by Create50
That morning he hadn’t had time to finish his breakfast or to tie up his laces. He’d run for the bus because the thing was chasing him. A plastic bag had flapped against his leg and he’d tripped by the gate, just where he’d been intended to, just where he could clearly see the tree across the field.
The bus arrived. His knee was grazed and he couldn't pull it straight. The bus would only wait for a second, not knowing how important it was to stay. It would disappear. He’d be left alone, flat on the concrete facing the gate and the tree and the unbroken hedge which stopped him fleeing to the right.
There wasn't a bus for two hours but he daren’t go back to the house.
Suddenly, with unimagined clarity, he knew what the thing looked like and, worse, what it would do to him.
He pulled himself up. He climbed over the gate, careful to choose the side which wasn't broken by rust. He parted the corn, pushing his way up muddy furrows. He sloughed towards the tree, which he now saw was a gnarled, bitter oak. In his hand, to his amazement, was a rope. He couldn’t remember when he’d been given it, whether it was when he tripped on the concrete or when he shut the door to the cottage or when he first arrived at 'Rosebud'.
Perhaps it was that time, long ago, when he noticed water behind the TV in his flat and wondered how it had got there. Maybe it was a present from his parents-in-law, one of those Christmases when he’d gone to their unwelcoming house with his still-alive wife. Or else when his father chased him round the beach and his mother laughed and he slipped and cut his knee below his trousers and his father knelt down and pointed at the dunes and whispered in his ear: “be careful not to fall, lad, there's something to your left”.
“What are you doing in that tree?” he whispered as he fell into yet another rut. And: “Why are you perching on the gate?” He turned but the thing had gone. “Which of the saplings did you dart behind when I turned my eye?”
At length he came to the end of the field. The thing was standing under the tree, looking up, curling a rope over a branch, pulling it tight, climbing up so it could prepare a noose.
Although the man knew the rope was for him, he couldn’t take his eye off it. He watched, first from below, then clinging to a crevice in the tree’s bark, then sitting astride the branch.
He could see the cottage in the dip, the village beyond the ridge, all the people who’d ever deserted him.
Up here everything was clear, everything explained.
He’d reached the point where he would drop, effortlessly and forever. There would be nothing more to be afraid of.
So that, when the next bus passed, a passenger would tap the driver on his shoulder and the vehicle would pull up.
They’d point to a body dangling from a tree, like a mouse hung out as a warning. Its silhouette would be twisted at the neck, its eyes forced open so it stared permanently to its left.
Playgod.com
By Simon Cluett
Richie took a long drag on his joint, savouring the euphoric buzz as he stared at the monitor. The cursor blinked on and off through the pungent haze. It seemed to be cajoling him for his inability to hack the firewall. Why would a sub-standard porn site have such elaborate security? Even the premiums were a breeze to get into by comparison. It had been coded by a pro, that much was clear, but it wasn't cia.com. SWAT weren't about to come crashing through his bedroom window. Whoever was responsible for this cyber fortress was a cocky little fuck-stick who needed taking down, big time – and Richie was just the guy to do it.
It took another hour of dead-ends and blind-alleys but eventually a route through the virtual labyrinth presented itself. Richie selected 'Berserk' by Eminem on his iPod, thumbing down the volume so as not to wake his mum, and bobbed his head to the thump-thump beat. It was one of his favourites, an expletive ridden celebration of old school hip-hop. His fingers clattered across the keyboard as if fuelled by the tongue-twisting, lyric-spitting rhymes.
He hit the Return key.
The screen cut to black.
Shit.
That was not meant to happen.
Enough already. He'd been at it for six hours straight and his head was pounding like a monkey with a snare drum. He would look at it with fresh eyes another day. He was poised to log off when a pixelated image appeared on-screen. It shifted into focus to become a goldfish bowl, top corner view of an elevator.
Help me.
The words were scrawled across a mirrored wall panel in ruby red lipstick. A girl in her early twenties was slumped in a corner. Her stringy blonde hair clung to her face in clumps.
Richie jabbed his iPod's pause button, cutting Eminem off in mid-flow.
WTF?
A set of icons framed the image; Muzack, Lighting, Mobility, Air Pressure and Air Composition. Clicking each one in turn pulled up a sub-menu. The Muzak option allowed him to cycle through a selection of brain-numbing tinkle-fests. Air Composition offered a range of chemicals which could be released into the enclosed space. Introducing a hint of sulphur would pollute the air with a stench of rotten eggs while reducing the oxygen level would make breathing increasingly difficult.
Richie put on the Bluetooth headset he used for online gaming. “Hello?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
The girl's head tilted upwards to the camera.
This shit was real time.
A counter under the main display ticked away the time elapsed:
One day : Seventeen hours : Twelve minutes : twenty-six seconds. . .
Richie clicked a magnifying glass icon and the image reconstituted, auto-enhancing as the size increased. The woman's pale blue eyes were haunted by shadows; her lips cracked and pitted with sores.
“Please… help… me,” her voice was little more than a broken whisper.
This was Madison Hart. She was 22 years old. An aspiring actress from Lincoln, Iowa. That's what a handy little Bio said about her anyway. There was even a link that took Richie to her Facebook profile. Madison's timeline showed her to be “in a relationship” with someone called Roy Stigwell; a status that had garnered over a hundred likes. She was clearly a happy-go-lucky soul with a wide circle of friends, an exciting and varied social life and, above all, an unshakeable desire to be famous.
The elevator was stuck between floors. If Richie could find a way of sending her to the next level and open the door he'd be free to log off and go watch Family Guy.
He clicked the Mobility icon and a sub menu appeared listing the options; Stop, Go, Turbulence and Plummet. He selected 'Go' but instead of restarting the elevator he received a system message.
FUNCTION UNAVAILABLE
Richie scrolled down further and spotted a line of text along the bottom of the screen.
NUMBER OF LOGGED ON GODS: 1
Weird.
Why would anyone go to the trouble of having such a complex, not to mention highly illegal set-up if they couldn't guarantee anyone was watching? As he moved further down an answer presented itself.
NUMBER OF LOGGED ON ACOLYTES: 1,257,406
Acolytes.
AKA subscribers. Each one no doubt paying a monthly fee to watch some anonymous premium-user decide the fate of a random victim.
An instant message appeared on-screen.
END HER SUFFERING
The message was replaced by another.
SMITE THE BITCH
Then another.
KILL! KILL! KILL!
A dozen more messages appeared, each one calling for the woman to be snuffed out of existence. Richie was a lot of things; geek, stoner, slacker, gamer, hacker, but one thing he was in no rush to have on his CV was killer. Not until zombies walked the earth, anyway.
The woman was dehydrating but a solution was right there at his fingertips. The control options gave him the ability to create water by adjusting the air composition. A water molecule was comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
H2O.
Simple.
He scanned the available options; Nitrogen, helium, ca
rbon, sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen. All being well, condensation would form across the walls, enough to keep the woman alive until he figured out how to get her out of there. He adjusted the slide bars controlling the various levels.
Nothing happened.
Why was nothing happening?
Then it struck him.
“Idiot!”
The elevator contained the right amount of oxygen and hydrogen but to create water, a thermodynamic reaction was required. He needed a catalyst. He scanned the options on the Lighting sub menu; normal on/off, night vision, thermal imaging, ultraviolet and. . . potassium flare.
Yeah, that ought to do it.
Click!
There was a flash of retina-scorching light and a deafening whip-crack-pop as hydrogen particles exploded. The flash left a colourful after-burn and a cloud of scalding hot water vapour. As the mist settled on the woman's skin she screamed and thrashed on the floor. Silvery beads of moisture formed around her, bubbling and trickling down the mirrored walls.
The strip lighting in the elevator's ceiling flickered. The control panel short-circuited and a shower of sparks cascaded over the woman. Her body jerked as a high voltage current consumed the moisture soaked elevator.
The lights stuttered and blinked out.
Richie stared at the screen, his mouth forming a perfect 'o'.
A system message appeared.
SUBJECT IS DEAD. CAUSE OF DEATH: ELECTROCUTION
A voice in the back of Richie's head whispered; “Delete the files. Wipe the hard drive. Get out to the lake and dump the fucking thing.”
He'd gone to great lengths to conceal his digital footprint. Anyone attempting a trace would find themselves bouncing back and forth around the world like a Korean ping-pong ball. So why did he have the feeling he was being watched?
He stared into the unblinking eye of his web-cam. It was stuck to the top of the monitor amongst a cluster of Star Wars figures.
They were watching him.
Not the Ewoks or the Imperial Storm Troopers – the acolytes. He should have covered the lens; it was a rookie mistake but the weed had made him sloppy.
The view of the dead girl switched to a grainy image of a slack-jawed teen sitting in his gloomy bedroom.
Richie exploded from his chair and backed away until he felt his spine pressing into a Wolverine poster. The on-screen version of himself was almost entirely consumed by shadow. Only the whites of his eyes and the glint of Adamantium claws could be seen.
At that moment, 1.2 million people were watching him. Correction, 1.2 million sickos were watching him. And how many of them were pleasuring themselves in a squint-eyed frenzy? That was a Venn diagram Richie did not want to imagine.
Richie bolted over to his computer and grabbed the web-cam. Yoda and Artoo went tumbling behind the desk into a jungle of dust bunnies. He wrenched out the connecting cable and the monitor went black. He flipped it the original angry bird before spitting out a triumphant, “Yeh, fuck you - freaks!”
Breathing heavily and adrenaline surging through his veins he flopped back into his chair. “Jeez!” he said, one hand clawing through his unruly mop of hair. He jabbed the computer's off button, cutting the power.
Yeah, that's right, Bill Gates, the off button. Deal with it.
Richie switched on a desk lamp and pulled open a drawer. His joint had long since burnt itself out and he needed a little something. . . something to calm down. He rummaged through the clutter until he found the tin in which he kept his emergency stash. As he peeled open the baggy, Berzerk blasted out at a deafening volume.
“Shit!”
Richie thumbed the volume down to zero but the moment he took his hand away, the volume spiked again.
“RICHIE!” his mum's screech elbowed its way through the thumping bass line.
“Sorry Ma!” said Richie, all fingers and thumbs as he switched off the iPod.
His TV – fifty glorious inches of wall mounted, LCD perfection – switched itself on to a hardcore porn channel. A human Barbie doll was being vigorously serviced by a sweaty steroid-freak. She yelped noisily, approaching a well-practiced orgasm.
“YES! YES! YES!” Barbie screamed.
“No! No! No!” Richie moaned.
“TURN THAT FILTH OFF!”
Richie unplugged everything, regardless of whether it featured Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity. His MacBook, Kindle, X-Box even his hair dryer and lamp.
Everything.
Actually no, not quite everything.
He'd missed something. Something that had its own power supply, its own GPS and its own artificial intelligence.
His iPhone.
It was on – or in – the bed.
Somewhere.
The Simpsons' catchy theme tune blasted out from under the duvet.
“WHAT'S GOING ON IN THERE?”
“Just go back to sleep!”
“I'M TRYING!”
Richie scooped up the phone and accepted the call. “Yes?” he snapped.
For what seemed like an eternity all Richie could hear was the sound of breathing that was not his own.
“Who's there?”
“You have mail.”'
As the line went dead a tiny envelope appeared in the top left corner of the screen. He accessed the message, which was blank except for a single attachment. Richie opened the file without thinking; an instinctive reaction he regretted immediately. An EXE file had been triggered but the malicious code was scrolling so fast he was unable to make any sense of it. The installation was complete within seconds. Richie thumbed his way to the most recently downloaded items where he found dozens of new picture files.
He opened a JPEG at random but it took his brain an impossibly long moment to process what he was seeing.
The man was in his fifties. He had a sun-bronzed complexion and his arms were covered in long-faded tattoos under a coarse thatch of grey hair. The girl he was with could have been no more than six years old.
There were others. So many others. Evil men. Vile degenerates. Their calloused fingers touching young, delicate bodies. Caressing, clutching, clawing at flawless skin. Old, weathered faces creased into gurns of degenerate ecstasy.
Innocence stolen.
So many tears.
So many screams.
The collection had been gathered from around the world and across the years. Images of such depravity that once seen, could never be unseen.
Somewhere in the distance came the shrill wail of a siren. It was getting louder and nearer with every second that ticked by but Richie couldn't move. His world had changed. Everything he knew, everything he'd ever enjoyed, everything to which he'd attached significance had been rendered meaningless
Whatever happened next; however this thing played out, one thing above all else was clear in Richie's mind. . .
. . .he was forever damned.
Killing Her Little Darling
By Merlin Ward
If he had a fault it was that he was too nice. He wanted to do too much for his fellow humans and sometimes his kindness was not wanted or needed. He felt a failure. He wasn’t, but he’d set his sights too high; perhaps his ambitions were beyond his reach. The recession had taken its toll and he was struggling to make ends meet as a copywriter. At one time his scriptwriting would augment his income, but not having an agent had severely stunted his writing career; no matter how good the script, how creative the story, the answer from every literary agent he wrote to was always the same: “We’re not taking on anymore clients at this current time.”
He tried every angle to get agents to consider him but their doors seemed permanently fused shut, including their Twitter accounts where he was often blocked and reported for spamming.
It was Friday afternoon when he saw the email – another rejection. Agents like to clear their desks before the weekend and sending out emails that inevitably patronise hopeful writers were always the last jobs to be done before opening the Sancerre. This time, the writer felt truly b
itter because a graduate trainee had read his work, not the agent, as promised. To cheer himself up the writer turned to Facebook, and soon he was happily rattling off opinions to his online friends when he saw a post about a young boy needing a bone marrow transplant. It was the boy’s only hope of surviving leukaemia. His bone marrow had ceased to produce blood cells and he needed a donor that was a perfect match to reboot his system.
The writer already gave blood because it made him feel good to give something that money cannot buy. He was a donor in demand by the National Health Service as he was not HIV positive, he’d never had hepatitis B or C, he’d never injected himself with illegal drugs, and he only had sex with his wife – not with drugs users, prostitutes or fellow men.
At the blood donor centre they made the writer feel special as, having donated forty units to date, he had positively impacted more than a hundred lives. Now, as he read the article about the little dying boy, he saw a very slim chance to do something really extraordinary. He always carried a donor card in case he had a fatal accident but this was a great opportunity for him to save a little life and for him to live to see the result. With a spring in his step, he went for the test.
The mobile phone buzzed across the writer’s desk as he was about to start another round of emails to literary agents. The hospital wanted him to return for more stem cell tests. This was good news. He had learned that human leukocyte antigens are proteins that live on the surface of white blood cells and that the donor and recipient need to be a near perfect match if the cancer is to be beaten.
The writer felt like a star – without him the boy had no hope, but with his precious stem cells he could give the boy a chance for life. He knew the boy’s name from the Facebook article but his mother’s name was different. She had been married, was now divorced, but in her professional life she had always used her maiden name and it was a name that struck a chord with the writer.
On the way home, he checked through his emails, his blood pressure rising with every re-read rejection message from a literary agent.
“Your work is of an extremely high calibre. However, we have come to the difficult decision that we will not be able to help you with representation, at this time.”
