Rubik's Cube

The municipal building in the centre of Widnes looks like a Rubik’s cube. I used to play on the top of this as a kid. I was all over it last night in my dreams. There was a running track built onto the side of it halfway up and I was getting some fitness in during break times from office hours.

It’s occurred to me that maybe the highest places or principal landmarks from our childhood territories linger in our subconscious for many an old devil moon.

I told my cousin A.Michael, the Horror Apprentice, that I’ve been dreaming every single night without fail for months. He said that’s really excellent, and confided in me 3 new dream secrets of his own.

1. He paused a dream once, like a videotape.

2. He blacked out in a dream, then came back to, still in the dream.

3. He got shot in a dream.

Not to mention a nightmare he can still remember from when he was under 10 years old, featuring a chimpanzee on a coach.

He’s no expert on ASTRAL PROJECTION, but here’s what he said about flying.

Focus on a point ahead, or on the skyline, or where you want to be, but don’t will yourself too hard. The harder you try, the more you’ll skim the floor. It’s all about 100 percent total concentration. It’s a form of meditation, of visualization. You need to be able to picture the scenery from miles around. Once you start to create that landscape, you can look down on it. There are several kinds of dream flight – this hovering, bird’s eye view kind, or the much harder, run and take off from a standstill kind.

No wonder they write whole books about it.

Do you believe in this kind of talk, or are your rests like a black, blank slate?

3am by A.Michael

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL from

THE HORROR APPRENTICE

It’s Halloween, and The Horror Apprentice speaks: “True horror for me involves a surgeon of some description. Surgeons make cracking horror characters. A dentist would be pushing it, but you know what I mean. What else I find absolutely awful is the random man who comes into your house to kill you for no reason. Knife attacks are particularly grisly, compared to quick execution-style gunshots. The idea of knowing that you’re going to die, but now knowing why, must be bewilderingly frightful. The worst acts are senseless, and unexplainable, where the human body is treated like a piece of meat. Desecrated, like, you know.” A.M

Ever since Jamal had upped and ditched her for that scummy bimbo from accounts, Rhonda couldn’t get over how spacious the king size bed now seemed. He was shocking, ending their relationship with a text message, a true coward and a typical man, in her experience, but despite her sour grapes, and fuming sense of betrayal, she would sorely miss the warmth from his side of the mattress.

He never smelled too fragrant at the best of times, and he certainly never had a personal scent unique to him, as was common between lovers. His manners were nothing to write home about, and his domestic abilities were virtually nonexistent. He was good with his tongue, but that was about it. All in all, glad to be rid. Nothing would be missed.

Apart from his warmth. Apart from the solid life-affirming bulk of his presence. Anyone, she realised, was better than an empty half of the bed. Anyone to plug that narrow but creepy gap between bed and wall. Rhonda always, always, slept on the edge of the bed.

~

What was that noise? It sounded like the bedroom door creaking open. She lifted her head and eyed the clock. It was 2.57am. But how? She had come to bed long before 1am and not slept a wink. Or had she? She must have. It didn’t feel like it, though. It didn’t feel like it at all. Yet she must have drifted off....and now she was awake. Because something had woke her up.

A cat? Maybe a cat had crept in the patio and hid under the sofa when she was airing the living room earlier. Or perhaps she had left the bathroom window open and a draft had pressed the door open. It was only a light door. Hmm.

Whatever it was, it didn’t account for the fact that this was the third time in a week she had been disturbed from slumber at the same time of the morning, three bells after midnight. She remembered reading somewhere that 3am was a common time for people waking up in the middle of the night. It was an actual official spook time, for some legitimate reason she couldn’t think of.

The last two nights she had remained under the covers, but tonight she was getting up, even though she was more scared now than the other two times combined.

Why did the lamp have to be on the other side of the room? And where was that cheating slimeball Jamal when you needed him? Damn being alone!

She opened the curtains to let some light in but it didn’t help one jot. She flinched in the fluffy total darkness of her bedroom, as if something was going to touch her. She wondered where she would go if she felt something brush her skin, once she had screamed and panicked and ran from the flat. She wondered about ghosts and hauntings and exorcisms and all kinds of impossible things that seemed not only likely, during the long walk to the light switch, but imminent.

~

Why should she recall that chilling obscure fact about 3am now? Was it from a daft horror movie or something? She would have to stop watching them.

Finally she reached the lamp and flicked light into the room. No cat, no wind, but no relief. Not yet, and not ever. WHAT THE !!!

A cold shiver rippled her flesh from tip to toe. As she turned back round to the bed, her sudden fear was so intense that she lost control of her bowels. Bottled gas from dinner warmed the insides of her thighs in a prolonged, noisy outpour. Any other time she would have been embarrassed but her alarm at what greeted her from what she had believed to be the empty side of the bed was similar to knowing a bomb was about to go off.

She hadn’t been alone in bed. There had been something in the bed with her. It would have still been in the bed now, if it hadn’t rose to embrace her. It was bloody, and handless.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t have time. But the rest of her guts dropped, hot and brown, as her heart sank into the pit of her stomach. She gulped, and slid down the door to the floor.

Dying instantly from shock is not a myth. It can and did happen to Rhonda Elizabeth Blancher.

rest her soul

Moments later, her clock struck 3.

god rest her pretty soul

3am.
-----------------------

© A.Michael MMX
Zombie Publications

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Reacher Man, from The Pumpkin Formula, by R.S Driscoll, 1888

Audio Dreams

My cousin A.Michael once suffered from regular night terrors, even as an adult. Now he has the occasional nightmare.

"I wonder why," he says, speaking to me on the train as he heads to the city to enjoy Manchester Day. "Maybe it's because of the dark stuff I've written. I think that by tapping into 'the other side' for material and research it leaves its mark with you. I believe its psychic phenomenon, to some extent. I'm not afraid to say that I think I have had a vision. Yes, I was half asleep, and that detracts from my validity, but in my own experience, this particular insight stands out above everything else with its own psychic quality."

I asked him about his most recent nightmare, for the sake of any Blob of Glob™ readers who might occasionally fancy dipping their feet into the world of chills n spills.

"Last night," he replied instantly. "The sound of a woman screaming woke me up. Fortunately, it was just getting light, but I opened the window and stuck the light on anyway. That's the best thing to do, put the light on. And the radio. It works. I used to just sweat it out in the dark. No more. Anyway, this screaming was definitely female, and it was regular, every one or two seconds. The sound of it was so rich in all the wrong ways though. There was a real inner grunting depth to it, a liquid aspect almost, and my mind conjured up notions of true violent horror. I thought of Jack the Ripper, to be blatantly honest."

I asked him if he could really hear the sound of a woman screaming.

"In my head, oh yeah. That's what was strange about it. There was no accompanying visuals at all. I was left imagining what on Earth might have caused such an awfully timed and rhythmic harrowing noise. I wasn't dreaming in the traditional sense, for 12 seconds in black & white. I could just hear them in my snoozing head. Just as I was waking the woman threw a 'f******g hell!' in there, which I was absolutely delighted about, because it meant that at least that she could still talk."

I told him this was a bit full on. I was watching CBeebies at the time.

"I don't know where it came from. I haven't watched or read anything lately that might have provoked it. I believe it's a side effect from writing horror, in all truth, although I don't even write splatter or gore, never have. There's a price to pay for regurgitating all the scary stuff from head to page. But to finish, once the light was on I was fine, plus dawn was breaking as well, but just as I'm nodding off again, I hear what could only be the screaming woman's voice, perfectly calm now, over her ordeal, and she whispers 'Goodnight'."

Is he making this up? you may ask. I doubt it. Having noted some dreams down myself several years back, I can testify that any writer who has to 'invent' his dreams must lead a very dull subconscious life, not to mention real one. The MANCUNIAN NOVELIST NICHOLAS ROYLE, who I met and judged a competition with in 2008, edited a book called THE TIGER GARDEN, which is a collection of writers dreams. He has a blog under the same name.

My cousin's above account gives a whole new meaning to the e-zine SCREAMING DREAMS, where I was first published on-line. This is run by STEVE UPHAM, who has been short-listed for the 2010 British Fantasy Awards, for work including the edition in which my story appeared (and which links me to the awards, in a way, cool!). WARRINGTON WRITER CONRAD WILLIAMS, who beat the big man STEPHEN KING back in 2007, tries to outdo him a second time.

d r e a m s

FIEND OR FOE by A.Michael

The Campaign for Real Fear Season

'Darkness is for Everyone'

Only now, after leaving my youth behind, can I argue for the presence of a supernatural entity. Just supposing something bad has journeyed alongside me?

Presently, with my alopecia, broken hip, jaundice, dairy intolerance, chapped skin, cotton mouth, wheezy chest, bloodshot eye, and dicky ticker, I feel like an end-result, not a work in progress. Minor imperfections are a demon in themselves.

In the mirror, obsessed with my reflection, does something I cannot see stare back and wish me harm? Want me to trip, slip or fall, stub my toe, scold myself with the kettle, cut myself with the razor blade, forget my keys, be late, get knocked down in the road? Something that never leaves my side, and especially hates me most whenever I am eating or making love? Adores me most when I am sulky, angry, upset…

An invisible malice, in an empty room, communicates. I sleep-walk away, naked, from twisted nightmares. I mope around my house, with a blanket wrapped around me, for days. Hiding from energies at work.

Delusional phases and episodes punish my otherwise happy life: Mind control, subconscious messages, covert drugging techniques, permanent surveillance; my persecutor has incredible wealth and power, unlimited resources and bags of time, the scope of a genius and the tenacity of a psychopath…with the luck of the devil to boot.

I know that master voice, that god-headed common overlord. Impossibly audible and real. I wonder how my friend got in my head. Knowing exactly how would not change the fact my brain is host to a transmitting microchip. Pretension and deception reel me in, spit me out, blindfold me, and spin me around. Reality has been pulled apart like a sponge cake.

If it is a demon responsible for the distorted perception of my friend, and not my best friend himself, then it must have the power to adopt the disguise of an emotion or mental state. Perhaps both scenarios are true: My friend is very bad and there are monsters in the closet. Or Samil has created a haunted environment, making it seem like there is a paranormal entity. Or…and this is hardest, like realising I have been missing the woods because of the trees…it is all just down to that stupid legal high.

The imagination spawns endless possibilities to the point where it is for the benefit of my sanity to reign it in. Never mind the cold dark depths of the universe, and you can even forget about the bottom of the ocean. Try wondering about what kind of basement or bunker might be under your feet, whose laboratory might be at the end of your street.

Is the idea of an unearthly fiend anymore unlikely than the notion of the cosmos coming to be from a piece of space the size of a pinhead? Is the idea of an enemy friend anymore unlikely than the notion of a real place such as Hell in flames under the ground?

© A.Michael 2010