Dark, strange and fantastic fiction
We’ve all got to go.
But do it on your terms.
The latest episode of Sleepytime Supervillain Theatre gives you the skinny on how to deal with Ol’ Bony himself.
Would you know what to do if Death turned up with an “Everybody Pays: Gas; Grass; or Ass” bumper sticker?
Exactly!
1. In 1773, Bailey Jackson from Knuckle, Oregon, was mocked by his neighbours after climbing a tree and refusing to come down. He had been there three days when everyone in Knuckle was killed by bears.
The bears were too full to climb the tree after Bailey, having already eaten well.
2. Tax collector Kim Nguyen narrowly avoided death after dropping her iPhone while crossing a busy road in the resort town of Nha Trang.
Before she could stop to pick it up, a voice in her head reminded her it was already two years old.
She left it there to go buy a new one, avoiding the truck which would have flattened her if she had stopped to pick it up.
3. Irish farmer Ted Driscoll liked to pretend it was his cows talking when he heard voices in his head.
When one day the cows stopped making sense, he called in a vet who to confirm his suspicions.
It was an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, and the early warning meant they were in time to confine the spread of the disease to the Driscoll farm.
4. The voice in her head told Meg Rodriguez not to open the bottle she found on the beach.
There was a note inside, and the voice told her it would contain bad news.
So she didn’t, and is still alive and happy today.
What would have happened if she had opened it?
Nobody knows, but you can’t argue with alive and happy.
5. When a voice in her head warned Texas mother Kari Olbrecht that her child was in danger at school, she dropped everything and raced to Don Townsend Elementary.
The voice had been right: the teacher was just sitting down to read a book to the class!*
6. Tom Bowles kept being woken up by a voice in the dark telling him he was buried alive every time he turned off the light off to sleep.
He soon learned to sleep with the light on.
Unless the voice was right, and he was just imagining he was asleep in his bed with the light on…
7. A trip to a local winery could have led to disaster for Martina Morrow if she hadn’t heeded the voice in her head.
It warned her that the vineyard’s owner, who also crushed the grapes with his feet as part of the “experience”, would reveal cloven hooves.
She made her excuses and left before he took his shoes off, saving herself a battle with the devil.
The last one hadn’t gone so well, and she wasn’t in the mood for a repeat.
8. Peering into the cloudy blue eyes of the newborn in her arms, Patricia Keyes knew he wasn’t her baby.
She had seen the nurse help him out of her body and hand him straight to her.
But the voice in her head insisted that her child had been swapped for this one while still in her womb.
9. Dave Weston was saved from a nasty bite when the voice in his head warned him the burger he was about to eat looked “mean.”
Using his knife and fork to examine the beef patty, he found several half-crushed, sharp-edged teeth poking out of the meat.
10. The voice in his head told Karl Weizenmüller not to eat the basil he had planted because it was already flowering.
He didn’t listen, however, and it’s always possible to smell when Karl is around, because of the
scent of basil.
A more unfortunate side-effect is that he can no longer go to Italian restaurants as seeing people eat pesto makes him cry.
*possibly this one: I Need a New Butt!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 26th November, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
I managed to finish “Laura’s Suitcase” (still don’t have a proper title), only to get stuck in another story (working title: “Dirtgod”).
I’ve also eaten a weird but delicious type of Georgian liquid bread that I didn’t catch the name of (I’ll get back to you), and arranged a little something for early next week. Don’t miss it!
Make sure you also fail to miss this week’s story. It’s a funny one to make up for last week’s story, which I gather not everyone enjoyed as much as I did.
England smiled, causing a dimple in Wales and another in Belgium (as if anyone cared).
It had bad teeth.
Based on their arrangement, experts estimated the location of the eyes. It was a very human face. Rumours started to spread, forcing the government to block access to the chasm of England’s mouth.
Cars and trains had plunged into it when the mouth opened, ripping roads and railways apart. But now people jumped and drove into it deliberately to get — finally — away from Europe for real.
People said King Arthur lived down there with Winston Churchill and Robin Hood. Elvis Presley was granted mandatory British citizenship, when the prime minister heard his music echoing up England’s throat.
Experts extrapolated the position of the nostrils. Dynamite and big yellow trucks were sent to clear the blockage, lest it be said the king ruled over a mouth breather.
In Wales, people danced naked to the cult of the dimple.
The Leader of the Scottish National Party said that if the mouth was down there, then Scotland must have the brains.
Northern Ireland said that England must have three eyes, because otherwise they would only get a single wonky ear, while the Republic of Ireland dug a trench across the middle of the country—which was all bog, anyway—because they had no face at all.
Immigrants were refused asylum and deported. Then anyone who didn’t look quite English enough, no matter what their passports said, because it wouldn’t do to have foreigners walking on England’s face.
They were shipped off to… well, does it matter?
The poor were given a starter pack of one hundred pairs of blue plastic shoe covers, because they all had pitbulls which shit everywhere, and they certainly stepped in it, rather than walk around it.
Then Richard Littlejohn made a joke in the Daily Mail, a newspaper which was only ever intended as wrapping for fish ‘n’ chips, and people read by mistake.
About where the stuff that the mouth ate must come out.
It so annoyed China that they bombed England’s face in retaliation.
Naturally everyone was very annoyed with China for a while, but it meant they didn’t have to listen to England talking about its face any more.
And as soon as France stopped complaining about the radiation levels, which would surely drop soon by themselves, everything could go back to normal.
Read!
You can read Dark Matter Magazine’s Special Halloween edition online for FREE this month. Do that here!
Watch!
This short film is not horror, but it does have a monster cat! This is great!
Look!
I’m getting a head start on the cover design for an upcoming project and came across these amazing paintings. What do you think, would you buy a dark fantasy book that looked like this?
Watch!
Remember when the Rubberbandits warned us in 2010 that there was a Horse Outside? (Caution, very sweary link)
Well, it’s finally happened. They’ve come inside. And they don’t speak English, apparently. Horse Inside.
Enjoy!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 15th October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
We’ve had a grim couple of years, what with Boris Johnson’s ongoing Billy Bunter impression, then Covid, followed by Putain’s bloody, bungled war.
But things aren’t all bad.
And I can prove it with this week’s Killer List: 10 kinds of accident, once common, now practically extinct!
In chronological order!
(And a special offer at the bottom of the post.)
Enjoy!
1. (11th century, England) Rioting caused by gallant knights.
The knights’ paths have crossed in the middle of the village’s main thoroughfare (there is only one thoroughfare, so it is the main one). They are now stuck, as neither will move first, as both wish to prove that they are more gallant than the other.
The village’s peasants are unconstrained by the knight’s code and after several days of this mediaeval gridlock, they are also starving and dozens die in the ensuing riot.
(The knights have snacks in their saddle-bags.)
Once the riff-raff are dead, the king commissions a statue to the “perfect knights.”
2. (late 13th century, England) Being miraculously cured of leprosy by a travelling monk then dying of peritonitis, knocking over a display of oranges as you fall, because it was your appendix and not your leprosy you required help with. (There’s a reason some of these monks are forced to travel. Always ask to see references.)
3. (14th century, Europe) Getting into a fender-bender when the cart in front of you suddenly stops to watch a barrow of mostly dead bodies be dumped into a plague pit at the side of the road.
4. (15th century, Europe) Being crushed to death by a maddened horse fleeing the foul odour of its rider. The rider believes that a good stench keeps the demons of ill-health away, and the horse can no longer bear the thought of having the filthy, stinking man sitting on its back.
5. (16th century, England) Being brained by a loaded bedpan on a frosty morning as it slips out of the emptier’s hand onto your head as you pass underneath the window they are attempting to empty it from.
6. (16th century, France) Being burnt alive as you attempt to walk home from the pub. The court jester was trying out some edgy political stuff for his routine for which the king set him on fire. The fire quickly spread, destroying the entire village.
7. (Early 17th century, Germany) Sudden death caused by spontaneous lynching when you are overheard on a street corner musing whether to “poppe over to gette some Milke”, having forgotten that it is a Sunday. Only witches buy milk on a Sunday.
Milk from the Devil’s bottom, probably.
8. (17th century, America) Whistling and then being stoned to death for having “lippes possess’d bye Thee Deville”.
9. (18th century, Europe) A massive traffic pile-up caused by a gust of wind which blows the white face powder worn by fashionable lords and ladies across the street, blinding everyone.
10. (late 19th century, America) Your train being derailed because a moustache-twirling scoundrel has tied a lady to the tracks to convince her she should marry him.
(The thinking behind this type of situation still exists, but everyone has beards these days*. They are harder to twirl.)
Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is available for $1.99 for a limited time only, so grab it quickly!
I’ve included the link to HarperCollins, you can navigate to your preferred ebook store from the links down the right-hand side of the page there.
(I went to Kobo and grabbed Jonathan Sims Thirteen Storeys for $2.99 and Ryan Leslie’s The Between for $0.99 while I was there.)
*Everyone has beards?
That’s right.
We’re pretty sure that’s not true.
I said “everyone” and I meant everyone. You have beards.
That’s true. A repellent sound like young chickens being softly plucked can be heard as thickly curled beards are fingered covetously. But you don’t—
Look! A single-origin Latte Crappacini!
Where? Where?
We’re travelling at the moment, so as promised, here’s your guide to some of the major fauna infesting Berlin’s public transport in this week’s special Killer List! Enjoy!
Occurrence: Late evening/Early night.
Friends from their university days are visiting Berlin. This blast from the past has made them frisky, so they decide to leave the car at home and “slum” it to a show (perhaps at the Wintergarten, or the Friedrichstadtpalast). Now they are on their way back home.
In their fifties, Herr Zehlendorf is still tall, but needs a slightly bigger belt. Frau Zehlendorf has let her long hair go grey.
They appear relaxed as they sit beside each other holding hands, but Frau Zehlendorf sits closer to her husband than usual and Herr Zehlendorf is sitting very straight, despite the discomfort to his spine after having sat for so long already.
Careful to avoid catching anyone’s eye, they radiate alertness as they count the remaining stops until they are safely back home.
Occurrence: Irregular/Any time
A lot of Spanish people live in Berlin, the most colourful type of which is the Spanish punk.
It’s easy to see why they like Berlin, where their appearance (mohawks, piercings, facial tattoos) blends in perfectly with Berlin’s “original” punks who haven’t changed (except for getting older, and, perhaps, their t-shirts) since their first visit to Kreuzberg’s SO36 in 1978.
Occurrence: Constant/Mornings to late evenings
Begging and busking are not allowed on the trains of Berlin’s U-Bahn, but the rule is seldom enforced (see also no. 10. The Real Musician), and a steady stream of hopefuls travel up and down most lines every day.
The Sweet Homeless Man has been a fixture on the U8 for years, accompanied by a pungently sweet smell as he staggers through the moving carriage on crutches. One foot is encased in a massive grimy cast.
The musky smell is thicker and sweeter than honey and causes noses to wrinkle involuntarily, but, after all, it can only be a richly sweaty sock, and one day the cast will come off and he can wash it.
Until one day he reveals that the smell comes from the gangrene eating his toes, and for years passengers have therefore been inhaling the particles of his rotting feet.
Occurrence: Constant/Any time
Mister Berlin (not Herr Berlin, not Mr Berlin) views everything and everyone on the U-Bahn with a look of tolerant disdain, which stems from the fact that he was born in Berlin. The U-Bahn is therefore his by birthright and it amuses him to let others use it.
Anyone foolish enough to engage the red-faced and leisure-weared Mister Berlin in conversation will discover that his voice has one setting: loud.
He offers his opinions freely, though only passengers skilled in cutting through the thick vegetation of Berlin’s buzz saw accent will understand their meaning.
Occurrence: Irregular/Early mornings
Morning commutes in Berlin are always at risk of being interrupted by marauding packs of ten-year-olds on a school outing. U-Bahn carriages, which were previously full of the strained silence of people strenuously ignoring each other, suddenly morph into noisy fried food-smelling commuter cages.
Berliners rarely like children (until they grow old enough to hold a useful picket at demonstrations), but nobody has told the children this.
In their happy ignorance, they kick other passengers’ knees as they jump up and down, or swap seats with each other.They pick their noses or block the doors with psychedelically coloured backpacks more suitable for the Love Parade.
But as bad as they are, these are normal children.
Then Schulietta sits down.
Alone among her fellows, she is quiet. She sits properly in her seat and does not require the teacher to keep explaining why Paul is wearing a green jacket, when he usually wears a blue one.
(Paul is wearing a green jacket because he lost his blue one at the museum, although he didn’t tell anyone at the time. He simply took a blue one, which he found. When the teacher asked, he confessed to not being able to remember what colour jacket he had put on that morning until they made it onto the train, at which point his classmates’ questions reminded him.)
While everyone else is staring and pointing at Paul and his new green jacket, Schulietta is only interested in you.
For the distance of five solid stops, she stares at you without blinking, then starts turning her head slowly to the window, but without releasing your blushing face from her gaze, hoping you will be tricked into acknowledging her.
Her stare gives you a headache on the top of your head as you attempt to continue reading. The need to move your head from under it, together with the reasonable conviction that surely her eyes can’t be as big as they feel, are almost too much to resist.
She smells of chewing gum, unless it’s her shampoo, and the synthetic smell is creeping up your nostrils, pushing the headache down into your back teeth.
What is wrong with your face, that she keeps staring at it like this? Did you cut yourself while shaving? Perhaps you sliced right through your jugular and are dead.
After several stops, you wonder if Schulietta is dead. Perhaps the school’s classroom was built on an old grave Prussian grave?
Perhaps the green jacket belonged to Schulietta, and Paul killed her to get it.
None of the other children pay her any attention, and your attempts to catch the teacher’s eye have earned you nothing more than suspicious glares.
Just don’t look at her, you tell yourself. Don’t look or she’ll bore through your eyes and dig into your brain.
You clench your fists hard enough to draw blood from your palms as the force of her black hole stare presses on your scalp.
You want nothing more than to get off the train, but somehow know that if you leave before the class does, then she’ll belong to you.
Occurrence: Rare/Afternoons
You continue reading your book as the seat across the aisle from you is taken. It is Herr Wurst, but you do not yet realise this.
Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed bobbed red hair and a short leather skirt, with a grey face and a chunky woollen yellow sweater between them.
Ah, you think. A woman has sat down opposite me. Fine.
As soon as the train starts moving, the person spreads their legs.
Their skirt is short, and they are sitting opposite you, and your eye is drawn inexorably to some incongruous detail.
Turning the page of your book—and knowing full well you shouldn’t—you risk the tiniest glance. In that infinitesimal moment, Frau Wurst turns into Herr Wurst, as that most telltale detail has slipped out from behind Herr Wurst’s panties to wink rakishly at you with its good eye.
Occurrence: Constant/Early morning to mid-evening.
In fact, you will most likely not see Frau Alt-Schmidt, as she has discovered a way to make herself invisible while in transit.
On occasion, she can be spotted at the exit to the U-Bahn, making her slow and painful progress up the stairs to the exit, at which point you remember she exists.
Occurrence: Regular/Late evenings
Alan is English, here to party, and doesn’t care who knows it.
Hey, he didn’t lose a war!
Used to the UK’s licencing hours, he’s conspicuously nursing that first beer on his way to the awful club he’s chosen for the night.
What makes him most conspicuous, however, is how ridiculously underdressed he is. Even in the middle of winter, he won’t put on a jacket in case it creases his favourite Top Shop shirt.
Occurrence: Irregular/Night time.
Standing in the corner furthest away from Alan is the carriage’s only goth.
Painfully introverted, the lonely goth has found the least judgmental piece of panelling in the entire carriage and is trying not to stare too hard at it, in case it starts staring back.
The intensity of the goth’s self-consciousness snags everyone’s attention, most of whom are wondering if the goth is truly unaware that black just isn’t his colour, and if there’s a good reason why his hair has to be so greasy and limp.
But nobody will tell this to the goth, who—like the vampires he admires—cannot look in mirrors and it is only the thought that he will soon be back in a pitch-black club, or bedroom, that is keeping him going.
Occurrence: Daily/All day.
A species of busker who wants you to know they are not in it for the money.
They do this by playing an entire song (bloody “Hallelujah” with an extra helping of yearning, if you’re really unlucky) rather than only playing until the next stop, despite the fact that everyone knows buskers are paid to go away, and perfectly good, proper music is being wasted on dozens of headphones while The Real Musician wrings every bit of juice out of each Hallelujah.
(If you are in this situation, just remember that it only lasts four minutes—or six for the “full Buckley.” It only feels like forever.)
I’m not a big fan of Christmas, so I wrote this piece of flash fiction to get myself in the mood. Enjoy!
We grinned at each other as we heard cursing come down the chimney. Becky was ready with the good silver tray with its glass of milk and expensive shortbread biscuits. I prepared to lend a hand unloading the Xboxes, PlayStations, and accompanying games we’d requested. The figure was soot-black and still cursing as he climbed backwards out of the grate. Then he turned around and Becky screamed.
“It’s not what it looks like,” said Death. “I’m just filling in to help out.”
“Gran’s in bed, take her!” said Kevin.
Death pursed his… mouth? “Well, that’s not nice.”
Kevin wasn’t getting a go on my Xbox, I thought. Then I quickly and loudly thought: I mean, of course he can play on mine. (No point taking any risks at this stage.)
“Would you like a biscuit?” Becky had picked one of the broken shortbreads off the carpet and offered it to Death.
“Thanks, I’m on a diet.” He patted where his belly would have been if he wasn’t a skeleton. “Tough crowd,” he said after a minute, and sighed. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? An Xbox and three games each, alright?” He rummaged in his bag.
“I wanted a PlayStation,” said Kevin, as he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Yes, but you just tried to trade your granny for one, so no.”
He stacked the brightly wrapped boxes under the tree, while we crowded around to double-check the name-tags. Once I saw mine, I went to get a wet dishcloth to mop up the spilled milk. Again: no point taking chances.
I rubbed at the carpet’s pile, waiting for Death to say “just kidding!” but it looked like he meant it, and was going to leave without giving Kev anything. Father Christmas is usually prepared for a bit of give and take, when he comes around to our house. And that’s when the strangest feeling came over me. It was a sort of aching hollow in my chest, which I had never experienced before.
I…
I felt sorry for Kevin! It was a Christmas miracle, just like on TV!
“Wait!” I called as Death was folding himself up to get back up the chimney. It wasn’t fair to leave Kevin like this. Death turned, so did the others, and I knew this was the right thing to do. I even felt it in the tears running down Kevin’s face.
“About Kevin… “ I took a breath. Was it just my imagination or did Death’s skull face soften? It wasn’t Kevin’s fault that he always messed things up, but he’d be miserable all during Christmas again.
“He got nothing this year. But neither did you.”
Death’s eyes flashed, but we’d already got our presents, so there was no question about it being a bribe.
“Won’t you take him with you? As a gift?”
In the end, Death had to go out the front door because of course Kevin’s stupid dead leg wouldn’t fit properly into the sack.
If you read this on Thursday, the 23rd of December there’s still a chance to boost my preferred Christmas song into the number one spot of the UK charts.
Because I’m a “certain sort of person” and because you owe it to posterity. Get it here! (<– Content warning for lots of swearing.)
And if you’re still looking for a Christmas present, may I recommend Witness X by S. E. Moorhead? (<– Content warning for an unputdownable page-turner!)
