Hey, I don't really ever use reddit, but I have this idea for a short story. I wrote two chapters last year but never had the confidence to show it to anyone. I was really into Douglas Adams at the time that i wrote i an if any of you have read his books, you'll probably see the influence. Anyways, just let me know what you think about it. Chapter. 1 I was sitting in my office, staring discontentedly at the picture frame that occupied the front right corner of my desk. I picked it up, moved it to the front left corner, and immediately regretted the decision. I slid it back to the right corner and was satisfied. The picture frame was one of three items on my desk, along with a pencil and something that is of no concern to you, or anyone for that matter. I picked up the pencil and instinctively reached for the drawer on my left hand side and removed a pencil sharper from it. I attempted to sharpen my pencil, which i thought was much too dull for my tastes, and felt immediate regret in having ruined my last mechaniical pencil. I put the pencil sharpener in the drawer from which I removed it and opened the top drawer on my left hand side. I picked up the wooden pencil that was inside of it. "It's just not the same." I said, or maybe thought. I put the wooden pencil back into the drawer and stared at it grudgingly for a few minutes, then shut the drawer. Turning my attention back to the picture frame on my desk, I started to wonder if maybe I should move it when someone knocked at my door. "Yes?" "..."What do you mean yes?" A voice responded. "Well, I'm not entirely sure, just come in." I said. The door opened and a man took several steps in. He was a strange man that walked as if he had a hermit crab in his shoe. It was my secretary, whose name is of no importance. He stopped at the front of my desk and stared at it for a few seconds, as if it were completely alien to him. "What is that?" He asked. "What is what?" I replied. "That" He said, pointing at... well it doesnt matter what he pointed at. "That's no concern of yours." I said. He continued staring, rather rudely I might add, for a few seconds. He apparently decided it wasn't worth further questioning and looked away from it. "I have something very important to tell you." He said. "What is it?" "I think that picture frame would fare much better on the other side of your desk. I considered this for a moment and came to the conclusion that it was completely insane. "Only a madman would think that." I thought, or maybe said. "is that all?" I said. "No." he said, and pulled a notepad out of his pocket, flipped the page several times muttering something about a walrus, and flipped back to the page he was initially on. "It's your wife, sir" "Which one?" "Er.." He flipped the page several more times until he found a page that satisfied him. "The blonde one." "What about her?" "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but she's been murdered." "Oh, not another one." I said insouciantly. I thought for a second, moved the picture fram to the other side of my desk, and looked up. "Very nice, sir." Said my secretary, pleased. "Well, do you know who did it?" I asked. He flipped through his notepad again, furrowed his brow, and said "A walrus, I think." "That's new" I said. "Are you sure?" "No, but It's in the notepad, sir." "Well, thank you for bringing me this infromation. Do you know where it happened?" "At your house." "That's strange. How could a walrus have killed her there?" He shrugged and turned to leave. He stopped at the trashcan, took off his shoe, and shook it over the trashcan. "How did that get in there?" He muttered as he shut the door. I got up and walked to the door, intending to solve the problem that awaited me at home. But first, of course, I'll have to stop for a quick drink. Yes, that's what I'll do. This is surely a problem that can't be solved without a quick drink. Before leaving, I looked at my desk to check if I was forgetting anything and it turned out to be a mistake, as all I could think about was that I needed a picture to go in the frame on my desk. I decided I'll do it another day, when I was distracted by a clicking sound coming from my trashcan. I looked in it and, upon seeing a hermit crab, came to the conclusion that I'll need more than a quick drink. I opened the door and set off on what would surely be a rather confusing and unpleasant adventure.


"First off, our deal didn't even kick in right away. I've been waiting years to ask you what THAT was about." Said the middle aged man, sitting on a couch off to the side of a giant fireplace in what can only be described as a castle. "I'm not sure what you mean.." Replied a beast standing in front of the fire, making it look almost toyish in size with his hulking shoulders, massive neck and enormous horns reminiscent in shape to that of a mountain goat. They jutted out from both sides of his head and wrapped around to his back. His skin, a dark black with a hint of green was complimented by eyes that burned bright red with the literal fires of hell inside them. The Devil never appeared in his true form when trying to make a deal, the sight of him would cause most people to lose their minds and it's hard to negotiate with a truly insane person. No, this was a scare tactic that didn't seem to be working on this client. He barely even took notice of the horns. What did I get myself into, Lucifer thought to himself. "You know damn well what I mean. I failed out of school, YOU were supposed to help me with whatever I needed." "I did, school would have just stood in your way and I don't deal in "needs" I deal in "wants" I sent you down the path to get you what you" Lucifer sighed "wanted." "Right.. Clever play on words to cover your fuck up. What is it you're doing here anyways? I haven't seen you in 30 years and you just show up at my house? The years haven't been kind Satan" The man said with a laugh, thinking back 30 years when a very slick looking man walked up to him on a busy street and got right down to brass tacks. He didn't mince words. Admitting he was the Devil and wanting to make a deal. "I'll give you anything you can imagine, any amount of power, wealth, fame, anything. For this all I ask is for your soul in return." Without hesitation the young man said "Deal, I want power. Power like the world has never seen." Satan was a little taken aback, this usually took some work. Oh well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth he thought to himself as he pulled out a contract written in blood, a finger was pricked and the deal was done five minutes after it started. Walking away, Satan looked back, still not sure what just took place only to see the young man watching him leave. On the boys face was a smile he thought was reserved only for his demons. Evil. "Things have changed. I BUY souls, you understand. The souls have to be worth something for me to make the purchase. 30 years ago, you had something inside you that made the deal worthwhile. What you do on Earth still effects the price of the soul I've purchased even after the deal is complete. Recently, your soul has lost it's last redeeming quality. It is completely worthless to me meaning the deal we made is no longer active. I'm not in the habit of giving away power and getting nothing in return." "I guess we both got fucked on this deal then." The man said, slowly getting up and pulling a hollowed out mountain goat horn from a nearby closet. While much smaller the horn looked like Satans, the Devil knew this asshole was toying with him. Almost threatening him. "How did you get fucked?!?" Satan bellowed "Look around you! You are all powerful! Soon you will conquer this entire world! I did this for you! You could have neve...." Satan stopped short. Standing directly in front of him, no more than 5 feet away, the man began to blow into the tip of the mountain goat horn, playing a tune while staring the Devil in the eyes. "Please, have a seat Lucifer. I want to show you why I won't deal with you again." The Devil is a surprisingly calm monster. Even with the clear threat and disrespect from this tiny human he never became angry. Walking over and sitting down on the opposing couch, cracking it in two under his massive weight he began to talk. "Look, we need to make a new deal here. The old contract was never meant for someone like you." "No deal." The man said while writing something in a folder. After a few more furious scribbles he pulled the paper from its leather binder, folded it in half and stood up. Walking over towards Satan he handed him the paper. "This is what I wanted. You never delivered." "You didn't ask for this! You didn't ask for anything close to this! It's not too late, I can give you this if you give back power." "No, it's too late." "It's not too.." "It's too late." "No, it's no..." Looking over the paper the Devil cut himself off, stood and said "Yeah... You're right. It's too late for you." "FUCK YOU! Get out of my house!" "Gladly, but you should know we aren't done here. This contract will be nullified one way or another." "Good luck, now leave." He said, pointing towards his castle door. "It was a simple deal!" He called after Satan as he walked out the door still holding the paper in his massive clawed hand. "Then you should have asked for it." And in a wisp of black smoke he was gone. Having taken the form of a prison guard Satan walked down the halls. The crying and groaning was music to his ears. At the last cell on the block he stopped and called the inmate inside over. "How would you like to get out of this place?" "I... I would like that very much Sir." The inmate replied. "I understand you're a lawyer, you specialize in contracts. You are the best in world at this particular occupation. Is this correct?" "Y... Yes, that is my specialty but I don't know if I'm the best in the.." "No buts. I need you to find a flaw in a contract. It would be very helpful to me and" stopping to look around the prison hall "many others." "And you'll release me if I do this Sir." "Yes. Yes I will. I just need you to sign your own contract first and then we'll get out of here." He said, sliding the agreement through the bars. "Yes! Yes, just let me look this over first and..." "What?!? I'm offering you a way out of this place and you want to read your get out of jail free card FIRST?" "No offence Sir, but as us contract lawyers say, the Devils in the details." "...... Yeah, can't fault you for that." While Satan stood by the cell and waited for the inmate to go over the contract with a fine tooth comb he pulled out the folded piece of paper from his guard uniforms back pocket and laughed. On it was a scribbling of what a 5 year olds mom might put on the fridge if it hadn't been of the Devil of course. It was a stick figure with a head 5 times too big and what must have been the mans attempt at horns. The red eyes didn't actually stay inside the giant head and crossed over into the open paper. Written at the top was "I WANTED TO BE AN ARTIST!!!" Shaking his head the Devil wondered why anyone would ever sign this horrible excuse for art but sure enough, at the bottom right hand corner "Adolf Hitler" was written bold and proud. "It all looks good sir, I pulled out a loose tooth and signed it, I'm ready when you are." The contract was clean. Even the Devil knew better than to try and pull one over on a Jewish lawyer. Three days later the Germans lost a battle that was the turning point in the war. As his armies fell Hitler sat in a bunker drawing stick people. He tried a little soul searching but it proved harder than people made it sound.


Alfred was alone. This was nothing new to him, but he did feel more alone than usual. He called out into the endless white plain for what must have been the eighth time, “Hello? Anyone know how I can get out of here?” No response came. Alfred scratched his head while he stared straight ahead with a look of deep contemplation. He felt absolutely perplexed, which was his least favorite way to feel due to his deeply held self-esteem issues. The cogs in his brain had been turning ceaselessly since his arrival into the empty realm of white, and his legs were exhausted from near constant wandering, and a sever lack of chairs. “I don't suppose there is a complaint department nearby,” he said sarcastically as he massaged his aching thighs. He'd tried to take a rest now and again by simply sitting on the pure white floor, but he found that his butt would become uncomfortable after a short while as the floor was rather hard, and no amount of awkward shifting could fix his discomfort. He'd been standing nonstop for three days now; but there was no way of which he could have realized this because, unbeknownst to Alfred, he has wound himself up in limbo. It was five days ago in earthen time that Alfred had met his end. He was in the midst of his morning ritual which consisted of waking, showering, dressing, and turning on the television, all while munching on two pieces of toast. The pieces of toast, I should add, were completely void of any condiments; no butter, no jam, no peanut butter and honey, just plain old boring toast. His fixation with this substandard form of toast eating remains a mystery to all, including himself. Once Alfred had reached the dressing phase of his bizarre ritual he had but one slice of toast left. He had usually attempted the long game (i.e. taking only small nibbles so that he'd have one-and-a-half pieces of toast left instead of just one by the time he reached the television), but he was feeling somewhat adventurous that morning. He'd been taking substantially larger bites than usual, and felt a sort of sinking feeling when he'd realized that all he had left was the company of a single piece of toast, and he had yet to even put on his trousers. He wanted to savor the piece as much as possible so that he would have something to eat whilst watching the morning news. Alfred pulled out his clothes for the day (a white, stained t-shirt and dark blue jeans) and then slipped the corner of the last piece of toast into his mouth, where he left it so that he could salivate over the tempting taste of room temperature toast on his lips. The toast wobbled limply between Alfred's lips as he hobbled to get his legs through their designated slots in the blue jeans. He began to feel the corner piece split off from the larger portion of the toast, and with a gasp of alarm, he sucked the now separated corner piece down into the depths of his windpipe in his rush to save the falling remainder of toast. After two minutes of struggling for air on his bedroom floor he passed on, leaving behind his corpse with his pants half down, no shirt on (revealing his somewhat flabby and pale body), three-quarters of a piece of toast beside him, and a corner piece of toast in his windpipe. The whole thing was rather depressing to witness, but luckily no one was around to see his comical last moments. Alfred was the luckiest of all as he has no idea of how he died, or even that he died at all, so he doesn't have to spend eternity thinking about how dreadful a finale he'd performed. Alfred's body would not be found until ten days later by his landlord who, in his usual state of rage, would come pounding on his door for the months rent, only to not receive any answer. This would lead him to kick the door down (despite having a maser key in his pocket) and find Alfred's dead body after a short search for any hidden cash. The landlord gave a moments pity, then cleaned out Alfred's wallet which sat on his nightstand, and called an ambulance to clean up the mess. The funeral proceedings were attended by the landlord, Alfred's mother in law who had screwed him out of his father's inheritance, and a weeping old man who had molested Alfred during his first semester of community college at the age of twenty-seven; no one was ever told about the incident. Alfred is now left to wander the endless plain of white for all of eternity; never again to be greeted by another. Never again to be embraced. Never again to eat his morning toast. Never again to attempt to find out what love means. Never again to speak with a telemarketer about politics. Never to make love. Never again to hear the morning news casters droll on about the weather or something equally unimportant. Never again to try and spark a relationship with Tina in the cubicle beside his. Never again to hear another voice, but his own. Alfred was alone.


I'll never understand the power of inebriation to make things funny when any rational empathetic person would find them heartbreaking. It rewires the brain unplugging the proper emotion from a stimulus and connecting it to its moral opposite. Joy for disgust. Anger for pity. Love for disdain. There is one connection that never gets touched no matter how long or how much you try. Every drunk hopes one more round will break the link from regret to sadness. That bond only gets stronger. Still they persist and drink here day after day. My humble dump of a pub hugs an ancient block wall that reaches out of the sand from what had once been sidewalk. It is not much more than a lean to built with a quilt work of charred road signs and corrugated tin. All hung on a lattice of what you might think was driftwood if it were not in a desert. When I built it five years after the blast life had just started to creep back. They said the radiation would kill me. They were right because I won't last much longer but the morons didn't realize that was the point. I just didn't think it would take so long. Penance has a pace all its own. The bar was an accident, or a sentence depending on your point of view. Leaning against that wall drinking one day a guy offers me money for a swallow. The next day he staggers by and brings a friend. We held up the wall and drank till the bottle was empty. Rinse and repeat. This went on for days, because I had a secret stash and a longing for a horrible death. In my half lit state I decided a bar needed a proper table so I scavenged one of those wooden spools they use for the power lines. There were a lot of them around from before the government gave up on restoring services and surrendered Arizona back to the desert. I set up shop and have been here ever since. There were more people like me that wandered back for the death sentence than you would have thought. Each of them looking for somebody or some thing they knew wouldn’t be here. The city blocks of rubble around Talking Stick turned into a little community for the broken, starving and cancer plagued survivors. Trading for food, drugs and other sordid needs. Wherever there are people, there is thirst for amnesia and what was left of the entrepreneur in me was compelled to fill the need in the market. You might be wondering where I got the booze. To understand that I have to take you back to when the NBA still played on the other side of the wall we drank under. Back in the day I was the penultimate business cliché. Every week was a stream of meetings, flights, and scavenger hunts for power outlets to charge the phone. Five minutes a night to talk to the kids. Weekends were for super dad. Coach third base. Paint a set for the play. Work in the yard to keep the homeowner’s association off my ass. And somewhere in there I saw the woman I was married to. She stopped being a wife a long time ago. Just another client meeting over an expensive dinner where I listened to problems, cared deeply and promised to fix them all, knowing all along I could not change a thing. It was a Friday and I couldn't wait to get home. Eva and the kids were picking me up and we were going straight to the NBA finals game. Nobody could believe the Suns were in it. It was my son's ninth birthday that weekend and he was crazy about it so I bought the tickets with my commission. My sixteen year old was all eye rolls and snapchat but once she got there I knew she would get into it. High impact quality time. Except that I blew it. The meeting went long and I missed my flight from Chicago. I got on the next one but I'd be late. It might work. I texted Eva and she would go ahead. I would meet them there since it was just a few blocks from the airport. No idea what I would do with the bags but I'd figure that out. This would work. The pilot had just given the announcement for the initial descent into Phoenix Sky Harbor. Forty-five minutes until game time. The plane banked right to come around and land from the west. Then the flash. It filled the cabin but felt like a camera flash you looked right into. A second later the plane banks harder, acceleration pushes me back into the seat and we climb. Some lady screams. When the shock wave hit I knew we were dead. It shuttered for what seemed like hours but it was only seconds. We didn’t die. Three hours later we land in Dallas. We should have died. We had been a hundred and twenty miles out and on pure reflex, the pilot finished the rotation he started and turned us in the opposite direction of the blast. Had we been perpendicular to the spherical shock wave radiating from ground zero or even at a lower altitude it would have rolled the aircraft. I heard more than three thousand died that way. But not me. I walked out of that airport with one thing in mind. Get to that arena. I never really thought about why and I never stopped. It is not like I had hope. I just had nothing else. The next few weeks were rental cars, dead phones, stolen cars, refugee camps, more bombs, water lines, riots, and walking. Endless walking. Funny thing about history is that they write down in excruciating detail how it starts. The finer points don't matter much when it ends. I kept moving from camp to camp, dodging troops scooping up people trying to get West once I got free of forced relocation. Why they cared to stop any of us I still don’t know. There wasn’t anything West of Albuquerque that didn’t glow in the dark. I had a time getting by the barricades at first but eventually the gatekeepers just drifted away. It just took a while for society to collapse to the point where they stopped caring if you wanted to kill yourself going home. It got easier to travel once I found that beautiful eighteen wheel monstrosity. An abandoned Peterbuilt at a truck stop outside Las Cruces, NV. The only thing I was ever grateful about from having an emotionally distant and mostly physically absent trucker father was that he taught me how to drive one of these when I was fourteen. That thing blew through the abandoned roadblocks like dry leaves in winter back east and I made the last four hundred miles in a third of the time it took me to go the first fifty. Dallas to Phoenix in forty-six months. The truck had one other advantage. Daddy taught me to drive but he never taught me how to unhook a trailer. By the time it got to Phoenix it was still hauling 18,990 bottles of Absolut. Turns out I get a hundred and eighty miles a gallon. Coming into the city most of the abandoned cars had been bulldozed off the highway by the military. Closer in it was much harder to move a rig that size so I ditched the truck in a rail yard, packed a few bottles of encouragement and started in on foot. More walking. Rubble strewn between charred buildings and the refuse of a dead civilization lay every where. Scattered among the ruins was the occasional scavenger with telltale growths and blisters, few teeth and even less time. I walked up what I thought was Jefferson past what had been Chase Field. Even back then a market of sorts had started to take shape at between the ruins of the sports complex and casino with a water peddler,battery smiths and other traders. I walked down Third street with the crumbling remains of a parking deck to my left and the hulk of the arena on my right. Turning on Jackson I planned to just walk around the block. You might have thought I’d have had a better plan than this after four years. I shuffled down the long block wall toward the arena’s south entry. When I noticed the monstrosity it looked almost as if it were leaning out of the wall. A trick of the light. At first I thought it was some kind of memorial. I’d had enough vodka by then to laugh out loud at the absurdity of an artist’s tribute in a dead city. Then through the haze it hit me. A long train of silhouettes. Blackened shadows etched all along the wall. A hundred or more outlines in the grey block face, forever queued in time for a game that never started. I slowed. Moving down the wall my fingers tracing the edges of Satan’s artwork until I came to one about four and a half feet high. I paused and looked back at two I had just brushed by and knew in my soul they were exactly five feet four inches. Tracy had caught up to Eva when she was fifteen. The air left my lungs and I sank to my knees, my face scraping the wall. Wanting so desperately to burn my own flesh into the rough gravel. Blood dripping on the sand at my feet. Every breath long slow and painful like it was drawn through the wall itself. Released in a dry coughing wail. I sat there wanting to die and started to drink. I drank until I couldn’t see anymore. Woke up and did it again. Drifting between screams, sobs and silence. I should have had a better plan. I don’t know how long after I looked up and there was a man standing over me. “Is that real liquor or are you just using the bottle to pretend” Somehow I found a voice, and told him what it was. “I’ll pay you for it.” And with that transaction my last life as a bartender to the damned began. Day after day I stare at the wall where my ghosts hang in judgement. But as much as I longed to see them as they were, I want so much more to see the shadow that isn't there. For another blinding light to put me on that wall where I should have been. Go ahead and laugh. Everybody does after a few. I don’t hear it any more. I just drink and I wait for the game to start here at the bar I call the Flash and Shadow.


The sword sat collecting dust and cobwebs in the corner of the dingy, dimly lit room. Its formerly ornate scabbard was chipped and cracked in places, from years of misuse and neglect. Layers of grime covered the sword’s once beautifully intricate pommel, the flickering firelight in the room now danced across its smudged, grimy surface. This was no longer a weapon of war, no longer a mighty instrument of justice and glory. Now it was nothing more than a forgotten remnant of a time gone by. The firelight cast its glow upon another forgotten object in the room, another tool of war, cast aside and left to decay in an empty derelict room of an equally abandoned house. The half illuminated figure was seated in a rotting wooden chair, sunken eyes reflecting the weak flame of his dying fire. The knight, like his sword, had lost the meaning of victory and valour to the passing of time. The howl of battle and carnage that had rang so readily in his ears before now echoed through his soul, when once the cry of conquest made his heart soar, the memory now brought only anguish. The war was in the past, but the battle continued to rage onward in the knight’s heart and mind. He had lost his family to the battle, victims to his unending despair. Never again would see them, for he had built a wall around his heart. A wall made from bricks of horror and carnage. His house, his castle, yet remained, but it was as broken as the spirit who dwelled within it. Its foundations were crumbling, and a single leaf might well bring the whole structure crashing down. The knight, once a mighty and noble warrior, the very picture of heroism; now he sat, a testament to the truth of war. His once broad shoulders, capable of bearing the weight of armour for days, now struggled to hold themselves up against the ragged clothes he draped over himself. His mighty arms were atrophied from disuse, and his legs couldn’t hold him for long. The fire flickered, but no spark reflected in the knight’s eyes. Soon he too would collapse, for his spirit had crumbled ages ago. He would collapse along with his empty and forgotten house, a tomb he had lived in since he had returned from the war. All that would remain is a sword collecting dust and cobwebs in the corner of the dingy dimly lit room.


Dec 18 No sun today. It appears the polar night has finally set in. If I am where I think I am, the sun should reappear in about 10 days. I am stocked up on firewood, although it is hard to stay awake without the sun to look forward to. The only reason I awake at all is to stoke the fires and cook food. Speaking of food, my rations have run lower than expected. I have decided to attempt to hunt something. I have a 300 yards of fishing line. I have attached it to the spur of rock that shields the entrance to my cave so I can find my way back. I am going to leave first thing in the morning. when I wake up. Dec 19 I managed to kill something. I’m not really sure what. I shot it in fright when it startled me. It was so dark. I hacked it to pieces with my machete and buried the chunks in the snow outside my cave. The fire was almost out when I came back, but I’ve stoked the flames. I’m so tired. After all the activity in the cold I was numb and now my thawing limbs are feeling exhausted. I don’t think a day has passed, my watch broke during the hacking and I couldn’t find it in the dark. I will take a nap and assume it is still the same day when I awake. Dec 19 continued I awoke feeling very well rested. Better than I have in days. Yet it could only have been a few minutes. The fire was full force when I awoke. I brought in some of the meat from this morning and started cooking it. It was delicious, but it may just be that I haven’t had non-jerky meat in almost a month. I stored some cooked meat in the cave to have for breakfast, stoked the fire again. Time for a real night’s sleep. Dec 19 continued again I just woke up. I think an animal was in the cave. All of my meat is missing and some firewood is gone. The fire is still going strong, so I figure I was only asleep for a little while. Must be late night or early morning. The knots on the tarp over the cave are still tied, but I am going to try and cover some cracks to keep out whatever stole my food, then go back to sleep. I’m not very tired, but I need to sleep more than two quick naps or I’ll lose my strength. Dec 20 I think I’m stoking the fire in my sleep. I awoke today and found more wood missing and the fire still warm. It must be the 20th though. I cooked more meat. I ate well, and then chipped out a shelf in the ice on the back wall. With the meat up there, I shouldn’t need to worry about anything getting in and eating it. I managed to find some more fuel for the fire. I found some uprooted plants that should burn well not too far when I was digging up meat outside. I cut them up and placed them near the fire to dry. I will be tying the zipper on my sleeping bag so I don’t waste firewood anymore. Dec 20 continued Ok, I think I’m imagining things. I awoke to a well stoked fire. The plants I chopped up had all been used. I estimate that for the fire to maintain this size and be going 24 hours a day, it would be the 23rd but that can’t be right. The meat was gone from the shelf again. I cooked more meat, but only enough for today. Since nothing was digging in the snow, I figure it’s better to only cook what I need right then and save food. I need to go home. Once I see the sun I will head back. If I move quickly and leave my supplies here, I figure I can make it within sight of the outpost within the brief light we get on the 28th. Since I have no idea what day it is, I’ll be checking for pre-dawn light every day from now on. **MORE MEAT** Dec 21 I’m scared. I awoke to a stinging in my eye. Somehow my forehead was cut, and that was written in my notebook using blood. The fire was built up much too high, the ice around the walls of the cave was melting. It was so hot that I had to wait at the back of the cave for it to die down a little. This all started with that hunting trip. I went out and dug up all of the meat and dragged it out a long way from the cave. I forgot to tie the string and ended up lost in the dark. I was wandering for a while before I finally caught sight of the light leaking out from the cave. I came back and the fire was stoked, as usual. The meat I had dragged away was neatly laid out in the entrance. My rations are missing. I cooked enough meat for the day, I’m going to try to make it back in the morning. *That’s the last entry. Jason’s body was found on Dec 28th. A search party had started looking when screams were heard coming from the direction he had left in on the 25th. It was on top of the firepit in his cave. All of the meat was picked off of his body. The entrance to the cave was still covered and tied shut from the inside, but no sign of another person was found.


#“Contact!” The cry rang out, cutting through the low murmur of normal operations on the bridge. “Bearing three-two-four, at zero-five-two by zero-one-five.” “What’s the word, Lieutenant?” the captain answered as he settled into his chair. “Not sure yet, sir,” the Lieutenant answered, studying the screen in front of him intently. “I’ll know more in a moment.” “Keep me posted, Pan,” the captain ordered, before addressing the bridge. “Engines ahead one-third. Make our heading three-four-zero level.” “All ahead one-third, aye,” came the response, followed shortly by “New heading three-four-zero level, aye.” A tense hush had fallen over the bridge. The captain counted twelve heartbeats before the comms officer spoke up again. “Sir, contact matches the profile of a Council frigate. Engines are cold and it looks like it’s putting out minimal power. Transponder is active, though…” The lieutenant checked his screens again. “IFF signal identifies it as the *Polo*, sir.” The captain’s brow furrowed. “The *Polo*? That can’t be, this isn’t their sector. The hell would they be doing out here?” He contemplated for a second, then keyed his earpiece. “Talk to me, Shack. What exactly are we looking at?” “Lieutenant Panzavechia is correct, Commander,” confirmed the voice in his ear. “The ship is broadcasting the proper Council identification codes. As far as we can tell, this is in fact F-324, SCV *Marco Polo*.” “Shit,” grumbled the captain. “Something’s not right here… Alright Pan, let’s say hello.” He tapped a button on his screen. “*Polo*, *Polo*, we have you on sensors with dangerously low power outputs. Confirm identity, and advise if you need assistance.” He tapped his screen again to end the recording. “Message away, sir,” reported Panzavechia. Twenty-eight heartbeats passed, when suddenly the captain’s earpiece chimed. “What is it, Shack?” he answered. “Commander, I wanted to let you know that Lieutenant Commander Luca has been notified of this development,” declared the voice in his ear. “She is arriving on the bridge imminently.” “*Shit*. I don’t need this right now,” the captain mumbled. “Noted, Commander.” The connection ended just as the bridge doors slid open. “What’s the situation, Commander?” Luca asked, almost out of courtesy as she strode onto the bridge. “Nothing that requires your attention just yet, Inquisitor,” the captain sighed. “Your ship’s computer tells me otherwise, Commander,” Luca argued, halting next to the captain’s chair. Her grey-and-white uniform was in stark contrast to the midnight blue of the bridge crew. “Yes, he does love to stab me in the back,” the captain countered dryly, making it a point to avoid looking at her. “As of yet, no Council protocol has been broken. This situation falls entirely within the jurisdiction of the Ranger fleet.” “Fine,” Luca spat, not looking entirely convinced. “I agree with your computer's analysis that something-" “Incoming message, Commander!” Panzavechia interrupted them. “Play it, Lieutenant,” the captain ordered, almost relieved to be able to shut Luca up. “Aye, sir.” The comms officer tapped his screen, and a voice came over the speakers. “Council frigate, this is the ship’s computer for SCV *Marco Polo*. We have suffered a major failure across multiple systems. We have no engines and limited power. Life support is failing. Requesting assistance and evacuation.” The captain and the Inquisitor glanced at each other for the first time since she had entered the bridge. Both wordlessly reached the same conclusion. “Lieutenant Patterson, bring shields to full,” the captain instructed. “Shields to full, aye, sir,” acknowledged the operations officer. The bridge was dead silent as the captain’s earpiece chimed again. “Commander, I should remind you that ship’s computers are not authorized to record or transmit messages. For this ship to do so would be a severe breach of Council regulations.” “I am aware, Shack, and I think the Inquisitor is perfectly aware as well,” the captain muttered. “One other thing, Commander,” the voice in his ear continued. “The voice in that message carried distinctly non-synthesized inflections, and did not match the profile of any computers that I am aware of. It is likely that the message was sent not by a ship’s computer, but by a person claiming to be one.” Eight heartbeats passed in the silence, then Luca spoke up again. “Definitely a trap, then. Pirates?” she suggested, a wry smile on her face. “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” the captain snorted. “Novak, engines ahead one-half. Okeda, make our heading three-five-zero by zero-one-five.” The responses came in rapid succession from the engineering and navigation officers. “All ahead one-half, aye.” “New heading, three-five-zero by zero-one-five, aye.” “Pan, keep an eye on that ship. Let me know if they-” “Contact!” cried the comms officer before the captain could finish his instructions. “Bearing zero-five-four at zero-two-seven by zero-one-three and closing.” “What is it, and where did it come from?” barked the captain. “Not sure, sir.” responded Panzavechia. “Size and energy signature are about what you’d expect for a cruiser. No blue-shift, it just popped up on sensors out of nowhere. Engines look like they just fired up, and their weapons are heating up as well.” “A cruiser? How the *fuck* do you hide a cruiser out here?” the captain exclaimed. “Commander, we-” Luca started to interject, but the captain cut her off. “Lieutenant Son, I want full power to all batteries as soon as possible. Open the point-defence lasers while you’re at it.” “Aye, sir,” the gunnery officer replied. “Novak, I want all ahead full. Pan, prepare to get a message away,” continued the captain, his heart pounding as he keyed the button on his screen again. “*Paradigm*, *Paradigm*, this is Commander Koenig of the SCV *Shackleton*.


I wrote this in about 3 hours before I had to turn it in for a class. I realize that it's probably consistent in errors, so constructive criticism is very much encouraged. Lunar Base 422 “Mommy, are you there?” Adeline pried her eyes open, a task that was becoming more and more difficult as the night grew older. Of course the recently-full-now-half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting on her station’s desk was not helping. She was really doing her best to make a bed for herself using only her terrible office chair and the aforementioned desk, a real testament to her resourcefulness. She sat leaned all the way back, with her feet propped on the desk next to the whiskey. She wiped her eyes and studied the monitor sitting on the desk. A small, pixilated face inside the monitor stared back at her, awaiting her response. “Yo, Addie, are you even listening?” “Yeah Mark, I’m still here” she sighed, already longing to be back in the dream she had just been pulled out of. “I’m fading fast though, if you have anything remotely important to tell me, now is the time” She dragged her feet off the desk and onto the floor and stood to stretch. After she finished touching her toes and Mark finished rolling his eyes, Mark continued. “Aries Command is on me for your missing fuel log. They are sure that they didn’t get it with the last comm. pack, which means you couldn’t have attached it. I’m not calling you a liar…” Adeline was zoned out again. She stared at a picture on her desk, the only picture she owned. The picture did not fit its frame and was held together by clear-ish tape, having been torn in two on more than one occasion. The picture was of a small six year old boy, wearing the largest grin a person could fit on such a small face. The boy was presenting a flower to whoever was taking the picture, and his grin revealed two nonexistent front teeth. A small smile found its way onto Adeline’s face, only to diminish a moment later, when Mark’s rambling seemed to be coming to an end. "So? What do you think we should do about it?” Prodded Mark. Adeline realized that she didn't want to be having this conversation a second longer. Mark was certainly calling her a liar, and she was even more certainly lying. "I don't know what happened, but I'll get it sorted out. I'll send you what I sent them and you can look it over for yourself. But I’ve got to crash, I have to make a run early tomorrow morning.” Adeline reached down to the keyboard to end the call. She hesitated before she hung up, trying to decide whether not to ask Mark a potentially embarrassing question. “Mark, you wouldn't have called me mommy earlier, would you have?” Mark’s face contorted in disgust and bewilderment. "Mommy, like mother? Why on earth…" Getting the answer she expected, Adeline ended the call. She didn't mean to resent Mark; he was not at fault for being stuck with her on this distant moon on the edge of a distant galaxy. Adeline always understood that she wasn't easy to work with, even before. Four years she had spent living and working on Lunar Base 422, and had only seen Mark in person a total of two times. The first time was her first Christmas, a tradition that they had originally planned to take place every year. Mark had made the two thousand mile journey in his lunar rover, with Adeline promising to take the journey next year. Though the affair had been so bleak and dry that both of them had wordlessly come to the understanding that they were better off separate. Since then it had only been weekly status reports and an instance a couple years back when Mark had to come help make repairs to the space cruiser docked in Adeline’s base. She could still hear Mark whining in her ear as he tinkered with the smashed navigation system. “I might just be an engineer, but I'm also your commanding officer. I don't know what you're doing out there, I'm not a pilot. But we are here to do work, to run tests and report data. If you wanted to fly headfirst into asteroid fields and explore the outer reaches of space, then you should have joined The Corps." Adeline laid down onto her stiff bed to attempt as much sleep as possible before the inevitable head splitting hangover that she was due for. As she began to drift off to sleep, she looked on her nightstand and saw an old open letter. Even though she had the contents memorized, she picked up the envelope and took out the letter. If anything she wanted to touch it, feel it, see handwriting that wasn't her own. Dear Adeline, Commander Hurt just told me that you have made your decision to transfer. I think you actually convinced him that you have a passion for deep space lunar exploration. I know that I cannot talk you out of this decision. Even though you are a necessity here in the research labs, I understand. But Adeline, I don't support you. What you are looking for is a myth, you know that your data is unquantifiable and random; all you have is the testimony of a pilot who is now living in a psych ward. Here I am trying to convince you again, even though I promised I wouldn't. I'm sorry, I don't support you but I do understand. That's all I'm saying I hear they're making you go to pilot training, which I find hilarious because you and I both know you could teach the instructors a thing or two. I wish you the entire best, fly safe. With love, Stan PS: If he's out there, I hope you find him. Adeline closed the letter and put it back in its envelope. She drifted off to sleep, dreaming of Stan, Mark’s contorted and disgusted face, and a small laughing boy handing her a daisy. Adeline woke with a start to the sound of a blaring alarm. This was not the station intercom alarm though; it was one that she had set, one that was only supposed to go off during a specific occurrence. Suspended in a moment disbelief, Adeline sat up straight in her bed, and stared at the monitor on her desk. The screen displayed giant red letters: Detection: ENERGY FIELD CLASS G. LOCATION: QUADRANT 3. APPROX 20 MNUTES UNTILL DISPERSION Adeline’s feet were on the floor and her legs were running seemingly before her brain gave them the order. She burst from her room, into a narrow hallway. She ran to the door at the end of the hallway, and charged through it to find herself in a spacious, open hanger. All of her focus was directed on a large, one person cruiser. Adeline moved quickly to the station consol, frantically pressing each key in precise order. When she finished, the lights and engine on the ship jumped to life, and Adeline moved quickly towards the boarding ladder. As she climbed up, she could already hear her automated computer speaking to her from inside the ship. “Incoming call: Commander Mark Walker. Incoming call: Commander Mark Walker.” Before she could ignore the call, Mark overrided her comm. system. His furious shouting filled the cockpit. “Adeline, I swear on everything that I am, if you are chasing another energy field I will have you court-martialed. If you don't die out there you will come back and be shot, I will make it my mission..." Adeline had used her knife to cut the already exposed comm. wires. She was alone, and she was going to do this alone. As the thrusters began to roar to life, the ship began to lift off the ground and move forward towards the opening hangar doors. The moment the doors gave Adeline the clearance she needed, the ship disappeared from the hanger, rocketing into the black. Adeline was as focused as she could be. Her ship cut through space at 1000MPH, which didn't seem fast enough. The automated computer broke the silence. “Approximately six minutes until you arrive at the selected coordinates. Current velocity not sustainable on current fuel cells. Consider...” Adeline pushed the mute button so hard she thought it might break in half. She reflected to herself that maybe ending conversations in such a manner was a bad habit, but that was a problem for another time. Each minute felt like an hour, and Adeline would be lying to herself if she said she didn't have her own doubts about what she was doing. "I saw her, I talked to her" A shaky but sure voice emerged from Adeline’s memory. "I thought it was all over, I thought the ship would be pulled apart in that energy field, and then she was just there, in the ship with me. Check my psych evals. I've never had a problem before. Even after she died. I would think I was crazy too, if she didn't tell me what I couldn't know." Adeline looked to the newspaper clipping that was taped to the dash of the cruiser. The headline read: “Aries astronaut discovers wife's missing body on abandoned moon.” The common man didn’t understand the implications of such a find. Every person under Aries command could have scoured every planet and moon known to man and still have next to no shot to finding Maria's ship. Most had assumed that she was floating off in space somewhere, with no hope of ever being found. Then one day, after her husband nearly died on his own exploration mission, he informed authorities that her crashed ship was on a baron moon, untouched by humans thus far. “Adeline, everyone thinks I'm crazy. And maybe I am. But I know my wife, I know her soul. And on that day, I met her soul. My only regret is pulling out of that energy field. I know I will never have that opportunity again." Opportunity. The word brought Adeline back into full focus as she steered the ship toward the now visible energy field. The only way the anomaly could be described to a person that had never witnessed such an event would be a thunderstorm in space. Seemingly random, most pilots feared them and avoided them. Adeline feared them, she did not avoid them. This specific energy field came about once every couple years. The last occurrence was Adeline’s near death experience with the asteroids. Today though, her path was clear and unburdened. An emergency signal began to blare through the cockpit Caution: energy field immanent. Change course. Ship unable to withstand heat levels…” Then, total silence. Adeline’s cruiser had entered the field. Though there was some rocking and jostling about, the entrance was smoother than she expected. The emergency signal had turned itself off unprompted, and the only sound left was the creaking of the ship. Then, to Adeline’s surprise, the short range comm. light on her dash came to life. She looked down at the recently cut wires, and knew that no power was actually being directed to the consol. She reached out and hesitated a moment before she pressed the key to answer the call. Though she did and heard only scratching and static. Then a voice, small and quiet, but just loud enough.


He sat in his hand-crafted oak chair on the front porch of his beach house. He breathed heavily, taking in the salted ocean air. It wasn’t a bright sunny day, nor was it an overcast day. In fact, it wasn’t day at all. It was dark, middle of the night. The rain pattered around him and on the roof over his head. The wind picking up as the storm moved in. He sat in his oak chair, leaned back and stared out into the ocean abyss. The lightning flashing in the distance, the thunder booming in his chest. The ocean waves rolling and splashing on the beach in a rhythmed manner. He closed his eyes and saw through his ears. Each set waves crashing onto the beach, soothing, almost. Alone he was, as most knew better than to stay. He, on the other hand, didn’t care. He enjoyed it. He enjoyed the wind sweeping the rain around the beach, splattering him in the face. He enjoyed the nearly winter cold temperatures that resulted from the incoming storm. He enjoyed the potential of the waves rising so high that it would take out him, and his beach house. It was the risk that made him feel alive. It was the pain that made him breathe. There was something here that took away the pain he felt inside, the hopelessness he felt inside, the crushing sensation that drowned him on the inside. For what drives a man to such a thing? To sit unmoving inside a storm that was destined to destroy? To cause a man to resort to such a form of insanity? Why love, of course. But this wasn’t the sort of love that one could act on. If he had loved someone, and they had yet to love him, then he could try. He could court, flirt, engage in conversation, engage in contact, to try and convince them that his love was real. If he had loved someone, that were young, immature, then he would wait. Patience, was something he had practiced. He would wait a decade for the right moment to try. No, he had loved someone that was completely disinterested. Disinterested to a point where they viewed him as a different species. It was the sort of love that he could not act upon for the other was already loved. He understood it rationally. He understood it in his head. The pre-frontal cortex that governed the higher thinking. He understood it all. But his emotions. His heart, raged at the cage his brain put it in. His heart shouted and punched, fumed and kicked, rattled and swore at the logical railings his brain re-built every day that it was torn down. He had lived with it for many years. But his well-practiced patience eroded away. The railings he put up were weaker by the day. It took his heart less time, each day to tear it down. He was tired. Tired of battling. Tired of pushing his heart down into the deepest corners of his soul. He looked upon the horizon. The waves rising, crashing against his porch. The wind howled, swept, whipped, and peeled at his skin. It formed the rain into piercing needles that struck him like tiny lashes. The pain was beautiful. It was exactly what he was looking for and more. The wind now pushed so hard, and so fast, that it was difficult to breathe. The roof above his head began to disappear as it was torn up into the flashing sky and the shouting clouds. He began to laugh. The ground shook. In the distance a wall approached. It seemed like slim sliver at first, but he knew better. As the unrelenting wind and rain carved against his skin. As the sky lit up brighter than the midday sun, bellowed louder than the loudest canons. As fires appeared around him, seemingly disobeying the laws of nature. The wall approached. He stood up from his hand-crafted oak chair that was immediately thrashed from underneath him and into sky. And alone he stood. He finally felt what he felt on the inside. Everything was in balance. He was free to let his heart out. “I love you, – “ For a swift moment, he sounded louder than the gods. For a swift moment he felt brighter than the sun. For a swift moment his heart jumped out and stood fast against the wind. For a swift moment, he was at peace. But he had timed it just right. All according to his plan. All because of his patience. For now he drowned on the outside as well as the in, and his peace was made eternal.


With the thunderous sound of chase behind them they ran hand in hand into the thick boughs of undergrowth and over the knotted roots and damp soil. Thorns and wet flowering leaves poked, scratched and whipped across the exposed skin of their faces, hands and feet as they made their way through the endless green maze. Above within the criss-crossed lattice of branches, leaves and vines the hooting of tiny beasts could be heard. The sounds were a chorus of deep and undulating incantations which almost sounded encouraging as if the tree-bound creatures wanted the them to survive. He imagined that they were the same primate analogues their team had encountered earlier. He risked a glance at his wrist to see his holo-sleeve flickering, the thick canopy which loomed above them like a verdant umbrella had limited the solar recharge rate. At this point he'd be surprised if it'd last another two minutes. But two minutes- that was more than enough to place them back on board the capsule. There he could insta-charge and bring up the shields, then get them back to where they needed to be. Which was anywhere but here, away from this horrifying and terrible place of such unimaginable beauty. A sternum shaking roar from behind lit all of his senses on fire. He turned to look back trying to gauge their chances of survival by how far away the abomination, the pure and utter terror that was the dominant life form on this- His foot snagged on a thick root and hand in hand they were flying, their inertia tumbling them through the air like ragdolls. He slammed into an upright log thick with green moss, studded with tiny red and white mushrooms. They turned to pulp across his face and into his nostrils, a pungent and musty taste and smell that jolted him back to reality. His fingers closed onto nothing but themselves and thick, wet air. He couldn't see her. A onerous breath left him, he'd broken at least three ribs. It hurt to breathe, to exist. He willed the stars out of his eyes and stood weakly, bracing himself against a gnarled and decaying trunk. His holo-sleeve was screaming, medical warnings emblazoned in red and orange flickered across the rapidly fading display. He blinked it away, shutting off the annoying and location betraying klaxon that signaled serious impairment. The pain in his chest was so severe that he didn't but barely notice the bites being taken out of his fingers by the tiny insectoids which swarmed over his hand, frenzied by the smell of blood. The holo-sleeve began to emanate a pulsing sound, the signature tone which meant the homing beacon on the capsule was close. Another bone shaking roar sprung forth from the green labyrinth. The beast was getting closer. They were in trouble. He called out to her, scanning the foliage - limping forward he reached a break in the treeline. Before him he saw the opalescent capsule laid out perfectly upon a patch of flattened white grass like a porcelain teacup atop an equally elegant saucer. It's canopy was sealed and she was already inside. She'd left him. His holo-sleeve chirped again, this time it was her voice. The area around the capsule began to shimmer, he saw her as a flickering myth, a mirage across the sea of time and and his heart sank. The choir in the trees abruptly ceased and the heavy air was silent save for the ragged pounding of his own heartbeat. The nightmare burst forth from the green hell they'd found themselves in. It's horrible maw open wide, ready to receive him. He closed his eyes to embrace a mercifully swift and hopefully painless journey into eternity- his only regret that he never told her. As the four sets of jaws closed around their prey the holo-sleeve chirped one last time. He expected to hear an apology, only she said she loved him.


We are together. Are are committed. We are partners. We are lovers. But I wish you were in love with me. I wish you made the choice every day, to pick me, the day I pick you. I wish I was as important as your paycheck, your long-distance friend, your potential interview. I wish when I cried, you felt sad, instead of angry and frustrated. I wish you knew that all those times I said "okay" that it wasn't, but I made it so. I wish you would look at my messages on your phone and respond when you saw them, instead of later when you "had time." I wish you woke up early one Saturday to surprise me with coffee instead of sleeping past noon. I wish you weren't the nicest to me in front of your friends, but alone, in the intimacy of our own space. I wish you would give me the key to your house, instead of an excuse about needing space. I wish you sent me flowers to my office. I wish I knew where you were all those times that I didn't. I wish you were in love with me, or that I was less in love with you.


'He doesn't go out to play football anymore...' Taylor's mum was talking about him over the phone. 'I think he's had a fight with one of his friends, or he's being bullied, or something. I don't know what it is, but something's definitely happened.' Taylor was already in the upstairs toilet when his mum stepped outside to talk. Through the open window he could hear her voice. He could smell her cigarette smoke. There were long pauses when his Auntie Iris rambled back at her. 'I know,' his mother sounded close to tears now. 'I just wish I knew what it was. Why can't he talk to me? I'm his mum.' Taylor felt guilty, he wanted her to know, but he could never tell her. His mum's tone suddenly changed, 'Would you? Aw really? Yeah he'd love that. Thank you, Sis. Thank you so much.' The door opened and slammed. 'TAYLS...' from the door. 'TAYLS...' from the bottom of the stairs. Standing outside the bathroom at the top of the stairs, Taylor held the door open as though he were just going in, rather than just rushing out, 'two minutes mum.' He said and went inside, 'COME DOWNSTAIRS AFTERWARDS,' his mum shouted before talking in a quieter tone down the phone. 'I'll ring you later then, shall I?...Thanks sis...love you.' Taylor flushed the toilet, washed his hands, rubbed cold water into his face then went downstairs. The kettle was on. 'That was Auntie Iris.' His mum said. 'She reckons she can get you on Danny's camping trip.' 'I'm not even in the Scouts mum.' 'Well so. She's gonna have a word with the Scout Leader. She says he's great. He'll probably let you go if you join. You remember how much Danny went on about the last trip. You could go, make some new friends, have a laugh. Aw please say you'll go Tayls.' 'It does sound quite cool.' As Taylor lied he remembered something his mum had once said about his dad, 'The trick to lying, is to believe your own bullshit.' Auntie Iris picked him up the night before the trip. After trying on pieces of his cousin Danny's spare Scout uniform, brown combat shorts, a cream shirt and a blue cravat, he ate pizza, watched a film, and then sat at the computer watching things on Youtube until eleven. In the morning, Auntie Iris waited with them outside until the mini-bus picked them up. She saw them inside before asking the Scout Leader, Mr Crawley, for a private chat. Walking only a few steps away, they were clearly talking about Taylor. He could tell by the occasional joined glances they made. Seeing the conversation, most of the kids were intuitive enough to understand its meaning without the key ingredient of words. They figured; this new kid, Taylor, had been allowed to come along because of some exceptional circumstances. To the credit of the group, they made extra effort to make him feel welcome. Docker (Brad Dockerby) showed him and Danny a video on his phone of a crowded bus. 'Watch the old woman.' He said to them. Taylor tried not to cringe. He thought the frail old lady was going to fall over, hurt herself horribly and he would be expected to laugh about it. Instead, when the bus jerks, she grabs the penis of the man standing next to her, mistaking it for the safety railing. The video then goes into slow motion. The man's eyes bulge. He looks at the woman in complete surprise. The speed became normal again, and a clock appears. It counts ten seconds while the molested man stirs at the unknowing woman in silence. Taylor and Danny laugh at the man's reaction. The other boys on the mini-bus laugh at their reaction. For the first time in two weeks Taylor forgets about what happened at the park, near the bushes. As he experiences perfect laughter he thinks about his mum, who was right, he was going to have fun. Taylor had never realised how cool Scouts could be. He had expected it to be like school but outside. In reality it was far more fun. After arriving at the woods, they followed a trail to a cave, which they had to crawl through on their bellies. Mr Crawley was waiting for them in an underground chamber. Grabbing Taylor's hand in one hand, his upper arm with the other hand, he helped him to his feet. The gesture reassured Taylor, it made him feel welcome, it said, 'You're with me. You're one of my lads.' Once everyone was inside, they turned their torches off and the chamber became completely black. Shouting and hooting, everybody played with their echoes. Taylor made the cock-crow noise his dad often made. Danny howled like a wolf. After the cave, they ate sandwiches and drank juice. Changing into water proofs and waders, they waded into a long, thin, still water passage. Rock walls rose up on both sides of them. The water came to his lower chest. The plastic of his waders felt cold against his skin. It was exciting. In the mid-afternoon, they returned to the mini-bus. It took twenty minutes to drive to a farmer's field. From where they set up camp, they could see the farmer's house and the woods they had just left, but the view was mostly fields filled with sheep that varied in size in relation to how far away they were. 'Tayls, you're with me and Jake.' Danny said. They pitched their tent in a cowpat clear patch of long grass. Jake pointed to a badge on his sleeve that had a tepee like tent on it, and said, 'We have these because we can put up a tent by ourselves.' Taylor smiled. He wanted a badge like everyone else. Only in his mind's eye his badge has a football on it. 'Are you having fun Taylor?' 'Call him Tayls.' Danny corrects Jake. 'Are you having fun, Tayls?' 'Yeah.' After keeping such a big secret it felt nice to tell such an easy truth. 'Yeah, I'm glad I was allowed to join...Thanks.' 'How come you never joined before?' Because I thought it was for geeks, Taylor thinks, but says, 'I didn't realise how cool it is.' With the tent erected, they laid out their sleeping bags. Combat coloured, Taylor's looked like it had come from the Army. It was new. The late summer's day sun beat onto the tent's plastic and heated its inside to a hot temperature that suited the musty smell which was caught within. Instead of bringing a barbeque, Mr Crawly, Mr Dockerby (Brad's dad) and Mr Thompson, whose son Adam was a Scout, burnt a heap of charcoal. They hung a metal grill over it. Taylor liked how boyish the parents were. They were more like older kids than adults and were very easy to get along with. It was this which later encouraged him to tell his secret at the camp fire. After the barbeque, they played a game of touch rugby. Taylor again laughed and enjoyed himself. As dusk tones swept across the cloudless sky, Docker's dad started the bonfire. It quickly became dark. The twelve, eleven year old boys and three men sat on logs in front of a bonfire which reflected the shape on Danny's camping badge better than their tent did. A bag of marshmallows, monstrous things that would take six bites to finish, were passed along the line. 'Two each lads.' Mr Crawley called. Long sticks were also handed out. 'You toast them on the fire.' Danny said. Taylor had seen a thousand films where kids did this, but he nodded anyway. Danny was always telling him things he already knew. The boys had to stand up and approach the fire to toast their marshmallows. As they all stood around, three, extra-long branches held marshmallows near to the fire. They turned see to the three adults, sat together on the left side of the log seating. Leaning back, with pieces of long grass in their mouths, they held there extra-long branches like fishing rods. The boys laughed. This was Taylor's first traditional camp fire. Where Christmas had its carols, presents and turkey dinner, Halloween had fancy dress and trick or treating, Guy Fawkes' night had bonfires and fireworks, Scout camp fires had marshmallows and scary stories. The adults each told a scary story. Mr Crawley told one about a murderer in the back seat of a car. Docker's dad told everyone about his nightmares. How he was running away from a dog that each night got closer to biting him. He drew everyone in by saying it eventually caught him. But when he went to show the bite marks he barked and snapped instead, making everyone jump. Mr Thompson told a story about his cousin, who was getting phone calls from a murderer while she was babysitting. Afterwards there was silence. Then groups of twos and threes started talking to each other. Danny and Jake looked into the fire. Seeing Mr Dockerby yawn, Taylor thought he wants to go to bed soon. The day had been brilliant. Everyone had been so friendly and welcoming that Taylor did not want it to end. 'I have a story.' He said standing up. Everyone looked at him. 'It's not a ghost story. But it's scary, and it's real.' The adults said nothing, only looked encouraging, like good for you for trying. 'It was on Tessdon field. On my Nana's birthday. Two weeks ago. I'd been playing football all morning. But when Josh Ticky came, I let him take my place and walked home to get changed. I was walking across the field, bouncing my ball like it was a basketball, and I heard this noise. Like a whimpering or something...well it didn't sound right. It was only dinner time, there were cars passing on the road outside the park. All my mates were on the back of the field, I thought ''nothing's gonna happen'', so I went over to the bushes.' 'Wo, wait there-' Mr Thompson interrupted. He then talked to Mr Crawley, not Taylor, 'Do you think we should let him continue? This sounds like it could get quite bad, quite quickly.' 'He's okay.' Mr Crawley insisted. Taylor felt like running across and hugging the Scout Leader because he knew this was his only opportunity to get it all out. Depending on how everyone responded, he might ask Mr Crawley if he would sit with him as he told his mum what had happened. 'Carry on Taylor. Just go slowly. Take your time. Tell us everything. Tell us details. Talk carefully.' 'I was bouncing the ball.' Taylor's hand moved as it had that day on the field. 'I heard this sound. It was like a whimpering or something. It was really not nice. I couldn't understand what was making the sound so I walked over to the bushes, calling ''Hello.'', ''I have my phone,'' His mum never let him go out alone without it. 'I can call for an ambulance.' I got really close. Ten steps away, maybe less. Then I saw someone inside the bushes. I saw his eyes looking at me. It was weird because I could see it was a man and he was angry but his face was hidden. I dropped my football. I think I wanted to grab my phone but I froze. I just stood still, staring at this guy. Then I heard the whimpering again. The man looked away. There was another cry. It sounded like the noise itself, not the thing making it, had been kicked, if you know what I mean? I should have done something. Rung somebody, gone into the bushes to help, but I couldn't. I couldn't move.' 'You did the right thing.' Mr Dockerby said. It was only by being interrupted that Taylor looked around at the scouts and adults, his now captivated audience. 'Carry on mate.' Mr Crawley spoke for everyone. 'After the noise the man came out of the bushes. He was wearing normal clothes, jeans and a black t-shirt, but he had a mask covering his face.' 'What kind of mask?' Mr Thompson asked. 'It was like a woolly hat that had been pulled down. There were holes cut out where his eyes and mouth where.' 'A balaclava...' Mr Crawley asked, 'like what bank robbers wear?' 'Yeah, that's it, one of them.' Taylor was now seeing the memory clearer than the fire. 'He stepped out of the bushes.' 'What did you do?' Danny asked him. 'I legged it.' Everyone understood the term, 'legged it', to mean, he ran as fast as humanly possible. That he ran faster than a kid could normally run. Ran with the superpower every kid knew could only be summoned when their life was in danger. 'I would have kicked him in the balls.' One of the boys said. The others laughed. Dickhead Taylor thought. By being asked what he did, Taylor had missed out an element of his story. While he had stood, frozen with fear, the man had spoken to him. 'What've you been looking at?' Harsh, aggressive, the voice spat out each word like they were swear words. 'Nothing.' Taylor had pleaded, 'I haven't seen nothing.' 'You can't fucking kid a kidder, Kid.' The man had started towards him. That was when Taylor had abandoned the football his dad had bought him on their trip to their holy ground, Spring Park, Wessford United's football stadium, and ran. Mostly white, with Wessford United emblems on some of the badges, the football had accumulated thousands of hours of foot time. It was practically his pet. 'Did you get away?' Jake asked. 'Of course he did.' Danny said. 'What did the man do?' Mr Dockerby asked. 'He just stood there, watching me.' When Taylor got home his mum had ushered him to the bathroom, to get showered and changed. Though distracted by the family party for his Nana, he had continued to think about what had happened. Later that night, sleeping under his Wess U covers, in his Wessford United decorated room, he had come to realise that the man had not chased him because he had wanted to get back to the bushes. 'Taylor.' Mr Crawley was the furthest away at the end of the log bench. Leaning as far forward as he could, half of his face became shaded. 'Be honest now. Did you go back to those bushes?' 'I went back the next morning' Taylor admitted. He did not mention that he had stayed awake all of the previous night questioning what he should have done and what he should do next. Should he have called the police? Should he have told his mum? When he decided to go back, he told himself, if there is something in the bushes, I'll take my phone and ring the police. I'll say I was looking for my football and just came across whatever's there. 'I was looking for my football.' He had lied so much lately, that this one slipped out naturally. He had gone back to the bushes to get another opportunity to do the right thing. 'Did you find it?' Jake asked. Taylor paused. Mr Crawley appeared to understand that the question had come too early, that there was another piece of the story to tell. 'What happened in the bushes?' The Scout Leader asked, 'what was in there?' 'This time I walked from the road.' Taylor felt a reprise of the experience wake in his stomach. Like an infection, it made his insides feel uncomfortably unbalanced. 'I looked in all of the other bushes first, so it would seem like I was searching for my football, just in case anyone was watching. But when I was two bushes away, I heard this meowing.' 'Like a...' Someone was about to ask a question, but a loud 'SHhhh!' stopped them. 'I headed towards the sound. It was getting louder and louder the closer I got to the bush. Then I saw it, through the same gap as the day before. It was a kitten, hung by its tail.' Taylor lost his breath as he visualised the black kitten. If felt like he had fallen into cold water and could not breathe. He tried to stay calm but he could not. He broke any boy's biggest taboo. He started to cry. 'It was just hanging there, screeching.' 'I went into the bushes.' He said wiping his eyes. 'When I got closer to it, it started to hiss at me.' Taylor took a moment to try and collect himself. Everybody was looking at him, but none of them in a bad way. Taylor saw again the inside of the bushes. Grown around a tree, the bush branches and leaves were mostly an outer shell. The clearing inside was what any local kid would call a 'den'. It was a place usually reserved for the innocent imagination of young kids' games, or later at night, a place for teenagers to smoke, drink and experiment with their urges. 'I don't get why someone would do that in the park?' Jake asked, 'Surely they know they'll get caught.' 'Maybe that's part of the excitement for him.' Mr Crawley said. That's it. Taylor realised. 'What did you do about the cat?' Danny asked. 'I couldn't untie it by its tail.' Taylor said. 'The rope had dug into it. It was bleeding and meowing so badly. I traced the rope up to the branch it was attached to. And do you know what was there? My football. The man, who had hung up the rope, had propped it next to it. I looked around for a branch to knock it free but there wasn't one. I looked around to see if anyone could help, but there was no one anywhere. So I climbed the tree, not high at first, about as high as Danny's shed.' 'Tayls is the best at climbing trees.' Danny said to the group. 'I had to lean across the branch.' Taylor continued. 'I was gonna try and untie the cat first but then I saw something written on my ball. I thought it had been balanced strangely. What he had done was stab it with a knife and stuck the hole around a bit of branch.' Taylor nearly broke up again. He got angry instead. His dad had bought him that ball on the best day of his life. 'He'd written across it, 'YOU'RE DEAD', in blood. That's when I heard branches breaking. The man rushed into the bushes. He was fast, he ran and jumped up at me. I scrambled higher up the tree. I felt his fingers touch my trainers. He nearly got me. 'I F-ing told ya!' he shouted at me. I was shacking. I nearly fell. He was pointing this Rambo knife at me. He was really angry. He grabbed a load of stones off the ground and slung them at me. Some of them really hurt. I had some change in my pocket so I threw that back at him. He backed off and stood looking at me. Then he said, 'I'm gonna cut this cat's tail off, then I'm gonna cut yours off! Only I'm gonna shove yours up your arse!' The group gasped. 'Did he?' one kid asked. 'Did he cut its' tail off?' another kid asked. 'He did!' Taylor said. Passionately nodding to replace details, he turned away for a moment. 'He pointed the bloody knife at me.' He said turning to face the group again, 'I screamed for help, but no one could hear me. The cat ran off. A trail of blood was following it. Its screeching set off hundreds of dogs which I could hear all around me. A rock hit my arm. A proper big one. It really hurt. I think he wanted knock me down. I got my phone out of my pocket. I shouted at him, 'I'm gonna call the F-ing police.' I called him an F-ing B. I was trying to scare him off, but he threw another rock. Because I moved out of the way, I didn't see him start to climb the tree. When he grabbed for me, I threw my football down at his face. His knife nearly stabbed me. To get out of its way, I jumped over him. I hit the ground hard, it really hurt, but I didn't stop. I ran straight out of there. I knew he was chasing me because he was calling me an F-ing C. There was an old man on the far side of the field, walking his dog, near the bike exit. I thought he would help me, so I legged it towards him. Kris Farret is the fastest kid in my class, and I'm telling ya, I would have left him for dead.' 'What did the other man, the old one, walking his dog, do?', Mr Dockerby asked. 'Did he help you?' 'No,' Taylor was angry again. 'He thought I was running away from the knifeman because I'd done something wrong. He shouted at me 'stop right there!' 'I know who you are!' I was out of breath, but when I got close, I started shouting at him, 'That man has a knife. He has a knife.' He wasn't listening, he moved across to block the bike passage out of the park. He kept shouting, 'Stop.' As I got close he held out his hand like he was Gandalf or summat. I was shouting 'Move. Move.' But he just stood there. Then I heard the knifeman's voice shouting, 'Stop him!' 'Stop him!' Thief' 'What did you do?' 'I tried to get past, but I couldn't. The old man tackled me. We both fell to the floor. I heard him groan. I kept saying 'he has a knife'. Trying to explain, but he grabbed hold of me. His dog bit my ankle. That really hurt. I could hear the knifeman screaming, 'keep a hold of him!' I'm really sorry for what I did... I was gonna get stabbed... I...I...I punched the old man.' One of the other kids laughed. 'James!' one of the adults corrected him. A silence followed. 'What happened next?' Mr Dockerby asked. 'The old man let go of me.' Taylor heard the shame in his voice. 'I had to kick his dog lose too because it was ragging at my trackie trouses. But now the knifeman had caught up. He was reaching out for me. I ducked and ran. I think he stumbled over the old man. But as I sprinted along the passage, I could hear him just behind me. I'll never run like that again in my life. I just wanted to get home to my mum. When I got out of the passage I ran across the road without looking.' Taylor heard one of the other kid's gasp. He found that surprisingly funny. 'A bus nearly hit me.' he said with an air of boasting. 'The man was still chasing me. So I ran past my street, then I turned down Cooke Street, the one past ours. There's a back alley which runs between the houses on both streets. I took that. I kept looking back but I couldn't see him. Before I went through our gate, I checked again but couldn't see him. When I got into our house, I shut the door softly then ran upstairs. I went to my room and I peeked out onto the road from behind my curtains. After a couple of minutes, I watched him go past my house. He was looking around, trying to find me. For a minute he even looked up at my bedroom, but then a man from down the road approached him. I think he asked the knifeman about his mask, because he ran away. Since then, I haven't been on Tessden field and I ignore my mates when they call. I'm scared because of the guy, but truthfully, I don't want to see the old man either.' As Taylor took a deep breath, he felt how tired he was. It was a pleasant feeling. The activities of the day had worked out the rust his body had accumulated over two weeks of not playing football. By telling his story, his mind had accomplished a similar, cleansing result. Taylor looked down at Danny. His cousin smiled at him in a way that said I bet you feel better now. He did. 'Taylor?' Mr Crawley said. He was frowning. 'Be honest with me. On the first day, when the man didn't chase you, were you wearing the football kit of the team you support?' 'I don't know. I don't think so.' He truly was not sure. Mr Crawley seemed to see this, so he asked another question. 'Your football then, does it have anything with your team on it?' Taylor knew it did, but he was scared by the question, so he lied. 'It's plain white.' He said. 'Are you sure?' Everyone was looking at him. He knew, they knew, he was lying. 'It's just that the man who chased you, might have seen your football, might have seen who you support, then, when he was chasing you, he might have seen a bedroom on your street, decorated with curtains of the same team, and he might have realised that you live there. So I'll ask once again, are you sure there was no way he could know who you support? Think about it.' 'I am sure.' Taylor became increasingly scared as he looked at Mr Crawley, who looking back at him, seemed to be making his mind up about something. Then the dark half of the Scout Leader's mouth smiled, and he said, 'Come on, you can't kid a kidder, kid.


Bill works in sales. He's a long time user of prostitutes and a regular customer of the agency I work for, so he fancies himself as a savvy consumer. I mention that he works in sales because it's the most significant thing about him. In fact everything with Bill is a negotiation, everything is a battle of wills. The management came very close to dropping Bill as a client on several occasions (for various reasons). The main reason they didn't, is because while Bill himself isn't particularly wealthy, he has referred a number of wealthy clients. However despite that he's always threading that line that if he crossed would end up with the agency cutting him off. The biggest thing with Bill is that girls finish a booking with him, regretting that they agreed to do certain things. While someone might agree to do something with Bill at the time, later reflection can often bring a combination of WTF, regret, and anger. So there's only a few girls that the agency will now send for outcalls with Bill and I'm one of them. I do them largely because I get to pick when I go, rather than sitting around in one of the agency apartments waiting for a booking. He's regular work in otherwords. Bill gets on well with the drivers. Which is unusual for a client.Clients often try to befriend the drivers but usually they're met with stony indifference. Some clients like to try and show off in front of the drivers. By having us strip off in front of them, while they're getting the driver the money. Which the drivers usually hate (they've seen us naked enough times already) However Bill always has the money ready which immediately puts the driver at ease then chats casually with them for a few minutes, before they head off. This is a calculated tactic of Bill's because he knows that if anything goes wrong, it'll be the driver kicking the door in. Anyway lets talk about one appointment I had with Bill. I'd stopped offering Bill anal sex. Strictly speaking I wasn't allowed to do that, Anal sex was something we were supposed to offer to all our clients after a second booking with them (it was one of the reasons a few girls didn't go for regulars). However after an instance a few weeks earlier with Bill and another girl that I'd heard about, I'd simply told him no anal.That was largely an opportunistic act on my part, I didn't want to do anal if I didn't have to. Normally the agency would have been all over me if I'd said no to another client, but because it was Bill it was okay. Bill had never really had that much interest in anal. I think he found it too difficult. Most clients with long bookings will always want to do anal at least once. There were ways I'd try and discourage them or persuade them not to, but all in all on any give night I'd expect to have anal sex at least once. So after 5 months I considered myself relatively experienced at this. I'd found from my own experience it was always better to initiate sex rather than wait for the client to do it. That allowed an added element of control. Bill had a thing that he thought was unique to him, where he'd like to get a blowjob standing up in the middle of his lounge. I never told him that it wasn't really unusual and that I had other clients that liked the same thing. Blowjobs are always easier if you let the client put at least one hand on your head and guide you. By keeping your hands on the base of his cock you could always control what he was doing. It gave them the illusion of control and they always came quicker. Bill came in my mouth without warning (though that wasn't a surprise). He knew he wasn't meant to, but I was prepared for it and there wasn't too much of a scene. However after I made a bit of a scene and spit it out, I felt I had to challenge him on it. Normally Bill would say it was an accident and act all apologetic, which would be a lie. This time however he didn't even pretend, which was worrying. Bill had booked me for 4 hours, and we were only 20 minutes into it. So we did what was the usual routine I put a t-shirt on and we sat on the couch to watch TV, while Bill was getting ready to go again. This was actually a common routine with men on longer bookings in between having sex, sometime they'd watch porn while fingering me, or in Bill's case he put Newsnight on. It wasn't even the first time that I'd watched Jeremy Paxman grill someone, while sitting in a guys lap while he fingered me. Anyway after a while I felt his erection come back. At first I thought I'd get away with another blowjob but no he wanted sex. So fine and I lay back on the couch but then he said he wanted anal. I said no immediately, like I had when he'd asked on previous bookings. However this time he was up for an argument and I suspect he'd been planning. If it was any other client he'd have been in a strong position. He could have phoned the agency and complained and I'd have got an earful. However Bill like I said was lucky to still be able to place bookings, and the management wasn't really interested in hearing from him. So I told him no and if he had any problems he could phone the agency. He didn't want to phone the agency but instead told me he wanted to leave. Which was a surprise, but to be honest I didn't argue the point. What did I care as he'd already paid. There was never any point in arguing in situations like this. In fact the first reaction I got was that I could maybe squeeze in a second booking that night. So I phoned the driver who was only a few minutes away and headed off to the bathroom to get a shower and get dressed. Now lets talk about the driver again. He was a fairly reliable guy, well built and seemingly no nonsense, but he hadn't been with the agency that long. He'd gotten the job because he was friends with another driver. The drivers like the girls and the management had a pecking order and he was towards the bottom of it. I always made a huge effort to get on with the drivers (occasionally that meant various things, but usually they considered it a job and weren't after sex) this driver however I think had mistook my being nice to him, as my deferring to him as the decision maker. After i showered I got dressed into my scruffs, which was jeans and a shirt rather that the dress I came in. When I headed out, I discovered that Bill had been chatting to the driver in the lounge. I just wanted to get your side of the story, the driver told me. Bill manipulating prick that he was (perhaps it was the fact that he worked in sales and marketing) had somehow picked up that the driver was a weak spot in this whole commercial transaction. I actually laughed at him which pissed him off. it wasn't his place to decide on which story to believe. Bill had obviously been charming him, which I saw as a pointless exercise as there was nothing he could do. Still the driver continued, why didn't you do anal he asked pompously. As if he was my HR manager. At this stage I told him to go fuck himself and it was none of his business what I offered clients. Being new he was aware of the constant friction between the agency and the girls about what services we offered. However the agency had never chosen to involve the drivers in that process, for good reason. The driver also I think knew that I was in often in the managements dirty books, and that I was unpopular with some of the other girls (though not with the other drivers) and I think he thought he might have been able to look good by intervening. In the end he told me that he was considering giving Bill his money back. I was absolutely gobsmacked, refunds occasionally happened but just because he had the money on him didn't mean it was his decision. I just kept laughing. I should have phoned the agency but I decided to let him carry on. Even Bill seemed surprised and a little bemused, he'd just been testing boundaries in his usual way, he didn't expect this. I even saw a little amusement in his eyes. The driver however thought that Bill was his friend, and that they were standing tall together against the money grubbing whore. Bill made an approach to me before he left, saying we could work this out if I would just be more 'reasonable'. There was always something sinister with Bill, it was one of the reasons he didn't get the more pliable girls anymore. He obviously had some very specific ways in his mind, that I could 'sort' all this out. Six months earlier I might have considered it, put up with whatever fucking weirdness he wanted, to avoid yet another argument with the agency. At this point however, I was in a more secure position financially, and I also understood the mechanics of how the agency worked better. So I just told him to go fuck himself. So Bill got his money back and we left, the driver started to have second thoughts on the drive back, and kept a constant stream of words coming at me, flicking between justifications, accusations and conciliation. On the drive back I think he realised just what a lot of money £700 was. Anyway when we got back to the apartment the agency was using for incalls, there was just the secretary and another driver there. They were both gobsmacked when the driver told them what had happened. I just shrugged, I'd sorted another booking in the car so I grabbed another driver and headed off. I never saw the driver again. Some of the other girls didn't like me, likewise I had a difficult relationship with the manager, however the idea that one of the drivers could do what he did appalled everyone. The next night I worked the money I was owed for my time with Bill was paid by the agency. Bill never paid it so I suppose either the driver or the agency paid. I actually earned above the odds for the night. A few weeks later I was on another outcall with Bill. Still no anal but he'd accepted that. At this stage I was the only girl who was taking his bookings. When I told him what had happened to the driver he laughed.