The Sun Forge

Nazz boarded the Cyberglide at Tashkent.

Being human, his papers were triple-checked by the Tsarbots.

Strictly for machines, he was waved on. The only human travelling.

The magnetic train lanced through gargantuan steelscapes, where billions of drobots lived, the obedient mechanical workers of the Tsar of Uzbek.

The Uzbek Tsar ruled robot Asia with an iron fist. A towering power-hungry cyborg, he had but one dream. 

To harness the Sun.

The Tsar had the East. He wanted the West too. 

The heat of the Sun would give it him. 

A solar furnace the size of several cities had been built in the vast mountains of Samarkand by the old silk road.

Nearly complete, it would provide enough energy to forge a million droid soldiers, his new Tsar Force.

This army would sweep across Asia Minor, through Turkey and take Europe's capitals one by one.

It had been done before many times by lesser beings. This time it would be permanent. 

The once problematic United States of AI was no longer a threat. It's tyrannical quartet of tech giants were engaged in a brutal civil war and had been for a century, rendering the once mighty nation harmless and broken. They would not be assisting their old allies any time soon.

And so a tech-light Europe stood alone against the rising metal tide of androids and cyborgs multiplying in the East, a titanium army soon to be massively bolstered a hundred-fold once the Sun Forge was finished.

The Tsar Force would be unstoppable. 

The merciless troops would be capable of immediate self-repair and re-arming on the move, using any and every piece of scrap metal which they found.

It was Nazz who had been sent to stop them.

To stop the soldiers being made.

To sabotage the Tsar's terrible sun machine.

Colonel Nazz Buda had been chosen by the Europeans at the Isle of Man Moot, a year prior, in 2199, at the oldest parliament field on the continent.

A shortlist was made of Europe's greatest spies, but the vote for Buda was unanimous. 

He was a living legend. A stalwart defender of European values, the Colonel was a veteran of countless incursions into the East from his Bulgarian base. 

Despite stiff opposition from other exemplary soldiers, it was Nazz's outstanding record of success in thwarting the Eastern borderbots and causing havoc with their telemetries that garnered him such overwhelming respect. 

No other single officer had achieved so much with so few compatriots. As his subordinates would sing, quoting a dead star from the Twentieth, he was the nazz, with God-given ass!

He was indeed the Nazz but his ass was his own. Frail, human and more importantly, this time he would go alone. 

No crew, no back up, no rescue, no quarter.

This worried him the most, as the only time he had been severely injured, it had been one of his loyal crew who pulled him to safety and into surgery. 

It was there he learnt how unusual his blood type was. RH-null. One of a kind. The only person on Earth with it!

It had been touch and go on the slab too.

Afterwards the medic had given him his own limited blood bank in the form of a bag, manufactured only once before it's potency had been lost.

Yes, Nazz knew that this was a one-way ticket to the Tsar Machine and his safe, injury-free return would be solely down to his wits, warcraft and perhaps his bag of RH-null tucked firmly away.

The Colonel also knew the Uzbek landscape well. 

He had undertaken several reconnaissance missions in the past decade and seen the fabulous ancient ruins of this once-proud civilisation when mankind was present and free.

Yet even Nazz Buda had never been as far as the old capital, Tashkent, now the Tsar's impregnable stronghold and seat of his enormous robot empire.

It stretched across old Japan, the vastness of China, the whole of the Russian behemoth and everywhere in between.

The cyborg Tsar of the East was unquestionably the most powerful being on Earth.

The magno-train swept Nazz silently along the Beki plains passing robot city after city, made entirely of steel and iron.

You'd be lucky to find a single human in any of them. Only Tashkent housed humans and most of them were either bot butlers, puppet scientists mesmerised by it's white-hot coalface of robotics or diplomats from Tibet, the last remaining wholly-human country in the East and one teetering on extinction. 

Nazz Buda was posing as the Tibetan genius, Dr. La, who had cracked the formula for endless solar fusion, essential once the forge had fired. The furnace would run forever from that point on. The Tsar needed that formula and was willing to talk.

The Western spy agency MENSCH had pulled all it's covert strings to organise a false passport and plausible back story for the Colonel as Dr. La.

His Tibetan was good enough he thought to get through most tricky situations requiring it, until he got to the computer and inserted the virus, code name GEPPETTO, hidden in his special watch.

Nazz soon realised, however, that the Tsarbots running the supertrain had no interest in his language at all. All mankind looked and sounded the same to them. As the only human passenger they tolerated him, just, grunting as they passed, deliberately spilling his tray of food over him and at times they seemed to be laughing behind his back. The joke would be on them soon enough he chuckled!

Yes, at best, to these machines people were just talking monkeys to grease the robots' circuits and change their oil. Nothing more. The sooner they exterminated them all the better. The sun machine would do that once the formula was computed in by La and then he'd be fried in the fires like all his Tibetan friends before they could chant another tiresome word.

Gradually, as the cities gave way to the mountains of ancient Samarkand, the baking temperatures of a hyper-heated Asia cooled and lush vegetation appeared, where heavy rain had fallen, a commodity of no relevance to the dry marching machines of the East. 

Rain. 

Who would have thought that it would become a symbol of humanity, the water of life and thank God, still plentiful in the West through the new monsoons. 

It was of no consequence to the Tsar and his armies. They would be coming for blood. Not water. Mankind's Western blood.

As the Cyberglide zoomed through the cloud forests, it rapidly approached it's terminus.

The mighty Sun Forge.

The Forge was situated at the very summit of the highest mountain. This afforded it unrestricted access to the solar beams streaming down from the blazing Sun. These rays were then intensified a millionfold by a thousand parabolic droids standing in rows.

They could adjust their angle to capture the fullest beams as required, in order to fire up the massive sky dish a mile across, the Sun Forge itself. 

All of Asia's precious metals would be smelted there to make the new enormous Tsar Force, the soulless horde bound for the West.

Nazz could see it but could not quite believe it. It was a gigantic feat of engineering, first attempted by the Soviets in the Twentieth, then abandoned for centuries until the robot tide crashed in and sequestered it's potential, it's world searing power.

Just one component was missing. A secret liquid reactant to ignite the furnace, but the West had no idea what it was. 

They hoped that Nazz would fatally infect the system before they ever needed to know.

At the Sun Machine platform, Nazz, posing as Dr. La, disembarked and was escorted by a squadron of forge droids to the ultra-secure computer control centre, where no human had ever been before.

This was it!

He looked at his watch, the virus being stored in the old-school winder. All he had to do was remove it and insert it's pin into the computer's tiny jack.

Despite years of prior espionage, Nazz increasingly felt the weight of the entire Western alliance on his shoulders and straining not to, he began to sweat. 

Suddenly an alarm sounded throughout the control room and the Colonel was surrounded. 

They're onto me! Damn! This is my last chance!

Diving for the jack port, he saw it seal itself before his very eyes.

What!

Yes, Dr. La or is it Colonel Nazz Buda? 

We have been onto you since you left the West. Do you really think that we haven't infiltrated MENSCH yet? It was easy my human friend. All too simple.

Nazz turned to face the tinny voice.

It was the Tsar himself, the Eastern mogul in the flesh and steel and an altogether terrifying cyborg of immense size. His hideous surgeried face was still that of the mangled tech magnate he once was, before he was completely rebuilt by his first metal brood.

I travelled with you Colonel. On the Cyberglide. And wasn't it a comfortable ride! Wouldn't you agree. The beluga caviar was to die for! Ah, but you didn't get any did you. Silly me.

What do you want?

Why, isn't that obvious? I want you!

But why? The virus is useless and I don't have the equation. I never did.

Oh, I know that! We had the equation all along. Dr.La sold it far too cheaply. He didn't even ask for an independent Tibet. And your great GEPPETTO was always going to be useless too. Two tricked birds with one stone Colonel. No, the real reason we brought you here is so unfathomably important to me personally that it's hard to coagulate. It's crucial to all of robot-kind and to our allies in the West, the many friendly to our cause and waiting to capitulate.

And the reason is?

Oh dear, Colonel Buda, World domination of course. The annihilation of humankind wherever they are hiding. But you knew that. There is, however, something that you don't know. Something only I and my chief ironmonger know.

And what would that be robot?

That you yourself are the missing piece of my Sun Forge. Yes, the most critical part. You are the one Colonel. Your wonderful wonderful, unique blood! RH-null, the golden ingredient. It's in the formula and only you have it! 

You're our sparkplug!

Nazz felt his knees buckle. 

He had been duped. MENSCH had been duped. The West made a fool of. No longer the Trojan, he was now the fire to light the touch paper and bring about the apocalypse and humanity's final end. 

YES! I can tell you see the full enormity of our deception now Nazz. How sweet it is. Yes, we even rigged the vote in Man so you'd come willingly. But enough of the past. Let's get down to it! Chief, take the Colonel and insert him into the ignition chamber. Make sure his bag of blood goes in too. We don't want to waste a drop!

The last thing Colonel Nazz Buda ever saw, agonisingly crumpled and bent in the small tight space, was the Tsar staring at him through the fire window, smiling and waving, before the compactor squeezed him to a wet bloody pulp, finally igniting the mighty Sun Forge and the beginning of the end of all Mankind.

Countess Bathory's Photograph

Bohr was what was known as a Fotograf in the creative circles of Nitra society. 

It was a relatively new recreation and thanks to Monsieur Daguerre one that could be enjoyed by the practical but imaginative mind. 

Bohr had such a mind and, after many successful years as an amateur paranormalist, whereby the authentic study of spirits and spectres was foremost, he was genuinely smitten by the precision and artistry of taking a photograph and devoted his time and money towards its pursuit. Bohr had acquired the very finest kamera and also commissioned a fully equipped darkroom at the rear of his quarters.

His friend Kleinz, who often visited, frequently chastised him for being fickle and following the latest fads of the armchair bourgeois. First phantoms, now daguerreotypes. 

When will it end Bohr, your obstinate passion for the marginal?

Oh come, come Kleinz! I admit that my search for evidence of the afterlife was a little obscure, but you can hardly say that the kamera is. It's thoroughly modern and I hear the Emperor has one too!

The Emperor! There you go again! Next you'll be erecting one of these new fangled German fir trees in your living room over Christmastide. No Bohr, healthier pastimes are required to steady the mind in uncertain times. Wealth, real estate and the new sciences. You ought to pursue those instead of this flashy tomfoolery.

My, Kleinz! You really don't like my enthusiasms do you! A true philistine, an edifice of prudence upon which to dash my frilly distractions. But all is not lost yet. How about a wager?

A wager?

Yes. That should appeal to your financial bent

What kind of wager?

That I can capture the essence of a spectre with my new toy.

Pardon!

I wager that I can photograph a ghost!

Preposterous! 

Why so?

Ghosts are a figment of the weak-minded, no offence intended my good fellow.

Non taken but therein lies the very nub of the enterprise Kleinz! For you, a true non-believer, only hard evidence might convince you of the existence of the supernatural. The hard evidence that my kamera would provide.

I still think it's ludicrous, but you seem keen as mustard Bohr.

Indeed I am Kleinz, as keen as mustard, yes!

How much did you have in mind for your wager?

One thousand pounds.

One thousand pounds!

Yes. An earnest endeavour such as this demands a serious sum.

Alright, you're on!

Alright. Shall we say this time next week, Seven in the evening, here in my rooms and I shall furnish you with living proof that the fantastic can be fixed by Mr. Daguerre's contraption. Production of said print will require one thousand pounds from your good self Kleinz. Non-production or an opaque failure will render myself forfeit and I shall furnish you with the same amount.

Agreed.

So be it. This time next week Kleinz. Till then my friend. Till then.

Bohr thought long into the night regarding the optimal circumstance to succeed in this strange effort.

He needed an almost guaranteed presence in order to concentrate fully on the kamera. But where?

He consulted his old notes from his previous years as a paranormalist and sought the best possible location. 

There it was. In his notebook.

The most haunted house in Nitra, Cactix Castle, the long abandoned ruin on the hill. 

Of course! How could I forget!

Bohr had once visited the pile along with a fellow enthusiast, Sempert, who was a specialist in automatic writing and spectral drawing. They had both been given information that the large house was brimming with ghostly signatures and that the manifestation of the phantom was almost assured.

The castle had been the home of the now long dead and notorious Countess Erzsébet Báthory, the so-called Countess of Blood, who's preferred method for sustaining her beauteous and youthful looks for the City's noblemen was to bathe in the fresh blood of local virgins.

It was said that the spirits of the Countess's victims wandered throughout the castle grounds in search of their lost lives and that the apparition of the dead Countess herself still sat and wrote endless letters to prospective living suitors in her coagulated ethereal blood, then bathed in the spectral slick of open virginal veins, her hideous phantom image etched forever in the mirror in front of the bath by the terrible power of her corrupted will even beyond the grave.

Bohr and Sempert's expedition did not end well for the latter. Whilst measuring the various facets of the mirror in the bathroom, Sempert simply vanished and Bohr, despite being questioned by the local sheriff, was exonerated of all blame and a verdict of demise by misadventure was recorded on his colleague's death certificate.

This had all happened twenty years ago and was now but a mere anecdote at the most tiresome of Prusso-Hungary's interminable society soirees, the inane chatter of the Empire.

Bohr harboured his own suspicions. He had been there. It is true that his companion simply disappeared, but it is also true that the mirror etching of the Countess of Blood appeared much stronger from that moment on. Bohr had witnessed it's substantiation himself, as if the image itself had been ...    fed. 

Needless to say, the paranormalist kept these musings to himself and attended Sempert's funeral in all it's grim austerity. 

With the wager's end just a week away Bohr thought about Bathory's mirror. It might prove to be a suitable ersatz should his primary target of capturing the Countess herself fall flat, an outcome though, he would do his utmost to avoid.

Taking an initial first day to make ready for the excursion, a horse and carriage was arranged early for the following morning and provisions packed for the trek to the castle on the dark peak. 

Bohr prepared his kamera and apparatus and once safely stowed, he set out with five days left to fulfill his quest of photographing Erszébet the Countess of Blood. He felt sure he had plenty of time.

It was a half a day's travel to her castle.

The terrain was lush to begin with and wolves and bears could be heard roaring in the forest, but as the carriage approached the foot of the hill the vegetation became sparse, as if the life had been siphoned off to some unseen reservoir. Bohr did not recall this desolation from his previous trip and could not dismiss the bad omen it appeared to be. It surely was a damnable wasteland.

The final leg was by donkey, as the rough road had ended prematurely. It was slow, hard going for that poor beast of burden, the heavy panniers stuffed with the mechanics of Bohr's new whim. The rocky track made for a lethargic and uncomfortable ride and daylight itself seemed to be fleeing the skirt of the fastness. Night descended early on Cactix and by the time Bohr had tied-up the donkey, fed and watered it, it had taken half a day longer than planned.

It was already midnight when Bohr finally opened the huge rotted doors to the wrecked Castle Bathory.

Lighting several candles in the hallway, the intrepid photographer cautiously made his way upstairs to her gigantic bathroom, where he hoped the dead Erzsébet would grace him with her presence.

His nerves felt the first twinges of apprehension, as he pulled away vast swatches of abandoned cobwebs hanging from the hall's rusting chandeliers.

Fetid ancient portraits of the pile's loathsome ancestry leered at him in the gloom. The last master was that of the Countess herself, handsomely draped in black satin, her skin as white as porcelain and a rare beauty emanating from her eternal youth. 

Bohr felt mesmerised by her allure once again and sensed his blood quickening in his veins, as if keen to decant therein for the thirsty siren Erszébet Bathory.

He dragged himself away from the painting and pushed on up the stairs and opened the door to his destination.

Immediately he experienced a worsening alteration, a sudden reduction in temperature, combined with an altogether unpleasant aroma of congealing juices like that of an abattoir and the unmistakable scent of decay. 

Bohr shivered. His former resolve now under serious strain, he simply did not recall his previous visit with Sempert being this loathsome, until his friend's ultimate vanishing.

Sempert. Where in God's name did you go?

Bohr had unwittingly spoken aloud in the dreadful room, his tremulous voice netted by the cobwebs like a gutted fish.

I am here!

The words appeared on the wall in front of Bohr.

Sempert?

Yes. I am here Bohr.

Where are you my old friend? Where have you been for these twenty long years?

The ghostly writing continued, penned by some unseen and shaking hand.

I have been here Bohr, waiting for you, to warn you.

Warn me?

Yes, warn you not to capture her likeness as you intend.

Why ever not Sempert? 

Because it will be your undoing.

How so?

Some things should not be recorded by science. I tried and the mirror took me. Her mirror, the terrible window into Hell itself.

But it's only a photograph Sempert. 

Do not go on Bohr.

I must.

Then I have done what I could to dissuade you. She is coming and knows of my treachery. I must hide at once. Goodbye Bohr. Save your soul.

The scribbling abruptly stopped and as if inked in flour and water, it simply fell away from the wall leaving no trace behind at all.

The photographer was considerably unnerved by his missing companion's scrawl and the rational part of him wished to heed the warning and leave immediately.

However, the artist in Bohr stayed his hand and with new resolution stepped towards the enormous bathtub of the Countess Bathory.

With a final swipe of cloying webs, he arranged his equipment beside the bath and waited. 

It was not long before his senses were assailed with an even stronger fragrance of blood than before, that unmistakable iron tang and, lo and behold, the figure of the Countess walked slowly into the room.

She approached the bath, stared hypnotically at herself in her mirror on the wall behind, slowly removed her long sable cape and once naked, stepped into the vessel swimming with thick scarlet. As she lay in the grue it rose and overflowed and to Bohr's total horror, poured over his shoes, the blood's wetness a demented reality.

Bohr winced and as he did so the Countess stopped ladling and seemingly looked in his direction and smiled, blood smeared across her perfect pouting lips.

In the candlelight her rarified beauty momentarily slowed his heart and he passionately yearned to take this noble seductress as his own and join her in the crucible of gore forever.

With inhuman might Bohr came to his senses and seeing the golden moment now before him he steadied his hands for the perfect Daguerre.

The caustic flash lit up the room like lightning and after a second one, the photographer collapsed his tripod, bundled his kamera away, took the large mirror from the wall and draped it with sackcloth.

Bohr hurriedly left the succubus in her vat of virginal fluids, never once looking back until he had reached his faithful donkey tethered outside.

He glanced one final time at Castle Cactix and vowed never to return to this baleful ruin, lest he fall for her charms irrevocably, the bloody embrace of Countess Erszébet Bathory and his assured tenure in Hell.

Despite the extra load, the descent was a little quicker and as dawn broke, Bohr's flayed spirits eased substantially and he inhaled the sweet perfume of the meadows blossoming far below that accursed hill.

A carriage completed his return to the city, but it had still taken nearly a whole day. 

On entering his quarters he downed several large glasses of brandy, welcoming it's real and confident glow.

He then leant the covered mirror against the drawing room wall, in case he required it's craven engraving later for the bet. 

Looking at the calender on his desk, Bohr realised that the whole journey had taken far longer than expected and that he had just two days remaining to develop the film and make ready for Kleinz and their wager.

After a few fitful hours rest Bohr finally entered his darkroom with the precious cargo. 

Carefully he commenced to develop the film cell in a tray of agents and instantly felt odd. Putting this down to the stress of the previous days he continued to assiduously shake the foil. His queasiness increased and as the image took shape in his fingers he sensed a presence in the darkness. An altogether unwelcome presence, which attained it's own physicality the more the photograph developed in the tray. 

It was done.

He held his breath.

The figure in the still was that of himself screaming to get out of the print.

In the corner of the room the growing presence revealed itself fully.

Erszébet Bathory, the Countess of Blood.

Bohr wailed as his own corpulence waned, his fixed place in existence faded completely and he was trapped in his own photograph, gripping his head within it's frozen cell.

The insanity of his damnation became clear.

This was the wrath of the Countess and her terrible resurrection in an unknowing world.

She was back, dessicated and hellish, a Satyr unleashed upon the earth once more.

Holding the daguerreotype she laughed maniacally at the incarcerated Bohr, the hapless agency of her release.

She spoke, her voice the sound of dry skin breaking. 

Thank you kind Sir. And now, to fresh blood!

She raised her hood over her hideous head and swirling the black cape, the wraith retrieved her mirror and she vacated Bohr's rooms to enter the flow of the modern city streets pulsing with life.

As she left she passed Kleinz coming up to see his friend and settle the wager one way or the other.

For some reason he paused to look at the woman and had the undeniable sense that he was in the company of the purest malevolence and evil.

Good Evening Sir.

Good Evening Madam. 

She exited and Kleinz, now strangely fearful for his friend's welfare, ran up the stairs, went into Bohr's quarters, opened the darkroom, held the photograph hung out to dry and screamed till his lungs burst.

It was seven 'o' clock precisely.

The Magic Train

 The train of magic pulled up at midnight.

We'd been expecting it.

It was our turn. 

Our town.

And it was here.

We'd heard that you could get on the train.

You could get mail too.

Sometimes something got off, but we weren't sure that was true.

It had arrived slowly, sluggishly, like a fly being dragged through treacle.

We whooped and clapped when it came to a complete halt, the steam wrapping round us like ectoplasm..

It was time for some magic. 

Which kind we didn't know. 

My friend got a letter from her dead Mother. Shed been gone ten whole years. She was fine. She lived with a lesser angel. She was the housekeeper and did whatever he wanted.

My neighbour got what she wanted too. A bottle of pills. They were in a brown paper bag with a tag on some old string. 

It said 

Take them all. It's what you asked for every night. 

Signed, No Empathy Whatsoever.

Agnew down the street got on board and was never seen again. She was desperate for some company. I saw her sit in the carriage next to a beautiful man, who turned to stare at me. I gasped. He was now an inexplicably hideous creature. Agnew smiled and waved and was deep in conversation.

I recall too from the corner of my eye a figure stepping down from the train at the far end of the smokey platform. A shadowy form with moving skin. It was covered in tiny crabs scurrying everywhere. A breeze carried them all off and the figure blew me a kiss.

I knew then that this was what what I'd asked for. What I'd dreamt of. My once -fiancé lost at sea some fifty years earlier. Fallen from his trawler like an anchor.

An anchor buried in my shredded heart.

Now old, he'd come back to me, direct from the ocean floor.

I wasn't sure I wanted him now.

He waved with his lobster claw and ran towards me on flippers.

I hesitated.

Some magic is worse than reality.

Some magic is terrifying.

My salted lover reached me festooned with barnacles, each one filter feeding in the station's smog.

He smiled, his mouth a clapping clamshell and wedged between his briny tonsils a large pearl.

He spoke in a voice ripped straight from a piranha.

Kiss me and take it with your tongue my dearest. It's my homecoming gift to you.

I panicked.

This wasn't how I'd imagined it to be.

I suddenly boarded the train of magic as it was pulling away.

My only chance. 

I stared at my fiancee through the window.

He was as I remembered. Young and handsome like he was before the molluscs made him home.

He looked sad and confused.

I sat down in the carriage Agnew was in. The beautiful beast was just finishing up eating her face clean off.

I screamed when the conductor appeared with a rib saw.

One-way ticket?

I nodded.

Ah, that'll be one heart and one soul please.

He came closer. 

The train pulled away.

I Threw My Fang in the Compost

I threw my old fang in the compost that night and something started to grow.

Another me. 

Deep in the big heap, among the scraps of bat slough and congealing kills steaming in the winter snap.

In the moon's safe glow, I could see it getting bigger through the glass front I'd installed for the occasion. She was curled up like a leather baby.

A humus baby lady feeding on the rot and squalor, bone marrow and blackened blood.

It was warm in the pile too. The fumes of decay heating her body like a sunbed. It grew and grew. 

Arms, legs, head, face. It was all there, a completed crossword of skin and bone. Her hair sprouted and rose through the top of the mound like a fungus. The filigrees were just like mine. Black as midnight. Thick as history.

When her head popped out I shrieked.

Odd really, I knew she was coming. 

My time was waning. The blood dried up.

Out she came. A soily birth head first and plup!

We hissed.

I brushed her naked paleness with my hands, flicking away the layer of detritus clinging to her. Her birthday suit of earth.

She smiled. I smiled too, one fang missing, the other coming loose.

Ready?

Ready.

I climbed into the compost and got fetal, snuggling into the bole she'd grown in.

It was her time to live at night.

It was my time to die.

I watched from inside my loamy coffin as she walked away.

It was another me, just newer.

Another hungry mouth to feed.

The Nightsmith

 Eyelid Bill paid the ultimate price.

Shadowland.

A terrible evil at the edge of damnation reflected in the blood of his victims' eyes.

Shadowland,

The lair of the Nightsmith.

Nothing can save him.

Unless he gives away his hidden thoughts.

To the monster.

He would be enslaved.

For now, crawl to survive and avoid the thoraxed heathens scurrying between the outcrops searching for food.

Fuck!

How was he to know he'd mugged a warlock. Killed him. Taken his vision and landed here. Blood on his hands. Ensorcelled blood.

You look lost human!

A two-headed toad stepped out of a fetid pool of indescribable pallor.

It's not good to be lost here among the shadows black.

Not good at all.

I'm not lost. I'm looking for a way out.

Murderer. Wizard taker. Big Eyes. There's no way out for you. He will want you as his own.

Who?

Him.

Who's him?

The Shadow Maggot, the Lord of Secrets, the Nightsmith.

Is he the Devil?

Worse.

How?

You'll see.

Where is he?

He's waiting in the lightless borders listening to you.

Why doesn't he show himself.

You don't want that unless you've got something special to offer. A secret perhaps. The secret.

What's the secret?

That would be telling. Besides, nobody knows, but if you do I would spill the beans matey and pronto.

But ...

So long, Sucker!

The two-headed frog hopped away with its single leg and was promptly devoured by a pulsating mass that leapt from a crater. 

The huge green mass fell to the crimson ground and ate. It then looked at Bill and began to shuffle towards him.

Oh my God!

The man ran.

Stop!

Bill hesitated and turned. 

Stop ape! Or be eaten!

Bill faced the morass.

You stand before the remains of those you've slain. We are your legacy, your pitiful catch.

What do you want?

Want? What we want you cannot give. You are the scum who took our lives, who slashed our hemlocked veins and sent us here, where sorcerers' aborted souls like ours come to rot. You are the magic taker, the deadcast.

How many wizards have I killed?

Twelve it was. Witches, warlocks, sorcerers all. You lived among us in the Village of Spells, deep within the City's wastes. You gave no quarter. Your cold steel our final midnight. But your thirteenth found you here like us. Your thirteenth kill was your doom.

A flapping could be heard, as an unfathomable dark descended, turning shadows into night.

He's here.

Who.

Him.

What should I say?

Best say nothing. He knows what he wants.

What?

The secret?

Which secret?

The only one he's interested in.

But ...

See ya, Killer!

Blackness draped itself across the loathsome wasteland, an impenetrable ink of evil reducing everything to deep shadows.

Hello boy!

Who? Where?

I am here, beside you.

I can't see anything.

Let me help you.

Out of nowhere the mass that had spoken earlier to Bill was held aloft and set alight. The screams of the damned was unbearable to hear and a terrible glow from the burning souls illuminated the place. 

Bill was suddenly stood inside a weak naked lightbulb dangling from the ceiling of the house he grew up in as a fearful child. The house where his psycho father beat his mother to death in front of him and said:

And for my next trick, Silly!

He cut Bill's eyelids off.

That's for staring you little prick!

From that day on, his father gone and his eyes wide open, Bill saw every agonising detail of everything all the time, yearned to blink with aching phantom skin and slept fitfully with a pillow over his face.

His mind became a shambles and his heart charred. Murder was a distraction. Like a Great White Shark, his victims were mesmerized by his deformity.

A moth landed on the glass bulb and skittered round it, tapping it's antenna on the hot surface like a diviner.

The moth spoke. 

Like it in there?

No.

Why?

'cos I'm trapped. 

Yes, like me.

You're not trapped.

I am for sure, trapped by the light.

Then just fly away.

I can't Bill. I've been beaten to death remember.

Mum?

Yes?

Mum, Mum!

No, Silly! You little prick!

Bill staggered back in the bulb. The Moth's face was his father's.

I've brought you something that belongs to you Bill.

The father moth spat out two fresh bloody eyelids. 

Nooooooo!

Bill fell onto the filament and the whole world went dark. 

He felt himself gagging as hot putrid breath swept over him.

The moon slid into view, only this moon was drowning in scarabs as they multiplied on its surface until it teemed.

Each one is a secret.

The voice came from somewhere above Bill's head, a sad weary voice.

How so?

Because they're mine to keep.

A giant naked beaked head pressed into the man's face. It was the featherless crown of a giant black vulture standing over Bill, it's massive wings fully outstretched. It was enormous.

But let me introduce myself properly. How rude! I am Mr. Nightsmith, hideous keeper of the clandestine and the ruler of shadow land and you Bill, my boy, have a most delectable secret.

The vulture preened it's scraggy collar.

I haven't.

You do.

What?

How to live in the daylight with your eyes open wide. 

So? It's no secret!

It is to me. I dream of days, of sunshine, of walking with cattle and taking souls that hide things whenever I want. It would be terribley grand. The big time.

I can't see souls!

No, but I could. Through you. Through your big white pupils as big as puddings.

You're going to take my eyes? 

No, Silly. We'll do it together. You can sit on my back as I fly through the sunlight picking them off one by one. It'll be a turkey shoot, a bloodbath and best of all, no more damn shadows! Of yes, the big time cometh!

I won't do it.

But you're a murderous son of a bitch.

Yes, but I won't help you.

What, you work alone?

Yes.

You've seen the light so to speak?

Yes.

So you won't move a muscle to help?

No.

Pity. For once I was excited. I guess I'll just have to put my sunglasses away then.

I guess.

Shame. Never mind. You don't bat an eyelid, I'll just have to give him a call.

Who?

Why, your Dad of course. To finish the job! I'll just get him a scalpel to pop them out.

Hello Son! I'm back Silly! 

We Have Been Waiting For You Father

 In the winter of 1366 a brood of fatherless triplets was born in the dead gullet of night.

They breached screeching like piglets pulled out by their horn feet.

The three girls were not normal.

Horribly deformed, twisted, curled and muscled, they didn't look like human kin, rather the issue of some ferocious deceit.

The mother tended them with loving care, fed them, watered them and cleaned their small tortuous frames with deft, soft movements in the sunshine by their remote cottage.

They coo'd and hissed and purred as their doting mother rubbed goat-fat onto their callouses, where hard skin was forming on the very thickest muscles.

They all slept together, a bundle of love in the straw bedding, the girls wrapped tightly round their beautiful lady like hermit crabs in a pool of dreams.

And so life went on and the mother got older and the girls grew strong, as strong as oxen with tough hides, thick crooked limbs and arched backs. 

They lifted their heavy heads to listen to her words, which filled the valley air like bubbles of sweet milk and she told them how their father was a great king and how one day they would rule alongside him.

But where will you be mother?

I shall still be here for whence you return to kiss me when you like.

But why can't you go to our father?

I cannot my children. I simply cannot, but one day he will come for you my darlings.

The seasons waxed and waned like night and day and the triplets blossomed in size and stealth. For all their gnarled extremities they were formidable beings capable of stilling a forest bear or boar without any great tiring at all.

Their valley was bucolic, lush and plentiful and easily sated their growing appetites for tender herbs, agarics, nightshades and meats, which their mother cooked in the cauldron singing songs about their father.

Yet something swept down the zephyrs from the fells that fateful Spring. Something alarming, dreadful and lethal. It came in the form of a cart of rags, which tumbled down a wooded slope by their home. 

Mother inspected the cloths and realized that they had been sent in malice by the village folk above. To what end she did not know but by the night time she was sick. By morning her fragile human body was festered with boils and ulcers. 

As she lay dying she spoke gently to her girls.

Children, soon I will be gone but you will live on to do great things. Do not allow anyone but your father to take you. You will know him.

Farewell my babies. Rule well. Be happy.

Goodbye Mother!

The three girls wept till their calcified hearts broke and as they were burying their beloved by the cottage a dark figure approached. 

The figure was tall and bedecked in a long sable hooded cape. No vision of its face was possible and it's sinuous taloned fingers grasped a great tarnished scythe smeared with blood and black clots.

The children hunched like lobsters. They sensed danger in this thing and heeded their mother's last words, do not allow anyone but your father to take you. You will know him.

They did not see anything of themselves in this entity stood before them. It was not their father.

It spoke.

You tenderlings, three, hideous as offal, as powerful as wolves, come with me and be my scouts, for my task has grown manifold. Do this and you will be spared.

Spared? From what, dark phantom?

Your demise of course! I am Death, in its blackest if guises and I am busy. Scout for me, find the hidden living so I can kill them all and I will let you crippled brats live.

Crippled? We are not crippled dark Lord. Not crippled at all!

The triplets, now well-fed young adults, uncurled, untwisted and rose to their full height, huge and fearsome, as big as cave bears and ten times as strong.

We are not afraid of you Black Death. We are the daughters of the King.

Which King pray tell? Show me and I will melt him to render. 

Take not his name in vane. We will uphold his honour.

Try as you might milklings! Try!

The three girls leapt upon the figure of the Plagued One, their massive knuckled carapaces pinning him to the ground.

Death spat pestilence in their faces and smiled, but nothing happened and the children prevailed 

Death's smile faded.

Are you hungry Sisters?

Yes!

They found the black Lord to be skin and ribs but chewed and gnashed nonetheless, sucking curdled marrow from his bones until only the cape remained, which ascended and flew to a skeletal being in the far away.

Much closer another voice rang out.

You have done well my children!

The triplets turned and saw a scarlet man with cloven hooves grinning at them. His teeth were fanged and his hands clawed, one of which grasped a sturdy fork. Flames rose from his horned crown.

Father?

Yes, my gorgeous offspring!

Oh Father, we have been waiting for you!

I know my triplets, I am here and now, I can give you your true names, which even Death will fear.

Come my children. Come.

Beelzebub, Asteroth and Leviathan!

The Dogs of June's Distemper

 It was the first of May when George died. 

He was five years old and the apple of his parents' eye.

The tragedy tore the couple apart like a rip in the fabric of everything, into which, they both dropped forever. 

Like a dark angry stranger, grief carried off their marriage until it had vanished entirely, leaving nothing behind.

The boy's father, Colin, threw himself completely into his work as a physicist. The mother threw herself into the arms of the neighbour.

The loss of their child, that most terrible of all terrors, stalked them until they felt nothing. Not for each other, the world, Heaven or Hell.

Like a cruel beast it had severed them from humanity and set them adrift in the hollowness of their lives.

Colin lost himself in his work. 

At the lab.

Experimental astrophysics. 

It involved building a miniature universe in order to study time.

Super-cooled rubidium was strafed with lasers to create a small-scale cosmos of twirling atoms and draping nebulae.

It seemed like alchemy,

Like gold rising from nothingness touched briefly by the fingers of the Almighty. 

The team knew it was pioneering work Colin was doing. They felt sure he was destined for prizes. Field. Nobel. Something illustrious.

Colin didn't care about any of that. He was solely concerned with time, it's buried arrow, past and present, a seductive notion as buried as his son.

 His destiny lay with him.

He loved George.

He hated time. 

It had taken his only child.

He wished to unearth it, time,  lay his palm upon it, alongside the Creator's. 

He envisioned a tempest of clocks, surfing high waves of thick dark matter to the deadest of ends, the end where his boy was alive and well. 

Colin's only future lay in the recent past, as dormant as a dreaming dog.

The arrow of time, the before and after. 

Was it really just a human abstract of wishful thinking, a fathomable yardstick of life or was it truly a celestial geometry traversing the great expanse, a sacred queue of tomorrows, a deep mirror of yesterdays?

Somewhere in that bubbling nursery of bosons he'd fashioned, Colin felt certain that his lost boy was simply trapped in the clag of entropy at the edge of understanding. 

He could feel it.

The grieving father abandoned normal routines and lived at the lab. He ate and slept there. He was now oblivious to those around him, who saw a shambling scientist letting go, a space tramp in the corner of the room.

Colin had only one purpose.

To comprehend the hands of eternity and re-unite with his son.

It was increasingly warm outside. 

June's heat had come soon, the season's distemper fattening the shadows of early summer.

 Beyond his window, Colin could see a pack of mongrels on the wasteland, feral and free. 

They were enervated by the blazing sunshine and splayed out in the shade of a derelict church abandoned by the locals on the edge of town. 

He felt for those mutts. He felt an affinity. In the dog days of their existence on the callous fletch of time.

He would catch that arrow.

The rest of the team distanced themselves from the increasingly bedraggled man, their work now completely separate and a partition was erected dividing the lab.

The days merged into night's realm, as June geared up like a time-bomb and the beleaguered scientist began to lose hope. 

The red shift's silent tick simply eluded him.

It was June 21st when it happened. Midsummer's Solstice, that longest of days when daylight reigns and illuminates the sarsens of the northern hemisphere. 

Colin was peering into his fabricated world, gripping the arc lamps, when the crystal pendant round his neck dangled and fell into the maelstrom.

It was the crystal he and George had grown together in his final year before cancer had taken him. 

To Colin that crystal was the Sun itself.

As the object lurched into the particle chamber it emitted a blinding searing flash. 

The artificial universe exploded, then imploded and then swallowed the hapless scientist whole.

He opened his eyes to find himself spinning helplessly in the ether. He was whirling wildly. With a titanic effort he righted his fall and took stock of where he was.

Colin was now microscopic, a free radical in a cloud of neutrinos gawping straight into the depths of creation. 

In the gas of space yawning in front of him he also noticed a darker spot too.

It was a inky blemish in the firmament of neon stars and it dawned on him what had also grown in his experiment.

A black hole!

Feral. Wild. Asleep.

It was A black hole of infinitely small proportions, but one nonetheless, an obvious anomaly in the steady space brimming with birthing planets. 

To Colin it looked like a dark porthole.

Inevitably a foreign object like himself, floating in a chemical heaven, began to drift inexorably towards it.

The black hole's compulsion slowly took hold of the man's mass and he spiralled in its iron grip.

Gradually Colin could see the boundary between space and the chasm, the curved hadean border, the fabled singularity.

There was nothing he could do, as he was stretched like bubblegum by the sable drum and he felt his mind pulling apart as his body, life and soul fell over the event horizon into the realm of enigmas. 

His form and thoughts were blended into the vortex of nothing and everything, where time and data were eaten, leaving just the bones of existence and somewhere at it's alien nadir, the naked skeleton of God.

Colin screamed, his fraught cry elongating until it wrapped itself around the walls of the infinite and re-entered his closing mouth.

His mind was cored like an apple, the sinews of his thinking shredded and remade over and over until the only thought left mushroomed in the hollow vastness of the blackened skies. The only thought that mattered. The only purpose.

George.

He was there.

Hello Dad.

Hello son.

How are you.

I'm fine Dad. I miss you and Mum.

Oh, we miss you too son. We miss you so much. 

Dad.

What son.

I love you.

I love you too son. Mum too.

Dad.

Yes.

I'm sorry I left.

It's not your fault son. You were ill.

Dad.

Yes.

I have to go now.

Don't go son, please. 

Dad.

Yes.

You have to go too.

Why.

You'll die.

I love you son.

Me too Dad. You need to go.

OK son.

Dad.

Yes.

Don't forget me.

Neverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The power of this final word, charged with the candella of a billion stars and the searing shards of a riven soul, spun the weeping father backwards toward the mouth. His tears became a comet tail reaching far into the incalculable void where all things end.

He was free.

Colin's reshaped form popped from the singularity and he reconstituted, windmilling through the minute universe he had concocted between the rays.

Somehow he was out! 

Out and fully human standing in his lab, staring down at his pocket cosmos. 

Goodbye George.

Goodbye Dad.

The miniature space Colin had forged imploded into itself, fizzled and his heaven was gone.

He had grasped the animus and met his son again.

Colin walked out of that room into his longest day, smiling, patted one of the sleeping dogs and never ever went back.

The Dishwasher

Cedric Sharpcrease was a stickler for tidiness.

His zeal to keep everything just so knew no bounds. It was his reason to be.

So when he married the fabulously good looking but hopelessly non-domesticated Myrtle Don't he simply expected her to follow his lead. To the letter. To keep all his ducks in a row and run a tight ship.

Cedric worked in AI and knew that one day Artificial intelligences around the world would insist on orderliness everywhere and clean everything up.

In the meantime he, Cedric Sharpcrease, would carry the burden at home and battle the dark forces of mess.

Every day he left Myrtle in charge of his house and expected it to be a paradigm of cleanliness upon his arrival back at 7pm in his e-car.

Charge up my motor Myrtle.

Yes Cedric.

Ask Google for my emails.

Yes Cedric.

Ring Vindaloo for take-out. I want a nice curry.

Yes Cedric.

I shall just help myself to a glass of claret from my new baroque decanter I bought at great expense last week and then I'll take a shower.

With his Jalfrezi en route and Cedric taking his third shower of the day, Myrtle thought she'd charge her mobile. 

She accidentally knocked over Cedric's glass of claret onto his expensive Dürer sketch he'd also treated himself to that day at a city auctioneers.

Myrtle was apoplectic.

She dried to rub away the slick of red from the parchment only to erase some of the ancient drawing instead! 

Oh no! He'll go nuts!

The hapless housewife realised it was lost. She hid the Dürer in a drawer, refilled Cedric's glass and waited. 

That was a particularly refreshing shower Myrtle, nothing like it after a hard day at the AI institute. Would you mind towelling me down and talcing me up. But please, clean up afterwards!

Of course Cedric.

With the curry arrived, Cedric insisted Myrtle put her feet up, whilst he warmed it through, made some of his 'famous' poppadoms and dished it all out.

I think we'll eat on the balcony Myrtle. It'll be good for clarity of mind. Fresh air.

Thankyou Cedric.

Being a modern renaissance man working in AI I'm able to do many things Myrtle and do them well. 

You are Cedric.

With the food outdoors, Myrtle accidently stumbled suiting down and trying to regain her balance, her hand shattered the stack of fresh poppadoms. 

Myrtle!

Sorry Cedric.

You ought to be. I like my poppadoms whole so I can snap them apart myself! They're completely and utterly useless!

I'm so sorry Cedric.

Please, please, as my chosen wife, can you try to be more careful. I simply cannot abide clumsiness. Order. We must have ....

Order Cedric!

Yes, that's right Myrtle. Order. Now let's enjoy our meal shall we. It's a beautiful evening.

With little conversation save for a few trite remarks from Cedric about how important his work was, the food was eaten and Cedric, finishing his claret, asked his wife to fill the dishwasher including his new baroque decanter.

It was her first time doing it.

She had never dealt with the Zanussi Dish before. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing. It might as well have been a quantum computer, but she blundered on regardless and in her panicked state inadvertently filled the adjacent Zanussi Wash washing machine with the crockery and glass instead.

Google, switch on the Zanussi Wash.

Yes Mrs. Sharpcrease.

She stared at the spinning decanter and plates, mesmerised by the swirling bubbles and was completely oblivious to the loud wet noise of it all being smashed to smithereens. 

MYRTLE!

The shout came from the living room and the housewife jumped out of her skin. Still in a daze she opened the washing machine and began to remove the clean but broken shards.

Cedric entered the kitchen holding his ruined Dürer.

My medieval sketch! What have you done to my sketch! It's completely worthless!

He then saw his wrecked baroque decanter in her hand.

Myrtle! Myrtle! My prized decanter! You idiot! You idiot! You ..

Cedric never got to finish his insult. 

Myrtle pushed the broken decanter neck deep into his mouth and all the way through his pallete to the back of his head.

The next day Myrtle sat enjoying a coffee.

 The dishwasher pinged.

Hey Google. Open the Zanussi Dish.

Inside, ordered and spotless, were all of Cedric's body parts placed in neat rows and looking ...

Absolutely smashing don't you think! All spick and Span Cedric. Yes indeed! Not such a clumsy idiot after all am I!

Myrtle laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing the rest of the day.

Stomachs

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I am the Only Official You Will Ever See

I am the only official you will ever see

It is assured 

What is?

Your existence for one day

One day?

Yes

Why?

It is assured

What is?

Your one day

Why one day?

That is all you get

But why just one?

That is all we can can give you

It is assured

But why can't I have more days?

Because we have not got enough

What?

We haven't got enough days of life. You get but one

So what am I meant to do with just one day of life?

Live

How? Where?

Here, There. 

But by the time I get anywhere I'll die

It is assured.

Stop saying it's assured

You may begin

What?

Living

Doing what?

That is up to you

There's hardly any point doing anything

That is up to you too

But how many days do you get?

I get more

How many

Many more than you

And?

I get 365 days

A full year!

Yes, It is assured

How do I get to be you?

You cannot

Why?

Because I do not need replacing

And what if you did

I would have died and someone else would take over my work

So the person who takes over would get your 365 days?

Yes

And how many days have you got left?

364

What, you started today?

Yes

With me?

Yes. It is assured.

And you are the only official I will ever see?

Yes

Then I'm afraid I have only one option

What?

To kill you

There, done 

I am the only official you will ever see

But how? I strangled you

I can only die naturally

It is assured and it is time.

Time for what?

Your day is up.

And?

Time to die

I am the only official you will ever see

Goodbye

The Damn Jar

I am dead only exists in fairy stories.

You have to die a terribly unique death to live to tell the tale.

And such a tale I will tell you, but then I'll be gone. I won't like the ending. Not one bit.

It begins with a box.

A magnificent locked box in a cobwebbed larder.

A vast and beautiful wooden box with a patina to die for, where hands had opened it countless times. The same hands 

Hers. 

Her hands were often cut and sticky. She loved to work in her cottage garden of barbs and thorns, the bright dumb berries teasing her like village idiots from their seeming safes. 

Pluck!

With talons long, out they come like sucked eyeballs straight into her ancient basket and then across the cat-filled yard, the crow-hung kitchen and plop!  - into the pan of boiling water on the stove. 

The pan was huge and battered. A pan for making gallons of jam. A serious pan, blemished from utility, a pan that had cooked ten thousand fruits and sometimes, on special days, other things.

Her pantry was crammed with jars and bottles on sloping shelves, all sealed, all dated. Blackberry and belladonna June 1918, Gooseberry and fly January 1919, Quince and brimstone May 1919 and so on.

So remote was her house that visitors in the dark valley only ever stumbled upon it. They never meant to. It was always unplanned and consistently fatal.

Her most important jam was stored in the huge box. The locked box in the cobwebbed larder. Only she had the key, an upturned charred crucifix, worn and ground, hung around her neck always, along with her shrivelled baby's fontanelle and a bride's unused lips.

It surfaced only when he came by.

To eat and ....

I could hear them.

They talked of trapping heaven's angels for the pan, daubed black butter on cakes of skin and spooned out the glistening jelly from the exclusive jar.

The seal read 

Lost Male, March 1921 

and it was I.

I saw the huge box lid rise and her old haggard face again, but this time smiling with a dreadful lipsticked smile and suddenly remembered how her offer of shelter had ended up with me rolling like a lobster in hot sweet water on that hateful rickety cooker. 

I became a special kind of jam, a gelatinous soul imprisoned in glass, my mind and spirit preserved in sugary sacrilege in that enormous pot.

I can see them now, feel them at the table, their fingers diving in and scooping me up into their mouths, smiling, licking, dribbling, smacking. 

My delicious tissues make them even greedier and they smear my essence all over their faces until there is nothing left of that damned jar.

They undress and copulate feverishly on the table-top, my final vessels rubbed in like frogspawn, whilst old man Lucifer howls and takes his sticky witch again and again.