boulder. A grunt as his muscles bulged and the boulder began to move.

The sun was hot. He could feel it searing his back, despite the stream of sweat that poured off him. The boulder moved forward, higher and higher. The summit approached, gravity tried to do its foul work.

Yet again, he cursed whoever it was that invented the damn thing.

Almost at the pinnacle. Get it right. Careful. Just a matter of balance. Poise, that's all it takes, and then he could go for a beer.

Yes. Yes. It was there. The pinnacle. Caught in that null point between gravity's insidious pull. At last he'd done it.

"Oy, Si!"

The voice caught him off guard and broke his concentration. "No!"

The boulder wavered and began its inevitable descent. If only it would smash into one of those piss-taking bastards at the bottom.

"Shame!" the crowd chorused.

One smart arse added: "Never mind, Si, you know what they say, one million six hundred thousand and seventy third time lucky."

"Drop dead," he muttered.


ONE thing about the night, it was a damn sight cooler. It also meant he didn't have the usual audience of idle jokers.

Of course, having that crowd did give him something for his mind to do. He could nurture a sense of disgust and even hate for those who took delight in his predicament. Not one of them ever offered to help. There was nobody around to focus his mind on now, which meant it had time to wander and ponder.

What he wanted was some conversation. It had been years since he had a proper chat. Mind you, he knew, these days he wouldn't make a very good conversationalist. When your day consists of rolling a boulder up a hill, subjects for conversation get a bit thin on the ground. The job did tend to be a bit repetitive.

As for small talk, well he shuddered at the thought.

He could imagine someone saying: "Hi, Si, how's your day been?"

"Oh so so, up and down really."

In the cold moonlight, he really did long for some human companionship. Even a sheep would do; in the dark he was bound to be able to nip off for a while without anyone noticing.

Okay, so a sheep isn't a very good conversationalist, but at least it wouldn't contradict anything he said, or criticise him in any way. Or laugh, for that matter.

There had been someone once, not long after he'd been given this bloody impossible job.

Pretty thing she was, he mulled as the boulder grinded its rut a little deeper. What was her name? Ah fickle memory.

She used to walk alongside him sometimes and chat, back in the days when he still had something to talk about. The jokes must have put her off in the end. He shuddered at the memory; people could be so nasty.

"Hey lass -- you don't want to bother with him. He can't get it up!"

"That's not right," somebody else would laugh. "He can get it up -- it's keeping it there that's the problem."

He gritted his teeth at the memory of the girl's blushes, and at the banality of idle gawkers with nothing better to do. You'd think they'd get bored of the same old joke; but each time the crowd laughed as if it was the first time they'd heard it.

She vanished not long after, and he went back to being alone amongst the multitude. Although once he saw someone who reminded him of that long-nameless woman. Some old crone with a couple of leering grand children. There was something about her; yet there was no recognition of recollection in her withered face.

He'd seen her, pondered, shrugged and got on with heaving that bloody boulder up the hill.


YEARS passed. The same old routine, but it was definitely getting easier now. In fact, it seemed his long labours might soon be at an end. The years of rolling and grinding had taken their toll on his burden.

The boulder was now a pebble. The final fall had shattered the rock until all that remained was this. He gratefully thanked whoever invented erosion.

He ambled up the hill, pebble in hand. He reached the top and stared at the pinnacle.

This was it. Gingerly, and feeling fatigued beyond belief, he placed the pebble on the pinnacle. It stayed there. Not even the faintest tremble. He couldn't believe it. The labours were done.

His cry of joy and relief should have met an ebullient cheer from the watching crowd, but there had been none of them now for centuries.

He started down the hill. At the bottom, he gratefully sat down and allowed his legs a long-deserved rest. Then he lay back and took a deep breath of cool air. He watched the sun crawl above the horizon; enjoying the chance to watch his first dawn in ages beyond recall.

No more repetitive present. There was a future ahead of him now; he didn't dare ponder what that life might hold, but anything had to be better than the countless years that had gone before. For now, he savoured his new found idleness, and anticipated the cooling tang of beer.

As he sat there he heard a noise unlike anything he had heard before. He felt no need to move, merely sit and listen for whatever made this outlandish sound.

Eventually the source came into view. Something on four wheels, of a kind he had never seen before. He imagined it to be some kind of cart. Made of metal he quickly realised, and huge. He wondered how it could move without horses or oxen to pull it, but his mind was too concerned with relaxation to really ponder the question.

The contraption stopped and a man climbed out of the metal box at its front. He watched the strangely clad man walk over, with some kind of board in his hand. He watched and wondered.

A bored face met his gaze.

"I'm looking for a guy called Sisyphus," the stranger said.

Long unused parts of his body struggled to co-ordinate. Finally he managed the relevant motion. "That's me."

"Got a delivery for you. Sign here."

Sisyphus took the board and the strange thing that resembled a stylus but clearly wasn't. After a moment, he figured it out and managed to sign his name on the smooth material held on the board.

"Cheers mate," the stranger said, sticking the stylus behind one ear. He turned back to the contraption and got inside. Moments later it made a strangely metallic rumble as the rear section tilted upwards. Quickly drowned in a rumble of another kind.

"Oh no!" Sisyphus cried as the dust settled. "No! No! No!"

The stranger stuck his head out of the box and pointed his thumb towards the pile of stone. "There you go, mate. That'll keep you going for a while."

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 1 August 2001

This story was first published in the Writers' Muse magazine #39 (September 2007)

Copyright (C) August 2001. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

A sleep-deprived mind opens itself up to many things as it slowly unravels and the caffeine starts to dissolve sense and sensibility: poetry for instance. So, when the time came to confront the world with his poems, Mark Cantrell took the plunge and did the deed -- the result is Deus Ex Insomnia.



So set aside the coffee and settle back to read, as the UK-based author and journalist welcomes one and all into the midnight hours with his debut collection of sleepless poetic meditation.

Published by Lulu, Deus Ex Insomnia combines 80 of his poems, together with four creative essays exploring the delights and mysteries of the literary process. This perfect-bound publication is his first leap of faith into the realms of poetry publishing. The 88-page, perfect-bound book can be bought from Lulu (www.lulu.com), the leading print on demand publisher, for the princely sum of £5.95, or purchase a copy through Amazon.

Mark has a reputation for dark writing among his friends and associates in the literary scene, and that is certainly reflected within Deus Ex Insomnia, but as any reader will find it's not all dark in the wee hours -- there's plenty of scope for fun and humour too.

Details:
Deus Ex Insomnia
Poetry & A Little Prose,
By Mark Cantrell
Published By Lulu
ISBN: 978-1-84753-507-8
Price: £5.95

Available from Lulu NOW and from Amazon and similar sites in the near future. Alternatively, order through good retailers.

Order direct from Lulu: www.lulu.com/content/652684

Website: www.tykewriter.supanet.com

Category: PLUGGED

---

SO, this is where the voyage of discovery had led them: to this desolate ruin. Cavendish already loathed the place, but it struck him that his associates might find some gothic satisfaction to the place.

The old church brooded against the oppressive backdrop of an overcast sky. Heavy rain lashed merciless at the crumbling stone. The masonry was already stained from decades of pollution. The water brought these dark hues of filth to the fore.

Stark amidst the piles of rubble that had once been Victorian houses, the church was gloomy and forbidding: isolated in its decay, much like the institution that built it. At one time, the structure had stood in a verdant rural idyll, until the city encroached and absorbed its tranquillity in the rush of urban evolution. The Victorian neighbourhood arose to house a prosperous middle class. Time cycled, and the affluence ran dry, as the area declined to inner city slum.

Until another cycle, the worms of decay turned, and now a fresh influx of modern wealth and opportunity promised the be-suited vultures of the developers, coming to pick over the architectural corpses. One day, new streets and modern styles would rise from the crumbled ruins of yesterday. For now, the old church stood, broken though it was, as a legacy to better days, waiting for the inevitable to claim it. And inside, somewhere, perhaps lurked the remains of a darker chapter in its history.

Slowly, Cavendish and his three companions climbed out of the antique Mercedes. They were an unlikely collection of people, he knew, but bound – possibly – by the history of the church. Together, they regarded it coolly, oblivious to the pouring rain.

Cavendish moved forward. The others followed, picking their way over the rubble and garbage of accumulated years. A thunderclap blasted across the wasteland, causing a grim smile to flicker over his face; he appreciated the weather’s sense of melodrama.

Onlookers might think it strange for such a well-dressed man to keep such company. He was dressed in a black overcoat underneath which he wore an expensive tailor-made suit. Were it not for the multi-media groups he owned then the very same publications might scent a scandal and splash him across their displays. He looked an elder statesman, but for his deathly-pale face and colourless eyes. These latter features were not quite the only aspects he shared in common with his companions.

“This the place then?”

Cavendish glared up at the church, as though defying it to make him a liar, then he turned to face the speaker; a gangly youth in a weather-stained raincoat, hands stuffed resentfully in his pockets.

“Yes. This is it.”

“Let’s go then.”

The youth made his way towards the boarded-up entrance; his trainers squelched every impatient step. The others followed more carefully, occasionally giving the old church an apprehensive stare, as if it was actually a menace more than a has-been.

At the entrance, Cavendish stood to one side while the younger men strained at the task of tearing clear the dilapidated efforts to seal the building. The girl – Lucretia, the eye-rolling name she’d adopted – watched, bedraggled impatience, her arms wrapped around her. Her pale, heart shaped face was streaked with black eye shadow, her lips coated with equally dark lipstick: every inch the cliché, but there were too few of them for Cavendish to pick and choose his kind.

At last the door to the church was exposed. A broken gap bordered by ruin-chewed wood. “After you, Mr Cavendish,” the other youth, Karl, said.

He stepped forward, regarding the speaker with a cool stare. He looked the male equivalent of the girl, but wore black jeans rather than a flowing skirt. The two were occasional lovers, which meant she forever floated in his wake, while he let his eyes, his hands, and his prick wander at whim.

They passed underneath the crumbling lancet arch. The old oak doors were jammed open on either side. The trio followed Cavendish as he picked his way through the rubble and broken pews. City neon flooded through the gaping windows and broken roof, but not enough to banish the dark entirely. Cavendish withdrew a torch from his coat pocket and flicked it on. More shadow scurried clear of the brilliant beam to huddle thick and grim in the corners of perception. The church was smaller than it looked from the outside.

The scruffy youth scrunched over the rubble and broken mortar. Then he turned and waved his arms in disgust. “There’s nothing here. This is a waste of time!”

“Perhaps. But we haven’t looked down there, have we my impatient friend?”

He pointed with the torch beam towards a dark archway. The youth shrugged and made towards the portal. Lucretia and her look-alike mate followed.

“Ey! What do you think yer doing ‘ere?” A watchman walked down the aisle; his stealthy appearance might almost have signified he shared their nature. “Don’t yer know this place is dangerous? The ‘ole fuckin’ place could come down at any time!”

“It’s all right, we have permission to be here.”

“Yeah? So what are yer doin’ here anyways?”

Cavendish laughed quietly and nodded gently towards Karl. “Answers,” he said at last. “We are seeking answers.”

The watchman stepped back. The confidence was beginning to drain from his face, but not enough.

“You doubt me. Karl, show our friend our permit to be in residence.”

Karl grinned and turned towards the watchman. He reached into his bike jacket, fumbling for the inside pocket. Once he was close to the old man, he withdrew the hand. The watchman looked at it expectantly, then recoiled as a clenched fist smacked into his face. A cry marked his collapse into an unconscious state.

Lucretia moved forwards and crouched beside the old man. She breathed heavy, staring with gleaming eyes. She pulled him into a seated position, turned his head then leaned in as if to kiss.

“No! Let him be.”

The girl looked up, her eyes narrowed. She bared her teeth and hissed defiance, showing she had watched far too many old movies. Blood stained her teeth. On the old man’s neck two puncture wounds dribbled the source.

“Let him be!”

Lucretia finally relented and let the man fall. She wiped the blood from her face and stood up with a wistful glance at the unaware man. Karl came up to her and placed a consoling arm around her waist.

“As the man said, this place is dangerous. Take him outside – a safe distance from this heap. And Karl – do not harm him!”

Karl looked at him sullenly, but complied. He began to drag the old man down the aisle.

“The rest of us will be down below. Come on.”

As they descended, their footsteps echoed like the ghosts of past generations. The steps were not deep, but they twisted round and round until they led to a short, dank passage. At the far end an iron gate was rusted ajar. On the other side the church’s crypt lurked. Cavendish stood on the threshold and scanned the dank chamber with the torchlight. Finally, as if satisfied at something, he stepped inside.

“Bit creepy,” the scruffy youth said. No one answered his comment. He slouched against the wall; hands thrust into the pockets of his raincoat, feigning a nonchalance his face failed to carry off. What was he afraid of, ghosts? The thought amused Cavendish, wasn’t that precisely why they’d come here? To lay some haunting questions to rest once and for all.

The crypt was long devoid of its musty occupants; the recesses lining the wall were empty, but the crypt itself wasn’t completely barren of purpose. In one niche, a pile of old rags like a tramp’s forgotten bedding, but it was a flat surfaced tomb that occupied the space before the northern wall that grabbed his attention.

The other two stepped in behind as he stalked towards the altar-like block. He placed the torch upon it in such a manner that it lit up the crypt, then he rummaged through the junk he found. Dusty test tubes were scattered on its surface, some broken, others intact. Petri dishes, covered in dust, the contents dried to a crust. A pile of books, but these were mouldered and stained, their pages bonded together.

Finally, what looked at first glance to be a portable computer: a keyboard and system unit unfolded to show a dark screen. Cavendish wiped some of the dust from the blind display and saw the cracked surface beneath. “It’s a gene sequencer, I think,” he muttered, “but it’s an old one – sixty years obsolete maybe.”

He walked round the table. His feet struck something that clattered plastic. A handful of storage disks and the sequencer’s synthesis unit. Karl returned while he pondered these relics. He went up to Lucretia and gave her a passionate kiss, but a trickle of blood leaking from their lips gave them away. Cavendish scowled, and tried to push back his anger.

“I’ve found something!”

The interruption pulled him out of the red fumes of anger. He turned towards the youth, who walked over, holding up a bundle of grubby rags like a prize.

“What is it?”

He took the bundle, felt the weight of whatever was inside. Hope urged him on. He placed the bundle on the table and hurried to untangle the old cloth, tearing it in his haste to unveil the contents. The rags came free. A book, a scrap of folder paper and a silver crucifix fell onto the table.

Cavendish smiled at the light shimmering off the crucifix, but other than that he ignored the object to regard the book; its mildewed cover and pucker-edged pages promised him what he wanted to know. That, or another frustrating false lead. Time to find out how fate’s dice were about to roll. He licked his lips in anticipation.

Lucretia, meanwhile, picked up the scrap of paper in idle curiosity. She unfolded it carefully and revealed an old poster. The colours were dulled and stained, but still conveyed everything of its original homage to vintage bad taste. The picture portrayed a young woman sat up in bed, naked but for the hastily and inadequately held sheet failing to veil her modesty. Her virginal purity was rather marred by the outdated ‘tribal’ hair styling, body tattoos and piercings. The look on the women’s face was a mix of exaggerated fear and sexual fever.

The other figure was every bit the caricature; pale of face, narrow but handsome features, black hair slicked back, fangs bared like a snake poised to strike. His clothes were archaic beyond even the antiquity of the poster: frock coat and flowing black cape. Every thread and cut the vampire cliché.

“Maleficio’s theme park of the mythical present’s for the public’s enjoyment, the ghoulish exploits… Who is Baron Blood?”

Cavendish ignored the girl’s question. The poster, the layers of lie masking truth, was a distasteful thing, and he would not credit its existence with an answer. Instead, he raised the book and with a tremble of anticipation, opened the cover.


“Quinn,” he whispered. Was this another disappointment? He turned the pages, looking for legible text. Water had seeped in, stealing the ink from the words, but it was far from obliterated. He let the dead hand of its author tap out his message from yesterday.

March 5
Welcome to my diary, curious reader. I am Quinn. Quinn the Vampire. Quinn the Slave. Quinn the Damned. Perhaps you know me better by my atrocious stage name -- Baron Blood. That is the name under which I drain the blood from the cloned bio-morphs for the titillation of the paying, baying hoards whose blood-lust cuts far deeper than my own curse.

Forgive me if I seem bitter, but if you were in my place might you not twist the same way, even if you retained but one shred of sanity? Perhaps I should be grateful; were it not for certain copyright issues I gather I would have become known as Count Dracula. More than a cliché but an insult to literature, one might say. Do I care either way? No, not any more.

I am of course -- here the writing was illegible. Cavendish skimmed the page until more of the words surrendered some meaning.

You may regard this script as my testament and my will, not that I have anything to bequeath to you other than the products of my mind, for I – along with my fellow inmates in this accursed asylum that calls itself a circus – am to be destroyed. We shall not be granted an execution, as befits a living creature, but disposed of as if obsolete machinery.

I, a being of flesh and blood, of cultivated mind, am to be destroyed because the lusts of the paying hoard have grown dulled by atrophied imaginations and so this travelling theatre of shame is cutting out costs. I would weep were I not so enraged at the folly of my – again the writing was obliterated by mould, much like the mind of the maker. Cavendish flicked the page, hungry for more. This was surely it.

March 11
My friend the Wolfman is dead. This poor creature of humble intelligence, yet benign nature, was shot like a mad dog. I grieve to think of his terror and desire to live that provoked such a foolhardy attempt at escape.

It was my misfortune to watch his final moments from the observation grille of my mobile holding pen. Poor creature; he attempted to climb the electrified perimeter, held there by the voltage locking his muscles, until the security guard blew out his scrambled brains. Soon, I fear, my bullet will be delivered.

The next few pages were, again, badly stained and water-damaged. Cavendish flicked through impatiently, ignoring the rising boredom of his companions.

April 2
Today I witnessed an event that should have lifted my heart, at least for a few precious moments. Yet I must confess that it has only added to the melancholy burden pressing on my shoulders. The unicorns have a benefactor it seems. One who is willing to save these noble beasts from the slaughter. I know not, of course, who has purchased their lives and I begrudge them not their salvation. Would that I and my fellows be likewise spared; but who would buy ‘Baron Blood’ – and would he truly wish to have the remaining dregs of his dignity sold on?

Strange, to think that these beautiful creatures should be spared for being none but animals, while we beings gifted with speech and intelligent minds are condemned to perish. One might think there is little merit to our intelligence. Fools for our fate and none so deserving you might think – should stupidity be worthy of such a punishment? Do you even care, you who might well have been one of the baying mob, paying to watch my fangs tear into the warm flesh of the clone and drink the pumping blood. That and what we might euphemistically call our foreplay. Yes, you might condemn me for your pleasure – but look first to your own misplaced morality.

Again, the rest of the page was rendered illegible. He turned through, the next page, the one after that, then he flicked with more haste. The same. Leaf after leaf of smudged ink and water damage, mould and the ravages of time. Too many years in this dank crypt had digested the message in the handwriting.

Cavendish swallowed the bitter taste of frustration; a few snatched lines here and there managed to whisper a fragment of meaning. Clues that might lead somewhere; after all these years he’d take what he could and be grateful. On one page, a reference to Quinn’s escape, on another a priest and this very church. He also found a reference that both puzzled and intrigued, and he suspected its meaning – if any – was destined to remain forever an enigma.

Two words, heavily underscored: the unicorns.

He closed the book with a sigh and realised his companions were waiting to share the revelations. Why disappoint, he mused, and with an exaggerated motion to draw out the delay he rested the book back on the dusty altar.

“Nothing,” he said. “Only bitter ramblings and some nonsense about unicorns.”

Karl shrugged. The others looked crestfallen. “So that’s it then?”

This was the dead end he’d long dreaded. The one thing that bound them was the unity of the question – how did they come to be? Yes, how was it that Lucretia and Karl, the youth, himself for that matter had all been touched by the blood of this long dead vampire Quinn? What was the secret that made them what they are? It was frustrating that decay in this old crypt had bleached and blurred the possible answer.

Then he thought. The church. The priest. There had been a priest. An insane fellow who might still be alive. Yes, the connections started linking up in his mind.


FATHER Ryan the man had called himself. He was said to have been a priest who lost his faith and lived alone in the church, at least until Quinn came to him.

Whether the man was truly a priest once was neither here nor there. Considering the twist his faith or lack of it took, it would be of no surprise that ‘respectable’ religions disavowed him. Only the disturbed and the decadent flocked to his calling, in those troubled and fearful times.

Ryan had been with Quinn at the end, when police marksmen had caught him in their sights. Afterwards, he played dupe and slave – an innocent co-opted to the beast’s will. He slipped the net; in those days the killing of even a vampire caused but few ripples and concern in a world gripped by apocalyptic dread of catastrophes born of human folly. So Ryan, poor mad ‘Father’ Ryan, found the niche to forge his obscene cult.

They worshipped the vampire. They worshipped the blood. In Quinn they found their Christ – and they drank the blood of others in homage to his will on earth and to sanctify their flesh with his spirit. The cult’s victims died in the old church. Perhaps their bloodless corpses had once mildewed in that old crypt. Whatever, these fanatics who stalked the night and stole their victim’s live were no vampires. That was the shocking horror of it – humans mimicking their betters.

In time, the world changed, crises passed, catastrophes averted, the world got back on what passed for an even keel. Society suddenly had time to root out the sickness in its midst. Ryan’s cult went the way of its unwilling founder – but the priest himself avoided the martyr’s fate. No, the dregs of his life were drained slowly out of him in a succession of institutions, until history largely forgot his sick footnote.

He lived still. Just. Close to a century old, but it would not take too many pulled strings to gain an audience with the one living creature who had spoken to Quinn. He should have thought of it before, but until the diary in the crypt the tumblers to unlock the clues had failed to fall into place. But now…


“I never knew the old man had any relatives, guess I can’t say I blame you for staying away all this time, but whatever changed your mind you came just in time.”

“Is he dying? Is he conscious?”

“Concerned about an inheritance, eh? Didn’t think he had anything.”

“Yes. Yes. Well, Doctor?”

“He’s dying. He’s long overdue, if you ask me. We give him a few hours – a couple of days if he’s lucky.”

Cavendish nodded. Just in time, indeed.

“You don’t seem concerned?”

“Should I be? He’s old. When you spend so long waiting for the inevitable, when it arrives – well… Like you said, overdue.”

“Of course, I understand. I’ll leave you in the orderly’s capable hands. If you need anything else I’ll be in my office.”

The doctor offered his hand. Cavendish shook it, not only for the look of the thing, but to complete the ‘greasing’ of the wheel. They were in. The only hurdle remained the man’s state of mind: to come so far, only to find a confused and bumbling dementia patient. No amount of bribery would ever open such a dark vault…

“This way, Sir.”

Snapping back to attention, he followed the orderly. The man led him through a warren of dreary corridors before stopping at a secure door.

“Is the prisoner, I mean to say Mr Ryan, dangerous?”

“No, Sir, don’t worry on that one. He’s too weak to be any bother now, but I hear he was a right monster once.”

“He was.”

The man swiped his identity card through the lock and wrenched the door open. With a taught step brought by anticipation, he followed the orderly into the secure wing. The others straggled behind, like a flotilla of bored offspring.

The journey took them through several more grey corridors, by-passing rows of doors, and rooms and wards. The place was largely empty, as if its sole purpose was to cater to the needs of one relic of faded history. The orderly knocked on a door, no different to any of the others, and then he slipped inside.

“Visitors for you, Mr Ryan.”

He adjusted the old man’s pillows, helping him sit up and view his guests. The shrunken and shrivelled face almost swallowed the rheumy eyes in bags and folds of flesh. Cavendish felt the sharp sense of awareness contemplate him from across the distance of time. This cadaverous caricature of a man had known Quinn. He swallowed the urgent impatience rising like bile.

“Don’t know you,” the figure rasped, “but it’s always nice to receive penitents.”

A wheezing, hissing rumble came out of the turkey-throat, shuddering into a hacking cough. For an alarming moment, Cavendish worried that the man was about to expire. The orderly moved to tend the old man, but the patient brushed him clear.

“Get off! I ain’t snuffing yet. Can’t be doing with you pawing me.”

“Now, now, Mr Ryan, we have to see you’re all right.”

“I’m dying, you stupid bastard – how can I be all right? Now clear off and leave me to my penitents.”

The orderly shrugged, and glanced up to a CCTV camera on the ceiling. Cavendish took note and nodded. “If you need me, I’ll be on the ward down the corridor,” the orderly said.

Once the man had gone, he stepped closer to the bed, where the old man could see him better. Lucretia, Karl, the youth, all hung back and clung to the corners of the room, as if the man retained his monstrous vigour of so long ago. For all their shared need for answers, this had always really been his need to know.

“So, who are you then?”

“Nobody. Just someone who wants to know about beginnings.”

“Must be somebody to dig out an old fossil like me – and walk in to the vault like you own it.”

“Wealth and influence grease many wheels.”

“That’s the truth. Never had much of either, except for what I bled from my little penitents. So what do you want with an old corpse then?”

“Some answers –”

“Tell us about Quinn,” Lucretia demanded.

The old man turned to stare. He grinned gummy; a little spittle dribbled from his lips. Then he gurneyed a leer. “My my girl, s’been a while but I don’t mind pleasing a bit of succulent woman flesh like you. Come on over here lass” – he patted the bed – “so’s I can have a taste.”

“Fuck you!” Lucretia bared her fangs. The old man’s leer dropped away. Suddenly he looked thoughtful.

“Well, I’ll be a – It actually worked.”

“What worked? Tell us Ryan. Tell us about Quinn. What did he do to us?”

“To you lot? Now how could he have possibly done anything to you? He’s been dead more ‘n 60 years. But you, maybe you eh? You could be old enough. Well preserved, like.” The old man chuckled. His mirth sounded like a death rattle. He turned to look at the others. “So you’d be the grand children. You poor bleeders. He did a good job on you.”

“What do you know about Quinn? Start making sense!”

“Like anything I’ll say’s going to make sense to you after all these years. Were you there in those days, when the world was going Hell and this mess called civilisation was clinging on by its fingertips? What do you know?”

Cavendish forced himself to bite down the rising anger. A stern glance told his companions to do the same. He turned back to the old man. “I know he hid in the theme park, masquerading as a mockery for the sick pleasures of the time, hiding what he was by being a caged version of himself. Then I read the remains of his diary and realised he was a captive, forced to flaunt himself for your twisted kind. I know he escaped. I know that in time they killed him. I know nothing of others like him in those days, nor how he bequeathed us our existence. We want answers. We need understanding of how we came to be.”

“A father figure or a god – you’ll get neither. He was the first of many but not all like you. They were different. Quinn was a freak. Ironically, that’s why he survived the cull so long – and why you came to be.”

“Talk sense to us,” Lucretia said, her pretty face sullen with frustration, and a dawning hunger. “Make sense – or I’ll drink you!”

“Fuck me, vampira, you’re a severe case aren’t you, but I like a girl with spirit in her veins. Don’t be sure I’ll not drink you first though. Or second, got to get a nibble in first. Shame to waste a little treat like you.”

Karl pulled her back before she managed to rake her nails across the man’s face. Ryan turned back to Cavendish; he was feeling some of Lucretia’s mood too.

“Pretty fine vampires. All of you.” Ryan chuckled again. “Except you ain’t. You’re as big a fake as Quinn. I reckon I’m more genuine than you – and I’m a complete fraud. Quinn wasn’t hiding, he wasn’t a captive either, not in the legal sense. He was owned. He was property. He was what they called a ‘repromorph’: a genetically engineered fiction. As close to the myth that reality could fashion. That was the thrill, get it? No fake blood, no actors in prosthetics. Real blood. Real death. Real corpses. And don’t think the sex acts they made him do excluded those pretty poor dead things. ‘Course, they were all engineered too, but I wondered then and I wonder now – were they all clones? Maybe some poor slip of a girl, forced to make a hard living selling herself, made a raw deal with the wrong punter. That was your Quinn. Your maker!”
“No!”

“Oh yes! Shocked? I don’t blame you. Don’t blame Quinn either. He never had a choice like me. That’s the thing about us humans, you see – we have choices. That’s why we’re the supreme creation. Even God is in awe of that. He’s rather like Quinn in a way – trapped by what He is.”

The old man grinned. He was loving this. Cavendish stared. Lost for words. Karl cursed, his throaty murmur turning softer to verbally caress Lucretia’s sore mood. The youth, the one who loved his sullen anonymity, he pictured as always leaning against the wall, hand thrust into his coat pockets, daring the world with the expression ‘so what’. Instead, he snarled out. “So what does that make us? What the fuck are we?”

“Even bigger freaks than he was. At least they made him with a purpose, but you – you’re a wild impulse, a foolish hope, a hot streak of fucking luck! Good job old Quinn was a smart one, eh?”

“He can’t have made us. Look at them – they were born long after he was dead. How can we be like him? We must have got things wrong. There must be others out there. Vampires. Real ones. Like us. What you say makes no sense.”

“Been to the old church have you? Found his diary didn’t you? So, you saw the gene-sequencer, I guess. Does that give you a clue? Hard to infect the germ line of a mature adult – but life’s a funny thing, sometimes it let’s you play!”

“He… made us?” Karl spat the words with his disgust.

“Nah! Dame Nature did that the tried and tested way, same as folks have been doing since day one. Quinn, he just tweaked things a little, paid a few visits to people, back then when things were crazy enough for him to get away with it for so long – and crazy enough to give hope a wild shot. Let’s say he added a bit of himself to the mix, before his victims got it together and spawned a sprog. Most failed, I guess, but some… well, you’re proof enough Quinn’s genes showed some staying power.”

“Let’s go, I’ve heard enough. This is too much.” Lucretia’s voice was shrill. The clicking heels of her boots emphasised the point, as she hurried out of the room. Karl followed slowly, cursing and muttering. As he passed the old man, he muttered: “You’re a fucking liar. We aren’t genetic freaks!”

Ryan winked. “Tell the pretty one, I’ll be thinking of her naked!”

Karl swore and stormed off. Cavendish, biting back a growing anger, turned to the youth. “And you?”

He shrugged, but didn’t move. Cavendish sighed. There was nothing more to learn here. No information that took them closer to an understanding of where they came from – but this gleeful storytelling of a man who had clearly missed his congregation. Aside from one nagging curiosity, he wanted nothing more to do with this freak.

“Why was Quinn so struck by unicorns? What possible relevance could they have to his life?”

“Ah! So you know about them, eh? Those beasts set him up on that mad quest of his. Now, if he’d only stuck to drinking blood out of the addicts and whores that used to infest the place, he’d probably be around to chat with you face to face. But no, he had to start putting himself about a bit.”

More laughter. The mirth turned to a barrage coughing. Then back to a strained laughter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?

“Means your lad and that pretty little squeeze danced out of here before the best bit. You want answers? Here it comes. Quinn was mad, see, especially when he learned the truth about himself. Thought he’d been hiding out in plain view so to speak. Well, he was smart – they made him smart to fit the stereotype – so he started studying. Took him a while, but he cracked it. How to put his key gene sequences into people – into their germ lines.”

“The gene sequencer? But I still don’t understand what the unicorns have to do with any of this.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Got to be as mad as Quinn to make that connection. When he was in Maleficio’s waiting to be destroyed, the unicorns were saved. Breeding stock. They gained legal status as a naturalised species, see, after some disgruntled programmer released their genome onto the public domain. Too many to enforce the intellectual property rights. Quinn thought if he could do the same for his kind, he’d gain a similar kind of status. Round the bend, like I said, poor sod.”

The anger flashed. That’s all they were? Fakes concocted in the alchemical brew of back street gene therapy? They were made to suffer the curse of the vampire because of all that. He found himself leaning over the bed, gripping the headrest with one hand, his finger pointing a threat at the old man.

“We’re cursed with the damned lust for blood because of the mad need for a fake vampire to be accepted!”

“Pretty much, yeah. I hadn’t figured it like that, but now you mention it that sounds about right.”

“Quinn actually thought that if people gave birth to – what? Vampires and quasi-vampires – that humans would say all right, you can live among us. That they’d grant a legal right to exist to a manufactured blood-drinking fiend?”

“You’re getting good at this. You obviously inherited Quinn’s smarts!”

“What could we have done to earn such a curse?”

The old man snorted a cynical laugh. “Same as the rest of us – you got born. Deal with it, instead of coming crying to old Father Ryan.”

“You’re loving this aren’t you – you sick bastard.” The youth lunged at the old man, all his sullen detachment gone. Cavendish found he was surprisingly strong for his build as he struggled to pull him back.

“Calm down.”

The boy’s face was an oblivious fury, his eyes boiling with the need for the old man’s painful death. He shook him hard until he began to emerge from the red haze.

“Don’t give the old bastard the satisfaction. We’re not his disciples whatever he thinks. We’re not here for his show!”

“Okay. I’m fine.”

He pulled free and adjusted his coat. The aloof detachment returned and he slunk back to the wall, once more pulling himself away from proceedings. Perhaps it was time to leave, before they ended up with a hard to explain corpse and some suspicious CCTV footage. Even the strategic application of fiscal grease might fail to turn that wheel. The old man clearly thought the same, from the malicious humour in his eyes.

“You know –”

“I think we’ve heard enough!”

“Not yet, you haven’t. Oh no, you started this with your dewy-eyed search for some father-creator, so I’ll finish it. Quinn didn’t have no bloodlust. That part of the coding failed to express. He was a failed product. That’s why he was at Maleficio’s. They bought him cheap. Got round the problem by spiking his blood victims with drugs. Got him high, got him hooked, got him thinking it was the blood. Fucked with his mind when he started craving and his drug-free victims did nothing but make him sick. That’s what he was your maker, a fucked up junkie pseudo-vamp. He’d have been lost without me. I put two and two together and came though for him. Until he had that mad idea about the unicorns.”

“No blood lust? No curse?”

“That’s right. You got the raw deal there all right. Got Daddy’s genes and made ‘em work too! You’re vamps after my own heart.” The old man grinned, winked. “Got everything you came for? More than you bargained for, I’ll bet!”

Cavendish felt cold. Angry cold. Hollow cold. The kind of void only a hot flush of fresh blood might soothe. Never the old man’s; enough of his poison was darkening his soul without imbibing more of his noxious senescence. He nodded a curt response, reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a pen.

“What’s this, you want my autograph? I’m touched. Been a long time, but it’s nice to be acknowledged. I brought art to a depraved time, you know.”

This time Cavendish smiled and it was genuine, if frosted in ice. “I’ve been doing some homework of my own. I figured I owed you something for Quinn. I never thought you’d earn it so generously. Turns out he and I share an aptitude in common, perhaps that’s not so strange given our common genetic heritage. How’s your immune system?”

The old man frowned, baffled. “Wha–”

“Not so good given your age, and terminal decline, I should think.”

He stepped close and pulled off the pen’s cap. Ryan stared at the elegant fountain pen, his puzzled frown deepening as he witnessed the pen’s transformation to a hypo-injector.

“You drank the blood in your day, Ryan, but you never felt the need, you never knew the blood for all it was worth, so I brought you a gift.”

Leaning over, as though sharing an intimate secret with the old man, Cavendish pierced the injector into the old man’s arm and triggered the release of its contents. Ryan gasped at the sharp brief sting, but in that brief interlude the deed was done and the pen returned to a pocket. Cavendish stood up, keeping his back to the monitoring CCTV.

“What have you done? You’ve poisoned me, you bastard! Well, so what – I was dying anyway so fuck you.”

“And maybe you’ll die before it starts to express, ” Cavendish laughed. “You should hope it does, because you are not going to like it, my gummy friend.”

The youth stepped forward, curiosity overcoming his usual reticence. “What have you done?”

“Answer him, you fucker, what have you done to me?”

“A gift from Quinn. From us. When it encodes in your genome, you’ll find you have a little reprieve from your appointment with the mortician.”

“What? Why? What’s that supposed to achieve? You wanna keep me in here a little longer? That’s supposed to bother me? You’re as nuts as Quinn.”

“Think it through, old man. The next time I – we – are struggling with the agony of the need, it will ease some of the suffering to think of you lying here screaming out the same agony. The genes won’t just extend your life – they’ll make you thirst the way we do. After all these decades you’ll finally know the blood – and you’ll never taste a drop to ease that agony.”

“No! You can’t do that to me! Do you know who I am?”

“Yes – and I’ve already done it. Quinn is inside you now. Enjoy it.”

Cavendish turned to leave. The youth waved the old man a contemptuous finger as they closed the door on history. Ryan shouted, more a strangled cry of rage than words. By tomorrow, he’d know what the blood truly meant to a vampire. Quinn, possibly, might have appreciated that.

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 20 July 1991




This short story makes it first appearance here.

Copyright © July1991/November 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

---

We often forget when we go for that job, but the company is selling itself to us as a prospective employer as much as we are selling ourselves as a suitable employee. With that in mind, Mark Cantrell talks you through one company's classic attempt to make an impression...

THE man had no name. He was a stranger in a room of strangers, but when he walked into the office I glanced up from my copy of the Borough Local News and found myself gazing into his eyes.

Nobody looked back.

The man behind the eyes was comatose with booze, the body shambling along on automatic. He had a beer can in one hand and a bag full of more tins slung over his shoulder. Those vacant eyes passed over me and the body lurched towards the editorial desk.

"Oh my God! If that's the competition then the job is in the bag," I thought. I was only half joking. The way the man lurched suggested he was meant to be here. In fact, as he moved into the working guts of the office, the horrible thought entered my mind that he was already on the payroll. Was the company that bad, it turned a man to such mental mush?

The place was Dagenham, where a small company published the free newspaper I was reading. The office was a converted shop and I was waiting to sell myself as just the man they needed for the sub editor/ reporter vacancy.

So far so routine, until the narcoleptic alcophile walked in and gave me something more than the usual job interview nerves to mull over.

"Can you please come away from there."

Reality wobbled for a moment when the news editor spoke and moved forwards to take charge. Things had become so unreal that I actually thought he was talking to me. No. His words were addressed to my rival with the beer can.

A few circuits must have fired in the drunk's brain. He staggered a little away from the editorial desk. The unfortunate chaperone gently guided him out with a firm hand while I suddenly concentrated on my copy of the paper.

"Oh shit! There's going to be a fight." Hazy memories of Bradford drunks flickered through my mind and suddenly I was home. Poor guy. The news editor wasn't big enough to play bouncer, and this drunk was built along powerful lines. If things kicked off in this small office, I was in the firing line, and I doubt our tipsy friend would care about the journalistic dictum that I was firmly not involved.

"Please leave the office!"

The news editor’s voice was louder now. Firmer. Not a trace of fear. So this was journalistic bravery in the firing line. I was impressed.

The drunk slowly began to get the message and, with assistance, he just about managed to navigate his feet towards the door. Any less alcohol in the system and the man might have become aggressive, but this really was a case of nobody at home -- not even Mr Rage. The office breathed a tangible collective sigh of relief as the drunk vanished outside.

I'd heard of Lunchtime O'Booze, of course, but I thought his liver had long since packed in and collected its P45... I went back to studying the paper I was here to pitch for, but I was wondering just what I had got myself into.

There was plenty of time to think, unlike most of my job interviews. I was thinking about my own first impressions. It turned out that I had misjudged the time it would take to get from Kings Cross to the nearest tube station. By the time I arrived at the office I was already fifteen minutes late.

Not good.

Not that it mattered. At least I arrived.

All the usual introductions, small talk and coffee had been conducted, but I was still left sat there. Five, ten, perhaps fifteen minutes you can compose yourself and look like the ready and able candidate. After forty minutes, and a drunken interlude, there is no alternative but to flag.

Now, theory says in a job interview scenario you are under scrutiny from the moment you walk through the doors. Actually, if the building has a huge glass front (as this one did, being a converted shop) then you are under scrutiny the moment you are seen approaching. Exude confidence, exude professionalism. Everything about you is a selling point.

By now I was having serious doubts. A couple of hurried phone calls revealed that the guy who was supposed to interview me was lost in the maelstrom of London traffic.

"Give it ten minutes," the guy at one of the computer terminals said.

Fifteen minutes later, it was clear that this guy was a no show. Stood up at an interview! Some date. Some first impression.

The man at the computer terminal introduced himself. "Come through."

I followed, bag in one hand, paper in the other. I paused briefly to utter a few words to the reporter who made me a coffee. I asked what I hoped was a joking question: "Who was the scuffer with the beer? He reminded me of home."

She smiled and muttered something. I don't think she knew the term 'scuffer'. Probably not an advisable thing to say in an interview scenario, but by now I couldn't give a fuck.

"I'm sorry, the lights don't seem to work," my impromptu host said as I entered the editor's office.

Good grief, I thought. I only said: "No problem, I am sure we can manage."

I sat down and readied myself for the grilling, trying to rapidly adjust my eyes to the gloom. The only light came from a dirty window behind my host.

"Now you are..." he began.

"Mark. Mark Cantrell."

"And you're here for the sales job?"

"Sub-editor/reporter," I said.

He looked momentarily lost as he flicked through the mess of paper and files on the desk, then he pulled open a drawer and looked forlornly inside its dark recesses.

"You sent a CV?"

"Yes."

"I can't find it. We'll have to do without."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and forced my body to maintain the eager, professional and competent exterior. Sit up straight, don't slouch, watch that body language, maintain eye contact, difficult in the dark but I managed it. Though by now I was wondering why I was bothering with the ritual of interview.

The usual run of questions followed. Have I had experience before, that kind of thing: I run through it. The feature writings, the news reporting, the freelance writings, the copy writing. I say all the right keywords, deadlines, calm under pressure that kind of thing. My host seems to be impressed, but based on the company's performance so far, I gather that it is not difficult to impress them.

So far so good. I show him examples of my page design work. He flicks through with an interested air. "They're quite good," he says. I bit down on the urge to say that, actually, they are not particularly good, only competent. I can knock a page together, but I am a writer not a designer. I couldn;t feeling that he should have been able to comprehend that from the pages I showed him. I just sat back and politely acknowledged the compliment.

Now things are winding down; he has run out of questions. It's my turn to grille him, though my heart is not in it. Then the interview is finally -- mercifully -- over. It's time to leave and return to normality. Outside, I light a cigarette and gratefully inhale.

Don’t call me, please, I think, and I most certainly won’t call you.


Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 15 December 2002

This article is previously unpublished. The names have been altered where not omitted.

Copyright (C) December 2002. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FEATURE

---

Mark Cantrell,
Stoke-on-Trent,
26 August 2005


Copyright (C) August 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

---

BEFORE the written word there was only the spoken word. The attempted domestication of the story is a mere blink of an eye in the history of storytelling. Scarce a few thousands years old, writing has far from tamed the story. They are as wild and free as they ever were, and the author is still a hunter-gatherer tracking ideas across the dreamscape.

So we can capture them in words, pin them to the page like insects in a museum collection, but the breed goes on, growing and shifting in the same chaotic patterns that enthralled our distant forebears. All we have done is shift the balance, for the story still evolves -- along with us. The story lives feral in our imaginations, skulking in the shadows of our darkest fears, or soaring high on the thermals of our greatest dreams.

The world is reflected in our dreamscape. As we change the world, it changes us, so too does the visionary stuff of fiction shift under our fingertips. What writer hasn't felt the story fight back, twist and wriggle to become something else? Fiction is a living thing for it is nothing less than an idealisation of ourselves, of our world in all its sordid, nihilistic complexity.

Fiction is the place where reality and imagination merge. This is the dreamscape. Ideas are derived from the world around us. They are fashioned into shape, spliced with other notions and fermented in our minds, only to be frozen in time on the written page. In that sense our modern stories are dead things, yet like fossils they can reach out beyond their own age to tantalise generations unborn.

Like all storytellers, we are rooted firmly in our age. The tales we weave are dependent on the world around us, and what we know of the world that went before. We may fantasise the future, but the truth is tomorrow is forever unwritten. Our futureshocks are a product of present day fears and hopes, projected onto our children and their children. Yet paradoxically, by envisioning the future we can shift consciousness towards realising at least something of that vision.

So our stories are rooted in time. Fixed. Yet the very best can reach out, become timeless by capturing the eternal essence of what it is to be human and to convey the very spirit of the age in which it was written.

In a sense that gives us a far greater power than our forebears who wove their words only in the transient human mind, through the medium of the spoken word. Their stories were timeless in the sense that such peoples rarely had any notion of linear time. To them, time was cyclic. The present was simply the here and now on the way to future, which was itself merely a foretelling of the past. Divorced from a sense of history, their stories could only shift and change as they and their world shifted and changed.

Yet for these people, these ancient hunter-gatherers, or simple farmers, who existed on the edge of the war-zone that is civilisation, stories possessed a far greater power than their modern descendants. For them, stories were a powerful rendition of their daily lives. The storyteller possessed an almost magical gift to walk with the Gods in the mythic realm. He wove great heroes, gave his audience an expanded sense of their own lives. In this way, he expressed the values and provided the living links with one generation to the next that held the community together.

Through the story, our ancestors learned who they were -- not just as individuals but as families and communities. Stories expressed the relationships between humanity and nature. They strove to make sense of the world at the dawn of time. Reality and fantasy intermingled in these stories. Heroes became mythologised into demi-Gods, the ills of the world were given shape as the beasts and demons that made us shiver from their hideaways in the shadows. They explored the limits of their world and inscribed on the mental map 'here be dragons'.

As they entertained, so they informed. These storytellers taught the ways of the world, transmitted culture, gave meaning and a sense of belonging to the people sat around that ancient blazing fire. Throughout the millennia, the story has reflected our lives and our existence. As with our ancestors, the search for meaning still lies behind our urge to tell a story -- even though we seek to preserve the words on the medium of paper, or even of quantum digits.

In our fragmented, restless society that search for meaning can be as little as the author's own personal quest. By writing, they may seek to resolve personal traumas. Beyond that, they seek to impose meaning on the senseless world around them. As readers, we look to be entertained -- to escape from the banalities of the world -- and in that sense we are little removed from our ancestors. Like them, we want to be enthralled and released into a world of mystery and adventure. And if in some way we can find some kind of meaning, so much the better. No matter that the sense is far from profound, as long as it reinforces and reassures our own personal shield against reality and the uncertainties that surround us, just as water permeates the fish.

Beyond this there is surely the desire to be noticed. In the days when the material and the spiritual worlds were separated by no more than a thought, the story was the means by which humankind danced among the Gods. We strive to be noticed, to make our mark in a cold and vast cosmos. Perhaps, as he wove his visions into words, that ancient storyteller perceived his Gods and Spirits on the outer edge, listening along with his all too human audience.

The same is true today, in a way. The writer craves attention. Not of the Gods, perhaps. Ours is too secular a calling. We crave the attention of our peers, we wish to make our mark in the human world. The story is our graffiti -- 'Kilroy is here!' we are crying -- our plea for attention in an indifferent world.

Even as we have gained with the advent of writing, we have lost something. Though our stories have flourished with the time machine that is writing, we have lost our ability to provide a sense of community, we no longer transmit those cultural messages that bind us together as people. That isn't to say that stories still can't -- and don't -- perform that function. But as our world has grown ever more complex and fragmented, so too has the human experience, and so too has the unifying potential of storytelling. We see ourselves reflected in a broken mirror.

Yet this provides a wealth of material for the storyteller. The very stuff of drama: conflict. Not merely the conflict of every day life set within the narrow parameters of a particular sub-culture -- but between sub-cultures, between class. We have a new age of heroes and villains, new demons and angels in our modern myths. That is the rich and the poor, the struggle for human dignity to raise itself above poverty and the struggle against those who enforce it.

A rich vein indeed for the storyteller, if only they choose to delve deep beneath its crust. For all too often the world of storytelling reflects only a narrow view, a view of only one facet in our seething society. The novel arose on the backs of a triumphant bourgeois class. It helped to shape their view of the world, gave them a sense of identity and purpose even as other writers gave shape to their ideas of business and social organisation. Like those ancient storytellers, these magicians of imagination carried forth their cultural values to infuse others in their struggle to pull down an aristocratic world.

Where are the storytellers in a similar vein today? Where are those who dare to dream of a world beyond the narrow strictures of the commercial, and seek to disseminate their dissent through characters and stories and enthralling, captivating words?

Underground. Existing here and there, far from the light of the flickering fire, making do with candlelight and the glow of the moon until their time comes to bask in the full limelight. That is where the hunt leads, the story plays with us in the ongoing drama of humanity's struggle for freedom and dignity.

The chase is still one of meaning and understanding, but in the face of an ever more complex -- yet paradoxically simple - world. And with it the story still develops, the real and the imaginary still bubble and boil in the dreamscape, as yet completely untamed. For the moment, we writers remain hunters, tracking the spoors of inspiration -- if only we dare to follow its trail.


Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 24 October 1998

First published in Lexikon Magazine.

Copyright (c) October 1998. All Rights Reserved.

Category: ESSAY

"QUIET in the cheap seats," Howard Frost growls. He turns to glare at the motley collection of writers gathered around the table.

Eventually they pay attention, like a bunch of unruly school children, and settle down to listen to the words of a fellow scribe.

This ritual takes place every Tuesday in the downstairs bar at the Priestley Centre for Arts (formerly the Bradford Playhouse), when the members of the Interchange (Bradford Writers Network) gather for their workshops.


Don't let Frost's mock stern nature fool you, it's a friendly and informal group. Unusually, it deals with just about every form of the written word: poetry, short fiction, novels, theatre and film scripts, memoirs, journalism as well as catering for singer songwriters. The group is as eclectic as it is gregarious.

Interchange is one of several literary groups operating in the city. Members flit between them in an almost incestuous excursion that helps to feed the vibrancy of the city's literary scene.

"We believe that no matter who you are, if you write then your voice, your input, your words matter," says member Ian Reed.

Frost agrees and adds emphasis when he says: "Interchange has always been about helping people find their own voice, value that voice, and help it to grow stronger by having a wider audience."

An audience is important to any writer, regardless of whether their main purpose is to develop their work for the performance circuit. The typical image of a writer is of someone working in isolation, sweating blood over piles of paper in their garret. Sometimes that image can be true, but for those who step outside the musty room, they find a vibrant world of fellow scribes waiting to share their literary needs.

It provides an environment of support and positive criticism that helps the writer to develop. Even the process of reading work and gauging people's response can work wonders to develop a scribe's words as well as confidence.

Maintaining this kind of environment is of crucial importance to the group. It consequently has few rules; the main ones being that only constructive criticism is allowed and there is no self-deprecation. The onus is on the words and on honing them as close to perfection as is humanly possible.


At time, it seems anarchic and chaotic, but there is method operating within its lack of structure. Whatever the magic, it seems to work and has held the group together until it has become one of the longest established in the city.

Interchange was formed 15 years ago as the Bradford Writers' Workshop. It emerged from an event called 'Poetry Live' that was organised by Nick Toczek and 'Wild' Willi Becket. Using the event as a focal point for attracting writers, they assembled the first motley collection to form a permanent writers' organisation. To their delight, they discovered it worked.

Writing under her married name of Mellor, Alex Krysinski wrote in the foreword to the group's first anthology, Flakattak (1993): "In no time at all [it] turned into the equivalent of AA. People could come and confess their addiction to pen and paper and hardcore word processor punters could offload their guilt, helping each other to take control of their mutual habit."

True to its aspirations of developing literature in the city, it has expanded beyond its weekly workshops to organise performance events at a number of venues.

Initially, it performed at the Love Apple Cafe, but in the Summer of 1998 the group moved to its current monthly venue at the Melborn. To mark this move, the group relaunched itself as Interchange.

Today, this is one of the group's main performance events and it takes place on the last Wednesday of the month. The second main event takes place at the Monkey Cafe Bar in Wakefield (in conjunction with the Black Horse Poets), on the first Wednesday of the month.

Both are open mic events, where performers can come along and take the stage by storm. All they are asked to do is arrive from 8pm to sign up. Performances begin at 8.30pm. These have become regular and well-attended venues on the city's arts scene.

Along with the regulars, the group has organised a variety of one off events and taken part in festivals throughout the district -- and further afield.

In 1999 six members of the group -- calling themselves 'The Bradford Six' -- self-published their work both in book and audio CD format. Not content with a UK audience, they took Release to the States to perform in cafes, bars and festivals.

Later in the same year, the group supported member Karl Dallas in a multi-media celebration of the Russian October Revolution.

Despite some misgivings about the 'political' nature of Red October (as it was called), the group was inspired to help stage the event by the selection of literature.

To music and a back-drop of computer-generated slides, the performance included works by Akhmatova, Bertholt Brecht, Hugh MacDiarmid, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Lenin, William Morris, Pasternak, Yevtushenko and J B Priestley's They Came To A City.


The centrepiece was a dramatised performance by Karl Dallas of Alexandr Bloc's controversial poem The 12 (1918); a warts and all depiction of a squad of Red Guard patrolling the streets of St Petersburg, who find themselves following the figure of Christ bearing the red flag of workers' revolution.

It was a challenging performance, for which the 'actors', particularly Dallas, benefited from the theatrical experience of director Howard Frost.

"It's always a challenge to do a one-man show," Frost said at the time of rehearsals. "The challenge has been to create something worth watching for its own sake without overtaxing the abilities of the actor. I think at the end of the day we'll both be able to say we achieved what we set out to do."

When the audience subsequently trooped out of the Priestley's Studio Theatre, both men, and the other performers, were indeed able to say just that.


With the turn of the century, the group decided to herald the New Millennium in verse with the Festival of 2000 Voices.

This was a year-long event, taking in a host of specially organised events, along with the regular gigs. The aim, by the end of 2000 was to have that number of poets and writers perform their works.

Each performer signed a 'performance book' to mark the event, along with a giant banner that was displayed on the last gig of the year.

As well as celebrating the Millennium, it was also intended to promote performance poetry as a distinct form, as well as find new voices.

Ruth Malkin, who organised the event, said: "I think of performance poetry as the popular form of the genre. Rather like the distinction between 'popular' and 'classical' music. The two can co-exist and just as in the music world there is some overlap. Funders of poetry and literary academics sneer at performance poetry, but they also reap the rewards of its popularisation of poetry in general."


Alongside the Festival, the group was also working on its second anthology: Love, Sex, Death & Carrots. Published at the end of 2000, and formally launched at the first Monkey event of 2001, it presented a host of old hands alongside the new.

Highlights of a busy group. Along with these have been other one-off events as well as the activities of individual group members. Within this varied activity, the core of the group - its very heart and soul if you like - remains with the weekly workshop, where talent is nurtured and developed. Fifteen years on from its inception, the group still shifts, grows, evolves -- just like the writers themselves. It's hard to imagine Bradford's already vibrant literary scene without Interchange.


"People have come and gone, some to extinction, some to glory," Krysinski added in Flakattak. "The workshop remains like a megalith, awesome and covered in graffiti."

Despite a change of name, the same can be said today.

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 21 July 2001

First Published In The Yorkshire Journal #37 (June 2002).

History never quite reaches that state of final draft, and this article was no exception. Researched from group history, cuttings and interviews with members then current and present, it was an attempt to provide a cursory look at the group's origins, ethos and activities. Of course, no sooner had it been published, than the woodwork was crawling with voices adding to, clarifying or disagreeing with some of the stated history.

Copyright (C) July 2001. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FEATURE

---

Category: QUOTE

---

CONFUSION.

A squealing of brakes.

Cries of terror.

The grinding of abused steel and the shattering of glass.

These were but fanciful mirages floating dis-coordinated around Jeremy McMahn’s detached mind, as he lay in a pleasant but stupefied respite from the event that birthed these images. More recollection bubbled up from the murky depths of his subconscious. He tried to resist this intrusion into his peace, but he could not stop the faces of the past appearing. Loved ones who were dead and gone, friends, they all rose like ghosts to scream at him as he lay in the realm of nothingness.

The image of his mother, a grim faced spectre with angry admonishment in her eyes: “You always were a lazy little boy! Get up, get up, GET UP!”

Jeremy groaned and tried to retreat further into the darkness, but the maternal apparition followed, penetrating the flimsy veils of shadow that his battered mind had woven around itself. As it drew closer, he realised with horror that the apparition was not his mother after all. It was some decayed creature, flesh writhing with obscene maggots, slime oozing from what had once been a face. Well, it made sense; she had been dead for years.

He screamed and ran. The apparition followed. Others appeared. The macabre figures grasped and pawed at him with clawed, withered limbs. The hideous chorus chanted: “This way… this way… this way…”

Through the amorphous shadows he fled, his clothes becoming torn and tattered by the clinging fingers of the dead. He ran as if wading through treacle, limbs heavy and unresponsive, but even so he managed to outpace his ghastly pursuers.

Ahead of him, he became aware of a smell; the hint of burning sulphur. It came from a flickering, glowing patch ahead. Sensing that the dead were catching up, he moved towards the glow. Was it a trick of the light, or was there somebody there – somebody waiting for him?

Jeremy moved closer…


AND woke abruptly. The stench of burning rubber filled his nostrils. With a bone-weary effort, he managed to lift himself into a sitting position. Every muscle ached in protest. He coughed harsh to clear his lungs of the burning stench.

A few metres away, his car lay on its side. Flames licked the edge of the bonnet. Thick smoke spewed from the wheel arch. A million tiny shards of glass glittered in the orange glow like poor quality diamonds.

Jeremy stared at the wreckage in a daze. The smoke stung his eyes and soon he couldn’t see clearly. It tickled his lungs and brought on a savage coughing fit. The heat intensified with a hideous ‘whumph’. A scream sounded harsh.

The anguished cry tore him free of the dazed limbo. He ran to the car, desperate, but was beaten back by the flames. The screaming grew shrill with intense desperation and terror. Again the flames beat him back. The screams become tones of sheer pain.

“Karen!”

Another attempt to reach his wife. This time fate was merciful, and a breeze momentarily beat back the flames. He stumbled closer, managed to try and reach inside the car. It was empty. He stared in surprise. No sign of Karen in the passenger seat, or anywhere else in the mangled interior.

The breeze ceased herding the flames. The heat stung, the flames tried to lick his body, he stumbled back crying in confusion and loss.

“Karen! Karen!”

Sore, confused, weary, he staggered around the crash site, shouting for his missing wife. The hope that she’d been thrown clear too, and was lying somewhere nearby, was the only thing that explained the emptiness of the ruined vehicle. If only he hadn’t been so careless, so impatient in his need to hurry – then they might not have gone off the road.

A voice called his name. Jeremy looked up. There it was again. A woman’s voice. He staggered in the direction of its perceived source; there was something both enchanting and haunting in its quality.

A dry stone wall barred his way, forcing him to make his way along it. His body was too bruised and pained to make the climb. The walk eventually took him to a gate, with a style at its side. His aching limbs just about managed the cope with it. Wearily, he clambered over and walked up a grassy slope until a figure above made him stop and stare. Karen, his wife.

There was something not quite right. They were both in advanced middle age, yet the woman was unmistakably young; the Karen he had met and married so many years before, standing as a mockery of his own flabby and aged flesh.

The moon flashed through a break in the clouds, bathing Karen in its dead light. She glowed in its silver shimmer as if she was lit from within. Regardless of the cold, she wore only a thin white nightdress made tantalisingly gauzy in the moon glow. Beneath the cloth, not quite fully revealed, the nakedness of her impossible youth stirred his tired organ to recollect some of its own youth.

Karen gazed with a knowing smile. A disturbingly knowing smile. She laughed in an almost adolescent fashion, then turned to vanish behind the crest of the hill.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

He found the strength to hurry to the top of the hill, but there was no sign of Karen. He felt his body sag with despair; despondent for the loss of both the yesterday and this ethereal unexplained now.

“Jeremy…”

The voice carried on the air, faint and distant, but resembling Karen’s voice as a young woman, but with the underlying resonance of her middle aged tones. He stumbled down the far side of the hill and on through a field, sometimes stumbling to the ground and crawling forward on his hands and knees until he could regain his feet. Nothing must stop his momentum; he had to keep going. Always, he followed the faint voice that called his name. Sometimes, he couldn’t be sure it was Karen, but who else could it be? When the voice faded into silence, Jeremy wandered aimlessly. Then, just as he had almost lost hope, he found bewilderment.

A door stood before him. Just a door and its lintel. Nothing else. The door was made of heavy, dark wood, fashioned in some shabby gothic style. There was no sign of any ruins to indicate some structure for which the door might be a relic. On all sides, it was surrounded by moon-kissed grass.

Without really understanding why, Jeremy reached out grasped the handle. The door swung open with a suitably eerie creak. There was no grass beyond the threshold; to his surprise he beheld a long corridor that tapered into deep mysterious shadow. Walking around the structure, he found the same view of a corridor waiting for him to step forth.

“Jeremy… this way… hurry up. I’m waiting for you. Hurry and close the door… it’s cold in here with it open.”

“Karen?” He shuddered on the threshold, caught on a moment’s indecision. Then, as if he had little free will in the matter, an impulse dragged him through the door. The portal slammed shut behind him. The moon-glow vanished in a perfect darkness, as if someone had slipped a velvet hood over his head.


IN the darkness, it seemed the door, the corridor, even his own body had vanished. Feeling with frantic hands, he found that he was still physically there. That was something, but he felt no walls, no door, nothing but space around him. Impossible, he had done no more than step over the threshold.

He should have been able to lean against the door without moving. The corridor was not so wide that he couldn’t outstretch his arms and feel the walls, yet there was nothing. But, then, the door itself was an impossibility to begin with.

Something soft brushed against his face. He cried out in alarm. A giggle in the darkness, then a soft glow began to show the merest hint of a face smiling against the blackness. The light bled stronger, until he saw Karen’s features shimmer in the softest of candle glows. She turned and beckoned for him to follow.

“Karen! Wait…”

She laughed and hurried on. Soon she was a small figure in the distance, flickering in the eerie candle-glow, floating in a sea of shade. Jeremy was forced into a run to try and close the gap, or at least keep her in sight. His tired and flabby body protested at the unfamiliar exertion, forcing him to labour for every breath, and sweat from every pore.

Mentally, he begged Karen to slow down and wait. He took a moment to sag against a tall copper post just for a short rest. Finally he was beginning to perceive something within the darkness, his eyes adjusting to whatever latent light there was in this unreal place.

There were more columns, spreading out into the furthest edges of dark, rising high to be lost in swirling, restless clouds a semblance of shades lighter than infinity.

A flash of actinic light banished the night briefly. The camera flash strobe revealed a vast cavern. The floor was polished marble; as dark as a morbid thought. Knowing that the floor had substance made him feel slightly better, but a door would have improved his mood better.

Karen beckoned him onwards, so he staggered into the light trails in her wake. Flashes of light became more frequent in the thick of that copper ‘forest’. Loud cracks split his spine, thundering on their journey until doppler made them rambling booms. Electric fire crackled from pillar to post, writhing in white lined agony into the marbled ground. Jeremy shuddered and tried not to sneeze as the sharp ozone tang irritated his nose.

These conducting rods were fearsome things. He dreaded being near to them now, but they clustered in greater numbers the further he went. He would have turned back; if he knew in which direction ‘back’ lay, if Karen didn’t draw him further in. She had become his sense of direction; he was truly lost without her.

There wasn’t much further to go before she led him out of this cavern of pillars. They came to a vast staircase that twisted and turned into the hidden heavens. The height of its ascent made him dizzy – like the hall before there was no end in sight – and he groaned in dismay as he watched Karen’s spectral form ascend.

With one hand tightly gripping the rail and his eyes shut, he climbed. He felt his way up, hiding from the vertigo. Once, he stumbled and opened his eyes. That was a mistake. The staircase was upside down. Far below, the ground waited for his defiance of gravity to fail. Vertigo got the better of him; he slumped to his knees and hugged his body, hiding his face and sight against the stair. It was a long time before he overcame the paralysing terror.

After hours, maybe, he emerged from his frightened shell. Karen was gone. He was all alone. This almost pushed him back into his shell, but he forced himself to go on. The only way was up. That was more true than he realised.

Below him, the staircase had vanished. A dissolving wave crawled up the steps, drawing near. With a cry he stepped up, then again, as he saw the steps below him begin to dissolve.
He turned away from the vanishing steps and the thought of his plunging into the far depths. The steps beneath his feet were solid enough, and those above remained apparently real; here’s hoping they remained so. He took them in double step before they might opt for vanishing unreality.

Up he ran, until he toppled onto all fours and found himself crawling breathless through a gloomy hallway. He let himself slump to the floor and he lay there to catch his breath. The hall felt oppressive, but he welcomed its stable, flat, floor.


THIS new place was black – not just poorly lit but decorated in ebony. Heavy wooden panels covered the walls, almost blending in to the ornately carved doors.

The far end of the hall was dominated by a huge clock. The noise of it seemed to pull each moment out of his own body and soul. Every passing second clunked into place somewhere deep inside its mechanism. Above the clock was a balcony, with two wide staircases curling down into the hall. High windows above the balcony showed utter black beyond.

Jeremy turned back to the stairway he’d just ascended. This time he wasn’t surprised to see that it had completed its dissolution to nothing, but where it had opened onto the hall was now only a wall with a wide, stained glass window. The glass was set in a baroque, demonically carved frame. Beyond the glass was only the fathomless dark of night, broken with speckles of starlight and one huge red star bound in orbit to a dense, brilliant-white companion.

“Jeremy! You made it!” Karen was standing on the balcony, looking out over the balustrade. “There’s someone here I know you’re just dying to meet.”

She left the balcony and rushed down the stairs. She ran lightly towards him and took his hands into her own and kissed him lightly. The ghost touch was a cold hand of grief that his own aged body no longer matched Karen’s youthful reinvigoration. She giggled and pulled him towards a door by one of the stair cases.

Slowly – very slowly – the door swung open. There was a darkness beyond so dense it seemed to spill out into the hall like a fog. With it came a heavy sense of foreboding, and he fought against Karen’s determined pull.

“Don’t be shy, darling,” she said, voice playful like the early days of their relationship.

Some… thing was taking shape beyond the door, an outline and impression forming in the red glow spilling in through the nightmare window, as if it was coalescing from raw shadow.

The figure stepped into the hallway. It was robed in black. The black cloth of its cowl merged with the shadow masking any face. A nauseating stench of decay filled the hall. A fleshless hand gripped a scythe that was perched against one shoulder.

Jeremy had never realised a cliché could forge such terror, but to see the image before him, there was nothing else it could be. He broke free of Karen’s grip as Death took a step towards him. Karen walked over to the apparition; he half expected her to put an arm around its waist in an act of intimate togetherness.

“Don’t be afraid, Jeremy. Throw your woes away with that worn out old carcass. Come to me and be young again, my love.”

Death took hold of the scythe in the classic pose. Horrified and afraid, but also gripped by a sense of horrid disbelief, he fled to the nearest door and threw it open. A hound was waiting for him; at least something that resembled a hound. Its sharp, yellow teeth leered from a spume of rabid froth. Mad eyes glared with intense hatred. Worst of all, it was obscenely bald. The muscular frame was a grotesque sight of bloodied and ulcerating flesh. A terrible caricature of a man’s best friend.

The dog growled. Jeremy stepped away from the door, trapped between two nightmares. The dog pounced. Jeremy screamed and raised his arms against the impact of its lunge and the awful truth of its fangs tearing at his throat.

Neither happened. The dog passed through his body like he was a ghost. He turned to follow its passage, even as it hindquarters were slithering through his flesh. The beast landed with an agile stance and vanished. Jeremy felt his legs trembling.

Death laughed; a horrible rasping sound.

“There is only one reality here,” it wheezed, “if you can find it.”

“Whe… where is here?”

The apparition laughed again and raised the scythe. Jeremy turned back to the door and practically jumped through. He almost slipped on a patch of the dog’s drool, but kept his balance and his pace. On the other side, another corridor, there was only endless dark, but even that was better than what followed.

All but one of his senses seemed numbed by this pervasive shadow, and he wished he could shut that one off too, but he didn’t dare put his hands over his ears. Death’s clicking footsteps measured his irrevocable pace, with the heavy thud of his scythe reinforcing the metronomic passage of time. Blindly, Jeremy ran, trusting to luck that there was nothing that might cause him to stumble. He wheezed and panted. His limbs felt leaden. Only the adrenaline of fear burning in his chest managed to fuel his flight from the cowled spectre.

The corridor – tunnel – began to curve upwards, adding to his exertion. There was a glimmer of light somewhere ahead. It spurred him on and he leapt into the shimmering pool. Only to plunge screaming over a precipice.


MERCIFULLY, the fall was not far. A bed of stagnant but soft mud broke his fall. He rolled over and lay half-submerged on his back, panting and shaking and recovering his strength. There was light now, but little to see through dense layers of writhing mist.

There appeared to be nothing dangerous nearby, as far as he could tell, but even so he felt little comfort in his resting spot. The grim spectre was out there somewhere. There was little luxury of rest, so he forced his weary body to move. He struggled to his knees, dripping with foul-smelling mud, and then took another look around.

Something in the mud caught his attention as he finished his cursory sweep. He groaned in horror as a second look confirmed his suspicions. There was no doubt. The mud was filled with corpses. Both human and animal, at all stages of decay. A previously shapeless lump a few metres away took on a grisly form: a dead horse, caked in mud, its legs torn off. Entrails spilled out like rills of slick mud, but they writhed with the motion of a maggots’ banquet.

Bile rose in his throat. He retched, but nothing came out. He crawled to his feet, dreading where to look, or where he might put his feet, but he had to get clear of this open grave. The mist cleared as he staggered free of the dead; finally he gained some visual sense of where he was.

There was no escaping the dead, he realised with dismay. As far as the eye could see, he saw a plain of mud and scorched earth, pockmarked with craters, striated by scars and furrows, meshed by a web of rusting wire. And everywhere he looked. Corpses.

The stench of mass decay was nauseating. He stumbled through the debris and clinging mud of this human hell and maggot’s heaven. There was no ignoring the horror, no matter how hard he tried as he wandered lost and directionless. That was perhaps the greatest horror of them all.

Then he saw them. Crouched by a crumbling wall, in the shelter of a shallow furrow, he saw a group of dishevelled mud-splattered men. Living men! They wore mud-soaked, tattered clothes that appeared to be some kind of uniform. Jeremy could sense their fear, and given this hellish nightmare could understand it only too well. More lost souls, bewildered. He was glad of the company.

An ear-splitting shriek hurt his head. It ended in a violent explosion that showered Jeremy’s cowering form in earth and mud. More shrieking banshees wailed through the skies. Jeremy threw himself flat. More explosions churned the tortured earth. Jeremy looked on, shocked and helpless as an explosion erupted in the midst of the huddled men and tore them apart. Red rain and gelatinous lumps rained down in a wide circle.

A survivor, limbless and shredded, shrieked shock and agony, but Jeremy’s feelings of horror took a more personal turn as he saw the figure of Death emerge from the dust and fog. They watched each other across the barren divide. The chilling spectre clapped its hands together; a thunderclap tore across the blasted landscape. Then it stepped forward, raising its scythe again in readiness. Jeremy didn’t wait, he slithered to his feet and ran as best he could.

The mud ahead of Jeremy rippled and moved in an obscene manner. A corpse burst free of its cloying grave. The snarling monstrosity possessing a burning fire deep in its empty eye sockets. More of the dead crawled free of the earth. They staggered forward, the tatters of rotten uniforms clinging to their rancid remains. Each of the dead stared at him with a hatred of everything that had manufactured its fate to rot in the mud, as if he personally was to blame.

Faced with this growing army of the dead, Jeremy turned and ran a meandering course, picking his way crazily through the ranks of the rotten, while they regained familiarity with their disused flesh. Death’s laughter followed, keeping pace, taunting him. The corpses began their pursuit, alarmingly agile for their poor condition.

The earth continued to bubble and churn. More corpses joined the gathering. Soon he was chased by a mob of the damned. Bony hands reached out for him. They grazed and scratched his flesh as they tried to pull him down. Finger bones broke free and pierced his skin, he fought against the scrum and the treacherous mud that tried to bring him down.

For all his efforts, the end was inevitable. The dead weight overbore him, the mud slipped out from under his feet. He slopped down into the sodden earth and lay there weeping. The dead gathered. Jeremy huddled into a ball, as if that could protect his living body from their vengeful rage.

Instead of tearing him apart, the dead lifted and carried him across the mud. He tried to fight their hold on him, but his muscles burned with fatigue, and too many dead arms held him above the ground. They marched him forth relentless of his will and efforts to the contrary.

When he saw where they were taking him, however, he redoubled his efforts to escape their clutches. He screamed and begged for mercy as even then his efforts failed, but the noises of hundreds of feet splashing through the sucking mud drowned his despair. His cries faded to whimpers as the will inside him gave in and snapped.

They reached the end of their dead march and dropped Jeremy to the ground. They waited like an expectant crowd. Patient. Silent. Jeremy felt one last desperate resurgence of his will to live and took to his feet to run. The crowd surged, jostled him, kept him prisoner in a cordon of cadaverous flesh. Death walked closer. The dead watched him expectant.

Only one possible escape route remained. Jeremy took it with a desperate burst of speed, lunging forward before he had time to think and doubt and succumb to freezing terror. He ran straight at Death, screaming. The creature might have grinned, deep inside its cowl, but it tightened its grip on the scythe. Ready. At the very last moment, Jeremy sidestepped with a nimbleness that belied his age and fatigue and he raced to freedom.

He was laughing as he left Death in his wake; he’d made it, slipped clear of the inevitable. He kept running, despite the stitch, the burning fire in his lungs, he kept running until he came to a gorge. This time there was no escape. He stared down into the murky depths, then he turned as he heard the movement behind him.

The dead were all around, gathered in a crowd that hemmed him in against the sheer drop behind. That’s all they did; massed in a hemispherical congregation, they watched and waited, until Death emerged from their midst and stood in the clearing to face Jeremy.

Death walked forwards, slow measured steps, and calmly raised his scythe. The front ranks of the dead shuffled forwards in Death’s wake, claiming the ground that was Jeremy’s.

He raised his hands, as if that could ward off the spectre’s advance, he shook his head in a numb attempt at denial. No words came stumbling from his fear clogged throat, just a mutilated assemblage of syllables. He watched Death. He took a step backwards, a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable. Death advanced. Jeremy took one more step backwards – and remembered the deep drop that lay in wait.

The ground gave way under his weight. He toppled off balance. Death surged forwards, but his scythe stroked empty air as Jeremy plunged screaming into the depths…


HE awoke with a start and a sense of déjà vu. This time, however, he was in a room, bathed by bright sunlight. The window suggested summer’s maturity beyond the glass, but he shivered under his layer of cold sweat. He was in a bed. The smell of disinfectant overlaying an aura of stale piss and shit suggested some kind of medical establishment. He tried to move, but found he was tethered to his prone position by tubes and catheters and wires. His hands were bandaged.

Moving only his eyes, he scanned the room as best he could. There wasn’t much to see in truth, but he was just able to perceive the banks of equipment at the side of his bed. They beeped occasionally and hummed electric.

As his consciousness expanded to full bloom, he became aware of another presence. He managed to turn his head slightly, and saw someone sat to the side. The figure was indistinct, caught in silhouette. Fears born of nightmare resurfaced; his body flinched under the adrenal rush of memory.

“Don’t worry, darling.” A hand gripped his arm and squeezed reassuring. Jeremy felt himself relax. The words found their way out eventually, but his voice sounded cracked and dry. The moisture that might have lubricated his vocal chords, instead wet his cheeks as the first tears spilled.

“You were burned. Rather badly, I’m afraid, but you’re going to all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Karen… You survived!”

She leaned over. He looked up through the tears. Karen emerged from the shadow-blind. Jeremy’s heart thumped in his chest as he witnessed her features revealed in the sunlight.

“I’ve come to collect you, Jeremy. I’ve been waiting for so long, but now we can be together again.”

She had no eyes. No real face. No hair. Just empty sockets, burned and shrivelled flesh, charred to carbon crusts over cooked meat. Jeremy felt the scream burst from his chest, but it was smothered in a kiss as Karen’s cracked and shrivelled lips pressed against his. They felt hard, like papier mache, tasted of burnt meat and petrol. The smell of it flooded into his nose, and made his guts writhe in nausea, but Karen held him down in a lingering kiss.

The door opened with a slow creak. Footsteps on the tiles, Jeremy squirmed on the bed, tried to break the contact and scream for help. Pain as needles and probes pulled from his limbs. Finally, Karen released him.

“It can be like old times, Jeremy, once you’re healed.”

Shaking, crying, spitting out the taste of meat and petrol he stared up at the newcomer in horror. Death stood patient. Then, he pulled back his hood.

Jeremy cried out against the expected horror of the creature’s skull and staring eye sockets, but the terror died bemused in his throat as he found himself staring at a face from the past. He barely remembered this visage, yet he had seen it countless times in old photographs casually scanned. Once upon a time, he had seen it every day in the mirror.

The younger vision of himself smiled. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Time we were reacquainted.”

Death – himself, the man he had been long ago – raised the scythe. Jeremy flinched with a scream. This time there was no escape. The shimmering blade flashed and the years fell away.


Mark Cantrell,
Bradford,
4 October – 29 November 1990



Copyright © November 1990/ September 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FICTION

---

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 17 June 2006

This poem makes its first appearance here.

Copyright (C) June 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

---

---

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, 12 May 2005


Copyright (C) May 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

BRUCE Barnes and Lynette Shaw McKone are no strangers to performance at West Yorkshire poetry venues, but their last tour took them a little further afield - across the Pond (the Atlantic Ocean) to southern Texas in the United States.

It was the trip of a lifetime for Lynette. Ever since she was a child she has wanted to visit the States because her birthday falls on the 4th July - American Independence Day. Thanks to Yorkshire Arts funding, she was able to realise her ambition in style, and found a vibrant poetry scene waiting to adopt her.


For Bruce the reasons were more complex and personal. He enjoys travelling on the US freeways, and is fascinated by what he considers the 'informality' and the 'weirdness' of the place. He also feels it is somehow unavoidable, because as, he points out, it exerts such a large influence on contemporary English culture. Here is an alien land, so familiar yet so strange. An excellent place for the poet to express and explore the strange affinity that exists between the English and the Americans.

"Poetry is huge in Texas," Lynette says. "It seems to be almost the national pastime. In particular jazz poetry and cowboy poetry, which are quite rhythmical and are art forms in their own right. At every venue there was a mixed bag of performers and a diverse range of writing. The American poets were so supportive and welcoming that we were virtually adopted in the extended circle of writers."

It's a daunting experience, travelling abroad to perform, but Lynette was in good hands. Bruce is a veteran performer and has travelled in the States before. In 1999 he went as part of the Bradford Six - a group of West Yorkshire poets who toured with their anthology and CD of performance poetry - Release the Bradford Six.

Both also benefited from the experience of Thom the World Poet, an Australian resident in Austin, who organised the venues during their tour. He is a frequent visitor to Bradford and he was instrumental in persuading Lynette to take the plunge at becoming an international poet.

Thom wasn't the only international poet they performed with. They shared the stage with Richard Healey from London, Rupert Hopkins, the Bristol poet responsible for the 'Waste Warriors' project, and Australian poet Pauline Brooks.

In the first week they covered 700 miles, performing across southern Texas - from San Antonio to Houston, from Austin to Temple and Georgetown. Many of the venues were the familiar café or bookstore, but some were unlikely places, such as their readings at a New Age Church, a Bedouin tent and a '60s fancy dress party.

For Lynette, one of the highpoints came at a genuine speakeasy in Austin, the Victory Grill. "A woman who was a poetry fan but not a poet and who had never performed before, got up in front of the audience and performed one of my poems," Lynette says. "Just the thought that one of my poems touched someone so much that they did that, well, I found it a very emotional experience."

The pair were struck by the vibrancy of the US scene - an event every night in the week in Austin for instance - but at the same time, they found the differences enlightening.

"I think there is a much clearer delineation between 'page poetry' and 'performance poetry' in the US," Bruce says. "I rarely heard anything that I would describe as a page poem being performed. To me page poems are more cerebral, and are to be mulled over: they don't arrive at the mike to meet you."


Local poets also noted the differences between styles and delivery as practised on either side of the Pond. According to Bruce, one Texan poet, Jean Guthrie told him that English poets 'always seem so much more talented and cosmopolitan and witty'.

"I don't believe this displays an inferiority complex, more a recognition that performance poets in Texas have their own agendas," Bruce explains. "These include a recognition of the immediacy of 'white' history, the importance of vernacular story telling in building that history, and the need to express the vitality of the working class American experience. When I listen to Texan performance poets I am often reminded of Raymond Carver's short stories."

If he was impressed by the quality of the poets, Bruce was also struck by the quality of the venues during his tours. Used to slumming it in Bradford's 'boozy and potentially noisy' places, he finds the Stateside experience refreshing.

"Austin and its venues seem made for performance poetry - small, intimate, good acoustics, low noise levels. They have good coffee and snacks too - after all, poets don't live on words alone," he says. "But I have to accept that I am not comparing like with like. Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, whereas Bradford is teetering on a knife's edge between sink city and slow revival."

Despite the differences, a connection was made. As Lynette explains: "The best thing about the trip was discovering that poetry is a universal language with a beauty of its own. It cuts across the barriers, regardless of age, sex, creed, colour and any other man-made barrier. It gives everyone who wants it the chance to say what they think and feel about their world, their lives, and their planet."

Bruce put it slightly different: "I returned from the afterburn of freeways with some photos, a wedge of chapbooks, happy memories and a recognition that behind the hype of a grasping superpower there are folk who are downright hospitable and generous."

The trip proved to be a rewarding - if exhausting - experience for the both of them. It boosted their confidence and developed them as writers and performers. "I feel that people do want to listen to what I have to say and I developed a more relaxed performance style," Lynette says. "I felt able to talk about my poems, explaining the events behind them, and also discovered that I am a closet comedian - that I could make people laugh with some of the sillier experiences that have sprouted poetry."

Bruce adds: "I think the more you perform, the more confident you are in reading and in providing the extras, like hanging around afterwards to talk to people from the audience and explaining just what you meant in that last line. I love performing, but I still dread the extras so each time I do them it's aversion therapy."


Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, June 2001


First published on UK Authors, circa December 2002. Subsequently republished in Carillon #15, July 2006. ISSN: 1474 7340.


Copyright (C) June 2001. All Rights Reserved.

Category: FEATURE

Everything is about to change