Hello. I got the fifth installment of Tooth and Claw up at my writing blog. So feel free to check it out. If you want to catch up, or remember what I've been up to, please check out the other installments of my little literary improv experiment. And be gentle with your criticisms. I've been really busy with family business, and I have a wicked head cold, so be warned, you may end up reading some bizarre fever dream from the snake pit of my mind. ;)
Showing posts with label Fictional Freakouts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fictional Freakouts. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Friday, 17 April 2009
Friday Fiction Feature
It's back, for no good reason that I'm compelled to finish things I start. I have the latest installment of my improvised blog story Tooth & Claw up on my fiction site. If you're new to it, or need a recap, then feel free to click on the other chapters...
Enjoy.
And be sure to check out...
Friday, 3 April 2009
Friday Fiction Feature...
... is on temporary hiatus, I have the beginnings of a cold, and a bit too much on my proverbial plate to keep up with this week's installment. I hope to have part four up next Friday, if possible.
So until then, re-read the first three installments, and revel in all my little blunders.
And on another note, a while ago, I participated in a project where 11 authors from all over the world each contributed a chapter in a big sprawling apocalyptic fantasy epic called Sha'Daa: Tales of the Apocalypse.
The idea was that each writer was each given a basic premise for their chapter, some background information, a title for their chapter, and told to go nuts. And we did, and the project has been picked up by a small-press publisher.
The first book in the 2-book project (the one containing my story) will be coming out May 1 and will be available via Amazon or through the publisher. I will let you know how to get the book and post the appropriate links as soon as I get them.
And here's a look at the cover....
Hopefully I'll shake this stuffy-headed feeling quickly, and might be able to get something business related up later.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Friday, 20 March 2009
Friday, 13 March 2009
Friday Fiction Feature
I'm starting a new feature where I'm doing one of my improvised web-stories and will be posting a new installment hopefully every Friday. But I'm not posting them here since this is more of a business-pop culture blog. Luckily, I have a writing blog called my Fiction Files.
You can find the first installment of my new improvised story Tooth & Claw here. Hopefully part 2 will be up next Friday.
Enjoy.
You can find the first installment of my new improvised story Tooth & Claw here. Hopefully part 2 will be up next Friday.
Enjoy.
Sunday, 17 August 2008
The Case of the Waylaid Wizard
The sky above was smoky grey as forest fires munched on Malibu mansions in the distance. The neon sign outside my office window buzzed and flickered like the products it advertised in the store below my office. But I didn't sell those kinds of pleasures, what I sold was peace of mind to people with too much fame, too much money, and too little intelligence, that's right, I worked for Hollywood. Hollywood needs me, because I'm Furious D, and I'm a Dick, a Private Dick.
My intercom buzzed, the surprise snapped me out of my impromptu siesta, not only because it held the promise of a case, but because I didn't own an intercom.
"There's a lady here to see you," said the voice of my secretary over the intercom. Which also surprised me because I didn't have a secretary.
"Come on in," I said, running a comb through my hair with one hand, popping mints to hide the scent of gin with another, and straightening my tie with the other.... What other?
The door opened, and in walked a helluva dame, Dame Judy Dench to be exact.
"Is this office of the William Morris Agency?" she asked.
"They're down the hall," I replied, "Go to the Janitor's closet and knock three times."
"Thanks," said Judy Dench as she left, and in walked a tall cold drink of water.
The drink of water was in the hands of a long legged femme of the sub-species fatale. I knew those legs that went all the way from the feet to the hips, those ruby lips, red like... um... rubies, with matching hair, swaying seductively, thanks to the wind machine that followed her, and an attitude.
"Well if it isn't Gladiola Hassenfeffer," I said, "I haven't seen you in a long time. Weren't you killed off the last time?"
"Who has the time to read through all that," said Gladiola, "and this is a blog story that's made up on the spot, who really cares about continuity. Don't you recall I like my friends to call me Lola."
"I don't recall us being friends," I said.
"Then think of me as a client," said Lola as one hand dipped into her ample cleavage, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it on my desk. I picked it up, it smelled like lavender and Vick's vapo rub, and it was stuffed with $100 bills. I'm talking money, cash, payola, spondooliks, moola, mucho dinaro...
"Will you stop coming up with slang terms for money in the narration," asked Lola, "I need a dick."
"I'm sure you do," I said, leering lasciviously.
"I don't have time for the usual innuendos," snapped Lola, "I have a case for you."
"What kind of case?" I asked. "Briefcase, suitcase, valise, trunk...?"
"Put down the fucking thesaurus," snapped Lola, "and quit trying to fill out this story. It's a missing person case."
"Oh," I said, slipping the envelope into my pocket. "Who's missing?"
"Harry Potter," said Lola.
"That's big," I said, "and by 'big' I mean expensive, costly, overpriced..."
"Cut it out and find him," said Lola.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"The boy wizard," said Lola.
I shrugged.
"Biggest publishing phenomenon since Guttenberg's Bible?" added Lola, her green eyes sparking with anger.
I shrugged again.
"They also make movies from these books," said Lola, "big movies. The latest one was supposed to be out this fall, but now he's missing, and might not be seen until July."
"Oh," I said, faking my way through it, "that Harry Potter. So you want me to find this punk, and what do I do when I find him. Want his legs broken? Cause that costs extra."
"I just want him found," said Lola. "People are worried that his next picture is going to suck harder than an electrified sucking machine, and we need to hear the truth!"
"All right," I said, "who was he last seen with?"
"He's been hanging out with the Warner Brothers since he got into movies," said Lola, "I suggest you start there."
"They're a heavy crew," I said.
"One of the heaviest," added Lola, for no real reason before sashaying out my office. While I hated for her to go, I did enjoy watching her leave.
"Quit ogling my ass you perv," snapped Lola.
"Hello Toots," I said to the receptionist Toots McGee.
"Hello Furious," replied Toots, flashing me her $1200 smile, and some of her $5,000 cleavage. "Are you here as a dick?"
"I'm here on business."
"What kind of business?" she asked.
"Bad business," I answered.
"How bad?"
"As bad as this faux-noir banter," I said. "I need to see the Warner Brothers."
"What about?"
"It's about a kid named Harry Potter."
"I'll see if they're available," she said, picking up her phone.
"I'll wait," I said. The Warner Brothers were big players here in La-La Land, running all the rackets they could get their hands on. Movies, TV, magazines, books, comics, and just about anything else that could be watched, read, or otherwise geeked out over.
"They're sending someone to collect you," said Toots.
Suddenly a big black shape appeared in front of me.
"Christian Bale?" I asked.
"I'm Batman," replied the shape with pointy ears. "And you have to go."
"Listen Bub," I said, "I want to talk to the Warner Brothers, and I'm going to talk to the Warner Brothers."
"You'll have to get past me first," replied Batman.
"If that's how you want it," I said, "but I ain't your momma, and I must warn you that I know Judo." To be specific, it was Judo Johnson who ran an Orange Julius stand at the mall.
I was just about to get into my proper fighting stance when he smacked me with a big bag of money.
When I regained consciousness I was in a dumpster outside the headquarters of the Warner Brothers.
"Get out of my office," growled a voice.
I looked up and saw Robert Shaye shaking his fist, the sleeves of his tailored imported suit were frayed, and he reeked of disgrace, humiliation, and Rub A535.
"I gotta production company to run!" he grumbled as I climbed out of the dumpster which had a crudely scrawled cardboard sign stuck to the side declaring it the hq of Unique Pictures, "I gotta a lot of work to do on the sequel to The Golden Compass!"
As I left Shaye to his rambling dreams of comebacks, I realized that if I was going to get to the bottom of this case I needed to be subtle.
And for that I needed a tank.
"So," said Ted, of Ted's Tanks & Artillery Rental as he pocketed the cash, "what do you need the Abrams for?"
"I need to talk to some folks about Harry Potter," I answered, client confidentiality was never a strong suit with me, "he's missing, and needs to be found."
"I thought he went missing because he was flashing his weeny in that play on Broadway," mused Ted.
"That's a New York thing," I said, "and what happens in New York, stays in New York."
"I thought that was Vegas?"
"I doesn't really matter," I said. "Besides, if anyone really cared and wanted to stop him, all they had to do was go to the dress rehearsal and yell: 'I've seen more meat on a dirty fork.'"
"True," said Ted.
"And not only that," I added, "unlike us, the kids who watch Harry Potter only really care about the stories, and don't really care too much about the actors unless they're somehow unable to do their job, or obnoxious adults shove it in their faces."
"Good point," said Ted, as he tossed me the keys to the tank. "Have fun."
"Damn it," grumbled Batman from beneath the tread of my rented Abrams tank.
"Now can I see the Warner Brothers?" I asked.
"Hell no," grumbled Batman. "They're making me rich, nobody bothers them!"
Since I couldn't appeal to his sense of reason, I decided to appeal to his sense of fist.
"All right," said a voice after I whaled on Batman for a while, "enough with the beating, we'll see you."
"You know," croaked Batman, "you could have said that ten minutes ago!"
The door opened and I walked in to be the first outsider to go to face to face, mano e mano, toe to toe with the famous Warner Brothers.
"So," moaned a figure whose physique made Marlon Brando at his worse look like Nicole Richie after a purge splurge. "I should introduce myself, I'm Time Warner."
"I'm Aol Warner," said the second brother, (pronounce A-hole) even fatter than the other. His suit, which was tight, had been a circus tent in a previous life.
"And I'm C.N.N. Warner," said the last brother, the folds of his multiple chins, more numerous than the Chins in the Beijing phone book, jiggled with each word.
"Do you know why I'm here?" I asked.
They attempted to nod, but their neckfat got in the way.
"Where's the Potter kid?" I asked.
"He's safe," said Aol Warner, a young hand poking out from between two folds of flab, before Aol pushed it back in again, "and he'll come out in July."
"I thought it was January?"
"You're an illiterate," said Time Warner.
"And you're ugly too," said CNN Warner.
"Well at least I'm the thinnest man in the room," I said. "Hand over the kid. Before I break out the shop-vac and start doing some home liposuction."
"You can't harm us," said Time Warner, "we're too big!"
"Too rich," added Aol.
"And too powerful," said CNN.
"We also have a secret weapon," said Time Warner.
"A powerful weapon," added Aol for no other reason than hearing the sound of his own voice.
"It's called Synergy!" concluded CNN. "A perfectly running corporate machine. You see, we made a lot of money off of the Dark Knight."
"A helluva lot of money," added Aol, provided nothing of any use, again.
"And we figured that having Harry Potter open in the fall would be too much too soon," said Time Warner. "So we bumped him back to July of next year."
"Don't you see what that's done?" I asked. The Warner Brothers just stared at me with blank looks on their obese faces.
"Folks are now speculating that the movie's going to suck," I said, "or that you're angry over the actor appearing Equus and that it'll somehow change the film into a nudity fest, and your own magazines aren't cluing into the plan in time to change their cover stories."
"Yeah," said Time Warner, "that did piss me off."
"So why not let the kid go," I said.
"And admit a mistake?" they all said horrified. "Never!"
"Besides," said Aol Warner, "we've got a movie called Twilight taking over the tentpole position this fall. It should do great!"
"I don't think you guys made Twilight," I said.
"Shit," said Time Warner.
"But we make everything!" blurted out CNN Warner. "Don't we?"
"No," I said, "there's still some competition left."
"We must stop this thing called competition!" declared Time Warner.
"Damn right!" added Aol.
"It might force us to do actual work!" stated CNN Warner.
They great bulky forms started to move, and I saw my chance. While they were slowly waddling to the door I lunged toward Aol and shoved my hand into the roles of flab. It was like sticking my hand into a vat of meringue, but I felt another hand, grabbed it and pulled.
"Thanks a lot bud-dy!" said the poor creature I pulled out.
"Pauly Shore!" damn, wrong lost person. "Get back in there and send Harry Potter out."
I shoved Pauly Shore back into the folds of corporate flab, and out popped Harry Potter.
"Let's run for it kiddo," I said, "there's an army of eager kids and geeky adults waiting to see you."
"Thank you sir," said Harry Potter, "how can I thank you?"
"What have you got?" I asked.
"Aol's wallet," said Harry holding up a wallet stuffed with large bills, that had been made from the skins of smaller media companies.
"Then it's humvees for everyone!" I said, and we made a run for it.
My intercom buzzed, the surprise snapped me out of my impromptu siesta, not only because it held the promise of a case, but because I didn't own an intercom.
"There's a lady here to see you," said the voice of my secretary over the intercom. Which also surprised me because I didn't have a secretary.
"Come on in," I said, running a comb through my hair with one hand, popping mints to hide the scent of gin with another, and straightening my tie with the other.... What other?
The door opened, and in walked a helluva dame, Dame Judy Dench to be exact.
"Is this office of the William Morris Agency?" she asked.
"They're down the hall," I replied, "Go to the Janitor's closet and knock three times."
"Thanks," said Judy Dench as she left, and in walked a tall cold drink of water.
The drink of water was in the hands of a long legged femme of the sub-species fatale. I knew those legs that went all the way from the feet to the hips, those ruby lips, red like... um... rubies, with matching hair, swaying seductively, thanks to the wind machine that followed her, and an attitude.
"Well if it isn't Gladiola Hassenfeffer," I said, "I haven't seen you in a long time. Weren't you killed off the last time?"
"Who has the time to read through all that," said Gladiola, "and this is a blog story that's made up on the spot, who really cares about continuity. Don't you recall I like my friends to call me Lola."
"I don't recall us being friends," I said.
"Then think of me as a client," said Lola as one hand dipped into her ample cleavage, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it on my desk. I picked it up, it smelled like lavender and Vick's vapo rub, and it was stuffed with $100 bills. I'm talking money, cash, payola, spondooliks, moola, mucho dinaro...
"Will you stop coming up with slang terms for money in the narration," asked Lola, "I need a dick."
"I'm sure you do," I said, leering lasciviously.
"I don't have time for the usual innuendos," snapped Lola, "I have a case for you."
"What kind of case?" I asked. "Briefcase, suitcase, valise, trunk...?"
"Put down the fucking thesaurus," snapped Lola, "and quit trying to fill out this story. It's a missing person case."
"Oh," I said, slipping the envelope into my pocket. "Who's missing?"
"Harry Potter," said Lola.
"That's big," I said, "and by 'big' I mean expensive, costly, overpriced..."
"Cut it out and find him," said Lola.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"The boy wizard," said Lola.
I shrugged.
"Biggest publishing phenomenon since Guttenberg's Bible?" added Lola, her green eyes sparking with anger.
I shrugged again.
"They also make movies from these books," said Lola, "big movies. The latest one was supposed to be out this fall, but now he's missing, and might not be seen until July."
"Oh," I said, faking my way through it, "that Harry Potter. So you want me to find this punk, and what do I do when I find him. Want his legs broken? Cause that costs extra."
"I just want him found," said Lola. "People are worried that his next picture is going to suck harder than an electrified sucking machine, and we need to hear the truth!"
"All right," I said, "who was he last seen with?"
"He's been hanging out with the Warner Brothers since he got into movies," said Lola, "I suggest you start there."
"They're a heavy crew," I said.
"One of the heaviest," added Lola, for no real reason before sashaying out my office. While I hated for her to go, I did enjoy watching her leave.
"Quit ogling my ass you perv," snapped Lola.
***
"Hello Toots," I said to the receptionist Toots McGee.
"Hello Furious," replied Toots, flashing me her $1200 smile, and some of her $5,000 cleavage. "Are you here as a dick?"
"I'm here on business."
"What kind of business?" she asked.
"Bad business," I answered.
"How bad?"
"As bad as this faux-noir banter," I said. "I need to see the Warner Brothers."
"What about?"
"It's about a kid named Harry Potter."
"I'll see if they're available," she said, picking up her phone.
"I'll wait," I said. The Warner Brothers were big players here in La-La Land, running all the rackets they could get their hands on. Movies, TV, magazines, books, comics, and just about anything else that could be watched, read, or otherwise geeked out over.
"They're sending someone to collect you," said Toots.
Suddenly a big black shape appeared in front of me.
"Christian Bale?" I asked.
"I'm Batman," replied the shape with pointy ears. "And you have to go."
"Listen Bub," I said, "I want to talk to the Warner Brothers, and I'm going to talk to the Warner Brothers."
"You'll have to get past me first," replied Batman.
"If that's how you want it," I said, "but I ain't your momma, and I must warn you that I know Judo." To be specific, it was Judo Johnson who ran an Orange Julius stand at the mall.
I was just about to get into my proper fighting stance when he smacked me with a big bag of money.
***
When I regained consciousness I was in a dumpster outside the headquarters of the Warner Brothers.
"Get out of my office," growled a voice.
I looked up and saw Robert Shaye shaking his fist, the sleeves of his tailored imported suit were frayed, and he reeked of disgrace, humiliation, and Rub A535.
"I gotta production company to run!" he grumbled as I climbed out of the dumpster which had a crudely scrawled cardboard sign stuck to the side declaring it the hq of Unique Pictures, "I gotta a lot of work to do on the sequel to The Golden Compass!"
As I left Shaye to his rambling dreams of comebacks, I realized that if I was going to get to the bottom of this case I needed to be subtle.
And for that I needed a tank.
***
"So," said Ted, of Ted's Tanks & Artillery Rental as he pocketed the cash, "what do you need the Abrams for?"
"I need to talk to some folks about Harry Potter," I answered, client confidentiality was never a strong suit with me, "he's missing, and needs to be found."
"I thought he went missing because he was flashing his weeny in that play on Broadway," mused Ted.
"That's a New York thing," I said, "and what happens in New York, stays in New York."
"I thought that was Vegas?"
"I doesn't really matter," I said. "Besides, if anyone really cared and wanted to stop him, all they had to do was go to the dress rehearsal and yell: 'I've seen more meat on a dirty fork.'"
"True," said Ted.
"And not only that," I added, "unlike us, the kids who watch Harry Potter only really care about the stories, and don't really care too much about the actors unless they're somehow unable to do their job, or obnoxious adults shove it in their faces."
"Good point," said Ted, as he tossed me the keys to the tank. "Have fun."
***
"Damn it," grumbled Batman from beneath the tread of my rented Abrams tank.
"Now can I see the Warner Brothers?" I asked.
"Hell no," grumbled Batman. "They're making me rich, nobody bothers them!"
Since I couldn't appeal to his sense of reason, I decided to appeal to his sense of fist.
"All right," said a voice after I whaled on Batman for a while, "enough with the beating, we'll see you."
"You know," croaked Batman, "you could have said that ten minutes ago!"
The door opened and I walked in to be the first outsider to go to face to face, mano e mano, toe to toe with the famous Warner Brothers.
"So," moaned a figure whose physique made Marlon Brando at his worse look like Nicole Richie after a purge splurge. "I should introduce myself, I'm Time Warner."
"I'm Aol Warner," said the second brother, (pronounce A-hole) even fatter than the other. His suit, which was tight, had been a circus tent in a previous life.
"And I'm C.N.N. Warner," said the last brother, the folds of his multiple chins, more numerous than the Chins in the Beijing phone book, jiggled with each word.
"Do you know why I'm here?" I asked.
They attempted to nod, but their neckfat got in the way.
"Where's the Potter kid?" I asked.
"He's safe," said Aol Warner, a young hand poking out from between two folds of flab, before Aol pushed it back in again, "and he'll come out in July."
"I thought it was January?"
"You're an illiterate," said Time Warner.
"And you're ugly too," said CNN Warner.
"Well at least I'm the thinnest man in the room," I said. "Hand over the kid. Before I break out the shop-vac and start doing some home liposuction."
"You can't harm us," said Time Warner, "we're too big!"
"Too rich," added Aol.
"And too powerful," said CNN.
"We also have a secret weapon," said Time Warner.
"A powerful weapon," added Aol for no other reason than hearing the sound of his own voice.
"It's called Synergy!" concluded CNN. "A perfectly running corporate machine. You see, we made a lot of money off of the Dark Knight."
"A helluva lot of money," added Aol, provided nothing of any use, again.
"And we figured that having Harry Potter open in the fall would be too much too soon," said Time Warner. "So we bumped him back to July of next year."
"Don't you see what that's done?" I asked. The Warner Brothers just stared at me with blank looks on their obese faces.
"Folks are now speculating that the movie's going to suck," I said, "or that you're angry over the actor appearing Equus and that it'll somehow change the film into a nudity fest, and your own magazines aren't cluing into the plan in time to change their cover stories."
"Yeah," said Time Warner, "that did piss me off."
"So why not let the kid go," I said.
"And admit a mistake?" they all said horrified. "Never!"
"Besides," said Aol Warner, "we've got a movie called Twilight taking over the tentpole position this fall. It should do great!"
"I don't think you guys made Twilight," I said.
"Shit," said Time Warner.
"But we make everything!" blurted out CNN Warner. "Don't we?"
"No," I said, "there's still some competition left."
"We must stop this thing called competition!" declared Time Warner.
"Damn right!" added Aol.
"It might force us to do actual work!" stated CNN Warner.
They great bulky forms started to move, and I saw my chance. While they were slowly waddling to the door I lunged toward Aol and shoved my hand into the roles of flab. It was like sticking my hand into a vat of meringue, but I felt another hand, grabbed it and pulled.
"Thanks a lot bud-dy!" said the poor creature I pulled out.
"Pauly Shore!" damn, wrong lost person. "Get back in there and send Harry Potter out."
I shoved Pauly Shore back into the folds of corporate flab, and out popped Harry Potter.
"Let's run for it kiddo," I said, "there's an army of eager kids and geeky adults waiting to see you."
"Thank you sir," said Harry Potter, "how can I thank you?"
"What have you got?" I asked.
"Aol's wallet," said Harry holding up a wallet stuffed with large bills, that had been made from the skins of smaller media companies.
"Then it's humvees for everyone!" I said, and we made a run for it.
CASE CLOSED!
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #8
New to this little piece of literary improvisation? Then check out the earlier chapters.
"We are at heart a peaceful people," said Procurator Wind-Grass.
"I'm also pretty sure you're not native to this planet," replied Thorn, earning a surprised look from Emma.
"You're very perceptive... by the way, you never told me your name?"
"Thorn," he answered.
"Well Thorn," continued the Procurator, "we are not native to this planet, or this system. Our home planet Gesserax was destroyed by an asteroid bombardment over a century ago. My parents came here with the rest of the survivors to this planet as refugees. It was the only habitable world within range of our sub-light ships, and then...."
"You had some trouble with the people already here," added Thorn.
"Sad," replied the Procurator, "but true. We tried to make peaceful contact with the Brutals, form a partnership since neither of us could go anywhere. We offered them our medical and scientific knowledge in exchange for peace. However Brutals have no interest in peace, only in sacrificing to their idols."
"I guess you won," said Emma, not really knowing why.
The Procurator tapped his chin. "We did. Kept them in the enclosures, and tried to do our best to nudge them along the path of evolution."
"How?" asked Emma.
"Eugenics," said Thorne in English, before returning to the Procurator's language. "That's our word for sterilizing the undesirable."
"Then you do understand," said the Procurator. "We did that, and allowed only the cooperative ones to breed, but the sterilized ones started causing acting out violently. We tried exiling them from the enclosures, but they would just come back to attack us. Lobotomizing them just made them even more aggressive. Then we realized a way to use one of their own traditions against them."
The Procurator opened a shiny metallic decanter and poured some green liquid into a glass, he offered some to Thorn and Emma, but they turned it down. Emma because she didn't take anything that didn't come from her own planet, no matter how thirsty she was, and Thorn, because he didn't feel like being a good guest.
"They worshipped the spatial rifts," said the Procurator, "they occur naturally on this world, appearing according to some complex pattern based on natural eddies caused by interactions with signals from a nearby pulsar with the planet's electromagnetic field. The Brutals thought they were the mouths of their gods, and after butchering and burning their sacrificial victims would toss the ashes into the rifts."
"So you would lobotomize them," concluded Thorn, "and toss them into the rift, to our planet."
"We do apologize," said the Procurator, taking a sip of his drink and opening a small box on his desk. "We thought the rifts led to caves on an uninhabited world. It was not our intention to anger a technologically advanced culture like yours." The Procurator took Thorn's pistol out of the box. "I assume this is some sort of a weapon."
"It is," answered Thorn.
The Procurator aimed the pistol at Emma.
"Why don't you tell me how it's made and how it works," asked the Procurator, his tone deceptively pleasant, "so I won't have to test it on your friend here."
"Sure," said Thorn, "but I have to say something first."
"What?"
"Bad touch."
ZZZZZKKKTTTT!!!!
The Procurator screamed as sparks leapt off the pistol's grip and up his arm. He then staggered backwards, into his own desks, dropped the pistol, and fell to the floor.
Thorn picked up the pistol and put it against the Procurator's temple.
"You know," said Thorn, "I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, give you a chance to explain yourself, but when you decided to pull the old 'threaten the woman' stunt, you just have to go down."
"Fire that thing and a hundred guards will be in here," groaned the Procurator. "Not even that weapon will save you."
Thorn smiled, a chill went down Emma's spine.
"This isn't the first time I've been threatened with an army," said Thorn, "and I've been threatened by scarier people than yours. Now I want you to listen, and listen carefully, because I won't be repeating myself. It's not my job to make you change your ways. I can't change your history, or those Brutals or anything about you. What I can change, what I can handle is how you affect my planet and my people."
"Is your planet going to declare war on us?" asked the Procurator, fear in his eyes.
"If you're lucky," answered Thorn, "but your luck has run out, so you have to deal with me." Thorn then pressed a button on his watch.
"Tanaka here," came a voice from the watch.
"We found out who was using the rifts," said Thorn, "we need to teach them some manners. Initiate the demonstration, about thirty clicks east of portal location."
"On it," answered Tanaka.
"Get up," ordered Thorn.
The Procurator got up, his legs wobbly.
"Go to the window," commanded Thorn. "Look out the window."
The Procurator approached the window. Emma looked out, she could make out a needle thin contrail in the distance.
"Is that a missile?" asked Emma. Thorn remained silent, but she got her answer.
The whole sky went white, then orange, and everything shook as a terrible noise, a hundred thousand thunders, blasted across them.
Emma fell to the floor, her eyes dazzled by the light. In a few seconds her sight returned and she started to hear Thorn over the fading boom.
"Send anything through any rift to my world," said Thorn, "and I will send one hundred thousand of those things to start. And after I've burnt your cities to ashes, I will then get very, very unpleasant."
"What was that?" asked Emma.
"It was a fusion bomb," answered Thorn in English, "just a small one."
"I see," said the Procurator, "I understand."
"I suggest you find some other way to break through to the Brutals," said Thorn, "tell them that little explosion was a demonstration from their gods to seek peace. I don't really care, just don't use my planet to dump your problems."
The Procurator nodded.
"You see," said Thorn, "two different species can break through. Now take us to the nearest portal."
The Procurator nodded.
"Is it sealed?" asked Thorn.
Fahey nodded and turned off a machine that looked to Emma like a something out of the prop-room for Frankenstein.
"Did you really intend to drop a hundred thousand of those bombs on his planet?" asked Emma. For some reason, being in a huge storm drain beneath Los Angeles now seemed positively homey compared to where she'd been.
"No," said Thorn, "we only have a thousand."
"I feel dizzy," said Emma. "I need some air."
Emma stepped out into the night air of her home planet. The concrete banks of the dry riverbed seemed to spin around her.
"Emma," said Thorn, "are you all right?"
"I don't know," said Emma, "should I? I just visited an alien planet, watched you electrocute an alien and threaten to blow up his planet. How should I feel?"
"I'm responsible for six billion lives here," answered Thorn, "sometime I have to be--"
Emma collapsed into Thorn's arms, her eyes rolling upward into her head.
"Shit!" said Thorn.
"She's stable," said Dr. Chambers, his eyes studying the scanner readouts in the Brigade's clinic. "In fact, according to her brainwaves, she in deep REM sleep."
"What happened to her?"
Dr. Chambers shrugged. "It could be a psychological reaction. Not everyone is as mentally.... 'flexible' as you are. Or... What's this?"
Thorn looked at the monitor. In the back of Emma's Grail's brain was a small oval object.
"I think it's some sort of microchip," said Chambers.
"Could it be the reason why she understood the other planet's languages?" asked Thorn.
"Why did those first aliens you met give her one, and not give you one?" asked Chambers. "Why didn't they rewire her brain like they did yours?"
Thorn shrugged.
"Hey," said Fahey, studying his own equipment. "Whatever it is, it's sending a signal. I'm talking terrabytes of data a second."
"Where's the signal going?" asked Thorn.
"It's short range," answered Fahey. "It's going to your office. To you office computer to be exact."
The door to Thorn's office slid open and he walked in alone.
"Still prefer to face the unknown alone," said an extremely familiar voice. Thorn looked into a hologram of his own face.
"That's right," said the hologram of Thorn, "it's me. After all this time I still haven't lost my taste for melodrama."
"You look..."
"Older?" said the hologram. "Yes, we will age, eventually, but only slightly, I won't tell you how long. Let's just say long enough to pack an interactive hologram program into a chip smaller than a the tap shoes of an angel dancing on the head of a pin, and toss in a universal translator to boot."
"The rift must have activ--"
"I remember what happened," said the hologram. "I don't have much time before my program burns out your primitive computer. You remember the third time she met you?"
Thorn nodded.
"Well you were wrong," said the hologram of Thorn. "It was actually the fourth time she met you. She doesn't remember it, because it happened in the future. Yes, your theory was right, time travellers do lose their memories of future events, it didn't just happen to you. But back to my story, it was the fifth time I met her... after a long time, and... damn, I'm just a simulation and it still chokes me up."
"What?"
"I have included all the information that will prevent the future she visited me from ever happening," said the hologram, "trust me, it'll be better for every one."
Thorn's desktop printer came on and started pumping out pages of data.
"You'll know what to do with this information when the time comes," said Thorn. "I guess I should tell you that the pain will get better, but I was never very good at lying to myself."
"What pain?"
"Time's up," said the hologram, which then vanished in a flash and the smell of ozone and burnt circuits.
Thorn stood alone in his office.
________________________
"We are at heart a peaceful people," said Procurator Wind-Grass.
"I'm also pretty sure you're not native to this planet," replied Thorn, earning a surprised look from Emma.
"You're very perceptive... by the way, you never told me your name?"
"Thorn," he answered.
"Well Thorn," continued the Procurator, "we are not native to this planet, or this system. Our home planet Gesserax was destroyed by an asteroid bombardment over a century ago. My parents came here with the rest of the survivors to this planet as refugees. It was the only habitable world within range of our sub-light ships, and then...."
"You had some trouble with the people already here," added Thorn.
"Sad," replied the Procurator, "but true. We tried to make peaceful contact with the Brutals, form a partnership since neither of us could go anywhere. We offered them our medical and scientific knowledge in exchange for peace. However Brutals have no interest in peace, only in sacrificing to their idols."
"I guess you won," said Emma, not really knowing why.
The Procurator tapped his chin. "We did. Kept them in the enclosures, and tried to do our best to nudge them along the path of evolution."
"How?" asked Emma.
"Eugenics," said Thorne in English, before returning to the Procurator's language. "That's our word for sterilizing the undesirable."
"Then you do understand," said the Procurator. "We did that, and allowed only the cooperative ones to breed, but the sterilized ones started causing acting out violently. We tried exiling them from the enclosures, but they would just come back to attack us. Lobotomizing them just made them even more aggressive. Then we realized a way to use one of their own traditions against them."
The Procurator opened a shiny metallic decanter and poured some green liquid into a glass, he offered some to Thorn and Emma, but they turned it down. Emma because she didn't take anything that didn't come from her own planet, no matter how thirsty she was, and Thorn, because he didn't feel like being a good guest.
"They worshipped the spatial rifts," said the Procurator, "they occur naturally on this world, appearing according to some complex pattern based on natural eddies caused by interactions with signals from a nearby pulsar with the planet's electromagnetic field. The Brutals thought they were the mouths of their gods, and after butchering and burning their sacrificial victims would toss the ashes into the rifts."
"So you would lobotomize them," concluded Thorn, "and toss them into the rift, to our planet."
"We do apologize," said the Procurator, taking a sip of his drink and opening a small box on his desk. "We thought the rifts led to caves on an uninhabited world. It was not our intention to anger a technologically advanced culture like yours." The Procurator took Thorn's pistol out of the box. "I assume this is some sort of a weapon."
"It is," answered Thorn.
The Procurator aimed the pistol at Emma.
"Why don't you tell me how it's made and how it works," asked the Procurator, his tone deceptively pleasant, "so I won't have to test it on your friend here."
"Sure," said Thorn, "but I have to say something first."
"What?"
"Bad touch."
ZZZZZKKKTTTT!!!!
The Procurator screamed as sparks leapt off the pistol's grip and up his arm. He then staggered backwards, into his own desks, dropped the pistol, and fell to the floor.
Thorn picked up the pistol and put it against the Procurator's temple.
"You know," said Thorn, "I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, give you a chance to explain yourself, but when you decided to pull the old 'threaten the woman' stunt, you just have to go down."
"Fire that thing and a hundred guards will be in here," groaned the Procurator. "Not even that weapon will save you."
Thorn smiled, a chill went down Emma's spine.
"This isn't the first time I've been threatened with an army," said Thorn, "and I've been threatened by scarier people than yours. Now I want you to listen, and listen carefully, because I won't be repeating myself. It's not my job to make you change your ways. I can't change your history, or those Brutals or anything about you. What I can change, what I can handle is how you affect my planet and my people."
"Is your planet going to declare war on us?" asked the Procurator, fear in his eyes.
"If you're lucky," answered Thorn, "but your luck has run out, so you have to deal with me." Thorn then pressed a button on his watch.
"Tanaka here," came a voice from the watch.
"We found out who was using the rifts," said Thorn, "we need to teach them some manners. Initiate the demonstration, about thirty clicks east of portal location."
"On it," answered Tanaka.
"Get up," ordered Thorn.
The Procurator got up, his legs wobbly.
"Go to the window," commanded Thorn. "Look out the window."
The Procurator approached the window. Emma looked out, she could make out a needle thin contrail in the distance.
"Is that a missile?" asked Emma. Thorn remained silent, but she got her answer.
The whole sky went white, then orange, and everything shook as a terrible noise, a hundred thousand thunders, blasted across them.
Emma fell to the floor, her eyes dazzled by the light. In a few seconds her sight returned and she started to hear Thorn over the fading boom.
"Send anything through any rift to my world," said Thorn, "and I will send one hundred thousand of those things to start. And after I've burnt your cities to ashes, I will then get very, very unpleasant."
"What was that?" asked Emma.
"It was a fusion bomb," answered Thorn in English, "just a small one."
"I see," said the Procurator, "I understand."
"I suggest you find some other way to break through to the Brutals," said Thorn, "tell them that little explosion was a demonstration from their gods to seek peace. I don't really care, just don't use my planet to dump your problems."
The Procurator nodded.
"You see," said Thorn, "two different species can break through. Now take us to the nearest portal."
The Procurator nodded.
***
"Is it sealed?" asked Thorn.
Fahey nodded and turned off a machine that looked to Emma like a something out of the prop-room for Frankenstein.
"Did you really intend to drop a hundred thousand of those bombs on his planet?" asked Emma. For some reason, being in a huge storm drain beneath Los Angeles now seemed positively homey compared to where she'd been.
"No," said Thorn, "we only have a thousand."
"I feel dizzy," said Emma. "I need some air."
Emma stepped out into the night air of her home planet. The concrete banks of the dry riverbed seemed to spin around her.
"Emma," said Thorn, "are you all right?"
"I don't know," said Emma, "should I? I just visited an alien planet, watched you electrocute an alien and threaten to blow up his planet. How should I feel?"
"I'm responsible for six billion lives here," answered Thorn, "sometime I have to be--"
Emma collapsed into Thorn's arms, her eyes rolling upward into her head.
"Shit!" said Thorn.
***
"She's stable," said Dr. Chambers, his eyes studying the scanner readouts in the Brigade's clinic. "In fact, according to her brainwaves, she in deep REM sleep."
"What happened to her?"
Dr. Chambers shrugged. "It could be a psychological reaction. Not everyone is as mentally.... 'flexible' as you are. Or... What's this?"
Thorn looked at the monitor. In the back of Emma's Grail's brain was a small oval object.
"I think it's some sort of microchip," said Chambers.
"Could it be the reason why she understood the other planet's languages?" asked Thorn.
"Why did those first aliens you met give her one, and not give you one?" asked Chambers. "Why didn't they rewire her brain like they did yours?"
Thorn shrugged.
"Hey," said Fahey, studying his own equipment. "Whatever it is, it's sending a signal. I'm talking terrabytes of data a second."
"Where's the signal going?" asked Thorn.
"It's short range," answered Fahey. "It's going to your office. To you office computer to be exact."
The door to Thorn's office slid open and he walked in alone.
"Still prefer to face the unknown alone," said an extremely familiar voice. Thorn looked into a hologram of his own face.
"That's right," said the hologram of Thorn, "it's me. After all this time I still haven't lost my taste for melodrama."
"You look..."
"Older?" said the hologram. "Yes, we will age, eventually, but only slightly, I won't tell you how long. Let's just say long enough to pack an interactive hologram program into a chip smaller than a the tap shoes of an angel dancing on the head of a pin, and toss in a universal translator to boot."
"The rift must have activ--"
"I remember what happened," said the hologram. "I don't have much time before my program burns out your primitive computer. You remember the third time she met you?"
Thorn nodded.
"Well you were wrong," said the hologram of Thorn. "It was actually the fourth time she met you. She doesn't remember it, because it happened in the future. Yes, your theory was right, time travellers do lose their memories of future events, it didn't just happen to you. But back to my story, it was the fifth time I met her... after a long time, and... damn, I'm just a simulation and it still chokes me up."
"What?"
"I have included all the information that will prevent the future she visited me from ever happening," said the hologram, "trust me, it'll be better for every one."
Thorn's desktop printer came on and started pumping out pages of data.
"You'll know what to do with this information when the time comes," said Thorn. "I guess I should tell you that the pain will get better, but I was never very good at lying to myself."
"What pain?"
"Time's up," said the hologram, which then vanished in a flash and the smell of ozone and burnt circuits.
Thorn stood alone in his office.
THE END
...for now...
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #7
New to this nutty little story that I'm making up as I go along, then click these lovely vitamin enriched links, now with riboflavin...
__________________
"Why don't you jump him?" asked Emma, nodding towards their purple skinned captor.
"That would be rude," answered Thorn, "we are visitors to their planet after all."
"You're going to let us be taken prisoner over etiquette?" asked Emma.
"That and the friend of his in the bushes with the gun pointing at us," added Thorn, nodding his head to the bushes. Emma looked and saw a similar creature, this one shorter and heavier, brandishing what could only be a weapon and an unpleasant look on his face.
"Tooba nok," said the heavy one, shaking his rifle. For some reason Emma knew that he meant no talking! she didn't know why, but it didn't stop her from understanding them.
The thin purple fellow drew a strange looking pistol from his holster, and barked: "P'kak ura tolar." Down that path, keep your hands up.
Emma and Thorn, their hands raised, walked down the path, and came through the trees into a road, paved with stones and bricks. Sitting one the side of that road was a broad black automobile with six wheels, and three more aliens, at least thought Emma before realizing that here she and Thorn were the aliens, standing by it carrying what looked like compact rifles.
The thin one reached over and pulled Thorn's plasma pistol from his belt.
"This looks like a weapon," said the thin one, looking it over. "We'll see what the Procurator thinks of these two."
Emma and Thorn were then unceremoniously shoved into the back of the six-wheeled car. Emma heard the engine grunt and then roar to life, and the sound reminded her of her grandfather's old Chevy truck. Plus, their weapons, upon closer inspection didn't look very fancy, or particularly alien, they looked downright crude. Like props from a movie about World War 2 designed by someone who only had a vague idea of what the weapons looked like.
***
The drive was uneventful, and mostly quiet. Emma and Thorn didn't say anything. Emma wanted to talk, but Thorn just sat silently watching the landscape roll by. As they approached the broad plateau they saw that crudes shanty villages lay beneath the broad trees, and that those villages were surrounded by barbed wire. Inside the wire they could see the shuffling shapes of the other creatures, clad in their yellow uniforms.
"They seem interested in the Brutals," said one of their guards with what could only be described as a smirk.
"Maybe the Procurator will feed them to the Brutals," said the driver.
The car stopped at a pair of broad iron doors at the base of the plateau. The driver honked his horn, and the doors began to open, revealing a tunnel going up.
"Not long 'til the Procurator settles you," said the Thin One.
***
"Greetings," said a small fellow with thinning green hair, and a pair of red lensed goggles, "can you understand me? My name is Procurator Wind-Grass."
"We can understand you," said Thorn in the creature's own language, earning him a shocked look from Emma. "And I know what you're up to."
"Really," said Wind-Grass with a smile. "What are we up to?"
"You're dumping your rebels and criminals on our planet," said Thorn, "and I'm here to tell you to stop."
"You are a clever little alien, aren't you?"
"More than you know," answered Thorn.
"Then perhaps I can make you see where we are coming from."
"You can try."
TO BE CONTINUED...
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #6
Not familiar with this piece of literary improv? Don't fret and check out the earlier installments:
______________________________
"I was expecting something a little more dramatic," said Emma Grail, feeling an alien breeze come from what used to be a basement closet.
"You do realize that there is a portal to an alien planet, and possibly an alternate universe in your basement?" said Thorn.
"I know," replied Emma, "but I've been conditioned by years of Hollywood sci-fi. I was expecting flashing lights, streaming colours, and maybe some weird noises. This is amazing, but it's not very dramatic."
"What do we do?" asked Tanaka.
"The portal is stable," said Fahey looking over his assortment of instruments.
"What's stabilizing it?" asked Thorn.
YOU TWO, answered the voice of Professor Hawkins that came from everywhere, but nowhere.
"You're going to have to do some explaining," said Thorn, "I majored in history, and she's an actress."
"That doesn't make me an idiot!" snapped Emma.
"But it doesn't make you a quantum physicist either," replied Thorn.
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE, replied Hawkins, BOTH YOU AND MISS GRAIL HAVE PASSED THROUGH MULTIPLE PORTALS. YOU HAVE A LOT OF PORTAL RADIATION EMBEDDED IN YOUR MOLECULES. THAT ENERGY IS STABILIZING THE PORTAL.
"That was my theory," said Emma.
"Sure," said Thorn.
"It's an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere," said Fahey, "and we're not reading any harmful biologicals."
"I'm going to take a look," said Thorn approaching the door, "you stay here."
"I'm not going--"
"--anywhere," said Emma, as she realized that she had gone somewhere. She was still standing by the closet door, but from the other side. She was standing on the stone path, felt the breeze in her red hair, and the heat from an alien sun on her cheek.
"What just happened," said Thorn as he came to her.
"You just appeared on the other side," said Tanaka through the open door, "as Thorn walked through."
"She must be bonded to the portal," said Fahey. "Hawkins thinks she's sort of a key and has to pass through when the portal is used."
"We're going to look around," said Thorn, "then we're going right back through."
"Look," said Emma pointing.
Thorn turned and saw a giant statue over twenty feet high. It was grey stone and showed a giant sized version of the strange long necked creatures they've been finding back on Earth, it was clad in long robes and it's broad legs stood on either side of the strange portal.
"This is not a coincidence," said Thorn.
"This is weird," said Emma.
"Weirder than what?"
"Look at the writing on base of the feet," said Emma, "it's weird."
"It's an alien language," said Thorn, "I'm sure English is weird to them."
"But I can understand it," said Emma, "it say that it is a memorial to someone named Overlord Mighty Thunder-Puncher or something like that."
"You can read it?" asked Thorn.
"Yes, can you?"
"Yes," replied Thorn, "but I'm a freak, long story, but you're an actress, you shouldn't be able to read it."
"I'm freaking out here," said Emma.
"Okay," said Thorn, "let's look around and then we head right back to your basement. Okay?"
Emma nodded. Thorn drew the strange looking pistol from his belt.
"We appear to be on a mountain," said Thorn, "that'll give us a good view."
They walked for a few moments in silence. Only the rustle of purple leaves on blue trees for a sound. Then they reached a broad ledge with an old stone wall around the edge of it.
Thorn holstered his pistol and took a small black box from a pocket and unfolded it. He held it to his eyes and looked around.
"Take a look at this," said Thorn, passing the device to Emma. "Look into the eyepiece and aim it that way."
Emma looked and saw a row of creatures, relatives of the one that attacked her, and descendants of the Thunder-Puncher. They were dressed in identical metal tunics and pants, coloured bright yellow. And they were harvesting what looked like pink grain from a field.
"They're walking funny," said Emma.
"I've seen that walk before," said Thorn. "They're wearing leg-irons. It's slave labour, now look up a little farther."
Emma aimed the device upward, and saw a vast artificial plateau of brick and cut stone. Resting on top of the plateau was something that looked like a city.
"It looks like suburbia," said Emma, "suburbia meets Helm's Deep. What's going on here?"
"I have a theory," said Thorn, "but I need some proof."
"Ovak!" snapped a voice behind them, "Tellus ovak!"
Emma and Thorn turned to see a tall slender humanoid, dressed in a lime green uniform, with purple skin, solid yellow eyes, and a stubble of blue hair in a thin line on the top of its narrow head.
"This is getting weirder," said Emma, raising her hands. "I understood him."
"Curiouser and curiouser," said Thorn as he raised his hands.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #5
Here's another episode of my ongoing blog-based story that I'm making up as I go along. If you just stepped in on this, then check out the earlier chapters here:
"OK, Tanaka, Fahey, you're with me and Emma," said Thorn, as he marched out of the meeting room and into an underground garage lined with vehicles. The rest of Thorn's 'team' kept up with him and nodded at his orders, Emma tried to keep up with their brisk pace. "Cohen, Montgomery, I want you and Hawkins working on tracking that thing. Make sure it doesn't hurt anyone."
"Open rules?" asked Cohen.
"If necessary," said Thorn. "This one might not be lobotomized, and we might be able to communicate. So try to stun it first."
Cohen and Montgomery nodded and headed for a plain looking black minivan. Emma watched Tanaka and Fahey head for another van, marked with a courier company logo. Emma was going to go with them, but Thorn pointed her to a non-descript sedan.
"Where are we going?" asked Emma.
"We're going where those things always seem to go," answered Thorn. "Your place."
"Report," said Thorn into a headset as they entered Emma Grail's condo.
IT'S IN THE SEWERS, said a voice from nowhere that Emma recognised as the telepath they called Professor Hawkins. IT'S APPROACHING A MANHOLE NEAR ECHO PARK, IT'S IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD.
"Nice place," said Mitsou as she came in, a black box under her arm, "a little out of the way for the celebrity set."
"That's why I picked it," said Emma with a shrug. "I'm not really part of the Hollywood scene, and there's no paparazzi here. Plus, it's an older building, and something about it appealed to me."
"What exactly?" asked Thorn, looking around at the condo's somewhat plain decor.
Emma shrugged again.
"We're getting something," said Fahey. "Quantum thread activity."
"Is it the creature coming?" asked Thorn.
"No," said Fahey, "it's too strong, it's already in the building, and it's stationary."
Thorn put his hand to his headset, and listened for a few seconds.
"Cohen has a visual."
"This one is extra ugly," said Cohen as he watched the creature step into the alleyway. It shook its narrow head and blinked its eyes. The sunlight seemed to bother it.
Cohen slipped his plasma pistol out from under his coat, and adjusted the setting to stun. Lydia Montgomery came up behind him, a netgun in her hands.
"I'll knock it out," said Cohen, "you wrap it up."
"I know the drill," answered Lydia annoyed that they still treated her as the 'junior member' even after six months on the team, as if she still hadn't earned the place her family had carved out for her in the Brigade.
The creature sniffed the air, and it looked confused. Then it took a step forward.
Cohen aimed his pistol, and Lydia prepared her tool, but instead of the sharp crackle of the plasma pistol, Lydia heard the squeal of a truck's air brakes, and the thud of something being hit, hard.
"I'll call a clean up crew," said Lydia while she thought Hawkins we need a memory wipe too for the driver.
"It got his by a truck," said Thorn. "It's dead."
"I'm still getting that Strand activity," said Fahey, studying his instruments. "I think I got it pinpointed downstairs."
"I do have a basement," said Emma, "it's right this way."
"Do you go down here very often," said Thorn as he led the way, a strange, looking pistol in his hand, followed by Tanaka, carrying an identical weapon.
"Not really," said Emma.
"There's a full blown rift forming," said Fahey, pointing to some dials on his scanner.
Thorn looked over and saw some light seeping from beneath a door at the far wall.
"Is that an exit?" asked Thorn.
"No," answered Emma, "it's a closet."
Thorn opened the closet, revealing a stone path, brilliant coloured plants and flowers, and a large white sun, hanging in a brilliant blue sky.
"It's not a closet now," said Tanaka.
_________________________________
"OK, Tanaka, Fahey, you're with me and Emma," said Thorn, as he marched out of the meeting room and into an underground garage lined with vehicles. The rest of Thorn's 'team' kept up with him and nodded at his orders, Emma tried to keep up with their brisk pace. "Cohen, Montgomery, I want you and Hawkins working on tracking that thing. Make sure it doesn't hurt anyone."
"Open rules?" asked Cohen.
"If necessary," said Thorn. "This one might not be lobotomized, and we might be able to communicate. So try to stun it first."
Cohen and Montgomery nodded and headed for a plain looking black minivan. Emma watched Tanaka and Fahey head for another van, marked with a courier company logo. Emma was going to go with them, but Thorn pointed her to a non-descript sedan.
"Where are we going?" asked Emma.
"We're going where those things always seem to go," answered Thorn. "Your place."
***
"Report," said Thorn into a headset as they entered Emma Grail's condo.
IT'S IN THE SEWERS, said a voice from nowhere that Emma recognised as the telepath they called Professor Hawkins. IT'S APPROACHING A MANHOLE NEAR ECHO PARK, IT'S IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD.
"Nice place," said Mitsou as she came in, a black box under her arm, "a little out of the way for the celebrity set."
"That's why I picked it," said Emma with a shrug. "I'm not really part of the Hollywood scene, and there's no paparazzi here. Plus, it's an older building, and something about it appealed to me."
"What exactly?" asked Thorn, looking around at the condo's somewhat plain decor.
Emma shrugged again.
"We're getting something," said Fahey. "Quantum thread activity."
"Is it the creature coming?" asked Thorn.
"No," said Fahey, "it's too strong, it's already in the building, and it's stationary."
Thorn put his hand to his headset, and listened for a few seconds.
"Cohen has a visual."
***
"This one is extra ugly," said Cohen as he watched the creature step into the alleyway. It shook its narrow head and blinked its eyes. The sunlight seemed to bother it.
Cohen slipped his plasma pistol out from under his coat, and adjusted the setting to stun. Lydia Montgomery came up behind him, a netgun in her hands.
"I'll knock it out," said Cohen, "you wrap it up."
"I know the drill," answered Lydia annoyed that they still treated her as the 'junior member' even after six months on the team, as if she still hadn't earned the place her family had carved out for her in the Brigade.
The creature sniffed the air, and it looked confused. Then it took a step forward.
Cohen aimed his pistol, and Lydia prepared her tool, but instead of the sharp crackle of the plasma pistol, Lydia heard the squeal of a truck's air brakes, and the thud of something being hit, hard.
"I'll call a clean up crew," said Lydia while she thought Hawkins we need a memory wipe too for the driver.
***
"It got his by a truck," said Thorn. "It's dead."
"I'm still getting that Strand activity," said Fahey, studying his instruments. "I think I got it pinpointed downstairs."
"I do have a basement," said Emma, "it's right this way."
"Do you go down here very often," said Thorn as he led the way, a strange, looking pistol in his hand, followed by Tanaka, carrying an identical weapon.
"Not really," said Emma.
"There's a full blown rift forming," said Fahey, pointing to some dials on his scanner.
Thorn looked over and saw some light seeping from beneath a door at the far wall.
"Is that an exit?" asked Thorn.
"No," answered Emma, "it's a closet."
Thorn opened the closet, revealing a stone path, brilliant coloured plants and flowers, and a large white sun, hanging in a brilliant blue sky.
"It's not a closet now," said Tanaka.
TO BE CONTINUED-
Friday, 20 June 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #4
If you missed the previous "Issues" of this experiment in literary improv, you can use these links:
ISSUE 1
ISSUE 2
ISSUE 3
ISSUE 1
ISSUE 2
ISSUE 3
________________________________
"Well," said Thorn, as the hologram vanished and the office lights came up. "You should answer your phone. Jake's going to call you."
Emma's phone rang. Her custom ring-tone, the music from the shower scene from "Psycho."
"Are you psychic?" asked Emma.
Thorn shook his head. "No," he answered, "you told me this would happen. Or to be more exact, you will tell me this will happen. You should answer that."
"Hello," said Emma.
"Where are you Emma," it was Jake Carson, Emma's companion on her abbreviated studio tour. "Studio security says your with a friend."
"I am," said Emma, "sort of. Sorry to bail on you like that."
"Just wanted some confirmation on your okay," said Jake. "They're taking me on a tour of the model shop for Shadowknight's Revenge. That is just too freakin' cool."
"Have fun," said Emma, "I have to talk to you later, boring Hollywood stuff."
After their goodbyes Emma hung up and turned back to Thorn.
"What are you talking about?"
Thorn rose from his desk and went to the door.
"We deal with portals that go through space, time and alternate dimensions," said Thorn. "To you, this is the third time we've met, but to me, this is actually the fourth. To you, it hasn't happened yet, but to me, it happened a long time ago."
"This is very confusing," said Emma.
"You don't need to tell me," replied Thorn as he guided her back to the hall, "because you're talking to a man who once crashed his own wedding."
"You're married?"
Thorn shook his head.
"Long, long story," he said. "No time to talk, because we have to meet the team."
"You have a team?"
***
"She seems shorter in person," said a big burly man with close cropped black hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was dressed all in black, giving the impression of a massive black wall.
"All movie stars are shorter in person Leo," said Thorn. "I know for a fact that Humphrey Bogart was only four foot six."
"I'm not a movie star," said Emma, "I'm just an actor."
"Leo Cohen," said the big man, shaking Emma's relatively tiny hand in his massive grip. "I'm in charge of tactical operations."
"Mitsou Tanaka," said a tall slender woman with a slight Japanese accent. "I'm the deputy tactical person. I loved your movie."
"Jim Fahey," said an voice with a definite Irish lilt and Emma turned to see a tall, gangly fellow with hair almost as red as hers, and carrying a large plastic case. "I'm the token tech guy, and I'm helped by Lydia Montgomery. She's coming behind me."
"Don't listen to the Irishman, I'm not just the helper," said a woman with a very posh English accent as she came in behind Fahey, carrying another case, "I'm a bloody scientist."
"You have a little United Nations here," said Emma.
"We're part of a multi-national organisation," answered Thorn. "We protect the world, so you don't have to."
ARE YOU GOING TO TELL HER ABOUT US?
It was a voice, but it wasn't coming from anyone, but to Emma it seemed everywhere.
"You shouldn't do that," said Thorn, "you're going to scare the girl."
"Should I be scared?"
DON'T BE AFRAID OF US
This time the voice was different, it was vaguely feminine.
"You better introduce her to the Eight," said Montgomery. "Get it over with."
Thorn walked across the meeting room and pressed a red button on the far wall. The top half of the wall began to rise, revealing what could only be described as an aquarium filled with a luminous green liquid and...
"Are they aliens?" asked Emma.
NO said another voice, a man's voice, WE ARE HUMANS THOUGH WE UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSION
They were people, at least they vaguely looked like people. Their heads were out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, which seemed frail, if not entirely withered. They were swaying gently in the green liquid, held in place by what could only be described as an elaborate life support system.
"I'd like to introduce you to the Eight," said Thorn, "led by the fellow floating in the centre. His name is Hawkins."
"Why are they in a tank," asked Emma, "and how can they talk to us."
WE'RE TELEPATHS answered another feminine voice.
"They have a condition discovered by my grandfather," said Montgomery, "called Montgomery-Austin syndrome. The symptoms are terrible physical weakness coupled with exponential mental power."
"Outside the tank," added Thorn, "they are weak, crippled, and racked with constant agonizing pain. The suffering so intense they can't develop their mental powers. Inside the tank, they are free from their pain, and to a certain extent even their physical bodies."
THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS OUR WORLD said a chorus of voices that Emma realized were in her mind.
"They can sense activity in the quantum belt, and the threads," said Fahey.
"They also protect this planet from alien invasion," added Cohen.
THERE IS NO ARMOUR TO SET AGAINST A WEAPON THAT HAS NO FORM
"Aliens have invaded?"
"Tried," said Thorn, "but they can't get close, thanks to the Eight, and their fellows across the world."
WE SENSE ANOTHER RIFT OPENING said the chorus.
"Any idea where?"
ODD said the voice called Hawkins.
"What's odd?" asked Thorn.
THE RIFT WAS ONLY OPEN FOR A FEW SECONDS
SOMETHING CAME OUT
IT IS SCARED
IT IS CONFUSED
IT IS ANGRY
SO ANGRY
SOMETHING CAME OUT
IT IS SCARED
IT IS CONFUSED
IT IS ANGRY
SO ANGRY
"Where is it?" asked Thorn, nodding to the others who went out the room to a door marked GARAGE.
LOST
IT DOES NOT KNOW WHERE IT IS
BUT IT KNOWS WHERE IT IS GOING
EMMA'S HOME
IT DOES NOT KNOW WHERE IT IS
BUT IT KNOWS WHERE IT IS GOING
EMMA'S HOME
"Okay Emma," said Thorn, "there's no time to socialize, it's time to see what's happening."
TO BE CONTINUED...
Friday, 13 June 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #3
"Have you seen enough Miss Grail?"
Emma thought her heart stopped.
"Well," asked Thorn, "Doctor Chambers could open him up again if you want to see more? Though I must warn you, it's very disgusting."
"And smelly," added Chambers.
Emma stepped out into the window of the observation deck.
"You knew I was here," said Emma.
"We knew when you were coming when you called your friend," replied Thorn through the glass. "Who is probably talking to studio security now."
"He knew you were coming here," said Dr. Chambers. "I thought you were just going to take the tour, now I owe him a steak dinner."
"And not a cheap one at that," added Thorn with a smile. "It's the only way he'll learn to never bet against me."
"What's going on?" asked Emma.
"Let's go to my office," said Thorn as he came into the observation room. "I'll explain what I can."
***
"Is that really an alien?" asked Emma as she sat on a dark blue couch across from Thorn's broad oak desk, that looked more at home in the office of a 19th century bank than the cool modernism of the office.
Thorn nodded. "It's an alien."
"As in from another planet?" asked Emma. "Not just from another country or something like that?"
Thorn shrugged. "Another planet, another galaxy, possibly another dimension, or even another time. The only thing we're really certain of is that he's not from this Earth. Can I get you something, coffee, juice?"
Emma shook her head. "I'd rather know what's going on. Why was that thing in my driveway, why did I come here, and why--"
"Were we in a plane crash," said Thorn, "where the plane didn't really crash?"
Emma nodded.
"This is the cool part of the explanation," said Thorn, taking a small remote control from his desk and pressing a button. The office went dark, and a sphere, sketched in light appeared in the middle of the office. "Free standing holograms aren't very practical as an information medium, but they sure are cool looking."
"Whoa," said Emma and the hologram shifted from a wire-frame diagram into a solid orange sphere, "what's it supposed to be?"
"That is our sun, otherwise known as Sol," said Thorn. "An unremarkable star that shares traits with thousands, if not millions of stars just like it in this galaxy alone. But there's something about all stars that most scientists haven't even imagined of, let alone discovered."
Thorn pressed another button and a semi-transparent blue belt encircled the sun, covering the center third of the orb.
"This is the quantum belt," said Thorn, "and the second most amazing thing about quantum belts is that they each function under a unique frequency, and if you send a simple, tightly focused radio signal in a frequency matching another star at this belt, a rift, or gateway opens, allowing travel to that other star within seconds."
Emma looked at Thorn, there he was telling her that there was an absurdly simple way to violate the laws of physics and travel faster than light.
"You must be kidding me," said Emma.
"Remember," said Thorn, "that there is a dead alien down the hall."
"Then what's the most amazing thing about these belts?"
"This," said Thorn, pressing another button, and thousands of thin hairlike strands emerged from the blue belt and started waving wildly, like the strands of a spiderweb in the wind. "We call them quantum strands, possibly millions of them. They radiate off the belt, and run through the solar system's heliosphere. Including Earth's orbit."
Another button clicked and the hologram zoomed into a narrow quadrant showing the strands coursing through a blue-green hologram of Earth.
"At any given moment thousands of quantum strands course through Earth," continued Thorn, "running unnoticed through the very fabric of everything and everyone."
"Are they dangerous?" asked Emma.
Thorn shook his head. "Only when they touch each other. Mix that with the soup of radio signals that coat Earth's atmosphere and you get rifts."
"Rifts?"
"Portals," answered Thorn, "not just through space, but through time and other dimensions. Now the bulk of them only last a few milliseconds, and form either in the upper atmosphere, or miles beneath the surface, and even then, most are also only a few millimeters in diameter, so the odds of the average person encountering rift phenomena are pretty slim."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"You, or I should say, we," explained Thorn, "went through a rift during that plane flight. On the other side were aliens from another dimension, they were studying the rift, and their research accidentally opened it wider than it should have, and our plane went in."
"Why don't I remember that?"
"They wiped our memories," said Thorn, "at least they tried to wipe mine, they repaired the plane, fixed our injuries, and sent the plane back to that corn-field."
"But you weren't on that plane when we woke up," said Emma.
Thorn shrugged. "Bit of a screw up," he answered. "I got separated from the plane and returned to a different place. I'm not important, this is your story here."
"So what's happening?"
"Long story short," said Thorn, "that thing that attacked your car came to Earth through a rift, a big one. Another one had come through earlier, we spotted it and tracked it, and found it sniffing through their garbage."
"My garbage," said Emma, "why me?"
"I'm getting to it," said Thorn. "It's the same reason you came here. This studio, this facility beneath the studio, were built on a quantum strand that is locked to Earth. In fact, it runs randomly through the planet, coming to the surface here, in Rio De Janeiro, Cleveland, Kiev, Cardiff, Osaka, and Halifax. All hot-spots for rift activity. When someone has gone through a rift, even if they don't remember the experience, they develop a sensitivity to rift activity. You could sense the quantum strand surfacing here, and was drawn to it. It was one of the reasons our memory wipe didn't really hold with you."
"You wiped my memory?"
"Not me personally," said Thorn. "A telepath who works here named Hawkins tried to replace your memory of the attack with a car crash. I told him it wouldn't work, it rarely does with rift-riders, and now you're here, and I'm owed a curry dinner."
"This is all too weird," said Emma, "but you still haven't answered 'why me.'"
"Whoever these things are," continued Thorn, "they seem to be sensing the remaining rift energy around you, and that is drawing them to you. You are in essence, alien bait, and will be until we somehow figure this out."
"For some reason I knew everything was going to get weird when I came to Hollywood."
Thorn laughed. "You have no idea. Which is why I'm being so honest here. The Phantom Brigade wants to protect you until we figure out what's happening."
"Did you say 'Phantom Brigade?'"
"What were you expecting," replied Thorn, "that we'd be called Men in Black."
"Sounds kind of hokey."
"Blame it on Churchill," said Thorn. "When World War 2 broke out Churchill asked a man named William Stevenson to do two things. First was to create a network of spies to 'set Europe ablaze,' and, more secretively, to create a 'brigade of phantoms to haunt Hitler's nightmares.' The name sort of stuck. Officially we don't exist, neither does our work, and right now, we are the only people who can protect you."
"What do I have to do?"
Thorn nodded. "It's an alien."
"As in from another planet?" asked Emma. "Not just from another country or something like that?"
Thorn shrugged. "Another planet, another galaxy, possibly another dimension, or even another time. The only thing we're really certain of is that he's not from this Earth. Can I get you something, coffee, juice?"
Emma shook her head. "I'd rather know what's going on. Why was that thing in my driveway, why did I come here, and why--"
"Were we in a plane crash," said Thorn, "where the plane didn't really crash?"
Emma nodded.
"This is the cool part of the explanation," said Thorn, taking a small remote control from his desk and pressing a button. The office went dark, and a sphere, sketched in light appeared in the middle of the office. "Free standing holograms aren't very practical as an information medium, but they sure are cool looking."
"Whoa," said Emma and the hologram shifted from a wire-frame diagram into a solid orange sphere, "what's it supposed to be?"
"That is our sun, otherwise known as Sol," said Thorn. "An unremarkable star that shares traits with thousands, if not millions of stars just like it in this galaxy alone. But there's something about all stars that most scientists haven't even imagined of, let alone discovered."
Thorn pressed another button and a semi-transparent blue belt encircled the sun, covering the center third of the orb.
"This is the quantum belt," said Thorn, "and the second most amazing thing about quantum belts is that they each function under a unique frequency, and if you send a simple, tightly focused radio signal in a frequency matching another star at this belt, a rift, or gateway opens, allowing travel to that other star within seconds."
Emma looked at Thorn, there he was telling her that there was an absurdly simple way to violate the laws of physics and travel faster than light.
"You must be kidding me," said Emma.
"Remember," said Thorn, "that there is a dead alien down the hall."
"Then what's the most amazing thing about these belts?"
"This," said Thorn, pressing another button, and thousands of thin hairlike strands emerged from the blue belt and started waving wildly, like the strands of a spiderweb in the wind. "We call them quantum strands, possibly millions of them. They radiate off the belt, and run through the solar system's heliosphere. Including Earth's orbit."
Another button clicked and the hologram zoomed into a narrow quadrant showing the strands coursing through a blue-green hologram of Earth.
"At any given moment thousands of quantum strands course through Earth," continued Thorn, "running unnoticed through the very fabric of everything and everyone."
"Are they dangerous?" asked Emma.
Thorn shook his head. "Only when they touch each other. Mix that with the soup of radio signals that coat Earth's atmosphere and you get rifts."
"Rifts?"
"Portals," answered Thorn, "not just through space, but through time and other dimensions. Now the bulk of them only last a few milliseconds, and form either in the upper atmosphere, or miles beneath the surface, and even then, most are also only a few millimeters in diameter, so the odds of the average person encountering rift phenomena are pretty slim."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"You, or I should say, we," explained Thorn, "went through a rift during that plane flight. On the other side were aliens from another dimension, they were studying the rift, and their research accidentally opened it wider than it should have, and our plane went in."
"Why don't I remember that?"
"They wiped our memories," said Thorn, "at least they tried to wipe mine, they repaired the plane, fixed our injuries, and sent the plane back to that corn-field."
"But you weren't on that plane when we woke up," said Emma.
Thorn shrugged. "Bit of a screw up," he answered. "I got separated from the plane and returned to a different place. I'm not important, this is your story here."
"So what's happening?"
"Long story short," said Thorn, "that thing that attacked your car came to Earth through a rift, a big one. Another one had come through earlier, we spotted it and tracked it, and found it sniffing through their garbage."
"My garbage," said Emma, "why me?"
"I'm getting to it," said Thorn. "It's the same reason you came here. This studio, this facility beneath the studio, were built on a quantum strand that is locked to Earth. In fact, it runs randomly through the planet, coming to the surface here, in Rio De Janeiro, Cleveland, Kiev, Cardiff, Osaka, and Halifax. All hot-spots for rift activity. When someone has gone through a rift, even if they don't remember the experience, they develop a sensitivity to rift activity. You could sense the quantum strand surfacing here, and was drawn to it. It was one of the reasons our memory wipe didn't really hold with you."
"You wiped my memory?"
"Not me personally," said Thorn. "A telepath who works here named Hawkins tried to replace your memory of the attack with a car crash. I told him it wouldn't work, it rarely does with rift-riders, and now you're here, and I'm owed a curry dinner."
"This is all too weird," said Emma, "but you still haven't answered 'why me.'"
"Whoever these things are," continued Thorn, "they seem to be sensing the remaining rift energy around you, and that is drawing them to you. You are in essence, alien bait, and will be until we somehow figure this out."
"For some reason I knew everything was going to get weird when I came to Hollywood."
Thorn laughed. "You have no idea. Which is why I'm being so honest here. The Phantom Brigade wants to protect you until we figure out what's happening."
"Did you say 'Phantom Brigade?'"
"What were you expecting," replied Thorn, "that we'd be called Men in Black."
"Sounds kind of hokey."
"Blame it on Churchill," said Thorn. "When World War 2 broke out Churchill asked a man named William Stevenson to do two things. First was to create a network of spies to 'set Europe ablaze,' and, more secretively, to create a 'brigade of phantoms to haunt Hitler's nightmares.' The name sort of stuck. Officially we don't exist, neither does our work, and right now, we are the only people who can protect you."
"What do I have to do?"
To Be Continued...
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #2
This is part 2 of my ongoing blog-based SF serial you can:
READ ISSUE #1 HERE
READ ISSUE #1 HERE
"If you look to your left," said the studio Tour Guide with a toothy grin, "you'll see Continental Studios famous 'New York' street."
"This is so cool," said Emma Grail's neighbor, a comic book illustrator named Jake Carson, his eyes wide with excitement. "That's where Shadowknight had the big fight with the Psycho Six in Shadowknight Returns." That movie had inspired Jake to become an artist, and now he was chief illustrator on the Shadowknight comic book series. Seeing that street was the main reason he accepted Emma's invitation to go on the studio tour. The fact that Jake had been completely oblivious to Emma's recent fame was the second reason Emma invited him. The main reason she invited him, the main reason she even went on this tour, was that Emma Grail felt that she was going crazy.
Ever since walking away from that plane's non-crash, Emma felt some how out of synch with the normal world. And it went beyond becoming part of Hollywood after a no-budget horror film she starred in called Somebody's Out There, ended up grossing over $150 million. Things just felt weird.
And they started feeling weirder after what everyone said was an accident.
After a late dinner meeting with some producers her agent was driving her home when their car was hit by a drunk driver. They suffered a few bumps and bruises, but their car had been totaled, and everyone told them that the other driver had been killed.
That's what everyone said, and that's what she remembered, at least up until the impact, and then waking up in hospital the next day, but it didn't feel right. It felt fake, it felt out of synch.
During the past week she also had the urge to visit Continental City, the massive central studio complex for Continental Pictures. She didn't really know why, just that she had to go there. There was something there she needed to know.
She didn't know what it was, but the feeling was strong enough to make her put her distinctive red hair under a floppy sun hat, and dress like a tourist, and take a tour of a studio she could easily visit for free.
"Hey," said Jake pointing excitedly, "there's the pool where Squidasaurus ate the football player."
Emma didn't hear this glorious revelation. Her eyes were fixed on a figure walking casually down the street, carrying a paper bag.
It was Thorn.
Suddenly it all came back to her. There was some... thing there, not a drunk driver, and he was there too. He pointed something at her and everything went dark...
"Miss," said the Tour Guide, "please stay with the group."
"Where are you going?" asked Jake. But Emma didn't hear either of them, she was focused on Thorn.
***
Emma grabbed the door, just before it shut, and carefully peeked inside. It was a plane white hallway, not unlike a thousand others in this studio complex alone, but unlike the others, this one didn't have any posters, or headshots on the walls, and it also sloped downward.Emma went in. She could hear Thorn's footprints faintly echoing from around a corner.
She carefully stepped inside and started following the echoing footsteps. Knowing that this was completely crazy, but driven for some kind of answer.
The corridor kept going down, and down, turning corners to face another slope. Then it ended in a long straight hallway.
There was no one around, not even the echo of footsteps. An air vent buzzed, and a door creaked as it swayed back and forth.
Emma approached the door and looked in, it was empty, with a row of plastic seats in front of a large window. Emma stepped inside, now she could hear voices from the other side of the glass. She carefully peeked over and saw Thorn talking to a man in a white-suit and matching head-gear. The man was pulling off the head-gear and talking to Thorn. He was an old man, black, with a salting of gray at his temples.
"What do you have for me Doc?" asked Thorn.
"What do you have for me?" asked Doc.
Thorn held out the paper bag, Doc peeled off his rubber gloves and took the bag. "Damn, I'm starving," and started carefully laying out the contents of the bag onto a metal table.
Emma watched Thorn approach another table, and her heart stopped. Folded at one end of the table was a pink outfit. The same, unlikely pink outfit that... thing, was wearing.
Then Emma realized that the rest of the table held a roughly man-sized object wrapped in a sheet.
Thorn lifted up the sheet, revealing that hideous, misshapen head.
"Well, Doc?" asked Thorn, studying the strange face.
"It's the same species as the first one," answered Doc through a mouth full of breakfast burrito. "And like the first one..."
"Is this your theory again?"
"It's not a theory," said Doc. "It's basically mammalian in structure, and you know that nothing we've encountered yet has been so alien, that I can't make out rather obvious signs. Brain tissue and genitalia bear heavy scarring."
"So this one was lobotomized and castrated too?" said Thorn, mostly to himself.
"Probably the main reason that poor bastard was so mad," replied the Doc, taking a sip of coffee.
"Hmmm," said Thorn, replacing the sheet over the creature's face. Then he looked up at the window, up at Emma.
"Have you seen enough Miss Grail?"
TO BE CONTINUED
Monday, 2 June 2008
Fictional Freakouts: The Phantom Brigade Issue #1
This is the beginning of another one of my serialized blog stories. I have no plan, no outline, or idea where it's going to go. But I do have a sense of how it starts. I'll be making it all up as I go along and see how long I can make it run. So here goes, enjoy..."You been sleeping?" asked Linda Woller.
Emma Grail nodded.
"Still having those weird dreams?" asked Linda as she turned her BMW onto Emma's street.
Emma sighed. She had the weird dreams because she was in a weird accident, if it could be called that. Perhaps 'incident' was closer, but it was still too vague.
The whole thing started out as pretty routine, she was on a flight back to Los Angeles after visiting her folks back east. The take-off was routine, and she had a friendly chat with the man in the next seat. His name was Thorn and he was in entertainment too, in a way, as an editor with a publishing company, flying to some meetings with a new author. He was too nervous to talk business, it was his first trip to LA, so they talked about the city, the sights, the smells, and how alien it was compared to everywhere else.
Then she looked out the window and saw the cloud. It wasn't really a cloud. Real clouds weren't green, didn't glow, and didn't charge at their plane like a mad bull.
She couldn't remember what happened next. Just a strange spinning sensation, then she woke up, still in her seat. However, when she looked out the plane window this time she didn't see the cloud, nor did she the sky.
She saw wheat.
Trans-Global Airlines Flight 435 to Los Angeles disappeared over Massachusetts, and was found three hours later in a wheat field in southern Saskatchewan. The plane was still in one piece, and almost all the passengers and crew were in their seats.
Almost all of them.
The man in next seat was gone.
And the frustrating part was that the dreams that she had every night for the past year seemed to have nothing to do with how a plane load of people ended up in a wheat field being stared at by a confused farmer. They did feature the man from the aisle seat, but he was different, he was changed.
"I'm still having the dreams," said Emma. "Are you going to be my psychiatrist now?"
"I'm an agent," answered Linda, "a ten-percenter. I can't afford to have my hot new client being caught by the paparazzi shaving her head with a lawnmower."
"Nice to know you care."
"This is LA," answered Linda. "Home of movie stars, agents, and that Mauler." Linda shuddered.
The mere mention of the local media's latest bogeyman made Emma even more aware of the darkness outside Linda's car. Southern California, so sunny during the day, transformed at sunset into the sickly glow of streetlights, and car headlamps, and deep pools of inky blackness. Two people had been mauled to death by.... well, folks didn't know. Some experts said it was an animal, others said it was a maniac.
Emma really didn't care, she just wanted to get home, and get some sleep, even if it was full of dreams that didn't make sense.
"Here's your condo," said Linda. "And remember, Franklin wants to see you Friday for another test."
"I haven't had this many tests since high school," said Emma as she opened the passenger door.
"I'm going to watch you to your door," said Linda.
"Protecting your invest--?" asked Emma, freezing halfway out the door.
Something was different in the air. It wasn't the usual neighborhood smell of car exhaust and chlorine from the pool. It was something sickly, sour.... strange....
Emma heard an inhuman snarl coming from behind the eucalyptus tree. It wasn't a dog, it wasn't anything she heard before.
Emma dove back into the car, slamming the door. Something, a big black shape, leaped from the shrubbery, and slammed hard into the side of Linda's BMW with enough force to crack the window.
Linda and Emma screamed.
The shape growled and moved around the car.
"My phone!" gasped Linda. "911!!" Linda began fumbling in her purse, trying to find something that was usually another appendage of her body.
A face pressed up against the glass of the driver's side window.
Linda screamed and almost climbed on top of Emma in terror.
It wasn't a maniac.
It wasn't an animal.
It wasn't human either.
Beady red eyes stared the glass. Through the mist the beast's breathing pasted onto the window Emma could make out a flat face, gray-skinned, with a wide slash of a mouth. Its lips parted to show two rows of shark like teeth.
CRASH!
The thing's head smashed against the window, shattering it. Emma suddenly remembered what her father told her when she got her first Hollywood job. She pulled out her key ring, sliding the metal keys between the fingers of her fist.
The thing leaned its head in. Linda wanted to scream, but couldn't, she just pressed against the back of her seat.
Emma could see its nostrils flare, and then it leaned in, ignoring Linda, and came in closer to Emma. Its neck stretching to an unnatural length.
Emma pulled her right arm back. She could smell its breath, reeking of blood and meat, and see its eyes narrowing.
Then Emma struck.
She felt the sharp end of her keys strike hard, leathery skin, and slide, then the key to her apartment back home, struck it in the eye. A terrible howl came from the beast as it recoiled from the car, leaving a trail of inky black slime in its wake.
Emma saw it stumble backwards into a streetlight. A clawed hand held up to its face. Black fluid seeping between its fingers. If it wasn't for the long neck, it would have looked almost human in basic shape, almost. Its feet were bare, revealing long, finger-like toes, topped off with sharp claws. It's fingers, three of them, were long, thick, and ended in claws as well.
But that wasn't the part that struck Emma as weird.
What struck her as weird was it's outfit.
It looked like it was wearing an electric pink jumpsuit.
The creature lunged back at the car, howling, black blood covering half its face.
Linda found the strength to scream.
Then there was a flash of light, and the creature stumbled backwards. Black blood now flowed from a wound in its chest.
Another flash.
Another fountain of blood appeared on its chest. The beast's legs turned to rubber and it fell in a heap on the pavement.
"Clean up," said voice from outside the BMW. "Aisle one. Clean up on aisle one."
Emma looked out. Men, dressed in black, their faces obscured surrounded the creature. They were aiming what look like weapons at the creature lying on the ground. At least Emma thought they were weapons, but they looked more like props from a science fiction film.
The faces were blanks to Emma. She didn't know what kind of masks they wore, but it was like their faces were out of focus.
Except for one.
"Thorn?" asked Emma, seeing a clear face in the crowd.
"Sorry for the mess," said Thorn, his face thinner, more serious than when they met, like the face in her recurring dream, "but it'll be like none of this ever happened."
Thorn touched a button on the back of what looked like a pistol, and aimed it in the car. Linda put up her hands, the came a flash of blue light, then a dark dreamless sleep.
--TO BE CONTINUED
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