Skin Baby

Here's a short story I wrote as a way of getting my brain back into a habit of writing. It's based on a rather strange dream my friend and editor Kathryn had. Enjoy!

Skin Baby

"Hoffner," said the suited man. "Is that a type of beer?"

"No," I replied. "No, I don't think so..."

The man wrapped his tongue around his gums, before giving his head a sharp nod.

"Pilsner."

The solution to his personal conundrum seemed to satisfy the man, bookending the conversation in his mind. His brow glistened with a thin film of sweat. His glasses were thinly rimmed with gold, or gold effect. I looked down at my notes. My words were drunken spiderlegs on the soft blue lined paper.

"What am I looking at here?" he eventually asked. His eyes narrowed against the glare of the halogen strip lights. The glass was clear, but only on our side. The infant could only see his own reflection.

"Samual Leopold Mc-"

"Official designations only, if you please," said the man curtly, flicking his eyes towards me. I paused, momentarily blank. Too much coffee. I'm becoming blinkered again.

"Subject one," I said, having to read it off the page. Of course. How could I have forgotten that?

"One?"

"He's unique enough to warrant it."

"But surely-"

"We've defined a new category."

"How old is-"

"The boy will be three this month."

"Hoffman," said the suited man, turning towards me fully. His shoulders pressed against the smooth lines of his off-grey suit, "if you interrupt me once more I'll send you back to pharmaceuticals."

I bit my lip reflexively. Don't mention that he got your name wrong...

"Fine..." he continued - to himself more then me - before turning back towards the observation window.

The room beyond was a mess of broken toys and spilled food, bodily fluids and blankets.

"It looks like a nest," said the man. I've already forgotten his name... Mancini? He's Professor Kray's superior, I know that much. "There had better be a good reason why that room hasn't been cleaned to company standards. This is a research facility. We have standards to maintain."

The blankets shifted as a small hand reached out. It slipped through a miasma of rotting fruit before grasping a red and blue plastic hammer and dragging it back into the grimy cotton folds. The suited man's eyes fixed on the movement.

"I was led to believe that agitation caused the effect," he said, leaning forwards until his forehead almost touched the glass. A faint halo of condensation began to form on its surface.

"Yes, but we've both recorded and exhausted the effect. Did you watch the footage?"

"I watch all footage from all departments. It's one thing to see it on screen and another to witness it."

"Well... we have got a test scheduled for this evening."

"Very good. I'm here now."

"Sir?"

"I'm here now," said the man, looking back at me. His eyes widened beneath his glasses.

We looked at each other for a few seconds.

"Perhaps we could bring it forwards," I said slowly. Kray will have my head.

"I think that's for the best."

I turned and scurried over to the control panel. My white coat was stifling. My badge beat against my breastbone with each nervous step.

"Begin," said the man, folding his arms across his chest.

My hands flew across the various dials. My fingers twitched with stress. Easy now, not too much...

A high pitched wail sang out. It was loud enough on our side to cause an involuntary wince; I knew that beyond the glass it was almost insufferable.

The mass of blankets unfurled like a dying flower. The boy rolled out, pink and glistening. His skin hung in rolls. His mouth was wide and toothless. We could barely hear his wails over the siren.

"Does it take long, or does... ah..."

The suited man's voice trailed off as the boy flipped onto his front. Bones shifted and slipped. Skin stretched and balloon, flowing as smoothly as water. Flesh tumbled and rolled.

"As you can see, the skeleton slips free almost immediately," I said, managing to keep the nerves out of my words.

The suited man flinched as a sudden shape pressed itself against the stretched skin that had been the boy's back.

"The skull," I said by way of explanation. I was gaining confidence in direct relation to the man's increasing disgust.

Streams of blood drizzled out of eye sockets that flapped free of their usual home. The press of frenzied limbs within the skin dome brought to mind a soft edged anemone.

"Stop this," said the man in hushed tones, as if afraid he could be heard over the cacophony.

Nerves fell back into place. I should have warned him. The recordings do no justice to the living sight. I shut off the wail and watched as the vigorous movement began to slow to an undulation.

“The way it moves...” started the suited man, before slipping a handkerchief free of his breast pocket and holding it to his mouth. He turned away to retch. In the room beyond, the boy's finger bones started to slip back into place within the glove of his own flesh.

“The boy has complete control over his body cells,” I said by way of explanation. The information did nothing to improve the man's mood. He closed his eyes as he pulled himself up straight. I could hear his breathing, sharp and fast.

“It's too much,” he said quietly. His back was both to me and the boy, who had begun to crawl back into his makeshift bed.

“We have even begun testing on smaller, ah... off cuts,” I said. “Professor Kray said we needed more time but the results are already astonishing. It's as if each cell can divine a purpose individually.”

“Divine,” repeated the man. He turned back towards me. His skin had bled of all colour. The sweat was no longer a film but a delta of rivulets.

“They can move. Each cell can move, when provoked.”

“Burn it,” said the man. He pulled his glasses from his eyes roughly and wiped his other hand over his pallid features. Sweat rained onto the ivory tiled floor.

“I don't follow,” I said carefully, hoping I had misheard.

“Burn it. Cleanse the room.”

“With respect, he is not an 'it'. His name is Samuel.”

“Do you think that matters?” asked the man, reaching forward and grabbing my shoulder. He began to knead the bone and skin together. “No one knows he's here. We paid good money to ensure that was the case.”

“But morally speaking-”

“Moralilty?” screamed the man incredulously. He swung his arm and gave my cheek a sharp slap. I stumbled sideways into the glass with a dull thud. The sound caused the blankets to stir. “This has nothing to do with morality. That thing is repulsive. It disgusts me.”

The man bore down on me. His hands grabbed my lapels. The crocodile clip that held my badge snapped free and the my plastic enshrined face fluttered to the floor like a sycamore seed.

“We are here to study the next age of evolution, not to cavort with demons. That thing is a unholy. Kill it.”

My mouth moved uselessly. My thoughts froze.

“He's a boy,” I said softly.

“Kill it,” repeated the man.

My eyes slipped towards the room. The greatest discovery of this age, lost because of fear...

The man released me, letting me tumble to the floor.

“You have one hour.”

The room was bare. The scent of bleach still stung my nostrils.

“Two years of research...” murmured Kray.

“He looked at me,” I said, staring at the spot that had been Samuel's bed. “He looked right at me. I don't know if he recognised me.”

The flame-thrower had been the only tool guaranteed to rid the room of all bodily cells.

“I don't even recall if I've ever shown him my face before.”

Kray sniffed, three times in short order. “Enough. This has left a bad taste in my mouth.”

The lab hummed with a dull machine heartbeat.

I carefully lined the remaining documents up with the shredder and began feeding them into the machine. The waste paper basket was already brimming with a vermicelli of white entrails.

“The air is too dry in here,” said Kray, sliding an index finger into his collar and jerking it away from his throat. He sniffed, before giving a quick cough, as if trying to dislodge a hair ball. “Do you have much more to do?” he asked irritably.

“There's just the samples,” I replied numbly, turning my back on him as I cast my eyes down upon the Petri dishes that were lined up along the counter.

I blinked. My right eye spasmed a little. I reached up with a knuckle and rubbed.

“Did you already dispose of these?” I asked. If he had, it would have been the first time he'd touched the samples since harvesting. Kray was an infirm man mired in theory, with hands that jerked in time with his pulse, despite his best efforts to control them.

The only answer from Kray was another rasping cough.

The counter itself didn't appear to have been sterilised. I placed my hand upon the surface, and lowered myself into a crouch as I carefully began to trace a barely visible, pink tinged line that zigzagged towards the floor.

“Hoffner,” said Kray, the word whistling in his throat as he gasped.

I shot a glance towards him. His hands were straining reflexively at his face, as he delved his shaking fingers into his own mouth. I pulled myself up quickly, my hands unintentionally sweeping the dishes onto the tiled floor, where they clattered and span.

“Move,” I commanded firmly, pulling his jerking fingers away from his spittle flecked lips, before tilting his head back. My right eye began to water with effort as I scanned his open mouth.

I caught sight of it a moment before it slipped from view, pink and quivering, wriggling downwards along the back of the old man's throat.

I let go of his face in shock, stepping back.

The faded pink/red line was there, snaking it's way up the hang-dog folds of Kray's sagging face, snaking its way into Kray's left nostril. It was indistinct, and far too faint to notice unless it was looked for, but its significance warranted fluorescence.

Kray gasped, a dry, jittering wheeze. His eyes conveyed a thousand questions, but only one emotion – desperation. His airways have closed. His airways have been closed.

My right eye flared with a sudden needle of pain. It was so intense that it dragged my attention from the dying man towards my own physical plight. I staggered over to a mirrored cabinet, scattering a trolley of surgical tools. Steel glittered as it rained upon the tiles.

The surface misted with my breath. I wiped away the condensation in time to see the line of hairs, crawling like caterpillars from my ear and into my eye, following a line...

Blood began to bead at the corner of my eye, seeping from the newly created and deepening wound.

My own words returned to sting my mind. “They can move. Each cell can move, when provoked.”

Perhaps the mind was never in control...

Kray collapsed. His lips were lined with blue. The memory of seeing the square of the child's flesh crawling into his lungs forced itself back into my mind. It was somehow worse than the knowledge that the boy's hairs were digging through my optic nerves, towards my brain...

The first year review!

My first year of public writing.

(Well, it's been thirteen months... but I was a bit tired).

Well it's certainly been a mixed bag of a year!

It started with the release of The Binary Man (a cyberpunk/semi dystopian adventure) in May of 2012. The book had been languishing on my computer for two years in a seriously un-proofed form, a situation that I have only recently 100% percent rectified (thanks Kathryn!). It did (and continues to do) surprisingly well for a first book.

Bouyed with the small (and friend supported) success of the book I decided to throw myself into writing a second, which turned into Heal The Sick, Raise The Dead. This one was much more bleak in tone, dealing with an unreliable narrator during an undead outbreak. The book has received generally more favourable feedback than the Binary Man but far less sales. I have no idea why this is. It could be the subject matter. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out, though I may amend certain parts in a 'Director's Cut' style at a later date. The highlight of the project was getting a professionally produced cover from Jody Whittle of thisishoax.com. He's worked with Alan Moore, so I have too... by proxy. I have. All right, I haven't.

Next up was my Cuts of Flesh series, which I wrote as a way to tie a few different stories I've had knocking around together with the same protagonist. I decided to release it as an ongoing series despite the fact that I hadn't thought of an ending, a mistake I will NEVER repeat. I found myself tied to details that I wanted to change simply because I had already published them, and such restrictions slowed my writing to a crawl that lasted for months until an amazing holiday in Japan unclogged my idea bung holes (they exist) and I finished the last three parts at a breakneck pace.

In between I also wrote a few short stories (Just One Day, The Uncanny Mr. Bones and Words) as a way of distracting myself from Cuts of Flesh. Just One Day was the breakout hit, getting a lot of good reviews and also making me a bit of money. I had no idea that anyone would buy a short story of 12,000 words but clearly some people will!

I also decided to join in the NaNoWriMo event in November, scraping another cyberpunk novel The Real Thing from my sleep deprived mind and writing 50,000 words in November. I finally worked up the courage to look back over the draft recently and it was better than I remember so I released it on amazon. I think my exhausted mindset at the time made it seem more shaky than it was. I need to give up coffee but it calls me back every day...

The best part of the year by far has been getting to know some great people, three of which stand out above the others. 

Ethan Spier was the first real contact I made and his help and advice has been invaluable over the past year. He is a talented (and successful!) author whose book Kinesis has been at number 1 in the amazon sci fi adventure chart for an age. Check out his stuff here http://www.ethanspier.co.uk. 

Kathryn Perkins is a wonderful person who is single handedly proofing and editing my entire back catalogue as we speak. She is a great source of support and re-affirms my faith in human kindness on a daily basis. She is also a talented artist and sculptor, and her custom guitar pendants can be bought here http://frenziedsilence.com/.

Last but in no way least is George Hodan, a photographer with an amazing eye whose pictures I often use for my book covers. He has won several awards on publicdomainpictures.net and deserves all of his success and more. Check out his pictures here https://www.facebook.com/hodanpictures.

There are many others that I've got to know through twitter and facebook, far too many to name, but rest assured I read and appreciate all comments and reviews.
This year has been fraught with self doubt, frustration, joy and a lot of hours of graft. Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed it, and though I have made some mistakes I hope that I will learn from them and craft a smart marketing strategy to go along with my hours and days and weeks spent on writing.

As for the next year, I think will be a tough one, but hopefully rewarding. My goal for now is not to make money (that will be a long way off, if it ever happens) but rather to get better at constructing my stories with the aim to getting something published, indie or otherwise. To do this I need feedback. I value honesty above all else and have no problem with constructive criticism of my writing. My writing is a lifelong passion and a lifelong project. Let's see what part two brings.

Bring the bile!

A friend of mine, who has always been very supportive of my fledgling writing attempts, told me tonight that he hates something I've done. This is not just in passing... he really hates it. He loathes it. He hates every aspect of it.

This is a refreshing thing to hear, as I've found that during the past year (it's pretty much a year to the day since I released The Binary Man and began writing myself into a caffeine haze) I've received occasional lukewarm reception, occasionally good, but rarely any criticism. 

This is actually more depressing than it sounds, for two reasons. 1: I always want more feedback, and 2: there are a lot of things I've done wrong. I know it, whoever reads this occasional blog knows it... most likely anyone who stumbles across my stuff on amazon knows it. My stuff is poorly proofed by myself due to my soft brain. My plots aren't always planned well. My dialogue can be stilted and cliched. My characters can react unrealistically at times.

I'm trying to address all these things and I hope I'm slowly improving. I have met a great person who as I type is probably hard at work editing my back catalogue for the peculiar blind spots I have for my writing. I take great pains to make sure my dialogue sounds realistic without falling into the trap of actually being realistic with all of its false starts and snatched sentences. Planning plots... well, I must admit that apart from a vague outline I nearly always wing it based on how the characters fit within the setting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I could spend a lot more time redoing and refining my stuff but I admit that I am actually enjoying throwing my words out and seeing what sticks.

The point is that from a writing point of view I'm still an infant. I'm one year old. And just like a child, sometimes I need to have the rules explained. I need to know what to avoid, I need to know what bits I'm doing right so that I don't lose focus on them and I need to know when I'm about to drop off into a chasm of crap... well, that last one is a little more figurative but you get the idea.

Please, tell me which bits of my books are crap! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I want to know!

Think of me as a public project. Get involved. I'll always listen.

Gloom

Here is a short extract of the beginning of Gloom. At the moment its my project of distraction which I add chunks to as an alternative to smashing my head against the wall when whatever I should be working on is dragging. I tend to write three or four stories at a time. I have no idea if this is good or bad!

"If I cared for your opinion," said Carcaras, picking a fragment of gristle from his teeth with a fingernail as long and yellow as a sun scorched bone, "I would not have taken your arm."

The limb in question was currently sitting in a congealing disk of blood upon the polished stone writing desk, ragged pink flesh quivering in the blue flame of the candle. Mor looked down at it wistfully.

"I used that," whimpered Mor as a steady flow of brackish blood slipped down the side of his rusting metal armour and danced on the bowing timber floor.

"You used to use that," corrected Carcaras, pushing it off the desk and onto a brazier dismissively. It fizzed as the flesh began to scorch, red to brown to black.

"It isn't fair..."

"Fair?" said Carcaras, standing up so suddenly that his top hat, almost as tall as his legs were long, danced and bobbed on his sweating, greasy hair. He turned his eyes, small and fierce as the dying embers of a sun and took a long stride towards the smaller man, who shrank back and clutched his remaining hand to the ragged stump on his shoulder. Carcaras grasped the mottled top of a post that formed part of the twisted cast iron fence that lay between them, over which he’d wrenched Mor’s offending limb. It was the only physical barrier between the square piece of raised flooring that marked his office and the main floor of the Central Memorandum. It was more a gesture than anything, a separation of Carcaras from the mass of Cringes that were still hammering out moments on their typewriters despite the sanguine soaked drama that was unfolding in their midst. "Fairness is not housed within these walls, wretch. You of all people should know that. Why else would you wear that fish-bowl upon your head when all others breath freely?"

Mor started to beat his chest a little with his remaining fist, clenched up tight as a dying crab as it drummed a nervous staccato on his dented copper chest plate. He was obviously lost for words, unsure of how it had all escalated so quickly. It was all very apt, considering their location. The unforeseen was a skilled instigator of the Moments.

“I was only asking,” he said finally, daring to say little else as he stared up at Carcaras. Carcaras could feel the grey eyes that swam behind the cloudy glass of Mor’s helmet as they scanned his features, most likely in search of that elusive quality of empathy. None to be had, whelp, though if you dig far enough I may cast a grain of pity towards you, though it would surely be tethered to a hook... a need for a gesture of willingness.

“It may have seemed as little more than a question to you, but consider the line of inquiry:  you would open up the knowledge of what lies beneath the mine to the entire city of Gloom. This is not simply a petty detail of life to be mulled over whilst chewing the morning carrion, this is a knowledge of where we stand in the darkness, of what forms our bones and splices our meat. Four of us know the truth, four apart and four together. Four only. That is the number it will remain.”

Mor turned his wide globular helmet and scanned the colossal hall that surrounded them. Pinpoints of lifeless blue light glinted across the copper encased man, born from the wired stars that hung from the rusting steel rafters far above. Around him the Cringes continued in their never ending task, stabbing out words and phrases at their workstations with their misshapen hands, which had been strapped up to such an extent that their fingers had fused together in pained and bloody clumps, with the index finger permanently extended, ready to type. Most had attached blackened metal extensions directly into their flesh simply in order to maintain any semblance of a fingertip.

“ Isn't it pointless to try and hide it eternally? They all know now,” said Mor sweeping his remaining arm around the room. The noise of keyboard keys was a constant chattering that echoed onward throughout the perpetual night.

“They have not heard us, they cannot hear us,” said Carcaras as he stretched a sinew strung leg across the fence and placed a foot upon the main floor, a fractal pattern of polished black marble. His pointed leather and steel shoes were as sharp as swords at the tips, and twice as long as his feet actually were, which was the way he liked it. They were always ready to administer a sharp kick should the staff become lethargic. “Unlike some, they are completely focused on their job at hand.”

He tapped a bony fingernail against the forehead of the nearest Cringe, which rocked a little in its seat but still continued in its task with glazed, red rimmed eyes.

“It’s just as well that they are so dedicated. If they were to stop then you must surely know the result.”

Mor nodded slowly.

“Announce it, I wish to know that you truly understand.”

The copper man angled his helmet’s eye plates to the ground, perhaps to formulate the right words or perhaps to simply curse the soul of Carcaras in his own mind. Carcaras cared little either way.

“If they stop,” said Mor eventually, his voice thick with displeasure, “then the spiral stops.”

“And if the spiral stops?” pushed Carcaras, leaning down at a right angle to his legs, his thin torso barely stretching the fabric of his impossibly slim suit. His coat tails fell about his back like flaps of dead skin.

“Then the city falls into the fog and is lost,” said Mor, finishing the sentence with less obvious disrespect than when he began it. He understands. No matter his dislike for me, he understands.

“So you see why they cannot be distracted. They need no truth. As for your arm, why, simply grow a new one again. I can already see a small facsimile of a hand pushing out of the wound.”

Carcaras straightened back up, and tilted his head to look at the little man more closely. I regret what I have done. It is a strange power that you wield, small Mor.

How much is too much?

I'm now edging in on the end of my Cuts of Flesh series (at long last). I hadn't intended for the process of writing them to carry on much into the new year, but both welcome and very unwelcome changes in my life occurred between January and March which dragged my writing progress down. I didn't feel like I could face imagined troubles on top of genuine troubles.

Now I'm finally getting into a rhythm again, getting up between 3.30 and 4 am to write before the kids wake up. I've finished Gashadokuro and am half way through Eat, so after that's done there's just Rapture and then the series is complete!

I have mixed feelings about Gashadokuro. I think it would work well if it had different characters and was stand alone as it feels like it has a different beast to the other novellas in the series. Unfortunately as I'm releasing sequentially (as soon as I have written them) I'm quite tied to the plot points, which is why I'm waiting until I finish Eat to release Gashadokuro, just in case I need to tweak the continuity. Hopefully people won't consider it a 'flabby middle'. I have enough of that with my own physique!

As I'm writing Eat (which I'm pleased with so far, even if it is intensely dark), I'm finalizing the plot of Rapture, but wondering if there is too much shadow and not enough light. I think it will out-bleak Heal The Sick. The suffering of the main character Aleister Ward does however have a reasoning behind it from a plotting point of view (however flawed that reasoning might be), so hopefully it will work.

I will be bringing out a complete Cuts of Flesh for £2.99 on kindle when it is finished, along with a paperback (the cover of which I am tentatively sorting myself). 

In other news, my manuscript is still with Harper Voyager and hasn't been thrown out, so I have a glimmer of hope for publication (imagine a coin at the bottom of a four mile wide lagoon).

When Cuts of Flesh is complete I will also have to decide which of my projects to get on with next. The choice is between Clock (classic sci fi), Fangrok (Horror/Dark Fantasy), and Ojiisan (Zombies set in modern day Japan/tragic love story).

If anyone has a preference they can let me know and I may take notice ;)