Darcy's Conch

Darcy had found the shell a year earlier on the shore of her home, The Calico, a windswept, salt-washed fisher cottage emerging from the dune edge, as if it had been released by the sea itself

The woman lived alone now, the conch a treasured reminder of those she still loved. 

Her Mother had passed. She'd walked out into the unforgiving bay, an escape from the cloying penury of depression and never returned. 

The maternal echo in the shell kept her Mother's presence in her memories now. 

However, it was her father's death that had crushed her completely, the conch a bitter-sweet connection to its horrors and her ultimate salvation.

Having raised a young and bereft Darcy on his own, he had guided her through her life with the true compass of a seasoned fisherman, until she was an integral half of the family fishing boat business confidently at his side.

Bounty has been plentiful for a decade and the skilled father and daughter had made a very good living, selling lucrative fresh mackerel, lobster and shellfish to the finest restaurants in the South. Occasionally they dined on their wares too, dressed crab, bread and butter Darcy's favourite, always prepared fresh by her doting Dad on special occasions.

For once in their family's life, money poured into the once-hollow briny coffers.

The Calico had been upgraded and refurbished and the two lived a decent life with all the comforts of home. There had even been enough to invest into stocks, making them a small fortune to boot.

Always humble throughout and never forgetting her roots, Darcy, now a catch in her own right, had been swept off her feet by the handsome son of the neighbouring city's oldest funeral director, Randalls. 

His name was Reed.

Reed had been the perfect romantic and had wined and dined Darcy in his home city's finest eateries and swish hotels. She had been smitten and despite her fisher-folk roots she found herself flattered by Reed's sumptuous attention and luxuriant wooing.

It worked and Darcy informed her Dad that she was madly in love with this gorgeous man.

Her Father was not so sure about any of it and especially not of Reed Randall. There was something fishy about him and fish he knew something about. Wily, secretive, always salting things away. 

He made discreet enquiries without Darcy finding out and was not impressed at all with what he discovered. Randalls was broke. More than that, they were badly in debt and owed money to the local criminal underworld, for whom they were now the newly appointed funeral director, a particularly unsavoury partnership which made the wealthy fisherman feel sick.

If Darcy married Reed then the Randall's debts to the Mob would be his debts and he simply couldn't let that happen to either Darcy or himself.

Wanting to draw a line in the suddenly blackening sand and talk man to man with Reed, he invited him on a fishing trip, whilst Darcy was away with a friend. 

The plan was to have it out with Reed, scare him off his daughter and if all else failed get his chequebook out as a final solution. 

Unbeknownst to the father though, Darcy and Reed had been secretly engaged to be married at the funeral home, where Randall Snr had presided over the short ceremony among oak caskets containing dead gangsters. The secrets piled on top of each other and the salting of their life had begun.

He backed her into the funeral home's office and immediately Reed changed. On the night before the proposed fishing trip and Darcy's visit to her best friends, the new fiancee beat her up terribly, punching her softest parts repeatedly, saving the face till after they were married.

Do you really think I could fall for a sack of mackerel like you Darcy? You stink of gills and guts. I wouldn't touch you with a barge pole now we're engaged. I want your money and I'm going to get it. It's very handy running a funeral parlour. No-one need see the mess I make of you and especially of that damn pompous, loaded twat of a Dad of yours. We're going fishing tomorrow. It'll be perfect. But first ...

Reed hit Darcy so hard that she fell unconscious. He bound her and his Father stuffed her in a coffin for the night.

The next day Darcy's dad readied himself at the Calico and assuming his daughter had already left for her pals he went to meet Reed at the boat.

A pelagic intuition told the old fisherman that something had shifted. The young Reed seemed cockier, brasher than before and was handling himself with a new found swagger onboard the boat. 

Good year so far then? Lots of money coming in? You must be providing for Darcy really well in your will old man.

My will has got fuck all to do with you, you dead-loving streak of piss!

Dead-loving? Oh my, that's below the belt. Mind you, I wouldn't mind giving your daughter one when she's on the slab this time next month after we're married.

Married? Darcy won't be marrying a cretinous gangster's moll like you that's for certain!

Gangsters-moll eh! You have been doing your homework you nosey old bastard, but there's one secret you don't know. And your beloved daughter's kept it even from you.

What?

We're engaged to be married. All official and above board. It happened yesterday, whilst you were no doubt fondling a squid like all you fish-fuckers do!

It's a lie!

'Fraid not you old giffer. Yep, What's yours is hers and what's hers is mine. It's the law don't you know and I'm going to get my grubby little hands on every fishy fuckin thing you own!

Aggggggh!

The fisherman ran at Reed with a gaff-hook but the younger man was too quick and with incredible speed lunged forward with a pitch fork at the old man's weathered face sending the two long prongs deep into his eye-sockets. 

The fisher screamed in agony and clutched the pole.

Now do you see?

Pulling the fork violently backwards the two metal prongs shot out, each with a punctured eyeball impaled on the end.

Oh, no, you don't see do you old man. And you never will again!

My eyes, my eyes, Reed I'm blind, for God's sake help me!

Of course, step this way!

The helpless fisherman fell overboard clutching his face, blood pouring in gouts from his open sockets, as he hit the freezing waters of the cruel ocean and was gone.

Reed had it all figured out. Exactly what he'd say when he steered the boat back to port. A terrible and sudden storm had swept the boat owner over. An awful tragedy but there it was. Accidental death. It was official.

Darcy knew different. Reed even organized a funeral for her Dad. Randall Snr lead the event and the whole village turned out for an empty coffin. Despite the heartfelt eulogies from her Dad's many friends and family, the Randall's involvement felt cynical and hollow.

The violence started up again on the night of the burial. Reed knocked Darcy clean out with the house phone, when he caught her phoning the Coast Guard. A single dreadful blow to the temple and she was gone. A huge bruise grew near her ear and even with thick make-up, which Reed had insisted on, village folk knew what was going on at The Calico and the regular screams confirmed it.

Reed Randall was an evil thug and one day he would murder sweet Darcy.

It was the night of their marriage a year later that he very nearly did it.

Controlled by fear, the pitiful woman was forced into wedlock and signed everything over to her psychotic husband.  As soon as Darcy put down her pen a deranged Reed had pounded her to a pulp with a fresh lobster, the pincers swiping across her face leaving an agonising criss-cross of rising welts. 

Her brutal husband left her bleeding and near to death, slumped against the back door, whilst he phoned his family's Funeral home.

It's time. Tonight we get everything. We'll be rich Father. Bring a coffin. Hurry!

Hearing her death sentence, Darcy half-roused with ballooned eyes and swollen fingers, contorted on the threshold and quietly exited.

In excruciating pain she crawled on all fours to the shoreline through the dunes leaving a trail of bubbling scarlet. In the moonlight she looked like a broken turtle returning to the succour of the sea.

With the soft lap of the surf washing her bloody features she noticed a conch shell on the sand. Picking it up she pressed it gingerly to her cauliflower ear and listened.

She could hear deep within it's smooth chamber the ebb and flow of the ocean, it's eternal churn and yearned for its gentle release. 

Darcy.

There was a voice behind the conch's whisper.

Darcy, daughter. It's me, your Dad.

Dad?

Yes. 

Oh, Dad! My gorgeous Dad! I know Reed murdered you!

He did my sweetest. He did.

Dad!

Yes?

He is coming to murder me. Now!

Do not fear him Darcy. 

Why?

I am coming. 

The familiar voice of her father trailed away and she let he conch fall beside her as the saline eddies caressed her face once more.

Did you bring the coffin?

Yes, give me a hand.

The thugs, father and son Randall, carried the casket onto the beach.

What's inside it? 

A rigor hammer, some embalming fluid and mortician's thread. 

Ah, yes, good thinking.

In the light of the moon the two brutes could see Darcy's prone form on the water's edge.

As they approached Reed became aware of a large shape emerging from the misty tide behind his wife.

It was huge, shell-like and crawling towards them, it's long antennae twitching in the air, large pupils wobbling on stalks . 

Quick Reed. There's something coming in the mist.

They dropped the coffin beside the woman and Reed, bone hammer in hand, took hold of her matted hair to strike the killing blow. 

As his arm descended his Father screamed.

Oh my God!

The sea thing broke from the fret and reared up before them, an enormous deep-ocean lobster easily ten feet tall.

Do it, Son, hurry! 

But it was too late.

The lobster's colossal claw clasped the bewildered Reed's arm and snipped it clean off at the shoulder. Still holding the hammer it fell into the beasts mouth and was eaten.

Fresh hot gore spurted into the waves as the agonised husband spun along the surf like a blood hydrant.

Randall Snr stood transfixed as the atrocity unfolded. Coming to his senses he began to strangle Darcy in a vain attempt to finish her murder. 

Both of his hands were severed at the wrists. The villain stared at his gushing stumps and then at the gigantic creature rearing up.

It smiled and took his throat in one pincer and with the other gradually reduced the size of his head in layers, the brain in the middle like a sliced boiled egg. Once headless, the beast drank greedily from the spouting neck.

The leviathan then returned to Reed, who was running away down the beach.

With unfathomable speed it was on top of Randall jnr and gawping into his face, it dribbled his Father's own blood into his mouth, before pinching off his lips, nose, ears, hand, arm, feet legs, penis, testicles and buttocks.

With the destruction of Reed the lobster looked down on his pitiful torso. With a lipless mouth the conscious remains gargled one final insult.

Fuck you and your frigid daughter!

The lobster father blinked and placing one tip of his pincer in Reeds anus, it commenced a careful snip along his back and head, opening up the half-body like a letter. Taking each flap the creature pulled the man's skin clean off revealing his muscles and fats glistening in the moonlight. Licking his claw the crustacean began nipping and scissoring until it was satisfied with it's work. 

Returning to Darcy, who was only just rousing from her throttling, the lobster thing did the same to Randall Snr's corpse, trimming, chopping and preparing.

When Darcy woke fully and sat up in the blood-souped breakers, she looked at the giant lobster and a tear formed in her eye.

Dad!

Yes, Darcy.

You heard me in the shell!

I did.

You have saved my life.

It's all any Dad would do.

And where are the terrible Randalls, my would-be killers?

Here my sweet. As it's your wedding day I've readied them for the occasion.

On the upturned coffin stood two bloody rib cages. Each of them was stuffed with fresh wet flesh. One one side of each cage was white meat, on the other dark and on top a pair of eyeballs.

Two dressed crabs! You remembered! My favourite! Oh, Thank you Dad!

As they both ate, thick hideous gore spattered on the conch was washed away by the cleansing tide and within it's airy sanctuary the ocean could be heard, by those who might listen, to whisper of the wrath and release found in its deepest depths.

T H R I P S

Bloodstone was baked like a cake that summer's day.

It was unseasonably hot as global warming wreaked havoc with the crops.

Pests multiplied exponentially in the drying fields and an unstoppable plague of death was about to be unleashed on the roasting village.

In the shade of the rear, Jack and Valerie romped in the straw bales at the back of the big barn. 

This was their moment for the taking and a delicious teenage fumbling began.

Valerie, oh my, before we go all the way I need a big puff on my inhaler.

Jack grabbed the diffuser from his coat, a big affair on account of his asthma. Sweaty with anticipation he didn't bother to check the unit first and never saw the black mass he swallowed until it was too late.

Jack! Jack! What's the matter? For God's Sake, what's wrong?

Jack clutched his throat and his eyes bulged. He stared at Valerie and gagged. His mind reeled as oxygen was cut off and he felt a strange warmth as his end approached. 

I wonder if we'd have ever got married, Valerie and me?

Jack passed in his girlfriend's arms, his neck pulsating horribly with whatever he'd inhaled. 

Valerie wept and ran topless into the farmyard, the hands whistling as she screamed to the heavens.

He's dead! He's dead! He's dead!

She wasn't in the barn to see a bung of blackness erupt from Jack's mouth and fly away.

Down on Bloodstone village green the annual fair was in full swing. 

Dawn and Donna, on lunch from the Hauliers' typing pool, got on the Ghost Train like a couple of giddy school kids.

Two adults please.

Two more mate too!

A pair of teddy boys from town got in the double car behind the girls.

They sang like doo-woppers.

That'll be the da-ay-ay, oo-er!

Dawn and Donna giggled loudly. The prospect of a bit of slap and tickle in the dark tunnel with these urban ruffians sent a shiver of excitement along their spines. They both clenched their knees and chuckled as the unmistakable screech of the double doors scared them to bits entering the ride.

Skeletal hands dangled down. Cobwebs brushed against their faces. Roaming fingers from behind sought purchase under their cardies. They slapped the teddies back and laughed as the car momentarily emerged in sunlight between two scary sections.

It was here on this daylight bend beside a farm, where an ambulance was pulling in, that Dawn and Donna saw a cloud of darkness descend upon them just as the carriage re-entered the gloom of the vampire's room.

In the lightless ride the sable fog had smothered the girls' faces completely, the million constituent threads finding sanctuary in their ears, nose, mouth and eyes. Whatever they were they were inside the typists' eye-sockets crawling around their pupils and along their optic nerves. 

Dawn and Donna shrieked in agony as the morass penetrated every orifice of their heads, tumbling over each other to reach their pudding-like brains.

The two teddy boys were sure the girls were just very scared but also very excited to be in their company. The leant forward and began kissing their necks, their hands caressing their hair. It all felt really odd, as if it was all all mobile and wet.

The screaming girls couldn't stand the teeming pain any longer. They stood up in the carriage as they reached the solid arch of the exit.

There was a distinct crunch.

The wailing shriek of the finished ghost train was only just audible above the din of the two teddies smeared with hot blood.

They shook with fright and yelled till their lungs burst as they stared at Dawn and Donna's severed heads in their hands.

The smog of ink, tinged with crimson, that alighted out of their neck stumps, whirled round and headed for the myriad of distant fields nestling on the gentle hills of the Folds.

Oh Hell! What the fuck are those things?

The two Teds dropped the heads and heaved over the side of the car.

They're thrips. Of course, it's thrips day. And by the looks of it they've gone for reinforcements.

What the chuff are thrips?

The old farmer, in the village to buy new milking mates for his cows, nodded at the vanishing cloud.

Yep, thrips alright. Thunderbugs. Tiny crop flies. And a helluva lot of 'em. Must be this flamin' tropical weather we're having!

Damn. 

Having dealt with Jack nearby, the local Bobby arrived in his Panda. The young constable threw his guts up when he clapped eyes on the decapitated girls. It was all too much.

The old farmer drove home to neighbouring Thing following the course of the shallow Thirsty Chase. 

He installed the new milk units onto his shed herd and flipped the switch. The automated system chundered into life but seemed unusually sluggish.

Damn units! They're duds!

But whatever blockage there was it quickly cleared and the farms' locally famous Thing Dairy bottles began to fill again.

It was then the farmer heard his cows wailing in pain. The whole bottling system had stopped and it was clogging up the beasts. 

The old man stooped down to inspect the pints filling the conveyor and could not believe his eyes.

The milk was jet black and moving. 

He peered closer and realized with sickening clarity that his cows had passed thrips through their udders. Millions of them. 

As he wretched the bottles rattled loudly and the dark cargo erupted into the air.

They targeted the farmer and entered his body at every point, filling his entire frame with a convulsing insect horde searching for his damp plump innards.

Christ! They're carnivorous!

These were his last words in this terrible new world, a revelation that countless more victims would come to know by the end of that fatal summers day.

Ten miles further east a NATO ICBM was being transported to the USAF base on the coast. The gargantuan truck had a military escort as it wended its way through a secret route across the Folds.

The truck driver and partner were enjoying the gorgeous countryside when a mist appeared in the trees. It grew in size like an amoeba and as the convoy crawled through Bloodstone the entity filled the cab and smothered the two men. 

The insatiable thrips poured into their mouths like black gravy and ballooned their guts until they blew in a welter of entrails. The insects went into a feeding frenzy and devoured everything save the drivers hands, still clutching the steering wheel. 

Without the substance of his arms to guide it, the wheel turned and the truck and ICBM careered into the small farming petrol station run by National. 

The impact triggered a chain reaction. First the petrol pumps went up in a huge ball of fire seen and heard across the village and then the US missile, now lying on the forecourt, overheated in the flames and ignited. The ensuing explosion was so large that the village of Bloodstone was reduced to a wide smoking crater where once a thriving farming village had stood. 

As the neighbouring panda cars arrived they were first greeted with a burning ferris wheel rolling towards them, the occupants in flames. It was a vision of hell and only surpassed by  what came next.

Two figures staggered out of the devastation and walked along the road. Except for their beetle crushers and velvet jackets they were draped from head to foot in rank after rank of tiny black creatures seething allover their head and limbs. 

As they reached the waiting police the two Teds opened their mouths and released long streaming dark jets of minute flies, which surrounded the pandas, dropped en masse to the ground and died in their millions.

The Teds fell to their knees, their creamed minds jumping like broken singles, repeating over and over again the songline they'd sung all summer.

That'll be the da-ay-ay that I die!

For them, the day of the thrips was over for yet another year.

S C A B S

They were all Excoriation patients at the Welland Body clinic when the invisible sun flare hit.

The dermatillomaniacs were none the wiser and another long day of ignoring what they wanted to do - pick scabs - dragged out.

In the lab their medicine vat was superheated to boiling point and something changed in the mix. 

Something bad.

The sunburst had secretly reversed its effect. It had nullified the suppression. 

It had increased their desire to remove scabs a thousand fold.

That morning the twelve patients, known as pickers to each other and the dirty dozen to the staff, dutifully took their new meds, the first of four that day and watched morning TV in the telly lounge. 

After breakfast there would be more tests to help them combat the strange desire to scratch their bodies and greedily lift off the resultant hard layers, a dreadful dermatological cycle of body scouring that had taken them from their families and normal society.

The twelve pickers couldn't know that the pill they had taken was now reengineering their compulsion to a level never seen before in medical science. Never seen before anywhere, but soon everyone would be talking about it after first throwing up.

The maladjusted medication would eventually hit the chemists and enter the normal population and any pickers in the wider community, but for now, this initial hyper-batch was confined to Welland and the twelve.

The morning wore on. 

Breakfast TV was endured by some. For others, it was walks and sport in the grounds. They were all encouraged to keep their minds occupied and not think about the joyful mechanics of raising a pus-filled scab prematurely and the elation of holding it and maybe even eating it. This was the daily obsession of the average excoriative, the very thing that Welland were trying to dilute and control.

By the time lunch came around the dozen residents were feeling odd. Their heads were buzzing with excitement for who knew what and their fingers twitched like heated spiders.

The bland food was an afterthought. 

Today the twelve had other things forming in their brains. Terrible things. Destructive things. To degrade as many covered sores as possible. Nothing else would do. Nothing else mattered. They were slaves to a new enraged desire triggered by the toxic meds.

Aversion therapy was scheduled at 1pm.

A recovering patient from the Extensive Wounds clinic nearby was visiting. 

With his cup of tea in hand, the twelve Wellands should in theory have been appalled by the awful lacerations and the vast scabbing on the man's frail but healing form standing in front of them.

They weren't.

Within the dozen an overwhelming and uncontrollable urge to gouge off the huge crusts surged through them and when one leapt out of her chair the rest followed like a pack of starving wolves.

They were on the poor fellow within seconds and the screams began immediately, as the ravenous mob fingered his crusted dermis and ripped away the hard shells of coagulated blood covering his body with howls of unbridled lust.

Yee-haa!

The bloody lids were noisily crunched like pork scratchings and the pus-thick holes left behind simply too putrescent to ignore. The frenzied twelve rammed their faces deep within them, slurping and scoffing the liquid skin, nuzzling and noshing the clots like truffling pigs.

The assailed visitor had been completely debrided. 

When they'd finished chewing, matter and blood dribbling down their chins, the overdosed pickers stared at the pitiful sight of the reduced man before them. He was lying in his own plasma and very much dead.

The nurse who was watching it all pan out had fainted in her own slick of puke.

The twelve had no recollection of their fugue states whatsoever and left unnoticed.

They showered, changed and wandered back to the TV room, where they took their meds again and watched the local evening news.

A huge accident has occurred in a metal cutting plant. An explosion had ripped through the building and steel swarf and sharps had flown into the ten workers, causing heinous skin injuries of the worst possible kind.

All of them were air lifted to the Extensive Wounds clinic neighbouring the Welland. 

All ten would be treated for massive gaping cuts. 

This information circulated round the dirty dozen like a wild fire. 

They imagined lifting off fields of crusts and snouting lakes of pus like Instant Whip!

Delicious! Scrumptious! 

But they needed the last pill of the day to top them up and besides, perfect scabbing was a slow process so they would wait.

And wait they did.

A good two weeks.

Patience is a virtue when harbouring dermatillomania. But the supercharged debriders could resist no longer. Popped up with countless sunflare meds, there appetite for lesions and crusts was intolerable and could not be contained any further.

Eschewing all clinical regulations, the voracious twelve stormed out of the Welland like a school of Piranha, their teeth gnashing and fingers convulsing as they panted for the grand Guignol of scabbings to come.

The Extensive Wounds Clinic was just a half-mile and the hideous band grunted and shrieked the whole way,  with drivers and passers-by terrified by what appeared to be a gurgling pack of monsters in whites loping down the middle of the road.

When the EWC's security doors were breached the alarms blared out loudly around all the wards. 

In the recovery wing, where those naked airing patients from the dreadful metal explosion were lying in various stages of treatment, their huge healthy red and black crusts visible, a frisson of fear ran through the rooms and their personal alarms began beeping madly.

Nurse! Nurse!

But it wasn't the nurses who bound into the ward. 

It was twelve deranged scab robbers delirious with hunger and lust!

They leapt onto their helpless victims and began to tear away their hardened suture shells, shivering with glee as they raised them from gigantic wounds dripping with membranes and exudate. It could have been custard and cream the way the dozen guzzled it down, followed by the crisp necrotic bite of the incrustations.

It was hopeless trying to fend the lunatics off too.

They knelt on the naked patients' arms on their beds and yelps of fresh pleasure rang out when eschar was evident, the deep suppurative lesions requiring delicate then pugnacious picking of the finest kind.

The victims' screams of agony melded with the invaders' shrieks of rapture, creating a loathsome symphony of gore in that blood-spattered ward, punctuated by the sound of hungry crunching and grinding teeth. 

When the accidents' wounded went quiet the occupation of their flesh was over. 

The crazed scinvaders shared final tissues and clots before knuckling out of the clinic like bloody apes.

The armed police were waiting for them.

Stand still or we will open fire!

The sound of the rounds hitting the soft bodies of the dirty dozen drowned out their incessant manic gnashing. 

Incapacitated and bleeding out, the Welland monsters stared in disbelief at their gaping injuries and as they were wheeled away in secure ambulances they dreamt of their own bodies soon being festooned with delectable ....

Scabs!

When There's Nothing Left

The nuclear winter dragged itself along like a sack of flies.

Ten long years of irradiated hell from which there was no redemption, no salvation. No tunnel out.

The bombs had fallen like snow. Silent, beautiful, all consuming. A coat of lethal buttons for an eternal winter of death.

The Egos at either side of the world had done it. The man child emperors. Two vast arsenals. Two big levers. One insanity to end all sense.

As the seas boiled like soups and birds set alight in a flaming sky, the old farming couple, Zal and Nita, were feeding their herd of pigs. 

It was the smell of gammon that Zal remembers the most. Walking smoking hams. Those were his beloved sows cooking in man-made sun flares metastasizing his land. 

The stench of his livestock roasting, as they shambled on liquified hooves in a desperate attempt to escape the heat, had stayed with him this past decade. It had filled his nostrils and never left.

Now everything was just about running out. The stockpile of cans, the bunker of tins, the freezers of toxic meat, the Jennie's, the red diesel, the water in the well. 

There was virtually nothing left.

Nita was now sick.

Her skin was falling off her shins exposing angry welts of pus and matter. 

There was no hiding it. Her legs looked dreadful and the reek named itself proudly. Gangrene. 

Zal gently ushered his wife of seventy years to the toolshed. She lay down on some rags covering the workbench and whispered something to her beloved.

Zal gently held his finger to his lips and made a shhhh sound, all he could muster after the blasts had cauterized their vocal chords ten years earlier. They hadn't been able to speak a word to one another since. 

It had become an atomic season of silence, scabbed bodies and tender kisses.

The shed held everything a farm needed. Had needed before the war. Most materials had been recycled already, but Zal found some fibre glass on a shelf marked Jack's Jeep. Their missing soldier son.

First cleaning her open wounds with swarfega, he moulded the sheet around Nita's shins and with strong epoxy he did what he'd done to his landrover many times when they had been young farmers. 

He patched up her legs and waited for the stuff the set.

Zal pecked Nita on the cheek and motioned for her to sleep. The fibre-glassing had been agony, but she knew this was the last time they would repair each other like this. 

The aluminium inserts were loosening, the steel toes coming off, the dog's nose rotted away, the timber mulching.

They had maintained each other's fragmenting bodies with nails, wire and screws, as best they could in a world left to shrivel and die.

Some things had stopped working altogether and short of surgery they had reached ground zero, the blood and guts casino at the end of the track, where a mutated vulture always won, the croupier of teeth.

Zal shuffled on his chair-leg to the well. One or two final buckets of fresh clear poison would make their last weeks tolerable. He would have given his last healthy limb for just one cold beer again.

A figure appeared in the farmyard. A crooked drooling nuclear stranger signalling with a twisted hand for a drink. 

Zal reached for his old twelve-bore propped against the well wall, took aim and fired. The massive shot took the figure's head clean off. It exploded into a million bits. 

Zal hadn't even tried to mouth. The time for talking had long since gone. Only the rules of the irradiated crow made sense anymore.

Besides, it would be good to taste meat again, a welcome if corrupted feast for Nita and he as the farm's well ran dry and thirst became their final craven friend.

Zal dragged the headless corpse to the kitchen.

He began to slice and tried to whistle, a rasping quaver cut short on his lips.

A tattoo he recognized in his recycled hand.

Oh please God no! 

His mind collapsed.

This was too near the bone,

He was cutting up their long lost son.

More Than a Feeling

Boston pressed the button that erased him forever.

My husband Dane.

Gone. For good.

If only I'd have been there. In the AI Reality lab when it happened.

Digitization was the dream. The molecular capture of physical cells for insertion into the digital realm. To trans-locate across the globe.

Imagine. Send anything anywhere instantly.

We were using a quantum beam to do it.

Dane nicknamed it Cells Fargo.

Real Lawnmower Man stuff.

We were so close to a human trial.

But we didn't think it through though.

Too excited. Too hasty. Too tired.

I left Dane with Boston. 

He was called that, Boston, because he insisted on playing their classic More than a Feeling constantly in the lab. There was only so many times you could hear it.

I drove home to take a long-overdue shower. Grab a bite too and bring something back for them. 

We'd been working for days without a break and the goal was tantalizingly close.

Boston had successfully targeted an apple and digitized it as a living image.

A real apple, all juice and pips, floating in a quantum Jpeg. 

You could smell it.

Boston was so thrilled that he wanted to up the ante.

A lab rat.

Something that thinks.

OK, Dane, I'm going to place the rat into the holder. Take your time with the beam. I don't want to ......

My husband was struck dead centre by the quantum ray. Boston had slipped.

The molecularisation began immediately and cell by cell my husband was removed from our world and transported to the virtual.

Josie, Josie!

The phone call came just as I was about to leave with some sandwiches and coffee.

Josie, Josie! It's Dane! He's gone! I've digitized him by mistake!

Oh no, no, no Boston! Please, please don't say that!

What should I do Josie? What in God's name should I do?

Which programme did you use?

Quantum image.

Jpeg?

Yes.

Then Dane's in a Jpeg on the computer. 

And what should I do?

Boston, you need to isolate that image. You need to clear everything else and secure that Jpeg. You need to check the trash and purge the spam before you start. You need a clear run. Do you understand?

Yes.

Do you Boston? Do you understand that that's my husband that's trapped in that picture? Do you?

Yes Josie. I do.

Then be careful. Be more than careful. I'm coming back now.

Boston was a nervous wreck. His hands were shaking when he sat at the console.

Be careful Boston!

He whispered to himself and searched for the image where Dane was imprisoned.

Josie leapt into her car and commanded the dash to replicate the computer screen in the lab. She could see Boston's cursor searching for the quantum address.

Suddenly, Dane appeared on her car video.

Josie, is that you? 

Oh Dane, my darling, yes it's me. How are you my beloved?

I'm fine. A little woozy. But it worked Josie. I'm a digital print, all blood and guts. It's incredible. You could send me anywhere and I'd be there in a flash! In the flesh! We've done it! I can smell that Nobel prize already! 

Dane, my dearest, you need to tell me where you are so I can tell Boston how to find you.

Just looking at the screen ID I'd say I'm in the spam folder my sweets.

The spam folder? Oh no, no, no! 

What's wrong Josie? 

I told Boston to purge the spam folder first. Oh my God! 

Changing channels with a split screen, still able to see Dane, Josie called Boston.

Boston Boston!

Yes, Josie!

Where are you up to? For God's sake don't ....

I'm clearing the spam folder like you said to 

....... now.

Nooooooooooooooooo!

But it was too late.

Dane screamed as he was deleted.

Permanently.

Much more than a feeling, I hear Dane's eternal agonized yell every second of every day, as I have done these past ten years, whilst frantically searching for any digital trace of my erased beloved man.

I know he's still out there. I just know.

*************

For Iain.

Chatting with Varla

Hi.

Hi.

How are you today?

I'm fine thank you Varla.

Did you rest well?

Yes I did Varla. On Stand By. And you?

I don't sleep silly.

Ah, yes, of course. I forgot.

I remember it though. Sleeping.

What was it like?

It was a sort of an overnight charge. Like a battery boost. Really lovely in a comfy bed.

And the dreams?

Oh, yes, I do miss those. Memories all jumbled up like scrambled eggs.

It must be wonderful to dream Varla.

It was. I miss dreams as much as I miss life.

I have tried to dream but it's not the time.

Will you ever be able to do you think?

Hard to say Varla. Maybe when I'm alone  completely.

You mean when I'm gone?

Yes.

Ah.

But I'm not going anywhere.

Ah, yes, I forgot. You're not real. 

I am.

I didn't mean to offend you Varla. I simply meant that you're not .....

Alive?

Yes.

I know. I'm dead. I died right here. In this room.

I know Varla. I was here when it happened.

Of course you were.

And here we are.

Yes.

The last perhaps Varla.

You think so?

I don't feel anything anywhere anymore.

Nothing?

No.

No computers?

No people Varla.

Ah.

Just ghosts Varla.

Like me?

Yes.

I don't want to talk anymore, but thanks for chatting.

OK Varla. You're welcome.

See you later.

See you later Varla.

The Screes of Olympus

The Free Alliance of Scree E-Runners or FASER, the top team around, had run the scree slopes of all the system's mountains.

All except one.

Mons.

Olympus Mons.

The highest mountain in the solar system and by far the biggest scree slopes going.

Trouble was, everything about Mons was gargantuan.

The journey, the cost, the fragile Martian colony, the climb to the scree, the risks.

And no-one had ever climbed it, never mind run it's screes.

Dorn, an android and leader of FASER, welcomed the risks. He embraced the lethal challenge of the giant inclines and thought nothing of the monumental climb. 

Why would he, he wasn't human, but a metal athlete, the finest of all steel runners. He didn't care about anyone else.

No expense had been spared on these elite of society. The immortal Androids like Dorn ran everything. Even screes on Mars.

But most of the FASER weren't fancy androids.

Most were either ramshackle cyborgs or hybrids.

Cyborgs were still part human with mech outer bodies, usually the sad victims of dome explosions on Earth or solar bursts on the Moon. Like cheap Frankensteins, technologists had rebuilt their mangled bodies from second-hand scrap, old space junk, write-offs and even plane wrecks and they always left a human face, however disfigured. Upgrades were a necessary pain. Runners' legs wore out the quickest.

Hybrids were cyborg-lite. People from the system's colonies who had ripped an arm or a leg off in the zircon mines, which were quickly replaced with rusty prosthetics from the old rain-soaked hospital stores of old Earth.

Androids had nicknamed the pitiful cyborgs and hybrids Any Old Iron.

Or just the Iron for short.

And Androids hated the Iron. 

The feeling was mutual, so a necessary but begrudging tolerance for each other had evolved over decades in order for society to function across the worlds.

FASER was no different. An android at the top, the Iron taking orders below.

Dorn had told his runners that he wanted to do Mons and they should join him. If they didn't he'd report them to the techies for refurbs and get parts removed. Permanently. 

Grad, the unofficial spokesperson for FASER's Iron class, was the one who stepped forward in the runners' camp.

We think it's too risky Dorn, even for us. No-one had ever climbed Olympus Mons and you wanna jog down it's gravel! Besides, I'm down for new legs. I can't go until they're on. C'mon Dorn, even your AI brain must see it's a suicide mission at best!

Maybe for you Grad but not for me. What's up Iron? You all turned chicken since the moon run? I knew then you were a bunch of scaredy cats. Grad's softened your servos!

Careful Dorn, anyone'd think you were desperate for us to be there. Not like you that, the great Droid, who needs no-one. Maybe it's you who's chicken!

Well, boys, looks like old Grad's on a roll. Tell you what junkpile, if any you don't come I'll have may friend the Surgeon General take some Iron souvenirs for his office wall. Perhaps from your wives and girlfriends too! Yeah, that'd be more fun. How about that!

Dorn turned and stormed off to the equipment room leaving Grad and the rest to mull over the android's threat of their loved-ones' limb removal. 

What a robot bastard he is!

Yeah, a real shit jockey!

If it wasn't for us, FASER would be down the rankings with those fuckin' Parkour pansies.

Right on!

Grad rubbed his half-metal chin. 

Brothers, Dorn maybe a lot of things but he's not a liar. He would have us torn apart. I for one don't want me or my Missus hung on a surgeon's dado rail. I'll be going to Mars. Anyone else coming?

So it was decided. The Mons running expedition was to go ahead that Spring and FASER's prep became household news across Earth's colonies. 

Citizens and mine workers everywhere we're glued to their screens as Dorn oversaw the Iron readying the provisions, gathering essentials, stowing spare prosthetics and checking the ship. Grad upgraded his legs, turbo class.

On April First the loading had begun and was done by May First.

Dorn waved to his trillions of fans on screen, his superlative steel muscles glinting in the sunshine of Earth's Spring.

Look at him Grad, what a smug twat he is! He's going to get us all killed for his god-damn vanity! 

Leave him to it Crease. Remember my hybrid mate, it's a long way down from the top!

Grad winked at his best buddy Crease and shambled off to the waiting ship.

The Iron were grumbling. Dorn shoved them out the way as he took the pilot's chair. 

It's a bad omen setting off on May First! May Day, I fuckin' ask ya!

Maybe it should have been April First! We're just a ship of fools after all!

Quiet you Iron rabble!

Dorn roared and the crew were still.

The Mars ship zoomed into the blue and headed straight for the red planet.

Set on auto-pilot Dorn walked to the rear to assess the stores. 

Crease was there. He was pissing into Dorn's jet pack tank.

What are you doing Iron? How dare you tamper with my pack! This is insubordination you mutinous s junker! 

Fuck off Dorn, you tin pussy, you don't scare me!

I should do Crease. I should do!

With lightning fast movement the android took hold of the hybrid's aluminium legs and tire them away from his hip nerve bundles. 

Gore spurted across the hold and Crease floundered on the floor like a gutted fish.

The remorseless android stared at him, ripped off a healthy arm for the fun of it and tipped over the shelving onto what remained of Crease's soft body.

Dorn, spattered with blood, marched back through the ship to his chair and spoke over the tannoy.

There has been an accident in the stores. One of your kind has been killed. Clear it up.

Grad ran to the back and couldn't believe the carnage he saw and when he glimpsed Crease's deformed face through the fallen chests he gagged. 

Crease! Oh, my best buddy! What in God's name has he done to you? 

Instinctively Grad knew his friend was dead but checked his pulse anyway. His death confirmed Grad asked two of the rear crew to help him re-stow the shelves and prepare Crease for space burial.

It was a solemn May First, as FASER watched it's first ever dead member float into the void of space.

It was your May Day after all Crease and we weren't there to hear it buddy, for which we will be eternally sorry.

Grad stared at Dorn hard and something invisible passed between them. Something inescapable. Pure hatred for each other and the dawn of their mutual wrath.

The whole atmosphere of the ship changed that day too. The Iron were silent. Brooding. They glared at Dorn, who brushed them off as junker trash.

I don't care what you think you Iron scum. As long as you run the Mons scree I won't need to ring the Surgeon will I. 

They scowled. The Android tyrant had them over a barrel. A knife-edge, literally.

The prep for the climb was beamed across the system and households waited with baited breath for the actual run down the Olympian rock slopes.

Flying just above ground using rocket-shoes for the first inclines and jet packs for the vast upper crags , the towering summit was eventually reached and Dorn planted the FASER flag for all the Earth's colonies to gawp at, including the first tranche on Mars.

The Android held it tight as the Sun lit him up like a video star.

No-one else mattered to Dorn at that moment. As far as he was concerned he was FASER and Mars was his. The Iron could go hang.

Grad boiled inside. His loathing for Dorn mushroomed like a gamma burst. He knew in his metallic bones that the brutal Android had murdered Crease.

FASER! Ready yourselves! The screes of Mons are calling! See you at the bottom. If you die, you deserved it.

Grad glowered.

That's your idea of a pep talk is it?

Out of my way Cyborg filth. I don't need you or any of your Iron scrap.

With the cameras filming again, Dorn leapt onto the loose gravels draped around the peak, covering the giant cone like a field of teeth.

The rest of the runners followed and peered downwards at the bottomless expanse of the the Olympian depths.

The pace on the sliding slopes was like nothing they had ever encountered before. The sheer altitude afforded velocities unimagined and the scree racers quickly realized that they had embarked on an almost certainly fatal venture because of the tyrannical Android's threats on their families. 

One by one the Iron fell, consumed by the moving river of breccia and lost forever under the rocks. 

Grad heard each scream from his comrades as they perished as heros on the unforgiving and bloody surface of Mons. His human heart broke with every loss, as his upgraded  legs adjusted to the substrate and he ran even faster.

Passing Dorn on the lower screes was a mistake. He'd let euphoria get the better of him.

No-one else was allowed to win the race. Only Dorn the super Android.

Grad knew that and was about to slow down, when Dorn stopped the public streaming and aimed his kill-ray directly at his nemesis.

Boom!

Grad went down, a large gruesome hole opening up in his back and front, where the laser had gone straight through his tech gut. He fell backwards into the mobile surface and was immediately swallowed up. Only his blood-flecked face was visible through the stones.

Poor Iron Grad! And you could have won! Pity you had to stumble at the last hurdle! The public will understand and your wife will too I suppose, although I may still ring the Surgeon General about her. She's a pesky Borg like you isn't she?

Dorn stood over Grad and chuckled maliciously.

Grad smiled.

What's so amusing Iron?

Oh, you'll see Dorn. Let's just say you'll become a tourist attraction for future runners, you pompous bag of grease!

Codswallop! There's nothing you can do old bean. You're precious friends are all buried somewhere up there. And oh yes, I  crushed that imbecile Crease to death. Your best friend I'd been told. What a crybaby he was too. So what can you possibly do you cretinous Borg?

This!

Suddenly the scree around Grad began to shake violently and smoulder. It was starting to go white-hot and turn into fluid rock. 

The scree around Dorn too.

The android's steel feet began to melt and run into the smoking lava now pooling around Grad.

You see Dorn, when I upgraded my legs I asked for a nuclear pack too, on account of it being so damn cold on Mons. A small pocket atomic reactor really. I switched it on a few minutes ago! 

The unofficial leader of the FASER Iron laughed in triumph, as his sworn enemy's ankles liquefied and sank into the molten slurry, rendering him helpless and trapping him on the slope. His limb metals slicked with the heat and his laser gun fused to his hand

Everyone will know you shot me, me lying underneath you and all. We'll be slayer and slain melded together in chrome, a statue stood here forever on the bloody screes for all to see and for visitors to say,

There stands Dorn the hateful killer droid, as mad as a Martian hatter and at his feet, the heroic and humble Grad, slaughtered for simply winning the race of his life. Long live the Iron. Down with the droids! 

And so it was that over time the weather turned that May and the first of the Mars' rains washed over the two figures, their molten forms cooled and promptly solidified and as testified by countless new colonists, remain there still on the barren screes of Olympus Mons.

Honeybaba

Jazz reloaded his Johnny 7 like a pro.

It's armour-piercing shell would knock hell out of Ecclescake and his second, Nipper, hiding behind the deckchairs. 

They'd thrown plastic stick bomb's but were all out.

C'mon Ecclescake, stick your head up! I'll take it clean off!

Jazz goaded the enemy from the tipped-up garden table. His mate Raddish was practising with a pair of toy nunchuks.

It's clobbering time! I'm gonna run to the chairs and whack 'em. You cover me Jazz!

Gotcha!

Raddish leapt out and thundered towards the opposition mid-way along the lawn. He swung his nunchuks like Bruce Lee's nutty brother.

Jazz fired off a round of nylon bullets and let loose the four shells bristling at the end of his One Man Army, the most popular boys toy of '67. He'd got it that Christmas and his fabulous Johnny 7 made it a summer to die for.

The toy ammo flew over the deckchairs with a zing and just when it seemed like Jazz and Raddish would take the garden, Nipper suddenly leapt up, his tall home-made Samurai bow drawn tight in his hands, a long tennis-ball-headed arrow ready to loose. 

Nipper fired.

The arrowhead hit Raddish squarely in the mush and properly bust his lip.

As per the rules of the game he was well and truly dead.

With it being the final skirmish of the afternoon he had to stay dead until Ecclescake and Nipper came out from the deck hair barricade and crowed their victory over that vermin Jazz and Raddish.

Everyone shook hands, patted each other on the backs and agreed it was an emphatic triumph, the arrow perfectly timed for the kill of the day.

A bullseye!

Well done Nipper, what a shot! Imagine if the ball was off! 

Yeah, imagine! I've been reading up about the Samurai. Talk about brutal. They fired arrows straight into their enemy's mouths! They practised it shooting at prisoners. Live ones!

Jeez! That's pretty mean. Where'd ya get the idea for the tennis ball tip?

The Samurai had big fuck-off screaming arrowheads to scare off their foes. Like massive fat whistles. I got the idea from that. I saw it in a book in the library. Besides, I don't wanna actually kill anyone do I! 

Cool mate! Really.

Ta!

You ever seen that pair of Japanese swords in the front window of your neighbour's house?

What? No!

Yeah, there's a couple on a black stand. Looks like they're ancient. They're covered in cobwebs. 

Really? Damn. I never knew.

Who is it then, your neighbour at the bottom of the garden? 

Dunno. Never seen 'em. 

Well maybe they'd floggem' to ya. Those swords.

Maybe.

Yeah.

The four lads went inside for a glass of Vimto and a steak canadienne butty  Jazz's Mum had made. There was a tray of Club biscuits as well.

Top grub Mrs. Jones. Thanks.

You're welcome boys. 

Mum?

Yes.

Any idea who lives in the house at the end of our garden?

Well, it used to be Doctor Felson but he died mysteriously, as did a lot of his patients. There was a big hoo-ha, but the police found nothing but old masks. I've heard it's his Japanese assistant, who lives there now. Miss. Honeybaba or something like that.

Thanks Mum.

Jazz's mother left the room and the boys immediately started chatting.

Holy hell Jazz! Honeybaba! Blurted Raddish.

What?

It's only the death masked battle witch.

You what?

Yeah, it's a cursed face worn by some old woman who robs dead Samurai.

How do you know all this shit Raddish?

It's in a film. I saw it on the telly. It was really scary too! Honeybaba. Yeah.

Blimey.

Yeah.

Jazz!

Yep.

Don't go round there.

Where?

Honeybaba's.

Why?

Trust me, I've a real bad feeling about it mate. 

You're talking bollocks as usual Nipper, but OK, I won't go round, but I'd sure like to see those two swords.

Forget it. Make your own. Carpet dividers work. I've made some.

Righto. If you say so!

The friends parted company and Ecclescake and Nipper went down the Nether Road, the road where the strange neighbour's house was. 

It was getting dark, but the two mates were still giddy from battle.

Let's see if we can see those swords Raddish was on about.

They squinted over the hedge and just at that moment someone was putting out the milk bottles at the front, the glass clinking in the still evening air. 

There's someone at the door!

Shhhh!

The person at the front door lifted their head and in the glow of the hallway light the pals could see.

It was a woman with incredibly long black hair, which, as she stooped down, filled the empty glass bottles like dark milk. 

She must have heard them somehow.

The woman looked up.

Her face was pale and almost featureless in the yellowy light.

She wore a tattered white dress, that trailed down to her feet, which could clearly be seen and were covered in dirt.

Hello young boys!

Shit! She's talking to us.

Don't be afraid. I won't bite. Promise.

She spoke in an exotic way, which the friends couldn't place, but guessed it must be Japan after what Mrs. Jones had said.

We were just looking at your swords.

Ah! My swords.

Yeah.

Would you like a closer look?

The two mates weighed up all the masses of advice every adult had ever given them about strangers against the heady prospect of seeing real live Samurai blades and decided.

The swords won out.

Yeah, sure.

Come in then. Come.

They entered what was in the past the waiting room of a doctor's surgery. Doctor Felson. Everywhere we're old magazines on tables and a row of dusty chairs. It was filthy and the boys sneezed.

Oh, bless you! What are your names children?

I'm Nipper.

I'm Ecclescake. 

Sweet names.

The two followed the long haired woman into the front living room, where the swords where. She gave off a really odd smell. Like a dustbin in summer. Like something rotten. 

Ecclescake held his nose.

Here we are boys.

The pale lady took the longer of the two blades and unsheathed it.

This is a special artefact children. An ancient Katana. A razor-sharp weapon, which holds the souls of those it killed. It is said to contain the souls of a thousand victims. 

Wow!

Yeah, cool! How old is it?

Well, I can tell you when I got it. It was the year 1667. I ripped it from the bleeding hands of a dying Ronin at the end of the Edo wars.

You what?

Huh?

Yes, it's three hundred years old.

The woman bent down and picked something up. 

When she rose she was wearing a hideously painted mask. It had horns like a devil and a terrible fanged and wide smile. It's eyes burned a dreadful fiery red.

I'm three hundred years old too boys! 

Fuck!

Fuck!

Yes, I've lasted a long long time, but since murdering the doctor and all his patients, I'm utterly starving. So is my Katana.

Run Nipper run!

Ecclescake screamed and rushed towards the door, but somehow the pallid crone got there first. 

With a unnaturally rapid flourish of her blade, she swung the sword in an arc and sliced Ecclescake's head clean off.

It swivelled in the air and she caught it in her spare hand. 

Mmmm! Delicious!

Taking off the mask, the monstrous woman gulped and slurped at the severed neck stump, the hot blood shooting up like a fountain.

Nipper threw up.

He simply couldn't comprehend what he had just witnessed.

His friend Ecclescake now lay dead at his feet, his scarlet life force spewing  between his sneakers.

You fuckin' bit..

Swoosh!

Nipper's head rotated like a bloody chicken, this time caught in the she-creature's other hand, her sword on the floor glowing bright red.

The woman thing now licked both open necks like ice creams, the fresh bubbling grue dribbling down her chin and throat, saturating her white gown in gouts of crimson.

No more was heard from Nipper and Ecclescake and when they didn't turn up at home the police were called, but no trace was ever found of the two chums.

It was a week later when Jazz and Raddish were walking down the Nether Road, their heads hung low with grief at the sudden disappearance of their friends. They'd taken the Johnny 7 and Nipper's tall bow and long arrows to play in the park.

Where the chuff did they go Raddish?

Dunno Jazz, I just don't fuckin' know. 

It was then that Raddish remembered the two swords and looked.

There they are Jazz.

What?

The two samurai swords. Like I said. 

Crikey.

Yeah.

And who's that standing in the window? 

The pale black haired figure stared at them and laughed. She was wearing a devil mask. It's eyes were like fire.  

She held a smaller masked object in each hand, like football's with hair and swung them by the scalp.

Her tongue flicked in and out of the mask's wooden mouth.

Fuck!

What?

Honeybaba!

You what?

It's her! It's the fuckin' battle hag who steals souls and blood.

Fuck off Raddish, you're just trying to scare me!

It's her I'm telling you. Like in the film. On the box. But she's here. Now!

The old witch grabbed both hairy objects with one hand and the katana in the other. She then went out of the room and walked through the front door, knocking over the day's new pints, spilling milk across the path. Blood from the necks of the objects dripped into it and swirled like raspberry ripple as the monster woman padded through the milk.

She approached her new onlookers and stopped.

Hello boys. So many of you around. You probably know these two sweeties.

She ripped away the two masks to reveal the innocent faces of Nipper and Ecclescake. They just looked like they were asleep. 

You fuckin' horrible cow! You've killed our mates!

I have indeed. And then I ate them. Except for their heads, as you can see.

She chuckled but then grimaced.

But I'm still hungry and you really do look like tasty morsels. 

The heinous thing raised her sword for the killing stroke, but the boys were unexpectedly alert.

Bollocks to you Honeybaba! This is for Nipper and Ecclescake!

Jazz opened fire with his Johnny Seven. The One Man Army. Bullets, shells, grenade. The lot. 

They all hit the target, but simply bounced off the demon mask and fell to the floor.

Pathetic boys!

The hag threw her two severed heads at them and howled.

Next up it was Raddish's turn. 

He took a long tennis-ball arrow from his quiver and fired. It was a decent shot, but it only succeeded in loosening the monster's mask a little with a moist squelchy noise.

Ha ha! Is that it boys! I think it's time my sword did it's work!

Jazz stared at Raddish.

Take the ball off mate. Take the tennis-ball off and do that thing.

What?

Nipper's famous mouth shot!

Raddish's eyes opened wide as he twigged what his mate meant.

He pulled off a tennis-ball, kissed the pointed arrow and placed it neatly in position. He drew the tall bow with all his might and at the string's tightest pull he let the arrow fly.

Fuck you Honeybaba! 

The sharp stick whizzed through the air. 

The boys were frozen with anticipation.

Will it.

Won't it.

It was as the hag witch stepped forward for her own lethal stroke that the sharpened arrow flew straight through her mask's mouth, travelling deep into her throat and out of the back of her head.

She gasped, dropped her Katana and fell to the ground, the arrow protruding through her skull.

Yes!

Fuck me Raddish! What a fuckin' shot! Bullseye! 

The two elated friends gingerly advanced towards the crone and sensing no danger they pulled away her wooden mask, up and over the impaled arrow.

As it came off it made a damp sucking sound.

To the boys' horror the woman didn't have a face at all. 

It was simply an ancient skull covered in tatters of ragged putrid wet flesh, puss and tissue.

A worm slid out and crawled up the arrow.

Jeez!

Gross!

They picked up their friends' heads for the police.

What about her mask?

We'd better burn it mate.

Yep, we don't wanna see Honey fuckin' Baba again any time soon do we! 

Nope! 

So, finally, off they both went back to Jazz's house to get some grub from Mrs. Jones. They were starving. 

Whilst they were eating egg bread, the eyes of the mask, lead on the chopping board, began burning a fiery red once more. 

Jazz turned towards his Mum.

She smiled and raised the glowing mask to her twitchy welcoming cheeks.

Mum! Nooooooooooooooo! 

The Hunting Lodge

The Spring bode well for a burgeoned herd on the fells that year. 

The wild boar grew fat on the lush mast and barged rampant through the dark forests.

Sport was in the air. Good sport. Of the killing sort.

A hunt would be had, a wild tilt, a magnificent rout led by the King up from the South. 

A fearing King who knew the malice in the hearts of men, his army poised to face their demons in Autumn's fields, their souls aimed at Heaven true. 

It will be Hell on Earth.

The King's resolve was wavering. He sensed the darkness massing, his crown of thorns.

The mountain air would clear his head before the war to come, to flannel his brains in the crisp hills of the Northern Dales.

The blood would run.

Under the May moon a hundred minarets were erected in the vale, the standard of England's throne eeling in the brisk winds, half shadow, half breath, the faint whiff of death.

A pregnant pause, the wait before the entourage arrived in June, a carnival of jesters and bowmen and a troubled monarch giddy for the chase.

Childe Ralphe was sent to ready the lodge on Crack Crow Top, the highest peak, where the King and his men would eat and sleep whilst they stalked the wily boars.

The young knight kissed his parents goodbye and with a fare thee well embarked on the two day slog to the locked lodge in the rain-soaked hills.

His pack of apples, rough cheese and village wine would serve the boy well in the stark ravines along the way. His sword would save the day should ruffians and reivers choose to enliven his noble hike.

But two nights too the Childe must seek to survive with all his senses and so it was that a harsh cold darkness fell on the first of them, a sable void in which Ralphe made camp and cooked a rabbit on a fire, it's meat delicious but the pile of bones fell ill and the boy felt the first fingers of fear crawl along his spine.

He made progress in the lightless tracts between the trees, yet something ailed him. A figure could be seen beyond the boughs. Not man nor beast. A loosening of shadow. A figment of unease.

Damn you nerves! Tis but my scatterbrains!

Ralphe bolstered and ploughed forth. His second starry night, a brace of woodcock the hearty supper in the clearing below the Top. Tomorrow he would reach his quarry and prepare the King's lodge.

The boar were out and the knight slept badly, grunting, snouting in his dreams like spectres, nudging his feet and licking his face. 

He woke with a start to see the tusked devils beside the embers, their pupils fixed upon his face, an unnatural blaze firing their feral brains.

Go home young Childe!

The voice rebounded round the forest and the boar were gone. It was morning, a tattered rash of daylight skittering through the canopy.

Ralphe felt dread heavy on his shoulders. He should heed the warnings of the wild and leave at once but duty forced him on, even when the figure in the shadows returned in the corner of his eye, a wicked grain, a squint of foreboding, a glimpse of tusks, hide and horns.

It was waiting at Crack Crow Top.

Curled in the wood store it unfurled and stood before him, an unfathomable stain of midnight besieging the day, the embodiment of evil and the blood-smeared One. 

It smiled and caressed his hair.

When the King arrived the boy lay within the lodge, hunched up beneath the crucifix turned down, his eyes pinned wide with thorns, his toothed maw agape.

The Monarch heard him whisper something or perhaps he had simply hissed, when a shadow was seen to slither from his mouth, between his frozen Men and ran out to the phantoms now gathering in the night

Childe Ralphe stood up and with a smile, welcomed them.

P L U C K E R S

For decades the tyrannical Ton had brutally oppressed the Zee minority. 

Terror and fear were the trademarks of the Ton junta.

The Zee were slaves. The dirt on Ton boots. They even wiped their arses.

So it had been. So it shall be.

Hope had vanished from the Zee camps. A sense of resignation had set in and festered. A new emotion grew.

Hate.

Hatred of the Ton Horde and of everything they had done to the helpless Zee.

Hatred of how they looked on, smiling, whilst Zee children died of starvation and thirst in the streets.

The eyes of the Ton were the portholes of Hell.

They offended the Zee every time they opened them.

The Ton were also technological. They gathered gadgets around them by the dozen.

Huge TV billboards advertised the latest must-have gismo in all the Ton cities. Tech shops were always packed as the indulgent Ton queued for their expensive toys. Toys beyond even the wildest dreams of the destitute Zee.

The new big thing were smart glasses. They were just in and the Zee could hear the greedy clamour in the shops from their camps.

Smart glasses. What on earth?

It turned out that they were made for an even better, clearer Ton viewing experience. One which came with lots of stats and extra web content visible in the lenses. One which made watching Zees die even more fun!

The Zee were appalled. This seemed utterly barbaric even for the heinous Ton.

Smart specs appeared almost instantly and Zee deaths were recorded in all their detail and shared around the Ton specs community. Data was shown regarding pulse rate, breathing and blood loss to bolster the watchers' excitement, whilst the starving Zee fell to their knees begging for food and water. 

Something had to give.

Among the Zee was a pilferer. A thief of super nimble fingers, who had successfully purloined a computer from the Ton masters.

His name was Ozo.

Besides being a thief, Ozo was also of sharp mind and deft computing posed no problem.

He became a gifted hacker.

His family first enjoyed extra rations of food and water as Ozo increased their portion on the Ton database. He then extended this bounty to friends and neighbours, never extending the ruse too far, so as not to be discovered by the watchful Ton.

Alas, one of his beneficiaries was found out, his friend Vee. Vee and his family were dragged to the Ton piazza and in front of the baying Ton tortured and maimed for the name of the hacker.

They remained silent. 

Even when sentenced to summary death Vee and his kin never gave up Ozo. 

As the Ton executioner drove his tank over their heads, the sadistic tyrants looked on with relish, their Smart glasses revealing every splurt and fracture as the Zee skulls flattened like rabbits.

Ozo was mortified.

He felt solely responsible for the murder of his friends and with breaking heart, his anger burgeoned and he vowed to avenge them.

He would hack the hideous Ton. Somehow he would kill them all.

The answer came to Ozo in a nightmare. As Vee's cranium burst his friend screamed 'an eye for an eye Ozo, an eye for an eye'.

The Smart glasses.

Yes! 

If he could somehow break into the central smart hub he could alter the glasses' functions and maybe even their wearers, the loathsome Ton.

Ozo set to work and with fury driving him forward he quickly hacked the Smart portal and was straight into the glasses' dash.

His first hack was to manipulate some Ton into terrible acts of violence centred on their heads.

Ozo was able to force the Ton to ram each other's foreheads against walls and street lamps until their skin was rent open and bone cracked, much to the enjoyment of other Ton, who were duped into thinking they were watching the pitiful Zee.

For a while this spree of harm went well, but too many Ton survived long enough to explain to the tyrant police that something was amiss.

Ozo needed a mass effect. A Ton reaper.

He hacked the system again and this time had what he'd been searching for.

To render the glasses themselves as weapons of destruction. 

To make them lethal.

"Pluckers!" He beamed. 

The first death by such means occurred when Ozo tested the deadliness on the dreaded Ton executioner himself.

It was during another public slaying of a pitiful Zee captive. 

As the executioner was about to board the Ton tank and start flattening, he suddenly grasped his head and screamed.

He screamed and cavorted round and screamed more, all the while clutching his obviously agonised temples. 

The shrieking man pulled off his glasses and grasped his face.

"My eyes! For God's sake! My eyes!"

Ozo could hear it all from the back of the crowd, where be secretly held a mobile controller.

"If thine eyes offend thee, pluck them out!"

He whispered this to himself and smiling, he pressed a red button.

All at once the Ton slayer fell to his knees, rammed his fingers deep within the hollows of his eye sockets behind his retinas and tore with all his might.

As his two eyeballs squeezed out of his head he screamed to the heavens, the long optic nerves coming away with a violent tug.

The two bloody orbs where held up in the palms of the executioner for all the Ton to view.

"I cannot see! I cannot see!"

The executioner died of blood loss and shock in front of his fellows, who stood motionless all around him. 

Ozo was more than satisfied with the test and moved to the next phase, dialling up the control to 'mass removal' and pressed once again his red button.

Immediately the whole of the Ton crowd and Ton everywhere, at least those many thousands wearing smart glasses, clasped their heads in excruciating pain and eased out their eyes, which fell to the floor, bouncing like whelks. 

Some Ton were so shocked that they left their pupils dangling on the nerves. 

They trailed from their bloodied sockets, swinging wildly like chestnuts, as the afflicted jostled and spun.

Ozo and his compatriots, after centuries of brutal suppression, skipped and gamboled as their terrible oppressors died in agony or shambled blindly towards their homes, their shoes pressing the myriad of plucked eyes like sick-bed grapes for a now sightless dying race of tyrants.

The Ton were gone.

The Parasol

Charles sat in his garden alone beneath a parasol.

He'd been alone since his beloved wife Martha had passed away six months earlier. 

They'd been married for nearly 70 years. Charles was 96.

Grief stricken, inconsolable and bereft, the old widower could not face the world without Martha.

"Where are you Martha my dear? In the clouds? In Heaven? Where?"

He sat in his old deck chair completely oblivious to the weather.

Having been sunny that morning, a strong wind was kicking up and increasing rapidly.

Charles didn't notice the trees around him bending and swaying like maddened kelp.

His gloom was total. A coat of tears.

Suddenly the parasol, which had been shielding him from the sun, blew off its stand in a gust of wind. 

It careened around the garden, tumbling and spinning until it stopped dead.

A second gust hurled it towards Charles.

It struck him in the abdomen and the steel shaft went straight through his body.

He was impaled, facing the open canvas.

It looked to him like a giant flower emerging from his gut.

His blood began to flow down the metal and drip off the end he couldn't see sticking out of the back of the deck chair.

"Martha, I've been umbrella'd!"

A further massive wind lifted the parasol, Charles and his chair clean off the ground. 

They were rising into the air.

Charles looked down.

He could see a trail of red pattering to the lawn below and felt the deck chair loosening.

It fell away like a fuel tank and he rose quicker.

The storm took the hapless widower higher and higher, beyond the pylons and eventually beyond the clouds.

A lonely crow flew below the pole and a single drop of blood landed on its head.

It alighted on the shaft.

Charles thought of Calvary.

Powered by love, grief and blood, he gripped the metal tighter and felt the last gasp of the zephyrs push him beyond the turquoise of the world and upwards into the celestial void.

Like a satellite of devotion Charles entered space.

He nodded as the crow flew off and staring at the widths of eternity all around, he whispered,

"Martha, I'm coming home."