Monthly Archives: October 2012

Foxed

Posted on by

At first I thought the pounding was an alcohol based manifestation caused by all the Talisker I’d sucked on down before I finally got to bed last night, but it turned out to be someone at the door. A very determined someone judging by the damn good thrashing that was being administered. I sighed and buried my head under the pillow burrowing down into drunken oblivion where I belonged. It was only when the shouting started, punctuated by vicious kicks to the door that I knew the chances of it being a new meter man or untrained neighbour were positively anorexic.

I uncovered my head and was rewarded by a man’s voice shouting heated but still quite inventive abuse at top volume. Beginning to warm up myself, I pulled the curtains on my four poster, leapt out of bed, managing to pull on dressing gown, blade from the dresser and my dark glasses, all before I reached the door.

Good sense and hangover reasserted themselves and so I paused palm on the painted wood and looked through the spy-hole. There were two of them: he was tall and thin, she short and plump and apparently trying to placate him, gaze darting around the stairwell nervously. The Fox twins: he Rufus her Ruby. Now this was beginning to seriously tick me off. These guys were part of the so-called psychic community within which I was persona non grata all on account of my little penchant for search and destroy missions. Most of the community was made up of losers, morons and no-talent, superstitious weirdos. Apart from these two who together formed the Fox Agency performing discreet services to the supernaturally challenged. She was an exceptionally powerful clairvoyant and he was one of the best exorcists that I’d ever had the misfortune to come across. I say misfortune because some of the demons he’d cast out had come calling for me and were only persuaded to leave after much blood and not a few body parts, thankfully none of them mine. But that was a whole other story.

“She’s obviously not in,” I heard Ruby say.

“Of course she is, it’s not like she’s got anywhere else to go. She wasn’t out on a hunt last night, so there’s no reason she can’t answer the flaming door.” her brother told her.

“Well at least that’s something,” she said looking pained, “but how do you know?”

Yes, how the hell did he know?

“Never mind that. Psychotic bitches like that don’t have friends and they don’t have anywhere to go when they’re not out making the world a worse place. Stands to reason they’ll be tucked up in their kip-”

I had heard enough and wrenched the door open.

“Well psycho-bitch is up now and you’ll both be familiar with the old saying, beware your heart’s desire? Good, because I’ve got high hopes you’re going to get it,” I said.

Two surprised faces whipped round. She was about five feet and everything about her was round and compact including her lips which were tightly compressed in a clearly heroic effort not to cry. She was wearing a duffle-coat and clutching a small back-pack for dear life. He was about six four; broad of shoulder but no real meat on him yet to pad the frame out. They didn’t really look anything alike apart from the fair hair and the same expressive hazel eyes.

“Yes?,” said Rufus staring at me, uncertainty evicting rage in the click of a door opening: “Can I help you?”

Rosie By Lamp Light

Posted on by

I came to tied to a chair in an empty, carpet-less room. It smelled of dust underlaid with a coppery hint of old blood and the only light came from the streetlight outside. Viciously tight bindings bit into raw flesh that felt as if someone had tried to flay it from my body while I’d been out.

I was alone.

Seconds pounded past on little leaden feet but frankly I was glad for even that meagre attention because it proved I was still alive. And then, a slight sound so faint it was almost imperceptible accompanied by a cool breeze across ravaged skin made me look up.

The demon covered the ceiling and still there was not enough room for him to spread his wings to their full extent. He didn’t hover so much as hang, neck bent at an impossible angle, lustrous black hair concealing his face. Only the gold of his eyes shone out through the hair, so bright they generated light that now played around the room: clearly the source of what I had fondly imagined had come from outside.

He must have heard some sound, perhaps the dilation of arteries, or the frantic pumping of blood by an agitated heart because he snarled, a low, rumbling growl that froze what was left of my blood.

Time stopped, my aches and pains fled, evicted by the certain knowledge that this was how it was going to end; here in this dirty little room at the hands of a creature so vile, even its own kind shunned it. Then with a deafening roar, a torrent of dark water surged into the room from the walls, the ceiling and from beneath the floor, slapping wetly about the legs of the chair. In seconds it was knee high and I realised it wasn’t water because in its discoloured brackish depths, solid shapes swam.

“Are you going to kill me Lukastor?”

Sometimes It’s Hard To Be A Woman

Posted on by

I hauled the body over my shoulder again in a fireman’s lift, made trickier by the fact that it was encased in slippery plastic, and hoped that some of the more fluid contents of the bag didn’t leak over me. It was just shy of eight but I rarely had to worry about bumping into anyone. The only signs of the alcoholic downstairs were his nightly snore-fests, audible I would have thought to the entire block. The neighbours across the way, a posse of young men who rarely made their presence heard rather than felt before the wee small hours. As a nocturnal beast myself, that was something I could respect. I don’t think I’d seen or heard of any of the other folk with whom I shared this bower of bliss.

But normal service it seemed had been interrupted, because just as I opened my front door, a young man with long, golden dreads and a nose ring strode onto the landing about to descend the stairs when he spotted me.

“Oh, hi,” he grinned, with an Aussie accent you could cut with a knife and still have enough to balance the drinks on. “You must be our neighbour. Good to meet you. Here, let me help you with that. I’m not taking no for an answer,” he said taking the body as well, before I could tell him where to put his offer. He was tall and well built but even so I could see it cost him no little effort. Just for a second the Cheshire cat smile faltered as the big lunk realised just what I’d been hefting until machismo reasserted itself and he made his way stiffly down the stairs, trying to pretend it was no big deal.

This was definitely not part of the plan and if I could have ripped his innards out and hung them around his neck for decoration I would have.

“What have you got in here,” he said winking, “A body, by any chance?”

This was why predators like me could live in the heart of the city numbering a half million other souls whose lives intersected on a daily basis but didn’t actually connect. City folk were so wrapped up in their own lives it was highly unlikely they’d recognise a body wrapped in bin bags if they were forced to carry it down three flights of steep stairs. It simply wouldn’t have occurred to them. Each and every one cocooned in private worlds constructed with the help of ipods, the daily paper, fantasy conversations where they told there bosses exactly where to stick it, plans for the dinner that night, all necessary props cushioning them from the smother of humanity around them.

Ask Fred West’s former neighbours. Ask the numerous lodgers that had flowed through the house like water over the years. How many saw him burying the evidence in the back garden, heard him torturing young girls in the basement of the house they all shared? When they asked him if the family was getting under his feet, they had no idea that they were right on the money. The fact is you don’t know who or what you’re living next to. Hallelujah and praise the Lord I don’t believe in.

“Name’s Roy,” he said. Maybe he was from New Zealand, I could never tell.

“I’m Rose and I can manage just fine, thanks anyway. And yes, it is a body.”

“Was it an old boyfriend refusing to take the hint,” he sniggered, reaching the first floor with a hand clamped in a death grip on the handrail with me stalking behind him in two minds whether to body snatch and run.

“Don’t be daft,” I gabbled. “It was actually a nosy neighbour who wouldn’t stop bothering me. I keep my exes in jars in the living room like everyone else. Together forever as Rick Astley used to sing. Haven’t heard from him in while mind you. Maybe he’s in a jar on someone’s mantel.”

He stopped short and made the effort to turn and look at me for a moment. Long enough for me to notice some gaffer tape had come loose and a shrivelled finger poked out like a mummified worm. A dark liquid had dribbled down Roy’s vomit green chunky knit pullover. Maybe he hadn’t heard of Rick Astley.

“Sense of humour as well as sensational looks. You know you must be tired, because you’ve been running through my mind since I met you all of two minutes ago,” he said turning to give me another wink….

The Man With The Cross-Stitched Eyes

Posted on by

The club was packed with hundreds of people and the Damned’s Love Song took over from the tender mercies of Placebo. I relaxed slightly finishing my drink in one long swallow. I was standing on the edge of the dance-floor which was flooded with Goths in tight, black clothes with hair combed to the sky as McDiarmid would no doubt have had it. The effects of the alcohol, music I knew and trusted and the presence of so many people anaesthetised me further, taking me back to the times I used to come here looking for my idea of a good time.

I made for the door in search of the toilet. It was bound to be in the same place and so I took the spiral stair down two flights and walked along a darkened corridor to the end and turned left. A chill not altogether natural chill raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Something was slithering along the ceiling behind me, but every time I looked around the noise stopped and couldn’t see anything. For a moment I thought I’d made a mistake and either come down the wrong stairs or they’d moved the toilet.

Then just as I was about to turn round and retrace my steps, the unmistakeable depiction of the female form appeared on a dark green door to my left. It opened with a loud screech to darkness and a damp, dank smell of old mould and urine. Fumbling with my hand on the wall, searching for the switch I cut myself on something sharp and swore loudly. The place was hushed as though a silent unseen crowd was monitoring my every move fascinated about what I was going to do next. Well, in a toilet there really wasn’t that much mystery.

I finally found the switch and wished I’d gone about my business in the dark. Even with my glasses on, the fuzzed edges of the walls and door spoke of a heavy emotional detritus left behind by the pain and suffering of the living. I knew that I’d see those familiar vermilion shades were I to take them off and so didn’t bother.

The drip of an old fashioned tap was the only sound and I set about finding the cleanest cubicle. The floor was littered with toilet roll and used tampon wrappers and the stench was beginning to make my gorge rise into my throat. It hadn’t been like this in the old days. But then it wasn’t surprising that no one wanted to clean it given what had happened down here. A dark streak of misery in the corner was in all probability all that remained of one or more of the victims, more emotion than actual ghost.

I pulled down my trousers and was about to get on with it when the door was kicked open. A blur of motion and then I was hauled to my feet by a hand around my throat with a knife pressed against it hard enough to draw blood. A cloth mask with cross stitches where the eye holes should have been covered the face but couldn’t disguise the heavy breathing or the obvious excitement of my attacker. Irrationally it made me remember the little ghosts at the St Birds pad until the fact that I was in a fight for my life managed to percolate through my thick skull.

I started to choke, hands clawing at the one that held my throat in a blind instinctual fight for survival. But The Man With The Cross-Stitched Eyes wasn’t going to take no for an answer….