Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Crime

Hugs and Stuff

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A ruined car parked in front of a setting moon.
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Welcome!

This week’s story is a blood-drenched psychological horror about a guy who probably needed a hug, while my recommendations roundup will tell tell you when a hug is not appropriate.

Flash Fiction: Willem Dafoe’s Face

Greg puked on the grass verge near the disco. In the moonlight, the mess of hot dogs and fries looked like an autopsy photo of guts. The blood splashed over the back seats was black oily paint.
He didn’t understand how could want them so much when they were alive, yet be so disgusted when they were dead. He could stop at the bridge to get rid of the body if he drove the long way home.
When he arrived, it wasn’t in the trunk.
He even got on his knees to look under the car, in case it had fallen out and rolled there. He had definitely killed the man in the back seat. He had definitely pulled the body out and dumped it in the trunk. The ticklish sensation of enjoying the still-warm skin, while repulsion built in his throat at the blood like greasy sweat, was fresh.
He thought he remembered the thump of the trunk lid slamming shutbefore he puked and drove off. He was always so careful. Could he have left a dead body beside a pile of puke with his DNA in it?
The car wouldn’t start. He got out again to push, but it moved an inch before rolling back to its original position. It didn’t matter about the puke, if they caught him on the bridge in a blood-drenched car.
He was trapped unless someone helped him. He dropped to his knees beside the car and prayed to God. He swore he’d never do it again, if the car would start. It was a lie, and Greg knew it. His God, who had Willem Dafoe’s face, but meth teeth and calluses on his knuckles, knew it too.
Greg stood. The body was in the driver’s seat. He met Greg’s stare of disbelief with disgust.
Greg thought about jumping into the river himself. It was where all the bodies went. There was a beauty in that pattern. But he couldn’t stand the thought of the cold water in his lungs, or the rocks on the riverbed smashing his teeth.
If he walked home, maybe he could slit his wrists in the bath before the police arrived. Caught but not caught. There was a beauty in that idea, too.
Instead, he got in on the passenger’s side. Just to see what would happen.
For the longest time, nothing did. Then the rears doors opened, and the car filled itself with the stench of sweet decay and musty clothes.
The car coughed into life, like spitting out water, and they drove off the way they’d come.

In Case You Missed It This Week:

Watch!
A comedy-horror show with puppets? Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is as good as it sounds!
Check out the new series on Channel 4! Compare them with the original YouTube videos!! Don’t Be Scared!!! Have Fun!!?

Watch!
After being postponed due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Stewart Lee’s Tornado is now available on BBC’s iPlayer for UK viewers! Get blown away here!

Watch!
Jarleth Regan is a new stand-up comedian for me. Maybe you’ve already heard of him, but here’s a full hour of comedy first posted online in June 2022.

Enjoy!

(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 1st October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)

Eager

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A black and white picture of a cross on a grave
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction is all about love.

Or money?

Or a love of money?

Or both?

Read on to find out which!

It was the perfect night for digging up a corpse. Not too cold, but with a low mist adding oodles of atmosphere.

“We’ll be rich,” said Mike. “Together.” We were already in the hole, standing on the coffin. Uncle Chester’s metal box of treasure (bearer bonds, family heirloom gemstones) had been sewn into the velvet pillow he rested his greedy, peeling skull on.

Uncle Chester had always been so greedy that he insisted he would “take it all with him.” That was the story.

I bent to give Mike the box, and his eyes hardened as soon as I touched it. Even in the dark, the way the muscles in his face went rigid to hide his anger was noticeable. I let him take it instead, and he hoisted himself out of the grave with it.

The pause before he reappeared to help me out was the longest I have ever experienced. I was so sure that a shovelful of cemetery dirt would hit me in the face that I held my breath not to inhale it.

“Come on, Kara!” Mike called, however, and his powerful arms pulled me out of the hole. He was smiling at me, his good mood returned.

I had the key to the box after all, having followed the clues to its hiding place, tucked into a slot carved into the back of an old mirror frame in the attic.

He waited eagerly for me to open the box, forcing me to admit that I must have left the key behind. His face went rigid. It made him briefly old and ugly, before it passed. 

Mist swirled in our headlights as we raced through the night, back to the penthouse to find the key. Mike loved me again.

As he drove, he made plans for Chester’s money, then tacked on, “wouldn’t you like that?” for my sake. As much as I loved him, he had never thought highly of my intelligence.

When we had got married, he had told me I was the only woman he had ever loved, even though he’d been divorced three times already, and the contact list on his phone only contained women’s names, none of whom I had ever met.

I liked to think it could be true. The marriages were unhappy, and the contacts were just friends. He was handsome. Why wouldn’t women like him?

He was possibly too handsome. And I did love him, despite the fact that I knew he mostly liked me for my money. That was the problem.

Not that he needed it after divorcing three incredibly rich women.

The cutest thing I ever saw was the look of disappointment when I told him my lawyer insisted on a prenuptial agreement before we married. 

Not that I planned on divorcing him. I had more money than I could ever spend (though not enough to keep Mike happy, if I simply gave it to him). And he made life exciting for me. 

So, I had a discreet arrangement with the local undertaker and his nephew who created puzzles for one of those “escape rooms” to help me source a constant supply of eccentric “relatives” and their various treasure maps, challenges, and other adventures to keep Mike on the hook.

If you liked this story, you might like to sign up for my newsletter! This month I’ll be writing about Edgar Allan Poe, writer, poet… psychic?

Wikipedia will tell you the cause of his death remains a mystery.

But I reveal all, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up free here!

Crash

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A heart icon overlaid on a bare tree.
Made with photos by Fabrice Villard and Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

After the protests and heavy-handed response last week, it looked like things have calmed down here in Kazakhstan (certainly in Nur-sultan, which anyway escaped the brunt of the violence).

I admit to having my doubts about the official explanation, but it looks like the real story was much worse than even I could have imagined. It turns out Kazakhstan was under attack by…

Jazz Musicians from Kyrgyzstan! 😮

Luckily the danger has been averted, so you can relax for this week’s piece of flash fiction, which is also about a man on a mission.

Enjoy!

The snow hid the curve of the road until it was too late. The ambulance Brent was driving ploughed through the guardrail and into a deep drift.

“Shit!” Brent was uninjured, and the ambulance didn’t seem badly damaged, just stuck. When he tried to reverse, his wheels span without purchase. And he had a heart in the back of the ambulance, with a patient waiting for it.

It wasn’t easy to get out of the vehicle; it was pointed away from the road and down into the neighbouring field at a thirty-degree angle. When he pushed the car door, the snow pushed back. It was up to the handle already, up to Brent’s waist, when he finally made his way into it. He climbed back to the road, hoping to spot a car that might tow him out, but there was no sign of any traffic.

He’d been travelling too fast, he knew that, but the heart transplant was urgent. If he’d taken the motorway, there’d be cars about, but that was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. He’d gambled on the empty back roads, and it had been paying off until he crashed. Had he fallen asleep at the wheel, one of those micro-sleeps? With the missing second income since Janine got sick, he was working every available shift. Driving was more stressful, too, in this kind of weather. And it wasn’t like people were lining up to become heart donors. Still, it’d be worth it once he’d finished the run and could enjoy Christmas with Janine.

From the empty road, he could see the snow-covered roofs of the Daniel’s farm a few hundred metres to the west. That, at least, was great news. He was only a half hour’s walk away from home. The only problem was that he didn’t think he could lug the donor’s body all that way to where Janine was waiting for it. Could he walk home to borrow Janine’s car? Maybe. If nothing else went wrong.

Behind him, a groan came from the back of the ambulance as his unwilling donor regained consciousness.

If you subscribe to my monthly newsletter then I’ll see you this Saturday (with funny cat photo!), otherwise I’ll see you again next Thursday!

Friction

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A black and white photo of a man in a boat ice fishing
Photo by Bjørn Are With Andreassen on Unsplash

Hi all,

Thanks to the protests here in Kazakhstan, it doesn’t look like this post will appear on its scheduled Thursday, because the internet has been basically cut. But I’m going to write and prepare it. I’ll upload it, when the internet returns, which, according to some rumours, might not be until January 19th or so.

Speaking of rumours, if you’re outside Kazakhstan, you probably have a better idea of what’s going on than I do. (Assuming you get your news from an actual news source, not Facebook. Facebook is basically an advertising company. It provides “entertainment” to keep you “engaged”, and made up stuff is more “engaging” than facts. See? That’s a scientifically proven fact, and wasn’t it boring?)

Anyway, I can’t upload my blog today, and I can’t use my bank card to buy food (the payment machine needs an internet connection to confirm the payment). So, I joined the queue of about 50 people waiting to take out cash from the cash dispenser. Talk about being engaged! It’s not normally the done thing to ogle the screen while people are getting money, but today, it was de rigueur. By the time I joined the queue, only one of the four machines was still giving people their own money back on request, and let me tell you: it was exciting.

When I joined the queue, it was still possible to take out the maximum amount of 100,000 Kazakh Tenge (a little over €200). The queue snaked around the foyer, and I had to follow it around to where the non-working machines blocked my view. By the time I could see the machine again, my adrenaline was pumping as people were already down to a maximum of 50,000 KZT.

Then 20,000 KZT.

10,000 KZT.

The woman in front of me got 6,000 KZT.

I got 0 KZT.

Spare me your pity, however, because only time will tell whether I really left with nothing! Of the fifty people in the foyer (and the line kept getting topped up behind me, so that’s fifty at a time, not fifty total), about ten were wearing masks (Yes, cynical and pedantic reader, I mean nine others and I). Of those ten, four were using their masks primarily as chin-warmers.

Luckily, the highly infectious Covid-19 variant, Omicron, hasn’t reached Kazakhstan. Whew!

According to official reporting, that is, and not the other thing: facts.

So, as I have no facts and can’t go online to find out what is happening from a reputable news source, I’m going to have to guess what’s going on outside. Here we go.

The initial cause seems to have been an almost-doubling of the cost of liquid gas, which people here use for fuel. But in the same way that an increase in bus fares set off wider-ranging protests in Chile, I’m guessing people are now protesting about a lot of other things, such as thirty years of corruption and cronyism*.

As I say, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just speculating based on my perception. Among other things, cutting internet when people want to complain doesn’t feel like the action of a legitimate democratic government to me.

Today’s flash fiction is very much in keeping with today’s theme (it was very subtle, were you able to spot it?).

Enjoy!

The thing about having his workshop in the shed where he also kept chickens was that they were always staring. Arnold ignored the quizzical glances boring into his back as he connected the final wire on the bomb. Finally, it was done, the tofu-like slab of Semtex sweating in the hot shed, just like Arnold’s forehead.

Now all he had to do was decide who to send it to. Arnold had a lot of enemies. Or so he liked to think.

Back in the kitchen, he fried up half a dozen eggs with a half-pint of milk and stared into space as he chewed the undercooked gummy mass. He tried imagining the newspaper headlines. That was a good point. If he wanted a positive write up, then he should leave the media alone. After breakfast, he logged onto his computer to help decide on a suitable target and immediately felt like a martyr. On his desktop was the folder, practically bulging, and which he had cunningly called “New Folder” to deflect attention, where the ladies of his porn collection lived. After years of conditioning, even the plain pancake-yellow folder icon got him excited.

If only he had an actual girlfriend (or two, gorgeous and bi-curious, ideally). Then, if something had happened to one of them, he could use his bomb to avenge her. The closest Arnold had ever come to a girlfriend was when a woman had once smiled at him by mistake. There was also the fact that he had given his chickens women’s names, about which he kept very quiet in his incel forum. He scrolled through the feed.

Politicians, banks, Big Tech, antifa, climate change scientists, members of the secret Bill Gates army (which was actually led by George Soros, except for when it was the other way around).… It wasn’t a lack of options, there were too many. He could even blow up his chickens if he wanted, though that would hardly make the headlines.

Unless…

Unless they were celebrity chickens!

Making his chickens famous kept him busy for a long time. Arnold’s Dancing Chickens Channel grew more popular every week, and the spin-off “Masked Chicken Challenge” was a smash hit on Netflix. He soon forgot all about his bomb, and, because this is a fairy tale, having actual things to do made him a better person, so he even met a girl who liked him.

*My fictional lawyer has asked me to clarify that I’m not suggesting there is any actual corruption here, merely that I suffer from a perception that a non-zero level of corruption exists. Probably because of social media. Hey, I’m the victim here!

Cream

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Small dead fish on a slab
Photo by Ben Ostrower on Unsplash

In the final flash fiction of the year, we look to Fate to help us live our best possible life. Enjoy!

Granny told the future from how the milk twisted when she poured it into her tea. She had seen World War II coming, and the day Granddad got hit by that car.

When I met Julie at work, I went straight to Gran for advice. I was madly in love with Julie and wanted to know if she felt the same way about me before I popped the question.

I kept it all to myself until after her divorce. Her husband kept custody of the kids, so she wouldn’t be bringing any “baggage.” it was perfect. Not that I’d have minded. Not really. But perhaps she needed a complete change to stop calling out her ex-husband’s name when we made love.

Shortly before Shrove Tuesday in the year after we married, I visited Gran again. I made tea for us both and unpacked some posh biscuits to stay on Fate’s good side.

“I see a long and happy life. Did you get these from Waitrose?” When I nodded, she took a biscuit. “I see health, happiness and fortune,” she continued.

It always pays to invest in quality baked goods. I spoil Julie with them, too.

“I see — “ Gran started coughing, and only stopped when she was dead.

Julie loves biscuits, so I make sure she gets plenty. Gran would want me to do that. I’m sure it’s what she wanted to say before she died. And whatever happens, I’ll be fine: Julie did well in the divorce settlement. I thump her on the back as another one goes down the wrong way.

Looking into the future, what else might the future hold for me as a forward facing indie author? Well, maybe I’ll get into NFTs. Don’t know what that is? Here’s a handy explainer for you!

See you next year!

Exhibit A

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Hi all, last week I promised a very short piece of flash fiction. So here it is. I tried writing a poem a few weeks back and it was really hard, so I wrote a shopping list instead. Enjoy!

A shopping list scribbled on a serviette. The items are: 6 bottles of wine; 2 bottles of vodka; 4 bottles of bleach; bin bags; rubber gloves; a steak knfe; a meat hammer; ear plugs; air freshener; cheap offcuts with bones and dry food for the dog; foot powder; toilet paper, and cigarettes
by Morgan Delaney

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