Just a quick 'Hello'

I'm perfectly aware I've not been keeping The Feardom up to date lately, nor have I been on Facebook or Twitter much either. For that, I apologise.

It's not to say I'm not writing; I am. But this girl has a day job which - at the moment - is overwhelming to say the least. If my day job was as a novelist, that would be utterly fabulata. Sadly, it's not.

So please don't give up on me. I have a pile of tales almost ready to put out as a collection, or submit separately to publishers. I haven't decided yet. They include:

• a story that will make you scratch and itch and punch yourself senseless
• a gin-riddled, ghostly account of debauched possession
• vicious trailer trash horror
• plastic bubbles in a plastic world where you must watch where you tread
• dolls trapped in trees
• a dystopian tale of golden corsets, time-travel and drugs
• a new Magenta Shaman episode

I'm also reworking Six Souls, the asylum novel - with passion.

Bear with me. I'm not done yet.

Waiting... just waiting

SMILING CYRUS by Lily Childs

It's the Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers Halloween Horror Editors' Special! Matt Hilton, Col Bury and David Barber have already posted three terrifying tales - and now it's my turn.

I wrote SMILING CYRUS, too late, for an Evil Jester Press anthology. Like many of my stories, it doesn't fit elsewhere so I included it in Cabaret of Dread: a Horror Compendium - the first volume of my collected short stories. (Vol.2 will be published in early 2013).

I love this tale, and am proud to offer it up on TK'n'C. I hope you enjoy it too.

SMILING CYRUS: Excerpt

Hurtling. He’s hurtling. Cyrus has a head the size of three balloons welded into one, rubber bumps in all the right places. Someone set him up, something stung him.

Trinkets and engraved goblets topple from overloaded shelves as the boy, nearly a man runs the length of the room and back again. His eyes are peas in the growing face. He tears at them, not knowing if they are about to sink forever into the burgeoning flesh or pop and burst. Salty old seadog, those tears that spill; they sting the stretch marks spreading and ripping at the child’s visage.

Blind, Cyrus throws himself to the floor. Screaming is impossible; the fattened mouth is full to suffocation with a tongue of weeping meatloaf. Who would hear him anyway?

They start with a jingle, the bells; whispering at Cyrus with their teasing voices. He slaps at the spaces his ears used to be, hearing only mosquito torture and fearing another assault. So they play a little louder. The boy shudders as the noise grows in volume.

Tinkling, ding dong dinging, tolling and tolling and tolling until the sound is too much and the eardrums inside Cyrus’s attic-sized head explode. The roar that almost kills him is enough to wake Mr and Mrs Cleavage in their bedroom below.

It’s the same every night since their son disappeared.

Read more...

______________________________

Cabaret of Dread on Amazon UK | Amazon US/Canada
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lilychildsfeardom
Twitter: @LilyChilds

Going for Number 1

I am stunned.

MAGENTA SHAMAN and MAGENTA SHAMAN STONES THE CROW have only been free to download from all Amazon platforms for a couple of days, and already both are alternating at top first and second positions in the Free Kindle Horror Bestsellers list, adjacent to horror master James Herbert in the paid lists, no less!

They're not quite there in the .com US charts but have still had lots of interest. To date, both books - short novellas that chart the terrifying journeys of Brighton-based, natural-born shaman Maggie Sweeney - have been downloaded over 2,500 times! That's across the US/Canada, UK, Germany and Spain.

I am so grateful to everyone that has picked up copies and hope you enjoy them. Your reviews and comments are very welcome.

All the best.

Lily/x

Download the MAGENTA SHAMAN stories for FREE!

Forewarned is forearmed... both MAGENTA SHAMAN and  MAGENTA SHAMAN STONES THE CROW will be **FREE** to download to your Kindle or Kindle app from tomorrow 4th September, right through to Saturday 8th.

Dark, urban fantasy woven with mild horror these short novellas introduce Brighton's natural-born shaman, Maggie Sweeney and follow her astral journeys to cursed lands and demon-infested pits.

Walk with Magenta as she gathers plants and poisons to use in battle; suffer with her as she faces death - again and again.

Sometimes it's not the supernatural you should watch out for, it's the devils on your own doorstep...

Free from tomorrow but more info - including a peek at the opening pages - at: Amazon UK  and Amazon US/Canada

I get the Slaughterhouse treatment from Mr. Glamour himself

Richard Godwin, author of the crime/horror novels 'Apostle Rising' and 'Mr. Glamour' is well respected for his incredible writing, but also for the regular interviews he conducts - Chin Wag at the Slaughterhouse.

Last year, he invited me to be interviewed and I finally finished answering his questions back in May. 

Today, Richard - who has the patience of a saint - has posted our interview up at http://www.richardgodwin.net/author-interviews-extensive/chin-wag-at-the-slaughterhouse-interview-with-lily-childs where we touch on myth, horror and the skill of the femme fatale.

If you have the time, please nip on over to Richard's place. He makes great coffee - and even better martinis.

All comments would be welcome. Thank you.

Flash Fiction Podcast - Me and The Boys!

A little while ago I was interviewed by Dion Winton-Polak and Phil Ambler on the subject of flash fiction for a podcast called Geek2Geek, which is part of The Geek Syndicate.

You can now download Geek to Geek - Issue 5 for free from iTunes

Our discussion starts at about 57 minutes into the podcast - you should be able to 'slide' to it. Our wonderful writer friends Matt Hilton, Col Bury, David Barber, A.J. Humpage and Sandra Davies all get a mention, as does The Prediction of course.

It'll be on the Geek Syndicate website soon too (it's got the wrong link on there at the mo. but this will be corrected shortly) so I'll add the link when that's up.

Additionally, there will be a longer version coming soon where we each do readings of our, and other people's work.... to be revealed ;-)

THE SONG OF RESTORATION

Triple X

It's day seven of John Xero's Xeroversary in the magical land of The Xeroverse, where he's celebrating with an eight-day selection of 'flash fiction - fantasy and science fiction, magic, myth and machines.'
 
My Crete-inspired whoredom, THE SONG OF RESTORATION is up today - debauch horror for your pleasure, and written especially for the Xeroversary. I'd love to know what you think.

Opening lines - a taster:

"Lestros calls me sordid, and I have no intention of disappointing him. A snip here, a snatch – albeit a well-worked flaccid one – there, and I can provide everything he needs. It’s not all for him though, which saddens me for a second or two every day. He has business to attend to, clients to please – as do I, but mine are more discerning, more appreciative of the finer things in life – and death.

I arrange my layers for his pleasure; cotton upon skin upon hair upon thin, light silk that stinks of overworked Eastern worms. He stares at me and I smile, knowing he’ll never be mine – not really.

“Shall I send them in?” he asks afterwards. I nod, a twitch at my scarlet-painted mouth.

In the intervening moments I gather the hoard to my bosom. We suckle one another to give strength..."

Read more...

________________________________

STARING AT THE PINK - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

STARING AT THE PINK

The final 'previously unpublished' story of the collection.

One death; two souls departed. How many versions of ourselves are housed in this thing we call a body? What happens if they are released before the corporeal shell has finished with them? Perhaps I should have called this "Giving Up The Ghost". Perhaps not.

I wrote Staring At The Pink for a Daily Telegraph competition but it got nowhere, neither did the other two magazines I sent it to want to publish it. Well, I like it - and that's why I've included it in Volume 1 of Cabaret of Dread so that it has somewhere to rest - amongst friends.

So – what’s Staring At The Pink about?

A young woman dealing with the agony of watching her grandmother die slowly in a hospital bed is shocked to see not one spirit depart, but a second, dark mirror image of her lovely Pink Grandma. Fighting off a spectral assault, the narrator escapes with her own soul still intact. But years later, as she is about to give birth to her own child the grandmothers return - and they're not alone.

Inspiration

Sadly, this story is inspired by a friend whose grandfather was seriously ill, but no matter how sick he became - he wouldn't give up. A medium, who didn't know anything about my friend, told her that part of him had already left and was waiting on the other side for the two parts to become one again.

It struck me that this was a dangerous situation that potentially happens a lot. What would happen if the two parts became permanently split - and which parts of one's personality would sit with which broken soul? The thought still chills me.

Excerpt

Her hand rests over my heart, forcing me to study the transparent fingers. I question everything; how can this possibly be? Yesterday she was here, solid and alive in a hospital bed. Today – she’s alive – solid and just about living in a hospital bed. But she’s changed. Last night, she died.

I saw it all. Moments after the green line ran straight and my grandmother began her journey towards the mythical light the doctors snatched her back; breaking the laws of death. I cried at first with fear and premeditated grief, and then again with a relief full of guilt for my selfishness. I didn’t want her to leave. I needed her. I wallowed in my own self-pity - until I saw what they’d done, the damage their interference had caused and I knew without understanding why or how, that from one perfect grandmother another - her dark side, her nemesis, was torn.

Do we spit out our demons as filth when we pass over, purifying ourselves on the way to an unknown place of rest? In the natural process does that shadow-self quickly dissipate and die? I don’t have the answer because I am not so spiritually minded to have considered it before now. But sitting here, staring at the pair of them – both revived, both breathing – I believe we should leave well alone, and that we are wrong to play God.

Pink Grandma rests beneath the sheets whispering laboured breaths into a clinical pillow. It’s the Pale Grandma that sits beside her who leans forward to stroke my chest.

“I’ll have it,” Pale Grandma says in a voice I struggle to recognise. Her bony claws grasp at my small breast, and I feel her ice in my soul. I do nothing, not out of fear but from teeth-gritting anger.

Pale Grandma has black eyes, not the wistful blue of Pink Grandma’s. They stare at me, those vaulted chasms, expecting me to give in. I return her gaze - defiant. I shake my head.

“No.”

She roars frustration back at me with foetid breath. And is gone.

Pink Grandma - Nana - stirs from her slumber, unaware of the nocturnal separation. She smiles without seeing, squeezes my hand without knowing I’ve clutched it back. I move to embrace her, lingering a while, careful not to damage her frail frame.  When at last she sighs I know it is the end and I hug her closer. Pink Nana dies, for the second time, in the safety of my arms.

***

We planned to call our daughter Rosa...

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread! By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful...

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from

Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

LIVING IN A BOX - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite. 

And as a special gift from me, this week I'm going to let you read the entire story LIVING IN A BOX for free!  If you like it, perhaps you'll buy Cabaret of Dread, or tell your horror-loving friends.

LIVING IN A BOX

Grace Pearce is afraid of The Black. She is scared of The Spindle Queen and unnerved by Dr. Pipe. They seem to come and go in Grace's one-room world, and sometimes they bring others to watch. Will anyone ever take her home?

Living In A Box was written for Chris Allinotte's first March Madness dark fiction showcase in 2011 over at The Leaky Pencil.

Why not linger a while at Chris's place and read through the MADNESS series, maybe you'll even download the Madness collections EIGHT DAYS OF MADNESS and NINE DAYS OF MADNESS from Smashwords. They're free too!

So – what’s Living In A Box about? 

The story is narrated by a young woman, Grace, from her cell in an asylum. Pumped with drugs she drifts in and out of consciousness, her perceptions and personalities change and overlap, confusing both Grace and the doctors. Even in the most extreme throes of paranoia and insanity, Grace knows something is not quite right. And when a man she has never met arrives to take her home, the terrifying truth gradually becomes clear.

Inspiration

A constant fascination with mental health, psychosis and treatments. I wanted to be an art therapist at one stage when I was studying psychology, though sadly this never came about. No one thing beside the showcase prompt inspired me to write Living In A Box, but I suspect this story has always been in my head waiting to be written in one form or another.

Excerpt

Quivering, vaporous forms. They are indistinct as my eyes open to the familiar pale green of the box. Walking, talking photographs, paintings even - that morph back and forth.

My mouth is dry – it’s always that way. Someone sticks a tube between my teeth and I suck in the salty, pale-orange liquid. It tastes of electricity and saccharine.

The figures are clearer now. I recognise them from yesterday and the day before that. One’s a man – an old man. The other is young; his daughter perhaps. She is so thin I call her the Spindle Queen. Inquisitive, her tight face bears more lines than the father, but she has scarlet lips; lips that pout, lips that squeeze when she is angry. I’d like to eat them but she draws back as I lunge, a fruitless effort.

“God, she’s fast.”

They nod heads and play out a psst, psst, psst tittle-tattle game of whispers before turning back to face me. My head dips to one side and I carefully emulate the woman’s fake smile. Mine reaches my eyes where hers does not. With a little flare of the nostrils she backs away, fading though the door until it is an empty picture frame.

I would love to stand up. When did I last use my feet? There are straps at my wrists, at my ankles; around my calves, my thighs and up, up, up to my chest where, without warning my heart swells hot then cold – freezing cold; pulsing fast, fast, faster. I can’t bear the panic. I need to run away. The chair is bolted to the floor but still I try to rock my way out of it, going nowhere. Quickly, my body gathers momentum until with every spasm the leather cuts into my skin, spraying blood over the thin gown. It spreads.

The old man calls into the wall.

“Assistance!”

I’ve heard that word before. It makes everything go black.

From somewhere within my belly I feel the squeal. It mounts and grows, taking my soul with it to the ceiling as its pitch rises. From a great height I circle the seated echo of me and join in with the scream pouring from my other throat. We labour as twins to fill the room with unique harmony.

Assistance arrives through another door. It’s the Spindle Queen. She winces at my song. She calls me Banshee.

I can do that. I’ll visit her in her dreams later, steal her children.

My ethereal being flails at Assistance as the needle is rammed into my corporeal arm. Although she cannot see my wraith she swipes at it anyway, but no matter - I am already sliding back inside. I have just enough time to spit in her face. There is red in it. I have bitten off the end my tongue.

***

Black.

***

“She’s not who she says she is,” the old man tells a gaggle of bespectacled onlookers. He smiles benignly at me so I guess it’s time to show him my claws. Midnight blue. I stretch them out as far as I am able.

“Can you tell our guests your name?” He is bent towards me, not too close but near enough that I can smell pipe tobacco.

“Lompster. Snap, snap.”

The visitors scribble onto notepads and clipboards, muttering and frowning. Old Man Pipe speaks again without averting his gaze from my lovely claws.

“Miss Pearce believes she is a lobster, for today at least.”

One of the group stares at me longer than the others. I wiggle my antenna and hope he will fall into my trap. I’m hungry.

Sniggers and half-concealed smirks ripple through the rabble, and then I spot her; Pipey’s daughter. She’s telling them I claimed I was a doctor last week. That’s ridiculous. I’m only twelve years old. Look at them – they’re the deluded ones in their white coats, writing and gossiping as though they can see inside my head. It’s the reverse. It’s me that knows they’re all after Thermidor for dinner; wondering whether to cook me gently, turning the heat up until I fall asleep – or plunge me into a boiling vat.

I don’t like it. I start to rock. Here it comes...

***

Black...

*************

Like the excerpt? Read the whole tale for FREE at The Leaky Pencil. The full tale is also waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

WRAITHS AND STAYS - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

WRAITHS AND STAYS

This ghostly horror is set in a medieval-like, dystopian future where darkness, depravity and death threaten men. I wrote it for a small press anthology which sadly never happened, but in 2011 I was interviewed by fellow dark fiction writer Erin Cole and offered the story to accompany the interview. 

Subsequent to its appearance in Cabaret of Dread, Wraiths and Stays was published in print, in Dreams of Duality by Red Skies Press. It is a short, short - at only 663 words.

So – what’s Wraiths and Stays about? 

The narrator is self-imprisoned in a rotting tower with hundreds of other men, all living in fear of a plague of spectral wraiths haunting the once green and fertile land. Staring from a window slit, he recognises wives and mistresses, mothers, daughters, sisters... The women sweep the earth and skies in half-dead hunger whilst the men find solace in each others' flesh. While the narrator reminisces his own sexual encounters over the years, can he resist the base urges being played out all around him?

Inspiration

The opening sentences came to me on the walk down the hall from my bedroom to the bathroom (no 'ensuite' for me sadly). This happens a lot - no soul-seeking, no begging with the muse, just out-of-the-blue stories delivered into my head and begging to be written.

Excerpt

We didn’t speak of it, for how could we? A blessing bell, the priests said but we knew the clanging peel sounded the death knell in our midst, announcing the journey to hell for the fairest and most sweet. Not even the healthy amongst them were saved from the buboids, eruptions and pox. And now, with them fallen like God-forsaken flies - daughters of Beelzebub – I tried to forget what my own looked like. Mother, frail but proud. My girls – a beguiling trilogy - unwed, unbetrothed. Even my wife, traitor that she was and bringer of plague to this island; she played still in my mind, a rotting wretch. Here we wallow, barely buoyant in the floods of death she has left in her wake, in this place that once drowned in roses and where trees dripped with pungent medlars and cider apples. All gone.

Out of high windows we stared at the seething, spiralling mass of living decay. They ruptured below us, then flew to our rooftops to snatch with sharp teeth at our desperate gazes. With every attack we fell to the floor, eyes closed in fear as our only protection.

It is days now; weeks. Food is on ration. Unseasonal snow hardens the ground making crops, seeds and grain inaccessible. Taunting voices steal through stone walls making whispers of love and a promise of more. Around me the weak seek solace in each others’ arms and between the hard legs of fighters and labourers. I don’t want to give in... Can I resist temptation? An intimacy only hinted at amongst the dandiest of types now seems so warmly and wantonly inviting....

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

PRETTY PINHOLES - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

PRETTY PINHOLES

I loved writing this horrible story. What an evil serial killer I've created - whoops. We could say all murderers are wicked monsters but sometimes they are the quiet gentle giant that lives next door - and more often than not they are someone we trust. That's the scariest horror of all.

Pretty Pinholes was first published on Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers in January 2010

So – what’s Pretty Pinholes about? 

An obsessive. A character that detaches themselves from reality to perform their unique art upon the body of their victims. The number of pins used is precise, as is the depth to which they are inserted. But who is this killer with such an exquisite taste in design?

Inspiration

The inspiration for Pretty Pinholes was short and not particularly sweet. I went to London for a conference; my colleague met up with a friend afterwards so I had to do the return journey alone. My train got stuck on the track on the way home and I spent twenty minutes staring out the window at an office block that had a single light on, and I could just make out two people. I blinked - and there was only one.

Excerpt

The factory floor was cold beneath her naked back. Hard on the shoulder blades, crusty against her splayed buttocks.

Naomi Allen, her arms and legs strung out to her sides, strapped down to stubby poles she could not see, lay shuddering. The only light - a breath of radiance shooting through a distant keyhole - spangled across the thousand pin heads that pierced her trembling flesh. A bed of nails, she was. Only more so.

 He watched her. Studied her. Inclining his head in the vast dark room he caught the outline of the starshine he had made of her. His snort of amusement had her jumping in her shackles, which made him laugh some more. He wondered who she really was, what she did for a living – whether she was married, had kids. He didn’t think so. He didn’t care. Despite the time he had spent on her, she wasn’t a project. Naomi Allen was just a whim.

He let her murmur and mumble a while longer. She was hungry – no matter. She was thirsty – he had splattered drops of water over her face these last couple of days, making her beg for it, licking as far as her tongue could reach around her lips, her chin, below her cheeks.

Outside the winter traffic thronged. Lorries air-braking, buses carrying mindless workers and wasters, cars distributing selfish lone drivers about the capital. Naomi heard none of it. Plugs of cotton wool, poked roughly into her ears, creaked painfully with every move she attempted to make.

She peed. Then she cried, the thick fabric binding her eyes darkened with the tears that fell more profusely than the pathetic spray of urine warming her thighs.

Crouching, near-naked himself except for the daggers, he took to his feet. Nothing could threaten the verve that prickled his skin, full as it was with exaltation.

*

“I love you.” It was a lie.

Naomi screamed at the muffled voice. So close. In her face.

“You’re twisted, you sick bastard. Let me go.”

“You twist, Naomi.”

His voice came from behind her head, then his hands joined his words and began to stroke her hair. He pulled at it, gently at first, then with harder, sharper tugs until clumps came away from her scalp. Naomi shook her head frantically as he tore at her, her sobbing drowned out as he sang, a high-pitched wailing, echoing her cries.

“Twist. Twist. Twist.”

He smiled affectionately at the girl in his hands. She shuddered as he slowed his caress, released his touch, and sat back, totally still. One minute. Five minutes, completely enjoying the fear mounting in her body.

“Where are you, you piece of shit?”

Without warning, he fell forward across her face and drove his tongue into her open, complaining mouth, forcing it deeper into her throat, sucking at her own tongue until she choked, and gagged, and it was time for more pins.

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

IN ADORATION - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Artwork (c) Laurence Ranger

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

IN ADORATION

In Adoration is yet another unpublished story. Not for want of trying. No-one accepted it; no-one explained why they didn't want it. Sod it - I love this diabolic tale. So please take it anyway by downloading Cabaret of Dread for a pittance.

So – what’s In Adoration about? 

Demons. Deities. Sex and horror. Pure and simple.

Mr Fucker is today's pseudonym of aged demon, Reuben. Reuben is bored. Reuben steals souls and has had just about enough of Seabourne's twee congregation.

Father Judas takes the demon under his twitching cassock and together they bring bloody rebirth to England's green and pleasant land.

Inspiration

I'd be a liar if I told you I remembered what inspired me to write In Adoration. What I do recall is regularly seeing a tall, creepy character leaving one of our seaside churches and lurching up towards the seafront, belching and seeming to fondle himself on the way. Dirty old bugger.

I am a very spiritual person who was expelled from Sunday School aged eight for asking "inappropriate" questions about the Gods other peoples and tribes worshipped. I have too much to say about this for this particular post but hell, demons, deities and even the devil - there are a thousand explanations - and none is right or wrong.

Excerpt

*Warning: offensive content - it is 'horror' after all.

“Excuse me sir. Are you alright?”

The voice breaks his reverie. He is not amused.

“I need to get to church,” he grunts. The couple bent over him regard one another, smug in their faith in the Lord.

“Of course.”

He watches the woman in her expensive print dress and pink safari jacket. Orgasm plays between her legs in satisfaction at being such a good Samaritan.

“We’re off to late Mass,” she says. “‘Would you like to come with us?”

Reuben squirms within the new flesh that moulds itself across his skull; it tightens around his throat. Believing the poor man is choking to death, the pristine couple help him to his feet, just about tolerating the stench of his soiled underwear.

“Our car is right here. Wait, let me…”

The man places a plastic-backed picnic blanket on the rear seat before strapping the old man in. Reuben spends the journey breaking wind. His hosts open all the windows and still they grin their evangelist smiles, clapping their hands at the Jesus music that speaks to them through the stereo. Frustrated with the overbearing pleasantness Reuben takes the time to vomit down his borrowed suit at regular intervals along the journey. Sirens continue to wail in the distance, disturbing his benefactors.

 “Oh dear,” Mrs Godsquad utters as the screaming grows louder. “I wonder what’s happened. Why don’t you turn the radio on, dear?”

She looks fifty, sounds sixty. Reuben gets inside her head - she is thirty-eight years old. Her husband obeys, flipping the CD off.

“…murder at St. Saviour’s Church, Seabourne. Brian Guilroy, lay-preacher. Husband to Maria and father of Nigel, Constance and Belinda was found in the pews after this morning’s early mass. It is believed the body of Mr Guilroy had been stripped of clothing and his neck broken. Unconfirmed initial forensic reports suggest that stab wounds were found at the base of his skull and at his groin.”

“Ha!” Reuben barks. They don’t know the half of it.

Mr Godsquad gasps in horror. He stares at his wife.

“Brian. Oh shit Barb, it‘s Brian Guilroy.”

Barb glares at him, ready to admonish him for the cuss-word. Instead, she turns in anger to their passenger who is roaring with laughter.

“I really don’t think this is appropriate behavior, Mr…?”

“Mr FUCKER,” Reuben shouts.

The driver pulls over, parking on double-yellows, much to his wife’s consternation. The passenger feels his groin pulse with the scent of the sea, salty in his mouth - in all their mouths. He leans forward.

“Can you smell it, sister?”

The tidy woman recoils yet can‘t take her eyes off him. Reuben unbuckles his seatbelt, staring into Barbara’s pale blues. He moves towards her.

“It’s the stink of my sex. Look at it – it’s hard and it’s fat.”

He shoves his hand between his legs and nods at the woman’s husband. “It’s what he can never give you.”

The wife says nothing. She stares him in the face. Disgust and revulsion don’t stop her gaze straying to his crotch where the mound twitches, filling the old man’s trousers. Despite herself, she flicks her own seatbelt off and reaches for him.

“Barbara. What do you think you’re doing?”

Angry at the interruption Reuben grabs Mr Godsquad’s fine head of hair. Yanking backwards, he quickly snaps the man’s neck. Benevolent Barbara sneers momentarily at her husband before crawling onto the back seat.

The passenger declares himself ‘open’.

With Barbara choked to death between his legs, Reuben decides to take the rest of the journey on foot...

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

CARPACCIO - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

CARPACCIO

Carpaccio is a crime/horror crossover I wrote back in 2009 about a young serial killer nurturing his skills and refining his tastes. It was published on Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers in April 2010 and nominated for the Spinetingler Awards 2011.

Matt Hilton, best-selling author of the Joe Hunter thrillers said of Carpaccio "... chilling with a capital 'CH', a feeling of creeping menace. Great writing. A superb investigation of the warped mind of a serial killer. A real coup, and a great idea."

So – what’s Carpaccio about? 

Our anti-hero Alan has a different view of life. He loves to love, but when the loving stops a sacrifice must be made.

The sewers of Sussex drip with his victims, but which are the surrogates and which are the real thing? And will Alan's plans change after a tragic family 'trip' to England's notorious Beachy Head cliffs?

Inspiration

I live near Beachy Head and it is a wild, beautiful place that attracts thousands of walkers, holiday-makers and artists. Sadly it also draws many desperate people to its edge.

I was up there one day admiring orchids and butterflies, on my way to meet friends at the cliff-top pub for a cider or two when I decided to take a rest and partake in a bit of people-watching. Most passers-by seemed happy, or quietly contemplative; no-one appeared to be planning their final hours - and it struck me how normal they all looked. What if one of them was a psychopath? How would I know?

I stared down over Eastbourne, nestling below the cliffs and could see the twinkle of the Big Wheel of the travelling fair that had come to town that week - and thought I'd be far more likely to pass a psycho or ten down there than on the downland. Or would I?

Excerpt

I prepared a new entry for tonight. A eulogy.

I didn’t usually record the times and dates of their deaths because that made it kind of final. I liked the idea that the agony would go on forever.

Some of them I held onto for weeks, a couple of months even. Kevin and Peter only lasted half a day each. But that was my fault. I couldn’t leave them alone.

***

I liked to hang around the fairground. It visited our seaside town two or three times a year – it was just about the only thrill we had in our genteel haven of beaches and blue rinse.

I imagined how it would be to work there. The rides, the slot machines; I’d be one of the cocky boys on Waltzers who’d steal your money as soon as screw you in the bushes.

***

My first was Jean-Paul. I was only thirteen, a late starter. Jean-Paul captured my attention and I felt this overwhelming need, this desire to possess him, care for him. And for him to love me back. His sinewy moves, the lazy slant of his lingering eye as he moved past me – one time, two times and more.

“Jean-Paul” I whispered.

He stopped and looked back. My heart snapped like an elastic band and I felt tremors of excitement. He’d seen me. He wanted me.

The woman he was with was probably three times my age, a carousel cutey but hardly burlesque. I studied her for a moment. Handy bendy cutey. When I told her I wanted him she laughed in my face. I ran and hid, but later Jean-Paul was mine, coming easily, relishing the attentions of a young, fresh and tender child. He asked me why I’d named him Jean-Paul. He was born in Essex, he said.

“Sartre,” I replied, thinking how clever I sounded. I was a teenager. I was doing existentialism. I was having a Parisian moment. No matter, he didn’t know Sartre from the Pope.

He was my first, and they’re always special. He let me love him, though he wasn’t always there for me. And it was over so quickly. He stayed in my room, hidden. I brought him food, which I paid for myself – and I brought him my love.

I was found out, of course. Six weeks was all it took for Jean-Paul to be discovered. And me questioned – over and over. In the end I told my parents he’d gone, he no longer loved me, could no longer cope with the pressures they were putting on us. It was half-true. He had gone, and it was because of them. They’d stolen him from my private sanctuary – my heart, my soul, and exposed him to everyone. That was unacceptable. He belonged to me, and me alone. So that was how it came about. How I killed my first...

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread!  By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

SMILING CYRUS - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Every Saturday for the next eleven weeks I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

SMILING CYRUS

This is the first previously unpublished tale in the collection. I originally wrote it in 2011 for the marvellous Evil Jester Press' Attic Toys anthology, edited by the equally brilliant Jeremy Shipp. Unfortunately I missed the deadline, but the story wouldn't leave me alone. No other paying market suited its bizarro horror theme, so I decided it should have a place of its own in Cabaret of Dread.

So – what’s Smiling Cyrus about? 

Naughty Cyrus isn't where he's supposed to be, skipping school and playing in his parents' attic instead. He has lots of friends up there - and they all want to play.

That was over a year ago; Cyrus is still missing and his mother Debonair is sure she knows where her son is.  But with a violent husband Debbie has to choose her moment. Will Cyrus be waiting? And will the toys welcome his mother to the game?

I've been told this is some people's worst nightmare. Oh goodie.

Inspiration

Although I already had the anthology theme to spur the concept, the opening lines came to me on the scurry from the bath to my bedroom - beneath my own loft hatch.

As I struggled to jot the words down whilst still half-clad in a damp towel I noticed a family walking along the street past my house, no doubt on the way to the beach - a stone's throw from my front door.

The dad was a big burly bugger, striding ahead and shouting at his stick insect of a wife. Haggard and obviously down-trodden, she trailed behind - occasionally holding out a hand to her little boy. This ginger-haired cherub skipped along ignoring his parents, then - smiling - stopped to stroke a cat. His mum and dad had crossed the road and turned the corner without even realising their son wasn't with them any more.

How chilling - and how very Smiling Cyrus.

Excerpt

Hurtling. He’s hurtling. Cyrus has a head the size of three balloons welded into one, rubber bumps in all the right places. Someone set him up, something stung him.

Trinkets and engraved goblets topple from overloaded shelves as the boy, nearly a man runs the length of the room and back again. His eyes are peas in the growing face. He tears at them, not knowing if they are about to sink forever into the burgeoning flesh or pop and burst. Salty old seadog, those tears that spill; they sting the stretch marks spreading and ripping at the child’s visage.

Blind, Cyrus throws himself to the floor. Screaming is impossible; the fattened mouth is full to suffocation with a tongue of weeping meatloaf. Who would hear him anyway?

They start with a jingle, the bells; whispering at Cyrus with their teasing voices. He slaps at the spaces his ears used to be, hearing only mosquito torture and fearing another assault. So they play a little louder. The boy shudders as the noise grows in volume. Tinkling, ding dong dinging, tolling and tolling and tolling until the sound is too much and the eardrums inside Cyrus’s attic-sized head explode. The roar that almost kills him is enough to wake Mr and Mrs Cleavage in their bedroom below.

It’s the same every night since their son disappeared. They hear him scream, always at the witching hour of 3:15am. Charlie Cleavage had stopped his wife Debonair from exploring the loft; that was over a year ago. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t wonder – still.

***

“Charlie?”

“What is it hun? Hey, are my eggs ready yet?”

Debbie flips them once, then back again without spilling a drop of bile-shaded yolk. Charlie doesn’t care for his wife’s allergies, or that eggs make her gag every morning. Charlie has needs.

“I want... I mean – can we have a yard sale?”

She slips the eggs onto a plate next to a pile of grits and chunks of fried bread. It’s casual, how she hands her husband his breakfast but he knows she’s up to something. He grabs her wrist. Debonair has long since learned not to give Charlie the satisfaction of a flinch. She sits down, ignoring the pain and smiles with red lips.

“I saw something you’d like.”

Charlie releases his grip, attacks the eggs in a spattering mess.

“What?” is all he can manage with a full mouth.

“Now honey that would ruin the surprise. You know how I like to please you.”

She runs her skinny hand over his knee, hating every moment.

“This is special. But I need a lidda bit of money, and I thought we could - you know, clear out the back-room, the attic, the garage...”

Charlie drops his fork on the plate.

“The attic?”

Debbie smoothes her skirt over knees made of sticks. They shake beneath the floral-patterned cotton.

“Yup. The attic. I decided you were right. Cyrus isn’t coming back.”

Cyrus isn’t coming back. She’s practised the line until it no longer shakes in her mouth. Charlie eyes her, his thick brows bristling like April caterpillars ready to spin a cold cocoon. Ain’t no butterflies in that bastard, Debbie thinks.

“OK.”

He pats Debonair’s leg, lingering at her thigh. She swallows the hate and claps her hands.

“Oh, goodie! I’ll make a start while you’re at the mill today.”

She stands, escaping before he can spread his hand wide enough to hurt.

*************

Like the excerpt? You can read a few more pages of SMILING CYRUS, plus the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX and a few mini-tales by visiting Cabaret of Dread's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful... 

Buy/Download Cabaret of Dread from
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com