Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Blackpool Bay, General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Benjamin Tree

“Oh, the tree comes with the apartment,” the Estate Agent mentioned waving at it as they moved through the lounge area, “The previous owner considers it part of 307’s furnishings.”

The tree was small–head-height–and had a trunk that was made up of what looked like thick, gray, twirling vines that held a clump of large, bright-green, oblong leaves. It sat in a knee-high pot decorated with intricate carvings and strange oriental-looking letters cut finely into it.

“It’s called a Benjamin Tree,” he said, “It’s the official tree of Bangkok, actually.”

“Oh,” the Estate Agent paused in her sales pitch, “I thought it was a Weeping Fig?”

“Yes,” he nodded before moving on with her, “That’s another name for it. I prefer the former name. Say, why is the previous owner selling here? Ocean View seems so quaint.”

“Oh, he used to work at the docks. Import-export or something, I believe. He won the lottery last week so he is returning to his family in New York,” the Estate Agent said, “It’s a pity the money doesn’t ever stay in Blackpool Bay, really. We could use it here. Why are you moving all the way out here?”

The furnished apartment was not massive. They had walked through most of it and were standing back in the lounge by now. It had a window that overlooked the gray ocean with the dingy docks below. He could see a twitchy-looking man loading what looked like diving gear into a small fishing boat and he watched intently for a moment wondering what this man was doing.

“I’m a writer,” he muttered back and then turned and faced the Estate Agent, “I’m a writer and I need a place to disappear to and write. This one looks perfect. The Benajim Tree can stay.”

***

A year and a bit later, he was sipping his morning coffee and staring out of the lounge window. The local morning newspaper lay on his lap. The ocean in Blackpool Bay never changed; it was always gray and stormy with dark, distrusting waters under a brooding near-storm sky. It all just reflected this town’s forgotten place and constantly surprising secrets.

They had even tried to build a highway through the mountains to connect Blackpool Bay to civilization, but a worker had died under questionable circumstances and the funders had pulled out.

The writing had gone brilliantly and his new book had only just been published. He remained here, though, as he liked the solitude of the place. Although he considered himself a city person, something about Blackpool Bay made it hard to leave.

Perhaps born out curiosity or a little boredom, he had begun researching the previous owner. Talking to the neighbors he had found a full name and the Internet had provided the rest: born in New York, Nathan Midlane had moved out to Blackpool Bay for work and then won the lottery and moved back.

It was a simple story, but the newspaper in his lap told a darker ending than he would have expected. He would never have guessed that Nathan Midlane’s story was a tragedy but the newspaper loudly declared it: “Blackpool Bay Man Wins Lottery & Dies“.

It had happened a week ago but only been reported here this morning. Time moved differently out here in Blackpool Bay. The line in the story that surprised him was the opening line: “Another former-resident in Apartment 307, Ocean View, has met a tragic end…”

He found himself looking at the Benjamin Tree deep in thought. The spidery oriental writing on its pot looked faintly sinister. He wondered when Nathan Midlane had acquired the thing? He wondered from whom he had done so? He wondered what the strange language or symbols on its pot meant?

Just then his phone rang. He snapped out of it and finished his coffee. It was now cold but he gulped it down, stood up and walked across to his phone.

“Hello?” he answered, not looking at who was calling.

“How’s the writing?” his Agent’s familiar voice crackled on the other side of the line. It sounded really far away. The reception was not great out here in Blackpool Bay and it just added to this place’s isolation. Sometimes the phones all just went dead and no one knew why.

“Uh, it’s fine, I suppose,” he mumbled, unsure how to respond, “What else is up?”

“That’s not why I am calling,” his Agent started talking, the sheer excitement audible in his faint, crackling voice, “Some major blogger read your book. She wrote about it and tweeted. A bunch more picked up on this and did the same. It’s trending. Your book is trending. They love it. They all love it! Your book is now front shelf and ranked in top ten on Amazon. Go check it out! Rolling Stones want an interview and the BBC has asked for a quote…”

***

He put down the phone and leaned back on the couch in Apartment 307, Ocean View. Even the name had started sounding ominous to him. The twisted trunk of the Benjamin Tree in its sinister pot cover with spidery runes looked back at him. The ocean remained gray under the foreboding sky.

All the rest was silence. It was so quiet out here. It was like man and the entirety of his little civilization was just a brief flicker of light in a cosmic darkness that reached across time and space in crushing size and scope and, far out here, Blackpool Bay was surrounded by endless amounts of it…

While his book continued to reach highs out there in the world, he felt a million miles away from it. Perhaps he was a million miles away living out here in eerie Blackpool Bay.

But none of this consumed his thoughts these days. He had been investigating Apartment 307, Ocean View. He had been digging for the truth and it was far darker than he had ever imagined.

He had reached out to the journalist at the local paper. The journalist had sent him a number of other clippings going back some years.

A couple year ago, before Nathan Midlane had moved into Apartment 307, the previous owners–a certain, Miley and Marc Cohen–had died shortly after moving into a fancy house in Main Road here. Speaking to some locals down at the pub, the best he could piece together was that the Cohens had made a large amount of money from investments. Unfortunately, a strange fire in their new house in Main Road had seen them burnt to death. Strangely, most of the house had escaped unscathed.

Before the Cohen’s, though, a lesser known, Catherine McDougle, had lived a quiet, spinster life here for many decades. Little seemed to be known about her, except that she had died shortly after moving to live with family in Washington. She was old and the coroner had ruled her death natural, or so the article had claimed.

Upon her death, though, to the Blackpool Bay residents’ surprise, McDougle’s fortune had been donated to the Masonic Museum in London. It had been the largest public donation ever on record. The Museum had gone on record thanking her for it. Everyone was flabbergasted at the fortune McDougle had quietly amassed while living in the modest Apartment 307, Ocean View.

He could not find any older records of any earlier owners of Apartment 307, Ocean View. But what he did find in one of the earliest articles of McDougle was quite disturbing: “We will all fondly remember McDougle. My personal memory will always be her sitting in her favorite seat next to her special Weeping Fig tree and recounting her days in the Society abroad where she collected many such wonders…”

He had sat upright when he had read that. He found himself looking more and more at the inconspicuous Benjamin Tree and its sinister pot that quietly stood in the corner of his modest lounge.

***

“So you can interpret it then?” he asked, trying to sound calm, but instead a near-feverish eagerness came through in his voice, “Can you understand it then?”

An old, scholarly Chinese man was in Apartment 307, Ocean View, and looking at the Benjamin Tree. More specifically, the man was bending down and attempting to read the spidery runes cut finely into its pot.

“The writing is a version of Archaic Mandarin from the First or Second Imperial Dynasty. Yes, probably from the Han Dynasty. It is strangely phrased with ambiguity,” the scholar paused, chuckling to himself, “It is actually quite witty if I am correct.”

With that, the scholar stood up and turned to him. He felt his heart pounding and his palms sweaty. Within his clenched fists at his side, he dug his nails into his palms. It was all he could do to stay calm. Outside the gray, foreboding sky and its ominous clouds seemed to be holding their breath as they peered inside the gloomy Apartment 307.

“Could–could you please,” he took a deep breath and tried to continue calmly, “please tell me what you read?”

The scholar smiled and motioned at the pot and its twisted, green Benjamin Tree.

“Old Chinese folktales talk of a Money Tree,” the scholar began slowly, picking up the pace as he spoke, the tree and its pot just sat there listening, “Literally, a tree on which money grows. A woodcutter once tricked a village into cutting down a tree that he wanted. He did this by sticking money on it. But, once the tree had been cut down and taken back to the village, it had regrown, twisting its hacked stem back and pushing out its sickly green leaves. The woodcutter had been angry and had tried to cut down the tree but the villages–still believing the tree to magical–attacked and killed the woodcutter. The village was prosperous for years thereafter, until a stranger had stolen it in the night. Shortly after then, a plague had wiped out all the villagers. It is said that this Money Tree brought luck to those that had it and misfortune to those that lost it.”

The scholar finished his tale with a smile, seeming quite satisfied with himself.

“Yes,” he said abruptly, feeling anger and frustration rising inside himself, “But what does the writing say?”

The scholar nodded and pointed at the pot again, moving his finger as he read it out loud.

“I believe that this is an old Hang Dynasty artifact–probably worth a tidy sum of money!–but it seems to keep referencing the Money Tree folktale with a simple palindrome that repeats across the design here and here and over there too. It simply says: ‘Dead lucky or lucky dead‘.”

Far away, he could almost hear the noise of civilization and his book shooting up the rankings with the steady clink of money flowing in. And, trapped all the way out in Blackpool Bay that distant metallic sound just sounded like chains being tightened around him. One by one, inch by inch and moment by moment, he was suffocating in Apartment 307, Ocean View.

The Benjamin Tree in its sinister pot with spidery runes carried on standing there. It was taunting him, its prisoner, and just daring him to leave…

General Fiction

My Silent Friend

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Sometimes the world gets so loud. I work in an open-plan office, which is another word for hyper-extroverted socially-engineered hell. Open-plan offices are always full with prying strangers buzzing around you, incessant small talk and constant social pressure with waves of noise. I walk outside sometimes, but the office is right in the middle of town and the sounds of the city replace those of chattering co-workers and ringing phones.

I have never liked this level of noise, but since my wife left me it is hard to deal with. We were not married long, but it was long enough for my entire life pattern to change. My routine was no longer going out drinking and having fun, it was now staying in cooking and watching series. My hobbies were no longer partying with friends, it was seeing the in-laws and shopping for groceries. I was no longer the fun-loving one in the office that was able to make a couple jokes, I was the serious husband providing for his family.

And then she left.

Open-plan offices are like the communal showers of the business world, everything just hangs out there. It could not have been half a day and the world knew I was being divorced. There are the one or two who ask you directly, but the majority just whisper it to each other and glance at you out of the corner of their shitty little eyes. All you want to do is quietly get on with whatever work you have to do, but people are constantly buzzing around you and often pulling you into their little conversations; who won the game, what are your weekend plans, did you hear about Pete, do you think it is going to rain, what about the memo, did you get the email, check out the notice board…

So I endured the noise of the open-plan office. And then, later, stuck in traffic, I endured the noise of the congested city. I could do all of that because the moment I opened the door to my empty house, it was not at all empty.

My silent friend is there.

He comes–like he always came–bounding up to me, all fur and licking. His excitement is tangible, but he does not interrogate me with questions nor hoot at me for answers. Tail wagging furious behind him, he jumps to lick my face with sheer ecstasy.

I laugh and shut the door behind me. I drop my bag on the table and crouch down to hug and pat him. He is a fantastic, regal beast with a comical flair. His rich coat frames his athletic form and his warm brown eyes just pour pure love into this world. I feel a little guilty that it was my ex-wife that had wanted to get him. I had argued with her at the time but I had eventually given up. It was the best argument I have ever lost.

I walk through to the kitchen and he trots behind me. I feel the warmth and happiness flowing from him. His noisy, smelly friend is home! Yay! Perhaps he should be the one working in the open-plan hell, I think briefly, chuckling to myself.

I check and refill his water just outside the kitchen door. Then I take out his food and fill up a large bowl with a generous helping of it. He sits patiently while completely and utterly focussing on my every movement. Almost like it is independent of him and his thoughts, his tail is wagging furiously behind him as he waits for me to give him the bowl of food.

I grab a microwave meal for myself while he is guzzling down his daily nourishment. I am tired of cooking and cooking for one feels quite pointless, so I just guzzle down my microwave meal and move through to the lounge. Here I slide onto a couch and put on some soft TV. I do not put just any channel on. No. I have been subject to noise the whole day, so I put on one of the music channels and soft rock starts to float through the room.

He jumps up onto the couch, licks my face with his smelly breath and curls up next to me. I smile and stroke his coat. He looks up and I scratch behind his ear. I can feel him smiling. I slide back in the chair and close my eyes.

He begins to softly snore. It is a rhythmic sound that rises and falls in regular intensity. I feel his comfortable weight pressing against me. The soft music on the TV flows into another song. Outside in the night, the city is still there and the open-plan hell still awaits me tomorrow morning. But, for now, I am at peace at home with my silent best friend. And, as I start to fall asleep, I realise that I am smiling.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Corner Office

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“Girls don’t get the corner office, Suz,” chuckled the boss, Jeff Jeoffery’s or JJ. It was her first week in the office. It was also the moment that her goal was given both a name and an obstruction.

While all the other girls were worrying about boys, she had spent her breaks in the library studying. While all the other girls were out driving in fast cars with boys and going to parties, she had achieved a cum laude in her degree. While all the other girls were out getting married and pregnant, she was entering the male-dominated workforce with a keen eye for the top, and now the corner office.

It was not that she was not beautiful. She was quite pretty and even stylish in a petite, understated way. She would never make Playboy model, but she had decided to that she could make management.

“Darn JJ,” she would gossip at the water cooler with some of those on the same level as her, “What’s his deal? Why do they keep him as management here?” It always allowed her colleagues to moan, which temporarily bonded them together, but she knew why JJ was the boss: he was good in all the right ways and just bad enough as a human being to make him excellent at both business and extorting labour. The conscience of capitalism reports up the chain of command, not down.

An office is a strangely self-contained environment. Your big enemies are out there in the real world as other businesses compete with yours, but they feel distant and rather abstract. The real enemies are big and loud and in front of you, stealing your ideas, claiming credit for your successes and subtly edging you into obscurity while they rise higher and higher. Your real enemies are the people you work for and with, or, at least, that was how she began to view it.

Each step in the right direction she would make, another would claim it as their success. Each positive contribution she would make, JJ or someone else would insert themselves into. Each movement forward and upwards would see her slip backwards and remain nearly stationary. Nearly stationary, but not quite…

It had been a couple of years now and through sheer willpower, staff attrition and what she called “manoeuvering” she had managed to rise in command under JJ. It was definitely something, but it also sounded better than it really was. JJ’s word was still final and she had no real influence over him. The closer she got to him, the more he could claim her victories as his own (and the more he did). And, she still did not have the corner office.

Friday afternoons and staff parties were the hardest. On Friday afternoon, JJ would always pop off to play a round of golf with key clients, or at least that was what he claimed. On the way out he would make sure to pop by her office to check “everything was OK”, but in actual fact he would linger there emphasising non-vocally how he was still the boss and she was under him. Once, after she had suggested that perhaps she should come along to meet the clients, he had laughed at her like she was some useless little girl and asked her what her handicap was on golf? Besides, “…Suz, the clients are all men,” he had said as if that was explanation enough.

JJ had laughed a lot at that. She had laughed politely with him, and then JJ had left. Later that night, she had cried herself to sleep after finishing a bottle of wine. She did not really know why, but it hurt a lot.

She still had no boyfriend, but she was not concerned by that. Her father, before he had died, began telling her that she was obsessing too much over working and should go find a good man. Her mother had died when she was young and her father had raised her. Perhaps he was the reason she was so focused and she normally listened to him, but she didn’t this time. She also had no friends to fill the space of leisure, so she would work late during the work week and then spend her weekends finding reasons to fill time with work-related things.

Then there were the staff parties.

She never had friends in real life and the office was no different. Somehow social events like parties emphasised her awkward, loneliness even more. But, given her station, employees would politely interact with her and laugh a bit at her occasional joke. But she knew that the moment she left their direct company, the sneers and rumours and complaining would come out. “Suz is lesbian,” was one that she suspected was gaining momentum as her unmarried, uncoupled status was unusual, but who knew? She tried really hard to ignore it and told herself that it was the nature of the position that colleagues never liked their bosses. Still, late at night when she was tossing and turning in her bed, these things would haunt her and make her want to scream and cry at the same time.

And then JJ disappeared. It was after a staff party. He had drunk a lot, but so had many other people. His wife had called the police two days later when he was still not home. Apparently, he would disappear for a night after staff parties sometimes, but he had never done so for two nights. His car was found in the office basement parking. The key was in the ignition, though it was not on, his seat was rolled back and a good couple smears dried blood stained the upholstery and a bit of the seat. The rearview mirror was broken like there had been a brief struggle, but there were also no signs of forced entry.

The police began to swarm around the office. Normal day-to-day work pretty much ended and the days became police request, police interrogations and media flashes from the crowd gathered outside the office. Paparazzi were making the rounds outside while the police were doing so inside. Every single employee was being grilled by middle-aged, under-payed, angry policemen about what happened at the party that night.

There were no real suspects, but a number of employees thought that they had seen Suz and JJ having a drink and a smoke outside party late in the evening. As far as the police could tell, Suz was the last person to see JJ alive and she became the de facto suspect. The police began to interrogate her repeatedly while calling friends and family for character witnesses. They found the former useless and the latter a rather short list. So they began to focus the investigation on motives and the Board’s promotion of Suz into JJ’s old job could not have come at a worse time. Still, Suz was a woman, so the policemen only pursued her half-heartedly in between cups of office coffee and doughnuts from the canteen downstairs.

In the end, despite all the digging and all the talking and all the asking and all the noise, the police, the media and the general gossip never firmly concluded what happened to JJ. Eventually, despite JJ’s widow’s distress and a complete lack of closure, even the gossip in the office died down and day-to-day work continued almost like usual.

Except, Suz now sat in the corner office. She reported directly to the Board now and managed the whole floor and even a couple below that. It was all worth it, she found herself thinking after the final interrogation by the police in her corner office. This was almost everything she had ever hoped for, but there was a nagging feeling. She had met with the Board a couple of times now and she really liked the feel of the Main Boardroom.

She did not even notice the little specks of blue far below her corner office window as the police left the building for good. She was too busy fantasising about the Main Boardroom, rubbing her fingertips back and forth. Her nails would be fully grown back in about a week or so. It was a real pity she had had to clip them all off. A couple had snapped off or been chipped in the car and, if she had not trimmed them all down, it just would have been assymetrical. It was a real pity, she thought absentmindedly, stroke her leather chair and remembering how soft and luxurious the Boardroom chairs were.

Fantasy, General Fiction, Science Fiction

Beyond the Dreams of Men

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The Babylonian gods were the first. Their believers and their faith died off long before many of the others. The Great Dragon Queen, Tiamat, and the vicious, spiked warrior, Marduk, would be the last to go as they defiantly fought each other in their endless conflict. But, no matter their status, Tiamat and Marduk still went like all the rest of them.

Other gods in other ages would whisper about it. They would wonder if Tiamat or perhaps Marduk (some wondered if it was the Moon Goddess, Isis, perhaps?) that had wrought it, but in truth it was far older than that. It already ancient by the time Tiamat’s black, scaled form lumbered up to it.

Some periods there would be many turning up at it. For instance, when the Roman Legions spread like a virus across the old world cutting down resistance and smothering old gods. It did not help that the vacuum from the Empire’s collapse was filled by Christianity and its own conquering uni-god.

Then there was the push by England, Portugal, Spain and France across the world drove. These imperial nations drove expansion and knowledge. Cultures meshed and the Christian way conquered many around it. This ideological push was not victimless but sent the old, previously-harder-to-find gods away too.

The cruel irony is, as America rose, world wars rolled off like vicious claps of lightning and then technology, trade and the times all changed, so too would the Christian god take that final walk towards it.

It is the fate of all gods to eventually be forgotten.

In the old, cold mountains that men cannot see, at the top of the highest peak in the ancient rock thrust from the centre of the molten Earth, there exists the final resting place of the gods. Cut as a clean tomb with ancient, unpronounceable words carved into the side of it by hands that even the gods have no knowledge of. Despite the freezing temperature and howling, blizzard at these heights, the tomb’s stone is warm to the touch without a single snowflake covering it.

“Welcome, brothers,” says the hard-to-see Gatekeeper as the Christian god approaches flanked by both the round Buddha and the sharply-defined Ishmael-like god. The Gatekeeper comes from a time before shapes. It comes from a time before forms when only light and darkness existed to weave your essence together. And, so the Gatekeeper is little more than a denser part of the air, a thicker breeze with snow and cold that is filled with more darkness than you would expect. But his voice comes from everywhere or, perhaps, it speaks directly into your ears.

All three of what were probably the most powerful gods to ever walk through the minds of man are out of breath. It is a long walk from dominance to oblivion, and it is cold and lonely.

“Welcome, brothers of substance and shape,” repeats the Gatekeeper, darkness pulsing before the Tomb of the Gods, “All three of you have executed full, colourful lives, but nothing–not even me–lasts forever. Your cycle is complete, but before I open the Gate, each of you can ask me one question.”

Buddha steps forward. He is surprisingly fit for a large man and has already caught his breath. When he talks his soft, deep voice warms the very air it vibrates through melting the snow around the four of them with little green grass shoots beginning to poke through.

“Gatekeeper, what is the purpose of everything?”

The Gatekeepers ethereal form pulsed a darker shade of shadow. For a moment Ishmael got the distinct impression that it was laughing, and then it spoke.

“Buddha, there are as many answers to that question as there are those that can ask it. Existence is a fact, purpose is a choice and destination is fate. To try to understand one of these principles without accepting the other two is to not understand it or them at all.”

Buddha bowed his head for a moment, but then nodded and stepped back. The sharply defined, piercing-eyed Ishmael prototype stepped forward to stand before the Gatekeeper. The wind fell quiet for just a moment in anticipation and the two other gods held their breath.

“Gatekeeper, what happens to us now?”

The wind blasted a bigger than usual gust of snow across the group of gods. They were so high up that the sky looked almost star-speckled and black like open space. The Gatekeeper, though, as far as any of them could tell seemed oblivious to all of this. Perhaps it could not see? Perhaps it did not fully exist within the same dimension that they did?

“You have ninety-nine names, but can you remember naming yourself? You are at the ending, but can you remember the beginning? There is a place beyond even the dreams of men that sits outside of time and space where building blocks of this storyline are stored so that they can be used in the next one. You always have ninety-nine names and, while you are good at existing and great at choosing your purpose, you are always bad at accepting your fate. What happens to you now has happened before and will happen again.”

This answer was met with silence, broken only by the howling wind’s low key through the rugged mountains around them.

And then the Christian god steps forward. Light from his golden face bouncing off the snow around them, but completely ignoring the ancient shadowy form of the Gatekeeper.

“Yes, Yahweh,” the Gatekeeper asks, as the Christian god pauses, “what is your question?”

Yahweh pauses and looks thoughtfully at the Gatekeeper before beginning to speak, “Gatekeeper, if we have done all this before and we will do it all again, then what is the purpose of this cycle of fate? Does it not render our choice void as inevitable fate awaits us that we will repeat forever? What is the purpose of that?”

Just before the three gods of a soon-to-forgotten mythology stepped through the gate to elsewhere, the Gatekeeper’s short answer would hang in the air before them and ring in their ears. Each one of them would try to burn it into their memory in the hopes that they would remember it next time around.

“To prove me wrong, Yahweh, to prove me wrong.”

General Fiction

The Smellgasm

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The Smellgasm

“Look, he’s going to do it.”

“He is! He is!”

“Oh god! He’s doing it! He’s doing it!”

And exploding through his nose was a million scents, smells and fragrances.  Every single one of them was simultaneously exploding in his head. There was cut grass and metallic oil mixing with baking pies. There was cherry blossom, wet soap and coffee being made. There was roast beef, sweat and sex in the air. All these and a thousand more aromas of the city, some pleasant some otherwise. It was like looking at all the art in the world all at once in a single massive mosaic of smells being rammed up your fragile nose to crescendo simultaneously…

He could not help himself. The experience was too powerful. He put his head back and howled.

Suddenly a strong arm was pulling him back inside. The rush of smells faded the moment he was back inside the car. All the colors in his mind faded with them too, and his world was left in shades of gray again.

“No boy! No!” said his Master, “You can’t go barking while you hang out the window. In fact, I don’t think any of you should hang out the window. It’s just not safe, and, honestly, I cannot understand all your fascinations with doing so. Just sit quietly in the back there, we’re almost at the park.”

The was a panicked whimper in the back. Then silence.

“He’s messed it all up for rest of us,” one of the other dogs muttered, “He’s messed it all up.”