Watch This: The Ritual

A nice little bit of the weird here from Will Wright.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/30269483]

Ten Discs

There's a thing going around Facecrack tagging people to post the top ten albums that have had a lasting influence on them. So, in no particular order, here are mine.

Radical Dance Faction - Wasteland(1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvCbVTt9QhU

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.(1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sML3fbgiA0

Paradise Lost - Icon(1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02EBDaI34jQ

Rudimentary Peni - Death Church(1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOiS0jqlkA4

C.R.A.S.S. - Feeding of the 5000(1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKAHU5-pS_A

Chumbawamba - Never Mind the Ballots(1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ilMH3Ie08

P.A.I.N. - Oh My God We're Doing It. We're Fucking Doing It(1996)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3aNalmpGDw

Inner Terrestrials - iT!(2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_SuikIqI3g

The Levellers - Levelling the Land(1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKrmo9H8XY

Tofu Love Frogs - Rentamob(Early 90s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36iwwwTOeMM

Pretty Eight Machine

What's not to love about this? :D

[bandcamp width=350 height=786 album=3535620166 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=63b2cc]

The Degenerate Little Town|Thomas Ligotti & Current 93

Thomas Ligotti has in the past collaborated with the English industrial band Current 93. In this track Ligotti himself reads the poem This Degenerate Little Town over music from Current 93.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBca33v8oGM

This Degenerate Little Town

Thomas Ligotti


The greatest secret,
which appears in no religious doctrine
and is found nowhere
in the world's overburdened library
of myths and fables
nor receives the slightest mention
in any philosopher's system
or scientist's speculation...
The greatest secret,
perhaps the only secret,
is that the universe,
all of creation,
owes its existence
to a degenerate little town.
And if it were possible
to strip away the scenery that surrounds us,
to pull up the landscape
of every planet,
to rip away the skies
and shove aside the stars and suns,
to tear from ourselves our own flesh
and delve deep into our bones,
we would find it standing there eternal,
the origin of all things visible
or invisible,
the source of everything that is
or can be,
this degenerate little town.
And then we would discover
its twisted streets
and tilting houses,
its decaying ground
and rotting sky.
And with our own eyes
we would see the diseased faces
peeking from grimy windows.
Then we would realize
why it is such a secret.
The greatest and most vile secret.
This degenerate little town
where everything began
and from whose core of corruption
everything seeps out...


From the beginning,
if there was a beginning,
this degenerate little town
has become ever more degenerate;
its streets more twisted
its houses more tilting
its ground more decayed
its sky more rotten,
those faces behind ever more grimy windows
have become ever more diseased
And in the end...
But there can never be an end
for this degenerate little town.
No more than an end will ever come
for the worlds that have seeped out of it
for everything we can know
is degenerate from the beginning,
everything becomes more twisted and tilting,
more diseased and decayed
rotting from the very sky.
This is the law of things,
if there can be any law
in a universe that has its source and origin
in a degenerate little town,
which has been degenerate from the beginning,
if there was a beginning,
and will go on with its degeneration,
its ceaseless twisting and tilting,
its disease and decay,
its infinite shades of rottenness
forever and without end.


We cannot help but wonder,
in our most perverse moments,
what it would be like
to inhabit this degenerate little town
where the sky is forever dripping its rottenness like rain
to be among those faces
that are diseased faces
eternally diseased faces
eternally peeking through the glass of grimy windows
and out into twisted streets
lined with tilting houses
in a town that is forever degenerating
and will be degenerating forever.
We cannot help but wonder
in our most perverse moments
as we look through bleary eyes
and see the stars that seem to form
so many twisting roads through the blackness,
or feel our flesh rotting upon our bones,
and yet we can only wonder
we can only whisper
or cry out in our dreams
“O Where is the way to this degenerate little town?”


There are those among us
who claim to have seen
this degenerate little town,
although they may be unaware
of its true nature.
There are those who have emerged
from some painful ordeal of the body
or of the mind,
and then begun speaking
of how they saw in the distance
an outline of crooked houses
tilting this way and that,
or walked along some twisted street,
and felt the ground soft with decay
beneath their steps,
or even glimpsed those diseased faces,
their skin rough and pale as plaster,
peeking from behind grimy windows.
But those who claim to have seen such things
always seem to tell a somewhat different story -
failing to compose a consistent picture
of what they may have seen,
or imagine they have seen.
And so we stare at them suspiciously
for a moment,
and then start to walk away,
leaving them to their lies or their illusions,
which of course are the very essence
of this degenerate little town.


“Where is this place?
This degenerate little town?
What is its name?
And who were its creators?”

Such questions are inevitable
and a matter of course
whenever a world knowledge
is attained about anything.
Never mind the greatest secret.
The greatest mystery.

“Are there seasons in the land of this town?
Is there a springtime in which great rains poor down day and night from that rotting sky?
Are there sultry summers that lay a heavy stillness upon those twisted streets?
And what of its autumn, which must be so succulent with all the colours of decay?
Do the winters there, in this degenerate little town, pile their weighty snow upon the roofs of those tilting houses? “

So many question about this secret place.
But as long as such questions are asked,
and countless answers are offered,
the greatest secret will always remain protected,
for no questions will ever be asked,
no answers will ever be allowed
concerning those diseased faces
that have gazed forever
behind the glass of grimy windows.


Like every phenomenon
that we cannot fully face,
this degenerate little town
must remain a cult in its essence
and serve as a limit
for such as we care to know
about what is beyond
the blackness of night
or what is deep in our bones,
for like every phenomenon
that we have actually come to face
this degenerate little town
can only pain us,
adding to our lives
a mere surplus of the pains
we have known so well
throughout the agonised ages
of a degenerate creation.

But like no other phenomenon
that we have ever faced,
this degenerate little town,
under its rotting sky,
standing upon decayed ground--
a landscape of a pain
that is like no other--
may be our last hope,
the only hope we have
of killing all the hopes
we have ever had
and murdering every mystery
we have ever cherished,
so that we may step forth, finally,
into that great shining kingdom
of which we have always dreamed.


It may be quite likely
that we are grotesquely mistaken
to think there is anything special,
anything remarkable at all,
about this degenerate little town.
Far from being the greatest secret,
the worst or the finest of all our dreams,
it may be quite likely
the greatest commonplace,
the supreme banality.
Consider the possibility.
Who among us
have not found ourselves
beneath a rotting sky?
A sky broken and rotting
from what has been heaped up to it
during every epic of this earth,
this ground that is miles deep
with the decay of everything
that has ever lived upon it.
Who has not traveled
through twisted streets,
and under the shadow of houses,
even the straightest of which,
if our eyes could only see it,
is veering towards to tilt?
As for diseased faces,
they are ever prevailing
to the point of embarrassment.
And so much for this civic marvel
that is beyond the blackness of night,
or resides deep in our bones.
Yet if this is the case,
as it quite likely may be,
what remains for us in a universe
where there is nothing special,
nothing of any account,
let alone the saving miracle
of this degenerate little town?


It seems entirely natural that,
should anyone gain full knowledge
of this degenerate little town,
they would deny the truth
of this greatest, most terrible of secrets -
and, as a consequence,
as an act of self-protection,
would fabricate some other
set of circumstances,
a more companionable picture
of the way of things.
This would explain so many
of the deranged idols and beliefs
that have arisen in our world.
At least we would be able to account
for the multitudes of Mannequin Saviours,
as one might view them -
their faces smooth and serene
behind display windows,
welcoming the faithful who,
upon their death,
will enter a department-store paradise
of the most vague and intangible delights.
And some mention must be made
of what might be called
the Sect of the Puppetlands,
whose highly deranged adherents
posit a transcendent universe
of infinite and harmless antics
that are imperfectly mirrored
in the chaos and crises of our own world,
which, in any case, will end nicely
when the Great Puppet Play is concluded
in a sweet bedtime of slumber...
until the next show begins.

Yet, who would begrudge anyone
the denials or alternate renderings
of the twisted streets and tilting houses
the diseased faces and grimy windows of
this degenerate little town,
which itself seems so perfectly bleak,
so in tune with the world we know
forever inclined to ever greater degeneracy
that even the few enlightened ones among us
sometimes doubt it to be real.


We sometimes imagine
that we have heard voices.
Strange and harsh voices,
faintly calling from beyond
the blackness of night
or from deep in our bones.
And even if there are no actual words,
no actual language we know
in which the voices speak,
still there is a terrible understanding
delivered into our world
that only a few may comprehend,
and none would desire,
for this understanding,
this message of strange harsh voices
from beyond the blackness of night,
or from deep in our bones,
declares that this degenerate little town,
that greatest of secrets,
is only a facade
or a mirage,
a picturesque lie
or illusion
in the guise of twisted streets and tilting houses,
all the rottenness and disease which we sense
as the source of all the things we know
or can ever know
when in fact there is something else altogether,
something which none could comprehend,
or desire to comprehend,
yet which they cannot fail to hear
when it slips through the sounds
of those strange and harsh voices,
when it drifts through
during the briefest moments of silence
and from beyond the blackness of night,
or from deep in our bones
comes forth as the hollow resonance
of a most dismal laughter.


Even though there is no evidence
that a degenerate little town
forms the greatest secret
and is the source
of all the things we know
its truth and its existence remain assured
and there do seem to be certain indications
certain aspects and elements of our lives
that in no uncertain terms
inform us of one fact:
sooner or later we will find ourselves
in this degenerate little town
whether we wish to go there or not.
Because when the sky
begins to darken,
as if rotting before our eyes,
and when our bones
begin to change,
growing soft with decay,
we know that all the ways
of our lives
have been leading us,
and can only lead us,
to this degenerate little town.
And then we may understand
that everything around us,
everything within us,
has a direct point of contact
to that secret place,
that source of all things.
Dreams, for instance,
the dreams of our sleep
wherein every mind is destined
to go twisted and tilting
into lands of swift magic.
These dreams alone would make the case -
if anything were ever needed
in the way of evidence.
These dreams alone
would put us in close view
of those grimy windows
behind which diseased faces
peek out through the glass,
as if they are waiting for
someone to arrive -
as if they are waiting
for everyone, sooner or later,
to enter their little town.

Caermaen|Ian Watson

More weird music; this time inspired by the writing of my fellow Welshman, the Caerleon born Arthur Machen. Caermaen being a Welsh town based heavily on his home town of Caerleon which sits within spitting distance of where I grew up.

This album is a dark ambient soundscape from Cardiff based composer Ian Watson and serves as a great counterpart to Machen's weird mystical horror.

[bandcamp width=350 height=588 album=2664988337 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=63b2cc]

Holiday Time!

Now that the summer is finally(!) over it's time for the family strange to start thinking about where we'll be going for our holidays. There's nothing like getting away from the hustle and bustle to properly enjoy the turning of the season as the grim green vegetation which has blanketed the land gives way to the warm russets of new rot. This year I'm suggesting that we visit the north of Englandshire; the small town of Scarfolk in particular. It seems like such a lively and friendly place, I'm sure we would have a wonderful time. I'll post some pictures I found on the Scarfolk Council website below along with a video of one of the charming children's shows that the local television network broadcasts.



 



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMjcn8_F3SA

Black Man With a Horn - T.E.D. Klein

I have heard repeated mentions of the T.E.D. Klein story 'Black Man With a Horn'  over the last few years and have heard it described as both masterful and a classic weird tale. I had read 'The Events at Poroth Farm' in S.T. Joshi and Guillermo del Toro's American Supernatural Tales -part of a series curated by del Toro for Penguin- and had thoroughly enjoyed it. It is an extremely unsettling story and I highly recommend it. However that was the extent of my reading of T.E.D. Klein. I set out to try and find a copy of the story online, it dates from the early 1980s/late 1970s so there was every chance it may be sat on the internet somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. It appears in S.T. Joshi's monumental collection A Mountain Walked but that's ever so slightly out of my price range. It does look beautiful though.

[caption id="attachment_586" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Illustration from A Mountain Walked for Black Man With a Horn[/caption]

I eventually found a copy of Cthulhu 2000 from Del Ray which included the story. Not quite so sumptuously presented I'll admit but the volume does include an amazing array of authors including Thomas Ligotti, Michael Shea, Harlan Ellison, and Ramsey Campbell amongst others. £3 well spent by any measure. I eagerly jumped into the story at the first chance I got which was, inevitably, on my morning commute to work. It soon dawned on me that reading this story at the present time, what with all the hoo haa that's going on surrounding HPL and the World Fantasy Award, was somewhat fitting. The protagonist of the story is an old man, an author of weird fiction who was a contemporary of Lovecraft's who has outlived his deceased friend and seen the world change around him. He harbours many of the same prejudices that Lovecraft did though to a far lesser extent. Of this character I would actually buy the 'man of his time' argument as there is no hatred to his racism, merely an understanding of how the world works stunted by culture and, to an extent, ignorance. The character's racism is also tempered by a misanthropy that causes him to scorn most people regardless of race or ethnicity.

It was, in fact, a thorny problem: forced to choose between whites whom I despised and blacks whom I feared, I somehow preferred the fear.

The tale is littered with passages like the one above where the protagonist expresses his discomfort with the world that has changed around him, leaving him trapped in a present that it alien and which shows no sign of ceasing in becoming more so as time progresses. Many of these passages are addressed directly to Lovecraft as he imagines his old friend's reaction to the world as it is now, well -as it was in the 1970s, and how badly he reacted to the New York that he knew in the early 1920s when he was driven by his fear to pen The Horror at Red Hook. It is a brilliant set up for a weird tale as the protagonist is already alienated from the world around him and so it doesn't take much to push him into the world of the truly weird.

The horror of this story is based on a cult mentioned by both  August Derleth and Lovecraft, the Tcho-Tcho, and the protagonist's investigation into their connection with the disappearance of a missionary with whom he becomes acquainted on a flight. I shan't go into the plot, track the story down and read it, as that's not what I wanted to discuss here. I think that  the most notable thing about the story, for me at the moment anyway, is Klein's handling of the prejudices of the protagonist and how he conflates them with Lovecraft's own, much more vitriolic, bigotry. It illustrates quite well the difference between the racism of a person who is 'of their time' and the shocking racism espoused by HPL. It is a nice exploration of the sense of displacement that a person can feel as they are left behind by the world as they age and how, eventually, they can come to peace with the inevitability of change and the alien. As the narrator does at the end of the tale.

The description of this story as a masterpiece of weird fiction is quite accurate. Whilst the story itself may not be quite as boundary pushing as some of the work being produced by today's masters in the field it is brilliantly executed and the subtler aspects of the story have made this a new favourite of mine. I'll definitely be seeking out everything else written by T.E.D. Klein.

Oh, and I should say that you probably shouldn't read this if you can't stomach the expressions of attitudes and prejudices that don't gel with your own.

Saor|Aura

Today has been a somewhat metallic one :) I do like to listen to music when I work and so was trawling the internets for something new to play today. I discovered this guy when I was going through the 'atmospheric black metal' tag on Bandcamp(don't judge me! >:( ) and blimey, he's really good. Well, if you like atmospheric celtic black metal that is. :D Plus he's from Weegie Land just up the road which is always nice. His name's Andy Marshall and the band name, Saor, is Gaelic for "free".

[bandcamp width=350 height=621 album=2677732706 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=63b2cc]

The Littlest Cthulhuist

The film maker John Hidalgo who made the short film Cthulhu's Witnesses, which aired at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, is making another short film that looks like a good wheeze. The Littlest Cthulhuist is about a wee lass whoo, as a Cthulhu's Witness, is getting picked on at school. It looks like it will be a giggle and they're only looking for $3,000 to fund it over at Indiegogo.  Watch the short trailer below and then head over to the website to give them a wee bung why don't you? $10 will get you a download of the film plus there are more bonuses for those who can donate a little bit more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdiHf_nxPSM

And here's Cthulhu's Witnesses for good measure. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO1s_wNm2Ac

Lovecraft and the WFA

The Lovecraft Ezine hosted a brilliant discussion about HPL, his racism, and the WFA last night. As ever, due to time zones, I was unable to watch the show live but managed to watch it this morning. I was, again, impressed with the level of discourse on such an emotive subject and I said as much on the Ezine message board with a small contribution to the debate.

Just watched the show. Great to see a friendly and level headed talk about HPL and racism. I wish I had been able to join in but I would like to make a wee contribution if I may.

When it comes to HPL I would place him within the Modernist literary tradition, especially his later works, and so his views were in keeping with certain segments of that tradition. I'm thinking here people like Ezra Pound and David Jones who were out and out Antisemites and, in the case of Jones, actual fascists.

Of course they were all writing in a time of great political and social upheaval. We have the background of the First World War, the Russian, Spanish and German revolutions, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain and of National 'Socialism' in Germany. The conflict between US and European workers and bosses was as explosive and violent as ever. It was a time of very firm ideological stances coming into direct conflict with one another.

For this reason it is unsurprising that we see contemporary writers falling into these broad left/right dichotomies. For every Pound/Jones/Lovecraft with objectionable reactionary opinions there was an Orwell or a Steinbeck.

I think that what acknowledging and understanding HPL's bigotry gives us, when we read his work, is an insight into the intimate and emotional core of this bigotry that was manifest in many people -not just HPL. His feelings of fear with regards the 'other' and anything that was outwith his understanding of the world via his WASP upbringing come through in more ways that the simple crude racism we see in Redhook or Call of Cthulhu. We see the alien other as something that is beyond the ken of civilised people. We see it as something that is overwhelming and unstoppable. A fear that is manifest in the more forthright writings of many racists and fascists. A fine example of this is the Rivers of Blood speech by notorious British racist Enoch Powell. His talk of an inevitable race war which will see black people slaughtering white could quite easily be fictionalised into a story of impending doom from anywhere outwith civilisation.

Of course, one doesn't have to read HPL, or any other author, in this manner. It is perfectly possible, and entirely legitimate, to enjoy his work as masterful pieces of horrific and fantastic literature. Being ignorant of his bigotry in no ways detracts from the tales. Being aware of it and understanding it however allows for one to choose *how* they wish to read them. I personally will sometimes read the stories with a critical eye and attempt to gain an insight into early 20th Century culture through the eyes of HPL. Much in the same way that when I was reading Classical Civilisation at university I would read Hessiod and Homer to gain insight into the culture in which the writers lived. Other times (most if I'm to be honest) I will read them as great stories for entertainment.

I do think that this discussion is important and, as others have said, it is one that we will continue to have as more people become aware of HPL and his work. That the discussion is cropping up more and more frequently is a good sign, especially for those of us who wish to have more people to write weird fiction and more people to read it. It means that the bastard child of genre literature is beginning to forge its own way in the 21st Century in the way that SF and Fantasy have been doing in recent decades.

I would also like to bring this fantastic collection to people's attention. Never Again: Weird Fiction Against Fascism and Racism edited by Allyson Bird and Joel Lane. It has some brilliant stories and all the profits go to groups working to do away with bigotry.

AMAZON USA  AMAZON UK

And finally. A quote from New Weird Maestro China Mieville. "The good thing about New Weird is that we certainly have less fascists."

Well, 'small' for me. Maybe not for Facebook. :D

Here's the show and below are a few more comments on things brought up by the panel during the discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwUTkeqWf4U

Pete mentioned that many of the current awards have rather embarrassing origins: the Hugo of the Hugo awards regularly 'forgot' to pay his writers, the Booker was started by a company that built its profits on slave plantations, the Poe is named after a man who married his 13 year old cousin and so on. He said that if we are to go after the WFA for its connection to HPL and his bigotry then we should go after them all. I can see his point here but the difference, especially with the Booker, is that we are a part of the community that issues the World Fantasy Award. We are not readers/writers of mystery or mainstream fiction. We are of the fantastic. Because of this is is to be expected that we should have a vested interest in the WFA and the community within which it exists. Joe and Matt were both of the opinion that it was entirely up to the WFA committee whether or not it should change. At the end of the day that is strictly true but as the award is part of wider fandom it is only right that fandom has an input into the award.

I do feel that if this debate, the wider one, had begun by someone pointing out that HPL is no longer as relevant to the field of fantasy as he used to be when the various genres of Horror/Fantasy/Science Fiction were more closely linked than I don't think we would be seeing this brouhaha. However because it concerns the man's bigotry it has gotten people's back up. This has been, from what I can tell, exacerbated by the attraction of the supposed internet 'social justice warriors' who seem to thrive off one upping one another with how outraged they can be in the various online fora. These folk really get my goat as I have only ever come across them in the online world. Despite years, and years of political activity including anti-racist work I have never seen or heard of any of these people. Like the racist trolls they see everywhere they seem to only exist online. This cartoon sums them up quite nicely.



It is a crying shame that these individuals are so loud. In an age where the vast majority of human debate is carried out online these people get far more attention than they deserve. The fantasy author Will Shetterly has written about them quite extensively and whilst I don't agree with him on a lot of things he is right about the internet Social Justice Warrior.

Another thing that came up briefly in the discussion was that Centipede Press are releasing a version of The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan. I've been excited by this since I first heard that they were working on it and so imagine my disappointment when I go to have a look at the Centipede website. $250!!!!!! $250! :'( There is no way on Earth that I could possibly justify spending that much money on a book at the moment. Poverty, and therefore capitalism, suck monkey balls. It really does.

 

Autumn Cthulhu

Mike Davis, the editor at the Lovecraft Ezine, has issued a call for submissions for an upcoming anthology entitled Autumn Cthulhu.

he sums up what he's looking for thus:

Well, the words Autumn Cthulhu sum it up somewhat.  But, though pastiche can be done well, I don’t want it here.  In other words, less “Mythos” and more “Lovecraftian”.  I’m talking about the themes of Lovecraft: cosmic horror, deep time, man’s irrelevant place in the universe, horrific truths about reality, etc…

So the story should be Lovecraftian, set in the fall.  You could include Halloween, and in fact I very much hope some of you do, but it’s not a necessity.  There’s a mood and a magic and a mystery to autumn; think colorful falling leaves, crisp days, rainy afternoons and evenings.  A cold drizzle.

Which sounds particularly enticing. Especially as I recently began work on a Yellow story set on a housing scheme on the outskirts of Glasgow in, of all times, the autumn! So if I can get it finished and edited before Halloween(nice deadline there Mr Davis!) I'm definitely going to submit it. The story is more of a Yellow tale than anything related to the Cthulhu mythos so I'm glad Mike wants Lovecraftian over mythos stories.

All the details on how to submit stories are in the post over at the Ezine so head over there if you fancy sending Mike a tall tale. Anyway, back to work on my story.

Aw B******s

Well, that went well didn't it? I'm referring, of course, to the vote for Scottish independence that happened last Thursday. For months I had refused to allow myself to become optimistic but as we entered the final week before the vote it seemed like thing might go the way I hoped. 97% of people registered to vote which I took to be a good sign surely people weren't going to go to such an effort to maintain the status quo? Especially when that status quo is responsible for devastating poverty, people starving to death or killing themselves as a direct result of the attacks carried out by the state upon the poorest and most vulnerable in our society rather than simply a large number of 3 chord pop-rock songs. It seems that I was wrong about that.

It's saddening, it really is. There is some hope though. 45%(ish) voted yes to independence and that's a hell of a result considering that the full weight of the British media and state was behind Project Fear, the No Campaign, in spreading lies and misinformation.

The other really saddening thing is that the optimism and joy of the yes campaign has been trumped by the mean, cold, and horrible ugliness of British Loyalism. Compare the scenes below.



 

In the top two images we see people involved in the Yes campaign on the day of the vote. Partying and celebrating. Below we see the ugly scenes as British loyalists came to 'celebrate' the No campaign victory with violence and bigotry. Look at these fuds abusing a Glaswegian councillor outside the council offices on Friday as they flocked to George Square to cause trouble. Rule Britannia, Britons always, always, always will be slaves.

Still, at least there is the possibility of another referendum at some point in the future. Though I'm certain that Westminster will have stitched things up by then to ensure Scotland's continued poverty either way. I love Scotland, I really do. I've lived here for over a decade and I've been, for the most part, happy as larry. Now however I'm seriously considering leaving. Not just Scotland but the UK entirely. There are far better places to live and raise a family, we just have to decide which one to flee to. Operation Sinking Ship starts now.

Yes/No/Maybe

I've been seeing yet more bizarre arguments against voting in the upcoming referendum, or voting No recently. I've seen Labour Party stalwarts making claims that it's all about Alex Salmond and the SNP, then they're saying that Scotland won't get the oil money as it all belongs to multinational corporations(I think with that one they're not quite getting the concept of oil revenue tax), that's it's nationalism and -from the more traditional Labour Party types and others on the actual left that it will be dividing the working class and thus weakening us. Scare mongering nonsense the lot of it.

First off. I'm voting yes on the 18th. I'm fairly hard-line in my politics. I abhor nationalism, I detest representative democracy(on the grounds that it isn't actually democratic), I want to see a world freed from the shackles of capitalism and the iniquities of a stratified class society, and I think Alex Salmond and the SNP can go jump off a bridge. Yet I'm voting yes so am I wrong or are they?

With regards the accusation of nationalism that's patently absurd. A large proportion of my friends in Scotland were born elsewhere and I myself am Welsh. Yet we are all voting yes. To not vote yes, to vote no, is a vote for British nationalism and all the horrors and injustices that are draped in the blood stained rag they call the Union Flag. It's a weird argument from the Labourites that a vote for independence is a vote for nationalism when what they are advocating is to remain with a form of nationalism that a) has a long and sordid history of bloodshed and terror and b) has been growing more and more extreme over the last decade or so -as evidenced in the rise of UKIP/Britain First/English Defence League and the hero-worship of the military with Help for Heroes and Armed Forces Day. Maybe they are thinking "better the devil you know"? Perhaps, but when that devil  has such a horrendous history I think that argument can f*%ck right off.

The more serious accusation, the weakening of the working class of the UK, is just as absurd. In the event of a yes vote there will be absolutely nothing preventing workers from organising in solidarity with one another. Many of the same companies will be operating in both a newly independent Scotland and the rUK and so workers will be able to strike and picket in solidarity with one another regardless. If these people were truly in favour of strengthening the working class of Great Britain then they would be pushing for industrial unionism through the IWW rather than the toothless, insipid trade union movement.

Another bizarre criticism that I have seen coming from the actual left is that voting yes is "not a revolutionary action". Well, you know what? Not everything is. Not every political activity is revolutionary and nor does it have to be. Voting yes in the referendum is no different from crossing the road when you see a gang of known street robbers on the next corner. Sure, someone else may mug you on the other side but it would be foolish to carry on towards the bampots you know are going to rob you and leave you bleeding on the pavement.

Right, that's my last political rant until my hangover of th 19/20th has cleared.

 

Also, because fuck this lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTYuCvuQmrw

Watch This: The Offering

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Story Feedback Wanted

Hey, if anyone who reads this would like to read one of my short stories and give me feedback on it please let me know. I've posted a password protected copy of it on the blog here and will message you with the link and password. Any advice and/or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Message me at my Gmail: awhendry.writer

or via Twitter: @postantiquarian

or, alternatively, leave a comment here with your details and I'll drop you a line.

Short Story #1

THE SABLE MASQUE

AW Hendry

The flooding was immense. I looked through my bedroom window at the street below. The black slime that last night had begun to seep up from the drains and to flow languidly down the gutters had risen now to such a level that neither the tarmac of the road nor the grey stone of the pavement could be seen. In their place was this slow moving river of black oil like slime oozing its way towards the center of town.

Cars and pedestrians made their way through the early morning haze seemingly not noticing the dramatic change to the street through which they passed. Seemingly unaware of the viscous filth that pulled and sucked at their feet, that fouled the tires of their vehicles spraying their chassis' with the grim substance.

The house was empty. It had been for years. Years since Kate had left home for her own life and, before that, since Alice had been taken away from us. It had been empty for years; yet now, faced with this horrid phenomenon outside, I felt the emptiness more than ever before. Since those first days after Kate left, those first days without either of the girls. Without my family. I felt the need to talk to someone. To anyone. To ask why they were not more perturbed, more caring, of the effluence that was now flooding the street. How could they bear to walk through it, to even drive through it - for surely that had walked through it to reach their cars?

The houses of Elderslie Road are old red brick Georgian terraces. Front doors opening directly onto the street but elevated by a couple of small steps. The slime was flowing just below the top of the first step, surely they must notice? It is only because of this tiny elevation that the horrid looking stuff was not flowing beneath doors and flooding the houses. At the rear of each house are more steps than in the front which lead down into the back yards so if the flooding was the same in the back then, at least, it would not have come into the kitchen. For now.

#

Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil I chanced a look into the back yard. It too was full of the same black stuff. Unlike the stuff to the front of the house this didn’t appear to be moving. It was just a pool, that had to be at least six inches deep, that filled my back yard from fence to fence. No movement, no ripples, no flow. It just sat there, my garden furniture - a white decorative metal lattice table and chairs - looked strange poking out of the black pool. They cast no reflection.

My coffee was black that morning. I should have bought milk the night before but I didn’t and the thought of walking to the shop at the end of the road was extremely unappealing. As much as I want to talk to someone about what has happened the thought of stepping into that filth makes me shudder. Extra sugar curbed the bitterness somewhat.

I took my time getting ready. I wasn’t going to make myself late putting off walking through the sludge outside but I certainly wasn’t going to be early either. I took the portable radio with me from the kitchen to the bathroom so that I could listen to the news whilst washing and shaving. I was almost surprised when it was clear water that flowed from the taps rather than whatever had covered the street and my backyard. As I shave I listened to the inanities of the DJ and the awful pop music that they played. Pop music wasn’t any better when I was younger, I am not one for rose tinted glasses, it has always been dross. Repackaged perhaps; and given a crisp new veneer every year or two but dross all the same. There is no mention of the black flood on either the news reports or the traffic updates. Perhaps, I thought, it is a localized phenomenon. Perhaps outside Elderslie Road there has been no flooding. It isn’t as if this is a newsworthy area. A young girl was murdered a few streets from here last year and it barely made the news. She was, like most of the residents of this part of town, probably of too dark a hue for the national news. Or perhaps her poor mother didn’t quite fit the correct class or career demographic for journalists to care about. Either way, we rarely make the news around here. Regardless of child murders or floods of viscous ooze.

#

I stood at my front door for a while looking down at the filth. It had breached the top of the first step to my house and I sincerely hoped that it would abate before it rose much further. The thought of coming home to a house ruined by the stuff was almost enough for me to phone in to work and claim sickness so that I could spend the day barricading doors against any incursion of the gloop. My position at work was, however, tenuous at best at the moment and so I didn’t dare miss a day. I had already moved all the books from the bottom shelves and piled them on the coffee table, I had unplugged the electrical gizmos, placing the DVD and VHS players alongside the books. I had emptied the space below the stairs of anything that sat on the floor and emptied the bottom kitchen cupboards onto the work surfaces. There wasn’t much else I was able to do.

I stepped down into the street.

I had expected more resistance than I met. The slime looked to be thick, thick like cornstarch. Kate had shown me, years before, a video on the internet of people running across swimming pools of the stuff. She said it was a non-Newtonian liquid and so behaved like a solid and a liquid depending on how much pressure was put upon it. I was impressed with an 11 year old using a phrase like non-Newtonian even if it meant nothing to me. This filth looked like a pitch black version of the same stuff.

Instead of resistance my foot sank easily into the slime and I had sunk past my ankle into it before my foot reached the pavement. When I tried to pull my foot back out however I found that the slime had become more substantial and I had some difficulty in extracting my foot without leaving my shoe behind. My foot looked like it had doubled in size thanks to the filth that was clinging to it. A man passing by on the other side of the street was looking at me. I gestured at the muck on my shoe, smiled, shrugged and, closing the door behind me, stepped in the black river.

I found walking through the stuff a lot easier if I didn’t attempt to remove my foot entirely from its grasp. This lead to me assuming an odd half shuffle to my gait which considerably slowed my progress to the Crepsworth metro station above Crepsworth Street.

Eventually I reached the gap between the terraced houses of Crepsworth Street and the steep stairs up to the metro platform. Approaching them I could see that the slime was now coating the stairs as well as the streets between Elderslie Road and here. It was being carried there on the soles of the hundreds of shoes that traversed the steps during rush hour. It puddled and pooled in the middle of the steps and, in places, formed extremely slow moving waterfalls, or should that be slimefalls, from one step down to the next.

The platform too was covered in the stuff. Pooling here and there or seeping over the edge and down onto the tracks. There was even a film of it over the touch screen of the vending machine where I purchased my ticket. It didn’t seem to affect the functionality of the device and my ticket finished printing just as the 07:50 to Bagswell trundled into the station. I hurriedly, and somewhat ineffectually, attempted to wipe the thin greasy film of slime from my hand onto the side of the vending machine before boarding the train.

I judged that, given the amount of slime which covered the floor of the carriage and the shoes of the commuters already ensconced aboard, that the flooding was no mere localized phenomena. Something which made the lack of it being reported on the radio rather peculiar. The 07:50 to Bagswell passed through the suburbs of Meritt and Candlewiks before heading into the city proper. One would have thought that flooding in those, more affluent, areas may have warranted some acknowledgement on the air.

As the train pulled out of the station I could see down and across the city. It was clear that almost everywhere, in this part of town, was also flooded with black oil, tar, slime, whatever it was. Cars slew through it; spraying gobbets of the stuff into the air splashing oblivious pedestrians who similarly trudged onwards as though nothing had changed around them.

I noticed that the coats and trousers of my fellow commuters were spotted with the black stuff. Where they were buffeted together by the motion of the train the globs of blackness gelled together and stretched slowly apart as they moved away from one another. Through this motion small webs of black stuff were forming between people. I myself had not been splashed by any passing cars en route to the station yet as I looked down I saw, with disgust, that I was now part of this sticky gelatinous web. A web which connected me to the people directly around me. A strand stretched from my right shoulder to the back of a pasty young man in an ill fitting suit whose eyes were firmly fixed upon his mobile phone. From my left knee a thick line of it hung between me and the rucksack sat at the feet of a young woman whom I recognized from my street. Glancing back over my shoulder I could see more strands joining me to a tired looking woman of about my age, to a broad shouldered man in mechanics overalls and to a woman in a cleaners smock.

I barely managed not to gag as bile rose to the back of my throat.

The doors opened and more passengers boarded. Bumping into one another, into me, pushing me into other people. More strands forming, more of this filth attaching itself to me.

Unable to stomach the cramped conditions of the carriage which allowed for the spreading of this filthy ichor I disembarked hurriedly, pushing against the onflow of passengers, and decided to walk to work. I would be late but I would have rather faced the ire of Alasdair, my supervisor, than find myself vomiting on a train packed full of commuters.

#

The platform at Milstone station was completely deserted as the train pulled out and it was slippery underfoot from the film of black oil which had been dragged up from the streets by people hurrying to work

My coat was covered in trails of the viscous goo, completely ruined. I removed my wallet and phone and, as soon as I had descended to the street, I threw it in the nearest bin. There was nothing I could realistically do about the strands and globs of the filth attached to my trousers. Looking about I realized that I had little idea where it was that I had disembarked. My commute to work had always been performed by train and so the space in between my neighborhood and the city center, where the office was located, were a mystery to me.

A bus passing the station threw up a wall of black slime and I narrowly avoided being covered head to foot. I did however spot that the destination of the bus was Hettingley Square - a small bus interchange not far from my work - and so I trudged off through the mire that the streets had become in the same direction as the bus. Catching a bus was out of the question as each one that passed was just as crowded as the train carriage from which I had fled.

#

It took me nearly an hour to reach work which made me nearly half an hour late. Sure enough, as I walked into the office, there was Alasdair standing beside my cubicle. He caught sight of me and pointedly looked at his wrist which, despite his wrist being completely devoid of any time keeping apparatus, signified he was annoyed at my tardiness.

It may seem strange that I accepted all these this that was happening on face value. That I did not doubt myself when I saw that no other person was reacting to the flooding of the town with this black ooze. The truth is that I did doubt myself. I tried not to believe my own senses when it seemed that I alone was aware of this startling intrusion upon our world. I was, as I am still, convinced that this was no mere hallucination. I may be in my late 40s but I did have a youth. I experimented with LSD and “magic mushrooms” along with many of my teenage friends. I have experienced hallucinations that would terrify most and I have enjoyed them as I could always distinguish what was real from what was not and this slime was most definitely real. I had decided this before I had reached the end of Elderslie Road. The experience of the substance was far too vivid. there was none of the unreality of a drug induced hallucination and so the lack of reaction from my fellow citizens was incredibly perturbing. It also made what happened next even more disturbing.

As I approached my desk the office was filled with the usual low level murmuring and background noise generated by any office. I couldn’t make out, or don’t recall making out, any particular conversations which were occurring as people spoke to clients and potential clients down the phones. Though I, perhaps, wasn’t listening. I hadn’t spoken to anyone so far this morning. I had bought my ticket from a machine and was far too distracted by the filthy oil coating everything on my commute to have paid any attention to the nattering of my fellow commuters on the train.

I walked up to Alasdair, excuses and explanations already forming in my mind. As I drew near he opened his mouth to speak.

He opened his mouth and darkness came out.

I stood, horrified, as the oil, which was now everywhere, spilled from his lips. Unlike the slime that oozed in the streets and clung to my clothes this was hot, or appeared to be so. It was steaming as it flowed down his chin. Black tendrils of steam poured from the viscous stuff. From his mouth. His eyes grew dark at the corners and he wept tears of the stuff until his face was nothing but black, steaming, oil. The tendrils of steam moved as though they were an extension of his body, they did not dissipate as steam does from a kettle. They coiled around one another like dozens of black translucent snakes. When they moved towards me I stepped back and bumped in the desk occupied by Simon with whom I shared the small cubicle. This momentary distraction managed to shake me free from the mesmerizing horror of what was unfolding before me.

Simon made a guttural barking noise. Half bark, half horrid organic belch. A sound one would expect to hear emitted by a tar pit of the sort we see illustrated devouring woolly mammoth in museums and children’s ancient history books. He uttered this awful sound and then darkness spilled forth from his mouth too. Barely containing a scream I turned on my heel and fled the office. Ignoring the lift I raced down the stairs and out through the side exit. Stopping in the alley where the office recycling bins were kept I vomited against the building next door.

#

Avoiding public transport and, to the best of my ability, streets with large numbers of people, I made my way home. It took me nearly two hours to reach Elderslie Road. The slime continued to flow here as thick and vile as it flowed through the rest of the city. On my walk home I noticed that as the day drew on it seemed that people were not so much covered in the slime due to being splashed by passing vehicles or brushing up against one another. Now they seemed to be secreting it themselves. I myself seemed to have avoided this most recent development of this horrifying phenomenon. Perhaps because I was able to perceive the stuff or perhaps I had simply lost my mind. The vividness of the stuff and the rest of the world continued to convince me that this was no hallucination. That something had gone very, very awry with the world. Or perhaps that the stuff had always been there and I had simply not been able to see it.

Once at home I packed a bag and called Kate, leaving a message on her mobile telling her that I was coming to visit. I walked back to the city center and, on the way, withdrew as much money as I could from the cash point. I boarded a train out of town, sitting in the least occupied coach that I could find, and made my way across the country to my daughter. As the train thundered out of the city and across the countryside I saw the same black oil, black slime, covering everything. It dripped from electricity pylons and trees, it flowed down motorways and turned rivers into the picture of an environmentalist's nightmare. The conductor, when she came, was weeping steaming tendrils of oil. The tendrils reached from her face and, as she took tickets, mingled with the tendrils weaving about the heads and faces of the few other passengers in the carriage. I looked down at the back of the seat before me and proffered her my ticket. Not looking up until she had moved on.

The train sped through the countryside, between towns and villages, and the oil was everywhere making a mockery of the clear blue sky and the sun shining brilliant in the sky. If it wasn’t for the unreal nature of what was happening it would have been a pleasant day to spend in the country or in a park somewhere. Especially now that I had, without doubt, lost my job. Not that this was a pressing concern at the time.

I alighted at the station of the small town to which Kate had moved and found, unsurprisingly, that the situation here was exactly the same as it had been in the city and everywhere in between. I avoided contact with the people around me, their heads too a mass of black steaming tendrils, and made my way to Kate’s house.

Kate had moved to this town for work and because she and Mark, my soon to be son-in-law, could afford to live in a nicer house than had they remained in the city. I hadn’t visited them enough, especially not since Alice had died. What were they going to make of me turning up now? Out of the blue, or the black as it were? Would they think me crazy when I told them what I was seeing? Would they be able to see it too once it had been pointed out to them? Would they think that grief and living alone had pushed me over the edge? That I was slipping into some kind of early dementia? My mother had had Alzheimer's, but surely that wouldn’t account for what I was now seeing all around me? By this point I had had a few hours of relative calm on the train and so was beginning to fall prey to the same doubts that I had dismissed just this morning on my way to work. Doubts about my sanity.

There was no one at home when I arrived at Kate’s house. A semi-detached with nice gardens to the front and back. It was no surprise that they were not in, both of them worked full time in the next town along and so I could look forward to a few more hours alone with my doubts. I took myself to the back of their house and waited in the garden. Thankfully their neighbors were also at work. I had not visited enough to know them and I fear that they may not have reacted well to a rather wild eyed, as I imagine I was by this point, stranger hanging about the next door garden unattended.

The hours passed intolerably slowly as I sat on a bench in their garden. The flooding wasn’t as pronounced here as it was in the street to the front of the house. Still, an inch thick film of the stuff coated the lawn and had stained the grass black as coal. It dripped from the apple tree and seeped into the kitchen beneath the back door.

Eventually I heard a car pull into the driveway at the front of the house and I heard Kate and Mark laughing as they closed the car doors behind them. I emerged from the side of the house and they both looked surprised to see me despite the message I had left on Kate’s mobile. She smiled and called out to me. As she came close to embrace me I recoiled. I recoiled from my own daughter’s embrace. She too was covered in the oil. She too had those tendrils of black steam weaving about her head. She too was infected with this horror.

She asked me what was wrong and I understood her. No barking gulps or torrents of slime ushered forth from her mouth. I looked at her. She was my daughter. Always.

“Nothing” - I lied, and returned her embrace.

Feeling the muck seep from her to me. Accepting it.

The tendrils of black steam embracing me as did her arms. Her embrace made the horror that had been coursing through my veins since I left work lessen. Made it tolerable. Made me realize that I could ignore it, pretend not to see it. Was that what everyone else was doing? Ignoring the horror? Pretending the darkness wasn’t there so as to preserve their sanity? Perhaps I too could do this. Perhaps I too could live in a world of black insanity. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. This illusion; this pretense.

I say her name. My mouth tastes of filth.

Review - The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

I posted this review of The Red Tree by by Caitlín R. Kiernan over at Good Reads.

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off. DO NOT LET THE COVER FOOL YOU!
This is not urban fantasy/paranormal romance. This is a beautifully written piece of literary weird/cosmic horror. Whoever ok'd this cover doesn't seem to have read the book.
Taking the form of a journal kept by Sarah Crow, an author grieving the suicide of her partner, The Red Tree is a sumptuously written examination of grief, anger, loneliness and the effects these can have on a person's sanity. Kiernan is masterful at her deployment of the unreliable narrator. The concept of the unreliable narrator being one that runs throughout this story; and, indeed, is carried on in her next novel The Drowning Girl.
The plot of the novel revolves around an ancient tree sitting just within sight of a farm house Sarah has rented in order to both work on her novel and try and deal with her grief. The tree is steeped in monstrous lore and terrible legends linked to barbarous rituals, serial killers and suicides. These myths and legends weave themselves into Sarah's story, into her grief, her loss and begin to fragment her sense of self and reality.
As with all of Kiernan's work The Red Tree is gorgeously written and a joy to read. Her prose is exceptional in the field of weird/horror writing and why she hasn't won more awards I do not know.
Still, I don't know what the hell is going on with that cover...


View all my reviews

The Red Tree - Caitlin R Kiernan

I'm a huge fan of Caitlin R Kiernan. I have been since I read her weird masterpiece The Drowning Girl last year. I still think that it's a travesty that the book didn't win every award that it was possible to win; so beautiful is her prose. I picked up the book that was released prior to The Drowning Girl, The Red Tree, quite a while ago but due to my studies obliterating my ability to read anything like the amount of fiction I would like I have only just gotten around to reading it. I've nearly finished the book, and probably will this evening, but there is something about it that has been bugging me.

As with the Drowning Girl Kiernan's story here is absolutely sumptuous and masterful in its execution. Following the final weeks of bereaved author Sarah Crow as she comes under the fell influence of the titular red tree it is presented as journal kept by Sarah Crow throughout her last weeks at the farm house to which she has fled to hide from her crumbling career. As well as being a masterpiece of Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror The Red Tree is also an intimate character examination of a middle aged woman whose life is crumbling about her whilst she is dealing with the emotional fall out of the suicide of her lover. Basically this book, as with The Drowning Girl, is a fantastic piece of genre fiction that shits from a great height upon the notion that genre fiction is all about plot and lit fic is all about character. I can't recommend it highly enough.

High praise. So, what is it that's bugging you so Andy? That's sticking in your craw to the point that you have to write about this book before you've even finished it? Well dear readers... who am I kidding? Dear reader, it is such a small thing that it is faintly ridiculous that it bugs me so. It's the cover.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="316"] Seriously????[/caption]

So, this a character examination of a middle aged lesbian encountering such stark and unthinkable horrors that it twists her sense of reality, shakes her to her core. Yet someone at ROC thought it was a good idea to put a moody looking early twenty something on the cover making this look like by the numbers paranormal romance or urban fantasy. Talk about mismarketing and misrepresenting the work within. Sarah Crow is 44 years old and broken. She isn't a 22 year old mysterious and sultry goth girl.* I know that we're told from a young age not to judge a book by its cover and all that jazz. Unfortunately, when it comes to buying books, that's exactly what we do. If I had seen this on a book shelf, without having previously read The Drowning Girl, I would have most definitely not have picked it up. I would have assumed it was some kind of a Twilight cash in. When Little Ms. X saw me reading it recently she guffawed and asked if I was reading a kids book. When I explained the plot of the book she looked at the cover unbelievingly.  It does this work an immense disservice that it is dressed in the black crushed velvet of a paranormal romance novel.

I honestly can't recommend this work highly enough and if you see it tucked between some god awful Twilight cash in nonsense at your local book store please, please rescue it and give it a good home. You will be grateful that you did.

Rant over. :D

 

*Not that I have anything against mysterious and sultry goth girls. It's just that this book isn't about one.