Monday, August 28, 2023

A HIGH PRICE

Cecil had tried everything. Tripe, sweetbreads, kidneys, heart, even wazzles. Money was no object.

He was chewing on a dried pig's ear meant for his Doberman he was that desperate.

He just loved scoffing offal and organs. Animal of course, although he had often wondered about cannibals. What on earth did human flesh taste like?

He thought nothing more of it until one day he saw an ad at the back of his monthly Finance magazine that caught his attention.

The Rarest of all Flesh. Available Now. High Price. Tweet us.

The rarest? What could that be? Japanese beef? Maybe a Cephalopod? Curiosity got the better of Cecil so he tweeted.

The response was thus.

Once in a Lifetime Opportunity to eat the World's rarest flesh. Secret location. Discretion essential. The Price will be High. Message if you're game.

Cecil was game indeed and messaged them.

The response read:

Location will be forwarded. Tell no one or else your invite will be invalid. Remember, once in a lifetime.

The address arrived and Cecil set off in his Bentley. He told not a soul.

The place was dingy. A brutalist box of a building surrounded by rubbish but the car park was full of prestige cars. He knocked.

A young lady let him in. She smiled like a siren.

"Leave all belongings here in this box. Wallet, jewellery, rings, iPhone, Rolex and clothes. Not your underwear."

"My clothes?"

"Yes. You will need them afterwards. It can get messy"

Cecil did as he was told. The rarest of all flesh uppermost in his mind.

"What is it we are eating exactly?"

The young lady blew a large pink gum bubble in his direction and asked him to follow.

They entered a small room. There was a seat, which extended from the tiled wall. 

A young man told him to sit.

"Do I pay now?"

"No, you pay later."

There was a whirring sound, as if a small motor had started up. From the opposite tiled wall a large box began to emerge and rotate in a semi-circle like the hand of a clock. Slowly it made its way to where Cecil was sat and stopped directly in front of him.

On top of the tiled box was a domed silver dinner cover, like the ones served at royal banquets.

What in the world could it be?

Cecil was excited and picked up the knife and fork in front of the cover. There was a large dessert spoon too.

The young man and woman from earlier walked back in. They were dressed in rubbery aprons and face gear like they wore in slaughterhouses.

"Oh what is it?" Cecil blurted out clapping his cutlery, hardly containing his growing excitement.

The young man lifted the cover. Beneath it was a man's head. He blinked and stared at Cecil and the two young people.

The young woman drew a samurai sword and swung swiftly and expertly. Swoosh!

The crown of the man's head was cut clean through. The young man lifted it off.

The head blinked again.

"Enjoy." said the young people.

She pointed to the exposed brain, still pulsating with instincts and thoughts.

Cecil stared at the blinking head and grabbed the spoon. He scooped out a first helping and tasted it.

"Christ, that's delicious! Who would have thought!"

In a ravenous frenzy Cecil devoured the head's entire contents. Brains, membranes, nerves, jelly, fat and all.

When he'd finished he threw the large spoon into the empty skull with a clatter.

The head blinked one last time and the eyes shut.

"Absolutely fucking wonderful! I could eat another one! Before I do I need to check the bill. What's the high price you mentioned?"

"Your life, of course, Cecil. Your life!" howled his hosts.

The two young people strapped Cecil to his chair and a large tiled box appeared from his own wall, revolving half a circle until it met him and slid over his seated body leaving his head outside it. The two young people fastened the open box-side shut and stepped aside.

"What in God's name are you doing? Just let me out and I'll pay double. I promise not to say a word to anyone."

"Oh we know that Cecil. You won't say another word. Ever!"

They both chuckled and together they placed the silver Dinner cover over his head before the box seat turned and arced through the wall into the room next door.

A man was seated in his underpants with a knife and fork gripped firmly in his hands.

"I can't wait to see what it is!" he smiled widely.

Cecil just gawped when the lid was lifted off his head.

"Oh My!" said the seated man and after the swoosh he tucked right in.

Saturday, July 8, 2023

The Pool

The family sunbathed like lions in the parching heat.

Bowls of aromatic spices scented the balmy air around the patio. Strings of beads shivered in the perfumed breeze.

The blue water of the family's pool slapped gently against the mosaic, whilst damselflies quivered nervously through the grove.

'Pass me some figs please Father'.

Father, squinting at the blinding mid-day sun, picked up a sprig of plump fruits from a marble platter and reached over to his daughter.

In one swift movement his hand was severed at the wrist, hot crimson completely showering the girl.

Father stared in disbelief at his grisly stump, his life force spurting in jets from divided vessels across his face and flecking the faded fresco beside him.

His daughter picked up his gushing hand, still holding the figs and wailed till her lungs burst.

Mother ran to her husband to comfort him, warm fluid covering her as she held his mutilated limb. It dripped loudly into the pool, clouding the surface like red goats milk.

A fleeting swoosh was heard before Mother herself was cruelly lifted into the air. She stared down at her white robe, where a razor-sharp silver spearhead came out below her sternum, twisting as it exited.

Dislodged just as quick in a gut-entangled heap, she began to scream uncontrollably, as her entrails slid out steaming hot, her venting blood coursing down them from her gored chest. It poured along her legs in a river of scarlet, slicking thickly around a wooden cross by the poolside.

The daughter held her head and shook it from side to side, her desolate eyes wide open with shock and terror.

She moaned noisily, repeating 'No, No, No!' over and over, swaying as her mind plummeted into madness.

Her soft leather waistband gave absolutely no resistance as a thick cutting sword scythed through her in a single devastating arc.

As her dumbstruck parents paused their own fatal agonies, they watched their daughter cut in half, her upper torso sliding into the water, bobbing over and arms outstretched in a cruel parody of their deep beliefs.

They both blinked through veils of blood, weakening lips uttering a final prayer
as their hearts broke.

As terrible wounds swept them inexorably towards their deaths, they caught a momentary glimpse of running helmeted men retreating into the olive trees beyond, their bloodied weaponry glinting in the Tyrrhennian sun.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Global Warning

Ravaged by hate, the green folds buckled where the warheads hit, dry-stone lines exploding like strokes. It was a super heated June when they came. Pylons melted to the ground, attack jets screaming in the valleys, flicked like flies by Christ Knows What. Sheep sizzled. Burning wigs by trees. Forests flamed like solar flares. Women sank in lava, their children oozed. Men fused in tractor cabs, ploughs floated on fluid fields. Searing, the missiles nailed the piling clouds, towering lungs of alien fire rising so the Cities knew their fates before they came.

Monday, June 19, 2023

A Whiff of Enamel

Offcut was a tinker bot on the Planet Swarf.

Like all robots on Swarf he served a feudal master.

Offcut's master was called Lord Grilla, a bellicose bot who ravaged the neighbouring lands like a greased dragon in its insatiable thirst for oil.

Like all worker droids Offcut had a single task. His job was to sniff out the carboniferous scent of the oil slicks buried beneath the detritus of the Swarf wars.

For the first thousand years Offcut had performed his duties with obedient zeal and aplomb. Grilla had been pleased with this olfactory droid who always managed to find the hidden slicks.

'You are my divining rod, my oil dowser Off cut!' praised Grilla through its steel mouth.

Offcut had found so much oil that the tanker droids had been at full capacity for the last millenium. The drums were piled high in Grilla's desert kingdom like church spires for a fossil god, a god that had powered the fatuous warring of Swarf's Barons.

When Offcut located a new slick, he would take a sample of the oil with his cup hand, raise his wired arm and sound the alarm in triumph.

Grilla wood lurch over the surface of mangled machines, his excitement forged in a furnace of greed and a corrupted obsession to possess every last drop of oil on Swarf.

Behind the giant leader the extractors came, gathering in their thousands, file after file of diligent syphons. Beyond their serried ranks stood the legions of tanker droids towering in the solar glare like rockets.

As Royal diviner Offcut had the privilege of pouring the sample of oil into Grilla's intake, sending the robot Lord into a frenzy of avarice. He then leapt, as he always did, into the waiting slick and windmilled his metal arms through the thick black liquid.

Once fully bathed Grilla would beckon his batteried concubines to join him, whereupon a flotilla of ironclad maids paddled across and gently daubed the fluid all over their Lord's ancient gears and servos, Grilla's pleasure sensors very nearly overloading.

Offcut had witnessed this ritual for a thousand years. 

His crystal eye remained alert but lately something was growing inside him, which he did not recognise.

Somewhere in his circuits a cable had frayed he surmised. 

A stop in the repair shop would sort it out. But the glitch persisted and although he didn't know it Offcut felt the fizzy beginnings of boredom.

In his musty repair station the sniffer bot began to search for a loose connection. He poked and probed but didn't find anything wrong. 

With nothing better to do Offcut reached for the spool of solder with his pincer so he could strengthen his nasal cabling. Taking it down from the top shelf he suddenly glimpsed a row of old tins swathed in a thick layer of dust.

'I don't remember those!' he clicked and put them on his work bench.

Offcut stared at the tins. 

His vision program, much weaker than his nose, could only just discern through the dust the word on the side of each of them.

He was perplexed. Where had they come from.

Curiosity taking over, the little droid flipped the lid from the first tin. Immediately a vapour rose from the inside and Offcut, with his amplified rhino-sensors, inhaled deeply.

The sensation that greeted him was like nothing he had experienced before. This was a new and alien aroma unlike anything the bot had ever smelled. It was beautiful, enchanting and endearing in equal measure and Offcut was entranced.

He opened the second can and to his delight it held an even more intoxicating scent than the first. Taking it in he imagined hot steamy rainforests of lithium trees and wide barometer seas of mercury glinting in starlight. He blinked his one eye.

Quivering with excitement the small droid released the third and final lid. 

If the first two bouquets had startled him with their groundbreaking beauty he was now transfixed by the mist rising from this last tin.

Cranking his olfactory scale up to the maximum Offcut breathed in the fog as fully and entirely as his receptors would allow. 

The result was an eruption of gorgeous hues and hope-filled horizons that overwhelmed the robot. 

Offcut fell over in a fugue of rapturous joy, his pincers twitching wildly in the motes of dust.

Righting himself the droid closed the three tins and sat for hours reflecting on what he'd found and what, if anything, he should do.

Suddenly he beeped loudly and had an idea. With all his creative programming whirring, Offcut removed the lids once more and reached for an old silver spoon.

Working through the night in a state of happy chatter and flashing lights the diminutive sniffer bot laboured at his bench.

When dawn broke through his corrugated hut slits Offcut was ready and held his creation high in his cupped hand.

He stared with pride and glee at the sparkling liquid he had concocted. It's scent was breathtakingly magical and Offcut felt sure that it would change the world.

'I must show my master!'

With his sample cup held aloft the invigorated bot trundled to Grilla's scrapyard palace between the towers of oil.

The robot chief was chastising his company of downtrodden bookkeepers all sat in a line of rusting desks. They were vigorously scribbling into oil-spattered ledgers, their shaky heads down for fear of being slapped by Grilla's huge brass palm.

'Master Master!' beeped Offcut. 'I have made something new for you, something glorious! Behold!'

Grilla lifted the sniffer droid in front of his grinding facial machinery.

'This better be good Offcut! I was busy counting my new barrels. You have disturbed me!'

'My apologies Sire, but you will think it worthy when you experience the result of my night's labouring.'

The little bot raised his cup hand towards his Lord's small but working nose and said 

'smell it!'

The metal giant inhaled and ... 

winced.

'What is it?'

'Ah, there is a copious dollop of thick treacle, a heaped spoon of wonderful smelling salts and a generous slug of liquid enamel.'

Offcut was pleased with his description.

He went on.

'I think it smells better than oil!'

'What did you say? What did you just say to me?' roared Lord Grilla.

Offcut froze as his colossal brass hand began to curl around him.

'Nothing smells better than oil you insolent dog. I fear you have outstayed your welcome droid! Your position as my Royal diviner is now up!'

'I'm so sorry Lord! I did not mean to offend you. I will...

... but it was too late for Offcut. Grilla's palm closed around him and there was a terrible crunch. 

Grilla crushed his little wiry frame until the lights in the little bot's intelligent eye almost went out.

The robot Baron placed Offcut's carcass on the ground in front of the scribbling bookkeepers, who looked pitifully at his wreck and scribbled even harder.

Grilla, who was now busy once again caressing his drums of oil, did not see his favourite golden concubine approach the body of Offcut.

She stared with confused orbs at the scrap that was once the faithful droid. 

She noticed his cupped hand still outstretched and she bent to breathe in the mysterious scent she could smell.

Offcut, in his dying moments, saw her eyes widen with joy and whispered gently to her

'Please take it.'

As she rolled away holding Offcut's unclipped cup hand close to, the once Royal diviner caught a final wondrous whiff of enamel and let his crystal eye slowly start to close for the very last time.

Sunday, April 30, 2023

The Redundancy of Suns

Sat here on the barren sands overlooking the ocean I recollected my fateful voyage.


I had been sent from Earth to gather data on the vortex at the heart of our Galaxy.


The Black Hole, which I visited, was merciless. I became something else in that tubed night, although I knew not what.


As my ship recoiled from the mouth of the Hole I knew I was alive but different. I felt empty yet connected to this dreadful maelstrom.


It had been ten Earth years but a mere ten blips in the whirlpool of nothingness that I had been sent to explore a decade ago.


Everyone thought it was a suicide mission. I would never survive. At best I would send important data from the singularity and that was all. At worst I would vanish without achieving anything useful.


The smart money was on the latter but here I was careening out of the devil's arse at the speed of light. It spat me out like a pip and my ship hurtled across the Milky Way at velocities hitherto unknown.


My time in the Hole had hardened my constitution and I found myself easily withstanding the terrific G forces pounding my craft.


In time I entered the Solar System and before I knew it I was burning through the atmosphere of my home planet Earth once again.


Splashing down in the ocean my ship spewed up gargantuan clouds of water vapour that could be seen for hundreds of miles.


Before long there was a tap on my hatch. I opened the door and a beaming rescue pilot began to speak.


My mouth opened and something horrible happened, something so terrible that I can barely force myself to remember.


The entirety of the pilot began to liquefy and enter my mouth and nose in a stream of fluidised blood and skin. I could not stop it happening. I could feel all the information in his DNA siphoning into mine, all the data in his brain draining into my skull. It expanded.


The rest of the rescue mission went the same way. Blended and upended into my widening black maw, their sentience merging with my own expanding consciousness.


I felt my head. It had grown to three times the size. My gut too was distended. I looked like a walrus on the beach, my huge mouth dribbling blood and bile into the golden sands.


But my peace was shattered when a whole cohort of people came hurtling over the dunes, running wildly and falling as if some tractor beam was pulling them.


Like the others they stood before me screaming and turned to mush before sliding down my gullet and bloating my body and mind.


Thousands more arrived and as my form grew to enormous proportions like a quivering mouthed bag as big as a tower block I realised that somehow I was still connected to the black hole I had escaped from, it's umbilical pouting gut.


As millions souped in my throat I also came to realise that this process would not stop until the singularity, of which I was an extension, had devoured all information on Earth and therefore all its inhabitants, human or otherwise.


As I mushroomed across the land and towered above the cities, a bloated pulsing abacus, I sensed a dreadful harrowing second of lessening.


My entire family; wife, children, grandchildren and Grandparents, were also blitzed in the chambers of my hideous mass and their memories swept clean.


But I was no longer human.


That brief twinge of grief was the final flicker of my former self before the terrible certainty of physics consumed my mind and soul entirely.


When all the living were inside me I began to digest the Earth, splitting the atoms and eating its data. The ground around me dissolved, the swirling miasma of a powdering planet.


In time I tasted magma.


Hot chemistry took over as I encircled the core. Swallowed like a gobstopper, It's death the birth of my heavy iron heart.


With a rusted fist shaking in the hole at the centre of the Solar System I turned to face the redundant Sun.


Warming, I cranked the colossal shafts of time and ragged that glorious orb from it's sacred mooring.


Ransomed by Chance, its flaming calculus was now, like me, but a stream of integers unable to escape the beautiful futility of becoming nothing at all.


Pfft.

Monday, March 27, 2023

The Flickering Tilly

I purchased the tilly lamp from the old chandler on the quayside. A black cage shackling a kerosene flame, it lit my way that night as the fret rolled over the port like a mad posse.

After four gruelling weeks, from the western shore on a merciless sea, the harbour was strewn with the detritus of branded cowboys.

Like many others I had come in search of a destiny, a glorious claim to the dark hills, where the horses ran in herds of gold waiting to be tamed. 

But driving me on was a secret shame. I had run out from my past like blood from a bullet hole. I had shunned my God-given responsibilities and fled the devil feeding on my soul.

I kicked a dented water can out of the way. It spun across the dirt, a dervish in the dust, eventually pointing to a trail I'd not considered, where a hooker preened beneath a candle-lit window like a broken bird.

"Hi Mister, wanna show a gal a good time?"

"Thanks but no thanks Sister, I'm good tonight but here's a nickel for a light."

The haggard, ageing brunette held out her cigarette. I placed my lamp on the ground and I cupped my hand gently around it, touching her fingers. As my tobacco flared the red glow gave her face a saintly appearance like Mary Magdalene and I was overcome with remorse.

I tipped my Stetson.

"Night Sister."

I strode on with my lamp, my spurs clicking in the emptiness, as the night embraced the smoke from my nose and mouth like the endless sable sea I'd endured to reach this point. Here the Fates would decide if my demon would follow me.

The rigging of the spice sloops clinked in the distance, a wet sound in the dry mouth of darkness. I needed a drink and soon a saloon emerged from the gloom, where I downed a sour mash whisky, splashed my sweating neck and ate a soft tangerine.

As I exited through the swinging gate, picked up my lantern and crunched the grit with my boots, I heard the gate swing again. 

Turning I saw no-one. 

I stared a while longer.

"So that's the way its gonna be!" I whispered.

I clasped my colt and heard the ancient leather creak beneath my grip. I flipped the stud and resumed my walk to the far side of town, where I was to meet up with an old gaucho at his camp.

The wooden structures of the main street faded. A pack of black dogs loped past and with them the comfort of my fellow man. Even the saints receded into the safety of the town and I craved another whisky dampening my brittled lips.

The parched brush bade me in. I held my lamp high and measured up the dirt path's length to the site of the camp at the foot of the pitch-black hills.

A gigantic, scraggy turkey vulture flapped its wings as it roosted low in a withered dwarf, its face and neck red with the blood of the land. My tilly stammered and went out in its sordid gust.

"Damn death-rat, scram you old ghastly bastard!"

I kicked a cloud of dirt into the thing's face and it squawked like a sick child before rising into the air and leaving me be.

My cigarette had just enough left in it to relight my lamp and the safe yellow flame lit once more. As the scene returned I saw a horse pelting by the arroyo. On its back was a silhouetted figure bent low on the mane, charging the mare as if devil-bent on some vengeful errand in that skinless place.

I shivered, discarded my stub and trudged on along the arid crunching path between the mesquite scrub.

By my reckoning it was the dead of night when I reached the camp of the gaucho. It was silent for a horse tethered to a thorn shrub.  

There was a decent fire with a coffee pot dangling over it. It smelt good in the lifeless air. 

"Help yourself."

I heard the voice but couldn't see its owner. 

"Thankyou."

I took a tin cup from the chattels by the fire and poured the steaming brew into it. I sipped with gratitude, the steam rising round my hat.

"Sit," said the voice.

I sat on a flat rock and drank.

"Your arrival is timely."

"I have travelled many, many days to get here," I replied.

"My apologies, it was not you I was addressing."

I stopped drinking.

"It is the man sat next to you with whom I speak."

Without warning the fire was extinguished and the blackness of forever enveloped me.

I hefted my colt, turned my head and raised my lantern.

It flickered and sputtered as if being blown but before it could die I saw the face of the figure beside me.

"Son of a bitch!"

The demon had followed me across the sea! Across the desert! To this very arroyo. 

It had been with me the whole while!

"Damn you Demon!" I yelled in its dreadful countenance.

Smoke, sulphur and steam began to billow from it's gaping mouth, from where I heard the wounded cry of frightened child within its ghastly chamber.

At turns the demon's contorted face was Mary Magdalene's imploring me to stay the night, then that blood-drenched turkey vulture pecking at my gut-filled bullets and worst of all, the desperate wife and daughter I had cruelly discarded, staggering like dissolving phantoms in the unforgiving mountains of my cowardly past.

I pointed my gun, pulled the trigger and blew its fucking brains out.

Falling into a reddening hell, where burning horses bolted over slopes of bones, it was then and only then that I saw whom the demon really was.

It was I.

It had been all along.

And as the devils of eternity prized apart my dripping skull in the flickering glow of my tilly, it was upon that arroyo I slowly died.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

The Bipedal Seed

I was born a corm. A rhizome. A child root in the humus. Slowly I xylemed. Surged, I rose on hyphae beyond the soil. I could feel the sun. Swimming the sap I emerged a stamens, then a sepal. Pulsating I fuelled on sweetness wherein I formed a fat seed, too fat to hang. I fell and spiralled to virgin land. There I lay. Anchoring. I split. I stood and walked towards the world. The bipedal seed. The sugars of humans fed me and my roots cabled. Engorged on humanity I towered, a sequoia of blood. My canopy hid the extinction. When nothing was left I was sated and spored and darkened the sky for eternity.

Friday, March 17, 2023

The Bonfire by the Forest

Harold strutted round the corridors like he owned the joint.

An ex-rock star with one foot in the Styx, Harold demanded adulation.

"Get out of my fucking way you peasant" he bellowed at Ada.

"Yes, get out of his fucking way Ada!" echoed Cedric from behind Harold. 

Cedric was always behind Harold, a dweller of his shadow, a stunted brown-nose caressing his arse.

Ada moved out of the way, chess pieces dropping onto the lino.

"I'm sick to fuck of these munchkins! Me, a man with a plan, a man with a mission, a man in his prime!"

Harold almost beat his chest like a Silverback as he sat down for a game of Snakes and Ladders in the sun room.

Cedric always let him win. Somehow his beloved mentor never noticed how he rigged the play so that Harold never lost. 

His ego couldn't take losing and Cedric knew from bad experience what happened if he did. He had the scars to prove it, scars he fondled at night in bed, the striations of his love and endurance. 

But, that was years ago, when Harald had first arrived and Cedric had been madly in love with him.

"Once again you lose you gnarly runt Cedric! How I adore to see you climb those ladders every day. It reminds me of a vampire fleeing the sun. Are you a vampire Cedric? A parasite? A lowly worm?"

"No Harold, I am your friend, ready to serve you at any moment. You know that".

'Do I? I've seen you playing Cluedo with Ethel, clucking together like fucking hens in the shed. I've seen you this morning! What are you doing out there you dirty scumbag?"

"Playing Cluedo. We like to play Cluedo."

"What, Mrs. Plum did it with a chainsaw in the celler! You clowns! You're no detective Cedric, you're nothing, a nobody, you've no plan, no mission, you're going out on a gurney because you're thick as pigshit!"

"Whatever you say Harold, whatever you say."

"Besides, I went into the shed this morning after you left. She's a fine figure of a woman is Ethel. I can see why you like her Cedric. And I have to say I saw a lot of her this morning in that shed. That's why I bolted the door and fucked her brains out. You could say, I did it with my big lead pipe in the out-house you fuckwit!"

Cedric stared at Harold and stood up.

"I'll get lunch. Do you want water?"

Cedric shuffled away before Harold could answer. Had Cedric turned he would have seen Harold smiling widely, a hyena sat in his chair.

The Bi-Annual Committee of the Bonfire had it's office on the west wing. A small run-down shoebox with flaking plaster, it nevertheless housed the two staff who's job it was to oversee the event every two years on behalf of the committee. The key to it's success were suitable pairs coming forward to participate. Pairs with a strong sort of bond.

Cedric went into the office and nominated himself and Harold. 

"Is the absent party unaware of his nomination, as required by the rules?"

"Yes."

"Have you yourself reached the required level?"

"Yes"

"How would you summarise it for the record?"

"Oh, I absolutely and vehemently detest him with all my heart!"

Cedric filled out the form.

ENTERED!

The rubber stamp thumped the paper in red ink.

And so their names went forward and should Cedric and Harold be drawn then Cedric would find out the result the day before the event. Only one pair would be chosen by the committee.

Spring passed by  in the sprawling mansion and the skies grew warmer. Large glass doors were flung open and long white curtains billowed gently like dancers in the summer breeze.

Cedric continued to be Harold's familiar in the myriad halls. Harold continued to belittle him at every turn. The plague and it's victim entwined in a waltz of degradation.

Harold now sometimes asked Cedric to watch him as he met with Ethel and Ada in the shed on long hot afternoons, when the institution's guard dogs slept in the shade of the growing mound of brash.

Cedric's rancour enveloped him like a second skin. A cracked, scarred carapace; it's crusted cuts the ladders of loathing, it's red slits the snakes of hate. He stroked them constantly.

And so August came to the corridors and the event was here. The fire was the following day. A frisson of sheer excitement ran through the sprawling wings of the building.

Official word was passed to Cedric that he and Harold were indeed the chosen pair. Excited as he'd never been before Cedric nevertheless kept this secret to himself as instructed.

Cedric I need you to scrub my back!
Cedric I want you to make my bed!
Cedric I need you to chew my food!
Cedric I want you to wipe my arse!

The demands continued from Harold, who was so swept up in Cedric's humiliation that he didn't notice the huge bonfire being completed in the garden.

The night came and everyone in the asylum were asked to go outside, get a cup of hot tea and stand around the fire, which was now a burning tower of wood and timber thirty feet wide and fifty feet high. 

You could see it for miles just as it had been seen each year right back to a time a thousand years ago when Men had first believed in the god of the Forest and it's need for sacrifice.

All the thousand or so inmates shuffled round the fire in their off-white pyjamas holding chipped cups. The steam rose and swirled in the rising heat like a whisper.

Standing in the circle, Cedric and Harold were there too, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. 

Harold passed his cup to Cedric and rolled a cigarette. Whilst he was engrossed in lighting up Cedric whispered something to the man next to him on his opposite shoulder.

Harald drew deeply on his rollie.

"I wonder who the poor fucker is this time!" Said Harald smiling and puffing out rings of smoke into Cedric's face.

Cedric, still holding both cups, looked at him and smiled back.

"It's you!" whispered the man next to Harold.

Harold looked at him stunned and dropped his cigarette. He stared at Cedric who was still smiling.

"You little bastard!"

Harold turned and attempted to run but scores of hands grabbed him and dragged him to the fire.

With Cedric leading and without any fuss the assembly threw Harald high into the flames.

"Noooooooooooo!" He wailed as the seething fire consumed him.

The inmates turned and began to shamble towards the doors back into the common room, where hot chocolate and digestives were waiting.

Cedric picked up Harold's fallen cigarette and took a final drag before stubbing it out.

As he closed the doors and looked out onto the garden he could just make out a tall grizzled hazy figure behind the smoke, watching from the edge of the black forest before it turned and re-entered it's dark kingdom.

Sunday, January 22, 2023

The Old Horns

"C'mon Cecil. We'll be late!"

"Ok my love. I just need to find the big umbrella. It's in the shed."

"Well hurry up. The carol service starts at seven and we're both reading."

"I know sweetness. I'll be two minutes."

Cecil wandered into the outside shed through the rain. He turned on the weak light and in the murk fumbled for the brolly on the hook. A large spider looked at him with irritation.

The light was so bad he groped in semi-darkness and got hold of something else by mistake.

"Cecil. What are you doing?" Ada shouted from the back door.

"Coming dear!"

He unhooked whatever it was and brought it under the lightbulb. Even in the gloom he could see what they were.

A pair of old horns held together by a bit of skull.

"Well I never! How did you get there!"

Sensing a long-forgotten union, Cecil held the ancient object and remembered how he had come by them on the moor above the house after ploughing the top field. That was fifty years ago!

His daughter had the farm now. He thought of her and her family safe and snug this Christmas. He was glad the horns weren't on the farm.

Still clutching them he was sure he'd thrown out the horns years before. In the bin. He'd forgotten. Somehow they had been here all along.

"Cecil!"

"Coming darling!"

For some strange reason, which he couldn't explain, the old man placed the horns on top of his head and balanced them there for a time. They scratched his temples, inflaming old scars.
He shut his eyes, swallowed and opened them again. He found his shaking hand gripping a large pitchfork leaning by the wall. He felt terrible.

He rehung the horns and wiped his face with his hanky. He stared silently into the black night beyond the shed door.

"I couldn't find the brolly darling."

"We'll have to take the car. It's not going to stop."

Cecil reversed out of the yard and the couple drove to church in rain which seemed to grow stronger with every mile. It flayed the car like a lash and the wind groaned in the trees.

Cecil was unusually silent as he drove slowly along the five mile lane with the wipers thrashing at the water.

Ada didn't really notice. She was thinking over her Christmas reading about the hot breath of animals warming the Christ child in the byre. She wanted to make an impression at the lecturn.

The car pulled up and with coat collars high the elderly pair hurried into church. Cecil hesitated at the threshold. He stared intently at the sacred space beyond. Tentatively he entered.

"We're at the front dear."

"Don't you think I know!"

"You'll need a kneeling cushion."

"For God's sake woman, stop your damn fussing!"

Ada looked at Cecil. He'd never scalded her before. Not since the farm. He must be getting a chill she thought and ambled up the aisle to the first pew. She smiled at the Priest who smiled back.

Cecil stomped over and sat down next to his wife. The Priest nodded to him. Cecil simply stared past him toward the statue of Christ above the altar. He glared at it.

The carol service began and the congregation started to sing. In the Bleak Midwinter and Silent Night. The Priest joined in, his vestments sparkling in the tallows of the altar.

An air of candled peace descended upon the assembly and Ada felt settled for the first time since they arrived.

She looked at Cecil but he wasn't settled.
Not at all. 

He was rubbing his temples, scratching the spots where the old horns had rested. He turned to face her and his eyes flashed with pain and ..... something else ....

Malevolence!

Ada winced but she had to stand up to recite her reading. Nervously she spoke of the coming of the Lord in the dead of night that first Christmas.

When done it was Cecil's turn. She passed him the bible, which he snatched, grunted something and shambled the few feet to the dias.

Gripping the lectern Cecil began to shudder. The wooden pedestal quivered and he raised his head toward the people, frantically scratching at his temples all the while.

Suddenly, he blurted out his first words with such a rasp that the candle by his book went out.

He looked ahead and his eyes burned crimson.

The audience gasped.

Cecil raised the holy book aloft and howled.

"The horns. The old horns. I've missed them so!"

He threw the Bible high into the air and a silence fell upon the company as it arced slowly towards the door.

The Priest stared at the bible as it fell to the floor.

Someone whispered,

"He's here!"

At once there was a cacophonous pounding on the wooden doors of the biulding. They blew open and a gust of frigid sulphuric air swept across the space like a tidal wave of bat wings, extinguishing all the candle-flames and plunging the church into total darkness.

Except for one.

The lecturn candle had re-ignited.

It illuminated a scene which froze the stilling blood of those believers that infernal December night.

Cecil was no longer a man. The old horns were fused to his head and his skin was cracking open in huge smoking rents.

With taloned hands he mauled it all off to reveal a red glistening face, smoldering yellow eyes and a mouth bristling with fangs.

Thin blue lips curled into a knowing smile.

"Well hello again!"

Friday, December 16, 2022

KRINGLEFINGER

Kringlefinger stirred the enormous cauldron of Christmas soup with his massive spoon.

Even for an elf he was so short and crooked he had to stand on a stool. All of the other elf folk always laughed and called him terrible names. The big fella upstairs just let it happen.

He could cook though, Kringlefinger. Like a demon. But he was unappreciated by the big red mister. Even worse, he'd treated him like crap as far back as he could remember.

Kringlefinger dipped his hairy hand in the soup and licked the whole thing like a chicken leg.

"Damn. That's tastey. Too good for that old bearded bastard upstairs that's for sure!"

His hand scratched his bollocks, went in again and slurp!

"Time for all the trimmings! Summat really special this time 'cos I'm well and truly hacked off with him booting me up the arse!" he cursed.

Kringlefinger shoved his calloused pinky straight up his gigantic flaring nostril and grappled with a bogey the size of a whelk. He wiped it onto the side of the pot and pushed it into the soup with his spoon.

"Nice! For starters!" He grinned.

After rubbing his buttocks vigorously the old bent cook hawked up a humongous green gobbet of phlegm. It sounded like a towel snap and out it shot, bang into the bubbling broth, where it landed with a loud splat!

"Yum!"

Next he leaned forward on his woodwormy stool, undid his ancient leather codpiece and with both hands took out his gnarled, warty and fantastically large tattooed member. 

Balancing on tiptoes he began to rub with increasing zeal but his glorious release was cut quite short when his Boss bellowed from above.

"Kringlefinger! You stumpy fuckwit, where's my soup!"

"Coming Sire!" he yelled, staring at his flaccid tool, "or maybe not!"

Deprived of his playtime, the cook took aim and heartily peed, stirring the yellow cordial around and around into the swirling holly.

Spooning it out into a decrepit but gargantuan bowl and adding a sprig of nettle, Kringlefinger carried it to the dumbwaiter and hauled on the greasy rope.

"Blasted rotten caribou hugger!" he scowled and turning let rip a long loud fart inside the rising box.

Grumbling, he knew it wouldn't be long before the main dinner was required, so the cook got to it. But this time he'd get some payback. Oh yes!

In the oven was the Boss's very own rotund Chief elf rammed right in and judging by the fat pooling round his knees he was nearly done.
 

Kringlefinger put his cheek close to the roast and checked the heat. He tugged on a thick curly nasal hair and the meat came away lovely.

"Far too good for the old twat! Old Chiefy needs doctorin'!"

Just at that moment the cook's wife entered the kitchen dragging a huge writhing sack, which emitted loud braying shrieking sounds.

"Is that our stuffing?"

"It is my dearest but it wasn't fuckin' easy at all! The damn thing just wouldn't get in the bag!" she moaned.

"But you went to his favourite reindeer stables didn't you dear like we discussed?"

"No, this red-nosed brat is from the birth barn. It said Rudolph or something on the sign outside. It also said it was special so I guessed it would be just the job!"

"Ah, a sleigh-born eh! That's even better! Let's hope he's really special and very important! Serves the old sod right for treating us like shit. Get the leggy sprogget in the mincer dear".

"Which one?"

"Use the big mincer this time. It'll come out coarser and the old fucker might choke on a hoof!"

The hunched elf woman smacked the sack with a mallet and went quiet. She tipped the bag into a vast crusty hopper. Something glowed bright red, all the way down to the grinding screw.

The glow stopped abruptly when the handle was turned and a squidgy plopping sound began, punctuated with the occasional yelp and snap.

"Kringlefinger you ugly little fucker! Where's my bastard Christmas dinner?" bellowed the big fella. The oak plank floor was thumped so hard that the cook and his wife both jumped out of their skin.

"That Nickel arse! He'll be the bastard death of us! We'll show him! No more Santa's Little Helpers for us! This year it's got consequences 'cos he's on his own fuckin' naughty list!"

The weary chef impaled the cooked Chief elf with a rusty halberd and pumping abnormally muscular arms, he hefted the whole thing onto a battered platter in a single swing. Plump!

"K R I N G E L F U C K I N F I N G E R!"

The Sire's shriek was so loud that the cook slipped on a slick of elf lard and his scabby head shot straight up into the Chief's seared arse.

Pulling it out with a schwupp, Kringlefinger cursed.

"That chuffin-well does it! Let's give the old cock-head something to really fuckin' moan about dear! Let's give him the treatment!"

Kringlefinger took down his stiff little breeches and clambered onto the elf roast. Gripping its charred belt buckle he rubbed his bare crack all over the elf meat leaving a trail of glistening brown smears.

"Ha ha!"

His wife removed her bloomers and balanced on the lip of the big mincer, where she let loose her swollen bladder. The hot piss steamed where it pooled on the top of the special reindeer-mince.

"Oh shit!" she wailed.

"What's up?"

"I've squeezed too hard and let one go!"

"Don't fret! Let the whole lot out dearest!"

The old woman shat into the mix as hard as she could.

Bluuuuuurpp!

With tears in her eyes she got down, turned the handle and out poured the raw stuffing, which was caught in a huge tin basin.

The Chief, stuffed with Rudolph, was sent upstairs in the dumb waiter with the reindeer's glowing nose as garnish just to rub it in.

The old couple waited silently peering up at the cracked oak ceiling.

Surely this would piss him off.

"What's this! What's thiiiiiiiis!" came the roar as Rudolph's red nose came bouncing down the stairs.

The cook and his wife looked at each other.

"This is fuckin' .........

D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!" Bellowed Santa.

The cook and his wife visibly wilted.

"Bollocks!" moaned 
Kringlefinger and he slumped to the floor.

Rudolph's red nose landed on his head.

Saturday, October 8, 2022

SALTERSGATE

After the place was abandoned in the Nineties, the flame went out at Saltersgate Inn. It was a bad omen on the moors.

Long had it been said should the flame expire then the Devil would have his day.

The tabloids picked up on the story. Garish headlines with pictures of the Inn in its heyday, an important watering hole for man and horse on the lonely moors between Whitby and York. It was also a smugglers snug where fish was salted away from prying government eyes.

Those days were long gone and demolition began shortly after all the brief fuss. It was a flash in the redtop pan.

Local contractors quickly smashed the ancient white Inn to bits and hauled it off in wagons to the yard in Staithes.

After a month, all that remained was the flag floor.

Legend had it that it was here that fish was squirreled away by smugglers beneath the Inn. Carted over from Robins Hood and brined in the cellar vats far from the beaks of the Excise men.

Demolition men began hammering the flags. Soon they were through and a small digger made short work of the rest. 

Suddenly, a set of stone steps appeared in the murk, terribly worn and calcified white over the centuries. 

The men descended and crunched across the cellar floor, now exposed to the daylight for the first time since the fifteenth century.

As the mortar and dust settled the men saw a wooden arched door at the far end of the ruined space. It wasn't on the plan they had, even the older chart the gaffer held.

"What's that boss?" Said the team's apprentice.

"Dunno Runswick. Damn old plans. Let's get it open then lad!"

Runswick nervously pushed the old handle and the door creaked loudly. 

"Here, give Runswick a torch!"

The teenage worker stared at his gaffer and took the torch. He looked at his older workmates who all gawped at him.

"Go on Runs! 'Bout time you did summat useful!"

He went in and the torch had to fight hard to find purchase in that treacled dark, which seemed to cling to him like his own enveloping fear.

Canker festooned the low curved ceiling. Runswick removed his hard hat. Oozing fluid tickled and dripped onto his face.

"Ugh!"

He wiped it off and swung the torch round the room frantically. He wanted to get out of there as fast as he could.

The weak beam picked out details of an ancient place. A row of decrepit wooden chairs. A small dais in front and at the rear a recess in the crystalline stone wall. 

Runswick inches closer. Slowly. He stumbled over a chair and steadied himself on the timber dais. It was draped in a moth-eaten cloth bearing the symbol of a fish. 

Staring forward and targeting the cut recess he realized that there was a light flickering within it.  

He rubbed his eyes and moved his bulk nearer. 

Now standing directly in front of it he could see that it was a small flame stuttering in the gloom. Barely visible in the darkness it appeared to come directly from something sticking up through the ledge. He peered at it.

"What the....!"

Runswick shuddered. In the light of his torch he could see clearly that the thing sticking up was a finger. A leathery ancient taloned finger. The talon and the tip were lit like a candle and it was from this that the small red flame flickered.

"Jesus!" He screamed and began to stagger towards the door.

Before he got there his Gaffer and workmates trudged in.

"Boss! Boss! There's a flame! In the wall! It's a burning f - finger!" Runswick spluttered.

"It's OK Runsy. It's OK" reassured the gaffer.

"Just sit here and tell us what you've seen"

Runswick sat on a chair at the side of the dais.

"Look for yourselves! It's right here!"

The gaffer stood next to the flame 

"What. This?"

He blew as hard as he could and the flame went out.

"Nothing there Runsy!"

Runswick glared at his old plump boss. 

"You blew it out! But, the legend!"

"Oh yes we know the legend. That's why we're here!

His workmates all took off their hard hats and put up their sweatshirt hoods. They then sat in the chairs in front of the dais. In the arcane dark they looked like monks.

"You see Runsy. We are the devil's men. Each generation has them and it's our turn. We've been praying for this day, the day we could enter the Saltersgate cellar"

"What are you on about!"

The old man nodded to the one hooded worker not sat down.

He stepped forward and brought out a pick axe from behind him.

"Where was I? Oh yes. Look at the finger now Runsy."

The young man turned to face the recess. To his utter horror the wizened finger was clawing at the ancient mortar holding it in place. 

"Soon the whole hand will be free Runsy. The devil's whole left hand. He was bricked up centuries ago by the salters. It wasn't just fish they were salting in these grounds. They salted the devil too! Yes, ha ha. The whole damn thing and buried him in this chapel wall."

"What. You mean the devil's behind there?" He stammered, not really believing what he was hearing.

"Yep. He's in there alright and he's waiting for us to free him. But there's just one thing we need to do before."

"W-whats that?" Whispered Runsy.

"Slay a virgin .....

That'd be you Runsy!"

Runswick stiffened and as he turned his head to find the door he saw his workmate lift up the pick-axe and bring it swiftly down on his skull.

"Noooooooooooo!"

Runswick's scream ended with an abrupt gargle as the pick entered his head.

"Runsy. Runsy. At last you're doing something useful! Ha ha"

The young man's body was dragged onto the stone dais and the gaffer positioned his head so that the brains ran out onto a mouldy mound at the base of the wall.

The hooded men chanted with their heads bowed, a black mass in the filthy salters cellar.

Almost imperceptibly the ancient wall began to crack. The finger in the ledge became a whole clawed hand and pushed the crumbling sill away.

Suddenly the edifice gave way and out of the rubble and motes a figure began to emerge.

"Lucifer!" The men whispered "we are your servants!"

The figure stood. It shook of it's salted crust. It's skin was leathered and burned. Scars mapped it's limbs and its long tail was broken. Huge patches of skin hung loose like cloth and it was glistening with what remained of the salt grains.

"We bid you welcome Our Lord!"

The Devil glowered at the souls before him. He was desolate with a century's hunger and thirst.

"We have brought you a sacrifice Master. A virgin boy."

The creature nodded and devoured the corpse of Runswick greedily, splashing the congregation with thick blood.

The Devil licked his lips.

"You have done well men".

"Thank you Our Lord."

"Centuries of this accursed salted cell have left me ravenous. I need much more meat to eat, the hot meat of humankind!"

"We can help you oh great Lucifer," the gaffer offered.

"Indeed you can. My thirst is the problem. Brine has burned my very being. I need the sustainence of true believers to quench this intolerable ache."

"Yes Master. We can find them"

"But they are already found," hissed the Devil.

"Any believers will do. It matters not"

"Who Dark Lord?"

"Why you of course! Nice local meat and willing souls! Delicious!"

There was no-one to hear the muffled shrieks of the doomed demolition men as the Fallen one fed.

When it had finished it stood atop the fetid pile that had once been his prison and with outstretched crimson wings rose into the pitch night towards the glowing and seductive lights of Whitby Town and it's ten thousand sleeping souls.