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."