Monthly Archives: January 2011

Blood Brothers Preview

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After a last minute drop out from the 10thology book, Stu challenged me to put together a brand new story based on a set of illustrations. At least, that’s what he told me. He might just be taking revenge for the bedlam that was MWM Live.

Either way, I thought I’d let you all see the first few paragraphs of the story as it shapes up.

There were four blocks of flats, thirteen stories each, arranged around a set of abandoned gardens. The shape, the specific shape of the towers and their gardens, formed an alter to a god long dead. Scorp’s grandmother said so, anyway.

And Scorp’s grandmother knew things.

Like most things living, Scorp avoided the gardens. Scorp had his own place, down in the basement of Block Three, with the boiler, and with Fred. Fred had been the caretaker of Block Three for fifty years, right up until the day he died. Of course, he’d stayed on. Scorp couldn’t repair the boiler, for one thing.

“Are you paying attention, lad?” asked Fred.

Scorp opened his third can of lager and took a noisy slurp. He was too young to drink, of course, but the one shop that was still open on the estate had an arrangement. They sold Scorp his lager, his fags, and his scratchcards, and he looked after them in return. There had been a time on the estate when Scorp had been just another one of those kids that you stayed away from, that you kept on the right side of if you didn’t want your car stolen or your door spray painted. These days, things on the estate were different. These days, people stayed on the right side of Scorp because one day, if they were really, really unlucky … they might need his help.

“I said …”

“Yeah,” said Scorp, “I’m listening. You know, you talk a lot for a dead guy. I don’t get this much aggro from my mum, and she’s alive. Mostly”

Fred fished a spectral bag of tobacco from the pocket of his ghostly cardigan and started to roll a cigarette. “I always thought these things would kill me,” he muttered, ignoring Scorp for a moment.

“Yeah, well, you were hardly going to see werewolves coming,” replied Scorp. “I guess that was the problem though.”

The Locket

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It always began with the most gentle of tappings. A soft percussion, an almost imperceptible rapping. She felt it, more than she heard it. A beat against her chest, a step out of time with her heart.

She tried to ignore it. She had tried to throw it away. But somehow, some … way, the locket always came back. She wondered, towards the end, if she belonged to it more than it belonged to her, if she, not it, were the errant possession that returned to its rightful owner time and time again.

The only certainty was that, every day, she would rise and place the thing around her neck. There were times when the weight of the thing seemed immense, as if it might snap her neck or drag her bodily to the ground. But still, she managed. She bore the weight. She carried the burden. The thing, around her neck, always gently pulsing and throbbing and aching for her attention.

Only once in a while, when the tapping had turned to banging, when the beat against her chest felt like the pounding of fists, when her mind and body were exhausted,would she open it. Always alone, always in private, always with the greatest of care. For what was inside was for her and her alone, she knew that. The locket would have it no other way.

It always began with the most gentle of tappings. And it always ended the same way. It ended with trembling fingers opening the clasp of a simple, silver locket in some dark and furtive corner, and then words, hissed from within.

“I’m hungry.”