This one is different. Different style, different narration, different. Haven't revisited it since I finished it off, but I needed to post it to get feedback. As always, comments below. Thank you.
I wake from dreams of horror. From dreams of blood splattered walls, merciless killers and death. I wake from dreams of instruments of torture and underground human trafficking. I wake from dreams of murder.
But when I wake I do so with a calm demeanor. I do not wake up with a yelp, or a whimper, nor do I wake up sobbing in the darkness of my bedroom. I wake up with a smile on my face and a pen in my hand because these dreams are not horrors for my mind to hide from, these dreams are much more useful to me. Each night that I wake like this I know that I have a new story ready to go, leaping from my mind onto the page, scaring readers the second they get the hands on my latest novel. The dreams which are not long enough, the ones that end and flicker out too quickly are not wasted, the go into my short story collections, which are as eagerly snapped up as any given novel.
To this day I have twelve published novels with the central character being a serial killer. Of course he is more than that, he is the hero, he does have good in him, his pray are the corrupt but at the end of the day which any way you look at it, he is a serial killer. But people love him. Each one of my twelve novels has out sold the last, and with each new publication, the back issues start to sell again.
As well as my novels, I also have three volumes of short stories, each containing twenty stories. These were the ones that I could not continue on to complete a full novel with but are just as gruesome. They also look into murders but with different, darker characters, ones that have a much more questionable moral compass.
Today is the launch of my Thirteenth novel. It is highly anticipated and so it should be. The Thirteenth of anything associated with horror is bound to be the most violent, the most blood, the most horrific.
I finish writing down my dream, a particularly brutal one, even by my standards, the important part of the dream ends with the character bludgeoning a mans head in with his own golf shoes. It was a very good dream, in a way.
I set about getting ready after I have finished with the dream log. The same as always, I pick up my dirty washing, bunging it into the washing machine on a very high heated, long wash. I then make myself a cup of tea and some toast, a nice thick spread of Marmite to start the day. Then to the shower. Here I spend most of my time for two reasons. One is growing up, there was this boy in my class. Perfectly nice, you could have a laugh with him, but he had an odour that hung around him like Saturn’s rings, it was even worse in the summer when I was sat next to him, and he next to an open window that carried his stench right up into my nose with each summer breeze. Ever since then, the last twenty odd years, I have been extremely aware of my own body odour, and remain determined to reduce the risk of me smelling badly to as close to zero as I can manage.
The second reason I spend so long in the shower is that, with the warm water beating down on my head from the top nozzle and gently splatting my back from the side nozzle, I rerun the dream in my mind, reliving it, making sure I extract every gory detail I can.
I have often felt that a story is made within the details.
As I dry myself off, patting my face deep into the thick towel, I hear the phone ringing, I leave it, knowing exactly who it will be and what they will be saying.
Since my first novel, Helen Pertrich has been my agent. She was one of the only people to respond positively to my manuscripts in the early days and the other agents just didn't seem to be on the same wavelength to me as they did. She understood me. The call would be from her now, she knew I wouldn't pick up, and although she knew that I would be on time and would be more than capable of sorting myself out, the call was just her way of reminding me what I had on today.
And what a busy day it would be, four television interviews, two radio interviews and a sit down chat with a writing magazine.
And I know what how the day will progress, the first couple of interviews will be fun, talking about my new book, building the interest, reminding people about the other things I've written, hinting at a film adaptation (always a sure fire way to massive sales), but then this will begin to drag on and by the time I hit the radio interviews, the questions will have long been repeating themselves and the day will drag.
Nonetheless, I wear a smile on my face as I finished getting dressed and leave my apartment, the dream last night still playing in my mind, a full short story already developing in my mind. Volume Four would make a nice shelf filler in six months or so, a little money earner when the novel begins to dip.
I love my London flat and head down the street to the nearest tube station. I’ve never bothered with a car, too much traffic, too much hastle when it breaks down. I’ve always preferred public transport, despite the ever growing number of people recognising me and pestering me for autographs and to talk to me about my latest ideas, what my next novel is about, would I read their story for the, it was simple and easy to use.
I head down the stairs to the subterreanian platform and swipe my oyster card as I slip through the barriers. It’s pretty empty on the platform at this time in the morning, an hour and quite a bit until rush hour. Still the Fringes, as I call them were around. The morning shift workers, the all nighters, the people who had nothing better to do with their sad fringe lives than to be up and heading into work so they can sit in front of a computer screen for hours on end. Think Orwell’s Proles but without a set social class.
The Fringes are often my inspiration. As I sit on one of the metal benches bolted to the ground I study them, watch their traits, think on who they are, what they do, who they do it with, where they grew up.
A backstory of any Fringe can be as interesting or as dull as I see fit, some people are extremely dull, even if I try and make up a story that puts them as the lead hero, fighting off inter-galactic space murdering monkeys, they’re still as bland as unflavoured pasta. These people are the ones which hold themselves with no dignity, they look dead, not even a zombie, zombies have something to live for, these people travelling to work, so they can pay for transport and housing so they can sleep and travel to work. To me, the Fringes are the worst kind of people. I hate these kind of people.
And low and behold, of course, it is one of them, a woman who has wrinkles deeper than caverns on her face and sagging eyelids who recognises me from the dust jacket of my book and is so excited for my next release and she’s going to go and buy it after work and go home and read it straight away, she’s already read my back catalogue several times, even the short story volumes, she has copies all over her house and she’s been writing her own novel recently, taking inspiration from my perfect bloody masterpieces and she actually has a copy of it with her in her bag that she was going to edit at work and that’s why she has come in four hours earlier than she needed to be in so she can get her work done and then use the computer to edit her story because it’s only her first draft and despite it only being her first draft she was wondering if I would read it and then I would be her favourite author forever and she’d tell all her friends about it and then she jokes that I had better not start demanding royalties from her.
All this without a breath. Without barely a pause or even expecting a response from me. The rate she spoke, and prattled on I was barely able to even perform my fake acknowledgement of what she was saying. Sadly the third stop in was her stop, she handed me the manuscript, poor type face, scruffy, cheap, worn out paper, barely more than 30 pages. She said that it was just a 1 st draft, and that her contact details were on the back page. The doors closed behind her and I stared blankly as she waved through the window, happy to have met me, blissfully unaware that I did not care for her or for her novel.
I left it on the train.
Those are the people I hate, Fringes. People who chose to be up this early normally have a reason
for avoiding groups of people in the day. It unsettles me, their way of existence.
The fans who have proper jobs, with reasonable hours and who respect my privacy and simply read my books and give me money and go on with their lives without disturbing me too much, they are the people I like, It’s not that I don’t appreciate my fans, I do, I just appreciate them from a distance, from a high window in a tall building looking down at them.
Three stops after the woman with the manuscript I leave the tube and climb up into the city. It is brighter now, the sun slowly lighting up the buildings. A left then a right, then a long stroll down the straight road and I’m at the first TV interview.
Helen is there already, in the waiting room for me. She stands up as she sees me walking in through the spinning doors, I make a big show of pretending to see her and walk out straight away again. The old ones are the best. Helen is brilliant, she looks after me, she cares about me, I’m pretty sure it’s down to me being her biggest and as such most financially rewarding client she’s ever had but I hope there’s some personal level there.
I’m up to the make up room and straight away I’m being padded in the face with bits and bobs I don’t even pretend to know about. The women who do the makeup have handled so many stars that they know it’s probably better not to talk about anything. They got on with their work and leave me to quietly reflect that I like these women whilst they apply the finishing touches to my face. I ask them why I need so much make up on. Apparently if you don’t wear makeup under the bright lights on the studio you can look very washed out and pale. I suggest that maybe being that colour wouldn’t be such a bad thing for a horror writer. They ignore me.
No time to dwell, Helen pops her head around the corner, her little brown bun atop an aging face. If I’m ready to go on, then the presenters are ready for me, she says. I stand and follow her out of the door, the make up artists begin talking once I leave, free to talk amongst themselves like children when the teacher excuses themselves from the room.
I meet the presenters, a husband and wife team, they interviewed me years ago, they think it was for my first or second novel. It was my fourth, but I don’t correct them. Small talk, offering of drinks, talking of how the interview will pan out, who’s on before me, who’s on after me, they’re disappointed I can’t stay for the full length of the show, they’ll mention how busy I am in the interview. This is all we talk about, nothing proper, nothing to do with the reason I’m there, they’ll save that for the cameras, no sense wasting good material.
I grab a bite to eat when they have finished their quick chat with. A bagel with some cream cheese spread over it. As I eat I watch the presenters talking to the other guests, almost identical conversations with each one, the same as mine. It was just a way for them to get a feel of who they were talking to, a warm up for the real thing.
As I tuck into the second half of the bagel, they retreat to the set and talk between them, occasionally glances up from the script that they peer over and pointing to certain guests. A couple of points towards me, brief smiles when they see that I am watching them, even more brief when they look up the second time and see that I haven’t stopped staring at them.
And then it’s time for the interview. I’m not on right away. They have a woman talking about her charity on first, then some of the shows usual stuff, advert breaks, a man talking about his youth programme, advert breaks, then some regular stuff, then it’s me.
As I’m welcomed on, and he’s one of the most celebrated horror novelists of our time, with a thenominal thirteenth novel in the current A Killer’s Mind series out today, please welcome our guest, the studio audience claps and cheers, some because they want to, most because they’re told to, and I step onto the set from the side of the camera and I walk over to the empty sofa oppostite the husband and wife and I shake the husbands hand and I kiss the wife on the cheek and our arms look in that special, I’ll hug and kiss your cheek despite you being a stranger to me, kind of way.
The interview starts off great, the wife tells me that she managed to get her hands on an advanced copy and she thinks it’s my best one yet. The husband agrees, but his favourite remains the first one because he remembers reading it in his youth and he still remembers the shock of the reality of it. He asks how I think of such brutal murders, and how I can write in such detail which seems to paint murder in such a glorified light. I pause for a moment, smile, and chuckle a little.
I tell them that most of the times it isn’t the murders that are hard to imagine, they come into my mind like a gentlemen on a pleasant stroll through my brain. I see them so clearly and vividly it’s just about relaying that to paper. I tell them that the tricky bit is actually getting a story to fit around these. A lot of the time, if I wake up from a dream in which I see a really aggressive, violent attack, I say, and I can’t think of a story to centre it around, it becomes one of my short stories.
Oh, says the wife, they’re so good. The husband agrees, he asks if there’ll be any more of them. I tell them my plans to start one soon. In fact, I say, I’ve already written a couple of them, and just come up with the central murder of the next one. They’re clearly happy by this.
And then they look at each other, they’re giving each other a look that only well tuned married couples know, and they know what the other is thinking and they both know that the question, the thing they know, and I’m almost sure I know they want to ask is on the tip of their tongues. And then they turn to me and it all comes up again. And I can’t believe that they would say it, that they would ask it, this early in the morning. But this is how they get their viewers and this is how they get people talking about their show. And so they do ask it.
It’s the wife who says it, they had this planned, she would ask in the soft soothing motherly voice, the voice that she had trained herself over many years of being a television figure to become her natural voice and they hoped that I would open up to them, and explain everything. So, she starts sickengly slow, as if I don’t know what’s coming, as if this wasn’t playing in the back of my mind for the last two weeks. Beneath the writing and the dreams of murders this was playing on my mind and especially over the last two weeks, with it being that time of the year, and a new book coming out and new stories being written to try and cover up the memories, and with this day of being in the spotlight, it was there.
But he question has left her lips and I am stuck. So, she says, is it painful, around this time. I give her a quizzing look, my trained reaction, pretend it never happened, block it out with murders and serial killers. Well, it’s common knowledge, she says my name and goose bumps go up my neck, my skin is literally crawling at her speech. My name, followed by the most despised sentence in the history of full stops. Your wife, dying the way she did, the anniversary was only two weeks ago, my name again and I feel bile swim up to my throat.
A swallow, stiffly. But I don’t respond, and now the husband jumps in, making things worse for me but trying to save his show, they can’t have a famed horror writer falling silent on him. It’s quite amazing though, he pushes, that just as she dies, your career really takes off, it’s almost like you changed your writing to make her proud of you.
The bile receeds quickly, I know how to respond to this, that was a good question, he is clearly the more skilled interviewer. Well, I say, my voice a little shaken, I found the best way I could deal with her death wasn’t to shy away from the subject, I confronted it. I couldn’t deal with the way she left, so I changed it. No she didn’t die the way she did, at the mercy of pills, no, she was killed by a serial killer. She was just a poor victim, I say, of his murderous spree. But he wasn’t a lead, he was a victim himself and I couldn’t have my beautiful wife murdered without justice. So I created A Killers Mind to enact that justice. And I fell in love again, this time with a serial killer that sprang from my mind onto the page.
This shuts them up. The glaze over and are clearly listening to their mikes, the men in the glass booth deciding what camera to show, screaming at them to cut me off. And they do, they say, unfortunately that’s all they have time for from me, I’ve got to be off for the launch day of my book, they plug it a little, not as much as I liked, but in the end, I ruined their show, they deserve it really, I try and put what happened to her behind me, to suppress it but every year, every novel. People who know, don’t understand why I do it, they couldn’t imagine anything worse than their job being about death after dealing with the death of someone they love so much. I see it as revenge in a way.
Helen is calling my over as the set rushing into action during the advert break, I thank the presenters for their time, they respond, repeating my words, no meaning behind them. And then we’re away from the studio.
Helen has a go at me in the car. She knows and I know that I shouldn’t have said that, I can write about disturbing things all day and get paid for it but the second I relate any of it to the death of a loved one, the papers will be reporting tomorrow, if the news is quiet enough, that I’m emotionally unstable, an alcoholic is usually their favourite route to go. Helen goes on about it all the way to the next stop, the publicity she has worked to create, the adverts for the book, they will be tarnished, I tell her not to worry that it will sell even better with controversy surrounding it. It better, is all she replies.
The day continues much less eventful than my first interview, the next presenters must have watched the first interview, known not to bring it up. They all eye me with a weariness, this bothers me, it’s the look I give a Fringe if they get up too close to me. For the rest to of the day this plays on me, I feel bugs crawling over my skin and see the dream that I have kept in my mind to write around drifting away.
It’s like her words, the woman are burrowing into my head, through a tiny little hole in the beck of my skull, and they’re eating away my ideas and replacing them with a sickness, I can feel them laying in my stomach, upsetting it to the point of vomiting. But I can’t be stick, instead it plays on my mind over and over. Your wife, dying the way she did, the anniversary was only two weeks ago. I know when it was.
I do my best to pay attention to the other television hosts, a man, who is loved by all his audiences, a group of middle aged women who all adore my work, which strikes me as odd as none of them are able to tell me their favourite novel, some even struggle to remember the name of the new one and just sit there reffering to it as this book, your new book, your new novel, your latest novel. Another male and female couple, they’ve been written a lot about recently, supposedly there’s something going on. I know better, she’s gay, but doesn’t want to admit it so never bothers playing down the rumours of a relationship with her very straight co-host. I can tell this because she has a thing for Helen, a lingering handshake, attentive eyes, the smile that forms only at the corner of her mouth when she catches a glimpse of Helen from behind the cameras, the resistance to bite her lip. But I can’t pay attention to what they are saying, I have my automatic response but all the while I should be thinking about what they are saying and giving much better, more insightful and advertising conversations, I can only hear the words over and over. The destroy my concentration and I am left sat on the shows and I can do nothing more than, hmmm, yeah yeah yeah, well this new book is out today and it’s about the same character.
Your wife, dying the way she did, the anniversary was only two weeks ago. The painful memories, the heart breaks when your loved one goes. You become something different. You will never think and feel the same way as you did when they were with you. You want revenge on everyone who played a part in it, and that makes you bitter. Your wife, dying the way she did, the anniversary was only two weeks ago. Over and over, the words clear in my ears as if freshly spoken.
And so my day was ruined. One woman and her pet husband, with that one topic, that sends me to my knees. Helen has a friend who works at a pretty big time paper, I was going to make front page. Drug addiction due to the death of my wife, apparently, which, in a way is nice because it gives the alcoholic story a rest. She wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy, and as we rode to the final meeting of the day, the report with the magazine, we stared out of opposite windows with glum expressions on our faces.
We walked in silence up to the third floor office space and found the people who I would be talking to. The reporter, a young woman, she looked barely out of high school, pretty but she looked like she knew it, which ruined it. Her assistant was the one who really caught my eye and perked my mood up.
We sat down at her desk and she started asking me about the plot for the new novel and what themes are carrying on and whether the rumours of the series ending were true and what I’m working on now. What my plans were for ventures into films, what advice I would give for aspiring authors, what I would be if I wasn’t a writer, that was her column’s little tidbit she said. And with that, with my eyes fixed on her assistant who was just to her left, make additional notes in case she missed anything out in her interview, and with her questions my mind was clear of the woman and was firmly back on my stories.
And then the interview is over, she thanks me, as does her assistant and we make our move to go. But we don’t. I say to the two of them, and Helen, we should go out for drinks and celebrate the release of the novel. The two of them say no at first, but I persuade them pretty easily, they know that it would make a brilliant story, for both the magazine and for themselves, to say that the horror writer of a generation took them out for drinks.
In the bar we talk again, on the way here it seemed a little quiet, especially the assistant, and I began to think the whole thing was a mistake. But now in the bar, with the first cool sip of a cocktail in your stomach and the promise of more to come the conversation has started to pick up. The interviewer, none too surprisingly leads most of the conversation, asking questions of both me and Helen, asking for off the record answers about my book, I don’t give her anything more than I already have, I made that mistake a few years ago, when a journalist says of the record what they really mean is they themselves won’t write about it, but they will sell on what you tell them to the highest bidder. Instead I just reword stuff that I have already said, she seems to take it down well.
The assistant chirps up every now and then, they tell little anecdotes loosely related to the story, it slows the conversation down a fair amount. You can tell why they’re only the assistant. We drink long into the evening and then into the night, we eat a little, a few bags of crisps, a portion of chips, which between four of us isnt’t really anything more than eight each. But we drink, long into the night. Helen, particularly fond of Whiskey sours, is thrilled to learn that they are 2 for £7, and can barely stand by her fifth one, the interviewer unsure on what she likes, not usually being much of a big drinker, tries almost everything on the menu, then when she can’t remember what she has had, decides that she had better go round them all again. Her assistant, at first only has a Malibu and coke, but then after some careful persuasion from the group joins in with the cocktails. I meanwhile, stick to coke, I never particularly like the sensation of being drunk and, especially with the story that while be running tomorrow, I am particularly keen to make a point of staying sober.
After a good few hours drinking, the evening has wound down. There bar is more of less empty now, not that it had ever really been heaving. All that remained were our group and a few Fringes, sat individually, dotted around in darkened corners, sipping their drinks, eyes burrowing into the ground. I despise them, these are the worst of them all. And the anger of the day wells up within me.
We decide, well, Helen tells us, that we had best be getting off. The interviewer and Helen decide
that they’ll take a cab as they live in more or less the same direction. As they left I asked the assistant whereabouts they lived. Her assistant said that it wasn’t in the nice end of the city, at the moment, this assistance job was pretty new and they were back at their parents house for now. As I thought.
I asked if they wanted a lift home, as I had only been drinking cokes all evening. I said that my flat was only a couple of stops on the tube from here. They agreed and we set off home. I preseed for more questions on their childhood, of their living arrangements, of their goals. I was told they had a pretty rough childhood, dad was a drunk, they often got into trouble as kids, stealing stuff from the shops, winding policemen up. They were back at their parents after their latest relationship crashed and burned, same as always. And in relation to goals, they were happy being an assistant for now, but would quit for something with the same money and less responsibilities within a second.
And there it was, by the time we reached my front door, full confirmed and neatly presented to me. A Fringe. And the anger of the day wells up within me.
They asked where my car was, I said I had lied, it was only a way to get them back to my house, I told them I thought they were gorgeous and I hadn’t been able to stop looking at them all ight, all through the interview, I said, my eyes were on them. The assistants checks flashed red, moving in for a kiss, I back step slowly, warning there could be cameras, paparazzi everywhere, we couldn’t risk it, we had to go inside first. Of course there were no reporters, no one knew where I lived.
I lead them into the flat, flick on the light, then edge past to fetch some wine. I say, make yourself comfortable in the lounge.
When I return from the kitchen, bottle of red wine in hand, apologising that I had no glasses, I see that they have stripped down, naked in my lounge. Turn around I tell them. They do, I edge closer, not saying a word, bottle still in my hand. I study their body, their legs, their hair, over the back of a skull. I raise the glass, then strike down hard, blood and wine exploding into shattered rain.
***
I wake from dreams of horror. From dreams of blood splattered walls, merciless killers and death. I wake from dreams of instruments of torture. I wake from dreams of murder.
But when I wake I do so with a calm demeanor. I do not wake up with a yelp, or a whimper, nor do I wake up sobbing in the darkness of my bedroom. I wake up with a smile on my face and a pen in my hand because these dreams are not horrors for my mind to hide from, these dreams are much more useful to me.
