When we were given our brief, a pdf outlining the world, the creatures, a little bit of the story, I have to admit my mind was a total blank and I was more than a little perturbed. Insects are really not my thing. Unless I’m watching ‘Them!’ or my very favourite bug movie of all time, the incomparable ‘Phase IV’ directed by Saul Bass I’m not really inspired by them at all. I have never had the urge to write a story about them. Not once.

So, if I’m honest, I didn’t really have a massive interest in writing about giant bugs breeding with humans and/or variously consuming us. Not only that but, contrary to popular opinion and despite my forays into gore and guts, I’m not actually a horror writer. Not by a long shot. Have no desire to be one either. I’ll leave that to writers who love to scare themselves shitless. In other words, I was struggling for an idea like an ant in a sun-warmed splodge of discarded chewing gum. Hopelessly.

After long and disastrous attempts at finding a bug story I felt like writing, breaking some neurons and seriously traumatising a whole heap more in the process, I realised that to produce a story for Colin’s anthology I’d have to come around at this bugger (or bug) from another angle. A tangential one. I was going to have to lasso my frontal lobe and fling it outside the box of insects it was currently trapped within, screaming and spraying vast amounts of Raid.

As luck would have it, at the time I was experiencing this eureka-like surge of self-realisation, I was also surfing twitter, that endless menagerie of thought juice squirted by a teeming horde of hive minds all across the interwebs, full to the brim of fascinating and inspirational titbits. And one of those titbits just happened to thrust itself upon my newly unleashed frontal lobe. A youtube video. This very video in fact:

In this video by the amusingly named RJD2 (which is why the video caught my attention in the first place (I am a geek and that is what we do)), there are some very interesting, and quite scary looking men in masks and trench coats and, at one point, what seems to be a couple of disembodied doors. These images stuck in my mind and gradually, over a period of time and delicate prodding, morphed into the Stock Takers and their Door from Below.

My Stock Takers, I decided, would be a sort of lab-created man/insect hybrid, fast, deadly and without morals or conscience. Monsters such as this would have to be created in a lab from hell… which kinda means you need a lab from hell, of course. Hmmm, what manner of lab would this be (I pondered)? Frankenstein-esque? Dr Jekyll-like? No. Not nearly nasty enough. So I again put my frontal lobe to work.

I’d pretty much decided straight away that of the three cities Colin left us to play with, Hong Kong was to be my playground, now resolutely Chinese once more. It being Chinese, and my being disappointed that I couldn’t use Tokyo as my setting, it did not take long for my mind to throw out ‘Philosophy of a Knife’, the docu-rama detailing the horrors of Unit 731. Run by the Japanese Imperial Army on what was Chinese land, the inhuman biological, chemical and medical human experimentation carried out there could turn the most staunch stomach. Moreover, it was a lab and, what do you know, a lab was precisely what I needed. So into research I dove.

I personally have never been so disturbed in my life than when researching that particular hovel of horrors but, to my own horror, it fit my needs to perfection. Manchuria is miles from Hong Kong to be sure, but if the ants wanted to send a weapon of choice into China, then setting up a new, underground Unit 731 to produce that very weapon from vile and deeply unethical experimentation would not be outside the realms of possibility in a world such as Colin created for the backdrop to the City of Hell Chronicles. Nothing like inspiration, is there?

After that, it was relatively easy. Having wanted to set my story in Tokyo (and sulked about it quite a lot as it happens – which isn’t pretty but whilst we’re being honest etc etc…) and therefore determined to bring some of that flavour into my story, my protagonists had to be a Japcore band (which I adore), and they had to be nucking futs. Their being Japanese meant that, for my inspiration for the feel of my story, I could leap into insane movies like Tetsuo, and some crazy classics like Wild Zero and Burst City. YAY! I basically let my mind go wild, use the driving chaos of Japcore and Asia Extreme to build my Frankenstein’s Stock Taker in a mental version of Unit 731.

And there you have it. The story behind the story. The lightning bolts behind the life of the words. Being inspired by all things Japanese, by the bright lights, neon and chaos of Hong Kong, by weird electro-hip-hop and the nightmarish realities of the very apex of humanity’s inhumanity to man as dealt to helpless individuals experimented upon in Unit 731, my story is a weird little animal to be sure. A jolting, discordant muddle of word images, staccato and frenetic, an unrelenting little juggernaut of oddness wrapped up in gore and I hope you were as unnerved by the reading of it as I was by the writing of it. I don’t think I have ever quite recovered and, no, I still don’t want to be a horror writer.

In fact, having done it, I’m not very eager to go back. I’ll stick to my happy little world of Speculative Fiction, ta. After all… I can go even crazier with my word Frankensteins in that arena, and I don’t have to scare myself stupid to do it.

Rain falls delicate as lace. The sky lowers, a frowning eye. His feet glide, silent, upon concrete, then cobble, then stone, then concrete again. When they strike cobble and lift to fall on concrete a sneaking tendril of thick, yellowish fog occasionally trails in their wake. His shoes are snakeskin, pointed, with steel gilding the soles like armour but Vespesian walks in-between and in absolute control.

Fragile as veils, the membranes move before him. In this place lives upon lives, the scuttling of them like ants within the void, have rendered the membranes thin. Vespesian strolls down Pall Mall toward St James, each step landing in foreign time, on foreign ground. He knows his destination but he is, at the moment, enjoying his little game of wandering.

Eventually he comes to a door that, in this London of the present, is the bland-faced entrance to a residence of luxury flats. Should he step through the membranes and into its history, he’d find but one family in semi-stately residence, making preparation for the short Season. Much like the collection of strangers now courting the halls of this building, they too would be more than a little surprised to find the hulking mass of Vespesian at their threshold. What fortune, then, that he is here for neither household.

Indeed, it is sideways, not through time but through places, nameless and multitude, that he must step to reach the great oak door which is both entrance and shield for the residence with whose inhabitants he has an appointment. It lies in a place between worlds, carefully concealed from prying eyes and, ever-more dangerous, prying minds. Vespesian dances gracefully to his left. Faceless black inset with charmless glass portions shades through a variety of materials, of colours, before it coalesces to ponderous, noble oak, unmarred by brush or glass.

He raises a hand sheathed in the snug grasp of fine leather, knocks thrice upon the solid, ancient face of the hidden doorway. Soft, subtle, in the backs of his eyes, he feels her prying. Their witch. Their seeress. Her touch no more gentle than a needle burns tunnels, blights his sight with lightning flashes of searing pain. Lesser minds would bleed under her vicious ministrations. He stands and endures.

One day, he has promised himself, when all this business is concluded, when he is no longer obligated, he will take her throat within his hands and choke the life, the power, from her body. It will be most gratifying.

//

Moe reaches again into the pocket of his jacket, tugs out the note. Read and re-read many times it unfolds into his hand elegant as a flower opening to the sun, and he reads again the words written in haste by his good friend and boss, Andreus Witter.

My dear Moe

I have been called away on business of a rather sensitive nature. There is an elderly client of mine who wishes to sell some of her more precious items and I am to help her decide which she will sell. Naturally these items have been in her family for many generations and she is quite unhappy to be forced to such circumstances. What is unfortunate for this client of mine is doubtless to be a boon for us, it is unlikely that we will ever lay eyes upon such precious items ever again in our careers. I will return on Monday morning, no later than 10 am. In my absence I am placing you in command of operations.

Yours, Andre

Moe’s brows dip as he reads the words over and over. Outside the dim tunnel of the underground blurs past his window. The train bobs to and fro as it races through the darkness, arrows for the light and relief of the next station. Legs akimbo, apt as a sailor on the open sea, he sways in time to the motion, one hand looped about a pole.

‘Monday,’ he murmurs to himself. ‘Definitely Monday. No doubt whatsoever.’ And his face gives way to a full frown of concern natural as the creases in the note itself as this expression has had much cause to sit upon his face of late.

Monday has come and gone, the sun rising and falling sure as it always does and, sure as always, the sun has risen and fallen a full three times since, but there has been no sign of Andreus. A late arriver to the 21st century, Andreus has only this past year owned a mobile. It’s rarely remembered and even more rarely charged but it has rung every time Moe’s called it these past four days, yet never been answered. That alone has his innards tied to a Poacher’s knot.

He’s agonised over what he should do, aware that the circumstances of Andreus’ absence may have affected the length thereof. To choose between treasures is surely a task of no small pain for one who is unwilling to part with said. But fours days and no word. Not even a whisper. A secondary note. Andreus would surely let him know that his client is taking longer than expected to decide?

Moe sighs, refolds the note and replaces it back in his pocket.

‘Of course he’d call,’ he says to himself. ‘And if he couldn’t call he’d send word any way he could. So if he hasn’t then he can’t for whatever reason, and I should worry. I should most definitely worry.’

Which is why Moe is on this foolish quest to Randall’s to hunt down Rolf. If anyone can sift through the world to find Andreus, it is Rolf. Moe’s worried about asking because both Rolf and Margo are different these days. Darker, less stable. The light in their eyes has dimmed as if some secret hand had stolen half their luminance from within. If any harm has come to Andreus it may damage Rolf to witness it, going as he must so deep into the landscape of the mind.

Moe remembers all too clearly how he sat with Rolf rested between his legs in the belly of the Peggy Dunne, his heart twisting to a Gordian knot of confusion, pain, unwilling attraction as Rolf, locked in the minds of those aboard, searched for the angel and wept. Margo would not forgive him if that should happen again and, moreover, Moe would not forgive himself.

He stares blindly out at the pipes of the subway, the tangle of varicose veins carrying electricity deep into the Earth.  Watches without seeing as they zip past, are replaced by a collection of archways, at first mere ornamentation, then transformed to eyeless sockets sheathed by dirty lengths of wire fencing. They draw his eyes, unerring, into their depths.

In the gloom red lights appear. Moe leans in to the glass, straining to see as the train rushes onward. Like objects at a distance sprung to definition by a telescope the lights transform to eyes. Despotic orbs of whirling ruby they leer at him. Moe freezes, his heart thudding hard and heavy under constricted ribs as the eyes loom forth, as jaws stuffed with teeth manifest beneath those cruel red glows and drool, steam rising from between fangs and curled lips.

Gradual as a photograph they develop torsos; limbs crouched as if in readiness to leap. Claws sheathed in the dirt, hindquarters bunched. Massive muscles ripple above shoulders in powerful waves but their bodies shudder with more than contained power. Moe is certain that if he could hear them beneath the rattle of the train, the whoosh of walls, they would be growling. Sounds to curdle the blood, to stop the heart’s tympanic beat.

He places his hands on the glass, leans till his nose touches, puffs clouds of white with each heavy breath, watches them with all the concentration they afford him. Though the train speeds past he sees them only in slow motion, even as they collect their limbs beneath them, even as their jaws crack wide and hatred spits from the pits of their eyes.

Then darkness gives way to light. Walls flash to open space. The platform, filled with bustling bodies, ricochets into view. Moe closes his eyes, rests his forehead on the glass, breathing, just breathing, until the train slides to a halt in a slew of screeching brakes, then he leaps for the light, for the platform, for safety.

He swipes his way through barriers and strides on swift feet into the belching roar of the streets above. Sighs with absolute relief as daylight and mayhem swallow him whole, carry him away. He sucks in great cold belts of air, hoping to expunge from his body the after-effect of those moments on the train. But even though he cannot see them, though he checks that they do not follow him, he feels those eyes on the back of his skull all the way to the chiming door of Randall’s book store.

//

‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Vespesian.’

Vespesian inclines his head. He’s no real desire to respond unless absolutely necessary. The witch stands just behind the chair in which his current employer reclines, hungry to hear his voice, to do her job. To pluck from the bones of his voice the meat of his meaning, to suck from thence the hidden marrow. He must be sure he is leached of all nuance before he utters one syllable. Quiet and shielded in an impenetrable barrier of will, he irons out those very few motes that may provide her sustenance.

‘I know you are not fond of being called to our headquarters. I appreciate your concern that it exposes us to possible disclosure. There are some heavy players in this game and some remarkably gifted amateurs. But I would not have called you were it not imperative that I say this direct to your face.’

Vespesian, satisfied that he is empty of any betraying inflection, responds. ‘It is regrettable that you feel the need but I understand the desire to be cogent. Pray continue.’

His employer nods gratefully. The witch, for her part, lifts one corner of a lip, unable to contain her fury at being entirely incapable of gleaning anything from her employer’s new favourite toy. She will be sure to warn her employer later on, in the privacy of his rooms, that this one is far from a toy and is not playing the game he has been set upon.

‘I’m sure you are aware of what happened to Eustacia Hermaini?’

Vespesian inclines his head once more. ‘I am.’

‘To my mind,’ his employer says thoughtfully, ‘that much in itself is a game changer and I should therefore like to be in charge of whatever changes the game should make.’

‘A wise decision,’ Vespesian allows, though he believes that this game lies deep within the smoke and all these fireflies who seek to direct it to their tune will find, to their dismay, that smoke is not a thing to be directed. It billows and rises where it will and only those who become smoke themselves have any hope of surviving.

‘In that case,’ his employer continues, ‘I am retracting the assassination contract.’

Vespesian, under his own tight control, nonetheless cannot prevent an eyelid from twitching oh so slightly. ‘Is that so?’ he asks and it is only the witch, paling in the shadows behind their employer, who catches the violence concealed within that bland utterance.

‘What I have in mind you may find a little more… interesting,’ his employer says, his tone arch and complicit as though he holds some secret delight to share.

‘Continue.’

‘I have set a little plan into motion,’ his employer says, a ripple of uncontrolled malice running like toxin through the warm river of his voice, ‘and I should very much like for you to conduct the proceedings.’

‘Does it involve the targets?’

‘Oh yes,’ Vespesian’s employer assures him, ‘it could not in fact continue without their inclusion, for they are both cast and victim of my little ploy.’

‘Interesting.’

His employer pulls from his desk a thin, card file and slides it across to Vespesian. ‘Within this file are the specifics, the blueprints if you will, of a little wobble in time I have engineered. The bait has been laid, the cast in is place. You, my good Mr. Vespesian shall play as shepherd and huntsman in a game of time-travelling chess.’

Despite himself, Vespesian is intrigued. The momentary twinge of anger he experienced when he thought himself denied the removal of those more interesting flaws is gone, replaced with a well-controlled elation. The game has in truth deepened, gained far more satisfying dimensions. The flaws are to be used as pawns. There is little doubt that pawns are expendable and, when their part is done, he will have the distinct pleasure of removing them from the board. But before that pleasurable denouement, oh before, there shall be fine sport.

He scents on the breeze the stench of their blood within his nostrils, those finely tuned instruments of deduction, and allows a thin smile to sneak across his face. Both his employer and the witch, seeing it, will experience a seeping of cold terror in their bones, he knows, for his is the face of smoke, the face of their mortality, smiling upon them.

They, too, are but flaws, insignificant fireflies and, when this business is done, Vespesian’s will be the last face they see before they are welcomed to infinity.

© Ren Warom 2011

Hovering weighless,

giant as clouds.

Bruise purple sky peppered rain,

a glistening glass shower,

made crystalline in light reflections.

And then, darkness,

resonant thrumming

like the drums of

a far off marching army.

The plinking of cooling metals,

a sulphurous burr, nostril deep,

And the night echoed empty.

I remember running in trees like a vagabond, breathless and dirt covered. Building forts of fallen branches. Whooping and hollering, burrowing through the leaves like a spikeless hedgehog, grin the size of the universe. That solid heathen smell of earth filling me up from head to toe, so I was part of it all. I recall looking at my limbs and thinking ‘how did they get there? what do I do with them?’ Gangly, gawky, skinny things they were and utterly alien unless out there in the wild when they became my keys to freedom. Skinny legs run fast, low wind resistance.

I remember fishing for newts and froglets with bare hands. Slimy slithering wriggling packages squeezing out between fingers. Bright red bellies with black spots, the long winding swoop of tails, curling my finger. The piston-like push of frog legs against a palm. So powerful it felt as if they’d drive a hole right through your hand. I used to blow on them until they were still and they’d sit there for a while, eyes serene green contemplation, throat gently working before, thrust, swoosh, PLOP and in the water they’d be, swift as a sparrow.

There was a deer park in a village not too far from our house in Grays. Or maybe it was far, I don’t recall. We went to the village pub often and I’d sit reading in the car, book splayed wide, in another world and lost to everything. Motorway passing in lampposts–sentinels of white during the day, a flashing spiral of fairyland at night (I’d often see that spiral in the distance and imagine all manner of wonders dancing amongst the lights). So perhaps the village, the park, were miles away and I, with the facility of childhood, shrunk hours to minutes through sheer disconnection with reality.

We always stopped to watch the herd, if they were there, every time we walked past on the way to the pub. Never missed an opportunity to study those creatures up close. So elegant, nervous and beautiful in their red coats. Graceful hooves rising and stepping bold as ballet dancers. Great black eyes, endless as the night, gazing with disdainful detachment edged with terror. They’re always fit to run, just on the verge. Waiting to fire off, red bullets scything the grass, piercing the trees.

Mostly it would be hinds and calves we spotted, sometimes juvenile males. But one time, I saw the Hart. He was huge. A construction of muscles. Antlers full grown in rutting season. Cernunnos in full deer form. He stood by an oak, utterly fearless. Our eyes met and held and I don’t know what it was that passed between us. It was powerful, too much to understand. There was so much in his eyes, the wild distilled to spirit, a great deep wisdom and so much understanding it seemed, that my chest hurt to see it. It seemed to last forever. Then somewhere, an engine roared and his hind quarters bunched beneath him. He leapt and led the herd on a magnificent dash to the shelter of the woods.

But I remember our encounter, remember it to this day as an encapsulation of everything my childhood seemed to be about. The pause of majesty before terror, the touch of something too huge to comprehend, bewilderment, horror and all-consuming wonder.

Hungry and furious it waits, hoarding the voice of the Earth to it like treasure. It has learned much. Of the fragile life force, so sparse when first it erupted onto this plane, and now rich, having spread like bacteria upon the face of the Earth.

It has learnt that some of these bacteria have obtained the power to traverse the membranes to other realities. To bring their realities into this thin, static plane. Such individuals, so unaware of what they have, these could be used. It aches to exploit them.

It knows that soon, it will have the chance. The Earth speaks with many voices of many things and it listens to them all. But louder than all other voices has been the clarion call from a tight knot of dark and devious minds.

It croons to them. Wills them to bring it forth from silence. To unleash it.

There are such wonders to consume.

//

Faces parade out of the shadows like speeding cars. Visages bright and all consuming of the eyes as the glare of headlights. They begin as pale spectres, no less human than her own face but as they gain speed, grow ever brighter, they malform to grotesquery. Until each face is suffered rather than seen.

She’d close her eyes, but they’d merely speed at her from within the dark shelter of her lids. Turn away, but they’d follow her still, as if anchored to her pupils. This isn’t a physical attack, just an endless stream of faces growing ever more hideous, ever more terrifying.

But they plague her until her body is a clenched fist of tension; until she’d tear out her very mind to make it stop. It’s only the distant warmth of Rolf, the echo of his suffering within her own, which makes it bearable.

Cocooned in their shared vision Margo stares into the eyes of the multitude of faces as they race at her, damned to see them until darkness and the relief of sleep swallow her whole.

//

A pale, fumbling hand knocks the alarm flying as it splinters sleep to shards. It skitters across the floor to land in a multi-colour octopus of unwashed nylon. From there it continues in a high-pitched whine of trilling sound, a jackhammer concerto.

Margo bolts upright, hair foaming over her face, eyes at red-curdled half-mast. She tears her pillow from behind her and lobs it. ‘Shut up, you fucker,’ she slurs, and collapses back, shrieking as her crown connects with the iron bedstead.

Naked and reeling she gyrates out of bed, stumbling and lurching across the floor in a dance of pain, her hands clutched to her skull. Mr Rat watches from the doorway, cool and assessing.

After a moment she glares at him. ‘Get me a bag of peas you fat, lazy, cat whore.’

Mr Rat lifts his paw, considers it for a moment, then tugs at a claw, making a flat, decisive click of noise. Margo sniffs, on her dignity. ‘Fine, I’ll just suffer then.’

She drags on clean panties and shuffles to the kitchen, nipples puckering in the chill of morning. Slaps on the coffee machine with a growl and shoves food into Rat’s bowl whilst fumbling for something cold in the freezer. Nothing.

‘Bugger it to fuck I need to buy some food, or I’ll end up roasting you, Ratty Rat the cat, roast Ratty Cat, Rat au Van, Catatouille, Rat in the hole.’ Margo slams the freezer door. ‘What else is cold?’ She feels everything on the counter, dismissing it all with sharp snorts of disgust. When she reaches the toaster she crows victory, unplugs it and places it on the back of her skull, sighing with relief. ‘Mmmm, nice cold metal.’

The sharp rap of knuckles on the door filters to the kitchen. Margo wanders out to the hallway and yanks the door open without checking the peephole. It’s not like the postman, her neighbours, the teenage boy from 7B and Mrs Ripowitz, her landlady, haven’t seen her tits before.

Moe raises a brow. ‘I’m not going to ask about the toaster,’ he says.

‘I hurt my head.’

‘Which doesn’t explain the nipples.’

Margo looks at her nipples, bewildered. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my nipples,’ she says, ‘I’ve got fucking marvellous nipples.’

‘That explains why they’re on display,’ Moe says, pushing past her into the hall. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He sniffs appreciatively at the air. ‘Making me coffee too. Thoughtful.’

Margo slams the door. ‘Listen you nascent pillow biter, I’m making my bastard self coffee but if you beg prettily I might allow you a cup too.’

Moe grins. ‘If I were Rolf, I’d poke your nipple and you’d just make me a coffee.’

‘If you were Rolf, I’d be making you a coffee anyway.’

‘You two are such sisters,’ he says, wandering off to the kitchen and throwing over his shoulder, ‘but he’s got better tits.’

Margo follows him, brow furrowed, he looks fine, acts fine, but there’s something simmering under the skin, she can’t put her finger on it. She strolls in to the kitchen, plonks the toaster down on the counter; the metallic clunk makes her wince. ‘I could be concussed and there you are insulting my tits. You aren’t overly attached to your testicles… are you?’

Moe sniggers, fails to look contrite, but doesn’t reply. Instead he collects two cups from the cupboard and makes coffee that he sips slowly, leaning his whole weight against the counter as though his feet have given up supporting him.

For a moment they drink in silence but Margo feels it building, that simmer rising to the boil, and then he speaks, just jumps in out of nowhere, his voice marred by a funny little half-broken crack like a teenagers’. ‘I’m going to go ahead and just throw this out there, because there’s really no other way…’

Margo’s left brow does a swift impression of a harrier jet taking off. ‘Rolf cornholed you?’

Moe sips, stares, runs his tongue under his lip and she restrains what she might have said next because she sees how very fucking serious this is. He speaks again, more quietly, considered, as if feeling every word for the correct weight. ‘Not yet. I was going to talk about my dreams actually. I’ve been having waking dreams. And I’ve been hearing things.’

Placing her cup on the counter, Margo gains the sort of look on her face Moe wouldn’t expect to see there. Too sombre. Too old. It’s as if she’s been stolen and replaced with an anti-Margo and now he knows what it was Rolf was gabbling on about the other day at lunch when she went for a piss. Moe makes a mental note to apologise for ignoring him.

‘What are you seeing?’ she asks, and the fear in her voice is another unwelcome revelation.

He clears his throat. Sips. Tries to work out how to explain, then just blurts it because, really, there’s no explaining what he doesn’t understand. ‘People that aren’t people. Well, they are… but they aren’t. They’re monsters too. Beasts. Nightmarish shit to be honest,’ he licks his lips, ‘but I’m awake and I’m pretty sure I’m not hallucinating.’

Margo leans toward him. ‘Where?’

Moe swallows. ‘Everywhere.’ He puts his coffee down; he doesn’t much feel like drinking it any more. He feels sick, because Margo isn’t scoffing, isn’t making faces or cracking jokes. He can tell by the look on her face that she’s been expecting this, been worried that it might happen. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ he asks her.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know, Moe. I thought it was the Mother. But I’m not so sure, I’m really not. Rolf and I, we’ve been… seeing things too. Not just the beasts in people but… things… faces… at night. You said you were hearing things?’

He breathes in, hard, because this is where it gets really weird, which is saying something. ‘Not a voice,’ he says, ‘although it’s whispering. Voices. I think. But I’ve never heard voices like this before.’ His face spasms, an expression of disgust, of fear, the kind of fear kids have in the depths of night when there’s no warmth, no adult to keep them safe, and the walls are moving with fractured, hungry shadows. ‘It hurts me. In my head, my chest. Like every time it… they… the voices whisper… some of me dries up, crumbles away.’

Margo shivers. Nothing to do with the chill in her apartment. Nor to do with the fact that she’s stood there in but a scrap of red silk. It’s more the vibration in his words, something on the gut-level that speaks to her of a similar experience she’s tried to ignore.

For a moment the vaults of her deepest mind crack open and she hears the sibilance. A rustling of words in many voices, in unknown languages. They sound like dried paper, satin over stone, the warp of sanity.

In their grasp she feels the particles of her being desiccate, scraps of Margo scattering like dust before the whisper of words as if it were wind. She places her hands over her ears, presses hard into her skull until the whispers fade away.

She raises her eyes to Moe’s, the dark chocolate of his irises bled to black with fear, with horror lingering like the smell of rot. ‘We aren’t done, are we?’ she says, realising that it’s true.

Moe gives a minute shake of the head, ‘No, no we aren’t.’

‘Is it too late to stop, do you think?’

‘I think,’ he tells her, ‘that it was too late to stop before we even started. I feel like I’ve been sucked into this on purpose. Like we all have. It’s how it all happened, how we all came together. We were tricked. We thought it was a game, and we were right, but I think we’re the ones being played.’

‘So whose game is it?’ she says, more to herself than him, but he answers anyway.

‘Fucked if I know. All I know is, I don’t want to play anymore.’

//

Slow, regular chirps of sound disturb the air, clockwork and precise. The varied beats of a dozen assisted hearts. It’s perfect harmony, creates an atmosphere of sobriety and reflection, as if this were a Cathedral, not a ward.

Then, amongst the harmonious symphony, one heart breaks the beat. Stutters. Begins an erratic rumba that sets off the frenzied shrieking of alarms. A half dozen bodies bustle to the cubicle in question. Lying within it, previously insensate and bandaged from head to toe, is a young woman known only as Irina.

As the alarms rant on and doctors race to check her vitals, Irina’s eyelids flutter, flick wide open. The eyes behind them are too bright, too aware. A nurse, seeing them, cries out.

‘She’s awake.’

The alarms are silenced. Irina’s doctor, a specialist, pushes to the head of the bed. Flicks a small torch from one pupil to the other and back again, appears surprised. ‘Pupil response good.’ He stows the light in his front pocket, leans down to her ear, asks softly, ‘Irina. Irina can you hear me? Irina?’

Irina rises from the bed, past his eyes. So slow. As if her body floats upward from the mattress, the pillow. Her eyes, still so frighteningly clear, gaze around at the encircling staff.

‘Where are my Sisters?’ Her voice is dry and rough, the damage of smoke inhalation and flames reducing it to hoarse crackles and scratches, an unbearable sound to hear. ‘Where are my Sisters?’

The staff share bemused, concerned glances. They don’t know much about this girl, where she’s from, how she was harmed. All they know is that, if there were sisters, then they are not here, are possibly dead, and that this girl is in no condition to hear it.

‘Lie down dear,’ says one of the older nurses, taking charge, ‘best not to talk. You’ve been out a long time and you’ve a long way to go before you’re ready for exertion.’

Irina’s head moves like it’s mechanised, in staccato increments, until it faces the nurse in question, who immediately steps back, breathes in sharply. Those eyes, she thinks, my god they’re so cold.

Then, like spears, they tear straight into her, through her; leave savage rents in her mind, pulling it apart like so much tissue paper. The nurse shudders and drops to the floor with a heavy thud.

There’s an instant outcry, hands grasping the nurse from the floor, carrying her to an empty bed. They don’t know why she’s collapsed. Didn’t feel those eyes in their own heads, ripping and tearing, nor experience the momentary agony of the loss of self before self was gone and only the void of nothingness left behind.

In the commotion, Irina steps quietly from the bed, methodically pulls needles and tubes from her arms, her nose, disconnects catheters. When she’s done she turns to watch their frantic attempts to revive the nurse. Something flickers in those cold pools of blue, something like amusement, and then she leaves.

And at every bed she passes the monitors fall silent.

© Ren Warom 2012

That’s what it says to you.

It says ‘look’.

It’s a voice compelling as a crooked finger. Whether willing or unwilling you are doomed to obey.  What is it? Fascination.

To a certain extent, no matter what it is you are doing, you are going to want to provoke this in people. Of course, if you provoke it and then fail to pay off, you may never manage to provoke it again. Your lures might be forever associated with disappointment.

Equally, if you go too far in the opposite direction, provide too much, you’ll become off-putting. Something people might occasionally go and look again just to prove to themselves, yes, you really are that odd.

It won’t be because they like you. No. It’ll be because you’ve just acquired the same draw, the selfsame appeal, of the gory roadside attraction. Of blood and guts and mayhem. It’s not flattering to realise people are only checking in to see how much of a mess you look, is it?

In this battle you’re looking to do one thing and one thing alone, and not only that, to do it well. You’re looking to snare by means of fascination and then back it up with a full, hearty meal of full on awesome.

You want people to come back again and again because the steak in peppercorn sauce of your writing, your art, your product is so gosh-darned unbelievably sexy they want to rub their faces in it and call it baby.

It’s a fine art, a balancing act of major proportions and an absolute bugger of a whip hand driving you along every time you take up fingers on keyboard to fight the good word fight. Because what we as writers think is interesting is not always the same as what a reader might think of as interesting.

And how do you hit that fine balance and trip the correct portion of fascination to keep a reader? Well, it’s a bit like alchemy… a delicate concoction of character, tension, plot, story and words. The wholesome (or slightly naughty) ingredients that comprise that gooey, more-ish word cake, or steak.

We read books on this shit like they’re going out of fashion, be they helpful or a hindrance to our development. Read our favourite authors again and again to re-visit their particular alchemical equations, to use theirs to refine our own or in the hopes that greatness might somehow rub off. Or even ‘wax on, wax off’ a sort of mechanical muscle memory that translates to kickassery.

In the end though it comes down to one thing. Writing the words and putting them out there. If you never expose them to the eyes of others you will never know whether they are sexy steak in peppercorn sauce or a morbidly interesting slew of roadside carnage.

You write to be read and you deal with the consequences, be they good or bad, without complaint. That, my friends, is a stone cold fact. Complaint is not a writer’s friend. Nor is excessive pride. Nor, indeed, is inability to take criticism.

We all want to make the perfect word cake (or steak). And you can’t bake a perfect cake without breaking a few eggs… it’s a process. Dive into it. Revel in it. Because the day your words elicit that cake/steak level of fascination and you receive words of praise, you will understand how much it was worth it.

No other yelling though, there’s no hook to extricate from their backs. Rolf managed to pull them back right to the night they’d left. Time being fluid, ever malleable, the world’s unchanged and none the wiser. Only they’ve changed, and Margo’s beginning to fear that change is not simply a stain upon the soul, but a rot, rooted in and gradually expanding.

She barges through to the back, where Rolf will be waiting. He’s there, but he’s quiet. Too damned quiet. She knew he would be. He’s leant up against the sink in the small kitchen; his eyes like sink holes, wary and shadowed. She goes straight to him, pulls him to her for a hug. He melts; she can feel him fighting back tears.

Too little damned sleep for the both of them. Apparitions and nightmares in every hidden pocket of dreaming. And they’re still connected somehow, right in the foundations, little hooks of Margo in Rolf and Rolf in Margo, and she felt him screaming in the early hours of the morning. His rage, his terror, it cut into her as if it were razors in her flesh.

She’s able to do now what she wanted to do then. ‘It’s OK, darling,’ she croons, stroking his back, ‘Margo’s here.’

‘What the fuck’s happening?’ he wails softly in her ear.

‘I genuinely don’t know,’ she says. Holds him tighter. ‘On the way today, I saw them. They’re everywhere. Not just the ones I could see before and not hiding in their skin anymore. Parading outside of it. Flaunting themselves. There’s so many of them.’

Rolf pulls back a little, sniffs. ‘So many of what?’

She bites her lip. Poppy red slides onto her tooth. She licks at it, thoughtful. ‘Beasts. Monsters. Things that hide in their skin. They’re still trapped in skin, or hidden, and no one else can see them I think. I only used to see them behind their flesh, like shadows, but now I see the whole of them, like the flesh is just an illusion trapped inside the beast.’

Rolf steps away from her, that fear flickering across his face like a movie, cell after cell of nightmare terrors. ‘I saw them in my dreams. And a shadow on you. A fucking huge shadow. Something’s coming.’

Margo reaches out, flicks on the kettle, anything to distract her own fear from rising, her anger from breaking out of carefully locked bars of pure iron will. ‘I know, the angel gave me a warning. I might be a mad bitch but I’m not insensible. I’ll be careful, but I can’t stop. They’re here to hurt. We can’t let them.’

Rolf looks uncertain. ‘Really? You really think that? Even though you’ve only been seeing them for a few months? All this is so new to us. What if we’re wrong?’

Margo rattles cups, coffee grounds and sugar spoons, lips buttoned. Her silence says it all. She doesn’t know a thing. It’s all been instinct and for larks. Fun that somehow isn’t any fun anymore. She gives him a solemn look, so out of place on her face it looks like she’s stolen it.

‘We weren’t wrong about the Mother.’

#

Margo sits below Rolf on the ladder. Legs dangling, shoes propped on toes and swinging. Little ruby flashes in the chandelier light. She’s handing him books from a box balanced on her knees. One by one.

They’ve stuck together. Margo leaving Barry to deal with the desk today. There’s too much going on in them to want to be apart.

‘I’m worried about Moe,’ she tells Rolf, finally letting go of the concern she’s held to her chest as hard as she’s holding the box of books to her knees.

‘Why? He wasn’t in the connection that hit the Mother.’

‘No. But the backlash hit him. It hit everyone.’

Rolf stops what he’s doing, book poised halfway into a slot. ‘OK. I concede that. But will it stay with him like it’s stayed with us?’

Margo shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. It’s not as deep in him, the stain, but it’s there and I’m worried it’ll grow, like ours is, and it might attract unwanted attention. He’s not gifted like we are. His gift is small. It makes him too vulnerable, despite his knack with blades.’

‘You think he’ll be targeted?’

She nods, that unnatural serious look flashes across her face again. He doesn’t like it, wants to wipe it off and paint her gold glitter, black kohl, poppy lips and bitchiness. ‘I was right from the first,’ she tells him. ‘From when I started seeing them, but before I knew I could fight them. I nearly died, Rolf. I had to run. Had to take off my fucking heels and fucking pelt for it like a pussy. Tore my feet to shit.’

Rolf’s quiet for a long time. Then he admits softly, ‘Me too. Before I knew. They came after me through the between of things. Digging in my head, these claws of invasion, like daggers. I thought I was dying from cancer or something the pain was so bad.’ He takes another book. ‘What should we do?’

Margo goes to answer but Barry calls over. She’s expecting him to, he’s been working up the courage all morning.

‘Rolf can do that by himself you know,’ Barry says, a wealth of distaste and barely concealed irritation in his voice.

‘He can fuck himself too but it doesn’t mean he’d say no to a helpful hand or anus,’ she snaps. Barry’s mouth pinches tight, rather like an anus itself. Margo bites back a grin. She feels Rolf hiding a massive shit-eater of a grin behind the book and elbows his leg. ‘Can it, Cheshire.’

‘Can’t help it,’ he drawls, ‘first funny thing to happen today. I need to laugh. I feel like my sense of humour’s bought a wedding dress and a decaying mansion to go slowly insane in.’

Margo smiles, ‘we can’t have that. Shall we go and wind Moe up so we can keep an eye on him? You could stand too close for comfort, smell his hair and fondle his arse. Poke him about a bit.’

Rolf flings the book back in the box. ‘You’re on. I vote we snaffle a fifty from the cash register, mainly because I’m broke but also because I want to get Barry back for stealing the last of my oolong.’

She gapes. ‘He never snaffled the last teapot worth?’

‘Damn right he did. I was bloody desperate too. Fucking PG Tits instead. Foul.’

‘Oooh. Right, I’ll create a diversion, you raid the till.’

#

It’s not the people you know that define you; it’s the people you kill. Vespesian knows this. He’s known it since first he felt the warm liquid of a life pour out over his hands. That was the first moment in which he felt finished in some way.

He was a mere lump of unformed boy before that moment. A potential, rather than an actual. Nebulous. Undirected. In that first theft of life he found meaning, self, purpose and actuality. With every subsequent kill he has felt ever more real, coming sharply, painfully into a vibrant focus.

At this point in time, this very moment, stood here in this apex of shadow and light, watching the vapour of humanity drift past like stench on the wind, Vespesian knows that none who live are more real than he.

They are but dim reflections and there is no pleasure in the snuffing of their meagre light. But he is committed to his task. These shades are the little flaws in the stone, represent the diminishment of the value of his world and he will remove them one by one until the stone is flawless.

The bright jangle of a bell calls to his attention. He watches the flaws leave the hovel. These flaws are not quite like the others. The intricate cracking of their blemish extends out beyond this flat plane and into a thousand thousand more, delicate striations of decay, weakness of a far deadlier nature.

To smooth their imperfection from the stone will be something akin to pleasure.

© Ren Warom 2012

My offering for this feast of words is a little SF number called ‘Lepidoptery’ and, because the first issue of Altered States is being given away 100% free (yes, that’s FREE fiction in bite sized chunks – sheer awesomeness), I’ve decided to pop up a little taster of ‘Lepidoptery’ here. I hope you enjoy it enough to go download the anthology (link at the bottom of the post) and, heck, mine’s not the only story and by no means the best, so I hope you’ll go and download whether you like my story or not. You seriously won’t regret it and it does not cost a thing. Oh… did I mention that it’s free… totally legal five finger discount? Yes I did. Well, doing it again

Lepidoptery

by Ren Warom

Clear as glass, the egg-shaped Carrier lifts to the sky. My stomach tips over. I curl my hands to fists. Watch as trees shrink to toys, the Holding to a doll’s house.

The Carrier’s strong but looks brittle as candy. It flies only with their thoughts, an invisible strength. Bodies held within glass, glass held within the air. If they stop thinking, even for a second, we’ll all fall.

I saw it happen once, last summer I think. I get confused because every day feels the same. The Carrier smashed to shards like a mirror. The bodies inside broke apart. Burst. Painted the Carrier shards red as Christmas.

I squeeze my eyes, try to wipe the memory away before it sets into my head. There’s too much in there I can’t forget. Too much noise. Too much ruin. If we fall, I’ll burst and it’ll cover the earth like a storm.

Outside the carrier, clouds draw in close. Like curious blank eyes, staring in at us. The sun lights them from within. They float just as we float. A sky full of floating. I’m floating too. Inside.

All those soft bits, heart, lungs, stomach, are bags of air in water, rising in my throat like sick. I’m scared they’ll choke me. I keep swallowing, as if that’ll make any difference.

We’re moving so fast I’m getting dizzy, brief flashes of the ground through the clouds at my feet reduced by distance to a blur of green. I can’t stop looking.

The Carrier bursts from thick cloud to bright sun. It stings my eyes. I blink away tears, stare out of glistening Carrier glass. And I see it. Rising in the distance. A huge building, one of their living places, so much more elaborate than the ones we call Holdings. I wonder if that’s where we’re going.

Tall towers, fingers of silkstone, stand intricate as lace against a white sky. Ghosts haunting the morning. I feel a ghost myself. Makes me wonder how death will feel. If that’s where they take us I won’t have to wonder long. I know, as everyone knows, that this flight is the last I’ll take. Those who leave the Holding never come back.

I wipe my hand through the tiny drops of misty water covering the curve of the glass; look up to watch the Moths as their minds carry us. There’s no sign in their peaceful flight of the violence they carry us toward.

These Moths aren’t the tiny things that used to flutter to bulbs and burn their wings, or tangle in your hair. They’re flying giants, larger than blue whales, I know because I went to London once, and I saw the model in the room at the Natural History Museum. Their wings swallow the sky. Each flap rocks the carrier, makes my stomach tighten, ache.

Their bodies are vast. It reminds me of being in London, feeling too small and scared. In the bright sunlight the swirls of autumn colours shimmer on their wings; the diamond glitter of frost crowds close as dewdrops on a crazy mix of colour cells.

Hard to describe, the only word that fits Moths properly is beauty. They don’t fit, do they?

Tess reaches out and grasps my fingers. “What does it look like? I can’t move enough to see properly.”

Tess is small, slight. Unable to properly digest the nutrients we were given she’s never grown much beyond the size she was when we first met each other in the Holding.

Both of us only ten years old. Kids from different countries who’d just lost everything we knew. So had all the other children, all we had left was each other. That’s still how it is, even now so many of us are gone.

Those we leave behind today will try not to think about where we’re going, I know because I’ve been there, we all have. And now I’m here, leaving, I know I can’t think about anyone I leave behind. It hurts too much either way. I didn’t want to know this, but very little of what I know has been anything I wanted to.

I squeeze Tess’s hand.

“It’s a cathedral made of milky glass, a castle built from opal, it’s magical,” I tell her, because I can’t lie. Even the world they’ve built over the ruin of ours is beyond beautiful. Like a dream.

Her fingers clutch. Hurting. “I’m so scared, Leela.”

I grip her fingers. I’m scared too. “It’s just like sleeping,” I say, “but it lasts forever.”

Her fingers tremble in mine. “Forever’s such a long time,” she says.

“Not really,” I say, and try to smile. “Because you’ll be sleeping.”

“But I won’t wake up,” her lips begin to tremble; the glassy shine of tears rises on the lids of her eyes. They fall one by one. Mini carriers. But these ones hold only hurt.

“Then it won’t matter that you’re asleep.” I sound more certain than I feel. A sharp pain hits my throat, a bursting bag. I think I might scream, so I swallow hard enough to hurt and say to her. “Perhaps we dream when we’re dead. We could dream of each other.”

“But what if they’re nightmares?”

My head empties. Water down a plughole. I’ve no idea what to say. What if she’s right? So I squeeze her fingers again, force a smile because I don’t want to upset her. If Tess loses it then I’m going to as well.

Tess was always sensitive. One of the kids who never managed to cope with all that happened. She still cries in her sleep every night. I cried only once. The day it happened. The day they came.

There you have it, the first part of my story. Please do go and download of Altered States, I know a great deal of the writers and I’ve read all their stories and they are fabulous. Here’s the link for lovely free literature:

http://www.ofalteredstates.com/free-downloads/

Thanks for popping by, and do drop me a comment if the spirit moves you!

Having said that, knowing the tripe I have on my iPod I admit to being rather terrified of what it might regurgitate. Fortunately for me it was rather kind and I was rewarded with a perfectly delightful and inoffensive track by Iron Maiden (hence the rather dashing photo of Eddie). So here goes…

My track: Prowler

My story:

The Pied Piper

Night. The faint drip of water from a broken drainpipe. A distant squeal of brakes. The banshee wail of sirens. He wraps sound about himself as much as darkness, whispers across the pavement on soundless feet.

Passes a row of tattered stores, candy colours of neon signs like fresh cuts on tired flesh. A door opens, disgorges a shaded figure into the cold. Another follows on its heels, slams the door to the wall, smashes silence like a storefront window.

‘Yo, Prince, you fuck, you pussy. I got serious money restin’ on this. You wanna jerk me now, boy, I’ma turn you inside out, drop your remains off for your mother to cry on. You hear me?’

‘Chill, Hex, I got your poison man, I got it. I’m just askin’ for more time…’

He lifts a hand as he waltzes past surrounded in sounds and shadows, draws night through his fingers like silken ink, sensual across his palm. Grips. Tugs. The ink becomes sharp. Ebony blades. Night turns ugly.

‘Word on the street is you full of bullshit, you lost Big Dee a cool hundred thou. I’m thinking you a bad investment.’

‘Man, now I said I was good. You don’t gotta do that, man. Please…’

Muted sounds of a scuffle. A high-pitched whine followed by the viscous slap of blood on filthy concrete. The sigh as it waterfalls to the road, to the drains. Somewhere down there in dank gloom and shit-coloured waters, rats twitch, scent the rich odour, swarm to feed.

He smiles, a glimmer of incisors in the neon. Soft shuffles past, his own dance with the shadows. Puddles are partners to twirl around, swift as a blade spun through fingers. Down the cracked concrete of the sidewalk he pirouettes, hangs a right, turns down the broken, garbage-strewn restriction of an alley.

Windows slam open above as if his passing is a breeze to move them. Menace rises like garbage stink. Then a voice speaks, low in warning, gilded with fear.

‘Don’t you do it, Carson. If you hit me again I’ll kill you, so help me. A woman only got so much patience.’

Feral pupils gleam in the soft glow from lighted windows. The hand moves again. This time a cat’s cradle of darkness between splayed fingers. Intricate. Ominous. Strange lights pulse its centre.

‘Carson. I am warning you. Don’t…’

Her voice trails like fragments of net in the wind as the unmistakable dense crack of flesh on flesh rings out. The scream that follows is pure rage. Red. Blistering. Limitless. Footsteps tap on vinyl. Then comes the scrape of wood on wood, a man’s low yell of surprise. Thock Thock. And more screaming erupts. Broken. Hysterical. Pain through and through.

‘Oh baby, baby, wake up, momma was aiming for daddy… baby, wake up… oh jesus… my baby.’

And the pied piper of ruin dances onward to his own tune, light footed and merry, leaving human wreckage in his wake, a feast for dark-furred gods.

©  Ren Warom 2012

Don’t really know if I like it, perhaps a little obvious, a little too prowlerish. But if I’d worked with the lyrics rather than just the general idea of a title then… well… Hades alone knows what horrors (not the good kind) might have emerged from my wobbly gray stuff.

Anyhoo, read, hopefully enjoy, and if the mood takes you then by all means do thrust your opinion my way with a bit of commentage. It’s be much appreciated.

Explosions of light

Parabolas arcing from water
.

Great still bodies

Serve as mirrors

To clone a placid sky

.

A tornado rising

Of wing feathers
.

Great choking masses

In Tumultous Gossiping unison
,

A funnel of consuming black

.

Fills the pupil void

Contracted to period point
.

Drenched, savaged

By roaring light feedback
.

Drowning,

Welded up against the glass

© Ren Warom 2008