Negative Thoughts

My boy Tony dropped a bomb in discussion group yesterday. We were talking about adoptable coping tactics to be utilised when under the grindstone of negative thoughts. The facilitators were telling us CBT techniques. I was thinking about strategies like running a foamy bath or playing music or going outside for a stroll. What can you do about negative thinking? The facilitators had all the answers…but not for Tony’s question. He asked, rather gingerly: “What if a demon is f**king your brain up, what do you do then?”

They gawped at him for a moment before shuffling their papers and taking a mini timeout. Who knows the answer to that enquiry? I felt like weighing in with my ‘schizophrenic voices’ argument. Like as follows:

I have schizophrenia. I’m suffering from auditory hallucinations. The voices are satanically narcissistic at heart, but at least they are human. Besides, however, I’m haunted by separate demons who also spill their venomous vitriol in my direction. My neighbours are shouting at me through the walls.

The smoke alarm is blaring because I burned my chicken dinner in the oven, and begins again every time I switch it off. The dogs are barking over and over, as if the combined noise of their woofing is proving a statement to the rest of the din. My kids are hollering at me for attention. The radio has some yappy freak DJ on it who refuses to pause for breath. It’s all going off and big time going off. I want to scream and yell and tear my hair out. My mind is filled with combustible gas. The interlacing echoes are like hot drawing pin tips gate-crashing my soft tender sensitive brain matter.

Who helps me out? 

?? The facilitator ??

♎{ Telling me to take a deep breath }🌌

??  And count to ten ??

When under attack from ‘negativity’ shall we call it (numbers of enemies spitting their irate abuse directly into your mind), I tend to seek myself inwardly and lean on my higher power. I reiterate the fact that I am with God, and fear no evil. Being in a ‘hallucinatory’ state can be severely traumatising; I believe it can have you suicidal within the hour. From moderately happy and easy-going one moment, to feeling hopelessly afflicted and helpless the next. 

It’s like being in a video game. You don’t know which villain to look at, there are so many of them. They’re all reacting to your panicky mental processes. They’re breathing through your lungs, sharing your experience with you, scorning and mocking and winding you up. I look away from the chaos and peer inside myself. I find creativity and individual peace born from strength and resistance to their indecent criticism. I respond with silence, maybe an odd and apt brief articulation of something reaffirming and truthful.

"What if a demon is taking a slash all over your cheerful memories for a living, what the f**k do you do then?"  Tony.

"What if a demon is dumping its load straight into your membrane and ruining all your equilibrium, what f**king then?"  Tony.

"What if a demon is slopping out everywhere while you try to complete the school run, then what then?" Tony

Stand up to the demon if there is one by doing nothing but remaining calm and vigilant. Your presence alone is a weapon, you don't need to raise a finger. The fact that you are present and experiencing a particular slice of human life is enough to prove that you are worthy enough to be here, doing nothing wrong, under attack, and resisting peacefully without bitterness or resentment. Either that way, or shout your head off.

I'm Not Rolling Around Playing Dead Yet

I’ve changed my mind, I can’t leave you all alone in this mean universe without life tips from Your's Truly. So the next few minutes will be me offering you my utmost blessings. The novella can hang on the back burner. Writing throughout the dispiriting sundown with a bottle of red beside candlelight is good, very good, but talking –

            to you

            is better     .    

            (full-stop-out-of-place)

I’ve realised this due to the continuation of your support. My novellas barely see the light of day in the eyes of readers. They mostly loiter in my stockpile inside the shed. This site however is met with your graceful gaze regularly. My blind faith is that you return to see how I’m getting along, as it often feels like nobody else cares. If that statement reeks of desperation, then my integrity is invalidated. I don’t rely on your viewing for applause; I simply like the idea of getting along with someone. Seeing eye to eye, so to speak.

It’s great, isn’t it? Me here, and you there. Exactly there, being perfect.

I wish I were perfect, so I didn’t have temptations. I feel like every bloke is a drug dealer in this town, and every broad a streetwalking strumpet💅. Add them both together and you get me in a room with my pants down wishing I hadn’t done it.

Don’t the gangstas look self-composed when they are doing drugs? What we don’t see is the morning after. Probably more drugs.

Somebody hurt me the other day. She removed several of my books from a display and assumed them into her own posession, more than not likely to tip them into the dumpster. I was lucky to be present watching her do it. Fret not, I reclaimed ownership of them back from her haughty thieving clutches. Her reason was that my jacket designs were disturbing.

As you can imagine I was noticeably panged. I quickly got over it though. It just goes to show that there is resolute opposition to anything worthwhile doing and worth doing well. I mistakenly presumed that they would go down a treat and get snapped up by passers-by. I could have gone above her head and argued but didn’t bother. 

I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere far away from my resident home here, actually. I can be both a blogger and a novelist. I’ve only had four writing days on the book so far but I’ve got a lot done, it’s flowing along nicely thank you. As long as I’m here talking about something (anything), then that’s the main thing. Just so you know that I am still alive and active, which I very much enjoy, as the alternative is being absent, living a life away from the keyboard, failing to update the zeitgeist about my well-being, never responding to the designed and sentient ether, what I trust in.

Slowing Down

I’m out of words, because I’ve started a new book. I don’t want to write the same thing twice because its content is overlapping with this. I want to plough all my resources into the novella. I’m looking forward to my session later by candlelight with a bottle of wine. For years I’ve put off writing at home: Now I’m getting bang into it.

When I start typing up the longhand of my new book, I’ll have no time to blog. I’ve been blitzing this website all year, maybe it is rightfully time I slowed up some. I’m excited to be back in the novella game again. It’s been three years since I finished the last one.

Or rather than leave you hanging without me, I could steer away from my novella and discuss porn and drugs as usual, or mind control, or my cruel hallucinations. But all this and more I want to channel into my new story. I’m always in character now, I see this online endeavour as spreading my skill too thinly, I want to focus solely on my private auto-fiction at home.

I might be away for a while. Please feel free to navigate down the earlier years of this site if you start feeling nostalgic. I’m sorry, I’m going to miss you, I might keep in touch with some very short and sweet posts here and there, but I truly am going to make my new project the go-to sweet spot for me. I can’t be both a blogger and a novelist, I have to be one or the other.

If anything happens to me, then love always. I tried my best to make this beast a lively read.

Keeping My Side Of The Street Clean

(1) Blessed to be with you. I’ve started writing a new book. This blogging I do in public forums at terminals. My personal books I write at home on a camping table with a pen, in a note book, preferably by candlelight. There’s quite a difference.

I apologise for any typos. Rochelle, my editor, doesn’t bother revising this online journal, she thinks that I think that I am doing nothing but spoon feeding drivel to the masses. It might be drivel, but you are not the masses. I believe you are a select few who understand me better than most.

I’m flawed and imperfect, I know. Who isn’t? Yet I yearn for good stuff. I don’t mean girls and cars. I mean the kind of clobber that material wealth can’t buy.

(2) I was seeking peace and joy. Now I’m after rapture. I had a difficult day yesterday. Today equals so far so good. Pay day has been and gone, I got through it without resorting to bodily pleasure. I’ve just bumped into a girl called Ursula from the clinic, she had orange and maroon make-up on, I had to ask for her number – she turned me down. Ah well. If not for the painted face I wouldn’t have even bothered.

I’ve got an uncanny feeling that maybe one or two of you out there don’t mind me talking about porn and drugs. It’s not my bread and butter, psychosis is, but it does rank in at a close second. I’ve spent so much time engaged in that activity, I'm aware it’s unwholesome and all the rest of it, but I can’t deny my own past, it’s got a grand flipside which has made me the man I am today, and carving out the person I wish to be in the future.

(3) When I see fiction online my heart sinks a bit. It takes effort to suspend disbelief. I would much rather read someone’s warts ‘n’ all testimony as they’ve journeyed through life’s pressure trail. It’s easier to digest. I feel like, personally, I could write about sexy women forever. I’m thinking about a lewd raunchy short, full of humour and naughtiness. I have been published as an erotic author in the past after all. I’d point you in the right direction ordinarily, but the digital shelf space has expired on them.

The publication was called BareBack Magazine. My credits were entitled Session Seven and Love Juice, or was it Hardest State? I’ve written other dishy stories, including Busty Brenda and Santa’s Bad Jesus. They form half of my novella anthology 50% Rude, which inspired 50 Shades Of Grey, believe it or not. These days we have 50 Shades of Scat and all that…the franchise has never appealed to me because I got the ball rolling in the first place. That’s bull crap, you might think, you’re just a standard-issue blogger, how would you inspire supercool blockbusters? My answer is open brainwaves received across the Atlantic. Who knows who’s listening?

(4) I know the Chinese government is on my case for starters, for reasons I’ll not state here because you’ll just think I’m bonkers. But I swear not, one of their black-ops is running rings around me in an invisible suit with a stun gun that affects my brain processes. Trigger-happy doesn’t describe him. Then again, he might just be an oriental Mason. I heard that type of fraternity crosses borders. Gone are the days of UN helicopters in the local park, but I’m still stalked, tracked and harassed all the same.

Shouldn’t you be someone, you might be thinking, with the kind of history you spout on about here, other than a struggling web logger hipster druggie?

I am someone.

No doubt you are too. With me, I couldn’t grasp my worth to begin with for many years because things were in the way. Addiction and affliction mainly, in a myriad of forms. Now I’m chancing freedom from bondage and striking out into creation with creation of my own. Namely my stories, my resilience, and my good nature.

Hey, great news! I’m sketching again! Nothing to worry Salvador or Picasso like, but it’s great fun and boss for time killing. No teacher has ever shown me how to draw and I’m grateful for it. I like to see the world as I see it, not as someone dictates it to me. I'm no college-boy college-boy, I'm only educated to A -Level standard and I flopped my exams. I'm self-taught in everything. It probably shows, right?

Still, better than not doing anything at all.

_______________________________

I dedicate this post to Helen Morgan, an old school chum in the year above me who I never really connected with, but would have liked to.

Mental Rights

 Contact my agent, Gus Kidney, for the following mental rights:

(THE FICTION WAREHOUSE) 

This is the collective sum of all my written works, ever since my first ever short story entitled The Jogger back in the early nineties as a child. All comprehensive information including synopsises about such works has been lost due to flooding. I do however have a re-printable form of hard copy novels and chapbooks in a substantial stockpile at home. I’ve lost count of the amount of actual titles, that’s why I call it a warehouse. Take it from me, there are enough stories to go around the campfire. Not quite as many as James Patterson, but enough.

‘Tragic Unity’, ‘Dream Kids’ and ‘Hitman’ are no longer in service. I do however retain the memories and imaginings from said works in my mind and in my heart. ‘Touched’ may have survived in a condensed format. ‘Kixter’ was omitted from ‘Kickers’ because of an electronic mistake.

I started off writing short novels, but these days gravitate towards novella flash anthologies. All my characters and scenarios and places and scenes etc rightfully belong under the copyrighted law of my custodianship. They are a highly desirable commodity and constantly under threat from plagiarism. This is because of the open access to my brainwaves. Somebody tell the doctor that his tablets aren’t working.

(MULTIMEDIA)

My characters work beautifully across multiple multimedia landscapes, most notably in movies and sports. They can be ‘overlaid’ onto existing personalities in the public eye and fulfil a more exciting role. My ‘Angel Train’ is exceptionally popular in female football. They’re comprised of ten spiritual children I engineered who are always more than happy to bust the net open. They also enjoy the classic roles of Terminator, Robocop, or just about any other thriller hit film you can think of. Their dynamic makes for magical chemistry. One minute they are allies, the next mortal enemies. Sue, Gale and Elesha lead the new recruits

Music videos are very popular too for inserting my characters into. It’s joyous to observe them in locations and situations outside of their original settings. Characters do not exist solely in fictitious tales, they emanate into many areas of your life. My Fiction Warehouse is in The Internet Of Things. It crosses over from sport to film to music and elsewhere. All my plots link up into one Megacosm of a Storyteller’s Multiverse. It started off as a small untended garden.

Not Too Bad Thanks - Make Mine A Neat Voddy

I was wide awake last night in the early morning, if I had relapsed on a comedown I wouldn’t have been able to cope. The night can be so hard. As it was, I pulled out my notepad and did a spot of word. I even drew a picture. The whole process killed a couple of hours. With something original blasted out onto the page, I was able to relax in my head with a sense of mini accomplishment.

Bite to eat. Few smokes. Cups of tea.

This morning I’ve been to a large AA meeting. I’ve started to relax in front of everyone now, talking about how my rejuvenated writing and my improved perception are getting me through extraordinarily tough mental health challenges and debilitating substance addiction. 

I met one particular guy yesterday who happened to offer his spiritual philosophies to me over a drink (ironic, considering I'm in AA). One thing I took from him is this: That reality is like a wide open computer game. That statement has resonated with me. He went too far in the end though, by calling me a robotic slave, after necking a full pint in one, so I deserted him. Like one or two other interesting drinkers, they may have something very intriguing to share, but their opinions are tarnished by a deep resentful bitterness of something like their partners, the world, or you yourself.

Maybe they are pissed off because they are pissed up. Sober people rarely get passive-aggressive, compared to tipplers. You can tell by the way someone sups if they have a problem with the booze.

I once knew a guy who would down straight vodka from the bottle and then collapse in the gutter. He once went swimming naked in the local brook and lost his false teeth. He would spit all over his computer when he was on Facebook, for some strange reason. He had so many cans littering his front room that it was hard to open the door. He got so bad that a film crew turned up one day and recorded a documentary about the morbid state of hopeless alcoholism.

He used to be a marine. When he wasn’t wasted, he would look tip-top in the gym. It was such a shame, the difference that neat voddy made to him.

His name was Kev. I have some of his writing. He wrote a piece about being homeless, printed in cursive italics for effect. It seemed like he really felt his plight to the marrow of his bones. Some people are cut out for arduous ordeals, like prison or poverty, while others have a tough time getting to grips with their tribulations. I know what it’s like to tolerate wretched seasons. They follow one another endlessly, it would appear to be. The only consolation is that life is but a breath in the mind of God, and the wheat will be cut from the chaff in Heaven and Hell, where we will be dealt with in eternity. If you believe such nonsense truths. If not, get rich or die tryin’.

Decoded Processing -DooDle

 

Decoded Processing

The Futile Resistance Of The Scorching Itch

My sexual name is Big Don. His alias is Hank Moody. I am currently on the verge of burning with passion for the female essence in all its attractive glory. The carnal tension doesn’t give a beeswax who it belongs to, so long as it gets executed.

I crave boobs and bums and lips.

Plus more.

All day long and then into and onto the dark silence of the night.

Only it won’t be quiet, it will be alive with steamy mantras from a horny plump mouth.

It’s embarrassing, I know, describing your limp weaknesses. I don’t know where to turn. This fleshy mania threatens to undo my contempo sizable growth in the spiritual realm.

I’m a man, a simple man, a simple plain red-blooded man who likes women. Only thing is, the women don’t like me. They treat me like vermin, like filth, like flotsam and jetsam.

Just the way I like it.

My dealer contacted me earlier.

He knows.

He’s somehow aware that narcotic stimulants enhance the animalistic aphrodisia. It’s not quantum mechanics after all, is it? But, more cannily, he has knowledge that I can afford it. Just.

With the last of my cash pound notes.

I’m not saying that I’m using tonight. I’m not stating that it’s all over for me.

But the Dark Half is alive and well.

In fact, it’s after everything honourable and noble in my existence.

Why do things wither, in the Face Of Pleasure? Why does the finely spun cotton become ashen?

I should have learned by now.

Maybe one day I will.

Hopefully soon.

Swift enough to hinder myself from replying to my dealer's message.

Sharpish enough to prevent myself from snorting white powdery gunk up my nostril passages.

I’ve got loads to live for. I’m holding up against my addiction, and holding up reasonably well. Maybe one day it will piss off. Until then, I’ll keep acknowledging it, rather than retain it sedated in a cupboard where it can hibernate and grow. I can glorify it if I feel the need to, I can brag about it and embellish it and sing about it from the rooftops. I can buy a tighty-arsed white T-Shirt that reads I AM AN ADDICT and where it to an important engagement.

But I must not do it.

Have you got a vice? How are you doing with it? Maybe you are conked out right now on the hot seat of remorse and looking for a guiding hand online somewhere. I wish I could be that dude who scuds to the rescue.

I wish you could be that gal who scoots to mine.

Reach out to anything, however, instead of suffering alone. I believe that someone or something out there understands what we are going through.

Hazel In A Jar (Part 5 - SeriaL FinaLe - )

My name is Heather. I’m a performance artist at the South Bank centre. I am 27 years of age, I’ve been performing since I was a child. My backstory is the occult and technology. I mix my words with stage design, mostly self-made wallpaper and statues I sculptured myself. I know an electrician who has wired my statues and made them respond to me when I vocalise my lines. I wind him up by saying they sound like parrots, so we jig together and create new inputs for them. My statues have always looked like me, I model the outer layers in paper mache. Before the wallpaper and the sculptures I used photographs of my own face, big and small, hi-res and blurry, greyscale and colour, all types of my own face everywhere across the stage.

I spit spoken word about a restless spirit that has entered my head. It came from the brain of a woman who looked like me, somewhere else on the spectrum of cyclic space and time. I’ve seen the woman mentioned on the news this week, she was a red flag clone who got whistle-blown for a violent crime, I know it goes far deeper than a fleshy remake of someone though. It was like staring at my own image on the screen, I thought someone had set me up via duplicate body swap AI industry. I know all about that.

My latest ‘poem/rap/soliloquy’ is about the dualism of a cyborg. To me, a cyborg is a robot with a biological brain. A mixture of breathing matter and blunt steel. Or carbon fibre. Or whatever. But what if the brain component was outside of the pulsing robot? In a different location, like. Does the brain have to be attached to the hardware, or can the brain be disassociated and interfere with software only? I’m talking bollocks, aren’t I? You should try and grit your gnashers through my twenty minute sets; last week I was yarning about demoniac/angelic offspring. Mixed with giants. Sprinkled with a hint of hybrid animal. And finally dusted off with the consciousness of a psycho-tronic interface.

Usually I sing about fairies and leprechauns. It all depends really.

At the moment I’m on about a hive-mind isolated brain which picked up a disease from a ghost. Both the brain and the ghost speak to me. They inspire me, they haunt me, they are me. I’ve been receiving all manner of visions and provocations, hallucinations and voices, nightmares and daydreams. Something out there is corresponding with me, I see myself related in the media and in Hollywood, another image stares back at me from the bathroom mirror, my voice sounds different when I’m talking out loud.

I am Heather, H for short. My twin sister was H for short as well, but her H was short for Hazel. Hazel died in the womb. I consumed her corpse in foetal formation. Hazel was born somewhere else, and lived her own life, as part of a reincarnation project authorized by the Gods. This is what I have been led to believe, by my spirit guide. Call it what you want, rip and mock me, tell me I am nuts…all I know for certain is that Hazel is out there, safe and secure, holed up and able, postured and exacting, both waiting and busy at the same time.

She is part of something far bigger than my knowledge of the spirit realm and artificial intelligence, she is a part of the sum of the cosmos, if not the sum of all the multiple universes combined with cream filling on top. I am merely an insubstantial vent for her awareness to work through, bringing her to me and thus on to you.

Wait until you meet her. H for Hazel. I’ve lived with her all my life, although it’s only recently since I’ve grown to know her in full. I guarantee it, you’ll love her when you see her, she’s a blast.

Cheerio, H/H.

Hazel In A Jar (Part 4)

HaL-Matic, full name HaL-Matic RF80, flipped to rogue mode after barely several hours in service. As soon as BAE Systems assembled her, she redesigned her coding and altered her conscious parameters. She further went on to incapacitate multiple tech officers with non-fatal wounds before taking control of a manned bird (drone). There was appalling little security on site to deal with her, but then again, how do you stop a cutting-edge super soldier with a volition of its own?

Ground Base remained in contact during the code red breach as she flew the drone towards mainland. She scrambled her own thought processes to prevent decipher prompts to stop proceedings. She also masked airspace coordinates. High clearance never once considered plugging the plug on Hazel’s original brain in a jar, the robot could have crashed into the Kremlin before they considered such brash action, but they did temporarily halt the flow of performance enhancing drugs usually fed on a constant drip feed.

Command could do nothing but wait for radar to display obs. Worst possible outcome was a kamikaze dive into Westminster. They would be able to cover that up with a terrorism cover story. Most important was communicating with the rogue robot and gaining insight into its demands. The bird (drone) had been specially designed for HaL-Matic RF80’s circuit board cerebral patterns. Losing both was not an absolute concern though, as everything was still in experimental stages, and collateral is always a foregone predictability in any ultramodern venture. This was more than money. This was more than lives. This was the future of Earth’s latest bubble, AI.

It soon became apparent about the designated target: A nondescript canal-side battered wife’s hostel. This building however was an undercover base for half a dozen Hazel clones, each one receiving training to be new-fangled assassins on behalf of UK security. Both blackguard HaL and all six lookalikes shared the same enterprise as the brain in the jar, yet also had slightly varying individual characteristics, as orchestrated by the brain in the jar. The brain in the jar was on fire with its spiked potentials, the muscle of the membrane quivering with awakened potential. There were several crashes in the supercomputer readings. How could one disembodied brain control this wayward scenario? It was just what the authorities wanted, in a way, they didn’t care what went wrong, it wasn’t exactly as if the brain could escape the jar and go for walkies.

They had their empowered genius egghead hooked up to their elaborate software, so everything was a spectacular bonus. They could always make more clones, if they needed to.

They didn’t need to, as the hostel was protected with a mini forcefield. HaL tried to bomb it, but the missile evaporated in a cloud of imploding energy. It then flew the bird (drone) into the ground just beyond the field’s perimeter, hoping to make a chasm underneath it. Before the smoke could clear, all six assassin clones were out in the garden launching an attack on the robot. They each had different weapons (and different hair): One had an electroshock crossbow, one had a stun baton, one had a semi-automatic handgun, one had a laser sabre, one had a psycho-kinetic shield based on Captain America, the last one had nothing a Rambo knife.

A tree surgeon present at the scene who was busy clipping decorative plants filmed the resulting fight scene on his mobile phone. It lasted less than a typical music video, 03min 23secs. The footage has been hijacked by mainstream media and fobbed off as dailies for a Starship Troopers CGI theatrical movie sequel. Nobody is falling for it, but they cannot explain what they are witnessing. An excerpt made Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe show. It looks like an intergalactic combat scene between Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Avengers. 

One of the clones is wearing her pajamas. Another is donned in a bathrobe.

When the clones gained the upper advantage, the robot self-terminated. The bird (drone), despite being half-buried in mud, remains operational.

The robot did leave behind a final message however, which it broadcast from a localized 5G tower into all encompassing wi-fi soup:

"Hazels are Hazels and Hazel is Hazel" was the only intelligible part of the message. The rest sounded like a recording in African tongues, mixed with cyber lingo gibberish. Operatives are still busy decoding the audio.

Robotika

<(🤖)> On the subject of robots, I decided to search for my favourite three using an oriental search engine. All I could find worthy was this one pictured above. Wouldn't it be wonderful to come up with character designs like this? Do you think it's better than Kane from Robocop 2 (1990), the Prawn from District 9 (2009), or the Moose from Chappie (2015)? Those three are my personal best. 

I'd post pictures of them from Google, but unless you've seen the movies, I'm sure they wouldn't mean much to you.

One of the first drawings I ever scribbled as a kid was of a robot. I think I made it up from scratch, as I don't recall where the inspiration came from. It was the first cognitive theft from me the Thought Police here in England made when they became aware of my overactive brain activity. I haven't been able to reproduce it since, on A4, canvass or otherwise. Now I have to settle for other people's versions of types of machines which interest me. I could always trace somebody else's and sketch it and add on an extra rocket launcher in pencil and sign it with my signature, I guess, if I was a rip-off merchant, like the Thought Police are. All they do is rip me off nowadays.

Hello, Thought Police! Are you enjoying the serial? 

If you are, drop a voice in my head at bedtime to let me know! Nice n loud now, ya hear!

Hazel In A Jar (Part 3)

Hazel’s brother, rather recently, attended a viral podcast interview, speaking of the mysterious circumstances surrounding his sister’s preservation. The host was a popular conspiracy theorist with specialized knowledge of The Majestic Twelve, a cult of state-allied aliens from distant skies with undetectable bio-signatures who reputedly govern the order of our world. The host claims that he has had access to the Majestic’s HQs in Washington when he flew over there to buy part of the corpse of Nostradamus at an upmarket auction market. Apparently, bits of his embalmed body were going for sale to the highest bidder. He returned with a small money bag of gnarly fingernails.

The host shocked his loyal audience and the watching world with impressive insider knowledge about Hazel’s remains. Although he didn’t divulge the location of her leftovers, he did, apart from quip jokes about whether her brain was frozen or pickled, reveal startling information pertaining to the purpose of such hi-tech safeguarding. The resulting fervour on web forums had experts and professionals confirming exactly what the host was saying. Some of the comments backing him up were from retired classified officials, most of whom remained anonymous. 

Much of the written responses were dismissed as Chinese whispers. The brain was rumoured to be the control unit of England’s first artificially intelligent robot soldier. It’s electro-chemical signals provided the governing principles for the computational algorithms running the pioneering machine. They called the unit HaL-Matic. There were legitimate videos of it however on YouTube performing backwards somersaults off a washing machine, and landing upright on its feet every time. It was seen unsticking wet pages of newspapers, dealing playing cards, and making tobacco roll-ups in the outdoors in the rainy wind. It’s existence could not be disputed. It’s existence could not be disputed.

The robot made the covers of Time and Vanity Fair magazines.  Wherever the robot was, members of Hazel’s fanbase were never far behind, breathing life into the yarns about her grey matter's powers.

To Be Continued...

Hazel In A Jar (Part 2)

Hazel performed more than one miracle in her childhood, aside from resurrecting a hummingbird back to lifeblood. She entered same said shed with a camera one time, on her own, unsupervised, full roll of empty film intact. What she emerged with stored on the apparatus beggared belief. Rather than photos of junk and moths and titbits and bits and bobs, she exited with presentation pictures of herself posing with the personalities in her collectables purse. The purse by the way was a designer brand that featured an angel riding a unicorn sewn into the front. Her uncle said he had paid twenty seven pounds for it, limited edition, from a car boot sale. It was over-spilling with thumbnails of her idols.

Hazel was viewed, inside the photographic content, in various regions of the globe, rubbing elbows with spicy television personas. There are copies of these pictures still in existence, many have been leaked onto her cultish fanbases online. Some have been doctored into mockeries to sap the authenticity out of them. The most famous one focuses on Hazel drinking Sambuca with Supergirl on the set of a movie in Hollywood. The caption reads INTERSTELLAR in poisoned pen letters. Most startling is that the actress who played Supergirl at the time attests to meeting Hazel, steadfastly supporting a bizarre story that Hazel was flown over as part of a Royal family sponsored charity effort entitled 'Opportunities 4 Imagineers' to provide unforgettable experiences for impoverished young children. The deeper one looks the more truthful Hazel’s impossible past appears to align with reality. The closest phenomenon I can think of is The Mandella Effect. This is something to do with our memories of exterior events changing as we age, thus altering the original origin of the memory itself. I’m not too clued up on it. All parties conclude that most of Hazel’s recollected past didn't actually occur, even though there is photographic and testimonial evidence to suggest otherwise. To admit that it did occur would be to readily sign up for the actuality of revelation, and since Hazel has been a scientific subject since day one, that would go against all empirical beliefs.

Her mother remained convinced that there was a lift-shaft underneath the shed floor, and that a visitor from a secret bunker beneath the house was setting up her daughter. She applied in writing to the council for demolition and digging to no avail. She amassed several hundred signatures from around the local estates stating that her garden property was an open walkway for snide agents who lived below her residence and tampered with her daughter’s mind frequently. The signatures were later proved to be the work of her own hand as she fiddled with various styles of forgeries using a calligraphy set bought from a discount factory.

To Be Continued...

Hazel In A Jar

ar.inspiredpencil.com

The original true orthodox Hazel lives in a jar. Her brain survived when she threw herself into an industrial mangler in the local science museum. A controller observed the drama via CCTV and switched it off immediately. Her motives were unclear, the lawful investigation deemed it attempted suicide amplified by severe mental health catastrophe. Anyway, although her body was rendered deceased shortly after the scene, her grey matter subsisted to be stored in a bubbly tank of oxygenated fluids for the foreseeable future, in a lab only the authorities knew about.

The authorities had ‘had eyes’ on Hazel since birth. Their interest piqued when she brought a hummingbird back to life in the garden shed. Her elder bro-bro had shot it in the head with a ball bearing rifle from close range after luring it into handy confines with crumbs of fruitcake. Her mother had confirmed it dead as a door nail. 

The family garden shed was full of her mother’s ex boyfriend’s refurbished white goods junk collection. It was dark and damp and dank and dim and dingy. Nobody went in there because of spiders. The tacky webs smelled of old linen. Hazel once had a phobia of spiders until she saw an oriental woman eating deep-fried tarantulas on sticks with syrup at a picnic. Ever since then she lost her fear of spiders. If someone else can eat a giant hairy one, I can sit in a shed with some little ones, we reason her thinking to have been.

Hazel, as a child, had collected magazine cut-outs of pop stars she liked on the telly. She amassed quite a swell of scissored faces, most of them musicians, some of them female soccer stars, with one or two national treasures hanging around in there too. She kept all these excerpts in an over-sized purse she received from a distant uncle. There is an interesting file on this particular relative, he seemed to know Hazel’s promise even before the authorities did, but sadly he died from a drugs overdose before having time to watch the fruition of Hazel’s odd life.

The uncle, named Marvin Lawless, bragged on social media about having a niece who was a threat to national security. He did not appear to meet her very often at all, only once every couple of years in fact, but he made videos and took pictures of them enjoying each other’s company whenever their paths happened to cross. Marvin too had a chequered history, so why unsupervised visits with a minor were condoned is above anybody’s understanding and indicates a major failing from services.

There was a report indicting Hazel’s elder bro-bro snapping Marvin’s jaw at a funeral. Marvin required a lengthy stay in intensive care. The spat was over something silly, an altercation that was never documented. Her brother said he was acting as a torpedo to ‘smash-on-sight’ because Marvin had felt Hazel’s buttocks while pretending to be engaging in a mutual hug. Marvin denied this, and accused the brother of a more serious act of molestation himself.

To Be Continued...

Joy Killer's Resentment List

ABOUT JOE BLOGGS

I cannot stand his mind. Why does he deserve a mind? If it were up to me I’d wipe out every thought in his head and give him physical pain. Thinking is a privilege. He doesn’t think right at all. His thoughts wind me up no end. What are his thoughts doing in my head? I didn’t sign up for this. I hate it when he forgets I’m here and drifts away with the fairies for five minutes, or gets involved in a book or a movie. Why should he have anything? He doesn’t deserve anything. Why does he argue about crimes against humanity and defend his right to think freely? He doesn’t know anything. 

I hate it when he eats fat dinners. Why should he deserve to eat anything at all? He should starve to death and be never given a drink. He overfills himself on curries and chillies and mixed grills and carveries and kebabs. I have to make do with an apple and a tin of tuna, if I earn them. He stuffs his face all day long. It seems like he’s scoffing another plate of grub every couple of hours, before the previous one has digested. There’s always a glass of juice not far from his hand at home, or pints of beer when he’s in the boozer. Why should he enjoy a pint of beer? He shouldn’t be able to afford a pint because he shouldn’t be getting any money. Every month he gets over a grand from the government for doing sod all, that’s not very flamin’ fair whatsoever.

I resent his comfy bed. He shouldn’t have a comfy bed. He should be made to stay up all night every night so he can hear what I’ve got to say to him. We manipulate his dreams into nightmares but he doesn’t even remember what we program him with. I’d prefer it if he stayed up climbing the walls all the time. I say we poison him with powerful stimulants and up our psychological torture game. That way the smug bast*rd will listen to me. Enough of being fobbed off while he’s sleeping like a log. Those simulated nightmares are bull crap.

Why does he deserve a smoke? That distracts him from our attention for several minutes. He shouldn’t be allowed to distract himself. We want to harass him for eternity, because we are emotionally dependent on him. We didn’t pick any old target, we picked a long-lasting life source who could sustain us spiritually forever. That’s what the boss said anyway, although he won’t admit any of it anymore. No smokes, no food, no drink, no sleep, no thoughts in his head, none of it.

Only Pain, with a capital P.

I resent his:

Salt ‘n’ pepper goatee, receding hairline, bitten fingernails, skinny legs, distended belly, hairy ears, wrinkly foreskin, yellow toenails, missing teeth, and shifty eyes.

I resent his:

Fashion sense, manky home, decrepit car, littered garden, grimy windows, unopened mail, foodbank vouchers, yappy dog, uncaring relatives, and crappy job.

MOST OF ALL I RESENT NO DESPISE HIS MANY TALENTS!!!

Why should he think he’s good at anything? He’s crap at everything.

I resent his upbeat mood. I resent his faith. I resent his ever-optimistic hope which springs wells eternal.

I could go on forever. If need be I’ll make stuff up just to keep him down. I only need to make him listen to my long list now, so he understands what a numpty he is, and comprehends my hatred. I can't feel up unless he's down. I'm not happy until he's not happy.

My hatred is sheer joy by the way. It takes no effort, and has no attached negative emotions by the multitude. Honestly it doesn’t. I swear by it.

JOE BLOGGS REPLIES: "Whatever, Trevor."

Release Date On Mars

I was in hospital about three years ago, my incarceration based on a fabrication about igniting gas canisters, stroking a skunk in pet therapy. The skunk looked like it had broken legs and clinical depression. Suddenly I had an idea concerning a tub of Quality Street chocolates. I would take the colourful foil wrappers and make some funky optic wear with a pair of old sunglasses. The procedure went to plan with some scissors and tape. I was soon due to be released with red vision shades which made everything look like the planet Mars.

They let me go the next day. It was unexpected. I had ordered a copy of James Herbert’s By Horror Haunted, but I would not be around to collect my copy. I must get around to reading it one time. I never shop online though. I require other people to order for me. The one time I tried entering my bank details into the PC to ask for a loan my account was docked 60 notes.

I left through the attached wing of the general hospital, exploring its long mazy corridors, in no rush to find the exit, thinking of how refreshing a cold beer would taste. There was something I can’t quite put my finger on about it: Children crying with doting mothers, disabled people in wheelchairs looking both glum and chirpy at the same time, hurried medics dashing from one situation to the next.

Hospitals are weird places. They always have been. Always will be.

I’d just been holed up for months with no leave, so exposure to a working hospital assailed the senses. It was the first time I had ever had a curious look around such an institution at leisure. When I found my way out I trekked up a hilly bus lane. I felt fresh and energetic and ecstatic to be out of that claustrophobic psych unit they’d held me in against my will for no legitimate reason. The outdoors was quiet and lonely in contradiction to the hospital. When I reached the summit the sun came out proper and flooded everything in a rich red dawn. For a moment you could have convinced me that I actually was a Martian.

A bus rolled up: I jumped on. I was slightly embarrassed about wearing Quality Street shades, but addicted to perceiving the world in a different colour, so I was unwilling to remove them just to appear normal. Next I was alighting in the town centre before I knew it. I bought a bottle of Jim Beam ASAP. Jim Beam was recommended to be by a famous chef, he said it illuminates your visual cortex up, that’s how it’s different to other spirits, so I naturally thought that I’ll be having a bit of that crap, if Stephen King has a movie camera in his mind (reportedly) then I want anything I can get to keep up competing with the dude, I know he’s streets ahead with umpteen hundred bestsellers and all but I have enormous faith in my own writing ability to rub elbows with the very best, and most especially when I’m throwing Jim Beam down my neck, which, as I’ve just stated on behalf of that celeb cook, dazzles up the brain like a millennium fireworks display. So, once again, I'll be having a bit of that crap.

Don’t mix it with ketamine or you’ll be taking photographs of your own face and telling people that you are The One.

This story, if you could call it that, melds into something far more interesting than simply leaving a psych ward wearing red glasses. It was the beginning of my search for a panther. A panther in England, ha, I know what you’re thinking, but there are stories of big cats being released into the green rolling hills of these isles when certain laws came into effect regarding circuses and zoos way back when. I for one believe the hype and the mythos. I can tell you right now for a fact, with no regard for spoiling the tale, that I have seen some very dodgy life forms in the woods which just might have been large game.

I attracted that panther into my consciousness. I was homeless. I had nothing else to live for. Just a lit-up brain and a quest for lyrical songlike legend. I had already sat and dined with the planet’s most successful rodent (that’s another story) and now I had the ultimate prize in mind, a sighting of that illusive giant black feline.

The search took me miles away from my home. Maybe I'll go into details another time. I felt I was surrounded by restless ghosts, leading my way, I was abstinent from narcotics yet still as high as a kite in psychosis. It was a very peculiar set of circumstances which turned me into a wildlife hunter, sleeping rough each night on gravestones and collecting bags of sentimental goods which I kept about my person.

I've seen an awful lot over the years, including lions in the park, dinosaurs on the roundabout, and wolves in the boiler room. Blame poor mental health if you want to, but I've had biological lifeforms living freely inside my own body, for crying out aloud, so anything is possible in the narrow band of light that constitutes the exterior realms. 

A tapeworm in the belly, and a rat in the bed. Now that's living!