Competition Result - Honourable Mention in Grey Matter Press Flash Comp

I entered the Grey Matter Press Flash fiction competition a few days ago and was surprised to see that I was given an honourable mention and a free ebook. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, I really appreciate it. You can read my own and the other winners tales here. Just click their names.

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The Pink Liebster Award

Steve Green very kindly nominated me for The Pink Liebster Award, which was a great surprise. Thank you very much Steve and congratulations on your own award. I do very much enjoy your bleak brand of sci-fi and other genres, so keep up the good work.

The rules that come with getting a Liebster are:

1) Link back to the person who nominated you. 
2) Answer the 10 questions they gave you. 
3) Pick some favourite bloggers of your own to nominate. 
4) Pose 10 questions of your own for them to answer. 
5) Make sure that the people you nominated know about it. And have fun.

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Steve opted to not set questions and instead wanted 10 random or unusual facts from me so here they are:

1) I used to have horrific nightmares when I was younger which lasted until I was almost in double figures. They vanished when I embraced them and I would happily have them now instead of the usual being late or lost anxiety type dreams. Give me werewolves any day!

2) I still find the original Robocop to be one of the grimmest and scariest films that I have seen. Might be because it was the first 18 I watched. ED209. Jesus. The hum of its systems and the way it kills the corporate suit and no one could stop it. Also...exploding hand. Say no more.

3) I've listened to audio books as I try to get to sleep almost every night since I was little. I think they have gone some way to making me the erudite young man I have become. lol.

4) I dislike TV. Adverts, reality TV, game shows, chat shows in which the only guests are other chat show hosts. Utter dross! I do watch the odd series like Luther, The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad though, but even those are usually via box-set rather than watched at broadcast.

5) I can't stand Harry Potter. Some love it and that's great. I just think that its nothing special. I did gain great enjoyment from the religious nuts proclaiming it encouraged children into Wicca and Satanism though.

6) I love dark music. I used to relax by listening to new age stuff but nothing relaxes me like the booming sub-audible drones of a dark ambient track. I think it comes from the belief that we need to embrace our light and dark sides or we become unbalanced.

7) I think I'm addicted to Pepsi Max. I could swim in a swimming pool full of it. It's the most "cola" tasting low cal drink that I think I've ever had. It even tastes better than regular old Pepsi or Coca-Cola to me.

8) I rarely feel like doing something until I start doing it. Whether this is due to my chronic illnesses or whether it's just how I have aged, there always seems to be a mist of "meh" around anything I consider, even if I know I want to do it.

9) Gillian Anderson is my celebrity crush. I have two autographs and a lovely art print on the wall in my bedroom. I feel it is a bit sad on one level, but on another, fuck it :).

10) Writing is my last "thing". My life has been severely limited by illness for over a decade and many of the things that I used to enjoy are lost to me now. I always enjoyed writing when I was little, and now writing has become my last route to expression and maybe some kind of career. As a result, I'm going all out to make a real go of it. I don't know how far I can get but there is nothing else I want to do.

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Now for my nominations. I will nominate two as Steve did, as that is a nice manageable amount for me to follow through on.

The first is my good friend Paul Brewer and his blog The Mind of a (Soon to be) Recovering Agoraphobic. The transformation Paul has brought about in his life this year is truly inspirational, and I am not someone who chucks that word around very often. He was my first thought when I had to think of someone else deserving of the Liebster award.

My second is from the #fridayflash community. Spencer Hixon writes some very clever and intriguing flash tales involving technology and the world wide web. After reading his stuff, I always feel jealous that I hadn't thought of that, and it is for this reason he is my second nomination.

I will also follow Steve's example and request that Paul and Spencer give the world ten random or strange facts about themselves, rather than give them a set of questions to answer.

Cheers again Steve.

Dark Fiction - After

After

By Casey Douglass

as part of #fridayflash

It was a dark and stormy night. Now it’s morning, and the thing is still outside, roaming around and around the perimeter of the small cottage.

You pick your way through the shattered debris strewn about the kitchen. What was once a lovely oak table now no more than a pile of sticks and panels.

Your hand trembles as you lift the kettle and fill it from the cold tap. The sun is still low outside, its fresh rays entering through the small-paned window and reflecting in a dazzling band from the draining board. You don’t look out because you know it’s still there.

When you thought it had gone earlier, you had looked out at the dawning day and had been rewarded with the sight of a robin imploding. One moment it was sitting on the small cylindrical bird feeder, the next it vanished in a cloud of plumage and gore.

You place the kettle back on its base and busy yourself while it boils. The old book is still splayed open on the floor, the scuffed wax circle that surrounds it more broken than whole. It looks like the dimples you have to contend with when tearing out your new car tax disc. You still aren’t sure of your mistake, you think that you did everything right but obviously something was amiss.

You walk into the small lounge and switch the TV on, your arms wrapping around yourself to keep the internal chill at bay. You watch the news half-heartedly as you hear the kettle begin to judder and shake.

You raise a hand to your throat and wince as you feel the still forming bruises. You marvel at your quick reactions. They probably saved your life last night. Sitting there with your eyes closed, one candle for illumination and words tumbling from your lithe tongue, things were going so well. The room had buzzed and vibrated as the energy levels rose, the most powerful reaction you had ever experienced. Then those cold fingers clamped around your neck and it all became a mishmash of vertigo inducing tumbling and struggling. How you ejected it from the cottage and slammed the door before it could re-enter is a true marvel. Thank goodness the house was already warded at each portal!

You walk into the kitchen, the steam from the kettle curling in tendrils as small drafts toyed with it. The kitchen window is misted now, thick beads of water trickling down once they achieve enough mass. You pick up the kettle and flick a teabag into a waiting mug.

A loud thump hits the glass but you suppress the flinch and look steadily at the window. Darker rings form at face level, swiftly followed by the impression of an insane grin. It puts you in mind of how teeth look in an x-ray, inverted and warped. The glass mists and clears, mists and clears as the thing breaths against it, looking in at you. You lean closer and look through it, it’s invisible body only adding the slightest of shimmers to the garden behind it.

You move away and finish pouring your cup of tea. It’s going to be a long day.

THE END

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Dark Review - Cook, Serve, Delicious!

My review of Cook, Serve, Delicious! is now up on Geek Syndicate here. A tasty little restaurant simulator that really tests your typing and prioritising skills.

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Dark Fiction - Pollywocker in Print

The Darker Times Anthology Volume Six is now out in paperback and ebook format on Amazon. My story Pollywocker is inside, as I placed in the Darker Times competition and my prize was to be included. It's not like having my own book out but it's a step in the right direction at least. It's nice to know my work is out there in a physical form, which is refreshing when it has all been digital to date.

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Dark Fiction - Nature

Nature

By Casey Douglass

as part of #fridayflash

 

Some people are just gloomy. This is only an issue to the eternal optimists amongst the general population; people who are so afraid of feeling blue, that they force their false smiles and manic happy thoughts onto others whether they like it or not. This was Oliver Smith’s opinion anyway. He stared at his muddy trainers as he traipsed across the meadows, the broiling clouds above casting the rises and falls of the landscape around him in hues of dark and darker. Where the sun did manage to punch through the clouds, the light was weak and sickly, like a flashlight in which the batteries are about to die.

He liked this time of day, the quasi-twilight that always felt so surreal and grim. Oliver was a creature of dark tastes. The bookshelves in his bedroom full of the classics of horror, from Lovecraft to Poe, King to Lumley to...anything he liked basically. He had just finished a particularly good book about creatures that stole the dead from the midst of a battlefield. He was about to crack on with the next book on his “To Read” pile when his Mother had put her head around his bedroom door and suggested that he take a walk or he would get scurvy. His fear of scurvy was small, but his fear of his Mother was great.

He fished in his pocket for his smartphone and took a hasty snap of some “God Rays” lancing down from the clouds. Smiling to himself, he shared it to his Tumblr followers. They were mainly Goths if he was honest. He didn’t share their dress sense but he felt a kind of kinship with them. The wind was really whipping up around him now, the chill felt like fingers trying to prod their way into the little places on his jacket that would just not zip up any tighter. 

The phone stowed once more, he pushed on, the ground sucking at the soles of his shoes. It was boggy here, large puddles and pools of stagnant water reflecting the grey clouds. He neared a particularly large one, his mind warning him of the probable depth. He was familiar with this field and knew there was quite a dip here. Something protruded from the surface of the pool. It looked like a bundle of white sticks. Oliver stood on tip-toe but the extra few inches in height did little for his view. He decided to walk around the pool, the disturbance looked a little nearer to the other side.

Taking his time, he edged around the body of water, wary of sliding in. The reflected light shifted as he changed his angle. Retrieving his phone once more, he took a few snaps of the murky water, quite fancying some spawn of Cthulhu could reasoably live there. He smiled to himself as his phone whizzed the data to his followers.

He achieved his goal of reaching the other side of the pool and stood as near to the water as possible, his neck straining to see. As in all moments of unfortunate clarity, the clouds shifted above, allowing the bottom of the pool to become visible.

Oliver felt a lump rise into his throat as he gazed down into the tea coloured water. The enormous bulk of a large bull hung a few inches below the surface, the hooves barely off the bottom. Its skin was a whitish pink and covered with small green veins. The large horned head was low, as if the great creature was looking down below himself. The only part of the beast that broke the surface was an area of its back about half way along its length. Here Oliver could see properly what was so indistinct before. A large swathe of skin and fat was gone, leaving only a massive open wound, picked and washed clean by carrion and the elements to reveal a curved spinal chord and a handful of bleached white ribs. Oliver couldn’t shake the phrase “Skeleton’s Lunchbox” from his mind as he looked on, the acid in his stomach threatening to burst from his mouth. He put his phone back inside his pocket. 

‘Sorry,’ he said to the body. ‘I’m really sorry.’

He started to cry.

--THE END--

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Dark Fiction - Inheritance

My submission for the Darker Times January short story competition was Inheritance, a tale of lonely halls and deep shadows. You can read it here on the Darker Times website.

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