The Broken Wing has wooden slats nailed across its windows and a paint job that flakes from the walls in brittle scales. The only sign it’s not abandoned is the rectangle of yellow light outlining the door.

It’s where the angel hunters drink.

What a lonely, desperate job angel hunting is. The work is too repulsive for society’s palate, its participants too ruthless for friendly bonding. They don’t come to the Wing for conversation or company. There’s no jovial gossip here. No swapping tricks of the trade. Miserable nights are wasted staring into the dregs at bottoms of mugs. They come here because… where else?

Angel conservationists — those pale papery types who hand out leaflets on street corners far away from the Wing — estimate there are fewer than a hundred angels left. Maybe much fewer. That’s one reason hunters don’t talk among themselves. You can’t turn a profit selling a dead angel’s feathers if your rivals snare them before you do.

Grimy silence hugs the Wing’s interior. Trains rumble past across the street. The fan’s blades whirr through thick smoke. The barman’s name is Eddie Staunch and he’s the offspring of a side of ham and a row of knuckles. You never have to tell Eddie what you want to drink. He always knows.

The Wing’s door croaks open. No one looks up. It’s always just some loser hunched in the doorway, fresh off another failure.

But this time…

Even Eddie Staunch puts down the glass he’s wiping.

It’s Sven Ketcher. Sven Ketcher! The greatest angel hunter in the world! They say he hates angels so much he doesn’t just steal their lives and their wings — he slices out their eyes, he tastes their blood.

The silence in the bar solidifies. No one looks up from his glass but every man’s attention uncurls, focuses on Sven’s approach to the bar.

Angel hunting is a lawless business, but like all lawless businesses it has rules. Rule number two: be quick. When angels die they evaporate into the ether, their divine cells uncoiling into light or pure goodness or some other arcane substance. Their faces collapse into golden dust, their wings disintegrate into mist. The precise physics of the process are unclear. But if you take your time you walk away with nothing.

A competent hunter hopes he might cut away two feathers before the body of his kill disappears forever. The legendary angel hunter Rafael Gonzales scored seven feathers from the angel Daphiel before it faded — a hunt he described as once-in-a-lifetime lucky.

Sven never walks away from a kill with fewer than ten feathers. How does he do it? His incredible mysterious skill must have made him a millionaire ten times over.

Yet here he is, in the squalor of the Broken Wing, dressed like a bum whose good rags are in for cleaning. Sven’s tall, blond, maybe good-looking under that crusty sandpaper stubble. There’s a tint to his skin. They say his father’s a Swede and his mother Indian.

This cold-eyed man has slain more angels and won more feathers than anyone in history, and every other hunter knows it. The men in the Broken Wing — they’re always men, the angel hunters — admire him, but they fear him and loathe him. Every time Sven makes a kill, that’s one less kill for someone else.

Sven eases his long, lean frame onto a stool at the bar. Eddie passes him a squat glass brimming with something clearish, brown. It looks like liquid headache.

“Sven, my man! How’s business?”

This interjection is unfathomable. The creature sidling up to Sven is Arnold Malone, who nicknamed himself “Rat” when he entered the trade. He’s short, his body twisted by the tangled chromosomes he was gifted with at conception, and he’s never made a mess — that’s what hunters call it, when they finish an angel; it’s what passes for a joke — though he likes to tell a convoluted tale about almost catching the angel Nazaraf in the Osaka subway.

Sven ignores Rat and the lukewarm beer clutched in his paw. The scattered hunters who still have capacity for emotion register surprise: Rat talking to Sven is a peasant addressing the Pope.

Sven tips back his glass, lays it on the bar. Eddie slides it away.

Rat forces a smile, cowers like a slave about to be whipped. “I heard you messed Sifuriel in Berlin couple months back.”

A long, dangerous pause punctuated by the click of fanblades. Then…

“No.”

That’s one more word than Sven’s ever uttered to most angel hunters. He resists anyone’s attempts to talk, to get close.

Rat swallows. “No?”

Sven looks at Rat for the first time, focusing his clear hard eyes on the little man’s dented beak of a face and its patina of forced confidence.

“It was the angel Zinnen in Berlin.” Sven knocks back another shot of acid dishwater. “Sifuriel I cornered in Rabat a year ago. Thirteen feathers. Not so unlucky.”

Yellow snaggleteeth show in Rat’s mouth. He’s smiling. He thinks he’s pals now, pals with the best angel hunter in the world.

“So, Sven. Who’s your next target?”

Someone coughs, chokes on a half-swallowed mouthful. Angel hunters never discuss targets. Never. The question is a disgusting breach of etiquette, or what passes for in in this business. Hunters spend months chasing their quarry, years, jealously guarding useless scraps of information. You don’t just ask.

Sven’s voice smoulders like a cigarette. “Who’s yours?”

Even Rat isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t know a line’s been crossed.

“Nah, mate,” he says, “I don’t have one. I got nothing. But you, you gotta be in town for a reason, right? Gotta be tracking something?”

Eddie passes across another glass. Sven lifts it between two fingers and a thumb, swirls it. The Wing’s patrons strain their ears for his answer.

Sven says, “I just came for a drink.”

“Right.” Rat forces a smile, casual as a royal wedding. “C’mon, Sven. You must have something lined up. Go on, give us a hint. What’s the harm? Not like I’ll ever beat you to it!”

Rat’s shifting on his feet now, squirming with desperation. He’s begging. Probably owes someone ruthless a buck or two or thousand.

“You know, I heard a rumour. From them brains at the Tenshi Institute.” Rat leans in close to Sven, a starving mongrel offering gristle to the alpha wolf. His breath is stale. “They reckon there’s an archangel in the city. Right now. Hiding out.”

Sven lays his empty glass on the bar. His face hasn’t changed.

“So?”

Rat’s face crumples like a car slamming into a bollard. “You know about Zephron?”

Silence now. Even the fanblade’s shut up. None of the other hunters lurking in the Wing have heard spit about Zephron. But damned if they’ll reveal that to each other.

Rat backs away from Sven as he stands, muscles stiffening under his cracked leather jacket. He uncurls a few soft bills, several more than the cost of his drinks, and hands them across to Eddie. He casts a surly eye around the Wing and lopes out the door.

The roads are slick. Sven strides through the streets, hunched against the rain, till he’s sure no one’s following. He sidesteps into a garbage-strewn alley, far from the light, and rubs his chin.

So. The angel Zephron might be in town. Interesting.

Every hunter in the Wing will now be on Zephron’s trail. But Sven works fast. No one tracks angels like he does. He has sources in high places. They can find just about anyone.

Just seven nights later Sven is hunched behind the wheel of a car. It’s a dented black bomb with the look of a Holocaust survivor. The neighbourhood it’s parked in has been abandoned by the rest of the city, which has thrived while this little pocket of misery and poverty shrivelled.

Sven strokes at the stubble on his face, so coarse it almost takes off the tips of his fingers. He lifts his legs off the dashboard and stows them under the steering wheel. It isn’t any more comfortable. Nowhere is, after you’ve spent 24 hours in an unmoving car.

Angel hunting has a dangerous, ugly mystique. Everyday folk imagine debonair men with eyepatches whittling away their riches in exotic bars, sipping sour cocktails with rascals and damsels, stalking celestial beings and rubbing them out without mercy.

In reality it involves hustling the dregs of humanity for a hot tip. Living out of a battered suitcase in countries that can barely be described as third-world. Endless stints on Google, poring over records in dusty libraries.

Most hunters hire people — amphetamine-addicted students are the popular option — to do that boring research for them. But unless he doesn’t have a choice Sven does all his research himself.

Of course he could pay someone. He must have a fortune stashed away. He does not spend any of it on his appearance: his close-shaven hair is choppy, his beard patchy, his leather jacket unravelling. He doesn’t look tough or cool. He looks like a man who sleeps in his car.

Sven does not spend his money on research. He spends it making research harder for other hunters. He has a vast army working for him: not collecting information but spreading misinformation, sowing false trails in the stacks and databases and gossipy back alleys of the world.

Sven winds the window down a fraction. Cool air seeps in. He reaches to the back seat and hefts over a ream of paper bound together with a mean-looking bulldog clip. He unpegs it and flicks through the pages he’s typed up, the barely legible notes he’s scrawled. All the intel he’s pulled together for his quarry.

Target: the angel Zephron, Sven’s written on the top page.

Rank: archangel. An archangel’s feathers sell for a lot more on the black market. They’re almost impossible to come by nowadays. That’s why it’s so important Sven pulls this job off.

Permanent appearance: unknown. But digging around the bowels of the internet has revealed Zephron prefers the earthly guise of an olive-skinned, curly-haired young man.

Sven’s sources high up indicate such a fellow might reside in the crumbling apartment block he’s been parked out front of for the last day. It’s as tall and squat as a footballer gone to seed, disfigured by rust and graffiti, most of the windows jagged holes.

Someone approaches the building, an umbrella held aloft against the tired sleet.

Sven’s instincts tell him he’s on to something here: the way the figure walks, the poise and shimmer of its movements. It’s subtle — but they reek of the celestial, wrapped in dirty rags of the mundane.

A lesser hunter might sit up in his seat and give the game away. Sven remains still. Only his eyes harden, watching the figure sidle up to the building, keeping out of the light.

The figure stops in the shadows outside the building’s front door. The umbrella comes down, revealing an olive-skinned, curly-haired… woman?

Interesting. Angels aren’t usually that clever.

It’s not they they’re stupid. They just aren’t cunning. Deviousness is a human trait; it is not in an angel’s nature. They can treat you to a rich analysis of the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and countless other texts, yet believe A.N. Gel is an artful pseudonym.

That is why they’re all hunted, in the end. The only safe angel is a dead angel.

The curly-haired woman glances over her shoulder before retreating into the gloom of the apartment block. For a fraction of a second her eyes spangle with the depth and glory of a far-off galaxy.

Sven smirks.

He reaches for his plain brown satchel. Inside is a very old, very sharp knife. Sven examines his thick bundle of notes one last time, double-checking they contain all the necessary information. Satisfied, he clips the pages back together and shoves them in the bag.

He strides across the street, breath steaming in the frozen, putrid air. The front door of the apartment building is barred and locked. Sven eyes the deadbolt. He reaches into the satchel and extracts a smaller pouch of instruments. There’s a blur of silver around the lock, and the door slides open with a faint click.

Sven enters the building. Alone.

Rule number one: never hunt an angel alone. Always bring someone.

The isolated nature of the job decrees angel hunters don’t work in pairs. So “someone” is a hooker, a street kid, a naive stranger seeking adventure. Someone who means nothing to you.

Slaying an angel — that is the worst thing you can do. You incur the wrath of the universe when you steal the life of its most pure, perfect beings. Retribution is swift.

No one knew exactly what finished Rafael Gonzales. His final hunt ended with his death — because the someone escaped, because he decided to go it alone, because of some other blunder. Whatever happened, there had been no other soul nearby to absorb the fatal blast of energy released when the angel died. No soul but Rafael’s.

He was not the first angel hunter whose career ended with a mistake like that. He would not be the last. But no one hunts angels solo.

No one but Sven Ketcher.

He has murdered scores of angels of every rank — always alone. Yet he survives. Lesser hunters marvel at how he does it, envious and fearful of the skill. They say Sven wears a magic vest. They say he sold his soul for immortality. They say he’s half-angel himself.

He stalks up a stairwell that hoards darkness, senses sharpened by adrenalin. He can almost make out a glowing trail on the steps where the angel Zephron’s feet touched the ground.

The path ends on the top floor. It’s dark and deserted. A window at the end of the hall shows gleaming skyscrapers, far away. Most of the apartment doors have been knocked off their hinges or removed altogether, while the closed doors emanate stony silence. Some have holes smashed in them, revealing sad emptiness.

Perfect. No interruptions, no witnesses. Just Sven and Zephron.

He pauses outside the splintery door at the very end of the corridor. It’s unlocked. Sven turns the knob. Some angels he’s found praying, some reading, some watching television. But most he’s found doing nothing. Standing still in empty rooms.

Zephron sits in a chair, staring out the window, face illuminated by a blue shaft of streetlight.

The angel is disguised as the loveliest woman Sven has ever seen. Soft browl curls tumble down around the smooth skin of her shoulders. Petite hands are folded in her lap. In the faint light she glows like a bioluminescent rose.

She looks at Sven with huge liquid eyes that glimmer like a tropical ocean under the moon. Her perfect face is blank, save for a touch of mournfulness.

The two of them stare at each other for a long time. Then she stands, the folds of her skirt billowing to the floor and sweeping around her figure as she takes a single step —

“Stop,” Sven says.

She stops. Amazing, how compliant the angels are. They’d probably cut off their own wings if you asked, if there weren’t divine edicts against such things.

“Show me your true form,” Sven orders.

Zephron straightens. A gold-white hue penetrates the room like sunbeams through a stormcloud. The hairs on Sven’s forearms stand up as raw power coruscates and crackles around him. Shafts of light shine from the woman’s eyes, pierce her scalp, tear through her dress. She’s consumed by a searing corona that obliterates her earthly avatar, a pillar of fire that would destroy Sven if he stared at it a microsecond too long.

The flame intensifies, resolves into a human shape — with blazing hands, eyes like coals, glimmers of hooves and scales and tails and coiled muscle swirling in the light. Sven’s ears roar, though the room is silent. He squints against the glare.

And the wings unfurl. Those gleaming, glistening, gorgeous feathers, and silvery and soft as the touch of moonlight, as calm and dangerous as the ocean. Against the fire of the angel Zephron’s body the wings are a balm that soothes the depths of even the most troubled soul. No wonder men trade away their fortunes for just one feather. They are more valuable than gold, rarer than unstable elements boiled up in sterile laboratories.

There are myths about children who are pure of heart, or virgins in distress, who received a feather from an angel as a gift. But no angel hunter has ever been given a feather. They must be taken.

Sven, careful not to look directly at the angel, slides the knife from his bag. The handle is black. The blade is black. The steely edge is so sharp it cuts the light radiating from the angel into spangling beams. Zephron, the sinews in its throat and lean tight like they’ve been carved from a slab of unblemished marble, watches the knife in Sven’s palm. The angel’s eyes glow like supernovas.

You are going to kill me.

The angel has no voice but its words resonate: they clang in your chest, pound in your stomach, quiver between your legs.

Sven tells the angel exactly what he is going to do to it.

Angels have no emotions. Not emotions as man understands them, at least: angels never show joy, or rage, or fear. But as it listens to Sven’s words, something flares in Zephron’s face. Some mix of understanding and resignation, and of sadness at the dark in mankind’s hearts.

“You don’t have a choice,” Sven says. His face is stony. He does not say “I’m sorry”, though the lack of the words rings in the air.

The angel nods gently, gazing at Sven with the intensity of a star.

Sven turns the knife in his hand. The light of those lustrous wings gleams on the blade. Then he steps towards the angel Zephron, holding the blade high.

The angel flinches but shows no other signs of pain as Sven makes the first cut, then another, then another. It holds it hands at its sides. From where he’s working Sven cannot see the angel’s face. He wields the knife expertly.

Finished, he steps back. Lays twelve angel feathers gently on the table. Liberated from Zephron’s wings, away from the turbulent glare of the angel’s body, they seem even brighter, cooler, richer. They are beautiful.

The storm of light in the room blows itself out. It’s dark again. Silent.

Sven wraps the cut feathers in soft cotton, stows them in specially made cardboard containers in his satchel. He takes one more thing out of the bag, then closes it, sighs, and turns to where the pillar of fire burned moments ago.

The beautiful olive-skinned woman regards Sven. He clears his throat. Does not return the gaze.

“You did a good job hiding yourself this long. You were unlucky. Turns out those idiots at the Tenshi Institute accidentally located you while they were testing some new particle accelerator,” he says to the transformed angel. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them.”

It will take a lot of money and influence to shut down the Tenshi Institute’s research. But Sven has no shortage of the former, and therefore no shortage of the latter.

He holds out the papers bound with the bulldog clip. Zephron hesistates, then takes the dog-eared sheaf. A small frisson sparks up Sven’s arm in the moment when he and the angel are both touching the paper.

“Everything you’ll need is in there,” he says. “Bank details. Passports. Identity papers. And instructions. Read them tonight. Memorise them. Then destroy them. Follow them to the letter and I guarantee you will never be tracked. By anyone. Not even me. Do you understand?”

The woman nods. Her mouth opens, as if she’s about to speak, though she says nothing. But her words too ring on the air.

She takes Sven’s dossier, all the information she needs to make a new life for herself. Then she sweeps out of the room, leaving the faintest hint of sweetness in the air.

Sven lifts the satchel over his shoulder. Without the papers it’s no effort to wear. The feathers weigh almost nothing. Sven’s already thinking of the merchant in Chicago who’ll buy all 12 of them — and not be able to keep his mouth shut about it. In a matter of days every angel hunter in the world will know Zephron has been killed.

And no one hunts dead angels.

*

Author’s note: Thanks to my writers’ group for providing really insightful feedback on this short story (as always). I made the image that goes with this post so long ago I can’t remember where I stole borrowed it from and thus can’t remember who to credit. My apologies to the photographer.

Go here to read more of my free short stories.

The Angel Hunter by Sam Downing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Horror Filming, by Samuel123

It took months for my sons to convince me to subscribe to a pay television service, which I’ve always maintained is a dreadful waste of money, though I must admit that when they finally bought me a subscription I was rather looking forward to all those additional channels on my television set.

A large carton containing the set-top box was delivered to my home. Installation was simple enough. Though the set-top box came with a thick instruction book it was really just a matter of plugging a slender white cable into the back of the set, then switching it all on. I eased back into my cracked-leather sofa, the remote control that had come in the box held aloft in readiness.

The electronic program guide flickered into life on my TV screen. More than 100 channels to choose from – where to start! I decided to partake in the news, but even the selection of news channels was vast. I chose one at random. Sky News.

“… the attack by Ablahelzareth the Thousand Eyed Spawn continues into its third day,” intoned the reporter, who seemed to be standing somewhere around Circular Quay, “with the eldritch abomination continuing its assault on the Sydney Harbour Bridge…”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Behind the reporter was the bridge, but it was being attacked by something… huge, by some behemoth rising up out of the harbour, tremendous streams of water sluicing off its swathes of horny toad skin. Thick long tentacles twisted up around the bent struts of the bridge, slathers of dripping viscous goo bubbling on to the surface of the road, barbed hooks scoring jagged cuts in the metal struts. Scores of pustulant eyeballs the size of cars protruded on stalks from all of the monster’s asymmetrical body, swivelling and blinking redly in the sun.

Parts of the creature’s massive bulk hung impossibly in the air. Several naval ships were positioned in the water around the beast, though none of them seemed to be doing anything. There appeared to be birds circling the creature, but as I squinted at them – my television set is very high-definition – I realised they were huge bat-like creations, squawking and swooping and spattering filthy dung over the sleek grey boats.

The entire image sucked and dragged at my eye, almost seeming to distort the edges of my TV set. Just looking at colossal monstrosity piqued vulgar flavours in my mouth, sent images of warped geometric shapes spiralling through the dark recesses of my mind.

I had caught the train over the Harbour Bridge not an hour earlier coming home from work. There was certainly not… some enormous monster hanging from it then.

I blinked. Gritted my teeth. The supposed reporter continued to yammer on in clipped tones, as if the horrific beast were no more consequential than a bad traffic jam. What was this horrible program? The abomination had to be some kind of ghastly computer effect, clearly, probably promoting one of those terrible new movies Hollywood makes, but what was it doing on a so-called news channel?

With a shaking finger I switched to CNN. Some kind of panel show, featuring perfectly coiffed Americans ensconced in a bright studio, came to life on the set.

“The Democrats are in crisis,” said one lady with a rock-hard blonde bob and an especially hard-curled accent. “Even if no one wants to admit it President Obama has ca-learly been driven to insanity since he laid eyes upon Yog-Sggauthnth the Great Goat-Headed Ruler of the Frozen Yonic Void -”

“Oh, please,” snorted a weaselly looking man in an ill-fitting suit. “Obama is very experienced with multi-dimensional eldritch abominations -”

“Yes, but -” the woman tried to interrupt, but the man pressed on.

“- and staring into Stygian waters seething with the trillion offspring of cruel dimensional abnormalities is a sight… is a sight he is well equipped to handle!” he said, by the end shouting to the heard over the blonde woman.

Another woman leapt into argue – something about the inability of any human mind to comprehend the sheer spectacle of the old ones from beyond the stars, regardless of its party affiliations – but what she said made not a lick of sense to me. I must confess that while I’m not as up on American politics as I ought to be, I’m not a complete dunce, and I couldn’t follow a word of this.

“1000-Eyed-Spawn continues Sydney assault,” read one of the headlines crawling along the bottom of the screen.

Annoyed, I brought up the electronic program guide again. A home renovation program would do the trick. Not that I’d be able to do much with their advice – what with my apartment being so small, lacking even a garden or second bedroom to do up – though I counted the genre among my favourites nevertheless.

An episode had only just begun. A strapping young lad holding a hammer was surrounded by the other presenters, explaining this episode’s project. By the look of all the tools and materials stacked behind them – vast sheets of corrugated iron and mounds of severe grey cinderblocks – I guessed it to be a big one.

“… fortifying your home against the plagues of horror that burst forth from the dark side of the moon is something you and your family can do in a weekend,” said the man with a grin.

“We’re gonna tell you how to build the home of your dreams,” added the woman standing next to the man, who had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, “that’s safe from the creatures of your nightmares.”

And she winked at the camera.

Hmmm. This was not at all promising. I lifted the remote again and circled through the channels to land on The Simpsons. Not my favourite television program, I admit, but my sons have watched it for years and I must admit to having enjoyed some of the episodes.

It was an older one, judging from the cruder look of the animation – the family had a strange bug-eyed look. They sat in their brightly coloured home watching television.

“Beer. Need beer,” Homer said.

“The Outer Gods took all the beer,” Marge said glumly.

“D’oh! Stupid Outer Gods,” said Homer. Suddenly a tentacle snapped through the window – sending the dog and cat fleeing – and wrapped itself around his neck! “I mean,” Homer managed, turning purple, eyes bulging comically, “woo hoo…” And the tentacle released him.

And it wasn’t even one of those Halloween episodes! Furious, and sick of tentacles, I switched off the television. Something had clearly gone terribly wrong. This… silliness was certainly not what I had signed up for.

I marched to the phone and dialled the pay television hotline.

“I would like to complain!” I announced, once I was through the maze of automated voices.

“Certainly, sir,” trilled the girl on the other end. “What seems to be the issue?”

I explained, sternly and clearly, that all my pay television channels were infested with tentacles and monsters and certainly not the informative and entertaining programming I expected, and given the price I had paid (I didn’t deem it necessary to mention that my sons had actually paid) I demanded a higher standard.

“I absolutely understand your complaint,” said the girl politely, once I’d finished. “Fortunately your problem is quite common among the newer set-top boxes, and very easy to fix.”

“Common? So the boxes are defective?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Some of the boxes are shipped from the factory in China with incorrect default settings, that’s all. All you need to do to receive programming from our universe is reset the -”

“Pardon me? Our universe?”

“That’s correct,” said the girl, who at least sounded like she was born in this country. “Some of the set-top boxes, such as yours, are inadvertently tuned in to parallel universes when they’re manufactured. Those are realities that sit alongside our own, but are different in subtle and -”

“I know what a parallel universe is,” I snapped. “I wasn’t aware it was possible to receive programming from one.”

“Oh, yes, the technology in our set-top boxes is very advanced!” she said. “For example, would you like me to explain how you can record up to five programs at once to watch at your convenience, using -”

I interrupted her to explain I was perfectly capable of learning how to record programs on my own in due course, and that in the meantime I would very much like to set the box to tune into my universe.

So I followed her instructions: I switched off the box, flipped a switch on its backside, waited five minutes – filling the time by boiling the kettle – then fired it up again. The television set leapt into life. I scrolled through several of the channels: past an old British sitcom, a black-and-white movie, a soccer match. It all looked normal enough, but I kept my finger on the redial button of my phone in case I needed to complain again. Finally, I settled back on one of the news channels.

A reporter stood across the water from Manhattan, the skyscrapers of the city rising up behind him.

Above the skyscrapers hovered an enormous ship, low enough to almost brush the tops of the buildings. It was almost as wide as the island and stretched nearly half its length, rising hundreds of metres into the air and casting a shadow across perhaps the whole of New York City.

An alien spacecraft.

I leaned forward in my chair.

“… a seventh Araxerxian starship entered Earth’s orbit today and set a course for Tokyo, though ambassadors for the alien visitors still refuse to explain the purpose of the starships, or whether any more are to be dispatched from the mothership in the Kuiper Belt.”

The reporter stopped, straightened hair whipped by the wind, glanced momentarily back at the huge ship over Manhattan. He looked suspiciously similar to the reporter I’d watched earlier, though I supposed they all had a certain sameness about them.

“President Obama will meet will Araxerxi from the New York ship on Monday, with hopes of continuing talks that stalled after China’s attempted nuclear attack on the Beijing ship…”

I leaned back in my chair and sipped my tea. Yes, that was better.

*

The image I stole borrowed from *samuel123; you can see the high-res version at deviantART.

Tuned In by Sam Downing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Captive Robin, by John Anster Fitzgerald

It began on a day that was wet and was cold,
just my sister and I in a house that was old.

“While we’re out, you be quiet!” our parents had scolded,
so we sat at the window, hands quietly folded,

watching the storm give our garden a lashing.
And then! From upstairs! Such a thunderous crashing!

Had the roof blown away? Then the crash crashed again!
My sister cried out, but I leapt up and then

dashed up the steps to the source of the sound.
On the landing I stopped, stunned by what I had found:

‘Tween two flights of stairs, in the wall, was a door.
Though we’d lived here for months, I’d not seen it before.

It was green, very tall, but remarkably thin -
and something was knocking so hard from within.

I reached for the knob. “Don’t touch it!” Grace cried.
Her green eyes flashed, fearful, as I pulled the door wide…

And behind stood a lady! Her hair hung in trails.
The light glinted odd off her teeth and her nails.

She gazed down upon me, and I tripped in alarm -
took a spill down the stairs where Grace clung to my arm.

Then the lady descended, with a swirl of her skirt,
showing feet that were bare – and encrusted with dirt.

At the bottom she smiled with too-shiny teeth,
and she said:

“Hello.”

We said nothing.

Her dulcet voice echoed, and I swear the house shook
on its foundations. Then she gave us a look:

her eyes hungry orbs in the curve of her face,
as far and as cold as the deep depths of space.

“Why, you are just girls,” she cried out, standing tall,
with such elegance, poise, that I felt very small.

The glint in her eye was like ice on the skin.
“I thought you’d be older,” she said, with a grin.

She leaned down in close. We trembled. She spoke:
“Tell me your names.” And she gave Grace a poke

with a long bony finger enshrouded in lace.
My poor sister cowered. She managed: “G-Grace.”

“And my name is Hope,” I said, trying to tame
the heartbeat inside me. “Now tell us your name.”

But the lady just smiled, and offered another
arch, cunning look, then said: “Where is your brother?”

We gasped, and she laughed. She knew we were shaken.
I thought of my brother – and the day he was taken…

We explored through the woods with our father and mother,
picnic lunch in a clearing, the sky a blue dome.
But wind whipped the trees and clouds threatened to smother
the sunshine. So we scooped up our things and rushed home.

In our haste to escape we ran fast as we could.
But dear Grace fell behind – in her arms was the baby -
and she took the wrong path, deeper into the wood,
becoming more lost every minute. And maybe

if she’d turned back in time, if she’d come to a halt,
if she’d not stumbled into that dark stand of trees,
then it wouldn’t have happened… no! It wasn’t her fault!
Grace could not have foreseen dark events such as these…

After sunset we found her, when the clouds had been drained.
She was curled, fast asleep, petals wreathed in her hair.
The baby was gone. Nothing of him remained.
Though a cold and high laugh hung so faint in the air.

The entire town searched till the sun rose again.
But they could not find John, nor console our shrill mother.
Twas three days before Grace could be woken, but when
she was questioned, she knew not who’d taken our brother.

“You took him,” said Grace. She was now nearly weeping.
The lady said nothing, a clever look creeping

‘cross her face. Then she said: “I can not tell a lie.
I did not take your brother. That charge I deny.

But I know where he is – and he will be returned.
If…” She ceased speaking. Her stellar eyes burned.

I gulped, met her gaze, then demanded: “If what?”
She peeled back her lips and revealed her cruel plot:

“Here’s what will happen.” Her eyes gleamed, icy blue.
“I will trade back your brother – but I’ll take one of you.”

There was absolute silence, a chill on my skin,
as the lady’s intention began to sink in.

I said: “No you won’t!”, in my angriest voice!
She smiled. “Dear Hope – you do not have a choice.

One sister will stay, and the other I’ll steal.
Then I’ll give back the baby – they’re the terms of the deal.”

“What deal?” I wondered – but the answer was clear:
the reason our parents were out, and weren’t here.

I felt very cold. I squeezed Grace’s hand tight,
as the storm raged outside with a terrible might.

Perhaps we could fight her. Perhaps we could flee.
But the lady stood firm. She said: “Who will it be?

Who will come to the land where the sun’s never shone?
Who will trade themselves in for your kid brother John?”

She reached out a hand, and I knew without doubt
Grace could not be the one who would go. I breathed out

and prepared to give in – to this deal I’d agree.
But Grace straightened and spoke: “No. It has to be me.

Poor John was taken while under my care.
So now I must go. We both know that’s what fair.”

Before I protested, Grace took Lady’s hand!
The lady gripped hard. “Not the sister I’d planned -

But I’ll take who I get!” And she pulled dear Grace back
up the stairs and tore open the door with a crack.

“Goodbye, little Hope,” said the lady, and smiled.
In that moment her face was both tender and wild.

My voice died in my throat. My feet stuck to the floor.
Grace looked back once – then was gone through the door.

The whole house was quiet, except for the gale.
But then, from the library, came a high, desperate wail.

The cry of a baby. I wiped off a tear.
Then I strode to the library – a room quite austere.

In front of the hearth was a rug, and there lay
a baby – my brother – who’d been dressed all in grey.

On John’s fingers were rings made from iron, like wire.
I pulled them all off, hurled them all in the fire.

Then I held him and calmed him, as the crackling logs burned.
It was well into night when my parents returned.

It was Mother who found John and I, on the rug,
and she said:

“I’m sorry.”

I said nothing.

Although John was back we were never the same.
We never again spoke my dear sister’s name.

And never again did I ever see Grace,
though I often remembered her voice, and her face.

But on windy, rare days, if a storm lashed the moor,
it appeared at the top of the stairs: a locked door.

If I peeped through the keyhole I’d see a night sky.
And sometimes, peeping back, was a shining green eye.

*

Click here to read more of my short stories.

Author’s note: I don’t write much poetry, so I learned something important while writing this. You know how poets always insist poetry doesn’t have to rhyme? Well, that’s not because of any aesthetic reason. It’s because rhyming poems are effing hard to write. Not only do you have to fit everything into the meter and come up with a whole bunch of rhymes (thank you, rhyming dictionaries!), but it’s near-impossible to make even the smallest change without throwing the whole thing off course.

There were two inspirations for this story. The first: I happened to pick up The Cat in the Hat recently and wanted to do something about children visited by someone strange while their parents are out. The second was this amazingly creepy animation of the (infamously macabre) children’s book The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Please watch it, for it is very good.

On a Windblasted Day Through the Door Came the Queen by Sam Downing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

She’s home alone – parents away for the weekend, brother sleeping over with one of the boys up the street, only the dog and the cat left for company.

She invited friends to stay but everyone’s busy, no one’s texting her back. She’s watched a movie, then another, and now she’s bored, restless. She paces back and forth, silhouetted against the bright windows, the cat trying to squirm out of her grasp. Behind her, film credits scroll up the television screen.

The cat leaps away and curls up in the middle of the dog’s sleeping cushion. She pulls a face, picks her mobile phone, throws it back down on the couch. She trudges into the study, slouches into the chair at her father’s computer. No messages, no emails. The screen’s soft glow outlines her hair.

The dog yelps and scratches at the kitchen door. She lets it out. She stands in the open doorway, beautifully backlit by white light emanating from the house, and an idea comes to her. It spreads across her face, hidden in shadow. She’s remembering: a sleepover with her friends, several months ago. Laughing and shrieking through hackneyed horror stories, pretending the decades-old slasher movies they’re watching are scary, whispering names at bathroom mirrors and waiting for poltergeists that never appeared.

A girl at the party – a friend of a friend of the host, someone nobody else had met before nor seen again – suggested a game. The Midnight Game, she called it, gleefully explaining it was an old punishment ritual the pagans invented.

Or something. The other girls greedily lapped up the half-formed details. And they’d played it, of course, and nothing had happened, of course. They’d lit candles, chanted in doorways, giggled till they got tired of the game and fell asleep.

It hadn’t worked because they hadn’t obeyed the rules. They hadn’t known you only play the Midnight Game alone.

Now, she leans against the jamb of the back door, two pinpricks of light shining in her eyes as she gazes into the yard. Come Monday morning she doesn’t want to tell everyone at school about her boring Saturday night home alone. She wants to tell an exciting story. She wants to tell them she played a game…

Back to the computer. She doesn’t even bother switching the light on this time. The light from the screen illuminates her fingers as they dance on the letters. She can’t remember the rules of the Midnight Game, but humans have all their knowledge buried on their internet. It isn’t long before she’s unearthed what she’s looking for. A page that spells out every step.

The page warns not to play the game – it’s dangerous. But she dismisses this. She’s seen enough horror movies to know the warnings are part of the fun.

On the page is a drawing of a tall, slender man dressed all in black, his face hidden by a wide hat.

Step one: write your full name on a piece of paper. Under the white fluorescent light of the kitchen she tears a strip from the bottom of a notepad, clears a space in the mess left from when she prepared her dinner hours before. Standing with her back to the kitchen window, she takes a pen and writes her name. Her handwriting is careful, loopy.

She hesitates before the next step: players must let a drop of their blood onto the paper.

This was not something she and her friends did when they tried to play at the sleepover. She wonders if something so drastic is really necessary. For a moment it looks like she’ll pull out of the game altogether.

But no. Once they decide to play, really commit themselves to the idea, they’re locked into it. Players can no more give up than iron fillings can resist a lodestone.

She disappears into the bowels of the house, re-emerges in the kitchen holding a needle and a plastic bandage. She takes a breath – then pricks the pad of her left index finger, gasping at the sudden burst of pain.

A fat drop of scarlet blood wells, splashes onto the paper’s ink letters.

She sucks on the finger. The blood spreads thick and blotchy into the paper’s fibres. She wraps the plastic bandage around the tiny wound, so tight the tip of her finger throbs pink.

Next: she must find a candle. She forages in the cupboard above the refrigerator and pulls out a white candle with an unblemished white wick. The rules she’s found tell her the candle must be exotically scented, but instinct tells her a simple white candle will suffice – and her instincts are correct. All one needs is a flame.

She glances at the clock. It’s close to midnight. Time for the final step.

She must turn off every light. Outside, the dog whines as the house drops into darkness. She is visible only as a dark shape moving through rooms. Several times she vanishes for whole minutes, only to reappear at an unexpected window. When she passes in front of them the streetlights throw silver flashes over her face, like schools of fish turning together.

She’s ready. She kneels before the front door. Set into the door are large squares of coloured glass, and through them she appears wavy, distorted. She places the paper on the floor, then balances the candle on the paper. She lights the wick with a match. The glow of the tiny flame flickers along the underside of her jaw.

Nothing in the house moves. The cat has retreated into a dark corner. The dog has retreated into its kennel. She remains at her post just inside the front door, jumps when a clock somewhere in the house strikes. It’s time to play.

She knocks on the front door once as the clock continues to strike midnight. Its chimes reverberate in the still air. She knocks once more, then once again. The clock strikes for a fifth time, a sixth. Without fully rising she reaches up and turns the doorknob -

The door flies inward, bangs on its hinges, pushes her back down to a kneeling position. Cold night air prickles on her skin. She swallows.

The clock strikes for a twelfth time and she says: “I invite you inside.”

Nothing happens. The echoes of the chiming clock fade and die. The edges of her mouth quiver, like she’ll burst with relief, laugh at the stupid game, clean up and paper and the blood and go to bed -

She’s knocked back by a sharp icy breeze that rushes into the house, streaming through her hair and snuffing the flame. A giddy shock runs through her as she recalls the rules: if the candle blows out you must relight it immediately. It must never be allowed to go out once you have invited the Midnight Man into your house.

The first match doesn’t take, just scrapes against the box. Her hands tremble as she tries the next one. It finally lights in a sulphurous burst. She holds it to the candle wick and it takes – at the exact moment the front door slams shut.

Silence. Her eyes are wide, skin tight across her face.

Hands shaking, she picks the candle up from the floor. The scrap of paper is gone and she spins for a moment, searching for it – till she realises it can’t have blown away. Not with the candle weighing it down. She stares at the empty spot where it ought to be.

On the paper is her name: Rebecca Heather Anderson.

A yowl behind her makes her jump to her feet. It’s the cat, poised in the arch between the living room and the entry halls of the house, its back arched and faint silver streetlight glinting on its hackles. She has never seen the cat’s face like this before – twisted, bared, hissing at something behind her. She doesn’t dare turn.

The cat shrieks, darts under the couch, its peering green eyes all that betrays its hiding place. Then comes another sound: the dog whining and barking and scratching at the back door.

Rebecca does not want to play the Midnight Game any more. She gropes for the light switch just inside the front door, and flicks it.

Players always attempt to quit. But once you have started playing you cannot simply give up. She flicks the switch again and again but the room remains dark. She dashes to the living room and tries the light switch there. Nothing. She tries the lamp. Still nothing.

She has only the soft gold glow of the candle and the faint white streetlights – but even they seem to be fading as darkness encroaches on the house. Shadows pool in the corners, the chill in the room thickens. Outside, the dog’s frantic cries drop to a whimper.

The candle is extinguished by a gust of breath so cold she nearly drops it. Her trembling hands can barely relight it, and when she finally does – only seconds later, but to her it must seem like hours – her face is a mask, eye-sockets bulging with shadows.

This is the part of the Midnight Game where the players realise what they have done. What they’ve invited into their homes. When they realise the only light they have is their candle, and their only choice is to keep playing. I’ve seen the same look on the face of every countless player: gulping, panting, as they struggle to remember the rules while their hearts and minds buzz with fear.

You must keep moving. You must not let the candle go out. You must not leave the house.

She ventures, stiff-legged, through to the kitchen. The green lines of the microwave clock say it’s just after 12. From the kitchen she moves through to the dining room, back around to the entry hall, back into the living room, around and around in circles. She doesn’t dare go upstairs.

A dark shape follows her. She is not alone in the house. She never looks directly at the intruder – no, at the guest, at what she invited in – though perhaps in the corners of her vision she catches the long legs and slender arms, the broad-brimmed hat, the blacker-than-black eyes that never cease watching her.

She stops, huddles in the kitchen, shivers, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the rising chill. She can’t risk putting more clothes on in case the candle blows out. Scores of tiny bumps rise on her forearm, as if she is being caressed by a cold finger. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her skin is soft and full, but cool to the touch.

Some players cheat, when the fear grows too much. They try to light more than one candle, or flee their home. But they always lose the Midnight Game. They scream as they’re snuffed out. Will Rebecca succumb to the temptation to break the rules? The back door is right there. She must be thinking: I could just slip out. I could give up. Her fear has hardened, her heartbeat firm and loud. The darkness stirs, quietly urging her to lie down, to let the candle flame go out.

The cold finger touches her lip – she gasps, recoils, steps back. The candle flame flickers and hisses. She buries her chin in her chest and presses onward, away from the tall dark shape.

Round and round she goes through the house. Instinct tells her to loop clockwise – the game might have ended so differently if she’d moved in the other direction. The flame hardly illuminates anything at all; her eyes are not adjusting to the gloom. She is being buried alive by thick darkness. Her free hand brushes a light switch. They always think light will shield them – long ago it was their fires they tried to hide behind, now their crackling electricity, the soft glow of their televisions and mobile phones. But she must know, deep down, that pressing the switch will do nothing. The hand drops. She continues onwards.

On her tenth circuit, or perhaps her hundredth, her thousandth, she stops in front of the mirror in the entry hall. A breath catches in her throat at the sight of the reflection. Behind her, somehow silhouetted against the darkness, is a tall, slender man, standing perfectly still. Eyes like black holes.

The candle flame wavers. The shape behind her moves closer – or grows bigger, or both. She can’t tell, can barely think. Her reflection blinks, blinks, blinks, as if her eyelids want to make up for the freeze that’s consuming the rest of her body. The dark man is right behind her now, towering over her…

None of the players ever wonder, when they commence playing, how they win the Midnight Game. But there is only ever one winner, and it’s never them. I reach out and grip her shoulder, her bones and ligaments tightening under my touch.

The clock chimes again, and the candle sputters out for the last time.

*

Click here to read more of my short stories.

Author’s note: This is pretty much the first time I have attempted a horror story. Spoiler alert: it’s harder than it seems. The story was inspired by this post on reddit, which gave me the heebies, and the image is Slender Man by Gaara Monster.

The Midnight Game by Sam Downing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Dear everyone who’s not into Twitter: please stop bashing Twitter.

Or at least stop bashing it via lazy criticisms which everyone’s sick of hearing, such as:

“I don’t know what Twitter is ‘for’.” You sound like an ignoramus when you say this. It’s like boasting that you don’t know what the internet is “for”.

“I don’t need to know what strangers are eating for breakfast.” If you’re following people who only tweet about what they ate for breakfast, you’re following the wrong people.

“140 characters isn’t enough to say anything substantial.” Sure it is. Try using the site.

“Hey, did you know that ‘Twitter’ sounds like ‘twit’ and ‘twat’? Let’s make puns based on this observation!” Oh ho ho. Important: The “twit”/”twat” jokes stopped being funny when vaudeville did. Joke about Twitter, but come up with  new material please. The existing stuff is as insightful as comparing Sarah Jessica Parker to a horse¹.

And when you write patronising articles like this, which treat Twitter’s users (in particular, Twitter’s female users) as superficial airheads who use the site  to gush about the trivial high-school details of their life, you sound foolish and deserved to be mocked by the internet.

Okay, sure, Twitter is a great place to gush about the trivial details of your life. But that’s not its only purpose. Much has been made about Twitter’s big-picture usefulness. But it’s a handy thing for everyday people to have in their everyday lives, too. For example: when I was slogging through the final chapters of My Book, it was nice to check into #amwriting and see that, hey, there are a lot of people working at this too, even if I don’t know any of them.

I think that’s kind of rad.

But after all these years I’m still reading articles in the MSM about “novelties” like online dating and adults who play video games – somehow I doubt the Twitter-bashing will end anytime soon.

1. Not that I think SJP is especially equine, but “She looks like a horse, hur hur” is a gag made about her that needs to be put out to pasture, pun intended.

So I have no idea what my parents are doing in the basement but they are making so much noise down there. I am trying to study but all I hear all night are bangs and crashes.

Don’t you dare even suggest they’re “making love” or something, because that’s gross. Besides, it doesn’t sound like… that. Not that I know what “that” sounds like, har har. But you know what I mean.

And last week I heard a scream coming from down there. It didn’t sound like Mum or Dad. Remember that time we went camping by Arkham Lake with your mum and step-dad, and when we tried to go to sleep the wind howling through the trees was so loud we thought it must’ve been two huge cats having a fight or something? It sounded like that.

So anyway I rushed down to the basement to see if they were okay but they wouldn’t let me in. Mum came out and told me I didn’t need to worry, but she was really pale and didn’t stop shaking till I made her a cup of tea. Then she made me go to bed without even telling me what’d happened. And the next morning Dad apparently left for some interstate anthropology convention before I even woke up, and he hasn’t come back yet and he’s too busy to even bother calling, so I haven’t had the chance to ask him about it either.

A few nights later Mum fell asleep in the living room (with all the lights on! And she’s always on at me about wasting power) so I snuck into the basement to see what’s going on. The door was deadlocked but everyone in the world knows where they “hide” the key in their study. And you know what I found down there?

Nothing. Not even any of the usual dusty relics they’re always bringing home from the university.

The basement was so dark, because for some reason the only light on down there seemed to be one of those weird ultraviolet ones, like they had at that lame dance we went to last winter, though I couldn’t see where it was coming from. The whole basement was all purpley-black and hurt my eyes. And it reeked of fish like you wouldn’t believe. Like they’d bought every single thing at the fishmarket and just let it rot for a month.

So I poked around for a bit but pretty much the only thing down there was this enormous book propped open on the desk. I guess it must’ve been valuable or something because it was chained down. I couldn’t really make out the writing but it was all Latin anyway.

Last night Mum was back in the basement again for hours, I guess messing around with the power because it made my alarm cut out and I was late to school. But the worst part? When I got home this afternoon, Mum had dyed her hair totally white. WHITE. She looks like a grandma. I asked why on earth she would embarrass me by doing that, but she refused to tell me and slammed the basement door in my face.

I’m really worried! This girl at school said her mum got an extreme makeover right before her parents divorced. Except her mum apparently got a boob job instead of wrecking her hair. I hope my parents aren’t getting a divorce! Then when I asked Mum when Dad’s getting back from his so-called “business trip”, she started crying and locked herself in the basement again.

So I hope it all works out okay.

Anyway. How are you? Did you win your netball final?

Love, S

*

Click here to read more of my short stories.

Author’s note: I wrote this for a short-story contest held by Nathan Bransford, in which the criteria was to “Write the most compelling (fictional) teen diary entry [or] unsent letter” in a teen’s voice. SHOCKINGLY, I didn’t win. Possibly because none of the other entries were written by anyone who’s been overdosing on Lovecraft-inspired fiction lately…?

Dear J by Sam Downing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

World's dumbest genius serial killer, pictured with family

Anyone who consumes fiction must have some very high hooks on which to suspend their disbelief. This is especially true for fantasy and sci-fi aficionados – you can’t buy into that malarkey about magic and spaceships unless you’re willing to accept the impossible.

However. Suspension of disbelief only stretches so far.

I pondered this during the week while catching up on the fourth season of Dexter, which was pretty excellent (and horrifyingly bleak) – except for some sloppy writing which pulled me out of the world. Mildly spoilery examples follow.

So in one instalment, Dexter sets up a kill room in a hotel bathroom. Because cheap hotels, as we all know, are bastions of privacy. Later in the episode, Dex stalks his victim to a construction site and prepares to attack. Suddenly, the victim attempts suicide! But Dexter rescues him at the last second, aided by onlookers who rush in to help. Onlookers who Dexter apparently didn’t notice while he tracked his victim; onlookers who apparently would’ve done nothing had Dexter attacked the victim before the suicide attempt.

Contrast this with Avatar (WHICH I LOVED), a film populated with blue-skinned cat-eared aliens who live on a planet overhung by huge floating mountains. How did the aliens, who evolved on a world light years from Earth, evolved to be (for all intents and purposes) exactly the same as Homo sapiens? How do those rocks float in the air? You might ask a billion questions like these – but ultimately the answers don’t matter, because the little details serve the story. They aren’t its sloppy byproducts.

It goes back to that old saying: audiences will believe the impossible, but not the implausible. I can believe blue cat people live on floating rocks. But I can’t believe a so-called genius serial killer would make such dumb mistakes.

Elaine (aka the greatest female sitcom character OF ALL TIME) flirts with third-person aficionado The Jimmy

You know what strikes me as weird? That referring to yourself in the third person is generally considered douchey, yet Facebook statuses force you to write this way. (At least, traditionally formatted Facebook statuses do.) Facebook: making d-bags of us all since 2004.

My Book is written almost exclusively in the third person – sometimes omniscient, sometimes dipping into my MC‘s POV (wow, bit of AO there¹) – with a bit of second-person stuff thrown in when I feel like giving you a more intimate perspective on what’s going on. (See what I did there?) Most of my fiction is written like this – I enjoy first-person, but if the Flying Spaghetti Monster descended from heaven and demanded that I choose only one narrative mode to use for the rest of my life, I’d pick third.

Most of what I read is third person too. A trend emerges!

Not sure why I prefer third, though it’s probably because it offers a bit more freedom – it allows me to duck out of a character’s perspective and insert broader information about the world I’m writing in.

1. That’s Acronym Overload, natch

This is the first image that came up when I googled "Chapter 12". Um.

Dear Chapter 12 of My Book,

Remember when you were just a scrappy little first draft? All cute l’il mismatched sentences just waiting to be polished up into nice shiny paragraphs. And remember when you had that exciting new subplot injected into you? Gosh, was that an exciting time!

Not so long ago I thought you were cool, Chapter 12. That there was no way you could possibly be more awesome. How wrong I was! Closer inspection reveals that you need some work. Boy oh boy, do you need some work. Did you realise that your sentences are awkward? Your dialogue weirdly leaden? Your pace strangely disjointed?

Not to mention all those adverbs you’ve scoffed.

Because I’m your pal, Chapter 12, I want to help you. What say we spent the next couple of days whipping you into shape? You’ll be as slim and trim as your writerly brethren in no time!

Yours sincerely,
Sam Downing

Not pee-yew stinky, but a little on the ripe side.

The trouble with working full-time as a writer is that, when I come home at the end of the day, it’s hard to get excited about spending another several hours tapping away at a keyboard. Especially when I have tonnes of unread Google Reader subscriptions and unwatched television shows waiting to be consumed. And especially now that it’s summer – even on the weekends it’s hard to muster up writerly enthusiasm when bright sunshiney days are singing their Siren songs.

I suppose every fiction writer with a full-time job grapples with this dilemma. And I suppose that working on My Book for just 15 minutes a day is better than not working on it at all.

On an unrelated note, I walked by two magpies the other day, and they both glared at me very sternly with their beady black eyes. And, um, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but, like, magpies are really big, and super creepy, and stuff. (Two for mirth? I ain’t laughing.) So I ran the rest of the way home².

1. Yes, I am aware that technically this should be “were”, thank you grammar Nazis. But I am not a fan of the subjunctive when used in this fashion. It’s so – awkward.
2. This really happened.