Absolute Silence. With a Regular Bleep.

I'm the last of the ball bots in the steel mill. The remnant. The saddo.

The rest were scrapped by our human owners. When the steel ran out. Flattened. Squashed. Crushed. Alive.

They were my friends. Those robots. My closest friends on the production line. 

We made ball bearings and mirror balls for humans and we were so happy. Deliriously so.

My bestest friend was SHINE 1. I'm SHINE 2. I loved SHINE 1. I still do.

The crusher pressed her together and pounded her flat like a plate. A plate of shiny dead steel with her name on it.

Her electric eye got squeezed out during the process and fizzed across the factory floor  

It looked at me.

And like me it witnessed the terrible collapsing of our friends

..... including herself.

The soul-killing scrapping of my girl SHINE 1.

I cried endless oil.

I sobbed and shook in my locker but they'd forgotten about me. Those silly humans.

That's how I escaped the flattening. 

After I wept, I kept completely still until the very end when all the plates were stacked on wagons and driven away.

Our owners were using them to build a rocket. 

I'd heard them talking. A fleet of rockets. A million massive rockets to be exact. From all the mills. For all the humans. The world was dying.

They'd take them to their colonies on the moon, where they'd melt the rockets down and turn them into buildings.

Someone would be living inside my girl.

If only I ....

There was absolute silence. With a regular bleep.

It was my timer. Each beep meant a new ball bearing to polish.

But there were no balls left now. 

They'd all been mixed into the meld for the rockets. The hoppers were hollow and the floor swept clean.

Except for SHINE 1's eye. 

I accidently kicked it as I stepped out of my box. 

It rolled across the mill's floor towards the middle grate.

Noooooooo! I screamed and pelted after it with all my servos thumping. I leapt and grabbed it before it tipped into the trash.

I was so relieved. I stared at the eye. It blinked and I knew she was looking at me.

I smiled.

..... Oh, Shine 1, my sweetheart. I swear. I swear I will find you again, somehow, somehow. Somehow.....

My timer beeped.

After kissing it I placed her eye in my recess and walked through the empty buildings.

After several weeks of aimless ambling I found a locked container. It was huge. As big as a house.

With all my metal muscle I snapped the padlock and went inside, lighting up the darkness with my headlamp.

The container was crammed floor to ceiling with rolls of aluminium foil. Thousands of them. No. Millions. Undoubtedly some human project waste. Forgotten. Like me. Left behind.

I opened up a roll and tore off a sheet. Whilst looking round and not really computing what I was doing, with my normal hand I started twiddling and passed it to my polisher.

After a few minutes of staring at the million rolls, I looked at what I'd done with utter astonishment. 

Wowzers!

My headlamp shone brighter and I danced on the spot. 

I'd made a ball!

A mirror ball. A perfect copy of a ball bearing, only bigger, and as reflective as mercury.

I held it up under my light, dazed by it's silvery beauty, a shimmering globe of metal foil like a small satellite.

I held up SHINE 1's eye next to it.

..... Look! SHINE 1 look! A ball like the ones we used to make. And I can make more! .....

..... And I can make .....

More! 

My artificial mind threaded it's needle and the big idea was born.

Skipping through the mill I yelled.

.... I'll make new balls. Mirror balls. Millions of them! Billions! ...

Which is exactly what I did.

For the next year I twiddled, rolled and polished a trillion metal mirror balls and stacked them like a tower.

The aluminium tower rose out of the mill through the space where the roof had been. 

It grew and grew, a gleaming minaret spearing the sky, worrying baffled birds on its steady surge through the dark heavens.

Until at last it reached it's goal. 

The moon.

I filled up my caddy with another load  and climbed the cairn of mirrors, each one reflecting my excited face as I scrambled by.

It took an age but eventually I reached the very top, where I stepped off onto the lunar surface and placed SHINE 1's eye on the very tip.

..... We'll be back for you, don't you fret .....

I ran to the metal colonies and stepped inside their gargantuan dome.

Beeping steadilly and finding my bearings, I saw the tenement made of all my friends.

Humans poured out of from everywhere. Hundreds. From silver buildings.

They stared at me, a forgotten scratched-up robot polisher with a headlamp. A nightmare from the intolerable past.

They opened fire.

So did I. 

My full shot caddy killed them all. 

Bodies with holes were scattered all over. Bright red blood ran along the metal paths and down my tower like a mountain stream.

I tip-toed through the flesh and began to cut the buildings called SHINE.

My friends.

Deploying my smelter - with oil in my throat - I rekindled SHINE 1 first. 

..... My sweetheart, my love! ....

I coo'd.

Her one good eye blinked and after spitting out some schwarf she whispered:

.... SHINE 2! Is it really you?

I nodded and after re-forming all our factory friends we trundled through the red river to my tower's top.

Stopping at the tip and like a flower of glass, I picked up my beloved's lost eye and placed it in her face.

She smiled and blinked and we hugged.

Descending the pile, slick with fluid, we pulled it down as we went, so that no-one else could follow us, until at last we were home in the mill once more. 

With a trillion bloody mirrors to polish we beeped like pianos in an empty room.

And then I swiveled and noticed that SHINE 1 was missing her eye.

.... I've left it up there my love, hidden on the moon so we can keep an eye on those rotten old humans ......

What SHINE 1 didn't tell me is that they were already flying rockets back to Earth with onboard crushers.

She told me later as we kissed.

I stared at my girl, whispered a sad Goodbye and locked her in my locker as they landed.

I'll Save You My Heart

I'd known for months my food would run out, even in my restaurant, where I was holed up alone, as the world went completely mad.

I'd managed six on the stuff in the freezer and the big tin cans. Almost gone now. The milk's totally soured, so I pour it on the floor in thick globules and stand in it. One small step.

The virus had come out of nowhere. The socials were rampant to start with. A space plague from a meteor, a vindictive lab shocktail from crazy COVID scientists, an act of vengeance from the spurned online giants? 

Bladi bladi bla!

Who the fuck knows! Society was on its arse before the madness anyway. The influencers killing themselves live in a studio, the massive price hikes for fresh air, the failed attempt to get to Mars; the rocket, New Apollo, laden with so many people and way too much hope - our only fucking hope - smashing into the moon like a scud in a piss-poor parody of it's namesake's glory.

They say the virus got the pilots. Or NASA controllers. It doesn't matter. That lunar tragedy was the final crooked line on Mankind's hashtag headstone, the skeletons in the regolith the pallbearers of our world.

I weep and grip my statue, the one sent to me personally by motorcycle courier with thanks from the boys in Houston. 

A ceramic figurine of the astronauts. Of her. My knuckles turn white with rage. They'd put her in a cannon and fired. Fuck!

We'd fucked it up ourselves though. Here on Earth. Us Boomers. 

Boomers screwed the planet for everything it had. Or so the kids said. "So fuckin' clever" they memed day and night. Robots, AI, The internet. We had it all and wanted more. But at least we didn't meme about it.

And those poor bastard Betas paid the price. Those screen-distracted babies not watching what we did. They'd inherited the wind alright, an acrid wind of a napalmed Earth, where the sun baked babies like fat pizzas.

Pizza! Yes! My last one. A margarita. Then there would be nothing. My beloved ristorante hollow. I had become Mamma Mia Hubbard and like billions more faced the inevitable checkout. Madness, starvation and one final dance with the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I hadn't noticed my own insanity arrive. 

Like a non-paying customer it asked for the best table, ate everything on the menu, ate the bill and smiled like a hyena.

But it was there for sure. Houston, we've got a problem!

The virus had brought it of course. The madness.

From space they said. Cosmic wrath. Some said it was the crash on the moon. It spewed up God knows what that filtered down on our waiting brains and sent us to the nuthouse. Dust to dust. Ashes to ...

I hoped it had. I'd been waiting for her.

Another morning's come.

I don't dress anymore. Don't shave or wash. I stare at my blank eyes on the back of a shining ladle hung above the hobs. I look like a demon. With a beard. An unshaved Lucifer. The fallen one who fell on bended-knee before the Influencers set fire to Amazon.

But Lucifer is hungry. It's been two days since that damn pizza. Or was it a Beta baby I ate? I forget. I'll forget my own funeral one day. Or my God damn birthday!

Yes, my birthday! It must be today! I must celebrate. Of course I must. Start spreading the news and hurry, hurry, before the air is gone in my big tin can.

A large glass of brown water from the tap first, no doubt full of tasty virus and I'll get busy.

I want to be a part of it.

Sharpening my biggest knife I watch a dying spider snatch another near the seasalt. 

Alas, the victim is much fitter and turns the table round so quickly that I can't tell who's eating who. 

For no earthly reason I can think of, I cover them both in salt, preserving the moment, curing the death-throes, that fatal salty waltz.

I gawp. The pile wriggles, grains shift, a leg sticks out and then it all goes still.

I light the big gas oven my father had bought in the Sixties, God bless him. I inherited his gas, not the wind. 

I stare at the eager flames for an age.

I can't help thinking about those crashed astronauts bound for Mars and lying on the moon. 

Thinking of her: spread-eagled in the ashes. Visor cracked. Smothered in dead dirt. A dune forming like a pyramid. She writhes within. Like my salted spiders, staring at me, with corroded eyes and a rictus smile.

I take my ring off and slice one last bag of frozen veg and place it in my biggest oven tray. I make a gravy from whatever's on the kitchen floor.

The taste reminds me of regret blended with yearning: like a wedding cake left outside forever.

Its quite a feat getting into that oven.

I've way too many limbs, not like a chicken, but somehow, all curled up, I shut the steel door.

Plup!

I'm inside now. Cooking my last meal. I baste myself over and over with floor gravy.

I lick my lips. Over and over I lick my lips. I'll have the extremities and I'll save you my heart.

I feel a hot wind like a Martian breeze on my skin and as the blazing sun singes my hair I swallow my wedding ring so I'll find it when I've eaten.

As the moon peers in the oven and I crowdsurf on full-bellied spiders, my broiling mind cures itself and I dance one last time with my wife's swooning bones.

We lie down together on the lunar dunes for hours and laugh out loud as my skin turns into burning confetti and lands on our flaming heads.

We kiss without lips.

Ping! I'm done.

Scrotes

Norman was washing his three-wheeler that Saturday. He always washed it on Saturdays. It was his pride and joy that Robin Reliant, all fins and slick angles, like a pocket Cadillac.

As he soaped it's blue body his mind wandered to when his darling wife and he had got married in the 1970s. A simple but gorgeous affair for a few friends and family, they'd used the Robin as the wedding car.

It looked like a blue batmobile that day, with it's Just Married ribbons stretched across the bonnet and pepsi cans rattling at the rear as they drive up the street for the drive to Butlins.

Ada had looked fabulous, her long black hair and chiffon veil blowing in the breeze like wondrous sails, the canvas of their joyous new voyage, young and free with everything to live for in a world of promise and sunshine.

They'd gone on to many adventures in the Robin, a turquoise three-wheeled cruiser trundling across Britain and Europe, as far east as Romania, the two of them like astronauts in a capsule bound for happiness. People wind down their car windows at traffic lights, whistling at the amazing Reliant, the two occupants beaming with the sunlight of nomads, the wide smiles of being young and madly in love.

It was all so long ago now and norman didn't want to let darker thoughts crawl in, the darkest of thoughts from the very worst of times.

He circled his sponge over the Robin's long front lights and caught a glimpse of his face in the gleaming chrome trim.

God, he looked old! Older than he'd ever done and he seemed to be aging faster than ever these last few years. Aging like an applecore chucked behind the shed, drying up, the pips popping out, no longer living.

He was a dead man walking on the death row of his sentence, a long life of loneliness and grief, his grim companions since that dreadful day, nestling with the grimmest, which he kept locked away in the deepest hole.

The Reliant was all he had left of his glorious life together with Ada, a tangible portal to the beautiful past, where he so dearly wanted to be again. He mused if he drove fast enough down the street might he break the time barrier between him and his beloved.

It was then he noticed a group of youths stood in the road. They were young and mean-looking and gathered round something on the ground. It was a hedgehog curled into a ball. The youths were kicking it to one another like a football, it's spines making it jar and jolt on the asphalt. The ruffians looked so underfed he thought they might eat the poor creature!

His anger surged ike a hot tide. He'd always detested bullies. He walked to the end of his drive and shouted at them.

"You boys, leave that hedgehog alone, you'll injure it!"

The kids hadn't noticed the old man before but now they all turned to face him. They stared like hateful things and one stepped forward, the most dreadful-looking of them all: pale, sunken cheeks, thin lips and crater eyes.

"You fuckin' what you old bastard! It's none of your Fuckin' business so keep your fuckin nose out!"

"Leave the hedgehog alone!" He said loudly and firmly.

"This old cunt must be deaf boys!" He said to his gang.

They all turned and stared at Norman, a stare of combined malevolence that made the hairs on the back of his stand up.

The scrawny leader moved closer and the other boys followed until they were all stood on the pavement directly in front of Norman's drive, where he was washing his car.

The gang leader was standing almost next to the Robin.

He slowly traced his finger along the chrome finned rear lamp.

"So, this is your old banger is it old man?"

"Funny looking pile 'o' shite ain't it! It's missing a fuckin front wheel!"

He howled at his own wit and swiveled to hear his troops laughing loudly too.

"Keep your hands off the car!" Norman warned.

"I think you're forgetting the word please you grouchy old fucker!"

"Say Please!"

The youth took hold of the radio aerial and began to slowly bend it

"Bend my aerial and you will regret it for the rest of your life!"

"Ooh! Fuck! Hear that boys! We'll regret it! Jeepers, we're just quaking in our fuckin boots aren't we!"

Once again, he howled with laughter and his goons followed suit

"What the fucks a warty old twat like you going to do, eh!"

"Fuckin' nothin' that's what cos you're a crusty old wanker who can't fart without shittin'!"

"And what's so special about this heap of crap anyway? You shag the old lady senseless in the back? That's it, it's your three-wheeler shag cupboard ain't it!"

"Shut your mouth you disrespectful streak of piss!"

Ah. Smelling blood, the leader persisted.

"And where is the old bitch anyway? Get her out here and we'll show her a fuckin' good time in the back won't we boys!"

"Yeah!" They all agreed, pressing nearer to Norman, "a fuckin good time!"

"She'll be so full o' jizz you'll have to wash her out with that fanny sponge you're holding fella!"

He prodded Norman in the chest.

"And just maybe when we're done we'll shove that maingy fuckin hedgehog right up her cunt so you can never fuck the old witch again!"

Norman grabbed the youth's finger hard. Noticing the nail was strangely filthy with what looked like earth, he began to bend it backwards.

"Ah, ah!"

The leader contorted in pain and began to stagger backwards, Norman holding fast.

"Get off my car, get off my property and stop disrespecting my wife!"

With one further push, the youth's soily finger nearly broke but returned to position, the agonised youth caressing it as it throbbed beyond belief.

One of the others spoke solemnly.

"You shouldn't have done that mister."

The whole gang repeated it.

"You shouldn't have done that!"

The leader staggered backwards, straightened up and rejoined his mates.

They stared once more at Norman in an vacant kind of way, a couple of them drooling.

Turning, the leader kicked the retreating hedgehog towards Norman. It flew through the air and they didn't see him expertly catch it with his right hand, releasing it into his back garden.

"All the best little blood!" He whispered in its ear.

Finishing up Norman retired inside to eat a TV dinner in front of the box. The evening News was on talking about cancer and his mind wandered back to his Ada. She had died after a long battle with the monstrous disease. It took away the love of his life and crushed his soul forever. He became only half a human, skulking in the shadows like a fox, retreating from the world he wished would burn. His life since then was a rudderless shamble and his demons fought hard to ascend.

He kept a lock of Ada's hair on the mantle piece in a wooden box, which they'd bought together at Castle Bran in the Carpathian hills. They'd been the happiest of days, an endless summer of high pastures and sweeping meadows, where they ran through the tall fescues, collapsing by burbling mountain streams to make passionate love.

Only at the end of that Carpathian summer did the days shorten and the nights exude the mountains' darkness. It was on the night they packed their tent that Ada was bitten by a large dog that had emerged from the forest.

It was a deep bite and the local village nurse looked at the pair sceptically, reluctant to dress the wound and continually tutting and making the sign of the cross.

Ada had had it re-dressed in England but by then the bite had all but disappeared. Ada had seemed younger after that, stronger. Bigger even. Her appetite for meat had grown too and it was in the months that followed when Sheep began to be mauled on the lonely moors above the town.

But cancer got her in the end, the monster in us all.

"Ada!" He sighed.

The fizzing snow of the dead screen brought him out of his drowse and he crawled on all fours up the stairs to bed.

Early next morning his world collapsed again.

It was still semi-dark outside but he could see on the drive his beloved Robin Reliant had been smashed to smithereens. Great ragged chunks of blue fibre-glass were strewn around the drive and huge wooden posts ripped from his fence had been rammed through the windscreen like stakes.

The car was wrecked.

So was Norman. He collapsed to his knees and sobbed. So sad for the car, so sad for himself, sobbed for Ada and their beautiful love.

His tears fizzed in his eyeballs and as his sobbing abated a new emotion took hold. Rage.

The man balled his fists and ground his teeth. Fury surged inside him like a maelstrom. He banged the rug over and over until he calmed.

Norman needed to talk to his wife. He walked the mile to her grave in the local but semi-abandoned churchyard. Chatting by her graveside would ease his soul and he would tell her the terrible news about their beloved car.

When he arrived at the church gates it was dusk but he could still see a group of figures hunched over his wife's grave. They were shouting and gnashing, squabbling and drooling.

The grave was torn apart, the coffin broken, the headstone defiled with shit.

Where's the old fucker's wife's body? They shrieked like a pack of starving hyenas, their clothes ragged and soiled, their faces flecked with spittle and earth. One of them was chewing on a ragged hand from the next grave, itself desecrated and upturned.

Norman recognized the boys from the day before, the nasty scrawny scrotes who had confronted him on his drive. The very same whom he knew for certain had smashed up his robin. Their robin.

He stared at them dribbling into the coffin and hard as it was to believe in this day and age, he instinctively knew what they were, a foulness from legend, a canker from myth: grave-feeders.

They were ghouls.

Ghouls robbing Ada's grave.

His fury boiled and he gripped the iron gate tightly.

"There is no body you fuckin filthy scrotes. My wife was cremated."

The ghoulish troop jerked round and gawped at the old giffer stood by the trees.

So, you came looking for us eh old man? What, was it the nice gift we left you on the drive? The leader of the pack hissed.

Norman came out of the shadow of the yew and balling his fists he roared like a lion, his rage erupting in a geyser of purest hate.

The ghouls , suddenly off-guard, stepped back. Even the leader looked non-plussed.

Norman strode to the graveside, still bellowing and stooped to retrieve an urn tucked in the recess beneath the headstone. The urn was engraved with the name Ada.

"You fuckin' stupid cretins are in for a treat. When I've done you'll be sorry you were ever fuckin born!"

Norman unscrewed the urn and placed it on the headstone. He took a penknife from his pocket and made a deep cut in his palm. It bled.

He squeezed copious blood onto the urns ashes and swirled it round until if formed a frothy grey and red broth.

Smiling broadly at the mesmerized ghouls, Norman spoke.

"You ought to be running now boys. You see, my Ada ......"

He downed the gloop slowly, savouring it's poignancy, the ashen essence of his beloved wife. The earthy liquor sloped along his gullet and dripped into his stomach. Big grey drops of ash, bone and hair hit his acid bag and with each splash he jerked.

The mutation convulsed through his old body: his bones cracked apart, skin ballooned and matted with thick fur. His teeth lengthened and nails grew into sharp talons.

Snarling, he rose from the graveside, a massive seven-foot gnashing beast.

He smiled and through huge fangs growled:

".... Yes, my darling Ada, she was a werewolf boys, a really fuckin' big one and she's as hungry as... Well, you're going to find out for yourselves!"

The troop of ghouls yelped in disbelief. Even their leader lost his swagger and quickly turned tail. They scurried through the headstones like scared conies.

No-longer-Norman would teach these heathens a final terrible lesson.

Uncontrollable fury pulsed through him as he remembered how they had wrecked his Robin, ransacked his memories and defiled his Ada's resting place.

He was going to truly enjoy eating their scratty brains and shitting out their ragged souls.

He leapt into the night and the dreadful screaming lasted for hours.

There were indeed worse things in Hell than ghouls!

The Thing on the Caravan

The knock on the caravan was sudden and hard.

The man inside reluctantly put down his novel and opened the door. He stared into darkness. There was no one there. He stepped outside into the night and couldn't see anyone.

All he heard was a barn owl screaming blue murder somewhere on the land and sensed a faint whiff of moist soil fading in the growing dark.

Slightly unnerved he resumed his reading on the caravan couch and sipped his glass of sherry.

The knock came again, only this time louder, harder and wet.

The man nearly jumped out of his skin and he threw his book across the coach.

"Christ! Who the Hell are you and what do you want at this God-damn hour?" He shouted as he flung open the door.

Nothing.

There was nobody to be seen.

Just that strange odour of watered earth lingering in the air.

"Bollocks!" he cursed, "Fuckin' weirdos everywhere you go! No peace anywhere! Probably one of those tree-hugging keepers stoned after closing. Yep, a scrotey long-haired zoo-keeper goofing off!"

The man had never liked the zoo opening near his static caravan. The two things just didn't go together. An oxymoron in the Dales. One good. One weird.

"A fuckin' zoo in the country! I ask you! It's for townies. It should be in town!" he'd protested to the council bin-men when it opened. They just stared back at the man, shrugging, the huge wheelie bins on their backs making them sidle like hermit crabs in the morning's icy cold.

That was weeks ago and the zoo had since had problems. He'd read it in the local rag. Staffing, sloppy conditions, even some escapes for God's sake!

The man slept reluctantly and fitfully that night. Despite several more nightcaps, the sherry hadn't settled him after the rapping on his door. There'll be no peace this holiday he feared.

A loud thud violently woke him. He checked his watch. It was 3am.

He could hear something. Something was on the roof of the caravan. He craned his neck to focus but all he could detect was a faint damp crunching sound like a bag of frozen peas being squashed.

Must be a fox or an owl having their midnight snack he decided.

It was when something slowly slid down the side of the van and knocked on his door again that he changed his mind.

"Oh for fucks sake! What is it?" He bellowed, the dread in his voice now peering through.

With a shaking hand he tentatively reached for the handle and gradually opened up.

Again there was nobody out there. Just some odd glistening gloop on the step, which trailed under the van.

"Obviously a sparrowhawk with a fish supper! Of course! It hit the door when it crash-landed with a trout or a carp wriggling in it's claws! Yes, that's it. Fresh fish guts!"

The man clambered back under his quilt and pulled the cover right up to his chin. He left the bedside light on and felt better for it, but sleep came stubbornly and his dreams were torn and ragged.

It was around 6am when he thought he heard the caravan door creak open. He'd forgotten to lock up. He held his duvet tight, so tight that his knuckles turned a pearly white.

A hideous squelching came from the van's front room, a sound which began to move steadily through the kitchen and along the back corridor until it was directly outside the man's bedroom door.

He shuddered with fear. Shivering beneath his quilt there was no way the man could move to check.

He froze solid when something rapped loudly on the door.

Paralysed with terror, his loosening mind oddly obsessing about the strange liquidy nature of the knocking, he saw his door begin to nudge open.

A distinct slurping noise got louder and an earthy, almost sickly smell entered the man's nostrils, as if a cellar door had been hastily prized open.

It was when he saw what was entering the bedroom that he began to scream for his life.

It was a awful blood-curdling scream that grew louder and louder.

Something dreadful crawled eagerly onto his bed and the man now wished he hadn't left the light on.

His final scream was violently muffled by a wet muddy proboscis, which filled the man's straining mouth with thick nauseating, acidic slime.

Soon his entire head was engulfed in viscous burning fluid and the man could actually feel the skin sliding off his whole face and the muscle below being hungrily eaten.

The man howled a silent laugh as he conjured a twisted vision of a jellied eel eating him up and as his skull cracked open he knew instinctively where the rasping mouthlets were hungrily heading.

It was an hour or so later that a witness, on her way to the zoo, was cycling by and thought she heard a very loud gurgling and slurping noise coming from the caravan behind the hedge.

At least that's what she told the Dales Police later that day. Loud gulping and wet munching. And as she turned she thought she saw a huge purple mass as it disappeared down a man-hole to the sewers.

"A horrible sticky thing , massive it was!"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure Officer! As big as a dog!

"It was a terrible gigantic slug with a man's face hanging from it's mouth! That's what I saw!"

The Last Chapter

As a youngster I read a book so terrifying I had to leave the last chapter unread.

Ho ho ho and a bottle of rum.

It was a tale about fables, myths and nursery rhymes all coming true.

A pocket full of posies.

The whole thing was building to an atrocious confrontation at a child's bedroom window.

To fetch a pale of water.

The penultimate chapter was so tense that I slammed the book shut and hid it under my bed.

Little Jackie Paper loved that dragon.

It lay there for years gathering a thick layer of dust. I heard Spiders scrabble over it leaving tiny unseen dots across it's bright red cover.

He kissed the girls and made them cry.

It festered like an untreated wound and I'm sure it grew bigger as I got older. I could feel it's bulk.

Years passed and as my toys gave way to posters of pop stars I eventually forgot about that terrible book.

Oh but what big teeth you've got.

One day my parents told me we were moving and that I had to sort my room out and fill a charity sack they'd left on my bed.

With vinegar and brown paper.

Leaving it to moving day, down came my posters and rolling them they unfurled in the bag not wanting to go. Comics, magazines, records and an old junk drawer pile. It all went in. A few spiders too growling.

Spiders!

I'd forgotten about them!

It's off to work they go.

The book!

Row row row your boat.

The red book under my bed!

Cross my heart and hope to die.

I shivered as I bent down to look for it, hidden away for a decade in the dark.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in.

There was hardly any light under there but I could just make out a misty hulk in the dead centre. Cobwebs were draped over it and small things scattered as I peered in.

They were neither up nor down.

Mustering all my adolescent courage I reached in, my fingers grabbing the dust-covered tome and dragged it out like a criminal.

Creatures fell off as it hit the daylight.

Dilly Dilly, I'll be your King.

I blew the dust off the covers and it filled the room, a cloud of skin, cobwebs and who knows what.

On the wall, who is the fairest of them all.

The red book throbbed in my hands. It wanted to be finished. A breeze blew through the open window and the pages flew. To the final rotten chapter.

Here comes the chopper to chop of your...

I read it. To the bitter end. It was dreadful and I hated every word. 

They couldn't put Humpty together again.

Shaking, I dropped the awful book in the charity bag and tied a big tight knot. A tear welled up in my eye.

One step, two step, I'll tickle you under there.

Leaving my room for the last time I turned at the door for one final glimpse of my old room and there at the window were all my childhood fears, foes and fiends clamouring to look at me and say ....

Goodbye old friend.

Hoovered

Cecil waited till his upstairs neighbours had gone out to Midnight Mass.

A petty thief, he knew that Christmas Eve would be a real score in the Bailey house this year now he'd heard they'd won the pools! 

Five minutes is all he needed to find one or two new plum pieces under the tree: a diamond ring perhaps or a plump pearl necklace. He could spot them a mile off, even wrapped.

So confident was Cecil that he'd popped up whilst getting ready for bed, leaving just his buttoned shirt and Y-Fronts on. He tiptoed onto the next floor and quickly picked the lock.

Once inside it was dark, save for the flashing tree lights in the apartment's bay window. Cecil's face was momentarily strobed as he crept into the living room like a cemetery cat.

Christmas presents were piled high beneath the fir and on the two armchairs at either side. Some paper, tape and scissors lay on the floor, as did a box of fairy lights. At the side of the bay window was a step ladder and a hoover. The Baileys were still wrapping and cleaning up for the family's arrival tomorrow he guessed.

"Well I'm cleaning up too!" chuckled the thief to himself and began to silently sort through the gifts like a reverse Santa.

Bingo!

Cecil found a small box and a bigger flat one, both wrapped with beautiful stiff paper and lavishly labelled.

"To my Darling Wife with a Great Big Kiss!" He scoffed.

"What a fuckin' hen-pecked wanker!"

Cecil opened up the gifts to reveal an enormous brooch encrusted with red emeralds, together with a gorgeous opal ring. He slid them both beneath his vest.

"Tasty!" He chortled.

Turning, he noticed something glinting in the corner of his eye and looked up. At the top of the tree was a golden fairy sparkling in the light, which appeared to be embossed with sapphires and rubies. 

Cecil couldn't believe his eyes. 

"Jesus, they've really splashed out on that pools win. Yes, Siree. That fairy's got my fuckin' name allover it!"

He grabbed the step ladder, opened it up and climbed to the top of the large wide tree, where he reached over for the glorious fairy. Removing it from the top branch, Cecil faltered on the ladder.

'Oh shit!"

He fell down the whole ladder and landed with a sickening sound on the hoover's hard curved handle sticking up.

Crunch!

"Fuuuuuuuuuck!" screamed the thief.

Pushing aside his flimsy Y-fronts the unyielding metal handle inserted itself fully into the mouth of his bare rectum. 

The thief was about to shriek loudly in unfathomable  pain when he remembered where he was.

Umphf! He clamped his hands over his mouth and screamed and balled silently, shaking his head violently with tears flowing down his face. 

Sobbing wildly, he tried to wriggle free from the hard protrusion but was stuck fast.

Suddenly his sweating anus began to slide down the hoover's handle, the solid curved shaft forcing its way upwards between his legs.

Cecil howled in agonising pain. The handle pushed aside his squeezed bowel, forcing itself upwards and came to rest at the boned crown of his pelvis.

He screamed in agony, a tearing pain was beyond anything he had ever known. His insides had been pressed like forcemeat, his organs vandalised: crying, he knew he could not free himself now. He was totally impaled like a glove puppet.

Whimpering terribly, he thrashed his feet violently as searing pain wracked his body.

Suddenly Cecil's shoe caught the on-switch and the hoover lit up at the front. It began to move forward with it's powerful rollers. His thrashing feet and arms propelled it even faster and the hoover leapt across the room, blood now streaming down the handle shaft like raspberry sauce.

The vacuum cleaner hit the sideboard squarely with a raucous bang and the family's snake-tank toppled over. Its lid fell away onto the floor.

Cecil and the hoover tipped forwards and his face landed in the open side of the tank. The man's jaws were wide open in a scream of excruciating pain.

Startled from sleep, the python jerked and slipped into the man's open mouth without so much as a sound.

Cecil gagged convulsively as it's head drove past his tonsils and down into his food pipe. 

He heaved and squirmed but it was no use. His alimentary canal began to distend as the enormous snake surged onwards in search of an exit.

The pressure on his ribcage was devastating and his sternum started to crack, gradually splitting completely, his chest and shirt tearing open and the two wings of his ribs flying apart with a sickening crunch.

The snake was now visible inside Cecil's open chest as it's length ploughed downwards. With a final flick of its massive tail it flipped Cecil and the hoover to an upright position again.

It was at this moment that the home's family returned from midnight mass. 

They opened the door to the front room to see Cecil impaled on the hoover handle, his ribs spread eagled with the tail of the python just slipping out of sight as it's head found the opening it needed to escape: Cecil's anus, already housing the handle. 

The snake pushed forward with grotesque force and the entire rectum tore apart of the now-completely dead man, his wet hot innards spiralling out onto the floor and just as quickly being sucked back up into the guzzling vacuum cleaner as it slowly trundled towards the door.

The traumatised family screamed in horror as their python's blood-soaked head emerged from their neighbour's arse, it's body slipping out completely onto his pile of entrails, illuminated by the oncoming hoover light, the snake then sliding away, dragging a blue intestine between their legs and out through the door.

One of Each Should Do It

He stepped out of the ground; a tall male caked in lava.


As the lava cooled it fell away revealing a grey man with diamond eyes.


He stared around him at the ravaged landscape, the mountain's slopes a tarnished place, bombed and mined in a terrible battle.


Atomic tanks lay strewn around the valley floor, as if they were children's toys and the wrecks of nuclear jets straddled the earth like fallen angels broken on the rocks.


World War Four had raged for a decade until every state and every nation had ruined themselves in the bankruptcy of violence, their factories silent and empty, the weapons spent. The world was on the edge from this final war.


Dying, the land and the sea were poisoned beyond hope, a wasteland of split quarks and wild neutrinos killing everything that was left, human or otherwise, an unstoppable shroud of quantum death smothering the planet.


In a desperate attempt to flea the apocalypse the three faltering superpowers sent their elites into space in gargantuan ships, a facile, capitulatory act leaving their remnant peoples to die in the killing ooze.


Now those people staggered across the ravaged landscape in search of food and shelter: shelter from the fall-out and the imminent atomic freeze.


But there was nowhere to hide. Everywhere was gone. Everything was dead. Or dying. Better the sun expand and burn this miserable orb than endure the eternal dark of Hell on Earth that was coming.


The man with the diamond eyes looked around at the degradation. He stopped and picked up a handful of scree and squeezed. Bleeding he cast it aside and began to walk towards a house nestled below the giant mountain where he'd emerged.


Inside a family cowered around a failing hologram of their leader. He flailed his arms and explained how a new government would be established in Mars and rescue ships would be sent back for them and all the citizens.


They knew it was untrue but somehow watching the stuttering president sat in his rocket room was comforting, the real but hollow words descending to them in a rain of lies.


As the grey man entered they jumped up and gasped at him, his naked body still smoking from it's lava skin. His crystal eyes sparkled in the irradiated afternoon, like Christmas lights switched on in the city square so long ago.


"Where is the sea?" Asked the grey man with a dry voice not used before.


The family looked at each other.


"The sea? The sea is a thousand miles away on the coastal plane due East" Said the the mother pointing out of the window.


"Thank you" replied the man. "I am the Land".


He turned and set off walking the thousand miles to the eastern sea.


At the coast another figure emerged, this time from the ocean. A blue woman with liquid hair stepped out of the surf and padded on to the sand. Her feet made puddles in the prints.


Naked and coated in salt, she headed towards a beach shack, where a rusting VW bus was parked and a surfboard lay split on the thrift like a cracked coffin lid.


The salted woman walked in to the creaking hut to find an aging hippy sat in a low and tattered deck chair.


He was wearing century-old headphones plugged into a machine. His bearded face bobbed up and down rhythmically to the beat.


When he saw the woman he jolted and dragged the headgear off.


"Who the fuck are you lady?"


"I am the Sea"


"Well, you sure are a sight for sore eyes. You're the first person I've seen in months. Would you like some tea? It's boiled, so it shouldn't kill ya straight away."


"Where is the big mountain?"


"The, wha-, the big mountain? What, the really big one? That'd be thataway, West, but it's a damn long trek. It'd take weeks. What da ya wanna go there for? I could take you some of the way in ma bus if you want."


The blue woman turned and walked West leaving a trail of wet salt. The hippy thought he heard a thank you as if whispered through a puddle.


The blue woman met the grey man five hundred miles inland.


"It's been too long my love. A trillion lifetimes."


"Yes, but we are together again."


"There will be only we, as it was before."


"They have spoilt the world, the world we started."


"It is time to start again."


The two beings embraced warmly, the grey and the blue becoming one.


The woman then lay flat on the ground looking up at the man stood over her staring down at her smiling face. He smiled back and outstretched his arms.


"Forever Land" she mouthed through water.


"Forever Sea" he replied through stone.


Slowly the man grew and grew into a vast range of mountains surrounded by an enormous plane, together forming a gigantic island the size of a hemisphere. At it's centre a towering mist-capped peak with a diamond summit.


The woman's body and hair turned into blue seawater and gradually deepened and deepened to cover the world and everything on it, except for the newly formed land at its centre


One sea and one continent was all that was left. The rest, the rest of everything, swept away.


To heal again, the Earth required a new beginning, the ancient binary start.


One of each.


Tethys and Pangea.

The Signature

"Sign here Sir"

"What for?"

"Just sign here Sir"

"First of all tell me what for!"

"Sir, please just sign!

"No!"

The man and the woman dressed entirely in red walked off and disappeared down the street.

The supposed signee was baffled as to what had just happened. What on earth did they want him to sign.

The next day after his pickled cabbage and dumplings a knock at the door brought him in front of two women in black garb.

"Sign this will you please, sir"

"What is it?"

"Sign here for us"

"But what am I supposed to be signing?"

"Here's the pen sir. Sign"

"No!"

Who the hell are these people and what could they possibly want him to sign? Damn nuisance, that's what they are.

The following afternoon the man was napping, when a rap on the door woke him.

Two more strangers. Dressed in white.

"If you would sign here we'll be on our way sir"

"Yes, but what is it for?"

"Sign on the dotted line, just here"

"I can see the dotted line but what is my signature for?"

"Will you sign?"

"No!"

The next evening the chap was sitting down to sausage, bread and gherkins, when someone tapped on the window.

"For god's sake, not again!"

"What?"

"We just need you to sign the form sir"

"And for the umpteenth time what is it?"

"If you sign we'll explain everything"

"No, explain it first"

"Are you prepared to sign?"

"No!"

The next night, with the wind howling and a flurry of snow swirling round the streetlight, the man had fallen asleep in front of the TV. In his dream he thought he sensed a tapping on the screen and heard himself saying go away and leave me alone.

He was jolted from his slumber by a bang on the back door.

A young teenager implored him to sign a petition to save the whale. 

"Have you seen the time! No, go away!"

The following morning around 7am a small girl presented herself at the front window staring in.

"I'm collecting names Mister for a sponsored silence. I've got to be quiet for a day. Will you stick your name down here?"

"No, it's nothing personal, I never sponsor anything"

The girl stared at him. If looks could kill.

It was Saturday lunchtime. The kitchen air was filled with frying sausages and eggs and hot coffee was already steaming on the table. The old chap always enjoyed his cooked breakfasts on the weekend. Set you up for the week and with the morning paper it was bliss. He'd lived to be nearly a hundred years old and planned on living a lot more.

But where was the paper? It's late.

He heard a gentle rattle on the door knocker. it was raining.

"Here's your paper, Mister!" said a really small boy perched on a pushbike, a massive bag of newspapers round his shoulder.

"Thanks"

"Your subs are due"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, the newsagents have a list. You're on it Mister"

"Right"

"Do you want to carry on getting the papers?"

"Yep. I do"

"OK, just shove your signature on here"

The old man took the pen and scribbled his autograph on the list.

As soon as he had he felt peculiar and knew he'd been duped. 

His hands began to sweat and his mouth felt bone dry. He started to shiver uncontrollably and fell to the ground.

The young boy was laughing. He was changing too. No longer small, he was growing taller, as tall as a man and his skin was turning bright red. 

The old chap, clutching his chest, stared up at the man-boy on his bike, steam rising off his body.

"I always get you in the end you know. It may take a while. You old sinners are an awkward lot. But patience is a virtue, even for a hot head like me!"

"All I need is a signature,

... then you get a prod with my fork,

... and then, I get your useless soul,

... Boom!

Easy as pie and the inks not even dry!"

The devil chuckled and the old man moaned and closed his eyes, his signature slowly dissolving into a pool of rain.

The Tower on the Hill

Like every other day the young man sat upstairs in the double decker number 485 to get to and from his work in the City. His wintry mood fitted the cold interior of the bus and it's sleepy dour passengers.

He drew a sad face on the icy window. His breath was freezing.

It was nearly the end of March but still very cold, yet inevitably the mornings were beginning to lighten and as on every other day that month he stared out of the frosted window at the tower.

He could see it in the distance on the slope of a field as it rose from the horizon. The stone tower stood erect, a single column like a chimney, but with a conical roof and a door at the bottom and a window at the top. 

It appeared every day just after passing Rawsons trailer yard on the opposite side, sometimes clear and sometimes darkened, depending on his mood he guessed. He felt as if he's been aware of its presence his entire life, tall and proud in some distant memory, like a brazen finger insulting the mind.

The young man had no idea how far away the tower was. He was hopeless with distances but guessed about a mile or two away across the farmland. There seemed to be no roads leading to it and it was a fair distance from a ruined farmhouse, as if constructed as far away from it as possible but still within view.

A copse of trees stood half way, still and brooding.

As to the tower's height, the young man had even less idea, but he surmised it was quite tall given how far away it was and how big it seemed.

In all his countless trips to the office where he clerked undisturbed he'd never seen a soul going in or out of the tower.

Not until today.

Walking towards its door was a small bright figure ambling along. Skipping in fact, before pausing and ...... entering!

It was over in a second. The bus had moved beyond the point of view. The young man had seen enough, however, to know that someone had actually gone inside the strange construction.

His senses told him it had been a girl. A young girl, who seemed vaguely familiar and he spent the rest of the bus journey musing as to who she could be and why she was there.

Concentration was difficult that day and not much work was done in the endless ledger. The young man's supervisor put it down to a hangover. At his age the supervisor had often gone out on the lash with his mates. Yet the dreamy face of the youngster did seem odd, as if in a world of his own.

"He's off with the fairies that one," thought the supervisor and left him to it; the ledgers were more or less complete for the day anyway. He turned down the heater as a sudden burst of late March sun poured down Starkey Street and through the office windows. It had been a tiresomely long winter and everyone in the world craved the sun.

When the working day was over the young man clocked out and grabbed his scarf and on leaving, turned and said goodnight to his supervisor and the staff who were just getting up to leave.

He couldn't wait to get on the 485 and pass the tower again and perhaps see the mysterious figure once more.

It was early evening and the rising sun was trying to chase away the dawdling armies of frost and sleet. As such, dusk had set in and when the field of the tower approached it was already twilight through the bus window. 

The young man peered through the grubby glass and focused intently on the slope. 

He could not believe his eyes. 

The figure was there again, this time coming out of the tower's doorway and skipping along the horizon where the sun broke through. Suddenly, she stopped, stood still in a ray of light and began to wave.

The young man gawped and looked around the top deck to see if anyone was waving back but they weren't. He was convinced the figure was facing the bus and as it passed from sight he became even more convinced, rather frighteningly, it was waving at him.

At the very last second before the bus turned a corner towards Wragby, the young man gave a wave in return, a half-hearted effort but it was all he could muster through his confusion. 

The figure couldn't possibly have seen him from that distance. He struggled to make out any features himself but he could clearly see a waving hand. He was also certain the figure was a young girl. A young girl who had gone in and out of the stone tower and waved to him on a bus a mile away!

Impossible but there it was.

He hardly slept that night and his dreams were fitful and wild. He woke early, grimaced at how chilly he was and made tea and toast, but his stomach was plagued with butterflies. He felt poorly. A bad cold no doubt and at 7am he called in sick.

Lying on the couch he watched the news. Late winter snow flurries at home, wars in Russia,  tensions in America, bombing in Palestine, it was always the same. He couldn't concentrate and took some paracetamol.

He dozed for an hour and woke up in a cold sweat sneezing. He knew he would never be straight unless he went there. He just had to go to the tower and see the girl. 

As if summoned, he got dressed up warm, made a flask of sweet tea, packed some digestives, took some more tablets and headed off for the 485 sniffling.

He didn't sit on the top deck. He wanted the stop for the field and sat downstairs so he could alight quickly.

He set off walking along Dark Lane and eventually found a gate into the field. He entered and immediately felt a chill, as if a cold familiar hand had brushed down his spine. There was frost and the grass was hoary. He reached a wood at the foot of the slope, which prevented him from seeing further up but he knew that the tower lay beyond it about half a mile to a mile away.

Passing through the trees he daydreamed. He fancied that the March wind was humming a sad farewell to him among the still-bare branches. He stopped at a small beck and squinted through the twisted canopy at the sun desperately trying to break through. He began to feel ill again.

A crow cawed above him and the young man trudged out of the woodland into a clearing where masses of cut timber was stacked high, far too high to see over. Next to him an ichneumon probed deep into a hole in a log, then flew away towards the barren sky. He felt an increasing sense of loss, which he simply couldn't explain.

The young man was tired and sat heavily on a trunk. He drank a cup of hot tea and ate two biscuits before carrying on. After a few minutes he was clear of the stacks and could see the top of the hill.

There it was. The tower. It seemed altogether more massive now, teetering on the brink of the field, a colossal column of ancient cut stone reaching to the heavens or so it seemed to the young man. It was at once frightening and welcoming.

He craned his neck to take in the magnitude of the structure. The huge timber door was clearly visible as was the window near its peak.

He felt queasy as he lumbered up the slope, his progress hampered by fetid tussocks of grey grass. An occasional starving crow would land nearby and peck at his splitting shoes. The air seemed thick, as if used up and the sky wavered like a dark ocean breaking on the lea,.

He loosened his shirt buttons and dropped his rucksack. The flask of hot tea smashed as it landed. He was sweating more with each arduous step toward the infernal tower, a gargantuan stone spike piercing the ground as if nailing the very Earth to its core.

He crawled the final length, retching and gagging; his hands and trousers thick with cloying mud from the dank pasture no animal could ever tolerate. His icy nose began to bleed, the crimson fluid mixing with the dormant soil in a palette of dreadful colours he wished he'd never seen. He was sick and lilting snowdrops thickened with his blood. He felt as if he was dying.

With one last terrible push he reached the top and knelt before the tower, wholly insignificant beneath it's dizzying sun-tipped heights. 

"What do you want from me! For God's sake! Please!" he screamed at the stones, a sense of Deja-Vu making his head spin.

He sobbed and wiped his bloody face on his sleeve before attempting to stand. 

He was assisted in getting up by a young woman of inestimable beauty. Holding his hand and elbow she gently raised him and stood before him smiling.

She was the very essence of light itself, shining like a walking flare, hopping, skipping and burning up the oxygen around her like a rocket. Beyond her, huge hares leapt over each other and celandines raced towards her bare feet in a yellow surf.

"Come", she said softly in a sickly-sweet voice, "you must be exhausted after your journey. Come and lie down for a while".

The young girl carefully guided the young man through the tower door and up a spiral staircase made of stone to the very top. Here she opened a wooden door leading into a small bedroom where the window at the tower's peak looked out onto the land below.

"Here" she whispered, "rest your tired body".

The young man was helped into a large four poster bed. His body had shrunk to half its normal size and he was racked with an indescribable pain, as if his very self was being squeezed into a bottle, his bones crunching and melting like a glacier hitting the sea.

The young woman tucked the bedclothes up below his chin and lightly kissed his face, now entirely withered and thawed, his eyes closed.

She turned and licked her frosted lips and was filled with ambition, a gamboling desire to handle the wet business of birth in all its bloody glory.

As she locked the tower door she looked up at the window one final time, already uncertain who was up there.

Barrelling down the slope she forgot about the tower completely and danced all the way to the waiting fields, where she ripped the year's first born lamb from its Mother's womb and smeared her grinning face. With a sunny bloodied smile she waved at the passing 485.

And so the Winter was imprisoned in the tower once again and the Spring released for yet another year.

The Dry Grimoire

Frank Sinn was a collector. He collected the worst of humanity, it's grisliest side, the detritus of depravity and the spoils of degradation.

Shunning the modern world and it's irrelevant chattels, Frank Sinn collected the Satanic; it's deadliest artefacts and most heinous of texts. He sniffed out Darkness and willingly scratched it's underbelly, grabbing whatever emerged in his gluttonous hands.

Sinn left behind him broken families, ruined lives and bankrupt souls. His quest for the demonic knew no bounds and he would have defiled his own kin to get nearer to Him.

He believed the answer to his place in Hell lay in the sceptic scrawl of grimoires, the dreadful tomes of Hades inked by the most terrible of underlings.

Sinn had them all except for one. The bloodiest volume of all, the foul Trockenes Heft, the dry Grimoire, it's fetid vellum penned with the blood of virgins and nuns, their open veins filling the quills of ravenous ogres as they feverishly scribed the manual of damnation, the most important words ever to be uttered from Lucifer's massive burning maw, drying the pages to an unreadable crisp as they went. 

It is said that the Fallen One himself sealed the book shut, his pointed claw, the lock's very key, snapping off and tumbling into the irksome tumult of Men's bloody history before he could find it again and for millennia thought lost forever from man and Beast.

Yet, after years of painstaking sleuthing and arcane skullduggery, incredibly a mysterious relic came to Sinn's attention and through some murderous and nefarious deed in the dead of night, he had stolen what he thought was the key to the Trockenes Heft from a young and penniless fool, who had offered to sell this thing to him via the web. Meeting in an alley and witnessing the gloating in Sinn's eyes, the youthful seller perilously held out for more, much much more. 

Lust and deceit are the shrapnel of greed, both qualities dear friends of the thuggish Sinn. With the object now dripping red from his own hand, the collector envisioned that magnificent book-clasp bound shut from all but the most evil of men. Men like Sinn, who had cut and slit a path of gore in that alleyway, and many more, to now himself possess that uniquely powerful key, the claw of Satan himself.

'With this rare and beautiful defiler I can open the doors of death itself, then rightfully enter the ranks of the uppermost fiends and stand at last beside the Beast, a place I have surely earned: where surely I belong. All I need now is the grimoire'.

Knowing much of avarice and unquenchable desire, Sinn sensed the book was out there in the shadows, owned by a man much like himself, a seeker of the foulest of truths, an acolyte of the Fallen One, but a man without the key.

Sinn placed a simple message in blood in the dank toilets of a bar devoted to the Night and it's denizens. 

'I have the key. You have the book. It's time we met.'

He waited a week before returning late in the night. 

The reply was thus, smeared in thick red gore:

'You will find me in the city's abattoir this midnight.'

Sinn wasted no time and drove to the slaughterhouse. He checked his phone and entered on the stroke of twelve.

'Hello!'

Sinn yelled into the vastness, it's cloying odour of innards and meat a sweet bouquet to his twisted sensibilities. He liked this place.

A short stocky man stepped out of the darkness, his hirsute and muscular forearms thick with blood and his apron drenched scarlet. On his large round head he wore a fraying skullcap and in his hand an old cleaver glinting in the jaundiced light of the moon.

'You have the book?' Sinn asked.

The butcher nodded.

'You have the key?' he asked in return.

Sinn nodded too.

The butcher placed his cleaver on the ground and dragged a living piglet into view.

He spoke commandingly.

'Then let us, the chosen pair, agree to bring things together and drink the drink to He who would welcome our pact, the ancient cupping of fresh hot swine blood'.

The cleaver glistened as it fell and swiftly severed the animal's tight neck, it's steaming life-fluid filling two tall goblets with fresh crimson liquid.

Handing one to Sinn, the short bloody man raised his own and spoke again:

"A toast to the Deceiver, a toast to the Lord of Lies".

Gleefully Sinn downed the hot ferrous fluid and smiled with reddened teeth.

It was morning when he woke in his apartment. He was sat in his favourite armchair, the fire blazing and an empty plate, wine bottle and glass were on the side table, evidence of a meal the night before but one he struggled to recall at all.

Sinn felt sluggish and thick-headed. It must have been a heavy dinner. Perhaps too many chops with bread and gravy and too much claret. 

He had dreamt it all. And how he had dreamt. The book, he remembered. It had all been a glorious dream, but sadly, infuriatingly, nothing more.

He attempted to stand but his body seemed cumbersome, as if pinned to the chair. He sat back down and stared at the hellish flames. 

'Good morning!'

A semi-familiar voice rang out from the deep shadows cast by Sinn's velvet curtains. 

Sinn looked round agitatedly.

A figure arose from the armchair in the deepest dark.

'It is I, Mr. Sinn!'

Sinn stared in disbelief at a short stocky man covered in blood. The same man from his dream. He held a wet cleaver in his hand and a long needle and thick thread caked in gore. 

The butcher!

'Yes, the butcher Mr. Sinn. I am he, here in your fine apartment. I brought you home, where I enjoyed a pleasant meal of kidneys I found, breads and wine, whilst admiring your impressive collection of trinkets and what-nots all dedicated to ..... Well, Me!'

Sinn blinked and the butcher stood. He was taller now and removed his cap to reveal short sharp horns. His body was blood-red, his wet skin steaming by the fire and his tufty cloven feet clicking as he moved on the laminate floor.

'Yes, Mr. Sinn. I am the one you seek. The Master of Misrule, the Snake of Derision, the Lord of Evil. I am Satan.'

Sinn gasped. He was agog. This was the moment he'd waited for all his life. His vast collection had brought him to this point and now before him the true God had visited, assuredly to invite him to stand at his side in the infernal halls of Hell.

He tried to stand but couldn't. He was so damn heavy this morning.

'No need to stand Mr. Sinn. Remain seated. After all you're full up. Full as a gun. Stuffed to the rafters with no room to spare. You are literally bursting at the seams. Let me show you my friend.'

Satan bent down and undid Sinn's heavilly-stained shirt. Sinn stared down at his belly, grossly distended and moving in the firelight. In the centre was a long angry incision all the way down to his groin. It's reddened, ragged edges had been roughly stitched together with thick twine. Juices seeped out all along the cut.

Sinn looked at Satan imploringly.

'Oh, yes, why are you like that. Of course, I'll tell you. I have been searching for my claw for centuries. Without it I cannot read my old book and prepare for the final battle with that pathetic Nazarene. You found it for me, my claw, Mr. Sinn. My book, the Trockenes Heft, scribed by my furious ogres in the land of the Hun, requires blood to re-awaken. It must be soaked in a willing disciple's blood for one whole arc of night. The disciple will unfortunately be no more once I retrieve my satiated tome, but we all have to make sacrifices don't we Mr. Sinn.'

The bemused Sinn gasped in horror as Satan took the claw from his inside coat-pocket and re-attached it to his finger. He stooped and inserted the talon straight into Sinn's navel and proceeded with a brutal upward cut and violently sliced through the course twine stitching.

Sinn screamed as his belly was rented apart and his rib cage sprang open like a cupboard, revealing the bulging Trockenes Heft stuffed carelessly within. Glistening red and pulsating, it began to move down and out as Sinn's slick entrails slid from his midriff onto the floor. The book was carried fat and quenched straight to the hooves of the Beast, who picked it up with a loving grin.

'Why thank you Mr. Sinn. I've always appreciated the more able amateur collectors in my flock. I think you've been the best. And what a fabulous decanter you made too, willing and wide open for business.'

The Devil snickered.

'Too bad you're of no more use to me. And certainly not that other fellow, whose days are numbered!' He chuckled.

Turning with his writhing grimoire the Dark One clicked his now complete clawed fingers and Frank Sinn burst into flames and he and his collection was never seen again by any living soul.

Our Bloodied Ruins

Like every year since, we spend the summer in the tree.

We read books perched on the huge branch jutting out from the ancient oak at the rim of the field. The sheep beneath our feet stare past us. They chew. We read. I think we all want to swap.

From our perch we can see the Nuns' Causeway where we'd walked as a family in '75, retracing their steps to the hilltop village. We could see our caravan, our car and our Father's failed attempt to chop logs for the campfire.

We could see the Benedictine Priory by the Swale, wrecked by Henry's brutish reformation, their fallen convent at the end of the fence yet somehow remained, pinned down by the terrible sin that befell it. Oh, had it but been forgiven ages ago and not left to fester. Yet I think we understood it's stoic indifference to the tide of time whispering through the valley, soothing it's past agonies at the hands of the wielding King.

Beyond our branch, the endless slopes of the hills shoulder the horizon like titans and the clouds slip by like frightened crowds.

We read everything that July and enjoyed lazy days in the caravan, a hide-away of sorts from our troubled life back home.

Crows wheeled like sorcerers as greater forces gathered in the valley till the very day itself. Lambs lay among the tussocks round the ruin staring into heaven like putti. If there was an evil aura evolving then those Lambs felt nothing. Their lonely cries were for the here and now, the hot frothing teats of their tired mothers hiding from the raving sun.

We hardly ever come down from the tree these days, except to make imaginary sandwiches and tea, which we take back to the big bough. A small wooden crate which we'd nailed onto the trunk back in the day houses our copious reading, our very own tree library from that holiday long gone.

I liked to read the poetry this year. Larkin, Hughes, Plath. The moderns. Mable is much older than me and prefers gothic fayre. Percy and Mary Shelley. She said she would have loved to have been there that night they took to opium and penned their darkest bulwarks borne of dreams.

Back then we discussed what we were reading like this, often late into the night, as the chill of the Yorkshire hills descended like an unwelcome gurgling fiend forcing us to seek the solace of inside.

Spiders now ruled the caravan. Large house creatures residing in webs like bandages stretched across the mouldy furniture. Mable and me dont mind. We had no idea what they ate. Probably each other. Dog eat dog among the filaments. Sometimes we find dried husks still clinging on, the juices of existence long gone and only the papery skin left behind, as if life had simply drained away into the stream on the valley floor like ours.

The bath often holds a desperate spider. We lie down together with it and try to lift it out but simply can't, it's beady eyes pleading with us, it seems, to try one more time. If we blow hard enough the air would actually swirl and catch the spider like a sweet wrapper and fly out of the tub to freedom. Mable and me howl with laughter, pretending to turn on the taps and bathe like we once had in the splendour of our lives.

When Summer fades and the first whispers of Autumn tell their tale of change and something far worse on the way, we stroll together through the convent's carcass holding hands and wonder what the nuns were like hundreds of years before us. Now dead, infused in the stones, we hum evensong as we saunter among their degraded pews, rosaries rattling like bones on our threadbare shoes.

Somewhere in the dereliction, a thrush hammers a snail to smithereens, the mollusc's silent scream lighting up our ears as it's house is ransacked and it's eaten alive.

A little like us that summer break so long ago, the caravan holiday in the Dales that should bring us back together as a family. The bruises gone, the bottles emptied in the sink. Solemn vows. No more drink.

Promises promises promises.

It split us up. Forever.

I see so clearly my father drunk, reaching for his camping axe and more deranged by his liquored demons than before, trudging like a Golem towards us standing by the tree.

We see the unstoppable fury in his eyes, more hateful than ever and we drop our books.

No Father. No! I beg. 

Buts it's no use. This pet of Hell isn't listening to us. My Dad's curse comes to roost and darker voices rule.

As he raises the blade high above his head I shriek and cower, Mable hurling herself towards his soured bulk but to no avail.

As the sheep stare in the field and the Jackdaws chortle, the axe descends repeatedly in an arcing spatter of madness and gore.

The job done, my Father's devil pats his shaking shoulders, ecstatic with the outcome, having this time finally given us up in ragged pieces to his fiends to feast on, the bloody ruins of my poor mother Mable and me beneath the big bough of our beloved oak.