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.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

Palindrome

Palindrome was an unusual citadel. Constant in most factors, it was noticeably unusual in one respect.

Every newborn had to have a name that was the same backwards. A palindrome.

The naming authority wasn't precious about style or authenticity. It was the honest truth of a reversible name that meant all.

A palindromic name allowed full entry into society and all its shining departments. Ada, Edde, Kik, Anna, Iggi, Ululu, Oro, Pertrep. All fully accepted members of the community since birth.

The name's the ticket it said on the mirrors.

So woe betide if anyone disobeyed the decree of the palindrome. The strongest possible sanctions would be applied to the parents, with the harshest of prejudice.  Such parents might be changed, re-written, never to be named again, the child being forced into the care of the citadel forever, relegated to the footnotes for life, stripped of a normal title or worse.

And so it was for Florence, the first child ever to have a non- palindromic name in the city state's history.

Named after the classical city of the Italian state, Florence's parents, being of Italian stock, wanted to celebrate their beloved Grandmother who was graced with the same name. Their love for her knew no bounds.

Florence was a promise and a tribute. It simply had to be. It was her destiny.

The citadel's Father's were swift to act. Aberrations in nomenclature were potential triggers for mass re-namings and could not be tolerated. Consequences were immediate.

Florence's parents were first incarcerated in the city keep atop the Main Hall and then positioned on the Hall's window ledge. A siren blared across all the departments. The girl herself was perched on the Leader's balcony. A huge mirror was erected. 

ONLY PALINDROMES IN PALINDROME!

A large crowd had gathered below the balcony in the square. As Florence quivered on the edge, her parents were reversed in full view of her and all the citizens massed below.

We are not Acronyms nor Acrostics nor Abbreviations. We are Palindromes! Proclaimed the Leader.

They gasped as the reversals took full effect. Nothing like it had ever been seen publicly in the city before.

What about the girl? Someone yelled from the crowd.

I have looked in the mirror and the girl will be placed in ellipses until a suitable name can be found. It is the fault of her misguided parents and not hers! Spoke the Leader into the microphone.

In the meantime I shall be her guardian in the House of Drome, where she can reflect on her future. It is not irreversible as we first thought.

Go home now citizens. Stare in the mirror and be thankful for your names.

Remember. There can only be palindromes in Palindrome!

Pushing Up the Six Foot

It fills you up with gas.
The slow processing, the whims of decay. It's testament the pursuance of glorious slop.
How can we stand or stop its path on which we give our thanks and duly falter.
Death will kill us all.
Derma will alter where fats de-butter the limbs, the sinews stiffening like redundant brass.
It is with great regret that I liquefy,
a decanting mass, a wet stain on an indifferent sun, steaming in a pan like collapsing shanks.
My brains run out of my ass.

OYSTER

The death of men has a new Mother.

Their souls' opening changing them like birth.
When will her hands prize open my own shucked brain,
Releasing all my thoughts and juices
Into the salted earth?
I can feel the rain advancing down my shell as it washes me away into the world,
Diluted, more enriching,
I ossify my existence and become a pearl.

NORMAN'S DEMONS

Norman Winter lived a secluded Yorkshire life. 

He liked it that way. In fact it was fair to say that he lived a life apart, wholly separate from other people.

You see Norman Winter feared one thing above all else.

Chaos.

The world was full of it and Yorkshire was no different.

It was everywhere and according to Norman it was getting worse, a great cacophony of anarchy rising to a fever pitch in God's Own County and just about everywhere on Earth.

He didn't want to have anything to do with it or with the people that created it. He didn't want to have anything to do with anyone at all.

So, he kept to himself always and organised his life so that it stayed that way.

He had plenty of money on his bank account. All his bills were paid electronically. His shopping was delivered to his house in darkness via an external dumbwaiter and he had reduced his mail to zero. Nothing else arrived except water in the taps and power in the cables. Occasionally a rat appeared in his cellar from the bunker next door.

All the usual things left in the sewage, including the rats, dead, of course.

The only real knowledge he had of society was his television and from what he saw society was falling apart. He would eat his tea and shout at the TV.

"You scumbags! Get a job! Earn some money!"

Footage of a listless youth drove him mad. He'd fought in a World War and his youth had been largely erased by the trommel of dictators. He hadn't had a choice but today's lager-guzzling good-for-nothings had.

They had a choice but chose to squander it in pointless violence, thuggery, murder and mayhem out in the streets of the city. Of every city. Carnage ruled with a big V sign at the old world.

Norman hated them all. Those young 'uns. Those workless wastrels. How dare they let their lives fizz away in Godless pursuits, when his entire generation had had to fight for years on end. Countless died and generations were maimed. And for what?

So these cretins could bully the pensioners and pummel the veterans wheeled along the rotten streets to the falling cenotaphs?

So these morons could slaughter their parents and hang the different from the bloody ladder-leans on the street lamps?

Where were they when the lights went out? Where were they when the skies were flecked with enemy planes, his brothers stopping them in their paths.

Where were they when the glorious ranks of beautiful boys were cut down like poppies. These villains wouldn't know a poppy if it was pinned to their lily livers!

Where were they when the bombs stopped time, a million souls were seared and the sands of the atolls fused like glass?

Oh the injustice, the cruelty, the teeming unavenged dead!

Norman threw his corned beef sandwich at the telly and screamed at the Six-O-Clock News, which was depicting ever-growing destruction in the cities. 

Kicking over his Aspidistra table at the window he bellowed:

"You young wankers!"

"I'll show you!"

Norman Winter had had enough.

He went into the attic and slowly dragged out a thick heavy wooden trunk. He had been saving it as a keepsake for a Grandson that had never come.

Now was the time to use it as it had always meant to be.

"Yes, it's time to remind the world!" he muttered staring at the stamped lettering on the lid.

"D. Core II C/O N. Winter, Holgate, York, England"

Norman had sent it at the end of the War. A memento. An investment. A little payback for the years he'd spent testing. He'd felt spent too, so he sent it in the US Army Mail when no-one was looking during the tests.

He opened the lid and there it was, a pristine metal orb sat in a bed of lead. It was about the size of a fist and could have easily sat in the palm of his hand.

Lifting it up he gently gripped the sphere like a cricket ball and stared at its sheer perfection.

Except, though, it wasn't a cricket ball.

In front of the orb was a nameplate riveted to the metal lining. It read:

"Demon Core II, Manhattan Project, Fissile Hand Missile, Once Removed Detonation in Five Minutes"

"It was so damn secret, they never even knew it was missing!" Norman chuckled

"By the time they realised, I was long gone and my little nest-egg was wending its way to York!"

Norman howled with laughter, the bitter tears of old age turning into sobs as he remembered.

"I lost everything. All my friends gone. An entire generation wiped out."

"Now it's their turn, those idle bastards!"

It some way Norman had known this day might come. His children had produced no issue and as years turned to decades he saw them no more, his door locked tight against the growing bedlam outside. He had stumbled across the underground bunker one day stacking tins of beans on his cellar shelves. Pushing through an irregular air-vent he was able to stand up.

And there it was.

A nuclear bunker!

Of all the twists of fate. He had his own atomic shelter once again!

Having checked it's integrity Norman had concluded long ago that no-one else had access to it and that it was completely hidden from view on the surface, except for a small hatch that looked like a manhole cover. A ladder lead up to it and save for the vent in his cellar, it was the only way in or out and it was sealed from the inside.

For years Norman had been filling the shelter with tinned food and bottled water from his constant deliveries in case the worst ever happened and it was time.

And time it was.

In Norm's mind the clock was ticking already and the countdown had begun behind the vacant look in his eyes. Five minutes was all he needed!

Yes!

Something had snapped.

It was wood on his front door. Splintering wood. 

"What the ....!"

He turned out all the lights and carefully peered from his upstairs window. To his horror he saw a flurry of small steel hatchets hitting his door from top to bottom.

The throwers were a rabble of feral youths hell-bent on wrecking Norm's entrance and getting in.

"Open up you old fucker! We know you've got tons of food and money in there!"

On the ground Norman's delivery man lay crumpled, an axe buried deep in his skull and Norman's groceries strewn across the dark street, mostly tins of beans and corned beef destined for his shelter.

"Open up all we'll smash the place to bits you miserly old twat!"

The door began to falter as more and more hatchets and knives thwacked into its failing grain. 

Then the upstairs window was smashed by a flying brick, which was followed by a hail of fellow bricks from the street. One hit Norman squarely in the face and he winced in pain.

"We're gonna fuckin' kill ya you stingy cunt. That food and dosh is ours now!"

Norman staggered into the living room and saw the headline of the Ten-O-Clock News.

"There is chaos everywhere! Society is crumbling! Marauding Youths are rampaging! Stay in your homes and lock the doors! Law and order has broken down! There is no tomorroooooooow!" screamed the Newsreader as a machete cut his feed short. Wild boys and girls filled the news room and the camera was splattered with blood ending the News for good.

Norman heard the front door give way.

"Oh my ...." stuttered Norman, "I must get to the bunker!"

The old man moved faster than he had ever done in his life and galloping through the cellar he closed the steel vent tight shut behind him.

"Phew!" he said, "That was close!"

He was safe. He had enough food and water to last for years. The bunker would be his new home from home.

He smiled widely and help up a vigorous V sign at the ceiling.

"Fuck you you cretins!"

He stared at the clock. It said 22:04. It had taken Norman exactly four minutes to get into his shelter and shut the vent. He sat and waited for the blast outside.

It was only then that he realised that he held something in his hand.

He stared in utter terror and realised that he was still gripping the Demon Core grenade!

"Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

The clock struck five past and melted.

A shudder deep underground was felt by the rioting youths ransacking Norman's larders, but it only momentarily stopped them as they greedily opened tins of his corned beef and beans.

"I wonder where the old bastard went?" they mused!

He Who Cannot Be Named

Slowly men fell.

Cut deep, He sleeps in their fissures.

Where is our Hell when Heaven's lost all sense of itself?

Gently, woodlice drum His entrance.

Grand like petrichor, the smell of rain, a deluge,

Their carapaces splitting like young mens' helmets,

the toying surge flooding our brains

with seductive visions of waterfalls and swell.

so He who cannot be Named can skip,

a cape draped in blood a thousand years in length slides over the dying

and shuts there eyes.

Dreadful are the boned limbs which end us from Night's night, 

the bottom nothing, the bleeding hood of entropy in the sack of our days.

As centipedes grip my eyelids I see the Jester blink and stop.

Stooped, He smiles, a lottery of fangs inside a bag of chances,

and I stand up to watch Him hop.