Black Monster

Christine sat at the back of the concert hall in dejection, too numb to leave and hide her shame. She’d muffed the recitle, muffed it big time. The conductor had been kind but she knew she would not get another chance like this again. It was the culmination of three years hard work and she’d stuffed it up. Rob appeared at her elbow but he was the last person she wanted to see right now. She would disgrace herself more by balling and causing her nose to run in a most ungraceful manor.

‘Christine?’ he asked gently putting his large hand on her shoulders, it was warm and sent a thrill through her.

‘I’m ok’ she said but knew he wasn’t fooled.

‘Come on lets go over to the Union and catch a bite to eat before the Freshers pour in for a night of cheesy disco.’ She shrugged and he pulled her up, his violin case was slung over his shouler. She hated him for a moment, it was hot and acrid and nasty feeling. The concert hall as always was too cool for the flimsy top she had worn on the stage. She had a moment of almost abandoning her flute but she just couldn’t. She wondered what she would do with her degree now that she had prooved not to be large crowd proof. What use was she and her flute?

Rob man handled her out and into the grey drizzel coated square, the plinth out the front looked as dejected as she felt. Shuddering she did a little half run around the corner into the Quad, carefully not looking at the red brick building opposite – The Musical School had been her home and now she trembeled with the thought of going back. Music was alreading blearing from Da Vincis so they headed to the quiet little Union Bar in the corner, they’d played concerts here too. Helped the Dram Soc put on productions and the like, it wasn’t their student union but then they didn’t really have one and they were welcomed here so it didn’t matter – lockers had even been put in for the musical instruments.

The bar was fortunatly not yet crowded though if the Miners came in there would be beer drinking contests and puking Freshers to deal with, she detested the Rugby club members who came into this bar too but they were not yet here. She sat on the old wooded benches polished to a gleam only managable with a good coat of poly urathan varnish. She picked up a coaster and began to fiddle with it, Rob appeared with a Tetleys and a vodka and orange, he dumped the pint in front of her, sloshing the creamy smooth froth she liked so much. The head was massive, she gave the bar tender a sad little smile.

‘I saved changing the barrel for when you came in’ he said and then turned away as if embarrassed, she stuck her finger in the cream and licked it off her blunt nailed musicians finger. She was greateful – Edwine could loose his job for giving her the ‘substandard’ pint.

Rob gulped his Vodka orange, ‘What happened?’ he asked her suddenly.

She sighed, ‘nerves I think’ she shrugged trying not to cry though the weight of the tears was burning her eyeballs. He looked at her, he knew there was more to it than that but how could she explain that the stupid mushrooms on the cieling put her off?

They’d been put in to improve the aucoustic which would have been dead without them, it wasn’t the best even with them there but the ugly grey things huanted her. It was stupid. And worse than that he would make her go to the gateway nurse again and college would be all understanding but none of it would help she had screwed up.

‘I should have stayed with the Chamber Chior then I would have been more used to performing in there,’ she said to fill the gap and the busied herself with sipping the pint.

Rob nodded, she hated his sympathy, ‘Well if your results come out too low I’m sure you could resit or something, we’ll go and see your tutor tomorrow. Christine?’ he said gentle, she didn’t look up she knew what was coming, ‘Christine, you should tell them it was the OCD even if it wasn’t.’ He reached for her hand. She jerked it away.

‘How DARE YOU!’ she tried to whisper and shout mangling the words slightly. Edwin came back to the bar thinking it was someone asking for a drink but she didn’t notice him. ‘It’s not something to use like that!’

‘I know that Christine… that’s not what I ment! It was the OCD though wasn’t it? I know you remember?’ He winced as she slamed her pint down sending a foamy tsumarmy over the side of the glass, he’d been expecting in the face, she was slight and fragile looking but she did tend towards artistic rages, but mainly she was hurt, it was the OCD of course it was but she could not admit that. She looked around, there was only Edwin standing frozen in the wake of her rage.

She burst into tears and run. Rob stood frozen for a moment and followed. Edwin stood there staring at the door, a sadness was eating him Christine and Rob, Christine and always Rob, he would give anything for them to break up but not for Christine to look like that, not for her to be so angished. He shook himself and collected their instruments and popped them in the office. It was his own fualt for having gone to a University with a 7:1 male female ratio. All the girls were either imports from the Music School or Medics. Methodically he went back to clearing the tubes from the barrel change.

He was sure they would be back later. Maybe he could get them to come to a party with him? Not that his shift ended particually early and he did have lectures on the morrow, plus he had orders from his mother to call in at UCL another university across Town. His Grandpa was back from Crete apparently.

Dr Atkins looked up from his rather cluttered desk, it was hot and stuffy but brightly light, a fire officer would have probably had apoplexy if they had come for a looky, there were crates of journals stacked infront of the fire exist. Emma wondered breiefly if the man had heard of e-readers but then noted the kindle on top of the paper landslides and mental kicked herself with the realisation that she had paper copies in her bag!

He was crinkly old but with brilliant eyes that seemed to look right through her, he sat back in a relaxed open gester, it smacked of lecturer training, put the student at their ease… rather than something that came natural to the man, however it was a polished move.

‘And can I do for you Miss?’ He asked smiling at the question, she realised he was half expecting a reprimand and a demand for a Ms.

‘Dectective Inspector Emma Dursley.’

He raised his eyebrow but she was already producing her warrent card in a fluid motion. Of course she was also a Dr of Paleoanthropology but he did not need to know that, most of collegues had not known it and she wasn’t happy that the Super had announced her credentials to the room at large.

‘A dectective? I am assuming it is not some piece of stolen art or a busted up site? Murder in the trenches perhapse.’ He started to laugh and then stopped at the hard line of her mouth.

‘Murder maybe, maybe not but I need to find things out and what I need you are the nearest expert in.’ She said wondering briefly how much to tell the old pickle.

‘Why go for the nearest? There are emails, hell there are mailing lists and things for this sort of thing I thought? Experts join up to help, I haven’t myself as I am always appear to be running to stand still in my scedule as it is.’

She sighed, ‘I find face to face works much better.’

He nodded then stood up, he was taller than she was expecting, on a par with herself. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

The advice was not to but then dectives worked slightly differently in her office, sometimes more was gleaned from coffee than days of padding the streets and sending emails. She nodded and followed him out of the room and back along the labrynth to the little room of coffee and stale biscuits. She found the rocks and arrow heads and skulls pulling at her concentration but Atkins poured her coffee and they sat down on plastic chairs that looked like they belonged in a school. ‘We have about an hour before the Undergruates arrive here for morning tea. Of course most of them will dissappear of to the refrectory to grab expensive chain coffee but this room will still become more crowded than is comftable.’

She nodded and sipped the coffee and realised that it was only going to be the students up against it that drank this bitter beverage, over stewed and cheap as.

‘I am investigating cereal killings maybe as a result of a cult of some kinds.’ she begain.

‘Ah, then you should get in contact with these people.’ he fished in his pocket and produced a business card it was the smart type with a little sim in it full of email and phone info. She looked at it briefly then handed it back.

‘They told me to come to you, they have no one on file that matches what is going on.’

‘Ah’ he said, it was a sad old sound and he suddenly looked like a little old man cuddling a cup of java as if it was a well loved cuddly toy from his youth.

‘We are finding… young women, drained of blood..’

‘Simply a vampire cult,’ he interupted, she shook her head.

‘No, the throat is slite and they have been hung as if to drain all the fluid for something – yes that could be a vampire cult but that is not the normal motif plus there are other things. An injury to the back of the neck.’ She puased and started to fish for her PDA.

‘Are the women drugged?’ he asked quietly. She looked up from her rummagings ‘yes but not with a modern synthetic its strange, a plant extract that’s not been seen before.’

The old man leaned forward. ‘not opium?’ She shook her head. ‘Similar though?’ she nodded affermation and then finially produced the slime case. Flipping it open she didn’t even look as her fingers danced over the touch screen to allow her entry.

‘These are the wound types,’ a slide show of bruised skin at the nap of the neck, a puncture would surrounded by the gentle discolouration of a hemotoma.

The old man paled but did not look away, ‘Spike and sucktion cup?’ he asked. She nodded.

‘Was anything left in the wound? Splitters, cotten fibre anything like that?’

‘Nothing’ she replied. ‘But thier brain chemistry was right out of wack, far more than expected for the drugged even if we don’t know exactly what it is.’

‘What about around the brusing?’ he asked. She hesitated, she still wasn’t quiet sure what to think about this part.

‘An organic… goo it has traces of DNA in it but… but they are wronge, not human, not animal, not even plant, just DNA.’

‘Just DNA?’ he repeated raising an eyebrow. She nodded.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘No’ she lied.

‘I am not quiet sure what you expect of me, I am not an expert in modern cults, and DNA that is not anything is a mystery to me. But I think your narcotic could be a blue lotus.’ She stared at him in dispair.

‘No they checked that one,’ she said.

‘No they checked one maybe two but there are several plants it could be.’ She nodded, placing her PDA back in the cacoon of her bag.

‘If you could send me a list of plant names that would be helpful,’ she said through gritted teeth. The mans line of questioning had been too smooth, it had been as if he’d been pumping her for information. And interesting result in itself but not one she would have hoped for. He nodded conscent and she strode from the room. She felt dirty which is why she did not hesitate outside the door as she would have normally. She missed him sitting back relaxed with his arms behind his head muttering, ‘Well, well well the plot does thicken.’ He sipped the bitter coffee he liked with every sign of enjoyment.

Emma stood at the bus stop, the sky was a miserable grey dish cloth, over used and under boiled, there was a faint smell of dank grease in the air. Her cream mac was not protecting her from the incessent drizzel and the bus was as always late. She hugged her metallic gold shoulder bag with its quilted diamond pattern and impateintly tapped her booted foot. The bus finially pulled up in a halitosis of frying oil and brake fluid, the doors hissed open and she dashed her bag over the yellow spot, the oyster card binged true and she slumped wearily onto on of the roughly covered seats. The bus shuddered away into the urban morning, lights hazing on the ganster scrawl etched into the windows.

Emma recoiled slightly from an orgainc looking smear on the window and extracted her current paper from the recesses of her violumous bag. The photocopied pages were grainy and some of it smugged, she’d read worse. The title was not something you would think to see from such an emminant journal, Hydra, Delphi and creatures of the deep. She sat absorbed in the dry words, teasing out the unwritten conclusions of the papers author, a very important man in Archeaology circles, she hoped he would be back from his latest dig on Crete.

The bus wheezed around a tight bend making her tense to keep her seat. She was almost there, she shoved the paper back in her bag and tucked a stray strained of hair back into the plait she had struggled with that morning. The style was too server and a pain with such long thick hair but French braids tamed her dark chocolate and caramel hair and lent her an authority. It was also more sophisticated and fun compared to a school teatcher bun. She sighed at the rain pitted reflection of herself, the distortion hid the silver hairs she had noticed creeping in. Thirty six was not supposed to be old, but she felt it. Felt the sickness of humanity in her very bones and now something else had come, some trouble and hide the shore of this land she had made hers.

An arthitic juddery stop saw the bus momentarily montionless, she got of the bus bearly waiting long enough for the doors to swing open. As always the streets were packed with youthful vibrant and often half asleep students. She was impressed that they had made it out before their nine o’clock lectures had begun, she personally had always struggeled with that one and even now in her thirties she would rather sleep till ten. Not that it really mattered with shift work, sleep routines were not something that featured heavily in her life. Emma picked her way through the crowd avoiding the lost tourists and the chuggers who lay in wait by the station entrance, she could not abide being asked to give money to charities, it was as if however much she did it would never be enough. Humanity stank to her.

The chuggers were always good looking and always put on the guilt trip and she knew they got paid – the bastards – when she’d fundraised she’d done out of good will alone – the charities were getting synical though and so was she. The telecomunications tower glowed in scifi surrealism, a reflection in a modern monstrousity of glass and steel. She turned the corner and was confronted with the older red bick and large cream stone buildings. These had a sense of confort too her, a similarity to were she had found her tertary education comforted Emma. The large black metal gates stood aside and the sercurity guard was half asleep. It amused her that in a time of security tightenening the places with posoin gases and military grade lasers still ambeled along thinking the worst that could happen was a student prank, it made her smile more that this was generally the case and when it wasn’t the academic community themselves would reek its wraith upon the trespasser.

She walked past a cluster with a thoderlite, and almost collided with an arty coming out of a domed structure she was sure had once been for astronomy though with the light pollution in the city she could easily understand why it had been turned over to the art students. She crossed the quad carefully and then stood at an entrance, heavy metal studded wood showed the prestige and grandure the place had once had now it was like all universities, struggling for survivial. Her boots squeeked on the marbled floor as she walked through to reception. A harassed looking man too fond of his office buffets sat behind glass dealing with an almost continous flow of people. October and Freshers were new and shiny and mostly lost.

She joined the small fluid queue, and was flattered to recieve a slight double take at her announcement of who she was and who she was here to see, the man had taken her to be over a decade younger than she was, these small triumphs mattered too much too her. She did not want to grow old, she was already too old by far.

A swip card and ident was handed to her along with a map, still printed on paper – she tried not to roll her eyes and simply took out her phone calling up Open Street Map, univeristies were one of the first things put into the thing and due to the nature of students it was kept faithally updated. She turned and followed it’s little rendered lines. She had to swipe herself through several sets of heavy door and passed a room with the smell of over brewed coffee and stale biscuits, she glanced at it and was starteled to see banks of wood and glass cases containing fossilised skulls and pretty coloured rocks. Her hands itched but she didn’t stray, she had been picked for this assignments becuase of her interests and her experiences. She wished they weren’t useful in this instance but it appeared they were.

She came to a little set of steps, lino covered in a pukey pink with pastel blue and green flecked, it spoiled the cosy wood and marble grandure, it looked as if the wall had been hacked to place the stairs there and the doors corridor after it had a tampered fill to it, suddenly much lower with more and more encroachement of offices and lecture theatres on the corridor, it all closed in. Land in London had always been expensive so large victoriana was built up on the inside with extra floors made of suspendion wires and asbestos tiles. The walls were stained with nearly centry old nicotine stains, for the last 50 yrs no one could wash such walls for fear of releasing the very fabric the walls were made off, asbestos fibres, lungs had clogged and choked their owners due to the substance. One of her papers had informed her that one of the greek islands had the mineral weathering out of the rocks and millions of tourists breathed it in quiet happily with their sunbathing each year.

She turned a corner and found herself in different decor again, this time it was like being submerged in the bowls of a seventies deranged submersable. Peach and brown and port holes as windows, it was a bearly disguessed bridge taking her through into bare concrete floors and breeze block, chipped green metal tubes formed the hand rails on the gritty stairs. She climbed.

On a half level under too yellow light she came to rest outside a door. The plaque read Dr Atkins Professor of Theological Archeology. She took a deep breath, and nocked, he could easily have decided to stay on his prescous islands and just forgotten to tell her, she knew academics of old.

She almost jumped when she got the reply ‘come in’.

I finished GothNaWriMo with 55, 467 Words and I am now continuing the same story for National Novel Writing Mounth. The story part of the Punk cannon I have been writing for all my Nano over on Purple Monster. I am aiming to push my word count this year. I am going for 90 K yep you heard that right and yes that is insane and a bit mad especially as like last month I shall have a kid book challenge going on. I have no idea if this is possible for me but we shall see. This is going to take me well past this one novel and I’m not entirely sure where it will take me.

I am keeping my purple spider mug out as it is still my horror novel but now my NaNoWriMo travel mug gets an airing too 🙂

I am reading continuously as well to keep the research side of it up and may have to re-write some bits of the novel as I go along but it all seems ok at the moment.

I posted the pre-qual to The Godex on here on the 31st of October – go and read and give me feedback 🙂

The God was insane, it had been insane a long time, the pain inside it’s beign grew and pulsed and it wanted annilation, had been made for such. Made for a purpose – what had it been?

There had been a man, one who spoke soothingly and stroacked it to life, it remembered the world in bright taste but now there was the tange of blood and it was diseased, all of it diseased. the victims were eating the God and the God screamed through the preistess.

Not the predictions they had come to seek, not the platitudes for more blood, the need to think drove the thirst for that liqour but there had once been an ambrioser that had been pour, it remembered but not since the savuoir disappeared all there had been was blood. The Saviour it must get its message to the saviour.

The Priestess was weakening, it’s fever was eating her mind as well as it’s own but it was almost there. The book, code in words, soul in code, her sysnapses tasted burnt, hemorrage, she was dying. Fitting. The connection went blank. A vibration, a scream and a bright blue taste shot through the god. A new mind to map, it was afraid, it stank of fear. Eons had not passed they had not observed the right but ah… yes if only it could listen properlly through the pain.

‘BLOOD’ it snarlled through young fresh lips, a flood of fresh sustanance, of needed poison flowed through it and it spasmed with delight. A clarity of thought stood out once more and it listerned. The Priestesses were fearful the end was near. It told them what to do.

Two days to go and I only have 45, 000 words! But that is OK – I will make it 🙂

I will definatly be taking this over into NaNoWriMo 🙂 I will also start posting the writing on here for you guys to read though you will have to bare in mind that it is going to be pretty raw and unedited and that I have server dyslexia.

I will also start putting my story line notes and plote structure, character profiles and what have you up on here. Obviously this is part of an already existing story arch/world etc… which you can catch up on at Purple Monster.

Don’t forget to download the Little Book before it is too late,

And here it is 🙂 Ten poems and lots of pictures 🙂 Remember it is only free until mindnight on the 31st!

It’s free I hope to get some donate buttons sorted at some point.

Yay! So my laptop is not back and it looks like it will be another five days as Apple still have not sent the bit 🙁 Fortunatly I have been lent a laptop 🙂

I’m hoping to really wizz now – I have managed 10, 000 words which though not on target makes me happy anyway. The story The Godex has a detective as the main character, is based initially in the UK, involves blood sacrifices, DNA monsters, super computers and the attempted making of an AI god. It is definatly part of the Punk Series and I may actually continue with it for my NaNoWriMo next month.

I pretty much have the back story sorted but alas still have no idea where the actuall story is going nor how much of the back story is going to be revieled. It is heavily drawing on my knowledge of Ancient Greece and Egypt though I have had to re-read Greek Mythology and Religon which I picked up on Crete when I visit there about a decade ago. I am basically working through a few of the text books and things I have on my book shelf and reading wikipedia etc… the computing and Artificial Intelligence side of things has resulted in me annoying my husband by bombarding him with questions.

As far as The Little Book is concerned it is basically done! I now have a [webpage](http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2012/10/14/the-little-book-of-spoogy-poetry-the-digital-release/) where you can pick up the PDF. It will be avalible for free until midnight on the 31st though people can give a donation if they wish.

Well I still do not have my laptop back though it is almost finished apparently – really not liking not having it 🙁 And I basically still have not started writing the novel – this is getting bad now so I will start today.

I have a title The Godex and a vague idea of what the back story at least is going to be about. I am still mulling things over in my head. It is a combination of a project I started with my Dad which was supposed to be a realistic X-files/James Bond type thing, very dry and tongue in cheek. We aborted the project after my husband suggested we read The Luandary series by Charles Stross. He stated this was a stupid thing to do so I’m sort of resurrecting the idea. But it is also pulling itself into the world of my Punk series which is what I tend to write for NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy. I was going to struggle to keep it seperate but felt I should but it was pointed out to me that I’ll only end up merging it in later and in trying to make it seperate will have scuppered certain cool things I could have done with the cross over.

My main issue for keeping it seperate is that everything I do that’s not for kids seems to be sucked into the Punk Canon.

The other thing is that The Punk stories are sci fi even the ones that seem like fantasy are actually scifi and that will be the case if I do a horror element as well. This is a tendency I have though – any story that gets over 60 K will end up being scifi if it is speculative fiction of any sort – I just can’t seem to help it :/

As for the Little Book – I have spent 20 hours wworking on it over the last week and that has seen all the illustration drawn and with the lending of a one slow and slightly broken laptop and lots of help from hubby I have managed to scan and edit the pictures, type set the poems within the images, rendure a PDF and attempt a printable version for stapling together an A5 leaflet type book. So this means that I need to make the webpage for it now, announce it’s arrivial and construct some books,

My 7 year old is very excited about this and has been giving me criticial feedback on the images along with her friends who have been round for play dates. They are all awaiting the Little Book 🙂

It is the first day of GothNoWriMo and I still have no idea what my story will be about or even what sort of horror it is going to be if I’m honest! And unfortunatly I still do not have my laptop back due to insurance faff. Because of this I have decided that I will focus on getting the Little Book of Spoogy Poetry ready and begun the illustrations.

I am working with pencil drawing the basic structure of the image and then using felt tip pens and fine liners, there needs to be 20 of them, some themed to the specific peoms and others generic page boarders. From experience I know I need 20 as aposed to 10 which would be one for each poem.

I tend to cover children’s books and my illustration work on Orange Monster.