Night of The Fictional Dead

[ashkent]

Off-Topic:

Ok, this is an idea that I began plotting and working on very loosely last year while I was sticking with Grim Reaping. What started out as a full blown comedy involving a bullied kid took a different turn when I came across a short 1st person piece I wrote about 10 years ago featuring a sarcastic, downtrodden detective kind of character. I'm not quite sure now exactly where it will sit - possibly a little more serious that Grim Reaping, but not a straight thriller. A dark real world fantasy detective thriller with overtones of humour and horror. Try finding that genre in Waterstones! Anyway...as with all things I get to starting, I'm not sure how quickly this will be produced, but unlike when I started GR at least I know this is going to be novel length, and i know some of the main plot elements so I should hopefully get at least a chapter a week out.
So, here is the first chapter of Night of The Fictional Dead. Enjoy.

Charlie Finch watched the cars passing by with a pint in one hand and the dribbling crust of a chicken balti pie in the other.

Half three in the afternoon and he was already three sheets to the wind, sinking into a happy pit of hazy living and long, blissful slumbers. It was a fucking disgrace.

A Jag stopped outside The Grumpy Stoat, its driver younger than Charlie’s underwear and just as tanned. He wore sunglasses, bling on his fingers and a suit that seemed to radiate power like a nuclear rod. It was a bigger fucking disgrace.

Mr Jag looked across at the window of The Grumpy Stoat. Through the smears and dirt on the glass, Charlie leered out at him, the last ugly puppy in a rundown pet shop. He raised his glass and stuffed the remainder of the pie into his mouth, slobbering pieces of pastry and spicy chicken down his bearded chin and onto the counter.

Mr Jag hit the throttle like a heavy brick, screeching tyres and leaving a cloud of dust on his tail.

“Dick,” Charlie spluttered through a balti-filled mouth. The window suddenly looked like the inside of a microwave after someone hasn’t covered the bowl of beans.

He downed the best part of a pint. Not a great idea for someone already dribbling in his pants from waiting too long. Something told him if he was going to reach any kind of completely inebriated state by a decent hour he really needed to make some room.

That meant breaking the seal. Every man in the history of every drunken bastard that had graced the face of the Earth knew that breaking the seal was something that needed to be postponed as long as possible. Start too early and more time would be spent in the shitter than in the bar. No alcoholic liked that scenario. It meant more was coming out than going in.

Four hours since his first drink of the day, Charlie reckoned that he had managed a fairly respectable time and slipped down from his stool.

The Grumpy Stoat could not be called busy at this time of day. Old Morgan Tweedy sat in his regular seat over in the corner, smelling of six-day old urine and damp pig (due to sleeping in the pigsty of a nearby farm on the nights he wasn’t bunking up with any tramp that would share their doorway). Maisey Gold leaned against a support on the business side of the bar, looking bored, visibly noting the seconds of her life ebbing away into the overflow grilles beneath the ale pumps. Larry Carrey perched on a bar stool, nuts spread across the bar top, eyes fixed on the spread as though reading the Great Charts of the Stars – which of course to him is exactly what he was doing. Reading the nuts was Larry’s unique speciality, which was unfortunate as even being the only nut reader he was not the best.

That was the summation of life inside The Grumpy Stoat at three-thirty on a Monday afternoon.

“They’re rising,” Larry Carrey muttered as Charlie passed. “I’m telling you. I can see it in me nuts.”

“’Bout time too, Laz,” Charlie said. “It’s only taken you ten years.”

Larry swung around on his stool, spinning fast enough to startle a yelp from Charlie and lose his alcohol-distorted balance and topple to the floor with a thud.

“You drunken sod,” Maisey yelled. “Get any blood on that floor and there’ll be trouble.”

Urine on the seats, not a problem. Blood on the floor, a travesty.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Larry continued from the floor by Charlie’s feet. “It’s starting. They’re coming. Look at the nuts, it’s all in the nuts.”

Charlie peered at the scattered mess on the bar. It looked like a load of crushed nuts, although if he turned his head just right, and squinted to a certain degree, Charlie thought he could see the face of Kermit The Frog. Then it was a turkey. And if he tilted just enough, one part looked like Notre Dame Cathedral.

“Yep, it’s definitely nuts,” he muttered.

“Fucking bollocks, is what it is,” Morgan hollered from within his wiffy cloud.

“Nononono,” Larry whimpered, lifting himself to his feet with the aid of the bar. “It’s true all of it. They are coming. And no one knows why.”

“You stare at your nuts a bit longer, Laz and you might work it out,” Charlie said, hurrying off in the direction of the toilet as he felt a dribble itching to burst down his leg.

He could still hear Larry waffling as he entered the men’s. He couldn’t help feeling he had perhaps waited too long and unzipped as he shouldered the second door, fingers already searching inside his jeans.

The room was small, ample for the small regular clientele base but definitely not prepared for the Friday night crowd who frequently packed out the pub for nothing more than a cheap start to a long, hazy night out. The wear and tear of such nights clearly showed too. Smears here, stains there. It wasn’t pleasant, but Charlie never minded for the short time he spent inside.

He hurried over to the urinals, his tackle already out and clearly straining to contain the flood. The first burst erupted just as Charlie’s hand slapped against the tiles above the urinal, and the splashback was like a breaking dam.

“Aww, shit!” he shouted as a spray of piss settled on his lower legs and shoes. “Goddamn Larry. I’ll give you nuts.”

Heavy footsteps came from behind him and a rough hand landed on his shoulder, knocking him into the tiles and sending a shower of piss flowing onto the floor.

“Hey!” Charlie protested. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Where am I?”

The voice seemed to belong to someone who needed a damn good hockle to clear his throat. The hand felt like it belonged to a silverback gorilla. His breath smelled like Morgan Tweedy’s soiled underwear…worse in fact.

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked, wishing he’d chosen a different day to get drunk early. “You’re in a toilet! Where do you think you are? The backroom of Swinging Knockers?”

The hand pushing him further into the wall made him think that the owner wasn’t in the mood for a joke.

“Why am I here?” the gruff voice rasped. “How did I get here?”

Although there was now more piss on his clothes and shoes than in the urinal, Charlie wasn’t worried about his bladder. It was the loose sensation in his bowels that concerned him most. He didn’t want to turn into Old man Tweedy just yet. After this incident he would think twice about frequenting places like The Grumpy Stoat in future.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Charlie whined.

“Don’t lie to Hyde!” the assailant bellowed, then uttered a gurgling pained sound, like someone with severe constipation.

Charlie stood frozen against the wall, desperately wanting to clip his dick back into his jeans and developing a seriously annoying itch in his left nostril, but even when the brutish hand fell away from his shoulder, he just couldn’t do it.

The sounds of choking and a strange shishing noise accompanied the thudding of the assailant’s body hitting the floor of the rest room.

Then silence followed.

Charlie tried to rotate his eyes to look out of a hidden hatch he wished he had In the back of his head, but finally he started to move his head to look behind him.

He lowered his gaze to the floor and took in the sight before him with the same sense of confusion he assumed most drunks viewed every minute of their lives. If he had been drunk, it would have explained so much.

Like why the man lying unconscious on the filthy floor had such small hands.

Despite his dumbfounded state and earlier wish to drink himself into oblivion, Charlie had a brain. An educated brain that had, over the years, been involved in reading various books and watching movies and was right at this moment offering a solution that could explain why this gentle looking unconscious gentleman had moments earlier been holding him with monkey fists and calling himself Hyde.

Charlie had a question to ask though. Had he really drank enough to consider the impossibly answer to the conundrum offered by his slightly inebriated brain as a serious one?

Charlie turned from the body and walked in a daze towards the door, passing through after three attempts to get hold of the handle.

“Erm…” he said as he stumbled into the bar. “I think I need some help.”

The two resident patrons of the pub turned as one with Maisey to look across to where he stood with wet patches splattered all over his clothes and…

“Jesus Christ, Charlie,” Maisey shouted. “Put it away.”

Charlie looked down. His dangling penis winked at him.

A swift fumble put his absentminded indiscretion right, but he knew that even among drunks his credibility had just been shot down and was nothing more than a burning wreckage.

“There’s someone in the toilet,” he said, the words sounding as dumb in his mind as they did out loud.

“I told you,” Larry said breathlessly. “They are coming. They are here.”

“You just like setting him off or something?” Maisey asked Charlie. “I’d just managed to shut him up about his goddamn nuts.”

“Well there is someone here,” Charlie said.

“Of course there’s someone here. You, me, him and him.”

“No I mean in there?”

“Well who is it?” Maisey asked.

“That’s the thing,” Charlie started as the door behind him squeaked open.

Charlie spun around, leaped back and generally managed to look like the world’s worst ballet dancer.

In the doorway stood the thin, dishevelled man Charlie had left lying on the toilet floor, probably in a puddle of his piss. Charlie had not noticed just how badly torn the man’s clothes were clothes were until now. It looked like someone had squeezed a champion bodybuilder into the lanky bloke’s gear before giving him them to wear.

He held the doorframe for support and he looked across the bar with troubled eyes.

“Excuse me,” he said in the soft voice of a laryngitic mouse. “I wonder if you would be able to assist me with something. My name is Henry Jekyll. Would you be so kind as to tell me where I am?”

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

Wonderful chapter Mr. Kent.  This story is just going from strength to strength. 

 

[ashkent]

“What is it you call this again,” Frankenstein asked.

“Well, the menu says it is a Mocha,” Erebus said. “Personally I would call it shit.”

Frankenstein looked at him across the table, a question surfacing to be asked. Erebus cut him short.

“I’m talking metaphorically.”

“Ah, I understand.”

Erebus was pleased someone did, as he understood very little at the moment. He could not say that his investigative back-book heaved under the weight of successfully closed cases, or that it even contained many open ones, but he knew he had never come across anything like this.

Being a one-man show, he had very few people to turn to, which meant there were fewer people to share the eventual spoils with. Provided there were any spoils in the first place and that had proved a little taxing in recent times.

Now that the subject of money had crossed his mind, whatever this thing was he had stumbled across it was growing less and less likely he was about to get paid for this one either.

“So, let me just see if I definitely have this right,” Erebus said, pushing aside the cup containing something that claimed to be Mocha. “The first thing you remember is opening your eyes and finding yourself in the street.”

“That is correct,” Frankenstein said.

Erebus paused, then said, “And there ends what we know. I’m sorry to sound like I’m being a little on the dickish side, but I can’t help thinking you aren’t giving me much to go on.”

“I can only apologise. I believe some of the problem lies with my concern for my creation. I worry that if I am here, so is he.”

“If he is, I’m sure someone will find him,” Erebus said. “You’re a long way from home…and your time, come to that. Things are done differently now.”

Erebus realised that with those words he had crossed a line. He was talking to the man opposite as though he believed he was actually the fictional creation of Mary Shelley’s novel. To anyone else, it would sound like he had lost his mind, precisely how he thought it sounded when a man with an axe had wandered into the bakers not so long ago.

Something had changed though. Something subtle that he couldn’t put his finger on. Despite what rational thought led him to believe, before him, grimacing his way through a cup of the most putrid liquid to ever grace human lips, was a man who for all intents and purposes seemed to be Dr Victor Von Frankenstein.

That acceptance, as strained as it may be, brought with it a question Erebus knew would be on his mind for some time: how was this possible?

“Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon,” Frankenstein asked.

“Nothing,” Erebus said, dismissing the scientist with a wave of his hand. “Just consulting with myself. Doctor, I need you to come with me to my office. I think you will be safe there until…”

Until what? Erebus thought. Until I find out how a character from a book is sitting talking to me on a day I haven’t been heavily drinking? Until I go get myself checked out and see if I’m hallucinating through stress?

“…until I see if I can find where your creation is,” he finished.

Was it possible that somewhere out there, a big lumbering hulk was out wringing necks and eating puppies? If one was here there he could not be seen as any more foolish to believe the other was too.

Then he remembered what had led him to the meeting with Frankenstein. Nancy. Nancy who by all rights belonged in the pages of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. She had claimed to be looking for Bill Sikes.

Fictional people searching for other fictional people right on his doorstep.

Erebus looked out of the window. It didn’t help, but he could see his reflection in the dirty glass. That did help. Those eyes didn’t look like the eyes of someone who had fallen off the top step of the sense ladder and landed in the crazy bush at the bottom. Those eyes looked they belonged to someone who had just seen something unbelievable.

They also looked like the eyes of someone who had spent too much time in an armchair until four in the morning watching bad movies and good porn.

“Right,” Erebus said, turning back to look at Frankenstein. “We need to get back to the office and I need to call in the one favour I’m owed in the world. Let’s go.”

“But I have not finished my drink.”

“Do you really want to?”

Frankenstein looked at the cup for only a second. “Actually, no. I believed it to be simply polite to drink what I had been offered.”

“Then we’ll go,” Erebus said, standing up and walking slowly towards the door.

He glanced at the waitress as he passed her. She was talking to a dark-haired man who seemed every bit as agitated as Frankenstein.

“I know you told me that, but I have to insist that you cannot be right,” the man said, his voice strained and almost pleading. “I should not be here. I should not be alive.”

“Sorry, but what did you say?” Erebus broke in, looking at the man, then the waitress who seemed relived at his intervention.

“I should not be alive,” the man repeated.

“Yes, that’s what I thought you said, but how about fleshing it out a bit for me. Why shouldn’t you be alive?”

“Because until ten minutes ago, the last thing I remembered was being decapitated by a re-animated corpse.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” Erebus said, to himself more than anyone else.

“What are you talking about?” the man said. “Who is Frankenstein?”

“I am,” the doctor said. “I overheard what you have said and I am truly sorry for the trouble I have caused.”

“I’m sorry?” the man said. “You have caused no trouble to me.”

“He hasn’t?” Erebus asked, looking from one man to the other.

“I haven’t?” Frankenstein asked, returning Erebus’ questioning stare.

“Of course not,” the man said. “I brought it all on myself. My damn need to prove  I could resurrect the dead overtook my mind.”

Erebus remained silence a moment, and he suddenly realised the waitress was still standing next to us and looking a little uneasy.  He glanced down at her name badge.

“Janet, I think I can handle this from here,” he said. “I think someone on table four wants the bill.”

Janet looked uncertainly between the three men, then made a decision.

“I think you might be right,” she said. “It might be a cliché but I really don’t get paid enough for shit like this.”

Janet made her quick escape, and Erebus turned back to the man with a belief that whatever was going on, it was about to crank up a notch.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man held out his hand, which seemed to be flecked with blood.

“Dr Herbert West,” he said. “Re-animator.”

[Chinaren]

   Yay!  New episode, and another good one, as if we'd expect anything less.

[ashkent]

  Yay!  New episode, and another good one, as if we'd expect anything less.

I actually struggled to pick up the threads at first...took me three days to write the first two paragraphs, but then it was like a floodgate opening.

[ashkent]

Elias Took sat at a table as far from the windows as possible, watching Erebus uncertainly shaking the hand of Herbert West. He very rarely disguised himself when observing people who did not know they were being watched, but similarly if a rabbit did not want a fox to catch it then it didn’t perform an Irish jig in front of it.

Like the house Crichton had chosen to do business in, the small rundown cafe was not the type of establishment Took was used to being seen in. Perhaps it was time he moved somewhere in the country, a small backwater place where houses only became available when they owners died and everyone owned a recreational vehicle capable of housing the occupants of a small orphanage.

However, he was bound by the contracts he accepted to take on, and more often than not knew the surroundings he would be forced to work in. This latest job did appear to be scraping the barrel in terms of just how low down the villainy ladder he was willing to go. Sometimes though it was about more than money, more than lifestyle, and a whole lot about having your interest is piqued.

If there was one thing this job had done, it had certainly piqued his interest.

As he had told Crichton, there were plenty willing to pay for his services but there were also plenty wanting to fill his plate with nothing but mashed potato. Took wanted a little more meat in his main course and watching the private investigator, he believed he had found it.

Took knew he had been right in his assumption that this job was way beyond the command of the unsubtle, mentally weak, and easily leaned upon Ace Crichton the minute the overweight henchman contacted him. Perhaps it was cruel to manipulate such an unworthy adversary, given that Crichton did believe he was the one who brought him here. The whole charade at the house had been nothing but a little bit of fun on his part, made all the more worthwhile when the blubberball fell hook line and sinker for every word that fluttered from his lips.

Took already knew who was calling the shots. He knew how much money was coming his way. And he also knew that every penny was already sitting in his bank account. Crichton may as well have ignored everything he said and taken himself to put his feet up for an hour for the good it would do. Took had effortlessly made himself Crichton’s organ grinder and was certain he knew more about what was going on than his monkey ever would.

That was why he was in the cafe and not on a fool's errand.

After his meeting with Crichton, Took had located his primary target as planned and subsequently ended up in his current position. The one thing he had not anticipated was the appearance of Herbert West, although in the grand scheme of things he was happy to have all his eggs in one basket on this occasion.

His phone chirped quietly in his pocket. He pulled it out and turned away from his targets as he spoke.

“I’m assuming you are going to congratulate me on doing a sterling job so far,” he said as way of welcome, bypassing the universally accepted ‘Hello’.

“Perhaps I would if I hadn’t just spent ten minutes calming down a mutual friend of ours who seems to be under the impression that he needs to get money delivered to your account immediately,” said the voice at the other end of the line.

“Ah, at least he can carry out an order well enough. Perhaps you should get him to be your personal servant.”

“I have more to think about at the minute. Have you found any of them yet?”

“Jimmy, Jimmy. I thought you knew how I work. You give me the brief, I give you the result.”

“Don’t use my name down the phone,” Jimmy Roaster hissed. “There could be anyone listening.”

“What?” Took asked. “You don’t want me to call you Jimmy, Jimmy? But Jimmy, if I don’t call you Jimmy then what should I call you…Jimmy?”

He waited for a response but instead a seething silence emitted from the phone. Took smiled. There were few capable of such manipulation as he. His victims never seemed to realise until it was too late though, many of them finding how undeniably terminal it was to let down their guard for too long.

“Who are you with?” Jimmy asked after a while.

“I have a party of one going on right now, but if you mean which of your resurrections I am looking at, it would seem I have been brilliant enough to locate two of them at once.”

There was a sound from other end of the phone that could have come from a gerbil.

Jimmy said, “Excellent. Which ones are they?”

“The scientists,” Took said. “Have I ever told you how much I hate scientists? I know we are talking a little more interesting in this case. The legendary body snatcher Frankenstein and lesser known but just as sinister Herbert West. In the end though, I’m sure at some point they will get to that moment all men of science do and start talking about the comparable smell of sulphur and its human equivalent.”

“I don’t care what they talk about. I just want them gathered and delivered to me.”

“Well there is one slight problem. They seem to be with someone else.”

Jimmy spluttered down the line, descending rapidly into a series of convulsive throat clearing noises and wracking coughs.

A moment later her wheezed, “Who?”

“I believe he is someone you may know. Erebus Stone.”

Something thumped at Jimmy’s end of the phone.

“How has Erebus got to them before we did?” he asked, still struggling to speak after his coughing session. “You have to get them away from him.”

“All in good time, my friend,” Took said. “All in good time. Let me enlighten you with the way I see it. As long they are with him, we know where to find them. Take Stone out of the equation and you have two very out of place scientists running amok and attracting attention to themselves.”

Jimmy pondered. “I can see your reasoning there. As long as they end up here with the others, then let Erebus keep them, but you will need to make sure he doesn’t try anything.”

“I don’t think he is that inclined,” Took said, a smile on his face before the reaction came.

“I am not suggesting he’s going to fuck them,” Jimmy said in a raised voice. “You cannot let someone like Erebus Stone near this and leave him to his own devices. If this goes tits to the sky then heads will roll.”

“Oh, are we lowering ourselves to cliché’s already?” Took said. “I thought we could have at least made it through the first stage before going there.”

“I haven’t got time for this,” Jimmy snapped. “Let me know when you have them all.”

The line went dead.

Took smiled. Jimmy Roaster was just another minion who thought he was top of the pile.

He turned back around and looked across to the counter.

His smile dropped away as he saw the empty space that has occupied his targets. 

He looked around the room. Stone and the scientists had gone.

At that moment, Elias Took decided that Roaster was not another minion; he was a fucking liability.

Pocketing his phone, he left the café, dropping a note on the counter to cover the price of the terrible cup of tea he had forced himself to consume.

The street outside was virtually empty. There was no sign of Stone.

There was someone else though.

Took crossed the street, approaching a tall man admiring a model ship in a shop window.

“Good afternoon,” Took said as the man noticed him and removed his hat. “May I be so bold as to call you Hook, or would you prefer Captain?”

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

Not one, but two excellent additions after a sustained hiatus.  Well done Ashkent.  And very good reading too!

[Chinaren]

Woo, another chapter, and so quickly.

Good one Ask, though a few of the sentences near the start might work a bit better with a slight rewording.  A couple are a tad unwieldy.

[ashkent]

Woo, another chapter, and so quickly.

Good one Ask, though a few of the sentences near the start might work a bit better with a slight rewording.  A couple are a tad unwieldy.

Thanks guys...and I think those sentence problems of which you speak should now be a thing of the past.

[ashkent]

“Dr Jekyll?”

Charlie stood by the door of the larder, listened for any reaction from within.

“Can you hear anything?” Maisey asked. “You don’t think he’s… done something to himself?”

“He might have knocked himself out I suppose,” Charlie said, pressing his ear to the cold surface but hearing only a grainy silence. “Do we risk opening it?”

“Maybe you should try his name again,” Maisey said, echoing the thought in Charlie’s head.

“Dr Jekyll, can you hear me?” he tried again. “We want to talk to you about…things.”

“That sounded pathetic,” Maisey muttered behind him. “You could have thought of something better than that.”

“Like we want to talk about the fact that you’re a dead fictional character yet you seem to be sitting inside our larder?”

“My larder.”

“Yes, ok, your larder. The point is it isn’t exactly the perfect way to start a conversation with someone who seems capable of turning into a big angry bastard in the blink of an eye. Besides he could–”

“Shhh,” Maisey said suddenly.

From beyond the door, a small, almost inaudible voice said, “I can’t breathe.”

“Is this thing airtight?” Charlie asked. “You didn’t tell me it was airtight when we put him in there!”

“Of course it’s airtight,” Maisey said. “But he can’t have run out of air. He’s only been in there for…oh shit.”

“Oh shit? Oh shit what?”

“That.”

Charlie followed Maisey’s pointing finger to a small unit off to the left of the door, a sticker above it reading, Fitted with air retraction technology.

“Oh for the love of…” Charlie said, unlocking the mechanism and swinging open the heavy door.

Jekyll was on his knees just inside the door, pale, weak and barely conscious.

“Help me get him out,” Charlie said, grabbing the doctor’s right arm and slinging it over his shoulder.

Maisey took the other arm and together they half-dragged a gasping Jekyll across to the wall, where they propped him up against some old crisp boxes.

“Did you not think to mention about the fact that thing turns itself into a vacuum when it’s closed when we put him in there?” Charlie huffed, stepping back from the dishevelled body recuperating in the vague stench of Worcester Sauce. “That would have been a turn up if we managed to kill him.”

“He shouldn’t even be alive!” Maisey shouted. “Anyway, at the time I was more interested in keeping myself out of the hands of that big ugly thing he turns into than checking the capabilities of my food store.”

“Ok, ok. Sorry. It’s just we have no idea what’s happening here and if anything happens to him, then our best chance of finding out goes with him.”

The both looked down at Jekyll, who seemed to have regained his colour and was breathing normally again.

“You don’t think he’s going to get mad and change, do you?” Maisey asked.

“Christ, he’s not the Hulk,” Charlie told her. “If I remember rightly, it isn’t controlled by anything.” He paused, then added, “Which means he can turn at any time.”

“Makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Which is why we need to get him upstairs and find out as much as we can before we need to worry about it,” Charlie said, crouching down next to the doctor. “Doctor Jekyll? It’s Charlie. We spoke earlier up stairs.”

“Yes,” Jekyll said hoarsely. “I remember our conversation but then nothing more until I awoke starved of oxygen in the dark.”

“Yes, I think we need to apologise for that. A bit of miscommunication. Do you think you can stand?”

“I’m not sure. Could you aid me?”

Charlie held out a hand and took hold of the doctor’s forearm. He rose up, unsteady but able to remain upright without too much support. Maisey stayed to his left, ready to move should he look like toppling in her direction.

“I think I will be alright,” Jekyll said. “It would be good to see the sun, however.”

“Not likely with the weather we’ve been having,” Maisey said, getting a look from Charlie. “Ok, let’s go up to the bar again. I just hope this is worth it, Charlie, because otherwise his evil twin is going to pop up again and it probably won’t be as easy containing him a second time.”

“If it is of help, I will try to sense him,” Jekyll said. “I do not know how much warning I can give, but I am sure any forewarning will be better than none.”

“We’d appreciate it,” Charlie said.

They ascended the stairs, emerging from the cellar into the expectant air of the barroom. All eyes turned in their direction as they stepped out of the doorway; Charlie leading, with Jekyll behind him.

“Take a seat, Doctor,” Charlie said, sweeping a hand in the rough area of the tables nearby. “Maisey, I think now we do need to get those drinks.”

Maisey closed the cellar door and headed over to the bar without argument. “I expect you’re putting these on your tab, Charlie.”

“Jesus, even in the middle of all this I can’t get a free drink?”

“I’m still running a business. There’s nothing in the brewery’s terms and conditions saying that all drinks are free just because we have some dead fictional guy in the bar.”

“Just pour, Maisey. Scotch for both of us and whatever any of the others are drinking.”

The gathered patrons showed their appreciation with various vocal thanks and a burst of hearty profanity from Old Man Tweedy.

“So,” Charlie said, turning his attention to Jekyll. “I know we kind of covered this before, but i want you to tell me anything you know about why you are here?”

“I am at a loss to understand much about my being here,” the scientist said. “The last thing I truly recall is being in my laboratory, confessing to the crimes of the dreadful Mr Hyde and…”

Charlie waited as a look of uncertainty passed over Jekyll’s face.

“And…” he continued. “I died.”

Maisey appeared beside them and clinked two glasses of amber liquid onto the table. “I think you might need that,” she said to the suddenly pale-again doctor. “There’s worse to come, trust me.”

“How can it get worse that recalling your own death?” he asked.

“When you were never alive to begin with,” Charlie said apologetically.

“I do not understand,” Jekyll said. “What do you mean, man? Of course I have been alive or how would I recall my past? After the doubt you have put upon my identity you start talking about me as though I am…a figment of the imagination.”

“I know what I am telling you is probably as hard for you to understand as it is for me to be sat here telling you it, but you are a fictional character.”

Jekyll stared at Charlie, then looked at the others in the room. “What is to say that you are all not simply part of a dream, no a nightmare, that I am having at this very moment while I am sleeping soundly in my bed.”

“This,” Maisey said, dropping something onto the table with a small thud.

Charlie and Jekyll looked down at the small, red leather-bound book Maisey had put down in front of them. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Jekyll stared at it for a few moments without moving a muscle. When he did, it was to lift his eyes to Charlie with an expression close to pleading.

“What is this?” he asked.

Charlie waited a breath. “Doctor Henry Jekyll,” he said. “This is your life.”

“Will you give it a rest with the funnies?” Maisey said. “Think how you were an hour ago when you came staggering out of the toilet hollering about who was claiming to be in there. Imagine what it’s like for him after what you’ve just told him.”

Jekyll reached out and opened up the cover of the book, his fingers quaking as he leafed to the first page and began to read it.

Charlie looked up at Maisey, asking her, “Where did you get that?”

“There’s a whole shelf of classic books over there,” she said, pointing off towards the far corner of the bar. “If you didn’t sit staring out of the window most of the time you’re here, shouting abuse at the cars going by, then you might have noticed it before.”

“I don’t shout abuse at cars,” Charlie protested at the assassination attempt on his character. “I shout at the people in the cars because they all think they’re better than me.”

“You don’t know any of them,”

“I don’t need to know them.”

“The nuts say you need to get a room,” Larry interjected from one of the other tables.

Maisey and Charlie both turned to him, then exchanged sheepish glances.

“Larry, your nuts were shot to shit,” Maisey told him, attempting to prevent the blush rising up her cheeks like fire up a dry straw stack. “They can’t say anything.”

“Sometimes a man doesn’t need his nuts,” Larry told her in a statement that brought its own silence with it.

“Doctor Jekyll?” Charlie said, returning his attention, gratefully, to the man opposite him. “Doctor Jekyll are you alright?”

Jekyll was turning pages in groups, skimming lines of text and moving on, and he was just about to make it to the last pages.

“You don’t need to do that,” Charlie told him, feeling the strange sensation that he was responsible for potentially driving the man mad with what he was reading.

“It is all here,” Jekyll said. “Everything of my unfortunate life since creating that devilish concoction. Even my own death.” He closed the book and looked Charlie straight in the eyes. “What am I?”

“Whingey bastard,” Old Man Tweedy chuntered with his usual impeccable sense of timing.

Charlie didn’t even acknowledge the slurred insult, just sighed and gave his own reply. “I don’t know, Doctor. I really don’t know, but the only way we can find out is to work out why you are here.

“Now I don’t know if there is some way we can help you contain Hyde, but as you clearly don’t know what is going on either, we will have to find what we need to know elsewhere, and we need to do it without worrying that at any minute we’re going to be jumped on by your unruly passenger.”

“I…I have never tried to control him,” Jekyll said. “For much of it, I did not really know what he was capable of, as you will know from reading this.”

He held up the book and considered it like an art collector appraising a new work by their favourite artist.

“But I am willing to try. I just cannot guarantee success.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Charlie said. “Now, I have just one question. Who could be talk to that could possibly have an idea of what is going on?”

He looked around the bar at the blank stares returning his gaze.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.

[Chinaren]

   Another excellent chapter Ask, loved the line:

Charlie waited a breath. “Doctor Henry Jekyll,” he said. “This is your life.”

Also the nuts chatter. 

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

Wonderful read Ashkent

[ashkent]

“Who’s there?” Serenity asked the empty road

Someone had spoken so close to her ear she felt their breath, and yet there was no one anywhere to be seen, nor were there any immediately obvious places for them to hide. Which left only one possible solution.

She was going mad.

The car that had led her to this side of the street remained stationary with its fake passenger.

I wouldn’t hang around if I were you.

Something told her it would be foolish not to listen to the advice, wherever it came from. This whole situation made her uneasy, and nothing usually unnerved her when she was working.

She took one last look inside the car then started walking away.

“Not that way,” the same phantom voice said, only this time she felt a hand against her shoulder.

Serenity swung around, chopping at air with her hand.

“What the fuck is this!” she yelled, no longer concerned with attracting attention.

“Trust me,” the voice said from behind her. “Go the other way.”

She spun again, attempting to catch sight of any disturbance nearby.

“This is insane,” she said.

“And dangerous if you don’t move now,” the voice urged from the left.

Serenity Dark, the cold blooded, calculating and overtly sexual predator, for a moment ceased to exist, and in her place appeared Daisy Smith, quiet, unassuming and scared. This was the young girl who turned herself into someone who would not be scared anymore. She was a real life Batman, taking her fears and turning them inward to create a new persona that would see her through tough times, make her stronger. The persona that had seen off more targets than Rambo and had given her a purpose in life other than being someone’s bitch.

The persona that had also given her more sex than Daisy Smith could have dreamed of.

For a moment, standing in the street by the car with its mannequin occupant, being instructed by a phantom voice, it was as though Serenity Dark had never been born and she was just plain old Daisy Smith again.

Then her mind clicked back into place and she hurried away from the car in the direction she had been instructed.

“Take the first right,” the voice said beside her, startling her at how omnipresent it had become.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you a ghost?”

How old are you? Five? she thought.

“I’ll tell you soon,” the voice replied. “When you are not likely to get yourself killed.”

“I can look after myself,” Serenity said, aware that she did indeed sound like a five year old. “I mean I’ve seen things that you can probably only imagine.”

“Then why are to following my instruction?” the voice said with an infuriating smugness.

She hated herself for being so easily manipulated. This was what it felt like to be on the receiving end, and she didn’t like it at all.

“I’m just curious,” she lied. “It’s not every day I meet someone invisible.”

“I’m pretty certain you’re right on that score. Take this left and you should be ok there for now.”

“Ok from what? Or who?”

“In good time,” the voice said. “Just get in there so you’re off the main street. If you’re that good at looking after yourself then you should know it’s best to stay out of plain sight.”

It was like being lectured to by her mother. Who was this guy? And why was he so interested in her safety?

She took the side road she had been instructed to, finding herself in a narrow lane between the houses and a small plantation area. It was certainly out of the way, concealed on one side by the tall townhouses, and on the other by trees.

Serenity stopped and listened. There wasn’t a sound other than her breathing, and her heartbeat that thumped a little louder than usual in her chest.

“Are you there?” she asked, listening for a noise to indicate another presence.

“Of course I’m here,” the voice said. “You think I would bring you all the way down here and then just wander off and leave you?”

“Maybe. So are you going to tell me who you are now? Why you’re doing this? Who I’m meant to be keeping out the way of?”

“I’m not sure if you would believe me if I told you who I am.”

“Well excuse me for being a bit obvious here, but I’m talking to someone I can’t see. I think it’s a little late in the day to be questioning what I will and won’t believe, don’t you, sugar?”

“I suppose,” the voice said. “I descended from a scientist who was written about in a book. His name was Claude Ranier. He was better known as The Invisible Man. I am his grandson, and as you can see, or not as the case may be, his curse has been passed on to me.”

“You’re the grandson of the Invisible Man?” Serenity asked the air. “Seriously? He didn’t have children in the b– Hang on, the Invisible Man wasn’t real! How can you be the grandson of a character from a story?”

“I thought we were beyond what you can and can’t believe?”

Serenity shook her head. “Yes, perhaps we are but this is something completely different. You want me to believe that you are related to someone who never even existed? And he didn’t have children!”

She felt like she was putting too much effort into stressing the lack of offspring line. In the end, there had never been an invisible man so there couldn’t be children and grandchildren. Ever.

“How else do you explain what you’re talking to then?” the voice asked. “And why would I make this up?

“My grandfather was a good man who cared for his family even when he was rendered invisible. His one child, my father, turned out not to have the curse of invisibility, but from the moment I was born I began to lose pigment colour from my skin until…well, you can see the result.”

Serenity waited a moment before saying what was on her mind.

“That’s not how I remember the story,” she said. “They guy went nuts through it and definitely wasn’t in the mood for a family.”

“I’ve read the accounts of my grandfather,” the invisible grandson said. “I have seen the book. Unless there is some fake account being circulated then I don’t know what you have been reading.”

“Whatever,” Serenity said. “The point is you cannot be related to someone from a book. How exactly do…why am I even doing this?”

She turned away from where she assumed the supposed third generation invisible man to be standing. This was impossible, completely impossible. It was not just one part of it either, it was everything.

She was talking to someone she could not see; impossible.

She was talking to someone who claimed to be the grandson of the invisible man; impossible.

She had taken instructions from the same someone. That too should have been impossible yet she was now standing in the secluded spot she had been led to.

“Ok,” she said, turning around again. “Where are you now?”

“Here,” the voice said beside her.

“For fuck’s sake, you’re going to stop doing that,” she snapped.

“Sorry,” he chuckled. “It is a bit of a perk.”

“I’ll give you a perk if you do it again. Before I do anything else, I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s your name?”

“Wilfred.”

“Jesus, the luck fairy missed you out, didn’t she.”

“Hey, I just saved your pretty little arse so less of the ungrateful, spoilt brat attitude or I’ll just leave you to fend for yourself.”

“You haven’t told me who exactly you think you’ve saved me from.”

“Someone who wants to enlist you to their cause.”

“You can cut the cryptic bullshit. It’s not working for me.”

Her supposed saviour sighed. “Is there somewhere we can go? I’m not explaining out in the open when someone passing by could see you talking to yourself.”

“I know somewhere we can go,” Serenity said. “But if this is just some way for you to get me alone, I’ll tell you now, just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean I won’t be able to snap it off it you try anything.”

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

The plot thickens!  Very good, as usual Ashkent.

[Chinaren]

Excellent, and a nice insight into 'Serenitys' background. 

Moar.

[Justclovis]

Just started reading this (still so much to catch up on!) and got about twenty lines into it before I had to stop and comment. This is way up my alley; I'm still sniggering. Had to say, it's not just men. Everybody knows the 20-Minute Rule: when drinking beer, hold it as long as possible, 'cause once you let it out, it's going to be every 20 minutes for the rest of the night. And when you have to stagger to the can in 4 inch heels, AND wait for some bint to finish her hair before she releases the stall, that's way, way, way too many times.

So there. Back to my originally scheduled reading.

[ashkent]

Erebus sat down at his desk.

It had taken very little to pursue the disorientated Herbert West to join him and Frankenstein in taking a walk back to his office.

The journey, though not long, was lengthy enough for Erebus to constantly believe someone was about to question him over his two companions. He assumed it was similar to how many celebrity chaperones felt when out with a star attempting to travel incognito.

This was a little different though. The most anyone wanted from a celebrity, in usual circumstances, was an autograph and possibly a photo. What would someone want if they found two fictional characters in the street?

They had traversed most of the journey before Erebus realised his worried were a little over-dramatic considering exactly who his companions were. Neither doctor could be described as immediately recognisable. He was not walking down the street with REANIMATOR ACTOR or Peter Cushing. These were the characters as they existed in a written world, not a cinematic interpretation. Just as he had not recognised either man by their looks neither would anyone else.

However someone could very well notice that West’s clothes were spattered with blood. That was a little more obvious eye-catcher.

Whether it was luck or good fortune, the closest they came to an incident was the very brief appearance of the nutter Erebus had earlier encountered on a corner two streets away from the office, but his attention had been focussed on some other poor local who was being shown a cucumber that was no doubt being referenced as a nuclear warhead.

In the office, Erebus closed the door and turned the lock to prevent any unexpected arrivals, even though the only people who should be turning up unannounced should be new business. He couldn’t afford to turn that away, but what was happening seemed to warrant the possible loss of income.

This was something that he guessed could only be described as a once in a lifetime occurrence.

Sitting behind his desk, Erebus felt like he could think for the first time in the best part of an hour.

He felt like he could but there seemed to be little coming other than trying to remember when he had last eaten.

“Talk amongst yourselves for a little while,” Erebus said to the similar scientists. “I have to make a phone call.”

Frankenstein seemed poised to ask something, but Erebus cut him off. “Something beyond your time, doctor.”

The curt statement seemed to make the doctor rethink his potential question, leaving Erebus free to pick up the phone and start dialling a number he did not think he would be calling anytime in the near future.

He put the handset to his ear and waiting while it rang. And rang. And rang.

“Why is no one ever near a phone when you call them?” he muttered, immediately waiving his hand when it looked like his guests were about to attempt to muster a reply to a clearly rhetorical question.

As the six ring died away in his ear, Erebus began to move the phone away from his ear just as a huffing voice gasped “Hello?” in a ghost of a voice.

“Eric?”

“Yeah, who’s….Erebus? That you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been a while, Mr Detective. What brings you to my direct line?”

“I need to claim that favour you owe me from the Marsden incident.”

“Yeah, ok, right,” Eric said quickly. “You don’t have to mention it by name…I know I owe you one. Must be bad though if you’re coming to me.”

It was true, and Erebus knew it better than anyone.

Eric Strange was a journalist, but not one that spent his time hanging around courthouses or celebrity haunts to get a breaking story. Possibly feeling he had a name to live up to, Eric tended to delve into the more dark and disturbing side of journalism that was usually reserved for those in cheap horror movies.

Eric shunned real news in favour of chasing ghosts, supposed beasts and other supernatural leads for the story he believed would be the making of him and prove the existence of the powers beyond the natural world.

When Erebus had first encountered the girl calling herself Nancy, and subsequently Frankenstein, he had already considered there could be others wandering the streets in search of confusion, and if there were such others appearing in town, sooner or later on of Eric’s peculiarity-loving sources would hear about them and pass on the good word.

“I think I might have a story for you,” Erebus said, “and it’s a better one that your regular mumbo jumbo crowd bring in but first I need to know if you’ve heard anything about…”

Erebus hesitated to wonder if he was really about to ask the question that equalled a madness the whole of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland could not muster.

“About?” Eric asked, his voice suggesting he already knew that if it was worth a phone call from Erebus then it was going to be something potentially publishable unlike most of the garbage thrown his way by drunks who claimed to have shared a bottle with the Devil.

“Dead fictional characters?” Erebus said, closing his eyes.

“What?” Eric asked. “I don’t get you. Have you really called me to talk literature?”

“Dead fictional characters walking the streets,” Erebus said. “Or, for the sake of being specific, sitting with me right now in my office.”

When making such a statement to a man who has spent his career being ridiculed for his theories and almost obsessive belief that one day he will hit the story that makes him millions, there are two reactions that can be expected; immediate acceptance or immediate belief that someone is taking the piss, the latter of which is accompanied by a smattering of profanity.

“Fuck off, Erebus,” Eric said. “You fucking prick. Of all the people I expected to be a fucking cock about what I do you weren’t one of them. Jesus fucking Christ, you absolute cock-end. I don’t even –”

“Eric!” Erebus shouted, his change in volume startling his two guests, who had been conversing with each other since the phone had been answered. “I’m being deadly serious about this.”

“Serious?”

“Well if not then I really haven’t thought of a decent punchline here.”

Eric seemed to take a few seconds to digest this, then said, “Who have you got there?”

“Victor Frankenstein and Herbert West.”

“Victor Frankenstein? As in mad scientist, Frankenstein’s monster Frankenstein?”

“Yes, and Herbert West.”

“Who the fuck is Herbert West?” Eric asked.

“Herbert West, H P Lovecraft character? Re-animator?”

“Rings a vague bell,” Eric said. “And you have them with you now?”

Erebus could tell the man on the other end of the line was probably only one moment away from pissing himself with delight at what he was being told, and he half expected a girlish giggle to come down the phone to him.

“Yes they’re here,” Erebus told the journalist. “And that’s partly why I need a favour. I don’t think they are the only ones.”

“There’s more of them?”

“Well, there’s definitely one, possibly others. I need to know if any of your sources have heard about them.”

“If they have they haven’t been sharing,” Eric said. “When you said there’s definitely another one?”

“She’s calling herself Nancy. As in Oliver Twist.”

This time the high pitched squeak of a giggle did come.

“Oh my god, Erebus. This could be big. This could be bigger than…bigger than…the return of the Titanic.”

“The Titanic never returned, Eric.”

“That’s what everyone thinks. I know different though. That ship came back full of vicious mutated cannibals. Something got them alright but it wasn’t an iceberg.”

“Anyway, if I can just keep on topic here,”Erebus said, reigning in the reporter. “I need to know if there are more. Something is happening that I can’t explain, and the only way I can see of making any sense of it is to know all the facts. Do you think you can try to find anything out?”

“As long as you promise me that this story is mine to publish. None of this hushing it up stuff like the government do with everything I get a sniff of.”

“When have I ever worked like the government do? I can’t follow the rules long enough to walk in those circles.”

“I’ll get on it straight away then,” Eric said, tripping over his words to get them out. “What number can I get you on?”

“You won’t,” Erebus said. “I’ll call you when I can.”

“You not got a mobile number I can get you on if I find anything?”

“Nope.”

There was a moment of stony silence down the line then Eric said, “You don’t have a mobile phone? What kind of detective are you?”

“One that doesn’t have a mobile. Now if that’s all, I’ve got two fictional dead guys in need of my attention.”

“Sure, sure. I’m going.”

Erebus muttered a quick goodbye and hung up the phone. He wasn’t sure whether involving the journalist would be a help or hindrance, but there seemed little point worrying about it now.

“Right,” he said, waiting for the two scientists to end their brief conflab. “I think the three of us need to have proper chat about what is going to happen in the next few hours.”

Erebus couldn’t help but think the conversation would be much easier if he had the slightest idea what was going on.

[Chinaren]

   Great to see this one moving again Ask!  And a very nice chapter as usual.  And...

“That’s what everyone thinks. I know different though. That ship came back full of vicious mutated cannibals. Something got them alright but it wasn’t an iceberg.”

There's another story to be written right there.

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

The enjoyment continues.  Wonderful chapter Ashkent. 

[ashkent]

Off-Topic:

Has it really been that long?? i can only apologise that i didn't stop taking my medication sooner

Jimmy Roaster grew more agitated as time marched on. Why did it take so long to get anything done in this business?

Every scheme, not matter how simple, always seemed to rely on others, and relying on others meant agitation. In turn agitation led to much floor walking, which is what Jimmy did as he waited for word from the swine of a bounty hunter Elias Took.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered, pacing across to the window and looking out at the street that still reminded him how much of a shithole the place was. “One simple task. That’s all it is. Just one simple task and it takes a goddamned age. And he hung up on me.”

A beep from the computer interrupted  his self-indulgent decimation of the situation.

Jimmy turned around and looked at the screen.

WELL? it asked.

The last thing he needed was this. How did he always seem to know just when to make contact? The webcam was definitely turned off this time, so unless he had managed to bug the room, it could be nothing other than coincidence…again.

Jimmy took a seat at the desk and typed his reply.

WE ARE ALMOST THERE.

He sat back, waiting for the next question. He wanted to pull faces at the screen, possibly throw in an obscene hand gesture, but the idea that somewhere in the room an all-seeing lens was observing his movements. It seemed a better option to simply sit and wait.

But after five minutes waiting for additional words to appear on the screen, the urge to explode became almost too great to hold in any longer. Then they came.

I DON’T THINK WE HAVE THE SAME INTERPRETATION OF “ALMOST THERE”.

“Fuck you!” Jimmy bellowed at the screen, his face burning red and popping with veins in places they had no right to be.

The thought of being watched had taken flight and did not figure in the now as he pushed back from the desk, yelling and stamping the floor with the atomic ferocity that comes so naturally to the under tens.

When he came to rest in a flurry of papers and heavy breathing, he noticed another line of text waiting for him.

ALTHOUGH I ALSO HAVE A DIFFERENT VIEW ON WHAT THE BEST TYPE OF SAUSAGE IS, SO DON’T READ TOO MUCH INTO IT. HA HA.

Something about the addition of those two small words at the end, which would in other circumstances have been a jovial finale to the line, made Jimmy want to take the nearest heavy object, be it the a paperweight, his chair or the desk, and pummel the laptop into the floor until it was nothing but a twisted wreckage of aluminium and electronic board.

The dull sound of Beethoven suddenly invaded the cloud of rage performing an intricate ballet routine around his head, and he looked around for his phone.

Where the hell had he put it? Every time he told himself to put it back in the same place, but there were so many distractions that he was doing something else before he realised.

Pulling open the desk drawer, Beethoven blasted up in his face reminding him he also needed to change the ringtone to something less bombastic.

He glanced at the caller ID as he lifted the phone to his ear and pressed the answer button.

“This had better be telling me something good, Elias,” he said. “I am not in the mood for any more excuses.”

He listened to the silky tone coming from the earpiece, and after a few seconds a wide, wicked grin parted his lips and his momentary decent into rage swept away on a tide of pure, cool waters.


“Well that is a step in the right direction,” he said. “Just do one thing for me and don’t lose them. How long until you have them at the facility?”

He nodded as Elias answered, the same grin remaining on his face throughout.

“Good. Let me know when you’re there and don’t leave them unless Crichton is there. I don’t want them wandering off.”

He didn’t bother giving a sign-off, instead quickly hanging up and leaping over to the waiting laptop.

WE HAVE THE MONSTER, he typed, the aura of self-satisfaction blooming like an H-Bomb cloud.

The cursor flashed. And flashed. And flashed.

“Where are you, you ratfuck!” he snapped at the screen.

Words appeared in red letters.

MESSAGE NOT SENT. USER OFFLINE.

The room blurred with furious profanity, and moments later a passing pigeon had its head wrenched from its shoulders after a collision with a speeding laptop.

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

Ha!  All this is so true!!

So happy to see this reappear Ash. Seems to be a (happy) trend recently, hope it continues!

[Chinaren]

Yay!     Very happy that you stopped taking the pills Ask.

Now... moar.

[ashkent]

“Ow. Son of a bitch.”

“Daughter of one,” Serenity said to the seemingly empty room. “Just because I can’t see you, if you stand in the same place long enough I’ll always work out where you are. Where did I get you?”

“Right in the eye,” Wilfred grumbled from her left.

“Good,” she snapped. “Just wish I could see the shiner when it comes out.”

She moved to her left, satisfied at the sound of her invisible associate’s feet doing a jig to avoid further damage to his face. This time she had no intention of landing another punch though, she just wanted a drink and he happened to be standing by the sink.

The small flat was just one of a number of safe-houses Serenity frequented in order to keep herself out of sight when she needed to vanish. The assassination business didn’t always lead to a calm and relaxing life, but it more than paid for the low rent on a handful of rundown accommodations that even the rats refused to sleep in.

“Want one?” she said without turning, her hand on the tap.

“No, I’m fine,” Wilfred said somewhere behind her. “An icepack wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Considering there isn’t even a freezer, I think you’re going to go wanting.”

She turned her back to the sink, a glass of water on her hand.

“You still think I need your help to stay ahead whoever you think is out to get me?”

“What, just because you have good hearing and decent aim you think you’re invincible?”

“It’s served me well enough so far, and believe me, I’ve taken down some big, ugly bastards in my time.”

Wilfred laughed.

“What?” Serenity asked. “Something amusing you over there?”

Wilfred’s laugh ceased. “No. There’s nothing funny about any of this, as you might find out if you actually let me tell you about it rather than trying to batter me senseless.”

“Can’t be full of bravado when you’ve been bested by a girl, can you.”

“I didn’t have to come to warn you,” Wilfred said, moving across the room. “I could just let everything pan out as they’re planning it. Let the world go to hell. God knows I shouldn’t even be here, so what does any of it matter to – damn it!”

A worse-for-wear coffee table toppled over and promptly fell apart as it hit the floor.

“You could also watch where you’re going every once in a while,” Serenity commented. “You have any idea how much that piece of shit cost me?”

“Not as much as it is going to cost the world if something isn’t done.”

“Geez, will you give it a rest about the world. The world has seen off more Armageddons than this town has more lowlifes in need of an assassin, I’m sure it can handle another one without my immediate attention.”

Wilfred sighed. “It’s never had to deal with the rise of the fictional dead before.”

Serenity lowered her glass. “Come again?”

“The world has never seen anything like what is happening out there now.”

“Fictional dead? What kind of hokey shit is that?”

“The kind I was trying to tell you about before you thought it would be more productive to start proving your childish point and taking a swing at me.”

Serenity turned and stood her glass in the sink. “Okay, so now I’m listening. Next time you might want to lead with the juicy line. Just, you know, to get the attention without making it like the three hundred page lead in of a Stephen King novel.”

She crossed the room and dropped into one of the rusty, decrepit chairs dotted around.

“So?” she asked.

The chair on her left creaked. “So, my face is throbbing.”

“My left hook is just as good as my right if you want to see it.”

“Alright, alright. Just trying to stop this getting heavy.”

Serenity laughed. “You’ve  dragged me away from my work, telling me that I’m in danger and someone is out to get me, then there’s this thing with fictional dead. I think we’re already well into heavy territory.”

“I suppose,” Wilfred agreed. “It’s going to get a lot –”

“If you mention the world one more time I swear you won’t walk again.”

Silence emanated from the seat next to her.

“How about just telling me who is after me and why they want me,” Serenity said.

“It seems that your talents have been attracting attention in certain circles. Have you crossed paths with Elias Took?”

“Took? What’s that slimeball got to do with this?”

“I’ll take that as a yes then. Took’s working for others. He’s meant to be collecting together a group of individuals who between them make up a formidable force for the mastermind playing them.”

“Okay,” Serenity said. “Now it sounds like you’re pitching a movie.”

“Sorry, it kind of lends itself to that sort of thing. Took is meant to collect you as part of his role. Along with Long John Silver, Frankenstein’s Monster Bill Sikes…”

“You’re really being serious about this, aren’t you? You’re sitting there telling me that Elias Took is out there herding up dead fictional characters like sheep?”

She paused a moment, staring at thin air.

“And I’m saying this to a man I cannot see. So who is Took working for?”

“Not seeing is believing, isn’t it?” Wilfred said. “I don’t know who he’s ultimately working for, but I have heard the name Ace mentioned, if that means anything.”

“Yes,” Serenity sighed. “It means that there’s two people about to make an appearance in my life I’d rather see run over by a bus. What do they need these characters for? Or me for that matter? And how do you know all this?”

“Do you want me to answer or are you just compiling a list?”

Serenity paused a moment. “You really expect me not to have a shitload of questions after what you’ve just said? And yes I know that was another one.”

“Imagine being invisible and finding yourself in some strange town you’ve never heard of before, listening to people talking about unleashing some fantastical hell on earth for their personal gain and then being assaulted by a girl for trying to help her out. How many questions do you think I have?”

“Okay, okay, I get your point,” Serenity said, the realisation how bizarre the whole episode was becoming. “Sorry. I’m just used to things being a bit simpler than this. You know, assassins don’t really get bogged down in much more than watching, waiting and acting.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Serenity broke it. “So…”

“So?” Wilfred replied.

“Should I start again?”

“Well I was thinking we could just sit and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet until eternal night comes down on us or something along those lines.”

“I knew invisibility could drive you mad,” she said. “I didn’t know it turned you into a sarcastic prick first.”

“I probably deserved that,” Wilfred said, the hint of a smile in his voice. “I really don’t think I know the full extent of what they are planning. I only know what I heard in the short time I was in their company.”

“Alright. So tell me that bit.”

“I can’t help but think it would be better if I told it in a flashback,” Wilfred suggested to any higher power that would listen. “Just to make it a little more interesting.”

And as if by magic, Wilfred’s story came into being.

[Chinaren]

   Excellent as always Ask, really digging this tale.  Just wish it came along more often, but considering the delinquent state of my own writing... stones/glass houses /  pot-kettle-black sort of thing.

 

[ashkent]

I wish that too
Too many irons in too many fires, that's my problem...and for some reason I have real problems writing at home.Anywhere else and it's fine. Locational writers block?

[NicTei]

I wish that too
Too many irons in too many fires, that's my problem...and for some reason I have real problems writing at home.Anywhere else and it's fine. Locational writers block?

I think I have something similar, though it's because I can't seem to get anything written before midnight.   Which is good considering this semester's schedule, but last semester...yeesh.  8:00AM classes after staying up until 2:00AM writing was not fun.

Anyways, more on-topic, I'm in agreement with China:  loving the the tale so far!

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

Another wonderful piece Ashkent.  I selfishly hope you become less busy so you can write faster!

[ashkent]

Charlie put down the phone book.

“Who’s bright idea was this?” he asked. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I mean it’s not like you can just look up an engineer for this kind of thing.”

“What have to looked at so far?” Maisey asked from the bar.

“Clairvoyants, mediums, exorcists, and one exotic dancer who apparently dances with real ghosts on stage.”

“I thought we were taking this seriously now,” she said with a glare.

“I am,” Charlie protested. “Look, she’s right there. Dark Enchantress for hire.”

“Have you given consideration to an investigator?” Henry Jekyll suggested. “Someone willing to track down these other people you have mentioned like myself?”

Charlie was about to tell the Doctor that he might as well stick his thumb up his arse and whistle a happy tune, but it was another option. It was certainly going to get them further than the Dark Enchatress and her dancing spooks. The question was who would run any kind of investigation business nearby. Discounting the current events, the most exciting thing to have happened in his lifetime was the Mayoral election fiasco that ended with both candidates dead. The fact they were found in the same bed with belts wrapped around each other’s necks did remove the need for much investigation though.

He flipped through the book. “What do you  suppose someone would advertise as? Private Investigators? Investigative agents?”

“Try Private Investigators first,” Maisey suggested

“Are you sure you don’t have any more nuts back there?” Larry said, playing with the shards of peanut and cashew he had  salvaged from the wreckage that had been his prized collection. “Any would do. I can realign them to the correct psychic level and soon have them as good as the old ones.”

Maisey sighed. “No Larry. Have you seen a delivery come in since you asked five minutes ago? There’s salt and vinegar crisps or Pork Scratchings. That’s your lot.”

“Are any of those Scratchings going begging?” a semi-sober Lambert Lamb asked from the other end of the bar.

Maisey snatched up a packet and launched them in the tramp’s direction. “Why not? It doesn’t look like anyone else is paying for anything today. Anyone else?”

“I would be appreciative of some sustenance,” Jekyll said.

“Come again?” Maisey asked.

“He wants some crisps,” Charlie said, finally finding the very diminutive section of the phone book listing the area’s Columbo fraternity.

“Why didn’t’ he just say that?” she said, tossing a bag over to the doctor. “Tweedy, what about you?”

“Shove ‘em,” Old Man Tweedy muttered from his corner.

“I’m sure no is the usual reply.”

“There’s two,” Charlie said.

“What’s the other one?” Maisey asked.

“What?”

“I don’t know, you said it.”

“Ok can we start again?” Charlie said. “There’s two Private Investigators.”

“Well why didn’t you say that?”

“I thought…never mind. There’s ones here in town, or the other one is out in Frampton.”

“So we go with the one in town?”

“Well, I was thinking it might be good to take an hour long drive myself, but now you come to mention it there are a few good reasons for going with-“

Charlie was cut off by a packet of Pork Scratchings to the side of the head.

“Hey, I didn’t want these,” he said.

“Just think yourself lucky it wasn’t a pint glass,” came the curt reply.

“So,” Charlie said quickly. “The one in town is Erebus Stone Investigations. Looks like he has an office just outside the town centre. You think I should go to see him alone?”

Maisey shrugged. “Do you think you can convince this guy that you aren’t just yanking his chain? And has anyone stopped to think that he’s probably going to want money for this?”

“What’s he going to get paid for? We don’t know what we’re asking him to investigate.”

“So, he’s probably going to charge double, take your eyes and then come back for the sockets, your teeth and your tongue.”

“Well that’s a reassuring image, isn’t it?”

“Why don’t I come with you?” Jekyll said. “It would perhaps be an easier task to explain if part of the explanation is there with you.”

“I’m not sure,” Charlie said. “You think you should be walking about out there?”

“Take him,” Maisey said. “I don’t mean this to sound unkind but if it’s there’s a choice here than I’m making it and I’d rather him be with you than stuck here with me and this bunch of wasters.”

“I don’t get a choice in this do I?” Charlie asked, the look on the barmaid’s face telling him the answer he already knew. “Ok, we’ll go and see him. That okay with you, doc?”

“Perfectly. It will be good to get a breath of fresh air.”

“Good luck with that one,” Maisey said.

“Smells like shit,” Morgan Tweedy contributed.

“You better not have done anything over there or it’ll  be the very real dead we’re dealing with,” she fired across the room.

“On that bombshell, I think we’ll be going,” Charlie said. “Come on, Doc. Let’s try to explain something about what’s going on to this Stone guy without sounding any more insane than we need to.”

“What should we do while you’re gone?” Larry said. “If I can get my nuts in order then perhaps we can start making plans on how to see this out.”

“Then it sounds like you need to sort out some nuts,” Charlie said heading for the door. He looked at Maisey. “Keen an eye in case any more of these characters appear. We don’t know who or what else could be out there. Maybe we just struck lucky with the Doctor.”

“I’d hate to be think who we’d have had if we drew the short straw,” Maisey said. “Go.”

“I don’t really want to go there. The days not done yet.”

And on that eternally ominous statement, Charlie and Jekyll left the pub in search of assistance from a private investigate who was going to be a lot easier to convince than either of them believed.

[Chinaren]

 Excellent, and  nice surprise to  another chpter so so on. Oh ffs. Hard  yoe  my phone when drink

[NicTei]

Funny, I happen to be on my phone and not drunk.

Another good one, ashkent!  I'm looking forward to seeing where this one is going.

[ViP Perry Tratchett]

I didn't see this!  Thought it was the previous chapter! 

Anyway, glad I caught it and good work, as per usual.