A short story or two

Horror Story Construction Kit

#1: Provocative Opening Paragraph With Nothing To Support It

As a child, they cut away my face.

This wasn’t done maliciously, but out of necessity: a necrotising infection was threatening to eat me away from within.

Yet still, as a child, they cut away my face, left only gristle and bone.

#2: An Attempt At Psychological Justification Of The Premise

I did not understand the reasons for it, did not appreciate the nuances of their decision. There was, from my view, simply a fever, delirium, darkness. Then confinement, confusion. Bandages, anaesthetics, salves, saline. Itchiness, discomfort, pain, boredom.

And finally, that inevitable revelation, that shock before the mirror, the face gone, my face, gone, replaced by this horror, this void, this grotesque mask that was not, I knew, a mask at all. Rather, it was the foundation on which the mask of myself had been built.

I turned away. I would not look.

#3: Finale Of Extended Outrages, For Which No Prior Justifications Will Suffice

[Forty five pages of faces being slowly and painfully removed by the protagonist in some sort of ironic vengeance or poetic revenge or karmic retribution, I don’t know, I can’t remember now. It doesn’t really matter.]

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Notes:

1. Written in September 2020

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The Islands Of The World (a guide)

An artefact from another world, The Islands Of The World is a guidebook to the many strange and wonderful places that exist out there across the endless immensity of the seas.

Here among these hundred islands you will find wonders and whales, mountains and mermaids, sorrow and silence, forever frozen fields and ever-burning flames, alongside a treasure trove of carefully curated illustrations from around the world.

The Islands Of The World (a guide) is available now in a beautiful, fully illustrated, pocket book edition for £9.99/$12.99.

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Notes:

1. Written between the 1st and the 9th of September, 2021
2. The book version is quite nice
3. But also you can read it all for free on its own website if you want
4. And there’s also a full indexing of all the images I used there too
5. Alongside some more notes not included here
6. I like notes
7. Sorry about that

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Human Heads Replaced By Television Sets

They’re everywhere now. You see them more and more. Humans with their heads replaced by television sets. It was disconcerting once but now it’s not. You get used to anything eventually.

They’re always old cumbersome CRT TVs for some reason. I don’t know why. Perhaps to maintain the illusion that there might still be a human head in there. A costume, some post-modern joke. Rather than an invasion.

On the bus they talk to me. At least in public I can walk away, but not here. It is impossible to escape. Snippets of television news cut up into sentences. Messages of despair and hopelessness delivered via nice suits, tone-neutralised voices, neatly brushed hair, wry smiles.

I think they’re trying to wear us down until we give up.

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Notes:

1. Written on 23rd September, 2021
2. Mostly I wrote this because recently I was reading this book where the cover illustration has a man with a tv for a head on the cover.
3. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it but my nephew was slightly freaked out by it and kept saying how weird and scary it was.
4. While all I could think about was that I’m surprised there’s never been Doctor Who baddies who’re just people with television sets for heads.
5. Though there probably actually is anyway and I’ve just forgotten.

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(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

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Satirical Fables

I don’t know if this genre actually has a name, but I very much enjoy books where the protagonist finds themselves in some strange new country or world that is, in part or in whole, an absurd and grotesque parody of our own. Gulliver’s Travels, most famously, and also Erewhon, Kappa, Cat Country, and more probably. (Does Alice in Wonderland count? I am going to arbitrarily decide that…. it does!)

Anyway, this morning I woke up in Great Britain in 2021…

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Notes:

1. Written on 22nd September, 2021

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If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!

I Was A Witch Once

I was a witch once. I used to help out in the summer, when the tourists were here, and the covens couldn’t cope with demand. I did luck spells mostly, lucky in love, lucky in spite, lucky in fruit machines, that sort of thing.

I don’t do it anymore. The covens have all closed down now. Everything’s online these days. Some old witch out there in her hut on the marsh can’t cope with some streamlined Russian wish farm or whatever. Now it’s all spells delivered by email spam, targeted facebook ads, unsolicited twitter DMs. No need anymore to slip something in someone’s tea. You can reach anyone.

It’s not the same, of course. But then again what is?

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Notes

1. Written on September 2nd, 2021
2. Although the title and half the first paragraph was written August 13th, 2021

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!