Hadesgate Forums Newsletter 6 - December 2006

[Demon]

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HADESGATE FORUMS NEWSLETTER

DECEMBER 2006

CHRISTMAS CRUCIFICTION

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..:WELCOME TO THE MADNESS:..

*Cue horrorfying music...*

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome one and all to the December Issue of our forums newsletter, and what I am deadly certain will be our most successfull to date.

Due to the mammoth size of this issue, we've split it up into FOUR POSTS, this being the first. We have five pieces of fiction throughout, and EXCLUSIVE interviews conducted by Garry Charles.

We have a special STEPHEN ROMANO section, an interview with movie director JOHANNES ROBERTS, another brilliant column from Inno, works of fiction from CJ Lines AND Darrell Joyce AS WELL AS an extra special community caption competition.

Although Mrs Elms has had to take another month off, we end with an absolute bang!! And that's none of the already mentioned treats.

I'm being intentionally vague as to the big finish here, for what you are about to read is the greatest Hadesgate Forums Newsletter to date, and I don't want to spoil a thing.

I hope you have a ****ing nightmare.

Demon
HGF Newsletter Editor

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HADESGATE SECTION


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HADESGATE PUBLICATIONS NEWS
Matron

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Readers, dear readers, come in out of the cold and take a seat.

It’s December and I can tell you all right now that the baubles are well and truly out and on display at Hadesgate Central!

Whilst I sit here amongst the miscellaneous guffery that is my desk, I don’t really know where to start, except to say that this newsletter, is the ‘Mutha’ of all newsletters.

It occurred to me last month that one of our numbers had been sadly lacking when it came to contributing and so I set him various tasks, ‘Go interview folk,’ I ordered, ‘Sort me a Christmas Comp,’ ‘and while you’re at it review something you slacker!’

You can only imagine the horror on poor Demon’s face, immediately I took pity and asked Garry Charles instead!!!!!!!!!

What he has come up with for this bumper issue of news, reviews, plugs, etc is astounding. Garry I applaud you and thank you, have a walnut dear; I’ve just cracked it.

We have for your entertainment not one but 2 interviews from the film industry, home grown Johannes Roberts, director of ‘Forest of the Damned’ and from across the Atlantic Stephen Romano, screenwriter of part of the ‘Masters of Horror’ anthology for TV, and author of ‘The Riot Act.’

Keeping with the movie theme we have a special Christmas competition, the winner of which will be announced in the New Year....

HADESGATE NEWS

Two pieces of news dominate the last month. The first is that we launched our first Hadesgate Horroween Bash, at Hadesgate Head Office. Attendance was in total 46, over the course of the day, from all four corners of the UK.

Now an annual event and with next year’s planning already in the very early stages, we are reasonably confident that a fun time was had by all.

More details to follow for the 2007 Hadesgate Fancy Dress Summer Bonanza (as requested by a number of guests). I can almost see the limbo dancing now.

If you missed this event or indeed missed the thread with VERY detailed information on the shenanigans that occurred, here is the link, make yourself a brew first though you’ll be there a while, ooh that Darrell

Hadesgate HorrorWeen Bash

Back to business...

Hadesgate are thrilled to have made a very important breakthrough last month.
We have agreed to become part of core stock at Waterstone’s.

Which means in layman terms that our products will actually be on the shelves in your local store. So in a short while it couldn’t be simpler, just pop in a grab a copy.

From the outset this is something we had in mind to achieve. We gave ourselves three years to establish this kind of nationwide blanket of outlets. It in fact took 14 months. My discussions with Waterstone’s were very positive, and our views that the horror genre is indeed on the up were confirmed.

Information on developments will be on the official Hadesgate website in due course.

ADDITIONAL NEWS

Four weeks remain to get your submissions in for TT2, closing date is strictly limited to 31 December 2006. For further information and guidelines, follow the link.

As you all know we had support from Guy N Smith for TT1, well for TT2 we have on board one of the best selling UK horror authors, we are quite sure you’ll be delighted.

Tiny Terrors Volume 2 Competition

PENS AT DAWN

A slight delay with this, due to the sheer volume of infomation. Fear not, this will be up and running shortly and we'll post up a 'it has been launched thread'.

CHRISTMAS OFFERS

Less than a fortnight to run: our p&p free service for all orders to be delivered in the UK. For overseas customers please contact the office at info@hadesgate.co.uk. For shipping details.

NEWSLETTER ANNOUNCEMENT

From 2007 we have decided to reduce the quantity of newsletters from 1 per month to 1 every 2 months. The reason mainly is that Demon has his finals next year. I have the opportunity of reducing his increasingly large workload and so I’m taking it. I hope you all understand. I have stars in my eyes A*’s

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HADESGATE WEBSITE / FORUMS NEWS
Demon

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Website Watch:

Sadly the Hadesgate website has been somewhat neglected this month, with mock exams being one of the many other jobs preventing me from overhauling the site again. I have fixed a few errors here and there, but nothing major.

HOWEVER, yes indeed there's a however, PENS AT DAWN is even closer to launch. Unfortunately it's taking longer than expected, but the pages are being compiled. I'm very busy and it's hard to fit everything in, but I promise that Pens at Dawn will soon see the light of day.

Forums In Focus:

EXTRA EXTRA - HADESGATE PUSHING FOR NEW MEMBERS!

Originally I wanted Hadesgate to have 100 members by Christmas day, but I think that may now be a little hopeful. I would still like us to see a few new faces around here though, so I ask you all to invite your friends, your family, your dog, ANYONE who you think might be interested! The Hadesgate family is growing ever larger, and I like it...

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PRODUCT FOCUS

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Product Name: Soulkeepers

ISBN NUMBER: 0-9550314-2-7

Published: April 2006

Price Information: £5.99 // p&p FREE until Friday 8th December!! (UK purchases only, we encourage US customers to visit www.shocklines.com.)

Product Description:

In a world where souls are stolen at birth two children and their primate friend stand ready to fight for the freedom of emotion.

GAREN: Full of adventurous dreams, yet unknowing of the future laid out for him by the mysterious Brotherhood.

SCIEL: One of only a few Teff left that is not bound by slavery. An ape-like creature that is loyal to his friend and always hungry.

KYMAR: Hidden from the Brotherhood and now an orphan. Someone is going to pay for her loss.

Are they be ready to face their destiny?

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CHATROOM INFORMATION

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Sunday 10th December. 7pm till whenever...

We shall discuss the amazingly awsome brilliance of this newsletter, and the suave good looks of it's main editor.

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COMMUNITY SECTION


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IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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Name: Fran "The Crusher" Friel

Age: I'm 45, but don't tell anybody.

Marital Status: I'm blissfully hitched to a Scottish sweetheart. What's that? Did I hear a guffaw? Yes, Scots CAN be sweethearts!!!

Location: Unknown, but Fran is rumored to be on secret mission, sunning herself on an undisclosed tropical beach, posing as an obnoxious American tourist. Oh, wait a minute, that was a dream she had last night. She has also been known to haunt small towns in Connecticut (an insignificant New England state in the US), also known as a suburb of New York City...New Yorkers think it's the countryside. Please don't burst their bubble by telling them it's all lie perpetrated by the CT Board of Realtors.

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Occupation (by day): Pretending to be a full-time writer.

Occupation (by night): Pretending to be a TIRED full-time writer.

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Tell Us About Yourself: I know it sounds like a bad personal add or an old Playboy centerfold bio, but I love to take long walks on sun-blushed beaches.
And it's one of my fondest goals to live barefoot at the beach in a lovely cottage, needing nothing fancier than shorts and t-shirts in my closet. I'm crazy about animals, and as a child I just assumed that I could talk to them and they would talk back. I was endlessly perplexed by the fact that squirrels and robins wouldn't let me pick them up. Hmmm...what else can I tell you now that I've revealed my delusional tendencies? Ah yes, I'm a closet artist and I secretly wish I would have gone to art school instead of conservatory. Yup, I'm also a "retired" classical
musician...bassoonist (basson, fagott, fagotto). And to pay the bills, because I used to be married to another musician (musicians = poor people), I've also pretended to be a florist, a Real Estate agent, a seamstress, a therapist and a holistic therapy instructor, amongst other things. And did I mention I'm a Gemini?? I have one spawn...uh, I'm mean child. She's in college under an assumed name to avoid...uh, me...at least until she needs money. She's brilliant and beautiful...taking after her step-father.

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Three best Words To Describe Yourself: I wish I could say that I'm completely humble and couldn't possibly describe myself, but one thing I am is "honest" (hah, snuck in an extra word!), so that would be a big fat fib. Okay, here goes...three best words: Curious, Passionate, Loving.

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Favourite Food: Steamed Maryland Blue Crab

Favourite Drink: Mojito

Favourite Film: hoosing one of anything is so darn hard for Geminis! Old Movie - 2001: A Space Odyssey; Newer Movie - Billy Elliot

Favourite Book: Julian May - Galactic Milieu Series I also have to add: Gardner Dozois - Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction.

Favourite Band: Travis

Favourite Quote: "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut

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Best Thing About HGF: Do you mean the best thing besides the sexy Matron and Mr. Charles, the brilliant line-up of authors, and THE best Forum Master ever to walk the threads of the World Wide Web? Ah, that's easy...it's the people! HGF has some of the nicest, most supportive, warm and embracing folks I've ever met.
Nothing pretencious, just fun and a complete laugh. I felt at home from the first time I posted. HGF rocks hard!!

What could be improved? More nudity.

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Give Us Some Words Of Wisdom: Be nice to your kids. They could be changing your diapers someday.

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SUPER SPECIAL COMMUNITY CAPTION COMPETITION!

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Back in light of us having a very special prize on offer is the Hadesgate caption contest.

Answers for the contest will only be accepted from the forums, i.e. only registered members will be eligible.

The judge for this competition is none other than Johannes Roberts himself, so come on, muster up your best captions and let him have it. Johannes gird your loins we're a rum bunch!

Unfortunately members of Hadesgate Publications will not be entering, which is a shame, but we think the only fair thing to do. This translates to mean, good luck with your entries everyone, and don't think for one minute the prize won't be second hand by the time the winner gets it .

So whats the prize?

A previously unseen, unreleased original cut, signed by the director copy, of ALICE (HELLBREEDER).

Starring Lyndie Uphill, Dominique Pinon and (that bit if a tit with the ladies) Darren Day.

What a fantastic and original prize, Hadesgate sends thanks to Johannes for his kindness and support.

Here's the image:

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HADESGATE FORUMS MONTHLY AWARDS

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MEMBER OF THE MONTH:

Rakie

As November's member of the month, the task of selecting a new winner fell to Darrell Joyce. Here's what he had to say:

"Although she hasn't been on the forums much lately, I'm nominating Rakie as member of the month - not only because she's far and away the coolest person most of us will ever be lucky enough to meet, but also because she was such fun to be with at the Halloween party (and if it hadn't been for her marathon driving stint, I might not have been able to get there at all). She was the life and soul of the event – absolutely everyone loved her, and she was fantastic with the kids.

She's also an amazing writer, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who hopes that her work will soon get the recognition it deserves.

Rakie, you're a star!"

THREAD OF THE MONTH:

What Have You Just Watched?

This thread has been around for quite a while, but has always been up there with some good discussion. This long term success has seen it become pinned at the top of the entertainment forum, creating a trio of permanent threads where members can reccommend music, TV and literature alike.


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[Demon]

WORKS OF FICTION

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DONT WAKE ME
Nimf

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Far away in the land of nod,
Along came the devil with a big round log.

Slapped the dreamer across the head,
Shook him madly, then turned and said.

"This is my bed sleep away,
The devil lives here so don't you stay."

The dreamer laughed and said to him,
"I don't believe I have your sin."

The devil cried and stomped about,
The world could hear him scream and shout.

He crashed through clouds and landed well,
Down from heaven to the pits of hell.

The dreamer smiled at the silly sod,
For the devil had woken a cranky God.


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THE FULL MOON
Darrell Joyce

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Keith Hargreaves stood on the brow of the hill, gazing out across the mist-shrouded moors. He took a deep breath, savouring the unpolluted air, and turned to the figure labouring up the hill in his wake. “Wait till you see the view from up here, love!” he shouted.

Lynn Palmer struggled through the undergrowth, muttering under her breath. She had been looking forward to getting away from it all, but hiking across the Yorkshire moors was not her idea of an exciting weekend away. The straps of her backpack were cutting into her shoulders, and the weight of the pack’s contents made it difficult to walk properly. She was panting heavily by the time she stood next to Keith atop the hill. Resisting the urge to give him a push and watch him go rolling down the slope, she took a deep breath and surveyed the landscape.

The land fell away at a sharp angle, giving them a panoramic view of the surrounding area. Acres of dry, coarse grass stretched as far as the eye could see, a mottled carpet punctuated by patches of dense undergrowth and stunted bushes. A light mist blanketed the scene, making the moors look like a dead alien planet. There was no one in sight.

Lynn shivered. Many people would have wondered what Keith saw in this place, but she knew the stories about him and could guess the answer.

“Can we stop and rest for a while?” she asked. “It’ll be dark soon and I’m tired. We’ve been walking for hours….”

“Of course we can stop,” he replied, favouring her with the expansive smile that she had once thought endearing. “Tell you what,” he said, pointing to a well-worn dirt track that twisted down the hill. “We’ll take that path down to ground level and look for a sheltered place to set up camp.”

They made their way gingerly down the path. Rocks and pebbles impeded their progress, and in places the earth was softer than it appeared, forcing a slow and careful descent.

Suddenly, Lynn stumbled and fell. She landed roughly on her side, crying out in pain. Keith’s pot belly wobbled impressively as he ran over to ask if she was all right. “I’m fine,” she said irritably, brushing earth from her trousers and straightening her backpack. “Let’s just keep moving.”

As they walked, the only sounds were their footsteps and the wind that howled mournfully across the flat expanse of land. Lynn wished that Keith would engage with her, make conversation and take her mind off the fact that they seemed to be the only people for miles around. But he merely stared into the distance, smiling that meaningless smile of his. She supposed that deserted places like this did strange things to people, but that did not excuse his ignorance.

He seemed to have changed since their arrival in this part of the world. He was never so offhand with her when they were at home.

Theirs was a familiar story. Keith had been a college lecturer, Lynn his student. He had quickly taken a shine to her and had wasted no time in inviting her round to his house, ostensibly to discuss her progress on the course.

Keith was an intelligent man and an insightful teacher, but he was no actor. Lynn realised immediately that he was interested in more than her academic performance. Although she felt no real attraction, she wondered if an older man would be preferable to lecherous drunkards of her own age and agreed to see him again. He worked hard to make an impression, she grew to enjoy his company, and soon they were meeting regularly. After a tentative, slightly awkward phase during which they were wary of announcing their relationship to all and sundry, they finally threw caution to the wind and decided to go on holiday together. With the situation no longer open to doubt, they hoped that after a short period of inevitable gossip, people would accept them as a couple.

They were wrong. When Keith’s head of department heard about them – and their twenty-six year age gap – he had made it clear that Keith would be ‘looking for other career opportunities’ unless he stopped seeing his teenage student.

Lynn expected him to cave in and toe the line, but he surprised her by deciding in her favour. “I’ve got plenty of qualifications,” he said one night over a bottle of wine. “I won’t struggle to find work. I’ve had enough of that place, anyway.

“Besides,” he added with a meaningful smile, “I want to be with you.”

Later, lying alongside his slumbering form after an uninspired session of lovemaking, Lynn resolved to stay with him for a while and see how things developed. She also resolved to keep her options open and not commit herself.

Then he had told her about the ‘holiday’ he was planning. Lynn was used to living in the middle of a city, surrounded by friends and home comforts, and the great outdoors did not appeal to her at all. She went along with the idea, though, consoling herself with the thought that perhaps Keith was planning to put some exciting twist on their weekend away. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.

When they arrived, however, she quickly realised that it was going to be exactly what she had feared, a weekend of monotony. Keith genuinely enjoyed wandering the moors, drinking in the scenery, stopping at night to pitch a tent in some inhospitable location before moving on to similarly uninteresting pastures the following day.

At least it was nearly over, she told herself. One more night and they would be on their way home. She looked forward to having a bath and curling up on the settee with a hot drink in one hand and the TV remote in the other.

The sun was very low in the sky now, and the air was growing colder. She was so tired that she could barely keep her eyes open. The moors could be frightening enough in daylight, especially with this ethereal mist hovering all around; at night, thoughts of who or what might be lurking outside kept her awake and alert. The previous night, she had snuggled up to Keith in their king-sized sleeping bag, hoping that his reassuring closeness would comfort her. But sleep had proved elusive.

It was becoming difficult to put one foot in front of the other. She simply had to rest. Just as she was about to suggest that they pitch the tent before darkness fell, Keith stopped in his tracks and stood looking into the distance. Following his line of vision, Lynn stared towards the horizon but could not at first see what had attracted his attention. Then, through the swirls of mist, she gradually discerned what looked like a small building.

“What on earth is that?” Keith wondered aloud.

“I don’t know,” Lynn began, “but it’s none of our business. I think we should stop now, anyway. I’m really tired.”

He was not listening. He strode off, disappearing into the mist as he approached the mysterious building. Reluctantly, Lynn followed.

As they drew closer, the building seemed to glide towards them on a sea of mist. When she saw what it was, Lynn stopped in astonishment.

“Good God!” exclaimed Keith. “It’s a pub!”

As they drew closer and saw the sign hanging above the entrance, Lynn wondered how The Full Moon did any trade at all, stuck out here in such a remote part of the moors. She looked around, wondering if there were any dwellings close by. But no other buildings were visible.

“Who would build a pub out here in the middle of nowhere?” said Keith. Then, shaking his head in wonder, he turned to her and said, “At least we can stop for a while now, love. Let’s go inside and see if they’re still serving.”

As he held the door open for her, an inexplicable sense of foreboding made her hesitate. Despite her increasing tiredness, she found herself feeling strangely reluctant to enter this lonely ale house.

“What’s the matter?” Keith asked.

Lynn shook her head, banishing her fears. “Nothing,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m just tired.”

“Come on,” he said, holding his hand out. “I bet this place is lovely inside.”

She took the proffered hand and they crossed the threshold together.

After the pub’s nondescript façade, the interior was a pleasant surprise. The plush carpet was an attractive shade of blue, and the walls were decorated with watercolours depicting scenic views far more appealing than the drab reality outside. Comfortable-looking booths lined the edges of the room, separated by high glass partitions, and a number of small tables were placed in the free space closer to the bar. A fire blazed cheerily in the hearth on the far wall, crackling and popping as the flames danced in the grate. Its warmth eased Lynn’s misgivings and she found herself looking forward to a drink as she slid into one of the booths.

“This is nice,” she said as they sat down.

“Told you, didn’t I?” said Keith, looking around with approval. “Let’s have a quick drink here, then go and pitch the tent.” Taking out his wallet, he walked over to the bar without waiting for a reply.

Lynn looked around. Book-lined shelves were set deep into the wall at the back of the booth, the volumes mostly inoffensive studies of local folklore. The glass panels between each booth bore pictures of mythical creatures.

Something was wrong, but she was unable to put her finger on it.

Presently, Keith returned with their usual drinks - a pint of lager for him, a Martini for her. He slid into the booth, his waistline making the task a little more difficult than it had been for Lynn, and sat opposite her, habitually examining the books on the shelves behind them.

She watched him as he scanned the titles. This was the man she had initially enjoyed spending time with, the studious academic with a passionate love of learning. In those days she had thought him noble, an intellectual crusader bringing liberation through knowledge. It was hard to believe how much her opinions had changed in the space of a few months, how quickly boredom had set in. Lynn shuddered at the prospect of spending the rest of her life with Keith. She decided that she would wait until they got home before telling him.

“It’s funny,” he said, still looking at the titles on the books’ spines, “I’ve been across the moors dozens of times, but I’ve never come across this place before.”

Lynn seized the moment. “I’m glad we’ve found it, though. It’s really made me think.”

“About what?”

“About going home. I can’t wait to get back to civilisation.”

He looked at her sharply. “I thought you were enjoying yourself?”

“I’m enjoying being with you,” she said carefully, “but this isn’t the kind of holiday I expected. I was hoping for some night life, a bit of excitement.”

“The night’s not over yet,” he said with a sly grin. “There’s more action round here than you might think.”

Lynn groaned inwardly. Apparently the stories were true.

She could deal with that later, though. She decided to change tack. “You said you were going to tell me about those job applications you sent off. Any luck so far?”

“I’ve got a few interviews in the next week or two,” he said vaguely. “But I wouldn’t worry, love. I won’t struggle to find something. Teachers are always in demand.” Again, that empty smile.

Lynn turned away – and barely managed to suppress a cry of alarm when an owlish face appeared from behind the partition separating their booth from the next.

“Sorry,” said the man in a gruff local accent. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He attempted a reassuring smile but his withered features were not quite equal to the challenge.

“It’s alright,” said Lynn, regaining her composure. “I just didn’t think there was anyone else here tonight.”

“Aye, this place is quiet in the evenings,” the man said ruefully. “People round here stay at home after dark - don’t they, dear?”

“Aye,” replied a muffled female voice.

The man rose to his feet and shuffled round to Lynn and Keith’s side of the partition. He was tall and cadaverous, with a pronounced stoop and time-ravaged features. His ancient face was deeply lined, his skin waxy and parchment-like. Sparse tufts of hair erupted randomly from his scalp, clinging on for dear life. He was dressed in a brown raincoat that had seen better days, black trousers with razor-sharp creases and sturdy boots ideal for walking across the moors.

His companion was a small, nervous-looking woman whose hair was gathered up into a lopsided bun. Her long tartan coat was open to reveal a flowing blue dress that might have suited her forty years earlier. Thick tights did not quite hide her varicose veins, and she moved with rheumatic stiffness.

“I’m George Barton. This is my wife Elsie.”

Although clearly annoyed by the interruption, Keith introduced himself and Lynn (she noticed that he described her merely as his ‘friend.’ Maybe he could see which way the wind was blowing. She hoped so). Now that the elderly couple had moved from their seats, it seemed impolite not to ask them into the booth. Sliding round towards Lynn, Keith gestured to the empty space on the other side of the table and invited them to sit down.

Lynn realised what had been wrong before. The place was lovely, but there had been no people. The presence of other drinkers helped to give a pub a welcome air of normality.

George and Elsie also seemed to welcome the company. “We don’t get many strangers in here,” said George. “Just passing through, are you?”

“You could say that,” said Keith. “We’re staying one more night, then we’ll be going back home. We’ll be setting up camp for the night after we leave here.”

“You’re camping out on the moors?” asked Elsie with a look of concern.

“Yes,” replied Keith. “Actually, we’ll have to make a move soon. It’s a bit awkward, pitching a tent in the dark. But we’ll manage.”

George and Elsie exchanged a significant look. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay here tonight?” said George. “I’m sure you’ll be much more comfortable here than you will outside in a tent. It’s freezing cold out there in the early hours….”

“It is,” agreed Keith. “But staying here would defeat the object, wouldn’t it?” he chuckled. “We like the great outdoors! That’s why we’re here.” He took a long swig of beer as Lynn rolled her eyes.

Noticing that George’s glass was almost empty, Keith asked what he was drinking.

“I’ll have a pint of mild, if that’s all right.”

“A pleasure. Elsie?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Same again, love?”

“We said we were only going to have one drink,” Lynn protested. “It’s nearly dark already.” She nodded towards the window. The clouds scudding across the sky looked vaguely sinister in the fading light.

“Alright,” Keith reluctantly agreed. “We’ll finish these and then we’ll go.” Lynn stood up so that he could slide out of the booth and go to the bar.

Left alone with Elsie and George, Lynn did not quite know what to say. The couple seemed suddenly tense, and were looking at her more closely than before. It occurred to her that there was something they wanted to say to her, although for the life of her she could not guess what it was.

She was spared the task of making conversation when, as soon as Keith was out of earshot and talking to the barman, George leaned across and said in a hoarse stage whisper, “Do you know what tonight is?”

Lynn thought for a moment. As far as she knew, today was not a special occasion. Glancing at the books on the shelves behind her, she briefly wondered if the date might have some local significance. Nothing suggested itself, though, and finally she shook her head.

George was about to reply when Elsie let out a startled gasp. Following her gaze, Lynn looked out of the window again. All she could see was the moon, newly emerged from behind a bank of obscuring clouds. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

George spoke quickly as he answered. “You really don’t want to go outside again tonight, lass. We’re staying here till morning, and there’s another room if you want it. The landlord here is a good friend of ours. He’ll see you all right.” He leaned even further forward, his eyes intent as he said, “I’m telling you this for your own good. Don’t go onto the moors tonight!”

Elsie’s cough was too loud. George glanced over towards the bar to see Keith making his way over with the pint of mild. He stopped speaking and leaned back in his seat, although his expression was troubled and it seemed to Lynn that he had wanted to say more.

“Here we are,” said Keith as he put the glass down on the table in front of George. “Enjoy.” He sat down next to Lynn.

“Thanks,” muttered George, not meeting Keith’s eyes. Elsie looked close to tears.

Keith apparently did not notice. “So, do you live round here?” he asked.

“Not far,” said George. “Our village is a couple of miles away. We won’t be going back there till the morning, though. We don’t want to be walking across the moors tonight,” he added. He looked from Keith to Lynn for a few moments, and it occurred to Lynn that he was debating whether to say more. Finally, apparently deciding against further disclosures, he added lamely, “Elsie has arthritis. She can’t stand the cold.”

Elsie nodded in assent. “Aye,” she murmured. “Arthritis. Don’t want to be out there with my legs.” She looked at George helplessly. He concentrated on supping his pint.

Lynn moved closer to Keith, wishing that she could persuade him to take a room for the night. But one look in his eyes told her not to bother.

His glass was almost empty. Suddenly, Lynn feared the night, and did not want to be outside as darkness claimed the moors.

She looked from George to Elsie, but neither would meet her gaze and her fears intensified.

The sound of Keith’s glass banging down on the table startled her, and she jumped in her seat. Keith appeared not to notice. “Right,” he said, “let’s make a move.”

Reluctantly, she stood up and donned her backpack. Keith bade their companions a hearty goodnight and made for the door.

Before leaving the pub, Lynn turned to look at the elderly couple one last time. They were talking in hushed tones, an urgent conversation that she could not quite catch. But as she stepped through the doorway, she thought she heard Elsie say, “You should have told her!”

The door closed behind them. The moon was again obscured by clouds, leaving them in darkness, and the wind was picking up. It howled eerily across the open ground, rustling the undergrowth and chilling their bones. The mist had thickened, and the horizon was now completely hidden from view. Lynn would have given anything to step back indoors, but Keith was already striding off across the moors, moving purposefully as though heading for some pre-arranged destination. Lynn thought she could hear him whistling a tune over the howling wind. She wanted to hit him.

But she had no option but to follow where he led. She caught up with him and tried to ignore the cold and the feeling of danger.

Again, Keith did not speak as they walked, just whistled the same inane tune over and over again until Lynn felt like screaming. Then, abruptly, he stopped and said, “It was strange, wasn’t it? Finding that pub in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yes,” she replied miserably.

He looked over at her but said nothing.

The clouds were threatening rain, and with the moon completely hidden, the darkness was complete. The effect was one of total isolation, a sense that they were marching towards a horizon they would never reach. She shivered as a cold blast of air whipped at her face.

Glancing behind her, she saw that the pub was almost out of sight now, its lights beacons of hope in the uncaring wilderness. Finally, desperation got the better of her and she said, “Keith, I want to go back to the pub. I’ll spend all day on the moors with you tomorrow before we go home, but please let’s sleep indoors tonight.”

He gave no sign that he had heard her, striding on up a gentle slope to a plateau of land that was slightly sheltered by a screen of bushes. “Perfect,” he said with a smile of satisfaction. “We’ll be protected from the wind here. You hold the torch while I put the tent up.”

Lynn did as she was bidden, knowing better than to argue with Keith when he was on a mission. She sat on the grass, shining the torch in his direction and watching disinterestedly as he fiddled with canvas and tent pegs. Sweating and cursing, making a mess of the job but refusing her offers of help, he finally completed the job.

Stepping away from their lopsided sleeping quarters, he wiped his brow and gestured for her to go inside. “After you, madam.”

Grateful for the opportunity of at least nominal protection from the elements, Lynn shrugged off her backpack and scrambled into the tent. She doubted whether it would last the night, but all she wanted to do was fall into the welcome oblivion of sleep and rest until daybreak.

She kept Keith waiting outside while she laid out the sleeping bag. “OK,” she said wearily, removing her coat and top, “you can come in now.”

As he crawled in and sealed the entrance, she noticed the look of child-like expectancy on his face. She groaned inwardly. Surely he didn’t expect anything tonight?

The answer came when he wriggled his way into the sleeping bag, lying behind her so that she could feel that familiar hardness pressing against her buttocks. In other circumstances, it would have been comical. “Keith….” she began, “I really don’t….”

“Shhhh,” he said peremptorily. He often grew impatient when she expressed reluctance.

She said nothing more. He fumbled, muttered, loosened her clothes and cast them aside, groped, probed and sought entry.

She had anticipated this. When fellow students had told her of the rumour that Keith looked forward to his weekends away because he was an exhibitionist who loved to have sex outdoors, Lynn had laughed and thought nothing of it. So what if it was true? It was a harmless enough kink.

Now, though, smelling the stale sweat on his flabby body, feeling him pummelling away inside her and pawing at her breasts, listening to his grunts of exertion, she wished she had said no to this trip. Half-asleep, she moved against him in a way that she hoped would bring things to a swift conclusion, uttering moans that he may have mistaken for expressions of pleasure.

A sudden brightness inside the tent made her open her eyes. Her head started to swim and her vision blurred as she looked around her. A strange feeling, a mixture of pain and yearning, was gradually suffusing her body. It was as though her bones and organs had miraculously grown, taking on a life of their own and trying to burst their envelope of flesh.

Still dimly aware of Keith’s rhythmic thrusts but unable to ignore the increasing pain, she decided to tell him to stop. But when she opened her mouth to speak, she found herself unable to articulate recognisable words. Instead, she issued a low snuffling sound that mirrored her lover’s carnal moans.

The agony was intensifying, and she shook her head from side to side in an effort to disperse the incessant ache in her cranium. She thrashed her limbs like a child in the midst of a tantrum and was surprised to hear herself snarl, a guttural oath quite unlike any sound that had previously passed her lips.

Something told her not to make Keith stop what he was doing, and she reached behind her to grab his wrists, pulling his arms around her body so that they encircled her waist. She found that her grip was more powerful than before. Even when he tried to move his hands, she was easily able to hold them in place. For the moment, he did not seem to mind.

The disorientation was still there, but her skin seemed to be stretching to accommodate her larger, heavier innards. She felt herself growing taller, Keith’s presence inside her less of a distraction with each passing second. Her spine curved, forcing her to alter her posture. She felt compelled to hunch forward as her bones reconstituted themselves. Then the real changes began.

Without warning, tufts of hair sprouted at random from various parts of her body – her chest, her thighs, the small of her back, and the nape of her neck. Half a dozen heartbeats saw the hair on her head transformed into a tangled mane.

The man behind her appeared to have registered that something was amiss and was shouting, trying to disengage himself. The hardness inside her body was softening. Absently, as though preparing for what lay ahead even though her conscious mind did not yet know what that was, she gripped his wrists more tightly.

The hair was growing at an exponential rate now, great swathes of fur breaking through her pores and coating her entire body. Her digits were no longer entirely human; when she tightened her grip on the man’s wrists, she felt her claws digging into his flesh. He cried out and tried to draw back, but she effortlessly held him in place. The ease with which she was able to do this gave her a feeling of absolute power.

As she writhed and growled, the shape of her face altered. She felt her nose thickening, becoming a snout, and her eyes and ears were suddenly sensitive to infinitely wider spectrums of light and sound. Canine incisors fought their way through her gums, displacing their human counterparts.

A new sensation rose within her, more urgent than anything she had ever experienced. She was salivating, her body crying out its need for food. This all-consuming hunger dwarfed the pain of her physical metamorphosis.

Covered in fur now, no longer a human being, the creature that had once been Lynn Palmer threw back her head and howled.

Hands had become paws now and she was no longer able to hold onto the wrists of the creature that had once been her mate. He had drawn away from her and was cowering in a corner of the tent, making noises that she instinctively recognised as sounds of panic.

She climbed up on all fours and turned to face him, watching dispassionately as he gibbered with terror and disbelief. Moving with the predatory grace characteristic of the animal kingdom, she positioned herself near the entrance to the tent, blocking his only escape route.

Evaluating the situation, she calculated that her physical strength was many times greater than that of her adversary and that she would almost certainly be the victor in the imminent battle. She had nothing to fear.

With a surge of adrenalin, she pounced.

Screams and snarls seared the air as she attacked, desperate cries bombarding her sensitive ears as she bit and clawed this troublesome creature. She decided to silence it. Allowing her instincts to guide her, she pinned it to the ground with her front paws and lunged for its neck. She angled her muzzle so that she could clamp her strong jaws round its throat, then thrust her head between its flailing arms and sank her teeth into its tender flesh as hard as she could.

Luscious pulses of blood spurted into her grateful mouth as she tore open veins and arteries, ripping away a great chunk of flesh in the process. She lapped at the gaping throat, delighting in the warmth that trickled deliciously down her gullet and settled in her rumbling stomach. Her foe’s strength quickly ebbed and his resistance was minimal as she opened more veins, eager to enjoy that scarlet tide for as long as possible. Her tongue darted in and out of the wound, the dying stream of blood quenching her thirst but fuelling her hunger.

Soon, the flow of blood stopped altogether and she realised that the creature posed no further threat. She could do with it as she pleased. Moving down the torso, she used her sharp claws to bisect the stomach, nuzzling apart curtains of flesh in order to forage among the juicy morsels within.

She plunged into the stomach cavity and buried her snout in the morass of slippery organs. Insensate, drooling madly and aware of nothing but this banquet of tastes and smells, she sampled organs at random, relishing their different tastes and textures. Blood and bodily fluids oozed from her slavering mouth as she fed. She ploughed repeatedly into the yawning cavity, emerging each time with a new treat clasped between her jaws. The intestines were a particular delight; she dragged them from their moorings and away from their host, the better to enjoy their gelid sweetness. The taste was exquisite, and she devoured virtually the entire tract before returning to the body.

As she ate, the madness of her initial hunger passed and she began moving around the corpse at leisure, determined to explore every inch of her kill. She shredded skin, gnawed at connective gristle, chewed facial features, tore off extremities, and greedily drank the corpse’s congealing juices. Bones crunched between her powerful teeth as she destroyed the ribcage and severed the spinal cord. She thrust her muzzle deep into the glutinous wad of gore that lay beneath the ruined skeletal cage, barking with delight when she sank her teeth into the succulent ventricles of the heart. Almost tenderly, she pulled it from the body and took it to a corner of the tent to eat.

Afterwards, her passion temporarily stilled, she picked at what was left of her kill but decided not to eat any more. Already, its freshness was gone and she wanted to be away from it. She padded outside.

As soon as she emerged into the open air, she stopped and looked up at the silvery-white disc in the sky. Dimly, she comprehended the fact that its appearance from behind the clouds had been the cause of the brightness in the tent, and the cause of her need to kill.

She realised that the hunger would return, and wondered where she could find more prey to enjoy. Then she looked up at the disc again and understood. She began to run, faster and faster as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, flying across the desolate moors.

She allowed the disc to guide her, running in the direction of the full moon.

====================================================

GOLD STAR EMPLOYEE
CJ Lines

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Frank Dax came in from the cold of a grey December morning in Holborn, marching his way through the reception area of HBG Telecom and into an elevator bound for the second floor. Upon reaching his destination, Frank glided down the corridor and eventually came upon the framed ‘Employee of the Month’ photograph just outside of the Purchasing office. It looked as though the cleaners had knocked it off-kilter while dusting so Frank meticulously straightened it up and proudly admired it for a minute or two. His eyes scanned down the list of previous award winners and he smiled to note that January to November inclusive, surrounded by a myriad of gold stars, was the name Frank Dax, eleven times over. There was only December left to fill in and Frank was supremely confident that he would have no challengers to his throne. He was, after all, HBG’s fastest rising star and convinced he would be elevated to management status come his first annual performance review.

As Frank entered the Purchasing office, he was dismayed to find two pixie-like girls from Accounts were giggling and hanging up multi-coloured tinsel all over the room. He tentatively approached his desk and discovered, with some disgust, that his own monitor had been draped with the ghastly stuff. He snorted and brushed it away into the bin, hoping the two girls would recognise this as a protest.

“Something wrong, Frank?” one of them squeaked.

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” he replied, curtly.

The girl merely shook her head and walked away, pausing only to swiftly affix a giant wreath of holly onto the office door as a parting shot.

Frank scowled, sat down and turned on his computer, determined to get on with his work despite others in the office allowing themselves to get taken over by the spirit of “the silly season”, as he called it.

Keith Merricks, Frank’s boss, strolled in from upstairs and nodded to Frank as he passed.

“Good morning Mr Merricks!” bellowed Frank, rising from his seat a little.

“Ah, morning Dax. Good to see you,” the older man responded with a wave. “I haven’t had chance to thank you yet for volunteering all that Christmas overtime. It’s difficult to find willing bodies to work over the holidays, so your offer was a Godsend.”

“Well, the wheels of commerce can’t stop turning just because of a silly old custom can they, sir?”

“That’s the spirit, Dax!”

Merricks slapped Frank heartily on the back and walked out of the office, leaving the latter to begin processing his daily buying report.

* * *

It was around two ‘o’clock in the afternoon when the frightful foliage first reared its ugly head. Frank had just finished a ‘phone call to an important supplier when, all of a sudden, there was a cry of “HEAVE HO!” from the street below as a giant Christmas tree was erected with ropes, outside the office window.

“For God’s sake, man!” exclaimed Frank, leaping out of his seat and craning his neck to get a better look.

There were a couple of workmen on the pavement, darting around with the ropes, as the tree now stood a good forty-foot high in the middle of the street.

“You can’t leave that here!” yelled Frank out of the window. The workmen clearly didn’t hear him as they continued their business, erecting a pair of ladders on either side of the tree.

Frank slammed the window shut and stormed out of the building, shivering a little as he advanced down the windy pavement without his coat. “What on Earth do you think you’re doing?” he hollered to one of the workmen.

The man turned around, rubbed his eyes and tapped his hard hat. “Just followin’ the guv’nor’s orders, squire.”

“You can’t leave a ruddy great Christmas tree in the middle of the street like this!”

“It says ‘ere, right,” the workman mumbled, fishing a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, “that this is where it’s going – by order of the Lord Mayor’s Office. We just need to put some fencin’ around it, do the trimmin’ and we’ll be out your way. It’ll look right festive. Marvellous.”

The man hiccupped a couple of times and Frank could strongly smell beer on his breath. He knew he had no chance of convincing this drunken buffoon to move the monstrosity and, as his teeth were beginning to chatter, he decided to go back indoors.

By the time Frank returned to his desk, the workman was up a ladder directly outside his window, affixing garish trimmings to the tree. As well as the usual tinsel and fairy lights, there were some absolutely vile toy elves on strings that grinned mockingly at Frank through the glass, shredding his nerves with their shiny blue eyes and plastic smiles.

Turning away from them, he rang up the Council and was predictably kept on hold for nearly half an hour. By the time his call was dealt with, Frank’s rage had become near apoplectic. He felt he had already wasted far more time than was justifiable on this nonsense and would have to work late to catch up.

Frank explained the story with added expletives and demanded to know why on Earth such an extra-large eyesore was being erected right outside his office window. However, the droid-like clerk on the other end of the line merely offered a monotone response that the Christmas tree was, “in the right place, sir.”

Apparently, a veritable legion of the things were being hoisted up all over London as part of the Lord Mayor’s latest campaign to bring the festive spirit back to the capital. Frank cursed the whole wretched idea, swore at the clerk and hung up, more furious than he was before. He cupped his head in hands and wished that the entire ridiculous season could be over already.

When he looked again out of the window, he couldn’t help but observe that the hideous little elves seemed to have moved. Whereas previously they’d been dangling upright with their arms by their side, they were now swinging upside down in the wind, arms aloft and waving.

“For God’s sake,” muttered Frank, “if they’re going to leave the damn things there, the least they could do is stop fannying about with them all day!”

He took a few deep breaths, walked to the coffee machine and made a conscious decision to forget about the Christmas tree, the despicable elves and the Lord Mayor’s ludicrous campaign, lest it slow down his pace of work any further.

* * *

As six ‘o’clock rolled round, the office had completely emptied, save for Frank who was still ploughing his way through the daily buying report. Throughout the afternoon, the annoying rustle of branches had continually distracted him as the wind blew them about, but now there was a clear knocking sound on the window. It seemed as if some idiot was shaking the tree from below and slamming it against the glass.

Frank rubbed his eyes and lamented to himself on why anyone would waste their Tuesday evening shaking a Christmas tree around. “Kids these days,” he murmured wearily and rose to take a look out of the window.

It was extremely dark outside, especially with the tree now blocking most of the glow from the streetlamps. Frank couldn’t see who was on the pavement but he noticed the elves were now facing upright again and seemingly bouncing up and down on their strings as the tree’s branches moved from side to side.

The sound of the swaying tree was becoming more of an irritant by the second so Frank decided to go down to the street and put a stop to it. Upon reaching the base of the tree, now surrounded by glittery red fencing, he struggled to make out any figures in the gloom.

“Hello!” he shouted into the darkness surrounding the tree’s massive pot. “Look, I know there’s someone out here! I just came down to tell you it’s not big or funny, it’s downright annoying!”

There was no response, but the tree continued to shake, its branches appearing to move by themselves. He looked upwards at the towering spectacle and saw the elves outside his window had turned themselves upside down again. What on Earth was going on?

Frank stepped over the fencing and felt his way in the dark towards the tree’s base. Upon touching the side of the bark, a branch swooped down from nowhere and wrapped itself around his body! Frank screamed as the wood tightened around his waist and began pulling him upwards into the tree’s leafy core.

He was being rapidly dragged up through the tree, his skin shredding on the sharp firs and jagged branches, as he cried feebly for help. The cacophonous sound of rustling that was becoming more and more unbearable the higher he ascended. His cries were lost. The wicked elves began throwing themselves down from their strings and laughing in shrill, short bursts as they latched themselves onto Frank, their tiny fists pounding merrily on his forehead.


With an explosion of leaves, Frank burst through the top of the tree and was greeted by the intense chill of the night air. He shivered violently and began screaming “HELP ME!” as he looked down at the pavement, forty feet below. There were no passer-bys around to hear him and his cries were soon muffled as the evil branches began stretching out his body into a star shape and wrapping his head in golden tinsel. Before long, he was mummified head to toe in it and held firmly in place at the freezing tip of the tree…

* * *

Sometime around mid-morning, the workmen pulled up in their van and began unpacking ladders.

“’Ere, Barry,” the one remarked, scratching his head. “Do you remember us puttin’ that star on top yesterday?”

“Can’t say as I do, ‘Arry but then after the fifth pint of Pride we ‘ad at lunch, I can’t say as I could tell you much we did yesterday.”
Harry laughed and patted his colleague on the back. “Aye son, well, I ‘ad it on the list that we was puttin’ a star up today so that’s one job down already!”

“Nice one, ‘Arry! Got time for a couple more down the Square Pig this ‘arvo then, eh?”

The workmen rubbed their hands together eagerly at the promise of a longer lunchtime drinking session as fifty foot above them, the weary suffocated shriek of “HELP!” got lost somewhere in the dizzy heights of the cold December air.


THE END

CJ Lines, (with a vague tip of the pen to Dorothea Tanning…)

====================================================

[Demon]

THE STEPHEN ROMANO SUPPLEMENT





====================================================

SISTER SINDI KICKS THE HABIT
Stephen Romano

====================================================

[For Heather Clendenin]


She rolls over on the silk bedsheets, admiring how beautiful he is.

How beautiful the apartment is.

How good she thinks she feels.

She smiles at him, and he smiles back, and they are family and it’s cool.

“The best things in life are free,” he says to her in the same so-far-away-from-everything voice he used to seduce her in the beginning. “But I’ve never known what they were.”

Then he almost laughs.

“I guess this was inevitable. Coming to the end like this, I mean. Who knows why things happen the way they do? I want you to know that I forgive you for everything, though. I love you and I wish things could be different.

“I’ve never explained it all to you. Not really. You should know why things are the way they are before it’s over. Would you like to hear?”

She smiles and says she would.

“When I was seven, my heart was broken by a little girl whose name I’ll never be able to remember. She was a little older than me, and I thought she was the best thing on God’s green earth. She gave me a reason to be alive. She had long black hair she never combed and she wore tennis shoes everywhere and we were inseparable for one summer. When you’re young like that, a summer lasts forever. I’m not even sure I remember how we met. Maybe I just woke up one day and there she was. We played in the park. Slept under freeways together. All those things you do when you’re kids and nothing else matters. We had a game we played where we’d go into the sewers and pretend we were black ghosts.

“I never knew where she came from or anything about her family. My mother had left long ago. There was only her and me. She’d bring food and we’d have these little picnics under the trees in Barton Springs. She’d ask me what it was like to be the way I was then. Cut loose and drifting. Going from one day to another. Surviving. I’d always tell her I didn’t know what it was like. It was just the way things were. She said she liked sleeping in the park and that she wanted to run away with me. Then when fall came, she was gone. I never saw her again. I cried for two days.

“That same little girl has come through the years with me, even when I pulled myself out of the gutter and made what some people might call a successful life . . . and she’s always laughing when something like this happens. Like she’s making it happen. Like I’m finding her in every woman I meet. That same beautiful betrayer that first sent my heart to live with the fishes and never let me have it back. It was my first lesson that you can trust no one but yourself. Girls are dangerous and evil creatures. They are meaningless in the final equation. I’m sorry . . . does that sound bad to you?”

She smiles and says it’s okay.

“My second lesson came from a woman at the orphanage where they sent me after I was arrested. A woman in black with eyes like an angel. I was thirteen and in love with her. Her name was Sherri. She was so beautiful and sweet. She used to sneak me candy and cookies after lunch. And she loved me special, in a way I’d never been loved before. Over and over and over again. Two years, we belonged to one another. I told one of the teachers that I wanted to marry her. That I was ready to see the world and that I wanted her to come along and be at my side, with the love of God blessing us both. But then she was gone. I was too young to understand why. All I knew was that awful laughter as my heart broke and I cried, hoping she’d come back. And she never did. There were other women after that, and all of them were cold and merciless, dangerous and cruel. I grew to hate even sweet Sherri, because of all the bad things they did to me in that place. I wanted to smash them, make them suffer, make them cry like she made me cry. All girls must burn in hell. I’m sorry . . . does that sound bad to you?”

She smiles and says it’s okay.

“But like most men, I just can’t seem to live without them. I always see a pretty face and I have to try and kiss it. At least that’s the way it was up until I was thirty-nine. By then, I’d gone through everything. I mean that. There are stories I could tell you about how I accumulated all this wealth that would make the events of tonight seem trivial. I’ve killed so many people. Did it without flinching. Without thinking. Did it for money. I want you to know that it has never made me happy to kill someone. You can’t feel one way or another when you do it. You just turn your soul off for a while and when you come up for air it’s all over. The guy is dead and you’re rich. And the more of that white emptiness you can channel, the better off you are. The more money you make.

“The girls would always be there to remind me I still had a soul. One after the other, they came and went. They’d make me feel good for a while and then they’d always leave. I’d be back in the gutter crying for my poor broken heart all over again. It just takes so much work to make a girl stick around . . . and sometimes you find you don’t even want her anymore, so you get all apathetic and she cuts out on her own. But I would always cry when she left. There were seventeen girlfriends. They were from every walk of life. A couple of rich career woman with stern faces and cold lips. A few hippie chicks who wore strange scents and protested in front of fast food restaurants. I even dated a nineteen year old high-school dropout named Lisa who had large breasts and a mouth that was always full of bubble gum. They came and went. I shared with some of them. The hippie chicks were always the most understanding. The sex was best with Lisa, I think. Maybe I loved them.

“I realized that the world was cruel and mean and that I would probably never be happy chasing after girls. That’s why I hired you in the beginning. I wanted the chase to be over. I had enough money to build my perfect woman from scratch and keep her around as long as I wanted. So I went shopping.”

Her smile becomes wider and she closes her eyes.

She knows how this part goes, but likes hearing his voice.

“A lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to buy something you want in this world, but then again most people are poor. I threw about a million dollars into finding you . . . and I guess it was fun. Went from one end of the country to the other, auditioning. Didn’t sleep with all of them. Sometimes, they’d just come to the door and I’d pay them and say thanks, but no thanks. Sometimes I’d screw them, or talk to them for a while, or both, or neither. I’d just look.

“I knew you were the one right from the start. You were just like her. For a while I thought you were her, but that’s impossible. I never told you about that, did I? About how I was looking for my first love. To silence the laughing that always happened when a woman broke my heart. The best things in life are free. But money can buy you anything. I was with you twice before I knew I wanted to keep you. But not like the others. I didn’t want to have to be in love with you. That’s why I offered you so much. I couldn’t let you get away.”

She sees it in her mind’s eye.

The calm way he explained to her how he wanted a full-time mistress, and the terms she would have to work under.

His beautiful, so-far-away-from-everything voice laying down the law.

There could be no one but him.

Either professionally or personally.

She would be a kept woman.

Devoted.

Loyal.

A f**kdoll in black-and-white-and-red.

Seventy thousand down, plus a condo in Travis Heights.

She would never have to worry about anything, ever again.

A fool would have walked away.

That’s what she tells herself now.

She has no regrets.

Everything in life is an adventure.

There are a lot of things he doesn’t know about her, too.

“I was really into it for a while, Sindi. It was almost like being married, but I could send you away whenever I wanted to. You never cared, one way or the other. I started to love you for that. Then I started to wonder where you were spending your nights when you weren’t with me.”

She can’t even remember.

All men are alike.

Beautiful boys.

“I only had you followed the one time, but it was enough. I told you at the start that there were to be no others but me. I guess you couldn’t help yourself. Most women like you can’t.”

She wonders what a woman like her is.

She really doesn’t know.

There is nothing inside her but the joy she thinks she feels.

The smile on her face.

“The heroin I could deal with. Not the others, though. I want you to know that it has hurt me deeply, this thing you have done. How could you do it after all I gave you?”

The best things in life are free, she wants to say to him.

But there’s no need to.

Words are irrelevant.

Only the pleasure matters.

Only the moment.

She rolls again on the silk bed and purrs.

“I want to describe what you are to me, Sindi. What you were. I want you to know the bottomless hell I was dropped into when I realized that it was all more of the same. That you were just like all the others.”

The bottomless hell?

How romantic.

How poetic.

She loves the sound of his voice.

They are bonded by so much blood.

Family.

“It wasn’t just the way you look. It was the way you made me feel. The way you made the pain fade. I was learning to defeat the evil that women do. You were showing me the way, Sindi.”

She remembers the first night pretty well.

The nun outfit and the lashes of leather and the shrieking agony across her back as he heaved with everything he had.

After that it was blur.

An adventure.

Always the black-and-white robes and the whips.

That part never changed.

But she could do anything she wanted when he wasn’t beating her.

Whatever the hell she felt like doing.

And she doesn’t even remember any of it now.

They have no names.

They are all alike.

Boys and more boys.

They only want one thing from a girl like Sister Sindi.

And she doesn’t mind.

Let them have their way.

It’s only a means to an end.

Just a little comfort in the dark . . .

. . . while you wait for the cold rush and the shot of lightning . . .

. . . for the happiness . . .

. . . the thing that hovers above all other things . . .

The blade hovers over flesh.

It doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters.

“I love you.”

She smiles and says she loves him too.

It’s a lie, but what the hell?

She feels nothing but happiness sleeting through her at a hundred miles per hour.

The cold rush and the warm glow.

It’s hers and not his.

No boy can take this from her.

She wishes he would talk more.

So she gets real close to him and whispers.

Asks him if he ever saw it coming.

She means the baseball bat in the dark.

The clever way she outflanked him in the alley outside the club.

The guys she had waiting to haul him back to his own beautiful apartment.

The slow and painful rising back to consciousness to find that he was tied to the chair and dressed in her Habit . . . which she’ll never again wear for anyone.
The Habit, which will soon be speckled with bloody rosary beads from his own heart, put there by the knife which she purchased with the money he gave her . . . because money can buy you anything.

“Tell me more, darling. I want to hear your voice.

====================================================

An Interview with...STEPHEN ROMANO
Garry Charles

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GC: We have a lot of UK readers here at Hadesgate. They may not have had heard of you yet. Tell them a little about yourself, but not too much!!!

SR: Not too much? What’s fun about that? Actually, you can find out quite a lot about me by reading my new book. As John Skipp says, “the screams are real,” and so the writing rings very true with regard to a great many things that have either happened to me or other people. It’s all fictionalized, of course, but all writers are parasitic somewhat of their own experiences and philosophies, so that’s about fifty percent of the real me in there . . . and the rest is a foul mouthed jerk who likes bad movies and treats his girlfriend like shit. No, okay, fine, just kidding . . . I don’t really have a girlfriend right now. And I’m really very sweet. The short version is that I am a professional screenwriter and author. Make friends with me on Myspace!

GC: You’re only 25 years old and you’ve already written a screenplay that was filmed for the first season of Masters of Horror and published your own collection of short stories.
How the f**k did you manage that?

SR: I’m a little older than my public age on Myspace suggests for a number of reasons (for example, you can’t have a public birthday in Hollywood after you turn 25 because the children pretty much rule everything over there), but I am still young to have gotten away with as much as I have so far. I had a very bizarre and paradoxical upbringing, with a dad who was a Texas blues cat, and so we had all these adventures with guys like Stevie Ray Vaughn and Lucinda Williams and Billy Gibbons, and it all taught me to really think outside the box when it comes to getting what you want. I went into moviemaking at a very young age, played in bands, made audio comic books and produced soundtrack albums professionally . . . and all the while I honed my writing skills. My first novel was published over ten years ago, and thank god nobody saw it. But it was a start. And then I muscled into the film industry though the back door, by way of hanging with my heroes at conventions and screenings, impressing them with my work and so forth. Film directors can always use a really good writer. And I am no longer interested in being a film director myself. At least not now. I’ve seen the job and it sucks. I never went to school for any of this stuff, by the way. I was too poor and too much of a scholastic underachiever to get a free ride in collage or wherever, so for many years I’ve been learning it on the street. And THAT, my friends, is where you really pick up a true and authentic VOICE in writing that will make people pay attention to you. That’s how I managed and continue to manage my rather unique career—by being good enough and bold enough so that people stop whatever it is they are doing and READ ME. Then, hopefully, they give me a job. MASTERS OF HORROR happened because I was/am working as Coscarelli’s writing partner on many other projects, and this fell into our lap out of nowhere and we just jumped in and nailed it. Wasn’t easy, but I think we kicked ass over there.

GC: We are featuring the stories Sister Sindi Kicks The Habit and Crazy Like Stacy. Crazy was my favourite story from the collection.
What’s yours and why?

SR: I have a few favorites. Some are more personal than others. The most honest stories are the ones that sit best in my heart, because my courage in writing them fulfills a real and authentic desire to openly bleed, and the voice is all mine and not some serial killer’s or whatever. CRAZY LIKE STACY is something I wrote when I was in love with the viola player from a string quartet called Two Star Symphony (do a Google, they’re incredible!), and it was based on my experiences with her and a freaky dream I had that she’d wished me dead. I woke up the next morning and wrote the whole thing down in a frenzy. It survived to THE RIOT ACT almost entirely as I wrote it that morning, with very few revisions. So it’s one of my most beloved stories, that wicked love letter I wrote for Jo. (I don’t think she’s ever read it.) It’s also one of the most hopeful stories I’ve written, which is cool, too. It’s about leaving anger behind you. We can all learn from a story like that, I think. Believe it or not, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUICIDE WITH ROBOTS is actually one of the most honest stories in the book because it’s based on my one-and-only trip to Las Vegas, where I was confronted with so many horrible realities and just wanted to blow the whole place off the map. The first draft of that story was just my ruminations about what a disgusting cesspool of anti-humanity Vegas is, then a few years later I came up with the character of Carolyn Wonderland, and off it veered into the territory it now inhabits. (Wonderland is actually named after a real person, a blues guitarist/singer who lives here in Austin!) I really like that story a lot. It has a tight, sucker-punch quality to it. The super short stories, the ones that clock in at under a few thousand words, can be so much more powerful. That’s a trick I learned from Andrew Vacchs. He says that writing shorts is like boxing in a very small arena—you have to get busy faster and it costs more if you screw up. Vacchs is a HUGE influence on my writing, particularly his story collection BORN BAD. You’ll find a lot of my schooling in that book. LOVE LETTER TO AUNTIE FAYE is probably my top favorite, next to STACY, because it deals with very ordinary, real-life horrors—the horrors of confronting your own heart and dealing with the fact that not everyone behaves in the way you’d like them to. True love is a lie. You never get what you want. All that terrible stuff you tell yourself when your heart breaks. Scott Bradley over at Pod Of Horror recently made the observation that one of my favorite themes seems to be the difficulties between men and women in relationships, and the observation is keen as hell. To me, there is nothing more horrifying than the cold, hard fact that we are all alone in our skins, and anything that other people do around us is simply information relayed by the five senses. So can you trust your own perceptions to inform you of how another person thinks or feels or loves? Most of the time, the answer is no. People are damn hard to figure out. All you can do is write down your own version and hope it makes sense. The problem is, people lie so easily, for even the silliest reasons, and it causes real problems. That’s what AUNTIE FAYE is to me. My own version of a terrible misunderstanding that creates a “heartbreakingly hopeless” situation. (Again, John Skipp’s words.) That’s horror. Not necessarily the situation itself . . . but the way the narrator deals with it. By plunging head-first into denial and rage. A LOT of my stories deal with denial and rage, but of all the stuff featured in THE RIOT ACT, Auntie is my most terrifying creation in my own personal world. Which means it’s the most honest story in the book. That was the reason I stuck it close to the end, between THE AGENCY’S BOY (Jack Ketchum’s favorite story) and WABBIT SEASON, two pieces which are about as far from reality as you can get, yet handled with a lot of my most personal observations about life. That was my way of really testing the reader, I guess. For sheer fun, I DO like WABBIT SEASON a lot. It seems to be the favorite story in the book . . . but I really had no clue at the time that I was creating something people would like so much. (It was also a Ketchum fave.) I had an idea for the ending which struck me as cool, and created the whole story to get there, and it sort of mutated as it went into the big, tough bastard it is. Also, I am very fond of FOUR DEAD GUYS IN ZILKER PARK, because it was my first attempt at “crime noir,” when I just totally let go of “horror” and let my voice evolve into something scarier and more realistic. That was when The Klown Prince started taking over my mind!

GC: THE RIOT ACT covers numerous genres with an ease that is clearly evident in the writing. How do you keep all the ideas from causing your head to explode?

SR: I just sit down and write, man. I am a guy who can slip into the process with a lot of ease. You have to do that to write movie screenplays, which is my main line of work. But, really, THE RIOT ACT represents a transformation in what I do and a movement to a higher level of expression, which I’ve been working on for years, since about 2000. It was my intention in sitting down to write stories like ARE YOU ALL GROWN UP? to get back to the idea of “pure artistic expression,” which lotta writers lose along the way, having to pay the bills and so forth. So whenever I do a story like this, I’m drawing from my life, from dreams, from the experiences and personalities of people I know . . . and if you are good at what you do, it will entertain people or make them cry or maybe they’ll just get pissed off at me, who knows? I want to shake people up and maybe even change the world a little with what I write, and that takes practice. THE RIOT ACT is my practice. Most of the time, I don’t even think about where a story will go. I just sit down with an idea or a clever title and I start riffing until it reveals itself to me. Then there’s rewriting to fill in the holes. I guess I’ve never really thought of my stuff as being so complicated that it would make my head explode . . . but thanks for the analogy anyway. I like a good exploding head.

GC: THE RIOT ACT is unique for a collection of shorts in that though the stories are separate they are also linked by characters and places.
Was this a conscious decision and did it determine the order in which the stories appeared?

SR: Of course. But not in the “traditional” sense. I live in a very interesting city filled with entertainment types and a lot of crime and a lot of my stories are based on that stuff, so it all goes down in Austin most of the time. The “normal people” who live here always read my book and tell me they had no idea there were mafia guys downtown or whatever . . . but there is. It’s everywhere. The order of the stories was very carefully determined, based on a lot of factors, including what is revealed about what and how elaborate in scope certain things are. For example, WABBIT SEASON technically happens before ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUICIDE WITH ROBOTS chronologically, but because the former is a lot bigger and informs you so much more of that world, I put it second-to-last and made SUICIDE second-to-first. (To be honest, I think SUICIDE is a much stronger story, too, and I needed four or five really strong, terse, fast pieces to open the book, with the more elaborate tales saved for last.) My new novel uses a similar technique of subtly linking short stories in the first half, but it is a whole thing unto itself, unlike THE RIOT ACT, which are all separate tales and meant to be seen as such at the end of the day. But yes, there are themes and places and even a few characters that run through the ACT and that is very important to me, and it is necessary to read the stories in the order they appear for just that reason. A lot of people like to skip around in a book like this . . . BUT DON’T EVER DO THAT!!!! We pull our f**king hair out trying to present our work properly! EVERYBODY GOT ME???!!!

GC: What’s the chance of seeing WABBIT SEASON turned into a graphic novel?
Please tell me it’s good.

SR: Ummmm . . . well, I dunno. You aren’t the first to suggest that. The irony is that I used to write comic books myself, but I’m not really interested in making new ones. I’d adapt WABBIT SEASON if it was a situation where I knew I could work with a really great illustrator like Darrick Robertson or Tim Bradstreet . . . but who would publish it? Anyone out there got the balls to roll the dice on story about a psychotic superhero who dresses up in a rabbit suit and blows the head off his own sidekick on page one? Hmmmm?

GC: Quite a lot of your writing is not horror in the traditional sense, though it is quite horrific.
What genre would you class your writing as?

SR: Errr . . . maybe “extreme fiction?” Really, I don’t care for any of these labels at all, like Splatterpunk or Bizarro or whatever. It’s all anti-productive and not very creative thinking. Like my bro Joe Lansdale says, I like to think of myself as my own genre. I love horror, but I don’t have a lot of patience with MUCH of the writing I see in horror movies or read in horror fiction. It seems like so many of the same ideas get thrown around, the same styles, the same plots. It bugs me (no pun intended) that all four (five) ALIEN movies have the usual basic storyline—and all the comic books, too. It’s always a bunch of people running for their lives from aliens as the clock ticks out, and then the critters are wasted and the whole place blows up, but NOT REALLY, there’s another one on the escape pod or wherever! PHOOEY!!!! The whole school of ‘run for you life’ horror is what people tend to think about mainly when referencing the genre, and that’s a shame because there’s a LOT more to be done here. (One of the reasons I was so happy to work on Coscarelli’s INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD was that we got to joke around with that format and bury it forever, at least in my mind. Some people did not get that we were actually deconstructing and making fun of that kind of horror film—but enough people did.) Even some of the most brilliant minds out there tend to be lazy with the “big ideas” at the center of what they do, and most of the time, the success or failure of a vampire novel or any other type of “traditional horror” novel comes down to sheer audaciousness or originality in style, prose-wise . . . which I think is great and I love and all . . . but sooner or later, zombies and angels and devils get reaaaaaly boring. The best writers are the cats that make their characters live and breathe, of course, and that leads to great notions and observations about humanity . . . but why have zombies AT ALL when the observations themselves are often so much more horrifying and insightful. That’s what I try to do. I think Chuck Palahniuk is pretty darn good at it, too. His work is ****ing amazing, natch. Also, I idolize William Kotzwinkle, who’s been around forever. He is an unequalled master of ANYTHING. I am not kidding. That man can ****ing DO IT. In any genre, any style. He just f**king ROCKS. He’s my favorite writer and probably the most influential on my work, along with Vacchs, Skipp and David J. Schow, who I studied intently when I was a kid for stylistic tricks. Those guys were the masters of tight, bird-on-a-wire machinegun prose and still kick ass to this day. It was an honor and a dream-come-true to be in the writer’s bullpen with Dave on MASTERS OF HORROR, especially since they did one of his best stories! If you haven’t yet, read PICK ME UP, and it’s prequel BAD GUY HATS. Just f**king wet as hell, baby.

GC: Any future plans for the screenwriting career?

SR: Of course. That’s my DAY JOB man! I am in re-write on Coscarelli's new film. He and I also have another screenplay in active development, along with about four other projects. One of them is called, get this: ESCAPE FROM FREAK MANSION. I also have several spec scripts on tap, and am working on a new one which I am VERY pleased with. Very dark and very scary. It could be the one that really puts my name over the top. I’ve never written anything so timely and commercial, and yet it really speaks to me as an artist. Who knew?

GC: Will there be another collection soon?
And will it link in with THE RIOT ACT characters/places in any way?

SR: Next year, or perhaps early in 2008 if things go slower than anticipated, you will read twenty-one new shorts in a collection tentatively titled 13 OUT OF NOWHERE, and, yes, there will be some old faces in with the new ones. Auntie Faye will return in a sequel to LOVE LETTER, there will be more gonzo superhero stuff in something called KATIE CHAINSAW DOES THE DIRTY and another one called DEADGIRLS . . . and more Austin stories, of course, stuff with titles like VENUS IN A YELLOW SHIRT, RED ANGER RAIN, JUST LIKE THE ANIMALS, PERSONALITY FLAW, and SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK STAR. Some of these stories are derived from old screenplays that either sold and reverted back to me, or never sold at all. Plus a novel is forthcoming as well. We’ll see how that all comes down as it happens. I can promise it will all be very soul-searching, disgusting and extreme. I’ve already offended one editor who invited me to appear in an anthology. My sweet, nasty Katie Chainsaw was a little too much for him. Mu-ha-ha-HA!!!

GC: Fun question time!!!
You’re on a desert island with two other survivors. One is a portly, intellectual gentleman who is interesting to talk to. The other is a slightly overweight blonde with a low IQ, but she f**ks like a minx.
Who would you keep as company and who would you kill and store as food?

SR: That actually happened to me once. The portly gentleman got hacked right off, because he was bigger than Lola, and I knew she could always lose weight. (She DID, too. There’s wasn’t much left to eat after we killed Karl and cooked him up.) Thing is, you can always teach a dumb blond nymphomaniac to fetch a stick or something when you don’t have her face down in the sand . . . so it was like having a dog you could f**k. I like dogs better than intellectual gentlemen five out of seven days, and, well, sorry, man . . . but I’m an Italian AND a Scorpio. I had to have the dumb blonde! We’re still friends, me and Lola, and sometimes she comes over for tea and we have some cheap laughs about the whole thing. She never got fat again, by the way (went vegetarian after the whole cannibalism thing), and is now dating a famous movie director who lives down the street from me.

GC: Is there any genre you have not yet ventured into and which ones would you like to experiment with in the future?

SR: Science fiction is something I love and want to do more of . . . but it’s all this twisted, life-worn stuff like RATBOY AND DOGBREATH. I would also like to write a straight-up people story, perhaps a movie, with no genre anything in it. Something along the lines of AUNTIE FAYE, that explores dark terrain, but has no murder or violence or even thoughts of such acts in it. Kind of like David Lynch making a Disney movie, right? Much of what I am doing now deals with real situations and real people, but I have so much fun ****ing with those innocent characters in horrific ways that it may be a while before the public sees something ‘straight’ from The Klown Prince. At the end of the day, I am an evil imp with an incredibly twisted and dark sense of humour. (That’s how you Brits spell it, right? Humour? Can I just say the word “F**k” one more time, too?) So, you, know . . . there will be a lot more in this cold f**king RIOT ACT vein for many years, don’t worry. Actually . . . DO worry. Worry quite a LOT, man. You are NOT SAFE. EVER.

GC: What question have you never been asked that you’d really like to be asked?

SR: I’ve always wanted a fan or an interview guy to stand up and get in my face about the overtly anti-woman nature of some of my writing, so I could say exactly this: ‘There is NO reason a particular woman should get treated with any sort of reverence in my work because women do stupid f**king things just like the guys do, and if I say a guy is stupid in one of my stories, what’s the big difference?’ Truth is, my career is just starting. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to blast the unenlightened. Things like sexism, feminism and Defensive Racial Harmony make me laugh out loud when what we really should discussing is the open horror of how many children get f**ked in the ass by their own fathers on an hourly basis. But that’s just me. I could be wrong.

“You could, and ARE wrong.”
—JACK BLACK

====================================================

CRAZY LIKE STACY
Stephen Romano

====================================================

[For Jo Bird]


She looks so good in the tank top I want to cry, but I can’t cry, because I can barely breathe. I’m wired up to a machine that blips and beeps and tells the nurse when to come in and take my pulse or fiddle with the switches. Sometimes she does a little of both. The nurse does not have a face for some reason. Anyway, I can’t see it through the big plastic shower curtain they’ve got me lying under. Oxygen tent, someone said a million billion trillion years ago. I’m lying here and I can’t move. There’s not a lot of pain, really. Kind of an ache-all-over feeling, like when you get the flu. I feel all the life running out of my body, but I’m happy.
Man . . . Stacy is so gorgeous. She’s the best. Real girlfriend material. I knew it when I first saw her. I wanted to make love to her, y’know? Not like all dirty and sweaty. . . but like love.
Now, I just want to touch her face and tell her how cool I think she is. I want to make her laugh. She told me once she doesn’t laugh enough.
That was just last week. When we both went off the wagon and had all those tequila shots.


I’m lookin’ at him, layin’ there. It don’t look like there’s shit wrong with him. The doctors can’t tell anyone what’s makin’ it happen. He’s just dyin’ for some reason.
There’s no reason for him to die.
I don’t want him to.
Shit, man . . . I’m gonna lose it an’ get all freaked-out again . . .
“Hey, sexy-girl,” he says. I can’t hear his voice all that good, like he’s really workin’ hard to call me sexy. It’s so far away. But I do hear it. I always smile when he calls me that. I never used to blush before Stacy came along. I think I blushed the first time he said it. That was at the Iron Maiden show where I first met him. He wasn’t like all the other dudes who hit on me. He was kinda chubby an’ had these amazin’ deep eyes an’ he, like, waved his hands aroun’ a lot when he talked to everyone. He wore a soft leather jacket that was too big, an’ a flannel shirt underneath. It must’a been a hundred degrees in that stadium, but Stacy was wearin’ a f**kin’ leather jacket.
Julia-Ann said he was a writer an’ someone had published his shit. His eyes got real big when I started talkin’ to him about it.


She was totally perfect, man. A bad girl, only really, really sweet. Like Liv Tyler, only really, really dirty. She had those strange sexy-chapped lips, but her hair was long and black and ragged and her chin was lazy. She wasn’t wearing the tank top that night, but I could tell she was so well put together. No ass, perfect tits. But you know . . . I don’t think I even noticed her tits until the next day at my book signing. That was after we’d all had so much fun at the Maiden show. I made her blush on first contact. That’s something that’s never happened to me before. She was twenty-seven and I was thirty-five. She was slinging glass pipes for a living and I was working as a dishwasher in a shithole. Julia-Ann was actually my date that night—a really hot redhead waif with deep blue eyes I’d met at the restaurant. She was the lead singer in Stacy’s band, and Stacy played drums. Man, a drummer . . . how could I miss with this girl?
The name thing wasn’t so bad that first night, but at the signing, it was surreal. Everybody kept saying “yo, Stacy this” and “yo, Stacy that” and she would turn her head every time, right in synch with me. I signed her copy of my poetry book:
‘To Stacy, a chick with a really groovy first name.’
I held up one pinky finger and gave her my best let’s-be-pals look. “Crazy like Stacy?”
She hooked her pinky with mine. “Crazy like Stacy, dude.”


Julia-Ann really hated me after th’ show, but she got over it an’ went’n screwed the bartender at Night Light where we use’ta to play all the time before the place burnt down. I mean, it wasn’t my f**kin’ fault Stacy was talkin’ to me all the time an’ not her. Why’d she even buy me the f**kin’ ticket? I wasn’t even really interested in Stacy. The name thing was totally f**kin’ creepy. An’ he wasn’t like the other guys I went out with. Didn’t have long hair an’ nose rings like Howler. That’s my boyfriend, who dumped me right after Stacy’s book thing. He was all, like, jealous an’ shit. I guess I kinda liked it when Stacy met me at th’ club that next Saturday an’ brought me th’ tape.
That’s what you do when you like a girl. You make her a mix tape. Mine are always really super radical because you can make all kind of cool edits if you know how to use the pause control just right. Since I play in a band too, I put some of my songs on there. We’re typical hair rock. Motley Whatever is the name of the band. Eventually the eighties are gonna end for some of us . . . but not me, dude.


Me an’ Julia-Ann kinda looked at each other funny. He was standin’ in front’a th’ stage like a f**kin’ kid at Christmas, with his hands over his heart, like we were really movin’ him or somethin’. Good thing there wasn’t a mosh that night or he’d’a been killed. But there’s never a mosh at our shows. We’re lucky if our boyfriends even show up. Stacy sure showed up. He screamed like a f**kin’ groupie for all th’ songs an’ stamped his feet for an encore. I was blushin’ for him, an’ I never use’ta blush before.
He gimmie the tape an’ I said, “Hey, thanks, dude!” I didn’t really snap that th’ f**kin’ whole case was HAND MADE, an’ that th’ tape itself was really godamn cool, with all these weird designs painted on it. I listened to it th’ next day doin’ laundry. I was so f**kin’ impressed by his band that I backed up th’ song an’ screamed for th’ girls to come in an’ listen. I guess I started like’n him after that. I told him I was unavailable, y’ know. All that rebound shit. I’d really loved that scumbag who dumped me . . . or I thought I did . . . shit . . . what th’ f**k . . . feelin’s suck anyway . . .


The tape wasn’t enough so I kept trying. And she kept saying she didn’t want to be with anybody, so I tried harder. After the first week or so, she didn’t fight too much when I gave her flowers or wrote her a love poem. She started calling me after a while. Julia-Ann said she thought I was really cool.


I went over to his place on his birthday an’ didn’t give him anythin’. He showed me his paintin’s ‘n’ his poetry books. He had a bunch of ‘em. Th’ paintin’s he never showed anyone or put out in shows. Th’ books, he published ‘em hisself an’ went on slam tours to sell ‘em an’ got bookstores around town to take ‘em. He kissed me really awkward in th’ kitchen . . . an’ I guess I kinda liked it or somethin’ ‘cause I didn’t slap him. Just told’im what he was doin’ wrong an’ put his hands where they were suppos’ to go. We made out like that for ten minutes. I felt really f**kin’ weird. Pulled away an’ said, “So what’s on TV, man?”
I thought I’d really blown it. Hadn’t touched a girl like that in months. Last girlfriend was a poet, too, and a philosopher. She philosophized her way right out of the relationship. Good riddance. She was crazy anyway. But I really like Stacy. She’s one of those girls who doesn’t talk much, but when she does she gives away everything. She doesn’t read. Some people think she’s a hick, but everyone wants to **** her. She has so much pain inside her.


I grabbed th’ remote an’ sat down on th’ floor. He didn’t have any furniture. Some movie was playin’ when th’ TV came on that had that Jodie Foster chick in it. She was all young an’ hot in th’ movie, not old an’ gay, like she is now.


“This is cool,” I said, sitting down next to her, stroking her hair a few times. “Ever seen this movie before, sexy-girl?”
She blushed and shook her head.
“It’s called Foxes. That’s what they used to call really hot chicks in the seventies.”
“I know that!” She punched my arm, but not too hard.
“Oww!”
“Toughen up, dude.”
I smiled and stroked her hair one more time, my eyes trailing back to the TV. “You’d like this movie. It’s got a really cool thing at the end.”
“Whatzat?” she said, gently moving my hand away from her.
I pretended not to notice. “I’d give away the ending!”
“Come on, man, tell me.”
“Well . . . you know how people want different things to be done to their bodies when they die, right?”
“Sure.”
“One of the foxes dies at the end, and they bury her under a baby pear tree. And so the roots grow all through her body for years, and all her friends show up to visit her and eat the pears.”
“That’s weird.”
“No, it’s beautiful. Wouldn’t you like to live forever like that?”
“How’s gettin’ buried under a pear tree make you live forever?”
“Because her body feeds the tree. Everything that’s left of her goes into it. You know, there’s certain tribes of Indians who actually eat the brains of their wisest and most benevolent rulers after they die. They think that consciousness and intelligence can be passed on as foodstuffs.”
“That’s stupid. How’s eatin’ someone’s brain gonna make you smart?”
“Ever tried it?”
She sort of smiles. “You’re kiddin,’ right?”
“Well, I haven’t either . . . so we don’t really know, do we? But isn’t it sort of logical in a strange way that feeding a baby tree with your dead body would pass you on in some way to that tree? And then the fruit passes a little of you onto your friends. In that way, you’d live forever, wouldn’t you?”
Her smile gets wider. I think she gets it.
“Maybe . . . I guess . . . I dunno . . . you wanna go out or somethin’?”


He took me down on Sixth Street an’ paid for all th’ drinks. We saw a couple’a guys an’ their girlfriends get maced by th’ cops for fightin’ outside the club. Stacy wanted to help ‘em or somethin.’ Even asked th’ guy on the ground gettin’ his head beat in if he was okay. I walked off an’ he caught up with me. I was real drunk cause’a th’ Tequila. I usually don’t drink, but it was Stacy’s birthday so what the f**k? Drinkin’ makes me all depressed an’ shit afterwards, but I never think’about that when I’m drinkin’ it. I really liked him that night. He told me he hadn’t had’a shot in three years, but he was glad he did, because he really, really liked me. I started blushin’ again . . . an’ later, I felt like a real dumbf**k.


I massaged her at my place for hours.
Then she wanted me to spank her.
Neither of us had any condoms so we couldn’t do it for real. She was so beautiful, though. Gave me head while the alcohol kept me from coming. I did the same thing and she screamed like a little girl at dawn.


I really felt weird when th’ sun came up.
Feelin’s suck.


She said: “Stacy, I haven’t ever felt this . . . I dunno, like, what’za the word? Pampered, I guess. Yer really . . . affectionate. I don’t get a lotta that, man.”
And I said: “I think you’re so cool.”
How could I tell her what I was really feeling? How lucky I felt? Would she even understand what a privilege I thought it was to touch her and caress her and be this close to her after a month of chasing and teasing? Maybe I got her drunk and drank myself so I would be sure to get laid, and we could both think of it as a mistake and at least I would know I got to have her after she disappeared. I tried not to think of that. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was probably true.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love her, though.
I wanted to tell her that, but I recited poems to her instead and she sighed and kissed my hand.


I felt like such a f**kin’ shit. He really liked me an’ I was jus’ sittin’ there sighin’ like I liked him, too. I couldn’t’a liked him that way. We just met. An’ I don’t wanna be tied down. I wanna be free like a bird.
After his third poem, I looked in his eyes an’ said: “Stacy, if I, like . . . hibernate for a while after this, don’t take it personal. I just don’t get a lotta what you’re givin’ me an’ I’m feelin’ really weird. Like I wanna hit somethin’.”
An’ he said: “Don’t be that way. You can have whatever you want. I won’t get hurt, I promise.”
He held up his pinky an’ said: “Crazy like Stacy?”
“Hold me,” I said back.


She was late for work that morning but we still made love in the shower before she went.
She was so perfect I wanted to die.
She made me feel so good.
She called me from her work, which was a Planet X Head Shop on Lamar, and she was crying. Her cell phone kept cutting out but I picked this up:
“Man, I’m havin’ a total shit attack . . . ****ed up . . . such an asshole with you . . . you think . . . love at first sight . . . can’t be with you again.”
“What did you just say? I never said it was . . .”
“F**K! I gotta GO!”


I drove thirty miles out to my parents house in Bastrop an’ threw rocks at the windows. That’s what I do. I’m a f**kin’ slut-bitch an’a whore. I hate everything an’ I wanna die. That f**kin’ bastard . . . why’s he gotta be like that? All strokin’ my hair an’ shit an’ whisperin’ all that trash? F**k him! I hate him! I WISH HE WAS DEAD!!!!


I went to Night Light because I thought that’s where she might be. The place was on fire. I mean, really on fire. Ambulances everywhere. Cops. Screaming kids. Channel Thirty-Nine. Julia-Ann was right in the middle of the street, hysterical and crying. I just knew Stacy was in there and I wanted to go in and get her. They had to restrain me. I think it took a few of them. A big guy sat on me and I started screaming and kicking and crying because I knew she was dead.
Please no.
Me instead.
She has so much to learn.
I want to teach her.
I want to learn from her.
I love her so much.
She needs to be loved.
Me instead.


Julia-Ann called me an’ I saw her number on th’ caller ID an’ I almost threw it through th’ f**kin’ window, too. Mom was standin’ there with dad, an’ they were lookin’ all like they look when I get like this. F**k them. F**kin’ yuppie asshole F**KS. What the F**K’D they EVER do for me? I wish they were . . .
Mom grabbed th’ phone away from me.
“Julie-dear. This is a bad time for . . . oh . . . goodness . . .”
She was quiet for a real long time after that.


They kept telling me I was going to make it that whole week, but I didn’t believe them. And I guess I didn’t want them to be right when my dad told me Stacy was out in the hall and couldn’t wait to see me. I smiled and I felt real good. I’m gonna die, but I feel real good.
“Hey dad . . . don’t cry. It’s okay. Really, man.”
“Stop saying that!” he screamed, losing it for the twelfth time that visit. “There’s nothing wrong with you! Fight it back . . . make yourself better, Stacy.”
I just kind of looked at him with my imp expression—the one I always used to give him when I was a little kid playing in the living room with no friends, creating worlds with my crayons, unaware of how much was passing me by in the world of real people. “Just don’t be such a f**kin’ crybaby,” I said. That’s what Stacy would say. I love her with all my heart. I’m going to teach her so many cool things. I’m going to learn so much from her.
“Son . . .”
“I wanna see Stacy now, okay?”


He’s smilin’ at me. I can’t believe this is happenin’. The doctors still dunno what th’ f**k is wrong with him. He jus’ dropped dead an’ nobody can tell me why. I wanna take his pain away. I wanna make him better. If this plastic curtain wasn’t here, I’d kiss him an’ suck his dick an’ tell him I’ll be his girlfriend if he would . . . would just not . . .
I’m so gonna start cryin’ again . . .


I’m smiling at her.
“Crazy like Stacy?” I say, but I can’t raise my pinky.
She raises both of hers and says it back.
I say: “Please don’t cry. It’s okay, baby. You’re gonna be fine now.”
“Don’ say that shit, man. We gotta go see the Crue next week, okay? They’re playin’ at Stubb’s. Got back together for a special tour. Rad, huh? I’ll even be your girlfriend at the show.”
“Really? Cool. What about after the show?”
I’m seeing her face break apart. And I’m seeing all that terrible shit she has underneath. I see her whole life and I feel her pain. She cries like a little girl. She’s always been a little girl. We’re all little girls and boys, shivering and crying and masturbating in the dark. We want to be saved, but sometimes we can’t find our way. Most of the time we can’t find our way.
She struggles to get her next words out, and her face is still shattered, showing me everything.
“Stacy . . . I’ll do anythin’ you want. Just don’t leave.”
I smile and tell her I’m not going anywhere.


I was really happy when they brought him out of the hospital. Had to fess up on that little white lie I told about the Motley Crue show, but I made it up to him. Turns out they really did get back together a year later, and they did play at Stubb’s and it was incredible. Tommy Lee kicks so much ass. I finally got to jam with him a few months ago.
Stacy was so proud of me.
I don’t mind now when he reads me love poems an’ stuff. That was sixteen godamn years ago . . . shit, there I go. Sounded like the old Stacy for a second. That ain’t me no more. He showed me I had a lot to live for. Feelings don’t suck. It’s the anger that sucks. I haven’t cried in a long time. I haven’t hated anyone in even longer.
I still don’t like our anniversaries, though. He always wants me to wear some pretty pink something-or-other, which just ain’t me, man. But I do it anyway to make him happy. Everybody’s here having a great time, laughing in the Texas summer. Old hair rock music from the eighties sweeps out across the park and everybody boogies down. Julia-Ann dances with her husband and her little girl, who is beautiful and spirited and filled with so much love and life. Her name is Stacy. My parents carry on deep political discussions with the rest of my old punk rock buddies, who all have real jobs now and websites that preach anti-government stuff. I’ve been touring with Salacious Crumb for most of this year. Guess you must’ve heard of us, huh? Just for the record, I had nothing to do with that last video they keep showing on VH-1. We’re actually going public with the breakup in a few weeks, and I think I’m finally gonna do my Crazy Like Stacy album. The fans are gonna be pissed, but my manager thinks they’ll like my solo stuff, and so does the label. Also for the record: those stories about me an’ Vince Niel are f**kin’ bullshit, okay? Stacy’s my main man an’ always will be. **** you if y’believe everything you read in those crappy mags at the supermarket.
Shit. There I go again. Gotta stop sounding like that.
It ain’t me no more.
Stacy’s dad hovers off by himself under the tree, not drinking his beer, and I go over to him and I kiss him gently and he tells me about his new wife. The grass is green and the sky is blue and gorgeous. There’s a keg under the tree but I don’t drink from it. Just one tequila shot for old time’s sake.
When everybody’s gone, Stacy and I have our private time.
I pick a pear and smile at it.
“Hello, boyfriend.”

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[Demon]

VARIETY SECTION


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PLUGS

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CHRONICLES OF A DEPSERATE DAD

BY MARK RICHARDS

ISBN: 0-9553637-0-5 £7.99

www.desperatedad.co.uk

This book came to us by chance, and we can throughly recommend it. A fabulous 'laugh out loud' read. If you have children, then this is the book for you, and for that matter each and every member of your extended family.

You'll find yourself remembering escapades of your own, long since forgotten due to the profound embarressment felt at the time, oh yes these will indeed come flooding back.

Billed as the ideal Christmas present for Dad that every Mum will want to read, we can't help but agree.

Here's a couple of excerpts to wet your whistle: -

The Accidental Terrorist:

All things considered, the holiday didn’t get off to the best start – and inevitably, it was my fault. When we had to cancel our summer holiday the very nice insurance company gave us our money back. Then we discovered that a cottage in Derbyshire in July translates to a villa in Greece at half term. Or it would do, if your seven year old son wasn’t arrested as a terrorist.

The day before we flew tempers were a little strained. Having done all the packing, organised the tickets and changed the money, Jane’s patience was marginally on the thin side. Rashly, she left me in charge of supervising the children’s hand luggage. Naturally I immediately delegated the task.

“Ben, sort your back pack out will you?”

“What shall I put in it?”

“Whatever you like as long as you do it yourself.” In retrospect, that wasn’t the wisest thing I’ve ever said.

Having guided Tom and Jessica through the airport scanner without them triggering an international alert I was ready to reward myself with a full English breakfast – until I heard a commotion behind me. A security man was wearing an ‘I’ve nailed Al-Qaeda’ expression. Jane was looking furious and Ben was howling.

“I’m sorry, Madam,” I heard him say. “We have to confiscate all potentially lethal weapons.”

He was triumphantly waving Ben’s plastic gun – another victory in the war on terror. So much for the bacon and eggs – it looked like I’d be posting bail. “Could I ask who let the young man pack this, Madam?” Jane’s gaze swung menacingly towards me. I rapidly scanned the departures board. There weren’t any planes leaving for the Falklands.

The situation didn’t improve when we landed. The villa was in the mountains – which meant that I had to drive…on the wrong side of the road, for the first time in my life, in Greece. The rental lady was all smiles. “Much bigger car,” she said, forcing a set of keys on me. “No Golf. Instead, Jumpy.”

A Citreon Jumpy…Well, the nine seats would be handy if we adopted some more children. I needed a trusty Golf, not a bus. I’d already been having sleepless nights about hairpin bends with sheer drops – and as I rapidly discovered, the Greeks really know how to encourage terrified drivers. There were little shrines dotted along the roadside. “What are those?” I asked Jane.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re just where someone’s died.”

But first we needed food – and beer – from the supermarket. This involved my debut left turn in Greek traffic and Jane’s simultaneous conversion to the power of prayer. I thought 24 cans would see me through the week. I popped the slab of Amstel on top of the luggage, where it wobbled ominously.

And then we reached the mountains - and a succession of shrine covered hairpins. “Look at the lovely view, children,” Jane trilled, desperately trying to divert them from the driver’s bad language and our imminent demise.

I was so busy avoiding the abyss that I didn’t spot a particularly vicious pothole. The beer lurched forward and dealt Tom a savage blow on the right ear. “Well done, dear,” Jane said. “That’s Ben arrested and Tom with concussion. What have got in mind for Jessica?”

But I gradually improved and eventually I was trundling down the middle of the road like a Greek version of Postman Pat, waving at everyone I saw. I was quite proud of myself until Jessica turned up. “No offence, Dad, but…” This didn’t sound like good news – and she didn’t try to be diplomatic. “We still think you’re going to kill us on the way back to the airport. What’s the Greek word for taxi…”

I could have been James Bond:

We finally made it on Sunday. About four years after Jane decreed that the children were now old enough and Sunday lunch was therefore an Official Family Meal – and about three years and ten months after I would have given up on it – the moment finally arrived. The children behaved themselves, we had a lovely meal, no-one argued, threw their food, spilt their drinks or did anything else to send my blood pressure into the stratosphere.

For once I was relaxed – which in my case meant I drank far too much red wine, ate too many Yorkshire Puddings, and then waddled down to the corner shop for some premium ice-cream. “I’ll have a large tub of Tight Fitting Trousers flavour, please.”

Eventually everything was shovelled into the dishwasher, and I collapsed on the sofa. I felt in the mood for a film, and with some subtle manipulation of his brother and sister, Tom persuaded us to watch James Bond.

Die Another Day? Tomorrow Never Dies? I can’t tell them apart myself – it was the one where he ends up with the Chinese girl. I’m more of a Halle Berry man, but I doubt if the feeling’s reciprocated.

As I watched James go through his paces, I shared a bit of useful information with the children.

“He’s older than me, you know…”

“Who?”

“James Bond – well, the actor that plays James Bond.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Honestly, he is. Not by much, but he’s definitely older than me.”

I could have left it there and not heard any more about it, but thanks to the red wine I started to dig a hole…

“I could have been James Bond, but I gave it up to be a Dad.”

“Dad you are no way James Bond. No way…”

“Yeah, they asked me to audition, really.”

“Dad…” (Tom has developed this way of saying ‘Dad’ which means “That’s a stupid thing to say, Dad, and I’m now old enough to answer back…”)

“Well, why not?” I said, digging deeper and deeper.

“Number one,” said Tom, delivering a vicious poke to the place where I might once have had a six pack, “James Bond doesn’t have this.”

“And,” said Jessica, not going to be left out of the blood sport, “His hair’s not going grey.”

“And he doesn’t wear glasses to read the paper…”

“And he’s not married to Mummy,” Jessica finished, neatly skewering us both in one sentence.

Not so long ago I was a hero to my eldest two children. I must have missed the day it changed. Suddenly they are aware that I don’t have the coolest car at school, and that I don’t drive as fast as teenage boys (but who does?) Jamie Clark’s Dad is definitely better at football, and Harry’s Dad – as I’m continuously reminded – is infinitely richer.

If you are still in that wonderful stage where your children think you are a combination of David Beckham, Michael Schumacher and Bill Gates, enjoy it while you can. Reality bites all too quickly and all too painfully.

Jane and I were going through some old photos last night. We found one of me on our honeymoon. Heaven knows what trick of the light had caused it but there I was – a beach God staring ruggedly at the camera, a bronzed hunk emerging from the Caribbean.

“Look at that bloke,” I said to her. “I wonder what happened to him…”

Jane looked at me in my track suit bottoms, flip-flops and faded rugby shirt. “Who knows,” she said. “He won’t look like that now. The poor sod’s probably had children…”

THE RIOT ACT

BY

STEPHEN ROMANO

ISBN: 978-1-84728-030-5

Highly recommended this collection of short stories, many and varied are a delight, we have had permission from Stephen to publish a couple of these in our fiction section. They couldn't be more different, and just the kind of taster you'll need.

No price I note on the back of the book, but for details on purchasing, the book is available at www.shocklines.com.

WWW.VISUAL-PAIN.COM

Find that rare / uncut film you've searched for all over!

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THE RIOT ACT by STEPHEN ROMANO
Reviewed by Garry Charles

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During the last twelve months I’ve done a hell of a lot of reading and – on the whole - it’s been bloody good stuff. Most of it has come from the small press and I want to state here and now that this is where the original talent can be found.
I feel very lucky to have read some outstanding anthologies, novels, collections and novellas. I had even started to think it couldn’t get any better, when this – THE RIOT ACT – dropped in to my lap from out of the blue.

I check the clock and see that I’ve got fifteen minutes to spare so I sit down and open the dark covered tome and read an intro by JOE R LANDSDALE. He has a lot to say about STEPHEN ROMANO and it’s all good.

“But can it really be that good?” I ask myself.

“YOU F**KIN’ BETCHA!!!!!!” screams THE RIOT ACT.

ROMANO starts things out with an intro of his own that is – in effect – a short story in itself. Never before has the written word sent so many shivers down my spine and I begin to believe that what lays open in my hands is indeed something special.

I forget about the ticking clock on the mantle, quickly moving on to the first story proper– FOUR DEAD GUYS IN ZILKER PARK – and the shivers become full on spasms as the quick fire narrative takes hold. Not only does this unique prose grab me by the throat it then proceeds to kick me in the groin and smash a knee in to my face.
By the last line I’m left battered, bruised and out of breath.

Without a pause I turn yet another page and find myself entering ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUICIDE WITH ROBOTS. I am transported to a harsh future of super villains and those employed to chase them down.
I’m feeling as if I’ve been taken hostage in a sports car and the crazy driver is forcing me to read on as he points a gun at my temple.

Before I know where I am I discover that I’ve been reading for ages. The car screeches to a halt and the driver kicks me out onto the road.
“F**k off,” he yells. “But you’ll be back.”
I finally look up at the clock and see that its 1:00 am and I have to be up for work at 4:00.

DAMN YOU, ROMANO!!!

I close the book – noticing that another eight stories have passed before my eyes in one glutinous reading session. The driver is right. I will be back for more punishment.

The next day I get up, drive to work, sleep walk the entire shift and then drive home. I walk in the door and THE RIOT ACT is waiting for me on my office desk.

“READ MORE IF YOU DARE,” ROMANO taunts from the front cover.

I accept the challenge, only to be confronted by a COOL TEENAGER FROM PLANET X. This one of my favourites; a new twist on the classic ghost theory that hits home with the subtlety of a 14lbs sledgehammer.

I miss the children coming home from school as I’m enveloped in the twisted world of movies and murder that is SECRET FILE HOLLYWOOD.

Next up I read what – was for me – the best story in the collection.
Why was it the best?
I’m not telling you.
All I can say is that CRAZY LIKE STACY is the angel tied to the chair, blindfolded and gagged in the room full of cavorting demons.
Read the book and you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

I don’t break from reading to go outside for a smoke. I take the book with me and end up smoking half a packet of menthols as SISTER SINDI KICKS THE HABIT and ACCEPTED HERE lead me ever deeper in to the underbelly of ROMANO’S seedy world of seedier characters. HEY, STUPID comes along and is a well told joke with a violent punch line and a hidden heart.

I suddenly notice that the chill, evening air has sent my fingers numb and I return to the warmth of the house. My reading for the night is still far from over. I walk passed the children and my wife as I head towards the stairs on auto pilot. THE RIOT ACT has my full attention. I make my way to the bedroom and flop down on the mattress, turning the page and finding out about THE AGENCY’S BOY.
Is it fiction? Is it conspiracy theory?
You decide.

LOVE LETTER TO AUNTIE FAYE then lulls me in to a false sense of security before plunging a dagger in to my chest. I refuse to be beaten and move onwards.

The end is nigh.

WABBIT SEASON is the best superhero tale ever told. I read it as a graphic novel unfolds in my mind. I’m hooked.
So hooked that I miss out on the offer of sex before I sleep.

SLEEP! I CAN’T SLEEP! Only one tale left and I must read it.

But……

Energy…………

Is…………………

Fading…………

Must…………

Hold…………

On…

And so I finish with RATBOY AND DOGBREATH, my eyelids heavy, my breathing but a whisper.

The task is done.

At the end of this frenetic journey how can I summarise what I have experienced?

For a start I have to say that this collection is the dog’s bollocks and I would be happy to lick them.

ROMANO has created a selection of tales that – even though separate – are linked together by characters and places. He has moulded a dark world that spans decades with the skill of a master professional.

ROMANO’S writing is a force to be reckoned with. It has the delivery of a high powered, fully automatic weapon in the hands of an expert marksman.
He creates scenes and images that assault your eyeballs, burn through the retinas before boring in to your brain and exploding your skull with the ease of a hollow point round.

You may have already guessed, but I highly recommend this book. I dare you to take the risk and venture into a world that is controlled by...

THE RIOT ACT!!!

The Riot Act
ISBN: 978-1-84728-030-5
Publisher: Arcaderetro Inc
www.arcaderetrpink.com
No price on cover.

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OK WITH ME
Elliot Friedman

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Elliot Friedman graced our beloved newsletter with 'Ride The World' last month, a song that still emits from our speakers even now.

On November 1st 2006, Elliot added a new track to Youtube, entitled 'Ok With Me'. It's slower than what you witnessed last time around, but it's every bit as beautiful, and so we, with his permission of course, had to share it with you.

Do enjoy, and for your interest the lyrics are featured below the video, as well as the links to him elswhere on t'interweb..

So you wanna be all by yourself,
And you don't need anybody else.
That's OK with me.
That's OK with me.

So you have to turn your head away,
To avoid seeing yourself this way.
That's OK with me.
That's OK with me.

But nobody stays the same and makes it to the end.
Something will have to change to make it to the end.
To make it to the end.

So you have to put up all your walls,
To stop yourself from taking any falls.
That's OK with me.
That's OK with me.

When the music drowns the pain away,
Nothing can hurt you or make you pay.
That's OK with me.
That's OK with me.

But nobody stays the same and makes it to the end.
Something will have to change to make it to the end.
To make it to the end. To make it to the end.

Youtube // Myspace // Soundclick

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THE OFFERING by SD HINTZ
Reviewed by Garry Charles

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Everybody out there – yes you – must have a special childhood memory that has stayed with you throughout adulthood. It may be a good memory or it may be bad. Either way it is the one moment you can recall with vivid detail.

I have one of my own and it’s quite scary. May be one day I’ll tell you all about it, but for now I must push my own memories to one side and focus on those of Murray Macabe.

Young Murray’s life was a bed of roses, an idyllic childhood that couldn’t have been beaten. And then tragedy struck when he was only ten.

Now, before I go on, I must stress that Murray Macabe is not actually a living person, nor was he ever real in any way, shape or form. Murray is, however, the pivotal character in the centre of THE OFFERING and like everyone else sealed within the covers has come from the amazing imagination of SD HINTZ.
I only mention this because you will, whilst reading, start to believe that these people are real, living and breathing characters. S D has managed to give each person you meet during this journey of growing up an individual personality that is totally believable in every way.

The tale follows Murray as he is forced to move in with a Grandmother he has never met in the town of Miniver, population: 79, average age: see population. The summer is looking set to pretty boring for our young hero.

If only he knew.

S D takes this tranquil location of retired OAP’s and instils it with an atmosphere that is as quirky and shady as the inhabitants. And it’s the residents of Miniver who draw you in to THE OFFERING with a promise of something that little bit different. They are the most bizarre bunch of old folk you could ever wish to meet, or not meet as the case may be. This entire world has been written with a heart that is so rare in the world of horror.

I think this is because S D has used a trick that always hooks me in. I have a fondness for horror that is told through the eyes of a child. If done right it adds innocence to the tale that endears the reader.

Well, S D doesn’t let you down.

THE OFFERING is told through the tinted lenses of youth and just fills the story with something so much more than words. It is clear in the writing that the author is filled with a love of his work and for his characters and that he has invested time into fleshing them out evenly.

I also admire the author for his talent to write a novel that is unnerving and sometimes scary yet totally readable by any age. In a genre where it’s either aimed at adults or younger readers S D has managed to break the mould. He has given us a horror story suitable for any reader aged between 13 and 73.

I don’t know about you, but when I read a book I become friends and enemies with those within the pages. I grow attached to well written characters and I hate saying goodbye when the last page is reached.

With this in mind I just have to add that I wanted more of THE OFFERING. I would’ve loved to have seen a deeper build up between the young hero and the old folk who surrounded him. I would have been more than happy if the book had been twice the length, giving me a chance to see more of his Grandmother and her neighbours.

On the whole a cracking read that has heart and horror in equal measures and I’m sure that some day soon I’ll be revisiting the town of Miniver and its people.

S D, I’m going to be keeping a close eye on you from behind my twitching curtains. You’re going to create a surge of gossip and I can see it’s all going to be good.

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THE INNO VIEW
Inno

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Inno's CD Review:

Thunder – Robert Johnson’s Tombstone

Thunder have been on the periphery of being “HUGE” for what seems like decades. In fact, it’s just 16 years since the classic debut album Back Street Symphony was unleashed upon the world. After a brief hiatus, and side projects and solo records, Danny, Luke, Chris, Harry and Ben are back with their third post reformation album.

And it has to be said – if The Magnificent Seventh (the previous album) was the finest work they’d turned in since that debut record, then with Robert Johnson’s Tombstone, they’ve finally surpassed it.

Full of delicious riffs that just roll out of the speakers, killer hooks and melodies that just beg to be sung at high volume, RJT is one of THE albums of the year for any discerning rock fan out there.

The beauty of Thunder is that despite their hardcore following, they’re still one of music’s best kept secrets – perhaps not for long with this record. With the single The Devil Made Me Do It sure to chart after its December 4th release, it’s possible that Thunder could finally get the big break that they’ve deserved for years.

“Like riding on a rocket, I’m powerless to stop it
I tried to push her away
But I guess she knew it, the Devil’d made me do it
It was gonna happen anyway”
-- ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’

The album opens up with the title track, described by main songwriter and guitarist Luke Morley as the most exciting things the band have ever done – and he’s not far wrong. Using the oft-repeated story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil as the basis for the track, this is ambitious to the extreme – and it’s pulled off with ease.

The voodoo and temptation theme is carried on throughout the rest of the album and artwork as well, creating a themed record that fits perfectly together. With political comment even slotted in on Last Man Standing, there’s no stone left unturned.

For the high point of the album, you could be pointed in the direction of the upcoming single, with a chorus you’ll be humming for weeks; you could look at Dirty Dream, a song that has a hook that should just be flat out illegal in most civilised countries; but for me, the highlight has to be My Darkest Hour – a departure from the standard Thunder anthem.

Take one cello – yes, cello – add Luke on acoustic guitar, and marinate with one of the finest vocal performances you’ll hear this year from the ever impressive Danny Bowes – this is simply the best thing Thunder have written or performed in their career, despite the shift in direction.

For a band that has such a following to still take risks at this stage in their career is commendable in the highest, and hopefully, the rewards will come their way.

For the naysayer, it’s still the standard Thunder formula – but only up to a point. My Darkest Hour and Robert Johnson’s Tombstone are big departures in sound and style, and offer up so much promise for the future of this band. Other than that, the formula isn’t changed much – but why should it? Thunder have had a career longevity that 95% of today’s chart acts can only dream about. They know their strengths, and they use them.

Go on – give this record a try. It’s one of the best releases of the year, and by backing it up with a UK tour that the fans are just eating up, how can you go wrong? You’d better hope that the band’s interest in voodoo stopped at lyrical content if you don’t get your copy soon…

Further info on the album, and samples of all the songs can be found HERE.

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An Interview with...JOHANNES ROBERTS
Garry Charles

====================================================

GC: Your starter for ten. For those that haven't heard of you yet (shame on them) tell us a little about yourself.

JR: I'm a film writer director of four feature films released in nearly fifty countries worldwide through companies such as Paramount, Warner Brothers, Columbia Tri Star and Universal. I have just finished filming the world¡¦s first horror series for mobile phones called When Evil Calls. I am good-looking, single and in desperate need of a date

GC: Your first film as director 'DARKHUNTERS' was unusual in that it was all filmed in the daytime. This broke with convention in a big way. Why did you opt for this?

JR: Darkhunters was actually my third feature but my first as sole director. Really the only reasoning behind this was we shot 35mm and were offered a good deal on stock but it was very slow stock and I didn't have enough money to light it if we shot at night. The film isn't scary but it never really was meant to be - I like it a lot - it's flawed but it has some beautiful moments in it. I love the angel at the end.

GC: For a first time director - and working with a low budget - how did you get the likes of Dominique Pinon and Jeff Fahey to star?
Did you use black magic?

JR: I'd worked with Dominique Pinon on my previous film Hellbreeder. I'd met him at a party in Cannes where I was stealing sausages and beer...and suddenly hey presto there was Dominique. He's just starred in When Evil Calls - so it will be three times working with him. He's great. I met Fahey in Cannes. He was a lot of fun to work with as well. We basically read the script to him off camera!

GC: You state that FOREST OF THE DAMNED was filmed on an almost no budget, but in places you showcased some great camera and special effects.
How did you pull this off?

JR: Forest didn't have a lot of money but I put most of what I had into sfx. I work with a very good director of photography as well - we've done all five films together so we know what looks good. It was a tricky shoot though filming naked girls in a forest in the rain and cold!!!

GC: And, just because I'm such a huge fan of the man as a writer. What was it like working with SHAUN HUTSON?

JR: I love Shaun. I remember the first time he called putting down the phone and turning to my girlfriend at the time and saying "Shaun Hutson just called me a c**t! He swears like a trooper!!!" But he's one of the nicest people I've ever met. I would actually describe him as a friend, which is unusual in this business!

GC: You've just released the first "for mobile only" horror series "WHEN FEAR CALLS." Whose idea was it and what was it like to work on such an original concept?

JR: Ben Grass the producer was an exec at Sony in charge of the internet and mobile side of things. When he left he started up Pure Grass, his company, in order to make mobile entertainment - they approached me to direct. It was great. They let me have a free hand writing and really doing whatever I wanted. Hats off to Zone Vision (the horror channel) for funding this - they put a lot of money into something that was a hell of a risk.

GC: Care to share a little of the story line with our readers?

JR: It's basically monkey's paw - students at a school get a text on their phone offering them a wish which then comes true but in the most hideous way possible. The series has an amazing cast; Hostel's Jennifer Lim, Amelie's Dominique Pinon, Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf) as well as Piers Brosnan's son Sean and Ray Winstone's daughter Lois, Victoria Atkien and of course Shaun Hutson. It's incredibly gory and packed to - check out www.whenevilcalls.tv - the rafters with effects and naked girls it's been so successful we've been asked to extend it and are in talks with a certain member of horror royalty to come on board - more on that soon!

GC: I've heard mention of a new film entitled STATION 13. Any news on the progress and will we ever see it?

JR: It's a great script - very scary. Fingers crossed we'll see some movement on it soon!

GC: What other projects do you have lined up for the near future?

JR: First up is extending When Evil Calls and then we're in talks over a television series and possibly adapting Shaun Hutson's new novel Dying Words (a really good book) into a feature film.

GC: If someone offered you an amazing budget to do whatever film you liked and with any cast what would you do and who would it star?

JR: Oh good question - I'd love to remake either Cujo or Christine. The one actor I really want to work with is Sam Neil (I love Mouth of Madness) - oh and Mila Jovavich!!!

GC: Would you be interested in a storyline about bikers (based around 1979) that rob a bank and then hide out in an Amish type village, only for the residents to turn out to be supernaturally nasty?
If so we'll have to talk later.

JR: Of course.

GC: And we'll finish on an easy one. Which directors inspired you to work within the horror genre and which film had the greatest impact on you as a growing horror fan?

JR: John Carpenter - always John Carpenter

GC: What question have you never been asked but would love to be asked? What would your answer be?

JR: Ideally why are you so talented and so good looking. Hey ho - don't get that one often. Actually I tell you what I would love - I litter my films with Stephen King and John Carpenter references - from dialogue, to characters, to scenes from the films but no one ever picks up on them. I'd love someone to pick up on them!

GC: If forced to choose which would you sacrifice?
a: An Arm
b: A leg
c: Your imagination

JR: It's a funny thing, but I wonder if losing your imagination might actually be a blessing. Free me from a ball and chain - I think someone famous once said that about losing their libido. It's funny, if I lost that I might actually be able to work in a call centre, live a normal life and find Scary Movie 1, 2, 3 and 4 actually funny.

GC: Now for the good old desert island question, but with a twist.
You're stranded on an island with two other people. One is a portly chap with a great intellect and you have some amazing conversations.
The other is a plump, yet attractive young lady with nympho tendencies, but she's thick as f**k.
Who would you kill and eat and who would you keep as company?

JR: Yeah I'd kill the girl. I've always wanted to eat an attractive yet plump girl. Actually I'm a talker so I'd be very happy just chatting away. And hey after a few years he'd probably start to become quite attractive.

Thanks Johannes

Thank You!

====================================================

An Interview with...SHAUN HUTSON
Garry Charles

====================================================

(Feel free to reply “F**k off, you cheeky little bastard” at any time.)

GC: Shaun, when man eating animals were a popular form of horror fiction the market was flooded with the likes of “SLUGS” (by yourself), RATS (Herbert), CRABS (Smith) and hundreds of others.
Would you consider your contribution as having been one of the novels that started the movement or was it cases of write what the readers wanted at the time?

SH: SLUGS was written in 1982. The whole ‘terror by animals’ thing had been going since 1974. We’d already had dogs, frogs, rats, bats, crabs and every other f**king thing that could suck, bite or nip. I can even remember books about crocodiles, spiders, giant preying mantis (what the f**k is the plural of Mantis..?) and a caracal (I think).
I was told by my agent of the time that there was a gap in the market so I wrote it. I actually wanted to write about leeches that affected people with a disease that turned them into vampires but he was stuck on the idea of slugs, I was only 22 so I thought, why not. Seems he was right……What this actually did was to launch the entire splatter novel genre which I was labelled as for years but who cares eh? Better to be known for something.

GC: Something you’ll never be forgotten for. Man, you’re immortal. However, some writers within the genre seem annoyed that you have earned the right to be classed as one of the top UK horror authors whilst they struggle within the constraints of the smaller press even though they see themselves as far worthier.
Any thoughts on this?

SH: Any thoughts on writers who are annoyed that I’m classed as one of the top UK horror authors? Yeah, bollocks.

GC: Here, Here *laughs*

SH: All through my career I’ve been amazed at how other authors in this genre have hated my success. I think it’s partly to do with the fact that I’ve never wanted to be a part of the literary scene they aspire to. Never wanted to mix with other authors and basically, treat the whole thing as a job. I also like to shatter the myth that writers are something special. They’re not. Writers are around to provide entertainment. Other than that we’re pretty f**king useless. Drop a planeload of writers in the sea and no one will give shit. Drop a planeload of nurses in the sea and we all suffer…

GC: I couldn’t agree more.

SH: The fact that I never read these self-important t**ts either never pleased them. I’m more interested in writing than reading what other authors have written and dissecting it.
When I used to go to conventions years ago, there’d always be the same little group of arse lickers hanging around people like blank and blankety blank. Some of them still are.

GC: I think blank has a new crowd of arse lickers in tow.

SH: People say stuff in interviews and that’s it. Who gives a shit? If someone slags me off that’s up to them. What makes me laugh is that they then get all defensive and indignant if I have a go back. Anyone can call me a c**t if they like but just be prepared for me to come back at you twice as venomously. Don’t start something you can’t finish….A well known author found that out in Birmingham years ago at a convention. He was taking the piss out of SLUGS and I told him that if he didn’t stop I’d tip him out of his chair. He didn’t stop…I tipped him out of his chair. Not clever I know, but like I said, if you dish it out, expect to take it…..

GC: Now I fear a violent reaction to my next, prying question.
Are you ready to reveal the pseudonym you’ve teased the readers about for quite a while now?
If not, any clues?

SH: F**k off you cheeky little bastard…You did say feel free to say that….

GC: Yes I did and I meant it. Let’s move along swiftly.
Over your career you’ve written horror/thriller/war and sci-fi. Is there any other genre you’d like to dabble in? Romance novel may be?

SH: I don’t think there’s any I haven’t dabbled in.. I think I’ve worked in all the genres I wanted to, when I wanted to. Science Fiction’s about the only one that holds no interest for me at all and that’s because it’s too technical and I’m too thick…Romance eh? Well, there is romance in my books. Alright, maybe not, it’s just sex isn’t it? Right, I’d better stop there…

GC: Having read a shit load of your books over the years (and, as a teenager, I enjoyed those sex scenes *raises eyebrows*) I’ve noticed the move towards thriller based stories – albeit thrillers of a dark subject matter. What have been the hardest subjects to write about?

SH: The hardest subjects to write about have been satanic child abuse (in STOLEN ANGELS), clinical depression (in HYBRID). They’re the two that spring to mind first but there’ve been problems with a few regarding research. Trying to research the Triads for WHITE GHOST wasn’t easy. Also, info about the Yardies was occasionally tricky for EXIT WOUNDS but all books give you problems in some way shape or form.

GC: If you don’t mind I’m going to move away from books for a while.
What do you think about your recent sojourns into the world of movie stardom? What was it like working with Johannes Roberts on Forest Of The Damned and the newer When Evil Calls?

SH: Films and T.V. have been great to work in. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun over two days as I did on FOREST OF THE DAMNED. Jo Roberts is a great guy (don’t tell him I said that) and I very much look forward to working with him again. I think that I learned a very important lesson and that was as an actor I’m a very good writer…
I’ll always have Jo to thank for having to have my head encased in rubber for a head cast, and being three hours in make-up to play a zombie…And all for no f**king money…I took the job (and I use the terms loosely) on FOREST because Jo promised me I’d be decapitated by four naked women…How the hell can you say no to that?

GC: Yeah, I dream quite often about naked women pulling my head off.

SH: It was two days of night shoots and I loved every minute of it.
He’s a very talented director (no honestly…) and I’d love to see him given a big budget and a good property to work on (i.e. one of my books…ha, ha…).
I must admit, I’d like to do more acting. The only drawback is that I’m shit at it. However, any desperate producers or director take note…

GC: Any more starring roles lined up?

SH: No.

GC: Maybe for the best, eh?
Is there any question you’d love to be asked yet have never been asked?
And what would the answer be?

SH: Now that’s a difficult one…A question I’d love to be asked…I’ve done so many interviews over the years I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t been asked. It’s usually the same old shit over and over again. When I went on long promotional tours in the beginning, every single local radio and TV station used to ask the same thing so, by day three, you’d get a script in your head. Why do you write horror is always the first one…How f**king original, eh?
I know that on one tour for CAPTIVES, I ended up that day at about six o’clock in somewhere like Brighton with a cub reporter who hadn’t even read the f**king press handout asking me questions without even looking at me 9ignorant little c**t..). I ended up telling him that CAPTIVES was about to be filmed starring Mel Gibson with Spielberg directing. He perked up then, little t**t.

GC: What a c**t.

SH: I’ve always found being interviewed far easier than interviewing someone else. I once had to interview a Swedish rock band for the MONSTERS OF ROCK show on Sky many years ago. They couldn’t speak very good English, I hadn’t heard their music until that morning… they were shit and I was shit…
Ah, well, no one’s perfect are they?…
In short, I can’t actually think of any question I’d like to be asked…No, just thought of one. “Well, Shaun, what’s it like to be thought of as the literary equivalent of Sam Peckinpah?”
My Answer; F**KING GREAT….
There you go…

GC: My favourite question now. The good old desert island with a twist question.
You’re stranded on an island with two other people. One is a portly chap with an amazing intellect. You have some good discussions. The other is a chubby lady, yet quite attractive with nympho tendencies, but she’s thick as two short planks.
Who would you kill for food and whom would you keep for company?

SH: Jesus…..a fat intellectual guy for company or a chubby nymphomaniac…
Thanks for destroying my female readership with one question, Garry…
If it was a SLIM attractive nympho then, chances are I’d eat the intellectual…I’m so incredibly shallow I’d have to say it came down to the size of the nympho/food source…Couldn’t I cut the fat guy’s legs off, eat those and carry on talking to him and still keep the nympho? Is that cheating? Have I just proved beyond doubt how shallow I am? Shall I quit now while I’m ahead?
That’s a bloody hard question and I’m pleased no one’s ever asked (or is likely to f**king ask) it on live radio of T.V. What’s your answer anyway, you bastard?

GC: I’m a greedy bastard so I’d kill them both and just keep her midsection for those lonely nights. I can always talk to myself.

SH: *laughs* Knowing my luck, the intellectual and the nympho would kill me and he’d end up talking to himself and shagging her anyway…

GC: Finally. If you could choose any of your novels to be made into a film which one would you choose and who would be the ideal cast?

SH: I don’t care much which novels are filmed as long as I’m paid obscene amounts of money for the rights and the script but, if forced to choose, I’d say, RENEGADES, DYING WORDS, TWISTED SOULS, SPAWN or UNMARKED GRAVES.
I’d love to work with/write for Juliette Lewis or Jodie Foster. For Ray Winstone, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Sean Penn and Bob Hoskins. If the film was then directed by David Fincher or Bryan Singer that would top it off. Hopefully one day one or all of those fine people might be working with yours truly.
My gut instinct though is, knowing my luck, that RENEGADES would be filmed with Mike Myers as Doyle, Lisa Kudrow as Georgina Willis, set in America and directed by Chris Columbus….
Ah, well, as long as they paid me enough for the rights I’m sure I’d get over it…

GC: Thanks Shaun.

SH: All the best, mate.

====================================================

AND SO CLOSES ANOTHER CHAPTER

====================================================

So there we have it.

What do you think? For a bumper Christmas edition I really think we are seeing out 2006 with a bang. Remember, the competition winner will be announced in the New Year. The winners of TT2 will be announced on or around 14 January ‘07.

Well I’m off now to soak my sultanas, gift wrap a goldfish and rest my feet in a bucket of hot water, 2006 has been one hell of a busy year, let’s just recap for a moment.

We have released 5 new publications, signed another 2 authors, and sent Garry Charles to the States to launch his second novel. Launched a hugely successful forum for authors and readers alike. In addition a monthly newsletter has further complimented this facility. We’ve attended this year’s FCon on Nottingham. Hosted a Horroween party. Draws breath. Don’t forget we moved house, twice! And relocated work to the purpose built office at home.

So time for a rest, I think. Enjoy your Christmas break and we’ll be back with a vengeance in the New Year for more of the same. Happy reading everyone and don’t forget Hadesgate while you’re away, because the yule logs around here just don’t come any bigger!!

My thanks go to all our contributors past and present, we just couldn't do this without your help.

‘Oh come all ye faithful…………’


Matron
HGF Newsletter Assistant Editor

====================================================

WITH THANKS TO THE CONTRIBUTORS FOR THIS ISSUE

====================================================

Demon || CJ Lines || Garry Charles || Inno || Johannes Roberts || Matron || Nimf || Shaun Hutson || Stephen Romano || Steven Pirie



The fictional works featured remain the property of their respective owners. All other content is copyright Hadesgate Publications 2006.

[Garry Charles]

I know I can't enter, but my caption entry is:

"This isn't what I expected when she said she'd give me head!"

[Nimf]

Another cracking newsletter-and quite a humungous one!

My fav bit? "Crazy Like Stacy" was awesome, i really enjoyed it!

[Barry Wood]

Wow. I just took a quick boo. I have much reading to do in the coming days.

Cheers, you all.

Barry

[Darrell Joyce]

I haven't read the entire newsletter yet, but I'll be coming back until I've read every word. This has to be the best one ever!

Loved the Romano and Hutson interviews, and 'In The Spotlight member Fran Friel comes across as a delightful woman.

I'm also keen to learn more about Pens At Dawn, which is a fantastic idea. I hope many writers, both well known and yet-to-be well known, sign up for it.

Can't wait to find out who the Tiny Terrors 2 winners are, too!

[Darrell Joyce]

Caption competition entry:

"I've just dumped him, and he was really cut up about it."

[steven pirie]

"I think we're making progress with your PMT, Miss Edwards."

Good newsletter. Congrats to all concerned. Mrs Elms sends hugs.

[Barry Wood]

Demon:

I just read your opening editorial. Delicious! A fine job, mate.

I've decided to comment on each piece as I read the whole thing. It might take me several days (weeks?), but I'm going to read this whole sucker from start to end.

Cheers, people.

Barry

[Barry Wood]

Matron: Loved this line in your editorial:

"Whilst I sit here amongst the miscellaneous guffery that is my desk, I don’t really know where to start, except to say that this newsletter, is the ‘Mutha’ of all newsletters."

Priceless.

[CJ Lines]

Caption competition: "J.K. Rowling was a little upset when she discovered that Shaun's latest book was outselling hers ..."

Great bumper newsletter and congratulations Hadesgate on such a busy, successful year! Here's to 2007!

[Barry J]

I've just had a quick look at the newsletter and, yes, it's another great one. I can see it's been lovingly put together. The abundance of enthusiasm within Hadesgate never fails to amaze me.

Congrats on the Waterstones deal and I think it's already been said but 'Here's to 2007!'

[Barry Wood]

I hope Steve Dean's Soulkeepers sells well. Looks interesting indeed.

And I greatly enjoyed IN THE SPOTLIGHT with Fran Friel. She's just mysterious enough to wet our appetites to know her better. I consider her a friend and a delight.

(You see, I am reading a bit of this newsletter at one sitting and commenting on each piece so as not to miss a single word.)