She Wore Stripes

She hadn’t been dead long. That’s important. And she hadn’t made a mess of herself. A bit of blood around the nose, easy enough to wipe off. Some hot water and a wad of toilet paper would take care of that. And she was dressed all in stripes, looking a bit like Beetlejuice’s teenage sister, especially now that she’d snuffed it. I’d been wearing a dress a bit like that when I went. I got hit by a lorry, though, so those white stripes turned red very quickly. Ha.

For any ghost attempting possession of a corpse, it’s important that the body hasn’t been dead for very long. It’s important because being in a corpse as it goes through rigor mortis is about as much fun as dying. And once you’ve done either once you don’t really want to do it again. You’ve only got about three hours before it becomes noticeable. I can tell you that it’s difficult to explain to the dead person’s friend why your arm isn’t bending any more. Best to know your limits. And if you do hang around for rigor mortis, the livor mortis has already begun. Blood pooling in places. Not good. So yeah, unless you want to tell a barman why you can’t move as you feel yourself becoming a soggy sausage skin full of…keep an eye on the time.

My name’s Elsie and if you’re wondering if I just hang around waiting to people to die so I can walk around in their bodies, you’re not far off the truth. I mean, yes, you can possess the living but that takes weeks, sometimes months, of preparation and frankly it’s very rarely worth the hassle. The dead don’t fight you; the only thing working against you is the clock.

I come to The Worker’s Hearth quite often. It’s open late and you quite often find people stopping off for a last drink at three in the morning on their stumble home. Every now and then one of them dies and I walk them home instead. But I’d come along early tonight and I was glad I did. This girl, the one in stripes, had popped in with her friends for a round of cheap shots on the way into town and had gone, alone, to the loos for a pee and a snort. After thirty years as a ghost you start notice when people’s bodies are struggling to cope and this girl had all the warning signs. So I floated off after her.

Sure enough, as soon as she’d got it up her nose the bleeding started and her little heart fluttered and gave out. Her face hit the tiles and I got to work.

There’s not really an art to this. It’s pretty simple. The person dies. Their spirit leaves the body like a reflex. And in you pop. The best way to describe it is like climbing into a wetsuit. You’ve got to wiggle your way all the way down the arms and legs, make sure your fingers and toes are in properly. If you do it right you’ve got total control of the body in terms of movement, vocal chords and so forth. You can walk, talk, smile. Sadly, you don’t have any say over the body’s decomposition. You’ve got about an hour, maybe two before people start to notice that you look and smell terrible.

A word of advice. Always take the time to clean yourself up. People tend to notice if there’s a dreadful stink of shit coming from you, or worse, there might be a wound that you haven’t noticed. Claiming to be drunk will only get you so far if you haven’t spotted that the back of your head is open and dripping.

So, I cleaned the blood from her nose and got the arms and legs moving. No stiffness yet, everything seemed to be working as normal. And she hadn’t shat herself, which was a relief. Obviously, sometimes you have to clean up but when you don’t have a lot of time you don’t want to waste it in the stalls. I gave her face a bit of a touch-up with the make-up kit in her bag. Her being a bit of a druggie was a relief; her friends would be used to seeing her pale. The outfit wasn’t too bad. A damp patch from the floor but I could always blame that on busted taps; in a place like this the girls downstairs would believe it.

I went back downstairs, going carefully to get the hang of her pins. The people at the table looked happy to see me. I was accused of taking my sweet time, to which I answered that I’d had too much to drink. They called me Tania, which I made a note of. Then I downed my pint, left the pub, and got into a taxi with them. On the way there I didn’t say a lot. I tried to focus on the little things. Feeling fabric against Tania’s skin. The air from the open window on Tania’s face, rushing through Tania’s hair. The after-taste of watered-down lager on Tania’s tongue. These things make Elsie happy. Before I knew it we’d arrived at the club.

I don’t really know the best way to describe trying to dance with limbs that don’t have blood pumping through them anymore. You know the Thriller video? It’s fuck all like that. There’s much less coordination. You just try to move your limbs as much as possible, really. I think maybe it helps postpone the stiffness but I have no idea. It’s just nice to have the feeling that the body you’re in is responding to instructions. I’ve tried haunting an aerobics class but anyone who’s going to snuff it at the gym tends to so fairly publicly, everyone hovering around them. You want people to go privately.

I noticed a couple of guys checking me out and quickly discouraged them, sticking to the group of friends this girl had found for herself. I’m not stupid enough to attempt intercourse while inhabiting a corpse. That would be horrible and incredibly ill-advised. Well, I tried it once. Once. After six years of being dead I finally had to give it a try. It was as disastrous and disgusting as you’d assume, and we’ll say no more about it. There were…fluids. Jesus, I’m shuddering just thinking about it.

I’d kept an eye on the time and it was approaching midnight. Time to get going, but I still had a couple of minutes to think about it. How did I want people to find Tania? She had friends with her, most of them seemed nice. A girl called Sarah seemed to be closest to her, a slightly chubby freckly red-head who had asked if I was alright and had tried to make me laugh. She’d stayed on the dance floor with me and shown a similar disregard for people trying to dance with her. I wondered if they were together. However, I wasn’t going to find out. I could feel the changes starting to happen and I didn’t want to freak her out unnecessarily.

Now, when it comes to getting rid of your body you can go for the alley-drop but that always struck me as a bit cruel on the survivors. I didn’t really want Sarah feeling guilty because she’d let her drunk best friend wander off to expire alone in a dirty alley. So I considered the “I just died in your arms tonight” approach. She’d always remember that. She could call an ambulance. That would make her feel better, if she’d been proactive. She could tell herself that she’d tried to help. I went for it.

I stuck around in the body long enough to give the illusion that Tania was dying in Sarah’s panicking arms, a bit of light convulsing, eyelids fluttering, some shallow breathing . Once people starting yelling I left. You don’t want to hang around all that. That’s none of your business; it’s nothing to do with you. Best left alone. So off I went.

You probably think all of this is wrong. Maybe you think it’s immoral, that I’ll burn in hell for it. Well I’m not there yet. And when you’ve been stranded in spectral form for thirty years you can talk to me about it.

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Hello there. I hope you enjoyed this one. I was worried at first that the voice was a little to similar to Eliza in Witch's Bile but I think Elsie's more disaffected than malicious. Anyway, she was a lot of fun to write and I have a plan for a second story with her where something actually happens, as opposed to this, which I think is just her normal Friday night.

Not sure which story will be next but it will be another week or two. The title from this story came from @merazad and I'm very grateful!

Slide Left

“Slide left.”

His father’s voice. It didn’t belong here and it didn’t hang around.

The door to the basement slammed and Michael opened his eyes. Whatever was down there with him shifted its weight and sighed. Michael pushed himself across the wet dirt floor back towards the cellar steps. The door would be locked. He knew it. He'd heard the metal screech of a dead-bolt. He was trapped down here. In the dark, with this rotten smell and with whatever this thing was.

He found a wall and pressed himself against it. Some impulse told him to set about looking for a weapon but what would be down here? Where would he find something to protect him from whatever had made his captors cackle as they pushed him down the steps? He tried desperately to make sense of what had happened.

His car had broken down in the rain. That was it. That was how it had started. The battery had died and he was looking for a phone so he could get some help because his bloody phone battery was as dead as the one in his car. He was only looking for help. He should have known. He should have guessed by the smiles on these people’s faces that they weren’t quite right. The house had looked normal from the outside. The man and the woman, both tall, she had lots of blonde hair and he had hardly any. They invited him in. Said they knew the number for the services. It all looked…normal. He could smell their dinner cooking in the oven. Heard some crooner on the radio. It had all been fine.

Then he had seen through to the living room. There was a girl lying on the floor, not moving, a pool of blood circling her head. He’d rushed over to help. He’d been trying to help. He’d had a hand on her shoulder and was shouting and then he'd heard laughter. And a scream. And everything had gone black.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

Michael looked up with a start, his heart pounding deafening blood, peering into the darkness. Whoever had spoken was hidden but the voice didn’t sound unkind. It sounded apologetic.

“I know,” he said stupidly, “I don’t know what happened…I think...something hit me on the head and I fell down. There was a girl. What…who are these people?”

The sigh again. It was less sinister now, sadder. Michael leaned forward.

“Don’t you know? They’re killers. They take people like you and me and they put us down here and then they wait.”

“Wait for what?” asked Michael. He knew he didn’t want an answer but he couldn’t help himself. He didn't have to wait long for it.

“They wait for us to stop. They wait for us to stop fighting, to stop trying, to stop hoping. Then we stop breathing.”

A hammering sound from upstairs. Fists on the door, a mocking wailing, and finally laughter. Michael closed his eyes.

“How long have you been down here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I was seventeen when I first woke up. How old do I sound?”

Michael thought the voice coming from the darkness was that of a young woman. He inched along the wall towards her. If only he could see who he was talking to. If they could work together, they could find a way out, and he told her so.

“You can’t get out of here. There’s not an out.” The girl was resigned.

Michael was not going to listen to this. There was a way out. There had to be. There was a way in so there was a way out. The two freaks upstairs couldn’t keep him locked down here for ever. And this girl, the one down here, she needed his help. No matter how scared he was, he had responsibilities. So he took a deep breath. And he told her about what his father used to tell him about bad situations.

“He used to tell me that when the worst thing in the world is coming towards you like a fucking lorry, just slide left. That’s all you need to do. No matter how hopeless, how inevitable it seems, there’s always another way out, another way around. You don’t need the perfect solution, it doesn’t have to be a work of genius, but that’s all you need sometimes. To just…slide left. To get out of the way.”

“It’s not always as simple as that,” the voice came back. There was less sorrow, more determination. How long had she been down here? Maybe she really believed there was no way out.

“It can be. There’s always a way.”

Then a thought made him stop cold.

“Wait…you said ‘us’. Have there been others?”

“Of course,” returned the voice. “Some have gone. One or two are still here.”

Michael stopped cold. If there was a group, why had they not mounted an escape? Even teenagers like this girl should surely be capable of taking on the two upstairs. He blinked again and was relieved that his vision was starting to improve.

“Who else is here? Why aren’t they talking?”

“Patrick can’t. Millie’s shy.”

He looked around the room, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness even faster. Why couldn’t he see further than a few inches?

“Tell them not to worry. I’m going to get us out of here.” He needed to believe it. Because he could do this. He could get out. He could get them all out, whoever the hell was down here. They’d all get out together.

The sigh again.

“We’re not worried. Millie says thank you for trying to help. She appreciated the gesture but you should never have come. The rest of us feel the same. We don't like you coming down here and talking about a way out. Like it was easy. Like it was something we hadn't thought of. Patrick can’t talk to you because they took his tongue. There’s a boy called Dominic around here somewhere but he doesn’t like anyone to see him since they took his skin.”

Michael couldn’t breathe. He could barely speak. But he had to.

“What did they take from you?”

“Everything. They took everything from me, Michael. And then they took my heart.”

A face thrust in front of him, skin a torn mass of white and red, blood running down from her mouth over shattered teeth, sickly eyes rolled up towards the ceiling and a guttural voice coming from a bottomless well of agony.

“Do you want to see my way out, Michael? Are you ready to escape, you arrogant piece of shit?”

Michael opened his mouth to scream.

“If only I'd tried sliding left, you stupid fucking moron.”

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Hi there.

First of all, sorry about the delay in getting new fiction up. I've ended up being very busy with non-fictional things, some of which have been good, some of which have been bad, all of which have taken time. Anyway. Here's a short story. Kind of a companion piece to This Bitter Family Tree, except I couldn't do it in 500 words so I had to settle for 1000. The title comes from @Daanando and it's not quite what I had in mind for it originally, but I couldn't quite figure out what to do with that story. It was also going to be a lot more mournful but suddenly she was angry and I liked that a lot more.

This Bitter Family Tree

Michael Thurlston trudged through the dark woods towards the house. The howling wind masked the crunching of his boots on the snow. In his bag he carried only what he needed to survive the journey there. There would be no journey back.

The house looked out over a small lake. His family had once owned all the surrounding land but it had been sold off, piece by piece, until only the house remained. The house was all that was required.

He climbed the frosted wooden steps and took the key from his bag. The key was an ancient thing but the lock offered no resistance. The moonlight streaming through the windows made the candles Michael had brought with him unnecessary. He lit them anyway. He’d been told that ceremony was important.

The walls were lined with dusty portraits. Generations of Thurlston men stared out at the skinny, bearded 30 year-old who lay his coat carefully by the door. Michael took a moment to examine his forefathers. The resemblance was clear, occasionally uncanny. A proud line dating back hundreds of years. A family with a strict tradition. Not one of them was smiling. Michael understood.

Several feet above him, close to the ceiling, the long-dead men in the photographs had gathered to watch the ceremony below them unfold. The spirits chattered away, safe in the knowledge that they could not be heard. The tone was one of approval. “It’s time. He’s come of his own accord, as he should.” Murmurs of agreement echoed in their private realm ten feet in the air.

One spirit stood apart from the others. Matthew Thurlston watched, weeping, as Michael went to his bag, took out a small package and began to unwrap it. As his fingers wrapped around the shiny pistol it was all too much for Matthew. He snapped and howled for Michael to stop.

Below him, Michael looked up. He could have sworn he heard a man’s voice. One that was strangely familiar. But that was impossible. There was no one here to distract him from what had to be done.

Matthew was quickly surrounded by angry spirits, Thurlston men with their dark eyes, Roman noses and widow’s peaks, speaking in unison. “You cannot interfere. He must take his life. From generation to generation it comes to pass. We all did it, you did it. Now it is his turn.”

Matthew begged, pleaded for his son’s life. Finally he asked the question each had once asked. “Why can’t we let him go? Why tell him to do this?”

“Spite” said the assembled voices. “Inherited bitterness. One went first. Then the next. Now we go on. Thirty years to start a family, produce an heir, then his time is done.”

“Not my boy,” cried Matthew, and raced down through the air. He hovered next to Michael and screamed a warning in his ear. Just in time for the bullet to pass through it. Shaking, Matthew dried his eyes and waited to greet his son.

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Hello there. 

You may have noticed that this title is not in the list of suggested titles. You may have also noticed that this story is a good 2,500 words shorter than the ones I usually put up on here. Well, the story behind this was that I forgot to write a story for a short story competition. The word count was 500 words, and once I realised that I'd missed the deadline I thought I'd try to write the story in 500 words anyway, and not let myself go over even by 1 word. It was a fun little challenge, actually. Resisting the urge to introduce the patriarch who instigated the tradition who would gravely intone the Thurlston rules, I just had them recited in en masse. Rather than give Michael any character of his own, you just assume he has a son because of the rules. I had two ideas for stories, the other one would hopefully be a lot scarier and I will try and get that written this week too.

It might not work at all. I wrote it quite quickly but I did a lot of fiddling with it, making sure the wording was just right. I'm glad I wrote it as it was a nice reminder about how important the words are. Which is an obvious point, really, but when you get used to waffling on it's easy to forget. With a story this short there's no room for skimming. It has to be precise, which is a style I went for in my novel (and the in-progress follow-up, which is moving forward slowly). And I like that. I hope you enjoyed it.

Samurai Surprise

Hello there. The title for this short story comes from @lafemmeflaneuse . I hope you enjoy it.

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You want to know how he got to be like that, that’s it, isn’t it? Now, I don’t mind telling you I did it. That’s fine. But I want to explain how it was that I came to be there, why I did what I did. You don’t have to believe me. I don’t expect you to. But you are going to sit here and listen to what I have to tell you.

You know my record. You know what I was in for; you’ve got my bloody file there in front of you. You can see I did six years for hitting that bloke. It wasn’t my fault he died; I didn’t know he had that condition, whatever it was. I didn’t even know he did die until they caught up with me at the pub two hours later. And obviously I’m not the first man ever to give up on boxing and get paid to hit people outside of the ring. But that’s not important. That time I was away, that’s not important either. The important thing came when I got out. I needed to find a job. I needed to pay my way, but I had nothing and nobody would give me the time of day. Not my parents. Not my old friends. And I couldn’t call Liz; she’d told me to leave her be. She didn’t want the boy to get confused. So I was alone.

I was living on the few quid I’d saved before I got put away but it was running out faster than I’d hoped. The day I met him I was sitting in Gina’s café drinking a cup of shit tea and feeling sorry for myself. Then in he walked. Sat down opposite me, grinned at me like he knew me. The stink of his aftershave wafted over the table. White hair slicked back over his scalp, wrinkles so deep you could hide things in them. Teeth yellow and cracked like old boiled sweets.

“Hello, Jimmy,” he said. “How are you doing, son?” I gave him a nod and told him I was doing alright. I thought he was mental, I thought maybe he’d just go away. But he leaned over the table with that grin. “I heard you got out, Jimmy, and I thought I’d pay you a visit. Now, don’t look at me like that, that won’t do. It’s good news, Jimmy. I want to help you. I want to give you a job.”

Of course, that was the magic word, that was. He might be a nutter, I thought, but if he’s got some cash to throw my way I can put up with a nutter for a bit. So I asked him how he knew my name.

“Oh, I know all about you. I know about that thing that they charged you for. I heard all about that. We’ve got friends in common, you and me. You know Mikey Brinch? Your old mate Mikey? He told me that you got out the other day and I know what that’s like. I know that it can be difficult to lay your hands on some money. And as luck would have it, I need someone handy. I’ve got something that you might be interested in. I’ve got a job and I’ve got a place for you to stay, rent-free. Now, tell me you’re not interested in that, eh?”

There was something about his grin; I just couldn’t keep eye contact with him. But the way he talked, the sentences running into each other, I couldn’t interrupt him. I had to wait till he’d finished before I could answer.

“I don’t know what Mikey told you about me but I’m not interested in anything…” I let the words tail off but he knew what I meant.

“Oh, don’t worry, Jimmy, I’m not going to ask you to rob a bank or anything. Jesus! Look, I’ve got a shop on Old Fork Road and I’ve had some trouble recently. Nothing too drastic but I could do with someone around the place who can handle himself if anyone takes it upon themselves to come round and start some trouble. And sadly, old bastard that I am, I’m not exactly up to it myself these days.”

Protection. That was what he was asking me for. Looking at him, I was pretty sure he could handle himself. He might have been old but there was a look in his eye that told me that he would definitely be capable of picked up a piece of cutlery and ramming it into my eye if he thought I was going to nick his wallet. He patted the table and stood up.

“Look, why don’t you just come round and have a look at the shop with me. I’ll show you the room and I’ll tell you exactly what I need from you. You can tell me what you think is a fair price for your services and if we agree, you can move in right away. If not, we’ll go our separate ways? How’s that?”

I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him. But I wasn’t in a situation where I could be choosy about who I liked and trust wasn’t a luxury I’d had in a long time. So I agreed. He thrust out his hand. “The name’s Ayres.”

Old Fork Road was a twenty minute walk from Gina’s. Ayres prattled on the whole way about this and that. The changing face of London. The effect that global warming was having on the weather. The fact that his doctor wouldn’t let him eat bacon any more. All sorts of bollocks. I walked along with him and nodded at the right moments and was bloody relieved when we finally got there.

He unlocked the front door and took down the “Back in 10 minutes sign”. God knows how long he’d actually been away for. His shop was a newsagent, basically. You’ve been round there tonight, you’ve seen it. Magazines, fags, sweets, stationery, key cutting, all that stuff. Whatever you need when you can’t be arsed to walk to the supermarket. There’s so much stuff there that there’s barely room to swing a cat. He had one of those “5 children allowed at one time” signs up in the window, but I don’t think any kids ever came in. They were probably scared of him and that grin of his. Once he’d given me the tour of the shop he took me through to the back. On the right was a small stockroom, with another door which went down the basement (“Where the stuff I can’t shift lives”), and directly ahead was a flight of scabbily-carpeted stairs which curled sharply round to the left.

There were four rooms upstairs: his bedroom, a living room which doubled as a kitchen, a windowless bathroom, and a second bedroom. He opened the door with a grand sweep and laughed. “All this could be yours,” he told me. It was nothing special. A single bed, a bookcase, a small radiator and a large window looking out onto the street. I hadn’t expected anything better and I’d been scared of something worse.

We went through to the sitting room, where he took a seat in an armchair and directed me towards the sofa.

“What’s this trouble, then?” I asked. He shrugged.

“Hard to say, really, Jimmy. It’s difficult to know what to expect. Might be nothing at all, might be something serious. But, like I said, I hear you can handle yourself, so I’d like you here in case of emergency.”

“So no one’s made any specific threats?”

“No, not specifically. Like I said, there’s been a bit of trouble recently and I’m scared of a reoccurrence.” He shifted forward in his armchair. “Look, tell you what. I’ll pay you for a week, right now. During this week you can leave whenever you want if you don’t like it. I think you’ll see very quickly whether it’s for you or not, and I won’t judge you if you want to leave.”

He was making it very difficult for me to say no to him. He made it even more difficult when he put a grand in cash in my hands. “For the week, mind. We can discuss your fees again as and when you decide you want to continue.”

What choice did I have? I said yes. I went straight over to my hostel and grabbed my things from the locker. I went round my mum’s and posted a note through the door with the address of Ayres’ shop, in case she needed to find me. Then I was back, unpacking the few things I had. Once I’d finished I went back down into the shop. Ayres was standing behind the counter reading the paper. He glanced up as I came in and nodded. “You get squared away alright?” he asked. I told him I had and asked if there was anything I could do. “You’re doing it, son. Read the papers or magazines if you want, we close at nine.”

The day went slowly. Ayres had about three customers an hour until six o’clock and I’d guess about twenty people came in. I had no idea how he was making money. Finally nine o’clock came and he locked the door, flipped the sign, and we went upstairs. He heated up two of those ready-made chicken tikkas, the supermarket ones, and then we settled down in front of the telly. He flicked through the channels until he came across a black and white film with subtitles. I’ve never had much time for films but when I do I normally go for comedies. But Ayres got all excited when he saw this film was on. “Have you seen Seven Samurai before?” he asked. I shook my head. “You’re in for a treat, my son, watch this.” So I moved a little closer to the edge of my seat so I could read the subtitles, and I got involved.

It was a long fucking film. But I could see why Ayres was so excited about it. When it was over he clapped his hands and looked at me, grinning away. “Bloody masterpiece, that is. I love that film. What did you think?” When I told him I agreed he clapped me on the shoulder. “Good, good. See, you’re getting more than money out of this arrangement, Jim. You’re getting an education in classic cinema. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know if you have any problems during the night.” I was going to ask him what he meant by problems but he was gone before I could. I put it down to his general strangeness and went off to bed.

I never slept well inside and it’s not a habit I’ve been able to shake. I wake up every hour or so then drift back to sleep. Any little noise will wake me up. So when there was the sound of something small falling to the floor in the shop below, I was out of bed like a shot. This was what I was being paid for. If someone was downstairs, I was going to get them out.

I don’t like violence at all. I never enjoyed hurting people, but I got paid to do it. It was as simple as that. Ayres’ had hired me and I was going to deliver. I’m not trying to big myself up but I can handle myself, and as I went downstairs but I knew that I could handle a confrontation if there was one. But it wasn’t a simple confrontation I had to deal with.

I peered round the bottom of the stairs to try and see what was what. Through the racks and shelves I could clearly see a figure by the door. Someone was inside, trespassing, so there was no need to play it quiet. I barged in, making as much noise as possible, shouting for whoever it was to get the fuck out now or I would beat the living shit out of them. The figure turned and I stopped shouting.

Standing in front of me, ready for a fight, was a bloody samurai. I am not making this up. There could be no doubt about it. Toshiro Mifune, or Kikuchiyo, I remember he was called, stood by the pick and mix at the counter. That’s not all. Not only was there a samurai standing there, he was in black and white and his edges were flickering. Obviously this wasn’t possible. It was a dream. I rubbed my eyes and this slightly grainy figure was still standing about six feet from me. A voice inside my head was telling me that there was no way a black and white samurai was there, but instinct made me duck as this monochrome fucking fictional character took his sword out from its sheath and ran at me.

I rolled behind the counter and reached for the bat that I’d seen stashed there earlier. The samurai’s sword crashed down above me, smashing the RSPCA change tin and sending copper change flying. I darted back out and swung the bat at his legs. I heard his left shin crack and he cried out in Japanese. As he went stumbling backwards his feet skidded on the coin and he tipped backwards, dropping his sword with a clatter on the floor. That same instinct that had saved my neck earlier told me to drop the bat and pick up the sword. As the samurai regained his balance I drove the point of his sword into his chest. The samurai staggered and fell without a word. I prodded him with my bare foot. He was dead.

I stood there staring at him for roughly five minutes. Then I woke up Ayres and dragged him, muttering, downstairs. I pointed at the samurai lying dead on his shop floor. He rubbed his eyes.

“Toshiro Mifune. That’s a first. Come upstairs, I’ll make us a drink. Leave him; he’ll be gone in a minute.”

Up in the living room, Ayres poured me a large whiskey and sat me down. My hands were still shaking and I still wasn’t convinced that I was actually awake.

“Right, how best to explain this…This is what I’m paying you for” he told me. “This…incident is an example of the trouble I was talking about. You see, Jimmy, I’ve recently discovered I have a remarkable gift. Everyone wishes their dreams would come true. Well, mine do. They…what’s the word, they manifest. Physically. But it’s not exactly a blessing. The dreams, these figures that are made real, they’re violent, they’re murderous. The first time it happened I woke up and my best friend from school had his hands around my throat. I assume Toshiro attacked you, rather than the other way around, right? I can’t explain why this is happening; I only know that it is. Maybe it’s punishment for something. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m not proud of. Maybe it’s a freak fucking accident. But I need protection. I can’t handle them by myself. I need you.”

I let him talk. I let him explain, as much as he could. It was obvious that there was a lot he didn’t know. There was one question I had that was particularly pressing.

“Am I replacing anyone?” I asked. “I mean, have you had someone doing this for you before?”

“Oh, plenty,” he said. “Most left after a week or two, they couldn’t handle it. And sadly a couple of them have died.”

So there was my answer.

“You can still walk away, Jim. You can keep the thousand. I’m not short of cash, I’m sure you’ve realised the shop isn’t my…main source of income. It’s up to you. If you stay, I’ll knock it up to five.”

So I stayed.

He didn’t dream every night. Those quiet nights were the worst somehow, trying to guess what would come storming out of his imagination that I would have to beat to death. Like I said, I’m not a violent man, but there was something about the challenge that a part of me found exciting. And it was consequence free. These things weren’t real. About half an hour after their death they would simply vanish into thin air.

I can see by the look on your faces that you don’t believe me but in all my years in the ring I never had fights like these. I fought a man twice my size and I won. I fought boxers from the telly and took a beating but by God I caved their heads in. Mostly they were people I didn’t recognise, people I assume were from Ayres’ past, but that was none of my business. I beat them all. We only had one more film star after the samurai. I can say that I knocked the gun out of John Wayne’s hand before he could use it. And it was all staged like a fight, the way they would always come in that front door. Part of me wished that I’d had a crowd to see it. Not the killing, obviously, but the fight itself. I’ve never fought as well as I did fighting those things, whatever they were doing there. I had about two months of fighting at the top of my game.

Yesterday morning I was making a cup of tea in the back and I heard Ayres’ voice calling me. It didn’t sound urgent so I took my time. When I came through to the shop carrying my mug I saw Ayres chatting happily away to my wife and son.

I wasn’t prepared in the slightest. I hadn’t seen Liz since she’d visited me the first week I was inside when she told me that she wouldn’t be coming back. And my boy…I’d never met him. Mum had sent me pictures in the card she sent every year. She wouldn’t talk to me, Mum, but she’d still send me a card at Christmas. Anyway, I couldn’t speak. Ayres made his excuses and went upstairs, leaving me with these two people who felt like strangers. Liz smiled at me, the kind of smile that people make when they actually want to cry.

“How are you, Jimmy?” she asked. I told her I was fine. “I went round your Mum’s,” she said, “to see how you were doing. She said she hadn’t seen you but she knew you were working. She said you were staying out of trouble. Is that true?” What do you say to that? I told her it was, that I was keeping my nose clean and working hard. She wiped a tear from her eye and put a hand on the boy’s head. “This is Oscar. I wanted him to see his dad, and I wanted you to see him too.”

“Hello, Oscar.” I said. He hid behind his mum. I didn’t blame him but it hurt.

“Look,” she said. “I’m not promising anything but I wanted you to know that we’re still here, Jimmy. We haven’t gone anywhere and we’re not going to. But we need to know that you’re alright, that you can stick to this. If you can, I think we can maybe give it another go.”

I don’t remember much of what she said after that. She left about a minute later and I just remember feeling…happy. Like something good was going to happen. Something good was finally going to happen to me. I could have a normal life. I spent the rest of the day on cloud bloody nine. I’m sure things must have happened but I don’t recall. All I remember is going to sleep with a smile on my face for the first time in more than six years.

Obviously I wasn’t surprised when I heard a noise from downstairs. I grabbed the bat from its new home under my bed and went downstairs. Whatever it was, I hoped it was nothing too fierce. I was in too good a mood for a nasty scrap.

It wasn’t just one thing standing in the shop waiting for me. It was two. One was smaller than the other. They were holding hands. And as they stepped into the light I screamed. I screamed for the first time since I’d started fighting Ayres’ dreams. I screamed as my wife and son screamed back and attacked me.

When I’d finished I lay their bodies next to each other and tried to clean them up as best I could. I knew they would disappear soon enough but I couldn’t bear to see them looking like that. I’d tried to make it as quick as possible but a bat isn’t a clean weapon. It had taken a lot to make them stop. They were barely recognisable. This wasn’t just Ayres’ nightmare, it was mine.

Obviously you can’t control what you dream about. But no one should have to go through what I did. So, while I know you don’t believe me, this is the reason why I took the baseball bat, went up to Ayres’ bedroom and caved his head in. He won’t be dreaming any more. And I’m bloody praying that I won’t be either. 

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Hope you enjoyed this one. I'm not quite sure the voice is convincing but hopefully the story's fun. As I said, this title comes from @lafemmeflaneuse and I'm very grateful for it. Oh, I have a list of titles that lovely Twitter folks have provided me with. Here goes:

....and the wind blew and they stayed like it (@jpwtweet)

Yesterday's Shoes (@nolanzebra3)

She Wore Stripes (@Merazad)

The Mystery of the Pomegranates (@mant_a_tangi)

An Empty Space on the Bookshelf (@andylonsdale21)

The Lesser Evil (@SFXPennyD)

Slide Left (@Daanando)

The Night My Heart Exploded (@DavidHayes4)

The Unexpected Samurai (martang66)

There's some great stuff here, please keep them coming, either on Twitter or in the comments section!

Thanks again for reading.

Witch's Bile Part 10: Bye Now

Hello and welcome to the last part of this series of Witch's Bile. This serves as an epilogue really, so if you haven't read any of the others please go here to give them a look. Please enjoy.

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It was you. Of course it was you. How could I not have seen it was you?

Jo wasn’t the punishment, was she? The monster following her was. An empty vessel with one single purpose but not completely brainless? Well, technically brainless I suppose. He’d been scooped clean at some point before he’d developed his obsession with poor Jo. Anyway, that’s some serious fucking magic and would require someone very bloody-minded to arrange. Well done, Mum. You made life difficult for me for a little bit, and made life miserable for Jo for nearly a year. Impressive, even by your standards of colossal bitchiness.

I suppose this might have been a test, rather than a punishment. Maybe you were seeing if I was capable of dealing with it, rather than just pissing me off for the hell of it. Maybe you wanted to see if I could teach somebody something. Maybe Jo’s more important than you let on. But that thought makes me uneasy because it would imply that you were preparing me for something. And I’d hate to think what that would be.

Because I know that something’s going on. Even out here in the fucking sticks I can tell that something is stirring, which makes me more determined than ever to disappear again. I told the Sheriff what we did the monster you sent us. Well, I kept most of the magic out of it. I just told him that we burned it up and that when the fire goes out it’s very important that they salt the bloody earth. I don’t know if makes any difference, the old salting the earth trick, but as a symbolic gesture it’s pretty cathartic. 

Anyway, Sheriff Larch nodded, stroked that beard of his and told me he would very much appreciate it we never darkened his doorway again. Those were his words; I assume he meant “stay outta town.”

I told Jo that she could either go back to Paris or stick with me for a bit. I know. I surprised myself. I don’t know how much longer I’d want her around for but I feel like somebody owes her something and I can’t very well blame her for being a bit pissed off with you. Yes, I told her my theory. She’s fuming. If we hadn’t already set fire to the house I’d have been worried.

So, this is my final tape, at least until you find me again. I’m off to show Jo a bit of America before something else decides to murder every man between it and her. Obviously I’m not going to tell you where we’re going but I want you to know that we’re both fine and we both hate you. Take care, Émilie. And please feel free to leave me alone.

Your hateful daughter,

Eliza Belmont.

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So that's that for Eliza and Jo. I hope you enjoyed this series. They might be back at some point but not for a long while. I enjoyed writing them but I'm not really sure how successful they were. I hope you had fun reading them anyway. Thank you very much for doing so. 

The next post will be a blog update! Excitement!

Witch's Bile Part Nine: Open Flames

Hello and welcome to the ninth and penultimate instalment of Witch's Bile. Just a quick reminder that parts 1-8 are here if you haven't read them yet and you want to understand what's going on. Otherwise, the monster is on his way. Please enjoy

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I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Well, actually, scared’s a bit of an exaggeration. Concerned. I was concerned that arranging for a murderous monster to be directed towards my house might be a bit reckless. I mean, he might kill Jo, who I was supposed to be looking after, and more importantly, he might kill me. And Jo wouldn’t have been my problem if you hadn’t sent her to me, Émilie, so technically anything bad that happens to her while in this country is your fault. She could have been safe in Paris, or London. Anywhere, really. But instead she’s in a small town in Illinois, USA, with me. Because you sent her. And because you sent her, he came too.

I was aware that my plan had problems. These beasts that have one single, unalterable goal can seem easy to direct but there are annoying little variables. Monsters in a trap will always react violently, lashing out in any bloody direction. Bloodily. And no matter how stupid you think they are there’s never any guarantee that they won’t suddenly figure out what’s going on. So yes, I had my concerns. I thought it would work, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a very stupid idiot who thinks that their plan will go off without a hitch.

Jo wasn’t stupid enough to make this mistake but she went along with it. She took some convincing and grumbled enough, but she went along with it.

“If this goes wrong, we’ll die,” she told me after I’d told her that there was no other way. It was stating the obvious but I can only assume stating it made her feel better. I nodded and told her that I was sure that it wouldn’t go wrong. If it went right, we would be free from this un-killable psychopath within an hour or so.

I got the call twenty minutes after Sheriff Larch and his terrified deputy left. Apparently once I’d told him that there was a fair chance that the man he’d captured could decide to kill his entire police force, he was keen to get the monster out of his custody and into mine. I assumed that the monster couldn’t drive, so assuming Larch had called as soon as he’d freed him, we’d have our visitor knocking on our door in about forty minutes.

I got things ready as best I could. You know as well as I do that you can check and double check that you’ve prepared spells properly but there’s no guarantee that they’ll go off without a hitch. I got Jo to help me with the magic. As we sat mixing up the necessaries the books said were required, she looked up at me with this weird sort of smile.

“This is the first time you’ve taught me anything,” she said.

Cheeky little bitch.

So forty minutes later we stood in the front hall, staring at the front door, waiting. Jo looked nervously at me. I looked back at her, only slightly less nervously. We could both sense that he was close. When forty five minutes had passed I got worried. Then I heard the back door open.

I span around and saw the man standing in my kitchen. Larch hadn’t been lying. A cracked rib stuck through his black shirt and odd lumps down his right side hinted at more than that. When he opened his mouth to speak I saw he’d lost several of his teeth, which will happen if I run you over with my car.

“I heard she had someone here,” he said, speech slightly slurred. “Where is she?”

I wasn’t thrown by the question. Jo had done exactly as I’d asked and slipped out of sight. I shook my head and he stepped towards me. I took a step to my right, towards the basement.

“Don’t lie to me,” he told me. “I know she’s here. I know she’s here with someone. Where is she? I need to talk to her.”

As he moved closer I saw his scruffy beard was caked with blood. I assumed it was his own but there was no way to be sure. He reached down towards his belt and took out a long kitchen knife, which I recognised as one of mine. He must have taken it when he had been here before leaving presents for us. His stumbling stopped and he stared at me for a moment as if trying to tell whether I was lying or not. Obviously he convinced himself that I was as he moved forward with alarming speed and grabbed me by the throat.

“Where is she, bitch?” he growled. Clearly the last part of that sentence was really supposed to put the fear of god into me and I thought I had probably given Jo enough time.

“The basement,” I gasped, “she’s in the basement. With him.”

He grunted and transferred his grip to the back of my neck, pushing me towards the basement door.

“Open it,” he said. “No tricks.”

Clever boy. I opened the door for him and what he saw made him release his grip on me. It also made him go charging down the basement steps.

An illusion is simple enough to create but it’s pretty fucking useless once the person you’re trying to fool tries to get his hands on it. The monster saw a handsome young man who was moving towards Jo in suggestive fashion. To put it bluntly, he was naked. But when the fruitcake with the knife tried to cut him, it would go straight through, which is why Jo was running up the stairs as soon he finished going down them.

Had there been time and a third witch, we could easily have come with an imaginary Jo as well but as it was we had to make to with the real one. She wasn’t happy about it but I told her that there was nothing else we could do.

The other person who wasn’t happy was the monster in the basement. As Jo cleared the top step he turned and looked up at us. He’d swung for the phantom’s gullet and had hit the brick wall in front of him instead. He was furious. I could feel Jo trembling beside me.

“You tricked me,” he spat.

“Burn,” I answered. He laughed and held his arms wide.

“That won’t work on this body.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I told him and pointed at the unfortunate nest of spiders in the corner that were just catching light on top of the cans of gasoline. Not all animals are receptive to spoken magic but when I'd moved them earlier I'd managed to get on their wavelength. I felt sorry for them but there was no time to dwell on it as we slammed the door shut.

We had cast a spell on the door which took effect as soon as both of us were on the same side. I thought that this was rather selfless of me given that I could have simply locked him, her, and the imaginary nude Adonis down there to burn. Not that I told her that. We went through the living room and grabbed the bags we’d packed while waiting for the Sheriff to call as the screams began.

You never really get used to the smell of human flesh cooking but this wasn’t exactly that. There was a whiff of formaldehyde and, as the smoke poured out from under the door, another scent that I recognised but couldn’t quite place. Whoever had done this had left their mark on his body. It was familiar but I didn’t have time to really savour it. We left before the fire got out of hand, and then watched from the street as it did.

I hadn’t lived in that house for long but I had liked it. I wasn’t entirely emotionless watching it all go up in smoke. But Jo was safe for now. And so was I.

I’m sorry if this seems a bit underwhelming but it’s something that I don’t understand when witches tell each other that something can’t be killed. This thing bled. Its ribs broke. It must have been able to heal itself over time, given what Jo said about it being run over by a London bus, but very few things can survive prolonged exposure to fucking fire. There's an argument to be made for lack of subtlety or finesse but, given the noises it was making, it wasn’t surviving down there. And if it comes back, then we’ll burn the fucker again.

Anyway, I have to make a statement to Sheriff Larch. Well, I don’t have to. But I want to see the look on his face when I try to explain what happened. I’ll record another message from the road.

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Hope you enjoyed this. The final part will be up very shortly and then the blog will focus on other things for a while. There's a general blog housekeeping update in the offing but for now, please enjoy Jarvis singing Leonard Cohen. As always, thank you for reading.

Witch's Bile Part 8: Empty Chests and Flat Feet

Welcome to the part 8 of my Witch's Bile series which is building towards the last two instalments, so if you haven't read any yet I'd advise you to head here and go back to the beginning! Previously, Eliza and Jo met the monster with the penchant for cutting men's faces off their heads and made the sensible choice of running away as he began work right in front of them.

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I don’t have a lot of dealings with the police, as you can imagine. Actually, you might be surprised to hear that I get away with what I do, but I think they’re scared of me. They would never admit it but I’ve packed up and left countless towns leaving a bloody mess behind me and I’ve not been pulled over once. But this was different. The teenagers killed last night hadn’t died by my hand, and there was a witness who had hopefully told the police that. Because they knew I hadn’t been in a bloodthirsty rage, I had a feeling that the police would be round sooner or later. I went to bed knowing that I might be woken up by cautious knocking on the front door.

Instead I woke up of my own accord around ten. Jo was still in her room so I made coffee and went down to the basement to get my old books and notes out. I disturbed a few spiders that were starting to build a home on the box marked “witch shit”, dragged the box up to the living room, and had a look through my records and the old books to see if anything matched the description of what I saw last night. It would probably surprise you, Émilie, to learn that I’ve still got all my things, all my notes, everything a proper witch should have. But you never know when you might need them. Especially when you can’t consult with anyone. The only witch I know in the whole country is Jo and she’s essentially still a student, so useless. I’ve kept away from American ones. I’m sure they’re fine but I’ve got no interest in being sociable.

Anyway, I didn’t find anything. Not a sausage. There were plenty of monsters that had some similar attributes. Obviously we’re familiar with many difficult-to-kill ones, as this fucker had proved to be by being run over twice, including once with a bus if Jo is to be believed. So that was too vague to help much. I thought the ritualistic removal of the victim’s face might prove to be a goer but it turns out that there are three species of monsters that regularly do that in America alone, not including Canada, and all those freaks have a full set of internal organs. Which was what stumped me.

This psychotic Romeo who’s got his eye on Jo had no heart. I told you I tried to make it explode, which is normally not that difficult as long as there is a heart to make explode, and in this case there wasn’t. I don’t think there was anything. The thing was just an empty shell. He was, or had been, a man, that was obvious. The basic energy he was giving off was human. There was none of the frazzled, haywire brainwaves of Patchworks. He clearly wasn’t a zombie as he was forming coherent sentences and didn’t smell like he was rotting. He was simply hollow.

While I wasn’t too surprised that I had never come across this, I was shocked to find that there was nothing in my books about it. Obviously we witches like to know as much as possible about the monsters of the world so we can either defend ourselves against them or, preferably, use them to our advantage. Something like this clearly had value, as anything that’s tough to kill does. Monsters like that are usually working for somebody. Too useful not to be. But it’s difficult to imagine who he would have been working for, going specifically after Jo like that. Or rather, going after people he thinks are after her, in a romantic way.

But as I was working it through I heard the doorbell ring. There was the sound of Jo stirring upstairs as I got up to answer it. I walked past the clock on the wall and saw it was nearly two in the afternoon. It had taken the police all night and more than half the day to get round to seeing me.

Two men in uniform stood on my front porch. They both had their cold weather police coats on, the ones with the slightly fluffy collars, and the standard issue cold weather police hats. I’ve always found this get-up quite adorable, despite feeling somewhat differently about the people inside it. One was younger and was anxiously alternating his stare between two inches over my shoulder and the floor in front of him. The other was older and had greying brown hair tufting out from under his hat to match the greying brown beard. He was the one with the Sheriff’s badge.

“Afternoon, Miss,” he said after a short pause. “I’m Sheriff Larch, this is Deputy Brigley. Would it be alright if we came in?”

“By all means, Sheriff,” I told him, and ushered them inside. I didn’t want to waste any time. Apparently neither did he. I’d barely sat them down in the kitchen before he put his hands on the table and looked me in the eye.

“So, we know you were there last night, Miss Belmont. And everyone in town knows what you are. You asked us to leave you alone and I decided that it was the best course of action. But the problem is that people in town aren’t just scared of you now. They’re scared of whoever did this. And we can’t very well leave him alone.”

I nodded. I appreciated that he had to make his position clear. He was doing well, all things considered.

“Do you know who did this?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” I told him. “But I can assure you I’m doing my best to find out.”

“This guy…I’ve never seen anything like him. When I tried to talk to him…”

“Wait.” I was surprised. “Sorry, you tried to talk to him? So you…did you have him in custody?”

Larch ran his finger around the brim of his hat and looked at the table. “We found him in the parking lot. He looked like he’d been beat to hell.”

“I ran him over,” I interrupted, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

“He was…he was taking the face of the second boy when we got there. The first one, he’d already finished him. We told him to stop what he was doing, put his hands up. He didn’t seem to hear us at first but then he yanked his left hand up and just tore the skin straight off that boy’s head. Then he turned to look at us and…Miss, I’m scared of you but there was an emptiness behind that man’s eyes that just terrified me.”

He paused. I took this opportunity to look at his deputy, who was apparently examining the floral pattern of my tablecloth like it might yield some clue.

“He did what we asked,” Larch continued. “He got in the car. I told my boys to drive him to the station, take his prints, get him in a cell while we cleaned up the victims. Now, the rest is only what I’ve been told, I wasn’t there. But they got him to the station and someone thought they should have him checked out, apparently they saw one of his ribs was starting to stick out of his shirt. Anyway, the doc got there and…she couldn’t find a pulse. He was dead. But…he wasn’t, I don’t know if I’m explaining this well…”

With this final sentence he looked up at me, like he was begging for an explanation, or at least some kind of reaction. I nodded. I mean, of course he didn’t have a pulse. He had no fucking heart. But this was clearly a big shock to the Sheriff so I let him have his little meltdown.

“Miss, we’ve got a man sitting in our cell who is clinically dead. I was hoping…you could tell me just what he is.”

I took a deep breath. Jo coughed from the doorway and I turned to look at her. She’d clearly just woken up and was still in her pyjamas. I don’t know how long she’d been standing there but she looked as anxious for my answer as the Sheriff did. To me, the course of action was clear.

“Well, Sheriff, the first thing you should do is let him go.”

Larch looked as though I’d reached under the table and grabbed his privates. “Let him go?” he repeated. Before he had the chance to reel off all the reasons why it was a bad idea I butted in.

“I’m not exactly sure why he agreed to come quietly. But I do think that at some point he’s going to get bored and he’ll wonder what Jo’s doing and then he will want to leave. And I say this with all due respect but I don’t think that you’ll be able to stop him. So, in my opinion, what you should do is save yourself a lot of bloodshed. Let him go, point him in the direction of this house, and let Jo and myself deal with him.”

He had let me talk, to his credit. It was more than I thought he might do. “And you think you’ll be able to deal with him?” he asked.

“Again, with all due respect, we’ll be able to deal with him a lot better than you could.”

Larch took a moment or two to think about it then gave me a little nod and stood up, followed by his deputy. We agreed that he would discuss a handsome young man looking after Jo at the house in front of the monster in the cells, then turn him loose. Obviously, he would call ahead to let us know exactly when he was being set free.

Once they had left Jo grabbed my arm.

“How exactly are we going to deal with him?” she hissed.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I have a plan.

And that’s what I’m saying to you, Émilie. I have a plan. If you hear from me again, you’ll know it worked. Here’s hoping, eh?

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Hello there, I hope you enjoyed this. It's a bit longer than usual but I'm trying to get things set up for the final two parts. I know I said that the blog would be updated more frequently but I'm currently quite busy with London Film Festival press screenings, which I'm covering for Cinetalk. However, the final two parts should be up soon so keep an eye out for them. Will update soon! Thanks for reading, 

J

Witch's Bile Part 7: A Night Out

Welcome to part 7 of the Witch's Bile series. You can find the previous parts here, I recommend that you read them first as there's not really a lot of explanation as to what's been going on otherwise. I hope you enjoy this instalment!


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Well, Émilie, I told you in the last report I sent that Jo was going to have to make some friends, with the admittedly risky aim of getting her murderous admirer out in the open. If she’s seen speaking to friends of the victim, I reasoned, then we might be able to draw him out. Get him jealous, get him visible. Charlie Kitson had been kind enough to give us the name of the bar his murdered underage son used to go to, so I made sure Jo had put some nice clothes on and a bit of slap and we drove over there.

Jo was a bit nervous in the car, I could tell. She was scratching at her nails and tugging at her bangs. I told her that she looked fine and she glared at me. OK, I thought. We hadn’t talked much before leaving the house. That was OK too. I assumed she knew what she had to do.

It was the first time I’d been around town at night, really. I only moved here a few weeks ago and since then I’ve made a point of leaving the house as little as possible. The last time I’d been out at night was the town meeting I organised at which I told everyone that I was a witch and that they should leave me alone. That didn’t really work out. It never does. Anyway, they all look the same to me, these small towns. There are the nice quiet streets with the big houses, big cars, big front porches, and the big back gardens and then you take a left and you’re sharing the road with people with completely different circumstances. But people are all the same to me. Wherever you go and wherever they come from. Everyone’s the same no matter how much money you have or how big your house is. Which is why I want them to leave me alone.

I took a right and saw the petrol station Kitson had told me about and the bar just behind it. We were close to the edge of town here, I suppose the kids thought the chances of law enforcement or their parents bothering to come and find them was pretty slim. A fluorescent red sign above the door told customers where they were: The Alhambra. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly Spanish from the outside. Still, I wouldn’t see the inside for myself.

“So what’s the plan then?” asked Jo, like she didn’t already know. I turned to face her.

“You go in, you ask around for the names on that list, and then you talk to them. Use your English accent to charm them. Well, that and your face. Offer them a cigarette and get them outside. Then we’ll see if the mystery man shows up.”

“How do you know they smoke?” she asked, and I sniffed.

“They’re underage. Of course they smoke.”

She took my pack of Gitanes and got out in a huff. I watched her cross the car park, her heels clattering on the tarmac. I’d nearly forgotten that she’d only been in America for a couple of days. I hadn’t even asked about jetlag or anything. Which probably meant she was fine, I mean, if I hadn’t noticed it. Probably. I found a new pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment and waited for Jo to make friends.

It was about five minutes before she emerged with three teenage boys and one girl. Even from across the car park I could tell that they’d all made an effort to look older than they were. All the boys were wearing shirts and long coats while the girl’s make up was visible from the car. Only one of them took a cigarette from her. There you go, I thought. I can be wrong sometimes. I let them talk for a little while, about ten minutes. There was still no sign of anyone suspicious. Frankly, I was getting bored.

Finally I struck on a way to find out if anyone was paying attention. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and ran over to where Jo was standing. She looked up as I approached, as did the teens, a little slower, admittedly.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted. Jo looked shocked and unsure of herself. “What do you think you’re doing here? I leave the house for five minutes and you go straight to a bloody pub and start drinking! I thought we had agreed that you wouldn’t do this anymore!”

Jo stared, trying to understand what I was doing. I threw her a bone, as they say.

“I am your mother and you will do what I say! Is one of these that boy you’ve been seeing?” I practically screamed.

“Whoa, calm down, lady!” exclaimed one of the boys. His right eye was covered by a lank fringe of brown hair that he shifted with a movement that I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or some sort of twitch.

“Yeah, you don’t need to shout at her like that!” said the tallest of the boys. He was wearing a blazer that actually fit him and you could tell he was the confident one of the group because he wasn’t attempting to hide any part of his face. Instead his black hair was greased back and there was a single ring in his right ear. The shorter, rounder boy behind him nodded in agreement but didn’t seem brave enough to say anything. Only the girl, a skinny little redhead in a leather jacket and short black skirt, seemed frozen stiff. Until she opened her mouth.

“I know who you are,” she told me. I stopped huffing and puffing and turned to face her.

“Do you now?” I asked, putting as much ice in my voice as possible.

“You’re the witch. You’re Eliza Belmont.”

The boys didn’t know my face but they certainly knew my name. They all took a small step back and stared a little harder. The tall one jutted his chin at me. “That true? You a witch?” I nodded at him. He turned to Jo, who looked like she wasn’t sure where she was supposed to go at this point. “And, what, she’s your mom?”

Jo took a step over to me and turned to face them. “She’s not my mother but you’ll answer any questions she has.” I was impressed and didn’t bother trying to hide a smile. So she hadn’t asked them anything. Not exactly according to plan, but at least she got out of the house.

“Where did your accent go?” asked the short one before figuring it out for himself and looking at the floor.

“Now,” I said, ignoring the little man’s question. “Last night, did you see Clyde talk to anyone?”

“We already told the police that we didn’t,” said the girl. “Clyde left early last night. He said he needed to go home and study.”

“Well it’s nice to see you’re honouring his memory,” I prodded. Her face dropped and the tall one spoke up again.

“We’re honouring his memory,” he said with all the sincerity he could muster. I grinned.

“So you didn’t see him talking to a guy you didn’t know, with straggly dark hair, beard, long coat? No?”

The short one cleared his throat and pointed.

“There’s a guy like that behind you.”

Jo turned first and grabbed my sleeve. I saw a man who fit the description I’d just given. He stared at us, looking us over one by one. There was a moment of silence. Even the tall kid couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Did you get my present, Josephine?” asked the man finally. Jo whimpered. “I left it where you could find it. Who are these people?”

I tried something risky at this point. Obviously you’re not supposed to attack without gauging your enemy. But I thought I could get the drop on him and I didn’t want to hang around in the open any longer than necessary. So I tried to make his heart explode. It’s a nice trick if you get it right, there’s relatively little mess, at least that you can see. So I focused hard. Tried to find his heartbeat.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. He just stared at me, unblinking. I knew what to do. I grabbed Jo and ran. You don’t get to my age without learning how to run away from things. Well, not really running, if you look very closely you can see our feet weren’t touching the ground and we were going faster than a fifty year old woman and a young lady in high heels really should have been but we made it to the car and bundled ourselves in.

As I turned the key in the ignition the headlights came on. The man was walking over to us. In his right hand he held the tall boy by his skinny neck. Behind him I could see the two other boys crumpled on top of each other in a heap. The girl ran screaming back to the bar and slammed the door behind her.

The man stopped about six feet from us. As I was about to put my foot down he took out a knife and pointed it at Jo.

“I know you understand,” he said, and plunged the knife into the boy’s face, just under the hairline. He twisted the blade and began to move it downward, peeling the skin from the boy’s head as he went.

I put my foot down and drove straight at him. He didn’t try to move out of the way. He just fell under the car and I felt the bump as we ran him over. I didn’t bother looking behind us. I knew he wouldn’t stay down.

“It won’t have made any difference,” muttered Jo.

“It made me feel better,” I said.

We got home without any further incidents. Jo’s up in her room and the lights are flickering so I can tell she’s upset. I know we’re going to have a lot to deal with tomorrow when the police realise we were there and work up the nerve to ask us why, so I’m going to sign off now and get some sleep. And try to think about what kind of a monster actually doesn’t have a heart.

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I hope you enjoyed part 7. We're getting towards the end of the Witch's Bile series now and I'm going to try and post the final few parts a bit more frequently than I have been. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the series so far. 

I'm still planning to update the blog with more non-fiction posts so keep your eyes peeled for that. I'm also going to a post asking for title suggestions for short stories as I will be starting that up again soon!

Thanks for reading.

Witch's Bile Part 6: House Call

Hello there. So, after last week's short story (Mindquack) we're back to Eliza the misanthropic witch with part six of the Witch's Bile series. Parts 1-5 are here and I do recommend reading them first. Each part is only about 1000 words so it won't take long to get up to speed. So, let's get to it.

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Where were we, Émilie? Oh that’s right. I’d just told you to go fuck yourself. You’ll have to forgive me for that little outburst. But I was quite upset. Because it seemed like you’d knowingly sent me a protégé who is being stalked by a murderous psychopath who is apparently very difficult to kill. Still, at least I now have some idea of who the person who left a dead boy’s face in my kitchen is. Well, not a name. Or a face. But Jo will recognise him when she sees him, and it’s my intention to flush this bastard out as soon as possible. I didn’t move to America to bring serial killers over. There are plenty of them here already.

I gave Jo a bit of time to calm down after she’d told me about this lunatic and how he seems to target boys she likes, or boys he thinks she likes. She went up to her room and I thought I heard her crying before a couple of our light bulbs blew. I may have to get used to these temper tantrums if she continues living with me for much longer. Stock up on bulbs. Anyway, I made a cup of tea and had a think and after about an hour or so she was back downstairs and ready to talk again.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

It was a fair question. “Well,” I said, “given that you don’t know anything about this person except what he looks like and the fact that he survived a double decker bus rolling over him, we don’t really have a lot to go on. So the obvious thing to do is go and talk to the dead boy’s dad.”

 “Is he going to want to talk to us? When he came to ask for help this morning you weren’t exactly helpful.”

In case you’ve forgotten, the dead boy’s father came round first thing to ask if I could help him find his son’s killer. You know my rules about helping people. I don’t. Which is what I told him. He didn’t leave in the best mood.

I smiled at her. Sometimes I forget what it’s like when people don’t know who you are, don’t know what you can do. You’re scared of people finding out, of what would happen if they knew. When you open up to everybody and you make sure they’re scared of you, then you realise that people are very easy to deal with indeed. “Trust me.” I said. “He’s going to be dying for our help.”

So I was a little bit surprised when, after we wrapped up and hurried down the street to the Kitson residence, we had the door slammed in our face shortly after it was opened by the tall, grieving man who had asked for my assistance only a couple of hours ago. He didn’t say anything. He just slammed it. But I knew better than to take it personally. Jo and I waited on their doorstep for a moment or two, listening to raised voices inside, before his wife opened the door.

“Please, come in.” she stammered. “I’m very sorry about Charlie, he’s…we’re both very…”

“I understand perfectly, Mrs Kitson,” I told her. “If we could just take a few minutes of your time we’d be very grateful.” She ushered us through her hallway and into her living room. The white carpet was covered in dirty boot prints, a clear sign that the police had been and gone. Charles was sat in the armchair and stared at us as we came in. I gave him my best smile.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Just to talk about your son, Mr Kitson. We want to help.”

“Oh yeah?” he sneered. “What’s changed? I came to ask for your help, I practically begged you, and you told me to go fuck myself.”

I took a seat in the chair opposite him and was aware of Jo drifting to stand behind me. She’s got good instincts, that one. I thought about telling him I didn’t use those words but decided against it.

“The thing is, Mr Kitson, the thing is that my position hasn’t changed. We can’t just help everyone who asks. And I believe you and your wife both attended the town meeting I organised specifically to tell you all that I must be left alone or you would face the consequences, and I think you’ll agree that I allowed you to speak your piece, consequence-free.” I could see this last part upset him; it was probably a mistake to bring it up but too bad. He was raising his enormous hand to make a point I continued before he could interrupt me. “But while my position hasn’t changed, the situation has. I was too hasty in telling you I couldn’t help you. Obviously I can’t give you your boy back, but I can find whoever killed him and make sure that he is punished in ways that the police can only have nightmares about.”

There was a sound rather like a small bird clearing its throat and I looked over to wear Mrs Kitson nervously hovered by the kitchen door. “How has the situation changed?” she asked. I was impressed. This Mrs clearly had more backbone than I thought.

“The situation has changed because it affects me. And my friend here.”

“I thought you said she was your niece,” said Kitson. Ah. Caught on a lie. Still, a relatively minor one. No real damage. Safe to admit to.

“I lied. You know what I am. My friend is one too. What happened to your boy affects us. We would like him to stop.”

Charles Kitson got to his feet. He nearly filled the space from floor to ceiling and he had the anger of a grieving man. “Are you saying that whoever did this has an axe to grind with you? Was Clyde some sort of message?”

Clearly it was best to lie at this point. So I made something up.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that whoever did this will do it again and he has certainly done it before. One of his previous victims was someone we cared about a great deal.”

“Did he kill a witch?” asked Mrs Kitson. I laughed loudly to make sure she knew how ridiculous her question was.

“No, the chances of a witch being killed by someone like we’re dealing with her are miniscule. No, it was Jo’s…brother. Which is why we couldn’t talk to you earlier. We had to be sure it was the same person before we got involved. And now we can.”

The last lie seemed like it might have been a stretch to far but you should never underestimate the gullibility of the grieving. Especially when they think that someone might be able to castrate the ones responsible. Charles looked at his wife and they seemed to reach some kind of agreement as they stared at each other.

“What do you want to know?” he asked. I smiled like a happy saint.

“Well, it would help if you told me where he…hung out. And, more importantly, who he hung out with.”

Twenty minutes later we were back in my kitchen with a list of names and the address of a local bar that didn’t look at ID’s too closely. Jo hovered over my shoulder as I went through the list and tried to remember if I’d seen any of these boys before.

“What are we going to do with this?” she asked.

“Well, clearly he thinks you’re attracted to boys your age,” I told her. “So you’re going to go and make some friends and we’ll see what happens.”

I don’t know if you were with Jo long enough to see this, Émilie, but there’s this look she gives that’s about half-judgmental and half trying to understand whether she should be judgmental or not. It’s quite special. So that’s the plan, Émilie. We’re going to have a nap and then Jo’s going out to make some friends. And I’ll be there to see if her man shows up.

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Thanks for reading. I'm interested to hear feedback on the Witch's Bile series. The instalments are intentionally a lot shorter than my short stories but I do worry that they're less fun. Anyway, I'm aiming for about 10 instalments in total for this round. Eliza and Jo will probably be back at some point anyway.

I hope you enjoyed part 6. I'm trying to update the blog more often so there may well be another non-fiction post of me rambling soon so, you know, get excited for that. Here's Distracted, a song from Sean Spillane's soundtrack to Lucky McKee's excellent The Woman